Page 25 - May 2020

If not for the pandemic, however, the funeral probably would have needed to be televised. The procession of police vehicles would have extended for miles, and the church would have been jammed with FOP and law enforcement dignitaries from across the state. Probably even across the country.
“We’d still be at the reception,” praised Dean Angelo, the Lodge 7 immediate past president who went to the church and wound up serving as a pallbearer.
Because the pandemic limited attendance, Nolan has not been accorded the memorial tribute so many want him to have. A post-pandemic celebration is already being planned to be held at the FOP Hall. Until then, perhaps a memorial reverence here can bring together the accolades and affection Nolan so richly deserves.
Ralph DeBartolo might have led the eulogy with remem- brance of his best friend. When he was on the job in the 1980s, DeBartolo was president of the Italian American Police Associ- ation. Nolan hosted a meeting of all the police associations in Chicago, and that’s when they met. Post-retirement from the Department, they worked together as chiefs for the Cook Coun- ty Sheriff’s Office Court Services Division.
DeBartolo would have told the story about being invited with Nolan, Carol and his wife Helen to New York City shortly after 9/11. NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik even hosted the visit when they were introduced to nearly every dignitary in town. It was these moments that captured Nolan’s influence.
“He knew everything. He knew everybody,” DeBartolo added. “If you needed something, ‘no’ was not in his vocabulary.”
Nolan once sent flowers to a young associate from the law firm of Baum Sigman Auerbach & Neuman, which represented Lodge 7 in labor matters, on the day his first son was born. That was Pat Fioretto, who witnessed Nolan’s leadership for all of his terms and lends keen insight to this memorial.
“He was a big hitter, but you never felt that when you were around him,” Fioretto remarked. “He treated everybody with the same level of respect that he wanted. And he fought for things that would protect the men and women of the Lodge.”
Nolan was renowned for bringing officers into his circle. He attracted them with an acute knowledge of the facts and a com- mand for detail that made him a great storyteller.
Retired Officer and Lodge 7 Trustee Ken Hauser was one of those who was drawn in. They worked together in the Depart- ment’s Intelligence Division, and Nolan actually dated Hauser’s sister, Mary Pat, in the early 1970s. Hauser indicated he joined the union because of Nolan’s propensity for wanting things to be done the right way. He saw that manifest over and over on the job and with the FOP.
“He just knew how to talk to people. He knew how to bargain for us,” Hauser extolled. “If you drew a picture of a good Chicago cop, it would look like Bill.”
His desire to get it done led to so many accomplishments. And any celebration of Nolan’s life would include friends like Angie Haynes recounting his virtues.
Nolan called Haynes in the 1980s to ask about starting a Chi- cago FOP Family Auxiliary. Chicago had become the biggest lodge in the entire FOP but didn’t have an auxiliary. So they started one.
Never thought he had done enough
Perhaps that kindness inspired Nolan’s devotion to Easter- seals. Easterseals Chicago CEO Barb Zawacki notes that Nolan’s commitment to help people with disabilities and love for chil- dren with disabilities consumed him.
When Easterseals Chicago was moving its school from near the old Michael Reese Hospital to the IIT campus in 2008, Za- wacki received a call on moving day that stopped everything.
His great storytelling ability and great sense of humor made Nolan some- body people loved to be around.
She had 40 students with autism and nowhere to go. So Nolan made a call, and Easterseals moved in.
“No matter what it was, he would always tell me, ‘We’ll make it happen, Barb,’” Zawacki recalled. “And he never took credit for anything. It was always, ‘We accomplished that.’”
Jim Pasco, executive director of the National FOP, witnessed Nolan’s ability to accomplish anything when they would lob- by Congress. Nolan’s work helped pass federal legislation to establish the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) that added more than 100,000 cops on the streets throughout the country.
When Pasco worked with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, he was friends with an agent who worked the Intel- ligence Division in Chicago with Nolan. When Pasco informed his friend that Nolan had passed, he cried. Tears probably said more than words, though Pasco had some to define Nolan.
“He was a great motivator without even knowing you were being motivated,” Pasco declared. “And he never rested on his
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Chicago Police Officer and artist Peter Bucks shows the Horse of Honor in the foyer of the Chi- cago Lodge 7 headquarters he painted, that features a likeness of Bill Nolan as a tribute to his service to the FOP.
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