Chicago Lives: Men and Women Who Shaped Our City

by The Chicago Tribune (Editor), Bill Parker (Foreword by)

Overview

A unique journey through the 20th century in Chicago, this work reveals the characters whose lives put an indelible stamp on the city. Some were famous, like Richard J. Daley and Harold Washington, while others were infamous or unacknowledged, living fascinating lives that helped shape the city while remaining anonymous at the same time like, such as Emma Schweer, who is believed to have been America’s oldest elected office holder; Zofia Kuklo, a shy church-going, Polish immigrant grandmother who hid Jewish individuals from the Nazis during World War II; and James Tuach MacKenzie, the dashing and charismatic former drum major and band manager of the Stock Yard Kilty Band, among the most prominent of Chicago’s many pipe bands. In Chicago Lives readers explore the struggles of immigrants, the innovation of architects and artists, the dedication of activists and city officials, and the actions of Chicagoan’s whose feats were never recorded by history books, until now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617499425
Publisher:	Triumph Books
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Sold by:	INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

The Chicago Tribune is the largest daily newspaper in Chicago. Bill Parker spent more than three decades working for the Chicago Tribune in numerous positions, including associate managing editor, sportswriter, and senior new editor.

Read an Excerpt

Chicago Lives

Men and Women Who Shaped Our City

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By James Janega

Triumph Books

Copyright © 2006 Chicago Tribune
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61749-942-5

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CHAPTER 1

Section I. Who We Thought We Knew

There are people we see every day and think we know well enough, or names we tie to achievements, assuming we are familiar with all that matters. But a thrill comes from moving beyond our assumptions.

If we can reconsider the parking lot attendant we thought we had pegged, we can revisit the lawyers and labor leaders for the same sense of surprise. We can look at a city skyline and see the silhouette of its creators. We can look at a warm and inviting neighborhood street and recognize not a play of light, but the far more subtle work of the person who designed it.

Sunday, March 4, 2001

Earnest Harris, Forty-Eight; Beloved Valet Exuded Joy, Toted a Secret

By Kirsten Scharnberg, Tribune Staff Reporter

In two grubby, bulging shopping bags Ernie Harris carried a mystery. For more than thirty years, the parking garage attendant lugged the bags from his humble house in the south suburbs to the bus stop to the succession of city buses that transported him five days a week to the North Lake Shore Drive high-rise where he parked Mercedes-Benzes and Jaguars and Volkswagen Passats as happily as if he owned them himself.

The bags would be from Marshall Field's or Filene's Basement or any number of little stores without household names, and Harris would carry them until the plastic wore out before transferring the bulky contents — though it seems nobody in the building knew what those contents were — into two new bags that would be toted until they, too, started to fall apart.

Up until February 23, the day Harris was murdered and the first day he ever failed to show up for work as scheduled, the gaunt, disheveled man always arrived at the Hawthorne House apartment building early, up to three hours before his 3:00 to 11:00 pm shift. He almost always stayed late, sometimes sleeping in the garage overnight, hunched in a padded old chair next to his plastic bags.

"He was this building's unofficial ambassador," said Hawthorne House owner Scott Ross, "and that was something he took upon himself and took more seriously than you can even imagine."

In an impersonal high-rise in an intimidating city where people can go for weeks without bumping into someone they know on the streets, there was something comforting and familial about walking out to the garage each day to be greeted by a boisterous parking attendant who remembered not only your name, but your husband's name and your children's names and your visitors' names. Ask any of the thousands of people who have lived in the 400-apartment high-rise over the years, and they'll tell you Harris considered chitchatting with them as much a part of his job as parking their cars.

"Beautiful day, beautiful day," he would mutter, day in and day out, sometimes to no one in particular, like a broken record completely oblivious to skin-stinging sleet or ten inches of snow or bitter Chicago cold.

"One more day," he reminded residents every Thursday as they got into their cars and headed off to work. "One more day till your weekend."

And on Fridays, without fail: "TGIF, folks, TGIF."

Make no mistake, forty-eight-year-old Earnest H. Harris was an eccentric. Even after a shower was installed for his use, he didn't often take advantage of it and usually left a strong reminder of his presence in any car he had just parked or retrieved. Unlike the rest of the parking attendants, his white shirt was never crisply starched or tucked in, his black bow tie was always slightly askew, and his hair was a fright of unruly curls.

