Evidence of time’s passage; Gov. Ryan gets his dues, What about Blagojevich?

Some people are going to be determined to go to their deathbeds shrieking and screaming about how corrupt George Ryan was, how abhorrent his time as Illinois governor was, and how we can “never forget!” the wrongs he did upon us.

RYAN: To be included in Kankakee tribute

But time really has a way of making everything wither away with its passage.

I COULDN’T HELP but notice the officials in Kankakee who recently approved erection of a new memorial on the grounds of the county courthouse – it’s meant to pay tribute to the three local men who later went on to become governor of Illinois.

Those three will include Ryan – who managed to offend many conservative ideologues with his one-term performance as governor, but who committed acts while serving as Illinois secretary of state that eventually got him into legal trouble and resulted in him serving a six-year stint at the work camp that is part of the federal correctional center in Terre Haute, Ind.

The monument itself would actually be paid for by the Woman’s Club of Kankakee, but governmental approval was needed to put it on public property.

Some people locally are upset, but it seems a majority is more than willing to move on and accept the fact that Ryan served a term – and is one of the few local (from Kankakee) residents to ever be Illinois’ chief executive.

SMALL: When last time you heard his name?

AS FURTHER EVIDENCE that time passing manages to assuage everything and everyone, I haven’t heard anyone make mention of the fact that another person whose name will be on the monument – Len Small from 1921 to 1929 – also had legal issues during his time as governor.

Small actually went on trial for actions occurring when he was state treasurer (embezzlement, as in state funds were deposited into a phony bank account), but he was acquitted.

Although there were tales of how that acquittal came about solely because of jury tampering – as in several members of the Small jury later were given government jobs.

But that’s nearly a century ago. I’m sure all who could remember are long gone. And perhaps those still living are wondering if it’s their mind fizzling out.

SHAPIRO: Replaced a corrupt pol?

ALTHOUGH IF YOU want to get technical, the third person to be put on the Kankakee monument (Samuel Shapiro, from 1968-69) also could have a taint of scandal.

Not that Shapiro himself did anything suspect. But he was the man who finished out the gubernatorial term of Otto Kerner – who gave up his Executive Mansion post to become a federal judge. Which is what he was when federal prosecutors went after him on criminal charges.

Quite a colorful contribution of characters to Illinois’ story, even though if you listen to certain people, it is only the city of Chicago proper that contributes all of the taint to Illinois’ public reputation.

Yet now it will be reduced to a few lines of type etched into stone, one that most likely will merely give off the impression of three “local boys made good” that Kankakee residents of future years will look at for a second or two – before moving on to other pressing business of the future.

A THOUGHT THAT I’m sure will thoroughly offend those people determined to think of George Ryan as the guy who “set all the criminals free” when he took his acts that essentially abolished capital punishment in Illinois.

BLAGOJEVICH: Will his day EVER come?

Preferring to remember instead those secretary of state employees who essentially sold commercial driver’s licenses to the highest bidder; and tried justifying it on the grounds that Ryan put so much pressure on them to buy tickets to fundraising events that they needed the extra money.

Perhaps it all will be forgotten someday, except for certain people who make a point of memorizing the details of every bit of trivia they can burn into their brains.

Just one point to ponder – will this ultimately become the outcome for Rod Blagojevich? Or is his “f---ing golden” line significant enough to warrant him a sense of eternal political infamy?

  -30-

J.E.B. who? It’s now going to be Obama Elementary in Richmond

It’s not new, or particularly newsworthy, that yet another school somewhere in the country has chosen to name itself after the nation’s 44^th president. Heck, there are some 44 schools that already bear the moniker of Barack Obama.

OBAMA: Now has a Richmond school in memory

Yet most of those were new school buildings erected in recent years, and often in places where the locals never would have put the name symbolizing the Confederacy of old on a public structure.

WHICH IS WHAT makes the newly-named Barack Obama Elementary School in Richmond, Va. – named for our very own community organizer-turned-U.S. president, all the more unique.

