The news Monday that former Wayne County (Detroit) Executive Bill Lucas died at 94 evoked memories about every aspect of his colorful career — all of them admirable.
Some recalled Lucas as a lawman — a New York City policeman, one of the first Black FBI agents in the early 1960s, and as the two-fisted sheriff of crime-riddled Wayne County in the '70s.
With the support of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. and other prominent Democrats, Lucas was elected to the just-created position of county executive in 1982. Many predicted bigger things for the new star of Wolverine State Democrats.
But Lucas had other ideas. In 1985, upset with the Democratic Party's propensity for government spending and encouraged by the recall of two Democratic state senators for supporting higher taxes, the Detroit man switched to the Republican Party.
A year later, he topped a four-candidate primary to become the first Black Republican nominated for governor by Republicans in any state since Reconstruction. Lucas named one of his former gubernatorial rivals, State Rep. Colleen House Engler, as the first-ever female Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. (By way of disclosure, Colleen is today the wife of this reporter).
President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, and other Republicans campaigned for the Lucas-Engler ticket. But 1986 was a big Democratic year and incumbent Gov. James Blanchard was re-elected in a landslide.
"Bill was a team player," former Ingham County GOP Chairman Norm Shinkle told us, "He refused to take donations once polls convinced him he would lose."
When Bush became president in 1989, he tapped Lucas to be Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights. He would have been only the second Black to head up the 32-year-old Civil Rights Division and, with his high profile as a politician, would have surely become a national figure in short order.
Perhaps sensing this — and clearly upset by Lucas' conservatism, his pro-life stance, and his criticism of affirmative action — Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted down his nomination. Leading the charge was Ted Kennedy, Lucas' onetime supporter as a candidate for county executive.
Bill Lucas took defeats as he did victories — without rancor and only a desire to just keep going.
With a booming laugh and strong traces of his parents' West Indian accent, Lucas was always a charming raconteur who unfailingly delighted listeners. At our first interview in 1985, he vividly recalled seeing and being inspired by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, D.-N.Y. when the storied Harlem lawmaker spoke at Lucas' high school in the Bronx.
"I never forgot his clothes," Lucas said of Powell, "He was the first perfectly color-coordinated man I ever saw."
Orphaned and raised by an aunt, high school track star Lucas won a scholarship to Manhattan College and graduated with honors. After brief stints as a teacher and welfare worker, he joined the New York City Police Department in 1953.
Much like a character straight out of the contemporaneous TV series "Naked City," Lucas moved from uniformed beat cop to plain-clothes detective. As he and wife Evelyn raised their children, Lucas earned a law degree nights at Fordham University.
At his law school graduation, Lucas' life was changed while serving as an escort for the event's speaker: U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
"Bobby said 'You come to Washington and work for me,' " Lucas said. He did, and was assigned to the Civil Rights Division as an investigator at the time the universities of Mississippi and Alabama were experiencing turbulent integration of black students.
But Lucas' love of law enforcement proved all-powerful, and in 1964, he became one of the first Black FBI agents.
It seemed odd, Newsmax once noted to Lucas, that he pointed to two figures who clearly detested one another as major inspirations in his life: Attorney General Kennedy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
"I don't know about their feelings about one another, but I just know I admired and learned a lot from Bobby and Mr. Hoover," he told us. "Bobby knew how to get things done. I loved when he'd say 'Let's do this or that' and someone should say 'shouldn't you let the president [brother John Kennedy] know first?' And Bobby would say: 'Let's do it and tell the president later.'
"And the old man [Hoover] taught me how much you could accomplish through plain hard work. He built the Bureau from nothing by working around the clock most of his life. You have to admire that."
Eventually stationed in Detroit as an agent, Lucas left the FBI in 1967 after being appointed Undersheriff of Wayne County. Like Kennedy and Hoover, Sheriff Roman Gribbs proved to be a mentor from whom Lucas learned considerably. When Gribbs became mayor of Detroit two years later, Lucas moved up to be sheriff.
Much will surely be written in Michigan and elsewhere about this remarkable man who came from so little to accomplish so much. What would Bill Lucas consider his most lasting legacy?
During an interview, I asked about his children. Whereupon he promptly opened up his wallet and distributed three business cards: Patricia A. Lucas, D.D.S (family dentistry); Stephanie Lucas, M.D. (diabetes, endocrinology, weight management); William R. Lucas, Jr. (ophthalmology).
"And I'm so proud of all of them," he beamed.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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