“Our mother was someone who was fiercely loyal not just to us, but to her friends, mentees and those who entrusted her to lead. Her career was filled with extraordinary accomplishments that will help define her legacy,” said the statement from her children. “So many knew her as a transformative force in public service, city planning and civic development, but to us, her most meaningful role was as our mom.”

More recently, in 2020, Healey joined the Obama Foundation as senior vice president and executive project officer for the Obama Presidential Center, where she was leading construction of the Jackson Park campus.

“Chicago is a better city because of Lori Healey. Lori established herself as one of the most respected and sought-after voices in both the public and private sector thanks to her brilliance, indefatigable work ethic, wise judgment and wit,” said Valerie Jarrett, CEO of the foundation. “Lori could connect with anyone in any room: heads of state, developers, construction workers, young people and every member of our team. She was generous with her time and passionate about living a purposeful life and (being) a mighty force for good.”

Before being hired in 2019 as Chicago’s regional president of Clayco — the development firm tied to expansions of O’Hare International Airport and Willis Tower — Healey was appointed in 2015 the CEO of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, also known as McPier, which owns Navy Pier and McCormick Place. In that role, she supervised the construction of Wintrust Arena and Marriott Marquis Chicago, according to City Club Chicago.

“The loss of Lori Healey is devastating. Lori was not just my former boss and colleague, not just a mentor, she was a dear friend,” said Larita Clark, Healey’s successor as McPier CEO. “She was a wise and charismatic leader who, in her humble way, was a champion for all people and a tireless advocate for women. Always willing to give of herself, Lori led by elevating those around her.”

Bob Clark, executive chairman and founder of Clayco, told the Tribune over email that he couldn’t think of anyone who had “this much impact” on the city.

“She loved Chicago with all of her being,” he said, “and every morning I’m sure she thought of how to make our community bigger, better and more functional. For everyone.”

After earlier stints both in state government and City Hall, Healey worked under Daley and then ran his family’s firm, Tur Partners, until her appointment to McPier.

In 2012, Healey coordinated and planned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit in Chicago as executive director of the host committee. A few years earlier, in 2009, she had helped lead the city’s failed bid for the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics.

Just last week, Healey’s son Ramsey Al-Abed accepted the 2025 Game Changer Award on her behalf when she was unable to attend the 37th Chicago Commercial Real Estate Awards.

“Her impact has definitely helped shape the landscape of this city over the past decades,” Al-Abed wrote on an Instagram post.

In a video montage presenting the award, friends talked about Healey’s interests and passions beyond work, including golf, the Chicago Bears, her horses and hot sauce she used to stash away in a cabinet.

“I want to thank you. Thank you for not only changing the city of Chicago for the better, and our state and our country, but also for the kind of person that you are,” Gov. JB Pritzker said in the video message.

Healey’s relatives called her “a remarkable woman — a deeply devoted mother and grandmother who found her greatest joy in time spent with her adoring family.” She was also “a loving partner” to Walt Eckenhoff, “and an inspiring leader, a friend to so many and a tireless advocate for Chicago.”

“We are heartbroken by this loss but comforted in knowing that her legacy lives on in the countless lives she touched — in her grandchildren, colleagues, friends and the city she loved so much,” the statement read.

Apart from her son, Ramsey Al-Abed, she is also survived by her daughter, Emily Thompson Lewis. The family asked for privacy and said additional details about a celebration of life would be shared soon.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

That photo was taken on Dec. 1, 1958, by Steve Lasker, a young Chicago American photographer, and it would appear in that paper, in Life magazine, and in hundreds of publications across the globe.

Lasker would have a pioneering, prolific and distinguished career, filling his 94 years of life with millions of compelling images. He died Wednesday, April 30, in home hospice care in Lincolnwood, where he and his wife, Fran, had lived since their marriage in 1965. It was the end of his long battle with bladder cancer.

“It wasn’t the hardship one might imagine. He was a wonderful patient,” Fran said. “And a wonderful man. He was such a mensch.”

The two had met when Lasker arrived at Lincoln Park Zoo to photograph its president, Marlin Perkins. Perkins was not there so Lasker spent time with his assistant. “That was me,” Fran said. “It was brutally hot and so the two of us spent three hours in Mr. Perkins’ office, the only place that was air-conditioned, just talking. He asked me out and we had drinks the next night.”

They were married three months later and would have three children, daughter Stacey and sons Scott and David. “He was a wonderful husband and a great dad. We always said that for him it was the job that came first, children second and me third,” said Fran, with a chuckle.

Lasker came to photography early. His parents owned and operated a dry cleaning store on the North Side before relocating south. When he was 13 years old he was shooting photos of World War II aircraft at Midway Airport. As a student at Hyde Park High School he shot for the school paper and also for the neighborhood’s Hyde Park Herald.

He was a frequent visitor to local firehouses, and the firefighters grew fond of him. They taught him to play poker and would often let him ride along and take pictures on emergency calls, such as the one that occurred on May 25, 1950, when a gasoline truck crashed into a streetcar, bursting into flames and killing 34 people.

Lasker was the first photographer on the scene and his photos were purchased by and displayed in Life Magazine and on television’s Channel 5.

So impressed were the bosses at the television station that they formally began Lasker’s career by hiring him to shoot stills for newscasts. After five years with the WMAQ, he was hired as a photographer at the Chicago American, and only months later was the first photographer to arrive at the Our Lady of the Angels fire on the West Side.

