Chicago’s Walking Man wandered alone for decades. Loved ones say: ‘He observed everything. That was his adventure.’

Sister Paul Wilson has seen a lot of human suffering in her nearly six decades as a nun.

So when she met Joseph Kromelis, who suffered horrific burns after being set on fire as he slept on a Chicago street, she didn’t flinch. She reached for his hand and told him she had been praying for him. Wilson wanted, she said, to show him he was loved.

When she asked if she could visit him again, he nodded and squeezed her hand.

Wilson didn’t know Kromelis personally before that first brief visit. Few people could say they did. Instead, like so many others, she knew him as a beloved Chicago character, affectionately dubbed “the Walking Man,” who had long stirred people’s curiosity.

For decades, Kromelis walked alone along the city’s busy downtown streets, mile after mile, regardless of the season.

Tall and lean, with a bushy mustache and flamboyant hair, the urbane, sharply dressed stranger fascinated his fellow pedestrians and Loop workers. He was rarely seen talking to other people in the crowd, adding to his mystery.

Frequent sightings of the Walking Man sparked urban myths about his true identity. Some even thought he was an eccentric billionaire.

But as the years passed, he began appearing more haggard. His once brisk stride slowed. He wasn’t known to ask for food or money, but many wondered whether he might be experiencing homelessness.

Then came the attacks, the first in 2016 when a man beat him with a bat. Amid the resulting media attention, Kromelis’ given name was revealed, along with a few details about his life: He was a former street peddler who had lost his rented room to redevelopment a few years earlier. Strangers donated thousands to help the Walking Man get back on his feet.

And then, one year ago, something even more serious happened.

Kromelis was sleeping outside under blankets early on May 25, 2022, when police say a young Melrose Park man with an erratic, violent background set him on fire.

His wounds, especially to his face, left him nearly unrecognizable. Severe burns covered more than half of his body. Kromelis couldn’t even close his blue eyes or blink because his eyelids were gone. So was his trademark thick mane and mustache.

Doctors did not believe he would survive. But he persevered for nearly seven months before succumbing to his injuries on Dec. 11. He was 75. His murder and the more recent fatal beating on the Blue Line of another man without a home are reminders of the dangers of living on the street.

Wilson, of the Little Sisters of the Poor, met Kromelis in September after he emerged from a medical coma. She visited him at least once a week for nearly four months until his death. In her first interview about their friendship, she told the Tribune he was not frightened, vengeful or defeated.

The infections from his open wounds would eventually ravage his body, but she said medical professionals managed his pain for most of their time together. His condition improved for a while, she said. The nun tried to coax him into coming to live at St. Mary’s Home, run by her congregation, when he was well enough.

Kromelis was pragmatic about death, she said, but he was “always looking forward.”

“I wasn’t there to push religion,” said Wilson, 76. “What I wanted to do was just let him know how much our Lord loves him and that there were people in this world that were praying for him and that loved him.”

Despite all that has been written about the city’s enigmatic Walking Man, much is still unknown. A Tribune review of his life through public records and more than two dozen interviews offers the fullest portrait to date of a private, gentle soul who felt most at home while walking among strangers.

Kromelis did not have a publicly documented history of mental illness, addictions or violence. He persisted through tremendous hardships — his father’s suicide, four siblings’ deaths in rapid succession, eviction and homelessness.

His only living sibling, Erika “Ricky” Singree, 78, of Alaska, said he was a bit of a mystery even to his own family. He never married or had children. She told the Tribune her free-spirited brother rebuffed offers of help, instead insisting on making his own way through life.

“He didn’t ever take anything from anyone,” said Singree, speaking about her brother publicly for the first time. “The word ‘independent’ matches him well.”

Kromelis walked through Chicago alone. But all through his life, there were people who loved him.

An immigrant beginning

Joseph Kromelis was born shortly after World War II on Jan. 13, 1947, the fifth of Jonas and Gertrude Kromelis’ six children.

His earliest years were filled with instability.

