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• 1 2021-02-01T13:47:11-06:00 City Celebrations 43 plain 2021-05-18T15:57:45-05:00

  One of the things that amazed me was that he enjoyed every event. It could be the one-hundredth parade of the year and you would think that it truly was the first one. He loved people. He loved parades. He loved the excitement. He loved his job.
  
  Patricia Daley-Martino, daughter of Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, June 12, 2002

  Parades and special events

  A small sample of the hundreds of special events attended by Mayor Daley:
  

  Entertainers and celebrities

  
  

  Dignitaries

  The [United States] State Department and other people always knew that they could bring people to Chicago. That was because they would get the best reception of all, the most lavish dinners, and the biggest parades. That was because they knew they could count on Richard J. Daley to put on a good performance. With New York, there was the first time around with the astronauts, sure. But then, after the second, third, and fourth ones, they didn’t. Chicago always still got them because we still put on a good show. He just loved showing off his city.
  
  Ed Bedore, City Budget Director, May 18, 2009

  
  
  
  
  

  Queen Elizabeth II visits Chicago

  In July 1959, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited Chicago as part of a tour to celebrate the opening of the St. Lawrence seaway:
  
  More scenes from the Queen's visit:
  
• 1 2021-02-01T14:24:51-06:00 1968: A Key Year 31 plain 2021-05-18T16:33:56-05:00

  I think 1968 was a key year, if not the most important, in recent history. And people forget how tense things were, how fluid. One of my memories from that week was being at home and seeing jets fly overhead. Military jets. And at the office, there were all these maps of the city laid out. There were maps like this of Vietnam, and now there were maps of Chicago. People forget how close the country was to tearing itself apart. Chicago suffered some of its worst race riots during the 1960s, most notably in April 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
  
  William Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, December 5, 2008

  The April 1968 riots

  In this audio clip, Joseph Fitzgerald, former Chicago Building Commissioner, remembers the riots:
  Ray Simon, Chicago corporation counsel under Mayor Daley, and the mayor's son, William, discuss Daley's controversial decisions during the riots:
   
  
  

  Democratic National Convention

  In 1968, Chicago hosted the Democratic National Convention at the International Amphitheater.
  
  Thousands demonstrated the week before and the week of the convention to protest the Vietnam War and the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, Hubert Humphrey. They and the Chicago police clashed on numerous occasions during this two-week period.
  Ray Simon presents the city's side of the dispute over where protestors would be allowed to demonstrate:
  

  Well, do you know what? Everybody played their parts. The mayor played his part. The police played their part. The protestors played their part. The media played their part. And it all blew up. The pot finally boiled over. It had been boiling and bubbling. And terrible things had happened around the world in 1968. The whole thing blew up and boiled over in Chicago for those five days. Nobody was killed. In his mind, the city didn’t riot. The outsiders rioted.
  
  William Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, January 12, 2009

  I believe that some forward planning could have averted the disaster that happened. I don’t know.
  
  Newton Minow, Chair of Federal Communications Commission 1961-1963, interview excerpt, October 2, 2003

  
  

  After the convention, the mayor’s office was getting sacks upon sacks of mail. The sacks would probably fill this entire room with mail from around the country saying, “God bless you.”
  
  Ed Bedore, City Budget Director, interview excerpt, May 18, 2009

  The Eastern liberal media that came to Chicago to cover the convention didn’t like Daley. They didn’t like his reputation. But after the convention, Daley could never be defeated. The people of Chicago viewed him as standing up almost like a paterfamilias concept and protecting his city. And he truly did love Chicago, and he wanted nothing more than to be the mayor of Chicago. He could have been Secretary of HEW or whatever if he wanted to, but he never wanted to leave Chicago.
  
  Ed Burke, Alderman, interview excerpt, August 5, 2014

  
   
• 1 2021-02-01T13:59:49-06:00 Making the City Work 28 plain 2021-05-18T16:06:27-05:00

  Basic city services

  One of his top priorities as mayor was to improve the delivery of city services to all of the neighborhoods and to all of the people of Chicago. When you look at the city’s Capital Improvement Program during his administration and the emphasis that was placed on constructing new facilities for every city department, you get a clear picture of the mayor’s priorities. As the City Architect, I had the opportunity and responsibility for the design and construction of these new facilities. New Police, Fire, Health, Senior, Community Service, Library, Streets and Sanitation, and Transit facilities were completed in neighborhoods throughout the city. All designed to improve the delivery of city services.
  
  Jerome Butler, City Architect, interview excerpt, July 8,2002

  William Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, explains his father's atttention to detail when it came to city services:

  I think that you can see how development helps a community. That’s not only from providing amenities in that area that will serve the people long after it’s built, but also the jobs it creates to build that amenity.
  
  Patrick Thompson, grandson of Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, June 13, 2002

  Watch footage (no sound) of waste management services:

  Clean water

  Those filtration plants are the lifeblood, not of the city, but of this region. Well, that wasn’t popular. It wasn’t popular at all. Build something in the lake? How could you do that? How could you even conceive that? But he knew that was right. He knew that we had to have clean water, if we were going to have cities in the surrounding areas. The foresight that he had was always, “What’s good for the city? And what’s good for its people?” Politically, at times, it was difficult.
  
  Ed Bedore, City Budget Director, interview excerpt, May 18, 2009

  Watch footage (no sound) of Mayor Daley inspecting water filtration plant:

  Public safety

  Daley expanded and professionalized police and fire services.

