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From the Vault of Art Shay: Remembering Chuck Percy

21.09.11

Magazine. He wanted me to do a sexy cover of a starlet who was a special friend of his. A Jewish actress, Kup filled me in, named Piper Laurie, daughter of a rabbi.

Thus, having done the cover, I found myself in a super chic restaurant on the night before the Oscars, sharing the tiny Chicagoan table up front. I sat between Kup and Senator Chuck Percy, two old friends. Three friends, Kup was at pains to point out who had each lost a child to an unsolved murder. Not an enviable bond, but a sobering one that took the glitzy wind out of the flapping sail of the pre-Oscar PR horseshit. Percy's hand tightened on mine in manly pain for a second and I hid my tears.

I had, of course, photographed actress Cookie Kupcinet who had been murdered in a Hollywood hotel. Sen. Percy lost his beautiful daughter Valerie, whose twin Sharon would go on to head NPR. I took the family's annual Christmas card pictures for a few years. They still have some of these, older son Roger assured me last year. (He had bumped into my photojournalist son Steve in Seattle.) Several years later there was a prison cell confession and another one reportedly by a burglar to his brother, asserting that each of these vermin had committed the murder. Sen. Percy chose not to re-open the case.

Source: Chicagoist