When Wilma Vicari was diagnosed with ALS in the summer of 2025, she didn’t sink into despair. Instead, she turned to her doctor at Northwestern Medicine and said something that left him stunned.
Her granddaughter, Lea Vicari, remembers it well. “I have to tell you how ironic this is,” Wilma told her doctor. “My husband’s name was Lou, we named our son Lou Gehrig, he named his son Lou Gehrig, and he named his son Lou Gehrig.”
For decades, the legacy of baseball legend Lou Gehrig had been woven into the Vicari family’s identity. Wilma’s late husband, Louis “Lou” Vicari, was a devoted Chicago Cubs fan whose deep admiration for the Iron Horse shaped his household. Their lucky number was four, their walls were lined with baseball memorabilia, and a family brick built into the walkways at Wrigley Field proudly reads: “3 Generations of Lou Gehrig Vicari.”
Wilma Vicari at home
The progression of ALS is rapid and overwhelming, but Wilma met the reality of the disease with the same quiet determination that defined her 91 years of life. Because of her advanced age, she chose to focus entirely on making her remaining time joyful.
To Wilma, family always extended well beyond blood. In her final days, her home didn’t feel like a clinical space—it felt like a celebration of the massive, five-generation community she had spent her life building. More than twenty family members and close friends packed into her house.
“We turned those nights into slumber parties filled with laughter, food everywhere, Texas Hold’em games, stories, and Cubs preseason baseball playing in the background,” recalls her granddaughter Lea. Wilma passed away peacefully on February 23, 2026, surrounded by that fierce love.
After the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, Louis famously told a cousin, “I can die now,” and he passed away just three months later. When Wilma received her ALS diagnosis years later, she found peace in a beautiful belief: it simply meant Louis was finally ready for her to come home.
Join us on June 2 for an afternoon of community, connection, and fun—and enjoy a game at Wrigley Field, as Louis and Wilma Vicari loved to do.
Get your tickets for Lou Gehrig Day with the Chicago Cubs by clicking this link!
