Wade Nelson started out as a journalist in Chicago before moving on to a long career as a political consultant, speechwriter and communications director for officials including the late Sen. Alan Dixon and former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Nelson was remembered for his range of interests from music and martinis to Midwestern architecture and the small southern Michigan town of Sturgis, where his ancestors settled in the 1800s and where he and his wife, Chicago Tribune columnist Ellen Warren, owned a house.
“He was curious about everything,” said Katie Lamb, who worked with Nelson in Sen. Dixon’s office.
Nelson, 70, died of gall bladder cancer Tuesday at his North Side home, according to Warren.
Edward Wade Nelson Jr. grew up in west suburban River Forest. He attended Fenwick High School in Oak Park, then graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia.
In 1970, he got a job at the City News Bureau of Chicago — where he met Warren, whom he married in 1981. He then worked for the Aurora Beacon-News and Wilmette Life before joining the Chicago Daily News and serving as a legman for the late columnist Mike Royko.
After the Daily News folded in 1978, Warren took a job with the Sun-Times in Washington. Nelson also went east, landing a job as a bureau chief with The Baltimore Sun before going to work for then-candidate Dixon, a job that took him back to Illinois. After Dixon won his first term in 1980, Nelson returned to Washington.
Nelson was executive assistant and press secretary to Dixon until 1987. He rejoined Dixon as communications director of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission when Dixon chaired that commission in the mid-1990s.
“He had wit and wisdom, and his sense of humor was a great tonic,” said Thom Serafin, also a Dixon Senate staffer. “He was so good as a writer, so fast, he could write on deadline beautifully.”
Nelson later also served as a spokesman for former Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Aurelia Pucinski, now an Illinois Appellate Court judge, and the Illinois State Board of Education. From 2007 to 2011, he was the chief speechwriter in Mayor Daley’s office.
Jacquelyn Heard, Daley’s longtime press secretary, said in an email that “Wade was a skilled writer whose quiet nature quickly dissolved when talking about his family.”
Until his retirement in 2015, he was a program officer and grant-maker at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a Michigan-based nonprofit specializing in education grants.
Through it all, at his core he was a storyteller.
“He would remember anecdotes,” said Hanke Gratteau, a longtime Chicago journalist who also was a legman for Royko. “One of us would start telling a story, and he would fill it in with the most colorful details and quotes.
“He was a student of everything he came across,” Gratteau said.
His enthusiasm for his many interests was infectious, friends said.
“Wade started me as a Cub fan, and he was my mentor when it came to jazz,” said Terry Kelleher, a friend since grade school.
Kelleher said Nelson would bring his tape recorder when the two went to games at Wrigley Field. The two would “broadcast” the game from the stands, with Nelson doing most of the play-by-play and Kelleher handling color.
“We’d have these tapes for analysis and posterity,” Kelleher said. “Unfortunately, I think they’re lost to history.”
Nelson was known as a walking encyclopedia of jazz and the Great American Songbook. He knew many of the performers and was a regular at venues such as the Acorn on Oak, Toulouse, the London House, the Green Mill and Yvette.
He also knew his way around the Washington music scene, according to Serafin, who said Nelson, his boss at the time, took him to many of the jazz joints in the capital.
Bern Colleran, a friend since their days together at City News, said going to hear live music with Nelson was always a special event. “The performers knew him, and you’d be like an honored guest if you were with him.”
“‘Bon vivant’ best describes him,” Colleran said. “He knew how to live well. He loved being with people and sharing ideas.”
Nelson also is survived by sons Ted and Emmett H.W.; a sister, Karen Nelson; and a brother, Ted Nelson.
A celebration of his life will be held at 2 p.m. Oct. 7 at Unity Temple, 875 Lake St., Oak Park, followed by a reception there.
Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter.