For until now, the school had bore the name of J.E.B. Stuart – who didn’t even live to see the end of the Civil War, but during the conflict between the states was regarded by southern interests as a skilled horseman and cavalry officer and one of the supreme military officials of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Of course, to everybody else, J.E.B. was just some ol’ white guy who once had the nerve to take up arms against the United States. An act of treason, if you want to be literal about it.

All because he wanted to reinforce the “way of life” that the South always proclaimed – the one that kept non-white people in a status of second-class citizenship. As in the South wanted them counted in the population to boost their total but wasn’t about to give them the same rights of white people.

BUT THERE WERE those who subscribed to the theory of “the lost cause” when thinking of the Civil War who were determined to pay tribute to every possible Confederate figure to try to glorify why they fought against the United States.

So the idea that J.E.B. Stuart could get a school named for him? Have generations of children thinking of him as a figure worthy of respect? I’m sure some would argue it no more ridiculous that I went to elementary schools in the Chicago area named for generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But times truly are changing. No matter how much some want to think this Age of Trump offers credibility to their cause, it seems the day will come when we can dump the Confederacy glorification.

STUART: Now just a figure of the past

We now pay tribute at this Richmond school to the first non-white man to become U.S. president – a concept that I’m sure infuriates the Confederacy-backers and probably has them backing Donald Trump’s actions in large part because they seem determined to erase the memory of Obama’s presidential actions.

BUT MAYBE IT’S just the evidence that the Obama legacy just can’t be erased – and that the Trump presidential legacy ultimately is determined to be his failure to undo the actions of recent decades. No matter how much he tries.

Personally, I find the idea that a Richmond high school is making such a gesture. For that Virginia city once served as the capital during those four years the Confederate states tried declaring themselves to be an independent nation.

Now, of course, Richmond is nothing more than a state capital for Virginia – no more important on the national political scene than Springfield, Ill. Our very own state capital city that gave us the figure of Abraham Lincoln.

Who lives on bigger than any of those grey-clad Confederates who touted the concept of ‘states rights’ not so much because they wanted separate nation-states but because they didn’t want anybody else interfering with their ability to back certain acts of immorality with the rule of law.

TO THE PEOPLE who still, to this day, try to justify the Confederacy, I’m sure the idea of an Obama School in Richmond is the equivalent of phlegm being hocked into their collective face.

Do we need more Lincoln Schools in South

But to the vast majority of us, it’s a sign that we’re finally, long-overdue, ready to move on from the mess that bogged down our nation some 150-plus years ago, and which some continued to tried to fight for during the following century-and-a-half.

Besides, just think of the mental chaos to be created for future generations who try to justify Confederate rhetoric while explaining the existence of Obama School.

While the memory of James Ewell Brown Stuart fades further into the past. Seriously, with all those names, it’s no wonder people just called him “Jeb.”

  -30-

How un-American can we get; spraying cemetery swastikas for Memorial Day

I feel sorry for those cemetery work crews in Glen Carbon – an Illinois-based suburb of St. Louis – who had to spend their Saturday sweating it out in the summer-time heat scrubbing swastikas that were spray-painted on head stones at a local cemetery.

Who in 'right' mind wants to bring this back?

For officials with the Sunset Hill Cemetery found headstones vandalized Saturday morning, and they wanted to be sure the mess was cleaned up prior to Monday.

THE LAST THING that anybody wanted was the symbol of Nazi-era Germany defacing the grave markers – particularly those of people who might have served in the military back in the World War II era.

On the day we pay tribute to those soldiers, sailors, air corps and marines who fought in the many wars our nation has taken part in, it is sad that we have some nincompoop out there who thinks it’s funny to deface graves with the symbol of the “enemy” whom we fought against.

Either that, or perhaps we have an idiot who thinks we fought a war against the “wrong” enemy! Believe it or not, there are those with enough screws loose that their vision of what “America” is all about would have had us aligned with the Axis Powers of old.

