A town’s pride

In the same way that Lori Lightfoot will never quite be a Chicagoan to some, having had the bum luck to be born and raised a few states away, her hometown will not stop claiming her as a Massillonian.

Here in this tough old steel town, she’s still the daughter of Ann Lightfoot, remembered as bright, motivated, hard-working, easy to get along with, popular across cliques.

A joiner of school activities: a trumpeter in the Tiger Swing Band, a singer in the choir, a regular, like many of the other 32,000 of them at Friday night high school football games and the Burger Chef. A finalist for Miss Massillonian 1980 though robbed of the senior year honor.

Class president three times though she was, as an African American, in the minority at Washington High School.

A born leader, according to her former classmates, family friends, and her 90-year-old mother.

“She is the one that usually states what is and what isn’t,” says Ann Lightfoot, proud mother of the mayor-elect.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

“Lori is Lori,” says Margaret Guleff, Ann Lightfoot’s longtime best friend. “I mean, if you cross Lori, that’s just the way it is. Don’t cross her.”

When Lori Lightfoot, 56, is sworn in on May 20, she becomes Chicago’s first elected mayor since Anton Cermak born outside the city’s limits, a fact that has tickled her fellow Massillonians as the word has spread of her victory.

”She had a lot of things against her, meaning being gay, being married, being an outsider, being a woman, you know, being black,” says Bill Weaver, (Washington High School, Class of 1975) who owns a snack shop downtown, The Sugar Bowl, along with his husband. “A lot of the things against her, and she beat ’em all. Isn’t that wonderful?”

For the most part, few in this small northeastern Ohio city home to fewer people than a single Chicago ward knew the details of her successes once she moved away — skipping the chapters after she came out as a lesbian, became a powerful lawyer, married a woman, adopted a child, and tackled police reform before challenging the mayor who’d appointed her.

Nor has Chicago had much time to get to know the political neophyte who never held elected office before she swept all 50 Chicago wards in a heated and historic election to also become the first black woman, the first openly gay person to occupy the mayor’s fifth floor office.

Back at home, Lori Lightfoot (Class of ’80) likely won’t ever be as famous or beloved as the Massillon Tigers football team, or its striped, leather-helmeted mascot, Obie, whose image is plastered ubiquitously on the side of a liquor store, door of the burger joint, facade of the lone Italian restaurant, mailboxes and address placards, keychains manufactured at the high school, front lawns, house windows, and carpet of the high school’s main office that overlooks the plaque where Lori Lightfoot and a few dozen other native daughters and sons are enshrined as Distinguished Citizens of Massillon.

Still — and particularly with football on hiatus — she’s the talk of the town.

On April 3, the morning after she won by a nearly three-to-one margin, Lori Lightfoot became part of the lesson plans at her high school. Massillon’s library, set in a turn-of-the-century domed building, unearthed her yearbook portraits so they’d be out on the ready; the city’s historical museum flagged photos from the places that shaped her.

People chattered about her at The Sugar Bowl and Massillon City Hall, at the Menches Brothers diner, inside the Bladez Barber & Beauty where, in the back, Lightfoot’s mother gets her regular wash-and-set.

Lori Lightfoot’s new job “brings a lot of shine to Massillon ’cause that’s all we’re known for is football,” says barber Reko Harris (Class of ’10). “Now that we got a mayor, it actually shows people that we’re actually striving to be better and do better in life, you know?”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

‘A small town, but it’s a tough town’

Massillon’s 19 square miles of land and water sit about an hour south of Cleveland, in a gently hilly part of Ohio.

Most local folks see Massillon as a high school football powerhouse, but snack shop owner Weaver describes it as “just a hometown, where everybody knows everybody, everybody takes care of everybody, and everybody looks out for everybody, everybody looks out for everybody else’s kids, every other mother is your mother because they will all yell at you if you’re doing something wrong — and they’ll call your mother.”

“It’s either a town that you love or you hate, you know. People that move away hate it because it’s small town.”

Lori Lightfoot was blunt when asked earlier this year what Massillon’s like: “Frankly, it was a pretty segregated town. Still is. The opportunities for me weren’t really going to be many. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my town. I did. I enjoyed growing up there very much.

“It never occurred to me that I was going to stay there, and that’s where my life was going to be.”

By the time Lori Lightfoot left in 1980 for college in Michigan, then to jobs on Capitol Hill, then to the University of Chicago Law School here where she’d ultimately settle, Massillon’s economic heyday was in the rear view mirror, though its population has held steady.

