Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “Spike O’Donnell,” I whispered.

  Ed nodded. “My chance to fulfill a family obligation, was how Spike put it, and make some money while I was doing it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

  So. I called Blake and said there would be no interview. The next day, an article appeared headlined, “Tsar Kelly Hides behind ‘Photographer’ Cousin.”

  “In the tradition of the Whoopee Boys,” Blake had written, “who gave swarms of their relatives no-show jobs, Nora Kelly, who takes endless pictures of events that matter to no one, has approached me in a pathetic attempt to stop the press in the exercise of their duties. William Randolph Hearst has said that the stories they don’t want you to write are the ones you must write. And nothing will deter me—neither attacks nor blandishments, nor threats nor insults shall keep this reporter from telling you, the readers, the truth.” And then, he reported on Ed’s tax problems and his unexplained income.

  I read the piece out loud to Ed. The two of us in his office, long after everyone had gone.

  “Jesus,” I said, “Ed, he sounds like a mailman. Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night. Maybe now that Jim Farley is postmaster, he can give him a job.”

  That brought a little smile from Ed. The strange thing was that Blake had missed the real scandal about me—my involvement with Tim McShane and his death at the hands of Spike O’Donnell. Odd about reporters. So focused on the dirt they’re digging, they miss a better story. But Blake was from New York and didn’t have his own swarm of Chicago relations to keep him in touch with the latest gossip. I was almost glad that Manny Mandel had stolen my picture credit because Blake hadn’t learned of my presence that night in Miami.

  “Hearst wants me to resign,” Ed said. “That’s what all this is about. I wonder if I shouldn’t. Remember what happened to Carter Harrison? Shot by a fellow who believed the lies the newspapers were telling. And then McKinley. Didn’t his assassin say that he’d been influenced by the Hearst publications that had said McKinley was a monster whose death would be a service to mankind?”

  “I forgot about that,” I said.

  “Yes,” Ed said. “These fellows don’t realize that their words have consequences.”

  “And the worst of it is I don’t think Blake cares one way or another,” I said. “He wants to make a name for himself. Get a job as a screenwriter in Hollywood. I’m just grateful that he hasn’t sniffed out my connection to Tim McShane and how Spike—well, how he rescued me.”

  “That’s because what they really don’t want is for us to be able to spend as we see fit. Trying to stop federal money for my subway project. Destroy the Democratic Party,” Ed said.

  True enough. Hearst had even gotten a senator to propose a bill taking control of New Deal grants out of local hands because Chicago politicians were corrupt.

  “Get rid of me, and the others will be easy pickings,” Ed said.

  “But you’re not going to resign, are you, Ed? You’re never going to resign.”

  “Never,” he said. But that was Friday. Very early on Sunday morning, Ed was at my door, still in his robe and pajamas, holding the Sunday edition of the Chicago American.

  “They’ve gone too far,” he said. He walked in, collapsed onto my couch, and handed me the paper. It was open to a story in the women’s section. “Wife of Mayor Kelly Suffers from Remote Mother Syndrome.” Some woman I’d never heard of had written a very fancy-sounding analysis of Margaret. Lots of so-called psychological terms, but the gist was that adoptive mothers could not really love their children.

  “I’m going to that newspaper office, and punch the first person I see,” Ed said.

  “I wonder,” I said. “I wonder if that’s not exactly what they want you to do. I bet they have a cop on hand to handcuff you, with a photographer ready to take the picture.”

  “This has to stop,” Ed said. He opened it to the editorial page—“Kelly Must Resign.” I skimmed the piece. Same old idea. Corrupt Democratic city officials could not be trusted with the money from New Deal programs.

  “And people believe what they read in the paper,” Ed said. “If only I could talk to them man-to-man without this barrier.”

  He shook the newspaper, then balled it up with his fists and tossed it across the room. He stood up, walked over to the window, and looked down at the streams of cars on the Outer Drive. He reached into his pocket and took something out. I walked over and stood beside him. He was holding Uncle Patrick’s medal, rubbing his thumb over the image of the Sorrowful Mother, then turning the medal over and pressing his thumb against Our Lord crowned with thorns.

