CHICAGO — As I write this, people are gathering in Chicago to bury an Ohio coal miner's daughter who came to this city in the early 1950s.

They are celebrating a social worker and community activist who has affected thousands of lives over the last eight decades in this city. As the Sun-Times reported, her "backbone and willpower fueled positive change in Chicago for decades.”

Angela Piazza Turley was a force to be reckoned with — both the irresistible force and the immovable object when it came to fighting for others.

She was also my mother.

The writer George Bernard Shaw once said that unreasonable people expect the world to conform to them. He then added that that was why all history is made by unreasonable people.

My mother was one of those brilliantly unreasonable people. As the baby of five, I spent much of my early years clinging for dear life on my mother's skirts as she confronted slum landlords, abusive husbands, and gang bangers in the Uptown area of Chicago. Time and again, I would squeeze her hand with that look of "what do we do now?"

She already seemed to know what to do. Growing up in a coal mining town in Ohio, my mother knew poverty and prejudice. She would never forget either. It created a solid core within her, harder and tougher than anthracite coal.

Some nights, she would go to sleep looking at the burning crosses on the nearby hill, a message from the local Ku Klux Klan that she and the other Italians were not welcome in the valley.

She learned that you had to fight for a better life. Her father, Dominick, was one of the earliest organizers of the United Mine Workers until he contracted black lung.

At Yorkville High School, she was called "Champ" for her feisty, indomitable energy. She had a certain tomboy beauty with olive skin and penetrating hazel........

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