Illinois State Society of Washington, DC

Illinois Hall of Fame: Scott Turow

By Mark Rhoads

Scott Turow has lived in the Chicago area most of his life.  He is currently practicing criminal law in Chicago and is also one of America's most popular novelists who specializes in intricate crime mysteries. Three of his books have been made into feature films starting with Presumed Innocent in 1990 starring Illinois-native Harrison Ford. Scott was born in Chicago on April 12, 1949 and raised in the northern suburbs. He graduated from New Trier High School in 1966.  In 1970 Scott graduated with honors with a B.A. in English from Amherst College.  He went on to study writing at Stanford University where he received an M.A. in 1974.

Scott taught at Stanford from 1972 to 1975 and attended Harvard Law School from 1975 to 1978 when he received his Juris Doctor degree. He became a trustee of Amherst in 2002.  From 1978 to 1986, Scott was an Assistant U. S. Attorney for the Northern District in Chicago. He was one of the prosecutors in the tax fraud trial of former Illinois Treasurer and Attorney General William J. Scott and was also a prosecutor of Cook County judges in the Operation Greylord cases. In addition to two non-fiction books, he is the author of seven best-selling novels including Presumed Innocent (1987), The Burden of Proof (1990), Pleading Guilty (1993), The Laws of Our Fathers (1996), Personal Injuries (1999), Reversible Errors (2002) and Ordinary Heroes (2005).

By Mark Rhoads

Scott Turow has lived in the Chicago area most of his life.  He is currently practicing criminal law in Chicago and is also one of America's most popular novelists who specializes in intricate crime mysteries. Three of his books have been made into feature films starting with Presumed Innocent in 1990 starring Illinois-native Harrison Ford. Scott was born in Chicago on April 12, 1949 and raised in the northern suburbs. He graduated from New Trier High School in 1966.  In 1970 Scott graduated with honors with a B.A. in English from Amherst College.  He went on to study writing at Stanford University where he received an M.A. in 1974.

Scott taught at Stanford from 1972 to 1975 and attended Harvard Law School from 1975 to 1978 when he received his Juris Doctor degree. He became a trustee of Amherst in 2002.  From 1978 to 1986, Scott was an Assistant U. S. Attorney for the Northern District in Chicago. He was one of the prosecutors in the tax fraud trial of former Illinois Treasurer and Attorney General William J. Scott and was also a prosecutor of Cook County judges in the Operation Greylord cases. In addition to two non-fiction books, he is the author of seven best-selling novels including Presumed Innocent (1987), The Burden of Proof (1990), Pleading Guilty (1993), The Laws of Our Fathers (1996), Personal Injuries (1999), Reversible Errors (2002) and Ordinary Heroes (2005).

Illinois Hall of Fame: John Gunther

By Mark Rhoads

John Gunther was the best selling author of 28 books including Inside Europe in 1936 and many "Inside" geo-political travel books.  John was born on the North Side of Chicago on Aug. 30, 1901. He attended Lake View High School at 4015 N. Ashland Avenue and wrote for the student magazine.  At age 16, he wrote an article on the Russian Revolution and would revisit the topic of Russia many times in his life culminating with his 1958 book Inside Russia Today. As an English major at the University of Chicago, he was 20 years old when he started writing book reviews for the campus newspaper, the Daily Maroon. John graduated from the University of Chicago in 1922 and was awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key.

In late 1922, after he bicycled across Europe, John started to work as a cub reporter for The Chicago Daily News earning a salary of $15 per week. Gunther went to Wyoming in 1924 to write about the great oil deposit scandal of the Harding Administration called Teapot Dome. He wrote: "Teapot Dome has no resemblance whatever to a teapot [or] to a dome."  His bad jokes notwithstanding, in fact his series was ranked among the best news stories of 1924.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Betty Friedan

By Mark Rhoads

Betty Friedan was a controversial author who advocated a radical brand of feminism.  She was born on Feb. 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois and raised in the city. Her birth name was Bettye Naomi Goldstein.  Her father Harry Goldstein was an immigrant to Peoria from Kiev, Russia who peddled buttons on the street when he first arrived and became the proprietor of a jewelry shop in Peoria that he advertised as "the finest jewelry store in the middle west." One family member called the store "the Tiffany's of Peoria" perhaps in a humorous vein and perhaps not.

