"Tiny, fey, Irish, honest, quiet, otherworldly, and superb"

Gemze de Lappe, far left, leads "Oklahoma" dancers through rehearsal in 2013.

    The hardest part of my job is convincing organizations to go along with a novel idea for a story. I'll think of an angle—who tunes pianos at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra? how do they feed all those fish at the Shedd Aquarium?—and then spend YEARS trying to convince someone to let me in to report it. They resist, I believe, because it isn't the precise facet they want to ballyhoo at that particular moment. But it might also have something to do with my blunt, I-must-do-this-NOW manner. I hope not.

     My relationship with the Lyric Opera of Chicago is different, unique really. They will actually invite me drop by a rehearsal and look around for some aspect that I find interesting. This takes a bit of courage on their part, as they aren't always happy about what I ultimately fix on, or the approach I take. But they tolerate my attention, and I'm grateful for that.
     The moment that best illustrates this process is when, hanging out at the rehearsals for "Oklahoma" in 2013, I noticed a tiny, white-haired woman in her 90s going over choreography with the show's dancers.
     "Who's that?" I asked. It was Gemza de Lappe, who danced in the original touring production in 1943 and kept the flame of the show alive for the next 70 years. Obviously I had my subject.
     De Lappe died a few weeks ago, without any notice in Chicago, and I thought it apt to revisit my column on her life and work, and a few photos of her, snapped, alas, from a distance with a primitive iPhone 4S. 

     When Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers were writing their first musical together, "Oklahoma!," they wanted spunky farm girl Laurey Williams to dream "a big circus ballet" that would give the audience something gorgeous to see.
     That was the plan. Until they ran into the genius of Agnes de Mille, whom they had seen choreograph Aaron Copland's "Rodeo" and tapped to create the dances for "Oklahoma!" Though it was her first major Broadway show, she told the musical icons that a lighthearted ballet was a dreadful idea.
     "People don't have dreams like that," she said. "They have anxiety dreams. It should be a dream of Laurey's terrors. Also, you have no sex in this show. Nice girls dream rather dirty dreams. They do."
     That nightmare dance is the pivotal scene in this landmark musical, which opens May 4 at Lyric Opera of Chicago. After presenting the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein musical "Show Boat" as part of its subscription season last year, Lyric launches its American Musical Theater Initiative, a five-year series devoted to the works of Rodgers & Hammerstein, with "Oklahoma!" Programmed outside of Lyric's regular subscription season, the American Musical Theatre works are part of the company's campaign to reach new audiences.
     In "Oklahoma!," de Mille's choreography made a dramatic break from the "one-two-three-kick" routines of earlier musicals, the first where dance and songs are not threaded together by a flimsy plot, but welded into one cohesive work of art. A masterpiece.
     "The show changed the course of musical theater, it was a watershed event," said "Oklahoma!" director Gary Griffin, who previously directed "The Merry Widow" and "The Mikado" for Lyric. "This is the first show where dance rose to the level of significant storytelling, particularly the dream ballet, an essential [element] to the story."
     And essential to dance is rehearsal. This morning, in Room 350 of the Civic Opera Building, two performers go through their paces: dancers Jenna McClintock and Stephen Hanna, the "Dream Laurey" and the "Dream Curly," under the gaze of associate choreographer Victor Wisehart and choreographer Gemze de Lappe, a wisp of an elderly woman, who leaps off a chair and hurries over to where McClintock has just curtseyed.
     "It's too ladylike!" she says, trying to import a bit of High Plains sass. "You say, 'Hey! Yeah! Mornin'!' You don't say, 'Goood mornnning.' You say ..." and she bites off the word and tosses her head: 'Mornin'!"  

  

With Jenna McClintock, left and Victor Wisehart, right.

