CHICAGO — Maggie Daley, the wife of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and a gracious promoter of the city’s cultural and educational programs, has died. She was 68.
Maggie Daley, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, died Thursday night, family spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard told The Associated Press. Daley had been a reserved and dignified presence at her husband’s side during his 22 eventful years as mayor.
When she first learned she had breast cancer in June 2002, 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,” Daley said in the weeks after the diagnosis.
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.” She was with him at the September 2010 news conference when he announced he wouldn’t seek another term. He left office in May.
In the years after the cancer diagnosis, Maggie Daley was in and out of the hospital but maintained a public life as Chicago’s first lady.
She is survived by her husband and three children. Her 33-month-old son, Kevin, died of complications related to spina bifida in 1981.
