By Yours Truly.
1955
From a long, colorful lineage of Irish Catholic priests, writers, poets, and Shanty Irish boatbuilders, I was born on a blistering hot summer day in 1955 in Oak Park, Illinois—to Jim Dunne and Joan Lawley, a young married couple—with dreams of a big, Irish, happy Catholic family.
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I was the namesake and the second of two kids—and the fourth generation of Dunnes to live in the same brick duplex at 108 Mayfield Avenue in Oak Park, Illinois, on the South Side of Chicago.
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Joan Lawley was born in the heart of the Depression, the daughter of a lawyer in the first Loyola Law School graduating class. Joan was cute, creative, smart, and just full of real. She was a Class Officer at Rosary College, graduating with top grades and with a ton of the greatest lifelong pals.
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Enter smitten, 24-year-old Jim Dunne, who grew up only a couple blocks away.
With a college degree in his pocket and his Navy service days behind him, he was 100% Irish-Catholic, good-looking, full of spit and fire, played anything that resembled a sport—and a look in his baby-blue eyes that he was going to tackle the world and anybody that got in his way.
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1960
They bought a starter home in the suburb of La Grange—down the Western railroad tracks and chock-full of schools, churches, town parades, green parks, and maple tree-covered streets of families with stations wagons full of kids.
Their home on Kensington Avenue cost $6,500—as Jim Dunne said, “The best $6,500 we never had.”
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In the blink of an eye, seven kids filled their happy home—blocks away from the center of their universe, St. Francis Xavier School and Parish.
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Grade School Days
After loading up the station wagon with the seven kids on a hot summer day and taking them to a new movie, How the West Was Won, as a seven-year-old, I came home and started playing the theme from the movie by ear on the piano in my living room.
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Mom, cooking in the kitchen, figured somebody was visiting in our always-busy home. Shocked to see me playing, she asked me how I was doing that. I told my mom it was no big deal. “All the notes on a piano are lined up in a row.”
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I took piano lessons from Sister Ethna Marie in second grade. She wasn’t real thrilled with the fact I’d get nervous during my lessons, look up at her—and wet the piano bench.
So that kind of the end of my formal musical training.
I learned “the math of music” on my own—playing by ear.
My baseball career unfortunately peaked in third grade, but I proudly set the town record for beaning 22 batters in one League season as a pitcher in only six games.
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By seventh grade, I was the backup organist at St. Francis for masses and practiced at night on the big organ in the back of the church—locking in formative chord, orchestral, and melodic foundations from Catholic church music that impacted him throughout his life.
In seventh and eighth grade, my focus turned to composition, writing classical instrumental pieces for piano on the upright Baldwin in our living room.
In eighth grade, I was in my first band, “The Autumn Sunsets,” with three classmates. I had to borrow a Farfisa organ for our first “gig,” an eighth-grade sockhop at a neighboring grade school, Cletus Grammar School. I borrowed the organ from David Hasselhoff (from “Baywatch”), a kid a few years older who lived just down the block. (We both ended up future first class of LT High School's “Hall of Fame.”)
Since I was new to the band that weekend, I didn’t know any of the band’s songs, so I didn’t even plug the Farfisa organ in on the stage. I just stood there, pretending to play.
After their set, five cute eighth-grade girls came up to the front of the stage, looking up and telling me I was just fantastic. I decided, “This is the profession for me.”
Notable football gridiron achievements included playing on the six-grade team when I was a seventh grader—while my six-grade brother Terry played on the eight-grade team.
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While holding grade school jobs of grass cutting, snow shoveling, weed pulling, and daily paper routes, I was most proud of my distinction as the “Worst Caddy in the History of La Grange Country Club.” Stories of my screwup days are legendary among junior budding neophyte rookie caddies.
I showed early signs of lifelong interests—as a writer for the St. Francis Xavier paper, writing a joke column for the paper, and running and MC’ing sporting events and school events.
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High School Days
Dunne Oil and the home heating oil business were having good days, and Mom and Dad packed up the house and bought a big, grand, prairie-style home—smack in the middle of La Grange with a ton of bedrooms and air conditioning.
A few blocks away from their home was Lyons Township High School, one of the largest high schools in the country—with 5,700 kids in the school.
My freshman class had 1,570 classmates.
Freshman year, I proudly was the absolute worst player on the sixth string of the Freshman basketball team—the “Guinea Pig Squad.”