     De Lappe is 91, and the last living link to the show's original choreography. The curtain rose on "Oklahoma!" on March 31, 1943; by that August, de Lappe was dancing in the national company of the smash hit.
     "It was wartime—it just rang a bell," she recalls. "Touched the whole populace of the United States."
     And not just the United States. She danced the Dream Laurey for 18 acclaimed months in London starting in 1947.
     "Tiny, fey, Irish, honest, quiet, otherworldly, and superb," one critic wrote of her dancing.
     Lyric's current cast is drawn not just from the world of opera but from musical theater: Laurey is Ashley Brown, who played Magnolia in Lyric's "Show Boat" and the title role in "Mary Poppins" on Broadway, and Curly is John Cudia, the only actor to play both the Phantom and Jean Valjean roles in the "Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Miserables" on Broadway.
     Cudia says that the musical's historical importance, evergreen popularity—thanks in part to beloved songs such as "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' "—and big, relevant themes make it perfect for the opera stage.
     "We all have things between us and what we really want," Cudia says. "Taking those journeys to get to a place of happiness and togetherness."
     While musicians can follow a score and actors a script, to make a dance really come alive requires a detail-obsessed choreographer. And de Lappe, who has been involved in so many productions of "Oklahoma!" over the years she has lost count, closely studies and then minutely adjusts every step, leap, turn, gesture, look, down to a flutter of fingertips.
     "I'm conscious of your thumb at your throat," she says after McClintock touches her larynx. "It's really just 'hauh!' That's better. Just two fingers."
     Often words fail her, and she sings, taps or shows the dancer what to do by doing it herself, imparting not only movement but attitude—a 19th century prairie shyness that 21st century dancers might not have encountered.
     "The other thing you got to work on is your hesitation," she tells McClintock. "It has to be much more big and decisive. 'Shall I? No, no. Yes!' It has to be clear as day, because otherwise ... this is not fast. This is yes, yes, yes, yes ..." De Lappe rises on her toes, a bit more with each "yes," then collapses and turns away at "no!"
     "You're a little bit undecided, so I think you should look down, and then change your mind. It's just a moment. And then go with that."
     While often emphatic, she is never harsh. There is no yelling.
     "Agnes never screamed," she says during a break. "She might be very forceful and very direct. But I never saw her get publicly angry."
     De Lappe's comments are peppered with dazzling smiles, ready praise and big hugs. She points out that David Adam Moore, who made his house debut at Lyric earlier this season as the brutish Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire," is even better in "Oklahoma!" than movie star Rod Steiger was as the menacing Jud Fry, because he has the handsomeness that would attract Laurey (he also has the physical prowess to dance Jud in the dream ballet, a part usually filled by another performer).
     This rehearsal goes on for three hours, with only the briefest of breaks. De Lappe's energy and focus never lag. Anyone who ever danced has to wonder how de Lappe has reached 91 uninjured, when many dancers a third her age find themselves hobbled.
     "They didn't force extensions and splits," she explains. "They didn't overstretch the body, like they do now."

   That's why her body is agile—that and her daily exercises—to the astonishment of dancers in the troupe, who have come into the rehearsal room to find her stretching on the barre.
     But how does she keep a fresh view of material she has worked with for nearly 70 years?
     "Well, first of all, it's very good material," she says.
     While de Lappe is trying to keep faithful to the original intent, she also understands that it must bear the imprint of whoever is performing.
     "As close to the same as possible within the freedom of the actor or dancer," she says. "You can't get a cookie-cutter copy. That has no life. You have to find the inner life of the performer and use that."
     Toward the end of the rehearsal, McClintock and Hanna run through the part they've been working on for hours, until suddenly it clicks: a smooth, frantic, graceful, hauntingly beautiful, complex yet seamless dance that brings to mind something Walter Kerr wrote after seeing de Lappe's choreography of a 1969 revival of "Oklahoma!"
     "Miss de Mille has been fortunate in having Gemze de Lappe to remember for her on this occasion. Miss de Lappe was one of the loveliest lead dancers Miss de Mille ever gave us, and the loveliness lingers in the sweetness and the shining respect with which she has restaged the numbers here."
     Yes, precisely, a fidelity to the past that nevertheless lives in the present. "Oklahoma!" has a triple history— a Prairie period piece created in the 1940s and staged in 2013, a large landscape populated with larger loves, sweetness with an undercurrent of eroticism and evil. Among the greatest American musicals, rarely performed on a stage dominated by European opera, it's the first musical where dance truly leapt into the spotlight.