The Pine Bluff, Arkansas, native seemed to have a near-photographic memory and a keen interest in other people's business, and it wasn't uncommon for him to raise an eyebrow in knowing disapproval if a resident pulled into the garage with someone who wasn't that person's spouse or steady sweetheart.

"He was the kindest, goofiest, most happy-go-lucky person I've ever met," said Caryl Dillon, who has lived in the building at 3450 North Lake Shore Drive for more than a year. "He knew everyone by name, and I mean everyone. The first day I parked in that garage just to look at an apartment here, he immediately said, 'Hi. I'm Ernie. What's your name?' I told him my name and said I was only considering renting an apartment here, and he said, 'Well, we sure would love to have you join us.' And then, when I moved in almost a month later, he walked right up to me and said, 'Hi Caryl. You took the apartment.'"

So because Harris treated them differently, the residents treated him differently right back. When they went out to eat, they brought him either their leftovers or a carry-out dinner they'd ordered just for him.

They tipped him at least a couple times a week, even though they only contributed to a holiday-tip fund for the rest of the guys who worked in the garage. If people saw Harris shopping with his family somewhere in Chicago, they'd shout, "Hey, Ernie," across the department store.

When Lidia Wolin's son moved into the building during college, the overprotective mother pulled Harris aside and asked him to watch out for her boy and to call her if anything seemed amiss.

"Don't worry, Miss Lidia," he'd say when he saw her. "Everything's going just fine."

Knowing all this, understanding just who Ernie Harris was and how a whole apartment building came to love him, will explain why everyone noticed when he didn't show up for work February 23. He was scheduled for 3:00pm, but since Harris usually came early, the guys in the garage were starting to worry by about 1:30.

"Where's Ernie?" countless people asked when they got home from work in the afternoon. By then it was nearly 5:30, and Francisco Lerma, another parking attendant who had come to think of Harris as a brother, didn't know what to tell them; he felt sick to his stomach.

About 5:35, the phone in the garage rang, and Lerma answered it.

"Ernie won't be coming in," Harris' wife, Barbara, told him.

"Why not?" Lerma asked.

"He's dead."

Still too shocked to even cry while telling the story, Barbara Harris relayed to the Hawthorne House parking garage what the Chicago police officers had just told her:

Harris, who just a month before had purchased a 1987 Hyundai for about $600 so he didn't have to take the nearly two-hour bus ride to work, had been at a stop sign in the 2000 block of West Sixty-fifth Street.

He was headed to work after dropping off a nephew he had been babysitting when two young men approached his car, threw open both front doors, and shot him once in the face. The young men ran away, not even bothering to take Harris' wallet or steal the car, after a bunch of children outside a nearby public school started screaming for help. Harris died immediately, his face on the street's bloody pavement, his feet still in the car. Fewer than two blocks away in the high-crime neighborhood, a hand-painted sign tacked to a tree beseeched, "Stop the black-on-black violence. It's got to stop."

Last week, two fifteen-year-olds, Rasson Davis and Gregory Brown, were charged as adults with first-degree murder and aggravated vehicular hijacking on Wednesday morning. Judge Neil Linehan set bond at$500,000 for Brown, who is accused of being the gunman, and $400,000 for Davis after Assistant State's Attorney Maureen Lynch told the judge that one of the two told police they wanted Harris' car for a planned drive-by shooting.

After word of the killing made its way to the high-rise, the guys in the parking garage handed a printed announcement to residents as they pulled into the garage that night. "It is with deep regret and extraordinary sadness," the one-paragraph statement began. "Earnestwas murdered Friday afternoon ..."

The garage manager, Steve Barakat, removed Harris' Polaroid picture from the center of a bulletin board introducing all the parking attendants. He blew the picture up — in it, Harris' shirt is wrinkled and untucked, his hair is jutting in a dozen directions, his bow tie is hopelessly crooked. Barakat posted the photo near the garage entrance next to a sign that reads, "Take a minute to ponder the silence of our garage." On the garage's work schedule, which hung nearby, five words were typed into the five days Harris was supposed to work the following week: "He will not be forgotten."

