CHICAGO

 

My first job after graduating from Western Reserve University was as an Urban Renewal Field Representative at the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency (later to become HUD).  To understand how I ended up there you will need a little background information. I started my college career thinking I would be a high school history teacher.  I loved history, geography, political science and sociology. By my sophomore year I realized that I didn’t even like teenagers when I was a teenager; so why would I want to spend my life teaching them.  I later realized that the job market for history majors was pretty dim unless you had a PHD and those jobs were few and far between.

While I was in college I became involved in politics and interested in public service. That included a heavy involvement in the 1960 campaign to elect John Kennedy president and Chat Paterson congressman in the 22^nd district.  Chat Paterson became a friend and mentor for me.  After the campaign I did some analysis of the results of the election which Kennedy won but Chat lost to the longtime incumbent, Frances Bolton.

The experience working in the 1960 political campaign and my relationship with Chat were the things which led to my career path.  Chat was a real estate developer and a major actor in the urban renewal program in Cleveland. By my sophomore year in college I saw my future in public service and politics.  That would require that I take more practical courses in my junior and senior years.  Fortunately, Western Reserve offered courses in public administration, public finance administration, public personnel administration and urban sociology.  I spent my junior and senior years taking the above mentioned courses as well as anything related to politics and public service.  I graduated with a degree in political science and history.

Some of the public administration courses were taught in the graduate school, often by adjunct faculty with actual experience in government.  An example was Public Personnel Administration taught by Morris Berke, the Director of the U.S Civil Service Commission in the Cleveland area.  I wrote a paper for that class about the Housing Intern Program of the US Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA).  Under that program, HHFA hired recent college graduates to work in one of the Regional Offices as a trainee for six months and then continue in one of the specialty areas within the agency.

I wrote that paper in my senior year and became convinced that experience in Urban Renewal would be the best entrée to my career in public service.  I applied to the HHFA and was accepted in the program at the Chicago Regional Office starting in June 1963. 

The Chicago Regional Office of the US Housing and Home Finance Agency was located on the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th floors of the Stone Container Building at the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive.  We were on the South side of the Chicago River across from the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower. It was an interesting neighborhood, which included the shopping areas on State Street and the Michigan Avenue as well as cultural organizations like the Chicago Art Museum and the Chicago Public Library. I spent many lunch hours and time after work exploring that neighborhood.

 STONE CONTAINER BUILDING  - MICHIGAN AND WACKER

 

 

 

 

WRIGLEY BUILDING AND TRIBUNE TOWER

The Regional Office was responsible for agency programs in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.  I was assigned to work with the Area Coordinator for Ohio.  There were seven trainees in my class.  We were given a lot of written material and procedure manuals to read and were assigned to a mentor, who would help acclimate us to the agency and its programs. The mentors were members of the field staff, which worked with cities which had or were applying for Urban Renewal grants. As a part of my training I went on field visits to several towns in Ohio including Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo, Youngstown, Campbell, Steubenville, and Martins Ferry.

There were also several groups of specialists in the Regional Office, who reviewed grant applications and performance in their area of specialization.  Trainees met with those specialists to get an understanding of their functions.  Those specialties included planning, land acquisition, land disposition, relocation, finance, and community organization.  In the fall of 1963 our group and those from all the other regions met in Washington DC for a week long conference after which we were given certificates for the completion of our training.

I completed my training by the beginning of 1964.  At that time the Regional Office created a new section for Program Review and Evaluation. One of the area coordinators was assigned to head the new section and he selected me and several other personnel to work with him.  In that unit I worked with field staff and specialists to review projects before they would be approved. This was a great opportunity to learn about projects from all over the region.  My experience visiting large and small cities in Ohio and working with the specialists in the Regional Office prepared me well for this assignment.

In the fall of 1964 my wife, Jean, entered the School of Library Science at Western Reserve University.  We rented a house in Cleveland Heights where Jean stayed while I stayed with her parents in the South Shore section of Chicago.  That resulted in me commuting by bus from Chicago to Cleveland every Friday and returning on Monday morning.  By 1965 I became tired of the commute and decided to return to Cleveland to continue my career while working at a variety of organizations and in many interesting buildings.