Aug. 1, 1999
The calls started coming in on the Sunday morning in August that a story on Mary Gonzales appeared. Some Tribune readers wanted to send Gonzales bags of used clothing, while others wanted to deliver whole roomsful of furniture to her, drop off crates of food or mail her a check.
On their own, dozens of people went beyond merely being impressed by Gonzales’ tireless efforts on behalf of the children of her struggling Back of the Yards neighborhood. Over the next few months they pitched in with everything from bicycles to Thanksgiving dinners, providing a steady stream of donations Gonzales then passed along to the children and families around her. In the first two weeks after the story appeared, readers sent Gonzales 60 bikes; furniture to outfit a living room, dining room and bedroom; two cases of mangoes and one of bananas; more than $900 in cash; and heaps of used clothing. All but the dining room table went to children and families in Back of the Yards–Gonzales kept the table, she explained, so she could serve more kids meals at her house.
Later, people would give her gift certificates for children’s shoes and for groceries. The Chicago Cultural Center gave her a $1,000 grant and will help Gonzales find an artist to work with the kids in her neighborhood next summer. An Optimists Club branch started a regular fundraising effort to bolster the Mary’s Kids program Gonzales runs informally out of her house and the nearby Cornell Square Park field house. A businessman gave her 360 pound cakes. Another donated Halloween pumpkins for all her unofficial charges.
“It’s amazing what people have that they want to give to these kids,” Gonzales said as she rattled off a list of recent donations. “It’s all good. It helps these kids get the kind of memories of childhood I think they should all have, because you know, I can see the writing on the wall for a lot of these kids. They won’t make it. In my heart I want to believe it won’t be that way, but that’s not reality.”
One call that stunned Gonzales came from the Consulate of Mexico in Chicago. Impressed by the work of this woman whose mother was a Mexican immigrant, the consul himself wanted Gonzales to march with him in a September parade. “Can you believe he’d want me?” she asked at the time.
Even several weeks after most copies of the article on Gonzales had disappeared into recycling bins, the calls and letters continued. Each week brought more cash, clothes or food–and all of it passed through the conduit that is Mary Gonzales to her friends and neighbors who need it more.
Not everything was intended to pass through Gonzales’ hands. Some people sent gift-wrapped clothes meant expressly for her; it was hard for her to keep from giving those away too. A developer offered to replace her leaky windows and get colleagues to do other repairs on her deteriorating house.
Some people pitched in more than once. A group of 22 people who work in McDonald’s legal department in Oak Brook organized a party in September for Mary’s Kids that included lunch for 150 children. They also arranged for McDonald’s to donate computers for Gonzales’ borrowed space in the Cornell Square Park field house.
What they saw spending a little time with Gonzales, says Janice Mayfield, a McDonald’s paralegal, “is that she’s phenomenal. She’s putting those children first, which somebody really has to do in their lives. So we decided, let’s not just do this for one day, let’s extend it for a few months if we can.” The group ended up sponsoring a Halloween party–one of two Gonzales put on with the help of donors–and at Thanksgiving provided meals for 25 families identified by Gonzales.
But even with all the unsolicited and unexpected generosity that came her way, Gonzales still has little of her own in material goods. She couldn’t find it in herself to cash in.
“What I think is that my mother couldn’t leave me any money or anything like that, but she left me a gift that I can give,” Gonzales says. “It’s serving people. And all these things people are giving me, that’s God sending me the tools to do my work.”
— Dennis Rodkin
`IT’S THE SAME. NOTHING GETS BETTER’
Dec. 20, 1998
Last year, the Magazine spent some time with a few Japanese students at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. The students, part of the nation’s largest Japanese educational exchange program, were culturally and linguistically distant from the rest of the campus. Nearly segregated in their day-to-day lives, they hid their misunderstanding of class lectures and silently suffered through a world of limited communication.
“Basically it’s the same. Nothing gets better,” says Yoshitaka Nakano, 24, one of the students profiled last year. “My listening gets a little better. But my speaking is not so gets better.”
Nakano said his social life at the school has not developed much over the last year. He usually eats and goes out alone and has only one American friend. He spends most of his time at the library.
