A Real Life Father's Day Story

The Man in the Family

By: Ann C. Piasecki

My name is Jim Conley. I grew up an Irish Catholic in a large corner apartment building at West End Avenue and Le Claire Street in the heart of Chicago's Austin District. I'm the oldest of three boys, each born a year apart, to Lee and Mary (O'Brian) Conley. In 1915 my parents owned the six-flat apartment building where we made our home. The community of largely Irish, Italian, German and Scandinavian immigrants was solidly middle-class, clean and safe. Elm trees and neat lawns lined the streets and boulevards. Small businesses like Sal's Groceries, Ed's Barber Shop, Kresge's Five-and-Dime, O'Hallaran's Pub and Gelato's Pharmacy  dotted the 25.7 square miles of this West Loop neighborhood.

 The makings of World War I in Europe were yet beyond our purview— we had enough bluster coming from our own City Hall. St. Thomas Aquinas Parish and School on Washington Boulevard was an integral part of our family community. You could rent a canoe or paddle boat at Columbus Park, and in the summer we'd walk over to the pavilion for an outside orchestral performance. I was partial to Red Allen, and boy could Louis Armstrong make that horn cry.

 We used to swim at the YMCA or play side-street baseball—that was our gang's favorite activity. Our bicycles, our own two feet, the Lake Street "L" and the Green Hornet street rail were our modes of transportation.     

I guess you could say my dad, a Chicago policeman, my mom and us boys were snug in a comfortable existence; but for me, it lasted only 14 years.  I had just completed my freshmen year at St. Mel's High School when my dad got shot and killed in the line of duty. School was already out for the summer, so on this Friday my brothers and I travelled with my Uncle Obe, he was policeman too, to see a friend of his on Maxwell Street. Afterwards we shopped around for deals on baseball cards—I wanted one of Lou Gehrig. I saw Babe Ruth play once while on a vacation in Philadelphia. You had to respect the Yankees.

But what happened later that day is forever burned in my memory. I recall every sensation. If I think about it, I can still detect the evil odor of dread, upset stomach, nervous shaking that occurred on that shadowy and unusually hot spring night, May 31, 1929.  

Supper was late. Mom kept the pot roast warming on the stove for a long time before she got fed-up  and told us to come in and eat. My dad was supposed to accompany my little brothers, 13-year-old Jack and 12-year-old Bill, to a mandatory meeting about vocations and the missions at the St. Tom school gym. We thought my dad was just running late—probably stuck booking some bum he'd pinched for public drunkenness, and that he'd be home soon. I'd finished my paper route and was listening to the baseball game, the Socks vs. Philadelphia, on the radio. I sat perched on the window seat in front of the long, tri-bow window frame in our third-floor apartment, waiting for the familiar wave Dad gave me every night when he stepped out of the squad car he frequently drove home.

It got to be about 7:30 p.m., two-and-a-half hours late from his normal arrival when I spotted a line of squad cars driving down the street. It wasn't just three or four; there must have been 20 or so it seemed, in a parade-like fashion looming in on us. Then it hit me. I didn't know the details, but I knew the god-awful truth.

 I sat there, paralyzed, couldn't make a sound. The yet unspoken, dizzying reality of never again seeing the 39-year-old, 5-foot-8-inch redhead that everybody said I resembled to a tee literally took my breath away. Watching those blue and white squads snake around the corner and park, I thought I was transported somehow into a slow-motion film. The images were real, but my ability to absorb them were more like blurry impressions. I heard the car doors open and slam in unison. About six or seven uniformed policemen crowded around the lead squad—I knew the captain, John Maloney, and my dad's patrolmen friends;  Ziggy, O'Connell, Pete Donovan and Joe Duffy—Dad's partner, Pat Murphy, wasn't there—he died that afternoon too along with an innocent bystander named Myron Bagnola. Of course I didn't know yet about Officer Murphy or Mr. Bagnola.

 I saw the officers walking toward the front door. Then there came that blaring sound of the buzzer; it shook me out of my catatonic-like state. Mom came out of the kitchen wearing an apron and wiping her hands on a towel. I was breathing heavy and my heart was pounding so hard I thought it would leap out of my chest. I stared at her with a panicky look on my face. She pushed the intercom button and asked who it was. Captain Maloney identified himself. He said something had happened and that he had to talk to her.

 A tidal  wave of emotion came over her. Her hands moved suddenly over her mouth. In a muffled cry, she screamed, Oh My God! Oh My God, it's Lee!" Then we heard the trail of heavy-footed steps echoing in the stairwell, mounting their way to the third floor. Mom opened the door to find a bevy of police officers on the landing.

I never heard the conversation. My nerves had taken over; I couldn't hear anything. I saw Captain Maloney's mouth moving; I saw my mom—a normally take-charge woman, the kind that had no qualms about cracking one of us boys if we gave her lip or failed to take out the garbage—collapse into the arms of Ziggy and O'Connell. The uniforms surrounded her. I was stunned, but then Ziggy noticed me; he grabbed me with a big bear hug. I pushed him away and started yelling, "No. No." Tears streaming down her face, my mom gathered Jack and Bill into her arms.

We later learned the devastating details of Dad's death. A domestic dispute in the Ukrainian Village erupted around 4 o'clock. A former WW I sniper, an immigrant from Kiev, went nuts and started firing rounds from an old Mauser.  My dad had just  finished an eight-hour watch in the Shakespeare District and was on his way home when he got the call about a family argument gone awry. He was the first on the scene and moments later Murphy, who got flagged down before he left the station house, arrived in another squad; he pulled up behind Dad. They could hear the gun shots even before they got out. My dad told Murphy to radio for back-up, but they knew they had to act immediately. The nutcase had some old woman pinned down behind a milk wagon; I guess she was hysterical, and people were scattering like rabbits. The thing is the two had no idea that this guy, Kuzma Zelenko, was a sharp-shooter, nor that he was having a flash-back to some armed encounter in Eastern Europe.  He'd already shot his wife in the shoulder and then bolted out of the apartment. He climbed onto the Polk Brothers' rooftop and was firing at anything that moved.  

The fact that my dad was the first to charge the sniper was no consolation. He got his head blown off. Murphy was down seconds later with a shot in the chest. When back-up arrived, they found what was left of the two lying in a bloody pool on the sidewalk at Division and Ashland. Dad was on the force for 16 years; Murphy, who had four kids under 6 at home, had 10 years in. Zelenko managed to take out one more policeman, Stanley Pierson, before the tear-gas they launched on the rooftop overtook him.

There was little solace to the fact that this bastard Zelenko never made it alive it to the station house for questioning.  This was Chicago, and he'd massacred three police officers. Believe me, they took it personally.  They cuffed him and loaded him into the paddy wagon. Apparently he'd escaped and then committed suicide.  A few days later his body was found bloated and floating in the Chicago River.