A little out-of-date, but still a great story

Hellooo? Is anyone still reading this?

If so, I want to share a terrific article I read in the Chicago Tribune over the weekend. The article is actually from 2001. My dad found it while going through the piles of papers my grandmother left behind when she died (she was a saver). We're not sure if she saved the article because she had some connection with the man in it, or if she just really like the article. It's good enough that it could be the ladder.


BELOVED VALET EXUDED JOY, TOTED A SECRET
Chicago Tribune March 4, 2001 Sunday
Copyright 2001 Chicago Tribune Company Chicago Tribune
March 4, 2001 Sunday
CHICAGOLAND FINAL EDITION
SECTION: METRO CHICAGO; ZONE: C; Pg. 1LENGTH: 1587 words
HEADLINE: BELOVED VALET EXUDED JOY, TOTED A SECRET
BYLINE: By Kirsten Scharnberg, Tribune Staff Writer

BODY:In two grubby, bulging shopping bags Ernie Harris carried a mystery.
For more than 30 years, the parking garage attendant lugged the bags from his humble house in the south suburbs to the bus stop to the succession of city buses that transported him five days a week to the North Lake Shore Drive high-rise where he parked Mercedes-Benzes and Jaguars and Volkswagen Passats as happily as if he owned them himself.
The bags would be from Marshall Field's or Filene's Basement or any number of little stores without household names, and Harris would carry them until the plastic wore out before transferring the bulky contents--though it seems nobody in the building knew what those contents were--into two new bags that would be toted until they, too, started to fall apart.
Up until Feb. 23, the day Harris was murdered and the first day he ever failed to show up for work as scheduled, the gaunt, disheveled man always arrived at the Hawthorne House apartment building early, up to three hours before his 3 to 11 p.m. shift.
He almost always stayed late, sometimes sleeping in the garage overnight, hunched in a padded old chair next to his plastic bags.
"He was this building's unofficial ambassador," said Hawthorne House owner Scott Ross, "and that was something he took upon himself and took more seriously than you can even imagine."
In an impersonal high-rise in an intimidating city where people can go for weeks without bumping into someone they know on the streets, there was something comforting and familial about walking out to the garage each day to be greeted by a boisterous parking attendant who not only remembered your name but your husband's name and your children's names and your visitors' names.
Ask any of the thousands of people who have lived in the 400-apartment high-rise over the years, and they'll tell you Harris considered chit-chatting with them as much a part of his job as parking their cars.
"Beautiful day, beautiful day," he would mutter, day in and day out, sometimes to no one in particular, like a broken record completely oblivious to skin-stinging sleet or 10 inches of snow or bitter Chicago cold.
"One more day," he reminded residents every Thursday as they got into their cars and headed off to work. "One more day till your weekend."
And on Fridays, without fail: "TGIF, folks, TGIF."
Make no mistake, 48-year-old Earnest H. Harris was an eccentric. Even after a shower was installed for his use, he didn't often take advantage of it and usually left a strong reminder of his presence in any car he had just parked or retrieved.
Unlike the rest of the parking attendants, his white shirt was never crisply starched or tucked in, his black bow tie was always slightly askew, his hair was a fright of unruly curls.
The Pine Bluff, Ark., native seemed to have a near-photographic memory and a keen interest in other people's business and it wasn't uncommon for him to raise an eyebrow in knowing disapproval if a resident pulled into the garage with someone who wasn't that person's spouse or steady sweetheart.
"He was the kindest, goofiest, most happy-go-lucky person I've ever met," said Caryl Dillon, who has lived in the building, at 3450 N. Lake Shore Drive, for more than a year. "He knew everyone by name, and I mean everyone. The first day I parked in that garage just to look at an apartment here, he immediately said, 'Hi. I'm Ernie. What's your name?' I told him my name and said I was only considering renting an apartment here, and he said, 'Well, we sure would love to have you join us.' And then, when I moved in almost a month later, he walked right up to me and said, 'Hi Caryl. You took the apartment.'"
So because Harris treated them differently, the residents treated him differently right back. When they went out to eat, they either brought him their leftovers or a carry-out dinner they'd ordered just for him.
They tipped him at least a couple times a week, even though they only contributed to a "holiday-tip fund" for the rest of the guys who worked in the garage.
If people saw Harris shopping with his family somewhere in Chicago, they'd shout, "Hey, Ernie," across the department store.
When Lidia Wolin's son moved into the building during college, the overprotective mother pulled Harris aside and asked him to watch out for her boy and to call her if anything seemed amiss.
"Don't worry, Miss Lidia," he'd say when he saw her. "Everything's going just fine."
Knowing all this, understanding just who Ernie Harris was and how a whole apartment building came to love him, will explain why everyone noticed when he didn't show up for work Feb. 23. He was scheduled for 3 p.m., but since Harris usually came early, the guys in the garage were starting to worry by about 1:30.