                   —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 28, 2013

Donald Trump brings shame upon himself and the nation

      When you have a president who is a bully, fraud and liar, and who manifests those dismal qualities every day, if not every hour, there can be a tendency to eventually let things slide. You can't react to every new insult, to each new deception, to every lie. It's hard enough to count them. Why not save your silver bullets? Focus on the truly important stuff—like the obscene and costly giveaway that the Senate is at this moment crafting, using the tax code to funnel money away from the poor and middle class and toward the already wealthy.
      But on Wednesday morning Donald Trump set an astonishing new low, even for him, retweeting to his 43.6 million Twitter followers a trio of odious anti-Muslim videos produced by a British hate group, British First, that has a record of misleading and vile anti-Muslim propaganda.
     The three Trump shared were titled “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!” “Muslim destroys a statue of Virgin Mary!” and “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”
     Whether they actually show what they purport to show is not the point—a standard technique of haters is to take one jarring crime, one reprehensible person, and use it to slur an entire community.  The Klan did it. The Nazis did it. And now the president of the United States does it. It happens to be against Muslims, but in the past it was against Mexicans, women, Jews. Any group he feels he can get away with mocking for the benefit of his followers, who thrive on this kind of thing.
    Again, nothing new. More of the thoughtless hate that got him elected, that excites the third of this country who are angry, fearful, and looking for someone to blame. Who need a bogeyman to justify their fear, like the 5-year-old who asks, "If there's no monster under the bed, then why I am afraid?"
     But because we have seen it before doesn't mean we shouldn't cry out in horror now.  Trump's actions this morning are a gross betrayal of what it means to be a patriotic American, or a person of faith, or a decent human being. It makes our country more imperiled, and provides succor and encouragement to every zealot, extremist and terrorist in the world. It is unethical and dishonest, both bad policy and bad strategy. It is Trump's three major deficiencies rolled into one: a bullying fraudulent lie.
     Reaction has been swift—British Prime Minister Theresa May denounced Trump's reckless calumny as "wrong."
     “British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency tolerance and respect,” she said in a statement.    
    That is leadership. The British leader should be joined by anyone with a voice. No decent American can let it go unchallenged. Because if we do, it'll only get worse and worse. It already has gotten worse. Today's obscenity is worse than what came before, and if we don't want worse to follow, we need to make a stand. This is intolerable.  
     Donald Trump reveals, once again, the small, twisted bigot at the bottom of what he calls a soul. America is humiliated that we set such a petty, vain, cruel, brainless, hateful individual as our leader. We didn't all vote for him. But we all have him now. Denunciation is ineffectual and cold comfort, but must be done. This isn't who we are, but it's what we are becoming, unless we find a way to stop it. It is a fight every American should—no, must—commit ourselves to waging right now. Loud, strong and clear. 

Rahm stays out of the heat of CBA show kitchen

Larry Aaronson makes a point of personally inviting Rahm Emanuel. 

     "Most politicians like to be skewered at some point," said attorney Jeffrey M. Marks, producer of the Chicago Bar Association annual satiric review, which opens Thursday. "They may not be happy how we skewer them."
     Marks said that most people figure they've made it if they're being made fun of. We get senators, representatives, judges..."
     "U.S. Attorneys..." added show co-writer Cliff Berman, sitting beside Marks in Philip H. Corboy Hall on the second floor of CBA's South Loop headquarters before rehearsals Monday for "Much to Sue About Nothing!" the 94th annual bar show.
     "Governors..." added Marks.
     "Quinn came, often" said Berman.
     "Everybody wants to come," said Marks, referring to the show, now in its 94th year.
     Well, not everybody. 
     Rahm Emanuel won't be attending the show this year because he never comes. Despite being personally invited, despite the lawyer playing him, Larry Aaronson, being his third cousin, and despite the mayor being a traditional source of fodder. The first line the chorus sings is, "Another year we'll make fun of Rahm."
     The lawyerly lampoon goes back almost a century, to 1924, when the smattering of songs for the CBA's Christmas party expanded into "Christmas Spirits,' a full-length revue.
     Rahm's predecessors had it worse and took it better. Mayor William Hale Thompson became Nero in the climactic song of the 1927 show, "The Burning of Rome"

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Tony Calzaretta, playing a frustrated Prince Charles, rehearses Monday for "Much to Sue About Nothing!" the Chicago Bar Association satirical music review, which opens Thursday

Give to The Night Ministry

Jeff Ayoub, of The Night Ministry, talks to a man sleeping on Lower Wacker Drive last Christmas.

