Some of the most famous residents of the southwest suburbs are here to stay.
Their names may be found in history books, or they may have created their legacies in music, sports or politics, on the stage or screen. But after a lifetime of travel to exotic places, they ended up in places like Joliet, Evergreen Park or Alsip. They may have rubbed elbows with the well-to-do, but their final resting places are squarely among the common folk.
The cemeteries of the south and southwest suburbs hold the remains and memories of many of those who gave Chicago its colorful, gritty character.
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For grit, look no farther than Brian Piccolo. Who can forget the touching TV movie “Brian’s Song,” which told of the friendship between Gale Sayers and Piccolo, the Bear halfback who filled in for him when Sayers was injured? Piccolo, a resident of the Beverly neighborhood, died of cancer on June 16, 1970.
“He was so young to die, with a future that held so much for him,” Bears owner George Halas said in an interview shortly after Piccolo’s death. “But Brian made the most of the brief 26 years allotted to him, and he will not be forgotten.”
Sayers considered Piccolo family. “I felt as close to him as I did to my wife and children, and I’ll miss him,” he said.
Small for a running back at 6 feet tall, Piccolo remained in Sayers’ shadow until the legendary player injured his knee Nov. 10, 1968. The rest is movie history. Piccolo rests under a simple stone, its carved outline of a football the only hint of his glory, in St. Mary Cemetery in Evergreen Park.
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The name Jimmy Snyder may not ring a bell today, but it did in 1939, the year Snyder broke a record for fastest qualifying run at the Indianapolis 500, clocking in at 130.138 miles per hour. Although he earned the pole position, he lost the race to Wilbur Shaw and one month later was killed when he crashed his midget car during a race at Cahokia, Ill. The 31-year-old former Chicago milkman is buried in Cedar Park Cemetery in Calumet Park.
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Rudy Kling also died in a crash while racing, but this Lemont native’s preferred vehicle was an airplane. In 1930, at age 22, he earned his pilot’s license. He didn’t start competing until July 1936, when he broke a speed record at the Mile High Air Show in Denver his first time out.
Kling named one of his planes Pride of Lemont, and he died in that plane at age 29, victim of a downdraft that crashed his plane and another at a race in Miami. He lies in St. Matthew’s Cemetery in Lemont, where an airplane graces his pink granite marker.
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Also known for speed was Ralph Metcalfe, an Olympic medal winner in the 1930s and U.S. representative from Illinois between 1971 and 1978, the year he died.
At 22, Metcalfe took home a silver medal in the 100-meter dash and a bronze in the 200-meter race at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Four years later in Berlin, he lost the 100-meter to Jesse Owens by a tenth of a second. He teamed with Owens and two other runners in the 400-meter relay to win gold.
Through their victories, Metcalfe, Owens and other African-Americans challenged Hitler’s notions of Aryan superiority. As a newspaper account from Aug. 16, 1936, put it: “Hitler, who had congratulated other Olympic victors publicly, was faced with a dilemma: Recognize the Negroes or flout world opinion by ignoring them. His solution was to leave the stadium hastily, ostensibly because of threatening rain and the lateness of the hour.” Metcalfe, who also had shone as a track star at Tilden High School on Chicago’s South Side, is buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Worth.
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Ezzard Charles was a winner of a different type. He outscored Jersey Joe Walcott to win the heavyweight championship in Chicago on June 22, 1949. He outboxed Walcott again and six others, including Joe Louis, in Louis’ comeback attempt, before being KO’d by Walcott July 18, 1951, in the 7th round in Pittsburgh. He lost again to Walcott the next year.
Charles, who died at age 54, is buried in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip.
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Torch singer and actress Helen Morgan fought a rare liver disease and lost Oct. 8, 1941. Born Helen Riggins on Aug. 2, 1900, in Danville, Ill., perhaps her biggest claim to fame was starring in “Show Boat” on Broadway in 1927 and in the movie version in 1936, singing the classic “Bill” in both of them.
She had started out as a department store clerk in Chicago, moonlighting as a cabaret singer. After winning a beauty contest, she studied voice in New York. Her Tribune obituary claims, “Her voice failed to develop volume, but it had a quality at once tearful and sultry that rocketed her to success.”
She earned great sums, but she died penniless, though not forgotten; a movie about her life, “The Helen Morgan Story,” was made in 1957. A granite cross proclaiming “Our Helen Morgan” marks her grave at Holy Sepulchre.