Those boom days revolved around the steel industry, whose meaty working-class jobs in the mills attracted immigrants from Eastern Europe and African Americans such as her father, Elijah Lightfoot, and her mother’s brother, up from the Jim Crow South. (Ann Lightfoot can count her Alabama family’s generations back to slavery.)

From the lower level of the Massillon Museum (where, naturally, Elijah Lightfoot worked for a time), local historian Margy Vogt (Class of ’67) sums up its history:

The city was founded in 1826, when it was named for a French Catholic bishop Jean-Baptiste Massillon, who preached at Versailles under the resplendent Louis XIV and gave a bracing sermon at the Sun King’s funeral.

Ann Lightfoot, 90, Lori Lightfoot’s mother, chats with Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lauren FitzPatrick in the parking lot for St. James AME Zion Church in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A view of Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A family walks near a Massillon Tiger Football mural along Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Washington High School’s Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, 1 Paul E. Brown Dr. SE, in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The Steve Studer Weight Room for Washington High School’s Tiger football team and other athletics in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Flags and memorials line the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Viaduct in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A man fishes in the Tuscarawas River near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Viaduct in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Washington High School’s Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, 1 Paul E. Brown Dr. SE, in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The plaque where Lori Lightfoot is enshrined as one of the Distinguished Citizens of Massillon near the lobby of Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Massillon Tiger Football’s mascot Obie can be spotted everywhere in Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Ann Lightfoot, 90, Lori Lightfoot’s mother, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at St. James AME Zion Church in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Ann Lightfoot, 90, Lori Lightfoot’s mother, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at St. James AME Zion Church in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Lions Lincoln Theatre, 156 Lincoln Way E, in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Smiley’s Ristorante & Pizzeria, 27 Lincoln Way E, in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The Lightfoot family church, St. James AME Zion Church, 209 2nd St. SW, in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The Lightfoot family home in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Elijah Lightfoot, Lori Lightfoot’s father, is buried next to Ann Lightfoot’s mother and brother, Lori’s grandmother and uncle, respectively, at Oakwood Cemetery in Massillon, Ohio. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Elijah Lightfoot, Lori Lightfoot’s father, is buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Massillon, Ohio. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A view of Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A vacant industrial building for rent in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A Massillon Tiger Football mural along Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A portrait of Lori Lightfoot hangs on the chalkboard as David Lee Morgan Jr. teaches his journalism class at Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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David Lee Morgan Jr. teaches his journalism class at Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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David Lee Morgan Jr., a journalism teacher at Washington High School, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times in his classroom in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Washington High School’s Paul Brown Tiger Stadium, 1 Paul E. Brown Dr. SE, in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The indoor practice facility for Washington High School’s Tiger football team in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Massillon Tiger Football’s mascot Obie can be spotted everywhere in Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Margy Vogt, a local historian and public relations coordinator at Massillon Museum, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at the museum in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A view of Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A view of St. Mary’s Church of Massillon off 2nd St. NE near downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Massillon Tiger Football’s mascot Obie can be spotted across town at residences and businesses in Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Bladez Barber & Beauty, 37 Erie St. S, in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Reko Harris cuts hair in Bladez Barber & Beauty in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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James Cutler, also known as “Cutty Da Barber,” poses for a portrait in Bladez Barber & Beauty in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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James Cutler (left), also known as “Cutty Da Barber,” and Reko Harris cut hair in Bladez Barber & Beauty in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Bill Weaver, owner of The Sugar Bowl, poses for a portrait in his store in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The Sugar Bowl, 47 Lincoln Way E, in Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Bill Weaver, owner of The Sugar Bowl, poses for a portrait in his store in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The Sugar Bowl, 47 Lincoln Way E, in Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Marva Dodson, a local historian and Lightfoot family friend, shows a “Celebrate Black History Month” framed photo that includes Lori Lightfoot, before sitting down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at her home in Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Marva Dodson, a local historian and Lightfoot family friend, shows a “Celebrate Black History Month” framed photo that includes Lori Lightfoot, before sitting down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at her home in Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Marva Dodson, a local historian and Lightfoot family friend, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at her home in Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Marva Dodson, a local historian and Lightfoot family friend, wears a “Lori Lightfoot for Chicago” pin as she sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at her home in Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The Lightfoot family church, St. James AME Zion Church, 209 2nd St. SW, in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Linde’s Bridal & Prom, 23 Lincoln Way E, in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A view of Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Flags and memorials line the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Viaduct in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Dave Scheetz, who graduated from Washington High School with Lori Lightfoot in 1980, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at the Bob Evans restaurant in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Washington High School’s Tiger Football Team players’ photos hang on flags lining Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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David Oberlin, 91, who was Lori Lightfoot’s Latin teacher at Washington High School before she graduated in 1980, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at his home in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The Massillon Public Library, 208 Lincoln Way E, in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A view of Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Ann Lightfoot, 90, Lori Lightfoot’s mother, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at St. James AME Zion Church in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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The Massillon Museum, 121 Lincoln Way E, in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Margaret Guleff, a Lightfoot family friend, sits down for a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times at the Menches Brothers Of Massillon restaurant in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 19, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A vacant industrial building for rent in Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Howard’s Tiger Rags Apparel, 125 Lincoln Way W, in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A view of Lincoln Way E in downtown Massillon, Ohio, April 18, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A senior student, Lori Lightfoot’s photo appears in the Washington High School 1980 yearbook in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Photo provided by the Massillon Public Library

