21 Facts About Mike Royko

1.

Mike Royko briefly attended Wright Junior College and then enlisted in the US Air Force in 1952.

2.

On becoming a columnist, Mike Royko drew on experiences from his childhood.

3.

Mike Royko began his newsman's career as a columnist in 1955 for The O'Hare News, the City News Bureau of Chicago and Lerner Newspapers' Lincoln-Belmont Booster before working at the Chicago Daily News as a reporter, becoming an irritant to the City's politicians with penetrating and skeptical questions and reports.

4.

Mike Royko covered Cook County politics and government in a weekly political column, soon supplemented with a second, weekly column reporting about Chicago's folk music scene.

5.

Mike Royko's column appeared five days a week until 1992, when he cut back to four days a week.

6.

In 1984, Rupert Murdoch, for whom Mike Royko said he would never work, bought the Sun-Times.

7.

Mike Royko then worked for the rival Chicago Tribune, a paper he had said he'd never work for and at which he never felt comfortable.

8.

In 1976, a Mike Royko column criticized the Chicago Police Department for providing an around-the-clock security for Frank Sinatra.

9.

Mike Royko auctioned the letter, the proceeds going to the Salvation Army.

10.

In 1973, Mike Royko collected several of the Grobnik columns in a collection titled Slats Grobnik and Other Friends.

11.

Mike Royko's columns were syndicated country-wide in more than 600 newspapers.

12.

Mike Royko produced more than 7,500 columns in a four-decade career.

13.

Mike Royko married Carol Duckman in 1954, and they had two sons, David and Robert.

14.

Mike Royko suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died on September 19,1979, Royko's 47th birthday.

15.

In 1986, Mike Royko married Judy Arndt, who had worked as the head of the Sun-Times public service office and was a tennis instructor.

16.

Mike Royko was a fervent devotee of 16-inch softball as a player and team sponsor.

17.

Mike Royko became a father at the age of 26 when his wife gave birth to a boy.

18.

Mike Royko was a life-long fan and critic of the Chicago Cubs.

19.

Berler and Mike Royko predicted that the heavily favored Oakland Athletics, who had a "critical mass" of ex-Cubs players on their Series roster, would lose the championship to the Cincinnati Reds.

20.

The Reds achieved an upset outcome in a four-game sweep of the A's, with Mike Royko's sponsorship propelling the Ex-Cubs Factor theory into the spotlight.

21.

Mike Royko's body is entombed in Acacia Mausoleum, Acacia Park Cemetery, Chicago.