Flashback 2004: 'At the top of the list of the good guys'

    How do you prepare for a national political convention? I'm not a political reporter, but I knew one of the best, Steve Neal. So I pulled down his last book, "Happy Days are Here Again: The 1932 Democratic National Convention, the Emergency of FDR — and How America Was Changed Forever" and reread it.  An excellent book, despite the unfortunate "changed forever" locution in the title. I think I'll write about it before the convention.
     The book made me think of Steve, and be shocked to realize both that he is more than 20 years gone,  and that he was only 54 — ten years younger than I am now — when he died. I went to look at the obituary I wrote the day after his suicide, and realized I've never posted it here.

     Steve Neal cut to the chase.
     He liked short lead sentences that punched to the heart of a matter. "He had it all" packed the essence of Dan Rostenkowski's fall from the heights. "He tried" telegraphed Eugene Sawyer's shortcomings as mayor. A dissection of Lee Daniels began, "If you've got the money, he's got the time."
     Mr. Neal, 54, unequaled as a political columnist in Chicago, was discovered dead at his home in Hinsdale on Wednesday. The DuPage County coroner's office described it as a "suicide situation." 

Steve Neal

     The end of Steve Neal's life was a stark contrast to how he lived — energetic, successful, surrounded by a wide, reverential circle of friends.
     "I'm sure going to miss him," said Rostenkowski, the former U.S. House Ways and Means chairman. "There's going to be a void. He was not just a friend. Steve Neal, in my opinion, was one of the more outstanding historians of our time. He recorded the unvarnished truth."
     "Steve Neal was a man of incredible talent, generosity and wit," said former President Bill Clinton. "He was a gifted writer and a sharp political analyst, always drawing from his deep reservoir of historical knowledge to frame current events in a way that helped people really understand what was happening in an increasingly complicated political universe."
     All were shocked at his unexpected death.
     "None of us saw anything," said Bernie Judge, editor of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. "No one had any indications that he was in trouble."
     Perhaps Mr. Neal's greatest legacy was keeping Gov. George Ryan from staffing the new Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield with political pals. Gov. Blagojevich said he looked to Mr. Neal when dealing with the library.
     "A lot of the decisions I've made were in large part the result of conversations I had with him," Blagojevich said. "He was very committed and dedicated to make sure that we had a presidential library for the greatest American president that was second to none."
     Mr. Neal could swing races. Ald. Tom Murphy (18th) credited Mr. Neal with helping him win a nip-and-tuck aldermanic runoff in 1991.
     "On the day before the election, he wrote his column about the 18th Ward race, and we felt so good about it — that he had given us such a fair shake —we ran off 15,000 copies of his column and distributed it," Murphy said. "We ended up winning the race by 127 votes. That column played a huge role in putting us over the top."
     Mr. Neal could write stinging barbs against politicians who he felt were acting improperly — there was bite, but no animus behind his attacks.
     "He could blast you one day, and the next day he'd call you and say, 'Let's have lunch,'" said Cook County Board Finance Chairman John Daley, adding that Mr. Neal's essential fairness made him a favorite of the Daley clan.
     "He was a great friend of our family," said Daley. "My mom really loved reading his columns. I considered him a great personal friend. I shared many good dinners with him and lunches. His knowledge of the history of Chicago was amazing."
     Daley's brother Mayor Daley echoed those sentiments.
     "Sometimes, Steve may have criticized me, and I wouldn't agree, but I always respected his point of view and political insights, and I know he returned that respect to me," the mayor said.
     In addition to his three-times weekly column in the Chicago Sun-Times, he was the author, editor or co-author of 11 books, one just being published now. He approached his profession with the joy of a man doing what he loved. Mr. Neal once began an autobiographical essay with, "It beats working."
     "He thought it was fun to write books," said former Mayor Jane M. Byrne. "Those are his words. He was proud of what he had published. He brought it to you with pride with a letter in front. He was forever delving into politics and government. It made him stand out in his broad depth of knowledge when he would write his columns."
     Indeed, friends wondered whether the effort to finish his latest book — Happy Days are Here Again, a study of the 1932 Democratic National Convention —might not have ground him down.