He had been on his way to an assignment that day when he heard a call come over a radio tuned to the police frequency: “They’re jumping out the windows!” He recalled what he saw at the school, talking to the Tribune in 2008: “Mayhem was going on and they started pulling kids out of there left and right. To this day I still have dreams about that horrible scene.”

But he and the photo would be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, launching a career that would earn him nearly 40 awards for his work.

In 1970, he moved to WBBM-Channel 2 and became a news and documentary cameraman. Over the next quarter century, he would be known as “the man with the golden eye” as he travelled the world and the city, working on hundreds of stories and documentaries, many in collaboration with esteemed producer Scott Craig. He also worked often with anchorman and reporter Bill Kurtis.

““He led our stellar stable of photo masters. Quiet. Respectful. A privilege to know. And he really did have a ‘golden eye’,” Kurtis said. “But that’s just part of what makes a great photographer. The eye is connected to the brain and an uncanny third eye that is able to anticipate what’s going to happen before it happens. It’s like Steve was waiting for the great shot. That always came.”

Kurtis told a story: “We were in Horicon Marsh north of Milwaukee to cover the migration of thousands of Canada geese. I saw some hunters in a nearby rowboat. I said to Steve, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to get a shot of them in action?’ When I turned back to Steve he was pointing the camera to the sky above the hunters as if that was where the birds would fly over. Before I could say a thing, a shot went off and a bird was falling from the sky and Steve was following it all the way to the water. He won an Emmy for that one.”

Lasker retired in 1995 but kept shooting. If there was an event — a block party or parade — in or around Lincolnwood, Lasker was there with his camera, later supplying photos to organizations or local publications. He also served as a member of the suburb’s Fire and Police Commission.

In addition to his wife and children he is survived by a grandchild.

Services are scheduled for noon Monday, May 5, at Chicago Jewish Funerals, 8851 Skokie Blvd., Skokie

Buzzi died Thursday at her home in Texas, her agent Mike Eisenstadt said. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was in hospice care. Shortly before her death, her husband Kent Perkins, had posted a statement on Buzzi’s Facebook page, thanking her many fans and telling them: “She wants you to know she probably had more fun doing those shows than you had watching them.”

Buzzi won a Golden Globe and was a two-time Emmy nominee for the NBC show that ran from 1968 to 1973. She was the only regular to appear in all six seasons, including the pilot.

She was first spotted by “Laugh-In” creator and producer George Schlatter playing various characters on “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour.”

Schlatter was holding auditions for “Laugh-In” when he received a picture in the mail of Buzzi in her Ormphby costume, sitting in a wire mesh trash barrel. The character was clad in drab brown with her bun covered by a hairnet knotted in the middle of her forehead.

“I think I hired her because of my passion for Gladys Ormphby,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir “Still Laughing A Life in Comedy.” “I must admit that the hairnet and the rolled-down stockings did light my fire. My favorite Gladys line was when she announced that the day of the office Christmas party, they sent her home early.”

The Gladys character used her purse as a weapon against anyone who bothered her, striking people over the head. On “Laugh-In,” her most frequent target was Arte Johnson’s dirty old man character Tyrone F. Horneigh.

“Gladys embodies the overlooked, the downtrodden, the taken for granted, the struggler,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post in 2018. “So when she fights back, she speaks for everyone who’s been marginalized, reduced to a sex object or otherwise abused. And that’s almost everyone at some time or other.”

Buzzi took her act to the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in Las Vegas, where she bashed her purse on the heads of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Lucille Ball, among others.

“Ruth Buzzi brought a singular energy and charm to sketch comedy that made her a standout on ‘Laugh-In’ and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. Her characters, especially the unforgettable Gladys Ormphby, captured the delightful absurdity of the era,” said Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York.

Her other recurring characters on “Laugh-In” included Flicker Farkle; Busy-Buzzi, a Hollywood gossip columnist; Doris Swizzler, a cocktail-lounge regular who got drunk with husband Leonard, played by Dick Martin; and an inconsiderate flight attendant.

“I never took my work for granted, nor assumed I deserved more of the credit or spotlight or more pay than anyone else,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post. “I was just thrilled to drive down the hill to NBC every day as an employed actor with a job to do.”

Buzzi remained friends through the years with “Laugh-In” co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jo Anne Worley.

Born Ruth Ann Buzzi on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, Rhode Island, she was the daughter of Angelo Buzzi, a nationally known stone sculptor. Her father and later her brother operated Buzzi Memorials, a gravestone and monument maker in Stonington, Connecticut, where she was head cheerleader in high school.

Buzzi enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse at age 17. Two years later, she traveled with singer Rudy Vallee in a musical and comedy act during her summer break. That earned her an Actors’ Equity union card before she graduated from the playhouse’s College of Theatre Arts.

Buzzi moved to New York and was immediately hired for a lead role in an off-Broadway musical revue, the first of 19 such shows she performed in on the East Coast.

She got her national television break on “The Garry Moore Show” in 1964, just after Carol Burnett was replaced by Dorothy Loudon on the series. She played Shakundala the Silent, a bumbling magician’s assistant to Dom DeLuise’s character Dominic the Great.

Buzzi was a regular on the CBS variety show “The Entertainers” whose hosts included Burnett and Bob Newhart.

She was in the original Broadway cast of “Sweet Charity” with Gwen Verdon in 1966.

