He excelled at debate at Lakeview High School, went on to graduate from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1901, and by 1917 he was selling stock in the Bayano River Syndicate that purportedly owned 5 million acres in Panama that were gushing with oil. Born to Jewish parents in what is now the Czech Republic, Koretz was brought to Chicago as a small child. What people didn't know at the time was that Koretz was a con man who had bilked naive investors to the tune of at least $2 million through a Ponzi scheme. He entertained royally, belonged to tony private clubs, had a box at the opera and drove a Rolls-Royce. Leo Koretz projected himself as wealthy almost beyond imagination. He was clad in a bathrobe and casually smoking as he shared his story: A long-time Oak Park resident before entering the hospital, the 92-year-old Kievan had fought in the Civil War. John Lowder was gassed during the war and had vainly hoped that working in the open on an Illinois farm would cure him. Since then he’d repeatedly been hospitalized. Stafford was a Chicago police officer before the war. Diel was in a wheelchair, having lost his legs. But crippled by arthritis triggered by exposure in the trenches of France, he’d been in Hines Hospital for eight years. Rodgers returned to work after the war at a bank in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It has cared for those whose suffering ensured that America would remain a land of the free and the home of the brave.Ī 1939 list of patients names should be read slowly, pausing after each entry, as if it was poetry, to fully appreciate the veterans’ sacrifices: Veterans Hospital marks its 100th birthday. He incessantly campaigned for the medical facility to remain open, and on Oct, 24, 2021, the Edward Hines Jr.

Government officials thought it would no longer be needed after the war, but Hines, a wealthy lumber merchant, knew that wounds don’t disappear when battle flags are folded. government was deciding what to do with a small hospital west of Chicago that had served as an Army medical center. wanted a memorial to his son and namesake who was killed in World War I.

Italian magazines in chicago