During the lead up to the Super Bowl, in January, 1986, the hype was unbelievable. I guess that I never realized how much excitement a sports team can bring to a city, town, or state. Everyday there were TV news reports about the various Bears on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Quarterback Jim McMahon was always up to something. I remember that Super Bowl Sunday, January 26, 1986, like it was yesterday. I was working that day at Montgomery Wards like I did every Sunday. As I was in charge that day, I closed the store early at three o’clock in the afternoon. The game started at 4:20 PM. I had plenty of time to get there. I simply wrote on the doors, “Closed for the Super Bowl.” I just assumed that nobody in Chicago would be out shopping. In fact, one of my part-time workers, Bill Fitzpatrick, was at the game in the New Orleans Superdome. Then I drove to watch the Super Bowl game at a Super Bowl Party. Diane and Walt Seiler were having a party, while Margaret and Joy were already there. Diane Seiler was a fellow teacher with Margaret at St. Lawrence O’Toole School, so that Joy knew the family also. I think that Walt Seiler was an Ozinga concrete truck driver. It was real fun watching the game where everyone was a Bears fan. We did not have to prepare anything or clean up. Of course, the Bears won. As if we did not have enough excitement, winning changed everything. The Super Bowl Shuffle had come through. The Chicago Bears had a big but cold homecoming for everybody downtown the next day. There was happiness all around. This reminded me of the time I flew into Kennedy International Airport in 1969, when I wanted to attend the funeral of my brother, Johnny. I could not get over how happy everyone in New York City was because the New York Mets had just won the World Series. A winning sports team changes a town or city for a couple of days and then it all wears off. Reality sets in. Both the Cubs and the Bulls were to do the same much later in my life. Strangely enough, these Chicago Bears never got to see President Reagan at the White House, because that trip was cancelled due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. However, a Chicago guy with a long memory, President Barack Obama, a Bears fan, invited the living 1986 Super Bowl champs to the White House in 2011. What part does sports play in your life?
“The Super Bowl Shuffle”
In December, 1985, the Chicago Bears football team performed, danced, sung, and released “The Super Bowl Shuffle” video seven weeks ahead of their only Super Bowl victory in early 1986. This video song peaked at number 41 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in February 1986. It also earned a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals in 1987. “The Super Bowl Shuffle” instantly became a minor hit, but an especially big hit in Chicago, selling over 500,000 copies. Everyone in the Chicago area was singing this “Super Bowl Shuffle” song. I know that we bought a copy of the video and played it all the time. Over $300,000 in profits from the song and music video were donated to the Chicago Community Trust to help Chicago families in need with clothing, shelter, and food. This was consistent with Walter Payton’s lyric in the song: “ow we’re not doing this because we’re greedy / The Bears are doing it to feed the needy.” This video was taped at the Park West Theater, a Chicago night club, the morning after the Bears’ only loss of the 1985 season to the Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football on December 2, 1985. Jim McMahon and Walter Payton refused to participate in the video shoot, thinking it would be better to release the song and video after the season was complete. However, the team was insistent on releasing the song and video shortly after the shoot. Thus, the video was filmed as the remaining players Payton and McMahon both filmed their segments separately a week later at the Bears’ practice facility, so that these segments were interspersed in the video prior to release. However, Dan Hampton refused to participate because of the song’s arrogance. The success of “The Super Bowl Shuffle” initiated numerous imitations from numerous teams across the league. There were individual verses from Walter Payton (Well, they call me Sweetness), Willie Gault (This is Speedy Willie), Mike Singletary (I’m Samurai Mike), Jim McMahon (I’m the punky QB), Otis Wilson (I’m mama’s boy Otis), Steve Fuller (If Jimmy can’t do it, I sure can), Mike Richardson (I’m L.A. Mike), Richard Dent (The sackman’s comin’), Gary Fencik (It’s Gary here, and I’m Mr. Clean), and William Perry (You’re lookin’ at the Fridge). They were dressed in their Bear uniforms as they all danced and sang the chorus:
“We are the Bears Shufflin’ Crew
Shufflin’ on down, doin’ it for you.
