Chicago Bears Matriarch Virginia McCaskey dies at 102

Virginia represented 13 family members in keeping approx. 80% of the bears. In the board, she voted for her family’s shares.

How that voting block will be affected after her death is unclear. When asked in recent years about the team’s future, George has repeatedly said his mother had a plan that would keep the team in the family after her death. The NFL requires each team to have a succession plan, although public details are vague.

For years, Virginia McCaskey, a devoted Catholic, quoted her son, Pat, who said the bears would stay in the family until “other coming.”

Halas bought the franchise for $ 100 in 1920 and attended the notorious meeting in Canton, Ohio, who founded the American Professional Football Association. Two years later, it became the National Football League. Staleys, who had moved from decatur to Chicago the year before, was renamed the bears.

When Halas took Red Grange on a child storming tour after his university season from 1925 – a step that helped legitimize the professional sport – he brought his young daughter. When she was 9, she participated in the NFL’s first championship game.

“It’s a special feeling to be part of the bearing history that was very important in the team’s survival and history,” she said. “And for George Halas.”

She signed up for Drexel University at the age of 16, partly to be supervised by her Uncle Walter Halas, who coached football, baseball and basketball. She met Ed, a Penn student, like someone else. They participated in the NFL title game in 1942 between Bears and Redskins in the hope of asking Halas for permission to marry.

The bears lost – so they eventually eloped.

“Early in my childhood, I realized that if I really wanted something, the best time was to ask after Bears won a game,” she said. “When we didn’t win? ‘Let’s wait a while.’ “

She trained in 1943. She and her husband were close to running back Brian Piccolo, who died in 1970 of cancer after playing for the bears for four years. She then did not learn to get too close to Bears players – until Star Running Back Walter Payton joined the team.

“After Brian Piccolo died (in 1969), my husband Ed and I promised ourselves that we would not be so personally involved in any of the players,” she said, and fell Payton in 1999. “We were able to To follow this decision until Walter Payton entered our lives. “

Even into her late 90s, McCaskey was an active part of the franchise. Her sedan with a bumper label that read “Bed the Rosary” was often seen parked near the entrance to the facility named after her father.

The league’s oldest owner since Bills’ Ralph Wilson died in 2014, she and George traveled to NFL owners -meetings and to the Bears Road Games where they sat in the owner’s box. She made fewer and fewer such trips in recent years.

She made her most public performance this year on the last day of the Bears 100 weekend celebration in June 2018. She charmed her way through a roundtable discussion, and joked that the team’s Throwback socks “don’t turn me on” and claimed it, like, like, Like a girl, she was more aware of the players wearing the uniform.

During her guidance, the bears won their only Super Bowl in modern times in January 1986. The franchise fought until 21 years later when she accepted the NFC Championship Trophy named after her father. She declared it on her best day since the bears beat the patriots to win the Super Bowl.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, watching the trophy. “Just pretty.”

Bears lost to Colts in the Super Bowl XLi and returned to the final game only once – a 2010 race that ended with an NFC title loss for the hated Packers – until they reached after the 2018 season.

Media-Kyged McCaskey’s words were invoked by her son in recent years and after franchise-changing decisions. After the 2014 season, George McCaskey decided to shoot both General Manager Phil Emery and coach Marc Trestman.

“She’s cursed,” George said then, explaining her decision. “She’s tired of mediocrity. She feels she and wears fans everywhere deserves better. ”

Viriginia McCaskey later said she never used that wording. When a nun chide her for it, McCaskekey smiled and asked her not to be upset over her son to exaggerate.

In September 2018, George told the moment he told his mother that the bears could trade for Star Pass Rusher Khalil Mack. They were in a Halas Hall elevator and she spent the trip with her mouth agape in disbelief. She was in the building that day to present the Virginia Award, given by Bears to an employee who best shows the properties that are synonymous with matriarch itself: grace, humility loyalty and dedication.

Brian Urlacher exemplified the respect that the bears had for her in August 2018. Two days before he was introduced in Pro Football Hall of Fame, the former linebacker threw a party in a canton, Ohio, Hotel, not far from where McCaskey’s father founded what would be nfl.

Virginia McCaskey arrived at the party at. 12:15, after the Bears’ exhibition game was completed. The room stopped, Urlacher said, and he immediately went to hug her.

“Amazingly …” said Urlacher at the time. “She went into the room and everyone was like,” Whoa. It’s George Halas ‘daughter.’ “

She was – and more.

“I am still trying to find words about what (the bears) have meant to me, and I hope, for all of you,” she told the audience on Bears 100. “It has made me even more grateful for what my life has been, and the position I am in. There are so many privileges and perks and blessings. I just can’t believe I’m here and I enjoy life my age as I am. “

She is survived by 21 grandchildren, 40 great -grandchildren and four great -grandchildren.