ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 16, 1996 TAG: 9611190063
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: B-9 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: JON ANDERSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
To his closest neighbors on the Gold Coast, where he lived in a red brick Victorian mansion with 19 chimneys, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was ``Joe,'' the name he gave after he waved to an Astor Street neighbor and she hesitantly asked how she should address him.
He was a good Joe, too, the cardinal's neighbors agreed Thursday as they came to pay their respects.
``It's a terrible loss. He could have been the first American pope,'' noted banker-broadcaster Norman Ross, who lives across the street, as he walked among the dozens of people who laid flowers, candles, notes and prayer cards on the front steps of the mansion.
On a garden wall, someone had used chalk to draw three crosses and write the words: ``Thank you, Joseph.''
It was a day that brought together coiffed matrons, joggers, executives on their way to work, schoolchildren and two workers in a Streets and Sanitation truck who stopped, carried a vase of flowers from the cab and placed it respectfully among the offerings.
Many brought memories.
It was Ross who organized a ``progressive dinner party'' when Bernardin, then an archbishop, first moved into the neighborhood in 1982.
``Hope McCormick called him `lovey,''' Ross recalled, speaking of an evening that began with appetizers at the Ross apartment, moved to the harvester heir McCormicks' for a main course, down to an alley townhouse for salad, then to a lavish Astor Street home for dessert and coffee.
What had been planned for an hour of Bernardin's time stretched to four. Joe wanted to talk to everyone, Ross said.
``He was a wonderful neighbor, but that's the least of his attributes. I admired him for his courage in facing the last stages of his illness,'' said retiree Philip Roth, shivering in Thursday's cold.
``He was my neighbor. I wrote him a little note and left it with a candle and some Queen Anne's lace,'' said Laurel Harr, reflecting the Gold Coast's deeply rooted sense of appropriateness. ``I thought he was a perfect example of St. Francis of Assisi: `Lord make me an instrument of your peace.'''
Several people in what is Chicago's wealthiest neighborhood recalled that the cardinal was a Saturday regular at the Drake Hotel barber shop, sharing quips with barber Joe Saladino and, on Saladino's 50th wedding anniversary, driving out to Niles to join in the party.
Others recalled the cardinal as a gentle man of nature, overseeing a flock of humans and a gathering of wild rabbits that hopped about the lawn of the mansion.
``The neighborhood children love the rabbits,'' said an Astor Street mother who lives two doors away and remembered the death and lawn burial, with many children present, of Peter, the largest rabbit in memory.
But mostly they remembered the cardinal's humanity.
Clad in winter wear, two dozen secondnd graders from the nearby Latin School of Chicago, where the flag flew at half-staff Thursday, watched as a two-man crew draped white-and-purple funeral bunting over the railing above the mansion's driveway entrance and above the front door.
``Remember we had the word `hero' on the blackboard this morning?'' asked teacher Patricia Callard, gathering the pupils in a circle.
``Well, the cardinal stood for social justice and world peace. He was a hero.''
One student replied that she and several friends had trick-or-treated the mansion on Halloween.
``He used to give out the candy himself - until this year,'' added a nearby mother. ``He loved to have the children gather about him on the front porch - and he would talk to them all.''
``In the last couple of weeks, it's been, `How is our cardinal doing?''' added another Gold Coast resident. ``Some of us are Jewish. Many of us are WASPs. But to everybody around here he was `Our cardinal.'''
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. A prince of the church, a regular guy: Cardinalby CNBJoseph Bernardin lived in a big mansion in Chicago's ritziest
section, but he was just a neighborly man who handed out his own
Halloween candy.