Grand Opening, McDonald’s, 1825 S.MacArthur, 1961. John Mack, Sr. at far right.

According to his sister-in-law Dorothy, Lithuanian immigrant John Makarauskas changed his name to John Mack 16 years before he opened the first McDonald’s restaurant in Springfield. Back then, John, Sr. had no way of knowing he would be the man responsible for bringing Mack-fries, Mack-cheeseburgers and Big “Macks” to Springfield, along with some of the city’s prime teen hangouts.

His first two McDonald’s across from the Allis Chalmers main gate (1957) and on South MacArthur Blvd. north of Ash St. (1961) were drive-up and open-air– without eat-in capacity–and with golden arches built right into either end of the red-and-white tile buildings. Because customers back then were expected to eat in their cars, the McDonald’s parking lots were much more extensive than the restaurants.

According to Glenn Manning, in the 1960s and ‘70s, hot rods would scoop a fast-food loop bracketed on either end by one of these first two McDonald’s. The loop ran north from the MacArthur drive-up, then east on South Grand Ave. to a Top’s Big Boy car-hop restaurant on or near Fifth St., then down Fifth St. (one way) until Fifth ran together with Sixth to the Sixth St. McDonald’s, before turning and heading back north on Sixth St. to South Grand.

In the early years, all the burgers, fries and buns were fresh and sourced locally. According to John, Sr.’s daughter Mary Ann (Mack) Butts, her father had a ground-beef patty-making machine made specially in St. Louis so he could keep his long-time Keys Ave. grocery store employee Frances Trello busy churning out fresh patties for his new McDonald’s franchises. Corporate dictated the lean and fat content of each patty, along with the recipe followed by a local contract bakery that delivered fresh-baked buns daily.

Son Jim Mack recalls that the potatoes came in 100-pound bags on a rail car. They were peeled with the help of a peeling machine, then sliced by hand into fries–and after being washed and rinsed a total of three times– blanched at low heat till they were finally ready to be deep-fried.

The McDonald’s Drive-in Little League Team poses in front of the chain’s first franchise in Springfield on South Sixth Street in 1961. Source: Illinois State Journal, April 27, 1999.

The soft ice cream for shakes was sourced locally, but the shake flavor mixes came from headquarters. John, Sr. reportedly used to joke that they were created in a lab by Gary Butts, daughter Mary Ann’s husband, who had been a chemist (and was sometimes seen tutoring teen employees with their chemistry books).

Many of John Mack, Sr.’s kids and grandkids worked in the family business, including son John, Jr. and daughter JoAnn (Mack) Shaughnessy’s husband and their daughter Debbie (Shaughnessy) Blazis. The magic starting age for most of the Mack kids seemed to be 15 – -one year older than John, Sr. was when he followed his father Stanley into the coal mines in 1926. Son Jim Mack remembers starting at age 13 at minimum wage, which was around 75 cents an hour.

Two minimum-wage teen employees who went on to become famous in Springfield were Dick Levi (Levi, Ray & Shoup), whom Jim Mack remembers training at the cash counter at the Sixth St. store, and Wes Barr, currently a candidate for Sangamon County Sheriff.

John, Sr. was a bigger-than-life personality who “would light up the place” when he visited one of his franchises to sit down and enjoy a burger, according to Don Gietl, who worked at a “Mack McDonald’s” just like brothers Jim, Charlie, and Terry.

McDonald’s 2849 S 6th after eat-in space was added

John, Sr. had opened three McDonald’s by the time he died at age 61 in 1974. His widow Mary and sons Tom and Jim and daughter Mary Ann and her husband Gary Butts went on to open five more locations in Springfield, usually as what the family considered a superior option to having corporate open competing new locations by bringing in a non-Mack franchisee. Not all of the new locations that corporate wanted were profitable, and Jim Mack remembers that growing the business took a heavy toll on the family over the years. But at least if a new location cannibalized existing business, the business “gained” from a Mack would still belong to a Mack.