– – -Famous jazz drummer Gene Krupa also was the subject of a movie called–you guessed it–“The Gene Krupa Story.”
Krupa led his own band after playing with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. He started out drumming in Chicago during its celebrated jazz age of the 1920s. He died in 1973 at age 64 from a heart problem, a complication of benign leukemia, and is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Calumet City.
– – -Many jazz and blues musicians not only played in the Chicago area but are buried here. During a tribute to her late ex-husband Louis Armstrong, Lilian “Lil” Hardin Armstrong keeled over and died at the piano while playing “St. Louis Blues” at Chicago’s Civic Center Plaza in 1971. An accomplished jazz pianist and composer in her own right, Satchmo’s former wife had taught him how to read music and supported him in his career.
Her death on Aug. 27, 1972, came about a month and a half after Satchmo’s, and she is buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island.
– – -A piano man credited with creating the boogie-woogie sound, Pine Top Smith met an early death at 25, the victim of a brawl in Chicago’s Masonic Hall on March 14, 1929. A vaudeville entertainer, he made only a few recordings before his death. He is buried in Restvale Cemetery in Alsip.
– – -Other famous blues artists interred in the area include Otis Spann, half-brother of Muddy Waters, buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, Alsip; William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy (this is indeed all one person), Lincoln Cemetery, Blue Island; and Marion Walter Jacobs, St. Mary’s Cemetery, Evergreen Park.
– – -Dinah Washington, born Ruth Jones in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in 1924, was a versatile blues singer who also performed gospel and pop. She was only 39 when she died, and a tiara and a string of notes embellish the tombstone of this “Queen of the Blues” at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip.
– – -Besides the blues, the Chicago area also was known for its stockyards. While most of the captains of that industry are resting in the northern suburbs, one meat baron is south.
Gustavus Swift started a slaughterhouse in Chicago after closing his butcher shop in his home town, appropriately named Sandwich, Mass. His inventiveness included creating a refrigerator car for shipping beef east as well as marketing meat byproducts.
He was buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery in Chicago’s Mt. Greenwood neighborhood in 1903, and his name still appears on various packaged meat products, including sausages.
– – -Also buried in Mt. Hope are the founders of two international service clubs for business people. Paul P. Harris started the Rotary Club in Chicago in 1905 and served as its president until 1912, while Melvin Jones founded the International Association of Lions Clubs in Chicago in 1917 and served as its secretary-general until 1961, when he died in Flossmoor at age 82.
Jones’ association, known for fundraising for the blind, is one of the world’s largest, with 1.4 million members in 40,000 clubs. The Rotary Club, founded by Harris in 1905, counts 1.2 million members in 28,000 clubs around the world.
– – -Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley ruled another powerful club of sorts: a Democratic political machine. For 21 years Daley controlled city jobs and influenced presidential elections. The 74-year-old kingmaker died of a heart attack on Dec. 20, 1976.
Ironically, Daley is not buried within the confines of the city he lived, worked and died in, but in Worth at Holy Sepulchre, near his parents.
– – -The name O’Leary also looms large in the history of Chicago, and the woman accused of complicity (or at least that of her livestock) in the Great Chicago Fire is buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Chicago.
Legend has it that Catherine O’Leary was milking her cow the night of Oct. 8, 1871, when the animal kicked over a lantern that started a fire in the O’Leary stable. The fire soon raged out of control, shooting flames that rose up to 100 feet high and crossed the Chicago River. About 250 people perished and 100,000 lost their homes in the Great Chicago Fire.
But were the O’Learys to blame?
After reviewing hearing transcripts and tract records, historian Dick Bale now faults a man named Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan, the O’Learys’ neighbor, although the legend may be harder to put out than the fire. Catherine O’Leary lived 24 more years after the great blaze, shunning publicity. She is buried alongside her husband, Patrick.
– – -Although cemeteries are considered perpetual resting places, one infamous resident of the Southwest Side has moved on.
Al Capone, Chicago’s notorious gangster who died of complications from syphilis on Jan. 1, 1947, was laid to rest at Mt. Olivet in Chicago’s Mt. Greenwood neighborhood with a minimum of fanfare, under orders of the archbishop. But when too many visitors trampled the grave, the family decided he should relocate, leaving the stone at Mt. Olivet to fool visitors (it remains there today).
“Scarface Al” now is buried in Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, where “My Jesus Mercy” accompanies his name on his stone.
