November 18, 2024

Shortly before Veterans Day we learned that Louis King, a Mercy Home alum who served during the Korean War passed away at the age of 98. Our donor publication, The Waifs’ Messenger, featured King’s story after he visited the Home several years ago. In his honor, we re-share his story on behalf of the many Mercy Home coworkers and youth who have served in our armed forces during the course of our 137-year history.

Life’s Winding Road Leads Alum Back to Mercy Home

After driving three hours from his home in Kankakee, Illinois, on a whim, a spry 90-year-old man walked through Mercy Home’s front door.

“Hello, my name is Louis King,” he said. “I used to live here 70 years ago. Can I have a look around?”

Louis shared with us the story of his life­–of losing his parents during the Great Depression, finding his way to Mercy Home, starting a family of his own, and giving back by taking in foster children.

Louis grew up on a grain farm, until the Great Depression hit. During that period, his mother passed away. And his father, who struggled with alcohol, lost the family’s farm. He could no longer afford to care for Louis and his siblings.

Louis’s brother and sister were sent to live with an aunt, while Louis went to live at the Guardian Angel Home for orphaned and needy children in Joliet, Illinois. After living there for eight years, Louis moved into Mercy Home. It was 1942, the same year his father passed away.

Here at Mercy Home, Louis worked in the kitchen and the print shop, learning valuable typesetting skills that later scored him a job with a downtown printer. He attended school at Old St. Patrick’s Church. Louis remembers having a full schedule of school and work but occasionally going with his buddies to the skid-row theaters in the Haymarket district to catch movies.

Marie gave birth to a son in 1968, and Louis continued to work with a band saw in a 32-degree room for 12 years until the plant closed in the early 1970’s. Miraculously, he managed to keep all ten of his fingers!

After bouncing around doing handyman jobs, Louis found work as an on-call mechanic at the Kankakee General Mills plant, where he worked for 17 years until his retirement in 1991.

During the late 1970’s, Louis and his wife made the generous decision to open their hearts and home to foster children. They liked the idea of providing their son with the siblings he never had. And most importantly, Louis was motivated to give back to a system that was such a vital force of compassion in his childhood.

“I was helped because I didn’t have a mother or a father,” he says. “I thought, ‘Let’s see what we can do for these kids.’ We specified that we didn’t want no little ones, because of our age, and our son’s age. We decided we wanted to take in teenagers, also because they needed the most help.”

Louis said he guided his foster children with the modest life lessons he had learned and taught them a few skills around the house. Two of the kids were even baptized in the local Catholic church.

“I just wanted to show them they could make something of themselves like I did,” Louis says.

When Louis retired, he and Marie bought a travel trailer they towed behind his pickup truck. They spent years zig-zagging the country, absorbing the sights and making friends, while bunking at campgrounds, where they loved to host card games.

Marie passed away last December and, naturally, Louis took it hard. Rather than sit home with grief, he decided to honor his wife by doing what she loved best: hitting the open road. Louis embarked on an epic, 4,000-mile journey that took him to Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi, the Florida Keys, and North Carolina.

His latest road trip brought him full circle back to Mercy Home, where he strolled down memory lane and expressed interest in returning for a Sunday Mass taping. Before he left, he quietly made a generous donation.

When we asked why he chose to come back, Louis said, “I always kept Mercy Home in my mind and I wanted to see it again. I still have the traveling bug in my system. I just wanted to do it. So I did.”