Bill McLean

STRINGS UNMATCHED

As a teenager, Benjamin Beilman spent nearly as much time in his family’s car as the gloves in the glove compartment did. The future violin virtuoso attended schools in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for most of the week and—for five consecutive years—commuted to the Music Institute of Chicago for weekend classes. That’s a round trip of

THE GOLDEN VET

Sidney Wallach enters a spacious meeting room at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital. It’s February 16, a scheduled day for an afternoon treatment. And two days before his birthday. Family members and medical personnel and hospital staffers had gathered there among swaying balloons before the World War II veteran’s arrival. “Happy Birthday!” the beaming folks

WAYS AND GREENS

IT’S 9 P.M. on a weekday, say a Thursday, and North Shore native Chip Green (a fictitious name) wants to work on his golf game ahead of an annual outing to South Carolina with his buddies Max “Mini” Driver and Sandy Von Trapp. Were he a member of Champion Ways, a unique indoor training facility

SINGING VOLUMES

Make major operatic artist Bill Powers laugh inside a building and you’d risk the collapse of a few walls. Powers’ voice is that thunderous, that deep, and that impactful. When Powers starred as Mephistopheles in the opera Faust, the conductor told him, “You have the power to terrify.” A contest pitting Powers’ bass-baritone guffaw vs.

BEAU-DACIOUS SEASON

You’re a sous-chef who gets to wear the big toque now that the restaurant’s James Beard Award-winning chef took a job overseas. Or you’re a longtime sub who gets to take over for a Golden Apple Award-winning high school teacher, who had suddenly retired. Or a Pulitzer Prize Award-winning journalist who sits next to you

OH, THE PLACES HE’S GONE!

Brad Bergman isn’t traveling, finally. He sits statue still on a February morning at a restaurant’s table in his native Wilmette. The 58-year old, who had visited the United States’ other 49 states before graduating from New Trier Township High School in 1984, retired from a career in finance at the age of 39—39!— and

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Bill McLean

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