Tell me again why you can't win?

This may be the strangest blog ever, but I saw this in the Sun Times today and believe it is worth reading. Think about this the next time you're tempted to whine, give up, or make excuses. Makes me want to go to the funeral and I never met Mr. Olaker.

Anderson E. Olaker had a busy double life.

By day, he taught science and math in the Chicago Public Schools. By night, Mr. Olaker did welding at a diesel-engine plant on 103rd Street in Pullman.

He worked both jobs full-time to help pay for college for his three children and his wife. Somehow, he also found time to earn a U.S. patent and learn both Spanish and German.

He grew up on a half-acre farm in Savannah, Tenn., where the Olakers grew most of their own food. They raised chickens that sometimes wound up in the supper pot. At night, the family heated up an iron in the fireplace and placed it in their beds, so they wouldn’t be chilly.

His great-grandmother was a slave. The Olakers can still repeat the stories she passed down. The slaves had no choice when “Their hair was cut and sometimes their hair was used for other things, like for stuffing” pillows, said Mr. Olaker’s daughter, Dr. Suezette Olaker-Copeland.

Mr. Olaker headed north to find a job. He and a friend were hired as migrant workers, but soon realized that if they stuck around, they would — as the old song went — owe their souls to the company store. Each time they were paid, they seemed to owe the farmer more money for their food and lodging. “They got dressed and left in the middle of the night,’’ said Mr. Olaker’s daughter.

He continued north to Chicago, where he went to welding school. In 1945 he landed a job on 103rd Street at the old GM Electro-Motive Diesel plant, which made train engines.

Mr. Olaker died at age 86 on Jan. 20 at the University of Chicago Hospital.

Mr. Olaker met Artemese White, who worked as a “Kelly Girl” secretary. They married in 1947 and lived in a South Side boarding house, where several renters shared one bathroom. Mornings were like an English door-slamming farce. “They would have to listen and hear somebody in the bathroom, and as soon as the bathroom door would open and close, you’d have to rush in before somebody else,” Dr. Olaker-Copeland said.

The Olakers raised their three children on the South Side, and Mr. Olaker ran a science club for neighborhood kids. They grew crystals and studied ant farms. “We always had microscopes and chemistry sets,” said his son, Malcolm, a 25-year-employee with the state of New York.

Mr. Olaker wanted to go to Roosevelt University, but when he took the entrance exam, his test-taking was rusty — he didn’t finish on time. He started studying books on speed-reading. When he rode the streetcar, he memorized the license plates of cars he passed. The next time he tackled the entrance test, he finished with time to spare.

He majored in chemistry and graduated in 1960. He wanted to work at Abbott Labs, but in those days, it was rare for an African-American man to be even granted an interview at a major drug company, his daughter said. So he taught chemistry, math and science at Crane, CVS and Robeson High Schools.

During his studies, he picked up Spanish and German. “He could speak in the perfect past tense and future perfect tense,” his daughter said. When he traveled to Germany to visit another daughter — opera singer Charlae Olaker-Haase — he used his mastery of German to go off exploring on his own.

Mr. Olaker got off work at the factory at 1:24 a.m., went home to sleep, and got up in the morning to teach school. A special treat that kept him going was lemon meringue pie.

He did the two jobs for about 15 years. He retired from GM in 1980 and from CPS in 1987. He then taught at Washburne Trade School and Kennedy-King College. He also invented an anti-tampering device for fire hydrants, earning a U.S. patent.

Mr. Olaker sang for more than 60 years with the choir at Greater Bethesda Baptist Church.

His son Malcolm said he learned empathy from his dad as he watched his kindness toward homeless and hungry people on the street: “Often, he would take them to a restaurant.”