Today in Chicago History: Impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich removed from office
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Jan. 29, according to the Tribune's archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
High temperature: 63 degrees (2013)
Low temperature: Minus 16 degrees (1966)
Precipitation: 1.33 inches (2013)
Snowfall: 5.3 inches (1909)
1856: William Rand cofounded what would become Rand McNally's first print shop with the Chicago Tribune on Chicago's Lake Street. Twelve years later, the company bought the Tribune's share and began printing railroad tickets and timetables.
1981: Jerry Reinsdorf was approved to buy the Chicago White Sox from Bill Veeck.
It only took American League owners 25 minutes to unanimously approve the sale to a syndicate headed by the Skokie real estate developer and New York television executive Eddie Einhorn.
2009: The Illinois Senate voted 59-0 to remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who walked out of the silent chamber after delivering an impassioned plea for mercy, saying he 'never, ever intended to violate the law.'
Within hours they applauded his former running mate and lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn, who was sworn in as the state's 41st governor.
2019: 'Empire' actor Jussie Smollett reported he was a victim of an allegedly racist and homophobic attack. He was later charged with making it up and convicted in December 2021 on five out of six felony counts of disorderly conduct for lying to police. He was sentenced to 150 days in Cook County Jail.
In a stunning move, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the convictions in November 2024, finding that a special prosecutor's decision to retry him for allegedly staging a hate crime against himself violated his rights after the Cook County state's attorney's office previously dropped all charges.
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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Landmarks: Pioneer Motel's iconic windmill comes down along I-80 in Lansing
Felix Smith had driven down Torrence Avenue for years going back to the 1970s, at first for the $15 extra large pizza at Popolano's. 'There would be so much pizza, you're not going to eat it all,' he said. On one of his trips to Lansing about nine years ago, he spotted a house for sale along 176th Street and jumped at the opportunity to move from Chicago's Roseland neighborhood to an area he long considered 'quiet and peaceful.' He was untroubled by the looming Pioneer Motel across the street from his front yard. In fact, it was a good thing. 'I tell people I live right by the windmill,' Smith said. 'You can always see it.' That's no longer the case, as the notable roadside structure came down earlier this month when the rest of the Pioneer Motel was torn down. Village officials in Lansing purchased the property last year and soon after initiated the demolition, according to Village Manager Dan Podgorski. The motel had long been a south suburban sore spot, a no-tell motel with stays available in four-hour increments that often ended badly. 'That place was notorious,' said Marlene Cook, a longtime Lansing resident who writes regularly about the village's history for the local Lansing Journal newspaper. 'It was a crime-loaded place. It was a flophouse. Police were there all the time.' Among those responders was Jerry Zeldenrust, a longtime police officer who's now a village trustee. 'In my early days on patrol, in the late '70s and early '80s, it was well known that any call from over there was most likely going to be a nefarious situation, where someone got ripped off, or a guy wakes up with no clothes, no wallet and no keys. To say nothing all the drug traffic and all that other stuff,' Zeldenrust said. 'I'm 67, and basically everyone who grew up in this town, like I did, only knew the Pioneer to be a seedy place that you don't go to.' It wasn't always that way. In 1950, officials cut the ribbon on the first section of 'the first modern expressway in Chicagoland,' on the Torrence Avenue overpass over the freshly laid concrete roadway then known as the Calumet Parkway, a section of the planned Tri-State Expressway, according to a 1950 Chicago Tribune article. 'These expressways differ from all other wide pavements in Chicagoland in that there is no cross traffic, … opposing streams of traffic are physically separated from each other, and … of course, there are no pedestrians and no parking,' the Tribune writer marveled. This modern mode of transportation would usher in a golden age of motoring, and John Oosterhuis, an immigrant from the Netherlands, planned to take advantage by building the Dutch Mill Motel in 1951 adjacent to the new highway. To help draw motorists off the wide roadway, now called the Kingery Expressway, he erected a large windmill on the inn's front lawn. It worked, so Oosterhuis had an even larger windmill built above the motel's new office building, complete with motorized fan blades that would spin like those of a real Dutch windmill on a breezy day. 