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Lori Lightfoot’s photo appears in the Washington High School 1978 yearbook in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Lori Lightfoot poses for a photo with other members of the Latin Club in the Washington High School 1978 yearbook in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Class president Lori Lightfoot poses for a photo with other sophomore class officers in the Washington High School 1976 yearbook in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Lori Lightfoot poses for a photo with other students in the Washington High School 1980 yearbook in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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Class president Lori Lightfoot poses in a photo with other senior class officers in the Washington High School 1980 yearbook in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019. | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

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A senior student, Lori Lightfoot’s photo appears in the Washington High School 1980 yearbook in Massillon, Ohio, April 17, 2019 | Photo provided by the Massillon Public Library

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Massillonians pronounce it “MASS-lun.”

Quakers had been among the earliest settlers of the area, including a family that hid runaway slaves on its sprawling farm, Spring Hill, a station on the Underground Railroad.

The city’s early prosperity owed to its proximity to the Ohio & Erie Canal that hooked towns along it into a national web of waterways from Lake Erie in its northeastern corner to the Ohio River at its southern border with Kentucky.

Chicagoans might be surprised to learn that another Chicago mayor claimed some roots here too: Joseph Medill spent some of his childhood on a farm near Massillon before migrating the 380 miles west across Indiana and Illinois to lead Chicago after the Great Fire.

“We started out as a canal town, and by the time the railroad came here, that went bust,” says Vogt, “but we reinvented ourselves as a more industrial area, and at first we were shipping wheat and coal, and then with the trains, we shipped steam engines all over the world. So we reinvented ourselves then. And then along came steel and lots of immigrants from Eastern Europe, and we reinvented ourselves again, and we just keep doing it. And in the 1950s when steel began to wane, we pulled up our bootstraps, and we diversified, and now we have lots of paper industry, and food packaging, and I just think we have a lot of spirit here that helps us keep starting over and becoming successful.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

David Lee Morgan Jr. teaches journalism at Washington now, but lives in neighboring Canton, whose fierce football rivalry with Massillon dates back more than a century.

“It’s a small town but it’s a tough town,” Morgan says. “There’s tough people that won’t take anything from people because of the way, because of where their parents and their grandparents worked. And what they had to do to make a living in a steel mill, you had to work with blacks, whites, Italians, Hungarians, Greeks.

“If you spoke out, at least people respected that you were being honest about what you thought or felt,” Morgan says. “That’s why maybe she has that toughness about her. And if you know her mom you can kind of see that because I know she was a [school] board member, and she was fiery and opinionated, in a good way.”

Local historian Marva Dodson (Class of ’62), a longtime Lightfoot family friend from church who presented the future Chicago mayor with the Distinguished Citizen award in 2013, noted how Lori Lightfoot’s campaign held up the public schools she attended as what she’d like to see in Chicago.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

“So when I say that Lori has never forgotten her roots,” Dodson says, “she really hasn’t.”

‘We were a village’

Lori Lightfoot was born at the old Massillon City Hospital in August 1962, the youngest of Ann and Elijah Lightfoot’s four children, though a granddaughter would soon join the household. Twelve years separated the oldest and youngest kids.

The family lived on the west side of town, across the Tuscarawas River from the downtown and from the east side pockets where most African American families lived. That was so the kids would learn young to get along with all kinds of people.

“We were a village. Everybody was concerned with everybody else’s children,” Ann Lightfoot says. “There were prejudiced people then as is now. But you learn to get over it.”

