Your Chicago / CONVERSATION
Relationship Goals In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we sat down with Skokie couple Lil and Jack Sklar. Both 94 years young, they’re just months away from their 74th wedding anniversary. Their secret? One word: family. BY MARJIE KILLEEN • PHOTOS BY ANDREW MILLER
W
HEN JACK SKL A R moved to
Lillian Wallach’s block in Brooklyn almost 80 years ago, he made quite a first impression. “I said, ‘Oh my God, that guy is for me,’” Lil recalls, and she told her mother she’d found the boy she would marry. Her mom didn’t take it too seriously — they were both 14 years old at the time, after all — but Lil knew what she was talking about. On April 16th, the Sklars will celebrate their 74th anniversary. 26 JAN UARY/ F EB RUARY 2018 M A K E IT B E T T E R
Growing up in the Depression was tough. “Nobody had jobs, my brothers were in the service, and my father couldn’t work,” says Lil. But there were bright spots. Jack was a grocery delivery boy, and Lil would insist that her mother tip him a dime instead of the usual nickel, even though that meant she wouldn’t have milk money at school the next day. “I didn’t want him to think we were poor,” she says. Soon after they met, Lil and Jack became boyfriend and girlfriend.
After they graduated from high school, Jack started college, but he couldn’t ignore the terrible situation in Europe. He started working in a shipyard in Baltimore to support the war effort, and soon he was soon called up in the draft. The shipyard offered him a deferment, but Jack said, “No, I want to go.” He was 19 years old. As the war raged on, Jack, now an army combat medic, knew that his division would be sent overseas. So he got a furlough, traveled to Chicago where Lil was living with relatives,