UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT UR2ANA-CHAMPAIGN ILL HIST. SURVEY /? V -' Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/bishopsheilcyobyOOtrea %, «*$ €h tmt/i by ROGER L. TREAT JULIAN MESSNER, INC., NEW YORK PUBLISHED BY JULIAN MESSNER, INC. 8 WEST 4OTH STREET, NEW YORK 1 8 PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN CANADA BY THE COPP CLARK COMPANY, LTD. COPYRIGHT 195 1, BY JULIAN MESSNER, INC. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA This boo\ is for GERDA Author's Acknowledgment J7 IRST, in newspaper days, I tried to write an eight-hundred word column about him — and threw the result in the trash-can; later there was to be a magazine article but that was like trying to put Niagara Falls in a thimble. Now this book is planned, leaving me with the feeling that no human could live long enough, nor find enough pages, to write the chronicle of this delightful man of God called Bernard James Sheil, founder of the CYO. The tale of his accomplishment through the CYO goes like this: you take a 15-year-old street kid who is rapidly becoming the neighborhood monster; if he has a family, he is driving it slowly mad; any bookie in town will give you 8 to 1 and 20 points that he is heading for the police line-up. Then — presto — the CYO gets him, his whole life-pattern does a back-flip like an acrobat bouncing on a trampolin, and he is a grand little citizen — probably a better one than you or I. A story in that? Of course. Why — you could write a book about it. Then the crashing truth dawns: there have been more than a million CYO boys and girls in Chicago alone in the first twenty vii viii Author s Acknowledgment years since Cardinal Mundelein told Bishop Sheil to go ahead with his dream ! Do you write a million or more chapters ? So, how do you write this story ? The man himself, perhaps ? How many volumes do you need to tell of a man who is saying a solemn Mass at a certain moment and two hours later is prancing around a boxing ring — still in his cassock, with boxing gloves added, slap- ping the ears off a fresh young punk who thought he was tough ? How many anecdotes and sagas to wear out how many type- writers can you write of a man who can — without "visible means of support" — create a college, a radio station, a prosperous junk business, one of the most famous boxing promotions in the country, several magnificent community homes — to say nothing of a comprehensive social service program and always friendly help and recognition for the needy of every race, color and creed? How can you measure spiritual good? How gauge the im- pact on society of a man who steps fearlessly into one social problem after another by decisive positive action which sends out ever-expanding ripples of social influence over the sea of American life? It can't be done. The reader will forgive an old sports writer if he seems to lay much stress on the great boxing tournaments which brought the CYO to national notice and which continue to do such untold good in building aimless boys into purposeful men. It is not merely that these tournaments dramatize the work of the CYO. It is not merely that they establish the pattern of Authors Acknowledgment ix Bishop Shell's technique of socially and spiritually significant action — a technique which starts from discernment of a need and the understanding of it from the point of view of the needy, then moves rapidly under a near-mystical trust in Divine Provi- dence to focus a phenomenal organizational and executive talent on the direct and immediate fulfillment of that need. The boxing is more than that. It is a valid symbol of Bishop Sheil's dynamic effect, as priest and as citizen, upon the world in which he lives. The description given of his approach to youth through the world of sport holds good with due chang- ing of details for the other aspects of his many-sided effort. The same effect could have been obtained by focusing upon the West End Center, the Sheil School of Social Sciences, or any other of the activities which can only be reported here in terms of their extrinsic achievement. If the writer has chosen to ap- proach Bishop Sheil and the CYO through boxing, it is for two good reasons: it is his own field and the one in which he first saw Bishop Sheil and his organization at work; it is the one best fitted to portray a fighting apostle. "What is this CYO?" wrote the charming Miss Gertrude Blumenthal of J. Messner Inc., Publishers, when we agreed to go ahead with this manuscript. Well, Miss Blumenthal, it's something like this — You go down to "The Center" in the heart of the South State Street skid row section of Chicago. It's a dirty building on the outside like all the others in Chicago's filthy Loop. A rattletrap elevated clanks beside the windows, each train sounding a little nearer collapse than the one before. You shake off the swarm of x Authors Acknowledgment "winces" who flounder out of the dark along the sidewalk, and you walk up to the gym on the second floor. It's a big gym, probably a hundred feet square. There are two boxing rings, and in each two boys are shuffling around punching each other. They are Jew, Negro, Italian and Japanese. The coaches, an Irishman and a Pole, interrupt each other yelping instructions. Two heavy bags are thudding as they get banged by a Mexican and another Negro. This is late training. The CYO tournament is getting close. Over by the other wall, under the Honor Roll for World War II, is a bunch of kids with musical instruments. More than forty of them sit down in band formation, and you get ready to wince even though the conductor tells you that this is less than half the regular group. They all look about fourteen, and half of them are girls. The steady thud and shuffle continue in the boxing rings as the conductor raps for "ready" and raises his baton. Again you grit your teeth, realizing that all writers must suffer for art's sake. Down goes the baton and out it comes, clear as a bell — strong, confident, healthy, glorious. First it's Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," perfectly done. Then it's "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and you haven't got much control over the lump in your throat or the damp in your eyes as you realize you never really heard it played before — not as it is being played here in this sweat-smelling gymnasium, where the Negro and the Jew and the Italian clout each other in perfect friendship, and there is an almost suffocating realiza- tion that God loves this place. Authors Acknowledgment xi That, Miss Blumenthal, to at least one man, is the CYO — The Catholic Youth Organization of Chicago. Without the heart-warming cooperation of Lou Radzienda, Jack Scalon, Admiral Herbert J. Grassie, Ray "Scooter" McLean, Bernie Masterson and countless other Chicagoans who love this great American whom they all call "the Bishop," this slight recognition of the magnificent life he has lived could not have been completed. And, for the many hours of talk, help, advice and inspiration Bishop Bernard J. Sheil has seen fit to give to this unjuvenile delinquent he is eternally grateful. May this book be his humble, and inadequate, thanks. Roger L. Treat ^W€m€e0$<& ^f0&€ifafep &ape Author's Acknowledgment vii i Trie Evil Is with Us 3 2 A Home Dedicated to Charity J 9 3 This I Will Not Forget 32 4 A Dream Takes Shape 40 5 Here Was a New Music 58 6 A Monkey for Jimmy 74 7 Stars in the Fistic Sky 84 8 On Many Fronts 98 9 A Parade to the Gallows 107 io For Those Who Walk in Darkness 123 ii Dark Stronghold of Evil 130 12 I Find Them on the Byways 142 13 A Pasture Near Statesville Prison 149 14 A Live Teacher and a Living School 161 15 From Bataan to Bastogne 186 16 I Shall Always Fight 195 Postscript 206 BISHOP SHE1L AND THE CYO CHAPTER ONE The Evil Is with Us 5P ATHER Bernard Sheil, catapulted out of deep sleep by an explosive nightmare, relaxed his hard, taut muscles and tried to remember what the dream had been. He could guess what had caused it, but awakening had washed the details from his memory. The grey light of a cold morning was the background beyond his window. Pellets of sleet scratched the glass and piled a deepening drift on the sill. The alarm clock clanked loudly beyond six o'clock and heat was banging into the radi- ator. Father Sheil's eyes found the picture taken twelve years before on the day he had been ordained. He smiled at the dark brush of hair which had dominated his head in those days, and the smile in the picture mirrored strong teeth between deep dimples beneath the powerful, hawklike nose. Even in the pic- ture, the widely spaced blue eyes were abnormally large, prom- ising an hypnotic power to soothe in humor or terrify in anger. The whole face would have fitted an Olympic athlete, a philosopher, a buccaneer. 3 4 Bishop Sheil and the CYO The brilliant eyes were closed as he talked with God about the work of the day, and particularly of the harrowing task of the night. His mind flashed across the blocks of the city to the place where he knew the boy was waiting. He knew the powerful young body would still be sitting on the comfortless cot, black eyes staring at the growing pile of cigarette butts in the corner as dawn replaced the naked electric bulb which had been glaring through the night. The monotonous rhythmic moan of a fog-horn thumped the ears of Father Sheil as he thought of the boy, seeing his eyes stunned by the horror of sights remembered and fear of the night to come. Only once or twice had they smiled as a boy's eyes should, during the past six weeks, as he talked of the few cherished episodes of his appalling nineteen years. There had been the puppy he had loved until his father had tossed it into the roaring furnace; there had been the man whose name he never knew who had spent two Sunday afternoons teaching him to dropkick a football. These were the two treasures the boy brought now to the summing up of his lifetime. These had been his total happiness. Father Sheil decided that the most strenuous of his daily calisthenics must come first in the frigid room, and for the next fifteen minutes he performed a routine of violence that would have sent many professional athletes limping back to bed. In the warmth of his bathroom he shaved quickly, suffered the Spartan ritual of a warm-then-cold shower and scrubbed his entire body into bouncing vitality with the sandpaper-rough towel. As he combed his thinning hair he wondered if there The Evil Is with Us 5 was anything short of Divine intervention to keep it from dis- appearing so rapidly. He dressed quickly and hurried through the corridors to the back of Holy Name Cathedral which joined the rectory. Out- side the traffic noises of Chicago Avenue where it crossed the sleazy trail of State Street were beginning to stir to the volume of going-to-work time. The rattling streetcars clanked through the switches of the intersection, muffled by the deepening snow and sleet. Father Sheil stopped by a window to watch the pedestrians leaning into the wind, then moved quickly through the massive church for his morning Mass. Five blocks south, closer to the drumming blast of the fog- horn, the boy sat alone. He could hear the continuous creaking of a chair down the corridor where his guard waited restlessly for the morning relief man. Through the high barred window came the faint gurgling of pigeons puttering about the eaves, and the angry scratch of sleet against the gutters. Since mid- night the woom woom woom of the maddening horn had pounded through the walls until it became part of the air he was breathing. The boy knew every creak, every gurgle, every scratch, every sound of the city which filtered through the badly fitted win- dow of his cell. He would know these noises through eternity. You could transport him anywhere, take away his eyesight, blank out his memory for a thousand years. Then, if he should come back to the world and hear these noises he would say: this is Chicago; this is a cell in Coo\ County Jail, two blocks north of the river; this is where I waited to die. 6 Bishop Sheil and the CYO His hand reached to the table beside the cot, fingered a cigarette from the nearly empty pack and stuck it between his lips. His eyes, looking like circles of mud beneath his blond hair, never left the spot on the wall at which he had been staring since long before dawn. A match clicked against his thumbnail as he counted eight bongs on the clock bell far south in the Loop. He twisted around on the narrow cot, lay flat on his back and let the cigarette smolder between his lips. He had not slept for more than fifty hours. As the minutes ticked by he lay motionless except for the steady working of the jaw muscles beneath the young skin of his face. Dark lashes, almost too long to be real, contrasted sharply with his thick, blond hair. Beneath their lids his eyes crawled and ached from the long battle with fear, the long staring at the hateful walls. Once more he would hear the eight count by the deep bass bell. Once more, and when it sounded again it would mean that he had four hours and one minute left in this world. What difference did it make ? What difference did the bell or time or anything make? He'd rather have it now now now and get it over, get it done. Suddenly he wanted the clock to hurry. Until now he had been fighting the speed of time, watching furtively for the first light of each morning, sweating and trembling when the long black night faded against the advance scouts of the sun. Always, until this moment, there had been a seed of hope that some miracle would happen to take him far away where no dirty cement walls could trap him again. Even after his lawyer had told him, with the heartless un- The Evil Is with Us 7 concern of a man announcing a baseball score, "The Governor threw you a strike, kid. That's as far as I can go. You've got six weeks to get ready" — even after that he waited, tensely expecting something would happen. Now he knew that noth- ing could change the program. He had been caught cold, his guilt in his hands, when the cop's bullet had slammed into his chest to drop him on top of the twisted, bleeding bodies of his two victims. Even then he had known that he had no chance, even as he knew that he had been double-crossed and framed by the man who had promised him the miserable fee to do the killing. At the trial he hadn't even mentioned it, not from a sense of loyalty to his betrayer as the ridiculous news- paper stories had said, but simply because he didn't care any more. In return, the Big Guy had provided a lawyer who was neither able nor interested, although he went through the mo- tions of defense. What miracle had he been waiting for ? What new force had come into his life lately to make his soul grind with the up- heaval of change so that he saw everything differently now? Was it the blazing spirit of Father Sheil whose gentle voice had told him the simple, sensible truths about God ? He didn't sneer about God any more, and he shuddered when he remem- bered some of the foul remarks he had made about God in the past. He had been hesitant to accept the friendship of this startling man of God who had brought a smile into his cell when he was fighting the first terrifying realization that he must die. Within a few moments he had known that this was no sissy 8 Bishop Sheil and the CYO priest but a rough-and-tumble scrapper who happened to be righting with the right gang instead of the wrong gang. Here was a man who vibrated the eagerness to punch for God, with his fists if necessary. He knew that Father Sheil would not hesitate to walk up to any hoodlum or gun killer he had ever remembered, and shove his gun down his throat. This priest was more a man than any of them, the most manly man he had ever known. For a long time he could not understand why such a man could be a priest. The sudden bong of the quarter-hour bell broke his train of thought, and although there was no outward sign as the jaw muscles continued to work rhythmically, he was startled that fifteen minutes had passed so quickly. God give me strength. God give me courage. Don't let it ta\e too long. Father Sheil, a muffler wrapped high around his ears above his warm coat, stepped into the freezing blow of the sleet and pulled the rectory door closed behind him. He stood still for a moment breathing deeply, enjoying the sharp cold air filling his lungs. This was a day for physical combat with the ele- ments, for soaring off a ski-jump to climb high into the angry sky, or for plowing across the lake in the open cockpit of a speed boat. He stopped at the corner newsstand, picked up the two morning papers and flashed a smile at the one-armed man with bloodshot eyes who grinned sheepishly as Father Sheil ap- proached. The Evil Is with Us 9 "Haven't seen you in some time, Sam." "No, Father. I had a little trouble." "Anything serious?" "Same old thing, Father. I went out with the boys one night and it was a couple of weeks before I could get sober. This bootleg hootch is awful stuff, awful stuff." "Your wife's been pretty cold keeping the stand going, Sam. She's a good woman. Couldn't you get one of your friends to take over when you get started?" "I should, Father, but a man doesn't think straight when he gets going. Oh, no, Father, I can't take that much. We'll get along all right." "Pay me back when you get straightened out, Sam. And tell your wife I want to buy some more of that marmalade she makes." "I will, Father, and thanks." "Bless you, Sam. And your good wife." He went into a cafeteria and ordered some things for his boys at the jail. All over the room breakf asters looked up as if compelled, without knowing why, to glance at his firm-strid- ing athletic figure. He had a smile for all of them, a greeting for more than half. Even the chronic "winces" of the neighbor- hood, fighting the thudding pain of their hang-overs with inadequate coffee, felt a moment of inner relief when his sharp blue eyes met theirs. He took a cup of coffee, spread the papers on the table, glanced at the screaming headlines: MAD DOG DIES TO- NIGHT was one version. DEFIANT KILLER LAUGHS was 10 Bishop Sheil and the CYO the other. Father Sheil winced, turned the pages quickly and started to study the sports section. For the rest of the time he was absorbed in the news about baseball camps opening in Florida and California. All the heroes of the diamond were packing their gear to head for sun country — and there, he thought, but for the will of God, goes Benny Sheil. How different and simple life would have been if he had gone on with his baseball. He probably could have stayed in the major leagues, pitching all summer, resting all winter. Why had he decided on the church as a lifework? Family influ- ence? Early environment? His parents had never urged it, would have been just as warmly loyal if he had gone on with athletics. He remembered the first time his mother had come to see him play football in high school days. She had left the game after the first quarter, had hurried to the nearest phone and telephoned the hospital to have an ambulance standing by, ready to roll, because she was sure he was going to be torn to shreds. But she had never suggested that he stop playing, and after a few games she was an ardent fan. No. Baseball was comparatively a loafer's life, with short hours of displaying a skill capriciously given to a few mortals, and long hours with no occupation to drain the tank of energy each day. A pitcher worked two hours every four or five days through half the year. A pitcher might throw forty complete games, or their equivalent That was eighty hours of concen- trated "labor" out of — let's see — 8,760 in a year. Heavens, was it that easy ? Think what a pitcher could accomplish in his off- The Evil Is with Us 11 hours, and yet few of them ever became anything but ex- pitchers. Hesitantly he turned back to the front page of the Tribune, which, in its editorial wisdom, found the execution of a young boy the most important news event of the day. The boy would die at one minute past midnight, and for some reason this was more newsworthy than the lives and deaths of billions of other people. A hundred other souls would pass on, in Chicago alone, dur- ing the coming twenty-four hours. Cancer, heart ailments, tuberculosis, child-birth, infantile paralysis would take their normal number of victims. Another statistical segment would perish in the streets under the wheels of vehicles. More would be consumed in fire, plunge into the river, slash their wrists or go down under gunfire. Mrs. O'Hara, two doors from the rectory, would surely not last out the day. Mrs. O'Hara's death would not be a front page story. The "Mad Dog Killer" was news. Father Sheil could sense that the whole city was gloating because a boy was to be killed in an orgiastic public spectacle. He knew that thousands had requested permission to witness the hanging; that many had gone to great effort to wriggle through political channels and thus be on hand to watch, with frightening inhuman intensity, how the boy would act as he walked up the steps to the gallows. Tomorrow's papers would report every reaction of the hang- ing. The boy was game. The boy snarled defiance. The boy col- lapsed at the last moment and had to be carried up the thirteen 12 Bishop Sheil and the CYO steps. The boy had paid the penalty. Crime doesn't pay. The wages of sin is death. And within hours another boy would commit murder. Who was thinking about the boy's soul? He folded the papers and left them on the table, wrapped his muffler high around his ears under the black velour hat and hurried out into the sleet. Halfway down the block he stopped in a drugstore, bought a carton of cigarettes and a handful of candy bars. Back on the sidewalk he ducked his head into the cutting blast of the storm and plowed ahead. People walking in the other direction were surprised to glimpse a grin on his face. That night they would say in wonder, "I saw a priest battling into the sleet this morning. He was almost falling on his face in the slush and the wind, but he had a big, wide smile. He seemed to be enjoying it. Looked just like a football player smashing into the line." Father Sheil could feel the tenseness as he neared the dirty- walled building. A wave of fear was rolling out of the long corridors of the cell blocks, splashing through the hallways to the lobby and into the street, with the deadly power of a poisonous gas. This was man-fear, fear of death, fear of planned death. Many of the prisoners within these walls had killed, heartlessly, and would kill again if the occasion should arise when they became free people. Several had learned to perform the slaughter of their fellow men in the armies of the first World War. Death was not new to them. It was scheduled death that filled them with terror. The fact that another man was to be killed at exactly one minute past midnight, slamming The Evil Is with Us 13 into eternity from perfect health, shrouded his going with an aura of inexplicable horror. For the past week the walls of Cook County Jail had housed a seething ferment of violent emotions that could explode into uncontrolled riot at any moment. Usually docile prisoners were snarling at the guards, fighting with each other, committing childish acts of vandalism that kept the entire staff hopping twenty-four hours a day. Mattresses were set on fire, plumbing was deliberately clogged to flood the cells. Many times during the long nights the whole jail would rattle, as the prisoners set up a maddening rhythmic drumming of tin cups against steel bars. Through it all the boy who was to die waited alone in Death Row. His final appeal had been refused. The moment of his execution was certain. He would die on his twentieth birth- day, exactly sixty seconds after the day had begun. Father Sheil, shaking the melting sleet from his coat, walked briskly through the grubby hallway to the steel-barred entrance of the main prison building, and waited for the clanking key in the lock. The drawn face of the guard cracked into a forced smile. "You want to go see the kid now, Father?" "Yes, Leo. I can find my way all right. You needn't bother." "I guess you can, Father. You'll be with us tonight, I sup- pose." "Yes." "Pretty tough on the kid. Pretty rugged way to die, but I guess he deserves it." 14 Bishop Sheil and the CYO "The boy will have a good death, Leo. He knows God now, and His Father will forgive him." "What's going to happen to all these young punks, Father? This place is so full now we have to stack them up like stove- wood at night." "There are no problem children, Leo. There is no youth problem. I don't believe there is any such thing as a juvenile delinquent. There are problems of youth and the older people are the delinquents. We are the ones who have failed, Leo, not the men in these cells." "Well, you ought to know, Father. But I'd hate to have some of these mugs catch me in an alley with a hundred bucks in my hand." Father Sheil smiled, patted the big guard on the shoulder and hurried down the corridor. As he passed the cells, the loud, profane talking ceased. The men crowded against the bars watching him. They knew where he was going. This time they would not delay him with the usual greetings and banter of his regular visits. Someone else needed him now. The boy's eyes opened suddenly and his head snapped up from the thin mattress as he felt the presence of Father Sheil standing before the door of his cell. A half smile lifted the corners of his full lips and the cigarette butt joined the pile in the corner of his cell. A key scraped in the lock. The guard moved out of sight and the warm smile of Father Sheil fired life into the boy's dull eyes. "Good morning, son. God blesses you this morning." The Evil Is with Us 15 "Thank you for coming so early, Father. It was a long night here alone." "You haven't been alone. God is here always." "Here? In this?" The boy looked around the dirty cell which was scarcely large enough for the cot, table, plumbing fixture and the two men. "Yes, here and everywhere. And always when you need Him." "In there— tonight?" "Always and everywhere, my son. Here are some cigarettes and those candy bars that you like. Awful things. They stick in my teeth." "Thanks, Father. You've been the only person who ever gave a damn about me in all my life. I never had a mother. The only things I can remember about my father made me hate his guts. I hated everybody I ever knew until I met you." The youngster stopped and looked down at the floor as though embarrassed at his own words. Then he went on, speak- ing slowly, a puzzled wrinkle on his brow. "I've been bad all my life. I've been trying to figure out why I was bad. I don't think, really, that I wanted to be. Why is it, Father? Does God pick out a certain number of babies to be the bad ones — just so cops will have a job, or something?" Father Sheil wasn't smiling now. His blue eyes blazed with the intensity of his anger. "You are not bad, son. There is no evil in you. You are a son of the God Who wanted your life to be good. He wanted 16 Bishop Sheil and the CYO joy and peace in it. The evil belongs to the rest of us, to the ones who never had a really big problem in their lives. They are too selfish, too wrapped up in getting more for themselves, to care about boys who have nothing. The evil is with us who live outside these walls, more than with the men inside them." The boy shook his head, riffled his fingers through his hair. "I never heard talk like that, Father Sheil. It's hard for me to understand. It's just backwards from the way I learned it. I figured you had to steal and cheat and kill to get what you needed to live. I had to steal food when I was young because I couldn't get enough any other way." The words poured out of the boy as if he had been saving them up for this minute. "I remember stealing a pair of shoes from a drunk when I was about ten. Otherwise I wouldn't have had any shoes. The woman my father was living with threw mine out with the garbage one morning. She slapped me around when I cried be- cause my feet were cold on the linoleum. So I went out that night and pinched some ofT of a drunk. You could always find a wino passed out in the hallway. The woman laughed when I brought them home because they were too big for me. She and the old man took me down to the saloon and made me walk around so all the other drunks could laugh at me. I wore those shoes for about six months, and I wouldn't go to school because I thought the kids would laugh at me like the men in the saloon. Nobody cared whether I went or not. Then the old man went to jail again, and the woman got a new man, and I went to the orphanage. They gave me some shoes." The Evil Is with Us 17 Father Sheil sat on the cot, silently encouraging the boy to talk. "Funny thing happened later, Father. I just thought of it for the first time since it happened. When I got out of the orphanage and went back with the old man again, I found him passed out in the alley one night. I didn't even think of what I was doing. I just went and took his shoes off him. Then I walked to the river and threw them in. It was the only pair he had. I think he always suspected that I did it. I wish I'd told him. I wish I'd told him how I hated him." "Easy, son. You have to forgive your father." "What? Forgive that no-good bastard?" "Yes. You must forgive him. When you go to God there must be no hatred in your soul. The one you hated most must also have the most love." "Father Sheil, that's crazy. How could I forgive my old man for what he did to me? I told you already about him. He started me stealing. He made me go out on stick-ups to get money for his liquor. He even gave me the first gun I ever carried. He led me just the opposite to what you talk about — and you sit there and tell me I should forgive him." "That's the way it is, son. Think of the prayer we've been learning. It says 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' Those words have meaning, son. You are asking God to forgive you to the exact degree that you forgive others. You believe that your own father did you the most harm, so you must forgive him the most. Forgive him completely and bless him, no matter how difficult it seems. And 18 Bishop Shell and the CYO God will forgive you completely. Your soul must carry no hatred when it goes to God." There was another silence. "That's tough, Father. If anyone else suggested that, I'd laugh in his face. But you're the only man who ever cared what I did or said." "I think it would be good to go over that psalm you like, son. Want to do it now — together?" "Okay, Father Sheil. I think I'm beginning to see what it means. Just in time, I guess." He gave an awkward laugh, then grew grave. "The Lord is my shepherd," the young voice joined the priest's, "I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me. . . ." The creaking of the guard's chair ceased in the corridor. No sound broke the stillness in the cell except the moaning blast of the fog-horn, the low voices of the two friends and the eternal gurgling of the pigeons on the eaves. CHAPTER TWO A Home Dedicated to Charity JL HEY prayed a while. Then the priest talked gently, ear- nestly and convincingly of the meaning of life, of the difference between Time and Eternity, of the goodness of God, of the Good Thief who is the one man we know for certain to be in Heaven because he turned to Christ in his last moments and heard those all-promising words, "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." They fell into one of those peace-filled silences in which two people who understand each other are drawn closer together than they could be by any words. Then the boy began to talk. Quietly this time and slowly, dragging up memories one by one out of the black pit that had been his short life. It was as if he were unburdening himself of a load that had been crushing him. He spoke in the wonder- ing daze of a man shaking off darkness, and stepping into the light of day. He remembered places, and people and things — all of them 19 20 Bishop Sheil and the CYO murky pieces in a jigsaw puzzle built upon the sordid Chicago gutter-to-gallows story that the young priest was hearing for the twentieth time in three years. As the boy went on, Father Stud's heart swelled and his mind went back to his own youth. He too, had been born in Chicago and brought up on a street just eight blocks north of the one that had fashioned this lad. But what a difference those eight blocks meant in the memories of the two! Somehow it always seemed like springtime in the home of the Sheils. A blizzard could be raging outside the door, or the searing heat of a Chicago summer could be curling the shingles off the roof, but within there was laughter and love and under- standing which gave the whole house an aura of sweet life blossoming in a beautiful garden. It was a happy sanctuary for anyone in trouble; it was an ideal growing place for a boy in the last years of the peaceful nineteenth century. No automo- biles raced through the steets of St. Columbkille's Parish to leave a trail of maimed and slaughtered children; no radio, nor television, blared terrifying international crises; World Wars One, Two and Three were still dormant germs in the minds of other youngsters about the same age as Benny Sheil — young- sters who would become disciples of destruction when they reached their maturity. The elder Sheils were neither rich nor poor, nor concerned about the problems of finance. There was income from a family coal company and from real estate, and father James Sheil con- trived enough insurance business to keep the family solvent. Neither he nor mother Rosella, whom he called "Rosalee," had A Home Dedicated to Charity 21 any desire to accumulate more than a comfortable working share of worldly goods. Oftentimes all the thriftiness of Rosella Sheil would be forced to come to the rescue, when the gener- osity of her husband led him, at hearing the hard-luck story of friend or stranger, to empty his pockets. Idleness and empty hours were never a problem in the early life of young Bernard Sheil. In fact, it was just the reverse. He was so full of turbulent energy that no day was long enough to complete half the projects he had in mind. First there was baseball — and those were the days when baseball was truly the national game. Hockey was still a strange game played by Canadians ; golf a sissy enterprise that would have been hooted out of town; tennis was unknown. Football was beginning to make itself felt, but was still an uninteresting pushing match. Only baseball was important to Benny Sheil and his cronies in the neighborhood, and at baseball Benny was supreme. In those days, as always, the best player was automatically captain and pitcher for the sandlot games, and Benny dreamed of going through high school, through college, to the day when he would take the mound for the Chicago Cubs and win the championship singlehanded. Thanks to the wise guidance of his mother, there were other activities in the life of young Ben. He attended dancing classes, went through an intensive schooling in the art of fencing, spent many hours practicing the piano. His schoolwork was slightly above a passing average, and his choice of reading matter for pleasure was unusually high. But none of these things, nor all of them put together, could crowd out baseball, and his fanatic 22 Bishop Sheil and the CYO study of the art of pitching. As the years went by, Benny Sheil was determined that he would practice until he could equal the ability of the immortal Christy Mathewson who was his ideal. Many sober baseball critics have maintained that Benny threw with just as much speed as Mathewson and might well have been a star in major league competition. Certainly several major league teams were anxious to find out, and to pay the young fireball artist well while he made the test. The chaplain interrupted his own thoughts to place a sym- pathetic hand on the shoulder of the boy as he choked out a particularly sordid story of one of his "stepmothers." Then the image of his own mother came into his mind, and he thought of the loving guidance that had shaped his own life. Rosella Bartley Sheil was a woman of startling beauty and a rare understanding of her child. Not once did she or father Jim ever suggest that he become a priest — or anything else, for that matter. Carefully, without driving, nor making his many projects seem arduous, she encouraged him when he took up reading and music, as she did in his fencing, boxing and acro- batic Indian club swinging. Before he packed his clothes to go away to St. Viator's boarding school at the tender age of eleven, he was reasonably proficient in all these arts besides his beloved baseball. Both James and Rosella Sheil believed that their only child was an individual who must make his own mistakes and his own decisions, and that the best way to prepare him for life was to let him develop his own plans from the start. Advice was always ready if the young boy wanted it, and his decisions A Home Dedicated to Charity 23 were discussed with both his parents. If his reasoning was not sound, they told him why. Jim Sheil was used to this. He had been the unofficial confessor, adviser and elder statesman of St. Columbkille's Parish as long as people could remember him being there at all. He was the kind of man who invited the troubles of others to rest on his broad shoulders, and his humor- ously wise outlook on life helped many neighbors over the rough spots. His generosity and availability to people in trouble was assumed by all the parishioners in St. Columbkille's, and he never failed to live up to his reputation. While Jim Sheil was the wise and benevolent elder states- man of St. Columbkille's, Rosella was its queen. Everyone loved her for her kindness, and for her home devoted to chanty. Some feared her because of her infallible, mystic sixth sense which became a legend. Her startling blue eyes seemed to strip a person down to the bare framework of good and evil which made him. No frauds fooled her even for a split second. "Be- ware of that one, Ben," she would say. "He is an evil man, masquerading very cleverly." Under the protection and encouragement of these fine parents Benny Sheil had always enjoyed a home that gave him a full- ness of freedom. He came and went as he wished, as long as he kept all his studies and other work up to date. There was only one rule that could not be broken. He had to tell his parents when he would be home, and he had to be there on time. In 1899 two Catholic boarding schools were available within a reasonable distance of Chicago. One was St. Viator's, near 24 Bishop Shell and the CYO Kankakee; the other was Notre Dame at South Bend. Both were considered good-sized, growing institutions with student bodies already averaging more than three hundred young fel- lows a year. There wasn't much difference between them, and Benny Sheil chose St. Viator's so that he could go along with several of his baseball-playing chums. Thus, to Kankakee he went in the fall of 1899 to spend the next ten years getting his formal education. The peaceful years rolled by rapidly. There was football in the fall, with Benny playing quarterback behind the flying wedge formations of the time. There was baseball through the spring, and during the summer when he was home on vacation. The rules of amateur standings were neither so strict nor so hypocritical as they were to become later, and as young Ben moved into his mid-teens, there were a few dollars to be made pitching for various semi-professional teams. He was becoming quite prominent as an athlete. During the spring of his final year at St. Viator's he produced a no-hit pitching performance against the powerful University of Illinois baseball team, and the major league representatives began to gather around. Among them were friends of Illinois who worked on the theory that if he could shut out their team without a hit, he would look just fine in an Illinois uniform the following season. When Bernard Sheil, now twenty, graduated with his Bache- lor of Arts degree from St. Viator's in the spring of 1906, he still did not know what he wanted to do for his lifework. Charles Comiskey, the beloved "Old Roman" of the Chicago White Sox, had offered a most attractive plan for him to pitch for the A Home Dedicated to Charity 25 White Sox; the Columbus team in Ohio was waving offers; and there was still the chance to go on with his studies at Il- linois, where more baseball was waiting. Through the summer he pitched, and played outfield for the famed "Logan Squares" in Chicago, a team which produced more future major league stars than any other in the history of the game. Many of his St. Viator teammates were on the Logan Squares, and they begged Benny to throw his lot in with them for the carefree life of baseball. There wasn't much doubt by then that the good right arm of Benny Sheil was plenty good enough to make the major league, and the temptation was great. Still, it wasn't what he wanted although he could not, at the time, explain what was lacking. Christy Mathewson, the immortal pitcher of the New York Giants, was his hero, closely