A story of love and family at La Capilla, a church in Chicago’s Back of the Yards
Thank you for Mike Amezcua’s essay about the closing of our little church in the Back of the Yards, Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church, which we have called La Capilla.
Because this is where the life of Rochelle Janiak-Wilk started:
My father, Edward “Monk” Janiak, was born and raised in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. My mother, Maria de los Angels Godinez Reyna, was born in Mexico City.
My abuelita (my mother’s mom) worked at a church in Mexico City, where she got to know one of the priests, Father George. She agreed to let him bring my mother, who was then in her early 20s, to Chicago to study and live with the nuns at the Guardian Angels House in the Back of the Yards.
One day, my mom was in church when she turned around and saw my father, who was a U.S. Marine home on furlough from Vietnam. (My father was severely wounded in the war and almost died. He was awarded the Purple Heart.)
When my mother first saw him, he had no teeth, having lost them when he was injured, but she fell in love with him instantly. My mother told her friends, “I’m going to marry that man!” Everyone, including Father George, told her, “No way.”
Soon afterward, after my dad got back from Vietnam, my mom intentionally walked in front of his car to get his attention. It almost hit her.
Well, they fell in love and got married in this little church, La Capilla. Father George married them, of course, and later baptized my sister and me. And later, in the late 1970s, my dad renovated the church’s rectory and the youth center a few doors away. My parents loved the Back of the Yards and so do my sister and I.
And we have so many fond memories at “La Capilla.”
Rochelle Janiak-Wilk,
Back of the Yards