And the odd thing is, many of them have enough of a militaristic attitude that would have them believe such a viewpoint is what this country ought to be about.

SOMETHING I’D THINK the people who actually fought in that particular war would find particularly repulsive. But then again, the surviving veterans of World War II are such that they’ve reached their 90s in age – if they’re even still alive.

Meaning many of us don’t have a direct memory of what that conflict was about. Which is why we get those endless studies showing young people of today don’t comprehend Hitler or the Holocaust. Maybe they think such stories are more examples of “fake news,” because, after all, nobody could have been that delusional or vicious in their behavior.

So yes, I’m bothered by the stories that came out of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the vandalized cemetery – although it also seems some houses near the cemetery also got tagged with the swastika. Which almost reminds me of that old “All in the Family” episode where someone tagged the front door of Archie Bunker’s bungalow with a swastika – and he tried to cover it up with a U.S. flag, only to be found out because he hung the flag on the door backwards!

Happening in real-life now as it happened on TV then

Some 1,300 military veterans are buried in that particular cemetery, and officials plan a noon-hour ceremony on Monday to pay tribute to those individuals.

SO IT WOULD seem that somebody was hoping to make a visual statement – one about what they think would “Make America Great Again” perhaps? And if you think I’m exaggerating such a viewpoint, consider the anonymous rants to be found on the Internet.

I literally found one person who thinks that such vandalism is to be expected because of the disrespect being shown by, “governments taking down and destroying monuments and history.”

As though not considering someone like Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee to be heroic is the same thing. The actual comparison would be someone lighting crosses ablaze at the remains of old “colored” cemeteries.

On the positive side, police in Edwardsville actually came up with security camera video that captured grainy images of the suspected vandal in the area at the alleged time of the incident.

THERE EVEN HAS been an arrest. Although just what kinds of criminal charges that individual will face remains to be determined. I’m pretty sure, though, that there will be some people willing to make a martyr out of the individual – whose idea of a political “statement” involved running around in the dark with an aerosol spray can of black paint.

Don't see where swastika fits in

Personally, I’d rather remember on this Memorial Day the individuals who fought against such ideals that these nitwits are superficially supporting.

It’s like some people want to keep refighting the old wars – and they’re counting on our apathy as a society to permit them to have a chance at victory.

Without it, our “American” ideals (which are nowhere as narrow as they want to make them out to be) are what will continue to prevail!

  -30-

Blows against fascism and slavery; or just attacking Italian legacy in Chicago?

It is an authentic pillar some 2,000 years old that came from a building in an ancient port town just outside of Rome, and this legitimate piece of Italian history was presented as a gift to Chicago back in 1934.

A postcard image from back in the day when both Balbo and Columbus could be regarded as heroic. Image provided by Chuckman's Photos.

It was given to the city as a gesture of goodwill, on account of the fact that one year earlier during the Century of Progress World’s Fair held one year earlier, one of the prime attractions was the air show put on by Italian General Italo Balbo – who had flown from Italy to Chicago to get to the show.

THE EVENT WAS even so significant that 7^th Street in the South Loop was renamed, and remains known as, Balbo Drive.

It was no secret at the time that Italy’s government was the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, although no one thought enough of the symbolism of such a gift back then to think of refusing it. That would have been rude.

The days when Italy was officially part of the Axis powers of whom the United States were opposed to during the Second World War were still seven years in the future.

So it’s only now that activist-types in other parts of the nation are getting worked up over all those damned statues of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and other leaders of the traitorous movement for a Confederacy that our local people are treating the Balbo monument as being our local equivalent of an offensive tribute.

THEY’RE PUTTING ON enough pressure that City Council officials are scheduled to consider renaming Balbo Drive, and also taking down the column – which admittedly never tried to hide the message its gift was trying to present.

