Word: bridgeporter
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...highest salary in twelve terms was only $9,300. But Bridgeport, Conn.'s late Mayor Jasper McLevy, 84, a Socialist with a banker's respect for a dollar, proved as frugal with his own funds as he had been with those of his city. He left an estate of $125,000, most of which goes to his wife and family, with one $600 bequest set aside to establish an appropriate annual essay prize for high school seniors. Subject: "How to Set Up an Annual Budget for the City of Bridgeport...
...trooped by. It was a fine funeral; and Jasper McLevy. who was fond of funerals and used to attend three or four a week, would have enjoyed it. But this was Jasper's own: the man who had served almost a quarter-century as the Socialist mayor of Bridgeport. Conn., was dead...
...conservative Republican. The son of a Scottish roofer, he quit school after the eighth grade, followed his father's trade and became a Socialist after reading Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. He ran for mayor nine times before he finally made the grade in 1933. Bridgeport, a drab industrial city on Long Island Sound, was then nearly bankrupt. McLevy fought school expansion, kept city salaries low (his own never topped $9,300), held down taxes as long as he could. Much of the city's business was outlined only in his own scribbled notes, but under...
McLevy lived as frugally as did Bridgeport. When the usual police-driven squad car was first offered for his use, he barked: "Get that damn thing out of here." He wore the same shapeless brown fedora for some 15 years. His frayed shirts were usually smudged, his brown or grey suits baggy, his high-laced shoes were scuffed. His only sartorial concern was that all aldermen wear straw hats, white gloves and carry dime-store flags in the Memorial Day parade each year. They did-and still...
...Reluctant Yes. While running Bridgeport with genuine affection (he opposed urban renewal, recalls a longtime aide, "because he resented the thought that anything in Bridgeport needed to be renewed-that would mean it wasn't perfect"), McLevy yearned for bigger things. In all he ran for public office 54 times in 58 years, including 15 times for Governor, twice for the U.S. Senate. He was always defeated for higher office, and finally even Bridgeport turned him down. The city's 25,000 schoolchildren desperately needed new buildings: its housing shortage could no longer be denied. Reluctantly, McLevy raised...