Every time Chris Ahrens visited his uncle in Chicago, he would get the mandatory architectural tour–the city’s earliest skyscrapers, the Louis Sullivan buildings, the first department stores.
Robert Ahrens wasn’t an architect, just a dyed-in-the-wool Chicagoan.
“He was very proud of this city,” Chris Ahrens said. “He would travel here and there, but getting him to leave Chicago was a chore.”
Mr. Ahrens, 80, a past Roosevelt University vice president who championed the rights of the elderly, died Saturday, May 24, of kidney failure in Warren Barr Pavilion in Chicago.
Mr. Ahrens was born on the South Side to German immigrants. His father died when he was 15, his nephew said, forcing him to shoulder responsibility at an early age.
During World War II, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces and was shipped to London, where he worked as an intelligence officer, his nephew said. When he returned, he enrolled in Roosevelt University in Chicago through the GI Bill, eventually earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
While there, Mr. Ahrens met a charismatic student named Harold Washington. The men became close friends.
A vigorous Democrat, Mr. Ahrens began working for the city under the late Mayor Richard J. Daley to help create the mayor’s Commission for Senior Citizens in 1956. The precursor to the Area Agency on Aging, it was one of the first municipal offices in the country to address the needs of the elderly, his nephew said.
Around the same time, he became Roosevelt University’s first director of alumni relations. He worked his way up to the post of vice president, which he held from 1965 to 1967.
After Mr. Ahrens’ friend became Chicago’s first black mayor, Washington appointed him as director of the Mayor’s Office for Senior Citizens and the Handicapped in 1983.
“He got involved in an area that was completely undeveloped at the time,” his nephew said.
“He was very committed to the idea that government could make a difference in the world.”
Mr. Ahrens also is survived by three other nephews and three nieces. Memorial services will be announced later.
