Daywatch: A tribute to Chicago’s ‘Walking Man’

Good morning, Chicago.

Chicago native Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” who carried out a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died by suicide.

Kaczynski, who was 81 and suffering from late-stage cancer, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. Emergency responders performed CPR and revived him before he was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead later Saturday morning, the people told the Associated Press. They were not authorized to publicly discuss Kaczynski’s death and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Kaczynski’s death comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in the last several years following the death of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein, who also died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019.

Kaczynski, who attended Evergreen Park High School, had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.

He forced The Washington Post, in conjunction with The New York Times, to make the agonizing decision in September 1995 to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” which claimed modern society and technology was leading to a sense of powerlessness and alienation.

But it led to his undoing. Kaczynski’s brother David and David’s wife, Linda Patrik, recognized the treatise’s tone and tipped off the FBI, which had been searching for the “Unabomber” for years in nation’s longest, costliest manhunt.

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Chicago’s Walking Man wandered alone for decades. Loved ones say: ‘He observed everything. That was his adventure.’

For decades, Joseph Kromelis walked along Chicago’s downtown streets and bridges seemingly all day, every day, regardless of the season. Tall and lean, with a bushy mustache and thick hair, the sharply dressed Kromelis stood out in the crowd. The urbane stranger’s striking appearance captured the imagination of his fellow pedestrians and Loop workers, many of whom dubbed him “The Walking Man.”

Kromelis, who experienced homelessness in his later years, died Dec. 11, 2022, nearly seven months after an assailant lit him on fire as he slept beneath blankets on the street. He was 75.

A Tribune review of his life through public records and more than two dozen interviews offers the fullest portrait to date of a private, gentle soul who felt most at home while walking among strangers.

Overcrowding, cold food and uncertain futures a way of life for migrants in Chicago’s shelters

Across the street from the 1st District police station, Hildemaro Rafael Peña Gonzalez, 23, from Venezuela, fed cereal out of a plastic takeout container to his pregnant wife Racnia del Carmen León Mendoza, 19, and rubbed her swollen belly. The couple was moved from the station to a shelter in a hotel downtown about 10 days ago, but came back to the small basketball cancha, or court, to sit on a bench in the shade. “People have been nice (downtown),” said Gonzalez in Spanish, “But it’s nicer here.”

It’s a sentiment shared by many. Though migrants from shelters across the city told the Tribune that sleeping in a shelter bed or on an air mattress is better than on the ground in police stations, the support and care they’re receiving appears, in most cases, to be worse.

Lion Electric’s new school bus factory in Joliet aims to rewrite the rules for manufacturing in Illinois

Lion Electric brings the prospect of 1,400 jobs and the first new vehicle assembly plant to metropolitan Chicago since 1965. It offers hope that Illinois can put people to work attacking its most significant source of greenhouse gas pollution: tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks.

The factory is unquestionably a green feather in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s cap. But two years have passed since the company’s Joliet announcement. During that time, Illinois has failed to join in the parade of electric vehicle and battery plant announcements fueled by President Joe Biden’s historic infrastructure spending.

Chicago baseball report: Seiya Suzuki’s balancing act for Cubs — and why White Sox aren’t looking at AL Central standings

The Chicago Cubs can at least find some joy in that they won’t have any more three-city trips the rest of the year.

Their 10-day West Coast trip to San Diego, Anaheim and San Francisco — culminating with a 13-3 loss to the Giants for a 4-6 record on the swing — did not yield the momentum needed as they claw their way back into the division.

How Chicago football players’ mental health journeys led them to focus on wellness for Black communities

It’s been almost nine years since the life-changing event that forced Dwight White, then a defensive back on Northwestern University’s football team, to change his trajectory. White took a hit during practice that caused abdominal pain, which led to the revelation that he was born with one kidney, a condition called renal agenesis. Medical professionals, sports staff and his parents advised White against playing football, but he made the decision to continue to play — until three weeks later, when he was hit in that same spot and had internal bleeding due to a renal contusion.

Since White left Northwestern in 2016, he’s been saying a lot through art centered on the Black experience, melding oil paints and acrylics, sociology and experiential design into socially-driven work.