Texas Notes: Badass Women

     The latest report from EGD's Austin bureau chief, Caren Jeskey.

     We all know Jane Addams (1860-1935), a progressive social reformer and the mother of social work who said “old-fashioned ways which no longer apply to changed conditions are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled.”       You’ve probably heard of Emma Goldman (1869-1940) who was an anarchist social justice advocate who said “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.” 

      You may even know Sissy Farenthold (born 1926, 93 years old today), a human rights activist who was nominated to be Vice President of the United States in 1972 and finished second at the Democratic Convention that year. She said “I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns and women join the unqualified men in running our government.” 

     But I betcha don’t know Elisabet Ney. Grab your pipe and a cup of tea, have a seat in your cozy overstuffed armchair and let’s fix that right now.

     Elisabet Ney was a stone sculptor from Prussia who moved to the US and built a modest castle for herself in 1892 in Austin where she could sculpt and showcase her art. It also became a salon where progressive folks sat to share ideas and debate the state of the world. Elisabet shocked her 19th century community by daring to wear bloomers. That’s right. A woman in pants, scandalous! Though kind of makes sense for person who rides horses, don’t you think? Anyway. She also used her — can I even say it? — maiden name. That’s right. The maiden had an opinion and deemed herself worthy enough to express it, including living her life on her own terms. As shocking as it is, there are some brilliant and talented women in the world who have their very own ideas and make their own choices about how they will live their lives. Some even become bad ass sculptors or — if you want to be dramatic — sculptresses, while they are at it.
     Elisabet named her castle Formosa from the Latin formosus meaning beautifully formed. Formosa is now a museum closed due to COVID-19 that can at least be visited on a YouTube channel today. When I first saw this stone castle in the middle of the city during a COVID walkabout I thought “oh, Austin, there you go again.” This is a city of hidden gems. I returned to this magical place in the city time and time again before I realized how much meaning I’d find behind the walls, which I still have not had the delight of entering. On my first visit I ogled the structure with its grand balconies where I could picture Elisabet sitting and watching the sunset after a day of strenuous building. I stood in front of the columns and exquisitely detailed stonework and felt this woman’s power. I sat on the front stoop and enjoyed the view of the carefully tended gardens.
     On my next visit I gravitated along the gravel path weaving through what reminds me of a prairie restoration project one would see along the lakefront at Montrose Beach or around the Peggy Notebart Nature Museum in Chicago, but with Texas live oaks boldly claiming their space in the landscape. I weaved around to the back of the castle and noticed modern sculptures in the backyard, including bright blue felted birds’ nests appearing real on the limbs of a tree. The windows in the back of the castle were too high for me to see into, but I was entranced to find just the head of a larger than life graceful stone woman looking longingly into the distance in one of the rooms, and in the room next to her a solitary man doing the same. I wanted to climb the wall and go into those rooms, but I am sure there were cameras and a good security system so resisted this strong urge.
     On one of my visits two police officers — and I thanked them for their service — approached me and asked me if I worked there, since they were responding to the alarm going off. I said no and we chatted until the true proprietors arrived. The irony of the fact that one of these officers mansplained incorrect information about Elisabet Ney to me was not lost on me. “Her husband never lived here in Texas with her. She sculpted the Goddess of Liberty on the top of the Capitol building.” Wrong, and wrong. I tried to tell him, but he was sure he was right so I let it go. After all, he was the one with the gun, the badge, and let’s face it, the anatomical right to silence me. I’m used to it.
     The plaque in front of the museum mentions that Elisabet had strong opinions, thus was considered eccentric. I guffawed. A woman with opinions? In the South! Well, she must be eccentric. That odd bird. When I read more about her online after this visit I fell even more deeply in love. She viewed the institution of marriage as a state of bondage for women — not to say I think it always is — and is quoted to have said “women are fools to be bothered with housework. Look at me; I sleep in a hammock which requires no making up. I break an egg and sip it raw. I make lemonade in a glass, and then rinse it, and my housework is done for the day.” She went on a hunger strike for weeks when her parents opposed her being a sculptor and not only did she get her way and followed her dreams, but her works are showcased in the Texas State Capitol building today (no not the one on the top, Officer).
     She was an early leader of the Texas Women’s Movement and a civil rights, education and arts advocate. I noticed that diminutively she’s described as “one of a kind” somewhere online. Oh that funny, odd, pants-wearing chick! Haha! She may have studied with the top sculptors of her time, excelled in her art, moved thousands of miles to a new land, learned a new language, built an impressive home for herself and her creations, and her work stands next to the more highly lauded male sculptors of her time, yet she’s called odd and eccentric and it almost seems as though folks found her cute. She’s not cute.  She’s a force of nature.
     I wonder how many men would feel comfortable changing their last names to theirs wives names, wearing skirts even when pants made more sense, being forced to study things that they were not interested in to conform to societal norms, and to be condescendingly called “one of a kind” for expressing their true selves? There are hundreds, thousands, probably millions of us who would walk in Elisabet Ney’s footsteps if we could, and we try. We will continue to try. Maybe one day this world will be equally led by women of strong heart and mind, unafraid to forge unique and powerful paths and will not be considered unusual.