followed by wily Clark Griffith of the Chicago White Sox. But there were other men who had grown into his heart by then, men whose selfless service to people in need had won his respect and admiration. His soul was filling with an under- standing of Godliness and a realization that the teachings of Christ, which he had absorbed at home and at St. Viator's, were more important than being able to hit the outside corner with a curve ball. He talked late into the evenings with his father and mother that summer, trying to find the true answer to his ambitions. Baseball was taking up most of his days, with games against the top semi-pro teams proving again and again that Ben Sheil was ready for the major leagues. Many times he was on the verge of signing up with the White Sox and accepting the 26 Bishop Shell and the CYO satisfying headline life of a prominent athlete. It could be fun, all right — the picture in the paper, the worship of the fans, the easy, carefree life, with six months' vacation every year. But what would he do during the vacations? Bernard Sheil was congenitally unable to sit around in the bars and poolrooms gathering fat during the winter as so many ballplayers always have. "There is no hurry, Ben," his mother said. "If you want to take up baseball as a career, next year will be time enough. If you should decide to go into the Church, there's plenty of time for that, too. Why don't you take a year at Illinois, go on with your studies, play your baseball, and let time make the de- cision?" "I think it will be the Church, Mother. I'm beginning to know that the real thing is to help others, as you and Dad do." "That isn't something that people usually find out until they are older — sometimes too old to do much about it. I'm not going to say you should be a priest, Ben. I know that whatever you do will be done with a strong feeling of God, and that is all that matters. If you do become a baseball player you will play fairly; if you become a businessman, you will be an honest one; if you should become a priest, I know you'll be one of the best." "I don't know, Mother. It means a lot of sacrifices and I'm not sure I can do it. I like the write-ups in the paper about the ball games. I like being captain of the team. I get a real bang out of being out there on the mound with the crowd watching." "You will be in the spotlight all your life, Ben. Something A Home Dedicated to Charity TJ tells me that. I suppose all mothers think that about their sons, especially when they have only one, but I know it beyond knowing. I know it with that knowing your Dad always laughs about — until my knowing proves right." "You're prejudiced, Mother," he laughed. "I may end up an alderman, or a policeman, or driving the horses on a trolley- car. But you're right about taking more time to decide. I'll go down to Champaign this fall, learn all I can about literature, and play some more baseball there next spring. By then I'll be twenty-two, and I should know where I'm going." He was back from Champaign after only two months of the fall term. A restlessness of indecision, of important decisions to be made was driving him to incessant action and change of scene. He was like a healthy young colt, bursting with vitality and fighting against the inadequate action of a slow condition- ing process. "Work for me for a while, Ben," his father suggested. "You can try selling some real estate and insurance. Collect the coal bills. And you can play again with the Logan Squares next spring." "I'd like to keep on with my English, Dad. Maybe I could work, and get a tutor and study at night." "Why not? And take some more work on the piano, too. You've got to have something to do in your spare time. A young fellow like you can't be happy with nothing but a job in the daytime, baseball overlapping that, book work in the evenings. You'll get bored. Better stick with that piano too." The decision came one evening during the spring. The Logan 28 Bishop Sheil and the CYO Squares had won a thriller that afternoon, thanks to the strikes Ben Sheil had fired from the pitcher's mound. He had banged out three hits, including a triple which had cleared the loaded bases and sent the winning run scampering home. It was a quiet evening at the Sheil house that night. He made his announcement quietly. "I'm going into the Church. I'll go back to St. Viator's in September. I should be ordained in the spring three years from now. I've finally made up my mind. I wasn't sure until today." "Bless you, Ben," his mother said softly. "I think I knew it all the time." "I'm not going to ask if you are sure, Ben," his father put in. "I know you are, or you wouldn't be telling us. I thought base- ball was going to win for a while. But that wouldn't be meaty enough for you for long. There can still be baseball, and other sports, for recreation. After all, that's what they are really for." "That's true, Dad. I'll play the rest of this season with the Logan Squares, but that will be enough of scheduled baseball." They talked late, both Jim and Rosella Sheil brimming with pride, both suddenly realizing that their son's choice was what they had really wanted and that the choice had been his own, completely his own, without any parental pressure. "God has won a good recruit," Rosella Sheil whispered as they started for bed long after midnight. Then, with a smile hiding her emotion, she leaned towards her son and added, "You're a good son, Ben. Your father and I are very proud." "I'll try to make a good job of it, Mother. So many people need help." A Home Dedicated to Charity 29 "There will be more as time goes on, Ben. The world is peaceful now but there is still much greed and selfishness every- where. I hate to bring up my premonitions again, but I have a feeling that your father and I are part of the last generation to know the world as we have known it. There is a lot of trouble coming up. War, maybe, and suffering so great that nobody would want to understand it. You will be part of it, Ben. You will be there to bring faith to those who will need it desper- ately. I know these things. I have always known you were going to make this decision." "You make me feel pretty small, Mother. I'll try, and God will tell me what to do. Good night, Mother. And pray that I'll be the priest you want." "Good night, my son. God is happy tonight. He has won a wonderful helper." The next three years passed swiftly on the familiar campus at St. Viator's. Bernard Sheil was an outstanding student, turning all his tremendous energy to absorbing the job ahead. Even before he was ordained in 1910, his mother's premonition was beginning to take shape. The dread god of war was hovering over Europe, building mighty armies "for defense," spread- ing the seeds of hatred that would blossom into World War I. Father Sheil could scarcely remember what happened to the seven years he was curate at St. Mel's. It was his first as- signment after ordination, and he was so busy "getting my feet wet" as a curate that the time flew by. His mother had been right. It was the end of a glorious era and, suddenly, we were in 30 Bishop Sheil and the CYO the war and he went to the Great Lakes naval base as chaplain of the "boot" camp. There were more than 60,000 boys there when the hideous flu epidemic struck. The doctors didn't know much about treat- ing it in those days, and the boys were dying fast. They were packed so close together in the infirmary that Chaplain Sheil had to lie beside one to hear his confession, then crawl over him to lie beside the next. There was one stretch of thirteen days when he never went to bed. He was swabbing throats, giving the last sacraments, taking temperatures, writing letters to families, doing anything he could to battle that horrible plague. The doctors had learned that whiskey would help some of the cases, even save some lives. But we had Prohibition then, and whiskey was barred. It was one of the most vicious and evil results of narrowmindedness and stupid bigotry ever seen. More than 10,000 boys died in six weeks. On the pleasant side of Great Lakes memories were the won- derful athletic teams. George Halas and Paddy Driscoll of the Bears were stars on the football team which was so good it had to be invited to play the Rose Bowl of 1919. Jimmy Conzelman, the great coach of the Chicago Cardinals, was on that team too. Halas has been a grand American and a credit to his country all his life. He went back into service in World War II to do his share again, when he could easily have stayed with his beloved Bears. The thought of all the rough, tough and splendid fellows he had known in the Marines pulled Father Sheil's thoughts back to the condemned boy who sat beside him. He asked himself A Home Dedicated to Charity 31 for the thousandth time what made the difference between those Marines and this boy — between himself and this boy. The back- ground of most of the men at the boot camp had been more or less on the pattern of his own. Like himself they had enjoyed the protection, encouragement and leadership of fine parents, teachers, ministers of religion. At this boy's age they had been like himself, and the chaplain knew that he had shared the same basic desires as this lad had. He had wanted action, color, fame, a chance to prove himself. He had got them all, on the football field, in the boxing ring, most of all on the baseball diamond. He remembered the cheers of the crowd when he finished his no-hit, no-run performance. His own glow of satisfaction. The pleasant tired feeling. This boy had known none of these things. There must be some way of giving them to him. Something he, Father Benny Sheil, could do for him — or at least for the thousands who were now growing up into the same unhappy pattern. But what was it ? Where did one start ? He racked his brain for a solution and, finding none, offered a prayer to his Divine Master for guidance, then turned his attention back to the boy who was now fumbling for words to express his wonder at having found, in these last days of his life, something that turned darkness into light and made death a great beginning instead of a dismal end. CHAPTER THREE This I Will Not Forget JL HE footsteps of several men sounded in the corridor. At the same time the muted bell of the clock started its monoto- nous twelve bongs of midnight. Father Sheil held both the boy's hands tightly and looked deep into his frightened eyes. "I will walk beside you and stand beside you," he said. "Re- peat this prayer now. Say it again and again. Like this, son. 'Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. O Lord Jesus Christ, receive my spirit/ He hears you, son. He is close to you now." "I'm not afraid, Father Sheil. I won't let you down. Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. I'm not afraid if you walk with me." Two guards, moving quickly and efficiently, fighting against their own tenseness, lifted the boy to his feet and snapped the cold steel of handcuffs around his wrists. In the corridor, the Warden rushed through the reading of the death warrant, the 32 This I Will Not Forget 33 legal instrument which was society's interpretation of justice. The boy had killed; now he must die. The firm voice of Father Sheil stabbed through the wave of terror that was drowning the boy's mind as the Warden turned to lead the procession into the chamber of the gallows. "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the soul of this Thy servant, and beseech Thee, O Jesus Christ, Redeemer of the world, that, in Thy love for him, Thou became st man, so now Thou wouldst vouchsafe to admit him into the number of the blessed!' The damp corridor and shuffling footsteps of the condemned were an old story to Father Sheil. Already, in less than two years at Cook County, he had walked beside more than twenty boys, most of them still in their teens, as they went to meet their God on the gallows. It never changed. There was always the chilling, explosive flood of the thoughts of hundreds of men confined within the walls of the jail. Not one of them would be talking during these frightening minutes. Each would be walking beside this boy, trying to understand what his thoughts must be at this moment. Some of them were waiting to follow the boy to the gallows. Many others were murderers not yet detected, living always with the fear that the law would discover their secrets. Each of these was thinking : it could happen to me. From the far reaches of the city, other thought waves beamed into this tiny corridor from minds loaded with the unholy fas- cination that an execution commands. The manacled hands reached out to grasp the arm of Father Sheil as his strong voice prayed. "Let his soul find consolation in Thy sight, and remember 34 Bishop Sheil and the CYO not his sins, nor any of those excesses which he has fallen into, through the violence of passion and corruption." The Warden opened the door and led the way into the glaring light of the execution room. "Up the steps, too, Father. Don't leave me now. I can't get up there without you." Father Sheil shifted his prayer book to his right hand, took the hand of the boy in his left and held it tightly. "I am with you, and God is with you. Repeat the prayer, son. Say it with me now. Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. God is with you, son. You rest in eternal peace." This is my tragedy, my failure, Father Sheil was thinking. This boy is not evil. Every adult American who did not prevent this ghastly travesty of the love of God must bear a share of the guilt that is here tonight. His parent who taught him to steal and to kill is not to blame. It goes beyond that to the society which did not assume its duty to that individual either. By our lack of moral principle, by our avarice, by our greed, our selfishness and our vicious intolerance, we have given our youth not wisdom and good counsel but blood and filth and suffering and death. "Remember not, Lord, the sins and ignorances of his youth; but according to Thy tender mercy, be mindful of him in the eternal glory. Open the heavens to him and let the angels re- joice with him. Into Thy Kingdom, O Lord, receive Thy servant" Yes, let the angels rejoice with this boy who is dying even before the noose strangles the breath of life from his healthy young body. Let them show him the love that is his God-given This I Will Not Forget 35 birthright. Let them bring him the peace that has never been his on earth. Let him now have his happy boyhood while earth- bound society, to its everlasting shame, closes the file of his life with the smug and vicious pose that justice has been done. Let his passing bring somehow a message to every American. Let them hear from God the voice of the youth of the slum, of the broken home, of the reform school. Let them hear the cry of protest. Let them see the tears of these, their children, beloved of God but shunned on earth, left hungry and cold in a land blessed with more than an overflowing abundance of God's infinite supply, a land too busy to care about youth, its most precious heritage. "/ have recourse to thee, St. Joseph, Patron of the dying, who departed this life under the watchful care of Jesus and Mary, and by those dear pledges I earnestly commend to thee the soul of this servant in his last agony. Into Thy Hands, O Lord. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you this heart and this soul!' The Warden stepped aside as they approached the steps to the gallows. One guard supported the boy's elbow on the left, hold- ing firmly lest he collapse or stumble. But the boy seemed thor- oughly under the control of Father Sheil whose powerful legs mounted the steps boldly, as if God waited at the top to enfold the boy in eternal peace. "Deliver, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant from all the pains of hell, and from all trials and tribulations. Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend this spirit." Sharply, vividly, the thoughts flowed through the prayers as Father Sheil mounted the gallows. This boy, now in the last 36 Bishop Shell and the CYO minute of life, was not just one soul lost on an evil pathway. He was all boys, all youth. He was thousands, millions of young Americans, any one of whom could follow this same brutal pattern. Many had. More than twenty, who might have been fine citizens, had plunged into eternity from this same platform as he stood beside them, helping them to meet God. The story of this boy's life, although a classic capsule of brutality, was being repeated in every block of every slum in cities and villages all over the nation. Of what use was the selfish acceptance of God's bounty, the burgeoning prosperity of America, if its youth had no better goal than the gallows ? Who but that massive, faceless creature called "Society" was to blame if these millions of youngsters were thieves and murderers be- fore they were men ? They were on the platform now, the boy's eyes transfixed on the hempen noose swaying beside him. Quickly the black hood was slipped over his head by one guard while another knelt to fasten a rope around his ankles. There must be no unseemly kicking by the dying body, too ghastly for the spectactors to bear. From the hood came the muffled whisper that was half a sob, half a farewell. "Good-bye, Father Sheil." "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I sleep and rest in peace in your holy com- pany!' A signal flashed, a lever was pulled and the platform fell away to drop the body to the end of the strong noose. The This I Will Not Forget 37 boy's tight grasp slipped from the hand of Father Sheil but not before the guard grabbed Father's arm to keep him from plung- ing through the trap on top of the boy. Blood dripped from Father's fingers where the chain of the handcuffs had ripped through his flesh, but his eyes were closed as he continued to pray. "To Thee, O Lord, do we commend the soul of Thy servant, that being dead to the world he may live in Thee; and what- ever sins he has committed through the frailty of his mortal nature, do Thou, in Thy most merciful goodness, forgive and wash away. Through Christ Our Lord." Beside him the rope jerked and swayed. The boy's last agony was ending. As he waited, praying, the faces of all the boys he had escorted to the gallows appeared and vanished in quick succession. He could feel the jerk and sway of the platform against the soles of his feet, and as his lips softly repeated the prayers for the depart- ing soul, another part of his mind was racing deep into the past and far into the future. I have listened to their talk and I have walked the last fearful mile with them as they told me their pitiful stories. They are all the same story. Sorrowful boys made evil by society, petty thieves who steal because others are filled with greed, dope addicts, the sick, the maimed, the "gondolier" boys and girls from every State in the Union — lost, wandering without hope, they all pass before me. They come to me in prison. I find them in the corri- dor of the chamber of death. "May the most clement Virgin Mary, Mother of God, the 38 Bishop Shell and the CYO most loving consoler of the afflicted, commend to her Son, the soul of this servant, so that through her maternal intercession, he may joyfully enter the desired heavenly home." From the prisons, from the jungle camps of the hoboes, from the steps of the gallows comes the challenge that my country, my friends — and, yes, even my Church — have been too busy to answer. What are you going to do for us? Why are we despised ? Who will lead us to happiness and contentment ? Where will we find an outlet for our natural love of competi- tion Must we never dream our dreams ? That is the challenge to me, to my countrymen, to my Church — the anguished cry of millions of young Americans who have no future, no work, no play, no ideals, no pride, no stimulus to achieve. That is the war I must engage. Idleness is my enemy. I must marshal the forces that I can command and carry this battle into the strongholds of evil which are the slums of our cities. Beneath the platform the rope hung still, the body no longer lurching in the agony of death. Guards steadied the body while the doctor made sure that all life was gone. Father Sheil admin- istered the last rites of the Church, the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. Then he walked firmly back through the corridor to the main building. He glanced into the boy's cell as he passed and saw nothing but scattered packs of cigarettes on the table, wrappings from the candy bars he had brought that morning, This I Will Not Forget 39 and the pile of cigarette butts in the corner. Through the win- dow came the muttering of the pigeons and the single bong of the clock. Fifteen minutes had passed since the boy had clutched his hands so tightly and said, "I'm not afraid if you walk with me." "I will make you a promise," Father Sheil whispered to the dismal grey walls. "I will make you a promise and I will not forget. Someday I shall devote my life to this problem of youth. Someday God will show me the way to spread that small meas- ure of love and thoughtfulness that keeps each youngster on the road to happiness and worthwhile existence. These men con- fined within this prison are not forgotten ; those who have gone to the gallows have not died for naught. My Church, and my God, are not callous and unheeding. My ears are tuned to your stories. We will build a great organization in our city, in other cities, all over America. We will bring you the sense of security that comes from belonging to a group and being wanted. We will answer your challenge and your bewildered eyes that ask us what we are going to do about his hideous waste of our glorious youth. "This I pledge you; this I will not forget." CHAPTER FOUR A Dream Takes Shape J. HOSE three years as prison chaplain were only a brief phase in the active life of Bernard Sheil. But they meant much to him and to the world he was to influence. Brief as they were, they packed in as much service to man as would have satisfied most of us for a lifetime. If Bishop Sheil were a man who could take time to write, he could make those years into a book which in a series of compelling dramatic pictures would etch out the whole story of man-made evil in a world God made good. The book would tell of a chaplain winning the confidence of men who had lost trust in man and God. He could tell of sitting calmly in the cell of a condemned man whose tortured mind had hit upon the plan of feigning an insanity which was much closer to genu- ine than the feigner realized; of calming the man by sharing his dilemma, by talking quietly to him, then letting him know when the guards were coming so he could go into his act. He could tell, if he wanted to, how that man finally walked to the gallows strong and unafraid in the security of a new-found 40 A Dream Takes Shape 41 faith. He could tell of heart-rending scenes like watching a boy handcuffed to prison bars, pulling himself up painfully so he could squint down through his window and see his mother and sister standing in the street, without letting them see him. But these incidents, that fruitful work, were not all that Father Sheil drew out of his work as prison chaplain. Those years burned into his soul a living charity and a passion for social justice that has never left him since. He threw himself into his work at the Cathedral parish with the same generous energy that had tackled the flu epidemic at the boot camp and faced the problems of prison. Whether in the plush Gold Coast homes or in the bedraggled hovels of Skid Row, Father Sheil was becoming known as a man with the capacity to carry an unbelievable load of other people's burdens. He also became marked as a man with the ability of a born executive to handle intricate problems of detail. These things, of course, did not go unnoticed by his ecclesiastical superiors. When, in 1922, the archdiocese of Chicago was faced with the honor and the responsibility of arranging the greatest manifesta- tion of the Catholic faith in the history of the United States, Archbishop Mundelein turned to young Father Sheil and ap- pointed him treasurer and unofficial major domo for the entire proceedings. This was the Eucharistic Congress, which drew the hierarchy and the faithful not only from all over America but from Rome and the entire Catholic world. It was the first time the honor of holding this Congress had been accorded to the United States. Handling it was a man-sized job. But it was just the job for Bernard Sheil. When it was over, 42 Bishop Shell and the CYO everyone was full of praise for its magnificence, for its smooth- working efficiency and for the 34-year-old priest who had done more than anyone else to make it a success. The following year he was made Vice-chancellor and in 1924, Chancellor of the archdiocese. He had become Archbishop Mundelein's right-hand man in the detailed administration of a large and difficult See. More than a million and a half Catho- lics of a dozen different national groupings were under his care. For a man like Bernard Sheil who cannot do anything without giving his whole heart to it, the day-to-day work was enormous and all-absorbing. Later in 1924, Archbishop Mundelein was called to Rome to receive the Red Hat of a Cardinal. By this time Father Sheil had become so close to the archbishop that the prelate took the unusual step of drafting his Chancellor as his secretary for the trip to Rome. There may have been another motive behind that choice. The archbishop may have had some suspicion that the Cardinalate was a result of the success of the Chicago Eucharistic Congress, and he may have thought it fitting that the man who had fashioned so much of that work be present at its crowning. The new Cardinal presented his Chancellor-secretary to Pope Pius XI in private audience. He had already spoken to His Holiness about Father Sheil, his background and his work. The meeting was a happy one in which kindred spirits recognized each other. For, although the Pope knew nothing of football or baseball, he approved of them on principle. He had won a reputation as an athlete himself, having established several mountain-climbing records which are still standing. Father A Dream Ta\es Shape 43 Sheil came out of the audience beaming, and he returned to Chicago with his superior and friend, George Cardinal Munde- lein, more than ever on fire with zeal for his priestly work. Four busy years went by in close administrative teamwork with the Cardinal. Then it again came time for one of the regu- lar visits which every Catholic prelate must make periodically to the Vatican. Father Sheil went along, but this time there was something brewing for him. On the way back, they were on a Paris railroad platform wait- ing for the boat train. Father Sheil was struggling with the baggage and trying to find a porter to lend a hand. The Cardi- nal came strolling over, a message in his hand and a mock serious look on his face. "Take it easy, Ben," he said, "don't get so excited over that baggage. Try to show a little more dignity. You're a Bishop now!" Father SheiPs face showed his confusion as the meaning of the words dawned. The Cardinal hastened to spare him the attempt to find words: "Congratulations, Your Excellency ! They couldn't have made a better choice." "Thank you, Your Eminence," was all the Bishop-elect could manage by way of reply. It was only on the way home that he had time to sort out his thoughts. His mother would be immensely happy about this honor to her son. But it would add so many new duties. It might tie him down just when a dream of specific action had begun to form in his mind. Would the penalties of office outweigh its attributes ? On the other hand, would he not be in a better posi- 44 Bishop Shell and the CYO tion than ever to move towards fulfillment of the vow he had made that night coming from the gallows ? His mind sped back to Cook County Jail; to the faces of his boys, to the pledge he had made. Now the situation had grown a hundred times worse for the youth of America; now the hoodlum was the national hero; now was the time for that pledge to be redeemed. It seemed to be getting close to the end of a losing game for large sections of American boyhood. Some- one must do something soon. Someone named Bernard Sheil. Even if, or perhaps especially if, he is Bishop Bernard Sheil. Back in Chicago, the new Bishop became Vicar-General of the archdiocese and the intimate friendship that bound him to the Cardinal grew stronger with every day they worked to- gether. It had become part of the daily schedule for them to have a quiet walk after dinner. Cardinal Mundelein would do most of the listening, Bishop Sheil most of the talking. Sometimes they would stroll the few blocks to the lake front and sit on a bench to watch the water change hues under the setting sun. Some- times it would be a march through the Skid Row section of North Clark Street, or westward on Chicago Avenue past a police station that was too busy to bother with anything except the more serious offenses. It was an unusual evening when an averted gaze, a half- ashamed greeting or some other depressing sight did not turn the Bishop's mind back to Cook County Jail. The Cardinal be- came familiar with his younger colleague's bursts of resentment against the social conditions which made the good life so hard A Dream Ta\es Shape 45 for so many basically good people. He learned to listen quietly through the retold stories of young men dying darkly and too soon. "Ben," he would say, "you mustn't take it too hard. It's the law of society that these men should die. We can't change it. We can only help them make their peace with God. You have done that." "But it's wrong, Your Eminence," the impetuous reply would tumble out. "That was a sweet, lovable boy. I know the neigh- borhood he came from. I know how kids grow up there. If I had been born eight blocks south, I might have finished up that way myself. We can't just watch conditions like that getting worse and worse every day." The Cardinal would eye him thoughtfully, like a father patiently hearing his son through his first fervent outbursts of intention to change the world. Only there was a difference. It was a mature man who was talking. A man whose tenacity of purpose and powers of execution the Cardinal knew. He knew that the impatient words were not meaningless declarations. There was something deep under them. But he was too wise to attempt to question or hurry the man at his side. He knew that when Bernard Sheil was ready, when the right moment came, Bernard Sheil would act. "What do you mean," he might lead him along, "by saying that things are getting worse?" "If I had to answer in one word, I'd say bootlegging. Look at the money it's putting in the pockets of those hoodlums. Look at the way they strut around these neighborhoods like visiting 46 Bishop Shell and the CYO royalty. People on those streets knew them — ragged, dirty, hope- less like themselves. Now they come back dressed up, flashy cars, pockets bulging with big bills. They're heroes ! The kids on the street look up to them. They want to be the same. The way I used to dream of being like Christy Mathewson, these kids dream of being big league gangsters like Jim Colosimo, or Johnny Torrio or this young fellow Capone who is a bigger man than the President of the United States as far as the West Side is concerned." "And what are you doing about it, Ben? What can you do?" "Practically nothing, so far. A bit here, a bit there ; like stab- bing a knife in a haystack. I've got a couple of vacation schools started in playgrounds. I've gotten after parishes to start the Boy Scouts. Helped a little here, a little there. It's like salvaging a few grains of wheat while a flood sweeps away your whole harvest." "Hold on to these grains, Ben. The rest will grow." The Roaring Twenties became a cyclone of disaster in the last year of the decade when the Great Depression hit in 1929. In Chicago the problem which had gripped Bishop Sheil's mind became intensified and multiplied. And simultaneously, his vision of what could be done about it, of how the first steps could be taken, began to clear; his plans began to solidify. "Our aim is a supernatural one," he told the Cardinal, speaking in his enthusiasm as though trying to convince his superior of something the man had lived for all this life. "But the means we must take are natural means. Our specific problem is youth. Our appeal must be to youth. A strong appeal. I want those A Dream Ta\es Shape 47 youngsters before they go to jail. It's not enough to patch up the damage after it's done. We're not doing enough for our youth. Either as Catholic churchmen or as Americans. Youth is made use of to fight wars that greed brings on. When the war is won, the leaders forget about youth. They leave it to shift for itself in the jungles of our cities. We can't let that go on. Youth is the most precious of our wealth. It's the hope of the Church; the hope of America. I can't. . . ." "If it please Your Excellency," the Cardinal broke in with a smile that was not reflected in the gravity of his eyes, "I suppose I should object to my auxiliary bishop trying out his sermons on me. But you know, Ben, I kind of like it. Every time you go on like this, I know you've been getting your teeth into something, and I'm getting so that I can tell when you are going to erupt into action. I just want you to know that you will have my full backing in whatever you want to do. Just come and tell me about it when you're ready." Bishop Sheil smiled and looked affectionately at the man who was his father in the Church. "I suppose I do sound like Fourth- of-July-in-the-pulpit sometimes. But I think I am ready. At least, the time is more than ready, I've got to do something, and I think I see what it is." "Good, Ben. I'll keep tomorrow afternoon clear and we'll go over it together." So it was in the calm of the Cardinal's study that the idea of the CYO got its first formal exposition. When the two men had settled down in their chairs, Bishop Sheil burst out with the nucleus of his idea. 48 Bishop Sheil and the CYO "Your Eminence, I want to run the biggest boxing tourna- ment this city has ever seen." "You what?" The Cardinal started forward in his chair, then sank back and stared speechless at the man in front of him. Would this priest whom he thought he knew so well always be able to shock him when he least expected it ? There were many ways to save souls, he thought to himself, but surely this was a new one. He choked back his amazement and asked, as calmly as he could, "A boxing tournament?" "Yes, Your Eminence, a boxing tournament. I've been looking for a point of attack. I think this is it and I want to hit as hard as I can." "It's a new form of apostolate, Ben. But you must have some- thing behind it. Let's hear it." "Well, it's really more than a boxing tournament. But here's the idea. I don't have to tell you again how I feel about the tough breaks some kids get. You've heard me say a hundred times that I don't think there are any youth problems outside the normal problems of youth. We all go through the same thing. Give us a normal outlet for all those energies, desires, ambitions and dreams, and chances are we turn out all right. Deprive us of it, and those things twist around inside us. We turn the frustration against ourselves or against everything around us. We're warped. Now this outlet may have to be dif- ferent for different people. But the fellows I'm thinking about — the boys who are going to land up in Cook County Jail or lying in the gutter — those are fellows I know. They feel the way I felt at their age, and I know the things they want. They want A Dream Ta\es Shape 49 action, they want color, they want drama, they're nursing a dream of fame and they want to know that they have an even chance with everybody else to see it come true. They know they are as good as anybody else and they want a chance to prove it. That's where the boxing tournament comes in." "But, Ben, aren't there enough boxing tournaments for them to go into if they want them ? How about Arch Ward's Golden Gloves?" "Not like this one, Your Eminence. Not like the one that's going to be run by the Catholic Youth Organization." "The what, Ben?" "Oh, I forgot to tell you. That's the name we're going to use ... the CYO." "Well, I must admit the name sounds quite orthodox. But why not call it the Catholic Boxing Club ?" There was a twinkle in the Cardinal's eye. "I think you know the answer to that, Your Eminence. It's not being launched just to teach kids the manly art of self-de- fense. Nor is that all it's going to do. Just look at it. Your Emi- nence." The stocky figure rose from the chair, the broad shoul- ders straight with tense absorption, the firm face aglow with en- thusiasm and the blue eyes sparkling with the vision that only they at this moment could see. Bishop Sheil strode over to the map of Chicago that hung on the wall. "Look what we've got." He jabbed a strong finger at the thin lines that divided the whole Chicago area into irregular-shaped divisions. "All Chicago divided into little sections called par- ishes. In each of those areas a priest in charge. A man who 50 Bishop Shell and the CYO knows the people, knows the problems. Not only a priest, but in every section, at least ten or a hundred willing and able men who will jump at our suggestion to do something they them- selves have wanted to do all along. They're just waiting for us. And within . . ." "Excuse me again, Ben, but are you proposing to use the hierarchic — or at least the parochial — structure of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church to run a boxing tournament?" "Your Eminence, you know it's not that. At least, it's . . . well, it is that, if you want to put it that way. But it's a lot more. Within those sections on the map every boy in Chicago is to be found. The boys on my old street, the boys on the Gold Coast, the boys on Skid Row. Black, White, Yellow. Polish, German, Irish, Ukrainian — anything. Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Buddhist, pagan. This tournament is for all of them. All of them want to be in it. All of them are equal in it from the first minute. Not just equal in that they are all allowed to enter. But equal in their opportunities to enter on the same footing. We'll have a place in every neighborhood where they can come to train. We'll supply them with equipment if they haven't got it themselves. We'll let them climb into a ring wearing our colors, feeling they're part of something, they're accepted, they're important, they are as well equipped — in at least one thing — as anyone else." The Bishop paused and looked eagerly towards his superior for a responding spark from his own fire. The older man smiled and shook his head. "There is no use my telling you, Ben, that I see what you A Dream Takes Shape 51 see. I don't. But I'm beginning to get the picture. It looks basi- cally good. But if some young newly ordained priest walked in with it, I'd laugh it off as a seminary dream. One of those Utopian things that the young draw up so easily on paper. The only thing that keeps me listening is the fact that you are no seminary dreamer and that I know you have been nursing this for a long time. That and the over-all concept. Let's hear some more." So the two men settled down. The auxiliary bishop of Chicago was like a young boy as he pulled notes out of his pocket and specified names, places, plans. Against frank appraisal of prob- lems and difficulties, he placed ways and means of meeting them. And always he harped on his dominating theme. "It's not a club for juvenile delinquents. It's wholesome energy-absorbing, ambition-firing action for every boy. And I mean every boy — the good, the bad, the indifferent. The privi- leged, the underprivileged. That's the only way it will work. The boy we want — the potential criminal, the future derelict — is in here with the rest. On an equal footing. And he knows he's on an equal footing — that's the beauty of boxing. His own two hands and a fair even chance. And behind that the friendship, the encouragement, the training he's been getting from people he used to think didn't understand him and didn't care about him " The Cardinal listened. He knew he had been right about the man beside him, and he was glad. As Bishop Sheil went on to expose what he saw in the CYO beyond the boxing ring, Cardinal Mundelein began to grow warm with conviction that 52 Bishop Shell and the CYO here was one ecclesiastic with the zeal, the courage and the strength to make a seminary dream into a working reality. ". . . and the parish structure, Your Eminence, can be the basis for leagues in baseball, in any sport or in any of the compe- titive endeavors that youngsters so dearly love. And when we have a city of active, eager youngsters. . . ." "Wonderful, Ben, but — you are going to start with boxing. So let me heave the first bucket of cold water. What are you going to do about the inevitable opposition — first from the forces of opinion, and they're not to be shrugged off lightly, who think that fist-fighting is an evil in itself? About the people who don't see any particular marks of sanctity hanging around the boxing game as they see it in operation? And how about the jibes that will associate you, and your Church, with 'muscular Christianity'?" "Your Eminence, I've thought of those things. I don't feel any too happy about them. But I know I'm right and I'm not going to let jeers stop me. That's one thing a man learns, Your Emi- nence, from being out on a baseball diamond, on a gridiron, or in a ring before a crowd. He's got to take those things and keep on giving his best. If he does that, if he keeps right in there pitching, the same crowd that jeered him will cheer him off the field — win or lose." "I begin to see, Ben," said the Cardinal thoughtfully. "I be- gin to see what it is you want those boys to learn." "And for the other thing," Bishop Sheil went on, "for those who see only the abuses that have grown up around the sport of boxing, that can be disposed of with an old Christian principle A Dream Takes Shape 53 — the use of a thing is not to be condemned merely because some people abuse it. There is a lot of good in boxing and there are a lot of good people in it. Those are the people our boys will meet. We will let the results speak for themselves." The Cardinal seemed to have stopped listening. He rose, turned his back on the Bishop and stood looking out the window for a long minute. Then he faced the expectant eyes of his auxiliary. "I'm going to give your project my approval and my bless- ing." At the words, a relaxed smile spread over the Bishop's face. But it sobered instantly as the Cardinal went on: "First, you will have to find the support, men and money, for this by yourself. Secondly, you will have my full backing in whatever you do — on one condition." He raised a finger for emphasis and the Bishop leaned forward to his words. "Whatever program you draw up for these young people, make it so adequate, so interesting, so attractive that they will not need or desire any- thing else." With the Cardinal's firm handclasp lingering on his fingers and with that tight, before-the-big-game feeling crowding his breast, Bishop Bernard Sheil strode out of the Cathedral study into a career of dynamic action that has written his name in a million hearts. Without a moment's delay he moved into the ordered flurry of decisive social activity that hasn't let up since. First there was a series of interviews with dozens of individuals. Sports writers, businessmen, athletes, former athletes, through the wide range of friends who would follow his lead. Then, when the founda- 54 Bishop Shell and the CYO tions were laid, a meeting to gather all the prepared parts into one working whole. The men who gathered were all, each in his own sphere, men of influence. They were friends of Bishop Sheil but they were hard-headed men of experience who would not let friendship lead them blindly into any impractical scheme. They knew, however, the man in front of them and that was why they were at that meeting. They knew he was a born leader, that he could inspire men, marshal resources, direct activities, conceive and carry to harmonious completion a wide, comprehensive plan. They knew that he would, if it were hu- manly possible, see anything he set out to do right through to the finish. And they knew that anything he set out to do would have but one ultimate aim, the betterment of men for the good of their country and the glory of God. This knowledge did not keep them from exercising their trained judgment on the Bishop's plan. They had their questions ready. What exactly do you intend to do ? How do you know it will work ? How will you do it ? How much will it cost to start it ? How can you guarantee that it will keep going ? What surety is there against a flare-up of activity followed by a collapse ? Bishop Sheil was ready for them. That was one of the things they liked about him. The years since that night in the death- cell had not been empty ones. All the pieces had fallen together. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He had envisioned the whole thing and worked out in detail the foundation on which the organization would be built. They listened to the story Bishop Sheil had poured out to the Cardinal, and they knew as surely as the Cardinal did that they A Dream Ta^es Shape 55 were listening to a man who would approach youth from youth's own point of view. Soon they were clustered around the Bishop, working out details of personnel, equipment and pub- licity machinery for the giant CYO boxing tournament. They believed fully with the Bishop that if they could give those youngsters the action, the color, drama and opportunity they craved, there would be no need for the dispossessed among them to seek it in the dark alleys of crime. It was with the conspiratorial joy of co-workers in a great benevolent scheme that they listened to the Bishop read from the tentative charter of the CYO : . . . a recreational, educational and religious program that will adequately meet the physical, mental and spiritual needs of out-of-school Catholic boys and girls, and, without regard to race, creed or color, assist those young people who are in need; to inspire, direct and guide the natural creative instincts and desires of young people into worthwhile channels which permit the widest expression of personality, individually or in groups, while instilling in their minds and hearts a true love of God and Country. The CYO was launched. Its first boxing tournament was on the way, and the Bishop was happy as he got home from that meeting. Here, he knew, was the thin end of his wedge into that procession to the Cook County Jail. Here was his first rift in the clouds of unhealthy environment that barred so many young people from the sunlight of good citizenship and wholesome living. Here was the dramatic focal point that would center attention on the Catholic Youth Organization, and enable it to 56 Bishop Sheil and the CYO become the all-embracing counter-attraction to evil and the in- fluence for good he wanted it to be. The men who had been at the meeting would not have been surprised to learn that Bishop Sheil sat down at his desk again before he went to bed that night. But they would have been surprised to find out that he was working with great intensity over an entirely different set of plans. Entirely different, per- haps, to anybody else. But not to him. He was planning a college. This had been working up in his mind as part of his over-all scheme. ". . . recreational, educa- tional, spiritual . . .," they were all part of the one. Some had suggested a trade school, since the fellows he most wanted to get didn't like book-learning. But he knew his young people and he knew that the term "trade school" had little appeal. It was one of his great assets in working with youth that he had never ceased to be young himself. To find out what appealed to them, he had only to ask himself what appealed to him. And he knew how much he liked to fly. These kids didn't particularly want to learn. But they wanted to learn to fly. He would give them a school built around aviation. Its principal building, its first building, would be a hangar with classrooms and administration offices attached. He had been thinking of it for a long time. With the excellent timing which Providence so often showed in cooperating with his ideas, an unexpected offer of land had turned up just as he had clarified his mind, and he knew where he could get the money for the first buildings. But how about carrying the school on ? Especially if he were to keep it faithful to his intention that at least 50 per cent of the students should be A Dream Takes Shape 57 admitted free. Now he had been given the idea, and found it was practical, of going into the junk business to provide a permanent income. He chuckled as he thought of the Cardinal's face when he heard about this. First an apostolic boxing tourna- ment; now a college with an aeroplane hangar as its main build- ing, a concrete runway as its campus, and a junk business for endowment! Then he reached for his breviary, opened it to the right place and began his Office for the day, "Open to us, O Lord . . ." CHAPTER FIVE Here Was a New Music O UDDENLY in that fall of 193 1 a new music came to Chicago. In some ways it resembled the machine-gun fire and running feet of the more violent days of the decade just past. But this was a fresh melody, more healthy although scarcely less violent. Through the afternoons and evenings, and even in the morning hours, the steady staccato beat sounded over the city. This was a new music, the song of hundreds of punching bags ra-ta-tat-ting as eager, leather-covered mitts learned the clever rhythms of drumming them against the backboards; the deeper whoomph of strong arms flailing the heavy bags that hung from thick ropes to absorb the beating that each youngster hoped to give another before the tournament was over; the slap of skip- ping ropes swirling around dripping young bodies as leg muscles learned new duties. From the canvas under dozens of new boxing rings came the whisper of feet slithering and shuffling through the stalking and retreating maneuvers; the sudden flurries of leather crack- 58 Here Was a New Music 59 ing against flesh and the strong breathing of well-conditioned athletes. Bishop Sheil had sent out the message in the late summer, using his parish followers and the Chicago papers to carry the startling news that there would be a new city-wide boxing tournament which would have its finals in the magnificent new Chicago Stadium. Every boy in the city was invited to enter and the eight winners — by weight group — would be awarded a college education. There would be no restrictions on the entry blanks except those of health. If your heart was all right, and your eyes had normal vision, you could be Italian, Armenian, Bohemian, Hebrew or Hottentot — you didn't have to be a Catholic. There were no strings attached at all. You could sign up, get your ring equipment free, get all the instruction you could absorb from Packey MacFarland, and the others, at no expense at all. You could use the best gyms and rings which could be made ready, and any physical injuries would be fixed up by CYO doctors and dentists. If you were good enough to win, you could take a Bishop Sheil scholarship and go to any college of your choice for a full four years of education. It sounded too good to be true. On the street corners, in the poolrooms, sometimes in the speakeasies, the boys of Chicago were talking about it. Where was the money coming from for all this ? Why, a college education cost several thousand dollars. Who was going to supply all that equipment ? There must be a catch in it. Some of the young hoodlums who had established reputations as potent street fighters were teased by their fol- 60 Bishop Shell and the CYO lowers. Why don't you go down to the CYO and win yourself a championship? You're such a tough guy, why don't you go down there and see how tough you are? You ought to win a title easy, big-time fighter like you. Some of them went because there was nothing else to do — just nothing else to do. There were no jobs anywhere; there wasn't much use trying to steal anything because nobody had anything worth stealing. They were sick of the poolrooms, sick of hanging around the joints with the gang and listening to the eternal griping. They were stick of themselves, sick of their life, sick of their youth. Here, at least, was something new. On thinking it over, it might be fun to get in a ring and belt somebody's ears off, have a good rousing scrap without taking the chances of getting conked from behind by a flying bottle, or hit in the nose with half a brick, as they often did in their neighborhood gang wars. Another thing brought some of them in. They remembered that Machine-Gun Jack McGurn had been a boxer once. That was the way Al Capone had found him — saw him box a few times, liked his style, and took him right into the top ranks of the mob. Boxing might provide a lot of opportunities for a smart young guy. A college education ? Well, that was good advertis- ing, but what rah-rah school would take a fellow who didn't have a clean shirt to his name — sometimes not even a shirt ? Still, they began to sign up, and the rattle of the speed-bags grew louder. Bishop Sheil and Packey MacFarland, sorting out a new stack of entry blanks each day, smiled with confidence. The kids needed something to do, something to keep them out Here Was a New Music 61 of trouble. This was it. This would burn up the turbulent, youth- ful energies that had found release only in vandalism; this would substitute a new thrill in place of the dangers and excite- ment of small-time stick-ups; this would send the tired young bodies to bed early; sportsmanship would be discovered and cherished. It wasn't evident yet, but a small crack was developing in the pedestal under the swaggering hoodlum who had been the ideal of poverty's children for so many years. The foreshadow of a rough, young kid with the green CYO emblem on his white boxing tights, and bloody mitts on his hands, was beginning to examine the machine-gun killer through healthy clear eyes with a look that said, "Maybe you're not as tough as you think you are. The entries poured in to the tiny office on North La Salle. Nellie Hart, sparkling with pride, sorted them by districts and by weight divisions. The standards of the rulings of classic box- ing, originated by the Marquis of Queensberry, were to be fol- lowed. There would be flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight, lightweight, welterweight, middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions. Each center would box until it had settled its own championship, then teams from centers would clash to establish divisional kings, and finally, the four surviv- ing teams would meet in Chicago Stadium for the semi-final and final rounds. On the streets where the boys gathered, a chain reaction was under way. Two or three of the early pioneers came strutting back to the gang with a new confidence bristling in every move- 62 Bishop Shell and the CYO ment. They talked knowingly of left jabs, right crosses, left hooks, footwork, speedbags. They demonstrated the graceful, shuffling ballet of boxing, showed how Packey had taught them to step inside a left and slam a right to the heart. The more hardened young sluggers of the neighborhood, who still thought anything connected with a church was too sissy to have a place in a real he-man's life, began to be jealous of these leather-pushing upstarts. Occasionally one of the hard boys would start a fight with one of the CYO recruits and would suddenly find himself being chopped to ribbons in a thunder- squall of fists that came flying from an opponent that he could not hit at all. What was going on here ? A church teaching that little jerk to fight like that? Maybe we better go over to the parish tomorrow and see what's going on. It wasn't long before more than two thousand applications had completely buried Nellie Hart's desk and almost buried Nellie along with it. Where other larger forces might have panicked and thrown up their hands in despair at the magnitude of the detail work, Bishop Sheil and his tiny force worked with a frenzied speed to keep the tournament under control. It must run off like clockwork; physical examinations must be on time to provide substitutions when boys were eliminated for physical reasons; equipment must be ready; officials must be appointed and their schedules arranged so that each elimination tourna- ment would run smoothly as if it were as important as the Tunney-Dempsey brawl at Soldier Field four years before. The boys had come to the CYO; now the CYO must sell itself to the boys by making each one feel that his own three rounds Here Was a New Music 63 in the ring was the most vital event in the universe at that moment. Even before the tournament was under way, the treasure house of Bishop Sheil was storing away hundreds of tiny jewels of triumph. Intangible and invisible they were, but beyond any shadow of doubt each hour spent by each boy in his CYO boxing career was one less hour spent in the dangerous swamp of idle- ness and despair where the only visible exits led to the novice ranks of the mobs. As Bishop Sheil had known, young males must fight and their finest characteristics are developed in gangs. Now they were learning that it was more fun to fight with boxing gloves and their gangs were becoming the boxing teams of the CYO. One of the busiest staff members was a blond flyweight named Lou Radzienda. He was a clever boxer, a true student of style and maneuvers. He was always around, ready to help erect a new ring, or tape the hands of the crowds of battlers, or pitch in to keep the equipment ready and clean. If a boxer needed a sparring partner, Radzienda was ready for that too, and it made no difference how large the opponent might be although Radzienda himself weighed 114 after a heavy meal. He wasn't there to enter the tournament, but to learn every- thing there was to know about boxing He knew some former boxers, professionals, who had reached the end of the trail in pitiful physical and mental condition, penniless, friendless, tossed aside by the profession which had taken their best and given them nothing. That was not for him. But something in the young soul of Lou Radzienda was 64 Bishop Sheil and the CYO moved by these derelicts, and before he bought his first razor he had determined to devote his life to the sport. His family had always been deeply religious, and when his Church, through the CYO, moved boldly into the boxing world, Lou Radzienda knew that his boyhood dreams had come true. He was willing to work harder than all the rest if they would just let him stay around, helping wherever he could. With Packey MacFarland, Radzienda, Arch Ward, Warren Brown and other top sportswriters of the time, Bishop Sheil had drawn up the boxing regulations of the CYO. These regu- lations would emphasize safety first of all. Every boy who joined the CYO boxing program was given a complete physical examination, often the first the boy had ever had in his life. Any physical defect which might bring danger in the fierce compe- tition of the ring disqualified the boy unless that defect could be eliminated through treatment. In many cases this was done; a new health was given to many who never had been able to afford medical attention. As soon as each boxer signed a CYO card, he promised that he would box only for the CYO, unless special permission were granted to enter other contests. This was a wise and important block against the inevitable raids by professional boxing mana- gers who would be drawn to this tremendous new supply of fresh recruits. Never in history have more than a few profes- sional managers shown any interest in a boxer beyond his dol- lar value, and the CYO was not saving these boys from one misery only to dump them into another. In return for this "exclusive contract" the CYO agreed to Here Was a New Music 65 act as each boxer's guide in all his contests, to provide compe- tent seconds for his corner during all his bouts. There was no place nor need for any other manager. The CYO was the impartial and sincere sponsor of every scrapper, doing its best to help each to win. Neatness and cleanliness were emphasized. If a boy couldn't afford a haircut or acceptable ring shoes, from somewhere the money appeared. The white trunks and bathrobes, both bear- ing the green CYO emblem, were provided along with the boxing gloves. They must be kept immaculately clean so that every boy would be a credit to himself and his new gang. These early rules of CYO were farsighted. Boxers were told that they could not use their new avocation as an excuse to let their school studies slide into the background. If their school- work was not kept above the passing mark, they would be sus- pended until their teachers were satisfied. For the sake of the boy's health, there was a flat ruling that no boxer could com- pete more than twice a week. Following knockouts, or injuries, the rest periods were longer. The agreements were signed for a period of a year, and since they went into effect only a few weeks before the annual cham- pions were crowned, they protected the best of the boys from the lure of the professionals for several months after each tournament was over. This gave the winners ample time to make a sane decision concerning the possible gain to be made in higher competition. Many times in the years that followed, CYO boxers were in- vited to turn professional. Each case was studied carefully by 66 Bishop Shetl and the CYO Bishop Sheil, Lou Radzienda, Packey MacFarland and other boxing experts who joined the staff as the years went by. If the boy had exceptional ability and a sound personality to back it up, he was allowed to go ahead. If it was obvious that his career would be unsuccessful, he was advised strongly, and effectively, to leave the professional game alone. The records of the few CYO boxers who have turned professional is a factual endorse- ment of this policy. A few have been champions; several have boxed in the front ranks of their divisions; only a minor hand- ful has fallen by the wayside, and they were mostly those who ignored the Bishop's advice and went ahead on their own. The crack widened under the pedestal of the idolized neigh- borhood hoodlum, and still another foe of decency was taking a beating as the CYO boxing program got under way. Jim Crow, and all his miserable brothers of racial intolerance, found themselves in a fight they couldn't win as soon as sports began to wipe out their creed of bigotry. Minority groups in Chicago, compressed into the geographical areas into which their parents had gathered a few years before, had always joined together in the gang warfares of childhood and a pattern of racial bitter- ness had grown — without reason, without sense, without under- standing of each other. Italians were surrounded by Mexicans, Negroes and Irish. Irish battled Poles, Italians and Greeks on their "borders." Negroes manned the ramparts of their outskirts to repel the attacks of Bohemians, Jews and Mexicans. All of the sprawling West Side and South Side of Chicago was marked off into battle zones with a street or an alley forming the boundary lines, and Here Was a New Music 67 a battle to be fought if any invader crossed those lines. For this eternal strife the boyhood gangs were formed; long and bloody were the feuds. Now they would meet two at a time in the 400 square feet of a boxing ring. Eight-ounce mitts would take the place of bot- tles, clubs, knucks and guns. Marquis of Queensberry rules would replace the old routine of kick, punch, bite, and slug from behind. An arrogant young Italian would find himself facing a hated Pole from two blocks away ; a white boy fresh from Mississippi would try to block the fists of a Georgia Negro; the Negro would learn that here in the ring the white man was just an- other man with two arms and two legs who bled the same red blood when you popped him on the nose. The battling might be furious from bell to bell with all the racial poison coming out in one torrential blast. When the bout was over the two exhausted warriors would suddenly find themselves grinning widely, though gasping for breath, as they walked to a corner, their arms around each other's shoulders. On the sidelines, Bishop Sheil would look on and smile. Up in that ring all men were equal. As the tournament of 1931 narrowed down to the finals, nearly every nationality was represented in the line-ups. The North Side would send O'Hanion, Haberski, Miller, Lazar, Kulin, Ducobu, Selgrat and Dvonch. From the South Side would come Hettlinger, Rodak, Para, Stiegel, Sertelic, Marek, Barauskas and Sakak. The West Side was ready to bet its shirt —about all it had to bet — that Soukop, Anderson, Marcy. Hig- 68 Bishop Shell and the CYO gins, Sylvano, McCahan, Pershe and Bukowski would bring home the scalps. Joliet sent in the other semi-finalist team as a proud representative of many suburban townships which had joined the fray. They were all Americans too — Kinney, Blahut, Roman, Dejules, DeMato, Nurczyk, Nicholas and Solik. "It's the line-up of America," said Bishop Sheil. "No matter whether it's sports, or politics, or education, or business, that's America's team, taken from all the tribes in the universe and joined under the greatest flag on earth. How can you beat a line-up like that? How can any of those teams lose?" The feelings that swelled in the heart of Bishop Sheil as he walked into Chicago Stadium on the night of December 4, 1931, are difficult to translate into coherent sentences. For here was both the end and the beginning of a dream. A year before no one had ever heard of the Catholic Youth Organization. It had been no more than a nebulous idea in the Bishop's mind. Now, for these few hours, it was the most important event in a great metropolis of three million people. It was headline news in all the papers. These thirty-two kids who would battle to- night had suddenly become important — to themselves, to their families, to their neighborhood pals — most important — to them- selves. The crowd, which began jamming the entrances an hour before the bouts were to start, came from every section of Chicago. Sports fans from the Gold Coast rumpled their proper evening attire shoving for the gates through swarms of ragged followers from the "Bloody Twentieth" Italian Ward; farmers and suburbanites came from a hundred mile radius to root their Here Was a New Music 69 favorites home. Prominent in the front rows were the dark suits, white shirts with no ties, and white felt hats creased in the middle, which indicated that Capone's boys were fight fans too. Jack McGurn, with his "blonde alibi" Louise Rolfe, was there, and so was Al Capone, looking perhaps for another McGurn who had caught his eye as a boxer a few years before. The most important members of the audience as far as Bishop Sheil was concerned were the hundreds of youngsters from the toughest neighborhoods in Chicago. These were his recruits of the future; these were the ones who would watch, bug-eyed, tonight as their pals punched their way to glory; these were the ones who would decide "if he can do it, I can do it." They would be coming around the gyms in herds from now on. Yes, definitely this program must go on. As time for the bouts approached, the excitement of the crowd was ballooning, and intensifying, until the Stadium seemed to vibrate. There had been plenty of good boxing there since the doors had been opened in the spring of 1929 with a torrid battle between Tommy Loughran and Mickey Walker. Maxie Rosenbloom, Tony Canzoneri, Sammy Mandell, Andre Routis, Bud Taylor, Billy Petrolle, Fidel La Barba, Barney Ross and Earl Mastro had demonstrated their various talents to capacity crowds. Professional boxing was at its peak in those days, with fifty or sixty high-class performers available for an endless series of crowd-pleasing matches. It was long before the 1950's, when less than a dozen top-notchers would be scat- tered through the eight divisions. On this night, however, there was a new interest, a personal 70 Bishop Shell and the CYO relationship between each of the thirty-two boxers and some segment of the crowd. These were not professional performers who would fight, take their pay and depart. These kids actu- ally belonged to the audience. Fifteen minutes before the bouts were to start, a thousand CYO Boy Scouts filed into the mammoth arena to line the aisles leading to the ring from the dressing rooms, and to stand at attention as an Honor Guard, while the thirty-two boxers walked proudly to the center and climbed through the ropes under the glare of the ring lights. Around the four sides of the ring they stood, each team lining up in order from the tiny flyweight on one end to the massive heavyweight on the other. When Bishop Sheil climbed through the ropes to join them a cheer went up from 18,000 throats that had never been heard before in any boxing palace. Here was the man whose dynamic courage had sent him plunging into the strongholds of the most serious enemy of the country he loved; here was the man who could slip on a pair of boxing gloves, without bothering to take off his priestly robes, and give a licking to the best man in the house; here was the man who had captured the admiration and love of every Chicagoan who was aware that the young people really had a problem in those sorrowful days of the Great Depression. They loved him with a violence which only Chicago, in its traditional slam-bang way of living, could show. It was minutes before the Bishop's upraised arms and engag- ing grin brought silence so that he could make himself heard over the public address system. He thanked everyone, and gave Here Was a New Music 71 fervent thanks to God for the success of the tournament. He promised that the CYO had only begun, and that it would not fail to continue the fight. With the vast audience standing respectfully silent now, he led the boxers and the Boy Scouts in repeating the CYO Pledge of Sportsmanship: "I promise upon my honor to be loyal to my God, to my Country and to my Church; to be faithful and true to my obligations as a Christian, a man and a citizen. I pledge myself to live a clean, honest and upright life — to avoid profane, obscene and vulgar language, and to induce others to avoid it. I bind myself to promote, by word and example, clean, whole- some and manly sport; I will strive earnestly to be a man of whom my Church and my Country may be justly proud." Strange talk, this, to be mixed with a sport which has been called, without serious dispute, "the Art of Modified Murder." Strange and healthy new theories were moving into the box- ing world which even then was gagging at the farcical "build- up" being staged for Primo Camera, with fake fights and phony "knockouts" arranged by the greedy souls who were to ship Camera home to Italy without a penny. Two weeks before this night, Camera had beaten Kingfish Levinsky in this same ring, and outspoken fight fans claimed that the stench of the bout was still apparent. Max Schmeling, the reigning heavyweight champion of the moment, had de- fended his title by knocking out Billy Stribling only a few months before. In Detroit there lived a lean, hungry Negro named Joseph Louis Barrow. He was 17 years old, was yet to 72 Bishop Shell and the CYO see a boxing bout. They, however, were unimportant now. This was the night for the CYO. Promptly at 8:30, the flyweight semi-finalists came whirling out of their corners to battle the last few rounds to the championship. From that moment until big Steve Sakak of the South Side team had his weary arm raised as heavyweight champion, the fans stood on their feet, sometimes on their chairs, and screamed for their favorites. This was warfare that made some of the lackadaisical, clock-watching professionals look like slow-motion movies by comparison. This was a con- test where every knight of the padded mitt had his own tribe to cheer him on. At last it was over, and, as the exhausted swarm of fight fans emptied out of the Stadium, Bishop Sheil was busy in the dressing rooms. First he congratulated the champions who were flyweight Oscar O'Hanion, bantamweight George Haberski, featherweight Anthony Marcy, lightweight Gene Higgins, welterweight Scotty Sylvano, middleweight Max Marek, light heavyweight John Pershe and heavyweight Stephen Sakak. Leo Rodak, who was to become one of the outstanding professionals in later years, had been whipped by George Haberski. Bishop Sheil reminded each of them that this victory meant they could choose whatever college they wished to attend, and silently blessed each one. Then, for a long time, he was busy with the losers. To him they were champions too. As Bishop Sheil was leaving the Stadium long after the crowds had gone and the lights had been darkened, he was Here Was a New Music 73 stopped at the doorway by a tiny ragamuffin, shivering in the cold. "Hello, Son, what can I do for you?" "I saw the fights tonight, Bishop Sheil, I waited to tell you that I'm going to be one of your champions next year." The Bishop smiled down into the blue eyes and grinning Irish face which barely reached his beltline. "You're a little young, aren't you, Son? You have to be six- teen to enter the tournament. But you can come and start boxing any time you want. We'll teach you all we know." "I'll be around tomorrow, Bishop. Maybe I'll be too young next year, but the year after that I'm going to be a CYO champion. I'm older than I look and I've done some boxing already. And I weigh almost a hundred pounds." "That's fine. We need boys like you. What is your name, Sonny?" "My name's Jimmy — Jimmy Christy. And don't forget, Bishop, I'm going to be one of your champions. You can put my name on one of those gold medals right now." Bishop Sheil smiled as he walked away. What an appealing youngster he was with that bright grin and those bold, blue eyes. Probably would be a champion. He'd have to remember that name— Christy— Jimmy Christy. CHAPTER SIX A Monkey for Jimmy A BRIGHT new chapter of life had opened for the eight CYO boxing champions. Their pictures were in the papers; the stories of their glorious battles to the titles were clipped out carefully and pasted in their scrapbooks; there was a rumor that the gate receipts from the show at Chicago Stadium would be used to create a huge CYO center sometime soon. George Cardinal Mundelein presented them with gold medals for the victories they had won, and, pinning the sym- bols on the eight proud breasts, tried again to explain to the world what the CYO was doing. "The Church in these days," the Cardinal said, "particularly in a big city like Chicago, must do some things we did not have to do a generation ago. Then, when a boy had passed through the parish school and had been confirmed, we felt that we had properly prepared him for life, and our responsi- bility concerning him ceased. "Today we must build high schools to receive him when 74 A Mon\ey for Jimmy 75 he has finished grammar school, and now we must even super- vise his recreation. Otherwise he will come under influences, and enter into surroundings, that may quickly undermine and destroy what we have built up in his soul and in his character. "That explains this boxing tournament of the CYO. We might as well admit that a growing, healthy boy takes as naturally to boxing as a puppy does to romping. We have all gone through it, some of us more, some less, according to temperament. Mothers for generations have tried to suppress it and haven't succeeded. The Church doesn't try. Rather, we are trying to control it, to teach the boys that there is a time and place for it and a method in doing it. If done properly, it certainly helps to develop the boy, it makes him alert, manly and courageous. "Moreover, everybody will admit, I think, that if a boy is going to fight, it is better for him to do it under our auspices and under the watchful eye of his priestly friend and superior than in back of a speakeasy, in the alley or cellar of some club and in the midst of a gang of rowdies. "There is another reason for our interest in this tournament and others that will follow. When I was a boy I constantly heard repeated the phrase 'the manly art of self-defense.' We have not heard that so often in late years. A great war came along and we put guns in the hands of boys, and a race of gunmen has come into being. Crimes of violence have become common, of hourly occurrence. "The Church here in Chicago is taking this new generation by the hand and leading it back to the ideals of our fathers. 