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Exploring Hillside Cemeteries with the Mayor
by Suzanne Hanney
“All history ends at the cemetery in terms of real people, who did real things,” Hillside Mayor Joseph T. Tamburino said during his September 30 annual Insider Tour of Mount Carmel and Queen of Heaven cemeteries – the final resting place of not only Chicago cardinals, but of mobsters like Al Capone, Dean O’Banion, Frank Nitti and Anthony Accardo, and even Chicago Police Officer Ella French.
Tamburino is vice president of an Standard & Poor's 500 company and has spent 43 years as mayor of Hillside, the location of both Mount Carmel and Queen of Heaven, Catholic cemeteries at Wolf and Roosevelt Roads near the Eisenhower Expressway. However, his recollections of the cemeteries date to when he was 6 years old. His father and “paisans” (Italian slang for “brother” or “fellow countryman”), as Tamburino called them, worked planting flowers on graves at Mount Carmel, and it was his job as a boy to water them.
Tamburino started giving informal tours to friends about 20 years ago. His executive assistant, Evelyn Belmonte, who is also village event planner, finally suggested that he make them official.
He stresses not only history, but art, religion, and Chicago culture. Mount Carmel and Queen of Heaven have the graves of numerous victims of Chicago tragedies such as the Iroquois Theater Fire, the Eastland Disaster, and most significantly, the Our Lady of the Angels School Fire.
The Iroquois Theater Fire of 1903 killed 602 people after a stage light ignited a stage curtain and people were unable to escape. The Eastland Disaster is Chicago’s greatest loss-oflife catastrophe; 844 people died when an excursion boat for a Western Electric company picnic rolled over in the Chicago River in July 1915.
But the Our Lady of the Angels School Fire of Dec. 1, 1958, which killed 92 children and three nuns, drew murmurs of recollection from people on the trolley tour. A memorial listing the victims’ names and the cemeteries where they are buried is located at a triangular intersection. Several more graves – of children as young as 10 – are situated in front of it, safeguarded by a relief sculpture of the Virgin Mary, flanked by angels. It’s been nearly 65 years, but flowers, prayer cards, a teddy bear and photos decorated one grave on the day of the tour. Many graves were marked by angels that collect sunlight by day and that glow by night.
The fire still elicits emotional posts in social media about Chicago history. I attended kindergarten through high school with the same order of nuns that taught at Our Lady of the Angels. I can still recall the haunted expression of my kindergarten nun touching the walls of our brand-new school building and saying, “It could never happen here.” Our Lady of the Angels had been an old structure, with brick exterior walls but interior walls, stairways and roof made entirely of wood.
By one account, people came home from watching fire rescue efforts, and in their grief, turned off the Christmas lights on their homes. It became too hard for families to see survivors similar in age to their own children, among other constant reminders, and so the fire accelerated the exodus of Italians from that neighborhood to western suburbs like his, Tamburino said afterward. However, the primary reason Italians moved, he and another tour participant said, was that Little Italy and neighboring Greektown were selected in 1961 for the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle campus.
Tamburino said afterward. However, the primary reason Italians moved, he and another tour participant said, was that Little Italy and neighboring Greektown were selected in 1961 for the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle campus.
Rolling along in the trolley, you forget tragedy amid the green lawns, flowers, and funerary art.
The trolley empties so Tamburino can showcase a monument made in Florence for the DiSalvo family: patriarch Angelo (1869-1932), matriarch Rosa (1872-1927) and their welldressed children. The monument rotates so that the grouping will face visitors on either side of the family plot.
The “Italian Bride” is a larger-than-life memorial to Julia Buc-cola Petta. Because Julia died in childbirth, she was buried in her wedding gown, according to Sicilian custom, with her baby under her arm, in 1921. Her mother, Filomena Buccola, continued to have nightmares that she was alive, however, and so after six years, Julia was exhumed.
The baby’s body had decomposed, but Julia’s was perfect –a sign of holiness in Catholicism. As a result, many pregnant women, and women who wish to conceive, are often seen praying at her grave, according to the Images of America book on Mount Carmel and Queen of Heaven cemeteries by Jenny Floro-Khalaf and Cynthia Savaglio (Arcadia 2006).
Some people say that the Italian Bride walks the cemetery at night.
