Saturday pinch hitter — Jack Clark: "Chicago 1968 and a few other DNCs"

     Former cabbie and current detective novelist Jack Clark has long been a friend of this blog. With the Democratic National Convention bearing down, he offers up memories of previous conventions. Jack is the author of Hack Writing & Other Stories, a a collection of 17 of his Reader pieces from 1975 to 2001.

     Years later--I’m not sure when this happened--I decided that my father had actually died in 1969. I probably had too many memories in the space reserved for 1968.
     The year starts for me at the very beginning of February with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. I had a hard time turning the page on a photograph of a very large pile of dead U.S. soldiers in the back of an open-bed truck. Many of them looked to be my age—the same age as my friend Phil who was there with the Marines. 2100 U.S. soldiers would die in the attacks, which were a turning point in the war. Before the year was out nearly 17,000 U.S. soldiers would die. It was the worst toll in that long war.
     At the end of March, President Johnson announced that he would not seek a second term. The war was tearing the country apart. From now on, we would have to do it without him. Maybe that would stop the chant: Hey, hey, LBJ how many kids did you kill today?
     Later that same week, my father and I watched Martin Luther King’s last speech. King told the striking sanitation workers in Memphis that he had been to the mountaintop. “I may not get there with you,” he said at the very end of the speech. “But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”
     He was assassinated less than 24-hours later.
     I saw the beginning of the West Side riots the next day in front of Austin High School where I was a student. A police car was overturned in the intersection of Pine and West End Avenue, just south of the school. A police officer fired a shot into the air. Those were the final sparks.
     I was with a few hundred other white students at the north end of the block. We were soon fleeing west. Thousands of black students, who had come on a march from schools all over the West Side, headed east causing havoc as they went, and that night the West Side burned. And that was pretty much the end of the neighborhood I’d known my entire life. After the riots, the question changed from Are you moving or staying? to When are you moving?
     My father was already back in the hospital. We could see the West Side burning from his room.
     In June, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.
     My father’s 50th birthday was in August, ten days before the Democratic Convention came to town. His friends threw him a big party in one of their downtown offices. Looking back, I realize it was what we now call a living wake.
     My family, like many others, often talked politics around the dinner table. The war in Vietnam and Civil Rights were the big discussions that decade. By 1968, most of us were against the war. I’m pretty sure my father had been against it from the very beginning. My parents were Henry Wallace/Adlai Stevenson liberals. When the first black family moved in around the corner, my mother baked them a cake, carried it over, rang their bell, and introduced herself.
     On the front porch one day, my father told me something prophetic about race relations. “Black people are always going to have a hard time in this country,” he said. “A bigot might see a man walking down the street and think he looks Jewish. As much as he hates Jews, he has to be careful because he’s not really sure. But when he sees a black man, he doesn’t have to be careful about anything. He knows.”
     My father and his mother came to Chicago from New York when he was 10. He never met his own father. He lived all over Chicago, south, north, and west, and knew it well. He met my mother in night school at Austin High School, and then went all the way through college and law school at night while working full time. He took several years out for Army service during World War II. When he passed the bar in 1951, he already had four children. Three more were yet to come.
     It was his idea that I should volunteer to work at the 1968 convention. His mother had worked at the Century of Progress World’s Fair in 1933, (No. Not as a fan dancer.) and he spent most of the summer he turned 15 there. He had good memories of being in the middle of such an historic affair. He thought being a page would be a good experience for me.
     My friend John and I had wanted to get to the convention center at the
     International Amphitheater but we didn’t have enough clout and got stuck at the Conrad Hilton. The other pages were all college kids. We were still in high school.
     The hippies and war protesters were across the street in Grant Park. The National Guard Troops were on Michigan Avenue and in jeeps covered with barbed wire frames. The Chicago police were everywhere. I was 18 years old. I had no idea what was going on, although I’m sure I could have done a pretty decent impersonation of someone who did. My favorite hippie chant was: Fuck you LBJ. Fuck you LBJ. It would go on and on. You could understand every word blocks away. I’d never heard anything like it—not out there for the entire world to hear. They didn’t like LBJ’s Vice President Hubert Humphrey either, the man who became the nominee that year. Dump the hump, was another chant and I agreed. I was working for the hump but I was rooting for Eugene McCarthy. He was staying across the street at the Blackstone Hotel.
