Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [103]
I am asked many questions about telethons. But of all of them, the most frequent one is this:
“Don’t you have trouble staying awake after the first ten hours or so?”
I always answer this way:
“It’s really not different from my usual schedule – sleep is one thing that columnists are accustomed to doing without. And besides, whatever fatigue effects you feel are more than compensated for by the exciting knowledge that phone operators, cabbies, entertainers, TV crewmen, and others all are working along with you – and that thousands of calls are jamming the switchboard with contributions for a worthy cause. You get the feeling you could continue for days – if the contributions would keep rolling in.”
But this feeling is not unique to telethons. It is also present in other activities in which I have regularly been privileged to help, such as the Dr. Jerome D. Solomon Memorial Research Foundation, honoring a brother of my wife who gave his life in World War II; La Rabida Sanitarium; the Off-the-Street Club Christmas Party through which the Chicago Federated Advertising Club raises $20,000 for the underprivileged in one afternoon; and Israel Bond sales and the Jewish National Fund.
The Jewish National Fund was kind enough to honor me as “Man of the Year” in 1960. It also named one section of its immense U.S.A. Freedom Forest in Israel the Irv Kupcinet Forest. But as my family and I planted some of the first of a hundred thousand trees which will help reclaim unproductive desert land for the benefit of thousands of people, we could not help reflecting that we were not the ones who had made this milestone of progress possible – it was the readers of the column and other generous Chicagoans who were responsible.
And make no mistake about it, beneath Chicago’s seemingly tough exterior, there beats a big warm heart. This has been proved so many times. Our famous Hull House was the first privately financed neighborhood settlement house, and the model for many similar social-work centers here. Our Hospitality Center for servicemen in World War II was the finest in America. And Chicago supports one of the largest Community Fund-Red Cross budgets in the nation – now more than fifteen million dollars a year.
Generosity is an integral part of Chicago’s civic personality – so much so that it makes any charity-minded columnist’s job relatively easy.
Permit me one final story on the subject.
In January 1960, a potentially devastating fire broke out in a building in a congested area on Chicago’s Near North Side. Firemen were able to contain the blaze, but nine of them were killed. Nine men – fighting one fire! They left not only their widows, but also a total of twenty children, almost all of school age.
Like many other Chicagoans, I was immensely touched by this tragedy. Bill Veeck, who was then president of the White Sox, was, too. He awakened me by phone the next morning.
“Let’s do something to help them,” he suggested.
Accordingly, my column of January 30 carried this paragraph:
The death toll in the Hubbard Street fire has numbed all Chicago. Nine lives snuffed out in the line of duty! But the firemen left behind wives and children. We are sending out a 5-11 alarm to aid the victims, especially the children. If you have been touched in the same way we have, send your contributions to the Firemen’s Fund, care of this column.
The response was instantaneous.
Veeck started it with a $1,000 donation. Then came calls from Joe Meegan of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council with a $500 pledge, another $500 from attorney Sid Korshak, and $100 from Jim Moran of Courtesy Motors and another $100 from Zollie Frank. For days, by mail and phone, other pledges arrived.
Mrs. W. J. Podbielniak, whose Lake Shore Drive mansion was one of the residential showplaces of Chicago prior to the recent demolition, agreed to open