Surprisingly, though, Nakano does not miss Japan at all. He is inspired by his academic life.
“The good thing in Carbondale is . . . the bookstore,” he said after much thought. Then he really got rolling, speaking with a fluency and excitement that he had not shown earlier. “I found the Barnes and Noble in Carbondale to be better than any bookstore in Kyoto.”
How does Nakano do in school? “Not bad.” He has made the dean’s list twice, by focusing almost entirely on schoolwork.
— Scott Rosenberg
`I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER WORKED HARDER’
May 2, 1999
Nowadays, gun industry lawyer Anne Kimball has her work cut out for her.
When the Magazine featured her earlier this year, she was tackling anti-handgun lawsuits filed by Chicago, New Orleans and several other cities. Since then, litigation has mushroomed so rapidly, says Chicago deputy corporation counsel Lawrence Rosenthal, that at least 30 cities and counties are now battling the industry in courts across the country.
Kimball–whose firm represents world-famous gunmakers such as Smith & Wesson Corp. and Colt’s Manufacturing Co.–is involved in all of those cases, coast to coast. “I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life,” she says.
The trend has sparked hot debate across the country. When Atlanta filed suit against gunmakers, the Georgia legislature quickly countered by passing a state law prohibiting its cities from doing so.
In October, Colt’s Manufacturing announced that it would stop producing some handguns, a decision that many link to the lawsuits. Meanwhile, gun industry representatives have met with some government lawyers to negotiate concessions–such as stricter supervision of sales–that may lead to out-of-court settlements.
Colt’s decision shows that “there’s going to be a shakeout in the industry. . . . I think we’ll see more companies going that way,” Rosenthal predicts. “It was an industry based on the assumption that you can never be held responsible for what someone does with the weapons you’re selling. That’s all changing now.”
Chicago–one of the first to sue–is seeking $433 million in damages, the estimated amount that gun violence cost the city between 1994 and 1998, including police and medical services. The suit puts forth a public-nuisance argument, charging that negligent manufacturers are “polluting” the city with gun injuries and deaths.
There hasn’t been a ruling yet on the legal basis of the city’s case, but in another suit filed by the family of slain Chicago police officer Michael Ceriale, the public-nuisance argument survived the first round in Cook County Circuit Court in November when Judge Jennifer Duncan-Brice refused to dismiss the case.
Meanwhile, other noteworthy rulings have rolled in, with contradictory results. A trial court tossed out a case filed by Cincinnati, ruling that gun regulations “were legislative issues and didn’t belong in the courts,” says Kimball. She called the decision “wonderful.” Cincinnati is appealing. On the other hand, Rosenthal points out that another court ruled that the Atlanta case could move forward with its charge of negligent marketing practices.
Whether gunmakers win the suits or lose, Rosenthal says, “either way they have to pay Anne Kimball and her colleagues bushels of money.”
— Linnet Myers
`HE’S A FRIEND OF MR. WHITE’
Jan. 17, 1999
If you’re driving along and pass a late-model Lincoln with a license plate sporting the single letter E, don’t be surprised to see Jim Edgar at the wheel.
Edgar, former state legislator, former Illinois secretary of state and former governor of Illinois, is now a private citizen. But his single-letter plate attests to his once-exalted place in the state’s political firmament.
That’s the way it has been in Illinois throughout this century, as the Magazine detailed last January. A low-number plate or a single-letter plate is an outward sign that the car owner is–or, often, was–a player in Illinois politics. These plates are favors that the sitting secretary of state hands out to friends and allies or those he would like to have as friends and allies.
As secretary of state, Edgar gave his mother, Elizabeth, plate 4. She died shortly after he became governor, and the plate went to one of his top aides–but with an understanding that, when Edgar left office, the aide would return the plate. And so he did last January when Edgar finished his second term.
License plate E was another story. Shortly before he left the secretary of state’s office, Edgar created a new set of high-profile plates: those with just a single letter. And he bestowed 25 single-letter plates on his nearest and dearest.
One plate, though, the 26th, wasn’t handed out: plate E. For eight years, it sat in the office of Edgar’s replacement as secretary of state, George Ryan. Again, there was an understanding: that the plate would go to Edgar once he left the governor’s mansion. And so it did in January.