They were an embarrassment to the high school—and would get in for about 10 seconds at the end of every freshman game when the team was way ahead. When you got in the game, you never passed to your teammates. You just ran down the court as far as you could—and chucked it.
The leading player on the “Guinea Pig Squad” had a grand total of two points for the season.
I took advantage of all the music and creative classes LT offered—including an important early creative mentorship by English teacher John Wheeler at the “Lion” Newspaper.
I played the “non-contact” sports. I had the lowest single-match score on the Varsity golf team—and was MVP of the Varsity tennis team.
I was the Senior Class President, and I was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” by my classmates. I was thrilled to give the senior speech at commencement, and I presented the high school with the largest class gift in the history of the school.
At graduation, I was very honored to receive the Robert E. Edie Leadership Award.
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College Days in Kentucky
I quickly fell in love with my new Kentucky home, including pretending to have a Southern accent.
With an enrollment of 22,000, I was honored to be one of a dozen students to be in a newly imagined Honors Program—affording me access to the best teachers and best classes in the university—spanning all disciplines.
Soaking up the art of academics, I took an abundance of hours, taking as many as 29 hours of classes during semesters.
I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa and with Highest Honors. Double-major Honors Program Degrees in Journalism and Business. Minors in Music Composition and Communications.
Dean’s List all semesters. Phi Eta Sigma Leadership Honorary, Lamp and Cross Men’s Honorary, Lance’s Honorary, Haggin Scholarship Award, Kentucky Alumni Association Scholarship Award.
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I loved my days as a feature writer for the Kentucky Kernel Newspaper; tackling stories from a college kid’s perspective. From stories dealing with racial issues of the day—to intentionally experiencing the plight of blindness for three days.
Only to avoid the nonsense of going through fraternity pledgeship, I found a loophole by applying to be in the SAE National Honor Pledge Class at Northwestern University. Lucky me, they picked me.
I recorded my first album, “Dunne,” produced by Sunny Records in 1972, in a small studio in Gary, Indiana. My mom sat in the studio with me as I played the instrumental piano pieces on a grand piano.
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From the dough of my caddying and grass-cutting jobs I socked away, and the $250 matching gift my mom and dad added to the pot, I had a $500 budget for the recording and printing of all vinyl copies.
I guess, “You get what you pay for.”
The only problem was some guy was hammering God-only-knows-what in the next office over—and you can hear the guy thumping in the middle of half of the songs. That’s show-business, I guess.
One of my dearest, most treasured memories with my mother.
About so much more than just sitting in that room. She was there for me in so, so many ways. She believed in me. To her core. Believed in why my music was important to me. Why spending that money, every nickel of it, which was a whole-lot at the time—was a great thing to do.
Whether we sold one copy or not.
She understood that every one of those songs was an absolute mirror of who I was.
That record was followed up with “Me and My Song,” produced by Staff Records (1974).
In my Junior year, I founded Dunne Productions, a successful music agency that booked leading Kentucky and Ohio bands for fraternity, sorority, and campus events. I learned a lot about marrying business and art.
I just loved my Kentucky days.
In Intramural sports, I was the Campus Champion in ping pong, croquet, and tennis. Not exactly the Olympics, but it sure seemed kind of important at the moment. When you think of bragging rights of your athletic talents, I suppose winning a college croquet title doesn’t exactly win any brownie points. Especially since there were only four of us to start with in the whole damn croquet tournament.
Representing my fraternity, I played on every intramural campus team known to man. Golf, swimming, badminton, bowling, football (they must have let anybody play), basketball, wrestling (can’t quite picture it), track, and baseball. I was the Runner-up for the all-campus “Greek Man of the Year” Award.
I don’t remember for sure, but I probably got plowed and egged the guy’s apartment who won.
This next story about a twenty-year-old with too much time on his hands.
I set the Guinness World Record in 1975 for “Juggling Balls for the Longest Consecutive Time” at 10 hours and 45 minutes. For the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation, I stood on a stage in a Lexington mall juggling three balls while a dope from the Guinness Book of World Records looked on to make sure I wasn’t cheating.
While I was standing there like a circus monkey juggling the balls, I gave a steady flow of four fans walking by in the mall the bonus treat of juggling and eating apples while I juggled.
Chewed through 94 apples that day.
Didn’t quite think through that every time I did my ‘trick,’ I’d be slamming the apples into my lips. Woke up with lips the size of two brown horizontal bananas.
