[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18259-18260]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO MAGGIE DALEY

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments in the 
Senate to pay tribute to a remarkable woman. Maggie Daley served with 
dignity and grace for 22 years as Chicago's first lady. She died on 
Thanksgiving evening after a nearly decade-long struggle with breast 
cancer. She was at home, surrounded by her loving family. There is a 
sad but fitting poignancy to the date. People in Chicago and far beyond 
have so many reasons to be thankful for the life of this exceptional 
woman. Maggie Daley was an adopted daughter of Chicago, but no native-
born Chicagoan could have loved the city more or served it better.
  Last May, as her husband Rich prepared to step down as Chicago's 
mayor, the Chicago Tribune wrote an article about what Maggie Daley 
meant to Chicago. The first paragraph put it well: ``There has never 
been and may never be a Chicago first lady of greater impact, influence 
and inspiration than Maggie Daley.''
  Maggie was smart, funny, tireless, amazingly modest, and deeply 
compassionate. She was also a very private person. Yet she still 
managed to touch the lives of so many people. The love Chicagoans feel 
for Maggie Daley was reflected in the faces of the people who waited in 
a line over a block long, in the rain, this last Sunday, to attend her 
wake at the Chicago Cultural Center--incidentally, a building which she 
worked hard to restore.
  I stood in that line and talked to many people. Some of them I knew 
from my public life and their public lives but many just private 
citizens, some of whom had met her briefly, some who had worked with 
her for years, but they all came to pay tribute to her. Among them was 
Hazel Holt, 74 years old. The Chicago Tribune described Mrs. Holt as a 
person who decided to drive:

       . . . downtown in her church finery from the Gresham 
     neighborhood on the South Side, absorbed the cost of parking, 
     rode the bus and then walked on a damp, chilly November day 
     to the wake.

  Mrs. Holt said Maggie Daley ``built connections to the city's people 
with her commitment to charities assisting children, as well as her 
public poise in the face of cancer that would claim her life.'' She 
went on to say to the reporter:

       I just loved this lady. I wish I had one-quarter of her 
     grace. She was a role model for a lot of us.

  That is a feeling shared by many of us in Chicago and beyond. Upon 
hearing of Maggie's death, Nancy Brinker, the founder and CEO of the 
Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure, said: ``We've lost a real 
general.''
  Loretta and I were blessed to have known Maggie personally, and Rich 
has been my friend, colleague, and even boss for decades. Yesterday 
morning, I attended Maggie's funeral at the old St. Patrick's Church in 
the neighborhood parish in Chicago. I remember the last mass I attended 
there with Maggie and Rich Daley. It was St. Patrick's Day. It is a big 
day in Chicago on St. Patrick's Day and ground zero for the celebration 
of old St. Pat.
  It was clear Maggie's health was flagging. She had to sit through 
most of the service. She came to the front pew in a wheelchair. But all 
those struggles were quickly forgotten as her children and grandkids 
were seated next to her, and we heard from the back of the church, 
after the mass, that sound we all waited for, the famous Shannon Rovers 
bagpipe band from the Bridgeport section of Chicago. They come marching 
up the center aisle with those bagpipes blasting. It is a moment I will 
never forget. Maggie's grandkids were nervously waiting, expectantly 
waiting for the sound of the bagpipes, scrambling all over the pew and 
all over Maggie and Rich to get to the point where they could peer out 
down the center aisle to watch the bagpipers come away.
  I looked at Maggie and Rich at that moment and I saw them beaming 
with the kind of joy that loving parents and grandparents just live 
for. Maggie was a patron saint of social causes, but her deepest 
convictions were to God and family. Maggie and Rich Daley had been 
blessed with four children: Patrick, Nora, Kevin, and Lally. Years ago, 
she made her husband keep a promise to reserve Sundays exclusively for 
private family time. So the bottom line was this: One could ask Mayor 
Daley 6 days of the week to go anywhere in Chicago or anywhere else but 
Sunday, no way. He made a promise to Maggie that that was family day. 
It is a promise he always kept, and we respect him for it.
  Two weeks ago, the family announced that their youngest daughter 
Lally had moved the date of her wedding from New Year's Eve to late 
November so Maggie could attend. It was a signal that the end was near, 
but she was at that wedding. There she was in her wheelchair with that 
irrepressible smile, a beaming mother, celebrating her daughter's 
happiness. It is quintessential Maggie.
  Part of the reason Maggie Daley found such joy in life is that she 
understood what a fragile gift life can be. In 1981, her third child, 
Kevin, died from spina bifida just shy of his third birthday. After 
Kevin's death, she found healing and meaning in reaching out to help 
others and especially in volunteering to work for kids with 
disabilities. Someone once called her the godmother of all Chicago's 
children. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on her passing that Mayor Rich Daley 
may have been the head of the city, but Maggie Daley was the heart of 
Chicago.
  In 1991, Maggie and Lois Weisberg, Chicago's long-time Commissioner 
of Cultural Affairs and an icon in her own right, began something 
called Gallery