Ann Lightfoot and friend Guleff, who is white, recall a happy little girl who didn’t have time to get into trouble (though she and Guleff’s daughter were known to pull an occasional childish prank, and the daughter has since come clean to Guleff about where they sometimes bought beer as underage teens).

Baby Lori, in cloth diapers, was a “delight,” her mother says, and as she grew, “took over taking care of” a little cousin.

“She was bossy,” Ann Lightfoot recalls during a lengthy interview she arranged at her church. “She loves to be in charge, without a doubt.”

“Always has,” chimes in Guleff, 80, who’s known Ann Lightfoot since their daughters were in third grade.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

Guleff led Lori’s Girl Scout troop and remembers “a very outspoken child, very outspoken. Has anybody ever told you that she was meek and quiet?

“No.”

“And if she didn’t like something I was doing, she’d say, ‘Why don’t we do this? You know, ‘or why don’t we do that?’ ”

As a girl though, Lori didn’t “ever really mention what she wanted to be,” her mother says.

Elijah Lightfoot (Class of ’48), rendered deaf before Lori’s birth from tuberculous spinal meningitis that left him comatose for an entire year, worked in factories as a janitor. Ann Lightfoot worked nights as a nursing aide. They were a church-going family, at St. James AME Zion Church, the oldest of Massillon’s African American congregations where Ann Lightfoot remains a deaconess.

Lori ran with all kinds of kids from school, from the neighborhood. She idolized the brother born before her, who’d spend much of his adult life in prison, before returning home to care for their mom.

“Even from a small child, she made friends quite easily,” Ann Lightfoot says.

The Lightfoots’ frame house — located on the same Route 30 that runs through Massillon’s downtown and Chicago’s south suburbs — was full of kids.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

“I often said, my husband was hard of hearing, and I think it was God’s will because those kids were up all night long running up and down the steps,” Ann Lightfoot says. “Yeah I had a lot of sleepovers for the kids. Then in the mornings I’d make a big breakfast for them, most times that would be pancakes and bacon — Lori loved bacon.”

Childhood friend Mary McMunn spent a lot of time at the Lightfoot house and remembers that by about middle school they rode 10-speeds with groups of girls to Wampler Park, an expansive, green oasis tucked into a west side neighborhood, with a playground and sports fields and a creek to catch little fish and crawdads.

“It was just a city where you could ride your bike anywhere,” McMunn says. “We didn’t drink beer. We never got in trouble.”

Lori Lightfoot, known now as intense, was just fun then, McMunn says. “Honest to God truth, I remember her laughing a lot. She has a great laugh.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

After Guleff divorced and only had her kids at home every other weekend, a sixth- or seventh-grade Lori would visit Sunday evenings after church and dinner “because she didn’t want me to be lonely.”

“We’d put on TV. We’d eat. She’s always loved cooking, anything I could cook,” Guleff says, “and she comes home just to eat her mother’s cooking.” (Ann Lightfoot “still cooks like there’s seven of us at home,” her live-in son notes.)

But as McMunn says, not much remains in Massillon for a Lori Lightfoot Childhood Tour.

One of the homes her parents rented early on before buying the one Ann Lightfoot still lives in has been torn down. Elijah Lightfoot died in 2009.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

The hospital was acquired by a bigger company, then closed. The school district decided to shutter some of its school buildings and consolidate children, so Harvey Elementary School and Lorin Andrews Junior High also have been demolished.

Many of the steel mills have closed. The St. James building where Lori Lightfoot attended then taught Sunday school, and served as a candle-lighting acolyte at weekly services since has been replaced.

Washington High School lives on, but its old building downtown where Lori Lightfoot successfully campaigned for high school class president sophomore, junior and senior year since has moved to a modern one built next to the 16,000-strong Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.

‘Comfortable in her own personality’

What was Lori Lightfoot good at during her high school days?

“Everything,” says David Oberlin, 91, her former Latin teacher. “That’s why I was hoping she’d go on to advanced Latin. But she said, ‘I had to make choices’ because I guess she knew, you know, what she wanted to do, and she had to get these other subjects in and then with all her activities that she was into.”

She was a trumpeter in the marching band that rehearsed tons, twice a day in summer — “more than the football team does and we have a great football team” as Guleff notes.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

“I was a kid who really liked meeting people and was involved in a lot of different activities,” Lori Lightfoot has said. “I had fingers in a lot of different cliques in high school.”

Though there still aren’t many African American teachers, Dave Scheetz (Class of ’80) remembers a wide range of economic backgrounds at the school, “extremely rich families at the school and the poorest of the poor.”

“She was very comfortable in her own personality,” he says.

