Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 37

Section 3 Chicago Tribune, Sunday, March 13, 1983 Hands reaching out to uplift a Samaritan v. I- 4 Dob k-y Wiedrich it i -4w I 9 1 'iL ir-f 1 I HUMANITY is one of God's noblest creations. Whenever 1 get down in the dumps over the state of civilized society, somebody comes along to do something beautiful that restores my faith in that dictum; That happened with great regularity last week through two of mankind's noblest creations, the telephone and the United Stales mail. I hardly had reported for work last Monday, when the phones started ringing with offers of support for a man whose dire financial plight had outlined in a column the day before. The 52-year-old maintenance man had been laid off from his job at the Klcclro-Motive Division of General Motors Corp.

lk years ago. He had expended his savings, borrowed all that he could and was reduced to living on food stamps. He wanted to work, but nobody would hire him. He was on the verge of losing his suburban home. YKT, IN Till': MIDST of all that tragedy, he had volunteered his services to help collect cash and canned goods for other unemployed workers through a Genera) Motors Care and Share program.

Given his personal circumstances, 1 thought his gesture was selfless enough to write about. Hut I didn't hold much hope for getting him any help. He was, after all, middle-aged in a highly competitive and apparently shrinking job market. The Illinois unemployment rate had just hit 13.5 percent, well above the national average. And some 759,000 other people in the slate were out of work or laid off temporarily and also reduced to near poverty.

So while 1 could find inspiration in writing about how people cared and shared during the Great Depression of my youth and were doing the same now, 1 figured thai fellow would pretty much be left on his own. Hoy, was 1 wrong. NOT ONLY WAS he not alone, he was almost instantly surrounded, not only by job offers, but aren't sky high, I'll pay it all off for him." Naturally, 1 relayed the offers to Don, including one from a woman who owns three-flat buildings on the Northwest Side and needs a handy man to fix up some apartments for occupancy. ANOTHER PHONE call was from Harvey Durocher and his wife, Alice, who are the Good Humor ice cream franchise distributors lor the seven-county Chicago area. They need 40 drivers to lease trucks from them as private entrepreneurs this summer.

The season runs from April 1 through Sept. 30. It is not an easy job. It involves 10-hour days six days a week. But there is potential for a hard worker to earn $200 to $300 a week, Durocher said.

There is, however, one catch. Applicants must come up with $200 as an initial investment. But it is honest work; so if anyone is interested contact Durocher in his office at 4825 W. Arthington Chicago. Probably the most touching of all the reactions to Don's plight came in the form of a letter from Anne Byrnes and her husband, Jim, of Earlville, which is 36 miles west of Aurora.

The letter contained a $10 check for the General Motors Care and Share program. IT WASN'T until I telephoned Mrs. Byrnes that the full measure of her act unfolded. Byrnes is a retired chemical salesman. He remains ill in Kishwaukee Community Hospital in-De Kalb as the couple approaches their 51sl wedding anniversary this month.

Their married son, Michael, is a home furnishing salesman who has been unemployed for a year. Nevertheless, Mrs. Byrnes did not hesitate to care and share whatever the couple has with another human being in serious need. None of these people about whom I have written are wealthy in a monetary sense. But they are rich in heart.

And that's what 1 mean about humanity. It's beautiful. other forms of generosity that boggled the mind. One of God's noblest creations was coming to the rescue. And while nothing might come of the offers, the mere fact they had been extended was sufficient to restore my faith.

One man called to swear me never to reveal his identity as he offered to pick up one of the beleaguered maintenance man's monthly mortgage payments. The laid off worker, whose name is Don, had only five payments remaining to square his 30-ycar debt. But he already had used up the three payments his savings and loan association permits some home owners to skip so he didn't know how much longer he could remain in his home. "We're not wealthy, but we've got enough to help with one payment, if it's not too high," the caller said. WHAT PROMPTED that gentleman to make his generous offer to a complete stranger? "The man you wrote about isn't somebody trying to chisel," he explained.

"He's been trying to find work for 2 years. He deserves help because he's trying to help himself. And what good are we if we can't help our brothers?" A few days later, a retired woman from Indiana called to make an even more generous offer. "There's no sense in anybody losing their home," she declared. "If you can't help your fellows, what good are you? If those payments Crime syndicate leader Tony Spilotro in his fieshmen year class portrait at Steinmetz High School and his boyhood home at 2152 N.

Melvina. Spilotro a 'nice boy' who grew up tough OFF AMD MORE LAST DAY TO SAVE SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 9:00 AM TO 6:00 PM 50 off RADIO FLYER 500 FETAL CAR orig. $44, $0 each day, 60 off ROBOT COUPE FOOD PROCESSOR $99.99, Orig, Model -3500. 25 ach day. Come in and find great savings on furnishings and accessories for every room in your home.

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from Motif with Innersprlnfl mattress. 10 each day. By Janet Cawley ON MELVINA Avenue in northwest Chicago, the tidy bungalows sit side by side behind carefully clipped lawns. This is a neighborhood of ethnic stability, one where values like hard work and family and religion make up the framework of life. This also is the neighborhood where crime syndicate leader Tony Spilotro was born and raised.

