Young man's fall inspires 16-year-old
One teen especially may learn from man who ended up in jail
Two weeks ago I wrote about a young man I first spotlighted in 1995, when he was 8 years old and worried about gang violence in his neighborhood.
Sadly, that young man is now in jail, facing serious charges.
"It turns out I didn't become any better than the trash I was talking about in my journal [when I was a little boy]," he told me. "I am facing federal charges for drug conspiracy. . . . We all start out good. I was a good kid who made wrong choices, and now I'm facing 10 to life."
Reaction to the column was extraordinary, with many readers offering to help the young man and his family. Others said they were moved to tears by this devastating sequel to the original column.
One teenager has long been motivated by the young man's story. This kid is 16, and he is determined to learn from that young man's mistakes.
He is the young man's little brother.
He is 16. He just finished his sophomore year in high school with a 4.0 GPA.
"When I was in elementary school, I saw people around me going down the wrong path, just like my brother did," he told me.
"I started locking myself in my room, just like my brother did, just trying to hide from everything.
"But I don't want to be a statistic. I moved in with my grandparents, I got involved with my church, and I have mentors at my high school who look after me.
"My main focus is to get a college scholarship and to help my grandparents raise my brother's daughter, who is 1½. This baby could end up in a bad situation, like a lot of other people [in my neighborhood]. I don't want her to end up this way."
One hopes and prays we'll be updating this story in a couple of years, with the high school student graduating and preparing for life in college.
Some of the most popular Chicago radio personalities of the last three decades were originally from someplace else.
The late Bob Collins of WGN fame was born in Tennessee, lived in Florida and worked in Milwaukee, San Diego and Los Angeles before coming to Chicago.
Steve Dahl is a native of Pasadena. He was a star in Detroit before he arrived in Chicago at the age of 24 and forever changed radio.
Jonathan Brandmeier is a cheesehead from Wisconsin who was hugely popular in Phoenix before he came to WLUP-FM in the early 1980s.
Each of these personalities -- along with other non-natives of Chicago such as Mancow, Don Wade & Roma and Doug Banks -- worked long and hard to win over the notoriously tough and territorial Chicago audiences. You can't just swoop into town, mispronouncing "Dolton" and "Goethe" while declaring you've always been a diehard Cubs fan, and win folks over.
(Of course, for every non-Chicagoan who has made it big in radio here, there are many more who hailed from the area and have Chicago in their blood -- from Bob Sirott to Roe Conn to Eric and Kathy and many, many more.)
It's easier for comedic personalities to make the adjustment than it is for more news-oriented hosts. Funny is funny. You can gradually work in the local references. But if you're new in town and your topic menu includes the parking meter follies, Patti Blagojevich, Daley's nephew, Cubs vs. Sox and the Chicago locations where they filmed "Public Enemies"--it's gonna be tough to sound like an authority.
Such is the challenge facing Greg Jarrett, the new morning host on WGN-AM (720). Until this week, probably 99 percent of Chicago area listeners had never heard of Jarrett, a former talk show host at San Francisco's KGO-AM.
Reading Jarrett's bio, you can't deny his credentials or his work ethic. He deserves a fair shot. But it's an enormous challenge. After all the years I've spent writing and broadcasting in Chicago, I couldn't imagine moving to San Francisco, turning on the mike and offering my take on what's happening in the Bay Area.
A friend stopped at a Downstate McDonald's recently and saw an amazing item on the menu.
A 50-piece Chicken McNuggets.
Fifty McNuggets! Unless you're that Kobayashi guy who wins all those hot dog-eating contests, can anyone out there seriously consider downing 50?
I know: You can share with friends. Still, I bet some individual consumers see that 50-piece item on the menu and think: FINALLY.
Just FYI: If you downed all 50, that'd be about 2,300 calories and 145 grams of fat.
And a small tub of barbecue sauce.