Like their cousin James Kalish, the three children of Steve and Josie Walko—Ed, Steve Jr., and Dorothy—emerged from their unfortunate childhood years, packed in 1929 into spare space at a hotel in the red-light district of East S. Louis, only to lead rich and interesting lives. Some of those lives were shaped very specifically by their time at the Savoy Hotel—especially that of the younger Steve Walko.
Not every customer of the Savoy Hotel could pay their rent—or bar tab or gambling debt or what have you. One such customer left a saxophone in lieu of payment, which a teenage Steve Walko picked up one day and taught himself to play.
“He loved to play music, and his little sister Dorothy loved to sing,” writes Ann Mahoney of Steve Walko. “He would carry his sax to school and then take the city buses to play anywhere that looked the other way and allowed a minor to play.” Whatever money he earned, Steve gave to his parents.
Ed Walko was a top student and athlete throughout junior and senior high school. His academic and athletic achievements won him a coveted scholarship to Cornell University, 900 miles away in Ithaca, NY. There, around 1938, he began studies toward a degree in chemical engineering.
By 1941, Ed’s father, Steve Walko Sr., had rebuilt a respectable career from scratch—after losing everything twelve years prior due to a humiliating mistake—by going back to the meatpacking houses, where he worked his way up to a foreman’s position. It was an admirable comeback, cut tragically short when he was hit by a car, sustaining injuries that would soon take his life.
The loss of income was devastating to Josie—there was no life insurance. To save money, she moved into an apartment with her daughter, Dorothy. While studying at Cornell, Ed took a side job in a restaurant and sent home $100—well over $1,000 today—every month. Others in the family pitched in to be sure she could pay her bills.
In 1943, the budding musician Steve Walko, at age 25, enlisted in the Navy to serve his country during World War II. He took his sax with him and won competitive auditions to play in the much-admired Navy Band. After the war, he opened a laundry in Springfield, IL—about 100 miles north of ESL—where he took on his grandfather Leonard Krokvica for odd jobs.
Steve closed the laundry when those went out of favor, once most households had their own washer–dryers, then opened a music store, Walko Music, first on 6th Street and then on 2nd Street. While running the store, Steve always made time to play his saxophone in local bands. Leonard and Marie Krokvica’s great-great-grandsons, Bob and Ed Durbin, would buy trumpets there in the 1960s.
Steve died in 1998 at age 79.
Ed Walko put his degree from Cornell to good use. He landed a job with Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville, OK, where in 1944 he met and married Margaret Vigie. They hadn’t been married long when Ed was drafted into the Army—one of the oldest draftees at basic training in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He was assigned to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he worked in a weapons development group with some of the biggest names in nuclear science. This was heady stuff.
Among Ed Walko’s specialties was the assembly of atomic bombs. In a vivid memoir he would write in later years, he describes being the chief nuclear officer on three bomb tests at the Nevada test site. His most thrilling assignment was assembling a bomb atop a 200-foot tower—in 100 mph winds—in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific. Side curtains, to protect them from the slicing wind, were out of the question, as “they would act as sails and push the tower over.”
After his Army adventure, Ed Walko’s work took him and his family to stints in Colorado, California, and Texas. Ed and Margaret retired to Sun City West, Arizona. Ed died there in 2003 at age 82.
Dorothy Walko graduated high school in 1942, a year after losing her dad, with ambitions of continuing her education. But with no money for college, those plans went on hold. In 1944, she married Jack Overton Durly, a soldier she had met in high school. The newlyweds moved in with Josephine to a house on Gaty Ave.
Known for a beautiful singing voice not unlike that of Judy Garland, Dorothy once entered a singing contest for a chance to appear on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour—a hugely popular TV show that helped launch the careers of countless celebrities. The well-known baseball player and manager Leo Durocher was in the audience and somehow got word to Dorothy that he and his table would clap for her—helping to ensure her victory.
Unfortunately, writes Ann Mahoney, Leo and his cronies “threw their support behind a young male singer named Vic Damone,” who would go on to be a nationally known celebrity singer and actor. “The family,” continues Ann, “never cared for Leo Durocher after that.”
Dorothy and her husband Jack Durly relocated upstate even farther than Steve did, moving to Chicago in 1960. He was an accountant, and she worked for the Singer Sewing factory—but her desire for a college education, put on hold after her father’s death in 1941, would not fade. In 1972, she earned her bachelor’s degree and, in 1987, remarkably, a master’s in adult education at Northern Illinois University—at the age of 63. Her career in adult ed continued until her retirement in 2008. She died the next year.
Josephine Walko—“Grandma Josie” once her children started having children—earned a reputation as an exceptional cook and baker, and not just within the family. She was featured in a local newspaper article recounting her extraordinary baking abilities. Unfortunately, her tenure as a grandmother was not a long one. In 1955, Josephine was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died on her birthday, two years later in 1957, at the age of 59.
Next: 17. James & Bernice Kalish 1933-2008
Michael Durbin 