Four months after her husband’s death, mornings are still the toughest time for Alisa Blanchette.
She feeds and dresses her four small children and whisks them out the door for school. This ritual drives home how alone she feels. It recently was so bad that she found herself weeping in the McDonald’s drive-thru, overwrought and overwhelmed.
But when she pulled up to the window, the cashier waved her off. The previous customer had already paid for her coffee. Blanchette looked to see if she recognized her benefactor’s car before it drove away. She didn’t.
The tears stopped, and if only for a moment, so did the all-consuming loneliness.
Such gestures have become commonplace since her husband — a beloved special education teacher and wrestling coach at the local high school — died in November. At times it feels as if all of Manteno, a small Kankakee County town along the railroad tracks, has wrapped her in its embrace.
There have been grand deeds, including silent auctions, pie sales and anonymous donations to help pay her mortgage and utility bills. Even more frequently, there have been small acts of kindness such as shoveling her driveway, hanging Christmas lights or buying her coffee at McDonald’s.
“I feel like I’m a vase that was shattered into a million pieces,” she says. “Manteno knows that I’ll never be the same vase that I was, but the town is determined to glue me back together. I’m so grateful for that.”
Cory Blanchette, 37, was out jogging on a dark country road before sunrise Nov. 1 when he was hit and killed instantly by a passing car. His dark clothing made it impossible for the driver to see him in time, and the iPod he was listening to apparently prevented him from hearing the vehicle’s approach.
No citations were issued, and the accident was ruled pedestrian error.
Firefighters and police officers at the scene recognized Blanchette immediately, because everyone in town knew him one way or another. Cory Blanchette was a native son, a born-and-bred Mantenoan who, a year earlier, gave up a good-paying job as a union pipe fitter to return to his alma mater and teach. Even before becoming a teacher, he had coached wrestling and football there for more than a decade.
Blanchette believed in giving back to the Manteno community and made public service a requirement of wrestling on his team. He and his squad often could be found on weekends raking leaves or doing chores for elderly residents. When deadly tornadoes ripped through Joplin, Mo., last spring, his team collected supplies and loaded them onto relief trucks heading south.
“He cared about the kids, and he wanted to instill strong values in them,” Manteno High School Principal Paul Russert said. “He was exactly the type of person you want teaching. He was in it for all the right reasons.”
As word of his death spread among the town’s 9,200 residents, Police Chief Bernie Thompson’s thoughts turned to Alisa Blanchette.
He knew that the family, which included four children between ages 2 and 7, had just come through a difficult time. Doctors diagnosed Alisa, 37, with breast cancer about 10 months earlier, and she had recently finished her last round of chemotherapy and radiation.
Thompson, who also doubles as the town administrator, worried about her emotional and financial well-being. A stay-at-home mom who had been elected village clerk a few years ago, Alisa had put her own teaching career on hold after giving birth to her first child.
Cory Blanchette had a very small life insurance policy, friends say. With the children, medical bills and Cory’s recent college tuition, the family didn’t have much of a nest egg.
Manteno would have to help, Thompson thought.
And it did so, in a way that only a small town could. Two anonymous residents came forward and paid the mortgage on the family’s small, three-bedroom home for the next three months. Someone else took care of the electricity bill. A local mechanic fixed the faulty transmission on Alisa’s aging car for free.
The town’s residents — friends, neighbors and complete strangers — have raised money by selling scented candles and holding 50-50 raffles at sporting events. The PTO raised $7,000 by selling more than 1,100 pies, while the high school students organized a dance that collected more than $1,000.
“I am overwhelmed by the community’s response, but I’m not surprised by it,” Thompson said. “We’re a town with a lot of good people.”
In December, a local pizzeria donated an entire night’s receipts — including the wait staff’s tips and wages — to the family. The restaurant’s phone lines jammed with delivery orders, and people lined up outside in the cold drizzle for more than an hour, waiting for booths to open. The event raised $21,000 — four times the expectation.
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Dozens of volunteers, including Principal Russert and Chief Thompson, pitched in taking orders and serving food. Others sold homemade cookies and candies.
Alisa Blanchette brought her children to the event and made sure she pointed out the crowds standing in the rain. She wanted them to remember that night, to never forget the kindness and generosity showered upon them.
“I want them to remember that they live in a very special place,” she said, as tears welled in her eyes. “I want them to pay it back someday.”
With so many people interested in helping the family, Thompson formed an informal committee to make sure the fundraising efforts didn’t overlap or undercut each other. There are plans for a golf outing and 5K race in the summer.
The next major benefit will be held March 10 at the Peotone Atrium, a facility owned by a former classmate of the Blanchettes’. Tickets have become a hot commodity in Manteno, with hundreds already sold and more being printed.
Since announcing the fundraiser nearly three months ago, organizers have been inundated with items to auction. Various school organizations assembled gift baskets, while one man made a beanbag-toss set in Manteno High colors. Another resident donated a much-cherished football signed by members of the 1985 Super Bowl Champion Bears team, as well as a second football signed by Walter Payton and Dick Butkus.
Cory Blanchette’s cousin, WGN Radio newsman Steve Bertrand, contributed shoes signed by Derrick Rose, items signed by other Bulls players and a hockey stick autographed by the entire Blackhawks team. The baiduhai and WGN have the same parent company.
“Everyone knows that we can’t replace Cory,” said Theresa Schulteis, a longtime friend. “But what we can do is buy the family a little more time to get back on their feet.”
The money has indeed given Alisa Blanchette time to figure out her family’s future without fears of losing the house or having the water shut off. But it’s the unexpected acts of compassion — someone taking her recycling to the curb or coming home to find her yard raked — that lift her spirits daily.
In December, she opened her front door to find the Manteno wrestling team standing there singing Christmas carols. One woman organized a group to flood the family’s mailbox with Valentine’s Day cards last month.
Alisa Blanchette fights back tears recalling a note she received from a third-grade boy, offering her the entire contents of his piggy bank. He told her the $56 was all he had and he wanted to give it to her family.
“This is the future of our town,” she says. “It’s clearly in good hands.”
Blanchette, though, still agonizes about the future and raising four children as a single mother. The hair that fell out during her cancer treatments last year has begun to grow back, and she recently received a clean bill of health. But she worries about how their son, Luke, will learn to throw a baseball. She wonders who will keep a watchful, paternal eye over daughters Addison, Brooke and Kendall when they get to high school.
Then she remembers.
“If I need help, this community will be there for me,” she said. “Manteno will always have my back.”