Bill McLean

A Circuitous Route from Iraq to Illinois

Good thing the taxicab driver that smuggled Dr. Rami Taha out of war-torn Iraq stashed Taha’s duffel bag near the cab’s engine. Had the hired smuggler simply placed the luggage in the trunk, Baghdad-born Taha—now a Lake Forest resident and infectious disease physician with practicing privileges at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville—would have been

Taste of Argyle

Bill O’Donnell’s heaven on earth is a cozy porch seat at his Blue Ash Farm cabin in Argyle, Wisconsin. It’s where the former longtime Chicago Mercantile Exchange commodities trader and current Deer Park denizen likes to sip coffee early in the morning, view nature, and hear its inhabitants produce their soothing choruses. “That,” the 56-year-old

Well ‘Red’

WALTER WILDMAN drove an American Red Cross ambulance in France during World War I. He was a Quaker. Quakers are to wars what trees are to loggers. They stand in opposition. “But he wanted to serve his country,” says Walter’s grandson Jamie Wildman. “So that’s what he did.” Grandpa Walter died in 1974. Jamie Wildman,

Feeling the Churn

PAIGE NEWHOUSE WAS CONFUSED. She also felt tired after sleeping for 16 to 17 hours, when she should have felt wide awake. Ten years ago, after returning home to Lake Forest from a trip to the East Coast, she realized she had left her phone and luggage at the airport. “My husband ( Jack) said

Ultra Goal-Setter

TWO YEARS AGO, Erich Loacker’s knee-jerk reaction to his wife’s seemingly audacious goal came from his mouth. He laughed. The exchange took place in their Lake Forest kitchen. “My husband thought I was kidding,” Courtney Loacker says. She was not. Loacker—a 1996 Lake Forest High School graduate and mother of son Corbet, 11, and daughter

Corps Values

It’d be easy to start a full-page magazine piece about retired Marine Corps aviator Jim King with vivid descriptions of one of his 215 Vietnam War missions from 1969 to 1970. It’s November, after all, the month featuring Veterans Day. But Jim King, the topic, is No. 101 on King’s List of 100 Favorite Topics.

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Bill McLean

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