When the state redistricted in 2010, it was the first time John Petalas ever saw “Mr. Merrillville,” Chet Dobis, flummoxed.
Dobis, a Democrat who hung up his political career in 2012 after 42 years as a state representative, found himself facing another popular legislator, Vernon Smith, for the seat he’d held for so long. Buying a house in incumbent-free Schererville fixed the dilemma, but Petalas said his longtime friend, whom he first met when Dobis served on the Merrillville Town Council in 1979, was concerned.
“He’d been unopposed for so many years, when he finally had opposition, he said, ‘What do I do?'” Petalas, the Lake County treasurer, recalled Saturday. “It was one of his last campaigns.”
Dobis died Saturday. He was 83.
Dobis was always “front and center” for any legislation the new town needed, Petalas said. Because it was a different time politically, Dobis served as a leader and will be missed for his ability to get things done.
“If he didn’t get the legislation passed, we might have been part of Gary or annexed into Hobart,” Petalas said.
Former South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Speros Batistatos said most people in Northwest Indians had no idea of Dobis’s impact on the region. He wrote the law that created the Regional Development Authority, for example, and recognized early the power of the tourism industry.
“He helped me pass four funding increases for the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority, resulting in the construction of the visitor center and us having the budget that was spent on tourism under my administration,” Batistatos said. “Chet Dobis excelled in finding bipartisan support and thrived in an environment of honesty, transparency, and commitment to good government in Lake County and Northwest Indiana.
“Chet Dobis was my friend and one of my two great mentors. He was a legislative titan that will be missed, but his legacy will live on through the scores of laws that shape our community to this day.”
Merrillville Town Manager Michael Griffin said he was saddened to learn of Rep. Dobis’ passing and offered condolences to his family.
“He was very much a man of the Indiana House, and I acknowledge his legislative work that led to Merrillville’s incorporation,” Griffin said. “He was an effective legislator, whether in majority or not, he was a leader.
“On my desk, I have a clock inscribed with the ancient Ephebian oath. It prescribed duties for young men in Athens. I believe that as that oath requires, Rep. Dobis, as a legislator, left this region the better for his service.”
The idea of Merrillville started with a proposal for 1,000 trailers on what later would become the Broadmoor Country Club and ended a few years later, in 1971, with the incorporation of the town of Merrillville, culminating a lot of hard work from committee members who fought off strong opposition from then-Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher, and thanks in large part to the help of Dobis, according to Post-Tribuhe archives.
Residents of the Lincoln Gardens and Young American subdivisions in then-unincorporated Ross Township didn’t want a giant trailer park, so they started campaigning for their own town with its own laws.
The county eventually denied the trailer park, but residents were still concerned about other proposals developers were making. The group first tried incorporating in 1969, but a three-mile buffer zone law nixed the idea.
A committee surveyed residents on their interest in becoming a town, and they then went to the legislature to ask that the buffer law be temporarily removed, the Post-Tribune previously reported. The bill, sponsored by freshman legislator Dobis, got passed but never got into the governor’s hands, so in 1971, a new incorporation committee comprising four Chamber of Commerce members, four Democrats and four Republicans was formed.
After more surveys and petitions, a buffer zone bill that exempted Lake County from the law, again introduced by Dobis, became law without the signature of Gov. Edgar D. Whitcomb in March 1971, largely because it had already been passed.
“I did the job people wanted,” the Post-Tribune reported Dobis saying of the bill.
In his time in the General Assembly, Dobis rose to speaker pro tempore, the second-highest position in the House, in 2010. But then-House Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, stripped Dobis of the post when the caucus was fighting over which Illiana Expressway bill to back, the Post-Tribune previously reported.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
