The Last Days of Harold Ickes

My dad and I playing in the leaves circa 1992 with one of our little trees in the background

Today, Harold Ickes resident Audrey Johnson and I were on Vocalo, talking about the demolition of the housing project that’s her home. You can listen to us here. Here’s a previous post about Audrey so you can get to know her.

We all have that box somewhere – the box of stuff that only means something to you. Old cards, pictures, notes. A ticket stub or a letter.

In my box, there’s a big chunk of wood – pine, cut by a chainsaw.

When I was a little girl, my dad used to bundle me up in the dark, early hours of cold Saturday mornings. We’d drive around the farm on a tractor, me holding a bucket with saplings on my lap, pine needles brushing my nose. One by one, we’d go around the perimeter of the property, planting each little tree.

One day, my dad would say, these little trees will be big, beautiful trees. We’ll be able to rest in their shade.

A couple years after my dad passed away, I was taking a walk through our property when I discovered some of those trees had been cut down. A few of those pines had grown in the way of a local power line, and the power company had hastily cut them down.

Ickes back in June, before demolition began

Logically, I understood they had to cut them down.

But part of me didn’t care. When you lose part of your past, all you have are the things that are left to prove it existed. I didn’t have my dad anymore. But the trees proved he had existed, that he had loved me.

I hadn’t thought about this in years, but it came to my mind as I drove down to Harold Ickes on Monday morning.

All my colleagues have written about Ickes by now. The near South Side development is being demolished. Six of the eleven buildings will be razed by December, and the few remaining will be closed next year.

In the news business, you always want to be first. I could have written about Ickes sooner, but there was one person I had to talk to, the person who had helped me really see Ickes in the first place: Audrey.

I met Audrey Johnson back in March at the National Teacher’s Academy, the school that’s right next to the housing complex. She lives in Ickes and works at the NTA, where four of her five kids go to school. She was sitting on a panel of residents who were answering questions for a third grade class doing a research project on their neighborhood.

Audrey Johnson talks to a class of NTA third graders

Audrey told the kids how beautiful it was when she moved in. How everything good about her childhood happened at Ickes. How she and her friends would go to the Henry Booth House, the social service center on site, and pay a dollar to do after school activities for a whole season – dance, sewing, cooking, writing. As she talked, tears came to her eyes and her voice cracked.

Sometimes, there’s something about a person that you just connect with. And I connected with Audrey. Audrey helped me see Ickes, in a way I’d never seen it before.

The first time I saw the Ickes buildings, I was stunned. They frightened me. A friend asked me what they were like, and I said it was sort of like seeing a homeless person who’s been on the street for years – missing teeth, hunched over. I think most outsiders view the buildings that way. There are windows gone and units boarded up. The paint is peeling from the doors, and the cold cinderblock is mean and institutional.

Audrey, September 2009

But when Audrey spoke, I got the feeling that she didn’t see the same thing that I saw.

When she looks at the buildings, she sees her whole life. Her friends, her family. Her childhood, and her own children growing up. She sees all the beautiful parts that I can’t see.

She’s not delusional. She just sees what I saw in the chunk of pine – part of her life.

Audrey’s trees – the buildings at Ickes – are being torn down, slowly and surely. They put up the fences, ripped out the windows, tore out the insides. And Monday, the wrecking ball began swinging.

Monday was when I finally found Audrey. She had been sick, or we had just missed each other several different times. I’ve been looking for her for two months, convinced I couldn’t write this story until I found her. I saw the life of Ickes through Audrey’s eyes, and I needed to see its death through her eyes too.

So, we walked along, taking a tour through Ickes and through Audrey’s life. We stopped at 2430, the building Audrey grew up in.

But it felt different this week. It wasn’t just being with people who live there. It was also hearing how Audrey described the buildings – not as terrifying towers, but as the place where she used to run up and down the stairs, play in the laundromat and call to her mom on the seventh floor when she was down in the courtyard with her friends.

The people who can’t imagine their lives anywhere else.

That’s why I like being a reporter. Your life is full of other people – their ideas, their words, their memories. You spend so many moments in your day, thinking about how other people think. It’s as close as I can come to seeing through another person’s eyes.

Thanks, Audrey, for letting me see through yours.