By Ben Joravsky
De Rosa says her grandfather was a Taylor Street kid, the son of a sewage ditch digger, who dropped out of school at age nine and went on to become one of the country’s most powerful union leaders. “He had to leave school to help his family make a living,” says De Rosa. “He attended Hull-House. Jane Addams gave him his first trumpet. He used to play weddings.”
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By the mid-1940s Petrillo was president of the national union and one of the most powerful men in the music world. Newsreel clips show him testifying before congressional committees, being interviewed by Edward R. Murrow, and playing a duet with President Truman. It was Petrillo, according to De Rosa, who convinced the city to hold free concerts in Grant Park, just as it was Petrillo who saw to it that a portion of all recording royalties was siphoned into a trust and used to pay for free concerts in schools, parks, and nursing homes. “He made it possible for people to attend free concerts, not just in Grant Park but all over the country,” says De Rosa. “Since 1949 the nation’s received over $300 million in free concerts. Chicago’s received over $22 million. That’s his legacy. That’s why he should be remembered.”
Roughly $215 million will come from public funds and the rest from private donors, some of whom will be honored by having their names attached to various parts of the park. At a press conference last year, Mayor Daley announced that a plaza in the park will be named for Ameritech. The mayor suggested that the music shell might be named for the Pritzker family, which is contributing millions of dollars, but no formal announcement has been made.
The irony was not lost on De Rosa and her supporters. “You have a public field dedicated to the memory of a union man out of Taylor Street, and it’s being taken over by the Lake Forest crowd,” says Donoghue.
The city is even thinking of putting the old band shell on wheels and taking it from one neighborhood to the next to stage free concerts. “I don’t know that anyone knows if the old band shell is going to be destroyed,” says La Pietra. “It may actually continue to live, though not in the exact position it is now. That may be one of the alternatives they’re considering. I know that they are compiling a number of exploratory notions of how to continue the Petrillo commemoration.”