Buzzi toured the country with her nightclub act, including appearances in Las Vegas.

She was a semi-regular on “That Girl” as Marlo Thomas’ friend. She co-starred with Jim Nabors as time-traveling androids on “The Lost Saucer” in the mid-1970s.

Her other guest appearances included variety shows hosted by Burnett, Flip Wilson, Glen Campbell, Tony Orlando, Donny and Marie Osmond and Leslie Uggams.

She appeared in Ball’s last comedy series “Life With Lucy.”

Buzzi guested in music videos with “Weird Al” Yankovic, the B-52’s and the Presidents of the United States of America.

She did hundreds of guest voices in cartoon series including “Pound Puppies,” “Berenstain Bears,” “The Smurfs” and “The Angry Beavers.”

She was Emmy nominated for her six-year run as shopkeeper Ruthie on “Sesame Street.”

Her movie credits included “Freaky Friday,” “Chu Chu and the Philly Flash,” “The North Avenue Irregulars” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.”

Buzzi was active on social media and had thousands of followers whom she rewarded with such one-liners as “I have never faked a sarcasm” and “Scientists say the universe is made up entirely of neurons, protons and electrons. They seem to have missed morons.”

She married actor Perkins in 1978.

The couple moved from California to Texas in 2003 and bought a 640-acre ranch near Stephenville.

Buzzi retired from acting in 2021 and suffered a series of strokes the following year. Her husband told The Dallas Morning News in 2023 that she had dementia.

“He was just a very good person for the community,” said Oakbrook Terrace Mayor Paul Esposito. “He worked in the best interests of the city, and never put himself first.”

Vlach died of natural causes March 26 at his home, said his wife, Verna. He had been in declining health, she said.

A Chicago native, Vlach graduated from St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago and attended Loyola University Chicago. An engineer by trade, Vlach worked at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works factory complex in Cicero until it closed in 1983.

In 1977, Vlach moved from Brookfield to Oakbrook Terrace and began taking an interest in community issues. Vlach worked for 12 years for the Oakbrook Terrace Park District, where he was a game warden enforcing fishing licenses at the district’s Terrace View Park pond. He was also active in the town’s senior organization.

In 2005, Vlach ran for a seat on Oakbrook Terrace’s City Council, serving constituents of the city’s Ward 2, which largely consists of residents in single-family homes in the main single-family subdivision. Vlach defeated incumbent Laura Vargas, and prevailed in four contested elections in a row after that.

While on the council, Vlach worked to secure free garbage collection for residents, and to keep their sewer bills low, colleagues said.

“Frank was very, very fiscally conscious and conscious of community spending, but he also served his constituents when needed,” Esposito said.

“He liked being helpful for the city,” Verna Vlach said. “He wanted everybody to live nicely.”

Oakbrook Terrace Ald. Mary Fitzgerald, who was elected in 2021, noted that Vlach “voted according to his conscience and I was proud of him for that.”

“He focused on things like residents’ electric bills and stop signs,” she said. “So his perspective was more local and personal than broad.”

This spring, Vlach had decided to not run for reelection after five terms in office, and he died shortly before the election for his replacement.

A first marriage to Mary Ann Vlach ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, Vlach is survived by a daughter, Sharon Smith; a stepdaughter, Denise Olalde; a stepson, Joseph Carco; a sister, Dorothy Pfeuffer; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Services were held.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

Anzevino’s death was announced Monday night by the board of directors of the Theo Ubique Theatre Company, the company he founded. He had been in the midst of rehearsals for his next show.

Anzevino was the passion behind the strangely named Theo Ubique, a Greek-Latin hybrid meaning “God present in everything,” a theater company he founded in 1997. He said at the time that he had grown weary of the increased commercialization of musical theater even though he had been a busy touring actor.

“Theater heals through honesty, concentration, simplicity, awe,” he told the Tribune. “If one can evoke elements of the spiritual on stage, it can heal all people.”

He relished staging Broadway musicals in a tiny space. First at the Heartland Studio Theatre, then at the 60-seat No Exit Cafe, both in in Rogers Park, and finally in a custom-designed theater on the Howard Street border of Chicago and Evanston, Anzevino worked his magic through countless jewel-box productions of titles from Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” to “Pump Boys and Dinettes.” Several Chicago companies went on to produce so-called micro musicals in the city, but Anzevino was the first to do so with equal measures of integrity and success.

His secret sauce was his ability to spot, and then snag, formidable young talent. And then figure out how to make them shine.

His musicals often were cast with recent graduates of the city’s leading musical-theater training programs, thrusting forward the careers of young graduates, many of whom went on to major careers. He also was able to forge relationships with two highly talented musical directors in Austin Cook and then Jeremy Ramey; Ramey worked with Anzevino on 42 shows over a 12-year period and said Monday night that he was “heartbroken and devastated.”

“Fred was an institution and a teddy bear, all at once,” said Sawyer Smith, an actor currently working at the Signature Theatre near Washington, D.C. “I remember meeting him for the first time. I was so nervous. All of the actors I admired had cut their teeth at Theo with Fred.  He saw you intimately and knew how to get you to dig deeper. Once you were under his wing, he was your biggest champion. He fought for who he believed in, for what he believed in.”

“What Fred did for storefront musical theater in this city will always be unmatched,” said Christopher Chase Carter, a choreographer who worked at Theo Ubique. “He set the standard.”

