Just mom. Just grandma. Just Virginia.
To those closest to Virginia Halas McCaskey, she was just that.
Mrs. McCaskey was known to most as the Bears’ principal owner, the daughter of George Halas and an NFL trailblazer. Mrs. McCaskey witnessed more pro football history than any individual in the world. But she lived an even fuller life in front of her loved ones.
A life where her legacy reached beyond sport.
She is remembered as joyful and calm. A woman of few words. Present and available. Always smiling. A great example of holiness. Stern and loving. Very competitive. Family-focused and faith-filled. Strong and poised. A will of iron.
Above all, she embodied the word grace, which everyone used with conviction when describing Mrs. McCaskey. That grace was always rooted in her faith.
“She knew that her life was a gift from God,” Patrick, her fourth-born child, said.
Mrs. McCaskey’s faith — which she displayed by attending Mass daily, giving out Bears-colored rosaries and being at every First Holy Communion, confirmation and wedding possible — influenced every part of her life.
It made her a strong-willed leader but also a gentle, warm matriarch, who in line with her faith, made family her priority.
“That smile,” James, her grandson and Patrick’s son, said. “Her laugh. It’s infectious. That was her aura. There was always a warmth to her. That’s what I always loved about her.”
Her faith also intertwined with her devotion to the Bears community whether it be members of the Bears family or those around the Chicagoland area who possessed the same love for the navy and orange as she did. The affection she delivered to her own family, she offered to them.
“Every time that I was around her, it really felt like it was just me and her,” Jarrett Payton, son of Bears legend Walter Payton, said. “She had this way of connecting with you where everything else around you was silent, and you were just in that moment with her.”