John R. Reilly, AdviserTo Mondale, 80, NY Times
DGH
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/us/16reilly.html?ref=obituaries
John R. Reilly, Adviser to Mondale, Is Dead at 80
By DENNIS HEVESI [New York Times]
John R. Reilly, a close adviser to a string of Democratic presidential
candidates since the Kennedy years, and particularly to his longtime friend
Walter F. Mondale, died Sunday [O ctober 12, 2008] in Washington [DC]. Mr.
Reilly, who in the 1960s was an influential member of the Federal Trade
Commission, was 80 and lived in Washington [DC].
The cause was abdominal cancer, said his wife, Margaret Warner, a senior
correspondent on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS.
Mr. Reilly was a campaign aide to John F. Kennedy, in 1960; Robert F.
Kennedy, in 1968; Senator Edmund S. Muskie, in 1972; Senator Edward M.
Kennedy, in 1980; Mr. Mondale, in 1984; and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., now
the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, in 1987.
But it was with Mr. Mondale that Mr. Reilly's influence was most
significant, in a relationship that began with a barroom argument in 1959 in
Miami [Florida].
"About 3 o'clock in the morning we both ended up down in that bar," Mr.
Mondale said on Monday. "He was lobbying for John Kennedy, and I was down
there working for Hubert Humphrey. We got in a hell of an argument." The
outcome was mutual respect.
Mr. Reilly was a senior adviser in Mr. Mondale's unsuccessful bid to unseat
President Ronald Reagan in 1984. He headed the search committee that led to
the selection of Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York [New York]
as Mr. Mondale's running mate.
In June 1964, Mr. Reilly was one of three members of the Federal Trade
Commission whose votes, in accordance with the findings of the surgeon
general, required cigarette packages to carry the label warning that smoking
was dangerous to health.
After resigning from the commission in 1967, Mr. Reilly became a partner in
the law firm of Pierson, Ball & Dowd in Washington [DC]. Five years later,
he was the founding partner of the Washington office of the law firm Winston
& Strawn, which was based in Chicago. After President Jimmy Carter was
defeated for re-election in 1980, Mr. Reilly brought Mr. Mondale into his
law firm; they soon began planning Mr. Mondale's 1984 campaign.
John Richard Reilly was born in Dubuque, Iowa, on June 4, 1928, the only
child of William and Stella Vogenthaler Reilly. He graduated from the
University of Iowa in 1952 and earned a law degree there in 1955.
Mr. Reilly's first marriage, to the former Susan Loosbrock, ended in
divorce. Besides Ms. Warner, whom he married in 1986, he is survived by four
sons, John Jr., Paul, Thomas and Patrick; two daughters, Marie Kerins and
Susan Kathleen Reilly; and four grandchildren.
After graduating from law school, Mr. Reilly was hired as a trial lawyer in
Chicago [Illinois] for the Justice Department's antitrust division. Mr.
Reilly joined John Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1960, and later
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy chose him as one of his closest aides.
On August 28, 1963, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I
Have a Dream" speech before 250,000 civil rights supporters in Washington
[DC], Mr. Reilly was given an unusual assignment by the Kennedy
administration.
As the television correspondent Roger Mudd wrote in his book "The Place to
Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News" (PublicAffairs),
Mr. Reilly told him that "he was stationed at the Lincoln Memorial, equipped
with a cutoff switch on the sound system if the rhetoric got too
inflammatory. 'We had a turntable hooked up to play music, if necessary,'
Reilly said." Mr. Reilly had picked a 78-r.p.m. recording of Mahalia Jackson
singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."