Copyright Chicago Tribune
Starting in the 1960s and continuing through the mid-1990s, Stormy Bidwill’s profile as an influential sports owner was comparable to that of George Halas of the Chicago Bears and Arthur and Bill Wirtz of the Chicago Blackhawks. From 1962 to 1972, Bidwill — who died Monday at age 97 — was co-owner and general manager of the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals, and from 1967 through 1995, he was president of the National Jockey Club that conducted thoroughbred racing at Sportsman’s Park, the track his family co-owned. Visitation will be held on Nov. 19 from 3-8 p.m. at Donnellan Family Funeral Home in Skokie. There will be a funeral Mass on Nov. 20 at 10 a.m. at Saints Faith Hope and Charity in Winnetka, followed by a graveside service at 11:30 a.m. at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Northbrook. At one point in the 1990s, Bidwill was the largest individual shareholder in Churchill Downs Inc., a member of the board of directors and a close confidant of Warner L. Jones, the Kentucky thoroughbred breeder who as chairman oversaw a revitalization of the racetrack and the corporation’s evolution from a single track to a conglomerate. Bidwill, whose given name was Charles Bidwill Jr., also was the co-owner of four greyhound tracks in Florida during a time when dog racing was a popular pastime for the state’s year-round residents, snowbirds and vacationers. All of these items in his diversified sports portfolio were inherited from his mother, the widow of Charles Bidwill Sr., one of America’s most colorful and charismatic sports owners and entrepreneurs. When Charles Sr. died of bronchial pneumonia on April 19, 1947, at age 51, Stormy was an undergraduate student at Georgetown University and overnight became the heir apparent. “I don’t know what would have happened if my dad had lived,” he later told the Tribune’s Rick Kogan. “A choice was made for me.” Although he was outgoing like his flamboyant father, Stormy, in contrast, made a conscious effort to stay out of the limelight throughout his life. Nevertheless, he was well-liked, respected and admired — more so than any of his Chicago sports owner contemporaries. Charles Bidwill Jr. was the antithesis of his nickname, which he acquired when he was a toddler and his uncle, State Sen. Arthur Bidwill, heard him causing a commotion and proclaimed: “This is the stormiest character I have ever seen.” His father burst out laughing and gave him the nickname. “His nickname was displaced — you hear ‘Stormy’ and you would think he was constantly creating an uproar or something,” said the late former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar, an owner and breeder of thoroughbreds and standardbreds who got to know Bidwill well. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve met a lot of nice people in racing but nobody nicer than Stormy.” “If ‘shrewd, tough and innovative’ are the first words used by associates and competitors (to describe Stormy Bidwill), ‘fair, honest and devout’ are close behind,” Jeff Johnson wrote in The Blood Horse in 1999. Born in Chicago on June 9, 1928, Bidwill graduated from St. Ignatius High School and went on to Georgetown, where he earned bachelor of science and law degrees. Although he passed the bar in both Washington, D.C., and Illinois, he never practiced law because he was preoccupied by his responsibilities in thoroughbred racing and pro football. His father was one of the NFL’s pioneers, and on more than one occasion he loaned Halas money so that the Bears owner and coach could make payroll. The elder Bidwill received $50,000 in Bears stock in return. In 1933 Charles Bidwill Sr. got his own NFL team when he paid a Chicago dentist, Dr. David Jones, $50,000 to buy the Chicago Cardinals. Also in the family patriarch’s diversified sports ownership portfolio were the Chicago American Giants, the most dominant team in the Negro baseball league from 1910 until the mid-1930s; the Chicago Bluebirds women’s professional softball team; Sportsman’s Park; the Florida greyhound tracks; and a string of racehorses. In addition, Charles Sr. ran Hawthorne Race Course for the Chicago Businessmen’s Racing Association under a lease agreement from 1924-45 and then for the estate of Thomas Carey from 1946 until Bidwill’s death the following year. Stormy’s mother, Violet, took over the Cardinals after the death of his father and sold the $50,000 in Bears stock back to Halas. Vintage Chicago Tribune: Meet Violet Bidwill, the NFL’s first female owner of the Cardinals In 1949 she married St. Louis businessman Walter Wolfner, and two years later Wolfner was named managing director of the team with Stormy as president and his brother Bill, who was three years younger, as vice president. The brothers, however, had no decision-making responsibilities to go with their titles. Under pressure from the Bears and the NFL, Wolfner was instrumental in moving the Cardinals to St. Louis in 1960. Violet died Jan. 29, 1962, in a physician’s office after a violent reaction to a penicillin shot and left