stella met and cahill on a blind date in 1938. the cahill family, they were hardly wealthy. but in the working class world of chicago, they were a step above stella's family, a considerable step above. as father who had been born in downstate illinois of irish immigrant parents, his father worked as he foreman for a construction company that did road work for the city of chicago. what that meant, especially in the 1920s, was that work was steady. in a way that it had never been for stella's family. and with that stead work ed's father earned enough that in the late twenties, he was able to buy a house on the 6100 block of west eddie street, the black you are looking at right now. in those days, it was a half finished brand-new development going way out on the outskirts of town. it was a completely white neighborhood. much of the new developments that were going up and chicago in the 19 twenties where wrapped in restrictive covenants, the little closets that developers put on their deeds to say that this property can never be sold to a negro, and oftentimes to a jewish america