Vern Whaley

Vern Whaley was born in 1908 in Valley Junction, Iowa, USA. He died on May 28, 2000 in Skokie, Illinois, USA. Vern Whaley was a picture editor for the old Chicago American for more than two decades and a sportswriter who covered boxing for the Chicago Evening Post in the late 1920s. The son of a Rock Island railroad engineer, Whaley was born in Valley Junction, Iowa. He went on to become a Chicago journalist and, according to good friend and fellow journalist John O'Brien, "a virtual walking historian." "He was always full of stories," said O'Brien, a former Chicago Tribune reporter who got to know Whaley when they were members of the Chicago Press Veterans' Association. "He was legendary. When other journalists or people would come to Chicago looking for stories about Al Capone or Chicago, Vern Whaley would always be there to oblige them." For example, there was the time when Capone, an avid sports fan, spotted Whaley at a sports writers' luncheon inside the Metropole Hotel and h