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Former WIND, WGN, and WLUP radio host Ed Schwartz died yesterday at the age of 62 after a long struggle with kidney disease. Noah Isackson wrote an extensive profile of Schwartz in Chicago Magazine, and Eric Zorn has written quite a bit about Schwartz’s health and financial problems. WGN host Dean Edwards did a long interview with Schwartz in 2006 when the local journalism community was rallying around him (the woman who calls in to sing his WGN theme song at about 11 minutes in kills me). Update: Eric Zorn files his obit: “They remember how Schwartz birddogged breaking news, interviewed celebrities and public officials, mounted crusades and started a major annual food drive for the poor–as though no one had told him that overnight radio was supposed to be soothing and intimate.”
“Schwartz falls asleep and wakes to the sound of this scanner. He lives alone.
