Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 27

lD0Sli(Q)Dglj1(a Section 2 (thicagO (Tribune Thursday, May 28, 1992 North Reputed mob boss Accardo dies w- 20m By Ronald Koziol and John O'Brien Anthony J. Accardo, who. rose to become the reputed boss of the Chicago crime syndicate from a job as Al Capone's bodyguard on no more than a 6th-grade education, died Wednesday night in St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital Center. He was 86 and a resident of Bar-rington Hills.

He was once described at a Forest The fall occurred during a dizzy spell suffered just after returning from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, where he was treated for heart and lung ailments. Accardo was one of the last of an era that included such mobsters as Jack McGurn, Sam Giancana, Frank Nitti and Paul Ricca. Accardo was one of the few to See Accardo, pg. 8 death, she said, were congestive heart failure, acute respiratory failure, pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Accardo spent the summers at the secluded Barrington Hills home of a son-in-law, Ernest Kumerow, president of Laborers Union Local 1001.

His last known hospital stay was for treatment of head injuries suffered in a 1984 fall in his former condominium in River U.S. Senate Rackets Committee hearing as the "godfather of Chicago organized crime a legend in his own time, the heir to Al Capone." Accardo, known as chairman emeritus of the Chicago mob, was admitted May 14 to Nazareth after returning to the Chicago area from his winter home in Palm Springs, Calif. He died at 7:36 p.m. Wednesday, said nursing coordinator Carrie Quidayan. The causes of Anthony J.

Accardo luburbs lose in Edgar Medicaid plan 4 N. 'Ail I By Hugh Dellios Chicago Tribune SPRINGFIELD Gov. Jim Edgar Wednesday unveiled a complicated and controversial Medicaid assessment plan to raise $735 million to pay for health care for the poor. Critics immediately assailed the plan because it would shift millions of dollars from well-off, mostly suburban hospitals to urban hospitals that serve a large number of poor patients. The plan became yet another maelstrom for the General Assembly to fight through this spring, and it fanned the flames of animosity between rich suburbs and poor cities.

Anticipating a looming battle among legislators, Edgar said the plan to tax hospitals, nursing homes and other health facilities was the only way to avoid a crisis in hospital care without raising the general income tax. Critics warned that some facilities will have to raise rates for patients who pay in order to make ends meet, and they scoffed at Edgar's suggestion that the plan is not a tax increase. "We share the governor's concern about the continuing survival of high Medicaid hospitals," said Kenneth Robbins, president of the Illinois Hospital Association. "But this tells us that it's time somebody found the political courage to raise the income tax. It's hard for us to understand how Edgar can square his oft-stated opposition to a tax increase with this sudden proposal to place a new tax on hospitals." Under the proposed hospital assessment plan, Resurrection Medical Center on Chicago's fc i i i VMM A Tribune photo by Cnaria Osgood Gov.

Jim Edgar chats with 20-month-old Jimmy Fields and his Children's Hospital Wednesday. La Rabida is one of the hospi-3V2-year-old sister, Alexandra, in the waiting room of La Rabida tals that would benefit from Edgar's Medicare assessment plan. Horowitz's piano now in spotlight The star of the classical musical tour now passing through our area weighs a corpulent 990 pounds more than three Pavarottis and must travel from city to city in the back of a moving van, ingloriously surrounded by household goods. The star is very temperamental and sensitive and has handlers who tend to every fussy need between performances. Fans have been known to weep at the opportunity just to stand close for a lingering look.

The star is unmoved by such sentiment, however, because the star is a concert grand piano, the very Steinway owned and favored by the late virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz. It is now a little more than halfway through a 75-city North American odyssey in which it is the featured attraction in concerts and exhibitions. This celebration of an inanimate object recalls the Monty Python "British Showbiz Awards" sketch in which the emcee announces, "Sadly, David Niven cannot be with us tonight, but he has sent his fridge What a typically selfless gesture that he should send this fridge, of all of his fridges." Actually, Horowitz would probably be aghast that anyone has sent this piano, of all the pianos he played, to tour without him. "He would allow nobody to play it," said Franz Mohr, the chief concert technician for Steinway Sons and the pianist's personal tuner for 25 years before Horowitz's death in 1989. "One time he had not performed for several months and I said 'Maestro, this is not good.

