‘Dad is equal to any crisis’
The many faces of fatherhood over the years in the Tribune
He was known as “The Boss.” “Da Mare.” Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley pulled the levers of city and Democratic power for over two decades. He was courted. He was admired. He was feared.
But a 1957 photo essay in the Tribune offered a remarkably humanizing detail from the private life of Chicago’s pharaoh: “Companionship with his children is the mayor’s only hobby.” His role as a father to seven children, it turned out, was an escape for Daley from City Hall wheeling and dealing.
Images of fatherhood and fathers have brought other larger-than-life power brokers and celebrities back down to earth for the Tribune’s readers. In a candid 1971 photo, delight spills across the face of legendary Blackhawk center Stan Mikita as he glides across the ice with his toddler daughter, Jane, carefully tucked in his arms.
Perennially dueling North Siders and South Siders surely can find common ground in enjoying the sweetness of “Mr. Cub” Ernie Banks and White Sox ace Ted Lyons sharing light moments with their fathers as captured by the Tribune 30 years apart.
And what of ordinary Chicagoans and everyday suburbanites? These dads’ tenderness and devotion haven’t gone unacknowledged on our pages.
Consider William E. Delaney, the patriarch of what you might call the Brady Bunch of Beverly. The widower father of six married a widowed mother of three, and the blended family eventually welcomed three more children. William’s daughter Marian and stepdaughter Kathleen wrote letters to the Chicago Area Father’s Day Council to explain why their dad deserved to be considered Father of the Year. He won the award in 1960.
“With all the work and worry connected with raising a family of 11 children (with another on the way),” Marian wrote about her chemist father, “you might think that my Dad could take no time out for fun and relaxation with the family. Anyone who has seen a large mob descend upon the beach, some summer evening, equipped with bathing suits, towels, pails and shovels, hot dogs, and assorted pieces of junk, would know that this is far from true. … Dad is equal to any crisis.”
“A father can be a hero to his children when he least expects it,” the Tribune wrote in a preview of the Father of the Year banquet the following year. It cited Kathleen’s 1960 letter to illustrate that point:
“Hilarity, confusion, tears, and joy, graduation, Confirmation, Communion, stitches, and stomach pumps, moving day, and birthdays — thru all this stands the tall figure of Dad, smiling or frowning as the case may be.”