This is the eighth in a series of articles intended to paint a cumulative portrait of our Jewish community. Today, we focus on Dr. Larry Sprung.
“Shut up, Larry!” So read a t-shirt that some of psychiatrist Dr. Larry Sprung’s friends once bought for him, according to his wife, CPA Rachel Sprung (nee Gil).
They didn’t buy him the shirt because they were angry at him or because he is especially talkative; in fact, he tends to be reticent. They did it because, according to his wife, Sprung is a notorious punster; and some people (this writer not included) find that kind of humor irksome.
Yet it was a surprise to hear about the shirt. Perhaps one must get to know Sprung well before the punster appears. In an interview at his home, this writer saw instead the man his wife described as “very even-keeled, good natured…. He laughs that I’m the emotional one of the two; [that] I’ll get angry for both of us.”
One of his colleagues, Dr. James Winston, owner and operator of the American Behavioral Clinics, agreed. He said Sprung is “steady. He’s a soldier. He goes about his work and does it diligently and thoroughly….. Patients respect his care and kindness and he’s well respected in the psychiatric community.” Winston’s one criticism of Sprung is that the Chicago native “needs to learn how to become a Packers fan.”
“Even-keeled” and “steady” also characterize Sprung’s biography, at least the way he tells it. He was raised in Skokie, Ill., where his father ran an auto parts store. Although Larry worked in the stockroom sometimes, he said he doesn’t “know much about cars.” His mother may have had more influence on his eventual career path; she was a special education teacher in the Chicago public schools.
Sprung said he liked to do “typical kid things” like reading and sports when growing up. But in school he always did well in mathematics and science, and “medicine always had an attraction” for him.
After studying biology at the University of Illinois’ Champaign-Urbana campus, he went to medical school at the Chicago campus. It was “during the clinical years” of his training that he became attracted to psychiatry.
While most medical work involves “saving and extending life,” psychiatry involved working on a patient’s “quality of life,” he said. “That had the most meaning to me at that time of my life, and it still does.” Sprung has gone into the field of psychopharmacology, characteristically because “that seemed to be the most natural thing for me.”
Sprung moved to Milwaukee to do his residency in 1986, and shortly thereafter he joined the staff of American Behavioral Clinics. He also does some work in area hospitals, like Milwaukee Psychiatric and St. Luke’s.
Sprung’s attitude toward and involvement in Jewish life also seem even-keeled and steady. While he was growing up, his family kept kosher and belonged to Skokie Valley Traditional Synagogue. He had some post-bar mitzvah Jewish education and visited Israel when he was 16.
He met his wife, a Milwaukee native, at a Jewish singles group’s event in 1988. They now keep a kosher home; belong to Congregation Beth Israel and the Harry & Rose Samson Family JCC; and send the oldest of their two children (Ari, 8) to Beth Israel’s Hebrew school, the youngest (Hannah, 4) to the JCC pre-school.
He said he once attended a bat mitzvah ceremony at a Humanistic Judaism synagogue in Illinois and “found that odd…. I’m not comfortable going in that direction. I still like a lot of things in Hebrew.” Moreover, he is somewhat more observant today than he was when growing up; his family now puts up a sukkah, which his parents did not.
Yet his affiliation is a matter of identity more than belief. “It’s just who I am, and I am comfortable with that.” As for such issues as the nature of God, “The scientific part of me says that if I see a burning bush, I will know. I have some doubts. I’m OK with that. But the identity part is crucial.”
Individuals for this column are selected at random from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation community data base. The Chronicle does not have access to donor information, nor does it contact members of the community with regard to their giving habits.
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