"Where's Ernie?" countless people asked when they got home from work in the afternoon. By then it was nearly 5:30, and Francisco Lerma, another parking attendant who had come to think of Harris as a brother, didn't know what to tell them; he felt sick to his stomach.
About 5:35, the phone in the garage rang, and Lerma answered it.
"Ernie won't be coming in," Harris' wife, Barbara, told him.
"Why not?" Lerma asked."He's dead."
Still too shocked to even cry while telling the story, Barbara Harris relayed to the Hawthorne House parking garage what the Chicago police officers had just told her:Harris, who just a month before had purchased a 1987 Hyundai for about $600 so he didn't have to take the nearly 2-hour bus ride to work, had been at a stop sign in the 2000 block of West 65th Street.
He was headed to work after dropping off a nephew he had been baby-sitting when two young men approached his car, threw open both front doors and shot him once in the face.
The young men ran away, not even bothering to take Harris' wallet or steal the car, after a bunch of children outside a nearby public school started screaming for help.
Harris died immediately, his face on the street's bloody pavement, his feet still in the car.
Less than two blocks away in the high-crime neighborhood, a hand-painted sign tacked to a tree beseeched, "Stop the black-on-black violence. It's got to stop."
Last week, two 15-year-olds, Rasson Davis and Gregory Brown, were charged as adults with first-degree murder and aggravated vehicular hijacking on Wednesday morning.
Judge Neil Linehan set bond at $500,000 for Brown, who is accused of being the gunman, and $400,000 for Davis after Assistant State's Atty.
Maureen Lynch told the judge that one of the two told police they wanted Harris' car for a planned drive-by shooting.
After word of the killing made its way to the high-rise, the guys in the parking garage handed a printed announcement to residents as they pulled into the garage that night.
"It is with deep regret and extraordinary sadness," the one-paragraph statement began. "Earnest was murdered Friday afternoon ... "
The garage manager, Steve Barakat, removed Harris' Polaroid picture from the center of a bulletin board introducing all the parking attendants.
He blew the picture up--in it, Harris' shirt is wrinkled and untucked, his hair is jutting in a dozen directions, his bow tie is hopelessly crooked.
Barakat posted the photo near the garage entrance next to a sign that reads, "Take a minute to ponder the silence of our garage."
On the garage's work schedule which hung nearby, five words were typed into the five days Harris was supposed to work the following week: "He will not be forgotten."
Within hours, the building's residents had created a makeshift memorial of flowers and cards in Hawthorne House's lobby.
"Thank you, God, for sharing Ernie with us," one card read.
Two days later, on Sunday night, Barbara Harris and the couple's son, Earnest Jr., drove from their Markham home to the 40-story building where Harris had parked cars all those years. Wife and son had simply planned on cleaning out Harris' locker--it turned out he kept next to nothing in it, choosing instead to keep his two bags near the sturdy, wooden chair where he always sat between parking cars--but they ended up staying at Hawthorne House apartments for hours.
Hundreds of residents lined up in the building's comfortable lobby, wanting to offer their condolences and kind words.
Since then, the building's residents have established a trust fund they hope will pay the remainder of Earnest Jr.'s college education.
The 20-year-old is a freshman at Kishwaukee College in DeKalb.Harris also has a second son, Robert Jackson, who is 27 and lives in Chicago.
It was while the residents chatted with Harris' wife and youngest son on Sunday night that someone finally asked the question. What about those bags? What had been in them all these years?
Everyone had their guesses: Maybe Harris was rich, and the bags were filled with money. Maybe he really had been homeless and they were filled with his only possessions.
Barbara Harris, a quiet woman who calls Ernie "the best husband and father a woman could ask for," and Earnest Jr., an effusive young man who has his father's quick smile, got a kick out of the questions.
Those plastic bags--and several more just like them out in the family's garage--had never been a mystery to this family who knew how much Earnest Harris loved his job and the people he met there.
The bags were filled with cards and letters from the hundreds of Hawthorne House residents who had taken time over the years to jot down a heartfelt "thank you" to the bedraggled little man who parked their cars and never failed to remind them to have a "beautiful day, beautiful day."

GRAPHIC: PHOTOS 3PHOTO (color): Residents of a Lake Shore Drive high-rise knew valet Ernie Harris was special, but after a tragedy, they found another reason why.PHOTO (color): Barbara Harris, who called Ernie "the best husband and father a woman could ask for," said he loved his job. Tribune photo by Candice C. Cusic.PHOTO: The garage of Hawthorne House, 3450 N. Lake Shore Drive, is quieter now that longtime valet Ernie Harris is gone. Tribune photo by Candice C. Cusic. (Chicagoland edition, Metro Chicago section, Page 2.)LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2001