Chicago, February 1986. I was selling men’s shoes at Marshall Field’s Water Tower Place store on Michigan Avenue.

Back then the Trib included Parade magazine in its Friday edition. On the Friday before Valentine’s Day, Leo Buscaglia’s smiling mug adorned the cover of that insert. “Dr. Love,” it announced, his face inside a big red heart.

Like most people, I knew Dr. Buscaglia from his wildly popular appearances on Oprah Winfrey’s show. At the end of each Oprah show the audience would line up for their chance to hug the so-called Hug Doctor. This man carried an aura of love. His excitement about the art of loving was infectious.

I worked the late shift that particular Friday so I didn’t go in until noon or so. Having a little time to kill before then I sat in one of the fast food restaurants in the mall and read the paper, including the article about Leo Buscaglia. It was under my arm when I entered Field’s and made my way through Women’s Accessories toward the elevator.

Next to the elevator was a small candy counter, and who was standing at the counter buying Frango mints but Leo Buscaglia himself!

(Note: I really, really miss Frango mints. RIP Marshall Field & Company.)

To this day I don’t know what came over me. On the occasions in my retail days when I met celebrities I’d ask for an autograph (Sean Connery, Dudley Moore, Tony Bennett, Peter Allen) or not (Oprah, Stedman, Judd Hirsch, Joe Piscopo, George Plimpton), but what happened with Leo Buscaglia surprised me even as it occurred.

I walked up to him and said, “Mr. Buscaglia?”

He was paying for his candy but turned around and acknowledged me.

“I…think I love you.”

He didn’t miss a beat and his face fairly glowed. “I know you do. And I love you!” And he smiled and he hugged me.

I told him that several years earlier, during a really difficult period, my mom had given me a copy of his Living, Loving and Learning, and that I credited the book with helping to save my life. He thanked me and said, “I want you to go give your mom a big hug for me.”

I pulled from under my arm that day’s Parade magazine and told him I’d just been reading it a few minutes before. I don’t remember whether I asked him to sign it or he just took it, but he asked my name and wrote on it, “To Clay, As we continue to share in the joy of love.”

Maybe he’d written that same phrase ten thousand times before but it sure did seem special to me.

We said our good-byes, he collected his Frango mints, and I got on the elevator and went to work. Before clocking in, though, I went to the pay phone back beyond the credit office on the sixth floor and called Mama, who was back home in San Antonio.

I told her about my encounter and that I’d been instructed to give her a hug, but since I couldn’t just then I wanted her to know that I loved her.

She thanked me, we chatted for a minute, and that was that. Or so I thought.

I had no way of knowing that Mama had just come home from a particularly difficult day of teaching Special Ed and was feeling waaaay down in the dumps. My call, it seemed, came just when she needed it the most. So she wrote to Dr. Buscaglia and told him so, and thanked him for prompting me to check in with her.

Dr. Buscaglia wrote her back. I was sifting through some old papers just now and came across his note, dated March 10, 1986, on letterhead with a South Pasadena, CA, address. Here it is, in its entirety:

“Dear Edwina,

“Thank you so much for writing and sharing your uplifting story with me. Knowing that my work really might be making a difference is a tremendous encouragement.

“I’m so pleased that your son got the message: the time to tell someone you love them is NOW. If all of us kept that in mind and acted upon it, what a much more beautiful world this would be.

“Continue living in love and sharing your warmth and specialness with the many in need.

“Warmly, Leo”

Mama of course shared the note with me. She explained about her having that bad day and hearing from me at just the best moment.

So what was I to do but write Dr. Buscaglia myself?

I told him how tickled my mom was to receive his personal reply to her own note. I also reiterated how much I valued the lessons I’d learned from him and his books.

You guessed it. He then wrote back to me.

That letter is around here somewhere and I can’t quote its contents from memory, but the bigger point is that this man walked the walk. He taught in such a friendly way that to love, while not necessarily in as vigorous a manner as he had experienced in his own vibrant Italian family, is a vital part of a fulfilling life.

Leo Buscaglia died in 1998 but I think about him and his lessons often. They would have been just as precious if I’d never laid eyes on the man but that moment at the Frango counter at Marshall Field’s Water Tower was the best celebrity encounter I ever had.

Photo credit www.leobuscaglia.org

It was the spring of 1996 and I was selling men’s shoes at Saks Fifth Avenue in Chicago. The suit department was next door and I’d sometimes help customers there if no other salespeople were around.

