There were times when Fred Fine found himself a hero in his country’s eyes, and other times when he was branded one of its mortal enemies.
As a young man, Mr. Fine voluntarily joined the Army, earning two Bronze Stars for service in Sicily and France during World War II. Less than 10 years later, Mr. Fine had disappeared, wanted by the federal government for his ties to the Communist Party.
But to friends and family, Mr. Fine was a man who brought art and culture into Chicago politics and government under Mayor Harold Washington. And he imparted more than 60 years of social activism and cultural history to the generations he advised at Columbia College in Chicago.
“I never met a person with a stronger passion for what was right,” said Dennis Rich, chairman of the Arts, Entertainment and Media Management Department at Columbia.
Mr. Fine, 89, died Monday, Feb. 9, in Santa Barbara, Calif., from complications after breaking his hip in a fall, Columbia College officials said.
“It’s a loss, of course,” Chicago historian Studs Terkel said. “The end of a certain age. Not quite the end of the era.”
Mr. Fine was born in 1914 to Russian immigrants and grew up in Wicker Park. His neighborhood was a “culturally rich area with all these theater and dance groups,” said his son, Larry, Mr. Fine’s only surviving relative. “He loved that environment. It shaped his love of culture.”
Mr. Fine attended high school in the city, but left before graduating, his son said. After marrying his wife Doris in the mid-1930s, Mr. Fine joined the Army on Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He spent 20 months in Algiers, Sicily and Marseille before a ruptured appendix forced his discharge, his son said.
After returning to Chicago, Mr. Fine became a board member of the Communist Party of the U.S.A., friends and family said. He was later indicted under the Smith Act for conspiracy to overthrow the government and went into hiding from 1951 through 1955, his son said.
After being cleared of the charges, Mr. Fine returned to Chicago and started Triangle Productions with a friend. By the early 1960s, the company had become known for bringing a wide range of performing acts to Chicago, from Israeli dance troupes to the Beatles.
Mr. Fine went to work for Columbia College, establishing its Arts, Entertainment and Media Management program. He left in 1984 to become Washington’s first cultural affairs commissioner.
Mr. Fine’s selection brought the ire of City Council members who wanted to block any of Washington’s appointments, said Nick Rabkin, director of Columbia’s Chicago Center for Arts Policy and Mr. Fine’s former deputy commissioner.
“The entire arts community came out and discredited the council,” Rabkin said. “Fred turned out to be the first Cabinet member approved by the council. He broke the logjam.”
Mr. Fine resigned in 1987 and returned to the college as director of public affairs. The college planned to name him professor emeritus on his 90th birthday this March, according to Rich.
A memorial service will be held in spring.
