Haunting memories from a tour of Cook County's old 'morgue' more than half a century ago
Sneed on Sunday ...
The body count.
A ghost from my past popped up this week.
The specter arose when the Sun-Times reported the Cook County medical examiner’s office was hoping to move from its decades-old Harrison Street haunts to two buildings in the Fulton Market District.
Back in 1967, the predecessor of the medical examiner’s office was the old Cook County Coroner’s office, aka the morgue, and it was at 1828 W. Polk St.
In those days, one of the duties of a newly hired reporter at the legendary Chicago City News Bureau was to check out the morgue in search of possible stories.
I was so new.
It was still an era of pencils, notepads, typewriters, pneumatic tubes to transport news copy, and coin purses loaded with dimes and quarters to phone in scoops from whatever phone booth you could find.
And, back then, the old coroner’s office was still rife with patronage — and as crooked as the trigger fingers that sent many of those corpses to the morgue. It had been that way pretty much since the office’s inception in 1858 and wouldn’t change until reform finally stuck in the 1970s.
Back in 1967, it was a cold afternoon the first time I visited the morgue, on the orders of an elderly and rumpled, but highly respected, City News Bureau editor named A.A. “Dornie” Dornfeld, who called his women reporters “chickie” and “girlie.”
Tales from the crypts
My visit had been arranged as an introduction. An attendant greeted me at the door. I wore a dress and probably carried a purse. The attendant gave me an official office rundown and then asked if I wanted to see the layout of the “place.”
It was getting late. There was no story. I hesitated … but what the heck.
As a Roman Catholic, I had seen the dead in open coffins at wakes and during pre-burial funeral services. But this “visit” was totally different.
It was a tour of what they called “bays,” crypts housing the lost, the mangled, the murdered. The contorted forgotten ones laid out on slabs, some forever unidentified. The lights were flicked on and off to allow me to view the grim and dark cubicles.
They were granted no privacy, even in death.
Too stunned to act surprised, I wondered later that night if this had been a test to shock me, a joke by a morgue ghoul or just a way to gauge the mettle of one of the young woman reporters now occupying the desks of young newsmen who had been drafted to march off to war in Vietnam.
I never asked.
But I have often wondered.
And thereafter, I would jettison the dress.
Trump getting Trumped …
The Slovenian connection: Donald Trump may be blasting President Joe Biden for what he considers mishandling “the high-stakes negotiations” in the largest multi-country diplomatic exchange of American prisoners in Russia since the Cold War. But it was former first lady Melania Trump’s birth country of Slovenia that provided Biden the final piece to the puzzle to secure the release of the American hostages in Russia.
“It all came together one hour before their release when the Slovenian prime minister released the Russian [prisoner] held in their custody,” Biden said.
Melania Trump was born in Slovenia in 1970, when it was part of Yugoslavia.
Her father, Viktor Knavs, now 80, had been a chauffeur and car salesman and was a member of the Communist Party. As many Slovenians did at the time, Viktor and Amalija Knavs had their children baptized as Catholics.
When their son-in-law was president, the Knavs became U.S. citizens in 2018 through a family-based pathway that President Trump had denounced as "chain migration” when used by others, saying “often it doesn't work out very well."
Amalija Knavs died in January at the age of 78.
Anyway, it’s a proud day to be an American … and for the members of former Russian hostage/Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s dinner group, which has continued to hold dinners in absentia for him.
Imagine the upcoming homecoming feast.
No Russian vodka, puleeze.
A silent star …
It’s no secret the Democratic National Convention in Chicago will pitch itself as a major showcase for American democracy.
So just asking:
Will the newly retooled DNC showcase of stars supporting the presidential candidacy of veep Kamala Harris include an invite to former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who bravely testified at the U.S. House Select Committee hearing on Trump’s mendacious conduct during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol?
J.B. for VP?
Hmmm. It’s looking more and more possible that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker could be steps away from becoming Dem presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ veep choice.
To wit: Not only is Midwestern Gov. Pritzker, scion of the Hyatt Hotel fortune, being vetted seriously as one of the contenders who would not have to give up a Senate seat if chosen, but his wife, M.K. Pritzker, is already a terrific first lady from the very Republican state of South Dakota.
Sneedlings …
Bench press: Two legal eagles were in transition on Thursday. Federal Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer stepped down as chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, handing her role over to U.S. District Judge Virginia Kelly.
Saturday birthdays: Martha Stewart, 83; Martin Sheen, 84; Tom Brady, 47; model Karlie Kloss, 32. … Sunday birthdays: former President Barack Obama, 63; Billy Bob Thornton, 69; Meghan “The Duchess of Sussex” Markle, 43; actor/director Greta “Barbie” Gerwig, 41.