John, Sr., had borrowed $100,000 from Illinois National Bank to get started on S. Sixth St.–a fortune at the time. However, Jim reports that the capital stakes rose dramatically with each new restaurant, especially as they became larger sit-down facilities, so that all the borrowed capital was not paid back to lender INB until the family sold all eight of their Springfield franchises and totally exited the business on Jan. 1, 1989.

John, Sr. had a right-hand man, Pat Murphy, who secured the first McDonald’s franchise in Jacksonville, which Pat intended to be operated by his son, who died tragically, leading to the sale of that restaurant, as well. The complete list of “Mack McDonald’s” included stores on: Sixth St., MacArthur Blvd., West Jefferson, Old State Capitol Plaza (Fifth & Adams), Capital City Shopping Center, White Oaks Mall, Chatham Road, Ninth & North Grand.

1975 artist’s rendering of John Mack, Sr. photo placed inside his McDonald’s restaurants in memoriam

The local Ronald McDonald House at Ninth and Carpenter was created as a result of a Mack family tragedy—the death from brain cancer of Dorothy and Frank Makarauskas’s 18-year-old son Robert. Robert was Mary and John Mack, Sr.’s nephew. After Mary visited a Ronald McDonald house in New York City, where young Robert was being treated, she dedicated herself to donating and raising the funds necessary to make it a reality in Springfield. The Mack McDonalds also sponsored many fundraisers and gave generously to Goodwill, among other local charities.

This post is dedicated to the memories of Mary (Gidus) and John Mack, Sr.;  John and Mary’s children JoAnn (Mack) Shaughnessy and John Mack, Jr.; and John, Sr.’s brother Frank Makarauskas and Frank and Dorothy’s son Robert. 

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.

Springfield “Celebrity Citizen”

Brad Turasky

Brad Turasky, vice president of Turasky Meats, was named a “Celebrity Citizen” of Springfield Friday, Feb. 8, in a ceremony at the Governor’s Mansion.

A third-generation owner in the Turasky family meat-processing business, Brad was honored for his successful volunteer work in bringing the 2015 American Association of Meat Processors convention, with its 1,200 to 1,500 members, to the Prairie Capital Convention Center and Hilton Springfield. (According to the Feb. 9, 2013 State Journal-Register.)

A fourth-generation Springfield Lithuanian-American, Brad is the son of Joe and Carolyn Ann Turasky, and the great-grandson of the late Joseph Turasky, born in Lithuania in 1881. Related post.

Newest Lady Buckeye

Vanesa Abad

I also just learned from Violeta Abramikas Abad, who grew up in Springfield attending St. Vincent de Paul Lithuanian Catholic Church, that her grand-daughter Vanesa Abad has been named to the 2013 rookie class of the Ohio State University Lady Buckeyes women’s soccer team.  News story here.

Vanesa is a midfielder who hails from Barrington, Ill, though she recently visited Springfield and her great aunt, Regina Abramikas Buedel, with her grandmother, Violeta.

A senior at Lake Zurich High School, Vanesa has had three years of club experience with Sockers FC and lettered in soccer all four years at Lake Zurich. She is a four-year member of the ODP Illinois state team and Region II pool, a two-time all-sectional, all-area and all-conference pick from Lake Zurich.  Vanesa also has been captain of her Lake Zurich team for two years, and tallied 31 goals and 26 assists over her first three high school seasons.

An all-around, multi-talented athlete, Vanesa also lettered in basketball and cross country.

The daughter of Michael and Ana Sanchez Abad, Vanesa enjoys snowboarding, camping, running and spending time with family and friends. She has two sisters, Catalina and Sophia. Her great grand-parents, Walter and Stephanie Abramikas, immigrated to Springfield as displaced persons after World War II.  Walter’s brother Vincent Abramikas and his family also lived in Springfield for several years after World War II before moving to Chicago.