76 Bishop Shell and the CYO "We are trying to teach them to use the weapons God gave them to defend themselves, and to use them only for defense. Any coward can shoot another in the back with a gun, but it takes quick thinking, clear vision and real courage to defeat an adversary with one's hands. "Bishop Sheil has seen every one of these contests. He tells me he has never seen a finer lot of boys than these hundreds of lads, descendants of a dozen races, a most promising lot of future Americans." Although CYO boxing was capturing the interest of the public, it was only a small factor in Bishop Sheil's vast athletic program that was under way and already functioning with the smoothness of similar university sport activities of long stand- ing. Basketball teams in the several leagues which had been set up could list ten times as many contestants as the boxing tournament had welcomed. Ice skating races and derbies were drawing another group of specialists. The Boy Scout troops, although not exactly athletic groups, were growing with tre- mendous speed. A typical advertising man might well have coined a slogan such as "It's smart to wear the CYO emblem." The aches and bruises of the boxing finals had scarcely had time to subside before the boys were packing for the long trek to Los Angeles where they would box a picked group of west coast wariors. They would travel in style; they would stay at one of the best hotels; they were champions and they would be treated as such. It must be emphasized that in January of 1932, any American who was eating regularly was considered a prince of privilege. A Monkey for Jimmy 77 Poverty's children were lucky to get enough shabby meals to kill the continual pains of hunger. But the CYO boxing trip was made in style. No athletic team before or since has traveled in more luxury than the CYO squads which have journeyed all over the world. Bishop Sheil was going along to Los Angeles, and his pro- teges must be fit and able to stand up proudly in any society. Each one was supplied with a new suit of clothes and com- plete furnishings to go with it. Socks, underwear, shoes, shirts, ties and hats were chosen for good taste as well as quality. An entire railroad car was chartered for the boxers, coach Packey MacFarland, medical director Dr. James Russell, Bishop Sheil, and Judge Bill Campbell who was going too. The railroad was supplied with a menu to be followed to the letter, in order that perfect physical condition be maintained. Pure bottled water was loaded on board for the trip, a pre- caution that few teams in history have bothered to observe. It is difficult to measure the tremendous impact this treat- ment had. The eight CYO champions themselves were sud- denly living in a dream world. They were learning that fun need not be found only in the gutters and alleys of the slums. They had fought to gain nice things; they would fight doubly hard to keep them. In Chicago, their pals who had watched them get ready for the trip were squirming with envy; their parents were bursting with pride as each boy was having an experience that few of the parents had ever known. In Los Angeles they stayed at the finest hotel, and, between training sessions, they were showered with hospitality. Bishop 78 Bishop Sheil and the CYO Sheil's dramatic war against the problems of youth was the first truly good news the country had read in a long time. America had lost confidence in itself, but here was a straight- thinking man of God who was not afraid, who knew that there was nothing more important than American youth, who had faith that these boys would clean up the mess their elders had made of the United States. After several glorious days on the west coast, the Chicago champions clashed with the Los Angeles team which was coached by former lightweight champion Willie Ritchie, and started the long ride east with a 5 to 3 triumph on their record. When they returned to Chicago, they were greeted like heroes and were soon exhausted answering the questions of the gang back home. CYO centers which were in parish halls, basements or any other big room when no gymnasium was available, were being swamped with new boxers of every size, shape and nationality. It was time to provide bigger quarters, to increase the staff on a permanent basis, to be sure that this blast of sunshine would not be snuffed out by inertia and improper preparation. A full time athletic director was needed, and after careful study Jack Elder, Notre Dame football hero of recent days, was chosen. Elder, along with Frank Carideo, Marty Brill and the other South Bend immortals of the late 20's, had survived the rugged school of Knute Rockne, and was ideally fashioned for the job ahead. The CYO soft-ball league was formed in the spring, and vacant lots all over Chicago were cleared of tin cans and bottles A Monkey for Jimmy 79 by the boys themselves. Chicago's vast park system welcomed the CYO nines which were formed quickly into leagues for controlled competition. Track meets were part of the program, and it was in one of these that the blistering speed of a tiny Negro named Claude Young was first revealed to the public. Some years later Claude, better known as "Buddy," was a star back at Illinois, and with the New York Yanks team in the National Football League. It was in June of 1932 that Bishop Sheil announced the opening of the CYO Center at 31 East Congress Street, one block south of the Loop. This large building, with fifty-two bowling alleys, was to become the heart of the CYO which would soon send its influence all over the world. Remodelling was necessary; space must be provided for the boxers to train. They were jamming the smaller parish equipment so thickly that it was almost impossible for anyone to get proper training or instruction. There must be office space to handle the ap- palling amount of detail work, and the other services that were still ideas and dreams in the mind of Bishop Sheil. In September, two months before America was to choose Franklin Roosevelt to become its leader for the rest of his life- time, George Cardinal Mundelein dedicated the new Center. The incredible progress of the CYO, which a year before had still been only an idea, now had a solid, and valuable home base of operations. This had been accomplished during the absolute financial bottom of the worst economic depression the country had ever known. The financing of the original Center, and all the seemingly 80 Bishop Shell and the CYO endless projects of Bishop Sheil, has remained a mystery. The Bishop himself always gave the same answer to questioning on the subject. "People make contributions," he'd say; "God will always provide." The doors of the new Center were hardly open before the building began to vibrate with the training of boxers for the next annual tournament. It hadn't been easy to win one of the championship titles the year before; this year it was going to be a lot tougher. For this year, the prize was even greater: the champions would go to Panama to fight a picked team. Such a journey was like a trip to the moon for the boys from Chicago's slums. All of the previous champions with the excep- tion of welterweight Scotty Sylvano and big John Pershe were still in training. They knew what a CYO trip was like and they wanted another. However, plenty of eager contenders were after their crowns. Of the thousands of boys training daily for the tourna- ment, none showed more determination than Jimmy Christy, the handsome, grinning little imp who had stopped Bishop Sheil as he left the Chicago Stadium the previous winter to inform the Bishop that one of the new champions was going to be James Patrick Christy. There was no stopping Christy. He would spar with anybody, even heavyweights if Packey Mac- Farland would let him; he worked at shadow-boxing, the speedbag, and in the ring, until they chased him home each night. Somewhere he had learned a few of the basic funda- mentals of scientific sparring and he absorbed the suggestions of Packey MacFarland like a thirsty sponge. Within a couple of weeks, Jimmy Christy was the pet of the A Mon\ey for Jimmy 81 CYO and the ringleader of all the mischief that took place. One of his favorite tricks was snapping BB shot from between his teeth in such a way that none of his targets knew where the stinging little pellets were coming from. No matter what deviltry he got into, his charming smile and baby-faced inno- cence always saved him from mob annihilation. Long before the tournament started, he did not hesitate to inform anyone who would listen that his bag was already packed ready for that trip to Panama. He wanted a pet monkey and he would get one in the Canal Zone. No matter where Jimmy was, in the ring or out, there was action. It would be that way all his life. The tournament opened in the late fall, with crackling action nearly every night in some arena in Chicago or the suburbs, as the boys jabbed and punched their way towards Panama. The Chicago Stadium was ready for the finals, and this time there wasn't a vacant seat. CYO boxing had already become a tradition, an annual event, that no Chicago sports fan wanted to miss. Again came the impressive ceremonies with the CYO Boy Scouts opening the show, and when Bishop Sheil climbed into the ring to lead the boys in the CYO pledge, he could not help smiling at Featherweight Jimmy Christy, standing proudly in his white robe and glowering at Featherweight Harry Booker and defending Champion Tony Marcy, the last two obstacles before the gold medal could be his. Christy's aggressive slam- bang style had been the subject of considerable newspaper com- ment during the preliminary rounds. Jimmy was a crowd pleaser wherever he performed, and some of the sports writers 82 Bishop Sheil and the CYO were even predicting that he might go to the top in the pro- fessional ranks if he decided to continue a boxing career. As expected, the contests opened with a squall of leather mitts, and before the torrid tornado ended, four of the defend- ing champions had gone down to defeat. George Haberski gave way to Johnny Ginter in the bantam class; Higgins was replaced by Jim O'Connell as lightweight king; Chet Bukowski blasted Steve Sakal out of the heavyweight crown. Oscar O'Hanion won a second term as boss of the flyweights and Max Marek moved up one division to be light heavy champion. In the featherweight class, which Bishop Sheil may have been watching with just a hint of hope for a certain puckish little Irishman, Jimmy Christy stormed to victory over Champion Tony Marcy, then lost by a heart breaking whisker to Henry Booker for the title. The gold medal for Christy would have to wait another year, but he would go to Panama with all the others who lost in the finals, as an alternate team. The sixteen warriors left Chicago during a wicked cold spell in early January, and four days later were stepping off the boat from New York in Havana for two days of sightseeing. They were dressed with the best in clothing provided by the CYO, and they were already putting on weight from the tre- mendous meals on shipboard. Sailors constructed a training ring on deck under the direction of Captain Max Marek and kindly Judge Bill Campbell who was riding herd on the trip. But the training and the invigorating sea air developed appetites that would not be denied. As Max Marek explained many years later, "Here was a bunch of kids who didn't know what a real meal looked like, and the ship's cook threw food at us A Mon\ey for Jimmy 83 like we were turkeys being fattened for Thanksgiving. When we finally got to Panama, flyweight Oscar O'Hanion weighed 124 pounds and he was supposed to box at 112." During the long trip through the Gulf of Mexico, Marek drove the boys through daily workouts. They were under tropical sun now, less than a week away from zero weather, and the quick switch disrupted the training routine. In Panama the sun continued to boil and the boys continued to eat. Jimmy Christy was driving the natives crazy with a steady stream of BB shot snapping out of his teeth. Altogether they spent ten days in the Canal Zone, seeing the sights like visiting royalty. Overweight, and far from sharp condition, they lost the team match to the older, acclimated Army boxers, although several of the CYO boxers won their individual matches. It was nearly February when they reached home, and the first one through the depot gates where Bishop Sheil was wait- ing to greet them, was Jimmy Christy. A monkey perched on his shoulder. "I got him, Bishop," the little scrapper grinned, "he'll be my mascot now and I'll win that lightweight title next December for sure." "How was the trip, Jimmy?" "Gosh, Bishop Sheil, I don't know what to say. New York, Havana, Panama, an ocean liner, all that food! I thought that just happened to people in books. Even when I get to be a world's champion, it won't be as much fun as that. Say, there's Mom. Hey, Mom, look at my monkey." "Bless you, Son," said Bishop Sheil, turning to greet the rest of his soldiers. CHAPTER SEVEN Stars in the Fistic Sky o F the one hundred and sixty CYO boxing champions who banged their way to glory in the first twenty years of the tournaments, only a few turned professional. Bishop Sheil was scrupulously careful to help all his boys avoid the many hazards which lie in the pathway of all professional boxers. CYO box- ing itself maintained an amazingly clean record. Proper train- ing, careful matchmaking, thorough physical examinations, and strict observance of the basic rules of safety, paid off with a record which showed none of the fatalities nor mental injuries so pitifully prevalent in the professional ranks. Bishop Sheil and his staff spent many long hours convincing starry-eyed youngsters that professional boxing was not the rosy pathway to riches and glory that professional managers liked to claim it was when they saw the possibility of selling the fresh reputations the boys had earned in the amateur ranks. Only a few of the professional managers and trainers have ever been on the CYO approved list. The rest, for good reasons, 84 Stars in the Fistic Sky 85 have been considered a detriment to the sport and a serious danger to CYO graduates. The case histories of havoc and death they have arranged for young fighters lacking such con- scientious guidance can be found by checking the later life of the well-known fighters of the past. With few exceptions they live out their lives in poverty, their mental faculties dulled forever from the beatings they have absorbed. A grisly example of the routine which Bishop Sheil has tried to avoid was that of Lavern Roach, an intelligent young Texan who won a national amateur welterweight title in 1945. Roach turned professional under the joint management of an unskilled pal of his days in the Marine Corps and a professional veteran who was more interested in big-money matches than the boy's health. Time and again Roach was rushed into competition far over his head, but managed to win despite overwhelming demands. Within a few months he was matched with Marcel Cerdan, then on his way to the middleweight title, and Roach absorbed a murderous beating. His immediate retirement "for life" lasted only a few months, and once more the young fellow was sent back into action. It was not long before television audi- ences all over the eastern states saw Lavern Roach killed in the ring by a shocked opponent of little ability. Brain injuries, probably inflicted in the bout with Cerdan, had taken their toll, and another fine boy had died to feed the greed of pro- fessional boxing. This was not the plan for CYO graduates, and Bishop Sheil struggled against it from the start. A few of the CYO cham- pions, and some who did not win CYO titles, showed top-flight 86 Bishop Sheil and the CYO ability, intelligent training habits and enough good sense to accept the advice of proper managers and trainers. The most prominent of these was a young fellow from Gary, Indiana, named Anthony Florian Zaleski, who, as Tony Zale, pounded his way to the middleweight title, lost it to the spec- tacular Rocky Graziano, won it back from Rocky, and later went down to his final defeat in a championship bout with Marcel Cerdan. Tony's three hair-raising bouts with Graziano, and the spectacular twelve-round war with Cerdan, created a public demand for a rematch for the middleweight title. But Tony was older by then and the time had come for good advice to take control before Zale exposed himself to permanent injury. It was then that Bishop Sheil and Lou Radzienda, who had become one of the Illinois State Boxing Commissioners, con- ferred with Sam Pian and Art Winch, Tony's managerial staff. Although there would be a fabulous guarantee of money for Zale to fight Cerdan again, he was persuaded to stay in retire- ment and become a boxing coach of the CYO teams. Zale was intelligent enough to accept this advice and joined Al Pris- linger, a triple title winner under the CYO banner, to teach other youngsters the style that makes champions. Max Marek, a champion on the first two CYO teams, went into the money ranks and climbed high enough to box John Henry Lewis, once light heavyweight champion of the world, in a feature bout at Comiskey Park. But Max was not quite good enough for the front ranks, and the CYO advised him to retire soon after his meeting with Lewis. However, Marek had Stars in the Fistic S1{y 87 once beaten Joe Louis in an amateur bout, and shrewd promoters milked this "record" for all it was worth, coaxing Marek back into boxing to get the beatings that the CYO strategy board had tried to avoid for him. At last, big Max saw the light and retired to become a successful businessman and part-time wrestler. The CYO boxers have always been consistent winners, or top contenders, in national Golden Gloves and Amateur Athletic Union tournaments. Their class, condition, and sound training have made their teams "the ones to beat" ever since their boxing program started. Never, however, has any other organization equalled the record made by the Chicago CYO in 1936 when three of the eight boxers who went to Berlin to represent the United States in the Olympic Games were Bishop Sheil's champions. These boys, part of the magnificent team of American ath- letes which listed the great Jesse Owen and Ralph Metcalfe on its roster, were bantamweight Johnny Brown, lightweight Andy Scrivani and welterweight Chet Rutecki. They did their part to humiliate the musclemen of Adolf Hitler, and to shatter the superman myth that the Nazi leader might have claimed for his Olympic team had not these fine young Amer- icans beaten them at their best games. When the boys came back, Scrivani and Brown, with the approval of Bishop Sheil and Lou Radzienda, turned profes- sional. They were good enough, and their careers, mostly waged on the Pacific Coast where small boxers are always in high demand because of the many Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and 88 Bishop Sheil and the CYO Filipinos there, were highly successful until they retired to married life. Rutecki fought professionally around Chicago for a short time, and gave it up for a steady job and a growing family. "When Harold Dade first came to box at the gym he was the most helpless kid I ever saw in the ring," Commissioner Lou Radzienda reported ten years after Dade's appearance "He was a tiny youngster, hardly weighed a hundred pounds. He was really terrible, but he showed that flash of great competitive fire and we decided to see what we could do with him. Well, there never was an athlete who worked harder at his craft than Dade. He practiced every day until we closed up at night, and, by the time he enlisted in the Marines he had won our flyweight title twice and was the national Golden Gloves champion too. When he came out of service he went West, gunning for the little fellows, and I wasn't a bit surprised when he beat Manuel Ortiz for the world's bantam title. That gave us two world's champs — Dade and Zale — and another, Leo Rodak, should have been a champion if he had followed instructions a little closer that night long ago when he fought Tony Can- zoneri. Rodak should have won that one and it would have given him the confidence he needed to go to the top. Rodak was one of our best although he was never, strangely enough, able to win a CYO title." For several years the CYO assumed the management of its professional graduates. Pat Kenneally, a CYO boxer himself, did their matchmaking for them, paid all expenses, gave the boys two-thirds of their purses and kept the other third in trust to Stars in the Fistic Sky 89 turn over when their careers were finished. Unfortunately, the controlling combines of the professional sport resented this fiercely and made friendly relationships impossible. However, the few boys thus handled did reach retirement in good physical and mental condition, and with some money in the bank. This has seldom been the case with unattached fistic warriors. Pat Kenneally was one of three large brothers who boxed for the CYO. Brother Phil later became a well-known stage and screen star; brother Tom, a heavyweight, turned profes- sional and walloped out a win over Lee Savold before he retired to become a referee in the state of Illinois. In 1940 the team produced Freddie Dawson, who was to be a topflight contender for the lightweight professional crown for the next ten years. On the same team, heavyweight Hubert Hood started his career which led to comfortable professional success. It also produced a boy named Al Reasoner, who won the lightweight title (Dawson boxed then as a featherweight) and it led to his tragic death at the fists of his team-mate, Fred Dawson. Reasoner turned professional against the advice and entreaties of Radzienda, Bishop Sheil and the entire CYO staff, who believed he was too frail and unpolished for the brutal profes- sional game. As time went by he achieved a mediocre record and was soon matched with Dawson, who was getting along fine as a pro. They met at Marigold Gardens in Chicago, and Reasoner, completely outclassed by Dawson, was knocked out. He never recovered consciousnes and died within a few hours. Dawson, inconsolable for weeks, was finally convinced that 90 Bishop Shell and the CYO Reasoner's death was an accident, and went on to a brilliant career. He knew that Reasoner had rejected the plea of Bishop Sheil — something he, himself, would not forget when the time came for him to retire. Jimmy Carter, who dethroned Ike Williams for the world's lightweight crown in the spring of 1951, was a product of the New York branch of the CYO. A few other CYO boys turned professional for a while, and enjoyed a certain degree of good fortune within their capabili- ties. Tony Motisi, 1937 welter winner, got far enough to meet Sugar Ray Robinson. Tim Dalton, 1943 lightweight champion, and Vince Pellegrini, who succeeded him the next year, boxed in the money ranks during the early war years. The history of the CYO boys who became personalities through their boxing could not be written without the stories of two who will never be forgotten by anyone around the gym at 31 E. Congress. One of them, three times a champion, and winner of the national title in his class, retired at the top of his career as an amateur, although professional managers were hounding him to distraction. He was Abe Lee, Chinese Ameri- can. The other was the kid who had won Bishop Sheil's heart with his impish love of laughter and life, Jimmy Christy, the Irish wildcat who never knew how to stop punching, and who fought a world's champion less than a year after his first pro- fessional bout. Lee Kwong was the name of the first when he was born in the heart of Chicago's Chinatown. Both his father and mother were immigrants who were trying desperately to make a living Stars in the Fistic Sky 91 by importing goods from the old country. And, like most national groups in the sprawling reaches of Chicago, the Chinese had created a community of their own. The customs, language and living habits of their native land continued, and little Kwong did not know a word of English until he was nearly ready for school. He ate his meals with chopsticks, and had never seen an unground piece of meat served at table. School, inadequate and uninteresting, had no appeal, and Kwong was on the road to becoming another recruit to the street gangs when he happened to become interested in the Boy Scouts. Then, almost immediately, the magic of belonging to a group began to work wonders for the lonely little fellow. Here were people who were interested in him, who tried to make him feel wanted and important. A great desire to learn blossomed within him, and it didn't matter whether he was learning to tie the intricate knots of the Boy Scout craft, or the school subjects which had been so dull before. It was not long before Lee Kwong decided he wanted to join the Catholic Church. What little religious training he had known until then had been a haphazard following of the Buddhism of his father, and it was not active enough to suit him. Kwong was a young American now, progressive, curious, awakening to the wonders of his country. He was baptized a Catholic when he was sixteen, and chose the name Abraham because he had read the story of a great American president so named. From that moment on, "Abe" Lee became part of the daily panorama at the CYO Center. 92 Bishop Sheil and the CYO Boxing fascinated him from the start. He had terrific speed and coordination within his 130-pound body, and it was soon apparent that when he became of age in 1944 he would be a hard man to beat in his weight division. He trained incessantly from the moment school was out until the gym closed in the evening. He worked at the art of boxing like a fine musician who practices his instrumental technique. Bishop Sheil became interested in Abe Lee, and sensed the tremendous ambition and pride that were driving the boy to learn everything he could about being a good and successful citizen, and a devout mem- ber of the Church. Abe was sixteen then, and for the next three years the welter- weight class at the CYO boxing tournaments experienced a whirlwind of fists as Abe punched and boxed his way to three championships. He had learned a left hook to the body that was a stunning weapon, and it was no surprise to anyone when he went to the national championships of the AAU in Boston and won the title. He was all action, a great crowd-pleaser, and also the first Chinese-American boxer of any prominence in the history of the game. The day after winning his national crown, Abe was invited to visit Governor Tobin of Massachusetts at the State House. The Governor had been a ringside spectator at the fights the night before, and put aside the duties of his office for a few hours of talk with the clean-cut, grinning Chinese boy who could fight like a wounded tiger. Then, inevitably, came the question of turning professional. There would be money in it for Abe. The fact that he was the Stars in the Fistic Sky 93 first of his race to become a top-flight boxer would pull the fans through the box-office. He might go to the top, might even be- come a world's champion. He was far ahead of the aver- age ability of the amateur boxers and he had a punch like the kick of a mule. Then, too, the war had depleted the professional ranks. The public was crying for new faces and the competition was not too rugged any more. What to do? Abe went to Bishop Sheil and asked for advice. "Why don't you go on with your studies, Abe? You've had fun out of boxing and it will be a spare-time hobby the rest of your life. You've learned about keeping your body healthy and strong, and you've become a great champion. We are proud of you just as we are of every CYO champion. But you have a better opportunity than most boys to make a great suc- cess of your life in the business world. You have learned how to study and you have a thirst for knowledge." "But, Bishop, I can't afford college. Father is getting pretty old. Mother is working to keep the home together. My brother and sister are younger, and in school. I'll have to go to work if I don't turn pro. Perhaps I could make some money fighting for a while, then go back and finish college.' , "It's not necessary, Abe. You plan to go to Lake Forest Col- lege this fall and complete your education. Your scholarship as a CYO champion will take care of the expenses." Five years later Abe Lee, a Bachelor of Arts degree already his, was finishing his studies and prepared for the examinations to become a certified public accountant, and was working at WFJL, the CYO radio station. He was still boxing as a hobby. 94 Bishop Shell and the CYO Did he ever regret that he hadn't turned pro to pick up some of that "easy" money? "Well," said Abe, "I might have done all right. Two years ago, which was two years after I retired, I put in two weeks of active duty as a Naval Reserve on the battleship Missouri. They wanted me to box the welterweight champion of the fleet who was also on board. I trained for two days and knocked him out in the first round. Of course he was no Sugar Ray Robinson, but it made me wonder how far I might have gone in the pro game. No. I made the right decision, or rather, the Bishop made it for me. What other young punk from Chinatown has had the breaks that he gave me ? I'd be awfully stupid if I didn't take every bit of advice he is kind enough to give me. Lee Kwong is doing much better as Abe Lee and I thank God every day that He led me to Bishop Sheil." "Jimmy Christy, God love him, had only one fault as a fighter," Commissioner Lou Radzienda explained. "He always wanted to do everything in a hurry. He couldn't understand why he couldn't box Freddie Miller for the title the day after he turned professional. I never saw such fury in a ring, nor such a lovable kid. When you sat there at the ringside and looked up at Christy, you were watching one of the handsomest and appealing youngsters that ever put on a glove. He could have gone into the movies. He had beautiful teeth and he was always grinning, even in the middle of a fight. He had a nice body, well-proportioned and well-coordinated. He looked like every boxer should look on the front cover of a magazine. And he had guts. Stars in the Fistic Sty 95 "Look at this record, here, Jimmy turned pro late in 1934, and before the year ended he won ten straight fights. He beat Everett Rightmire in his tenth, and Rightmire was an experi- enced old pro at that time. Next year Jimmy won three more, then went in with five of the toughest little men in the world at the time, one after the other. Here they are: Mike Belloise, Jackie Sharkey, Lew Feldman, Baby Arizmendi and Red Gug- gino. He beat four of them and had a split-decision loss to Arizmendi who was only good enough to go forty-five rounds in three fights with Henry Armstrong when Armstrong was at the top of his terrific ability. "So then Jimmy had to have Freddie Miller, the champ. We told him he wasn't ready for Miller, begged him to wait another year, but it didn't work. He wanted the champ, maybe to find out how good he really was. Well, he found out. He wasn't good enough to beat Miller, but he came awfully close to scoring the upset of the year considering that he had had so little pro experience and that Miller was one of the greatest champions. "You should have sat with the Bishop when Christy was fighting. He was in that ring just as much as Christy, ducking, jabbing, hooking, feeling every punch that Jimmy took and making every move right with the kid. The Bishop had always been a pretty good boxer himself. I remember one time there was a fresh young punk came into CYO and thought he was pretty smart belting some of the boys around. The Bishop came by one day — it happened at the boys' summer camp — and saw what was going on. So he climbed up into the ring, put on % Bishop Shell and the CYO the gloves, and gave this smart aleck a good shellacking. Didn't even bother to take off his cassock. "I'll never forget the night Christy boxed Sam Angott the first time. Angott was a whirlwind in those days too, and dump- ing him in with Jimmy was like putting the trigger to an atom bomb. They tore into each other like two starving tigers and never stopped for ten rounds. The Bishop was just about ex- hausted when it was over, but when they announced that An- gott had won the decision we had to sit on him to keep him from getting up in the ring and licking everybody connected with the joint. I've never seen him so mad before or since. He thought Jimmy had been jobbed out of the win and he was going to tear the arena down and throw it in the ashcan. He just barely remembered that nice bishops don't do such things. "About that time, Jimmy got interested in art and discovered he had a lot of drawing talent. So, after he lost another deci- sion to Angott, he went to art school and he stuck with that until the war came along." Boxing will always be a dramatic and exciting part of the CYO program, although it is overshadowed in public service by the many other projects which have grown around it. Periodically Bishop Sheil is attacked by the softer-minded seg- ment of Chicago's population for his sponsorship of "horrid fist-fights." To this His Excellency has a stock answer. "I would rather have them fighing with gloves than have them learn to use the lethal weapons we 'good' citizens allow our Chicago hoodlums to flaunt," he says. "The problem is primarily the desperate need of young people to give expression Stars in the Fistic S\y 97 to those creative energies with which their Creator has en- dowed them. It is the hunger of boys and girls for recognition, their identity as individuals in a calloused society too busily engaged in other matters to pay any attention to them. Their youthful personalities, rebelling against this neglect, seek an outlet that is inevitably anti-social. Competitive athletics and organized games and recreation can do much toward helping to meet this need. Left unchecked, this tumor of delinquency can prove tremendously costly to the future of the nation." CHAPTER EIGHT On Many Fronts B EFORE the boxing tournaments had made the CYO name a shining light in the darkest heart of Chicago and throughout the land, Bishop Sheil had already started to wage on many fronts the larger fight, of which the boxing was at once a phase and a symbol. Very soon, the battle was to be in full blast at so many different stages and in so many different directions that it is quite impossible to set forth its events in chronological order. The School of Aeronautics, for example, came into being- two brick buildings and fifteen students — practically simul- taneously with the boxing. But its story had better be left till later. Vacation schools multiplied, more and more parishes fostered Boy Scout troops under the CYO banner, the biggest basket- ball league in the world was under way, and Bishop Sheil's plan of coordinated interparochial activity had the entire Chicago area humming with action which was soon to be re- 98 On Many Fronts 99 duplicated in dioceses across the United States and in foreign lands. But as one front sprang into action, Commander-in-Chief Sheil was already attacking the enemy on another. And always it was the same direct tactic of frontal attack against the point on which the opposing forces offered their strongest and most immediate threat. In the early thirties, America's immediate threat rose from the ugly social spawn of depression. They were baleful years and a lot of good, healthy American youth was beginning to rot in hopelessness. Workless kids became homeless kids, kids outside the law. The hobo jungles overflowed with hapless "road punks" to whom society offered nothing but the negative attention of condemnation and scorn. Jails burst at the seams and parolees came back as repeaters in such numbers that the country began to cry out for the abolition of parole. It was a mess into which leaders of the people, brave enough in other things, feared to venture. Not Bishop Sheil. His boys were in danger and he stepped right in by their side. A working boys' home, a home for parolees, shelter for transient youth. They came in rapid order. In normal times, one might say these were normal charitable activities for any churchman. But this was a moment of politi- cal and social chaos. The need was so pressing that meeting it seemed a hopeless task. The situation was dynamite. It is a tribute to Bishop Sheil's capacity for meeting threaten- ing forces with direct vigorous action that at least two of these three foundations were to throw him into the limelight 100 Bishop Shell and the CYO as a national influence on the shaping of American social policy. The Home for Parolees, for example, was in the first place a natural for the ex-prison chaplain prelate. It was part of his direct challenge to that ever-busy death cell in Cook County Jail. To the convicts, parole meant a second chance. The second chance Chaplain Sheil had always fought to give them. Now that hope was in danger of being cut off. It was a familiar ques- tion back again in another guise: "Does the abuse of a thing condemn its right use?" And what was causing this particular abuse of parole? A scared society was ready with the answer that the fault lay in the intrinsic wickedness of the parolees. Those fellows were degenerate types. They were constitutional enemies of society, and the only way to keep them from doing harm was to put them in prison and keep them there. The Sheil answer was different. And he provided it in prac- tice as well as in theory. He knew the men, and his answer came from their side. Was the cause of the abuse not rather in the parole system than in the parolee ? What kind of "second chance" was it to release a man from constant contact with habitual criminals, and throw him back into the environment that caused his trouble in the first place, telling him to report to the police station regularly or he would go back into jail? What chance did that give in the best of times when at least a few people could be found to hire an ex-convict ? What chance did it leave in these days when there were no jobs for anybody? Treat a man like a man and he'll act like one. That had been Sheil's rule and he did not fear to put it into practice. The parolee needed a home that would release him from his old On Many Fronts 101 environment, he needed guidance in refashioning his life, re- forming his habits. He needed to feel that he belonged, that he was not an outcast. He needed honest work and, again that phrase, "an outlet for the normal energies of his youth." With parolees as with others, for Bishop Sheil there was no youth problem, only the normal problem of youth. He provided the home, the guidance, the feeling that someone cared about them. He supplied jobs by creating them where none existed. This he did by establishing a Delivery Service run and staffed by his boys. Did it pay off? The Bishop could provide a fat folio of case histories, if he bothered to keep such things, which would prove that it did. In fact, the details of one of those unwritten case histories fall into such a classic melodramatic pattern of Innocent Fall and Ideal Rehabilitation that no one looking for an example of what might be done by proper guidance would dare to dream up this true-life story. The boy had actually been put in jail for stealing a piece of fruit. In the cells he had learned the ways of the criminal world and absorbed its against-society mentality. Rankling with in- justice at what had happened to him, he was ready when re- leased on parole to fall into line with the only friends he now trusted, his prison pals. But he wasn't left to the tender mercies of his new-found friends. The Home for Parolees was now in existence, the boy came under Bishop Sheil's influence, and he is now a respected, useful and happy American householder. But the story does not stop with the physical fact of the Home and the spiritual fact of its influence on the boys it sheltered. It goes on to become a part of our changed national outlook on the rehabilitation of prison inmates. 102 Bishop Sheil and the CYO When the Bishop launched his Home he followed his usual procedure of finding the right lieutenants for the job. This time the man was Charles Leonard, now one of the nation's out- standing criminologists and Superintendent of the St. Charles State School. With such competent and willing assistance the Bishop stood out against the wave of public opinion for the abolition of parole. One needs only look at prison methods in the United States today and twenty years ago to see the great difference that has occurred. It would be gross exaggeration to attribute all this to Bishop Sheil. But there are those who attach such high importance to his vigorous constructive action at that particularly crucial moment, as to credit him with a major role in saving the American parole system and pushing it towards needed reform. A similar development of influence from the local to the national sphere followed his action on behalf of the neglected multitude of homeless boys. He opened a house for them, and was immediately flooded. As many as seven hundred transients and homeless came in one night. He had to rent practically a whole block. An incident that occurred in this initial stage of sudden expansion is revealing of the Tightness of the Bishop's attitude towards his parolees. The throngs poured in before there was adequate organization to do more than attend to their immediate needs. Among them were a number of real "toughies" who formed a muscle-gang to run things their own way. They formed their own private administration demanding tribute, in real gangster fashion, from all the rest. In short order they were controlled from within their own ranks by another group of boys who took it upon themselves to restore On Many Fronts 103 right rule and proper respect for authority. That law-and-order group was made up of Bishop Shell's despised parolees! This mass of unemployed and homeless youth needed more than food and shelter. They needed more than recreational activity. What was needed was the healthy activity of ordered and useful work to fill their days and keep their souls alive. And it was needed, not merely in Chicago, but on a national scale. So the Bishop carried the force of his ideas all the way to Washington where Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sadly in need of men of the caliber of Bernard James Sheil to aid in the immense task of reconstruction that faced the nation. It is always difficult to document the effect of one man's in- fluence on the subsequent actions of others. It is particularly delicate to attempt to do so when the one man is a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church and the other is a perennially con- troversial President of the United States. But shortly after this, the CCC camps came into being, incorporating the basic ideas Bishop Sheil had been advocating. And the report has never stopped circulating that the auxiliary Bishop of Chicago had been invited to Washington to superintend the program of Youth Rehabilitation on a national scale. One thing is quite certain. Within a few short years of launching the CYO, Bernard }. Sheil of Chicago had become a national figure on the American social scene. And he had hardly started yet! Most of the enterprises that had been started under the CYO banner were still, one might say, in their crude pioneer stage. The most deeply influential of the Bishop's ac- tions had not yet been placed. He had not yet thrown the full weight of his sometimes dramatically imposed intervention on 104 Bishop Sheil and the CYO phases of change that were to alter whole areas of the American social scene. Before the decade ended, he was to be known across the nation as a bishop who had fought the workingman's fight wherever he saw the workingman's rights denied him. A man who had done so, even when it meant standing by the side of men whom many of his colleagues in the hierarchy did not hesitate to label as "communists"; even when it meant defend- ing strike action against very influential opinion which called the same strike action "treason." He was still to become hated by the few and loved by the many as the man who fought race prejudice to a standstill, even when it meant public castigation of priests of his own church. These particular events were still in the future, but the man who was to be their center was steadily moving towards them. Nor did these larger issues distract him in the least from carry- ing forward the comparatively minor details of CYO develop- ment. For him, they were all part of one large social picture. Tonight's training session in the CYO gym was of as much im- portance to little Tony Garatti as a certain mass meeting was later to be for John L. Lewis. And the world was a small, miserable and immediate thing for the little bootblacks the Bishop would find curled up in doorways as he strode home past midnight along Madison Street. All the constructive charity that lay in the Bishop's heart belonged as much to each one of those boys as it did to Chicago and the nation. They found a father. They were cleaned, housed, their rags ex- changed for decent clothes. They were sent to school, to high school, even to the college. We mentioned case histories before. Bishop Sheil could give On Many Fronts 105 you seventy-five of them right from these boys. On the part of the boys, gratitude is so strong that, if it were not entirely out- side the Bishop's mind, you could read their names and their histories here. You would find a very prominent West Coast surgeon among them, and a fully qualified social worker who is now passing on to other boys the opportunity for a new life that Bishop Sheil gave to him. For some it might seem a long way down from wrestling with major national problems to starting a band. But that's just what the founder of the CYO did, in the midst of all these other concerns. It was quite a simple matter to him. Music would do for some what boxing was doing for others. So the CYO would have a band. Not just any band, mind you! It would have the best band in Chicago. So it had to have the best leader. So much of Bernard Sheil's action falls into the same pattern of progressive, constructive and decisive action that one grows tired of using the word "typical" about this or that act. There were two typical Sheil aspects to the founding of the band. Like the boxing, the parolee problem and the other activities, nothing was good enough for the youngsters but the best. Before, it had been the Arch Wards, the Lou Radziendas, the Tony Zales, the Charles Leonards. Now it was Tom Fabish. He was the best man for forming this best band, and the Bishop would have him. The second typical thing was that Tom Fabish was then a comparatively untried youngster of twenty, but far from being dismayed at that, the Bishop was delighted at another chance to demonstrate his confidence in youth's ability to solve the normal problem of youth. 