Other changes in the most-coveted plates:
– Former Gov. James Thompson reacquired plate No. 8 for his 1991 Mercedes.
– Margaret H. Hensey, the secretary and fiance of Secretary of State Paul Powell (1965-70), died in June, and her plate No. 7 was passed along to a relative, Teri Tomaw, of Riverton, Ill.
– Frank Ward Sr. of Burr Ridge was given plate 19 by the new secretary of state, Jesse White.
Ward is not a high-profile person in Illinois politics, and White’s spokesman, Dave Druker, was asked why White gave the plate to Ward. “He’s a friend of Mr. White,” Druker said.
— Patrick T. Reardon
`I WALKED IN AND SAW THIS CONVENIENT WAY TO LIVE THAT I HADN’T LIVED BEFORE’
Feb. 28, 1999
In February, 89-year-old Eugene Thomas peered from the cover photo of the Magazine, posed outside the tiny home he shared with his family. The cramped cinder-block dwelling was so antiquated that its only heat glowed from a wood-burning stove. All that has changed.
Today, the family sits snugly inside a brand-new modular home completed over the summer in Hopkins Park, a village about an hour’s drive south of Chicago.
“I walked in and saw this convenient way to live that I hadn’t lived before. Boy, oh, boy, I just exploded with joy,” said Eugene Thomas, who will turn 90 on New Year’s Day. “I don’t have to cut wood, haul logs, clean ashes or keep a fire all night.”
The brightly decorated home sits on the same plot of land with the one in which Thomas formerly lived with his wife, a great-grandchild and two grandchildren. “But it’s altogether different,” said his wife, Hazel, 71. “It just don’t seem like the same place.”
For years, some Hopkins Park citizens have been caught in what almost seems like a time warp. Living a rural lifestyle with many unpaved streets and no natural gas pipeline whatsoever, a smattering of its poorest residents even go without electricity and indoor plumbing. A startling 33 percent of the township is unemployed.
As the town struggles to modernize, a group called The Time Is Now has stepped in and personally transformed the lives of a few of its neediest elderly citizens. Sal Dimiceli, who founded the Itasca-based non-profit concern, said he spent $600,000–primarily his own money–to buy 15 acres, construct six homes, furnish them and equip them fully–right down to the toothpicks.
“They’re completely furnished and have bedding, clothes, linens . . . dishes, pots, pans, refrigerators, washers, dryers,” said Dimiceli.
The six three-bedroom homes are off the town’s main road, just down the stretch from the offices of Pembroke Township, which includes the village of Hopkins Park. There Township Supervisor Rose Covington still fights for basic infrastructure taken for granted elsewhere in Illinois: 1999 has passed without additional paved roads or a long-hoped-for gas pipeline.
Covington said a farmers co-op is working to produce organic food in the area, hoping to boost the economy. But the Kankakee County Housing Authority–which earlier this year vowed to have new affordable housing up by autumn–has built nothing.
Yet she holds out hope, in the form of a proposed new state prison.
“It will mean 900 jobs, economic development and stores,” said Covington, adding that the town lost almost 100 jobs this year when its sole manufacturing plant closed. But two other Illinois sites are competing for the $80 million women’s prison and there’s no guarantee it’ll end up in Pembroke.
Covington concedes that dramatic change eluded Hopkins Park this year–except when it comes to the Thomas family and others who inhabit the half-dozen new homes.
“It felt so good that I finally got to make a dent,” said Dimiceli. “But I’m dumbfounded that the people in a real position to change the area don’t.”
— Linnet Myers
`THE INDEPENDENCE IS ABSOLUTELY OVERWHELMING’
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May 30, 1999
College rules. Except, of course, for rank cafeteria food, rude roommates, heavy workloads and homesickness. The seven Lincoln Park High School seniors who struggled through the college-application process in “Getting In” are all bona fide freshmen now, wrapping up their first semesters. They’re thrilled with the stimulation and independence. But the adjustment, all agree, has been a shock.