Joseph’s three oldest siblings were born in Lithuania, but Singree said she, Joseph and another brother were born in Germany because the family had fled their homeland during the Russian invasion.

They moved around a lot in Germany and, at one point, lived in a camp for displaced persons.

Though the family was Lithuanian, Joseph’s father was born in the east-central Illinois town of Westville, near Danville, in 1903 while his parents were visiting family in the U.S.

Jonas Kromelis married Gertrude in 1932 in Lithuania. Singree isn’t certain, but she thinks her parents’ families arranged the marriage, as her father was 28 and her mother was still in her teens. But she said her mom adored him.

“My dad was kind of a big shot in Lithuania,” Singree said. “He was very handsome. He had hair like my brother Joe. Joe looked more like my dad than any of my other brothers.”

Singree said her father still had family in Illinois, and so, in 1952, the couple traveled with their six children to the United States aboard the USNS General C.C. Ballou.

Joseph was 5; Singree was 7. She still recalls the ship’s huge dining room and the medium-boiled eggs and grapefruit they had for breakfast each morning.

“We knew it was something strange and different,” she said of their voyage. “I remember they had a movie house on the ship and we saw our first Mickey Mouse movie.”

The family stayed with relatives upon their arrival. Jonas Kromelis and his oldest child, John, worked in a tobacco factory, and the father soon rented space to run a tavern in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood.

He eventually had enough money to open his own bar, the Meringa Club, at 1745 S. Halsted St. on the Lower West Side, in Pilsen. The family lived upstairs.

It was a typical shot-and-a-beer neighborhood tavern, where the regulars all knew one another, including the old-timers who huddled around a table to play chess. John Kromelis, then in his 20s, played accordion, piano and saxophone. He often entertained the crowd.

“It was an old-fashioned little joint but it was nice,” said Singree, who tended bar after she turned 18. “My mother used to clean up in there every night. They’d work themselves to death.”

Singree described her parents as strict but loving. Gertrude Kromelis was a gifted cook known for traditional Lithuanian dishes: stuffed potato dumplings, apple pancakes, cream-filled tortes, doughnuts. A relative said she fancied herself a bit of a soothsayer — ”she was always talking about one prediction or another” — and believed she could cure warts by tossing beans into an open fire while chanting.

The younger children, including Joseph, attended the now-closed Providence of God Catholic School, a parochial school connected to a parish at 18th Street and Union Avenue. He received his Holy Communion and other sacraments.

Tom Tomson, who graduated from grammar school with Singree in 1960, remembers Joseph tagging along on group swimming excursions near the Adler Planetarium.

Joseph didn’t have money to ride the bus with the older teens, Tomson said, but he still made it to the lake.

“We would take the Halsted Street bus to Jackson and Joe would run alongside the bus and keep up with it as long as he could,” Tomson said. “When we got to Jackson, Joe wasn’t there, but he ended up at the planetarium eventually and would swim with us.”

Kromelis’ sister said that on Sundays their parents took them on long drives, usually to Michigan, where they had picnics. Two years older than Joseph, Singree said she was the closest to him of all her siblings when they were young. She said he loved to imitate Elvis Presley.

“What he liked, even as a young teenager, was really nice clothes,” she said. “When most kids would buy candy or junk stuff, he’d work part time or get a little money from Dad and then go down good old Maxwell Street and look for a new shirt.”

Singree said her brother was “anxious to go out in the world” and didn’t get far in high school, maybe a year at most. She said he often would disappear for long stretches of the day.

“He was always to himself,” she said, “even as a kid.”

Their parents retired around 1966 and soon bought a home on a tree-lined property in Glenn, Michigan, near South Haven. Only their youngest child, Peter, then in high school, moved with them.

Jonas Kromelis had plans to open another little bar in Michigan, but they did not come to fruition.

In April 1968, when Joseph was 21, his father committed suicide in the family home after a six-month battle with terminal cancer. He was 64.

“He was already inches away from death,” Singree said. “He left a letter for my mother and for us kids and said how much he cared for everybody and he didn’t want to burden my mom anymore.”