'There was a playground for kids, and it was a family destination as well as a place for weary travelers,' Zeldenrust said. 'People would go down I-80 and say, 'hey, there's a giant windmill!' It was their calling card.' Though not part of a chain, Lansing's Dutch Mill was one of several windmill-themed motels scattered across North America, some dating back to the 1930s and others built in the 1970s and after. Many were also called Dutch Mill, according to information compiled by the website There were Dutch Mills in Wisconsin Dells, Mayfield, Kentucky and Dixon, Illinois, along with a bunch in Florida and California. Oosterhuis did well enough to purchase some acreage in Iowa, where he moved in 1971 after selling his motel. The Dutch Mill became the Pioneer Motel. 'In the 1970s, teens discovered it and held weekend parties,' Cook said. 'Then the adult parties took over.' Somewhere along the way, the windmill stopped spinning, becoming instead a billboard of sorts, eventually advertising jacuzzi suites. Smith, the neighbor across the street, lived in the shadow of that windmill for the Pioneer's last nine years, when many of the motel rooms had become residential rentals. Even as many people focused on its negative aspects, there were good things about the place even at the end. 'People know Lansing by the Pioneer. You know, the windmill there,' he said. 'I never knew it to be a place where there was a lot of ruckus, but the people did party. And they had a ball. They pull out their drinks and they sit out in the back and enjoy it. I've seen them barbecue. They were living. There wasn't a lot of violence. People were enjoying each other and getting along.' After acquiring the property, Lansing worked quickly to tear the old motel down, the giant, kitschy roadside windmill with it. But Zeldenrust, the village trustee and former cop who'd responded to many calls on that property, didn't want to give up on this Lansing landmark without at least looking into saving it. That won't be easy. For one thing, the windmill's bottom third was built into the office structure. 'We were in a quandary,' he said. 'It was hard to find people that were excited enough to salvage it — to pay for the crane that would have been required to do it right.' The answer was to strap the windmill together as securely as possible and ask the demolition team to 'lay it down slowly.' 'It was going to be a gamble,' Zeldenrust said. 'They didn't promise anything.' As the windmill structure was being lowered to the ground, 'the fan blades came down first,' he said, and the windmill's cap was destroyed. But the main body of it came down intact. 'Now we're trying to figure out how to do a proper salvage job on it,' he said. A larger issue is coming up with a place to put the windmill. Ideally, Zeldenrust said, it would be restored on the property where it has welcomed visitors to Lansing for 70 years. But that's unlikely. Podgorski, the village administrator, said officials plan some additional land assembly in the area, and then it will be redeveloped with retail stores. Zeldenrust said the hope is for upscale restaurants and stores, which may not mesh with 'a gigantic old windmill.' He's been in conversation with other village officials to see if there's a spot on public property to house the windmill, but said he didn't hear a lot of support. 'We reached out to South Holland to see if they were interested, since they're a Dutch community,' Zeldenrust said, and a team from that village came out to investigate 'if they could move it or use it, or find a place to put it.' That effort didn't gain any traction, and they said they're going to pass, he said. 'I'm doing this on the wing. I don't have authority to give it to anybody. I'm just a trustee looking at this Dutch thing. How often does a Dutchman get to salvage a windmill?' Zeldenrust said. But there are no easy answers, even at home. 'My wife said it's not going to fit in our front yard,' he said. A few days later, as he and some workers went back to the former motel property for a closer inspection of the remnants of the windmill, the outlook dimmed even further. 'The damage from taking it down was a bit more than we thought,' he said. 'There will be significant costs to build a base, repair and install the (intact) sections and fix it up cosmetically.' But the effort already has been worthwhile, he said. For one thing, it's a chance to recover the story of the family-friendly Dutch Mill Motel from the sticky, unfortunate wreckage of its Pioneer Motel legacy. 'Part of my motivation is to tell the story of this thing, and what it was about when it was put in,' Zeldenrust said. 'It's a Dutch thing, and a local history thing, and it would pay homage to a bygone generation. And it's a good story.' It's also something that's unique, a remnant roadside attraction in the suburban landscape. 'Fads come and go, but there's a sustained interest in this kind of thing,' Zeldenrust said. 'To think we have one sitting right here, if we can salvage it somehow. 'The future is undetermined, but I'm hopeful.'
