Thomas P. Ryan Jr.
Tom Ryan was a complicated man, and a complicated mayor.
                 Ryan,
who died last Friday, served as Rochester’s mayor from 1974 to 1993, and right
to the end, he was shy: hated public speaking, didn’t like going to
neighborhood meetings. “He was not one who reveled in the ceremonies of the
office,” says his former deputy mayor, Chris Lindley.
                 He
mumbled, and grumbled, and conversations with him were dominated by long, long
pauses. Interviewing him was often a challenge. He was not terribly quotable
— was not, says Lindley, “good copy.” But, says Lindley, “I think with one or
two exceptions, the reporters who covered him came to adore the guy.”
                 Reporters
weren’t the only ones faced with what former city official Tom Argust calls
Ryan’s “indirect Irish communication.”
                 “One
of the challenges in working with him was to try to be clear about what he meant,”
says Argust, who was Ryan’s Commissioner of Parks and Recreation and then
Commissioner of Community Development.
                 And
yet he left an exceptional record. And he was admired, often revered, by those
who worked with him. The crowd at his memorial service on Monday included not
only current political leaders but also former City Councilmembers, former
School Board members, and City Hall staff members, some of whom were wearing
election buttons from Ryan’s last campaign.
                 Ryan
was also extremely popular with voters. “He had a different way of
communicating,” says Lindley, “but the public liked it. The public trusted him
and liked him.”
                 The
aggravations of the job obviously got to him. But when Michael Miller, as
Democratic Party chair, suggested that Ryan might want to get out of City Hall
and take a City Court judgeship (10 years guaranteed tenure), Ryan declined. He
said, Miller related at the mass on Monday, “I already have the only job I’ll
ever want.”
                 His
shyness and few words didn’t mask his intelligence. He was intensely interested
in public policy, reading voraciously — nonfiction books, government reports,
newspapers. He watched C-Span, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning,
fretting about violence and poverty and looking for ways to attack them.
                 And
he did not suffer fools gladly. He had a temper, and reporters who displeased
him heard about it promptly. A favorite phrase, Chris Lindley recalls: “There’s
nothing so dangerous as dealing with a man who doesn’t know anything.”
                 Ryan
was, in summary, an unusual kind of leader. But a leader he surely was. And he
molded an administration that gave Rochester stability and strength.
                 He
hired creative people, and he was willing to take risks, whether it was
investing millions of dollars in High Falls or hanging on through the
embarrassment of the uncompleted Hyatt Hotel.
                 As
suburban sprawl sucked residents out of the city, he and his administration
fought back, with investments in street and sidewalk repairs, neighborhood
beautification programs, loans and grants for home repairs, and downtown
development efforts.
                 He
was an ardent Democrat, and no softie when it came to politics, but he worked
with Republican County Executive Lou Morin to create an innovative tax-sharing
plan that both eased city financial problems and forged an example of
metropolitan cooperation.
                 And
it did more than that. It put the county and the suburbs on record as
recognizing that the city is not just one municipality among many; it is the
core of the region, offering services and hosting tax-exempt institutions that
serve the county and the region as a whole.
                 Ryan
also left Rochester with a tradition of honest government. He had, says Chris
Lindley, “a rock-bottom sense of decency and fairness and honesty.” And his
personal ethics set the tone in City Hall.
                 “He
provided a context,” says Tom Argust, “an atmosphere in which people made the
decisions that were best for the city.”
                 “It’s
not that you have to be out front all the time,” says Argust, “but you create a
culture that values integrity, that values trust, that values honesty, that
values a high degree of professionalism and expectation in public service, an
expectation that public service is not something to be taken lightly, that it
is a mission in life. He created that expectation by example.”
                 Ryan’s
is a legacy he — and his public — could be proud of. The tragedy is that he
still had so much to give when he lost his fight with cancer.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2003.
