Robert Kelly
While it’s probably insensitive to suggest that anything positive came out of the head-on collision of two Blue Line trains the morning of September 30 (the yet unexplained incident sent thirty people to hospitals), the press statement delivered by Robert Kelly, president of the CTA rail workers union, was as serious, authentic and masterful an incantation of the Chicago accent as you are likely to see. Repeatedly applying the idiom “da million dollar question,” he earnestly pinched his “a”s and compassionately rounded out his “o”s, while graciously breaking down professional terminology like “emergency” for broad-shouldered folks like us.
Best of Chicago 2013