T C Corbett

Thomas Cyril "Cy" Corbett (1895-1976) grew up in Chicago's South Side neighborhood of Woodlawn. His Irish-Catholic family consisted of a younger sister and brother, his widowed mother, and aunt. A serious student from a young age, he attended St. Ignatius High School and Loyola University. At the outbreak of World War I, Cy left school to enlist in the Army Air Corps. Training was exciting, exhilarating, and dangerous: he experienced sixteen forced landings and one serious crash, which likely...See more

Thomas Cyril "Cy" Corbett (1895-1976) grew up in Chicago's South Side neighborhood of Woodlawn. His Irish-Catholic family consisted of a younger sister and brother, his widowed mother, and aunt. A serious student from a young age, he attended St. Ignatius High School and Loyola University. At the outbreak of World War I, Cy left school to enlist in the Army Air Corps. Training was exciting, exhilarating, and dangerous: he experienced sixteen forced landings and one serious crash, which likely contributed to a painful abdominal ailment that affected him for the rest of his life. Throughout his life he kept journals which provided him an avenue to record observations about the people he knew, and acted as a therapy to cope with bouts of depression, which he dubbed "The Irish Melancholy." In 1921 he joined the Chicago Tribune as a copywriter in their business department, and was instrumental in creating advertisements promoting the opening of the Tribune Tower in 1925. He continued at the Tribune with various writing and editing assignments until 1944, when he retired to Michigan and built a small summer resort where he lived until his death at age eighty. See less