Born in 1957 in Providence, Rhode Island, Anzevino showed early promise as a baseball player but instead studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, at Rhode Island College and at George Washington University. As a young actor, he was part of the national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical “Big River.”

Although the cause of his death has not yet been determined, Anzevino was open about being an AIDS survivor and was a man who long had lived with HIV.  He considered himself deeply fortunate, and it was that seriousness of purpose that informed both his work with collaborators and his deeply emotional productions.

At its creative peak between about 2008 and 2016, Theo Ubique shows dominated local awards ceremonies. Memorable productions also include stagings of “Jacques Brel’s Lonesome Losers of the Night,” “Evita,” “Chess,” “Cabaret” and “The Light in the Piazza.” Anzevino was not daunted by complexity nor by the seeming size of shows; everything, he believed, could be staged intimately, if you had talented collaborators. He staged “Cats” in a room that many would have felt was barely big enough for a litter box.

With help from supporters and Evanston officials, Anzevino managed to raise enough funds for a new theater space which opened on Howard Street in 2018, just managing to get on its feet prior to the pandemic. Thereafter, Anzevino, anxious to give younger artists opportunities and fearing his generation was becoming out of step, stepped back some. But at the time of his death, he remained Theo’s artistic director and was in rehearsal for “Diana: The Musical,” which he was co-directing with long-time collaborator Brenda Didier.

Theo board chair Stephanie Servos said Monday night that the company’s board of directors were devastated by Anzevino’s death and that she hoped the company would be able to rename the theater in Anzevino’s honor. “Fred was like a father to me,” Servos said.

“The larger the theater gets, the more external problems there are and the more difficult it becomes for honesty to appear,” Anzevino told the Tribune in 1997. “Spiritual and holy theater can only be performed in small and dingy spaces.”

Dingy disappeared over the succeeding years. But never the small, and never Anzevino’s insistence that his art, and his artists, had sacred purpose.

Survivors include a sister, Joann Benedetti.

“He worried so much about me even though he was my little brother, Benedetti said Tuesday.  “Fred was just a very humble person. I’m going to miss him so much.”

Plans for a memorial service are pending.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

“Holly was a principled, values-driven leader who prioritized integrity, people and outcomes equally,” said Dana Levinson, chief program officer at the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation in New York and a longtime colleague. “She maintained the highest standards at all times — not just for what she accomplished but the manner in which those accomplishments were achieved.”

Humphrey, 68, died of pancreatic cancer April 17 while in hospice care at Hinsdale Hospital, said her daughter, Dr. Sarah Follman. She was a resident of Hinsdale.

Born in Edgerton, Wisconsin, Humphrey moved to the Chicago area to attend North Central College in Naperville, where she was named the “Outstanding Senior Woman” and graduated summa cum laude in 1979 with degrees in biology and chemistry.

Humphrey’s decision to attend medical school was rooted in her childhood when she watched her sister, Sally, struggle with complications from Type 1 diabetes. She received her degree from U. of C.’s medical school in 1983 and remained in Hyde Park for a three-year residency in internal medicine. She then undertook a three-year fellowship in pulmonary and critical care.

She then took a job overseeing the university’s internal medicine residency program and working as a professor.

In 1989, the medical school’s dean of students at the time, Norma Wagoner, created the nation’s first white-coat ceremony, a ceremonial event in which incoming medical students promise professionalism in their careers and are given physician coats, a ritual that now has become a commonplace tradition at medical and nursing schools around the globe. Humphrey delivered the keynote address at the inaugural ceremony.

“It is crucial for students entering the profession to understand the fundamental principles on which the profession rests and the values that transcend the interests of individual physicians — all based on the tenet that the needs of patients assume the highest importance,” Humphrey wrote in a reflection about white coat ceremonies for the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation in 2020.

“Likewise, for students to hear faculty publicly make a promise to serve as their guides is a significant commitment,” she wrote. “Students must know that their institutions do not expect them to have a command of these professional frameworks or behaviors on day one, but that they will learn and explore these ideals during their professional journey.”

Colleagues said that Humphrey’s role in that first-ever white coat ceremony speaks to her focus throughout her career on physicians’ professionalism.

“What made Dr. Humphrey so special was (that) she excelled at the art of listening and diagnosing not just as a doctor, but as a leader,” said Dr. Vineet Arora, the Pritzker School of Medicine’s current dean of medical education and one of Humphrey’s former students. “She truly zeroed in on the issue that you might be facing as a learner or faculty member and (was) able to brainstorm with you ways to solve the problem. She instilled in thousands of learners the importance of both taking the high road while also focusing on caring for the most vulnerable.”

In 2003, Humphrey was named dean of medical education at the U. of C.

“Medicine gave her a place to advance the understanding and teaching of illness and treatment,” Humphrey’s daughter said. “She saw it not only as a science, but as a profoundly human endeavor. For her, being a physician and clinician educator was never just a job— it was a privilege, a responsibility and above all, a calling.”

Follman added that her mother was “constantly energized” by the high caliber of those around her — from mentors and collaborators to students and trainees.

“She firmly believed that medical education was the key to building a more compassionate, just and equitable health care system,” Follman said.

In 2018, Humphrey became president of the New York City-based Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, which is a national organization dedicated to improving the education of health professionals, and she began dividing her time between Hinsdale and New York City.

In her work at the Macy Foundation, Humphrey initiated a strategic planning process that produced three priority areas for the group: promoting diversity, equity and belonging, increasing collaboration across future health professionals and preparing future health professionals to learn how to address ethical dilemmas.

