It is with great sadness that we here at The Bulldog learned of the passing of Lacy Banks, a sportswriter with the Chicago Sun-Times.
As stringers for The Chicago Tribune Jane Rickard and I covered the Chicago Wolves while Lacy covered the team for the Sun-Times. What you’ll read about his sunny personality at the Sun-Times is all true.
We got to know Lacy in the final years of his life and have not spoken since the end of the Wolves season in 2010. Lacy had to miss some of the Wolves pressers and parts of games due to fatigue and failing battery power on the devices that extended his life.
We learned how to work well, play well with other media because of Lacy’s example. We learned how to ask tough questions and learned to respect our work and the lives of those we interviewed by Lacy’s example. We are, after-all, citizen journalists first at The Bulldog.
Lacy was frustrated in his later years not just by the battles with illness, but with his battle with an uncaring corporate office. It was and is not being told by the Sun-Times how the Sun-Times attempted to end his health benefits and treated him so coldly after years of service.
His battle with Lewis Grizzard, arguing that Grizzard was acting as a racist in spiking Lacy’s columns will also be conveniently forgotten.
Now Lacy is being celebrated, not just by the employer he often battled, but by the likes of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
We think this may be the final lesson from Lacy, not to give up, to be dogged and persistent.
And sometimes being a pain in the ass (read about that in the Reader story) is what the people who didn’t work with you remember, as well as that you were a nice guy who everyone called Reverend.
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- Sun-Times reports Blago’s Ravenswood Manor home for sale
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- Maniac Latin Disciples reeling: Sun-Times
- Windy City Times looks at 46th Ward
