HYDE PARK — Bruce Sagan, a Hyde Parker who counted amongst his many achievements a presidential recognition, the relocation of a prestigious ballet firm to Chicago and 7 many years on the helm of his neighborhood newspaper, died Sunday following a quick battle with most cancers.
Sagan, 96, was a longtime newspaperman, arts patron and “renaissance man” immediately recognizable by his bowtie and cardigan, family members stated.
He rescued native newspaper the Hyde Park Herald from a seemingly sure demise in 1953, and formed it right into a paper with a penchant for element, an activist bent and a dedication to the distinctive group it served. 5 years later, he bought the Southtown Economist, which grew into a sequence with 28 publications at its peak.
Sagan was additionally a mainstay in native performing and advantageous arts scenes. He and Bette Cerf Hill, his spouse of 5 many years, helped create the Printers Row Lit Fest and relocate the Joffrey Ballet from New York Metropolis to Chicago, the place the latter firm has remained lively for 30 years. Sagan obtained a Nationwide Medal of Arts from President Joe Biden in 2024.
He served in management positions with an array of civic establishments, together with the Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Solar-Instances, classical and people radio station WFMT, Chicago Housing Authority, Illinois Housing Growth Authority and the Illinois Arts Council.
“He had a number of communities. Hyde Park was close to and pricey to his coronary heart, however he thought of all of Chicago his group,” Hill stated.
Sagan is survived by Hill, two sons from his first marriage to Judith Sagan, three stepdaughters, 12 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren.
Members of the family have requested, in lieu of flowers, that mourners donate to charities and establishments, together with the Joffrey Ballet, Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago Public Library Basis and the Bard Jail Initiative.
A ‘Ethical Imaginative and prescient’ Of Journalism
Sagan was born Feb. 1, 1929, in Summit, New Jersey, to George and Esther Sagan, Jewish immigrants from what’s now western Ukraine, in accordance with his obituary.
His cousin was famed astronomer Carl Sagan.
Bruce Sagan first moved to Hyde Park in 1946 to attend the College of Chicago, the place he transferred after one time period on the College of Wisconsin.
He entered the college’s undergraduate program — “I by no means completed,” he advised Block Membership in 2022. He’d later enter its legislation faculty. “I by no means completed,” he stated.
A UChicago professor as soon as quipped that he missed so many lessons, it was solely by studying his writings within the Chicago Maroon that the professor might affirm he was an lively pupil on the college, Sagan stated.
That’s to not say younger Sagan was a slacker — he labored numerous jobs, together with driving a cab and dealing a Campbell’s Soup manufacturing facility line to make V8 vegetable juice.
He additionally participated in protests for civil rights, stated his granddaughter, Jessica Neptune.
Sagan was amongst a bunch of scholars who, in 1947, “received a maintain of assembly minutes from the College of Chicago’s medical faculty that proved they debated and determined to not admit Black college students,” Neptune stated.
“The best way Bruce tells it’s, whereas college students had been on the street protesting, he was working the telephones to [secure] press protection,” she stated. “He was very happy with a few of that early activism.”
Sagan entered journalism in 1951, securing a job as a “copy boy” for the Hearst Worldwide Information Service.
He then labored about two years as an in a single day editor for the legendary Metropolis Information Bureau. Staffers half-joked that their midnight-8 a.m. shift coated the Mafia assassinations beat, he stated.
As Sagan sought a extra sustainable reporting gig in 1953, he was turned down for a place with the Solar-Instances, the place he would later return to function chairman.
Shortly after the rejection, a bunch of Hyde Parkers approached Sagan, who by then was a 24-year-old “public citizen” who devoted his time to dam golf equipment and different group initiatives, he stated.
The neighbors wished the budding reporter to contemplate shopping for the failing Hyde Park Herald, whose writer had already introduced the paper’s demise.
Given the Herald’s precarious funds, the thought “was clearly scary, however very engaging,” Sagan stated. The 24-year-old Sagan borrowed $2,500 from family members to take over the paper, which ran the subsequent week with out interruption.
Hyde Park’s “city renewal” venture — a controversial, decades-long redevelopment plan that adopted widespread demolitions and noticed a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} poured into the group — obtained specific consideration from the paper in Sagan’s early years.