Stuck at home? Try living at O’Hare — since April

Manuel and Linda Benavides at O'Hare airport (Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia)

     Linda Benavides and her husband, Manuel, slept at O’Hare International Airport Wednesday night. In Terminal 1, near baggage claim. At least they tried to sleep, until 2:30 a.m., when the police kicked them out, again. They went to sleep on the Blue Line.
     Or tried to.
     “There was a party on the train,” she said. “The Blue Line is bad. Drug addicts.”
     Most likely they will be back at O’Hare tonight, sleeping there again, or trying to, leaning against each other, using their jackets as blankets. 

     They’ve slept at O’Hare most nights for the past month. A good place to sleep, Linda said, because the bathrooms are right there. But not exactly pleasant.
     “It’s hard,” said Linda, 65. She said it several times. ”It’s hard.”   
     Why is it hard? Well, the lights are always on, for starters. And the constant looped announcements. “Cover coughs and sneezes and clean and disinfect hard surfaces...”
     Plus it’s cold. 
     “Like a refrigerator,” she said.
     The couple is used to the warmth of Central America. They lived in El Salvador for more than 10 years, trying to stretch her tiny pension from the Chicago Board of Education.
     “The only family he had was in El Salvador,” said Linda, while Manuel, 64, looked on. “He lets me do all of the talking because he can’t express himself that well.”
     They lived in San Salvador from 2009 until April 16.
     “We were helping his mom,” she said. Then his mother died. And the trouble began.

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Photo for the Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia

Flashback 1991: Room 174—a dead end

     An upcoming column required a call to the Cook County Medical Examiner Wednesday. I had a lovely conversation with someone from the county, and told her, in my chatty, effusive fashion, that nearly 30 years ago I spent the day with Dr. Robert Stein, the county's first medical examiner—before that, the post had been "coroner," a political office that rewarded connection over skill, and was filled more by men in derby hats than pathologists with medical degrees. I wanted to show her the article—a flaw of mine, I know, showing off my stuff, but too late to fix that now. I remember being proud about two aspects of this story: first, that I remarked upon the beauty of the young bodies in front of me. That didn't seem a place most reporters would go. And second, that I pointed out that most of them were African-American. At the time, it was considered impolite to do that. But to me, it was required. A problem can't be fixed if it can't be mentioned.
   
