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A sprawling mural in the South Loop along Ida B. Wells Drive across from the Harold Washington Library was painted this fall by Dwight White II, a former football player at Northwestern University who embraced art after an injury prompted him to retire from the sport in 2014. | Courtesy of Chicago Loop Alliance
After suffering a kidney contusion during a practice in 2014, he made the tough decision to leave the team. He ended up embracing another love — art, which he’s now pursuing full-time. A towering mural in the South Loop is among his latest creations.
While playing football, Dwight White II’s hands were among his most important tools — used to derail a catch, make a tackle, pick off a pass.
He made the difficult decision in 2014 to give up the sport while a cornerback for the Northwestern University Wildcats after discovering he’d been born with only one kidney and suffering an injury in practice before the season opener in Evanston.
But White — who went on to earn his bachelor’s degree and a master’s from Northwestern — continues to work with his hands, though on walls and canvas rather than the gridiron.
He’s become an artist, leaving a corporate job during the pandemic to make a go at art as a full-time profession.
ProvidedDwight White II in front of one his paintings.
The 27-year-old Chicagoan has started to garner attention — most recently along Ida B. Wells Drive where in October he painted a towering mural in recognition of Loop workers.
Each weekday, more than 77,000 vehicles pass the artwork, featuring the side profile of a pony-tailed woman in a hard hat, colorful streaks obscuring her eyes, a stack of books and the words “All Roads Lead Back To The Loop.”
ProvidedDwight White II works on a mural on Ida B. Wells Drive this fall.
Sponsored by the foundational arm of the Chicago Loop Alliance, the mural was intended to recognize downtown workers, particularly a dozen recognized by the group as “Employees of the Month.”
White also painted a mural on the West Side as part of an arts initiative to honor front-line medical workers during the pandemic, and another one on the North Side amid Black Lives Matter protests earlier this year.
ProvidedA Black Lives Matter mural painted at Belmont and Francisco avenues by Dwight White II and an artist who goes by “AntBen” following the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis by a white cop earlier this year.
“What I really love about art is being able to reach people with different backgrounds,” said White, who grew up in the Houston area and secured a football scholarship from NU. “It connects different walks of life, it builds community.”
He added, “And, it’s a personal practice, it’s how I best communicate.”
Robert Herguth / Sun-TimesA mural honoring medical workers during the pandemic was completed by Dwight White II at Ogden Avenue and Taylor Street earlier this year.
Cornerbacks are defensive players who cover wide receivers — offensive players who often run long, quick passing routes.
During the 2013 season at Northwestern — during which he was a red-shirt freshman, standing at 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 180 pounds — White played in all 12 games, started in six, and logged 17 solo tackles and one interception, against the University of Nebraska.
NU AthleticsDwight White II picks off a pass in 2013 while a Northwestern University cornerback. The next year an injury led him to leave the squad.
While practicing before the 2014 season, he felt discomfort in the kidney area and, during a doctor visit, discovered he only had the one kidney. He’d been born without a second one.
That made continuing to play football risky, but he decided to soldier on and play the sport that he loved.
Outfitted with a special pad for added protection, White then landed on a receiver’s knee in the same spot during a practice leading up to the Aug. 30 opener at Ryan Field against the University of California.
“It gave me a contusion on my kidney,” he said. “It was a risk to keep playing ball.”
ProvidedAnother canvas painting from Dwight White II, who hails from the Houston area but now lives in Chicago.
Consulting with his parents, both of whom had been college athletes, he decided to call it quits, though he stayed on scholarship at Northwestern and completed his first degree in 2016.
“Being a member of the football program at Northwestern University has been a huge blessing,” White said at the time in a statement. “Throughout my life, football has been awesome during the good times where I’ve had lots of success, and through the tough times where I’ve strived for success.”
“This football family is part of who I am, and that won’t change with this decision I’ve had to make for my long-term health.”
True to his word, White stayed connected to the football program, led then and now by head coach Pat Fitzgerald.
“I started thinking of ways to stay engaged and contribute,” White said, so got involved in public relations and marketing for the team, including over social media platforms.
