Mitchell Indiana Weather News

Changing Chatham: Next generation fights for the future

The crowd gathered at Cole Park in Chatham wasn’t much larger than the group of young men who were shooting hoops.

Named after Nat King Cole, the park at 85th and King Drive is surrounded by many of the eye-catching homes built by black people in Chatham in the late ’50s. On this chilly and wet Sunday afternoon, people had come together there for a peace rally prompted by a gang shooting nearby, on 79th Street.

“It was like ‘New Jack City,’ ” the Rev. Marc Robertson told the crowd.

Once, Cole Park was symbolic of the pride Chathamites took in their neighborhood. Now, as Robertson tried to stir the crowd to action, a group of teenage girls hung out on benches defaced with obscene graffiti.

The park is where Thomas Wortham IV played as a child. It’s where he worked as a volunteer until the day last summer he was gunned down by attackers who wanted his motorcycle.

“He understood there were challenges, but he wanted the community — the park, in particular — to be a safe place to play, the way it was when he was younger,” says his mother, Carolyn Wortham, who joined in the prayer vigil.

I listened in awe. Having endured the worst catastrophe a mother can face, Wortham is still working to save Chatham for a future generation. Nobody would have faulted her and her husband if they had packed up and left Chatham behind. But there they were. In the crowd. Standing shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors. Just like their son would have been.

“Before his death, Tommy was looking for a home in the area,” Carolyn Wortham says.

Now, her daughter, Sandra, also plans to live in Chatham.

“You can’t run from situations,” Wortham says.

She doesn’t blame the community for her son’s death. She blames individuals who made bad choices.

“The community did not kill my son. Poor choices killed my son. We’ve got to make sure, as we raise our children, we make them understand how to make responsible choices.”

★★★★

Times are definitely tough for Chatham. And they’re not likely to improve any time soon, says William A. Sampson, a DePaul University sociologist who has spent most of his career studying the black middle class.

Fronius Plans for New U.S. HQ, Portage, Ind.

Fronius, a developer and manufacturers of battery charging systems, welding technology and solar electronics has announced plans to launch its U.S. headquarters in Portage, Ind. in the third quarter of 2012. Indiana Governor Mitchell E. Daniels and Portage Mayor Olga G. Velazquez joined Fronius executives, employees and other dignitaries in Northwest Indiana at a ceremony on June 23, 2011 of the future site of the Fronius U.S. headquarters.

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