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Tom Houlihan, a longtime columnist for the Star and one of the founding members of the Homewood-Flossmoor Chronicle, died Nov. 23 following a decision to end cancer treatment in favor of palliative care. He was 76.

Houlihan was born in 1949, and grew up in Morgan Park on Chicago’s South Side. He graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a degree in journalism in 1971.

After graduation, Houlihan’s career in journalism started with Crescent Newspapers, a now-defunct chain of newspapers that once covered the ‘crescent’ of suburbs around Chicago. There, he worked for the Lockport Herald as both a reporter and editor.

“He was just an excellent reporter, and, I mean, everybody loved him,” said John Ostenburg, a longtime frien

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