106 Bishop Sheil and the CYO So Tom Fabish took the band and brought along his high school chum Lawrence "Murphy" Lodato to help him. Today Tom Fabish is recognized as one of the leading band directors of America, and the CYO Band is one of the leading bands. The band had its aim set high from the very beginning, and it has never been anything else but good. CYO Bands have never finished lower than third in the important Chicago Musicland Festival. From 1942 to 1945 the band took top honors in Class C competition. In 1946 it carried off Class B honors. In 1948 and 1949 it won the Class A contest, and Tom Fabish led the massed bands in Soldiers Field. But the trophies are not what Bishop Sheil sees when he looks at the band. He sees the discipline of the long hours of practice, the joy of the music, the pride of belonging that has filled each of the three thousand youngsters who have been trained by Tom Fabish. He is not particularly impressed by the fact that one or two of them have gone on to fame in the entertainment world. But he is proud of the fact that his band is the father of other bands ; that ten of his boys are now bandmasters themselves, that others have gone on to teach the music they have learned. And he is happy at the fact that while adding color and glamour to the CYO picture, those youngsters are marching on to fuller lives, and to bring fuller lives to others. They are doing it because that is precisely the direction in which they are being pointed by Tom Fabish — a lad whom the Bishop was not too busy to start off on his productive career at a moment when the fuller life did not seem a very likely prospect for anybody. CHAPTER NINE A Parade to the Gallows A; S Bishop Sheil walked into Chicago Stadium on the night of his first boxing finals, he could not help feeling that he was at least beginning to fulfil that death-cell promise, to bridge those eight blocks. A year before, no one had ever heard of the Catholic Youth Organization. It had been but a nebulous idea in his own mind. That night, the first finals were the most im- portant event in a metropolis of three million people. It was headline news in all the papers. Everyone in the city knew about the CYO. The thirty-two kids who boxed had suddenly become important — to themselves, to their families, to their neighborhood pals. They had learned, and were in turn teach- ing, important lessons on the value of discipline, the meaning of honor and the fact of the equality of man. They had battered down doors and breached stone walls. The audience that jammed the stadium came from the Gold Coast as well as from the Bloody Twentieth Ward. But to Bishop Sheil the most important part of the audience was the mass of kids from 107 108 Bishop Shell and the CYO Chicago's toughest districts looking up at the ring saying, "If he can do it, I can do it." Nor was his mind resting on the resounding success of the boxing program. True, it had done many things, including dramatizing the CYO program, but there was still much to do. Boxing was merely a means to an end. It was neither the only means nor was it the end. Boxing had given all these boys a start, but there were people and problems that boxing could not reach. The thousand CYO Boy Scouts who lined the stadium were one indication that boxing was not the only CYO activity. Another was the rounded list of sports activities of a dozen different kinds which was already in motion. But even these things which caught the public attention did not come near reflecting what the CYO meant to Bishop Sheil. It was the whole social problem of prejudice, hatred, greed and oppression that he was attacking, and his strategy soon opened the battle on other fronts. While the first set of boxing champions was taken on a dream-trip to Los Angeles and the second sailed on ocean liners for a journey to Panama, the Bishop was mov- ing in with typical energy and directness on the interracial problem in Chicago. Each boy who came to the CYO was an avenue to the heart of a social problem. As Bishop Sheil moves from symptom to cause, the CYO technique unfolds and the Bishop's peculiar genius reveals itself. Bishop Sheil didn't invent Boy Scouts, or boxing tournaments on the Golden Gloves model, any more than he invented colleges. Like a combined Commander-in- Chief, Chief-of-Staff and Field Marshal, he reviews the situa- A Parade to the Gallows 109 tion, makes a decision about his next move, surveys all the means at his disposal, deploys them to best advantage and brings them to bear with crashing force on the point he has decided to attack. This is how he has built the CYO. As we watch the progress of its battle against poverty, prejudice and ignorance, we go down to the platoon or regimental level and see the Commander-in-Chief principally through his work. The big battle, that of letting fresh air into the two festering sores of Al Capone's Bloody Twentieth Ward of struggling Italians, and the ant-heap of misery in the Negro South Side, is best watched through the conditions that had to be fought, the men who did the fighting and the people concerned. It was the toughest district of the most lawless city, at a time when murderous Al Capone was king of all he surveyed in Chicago. "The Bloody Twentieth Ward" it was called, or "Little Italy," or "Alcohol Avenue." No statues of the mighty Capone graced its filthy streets, but the youngsters of the neighborhood worshipped this hero in a district which hatched more than ninety per cent of the hoods in Al's mob. Al would stop around the neighborhood every few weeks. He would be flanked by six or more bodyguards, all dressed in the latest mobster finery which, at the time, consisted of dark blue suit, white shirt with a stiff collar but no tie, and narrow- brimmed white felt hat creased down the middle. Al passed out shiny new dimes to the kids, patted them on the head like visiting royalty, and sent baskets of food to many hungry families. The kids liked Al. Nobody else gave them food, nobody else 110 Bishop Sheil and the CYO brought them shiny dimes. From Harrison Street on the north to Roosevelt Road on the south, from Des Plaines Avenue on the east all the way to Western Avenue, they talked about Al the way other kids, in other days and other places, might talk of Babe Ruth, or Charles Lindbergh, or Joe Di Maggio, or Hopalong Cassidy. Every little boy was going to be one of Al's gunners some day; every little girl hoped that some day some really important killer might escort her to a neighbor- hood party. In the league of good citizenship, each male child born in the West Side of Chicago started the game with not two, but three strikes, already called against him. His only hope was the small possibility that the catcher might drop dead. In the sketchy delinquency records of the time, the district was Num- ber One, far in front of its nearest competitor in any city from coast to coast. Capone would never lack recruits, processed to believe that any boy who respected the law was a sissy; that Machine-Gun Jack McGurn, who had grown up here as Vin- cent Gebardi, was the finest sample of manhood the neighbor- hood had produced. Thus, for every boy in the Bloody Twentieth who, through good fortune, good family, good breaks, good influences and a good measure of the Grace of God, went straight — fifty, by con- servative estimate, went wrong. Capone himself was not born here, but came to Chicago from New York as bodyguard for Johnny Torrio. However, outside of Al himself, nearly every one of the hundreds of hoodlums of varying degrees of evil that he controlled, called the West Side home. Many of them A Parade to the Gallows 111 lived there until the violent end of their careers, a lawless, strutting, vicious brood, confident that the corrupt police would never bother them, that their only danger lay in a double-cross or the "Big Boy's" displeasure. The kids started fighting as soon as they could walk. When they weren't fighting each other, they formed into raiding parties and fought with gangs of Negroes from the area south of Little Italy, or tangled with other mobs of their Jewish or Mexican neighbors. Stealing was as natural as playing baseball. Any kid who might show a moral reluctance to hoist a few trinkets, or a bicycle, or candy, or other loot, was shunned, thereafter, as an unhealthy freak. At first the stealing was just something to do, an outlet for natural young male exuberance which had no other channel. There was no proper guidance, no inspiration except that of the hard-faced young graduates of the West Side who had made good with the Big Boy, and who now walked the streets with dark suits bulging over two shoulder-holsters, their pockets full of thick packs of folding money. Later the "snitching" would become more ambitious. Stick- ups, jack-rolling the drunks along nearby West Madison Street, would help them gain the experience and reputation to qualify for the big time. Then the neighborhood pattern of youth would be complete. Another hoodlum would be ready to live, and to die, according to the whim and plans of Al Capone. Bishop Sheil was aware of all this, and in much greater detail than here chronicled, when he formed the CYO. He knew that the West Side area contained the most concentrated groups of 112 Bishop Shell and the CYO boys heading for the gallows in the history of the country. Here, in a poisonous capsule, was the most vicious by-product of Pro- hibition which had created Capone and corrupted the govern- ment of this great city. In the days at Cook County Jail, Bishop Sheil had escorted more than one "graduate" of Little Italy to the gallows, and he knew that the sad parade would continue as long as the neighborhood gunman was the object of youthful hero worship. Some day he would move into the district in full force, but the beginning must have a dramatic impact. "We'll knock the hoodlum off the pedestal out there," Bishop Sheil said. "And we'll put another neighborhood boy in his place. He'll be dressed in CYO boxing shorts and a pair of leather mitts. He may have a shiner and a bloody nose, but he'll also have a Championship medal. We'll make a new hero in Bloody Little Italy. Those kids out there love to fight. We'll let them fight. We'll make them fight. We'll find a lot of champions in that neighborhood." Into this district in 1920 was born Ernesto Arturo Giovan- nangelo, the son of an immigrant tailor who had come from Bari, Torrino di Sangro, Italy, to raise his family in the fabulous new world, where the streets were supposed to be paved with gold and money showered down like rain. From Torrino di Sangro, "Land of Blood," the senior Giovannangelo came to settle in the Bloody Twentieth with all the other "paisanos" from the old country. Thrifty, hard-working, he bought his home, earning the money with his clever needle, going to school at night to learn to read and write the language of his A Parade to the Gallows 113 new country and to be a good citizen, long before Prohibition and Capone. Ernesto, who soon became "Blackie" to his buddies because of his black hair, dark complexion and the black eyes of his race, grew up like every other kid in the West Side. Before he reached his teens he had learned to hoist whatever loot his gang decided upon. When he needed a new bicycle, he walked into the better neighborhoods until he found one, then rode it home. It wouldn't be his long. Someone else would get it as soon as his back was turned. He liked sports. He liked to watch them, or play any game he could find. When he got into a soft-ball game which was umpired by the mighty Machine-Gun Jack McGurn, his heart beat fast. What a man that McGurn was, standing there on the field with two .45s sticking out of his hip pockets, and another tucked under his belt in front! How many notches did Jack have on his gun by now? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty? Nobody knew for sure, but they did know that Vincent Gebardi had been just a no-account punk like all the rest of them until Al Capone had liked his style of fighting and had taken him into the mob as Number One bodyguard and executioner. Well, if Vince Gebardi could become Machine-Gun Jack, so could anyone else — if he knew how to fight. Pasquale "Patsy" Tardi was there too, living just half a block from little Blackie Giovannangelo. No one had ever proved it, but all the neighborhood believed that Patsy had been the torpedo who had rubbed out Jake Lingle, the notorious news- paper reporter who had thrown a double-cross at the mob. 114 Bishop Sheil and the CYO Patsy liked to sit on his front steps and clean his guns. The kids would gather around to stare with awe at the revolvers and the deadly machine gun that Patsy handled as if it were made of platinum. Sometimes the squad car would roll by while the gun parts were spread all over the steps, and the boys would all watch until the hated cops were out of sight. Patsy paid no attention to the cops. They were too unimportant to him. He might look up and sneer, but that was all. Then one night Blackie heard the crashing chatter of a machine gun just outside his door. He raced out, knowing it had something to do with Patsy, and there was his neighbor lying face down on the sidewalk, his blood trickling into the gutter. Patsy wouldn't be cleaning his guns any more. The Genna brothers were local heroes for a while, but there must have been something wrong with them. Three of them were gunned to death, another was deported, and the last one finally disappeared. After Patsy Tardi died, Jim Venatucci, who called himself "Blondy Ryan," moved into the spotlight. Blondy liked to take long trips, but no one ever knew where he went. During the time John Dillinger was leading his marauding pack through the Middle West, and getting credit for bank stick-ups, Blondy would disappear and come back loaded with fresh money. And the whisper would go around that Dillinger was getting the credit while Blondy got the cash. Blackie learned how to fight. He could lick any kid within five years of his age. He was getting tough too. Six times the squad cars picked him up as he strolled through the neighbor- A Parade to the Gallows 115 hood. The cops would yank him into the back seat, slap him around, call him a "dirty little Dago" and try to make him admit some minor burglary. It never happened to be any job Blackie had actually done, but the bruises stayed on his face for days and he learned to hate the law. He learned, too, to disappear on Wednesday which was show-up day at the police station. That was the day the cops would bring in anybody they could catch. They'd be thrown under the glaring lights and many of Blackie's pals were fingered by witnesses for crimes they didn't happen to commit. They went to jail any- way. The law looked on them all as no-good Dagoes who were probably guilty of something. If they weren't high enough in criminal society to be sponsored by Capone, they would be locked up. Blackie wouldn't forget those bruises, the slapping around for things he did not do. Neither would he forget the St. Valentine Day murders of 1929, when seven hoodlums who worked for Bugs Moran were lined up in the garage on North Clarke and blasted into a squirming, bloody pile of corpses. There wasn't any doubt on the West Side that Jack McGurn had been the hero of that episode. Nor were there many residents of Little Italy who did not applaud the appear- ance of pretty little Louise Rolfe when she testified that Jack had been with her in the Hotel La Salle at the time of the shooting, thus becoming the notorious "Blonde Alibi" who would be Jack's bride soon after. Only a few repeated the rumor that Jack had twisted two of her dainty fingers until they snapped in order to convince her 116 Bishop Shell and the CYO that she was really with him at the proper time. Surely their hero wouldn't do that. Thus life went on for Blackie. One of his early pals was a kid named Tony Motisi, a laughing, bowlegged newcomer to the section when they were both about ten. They called Tony "Tom Mix" because of his bowlegs. Tony won his membership in the gang by accepting the challenge of the neighborhood bully who was known as "Cicauca," which is translated roughly to mean "Stupid." Tony flattened Cicauca with two smashing blows to the chin to prove he was tough enough, and game enough, to belong. Blackie started to look for a job when he was thirteen. The New Deal was in Washington now. Prohibition was dead, and most of the hoodlums were seeking new activities to replace the old income. No longer could Blackie pick up a few dollars delivering hootch. He tried the employment offices, and it didn't take long to find out that a boy with an Italian name and an address in Little Italy was not wanted anywhere. "Get out, you dirty little wop" was the most pleasant refusal he got. So he went back to the neighborhood, back to the poolroom. His pals were turning to stick-ups now — not for fun any more, but to live. Tony Motisi wasn't around so much nowadays. He, and another pal, Andy Scrivani, were getting all excited about some boxing tournaments that were going on downtown. Once in a while Blackie would bump into them and listen for a few minutes to their boasting about the instructions they were getting from Packey MacFarland, the old "uncrowned light- A Parade to the Gallows 117 weight champ." They were doing road-work in the early morn- ing, going to bed early too. They wanted Blackie to join them but when he heard that some Bishop was promoting the fights he sniffed and backed away. What kind of sissy stuff was that ? They probably fought with pillows tied over their hands. They did look good, though. Their clothes were neat and clean. They laughed a lot more than they used to, and they didn't get picked up by the prowling squad cars any more. The monotony was driving him nuts. School was all right, but after classes there was nothing to do except hang around the poolroom, or the drugstore, and listen to the guys planning their stick-ups or discussing their girls. Blackie wanted no part of girls. They scared him to death. Why shouldn't he join up with Little Dom's gang that was planning to knock over that Jew grocery store some night soon? Why should he be broke all the time with nothing to do? Pa kept telling him to stay honest, get a job, be a good boy. But Pa never had a dime to spare, while Jack McGurn had pockets full of money. Why not? Why not join Little Dom? In a few years he might have a mob of his own. He could go down to box at this CYO thing that Andy Scrivani and Tony Motisi were talking about all the time, but he'd rather play basketball or football or baseball. Maybe he should go over there some day. Yeah, might as well go see what it was like. Would they chase him because his name was Ernesto Arturo Giovangelo (Pa had shortened it a bit) and because he was a dirty little Dago from Little Italy? Well, if 118 Bishop Sheil and the CYO they did he could punch somebody in the nose and walk away. "That was the crossroads," the man who had once been "Blackie" Giovannangelo said, as he sat in his pine-panelled office in the CYO West Side Center just before Christmas, 1950. On the door, gold lettering spelled "E. A. Giovangelo, Di- rector" and two secretaries worked in a private office of their own. "That was the crossroads. I could have gone down in front of a gun like Jack McGurn did in 1936. I can't help believing that God reached down and gave me a little nudge when it was almost too late, to keep me from being a wrongo all my life. "I went to play some basketball. I got into CYO, and finally I got a job. Mainly, some swell guys gave me a new ideal and I decided to get myself an education, and I was stubborn enough to work two years, save my money and go to Illinois. The war butted in and took three years away from me, and then I went back to college. I was second string quarterback down there, but I'm too small for football. I could have taken a job coaching, but the Bishop had been watching me without my knowing it and he asked me to come here. It was strictly a lucky break — or that nudge from God. If I had gone over to the poolroom that night instead of looking for some basket- ball, I might be way ahead of Little Dom now on his jail record. I might have been hanged long ago. I was begging for it. "When the Bishop started this place twelve years ago, the A Parade to the Gallows 119 neighborhood led all the rest on the delinquency lists. We were all Junior Jack McGurns and proud of it. But, within five years Tony Motisi and Andy Scrivani, two CYO boxing champs by that time, were the king pins out here, and now we don't rate on the delinquency list at all. Just no standing. We still have a few boys, girls too, who get started wrong, but we grab them and it's amazing the way they straighten out. "You should have been around here when Scrivani and Motisi came back from that CYO boxing trip to Hawaii in the mid-thirties. The Bishop had bought them all a couple of out- fits of clothes, and they had been treated like visiting royalty for ten days in the Islands. People were coming around asking for their autographs, and the girls were giving them the big eyes. Then Andy went to box in the Olympic Games in Berlin, and was he something when he came back here! McGurn got himself shot the same year, but he was just a bum by then. "It was such a simple formula, too. The Bishop gave the kids something to do in their spare time. He knocked the hood off the pedestal and put a young champion up there. And when he got the kids interested, he began to teach them how to live, and how to meet people, and take care of nice clothes. After you get those things you want to keep them. You don't want to go back to being a bum again." The CYO West Side Center bounces with activity. The build- ing, a stable once, has been remodelled, enlarged, painted inside with a striking choice of cheerful colors chosen by Ernie Gio- vangelo. The auditorium seats several hundred before a stage which the members built themselves, and dominates the first 120 Bishop Sheil and the CYO floor. Dramatics, taught by Florence Giovangelo Scala, sister of the Director, provide talent for the future in this region where Walt Disney and Paul Muni once went to school. A full-size basketball court and gym combination rises through two of the four stories. Mike Calabreese, all-round athlete who was blocked out of a major league baseball career by several years in the army, is the instructor. Badminton, vol- leyball, and weight-lifting take place in the gym. "We don't give trophies any more," Ernie Giovangelo ex- plains. "We did at first but every game ended up in a war. These kids are too full of spaghet' around here. You put a up a trophy, they'll kill each other. Mike and I spent all our time breaking up fights in the middle of the basketball games. So we put them in a ring, put the gloves on and let them settle it that way. We try to get them going on sports they can play all their lives, like badminton, archery, tennis, golf. We try to get them to play with their wives, or with the girls who might become their wives. A family that can enjoy sports together is going to avoid a lot of trouble. "One thing, however, has to be made clear on these pro- grams. I think a lot of good efforts are wasted because nobody knows this quite like Bishop Sheil knows is — that sport is not the whole answer, sport is just the bait. You can't throw a football down in a crowd of young hoodlums, walk away, and expect them to be good citizens. They've got to have direction and instruction, and you must use sport to get their interest and their respect. Then it isn't so hard to make them see that it's smart to be a right guy. A Parade to the Gallows 121 "The basketball isn't what straightened me out. It was meet- ing fellows like Tony Ippolito, Chicago Bear fullback, and Bob Hix, who coaches at Tilden High, and Bert Boerner, who used to play fullback at Minnesota in back of Broncko Nagurski. Those fellows were on the right track and I followed right along after them. Tony came out of this district too, to be one of the great athletes in Purdue history, and with the Bears. He's a bone specialist now, getting along fine." Almost every spare-time activity in a happy family life finds an outlet at the CYO West Side Community Center. Mothers learn to sew and make their own dresses while their sons play table tennis and their daughters get instruction in water colors. There is a woodworking room equipped with the finest in elec- trical saws, jigs and gleaming racks of hand tools. Roller skating, square dancing, boxing shows, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Hallowe'en parties, Thanksgiving parties, Christmas parties, treasure hunts on April Fools' Day, keep the staff eternally busy. Movies, sometimes in the native Italian, are chosen with care and approved by the Catholic Legion of Decency. Ernie Giovangelo became the right hand and the voice of Bishop Sheil at the CYO West Side soon after he graduated from the University of Illinois in 1946. His record showed long months of front-line duty in the ETO as Medical Attendant to an anti-aircraft unit in support of Patton's Third Army from the Normandy coast to deep in Austria. "Yes," he said, as he watched a swarm of healthy youngsters battling through a game of indoor soccer, "they would all have been Junior Jack McGurns if it hadn't been for Bishop Sheil. 122 Bishop Shell and the CYO There's only one Bishop Sheil in all this unhappy world — but I think maybe one is enough. You can stop any one of these kids and ask him what he thinks of Jack McGurn and he won't know what you're talking about. When I was their age he was my ideal. We scored nearly ninety thousand separate activities by kids here last year. Each one of those was another star in the Bishop's crown." There is no let-up in CYO planning for the West Side area. Although Bishop Sheil had won this tremendous triumph for youth on a battlefield where evil seemed to be in complete con- trol only a few short years before, his next plan is to provide an outdoor swimming pool for the West Side Center. No such luxury had been known in this scarred slum in the days when machine-gun fire was the music of the younger generation. The ghosts of Vincent Gebardi, Pasquale Tardi and hun- dreds of their bullet-riddled pals may watch wistfully, regret- ting that Bishop Bernard }. Sheil was born twenty years too late to steer them from the hideous paths they followed in the old neighborhood. Had CYO come to the West Side twenty years sooner, "Machine-Gun Jack" might well have been "V. Ge- bardi, Director." It happened that way for Ernie Giovangelo — who might have been Machine-Gun Jack. CHAPTER TEN For Those Who Walk in Darkness B ONNIE LEE KIRCHEN would never see the face of her pretty mother nor her handsome father. The blue of the heavens, the green of the grass, the red of a rose were all alike in blackness. She could not watch the moon rise, nor the sun set. No matter how long she might live, all the normal plea- sures of sight would be denied her in eternal night. For Bonnie Lee was born blind in Grand Ledge, Michigan, where her father, an infantry veteran of World War II, worked in a tile plant and earned barely enough to get along. As with all sightless people — and there are nearly 200,000 in the United States — Bonnie Lee was entirely dependent upon others. Without the precious gift of sight, she was destined to live in a ghost world of insecurity, without hope of ever escaping. Bonnie Lee was a little girl of nearly five when her family heard the rumor that a certain cigarette manufacturer would give a Seeing Eye dog in exchange for 40,000 of the red cello- 123 124 Bishop Sheil and the CYO phane rip bands which are part of its package. Bill and Elsie Kirchen were delighted. Here, perhaps, was the answer — a guide dog for Bonnie to give her "eyes with a cold nose" and release her from her invisible prison of dependence, to bring dawn into her darkness. They started saving red bands. Bill Kirchen told his buddies in the factory, Elsie told all her friends, Bonnie's playmates and school chums took the news home, and soon most of the two thousand residents of Grand Ledge were carefully stripping the red rip bands from every package of cigarettes and tucking them away to add to Bonnie Lee's growing stack. Bonnie Lee was getting very excited. She didn't know what a dog looked like, but her tiny hands had felt them, her ears had been muzzled by their cold noses and she loved puppies. "Will my dog be little so I can take him to bed, Mommie?" she asked Elsie Kirchen. "I don't think so, Bonnie Lee," her mother answered. "It will probably be a great big dog to take care of you and guard you all the time. Maybe we had better write the cigarette people and get all the details. We've got about 20,000 wrappers saved already. I'll have Daddy write and find out all about it." Within a week ghastly news came back. The cigarette com- pany had never made such an offer; they had tried to stop the rumor because of countless episodes like this, tragedies of false hope, of happy collecting of the red wrappers, and of the in- evitable heartbreaking realization that the whole dream was only a dream, that the wrappers were just a pitiful little pile of rubbish. For Those Who Wal\ in Darkness 125 The whole town of Grand Ledge, where little Bonnie Lee was loved by everyone, was shocked at the cruel news that there would be no dog to guide Bonnie Lee through her eternal midnight. It was such a devastating local calamity diat John Flagler, United Press reporter at nearby Lansing, the state capital, sent the story clacking out over his wire to be reprinted by editors, and read by Americans all over the country. As always, the great warm heart of the American people opened for the tiny tot in Grand Ledge, which was soon swamped with queries. What could America do for Bonnie? Whatever she wanted was hers. Bishop Sheil was in action, however, almost before the ink was dry on the Chicago papers which carried Bonnie Lee's tragic little tale. Norine Foley, beloved columnist of the Chicago Daily News, who had used the story of Bonnie Lee on April i, 1949, was on the Bishop's phone early that morning. She, like so many others, was well aware of a Founda- tion, pledged by its President, Bishop Bernard J. Sheil, "To do its utmost to light the way for those who walk in dark- ness." Would the Foundation provide a dog for little Bonnie Lee Kirchen, who had just had her heart broken because of a vicious rumor? Of course it would. But a five-year-old child would not be able to handle a dog for at least eight or ten more years. Then how about getting her a puppy, a real German Shep- herd puppy, to be her companion, her lifeline to hope, until she would be big enough to have a real guide dog ? 126 Bishop Sheil and the CYO Well, it had never been done. But if it would make the child happy — why sure, Norine, that's just what we must do. Invisible buttons were pushed. And on April 19, 1949, it was "Bonnie Lee Kirchen Day v in Grand Ledge. Her picture was on the front page of the Grand Ledge Independent; her name led the banner line which said: BONNIE LEE GIVEN HER GUIDE PUPPY What was this instrument in the hand of Bishop Sheil to which appeal was made as to the last and greatest hope of the blind? Norine Foley had referred to "the Foundation . . ." She like so many others was asking help of the Foundation for someone who could not afford to buy help elsewhere, for some- one who had nowhere else to turn . . . the Pilot Guide Dog Foundation. Bishop Sheil has long felt great sympathy for the blind. For 20 years he has tried to help those blind brought to his atten- tion, primarily by giving them guide dogs as the best means of restoring their confidence, giving them the means to move about independently. But the warmest of his affections has always been reserved for those blind people — of any age, race or religion — who are poor or of very modest means, those who cannot pay the fee asked by some organizations for guide dogs or who, as demanded by other groups, cannot get the necessary financial backing of the local Lions, Eagles, Rotary or other service group. These are the blind who are up against it. The guide dog For Those Who Wal\ in Darkness 127 represents the only hope for traveling to and from work safely, to and from the store safely, or the school, or the dentist's office. It represents the main chance, for most blind men, of support- ing their family. And yet this hope is denied them by their inability to pay for it. The blind man who is poor must lift himself up by his bootstraps. It was to help these blind that the Bishop decided to con- solidate his activities. He said to his friends: "The blind who are poor must have a place to go where their pleas may be heard. The greatest thing we could do for them is to give them a guide dog, and I mean give them a guide dog. These animals will cost a lot, and I propose that we let the public have a chance to help, because the only way this work will ever be of service to the blind is to make it available to numbers of them. And this will involve a lot of money. We will be in this work for the sole purpose of giving happiness to those who have heretofore been denied it, so we will be organized not for profit. And we will work to help those blind who need our help, no matter where they live or what their color may be or how they worship God — and at no cost to them." Years were spent in the search for the ideal training site. The finest possible guide dogs were needed, but yet not at such a price as would prohibit their being delivered in numbers. While known then as the Master Eye Foundation, the Bishop's activity in the field of guide dog service to the blind succeeded in providing many fine guide dogs to deserving blind. But Bishop Sheil still was not satisfied. "Where can we train more 128 Bishop Shell and the CYO of these dogs ? Where can we give more of them the best train- ing, and at a cost which will allow us to give them to more blind people?" The answer was Columbus, Ohio. There, another inde- pendent, nonprofit group was training German Shepherds, Doberman Pinschers and Boxers, but did not have the ma- chinery for sifting applications from blind people and could not find a ready "market," and a deserving one, for all their dogs. This group was Pilot Dogs, Inc. The Bishop contacted the board of directors of Pilot Dogs, Inc., and made this proposal: "We will buy all the guide dogs you train and send to you all the blind applicants we receive who are considered worthy, if you will train your dogs only for us." A contract was signed. And Bishop Sheil had achieved his goal. The finest of all guide dogs at the lowest price consistent with their quality and being trained on a steady schedule. Here also were facilities for training the blind students with their dogs for one month, facilities which allowed the blind to live in homelike surroundings during the month-long training period. The Pilot Guide Dog Foundation was now functioning at peak efficiency. The contract was signed in February, 195 1. From that date through the last of September, eleven blind men and women — a man of 60, a girl of 17, a boy of 16, an Ernie Hutchison, an Isadore Leibovitch, a Dorothy Larson, and others — all had received Pilot Dogs, valued at $1,000, and received them at no cost. They were sent to the Pilot House in For Those Who Wal\ in Darkness 129 Columbus from all points of the country, transportation paid and expenses paid while in training at the Pilot House. The Foundation is hard at work, and Bishop Sheil now feels that, with the help of the nickels and dimes and dollar bills of the Foundation's friends throughout the nation, and with the help of such open-hearted business firms as the Perk Dog Food Company who give of their profits to the Foundation's work — with this help, the Foundation has a future. The blind girl with the Pilot Dog at her side says she can see that future. CHAPTER ELEVEN Dark Stronghold of Evil J OE ROBICHAUX, a huge tan Buddha of a man, whose kindly grey eyes disappear behind the wrinkles of his smile, was chosen by Bishop Sheil to lead the assault into the festering jungles of Chicago's South Side at the end of World War II. There was a tremendous battle to be done in this frightening stronghold of evil where nearly four hundred thousand Negroes live in anthill congestion. Here is the busiest police station in the world ; here hundreds of families live twenty to the room in unheated firetraps, sleep- ing in relays through the day and night; here thousands who had migrated from Dixieland to work for a few years in the steel plants and other war-boom sections, found that the old routine of "last to be hired, first to be fired" still holds true for the colored man. Four hundred thousand of them exist in "Bronzeville," an area which could take less than one hundred thousand in com- fort, if it can be called "comfort" to dwell in unheated, cold- 130 Dar\ Stronghold of Evil 131 water tenements which stink from tons of uncollected garbage, of the one-toilet per tenement, and that one often not working. Unemployment rocketed as the Negro, after the few war years of economic equality brought on by necessity, found himself facing the same old problems he had known before the war. If he had become a skilled worker, if he had learned a craft in service, that was fine. But it wouldn't buy the groceries now, nor good food for the kids, nor clothes, nor heat, nor a decent place to live. There was only relief, or the policy racket which always needs hundreds of recruits, or there was outright crime. There wasn't any use heading home for native Dixieland even if there were a desire to go back to the humiliating in- dignities of saying "Yas, suh, boss" like a fawning Uncle Tom in order to survive. Besides, what would he use for money to get there? Thus, as automatically as a mathematical formula, crime and the problems of youth were fused into an explosion like the deadly cloud of an atom bomb spreading to poison everything in reach. Marijuana, the insidious "tea" of the Be-bop age, became as prevalent as the cigarette smoking of former days. Stealing, sex, even killing in wolf-pack style, were beckoning to any youth in Bronzeville whose idle hours were empty, whose life lacked love and guidance. Always behind the dull apathy of the parents was the eternal worry about food and the deep, disheartening knowledge that the Negro always has to get it the hard way. The problems had always been there on the South Side, al- 132 Bishop Shell and the CYO though not quite so intensified by impossible crowding until after World War II. Kindly individuals, civic groups, and lead- ing Negroes have been fighting the battle for years. Some struggle on, doing a massive job for good; others give up in despair. Still others have approached it with fanatic zeal born of righteous indignation, have surveyed and studied the situa- tion, and then fled to lesser problems — smaller battles with evil which could more surely be won. For this seemed as hopeless as fighting the horror of tuberculosis with a box of cough drops, or storming the Normandy beaches with a troop of Boy Scouts armed with boomerangs. Of all this Bishop Sheil was well aware when he called on big Joe Robichaux, born in New Orleans of a French- American father and a Creole mother, raised in Chicago where his father became storekeeper for a railroad. Joe was big — physically, and in heart. He was tough enough to be one of the outstanding schoolboy football tackles. He had a smile like a blast of hot sunshine. He had grown up in the outskirts of this slum jungle, hero-worshipping neighbor Ralph Metcalfe who, with Jesse Owen, sped through Berlin's Olympic Games in 1936. Joe Robichaux considered seriously becoming a priest during his early years. His massive size threw him in with older com- panions all through his boyhood, but he found his greatest pleasure in helping the smaller kids with their teams and their games on the streets and vacant lots. It was Joe who taught them how to block and tackle; it was Joe who pitched batting practice and showed them how to Dar\ Stronghold of Evil 133 swing the bat. It was Joe who was getting ready for the job that would be his in 1945 when Sheil House would open in the heart of the South Side. While he was still in grammar school he became an altar boy, and learned to love the dignified music of his Church. But his family's efforts to make him learn the violin went the way of most such projects, and he put his fiddle away after six years of struggle. He went to Catholic schools and junior college, and at nine- teen started doing volunteer work for the CYO. He coached basketball teams, soft-ball teams, track teams. He even sparred with young Negro boxers who were pounding their way through the CYO tournaments. Jack Elder taught him much about organization and care of