Skip to content
  • Subscribe
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
  • Email
  • Home
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Entertainment
  • Features
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
Suburban Chicagoland

Suburban Chicagoland

Original News, Features & Opinion on local and regional news you won't find anywhere else

  • About
    • About
    • Advertise
    • Our Writers
      • Ray Hanania
      • Bill Lipinski
      • Biography: Aaron Hanania
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Policy
    • Reach Out
  • Sections
    • Events
    • Opinion
    • News
    • Features
    • Seniors
    • Comic Strip
  • Library
    • “MIdnight Flight” Online Book
      • Midnight Flight Book Overview
      • Midnight Flight Introduction
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 1
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 2
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 3
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 4
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 5
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 6
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 7
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 8
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 9
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 10
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 11
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 12
      • Midnight Flight Chapter 13
    • Villages, Cities & Towns
    • Federal Office Holders
    • County Officials
    • Legislators
  • Subscribe to Ray’s Columns
  • Comment
  • Podcast
    • Ray Hanania on Politics
    • Two Guys on Politics
    • Hanania on Tiktok
  • News Wire
  • Archive 2004-2013
  • Toggle search form
  • Father and two daughters Jeffery M Leving
    Father’s Fight to Protect his Abused and Badly Beaten Daughters Dads' Rights
  • Illinois Senator Michael Hastings addressing the Orland Township Democratic Organization Wednesday Oct. 12, 2022
    Hastings announces $75,000 grant for Olympia Fields Bicentennial Park renovations Illinois Legislature
  • Alleged Member of Chicago Street Gang Charged With Soliciting the Murder of Senior Law Enforcement Official Involved in “Operation Midway Blitz” Crime
  • IIEC Logo
    The Energy Omnibus Bill will increase rates over the rest of this decade as Illinois families and businesses toil under higher utility costs Business
  • Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Polish hero of the American Revolution. After arriving in America in 1776, Kosciuszko joined the Continental Army. As a skilled engineer, he made significant contributions to the war by designing fortifications for several strategic places such as Philadelphia, West Point, and Saratoga. Kosciuszko later returned to Poland to lead his native military in a 1794 uprising. In Detroit, Courtesy of WIkipedia
    Cook County Treasurer Pappas showcases Polish photographer’s first-ever American exhibit and honors Polish American Heritage Month in Chicago Cook County
  • On Saturday, October 4th, Cook County Commissioner Frank J. Aguilar hosted the Fifth Annual 16th District Dia de los Muertos Resource Fair at his district office. Partnering with Commissioner Aguilar were the Village of Lyons, Lyons School District 103, Teamsters Local 777, and Rincon Family Services.
    Commissioner Frank J. Aguilar Hosts Fifth Annual Dia de los Muertos Family Resource Fair  Cook County
  • Jesse Jackson Jr July 2025
    Jesse Jackson Jr. Launches Candidacy for Congress Civil Rights
  • Cook County Treasurer Maria Papas
    Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas to Celebrate Diwali by Recognizing Indian Community Leaders Cook County
  • Andrew Boutros US Attorney Illinois
    Statement of US Attorney Andrew S. Boutros and Federal Law Enforcement Leadership in Chicago on Ongoing Criminal Immigration Enforcement Operations Chicago
  • Cook County Treasurer Maria Papas
    The 5 Most Common Mistakes Homeowners Make with Property Taxes Cook County
  • Road construction cement truck. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
    Hastings: $123 million in IDOT projects will improve South Suburban roads through collaboration with local leaders construction
  • Source: Electric Power Monthly - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
    Ratepayers will lose in the rush to approve battery storage electricity legislation in Springfield Business
  • Joyful reunion photo courtesy of Jeffery M. Leving & Assc law firm
    Leving Team Prevented a Father’s Wrongful Separation from His Child Dads' Rights
  • CTF Illinois Orland Park, 18230 Orland Pkwy, Orland Park, IL 60467
    Hastings, Giannoulias announce opening of temporary driver services facility in Orland Park Baby Boomers
  • Emagine Theater Pink popcorn
    Popcorn with a purpose: Emagine Theatres brings back Pink Caramel Corn to support Pink Fund during Breast Cancer Awareness Month Business
Ray Hanania and Harry Golden Jr., at City Hall in 1982. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania

30-year anniversary of a Chicago journalist’s passing

Posted on April 12, 2018November 29, 2019 By Ray Hanania No Comments on 30-year anniversary of a Chicago journalist’s passing
SHARE THIS STORY
            
 
  

30-year anniversary of a Chicago journalist’s passing

Chicago City Hall Journalist Harry Golden Jr., died on May 1, 1988, 30 years ago having documented Chicago’s rollercoaster political scene, and bringing to a final end the era of Front Page journalism. Golden was one of the best journalists in America at the time and has never been replaced. This is an expansion of my column published April 12, 2018 in the Southwest News newspaper group.

