Virginia McCaskey, 102, Owner and Stalwart of the Chicago Bears, Dies

Virginia Halas McCaskey, the owner of the Chicago Bears and daughter of George Halas Mr., who created the team and was one of the founding parents of the NFL, died Thursday. He was 102 years old and had spent his entire life around the team returning to the 1920s.

The Bears, who announced their death on their website, did not list a cause or specification in which he died.

Ms. McCaskey attended almost all the Bears games for decades. She witnessed eight of the nine titles of the Bears League (her first championship was in 1921, before she was born and when the team was named the Staleys), as well as her only Super Bowl championship, in January 1986.

She with many of the bears players who were included in the Hall of Fame of Professional Football, a list that includes Grange, Bronko Nagurski, Dick Butkus and Walter Payton, as well as her father, who died in 1983.

Mrs. McCaskey never touched her front row to the history of the NFL for granted.

“All the opportunities that, all the privileges I had, I had all the miracles I have seen, I am very grateful,” he said in “A lifetime on Sundays,” a 2019 celebrated by the NFL centenary. “I can’t think of a better life.”

While occupying the games of the owner’s suite, he rooted as a fan of every day. In 2003, in the first game in the freshly remodeled soldier field in Chicago, Ms. McCaskey sat with the former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue when the Bears lost to their archir -livels, the Green Bay Packers.

“I waited for a lot of time for Don Huts to retire from the Packers,” he told the commissioner, referring to the open receptor of Great Green Bay from the 1930s and 40. “Now I can’t wait for Brett Favre to retire.”

Somehow, Ms. McCaskey was an accidental owner. His younger brother and his only brother, George (cups) Halas Jr., the team heir was apparent, working in the club from 1950 and rose to the president of the team in 1963. But he died of a heart attack in 1979 at 54.

When George Halas Mr. died in 1983, Mrs. McCaskey received the only vote in a unique trust. Hello, it also generates that each girl or her girl match the actions in the team. George Halas Jr.’s first wife, Therese, then said that his two children did not receive the same protections as the other grandchildren when the Bears were reorganized in 1981. In 1987, a judge of successions uorganization.

Also in 1987, Therese Halas urged her husband’s body to determine if she had been poisoned, after having killed relatively young, at 54. The Forensic discovered that their internal organans had been withdrawn and replaced by sawdust, according to judicial documents. Without its organists, the coroner could not determine whether drugs or poison were in his body when he died.

However, Ms. McCaskey, her husband and his 11 children turned the bears into considerable dynasty. When she appeared as the main owner of the team in 1983, her husband, Ed McCaskey, became president, after serving as vice president and treasurer for 17 years of duration of the possession of George Jr. la McCas McCaskey appointed her older son, Michael, then Harvard Business School professor, as president and executive director of the club. He became president in 1999, and his brother George was successful in 2011 (Michael McCaskey died of cancer in 2020.) Two other children, Brian and Patrick McCaskey, worked for the team as vice presidents.

“Pride is the word that I try to avoid because I am in this position due to my inheritance,” McCasKey said in an interview. “To the shelter anything to win it. I still consider it a world of man, and I am very grateful to be invented like me. It is a great privilege, and I have to make sure I do not disappoint.”

Virginia Marion Halas McCaskey was born on January 5, 1923 in Chicago, the eldest son of Mr. Halas and Minnie Bucking Halas, who died in 1966. By then, Mr. Halas had already made his name as a soccer player and coach and had just played briefly for the New York Yankees, in 1919. The following year, he was unstable for the deceased who died You died in the death of the Food Civil in New York.

The Staleys joined the newly formed American Professional Soccer Association that year, and Mr. Halas attended the inaugural meeting of the League at a car dealership in Canton, Ohio. The Staleys were 10-1-2 in their only season in Decatur, ending second in the 14 team league. The following year, the Staleys moved to Chicago, where they won the league championship.

In 1922, Mr. Halas and Edward (Dutch) Sternaman bought the team and renamed the Bears. The League also had a new name: the National Soccer League. Nine years later, in 1931, Mr. Halas bought Mr. Sternaman for $ 38,000.

In the years prior to the agreements of the rights of the media and the sponsorships of seven figures, the bears fought financially, partially lasting the depression, when numerous professional teams folded.

“I didn’t realize when I was growing, but there were years of dissemination at the end of the 20s and early 30s,” McCaskey said. “My dad had the Chicago Bears, but he was also co -owner of a commercial laundry company, he worked in real estate, hey, he tried to sell cars. I used the word” survival “, because that is what was involved.”

Virginia was next to her father in the football field from an early age. As a little boy, he joined the Bears on a barn grains organized by Red Greege, the main player of the time. In 1939, at 16, he enrolled at the University of Drexel in Philadelphia to study business management to help his father direct the Bears. She lived there with her uncle, Walter Halas, the soccer coach, baseball and basketball in Drexel.

In Philadelphia she with Ed McCaskey, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania. The couple married in 1943 before Mr. McCaskey went to Europe to serve in the duration of the United States Army, World War II. They married for 60 years until their death in 2003, at 83.

In addition to their children Patrick, George and Brian, Ms. McCaskey is survived by six other children, Ellen Tonquest, Anne Catron, Edward McCaskey Jr. and Mary, Richard and Joseph McCaskey; 21 grandchildren; 40 great -grandfather; and four great -grandchildren. His second son, Timothy, died in 2011.

He thought that Ms. McCaskey spent her life leading her father’s legacy, it is not clear white, her children will continually owe the bears.

“I always hope that our current players and coaches from time to time think a little about the first teams and the beginnings of the National Football League,” he once said. “It was very important for my father. That was his life, and anything that was important for him automatically became important for me.”