“Holly was a truly authentic person and leader, a guiding star for those of us at the Macy Foundation,” said Peter Goodwin, the foundation’s chief operating officer and treasurer. “She demonstrated the patience and kindness to listen to others (and) the willingness and openness to welcome diverse viewpoints, thereby creating an atmosphere through which all could excel.”

Humphrey served on the board of the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, including as board chair. Based in Pasadena, California, that medical school graduated its first class of doctors in 2020.

“Holly transformed medical education in the U.S.,” said Mark Schuster, founding dean and former CEO of the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. “She was one of the most remarkable, brilliant, generous and deeply empathic people I have known, and as board chair, she endlessly championed our new medical school.”

Humphrey also was elected in 2020 to the National Academy of Medicine, which is one of the highest honors in her field.

In addition to her daughter, Humphrey is survived by her husband of 42 years, Dr. Duane Follman; a son, Dr. Benjamin Follman; a daughter, Hannah; and two brothers, Philip and Richard Humphrey.

A memorial service will take place at 10 a.m. Friday at Christ Church of Oak Brook, 501 Oak Brook Road, Oak Brook.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

According to Vatican estimates, some 250,000 people flocked to the funeral Mass at the Vatican and 150,000 more lined the motorcade route through downtown Rome to witness the first funeral procession for a pope in a century. They clapped and cheered “Papa Francesco” as his simple wooden coffin travelled aboard a modified popemobile to St. Mary Major Basilica, some 3.5 miles away.

As bells tolled, the pallbearers brought the coffin past several dozen migrants, prisoners and homeless people holding white roses outside the basilica. Once inside, the pallbearers stopped in front of the icon of the Virgin Mary that the church is famous for and that Francis deeply revered. Four children deposited the roses at the foot of the altar before the burial ceremony began.

“I’m so sorry that we’ve lost him,” said Mohammed Abdallah, a 35-year-old migrant from Sudan who was one of the people who welcomed Francis to his final resting place. “Francis helped so many people, refugees like us, and many other people in the world.”

Earlier, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re eulogized Francis during the Vatican Mass as a pope of the people, a pastor who knew how to communicate to the “least among us” with an informal, spontaneous style.

“He was a pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone,” the 91-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals said in a highly personal sermon. He drew applause from the crowd when he recounted Francis’ constant concern for migrants, exemplified by celebrating Mass at the U.S.-Mexico border and travelling to a refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, and bringing 12 migrants home with him.

“The guiding thread of his mission was also the conviction that the church is a home for all, a home with its doors always open,” Re said, noting that with his travels, the Argentine pontiff reached “the most peripheral of the peripheries of the world.”

An extraordinary meeting about Ukraine on the sidelines

Despite Francis’ focus on the powerless, the powerful were out in force at his funeral. U.S. President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer joined Prince William and continental European royals leading more than 160 official delegations. Argentine President Javier Milei had pride of place given Francis’ nationality, even if the two didn’t particularly get along and the pope alienated many in his homeland by never returning there.

In an extraordinary development, Trump and Zelenskyy met privately on the sidelines of the funeral. A photo showed the two men sitting alone, facing one another and hunched over on chairs in St. Peter’s Basilica, where Francis often preached the need for a peaceful end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Tens of thousands flocked before dawn to the Vatican

Francis choreographed the funeral himself when he revised and simplified the Vatican’s rites and rituals last year. His aim was to emphasize the pope’s role as a mere pastor and not “a powerful man of this world.”

It was a reflection of Francis’ 12-year project to radically reform the papacy, to stress priests as servants and to construct “a poor church for the poor.” He articulated the mission just days after his 2013 election and it explained the name he chose as pope, honoring St. Francis of Assisi “who had the heart of the poor of the world,” according to the official decree of the pope’s life that was placed in his coffin before it was sealed Friday night.

The white facade of St. Peter’s glowed pink as the sun rose Saturday and throngs of mourners rushed into the square to get a spot for the Mass. Giant television screens were set up along the surrounding streets for those who couldn’t get close.

Police helicopters whirled overhead, part of the massive security operation Italian authorities mounted, including more than 2,500 police, 1,500 soldiers and a torpedo ship off the coast, Italian media reported.

Many mourners had planned to be in Rome anyway this weekend for the now-postponed Holy Year canonization of the first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis. Groups of scouts and youth church groups nearly outnumbered the gaggles of nuns and seminarians.

“He was a very charismatic pope, very human, very kind, above all very human,” said Miguel Vaca, a pilgrim from Peru who said he had camped out all night near the piazza. “It’s very emotional to say goodbye to him.”

A special relationship with the basilica

Francis, the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope, died Easter Monday at age 88 after suffering a stroke while recovering from pneumonia.

Even before he became pope, Francis had a particular affection for St. Mary Major, home to a Byzantine-style icon of the Madonna, the Salus Populi Romani. He would pray before the icon before and after each of his foreign trips as pope.

The popemobile that brought his coffin there was made for one of those trips: Francis’ 2015 visit to the Philippines, and was modified to be able to carry a coffin.

The choice of the basilica was also symbolically significant given its ties to Francis’ Jesuit religious order. St. Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, celebrated his first Mass in the basilica on Christmas Day in 1538.

The basilica is the resting place of seven other popes, but this is the first papal burial outside the Vatican since Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903 and was entombed in another Roman basilica in 1924.