That helped hone his digital art skills, using Photoshop, for instance, to showcase members of the team in action.
“Eventually I started testing other mediums such as painting,” he said.
“I guess when you have significant life changes” — this marked the first time since he was in the 1st or 2nd grade that he hadn’t played football — “you start redefining yourself,” and he retreated to something else he enjoyed as a kid, creating art.
His mother, LaWanda White, said with sports consuming so much of his time as a youngster, “he didn’t have a lot of time” for artwork, but he always “liked to draw.”
ProvidedDwight White II is also using his art skills to work with corporate clients including the Chicago Fire, for whom he designed special cleats.
White stayed in the Chicago area so he could complete his master’s degree in integrated marketing communications in 2018 and was hired to work in the marketing and consumer insights department at the Kraft Heinz Company.
“A lot of it had to do with market research . . . less creative, more really understanding the minds and behaviors of consumers,” he said.
While there, he was working on his artwork off hours.
“I was balancing the two as best I could” for more than two years, he said, adding that, eventually, “I had to choose one.”
ProvidedA mural inside the Northwestern players’ lounge in Evanston, painted by Dwight White II in 2019.
In recent months, he left his job to become a “full-time creative.”
Calling White “so talented, and humble,” Fitzgerald said, “To see how he’s responded to the adversity” he faced “has been just unbelievable.”
White is not only doing the occasional mural — including one inside the Northwestern players’ lounge in 2019 — he teams with corporate brands on consumer-related art projects and is in the midst of a gallery show in Logan Square where he’s selling his canvas paintings.
As for the 40-foot-tall mural completed this fall, Chicago Loop Alliance President and CEO Michael Edwards said “Dwight did a great job incorporating symbols” of the workers being honored, with balloons, for instance, a nod to a downtown security guard “whose smile uplifts.”
“We love the way he interprets,” said Edwards, whose group promotes the Loop as a workplace. The end result was “very colorful, very playful, very engaging.”
Chicago police exchanged gunfire Dec. 27, 2020, with a man in Washington Park. | Sun-Times file photo
The shootout happened about 10:20 p.m. in the 5100 of block of South Prairie Avenue, where officers responding to a ShotSpotter alert came upon two males in a dark-colored SUV, Chicago police said.
Chicago police exchanged gunfire Sunday with a man in Washington Park while responding to reports of shots fired in the South Side neighborhood.
The shootout happened about 10:20 p.m. in the 5100 of block of South Prairie Avenue, where officers responding to a ShotSpotter alert came upon two males in a dark-colored SUV, Chicago police said.
As officers approached the SUV, someone in the passenger seat opened fire at them, prompting one officer to return fire, according to police.
No one is believed to have been struck, police said. The shooter and the driver of the SUV have not been taken into custody, but a weapon was recovered on the scene.
DePaul Prep’s Perry Cowan (11) pulls up a three pointer against Bogan at state in 2019. | Worsom Robinson/For the Sun-Times
The Sun-Times is counting down the 50 high school basketball programs with the most wins during the decade.
When high school basketball fans think back to the 1980s, programs like Quincy, Providence St. Mel, East St. Louis Lincoln and the arrival of city powers King and Simeon are easy to think back on.
The 1990s brought us memorable basketball giants in Peoria Manual and Thornton, a few steamrolling Proviso East teams and the continued dominance of King.
The first 10 years of the 2000s included Glenbrook North, Peoria High and the beginning of a Simeon juggernaut.
Now, with the calendar inching closer to wrapping up an unforgettable 2020, the end of this month closes out another decade. And it’s another high school basketball time period to look back on.
Earlier this year we broke down the decade’s best teams and best players. Now, with every season of the past decade complete, it’s time to look at the Chicago area programs who won the most.
This list is comprised of the 50 winningest programs over the past 10 years, starting with the 2010-11 season and concluding with the 2019-20 season. Every team in every class throughout the Chicago area will be broken down in a variety of ways. But total wins, with winning percentage used as tie-breaker, determined the rankings.
We present No. 36 DePaul Prep today and will add one program a day going forward.
