[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 169 (Thursday, October 19, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S6635]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        REMEMBERING WADE NELSON

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, Wade Nelson was a friend who began his 
professional life as a journalist and served at many levels in public 
service.
  He was regarded as an honest professional in all of his life's work, 
a father and husband truly dedicated to his family, and a joy to count 
as a friend.
  His colleague and friend, Bob Secter, wrote a remembrance, which I 
include with this statement. It was given to those of us in attendance 
at Wade's memorial service at the Unity Temple in Oak Park, IL, on 
October 7, 2017. The speakers at the service included his wife, Ellen 
Warren, a respected journalist in her own right, and his sons, Ted and 
Emmett. They each shared touching stories of Wade as a husband and 
father. Rick Kogan emceed the celebration with his own signature style 
and Wade's friends Bern Colleran, Terry Kelleher, Hanke Gratteau, and 
musician Jon Webber each added great memories to the service.
  As Bob Secter wrote:

       Back in the rambunctious days of Chicago newspapers, Wade 
     Nelson worked for the legendary columnist Mike Royko who sent 
     his ``legman'' to check out a tip that Cook County judges 
     were issued cushier toilet paper than that stocked in public 
     restrooms.
       The easy part for Nelson was grabbing samples from public 
     toilets in the Loop courthouse, now known as the Daley 
     Center. Obtaining tissue from a judge's inner sanctum was 
     trickier.
       So, Nelson made up a pretense to interview Chief Judge John 
     Boyle, then excused himself mid-talk to use the toilet 
     attached to the judge's chambers. He emerged to confront the 
     startled judge with the incriminating evidence, and a great 
     column was born.
       Charmin-gate was hardly the highlight of Nelson's days as a 
     reporter. Yet it demonstrated the resourcefulness, spunk, and 
     droll whimsy that propelled him on a rich career path 
     involving being press secretary for the late U.S. Senator 
     Alan Dixon of Illinois, communications director for the 
     federal military base closure commission, political 
     consultant, and chief speech writer for former Chicago Mayor 
     Richard M. Daley.
       That resume hardly defines the sum of Nelson, however. 
     Friends remember him as someone with boundless curiosity and 
     a walking encyclopedia of knowledge about interests as varied 
     as Midwestern architecture, jazz, the Cubs, anything Chicago 
     related, the minutia of the small Southern Michigan town of 
     Sturgis where his ancestors were early settlers in the 1800s, 
     and the secret to the perfect martini.
       Edward Wade Nelson Jr. grew up in west suburban River 
     Forest, attended Fenwick High School in Oak Park and the 
     University of Missouri where he graduated with a degree in 
     journalism.
       As a young adult and beyond, his greatest devotion was 
     reserved for performers at Chicago's varied night club, 
     cabaret and piano bar scene where men and women who played 
     and sang there came to embrace Nelson as an honored guest and 
     friend. He became an audience fixture at venues, most now 
     long gone, like The Acorn on Oak, Toulouse, The London House, 
     the Green Mill, and Yvette. Nelson even came to name his 
     family pets after 20th Century jazz legends.
       As Nelson climbed the rungs of journalism jobs, from City 
     News to the suburban Wilmette Life and then the Chicago Daily 
     News, his career tracked closely with another young reporter, 
     Ellen Warren, who later became a White House correspondent 
     for the old Knight-Ridder news service and then a columnist 
     for the Chicago Tribune. They eventually married and had two 
     sons.
       Nelson moved back to River Forest, but he rejoined Dixon in 
     the mid-1990s when the former senator chaired a politically 
     sensitive federal commission charged with recommending the 
     closure of surplus military bases across the country.
       In subsequent years, Nelson served as a spokesman for then-
     Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Aurelia Pucinski, now an 
     appellate court judge, and the Illinois State Board of 
     Education and became a program officer and grant manager at 
     the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a Michigan-based non-profit 
     specializing in education grants. Wedged in between these 
     jobs was a multiyear stint as the chief speechwriter for 
     Richard Daley, a difficult task making Chicago's notoriously 
     ineloquent mayor sound eloquent.

  Wade is survived by his wife and sons, Ted--and his wife, Sarah--and 
Emmett of Chicago; a sister, Karen Nelson of Chicago; and a brother, 
Ted--and his wife, Terry--of Spicewood, TX.

                          ____________________