Betty's mother was Miriam Horowitz Goldstein who was born in America and was a graduate of Bradley University.  Miriam was editor of the society page for a local newspaper.  Miriam's father was a Hungarian immigrant and doctor who became public health commissioner of Peoria after World War I when Betty was a small child.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Edgar Rice Burroughs

By Mark Rhoads

Famous American author Edgar Rice Burroughs was the creator of Tarzan and other popular literary characters in the early part of the 20th Century. Edgar was born in Chicago on Sept. 1, 1875. He was the youngest in the family after two of five brothers died as infants. His father was a former Union officer, Maj. George Tyler Burroughs and his mother was Mary Burroughs. The family lived in a three-story brick house at 646 Washington Boulevard on the West Side between Lincoln and Robey Streets.

When Edgar was growing up in Chicago there were often contagious diseases that spread among children and caused the shut down of classes and interruption of school work.  Edgar's parents tried to protect him from a dangerous influenza in 1891 by putting him on a train to Idaho where is older brothers George and Harry worked on a cattle ranch.  Edgar loved the life on the frontier ranch for a half-year but then was send to Phillips Andover Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. But he did not like Andover so his father sent him to Michigan Military Academy at Orchard Lake. It is believed that Edgar drove the first "horseless carriage" or automobile in Chicago in 1893 due to his father's position with American Battery Company. Burroughs graduated from MMA in 1895 and stayed on for a while as an instructor. In 1896 he went to Arizona to join the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, former regiment of George Armstrong Custer, but he was discharged a year later with no adventure to add to his resume.

By Mark Rhoads

Famous American author Edgar Rice Burroughs was the creator of Tarzan and other popular literary characters in the early part of the 20th Century. Edgar was born in Chicago on Sept. 1, 1875. He was the youngest in the family after two of five brothers died as infants. His father was a former Union officer, Maj. George Tyler Burroughs and his mother was Mary Burroughs. The family lived in a three-story brick house at 646 Washington Boulevard on the West Side between Lincoln and Robey Streets.

When Edgar was growing up in Chicago there were often contagious diseases that spread among children and caused the shut down of classes and interruption of school work.  Edgar's parents tried to protect him from a dangerous influenza in 1891 by putting him on a train to Idaho where is older brothers George and Harry worked on a cattle ranch.  Edgar loved the life on the frontier ranch for a half-year but then was send to Phillips Andover Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. But he did not like Andover so his father sent him to Michigan Military Academy at Orchard Lake. It is believed that Edgar drove the first "horseless carriage" or automobile in Chicago in 1893 due to his father's position with American Battery Company. Burroughs graduated from MMA in 1895 and stayed on for a while as an instructor. In 1896 he went to Arizona to join the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, former regiment of George Armstrong Custer, but he was discharged a year later with no adventure to add to his resume.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Studs Terkel

By Mark Rhoads

It might or might not have been a coincidence, but when Hollywood casting agents selected the actors for Eight Men Out in 1988, they chose several actors with close Illinois ties that certainly looked authentic in their parts as characters from the Black Sox Scandal of 1919.  Studs Terkel was one of those who played a quintessential Chicago newspaper reporter.  Another was John Mahoney from Quincy, Illinois who played White Sox Manager Kid Gleason and the great character actor John Anderson from Clayton, Illinois who played Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Bob Woodward

By Mark Rhoads

Washington Post investigative reporter and author Bob Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois on March 26, 1943.  He was raised in Wheaton and graduated in 1961 from what was then called the Wheaton Community High School. His mother was Jane Woodward and his father was Judge Alfred E. Woodward, a circuit court judge of the 19th Circuit in Du Page County. Judge Woodward was first elected as a Republican. Other members of Bob's family including his uncle practiced law in Wheaton and the family was considered prominent in Wheaton long before Bob went to college.

