Obama Foundation adds Chicago native Deval Patrick to board

While Obama moved to Chicago after college, Patrick is a real South Sider in the sense that his roots are here, growing up in poverty far more dramatic than any Obama experienced. Patrick was born July 31, 1956, in an apartment on 79th and Calumet, swaddled and placed in a turkey pan and placed in an oven — the door left open — to keep him warm, he told me. His mother, Emily, was forced to move in with her parents in a flat at 54th and Wabash after his father, known as Pat, a sax player, left the family for New York when Patrick was 5. Patrick’s grandfather was a janitor at the old South Shore Bank, at 71st and Jeffrey. Growing up on the South Side, I had no concept of the North Side, Patrick told me. In the ’50s and the ’60s, the South Side was for us. In our family, we went downtown once a year usually before the start of the school year mostly to do clothes shopping at the State Street Sears and for the occasional movie. He worshiped at the Cosmopolitan Community Church at 53rd and Wabash. He attended the Mary C. Terrell School at the Robert Taylor Homes through sixth grade, then the DuSable Upper Grade Center where he was hassled by gang members outside of school. At DuSable UGC, a teacher, Darla Weissenberg, saw his promise and told him about a program — called A Better Chance — that could show him another world. He wound up at an exclusive prep school, Milton Academy outside of Boston, and on a path leading to Harvard, Harvard Law, away from the South Side of Chicago.