Singree said she moved to Michigan after his death, at her mother’s request.

Joseph and his two older brothers, John and Bruno, and his other sister, Irene, remained in the Chicago area. The brothers lived together, and Bruno Kromelis’ wife, Alma Maciulis, moved in with them for a short time after the two married in 1970. On most weekends, they all headed up to Michigan in Bruno’s Volkswagen. Joseph liked to play cards and enjoy the occasional highball cocktail.

“In the evenings, everyone would pile into the living room and watch some TV show,” Maciulis said. “Otherwise a lot of time was spent at the beach on the shores of Lake Michigan or walking on the property. … Sunday evening the three of us would head back to Chicago and the grind of everyday life.”

She and Singree said Joseph was kind, soft-spoken and intelligent. But Maciulis also found him to be a puzzle, a private man who chose to make his living peddling fake Rolex watches and other jewelry. She said he wanted the freedom to set his own hours and be his own boss.

Maciulis and Bruno Kromelis moved out on their own by the time their first daughter was born in 1971. The couple divorced in 1976, and Maciulis said she soon lost touch with Joseph.

Singree moved to Alaska in 1974 after starting her own family. She saw Joseph whenever she returned to Michigan for family events, including their mother’s death in 1984.

“He loved her dearly,” his sister said. “That’s the one person he kept in touch with the most.”

Becoming the Walking Man

Joseph Kromelis’ interest in selling jewelry likely was born at Maxwell Street Market, a crowded open-air bazaar near Halsted and Maxwell streets, about a mile south of downtown.

In its heyday, thousands of customers crowded the market’s stands, stalls, pushcarts and shops, haggling in various languages with vendors hawking everything from hot dogs to hubcaps, from oven-roasted chestnuts to prom dresses — and gold, some real and some fake.

In the 1970s, Kromelis hung out with a group of other street hustlers and artists who often met at the Bagel Nosh Deli in the Gold Coast’s Rush Street area. They swapped stories about their day, the price of gold or the outcome of a horse race.

One of his friends back then was Viki Mammina, who said she met Kromelis shortly after she moved to Chicago for art school in 1974. They called him “Mojo,” she said, “because he was just so gorgeous, so stylish with his three-piece suits, gold rings and chains.”

He was one of three “Joes” in their group, along with Joey Diamond and DP Joe. A guy named Jerry, who sold shoes, and Ralph, who ran the parking lot next to the Back Room jazz club, rounded out their group.

“I was like a little sister to them,” said Mammina, nine years younger than Kromelis. “They treated me with such respect. I felt very safe with my Joes. I felt like this was my true family.”

Mammina said her sharp-dressed friend was very private, even within their group of friends, and didn’t talk about where he lived or if he was dating. He’d laugh off their good-natured ribbing that he was a gigolo breaking hearts all over town, Mammina said.

The two of them shared a love for exploring the city on foot, and he would warn her which areas she should avoid. She admits she had a crush on him and regrets she never told him.

They did “make out” once at the cafe, she said. But neither pursued it after that.

“At an older age, I would have had a conversation with him, like, ‘Let’s see where this goes, Joe,’” she said. “I had no delusions he would have settled down and got married, but I would have been curious. I admired him so. There was such a kindness about him.”

Mammina said she lost touch with Kromelis in 1980 when she moved to Los Angeles, and eventually she made Tennessee her permanent home. But she ran into him one more time during a visit to Chicago in 1985. Time hadn’t dulled their bond, she said.

By then, she was married and had her first child.

“He looked exactly the same,” Mammina said. “I think he was just still selling jewelry and walking around. He felt most comfortable with other street people. I don’t think he knew how to do anything else. That’s who Joe was. It was his identity.”

Tomson became a Chicago police officer in 1968 and often saw Kromelis while patrolling downtown for the next 30 years. Tomson said he’d stop to “chew the fat” with his old friend.