The base upon which it is displayed has an Italian language message that says, in part when translated into English: “Fascist Italy, by command of Benito Mussolini presents to Chicago exaltation symbol memorial of the Atlantic Squadron led by Balbo that with Roman daring flew across the ocean in the 11^th year of the Fascist era.”

The offending column

It’s probably a wonder that such a blunt message wasn’t taken down years ago. It probably would have been a priority if it had been something Japanese.

Yet I can’t help but think that the column itself, which originally was erected on the beach of Ostia that was a Rome port, has a legitimate historic value. Probably something that would fit in perfectly as an exhibit in the Field Museum.

ALONG WITH ALL the other worldly artifacts that are on public display. I would hope that nobody is seriously thinking of reducing the 13-foot-tall column of breccia into rubble. That would just be petty.

As for the base with the Fascist message, that is not of an ancient origin. That could go. Although I’m sure that thought will offend those of Italian ethnic origins who want to insist that the current display is merely a cultural tribute – and nothing more.

Because I’m also sure those same people are prepared to take great offense to the latest pronouncement from Ameya Pawar, the 47^th Ward alderman who wants to be elected as Illinois governor. Pawar says that if elected, he’ll use his powers to eliminate Columbus Day as an official state government holiday.

Not that he’s expecting state workers to work an extra day, or for schoolchildren to have to go to class. He wants to replace a holiday for the Spanish-paid explorer with one honoring the indigenous peoples who already lived in the Americas at the time of Columbus’ arrival.

WHICH WOULD PUT Illinois in the same class as Vermont, or cities such as Denver and Phoenix. For what it’s worth, the same City Council that now wants to erase Gen. Balbo passed an indigenous peoples’ resolution for Chicago, but that was a one-year thing. Efforts to make such a holiday an annual event in the Second City have stalled.

PAWAR: Getting votes by doing away w/ Columbus

I don’t know that I get as worked up about Columbus and whether or not he was a slave trader as some people do. Although I’m not about to plant altruistic motives to Columbus’ life as some people are determined to do.

Personally, I find the irony in the notion that the potentially first Indian-American to be chosen as governor would be the one to dump Columbus Day, since Columbus’ so-called discovery was an attempt at finding new trade routes to India.

Only to get distracted by arriving in what is now the Dominican Republic, and later Puerto Rico. One could sarcastically argue that at least Balbo managed to reach his intended destination.

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: So what do we do with the very prime location in the middle of Grant Park where Balbo Drive and Columbus Drive intersect?

Sports are so unpredictable; or, How Dare da Bulls screw up by winning!

I didn’t watch the Chicago Bulls as they began their playoff stretch Sunday against the Boston Celtics, but I did stumble onto some of the pre-game ritual that focused heavily on the fact that Celtics player Isaiah Thomas had a sister who was killed during the weekend in an automobile accident.

Spouting off too quickly?

We got to see the closeup of his game shoes that had her name written on them as a tribute and the moment of silence by the fans, along with the sight of Thomas sobbing. It was supposed to be the motivating factor that would inspire the Celtics to go out and win this game for their teammate in mourning.

DURING THE TNT pre-game broadcast, analyst Charles Barkley came right out and proclaimed the Chicago Bulls to be “losers” Sunday night, and likely of this entire round of playoffs. They have no chance!

The Celtics would just have too many reasons to win, and not just because theoretically they’re a better team.

Now I don’t know if this belongs on the list of ridiculous things Charles Barkley has said during his time as a professional basketball player and post-player career hanging around the game. Heck, it’s not even the dumbest thing he said Sunday – what with his remarks that another player would spend that night in a gay bar.

But let’s look at the actual on-court results for a second.

CHICAGO BULLS 106-Boston Celtics 102.

It’s almost like that moment from the film “Brian’s Song,” when the Chicago Bears learn that teammate Brian Piccolo was seriously ill and they take it upon themselves to say they’ll give Piccolo the game ball.