     I remember leading a couple of delegates to their rooms. Other than that, I have no ideas what our duties were. I know John and I spent quite a bit of time a few floors down where Bobby Kennedy’s people were in mourning. We’d hide our Humphrey credentials and try to talk with any college girl we could find. I’m pretty sure we never told them we were in high school. When security got tighter, we were exposed as Humphrey workers and barred from the floor.
     But the Hilton turned out to be the action-filled assignment. We watched parts of the Battle of Michigan Avenue, between war protesters and the Chicago Police, first on live TV and then hanging out the 8th floor windows of the Hilton Hotel. The Walker Report would later characterize the battle as “a police riot.”
     After the last hippie had been beaten, tear-gassed, and dragged away by the police, John and I hurried down eight flights of stairs and went outside to view the battlefield. Michigan Avenue was littered with assorted pieces of clothing, shoes without partners, sleeves torn off shirts. The heavy scent of tear gas was still in the air, and that’s about as far as my memory goes. There must have been blood but, more than 50 years later, I can’t say I actually saw any of it. I know that when we tried to get back into the hotel, we couldn’t. I think they were afraid of a hippie counterattack. Our Humphrey credentials were no longer enough. Now we needed a room key.
     We ended up in a long line for the pay phone across the street in the parking lot of the Essex Hotel. It was mostly kids calling their parents collect to let them know that they’d survived. One of them said his father was the governor or maybe the lieutenant governor of Connecticut, something like that. When our turn came, we called upstairs and had someone come down with a key.
     Ramparts Magazine published a daily wall poster newspaper at the convention. I’d saved every issue. “Up Against the Wall,” it said on the top left, and that’s exactly where I intended to put them in my bedroom at home. When we were getting ready to leave on the last night, I opened the drawer where I’d stashed them, and every single issue was gone. Who would be that low down and dirty? I never figured it out.
     That was the end of August. My father died less than three weeks later. He’d been in and out of the hospital for more than a year.
     I don’t think we ever talked about the convention. By the time it was over, the relatives were coming in from out of town.
     I must have gone to the hospital once or twice in those final weeks. I hope I did. But the truth is, I went as little as possible. I told myself it was too painful to see him in that condition. I have long since realized it’s not your pain you should be worrying about when someone close is dying.
     I sometimes think 1968 must have been a particularly bad year to die. The country and Chicago were both in turmoil. It was a troublesome time. And he would never know how it all turned out, how the country and the city got through it, or if they ever did.
     On the other hand, he was spared the Nixon years.
     My father attended the 1952 and the 1956 Democratic conventions, which were also held at the International Amphitheater. Adlai Stevenson was nominated at each, and went on to lose to the Eisenhower/Nixon ticket both times.
     In 1956, my father Vincent Clark and his law school friend Patrick Nee were at the convention on the final night. They stayed to the very end and then grabbed one of the decorations on the way out the door. It was a sturdy five-point, canvas-covered star, about six feet by six feet, built with two by fours. They tied it on top of Pat’s old Packard and started for the West Side.
     The Congress Expressway (now the Eisenhower) wouldn’t open for years. But sections of it were already completed. Signs said: Drive At Your Own Risk. They probably thought this was the perfect route, a couple of young attorneys turned desperados, on the run with a pilfered star. That’s where they ran out of gas. Pat got the car off to the side. My father grabbed a gas can and went off in search of a station.
     He found a cop somewhere or, more than likely, the cop found him. He got gas and the cop gave him a ride back to the car. Along the way, my father talked the cop into giving Pat a hard time. The cop turned on his flashing lights, pulled behind the Packard and shined his spotlight in the window. He got out and began to interrogate Pat about what he was doing with a star on top of his car. Where’d you get the star, buddy?
     It was a great joke and anytime someone asked about the star, which moved around our house for years, my father got to tell it all over again. Pat was a good sport, a big guy with a twinkle in his eye. We kids all loved him. He died even younger than my father.
     So all this is a way to say, I’ve got Chicago conventions in my blood. But I’m going to have to miss this one. I’ll be in France visiting the lovely Hélène, the light of my life these last 14 years. I’m sure we’ll catch some of it on TV, especially if it’s anything like 1968. The French love that kind of stuff.
     Have fun without me. And if you happen to see a loose memento lying about don’t be afraid to grab it. But don’t steal someone else’s. Those Up Against the Wall Posters would have been in tatters long ago, if I’d managed to get them home. But I would have had a lot of fun with them through the years, moving them from one apartment to the next, from one wall to another. If people happened to ask about them, it would have given me a chance to tell some stories. Who knows? Maybe if I had, I would remember more today.
     There are those who say that when history is being made it’s best to be somewhere far away. On the other hand, if you manage to survive, you’ll always be able to look back and say, “I was there,” even after you’ve forgotten almost all of it.