We’re so bad we know we’re good.
Blowin’ your mind like we knew we would.
You know we’re just struttin’ for fun
Struttin’ our stuff for everyone.
We’re not here to start no trouble.
We’re just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle.”
This song was everywhere in Chicago, including the great victory at Super Bowl XX on January 26, 1986. Do you remember the “Super Bowl Shuffle?”
The 1985 Chicago Bears
The 1985 season was the Chicago Bears’ 66th in the NFL, and their fourth under head coach Mike Ditka. The Bears entered 1985 looking to improve on their 10–6 record from 1984, and advance further than the NFC Championship Game, where they had lost to the San Francisco 49ers. The Chicago Bears did improve on that record. They put together what would be considered by many football historians as one of the greatest seasons in NFL history. The Bears won their first twelve games of the season before losing to the Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football in December. The loss to the Dolphins would be the only loss that the Bears would suffer that season, as they finished with a 15–1 record. This matched the 49ers’ mark from the year before, as they tied the then-record for most wins in a regular season. The Chicago Bears won the NFC Central Division by seven games over the second-place Green Bay Packers. Thus, they earned the NFC’s top seed and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs at Soldier Field. In their two playoff games against the New York Giants and the Los Angeles Rams, the Bears outscored their opponents 45–0 and became the first team to record back-to-back playoff shutouts. This was the Bears’ first NFL Championship title since 1963. The 1985 Chicago Bears were one of the few teams to consistently challenge the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins for the title of the greatest NFL team of all time. The Bears’ famous 46 defense under defensive coach Buddy Ryan was ranked first in the league, since they only allowed 198 total points. They led the league in least yards allowed (4,135), and takeaways (54). The Chicago Bears’ hopes for a perfect season were dashed when Dan Marino and the Dolphins defeated the Bears on Monday Night Football, 38–24, so that the ’72 Dolphins have been the only undefeated regular season team in league history. The day after this loss, the Bears filmed the video for “The Super Bowl Shuffle.” During that 1985 season, the Bears defeated all their four NFC division rivals twice, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Minnesota Vikings, the Green Bay Packers, and the Detroit Lions. Plus, they beat the New England Patriots, the Washington Redskins, the San Francisco 49ers, the Dallas Cowboys, the Atlanta Falcons, the Indianapolis Colts, and the New York Jets. The real disappointment was that one stupid loss in Miami on Monday Night Football. This was a team of characters led by a great character himself, Mike Ditka. George Halas had named Ditka the head coach before he died in 1983. I really liked this team. The biggest frustration was that after this year, they never established a dynasty for the next forty years. They were good for one year only, a one hit wonder. However, seven players from this team were elected into the NFL Hall of Fame: Walter Payton, Mike Singletary, Dan Hampton, Jim Covert, Mike Ditka, Richard Dent, and Steve McMichael. Four others became NFL head coaches: Ron Rivera, Mike Singletary, Lelie Frazier, and Jeff Fisher. Were the 85 Chicago Bears the best NFL team ever?
