Flashback 2008: "Sympathy for the Daley"

Managing all that stuff isn't easy. A room at the Northwestern University Archives in 2023.

     January is a cold month, and it should come as no surprise that death has been busy. Wednesday, the day the obituary for my esteemed colleague Rich Hein ran in the paper, a classmate asked me if I had heard that Pat Quinn died. I had not.
     Quinn was the archivist at Northwestern University, and given my affection for research, of course I knew him, and benefited over the decades from his enthusiasm and expertise. He was especially helpful when I was writing my pranks book, though whenever I visited Deering Library — a vast improvement over the tri-towered mess of poured concrete that is the university's main library — I would pop in and visit.
     When Pat retired in 2008, I noted it in the column, which I reprint here in full since it is — he said modestly — a hoot. Plus its general tone explains why my invitation to speak at Northwestern's commencement has been slow in coming. The original online headline was, "Sympathy for Daley — So he's not George Clooney — Chicago's scrappy mayor can teach Northwestern's pampered graduating class a thing or two."
     This was from when the column ran a thousand words and filed the page, and I've kept in the original headings.

OPENING SHOT ...

     What a bunch of babies.
     Even considering the constant embarrassment that Northwestern University has been inflicting upon its shuddering alumni lately, this is a new low, as NU's pampered undergraduates send up a chorus of complaint because their commencement speaker is Mayor Richard M. Daley.
     A "slap in the face to graduating seniors" one whined.
     Well . . .
     I've been writing about Daley since he took office, and I can't remember ever feeling as much sympathy for him as I do now. It's hard to write a commencement address and a pain in the ass to deliver one, never mind to a gang of 21-year-olds from Scottsdale and Connecticut who have their dander up because you aren't the Dalai Lama or George Clooney or somebody they can brag about to their chums at Stanford (Oprah Winfrey!) or Harvard (J.K. Rowling!).
     Say what you will about Daley, but being the son of the former mayor didn't guarantee him his job — not the way many spurning him will have their careers handed to them on a platter by Dad. Daley had his perks, but the long knives were also out for him after the old man died. Daley's path was uncertain, and he learned a thing or two that might help an ambitious graduate.
     Last year, Julia Louis-Dreyfus was the commencement speaker. Nobody howled about the TV star, but the embattled city mayor gets catcalls.
     This is what they call "a teaching moment." For years, Northwestern liked to festoon its official materials with the best advice a graduate can get, spoken by Adlai E. Stevenson:

     "Your days are short here," he said. "This is the last of your springs. . . . And don't forget, when you leave, why you came."
     Is that really why the Northwestern Class of '08 went to college? To bask in the reflected status of some rock-star commencement speaker?

SPRING 2008

     "Free Sun-Times!?" a bright young man in mod eyeglasses half exclaimed, half asked, poking a folded paper in my direction as I cleared the steps at Union Station and broke into the fresh air and sunlight of Madison Street.
     I subscribe, of course. But that copy stays at home with my wife, so I buy the paper at the Northbrook station. There's another copy waiting on my desk. So I'm covered, Sun-Times-wise. But I was so glad to see somebody waving the flag, that after weighing the merits of wasting a promotional paper vs. supporting the boys in the trenches, I smiled, thanked him and took it.
     The exchange slowed me down a couple of seconds, enough that, a few steps later, when I glanced down at the green water of the Chicago River as I passed the center of the Madison Street Bridge, I saw the front edge of something massive moving out from underneath.
     It was the Robert F. Deegan, out of Thorofare, N.J., a huge barge, its width spanning a third of the river.
     I settled against the rail to watch the enormous vessel pass under my feet, all gray metal walkways and red rust stains. Pushing it was a tugboat, the Donald C. Hannah — nearly 90 feet long, with a 2400 horsepower engine — out of Lemont.
     It took a minute for them to move a block south toward St. Louis. I watched the boats recede, joined by a solitary gull circling around. The barge and the tug cleared the Monroe Street bridge, and the gull peeled off.
     Taking its cue, I headed toward work, stepping into Harry's Hot Dogs at Randolph and Franklin to quietly set the folded newspaper on the orange linoleum counter, where somebody could find it.

MY WAR AGAINST BUCKTHORN

     Call it "buckthorn suppression," the stroll around my property, with its narrow stretch of woods on the east side, eyes on the ground, pausing to bend over and pull up the small buckthorn sprouts that grow everywhere no matter what I do. You need to catch them early, when they are 2 or 3 inches long, because very quickly they're 6 inches tall with roots so deep you have to dig them out.
     Having had to saw down several 15-foot tall versions of the gnarly, bethorned tree, I know the danger of neglect, but still am surprised by my zeal. It is against the law — the Illinois Exotic Weed Act, to be specific, as amended in 2004 — to "buy, sell, offer for sale, distribute or plant" buckthorns without a permit, and they will only be issued to those experimenting with new ways to kill it.
     As is common with zealotry, my animosity against this plant, with its deeply veined, oval leaves, is catching. When we went to the Brookfield Zoo last Sunday, it was my wife who kept pointing out that much of its 216 acres are choked with buckthorn.
     Deeply ironic that a facility dedicated to preserving creatures from natural habitats around the world would play host to this destroyer of Illinois vegetation — invasive plants crowd out and kill native species. In its defense, Brookfield Zoo is aware of the problem.
     "We don't have enough staff to keep up with it," said Nicole DiVito, a spokeswoman. "We're doing as much as we can. Occasionally, we're getting volunteers, and slowly getting rid of it."
     I asked her to let me know next time Brookfield has its Let's Kill the Buckthorn Day. I'll help. Because, really, what's the point of highlighting the biological diversity of the earth, if every plant is going to be the vegetable cousin of the cockroach?

PERSONAL NOTE

     Patrick M. Quinn, the archivist at NU for 34 years, is retiring today. As luck would have it, I called him to check the Stevenson quote, and he pointed out — in characteristic fashion — that Stevenson did not say it at NU, but at a senior dinner at Princeton in 1954, and that Northwestern, also in characteristic fashion, alas, seized it as its own, for years, until he stopped them. Thanks for all the help, Pat. Good luck and God bless.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 30, 2008