Byrne gains glory after she’s gone

If ever there was a case of somebody having to wait until after death to gain praise for what they achieved during life, it is that of former Mayor Jane Byrne.
         

The first, and thus far only, woman to get elected as chief executive of Chicago city government died Friday at age 81 – some 31 years after she lost her re-election bid to Harold Washington.

MUCH HAS BEEN made about the fact that any kind of official recognition for Byrne didn’t come until this year, when the Circle Interchange was officially renamed in her honor. I found it amusing to read in the newspapers this weekend that Byrne’s daughter, Kathy, said Jane used to get a kick out of listening to radio traffic reports telling of rush-hour traffic “backed up at the Byrne,” so to speak.

But let’s be honest. She could easily have passed with relative anonymity, and her funeral service to be held Monday could have wound up a low-key affair that nobody paid attention to.

Is it really the desire of the Daley family to downplay anything involving city government that they can’t take credit for? Or are we Chicagoans just so short-memoried when it comes to our public personas?

Of course, Byrne used to get so much criticism from all factions in Chicago while she was mayor that it probably has taken the passage of so much time before people could think pleasant thoughts about her.

SOMETHING TO KEEP in mind when one keeps hearing over and over about the low approval ratings for President Barack Obama or soon-to-be former Gov. Pat Quinn.

But back to Byrne, who included amongst her achievements during her four years as mayor a stint living in the now-demolished Cabrini-Green public housing complex.

Her time living there stretched anywhere from one to three weeks – and was a response to a rising level of gang-related violence at the complex. It gained attention because the complex was so close to the Gold Coast neighborhood and Near North Side that Chicago likes to think of as being amongst its jewels.

Byrne herself said she was amazed she could look out her Cabrini apartment window and see her high-rise condo and Holy Name Cathedral, yet feel so isolated at the same time.

BYRNE CLAIMED SHE wanted to offer Cabrini-Green residents hope and a sense that the outside world cared about their predicament.

But I also have known many black people who viewed Byrne’s stint as a stunt and they say that she and husband Jay McMullen never really “lived” there – even though in her book “My Chicago,” she recounts a tale of her husband frightening security when he tried to cook dinner in a Cabrini kitchen; only to trigger the fire alarms.

Personally, I’m shocked to learn the complex’ fire alarms worked. But that’s another tale.

Many of the obituaries I have read recall how she “beat” the Machine – only to make deals with the “Evil Cabal” of aldermen including the Eddies; Burke of the 14^th Ward and former 10^th Ward boss Vrdolyak.

ANYBODY WHO THOUGHT she was friendly with either doesn’t understand the nature of political people – who tend to be envious of each other when the cameras aren’t running.

I recall a moment from my City News Bureau days when, on primary Election Day in 1988, I had to go see Vrdolyak vote. He was already past what turned out to be his glory days, but had hopes he could stage a political comeback by being the Republican candidate for Cook County court clerk.

It was a possibility that Vrdolyak could wind up running against Byrne herself, and “Fast Eddie” arrogantly said he wanted to run against her instead of Aurelia Pucinski because he thought Jane would do something self-destructive. “It’ll be more fun that way,” he said of the former mayor.

Not exactly the feelings of a friend.

ALTHOUGH I ALSO recall a moment talking to a Chicago cop who didn’t think much of the mayor. But when he tried to come up with the line that summarized her, he said, “she’s ugly, but she’s tough.”

Somehow, I suspect Byrne herself would have taken that line as the ultimate compliment.

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Jail stunt reminiscent of Madame Byrne

The sheriff for Lake County, Ill., had plans to be locked up in his very own county jail – supposedly to show that the place is not a deathtrap, despite the fact that two people have died there in recent weeks.

CURRAN: Not inmate material (we hope)

Although the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday that Mark Curran changed his mind. A scheduling conflict, he claims. Although the Internet is filled with anonymous comments about how Curran decided at the last minute how he would prefer not to be sexually molested by the jail inmates.

PERSONALLY, I DOUBT that would have happened. Because I’m sure the personnel who work for Curran at the jail would have gone “by the book” and treated him the way inmates are supposed to be treated.

If anything, he would have received extra care to ensure that nothing bad happened to him – other than having to adapt to a new diet consisting of foods such as bologna and oatmeal..

Curran would have received what he described as “the realities of the exceptional treatment of the inmates at his jail.” I doubt other inmates receive similar treatment, except perhaps by accident.

But I’m really not as concerned about whether Curran’s stunt would have proven anything about the daily realities of jail life. I expect it would have proved about as much as did Jane Byrne in 1981when the then-Chicago mayor decided to show that Chicago public housing really wasn’t all that bad.

SHE DID SO by moving into the now-demolished Cabrini-Green public housing complex – the one located right next to the Gold Coast neighborhood where Byrne herself really lived.

Byrne gave the same explanation that Curran gave for her stunt – she wanted to see for herself what things were like for people who had no other options than to be in those places.

BYRNE: A Cabrini-Green resident?



No one believed it when Byrne said it just over three decades ago. I doubt anyone finds it more believable now coming from Curran’s mouth.

For the record, Byrne lived in an apartment (number 401 at 1160 Sedgwick St.) with her husband, Jay McMullen, for three weeks some 31 years ago. In her book “My Chicago,” she wrote, “Living in Cabrini was not uncomfortable, but all in all it was a sobering experience.”

SHE GOT TO see up-close an environment in which people were afraid to be seen outside near their own residences for fear they’d get caught in the street gang crossfire. She also got to experience the “eternal vigilance” against protecting one’s food supply from being infested with cockroaches.