By day, it’s all blue skies and broad green lawns as the sun shines brightly on an obelisk over the grave of North Side gang leader Dean O’Banion; the nearby mausoleum of his best friend, Hymie Weiss; the tomb of Sicilian leader Tony Gemma; the tomb of Unione Siciliana leader Michele Merlo and the family plot and the grave of South Side leader Al Capone and the tombstone of his enforcer, Frank Nitti (Nitto). (see page 11)
By day, it’s all blue skies and broad green lawns as the sun shines brightly on an obelisk over the grave of North Side gang leader Dean O’Banion; the nearby mausoleum of his best friend, Hymie Weiss; the tomb of Sicilian leader Tony Gemma; the tomb of Unione Siciliana leader Michele Merlo and the family plot and the grave of South Side leader Al Capone and the tombstone of his enforcer, Frank Nitti (Nitto). (see page 11)
It’s quiet now, said one mourner at Tony Gemma’s funeral but, “When Judgement Day comes and those graves are opened, there’ll be hell to pay in this cemetery,” according to the Images of America book.
Judgement Day is, in fact, the foremost theme of the Bishop’s Mausoleum, just 100 feet away from O’Banion’s obelisk.
Situated prominently on an elevation of the road leading from Mount Carmel’s main entrance, the Bishop’s Mausoleum was commissioned by Archbishop James Quigley and constructed between 1905 and 1912 in Romanesque Classical style. Atop its dome, an angel blows a horn to announce the Second Coming, and over its door is the Latin inscription, “Resurrecturis: to those who will rise again.”
Inside, the chapel features an altar topped by Christ scaring Roman centurions away from the entrance to his tomb and an inset of mosaic saints representing Chicago’s Slavic, Celtic and German ethnicities. Marble and mosaics give the chapel a Roman look, which is why the archdiocese has closed it except for the Mayor’s Tour: regular tourists had been chipping away at the mosaics as souvenirs.
The crypts on either side hold all Chicago’s archbishops and all its cardinals except George Mundelein and Francis George. Cardinal Mundelein was buried at the priests’ seminary he founded, in his namesake town in 1939. Cardinal George looked at the crypts and said he couldn’t identify with them because he had taken a vow of poverty, Tamburino said. He was buried with his family in All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines in 2015.
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, however, picked the crypt to the left of his immediate predecessor, Cardinal John Cody. “I’ve always been a little bit left of Cody” he remarked, according to a book prepared for the Mayor’s Tour. After his death in 1996, his secretary sometimes said mass in the chapel, Tamburino said.
There had been a Catholic cemetery at North Avenue and Dearborn Streets before the Civil War, just south of the main city cemetery, but in 1866, further burials near the lakefront were prohibited, because of sanitary concerns (bacteria from graves too close to the Lake Michigan drinking water source) and the growing city’s need for the land, according to Pamela Bannos on the Hidden Truths website, hiddentruths.northwestern.edu (StreetWise, Vol. 30 No. 44, Oct. 31-Nov. 6, 2022). It was replaced by Calvary in Evanston (primarily Irish), St. Boniface in Uptown (primarily German) and St. Adalbert in Niles (primarily Polish).
As Chicago's Catholic population grew, Mount Carmel was one of seven cemeteries built between 1885 and 1905. Although it was not restricted to any one ethnic group, it became traditionally associated with the Italian wave of immigration, according to the archdiocesan cemeteries’ website, catholiccemeterieschicago.org
Queen of Heaven, dedicated in 1947 just across Illinois 38 (Roosevelt Road) from Mount Carmel, reflects postwar prosperity, with its Norman Gothic mausoleum for 30,000 people. Tamburino describes it as akin to a hotel: individual alcoves for families with marble-fronted vaults, stained glass windows and seating to allow time for reflection. Famous people entombed here include Celeste Lizio of Mama Celeste Pizza, and Anthony Accardo (1906-1992). According to the Las Vegas Mob Museum, Accardo was one of the last members of Capone’s crew under Paul Ricca. He helped the Outfit make millions while steering it away from activities that had gotten it into trouble and he allegedly took control of Chicago operations when Ricca retired – although he denied mob involvement all the way to his death.
There are also indoor and outdoor spaces for cremation urns, including that of Ella French, the 29-year-old Chicago Police officer who was killed during an August 2021 traffic stop.
Queen of Heaven is now the headquarters of the Chicago archdiocesan cemeteries. Outside its main chapel, genealogists can find a kiosk with names of people in any of them.
Besides sheltering the homeless, burying the dead is one of seven Catholic corporal works of mercy, and so Cardinal George rejected a proposal from what the website termed “death care conglomerates” to manage the archdiocesan cemeteries.
Heading into the third millennium, Cardinal George said, “…it is both wonderful and comforting to know that our Catholic Cemeteries are caring for and will continue to care for the remains of our loved ones awaiting the resurrection.”
Reservations for the 2024 Mayor's Tour of Hillside cemeteries will open next September 1. The $45 cost includes continental breakfast, deli lunch, trolley tour and two books. Send inquiries to ebelmonte@hillside-il.org; Ph 708-202-4343.
