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25 DayS 01 ThankSgiving 1HANKSGIVING DAWNS CLOUDY AND COLD, with a couple of inches of snow on the ground. I look out my motel room at this white world and wonder how far I will get on the road this day. Cleveland had been my hope, then the car spins out on the motel driveway, a worrisome reminder of its terrible traction. But the clouds start to clear as I am leaving Carlisle, and then the sun comes out, blindingly bright. My apprehension about snow fades, my spirits rise. I take comfort in being part of the Thanksgiving parade on the highway, while the Pennsylvania countryside presents endless Christ~ mas card scenes, the gently rolling Alleghenies, handsome farm~ houses with smoke rising from the chimneys, livestock crowded around old barns, snowy rural roads still awaiting the morning's first tire tracks. I pass around Pittsburgh, soon cross into Ohio. A blizzard blows in near Youngstown. The Ohio Turnpike turns white, I switch on my lights, slow to forty~five miles per hour. The going gets rough, then rougher. There is not enough traffic to keep the pavement wet. The blizzard continues unabated. I finally exit the Interstate in the Cleveland suburbs at Chagrin Boulevard, a street that is Memory Lane for me. I pass the Dairy Queen where we used to gather after high school baseball games; the jewelry store where I worked my first real job; Orange High School and Moreland Hills Elementary; Mill Creek Lane where we Mar~ shalls lived. I soon enter Chagrin Falls. Snow covers the triangle park surrounded by old brick buildings in the center of town, tall 260 DAYS OF THANKSGIVING 261 evergreens and the bandstand are turned white, and yellow Christ~ mas lights are blinking, the entire scene looking as it did in "The Gathering," that heart~rending TV movie, starring Edward Asner, about a fateful family reunion during the holidays. I am feeling misty~eyed myself by the time I arrive at the home ofJim and Janet O'Hara, two high school classmates. Janet had been my first love back in eighth grade, Jim a teammate on the baseball varsity. The aroma of roasting turkey greets me at the front door, beers are brought forth, and football is on the TV. Four generations soon gather around the Thanksgiving table, we bow our heads, a blessing is said. And there is no one more thankful than I' am, warmed by the welcome of a family during a holiday far from home. The next morning, I leave to see Dr. Raymond Waggoner, my grandfather's best friend, who is visiting his son outside Columbus for Thanksgiving. I am lulled by the passing farmland of Ohio, its small towns called Congress and Pleasant Home. My mind drifts back to my previous visit with Waggoner eight months ago in Ann Arbor. He and my grandfather had been such good friends, a relation~ ship that had endured for four decades, through crises and normalcy, countless long conversations and shared bottles of Scotch. Waggoner was the one who had first diagnosed Ives' multiple sclerosis and had gone on to provide counsel through the many stages of her illness. Of Waggoner, my grandfather once wrote: "More than all other things put together, my close friendship with Ray Waggoner had steadied me through some trying years. He knew me better than I understood myself. I have never had a friend more considerate, painstaking and unfalteringly loyal, nor one whose genius was more handsomely cloaked in native modesty." I could see the aptness of my grandfather's description even in two hours with Waggoner. He was eighty~seven and had a distin~ guished career as a neuropsychiatrist-chairman of the University of Michigan's Department of Psychiatry, president of the American Psychiatric Association, among many achievements. But he made no more of that than the fact that he had been out on his tractor that morning, clearing some brush in the woods around his house. Waggoner turned out to be the sort of animated gentleman who gives old age a good name. A smallish man in a dapper three~piece suit, Waggoner had a kindly face, sympathetic eyes behind bifocals, 262 RECONCILlATION ROAD plump cheeks, a wide chin, an impish grin. He radiated brisk good health. His mind was as sharp as a barber's straight razor. Waggoner had been my grandfather's closest confidant, but no one involved in the Marshall controversy had bothered to solicit his memories. This was...

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