     Ideally, you wouldn't be giving money to The Night Ministry today.
     Even though today is "Giving Tuesday," a day designated by those who care about such things full time to encourage we who rarely give these life-and-death matters a second thought to pause from our lavish and blessed lives, pause between the Feast Extravaganza and the Carnival of Gifts and remember those with nearly nothing. To extend a hand to people facing problems that on their best day dwarf ours on our worst.
     You wouldn't be giving today because, again ideally, you wouldn't have to. You'd already be giving throughout the year, either to The Night Ministry, and organizations like it, whether through money or, more valuably, through your time and efforts.
     Though really, there are no other organizations like The Night Ministry, the last threadbare safety net between thousands of Chicagoans and the abyss of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, despair and death. 
    There are other things besides money. You could, for instance, prepare a few score meals to be handed out at one of the stops of the Night Ministry's health care bus during its nightly rounds, and then show up at the appointed hour and distribute them. You could help pull off their big annual fundraising dinner or hit up prominent individuals to lend a hand. I've done all that—on certain sporadic occasions, I don't want to give the impression I'm a less selfish person than I actually am—and it feels great.
     But in a pinch, digging into your pocket will do. I''ve done that too, mostly recently on Monday, just to show how easily and painlessly it can be done. You go to the web site here.  I timed it—four minutes flat, from start to finish. Nobody is too busy to spare four minutes. The Night Ministry gives you a receipt for your records. 
     Plus a certain charitable Chicago supporter has pledged $25,000 in matching donations for Giving Tuesday—meaning every dollar you give will be doubled. So dig deep. 
     Or not so deep. Whatever you are comfortable with giving. I'll never miss the money I gave to The Night Ministry. But the person who gets my $50, maybe in the form of a care package of life's essentials, or a visit from the bus, or an asthma inhaler, or a sandwich handed over by a wide-eyed suburban volunteer  they corralled to help out, someone like my son below, will benefit enormously.

 

He's baaaaaaaack!!!

By Damien Hi

     Watching one zeppelin-sized media career after another go up in flames, like so many Hindenburgs exploding — fwump! fwump! fwump!— as their revolting sexual excesses are disclosed, I nevertheless felt secure. Think of it as the shy guy dividend.
     Alas, being a predatory creep isn't the only way the past can rear out of the dust and bite you.
     I was shocked last week to see someone completely unexpected back in the headlines, back on television, an accusation in human form aimed in my direction.
     No press conference, yet. No hazy, half-remembered charges. That's coming, no doubt.
The only thing to do is to be proactive, try to get ahead of the scandal.
     Sigh.
    Todd Stroger.
     I'm innocent. I swear. Stroger is not my fault, though people at the time blamed me.
     "Even Stroger's supporters were worried in the final three weeks of the campaign as to whether African Americans were going to turn out heavily for Stroger," the Chicago Defender wrote in July 2006. "Were it not for the controversy created by Neil Steinberg's column in the Chicago Sun-Times blasting his health status, which invigorated the Black community and drove many of them to the polls, President Stroger likely would have lost."
     That was referring to Todd's father, John, and if you're wondering how boosting the chances of dad meant helping junior, well, how quickly you forget.

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Piercing info; You never know what you'll find on Facebook

      I spent the long weekend getting ready for Thanksgiving, cleaning up from Thanksgiving, then puttering around the house, trying not to do or write anything. I generally kept off Facebook because when I dipped into the thing it seemed, not so much a dynamic gathering of friends and associates, but as an electronic backwater, a new way to be lonely. 
     Looking for a post for today, I jumped into the archives and put my name and "Facebook" into the search and came up with this chestnut from almost a decade ago. So long ago that I felt the need to explain what Facebook is on the first reference to it: "the social networking site." How quaint is that? Akin to saying, "I looked for a telephone, that popular communications device..."
      Well, I suppose Facebook still has its uses—Scrabble comes to mind—though it hasn't served up a topic like this one in many a year. 

     The neat thing about this job is that you never know where it will lead you.
     For instance. The Sun-Times asked us to join Facebook, the social networking site. Sure, it seemed a little one-on-one for a supposedly mass communication business. It was as if they started encouraging us to run up to anyone we saw on the street holding a copy of the Sun-Times, drape our arm around their shoulders and gush, "Hiya pal! Enjoying your newspaper?"
     But heck, if giving hundreds of strangers a little electronic hug makes them feel loved, then why not?
     Besides, it's fun. I get a few new "friends" every day, tell them it's nice to meet them, glance at their bios, and perhaps ask a question based on who they are. What's an 85-year-old man doing on Facebook? What's a mechanic do at a soda can factory? What's new at Loyola University Medical Center?
     The senior citizen didn't reply. The mechanic maintains the die punch presses. And Anne M. Dillon, as befits a media director, rattled off what's happening at the hospital: there's the study of high-fructose corn syrup in sodas and its effect upon the kidneys; the OB/GYNs are "up in arms about the prevalence of labia and clitoral piercing among young women . . . "
     Stop right there, I said. Tell me more about that high-fructose corn syrup study . . .
     Kidding. Of course I wanted to know more about labial and clitoral piercing -- because really, if I don't ask, then how are you ever going to know?
     "The concern we have is mainly trauma during the actual birth," said Sarah Wagner, a doctor of obstetrics and gynecology at Loyola. "The piercing can get in the way of the delivery of the infant, and can be traumatic to both the infant and the mother."
     She said that while patients invariably agree to remove them prior to childbirth, that with the profusion of piercings, not every prospective mother might know to do so.
     "We've definitely noticed an increase in genital piercing," she said, estimating that she has perhaps half a dozen patients in her practice who have the jewelry in their nether regions.
     "It's less than 1 percent, but it's there," she said.
     She said the biggest risk right now is getting the piercings in the first place.
     "People can have some pretty awful infections to the surrounding tissue," she said. "Infections that get deep as the bone."
     So given the risk, why do women do this? Is it a tribal sisterhood type of thing?
     "To my knowledge, they're doing it for sexual pleasure," she replied.
     Clearly, more research was called for. Experts only take you so far. I turned to help from Facebook, which did not let me down.
     "I was a freshman in college," recalled Eileen McCarthy, 23, when she and a group of her friends decided to embellish themselves.
     "Since I had my nose and tongue [pierced], they suggested to get my [genitals] pierced," she said. "I think they were joking, but I agreed to go through with it."
     She had it done at a place called Hobo's in Portsmouth, N.H.
     "It was a little painful, but not too bad," she recalled. "It was more like a little pinch. It was my least painful body piercing. I did not have any complications."
     She never told her family about the piercing --which she says she did not find particularly stimulating -- and removed it when a guy she was dating felt it was "trashy."
     McCarthy was 18 when she had the procedure done, but those in the piercing world say this is in no way limited to young women.
     "It is common for a woman who has no other body art to get a genital piercing," said Elayne Angel, a piercing pioneer who has performed the procedure 40,000 times. "I get a lot of empty-nesters, retirees, soccer moms, sorority gals."
     "Retirees?" I whispered.
     "Certainly," she answered. "I have pierced quite a few in the category of older women. They're celebrating a renewal of their sexuality."
     The author of the forthcoming book, The Piercing Bible, which Ten Speed Press is publishing next month, Angel said that piercing is a way for women to sanctify their lives.
      "There are very few rites of passage left in modern society, so people use piercings to mark passages: clean and sober times, births, deaths, marriages, all kinds of milestones," she said.
     "There are probably about as many reasons as there are piercings."
     Angel, who now lives in the Yucatan in Mexico but for years ran a piercing parlor in New Orleans, stresses the need for customers to scope out where they are having their piercings done.
     "Piercing is under-regulated, and many people piercing have little or no skill," she said. "There is no such thing as certification."
     She said that several chapters in her new book are devoted to how to select a safe piercer.
     "There are many things to check for," she said. Do they have an autoclave to sterilize their tools? Do they know how to use it? Do they perform spore tests to ensure the autoclave is at sufficient heat to kill micro-organisms?
     "It's dangerous out there," she said. "It is a break in the skin and there are risks."

         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 25, 2009

A legacy that still shines

    I never laid eyes on Harold Washington. When he died, I had been on staff at the paper eight months, but had spent that time putting out The Adviser, a weekly publication that told readers how to clean their garages and get Japanese beetles off their lawn. Nevertheless, 25 years later, I was asked to assess his legacy.

