I was in the NUF Class of 72 - 73 and shared a great relationship with Frank Logue ... being a Fellow added significant values in my professional career (law enforcement) through retirement as a police commander; post retirement as a water commissioner; year long foreman of the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury, and numerous other boards and community activities ... I will forever remember Frank
Following up
By Joseph P. FriedPublished: February 16, 2003At 78, Still Bridging The Town-Gown Divide
As mayor of New Haven from 1976 to 1979, Frank Logue had both town and gown in his politics.
A 1948 Yale graduate who also earned a law degree at the university, he was a liberal reformer in New Haven's Democratic politics who twice bucked the party machine and won primaries that led to his election as mayor. Yale-connected liberals were a big part of his constituency. He lost his primary race for a third two-year term.
His agenda included increasing City Hall's role in strengthening cultural programs throughout New Haven. His administration promoted and financed groups from visual artists to a troupe of mimes.
Today, Mr. Logue, 78 and a retired labor arbitrator, is still engaged on the local cultural scene. He is a leader of a nonprofit theater group, the Elm Shakespeare Company, which puts on free summer performances in a park. He previously ran a book-discussion program, often featuring Yale professors, at a local church.
As for town-gown relations over all, they are better today than in his own mayoral days, he said last week from his New Haven home, because Yale officials now recognize their responsibilities to the city. ''They really understand, as they never used to,'' he said, ''that they're the biggest enterprise in the entire city.''
A Great Player, A Great Man
A further remembrance of Lou Gehrig.
Kids in Philadelphia rooting for the Athletics in the late 1930's found few consolations at Shibe Park. We were too young to recall the glory days of Foxx, Grove and Simmons in 1929, '30 and '31. All the heroes and legends we watched played for the visiting teams: Bob Feller of the Indians, Hank Greenberg of the Tigers and all of those mighty Yankees: DiMaggio, Keller, Dickey, Ruffing, and of course Lou Gehrig.
One Sunday in 1938 I went to a doubleheader and watched the Yanks beat the A's in the first as usual. Between the games, after the ground crew dragged the infield, Lou Gehrig and Dick Siebert, the A's young first baseman, went out to first base. Gehrig demonstrated to Siebert a first baseman's footwork. He stood off the bag and fielded imaginary pegs from second, short and third, high and low, to one side and the other, letting the appropriate foot ease back to the bag.
I admired Siebert for letting the home folks see that a major league player was willing to be instructed in public. I was awed by Gehrig -powerful yet graceful - and generous enough to give lessons to the other team's first baseman.
The A's lost the second game, too, but I learned some things about what makes a good first baseman and a great man.
FRANK LOGUE New Haven
Frank Logue was involved in many organizations. These include...
Books Sandwiched In, New Haven Pulic Library
Elm Shakespeare Co., Co-founder and Vice President
Cold Spring Group Home (co-founder)
New Haven Youth-At-Risk
Artspace New Haven
Citizens Television
Morse college (Fellow)
Beginning in September 1945, two of the three Yale undergraduates I roomed with in our
suite in Berkeley College were brothers and my boyhood Philadelphia friends, Gordon and Frank
Logue. The two other Logue brothers and friends were also at Yale soon after World War II ended in mid-
1945. Ed, the oldest, was in law school and undergraduate John had a single in Berkeley.
Because of our long, deep and rollicking friendship I was sometimes called “the fifth brother.”
Measured by Irish heritage, intellect, political consciousness, powerful blood ties, charm
and good looks, the four Logue, brothers were every bit the match of the Kennedys. While they lacked
the Kennedy gold they had a huge amount of Logue brass. Among a number of politically
conservative Yalies they were sarcastically known as ‘the social justice boys”
when in fact that was a compliment,
Frank was my roommate through our Yale College graduation in 1948 and into the next two years at
Yale Law School after which, for the final year, he moved off campus with his wonderful new
wife, dear Mary Ann. Frank and I got along handsomely and never had to ask permission to
borrow each other’s socks or soap. I delighted in his great sense of humor. and intelligence. and was moved by his genuine concern for the underprivileged. What also powerfully bonded us was our U.S. Army service as combat infantrymen in the war in Europe. Although we were in different divisions, we had both experienced the bitter winter of 1944-1945 and were knocked out of the war when Frank suffered trench foot, and I was wounded.. We could always deeply communicate about that in just a word or two. Knowing the horror of war and the gratitude for having served and survived gave us genuinely shared spirits.