Following the funeral, preparations can begin in earnest to launch the centuries-old process of electing a new pope, a conclave that will likely begin in the first week of May. In the interim, the Vatican is being run by a handful of cardinals, key among them Re, who is organizing the secret voting in the Sistine Chapel.

Crowds waited hours to bid farewell to Francis

Over three days this week, more than 250,000 people stood for hours in line to pay their final respects while Francis’ body lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Vatican kept the basilica open through the night to accommodate them, but it wasn’t enough. When the doors closed to the general public at 7 p.m. on Friday, mourners were turned away in droves.

By dawn Saturday, they were back, some recalling the words he uttered the very first night of his election and throughout his papacy.

“We are here to honor him because he always said ‘don’t forget to pray for me,’” said Nigerian Sister Christiana Neenwata. “So we are also here to give to him this love that he gave to us.”

Murphy also emerged as a forceful advocate for all DuPage County municipalities in the early 2000s amid a battle with county leaders who wanted to seize control of the DuPage Water Commission, which distributes Lake Michigan water.

“He did everything with great vision and a great heart, with dedication to our community,” said Woodridge Mayor Gina Cunningham, who succeeded Murphy. “He was wonderfully humble but extremely impactful, and he knew his purpose and he faithfully served that, whether it was with his family or his community.”

Murphy, 81, died of complications from lymphoma March 30 at his home, said his wife, Elizabeth. He had lived in Woodridge since 1968.

Born in Chicago, Murphy grew up in Elmhurst and attended Immaculate Conception elementary school. He graduated from St. Bede Academy in downstate Peru and then received a bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Joseph’s College in Indiana.

Murphy briefly attended law school before returning to school to gain the credentials needed to become a teacher. He taught at Ulysses S. Grant School on Chicago’s Near West Side for several years, and during that time picked up a master’s degree in education from Roosevelt University.

In 1968, Murphy moved his family to Woodridge — he joked to the Tribune in 1988 that at the time, “I thought at first that this place was out at the end of the world” — and in 1970, he left Grant School to take a job as principal of Goodrich School in Woodridge. Four years later, he became principal of Edgewood School in Woodridge, and the following year, he was appointed to the newly created position of assistant superintendent for personnel in Woodridge School District 68.

“(The job) was a good match,” Murphy’s wife said. “He was very much of a people person.”

Upon Murphy’s retirement from District 68 in 2004, the District 68 board renamed Woodridge Elementary School as William F. Murphy Elementary School.

In 1972, Murphy was appointed to a vacancy on Woodridge’s Village Board. The following year, Murphy won election to a four-year term as trustee and was reelected in 1977.

In 1981, Murphy successfully ran for mayor. He was reelected seven times, serving a total of 32 years over eight terms.

During his time as mayor, Murphy oversaw the approval and development of new housing developments, which helped increase the village’s population from more than 21,000 to more than 32,000. Retired state Supreme Court Justice S. Louis Rathje, who as an attorney represented developer Gallagher & Henry in the 1980s before Woodridge’s Village Board, recalled Murphy’s leadership as the town grew.

“I found Mayor Murphy to be fair, honest and forthright,” Rathje said.

From the time he was elected, Murphy also sought to shift attention toward greater commercial development in Woodridge.

“It’s changing Woodridge from not just a quality residential community, but also a community that offers commercial, warehouse, office and, along with it, jobs,” Murphy told the Tribune in 2000.

Projects that Murphy was most proud of include the Seven Bridges development near Illinois Highway 53 and Hobson Road, and the ProLogis Park Internationale Centre industrial park near Interstate 55 and Interstate 355. Earlier in his career, Murphy led efforts to construct a new village hall, police station and other civic buildings.

“He really believed in our neighbors, the community, the county and beyond that,” Cunningham said. “He always was a fighter in such a good, positive way in serving people. And he was a champion of children and education.”

Murphy was at the helm in Woodridge when the village joined with 22 other DuPage communities to build a pipeline to bring Lake Michigan water to the county. After lake water began flowing in 1992, Murphy became more involved with the DuPage Water Commission, the semi-independent agency that pipes water to the county’s towns, particularly amid a skirmish with then-DuPage County Board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom, who was interested in taking some of the agency’s excess reserves for non-water purposes.

The battle intensified, with state legislation drawn up in 2003 to abolish the water commission and hand its oversight over to the DuPage County Board. Murphy became an outspoken opponent of that legislation, and he was a public advocate for DuPage municipalities retaining some level of oversight over the Lake Michigan water agency as well.

“If our rates are set with that (money) going to the county, we will have to raise our annual rates to our charter customers by 25%, which would no doubt translate into a 25% increased cost to Mr. and Mrs. DuPage to obtain Lake Michigan water,” Murphy told the Tribune in 2003.

Ultimately, the water commission remained semi-independent under a compromise with county leaders and passed by the General Assembly. In 2004, Murphy joined the water commission’s board, eventually becoming its vice chairman. He retired from the board in 2014.

“As a commissioner on the water commission, Mayor Murphy was well-prepared, and always willing to cooperate with the goals of the DuPage Water Commission,” said Rathje, who later chaired the commission’s board and served alongside Murphy.

Murphy chose not to seek reelection as mayor in 2013.

“I have been witness to the tremendous achievements of all facets of our community,” Murphy said in his final State of the Village address in March 2013, according to a Tribune article. “I am proud that we are home to major national corporations, while placing every bit as much emphasis on our small businesses.”