The Herald printed the city renewal plans that might be handed by Metropolis Council in 1958 “so the group might see them and talk about them”; wrote about neighborhood crime, “which was excessive on [neighbors’] listing of considerations”; and promoted the Whistle Cease crime prevention program, Sagan stated.
“This concept that you can re-plan an present space, maintain individuals in it and nonetheless do issues to modernize that group, that was a brand new concept,” Sagan stated. “It wanted explaining … and it wanted a car which might talk to the group its particulars that different journalistic enterprises wouldn’t do.
“A Downtown each day newspaper overlaying the whole metropolitan space was by no means going to do it,” he stated.
Underneath Sagan’s management, the Herald “went into element of an intimately small variety” because it coated urgent neighborhood points, he stated. The paper additionally mirrored Sagan’s “ethical imaginative and prescient,” together with “forceful” and “unprecedented” commentary in its information articles, Neptune stated.
Such detailed protection was no small activity for a skeleton crew that at occasions was simply Sagan, maybe one different journalist and an editor, he stated.
Sagan spent “about 200 hours per week” placing the paper to print, distributing it and securing ads from native companies and for the classifieds part, he joked.
In 1958, 5 years after taking on the Herald, Sagan bought the Southtown Economist, which grew into a sequence of 28 publications.
The papers ultimately merged into one each day paper within the south suburbs, which was a predecessor to the Every day Southtown. Sagan offered the Southtown in 1986, reportedly for $40 million, and retired from it two years later.
Sagan continued on the Herald’s helm till 2022, when he transferred the paper to an nonprofit led by one other group information outlet, the South Facet Weekly. His 69-year run with the Herald made a “basic influence on newspapers and information within the metropolis, in addition to nationally,” then-South Facet Weekly writer Jason Schumer stated in 2022.
The grassroots journalism present in Sagan’s papers influenced Chicago’s fashionable impartial media ecosystem, stated Charles Whitaker, dean of the Medill Faculty of Journalism, Media and Built-in Advertising Communications at Northwestern College and a Block Membership Chicago board member.
Whereas fashionable depictions of newspapers rejoice the “investigations that deliver nice establishments to heel,” the Herald and Southtown papers pioneered reporting that holds “a mirror as much as [a] group, enabling it to see itself in all of its joys and sorrows,” Whitaker stated.
“Bruce demonstrated you are able to do that [style of reporting] and nonetheless be extremely profitable and have a fantastic life,” Whitaker stated.
Sagan’s work served as a mannequin for different neighborhood shops trying to change into “trusted members and trusted establishments in the neighborhood, and never simply people who’re parachuting in when there’s something extraordinary occurring,” Whitaker stated.
Laura Washington, a contributing columnist on the Tribune and political analyst with ABC7, stated her mom, a Hyde Park resident, “was an enormous Hyde Park Herald fan.”
Sagan’s papers “charted a imaginative and prescient of what journalism could possibly be earlier than many different individuals had it,” backing nonprofit shops just like the Chicago Reporter — the place Washington labored as a reporter, editor and writer — and the now-defunct Chicago Information Cooperative, she stated.
To this present day, the Herald covers the group “inside and outside,” stated Washington, additionally a Block Membership Chicago board member. “It’s not only a shopper paper that covers the newest eating places that opened or the newest politicians on the scene.”
Sagan’s legacy “is that he saved the potential for necessary establishments alive, well past what some may need thought can be their expiration date,” Washington stated. “He cared a lot about these establishments; he wasn’t going to allow them to die.”
Past his journalism profession, Sagan was a tireless arts patron. He moonlighted as a Civic Opera Home usher as he established himself in journalism, a gig that allowed him to witness dance performances.
That early love of dance lasted for many years, with Sagan changing into one of many Joffrey Ballet’s inaugural board members — having helped, together with Hill, to maneuver the struggling firm from New York Metropolis in 1995.
The Joffrey’s Downtown headquarters at State and Randolph streets “wouldn’t be ours if not for Bruce’s enterprise savvy,” whereas he oversaw latest expansions to 2 new firm studios within the South Loop and a workshop house close to Halfway airport, president and CEO Greg Cameron stated.
