“Upon arrival, the Slovak immigrants, mostly
young men, brought only their strong bodies and a willingness to work.” Joseph Semancik
I have begun
organizing the papers and photos that Cindy Karlberg sent of her grandparents,
Michael and Susanna Guba, as well as their descendants. From a prayer book I’ve determined that the
matriarch’s ethnicity was Slovak. In
addition to the parish where the Gubas worshipped, St. Michael’s (Byzantine),
there were two other churches that Slovaks attended, Holy Trinity (Roman
Catholic) and Dr. Martin Luther Evangelical (Lutheran). The collection contains great photos of daughter
Ruth Ellen, Cindy’s mother (1933-2009), as well as reminiscences by other
daughters. Cindy’s son Casey is willing
to loan us numerous items pertaining to Cindy’s dad, John Ledwitch, who served
in the Coast Guard and worked for Inland Steel. Hopefully other family members will discover
the collection and add to its holdings.
In “City of the Century”
I profiled Slovak-American Anna Rigovsky Yurin, whom I met at the Slovak Club
on Eleventh and Harrison in Gary, where, as a member of the Ladies Auxiliary,
she cooked for Friday night fish fries. In
fact, her mother (Mary) made pierogis for church holidays well into her
eighties. Arriving in Gary with her
parents in 1912, Anna started kindergarten the following year at newly-built Holy
Trinity. Her father (John) helped
solicit funds door-to-door for the church’s construction. I wrote:
“[At first
Anna] spoke only Slovak and ran home when the teacher ignored her request to
use the washroom. After someone spoke to
the teacher, she returned only to be sent to the bathroom whenever she spoke. Because of the incident, she said later, ‘I
learned and learned fast, and pretty soon I was talking nothing but the
American language.’
Anna first
lived in a shack-like house at Tenth and Jefferson and grew up on the
Southside, close to undeveloped marshes and frontier-like saloons. On Saturday nights, while the men drank away
their problems, the wives stayed home.
Some immigrant women were housekeepers for a dozen boarders. Others were mail-order brides. ‘Beauty didn’t count in those days,’ Anna remembered.
‘How strong you were was what mattered.’
Some of
Anna’s friends lived in terror of their fathers, but steelworker John Rigovsky
was partial to his two daughters and never spanked them. ‘From mother it was a different story,’ Anne
recalled. ‘One, two, three! I got it when I got out of line.’
Once when
Anna’s sister played hooky, Mary told John to punish her with the razor
strap. Into the bedroom went the culprit
and the reluctant patriarch, and through the door came screams. Fearing that John was overdoing it, Mary burst
into the room to find him pounding the bed.
‘She took that strap, and both of them got it,’ Anna recalled.
Anna attended Froebel for two years, then quit school to work at Boston Clothing
Store. She married at age 17, learned to
make due on beans and potatoes during the Depression, and worked in a machine
shop during World War II. Husband Henry was a union activist and she campaigned
for Democratic candidates. When her
brother left for France during World War II John told him to shoot the
lords rather than the common soldiers.
Steve McShane
recently purchased two copies of “Slovaks of Chicagoland” by Robert M. Fasiang
and Robert Magruder. They mention that
WJOB broadcast a Sunday afternoon “American Slovak Radio Hour” for 26 years beginning in 1931, hosted first by John Babinec, Sr., and then by John, Jr. In “Peopling Indiana”
Joseph Semancik wrote that the program, sponsored by Slovak businesses,
intermixed Slovak music with news and announcements of upcoming social events. The elder Babinec helped start the
American Slovak Civic Club of Indiana Harbor and for a quarter century served
as its president.
Wally Ziemba with Notre Dame Coach Frank Leahy and Hugh Devore, Ed McKeever, and Moose Kraus
A chapter on
notable Slovaks in “Slovaks of Chicagoland” contains photos of Bishop Andrew
Grutka, Congressman Peter Visclosky (who called himself the “Slovak Kid” at
ethnic functions), and, my favorite, Rudy and Mary Kapitan. Rudy passed away eight years ago after
writing two autobiographies, “Seasons of My Childhood” and “Seasons of My
Life.” The chapter on sports mentioned
that 1939 Hammond High grad Wally Ziemba was an All-American center and
linebacker at Notre Dame. The Arcadia
Press volume used photos from the Calumet Regional Archives of ladies dressed
in kroj folk dresses at a 1956 Gary
Golden Jubilee event sponsored by the International Institute.
Times columnist Al Hamnik, an East Chicago native and graduate of
Griffith High School and Calumet College, has been on the sports beat for 47
years, going back to the season Gary Roosevelt won the IHSAA basketball
championship. Like the Post-Trib’s John Mutka, he frequently
writes about nearly forgotten local legends.
A master of similes, he is
presently covering Chicago Bears training camp at Bourbonnais and spoke of Hall
of Famer Michael Irvin, who showed up to offer tips to wide receivers, as one
who “could talk the stain off an outdoor
deck, the fur off a kitten.” Here’s
a sampler of recent Hamnik comparisons:
Kyle Fuller:
He’s got more tools than Ace Hardware
D.J. Williams:
As dependable as a leaky tent.
Devin Hester:
Brought fans to their feet quicker than a military salute.
posted by Jim Spicer
At lunch with State
Rep. Vernon Smith and student government vice president Matt Lawson, we
discussed how Governor Pence is making a mockery of the American Dream by
gutting public education and advocating the deportation of Central American political
refugees. I mentioned attending a rally
for 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern at West Side, and
when a couple people remained seated during the National Anthem, a black man
shamed them by telling them to respect the ideals it symbolizes.
George and Mary Ann
McGuan hosted a fundraiser for their son George, a Democratic candidate for the
Alaska state legislature. George, who attended IUN in the Seventies and started
Kidstuff Playstations with Dick Hagelberg, recalled, in his words, “working diligently for George McGovern, as
did I, Nixon winning in a landslide. McGuan recalled: “It wasn’t pretty, but I remember the bumper stickers thereafter
(during the Watergate investigation) that said something to the effect of ‘None
of this is OUR fault.”
On the way to the
McGuans police cars with lights flashing blocked my path as I approached 18th
Street Brewery on Miller Avenue. Taking
a side road, I noticed police with drawn firearms scouring nearby woods. I finally made it to Route 20 only to observe
a half-dozen police cars surrounding a young man with his hands in the
air. I later heard that he’d stolen a
car and, pursued by police, got stuck by a train crossing Lake Street. The whole thing was quite surreal, but in
retrospect I was less scared than irritated at the delay, compounded by two
long trains at County Line Road. At
McGuans Cheryl Hagelberg noted that six hours before police descended upon
their neighbor’s house and took three people away on handcuffs, probably on
drug charges.
Candidate George (above),
an electrician living in Juneau whose wife is pregnant, was thoughtful and
impressive. His Republican opponent, he
said, though quite nice, voted the straight party line on several important
measures and probably has her sights set on higher state office. Family members had prepared delicious sandwiches
and awesome guacamole. I washed down a
huge chocolate cookie with a Corona. I
chatted with two good people I hadn’t seen in a while, Al Renslow and Anna
Karras, plus traded barbs with Ron “Sparky” Cohen, who wondered whether Paul
Kern would be coming up for Fred Chary’s 75th birthday party (doubtful). George McGuan had taken a history class with John
Haller 40 years ago and once got dressed down for failing to read the assigned
book for that week. . No trains blocked
my way home, and I zipped down the old Dunes Highway in 20 minutes, avoiding
potential traffic snarls on 80/94 due to construction.