On Friday, Woodridge will rename its Village Hall after Murphy.

“It’s our honor to dedicate our building and name it after him,” Cunningham said. “He helped build it. And as mayor, he was called to serve, and it was a higher calling — he was not motivated by anything else but doing good.”

In addition to his wife, Murphy is survived by three daughters, Jennifer Lawson, Lisa Young and Colleen Bosch; a son, Bill; and six grandsons.

Services were held.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

McMichael had been hospitalized recently in the intensive care unit and was to be moved into hospice care soon, a source had confirmed to the Tribune earlier in the day.

McMichael revealed to the Tribune in April 2021 — a little more than three months after he was diagnosed — that he had ALS, often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, the progressive nervous system disease that disrupts the brain’s ability to communicate with muscles.

“I promise you,” McMichael said, “this epitaph that I’m going to have on me now? This ain’t ever how I envisioned this was going to end.”

Unsurprisingly, the man affectionately nicknamed “Mongo” during his playing days still had his sense of humor through it all. “I thought I was ready for anything,” he said. “But, man, this will sneak up on you like a cheap-shotting Green Bay Packer.”

McMichael’s yearslong fight with ALS robbed him of the ability to move and speak and on multiple occasions contributed to health issues that required him to be hospitalized.

But he retained his mental faculties and was still alert in August 2023 when the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s seniors committee recommended him for induction.

“Finally,” his wife, Misty, told the Tribune at the time. “This is amazing. I don’t want to watch him die. I want to see him live to see this, to feel all that love. He deserves this. I want him to go happy.”

In February 2024, McMichael was officially elected to the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024, announced during the NFL Honors event in Las Vegas. That tribute resonated deeply with McMichael’s family and former teammates.

“It’s the most amazing feeling in the whole world to know that he’s in and to know he’s being recognized,” his sister Kathy McMichael said. “And that he deserves it. … We waited for this for a very long time. And it’s just amazing that he gets to be a part of this. That’s all we wanted was for him to know that he was going to be in the Hall of Fame and live there for eternity.”

Photos: At home with Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael

McMichael’s formal enshrinement in the Hall of Fame took place Aug. 3, 2024, in Canton, Ohio.

Gary Fencik, a Bears teammate of McMichael’s for seven years, including the 1985 Super Bowl XX championship season, said it was a fitting honor for a player who was an ideal fit for the 1980s Bears.

“We all always think of how loud and vocal he would be as a character off the field,” Fencik told the Tribune in February 2024. “But on the field, Steve was a guy who took immense pride in just doing his job. Never complained. Never needed the outside recognition. He just relished in being such a strong complement to the rest of our defensive players. He was just very reliable. Always a very reliable teammate.”

McMichael played in 191 consecutive regular-season games for the Bears and 12 more in the playoffs. No offensive or defensive player has appeared in more games for the franchise in its 105 NFL seasons.

“More than 200 games in a row,” said Dan Hampton, McMichael’s longtime teammate, close friend and fellow Hall of Famer. “To withstand the rigors and the pounding for all those years. And it’s not like he was playing cornerback. He wasn’t a receiver. He was a defensive tackle taking on double teams and triple teams and leg whips and this and that. To then essentially defy the physical reality of it is mind-boggling.”

In 2019, before the Bears played their 100th season, the Tribune ranked the top 100 players in franchise history. McMichael came in at No. 18.

“It’s a cruel irony that the Bears’ Ironman succumbed to this dreaded disease,” Bears Chairman George McCaskey said in a statement. “Yet Steve showed us throughout his struggle that his real strength was internal, and he demonstrated on a daily basis his class, his dignity and his humanity. He is at peace now.”

McMichael was named a first-team All-Pro in 1985 and ’87, to the second team in 1986, ’88 and ’91 and to the Pro Bowl in 1986 and ’87.

At 6-foot-2, 270 pounds, McMichael was smaller than the average tackle, but he thrived in defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan’s system because of his strength and quickness. McMichael was able to stuff the run and was one of the best interior pass rushers in NFL history.

McMichael recorded 10 sacks or more in 1984, ’88 and ’92. His 92½ sacks for the Bears are second to Richard Dent (124½), his former teammate who had the honor of informing McMichael of his selection to the Hall of Fame.

In 1993, McMichael broke Walter Payton’s team record of regular-season games played. He still ranks second in franchise history in that department, tied with Olin Kreutz and behind only long snapper Patrick Mannelly’s 245 games.

McMichael played his last season for the Packers in 1994, starting all 16 games after the Bears released him rather than pay his $1 million salary.

He joined World Championship Wrestling as a broadcaster in 1995 and became a wrestler a few months later. In 2001, McMichael was ejected from Wrigley Field after criticizing umpire Angel Hernandez over the public address system before singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

In 2013, he ran for mayor of Romeoville and earned 39% of the vote in a loss to incumbent John Noak.

On Sept, 18, 2021, McMichael received the first ALS Courage Award at Soldier Field. He and Misty wore matching black shirts emblazoned with “Me Mongo” and “Mrs. Mongo.”

Photos: ALS Walk for Life honors Chicago Bears legend Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael

“I never thought that I could admire the man more than I already did,” McMichael’s former teammate Keith Van Horne said while presenting the honor. “But watching him, how he carries himself dealing with this toughest opponent that he’s ever had to face, he’s done it with grace and humor.”