     They all end up here. All the clumsy drunks and the cocky felons; the innocent bystanders and the gangbangers who flash the wrong sign. Everyone who dies in the street, dies by the grim forms of violence, dies alone and unknown.
     Whatever the cause, they are brought to the same address: 2121 West Harrison St. They are brought through the same side entrance to the same room: Room 174. They are weighed on the same big stainless steel scale. A mop and an industrial wringer bucket always wait nearby.
     In this year of violence, when Chicago seems sure to top last year's total of 851 killings - the third highest in the city's history - and could very well break the all-time record of 970 murders, it is easy to fixate on numbers.
     But if you spend time in the Cook County Institute of Forensic Medicine and watch the dead come in, one at a time, the numbers recede. They are replaced by a realization of both the skewed racial mathematics of murder and the shocking fragility of the human body.
     Each evening, the next day's list is tallied. It usually contains between a dozen and two dozen names. The list appears on the desk of Dr. Robert J. Stein, Cook County's first and only medical examiner. For 15 years, he has left his home most days before 4 a.m. to arrive at work by 5 a.m. for a 12-hour day.
     He picks the cases he will handle, assigning the rest to the three forensic pathologists who work with him.
     Last year, 8,000 bodies passed through the medical examiner's office, which performed about 4,500 autopsies when cause of death was in doubt.
     On this particular day, there are 16 cases. Six are homicides. On average, eight times as many black people are murdered in Chicago as white; today, five of the six homicide victims are black. The sixth, a stabbing victim, is Hispanic. It is an average day.
     The rest are car accidents, mysterious deaths or possible homicides, requiring autopsies to determine cause of death.
     People mistakenly refer to the entire building as a "morgue," but in truth, the morgue is the big refrigerated storage area at the center of the building. It can be entered through several tall freezer doors.
     Contrary to popular belief, there are no drawers, no slabs. The bodies rest on gunmetal gray shelves. The shelves rise six high to the ceiling, and a forklift is needed to get them down from the top.
     Some bodies are wrapped in plastic shrouds, or white sheets, but the wrapping is haphazard. The only sound is the hum of refrigerator fans.
     The bodies are drenched in liquid soap, in bleach, but still the smell of death seeps through the rubber seals on refrigerator doors and soaks into clothes. Almost unbearable at first, after a minute it disappears, for a while, until it sneaks up again. It is an unforgettable smell.
     One morgue door leads into the autopsy room. The size of an elementary school classroom, the autopsy room has four stations where autopsies are performed simultaneously by Stein, Dr. Robert H. Kirschner, Dr. Mitra Kalelkar and Dr. Edmund R. Donoghue.
     At 8 a.m., there are more than a dozen people in the room. There are the four pathologists, each with an aide who does the bulk of the dirty work; several police officers, and a medical photographer, who takes pictures of the corpses and closeups of their wounds. Visiting interns from the University of Chicago and other schools, as well as doctors from South Africa and Japan, are also in the room.
     At each station is a corpse. The bodies are inclined on stainless steel tables, with fluids draining into large sinks.
     One body is that of a 22-year-old woman, shot by her boyfriend, who then killed himself. He is on a table nearby. On another table is a bicyclist; at the corner of 53rd and Princeton, he was shot seven times.
     The most unsettling thing about the bodies is that in many respects, they are beautiful - resembling sculpture, young and well-muscled, faces handsome and peaceful, beaded with water droplets from the beige hoses aides use to wash the gore into the sink.
     They look like they should be alive, and, of course, they should be. To gaze on those faces, unmarked, and those eyes, open, and then shift attention to the empty, red chest of the corpse is agonizing.
     Stein's case, No. 388, is a 25-year-old Mount Prospect man. He is dressed only in khaki shorts. On one arm is tattooed a dagger; on the other, a devil's face.
     There are no visible wounds. The only sign that he is not alive is his rigid pose; the deep, port-wine stains on his shoulders and the back of his neck, and his lower lip, which is deep blue.
     Mount Prospect Police Officer John Gross says the man was a drug dealer and user, that his roommates said they found him on the floor in his apartment.
     Cutting open a body is quick work. Stein's assistant, Doug Childress, takes a scalpel and, in two easy movements, makes incisions from armpit to armpit and from throat to navel. A few moments more and the man's heart is being weighed and examined.
     "This is the most important blood vessel in the body," says Stein, poking at the aorta. Lungs, liver, spleen follow. They are cut into slices, and samples are sent to a toxicology lab.
     The head is cut open with a small electric saw, its circular blade the size of a half dollar. "Guy's got a thick skull," says Childress. The skull is then opened with a small chrome wedge. The top of the skull makes a terrible sucking sound as it is removed. Stein weighs the brain and sections it.
     After about 45 minutes, Stein has uncovered nothing. All organs seem normal, and they are put into a plastic bag and returned to the chest cavity, which is crudely sewn up with heavy thread. The skull is packed with cotton.
      The next step is to wait for the lab report. Unlike on the television show "Quincy," which the 70-year-old Stein says is wrong on almost every detail, there are no rushes. The lab report will take up to two weeks. Until then, Stein fills out a temporary death certificate.
     The suburban man's body is returned to the morgue, and case No. 391 rolls into the autopsy room. On the new corpse's right big toe is wired a yellow tag that reads: "Unk. male black." He had been shot in the back at West 57th Place the day before.
     Despite the apparent cause of death, Stein still has to examine the body, murmuring details into a micro-recorder.
     The unknown man's clothes are cut away. A pair of black Air Jordans and a black baseball cap are set aside, near a bloody sponge. The corpse is tilted on its side, the body rigid, like a mannequin. The bullet hole is photographed beside a small ruler. The hole is one-third of an inch in diameter.
     The organs are examined. The bullet is found, lodged in a lung, along with a fragment. It looks small for the damage it has done.
     Stein pulls back a lung to display a pool of blood in the chest.
     "See that?" he says. "This man could have been saved if he was gotten to a hospital in time."
     At the next table, Harold Alexander, a technician for 20 years at the medical examiner's office, finishes sewing up one homicide victim. The body is rolled into the morgue and, 60 seconds later, another one is rolled out into the autopsy room.

