Hyde Park Stories: Gold Star Memorials
Written by Patricia L. Morse
During World War II, many people dealt with their grief by setting up small personal memorials to the sons, brothers, and fathers they lost. These memorials once graced street corners throughout Chicago. Almost all of them have vanished, but two survive in Hyde Park.
With 16 million Americans in the Armed Forces, service was a communal affair. Everyone knew someone in the military. During the war, people put a blue paper star in their windows to show that a member of the family was serving. When a serviceman died in combat, the families replaced it with a gold star. Many people wanted a more permanent way to honor the one they’d lost. Some people switched from a paper gold star to a metallic star attached to their buildings. One such was on a building at 55th and Dorchester and another at 55th and Kenwood. They were lost during urban renewal.
Those with access to a parkway could set up a concrete V with a flagpole rising from the point. They’d place a plaque with the name on the flagpole so the name could live on. There once were many of these flagpoles throughout the city, but over the decades, the name plaques were lost, the poles came down, and the meaning of the concrete V disappeared. There may be only two left in the city.
56th and Blackstone
Hyde Park’s V in the parkway at 56th and Blackstone barely survived road crews in 2004. They smashed the concrete while doing sidewalk work. Just as they were about to toss the concrete into the dumpster, a neighbor stepped up to save it. The memory that the V had something to do with V for Victory had survived. No one was sure exactly what it was. Some thought it was the remains of a tiny Victory Garden, though Victory Gardens were large plots of vegetables to feed whole families. Finally Damaris Day wrote to the Hyde Park Historical Society to set the record straight. It was built by the janitor of the building at 5557 S. Blackstone in memory of his son. The janitor raised the American flag there every day and grew flowers inside the V.
The other memorial that survives is an aging concrete post on the northwest corner of 55th and South Shore Drive. According to Stephen Treffman, there once were a number of these concrete posts scattered around the street corners of Hyde Park. Now, there are less than a handful that survive in the whole city, and some of those survive as cryptic empty concrete posts. Hyde Park’s memorial pole survives because it is on a corner undisturbed by urban renewal in a parkway that’s well maintained. It even has its Gold Star plaque, dedicated to "Arthur W. Klein, Lt. USN, 1905-1944."
With a name, fragments of a life survive. Arthur’s parents were Jewish immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father, Jacob, opened a pawn shop in the Loop in 1885. Over the years, it grew into a successful sporting goods business. Arthur’s sister married Alderman Abe Cohen. Milton, Arthur’s younger brother, went into the family business. Arthur became a lawyer with his own firm—Klein and Harrow—at 10 N. LaSalle. He went on vacation to Vera Cruz in 1937. He was living with his parents at 5121 S. Drexel in October 1940 when the order came for all men over the age of 18 to register for the draft. Arthur enlisted in the Navy right away. He would have gone through boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Station. With his education and past ROTC experience at Lane Tech High School, he became an officer. He later took courses in radio, electronics, and microwaves at the University of Chicago.
While he was away, Arthur’s mother died. Left on his own, Arthur’s father moved into the Shoreland Hotel on South Shore Drive, awaiting Arthur’s return. But Arthur didn’t return. He died in Washington, D.C., after four and a half years in the Navy. No one posted an obituary for Arthur. He might have been one of the 113,842 men who died in service, but they didn’t qualify for gold stars. It seems likely that he died of combat-related injuries at the National Naval Medical Center in Washington. Probably Arthur’s memorial service was held at the Furth Funeral Home at 936 East 47th Street, where his mother’s service had been. Lee J. Furth was proud to donate memorial services to gold star families. Grief-stricken, Jacob arranged to set up the post in Arthur’s memory near the Shoreland. It probably helped to have an alderman in the family to round up the concrete and metal made scarce by rationing.
Grief and remembrance can take odd turns. While tracking down Arthur Klein’s family, I discovered that his brother, Milton, who lived at 51st and Drexel, has his own footnote to history. After the war, he’d built up Klein’s Sporting Goods into a large mail order business that, among other sporting goods, sold guns. He preferred fishing gear and golf clubs, but guns had been part of the business since its pawn shop days. He worried that gun sales weren’t regulated and some day one of his guns would be used by the wrong person. His nightmare came true in 1963.
An order came from “A. Hidell” in Dallas for a used Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that cost less than $20. He used a coupon in the National Rifle Association magazine. “A. Hidell” was Lee Harvey Oswald. To his horror, Milton’s life lurched into the public gaze immediately after the Kennedy assassination. When word got out, overnight, cinderblocks were tossed through smashed store windows and death threats were left on the store’s door. The grief Milton felt led him to lobby Congress to ban direct interstate gun sales in 1968, though it would cost him business. The act required a gun purchased by mail to go to a local licensed gun dealer, who would then check the buyer’s identification and follow any local regulations. Milton sold the company after the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed. He refused to speak about his connection to history for the rest of his life, but, according to his sons, would grow sad every November.
Northwest corner of 55th and South Shore Drive
Sources:
Hyde Park Herald, Chicago Tribune, census documents
A shorter version of this article appeared in the Hyde Park Herald, November 11, 2021 Hyde Park Stories: Gold Star Memorials | Local News | hpherald.com