Can we allow some master students to practice on And he went mad. He said, 'Nobody touches my Now everybody is touching it Wednesday morning, anybody who had signed up could walk into The Beautiful Sound piano showroom on North Michigan Avenue and tickle the same slightly scratched ivories so often tickled by one of this century's greatest artists. One woman played "The Happy Farmer." Yours truly plunked out a two-fingered version of "Chopsticks," my keyboard tour de force. "He would turn in his grave to see this," said Mohr, who had flown in from New York to minister to the 9-foot-long celebrity. The piano was built in 1941 and is roughly the same as the Steinway Model you could buy if you had $60,000.

Mohr said that he has adjusted it so the keys have a very light touch and spring back quickly, as Horowitz demanded, and that the piano has a very strong bass and, overall, an inherent slightly "nasal" sound. "It has a remarkable range of capabilities," said Tony Millard, an amateur who tried it out Millard owns a concert grand, which he said he prefers in some respects, but said that laying the Horowitz "is a thrill just like a ittle Leaguer would feel picking up Babe Ruth's bat" This piano has been in Moscow, Tokyo, Berlin and London, and Thursday it will travel for the first time to suburban Countryside for private classes. Friday it will be center stage for "A Salute to Horowitz" benefit at Hinsdale Central High School. Sunday the hardest working piano in show business will appear at 3 p.m. Orchestra Hall and at 7:30 p.m.

at Ravinia's Murray Theater. Monday it will go to Evanston for private classes. Tuesday it will return to Countryside for public playing at The Beautiful Sound store, then to the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago for a concert Wednesday and public play all day Thursday. Friday and Saturday it will be back at the downtown store, where average musicians can once again hack away on it Hauling the enormous piece of memorabilia around is the hard part Four strapping movers are needed to take its legs off and slide it into a customized crate for each relocation, and at each new site, a tuner must check all 243 strings, sometimes several times. But on the other hand, unlike other problematic stars, this one is so large it doesn't need bodyguards to protect it, it never trashes a hotel room, and it doesn't demand anyone pick the brown out of the candy dish before a performance.

The satiny black exterior is a bit road weary with assorted tiny nicks and dents and gouges, and Mohr said that changes in temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure can cause subtle shifts in the wood-and-felt hammer mechanisms that then require adjustment He said he tries to make the piano feel to you like it felt to Horowitz. The master loved this particular piano and its idiosyncrasies so much, Mohr said, that he took the unusual step of taking it on tour with him beginning in the early 1980s. This lent the instrument a powerful mystique "Every pianist wants to know how much of that genius was Horowitz and how much was the piano," as Millard put it and contributes to the aura surrounding this unusual tour. "People make appointments just to touch it," said Sharon Graham, sales consultant at The Beautiful Sound. "Others have told me they want to play it because they believe in psychic channeling." From here the enormous talisman will go on to Milwaukee and eventually conclude its tour next winter in Salt Lake City.

Now, can Liberace's piano be far behind? where a large part of Medicaid money is spent. Chicago Osteopathic Medical Center on the South Side would gain the most, receiving $10 million in additional funds to cover Northwest Side would lose the most. It would be required to pay $3.9 million more a year into the program than it would receive back in Medicaid reimbursement, according to figures prepared by the governor's staff. The other nine out of 10 hospitals that would lose the most are in Chicago's suburbs, and nine out of tie 10 that would gain the most are in Chicago, treatment of poor patients who can't afford to pay themselves. "Here's another case where some of the suburbs become a funding source for the entire See Hospitals, pg.

