American Pharaoh (27 page)

Despite the critical role black voters and the black submachine played in his election, Daley appointed no blacks to any positions of consequence. It would be five years before Daley appointed a black to his cabinet, and that would be as public vehicle license commissioner. Chicago’s significant Jewish population, another mainstay of the city’s Democratic Party, was also largely excluded from the upper ranks of the Daley administration. Though Daley made a point of selecting Jewish candidates like Becker and Sachs in order to draw Jewish voters to the machine slate, he had only two Jews on his mayoral staff. One was his press secretary, Earl Bush, and the other was a secretary held over from the Kennelly administration. Frank Sullivan, press secretary toward the end of Daley’s reign, said he believed Daley “was not comfortable with blacks and Jews.”
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Daley was discreet about his racial and ethnic preferences. In an age when southern politicians openly denigrated blacks, Daley was careful not to make racially offensive comments in public. This discretion was, if nothing more, smart politics. Unlike in the South, where few blacks were registered to vote, Chicago’s blacks were involved in the political process, and they were a critical part of Daley’s electoral coalition. Behind closed doors, however, it was another matter. Daley intimates, including those who retain a fondness for him, have conceded that racism was widespread within Daley’s inner circle. Dr. Eric Oldberg, a suburban doctor who became a friend of Daley’s and president of the Chicago Board of Health, says that one thing that set him apart from the “rather primitive group that [Daley] felt comfortable with” was that he did not share its prejudices. “He would never have had to ask, say, Bob Quinn the Fire Commissioner or Bill Lee the union fellow, or any of those guys in his circle, what they thought about something; he knew how they felt,” says Oldberg. “It was automatic; it was born and bred in them to think the same way about everything — including prejudice toward the blacks and things like that.” Frank Sullivan has written that “More than a few of the members of [Daley’s] staff could be described as racists.” And Sullivan tells an odd story of writing a speech for Daley to give at the dedication of a statue of three Revolutionary War patriots, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, and Hayam Solomon. Because Solomon was Jewish, Sullivan wrote a section paying tribute to the contributions made by Jewish-Americans to the nation. When Daley reviewed the remarks, he commented: “Don’t you think you have gone a little overboard about the Jews, Frank?”
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In the months after Daley’s election, Chicago was just beginning to get to know its new mayor. Word spread that Daley would be leaving Bridgeport for a new home more befitting the mayor of America’s second-largest city. The Daley family — including Sis, six of the seven children, and Daley’s father, Michael — still lived in the simple brick bungalow at 3536 South Lowe Avenue that Daley and Sis had built two decades earlier. It was a modest house, no different from the ones owned by the policemen and government workers who lived on the same block. But those who were saying that Daley was looking to leave Bridgeport did not understand him. When the
Chicago Tribune’
s Voice of the People floated the idea of providing mayors with an official residence, Daley said he was not interested. “Perhaps future mayors would like to have a home of this kind to live in and entertain dignitaries,” Daley told the newspaper. “I’m very satisfied to live at 3536.” Sis Daley also spoke out in defense of Bridgeport. “We have wonderful neighbors,” she told the press. “It’s true that their houses are very simple on the outside — but the interiors would surprise you. People around here are always remodeling and improving.”
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Daley was deeply rooted in the Bungalow Belt, the vast expanse of white ethnic neighborhoods that spanned hundreds of blocks on the Southwest and Northwest sides. The Bungalow Belt is, a Chicago writer has observed, “like the South’s Bible Belt — as much a state of mind as of geography.” Its homes were plain, furnished in a simple working-class style. One visitor to Bridgeport noted that it was a place “of bronzed baby shoes on the parlor mantel, of television sets and undershirts and cans of beer, of corner saloons whose only patrons are ‘the boys on the block’ and whose windows bear signs such as ‘Your husband isn’t here.’” Daley fit in perfectly in this world. The Daley homestead was decorated with a large picture of Christ on a living room wall and a statuette of the Virgin and Child on the dining room sideboard. And the Daleys did, in fact, have bronzed baby shoes on the mantel — seven pairs, each engraved with the name of the child who had worn it. There was wall-to-wall turquoise carpeting, a hand-woven rug with the provinces of Ireland, and red-white-and-blue china bearing the Daley family crest, with its motto, “Deo Fidelis et Regi,” or “Faithful to God and King.” The home had its small luxuries: with an addition in the back, it had been expanded to five bedrooms, and there was a basement rec room with exercise equipment and a piano for the Daley daughters. Outside of family and close friends, though, few people ever got to see the house on South Lowe Avenue. It was, in the words of one member of the Daley inner circle, “the house nobody gets into.”
