Richard M. Daley walked out of City Hall on Friday for the final time as mayor, waving goodbye with tears in his eyes and his pride intact.
He leaves after a record 22 years running Chicago and formally hands off the keys of city government to successor Rahm Emanuel on Monday.
Reflecting on his legacy, Daley noted an hour or so earlier that he and his brothers carried on the family reputation established by their father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, even after some had relegated it to the history books.
“I’m very proud of taking my father’s legacy, and most people, when he died, they thought it was the end of me, and the end of the Daley family,” the mayor said of the period after his father’s December 1976 death in office. “Of course, they underestimated me, my entire family.
“Now today, when I’m leaving after 22 years, my brother Bill is chief of staff for the president of the United States,” he added, noting his brother John has been the finance chairman of the Cook County Board under several administrations. “I’m very proud of our family, and proud of my father’s legacy and proud of another generation’s legacy.”
More Top Picks Bike Locks
Daley spent the morning of his last day on the job on the South Side as part of his neighborhood appreciation tour, mobbed by well wishers as he visited a shopping center he helped get built at 119th Street and Marshfield Avenue and a youth football camp at Ogden Park in West Englewood featuring current and former NFL players.
“I enjoyed it — it was really not like work,” Daley, 69, said of his time as mayor. “When you’re mayor, you have to really enjoy it. If you don’t, boy, it’s a tough life, because you have to meet a lot of people in different situations. My theory: You have to like it. And if you don’t like it, quit.”
Speaking during one of several private interviews he gave this week, Daley said he would leave a note for Emanuel. He declined to reveal exactly what it would say.
“It’s more between Rahm and myself and his family,” Daley told the Tribune. “Just best wishes. Wish him that he becomes the best mayor of Chicago. That’s what you really want to make sure, that he moves forward, moves the city forward.”
While he spoke, some of his staff packed up their personal belongings, as Daley had been doing for weeks. Chief of Staff Raymond Orozco wished workers well, and bubble wrap was spotted on the floor. Others shared sometimes teary goodbyes.
Some of those staff members will get job placement assistance from a Chicago firm, the Daley administration announced late in the day.
Daley described Friday as “another day.”
“Life goes on,” he said. “It doesn’t end as you leave a job or leave an office.”
The mayor is co-chairman of an advisory panel set up by President Barack Obama tasked with ensuring more American students pursue their studies in China, a country Daley has visited often and frequently praises for its major public projects, job creation and education.
He’s also signed up with a speaking agency to give talks here and abroad. He said he’s had lots of offers for work, including some from law firms, but maintained he has yet to make a final decision.
“I’m going to take my time to look at opportunities, and I’ll become a private citizen,” he said, listing his 42 years in government posts. “I deserve to be a private citizen, I guess.”
“Whatever I decide to do, I will do it, whether it’s of counsel of something like that, and no conflicts with the city. I’m not going to be doing city business. … As a lawyer, at a law firm, you just build a Chinese wall.”
Daley met with his family in his inner office at about 5 p.m. and walked out in a moment captured by a throng of photographers. Chants of “Daley” broke out briefly as the mayor paused to point to the “Office of the Mayor” above the door, leaning down to talk to grandson Kevin as he did so.
In the first-floor lobby, more than a hundred cheering employees waved miniature flags. Daley had tears in his eyes as he slowly walked through, and he paused to hug people and wave.
He helped his wife, Maggie, into a waiting minivan on LaSalle Street. He gave a thumbs-up and a waved to the crowd that had assembled on the median and the far side of LaSalle. He mouthed the words “thank you,” then ducked into the backseat of his own guarded, chauffeured black sedan.
Towering over them were banners in the colors of the city flag that have been on light poles outside City Hall this week. They read: “CHICAGO … A WORLD CLASS CITY … THANK YOU MAYOR DALEY.”
Twitter @ReporterHal
More Top Picks Best Wake Up Lights For Seniors