The Library

In 1993, a would-be lawyer named John Huebl serendipitously acquired a phenomenal collection of books. Fifteen years later, as he recalls the joy those volumes brought him, Huebl uncovers the story of the man who once owned them

By John Huebl

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After his move to Chicago in the mid-1970s, Berkowitz distanced himself from his family. “It was as though he had decided upon a whole new life,” says his brother.

That February, I received a letter with a Florida return address from Mildred and Bernard Berkowitz, Howard’s parents. The stylish young woman whom I’d met in the lobby—and who turned out to be the lawyer handling Howard’s estate—had given them my name and address. “It must have been fate or a spiritual force that brought you and [the lawyer] together at that precise moment,” they wrote. “Howard loved books all his life. They were an essential part of his life. . . . From what [the lawyer] told us, you, too, love books, and your desire is to have a library. It is very comforting to us to know that these books are with someone who appreciates having them. . . . We hope that they will give you the pleasure and knowledge that they gave Howard.”

My stay at McClurg Court lasted about a year, including about nine months with Howard’s books. The books were a comfort and a joy to me during those dark days, when, inevitably, I had to confront the failure of the previous year and figure out what to do next. The immediate question was whether to return to law school, and if so, when. Northwestern generously had allowed me the opportunity to restart in the fall of 1993.

With his books lining my walls, I thought often about Howard during those months. I would stand at my own bank of windows and watch the clouds roll in from Lake Michigan, shrouding the gleaming white Water Tower Place and the black John Hancock building, the two towers juxtaposed like figures on a chessboard. I wondered about the thoughts that must have run through Howard’s mind over the course of the years when he had lived on the opposite side of the building. I pictured him and a companion seated at a table against his bank of windows, enjoying a meal that Howard had prepared; I pictured him in his reading chair, looking up from one of his beloved books to consider an idea and, once again, to admire his panorama of the city and the lake; I pictured him alone, standing at those windows, contemplating the beauty of the scene as a backdrop to timeless human mysteries. In particular, I wondered about the thoughts that had run through his mind as he stood at those windows for the first time after learning that he had been infected with that certain virus, and during the ensuing months of facing his onrushing demise, one that would cut his expected lifetime roughly in half.

Sometimes, seeking perspective on my own life, I would dip into one of the many biographies that Howard had provided and find reassurance from knowing that the lives of others—Simone Weil, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and George Orwell, to name only a few—had been filled with their share of tumult.

In the late summer of 1993, I decided to wait yet another year and return to Northwestern in the fall of 1994. With that decision made, I also decided that I would pass some time in Colorado. Of course, taking Howard’s library with me would have been impossible. Therefore, in October, I loaded Howard’s books into boxes, rented a U-Haul, and drove the boxes and bookshelves to my parents’ home in Detroit, where they found storage in the garage.

There they would stay for 14 years: through my stay in Vail from November 1993 through May 1995 (while in Vail, I postponed my return to law school by yet another year); through law school from August 1995 through May 1998; and through nine subsequent years of lawyering in Illinois, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Then in February 2007, my wife and I bought our first home, a large colonial in Maryland. Suddenly, we had room for the books, which my parents brought in several carloads during the next few months. During their visits, I would return from the office to find a new batch of classics lining our basement shelves. I later moved some of those books to the loft above our garage, where I have my writing table. Brought face-to-face with these books after so many years, I started thinking once again about a man whose death was, in one respect, a statistic, a death that occurred during a distinct era in American history when gay men in large numbers were killed by a disease that seemed to come out of nowhere. Howard, of course, had been more than merely a statistic; he had been an individual, which led me to wonder about the life signified by the raised seal on the pages of these books. Who actually lived it? Put another way, what was the life story of the man who had provided me with hundreds of books full of stories?

* * *

Using the return address on the letter from Howard’s mother those many years ago, I managed rather easily to find Howard’s family. I spoke first with his mother, who was now 87 and who, upon receiving my call circa 7:30 p.m. on a Sunday night, was too surprised to be able to say very much, but who put me in touch with her other son, Robert. From Robert, I learned that Howard once had been married and that he had had a daughter. From talking with Robert and with Howard’s ex-wife, Kathy, and with his daughter, Rachel, I was able to find out more about the man whose wonderful library had ended up in my hands.

Howard was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on March 3, 1944. Through most of his first 18 months, his father, an American soldier, was in Europe fighting in World War II. (Howard’s father was awarded the Silver Star for “gallantry in action” in southern France in August 1944.) When Howard was nearly four, his younger brother, Robert, was born. In 1949, the family moved to West Orange, New Jersey, where the two boys shared a bedroom.

Robert recalls that he and Howard were opposites growing up—Robert was the athlete, while Howard was given to a life of the mind. On the shelves that lined their room, Robert displayed trophies on his side, while on the other side Howard stacked the books on which he spent almost all his money. “Howard was always precocious, artsy, and creative,” Robert said. “Even as a kid, he took over the bedroom with his books.”

Howard went to high school in West Orange, then attended Rutgers University, still living at home. One day, while Robert was still in high school, he returned to find that Howard had removed the trophies from their room and put them in a box in the attic. In their place, he had left Robert a letter stating, “It’s time to get your act together, time to get serious!” Enclosed with the letter was a list of summer reading assignments, including a New Yorker article about the plight of India’s Untouchables, and books such as Crime and Punishment, Sister Carrie, The Grapes of Wrath. “Howard was eccentric, nerdy, an unusual young person,” Robert says. “He would call me a ‘suburbanite philistine,’ admonish me to get serious, and, like an idiot, I had to take him seriously. But he definitely had an effect on me. On the bus to high-school baseball games, as other players were discussing [the usual subjects], I was reading Darkness at Noon—and I was the captain of the team!”

