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Joe O’Neil: Ticket Manager

He’d done some intern work at the Sun Times and Chicago Daily News finishing up college in 1979. On Christmas break before graduation, determined to work for a Chicago sports team, he planted himself in the Bulls old offices at 333 North Michigan and wouldn’t leave. Eventually he met accountant Irwin Mandel, whom he kept in touch with. Then Mandel had a project. United Airlines had a strike in 1979. When they settled they were offering customers half fare vouchers. Could O’Neil hang around O’Hare and buy some and then the Bulls, traveling commercial then, could use them for player fares and save money? That was the Bulls and their eight-person staff then. In less than three hours, O’Neil collected thousands of dollars worth for the $2,000 the Bulls spent. Yes, the Bulls would travel another season. O’Neil was the new ticket manager. He’s gone on to become a top Chicago restaurateur with his O’Neil’s on Wells establishment and joined with Bulls photographer, who established the New Day Cambodia foundation to help children in need. O’Neil is leaving on his 21st trip to Cambodia this week. O’Neil met his wife Susan, who was a Bulls secretary, when he began and they have three children. There were all the titles from that inauspicious start, his kids getting to work as ball boys at times and as ticket manager the most popular—and under siege—person in Chicago in the 1990s. But O’Neil said the highlight was that trip with Jordan to Springfield. “It wasn’t like we were super close, but that he remembered and to be on the plane,” says O’Neil. “The reminiscing from how it all started to where we came. That was terrific.”