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  Mrs. Trandell began her tour of the first floor: parlor to the left; sitting room to the right, leading into a dining room, which opened to the kitchen; then the mudroom with a back stairway leading to the second floor. Off the mudroom was a real luxury: indoor access to an enormous basement. Mrs. Trandell spoke in reverential tones tinged with nostalgic longing: “I’ve been so happy here,” she said, her eyes misting over. “I would never leave, but my son says it’s just too much for me to handle.”

  We climbed the front winding staircase, which ended in a small sitting area, bathed in a golden glow by the western sun. Light poured into all four second-floor bedrooms, each with at least two windows and a view. The master bedroom was huge, with a walk-in cedar closet—definitely for Mom and Dad. Across the sitting area was a bedroom that seemed ideal for Paul—plenty of room for a big desk, where he could spread out his books to study. Everyone agreed the bedroom directly across from Peggy’s room next door had to be mine. “You and Peggy could just lean on your windowsills and gab with each other!” Mom said.

  At the back was a smaller bedroom, with built-in cedar drawers under the raised bed. Billy, age twelve, looked to Mom with a wide grin and spoke quickly, the words pouring out. “This looks just like where the captain of a ship would sleep! And I can look out the window to the backyard—as if it’s the sea!”

  “It would look so nice with nautical wallpaper,” Mom chimed in. We were talking as if we already owned the place.

  Across from the home’s only bathroom and right next to “Billy’s room,” we opened the door leading to the attic. At the top of the bare wooden stairs, we reached an expansive space, the center soaring up fifteen feet. We tilted back our heads, our eyes sweeping around the hugeness of it all. Even up here, sunlight played its magic, the rays illuminating dust motes that floated and bounced about like fairy dust.

  “We could have parties and balls up here,” Dad said in a whisper, his creative mind always turning things over in the most unlikely way. We looked at one another and smiled. Our hearts were already aching.

  My parents had just spent the previous month upgrading the six-flat, but the effort that this nine-room home (plus a barn, a basement, and a yard at least six times as large as the one on Washington) required didn’t deter them. Besides, it was understood that all three of us kids would roll up our sleeves to help refurbish this faded beauty—if we bought it. After our tour, we asked Mrs. Trandell the price. It was non-negotiable at $24,600. Why? “Well,” she said, “the digits of the price and the digits of the house address (4323 North Keeler Avenue) have to add up to the number twelve.”

  “I see,” said Mom, but she and Dad shot each other a glance that showed they didn’t see. Neither did I, but I knew that was irrelevant. Despite Mrs. Trandell’s bizarre reasoning, the price was affordable, especially now that we had the six-flat as additional equity. Not one of us held a poker face. “We just love this house,” Mom effused. “We’ll get back to you as soon as we check on the loan.” Our family had stumbled onto a new life that we hadn’t even been looking for.

  But Mrs. Trandell’s odd price requirement wasn’t the only weird thing about the purchase. We were in for an emotional roller-coaster ride. Mom called Mrs. Trandell the next day. “Hello, Mrs. Trandell, this is Lillian Gartz calling about the house. We’re ready to offer you your asking price. When can we work out the details?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Trandell, wavering. “You see, another nice family wants this house, too. I think we have to sell it to them.”

  Mom’s face twisted as if she had been kicked in the stomach. “Oh, no, Mrs. Trandell, I don’t think you want to do that,” Mom said. “We’re the absolute perfect family for that house.” Mrs. Trandell listened to Mom’s arguments and agreed to sell to us.

  Later that afternoon, Mrs. Trandell’s son called. “No,” he said, “we really have to sell it to the other family. They looked at the house first.”

  Mom was pacing around the dining room when Dad called from a pay phone, en route to Fireman’s Fund inspections. “Hi, Lil. I just happen to be in the Trandell’s neighborhood. Should I drop by to talk to Mrs. Trandell?” He was unaware of Mom’s most recent conversation.

  “Oh, please, do whatever you can! Trandell’s son just called to say they’re selling to that other family. I think I’ll die if I don’t get that house.”