the expensive athletic equipment. As the years went by, no South Side team seemed complete without Joe Robichaux' big grin somewhere around. He was taking a course in sociology at Columbia University when the war gave him a chance to join the National Catholic Community Service, which worked closely with the USO in providing entertainment for the Armed Services. Robichaux travelled all over the country, bringing a few hours of pleasure to lonesome, homesick men. Best of all, Joe Robichaux understood the deep basic problems of his neighbors. He knew what the Negro faced. He had been one all his life. The phone rang in his New York office of the National Catholic Community Service one day shortly after the collapse 134 Bishop Shell and the CYO of Germany. It was a few weeks before the atom bomb was to drop on Hiroshima, but the end of the war was definitely in sight and post-war planning was starting. Bishop Sheil was calling from Chicago. "We've got the building on the South Side, Joe. You had bet- ter come home." "That's wonderful, Bishop. What building is it?" "The old St. Elizabeth School building at 4100 South Michi- gan. It's in fair shape and we can remodel it to suit our plans." "Wonderful, Bishop, wonderful. I have a couple of field trips on the program I have to make. When do you want me?" "Right away, Joe. Just as soon as you can come. The situa- tion is getting worse out there every hour. We mustn't lose any more time." "I can come out for a day or so now. We can talk about get- ting a staff together." "Right, Joe. Get here as soon as you can." Thus Sheil House was born, a haven of warmth in the heart of the most desperately unhappy section of the sprawling city. From thousands of South Side people, Joe Robichaux picked his staff as carefully as any commander choosing a crew that must not fail in the most vital maneuver of his career. The four-story building was adequate for several closely knit operations so that the community members from the age of two years and up could benefit. A nursery school took over one of the large first-floor rooms. Here, five years after Sheil House opened, a happy healthy herd of toddlers spend five days each week while their parents work. Dar\ Stronghold of Evil 135 Several come from broken homes where mothers must work. If it is impossible for the mothers to bring them to the nursery, they are picked up each day by the Sheil House station wagon and returned home each night. Each child is given a thorough health examination at the start of each day. A well-balanced, nutritious lunch is provided, followed by a nap in comfortable beds. Toys of all sorts, tri- cycles, kiddie cars, doll buggies, rubber balls and drawing equipment are there, and Beatrice Simms, a gentle woman thoroughly trained in child care and psychology, supervises all of it. The children are taught manners, habits of cleanliness, and are grooved into a healthy, joyful routine of living. There are no tantrums there, no squabbling over toys, no mess of thought- less destruction so common in children left to their own ideas. Beatrice Simms, who seems to have more fun than any of the youngsters, anticipates every tiny crisis. Her arms are always ready to bring the feeling of security, of being wanted, to each lonely little soul who has never had the complete home that every child needs so desperately. Here, following its plan to make assets out of possible liabil- ities, the CYO is becoming part of the child's life at the earliest possible age. It is not improbable that some of these children will spend part of their next twenty years enjoying the benefits of Sheil House. If they do, there is little chance that they will ever stray from the path of good citizenship. Behind the Nursery of the first floor of Sheil House is the Extended School for groups of children 6 to 10 years old. This 136 Bishop Shell and the CYO is available before and after regular school hours and during the vacation periods. Drawing, water-color painting, wood- working, educational and historic trips all over Chicago start from here. There is a story hour, and community singing. Here, too, a well-balanced lunch is provided, and an afternoon snack or soft drinks in the Canteen. In the basement, Johnny Hawthorne supervises the Game Room. Three pool tables of championship size and condition, four standard bowling alleys, a shuffleboard and checker tables are in constant use. The Game Room is kept immacu- lately clean; there is no noisy rough-housing by the teen-agers who use it. Johnny Hawthorne is a CYO product himself. He was the light-heavyweight champion of the CYO in 1936, boxed against the South Americans before that crowd of more than 40,000 at Soldier Field in 1937. "I wanted to turn pro along with Tom Kenneally and Max Marek in those days," Johnny says, "but the Bishop advised me not to. I guess I wasn't quite good enough. So I took his advice and it was the smartest thing I ever did. It was fun though. CYO boxing gave me a wonderful trip to Hawaii when we boxed out there, and it made me know how to meet people and how to spend my time. I could have gotten into a lot of trouble in this neighborhood when I was a young punk without CYO." His clear eyes sparkle over the broken nose as he talks of the boxing days. There is no sign of the beat-up, punchy fighter here. His mind is clear as a bell and his heart sings at his work. Sam Jordan, a physical culture enthusiast, is the volunteer Dar\ Stronghold of Evil 137 supervisor of the Sheil House weight lifters. Sam, in his late twenties, has a small room in the basement where bar bells of all sizes are piled under walls papered with pictures of his muscular heroes. Most prominent is John Davis, the Negro world's champion, whose "press" of 364J/2 pounds is mentioned with awe. "Best I've ever pressed is 255 pounds," Sam says. "But I might add ten pounds to that under competition. We're going to have a team here soon and we'll try to outlift a few fellows. A lot of prominent men in the world are lifting weights for their health, and the public is getting over that weird story that muscle development is binding. Frank Stranahan, the golfer, is a good lifter and it doesn't seem to hurt his whipping that club around. Mario Lanza, the singer, works with the bells too. Lots of others." Sam works at a meat-packing plant as a "caser," flushing out hog intestines to make casings for sausages and other meat products. "It's a nice job," he says. "And I hurry over here every day to teach these kids how to handle the weights. Look at the devel- opment in this boy's shoulders — and he's only fourteen years old. It's more than just muscles, too. It makes the blood move around, keeps the stomach percolating. You don't hear of any lifters getting sick. And, best of all, it keeps them interested and off the street. These kids show up every day, and I have to chase them home at suppertime. Come on, Andy, let's get going with that clean-and-jerk." On the second floor and reaching up through part of the 138 Bishop Shell and the CYO third, is a full-size basketball court, a fortunate legacy from the days when Sheil House was a school building. When this isn't in use for basketball, volleyball, badminton or gymnastics, other activities take over. Each Friday night nearly three hun- dred neighborhood youngsters dance there to either juke-box records or their own orchestral renditions. Sometimes it's square dancing, sometimes it's jitterbug, but always it's clean and wholesome. There is no room here for the marijuana crowd, although some of the dancers tried that method of spending an evening before Sheil House was opened. Eugene Saff old, another CYO product who was educated at Xavier University in New Orleans on a Bishop Sheil scholar- ship won in basketball, is Program Director. He is busy from early morning to late evening drawing up plans for his thou- sands of activities. The top floor of Sheil House is devoted to wood carving, ele- mentary and advanced carpentry, cabinet work, and facilities for painting. Haywood Stewart, a master craftsman himself, teaches his young admirers how to operate electric jigs, powered saws and sanding machines. Some of the nine- and ten-year-old workers are turning out wood carving and scrolled wood- working that would make many adults proud of themselves. They bring most of their own wood from salvaged crates, boxes and discarded furniture. They are extremely proud of their work, and with reason. Joe Robichaux coaches the teams that represent Sheil House, and has developed some top competitors. Joe Bertrand, now a Notre Dame student on a Bishop Sheil scholarship, is con- Dar\ Stronghold of Evil 139 sidered one of the greatest basketball players in the world with a brilliant future of stardom on the courts ahead of him. A Sheil House girl, Mabel Landry, is already a national champion. Mabel was with the CYO track team that went to Freeport, Texas, in August, 1950, to win the National broad- jump title in both the Junior and Senior Classes, and to win the 50-yard sprint championship. Joe Robichaux chuckles as he tells of Mabel's running before the Texas audience. "We had a mixed team down there," he says, "several white girls and boys and several Negroes. Our girls have a habit of throwing their arms around each others' shoulders after a race, and walking off the track together. They've forgotten long ago that their skins are different. Well, when they did that at Freeport, you could hear one of those 'Southern silences' spread through the stands. Two big Texans were standing right beside me. They looked at Mabel and this white girl walking off with their arms around each other, and one of them said, 'Wal, now I've seen everything. Let's get out of here.' Funny that should be so startling to them, when we forgot it so long ago in the CYO." Activities of the Sheil House plan take in people of all ages through special educational classes that go on all the time. Reading, writing, arithmetic and all the basic American courses are available for those who never had a chance to go to school in their youth. More than a thousand people take advantage of these classes each year. Social clubs for both boys and girls in several age groups pro- mote the wholesome side of "gang" or team spirit. The Blue 140 Bishop Sheil and the CYO Flames, the Targeteers, the Sheilerettes, the Demons, the Royal Queens and many others organize their own plans for every activity from sewing classes and charm schools to wrestling and table tennis competitions, clay modelling and finger painting. During the .summer months the Summer Day Camp is in operation five days a week, open to any youngster from six to fourteen. The "camp" makes interesting safaris to visit Lincoln Park Zoo, to the amazing Chicago Museum of Indus- try and Science, to the Planetarium, the Chicago Fair, to beaches for swimming. There are always endless gallons of free milk poured down the young gullets to bring finer health. Each Christmas, several hundred who might not be able to entice Santa Claus down their poverty-blocked chimneys, come to Sheil House to find that the old man from the North Pole has made Christmas available for them there. At all times there are tournaments going at Sheil House — basketball, soft ball, table tennis, volleyball, boxing, wrestling, badminton, bowling, gymnastics, tumbling, weight lifting. Never was so much concentrated activity of youthful exuber- ance spent in one small building which somehow stands firm on its foundations despite the healthy uproar within. Unperturbed and coolly efficient in the center of what could be a maelstrom of confusion, sits tough but gentle Joe Robi- chaux, a man not unlike Bishop Sheil himself in his ability to juggle a thousand details with precision. Here again there seems to be living proof that one man can attach a fueling line to the soul of another to let it draw in the greatness of heart Dar\ Stronghold of Evil 141 that has made Sheil House another glorious adventure of the CYO. It has been tremendously successful in an area where forces for good were least likely to succeed. It has rerouted the lives of thousands of poverty's children to a habit of living from which there is no chance of their falling into the shadows of idleness and despair. It has brought love and warmth into homes which had known only sorrow and hopelessness, like a tremendous hearthfire direct from heaven. And on the South Side of Chicago they will tell you that it did indeed come directly from a man who has heaven in his heart. CHAPTER TWELVE I Find Them on the Byways Wi HEN Betty set off a string of firecrackers in the church during Mass, it was the climax of her long series of spectacular attempts to become the most obnoxious nine-year-old monster in her neighborhood. Life was one continuous Hallowe'en for this baby-faced hellion who was being pointed out as the rein- carnation of some gang moll or ax murderess. She was insolent to everyone; she defied her mother, talked back to her teacher; her disposition was not quite so bad as a cobra's, nor as good as a rattlesnake's; she practiced vandalism in both its crude and refined forms; she stole indiscriminately from her playmates, her family, strangers and stores. Oddly enough, she gave most of her considerable loot to other children. Betty's mother, known as "that poor woman," was a quiet and efficient hospital nurse. Since the death of her husband when Betty was five, she had gradually fought her way out of sadness, conquered her loneliness for the shy man she had loved, and awakened to find that their child had become a wild, unpossessable little savage. 142 / Find Them on the Byways 143 She kept a nice home for Betty, refused to search for social amusements, declined the invitations of many men who showed romantic interest, and slowly began to lose her mind at the growing list of complaints that was piling up against her daughter. When Betty took a notion to attend school instead of play- ing "hooky," she plunged into daily trouble with her teachers or the other children. When she did not go to school she found trouble on the outside. If it kept up much longer, Betty would be in reform school and her mother in a "rest home." So all that had been done before was not enough. There are warped minds as well as stunted bodies, hidden diseases the victim himself didn't know he had. But there are signs by which you tell they are there, and things you can do about them. Bishop Sheil didn't discover those signs or what to do about them. What he did was typical. He said, "Investigate. Then make a list of the danger signs. Send the list out through every possible channel — schools, parishes and person-to-person. Tell them that if a child shows any of these signs, we want to know about it before the situation gets worse." This CYO approach assumes that the so-called "difficult" child is normal in every respect except that his behavior is causing concern to his teachers, or his parents, or his neighbors, or himself; that anti-social behavior does not indicate innate evilness but only that no one has taken proper measures to avert the increase of a basic problem which may, in itself, be micro- scopic. Thus a CYO Social Service, which is all but limitless in its range, comes into being to provide diagnosis and treatment 144 Bishop Sheil and the CYO ranging from play therapy for children through remedial reading and expert application of each newly discovered tech- nique. It is again typical of Bishop Sheil that he does not start just another Social Service Center. For the neediest, he always seems to say, nothing is good enough but the best. By its progressive, psychiatric approach and by its expert administration, the CYO Social Service reaches a standard attained by only four or five other institutions in the entire nation. Dora Somerville, who studied for her Master's Degree at Catholic University in Washington, D. C. and at Loyola Uni- versity in Chicago, was the charming quarterback of a team that was willing and able to handle any problem that "The Difficult Child" could produce at its fiendish best. Dr. Kalmar Gyarfas, brilliant psychiatrist trained at the University of Buda- pest, and Mrs. Ruth Bromberg, educated in psychology at Har- vard, were the board of strategy. Several social workers, all qualified by university degrees, were the front-line troops. Betty, and Betty's mother, had come to the right place when her case was referred to Bishop Sheil by the long-suffering schoolteachers after they decided that the world was not large enough to hold both Betty and the rest of civilization. This was shortly after the firecracker episode in church, and the priest whose services had experienced this unusual form of devotion seconded the referral. After the routine forms had had been filled out, processed and accepted, Betty's mother was called in for conference. The probing questions of "Dr. Kal," which searched back through the mother's childhood and on through the lives of her parents, / Find Them on the Byways 145 may have seemed strange to the harassed woman. What differ- ence did it all make? She had somehow given birth to a bad little girl, and, even though she loved Betty, some madness that lay hidden far back in the family tree must have come alive again. Either that or God was punishing her for some devas- tating sin that she couldn't even remember. Why all these silly questions? It couldn't possibly make any difference now. But the answer to Betty's problem was crystal clear to Dr. Gyarfas long before the interview was done. He would cross- check, probe, weigh and balance with the child herself, but he was sure of his ground even before the child was brought in to put on another performance of defiance and foul-mouthed in- solence. Betty's whole trouble was the deep love that had existed be- tween herself and her quiet, soft-spoken father who had gone away never to return. Betty somehow had decided to blame her mother because her father was gone, and all her hell-raising had developed from that decision. Dr. Gyarfas finally dug out Betty's fear of her almost chronic nightmares in which she dreamed that her mother had died. The dreams made her afraid of her own thoughts, afraid that she wanted her mother to die. Betty was a confused and unhappy little girl when she first came to CYO, but to Dora Somerville's smooth-working staff she was little different from the average parade of six hundred children between the ages of five and eighteen, registered with the Social Service Department each year. Treatment techniques, exasperatingly slow at times, eventu- ally spread over difficult lives like sunshine beaming down on 146 Bishop Shell and the CYO the murk of a swamp. Inevitably, the warmth and love that flows from Bishop Sheil through all his helpers drives out the evil and creates a garden where a happy life can blossom. So it was with Betty, and many other little Bettys who have found that the world can be a beautiful garden if they follow the right road. Several hundred full-grown "Bettys" found themselves in trouble in Chicago soon after World War II, and this pre- dicament was the beginning of another CYO project. These girls, Puerto Ricans, had been brought to Chicago by employ- ment agencies which placed them as maids, laundresses and cooks in Chicago homes. Their passage to the States was ad- vanced against their wages under contracts which permitted them to pay back small sums periodically until the debt was cleared. Unfortunately, some of them, because of unscrupulous em- ployers, found themselves living in virtual slavery, unable to collect their just wages, and, with no money available, unable to live any place except the most disreputable, unclean places which passed for rooming houses. Even when they did collect their proper amount of pay, the girls still faced the problem of adjusting to a country whose customs and language were quite different from theirs. The American way of living in YWCA hotels and other girls' quarters was alien to them and they found themselves faced with the loneliness that comes from that feeling of not belonging. Their growing belief that the United States had imported them to work for nothing and to ignore them, aggravated their loneliness, bringing about a loss of faith in what they had so highly appraised before they / Find Them on the Byways 147 left their homeland. Unused to the bitter Chicago winters, sick- ness soon entered their lives and rinding the fertile soil of dis- couragement it struck rapidly and fatally. It was at this stage of abandonment that their troubles came to the attention of Bishop Sheil. True to his love for the poor and the desolate, the Bishop soon sought out a remedy for the group: a program of social, recreational, spiritual and educa- tional opportunities. A priest was assigned as the spiritual director of the group. This priest with the help of several other priests, developed the Puerto Rican Program of the CYO, under the able guidance and leadership of the Bishop. Within the four years of its exist- ence, at one time or another, almost all of the six thousand Puerto Ricans in Chicago have found a helping hand with their troubles through this program. One of the most popular activities carried out for the group was the weekly dances. This was one of the first activities put on inasmuch as the love of the Puerto Rican for music and dancing is a well known fact. At the time there were a few hundred Puerto Rican men that had settled in the Gary steel sector and more were drifting into Chicago for their jobs as itinerant farm workers. A juke box was obtained with popular records of Latin American music. At times native musicians played at the dances. They enjoyed dancing their native dances: rumbas, boleros, and American dances too. The affair was always a very vivacious part in the lives of these Puerto Ricans. Characteristic of their temperament, they enjoyed the fast tempo of the rhythm, and never seemed to tire of the fun they were having. 148 Bishop Shell and the CYO As the program developed, many more problems were found to be faced by this group. Housing, unemployment, medical care and hospitalization, all these problems assumed larger pro- portions because of language difficulties and the prejudice that burdens a minority group. In order to prevent the outgrowth of a Puerto Rican ghetto great efforts were made to help them find housing in different parts of the city. Employment needs were met successfully in many cases with the cooperation of the Puerto Rican Office of the Government of Puerto Rico in Chicago. The health problem is a great one, yet this is being met suc- cessfully. Due to their being unaccustomed to winters, since the climate of their homeland is a tropical one, they are susceptible to many illnesses until they become acclimated. Throughout that period of acclimation, hospital care becomes necessary many times, and it is at those times that they seek desperately the help that is offered them through this program. Reports on their condition are furnished the hospital and admission is made possible much more rapidly than if they sought it by themselves. It is no wonder that the Puerto Ricans hold such a warm spot in their hearts for Bishop Sheil. Through him they have come to believe in the dignity of the individual; they have seen new hopes in the horizon of their lives; they have come to know what is the true meaning of "Love thy neighbor as thyself." And so, this is only a small piece of the giant mosaic that is the Catholic Youth Organization. CHAPTER THIRTEEN A Pasture Near Statesville Prison A CYO boxing veteran, trying to explain near-miracles which had taken place before his eyes, searched for words a long time before he said, "This is the way it seems to me. Bishop Sheil works so close to God that all the Bishop has to do is decide what he wants — and WHAM — there it is. Take that college, for instance. You don't build a college with four dol- lars. But the Bishop decided that the boys of Chicago needed a school they could afford to attend, and in a couple of days a man came along with stacks of money to give away, and there's the college." It wasn't quite that simple, but nevertheless, Lewis College of Science and Technology soon spread over 900 acres, its im- maculate brick buildings and busy airport one of the show places of the area. Thirty-five miles northeast of its campus the skyline of Chicago is a landmark to the office of Bishop Sheil, whose germ of an idea in 1930 attracted, like a powerful mag- net, the other humans whose kindness and generosity created 149 150 Bishop Shell and the CYO and built Lewis College into one of the finest educational centers in the country with a school of aeronautics which shares its high rank with the best. Lewis College was founded to enlarge the scope of the CYO, to provide a channel through which the good which is born in every boy could be nourished and trained towards a useful, happy life. In the depths of the bleak despair which had thrown a damp, dismal blanket over American youth in the early 1930's, Bishop Sheil, through Lewis College, offered complete training in the most glamorous profession of all — aviation. With his usual magnificent disdain for the staggering prob- lem of finances, Bishop Sheil founded the Holy Name School of Aeronautics in 1930. There wasn't a penny in its bank ac- count; it had not a square foot of land for its campus; its staff of professors were busy elsewhere, unaware that it existed; no student had ever heard of it. Brick by brick it was created through the ideals and plans of Bishop Sheil, to fashion another story of the man in whom the quality of daring and faith flows in the highest human voltage. Within twenty years after the idea was born, Lewis College had reached a point where it was routine hospitality to send one of its $25,000 helicopters into the heart of Chicago as a taxi service for its visitors. Its fame had reached so far around the world that two of its students were Ga tribesmen from Accra in British West Africa. It was no problem at all for Al Luke, Director of the Aero- nautics branch of Lewis, to pin-point the 'copter onto the tiny beach in front of the Drake Hotel, wind-milling down between A Pasture Near State sville Prison 151 the skyscrapers of Chicago's near-North Side, thus giving front- door transportation service to the writer of this story. The skyway to the Lewis campus unfolds southwestward across the sprawling tenements of lower Chicago, above the thick traffic of barges on the busy Chicago River and the flat prairies be- yond the city limits. Near the town of Lockport, Illinois, the campus of Lewis crawls over the horizon. Its trim brick buildings and massive hangars border its huge airport, its athletic fields stretched east- ward towards Lake Michigan. Al Luke pulls the 'copter into hovering position and points a mittened hand at the campus below. "I still can't believe it's real," he says, hesitates a moment, then adds, "If he wanted, he could snap his fingers and the Taj Mahal would appear right in the middle of the football field." There is no doubt as to which "he" Al Luke means. Luke points out the grim massive walls of Statesville Prison, two miles to the south. "There's the contrast," he says. "If they come here, they don't go there." Down the helicopter spins, finally touching its wheels gently to the ground so close to the front door of the Administration Building that the tips of the rotors almost brush the bricks. The passenger steps out and the 'copter lifts, hops over a hangar and settles to its parking space on the flight apron, where several aircraft are lined up with military precision. The entire trip has been made before a taxi, leaving the Drake at the same time as the 'copter, could have battled its way through Chicago Loop traffic. 152 Bishop Sheil and the CYO The land which was to become the Lewis campus was part of the estate of a devout family of Catholics named Fitzpatrick, who carved a homestead out of the wilderness in the early nine- teenth century. In 1930, as if by divine plan, Michael and Frances Fitzpatrick approached Cardinal Mundelein, offering to donate part of their acreage to the Church for whatever pur- pose it might best be used. It seemed a bit weird that this wish on the part of the Fitzpatricks coincided with almost split- second timing to the hour when Bishop Sheil was starting the search for land on which to create this part of his dream. In the beginning, funds for a few buildings were worked out through the Holy Name Society of the Chicago Archdio- cese. The 160 acres deeded to the "Bishop of Chicago" would become "Holy Name Technical School"; it would be a resident, four-year technical high school. It would guide and direct the development of its students spiritually as well as mentally and physically. As always, a complete sport program was high on the list of priorities. "How will you support it, Bishop?" Cardinal Mundelein asked. "We can get a start with Holy Name funds, but that won't keep it going." "We'll use junk." "Junk?" The Cardinal had learned not to be surprised at anything Bishop Sheil might say, but this was rather startling. "How will you use junk?" "Salvage. It's a very profitable operation. We'll get a build- ing and some trucks. We'll offer to pick up anything any householder doesn't want, like discarded clothing, furniture, A Pasture Near Statesville Prison 153 old newspapers and magazines, musical instruments, appli- ances, everything. We'll repair them, put them in perfect con- dition, and resell them. Waste paper is always in demand. We can sell the clothing, furniture and other things at a good profit and still provide wonderful bargains for people who can't even afford a bed under present conditions. It will be a form of painless taxation to the residents of Chicago and it will help support our school." "Well, I hope you know what you're doing." "I think I do. There's a building down on South Michigan that we can get for very little. It's almost sinful the amount of usable goods that are destroyed when so many people need so much." "What will you think of next ? You've become a boxing pro- moter and a junk dealer and a dean of a college all within a few weeks. You're talking about opening poolrooms. Is it going to get out of control, Ben? Can you handle all this?" "There are twenty-four hours every day, Cardinal, and there are a lot of boys and girls who need a lot of things. We're going to supply them. The money will be provided. I don't know how right now, but it will appear." In 1930, three years after the dramatic flight of Charles Lind- bergh from New York to Paris, aviation was the dream of nearly every boy. To become a pilot had become the romantic wish of the youth of America, replacing earlier ambitions to be cowboys, railway engineers or skippers of sailing ships. For this reason the first building on Bishop Sheil's new campus was designed as a combination hangar with a machine 154 Bishop Shell and the CYO shop and classrooms sharing the first floor. Upstairs the dormi- tory, electric shop, washroom and office completed the build- ing. The Administration Building, with dining room, kitchen and quarters for the faculty was erected at the same time and completed in early 1932. The school was dedicated to Bishop Sheil's sponsorship in late summer and was ready for action that fall. Three Fran- ciscan Brothers were in charge of discipline and maintenance; two laymen appeared as faculty; Major W. H. Sickinger, ex- Army man, signed up as Director. There were fifteen students studying mathematics, physics, mechanical drawing, electric shop work and chemistry. There were fifteen boys getting an education who could never have done so otherwise, and several of them had already indicated that Statesville Prison was their destination unless drastic steps were taken to reroute them towards a happy life. By this time the Catholic Salvage Bureau, Bishop Sheil's "junk business," had become an important link in the CYO line-up. Under Manager Tom Anderson, thirty to forty em- ployees were bringing in mountains of the most bizarre collec- tions of trash — which suddenly became clean, fumigated mer- chandise that would have been welcomed in the best stores in the Loop. It was sold for prices that were truly shocking: a piano for $8 ; shoes with new soles for 30 cents ; davenports for $2; furniture for a living room for $11; electric irons for 75 cents. As might be expected, there was an unwritten rule at the Salvage Bureau that if a family had no money at all and needed clothing, the price would drop to zero. A Pasture Near Statesville Prison 155 Amazing as it may seem, the Bureau was soon doing business at the rate of $100,000 a year, and about a quarter of that was profit. Chicago's trash would create aeroplanes which Chicago's underprivileged boys would learn to fly, but first the funds must be increased and an airport must be built. In those days there were no helicopters which could operate from a landing field the size of a pool table. It was then that Frank J. Lewis, a prominent Chicago philanthropist, became interested in Bishop Sheil and his dy- namic plans for the boys of Chicago. Mr. Lewis had lost his only son in a tragic accident. He was seeking a new interest, a fitting memorial to his boy who had loved the exciting new frontiers of the skies. Frank Lewis went to Bishop Sheil. What could he do to help ? What did the boys need ? New buildings ? All right, let's put up some buildings. How about a gymnasium ? Would that be good ? All right, we'll build a gymnasium first. Construction was started on Lewis Memorial Gymnasium in August of 1933. Before the gym was completed, Lewis had started work on a new brick hangar. Within two years these were finished and so was a new two-story brick dormitory. That wasn't all. He also financed landscaping, roads and sidewalks, a 50,000-gallon water tank, underground water lines and a central heating system. This expansion provided dormitory and classroom space for 130 boys, and the school was reorganized as Lewis Holy Name School of Aeronautics, with Frank Lewis as Chairman of the Board and Bishop Sheil President of the non-profit corporation. 156 Bishop Sheil and the CYO It was time now to move into the air. Al Luke, a veteran barn- storming pilot, joined the force bringing along his Swallow biplane for flight instruction. A damaged sister ship of Lind- bergh's "Spirit of St. Louis" was purchased at auction for $510 to be rebuilt as part of the ground training course. The sports program was under way. Baseball, football, basket- ball and the inevitable boxing provided health outlets for the students, and the trips to neighboring schools for the contests were big moments in the lives of some of the boys who had thought that Springfield, Illinois, was as far away as the South Pole. The school had grown with startling speed. Its ideal was "to make each boy into a good citizen, a good Catholic, a good and useful workman. It is our hope that when a boy becomes a man he will be able to go out into the world equipped in heart, mind and hand to serve God and humanity, and that his desire to do so will be great. God wills it that his viewpoint in life shall be a happy and wholesome one, and that the world will be just a little bit better because of him." Physically, too, the school had grown. Eight hundred more acres were added to become a farm, which would help to sup- ply food for the school and additional income through crops. Frank Lewis built a new barn, added stock and farm machin- ery, found an outstanding tenant farmer to run it on a profit- sharing basis. A new 170-acre airport, complete with gravel runways, ap- peared over the old gullied cow pasture just in time to take advantage of the vast Civilian Pilot Training Program in the A Pasture Near State sville Prison 157 early days of World War II. Lewis College obtained flight con- tracts from the government, and the air above was kept boiling with the propellers of Cub Trainers from dawn until dark. In 1940, the name was simplified to "Lewis School of Aero- nautics"; it was opened, for the first time, to tuition-paying students — but only to fifty percent of total enrollment. It would still be, basically, a free school for those who could not afford to pay. Barnstorming days were over for Al Luke now. The tiny, patched-up Swallow trainer had long since given way to a fine fleet of training craft. Luke, always a pioneer of the air, insti- gated a program of gliding and soaring for the benefit of the Army Air Force and the Marine Corps. In 1942, Lewis School went completely on a wartime basis by turning over the entire facilities under a Wartime Training Service Contract in the Navy Special Flight Instructors courses. For the next two years the student body consisted of a static enrollment of about 200 Navy pilots, replenished each month by 30 recruits as the same number graduated. The post-war college which Bishop Sheil prepared for stu- dents under the GI Bill of Rights, as well as the usual com- plement of free students, bore as little resemblance to the tiny Holy Name School of 1930 as could be pictured in the most vivid imagination. It would be the Lewis College of Science and Technology now, still primarily interested in aviation, but also offering 122 other courses including radio, television, radar, a complete aca- demic course and all the more highly technical engineering 158 Bishop Shell and the CYO divisions. It was now recognized by the State of Illinois as a four-year junior college, its credits as acceptable as any other college in the country. Facilities were ready to handle 240 students and the faculty numbered 25 instructors, including five connected with the school of flight. When the famous Ray "Scooter" McLean re- tired from active football after eight glorious seasons as half- back for the Chicago Bears, he became Athletic Director and Coach of the Lewis teams which now had a stadium of their own and were becoming one of the strongest competitors in the Midwest. In 1949, Al Luke, still seeking new vehicles to explore the reaches of his beloved sky, went to Bishop Sheil with a startling suggestion. "Bishop, we need some helicopters." "Goodness, Al. What will we do with helicopters?" "They are the coming thing, Bishop. We can give instruc- tion, do some mapping photography and some crop-dusting. Some day the 'copters will be used to shuttle services all over the world. And it will give us another 'first' on our list." "If you say so, Al, go ahead. But you'll have to help me ar- range the financing." Thus two Bell 'copters, worth $25,000 each, joined the force at Lewis, and it was not long before Lewis-trained 'copter pilots were shuttling the airmail between Chicago's Municipal Air- port and the roof of the downtown Post Office building. Al Luke himself, between 'copter exhibitions at air shows and his routine instruction, found time to fly an 8,000-mile power-line A Pasture Near Statesville Prison 159 inspection job for the Tennessee Valley Authority, comprising some of the most hair-raising mountainside piloting ever attempted. The CYO, the Bishop decided, needed to spread the story of its magnificent progress in its own way. So why not build a radio station of its own? There would be no commercials to mess up the entertainment. There would be complete sports coverage, good music; there would be no objectionable material or talent. Chicago was used to Bishop Sheil's miracles by this time, and it was no surprise to its four million citizens when Station WFJL, "owned" by Lewis College, stuck its tall mast into the sky above Wacker Drive in May, 1949. Its studios and offices were the finest in town. Despite the clamor of advertising agencies, it accepted no sponsors. The CYO and its affiliates had enough stories to tell without wasting precious time selling deodorants and second-hand automobiles. Under the new Chancellorship of Admiral Herbert J. Grassie, commander of the Idaho during the Guam, Tinian, Palau, Saipan and I wo Jima invasions, who retired to join Bishop Sheil following the war, Lewis College of Science and Technology moved into the second half of the century still squirming with violent growing pains. Students had already checked in from Mexico, Ethiopia, Palestine, Colombia, Brazil and West Africa — all financed by the CYO and discovered by its branches in their native lands. Its destiny might be charted by two statements recorded late in 1950. 