It wasn’t unusual for former Ald. Edward M. Burke to give an impromptu lesson on Chicago’s past and its colorful characters during his more than half-century at City Hall.
Burke, who sat on the City Council for 54 years, was never going to be relegated to the footnotes of Chicago history. He controlled which Cook County judges would be slated, ran the City Council’s powerful Finance Committee and, as a private lawyer, catered to wealthy interests seeking big cuts in their property taxes — including, at one point, companies owned by Donald Trump.
