Sunday, Dec. 07, 2008

6-block trip of a lifetime

CHICAGO -- Neither man had a clue what to expect that morning in March as they stood toe-to-toe, 42 stories above the city.

The men were guarded yet friendly as they sized each other up, trying to decide whether to shake hands or hug. After all, they were strangers.

The younger of the two was Lewis Manilow, prominent Chicago lawyer and real-estate developer, co-founder of the Museum of Contemporary Art and major fund-raiser for cultural institutions and such Democratic Party luminaries as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The other man was Jacob "Jack" Shore, an international patent attorney who wrote the patent application for the insanely popular TMX Elmo doll, the 2006 Toy of the Year.

Over the course of their long careers, the two men have taken part in countless negotiations. But never with each other and never anything like this. Not in their wildest dreams.

This morning's meeting had been hastily arranged by telephone at 10 o'clock the night before. It was Lew's idea. He's the one who had tracked down Jack, hiring a modern-day gumshoe out of Detroit to do the job. But now that he had found his quarry -- and so shockingly close; the two live only a few blocks apart -- Lew wasn't sure how he felt. "I was keeping my emotions in check," he says.

As for Jack, he had stayed awake half the night. Never too up, never too down. That's Jack. The streetwise ex-Navy officer doesn't rattle easily. But this time, he was shook up for sure. It surprised him how difficult it was to think this thing through. Muhammad Ali could not have hit him any harder than the news he'd learned in the last 24 hours about Manilow and himself.

The men performed an awkward not-quite-a-hug, not-quite-a-handshake, and Jack blurted out the question in the forefront of each man's mind.

"What do you say to a brother you didn't know existed for 80 years?"

This is the bittersweet story of Lew and Jack, two grandfathers in their early 80s who, after a lifetime as strangers, discovered they are brothers.

It began in 1955 in a restaurant in the Loop. Ernie Banks was lighting up the Wrigley Field scoreboard and the Prudential Building dominated the Chicago skyline. Lew was in his late 20s, the son of Nathan Manilow, one of the country's top home builders. With a law degree from Harvard and a sky's-the-limit future in the real estate business alongside his father, Lew was having lunch with a close friend of his father's.

Maybe they were discussing President Dwight Eisenhower's heart attack that September. Perhaps it was that year's heartbreaking Broadway sensation, "The Diary of Anne Frank." Whatever the topic, it flew right out of Lew's head as soon as his lunch companion, in reference to a mutual acquaintance, dropped a bomb on Lew's assumptions about his own privileged life.

You know, Lew, so-and-so was adopted. "Like you." The words sent a jolt through him.

ADOPTED. LIKE. YOU.

"I tried to keep a poker face," he says. "But I was stunned." Lew forced himself to finish his meal. Outside on the sidewalk, he said goodbye and hurried in the opposite direction to the Cook County Probate Court, head spinning, heart racing. There, he rifled through a thick ledger, found his name and asked a clerk behind the desk for his file. He opened the folder and there he was -- or who he used to be -- Irvin Inger, born in Wayne County, Mich., on Aug. 11, 1927, to Gussie and Sam Inger.

Gussie was an unschooled immigrant from Lithuania whose life in America included several rocky marriages and a history of living on public charity. Sam Inger was from the Ukraine and had little way with money. The couple met in Toledo, Ohio, the epicenter of the American Heartland. It was Sam's first marriage, Gussie's third. Together, they had two children, Jacob and Irvin, who joined Gussie's four older kids from previous marriages.