36. DEPAUL PREP: 191-106
Decade’s biggest storyline: The decade was filled with so many highlights. But the 25-win team in 2018-19 that finished third in the state in Class 3A jumps to the top. The Perry Cowan-led team fell to Bogan in the state semifinals but bounced back to beat Peoria Manual in the third-place game.
Underrated decade highlight: The great Tom Kleinschmidt, who returned to DePaul Prep (formerly Gordon Tech) as head coach, turned the program into a bonafide area power. Kleinschmidt’s impact can’t be overlooked.
Kleinschmidt, who led Gordon Tech to a second-place Class AA finish in 1990 and was a McDonald’s All-American as a senior, has averaged 22 wins a season since the change to DePaul Prep in 2014. He’s emerged as one of the top coaches in the state.
Remember, this was a program that at one point prior to Kleinschmidt’s arrival had lost 36 Catholic League games in a row and had not won a league game in four years.
Player of the Decade: Perry Cowan (2017)
All-Decade Team: Raequan Williams (2015), Perry Cowan (2017), Lance Mosley (2020), Brian Mathews (2021) and TY Johnson (2021)
Sun-Times file photoDePaul Prep’s Raequan Williams (44) backs down St. Ignatius Daniel Ogele (22).
Other decade news and highlights:
–DePaul Prep snapped the 36-game Catholic League losing streak in eye-opening fashion with a shredding of a talented St. Joseph team in 2012-13. Kleinschmidt always believed that win catapulted his program and was the beginning of the belief and the culture within the program.
-The Rams won 26 games last season, including their sixth regional championship of the decade.
-The Rams wereCatholic League Blue champions in 2018-19.
-In the short history of DePaul Prep, Perry Cowan became the all-time leading scorer –– and tops the list of so many other statistical categories.
-Raequan Williams, who was a huge piece of the culture change at DePaul Prep, starred at Michigan State in football and is now playing in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Should Matt Nagy actually return as head coach of the ChicagoBears next season?
Although the future for Matt Nagy should be in doubt according to many fans, the Chicago Bears may not be granting such a request just yet.
Prior to the game on Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Bears were exactly 15-15 in their last 30 games. Last season, they ended 8-8. This year, they were sitting at 7-7. The definition of mediocrity is exactly what you’ve seen in Chicago for nearly two seasons now.
So, with nothing truly changing, why wouldn’t the Bears be searching for a new head coach in 2021? Why would they want to continue putting up with a “not bad enough, but not good enough” type of team?
It all stems from leadership, and if you ask a lot of folks, they would tell you Nagy needs to go. But, a report coming out on Sunday morning says differently.
ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that Nagy will likely return in 2021, writing this via Twitter:
“Multiple people around NFL believe the Bears will retain Matt Nagy for 2021, as a win over Jacksonville would ensure three seasons of at least eight wins. Final two weeks must play out but Nagy’s team responded to midseason struggles and coach appears well-positioned.”
The Bears’ offensive resurgence has been a positive, no doubt. But, look at the facts, here. The Bears have scored over 30 points in three straight games, but they’ve done so against the Lions, Texans and Vikings. The best of those defenses is Minnesota, who is right around the middle of the pack overall.
Mitchell Trubisky also looks positioned to return with how he’s responded in his second chance as a starter this year, but his play next week against the Packers will tell us a lot more about who he is at this very moment.
It’s been nice to see the offense put more points on the board, but the part of this report fans should be furious about is this: Fowler specifically stated “three seasons of at least eight wins” being the deciding factor with Nagy.
Three seasons in a row of being O.K. is good enough to keep you around? I suppose, if your name is Marvin Lewis, then you might be safe in that instance. But, the Bears are going to keep Nagy around because he’s won at least eight games in his first three years? That, in and of itself, is a hilarious qualifier when it comes to saving a head coach’s job.
Year 1 was a honeymoon. Year 2, the Bears came back down to earth. This year, once more, mediocrity is at the forefront. So, why is Nagy safe? It’s easy: The Bears are historically cheap, and as long as they aren’t a bad football team, that’s good enough for the McCaskeys.
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