Column: Author Peter Ferry is back, as his novel ‘Old Heart' becomes a movie

Chicago Tribune

28-05-2025

The teacher and novelist Peter Ferry is dead. He died at age 77, less than a year ago, on the morning of Sept.17 to be precise, but he was the topic of conversation recently when a couple of creative guys were telling me about him and talking about his novel 'Old Heart' and how it became a movie.
'He was a wonderful guy,' said Gary Houston, long a prominent presence as an actor and director on the local theater scene and a former newspaperman, now a managing editor of the literary Chicago Quarterly Magazine, which published some of Ferry's short stories. 'And he really inspired me to start writing fiction even after many years of never trying.'
'I fell in love with Peter's book and immediately called him and told him I wanted to make a movie based on it,' said Roger Rapoport, a writer, investigative reporter, producer and all-around creative dynamo. (He's also the brother of former Chicago sports columnist Ron Rapoport.) 'I hadn't known him, but he was just wonderful, the perfect collaborator. He was so supportive, always coming up with great ideas and sharing his knowledge that enriched the project.'
Ferry will not get to see the movie, which begins a national tour that brings it to our Chopin Theatre on June 4 for the premiere of 'Old Heart,' the feature-length movie based on Ferry's second and last novel. Among the guests will be Houston and Rapoport; co-director Kirk Wahamaki will also be there, along with actors Jamelle Sargent, Edward Gaines and Eva Doueiri, who is flying in from Amsterdam. Ferry's widow, Carolyn, will be there, as will daughter Lizzie and son Griffin, and surely others. Ferry had many friends and admirers
'Peter did get to see the stage adaptation of the novel when it was performed in Michigan,' said Rapoport, who wrote and produced the stage version and the movie. 'He liked it, was proud and I knew he could envision the film.'
Ferry was a native of West Virginia who moved to Chicago as a teenager. After college at Ohio and Northwestern Universities and a few years writing and editing textbooks at Rand McNally, he spent three decades teaching English and writing at Lake Forest High School. Among his students were actor Vince Vaughn and author Dave Eggers, one of the leading literary figures of our time, who has said of Ferry, 'He was a very erudite guy with a wry wit, and he understood the strange sense of humor my friends and I had. We became fanboys of Mr. Ferry, and he was our hero and mentor. And he and I stayed in touch for the next 35 years.'
Eggers told me this after Ferry died: 'I think I mention Mr. Ferry and his second career as a novelist once a week, whenever I encounter someone trying to write a novel later in life. Mr. Ferry really showed you could do it, and do so at the very highest level.'
While teaching, Ferry also wrote stories for the Tribune's travel section and worked on what would be his first novel, 'Travel Writing,' published in 2008.
'Old Heart' came out in 2015 and reviewing it for this newspaper I called it 'a stunning story. In bright and precise prose.' It tells of 85-year-old Tom Johnson, a Black World War II veteran who decides, much to the alarm of his maybe-dad-should-be-in-a-nursing-home grown children, to find the woman whom he believes to have been the great love of his life, lost over decades and, perhaps, for good. And so off he goes, to a lovely town in the Netherlands.
Johnson's identity as a Black veteran is an essential element of the story. 'That's the thing, on top of its inherent power, this novel, this film is so topical. It is in its way the ultimate DEI movie, a story that deals with race in the armed services, and the story of the Red Ball Express,' Rapoport says, explaining that famed trucking operation in Europe that carried supplies to the rapidly advancing U.S. forces, especially crucial following the D-Day landing. The young Tom Johnson drove for the express and the film offers terrific and dramatic flashbacks, some of which detail the reasons why the drivers were almost all Black. It was because the U.S. Army was segregated at the time, with Black soldiers not serving in combat.
'We filmed in Michigan and in the Netherlands and Peter's knowledge of both places (he had a home in Michigan and has lived and taught in the Netherlands) allowed for terrific and knowing details,' Rapoport said. 'When it was in shape to screen for various technical people, editors and such who really know movies, they were all impressed and engaged.'
Houston has seen the film and likes it too. He says, 'I was so pleased that the film follows the novel faithfully. It brings out the novel's values, the idea that we should live life the way we want to, that we don't have to throw in the towel when we get old, and that irresistible notion of finding a lost love after more than 50 years.'
We both almost simultaneously remembered and spoke a line from the film, when Johnson says, 'I might be old but I am still a human being.'
It would be unfair to tell you how the movie ends. So I won't. All I'll say is it's nice to have Peter Ferry still with us, on the pages of his books and now compellingly and entertainingly on screens.