“Some of the guys used to stop him because he was a peddler and needed a license, and I would say, “He’s a friend of mine. Leave him alone if you can.’ He was a nice guy. He never bothered anybody.”

Rick Stradal, a retired corporate driver, said Kromelis approached his idling car on occasion and opened his three-quarter-length trench coat to reveal dangling gold necklaces for sale. Stradal said he never bought anything from Kromelis, who he said was never overly aggressive.

Kromelis also worked the cab stands and train stations, selling jewelry, perfume, stamps and other wares.

It was during this time — in the 1980s — that Kromelis’ mystique grew. As he passed by, people noticed him. The downtown gadabout walked with confidence and had an air of old-school sophistication. His trademark sport jackets typically had a handkerchief neatly tucked in the breast pocket.

“I’d be out on Canal Street or Clinton and then next thing I’d see him maybe a couple hours later on Michigan or walking down Randolph,” Stradal said. “He stood out. He was just a cool-looking guy walking down the street, but you’d see him everywhere and wonder why.”

Downtown workers and pedestrians gave him monikers: the Walking Man, the Walking Dude, Walking Yanni, the ’70s Man and more. Urban myths grew about his identity: He was an eccentric billionaire, a college literature professor, a hotel doorman, a bartender, a famous musician, even the ghost of a pedestrian who died after being struck by a car.

“I heard he used to have a little dolly who would take care of him somewhere up on the Gold Coast,” Tomson said with a chuckle.

Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper began writing about the Walking Man in the 1990s, long before his true identity was publicly known. One fall day in 1998, Roeper spotted him walking and tried to interview him.

“By the time I found a semi-legal parking spot and jumped out of my car, the Walking Man (aka The Walking Dude) was already around the corner and down the block,” Roeper wrote. “But I caught up with him, and I did talk to him. I was determined to turn the Walking Man into the Talking Man.”

After a brief exchange in which Kromelis identified himself as Jim or John, Roeper’s elusive subject took off running down State Street, claiming to be on his way to work.

“I don’t think I’ll try to speak with him again,” Roeper wrote. “Sometimes the living ghosts of the streets are better left unbothered.”

Kromelis so fascinated one Michigan Avenue advertising representative, David T. Jones, that Jones set out in the early 2000s to make a documentary about him. Kromelis wasn’t too thrilled, but he occasionally chatted with Jones, who compensated him for his time.

“He was not interested at all in telling me his story,” Jones said. “Just about everything he told me was sort of false or kind of a fib. It was clear he was kind of tolerating us.”

According to relatives and public records, Kromelis was not homeless at the time. He lived alone in a single-room-occupancy building.

Jones shot hours of footage of Kromelis, including when he stopped to comb his hair in the reflection of a window at the old Sun-Times building and when he paused to look at dogs and cats through a window at an animal shelter.

Eventually Jones grew uneasy about pursuing his semi-cooperative subject and abandoned the idea of a full documentary, completing only a short trailer. The video, titled “The Walking Dude, a Dudementary,” appeared on YouTube in 2006.

It now has nearly 80,000 views and serves as a time capsule of Kromelis in his prime. It asks the question, “What’s his deal?” but offers no answers.

“It was really a celebration of the mystery of this gentleman,” said Jones, who now runs an ad agency he co-founded. “He had this coolness about him. People were fascinated. The best I could tell is that he felt compelled every day to sort of walk around and see what the city would bring him that day, kind of feeding off it.”

In 2010, Tribune columnist Mary Schmich wrote about the Walking Man after spotting him “loping down” North Michigan Avenue after a long absence. She said he looked older, his dark bushy hair now a jaundiced gray. But he still had his “usual rambunctious mustache and faraway gaze.”

She described how “everyday strangers” — be it a coffeehouse barista, a fellow bus traveler or a familiar street person such as Kromelis — play a role in the lives of people who encounter them.

“They’re not friends, but they’re a small part of the fabric of your life and of the place you live,” Schmich wrote.

And, to thousands of Chicagoans, the Walking Man was part of their lives. But he wouldn’t remain nameless forever.

