The day city lost a giant
30 years ago Wednesday, the first Mayor Daley died
Mayor Richard J. Daley died Monday. He was 74.
The mayor suffered a massive heart attack in his doctor's office at 900 N. Michigan, where he had gone for an examination.
(Sun-Times)
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Richard J. Daley
He arrived there at 1:45 pm. and collapsed a few minutes later. He had just completed a telephone call to his son, Michael, when he was stricken.
His physician, Thomas J. Coogan Jr., a team of Fire Department paramedics and doctors from nearby Northwestern Memorial Hospital worked urgently and in vain for more than an hour to revive him.
His wife, Eleanor, and his four sons and three daughters were summoned, and were at the doctor's office when the end came. Two Roman Catholic priests were present at his death.
He was pronounced dead at 3:40 p.m. and his body was carried on a stretcher to Fire Department ambulance 42. ...
Limousines bearing the mayor's family followed the ambulance across the Michigan Ave. bridge and on south to the McKeon Funeral Home, only a few blocks from the Daley home at 3536 S. Lowe.
Just after 4 p.m. Frank Sullivan, the mayor's press secretary, emerged from the building at 900 N. Michigan and addressed the reporters there. "I am sorry to inform you and the people of Chicago that Mayor Richard J. Daley is dead," Sullivan said.
Within minutes of his death, messages from all over the country were being received at City Hall. There were tributes from President Ford and President-elect Jimmy Carter, from his fellow mayors, from powerful political figures of both major parties.
His Bridgeport neighbors gathered in groups in the darkness at the funeral home, grieving. They wept as they watched his family, his close friends and political associates arrive. ...
The report that the mayor was stricken was flashed by radio and phone wires to City Hall, and the word spread like a flame through the marble corridors.
Within moments, a stream of aldermen, officials, compatriots through the years, went to the mayor's office. Shaken, shocked, grim, seared by the news, they waited. ...
In two hours, Richard J. Daley would be dead and for the first time in more than two decades, the city he loved and led would be without his leadership as mayor.
There would be no mayor at all, because the law defining succession does not provide for one.
For many people, the now-empty chair on the fifth floor of City Hall is appropriate. For many, Richard Daley was the mayor, the only mayor, and the thought of another is not yet credible.