He’s 94. Goes to work every day. Is writing his memoirs.
That’s the good news about Leon Despres who, as one of his many friends puts it, “has fought the good fight for 50 years or more, pitting the politics of the moral right against the politics of `where’s mine?'”
On the down side, the former alderman admits his health has been less than good since he took a tumble in his Hyde Park apartment last fall and bumped his head hard enough to require brain surgery.
“I use a walker, as everyone can see,” Despres said. “But I still come in every day from 8:30 to 3. I have the practice of an older lawyer–real estate, wills, that sort of thing. And we did get to do some carousing for my birthday.”
That involved going out for dinner three nights in a row with his wife, Marian. She’s 93.
And, oh yes, he’s never been to prison.
That came up when a visitor, dropping by for a how-are-things chat, wanted to know how he’d kept a squeaky-clean record as a high-minded, independent voice during 20 years of service in the Chicago City Council.
“Fifteen of my colleagues went to jail,” Despres said with a wry smile, recalling the days of yesteryear when, as columnist Mike Royko wrote, he “was told to shut up, in one form or another, more than any grown man in Chicago.”
In his prime, as historians remember, Despres was a finger-wagging scold of Mayor Richard J. Daley, rising to speak out against the evils of racism, poverty, mismanagement of parks, axing of trees and distribution of boodle.
At least, he spoke until his microphone was cut off, often long before his allotted time was up.
“Yes, I enjoyed the tumult,” he said. As for bribes, he said, he made it clear, at the start of his aldermanic service in 1955, that he wasn’t interested. “The people who said `we’ll take care of you’ never came back,” he said.
Despres has 250 pages of memoirs written, covering his aldermanic years and his later service as City Council parliamentarian for Mayors Jane Byrne and Harold Washington.
“When [Byrne] became mayor, she didn’t know how to run a meeting. She was very unsure of herself. I had to sit there and keep things going,” Despres said. “Washington,” he added, “knew parliamentary law very well, but he was always talking with people, conferring. You’d have to pull him away.”
Despres also mentions many other involvements, including Business and Professional People in the Public Interest, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and Friends of the Parks, which he recently helped in its fight against changes at Soldier Field.
“I really maintain my interest and activity in the social problems of the city,” he said.
Then he offered a quick synopsis on how Chicago has changed since he was born, at 41st Street and Michigan Avenue, in 1908:
“Traffic and parking are terrible,” he said, “but the physical plant is much better. Dividers, trees, flowers, cleaning the streets–all good. The Millennium Park, though it costs a huge fortune, is a beautiful ornament.
“The racial situation is still fundamentally bad, but so much progress has been made. African-Americans have penetrated so many neighborhoods without creating a ghetto. But we still find terrible reactions in some areas. There have been advances for women, in the law, in banking, for example, but there’s a long way to go.”
Despres plans to continue working as long as he can get out of bed in the morning. Meanwhile, he’s looking for a publisher–and a title–for his collected thoughts.
“I’ve been calling it, `The Battle for Chicago,'” he said. “But I think we have to do better than that.”