Encountering difficulties

Joseph Kromelis faced a series of life-changing hardships beginning in 2012, when he was in his mid-60s.

His sister Irene died that November. Weeks later, their oldest brother, John, died on Christmas Eve.

This was the same year that Kromelis is believed to have first experienced prolonged homelessness. A review of his city peddler’s license applications over several years shows him living on the 2800 block of North Lincoln Park West. But his relatives say the building where he rented a room was redeveloped or torn down in 2012. His final peddler’s license expired that next year. Kromelis never reapplied, city officials said.

By then, buildings that offered single-room occupancy were a vanishing breed in Chicago. Developers had converted more than 2,000 such rooms into higher-priced apartment buildings over three years, according to a 2014 Tribune report. And despite efforts to preserve those that remained, the Tribune reported that fewer than 100 efficiency rooms were available in Chicago by 2016.

The hits kept coming. Two more siblings, Bruno and Peter, both residing in Michigan, died months apart in 2014 and 2015. Similar to their father, Peter Kromelis committed suicide, according to relatives and public records.

Of the Walking Man’s five brothers and sisters, only Singree remained. She said the last time she saw or spoke to Joseph, who did not have a cellphone, was about eight years ago when she and her daughter, Jami, were in Michigan. Singree said she did not know at the time that he didn’t have a home.

“I don’t think he ever would ask for help,” she said.

But Kromelis soon could no longer hide his lot in life or remain anonymous in the city he loved.

In May 2016, a bat-wielding man brutally attacked him, including gouging his eyes “to the point that blood was streaming from (his) eye sockets,” a police report said.

Lena Moore, a school social worker, witnessed the attack on Lower Wacker Drive while driving east toward the lake. She pulled over, begged the attacker to stop and called 911.

“He was trying to protect himself,” she said of Kromelis. “I was terrified for him because the other guy was literally in the process of trying to pick him up and throw him over the railing. He was trying to kill him.”

Another witness, a man visiting from Seattle, said the assailant approached Kromelis from behind and struck him without provocation.

Police arrested McCarlton Perry II, also homeless, and he was charged with reckless conduct, a misdemeanor. But the case was never prosecuted. When Perry was hospitalized for frostbite some months later, a judge found Perry could not take care of himself and appointed the state guardian’s office to oversee his affairs. Perry was diagnosed with schizophrenia, court records show.

Kromelis’ address at the time of the attack was a Pacific Garden Mission shelter on Canal Street, according to a police report. He was hospitalized for several weeks afterward.

The violence that befell Chicago’s beloved wanderer garnered widespread media attention. And, for the first time, journalists published his name and confirmed rumors that he was among thousands of people in the city without a permanent home.

Kromelis declined media interview requests at the time. Still, coverage of the attack inspired an outpouring of sympathy, anger and offers of financial assistance. More than $30,000 was raised through crowdsourcing from several dozen donors, including Chicago architect Pam Hutter, who said she had seen Kromelis walking for decades. “My heart went out to him,” she said in an interview.

Well-wishers spent another $5,500 on charity T-shirts bearing a sketch of his likeness and the slogan “Walk On, Dude.” The shirts are still available on giveashirt.net.

Scott Marvel, president of Daily Planet Productions, started the T-shirt charity in 2015. The proceeds — an estimated $400,000 since its inception — go to StreetWise. But after learning what had happened to Kromelis, Marvel created a separate campaign solely to benefit the Walking Man.

The two met in summer 2016 after Marvel tracked him down to present him with a check. Kromelis told Marvel to send the money from the shirt sales to a relative he said was helping him. Efforts to seek comment from the relative who received the proceeds were unsuccessful.

Marvel described Kromelis as intelligent and friendly. He said Kromelis “didn’t hold an ounce of a grudge” about the attack, recognizing that Perry was mentally ill. Kromelis told him he used to walk about 20 miles a day but had slowed down to about 15, he said.

