Jeremy Brett, as Sherlock Holmes
in the Granada Productions
Meet Don Izban:
sprouter of scions, canonical therapist
Shaw encouraged many a new scion. Izban started a slew of new scions. A three hour dinner or event with Izban has a way of taking on a name, becoming a group, and creating a tradition. In no way are Izban’s new scions clones. Each has a distinct tone, taste, and format — as in Bass, dark, draft; or Bud, light, bottled — but the emphasis is almost always on fun, lots of good prizes, food, drink, and gales of laughter. Izban also makes it a habit to turn the groups over to new leadership to give them the benefit of new ideas.
Our first contact with Izban was at the Canonical Convocation and Caper of 1996 in Door County, Wisconsin. This interview was conducted at the 1997 CCC on Sept. 13, shortly after but not because (post, non propter, causam) he requested investiture into the Nashville Scholars of the Three Pipe Problem. He’d become a great fan of our newsletter (etiamsi propter causam) in which he happened to be often mentioned. At the time, Chicago lacked an archbishop due to the death of Cardinal Bernadin. Izban, one of Chicago’s more prominent Catholics, was the Problems’ nominee to be the new archbishop and appropriately received the Problematic moniker Cardinal Tosca. Perhaps not has noteworthy as J.B. Shaw being knighted by the pope as a Knight of St. John of Malta, but noted.
A week later, Archbishop (now Cardinal) Francis George, another strong
contender for the position, was named instead. He joined Izban’s golf club,
the Ridgemoor.
Izban is, well, huge fun at the CCC in Wisconsin, speaking at the STUD dinner, treating participants to coffee and donuts before the Rache Road Race (and ingenious quiz), distributing gifts after showing them Starrett’s grave, or telling anecdotes at the Solar Pons Breakfast Club — just to name a few events he started.
This interview was conducted in a typical Izbanian setting — on a couch before the fireplace at Waterbury Inn, amid tables of vendors selling Sherlockian wares — and Izban one of them, so that buyers picked the item they wanted and brought him the money.
Vita preSherlockiana
Don Izban was born in northwest Chicago where he attended
St. Hyacinth grade school in a Polish parish. He “endured Polish language
lessons an hour each day” at school, but his parents, born in this country,
didn’t speak Polish. His mother’s parents were from Poland and spoke the
language, but the rest of his family “were Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Izban
has been known “to know Polish” on occasion — like the time he recited
Vincent Starrett’s poem, 221b, ‘in Polish’ during a Scotland Yarder meeting.
The future cardinal deigned not to be an altar boy at St. Hyacinth
because he “wasn’t game for getting up early or tying up Saturday nights
for novenas, and the like.”
His father, a fireman, was his first life long influence. He died
at a fire in 1955 at age 50 when Izban was going on 25. Don was an only
child except for a brother who died of pneumonia when he was a baby. His
mother was a full time homemaker.
He went to St. Mel’s, a westside Chicago military high school
that distinguished itself in sports by beating the state basketball champ
in the annual city championship game. Izban’s 1949 graduation class of
321 was the school’s largest ever. The school was good training for him,
says Izban. “It taught me to persevere, to be umble, to be patient and
to ...” (at this point he pauses, apparently unable to speak because his
tongue was too caught in his cheek for him to enunciate). Izban’s four
year military unit at St. Mel’s was the best in Chicago, winning all the
marching and close order drills
After graduation in 1949, Izban went to Loyola University, which is run by Jesuits. You attended Mass every Friday because “if you missed four, you were thrown out.”
Upon graduation he lost his Korean War deferment. He joined the Army in
February 1954, taking basic training at Ft Leonard Wood in Missouri, then went to Adjutant General School at Indianapolis where he was trained to be a secretary, studying shorthand five hours a day, English usage, and grammar.
“They had a cool way to make a student work,” says Izban, who can still read shorthand. “If you refused to do the homework in barracks, you were disobeying a military order, which meant a court martial. We took a four year shorthand course in two months. If you failed you went to Korea.” (The Korean War itself lasted from June 25, 1950 to the signing of the cease fire on July 27, 1953. But troops remained for decades. President Carter almost withdrew them in the ’70s.)
Izban learned well and was assigned to First Army Headquarters at Governor’s Island in New York. He became secretary to the commander, Lt. General Thomas W. Herren. Herren influenced Izban more than anyone else he met in the Army.
The First Army was big, extending through all the northeastern states. It had a glorious military history, having been commanded by Black Jack Pershing and Omar Bradley. It had landed at both Omaha and Juneau Beach on D Day, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
When offered an early discharge after 21 months, Izban took it, leaving the Army in November 1955. He went to work for a bank for about a year before settling into a career (1957 1992) with Commerce Publishing House, the largest law publishers in the country with headquarters on Chicago’s west side.