Wilmette and Winnetka police officials are remembering Theodore “Ted” Moran, who served both departments over a career of more than 20 years, as a dedicated public servant whose work, distinctive voice and technical expertise won the respect of his peers and bettered both departments.
His family remembered Mr. Moran, 58, who died at his Wheeling home May 28 after battling colon cancer, for his love of the stars and his desire to spread his passion for science to those around him.
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Mr. Moran was a dispatcher with the Wilmette Police Department from 1995 to 2000, police chief Kyle Murphy said. He worked in the Winnetka Police Department’s dispatch center from 2000 to 2017, and also returned to the Wilmette department to work as a part-time dispatcher from 2011 to 2017, Murphy said.
When Winnetka consolidated its dispatch office with the Glenview Police Department, Mr. Moran returned to full time work in Wilmette, Murphy said.
“He loved his job and he felt a very strong responsibility to his duties,” Murphy said. “He was working up until about two weeks ago and he actually felt that he was letting us down because he couldn’t be there to help us test our new radio network in the next few weeks.”
Mr. Moran helped with Wilmette’s 2015 communications center redevelopment, Murphy said. In 2007, while he worked in Winnetka, he helped Wilmette make the leap to a computer-aided dispatch system.
Murphy said that Mr. Moran also helped train new department telecommunicators.
Winnetka police chief Marc Hornstein said Mr. Moran’s significant technical knowledge of radio systems served the Winnetka department as well.
“He made significant contributions to our communications center,” Hornstein said.
“He had an outstanding voice and a very distinctive style of dispatching,” Hornstein said. “He was highly respected and regarded by everyone here in the department and he will be sorely missed.”
Jennifer Lerner, Mr. Moran’s life partner, said he never felt he needed recognition for his job.
“He used to say that he saw people at their very worst, when they were scared or worried. It was his job to get information from them, sometimes information they didn’t even know they needed to give,” Lerner said.
Mr. Moran was raised in Chicago and went to school in Evanston, said his sister Nancy Moran, of River Grove. He briefly attended the University of Indiana Bloomington but returned to Chicago to care for his family after the death of his father, Nancy Moran said.
Lerner said Mr. Moran became interested in radios and in police work because of his father, who also worked in law enforcement.
“He was a radio buff as a kid and he used to say that because of what his father did, there was always a scanner in the background of their lives,” Lerner said.
Between 1980 and 1995, Mr. Moran held security related positions with several companies, she said.
Lerner said Mr. Moran’s love of science was a lifelong passion, whether that was teaching neighborhood children about the solar system with the help of yards of string, or traveling to Kentucky to see the 2017 solar eclipse and inviting children and adults to view it look through his telescope.
Nancy Moran agreed, saying, “When I’m looking up at the stars and the moon, I’ll be thinking about him.”
In addition to his sister and Lerner, of Wheeling and Northampton, Massachusetts, Mr. Moran is survived by his mother, Shirley, also of River Grove.
A memorial service will be held from 4-8 p.m. Monday June 11 at the Mallinckrodt Center, 1041A Ridge Road, Wilmette.