- Via Facebook
Bob McClory covered human decency for the Reader. He admired activists and reformers, and every couple of months he would tell a story about one or two of them in our pages. Older than other Reader writers, decades older than some, he described a Chicago that needed every ounce of reform it could get—no argument there—but got plenty. If sin thrived in our city, so did the coin’s other side—virtue. The generous way he reflected on human folly, you might have thought he was a priest.
“That is the way a priest ought to be,” McClory said about Pfleger. “That is what you think about when you read about the early church and the energy of the people going around the world and the missionaries down through the centuries who have been so activist. If you think the message is so vitally important, you hurl yourself into it totally. I thought, ‘Yeah, he’s got it way, way beyond anything I’ve got.’”
In addition to his writing, McClory taught journalism at Medill. I trust he drilled into his students the importance of intellectual humility.
