Long after the fuss over Pope Leo XIV, the village of Dolton will still be here

DOLTON Ill The village of Dolton which is where you may find yourself if you re traveling south through Chicago and run out of Chicago to journey through which we have heard more about in the past days or so than since it was established -odd years ago which is now best known to the world as the hometown of Pope Leo XIV is like a lot of Midwestern places Or a lot of the blink-and-you-miss-it boondocks backwaters and wherevers other popes have come from You never give it a second thought until you do A water tower rises above residential streets June in Dolton Brian Cassella Chicago Tribune And so before our attention swings forever more to the Vatican know this Dolton whether or not you ever think about it again is full of kindness and hope But stimulating It s a pocket-sized village square miles with a population that peaked at around in and has drifted off ever since It s on the banks of muddy Little Calumet River and modest Lake Cottage Grove though it feels far from anything damp The town water tower invariably seems like it could use a fresh coat of paint Railroad tracks shoot here and there all over the place It s been working class since European settlers Germans Dutch arrived in the s But after industry faded away generations ago the future never trended brighter Dolton kept hoping Its new wish for a burst of pope-related tourism resonates with another moment in its history -odd years ago when Dolton so hotly anticipated a boom of new residents and tourists to emerge from the success out of Chicago s Columbian Exposition of Dolton civic leaders decided to get incorporated That boom landed with a wet pop Neighboring South Holland began touting itself as the fancy and inviting Onion Capital of the World meanwhile Dolton became home to a large sauerkraut factory and several nondescript industrial warehouses that churned out canned beets lima beans baking equipment castings and barrels See until a meager weeks ago May to be precise there wasn t a lot of there there If you re planning a pilgrimage to the pope s hometown this summer keep that in mind Dolton was never a remarkable place and never demanded to be considered remarkable Except in its own way it is Just like wherever it is you came from Pope Leo XIV officially begins his papacy with inaugural Mass in St Peter s Square Dolton has good history and bad history and lawns stores squirrels parks good people bad people boring people people with too much to say people with nothing to say It s seen plenty of characters The grandma in the s who would drag her rocking chair out to new railroad construction sites and knit all day hoping to block yet another soot-spewing steam engine from lumbering into town The mayor Ira Hastings who served from to having determined his calling after knocking around minor-league baseball a stint so bad he played on different teams in only four years and retired with exactly zero home runs and zero RBIs More ominously there was that friendly guy down at the local trophy shop Trophys Are Us the one who turned out to be a serial killer David Maust And that Marine radio operator who was in Desert Storm who also turned out to be a serial killer Andrew Urdiales There was the Dolton man whom everyone called Motorcycle Mike though it was a misnomer Mike an associate of Al Capone s was known for stealing cars so countless around the Midwest that when he was ultimately caught at -years old he became the oldest car thief in Minnesota history An eager crowd surges toward President Jimmy Carter on Oct as he arrives at Thornridge High School in Dolton John Irvine Chicago Tribune Students attend a homecoming celebration for the Thornridge High School boys basketball state champs on March in Dolton Ed Feeney Chicago Tribune Children from Berger-Vandenberg School march through Dolton in their bicentennial parade in the fall of It was arranged by th-grade mentor Mary Kahn Lynette Miller Chicago Tribune Show Caption of An eager crowd surges toward President Jimmy Carter on Oct as he arrives at Thornridge High School in Dolton John Irvine Chicago Tribune Expand Jimmy Carter once held a town hall meeting in Dolton And Gene Hackman shot a single scene in Dolton for a movie you never saw The Package Dennis DeYoung lived with his parents in Dolton just as he began to play rock music with a insufficient friends who later called themselves Styx That commented other than again you know the pope the second most of remarkable thing to happen in Dolton was a demographic shift driven by the decline of factory work and textbook white flight Which was not that remarkable for Illinois either In there were only Black residents in Dolton by the s there were more than In contemporary times Dolton is around Black Dolton may look different now than it did when it was a blue-collar postwar suburb but it s not really all that different You can still count the stoplights on a meager dozen fingers No one over at Kandy Kane Park including Park District functionaries can tell you why it s Kandy Kane The village hall is no larger than a small bank branch and inside is like a DMV on a slow morning Official village vehicles are so tiny a resident described them to me as clown cars So no it s not Mayberry Midwest snark comes factory-installed as do caveats Dolton s fine you hear A family place A quiet place That s why people move here One morning at Olivia s where everyone stops for pancakes a Jamaican retiree displayed off photos of grandkids to a retiree who drove a truck for years They