Agnes Belushi, 67, mother of actor-comics Jim and the late John Belushi, died of cancer Thursday at her home in Addison.
Family members flew in from all over the country Thursday to gather at the home. Jim Belushi was expected to arrive for the funeral after taking a leave from filming “Filofax” in Hollywood.
“Christmas will never be the same,” said Dolly Kekela, Mrs. Belushi’s youngest sister.
“She’s going to leave a great void in my life. `We’re all kind of numb right now. It’s kind of difficult because we’ve gone through so many near crises and been grieving so long, that we’re all cried out at the moment.”
Mrs. Belushi was born of Albanian parents in Akron, Ohio, where she she worked as a riveter for Goodyear Aircraft Co. during World War II. She began corresponding with a young serviceman named Adam Belushi, also of Albanian descent, at the behest of Belushi’s sister. When the young man returned from the service, they courted and were married in 1946.
Mrs. Belushi and her husband moved to his hometown of Chicago and settled on the Northwest Side, where they began a family. She and her husband once co-owned three Fair Oaks restaurants in the area. They later moved to Wheaton, where they lived for 24 years, and then to Addison.
Mrs. Belushi sold real estate in Addison in recent years and took bit parts in movies, including “Sixteen Candles,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “The Color of Money.”
She had been a champion of the “Say No to Drugs” campaign since John Belushi’s death from a drug overdose in 1982. Recently, she was involved with the Ray Graham Association for the Handicapped, donating items for an auction earlier this year that raised more than $10,000.
“She was a very vibrant woman, very full of life,” said a friend, Herb Beutow, who met Mrs. Belushi through the association. “She liked country and western music and liked to go dancing at Nashville North in Bensenville.”
Mrs. Belushi told the Sun-Times in an interview in January that her motto was, “Health is first and wealth is not a bad second.” She said: “Everybody can’t be happy all the time. God doesn’t want us to be happy all the time.”
In addition to her husband, sister and son Jim, survivors include a daughter, Marian; a son, William; two sisters, Olympia Kianos and Anastasia Dimas; three brothers, Elias, George and William Samaras, and two grandchildren.
Services will begin at 11 a.m. tomorrow at St. Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church, 2701 N. Narragansett. Visitation will be from 3 to 9 p.m. today at Salerno’s Galewood Chapel, 1857 N. Harlem. Burial will be at Elmwood Cemetery in River Grove.
