How Byrne beat the machine is one of Chicago's epic political tales. She had worked on Sen. John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign and met much of his clan. The White House invited her to a 1963 Army-Air Force football game at Soldier Field, where the spunky young widow — Bill Byrne, a Marine flier, had crash-landed in fog near Glenview Naval Air Station in 1959 — impressed Mayor Richard J. Daley. He gave her a job with an antipoverty program, then elevated her to his cabinet as commissioner of sales, weights and measures. In return Byrne rabidly defended Daley; when his minor stroke provoked speculation about possible successors, she called an over-the-top news conference to denounce the "vultures" and "little men of greed" waiting to grab for his power.