 

Summer's not over (yet); a conversation with Germany's 'Dr. Beer'

Dr. Marc Rauschmann, with hops plants.

     The second half of August, already? Geez, that was fast. Summer, still, but also one of those moments when you find yourself teetering at the top of that first steep hill on the roller coaster. You can see the entire amusement park spread out around you. Take a good look, because it's a quick plunge, a few rises and falls, a few hard turns, until we come to a jarring stop at autumn.
     Did you have a good summer? I detailed the highlight of mine on Wednesday — my older son's wedding. Otherwise, mostly work, trips to the Botanic Garden and the YMCA. Gardening was a disaster, again. My tomatoes are little hard green balls of shame.
     At least there was the comfort of cherries. Great this year, if pricey. The Northwest Cherry Growers credit perfect weather.
     What else? I did indulge in light summertime reading, racing through the last few volumes in Robert Galbraith's C.B. Strike mystery series. My wife is a big mystery fan, and after years of touting the books, written by J.K. Rowling under a pen name, I dove in, warming immediately to one-legged shamus Cormoran Strike and his resourceful sidekick Robin Ellacott. The author of the Harry Potter books certainly can write, and these books are also a window into her psyche. Rowling spends her days decrying trans women on X, and they appear as some of the more loathsome characters in the Strike novels.
     Strike is a classic noir detective — hard-drinking, fast with his fists. But in the later books he goes on a diet and starts drinking NA beer, which has been booming in recent years. NA beer can be seen as reaching a new level of acceptability when fictional detectives start drinking it.
     Once, the choice was O'Doul's or nothing. Now there's half an aisle of NA beer at Binny's. When I was in Boston, my cousin's wife brought me a Woodland Farms Brewery Pointer Non-Alcoholic IPA that was so delicious I looked into having the stuff shipped. Though honestly Clausthaler is good enough for me.
     The Radeberger Gruppe, which launched Clausthaler in 1979 and claims it is the first NA beer (a distinction I'd give Prohibition era near beer), dangled their brewmaster at me. I bit.
     What does Clausthaler taste like?
     "It's full-bodied beer," said Dr. Marc Rauschmann, on a Zoom call from Germany. "A slight sweetness from the malt, from the sugar. We have a moderate bitterness, a good bitterness."
     I told him that a moderate, good bitterness is exactly what I strive for.
     "We have a higher bitterness, but because of the sweetness it's a very good balanced beer," he continued. "You don't taste a very aggressive bitterness. You taste the bitterness, but it's very pleasant."
     This is because it's brewed to be no alcohol, he said, while other NAs remove the alcohol later, leading to "empty tasting, low bodied" beers.
     Speaking of Heineken 0.0, that leads to what I know is the central puzzlement among regular beer drinkers regarding NA beer: If you don't get a buzz, why bother? Several reasons. To me, it tastes good, it's better than a glass of water and fewer calories than soda. It approximates the beer experience, and nobody ever regrets drinking NA beer.

