[Oe List ...] UPTOWN con't

[Nancy Lanphear]

Dear Ones,

Isn't it amazing how a topic that touched so many of us can spark such a
list of responses.  We are certainly story animals!  Here's mine!

Until 1980, Fred and I had not lived in Chicago under assignment.  We had
visited both the West Side campus and then in 1972 after participating in
the opening of the Indianapolis house during our intern year, attended the
Summer program in the Kemper building from the Indianapolis House.  Since I
did not know any of our neighbors there, I had no way to know what they
thought of us as we moved in and out of the building so frequently.  Then
of course, following the summer program, we ALL moved out with suitcases,
beds, and every thing else one could think of into all of those big trucks
waiting behind the building in the alley!  I really wondered then who they
thought we were!

We arrived from Nairobi and Kawangware in the summer of 1980, Fred being
sick with malaria and I following along later to find him better but still
weak.  Imagining that we would return to Kenya later that summer, we had
left most of our "stuff"  behind, under out bed over the bar in
Kawangware.  But life had another plan fr us - surprise?  Priscilla Wilson
as part of the assignment commission, decided that Fred and I were called
to  guide, facilitate, join the staff .... of Phase One including the
Student House, EG structures and youth clusters out in the regional
houses.

It was then following a difficult decision on my part to take the Phase one
assignment that we began to understand what it would look like to live in
Uptown!  Although those of us who lived in the Kemper building, 3rd floor
suggested that we be seen as living on the moon! we certainly interacted
with others who lived in the rest of the building in many creative and not
so creative ways!  That is another story!

Our interactions in the neighborhood was mostly through the student house
residents as they told stories of encounters with kids from school and
around Uptown.  However, I do remember Church's Chicken, Siam, The Green
Mill, the El train stop, Joan Arai school, the church, hospital's etc.
And, I do remember driving Metro and leaving Uptown with a crowd of
teenagers in the Sububans for the car-crowded streets of the suburbs to
deliver grocery flyers.  What a time!

One more memory of being in the Kemper building for the first time .... do
you remember?  One evening during the program, someone decided that
whosoever would go over the the West Side and sing hymns.  Joe and Lynn
were there, someone played the piano and we sang for several hours - no
music, just our memories of being raised in a church that sang!  I remember
watching Joe sing!  I can still hear us singing, even now after 41 years!

So much for memories that just seem to spill out of me .....thanks for
sharing yours.

With love and gratitude,

Nancy
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