Chicago Tribune
6 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Letters: It was heartwarming to see the Army celebrated at the parade in Washington
It was with patriotic pride that I watched the 250th anniversary parade for the Army. As a veteran, I can attest to the significant contributions our fighting Americans have made to our country. My family members have served in the military since our country's founding. Their sacrifices, like the sacrifices of many other soldiers, have produced the greatest country in the history of the world. Millions of people today owe their freedom to the U.S. military. It was heartwarming to see the people in attendance supporting our troops and celebrating our Army's history. Well done to the Army and all the other branches of service that ensure our freedom! I am proud of my service to the United States. I stand alongside our active-duty troops to support their hard for me to understand how the Tribune can splash a large picture of a demonstration by un-American protesters on the front page of the paper and yet relegate the story about the Army parade to Page 7 of Section 2. If it wasn't for the Army and the other branches, the Tribune would be publishing its paper in German. Please go back to has been lots of complete media coverage of the fine military parade, honoring in large part the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump. There has been no mention of the 'bone spurs' diagnosis that kept Trump out of military service and exempted him from serving in Vietnam. And Trump called those killed at Normandy 'losers' and 'suckers'! Good journalists should include these items when reporting on Trump's dealings with the military. He will never be supported by veterans who know these truths and facts. He was and is a bone-spur draft-dodging grifter.I am an Army veteran (Vietnam, 1968-69), and I am appalled at the inexcusable behavior of soldiers of the 82nd Airborne last week who loudly jeered the media and former President Joe Biden at the urging of President Donald Trump. They seemed to forget that Biden was their commander in chief in January. More troubling was the silence of sergeants, officers and other command personnel during and after the outrageous behavior of the soldiers in attendance. I am certain that there would have been hell to pay from my first sergeant and my company commander, a West Point graduate, had the men in my company — Echo Company — behaved so badly at a military assembly. My father-in-law served in the 82nd Airborne in World War II, trained at Fort Bragg and helped fly a glider plane behind enemy lines on D-Day. The behavior last week is an affront to the memory and service of the men of the 82nd who served bravely in Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. Just really disgusts me when I see President Donald Trump speaking at West Point or reviewing troops at his birthday parade. Here's a guy who used his father's connections to avoid military service due to 'bone spurs' in his heel but can golf 100-plus rounds of golf each year. I'm all for cutting government spending in a responsible way, unlike the Department of Government Efficiency's methods, and reducing the deficit, but his 'Big Bloated Bill' will do neither. Republicans used to be the party of fiscal responsibility, but the last federal surplus was under Bill Clinton. After 9/11, George W. Bush ran $1 trillion deficits, and Barack Obama followed suit. Trump's first term increased the national debt by nearly $2 trillion, then Biden and Trump's second term will have exceeded that mark. Tax cuts and supply side economics have not worked in the past. Hoping that they will in the future is wishful thinking. If our members of Congress ran their personal finances the way they run the government's, they'd all be on welfare. I saw a recent interview on PBS with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who is appalled at the size of the national debt and the lack of concern shown by his cronies. This shows that there are at least a few sane people in government who are willing to take an unpopular stance and buck the president to save the country. Let's hope he is joined by others with Minnesota political shooting suspect Vance Boelter a 'devout Christian' is a misnomer. There is a huge difference between a devout Christian nationalist, which Boelter is, and a devout Christian — those who follow the way of Jesus. Please ask your reporters and editors to use the correct identity when reporting. Those of us who try to follow the way of Jesus should not be lumped into the same category with Christian nationalists and the hatred they again, I am appalled at the state of the . Recently, elected officials were murdered in Minnesota. The president never called Gov. Tim Walz about this tragedy in his state because he doesn't like him. What happened to the 'United' part of the United States of America? The president seems to only care about the people who support his twisted agenda, not all the people he pledged to defend. Please, people, vote your conscience.I trained in pediatrics at Children's Memorial Hospital, now known as Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, from 1981 to 1984 and practiced primary care pediatrics until my retirement in 2020. I have never seen a case of polio, smallpox, tetanus or diphtheria. Why? Because of the vaccines developed prior to that time. I seen death, sepsis, meningitis, epiglottitis, birth defects, encephalitis, seizure disorders, hearing loss and brain damage from what are now vaccine-preventable illnesses. Our current administration places these lifesaving medical advancements in grave danger. You, parents, still have the power to keep our children safe. that your insurance companies cover these safe and effective vaccines. that your schools demand that a safe and reasonable vaccine schedule is followed. You, parents, hold the power at the ballot box. Make your voices heard! I pray that the current pediatric trainees do not have to see what I have seen to effect change. Children's lives are at to Medicaid will come at a cost — the cost is in loss of life for individuals living with cancer. There is simply no way that cutting $793 billion from Medicaid will make the program stronger. Cuts of that magnitude will cut patients off from their health care, harm hospitals and clinics, and weaken state economies. The truth is that almost all the fraud, waste and abuse in the health care system comes from the billing and payment processes and skyrocketing prices, not from people who rely on Medicaid for essential care. As a breast cancer survivor, I know the importance of access to quality health care. In Illinois, over 3 million residents rely on Medicaid for health care coverage, and doctors rely on it to be paid for their services. Lawmakers might not know that the folks who rely on the program are mostly those who work jobs that don't provide benefits, or those who work seasonal jobs. These are huge parts of our economy. These people work hard and are in no way asking for handouts, but also often cannot afford the high prices of private insurance, which will be driven up further by cuts. As a cancer survivor, I urge U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to stand up to protect the health and lives of all Illinoisans.
