Chicago – As I wrote this, people are gathering in Chicago to bury the daughter of an Ohio coal mine, which came to the city in the early 1950s.
He is celebrating a social worker and community worker, who has affected thousands of people in this city in the last eight decades. Sunshine InformedHis “backbone and willpower made a positive change in Chicago for decades.”
Angela Piaza Turley was a force – when it came to fight for others – both were considered with unique force and immovable object.
She was also my mother.
Writer George Bernard Shaw once said that inappropriate people expect the world to conform to them. He then said that this is the reason that all history is created by unfair people.
My mother was one of those brilliant inappropriate people. As a child of five, I held my mother’s skirt in my early years for a dear life as she faced slums in the Uptown area of Chicago, the landlords, derogatory husbands and gang Bengers. Again, again, I “what do we do now?”
He was already finding out what to do. Growing in a coal mining city in Ohio, my mother knew poverty and prejudice. She never forgets. It created a solid core within it, hard and harder than anthracite coal.
Some nights, she slept on seeing the cross burning on a nearby hill, a message from the local Ku Clox Clan that she and other Italians were not welcomed in the valley.
He learned that you had to fight for a better life. Her father, Dominic, was one of the early organizers of the United Mine Workers until he signed a black lung contract.
In Yorkville High School, she was called the “champion” for its feudal, indomitable energy. She was the beauty of a certain tombs entering the skin of the olive and Hazel’s eyes.
Courtesy of Jonathan Turley
After World War II, he attracted the attention of a young experienced, Jack Turley. This string-bean Irish Street Kid was scrapping as a photographer, in fact my grandparents did not have a suit for a suit. He faced an inaccessible wall of isolation polished by Josephina, a size -shaped Sicili grandmother.
The two slowly came with the way my grandmother could not refuse: crosswords in their grocery store’s bay window. it worked.
She believed in her, and, when she said that she wanted to become an architect, she decided that she must definitely study under the most famous architect of the time: Meez Van Der Rohe, who developed modern steel and glass structures that changed cities.
It was a task of sheer hubis, if not madness. The two arrived in Chicago with $ 1.37 in their pocket late in an icy night. They stopped in a shop and ordered only one thing that they could tolerate: a cup of coffee. Before leaving that night, my mother worked as a waitress.
He would become one of the closest colleagues of Mies and, after his death, a partner in Skidmore Owings and Merrill, who helped designing Chicago and some of the world’s most famous buildings around the world.
My parents’ ability to help others with success. He established organizations that would have a significant impact on the city, which includes one of the first internal community credit unions to provide loans to local businesses and families.
She fought the chairman of the Jane Adams Plow House and a better accommodation for the city’s poor, education and safety, the founder of an array of organizations. He helped create one of the first shelters for women and a group of misbehavior to maintain support for our public schools. She ran to the city council in the 46th ward, and the Chicago Tribune described her as a “scraper” from Uptown, seeking to convert the poorest areas into decent places to live.
He was all – fearless; The incarnation of pure willpower. I remember she was going with her to slums because she faced violent landlords and pimps. On one occasion, he and other mothers literally followed Pimps and gang Bengers from a playground and a low -income building.
I can still see the face of a broker because this hard Sicily mother has been pushed on the road, with two young children as a mixture of amazement and entertainment. I saw him with him “What do we do?” Look, but she was not. He had the crazy Sicilian look that said, “I am ready to go all the way, are you?”
I was sure we were dead. But he never returned.
My parents’ success also gave my mother a chance to do something that she saw as a little girl during depression: a beautiful house full of family. He bought one of the oldest houses in Uptown near the lake, with a room for each of his five children.
When she went through that house for the first time, she stayed in the backyard and smiled as she came face to face with a huge Ohio Bake. It was love at first sight.
She later filled the house with a stable stream of people who were struggling in the US in search of opportunities or were foreign students that the house was his own projection in the world: a love and protected place, big and open to others. For him, the house echoed with a little girl’s dreams in depression; This means security, family and continuity.
After my father’s death, my mother had only one request – she wanted to die in that house, not some hospitals or Dharamshala.
He and the house slowly deteriorated together; Gradually and inexplicably. My brother -in -law and I struggled to work for old furnaces and pipes to maintain my promise.
She used to pass in her room in her room a few days before her 98th birthday in her room. His death was hardly unexpected. This is a moment that comes to all of us, but is ready to say goodbye when some time comes.
When his health suddenly turned worse, I reached the airport to stay with him, closing the airport due to only a fierce storm. For the first time, she was out of reach. She died while waiting at the gate.
My last moment came with him a week ago.
I sat at the end of her bed late at night, staring at her and trying to catch her together. I had to catch a flight to Washington in a few hours. I could not say one thing; I just saw him with him “What do we do now?” Look
I think she knew somehow. She suddenly sat down and looked at me directly with those beautiful hazel eyes and smiled. He then threw me a kiss. She then returned to sleep. It was as if she was saying, “You are going to recover. You can take it from here.” And this was the last thing that my mother ever told me.
She was always there. In the most difficult situations ranging from slums to roads, I knew that I had to hold only more tightly; Hold it. We will get out of there… together.
She was always my guiding light, my North star. Now she is left. When your North Star Supernova, what do you do, in the very center of your life, except just a black hole that seems to suck in great light around you?
“What do we do now?” He did not need to say. Now we know. You harass people you love and you stand on your ground.
Angela surpassed five children, 13 grandchildren and six Parpotta. He left a legacy of thousands of people, when he needed him the most, he made it better for him. This week, we will gather to bid farewell to Angela Turley, but not for her legacy. She will stay with the city and grow that she loved.
Jonathan Turley George is the Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at the University of Washington and the best selling book “Author of the book”Unavoidable Rights: Free speech at the age of anger“Who is dedicated to his mother.