Within hours, the building's residents had created a makeshift memorial of flowers and cards in Hawthorne House's lobby. "Thank you, God, for sharing Ernie with us," one card read.

Two days later, on Sunday night, Barbara Harris and the couple's son, Earnest Jr., drove from their Markham home to the forty-story building where Harris had parked cars all those years. Wife and son had simply planned on cleaning out Harris' locker — it turned out he kept next to nothing in it, choosing instead to keep his two bags near the sturdy, wooden chair where he always sat between parking cars — but they ended up staying at Hawthorne House apartments for hours. Hundreds of residents lined up in the building's comfortable lobby, wanting to offer their condolences and kind words.

Since then, the building's residents have established a trust fund they hope will pay the remainder of Earnest Jr.'s college education. The twenty-year-old is a freshman at Kishwaukee College in DeKalb.

Harris also has a second son, Robert Jackson, who is twenty-seven and lives in Chicago.

It was while the residents chatted with Harris' wife and youngest son on Sunday night that someone finally asked the question. What about those bags? What had been in them all these years?

Everyone had their guesses: maybe Harris was rich, and the bags were filled with money. Maybe he really had been homeless and they were filled with his only possessions.

Barbara Harris, a quiet woman who calls Ernie "the best husband and father a woman could ask for," and Earnest Jr., an effusive young man who has his father's quick smile, got a kick out of the questions.

Those plastic bags — and several more just like them out in the family's garage — had never been a mystery to this family who knew how much Earnest Harris loved his job and the people he met there.

The bags were filled with cards and letters from the hundreds of Hawthorne House residents who had taken time over the years to jot down a heartfelt thank-you to the bedraggled little man who parked their cars and never failed to remind them to have a "beautiful day, beautiful day."

CHAPTER 2

Section II. Coming to Chicago

In a city of immigrants, in a country of immigrants, newcomers to Chicago have forged not only an American metropolis, but have reached over oceans to change the lands they left.

Chicago owes its soul to Poles, and to Mexicans, to African American migrants from the American South, to the Swedes and Puerto Ricans and Czechs, and waves still arriving to chart its future.

Tuesday, January 25, 2000

Wanda Szygowski, Eighty-Nine; Welcomed Poles

By James Janega, Tribune Staff Reporter

Once a month for more than forty years, Wanda Szygowski would open her house to Poles who had recently arrived in Chicago.

Szygowski, a consummate entertainer, was as versed in Polish politics and culture as she was in the traditional Polish dishes she served.

So formally did Szygowski, eighty-nine, practice the customs of her homeland that it was easy to forget she and her husband, a World War II–era Polish diplomat, were no longer officials. They were stranded here when communists took over their country in 1945.

Szygowski, who spent the next twenty-five years working for Montgomery Ward & Co. but never relinquished her social position as the wife of Poland's former consul general to Chicago, died Sunday, January 23, in Northwestern Memorial Hospital of complications from a stroke.

For years, she traveled with her husband, Julius, on diplomatic trips to Warsaw, New York, Winnipeg, and Chicago, often hosting visiting Eastern European royalty on their tours of the West.

But when her husband was forced to relinquish the Chicago consulate to Poland's communist regime, Szygowski maintained her connections with expatriate Poles here, even as she became an American citizen and wrote the index for the Montgomery Ward catalog.

She and her husband moved to a house in Rogers Park, holding a prominent position among the Polish nationals in the city, which is said to have the largest concentration of Poles outside Poland.

Szygowski discussed Polish and national politics over card games with friends and listened to chamber music written by Polish composers. She hung Polish tapestries on her walls.

"It was such a strong part of her," said her granddaughter, Margaret Newell. "In Chicago, she could keep her Polishness very much alive."

Even after her husband became a banker and assumed a role in Poland's government-in-exile, Szygowski zealously maintained their cultural traditions, such as the monthly receptions she and her husband hosted for new Polish immigrants, a form of hospitality said to have been started by Polish royalty.

And she was among the thousands of Polish citizens living in the Midwest who stood under cloudy Chicago skies in 1989 to vote in the Polish election that returned a noncommunist government to their homeland.

"They were thrilled. I think they felt like they had come full circle," Newell said.