Classmate Craig Simpson, who was campaign manager for Bob's losing campaign for student council president in high school, told one biographer, Adrian Havill, that "He was always well-intended but remote...In many ways, he was like Nixon."

By Mark Rhoads

Washington Post investigative reporter and author Bob Woodward was born in Geneva, Illinois on March 26, 1943.  He was raised in Wheaton and graduated in 1961 from what was then called the Wheaton Community High School. His mother was Jane Woodward and his father was Judge Alfred E. Woodward, a circuit court judge of the 19th Circuit in Du Page County. Judge Woodward was first elected as a Republican. Other members of Bob's family including his uncle practiced law in Wheaton and the family was considered prominent in Wheaton long before Bob went to college.

Classmate Craig Simpson, who was campaign manager for Bob's losing campaign for student council president in high school, told one biographer, Adrian Havill, that "He was always well-intended but remote...In many ways, he was like Nixon."

Illinois Hall of Fame: Henry Regnery, Sr.

By Mark Rhoads

It is hard to imagine a more important leader in the American conservative movement in the last half of the 20th Century than Henry Regnery.  Henry and his Chicago-based publishing company were the essential elements in giving new conservative professors and authors a means to share their ideas with the reading public.  Before Henry, it was extremely difficult for conservative authors to find any publisher for their work. Those ideas eventually laid the intellectual groundwork for Sen. Barry Goldwater's campaign in 1964 and the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1989.

Mr. Regnery was born on Jan. 5, 1912 in Hinsdale, Illinois. He graduated from MIT in 1933 with a B.S. in mathematics. He spent two years studying at the University of Bonn, Germany but returned to America in 1935 to study economics at Harvard University. In about 1937, Regnery was an active member of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that was then active in helping jobless victims of the Depression. Regnery helped to start, and then later ran, a knitting mill in western Pennsylvania to provide jobs for unemployed coal miners.

In 1947, he founded Henry Regnery Company book publishers in Chicago to help conservative authors. But the company published other works as well including poetry.  Among the early conservative books were God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, Jr and The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk, Witness by Whitaker Chambers, and The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry M. Goldwater.  The company also published works for the University of Chicago.

Books written by Regnery himself include Creative Chicago: From the Chap-Book to the University and Cliff Dwellers: The History of a Chicago Cultural Institution. Mr. Regnery played the cello and loved music.  He was a long-time member and benefactor of the American Conservatory of Music.

By Mark Rhoads

It is hard to imagine a more important leader in the American conservative movement in the last half of the 20th Century than Henry Regnery.  Henry and his Chicago-based publishing company were the essential elements in giving new conservative professors and authors a means to share their ideas with the reading public.  Before Henry, it was extremely difficult for conservative authors to find any publisher for their work. Those ideas eventually laid the intellectual groundwork for Sen. Barry Goldwater's campaign in 1964 and the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1989.

Mr. Regnery was born on Jan. 5, 1912 in Hinsdale, Illinois. He graduated from MIT in 1933 with a B.S. in mathematics. He spent two years studying at the University of Bonn, Germany but returned to America in 1935 to study economics at Harvard University. In about 1937, Regnery was an active member of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that was then active in helping jobless victims of the Depression. Regnery helped to start, and then later ran, a knitting mill in western Pennsylvania to provide jobs for unemployed coal miners.

In 1947, he founded Henry Regnery Company book publishers in Chicago to help conservative authors. But the company published other works as well including poetry.  Among the early conservative books were God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, Jr and The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk, Witness by Whitaker Chambers, and The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry M. Goldwater.  The company also published works for the University of Chicago.

Books written by Regnery himself include Creative Chicago: From the Chap-Book to the University and Cliff Dwellers: The History of a Chicago Cultural Institution. Mr. Regnery played the cello and loved music.  He was a long-time member and benefactor of the American Conservatory of Music.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Vachel Lindsay

By Mark Rhoads

It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

From Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight by Vachel Lindsay.

