As Chet McKeenan and his son waited in the cold at Mt. Carmel Cemetery Wednesday, a dusting of snow settled on their parkas.
“It’s the angels tossing down confetti for the cardinal,” he told the boy.
“They’re throwing a parade to welcome him to heaven,” replied Patrick, 6.
Chet and Patrick McKeenan were among tens of thousands of mourners across the city and suburbs, in groups or in solitary sadness, in churches and schools, who said their goodbyes to Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.
From curbsides and front stoops along the funeral route, to Loop office buildings and plazas, they came out to wait, sometimes for half the day, sometimes just for a few minutes, to pay final tributes as the cardinal’s body was carried in a 60-vehicle procession to the cemetery in west suburban Hillside.
From downtown crowds three deep to the prayerful man kneeling alone on a West Side parkway, an eerie, respectful silence followed the cortege as it snaked through city and suburban streets on the way to Mt. Carmel. Downtown’s usual bustle faded, and suddenly it was quiet enough to hear the sound of the motorcade’s tires on the pavement and the clicking of stoplights changing colors.
On the Near West Side, a worker emerged from Pepe’s Meat Packing to view the procession, his apron smeared with blood.
An elderly woman carried a green and white lawn chair as she shuffled along the procession route, hoping to find a better view.
Five firefighters from Engine Co. 103 stood at attention, in full gear, in front of their truck along Washington Boulevard east of Ashland Avenue, paying silent tribute.
Children at Sojourner Truth Learning Center on West Washington held a hand painted sign: “May You Rest in Peace.”
“Shine your light upon us” read another sign held by two of the 100 students from Providence-St. Mel along the route.
In Maywood, Aniceto Ayala was overcome by a sense of “tranquilidad”–peace–when the cardinal’s hearse passed by.
In suburban Bellwood, Maria Ledoux, 32, brought children Francesca, 7, and Addam, 11, wrapped in blankets.
“I want my children to look up to somebody like him,” explained Ledoux of Melrose Park. “Not just Michael Jordan and these other sports figures. With them it’s the money and the fame. But someone like this, they can respect his values,” she said, still cheerful after a three-hour wait.
In the West Garfield Park neighborhood, a strip of Washington Boulevard between Pulaski Road and Karlov Avenue fell still as the procession rolled by. Even the neighborhood toughs were–if only briefly–mum.
From the Marathon gas station, the Temple Deliverance of Christ Church and even the Homey Sub restaurant, people watched, waved and mumbled prayers in tribute to a religious leader whose inspiration many said transcended denominations, class and race.
And the tribute was returned. Some in the shiny black limos, filled with bishops, priests and politicians, cracked open the windows and smiled and waved to the crowd like the grand marshals at a parade.
One in that crowd was Emma Jones, 56, who held vigil for 90 minutes outside the Marshall Hotel, refusing to warm up in the building for fear of missing the procession.
Jones felt a special connection. After her employer in Houston went bankrupt, Jones moved to Chicago in 1990 with little money and no job. She wandered the city looking for work and one night, exhausted, stopped to rest on the steps of Holy Name Cathedral. Soon after, Bernardin emerged from church.
“He came out and asked me what was wrong,” recalled Jones.
Bernardin gave her a sandwich, tea and cab fare. He sat with her, held her hand and said a prayer for her life in Chicago. Then she went on her way. “He inspired me and gave me a little hope,” she said. “I never forgot him.”
In Oak Park, some 150 pupils from St. Giles school marched two miles to the corner of Madison Street and Euclid Avenue to glimpse the funeral procession, which included 21 limousines, and gawk at the pair of noisy helicopters whap-whapping overhead.
Teachers nagged at them to remove their hats, stand at attention and be quiet as church mice when the motorcade rolled by.
But it was a long cold walk and on the way the kids were their best, goofy selves, tossing around an orange football, bumping into each other and rating the cars that passed by.
They also mulled the mystery of heaven, speculating how Bernardin had taken to his new ethereal surroundings. “I think he’d be really happy up there, meeting people he used to know,” said 5th-grader Henry Carney, 10.
Carney’s classmate, freckle-faced 10-year-old Tom Larsen, recalled how he actually met Bernardin one day at school last year.
Tom said he was in math class and went up to the teacher’s desk to ask about an assignment when suddenly the cardinal walked in.
Tom froze in awe. But the cardinal quickly broke the ice, sticking out his hand and joking, “Oh, you must be the assistant math teacher,” the boy recalled.
As the youngsters lined up on the curb and the procession passed by, their mouths gaped open, eyes big as cookies, they cupped the flames of flickering white candles that puddled into their paper holders.