  Dad parked in front of 4323 North Keeler Avenue and rang the bell. I can picture the scene. Both Mrs. Trandell and her son were home and welcomed him in. Dad always leaned forward slightly when he engaged with a recent acquaintance—not quite a bow, but humble, friendly, he smiled with his eyes—sincere and warm. “May I come in? Just to chat with you both for a few minutes?”

  “Of course. Come in. Come in.” The Trandells led him into the parlor, where he sat, elbows again resting on his knees in his casual way, his hands poised between his thighs or gesturing in rhythm with his conversation. His gentle, easygoing manner put people at ease. He told them about his family and his own childhood. “We’re devoted to taking care of property. Even our kids work with us, and they’re eager to keep this home as beautiful as you’ve always loved it.”

  He shared a few of the stories and jokes he knew would put his audience at ease. Somehow, by the time Dad left, the Trandells had agreed to sell the house to the Gartz family after all. It was July 27.

  Dad went back to the pay phone. “We’ve got it!”

  “Really? Oh, really? Oh, that’s the best news! Fred, thank you. Thank you! I’ll call the bank.” Mom let out a whoop and later wrote in her diary, “This is one of the most momentous days in our lives!”

  In the lawyer’s office on the day of the closing, Mom’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Both my parents and the Trandells had arrived early, but the lawyer was late. Fearing the old woman might change her mind about selling, Mom chattered at her nonstop, her saliva going down in hard nuggets.

  The lawyer finally showed up, discussed a few details, and handed a pen to Mrs. Trandell, saying, “Okay. It looks like we’re ready to complete this sale.” Mrs. Trandell looked at her son, her eyes moist, the pen poised over the contract.

  Mom tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. “Could we just sign now, please?”

  Everyone signed. Mom and Dad were all smiles, floating on the lightness of relief. The closing marked the high point of their summer. Less than two weeks later, we found ourselves in the midst of a maelstrom.

  CHAPTER 28: Up in Flames

  Chicago Daily News, August 14, 1965 p4.

  On Wednesday night, August 11, 1965, police in the Watts area of Los Angeles stopped a young black man, Marquette Frye, on suspicion of driving under the influence. Just as in Chicago, blacks had poured into Los Angeles from the South during the years of the Second Great Migration.39 And as in West Garfield Park, and dozens of other large cities, blacks were segregated. Government redlining policy meant mortgages became unavailable when blacks moved into an area, so whites had deserted Watts in a mass exodus once African Americans moved into their neighborhood.

  Often harassed and intimidated by the virtually all-white Los Angeles police force, excluded from jobs, housing, and politics, blacks in Watts were a community powder keg, ready to explode. Frye’s arrest lit the spark. After Frye’s mother and brother got into a physical confrontation with the officers, the local crowd of onlookers burgeoned into a mob, hurling rocks and chunks of concrete at the police. Violence escalated as up to thirty-five thousand rioters looted, set fires, and attacked police and white motorists. By Friday, August 13, rioting was so intense that as many as thirteen thousand national guards-men were called in to maintain order.

  The evening after Watts convulsed in riots, on August 12, a fire truck pulled out of its station at Wilcox and Pulaski, just south and east of our buildings and near the neighborhood’s main business district. That simple routine turned into tragedy.

  Neighborhood blacks perceived the Wilcox all-white fire depa
rtment as racist. One African American woman who went to Providence St. Mel School, just south of Garfield Park, recalled why: “City services were such that you didn’t want to call the police or fire department; they would treat you with disrespect.”40

  Despite numerous petitions by West Garfield Park African Americans to the city to hire more blacks to serve in the Wilcox firehouse, the requests were ignored. Just like Watts, WGP was a tinderbox of resentment. A fire alarm that Thursday night of August 12 struck the match.

  A hook-and-ladder truck was dispatched to respond to the alarm, but the tillerman, whose job it was to control the ladder, never took his place at the back. He was supposed to press an “all-clear buzzer,” telling the driver that he was in position and that it was safe to pull out of the fire station. The driver mistook another sound for the buzzer and raced out of the firehouse without the tillerman in place. On a sharp turn, the uncontrolled ladder swung free, ramming a stop sign, which struck and killed twenty-three-year-old Dessie Mae Williams, a young African American woman.