8 Campaign seelis 1 new (Hare runway if Tribun photo by Chutes Chsmey talks with Rosemary Auster, president of the Market Service Association. tion of O'Hare-area communities, said, "The quality of life, the value of property and the emotional well-being of people are more important than getting a few thousand more planes into O'Hare." And while members of the group endorsed the proposed Lake Calumet Airport, they accepted one of the premises used by critics of the Southeast Side field that it could take much longer to complete than the 2005 target date set by the city. Anti-noise activists around O'Hare and their anti-Lake Calumet Airport allies in Hegewisch and the south suburbs have argued that the toxic waste cleanup, threats to federally protected wetlands and displacement of thousands of residents and businesses could delay the project, if not cancel it. New runways could be forced on O'Hare to handle the crush of growing air traffic during the delay, critics contend. "We've been saying that, and the business community and Mayor Daley have been denying it.

Now, suddenly, they agree with us. That's the irony in it," Zettek said. The O'Hare group's acceptance of a 20-year construction schedule "more than anything else confirms the legitimate concerns of people who have had doubts that Lake Calumet can be built, and whether that is what some of the proponents of the airport really want," said Mark Gordon, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader James "Pate" Philip (R-Wood Dale). Philip opposes new See OTIare, pg. 8 By David Ibata A coalition of city and suburban business interests called Wednesday for at least one new runway at O'Hare International Airport to keep the field competitive in the 20 years that it could take to build a new regional airport at Lake Calumet.

Led by the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, the group, with a combined membership of more than 4,000 city and suburban businesses, unveiled a campaign called "Save the O'Hare Airport Region" at a news conference at O'Hare. Chicagoland Chamber President Samuel R. Mitchell said the campaign's purpose is to convince state legislators not to preclude an O'Hare expansion in an attempt to win suburban support for a Lake Calumet Airport. Such action "will cripple O'Hare's ability to continue as the air hub of the nation," Mitchell said. The campaign's launch coincided with the decision Wednesday by House Speaker Michael Madi-gan (D-Chicago) to schedule a June 3 hearing on the Lake Calumet Airport and related airport issues before the House Executive Committee.

Asserting that a new O'Hare runway is needed to reduce flight delays, Mitchell said, "We simply cannot afford to jeopardize g)'Hare's future by trading away 'Hare's viability to appease a vocal minority of people who want to limit O'Hare's future." But Charles Zettek, Elk Grove Village president and vice chairman of the Suburban O'Hare Commission, an anti-noise coali Work goes on as usual Wednesday at the South Water Market as Mayor Richard Daley New roots for South Water Market By Ronald E. Yates Calling it a critical step in Chicago's march to attract more business and industry, Mayor Richard Daley announced plans Wednesday to upgrade the city's aging infrastructure and create seven industrial parks. Flanked by crates of avocados, oranges and lemons in the 67-year-old South Water Market at 14th and Morgan Streets, Daley outlined an ambitious program that includes: Moving the South Water Market to 61 acres now occupied by the Sears, Roebuck and Co. warehouse at Ashland Avenue just north of the Stevenson Expressway. Preparing the site of the former Read Mental Health Center on the Northwest Side for a warehousedistribution center.

Creating an industrial park at Madison Street and Racine Avenue. Turning the Campbell Soup factory at 35th Street and Cali-fornia Avenue into a warehousedistribution center. Converting the southeast quadrant of the Stock Yards into an industrial site. Building a West Side distribution center at Roosevelt Road and Kostner Avenue. Creating a manufacturing and distribution center on the Near Northwest Side at Laramie and Bloomingdale Avenues.

Also on tap are repairs to 20 bridges, vertical clearance improvements to nine overpasses, and improvements to segments of 13 "industrial" streets those traveled by heavy trucks. The money will come from a See Market, pg. 8 Chicago The Illinois Senate race goes national as i ,1 I e. Washington Sruti Nadimpalli and 3 other Chicago-area National Spelling Bee entrants survive. See Page 3 Lincolnwocd A man who admitted being an SS guard at a concentration camp agrees to leave the U.S.

See Page 3 Sens. Bill Bradley and Skokie The Board of Trustees will vote Monday on a plan for a new $13.6 million Centre East performing arts center. See Page 4 Phil Gramm (R-Texas) attend fundraisers. See Page 2 0.