My Guinness glory days lasted about three years until another sluggard in a little town on the East Coast with way too much time on his hands juggled for three minutes longer.
Just so you don’t think I was being nice, most of the time I was involved in charity projects in college, I was probably just sucking up to a girlfriend or getting in good graces with some snappy sorority house.
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With that in mind, I was the Chairman of the Children of the Bluegrass Christmas Fund, and the Cardinal Hill Fund Drive, was the Advertising Chairman of the American Cancer Society Bike-a-thon, very active in the campus Heart Fund Drive, Kentucky Adopt-a-House project, the Kidney Foundation Fund Drive, and ran the Muscular Dystrophy Wheelchair Basketball event.
I performed over a hundred concerts throughout Illinois and Kentucky for charities (including the American Foreign Students Program, Cardinal Hill Children’s Hospital, Shriners Hospital, many convalescent homes, and the Lombard Drug Abuse Center).
I was very involved in my college fraternity, the SAEs. I held a bunch of offices: Social Chairman, Upper Council, Greek Sing Chairman, Editor of the “Epsilon Epilogue,” Eminent Herald (whatever that means), and important-sounding stuff like that. I was VP of the Haggin Hall Dorm, and very active in the Newman Center.
But my most important job was as a busboy for dinners at the snappy-pants sororities. After I’d clean and bus the tables, I’d sit at the piano in their sorority living room playing sappy Elton John songs—and all the girls would gather around thinking I was so much sweeter guy than I really was.
Can’t beat it.
I’ve always been fascinated with high jumping and pole vaulting for this reason. You just have to get over the bar by an inch. That’s it. Anything else doesn’t matter. That’s kind of my tennis story…
I played tennis for UK freshman year, affording me just enough of a ‘credit’ to teach tennis in the summers back in the Chicago suburbs as a tennis pro at the suburban country clubs.
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Couldn’t have loved it more. Taught a ton a kids, lots of moms and dads. But it was the kids I loved.
It wasn’t about teaching tennis. Having the chance to spend a whole summer with a whole bunch of kids trying to figure life out… and steer that ship a bit along the way.
It doesn’t get better than that.
While working as a Tennis Pro at Oakbrook Bath and Tennis Club in 1974, I founded the West Suburban Tennis Conference, creating a league for junior tennis players—in the suburban clubs of the Chicago area.
Fifty years later, the West Suburban Tennis Conference thrives today—with generations of kids having played and won trophies at their clubs. It has been guestimated 6,750 matches have been played by kids in the Conference over the years…
I was a Tennis Professional at Oakbrook Racquet Club, Oakbrook Bath & Tennis Club—and Head Tennis Professional at Edgewood Valley Country Club in my summer after graduating.
For a college kid, it was amazing. I had no business getting the opportunity that country club afforded me as a goofy 21 year-old.
I had a staff of Assistant Tennis Pros, I ran a Pro Shop selling a full line of tennis clothes and equipment—and my sister ran the Pro Shop. We ran programming for all ages, and created tournaments and protocols for the entire West Suburban area out of that pro shop.
And I could play golf any time with my knucklehead pals.
Life sure was good…
While I was in college, I got my first “nibble” in the music business; writing and performing the musical score for ABC’s “Cathy Rigby’s World,” sponsored by the Milk Foundation.
I packed up my piss-yellow Mazda GLC, one of the finest-looking automobiles in America, and headed west.
In front of me was a job as a tutor at a fraternity house at USC for $1,500 for the year, along with room and board. The deal was they’d sign me up for a list of music classes toward a music master.
I filled up that car-full of the best memories I could ever possibly ask for, knowing I had a mom and dad and family back in La Grange all rooting for me. That meant the world.
I walked up to that fraternity door in the middle of a rush week party with my Mazda GLC parked in front of the house. The fraternity door looked like the door to the Wizard of Oz. The President of the fraternity opened the door with a beer the size of a keg in his hands.
I yelled over the music that I was Jimmy Dunne, their Tutor in Resident from the University of Kentucky. None of those were good words.
He looked at me with this gazed, “Animal House” kind of look, and he said kind of like Carl Spackler from “Caddyshack,” played by Bill Murray, with half of his lip hanging down, “That’s what I forgot to do.”
No room in the fraternity house. No music classes set up at USC. Nothing.
I got a one-room apartment in a Spanish housing unit off campus with a sofa and bed bugs for roommates.
And my California and adult journey began…
