Award-winning Sun-Times editor
Watching Dick Mitchell on deadline was a little like watching Fred Astaire dance.
Tall and slim, “Mitch” glided through the Chicago SunTimes newsroom, communicating intelligence, elegance and graceful authority.
As a reporter, that unruffled calm helped him investigate “heater” stories, like the Attica prison uprising of 1971. When he became an editor, it gave confidence to the reporters who worked for him.
Mr. Mitchell, 67, died Wednesday at his Oak Park home of complications from emphysema.
He won awards at the Chicago Sun-Times for his 1983 reports on how $10,000 in campaign re-election funds for Mayor Jane Byrne found their way into the coffers of the notorious El Rukn street gang. Within days, Mr. Mitchell reported, the gang was “handing out Byrne campaign literature, canvassing voters and putting up 700 to 1,000 Byrne posters on eight buildings they own.”
Later, he was promoted to the posts of deputy metro editor and Sunday editor. He retired in 1995, at age 49. He didn’t want to work for SunTimes owner Conrad Black, who would later be convicted of fraud. When Mr. Mitchell glided out of the newsroom for the last time, his co-workers gave him a standing ovation.
He kept busy, traveling to Europe; going to Grand Prix races, and visiting car shows with his Iris Blue 1959 MGA Roadster. He cooked dinners of duck confit, cassoulet and red beans and rice for his wife, Doreen Wurster Mitchell.
One of his passions led to a new avocation. A wine lover who enjoyed sharing treasured bottles with friends, he used his oenophilic expertise to analyze peoples’ wine cellars. He’d study their collections and issue detailed reports on what they had.
Adrienne Drell benefitted from his analysis.
“He compiled a list of what they all were, and gave me a list of whether it was good, or bad, or ‘get rid of it,’ ” said the former Sun-Times reporter. “He was like the sweetest of wines. He was a good editor, and so kind.”
Mr. Mitchell grew up in blue-collar Elmira, a New York town situated between the Pennsylvania border and the Finger Lakes.
He played tennis at his high school, Elmira Free Academy. He attended Howard University and Corning Community College. In 1969, he began working at the Elmira Star-Gazette newspaper.
Covering the penal system, Mr. Mitchell became such an expert that when the Attica revolt occurred, the Gannett Newspaper group assigned him to team coverage. He won a Gannett award for an Attica investigation.
From 1979 to 1982, he worked at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. He received an AP award for stories on “Being Black” in Rochester.
He joined the Sun-Times in 1982. His El Rukn coverage netted him awards from UPI, the Inland Daily Press Association and the Chicago Newspaper Guild.
He became an editor reporters adored, and respected.
“He had covered the strife at Attica,” said former SunTimes reporter Lee Bey. “Here was a guy who worked in the trenches and earned his stripes.”
To young African-American journalists, “It meant the world” to see someone like Mr. Mitchell in the news- room, Bey said.
“As fine as a journalist as Dick was, he was a better human being,” said former SunTimes reporter Dirk Johnson. “Dick acted kind of like a big brother.”
Mr. Mitchell even helped save a life in the newsroom. When Sun-Times editor Frank Devine was felled by a brain embolism, Mr. Mitchell did chest compressions while then-reporter Susy Schultz administered mouth-tomouth resuscitation.
“Mitch was pumping,” Schultz said. Devine revived — and gifted them with bonuses and dinner at the Union League Club.
Mr. Mitchell met Doreen Wurster at the Billy Goat tavern. They wed in 1989. “The love of his life,” said friend and colleague Leon Pitt, “with whom he traveled the world.”
After retirement, “He was a most amazing cook,” his wife said. He took language classes at the Alliance Francaise, and returned to France often. He loved the freedom he felt there.
“In France, I feel like a man, and in America, I’m a black man,” he once said.
Growing up near New York’s Watkins Glen race course, Mr. Mitchell loved cars. He tooled around in a 1959 MGA Roadster, and he and his wife attended Grand Prix races in Canada, Hungary, and Spain. Their last Grand Prix was in 2012 in Monaco. “We had seats that faced the harbor,” she said, just feet away from Princess Charlene, wife of Prince Albert.
He loved his little cockapoo dog, Hannah.
Visitation is 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at Drechsler, Brown & Williams Funeral Home, 203 S. Marion St., Oak Park. A service is to begin at 4 p.m. Sunday at the funeral home.