'Buy flowers for your wife' and other lessons retired Oak Park teacher Arthur Albores left his children

After retired Oak Park River Forest High School Spanish teacher Arthur "Art" Albores died Oct. 12 at 94, his three sons looked back at his life and came away with a blueprint of sorts to guide their own.

Among the lessons they say their father left them:

• Never hesitate to order the bacon.
• If a young child hands you a toy phone, answer it.
• Never miss a parade.
• Carry a thin wallet.
• If you leave the barber without getting your eyebrows trimmed, you blew it.
• Always wear colorful socks.
• You can never have enough pairs of reading glasses — three is good, but 10 is better.
• Take naps.
• Volunteer at a homeless shelter.
• Remember to floss.
• Drink martinis but only sparingly.
• And, most important, be a part of your children's lives without ever telling them how they should live them.

Peter Albores compiled the gems and wrote them down for a family obituary after his father's death following a brief illness.

Mr. Albores and his wife Carole were married for 53 years. The father's views on their marriage left the sons with some of their fondest memories and life lessons

• Buy flowers for your wife.
• Say yes to her wild adventures.
• Let her kiss your head tenderly.
• Let her tears be yours and your laughter be hers.
• Hold each other while you walk so you can steady her, and she can steady you.
• Guard her like she is the last flicker of a candle in the wind.

Art Albores and Carole Bock met at a party in 1971. People were hanging out, sitting on pillows (it was a thing back then), and Mr. Albores struck up a conversation. She was leaving the party when he stood and, in a loud voice, boldly asked for her number. She gave it to him but told a friend, "That guy is nice, but I don't think I want to go out with him."

The next day, she went on a ski trip, broke a leg and thought about the guy she'd met at that party. When she came home to the house where she lived with her parents, her father told her some guy named Art had been calling every day.

Five months later, they were married.

"I just knew," she said, noting with a laugh that he dropped the ring when he popped the question in his car outside her house in Park Ridge.

It took about 15 minutes to find it.

Mr. Albores worked for decades as a Spanish teacher at Oak Park River Forest High School and then taught Spanish at Northern Illinois University for about another decade.

"He had a wonderful combination of sternness and lovingness that made him a great teacher and a great dad," said Peter Albores, who lives in Los Angeles, where he works in advertising. "We lived in a little stucco house in Oak Park, and in a second-floor bathroom there was a laundry shoot that went down to a wooden basket in the basement, and me and brothers would fly down it, and he'd hear a thump and come running down and roll his eyes and tell us not to do that, but he never yelled. He wasn't a yeller."

Until four weeks before he died, Mr. Albores went three times a week to the Loyola Center for Fitness, where he ran a mile and half on a treadmill before hitting the stair machine. He'd finish his workout with stretches and weights before having a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin.

The fitness center put a framed copy of the family's obituary on the front desk. Servers from the Blueberry Hill Cafe in La Grange, his favorite breakfast spot, were among those at his wake.

"He just had a way of touching people," said his son Tim Albores, who works in student services for Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202. "His advice to us always was: 'I don't care what you do as long as you love doing what you do and can support yourself and your family if you choose to have one.' And: 'Keep your brain active and your body active.' "

Mr. Albores was born March 1, 1930, in Chicago to Jacob Albores, a tailor with a shop in Pilsen, and Victoria Albores, a homemaker. Both had immigrated from Mexico.

After his father died suddenly, his mother cared for their seven kids through the Great Depression and World War II.

Mr. Albores found a second home at a YMCA, where he learned the importance of community that later served him well as an active member of St. Giles Catholic parish in Oak Park, according to his sons.

He graduated from North Central College in 1956. In 1965, he joined the Peace Corps, spending about two years establishing YMCAs in Venezuela before returning to attend Middlebury College, where he got a master's degree in education.

In addition to his wife and sons Peter and Tim, Mr. Albores is survived by his son Geoffrey and five grandchildren. Services have been held.