He had been a celebrity

A non-descript old man resided in the Self Help Home for the Aged, a nursing home on Argyle Street in Uptown. I met him when I visited the place shortly after being hired as an aide to 48th ward Alderman Marion Volini.

I hadn’t expected to encounter anybody of note there, so I was surprised when he was introduced to me as a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Germany, where had served during the Weimar Republic, a brief democracy sandwiched between the monarchy of Kaiser Wilhelm and the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, fifty years earlier.

Meeting him was a reminder that yesterday’s leaders may not be leaders anymore but that they still deserved respect. And I promised myself to not ever judge people by their appearance or by their surroundings.