160 Bishop Shell and the CYO One was the joint utterance of Emmanuel Addy and Jacob Botchway, chosen by the CYO in Accra, British West Africa, as outstanding native students eager to take the Lewis course in electronics. These two exceptional, intelligent young men, with their soft enunciation of "British" English and the tribe marks cut in their cheeks, had this to say in their native Ga: "Bifop Siil dzi onukpa ko ni wawo keba American may ne mli. Wo dale fi adzagbayy." ("Bishop Sheil is the one responsible for our com- ing here. We are deeply grateful.") "Scooter" McLean, Athletic Director, had a more ominous prediction: "Next year my line will average 220 from end to end. In a few more years even Notre Dame better be on its toes when we come around." CHAPTER FOURTEEN A Live Teacher and a Living School L EWIS College is a substantial institution today and a firm part of the American educational picture. It is quite a monu- ment to Bernard J. Sheil. But when people today think of Bishop Sheil, the CYO and education, their minds leap at once to another school — the Sheil School of Social Studies. If this school isn't unique, it is most certainly unusual. To grasp it we have to go back again inside the mind and the heart of the man who founded it. It is a bit like the Boxing Tournament moved over into the intellectual world. To understand its origin and nature, you first have to under- stand a bishop who, at a time when Labor Unions were anathema to many, would go around the country making speeches like this: "Let these malicious labor baiters show us achievements com- parable to the achievements you have wrought, worhjngmen of America, and we will listen to them. Until they do, their 161 162 Bishop Sheil and the CYO disgraceful tactics, their attempts to deprecate labors contribu- tion and to confuse the friends of labor will continue to be an affront to truth and decency. ". . . / see a world dedicated to freedom and justice and unified by universal brotherhood and tolerance one for another. ". . . I see a world in which every man realizes his own sub- lime destiny — where every man will be not only a citizen of his own state, but a citizen of the world. " . . . / see a world where all those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow will march in the ranks of organized labor. Where the workers will really be free in great trade unions, undominated by any outside force. Where Labor can take its proper place at the council table with the owners and managers of business. Where the security of the workingmen in every section of the world will be guaranteed by their own strength and enforced by the safeguard of law." You must remember, too, that those were the words of Bernard }. Sheil, no arm-chair agitator but a man whose actions match his words. For action to match the words let's go to Chicago in the summer of 1939. The episode was the famous battle between the Meat Barons and the CIO. It was the day of the rise of the large unions. The Big Four of the meat business were determined that organized labor would set no foot on their territory. On the other side, the CIO under the loved and hated leadership of John L. Lewis had thrown its growing strength into organ- izing the polyglot laborers who lived in that stockyard area A Live Teacher and a Living School 163 which was still The Jungle portrayed so mercilessly in Upton Sinclair's novel. As the idea of the union took hold, as the men began to understand the benefits cooperative action could bring to the individual, what had hitherto been an unorganized and therefore helpless mass of discontented workers took on the aspect of an ordered army ready to wage effective war for the human dignity of the individual worker. This was by no means the first attempt to organize the meat industry. There had been a not unbloody history of previous efforts going back to the days of the Knights of Labor. Chicago was a tough town run by tough men. The suppression of the earlier efforts had been ruthless and this one could expect no other treatment. The men who ran the meat business had fought their way to the top. They knew their business, they had made it the giant thing it was and they were not going to let anyone else tell them how to run it. They had handled things like this before and they could do it again. It was a clash of strong forces and the lines were drawn for a pitched battle. Perhaps the strongest weapon in the hands of the meat inter- est was the propaganda they could spread with the almost un- limited money, power and influence that lay in their hands. They painted the labor union as a destructive force in Amer- ican life. It was communistic, anarchistic, against all the tradi- tion of enterprise that had built this country. All the Union wanted to do was inflame the worker into an artificial dis- content and tear down the institutions that were the backbone of the nation. 164 Bishop Shell and the CYO Nothing could have been more inflammatory than such words falling on the ears of workers who knew that all they wanted was a living wage, decent working conditions, some sense of security and a little recognition of their dignity as workers. They had only one weapon, the strike. It was a two- edged sword which would cut them more deeply than it would wound their masters. One week without pay would mean im- mediate want in thousands of Jungle homes. On the Gold Coast it wouldn't mean a thing. This was the cruel fact that had beaten other uprisings into submission more than anything else. But the men now had an organization that would bring them aid from other workers of America. They could hold out at least for a while, they could ask their fellow men not to come in and take their jobs, they were prepared, if necessary to stop them from doing so. Without labor, the wheels of Big Busi- ness could not turn. They were beginning to learn that if Labor needed the jobs provided by Capital, then Capital needed the work provided by Labor. They felt they had a right to de- termine on what terms their labor would be given. That much they saw, and when union recognition was refused, they were prepared to strike. The propaganda barrage had done its work on public opin- ion, already aroused at the thought of a meat shortage. The Bosses knew this and it made them confident. Neither the public, nor the authorities would stand for any demonstrations, any interference with the public interest, by a subversive, rabble- rousing mob. John L. Lewis saw it and he worried. He would be going into battle with the odds heavily against him unless he A Live Teacher and a Living School 165 could free labor from the accusation of being anti-American. How could the subtle propaganda of the opposition be un- done ? Had he known his Chicago better, he might have had the answer sooner. The man who could do it was right at hand. In fact, he was already on the job in this very district. The whole answer to his problem came in one suggestion from a lieutenant who said, "Ask Bishop Sheil." Some time previously, a young sociologist named Saul Alin- sky had conceived the idea of an over-all community approach to the social problems of the seething packing-yards district. Getting an idea and putting it into execution are two different things, so he had immediately taken his plan to the founder of the CYO. The Bishop at once saw its value, and, as always when the welfare of the downtrodden is concerned, he exploded into action. That was how the now-famous Chicago Back-of-the- Yards Neighborhood Council came into being. The plan was one of self-help, of self-government of conditions in the area. It involved bringing together all the social agencies at work in the neighborhood. National groups, religious organizations, welfare societies, all of them, would join for discussion of the common problem of better living. The operation of the plan involved some high-level battling and Bishop Sheil was the man who spearheaded the fight. Again he had the right man at his side in Joe Meegan. A lot of the activity Joe Meegan organized for the Back-of-the-Yards centered around one of the public parks. Politics raised its ugly head when the then Parks Com- missioner opposed it and finally banned the use of the park for 166 Bishop Sheil and the CYO these activities. He probably thought that that ended that. But all he had done was start something. And he started it with the wrong man. If he hadn't heard that Bishop Sheil was a fighter, he soon learned the fact. When the dust of that scrap had died down, the man was no longer a Parks Commissioner nor any- thing else in public life. And the Back-of-the- Yards Council was running along merrily. So the neighborhood knew Bishop Sheil. The Bosses knew him, too. Wasn't it their donations that had helped to get his CYO going and keep it running ? When they heard that he had accepted an invitation to stand on the platform beside John L. Lewis and address the last-ditch-stand pre-strike meeting in the Chicago Coliseum, their silk hats hit the ceiling. That one act would topple their whole structure of propa- ganda like a house of cards. How could an organization spon- sored by a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church be com- munistic, anarchistic and destructive of sound Christian prin- ciples? Not only that, but among the workers themselves, the carefully implanted mistrust of their leaders was cleared away by the simple fact of the Bishop's adherence to their cause. Action had to be taken at once to prevent his appearance at that meeting. It was. The incidents that followed would be incredible if one did not understand two things: the burning intensity of that mo- ment in the industrial history of the United States, and the temper of the Chicago of 1939. For this was no mere handling of an isolated strike. It was for all intents and purposes the last big stand of Capital against A Live Teacher and a Living School 167 Organized Labor. Such big powers as General Motors, Chrysler, and U. S. Steel had been forced to terms by the rising wave of the CIO. The Meat Barons of Chicago were the last hope for the survival of the old days of treating workmen as so many impersonal entries on a balance sheet. They were the last hope for refusing the worker the organized right to control the con- ditions under which he would work. If they failed, it meant a tremendous, and, for many, an unthinkable change in the struc- ture of industry. And Chicago was not yet free from the odor of its gangster era. The counterattack began in a manner that was to be expected. Polite representations were followed by angry arguments, threats, and ill-concealed blackmail. "You can't do this," they said. "You a bishop of the Catholic Church and a leading citi- zen of the community! Not only will you be disrupting the settled order, but you will bring ruin on all the good work you have been doing. If you go to this meeting, you will never again get one red cent or a helping turn of the hand from any busi- nessman in this city." The Bishop still chuckles as he recalls the picture of one Very Prominent Catholic standing over his desk, pounding it with his fist and threatening him with the heavy hand of the Vatican. "I'll see that you're thrown out of here!" John L. Lewis himself couldn't have thought up a better way of insuring the Bishop's presence at the meeting. Influence was brought to bear on him from all sides. Even among his friends there were those who counseled shelter from 168 Bishop Shell and the CYO the rising storm. "We know, Your Excellency, that you are right. But don't you think you could just let it go with a state- ment of some kind ? After all, you have the episcopal dignity to think of and you don't have to stick your neck out like this." That would bring an answer that the Bishop knew by heart from hours and years of meditation. "Show me one thing I'm saying that has not already been said by Pope Leo XIII and by Pope Pius XI and I'll withdraw. Point to a single thing I am doing that is not counseled, even ordered, in their directives and I will stop doing it." There was never any reply to that. For Bishop Sheil, the amazing thing was that, after all the Popes had written in their social encyclicals, the appearance of a Catholic bishop on a labor platform should cause any Catholic to be surprised. Cardinal Mundelein, then in his last year of life, was ap- pealed to. But the Cardinal had long ago placed his trust in Benny Sheil. As he heard the noise of that storm breaking around the head of the fighting Bishop, he must have recalled a night ten years previously when a young bishop had told him that he wanted to start a boxing tournament. He had known that night that the boxing would take place in a very wide ring. So the panic-stricken appeals did not unduly disturb him. His auxiliary was walking into a man-sized situation; but he was a man-sized man. The day of the meeting was drawing close when something happened that one can scarcely credit even in such a situation and in such a city. The Bishop, it is true, had been fairly warned. A Live Teacher and a Living School 169 But he could hardly have been prepared for the bullet that crashed through the window of a downtown restaurant as he sat at lunch. None of it made any difference. The night of July 16, 1939, came and Bernard J. Sheil, D.D., Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, was going to the meeting to sit on the platform alongside John L. Lewis. He got to it with the help of the Chicago police force which cleared the eight blocks between his office and the Coliseum and assigned him a bodyguard of 50 policemen. Once he arrived there he had a different kind of protection. There were 20,000 packing-house workers in the Coliseum and another 10,000 standing outside. They were a keyed-up crowd of men and it would have gone sadly with anyone who dared to raise hand or voice against "their bishop." The program said that Bishop Sheil was to give the invoca- tion. It was quite an invocation. Any thought that threats had scared him or persuasion softened him was quickly dispelled. If any of the workers thought he was there to lead a strike and exhort them to march on the packing houses, they were soon disabused. From his opening words he stood squarely and inde- pendently as what he was — a man of God and a man of the people. "It is my duty as a priest of God and as a guardian of our youth to state clearly and briefly the position that has been expressed by the popes oti matters affecting profoundly the eco- nomic and social welfare of society. This obligation I gladly and eagerly accept, regardless of approval or disapproval." He went on to a no-holds-barred castigation of the meat trust. 170 Bishop Shell and the CYO He did not plead or beg or seek refuge in generalities. He explained what he meant by the rights of labor. "... /'/ man has the natural, God-given right to life then he must have the right to the means of life. To admit the right to ends and to deny the means without which the ends cannot be attained is self -contradictory . . . ". . . the returns on his labor must be sufficient to enable him to bring up his children properly. This includes not only the necessities of life, such as adequate food, clothes and shelter, but also necessary medical care and reasonable education. A wage which does not meet these requirements is an unjust inva- sion of fundamental natural rights!' Nor did he let labor alone. He criticized its faults, warned it against unjust means, demanded that it measure up to its responsibilities. And all the way, he fought against the strike. He who stood right in the center of the electrically tense situation knew better than most the violent eruption that would follow its uncon- trolled release. He passionately wanted justice for labor, but he wanted it the democratic way. He put all of his reserves of mental and spiritual energy into that speech. And he won his fight. The union won its right to organize, and industrial rela- tions in the United States had entered into a new phase. Before the year was over, the nation had another striking demonstration of the pattern of social thinking that lay behind the CYO. A normal man might have decided that he had gained enough enemies for a while, but within a few months another social evil had become so malodorous that the Bishop A Live Teacher and a hiving School 171 found it necessary to give one more chapter of the Hate-Sheil Club grounds for taking out its charter. This time he lined up his guns and let fly at a figure inside his own church, and when the shooting died down the Club had gained several thousand new members. They were recruits, for the most part, from the lunatic fringe, comprising fanatics within and without the Catholic Church. His target was "the Voice of Little Oak," Father Charles E. Coughlin. At no time had Bishop Sheil wasted any finesse in expressing his opinion of the insidious anti-Semitism and all the other detestable grains of poison that were spewed out of millions of radios each time the Detroit cleric sent his throbbing baritone into the ether. This time he, himself, turned to the radio and put his holy anger on record from coast to coast. Once more the single act was fraught with wider implica- tions and carried out against vociferous opposition. Prudent advisers were again counseling restraint. After all, they said, Charles E. Coughlin is a priest in good standing. He is not in your jurisdiction. He has his own ecclesiastical superiors. Let them do whatever chastising is necessary. Don't you go and lay your head on the hierarchic chopping block. Not for the life of him could Bernard Sheil give soul-room to such an argument. He simply could not understand how any- one could see anything wrong in a Catholic bishop taking a public stand on behalf of principles laid down by Christ and repeated a hundred times in the encyclicals of the popes. In addition, the matter had become a political one. The late President Roosevelt was attempting to lift the Embargo Act and 172 Bishop Shell and the CYO to introduce legislation forbidding discriminatory employment practices. The Bishop, as a friend of the workingman and a foe of intolerance, was scarcely on the side of the President. With him the question was one of principles, not of politics — as he was to demonstrate later when he opposed the same Presi- dent whose work he had so often championed, to take Labor's side in the Little Steel dispute. The Coughlinite action, on the other hand, was using its mushrooming demagogic influ- ence to block the President. So the cry of politics went up and there were not lacking those to taunt Bishop Sheil that he was taking the part of an inner-circle Freemason against a priest of the Catholic Church. But the fighting Bishop saw only two things: a matter of basic social justice was at issue in the nation; it was time somebody made it clear that the "Voice of Royal Oak" was most certainly not the voice of Rome. It was, therefore, in another exceedingly dramatic situation that he went to the microphone to broadcast over a nation-wide network on Sunday, October 2, 1939. The speech had been pre- pared with the consent and the full approval of Cardinal Mundelein. On the very morning of its delivery, the Cardinal who had been Bernard Sheil's father in Christ, his intimate friend and staunch supporter, was discovered dead in his bed, the victim of a heart attack. This calamity would have provided a lesser man with a double reason for dodging the issue. He could have pleaded his personal distress and the mourning of the archdiocese. He could have hidden behind the death of the superior who had granted A live Teacher and a hiving School 173 permission for the address. Such evasion had no place in Bernard Shell's make-up. He went that night before the NBC microphones and let all America hear the full speech as he and his now-silent superior had prepared it. If the speech was a devastating attack on narrow-minded- ness, it was also a solid setting forth of positive Christian social teaching. From Christ's own lessons on the oneness and the equality of men, it moved to another hammering home of the practical application of those lessons as set forth for all Christ- ians to follow in the writings of Christ's Vicars on earth. Nor did it stop there. It went on to make specific application of the general papal directives to the here-and-now situation in the United States. It got right down to cases and to such stinging rebukes as those contained in passages like the following: "The devising of a course of action is not something to be divined by emotional charlatans who have become statesmen overnight and whose unctuous voices betray a first urge to hear themselves no matter what they convey. You \now the men I mean. . . . "As between our great leader on the one hand . . . and those, on the other hand, whose judgments have been proved wrong or not proved at all, there is only one common course to follow for those of us who are not experts in his [the President's] busi- ness. It is to accept his leadership." Words like those, as one can well imagine, really set the underbrush on fire. That one talk, if he had never spoken an- other word publicly, would have earned Bishop Sheil the undying enmity of everyone who followed the twisting maze of 174 Bishop Sheil and the CYO economic mumbo- jumbo that Father Coughlin glibly substi- tuted for a program. But there were to be more public words and gestures, particu- larly against that insignificant but noisy group within the Catholic flock whose hate-warped minds had concocted the blasphemy of associating racial prejudice with the teaching of Christ. Two of these occasions which occurred after the found- ing of the Sheil School of Social Studies will serve to complete the picture of the Bishop's attitude in this matter and to set forth one of the reasons why he determined that the time was ripe for establishing the Educational Department of the CYO. In Boston, a Catholic schoolteacher named Frances Sweeney had spoken out courageously against the rowdy anti-Semitism which had manifested itself among certain Catholic elements in that city. The opposition against her was so strong that she was compelled to give up her teaching job. The Frances Sweeney case became something of a cause celebre among right-thinking Catholics. The Bishop's first action in the case (which again involved the delicate question of one prelate "interfering" in the internal affairs of another prelate's diocese) was to ship to Boston fifteen thousand copies of a pamphlet made up of ex- cerpts from his speeches setting forth the true Christian doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man under the fathership of God. Then Frances Sweeney died of an illness thought to have been aggravated by the anguish she had been caused. In a ges- ture which focused national publicity on the situation, the Bishop announced Miss Frances Sweeney as the posthumous winner of the newly founded Leo XIII Award of the Sheil A Live Teacher and a Living School 175 School, "for outstanding work in Christian social education." The implications were obvious and the sturdy figure of the Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago was once more standing in the limelight unmistakably by the side of another one of "those who hunger and thirst after justice." The second incident happened in Chicago. It provides an ugly and unforgettably magnificent picture of impotent, twisted hatred venting its spleen on a man who sees things straight. One of the Forum Lectures which are a feature of the Sheil School was being given by the Founder himself. Its subject was the currently red-hot one of the Christian and the Jew. Char- acteristically, the Bishop had gripped this hot potato in his own hands rather than take the easier way of tossing it over to some- body else. Interest ran so high that the large attendance forced the audience out of the lecture room and into the CYO gym- nasium. The Elizabeth Dilling-Coughlinite element was rep- resented in force — and the Bishop knew it. Speaking in his own Congress Street headquarters, he pulled out all the stops and spared no one in his castigation of those who would pervert the teaching of Christ. Was not Jesus Christ a Jew? Was not the Mother of Christ, that uniquely beautiful and pure crown of all the human race for whom Catholics have such reverence and devotion, a Jewess ? Against the beauty of the truth he set the ugliness of its perversion. It was a splendid talk, in which inspiration was buttressed with reason and revelation. But the prejudiced mind is beyond the reach of reason. It is a diseased mind. When the talk was finished, the large number of such minds among the audience were simply seething with helpless 176 Bishop Shell and the CYO and malevolent rage. The platform was at the far end of the gymnasium and the only way out was by a lane that had to be cleared before the Bishop through the standing-room-only crowd. As the speaker made his way down the floor boos and hisses mingled with applause. Near the back of the room, there was a sudden commotion in the crowd. A typical fanatic woman pushed herself straight into the Bishop's path and started to revile him in a shrill emotion-charged voice. "I am a Catholic!" she screamed. "You are not a Catholic! You're a nigger-lover! A Jew-lover! You call yourself a bishop! You're not a bishop. You're a RABBI!" Then, trembling with passion, she drew a deep breath, thrust her hate-contorted harridan features to within inches of the Bishop and spat full in his face. There was an audible short, sharp intake of breath through- out the hall as 500 people fell into the sudden silence of deep shock. The woman herself recoiled from her act. Not a muscle stirred in the room. The concentrated attention of 500 people was fixed with hypnotized intensity on the figure who stood there with spittle running down his right cheek towards his Roman collar and the purple insignia of his rank. He did not so much as make a move to clear the spittle from his face. His features remained calm. . . . This man of strength, this fighter who had never backed away from anyone or from anything in his life, was in complete control of himself. As he stood there he taught a greater lesson than he had ever given in all his words. An aide A Live Teacher and a Living School 177 who stood at his elbow that night still warms at the recollec- tion. He says, "That was one moment when you really thrilled with pride in the guy." When the Bishop broke his silence, his calm words were almost an anticlimax. He had said them already in his bear- ing. He said: "I thank you, Madame, for the compliment of your action and your words. Rabbi? That is what they called our Lord." It was fitting that this should have taken place at a lecture on the program of the Sheil School of Social Studies and on the floor of the East Congress Street gymnasium which is the hub of the CYO boxing program. For the scene embraces, as nearly as any single scene could, the full span of CYO action. Here on the spot on which he had first used boxing gloves to teach right living, Bishop Sheil had just given, by word and example, an intellectual, moral and physical lesson on the basic Christian approach to social life. Here we have at a glance the distance between the Boxing Tournament and the Sheil School of Social Studies and the single mind which informs both. In November, 1942, the CYO Educational Department was established. On February 1, 1943, it founded its first project, the Sheil School of Social Studies. From the beginning it com- bined a high order of thinking with an informal down-to-earth technique. It had no requirements of previous education, "race," color, creed or money. The School was absolutely free and open to all. It set forth its objectives in a prospectus entitled "Memoranda for the Full Life . . .", which read in part: 178 Bishop Sheil and the CYO This School might be called a screech to be free — a protest — an effort to show people that life need not be all gadgets, ads and standard brands. It aims to show people a picture of life as it can and of right should be. It strives to stir up the desire for full life — a desire it hopes will spread from person to person and yield in a mighty, firm demand. . . . We teach in a word the motives, the principles, the means, which heeded, observed and used will make our action together achieve the decent, the good, the full and human life. A Live Teacher and a Living School 179 The technique used was that of a truly adult education center. Classes, forums, workshops, and lectures were carried on in such a way as to create an atmosphere full of the strong winds of life rather than the dry dust of textbooks. A corps of highly qualified professors and leaders in various trades and profes- sions gathered around the Bishop to form a first-class, and com- pletely volunteer, faculty. Subjects taught fell into three main classifications: a) The- ology and Philosophy — "These tear away the encrustations laid on truth and bare the very fibres of life . . ."; b) Social Studies — "These bring the aforementioned eternal, general truths to bear on the things of our time and our place. By this means we decide what good our common life presents to be kept — and what of bad our action must destroy"; c) Liberal Studies — "These are presented to discipline the mind, to enlarge its scope, to put it in touch with the mightiest minds who have held life up to view, to help it support the greatest truths, to provide it truly human things to do, to equip it to give effective voice to truth." In those words from the prospectus the School set itself a rather high-sounding goal. But this was a Sheil operation and no empty declaration of airy plans. The School went right to work and did just what it said it was going to do. In no time at all it was a bustling crossroads of thought and the center of dynamic Catholic activity in Chicago. Labor and Social courses naturally came to the fore and the School soon became familiarly known by various slightly mis- leading names like the Workers' College, and Bishop Sheil's 180 Bishop Shell and the CYO Labor School. These courses ranged all the way from the phi- losophy and theology of human relations to things like "Organ- izing Department Store Workers," "Helping Union Members During a Strike," "Building Unity Between the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O.," all courses given by union officials. There were courses on public speaking, on conducting meetings, on labor law, on economics, on cooperation between labor and manage- ment. Discussion was always lively and forums allowed labor and management to sit down together and discuss their com- mon problem. Inter-racial understanding was promoted both in courses like "The Negro in America" and by the free inter- mingling of the diverse peoples who made up both the student body and the faculty. The student at the Sheil School is never at a loss for choice of subjects. He may learn Spanish, Italian, French or Russian. He may attend the Art Workshop or go into stage and radio productions by way of the Theatre Workshop. He can follow a course on the Meaning of Music, or one on Europe Today. He can come out of a lecture on Shakespeare and choose whether he will follow it with Introduction to St. Thomas, or Why Labor Unions? If he wants to follow regular courses in Psy- chiatry, he may do so. Others he may choose from are Effective Speech, Straight Thinking, Introduction to Theology, The Great Books, United Nations Report, Human Relations in Chicago, Our Changing Laws, How to Read Better, and the Philosophy of Politics. Wherever he goes he will find himself joined with a group of active minds under the professorship of a man of learning A Live Teacher and a Living School 181 who knows how to talk in terms of the people. The atmosphere of intellectual give-and-take is most stimulating for students and teachers alike. The thud of gloves that can be heard down the corridor is no unfitting accompaniment to the clash of open and opening minds within the walls of the Sheil School. The School needed a library, so the Bishop with his unerring instinct for the right person and his uncanny luck in having just that person come to hand at the right moment, turned to Miss Sara Benedicta O'Neill. Now in her mid-eighties, Miss O'Neill is such a youthfully bright, pleasant and intelligent lady that a meeting with her is sufficient to brighten a person's whole day. For years she had been carrying on the St. Benet Library and Bookshop, a tiny one-woman venture which, just at the moment Bishop Sheil appeared on the scene, was about to end its brave hand-to-mouth existence. The invitation to become the CYO Library was like the waving of a magic wand. The Bishop provided the means and the clientele and Miss O'Neill's intelligence, good taste and personality did the rest. If the CYO is the crossroads of Catholic Chicago, the St. Benet Library and Bookshop is now the corner at which everyone who passes by stops for a chat and some intellectual and spiritual refreshment. In recent months, Miss O'Neill has had to relinquish most of her active duties. They have been taken over by an assistant, one of the original faculty members and promoters of the Sheil School and a young person whose taste in literature and art combine with a rarely sensitive intellect and a warm personality to make the beautiful, spa- 182 Bishop Sheil and the CYO cious room on the ground floor of the CYO building a living embodiment of the grace and culture it exists to promote. The Sheil School might be summed up as a projection of the social thinking of the Bishop into the minds of others who would in turn extend its influence in their immediate sur- roundings. The key point in this transference of Bernard Sheil's men- tality to his fellow-Chicagoans was the tiny permanent staff which sparked the new school from its beginning. The dis- tinctive elan and the sense of intellectual and cultural ad- venture which gave the Sheil School its characteristic note were implanted by early leaders. The student body covers a wide range of ages, creeds, colors and walks of life. Most classes are held in late afternoon, eve- ning or Saturday mornings. You may find a nice old lady sitting beside a hard-boiled union organizer and engaged in spirited discussion with him. Laborers straight from work get into bull sessions with university students who make a buss- man's holiday of some of the unusual courses in this unusual school. Office workers, who have stayed downtown for the evening courses, add to the variety which makes for many-sided discussion of any topic that comes up in class. The School has attained its largest student body under the present director, Rev. Edward V. Cardinal, C.S.V., Ph.D. The academic year 1949-50 saw 2,134 students registered in the 97 courses. Ages of students ranged from seventeen to seventy with more than half of them under thirty. It is estimated that about A Live Teacher and a Living School 183 half of those attending the courses have had a high school education or less. The Sheil School of Social Studies has never had any trouble knowing whether or not its teachings were in harmony with those of its founder. For while the School was building up, Bishop Sheil was continuing to hammer home his teachings on social responsibility and individual freedom in a series of public addresses which often enough made headlines from coast to coast and sometimes had repercussions on the forma- tion of national policy. One such widely reported and reprinted speech was that on "Restricted Covenants vs. Brotherhood.' , It was given for the Chicago Council Against Racial Discrimina- tion on May n, 1946, and the principles it enunciates have since been written into the law of the land. In it, Bishop Sheil said: "Men are brothers not because of some mystic unity grousing out of emotionalism, but because they proceed from a common origin — God. Strip from the brotherhood of man the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and you leave only a meaningless hushj. a set of nice, but acquired mannerisms that may easily be discarded without fear of consequence. Deny the Fatherhood of God as the one and only basis for our common brotherhood and you open wide the door to the racial insanity of the 'Superman and all of the hatred, brutality and violence that follow inevitably in its wa\e." He spoke in favor of FEPC and the Anti-Poll-Tax Bill. He said: "Furthermore, it is the most stupid \ind of hypocrisy to 184 Bishop Sheil and the CYO proffer the 'lily-white hand' of friendship to a world pre- dominately colored, and at the very moment our hand is ex- tended be guilty of the most vicious kind of discrimination against these, our darker brothers!' He left no doubt about where he stood on his topic: "In the hideous question of restrictive covenants we are faced with a problem that far transcends the question of democratic rights. It is one of the most basic factors militating against inter-racial harmony. The mere existence of what we have come to term (with an understandable sense of national shame), 'Christian ghettoes is an absolute negation not only of the American Creed but of Christianity itself. The defenseless people whom we have caused to be walled in behind the legal- istic concentration camps of America are mute witnesses to how far we have drifted from the original command, 'hove one another! " Nor did he spare the churches, including his own : "I have said before, and I repeat, that the churches of all religious denominations cannot be absolved from blame for the fact that social injustice, racial and economic inequality still remain as entrenched obstacles to the complete development of the American Creed!' He spoke in dozens of major cities, at congresses and conven- tions, and practically every appearance left in its trail a crop of sentences which were quoted in the writings and speeches of other men until they had been planted all over America. Carl Sandburg made a column out of one of his talks against discrimination. He ended it with this: A Live Teacher and a Living School 185 "This \ind of preaching is worth study. What holiness there is here touches many streets, people, and hungry hearts. It may go far. A glint of the priceless shines in Bishop Sheil's declara- tion, 'Jim Crowism in the Mystical Body of Christ is a dis- graceful anomaly.' " He has been much quoted on his stand for Labor; as in one passage of his battle against the Taft-Hartley Act when he re- ferred to the claim that unions had grown too strong, as "A bitter joke." Similarly, the words have been passed along in which he condemned Labor for allowing abuses within its ranks and called it a racketeers' and Communists' "scandal to the entire Labor movement." Behind all this social drive lies what Robert Lasch, in an article in The Reporter, has called Bishop Sheil's "personal philosophy of revolution." Mr. Lasch quotes the Bishop's own words in support of his statement: "In the early springtime of its dynamic and contagious en- thusiasm, Christianity was the most radical and uncompromis- ing revolution that men had ever experienced. One of the truly tragic happenings of the modern age is that this same Christian- ity, because of fear and too much human respect, has been allowed to become synonymous with conservatism." If the Sheil School of Social Studies ever moves into a build- ing of its own, it might well chisel those words over the door. CHAPTER FIFTEEN From Bataan to Bastogne a i F the Armed Services had decided to use a few divisions made up entirely of CYO boys in World War II, they would have had some pretty tough and able outfits," Bishop Sheil said as he looked at a huge board that listed hundreds of names. "If these boys had run out of weapons and ammunition they could have put on the six-ounce gloves and chased the enemy right out of town. A tough bunch, these youngsters, with the highest average of physical rating in the Service. I don't know of any CYO boxer being turned down for physical reasons, and we must have had several thousands who served. We lose track of some of our boys who leave town, go into business and get too occupied with their lives to report back. But we know they're doing well. They always do." The board hangs in the gymnasium at the CYO Center so that those who came back can see that they were never for- gotten, and may pause for a moment to remember the others who lie beneath the white crosses on every battlefield from 186 From Bataan to Bastogne 187 Bataan to Bastogne, and under the waves of the seven seas. They wrote letters, these lonely men in service, as did every other GL And "home" to many of them was the building beside the noisy elevated tracks at the corner of Congress and Wabash in Chicago. It was here that they had spent the few happy hours of their short lives ; it was here that they had found the road to sensible, happy living; for here waited the man who loved them all and was ever ready to hear their troubles, to give them the feeling of importance that they had needed so badly. Lou Radzienda, Supervisor of Boxing by this time, and so efficient at his job that he would be named Commissioner of Boxing on the Illinois State Athletic Commission in 1950, was swamped with mail from all over the earth. Back to the boys went personal letters written far into the morning hours by Radzienda; back went copies of The Voice, the magazine of the CYO, to take them news of activities at the Center and the reports of what the boxing teams were doing at home. They were doing plenty. Hardly a night went by without a group of CYO battlers journeying far afield to give exhibitions at the service hospitals which were already filling with wounded men from the battle fronts; or boxing at banquets and other affairs to raise funds so that the work could go on. More than a few of the dollars earned by these willing fists went to buy groceries and clothing for destitute families of other CYO boxers of years gone by, who were fighting a more important bout without the benefit of the rules of the Marquis of Queensberry nor the corner advice of tireless Lou Radzienda. 