Didn't get the desired Sunday tribute

Only to cut to the next scene where the Piccolo character belittles his teammates for going out and losing the game! So much for the tribute to and sister Chyna.

Either that, or we can blame the Bulls for screwing up what would have been a touching sporting moment. Or at least something that the sporting fan mentality would want to perceive of as being touching.

SINCE ALL TOO often, that mentality does have a knack of making something out of what the rest of the world would consider nothing.

Now I’m not particularly following the Bulls as they try to work their way through what theoretically could be a couple of months of playoffs leading up to the National Basketball Association championship, to be played in June.

I'll bet MJ could tell us tales about Barkley

I realize this first round against Boston could be THE END for Chicago. The Bulls of the 21^st Century are nowhere near the domineering team they were in the final decade of the 20^th Century.

In fact, managing to win the game that Charles Barkley said they were supposed to lose and had no business even thinking of being competitive in could wind up being the highlight of the 2016-17 season.

THERE ARE STILL up to six more games to be played in this round of the playoffs, and it is totally possible Boston will rebound. In fact, it probably is likely they will rebound, and people will “little note nor long remember” what was said by Barkley.

To steal a thought from one A. Lincoln and his most famed of speeches he made that day in Gettysburg, Penn.

"You're supposed to win the game!"

That we will get to see for ourselves when the Bulls take to the court again Tuesday night for another game against Boston before traveling back to the United Center for Game Three against those mighty Celtics.

All of which strikes me as a bit much attention for a sport that should have had the decency to wrap itself up in March, since playing for an NBA championship in June is almost as obscene as the baseball World Series in November.

  -30-

EXTRA: What warrants Obama brand for posterity (or maybe that long)?

Out in south suburban Markham is an elementary school named for Barack Obama, while a quickie search of the Internet uncovered schools in Dallas, Los Angeles and Milwaukee named for the nation’s 44^th president.
 

OBAMA: Does he need a highway too?

Which intrigues me because our federal government’s current leadership seems determined to erase anything and everything that ever occurred during the Obama years. If they succeed, will students of the future attend schools named for someone who left nothing lasting behind?

WE’RE GOING TO spend the next few years, perhaps even decades, pondering the Obama legacy – between those who want to erect tributes to it in marble and whose who want to be the equivalent of the pidgeon that dumps its waste all over it.

So it will be interesting to see how things wind up this year with a pair of bills now pending in the Illinois General Assembly, being sponsored by legislators who want Obama to be something equivalent of John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson II or Dan Ryan.

As anybody who drives around Chicago on a regular basis knows, those men all have major highways named after them. In fact, I’d bet most people only know the Ryan as a South Side highway and don’t have a clue who the former Cook County Board president really was!

We do seem to have a split.

 

STEVENSON: Can he share I-55 w/ Obama?

ONE BILL SAYS we ought to rename Interstate 294, also known as the Tri-State Tollway, for Obama. It would be a major road used heavily every day by traffic in the Chicago area, and some think it cute that it connects Illinois to Indiana and Wisconsin – all of which are states Obama took in the Electoral College in his 2008 presidential victory.

Of course, the smart alecks point out that the Tri-State is the road used by traffic to avoid having to enter the Chicago city limits.

 

RYAN: A highway, more than a man?

But there is another bill calling for the bulk of Interstate 55 in Illinois to be named for Obama. As things stand, the Chicago portion of that highway already is named for Adlai.

In fact, I suspect most Chicago motorists would get a confused look on their faces if you speak of I-55; but Stevenson Expressway will create a slew of stories of traffic congestion they have had to endure.

 

FORD: Name has new freeway fame

ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT this bill is politically loaded – there will be the rural Illinois residents who will object to having one of “their roads” being used for an Obama tribute. Yet you try to dump the name of Adlai E. from the Chicago portion of I-55, and that will create a bigger stink because people will have to learn a new name for telling people what road they were caught in traffic on during the morning rush hour.

