Sicilian Culture: The News & Views: John Ferraro, Long Time City Council Leader Dies

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John Ferraro, Long Time City Council Leader Dies

John Ferrarro's passing at 76, was Front Page News the last Two Days. Those two articles follow.
(1)JOHN FERRARO, LONGTIME CITY COUNCIL LEADER, DIES
(2)COUNCIL TRIBUTE TO A 'FATHER'
Very Proud and Involved Italian American Served Nine Terms as Council President.
Voice of reason, humor, and peacemaker, on frequently fractious Council. Longest serving council member in the city's history, 35 years. A big man (6'4"), a strong man (played "Tackle"), but he was a loving man All-American,1944 & 1947, played in three Rose Bowls for USC. Inducted into the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame. Represented the heart and the soul of Los Angeles.

JOHN FERRARO, LONGTIME CITY COUNCIL LEADER, DIES
By Elaine Woo, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 18, 2001 - - John Ferraro, the affable Los Angeles city councilman whose quiet politicking during 3 1/2 decades at the center of city government helped bring Southern California the 1984 Olympics and removed a controversial police chief after the 1992 riots, died Tuesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica after a nearly two-year battle with cancer. The council's president and grand old man was 76.
Ferraro, the longest serving council member in the city's history, was diagnosed as having cancer of the spleen in August 1999. He disclosed the illness to his colleagues the following February, when he planned to undergo chemotherapy after other treatment failed... He last presided over the council in December.
His death was announced in council chambers shortly after noon by President Pro Tem Ruth Galanter. Fighting tears, she told a reporter, "We are all sort of his children here. . . . It's really hard to lose your dad."
Mayor Richard Riordan was at Ferraro's side, along with family members, when he died.
"He was a great leader of our city," Riordan said at a news conference a few hours later. "I know of no one who represents the heart and the soul of Los Angeles more than John Ferraro did. He was a big man, he was a strong man, but he was a loving man--a person who put Los Angeles first and his own agendas last.
"John, we will miss you very, very much."
Reelected 9 Times
Ferraro was appointed to the council in 1966, when some current members were in grade school. He was reelected nine times from the 4th Council District, which stretches from North Hollywood and Toluca Lake to Los Feliz and his neighborhood of Hancock Park, and was serving his ninth term as council president.
A politician who often was awkward under the spotlight, Ferraro was more skillful as a behind-the-scenes deal maker. Associates described him as the unsung hero, a role ascribed to him recently by key players behind Staples Center, the downtown sports complex that opened in October 1999, three years after Ferraro wooed back its frustrated developers.
Called "the voice of reason and humor" by council colleagues, he built a reputation as a peacemaker, soothing relations on and off the frequently fractious body. He was pivotal in the private negotiations that finally nudged a recalcitrant Daryl F. Gates out of the police chief's office in 1992, two months after the riots and a year after the police beating of Rodney G. King ignited calls for the chief's resignation.
Ferraro was born on May 14, 1924, in the sleepy Los Angeles suburb of Cudahy. He was the youngest son in a family of eight children whose Italian immigrant parents ran a macaroni factory before going broke during the Depression.
He attended Bell High School, where his excellence on the football field led to a scholarship at USC. In college he earned the nickname Big John: He stood 6 feet 4 1/2 inches and weighed 240 pounds...
He was named an All-American in 1944 and 1947 and played in three Rose Bowls. Three decades later, he was inducted into the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame.
When World War II erupted, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve, serving on a tanker with Warren Christopher, later U.S. deputy secretary of state under President Carter and secretary of state in the Clinton administration. Christopher sparked Ferraro's interest in politics during long early-morning discussions when they were stationed in the Bay Area.
After the war, Ferraro finished college and married Julia Luckey, the daughter of Democratic state Sen. E. George Luckey, later chairman of President Harry S. Truman's Southern California campaign in 1948. The marriage produced a son, Gianni Luckey, but ended in divorce in 1972.
With a degree in business administration from USC, Ferraro established a lucrative insurance business on Wilshire Boulevard. Through shrewd real estate and stock investments, he became a millionaire, but maintained an interest in politics.
By the late 1950s Ferraro headed Democratic Associates, a moderate group that offered a more conservative alternative to Adlai Stevenson. In 1960, he supported John F. Kennedy for president.
He served on the Police Commission for 13 years, starting in 1953. In 1966, he was named by Mayor Sam Yorty to fill a vacancy on the City Council created by the death of Councilman Harold A. Henry. The next year he ran for election and won his first four-year term.
Over the many ensuing elections, he never faced a strong challenge for his council seat, although the boundaries of his district would change with reapportionment. He maintained his firm grasp on the diverse district by taking care of the humble business of politics--fixing potholes, funding community centers and finding out why the garbage truck didn't show up.
After going to church Sundays he would bring his staff a pile of notes about helping a man find an apartment or fixing a light on another constituent's street. "I return all of my phone calls and I emphasize that to my staff," he said during a recent reelection bid. "We try to help people. And if we can't, we let them know we can't."
