In March of 1958, five months after Sputnik began its first ninety-six minute orbit around the earth, Life magazine ran a series-story called Crisis In American Education. Two sixteen-year-old boys were featured on the cover. EXCLUSIVE PICTURES OF A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY VERSUS HIS US COUNTERPART, it read above their juxtaposed photographs. The Russian, Alexei Kutzkov, frowns beneath a soot-streak moustache. His shoulders disappear beneath an armor of fur. I can't recall much else about Alexei. Each time I've faced these two boys my focus has perched upon the American. I've studied his grin, a white picket fence, followed the swell of his acne-blemished cheeks, and stared at his James Dean leather jacket, half-zipped over a wool sweater. This is Stephen Lapekas of Chicago, Illinois. He is a vestige of the battle Life lost to television in 1972, a faded reflection of my nineteen-year-old self. He is my father.

A team of twelve Life reporters spent one month conducting visitations to ninety public high schools throughout Sandburg's "city of the Big Shoulders." "We're looking for someone … more average," they explained to principals, stopping them in mid-reach for honor roll lists. My dad didn't even know anyone who was on Austin High's honor roll. He was a C student, Austin High's top swimmer, and thought of college as a golfer might think of a sand trap. Everybody has to roll in sometime. He was Sandburg's "Tool maker, stacker of wheat," an example of what every common, American boy should have been.

Jane Hernandez, a senior writer for Life, and photographer Tony Jenkins documented my dad's day-to-day life for one week. When he asked why only a week, Jenkins answered, "Took God seven days to make the world." Their study started the day after he received a phone call from Life's news editor, Tim Horton, who told my father he had been selected out of seven-hundred other "candidates" to appear in what was, at the time, one of the country's most-read magazines. Horton never talked in terms of a "story" as Jenkins had. Horton, my father says, spoke of how life was like a lottery ticket, how this was his winning number, and how if he just said 'yes' his face would appear in the presence of icons like Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.

"Guess what, Dad? Remember those interviews I told you about? The ones from school? With the reporters from Life?"

"No," my grandfather said. He was crouched under the kitchen sink, looking for a leak. Stephen stood above him. The name 'Elvis' was still buzzing in his ear like a gnat. "Now give your brother that ride to the library you promised him. Stanley says he's got a project to do, and I'll be damned if the only thing that car is used for is so you can go dancing with some fast girls at the Y."

Over dinner my dad slid into a swamp of gravy and mashed potatoes and forgot he had anything important to say even when his mother reached over to pull him out.

"I know you would have rather had carrots, honey, but you still have to eat."