In addition to her granddaughter and husband, Szygowski is survived by a son, Mathew; four other granddaughters; fourgrandsons; nine great-grandsons; and nine great-granddaughters.

Wednesday, December 6, 2000

Nora E. Olivares, Fifty-Two; Activist for Latinos

By James Janega, Tribune Staff Reporter

Nora Elia Villarreal de Olivares, fifty-two, a volunteer at Queen of Angels Parish in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, sought to build bridges between white and Latino cultures, to strengthen families, and to help Latino immigrants become American citizens.

"She was a leader to both languagecommunities," said Rev. William O'Brien, pastor of the Catholic church. "She was an extremely dedicated person, a person who was concerned about blending people."

Olivares died of a heart attack Sunday,December 3, in Ravenswood Hospital.

She was a common sight at parish activities, from school board meetings — she was the first Hispanic member — to mass, for which she coordinated bilingual liturgies.

During parish dinners, she headed food preparation and ensured that the kitchen workers were as multicultural as the hot dogs and tortillas they dished out.

When young couples wanted to get married in the parish, many first met with Olivares and her husband, Juan, for advice on how to stay married.

Born Nora Villarreal in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, Mexico, she moved to Chicago as a young girl.

She attended the former Loop College, now Harold Washington College, where she founded several Hispanic organizations, and later went to work as a counselor at a private school. She left the job when her health deteriorated in 1986.

"She looked so meek, so frail, and yet she could probably go up to Mayor Daley and say this is what we need and not be shy about it," said her friend Cristina Ruiz, who added that Olivares was a powerhouse when it came to making connections work.

She and her husband joined Queen of Angels in the late 1970s as the parish was adapting to the changing neighborhood around it.

Olivares was the first director of immigration and citizenship efforts at Queen of Angels, and she also served on the parish school board committee that gives financial aid to pupils.

And as she worked in the church and its school to make them more inclusive, she opened her home for parish meetings and people in need. "She was like the answer to everyone's prayer in a new place. They knew that she would help; she would receive them with open arms and go totally out of her way to make things easier for them," her friend said. "She knew what it was like to struggle, and she wanted to do everything in her power to help the underprivileged."

Olivares is survived by her husband, Juan; a daughter, Nely; her mother, Minerva Villarreal; a brother, Emigdio Villarreal; and two sisters, Ruth Lara and Gloria Villarreal.

Saturday, December 23, 2000

Selma Jacobson, Ninety-Four; Swedish Booster

By James Janega, Tribune Staff Reporter

Selma Jacobson, the ninety-four-year-old grande dame of Chicago's Swedish American community, once the largest Swedish population in the world outside Stockholm, died Thursday, December 14, of natural causes in Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center.

Jacobson was instrumental in establishing the Swedish American Museum Center on North Clark Street and preserving writings on Swedish American life in the Swedish American Archives of Greater Chicago at North Park University.

"[The fact] that much of what Swedish America was, in its 'capital' city of Chicago, has not perished or been destroyed ... can be attributed in no small measure to the diligent efforts and achievements of this remarkable woman," the Swedish American Historical Quarterly wrote in 1991.

For decades Jacobson gathered diaries and letters to early settlers, yellowed Swedish newspapers, and memorabilia of Chicago's Swedish pioneers.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Chicago Lives by James Janega. Copyright © 2006 Chicago Tribune. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction,
Section I. Who We Thought We Knew,
Section II. Coming to Chicago,
Section III. Faces Behind Cultural Landmarks,
Section IV. Neighborhood Personalities,
Section V. Politicians,
Section VI. Activists,
Section VII. Builders,
Section VIII. I Met Them Once ...,
Section IX. Cop and Robbers,
Section X. Celebrities in a Sports Town,
Section XI. Moguls and Other Big Cheeses,
Section XIII. Lawyers,
Section XV. Classical Musicians,
Section XVI. The Musicians We Knew,
Section XVII. Dancers,
Section XVIII. Restaurateurs,
Section XIX. They Broadened Our Minds,
Section XX. Witnesses to Chicago History,

Editorial Reviews

Drawing on their voluminous files, the editors of the Chicago Tribune sketch out the history of the Windy City through the lives of the men and women who made it great.