Dan Rostenkowski, one of the most powerful men in the country until he went to federal prison 15 months ago, became a free man five minutes after midnight Tuesday when he walked out of a West Side halfway house.
And he came out the same way he went in–with a well-coordinated high-profile maneuver. Rostenkowski had the timing down so well with his friends that he made a quick call from a cellular phone after signing out of the building at 105 S. Ashland Ave., and seconds later a gray Oldsmobile containing two burly men screeched down a dark alley and pulled up at a rear door just before Rostenkowski walked out.
Asked by a Tribune reporter if he had anything to say, Rostenkowski said, “Yeah.”
But with that he got into the car’s right front seat, and it screeched down the alley once again, heading onto Monroe Street and leaving three television camera crews, three newspaper photographers and the Tribune reporter wondering what he’ll say and when he’ll say it.
Rostenkowski, 69, wasn’t dressed like the dapper congressman he was before he went to the Oxford, Wis., prison camp. This time he looked a little weary in khaki slacks, a shirt and a blue and red windbreaker and carrying a Nike duffel bag. After signing out at a desk near the front door of the halfway house and saying his goodbyes to a few prison administrative people, the man known as “His Gruffness” walked down a long hallway to the back door with a cell phone to his ear.
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Then he walked with his head down out the four-story red brick building that used to be a YWCA and into the darkness, apparently to continue a consulting business that he has been running out of a simple storefront office on the Near Northwest Side while living in the halfway house since August. His office is adjacent to the family home his grandfather built and in which he has lived his whole life.
However, the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, where he wrote many of the country’s tax bills, will not have the run of the country for a while. He will have to serve two years of supervised release, meaning that he will have to report to a probation officer, disclose his sources of income and not travel outside northern Illinois without the probation officer’s consent.
But while the prison sentence might have tarnished Rostenkowski’s image nationally, a stroll up and down North Noble Street within sight of the Kennedy Expressway, where Rostenkowskis have represented voters for decades, made it clear that the judgment of history has been written far more favorably in the minds of many.
“As a congressman he was a great person, a wonderful human being for Chicago, for the neighborhood. They love him here,” said Lubomyr Wandzura, 68, who for years has owned the building across the alley from Rostenkowski’s home and office.
Motioning to the Kennedy 50 yards away, Wandzura said, “If it had not been for him, we would not have had that redone.”
Some parishioners of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, across the street from what used to be the 32nd Ward office when his father, Joseph, was alderman, are ready to re-elect Rostenkowski to public office. Other longtime friends across the city seem just as optimistic about Rostenkowski’s future.
“I think he will have a substantial number of significant opportunities,” said Neil Hartigan, the former Illinois lieutenant governor and attorney general who got to know Rostenkowski when Hartigan was an administrative assistant to the late Mayor Richard J. Daley in the early 1960s.
“The reality is that nobody knows the federal, state and local government structure better than Dan Rostenkowski.”
But the man known for his dealmaking prowess as a former Washington power broker wasn’t exactly chummy at the Salvation Army halfway house.
“He was off to himself, kind of anti-social,” said Kendrick Ewing, 29, another resident there.