Byrne's Irish-Catholic roots

Brass: Jane Byrne and the Pursuit of Power,
by Kathleen Whalen FitzGerald.
Contemporary Books, Inc., Chicago, 1981. 231 pp. $11.95

DESPITE tasteful invitations, thirty pounds of jumbo shrimp, and a popular jazz band, the pre-primary fund raiser for mayoral candidate Jane Byrne was a disaster. A total disaster. More than 500 guests were expected at the suburban Lake Forest mansion. Fewer than 20 came. Among the guests was Kathleen Whalen FitzGerald who would later write Brass, an interpretive biography and careful examination of the forces that shaped Jane Burke Byrne.

What were those forces? There was the very private Burke family, the community expectations of Irish-American Catholic womanhood, the abrupt death of Jane's husband, and power — elusive, attractive, life-enhancing power.

Power is the thread that weaves in and out of this book. Power and powerlessness, the ultimate contrast, more stark than black and white, more important than rich or poor. Jane Byrne knew the modest power of affluence, the significant power of the Church, and the love of power of the Irish. "The Irish in Chicago were drawn to power as sure as the needle on a compass points north," writes the author.

FitzGerald was writing a doctoral dissertation on power and the Catholic Church when she met Byrne. She saw things in Byrne which other writers might overlook — especially those characteristics of being Irish-American and Catholic and a woman — all refracted in the very prism of power. FitzGerald writes gracefully and thoughtfully in this very readable book.

Jane Burke Byrne, second of six children of a well-to-do steel executive, had a comfortable childhood and family life. Jane was educated in fine parochial schools, a life-shaping experience to be sure. "To be a Catholic — a young educated Catholic — in the '40s and '50s," writes FitzGerald, "meant that you were part of a way of life that perhaps the world will never know again. . . . You were part of the 'one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church' — you were right and all the others were wrong. It gave you a strange confidence mixed with an insidious insecurity because you knew you were different from most people."

The Burkes were not a political family in the traditional sense of the word, but they were close to power. Jane's paternal uncle, Monsignor Ed Burke, was Chancellor of the Chicago Archdiocese. FitzGerald writes, "The Catholic Church in Chicago did not exist in a political vacuum; it was made up of the same Chicago people, from the same backgrounds, who shared the same biases and who knew how to make things work. Take a good ward committeeman, put a Roman collar on him, and he could run the parish; give the pastor a shirt and tie and he could deliver the votes." In other words, as long as one is exposed to power, the lessons and skills are transferable. Jane was thoroughly exposed.

Jane commuted in her convertible to Barat, a Catholic women's college in wealthy Lake Forest (which explains its selection for the pre-primary fund raising party) where she majored in biology because she wanted to be a physician like the woman who had helped her mother through a crisis. She finished college, but set aside her professional goals when she married her Notre Dame boyfriend, handsome and gregarious Bill Byrne. Their wedding was marked by "ecclesiastical and worldly splendor" according to the newspaper report. There were two happy years, a baby, and then tragic and sudden death when Lt. Byrne's plane crashed.

Jane's world crashed also. She was too stunned to cry. She stumbled on, eventually volunteering in the 1960 Kennedy campaign. Later she was launched on a one-of-a-kind political apprenticeship program personally designed for her by Mayor Daley. Daley's death in 1976 must have rekindled all the pain and powerlessness she felt when her husband died. This time she didn't go numb. She fought. After she was tossed out of her office of Commissioner of Consumer Sales, Weights and Measures by then-Mayor Michael Bilandic, she came back and entered the Democratic mayoralty primary.

Campaigning for office is tough. When it is a big district like Chicago and the press ignores you, it is even tougher. And when everyone agrees you're going to lose, it can be brutal. The Republican candidate said he didn't think Jane Byrne would make a very good mayor because she had her period every month. Everyone laughed. Bilandic ignored her. And of course she made it.

Brass takes the reader up to Jane Byrne's election. It is a sympathetic account, but the pimples and the clenched jaws show through. Byrne had to have guts and determination to make it. She did not have to have compassion or loyalty or wisdom — and she didn't.

Brass is not a political analysis. It is a personal analysis. Some things seem to be missing. There is no mention of World War II, atomic bombs, integration, Eisenhower, Nixon. Did young Jane have any ideals or ideas? Were issues important to her, or was it only personal loyalties that aroused her? But much is here. The analyses of Irish-American culture, the Catholic Church and the role of women are fascinating and subtle.

Free-lance writer Dona Gerson is also at Evanston alderwoman.

18 | November 1981 | Illinois Issues