Katie Nagle was the nicest person I've ever known. Not one of the nicest; literally the nicest. No exaggeration, no hyperbole. More a fact than even an opinion.
Katie was my friend since we began working together with the Bears in 2002. But she was everyone's friend. If you were lucky enough to have spent a few minutes interacting with her, you felt like you had known her forever.
Describing Katie in the past tense pains me more than words can describe. But our friend passed away Sept. 2 after an unexpected hospitalization in April. Katie was 64. Her passing sent shockwaves of sadness and grief through the same halls at Halas Hall that she had brightened for more than two decades. The Bears flag just outside of the building was lowered to half staff in her memory.
A longtime Bears executive assistant under former team president/CEO Ted Phillips and most recently chairman George H. McCaskey, Katie was universally loved by her co-workers, whom she considered a second family. They are still trying to process the gut-punch of her passing three weeks later.
"The outpouring of love and support and concern from the Bears family when she got sick was just extraordinary," McCaskey said. "I can't count the number of times somebody stopped me in the hallway and asked, 'Any update on Katie? Can we go see Katie? How's Katie?' To be revered like that, it's otherworldly."
Clearly, I'm not the only one who considers Katie the nicest person they've ever met. I asked several individuals at Halas Hall, independently, to describe her to someone who didn't know her and the responses were nearly identical.
"She was the nicest person on the planet," McCaskey said. "She had an extraordinary capacity for making whoever she was talking to or dealing with feel like they were the most important person in the world to Katie in that moment."
"She was the kindest person that walked the face of the earth," said Sharon Lehner, a longtime Bears employee whose cubicle was next to Katie's. "There wasn't anybody she wouldn't go out of her way to help. There wasn't anybody she didn't try to do something for. She liked people and liked being with people and helping people."
"She really made everyone feel like they were the most important person," said Jessica Noonan, a Bears staffer since 2000 who is currently a community outreach and alumni relations specialist. "She not only cared for you but for your family, your kids. I think she wrote and sent more cards than anyone we knew and didn't miss a birthday. If you knew her, if you had any experience with her, she'd remind you of how wonderful it was every time she saw you."
Katie shared a birthday with Noonan's 8-year-old daughter, Shea.
"Shea's so into the ocean and sea animal creatures, so Katie got her all these little sea animal figurines and would always send her a card and Shea would make Katie a card," Noonan said.
During Bears training camp one summer in Bourbonnais, Noonan and some friends invited Katie out to join them at a local establishment after practice.
"She talked about that for months after, how that was so much fun and thank you for asking me," Noonan said. "Years passed and she kept bringing up how much fun that was, just getting beers and us inviting her. She thanked you endlessly."
If you knew Katie, you no doubt heard her say thank you. Again and again.
"I told my brother, Pat, once, 'I've got a challenge for you: Try to out thank you Katie Nagle. See if you can do it,'" McCaskey said. "Couldn't do it. That's my Katie Nagle imitation: backing out of a room saying thank you over and over as you're leaving."
Kate Rackow, who has worked for the Bears since 2002 and is currently the team's manager of community outreach and alumni relations, described Katie as "incredibly kind and thoughtful." Rackow wanted to expand but joked, "there isn't a word for saying thank you a million times."
Katie's kindness took many forms. She would arrive at every Bears home game with a basketful of delicious brownies she distributed to coworkers throughout Soldier Field.
"You tell me how she made as many stops as she did and had enough for everybody and they were still warm when they got to you," McCaskey said. "How does that happen? And good lord they were good."
McCaskey added that Katie was "always so thoughtful with a note or a gift or a kind word." He especially liked "the cards with the beautiful penmanship, the whiteout for mistakes and writing on the back because she didn't have enough room on the front to thank you profusely enough."
After her mom, Marge, passed away in 2021, Katie continued to visit her mother's friends at the assisted living facility where she had lived. She even would take one of the ladies out for lunch and to go shopping.
"She'd still go once a week and she'd play bingo with her mom's friends and take them out," Noonan said. "It breaks my heart thinking about all those people. She probably was the brightest little part of their week."
"She just wanted to bring some light to everybody," said Marge Hamm, Bears Care director since 2006. "She was just always thinking about other people and how she could make them smile or happy."
It's no surprise that in 2015 Katie was named the club's first recipient of the Virginia Award, which is annually presented to a Bears employee who has demonstrated the characteristics and values of Mrs. McCaskey: grace, humility, loyalty and dedication. The winner also is someone who not only exceeds the highest standards of achievement, but whose work sets them apart from co-workers.
"She just beamed positivity," said Bears vice president of finance and accounting Jake Jones, who has worked for the organization since 2002. "No matter what might be going on, even in stressful and challenging times, she just made you feel like she cared more for you than anything else.
"She would always ask me about my kids and how they were doing in school. She had met them and gotten to know them a little bit through staff functions here at the office. Every time I'd run into her in the hallways, she never missed a chance to ask what was going on in their lives. She just was super plugged into the people that work here. I can honestly say I've never met another person like Katie Nagle."