“I didn’t want to pry too much,” Marvel said. “He had a sense about him ... that he was a private guy. There was no sense of any mental illness. Maybe he just chose to live the way he wanted to live, freely, walking around. I choose to believe he really just wanted to be left alone and do his own thing. Walk his own walk.”

Kromelis assured Marvel he had a place to stay. Time proved otherwise.

A horrific attack

It’s unclear when or why Kromelis began sleeping on the streets again.

Several advocacy groups who do outreach work with people who are marginally housed told the Tribune they did not provide services to him, according to their records.

But, six years after the first attack, Kromelis was sleeping under blankets on the 400 block of North Lower Wabash Avenue just before 3 a.m. on May 25, 2022, when someone poured a cup of gasoline on him, set him on fire, and fled.

Authorities described a horrifying scene, all captured on video by a nearby security camera. They said Kromelis remained on fire for approximately three minutes, thrashing around trying to extinguish the flames before slumping against a wall, still burning.

A Trump Tower security guard saw Kromelis on the surveillance footage and put out the flames using a fire extinguisher. Another guard joined him, and they tried to comfort Kromelis until emergency personnel arrived.

After reviewing footage from numerous security cameras, police said they tracked the path of the assailant, who had a large “$” sign on his right cheek and was wearing a windbreaker emblazoned with the words “Hood Rich.” They said he took a train to O’Hare airport and back toward Forest Park, then boarded a bus to Melrose Park, finally exiting near 25th Street.

Police released surveillance footage of the assailant to the public. Two Melrose Park police officers, Jessica Ortiz and Eric Orozco, said they immediately recognized him as Joseph Guardia, a troubled 27-year-old local man with whom they had previous contact.

A Tribune review of Guardia’s criminal record found more than two dozen arrests in three states and other police contacts dating back to 2013 related to allegations of retail theft, battery, burglary, robbery, criminal trespass, domestic battery, reckless conduct, resisting arrest, public intoxication and criminal damage to property, as well as outstanding warrants for failing to appear in court.

His mother had repeatedly called police asking officers to remove her son from their Melrose Park apartment following arguments that sometimes turned physical. Guardia had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had hospitalizations for suicidal thoughts, records show. Police had found him sleeping in unlocked cars.

Orozco said he and Guardia attended elementary school together; Orozco was a grade younger. Their paths wouldn’t cross again until years later after Orozco joined the police force and recognized Guardia as the man he was transporting to court for an outstanding warrant.

He next began regularly seeing Guardia while Orozco was working a side security job at a local plasma center where Guardia regularly made donations for cash, including the day of the early morning attack.

“I know exactly who he is,” Orozco said of his reaction after later seeing the Chicago police bulletin about the man who attacked Kromelis.

“When we were growing up as kids,” he said, “he was never really involved in anything bad. It wasn’t until later in life that he probably got caught up in the wrong crowd. … I would tell him, ‘You know, you can get a job if you’re not happy at home and get your own place and get your life together.’”

Ortiz, a police detective, also reached out to Chicago police and identified Guardia.

At the time of his May 27 arrest, authorities said, Guardia was wearing the same clothing seen in the surveillance video. In recorded police statements he said he had found a McDonald’s cup filled with gasoline and set a pile of blankets on fire, according to public records. Guardia said he was “an angry person” but offered no other motive.

Guardia also said he was not aware that a person was under the blankets, but prosecutors said Kromelis’ head and lower legs were visible.

“It takes a special kind of evil to do what the defendant did,” Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Danny Hanichak said at Guardia’s bond hearing. “The defendant decided to target the most vulnerable person possible: a 75-year-old homeless man sleeping on the street. In 16 years of prosecuting cases, I’ve never seen a video so horrific.”

‘He knew I cared’

The attack left the Walking Man with severe burns covering about 65% of his body, especially his head, face, neck and chest, according to medical records.

When Sister Wilson first called the hospital to see if she could visit him, a nurse told her that Kromelis had to give consent and was still sedated.

Undeterred, she kept calling.