These measures are going to create quite the political brawl; particularly since I already sense how offended the “loser” (as in the one whose idea gets rejected) will take it personally.

Will we get some people out there determined to hang on to numeric designations because they don’t want to acknowledge the Obama name – similar to how I’m aware of some people who insist on using the “Calumet Expressway” name for Ill. 394 because they don’t want to acknowledge the “Bishop Ford Freeway” and the Rev. L.H. Ford whose cultural significance as international head of the Church of God in Christ apparently didn’t extend into the non-black parts of the South Side.

It is a large part of why I personally hate seeing roads renamed for anybody. The amount of stupid-talk that gets created is never worth the tribute, and it also has the effect of reducing the memory of anyone to nothing more than a future traffic jam or deadly accident.

 

BYRNE: She saw humor in her interchange

IN FACT, ABOUT the only renaming I ever wound up liking was the one that turned the Circle Interchange (just southwest of downtown where all the expressways converge) into the Jane Byrne Interchange, in honor of the first femme to become Chicago mayor.

It’s not that I think the Byrne Interchange moniker has all that special a ring to it.

But Byrne herself was still alive when the change was made, and I’ve heard stories about how much amusement she’d gain whenever she heard radio reports about traffic congestions that inevitably would include the line, “Jane Byrne is backed up.”

  -30-

What will we remember when we think back fifteen years to September 11?

When I think back to Sept. 11, 2001, I have my own personal image I keep in my mind from that day.

As we viewed it from Chicago

It was as I walked through downtown that morning while most businesses were quickly shutting down for the day to allow for an evacuation of the Loop as a precautionary measure – in the event that anything similar to had what just happened in Manhattan and suburban Washington, D.C., was in store for Chicago.

I RECALL THE sight and sound of Chicago Police motorcycles riding all over the downtown area with their lights flashing and sirens roaring, trying to create the visual image of a heavy police presence that would pounce down on anyone who did anything even remotely suspicious.

And while I heard that, I happened to look over at the Borders Books store that used to exist on State Street (it’s now the Old Navy store), where I saw a store manager standing in the display window quickly concocting a sign that informed people the store was closed for business until further notice (it wound up re-opening a day later).

Like I said, the Loop was in a state of chaos. People were headed for the commuter train stations in hopes of catching a ride back home for the rest of the day. In fact, I was one of the few people headed to an office – instead of away from one.

I would up spending the day at a makeshift United Press International bureau, then got to see the Loop later in the afternoon by which time everybody was gone and it seemed like a ‘ghost town.’

ALL BECAUSE OF the activities by fanatics citing their religion as an excuse for acts of vandalism against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (with speculation being that had the plan been carried out to its full extent, the Capitol building and White House also would have been hit that day).

 

'Loop empties' makes Page One

We literally wondered if someone had in mind a plan to hit the Sears Tower as well. It led to the precautionary evacuation that pretty much meant that for Chicagoans, Sept. 11, 2001 was not so much a day of horror, but one in which we got an excused absence from work.

Which makes me wonder what we’ll think about on Friday – which is the date that many communities throughout the Chicago area have chosen with which to have official ceremonies paying tribute to the memory of that date.

 

A view from up and close

One which some people are determined to think lives “in infamy” even if their sense of history is so weak that they have no concept of what that famed FDR quote refers to, or who President Roosevelt even was!

I WONDER ABOUT the point of many of these ceremonies, which I wonder if they will be so filled with all the patriotic gestures one can think of that they wind up becoming trite remembrances of what we actually felt that day.

For one thing, they’re being held now instead of on the actual anniversary date of Sunday. Which makes me suspect that organizers fear people would be too preoccupied with the Chicago Bears season opener against the Houston Texans to care much about a patriotic ceremony!

Has Sept. 11 become just a date? Rather than an event in which we remember how 15 years ago our sense of our nation’s invincibility was challenged, and we might have to consider the concept that someone else would have the nerve to try to challenge our society.

