The extraordinary life of a girl called ‘Champ'

The Hill

2 days ago

CHICAGO — As I write this, people are gathering in Chicago to bury an Ohio coal miner's daughter who came to this city in the early 1950s.
They are celebrating a social worker and community activist who has affected thousands of lives over the last eight decades in this city. As the Sun-Times reported, her 'backbone and willpower fueled positive change in Chicago for decades.'
Angela Piazza Turley was a force to be reckoned with — both the irresistible force and the immovable object when it came to fighting for others.
She was also my mother.
The writer George Bernard Shaw once said that unreasonable people expect the world to conform to them. He then added that that was why all history is made by unreasonable people.
My mother was one of those brilliantly unreasonable people. As the baby of five, I spent much of my early years clinging for dear life on my mother's skirts as she confronted slum landlords, abusive husbands, and gang bangers in the Uptown area of Chicago. Time and again, I would squeeze her hand with that look of 'what do we do now?'
She already seemed to know what to do. Growing up in a coal mining town in Ohio, my mother knew poverty and prejudice. She would never forget either. It created a solid core within her, harder and tougher than anthracite coal.
Some nights, she would go to sleep looking at the burning crosses on the nearby hill, a message from the local Ku Klux Klan that she and the other Italians were not welcome in the valley.
She learned that you had to fight for a better life. Her father, Dominick, was one of the earliest organizers of the United Mine Workers until he contracted black lung.
At Yorkville High School, she was called 'Champ' for her feisty, indomitable energy. She had a certain tomboy beauty with olive skin and penetrating hazel eyes.
Courtesy of Jonathan Turley
After World War II, she caught the attention of a young veteran, Jack Turley. This string-bean Irish street kid making scraps as a photographer was not exactly what my grandparents had in mind for a suitor. He faced an insurmountable wall of separation policed by my pint-sized Sicilian grandmother, Josephina.
The two gradually came up with a way to meet that even my grandmother could not refuse: doing crosswords in the bay window of their grocery store. It worked.
She believed in him, and, when he said he wanted to be an architect, they decided that he should study under arguably the most famous architect of the time: Mies van der Rohe, who developed the modern steel and glass structures that transformed cities.
It was an act of sheer hubris, if not insanity. The two arrived late on a snowy night in Chicago with $1.37 in their pockets. They stopped in a shop and ordered the only thing that they could afford: a cup of coffee. Before they left that night, my mother had a job as a waitress.
He would become one of Mies's closest associates and, after his death, a partner at Skidmore Owings and Merrill, who helped design some of the most famous buildings in Chicago and around the world.
With my parents' success came the ability to help others. They founded organizations that would have a significant impact on this city, including one of the first inner-city community credit unions to provide local businesses and families access to loans.
She was president of Jane Addams Hull House and the founder of an array of organizations that fought for better housing, education, and safety for the poorest of the city. She helped create one of the first shelters for abused women and a group to maintain support for our public schools. She ran for city council in the 46th Ward, and the Chicago Tribune described her as the 'scrapper' from Uptown seeking to transform the poorest areas into decent places to live.
She was all that — fearless; the embodiment of pure will. I remember going into slums with her as she faced down violent landlords and pimps. On one occasion, she and other mothers literally chased pimps and gang bangers out of a playground and a low-income building.
I can still see the face of one pimp as a mix of amazement and amusement at this tough Sicilian mother with two young children in tow, pushing him into the street. I looked at her with that same 'What do we do?' look, but she did not flinch. She had that crazy Sicilian look that said, 'I am ready to go all the way, are you?'
I was convinced that we were dead. But he never came back.
My parents' success also gave my mother the opportunity to have something she had dreamed of as a little girl growing up during the Depression: a beautiful home filled with family. They bought one of the oldest houses in Uptown near the lake, with a room for each of their five children.
When she first walked through that house, she stopped in the backyard and smiled as she came face to face with a giant Ohio buckeye. It was love at first sight.
She would later fill the house with a steady stream of people who were struggling or foreign students seeking opportunities in the U.S. That house was her projection of herself in this world: a loving and protected space, large and open to others. For her, the house echoed with the dreams of a little girl in the depression; it meant safety, family, and continuity.
After my father's death, my mother only had one request — she wanted to die in that house, not some hospital or hospice.
She and the house slowly deteriorated together; gradually and inexorably. My siblings and I struggled to keep the old furnace and pipes working, to keep our promise.
She would pass in her room with the ivy-framed windows looking out on Hazel Street, just a few days before her 98th birthday. Her death was hardly unexpected. It is a moment that comes for all of us, but few are ready to say goodbye when the time comes.
When her health took a sudden turn for the worse, I rushed to the airport to be with her, only to have the airport shut down due to a raging storm. For the first time, she was out of reach. She died as I waited at the gate.
My last moment with her had come a week earlier.
I sat late at night at the end of her bed, staring at her and trying to hold it together. I had to catch a flight back to Washington in a few hours. I couldn't say a thing; I just looked at her with the same 'What do we do now?' look.
I think that somehow, she knew. She suddenly sat up and looked straight at me with those beautiful hazel eyes and smiled. She then threw me a kiss. She then fell back to sleep. It was as if she were saying, 'You're going to be okay. You can take it from here.' And it was the last thing that my mother ever said to me.
She had always been there. In the toughest situations from the slums to the streets, I knew that I only had to hold more tightly; hold on to her. We would get out of there … together.
She was always my guiding light, my North Star. Now she is gone. What do you do when your North Star supernovas, leaving just a black hole in the very center of your life that seems to suck in the very light around you?
'What do we do now?' She did not have to say. We know now. You hold on tighter to those you love and you stand your ground.
Angela left behind five children, 13 grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. She left a legacy of thousands of lives made better for her being there when they needed her most. This week, we will gather to bid farewell to Angela Turley, but not to her legacy. That will live and grow with the city she loved.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of the best-selling book ' The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,' which is dedicated to his mother.