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the “greatest humorist the USA has produced.” William Faulkner called him “The father of American literature.” The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the settings for both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer early in his career. Then he worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to his older brother Orion Clemens’ newspaper. His father, John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), was a lawyer from Virginia. When Twain was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, joining the newly formed International Typographical Union. Twain educated himself in public libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school. Twain studied the Mississippi River, learning its landmarks, how to navigate its currents effectively, and how to read the river and its constantly shifting channels, reefs, submerged snags, and rocks that would tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It was more than two years before he received his pilot’s license. Piloting also gave Twain his pen name from “mark twain,” the leadsman’s cry for a measured river depth of 12 feet, which was safe water for a steamboat. Mark Twain then became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, which provided him the material for Life on the Mississippi in 1883. Twain continued to work on the river and was a river pilot until the Civil War broke out in 1861, when traffic was curtailed along the Mississippi River. Twain’s first success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was published on November 18, 1865, in the New York weekly The Saturday Press, bringing him national attention. Twain wrote many of his classic novels during his seventeen years in Hartford, Connecticut (1874–1891). Twain’s novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), and Muttonhead Wilson (1894). His wit and satire, both in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers. Mark Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Mark Twain also published a satirical pamphlet, “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” in 1905 about Belgian atrocities in the Congo Free State. Mark Twain earned a great deal of money from his writing and lectures, but invested in ventures that lost most of it. Mark Twain was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. In 1909, Thomas Edison visited Twain at his home in Redding, Connecticut, and filmed him. Part of the footage was used in The Prince and the Pauper (1909), a two-reel short film, the only known existing film footage of Mark Twain. In his later years, Twain lived at 14 West 10th Street in Manhattan. What do you know about Mark Twain?
Hannibal Missouri
Sometime in 1985, we traveled along the Mississippi River to Hannibal, Missouri, with a current population of 17,108, the largest city in Marion County. Commerce and traffic has long been an integral part of Hannibal’s development, about 110 miles northwest of St. Louis, and 100 miles west of Springfield, Illinois, across the river from East Hannibal, Illinois. The next city upriver is Quincy, Illinois, 17 miles to the north. This river community was the mid-19th-century boyhood home of the author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835–1910). Mark Twain drew from his childhood settings for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Numerous historical sites are associated with Mark Twain and the places depicted in his fiction work from his Hannibal home. Hannibal was laid out in 1819 by Moses Bates and named after Hannibal Creek, a hero of ancient Carthage. By 1846, Hannibal was Missouri’s third-largest city when the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was organized by John M. Clemens, Mark Twain’s father and his associates. This railway was built to connect St. Joseph, Missouri, the state’s second-largest city. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the city served as a regional marketing center for livestock and grain, as well as as cement and shoes. The Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse was constructed in 1933 as a public works project under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Today, tourism is a major part of Hannibal’s economy. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum and Mark Twain Cave are two of the city’s major attractions. I have five postcards from Hannibal. One was about the Mark Twain Cave system that I did not know much about. Two others were about the entrance to the caves and one from inside the caves. Then there was one postcard with Tom Sawyer’s house with the famous white painted picket fence. The other postcard was from inside Becky Thatcher’s house. Joy was intrigued about Becky and her clothes. Margaret liked the caves, and I was interested in the Tom Sawyer white fence. However, there was very little about Huckleberry Finn. Have you ever been to Hannibal?
My Inheritance
My mother had made a will, her Last Will and Testament, on September 19, 1972, at the law offices of Elmer Brown, in Carteret, New Jersey, after my father had died that year. There was nothing complicated about it. She left her beloved step-son, Gerald Mingin $2,000. The rest of the estate was to go to her beloved son, Eugene Finnegan, me. I was also appointed Executor of this will. My mother did not own any property, since she never drove a car during her life. All she had was in her #1008 apartment at Thornwood House. However, she did have a savings account with about $20,000 in a bank right next to Thornwood House. She would bring her monthly Social Security check there to cash it. Jerry and I agreed that it should be put aside as a college savings for Joy, which we did. He then left for home in New Jersey. I was still getting a $100.00 mortgage check every month from Raymond and Joyce Skokowski, who had bought her house in Carteret, NJ, from her. Within the next few days, we went over to her Thornwood House studio apartment to clean it out. Joy knew where my mother kept all her money, in the McQuaid pipe tobacco can. That is where she kept money, when I was a little kid, also. We always had cash on hand in the pipe tobacco can. She never smoked, but my father always had a pipe in his mouth. Besides the money in the tin can, we found all kinds of cash in the apartment, in her dresses and clothes. She always believed in cash, and never had a checking account or credit card. For her, cash was king. We took care of the funeral home. We got the bill on September 6, 1985 and paid it on October 29, 1985, for a grand total of $2977.00 from Hirsch & Spindler-Koelling Funeral Home. The biggest expense was the 19-gauge steel casket at $1144.00. However, I do not have the expenses for the cemetery. My parents did not leave me a huge financial inheritance, but they were kind and loving. There is no greater inheritance that a kind wonderful life well lived. What did you inherit from your parents?
