On the seventh day, after creating heaven and earth, God rested. Sometime after that, he oversaw the invention of radio-good news for Rev. Greg Sakowicz, the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese`s emissary to the Top 40.
Sakowicz, 37, is a jack of three trades: priest, disc jockey and vocational recruiter for the archdiocese. He`s a man of many media who speaks to the flock via TV and radio airwaves, and a billboard on Interstate Highway 294 near Grand Avenue.
He does a mix of religion and pop music, ”The Journey Inward,” heard at 6:30 a.m. Sundays on WPNA-AM 1490 and 11:30 a.m. on WLUW-FM 88.7. You won`t hear the controversial raps of 2 Live Crew or even much Madonna, but the weaving of spiritual tales with Crosby Stills & Nash, Supertramp, the Eagles and Spandau Ballet, among others. The show also airs on two stations in Sarasota, Fla., and throughout Illinois on the Illinois News Network.
Further, one can sometimes catch Sakowicz celebrating mass on WGN-Ch. 9`s ”Mass for Shut-ins” at 8 a.m. Sunday. It`s a mini-mass, taking what normally would be about 45 minutes at a church and transforming it into a 28 1/2-minute version in a studio.
That Sakowicz is a less-than-shy soul, at ease before a camera and microphone, is no revelation. He`s the son of a longtime Chicago broadcaster, the congenial-cum-schmaltzy Sig Sakowicz.
”When I was a boy, Dad used to do a Saturday evening radio show, and I remember him saying that `when the red light goes on, you have to be quiet. If you don`t say a word, I`ll take you for an ice cream cone,”` Greg Sakowicz recalled.
”Hey, I thought that was a great deal and part of the reason radio got into my blood.”
His initial aim was to play linebacker for the Bears. By 3rd grade, he was mulling the priesthood. His mother, Dee, was especially religious and the family attended services each Sunday.
By 8th grade, he had discovered girls. At Notre Dame High School in Niles, he assumed he`d go into sportscasting and, in his senior year, was accepted to Northwestern University to study radio and TV: ”I figured I`d do that, get married and live happily ever after.”
Soon after being accepted, he says, he turned melancholy. ”Something inside was not at peace. I thought I should be elated but wasn`t.”
He decided to give the seminary a try. He went to Loyola University`s Niles College, a seminary of the Chicago archdiocese, and the University of St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein. He was ordained a priest in 1979. He served six years as associate pastor of a church in Schaumburg and in 1985 was assigned to Niles College as director of recruitment. He also runs a freshman dorm and a program for students, as well as handling media for the college.
”He`s a ball of energy,” said Rev. James Kiley, the rector and president of Niles.
Sakowicz estimates having spoken to 18,000 area high school students about joining the priesthood and coming to ”one sad conclusion: For most high school men, the priesthood is not even an option. The issue of celibacy is critical and keeps many away.”
Yet he persists and sees broadcasting as a good fit. The mass on superstation WGN, he says, lures as many as 1 million viewers. ”It almost humbles me that I would proclaim the word of God to more people on one show than I would my whole life in a parish.”
The masses, which are taped, aren`t ideal, with only those few in the studio receiving communion. But they have their advantages.
Once, during the Lenten season, instead of saying, ”Welcome to `Mass for Shut-ins,` this is our third Sunday of Lent,” Sakowicz intoned, ”Today is our third Sunday of Advent.”
”I had the wrong liturgical season!” he recalled. ”So I said: `Stop the tape! If those go through, people will think I`m nuts.”`
He`s one of four children. His sister Pam is a homemaker and lawyer;
sister Marja does public relations for Arthur Andersen & Co.; and brother Adrian is public relations director for Brunswick Corp.
That publicist`s impulse appears rife, as those driving on I-294 north toward Milwaukee for the next few months may notice. With the generosity of J& B Media Networks Inc., Sakowicz has installed a billboard: ”Catholic Priesthood-Make a Difference With Your Life.”
”You don`t have to be boring to be holy,” said the son of Sig.
The Chicago Sun-Times, which announced in February that it was selling its headquarters building at 401 N. Wabash Ave. for about $90 million, may face the same problems of gunshy lenders and a slow real-estate market that it chronicled in a Page 1 story Wednesday on the North Loop renewal program.
Sam McKeel, president and chief executive officer, says the paper is working with at least three prospective developers. He remains confident of a good deal but concedes that ”the timing certainly could be better.”
Meanwhile, agreements in principle to buy offset presses from the Los Angeles Times remain in place, though no purchase has been made yet. It`s also thought that the paper is seeking to refinance some of its bank debt in what would be a normal search for lower interest rates. McKeel declined to comment on that subject.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes federal funds for public broadcasting, just announced grants to 18 of the 491 projects that sought money this year. There`s just one Chicago winner and, curiously, its proposal for a Chicago-oriented documentary did not enthuse WTTW-Ch. 11 enough to fork over any dough.
”Hoop Dreams,” a study of two Chicago high school basketball players, is a joint project of Kartemquin Educational Films, 1901 W. Wellington Ave., and the public station, KTCA, in St. Paul, Minn. It`s already three years in the making and producers Fred Marx, Steve James and Peter Gilbert, who`ve doubled as editor, director and cameraman, can use the $70,000 from the corporation.
In 1987, they began following William Gates and Arthur Agee, both then freshmen at St. Joseph`s in Westchester, the school that produced pro star Isiah Thomas. Gates lives in the Cabrini-Green projects and Agee, who has switched to Marshall High School in the city, lives on the West Side.
Each has had ups and downs but harbors dreams of making it as a ball player. The documentary, to be completed by March 1992, is meant both to chronicle the paths of the two, who`ll be seniors in the fall, and to serve as a cautionary note to those who don`t realize the slim chances of making the pros.
WTTW does frustrate some independent filmmakers, who find it overly cautious and unreceptive. Marx, for one, asserts that the station ”has a long history of not being interested in independent filmmaking.”
A station spokesman disagrees, saying that WTTW has funded projects of filmmakers in other cities and that the turndown of Kartemquin ”was a business decison. It happens all the time.”
Early coverage of Nelson Mandela`s visit revealed a woeful lack of journalistic objectivity. A saving grace was ABC`s Ted Koppel.
In a news-making Thursday interview, Mandela came off as less an avuncular Martin Luther King Jr. than a resolute, if admirable, radical who counts Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro and Moammar Gadhafi as allies. Koppel did well to remain stoic amid a lapdog, pro-Mandela audience at a New York college that was miffed at any intimation that Mandela was not fit for sainthood.
Speaking of Castro, he`s interviewed for an hour at 8 p.m. Monday on CNN by fishing chum and CNN boss Ted Turner. It`s a foreign policy version of a marshmallow-soft Barbara Walters special, though Turner didn`t don military fatigues, as Walters might have, to match the guest.
Castro, who holds various world records for non-stop oratory both indoors and outdoors, is typically exhausting throughout, including his circuitous, implicit defense of China`s crushing of its student rebellion. Professor of socialism that he is, Castro essentially chides China not for bashing the kids, but for not being as efficient as it might be in repressing its citizens.
Turner asks a final question that may seem to come out of left field:
What did Castro think of the U.S. attempt to block televising of the next Pan American games? Heh?
Well, it turns out that, yes, the U.S. is in court with ABC after spurning its application for a license to televise the contests live next summer. The government isn`t happy that ABC would pay $8.7 million for rights, with $6 million said to go to Cuba.
”Muchas gracias, Senor Castro,” Turner says at the end.
El Presidente does not appear to have sweated through his fatigues during the interrogation.