Vachel Linday was an American poet, writer, mystic, public speaker, and artist whose work was particularly admired in some religious revival circles early in the Twntieth Century.

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois on Nov. 10, 1879. His father was Dr. Vachel Thomas Lindsay, a physician, and his mother was Caterhine Frazee.  His parents were Cambellites, a church founded in 1830 by the Scotch-Irish clergyman Alexander Campbell. The Cambellites emphasized education, individual spiritual life, and the missionary role of American democracy. The Cambellites also hopes for one nondemoniational Christian Church. These beliefs had a great influence on Vachel's career as a poet, pamphleteer, and lecturer.

Vachel graduated from Springfield High School in 1897 and began to study medicine at a Cambellite school, Hiram College in Ohio. He was a student at Hiram until 1899 but did not get a degree and left college to return to Springfield. 

By Mark Rhoads

It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

From Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight by Vachel Lindsay.

Vachel Linday was an American poet, writer, mystic, public speaker, and artist whose work was particularly admired in some religious revival circles early in the Twntieth Century.

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois on Nov. 10, 1879. His father was Dr. Vachel Thomas Lindsay, a physician, and his mother was Caterhine Frazee.  His parents were Cambellites, a church founded in 1830 by the Scotch-Irish clergyman Alexander Campbell. The Cambellites emphasized education, individual spiritual life, and the missionary role of American democracy. The Cambellites also hopes for one nondemoniational Christian Church. These beliefs had a great influence on Vachel's career as a poet, pamphleteer, and lecturer.

Vachel graduated from Springfield High School in 1897 and began to study medicine at a Cambellite school, Hiram College in Ohio. He was a student at Hiram until 1899 but did not get a degree and left college to return to Springfield. 

Illinois Hall of Fame: Gwendolyn Brooks

By Mark Rhoads

In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks of Chicago became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize. In 1968, the Illinois General Assembly asked her to become the Poet Laureate of Illinois after the death of Carl Sandburg who had been named to that post in 1962.

Gwendolyn was born on June 17, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas and her family moved to the South Side of Chicago shortly after her birth. During the Depression, she attended three different high schools, all with different racial dynamics. They were at that time the mostly white Hyde Park High School, the mostly black Wendell Phillips High School, and finally the integrated Englewood High School.

In 1936, Gwendolyn graduated from the then new Woodrow Wilson Junior College at 6800 S. Wentworth. The school's name was changed in 1969 to Kennedy-King College in honor of two national leaders assassinated in 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to Kenny Jackson Williams in Modern American Poetry Magazine, the next years were the most important of her life in shaping her writing career. Few Chicagoans today understand the international importance of Hariet Monroe and her small-circulation Poetry Magazine that was founded in Chicago early in the 20th Century. The tiny magazine was considered the most prestigious venue in the world for any poet and it gave a tremenous boost to Illinois poets such as Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, and Vachel Lindsay. The magazine paradoxically transformed the rough and unrefined "city of the big shoulders" into the world capital of poetry. Williams writes about Brooks: 

"Her profound interest in poetry informed much of her early life. "Eventide," her first poem, was published in American Childhood Magazine in 1930. A few years later she met James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, who urged her to read modern poetry--especially the work of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and e. c. cummings--and who emphasized the need to write as much and as frequently as she possibly could. By 1934 Brooks had become an adjunct member of the staff of the Chicago Defender and had published almost one hundred of her poems in a weekly poetry column."

"In 1938 she married Henry Blakely and moved to a kitchenette apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Between the birth of her first child, Henry, Jr., in 1940 and the birth of Nora in 1951, she became associated with the group of writers involved in Harriet Monroe's still-extant Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. From this group she received further encouragement, and by 1943 she had won the Midwestern Writers Conference Poetry Award."

