It was 1975, in a box at the old Soldier Field, when Virginia Halas McCaskey got an up-close view of what owning an NFL team was like.
She shared the box — it was very basic — with her husband and brother, as well as the Chicago Bears’ general manager at the time, Jim Finks. And with her father, George Halas, one of the founders of the NFL.
On Thursday, McCaskey — a rare woman in the NFL’s ownership ranks — died at the age of 102, ending an enduring link to the earliest days of the league.
As a toddler, McCaskey had gone along on the Red Grange barnstorming tour in 1925 — an event staged by her father after he signed Grange, helping get the NFL off the ground — an appropriate beginning for the woman who would become, as former commissioner Paul Tagliabue used to introduce her, “the first lady of the NFL.”
“While we are sad, we are comforted knowing Virginia Halas McCaskey lived a long, full, faith-filled life and is now with the love of her life on earth,” the family said in a press release from the team on Thursday.
“She guided the Bears for four decades and based every business decision on what was best for Bears players, coaches, staff and fans.”
Until late in her life, McCaskey followed the same routine, rising early at her modest Chicago-area home to attend Mass. While she still went to every Bears game and agonized over the results — after her son, George, fired the coach and general manager following a dismal 5-11 season in 2014, he famously said his mother was “pissed off” — the franchise was run by president Ted Phillips, the first person who was not a member of the Halas family to hold that title, from 1999 through his retirement following the 2022 season.
Kevin Warren has manned the post, serving as team president and CEO, since 2023.