Because that’s what those particular attacks were – meant to strike a blow against the western world that some perceive as leading us into a 21^st Century that has deviated too far from their vision of the ideal.

 

A little over the top

TO THE POINT that Chicago pretty much shut itself down for a day, and I still remember the fact that commercial airlines were shuttered for a week. Car rental agencies received a boon as certain people learned that the three-hour flight across the country was actually a three-day drive if done by automobile.

It's something that ought to be thought of seriously, and not just an excuse to listen to a poorly-sung national anthem while people struggle to remember the proper words to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Which is what is too likely to occur in ceremonies held across the metropolitan area and the nation come Friday.

  -30-

Holiday ‘blues’ leaves many for dead; but not in a way we’d honor and respect

It was Memorial Day on Monday, and we were supposed to be paying tribute to those people who served in the military and wound up making the “ultimate sacrifice,” as some people like to phrase it.

Yet I wonder if we’d have been better off paying some sort of tribute to those of us Chicagoans who wound up getting caught in the crossfire, so to speak, and being shot – if not outright killed.

FOR WHILE MANY people wanted to talk about long-ago casualties in places like Khe Sahn, Normandy Beach (we’re only a couple of weeks shy of the 71^st anniversary of D-Day) or Fallujah, certain of our own streets seem to be just as deadly.

For it seems that during the holiday weekend, there were nine people killed by gunfire and at least 34 others wounded. Unless you prefer to believe the Chicago Tribune, in which case, it was 41 people.

There’s always the chance that the figures could go higher by the time you actually read this, since one of those wounded may wind up becoming a fatality.

Now I’m not implying there’s something special about these holiday weekends that causes more people to become fatalities. I recall my own days of full-time police reporting back when I was with the now-defunct City News Bureau. It was back then that I learned to dread holiday weekends.

NOT BECAUSE I cared about the fact that one year, I worked every single major holiday that “real people” were given off as paid holidays.

But it was because of the tendency to pay extra close attention to every single incident of mayhem that occurs at such times. Not only running totals of every single auto accident, but of just about any incident that occurs in someone’s death.

Sometimes, I wonder if such attention somehow causes higher numbers of incidents. Or maybe we’re just made more aware of how deadly conditions can be in certain parts of Chicago.

Because it becomes way too easy to ignore for those of us who don’t live in certain parts of Chicago – which a Tribune story on Monday managed to define as being from the north end of the Bronzeville neighborhood south into the Englewood neighborhood.

THE PLACES WHERE the “Chiraq” label isn’t all that much of an exaggeration, and where our city officials wish they didn’t have to devote so much time and attention.

The image many of us want of Chicago

Better for them if they could think the seedy side of Chicago is the so-called “Bundy Fountain” that foreign tourists ask to see, and which the rest of us know as Buckingham Fountain.

It would be sad if it turned out that Memorial Day went into the mindset of a significant number of Chicagoans as a bloodbath. Since it seems several of the shootings and at least two of the fatalities were on Monday proper.

The day that some people are devoting to trying out a special sauce to go with their holiday barbecues will be the day that some families remember as the one where a loved one died.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE it won’t be thought of that way. In fact, I’m sure some people will want to think of such a thought as being overly morbid. Perhaps even subversive.

They’d rather think of death on this holiday weekend in the abstract – as in something that occurred on a battlefield overseas and where noble words about “honor” and “duty” can be tossed about.

 

The great shame of the bloodshed that occurred in Chicago this past weekend is that many of these were young people – the fatalities were as young as 15 and the wounded included a 4-year-old girl.

The way some view holiday's death

People whose lives were cut off prior to reaching their prime; before they could even have a chance to serve their country and possibly make that “ultimate sacrifice” that would probably be the only way that would cause some in our society to recognize their worth as human beings.

  -30-

Byrne joines Ryan, Ford as transport tributees -- will 'Looie" be next?

