12-20-1976: Mayor Daley dies

12-20-1976: Mayor Daley dies

WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. Sign up for our newsletters to stay up to date on the stories that matter.

This was the Monday before Christmas, the last day before winter, and it was cold in Chicago. A few minutes past two in the afternoon, police began blocking off the streets near Michigan and Chestnut. An ambulance had just arrived. Something big was happening.

Mayor Richard J. Daley (City of Chicago)
On the second floor of the building at 900 North Michigan Avenue, Richard J. Daley was dying.
Daley was 74 years old, in his 21st year as Mayor of Chicago. He’d been having chest pains over the weekend, and had made an appointment with his doctor. That’s where he was now.
The doctor had examined Daley. You have to be admitted to the hospital immediately, he’d told Daley. The mayor had phoned one of his sons. Then, while the doctor was busy making hospital arrangements, the mayor had collapsed.
So now came the paramedics. Now came the police to set up the barricades. Now came the Daley family. Now came the reporters, and the curious public. 
At 3:50 p.m., the mayor was dead.
The news spread swiftly. There was shock and disbelief. Sure, Daley had been sick before. And like everyone else, he was going to die someday. But now? Why now? And what was going to happen to our city? It felt like Chicago had suddenly become an orphan.
Daley Memorial Book (author's collection)
The wake was held at the parish church in Bridgeport the next day. As mayor and Democrat Party leader, Daley had gone to hundreds of wakes. Now his citizens were returning the favor. The doors at Nativity of Our Lord stayed open all night as 100,000 people filed past the open coffin.
Jimmy Carter, president-elect, came for the funeral Mass. So did Vice President Rockefeller, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and other men of power. Then Daley left Chicago for the last time, to be buried in the family plot at Holy Sepulchre in Alsip. 
Many plans were made to honor Daley. Some wanted to rename Western Avenue – the city’s longest street – after the city’s longest-serving mayor. An unincorporated village talked of incorporating as Daley, Ill. There was a proposal that a 25-foot statue of the late mayor be erected in the Civic Center plaza. In time, the actual memorials would be more modest. 
“Mayor Daley.” The phrase had become so common, so indivisible. A ten-year-old boy was said to have asked his father, “Who’s going to be the mayordaley now?” 
One man died, but Chicago lived on. And eventually got a mayordaley named Daley.