Joe and Joey Chernis, owners of Midwest Demolition of Springfield

A few weeks ago I read of some interesting plans for the old icehouse at 9th and Edwards by Joseph J. Chernis and his son Joey. The grandson of an immigrant Lithuanian coal-miner who died at age 45 from black lung, Joseph (Joe) is a retired 35-year field service engineer for 3M Company. He is also a Vietnam vet and former Springfield Township Highway Commissioner (1997-2005).

In 2009, he formed Midwest Demolition with his then-27-year-old son Joey, who could operate a backhoe at age 9 and loves managing the company. In less than four years, Midwest has grown to a total of 10 employees, and has performed basically every kind of job requiring heavy equipment, including demolishing multi-story buildings, excavating ponds, pre-construction prep and trucking scrap. For example, Midwest is currently at work on the new Aldi site on Dirksen Parkway.

Other customers in Illinois and beyond have included Norfolk Southern Rail, Mervis Industries, and the City of Springfield. However, there’s something special about Midwest’s icehouse project. This time, it’s not just about demolition. And Joe Chernis, himself, owns the property: four buildings on 1.2 acres that he bought at bank auction in 2009 as the only bidder.

A March 12, 2013 State Journal-Register article described how Joe wants to redevelop the icehouse site, which is just east of the Lincoln Home area, in concert with the 10th St. rail transportation center to be developed nearby. One idea is for a historic Route 66 visitor center and museum. Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau officials agree that it’s a very attractive and strategic location, once private or public funds become available.

Joe’s Lithuanian immigrant grandparents, Joseph and Josephine Chernis, came to Springfield in 1906.They had two children, Joseph, and Margaret. Joe Chernis is the son of Joseph, Jr., deceased. He has three siblings: Marilyn Jean, Cheryl Beth, and John Patrick, and he attended St. Aloysius Grade School and St. James Trade School. His son Joey attended Ursuline Academy and Lanphier High School, followed by a laborers’ training center. According to Joe, demolition is clearly in son Joey’s blood: “Even as a boy, he could tear up an anvil with a rubber mallet. And he has always been fascinated with heavy equipment.”

Another long-time Springfield-area Lithuanian died recently: Irene Kudirka, 85.
Many of us remember Irene and her husband, George A. Kudirka, M.D., of Mason City, from Lithuanian-American Club dinner dances, picnics and Christmas parties in the 1990s and early 2000s. George passed away at age 88 back in October 2011. He was born in Alytus, Lithuania on April 29, 1923, graduated from “Ausros” High School for boys in Kaunas, and earned his M.D. at Tuebingen University in Tuebingen, Germany as a person displaced by World War II.
After emigrating to the United States, George completed his medical internship and residency as a family practitioner in New York City. He was a diplomate and fellow, in good standing, of the American College of Family Physicians for 50 years. He was board-certified and attended annual medical conferences with his wife Irene around the world. George was also a Korean War veteran, serving as a physician with the rank of captain.
Irene (Giedrys) Kudirka, who died last week (March 1, 2013) in California, was born in Kybartas, Lithuania on June 21, 1927. Together with her parents, Andreas and Berta, and older brother, Eugene, Irene moved to Kaunas, Lithuania as a child, where she attended school.
During the Second World War, her father was a prisoner of the occupying Soviets at the Kaunas 9th Fort Prison. After her father was released, the family fled to Germany and ended up living as refugees in the “Haunstetten” displaced persons camp in Augsburg. While still in Germany, Irene graduated from Saint Theresa’s Catholic Girls High School. She emigrated with her parents to Brooklyn, NY in 1949. In 1951, she married George while he was completing his residency, and the couple remained married for 60 years.
In 1951 they settled in Mason City, Illinois, where they resided for 50 years, raising a family of five children; sons George of Tuscaloosa, AL, Tom of Santa Monica, CA, Anthony of Milford, MI, John of Thousand Oaks, CA, and daughter Daina (Kudirka) Shuster of Arcadia, CA. All of George and Irene’s children are college graduates: three sons hold medical degrees; one son, masters degrees in public administration and international business; and daughter Daina, a BS in nursing.
The funeral service for Irene Kudirka in Mason City will be held at Hurley Funeral Home on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. Visitation will be one hour prior to the service beginning at 1:00 p.m. Graveside services will follow at the Mason City Cemetery, where George is also buried.
Both George and Irene were uprooted by war, had their educations and families disrupted, and were forced by circumstances to emigrate at least twice by the age of 25. They were remarkable people with remarkable stories that I hope I can someday post in further detail. For now, we offer our sympathy to George and Irene’s children and grandchildren.

Senator Dick Durbin

Senator Richard J. Durbin isn’t just one of the most powerful—and down-to-earth–political leaders in the United States. He is our #1 claim to fame as Springfield Lithuanian-Americans, and one of Lithuania’s best friends in Washington.

As Assistant Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, he is the second highest-ranking U.S. Senator and only the fifth Illinois Senator in history to serve as a Senate leader. In January, he was appointed Chairman of the Senate’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

Many are familiar with what Senator Durbin has accomplished on U.S. consumer issues like food safety and financial regulation. We in Springfield are grateful for his role in the creation of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Senator Durbin’s ethnic Lithuanian profile is less well-known outside of Central Illinois.

Dick Durbin is the son of Ona Kutkaite (Kutkin–possibly from Kutkis) Durbin, who was born in Jurbarkas, Lithuania in 1909. In 1911, his maternal grandmother and his mother (two years old at the time), aunt and uncle all immigrated to East St. Louis to join grandfather Kutkin.

Lithuanian-language Catholic prayer book

One family artifact that Senator Durbin treasures is the small contraband Lithuanian-language Catholic prayer book printed in Vilnius in 1863, like the one pictured here, that his grandmother carried with her to America.  For more than 40 years, publishing, teaching and speaking in the Lithuanian language were banned by the Czarist Russian rulers of Lithuania.

Senator Durbin explained:  “My grandmother, as defiant as she was, had this prayer book and she wasn’t going to surrender it—and she brought it with her to this country. That said something about her, but it also said something about America that she knew when she came here, her right to practice her religion would always be protected.”

Senator Durbin’s parents Ona and William were railroad employees in East St. Louis.  After finishing grade school and high school there, Dick earned a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1966 and a J.D. from Georgetown’s School of Law in 1969. While in D.C., he got his first taste of national politics interning in the office of Senator Paul Douglas (D-IL).

Dick moved to Springfield as a new lawyer with a young family in 1969 for his first job: legal counsel to Lieutenant Governor Paul Simon.  From 1972-1982, he was counsel to the Illinois State Senate Judiciary Committee.  He won his first election—to the U.S. House of Representatives–in 1982.  Though he commutes between Illinois and Washington, his primary residence has been in Springfield since 1969.

The young Durbin family’s rented house on S. State St. across from Southside Christian Church.

That means many here have crossed paths, over the years, with Dick and his wife Loretta and their three children:  Christine (deceased in 2008), Paul and Jennifer. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, my family lived one block south of the Durbins on S. State St. (in Blessed Sacrament Parish), and my older sister Terry, a teenager at the time, was called on to babysit the young Durbin children.

When visiting from out of town, I remember putting up yard signs for one of his House campaigns in 1984 or 1986.  Next came the “Singing Revolution,” when Dick was a great partner in the U.S. Congress for the many local Lithuanian-Americans lobbying for Lithuanian independence from the Soviet Union.

In the spring of 1990, after small and embattled Lithuania declared the re-establishment of its sovereignty, then-U.S. Rep. Durbin stood on the steps of the Cathedral with several hundred fellow Springfield Lithuanian-Americans to rally U.S. support.  I remember seeing a note from Dick to my family on embossed House stationery admiring “the fire in your father’s eyes” during the demonstration.  (Our 70-ish father was a World War II “displaced person” who had arrived from Lithuania in 1949.)

Rep. Durbin also was a founder and leader of the Congressional Baltic Caucus and wrote/sponsored several important resolutions in support of Lithuania before and after independence came in 1991. After he became a U.S. Senator in 1996, Dick was key to founding the Senate’s Baltic caucus and continued to assist Lithuania over the years, most significantly with its entry into NATO.

In 2012 he made a personal donation to the new “Lithuanians in Springfield” historical marker in Enos Park.

For more info about Senator Durbin’s life and times in Springfield: http://www.springfieldsown.com/features/cover-story/464/home-where-your-heart

See him holding up his grandmother’s prayer book during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: <a href=”http://durbin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/photos?ID=25c04e26-c04b-498c-ae8b-32195b462255

Here he is visiting Lithuania in January 2011, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Soviet massacre at the Vilnius TV tower:  http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-8287-durbin-commemorates-bloody-sunday-in-lithuania.html

See this link for Senator Durbin’s brief political biography. http://durbin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/about

A warm thank-you to the Senator’s D.C. aide Christina (Norkus) Mulka, a fellow Lithuanian-American, who assisted with this information.