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Daley’s election as mayor did not change his lifestyle: when he was not governing or engaging in politics, he continued to live much as his Bridgeport neighbors did. “Nobody catches him chatting about literature, music or French cooking,” Mike Royko once observed. “He likes White Sox games, fishing and parades.” After a rare outing to Chicago’s Lyric Opera, Daley is said to have exclaimed happily: “It’s just like baseball! You stand and cheer when it’s all over!” Daley’s one concession to his station in life was his clothing: he dressed himself as extravagantly as an adult as his mother had dressed him as a child. He wore hand-tailored Duro suits, and often made national ten-best-dressed lists. Daley rarely appeared in public in anything less formal than a suit, and almost never removed his jacket.
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Daley woke early, and attended morning Mass at Nativity of Our Lord Church. After a quick breakfast at home, he was driven to work by a city policeman in a late-model Cadillac. Daley often got out of the car a few blocks south of the Loop so he could work in a short walk before arriving at City Hall — a gesture to exercise that did little to rein in his fast-growing girth. At lunchtime, he generally made his way over to the Morrison Hotel, where he had a separate office and secretary for his work as machine boss. After returning to City Hall for an afternoon of work, he usually went home for dinner with his family between 6:30 and 7:00
P.M.
Daley worked most Saturdays until midafternoon, but spent more time at home on Sundays. On his rare vacations, Daley often went fishing with his father, and on weekends he liked to take his children to Comiskey Park, the “Base-Ball Palace of the World,” which was just a few blocks from home.
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Sis Daley, for her part, remained every bit the Bridgeport matron. Like many of her neighbors, her life revolved around neighborhood, church, and family. She was active in charity work, preparing flowers for the Altar and Rosary Society at Nativity of Our Lord, and visiting the poor in the parish. She liked to cook, and baked an Irish soda bread twice a week throughout her married life. The secret to making a good soda bread, she once told a neighbor, was to “keep kneading — you get your hostilities and aggression out on the dough.” A few weeks into his first term as mayor, on May 15, Daley celebrated his fifty-third birthday with a simple dinner at home. Sis cooked his favorite dish, roast beef, and baked a birthday cake. Sis was interested in her husband’s political career and served as a sounding board for his important decisions. But in her public statements, she disclaimed all interest in politics. When she spoke to reporters, which was infrequently, the conversation usually hewed closely to domestic topics. Sis once advised a household-hints columnist that bowls of vinegar are the best air fresheners for stale, smoke-filled rooms. “I suppose if Dick is elected, I will have to be more active,” she said on the eve of her husband’s election as mayor. But after a year as Chicago’s first lady, she reported that her role had remained sharply circumscribed. “I guess you’d say I’m first lady to my children first,” she told a reporter. “Making a good, comfortable and happy home for them and Dick still is the thing I like and want to do most.”