Nina Armour had no sooner unpacked at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale than she was ready to pack up. It wasn’t that she hated school. It was that her best friend and roommate did. Nine days into the semester, Amy left. “Ever since then I never liked it,” says Nina. “I sort of fell apart.” But Nina’s mother persuaded her to stick it out.
It has been hard making friends, getting used to a roomie who keeps late hours, biking between classes and a job tutoring 1st graders. And while the academics aren’t “exactly difficult,” says Nina, “I don’t think I prepared myself for this.” Her first-semester grades will probably range from a D in psych (“I’m trying so hard”) to an A in art. She’s thinking of majoring in elementary education, a switch from nursing. “Patrick and I are still hanging in there,” she says of her Chicago boyfriend. But already she feels herself pulling away from her old life. “At times I still want to leave–when I talk to Amy or my friends in Chicago. Then every time I go home, I realize I’m not missing anything.”
Jonah Gaster, who stumbled haphazardly into the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has found college something of a shock. Honors multi-variable calculus is “just awesome.” His cramped, ugly dorm is a drag, “totally cool” roommate aside. He finds a certain element on campus–frat-centered, drink-focused freshmen–narrow. “They’re content to have the same weekend over and over.”
“I do think I should have spent longer on the college decision, taken it more seriously,” says Jonah. “Madison is a great place, but I’m not sure it’s the right place for me.” He wonders if a smaller, more academically focused campus would have been a better match. But his new life leaves him breathless: “The independence is absolutely overwhelming. Sometimes I hate it and sometimes I love it. At any moment–it’s me. I decide whatever I want. It’s my life now. It’s weird. It was a lot more stunning, abrupt, than I thought it was going to be.”
Stephanie Simpson had to learn a new language at Illinois State University in Normal. “If you get a new haircut they say, `Oh, sweet.’ I’m like, `What? I don’t understand.’ ” In part, that’s because many of her classmates come from another culture–the suburbs. “It just felt weird.” Fortunately, however, the campus is not nearly as remote as she had once feared. “It’s not surrounded by corn.” Classes are somewhat easier than she had expected, but marching band–with three-hour rehearsals in season–is more demanding.
“Originally I said I’m going to go to bed every night at 10 o’clock. That doesn’t work. You want to sit in the lounge and chill and talk or whatever.”
At Swarthmore College, Caroline Bermudez has found a tentative focus–education–and way more peace and quiet than she ever imagined she’d want.
“I thought I would miss skyscrapers,” she says. Still, “weekends are pretty slow. I’m not a party person.” Lincoln Park’s strenuous International Baccalaureate program, Caroline admits, reluctantly, helped prepare her for Swarthmore’s rigorous academics. Monday midnights she hosts her own radio show. She’s enjoying observing 2nd graders for her education class. Caroline spends a lot of time in her dorm, just talking. “I thought, three roommates–no way. We’ve done well, surprisingly well.
“I thought going to college I wouldn’t find cliques, but you do,” says Caroline. “You even find the typical jock around here. I wanted to avoid an environment like that; that’s why I didn’t go to the University of Illinois. At the same time, I think the general spirit of the school has remained unchanged for 130 years: Learning comes first.”
Vanessa Lopez, who chose Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., based on “geographics,” finds herself “far, far from home.” While good shopping in New York City is, indeed, close at hand, suburban life is disappointing. “I’m stuck in the middle of New Jersey. Everyone lives around there, so they go home every weekend. I sit here in my little dorm. I work in the mall.” Classes–English, Spanish, algebra and college skills–are good, and she’s sticking with psychology as a major. For the first time, she has tried community service, helping plan a “senior prom” for senior citizens.
Vanessa misses Chicago a little, home cooking a lot, and her family “insanely.” “They have a lot of things to do, little groups to join, but I’m sort of sticking to myself, getting used to even being here. It’s just a different lifestyle. I’ll get used to it.”
Despite last year’s dreams of leaving home for Champaign, or at least for a dorm room, Giang Nguyen is happy staying put. His classes at DePaul University are mixed–ancient history and philosophy are great, business math and a freshman class on Chicago dull. “Kind of those high school experiences coming back again,” he complains. “Some of the students in college, it’s like they don’t know about fun–all the time spending the time in the library, reading, doing some homework, studying. Every time you check to see if they’re free to go to movies, they’re never free.” His glimpses of dorm life have made him content with living at home: “It’s too much of a good thing to skip.”
