Tiny, Insular Town Was Home

When Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. studied Virgil and classic literature at a private, all-boys boarding high school, he preferred to read the books written in their original Latin.

As captain of the football team, he has described himself as a “small but slow” running back -- one whom opponents often towered over and routinely pummeled.

Home was a two-story beach cottage a couple of blocks from the shore of Lake Michigan, about 60 miles east of downtown Chicago. But instead of using his summer vacations to relax on the sand, he hauled cables and boxes of tools at the steel mill where his father was an executive.

“Everyone knew that he had the mind and determination to do something great,” said Lawrence Sullivan, 72, a former math teacher of Roberts’ at La Lumiere School in La Porte. “The question wasn’t if he would. The question was when.”

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1955, Roberts has three sisters, one older and two younger. His parents, John and Rosemary, moved the family to northern Indiana in the 1960s, when his father was transferred to the Bethlehem Steel Corp. mill in Burns Harbor. He was in charge of the mill’s electrical department.

The family arrived during the steel industry’s heady days, when business was booming and mills employed tens of thousands across the state. Family friends say the Roberts family was lured to the area’s strong economy and devout Roman Catholic community.

Long Beach -- with a population of about 1,600 in 2000 -- was a tiny, insular suburb popular then among executives at Bethlehem Steel.

“It was mostly families in the upper middle class, where neighbors knew one another because of church or the mills,” said former neighbor Betsy Starr Swan, 50. “The beach was beautiful, and people were doing well. But it wasn’t a place where the truly rich lived.”

When the Robertses arrived, said Starr, “all the local girls developed a crush on John.” They sighed over his blue eyes and his dark, tousled hair.

“He was so cute and nice,” Starr said. “Though he didn’t date. We were all good Catholics, and there weren’t many mixed parties where boys and girls played together.”

After attending a Catholic middle school, Roberts decided to apply to La Lumiere, a small independent school with Catholic roots. He chose it, in part, because the closest parochial school didn’t have a football team.

Tucked in the woods of La Porte, the school today looks more like a rural Boy Scout camp than a high school: A barn has been converted into a gymnasium and a cabin houses the school’s cafeteria.

The school has always been small. It currently has about 120 students, the same as when Roberts was a freshman in 1969.

Among its fewer than 1,000 graduates, school officials say, are politicians and influential figures, including members of baseball’s Comiskey family, former Rep. John Patrick Hiler (R-Ind.) and Andrew McKenna Jr., chairman of the Illinois GOP.

Part of the school’s appeal, say former students, was its reputation for pushing smart kids to succeed and in turning around students who had run into trouble.

“There had been people who had been thrown out of their schools,” said Carey Dowdle, 49, who owns a mortgage company in Northbrook, Ill. “And there were people there whose parents wanted their kids to have the benefits of an East Coast prep school without having to go so far. John, clearly, was in the latter camp.”

It wasn’t cheap: School officials say it cost about $7,000 a year in 1969 for tuition, room and board.

Students followed a strict dress code that required a sport coat and tie at all times. Casual meant a V-neck sweater and a bow tie. Dinner required a dark jacket and a white shirt.

“If your shirt had stripes, you’d be sent back to your dorm room to change,” said a friend and former roommate of Roberts, Bob MacLaverty, 49. “In the summer, we’d be so hot and we’d have to sit there in the dining hall and sweat it out.”

Roberts, who was also editor of the school’s newspaper, graduated in 1973 at the head of his class. He later earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University.

Roberts, 50, and his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, have two children.

According to a family friend, Jack Roberts retired early, while his son was attending law school. The family later settled in Ellicott City, Md.

Many of the executives in the steel industry left the area in the 1980s after the steel industry crashed. Over the years, Long Beach emerged as a popular vacation spot for Chicagoans looking for an inexpensive place to build a second home.

Today, lush flower gardens are interspersed with houses along the winding, tree-lined roads; lakefront property sells for more than $1 million. The median family income in 1999 was about $85,000, according to the regional planning commission.

Yet it remains a fairly close-knit community. And on Wednesday, the primary topic of conversation was John Roberts.

At the town’s only restaurant, Little Giant Pizza, residents gathered in its tiny dining area late Wednesday and shared the shop’s six seats. A TV had CNN on, and the people cheered when Roberts’ face appeared.

“How cool is that?” asked Tom Holwell, who owns the restaurant. “How many people can say they’re from the same town as a Supreme Court nominee? We’re all keeping our fingers crossed that he gets the job.”