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Richard M. Daley

November 26, 2011 by · Comments Off on Richard M. Daley 

Richard M. Daley, Maggie Daley, 68, the wife of former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley and a promoter of the city’s cultural and educational programs, died Nov. 24 in Chicago, family spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard told the Associated Press.

In June 2002, doctors diagnosed Mrs. Daley with breast cancer.

When Richard Daley was elected to his first term as Chicago’s mayor in 1989, he thanked his wife in his acceptance speech, calling her “the best campaigner in the family.”

During his 22 years in office, Richard Daley would routinely tear up when he spoke about his wife. They had met while he was campaigning for the Illinois Senate and were married in 1972. Eventually, their partnership became a steady force for the city during his at-times turbulent two decades at the helm of the nation’s third-largest city.

In the years after the diagnosis, Mrs. Daley was in and out of the hospital and had many setbacks to her health. All the while, she maintained a public life as Chicago’s first lady.

When she first learned she had breast cancer, Mrs. Daley said she was shocked. “But you pick up and you move on. .?.?. I’m not alone here. There are a lot of people who have experienced this,” she said in the weeks after the diagnosis.

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