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Cool facts about beautiful buildings

 

Artist/photographer Chris Hytha, right and writer Mark Houser by Hytha's model of the top of the 
Carbide and Carbon Building at the Chicago Architecture Foundation in July.

    Unlike you, I've been through the nickel skybridge connecting the two Wrigley buildings — yes, there are two, built at different times, with separate addresses, yet still generally considered one Wrigley Building. My wife and I also had our first breakfast as a married couple across the street on one of the stepback terraces of the old Medinah Temple — now the Intercontinental — having wed in a ballroom there the night before. I've sat in one of top floor offices of Tribune Tower, with a glorious half circle window, while admiring one of the three Pulitzer Prizes won by the late cartoonist Jeff MacNelly. And I once gave an architecture talk at the top of Mather Tower, pointing to the various landmarks within sight of the wonderful little round skydeck with a 360 view of the city. 
     What I'm trying to say is that I have a fairly granular understanding of the local subject matter of Chris Hytha's art: gorgeous high rez images of deco towers. And so went to the talk that he and writer Mark Houser held at the Chicago Architecture Center in late July. Not expecting to write anything — I focused on Hytha's stunning drone images (not Ansel Adams single photo frames, but computer-assembled composites) just two years ago.
    Even though the talk offered up a trove of delicious information.

    For all the times I walked past the Carbide and Carbon Building, the cover image on their new book "Highrises Art Deco: 100 Spectacular Skyscrapers from the Roaring '20s to the Great Depression," I didn't realize it is Union Carbide and Carbon the name refers to (I have a hard enough time keeping them in the right order — I keep wanting to make it the Carbon and Carbide Building, until I realized that the second vowels went in order, i before o).
    Nor did I realize the connection between The Chicago Tribune Building and the Chicago Temple, the gothic-topped home of the First United Methodist Church of Chicago (and yes, I've gone through the parsonage located at the top, one of the sweeter gigs in Christendom, and visited the Sky Chapel with its carved wooden bas relief of Jesus gesturing over the skyline of the city, circa 1955). 

    Exactly a century ago, in 1924, the Tribune had its famous contest for a design for its new home.

     "Col. McCormick had just finished an international contest, hundred of architects from around the world., trying to design the most beautiful skyscraper in the world to be the new home of the Chicago Tribune," Houser told the rapt Architecture Center crowd. "Every single one of those entrants had followed the rules that Chicago has a 400 foot tall height limit.  He picked his winner, based on a French cathedral. And that skyscraper is just under 400 feet tall."

    Then the Chicago Temple topped out, far taller than the proposed Trib Tower.

   "Now the City Council is going to allow the church to have a 568 foot tall skyscraper a couple months after he made this announcement," Houser said.

    Col. McCormick was not a happy man. And he had a newspaper to thunder through, though he tried to work with the development.
    " So immediately, there's the headline: 'The Methodists have found a way to break through the 400 foot crust that is stifling Chicago architecture!"' said Houser. "The city saw the error of its way and the Chicago Tribune tower added another four stories" after McCormick pressed the winning architect to make the thing bigger.

     There's much more, but you get the idea. I would have selfishly kept this to myself, but the duo are circling back to Chicago this weekend — alas, their talk Saturday at the Pendry Chicago, a boutique hotel within the Carbide and Carbon (checking those second vowels) Building, 230 N. Michigan, is already sold out. But they are selling (and signing) their magnificent book there 5 to 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday evening and 10 to 12 Sunday morning.  And their show at the Chicago Architecture Center, 111 E. Wacker, runs until the 25th. Check it out if you can; it's stunning.

Chris Hytha with a slide showing how AI can be used to. generate architectural ideas. Over three years
he traveled to some 70 cities shooting deco towers.

