Family heirloom stolen from Joliet yard

Angela Wilkerson knew she should have brought the bench home for safekeeping.

The last time Wilkerson visited her mother, Raynice Tadey, who lives near Joliet West High School, Wilkerson thought maybe she should take the bench to her Orland Hills home.

But Raynice didn’t want Wilkerson to move it. She wanted it left in Anthony’s spot, which Wilkerson said she understands.

Except now the bench is gone.

Wilkerson noticed the bench was missing on Sunday when she was helping Raynice with yard work. The bench isn’t valuable in terms of dollars and cents. But it means the world to Wilkerson and her mother.

“My dad (Anthony “Butch” Tadey) died four years ago and this was really the only thing I wanted to have of his,” Wilkerson said.

The bench has moved around Joliet with the family through the years. It originally belonged to Anthony’s father, Anton Tadey, who had lived on Clement Street.

“Then my dad took it to Hickory Street when my mom and dad moved to Hickory Street,” Wilkerson said.

When Anthony and Raynice moved closer to Joliet West High School, the bench came with them, Wilkerson said.

The bench has now moved again. Except this time, the Tadey family didn’t move it, someone else did. This time, the family has no idea where the bench is. Wilkerson is hoping whoever moved it will realize how much this bench means to her family and return it.

Wilkerson said Anton used to sit on it. Anthony liked to read his newspaper, smoke a cigar, get a tan, and stretch out on that bench, she said.

“I used to do my homework there,” Wilkerson said.

Anthony, who loved reading, was knowledgeable about politics, World War II, gangster history, sports history and local history. He explored cemeteries and often took Wilkerson with them. They found many notable people, especially Civil War soldiers.

Wilkerson met famous sports figures, including Pete Rose, at the sports conventions she attended with her father. She visited the “nooks and crannies” of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin from all the mini-trips she took with her father.

“He’d say, ‘Let’s go take a ride somewhere and find something,’” Wilkerson said in a 2017 Herald-News “An Extraordinary Life” story.

Now she hopes someone will find his bench.

“It has a lot of sentimental value,” Wilkerson said. “That’s why we’re so upset about it.”

Wilkerson feels anyone who picked it up should have realized the bench belonged to someone. Although Raynice doesn’t have a fence, her yard is well-landscaped and bordered by shrubbery and the bench sat about 10 feet into that yard, Wilkerson said.

“I wanted to bring it to my house, which has a fenced-in yard,” Wilkerson said.

Unfortunately, people do cut through Raynice’s yard, Wilkerson said. Wilkerson wondered: Could some teens have taken it, not realizing the importance of the bench to Wilkerson’s family?

Wilkerson knows people “have picked through” Raynice’s garbage. Could a scrapper have taken it?

“I know it’s desperate times,” Wilkerson said.

So Wilkerson contacted “all the scrap metal places” and asked them to watch for the bench. Wilkerson said she also made a police report, but she insisted she doesn’t want to file charges.

“I just want the bench back,” Wilkerson said.

Did you see the bench? Email Wilkerson at bcbg11@hotmail.com.