Lauren Teichner loves just about everything about Princeton. She shares a suite with, she swears, “my favorite five girls on campus.” She’s got a full schedule, a radio show and a penchant for impromptu trips to New York or Philadelphia. “It’s definitely nonstop. It’s so cool being in a place where any day you can pick like a billion things to do.” A major beyond her pre-med requirements is still hazy, but she has discovered an interest in women’s studies. “Work didn’t seem horrible-horrible, until we got to midterms,” says Lauren. “That was a big wake-up call for me.” She has had to switch from simply memorizing material to learning how to apply it. “Now I know how to study.”
— Leah Eskin
`THAT WAS MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH A KNOCKDOWN’
July 25, 1999
When Michael Grant walks through hotels and casinos, he invariably attracts stares, as he did recently in the Trump Taj Mahal on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.
They are ogles of awe at his 6-foot-7-inch size and sculpted physique, but for the most part they are not looks of recognition. While 27-year-old Grant looks every inch an athlete, he also appears to be looking for a basketball game.
But he came to Atlantic City looking for a fight. And Andrew Golota, another Tribune Magazine cover boy (Dec. 8, 1996) and a top contender for a shot at the world heavyweight title, gave him one.
In their scheduled 12-round bout Nov. 20 for the lesser North American Boxing Federation title, Golota almost finished the brawl in the first round. He knocked Grant down twice.
But after needing four rounds to shake the effects of being floored for the first time in his 31-fight pro boxing career, Grant fought his way back.
Midway through the 10th round, he wobbled Golota with a right to the jaw and followed with a barrage of punches as his opponent went into reverse. When Grant knocked him down with a short right to the head, Golota rose but told the referee he could not continue.
As a result, Grant avoided being detoured from his goal, which is to step into the ring as the challenger to the world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis. That matchup is now a distinct possibility for the coming year.
“That was my first experience with a knockdown,” Grant said, with a wan smile on a post-fight face that had been pounded into a relief map with mountains around his eyes and on his lower lip. “I don’t ever want another one.”
While Golota, 31, fell short in his chance to leapfrog Grant, his showing keeps him in the mix of top heavyweights, with a less clear future. In almost the opposite route toward the same boxing career and millionaire status as Chicago native Grant, Golota left Warsaw to pursue his dreams in Chicago. He lives on the Northwest Side with wife Mariola and children Alexandra (Ola), 8, and Andrew, 2.
— Michael Hirsley
`I AM SICK OF ALL THE LOVE GOING AROUND THIS PLACE’
Jan. 10, 1999
The marvelous thing, I was soon told, about being the parent of a 16-year-old daughter, one who was “sweet, profane, sly, smart, reckless, messy, innocent, sexy, alternately precious and odious,” is that she would turn 17. And Cathy did, with only a few fits and starts, moving through her senior year of high school, managing the work and the college angst.
Being a Magazine cover girl affixed a one-liner to her. I described her sass and independent spirit by relating the time that I asked her as she was leaving to join her friends what she had in a very overstuffed backpack. Her mocking response: “Vodka and condoms.” For months afterward, perfect strangers stopped her to inquire about the backpack.
Cathy spent an itchy, restless, pre-college summer of wanting to be anywhere but here. She had chosen the University of California at Santa Cruz to pursue marine biology even though she wondered if she’d fit in there. In late August she phoned her new roommate, a girl named April from San Diego, who said, among other things, that she was “very spiritual.” Cathy’s reaction: “Well, we’ll have to cure her of that.”
She quickly settled in, however, describing UCSC dormitories as looking like “a Mexican resort.” Her chemistry professor went by the name of One Sun, and late one night hundreds of students streamed from their dorm rooms and drummed and danced in celebration of a full moon. She found a new boyfriend with the last name of D’Amore.
But it was not long before Cathy’s no-nonsense Chicago attitudes clashed with the mush, or “softness,” as she dubbed it, of California. What set her off, and propelled a flaming letter back home, was the oppressive love-and-be-loved atmosphere of Santa Cruz and the saccharine attitudes of her classmates. “I hate to be harsh,” she wrote, “but I am sick of all the love going around this place. . . . People don’t seem to have any opinions or biases about anything and it’s getting on my nerves.”
