Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [14]
It was here, at the University of Chicago, that the late John Dewey, “Mr. Progressive Education,” did some of his most important work. And here also where, a generation later, Dewey’s most publicized modern critic, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, studied in the public high schools. And it is here where Robert M. Hutchins, former “boy wonder” Chancellor of the University of Chicago, tried accepting as collegians bright young students with only two years of high school. (Like football, this program for prodigies no longer is part of the University’s policy.) Hutchins’s chair is now occupied by Dr. George Wells Beadle, Nobel prize-winning geneticist.
Among the many other important educators are Dr. J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University; Edward J. Sparling, founder and president of Roosevelt University; Dr. John T. Rettaliata, president of the Illinois Institute of Technology; the Very Reverend C. J. O’Malley, president of De Paul University; the Very Reverend J. F. Maguire, president of Loyola University; and Superintendent of Public Schools Benjamin Willis, who once studied in a one-room school in Maryland and is now the second highest-paid public official in the nation.
In the field of religion, there is Chicago’s Mahalia Jackson, a former scrubwoman who is now queen of the gospel singers. She has performed in two hemispheres for kings, presidents, and SRO audiences. But she still lives in a South Side bungalow and sings at her home church, Greater Salem Baptist, at Thirtieth and LaSalle.
Many Chicago men of the cloth have achieved national prominence, including my own rabbi, Dr. Louis Binstock, of Temple Sholom. Among those who are widely respected as leaders in their field are Dr. Preston Bradley, Peoples Church radio minister and author, who just celebrated his fiftieth anniversary in the pulpit; soon-to-retire Rabbi Louis Mann of Sinai Temple, who was a founder of both the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Hillel Foundation youth organization, which has spread to 239 college campuses; Episcopal Bishop Charles Burrill; Roman Catholic Albert Gregory Cardinal Meyer; and Auxiliary Archbishop Bernard J. Sheil, founder of the Catholic Youth Organization. A gifted athlete who turned down a White Sox contract to enter the priesthood, Archbishop Sheil once, early in his career, had the painful duty of accompanying a former neighbor to the gallows. “Can’t someone help people like me before we’ve gone wrong?” the criminal asked. The young priest’s answer was the Catholic Youth Organization.
Incidentally, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago is the nation’s largest. It is greatly to Cardinal Meyer’s credit that he has found means to pursue the far-reaching program of helping to integrate into the mainstream of Chicago life the newly arrived Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. That was begun by his predecessor, the late Samuel Cardinal Stritch. Under Cardinal Meyer the program has been expanded to include help for the new arrivals in obtaining jobs, housing, and English language instruction. “If the community shows it cares,” he says, “then the newcomers will care about the community.” It is an effort other large melting pot centers well might emulate.
And these are only a few of the personalities that make Chicago so exciting. LaSalle Street, State Street, and other business centers harbor some of the nation’s most powerful figures in commerce and industry, in labor and management.
These include such union leaders as Bill McFetridge of the Building Service Employees, Bill Lee, Chicago Federation of Labor president, Pat Greathouse of United Auto Workers, Joseph Germano of United Steel Workers, Pat Gorman of the Butchers’ Union, and the Musicians’ Music Man himself, James Caesar Petrillo.
Although he is now retired from the battles of his American Federation of Musicians, Jimmy Petrillo is still head of Chicago Local No. 10. For many years he was one of the city’s – and the nation’s – political