Former Mayor Remembered For His Style
Submitted by:	N.O.V.A. April 2005
Source:  	Times Picayune 09-02-1992

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Friends of New Orleans Mayor Victor H. Schiro remembered him Tuesday
as the common man's politician whose legacy of racial goodwill and
unabashed boosterism will shine brighter through the years.

Schiro, who died Saturday at 88, was "the Harry Truman of mayors -
not appreciated as much as he should have been when he was in office,
but always looking better and better," said former Schiro mayoral
aide Jack McGuire, now a Mandeville city councilman.

A domed stadium and a wide Poydras Street filled with gleaming office
towers, both dreams of the dapper little mayor with the pencil-thin
mustache, eventually became reality.

"His flights of fancy are still flying, and all of them have been
good for the city," McGuire said at funeral services for Schiro held
at Gallier Hall, the former City Hall.

For three hours before the ceremony, the late mayor lay in state in a
large ballroom at Gallier Hall. Afterward, under darkening skies, a
long procession slowly took his body past City Hall and the Super
Dome to Lake Lawn Park Mausoleum, where the sound of thunder muted
final prayers by former Archbishop Philip Hannan, and heavy rain
soaked a New Orleans police honor guard that fired three shots in
salute to Schiro. He was laid to rest in a black granite tomb.

Schiro got into politics in 1950 at the urging of then-Mayor
deLesseps S. "Chep" Morrison, running successfully on Morrison's
ticket for a seat on the city's Commission Council. After New Orleans
voters approved a Home Rule Charter that replaced the Commission
Council with the City Council, Schiro was elected councilman at large
in 1954 and again in 1958.

In 1961, Schiro was named by his colleagues to complete the unexpired
term of Morrison, whom President Kennedy had named ambassador to the
Organization of American States. Schiro won election to the mayor's
office in 1962 and was re-elected four years later.

Throughout the Tuesday service in his honor, his friends remembered
Schiro as the chief executive who took the first tentative steps to
employ black people in what had always been an all-white City Hall.
And they said they believed his affable personal style helped keep
New Orleans off the list of cities torn by race riots.

"This man has done more, in a silent way, to promote race relations
when it wasn't popular," said Philip Batiste, the city's first black
mayoral assistant, appointed by Schiro in 1967.

Schiro was "largely responsible" for the fact that New Orleans did
not become a racial powder keg during school integration and
following the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert
Kennedy," said the man who succeeded him as mayor, Moon Landrieu.

"Vic was always the underdog, and underrated," said Landrieu, now an
appeals court judge. "He had a truly unique relationship with the
public; they understood him, and he understood them."

Many present and former officeholders, some of whom at times were on
the opposite side of the political fence from Schiro, recalled a
fellow who put aside differences after elections to work for the
city's good.

"The man did not have a mean bone in his body," said Philip Ciaccio,
a councilman with Landrieu during Schiro's second term as mayor and
now an appeals court judge.

A lot of what Schiro accomplished didn't make big headlines but was
probably a hit with the average citizen, former aide McGuire said.
Schiro brought piped water to Lower Coast Algiers, which until his
administration had water trucked in. He created a mosquito control
board that became a national model.

And Schiro, who drew guffaws when he counseled harried New Orleanians
during Hurricane Betsy not to believe any false rumors unless they
came from him, later pushed for passage of laws that provided federal
hurricane disaster relief and flood insurance.

But it was Schiro the everyday guy that many remember best, including
deLesseps S. "Toni" Morrison, son of the man who drafted then-
insurance salesman Schiro to run for office.

Morrison was 4 years old when he accompanied his mother and father,
and Schiro and his wife Sunny, on a car trip out West, where Mayor
Morrison was to attend a conference.

"I just remember Vic and Chep talking nothing but politics the whole
way," Toni Morrison said. "They were going to re-do the city."

Schiro was a much more able public official than people gave him
credit for, said attorney Sal Anzelmo, who managed Schiro's 1965
mayoral re-election campaign.

"He was just an ordinary guy who did ordinary things for the ordinary
people of New Orleans," Anzelmo said. "He was completely himself. . .
. He was an excellent ordinary man."