  “Roosevelt did it,” I said.

  “Did what?”

  “Talked to people directly on the radio.”

  Just the month before, right after he was inaugurated, Roosevelt had broadcast what the newspapers called a “fireside chat.” He’d used common language and a conversational tone to lay out his policies. The whole country had listened. Radio offered a way to connect so personally to people right in their living rooms. A first. Lots of letters to the editors saying, until they heard him speak, they had believed that FDR was the crazed dictator the Roosevelt-haters in the press made him out to be.

  “You should go on the radio, Ed, the way the president did.”

  Ed laughed. “Roosevelt has a special talent and I’m…”

  “A thick Mick? Come on, Ed. You do a great job as master of ceremonies for the Knights of Columbus, you and Michael are the best they have. I don’t understand why you won’t get out and make speeches.”

  Because Ed had been appointed as mayor, he hadn’t had to campaign. And I thought that really Pat Nash would prefer that Ed just go quietly about his business, while the party found a candidate to run in the next election. But Ed did have an easy way about him. A nice deep voice, and he knew how to tell a joke and sing an Irish song.

  “Look, Ed, just pretend you’re talking to the Knights of Columbus. Lay out your case to the real people.”

  “I’ll sound like I’m whining.”

  “No, you’ll sound like a man defending his wife and family, a fellow who wants to tell the truth.”

  Samuel Insull, who owned most everything in Chicago at that time, had the most powerful radio station in the city, WENR, broadcasting from the Civic Opera House. Those were the days when Insull was Chicago’s beloved benefactor—before we found out he was a crook who stole the life savings of half the citizens.

  “I’m sure Insull will let you use his station.” So we sat down that very minute to write his speech.

  “You’ve got to start with something snappy,” I said, “to get their attention.”

  “How about this?” Ed asked. “I’m going to tell you the truth. Then, let the people of Chicago decide whether I should resign or not.”

  “Great idea,” I said. “You can ask the audience to call in to the station, send telegrams. The newspapers say you became mayor without winning a vote. Tell the people, ‘We’re holding the election right now,’” I said.

  “I’ve got to find a way to make them understand that these fellows want to keep money coming from Chicago. We’ve been making progress. If everything falls apart, Big Bill Thompson will be back in charge before you know it.”

  I thought Ed would be nervous when the two of us sat down in the little soundproofed room in the Opera House. But when he leaned toward the microphone, I think he really felt that he was talking to people in their living rooms. He rubbed his holy medal, cleared his throat and began to speak.

  “My fellow citizens,” he said, “a vicious campaign of abuse, vilification, and slander is being conducted against me by the Hearst publications of Chicago.” I nodded. Good delivery. No anger in his tone, but strong words. “So long as it was directed solely against me,” Ed said, “I remained silent, making only such replies as I deemed consistent with the dignity of the office I hold. But now, the slanderers have attacked, not only the Democratic Party, the governor, and the duly elected and
appointed officers of this county and state, they have also reviled the good name of Chicago, and are now taking aim at my wife and children. I cannot remain silent. I personally need no one to fight my battles. My life has been one long fight against the odds. I’ve been the target of abuse for personal and political gain on the part of those who attacked me, and I have come to regard such tactics as part of public service. But now, this carpetbagger of a managing editor, who’s come to Chicago only recently, is trying to bring me down in order both to prevent the men and women of Chicago from obtaining needed employment in necessary public construction and to impair the credit of our city and thus make it impossible to obtain funds for payrolls. Why does he hate our city so much? Why does Hearst focus on me? I, myself, am of the humblest of origins. My ancestors came from foreign shores seeking happiness and contentment, and we have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Chicago is my birthplace and is my home—and it will be until my life has ended. I was married in this community to a Chicago girl—and, by death, I suffered the loss of my wife and my young boy, who God in his wisdom called.”

