George Rawlinson [October 11, 1956-January 13, 2026]

by Donald G. Evans

There was a time, long past, when my son, Dusty, considered himself an artist. He also, in prior incarnations, considered himself a detective, and inquired about what it would take to become a TV star. Nevertheless. Art, for a fleeting time, meant something to Dusty. He scribbled and colored and painted, and was pretty good, at least judged against other six-year-olds.

Dusty asked if he could exhibit his work—a kind of retrospective on his major paintings and drawings dating from kindergarten until around the summer before second grade. I said, “Sure.” I figured we could have some fun with it.

So in our backyard that Saturday, as people filtered in for a barbecue, there hung Dusty Evans’s artwork: taped to the wooden fence, tacked to the porch railing, leaned against the neighbors’ protruding tree trunk. The quality ranged from incoherent to “I think that’s a tiger.” Dusty was thrilled.

Everybody entering our yard that day were friends—kind and generous people. But it was George Rawlinson who made the experience an unforgettable one for Dusty. It was always George making an experience unforgettable.

He closed the gate behind him and ambled into the yard. He deliberately avoided Dusty—just went straight to the art. He took a step back to really examine a painting that resembled a clown. He said, “Wow!” He sidled over to a drawing of a big dog. “Wonderful, wonderful,” he murmured. By now, Dusty had bounced to his side. Dusty knew George; George, of course, knew Dusty.

“Did you see this spectacular piece?” George asked Dusty. “Do you know who the artist is?”

“It’s ME!!!” Dusty exclaimed.

“You? That can’t be. You’re too young.”

“I MADE it.” He added, “This is MY SHOW.”

“All of these are yours?”

“ALL of them.”

George gingerly approached the backyard fence, as though mindful not to bump into a priceless object. He lifted the bottom of the flimsy paper, looked closely at the drawing as he called out the remarkable details, the smart color choices. “Tell me about this one,” George prodded. He stepped back, looking intently and rubbing his chin.  

“It’s Scooby DOO,” Dusty said.

George exchanged some playful banter with Dusty, who was awash in the praise and attention. Finally, George said, “Would you take twenty dollars for this drawing?” He pulled a bill from his pocket and extended it toward Dusty. Dusty’s eyes popped. “Sure!” he blurted, tugging at the bill still held tight in George’s hand.

“But,” George said, “you have to sign it. When you become a famous artist, this is going to be worth a fortune.”

“I’ll sign it.” At that, Dusty grabbed the money and scribbled his name on the bottom.  

George was a master at uplifting others. Plus, he respected a hustle. I and so many others benefited from George’s unique brand of friendship, in which he delighted in putting himself at our service. We’re all downcast at the news of his recent death. He was a raconteur, and everything else he did—as a journalist, non-fiction book writer, publisher, small-time radio guy, promoter of authors—fueled his stories, and his relationships. His legacy is as a model for how to be a friend.  

I met George when he walked into Books at Sunset, just before I was scheduled to do a reading to promote my novel Good Money After Bad. This was not quite twenty years ago. George, I soon discovered, lived in Elgin, but why he was there (everybody else, to a person, were friends) I don’t think I ever found out. He wore a backward leather newsboy cap, a leather vest, and a braided wristband; he sported a goatee. You might have mistaken him for a biker, if not for the glasses-framed face that split the difference between twinkly and curmudgeonly. We wound up going out after the reading, and before he popped off we were talking about doing a book together.  

George was Chicago through and through. He loved the city, and the city loved him. Name a beef stand or a deli or an old movie theater or an el stop, or…anything. He had a story. “First time I went to Johnnie’s, I ruined a brand new shirt. Eating a beef sandwich is a next-level skill at that place.” It was uncanny—to the point it sometimes seemed made up—how intimately George knew everything. We were driving together one day and as we neared my old neighborhood, I remembered out loud about Mama Luna’s Pizza, how that was one of our main places as a kid. “No shit,” George said. “I delivered pizzas for them.” I started to tell the story about how when I was around 10, there was an execution there, but I didn’t remember many details. George finished for me. “Anthony Reitinger,” George said. “He owed street tax on his book business. It was a Montenegro. Pulled up and a bunch of mobbed up guys in ski masks—three or four of ‘em--jumped out. Gunned him down right in his booth. Harry ‘the Hook’ Aleman was one of the guys. You read Kogan’s book, right?” George was talking about Everybody Pays, a book about a different Harry Aleman murder. “Even after Mama Luna’s moved down the block, people used to drill little holes in the wall near the back booth, to make it look like bullet holes.”

