Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [99]
And perhaps you also will understand why I maintain it is the most misunderstood, underestimated metropolis in the world. And why many of us who live here feel a love for it akin to that of former Mayor Martin H. Kennelly, who once said:
“Why live, if you don’t live in Chicago?”
10. The Column Has a Heart
Rodgers and Hammerstein put it so beautifully in their hit musical, Flower Drum Song: “A hundred-million miracles are happening every day.” There must be at least that many. I have seen thousands in Chicago alone – thousands in the course of an afternoon. Sometimes they just “happen,” as the song suggests, and I could fill another book with happy stories about them. But in this chapter I want to talk about another kind of “miracle” – the kind that is made to happen when good people respond unselfishly to an appeal for help.
It was always the philosophy of my late editor, Dick Finnegan, that “a column, like a newspaper, must have a heart.”
It was his way of saying that it is never enough just to stimulate the minds and tickle the funny bones of the readers – that it is necessary to reach straight into their warm, generous hearts. As a result, “Kup’s Column” always has been open to a worthy cause. Because of this, it has been my privilege to share a little in the making of many “miracles” which reveal something especially wonderful about Chicago and Chicagoans.
In 1945, in the last days of World War II, most of us civilians wanted to do something to show our appreciation to the young men who had been wounded in the service of our country. Among other things, I helped to organize a special excursion, which was announced in “Kup’s Column” with the following statement:
This is the announcement of a Purple Heart Cruise. Wounded heroes who are convalescing in Army and Navy hospitals in the Chicago area will be the guests of the readers of this column on Saturday, June 16, aboard the S.S. North American, one of two palatial sister cruisers on Lake Michigan . . .
If the heartwarming smiles of guests and sponsors alike were any evidence, the cruise was a complete success. It showed these men that their recent sacrifices had not gone unappreciated, and provided them with a welcome break from the monotony of hospital routine. And it gave those of us who contributed to the occasion a nice opportunity to say, “Thanks.” So far just a commonplace story of what it was like at the end of the war.
But here is the point: There has been a Purple Heart Cruise every summer since! It is all too easy to forget our hospitalized veterans as the peacetime years go by. Chicago has not forgotten these citizen-soldiers to whom even’ American owes so much.
And there are so many who deserve credit for the perennial success of the Cruise. First of all, of course, there are the veterans themselves. We have many of them in the Chicago area, at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital, and Veterans Administration institutions at Hines, Downey, and Chicago’s North and West Sides.
Erwin Goebel, president of the Georgian Bay Line, annually makes available to us the largest luxury liner sailing the Great Lakes. Chicago City Port Director Jack Manley, who was a Navy lieutenant commander in World War II, serves as my “naval aide.” Les Lear, a former “Welcome Travelers” staff member and now one of Chicago’s top promotion men, is entertainment director and master of ceremonies.
For companionship and dancing, there are flocks of former hostesses from the Servicemen’s Center, YWCA, and USO, and models from the A-Plus, Sabie, Patricia Vance, and Patricia Stevens agencies – all under the supervision of the Board of Education’s Helen Yerger. There is a seven-course meal, with a menu printed in Puq^le Heart motif, thanks to Jack Kallis. Phil Gray of Schak’s, Inc., “dresses” the ship, stem to stern, with Purple Heart decorations.
Each veteran receives his photograph in a Purple Heart folder,