She then told about how a girl in her dorm took in a “hippie hitchhiker named Acorn,” and let him stay in her room only to have him start it on fire.
“It wasn’t a bad fire and no one got hurt, but still! Everyone seemed to be OK with it except me. I mean, COME ON, you don’t just invite people into your home when you don’t even know them, especially hippies named Acorn!”
I’ve been told that once your child goes off to California, she doesn’t come back. With Cathy, well, we’ll see. The good thing is that she packed plenty of Chicago and its grit in her backpack, which has always been overstuffed.
— Bill Brashler
`MY FIRST CONCERN WAS, ARE PEOPLE GOING TO FEEL LIKE QUITTING NOW?’
Feb. 21, 1999
The church trial of Rev. Greg Dell ended around midnight on a raw March night in Downers Grove. Convicted, suspended and exhausted, Dell huddled with supporters in a prayer service that looked more like a wake.
It’s not over, insisted Dell, his tear-streaked face lit only by the jostling television cameras. It was a beginning, he said.
Indeed, that was the beginning of a wildly busy year for Dell, the Methodist pastor who performed a marriage-like “holy union” service for two men at Broadway United Methodist Church in Chicago.
It was also the beginning of a landmark year for the 8-million-member United Methodist Church, where the ban on church blessing of homosexual unions threatens to split off parts of the denomination.
Dell crisscrossed the nation between May and November, speaking before church congregations, university audiences and gay support groups.
His own future seemed to brighten in September, when a church tribunal decided that his indefinite suspension was not a legal penalty and ruled that he could return to the pulpit of Broadway United Methodist Church as early as July 1, 2000.
Then, in November, Dell’s seminary classmate and close friend, Rev. Jimmy Creech, was banned from ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church after his second conviction for breaking the gay-union law.
“Jimmy Creech’s trial was a real blow,” said Dell. “My first concern was, Are people going to feel like quitting now? So far, they’re not. They’re angry, they’re hurt and they’re committed to continue the fight.”
The two sides will step into the ring in earnest in the summer of 2000, when homosexuality promises to be the central issue at the denomination’s quad-rennial General Conference.
For now, Dell and his wife, Jade, continue to live in the parsonage at Broadway United Methodist Church on Chicago’s North Side, after the congregation voted to continue providing their housing while renting a nearby apartment for the interim pastor. But Dell refuses to worship at Broadway, for fear that his presence would undercut his successor.
And on those rare Sundays when Dell finds himself in Chicago, the sound of Broadway’s church bells next door are a doleful reminder that for the first time in more than 30 years, he does not have a congregation he can call his own.
“I told Jade, this will be the first time since 3rd grade that I haven’t had a church to go to on Christmas Eve,” Dell said.
— Steve Kloehn
`WE STILL HAVE THIS ONE TO RAISE’
Feb. 7, 1999
Oct. 27 was the first anniversary of the death of 15-year-old Georgette Giovenco and her 20-year-old boyfriend, Jeffrey Cormier–a couple whose double suicide in front of a speeding Metra train last year left their families grappling for answers. Georgette’s mother, Georgia Giovenco, recently visited the Franklin Park train station where the deaths occurred and found remnants of a shrine to the two victims still there. Standing next to the tracks where her daughter’s life ended, she struggled to compose herself as the memories flooded back.
Georgia copes with her daughter’s death by finding as many ways as possible to discuss her life. “I talk about her so much that people think I have a daughter who’s alive,” said Georgia, who is now settled in Keller, Texas, with her husband, John. “I still keep a journal and I write down what’s happening in my day and address it to her.”
Fearing that their daughter was being manipulated by the older Cormier, a high school dropout with a drug problem and a criminal record, the Giovencos had moved from Elmwood Park to Texas to create distance between the lovers. But Georgette and Jeffrey reunited near Chicago anyway, and not long afterward, they apparently planned their deaths. A year ago, the medical examiner’s office ruled the couple’s death a double suicide, after a suicide note Jeffrey wrote was found near the scene.
