Young Life

By Steve Stanek. Special to the Tribune | May 25, 1998
At only 13 years old, Jill faced a perilous future. The Woodstock girl had been convicted of theft, was failing at school and was spending hours each day contemplating suicide. Now 15 years old, Jill says she no longer steals, she does better in school and she looks forward to growing up. She credits two people with helping turn her life around: Mary Dougherty, director of the Therapeutic Mentoring Program at the McHenry County Youth Service Bureau, and Linda Schoen of McHenry, who spends time with Jill as her mentor.
By Ann Landers | December 22, 1996
Dear Ann Landers: I couldn't hold back the tears when I read the news story in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel about a local 12-year-old boy who hanged himself in his parents' back yard. It seems the boy was overweight and didn't want to go to school because his classmates continually teased him about being fat. He just couldn't take it anymore. He got up in the middle of the night, found a rope, went to the back yard and ended his life. When his younger brothers, 8 and 10, were getting ready for school in the morning, they looked outside and saw their brother hanging from the limb of a tree.
By Gary Reinmuth, Tribune Staff Writer | December 17, 1996
Time for Chicago's Bryant Notree to do his stretching exercises--again. Change, adapt, adjust, grow. That's Notree's story line, and life keeps sticking him to it. If Illinois coach Lon Kruger's decision to shift him to small forward from the power position this season wasn't as jarring for Notree as it might have been for some players, it's because, well, he has been jarred a few times before. And not just last season, when flying elbows were what all those bigger power forwards fed him for lunch underneath.
By Andrew Fegelman and Ron Grossman, Tribune staff writers | September 6, 1996
Michelle and Carey Portman have seen themselves as the saviors responsible for rescuing a young Russian girl from a disheveled home and a neglectful mother. But on Thursday, a Circuit Court judge, angry that the couple apparently was interfering with efforts to bridge the rift between the 10-year-old girl and her biological mother, Tamara Leyzerovich, said the child should no longer live with the couple. "I am convinced this child is not in a neutral environment," said Cook County Circuit Judge Francis Barth.
March 28, 1996
BY GAYLON B. ROBERSON. Crime and racism, injustice and irresponsible parents sat idly in the back of mind until my 17-year-old brother was arrested and put into Cook County Jail in January of 1995. His arrest made me think about all the things that make the world go wrong. How we give up, as a society, on the human race. How one act of injustice will lead to other acts of the same. How the crime that depletes neighborhoods of life, is the direct result of these injustices. How people of color are targets of those injustices and how the black male is at the center.
By Reviewed by Alexander Theroux, An author whose most recent book is "The Primary Colors." | March 3, 1996
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West By Stephen E. Ambrose Simon & Schuster, 511 pages, $27.50 On July 4, 1803, the nation's 27th birthday, the very same day Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States, Capt. Meriwether Lewis was making final preparations for the greatest exploring expedition in the history of this country. President Thomas Jefferson had selected his personal secretary and fellow Virginian to travel up the Mississippi and Missouri, cross over the Rockies, go down the Columbia and reach the sky-blue Pacific.
By Sue Ellen Christian Paul de la Garza and Andrew Martin, Tribune Staff Writers | August 25, 1995
Almost a year ago, a child nicknamed "Yummy" shocked a nation already numbed by violence. The boy, 11-year-old Robert Sandifer of Chicago's South Side, exposed how quickly urban ills-poverty, gangs, drugs and an overloaded juvenile-justice system-could poison a young life. Robert was a 68-pound Black Disciple when he opened fire on rival gang members. His bullets killed Shavon Dean, a 14-year-old girl seeing a friend safely home. Within three days, fellow gang members turned on him, police say, executing him at a viaduct in his Roseland neighborhood.
By Ann Landers | October 7, 1994
Dear Ann Landers: Your advice to "Devastated and Numb" was crazy. You told her to stick with her crack-addicted boyfriend and help him clean up his act. Have you ever known a crack addict? I mean, personally? My sister just divorced her crack-addicted husband after wasting 10 years of her young life trying to help him "clean up his act." Ann, these people don't need a victim to bolster their resolve. They are parasites who suck the life out of everyone around them. My ex-brother-in-law was a world-class liar, a thief and a totally self-centered manipulator.
By Jon Hilkevitch, Tribune Staff Writer | April 13, 1994
Janna Sugar enjoyed life's rich variations, as well as its daily routine. So it was on Saturday, when the 18-year-old Northbrook resident was completing her ritual morning jog-this particular day on London's bustling sidewalks in the shadow of Big Ben. Sugar, her varsity soccer coach at Glenbrook North High School and several other students, all participating in a spring-break study tour of Ireland and England, were running back to their...
By Blair Kamin, Tribune Architecture Critic | February 21, 1994
He still can remember the mornings when a big yellow cab would screech to a stop at 5th Avenue and 88th Street. A cane would poke out the door first. Then a porkpie hat. And, if it was cool outside, a flowing cape. Then America's greatest architect would slap his hands against his pants pockets, hoping to hear the sound of loose change. Since Frank Lloyd Wright cared more about buildings than money, his flailing fingers rarely produced the desired clinking. "Somebody had to come to his rescue," photographer Pedro Guerrero is saying now, four decades later, looking out to the corner of 5th and 88th from inside the Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum.