Searching for opportunity
While at York Spitz was a part of the school's small minority population. Some of her memories stem from joining the Spanish Club and the' choir and attending football games.
    "York High School used to look a lot different," she said. "The whole front of the school -- which is on St. Charles Road -- used to be a big oval football field. On either side were these beautiful stone football bleachers all the way around and huge trees. It was such a wonderful setting."
    She also remembers taking a course called "Contemporary Problems," which was taught by Robert Leader.
    The class covered current events in America and foreign lands such as Russia. She describes this experience as one from the recent movie "Pleasantville," in which two teenagers from the 1990's are pulled into a 1950s sitcom world. The 1950s was a prosperous time for many. Spitz explains that students in the class were not too concerned with world issues, but with their own lives.
    "It was kind of like 'Pleasantville", she said. "If there were problems, people tended to ignore them or gloss them over. I'm sure that most of my classmates never thought that there were problems."
    While there were some good times at York Spitz had the feeling that she was not like everyone else, not part of a popular clique. She felt alone with very few school friends.
    "I didn't think I fit the mold," she said. "I did not have rich, permissive parents. I had different rules, such as [being home at a certain time.]
    "I looked different from them [students]. I wasn't blonde and didn't have blue eyes. I did not have a German or English surname. I had this "funny" last name. People did not pronounce my last name right.
    "I really thought that if you were a minority, you're better off keeping a low profile. I was acutely aware that I was different. There's a certain confidence you get when you go to high school and you know a lot of people. They accept you and you're part of the group. Then you get there and you have to struggle. You never make part of the group."
    Spitz found friendship with people in her neighborhood and among those who at tended the Tabernacle Church in Villa Park. There were pajama parties and church socials. Sometimes they would travel to York Theatre and see the top action and romance movie stars such as Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant.
    Spitz said radio programs particularly "The Shadow," and "Nick Carter, Private Detective," were her favorite form of entertainment.
    "On Sunday afternoons, my parents, my sisters and I used to sit down and listen to all these radio programs from 4-6 p.m.," she said.
    "I was probably concentrating on the stories. What's nice about radio is that you could be doing something else. People didn't do the things then that they do now, such as going out to restaurants," Spitz added.
    In high school, Spitz wanted to know what it was like to be in the "in crowd." She talked about the popular students wearing twin sweater sets and driving automobiles to school, things that were out of Spitz's reach as a student. Developing self-confidence was also hard for her.
    One teacher she enjoyed having when she first came to York was Ms. Lampark an English teacher. Lampark demonstrated poise and assertiveness in the classroom -- qualities that made a positive impact on Spitz.
    "I loved that woman," she said. "She was everything that I wanted to be. She was blonde, cute, witty and looked tall. She just seemed to exude self-confidence. She knew what she was doing. I do believe a lot of self-confidence comes in when you're part of something. I was not confident until I got of high school and I got a job."
    Another life-changing event at York was watching General Douglas MacArthur returning to America from the Korean -War in the early 1950s.
    "It was exhilarating," she said. "I think that was when I started realizing that there was this whole big world out there. It was kind of an epiphany. Back in the 1950s -- and I think it's still true for some of my classmates who did go to college -- women were just expected to get married and have kids. You were going to be a nurse or secretary. There was also that double standard of the guys were going to make the living. If there was any money for somebody to go to school, it would go to the boys not the girls, if one had to choose."
    Spitz then began her search on what the world had to offer her after graduation.
    "There was something out there, but I wasn't sure how to go about getting it," she said "It's like knowing that there's Paris, but not knowing how to get there,"' she added.

A new life
College was not in the game plan for Spitz after graduating. She said she never even thought about it. Instead, she found a job at Lyon Healy, a downtown Chicago music company. She befriended aspiring actors and musicians and went out almost every night. This was also the place where she met her first husband, John Rohskothen, a company salesman.
    [John] was this gorgeous older man from Germany," she said. "He had this darling accent and he was so suave.
    "They got married in 1955 and moved to Washington, D.C. In 1956, she gave birth to her first child, John. The family moved back to Chicago six months later. In 1958, Spitz gave birth to a daughter, Linda. The marriage did not last for long. In 1960, Spitz said, her husband "went out for a loaf of bread and never came back."
    She divorced him and be came a single mother in the 1960's. Fending for her family was rough.
    "Here I was with two small children and not a lot of education to support them," she said. "1 got three jobs. During the day, I worked for a theatrical agency. Two nights a week I was a cocktail waitress and then I took ticket [reservations] for plays one night a week.
    "It was uncommon [to be a single mom,] especially if you were divorced. That was awful. It didn't bother me as much as it would bother other people. People were not nice to you if you were a single mom. They would think that your kids were being neglected because you were working."
    The stress of running to three different jobs became unbearable.
    Spitz decided to focus on one thing, and she signed up for beauty school to become a hairdresser. It was also during that time that she met her second husband, Don Koppel, who worked in the insurance industry.
    The two married in 1963 and had a daughter, Melanie, in 1967. Koppel died from a heart attack in 1972.
    In 1974, she married her third husband, Burt Spitz, who also worked in the insurance industry. They divorced in the late 1970s.