More than two dozen former NFL players have come forward with their ALS diagnoses, a group that includes Steve Gleason, O.J. Brigance, Tim Shaw and the late Dwight Clark, Kevin Turner, Wally Hilgenberg and Orlando Thomas. Former Raiders running back Steve Smith, who died in 2021 at age 57, had the disease since 2002. His wife, Chie, became one of Misty’s most trusted resources and confidantes.

“Steve McMichael told everyone he would fight ALS with the same tenacity he showed for 15 seasons in the National Football League.” And he did just that,” Pro Football Hall of Fame President and CEO Jim Porter said Wednesday in a statement. “Everyone who played with or against Steve shares the same opinion: No one battled longer or harder from the snap until the whistle than Steve the player. … And the love his teammates showed him throughout this difficult journey says everything about Steve the man.”

Upon his initial diagnosis, McMichael reflected on whether, considering his later-life plight, he would choose to play football as hard and for as long as he did.

“Hell, yes, I would do it all over again,” McMichael said. “Because it’s that journey that’s the reward. It’s that climb and how hard it was to substantiate yourself as out of the ordinary. That kind of achievement isn’t just given to you.”

Throngs of the faithful made their way to the 16th century basilica’s main altar where Francis’ open wooden casket was perched, as Swiss Guards stood at attention. Over the coming days, tens of thousands of people are expected to pass through, and the Vatican said it may extend the viewer hours even longer due to high turnout. In the first 8 1/2 hours, 19,430 people paid their respects to the pope.

Francis was laid out in red robes, clasping a rosary and wearing a bishop’s miter, the traditional pointed headdress. Mourners waited hours to reach the casket, which was behind a cordon. Some held their cell phones aloft as they neared to snap photos in what has become a modern ritual.

“It gave me chills,” said Ivenes Bianco, as she left. She was in Rome from the southern city of Brindisi for medical care, and came to pay her respects. “He was important to me because he encouraged co-existence. He brought many people together.”

Francis’ casket wasn’t put on an elevated bier — as was the case with past popes — but placed on a ramp, facing the pews. It was in keeping with his wishes for the rituals surrounding a papal funeral to be simplified to reflect his belief that the pope’s role is that of simple pastor, not world leader.

Cardinals, meanwhile, met in private to finalize preparations for Saturday’s funeral and plan the conclave to elect Francis’ successor.

Francis died on Monday at age 88, capping a 12-year pontificate characterized by his concern for the poor and message of inclusion, but also some criticism from conservatives who sometimes felt alienated by his progressive bent.

Francis first lay in state in the hotel where he lived, in a private viewing for Vatican residents and the papal household. Images released by the Vatican on Tuesday showed the pope in an open casket, his hands folded over a rosary.

Wednesday opened with the bells of St. Peter’s tolling as pallbearers carried Francis’ body into the basilica, in a procession through the piazza where he had delivered his final goodbye. Francis had made a surprise popemobile tour through the faithful on Easter Sunday, after his nurse assured him he could despite his frail health from a bout of pneumonia and long hospitalization.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who is running the Vatican until a new pope is elected, led the procession to the altar, with clouds of incense and the choir chanting the Litany of Saints hymn. In pairs, cardinals approached the casket, bowed and made a sign of the cross, followed by bishops, ushers, priests and nuns.

Then the doors were opened to the public. There was the squeak of sneakers, the rustling of kneeling nuns, the murmur of quiet prayers. A cough, a child’s cry.

“We knew there were many people, so we approached this with calmness,” said Rosa Morghen from Naples, adding: “It’s the feeling one experiences when a family member passes away, as he is a father, a grandfather who has gone.”

The public viewing ends Friday at 7 p.m., after which Francis’ casket will be closed and sealed.

The funeral has been set for Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square. It will be attended by world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy.

After the funeral, the conclave

Francis’ death and funeral will usher in a carefully orchestrated period of transition in the 1.4 billion-strong Catholic Church, with cardinals gathering over the coming days before entering a conclave, the secretive ritual voting in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope.

There are 133 cardinals who are under 80 years old and eligible to vote, after two bowed out for health reasons, and the new pontiff will likely come from within their ranks. The conclave is not expected to begin before May 5.

South Korean Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik, who heads the Vatican’s office for priests, predicted a short conclave but acknowledged the transition is full of uncertainties.

“We’ll see what the Holy Spirit says,” he said Wednesday. Asked if the next pope could come from Asia, where the Catholic Church is growing, he insisted: “For the Lord, there’s no East or West.”

Papua New Guinea’s first and only cardinal, John Ribat, prepared Wednesday to leave for Rome to participate in the vote, pleased to represent the South Pacific island nation of 12 million people and more than 800 languages in a College of Cardinals that Francis greatly diversified.

“To have a representative from here to be in the conclave, it is a big thing,” Ribart told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. He said he hoped the next pope would be someone who could lead the church in “a way that is truthful and binds everyone together.”

Italian police have tightened security for the events, carrying out foot and horse patrols around the Vatican, where pilgrims continued to arrive for the Holy Year celebrations that Francis opened in December.

“The death of a pope is not a small thing, because we’ve lost our leader,’’ said Julio Henrique from Brazil. “But still, in a few days, we will have a new leader. So … the thing of hope remains. Who will assume Peter’s throne?”

Associated Press reporters Silvia Stellacci and Trisha Thomas in Vatican City contributed to this report.