The Thompson Center cost $172 million to construct. Helmut Jahn, who died in a bike accident last month, began designing the 17-story building in 1979. Located on the corner of State and Lake, it was originally known as the State of Illinois Center, and named after its keeper, then-Illinois Governor James R. Thompson. After Thompson left office, he contributed to Illinois’s long-standing history of political corruption by having his firm represent Governor George Ryan pro bono. The Thompson Center serves as a train station and a state office building; it boasts retail shopping on the ground level and a food court in the basement.
Growing up, she was over every weekend, providing respite to my mother. She’d have us recite prayers for safety before we went on drives, she would witness to people in the grocery store who she deemed were sinners and told us about the powers of Alcoholics Anonymous. As a born-again Christian, it was her job to provide people the tools to get into the kingdom of heaven. Ultimately, her belief in a kingdom trumped her will to live as she stated several times in a 13-page goodbye letter to my sister and me. She ended her own pain and suffering by suicide because she’d get to God sooner, because she was leaving us here for a better place.
My mother’s face twisted in knots. She had been on edge for the past year after finding her husband, my father, dead in the basement of the same house. My aunt wasn’t answering her phone and we agreed that we needed to go to her apartment. We rushed towards Jefferson Park. It felt like a scene from a movie.
One of the police officers clicked their radio. “There has been a report of a jumper at the Thompson Center.” My mother wailed.
We were coldly informed there was a suicide. The person who jumped made their way up to the 15th floor via the elevators that connected the building’s basement to the subway station. They climbed over a barrier and jumped to the bottom of the atrium floor. Fifteen floors plus another 30 or so feet down into the marble floor of the food court in the building’s basement. I asked if we could enter to see the aftermath. “No,” the state trooper replied.
It was well into the night now, and we exited the building across from the still taped-off Thompson Center. Police officers stood guard at the entranceways.