Whether it was discussing what happened in class that day, telling the latest “white
shoe boy” joke, singing “ Bless ‘Em All” or chanting “Talking Union’ over pitchers of beer in
the Old Heidelberg, we were kindred souls. Even when we hadn’t seen each other for years, we
could begin our conversation as if we had been singing together at the Old Heidelberg the night before.
I was truly blessed that Frank was my dear friend. May his soul rest in peace.
Seymour I. "Spence" Toll
By Robert J. Leeney
That is the shared opinion of former Mayor Frank Logue (1976-79) and former Mayor John Daniels (1990-93). They spoke together last week at a public conversation sponsored by the New Haven Colony Historical Society. The society has devoted this year's Pitkin Memorial Lectures to an election-year look at city mayors and their experiences in City Hall.
Daniels and Logue agreed that urban programs, projects, and even philosophies may shape a mayor's connection to the voters, but getting and properly using the money to meet the needs and obligations of the municipal government is always the mayor's heaviest burden — the challenge and the chore that dominates their memory of the job.
After World War II, New Haven, like many other places, had undergone a "revolution of rising expectations" in the initial success of Dick Lee's downtown redevelopment and neighborhood renewal plans.
But by the early 1970s, in the hubbub of Vietnam War protest and drug-related inner-city crime and family problems, federal funds were shrinking at City Hall. Republicans in Washington and Hartford were less smitten by the ideas and appeals of a Democratic-run city. And the private sector economy, the basic job source, was having ups and downs.
In Frank Logue's time at City Hall, the tax base was shrinking. Downtown retailing continued to decline. More and more of the established factories — neighborhood prosperity builders for more than a century — were moving out of town, out of state or joining locally owned banks in the first eddies of globalization's spin.
In this pinch, Yale had the deepest local pockets left. Logue conferred with Kingman Brewster and the corporation but knew their polite summation, "interesting," promised few rewards. So his administration worked with Yale to define a way in which tax-exempt properties could help produce public funds. It took years, but eventually the state's "PILOT" program, meaning "payments in lieu of taxes," created new fiscal options in many Connecticut cities.
Logue also described the traumatic last stages of the local withdrawal of historic Winchester Repeating Arms. Technologically outmoded, its buildings being razed to avoid taxes, it faced a strike in 1979.
The Olin-Winchester managers signaled they would bring in replacement workers. The union machinists signaled they would mass pickets at every gate and door.
Foreseeing violence, Logue directed the arms plant to close down. Within four days, a Superior Court judge reopened it.
The union workers settled for the limited production schedules of new foreign investors.
The local "agita" was over, especially at City Hall — but generations of worker skills and community pride also vanished.
When John Daniels succeeded the late Biagio DiLieto as mayor in 1990, the pursuit of money for a hard-pressed city again focused on Yale and a municipal budget deficit of $12 million.
Daniels was the city's first African American mayor. He had pledged that he would make improvement of neighborhoods, "not downtown," his core goal.
Benno Schmidt was Yale's still-new president. They met with a shared sense of community crisis.
Their negotiations were intense, the issues complex. In the end, Yale produced an immediate $2 million for municipal fire protection with added annual payments; it permitted the city to put the Yale Golf Course on its tax rolls; it produced other Yale participation in community investments.
With the Yale agreement signed, Daniels made the innovative concept of "community policing," as applied by Chief Nicholas Pastore, the key to many other neighborhood improvement efforts for the rest of his term.
Both Logue and Daniels spent more than 1,400 days in the office of the mayor.
A day by day examination of their activities would produce a record more idealistic and ambitious than budget making alone — and they like to talk about their exercise of vision.
But when asked about the essential measure of any mayor's performance, they spoke most proudly of raising the dough.
From the New Haven Register Online Comments section
by Shawn Flynn
Reprinted with permission
Remembrances from the New Haven Register Online Comments Section
Excerpts
by Tomas Reyes Jr.
I had the great fortune of having gotten involved in local New Haven politics supporting Mayor Logue`s first Mayoral campaign. He was a very fair,committed public servant who helped the New Haven Latino community in many ways.
His love for the city was evident in his every day work.He surrounded himself with smart, hard working people who made his administration quite effective and proactive.
by David S. Rose
As a college student who came of voting age just before Frank Logue’s first campaign, I have always thought of him as my equivalent of JFK, John Lindsay or Barack Obama (depending on one’s age cohort). I enthusiastically campaigned for him, rejoiced in his election, and, as an urban planning major, followed his post-mayoral career (and that of his late brother, Edward J. Logue, the original master planner of post-war New Haven.)
