The 10th Ward, that vast area of southeast Chicago that sits against Indiana and where the shadow of former Ald. Ed Vrdolyak still looms large, is a mystery to most of the rest of the city.
“I sometimes get mail addressed to Hegewisch, Illinois,” says the ward’s alderman, John Pope, who was raised in and continues to live in Hegewisch, which is not a town but one of the seven neighborhoods that make up the ward (to see a map and a photo of the alderman go to www.cityofchicago.org and click on the “Your Ward and Alderman” link). “This area really is the best-kept secret in the city.
“There are four lakes here [Michigan, Calumet, Wolf and Powder Horn]. We have the only state park in the city, the only place where you can legally hunt. The only trailer park in the city is here. The only sawmill.”
Pope comes off very much as a pleasant neighborhood guy, with his easy manner and local accent. It’s not hard to see him working construction or occupying a stool at the corner tavern.
“My father was an ironworker, my grandfather too. One of my brothers has been in the Navy for 17 years. Another is a boilermaker. My dad was from the era when you could just walk across the street and get a job in the mills,” says Pope. “But he saw what was happening and he impressed on me the need for education.”
What was happening was that the steel mills, which for decades had provided high-paying jobs for thousands in the area and given it a strong economic base, began to close.
The youngest of six kids–“four minutes younger than my twin brother”–Pope went to Mount Carmel High School, where he played linebacker and captained the football team. He attended all-male Wabash College in Indiana–“I was like, ‘Where are all the girls?’ It wasn’t exactly ‘Animal House’ “–graduating with a degree in economics. He eventually landed a job in the city’s budget department and later joined Mayor Richard M. Daley’s staff, “working to implement plans for neighborhoods across the city.”
When Ald. John Buchanan decided not to run for reelection in the 10th, Pope considered seeking the job and went to the mayor for advice. “He told me that I really had to want this, that I had to feel it in my gut. And that I had to talk to my family, because our lives would never be the same,” says Pope.
That race was nasty, with 10 opponents and with Buchanan charging that “the mayor absolutely wants a puppet, and Pope will be his puppet.”
“What was interesting was how personal it got . . . the hatred I met with,” Pope says.
He won in 1999 and in 2003 ran unopposed. “I will run again next year,” he says. “I want to be alderman as long as God’s willing. And actually, I think I’m running for the job every day. I don’t take this for granted.”
The 38-year-old has been married since 1995 to the former Debbie Kalinowski, his high-school sweetheart, who works as an occupational therapist. They have two children, 6-year-old Maddie and Jim, who is 4.
When Pope was a kid, he often rode his bike to the East Side Plaza Mall at 118th Street and Avenue O. “It was new and the greatest thing, with a Dominick’s, a Service Merchandise, all these other stores,” he says. “Then it went down. The stores moved out. Now we’ve got Pete’s [Fresh Market, in Osgood’s photo] in there as an anchor and it’s bouncing back.”
There are great challenges and opportunities ahead in the ward. Sitting along its Lake Michigan shoreline are more than 500 empty acres, the former site of U.S. Steel, awaiting plans and development. And what happens there is likely to be one of the most interesting, controversial, and not at all secret, city stories of the coming years.
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rkogan@tribune.com