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When Daley socialized outside Bridgeport, it was generally at public appearances that had the impersonal feel of campaign events. Most nights, he attended five or six of these gatherings. His first Sunday in office, Daley ate dinner at home, went out to a dinner at the Morrison Hotel for the Holy Family Villa Retirement Home, and then moved on to the Conrad Hilton for a dinner for Villa Scalabrini, another retirement home. And Daley was a fixture at the life events of people he did not know well. A few weeks into his mayoralty, he attended six weddings in a single day, none for relatives, and the next day he attended two more. He worked the crowd at wakes across the city. Daley’s “name is signed in more wake books than any name in the history of Chicago,” one associate said. Daley was skilled at making his way through these events. “One thing he learned,” says David Stahl, a deputy mayor who often went along with him, “was to work a crowd and keep moving.” This frenetic round of appearances came on top of a daily schedule that was filled with ceremonial events: bowling the first ball at Chicago’s Tuesday and Thursday Night Classic Bowling League, planting a kiss on six-year-old “Little Miss Peanut” as part of the Kiwanis Peanut Day in Chicago, or being honored with a 50,000-tree forest planted in his name in Israel at a Purim dinner sponsored by the Jewish National Fund. At these appearances, Daley usually offered up a short speech that was more upbeat than insightful. To kick off the first year-round athletic program sponsored by the city, he put on a glove and caught balls thrown by Chicago Cubs pitcher Don Kaiser, and declared that “boys and girls are the citizens of Chicago of tomorrow.” Daley also continued to make the rounds of the city’s fifty Democratic ward organizations. One such gathering was a tongue-in-cheek graduation ceremony thrown by Alderman Charlie Weber for fifty garbagemen who found their jobs through 45th Ward patronage. The colorful Weber doted on his sanitation workers, whom he referred to as the Knights of Cleanliness. For the ceremony, he distributed white academic gowns and mortarboards to the “graduating” garbagemen. Daley stood on the dais and conferred parchment diplomas, which had summa cum laude notations and five-dollar bills attached. A dinner of turkey and beer was provided. “Don’t steal any of them caps and gowns,” Weber yelled out to his guests. “I rented ’em. Leave ’em at the door when you go out.”
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Daley had the kind of social skills that serve a politician well. He had a knack for remembering people; it was said that he could greet half the city’s employees by name. David Stahl took his young sons to work one Saturday and introduced them to Daley. Six months later, Daley’s secretary called to offer Stahl three tickets to a White Sox game. When Daley showed up, he immediately greeted the Stahl children. “He said, ‘Hi Steve, Hi Mike.’ Nobody had given him a card. He had an incredible photographic memory.” Still, Daley was not a warm man. “You never touched him,” says Congressman Daniel Rostenkowski, a friend and political protégé of Daley’s. “You wouldn’t hug him.” Apart from family members, Daley’s relationships were largely defined by politics. Many of the people he was closest to were politicians, and Daley was inclined to view them more as rivals than friends. Near North Side alderman Joseph Rostenkowski, Daniel’s father, was nominally a friend, but Daley always regarded him warily because of his strong following in Chicago’s large Polish community. Daley was able to let his guard down a bit more with younger people. “He never feared me,” says Daniel Rostenkowski, who was in his early twenties when he started out with Daley. “I wasn’t a threat to him.” Daley was a gregarious loner, acquainted with thousands of people but close to almost none. “He’s like a post office clerk sorting mail,” one Daley associate said. “He keeps men in slots. In a general human sense of trusting somebody, the only person really close to him is his wife.” Daley also kept people at arm’s length with a fierce temper that rose up without warning. “He was essentially a quiet, soft-spoken person,” says David Stahl. “But he had the capacity to get angry and bellow. He did it almost every day of the week.” Daley’s associates had a gallows humor about his frequent red-faced outbursts. Asked about the best way to approach the mayor they would respond: on tiptoe.
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Daley was also suspicious and secretive, in both his private and public lives. He rarely talked about his family or his past. “That was a private world he hung on to,” says human relations commissioner Edward Marciniak. Daley was so reticent about even the most basic personal details that when one author set out to write about Daley he found himself unable to verify that he was an only child. “I checked with two people, one a Democratic politician who has known Daley for twenty-five years, and the other, a man who had worked in Daley’s office closely with him for a number of years and who had been invited to the weddings of Daley’s children,” the author wrote. “When asked whether Daley was an only child or whether there were any brothers or sisters, both men replied that they thought [he was an only child] but were not sure.” Daley quickly imposed this diffident style on his mayoral administration. He held press conferences almost every day, but he addressed only the topics he chose. City employees were instructed not to answer even simple inquiries from reporters or civic groups without checking with him. Lois Wille, a
Chicago Daily News
reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on health care for indigent women, says it was almost impossible to get basic facts on issues like infant mortality out of Daley’s City Hall. In one case, she had to arrange a secret rendezvous with a woman doctor at the perfume counter of a department store to get health data that, in any other city, would have been available through the mayoral press office.
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