By Ray Hanania

I was always lucky as a journalist. I had everything going against me to succeed.

I didn’t graduate from journalism school. I flunked English composition repeatedly in school, evident in my writing even until this day. I’m Arab American and faced constant criticism from activists in the pro-Israel community, even at newspapers where I worked, and was attacked by other Arabs who didn’t understand the power of communications.

Worse, I let my mother down choosing journalism over medicine as my life career path. Arab mom’s want their sons to either be doctors or grocery store owners, not low-paying journalists who only set themselves up for conflict.

Yet when I entered journalism in 1975, luck was on my side.

Ray Hanania and Harry Golden Jr., at City Hall in 1982. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania and Harry Golden Jr., at City Hall in 1982. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania

I began by publishing an English-language Arab American newspaper that immediately caught the attention and scrutiny of the FBI. It resulted in a lengthy two-year long FBI investigation into my life that began with the ominous concern that I might be involved in “terrorism” but ending matter-of-factly with the conclusion that I was merely concerned about bettering the lot of Arabs in America.

Recognizing how much more important journalism and communication were to the issues that concerned me, over a medical career, I dropped out of pre-med courses at Northern Illinois University, entered Military service during the Vietnam War to get my head straight, and returned to college at the University of Illinois at Circle studying under political mentor Professor Milton Rakove.

And it didn’t take long for my passion and much fortune to fuel my personal life-long assault on journalism, a profession I believed needed to be saved.

I wrote letter after lengthy letter to the editor of the local suburban newspaper at the time, the Southtown Economist, railing on issues involving media racism, the absence of media fairness and the need for more diversity in newsrooms when the editor of the paper, tired of re-typing my handwritten letters, offered me a job. I grabbed it and started covering education and suburban community events.

But in 1977, sitting in the packed editorial offices of the old twice-weekly Southtown Economist, I was the only one to raise a hand when the publisher asked for a volunteer to cover Chicago City Hall, later to pioneer bureau there. City Hall of my era occupied en entire block bounded by Clark, LaSalle Street, Washington and Randolph streets. It was two blocks south of Chicago’s first City Hall which was located in an old saloon at Lake and Clark Street.

I arrived at City Hall full-time, after covering it for one year from the edges of the city, in the Spring of 1978. It was right about the same time that the boredom of Mayor Michael A. Bilandic’s administration was being swept out by the unpredictability of his former Consumer Sales & Weights and Measures commissioner, Jane M Byrne.

Former Chicago City Hall reporters (from left, back) Avis LaVelle, Michelle Damico, Molly Sullivan, Dan Parker, Manuel Galvan, Ray Hanania; front from left, Cheryl Corley, John Holden and Dave Roeder. Photo courtesy of Aaron Hanania
Former Chicago City Hall reporters (from left, back) Avis LaVelle, Michelle Damico, Molly Sullivan, Dan Parker, Manuel Galvan, Ray Hanania; front from left, Cheryl Corley, John Holden and Dave Roeder. Photo courtesy of Aaron Hanania

Most importantly, I met a good friend, someone who would mentor my career and give me the boost I needed to help me in professional journalism. Harry Golden, Jr., got the Chicago Sun-Times to hire me in 1985.

Harry was the journalist’s journalist. The guy had no biases. He called it just the way it was, good, bad or ugly. His writing was powerful. The guy was a true wordsmith, slamming away at his black Underwood typewriter, and later a grey Royal typewriter, like a baseball player with a .300 or higher batting average. He had a brutal honesty that was pure accuracy. And he rarely missed.

Golden ruled Chicago City Hall from his roost in the 2nd Floor Press Room that today carries his name. When he wasn’t slamming out scoops, Golden was carefully snipping articles from the Sun-Times newspaper (and others, too), carefully folding them and then indexing them like a librarian in a wall of small library drawers located behind his desk which over-looking LaSalle Street.

Down below on LaSalle Street, the late attorney Roland V. Libonati, who built his career as a state legislator and later congressman representing Chicago’s near West Side after defending Al Capone in court, stood on the sidewalk with an opened briefcase and negotiated city services, political perks and favors with aldermen, committeeman and political wannabes.