188 Bishop Sheil and the CYO In Army, Marine and Naval bases all over the United States, CYO boys were playing leading roles as pilots, paratroopers, commandos, gunners, infantrymen, and — in their spare time — as boxers on their camp teams. Many became physical directors, teaching the routine they had learned at 31 E. Congress. Many of them rose rapidly through the ranks, these boys of every race, creed and color, born with their noses pointed straight toward the penitentiary, who had found the right road in life because one man refused to be too busy to show them the way. "I cannot make an honest estimate of how many boys we had in the service," Bishop Sheil said. "Nearly a quarter of a million had become CYO boys in Chicago alone before the war started. Nearly twenty thousand of them were boxers, the others took part in so many other sports, in our schools, our summer camps and other activities. We had girls in the WACS and WAVES and in the Marine Corps. We were always too busy to make a complete list. It would have been a titanic job. Then, when you add all the other CYO service records from all over the United States and in foreign lands, you have a mighty big army. I like to think of all of them lined up here in my heart. I see them in their boxing outfits battling in that ring up there. I see them smiling at each other and walking to the shower room with their arms around each other when the bout is ended. They are fine boys, fine American men. There are none better anywhere in the world. We have our Gold Stars, too, each one of them a pain in my heart, each one of them a glorious young life taken because humanity will not turn to God to settle problems. From Bataan to Bastogne 189 "Two of our Gold Stars are for Jimmy and Gene Cahill, listed on that board with their brother Johnny. All three were fiery little boxers although none of them won our champion- ships. They went on together on to a bigger fight, at Bataan and Corregidor. Jimmy and Gene were killed ; Johnny was one of the survivors of that hideous death march from Bataan as a prisoner of the Japs. This fall, Johnny and their mother flew to Manila to visit the graves of Jimmy and Gene. The CYO paid their expenses. It was the least we could do." From thousands of war fronts, bearing the APO c/o Post- master, the letters came. Mike Sarno, light-heavyweight cham- pion of 1942, reported from a hospital bed in North Africa that he thought his young brother Harry, another CYO boxer, was in an infantry camp in Texas. Mike was right, and soon Harry would go overseas to become another Gold Star on the board in the gym at 31 E. Congress. Hiner Thomas, middleweight champion in 1935 and welter winner in 1938, sent pictures when he was made corporal in the Marine Corps, in charge of recreation for 8,000 men, show- ing his grinning ebony face above the handsome dress uniform. He wrote that he was planning to get Joe Louis for an exhibi- tion bout with Roscoe Toles; that Harold Dade was at his camp but would soon go overseas. Dade, tiny bronze flyweight king of the CYO in 1939 and 1940, did go over and came back to win the professional world's bantamweight title from the sup- posedly invincible Manuel Ortiz. Eddie Kaninski, heavyweight champion in 1942, wrote from a Pacific base that he had bumped into Jonias Flores some- 190 Bishop Sheil and the CYO where on the islands. He did not know that Jonias would soon be a Gold Star. From Frank Balanch came a long letter asking for Jack Elder's address. It ended with these simple words: "May God guide, bless and love you — one of the Bishop's chil- dren. Frank.'' Even before the letter reached the CYO Center. Frank Balanch lay beneath a cross after his Marine squadron had smashed its way on to a new beachhead, and Frank was another Gold Star on the board back home. Even after the war ended in Europe and Japan, the mail was still heavy. Hundreds of the boys remained abroad in the Armies of Occupation in Germany, Japan, Korea and many other lonely outposts. It was not until late in 1946 that Tony Urabe finally checked in at headquarters. Tony had been a grinning Japanese-American imp of 118 pounds when he won the bantamweight title at Chicago Stadium in 1944. He had left Radzienda and Bishop Sheil with the brash statement that it was time for him to go back to the home of his ancestors and take charge. At last his letter came from Showa Air Base in Tokyo. "Well,'' he wrote, "it didn't take me long. But now the Army's got me busy shooting needles into kids with V.D. Some job for a champion!"' Lou P.adzienda saved all the letters, saved them until they became an amazing pile of cartons full of the lonely thoughts of young boys who had gone out into the world to become men the hard way. Only a cosmic calculator could record how many times these men had found time to remember Bishop Sheil as sat in foxholes in the Pacific, triggered their bombs high ■ Europe or dodged submarine attacks in the Atlantic. If From Bataan to Bastogne 191 one may judge from their tragic letters, his memory was the most precious thing they carried into battle. Their scrawls were full of self-conscious little reports of their activities and minor triumphs in the deadly service world. Not one of them would fail to spread the creed he had learned at CYO — that every man was important, and deserved to be treated with dignity. Each one knew that the smiling man in back of the big desk at 31 E. Congress was proud of him, confident that he would not fail, and that his personal blessing would be with each. The most unhappy moments in the history of the CYO Center were when the tiny Gold Stars were placed beside the names of the boys who would not come back. They were not many compared to other great organizations which had large numbers of sons in service, a factor difficult to explain without resorting to the theory held by many CYO veterans that Bishop Sheil's prayers had saved them in circumstances where no hu- man agency could possibly have been responsible. Still the tragic notices came in for a few. Jimmy and Gene Cahill were followed by Bill Snell, Johnny Berek, Chet Char- cut, Ed Carfagnini and Jim Stift. They were soon joined beyond the eternal barricades by Ted Michalik, Phil Carey, Alex Antosiak and Joe Steffan. Each chipped off a tiny piece of the heart of Bishop Sheil. These were his sons, symbols of his triumph over his enemy the slums. Their pitiful crosses near the battlefields of the world were monuments to the battle he, himself, had engaged in more than a decade before. It was not until February, 1944, that the most shattering sor- 192 Bishop Shell and the CYO row of all came home to haunt Bishop Sheil. The news spread quickly through the newspapers of Chicago and was the lead item in the column of Sports Editor Gene Kessler of the Sun. "Jimmy Christy, a bundle of spitfire in and out of the ring," Kessler wrote, "went out the way he lived — sensationally. The report says only that he died in a plane crash, Feb. 12, outside the continental United States. "Sorrel-topped Jimmy was all action. His ring career was brief, yet he crowded more in one year of pro biffing than the average pugilist does in five. During that short period, the Irish fireball of the padded mitts fought Sammy Angott, now claimant of the lightweight crown; Lew Feldman; Baby Ariz- mendi and Freddie Miller, featherweight champ at the time. "All of his fights were sensational. We recall his spat with Angott in particular, for it was like two truculent wildcats tearing each other to bits. Neither ceased flailing fists from gong to gong for 10 rounds. Angott gained the decision, but there wasn't much to choose between the two belligerents." Bishop Sheil would remember that bout. It was the time he had to be restrained from climbing into the ring to thrash the officials whom he thought guilty of unfairness to Jimmy. "We always thought Christy rushed to the top too quickly, that he would have been a champion had he taken more time to polish his artistry. But it was his own doing. He wanted to meet the best in his division as quickly as possible. So he met Miller for the title after just one year of pro biffing. It was char- acteristic of the lad that he announced, on the eve of the bout, his retirement from the ring. Perhaps he realized, even before From Bataan to Bastogne 193 meeting Miller, that he would lose. He was defeated decisively by the veteran southpaw and carried out his decision by trading the gloves for an artist's brush. "So it wasn't surprising when Jimmy Christy enlisted soon after Pearl Harbor, or when word came that he had earned his wings, was flying army planes as a lieutenant. Yes, the red- headed, smiling Jimmy Christy died as he lived — in the thick of action to the last gong." There was little doubt that the death of Jimmy Christy was a terrible blow to Bishop Sheil. His prayers were equal for all of his boys, but the fun-loving, explosive little scrapper seemed to have held a special place in the scheme of things around the CYO. Veteran men of the staff, and friends who had known the Bishop since boyhood days, were unanimous in the belief that Jimmy Christy, with his eternal air of devil-may-care impudence, got closer to the inner heart of his leader than any other human, excepting — obviously — Father and Mother Sheil. More than that, Jimmy Christy was the prize example of the CYO Champion. He was tough and courageous; he was an expert on the sordid side of life when he was a tiny ragamuffin of a newsboy; he was shrewd, nervy and ingenious. It is easy to believe that without the influence of Bishop Sheil, Jimmy Christy could have strayed to the wrong pathway and become one of the most dangerous criminals of his age. Instead he became a CYO Champion, as responsible as any other and more than most, for slamming the hoodlum off the pedestal of worship in the slums of Chicago and providing a goal for several thousand of his contemporaries who had the 194 Bishop Sheil and the CYO choice of trying to be like Jimmy Christy or trying to be like Al Capone. Besides, Jimmy was handsome; Jimmy was charming; Jimmy was bubbling with an overload of fun and good humor which permitted him to take liberties and delight people of all kinds. It is impossible to deny that the same boisterous and virile feel- ing for fun was abundant in Bishop Sheil, although held in some restraint by the dignity of his office. They would under- stand each other, these two, the tough scrapper of the prize ring and the equally tough battler of the Church. There would be mutual understanding deeper than words could convey. They were like brothers, like father and son. It was not sur- prising to find in CYO files a copy of Bishop SheiFs letter to the U. S. Air Force, saying: "I have always known Lt. James P. Christy to be a young man of outstanding moral character and mental alertness and a loyal and devoted young American. ... I unhesitatingly recommend him for whatever task may be delegated him as a member of the U. S. Air Force, fully confident that he will discharge it with competence and bravery." He might have added "even to the supreme sacrifice of his life." And he would not have been wrong. CHAPTER SIXTEEN I Shall Always Fight B REAK every law in the book, get yourself in such deep trouble that no one wants any part of you, make yourself Public Nuisance Number One in your neighborhood, and Bishop Sheil will appear automatically, like a rabbit out of a hat, to get you oui of the jam. If you are a good, law-abiding citizen with no more than the normal minor troubles of life, he hasn't any time for you. When he was Chaplain at the Jail, that notorious murderer, 'Terrible Tommy' O'Connor, escaped on the eve of his execution and has never been seen since. I always tease Ben by accusing him of letting Terrible Tommy out of there, and sometimes I'm not so sure I'm kidding. He's too busy for people who are getting along all right, except when he puts the bite on them for CYO funds. But if you're in a mess, he's right there with all the time you need. He gets a great bang out of salvaging the worst bums in town and making good people out of them." This startling thumbnail description of His Excellency 195 196 Bishop Shell and the CYO Bernard James Sheil was delivered by the president of one of Chicago's largest industrial plants, a man who had played ball with young "Benny" Sheil back in the days of St. Columbkille's Parish, and had been an intimate friend through all the later years. The record bears out a thousandfold the accuracy of the description. Members of the CYO staff of the past and present watch "the boss" with awe, reverence and a large touch of apprehension about what he may decide to do next. No project has ever been completely installed and running smoothly before the next is on the production line, with Bishop Sheil driving for imme- diate action. Outsiders have watched him, too, and whatever apprehension they may have felt soon turned to admiration before the radical soundness of his motivation and the impos- ing record of his solid accomplishment. One of these was the late President Roosevelt, who found the Bishop a beacon of light on the dark sea of the depression years. Although he never took a federal office, Bishop Bernard Sheil was a close friend and sincere admirer of the late President. He has denied that he ever could have been called an "adviser," but some of the President's thoughts and actions on various phases of anti-discrimination battles and particularly on the problems of youth bore too much resemblance to the ideals of Bishop Sheil to be explained by coincidence. The admiration which President Roosevelt always held for Bishop Sheil was shown when he sent Judge Sherman Minton, soon to become a Supreme Court Justice, to represent the White House at the banquet at which 1,600 Chicago leaders gathered to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the CYO. / Shall Always Fight 197 An amazing gathering it was. Sitting side by side at the table of honor were the Catholic Bishop Bernard J. Sheil, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Samuel A. Stritch, the Methodist and Episco- pal Bishops and two Jewish rabbis. Rubbing shoulders were the Republican governor of the State, Dwight Green, and a Demo- cratic mayor of Chicago, Edward Kelly. A top rank labor leader sat beside a noted capitalist. Also at the table of honor were a few representatives of CYO: a blind boy — his Pilot Guide dog beside him ; a pair of slant-eyed lads from the CYO unit in the Nisei section; two boxing champions, one of them Polish, one Negro; Boy Scouts; Girl Scouts; members of the CYO band in their resplendent uniforms; others in the powder-blue regalia of Lewis School of Aeronautics. Less important folk such as university presidents, industrial leaders, editors, bankers and society leaders cheered until they were hoarse when the CYO kids were introduced. President Roosevelt's message, delivered by Judge Minton, said, "It is indeed a memorable occasion when the government of the state, of the city, and the free citizens of that free city join to honor you for the great work you have done in caring for and directing youth. "I have been impressed by the boundless good will with which you have literally lived the Sermon on the Mount in your city of many races, many colors and many religions. Yours indeed is the spirit of good will toward all men in works as well as words. "If through ministrations such as yours that same spirit can reach down to all the youth of all our people, our democracy will indeed be made impregnable. ,, 198 Bishop Sheil and the CYO Turning aside the homage meant for him, Bishop Sheil used it to call increased attention to the young people among whom he had labored so diligently. He said, "If we are to stamp out the deadly maladies which threaten to destroy all which makes lif e worth living, we must enlist a vast army of young men and women who are willing to battle with every ounce of their strength and energy to establish the reign of truth, of right, of justice and brotherly love. They must make men realize that no material comfort, power or position, but God and the human soul are supreme. Then the downtrodden and enslaved people may look up and be glad, for the redemption is at hand. Over against the anti-godliness and anti-morality I set the youth of the world. I am profoundly persuaded that the one human hope of the modern world is youth." A great number of people, some innocently, others mali- ciously, have wanted to know where Bishop Sheil gets the money for his huge CYO program. The answer is simple. Part of this is gathered from the annual boxing tournament, an annual youth benefit ball, weekly dances at a leading hotel and similar promotions. In addition, the Chicago councils of the Knights of Columbus have been responsible for raising and turning over to the Bishop a large sum each year. Other funds are obtained from the hundreds of priests of the Chicago archdiocese who recognize the tremendous job the Bishop and his CYO are doing and contribute generously to keep it going. Not all the local clergy supports him, it should be noted, for "the prophet is without honor in his own coun- try" and Bishop Sheil is no exception. But the majority stand / Shall Always Fight 199 still under the annual frisking to which the Bishop subjects them. The remainder of the always increasing amount of money that it takes to keep the CYO pot boiling is the result of the Bishop's own efforts and is a constant tribute to the magnetic quality of his personality. Many a Chicago business tycoon who has torn out his hair by the roots upon picking up the morning paper and reading Bishop Sheil's latest statement on the value of unions (made, perhaps, to his own employees) will later respond generously to an appeal by the genial Bishop for funds with which to sustain his youth work. When asked how come, as one of them was, he replied, "He has done, and will always do a great job with young people, and I honestly know that he is deserving of my support. But why can't he keep his mouth shut?" In the answer to that question lies the whole key to His Ex- cellency Bernard James Sheil. He cannot keep his mouth shut once he becomes convinced that humanity's rights are being invaded. His entire intellectual being is permeated with an intense protective love for his fellow man. This is not a namby- pamby affection, nor a sentimental approach, but a burning inner conviction that the entire Christian concept of mankind is something more than a mere tool, either of the State or of the powerful and greedy, that it is a concept that must be acted upon with all the vigor and vitality that one possesses. Through- out his every public address runs that dominant theme, a basic dogma of the Church he serves — the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. 200 Bishop Shell and the CYO Those familiar with Bishop Sheil's career are never surprised by his outspoken and candid opinions, for his public speeches sparkle with golden phrases. Nor has he taken pains to spare the feelings of members of his own faith, a fact which may explain his apparent "freezing" at the ecclesiastical level of Senior Auxiliary Bishop. "Nor can the churches," he had said, "be absolved from all blame for that social injustice, economic inequality and racial discrimination which have become such entrenched obstacles to the full development of American democracy. Too often in the past religious leaders, under the guise of prudence, have failed to appreciate or to teach fearlessly what the Botherhood of Man means in terms of practical justice for the poor, the under- privileged, the oppressed of the world. The strength of the Church lies not in real estate holdings, not in institutions, but in the mass of the common people. It is their rights that the Church must vindicate before the world. There is a time for the virtue of prudence; there is a time also for courageous think- ing and acting; there is never a time for compromise with fundamental principles." His intense love of his country fired his every public state- ment, blazing with a brilliance almost equal to his love for his God. "America is such an amazing thing," he once said in a short talk which has become historic as an epitome of the Sheil point of view. "The people are all that count. They will never become Communist if they have a fair chance to participate in the advantages of democracy and feel that the government is theirs. Communism, wherever it appears, is the result of a frus- trated sense of justice. / Shall Always Fight 201 "We have the greatest chance in the world to create a broader justice in America and we must not fail. The Catholic Church must make its contribution to that evolution. "Above all, it must remove the odor of fascism if it is to ful- fill its real destiny in American life. It must free itself from any associations with fascism, abroad and at home, and all similar forces that make for reaction. Unless we root out fascism in America, we betray the kids who died in World War II. We Catholics are never going to get anywhere with a state-of-siege mentality." It has been ever evident that since Bishop Sheil emerged from the obscurity which cloaks the activities of thousands of men of God, there never could be a foe too big for him to attack, nor a person too "unimportant" for his complete interest and help. Nor has his capacity for assuming an ever-increasing pyramid of activities ever been seriously taxed, although he controls a dynasty of endeavors that staggers the minds of even the casual observer. He has been described as a Master Juggler who, having learned the rhythm of keeping eight balls in the air, finds that through some magic formula of timing he can keep eight hundred arching up and down under complete con- trol. And it must be emphasized that His Excellency does all this in his "spare" time, carrying on the complex duties of his office as the Senior Auxiliary Bishop of a tremendous city and pastor of St. Andrew's parish. He made a tour of Europe in 1946 at the request of President Harry S. Truman to study youth under post-war conditions. His report and suggestion, that the youth of Europe was the most important foundation for a successful solution to the many 202 Bishop Sheil and the CYO problems, was filed and apparently forgotten by the politicians. The floundering, blundering mess that developed might have been saved to a great extent had it been given proper attention — even as his ideas had changed the toughest districts in Chicago. Already the evil of Communism was unmasking itself all over the war-torn world, although many important Americans were still enamored of "our brave allies" who had fought so bravely against Hitler's eastern army. Bishop Sheil despises Communism, Socialism, Nazism and any other "ism" which blocks in any way the inherent right of every human to live in proper dignity and self-respect. How- ever, this has not prevented capricious enemies from attacking him for his outspoken battle for decency. One such who made a glib reference by innuendo to Bishop Sheil as a Socialist, a Communist, and an apologist for Com- munism was Joseph Washington Hall, who gained considerable reputation arid following under the name of "Upton Close." Close made his charge over a coast-to-coast radio hookup of the Mutual Broadcasting System nearly three months after a speech given by Bishop Sheil before the National Convention of the American Veterans Committee. Within a few days, Close had reason to wish that he had delayed his comments forever, for Bishop Sheil had demanded and obtained a similar amount of time to reply to Close's remarks. And despite Close's appeal to cancel, or delay, the rebuttal, the Bishop went on the air Sep- tember 3, 1946, with a speech of such powerful impact that Close was soon without sponsors or backers, and was finished as a top-flight commentator. For Bishop Sheil did not spare 7 Shall Always Fight 203 the ammunition as he poured the counter-attack on Mr. Close. "I am amazed that anyone enjoying the right of free speech would so completely disregard the corresponding duty of being truthful and factual," Bishop Sheil began, in reference to Close's accusation. "I realize the futility of attempting to refute, in the few minutes allotted to me, the untruthful statements, the un- just implications, the despicable insinuations and the utter in- tellectual dishonesty of Mr. Close's entire statement. Ordinarily I would not dignify such patently absurd remarks by stooping to answer them. However, as a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, I consider it my duty to reply to any aspersions of this nature, regardless of the source. "Mr. Close singled out a recent address which I delivered to the National Convention of the AVC. Apparently he did not read my speech in its entirety, for Mr. Close quoted a summa- tion which appeared in a newspaper column written by Mr. Thomas Stokes, the distinguished columnist. By removing the summation from the text, and through the use of twisted and tortuous logic, Mr. Close proceeded to condemn me as a Socialist and Communist. "To keep the record straight, I shall read the paragraph from my address to which Mr. Close referred: 'Many men raise the red scare of Communism whenever plans for social improve- ment are proposed. But America has nothing to fear from Com- munism if we have here a social order that regards man as, at the same time, the beginning and end of life in human society. People who are well-fed, well-clothed and well-housed are not 204 Bishop Shell and the CYO interested in Communism. If we make American democracy work, not only politically, but economically and socially as well, we can conquer any ideology. Cardinal Lienart has per- tinently said, "Ideologies and doctrines are destroyed not by force but by truth and a better ideal; under the condition that this ideal does not remain theoretical but is translated into realities of the entire social order." ' "I submit that any person who compares my actual statement with Mr. Close's misstatement and his subsequent vicious innuendoes will have no doubt as to which of us presents the greater danger to American ideals. "No, Mr. Close, I defy you to prove that I have at any time made any statement that could possibly be interpreted by hon- est, objective observers, as favorable to either Socialism or Com- munism. You can make such a statement, Mr. Close, only by a nauseating disregard for fact, and a revolting violation of justice. I have never hesitated to condemn, with all the power at my command, every form of totalitarian government. And, by totalitarian government, I mean Fascism and Nazism as well as Communism. I do not think you can truthfully say the same, Mr. Close." Bishop Sheil went on to state that another part of Close's address had been called "a base and contemptible lie" by the Vice-Chairman of AVC, and brought his remarks to an end with a few words which will echo forever when posterity exam- ines the mortal days of this Apostle of Youth. He had been insulted and vilified with the one epithet he would not accept — a Communist traitor to the country he / Shall Always Fight 205 loved more than life itself. This was not a time for meekness, nor for turning the other cheek. This was a time for stating an ideal that resounded with Godliness and dignity, and rolled over all disbelief and doubt like a mountainous tidal wave. "I have fought, Mr. Close," and his voice was cracking like the punches of a CYO Champion, "and I shall always fight, for the right of the weak. I have fought, and I shall always fight, for the helpless. I have fought, and I shall always fight, against evil, whether in the depressed slum area, or over a national radio network. I have fought, and I shall always fight, as an American, completely dedicated to the ideals of Liberty, Justice and Equality — the basic ideals on which our great Re- public was founded. I have fought, and I shall always fight, for a better America and a better world — a world where poverty and destitution will be only a melancholy memory — a world where laughter and innocent joy will replace suspicion and hate — a world where nations will live in harmony and prosperity — a world peopled by men clothed in the regal dignity of freedom — a world that can be truly a stepping-stone to Heaven. God will- ing, Mr. Close, I shall never stop fighting for that kind of world." This was the creed of His Excellency Bernard James Sheil. The fact that he has lived up to it is visibly established in the existence of the CYO. That remains eternal, his immortal monument as the greatest friend American Youth has ever had. Postscript i STARTED off by saying that getting Bishop Sheil down on paper was like trying to put Niagara Falls into a thimble. I still feel that way about it. I haven't told, for instance, about the collection of honors and citations that have recognized Bishop Sheil's work. There is a bronze plaque in his office which pays personal tribute to him for pioneering helicopter research for no less an important combination of forces than the Army, the Navy and Civil Aeronautics. (And as these words are being written there is a Lewis College helicopter full of Very Important Scientists doing hush-hush experimental research up in the Arctic.) Then there is the B'nai Brith Organi- zation of Chicago, giving its Award for Outstanding Humani- tarian Services for the first time to a Gentile, presenting a scroll which speaks of "His warm humanity, his defense of human rights, his zeal for justice, his constant battle against bigotry and, above all, his tender concern for the youth of every race and creed, his good sportsmanship, his furtherance of inter group harmony, his undeviating respect for human dignity and his embodiment of all that is precious in our American tradition . . ." 206 Postscript 207 Or his award from the Polish Government, one of many official recognitions from representatives of minority groups. Or the fact that President Truman sent him to Germany as his personal representative to study youth conditions there. Or that the Governor of Illinois appointed him to a Youthful Offenders Commission to investigate the state's system of juvenile cor- rection. You could make a long litany of such things — and then expand each one of them into a chapter. Nor did I find place for the latest of the Bishop's educa- tional activities. It is called the Bishop Sheil International Uni- versity. Handsomely housed on Michigan Avenue, it arose like each of the Bishop's ventures as the practical response to an immediate need. The need was for a focussed type of education by which young people who went into business in secretarial positions could bring all their general academic knowledge into full use and thus advance to executive-secretarial and then to executive positions. Fifteen units of high school credit are re- quired for admission and graduates may receive a Bachelor of Science in International Trade, a Bachelor of Science in Com- merce, or a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Service. Diplomas or certificates are offered for programs in International Trade, Bi- Lingual Secretarial, Brevitype Court Reporting, etc. In other words, it is another opportunity for people to widen their horizons and better themselves. This particular doorway of opportunity was not open to many in Chicago, so Bishop Sheil opened it. Then, too, a chapter might have been given to Bishop Sheil's position in his Church. Is it true that there is something very 208 Bishop Shell and the CYO like conflict between him and his present superior, Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago? Thomas Morgan in his Speaking of Cardinals (Putnam's Sons, New York, 1946) puts it very nicely by describing Bishop Sheil as being the Paul to the reserved and scholarly Cardinal's Peter. But we do not have to speculate about this. We have the Cardinal's own words on the occasion of his reception in 1950 of the Leo XIII Medal awarded annually by the Sheil School of Social Studies. The fol- lowing excerpts from the extempore speech of acceptance are taken from the Commonweal (March 3, 1950). They say all that need be said. "There is one man who, having the sense of Christ's presence in the Church and the wor\ of the Church, is doing so many things that even the Cardinal Archbishop has found it difficult to \eep informed on all his activities. "In Bishop Sheil I would say there exist two outstanding qualities. The first I would call fecundity. For so prolific are his activities in behalf of the underprivileged that some of us can never be quite sure what's coming next. His second out- standing quality is related to the virtue of fortitude. It is a quality of zeal, of what I would call daring. "Some of us possess prudence, others fortitude. "Some saints have different virtues than others. "The virtues of the Popes differ also. "Many things would never be accomplished without daring. God wants certain things to be done which cannot wait on the virtue of prudence. Bishop Sheil 's resources of fecundity and daring have served him well in his long and unswerving devo- Postscript 209 tion to the underprivileged. His relationship with the under- privileged has always been the sound Christian one — and that is no easy tas\. In that great Catholic novel I Promessi Sposi by Manzoni, there is a paragraph which illustrates the true Christian attitude toward the poor. Said Manzoni: 'There are many who will put on an apron and serve the poor at table, but there are jew who will sit down and eat with them! " The Cardinal then went on to pay tribute to the various specific works of Bishop Sheil showing how he had always been one with the people he tried to help. I would like to put some of the things this book hasn't said — and perhaps all of things it has said — into one picture that stands out in my mind. It is the picture of a boxer, a bishop and a kid. The boxer is Tony Zale. You know who the bishop is. The kid is Warren Simon of 6048 Princeton Avenue, Chicago. To get the background of the picture we have to go to Pat Cleary, who is physical instructor and boxing coach at the CYO. And you have to know about the CYO Physical Training Classes which are really dearer to Pat's heart than all the cham- pionships. "The kids come in," Pat tells you, "and they want to put on a pair of gloves right away and jump into a ring. We don't let them. We build them up first and train them. We tell them that if they take care of their bodies, their bodies will take care of them. We give them a little confidence and pride in their accomplishment. Then we let them put on a pair of gloves and start punching into the other fellow's glove till they know how to throw a punch. Then we let them do their first boxing 210 Bishop Shell and the CYO wearing headguards and every protection. When we're finished maybe they're not champions, maybe they're not boxers at all but they are fit and prepared to go out and get into whatever sport they like. And they've learned a lot of other things as well. Like discipline, how training helps you to do whatever you want to do, and how to get along with other people — and no kid is ever refused." Through the glow in Pat's eyes as he talks of his work with the boys, you catch once more the spirit that makes the CYO possible. Then Pat might tell you about the boy in the picture. Warren Simon, like thousands of other boys, wanted to be a CYO boxer. But it seemed a pretty futile wish. For Warren was a spastic paralytic. His muscular condition caused a serious lack of ordinary coordination which made any sport an im- possibility. He was fourteen when his father brought him down to the CYO gym. The spunky kid looked up at Pat and said, "I'd like to fight and play baseball." His father put his hand gently on the boy's hand and smiled sadly as he asked, "Do you think you could help him any?" Pat took the boy by the hand and started to help. There were weeks of just "heel, toe . . . heel, toe . . . heel, toe," and the kid could walk with some poise. Simple calisthenics, guided movements, slow pulley tugging, rowing machine exercises and gentle tumbling practices carried out faithfully, day after day, at first seemed to effect little im- provement. Then the small signs began to appear. First, the ability to pick Postscript 111 up a ball without losing his balance. Then the sleepy awaken- ing of reflexes, revealed when the boy would almost catch a ball thrown unexpectedly at him. Then the lad walking firmly and controlled across the floor. "It's funny," said Pat Cleary, "you'd never think the sight of a boy just walking across a gym full of boxers could be so grand." Never once did the boy hear the word "handicapped" at the CYO. Now he never will. That picture I was talking about was taken as publicity for a newspaper story which began : "Tony Zale, former middleweight boxing champion, was appointed today to the boxing staff of the CYO by Bishop Bernard J. SheiU' But the reporters missed the real story. For the other boxer shown swapping blows with Tony Zale was the same Warren Simon who had come down to the CYO gym just over a year before as a spastic paralytic. Now, if you take that picture, substitute any underprivileged or handicapped youth for Warren Simon, put the personality and technique of the CYO in place of Tony Zale and at the same time think of how Warren Simon got into the picture, you will have some idea of the smiling, energetic cleric in the middle, and of the things to which he gives his life. BISHOP SHEIL and THE CYO by 0t#i&&ti 2. Sfoea/ THE STORY OF THE CATHOLIC YOUTH ORGANIZATION AND THE MAN WHO IN- FLUENCED A GENERATION OF AMERICANS IT WAS Chicago. Just past midnight. A broad- shouldered young prison chaplain looked back at the grey walls of Cook County Jail and made a solemn promise. As a result of that promise, mil- lions of youngsters have been encouraged, guided and led to lives of which America can be proud. The Chaplain was Father Bernard Sheil. He had just come from his twentieth walk to the gal- lows with a young man he knew to be every bit as good as himself, except for one thing — the out- let each had been given for the normal vigors of youth. The promise he made was this: he would never forget that walk, and he would dedicate his life to wiping out the one difference that separated him from the boy who had stood beside him a few short minutes before. This book is the story of how Bernard Sheil —ex-baseball player, ex-marine chaplain and fu- ture bishop^kept that promise. It is the story of the Chicago CYO and, in an indirect but very real way, the story of the Most Reverend Bernard J. Sheil, Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago. For, the man whom all Chicago knows as Bishop Benny Sheil shines through his work. That work meant smashing the gangster idols from their thrones in the hearts of a thousand boys and putting others in their place. It meant recognizing that those boys, like all boys, wanted action, color, fame, a chance to prove themselves — and letting them have it. It meant realizing that continued on back flap continued from front flap they longed for friendship, understanding, guid- ance, leadership— and giving it to them. It meant understanding that they wanted to be free to use their hands, their hearts and their heads — and letting them do it. They wanted to fight, so he let them fight in a tournament which begins on any street of the city and winds up in one of the most colorful and highly publicized sports events the Chicago Sta- dium knows. They wanted to play, and he let them play — in almost any sport they could name, or in a band that carries off top musical honors every year. They didn't particularly want to learn. But they wanted to learn to fly. So he gave them a college whose first building was a hangar with a fully-equipped machine shop, and he went into the junk business to keep it going. His work widened. Bishop Sheil gave the homeless homes; the poor, a comprehensive social service ; the colored, the Nisei and the Puerto Rican, help and recognition when they needed it most. He gave labor its own Worker's school, and then went to the employers and asked for money to support the school. When Coughlanite intolerance infected his flock, he spoke out so hard against it that people dubbed him Rabbi Sheil and he gloried in the name. For it is a fundamental of the CYO that its activities are for every race, color and creed. It is an organi- zation for Americans, founded by an American who wants to make a better America and who has proved that he can find the young people to help him do it, right in the worst sections of Chicago. It is an inspiring story and a vivid proof of Bishop Sheil's wisdom when he says, "There are no youth problems, only problems of youth." k» ROGER L. TREAT is a nationally famous sportswriter, and the author of MAN O'WAR and WALTER JOHNSON. From firsthand acquaintance with Bishop Sheil and his work, he has written a story to stir the imagination. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 282.0924SH42T C001 BISHOP SHEIL AND THE CYO / BY ROGER L. T 0112 025276657