Though they still disagree that Georgette committed suicide, the Giovencos have made some important steps in the healing process. Georgette and Jeffrey’s 15-month-old boy, Preston, helps keep the couple focused on making their marriage work. To keep Georgette alive in Preston’s thoughts, they covered his room with photos of his mom.
“We’re still always saying, `What if?’ ” Georgia said. “But we’ve come to some terms now. We’re not aggravated or upset with each other. Now we just kind of deal with it. We still have this one to raise.”
Cormier’s family and friends continue to struggle with questions surrounding his death as well.
“What can we take from this case study of the fallibility of our most venerated institutions?” wrote Jeffrey’s attorney, Robert Bailey, in a letter to the Tribune.
Bailey said the school leaders, law enforcement officials, probation officers and social workers Cormier encountered throughout his youth somehow failed him, despite noble efforts by some.
“Perhaps the most that can be expected is that none of us should be quite so confident in our abilities to successfully resolve the most difficult of human problems,” Bailey wrote.
Still, he said, the case recalls Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman,” with the telling line, “Attention must be paid.”
— Meg McSherry Breslin
`WHY DON’T YOU JUST SAY I GOT DIVORCED AND THE SHOW GOT CANCELED’
Dec. 6, 1998
The last time I spoke with Richard Appel, he was sitting in his Century City, Calif., office, enduring the good-natured abuse of fellow writers on the Fox animated sitcom “King of the Hill,” after having won an Emmy with the staff of his previous show, “The Simpsons.” A year later, the proverbial shoe is on the other foot, as Appel celebrates “King of the Hill’s” first Emmy as best animated series, an honor for which it beat out, yes, “The Simpsons.” The Emmy isn’t all that has changed for “King of the Hill”; through much of last season, the show struggled at the bottom of the ratings, after a heavily promoted move from Sundays to Tuesdays failed to pay off.
These days, however, “King of the Hill” is back as part of Fox’s Sunday night lineup, a shift that has made it No. 1 in its time slot for the much-desired 18- to-49-year-old age group. For this reason, the network has just renewed the series for a fifth season.
But even with the staff preparing to mark the milestone of the show’s 100th episode (which will air toward the end of next season, “King of the Hill” has begun to go through a number of behind-the-scenes transitions. In the short term, there’s Appel’s heightened visibility as executive producer. With series co-creator Greg Daniels taking more of a consultant’s role as he focuses on other projects, Appel has had to assume most of the day-to-day show-running duties, a responsibility that affords him little time to write.
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Beyond that, though, Appel himself will leave the show at the end of 2000 to embark on a two-year development deal, with the intention of creating his own sitcom for Fox. In the meantime, his wife, novelist Mona Simpson, is expecting the couple’s second child, a daughter due in February.
Through it all, Appel manages to preserve a boyish air of ease. “Why don’t you just say I got divorced and the show got canceled,” he jokes, and even after the conversation turns serious, he remains effusive, open to possibility.
“Who knows?” he wonders. “Over the last few years, because of the show, I’ve passed on a couple of opportunities to write a movie–which is something that I’d like to do.’
— David L. Ulin
`WITHIN 60 DAYS THEY WERE ON TO SOMETHING ELSE’
Dec. 13, 1998
If you presumed that the Furby, the hottest toy from last holiday season, would end up this year as the chief resident of the remainder table at Toys “R” Us, think again. Pokemon cards and games may now be all the rage, but America’s favorite electrified clump of plush appears to have legs.
Tiger Electronics, the Vernon Hills-based company that produces Furby, says the toy produced $60 million in gross sales in 1998 and is soaring past $200 million in sales this season.
“What’s surprised a lot of industry people is that Furby has translated from a fad product into having a strong second year,” says Chris Byrne, editor of Toy Report, a trade magazine. Furby is most popular with 6- to 8-year-old girls, says Byrne. But Tiger President Roger Shiffman also reports: “We have created a base of loyal (adult) fans who are collectors. This one woman found a defect in her Furby, and she didn’t even want to return it. She kept the broken toy and treated it like a child with a disability.”
