Today is Abraham Lincoln's birthday, and back when I was a kid attending Fort Dearborn Grammar School in the South Side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago, we got both Lincoln's and Washington's birthday off. I was never crazy about school, and having two days off in February was a major deal for me, as I am sure it was for many others. But these days, even though Lincoln's birthday is a state holiday in Illinois, CPS has the option of celebrating it on Presidents Day instead, and that is what they do. It is no longer a school holiday. If it was me, I would organize walkouts every year until students (not to mention teachers and staff) got that holiday back. But that's just me - a rebel at heart. The photograph above, by the way, which I took back in 2010, the last time I was in Chicago, shows the main entrance to Fort Dearborn. The sign is new (to me), but the rest is all the same. When you walk through that door, the principal's office is just to the right, the auditorium on the left, and the stairway leads to classrooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors, where I spent many a year waiting for June and the end of the school year to come around. Big Jim Thompson, the mayor of Chicago at the time and a lacky for Al Capone, gave a dedication speech when Fort Dearborn first opened. My Grandmother Hoyt was at that ceremony and was outraged that he was intoxicated when making his speech. He left office in 1931 and was the last Republican mayor of Chicago. Thompson has been called the most corrupt mayor in American history, and when he died in 1944, $1.8 million was found in his safe deposit boxes. No surprise there. Capone was a very generous man.
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