   

    

 

Law school sweethearts wed in beach ceremony

Courtesy of Kay Marie Photography

     Taylor Ann Ackerman and Ross Edward Steinberg were married Saturday, July 13, 2024, on the beach at the Village Suites Bay Harbor in Northern Michigan. Taylor wore a white, rose-patterned lace dress with a parasol, veil, and pearl necklace, and Ross wore a custom black tuxedo with a pocket boutonnière.
     I don't usually take requests from readers. I'm not a hotel lounge pianist; particularly not wedding stories. Once you start, there'd be no end to it. But a certain cherished couple asked me to write an announcement. I'm complying because, well, as their wedding approached, and not wanting to be a source of trouble, as so often happens, I came up with my Three Wedding Rules, which I will share now because they were so helpful: 1) None of this is about me. 2) Do whatever the bride wants. 3) Don't argue with anybody about anything. 
     The wedding party was barefoot on the sand. They wore tan suits and eucalyptus dresses. The florals were muted roses and orchids. The weather was perfect. The bride's brother Brennan officiated the interfaith ceremony. Ross’ brother, Kent, was best man, and Taylor’s sister, Ellie, was maid of honor. Our dog, Kitty, and Taylor’s family dog, Rosie, were the flower girls.

     Every wedding is news. The marriage rate in the United States is plummeting — 1 in 4 Americans over 40 has never been married. This couple bucked the trend because, well, love. Every speech at the wedding circled back to it. 
     At the reception, the couple danced their first dance under a tent to “Say Yes to Heaven” by Lana Del Rey. The centerpieces included their favorite books. Their tables were named after board games, and the signature cocktails were named after their childhood pets — including an NA cocktail, which the groom's father appreciated. The couple did the hora held aloft in chairs, in the Jewish fashion. As darkness fell, much of the wedding party, including the bride and groom, ended up celebrating in the lake, a very Gatsby touch.
     Sun-Times readers have been reading about Ross all his life. He and Taylor first met at a board game club hosted by New York University School of Law on a Friday evening during the fall of 2019. The two played Wingspan in the basement of NYU Law's D'Agostino Hall.
     The groom, 28, of Northbrook, Illinois, is a 2018 graduate of Pomona College and a 2021 graduate of NYU Law. Following law school, he worked as a litigation associate at a New York City law firm and then as a law clerk on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco before joining the Federal Trade Commission’s Washington, D.C., office as an antitrust attorney.
     During the COVID-19 spring of 2020, NYU Law began hosting classes online, depositing Ross onto our sofa. He spent multiple hours every day talking on the phone and playing online board games. My wife knew something special was occurring by the way his tone changed. "He's FLIRTING with someone," she told me, infusing that verb with surprise and delight. "I can hear it in his voice." For a while the mystery woman was "T" — my boy jealously guards information, perhaps to keep it from ending up in the newspaper. 
     The bride, 29, of Charlevoix, Michigan, is a graduate of Central Michigan University. In 2018 she received a master's degree in global affairs with a concentration in international law and human rights from NYU and graduated from NYU Law in 2022. She works doing tenant defense for a non-profit in the Bronx.

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Connie Wilkie, 'gruff drill sergeant' who kept the Sun-Times newsroom running, dies at 85

     A colleague asked me to send Connie off in the proper fashion, and I couldn't refuse.

     For many years, the quickest way to reach the Chicago Sun-Times newsroom was by dialing 321-2522. That phone rang on the city desk, and often would be answered by the gruff, no-nonsense, suffer-no-fools nicotine growl of Connie Wilkie.
     "Connie ran the city room like a drill sergeant," remembered Scott Fornek, a Sun-Times breaking news editor. "I believe her title was something like ‘chief editorial assistant,’ but she was effectively an office manager for the newsroom, overseeing the clerical staff, handling scheduling, expense accounts, vacation requests — and everything else that it takes to keep an office of that size running."

