Three people I knew died in the fall—two of them on the very same day. That would be guidebook legend Arthur Frommer, who founded the travel media company I work for, and Kris Vire, my editor at Time Out Chicago back when I was a part-time freelance theater journalist.
Because Kris and I came from the same part of Arkansas, had similar career aspirations, and were about the same age (though we didn’t meet till we got to Chicago), I always thought of him as a nicer version of me. Freelancing often made me feel frenzied and desperate, and I am grateful for the patience and gentle calm Kris exuded as an editor.
In his own writing, he was a discerning and stalwart advocate for Chicago theater and the people who make it. That distinguished him from many other critics, who are mostly advocates for letting you know how great they are. Diagnosed with cancer last year, Kris died Nov. 18 at age 47.
In New York, meanwhile, 95-year-old Arthur Frommer went on the same date. He’ll be remembered for the significant role he played in democratizing 20th-century travel with his best-selling 1957 guidebook Europe on 5 Dollars a Day and the Frommer’s brand it spawned.
What I liked about him, though, was his forceful sense of self. His convictions were ironclad; his everyday speech sounded like an oration. He had a way of expressing an opinion, even on something minor, so that it felt like the final word on the subject.
I once interviewed him for a light piece on the movie EuroTrip, in which a Frommer’s guidebook is a pivotal prop and a British actor plays Arthur in a cameo.
“I saw it once and never went back to it,” the real Arthur pronounced when I asked him about the movie. “I thought it was a nothing film.”
And that was more or less that, EuroTrip-wise.
He was eloquent, however, on the things that mattered. From his publisher’s note in recent editions of Frommer’s books:
I have high hopes for the future of Frommer’s. May these guidebooks, in all the years ahead, continue to reflect the joy of travel and the freedom that travel represents. May they always pursue a cost-conscious path, so that people of all incomes can enjoy the rewards of travel. And may they create, for both the traveler and the persons among whom we travel, a community of friends, where all human beings live in harmony and peace.
The third person who died was my husband’s close friend Louie. He passed away Oct. 12—like Kris, at age 47.
I considered Louie a friend, too, though it took us a while to get there—mind you, through no fault of his. It can take up to 7 years for me to grow on you.
I think he found me standoffish, at least initially. He, on the other hand, was a fiery, feisty little thing, with one of those high-decibel machine-gun laughs you could hear over any other sound in a room—loud conversation, dance music, the Ohio State marching band, what have you.
But he could also be sweetly vulnerable. After we finally got to know one another better, Louie told me he had long worried that I disliked him because of some half-remembered incident that took place on one of the first occasions he hung out with my husband and me. We were at some Pride event during the early Mesozoic Era, and a fed-up Louie had thrown a drink at a caddish guy he was sort of seeing at the time.
Recalling the episode, Louie was all sheepish and regretful. As if I could ever be mad at anyone capable of such glorious soap-operatics.
I was like, Are you kidding me? I considered that a point in your favor.
Indirect Objects 