John Menard Shares All The Intimate Secrets of His Life

When John Menard was born and brought home along with his twin, James, his three older sisters, who were four, five and seven years old burst into tears. They already had three brothers and they did not think it was fair to get stuck with two more! It's a good thing babies are so cute so I am sure Johnny and Jimmy won them over quickly.

John's father had worked in the Stockyards and then had become a cab driver. That is how he met John's mother who was the dispatcher! Later he changed his career and became an insurance salesmen. The family lived around Harlem and Archer, sort of near Midway Airport. When John and his twin, Jim, were six, the family moved to Clarendon Hills where they had one acre of land. 

He felt he had a great childhood. There was a very religious atmosphere in their home. They said the rosary every evening and went to mass at 6:15 am every day. He and his twin played at serving Mass while his older brother played the priest - and said the mass in Latin. John's three older brothers all spent time in the seminary. His oldest brother, Paul, almost became a priest but he died in 1961 when John was in eighth grade. Paul was fourteen years older than John.

Larry was his second oldest brother by nine years. Wally is two years older and, of course, Jim is the same age as John. All but John went to the seminary although none got as close as Paul did to getting ordained.

Was John interested in a religious vocation? Well, there was a seminary week for boys in grades seven to nine. John went for a week. He was okay on the first day until dinner. He was overwhelmed with homesickness.  He called home and his father came and picked him up. Happily there were no repercussions at home. None of the children was forced or shamed into doing anything. 

John always questioned what he was taught and was encouraged to do so by some of his teacher priests in college. His religious beliefs changed as he grew older. He was very influenced by the writing of Joseph Campbell. Campbell was a professor of English literature at Sarah Lawrence College. He is famous for his writings on comparative mythology and comparative religion.

 In a family of eight children there was discipline of a sort. John was a fussy eater. His mother gave up on making him eat everything on his plate and told him if he didn't eat what she was serving then he could get a can of tuna and eat that. Sometimes his mother would report him and his siblings wrongdoings to their father. On a couple of occasions, his dad would take the misbehaving one down to the basement and pretend to spank him. So John learned to hide the truth from his mother. He learned it from his father and his siblings 

John was seventeen when he lost his father. He was very young and he had already experienced two deaths in his immediate family. When he graduated from high school he felt too immature to go away to college. Or maybe he needed to stay close to home to prevent any more losses.  He enrolled at St. Procopius College. At St. Procopius John was a math major. He thought at some point he could be an actuary. After graduation, still living in the area, he met a girl at a party at St. Procopius. She was in the first group of girls to ever attend St. Procopius College. On a chance visit to the campus three months before the school went co-ed, she so loved the look of the campus that when she heard the school was going co-ed in September she cancelled going to Purdue and went to St. Procopius instead. She became one of twenty four girls in a school of 759 students. They got married the September after their first meeting. 

At graduation John was planning to return to a summer job and go to grad school in Milwaukee in the fall. However, he was recommended for a better summer job by the head of the math department, who happened to be the only female department head at St. Procopius when it was an all male Catholic college. The job had nothing to do with actuarial science. At the end of the summer they offered John a full time position. Over the summer he was making $680 a month and he decided he would accept the permanent position if they offered him at least $750 a month. They offered $820. So John did not become an actuary but instead he became a software engineer at Western Electric. He graduated on Sunday, May 25, took a one day vacation, and started working on Tuesday, May 27. So that is how he happened to become a computer programmer and later a software engineer. 

He also started going to night classes to get his Master's degree. It was too much of a grind so he dropped out. However, in 1975 he received a fellowship from his company to get a Master's in computer science. He even got compensated for gas money. So he lucked out again.

In the 90's he began receiving international assignments. He got his first passport when he was 42 years old. Through travel for work he earned many United Airline miles and was able to do more travel on his own. 

John's accomplishments in his career were stable and rewarding, However, in his personal life things were not going as well. Not only did John lose his brother and father when he was still in his teens but he soon lost his brother Larry and his sister, Clementine.  It was probably equally difficult to realize that his marriage was ending. After trying for a long time he and his wife agreed to separate and divorce.

John decided to accept a job transfer to England. He may have seen it as a fresh start and an adventure to live in another country.  Then he discovered his twin brother, Jim, was going to undergo by-pass surgery. The day after the surgery he had to go to England to find a place to live. On his return he stopped in Rochester, New York, where his sister Monica and her husband shared their home with his mother. Unfortunately his mother who had been quite ill, died the previous Tuesday when John had been in England. I can't imagine the grit it took to get through all of that. There was no way to stop and pull things together or even mourn. He had to pack and move to England. The only good news was that his brother Jim's surgery went well.

John survived all of the trauma and became adjusted to working in a foreign country. He loved that he now lived in a place where he was the one with an accent  He made a good friend there named Jill.  I am sure many of the readers here have read the novels of Rosamumde Pilcher.  I know I've read all of them and I've seen the movies. Ask John how a request of his caused Jill to reconnect with her aunt. John came to understand art and appreciate it much more due to her influence. He also increased his visits to museums and galleries.

John eventually returned to the United States in 1998 and worked out of a building that can be seen from our library on Avenida's second floor.  He retired in 2001 when Lucent Technologies offered him and thousands of others a Retirement Incentive Program. A year later he decided to move to Arizona and he bought a house in Sun City Grand. He usually spent at least a third of the year visiting somewhere else to avoid the hot summers. His sister and her husband visited almost every winter. It was their home away from home. However, Arizona never really felt like home to John. When his sister and her husband decided they were getting too old to make the long drive from New York to Arizona every year John was left with no reason to remain there himself. He decided to return to Illinois, to return home.  He looked around at different situations and spotted a sign for Avenida while driving down Mill Street. Later on a return to Illinois he was able to look at apartment 310.  He easily sold his house in Arizona and moved into apartment 208 Avenida in May of 2020. 

The move was made just two months after the pandemic came. There were few gatherings but things got better. Thing got really excellent when he met Marie. That is a story he can tell you about personally or we can all sit back and enjoy watching it develop before our very eyes.