John R. Schmidt

Amos 'n' Andy debuts

By: John R. Schmidt | Mar. 19, 2013

Mar. 19, 2013

On March 19, 1928--85 years ago today--the most popular program of radio’s golden age made its debut in Chicago. The show was “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” The title characters were two African-American men who had moved from the South to a big city in the North.

Amos was played by Freeman Gosden, and Andy was played by Charles Correll. Both men were white. They did their show in what they considered Southern black dialect.

Gosden & Correll had been doing a similar program called “Sam ‘n’ Henry” on WGN. When they moved to WMAQ on this date, they had to change the names of their characters. Within a year, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” went national. Within another year, it was the biggest thing on radio.

The original show ran six days a week with continuing story lines like a soap opera. Listeners really got involved. The program was so popular that many theaters would halt their movies at “Amos ‘n’ Andy” time, and pipe the radio broadcast right into the auditorium.

As time passed, most episodes revolved around the head of the local lodge.

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The mystery of Woodward Drive

By: John R. Schmidt | Mar. 18, 2013

Mar. 18, 2013

Anyone interested in Chicago history should get a copy of Streetwise Chicago. This 1988 book by Don Haymer and Tom McNamee lists the origins of thousands of the city’s street names. They gathered their information mainly from files at City Hall or the Chicago Historical Society.

There are a few gaps. Woodward Drive, a little roadway in Garfield Park, is dismissed with “source unknown.” Obviously the Park District didn’t keep very good records.

I have no way of proving it, but that roadway was probably named for Augustus Brevoort Woodward.

Woodward was quite a character. For one thing, when he was born in 1774, his given name was actually Elias. He later changed it to Augustus, after the first Roman emperor. That fact alone tells you something about the man’s opinion of himself.

He came from a prominent New York City merchant family. After graduating from Columbia Woodward got a job in the Treasury Department, and eventually became a lawyer.

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Cook County Hospital makes history

By: John R. Schmidt | Mar. 15, 2013

Mar. 15, 2013

Cook County Hospital (aka Stroger) sometimes gets a bad rap. It’s often forgotten that the hospital has a distinguished history. One important event in medical treatment took place there in 1937. The subject was blood.

By the turn of the 20th Century, medical science had learned much about working with blood. Transfusions were becoming common. But blood will go stale after a while. If a patient needed blood, a live donor had to give it, directly and immediately.

Could blood be stored for longer than a few hours? Researchers worked on that problem for decades. During the early 1930s, Russia was able to set up a network of blood depots, where patients could have access to preserved blood. This interested Dr. Bernard Fantus.

Fantus was a Hungarian-born physician who had earned his M.D. at the University of Illinois.

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Loyola makes basketball history, part two

By: John R. Schmidt | Mar. 14, 2013

Mar. 14, 2013

Faced with a governor trying to stop them from playing Loyola, the Mississippi State basketball team did the honorable thing—they snuck out of the state. When the two teams faced off, security was tight. The game went off without a hitch. Loyola came from behind to win, 61-51.

Loyola’s next game was more relaxed, with no off-court drama. They blew past Illinois, 79-64.

Next the Ramblers moved to Louisville for the Final Four. Their opening opponent was Duke, another all-white team from the South, ranked #2 in the nation. Again Loyola won easily, 94-75.

Now it was Saturday, March 23, 1963. Loyola was set to meet the Cincinnati Bearcats for the NCAA championship. It was a dream match-up—college basketball’s top offense versus college basketball’s toughest defense. And few people gave Loyola a chance. 

Cincinnati had won the last two NCAA tournaments. They were trying to become the first college in history to post a three-peat. The current team had an aura of invincibility. Some bookies were listing the Bearcats as 25-to-1 favorites. 

Loyola looked nervous in the first half, missing 13 of their first 14 shots. Harkness was totally shut out.

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Loyola makes basketball history, part one

By: John R. Schmidt | Mar. 13, 2013

Mar. 13, 2013

With the NCAA Basketball Tournament on the horizon, we look back fifty years at the remarkable--and historic--Loyola University basketball team of 1963.

The Ramblers were coached by George Ireland, then in his twelfth season at the post. Ireland’s teams played an aggressive, high-speed game that was labeled “organized confusion.” Loyola led the nation in scoring during the 1961-62 season, and was doing it again in 1962-63.

Jerry Harkness, an All-American forward, was team captain. The rest of the starting lineup included Vic Rouse at the other forward, Ron Miller at guard, John Egan at guard, and Les Hunter at center.

Egan was the only starter from Chicago. He was also the only starter who was white. That was notable in 1963.

Less than ten years had passed since the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

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Chicago gangster's funeral draws thousands

By: John R. Schmidt | Mar. 11, 2013

Mar. 11, 2013
On this March 11 in 1930, the big story in Washington was the funeral of William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States. In Chicago, the big story was also a funeral. The city was saying good-bye to the Dingbat.
The Dingbat was John Oberta, his nickname derived from a comic strip. He was 29 at the time of his death. Like Taft he was a Republican politician, the 13th Ward Committeeman. Unlike Taft, he was a gangster.
 
Oberta was a protégé of Big Tim Murphy, bootlegger and labor racketeer in the Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood. One morning Big Tim opened his front door and had his head blown off by a shotgun blast. A few months later, Dingbat married Big Tim’s widow.
 
Now Dingbat was gone, too. He had been found shot dead in his car, along with his chauffeur, on a deserted road near Willow Springs. 
 
By 1930 the gangster funeral had become a familiar Chicago custom. Dingbat’s friends would not scrimp.

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Norwood Park, past and present

By: John R. Schmidt | Mar. 7, 2013

Mar. 7, 2013

Norwood Park, Community Area 10, is one of Chicago’s railroad communities. The original settlement was planned around the Chicago & North Western commuter line. But that’s not the beginning of our story.

In 1833 Mark Noble filed claim to 150 acres of land in the area. He built a frame house on a glacial ridge and lived the life of a gentleman farmer. Today his home, at 5634 North Newark Avenue, is the oldest building in Chicago.

Other farmers followed Noble. Then in 1868, a group of Chicago investors purchased 860 acres near the railroad for real estate development. Taking their name from a popular novel, they called their community Norwood Park. A town hall and shops were built across from the C&NW station.

The new town featured wide lots with expansive front lawns. Instead of following the rigid Chicago grid, the streets were pleasantly curved–one of them even formed a circle.

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Oak Park's Continental Divide

By: John R. Schmidt | Mar. 5, 2013

Mar. 5, 2013

Most of Chicago is flat as a pancake. That’s why the neighborhood I grew up in was special. We had a hill. I was so impressed that when I got my first camera, I went out and took a picture from the top of its dizzy heights.

Actually, our hill wasn’t a real hill. The rise along Narragansett Avenue was a ridge. Long ago Lake Michigan was much larger, and its waters covered most of what’s now the city of Chicago. The ridge marked one of the ancient lake’s beach lines.

That same Narragansett ridge stretches into Oak Park. Once I became an adult, I never paid much attention to it. Then, a few years ago, I was driving west on Chicago Avenue through Oak Park. Just as I crested the ridge I saw the historic marker on the parkway to the right. 

The marker told the story. My childhood ridge was a continental divide. 

The ridge separates two great watersheds. The rain that falls on the east of the ridge eventually flows into the Atlantic Ocean. The rain that falls on the west of the ridge goes toward the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. 

Chicago was settled because of its convenient location between the two great watersheds.

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