Let's put a museum at the new Cook County Medical Examiner's Office
Many visitors to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office are dead. I almost said "most visitors," but honestly, haven't done the math — there could be more forensic technicians, cops doing paperwork, janitors mopping up and medical student observers than there are actual corpses.
But I imagine it's a footrace, metaphorically, between those fortunate enough to walk out at the end of the day and the 2,600 or a year who can only leave on a gurney.
So as someone who went to the place several times over the years and emerged alive, I should say that while I have no particular affection for the building at 2121 W. Harrison St. — another example of 1970s concrete brutalism that can't be dynamited quickly enough — now that it seems slated to move to the hoppin' Fulton Market district, as reported in the Sun-Times Wednesday, the institution should be given its due.
There's time, yes. But I have an idea for the new facility, and I'd like to toss it out early, while it could do some good.
The idea came from the original Cook County medical examiner, Dr. Robert J. Stein. Prior to Dr. Stein, we had coroners, a political position, and a notorious one.
"Coroners were political wildmen," Mike Royko wrote in 1976 after the office was voted out of existence, noting their devotion to showboating and stripping bodies of valuables. "They loved to get all the publicity they could. So their main job was to rush to the scene of big murders and pose for pictures, pointing a finger or cigar at the body."
That self-promotion rubbed off on Dr. Stein, to be honest. He relished the attention of the press — that's how in 1991 the Sun-Times was invited into his office, with its statue of dancing skeletons and mass murderer John Wayne Gacy’s oil paintings of clowns.
I asked him about what struck many as his unseemly enthusiasm for his job.
"I'm a doctor," he replied. "Like all doctors, I'm trying to find out what's wrong with people. They just happen to be dead."
A benefit, he said, because he didn't have to worry about hurting his patients. They weren't going to get deader.
That made sense to me.
Not only was Dr. Stein enthusiastic, but he wanted to share his passion with the public. In January, 1984, in he announced his intention to create a museum in the basement of the medical examiner's office.
The Sun-Times, I'm sorry to say, dubbed it an "insane scheme" and "the most revolting idea by a public official for all of 1984. Maybe 1985 and 1986, too."
That was 40 years ago. I like to think we've matured as a society since. Anyone who took in the exhibit “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery” at the Field Museum last year knows the subject is a font of fascination. I'm not saying the new medical examiner's office should open a mini-Field. But a permanent exhibit about what goes on inside. Maybe a display of Stryker saws and body lifts and buckets and such. Plus something about famous cases — American Flight 191, the 1995 heat wave. Plus addressing the most common ways people end up here — gunshots, drugs, heart attacks, car accidents — could be highly educational.
Illinois schoolchildren are compelled by law to traipse through the Illinois Holocaust Museum. Imagine the positive effects of a field trip to the new Cook County Medical Examiner's office. My guess is it would be the starting off point for countless careers in medicine, plus an even greater number of youths who might think, perhaps for the first time: "You know ... this getting shot business is really horrible. I think I'm going to try to avoid it."
Death is an inevitable part of life — we all die — and thinking on that fact, memento mori, can have a positive effect. All life is an education, or should be. But the stuff you learn at the morgue tends to stay with you. Watching a successor to Dr. Stein, Dr. Nancy Jones, work, I couldn't help but notice that, rather than a scalpel, she used a 10-inch Henckels kitchen knife to perform autopsies. Of course I asked her about that. Far cheaper, she explained, and it holds its edge better.
Sure, it was squeamish, to watch that kitchen utensil being wielded over a body. But memorable too. The residents of Cook County are paying for the facility. We might as well get something out of it while we're still on the breezy side of the grass.