  And now Ed stopped speaking. He’d been moving through the text slowly and deliberately, and yet not haranguing the audience. Doing very well, I thought. But in the last sentence his voice changed. He was speaking from the heart. He looked over at me. Don’t cry yet, I thought. That’d be a little too much for Chicago. He took a breath.

  “I am now blessed with a wife of sweetness and patience, and her desire for motherhood was fulfilled by the adoption of three children. Two husky boys and one sweet girl who bear my name and will be a comfort and solace to me when I am old and decrepit, I hope.”

  Ed smiled, and I think the audience heard that smile. And now he picked up the pace, laying out his accomplishments. The Lakefront, Soldier Field, Buckingham Fountain, Planetarium, Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, as well as the skyscrapers that had grown up along Michigan Boulevard, next to the parks and beaches. He went on to point out that the Hearst newspapers had attacked Roosevelt, questioning his Americanism. He said that Al Smith had been called the most dangerous man in the United States by Hearst. Teddy Roosevelt, “a loose-tongued demigod and woman killer.” And McKinley’s murderers had been influenced by the Hearst publications.

  “I am proud,” Ed said, “to be put in this select circle of men. The suggestion was made by Hearst editors that I resign. I don’t come from stock that resigns under fire. I shall never surrender to Hearst tactics—but if I’m to remain in office and administer the affairs of the city, I need your support. I believe the march of prosperity is on, and I wish to have you join me in this march. I’m asking you to telephone this station or my office at city hall, drop me a note, send me a telegram, come down to see me on LaSalle Street. We have to show these vultures from back east what Chicago people are made of. We can rebuild our city. We did it before. Fire couldn’t destroy us, and neither will lies. I come from a people who were pushed to the brink of extinction, and we didn’t die. Let me know if I have your support. If not, I will leave this office with great sadness, but with my honor intact.”

  Well, the switchboard of WENR was jammed before we even left the studio. And it wasn’t only telegrams and letters that arrived at city hall, but lines and lines of people. “We’re with you, Ed,” they shouted when he arrived at his office the next morning.

  I took a picture of him surrounded by his well-wishers, and didn’t Ed get it on the front page of the Tribune the next day.

  Colonel McCormick might have been a Republican, but he had a soft spot for Ed and hated Hearst and his newspapers because, in those days, the circulation wars were really wars. Gangsters rode on the newspaper delivery trucks ready to shoot their competition. They terrified the newsstand owners. Moe Annenberg and his brother started as newsies, kids who bought papers for pennies and sold them for nickels. As the two got older, they made deals with the management of the papers and took over the whole business. Moe was on the straight and narrow now, but Ed always said he was as tough as any of Capone’s button men, but just smarter. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to build a business, if you’re willing to kill your competition like the Outfit does. So though the Tribune had their own bunch of thugs, they were trying to rise above the red and yellow headlines that marked the Hearst papers. Not that the Tribune spared Ed and the other Democratic officials, but at least McCormick made families off-limits and did, in his way, love Chicago.

  * * *

  “Well, Ed, you did it,” I said to him the next morning when I laid the Tribune on his desk. “People Rally for Kelly” said the headline. And there was the photograph, credited to me, of Ed surrounded, hands reaching out to him, a big smile on his face.

  “Blake will have to remove those quotes from around photographer,” I said.

  “Dream on,” Ed said. I noticed he was rubbing the medal again, a sure sign something was bothering him.

  “I’ve been thinking, Nonie, and talking to Margaret.” He rolled his leather chair closer to the desk, leaned forward, and laid the medal on the desk. “We were lucky that Blake hasn’t dug too deeply into your past yet, but…”

  “Wait a minute. What do you mean ‘yet’? I’m not important to his story. Believe me I know these guys. He’ll move on to the next topic, find somebody else. We beat him. Just like I silenced Wilcox.”

  “Maybe,” Ed said, “but now he knows you’re very closely connected to me.”

  “So what?”