He forged strong ties with downtown business leaders, which helped him maintain a healthy campaign war chest. But he was a strong supporter of rent control and limits on condominium conversions. In 1982, he wrote the legislation that created permanent rent controls in Los Angeles and ended a standoff between tenant and landlord groups.
He played a major role in bringing the Olympics to Los Angeles, serving on early committees that were trying to attract the Games. Working closely with Mayor Tom Bradley, he kept arguing for the viability of the 1984 Games--the first to make the host committee responsible for all costs--when most civic leaders, fearful of the financial burdens, were backing away. He held together the fragile support for the Games on the council.
He was generally popular among his council colleagues because he did not compete for the limelight or meddle in their districts' affairs. They rewarded him by repeatedly electing him council president...
He also played a role in bringing the Democratic National Convention to town last year and in spurring the renovation of the Los Angeles Zoo. In one of his last major roles, he helped broker the agreement among Riordan, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and the council over the federal consent decree to reform the Los Angeles Police Department. In September he returned to the council for the first time after his cancer surgery to cast a pivotal vote in support of the reform mandate.
Ran for Mayor
Ferraro was skillful at the insider's fight.
The longtime councilman had wanted to be council president when the Olympics arrived in 1984 but was challenged by a close Bradley ally, then-Councilwoman Pat Russell. When Ferraro realized he did not have the votes to hang on to the gavel, he was determined that Russell would come up short too. In a masterful ploy, he persuaded colleagues who were going to vote for him to switch their allegiance to Joel Wachs. Wachs, who was going to support Russell, voted for himself and won.
"They were trying to do me in, so I did them in first," Ferraro recalled with relish during a 1985 interview. "It's one thing not to be president and another thing to be taken out in a coup like I was. I salvaged a little by changing the course of it at the last minute."
When he regained the presidency by unanimous vote a few years later, he admitted, "I did get a few tears in my eyes."
He tried to move up from the council twice. In 1974 he ran for Los Angeles County supervisor to replace the retiring Ernest Debs but lost to Ed Edelman, who would serve five terms...
Some observers suggested that Ferraro's bitterness about losing the council presidency in 1981 contributed to his decision to challenge Bradley in 1985. Others said Ferraro always wanted to be mayor.
An amiable politician who shied from controversy, Ferraro surprised many, Bradley included, by waging an aggressive campaign from the outset...
In the final tally, Bradley won...
Friends, associates and Ferraro often summed up his strengths using the language of the playing field: He was in his element as a team player.
"I was a tackle," Ferraro once said, likening his tenure on the council to his college football days. "Sure, we never got any glory, no headlines, and that has been my philosophy."
Self-effacing, he often joked during council meetings that a matter was so simple that "even I can understand it." Or he would quip, "John, tell them all you know, it'll only take two minutes."
That philosophy helped him carve out a role as peacemaker and behind-the-scenes deal maker. But it meant he wasn't in the limelight as much as he might have deserved.
A prime example of his quietly effective politicking came during one of the city's most painful times: during the months after the King beating and riots, when ridding the LAPD of its longtime symbol, Chief Gates, came to be seen by many as the balm for the city's tensions...
In a swirl of meetings and phone calls engineered by Ferraro and Wachs, Gates finally agreed to a retirement date of April 1992. Ferraro was widely praised for engineering the deal. "The real hero in this is Ferraro," Riordan, then a wealthy downtown businessman and Gates confidant, said at the time. "He just kept at it in a very low-key and nonthreatening way. He convinced Gates that he was his friend and his total ally. He was very persuasive." ...
Ferraro was considered pro-development but moderately so. In the 1990s he worked with developers of a planned retail complex for the Farmers Market area and residents of the surrounding Fairfax neighborhood to produce a scaled-back plan that now includes a Nordstrom department store.
Toward the end of the decade, he joined the movement for a new sports complex to revitalize downtown. He wrote a series of memos nudging the complicated process forward. He assembled a team of administrators from various city agencies to eliminate as much red tape as possible. When questions of financing and other details threatened the deal with collapse, Ferraro the diplomat focused on salvaging the project for Los Angeles.
"John Ferraro is the unsung hero in this thing," George Mihlsten, an attorney for Staples Center developers Ed Roski Jr. and Philip Anschutz, said as the completed center prepared for its opening. "He made the deal happen in L.A."
In late 1992 he discussed with supporters the possibility of running as a one-term caretaker mayor who could make tough decisions and help sooth tensions brought on by the riots and recession. "The city is in desperate need of strong leadership," he said.
But by that time he had undergone open-heart surgery twice: He had a heart attack and a double bypass in 1979, and had a heart defibrillator installed after a quadruple bypass in 1992.
He was devoted to his second wife, the former Margaret Hart, who nursed him back to health after his first heart attack before marrying him in 1982. She died in January 2000 after a long illness.
He is survived by his son.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
* * *
www.latimes.com/print/20010418/t000032859.html
Times staff writers Tina Daunt and Douglas Shuit contributed to this story.
* * *
Video from Tuesday's City Hall news conference, with reaction from Riordan and council members to Ferraro's death, is available on The Times' Web site at: www.latimes.com/ferraro

