Clare Elizabeth Faherty died in the presence of her family, in LaGrange on Sept. 9, 2025. The first daughter of James and Mary O’Neill of Milton, Massachusetts, she was a beautiful and bright child, excelling in school and adding fresh insights to conversations. She graduated from Boston College, at the age of 20, with a bachelor’s degree in education, where she met Paul Faherty. Shortly after Clare’s graduation, they married and had five children, Paul (Mary Tsai), Teresa (Robert Blomquist), Sara (Markus Dubber), and John (Libby Hunter). Their youngest daughter, Maura, died in a car accident in 1984. Clare withstood the tragedy through her faith and sustaining friendships with Terry and Renee Norton, Terry and Tom Coffey, Sheila Clements Murray, Mary Ann and Bob Tuerk, Len and Nancy Vertuno, and so many other friends and neighbors.
As a public school teacher on Chicago’s West Side, she taught many kindergartners and first-graders to read, write and play. She believed in education as a human right. In the 1980s, she and Paul, along with other St. Luke parishioners, founded The Learning Center in North Lawndale to teach literacy to adults whose educations had been cut short. They tutored, raised money, served on the board and also taught literature classes in Stateville prison. She heard the call to remember and care for “the least of these,” believing in the equality of all people and fearlessly scorning ideas to the contrary.
She was slim, quick, loved to walk, and reveled in nature, especially at the beach house in Humarock where she and Paul (until his death in 2019) spent many happy summers with their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and her in-laws, Clare, Tommy, Frank, Sheila, Don, Jack and Jan. At Plymouth Place, she was blessed in the last year of her life with excellent caregivers, Roxie, Marquianna, Crystal and others. She took long walks around the natural habitat on the grounds. A large red hawk, whom her caregivers named “Billy,” regularly perched on the balcony of her eighth-floor apartment. She loved the egrets of the Humarock marshes most of all.
Bulbar ALS stole Clare’s voice several years ago but her family and friends can still hear it, melodious and kind and gentle, but she was not one to talk about herself, unless someone asked. The births of her grandchildren, Maura (Matthew Uebbing), Dora, Clara, Davis (Zed Malmoux), Henry, Delaney, Theo, Luke, Sitota, Sophie, and Lucy, overjoyed her. Her great-granddaughter, HazelClare O’Neill, was the icing on the cake.
She loved painting, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, National Public Radio, WTTW, opera, good novels, the New York Times, Shakespeare, and Mary Oliver. She was inspired by Julie Child’s TV show in the 1970s and kept her friends and family happy with elegant meals. No one could write a letter like Clare — heartfelt, witty, comforting. Her wisdom was matched by her sincerity. She thoroughly enjoyed life’s many pleasures while staying pure and true of spirit.
At 9 a.m., Sept. 19, visitation at St. Luke Catholic Church in River Forest, will be followed by a funeral Mass at 10 a.m., with burial at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside.
In lieu of flowers, donations to The Learning Center, tlcchicago.org, are appreciated. Arrangements were handled by Zimmerman Harnett Funeral Home.