Funeral Details

Lois Friedberg-Dobry, who devoted her life to bringing joy and justice to her beloved Chicago, died on Saturday, December 2, 2023. She was 98. Lois started working for a more just Chicago at a time when 49 of Chicago’s 50 aldermen belonged to the Democratic Machine. Others despaired; Lois organized. Joining the merry band of cockeyed optimists who became IVI-IPO, she used her union organizing skills and techniques stolen from the Machine to beat them at their own game. Never one to hog the spotlight, she taught thousands of people through her example how to pass nominating petitions, raise money, work a precinct, organize hundreds of election day volunteers, throw an election night party, and then, win or lose, get up and do it all over again. She worked at politics for 27 years before Chicago elected its first independent mayor and she worked even longer to fill the council chamber with independent aldermen. She never gave up. Along the way she was instrumental in the campaigns of many of the key figures in independent Chicago politics - Toni Preckwinkle, Leon Despres, Harold Washington, Leslie Hairston, Barbara Curry, Tim Black, Dick Newhouse, and many others. But she was proudest of empowering ordinary people with the confidence and organizing skills needed to get a pothole fixed, to protect a park, to sit on a school council, to, in other words, exercise their rights as Americans. While politics was her first love, Lois worked for joy and justice in many other realms. As a lab tech at Michael Reese and University of Chicago hospitals, she organized her fellow workers into unions. As an English professor at Columbia College, she passed on to her many first-generation college students the love of learning and the joy in literature she learned as a first-generation University of Chicago student. As a long-time Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference board member, she worked to keep Hyde Park diverse (and quirky) and to defeat the dead hand of urban renewal. As Tag Day co-chair at the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club, she organized Hyde Parkers to go all over the Southside collecting the coins that paid for a place of pure joy for Hyde Park kids. As one of the founding board members of the South Shore Cultural Center, she worked to turn what had been an exclusive country club into a people’s arts palace. Most of all she helped people one-on-one whether it was someone who called the Fifth Ward Committeeman’s office, a tenant in the 24-unit Englewood apartment building she managed for 30 years, or just a neighborhood kid sitting at her kitchen table. She invariably saw the potential in them to solve their own problems and gave them the confidence to do it. Lois lived her 98 years to the fullest leaving us with a legacy of what it means to truly lead a life devoted to joy, justice, and tikkun olam. Lois was preceded in death by the love of her life, partner in all things, and husband of 70 years, Alan Dobry. She is survived by her loving daughters, Judy and Shoshanah; by her beloved sister-in-law, Barbara Cannon; by the nephew and nieces who brought her such joy - Peter, Alice, Therese, and Gracie Cannon; by her goddaughter Shani Abrams; and by the cousins she loved, Steven and Jeffrey Mora. Most of all she is survived by the community of friends she made wherever she went. These include the huge number of Hyde Parkers she befriended over the years; her IVI-IPO community; her great friends Demetria Smith and Jessica Dekreon, who made the last five years of her life such a joy: and her many friends among the Selfhelp Home staff and residents who treated her with such love and kindness. Her spirit lives on in all of them. If you would like to come to a memorial service planned for this spring, please send an email to amdobry@gmail.com. If you would like to do something in Lois’s honor, ORGANIZE! Arrangements by Chicago Jewish Funerals - Skokie Chapel, 847.229.8822, www.cjfinfo.com.