The South Side recently lost a figure who was part grandmother, part unofficial community mayor.
Metropolitan Cleaners owner Margaret Hurney was 85 when she died Jan. 7. She owned and ran the dry cleaner for 44 years. Her family remembers that, even when sick, she rushed from the back of the shop when longtime customers walked in.
“She just loved people,” said Margaret’s son, Tom. “She knew the questions to ask to find out what was going on.”
Customers loved Margaret right back, said Tom’s wife, Linda. “People would come in just to talk to her—just to get things off their chest,” she said.
Margaret wouldn’t just listen—she wanted to help locals in ways big and small. Tom recalls she once offered a favor to a customer who loved Hawaiian shirts, promising that her granddaughter in Hawaii could send a few straight from the islands. She came through on the offer. “If she could do something for you, she’d do it,” Tom said.
Margaret’s husband, Leon, bought the business in 1968 so she would have a way to support herself and the couple’s six children. He died several years later.
Margaret remained at the helm of the old-fashioned cleaner—a store that still has an antique cash register, latticed counter fronts from the 1970s, and floral wallpaper last changed 15 years ago. The long turnstiles of pressed clothing in plastic bags sit just behind a glass partition. Margaret sewed buttons and hems until weeks before she passed away.
The business was always a family affair. Years ago, Margaret brought her toy poodles to the store. Tom first spent time there at age 5, and it has been his only job since his teens.
His wife, Linda, works there, too—she has frequented the shop since age 8, when Saturday trips with her grandmother to see Margaret were a highlight. Once a year, the store sells Girl Scout cookies from Tom’s niece.
Community support worked both ways. In the 1970s, Tom accidentally left the back door open and a gust of wind shattered the East Carson Street windows. Bar owners across the street supplied beer, and a nearby pizza shop brought food for neighbors who helped board up the storefront.
Margaret was fiercely opinionated, independent and street-smart, friends and family said. “She was a very considerate person—whether you were influential or an ex-bus driver like me, she always worried about you,” said John Krzeminski, a Port Authority retiree and friend of 35 years. “Even if she had a gripe, she’d come down and say, ‘How you doing?’ We didn’t fight all the time, but, you know, we danced.”
Some customers disappeared for years and returned claiming they had been living “in Chicago,” Tom said. After the door closed, Margaret would remark, “Yeah, they were in jail. You couldn’t fool her; she’d see right through it.” Still, Tom added, “If she knew you, she became a part of your life.”