didn t know each other until that day before saying goodbye they made dinner plans If it all sounds too idyllic to be true all the time yes it is and so what Even the locals who never requested to live anywhere but Dolton will promptly add sure they live among the faded lettering and tattered awnings of far too a great number of shuttered storefronts businesses that decades ago seemed promising to someone Yes they say with a self-deprecating chuckle there s still no there there in Dolton But there are thoughtful people who long before a pope came out of their ranks were already doing onto others as they would have done onto themselves Jevon Ollins and his son Josiah have breakfast at Olivia s on June in Dolton Brian Cassella Chicago Tribune Jacques Lamarre waves to a neighbor on his block June in Dolton Brian Cassella Chicago Tribune The first resident I approached was mowing his lawn except I learned it was really the lawn of an aging neighbor who lives on a fixed income and needed a hand The man with the mower Jacques Lamarre semi-retired had the time so He says it self-consciously He s not looking to become a pope or a saint or anything He speaks with the musical French timbre of his native Haiti He s lived in Dolton since the s He talks long and wittily it s as if he had been waiting for someone to ask him why he lives on this block in this neighborhood in this town in this state He smiles and says It s a place of two faces North side is rough west side is easy But that s also relative he adds generously He raised three kids here all of whom moved away as they got older His neighbors also elderly South Holland a stone s throw away is upper grade but he prefers here We get Fourth of July fireworks And we have a lot of churches Do something you shouldn t you don t go far to tell someone you feel bad Indeed down at the end of the street at Faith United Methodist there s a wide wall with a sun-washed sign that seems to beg NO BALL PLAYING You can tell ages ago this was the perfect wall for hitting a ball against but whatever concrete existed beneath it is now overgrown grass Just the other day one of Katrina Cotton s neighbors called her at work They were worried because it appeared someone suspicious was creeping around Cotton s backyard After a scant worried moments it dawned on Cotton Oh wait that s just the termite man spraying I love Dolton she stated it s my hometown people look out for one another I know everyone I know the person who lives in that house She points across a park And that house It s cozy The kind of place where from where I am standing I know if I cross two train tracks there I m in Chicago It s the kind of place where the landmarks on your personal map are the same as everyone else s To reach say the Free-N-Deed Realm downtown near the village hall Pass the basketball court continue by that long parking lot nobody parks in pass the brown and tan houses that look like brown and tan houses the apartment complex that could be anywhere and when you get to the building that used to be New Zion church by the closed obstetrics office turn left there you are Founder Nicole Scott center helps a customer bag groceries with helpers at her Free-N-Deed food pantry June in Dolton Brian Cassella Chicago Tribune You ll find Nicole Scott who founded the Free-N-Deed food pantry as well as next door Tabitha s Closet-N-Thrift which is named for the Biblical Tabitha also known as Dorcas also known as a compassionate soul who helped widows A long note in the window explains all of this and much more Sales go to the American Association of Single Parents which Scott founded Scott created all of this But she doesn t like to acknowledge that Because God does it all in my book She s short and imposing and sizes you up and keeps moving You are taking her time but she doesn t want to brush you off she s not rude She s building a soup kitchen in an adjoining space she s calling it Elijah s Cafe Beside that an emergency shelter she s calling it Jacob s House She s been repurposing an entire strip mall with Free-N-Deed as the anchor mainly for Dolton residents who could use help Countless do About of residents live below the poverty line unemployment is roughly double the state rate Scott whispers it s been great working with Jason House the new mayor of Dolton but the last limited years were a trial She says nothing more She s discreet Her eyes search your face and tell you what you already know The previous mayor Tiffany Henyard voted out last winter beneath a cloud of financial probes and federal investigations had a nickname Worst mayor in America Scott smiles tightly The two things you re never supposed to talk about politics and religion have become the only two things that anyone wants to talk about when it comes to Dolton Illinois A homeowner of years looks out over her decorated front yard June across from the Park District in Dolton Brian Cassella Chicago Tribune Dolton police sit June outside the former Prevost family home where Pope Leo XIV grew up on East st Place in Dolton Brian Cassella Chicago Tribune At one time it was just land As late as the s much of that dirt held on to an endemic smell of onion fields Its first residents were Potawatomi and Winnebago Eventually the town was named for the Dolton Family who traveled here from Ohio in a carriage pulled by oxen They settled on this land for reasons a large number of people still settle here They detected Chicago expensive and crowded Dolton suggested opportunity and indeed the railroads arrived fleetly then the corporations Industry was