It’s the ultimate long shot–three women and one priest trying to revive interest in a church in a high-crime, gang-riddled neighborhood that was written off long ago, a church whose dead haunt its living. The interest in their mission is so weak that they haven’t been able to sell enough raffle tickets to break even on their upcoming December 3 fund-raiser, which is intended to help erase the $90,000 debt the church’s school is carrying.
“It’s hard to describe what it was like around here 40 years ago to someone who never saw it,” says Radek, who’s lived in the area for almost 50 years. “The streets were clean. People kept up their property. My kids used to walk to Humboldt Park and play ball there, or go fishing in the fish pond at Garfield Park. It was a different world back then in almost every way. You got married because you loved someone and to propagate. I had six children, and my sister, she had five. Back then women might have jobs, but you didn’t have careers. My husband managed a warehouse. I was a crossing guard at Hamlin and Iowa. My daughter is a landscape architect, and I’m very proud of her. And I think that, yes, women are better off having careers. But with all the changes something’s lost.”
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By then West Humboldt Park was changing rapidly. Nearby factories moved or went out of business. Jobs were harder to come by. The local alderman, Tom Keane, a tough old bird who ran his ward like a fiefdom, went to federal prison on corruption charges, and city services declined. The neighborhood itself was chopped into different wards during various redistrictings. Almost all the whites moved out as Latinos and blacks moved in. And the merchants on Chicago Avenue closed up shop. Sometimes they were replaced, most times not. The street is now lined with vacant stores and vacant lots, a shell of its former self.
It was Radek who recruited the Lenzen sisters in the effort to revive the church. The Lenzens have long been active in neighborhood groups and local politics. “For three years we fought the city to knock down an abandoned bowling alley on Chicago and Pulaski,” says Sue. “One day the roof caved in–and we still couldn’t get them to tear it down. We were bringing that building up at meetings with city officials all the time. Finally the city tore it down. That was in 1992. Now it’s a vacant lot with a For Sale sign on it. I guess that’s progress.”
Despite the uncertainties, the women try to be optimistic. “There are good people in this neighborhood,” says Sue. “There are some neighbors I wouldn’t trade for a million bucks. And there are some undesirables. It’s like anything else–you make what you want to make of your life.”
