Carole Clancey Cotter, Chicago mother of 7 who put her foot on the gas pedal in retirement, has died at 93

When Carole Clancey Cotter retired, she didn't slow down.

She had raised seven kids — all attending Catholic schools — and worked with at-risk kids in Chicago for nearly two decades as a social worker.

Then, in retirement, it was as if Mrs. Cotter climbed into a cannon and lit the fuse, according to her family.

"My mother was either on a trip or planning a trip for the last 40 years of her life," said her son Patrick Cotter. "In her 80s, she was still going all over the world to places like Turkey and neighboring countries."

She volunteered as a docent at the Field Museum and as an election observer with the League of Women Voters and took community college classes in whatever interested her. She took about 12 of them with Oakton Community College literature instructor Richard Reeder, including one, last year, when she was 92, on the James Joyce classic "Ulysses."

"It was the second time she'd taken the class," Reed said. "She loved it."

She saw countless plays and made friends as a volunteer theater usher.

Mrs. Cotter, who'd moved from the North Side to Glenview in her later years, died March 17 from natural causes. She was 93.

She never drove. Even in her 90s, she'd take public transportation to visit places like The Art Institute of Chicago.

An only child growing up in a four-flat in the Back of the Yards, she dreamed of being a globe-trotting war correspondent. But she also dreamed of being matriarch of a large, tight-knit family — the kind she didn't have as a child.

"She had these two competing ambitions," her son said. "Very near the end of her life, we were chatting, and I said, 'Mom, you've had this amazing life.' And she said, 'But it wasn't very dramatic, was it?' I was taken aback and said, 'Actually, Mom, it was. You did all these things and managed to survive so much.' "

Mrs. Cotter was born in Chicago on Feb. 27, 1932, to Jack and Sylvia Clancey. Her father worked in accounting for a railroad. Her mother was a secretary.

Her father sometimes called her Snorkey, after a horse he’d won a lot of money betting on.

One of Mrs. Cotter's first memories was of being perched on the end of a neighborhood bar while her father, who was supposed to be taking her for a walk, drank with friends.

After graduating from Lindblom High School, she attended Kent State University for a year but dropped out when money got tight.

She came back to Chicago and worked for a travel agency.

At a dance at the Aragon Ballroom, she met Robert Cotter, an electrician recently returned from the Korean War. They were married the next year, in 1955.

They raised their seven children in West Rogers Park and were active members of St. Timothy Catholic Parish.

Mrs. Cotter was a homemaker. Her husband worked for ComEd by day and split time in the wee hours as a taxi driver and an emergency elevator repairman at the Drake Hotel.

When her kids were old enough, Mrs. Cotter went back to school and got a degree in social work from Northeastern Illinois University that she put to use at Lawrence Hall School for Boys, where she ran admissions for the nonprofit agency that provided housing and educational programming for troubled kids.

She retired after 16 years and launched into activities and travel.

"It took us by surprise," Patrick Cotter said. "She liked to travel. My father did not. He said he'd flown to Korea and that was enough because, for the next 18 months, people were trying to kill him. But, for Mom, travel, theater, restaurants, volunteering, exploring, learning — these things very quickly became who she was.

"My father . . . was one of those retirees who was content to sit around and not do much, maybe go to a diner for three hours and drink coffee. But they found a middle ground."

Her husband died in 2003, and Mrs. Cotter leaned into her busy lifestyle even more.

"I used to joke that it was very hard to get on Mom's schedule," her son said. "I'd call and say, 'Can we get together?' And she'd say, 'Let me check my book.' "

Still, "She was always there for me, financial, otherwise, never judged me, never told me what to do, what was right or wrong; she was just there for me," said her daughter Karen.

Mrs. Cotter was raised Catholic but learned as an adult that her mother had Jewish heritage, according to her family. The story was that her mother, while looking for secretarial work in the Loop in the 1920s, changed her name from Sylvia Bernstein to Sylvia Byrne to try to boost her job prospects.

In addition to her son Patrick and daughter Karen, Mrs. Cotter is survived by sons Daniel and Robert, daughters Cathleen, Janice and Kimberly, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Services have been held.