     "I've been doing this so long," he says. "Every day. You get tired. You take so much–six days on, six days off. Sooner or later it catches up, the stress builds up. I've quit twice and come back twice."

     To summarize the bodies he handles, Alexander says: "Mostly black. Black male. Young male. Gang-related. Drug-related." In fact, 75 percent of the homicide victims in Chicago last year were black—639 black victims arriving at 2121 W. Harrison.
     Downstairs, near Room 174, Joseph Thomas is compiling the list of new arrivals.
     "We're going to hit the 1,000 homicide mark before year's end," says Thomas. "We're getting six or seven homicides a day. That's a lot of cases. It makes you so you don't want to go out for a drink after work."      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 10, 1991

A 5th star on Chicago’s flag: pep talk or curse?

  
     My people have a useful term that doesn’t translate well: kine hora. It’s Yiddish for “not the evil eye,” but means something akin to “knock on wood.” Were I to toss off some giddily optimistic prediction — “In September, when everything is back to normal, I’m looking forward to enjoying a sunny afternoon at Wrigley Field” — my wife might reply, “Don’t give yourself a kine hora.”
     Fate has a way of grinding our faces in misplaced optimism. My ballgame plans, come September, might haunt me as I’m herded into the temporary detention facility set up inside the shattered ruins of Wrigley, snagged in the federal sweep of writers and people who wear eyeglasses after July’s general societal collapse. I’ll look around, dazed, realizing I’m in the exact spot where I had anticipated an afternoon of peanuts and box scores.
     Best to avoid cheery predictions.
     So when Mayor Lori Lightfoot said, twice, she wants the city’s response to COVID-19 to be worthy of a new star on the Chicago flag, I winced, hope dwindling. Maybe this isn’t the beginning of the end. Maybe this is where the Bad Part starts.
     “I want nothing less than for our efforts over the coming months to truly warrant a fifth star on our flag,” Lightfoot said last week. Maybe she was being merely motivational, the way a Little League coach tells his players “I want every one of you to put in your best Hall-of-Fame effort against the Bumblebees.” That doesn’t mean he expects them to end up in Cooperstown.
     I hope so. Because to sincerely suggest a fifth star ... isn’t that jumping the gun? Isn’t plotting new flag stars an Ed Burke move? The defanged Burke argued a posteriori for a fifth star for the 2016 Olympics which, in case you forgot, didn’t work out so well.
     Fortunately, the solution was posed by the mayor herself, exactly one year ago. 