Golden was a wealth of stories. He’d often regale the press room with stories about journalism in the 1960s, great reporters like Ed Schreiber, Frank Sullivan, Jay McMullen, and Mike Royko. A lot of the stories had to do with Chicago Police officers having to drive drunken City Hall reporters back to their suburban homes, as a favor to some alderman.

Golden’s father was a friend and biographer of the poet Carl Sandburg. Harry Golden Senior published his own newspaper, “The Carolina Israelite,” and authored nine books, including “Only in America.” Harry Junior was his father’s book editor.

Harry Golden Jr., stands front-and-center with Mayor Washington and members of the Chicago Press that covered City Hall full and part time.
Harry Golden Jr., stands front-and-center with Mayor Washington and members of the Chicago Press that covered City Hall full and part time.

Golden favored me and helped get me my job at the Sun-Times, in a large part because he never stopped thanking me for serving during the Vietnam War. Golden served during the Korean War before working for the Charlotte Observer, the Detroit Free Press and eventually the Sun-Times.

He strode City Hall wearing Giorgio Armani suites, and had his hair cut every week in the lower level of the county courthouse building, even when he really didn’t need a haircut.

You didn’t have to strain to hear Golden calling in by telephone his city budget exclusives with his gravely-voiced Brooklyn accent.

Golden would quietly walk out of the City Hall press room and find a phone in the open hallway offices of the sergeant-at-arms Michael V. Colletta where he would call in his exclusives by telephone, eschewing the computers that were fast making their way into journalism. All the reporters would hush and you could hear Golden’s course worse waft through the hallway, “Mayor Jane M. Byrne … told me her new budget …” Golden’s whisper’s sounded like a lion’s growl.

When he broke his many scoops, he would crow loudly about his “good stawwee!”

Golden, recognized as the “Dean” of the Chicago City Hall press corp, knew every nook and cranny of the City Hall building, and every source that possibly could whisper insight into the actions of the mayor, floor leaders and aldermen.

And he had a very personable side, too. Golden once told one of Alderman Fred Roti’s nieces that she looked more beautiful than a Cardinal in the Spring, to which she responded with a smile and her own New York-like accept, “Ha-wee … you ha-ba way wit woyds!”

There were many great reporters who covered Chicago City Hall with Harry during the between the death of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley and the rise of his son Richard M. Daley, including the Chicago Tribune’s Robert Davis, who died in 2003 at the age of 61, WBBM Radio’s Bob Crawford, who is retired, and WMAQ Radio’s Bill Cameron, who still reports on Chicagoland politics.

Golden was 60 when he died of cancer on Sunday, May 1, 1988 in his home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

(Ray Hanania is an award-winning columnist author and former Chicago City Hall reporter. Reach him through his website at www.Hanania.com or by email at [email protected].)

newswire info
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania is an award-winning columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.  

His award winning columns can be found at www.HANANIA.COM Subscribe FREE today

Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.

Email Ray Hanania at [email protected].

Follow RayHanania at Twitter
Ray Hanania
Latest posts by Ray Hanania (see all)
  • Father’s Fight to Protect his Abused and Badly Beaten Daughters - October 9, 2025
  • Hastings announces $75,000 grant for Olympia Fields Bicentennial Park renovations - October 8, 2025
  • Alleged Member of Chicago Street Gang Charged With Soliciting the Murder of Senior Law Enforcement Official Involved in “Operation Midway Blitz” - October 8, 2025
NPV: 32
  • Tweet

SHARE THIS STORY
            
 
  
 
 
 
           
Blogger, Commentary, elections, Government, Opinion, Politics, rayhanania Tags:2018, 30 year anniversary, Chicago budgets, Chicago City Hall, Chicago politics, City Hall Press Room, Front Page journalism, Harry Golden Jr., Journalism, May 2, news media, reporter

Post navigation

Previous Post: Orland woman dies in cooking related fire
Next Post: Morrison re-elected as Cook County GOP Chairman

