Sister Sheila Lyne, who headed the city of Chicago’s Public Health Department from 1991 to 2000 and worked almost 30 years as president and CEO of Mercy Hospital & Medical Center, died Tuesday at 83, according to friends.
A member of the Sisters of Mercy, she was the first and only nun to run the Chicago Department of Public Health, according to Cook County Commissioner John P. Daley. She served in the administration of his brother, Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Sr. Sheila Lyne died at Mercy Circle senior living community. She had dementia, according to her friend Mary Ellen Caron, CEO of After School Matters.
Young Sheila grew up on the South Side, where she went to Little Flower grade school and Mercy High School. She joined the Sisters of Mercy in 1953.
In the 1960s, she earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s in psychiatric nursing from St. Xavier University, according to her biography with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where she received an MBA in 1980.
She started her nursing career at Mercy Hospital, the city’s oldest hospital. It also has deep ties to the Daley family — Mayor Richard J. Daley and his wife, Sis, helped raise money for it; Daley children were born in an older Mercy building, and John P. Daley has served on its advisory board.
By 1976, she had risen to be president and CEO and was credited with helping the hospital rebound after it had been in danger of closing.
“She was a strong, strong voice for the under-resourced in health care throughout her life,” said Caron. “She always cared about those who were uninsured or underinsured.’’
“The Daley family has lost a great friend,” John P. Daley said, “and the city of Chicago has lost an outstanding public servant, someone who was committed to health care for all in this city.”
“She worked seven days a week. She walked the halls,” said her friend Connie Murphy, who worked in marketing at the hospital. “At 77 years old, she would call me at 8 o’clock at night, on the treadmill, to say what needed to be done tomorrow.”
Her role as city health commissioner resulted in her proudest achievement and biggest regret, she once told the Chicago Sun-Times.
When she started the job, the impact of AIDS was worsening, she said in a 2012 Sun-Times interview. She worked to increase funding for prevention and promoted the distribution of free condoms.
“I remember the activists marching against the mayor and all that, and that program definitely needed money. It had $4 million in funding, which went up to $40 million,” she said.
Her leadership on the issue sometimes “put her at odds with the Archdiocese,” John P. Daley said.
She also was credited with working to reduce infant mortality and weeding out a department known as a haven for patronage workers.
Her regret, she told the Sun-Times, was the death toll from Chicago’s 1995 heat wave. Recent studies place the number of fatalities at approximately 739.
“It was one of the things we missed,” she said. “A lot of people died unnecessarily because we didn’t recognize the difference when this first heat wave came, and it was something we all just couldn’t believe was happening.”
After leaving City Hall, she returned to Mercy. When she announced her retirement from the hospital in 2012, a Sun-Times editorial praised her for helping to secure the hospital’s future.
“If at times that meant engaging in classic Chicago clout politics, tapping a powerful South Side Irish network to secure key loans and tax breaks, well, it was all for an excellent cause,” the editorial said.
A wake is planned at noon Friday until the start of a 4 p.m. funeral Mass at Mercy Hall, 10044 S. Central Park Ave.
Contributing: Maudlyne Ihejirika