  We re-did the headquarters. We built a communications center. We worked with O. W. Wilson in the reorganization of the Police Department and built a series of area headquarters, which were never built before, after Wilson came in. We started with the Area 4 Police Headquarters, then Area 6, and then the Police Training Academy. The city never had a police training academy until Wilson came in. Here’s the fire department. They never had a fire academy until Daley came in. They built a new fire academy.
  
  Jerome Butler, City Architect, interview excerpt, July 8,2002

  Watch footage (no sound) of Chicago Police Department services: In 1967, 23 inches of snow fell within 35 hours — the largest single snowfall in the city’s history. Businesses closed, roofs collapsed, cars were abandoned, and many Chicagoans were stranded.
  

  We didn’t have the power. We didn’t have the strength. We didn’t have a good plan. We didn’t have anything. And Mayor Daley pulled it off because of his charisma on television, telling everyone how good we were doing. We really weren’t doing so good.
  
  James McDonough, Commissioner of Department of Streets and Sanitation, interview excerpt, September 17, 2003

  Youth and community engagement

  The city had a number of programs for youth.
  
  Services for the neighborhoods and the wards.

  I was Alderman of the Ninth Ward from 1971 to 1979—8 years.  The Ninth Ward, under the leadership of Mayor Richard J. Daley, received many important improvements including: a new library in West Pullman, a new grammar school in West Pullman, a new high school in Altgeld-Murray Homes, addition to Curtis Junior High School at 115th Street and State Street, building Chicago Police Department Area 2 Headquarters at 111th and the Calumet Expressway with a City of Chicago Court, City of Chicago Landmark status for Pullman in 1972, and a new roof for Hotel Florence in 1975.
  
  Alexander A. Adduci, Alderman, interview excerpt, July 18, 2014

• 1 2021-02-01T14:00:19-06:00 A Union Man, A business Mayor 25 plain 2021-07-01T12:22:15-05:00 Mayor Daley came from a union family. His father was a lifelong member of the Sheet Metal Workers International Union, Local 73 in Chicago.

  He was a union man. But he wasn’t a coward with the unions. I sat in meetings where he was talking with union leaders. He’d say, “No. This is not good for business.” I can remember when we’d have meetings sometimes. People would want to come in and either establish a company or build something. He would call some of the business community in. And he’d say, “Look, you tell me whether this is good for Chicago or not. I’m going to leave the room. My criteria is that if it makes jobs, I’m for it. If it doesn’t make jobs, I’m against it.” And he’d leave. We’d sit and talk. Then he’d come back.
  
  A. Robert Abboud, First National Bank of Chicago, President, interview excerpt, December 3, 2009

  Ed Bedore recalls one negotiation between Mayor Daley's office and the Chicago Teachers Union:
  
  

  My dad had a great relationship with the business community in Chicago, and most of the people were Republicans. But he knew that for the city to be sound, you needed a good sound business community and a strong relationship with them. And they respected him and were very supportive of him on issues. They disagreed at other times, but he knew that he needed that base for different causes, whether it was the university or whatever. The business community helped him tremendously. It wasn’t just politicians.
  
  John Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, May 9, 2007

  The business community, I think, always felt that if they had a problem, they could go to the mayor. The mayor would give them a fair hearing. And if he could help them, he would.
  
  Newton Minow, Chair of Federal Communications Commission, interview excerpt, October 2, 2003

  
  

  Did the mayor raise property taxes? Yes he did. What he also did was that he had this great relationship with the business community and the unions that built this downtown. They kept putting more and more millions of dollars on the tax rolls.
  
  Ed Bedore, City Budget Director, interview excerpt, May 18, 2009

• 1 2021-02-01T13:46:55-06:00 Budget, Banking, and Business 17 plain 2021-07-01T12:31:17-05:00

  Mayor Daley knew more about the budget than any of us did in the budget office. The mayor was the former Director of Revenue for the State of Illinois. He was the Cook County Clerk who, at the time, did the county budget. So he was in charge of the county budget and the Department of Revenue. So when he became the mayor, he knew about the budget just as well as anybody. And he was also, I’ll word it very carefully, he was very frugal with the city money. He kept his salary at thirty-five thousand dollars, which allowed the department heads – every year we’d get a small increase. But because we were pushing thirty five thousand . . . as long as he never had his salary increased, we could never go higher than his. But that was the mayor. He always looked out for the taxpayers.
  
  Ed Bedore, City Budget Director, interview excerpt, May 18, 2009

  Bob Abboud [First National Bank of Chicago, President] always said he questioned him on the finances of the city and the county and said his knowledge was better than some of the bankers that were right there….And he would work all summer. He’d have all the heads of the departments start working 7:30 in the morning because, he said, between 7:30 and 9:00 he could accomplish more than later when the phone wasn’t ringing or anyone around. They would present their budgets in the summer. He would work with them. Then the budget would go through and he’d present it. But he knew every page of that budget.
  
  Eleanor Daley, wife of Richard J. Daley, interview excerpt, October 9, 2002

  I felt that he was always prepared. He wasn’t just perfunctory about doing anything. It was not that he read through every prospectus of every one of our bonds. But he met with the people who did it and he got from them what he needed to know. He would make use of them making his decisions. He was always well advised and tried to be well advised. He had a lot of great advisors.
  
  John Weithers, Public Building Commission Member, interview excerpt, October 7, 2003

  In this audio clip, Alderman Ed Burke remembers that Mayor Daley once offered his personal guarantee for the city's finances.