[[Page 18260]]

37. There was an abandoned piece of real estate in the middle of 
downtown Chicago that had been lost in legal and court battles for 
decades. So Maggie and Lois decided to set up a tent on this old plot 
of land that was sitting vacant and create Gallery 37, which was an art 
gallery for kids. All across Chicago they invited kids--grade school 
and high school--to submit their artwork. We all went down there for 
the joy of that moment, of seeing the kids and the pride they had, and 
some of the magnificent artwork they produced, all because Maggie and 
Lois decided here was an opportunity they couldn't miss.
  That program later morphed or matured into an amazing program called 
After School Matters. Maggie thought: If I can occupy these kids with 
art and music and drama and theater and chorus during the school year, 
let's do it after school--a vulnerable time for many kids. So over two 
decades, Maggie Daley nurtured the artistic talents of thousands of 
Chicago high school students and became a model for programs in many 
cities across the country and as far away as London and Australia.
  The last time Maggie was in this building was in my office. She came 
upstairs to visit and to lobby me for money for After School Matters. 
Needless to say, she won my vote and my support.
  Maggie Daley believed that art could change lives. She believed that 
artistic talent could exist in children from the Robert Taylor Homes in 
Chicago as surely as it could from children in better, more wealthy 
neighborhoods, and that all young people should have the opportunity to 
develop their talents together. That is why After School Matters has 
become such an amazing program.
  Maggie Daley also served on the auxiliary board of the Art Institute 
and the Women's Board of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. She 
was a very busy person.
  It was a happy accident that Maggie Daley came to Chicago. Margaret 
Ann Corbett Daley was born and grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh. She 
was the youngest of Patrick and Elizabeth Corbett's seven kids and 
their only girl. After graduating in 1965 from the University of 
Dayton, she entered a management training program for Xerox and her job 
took her to Chicago. She promised her dad she was going to stay in 
Chicago for 2 years and then come back to Pittsburgh. But in 1970 she 
met a young attorney named Rich Daley at a Christmas party. They 
decided to date, got engaged, and were married for nearly 40 years.
  The average survival rate for Maggie's form of breast cancer that has 
spread beyond the breast and lymph nodes is very brief. Maggie Daley 
lived with this incurable illness for 9 years. Her doctors called it a 
medical miracle. She endured years of painful treatments and faced her 
cancer with courage, dignity, grace, and good humor. As the cancer 
progressed, she relied on crutches, a walker, and eventually even a 
wheelchair, but the smile never quit.
  She donated generously to help open the Maggie Daley Center for 
Women's Cancer Care at Northwestern Memorial Hospital last year. The 
center helps other women facing cancer by providing access to doctors 
and important support services.
  Loretta and I obviously offer our deepest condolences to Rich Daley, 
his wonderful children and their families--all of the Daley children 
and grandchildren. We trust that time and treasured memories will ease 
the great sorrow they obviously feel. They can also take comfort in 
knowing that the legacy of Margaret Corbett Daley can be seen and felt 
all over her adopted city of Chicago.
  Maggie Daley's dedication to the arts will continue in part through 
the work of her daughters, Nora Daley Conroy, who chairs Chicago's 
Cultural Affairs Advisory Committee, and, of course, Lally, who will 
continue in her mom's tradition. Her commitment to education will live 
on in the lives of the young people she has touched. Her courage will 
endure in women she inspired who can now find medical care at the 
center she helped establish.
  Maggie Daley was a modest person. She didn't like to talk about 
herself; she preferred speaking of others. Two years after she was 
diagnosed with cancer, she gave an interview to the Chicago Sun Times 
in which she hinted about how she felt about the future. This is what 
she said:

       I try not to waste any time. At the end of the day, what's 
     important is if you think that the people around you have 
     maybe had a better day because of some of the things you've 
     done.

  By that standard and so many others, Maggie Daley lived a good and 
full life. She did much good, and she will be greatly missed.

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