By Cory Franklin

December 5^th, 2025

A friend of mine and John’s, Bruce Dold, arguably Chicago’s foremost journalist for two decades, died recently. Excelling at every facet of the profession, he was journalism’s Joe DiMaggio – like The Yankee Clipper, always making the difficult look easy.

The editorial page was his center field – even if long-time Yankee fan Bruce personally might have preferred his comparison to be with Mickey Mantle. The great raconteur Oscar Levant, upon hearing that Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were divorcing, famously said it proves a man can’t excel at two pastimes, but Oscar Levant never met Bruce.

Bruce, the writer/reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial writing. By some measure, that might say it all, but it barely speaks to the issue. Unlike some, he didn’t get the award for inserting his persona or his personal politics into his writings or by schmoozing the right people – his was a merit selection, genuinely deserved. No participation trophy there.

With a gimlet eye that noticed facts others missed, his prose embodied his personality – snappy, witty, sparse and most of all, incisive. Extra words and unnecessary sentences customarily omitted. Like DiMaggio drifting under a fly ball, no wasted effort; readers and colleagues alike were regularly impressed by the crisp and unambiguous style.

His calm deportment belied a fierce intellect and fearless demeanor. When he became an editor, the country’s most powerful people had him on their speed dials or confronted him in the Tribune Tower’s the fourth floor Editorial Board conference room, hoping he would advance whatever agenda they brought to the large oak table where meetings were held.

They would flatter, cajole, dissemble and occasionally threaten. But ever unruffled and unbowed, he always remained true to his honest, journalistic principles, as only a select few do. And he always paid for his own lunches, never accepting a meal, or anything else, from anyone.

A nonpareil copy editor, he usually wanted it shorter but invariably wanted it clearer. His gift was one many editors claim, but few truly possess: the talent to make every writer that he edited a better writer.

Only the obtuse or egotistical failed to appreciate the expertise from which they benefited from. And he was, hands down, the best interviewer I ever witnessed. Neither obsequious nor combative, he rivaled the top trial attorneys by asking subtle but probing questions to draw a subject out.

One illustrative anecdote. Interviewing an elderly Ted Sorenson, JFK’s speechwriter, Bruce asked him, in front of an audience of 300, who had  written Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage. The rumor had long been that Sorenson was the ghostwriter and near the end of his life, Sorenson was perhaps eager to take credit, albeit reluctant to say so.

He said JFK wrote it. Bruce persisted, not settling for the pat answer. Sorenson hedged and said, “well, several people were involved.” Hoping this would take him off the hook, Sorenson didn’t see Bruce’s follow-up coming. “In those days, the author started out with a pen and a yellow notepad.

Who was the first one to write on the yellow notepad that became Profiles in Courage?” Disarmed by the question, the speechwriter stammered and answered by offering the same famous words that he wrote for JFK’s 1961 inaugural address, “Ask not.” Right there, in front of that audience, Bruce got Ted Sorenson to fess up to being the author of Profiles in Courage.

But it was more than just professional. Bruce was a jazz aficionado and a polymath to boot. He could discourse in an intelligent, entertaining manner about – choose one among many – Miles Davis, Rod Blagojevich, the Grateful Dead, Notre Dame football, Northwestern’s quarterback perennial predicament, golf or one of his favorites: a fellow Bruce from New Jersey, Springsteen.

He may have been a New Jersey boy at heart, but he could tell great stories about every hinky Chicago and Illinois politician since the 1970s, and some pretty good ones about celebrities from Arnold Palmer to Roger Ebert. The more salacious tales were delivered with an elfin grin, discreetly and away from mixed company.  The invariable deadpan delivery enhanced the charm of every tale.

Another demonstrative anecdote of his wit. When I attended his daughter’s wedding at Holy Name Cathedral, one of the bridesmaids fainted from the heat. During the service, I went back to the sacristy to watch over her while she recovered.

Surrounded by the impressive vestments and items of worship in the sacristy, after the ceremony I said to Bruce, “You know, I was probably the first Jew ever to be in the Holy Name sacristy.” A wry smile for that quick Irish comeback, without breaking stride he deadpanned, “Second.”

For all that, far more important was what he meant to his family and friends – and what they meant to him. He and wife Eileen were soulmates and friends for life, “in sickness and in health,” to nick a phrase. A great son to his parents, a wonderful brother to his sisters, and a marvelous father to his daughters. And of course, a proud and adoring grandpa. His relationship with his five grandchildren was special, one any man would envy.

He was dealt a bad hand with a terrible cancer diagnosis, yet he lived far longer than anyone I had ever cared for who carried the same disease.

I have taken care of patients for 50 years, and I never saw anyone handle it better mentally or physically – even when his doctors treated him, in my view, a bit too casually. He confronted his condition with grace and aplomb, never considering going gentle into that good night.

Having Bruce as my friend was one of the best things that ever happened to me; I shall miss him terribly, but what memories! I leave the final description of Bruce to Shakespeare by way of Catullus, a Roman poet, both far more eloquent than I, who wrote,  “His life was gentle, and the elements so mix’d in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’”

“Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale”

A memorial service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Dec. 12 at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, 124 N. Spring Ave., in La Grange.

Our friend R. Bruce Dold, the great editor of the Chicago Tribune died the other day. Many of us thought he had a little more time. We were wrong. He was a good editor and a better man. Though he was from New Jersey, Bruce was Chicago all the way. When Eleanor ‘Sis’ Daley died, Bruce knocked on my office door. “We’re going to the wake.” I didn’t want to go. Why? I’d feuded bitterly with her son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and I didn’t think it would be proper to go. “We’re going, you and me, we’re going now,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.” He was right. It was the Chicago thing to do. You go to the wake. If you don’t know that, you don’t know Chicago. And R. Bruce Dold knew Chicago.

He loved what the Tribune meant to Chicago. What made him a great writer: he was curious about people, about the city’s politics, and tribes and institutions. And he loved the Chicago Tribune. Unfortunately, after all those years, the Tribune didn’t love him back. 

JK

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Dr. Cory Franklin

Cory Franklin, physician and writer, is a frequent contributor to johnkassnews.com. Director of Medical Intensive Care at Cook County (Illinois) Hospital for 25 years, before retiring he wrote over 80 medical articles, chapters, abstracts, and correspondences in books and professional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. In 1999, he was awarded the Shubin-Weil Award, one of only fifty people ever honored as a national role model for the practice and teaching of intensive care medicine. 

Since retirement, Dr. Franklin has been a contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page. His work has been published in the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Internationally, his work has appeared internationally in Spiked, The Guardian and The Jerusalem Post. For nine years he hosted a weekly audio podcast, Rememberingthepassed, which discusses the obituaries of notable people who have died recently. His 2015 book “Cook County ICU: 30 Years Of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases” was a medical history best-seller. In 2024, he co-authored The COVID Diaries: Anatomy of a Contagion As it Happened.

In 1993, he worked as a technical advisor to Harrison Ford and was a role model for the physician character Ford played in the film, The Fugitive.