COUNCIL TRIBUTE TO A 'FATHER'
Current and former leaders gather at City Hall to remember John Ferraro as a moderating voice and a kind mentor.
By Patrick McGreevy, Staff Writer The Los Angeles Times
Thursday, April 19, 2001 - - With a black shroud covering his chair and the Los Angeles City Council chambers packed for the occasion, John Ferraro was remembered Wednesday for his warmth, political savvy and humor.
In an emotional tribute a day after his death, officials recalled Ferraro's 35-year career on the council. Some of the testimonials were tearful, but more often they were delivered with humor.
Ferraro was cited for his work on the 1984 Olympics and improving the Los Angeles Zoo. Mayor Richard Riordan and others praised Ferraro as a strong and steadying force who brought civility to the debates of government.
"You were the heart, the soul of our city of Los Angeles," Riordan said as a giant photograph of Ferraro was shown on a large-screen television. "John Ferraro's life was a life of giving, giving to the people of Los Angeles, giving to the people of his district."
Ferraro was 76 when he died Tuesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica after a two-year battle with cancer. Family members, including sisters Rose Mercadante and Mary Busciglio, attended Wednesday's tribute, which will be followed by visitation Sunday at 7:30 p.m. and funeral Monday at 10 a.m., both at St. Brendan Church, 310 S. Van Ness Ave.
Joining 12 current City Council members Wednesday were former City Council members Roz Wyman, Joy Picus, Art Snyder, Richard Alatorre, Zev Yaroslavsky, Ed Edelman, Michael Woo and Robert Wilkinson.
Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, Fire Chief William Bamattre, City Atty. James K. Hahn and other city department heads also attended the two-hour tribute.
"He has served the city so well for so many years as a moderating voice, a person everyone could work with, and who has contributed so much to the well-being of this city," said Edelman, who is also a former county supervisor.
Picus added that Ferraro's remarkable presence reflected the way he carried his influence, wearing "the mantle of power both gracefully and graciously. His wit and fairness are truly legendary."
African American Council members Mark Ridley-Thomas and Nate Holden recalled that when they were first elected, the Italian American Ferraro broke the ice by introducing himself as chairman of the council's "black caucus."
"John Ferraro's favorite line to me," Councilman Mike Hernandez added, "was 'Us Latinos have to stick together.' "
Hernandez was near tears when he said he considered Ferraro to be like a father, and Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. said Ferraro was a padrino, who took him under his wing.
Others recalled with humor some of Ferraro's parliamentary mastery, a set of skills developed over decades that helped the councilman prevail in those instances where charm or humor failed him. Holden recalled one key vote in which he was the only dissenter and, by voting no, delayed final approval. Holden was doing an interview with a reporter afterward and Ferraro, he said, urged him to take the interview out in the hallway. As soon as Holden was outside the council chamber, Ferraro called for a new vote and the measure passed unanimously, Holden recalled.
"We can go on for weeks telling John Ferraro stories," said interim Council President Ruth Galanter. "Besides being a wonderful human being, let's not forget that John Ferraro was a really slick pol."
Although Ferraro's public life was the one best known around City Hall, two other devotions helped make him the man he was--his loyalty to USC, where he played football, and his dedication to his wife, Margaret, who died last year after a debilitating illness.
Under any circumstances, Ferraro's death would mark the end of a long era at City Hall. But for several of those who spoke Wednesday, the council president's passing was especially unsettling because it comes at a time of great change in Los Angeles, when voters are electing a new mayor, city attorney, city controller and six new council members.
Councilman Alex Padilla, who was elected two years ago, worried about the loss of experienced leaders like Ferraro, who he said helped him learn the ropes at City Hall.
Alatorre agreed: "He was a big man in stature but he was a bigger man as a human being. This city has lost a great man." ...
www.latimes.com/communities/news/los_angeles_metro/20010419/t000033117.html

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