Related Posts

  • Susana Mendoza, Illinois Comptroller
    State Comptroller Susana Mendoza takes tough action against Orland Park over unfiled audits Economy
  • Bone in Steak. 94 West Restaurant, 15410 94th Avenue Orland Park. Photo courtesy fo Ray Hanania
    94 West one of the best restaurants in the Southwest Suburbs Blogger
  • DVR-based Security camera systems need to be replaced Blogger
  • Governor-elect JB Pritzker and Lieutenant Governor-elect Juliana Stratton held a statewide day of service to kick off their inaugural weekend
    Pritzker, Stratton host “Day of Service” to kickoff their inauguration Features
  • Casa Margarita, 9549 W. 151st St in Orland Park offers a wide selection of Mexican food. This is plates of Guacamole and Ceviche with extra thin taco chips. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
    Venturing out of the Coronavirus Pandemic Blogger
  • President Larry Dominick led the push to get FEMA to approve funding for Cicero flood victims. President Dominick speaks at a FEMA and County Emergency Management press conference Wednesday July 26, 2023 at Morton College called to inform residents of that effort. Photo courtesy of the Town of Cicero
    Cicero President leads successful push to get FEMA to approve flood disaster assistance to residents Baby Boomers

More Related Articles

Dr. James Gay, School District 230 Dist 230 Supt Dr. James M. Gay announces intent to retire Education
Illinois State Museum Lockport Gallery, Lockport Illinois Illinois State Museum Wins Leader Institution of the Year Award Entertainment
Road construction cement truck. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania Congress members applaud infrastructure bill passage Federal
Cicero Plaza with flags. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania Walgreens chooses to fight Cicero Face Mask order Business
WGN TV's moderators Tahman Bradley and Lourdes Duarte WGN Mayoral forum gives candidates chance to sparkle Blogger
Orland Township Supervisor Paul O’Grady (left) Township Clerk Cindy Murray and Township Trustee Antonio Rubino get a little help from Santa and one of his elves at the Township’s Holiday Program distribution. Photo courtesy of Orland Township Orland Township Provides Gifts and Meals for Over 200 Families coronavirus

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Login with your Social ID
  • OPINION
  • 06-04-25 Two Guys on Politics Background Zoom LOGO with images
    Video Podcast: Trump Kimmel Kirk Great American Divide Illegal Aliens polling and Illegal Aliens and ICE
    September 20, 2025
  • Illinois House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch speaking at a West Side affordable housing dedication
    Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, one of the best candidates to become Illinois Governor
    September 7, 2025
  • Cook County Treasurer Maria Papas
    What You’re Missing on Your Property Tax Bill
    September 5, 2025
  • 05-23-25 Jeffery M. Leving
    Children of divorce caught in the middle during the holidays
    August 27, 2025
  • Cook County Treasurer Maria Papas
    We Can Help You Understand Your Property Taxes—In Nearly Any Language
    August 8, 2025
Subscribe to Ray Hanania's column graphic

Enter Your Email to Subscribe to Ray Hanania’s Columns

  • The-Kings-Pawn-Book-300-x-300.png

Mohammed Faheem The Lightning Strike Radio

  • NEWS
  • Father and two daughters Jeffery M Leving
    Father’s Fight to Protect his Abused and Badly Beaten Daughters
    October 9, 2025
  • Illinois Senator Michael Hastings addressing the Orland Township Democratic Organization Wednesday Oct. 12, 2022
    Hastings announces $75,000 grant for Olympia Fields Bicentennial Park renovations
    October 8, 2025
  • Alleged Member of Chicago Street Gang Charged With Soliciting the Murder of Senior Law Enforcement Official Involved in “Operation Midway Blitz”
    October 8, 2025
  • IIEC Logo
    The Energy Omnibus Bill will increase rates over the rest of this decade as Illinois families and businesses toil under higher utility costs
    October 8, 2025
  • Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Polish hero of the American Revolution. After arriving in America in 1776, Kosciuszko joined the Continental Army. As a skilled engineer, he made significant contributions to the war by designing fortifications for several strategic places such as Philadelphia, West Point, and Saratoga. Kosciuszko later returned to Poland to lead his native military in a 1794 uprising. In Detroit, Courtesy of WIkipedia
    Cook County Treasurer Pappas showcases Polish photographer’s first-ever American exhibit and honors Polish American Heritage Month in Chicago
    October 8, 2025
John Kass Columns

Order the book PoweR PR; Ethnic Activists Guide to Strategic Communications

YOUTUBE VIDEOS

CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE TO RAY HANANIA'S YOUTUBE VIDEOS


Click here to view the video on YouTube or use the widget below.

Follow Ray Hanania at
Twitter
Facebook
TitkTok
BlueSky
RayHanania Columns

Creative Commons License
All works on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Do not edit original work. Give credit to the original source.

Categories

Copyright © 2022 Suburban Chicagoland & Urban Strategies Group

Powered by PressBook Premium theme