Miami Herald
a day ago
- Miami Herald
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson didn't conduct formal national search for CTA head despite claiming otherwise, records show
CHICAGO - Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration never undertook a formalized national search for a new Chicago Transit Authority president despite the mayor saying last month that his office had in fact done so, according to responses to public records requests made by the Tribune. The CTA has been without a permanent leader since embattled former president Dorval Carter stepped down earlier this year under pressure from lawmakers and transit activists who had long called for his removal. Last month, Johnson told local news site Block Club Chicago that his office had undertaken a national search for a new CTA head, something transit advocates had pushed for in the wake of Carter's resignation. "We were always in the process of finding someone," Johnson told Block Club at the time. "It looked like any other national search." Johnson told Block Club the search had already been completed. But Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Tribune failed to reveal records that demonstrated the city has undertaken a thorough or formalized search of any kind. The Tribune submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for records related to the search to three city departments: the mayor's office, the law department and the department of procurement services. All three departments told the Tribune they possessed no records of any contracts the city held with search firms involved in vetting candidates, nor invoices from such search firms, resumes of candidates who had been in the running for the job or reports on the search process. In a statement, Cassio Mendoza, a spokesperson for the mayor, said the administration had "looked at" candidates who are current leaders of mass transit agencies. "To maintain the integrity of the process and out of respect for their privacy, we are declining to share the names of specific candidates," Mendoza said. "The Johnson administration continues to believe in the importance of public transit for our city and our region," he said. "We will continue to work to find the most qualified and capable leader for this critical position." The mayor's office said it reached out to three leaders of agencies across the country but none were interested in doing a formal interview for the position. The administration said substandard CEO pay, uncertainty surrounding transit funding in Springfield and what it described as "hostile" media treatment were barriers to attracting further interest in the position. The Tribune submitted FOIA requests following a similar request made by transit advocate and environmental policy analyst Nik Hunder. In an email to the Tribune, Hunder said it was "puzzling that the Mayor's office felt the need to misrepresent the progress it had made on finding a new leader for CTA." "It took me under 5 minutes to submit the FOIA request for these records and to unintentionally prove that the Mayor and his staff did not do as they said," Hunder said. Johnson's claim that his office had undertaken a national search for a new leader came as he faced scrutiny over rumors he planned to appoint his chief operating officer, John Roberson, to lead the agency. Roberson has since taken a job at the Obama Foundation, putting an end to speculation that he would be appointed to lead the CTA. Before Roberson's new job became public last week, his rumored appointment was criticized heavily by transit activists, who called for a thorough, nationwide search for a new CTA head whom they hoped would have experience leading a mass transit agency. At the CTA's board meeting last month, three of the agency's seven board members had said they too supported a more thorough search, indicating Johnson would have faced opposition in getting Roberson confirmed had he nominated him for the job. At the same meeting, 17th Ward Ald. David Moore, for whom Roberson had worked as a chief of staff, spoke in support of Roberson, warning CTA board members to "work with the mayor who put you here" and "don't be a backbiting snake." Only two of the board's seven members were appointed by Johnson. The others were appointed either by former mayor Lori Lightfoot or Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Whomever is ultimately appointed to helm the CTA will be tasked with leading an agency that is facing the possibility of making drastic service cuts next year because state lawmakers adjourned their spring legislative session without passing funding to avert a looming $771 million transit fiscal cliff. There is still time for the legislators to allocate more funding for transit before the end of the year, but should they fail to, the CTA could be forced to cut more than half its bus routes and eliminate service on whole branches of "L" lines. The agency is currently led by an acting president, Nora Leerhsen, who was Carter's chief of staff before he resigned. ____ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