George moved seamlessly from lore to history to literature to life. Sitting with George in the bleachers at Wrigley Field for nine innings was like a master course in baseball, Wrigleyville, and so much else. It wasn’t just that he knew statistics, but he knew the stories behind the stories. He’d tell about seeing Milt Wilcox at Yum Yum Donuts and would remember what the obscure Cubs pitcher ate and how he took his coffee. He’d tell about how he’d bought a Joe Pepitone pinback button from the old nostalgia shop on Addison called Yesterday. That would lead to George recalling how the one-time Cubs first baseman owned a nightclub called Joe Pepitone’s Thing on Division Street near Rush. “It was named after his dick; supposedly, he had reason to be proud,” George said. “The place got busted at least once by the narc squad. I remember me and some buddies driving down to Rush Street just to stand outside, and thinking about all the shit we would get into when we were old enough.” He’d talk about parking in the then-dirt no man’s land under the Ravenswood el tracks, or catching opposing players as they walked through the gated-in ramp that once ran below the grandstands. We shared stories about stalking players like Fergie Jenkins when they used to park in an unsecured lot just outside the park.

George was always detouring—and not just his stories. “There’s something over there,” he’d say, and we’d be crawling down side streets to find the Obamas’ Kissing Rock or a ghost Schlitz sign or Couch Place or Walt Disney’s birthplace. “They call this the Alley of Death, because this is where hundreds of people died trying to escape from the Iroquis Theatre fire. Supposed to be haunted now.” He never used his phone to confirm details or remind him of the facts. George would rather guess or make it up than cheat.

We rarely got done what we set out to get done. George was always quadruple booked—he’d show up and run out of time, never stressed about it. He’d say, “I’ll drive down there tomorrow,” or “I’ll take care of that later this week.” Around the time we were getting ready to publish Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Till Next Year, George decided we should set up a book event at El Jardin restaurant. “You know Maria?” I asked.

“No, I’ll go down there to meet her.”  

“I can call. I’m sure she’ll do it.”

“I’ve got to go into the city anyways.” George drove there not once, not twice, not three times, but a half-dozen times in all. A few times, Maria wasn’t there. Once, he promised her a book and drove back down to deliver it. There was a problem with the time—George would talk to her in person about that. Remember, he was starting out in Elgin, so this was probably two-and-a-half hours, round-trip. Efficient? Not even close. But George got to know Maria and the other El Jardin staff—they soon loved George and were excited to do whatever needed to be done to make this a success.

The thing was, George liked to do it the hard way because it connected him to people. He liked people. He wanted to hear their stories, to get to know them, to be a part of their lives, in whatever small way that wound up being. Kurt Vonnegut once wrote about his affection for running errands and other time-consuming tasks, concluding that, “we're here on Earth to fart around.” George excelled at farting around, at least in a slightly curated way.

Virginia Harding signed up for one of George’s Chicago Writers Association bus tours. Afterward, she raved about how great the tour was and how the docent (George) went out of his way to drive her home. On another bus tour, I brought my mom and her friend Joan. George took special care with them and also made a point to tell my mom, “You have an amazing son,” before going on at length about my accomplishments as a human being, writer, etc. It wasn’t wrapped, but no doubt a gift from George to my mom, and to me. He did this for a lot of people.

George was forever going out of his way. Glennette Tilly Turner was scheduled to speak at her friend Harriette Gillem Robinet’s Fuller Award ceremony—she, nearing 90 at the time, and her husband, afflicted with dementia, couldn’t manage without a ride and an escort. I called George first—he readily agreed, and spent what amounted to an entire day making sure Glennette and Al made it to and from the big event. I have a lot of friends, but I’m not sure who else I could have gotten to devote a day to the care and transport of a couple of elderly, mobility-challenged octogenarians.  

George hurled himself into every project. In most ways, George was not an astute business man—his State Street Publishing did not even have a website, much less distribution or any other foundational pieces. He was, then and at other times, a man on a mission. “A mission from God,” as he would have said, since he loved the Blues Brothers film and could point out the various places scenes were shot around Chicago. He was a carnival barker, a door-to-door salesman, a sleight-of-hand artist. He sold books literally out of his trunk. He was a dreamer. He tried to will projects to success. Not nearly everything George did was successful, but he always did his best.

