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When the Northwest Side St. Patrick’s Day Parade or- ganizers decided to make the 2016 event a tribute to first responders, logical thinking surmised that a neighbor- hood where so many police officers live was stepping up to give a cheer for those who really needed to have their spirits lifted. But the reality is that the idea to honor cops and firefighters bubbled up shortly after last year’s parade reached its summit.
“Despite what everybody thinks that this had some- thing to do with all the police stuff, we made this deci- sion a year ago,” explains Elizabeth Murray-Belcaster, who started the Northside Irish Parade 13 years ago with her father Daniel Murray to honor her mom, Judith. “We knew then that we wanted John Dineen to be our Grand Marshal.”
No greater tribute could be accorded to Chicago police officers than to have John Dineen grand marshal a parade that has attracted up to 100,000 devotees lining Northwest Highway to Harlem Avenue. No single cop might epito- mize the resiliency, intestinal fortitude and belief in the greater good that inspires law enforcement than Dineen, who helped found Chicago FOP Lodge 7 and is credited with forging many of the favorable benefits and working conditions members savor every day on the job.
Dineen and his wife Marilyn were part of the original parade committee, and his honor this year could have been a tribute to what he has put into Northwest Side Irish to help it grow from a couple of neighborhood events to one of the city’s biggest St. Patrick’s Day-related celebra- tions. But with the Emerald Society Pipes & Drums lead- ing the parade and the 100 units marching that includ- ed a huge contingent from Lodge 7 and other local labor unions, Dineen’s presence as Grand Marshal defined the occasion.
More than 60,000 braved the relentless rain to attend. The downpour forced Dineen to ride in a car rather than walk, but the vehicle rarely moved more than a few feet without somebody coming up to shake his hand. And this was confirmation, as Murray-Belcaster praised, that Dineen is truly an epic part of Chicago history and a sta- ple in the Northwest side and police society.
“Well, I helped start the parade,” Dineen commented with the deadpan humor and humility that his colleagues say made him such a memorable union leader. “I think this year they ran out of people to promote so they asked me to be Grand Marshal.”
Grand Tour
To say that Dineen had a career before serving the Chi- cago FOP Lodge full time is to know that there was no Chicago FOP Lodge before Dineen. In 1957, he took the entry test for the Department while still in the Army, and when he was discharged, he came home to find a letter notifying him to report to the academy. The next day.
But he was meant to serve. What else do you do when you are born on the Fourth of July? And so he did. After coming on the job in 1957 in the Fillmore District, Dineen had an opportunity during his first year to join what was known as the “task force” that went all around the city.
34 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ APRIL 2016
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shooting or a riot, they would send us there.”
Highlights of life on the beat offered quite poetic book- ends. In 1959, Dineen was part of detail that provided se- curity when the Queen of England visited. Before he re- tired, Dineen also worked a security detail when Princess
Diana visited Chicago in 1996.
The labor representation landscape at the time of the
Queen’s visit was somewhat less poetic. In 1960, there were approximately 8,000 cops at the rank of sergeant or below, and seemingly as many organizations looking to represent them. Dineen was part of a small, but growing group called the Chicago Police Association, and one its members recently hired from a suburban department had been with a town that belonged to the FOP.
By 1963, Chicago Lodge 7 was initiated. Dineen became its first treasurer, and because it was the seventh lodge in the state, Illinois was also able to start a State FOP Lodge.
He served as treasurer until 1972, when the president resigned and the Lodge 7 Board elected Dineen to fill his term. “I just kept running and running for more terms after that, and I became a politician,” he admitted. “In 1975, the National Lodge had an election and I got elect- ed treasurer. I went around the country visiting members and doing what we do. After two terms, I thought why not throw my hat in the ring for national president. I got elect- ed. That was 1979.”
All of this really set up what would make Dineen so grand. In 1980, Jane Byrne was elected mayor of Chica- go and promised labor unions the opportunity to collec- tively bargain their contracts. He acquiesced the national presidency to focus on Lodge 7, which won an election to become the bargaining representative for Chicago patrol officers and detectives.
“You have to dance with who you brought to the dance, and that was Chicago,” Dineen quipped. “After we won the election and the right to represent 10,000 members, we woke up the next morning and said, ‘What do we do now?’”
Grand Father of the Union
What he did was set up a second phone line in his home
he man who will turn 80 this year. “We’d pull out of the garage on 50 motorcycles, and if they had a problem somewhere like a
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