“Well, he’s in heaven now,” pronounced Kelly Miles, 10.
A few hours before the funeral procession passed by her tidy yellow brick house in Hillside–just two blocks from the cemetery– Corrine Cruz went shopping at a local card shop for something purple and white, the colors of mourning and resurrection.
She came home with four plastic tablecloths, fashioned them into a makeshift bow and attached it to a leafless oak tree in her yard.
Cruz also decked out her 6-year-old daughter, Brittany, in a purple and white vest and blouse. Still grieving for her late grandmother, Cruz said she took such care because, “I wanted the cardinal to know that when he sees (my grandmother) he can tell her that we are thinking about her and we miss her terribly.”
It took 90 minutes for the procession to traverse the 18 miles from the church to the cemetery.
The crowd stretched along the whole way in clumps, knots and masses, and Chicago Police spokesman Paul Jenkins said there was no way to estimate how many onlookers there were.
While it was a day of mourning for most, glee was in play at schools along the procession route where classes had been dismissed early and students were–predictably–thrilled.
Cracking her gum with a big, broad smile, 15-year-old Shatoni Johns, a student at Proviso West High School, declared, “I ain’t happy because somebody lost their life. But I’m happy we got out of school early.”
Johns complained about the arrangements at Holy Name Cathedral that only allowed a select group of ticket holders to attend Bernardin’s funeral mass.
Church officials shared Johns’ regrets. “There are so many people whose lives he touched directly,” said Sheila McLaughlin, the head of the archdiocese’s Office for Divine Worship. “In an ideal world, of course, they should all be there.”
Not everyone, of course, was engaged in final farewells.
At Mickey Finn’s Brewery in Libertyville, Buddy Harvey, 39, a truck driver drinking a beer, said, “I feel when you die, it ought to be a private time.”
“God bless the man and I hope he goes to the right place,” said waitress Stacie Wood. Even so, Wood was steamed that extensive television tributes to Bernardin forced the preemption of her favorite soap.
Harvey and Wood, though, were clearly in the minority. At Mickey Finn’s, four of the beer drinkers stopped talking about Gary Barnett and Lou Holtz to engage in some somber reflection about the funeral unfolding on two of the bar’s three TVs.
Mickey Mandolesi, 70, of west suburban La Grange, also was watching TV–even though he was at the cemetery in Hillside.
Thanks to a pocket-size color TV, he did duty as play-by-play announcer for the funeral mass at Holy Name Cathedral.
“Now the bishops are coming in,” he narrated. “What a sight to see. Chicago will never forget this day.”
As Mandolesi monitored the images on his tiny screen, Anne Marie Himpler and her husband, Jack, were sharing a special kind of ESP. Himpler said that while she attended morning mass Wednesday at St. Joe’s in Downers Grove a “beautiful feeling” overwhelmed her.
Later, she told her husband about it and he told Anne Marie that he felt the same way.
Jack Himpler suggested going to the cemetery. “Bless your heart, Jack,” his wife replied, and they headed to Mt. Carmel to stake out a prime spot 50 yards from the mausoleum where Bernardin’s body would soon rest alongside other deceased Chicago cardinals.
There were scores of early arrivees at the cemetery, most with feet cold as mackerels. They staked out vantage points hours before the hearse arrived and stamped their feet as they listened to the funeral mass over huge outdoor loudspeakers.
Seventy-two-year-old Vince Novelli’s feet were close to becoming icy blocks when he declared, “I said more prayers in the last three days than I have in my whole life.”
For Novelli, this was saying something, since he is a religious man who visits his mother’ grave weekly.
Leaning against a looming granite tombstone, with hours to go before the funeral cortege arrived, Novelli talked of what Bernardin had meant to him.
“He reminds me of my father,” he said. “He was a caring man with a big heart. . . . If we had a president like that, this country would be a truly great place.”
Five-and-a-half hours later, with more than 300 now gathered at the cemetery and the snow settling on his white moustache, Novelli was jubilant as the funeral cortege arrived.
“I was getting pretty cold,” Novelli admitted. “But, now that he’s here, I’ve kind of warmed up.”
The committal ceremony at the cemetery was held under a canopy draped in purple and white just outside the mausoleum. Those who waited so long were able to get a final look at the casket, maybe glimpse a little of the ceremony and listen to the service over the loudspeakers.
At nightfall, with the limousines gone and caretakers beginning to send stragglers on their way, a trio of sisters stood talking in the nearly empty cemetery.
Snow falling hard now on her black fur hat, leaning on a cane, Josephine Saso turned to her companions.
“You just don’t want to leave,” she said. “There’s something about him that just won’t let me go.”