It was sale time – it was very often sale time – and the aisles were jammed with racks of marked-down suits and pants. An elderly African-American man rolled up in one of those scooter-chair things and said he needed some tan trousers. Because the aisles were blocked in that department I walked over to the rack, pulled out a few pairs in his size, and brought them to him. He liked a couple and wanted to try them on, so I directed him to the fitting rooms. What happened then was a first (and only) in my 15 years in retail.

The man said he could walk very short distances – such as into the dressing room – but he couldn’t bend over, and he asked if I could I help him try on the pants. So I did.

I went into the little room with him, helped him off with his own trousers and helped him on with the new ones. He stood up slowly, looked at himself in the mirror and made his decision quickly (bless him), and then we got him dressed again.

As I was ringing up his purchase he explained that he’d had a stroke recently and couldn’t walk much, thus the scooter, and that he had retired from his job as a criminal court judge. His speech was a bit slow but I understood him perfectly. He was from Memphis, he said, and was in Chicago visiting his sister.

“Memphis? I’m going to be there next month.” Calvin’s mom was recently married and planned a driving vacation from her home in Mississippi to Branson, Missouri, via Memphis, and Calvin and I would rendezvous with the newlyweds in Memphis. I had already done some research on dining options.

“I read about a restaurant called the Four Way Grill. Do you know it?”

His head turned a little to the side, like people’s do when they want to hear something better.

“Yeah, I know it. That’s a black restaurant.”

“Well, is there any reason I shouldn’t go there?”

“Noooo.” He didn’t sound bothered, just a little confused.

“Is it good?”

He brightened. “Yeah, it’s good. I’d go with you if you asked me.” And I did.

A month later, after arranging to meet Judge Lockard for breakfast – that was his name, H.T. Lockard – Calvin, his mom and stepdad and I found ourselves driving through some neighborhoods that made us wonder if we were lost. This place was in Gourmet, I thought; could this be right?

But soon enough we saw the Four Way, and there, in a minivan parked in front, was the judge. He slowly turned himself out of the driver’s seat and, with the help of a cane and a convenient elbow, was able to make his way to the restaurant. It was a small diner, really, in a plain brick building of faded pink.

As soon as the door opened we heard a chorus from the kitchen. “G’mornin,’ judge!” “You’re lookin’ good, judge!”

The rest of us looked toward the dining room, wondering whether we should seat ourselves or wait, when the judge said, “Come this way,” and set out in his slow shuffle through the kitchen.

We snaked behind him through the hot, narrow space, squeezing between women in white dresses griddling eggs and ham and pancakes and patting biscuit dough. Large pans of biscuits were spread over the counters and let up a smell that told you you’d soon be eating too many of them.

Through the kitchen, we found ourselves in a dining room separate from the main seating area, without a door or any means of entry except through the kitchen.

The tables were covered with worn vinyl cloths and the walls paneled with thin wood-grain sheets of 1960s vintage. Photographs hung around the room. Over here was Dr. King and over there was Jesse Jackson. That looks like Alex Haley. And there – why, that’s Judge Lockard. And there’s Judge Lockard with Dr. King!

Orders were taken and our breakfasts were delivered. I had country ham with strong red eye gravy – so did the judge – and there was a mountain of biscuits in the middle of the table. Judge Lockard asked gently if I might help him cut his ham into pieces since he had trouble using his right arm. Of course I did, while resisting the impulse to express my hope that his minivan had automatic transmission.

We had the back room to ourselves for that breakfast and enjoyed a good conversation, mostly about food.

Judge H.T. Lockard

A few months later, in the summer of 1996, the Democratic National Convention took place in Chicago. During that week a customer came into Saks wearing a seersucker suit and a bow tie. “Let me guess,“ I ventured. “You’re not from here.”

“Sharp eye. I’m from Memphis.” He was a newspaperman, it turned out, in town covering the convention.

I lit up and told him I’d been there recently and had some good meals. He asked about them.

“Well, there was the Rendezvous – great lamb ribs.” He nodded approvingly. “And the Cozy Corner – those barbecued Cornish hens.”

“Another good one.”

“And we had breakfast at a place called the Four Way Grill. Have you heard of it?”

He stiffened. “You went to the Four Way Grill?”

“Yeah, and it was really good. We ate in the back room with a fellow I know named H.T. Lockard.”

The newspaperman’s eyes grew large. “You were in the back room of the Four Way Grill with H.T. Lockard?”

This scared me a little. “Uh, yes. Why?”

He explained that the back room of the Four Way Grill was where the black elite of Memphis did their politics and made their deals, and that Judge Lockard ranked very high in the pantheon. He had been among the founders of the NAACP in Tennessee. It was a rare honor, the journalist told me, for outsiders – white ones at that – to be invited into the sanctum.