     "He never complained about anything to me, but he complained about being tired about his book," said Judge. "He told me he was really tired. Forty pages of single-spaced footnotes...."
     His wife, Susan Neal, agreed that the book "took a lot out of him." He frequently wrote until 11 p.m. or later, even on weekends, and had not taken a vacation in four years, she said.
     Medications he was taking also were troubling him, causing adverse reactions that left him feeling ill and weak, she said.
     According to Hinsdale police, who responded to a "carbon monoxide alarm," Mr. Neal was found at the wheel of his car in the garage attached to his home Wednesday around 5:30 p.m. He left behind several notes, according to police.
     Mr. Neal liked to socialize, to eat and drink, and a long Neal lunch, at his favorite haunts such as Eli's or Gene & Georgetti's, was a valued opportunity for politicians and journalists to let down their guards and talk shop.
     The management at Harry Caray's kept Mr. Neal's table empty Thursday as a tribute during the crowded lunch hour.
     "He was, I guess for lack of a better word, a raconteur who enjoyed good food and drink, but only as an adjunct to stimulating conversation," said Ald. Ed Burke (14th). "He had a great capacity for remembering details that many others forget and to put those details into proper perspective."
     "Having a drink with Steve was like getting a free seminar on what was going on," said Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist David Broder. "I grew up in Illinois. I thought I knew something about politics. But he knew a hell of a lot more than I did ... he was a treasure."
     "He worked hard. He enjoyed life. But, he was always there when the bell rang to do the job," said former U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley.
     Mr. Neal realized that politics was all about personalities, and he was deft at navigating the often-conflicting egos.
     "He also had a great capacity for rapprochement," said Burke. "He would write critical articles about a politician and, the next month, sit down and break bread with the same person."
     Mr. Neal could easily have left Chicago for the glamor of the nation's capital.
     In 1989, President George H.W. Bush asked Mr. Neal to serve as his press secretary, said former state Sen. Jeremiah Joyce.
     Why did he turn it down?
     "He was a reporter," said Joyce. "People sometimes lost sight of that because of his great personality, but he was a true journalist.... There will never be another Steve Neal."
     His office walls were covered with framed posters from long-ago campaigns, featuring picture after picture of his heroes: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy.
     Significantly, there was no picture of Mr. Neal — he was a modest, quiet, self-effacing man, who never bragged — not about covering the White House, nor being there when Ronald Reagan was shot nor about dining with Richard Nixon, nor about his powerful friends. At home, though, dozens of shots of Mr. Neal with national and local political leaders joined a gallery of family photos on the walls.
     Mr. Neal was born in Oregon, but he was introduced to tales of Chicago politics by his grandfather, who lived here for half a century. He was drawn to political writing by Theodore H. White's classic The Making of the President 1960.
     He attended the University of Oregon, met his wife when both were freshmen in 1967, and got his first job as a reporter on the old Oregon Journal. After the Columbia University School of Journalism, he went to work at the Philadelphia Inquirer in June 1972.
     In 1987, he joined the Sun-Times. Soon Mr. Neal would touch off a political storm with a controversial story about a meeting between 1987 mayoral challenger Edward R. Vrdolyak and Chicago mob boss Joseph Ferriola.
     Mr. Neal was himself the kind of last of a breed he often celebrated.
     "There was absolutely no smarter political reporter in the city than Steve Neal," said Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin. "The other sad thing is he ended up the last Chicago political daily writer in a town that once had five or six Steve Neals. It's sad there aren't any other voices like his out there."
     Survivors besides his wife, Susan, include two daughters, Erin and Shannon, his parents, Ernest and Ellen Neal, and two brothers, Dan Neal and Gary Neal.
     Mr. Neal "loved his family. He loved his friends" said his wife. "We will miss him terribly. He was just a great husband and father."
     "In the field of politics, there are good guys and there are bad guys," said U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill). "And Steve Neal was at the top of the list of the good guys."
Contributing: Scott Fornek, Dave McKinney, Abdon M. Pallasch, Dan Rozek, Fran Spielman
             —Originally published in the Sun-Times, February 20, 2004 |