To promote the Cubbie Blues book, he rounded up an assortment of colorful Cubdom characters—Ronnie Woo Woo, Pat Brickhouse, David Goodman—to show up at various signings. He got comedian Tom Dressen to officiate a “funeral” in which we buried the Cubs curse. Former Cub players Gene Hiser and Bill Campbell were there, along with other Major League players like Skip Pitlock and Bob Miller. He got our friend Kathy Wolter (a Cubs Ball Girl in the mid-80s) to join the fun, along with contributors like James Finn Garner, Rick Kaempfer, Mary Beth Hoerner, Julia Borcherts, and Bill Hillmann. Brian Bernardoni was there, as was Robert Duffer, Shawon-O-Meter co-creator Dave Cihla, "Ivy Man" Ward Tannhauser and “Radio” Ron Walerowicz. A band called MGM debuted its song “Curse of the Cubbie Blues.” It was so much fun and so unprofitable-- it was only when it was too late that George learned he would have to rent security officers for the funeral, among other unexpected expenses that flushed all sales revenue, plus some, down the toilet.

There were many other splashy events that took us to Woodstock, Sheffield’s Wine and Beer Garden, spring training in Arizona, retirement villages in the suburbs…too many places to mention. The book—or at least the events surrounding the book—got a lot of attention, but at a certain point if you wanted a book….basically, George would drive it to you. I had breakfast with Bob Goldsborough a few years back, and he raved about how that book (in which he was one of many, many contributors) provided him the most fun and satisfaction out of all his 25 published titles.

The stories! ”Don, do you remember?” George would start, and then go into a reminiscence filled with details I’m not sure were accurate, along with updates about the characters in the story—all with whom he kept in touch.

Last year, we scheduled a South Side literary bus tour on March 29, and in preparation for that George and I met a bunch of times. He wanted to nail down the parking (“the parking situation is fine,” I assured him) so we headed to Douglass Park. He became fast friends with a custodial worker. They gushed about Harold’s Chicken Shack and Raymond’s Tacos, then somehow got to talking about the legendary DePaul basketball teams of the late 70s and early 80s, swapping stories about Clyde Bradshaw and Mark Aguire and Terry Cummings and Skip Dillard and Tyrone Corbin—they knew their high schools, what they did after college, and seemed to have at least one personal encounter with each of the players. Before long, George had added the guy’s cell number to his contact list (“Just call if you need anything!”). Then George insisted we meet the head groundskeeper, who, once we tracked him down, assured us he would personally make sure both parking lot gates would be unlocked on the day of our trip. As we drove the proposed route—detouring constantly—we stopped at every viaduct to make sure it met the minimum height requirements for the bus to clear. Not every viaduct (and there are LOTS of viaducts) displayed a height, so George consulted a Department of Transportation map or else called somebody he knew at I-DOT. When we got really stuck, he called our bus driver, David, whom George knew from CWA trips.  

George had worked for the Chicago Park District in the late 1980s into the early 90s, did a short stint at Cook County Jail because he’d been involved in abuse of the city’s resources. He owned up to his past, but you got the feeling those years of poor judgement not only made him a better person but were worth it just for the stories. He told about how his mobster boss at the park district was a compulsive gambler who used to run poker games out of the field houses at various parks, including Douglass Park. There would be a half-dozen union workers playing cards. “If he was down,” George said, referring to his boss, “he’d make everybody work overtime so he could chase his losses.” There were stories about no-show employees coming in for their checks on Fridays; elaborate side jobs the crew did on city time, using city resources; about trolls mocking the inmates at Cook County Jail by tossing toilet paper rolls over the outside wall; jokes about his resume.

To know George, you’d always think he was doing fine. But in all the time I knew him, he hustled from gig to gig—low-level campaign work for local politicians, Uber driver, ad sales for books he’d written or published, small-time radio work—and it never added up to enough. It couldn’t have. Yet somehow he never let that interfere with a life in which he devoted himself so frequently to helping others. He regretted how he’d been as a husband and committed himself to being a better father to Karlyn as she matured. He was here on the ground level when we started the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, working for our cause with the same enthusiasm he did for his own. I just unearthed an old business card we made for George, in which we’d bestowed upon him the title, “Director, Promotions.” He scrambled around to collect a few dollars for this and that, when a few dollars was more than we had. He sat on the board of the Chicago Writers Association. Helped many others with their nonprofit enterprises. He was enthused about all the work he did, and labored in the most altruistic, self-sacrificing manner. No task was beneath George—he carried heavy boxes and ushered people to their seats as easily as he prepared a manuscript for publication or created a promotional event. For paid work, he carved out the most ludicrously reasonable fees for himself. He remembered people—not just their names, but details about their lives, their families. Shawn Shiflett wrote that George made everybody feel like they mattered; I’d go a step further and say he honestly believed everybody mattered.

