Street Honoring Late Activist Helen J. Mikols Disappeared With Midway Airport Renovation; Family Is Fighting To Get Honor Back Amid Broken Promises
CHICAGO (CBS) -- All a suburban man wants for Christmas is to get his family's street back.
More specifically, Robert Mikols wants Chicago to find a new place named after his aunt. The passenger pickup and dropoff lane at Midway International Airport used to be named Helen J. Mikols Drive – but when Midway Airport was renovated, the street name disappeared.
And CBS 2 Political Investigator Dana Kozlov has found that Robert Mikols' decades-long fight has involved a lot of broken promises by the city.
Robert Mikols held up a Chicago street sign bearing his aunt's name – and said the honor made him proud and happy. But those emotions tend to evaporate when he thinks about how the city did his family wrong.
"It was not right for the city to take it away and do nothing about it," he said.
Helen Mikols was a Southwest Side 23rd Ward activist in the 1960s and 70s. In 1984, after she died of cancer, Mayor Harold Washington signed a city resolution changing the name of Midway Airport Drive to Helen J. Mikols Drive.
This was not an honorary street name with a secondary brown sign, but an actual renamed street with new official green signs. Robert Mikols remembers the dedication ceremony fondly.
But when the city reconfigured Midway 15 years later, Helen J. Mikols Drive was wiped off the map. The reconfiguration of the airport with a new terminal that straddles Cicero Avenue meant the removal of the old pickup and dropoff lane that bore Ms. Mikols' name, and her name did not go on the new one.
"It hurt when they took it away," said Robert Mikols. "It really did."
In a 1999 letter, then U.S. Rep. Bill Lipinski (D-Chicago) stated that he and Midway Airport Deputy Commissioner Erin O'Donnell to replace the honor. That promise was broken.
"That's the Chicago way," said Robert Mikols.
The new Midway Terminal Building was completed in 2001. Once the new Midway was operational, Mikols began reaching out to the city and elected officials again – asking when and if they could find a new place for his aunt's street somewhere in the area.
He said one elected official indicated it might happen if the official in question got something in return.
"'Hey, you know, grease my palm a little bit - we'll make sure.' I says, 'OK,'" Mikols said. "So I told my uncle that, and Joe says: 'No, no way we're giving him money, because Helen would come out of her grave and kick my ass."
Now, Mikols is renewing his fight as a matter of principle.
"There's got to be somewhere," he said.
The city is looking into the matter.