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| The Illinois State Crime Commission/Police Athletic League of Illinois works diligently with community leaders to help provide each citizen a safe place to live! |
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News
A Salute to Those Who Make a Difference 2010
Police Athletic League of Illinois Bishop Sheil Awards
Dale Caridine
Mary Beth Duffy
John Fritchey
Perry Mandera
Susana A. Mendoza
Mary Schostok
Ron Sutter
Donne E. Trotter
Ezzard Charles Award ................. Brian Urlacher
Illinois State Crime Commission
Protector of the Working People Award .......................... Bernard M. Baum
Democratic Leader of the Year Award ............................. Edward M. Burke
State's Attorney of the Year Award ............................................ Tina Filipiak
Republican Leader of the Year Award ......... Elizabeth "Liz" Doody Gorman
Award of Excellence in Government ............................... Toi W. Hutchinson
Award of Excellence in the Judiciary ............................... Thomas L. Kilbride
Citizen of the Year Award ........................................... Stanley Panagiotaros
Police Chief of the Year Award ......................................... James M. Paoletti
Labor Leader of the Year Award ............................................ Ronald Powell
Lifetime Achievement Award .............................................. Michael Prueter
Mayor of the Year Award ...................................................... Frank Saverino
Municipal Leader of the Year Award ................................. Peter N. Silvestri
Award of Excellence in Municipal Government ................ Eugene Williams
Award of Excellence in Government ........................................ John Zediker
Bishop Sheil Award
Bernard J. Sheil 1888-1969
Bishop Bernard Sheil never became an archbishop, but he did become something possibly greater - one of the most loved and respected Christian leaders in the United States. Bishop Sheil was founder of the Catholic Youth Organization establishing annual boxing tournaments that appealed to thousands of working class youths, representing all ethnic groups. He eventually produced an international traveling team and a number of boxing Olympians. All participants received free instruction, equipment and medical care with winners receiving a college education. The great success of the boxing program led to more athletic programs and social agencies. He founded Sheil House, a settlement in the African American community and similar neighborhood centers for Italians, Puerto Ricans, and Navajo Indians. Through all of Bishop Sheil's social activism ran a deep commitment to interracial justice.
May 11, 1953 Time Magazine.
[At a dinner honoring Bishop Sheil] Father William Bergin was there. Tipperary-born Father Bergin, 86, could easily remember young Benny Sheil, his pupil at St. Viator College in Bourbonnais, Ill. who pitched a no-hitter for St. Viator against the University of Illinois. ("I had a terrifying amount of speed," says Bishop Sheil, thinking back.) Benny Sheil turned down offers to try out with both the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago White Sox before he went back to study for the priesthood.
As a young priest, Father Sheil served part-time as a chaplain at the Cook County jail. He walked many a doomed man to the execution chamber, and once a "mad-dog killer" said to him near the end: "Father, why do they wait until now before they start to care?" Later, when Father Sheil was consecrated a bishop at 40, he tried to answer the condemned man's challenge.
With his own inheritance from his father and $10,000 from Utility Man Budd, Sheil set out to lure off the streets young potential gangsters-white and Negro, Protestant, Catholic and Jew-with a social and athletic program that kept moralizing to a minimum. Boxing was the major attraction. When some high-minded people clucked at the stress on boxing, Bishop Sheil's reply was: "Show me how you can inspire boys away from the brothels and saloons with a checker tournament and I'll put on the biggest checker tournament you ever saw."
A Jewish sociologist and an Irish playground director were the bishop's right and left hands in the late 30's when he set out to fight Communism among the tough, discontented unemployed of Chicago's stockyards. The Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council brought democracy and self-respect into an explosive situation. The packers, who at first did not like the unionization that went with it, learned to be grateful for the bishop's work.
Bishop Sheil made himself just as unpopular with fringers on the right as with those on the left. At one forum on Christian-Jewish relations he was viciously heckled by a delegation of Christian Fronters, and a virago pushed her way towards him as he was leaving. "I'm a Catholic!" she screamed. "You're not a Catholic-you're a n.....-lover and a Jew-lover. You call yourself a bishop. You're not a bishop, you're a rabbi." And she spat in his face.
Bishop Sheil did not move a muscle. "I thank you. madam, for the compliment of your action and your words." he said calmly. "Rabbi? That is what they called our Lord."
More than 2,300 people came to dinner. Their tables overflowed the Palmer House grand ballroom into the foyer, into the halls, almost into the elevators. There was a cake 15 ft. high which Bishop Sheil had to cut standing above it on the balcony. There was a main course of the bishop's beloved corned beef & cabbage, and over & over the band played his favorite tune, MacNamara's Band. At the head table sat Theologian Jacques Maritain and Labor Leaders John L. Lewis and James B. Carey, Illinois' Governor William G. Stratton and Capitalist Marshall Field. Chicago's Episcopal Bishop Wallace Conkling gave the benediction and Rabbi Louis Binstock of Temple Sholom asked God's blessing on Bishop Sheil in Hebrew. A check for $131,582 was presented to the bishop for his various funds, and 26 separate awards, each with appropriate words of praise, kept coming until midnight.
In the midst of the depression, the Most Rev. Bernard James Sheil accepted "as a great privilege" the invitation of John L. Lewis to appear on C.I.O. platform in the stockyard district. "I want you to remember, Your Excellency," said the banker, a Catholic layman, "that the minute you step on that platform, you lose your chance to become archbishop." For a moment, the stubby little prelate just looked at him. "You should know," he said after a while, "that I wasn't ordained a Catholic priest in order to become an archbishop."
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