And what of the shoppers who waited outside FAO Schwarz on Michigan Avenue last October for the first Chicago Furbys? Linda Elarde, of the Northwest Side, cadged 11 Furbys by Christmas. She gave away five and kept the rest for herself. She remains a devotee: “Oh, Furbys are so cute.”
Russ Klein, of Kenilworth, hauled home Furbys for his two older children, aged 5 and 3, who delighted in their Christmas presents initially. “But within 60 days they were on to something else,” says Klein. This year, both kids lust for Pokemon gifts, with Cameron Klein, now 6, also having eyes for anything “Star Wars.”
— Grant Pick
`LORD HELP US, EVERY ONE OF US MAKES A MISTAKE’
March 14, 1999
Moments after the flight from Lima, Peru, touched down in Houston, the tall, thin dark-haired young woman came bounding out of the U.S. Customs gate and into the open arms of her father. And they stood hugging as passersby smiled at them.
Before the plane arrived, Denny Davis had sworn that he would hug his daughter, something he had never done in her childhood years. He was on hand to welcome his daughter and bring her home to Danville.
Jennifer Davis came home in November to the U.S. after nearly three years in a prison in Peru. A Peruvian court this year gave the Danville woman a six-year term for her role in a plot to ship cocaine to the U.S.
For $5,000, she had agreed to fly to Peru from Los Angeles, where she had moved after high school, and to bring back cocaine to the U.S. Now, she will serve out the remainder of her term on parole in her central Illinois community.
“Before this happened,” Denny Davis said, “I was a very closed person. But this opened my eyes Before, I wouldn’t give someone the time of day. It was the support from friends and strangers that changed me. . . .
“Lord help us, every one of us makes a mistake.”
As for Jennifer, warning youngsters about drugs, and especially the dangers of getting caught up in international drug dealing, is one of her goals now. But she is not sure of what else lies ahead. She had dreamed of a career in modeling before her tragic interlude in Peru. There have been offers of movies or books for her story–the story, essentially, of a very naive young American who breaks the law and becomes ensnared in a backward Third World system of justice and primitive prison conditions.
— Stephen Franklin
`WE ALL SIT IN EACH OTHER’S LAP TO GET IN THE SHADE’
May 9, 1999
A tentative catalpa, all lanky trunk and wiry branches, sways where the massive maple once stood. But the memory of the tree that for 90 years kept watch over 4511 N. Wolcott Ave. has not faded. And the scars inflicted during its fall–a rutted lawn and a broken fence–have yet to mend. “I still miss it,” Gail Fearon says of the maple felled last spring in the fight against the Asian longhorn beetle.
“So much of this year was loss,” she says. The couple watched a friend die. They put down their German shepherd. One daughter left for college, the other is planning her wedding. “It’s just a year of a lot of changes for us. I’m sure that’s why I had such trouble with the tree coming down.”
After the maple was chopped and chipped, the Fearon family was left with bittersweet memories–and a mess of a yard. It took weeks to haul away the leftover dirt, dig up the ruined patio and saw out the network of old roots wriggling through the lawn. Then one weekend in June the whole family–Jeff and Gail, Jennifer, Katie and Jeffie–got together to rebuild. They planted arborvitae, blue prince and barberry, shrubs purchased on the $800 budget the city and USDA extended bug-stricken families. They hooked up a gas grill and laid patio brick, leaving four squares open and freshly tilled.
Jeff and Gail, in consultation with their dentist (a master gardener), shopped for linden–in part for its graceful shape–and catalpa. “It’s an old-fashioned kind of tree,” says Gail, “a sweet tree.”
It wasn’t until late August that the couple came home to find that the city had planted two saplings out back–in the wrong spots. The linden, which they had envisioned near the kitchen window, stood smooth-skinned and richly branched out by the alley. The catalpa was settled in the patio, though its slim trunk, broken limbs and loose fit seemed to threaten it wouldn’t take. The city has since promised–but not delivered–a replacement. “We all sit in each other’s lap to get in the shade,” jokes Jeff.
Jeff still thinks about transplanting the two silver-maple shoots tangled with the back fence. “The little ones–they stay,” he says. “That’s the grandkids.”
— Leah Eskin