Hard case

Don't you Chi newspaper readers wonder sometimes why some people happy-birthday'ed by Sun-Times's Michael Sneed are "ageless"?  Most have their ages behind their names, but some are special and suffer no such indignity.  Today's "ageless" is Terry Durkin.  Who the heck is Terry Durkin?  Trying Google, one discovers:

 

An Indiana U. prof whom I have emailed asking if he's ageless in Chicago.  He's at The Open Source Lab, which sounds electronic. 

 

The MVP for 1982 for the Yale (U.) Bulldogs softball team, which means she's a girl.  Ah-hah, we might be getting somewhere. 

 

A charter boat captain in Petersburg, Alaska, who promises "unforgettable fishing."   Does Sneed fish?

 

A Clear Case product manager reachable email-wise at Rational-dot-com.  He has a 781 area code and is clearly (sorry) up to something electronic.

 

The founder (and charter member) of Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo and La Mesa, California who unfortunately died in 2003.  It can't be he.

 

A senior software analyst at Human Resources Canada who gave a speech in 1998 that referred early on to his being "in the middle of one of those sleeps where you are barely above the level of a coma" and being awakened by the ring of his telephone.

 

The first president-elect of PERS (Pacific Estuarine Research Society) at its formation in 1978.  PERS, for those with the need to know, is an Affiliate Society of ERF (the Estuarine Research Federation).  What would be ageless about him (or her; I'd rather not be fooled) is anything but clear.

 

Which leaves us all in the dark.  Will Sneed clear this up for us some day?

 

Wait.  Hold your horses.  I may have it.  What a fool I was not to tell Google it's Terry Durkin Chicago I have in mind!  There it is, third in line, in an Eric Zorn blog, entitled, what do you know, "Aging the ageless," in which, don't tell me, Zorn outs Sneed's ageless birthday boys and girls, including "gaming [gambling] industry attorney Terry Durkin," whom he exposed on Feb. 9, 2005, a year ago almost to the day, that is, the day after Sneed wished him Happy Birthday, calling him ageless, as 48 whole years old!

 

There it is!  All comes to him who knows or learns pretty quickly how to make best use of Google.  Terry Durkin on this day is 49 years old, and he's a gambler's lawyer.  Very interesting.  He's also into Sneed somehow.  She owes him, that is.  In short, he's a SOURCE, and where would Sneed be without sources?  Case closed.

 

One more thing.  Zorn explains his interest in ageless birthdays as in the Sneed column here.  Look it up.  But the sad thing is that this citing of Zorn will go unnoticed by him unless he reads my Chi Newspapers blog because for quite a while he has had a block on my email, maybe because he blocks a lot of inconsequential commentators but maybe also because I have pissed him off in email exchanges, for which I am heartily sorry and to prevent reoccurance am embracing a firm purpose of amendment.  Better stop now.  This has gone far too long.  Cheers.