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Nurses: Tough, tender pros who love their jobs

     I typically write three columns a week, but often there are extras, such as this. I had done a number of interviews with nurses, and two weeks ago my bosses asked if I might do one more for International Nurses Day. I said sure—I try to be agreeable—and it ran last Tuesday.
     The dilemma for me was what to do with it here. Since it ran when I was on vacation, and I had already set up five days of Chicago Icon Week, and didn't want to break the continuity. I could have run it as a second daily post, but that seemed profligate. So I decided to save it until this week, thinking that few readers would care whether they were reading about a nurse on their actual day, and it would put some time between my previous nurse stories and this one. I'm a reader as well as a writer, and I feel as if I've been reading an awful lot of stories about medical personnel. Which is fitting, given the COVID-19 crisis, but also a reminder that it is better to offer too few than too many.

     Michelle Latona is no hero. She’s a nurse, in the emergency department at Mount Sinai Hospital.
     Latona certainly doesn’t consider herself heroic.
     “No, I don’t,” she said. “I wake up every morning and I come to work and do my job.”
     A job that demands she tend to the sick and the dying for 12 hours at a stretch. To juggle patients, rooms, medicines, doses, equipment, colleagues, hours, breaks, all the time keeping focused on the central task: making people well again.
     “We’ve been saving lives the entire time,” she said, admitting that since the COVID-19 pandemic hit Chicago in mid-March, things have changed.
     “This is a different time,” she said. “But I’ve continued to show up to work and do what I do.”
     Latona never knows what’s coming through the door.
     “This is a trauma center,” she said. “We still have gunshots, car accidents. Kids still fall off bunk beds. Now there are extra precautions. We have to go under the assumption that everyone is positive until they’ve proven negative. The COVID adds a little bit of extra stress.”
     That “little bit of extra stress” has to be heroic, the modesty of the truly courageous, since most folks feel extra stress going to the supermarket, never mind having to intubate COVID-19 patients in an ongoing worldwide crisis hitting nursing much harder than most professions.
     Nurses are the tip of the spear. The National Nurses Union reports at least 50 nurses have died in the United States from the coronavirus, and some 10,000 have been sickened by it. The only reason the death toll isn’t higher is because nurses tend to be younger, and fitter. Latona says her main hobby outside the hospital is working out.

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Mock death with American-made flatware

     Nobody is going to look back on the enormous toll of 2020 — the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, the vanished jobs, the businesses that close and never re-open — and think, “What really stung was losing the Home + Housewares Show.”
     Most Chicagoans barely noticed when it was scrapped in early March. Heck, few notice when the show is held. Which is why I go. The Chicago Auto Show, a month before, draws the big media circus. I seldom go to that.
     Why? Cars are easy; sponge mops are hard. Six hours trudging past McCormick Place booths crammed with cutting boards and blenders, travel cups and bath mats, hand soap and slicers, and I’m in my groove. And, yes, there are celebrities: I once ran into Ron Popeil. We talked about his Veg-O-Matic.
     I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to read something that isn’t about the vaporous death that cannot be lied away.
     So, I hatched a plan: present my own little virtual Home + Housewares Show; call a few companies and try to find out what new kind of vegetable brush got lost in the general conflagration.
     That plan got as far as Matt Roberts and Greg Owens, co-owners of Liberty Tabletop.
     “Matt and I worked for Oneida,” Owens said. “We both worked for them, running the factory.”
     Oneida made silverware in Upstate New York for 125 years. But this was in the early 2000s, and China was beginning to not only eat our lunch but make the cutlery to do it.
     “In the early 1980s, China made no flatware,” Owens said. “What is a fork? Stainless steel shaped and polished. If you could buy metal subsidized by your government, you’re going to gobble up business. That’s what happened. Oneida could literally buy the finished product cheaper than they could buy stainless steel to make it.”
     More than a factory was imperiled. There was the town around it.
     “Sherrill, New York, is the smallest city in New York state,” Roberts said. “Twenty-five hundred inhabitants. The closest thing to Mayberry in existence. It was built by the Oneida community, begun in 1848. Very industrious. They’ve made flatware continuously since the 1870s.”
     Oneida closed its Sherrill factory on March 21, 2005. Roberts and Owens opened Sherrill Manufacturing March 22, 2005.
     At first, they focused on doing what the Chinese couldn’t. “Certain intricate patterns, they couldn’t figure out how to manufacture,” Owens said.

