DEATH ANNOUNCEMENT
PATRICK MICHAEL DOLAN
“Big Pat”
30 August 1951 – 22 March 2023
Chicago Fire Department lieutenant, South Side Irishman and the block's fix-it man
“Check the back door first,” Pat Dolan told every rookie who ever rode a rig with him, and he meant it about fires, houses and life in general. There is always a way out, he said, and a decent man makes sure everyone else is through it before he is.
Pat was born in the Back of the Yards in 1951, the fourth of six children of a meatpacker from County Mayo and a hospital cook from County Clare. He graduated from Brother Rice High School in 1969, spent four years swinging a hammer on construction sites while swearing he would never be a fireman, and took the Fire Department test anyway. He joined the Chicago Fire Department in 1973 and spent thirty-five years in Southwest Side firehouses, retiring as a lieutenant in 2008. He was on duty during the Loop flood of 1992, pumping out basements for three days on bad coffee and ham sandwiches, and the sandwiches got bigger with every retelling.
Off duty he was the man every block needs. He fixed neighbors' furnaces, shoveled half of Longwood Drive after every blizzard, and coached girls' softball in Beverly for twenty-two seasons, where his entire strategy was the word “hustle.” He marched in the South Side Irish Parade for fifty years playing a tin whistle badly and with total commitment. He was a White Sox man to the bone, and he watched the 2005 World Series from the same tavern stool on Western Avenue where he had watched every disappointment before it.
He married Maureen Cullinane in 1976, and they were together for forty-seven years. Pat died at home in Beverly on 22 March 2023, after a long illness, with Maureen beside him and a spring-training game murmuring on the radio.
He is survived by Maureen; his children Kathleen, Sean and Colleen; seven grandchildren who called him Papa Pat; and his brother Tom. The department will sound a last alarm in his honor, and a great many people will check their back doors tonight.
“Check the back door first. There's always a back door.”