For Spilotro, it has been a long journey from his boyhood home a modest, two-story, gray clapboard bungalow at 2152 N. Melvina to the bright lights and money of Las Vegas, where he oversees the Chicago mob's operations and controls a far-reaching criminal empire that has made him the most powerful underworld figure in Nevada. Along the way he has been accused of engineering or executing hundreds of mob-related crimes, including arson, robbery, burglary and dope deals. According to one report, Spilotro also has been arrested, questioned or listed as a suspect in at least 25 murders. NOW HE HAS been returned to Chicago, where he has been indicted for two 1962 gangland murders because a childhood friend and fellow mobster turned informer last year.

But back in the neighborhood where he grew up, all this seems light years away from the fresh-faced boy with chestnut hair and blue eyes residents still remember. They describe a high-spirited youth from a loving family who played stickball in the alley, went to mass with his family at St. John Bosco Church and always addressed adults as Mr. or Mrs. "My memories of Anthony are all pleasant," said one neighbor who still lives on the block.

"All this mob stuff is just something I can't understand. He was a very nice young man and so were his brothers." THERE WERE six boys in the Spilotro family: Vincent, Victor, Patrick, Anthony, John and Michael, all born in quick succession. Their father, Pasquale, also known as Patsy, came to the United States from Italy in 1914 at age 15 and, after learning the food business and running a lunch counter, eventually opened a restaurant known as Patsy's at Grand and Ogden Avenues. It specialized in Italian food and featured pinochle games in the off hours. Pasquale was 39 and his wife, Antoinette, 32, when Anthony was born at home May 19, 1938.

"I'll tell you one thing," said a woman who lived next door to the family for years, "those kids were always clean and neat. Their mother was up at 5 o'clock every morning, hanging her clothes out and baking pics. "Their father? No. we didn't see too much of him. He usually leave for the restaurant about four in the morning and come back maybe five or so in the afternoon." THE RESTAURANT wm a back-breaking enterprise for Patsy, even with his sons helping out waiting tables and washing dishes, and the family patriarch died of a ruptured blood vessel in the brain in 1954 at age 55.

From then on, his wife took over as head of the family. "Their mother was strict but they listened to her, they respected her, said another neighbor. "They all used to help out around the house." "Their mother was a saint," said a young woman who grew up with the Spilotro boys. "She was loving, really a wonderful woman. Those kids went to school every day lust immaculate.

Everything ironed to perfection. They really came from a good home. All of this (todayl it's really Just too bad." Eventually, Mrs. Spilotoro left the neighborhood and moved to Oak 250o off RCA 17 in. DIAGONAL COLOR TV.

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10 each day. Tony Spilotro Park, where she lives today. Of her other sons, Patrick became a dentist and Michael operates Hoagie's restaurant at 6978 W. North Ave. Victor was sentenced to 18 months in prison in January of 1980 on gambling and tax fraud charges, Vincent spent some time in Nevada, where he described himself as a builder, and John works with his brother in Las Vegas.

BUT WHEN they were growing up, Melvina Avenue was always home base. Young Anthony in the neighborhood, he was always known as Anthony, never as Tony went to Burbank Elementary School, about three blocks from the family home, and from there to Steinmetz High School, which he entered as a freshman in the fall of 1953. It was there his life first seemed to veer from the straight and narrow. Dorothy Bogot, a classmate, remembers him as "more interested in people, in his buddies, than in scholastics. He was a happy-go-lucky tough guy.

Cocky. He was an an-tagonizer but he didn't pick on small With him, it was always even-steven. But if someone did something he didn't approve of, or insulted him, or something like that, there would be a dust-up in the parking lot. But that would end it. He didn't seem to carry a grudge.

But he was a tiger when he got to fighting." But one thing was clear, she said: "Tony was always in charge. He showed a great deal of leadership with those guys he ran around with. He had a strong personality and that was it I don think he went out of his way looking for trouble, but in many ways it came to him. And he'd Just say, 'Hey, get out of my lasically, people either liked him or were afraid of him. There was nothing in between." ONE INCIDENT Bogot particularly remembers occurred when Miss Kuebler, the English teacher, had to leave the classroom during a test and asked Bogot to sit in and watch the class for her, "Tony came up to me," Bogot related, "and said he wanted the answers to the test.

I said, 'Sorry, you can't have So he biffed slapped me across the face. It was just an instantaneous thing. Whap. I was in shock but I said, 'Sorry. Tony, you still can't have Nothing more was said.

He turned around and walked back to his desk." Miss Kuebler also figured in another of Bogot's memories about young Spilotro. "She was an elderly woman and afraid of him," Bogot said. "He used to tease the heck out of her. He'd go up to her desk and start talking and she'd say, 'Go back to Continued on page IS, col. 1 60 off STAKMORE WOOD FOLDINGCHAIRS" $49 pair, orig.

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