McNamara Center, The University of Minnesota

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Thank you for reminding us Mr. Vice President and Mayor George that it is simply not possible to comprehend the extraordinary breadth and depth of accomplishments that cascaded from Don’s almost seventy-five years of public service without accounting the transcendent qualities of character, intellect, and moral integrity that made Don one of the greatest public servants of this state’s history.

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I first met Don when he asked me to join his office in 1974. But I walked into his office knowing that he was among that very rarified group of public officials who possessed the insight and courage to get out in front of the most pressing issues of their time and to bend them toward the common good.

• I’ll never forget Don’s deputy Iric Nathanson telling me on one of my first days in the office about Don’s 1962 campaign against the cold warrior Walter Judd. Iric told me just how difficult it was for Don to challenge the nation’s dominant political and intellectual concept of national security by proposing that a “Strong America Begins at Home,” not in the flexing of overseas military power.
• Similarly, I sat for hours in the office of Dale MacIver, who staffed Don on the District of Columbia Committee, receiving a tutorial on why Don had agreed to take that committee assignment. Dale explained that while other House members thought that that assignment would be beneath them, Don threw himself into the creation of a Home Rule Charter for the District as an antidote to the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents.
• And I was awestruck when – during dinner at Don and Arvonne’s home in Southwest D.C. – Don had to excuse himself to take a call from the Democratic nominee for President, Jimmy Carter. The President-to-be was about to go into his television debate with Gerald Ford and wanted Don’s advice on exactly how to frame the importance of international human rights, which Don had introduced onto the national stage through his chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements. Suffice it to say, Carter took Don’s advice.

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Don’s re-direction of the arc of these issues – and so many, many more – stemmed from being armed with clear, unshakeable values that activated like a thermostat in the presence of social challenge. His leadership was an alchemy that blended crystalline clarity of purpose . . . inviolable integrity . . . and ever-adapting method. All leavened with profound humility.

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After working with Don in his final four years in Congress, I had the honor of rejoining him for his last four years at City Hall, and of working with him subsequently as a colleague during my six years at the McKnight Foundation.

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In each role, I saw a leader who put political considerations somewhere around the ninth position on any listing of reasons for taking an action. Literally.

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Early in my tenure as Deputy Mayor, Don asked for my advice about whether to veto a particularly divisive and gnarly development proposal. I suggested that the only sensible political course seemed to be to swallow very hard and go along with the City Council. He smiled and asked me to sit with him. He then wrote out on a piece of paper six reasons the development was wrong-headed. He then drew two lines underneath the list and wrote the word “politics” underneath it. He said kindly, but very firmly, “Never make a decision below the line.” Message received.

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In each of my roles, I bore witness to a leader who invariably sought to listen and understand before exercising his power and authority.

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I can’t tell you how many times I watched Don patiently listen . . . and listen . . . and listen to a resident or business owner or someone else wanting something from City Hall. His assistant Bea Underwood would invariably poke her head in and tell Don that he had to be somewhere else. But if the visitor’s story wasn’t done or if Don hadn’t had all of his questions answered, he would sit and listen some more. When I told him there were times that I wanted to run out of the room screaming, he reminded me that it was far better to listen too much than to know too little.

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And in each role, I learned from a leader who understood the difference between searching out defensible common ground on one hand and comprising at the cost of one’s principles on the other.

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At one particularly low-point in the BWCA wars, members of our environmental coalition met with me to say that they felt that we would have no choice but to make deeply painful concessions in order to keep the possibility of robust wilderness protection alive. I walked down the hall to the office of the larger-than-life Congressman Phil Burton of San Francisco, who was masterminding the bill’s strategy in the House of Representatives. After I explained the situation, Burton sat me down and gave me a vodka-assisted three-hour schooling on the role of political compromise. He then looked at me and said: “I tell you this because everything I’ve just described is everything Don Fraser is not. He is the member of Congress I respect above all others. He is everything good and true about politics. If he doesn’t want to settle for a middle ground, neither will I. Let’s stay the course.”

