Jim Tyree

      Live long enough, and men you know become statues.
      Well, that's how it's been for me anyway. Maybe for you, not so much.
      Some I knew fairly well: Roger Ebert, Irv Kupcinet, Jack Brickhouse. 
      Some I only spoke to once or twice: Michael Jordan, Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Harry Caray.

      All men, so far. Women don't seem to get statues. I'm not sure why, but lucky them. Being rendered into bronze has to be a mixed blessing. You need to be dead, usually. They make an exception for sports heroes. Though some of the statues — Ebert's, for instance — well, not the best likeness. 

      Some have other memorials as well. Harry Caray, for instance, the broadcaster, has a statue outside Wrigley Field, and a namesake restaurant in River North. I was trucking there Monday, through the double-deserted downtown. Especially empty because it was both President's Day, when many government offices were closed, and a Monday, when many workers wring out an extra day of weekend.

     So pretty much alone, proceeding along the 300 block of North Clark Street, heading to Harry Caray's to have lunch with a reader who had bought the meal in a charity auction, when I was stopped in my tracks by the plaque above.

      First, I'd never seen a memorial like this — a metal marker, not on the public way, but a private sidewalk between blocks, on a shortcut I was vectoring through.
      And second, I knew Jim Tyree, CEO of Mesirow Financial. He rescued the Sun-Times in 2009, leading a group of investors who, by paying $5 million and assuming $20 million in debt, snatched it from the vultures who'd have picked it clean long ago. 

      I remember the cocktail party he threw after he bought the paper. It wasn't for everybody — just machers — and I was surprised to find myself among the select. I wandered the crowd, nibbled appetizers, while running what I would say to him over in mind, smiling a little, thinking of Luca Brasi practicing his greeting by himself in the opening of "The Godfather."
    "Don Corleone. I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home... on the wedding day of your daughter..."
     I finally worked my way up to Jim, waiting for an opening and inserting myself into a gap in the circle of well-wishers. He looked at me. I introduced myself and said, formally "Mr. Tyree, thank you for saving the Sun-Times."
      To which he replied, "People tell me you're the reason they read the Sun-Times."
      Which left me speechless, groping for a response.  What I came up with was this:
      "Thank you. I'm reluctant to quote David Radler ... " — the predatory felon who owned the paper before Tyree — "...but he liked to say, 'When you make the sale, close your briefcase and walk away." 
    And I turned and left. We spoke again in the brief time he owned the paper — when he came down with cancer, I gave him Evan Handler's "Time on Fire," a primer on staying alive and keeping your spirits up while battling the Big C. 

     That wasn't what killed him — a technician preparing him for dialysis messed up the line into his artery, introduced oxygen, and that got him. An unfair end for a very giving man, someone who loved Chicago. 

     And now he is part of Chicago, literally an element of the infrastructure, like a fire hydrant or a lamppost, built into the ground, part of the pavement.  I'm not sure whether I'd like it if this caught on — you're trying to get somewhere, and all these prominent individuals call to you from below your feet. It's cool that there's the one. Jim Tyree deserves much more. But it's a start, and made me think of him, which is the point of these tributes. 

Clark Street, 12 noon.