"In 1945 her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville (published by Harper and Row), brought her instant critical acclaim. She was selected one of Mademoiselle magazine's "Ten Young Women of the Year," she won her first Guggenheim Fellowship, and she became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her second book of poems, Annie Allen (1949), won Poetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize. In 1950 Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. From that time to the present, she has seen the recipient of a number of awards, fellowships, and honorary degrees usually designated as Doctor of Humane Letters."

"President John Kennedy invited her to read at a Library of Congress poetry festival in 1962. In 1985 she was appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. Just as receiving a Pulitzer Prize for poetry marked a milestone in her career, so also did her selection by the National Endowment for the Humanities as the 1994 Jefferson Lecturer, the highest award in the humanities given by the federal government."

"Her first teaching job was a poetry workshop at Columbia College (Chicago) in 1963. She went on to teach creative writing at a number of institutions including Northeastern Illinois University, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, Clay College of New York, and the University of Wisconsin."

Gwendolyn Brooks died on Dec. 3, 2000. In 2003, the Illinois State Library in Springfield was renamed as the Gwendolyn Brooks Illinois State Library in her honor. For a sample of some poems, prose, and essays on the work of Gwendolyn Brooks, click here to see her home page on the Modern American Poetry Web Site.

By Mark Rhoads

In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks of Chicago became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize. In 1968, the Illinois General Assembly asked her to become the Poet Laureate of Illinois after the death of Carl Sandburg who had been named to that post in 1962.

Gwendolyn was born on June 17, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas and her family moved to the South Side of Chicago shortly after her birth. During the Depression, she attended three different high schools, all with different racial dynamics. They were at that time the mostly white Hyde Park High School, the mostly black Wendell Phillips High School, and finally the integrated Englewood High School.

In 1936, Gwendolyn graduated from the then new Woodrow Wilson Junior College at 6800 S. Wentworth. The school's name was changed in 1969 to Kennedy-King College in honor of two national leaders assassinated in 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to Kenny Jackson Williams in Modern American Poetry Magazine, the next years were the most important of her life in shaping her writing career. Few Chicagoans today understand the international importance of Hariet Monroe and her small-circulation Poetry Magazine that was founded in Chicago early in the 20th Century. The tiny magazine was considered the most prestigious venue in the world for any poet and it gave a tremenous boost to Illinois poets such as Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, and Vachel Lindsay. The magazine paradoxically transformed the rough and unrefined "city of the big shoulders" into the world capital of poetry. Williams writes about Brooks: 

"Her profound interest in poetry informed much of her early life. "Eventide," her first poem, was published in American Childhood Magazine in 1930. A few years later she met James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, who urged her to read modern poetry--especially the work of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and e. c. cummings--and who emphasized the need to write as much and as frequently as she possibly could. By 1934 Brooks had become an adjunct member of the staff of the Chicago Defender and had published almost one hundred of her poems in a weekly poetry column."

"In 1938 she married Henry Blakely and moved to a kitchenette apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Between the birth of her first child, Henry, Jr., in 1940 and the birth of Nora in 1951, she became associated with the group of writers involved in Harriet Monroe's still-extant Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. From this group she received further encouragement, and by 1943 she had won the Midwestern Writers Conference Poetry Award."

"In 1945 her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville (published by Harper and Row), brought her instant critical acclaim. She was selected one of Mademoiselle magazine's "Ten Young Women of the Year," she won her first Guggenheim Fellowship, and she became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her second book of poems, Annie Allen (1949), won Poetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize. In 1950 Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. From that time to the present, she has seen the recipient of a number of awards, fellowships, and honorary degrees usually designated as Doctor of Humane Letters."

"President John Kennedy invited her to read at a Library of Congress poetry festival in 1962. In 1985 she was appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. Just as receiving a Pulitzer Prize for poetry marked a milestone in her career, so also did her selection by the National Endowment for the Humanities as the 1994 Jefferson Lecturer, the highest award in the humanities given by the federal government."

