THANKYOU, MAYOR BYRNE
When we stroll Navy Pier, we think of Jane Byrne. Thank you, Madame Mayor. You got the ball rolling on the recreation of Navy Pier, now our state’s top tourist attraction. You had a sense, ahead of your time, that a big city in post-industrial America has to have a sense of fun.
When we vote in city elections, we think of Jane Byrne.
Thank you again, Madame Mayor. Before you came along and kicked down doors, City Hall was run only by men, and mostly by white men at that. You were the first woman elected mayor, as well as the first contender for mayor in generations to beat the Machine. You led the way for others, including Mayor Harold Washington.
And when we’re feeling particularly human, doing our best but falling short, we think of Jane Byrne.
We appreciated that part of you, too, Madame Mayor. With all your exuberance and all your foibles, you were so very real. We could hear your beating heart.
Jane Byrne died Friday. But, fortunately, not before Chicago had a chance to say thank you and — we knew it then— goodbye.
On the last Saturday in August, Gov. Pat Quinn named an expressway interchange for Mayor Byrne, unveiling four signs at a dedication ceremony. The former mayor sat in a wheelchair on a stage and said nothing, too frail to speak. But she took it all in, looking happy to be
Before you came along and kicked down doors, City Hall was run only by men, and mostly by white men at that.
get her due.
For the longest time, Byrne was Chicago’s semi-forgotten mayor, seldom invited by her immediate successors to civic functions. Two memorials bearing her name were removed to out-of-the-way places. Her tenure as mayor had been marked by a good deal of mercurial instability— a revolving door was the apt metaphor— and Chicago’s ruling powers later found it convenient to exaggerate her failings and understate her achievements.
But time has a way of righting wrongs.
As the years rolled, the historic importance of Jane Byrne’s singular feat— upending the smug and unresponsive Democratic Machine — became clearer than ever. After Byrne and Mayor Washington, the old Machine reasserted itself, again under a mayor named Daley, but never again could it take ordinary people, out in the neighborhoods, quite so much for granted.
Or maybe this is what the passage of time told us: Uprisings of the kind Jane Byrne led should happen more often.
One iconic image sums up what Jane Byrne meant to Chicago:
It is the winter of 1979 and Byrne, who is running for mayor against incumbent Mike Bilandic, is standing on an L platform, a small woman in a big coat in a falling snow. She is asking, in so many words, why the tracks are frozen, why the streets are unplowed, why the buses are hours late, why the garbage is piling up, why the children can’t get to school.
She is being a little unfair. This is the Blizzard of 1979, one of the biggest snowstorms in Chicago history. Nothing can go right in even the best-run city when almost 19 inches of snow fall in two days.
Chicagoans know this. They know how snow works. But they also know this is not really about snow. This is about arrogance. This is about self-satisfied political bosses taking people for granted. And those people are fed up. When that snowplow finally comes? Every Chicagoan knows it will go down the alderman’s block first.
Byrne wasn’t a rebel for long. She was a product of the Demo- cratic organization, a favorite of the first Mayor Daley, and soon after she was elected mayor she forged an alliance with the old power brokers.
But when Jane Byrne was elected mayor on Feb. 27, 1979, ironically a fair and sunny day, every Chicagoan got the message:
Government, even in Chicago, is for the people. Thanks for that, Mayor Byrne. Not for nothing will the snowplows roll into place this winter at the first kiss of snow.