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Bulls Flashback 1985. "Chaplain has his own game plan"

    ESPN's documentary "The Last Dance," exploring Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, particularly the 1998 season, airs the last two of its 10 episodes tonight. To mark the occasion, I thought I'd reach waaaay back into the vault for the time I spoke with Michael Jordan.
    Of course, as you will see, the chat was a complete accident. First, the backstory: I was 24, and the opinion page editor of the Wheaton Daily Journal. But I was able to also write freelance for the Sun-Times through use of that important journalistic tool called Not Asking Permission. I had met Rev. Henry Soles one Sunday in his church, where fate had put me in a pew next to Cubs great Billy Williams. He gave testimony to the role of faith in his life. 
     I interviewed Rev. Soles for the Daily Journal, and after a standard profile question—do you have any hobbies?—was surprised to learn he was the chaplain to the Chicago Bulls. If you're wondering why I wrote that story for the Sun-Times and not for the paper that employed me, the answer is easy. My thinking was: the Journal is where I am, but the Sun-Times is where I am going.
     This was the first Bulls game I ever attended. I do have a few memories of talking to Jordan: first, that he was buck naked when I met him, sorting through letters before the game—Cubs tickets come to mind— handing certain ones to an assistant with instructions. Second, that when we began talking I had no idea who he was. I asked about chapel, he replied, and I was about to say, "And you are...?" when he pulled on his jersey. Well, I can read. I jotted the name in my notebook. 
    The Rev. Soles served as Bulls chaplain for 30 years, during all their championship seasons, and died in 2018.

