Richard J Daley

The Mayor had dominated politics in this city since his first term, in 1955, after working his way up from precinct politics. He also became a force in national Democratic politics. Mr. Daley attended the neighborhood parochial schools and De La Salle Institute, a Catholic secondary school. Mr. Daley became a precinct captain when he was 21 and shortly thereafter, putting the stenographic training he had received at De La Salle to good use, he became a clerk in the City Council. He held city jobs while he became a ward committeeman and then a legislator, spending nearly 10 years in the State Assembly and State Senate. He had also put himself through DePaul University and its law school. And he had married a neighborhood Irish-American girl named Eleanor Guilfoyle, whom he and everyone else who knew her called "Sis." In the 22 years that he headed Chicago's municipal government, Mr. Daley became synonymous with the city's image: burly, rough, powerful, restless and, except for its burgeoning black residents, a study in middle-class prosperity. He quickly became known as a brick and mortar man, and for most of his tenure Chicago grew upward in a continuous building boom. Mayor Daley is survived by his wife, Eleanor, and by seven children--Richard, Michael, John, William, Mary Carol, Eleanor, and Patricia, and by 10 grandchildren.