Put Jane Byrne on the list of people whom future generations of Chicagoans will regard as a mere road.


Forget the humanity that ever existed. People will forget the fact that Byrne was once mayor of Chicago, or that she was the first (and thus far, only) woman to hold that post.\


BECAUSE HOW MANY people do you really think remember that Dan Ryan, Jr., was once a Cook County Board president. Or that the Bishop L.H. Ford was once a significant leader of the Church of God in Christ?


Instead, we hear the daily traffic reports about how backed up traffic was on the "Ryan" for those people working their way into the heart of the city.


We even hear exotic reports about this "Ford Freeway" that always seems absurdly backed up headed north in the morning, and south in the evening -- but that many people living in the metropolitan area never go anywhere near.


Admittedly, Byrne's name will get more prominence because she's getting the Circle Interchange named after her. That's the point where all the expressways that head downtown converge.


IT'S THAT POINT where many motorists from all over Chicago and surrounding suburbs converge. It is a place with much potential for auto accidents of all sorts.


Which makes me wonder if we're destined to hear of so many people being killed or maimed at the Byrne Interchange that her name will take on an even more negative connotation now than it had for some people back when she was mayor and interfering with their efforts to push yet another concocted scheme through City Hall?


One significant difference; Byrne was still alive last week when ceremonies were held to mark the official renaming of the interchange.


Unlike Ryan and Ford, who had already passed on by the time the expressways that took their identities became a part of the daily commutes that occur in Chicago.


ALTHOUGH CONSIDERING HOW long it took for Byrne to get anything of significance named in her honor, I can't help but wonder if some political people were preferring that she be deceased before they had to get around to doing anything.


Even Harold Washington got his namesake tribute (a public library building) so many years ago that I wonder how many people are losing track of the man.


We now have Ryan, Ford and Byrne, to go along with former Governor and U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and former presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy as the namesakes of Chicago's major expressways.


Ronald Reagan has his own expressway up in the far northwestern suburbs; which I suspect makes his ideologue backers happy. His road doesn't stretch into the city, because his political programs and ideas often ignored the concerns of urban America.


ALTHOUGH LOOKING AT the non presidential types who get a Chicago expressway, I can't help but notice some odd sense of balance -- although I believe it is unintentional.


A white Irish type in Ryan, an African-American preacher in Ford and a woman in Byrne. Does this mean we're going to someday need a Latino of sorts to provide another sense of balance?


Which makes me wonder if the day is going to come when we're going to get a significant road named for Rep. Luis Gutierrez? I'm not sure which road it will be. For all I know of the "Chicago Way," it's likely that someone will want to build a new road (and get rich off the awarding of the construction contracts) just so that the congressman's name will have a place to go.


And someday, the outspoken congressman will become nothing more than a place where winter icy conditions caused a series of fender-bender accidents.


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EXTRA: Judgely?

SIMS: Judgely?

I’m sure she meant well, but listening to Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims, D-Chicago, pay tribute Wednesday to one-time county Sheriff and Judge Richard Elrod couldn’t help but give me the quip of the day from a politico.

How else to explain, “I don’t know how you define a judge, but he was as judgely as a judge could be.”

ELROD, WHO SERVED four four-year terms as sheriff before moving up the ranks to serve as a judge for a quarter of a century, died last month. He was 80, and suffered from complications due to cancer of the liver.

ELROD: Long career after injury

Elrod, whose father, Arthur, was once a Cook County commissioner himself, had an incident in his life that would have traumatized many – a broken neck during a 1969 altercation during the “Days of Rage” Vietnam-era anti-war protests that left him with limited mobility.

Yet other commissioners who paid tribute to Elrod on Wednesday during the county board’s meeting made mention of how he did not let that injury get the best of him – and was literally still on the Cook County bench at the time of his death April 19.

And as for Sims, her quip is notable, although not quite on the level with the elder Richard Daley once telling us the police were there to "preserve" disorder.

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