Nancy C. Carr (McLinden)
1973 - 2006
County worker loved politics
By Brett McNeil
Tribune staff reporter
Published May 10, 2006
Leaving work early last Friday to catch the White Sox
game with her husband and a group of co-workers was no big deal. Nancy
C. Carr figured she'd make up the hours Sunday morning.
Besides, the outing of colleagues from the Cook County assessor's
office was the sort of thing that nobody wanted to miss--and without
Mrs. Carr, 32, it just wouldn't have been the same. She was for
many the heart of the group--a longtime assessor's office employee who
began as a summer intern while attending the University of Iowa, a
dedicated and conscientious staffer who most recently worked as a field
inspector. "She was a real franchise player for the office,"
said Cook County Assessor James Houlihan. "Nancy was the kind of person
you could build an office around--her smile, her personality, her
enthusiasm. She was one of the core people we were building around."
Two days after the Sox trip, Mrs. Carr was driving to work when her car
was struck by a Chicago Transit Authority bus about 7:45 a.m. Sunday on
the 4900 block of North Central Avenue in Chicago. Authorities said
Mrs. Carr apparently missed a red light. She was taken to Advocate
Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead about
8:30 a.m., according to police. "It's a terrible loss," Houlihan said.
One of nine siblings--eight of them female--from a close-knit family
from south suburban Flossmoor, Carr and her husband, Peter, recently
moved to River Forest to raise their own growing family. Two years ago,
the couple had their first daughter, Catherine, and on Jan. 31 Mrs.
Carr gave birth to a second girl, Margaret. Peter Carr said his
wife spent the late winter and early spring juggling work and family
and a new home that needed sprucing up. "The place was a
complete disaster, but Nancy just had vision. She could take anything
and make it look better," he said. "Everyone calls her Martha Stewart's
challenger." The couple were planning to landscape the yard
later this spring--just one of the many projects that Carr said his
wife took on in addition to lending a hand to others. "She was
just so generous with her time and her talent," he said. "Any spare
moment that she had was given to her friends and her family, and
strangers." A standout field hockey player at
Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School, Mrs. Carr, then Nancy
McLinden, earned an athletic scholarship to Iowa. She played as a
midfielder on three different Hawkeye teams that reached the final four
of the NCAA tournament, according to a University of Iowa official.
While studying art history in college, Mrs. Carr served two successive
summer internships with the assessor's office and developed an interest
in Cook County politics, according to her father. "She loved politics. She loved the atmosphere of the assessor's office. She loved the Democratic Party," Bill McLinden said. Houlihan said Mrs. Carr's death left many of the more than 400 staffers in the assessor's office in mourning.
"She loved the politics. She loved the government. She loved her
family," said Houlihan, who was Mrs. Carr's boss for about nine years.
"Our office is in real grief." In addition to her husband,
daughters and father, Mrs. Carr is survived by her mother, Marge, and
seven siblings, Bill McLinden, Peggy Cooney, Mariellen Kelly, Sue
McLinden, Kitty Connors, Deirdre McLinden and Corinne McLinden. A mass
will be said at 11 a.m. Thursday in St. Luke Catholic Church, 528
Lathrop Ave., in River Forest.
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