     Chicago wanted Harold, and Chicago got him, though nobody realized for how brief a time.
     Harold Washington, the beloved, the first and only, larger than life, abruptly entered death on Nov. 25, 1987—exactly 25 years ago Sunday, a span that will catch many Chicagoans by surprise, and perhaps remind them of their own uncertain date with mortality, and of course bring back a dynamic chapter in Chicago political history remembered by all, cherished by many.
     "I miss him terribly, and I think about him every day in one way or another," said Timothy Evans, now chief judge of the Cook County Circuit Court, but alderman for the 4th Ward during Washington's administration and his floor leader in the council. "There was certainly a huge sense of loss. The possibility of someone that brilliant and that committed to fairness, and that committed to all communities — who seemed to be the right job for the right man for the right time — and to have that taken away when the city seemed to need him most, was something I think affected people greatly."
      Even 25 years after his death, Washington still inspires a fervent reverence.
     "Harold Washington will go down in history as one of the most, if not the most, impactful mayor in the history of Chicago," said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Chicago), an alderman when Washington was in office. "Because Harold was a visionary. He understood not only the problems that the city was confronted with, but the potential of everyday, ordinary Chicagoans that was not remotely achieved by other mayors. Harold built a coalition that completely exploded the opinion that Chicago ain't ready for reform, and built a coalition that did in fact reform Chicago. He made patronage a bygone word in this city."
     For a city that had elected 40 white men and one white woman mayor over the previous 146 years to finally put a black man in City Hall was an occasion for joy for many.
     "With blacks it was a question of group esteem," said Paul Green, professor of political science at Roosevelt University. "When Harold Washington became the first black mayor, that created an enormous sense of pride, among black people and also Hispanics, and also among good-thinking white people. He had a real deep-seated visceral impact."
     Those who had been frozen out of power delighted in having a mayor who spoke for them.
     "We are a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-language city," Washington said in his first inaugural address. "Neighborhood involvement has to take the place of the ancient, decrepit and creaking machine. City government for once in our lifetime must be made equitable and fair."
     It was not a vision that the old white machine, that still held a majority in the City Council, was eager to hear.
     "That speech that day created the 29-21 [split in the council]," said Dorothy Tillman, then alderman of the 3rd Ward, on the 10th anniversary of Washington's death. "A lot of [the white aldermen] were scrambling and running and saying, 'Uh-oh. Fairness is coming. We've got to mobilize.' "
     'Power-based' opposition
     Mobilize they did. The "Vrdolyak 29" coalesced against Washington; some of his appointees could not be seated for months, even years.
     "I think much of the opposition was power-based and not racially based," said Evans. "Maybe some people mentioned race as a way of marginalizing Harold. But I think the real issue was power, not race."
     Either way, Washington had difficulty matching his success at winning office with success at running the city.
     "Harold Washington, in my opinion, has to be divided into two parts," said Green. "Harold Washington the politician was absolutely brilliant, with the ability to win what I have called the mother of all primaries in 1983 against Richard Daley and Jane Byrne. We'll never have another cast like that, with a supporting cast like Ed Vrdolyak and Ed Burke, it was a rendezvous of sluggers."
     But as mayor, despite the praise of admirers, Washington was often thwarted, not only by local enemies, but by national trends.
     "He was mayor of a big city during the Reagan administration," Green said. "Anyone would have had problems. There was so little he could do, even if he had control of the council. Money was tight. The Republicans also controlled Springfield. And even when he got control, the legacy of Council Wars was there."
     After succeeding in breaking the deadlock in 1987, Washington's death seven months later left a void that the African-American community clutched at for years, assuming that a replacement would be found, that fairness demanded a return to the mayor's office they had won. Instead they were left with enticing might-have-beens.
     "He didn't live long enough as mayor, he didn't have enough time, for his vision to take root in its totality," said Rush. "Had Harold lived, you would have seen more stable communities throughout the city, rather than just having central pockets of affluence."
     "He had a style all his own," said Green. "There has never been an African-American politician in the city, including Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson Jr., to capture a moment in a phrase or feeling the way Washington could. He invented words—"hocus pocus dominocus"—but he said them so well. He had that personality, bigger than life. The man was brilliant."
     "His legacy is alive today," said Rush, "because it's the only legacy that makes sense. Richard Michael Daley borrowed immensely from the Harold playbook. Rahm Emanuel is today using Harold Washington's playbook in terms of trying to rekindle and reconnect that coalition that really represents that city as its best. President Obama right now is trying to govern using the Harold Washington playbook."
     "He was a forerunner of what would happen," said Green. "Illinois gets a lot of heat for its corruption, and Chicago's racism, but in reality, if you look at African-American leadership over the past 25 years, it's all come from Chicago. That is his greatest legacy. He begot Carol Moseley Braun for Senate. He helped create the image of Barack Obama. People forget that Cecil Partee was head of the Illinois Senate in the 1970s. The party was always crucial, and Harold Washington bled Democratic blue. He and people like Emil Jones, John Stroger, Wilson Frost - they assumed real power, and Washington was the personification of that. That's his legacy. He was the first. That to me is tremendous. A lot of people followed him, but there is only one Harold Washington."
     Evans, who was with Washington the day he died, dedicating new housing in Evans' ward, remembers traveling to China with the mayor, on their way to establish a sister city.
     "We got to Beijing, we saw how they had entombed Mao," Evans said. "We were on the square, and he said, 'We see how China's leader was remembered — I wonder how I will be remembered?' I think he'd be thrilled to know that people remember him in commitments to education — Harold Washington College; he was always committed to education as being the path to improvement in every community. The world-class library named after Harold Washington. He knew a new library was coming. He just didn't know it was going to be named after him. I think he'd like to be remembered that way."

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 23, 2012