Howard graduated from Rutgers with a degree in history in 1966 and married two weeks later. “We were very much alike,” says his ex-wife, Kathy. “What attracted me to him initially was our shared interest in classical music, the arts. He was sensitive, not a macho kind of person. And we both were very much against the Vietnam War.” Kathy adds, “He was very handsome. He had a very beautiful physique.” Both Kathy and Robert remember Howard as being about five feet ten inches, with dark brown eyes and a dark complexion.

Howard and Kathy moved to Baltimore, where Howard did graduate work in history at Johns Hopkins University. Their daughter, Rachel, was born in 1971. “He was an incredible father, terrific, lovely,” Kathy says. “He adored her—he was such a sensitive man.” Howard dropped out of the Ph.D program and began teaching in the Baltimore public schools. Ultimately, Howard’s inner conflicts—especially those involving his sexuality—came to light, and the couple separated. As for the reason, “Howard did not want me to tell his parents,” Kathy says. “But he and I had been such a close couple, and I had to give them an explanation. Howard was very angry when I told his parents.”

Howard went to work for Blue Cross; around the time when Rachel was three years old, Kathy, in search of a good public school system, moved with Rachel to Columbia, Maryland. According to Robert, Blue Cross asked Howard to become its director of communications in the mid-1970s, a promotion that took him to the company’s headquarters in Chicago.

Of Howard’s life in Chicago, Robert says, “He loved the city, he loved his view; he never had a car in all his years there, and he loved that freedom.” Also during those years, “he kept his distance from the family,” says Robert, today a writer living in Connecticut. “It was as though he had decided upon a whole new life. Sometimes a year or two could go by without him making contact. I would call him once or twice a year, just to let him know that I was still around, still available. Sometimes he would call me back, sometimes he wouldn’t.”

Robert visited Howard occasionally in Chicago, as did Mildred and Bernard. They had been surprised to learn their older son was gay. “They had had no idea, and it was all alien to them,” Robert says. “But they never stopped loving Howard.”

According to Kathy, she communicated with her former husband only to discuss details of Rachel’s child support. During the 17 years that Howard lived in Chicago, he did not have any contact with his daughter.

In January 1992, Howard had his first bout of pneumonia. “At that point, I knew he had AIDS,” says Robert, who, based on earlier conversations, had already begun to suspect his brother was ill with the disease. “At first, he didn’t want anyone to know. He tried to fight it; he thought he was going to beat it. But at some point when I asked him, ‘Do you want Mom and Dad to know?’ he said, ‘Yes.’”

With his life winding down, Howard sought reconciliation with his family. “It was as though he was going through a flashback of his whole life,” Robert says. Robert, Mildred, and Bernard visited Howard in Chicago. In a telephone conversation with Kathy, “He told me that he still loved me,” she recalls. “I think that psychologically, he wasn’t sure where he fit; he was not sure where he was, what he was. It’s a tragic story, [his] not knowing who he was.”

Howard also told Kathy that he would like to talk with Rachel, who at the time was 20 and a senior at the University of Delaware, pulling down good grades and swimming on the school’s team. Now 37, she lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband and two children. “My mother told me that Howard would like to talk with me, that he would like for me to call him,” Rachel recalls. “I was upset and angry. I had never had any relationship with him, and always referred to him as ‘Howard’ rather than as my father. When I asked about him, I learned only that he was living in Chicago and that he never had remarried.”

Rachel could not bring herself to call Howard, but on September 7, 1992, she sent him a four-page handwritten letter. “All my life I have wondered what you were like, what you were doing, who you were,” she wrote in part. “Now, in one day, I know exactly what you are doing. I’m very sorry to hear about your illness[;] I hope you’re not in too much pain. . . . I always wondered why you never kept in touch with me. For a while, I hoped to get birthday cards, but I gave up that idea after a few years.” She asked if he would have contacted her if he hadn’t been sick. “Eighteen years is a long time to decide whether or not you want to make contact. I also feel a little hurt that now when I’m getting in touch with you [and] getting to know you, you will be gone from my life again.” She asked him to write back and signed the letter, “Your daughter, Rachel.”

Howard quickly responded in a shaky script, thanking Rachel for her letter. “I’m very happy we’re in touch,” he wrote. He said he hoped they could meet in person. “I think we’ll both find we have quite a lot we’ll want to tell each other. For now, let me start by trying to answer the difficult question you asked: Would I now be in touch if I were not ill? In truth, I do not know. I’ve always thought that, at some point, we’d get reacquainted and enjoy a healthy and rewarding relationship. But I never really knew how to decide when the time was right. Still, please know I always loved you and took great pride in the kind, dignified, and purposeful way you led your life. When I left on my solitary path 18 years ago, I thought it best to leave well enough alone and let you and your mother recover from a difficult separation and divorce while each of you in your own ways got on with your lives. I thought I did not have the right to come and go as I saw fit. I did not know if I was welcome. When I got into trouble with my illness early this year, I made contact with your mother to advise her of the situation. The question of what to tell you came up at once. We both were confused.

“My instincts were not to say anything for now. I did not want all this on your mind as you started your very ambitious final semesters in college. But in the end your mother concluded—and I agreed—the right course was to share the facts with you and let you decide what—if anything—you might want to do. I rejoiced when your letter arrived!” He signed the letter, “Love, Howard.”

* * *

Photograph: Courtesy of the Berkowitz family