Grant Pick had been writing for the Reader for about a quarter of a century when, at the age of 57, he died of a heart attack walking home from lunch. That was three years ago last week. In many ways, Grant was the writer who best defined this paper. As he liked telling journalism students who read his pieces and asked where the news pegs were, “There is no news peg. The people are the news.”
From “Brother Bill,” June 1, 1990
His first day at Henry Horner, Tomes strode the length of the project. The teenage boys there had never seen anybody like him, and the next day, according to Tomes, the council of the Disciples gang took a vote on whether he should be killed. “But they thought I was a good guy and agreed to protect me,” Tomes says. “We thought he was crazy,” says Demetrius Ford, a Disciple who has since gone to work at Saint Malachy’s. “What the fuck would you think?”
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“Other people might want to change these kids,” Tomes says, “but I recognize them for who they are, and for how great they are as children of God. They need to respect themselves; it’s when they don’t that they shoot at each other.” Tomes never issues advice except when asked. “I give information, is all,” he explains. “I don’t make a recommendation except if I think the person is ready to follow my bullshit anyway.”
“I went to a Cobra Stones building, then a Disciples building, and I got . . . um . . . a cold reaction,” says Tomes, recalling his first day at Cabrini. “Some drug dealers gave me the silent treatment.” The one bright spot was an encounter with a young man named Elbert O’Neal, a Cobra Stone who lived with his mother and siblings on the 15th floor of 1150 N. Sedgwick. “You are a sign from God,” O’Neal told Tomes. No, Tomes said. “Yes, you are,” said O’Neal. “God sent you as a sign so I’d change my life.”
In December of 1988 a 25-year-old named Sammy Hatcher was gunned down in an entranceway at Cabrini. Tomes baptized him with a handful of snow before he was hauled away to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, brain dead on arrival.
From “As I Lay Dying,” July 25, 1997
