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· SIXTEEN Dorothy Ogilvie N o matter how far her husband's political career might take them, Dorothy Ogilvie was determined to keep her feet on the ground. She also knew she had to be prepared to face anything at anytime. But did she foresee being stuck in an elevator at the Vatican? She definitely had not anticipated that. The first lady, the governor, and their daughter Blizabeth visited Rome late in March 1972 on one leg of a trip abroad that began in Israel. A large contingent of Chicagoans had flown with the Ogilvies to Israel, many of them contributors to a library project nearJerusalem in honor of Ogilvie and his support for the sale of State of Israel bonds. While in Israel, the governor and his wife met with a number of the republic'S luminaries, including Prime Minister Golda Meir. From Israel, the Ogilvie family and a handful of others flew to Italy for the start of a largely nonofficial jaunt through Burope. In Rome, the major destination of the group was the papal headquarters, where a private audience with Pope Paul VI was arranged. Dorothy Ogilvie relished retracing the literal ups and downs of that visit as she relaxed in Chicago'S Tavern Club on an early spring day in 1994. For one thing, the very short skirts that sixteen-year-old Liz had been wearing on the trip just would not do for meeting the Pope. So Liz had to quickly scurry about in Rome to find a long dress for the occasion. The visit started off smoothly enough as the small Ogilvie party was ushered to St. Peter's Square in two limousines. After getting a glimpse of some of the Vatican's art treasures, the group was greeted by Bishop Paul C. Marcinkus, the contact person for the audience with the Pope. A tall and husky man a year older than Ogilvie, Marcinkus was a major leaguer at the Vatican. A native of Cicero, Illinois, Marcinkus was a talented linguist who had risen to become Vatican treasury minister and then head of the Vatican bank. Ironically, the Vatican elevator carrying these heavyweights-the bishop, the governor of Illinois , and his party-malfunctioned. It got stuck between floors. What happened, as Dorothy Ogilvie told it, was that "the bishop pressed up, but we went slowly down. Then it stalled between floors and there we were, stuck and going nowhere. Dick took it lightly. He said to everybody, and he was 226 DOROTHY OGILVIE . 227 chuckling, that we were stuck in the bowels of the Vatican. But I was getting nervous that we were going to be late for the audience with the Pope."! Swinging into action, Bishop Marcinkus picked up the phone in the elevator, imploring for belp. Ogilvie staffer Jay Bryant, who was present, noticed that "the bishop was conversing on the phone a bit of a while, but we could not understand what he was saying because he was speaking in Italian. When he hung up, he was laughing. He told us that most of the time on the phone was spent trying to convince the little nun at the switchboard that it was really him she was talking to and that he really was stuck on this elevator. She apparently had to be convinced it wasn't a prank."" But the bishop got his message across because, in Mrs. Ogilvie's words, "we were cranked down" to a lower level and then led briskly by foot up to the Pope's receiving room in the nick of time. The audience went well, although Liz's nervousness was recorded in her scrapbook when she wrote that the Pope "kept holding my hand and asked me about school. ... I trembled the whole time."3 On the subject of schools, Bryant recalled the slender white-robed Paul VI expressing to the governor through an interpreter "the Holy Father's awareness and appreciation of the Governor's effort to improve education." This prompted a knowing look from Bryant to Tom Drennan and his wife Lorraine, who were the only two Catholics in the Ogilvie group. "Tom and I understood, of course," said Bryant, "that the Pope was referring to Ogilvie's strong support back home for providing state aid to Catholic schools."4 All in all, Rome and the other European stops provided a welcome respite for the Ogilvies, away from the glare of the public spotlight. All of them were under the lights, not just...

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