Dorothy Ogilvie, former first lady of Illinois, dead at 94

Dorothy Ogilvie, the former first lady of Illinois, died Sunday at her home on Chicago’s Gold Coast. She was 94.

The widow of former Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie was born in Pennsylvania in 1922 and moved to Oak Park 10 years later, according to her death notice. She is survived by her daughter Elizabeth Simer and several nieces and nephews.

A memorial will be held from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday at The Clare, 55 E. Pearson.

She was among the Honorary Life Directors of the Gateway Foundation, which aims to assist those with addiction and substance abuse problems. In 1994, she accepted the honorary chairmanship of the Richard B. Ogilvie Society, an extension of Gateway, which her late husband strongly supported.

From 2002 to 2012, Mrs. Ogilvie possessed the most-coveted license plate in Illinois, once reserved for Roman Catholic cardinals: the number “1.”

Her daughter once told the Chicago Sun-Times that her mother gave up the plate when she sold her car and stopped driving. Simer, who is the only child of the late governor and his wife, could have arranged to have the No. 1 plate passed down to her but didn’t.

“I wouldn’t have wanted all the attention,” she said. “And all those parking tickets.”

In the 2000 presidential election, Mrs. Ogilvie campaigned for George W. Bush in the west suburbs with Lura Lynn Ryan, the wife of then-governor George Ryan, and her fellow former Illinois first ladies Shirley Stratton, Jayne Thompson and Brenda Edgar. The state’s 22 electoral votes eventually went to Al Gore.

In 1995, though, she gave $500 to the re-election fund of the state’s most powerful Democrat: then-Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Her husband served one term as governor, from 1969 to 1973. He died in 1988. The mass transit station at Madison and Canal in the West Loop is named in his honor. As governor, he led the enactment of the state’s income tax.

In the mid-1980s, the former governor gave his wife Cubs season tickets. In October 1989, she told the Sun-Times: “Dick gave me my Cubs tickets four Christmases ago and I haven’t missed a home game since.”