Robert Katzman, a friend for more than 50 years, has led an amazing life, replete with the most unusual and insightful “learning” episodes, many of which are presented here.
And in typically “Bob” fashion, the lessons to be learned are presented in an under- stated manner, where the reader must do a little thinking to fully understand the principles at play. A true product of the mean streets of South Side Chicago, Bob overcame early childhood physical and emotional abuse which would have destroyed many a lesser soul.
He became, in essence, a self-supporting and emancipated adolescent.
Always keenly interested in the world around him, Bob befriended a very broad cross-section of humanity in his travels through time and space; committed to connecting with the threads of people-hood that came his way. He remains interested in those who share that commitment yet come to it through very different life experiences.
Inter-current with these melded perspectives, as can be seen in the collected stories presented here, Bob’s lifelong struggles with cancer are yet another determinant of his journey (and) life in general, and provides us with a sobering backdrop to explain a fundamental openness to whatever life brings across our path.
The challenges that Bob has surmounted are remarkable and have been key to defining who he is… at least as much as the adventures he has experienced and now shares with you in this book.
You will never find a better observer and respondent to the questions that life poses to each of us – helping us to be more aware – and inspiring us to become even better.
Please enjoy!
Raph Pollock
Raph Pollack: The Evolution of a Relationship
By Robert M. Katzman © April 28, 2023
While we never hung out, went to a movie, or visited each other’s homes, he was friendly and open whenever we had occasion to talk. Flash forward five decades.
I was writing more and more, and posting my stories on a regular basis on my website www.DifferentSlants.com and gradually becoming better known to a growing group of readers. I had published 4 books between 2004 and 2008, and then two more in 2018.
Though we had little contact in between 1964 and 2018, and none in person; he began reading my stories and writing to me about them. When the last two books were published, he was among the first to buy the two volumes of my autobiography. Our written conversations gradually became more frequent.
And then when my new girlfriend, Nancy Alexander and I decided to cross America in search of art galleries in the northeast in 2019, we stopped by his house in Columbus, Ohio and met each other again for the first time in 51 years. He was still taller than me.
Raph had become a distinguished physician and surgeon during the intervening years, but also developed a serious lingering illness. It brought home to both of us (by then I’d had 41surgeries) the fragility of life and the realization this renewed relationship should be tended carefully in the time both of us had left. His formal description of who he is now is better than my trying to paraphrase it:
Raphael E. Pollock, MD, PhD, FACS
Director, The Ohio State University
Comprehensive Cancer Center
Kathleen Wellenreiter Klotz Chair in Cancer Research
Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital & Richard J. Solove Research Institute
Professor, Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery
Nancy, Raph and I visited with each other for two days before we pushed on further east. We saw him again in 2020 on the same mission to visit as many art galleries as possible within two weeks while living in a cargo van, sleeping in truck stops overnight and eating at Diners in the morning before shoving off to our next destination. The second time we reconnected was after many phone conversations and emails.
He had become integrated into our lives, though living about 12 hours away by car. On the way home from the second trip, after endless badgering from Nancy: “Why don’t you write a story about Raph?”
I kept repeating to her that I didn’t have any story to write – until we had a bad night during a freezing rainstorm and we couldn’t locate a truck-stop to sleep in. Very late at night we obtained permission to park behind a convenience store, no charge.
“See y’all in the morning!” the night clerk said to us with a smile.
We both woke up with terrible headaches because we’d closed both windows to keep the rain out, and during the night, our oxygen level must have dropped a little too low inside of the cargo van. Gradually we both recovered. As the pain lessened, the incident brought home to me the one story I did, in fact, have about Raph… where he played a small but essential part in ensuring my safety while I was losing my virginity. So, as usual, Nancy was magnanimous in victory.
Recently, in February 2023, I was talking to Raph and learned that he’d had a serious health issue and would not be coming to the May 2023 55th reunion of our class of 1968 from Lab School.
Hearing this upset both of us because Nancy had become close to Raph Pollock in the intervening years. He is an easy man to care about and ultimately love. I decided the only acceptable solution to my now more-isolated friend was for me to go to visit him. Not as a tourist, just as two old friends hanging out in his house for five days. I will be flying there the last week in April. There is no more I can do for him than make him aware of his importance to me in my life – than to bring me to him.
After 70, every day seems to be a gift. I seek to spend my gifts wisely, kindly and take others’ limitations more into account than ever. Raph gave me the gift of writing one of the best forewords to use in my books of any of several people who offered to write one. Very kind of him. His words are gold to Nancy and me.
Bob Katzman