Frank Logue was an effective, pragmatic and idealistic public servant, before, during and after his mayoral years.
by James Velvet
Mayor Logue was an honorary pall-bearer at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s funeral.
by Lou Lange
" I remember Mr. Logue as a kind and gentle man who ran the city of New Haven in a gentle manner, but was firm when he needed to be. He helped get New Haven off the ground in the early 1970s."
by Rose Marie Nemec
" Back in the early 60's Mr. Logue was a lawyer in the town of Trumbull. I had the great good fortune of working in his law practice for a few years. He was a kind, caring and hard-working man."
by Vanessa Burns
I was [an] aldermen during the Logue Administration and I found him to be knowledgeable and he cared deeply for the City. I did not always agree with him on policy but he was knowledgeable about the issues and represented the City well.
Reprinted with permission
Published: Thursday, May 30, 2002
The book given me to read tells a tale about a Chinese girl and the perils and rescue of her favorite pet. The kids listened politely and responded readily to the questions I asked about the story. Then they asked me if I would like to hear some jokes. I wasn't sure that jokes were appropriate on Read Aloud Day and glanced at the teachers, who nodded and smiled.
Wondering what kinds of jokes 7- and 8-year-olds tell, I said, "Who wants to tell a joke," and a dozen hands flew up. Some of the jokes were familiar, some were funny, and here is the best one, told by a boy named Kroot Aab:
A lazy man wanted a pet to do all the work around the house, but all he could afford was a centipede. He told the centipede to bring in the newspaper and he waited 10, 20 and 40 minutes for the paper. He shouted at the centipede, who replied. "I heard you, I'm just putting on my sneakers."
After 15 minutes of jokes, I expressed my thanks and the kids asked me to watch a rehearsal of their play, "Escape from the Polar Pole," which they had written and was scheduled to be performed at the Long Wharf Theatre. Feeling somewhat skeptical, I turned to the teachers, who said the kids needed to have a rehearsal for someone outside the school, so I agreed. All of them participate in the play, some shyly, some earnestly and a couple like seasoned actors.
The children present a remarkable diversity. Half of them are from Asia, Africa, the Middle East or Latin America. Their last names include Bi, Du, Delapaz, Ma, Dzingirai, Ye Mamillapalli, Hossin, Truong, Ye, Zhang and Zhou, as well as Beach, Kendall, Rodgers and Todd.
Two days after my visit, the mailman delivered the mandatory thank you letters from the children.
The first asked, "Are you an author or a publisher?"
Here are some others: "Please return next year and read a chapter book, love 'em." "I am from Mexico, Spain and Puerto Rico." "I am orange and you are purple." "You are very nice to us and I know we have to be nice to you." "How cool." And then, "You should be our mayor, not John DeStefano" (which neither of us would welcome).
The one request in all 25 of their letters was that I attend the performance of their play at Long Wharf.
© Copyright 2011 New Haven Register, a Journal Register Property & part of Journal Register CT -- All rights reserved (Reprinted with permission)
A Man with a Vision
(This article is from the National Urban Fellows Website, November 30, 2010)
For forty-years, National Urban Fellows has addressed one the most important and challenging issues faced by America – the under-representation of people of color and women in leadership – particularly in public sectors.
National Urban Fellows has grown from a model program solution, brought about by the civil rights era, to help the nation cope with the pervasive violence and social unrest; the results of discrimination, segregation, poverty, police brutality, unemployment, and poor housing, and has grown into one of the country’s oldest and finest leadership development organizations for people of color and women.
It took the leadership and commitment of many individuals and institutions to create the ground-breaking program that was designed to bridge the gap between city governments and minority communities.
As we celebrate this 40th Anniversary year, it is with gratitude that we acknowledge and extend appreciation to the Founder of National Urban Fellows, the Honorable Frank Logue, whose steadfast vision to prepare qualified and promising people of color and women for leadership, set the course for America’s future leadership.
Today, National Urban Fellows has graduated well over 1,100 people of color and women who hold policymaking positions as mayors, city and county managers, commissioners and officers of major nonprofit and philanthropic organizations throughout the country. We remain confident that these are the leaders who will work to ensure equity and social justice for all people, and who will effective positive change in U.S. communities and ultimately the nation.