  “I didn’t realize how many people know about your, well, relationship with Tim McShane and how it ended.”

  “You mean my running away to Paris to save my life? Or Spike O’Donnell plugging Tim so he wouldn’t strangle me to death?” My voice rose, and I started pacing around the office. “What did you do? Take a survey? Or stand with Henrietta on the steps after ten o’clock Mass at St. Bridget’s? Consult Toots?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Ed had always understood me. We were the redheads. Hadn’t I seen him at his worst up there in Wisconsin and never told a soul, not even Margaret? But Ed went on.

  “I’ve never asked you about all the things you were up to in Paris and Ireland, but Margaret says that some of those Irish characters you were involved with were pretty violent and, well—”

  “You mean the fellows who fought and died so that Ireland could be free? Who protected me from the Black and Tans? For God’s sake, Ed, I was attacked by the grandson of the very man who raped our aunty Máire and…”

  Ed stood up.

  “See, Nonie, you’re screaming at me.” Which I was, but why not? “Imagine if you were with me at a press conference and a reporter asked a question about your past, and you went off half-cocked. Margaret’s right. It’s not good.”

  “Are you saying I can’t control myself?” I asked. Banging out each word on his desk with my fist. Ed shook his head.

  “We both know you’ve been through a lot, and I blame myself for sending you down to Miami with Cermak.”

  “I sent myself, Ed,” I said. He was talking to me as if I were a difficult child who had to be humored.

  “But you’re an artist, Nonie. I’m sure the kind of photography you do for me doesn’t call on your talents, so…”

  “Are you firing me, Ed?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Fire me. Go on. I’ve been trying to get back to Ireland and those violent characters for ten years. Maybe now is the time.”

  “Easy, Nonie, easy. I—we—don’t want you to leave Chicago. My kids love you, so do Michael’s. What would they do without their Aunt Nonie to give them a bit of fun?”

  “So now I’m an entertainer?”

  “You’re purposely misunderstanding me, Nonie. Trying to put me in the wrong, and all I want to do is offer you an opportunity. You know the magazine, the Chicagoan?”

  “I do,” I said. A glossy publication trying very hard to be our version of the New Yorker.

  “Well, I got a letter from the editor. He wants special access for
a reporter and photographer to the Century of Progress and I’m proposing you as the photographer.”

  The Century of Progress was to be Chicago’s second World’s Fair. Ed had been involved when the idea first was proposed, five years ago. The land the Fair committee wanted to use belonged to the South Park Board, and Ed was the president. Well, he was thrilled with the idea. I mean it was the 1893 World’s Fair that inspired him to become an engineer. As a young boy, he’d hung around the construction asking questions; and when it was up and running, he must have gone twenty or thirty times. And now, here was a chance to be part of building another World’s Fair. Well, he was over the moon.

  The original plans for the Fair were made in 1928. The stock market was booming, people were making money hand over fist. The bond issue that would finance the Century of Progress passed Congress on October 28, 1929. Sound familiar? The next day the stock market crashed. Big Bill Thompson had just beaten Dever, so he was mayor. No money and a jackass as mayor should have put the kibosh on the whole project. But Ed convinced companies like General Motors to underwrite the buildings, and he sold the Fair to Thompson with one word—jobs. The city was beginning to feel the pinch of what would become the Great Depression, and even Thompson had to admit that no one knew better how to employ the maximum number of men on any construction project than Ed Kelly.

  And so Chicago’s Century of Progress, which had been meant to celebrate our city’s growth from a frontier village in 1833 to the City of the Big Shoulders, became an effort to rescue that city and its citizens. Thompson had kept Ed out of the limelight as much as he could. This was going to be Big Bill’s time to shine. I think the bitterest pill he had to swallow when he was defeated as mayor was that Pushcart Tony Cermak would open the World’s Fair. But, of course, he didn’t. Ed Kelly would do the honors, which he had done on May 27, 1933, four days ahead of schedule, with Jim Farley beside him.