Longtime Chicago-area journalist, author and editor Eileen C. Norris wrote and edited widely read health books such as the “American Medical Association Complete Medical Encyclopedia” and the “Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide.”
“She was a very talented and gifted writer, she was especially good at interviewing people, and she was also very good at bringing attention to causes in a respectful way and in a way that people were inspired,” said Rosie Burke, a longtime friend and former coworker.
Norris, 73, died of complications of anaplastic thyroid cancer on Aug. 7 at Evanston Hospital, said her daughter, Kristen Dold Christman. A longtime La Grange Park resident, Norris had been married to former Tribune editor Bruce Dold for 43 years until his death in 2025.
Born in Chicago in 1953, Norris was one of five children in a close-knit Irish family. She lived in the South Side Englewood neighborhood before moving with her family to Westchester in grade school. After graduating from Proviso West High School, Norris studied at Triton College while working as a secretary. Her boss encouraged her to pursue a writing career. She next enrolled at Northern Illinois University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1978 and worked on the student newspaper, the Northern Star, as a police reporter.
In 1978, Norris joined the staff of the Tribune’s Suburban Trib suburban news supplements, where she and Dold met. Norris was a general assignment reporter and also worked for the Tribune’s health team task force.
“Eileen was very self-effacing about her work (and) didn’t blow her own horn the way most of us in the newspaper business do,” said former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown, a longtime friend who attended college with Norris.
Brown’s wife, former Tribune managing editor Hanke Gratteau, also was a close friend of Norris. She called Norris “kind, generous and loving” and said that she “could spot a phony a mile away.”
In 1980, Norris joined the Chicago-based trade publication Business Insurance, where she worked as an associate editor until 1983. She then stepped away from full-time work to be a freelance writer and editor for the next decade, until returning in 1993 to take a full-time job at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, editing its Lifetime of Health quarterly magazine.
Norris returned to the freelance arena in 1995, serving as one of three main writers for the 1,000-page “Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide” medical book. That work paved the way for Norris to join the American Medical Association in 1999 as the senior editor of consumer books, a role in which she researched, wrote and edited the AMA’s medical encyclopedia.
In 2004, Norris took a job as an editorial manager of publications at the Joint Commission in Oakbrook Terrace. In that role, she managed a team of senior editors who produced 75 health-related books annually and six monthly newsletters. She also was managing editor of the bestselling book “You: The Smart Patient,” by Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen.
Norris resumed freelancing in 2007. She wrote online and print articles for NorthShore University HealthSystem, Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and the University of Chicago. She also undertook numerous book writing and editing projects, including editing the 2011 book “The Available Parent: Radical Optimism in Raising Teens and Tweens.”
Norris’ daughter said her mother felt that writing gave her a reason to keep learning.
“She was curious and really good at taking something complicated — especially medical information — and figuring out how to make it clear and useful to regular people,” Christman said. “She was also a meticulous editor and loved the process of making something better. She had very little ego about the work. She spent a lot of her career behind the scenes, writing and editing books where someone else’s name was on the cover, and that never seemed to bother her much.”
In 2011, Norris was inducted into Northern Illinois University’s Northern Star Hall of Fame, which honors former students, advisers and friends of the university’s student newspaper. In 2012, the university’s journalism program honored her with the Donald R. Grubb Distinguished Alumni Award.
After retiring from working in 2019, Norris enjoyed growing and arranging flowers from her yard. She also enjoyed traveling to Ireland and spending time with her husband in New Buffalo, Michigan, where they hosted friends and watched sunsets over Lake Michigan. An active grandparent, Norris also volunteered at Hope Chest in La Grange, which provides support for domestic violence survivors.
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In addition to Kristen, Norris is survived by another daughter, Megan; five grandchildren; and a sister, Mary Ann Fritsch.
A visitation will take place at 9 a.m. Saturday at St. Francis Xavier Church, 124 N. Spring Ave., La Grange, where a mass will follow at 10 a.m.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.