Several months later Calvin and I returned to Memphis and again we met the judge, this time for Sunday brunch at a trendier little spot near the University of Memphis. It was an Eggs Florentine kind of place.

I never saw Judge Lockard after that but I spoke to him a few times on the phone and we traded a couple of letters over the years.

Six or seven years ago I attended an Urban League event in Los Angeles. At one point I was standing in the rear of the ballroom when Jesse Jackson walked by. I said, “Reverend Jackson, I think we have a mutual friend.” His face pinched up a bit, skeptically.

“Oh, really.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. H.T. Lockard.”

“You know Judge Lockard.” Again, a statement. He really hadn’t stopped moving during the exchange.

“Yes. Had a nice breakfast with him once in the back room of the Four Way Grill.”

Rev. Jackson stopped and turned toward me. “You were in the back room of the Four Way Grill with H.T. Lockard?”

I just smiled and shrugged. I considered mentioning that I was at that breakfast with my boyfriend but decided that might be too much for the civil rights leader.

The judge died about a year ago at age 91 and I read a wonderful story about him in his obituary. In the early 60s he was the attorney representing black students attempting to enroll in Memphis State University, and during the fight a man called to say he was going to kill him. He told an associate about the threat and said, “I’m going to fortify myself with arms and liquor and be on the front porch waiting for him.” Fortunately nothing came of the incident but the story captured the elegance I saw and the determination I had read about.

I thought about H.T. Lockard the other day on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination. He was a great man, one of the people I’ve been blessed in my life to know, if only a little.

When I was a little boy in Houston a cat and a dog lived with us. Lickie the cat was jet black and temperamental, possibly the most catlike cat I ever knew. She wasn’t mean but she wasn’t friendly, either. Other kittens, cats and dogs came and went but Lickie, reaching the ripe age of 21, outlived many of them. She refused to eat anything except Purina #1 canned food.

Skippy came to the family a little before me. Of noble Louisiana breeding and birth, he had a proper name – Squire Skipdale of Nodaway – but he answered to Skippy. I don’t know anything about Wire Fox Terriers beyond what I saw in my ten or twelve years with him, or whether his temperament was standard for the breed, but he was perky without being hyperactive and he didn’t bark too much. He was smart. He knew the usual commands. He’d beg for food, and when you held your hands open and said “All gone,” he’d go away.

I think our dog’s 12-year lifespan was about normal, but he endured in spite of us. Skippy survived so long despite the fact that every Easter, when much of the world celebrated a beautiful, inspirational story of rebirth, we tried to kill him.

My brother and I had a mom who indulged us with holiday candy. On Christmas we would awake to find stockings full of Hershey’s kisses and Pez dispensers, and on Easter morning the spread of sweets was even more elaborate. Big baskets of green plastic grass held malted milk ball eggs, chocolate eggs, solid chocolate bunnies, hollow chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chickens, jelly beans. Candy, candy, candy. We would gorge ourselves until being dragged out to the car and to church.

After church we usually had dinner at our grandparents’ house. We had cousins and sometimes the dinners ran to a dozen people. Often there was ham, or sometimes lamb (which I only learned years later could be served in a color other than gray), and our grandmother Pat liked to put out what she called a relish tray. That confused me because it held black olives out of a can and carrot and celery sticks and little sweet pickles but no relish. Pat was also fond of pickled watermelon rind, which I didn’t love then but for which at this minute I suddenly feel a craving.

Easter afternoons were fun. It wasn’t steamy yet in Houston and we kids could play outside after we ate. Pat had baskets of candy for us, too. She had her own sweet tooth and used the grandkids as an excuse to indulge. The afternoons would end around four or five o’clock, when we’d pack ourselves into the car and head home.

What greeted us when we got there was grotesque. We paused in shock at the front door to survey Shiloh in our own living room. Shredded foil rabbit-wrappers were strewn everywhere. There was so much plastic and torn cardboard that one might have believed a ticker-tape parade had come through. The green plastic grass, which only a few hours before had served as a bed for our candy treasures, was now massed in wet brown clumps, having been swallowed and regurgitated. Skippy apparently had rather catholic tastes in candy, for it seemed that he ate everything from our baskets. Further, based on the contents of the numerous piles and puddles of vomit, he didn’t keep anything down.

I don’t recall learning until much later about the dangers of letting dogs eat chocolate, but these annual binges didn’t seem to do Skippy any lasting physical harm.

One amazing aspect of the Easter adventures with Skippy was the fact that they recurred, year after year after year. When we went to sleep Sunday night our collective memory was erased so that a year later, the same series of events repeated themselves.

I can’t see or eat Easter candy without remembering Skippy.