Wirtz history

In 1933, Wirtz and Norris formed a partnership to purchase the team and the Olympia Stadium where the Falcons, as they were then called, played their home games.

Later in 1940, he and Henie took on Broadway, co-producing the Rockefeller Center Ice Revue.

After struggling through Prohibition and the Great Depression, Wirtz bought the large Judge & Dolph liquor wholesaler from the Walgreen Drug Co. in 1945.

On the verge of collapse, in 1949 the NBL's six remaining teams joined the BAA, which then modified its name, becoming the National Basketball Association.

Henie's review soon hit financial difficulties, exacerbated by a bleacher collapse at one of her performances, and in 1953 she was forced to terminate her show.

Wirtz also entered the insurance field in 1960, when it launched the Wirtz Insurance Agency, offering property, casualty, and health insurance.

His son, William Wadsworth Wirtz, would play an increasing role in the running of the club and was named president of the Blackhawks and Chicago Stadium Corporation in 1966.

He put together an investment group in 1970 to purchase a controlling interest in the Bulls, which he would head until his death.

He finally exited the show business in 1979 when he sold "Holiday on Ice" and another show to the owners of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The Bears remained in their longtime home of Soldier's Field, which was eventually renovated, but Wirtz and Reinsdorf joined forces in the early 1994 to build a new arena for the Bulls and the Blackhawks, the United Center.

Little known fact: Before the Bulls and Blackhawks achieved United Center glory, Danny Wirtz and the Loyola Academy Ramblers won the state hockey championship there in 1995, just a year after the facility co-owned by the Wirtz family opened.

When negotiations broke down between the players and league in 2004, the owners locked out the players, resulting in the cancellation of the 2004–05 season, the first time that a professional sports league had been forced to cancel an entire season because of a labor impasse.

After growing up in Winnetka and attending Boston College, Wirtz pursued a passion for music and, eventually, brands, working for marketing firms in New York and London before returning to Chicago in 2007.