Worked front office for Archdiocese cemeteries

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Obit photo of Gerry Cahill

Updated: March 4, 2012 8:10AM

After a particularly trying day at the cemetery, Gerry Cahill might joke around the dinner table that it was only family members of the deceased who complained, never the dead themselves.

But when the words did not come so readily, it often meant Dad had spent the day dealing with a family that had lost a child.

“Sometimes he would ask us to pray for that child,” one of his five children, Maura Weldzius, recalled Wednesday. “Mostly, he would be very quiet. He didn’t want to burden us with that.”

Mr. Cahill — who spent 37 years helping make final arrangements at Catholic cemeteries across the Archdiocese of Chicago — died Monday, his family said. He was 81. He died at his Brookfield home of complications from congestive heart failure, his family said.

Mr. Cahill, a devout Catholic, was particularly well suited to his work, his family said. He viewed it as “a ministry.”

“He had a compassion and a gentleness that’s needed to deal with surviving family members,” Weldzius said.

It could be heartbreaking work, and Mr. Cahill never got used to seeing parents coming in to bury a child, Weldzius said.

Mr. Cahill grew up in Cicero, where he went to grade school and met his future wife. He set out to become a priest, attending seminary school both in Chicago, Scranton, Pa., and later in New York. But, ultimately, he decided the life of a priest was not for him; neither was selling life insurance, something he tried before finding his true calling.

Mr. Cahill worked in the front offices of many of the archdiocese cemeteries, including Queen of Heaven in Hillside — where he will be buried — and Mount Carmel, where many of Chicago’s most infamous gangster families are buried.

Mr. Cahill dealt with some of those families, but he kept the details mostly to himself.

“He would be the one selecting graves and how the service would be at the graveside, and most of the families he dealt with in that regard wanted a private ceremony, where there wouldn’t be a lot of pomp and circumstance,” said one of Mr. Cahil’s two sons, Phil Cahill.

Mr. Cahill retired in 1998. His wife, Loretta “Laurie” Cahill, died in 2000. They’d been married for 45 years.

Mr. Cahill spent his latter years keeping the aches and pains at bay with visits to the YMCA at La Grange and later Berwyn, his family said.

And he remained, up until his death, devoted to St. Barbara Parish in Brookfield, where he held many ministerial roles.

Mr. Cahill was also a devoted White Sox fan as any in Chicago. His brain housed an infinite catalog of Sox trivia. One of his life’s highlights was throwing out the first pitch at a Sox game in 2004, his family said.

He had a couple dozen Sox ball caps at the time of his death, and he always kept one hanging on the post of his maple rocking chair in the family living room.

Oddly, his kids were all Cubs fans. And although he was a devoted family man, he took special delight in teasing his kids after the Sox won it all in 2005.

“He rode us hard every day after that,” Phil Cahill recalled. “He would never let us forget it. He was in his glory.”

Survivors also include two other daughters, Laureen Cahill of Birmingham, Ala., and Jody Kunzweiler of Palatine; another son, Dan Cahill of Naperville, a Chicago Sun-Times deputy sports editor; 11 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Visitation is 3-9 p.m. Friday at Johnson Funeral Home, 3847 Prairie Ave., in Brookfield. A funeral mass is planned for 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Barbara Church, 4008 Prairie Ave., Brookfield. Burial will follow at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside.