The son of a Chicago newspaperman, John Flynn Rooney carved out his own reputation as a dogged and ethical reporter in Chicago during an award-winning career spanning more than 30 years.
While a reporter at the City News Bureau in 1982, Rooney broke the story about poisoning deaths that were ultimately found to be caused by an unknown perpetrator tampering with capsules of Tylenol. Rooney subsequently spent 27 years as a reporter covering legal affairs for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.
“What a wonderful guy,” said U.S. Circuit Court Judge William J. Bauer, who met Rooney when he was accompanying his journalist father. “He was really a nice, nice man who never backed out on his word and was a good writer who dug into facts and wrote things as he saw them.”
Rooney, 56, died of complications from ALS on June 30 at his Chicago home, said his wife, Meg. He had been a longtime resident of the Beverly neighborhood.
Born and raised on the South Side, Rooney was the son of Chicago Daily News reporter Edmund J. Rooney Jr., who shared a Pulitzer Prize in 1958. Rooney moved with his family to Beverly when he was in fourth grade. He graduated from Marist High School in 1978 and earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Loyola University in 1982.
While in college, he worked as a runner for noted personal-injury attorney Tom Demetrio, whose firm also employed several of Rooney’s siblings.
“He was quiet and very dependable. He was a professional, and he was a very, very serious young man,” Demetrio said. “And I stayed in touch with John — once he became a reporter, he did a lot of stories, and I gave him my two cents’ worth. He was the same thorough, dot-the-i’s-and-cross-the-t’s reporter that you all aspire to be.”
After college, Rooney decided to pursue a journalism career and was hired by the City News Bureau, a wire service that no longer exists.
“Our dad showed us that it was an admirable profession and that you could make a difference in other people’s lives and hold the public accountable and tell the story of everyday people,” said Rooney’s brother Tim. “I think John was drawn to storytelling and really being part of life. We were told by our dad that journalism is a front row seat to history.”
Acting on a tip not long after he joined City News, Rooney began tying together disparate poisoning deaths. He then wrote the first story about what quickly became a nationally followed story that sparked reforms in product packaging. No one ever has been charged in the Tylenol murders.
“I remember how lucky he felt that he was there to cover it,” his brother said. “It was one of those things where John wasn’t real pleased that this had happened, but he was amazed that he became a part of it, and how kind of spontaneously the whole thing happened to him.”
Meg Rooney said her husband “took a lot of pride in” his Tylenol coverage.
“For him, it was, ‘Here’s a puzzle, and I want to find the pieces of the puzzle and see what we can come up with,’ ” she said. “He was very proud of that work.”
For his work on the Tylenol murders, Rooney won a Peter Lisagor award from the Chicago Headline Club. His coverage also earned him the first of what would be several Herman Kogan Awards from the Chicago Bar Association.
In 1985, Rooney took a reporting job at the Tampa Tribune in Florida. He returned to the Midwest to pursue a master’s degree from what then was known as Sangamon State University. After graduating, Rooney, who also worked for a time as a producer for Walter Jacobson at WBBM-Ch. 2, was hired as a reporter at the Daily Law Bulletin by its new editor, Bernie Judge.
“I wanted to get John working for me after he got his master’s degree because I knew his work from City News Bureau and I knew he was a solid, hard-working, trustworthy and excellent reporter, and I was hoping he would come to work for me,” Judge said.
“John was a guy you could absolutely rely on. You knew he would always play it straight, and he would have the respect of the people he covered because they would quickly sense that he was somebody who had integrity and was only trying to do a first-rate job, which he did.”
Rooney covered county courts and the state appellate court before shifting gears and covering the federal district and appeals courts. He returned to covering county courts in 1997, reporting on three Cook County chief judges, Harry Comerford, Donald O’Connell and Timothy Evans.
“John was so well-informed and asked those of us involved in the legal community questions that were well-informed questions. They were not run of the mill,” Evans said. “He took the time to make sure he got all of the facts and the ramifications from the facts before he wrote his articles.”
Rooney in 2003 began working as a general assignment reporter, focusing on attorney and judicial discipline and judicial elections. In his later years at the paper, he most enjoyed a series of articles he wrote about his own father, his wife said.
In 2013, Rooney began experiencing weakness in his left leg. While only a small percentage of ALS cases are hereditary, the disease had claimed Rooney’s mother and aunt, and his own symptoms caused him to suspect that it was ALS. A diagnosis in 2014 confirmed it.
Ever the journalist, Rooney wrote a May 2014 column revealing the diagnosis and emphasizing that he had no plans to “allow ALS to define me. At age 54, I rely on my faith, along with strong support from family and friends.”
He retired from the Daily Law Bulletin in August. In a farewell column, he noted that it had been “my great honor and privilege to write about the members of the Illinois legal community.”
ALS was “not an easy journey for him, but he led us by example like he always did in his life and showed us with great patience and love that he could endure it,” his brother said. “I don’t know what other gifts he could have given us that would be greater than that.”
Tim Rooney said his brother donated part of his body to continue research into ALS.
“People may never even know the influence he’ll have in curing the disease,” his brother said. “He viewed it like, ‘I’m going to do whatever I can.’ Knowing that he’s doing that provides us comfort.”
In addition to his wife and brother, Rooney is survived by three sons, Ned, Jack and Dan; two sisters, Molly Kelly and Ellen Martin; and two other brothers, Ed and Peter.
Services are pending.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