“Bruce was as enthusiastic about what occurs on the stage as he was to how the stage was constructed and the house we used to rehearse and create,” Cameron stated. “He was fascinated by bodily house, and he was fascinated by how arts organizations activated that house and engaged artists.”
Sagan left his mark on initiatives that can proceed past his demise, together with a documentary with Kartemquin Movies on the Joffrey’s works set to air on PBS subsequent 12 months.
“For years, we’ll be speaking about Bruce was right here, Bruce was there,’” Cameron stated.
Sagan was honored Wednesday as a “life trustee” of the ballet firm. It’s an honor he refused whereas alive, as he thought of the function too passive and wished to maintain serving as a daily board member, Cameron stated.
Sagan additionally served on the board of Steppenwolf. Hill takes credit score for that connection; she was working as a historic preservationist when a coworker really helpful she try the play the coworker’s child was set to carry out in, she stated.
“I knew Bruce didn’t like novice work, so I stated, ‘Only for me, might you do me a favor?’” Hill stated. “The daddy of the person was the daddy of John Malkovich. The play was ‘Say Goodnight, Gracie.’ The corporate was the Steppenwolf.”
Sagan loved the efficiency, and the couple was moved to become involved with the Steppenwolf, Hill stated. He joined the board in 1983, turned board president and helped the corporate discover a everlasting dwelling on Halsted Avenue in 1991. Malkovich, a constitution member of the theater, feted Sagan with a script studying on his eightieth birthday.
Hill based the Printers Row E book Honest in 1985, which turned the trendy Printers Row Lit Fest. Sagan marshalled staff of his papers’ distribution heart to assist transfer and safekeep the booksellers’ wares for the inaugural affair, Hill stated.
Hill and Cameron attended Sandra Cisneros’ keynote occasion at the newest Lit Fest this month, the place Cameron was flanked by an empty seat probably supposed for Sagan, he stated.
Cameron wasn’t conscious on the time “how critical Bruce’s bodily challenges had been,” however acknowledged the absence and “felt a heat hug from him,” he stated.
Sagan’s occupations of journalism and artwork generally overlapped, with maybe no clearer instance than his possession of Hyde Park’s Harper Theater.
When the Herald’s headquarters was marked for demolition in 1960, amid the neighborhood’s city renewal venture, Sagan started on the lookout for new workplace house. He purchased the Harper Theater in 1961 and moved the paper to the theater constructing’s higher ground.
Sagan made wholesale adjustments to the theater beginning in 1964. Impressed by New York Metropolis’s off-Broadway productions, he turned the Harper into an “off-Loop” theater the place skilled actors might carry out for extra intimate audiences.
The Harper Theater held an annual dance pageant organized by Sagan and his then-wife Judith; hosted the Joffrey Ballet 30 years earlier than it might name Chicago dwelling; and was dwelling to different stay theater and dance packages earlier than it reverted to a movie show round 1970, Sagan stated. The Herald moved out of the constructing within the Eighties.
Chicago As A ‘Classroom’
Sagan was acknowledged for his many years of cultural work with the Nationwide Medal of Arts final 12 months, as Biden’s White Home credited him with “in search of the reality as a real public citizen.”
By his involvement in so many establishments, Sagan was a significant participant in establishing Chicago as a “classroom” — a spot to be taught, develop, converse and debate in public — and he occurred to be one in all its hottest instructors, Cameron stated.
Conversations with Sagan had been by no means “chitter-chatter,” and as an alternative probed how he and people round him might make town a greater place, Cameron stated. To that query, the humanities had been normally the reply.
“Bruce simply was such a trainer, however by no means in a preachy kind of means,” Cameron stated. “Some individuals prefer to make you’re feeling little once they let you know tales. Bruce was at all times telling you a narrative since you might be taught from it.”
When requested to replicate on her and her husband’s achievements over 50 years, Hill instantly named mixing their households — her three daughters and Sagan’s two sons — upon marriage as “one of the necessary” works.
For all Sagan’s titles and pursuits, “household was actually his best pleasure,” and he let that be recognized to these round him, Hill stated.
“Even at 96, he was Ubering as much as the Previous City Faculty of Music to observe his great-grandson breakdance,” Neptune stated. “He was nonetheless selling and nonetheless cheering the humanities, nonetheless studying from his great-grandson, nonetheless increasing his personal world.”
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