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

CHICAGO -- 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 c...