Connie Wilkie

     Ms. Wilkie died Aug. 5 of COVID-19 at Liberty Village in downstate Pittsfield. She was 85.
     “Connie was a rock in the Sun-Times newsroom, efficiently ensuring that phone calls into the city desk from sources, reporters, cranky readers and others were channeled in the right direction,” said Alan Henry, a former editor. “Graced with a kind heart and a dry sense of humor, she was a pleasure to be around and was one of the ‘characters’ who helped make the newsroom a fun place to work.”
     Ms. Wilkie had a genius for friendship — not only was she friends with Mary Dedinsky, who rose to managing editor, during her time at the paper, but they remained friends for decades afterward.
     "We continued our friendship," Dedinsky said. "Every Christmas and birthday I got a card with a witty note inside. She loved antiques, good food and parties. I have all over my house gifts from Connie, wonderful carnival glass and antique plates. It was always fun to be with her. There was an energy and a wit. She made the best cheesecake I ever tasted in my life: sumptuous."
     Don Hayner, former editor-in-chief, said, "Connie was tough, loyal and smart. She could be formidable when needed, and kind. There was nobody who was a better protector of the Sun-Times and its people.”
     Some of its people, that is.
     "She was one tough cookie," remembered Fran Spielman, the paper's longtime City Hall reporter. "A gruff drill sergeant. An iron lady with a heart of gold. If she liked you, she was fiercely protective of you. She would do anything. But boy, you didn't want to cross her. If she didn't like you, you wouldn't get any calls forwarded to you."

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'Our future is at stake'

     Joe Biden won Illinois in 2020 by 17 points, 57% to 40%. There's every indication his vice president, Kamala Harris, has an equally comfortable lead in the Land of Lincoln.
     But up in Wisconsin, Biden squeaked out a razor victory in 2020 — by 0.63% — in a state Donald Trump won in 2016, making Wisconsin among a handful of swing states.
     "The election is likely to be decided there," said Evanston Mayor Dan Biss, who showed up at Democratic Party headquarters Saturday morning to see off a contingent of Operation Swing State volunteers heading to Wisconsin to knock on doors. "You live in a state that's not close, and you wonder for a second, 'Do I have a voice in this election?' And the answer is 'yes.' Because the state line is about an hour away, and that's where it's going to be decided."
     Biss is a politician; politics is what he does. But why would an ordinary person spend their Saturday — a lovely day, in the mid 70s, low humidity, sunny with a scattering of clouds and a gentle, caressing breeze — driving 68 miles due north to ring doorbells and quiz strangers?
     "Because our future is at stake," said Susan Kelly, a retired executive who lives in Evanston. "I am concerned about what Donald Trump would do if he gets in office again. I'm concerned about Project 2025. The economy may go up and down, but once our democracy is gone, it's gone."
     "A lot of our freedoms are at risk, and I am very concerned, especially as a woman, a person of color and just a human being in general," said Loretta Jackson, a retired social worker, who started knocking on doors in June. "Most of the time they're friendly. You get one or two they want to scream at you about COVID. They don't have their facts straight. You want to try to inform them, but sometimes they don't want to hear it, and when you can't speak to them, it's best to just walk away."
     The volunteers tended to be older, many retirees, while the organizers skew young, like Carter Gulyas, 19, a history major at Illinois State University, and today's canvass captain. He's seen a big change since President Biden took himself out of the race.
     "It's like turning a new chapter — people are really getting excited," he said, noting that about 50 people signed up for today, double what it had been previously. "This is going to be our biggest turnout yet."
     Gulyas made a brief speech: "It is time for new beginnings. It is time for risk. It is time for joy and prosperity. We are here today because we are going to win."
     He made sure everyone was paired with a driver. An experienced activist, Andrea Pauls Backman, former CEO of the Les Turner ALS Foundation, was paired with Diane Ativie, a retired social worker from Skokie. She had done phone canvassing for Harold Washington and Barack Obama, but this was her first time going door-to-door, prompted by both the elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris and the need to defeat her opponent.

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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 |