Chicagoans Ignore the Cold, Open Their Arms to the Champion Bears

Because a championship by a Chicago sports team is about as rare as Halley’s comet, the city bundled up against arctic weather Monday and mobbed the financial district, giving an unprecedented, roaring welcome to the Super Bowl champion Bears.

The parade, honoring the Bears for winning the first national championship by any major sports team in Chicago in 22 years, left LaSalle street buried beneath a blizzard of paper that required a fleet of snowplows to clear.

“Isn’t this sweet,” Bear kicker Kevin Butler said as the crowd cheered. “Make your plans for Pasadena,” he added, alluding to the 1987 Super Bowl game.

Said wide receiver Willie Gault: “Thank you Chicago!”

Tens of thousands of people, standing in the teeth of a whipping wind that sent the wind chill measurement to 30 degrees below zero, jammed every available space on the street and sidewalks in the five-block stretch between the Board of Trade and the Civic Center.

“We want the Bears! We want the Bears! We want the Bears!” they thundered in a chant that echoed through the Loop’s high-rise canyons.

Their numbers were so great that buses carrying the victorious Bears moved just one block in the first half hour of the parade. Most of the team and their families missed Mayor Harold Washington’s official welcome and the finale--the release of hundreds of orange and blue balloons--because police were unable to hold back the wave of people.

Several dozen people were injured, most by the crush of the crowd. Many were reported to have broken ankles. Police made a number of arrests, most for disorderly conduct.

Chicago has not had such a parade crowd in recent history, not when Pope John Paul II visited in 1979 and not when General Douglas MacArthur made his farewell visit in 1951.

“I was here for MacArthur, I was here for the (Apollo II) astronauts and this has to be 80 times bigger,” said Joseph Coriaci, 52, senior vice president of Continental Bank, whose building is located at the beginning of the city’s traditional hero’s parade route.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Roberta Santo, 44, who came to the Loop specifically for the parade. And the cold was a small price to pay, she added. “They did it for Chicago. We can do it for them.”

Said Lucia Tinaglia, 35, who stood in a 13th-floor window dumping shredded paper on the Bear’s caravan: “I’m not even a football fan, but am I excited. It’s a beautiful sight.”

Mayor Washington, wearing a Bears’ cap, told the revelers: “Don’t let anybody ever tell you you’re the Second City. You’re No. 1.”

Fans climbed lamp posts and office facades and even scaled the icy five-story tall Picasso sculpture at Daley Plaza, temporarily renamed Bears Plaza.

The party had begun Sunday night when the Bears routed the New England Patriots, 46-10, at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. It resumed early Monday afternoon as office workers left their jobs early and swarmed onto the parade route.

With a quick change in its sign, the world’s tallest building, the Sears Tower, became Bears Tower for a day. The Board of Education was compelled to broadcast radio alerts to parents that Monday was not a holiday. But some private schools did close in honor of the Bears’ victory.

Workmen had rushed to pry open high windows in the financial district that hadn’t been open in years to prepare for tossing of shredded paper.

In anticipation of the celebration, City Hall last week put out an urgent request for the shredded paper to replace ticker tape, which is virtually extinct. Chicago businesses responded with more than 100 tons of paper.

It’s been so long since the city had a ticker tape parade that the Continental Bank held classes with safety wardens to teach workers how to throw the shredded paper without throwing themselves out of windows.

“Well we didn’t want anybody falling out,” said Barbara Cella, 59, a Continental vice president who showed up for work today in a Bear T-shirt, a Bear cap, two Bear buttons, and a mink coat. “We haven’t had a winning team in my lifetime, I don’t think.”

Less hardy Chicagoans watched the parade on television. All four major TV stations in Chicago provided live coverage.

The Bears’ plane from New Orleans was more than an hour late, yet afternoon soap operas here were interrupted frequently with live updates: Bears arriving at O’Hare, Bears getting into their buses, buses heading down the John F. Kennedy Expressway, buses arriving downtown.

Eight of the team’s top players, among them running back Walter Payton and quarterback Jim McMahon, were absent. They had headed for Hawaii, site of Next Sunday’s Pro Bowl game. But the cheering fans who lined the motorcade route probably did not notice their absence, since dark tinted window glass made it difficult to see inside the buses.

Because they had come directly from the airport and warm New Orleans, many of the players were not dressed for the weather and several arrived at the Civic Center wearing Red Cross blankets wrapped around their shoulders.

The team was greeted with posters expressing their fans’ appreciation. One summed up the Super Bowl game this way: “Boston had the tea party, but Chicago had the massacre.”

And there was another sign, this one anonymously placed at the tomb of George S. Halas, founder of the Bears and one of the founders of the National Football League. It said: “Somewhere he’s doing the Super Bowl Shuffle.”