“I would call back twice a week and say, ‘I’m still here if he needs me,’” she said. “I had never met him but I thought if he ever survived what he was going through that possibly we could welcome him into our home.”

She called regularly for three months. It wasn’t until the first week of September that hospital staff allowed Wilson to visit.

“When he woke up from sedation, that’s when I came into his life,” she said.

On their second visit, she said, he softly joined her as she recited the Lord’s Prayer. Wilson took that as a sign that despite his horrific condition he still believed in God.

The nun visited him weekly, sometimes more, at various hospitals, rehab and nursing facilities. She usually came alone, worried that even the most well-intentioned guest might gawk.

She said Kromelis’ wavy hair and thick mustache had burned off but were growing back. He was covered in bandages and gauze and wounds from the fire and medical skin grafts, records said. The left side of his face was so horribly burned that he lost part of his ear. He received drops to keep his eyes lubricated because he could not blink.

Kromelis didn’t talk much about what happened to him, Wilson said, and he never uttered a word about his assailant.

“He never voiced vindictiveness,” she said. “He did give the impression that it was something that happened and he was going to go on with his life as it is now. He just kind of kept going.”

There were some lighter moments, she said, like once when she played songs from Spotify on her tablet.

“He began conducting the music with his hands,” she said. “He was so excited, like a little kid.”

She didn’t ask too many questions during their visits. But she was curious about why he didn’t use a sleeping bag instead of blankets in the wintertime.

“He said, ‘Are you crazy? They can really get you if you’re stuck in a bag,’” she recalled.

They prayed or watched old movies together. He also loved the news, especially CNN. Wilson remembered his reaction after watching coverage of a protest in a country where women and young girls were being denied basic rights.

“He said, ‘Isn’t that pathetic?’” she said. “He was really concerned about other people.”

His condition seemed to be improving, she thought. He could see, sit up and move around a bit during his physical therapy sessions. His speech continually improved.

He had a good sense of humor. But he also was stubborn and at times refused to obey his doctors’ wishes. Wilson said she tried to help coax him into taking the next steps in his recovery. It wasn’t always easy, especially regarding a surgery he needed to insert a feeding tube through his abdomen into his stomach.

“That was another battle,” she said. “I went (to visit him) four days in a row. He threw me out because he didn’t want to hear it. He had to make up his own mind.”

But he let her come back, and she said Kromelis eventually agreed to the surgery.

“He knew I cared,” she said. “He was a person who could still trust.”

Wilson visited Kromelis for nearly four months. During most of that time, she thought he was going to make it. She hoped he would join her at St. Mary’s Home, which has a nursing staff. She said he didn’t make any promises, but he asked questions about life there. She assured him he could walk freely.

“Oh, I loved him,” Wilson said. “I’ve worked with a lot of elders all my life and he was very unique. No one was going to tell him what to do, boy. He was a man who was making his own decisions.”

It was while researching ophthalmologists for Kromelis that she learned the sad truth. The nun said specialist after specialist declined to help. She couldn’t understand why. This was Chicago’s beloved Walking Man, after all. Then it dawned on her. She asked one of his medical professionals to level with her about his prognosis.

“He just looked at me and said, ‘You really want to know?’” she said. “He said, ‘Sister, he is so full of infections, it’s just a matter of time.’”

Joseph Kromelis died Dec. 11 of complications from thermal injuries, about 10 days after he arrived at a nursing facility. Wilson and Susan Pistorius, who volunteers with Little Sisters of the Poor, were the ones who found him.

They had brought him a small decorated Christmas tree that afternoon. After setting it next to his bed, Wilson took his hand and realized he was gone. The nun believes he had just died, as his hand was warm still.

They waited hours, until fire and police officials had all left. They then walked back into his room and, after a nurse lowered a sheet to reveal his face, each of the women held one of his hands and prayed.

“If you could have seen him in that bed, when you think about Good Friday, our Lord on the cross, it was just awful,” Wilson said. “I don’t think he suffered a lot in the end, but his body was just wracked with sickness. It was very stark. Very, very hard.”