all of the sports holdings she’d inherited from her husband to Stormy and Bill, including an 82% interest in the Cardinals. Wolfner inherited nothing but five Oklahoma oil wells that generated $400 in monthly profits. Wolfner filed a lawsuit, claiming the brothers were illegally adopted as infants. This stunned Stormy and Bill, who were unaware they were adopted until they got the news in Probate Court. The judge ruled in favor of the Bidwills, and acting as the Cardinals president, Stormy also became the team’s general manager. Co-ownership of the Cardinals proved to be a strain on the brothers’ relationship, and in 1972 Stormy reluctantly sold his half of the team to Bill for a reported $6 million. Bill moved the Cardinals from St. Louis to Phoenix in 1988, and his son Michael took over operations in 2007. After the sale of the Cardinals, Stormy focused on running Sportsman’s thoroughbred meeting and expanding the Churchill Downs Inc. holdings he’d inherited because the Louisville track’s president, Matt Winn, couldn’t pay the bill owed for betting tickets printed by a business owned by Charles Bidwill Sr. In the years since Stormy left the Cardinals hierarchy, the value of an NFL franchise skyrocketed while racing profits dwindled as a consequence of a massive expansion of casino gambling and the growth of mainstream sports that have enlarged their audience dramatically through television contracts. “I can’t look back,” Stormy said later when asked about the financial ramifications of the split. “His idea of how to run the team and mine were different. The leaving wasn’t easy for either of us. Now, I call him on his birthday and he calls me on mine.” With Stormy at the reins, Sportsman’s was superbly maintained and supremely functional. While he concentrated on the thoroughbred meeting, the track’s co-owner — the late Billy Johnston, whose father was another of the track’s founding fathers — directed the harness meeting and made it a smashing success. Without prodding from the Illinois Racing Board, Stormy renovated the Sportsman’s stable area, a 15-year, $4 million project that entailed building fireproof brick barns with second-floor dormitories for backstretch workers. In 1990 he renovated the grandstand at a cost of $1 million, and in 1992 he spent $3.6 million to resurface the racing strip and expand it from five-eighths of a mile to seven-eighths, giving Sportsman’s a 1,436-foot homestretch, the longest in North America. Unlike the late Dick Duchossois, the former Arlington International Racecourse owner and chairman who relentlessly and successfully sought to drive rival track owners out of business, Bidwill took an ecumenical approach. As he put it: “We are all in the same lifeboat. What’s good for Arlington is good for us (at Sportsman’s).” The track fell on hard times after Stormy’s eldest son and successor as president, Charles “C3” Bidwill III, discontinued harness racing and in 2000 converted it into a $200 million combination thoroughbred/auto racing facility known as Sportsman’s Park/Chicagoland Motor Speedway, with seating capacity increased from 12,000 to 67,000. The NFL’s oldest rivalry continued at Soldier Field. A look back at the teams that started it all in 1920. After three years, C3’s collective venture with Championship Auto Racing Team (CART) magnate Chip Ganassi and Sportsman’s chief operating officer Ed Duffy proved to be an aesthetic and financial failure that left the National Jockey Club with a debt load estimated at $70,000. In an attempt to continue thoroughbred racing, in 2003 the National Jockey Club shut down Sportsman’s and partnered with next-door neighbor Hawthorne to create Hawthorne National LLC and race there for 99 years under a lease arrangement while the Carey family and Bidwill racing groups remained separate entities. But that attempt was thwarted in 2006 when Duchossois Industries bought a reported $20 million National Jockey Club note with Harris Bank and foreclosed, putting it out of business. By then Stormy was no longer involved in the decision-making process, and his sports holdings were limited to his Churchill stock and the greyhound tracks he co-owned with Johnston that since have been converted into poker rooms after Florida’s ban on dog racing. His role at Churchill became that of a director emeritus. Without fanfare in 2006, Stormy and his since-deceased wife of 67 years established the Charles W. and Patricia Bidwill Foundation. According to their daughter Patti, who serves as the foundation’s chairman, it has a two-fold purpose: providing quality education for young men and women who otherwise wouldn’t have access to it and providing educational support to children with physical and mental special needs. Stormy and Patricia raised their family in Winnetka and Kenilworth before moving to Northfield where he resided at the time of his death. In addition to Charles III and Patti, he is survived by another son, Brian, and daughters, Mary Christine and Shauna (Danny) Valenzuela. Stormy was preceded in death by wife Patricia in 2016 and brother Bill in 2019.