Jones and Katie traveled with the Bears on the team charter to last year's game in Kansas City as part of a new program to reward longtime employees. The two went out to dinner the night before the game with Jones' brother-in-law and nephew.
"It was such a special trip," Jones said. "She was typical Katie; just overly thankful and appreciative of the opportunity to do the police escort and enjoy the whole experience. She was just as thankful and gracious as she always was."
"I know that there were other people in the Bears family that were closer to her than I was," McCaskey said. "But I'm the lucky one because I got to see her and interact with her every day, and I'm going to treasure those moments."
The Bears held an all-staff quarterly meeting Sept. 3 at Halas Hall, one day after Katie's passing. It's typically an upbeat state-of-the-franchise gathering that McCaskey hosts, using his quick wit to banter with new hires who are asked to reveal a fun fact about themselves.
This time, as you'd expect, there was a much more somber tone. McCaskey deferred to team president/CEO Kevin Warren, who said of Katie: "She lived in a state of perpetual gratitude."
"I knew right away that I wouldn't be able to talk," McCaskey said. "I'm so grateful to Kevin because he described Katie better than I could have.
"There were a few people in that room who unfortunately did not have the opportunity to meet Katie. We're the fortunate ones because we got to know her, we got to work side-by-side with her. We got to be her friends, her family. I'm very grateful for that."
Friends smile when recalling Katie's fun side—like the time she jumped in a friend's pool with her street clothes on because she simply "wanted to go swimming." They also remember how much she loved attending dozens of Jimmy Buffet concerts. In an incredible coincidence, the Cubs held a "Margaritaville Night" celebrating the late Buffet at Wrigley Field the very same day that Katie passed away.
"She liked to have a good time," Rackow said. "She was always out to dinner, going to her Jimmy Buffet concerts, going to grab a glass of wine or a drink."
"She really knew how to enjoy life," Jones said. "She was just such a positive person and a grateful person to be around. You always walked away from a conversation with Katie thinking you could never get the last thank you in with her. She always would follow up. She had the last word in terms of gratitude. She was just a special person."
Rackow remembers when Katie would volunteer at the Bears' Back to School Fair at training camp in Bourbonnais.
"She had this amazing outlook," Rackow said. "She was so happy to sit and face-paint for six hours on a Saturday in July. So she would force you to look at things with a more positive outlook, which will be sorely missed."
Katie will be remembered by friends and family Monday at St. Raymond Church in Mount Prospect, with visitation at 10 a.m. followed by a funeral mass at 11 a.m.
A loving daughter, sister, aunt and friend, Katie was born June 21, 1960. One of eight siblings, she grew up in Mount Prospect. She attended Sacred Heart of Mary High School and Illinois State University. Katie is survived by her siblings, 12 nieces and nephews, one grandniece, one grandnephew and countless friends and relatives. Another survivor is her bird Norm, a 27-year-old cockatiel who is named after the iconic character played by George Wendt in the TV series "Cheers."
Norm has been permanently adopted by Bears director of security Pete Spizzirri, who had been caring for the bird since Katie was first hospitalized. Spizzirri describes Norm as a chatty bird who loves to eat popcorn and Cheese-Its.
"He's a character," Spizzirri said. "It's funny because she was genuinely the nicest human being I've ever met in my life with a bird that has more attitude than I can even tell you. You would never think that this bird and Katie were aligned. He's full of attitude. It's funny, but he's a character for sure. He's a talker. He chirps constantly. He sings a lot, and I think it's the Andy Griffith [TV theme] song on repeat. I'm almost 100% sure that's what he's singing, but that's his favorite song to sing."
Spizzirri, who has worked for the Bears since 2016, agreed to keep Norm because of what Katie meant to him and the entire organization.
"That's why I took the bird; because it was Katie," he said. "I just felt like it was a small imposition for somebody that has done so much for so many people here. For me, it was a no-brainer. She didn't have anybody to watch this bird. That bird was like her child. She had had it for 27 years. It was an easy decision."
While Katie wouldn't cross paths with Spizzirri every day, their friendship illustrates the type of impact she made throughout Halas Hall.
"That's the thing that makes her stand apart from everyone," Noonan said. "Everyone's busy or you tend to eat with the people in your department or you have your certain friends. But Katie made a point to be friendly with everyone."
A passage in Katie's obituary sums up why she was loved by so many. It reads: "Katie's ability to make you feel special was unmatched. Always thinking of others, Katie was the queen of sending cheer through the mail, baking you some goodies, or picking up the phone to chat. She had a strong faith and a giving heart. She loved to cheer on the Chicago Bears, share a good joke or clever story, and most of all, being with her family and friends. She had a beautiful knack of turning strangers into friends and a genuine interest in everyone she knew."
In other words, the nicest person I've ever known.
