[Ike Bana]

It's a long story...I may have already posted already but here it is again ...the blonde was an elementary school teacher on Chicago's west side in 1968. She was 22 years old. Just before lunch on April 5th the Chicago rioting broke out. It took a coupe of hours before instructions came down that school was to be evacuated. She hopped into our Opel Kadett, and the clutch cable snapped just a block from the school, as she was about to turn on to the entrance ramp to the Eisenhower Expy. Right in front of a little service station. Three old black fellas (probably the age I am now) saw her standing terrified next to the car. They came over, pushed the car into the station and hid her in the restroom until one of her colleagues, one of the last out of the school, picked her up. This was right in the middle of the worst of it, buldings already on fire, people being pulled out of their cars and assaulted, gunfire...these guys may very well have saved her life. And they apologized for what was going on in their neighborhood and for how terrified she was. She said they were absolutely dismayed at what was happening all around them. Just incredible as their neighborhood was being decimated. They installed a new cable, and a few days later when we went to pick up the car they refused to take any money. I asked to use the restroom and left a couple of 20's on the desk, and we took off. The national guard was still at every exit and entrance up and down I-290 there on the west side.

Just our little piece of history from the days after Dr. King was shot.