By: E&P Staff Dave Nightengale, the last sports columnist for the Chicago Daily News who went on to become a baseball writer at the Chicago Tribune, died Wednesday of an apparent heart attack at a hospital in Robinson, Ill. He was 72.
Nightengale succeeded the legendary sportswriter John Carmichael, whose column ran in the Daily News from 1937 to 1972. Nightengale began writing his column in early 1973, and continued until the paper folded in 1978, according to an obituary in Friday's Chicago Sun-Times written by staff reporter Larry Finley.
When the Daily News folded, Nightengale was not picked to work at the sibling Sun-Times. Instead, he was one of the first Daily News veterans picked up by the Chicago Tribune, which assigned him to cover the Chicago White Sox baseball team.
Nightengale was born in Chicago on Feb. 7, 1935, and worked as a sportswriter for the Toledo Blade before entering the University of Illinois.
After graduation, he became sports editor of the Dixon (Ill.) Evening Telegraph. He then was hired as a sportswriter for the old Rockford (Ill.) Morning Star.
He joined the Daily News in 1961 as a night sports editor. In 1966, he was assigned to cover the White Sox.
He left the Tribune in 1981 to work for the Sporting News. He covered the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.
Nightengale was preceded in death by his first wife Margot Allison, who died in 2001 of Lou Gehrig's disease. He later married his wife Rebecca.
He is also survived by a daughter, Allison Rush; a son, C. Van Nightengale, assistant sports editor of the Los Angeles Times; two granddaughters, and a sister, Marcia Carlson.
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