Dressing in the morning, Nelda Brickhouse would go to a closet off the bedroom of her spacious wood-and-stone house on Locust Road in Wilmette. The broad back lawn visible from the windows, she’d pull out one of her many three-button pullover blouses in white and primary colors, most of them by sportswear designer Leon Levin. Donning the blouse and a pair of knit slacks–her uniform–she’d walk downstairs to face the day.
One day a fledgling sports broadcaster on WMBD radio walked in looking for a car loan. Jack Brickhouse would write in his memoir, Thanks for Listening!, “I had trouble making the car payments but it was a pleasure to visit Lincoln Loan and explain my financial predicaments because it gave me an excuse to see Nelda.” Jack’s car was ultimately repossessed, but the relationship with Nelda lasted. He proposed to her by a lake in Wisconsin. “You need to marry me,” Jack told her. “If you don’t, you’ll never see me again.” They wed in Bessemer, Michigan, in 1939. Nelda, who was 23, came up with the money for the judge and the license.
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The next year Jack was summoned to Chicago to broadcast Cubs and Sox games for WGN radio. After nine years of marriage they had a daughter, who died shortly after birth from a hole in her heart, and then Sky, whose given name is Jean. By the early 1950s Jack was on television, his reputation growing, and the family had moved to Wilmette, first to a house on Linden Avenue and then to the one on Locust Road. They lived there except for the month or two each year that they went to Arizona for spring training.
Jack Brickhouse, a tall and imposing figure, announced Cubs, Sox, and Bears games in an energetic style marked by the tagline “Hey, hey!” He eventually earned a spot in baseball’s Hall of Fame. He met presidents, popes, star athletes, and famous entertainers, had a legendary falling-out with Cubs manager Leo Durocher, liked his drink, and told stories masterfully. “He was a raconteur, no doubt about it,” says Rosenberg. “He had total recall, and he would go on and on.”
The divorce left Nelda hurt, bitter, and confused. “I know she felt vulnerable, but she went back to her roots,” says Jane Hasten. “One day she looked at all her ball gowns and her furs and said, ‘I’m not going to need these anymore.’ She gave them to charity.”
When Jimenez divorced her first husband, she took the last name Sky. “I wanted to honor my Native American heritage,” explains Jimenez, now 54 and a school counselor, “and I didn’t want to go back to my maiden name. It had been a burden growing up–boys would ask me out because they wanted Cubs tickets and things like that.” When she married a man named Jimenez, she promoted Sky to her first name and jettisoned Jean altogether.
Noah wanted to be an actor, and when he debuted in Marty on Chicago’s north side in 2001, Jimenez and Ross brought Nelda down for the show. At home she listened endlessly to books on tape. Noah read to her from the Brickhouse sections of Scott Simon’s book.