Which, to my mindset, makes the video that exists on YouTube all the more hilarious. It was Easter Sunday that year, and Byrne arranged for a church service to be held outdoors at the complex grounds. We get to see Jane “find Jesus” along with all the other Cabrini-Green residents.

Of course, none of those residents had a Chicago Housing Authority crew do their best to clean up the apartments she used. Note, I wrote apartments – as in plural.

Because Byrne admits her mayoral security detail was living right across the hall from her. Which, in and of itself, makes her experience of sleeping nights in a Cabrini-Green apartment and going to work at City Hall during the day somewhat artificial.

ABOUT AS PHONY as any experience Curran would have had staying a couple of nights in his jail.

Which makes me think there is something inherent in the political process that makes public officials believe they can arrange for an artificial view of something and make it reality.

The Cabrini-Green of decades ago was a dismal place where too many disadvantaged people were crammed together and wound up feeding off each others’ misery. Too much like the conditions of a jail, except that the public housing residents didn’t have criminal records that put them there.

The superficial view didn’t offer up much in the way of change for public housing three decades ago. It wouldn’t give us anything better in the northern suburbs now.

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Cabrini-Green – R.I.P. (& good riddance)

The Cabrini-Green public housing complex on the Near North Side, like all the other high-rise public housing units that sprung up throughout the South and West sides, was a pit. Nobody lived there by choice.



Will Chicago even try to remember this mistaken attempt at isolation?

It was part of a failed attempt to house the less fortunate among us, whose real purpose was to isolate those people in distant pockets of the city where the rest of us Chicagoans could ignore them. A part of me thinks that we, as a society, should be ashamed that we ever let people live under such conditions.

SO LEARNING THAT the final resident of Cabrini-Green was to leave the Near North Side complex, and that all physical traces of the high-rises will soon be gone, is a positive for Chicago. Sort of.

Even though the places where these public housing residents were moved to aren’t exactly ritzy, they are bound to be an improvement over the collection of poverty that one found in the public housing high-rises – which always struck me as resembling prisons.

In fact, that probably is the best characterization of the structures. They were there to incarcerate people who didn’t have criminal convictions (or were perhaps in between prison sentences), but whom we didn’t want living among us.

Anyone who thinks I’m being overly cynical in taking such an attitude ought to read some of the Internet commentary that is sprouting up. There are many people whose biggest concerns are that these public housing residents may now be living near them.

WE’RE ALSO GETTING the rants from people who object to anyone being able to live in public housing, complaining it is now their own money (as in tax dollars) that is paying for undesirable people to be their new neighbors.

All of which means that I have mixed feelings about the demise of Cabrini-Green – which at its peak consisted of 23 high-rise apartment buildings containing more than 15,000 residents.

I can understand the reluctance of some people to move from there, even though I know their lot in life will improve by getting away from the concentration of narcotics and streetgangs that dominated the local lifestyle.

Not that they’re getting away from those problems altogether. They are everywhere. It just won’t be as intense as it was in the high-rises.

BUT I DO understand why those residents feared that the only reason city officials showed any interest in their fate was because the actual land upon which Cabrini-Green stood was SO CLOSE to the Gold Coast, Michigan Avenue and the Near North Side (some of Chicago’s most elite real estate).

They were correct in thinking that the interest had nothing to do with their own well-being (like I wrote earlier, if we cared about their well-being, we as a society never would have created the high-rises to begin with).

I got my chuckle from reading the Chicago Sun-Times account of the last Cabrini-Green resident. She is being moved to a smaller-scale Chicago Housing Authority complex south of U.S. Cellular Field, and complains that the area is a “food desert.”

She’s right. There won’t be any nearby supermarkets, compared to Cabrini where residents could shop at that Jewel-Osco supermarket located just to the east on Division Street.

OF COURSE, THAT was a source of tension at times for area residents, since that is a store frequented by Gold Coast residents as well (except for those who preferred the neighborhood Treasure Island grocery store that used to be on Clark Street). Many of them didn’t care for the interaction between the two that would occur.

It is probably another reason why some people may be glad that the housing complex honoring the memory of Mother Cabrini and former Gov. Dwight Green is gone. You won’t have to feel pangs of guilt while grocery shopping, although I suspect many of the people who most strongly felt this way never felt guilt.

Although it was that very proximity to the Near North Side that caused then-Mayor Jane Byrne to use Cabrini-Green for her stunt in 1981 when she “moved” to the housing complex for a month or so, in hopes that her presence might reduce the violence.

So while I realize that, as a whole, Chicago has potential to improve by eliminating these high-rises, I know that anyone who portrays this story as being that simple is being simple-minded themselves.

I ONLY WONDER how future generations will remember what once stood between Evergreen Avenue, Sedgwick Street, Chicago Avenue and Halsted Street – since I would expect developers to obliterate any traces of what has existed for the past seven decades.

I only hope that Hollywood and television don’t control that image. Because there are bound to be copies of that 1992 horror film “Candyman” (set in Cabrini-Green) that get aired on “bad movie nights.”

Then, there is “Good Times,” that staple of 1970s television that used to be CBS’ competition to “Happy Days” on ABC. The opening credits of that situation comedy set in a public housing complex in Chicago clearly singled out Cabrini-Green – although it was never mentioned by name.

I’d hate for people to think that the real-life of Cabrini-Green had anything to do with Jimmie Walker, or “Dyn-o-mite!” or those re-runs that crop up every night on “Me-TV.”

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EDITOR'S NOTE:  R.I.P., Dantrell Davis.