"Her first teaching job was a poetry workshop at Columbia College (Chicago) in 1963. She went on to teach creative writing at a number of institutions including Northeastern Illinois University, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, Clay College of New York, and the University of Wisconsin."

Gwendolyn Brooks died on Dec. 3, 2000. In 2003, the Illinois State Library in Springfield was renamed as the Gwendolyn Brooks Illinois State Library in her honor. For a sample of some poems, prose, and essays on the work of Gwendolyn Brooks, click here to see her home page on the Modern American Poetry Web Site.

Illinois Hall of Fame: George Will

By Mark Rhoads

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author George F. Will was born on May 4, 1941 in Champaign, Illinois. His parents were Fred and Louise Will. His father was a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois. Louise Will died in 2006 at age 98.

George attended grade schools in Champaign. He then studied at the elite University Laboratory High School on the campus of the University of Illinois in Urbana. The 'Uni High" school can take students as young as sixth grade by application. The high school has graduated four Nobel Prize winners and was named in 2006 by NEWSWEEK Magazine as a "public elite" in their list of only 21 best schools in America.

Will attended Trinity College in Connecticut and Oxford University in England. While he was at Trinity in 1960, Will was co-chair of the Trinity College Students for Kennedy. But while at Oxford, he began to reject the dominant anti-capitalist and leftist philosophy of the Oxford faculty. He appeared to be following in his father's career of teaching when he earned a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University in 1967.

By 1967, Will was solidly in the conservative Republican camp.  He taught at Michigan State University and the University of Toronto. But in 1970 he left the academic life to work in Washington, DC for Sen. Gordon Allot (R-Colorado).

In 1973 Will became the Washington editor of National Review. He resigned as editor in 1975, but by this time he was already syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, and by 1976 he became a contributing editor for Newsweek. Beginning in 1977 Will was a television commentator for Agronsky and Company and in 1981 for This Week with David Brinkley. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary writing in 1977.

George Will continues to write a syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group and continued to be a commentator for ABC News. He is the author of many books on politics and baseball. The dark side of George Will is a common affliction for many native Illinoisans, he continues to have a weak spot for the Chicago Cubs. His son is an Orioles fan. George is a member of the Washington-based Emil Verban Society of Cub fans both in Illinois and in Washington. The society meets every two years for a lunch in Washington.

By Mark Rhoads

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author George F. Will was born on May 4, 1941 in Champaign, Illinois. His parents were Fred and Louise Will. His father was a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois. Louise Will died in 2006 at age 98.

George attended grade schools in Champaign. He then studied at the elite University Laboratory High School on the campus of the University of Illinois in Urbana. The 'Uni High" school can take students as young as sixth grade by application. The high school has graduated four Nobel Prize winners and was named in 2006 by NEWSWEEK Magazine as a "public elite" in their list of only 21 best schools in America.

Will attended Trinity College in Connecticut and Oxford University in England. While he was at Trinity in 1960, Will was co-chair of the Trinity College Students for Kennedy. But while at Oxford, he began to reject the dominant anti-capitalist and leftist philosophy of the Oxford faculty. He appeared to be following in his father's career of teaching when he earned a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University in 1967.

By 1967, Will was solidly in the conservative Republican camp.  He taught at Michigan State University and the University of Toronto. But in 1970 he left the academic life to work in Washington, DC for Sen. Gordon Allot (R-Colorado).

In 1973 Will became the Washington editor of National Review. He resigned as editor in 1975, but by this time he was already syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, and by 1976 he became a contributing editor for Newsweek. Beginning in 1977 Will was a television commentator for Agronsky and Company and in 1981 for This Week with David Brinkley. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary writing in 1977.

George Will continues to write a syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group and continued to be a commentator for ABC News. He is the author of many books on politics and baseball. The dark side of George Will is a common affliction for many native Illinoisans, he continues to have a weak spot for the Chicago Cubs. His son is an Orioles fan. George is a member of the Washington-based Emil Verban Society of Cub fans both in Illinois and in Washington. The society meets every two years for a lunch in Washington.