This week we revisit stories that ran in this section during the previous year
Where to display Kerouac’s $2.4 million `On the Road’ scroll?
May 8: “Bible of the Beats: Jack Kerouac’s bizarre `On the Road’ scroll continues its odd journey.”
When last we left it, the 120-foot roll of paper upon which Jack Kerouac typed the Beat classic “On the Road” had just been auctioned for $2.43 million, a record for a literary manuscript. Since then, the buyer of the scroll, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, has considered a number of options for public display, including a cross-country tour in 2007.
“I think it was always his intention to share it with the public,” says Irsay’s publicist, Myra Borshoff.
In a November interview with the Indiana Daily Student, Irsay expressed interest in using the manuscript to raise money for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but Borshoff says he is still weighing his options.
“I would say that Jim is still interested in doing something that would involve some philanthropic aspect to it with the scroll,” Borshoff said.
“But it just got very complicated, and we decided that rather than try to push the square peg into the round hole, that we would just sort of step back, rethink things . . . and then, after the first of the year, start maybe putting some plans down on paper.”
— Nara Schoenberg
WNIB-FM’s former owners: Distributing their millions
“Former WNIB Debuts Rock and Pop Oldies Format as `The Drive.'” March 15.
In February, Bill and Sonia Florian sold their classical radio station, WNIB-FM 97.1 (and sister station WNIZ-FM 96.9) for a staggering $165 million to Bonneville International Corp. of Salt Lake City. It was one of the largest sales in radio history, and a huge markup from the $8,000 the Florians paid for the station in 1955.
After three weeks of commercial-free (and deejay-free) broadcasts featuring an artist of the day, the former classical station went classic rock. Since the sale, “We’ve set up a [charitable] foundation, but we haven’t given any money away, which is annoying,” Sonia Florian said. “I’ve joined the WBEZ [FM-91.5] board, and I’m traveling a bit. I’ve gone to New York City, Albany, Santa Barbara and Italy. I’m having a good time.”
As for personal luxuries, “We haven’t done anything extravagant,” Sonia said. A planned trip to Central Asia was canceled after the 9/11 attacks. “I bought a BMW X5 — it wasn’t quite $50,000 — and I did that because I had to transport three dogs around.”
The Florians still spend a lot of time in their former WNIB digs, which now house the offices of their fledgling foundation, which will support the arts, animals and the environment. As for the sale of the station, “It was the right thing to do at the right time,” Sonia said. “I do have regrets, but I know that with the recession and 9/11 that we would’ve had a lot of problems. We were lucky. Some people would say we were smart, but we were lucky.”
— Lou Carlozo
Hancock’s sky-high eatery:
`Still seeking normalcy’
Oct. 5: “On the Hancock’s 95th floor, a restaurant seeks normalcy.”
September’s terrorist attacks that destroyed the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of New York’s World Trade Center left the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the Hancock Building as one of the world’s few sky-high restaurants.
Immediately after the attacks, Rick Roman, who runs the Signature Room with partner Nick Pyknis, noted a 50 percent drop in business. .
And now? “We do feel that business is coming back stronger and stronger every single weekend,” Roman said. “Right now, we’re still about 10 to 12 percent off in terms of our peak customer numbers of last year. The weekends are really strong [but] midweek still seems to suffering from this overall general malaise in the airline industry. We’re from 20 to 25 percent off on those days.”
As for the upcoming year-end celebrations, Roman said: “We seem to be booking well for New Year’s. It’s certainly not sold out. But I didn’t really expect it to be. I think normally now we’d be about anywhere from 35 to 40 percent sold out and that’s pretty much where we’re at now.”
— Judy Hevrdejs
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Demand for flags is still flying high
Sept. 18: “Pray, give blood or fly a flag”
The last time we saw Janice Christiansen she was standing in the parking lot of her business, J.C. Schultz Enterprises, with an “Oh, my God!” look on her face.
Her St. Charles company manufactures flags, and in the days following Sept. 11 she was flooded with orders from her dealers. That was bad enough. But when a couple of radio stations announced that her company had flags for sale — they neglected to mention that J.C. Schultz doesn’t sell to the public — hordes of would-be flag-wavers showed up.
And that’s where we left Christiansen, trying to figure out how to handle about 100 patriotic Americans in a line that snaked through her parking lot and out toward the street, where more cars were pulling up.
Three months later the lines are gone, but the demand for flags isn’t.
“We’re still working to fill orders,” Christiansen said. “We have a large backlog.”
She expects to be busy through 2002 — especially leading up to Illinois’ newly declared American Flag Month (June 14-July 14) and the first anniversary of the attacks.
She brought on a few more employees, and she’s planning to make the second shift full-time work and add a third shift for part of her operation.
“I think barring anything unforeseen, we’re going to be booked to more than capacity,” she said. “That’s what we’re looking at and planning for right now. It won’t be indefinitely, but for 2002.”
Christiansen said she hasn’t totaled up how much business she has done since September. “I have the numbers but I haven’t really calculated them. . . . All I know, it’s been unbelievable.”
Oh, and the mob in the parking lot? Christiansen made sure they all got flags.
“We want everybody who wants a flag to have a flag,” she said.
— William Hageman
Preservationists save her home
Sept. 5: “Jennie came marching home: Downstate women battle to preserve the memory of a Civil War soldier who spent most of her life posing as a man”
The 12-by-22-foot house that was home to Jennie Hodgers, the only woman to receive a pension as a Civil War veteran fighting for the Union Army, almost went up in flames in Downstate Saunemin in a local fire department practice session before it was rescued by Betty Estes, tourism director in nearby Pontiac. However, for the last six years the structure has sat in a Pontiac municipal maintenance garage parking lot.
The events of 9/11 apparently killed interest from CBS’ “60 Minutes” and others who contacted Cheryl O’Donnell, head of the Saunemin Historical Society, about doing stories on Hodgers’ home after reading the Tribune piece. But nearly $1,500 in donations has trickled in, Illinois Historic Preservation Association officials have stopped by for an inspection to determine whether the structure is worth saving (it is), and it has been moved inside a storage garage to prevent further deterioration before restoration soon gets under way.
— Mike Conklin