Scheetz, who returned to the high school to teach mass media, wasn’t close with Lori Lightfoot, though he sang with her in choir, where she was an alto. Still, in their class of about 380 graduates, she left an impression.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

“She was like in every club imaginable, seemed like,” he says, flipping through their yearbook to point out all the photos she was in. “And the thing that I remember most about her is the fact that she was a leader, and she was mature beyond her years.

“She was quick to make decisions about things from what I remember. You could ask her her opinion and she did have an opinion on something, and it seemed like it was the right thing to do at the time, whatever that might be … and she seemed like she got along with everybody that she was in contact with.”

Some classmates remain surprised that Lori Lightfoot lost the Miss Massillonian title — the pageant held since 1940 to recognize a Washington senior girl with good grades, activities and friends — at a country club the mayor-elect has said that “neither me or my parents could get into.”

The loss left 17-year-old Lori “hurt,” her mother remembers, “but she got over it, she bounced back. She was very resilient. She was able to move on in her life. … Grades-wise, she was popular in school, she’s president of her class and she said she had all the qualifications, but she just happened to be African American, and she didn’t get it.”

In the late 1970s, few high school students came out as gay or lesbian. Lori Lightfoot didn’t come out until she left home.

“Did I know I had an attraction to women? Yeah, probably starting in junior high school maybe a little before that,” Lori Lightfoot said during a campaign office interview in March. “Was it something I fully embraced then? No. There was nobody that I knew that was gay. It wasn’t even in the realm of possibility. Frankly, I don’t think I even thought of that word in my mind’s eye when I acknowledged attractions to women. I didn’t really ‘come out’ until I was here in Chicago in law school.”

The Sugar Bowl owner remembers a less tolerant Massillon back then.

“When she came out, just to tell you, it wasn’t accepted in Massillon,” says Weaver, who was called names after he was known to be gay.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

Attitudes certainly have changed by now, says Weaver who owns two successful businesses downtown with his husband.

Kids are out at the high school, without any bullying, says principal Dave Lautenschleger. No one sees anything unusual in bringing a same-sex date to prom.

“You can be whoever you want to be,” says 16-year-old Ryley Cecil (Class of ’21).

Washington teachers and students alike seemed surprised to learn the new mayor still thought of her hometown as “segregated.”

“I don’t see it that way,” athletic director and Tigers football coach Nate Moore says after a tour of Tiger Stadium and its top-notch practice dome. “But what’s important is that our experience is different than other people’s experience, and I think you have to acknowledge that. It’s a little bit sad, a lot sad, really.”

‘Started and evolved in our backyard’

The night of April 2, as the Hilton Chicago Grand Ballroom on South Michigan Avenue filled with hundreds of Lightfoot supporters eager for election results, Ann Lightfoot waited by her telephone for a promised 8:30 call.

“Well, of course, I am eating everything that I can put my hand on when I get nervous. I have a tendency to do that,” she says. “And now the phone hadn’t rang, and I kept thinking ‘My gosh, oh she lost.’ Finally, she called, very calm and she said, ‘Mom. I won.’ Very, you know as if this is something happens every day, and I thought, I am a total nervous wreck. So, of course, I had to call Margaret … the phone started ringing.”

“Never, never had any thought that she would have that margin of a win, which is just unbelievable.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

Ann Lightfoot and Margaret Guleff will travel to the inaugural festivities, thrilled to witness Lori Lightfoot making history, though both worry about the new mayor’s flexibility to come home — and for her safety as she takes on Chicago’s challenges. (“She did not ask my advice before she went and ran for mayor,” Ann Lightfoot says, “no she didn’t.”)

Ann Lightfoot won’t put on airs, though she did call the pastor her kids grew up with, saying, “This is the mother of the newly-elected mayor of Chicago.”

Wrangling tickets to the private swearing in, too, are 10 journalism students from Lori Lightfoot’s high school.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times

Morgan — the journalism teacher — couldn’t pass up a chance to cover “a national story which kind of evolved, started and evolved in our backyard.”

The class didn’t know much about Lightfoot before her victory, but their research is underway for big, end-of-year stories they’ll publish on the school website.

“I’m meeting a mayor that’s someone that used to go to the high school I’m going to,” says 16-year-old Lauren Turner (Class of ’20).

“Just cause you come from Massillon and, like a small city like Massillon that’s mostly football-related,” says Marissa Toney (Class of ’19), “you can make something bigger than yourself and you can do more than just a small city all about football, and you can impact people’s lives.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Sun-Times