The funeral for Rose Finnegan, August 29, 1985
The notice in the Matteson-Richton Park Star on Thursday, August 29, 1985 in the obituaries read: “ROSE FINNEGAN. Services were Thursday for Rose Finnegan of University Park, who died Monday at her home. Burial will be in Assumption Cemetery in Glenwood following a 10:00 AM Mass today at St. Lawrence O’Toole Church in Matteson. Mrs. Finnegan was born July 9, 1906, in County Monaghan, Ireland, and lived in this area 10 years. She is survived by two sons, Eugene of Matteson, and Jerry Mingin of Edison, NJ, and two grandchildren. Her husband, Eugene, died in 1972, and a son, John Mingin, in 1969.” The wake was the night before the funeral at the Hirsch & Spindler-Koelling Funeral Home at 1340 Otto Boulevard, Chicago Heights. They had a nice booklet about my mother, Rose Finnegan, and a holy card “In Remembrance,” with the prayer for peace of St. Francis. The memorial book listed her parents, Peter Finnegan and Ellen Dooley, whom I never met since they had died before I was born. Her husband was Eugene Finnegan, and her three sons were Eugene Finnegan, John Mingin, and Jerry Mingin. This memorial book listed her five sisters, Kate, Elizabeth, Mary, Bridget, and Ann, along with her two brothers Tom and Pat, as well as her two grandchildren, Joy Finnegan and Jerry Mingin. The pallbearers were John Rangel, Jim Bailey, Jack Fleming, and Greg Stanek, neighbors of ours. At the wake, there were ten people from Thornwood House, who knew my mother, but I did not know any of them. My brother, Jerry Mingin, and my cousins, Mary Henry and John Finnegan were my only relatives at the funeral home, but there were over thirty-five other people who signed the “Relatives and Friends Book” at the funeral home. They included many of Margaret’s fellow teachers and our neighbors: Augustine Witt, Karin Cole, Betty Schwab, Mary and Dick Bisaillon, Paul and Jan Egbers, Ralph and Rose Mary Ditchie, Sue Miller, Karen Nair, Jane Fagan, Joanne McCarthy, Joyce Dalrymple, Barb Rook, Eunice Green, Donna Hoffman, Barbara Taylor, Beth Brophy, Katie Foley, Zelia Cato, Barb Wojtczak, Arlene Garbacz, Jim and Chris Bailey, Bill and Linda Siegert, Mr. and Mrs. Terell Mailhiot, the Gerry Pannaralla family, Ralph and Rose Mary Ditchie, Chris Smith, and Father Ed Cronin who led the prayer service. There was nobody from my work at Montgomery Ward, since it was so far away for most of them. However, when I went back to work, I found out that Connie Bettilyon had taken up a collection for me. “A collection is being taken for Gene Finnegan, Budget Store Assistant Manager, in memory of his mother, Rose Finnegan, who passed away on Monday, August 26, 1985. Please return envelope to Connie Bettilyon in the Budget Store. Thank you.” There were eleven people from the Montgomery Ward store and around fifty from the warehouse who had signed it and contributed to this collection. I was touched. At the 10:00 AM Funeral Mass of Resurrection the next day, Father Cronin presided, as all the grade school children from St. Lawrence O’Toole were present, because Margaret was a teacher there and Joy was a junior high student. After Mass, we had the car procession to the cemetery where my mother was buried at Assumption Cemetery in Glenwood, IL, in Section 12, Block 36, Plot 7, Grave 1. We had a small reception luncheon afterwards. “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead.” Do you remember the funeral of your mother?