  The day of the fire-truck incident, I was spending a couple nights with a friend in a northwest suburb, focused only on teenaged fun. The next morning, unaware of Williams’s death, Mom and Dad decided to take a needed break from their nonstop work on the six-flat and the tense negotiations to buy the house on North Keeler. They, along with Billy, took one day off to relax at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, an hour and a half north.

  The glow of owning their first single-family home was still fresh in their minds. In between brief swims, they discussed plans for remodeling, indulging in their dreams on that bright Friday afternoon of August 13. Swimming in Lake Geneva’s cool, calm waters under a cloud-puffed August sky, Mom and Dad had no idea of the fury fomenting after Williams’s death, just blocks from their apartment buildings.

  Rumors had flashed through the neighborhood that the fireman whose ladder had hit and killed the young mother on Thursday night had been drunk. On Friday, angry leaflets circulated, fueling the rage. One screamed for attention in huge, bold type:

  DRUNKEN WHITE FIREMAN KILLS BLACK WOMAN.

  ACT CALLS MASS RALLY TONITE FRIDAY, AUG. 13, 7 PM, ON CORNER [OF] WILCOX & PULASKI

  (In tiny print in the upper-left corner is the word “allegedley.” [sic])41

  TheChicago Daily News reported that Lawrence Landry, chairman of an activist civil-rights group, ACT, addressed a large group of African Americans in front of the Wilcox firehouse. Landry exhorted his listeners to take action against the injustices blacks had suffered, saying, “Black people must control their own destiny,” and, “You’re being misused because you’re in a white-controlled society.” The crowd swelled. Clusters of angry youths took to the streets.42

  My parents and Billy left Lake Geneva as the western sky blushed mauve and purple. Seldom having time to simply talk to one another, they didn’t bother to turn on the radio. And they had so much to discuss: the new house, the six-flat repairs, and catching up on Billy’s life and interests.

  As the conversation shifted, the ongoing riots in Watts came up. Mom later told me they had wondered aloud whether such violence could happen in our neighborhood. Just the previous year, Harlem and Rochester, New York and Philadelphia had erupted in devastating race riots. Why not Chicago, too? An hour later, they were traveling south on Pulaski in the summer dark, clueless about the anti-white rage that was already boiling over just blocks from our home.

  As the crowds swelled, the police cordoned off Pulaski Road at Washington Boulevard, our street. After twenty-four hours of furor and decades of frustration, black West Siders vented their outrage in volleys of missiles. From housetops, curbs, and doorways, in all sections of the community, youths pelted police with bricks, stones, and bottles. The crowds surged into the business district, just a few blocks away.

  Two Chicago Daily News reporters, one black, one white, entered the fray. The black reporter, Burleigh Hines, donned old clothes and mixed with Chicago’s West Side rioters. He wrote about what he saw as my parents and Billy, oblivious to the melee, made their way toward home:

  Young punks swarmed in the area, yelling and cursing. Some of them seemed almost hysterical with hatred. The hatred was directed at white men—all white men… . “KILL THE white ________” the punks screamed whenever a white person made the mistake of showing his face in the area.43

  (Whatever epithet the reporter left blank in his story, it apparently was too raunchy even to allude to in a family newspaper in 1965.)

  The paper’s white reporter wrote, “I’ll have to rate it as the most dangerous newspaper experience in fifteen years of covering stories in this, my hometown… . A young Negro boy stuck his head in the window of my parked car at Wilcox and Pulaski and shouted, “You get out of here, white man, and don’t come back … don’t ever come back.”44

  Scores of drivers and passengers were struck by bricks that crashed through the windows of their moving cars. In one of these cars rode the Reverend David Nelson and his sister, Mary Nelson, both white, who were just arriving on the West Side. The children of a Lutheran pastor, both were devoted to helping the downtrodden. David was coming to West Garfield Park to be the new minister of our virtually empty Bethel Church. Mary came along to help him settle in and work on community development. Their welcome to the community they had come to serve was a brick through the window of their Volkswagen Beetle.

