Their lake house was my second home.
If my mom needed a weekend to herself, or the weather looked particularly beautiful (or rainy), I would climb into my Papa’s Cadillac sedan and make the trek up to Elkhorn, Wisconsin. On the way, we’d listen to NPR’s “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” or “Car Talk” and talk about what books I was reading in school.
When we got to the lake, Grammy and I would shuck corn on the back deck while Papa grilled the best steaks I’d ever eaten and listened to Johnny Cash on the outside radio. At night, when I was ready to be tucked into bed, Papa would come down the hallway with a stool in one arm and a flashlight in the other. He’d roar and push the stool towards the bed, legs facing the foot of the bed.
“Papa, are there any lions under the bed?”
“There might be, Kate. I better make sure.”
My Papa was Joel Daly.
Joel Daly’s love for Chicago was overshadowed only by his love for his family.
Papa bought me my first bike from Terry’s Byke Haus in La Grange; if I close my eyes, I can still see the neon pink and turquoise tassels that hung from the handlebars.
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He smelled like Joop! cologne and had perfectly coiffed hair — so perfect that I was convinced he wore a toupee until he took me swimming in Florida when I was 8 years old.
He loved “The Electric Horseman,” Willie Nelson and whiskey. He never outgrew his cowboy ways from driving a tractor on a farm in Montana and wore cowboy boots every night under the news desk. We watched James Bond movies and made homemade popcorn while Grammy did the crossword puzzle with an erasable pen (though she never seemed to need the eraser).
The city knew him as a journalist, a pilot, a singer and a lawyer. I knew him as all of those things too, and as I got older, I realized that it was impossible not to be in awe of the man. Folks would stop him on the street and tell him how important he was to Chicago, to them. He shook their hands and smiled. I never saw him more proud or honored than when someone stopped to talk to him. He went to work nearly every day for 38 years, and I watched him on ABC-7 for 17 of those years.
He was not just a news man: he was an Everyman, and he was damn proud to be from Chicago.
Joel Daly lived a dozen dreams in one lifetime, and each one was a treasure to him.
The last original newsman is gone, but he will live on in this city forever. And, to me, he will always be the man who tamed the lions under my bed.
Kate Scot Daly is a local freelance photographer.
