Go back to Henry Sulcer, Proto Ad-Man.
Henry and Charlotte prospered in Hyde Park as business boomed. Of course, it was almost hard not to do so in “Roaring Twenties” Chicago, with the stock market soaring. Still there is no doubt that the Sulcers were up-and-comers. They knew the socialite Bobsy Goodspeed, who was visited by Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. In one family story, Henry and Charlotte even met the greatest hero of the age, aviator Charles Lindbergh, who gave them a flight around Washington D.C.; Henry had to sit in the plane’s bathroom.
As my father put it
If you want to paint the family as social climbers who were living off the fat of the land, you wouldn’t be far wrong.
Sandy Sulcer
The kids attended an expensive local private school, and in their early teens, they all sailed in luxury to France on the S.S. Leviathan.
It was a culturally enriched life too. Henry, recalling his glory days on the stage at the University, donned elaborate costumes and makeup to play classic roles on community theater stages.
The couple was heavily involved in University alumni functions, fundraising, local theater, arts, and, always, music.
The coolest invention of the era – in my opinion, even competing with the airplane – may have been the introduction of radio. It should not be surprising that Henry and Charlotte played a part in the introduction of broadcasting, when it was so new that people still treated it like the miracle it actually is, before we became jaded with the commercialization of public airwaves. Back then, the ether was so uncluttered by static that you could tune in programs all across the country, especially at night.
On a Wednesday evening in 1925, in the city of Seattle, were you to tune your cabinet-sized wireless set to the wavelength of 323.4 meters, you would have been able to hear two hours of an instrumental program featuring Henry (tenor) and Charlotte (soprano) on station WJAZ in Chicago. You would have had no idea that Henry was the president of a prominent advertising agency, which had yet to have anything to do with broadcasting, or that Charlotte was a busy mother of two.
In 1926, when Charlotte was 39 years old, she may have thought her mothering years were behind her. Nevertheless, a third child was born that August – my father. They named him Frederick after his grandfather, but everyone in the family went by nicknames. He was quickly known as “Sandy” because of the blond hair he sported in his early childhood; the name stuck throughout his life, even in business.
It was a privileged life that he was born into. Gang warfare may have been raging between Al Capone and the FBI in the city, but Hyde Park was a quiet oasis on the South Side. Long summers were spent sailing at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin where Charlotte kept at least two pianos in tent cabins.
The older kids had ponies, “Blackie” and “Blossom”.
Their own family cook prepared all the meals, and they had hired a young Swedish woman named Anna Anderson to help with the children. They encouraged the kids to speak French by using it around the house (a practice my father continued with us, with questionable results). Sandy remembered being taught to call out “J’ai finis!” while being potty trained.
I myself became involved in amateur theatrical productions in my middle age, and I loved finding out that my grandfather stayed active in this throughout his life, too. Even in his mid-forties, Henry acted in a drama at Mandel Hall on the campus, called The Valiant – a “serious” drama:
The play tells the story of James Dyke, a confessed murderer who has been sentenced to die and now awaits his fate on death row … the prison’s warden and chaplain have nearly given up hope of discovering his true identity until the night of Dyke’s execution when a strange young woman arrives requesting to see him. Now, she may be the only key to unlocking Dyke’s mysterious past…
Wikipedia
It was a privileged, comfortable and enriching life – at least, it was until the stock market crash the following year.
Go on to read about the the amazing musician and matron of the family, Charlotte Thearle.
Sources
- Englewood Women’s Club”, Englewood Times, 26 February, 1915
- Letter to Merideth Sulcer, 11 March 1997, used with permission of Sandy Sulcer
- US 1920 Census
- “The Valiant (Play), available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Valiant_(play) on 6 December 2019
- “Culture and Coin Combine as Motives for Local Plays”, Hyde Park Herald, March, 1928. Full text in appendix.
