In the early 1980s, as drug use and crime raged in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, community activist Mary Volpe organized a neighborhood patrol to roam the streets and confront the trouble.
On weekend nights, Mrs. Volpe, executive director of the Northeast Austin Organization, would grab a friend and her CB radio and drive around in her fight against crime. The feisty Mrs. Volpe showed no mercy, and if she spotted drug dealers or prostitutes, she rolled down her car window and started yelling at them to get out of her West Side neighborhood.
“I got to ride with them one night — and I was scared stiff,” said her daughter the Rev. Gina Volpe, an Episcopal priest. “It worked as the crime reduced and … folks knew that they were on alert.
“They were taking ownership of the beauty of the neighborhood and not allowing it to become a place of fear but a place you can call home,” said Rev. Volpe.
As an activist for nearly 30 years, Mrs. Volpe worked with police commanders and politicians including U.S. Reps. Danny Davis and Jan Schakowsky and former assistant state’s attorney and now mayor, Richard Daley.
Mrs. Volpe, 78, who led the Northeast Austin Organization from 1972 to 2001, died Tuesday, Oct. 5, of a heart attack in her Austin home, said her daughter.
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Mary Regenie Johnson was born and raised in Austin. She attended Wright College briefly and then became a music teacher. It was only after she married Micheal Volpe in the late 1950s and started a family that she became interested in community activism.
The couple later divorced.
Mrs. Volpe was especially troubled by the racial conflict that erupted in the early 1970s when many of the predominantly white neighborhood’s residents left and black families started moving into the area.
“She was horrified by the way people were being treated,” said her daughter.
In response, Mrs. Volpe became involved with the Northeast Austin Organization and eventually became its executive director. One of her first projects was to ease tensions by introducing herself to new residents. In a Tribune story published in November 1996, Mrs. Volpe said she helped organize “block clubs,” parties and gardening projects in vacant lots.
“We made sure that people who came in were welcome,” Mrs. Volpe told the Tribune.
“Most people had never lived in an integrated community. … We found that by educating and bringing in people so they got to know each other, the tension was cut down,” Mrs. Volpe said.
With her fearless attitude, Mrs. Volpe became a respected figure in the neighborhood. Senior citizens who didn’t trust police often called Mrs. Volpe in the middle of the night with their problems. When vandals sprayed graffiti on garage doors, she bought paint and asked her three children to help paint over the mess.
But others were not pleased by her efforts to cut crime in Austin and sometimes she suffered retaliation.
“Mom got all sorts of abuse,” said her daughter. “She got death threats, physically beaten up a couple of times — usually right after she was standing up for someone’s rights.”
But she never stopped helping her community. After she retired from the Northeast Austin Organization in 2001, the group dissolved.
Mrs. Volpe also is survived by a son, Peter, and another daughter, Michelle Bardachowski.
Services were held.