MARK KIESLING: Hammond is poorer for Raskosky's passing

The passing of former Hammond Mayor Ed Raskosky this week brings us closer to the end of an era.

He would have been 90 next month and was mayor from 1976 to 1983, when the guard changed significantly in the county's major cities.

Raskosky, a lawyer with offices downtown Hammond, looked every inch the old-style politician — the gray suits, the fedora hat.

In 1983, he was replaced by Tom McDermott Sr., the father of current Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott Jr.

McDermott Sr. was everything Raskosky was not — young, flashy, with movie star looks. When he was elected, a lot of people saw it as a breath of fresh air, an opened window into a room in which too much dust had collected.

But did that make the elder McDermott a better mayor than Raskosky? That's not a given. Style over substance might work in Hollywood, but it doesn't play in Peoria, or Hammond for that matter.

However, it was time for the end of the era of the political dinosaurs. Bob Pastrick hung on in East Chicago and was elected in 1972, four years before Raskosky.

By that time, voters in Gary had already replaced A. Martin Katz, the last in the city's string of white mayors, with Councilman Richard Hatcher, elected in 1968. (Yes, I know the totally Caucasian Scott King was elected mayor later, but resigned and has been succeeded by African-Americans Rudy Clay and Karen Freeman-Wilson).

So following in the footsteps of East Chicago and Gary, where the gray-suited solons had already sunken into the political tar pits, Hammond moved into a new era in 1983.

It's a foolish person, though, who treats the past as if it never existed. Even if it does not appear relevant to today's Lake County politics, much can be learned from studying that which has happened before you.

Raskosky, who practiced law for more than 60 years, remained sharp until the end, when he was suddenly swept from this world into the next.

Which reminds me of a legendary story here at the paper when a rookie reporter, assuming a fellow of Raskosky's age would have shuffled off this mortal coil long ago, referred to him as "the late Hammond Mayor Edward Raskosky."

Well, we all make mistakes, but this was one to which Raskosky did not cotton. He called the paper in wrath, demanding a correction and insisting (a la Mark Twain) that rumors of his demise had been greatly exaggerated.

Alas, this time they have not. And Hammond will be the poorer for it.

The opinion is solely that of the writer. He can be reached at mark.kiesling@nwi.com or (219) 933-4170.