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I didn’t even bring the compromise proposal to Don. Burton was right. I didn’t need to. We both knew what Don would say. Indeed, he didn’t waver, and the environmental patrimony of this state is indescribably richer for it.

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When Don returned to Minneapolis and became mayor, he dove into the traditional responsibilities facing any large-city executive – balancing budgets, delivering essential residential services, growing the economy, ensuring public safety. Indeed, when I arrived at City Hall, Don did not – as George so wonderfully described – behave modestly. He instead tasked me to undertake initiatives of sweeping boldness and innovation. The restructuring of the city’s budgeting process . . . the creation of a $400 million Neighborhood Revitalization Program based on comprehensive neighborhood planning . . . the preservation of city landmarks like the Armory and the Ivy Tower . . . the re-writing of the City Charter to augment the Mayor’s authorities . . . the drafting of annual State of the Urban Environment addresses, which would form the third leg of the stool next to his Budget and State of the City addresses. All milestones that would have generational impacts on the residents of Minneapolis.

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But Don was well along the road of recalibrating the job description of Mayor, elevating the soft- tissue issues of human development – finding creative and effective ways to promote the well- being of the city’s children and families. And as his job description changed, so did mine. We – he – went to work on a youth agenda of sweeping ambition:

• Birthing the Youth Coordinating Board to align the youth policies of the independent Park, Library, and School systems with City Hall priorities.
• Creating Way to Grow, a nurse home-visiting program, and tied it to the United Way’s first Success by Six early childhood initiative.
• Developing a set-aside percentage in the city budget for youth outreach workers who operated out of park facilities.
• Convincing the corporate community to sponsor and adopt neighborhood early learning centers throughout the city to offer Head Start, childcare, health, and parental support services in a single location.
• And the list goes on and on.

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This conception of a mayor’s role seems so basic today, but it was anything but that in the 1980’s. Indeed, when Don first ran to be President of the National League of Cities, his youth policy platform cost him the job, and he was defeated by the mayor of Orlando, who politely pointed out that all that stuff Don was promoting was not really a mayor’s job. [As George alluded to, that miscarriage of justice was later remedied, and with a vengeance.]

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When Don asked me to draft his final State of the City address in 1993, he told me that he wanted to dedicate it entirely to the challenges, accomplishments, and opportunities of children and families in the city. He said that his separate budget address would convey clearly enough the priorities for the rest of municipal operations. He wanted to be sure that, as he left office, he articulated unambiguously the case that had seemed so foreign to his peers – that a mayor had no higher priority than ensuring that a city’s children were given every possible opportunity to realize their full potential.

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Time has shown just how right Don Fraser was about that. It is utterly inconceivable that municipal policy and practice in any American city – from St. Paul to San Diego, Duluth to Detroit – would not situate children and families at their core. Mayor after mayor seeks to position her city to animate the very kind of strategies that Don pioneered thirty years ago. Thirty years ago. Back to the idea of Don getting in front of a curve.

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Don often said to me that public policy was a bit like taking on a project at his basement workbench – laying out the parts, understanding how they fit together, and then having the patience to assemble them systematically. I once remarked to him that that didn’t seem to account for the passion he brought to public problem-solving. He grinned and replied that one began a task with passion, but finished it through intentionality. He understood that the inspiration of a grand idea was hollow without the impact that comes from action.

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The measure of this profoundly great man is that he never chose to dwell on his own role in any of his accomplishments. Consistent with his sage workbench metaphor, he preferred to move with passion against a social challenge that was fundamentally inequitable or unjust, deconstruct it, and then put it back together in a more humane, sensible, and effective way.  

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The theologian Thomas Merton once said: “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.” Well, Don didn’t. And everyone in this hall, everyone in this great city, and indeed so many beyond it, are immeasurability richer for it.

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God speed Don Fraser.