My mother died on August 26, 1985
In late August, 1985, we had not heard from my mother for a couple of days. Margaret told me to call her. I called her a couple of times and she did not respond. After a day or two, Margaret decided to go by herself to check up on my mother Rose who was living at Thornwood House in University Park, about ten minutes from where we lived in Matteson. When she got there, she found my mother laying on her couch unresponsive. I told her to call 911. She did, and called the priest from St. Lawrence O’Toole, Rev. Edward Cronin. He came and told her that my mother was dead. I began to feel bad that I had been so neglectful to her the last couple of weeks. My mother was gone at age 79. She had lived a good long life. My father had died at age 72, thirteen years earlier. She had been a widow for nearly fifteen years. As a little child, I thought that I could not get along without her. However, as I grew older, I knew that I would be able to live without her. She was kind, yet overbearing. She always defended me, but demanded a lot from me. Both my parents were now dead, but I was 46 years old. I began to think about all the people who had their parents die, who were younger than me, young people. I suddenly missed her. She had no long illness and no history of heart problems. She had suffered a sudden heart attack. The official death certificate said “cardiac arrest collapse with associated arteriosclerotic heart disease.” She might have been dead a day or two before Margaret found her. Then we had to plan the funeral. Jerry and Mom had taken care of my father’s funeral and my brother Johnny’s funeral. We were going to have the funeral at St. Lawrence O’Toole, our parish, where Margaret taught in the grade school. Which funeral home? I had to decide what funeral home and where to bury her, all the decisions that I had not thought about. Father Cronin at O’Toole helped us with these decisions. We had to go to the funeral home to pick out the casket. I remember going to the funeral home in Chicago Heights, and having to decide what kind of coffin we should get for my mother. Where would she be buried? We decided on Assumption Cemetery in Glenwood, because it was not far away. I called Jerry Mingin, my brother, in New Jersey. Then I called my cousin Jerry Finnegan in Connecticut, since his deceased father Tom and my mother were brother and sister. I also called by cousins in Denver. Jerry flew out from New Jersey to be with us. My cousin, Mary Henry from the Bronx, was living in Naperville, Illinois, after having lived in Janesville, Wisconsin, for some years. She was a few years older than me. Her mother’s sister was married to my mother’s brother. I had a very pleasant time with her as we recalled the years in New York where Aunt Kate, Mom’s sister, was so kind. I realized why she was called “Mary from the Bronx” because of her very pronounced Bronx accent. My other cousin John Finnegan flew in from Denver. His father John and my father were brothers. John was 68, and retired from the Army Corps of Engineers. We talked about Denver and the west that I had never seen. Do you remember when your mother died?
Various South Dakota Kleins come to Chicago
During the 1980s, many of Margaret’s relatives came to visit us in Chicago, in Matteson, IL. Of course, Margaret’s parents, Mary and Peter Klein, came to visit us and their granddaughter Joy practically every year. Sometimes, they drove their car. Then they tried to fly. Other times, they took a bus from Minneapolis to Chicago. I know that one time, we went apple picking in an orchard near us in Matteson, Illinois. However, then Margaret’s brothers and sisters came to visit us also. I know that Margaret’s brother Mike and his wife Grace came to visit us after they got married. However, they were always busy with their daily dairy farm and taking care of their four children after their first-born twins died at childbirth. Thus, they did not come that often. Margaret’s sister Rosie would bring her two kids to Chicago, on their way to and from a visit to their father in Michigan. However, I believe it was in the summer of 1985 that Margaret’s brother Ed and his wife with their three daughters came to visit us. They stayed at the house so that it was a little crowded. At least Joy had a few cousins to visit her, since two of them were close to the same age as Joy. I decided it would be a good idea to visit the aquarium in downtown Chicago on what they call the museum campus. I do not remember if we went to the Planetarium also. Everything