     The game between the Bulls and the L.A. Clippers is 90 minutes away and inside the Chicago Stadium the action is still in the stands, not on the court. Vendors are hooking soft pretzels on rotating racks. Policemen are drinking coffee and watching the LuvaBulls practice a new routine.     
     The athletes begin to arrive. Forward David Greenwood is the first to enter Gate 3 1/2. A young fan approaches, pen and paper held out in a gesture that needs no words. Greenwood signs, and moved on. Orlando Woolridge does the same, pausing to smile at the fan.
     Henry Soles, tall enough to be a basketball player but, at 49, several years too old, follows through the gate. The fan does not ask for Soles' autograph. Yet soles is also a member of the Bulls, though few would recognize him. He is the team's chaplain, and has come to perform the service that precedes almost every NBA game.
     "Everybody respects the pastor," says Bulls star forward Michael Jordan. "With the stress and pressure athletes go through, it's good to have someone you can talk to, relax with someone to take the pressure off."
     Players from both teams attend the chapel, held in a small dressing room near the lockers. It is the only chance they have to meet, other than on the court.
     On this day, seven players show up. Five are Bulls: forwards Steve Johnson, Sidney Green and Greenwood, guard Wes Matthews and center Jawann Oldam. Two Clippers attend as well—Junior Bridgeman, who is president of the NBA Players Association and Harvey Catchings. It is an average turnout.
     Those who don't attend are distracted by other pre-game activities. Jordan is talking to reporters. Woodridge is having his feet taped by trainer Mark Pfeil.
     "I know I should be going," says Woodridge. "But I've been busy with a lot of injuries this year."
     Soles asks Catchings to open with a prayer. "Most gracious heavenly father," he begins, "we pray that you will be with us as we venture out onto the court..."
     Then Soles, perched on a table with a Bible in his hand, begins the lesson. His style is informal and conversational.
     "We'll be talking tonight about meeting challenges and goals," he says, looking from payer to player. He quotes a story from the Book of Numbers about Joshua, Caleb and the 12 spies who were intimidated by race of giants.
     "They were taler than Artis," says Soles, referring to the 7-foot-2 inch ex-Bull Artis Gilmore. "These were giant guys." The players, nodding occasionally in agreement, listen intently.
     Soles' message is brief. "We can meet any challenge that comes to us as long as we feel God's presence," he says.
     In 10 minutes, the lesson is over. Soles ends the service with a prayer , the athletes bowing their heads. Then they shake hands and head upstairs to the court for their warmups.
     "I don't give them a theological treatise wrapped in jargon," Soles said. "I give a simple, but hopefully inspiring message, from a biblical as well as a practical standpoint. We pray to do our best on the field, respect teammates and opponents, play up to potential and not suffer any serious injury."
     Soles' easy-going style and zealous service to his faith has won admiration from athletes across the country. Julius Erving can be counted on to bring six or seven teammates when the Philadelphia 76ers are in town. Famed Cubs left-fielder Billy Williams attends Soles' church in west suburban Wheaton and is a good friend.
     "The word is out all around the teams," said the Bulls' Greenwood. "I think everybody in the league has tremendous amounts of respect for him."
     In addition to chapel, Soles performs baptisms and counseling for the players and attends retreats and seminars with them.
     "I know Rev. Soles outside of what he's doing here," said the Clippers' Catchings, who has attended conferences of the Pro-Basketball Fellowship with Soles. "He has really enhanced my life. He's a great human being and I have always admired him."
     Last August, Soles led a group of athletes to Africa. The athletes, including Bobby Jones of the 76ers and Gilmore, now of the San Antonia Spus, did missionary work in Kenya and served as Christian witnesses to young people.
     They did this on their own times and it wasn't publicized, but they felt it was something they should do," said Soles.
     He began his sports ministry in 1975, providing chapel for the Bears and major league baseball teams at the request of ex-Navy quarterback Bruck Bickel, then director of the Chicago Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
     In 1979, he helped form Intersport Associates, a nonprofit organization that coordinates ministry activities aimed at professional athletes, and he added the Bulls to his roster in 1981.
     "Once inside I saw a great need for spiritual help on their part," he said. "They had the professional ability, they had the plaudits of the crowd, but they had a need for spiritual direction. I felt because of my background and ability I could help them."
     Soles also is an associate minister at the DuPage A.M.E. Church in Wheaton, as is his wife, Effie.
     His association with professional athletes gives Soles a down-to-earth view of his glamorous friends. he said that while many envy the athletes for their high salaries and exciting lifestyles, they are subject to great pressures. There are long separations from families, constant media exposure, the perils of excess and the demands of the sport.
     "I don't see them as stars. I see them as individuals who have needs," he said. "They have the normal problems for people their age—women, drugs, money—but the problems are intensified by the players' high visibility. Their temptations are greater.
     "Material things are not lasting, and I try to get the athletes to understand that," he said. "Life is short, especially the professional life of a sports player, and they must start planning for retirement the day they sign on.
     "We help them to put their career in perspective. We show them there are things more important than a sports career—their family, who has to suffer their absence, and most importantly, God Himself, who gave them the ability to excel."
     On this day, the Bulls excel, beating the Clippers 117-101. After the game, Soles stops by both locker rooms. Outside, the fans press and wave, clotted around the exit. After showering and dressing, the Bulls players leave the locker room, signing autographs as they walk briskly to their cars.
     "Rod Higgins! Rod Higgins!" a young man shouts to his companion. "I'm telling you, ROD HIGGINS!!"
     Henry Soles, unnoticed, tucks his Bible under his arm and disappears into the night.
   —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 3, 1985