Local Voices: New pope revives Dolton pride for The Lansing Journal freelancer – The

Submitted by Carrie Steinweg, freelance reporter for The Lansing Journal

One thing I noticed immediately upon moving to Lansing in 1991 was that the majority of people I met have lived here a long time.

Most people I knew were either born nearby at St. Margaret’s or Ingalls hospitals (or at home) and grew up in Lansing. Or they’d moved to the town in childhood and stayed as adults.

Many of the people I met who came to Lansing as adults had moved from neighborhoods in the south part of the city of Chicago, places such as Roseland, Mount Greenwood, South Chicago or the East Side. Occasionally, I’d meet someone who, like me, was from another Chicago suburb. Lansing was a community where so many people stayed or returned to when they married and raised families.

The same cannot be said of the village I grew up in — Dolton, Illinois. I can’t name a single friend or neighbor that I knew in childhood who still resides there. It’s just a few miles away, but after my parents moved from Dolton around 2004 and my mother-in-law moved in 2014, there hasn’t been reason to go back.

The only thing that has drawn me back to Dolton in recent years was to attend an event called the Shrimp Boil, an annual fundraiser for the Izaak Walton League that serves as a reunion for those who went to school in Dolton in the last half of the 20th century.

In the last several years, there hasn’t been a lot of good news to come out of the village of Dolton. The village has had more than its share of of political controversies, talk of misconduct, and allegations of corruption.

Still, Dolton holds so many special memories for me as a member of Generation X from an era when you walked to school, drank from the garden hose, and rode your bike from one end of town to the other. You left early in the morning and came home when the streetlights came on, with no cell phones to track you down or photograph your every move.

In May, something occurred that brought Dolton back into the spotlight, but this time it wasn’t related to politics or governmental misspending. It was an announcement that the Catholic Church had named a new leader, a U.S.-born cardinal named Robert Francis Prevost.

I happened to be in an American Legion post in Valparaiso, Indiana, picking up lunch when the announcement was made, and everyone was glued to the televisions. I hadn’t really been following news of the announcement and wasn’t prepared for the way the place erupted in cheers. The banner on the television screen noted that he was the first U.S. pope. Someone in the room commented that he was from Chicago.

The next morning while walking with a friend I’ve known since kindergarten, she told me Pope Leo XIV was from our old neighborhood in Dolton. When I got home I looked up the address. It turns out I grew up two blocks away from the pope’s childhood home — almost to the exact house number. My address was 213 E. 143rd Street. Pope Leo’s was 212 E. 141st Place.

The neighborhood was called Ivanhoe Manor and it was filled with two-story, brick Cape Cod homes. From the outside, the pope’s home looks like a duplicate of the home I lived in from tolddlerhood until age 18.

When I learned of the address my mind wandered back. I was born 17 years later than Pope Leo, an age gap that meant we wouldn’t have crossed paths as we each grew up. However, his parents resided at the home into the 1990s, so during my childhood, I’m sure I visited there to trick-or-treat.

I would have knocked on the door to sell Girl Scout Cookies.

I delivered the Hammond Times newspaper after school during junior high, so if they were subscribers, I would have been their paper girl.

We walked the same streets, shopped in the same stores, knew some of the same families.

I’ve attended weddings and been to services at his family’s home parish, St. Mary, which was as far south in Chicago as you can get (the opposite side of the street was Dolton).

After the new pope was named, I decided to make a trip back to the old neighborhood. I drove by my old schools, parks, hangouts, my childhood home, the homes of friends, and other significant places I remember.

The former Kmart store where I put things on layaway and learned to drive in the empty parking lot after hours.

The building that was once a Kentucky Fried Chicken where I worked my first real job. The hot dog joint we frequented after the high school bus dropped us off in front of the restaurant.

The old Dolton Theatre where I saw many movies on weekends. The old Value Village store where we shopped for school supplies and clothing.

The family restaurant we went after dances and where my husband worked as a teen. The empty lot of Nick’s Sports Page where local athletes would make appearances. (As children, my sisters and I met baseball hall-of-famer and former Chicago Cub Ryne Sandberg there early in his career.)

I reminisced about summer days at the Dolton pool, breakfast at the pancake house, the time spent wandering around the library, riding our bikes to “the valley,” and the festive Independence Day carnival and parade that the governor marched in.

I wondered how many of the places and experiences I remember as a kid growing up in Dolton are also part of Pope Leo’s memories.

It feels good to proudly tell people that I’m from Dolton. Now people don’t shake their head and mention corruption or tell me how the town has gone downhill. Now people know it as the home of the pope.

I’m happy for my childhood hometown, that the pope’s election has sparked a lot of good conversation about the village, even as some is the talk of days long ago.
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