went well, until we were watching the feeding of the fish as everyone gathered around a big fish tank close-up. Suddenly, I felt my wallet coming out of my pocket. I looked at the guy next to me and said to him that he stole my wallet. He said that he did not have my wallet. I got mad and started shouting. Finally, a guard came over and I told him what happened. I even pointed out the guy who did it. He came over to me and said that he had not done anything. They ever searched him. I was very upset. The guards did nothing. I lost all my cash, my IDs, and credit cards. Finally, one guard told me that it happened all the time around the feeding of the fish. That was little consolation. In fact, it made me angrier, because they were not doing anything about it. That spoiled that day. I wanted to get home to call about my credit cards. They had an 800 number that I called. The credit card people said that the card had been used in the last hour, but I would not be responsible for any charges. They seemed nice. However, for the next month, it was a hassle as I tried to get my driver’s license and social security cards back. It was the annoyance that was the worst. Besides, I was not a good host. The Kleins were gone the next day. We had more South Dakota Klein guests, but that was the most memorable for me. I remember picking people up at O’Hare, waiting for people at O’Hare, and bringing people to O’Hare, since the airport was only about ten minutes from the Montgomery Ward store in Franklin Park. Have you ever been robbed?
Hersheypark, Pennsylvania
However, the next day, the last of our trip, June 22, 1985, we headed to Hersheypark. I was not sure what to expect. Hershey is an unincorporated community in Derry Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, 14 miles east of Harrisburg. Hershey is home to the famous Hershey Chocolate Company, which was founded by candy magnate Milton S. Hershey (1857-1945) in 1900. The first Hershey bars proved so popular that he was able to build his own company town of Hershey, Pennsylvania. Hersheypark was founded in 1906, as a leisure park for the employees of the Hershey Company. In 1923, it became an amusement park when it opened its first roller coaster. However, it was redeveloped in 1970 with new rides. Between 1991 and 2008, it added eight roller coasters and a water park. As of 2020, the park had over 121 acres, containing 76 rides and attractions, as well as a zoo. Adjacent to the park was Hershey’s Chocolate World, a visitor center attraction that contains shops, restaurants, and a chocolate factory-themed tour ride, where visitors can get their picture taken and receive a piece of chocolate at the end of the ride. Over three million people a year attend Hersheypark. Thus, we, Margaret, Joy, and I, all went to Hersheypark, a family theme park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I have seven postcards and three brochures from our one day at Hersheypark. I loved plain Hershey chocolate bars as a kid. Hersheypark had developed many themed areas, the first being Carousel Circle. In 1985, this area had a carousel, a giant wheel, a tilt-a-whirl, a scrambler, a comet roller coaster, and a ballon flite. The Tower Plaza, another area, had a kissing tower, a sky ride, the twin turnpike, a coal shaker, a coal cracker, and a Super Dooper Looper. The Animal Garden had kiddie rides, a monorail, the dry gulch railroad, the timber rattler, and the starship America. Besides the rides, there were theatres there also. The Amphitheatre had a dance show 85. The Trailblazer had a hoedown. The Fest Haus had German music. The Aqua Theatre had a dolphin and sea lion show, that I think that we saw. I am not sure about the other shows. I know that we went to Founder’s Way that was outside of the main gate near Tram Circle. There was a whole history of Hershey, the factory, and sample Hershey kisses and candies. I liked the whole experience. I was surprised at how good it was, since I was afraid it might be gimmicky, but it was not. We headed back tired to the hotel in Harrisburg on that Saturday night. On Sunday morning, June 23, we headed across the Susquehanna River to New Cumberland for a 9:00 AM Mass at St. Theresa of the Infant Jesus Church, that is still there today. Then we hit the road again, making a few stops for gas, food, and potty breaks. We were back home in Matteson, Illinois on late Sunday night as we finished up our southern trip to Tennessee in 1985 in Pennsylvania. Do you like Hershey bars?
Gene Finnegan Remembers Living Eighty Wonderful Years 