Coroner's career in death gives birth to a rich, full life

Immersed in blood, guts and gore for nearly a quarter-century as Lake County coroner, 87-year-old Barbara E. Richardson of Gurnee doesn't care much for Halloween.

"Oh, I like kids trick-or-treating," Richardson says. "But I don't like things hanging from trees. I don't like graveyards in the yards."

During her career, which ended with her retirement in 2003, Richardson saw tens of thousands of real corpses - victims of car crashes, shootings, stabbings, fires, drownings, crib deaths, beatings, suicides, falls, poisonings and the usual assortment of diseases. After all that, she just can't find the fun in pretend death.

"We'd have this horrible, god-awful case with a body in a condition you just couldn't imagine," Richardson says, grimacing at the memory. "And then a week later, we'd have one that was worse."

The trauma was unrelenting, with her office investigating 3,000 deaths some years. Richardson brought in mental health experts from time to time to meet with her staff. "The guys didn't like it because we'd all end up crying," says Richardson.

"Even though she was tough, she probably cried on a daily basis," says Jody Schuetz, one of Richardson's daughters.

Richardson's toughness was honed during childhood. She was born in Chicago to Scandinavian parents Ernest and Margaret Erickson. Her younger brother, John, died at age 48. Her father was a cabinetmaker who worked for Gulbransen Piano. At the start of the Great Depression, he lost his job and the Ericksons moved in with Margaret Erickson's parents in Grayslake. Margaret Erickson returned to work as a bookkeeper for a Chicago brokerage firm, taking the train from Grayslake.

Her dad, known by his nickname "Whitey," served as police chief of Grayslake, and then as village administrator and director of public works. He pushed her to be involved. "My dad would say, 'Can't never did anything.' That meant you were going to try it," Richardson says. "But my dad was never around when I did it."

She won the American Legion Award in eighth grade and was active during her years at Warren Township High School in Gurnee in cheerleading, theater, chorus and band, where she was a first-chair trombonist. Many of the school's graduates, including her classmate Mickey Babcox, went on to be Lake County politicians. But Richardson excelled as a campaign manager and speechwriter for others.

She worked as a bookkeeper, clerk and "girl Friday" for a lawyer and later a judge in Waukegan, but became a stay-at-home mom when she and her husband, Jack Richardson, became parents to Jody, Jill and Jim in three years. She was president of the PTA, served on the Grayslake village board and took a job as an assistant secretary at Grayslake High School. In the fall of 1968, Richardson was so upset about the administration's harassment of one male student that she quit. "The week after I left the high school, the boy committed suicide," Richardson says. "It was a life-changing experience for me."

She wanted to help people, but she needed a real job. Responding to a tiny newspaper advertisement, Richardson became one of seven employees involved in the founding of the College of Lake County.

"We literally started the college. It was a wonderful experience," says Richardson. When she left that job on Monday, Nov. 1, 1976, fate intervened.

"On Tuesday, Mickey (Babcox) was elected coroner. On Wednesday, he said he'd hire a woman deputy," remembers Richardson, who notes that she and Babcox didn't get along when they were high school classmates. Babcox invited her for coffee on Friday and offered her the job.

She became a deputy coroner on Feb. 1, 1977. While the coroner is a law enforcement office that doesn't require any medical training, Richardson immediately took a series of classes in Chicago to learn about death investigations.

"The boys didn't have to do that," Richardson says. "I wanted to. No woman had done this before, and I wanted to learn."

When Babcox was elected sheriff in 1982, he already had set the wheels in motion for Richardson to be named coroner.

As a female elected official, Richardson admired Virginia Fiester Frederick, a Lake Forest Republican elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1978. Frederick was a leader in child welfare issues and domestic abuse before her death at age 93 in 2010.

Frederick and Richardson started a group for women interested in government, and Richardson spoke often about being a female politician. Her campaign colors were purple and white, and she sometimes passed out campaign cards with a recipe on it so people wouldn't throw them away.

She talked about trust and determination, and told voters, "I am naive and honest to a fault, perhaps."

She won every election she entered, often getting more votes than any of the other Republicans on the ballot, even presidential candidates.

"The politics side of it was a little bit odd, but she never had any problem with it. She was good at it," says her son, Jim Richardson.

"I would like to think of it as more public servant than politician," says Richardson.

She met many voters through her job, although usually under horrific circumstances.

In one of her first cases, she had to tell her neighbor that her two teenage sons had been killed in a traffic accident.

"What better person than my mom," says Richardson's daughter, Jill Halverson, who says her mother had empathy and knew what to say.

Richardson delivered that news thousands of times, often getting out of bed to drive to a stranger's home in the middle of the night.

"If I couldn't find the house, I went to the house with the porch light on," she says.

"People were so wonderful to me," she says. "One of the things that bothered me was when I'd leave, they'd say, 'Thank you.' And I'd think, 'You're thanking me for ruining your life.'"

But they appreciated her kindness.

"Some became really good friends," says Richardson, who turned down opportunities to run for higher office. "I was the luckiest woman in Lake County. Why would I leave a job that gave meaning to my life?"

She gave countless talks to high school kids about the dangers of drunken driving. She'd tell them about going to a home and spotting a photograph that would be the last family portrait. She also won awards for her advocacy of organ donation.

"My kids know, if there's an eyelash left on me and somebody wants it, take it," Richardson says.

Widowed after the 2007 death of her second husband, Don Cannon, she volunteers with the Warren-Newport Public Library and serves on the board of directors for the Cancer treatment Centers of America, which is opening a new inpatient tower in Zion on Nov. 18. A grandmother of seven, with a fifth great-grandchild due this month and a sixth next year, Richardson laughs often, frequently at herself. A decorative rock near her front door features the Ralph Waldo Emerson line, "The earth laughs in flowers."

Working with death helped her appreciate life. During one of her speeches, a young woman asked her what she had learned during her career. Richardson says she didn't realize it until that moment.

"Life changes in a heartbeat," she says. "I hope that when my heart stops beating, somebody cares."