This week, we revisit stories that ran in this section during the previous year.
Haunted by new specters of Christmases past: 1931 and 1941
Dec. 25, 2000: “The Ghosts of Christmases past”
Ask Jim Benes about the Christmas season this year in Chicago, and he’ll tell you about 1931 and 1941.
Benes is the author of “Chicago Christmas: One Hundred Years of Christmas Memories” (Cornerstone Press), published in fall 2000 and profiled last Dec. 25 in Tempo. And he has become the city’s expert on the history of the holiday. “The first thing I noticed,” he says, “is that this year’s Christmas is a lot like 1931 when we were in the Depression. The Saturday before Christmas, the State Street merchants said the crowds were the biggest ever, but people were spending less, and a lot of items were marked down. Sounds a lot like this year.”
Of course, the comparison is even stronger — and more poignant — with 1941 when Chicago and the nation were trying to cope with the trauma of a sneak aerial attack that had left death, destruction and fear in its wake. The raid by Japanese bombers on the U.S. Navy ships and airfields at Pearl Harbor occurred less than three weeks before Christmas that year, so the fears and anxieties of Chicago were still fresh when the holiday rolled around.
This year, those long-ago emotions resonate strongly among Chicagoans who experienced the same grief, anger and uncertainty following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
“People were worried then just as we are today,” says the 54-year-old Benes, a veteran news editor at WBBM-AM.
For example, he notes:
More Top Picks Irlen Syndrome Vs Visual Stress Are They The Same Thing
– Actress Lillian Gish, interviewed, as movie stars were in those days, as she changed trains in Chicago, said, “The California coast is in a panic. They are expecting air raids hourly.”
– A British aviation editor, in an address at the University Club, assured Chicagoans that the city was unlikely to be a bombing target because it was so far inland.
– In a speech to 150 state highway officials, Don Leonard, the president of the International Chiefs of Police, said it wasn’t a good idea for them to turn off traffic signals during blackouts.
– And Mayor Edward Kelly promised citizens that the city would install an air raid siren system quickly. And, to avoid confusion, Kelly said he’d ordered the police and fire department to replace the sirens on their vehicles with gongs.
There are differences, as well, between the two years, Benes says. For one thing, the U.S. today has a professional military rather than one built on the draft. “We don’t see any Hollywood stars or sports celebrities stopping their careers and going off to war,” he says.
Also, Benes notes, “We knew then who the enemy was. The enemy this year is kind of nebulous.”
Chris Rice, an editor at Cornerstone, says more than 4,000 copies of “Chicago Christmas” are in print, and the publisher, which is a division of Jesus People USA, is considering the possibility of doing a revised edition, perhaps next year.
“This is one of our best-selling titles,” he says.
Benes says he has a long list of material to add to a revised edition, including sections on the Cinnamon Bear radio series, the Do-it-yourself Messiah, a “Wizard of Oz” play that was a holiday tradition in the early 1900s and the story of two captains of wooden sailing ships — brothers from the Green Bay area — who died in sinkings 13 years apart while delivering Christmas trees to Chicago.
Many people, Benes says, ask why 1949 wasn’t one of the years he highlighted in the book, so he’s planning to do so in the revised edition.
It will include a reference to a slowdown by United Mine Workers union members just before Christmas that drove the price of coal up 50 cents to $11 a ton. Also that year were newspaper stories on how to put chains on tires, the better to get through the winter’s snow.
One passenger flight landing at Midway Airport could have used tire chains, Benes says.
It was a Trans World constellation prop plane that was unable to stop before plowing through a fence around the airfield and skidding out onto Cicero Avenue. None of the 26 people aboard was injured, but it took some hundred workers eight hours to get the 47-ton plane out of the way of traffic.
In fact, Benes notes, it took those workers the same amount of time to get the plane back off Cicero Avenue as the aircraft had needed to fly 2,100 miles from San Francisco.
— Patrick T. Reardon
Pickens, Green: Time to cut a CD
Jan. 11: “The Spirit Moved Them”
When two seasoned Chicago jazzmen met for a Christmas concert at a South Side church last year, they proved beyond doubt that a music typically performed in saloons can convey a sublimely spiritual message.
But even if pianist Willie Pickens and alto saxophonist Bunky Green had not been performing in Hyde Park Union Church, their music-making would have expressed comfort and joy, for this concert was a reunion. The men hadn’t played together in years, and they sounded exultant to be collaborating again.
Though the musicians, who grew up in Milwaukee before heading to Chicago, have not played together since that great Christmas concert, their connection remains intense.
“We’re like brothers,” says Green, who teaches jazz in Jacksonville, Fla. “Even if we don’t see each other for five years, the brotherhood is there, which is what I think people heard at that concert.”
Indeed, Pickens says, “When you’ve played music with someone on and off for more than half a century, you don’t have to do it every day anymore to stay on the same wavelength.”
Both men have been busy ever since, Pickens recently cutting a CD in New York and Green touring Europe amid his teaching assignments.
“What we’ve got to do next,” Green says, “is get the two of us on record together. We’re not getting any younger, and I think what we have is unique and ought to be documented.”
Amen to that.
— Howard Reich
How Suite it was:$15,000 for kids
May 31: “People who live in glass houses”
The city’s most recent public art project, the fiberglass-furniture-on-sidewalks concept dubbed “Suite Home Chicago,” did not attract as much global attention as 1999’s “Cows on Parade” nor as much money for area charities. (The cows garnered $3.5 million while the “Suite” auctions totaled a little more than $100,000).
More Top Picks Best Computer Glasses For Programmers
Still, the dozens of wacky chairs and sofas did generate a good measure of interest — and not just with photo-opping tourists. Two couples — Nate and Mary Jo Wyche Sr. of Hammond as well as Eve Wolk and her fiance, Matthew McDowell — penned essays in a contest sponsored by retailer IKEA that won them the chance to be living works of art.
For three days they lived in a suite of furniture set up on Michigan Avenue. Each couple got a $5,000 gift certificate and IKEA promised to donate $125 for each hour the couples watched television, plus $10 for each passerby who joined them.
Their total: $15,000. It was given to the Snow City Arts Foundation that provides arts education to hospitalized kids, according to an IKEA spokesman.
And the gift certificates? Eve and Matthew, who are planning a May wedding, bought a sofa plus a few other things. And the Wyches purchased things for their home office and grandkids, though they still have some money left. That, Mary Jo believes, may be spent on Nate’s favorite IKEA item, those Swedish meatballs served in the eatery at the Schaumburg store.
— Judy Hevrdejs
O’Hare chapel noticed changes
Nov. 20: “Praying in Terminal 2”
The chapel at O’Hare International Airport, as well as those at airports around the world, saw an uptick in attendance following the Sept. 11 attacks. The increased attendance at services didn’t necessarily come from travelers, in part because new security measures after Sept. 11 make it difficult for those who clear security to stop by the chapel in an unsecured area of Terminal 2. Since then, “Less people have been showing up for services,” says the Rev. Michael Zaniolo, the Roman Catholic chaplain assigned to O’Hare, “but more people have been showing up to have one-on-one talks and for confessions.”
— J.H.