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railroad fairs, pageants, and other diver-
sions at this site. With such regular revenue
flow after the Fair, power brokers and city
planners resolved to build a permanent
fair and exposition center by the lake.
The plan’s biggest booster was Colonel
Robert McCormick, editor and publisher
of the Chicago Tribune, which he used as
a bully pulpit for pet projects. Lakefront
defenders fought against the plan for
years. In 1960, McCormick Place made
its lakefront debut. When it burned down
seven years later, detractors considered the
fire as possible divine retribution for the
city’s encroachment upon the lakefront.
But in Chicago, politics rule, and the
massive structure was rebuilt. Recently,
Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed using
McCormick Place as an alternate site for
the proposed Lucas Museum, so the con-
troversy endures.
In addition to lakefront lore, Baer had
plenty of other tales of Chicago’s history,
replete with fascinating characters and riv-
eting stories. He concluded by noting that
at the heart of these stories, one often finds
a juicy legal dispute. A glance at today’s
headlines concerning the Lucas Museum
is proof that history often repeats itself–
especially when coveted lakefront land is
at stake.
THANK YOU ANDWELL DONE
At the Kogan Awards luncheon, JusticeMichael B. Hyman offered
the following remarks about notable legal journalist John Flynn
Rooney, who passed away from complications from Lou Gehrig’s
Disease on June 30:
John, we are humbled and inspired by your fortitude and
attitude, and that of your loving family.
Two years ago this month, May 2014, John Flynn Rooney
announced in the
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
that ALS, Lou
Gehrig’s disease, had claimed him as it had his mother. Then,
last August, John’s byline appeared above an article entitled, “A Farewell to the Legal Community.”After
33-year career in journalism, 27 of them with the Law Bulletin Publishing Company, John notified his
readers that the time had come for him to retire.
Today, the legal community, formally and publicly, says to you, John, thank you and well done.
If something involved law, John reported on it. John was our eyes and ears up and down LaSalle Street;
in and around the public and private corridors of our courthouses, and throughout the Bar associations
and law schools.
Every evening, I’d always look forward to reading whatever John wrote for that day’s edition. I was not
alone. John’s writing has a way of making you feel as if John is talking to you as a friend.
John told stories, our stories, and he told them with incisive writing, insight, and intelligence. That John
is not a lawyer is hard to believe, except for the fact, fortunately, that he never wrote like a lawyer.
No detail seemed too minor to escape his attention. No question appeared too tough to ask. No story
was too big or too small, or too difficult, to handle. And, there never was a personal, partisan, or ulterior
motive when it came to the way John practiced journalism.
A true professional, John was always friendly, down to earth, and reassuring. On deadline, he projected a
level of calmness whatever the circumstances, which a lot of lawyers would not mind having themselves.
When John started at the Law Bulletin, an editor asked if he was passionate about the law. John said he
didn’t know. Soon enough, a passion about the law fueled a career.
It did not take long for the legal community to reciprocate–here was a journalist we could respect, trust,
and most of all, like. No one has ever said a bad word about John’s reporting or John…a feat even the
legendaryWalter Cronkite never achieved.
John, on behalf of the Kogan Award Committee, the Chicago Bar Association, and the legal community,
a heartfelt and grateful thank you.
Thank you for your 27 years of keeping us“in the know“ and connected to our professional world. Thank
you for putting up with us all those years. And thank you for caring so much about the law, the legal
profession itself, and, especially, about all of us.
We care about you. God bless.
–Justice Michael B. Hyman
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