Jim Bracey and Vernon Doyle have learned to count on each other in times of crisis. When a tornado touched down in Mokena in 1996, Bracey, a Salvation Army chaplain, brought Doyle along to help hand out food and water. He did the same thing a year later, following an explosion at a Joliet power plant. Three weeks ago, as fire tore through a chemical factory at 87th and Cottage Grove, Bracey sent Doyle to find ice. Doyle ran the half mile back to the scene with a ten-pound bag in each hand, and when that was gone he went back out for more.
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Canteen Truck Number Eight, which looks like a U-Haul but comes with a kitchen that can churn out hundreds of meals an hour, was parked in Alsip. Bracey took Doyle and volunteer cook Gerald Katzmarek with him to fetch it, and they were almost through with preliminary setup when the Pentagon was hit. Ten minutes later they were back at Harbor Light, picking up supplies and crew. As Number Eight raced west on the Kennedy, the south tower came crashing down. Next stop: Norridge, where supplies were loaded as the north tower crumpled and a fourth hijacked plane went down outside Pittsburgh. Pulling into O’Hare, Canteen Number Eight snaked around Departures and came to a stop just outside American.
Inside was bedlam. Airport workers were being sent home, cops and firemen were arriving, and stranded passengers were trying to figure out what to do. Every TV had been turned off, and what was presumably an antidote to panic instead left the people inside to wonder, often out loud, whether a missile was headed for O’Hare. Doyle nuked microwave hot dogs as the airport shops and restaurants shut down. Takers were sporadic at first, but by Wednesday morning the canteen could barely keep up with the demand for pancakes, which were served nonstop for eight hours.
“Yeah, that knucklehead slept at my house again,” laughs Bracey. “But you see a guy who’s got potential, who really wants to do good, and you want to help him out.”
Doyle last saw his three children in spring 1999. He was working a carnival in Elgin, and they happened to be there. “That was when I was running from the police,” he says. “I got to talk to them but I couldn’t very long.” A few weeks later Doyle turned himself in to the Elgin police. He got 30 months and was sent to a work camp in downstate Jacksonville. “It was prison–prison, work camp, it’s the same thing,” says Doyle. He was assigned to the laundry room.
“You’re not, you’re not asking for too much,” said Doyle, who had lots of both. “Don’t worry, when I needed help, I didn’t feel bad asking.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Yvette Marie Dostani.
