Kathy Byrne, the only child of Chicago’s first female mayor, was an influential Illinois trial attorney who specialized in asbestos litigation.
Byrne, 66, died Aug. 8 at Rush University Medical Center of complications from surgery to remove a blood clot, her family said. A Gold Cost resident, she had been suffering from lung cancer.
Katharine Byrne was raised by her mother, Jane Byrne, in the Northwest Side Sauganash neighborhood after her father, William Byrne, a Marine pilot died in a plane crash.
Kathy Byrne later reflected on lessons from her mother, who served a single term as mayor from 1979 to 1983 and died in 2014.
“Her greatest legacy to me was that there is no ceiling,” Kathy Byrne said in a post on the website of her Chicago law firm, Cooney & Conway. “You talk about a glass ceiling, but I’m unaware. I’m sure there probably is one, but I’ve never felt there was anything that I could possibly be prohibited from doing.”
Although Kathy Byrne didn’t follow her mother’s lead in running for elected office, she was active in all levels of politics.
An early family photo shows her as a small child with John F. Kennedy, whose campaign was supported by Jane Byrne. As an adult, Kathy Byrne co-chaired Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s unsuccessful 2019 campaign for mayor and co-hosted a downtown fundraiser for presidential candidate Joe Biden later that year. Byrne gave Mendoza a pin that belonged to her mother, which Mendoza wore every day during the campaign.
Byrne was a fierce guardian of her mother’s legacy, recalled former Gov. Pat Quinn, who renamed the interchange where the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Dan Ryan meet after Jane Byrne.
“We had the formal announcement. Then I’d say a couple weeks later her daughter saw me and said, ‘Boy that Jane Byrne interchange really has put a big spark in my mom’s life,’ ” Quinn recalled. “She gets up in the morning, she goes to the kitchen and makes coffee, and then she sits at the kitchen table and turns on news radio 78 to listen for the traffic report.”
While Byrne’s last name often drew attention to her mother’s story, was made her own reputation as an attorney.
Byrne received her law degree from Loyola University and became a partner at Cooney & Conway, whose offices are across the street from City Hall. She was also the second woman elected to lead the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association and established a scholarship at Loyola.
Kevin Conway, her colleague at the law firm, remembered her as someone who would encourage younger women lawyers to “seek leadership.”
“You’re great attorneys, you should become leaders,” he recalled Kathy Byrne saying.
Much of her practice was devoted to asbestos litigation. In a profile published by Loyola School of Law, Byrne reflected on the dangers of asbestos, and failure of government to act on those dangers.
“You realize that the only reason (companies) took this hideous, insidious product out of things was because lawyers brought lawsuits,” Byrne said. “Not because the government acted.”
She also spoke about advocating for her clients.
“My instinct is to say, ‘don’t take it personally,’ but I take it personally,” she said. “I actually think you should take it personally, because your clients are taking it personally and you owe it to them to echo that.”
Willy Vogt, Kathy Byrne’s only son who is now a law student, recalled his mother as “a very hard worker who cared a lot about the cause of justice for regular people.”
Visitation is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, 1010 W. Webster Ave., with a Mass to follow at 11 a.m.
