Longtime journalist covered national politics, economics
Over Jerome Cahill’s 40-year career as a newspaper reporter, he covered national politics and economics and had a frontrow seat to inform readers about events such as presidential campaigns and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“Jerry was aggressive but he was always fair, and he was incredibly accurate,” said Larry O’Rourke, a former Washington correspondent for the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin and a longtime friend. “He worked very hard at doing that. And while we were going after the same story almost all the time, he came up very frequently with good sharp leads that would beat me the next morning. I’d have to start making calls to catch up with Cahill.”
Cahill, 92, died of natural causes May 24 at Rush Oak Park Hospital in Oak Park, said his son Joe, a Crain’s Chicago Business columnist. He had been an Oak Park resident for the past three years.
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Cahill was the son of an industrial engineer father and a schoolteacher mother. He spent most of his childhood in Riverside and graduated from Riverside-Brookfield High School in 1946.
After high school, Cahill joined the Army and was stationed in Hokkaido, Japan, for a time. He then enrolled at Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he first was city editor of the student newspaper and during his senior year was its editor. He graduated from Marquette in 1951.
David Haberman, a longtime friend who also was the editor of Marquette’s student newspaper, hired Cahill as the paper’s city editor, which meant overseeing about 30 reporters covering campus activities.
“He not only did that job with aplomb but with wisdom, insight, tact and total reliability,” said Haberman, 93. “He was an essential voice at staff meetings. He was low-key but wise beyond his years.”
After college, Cahill worked first for the Catholic Messenger, a diocesan newspaper in Davenport, Iowa. He left the Messenger in early 1952 and returned to the Chicago area for a stint as a reporter for the Waukegan News-Sun, followed by a stint as a reporter at the Appleton Post-Crescent in Wisconsin.
In the mid-1950s, Cahill moved to Milwaukee to work as a reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel. Among the major stories he covered at the Sentinel were the murders by body snatcher Ed Gein and the Milwaukee Braves’ 1957 World Series win, and he also interviewed Sen. Joseph McCarthy before McCarthy’s death in 1957.
In 1960, Cahill moved his family east after he took a job as a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which soon sent him to its Washington, D.C., bureau. O’Rourke, 83, recalled competing with Cahill while both were based in Washington for Philadelphia newspapers.
“We ran into one another frequently covering the same story and not telling each other what we were covering,” O’Rourke said. “And, I got to know Jerry and (his wife) socially.” In the early 1970s, Cahill left the Philadelphia Inquirer to join the New York Daily News, continuing to work in that paper’s Washington bureau as well.
Among the national stories that Cahill covered were corruption at East Coast airports, chronicling the postwar economic rise of Japan and explaining how the massive tax overhauls of the 1980s affected ordinary people.
“Jerry’s long and noteworthy career in the nation’s capital was typified by a determined pursuit of facts coupled with a strong sense of fairness and a commitment to his craft,” then-U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, R.-N.Y, said in remarks published in the Congressional Record when Cahill retired. “He made a difference for many people by improving our understanding and broadening the public debate.”
Cahill retired from the New York Daily News in 1991. He and his wife moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1995, and he remained there until moving to Oak Park in 2018.
Outside of work, Cahill enjoyed tennis and played nearly every day from his 40s until his 80s, his son said. He also was a fan of the Chicago White Sox, University of Notre Dame football and Marquette University basketball.
Cahill’s wife of 58 years, Mary, died in 2014. In addition to his son, Cahill is also survived by two granddaughters.
Services have been held.