I’d corralled George into planning and executing the bus trip not only because he was a premiere guide, but because I knew his time was limited. It was something I never felt, just intellectually knew. He’d had cancer more than a decade—cancer that was supposed to kill him closer to when it was diagnosed. The cancer spread to various regions. Toward the end, he’d developed brain lesions. He thinned some. Looked older, as we all do. Mostly, though, he’d make it so you were unaware of how sick he was. He was very sick. Surgeries. Radiation and chemo treatments. A revolving door of doctor’s visits. He’d disappear for a week or two at a time, then reemerge to assure us everything was fine. He’d laugh and tell jokes and show up to do his part. He would never take me up on my offers to do something for him. I’d say, “George, you shouldn’t be driving; let me drive you,” and he’d assure me he just needed to focus behind the wheel. The only chance I had to spend precious time with him, before it was too late, was to ask him to do something for me.

George was his charming, spectacular self on that bus trip. He took care of all the paid guests—single-handedly assembly-lined snack bags he passed out as people boarded; assisted people getting on and off the bus; checked to see if anybody needed anything; instructed the bus driver to pause at sites he’d learned a passenger found especially interesting. He told riveting stories at many of the stops. When we stopped at Cook County Jail, he cracked over the microphone, “Here on our left is my former residence…”

He never hesitated to call, for even a small reason. Whenever I saw it was George calling, I immediately—almost no matter what I was doing—took the call. Not because I thought it was important—it almost never was, not really—but because talking to George made my day better. I could confide in George, get his opinion on something, share complaints. We’d laugh a lot.

George died a relatively poor man. It’s a testament to him that he navigated his modest circumstances as a benefactor. He arranged, through Jeff Myers and Kyle Bault, for me to sit in on their broadcast of a Chicago Bandits game in Rosemont--Margaret, Dusty and I were given VIP seats behind the plate; we met Carlos Zambrano; and generally enjoyed a spectacular evening. George got us a couple tickets to a Boston concert in Elgin. He called several times to offer Cubs seats. He made occasional donations to the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. These are the sorts of meaningful gestures he routinely made. As I said, George was always hustling. But the hustle was for something greater than his own profit. He worked with other organizations to donate and ship his book Fox Valley Veterans to troops serving overseas, and in other ways—such as on Veteran’s Day when he interviewed local military people on WMRN radio—tried to honor the individuals who’d served our country. He scrounged up enough money to help Karlyn through her undergraduate years at Columbia College, where she graduated with a degree in childhood education and a minor in fiction writing. He ushered many books into print, often the work of previously unpublished authors. Gary Johnson, who worked closely with George on his true crime memoir, Luck is a Talent, said, “He made my dream his dream; he charged me next to nothing.”

I assume George’s free-lance, freewheeling career came about in part due to the difficulty he’d experienced as a felon trying to gain employment. I didn’t know him back in his park district days, but in the decades of our friendship I could not imagine George as a 9-to-5er. He roamed the city and the suburbs, and traveled extensively with his late-life partner, Chris Danzi. He was here and there and here again. He liked to ramble in the way that only a flexible schedule allowed. He could, and would, be there for you on short notice.

Dusty hoarded and showed off that twenty-dollar bill for a long time. Each time he reached for the money, he laughed—it made him giddy, thinking of his big coup, of what it must say about his talent, of the sheer luck of it all. It wasn’t luck. It was George.

 

Celebrating the Extraordinary Life of George Rawlinson will take place on Wednesday, February 18 at the Elgin American Legion Hall, from 5-8 p.m. A spaghetti dinner will be served to all, followed by tributes to George. There will be a donation box available for his daughter, Karlyn, to help cover funeral expenses. Charitable donations can also be made to Soldiers Angels, an organization to which George volunteered for many years.

 

Donald G. Evans is the author of a novel and story collection, as well as the editor of two anthologies of Chicago literature, including Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Till Next Year, which was published by George’s State Street Publishing imprint, Can’t Miss Press. He is the Founding Executive Director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.