The women recited the Lord’s Prayer. Wilson also said a prayer that she and her fellow Little Sisters often recite with the dying: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul, assist me in my last moments, and may I breathe out my soul in peace and trust in you. Amen.”

Pistorius, who had accompanied Wilson to visit Kromelis a few other times as well, said she is in awe of Wilson’s kindness and the bond she formed with him.

“She was the one who really convinced him that there was somebody in his life that cared about him and wanted him to succeed and wanted him to get better,” Pistorius said. “And I think that gave him a lot of hope. I really do.”

A moment of affirmation

Joseph Kromelis’ body was cremated and his ashes interred in a donated columbarium space at St. Boniface Cemetery in Chicago.

The Rev. Scott Donahue, president and CEO of Mercy Home, worked with Sullivan Funeral Home in Hinsdale, as well as anonymous donors, to provide a dignified interment. Donahue read Scripture from the Gospel of St. John at a small private service.

“It was absolutely powerful and touching,” Donahue said. “They gave him a spot in the columbarium that is the highest shelf facing east so he can see the sunrise over the lake.”

The funeral home published an obituary that acknowledged Kromelis’ public persona, calling him a local icon.

“And above all, he walked … and walked, and walked,” it read. “Among the crowds. Down the Magnificent Mile. Across Chicago River bridges. Through the L-shadowed streets of the Loop.”

Advocates for people experiencing homelessness are hopeful Kromelis’ death will lead to change. They plan to continue pushing a proposal called Bring Chicago Home, which organizers say would generate $163 million annually through increasing the real estate transfer tax on the priciest of properties. An earlier effort was unsuccessful.

Doug Schenkelberg, executive director of Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, sees a sad irony in Kromelis’ story.

“A lot of people felt like they knew him even though they didn’t,” he said. “That sense of knowing him, I’m sure, had a huge piece as to why people wanted to support him. And that’s at the same time that a lot of people who are experiencing homelessness are actively ignored. People work to walk past them without looking at them. They don’t want to see the issue because it makes them uncomfortable.”

Kromelis’ sister, Singree, in Alaska, said her brother truly loved Chicago.

“Maybe because of all the bustle,” she said. “And that’s why I think he walked. He observed everything. That was his adventure.”

One year after Kromelis’ death, there are signs of his lingering impact.

Chicago street artist Dont Fret included a large portrait of Kromelis in a “People in Your Neighborhood” exhibit that stretches along part of the Riverwalk and features 55 familiar faces.

A Facebook page in his honor is still active. And Marvel said his “Walk On, Dude” T-shirts continue to sell, with the proceeds now going to StreetWise. To date, people have bought about 500 shirts.

Documentary filmmaker Rebecca Halpern, an Illinois native who directed the acclaimed “Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter,” said she is in production on a short film project about Kromelis. It will include Jones’ donated archival footage.

“Our hope is the film will raise awareness about the homeless population in Chicago,” she said. “Shouldn’t we all leave a legacy that’s bigger than ourselves? And he did.”

Joseph Guardia, who did not respond to a request to be interviewed, is being held without bail at Cook County Jail on first-degree murder charges. At a recent court hearing, he complained about “being physically assaulted everywhere I go” and asked for more protection. But, according to jail records, Guardia often instigated the physical confrontations.

Sister Wilson said she would like to visit Guardia in jail.

“It appalled me to see so much suffering, but at the same time I would like to reach out to that person, not to throw it in his face, but to see if there’d be a way to help him,” she said.

Though Kromelis lived his life outside society’s norms, she said he should be remembered with respect. She recalled a poignant moment during his hospitalization when a nurse asked Wilson if she would introduce her.

The nurse told Kromelis what an honor it was for her to meet him.

“I’ve seen you all my adult life and I’ve always wanted to talk to you,” said Wilson, quoting the nurse. “And little tears came down his cheek. It was like this moment of affirmation for him. I’m sure he realized that he meant something to people. He knew he wasn’t just this unnoticed person.”