  It was after nine thirty when Mom, Dad, and Billy approached the intersection of West End, a block north of Washington, where police cars blocked Pulaski. An officer directed Dad to turn west. Turning slowly, Dad peered south. Dozens of flashing blue lights scattered the darkness. In the distance rose tongues of flame and billows of smoke.

  He drove down our alley, backed the station wagon into the garage, then started east on foot, calling over his shoulder, “I’m going to find out what’s happening.”

  “Fred, please. Don’t go. This is not your business. With all those cop cars, it must be dangerous,” Mom pleaded.

  “I’m going!” he shouted, and walked toward the whirling lights.

  When Paul heard the back door open, he dashed from his bedroom into the kitchen. He looked to Mom and Billy. “Where’s Dad?” he demanded.

  “A slew of police cars were blocking Pulaski,” Mom said, gesturing east. “I begged him not to go, but, as usual, he wouldn’t listen!”

  “What? The radio said there’s a race riot going on. I’ve got to find him before he gets killed!”

  Mom grasped Paul’s arm. Her voice cracked. “Paul, don’t go. Please. He’ll come back. If you go, then you’ll both be out there. I don’t want to lose my husband and my son!”

  Paul pulled free of her grip and ran to the front. The door slammed. He leaped down the steps and strode east, half running, half walking. He knew Dad would have gone straight to the action. Dad’s years in the business of fire protection and underwriting had made him a junkie for conflagrations and firefighting tactics. Paul ran south to Madison Street, then turned toward Pulaski on deserted sidewalks. The eastern sky glowed a lurid, smoky red. Slowing his pace as he approached Pulaski, he couldn’t absorb what was happening on the streets where he had grown up, shopped, and played with friends. All hell is breaking loose, he thought. Fear clutched his throat tighter with each crash and whoosh in the distance. As he approached Madison and Pulaski, a scrum of young black men rounded the corner ahead and blocked his path.

  “Hey, white boy?” one guy said to him. “You don’t wanna go down there.” He gestured at the red sky. “Don’t you know they killin’ your kind?” In moments, Paul was surrounded by at least seven black men, with many more behind them.

  “I’m looking for my father,” Paul said, keeping his eyes on the guy who had spoken to him. The young man had bright eyes. Smart guy, Paul thought as he appraised his situation, even as he felt the sweat gathering under his armpits, his heart moving to his throat. The man confronting him stood about five foot nine, had a moderate build, and appeared to speak for
the group. Next to him stood a guy, drunk or high on drugs, wide and muscular. He locked his bleary, empty eyes on my brother and didn’t move or say a word. Paul thought, This guy could kill me in a second—like squashing a fly. I can’t let them think I’m afraid.

  The leader did all the talking, expounding of the injustices the black man had suffered at the hands of white people. He told Paul that blacks were better than whites. “You can only make white babies. We can make any color we want.”

  Paul listened and nodded, saying little except an occasional, “You have a point.”

  After about fifteen minutes, Paul said, “Well, I understand your position, but now I really need to go.” He backed away. The men behind him parted to let him through. He walked back west, toward our home, dazed and not certain what had just happened or if he might still be in danger. Not daring to look back, he hunched his shoulders and kept a purposeful pace. He was followed only by the crackle of flames and the roar of water gushing from fire hoses, until the din faded to a dull muffle.

  By the time he arrived at our flat, Dad was back, too.

  “Dad!” exclaimed Paul. “What happened?”

  “The cops wouldn’t let me go any farther after I got to Washington and Pulaski, but it sure looks like a riot,” he said.

  “Paul! Thank God you’re back safe,” Mom cried, throwing her palm to her forehead, her dramatic gesture when relieved. She paced the room. “Just don’t anyone go out again!” she commanded.

  Only I wasn’t home. She picked up the phone. “I’ve got to call Linda and tell her what’s happening, tell her to call us before she comes back home tomorrow.”