good to Dolton for decades The soil made for perfect bricks The rivers were ideal for shipping Plus Chicago was right there US Steel as well as other factories brought in solid middle-class factory jobs and the railroads attracted employees from Pullman who eventually stayed Residents around the Southland began referring to Dolton as Dolton Station a place so crisscrossed with rail lines that children headed to school could be spotted sitting crosslegged by the tracks doing homework as they waited blocked again by slow-moving trains inching past Dolton for a while turned into the archetype of the th century blue-collar Midwest modest union work affordable bungalows The first movie theater in the south suburbs was built here Churches in particular proliferated as well as the kinds of churchgoers who lecture on street corners about the evils of drinking and dancing while being known to go out drinking themselves every night After Dolton became another kind of Midwest example Corporate globalization slowly snowballing closing its factories taking jobs The property tax base evaporated and real estate speculators bought homes from deserters More of Dolton now rented By the s residents were putting signs in their windows urging neighbors to stay The first Black residents came from Chicago for affordable housing better schools more quiet and less crime A large number of others arrived from the South Cotton s parents moved here from Alabama partly because like the Europeans who had come here a century earlier rural life agreed with them James Stewart partly retired sat in his driveway the other day watching a neighbor curl his body around a lawn mower fine-tuning its innards picking at clumps of fresh grass For years he built sidewalks here he stated He was a cement mason He moved to Dolton years ago from Englewood to avoid gang violence Before that he was in Holly Springs Mississippi home of Ida B Wells the sort of place you can get on a horse and ride for miles He lived on a -acre plantation he calls himself one of the last sharecroppers He longed for that quiet He s so entrenched here now he figures he could be mayor himself He holds no illusions and suffers no doubters Dolton is up down good days bad days like anywhere these days Tony cuts grass at family member s home June across from the Park District in Dolton Brian Cassella Chicago Tribune New Dolton may have come for multiple of the reasons as old Dolton but by the s the land was no longer firm Warehouse jobs were replacing factory jobs Residents became familiar with the hollow optimism of redevelopment and enterprise zones It s hard to hear when the house next door leans so improbably to one side you don t know what s holding it up Against a closed regime office there s a painted sign boasting of Dolton as a certified city a reference to a state advance plan from In it comes across like a reassurance that Dolton still exists Except hope is as easy to spot as decline The way bungalow owners emerge on a bright morning to weed whack away a burst of dandelions The way the library lines its shelves with books about spring and renewal and optimism The way Wilma s Famous BBQ still sells its beloved Obama Juice lemonade tea and raw honey in those small plastic jugs you used to see in the s Hope here can look as modest as the sign at Dolton Bowl promising freshly oiled lanes every day I knocked on the door of a home that considering this is the pope s hometown has an unfortunate street number No one answered That s a win Sometimes you take hope where you can find it A fence closes off the private fishing club at Lake Cottage Grove June in Dolton Brian Cassella Chicago Tribune I demanded Nakita Cloud the village spokesperson about Lake Cottage Grove one of the inadequate sites of natural beauty here It s controlled by a privately owned fishing club named the Piscateers who keep Dolton out using chainlink fence that arrangement once disputed by the village upheld by state courts began in the s She noted the Piscateers in fact just now invited Dolton trustees for a barbecue and though nothing will change about the lake she discovered them hospitable That s what progress can look like Related Articles In a nation growing hostile toward drugs and homelessness Los Angeles tries leniency In current times in History July Live Aid concerts Trump says he s considering taking away Rosie O Donnell s US citizenship Job scams are on the rise and more people are falling for them Protect yourself with these tips Trump announces tariffs against EU Mexico to begin Aug rattling major US trading partners Cloud grew up in Chicago but she pictured Dolton as the goal the quiet suburb to retreat one day There was a period of riff-raff I won t lie she explained but crime s down A better future is not far Dolton hadn t marched in any local parade in years but on Memorial Day when village staff carried a banner in a South Holland parade strangers from neighboring communities stepped off the sidewalks and met them spontaneously in the street hugging them urging them to keep going Hold that image tight Because surprised as everyone was that a new pope came from Dolton again this is exactly the kind of place where popes come from where miracles get communicated and saints grow up Working class ramshackle tight knit borderline rural hoping against hope Remember that the next time someone tells you this new pope is from Chicago He s not not really He s from Dolton a small place where nothing captivating has ever happened and the primary export these days is decency cborrelli chicagotribune com