Monday, April 26, 1999

Longtime mayor: It's time to go

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Healy's been serving city for 32 years

BY ALLEN HOWARD
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Francis Healy won't continue as Deer Park mayor but will keep cutting hair. His customer is Richard McGowan. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

        DEER PARK — The absence of Francis R. Healy from the ballot after three decades leaves a certain emptiness.

        He has been in City Hall 32 years, 24 as mayor and eight as a council member, including two as president of council.

        Mr. Healy is not running for re-election.

        “It is time to move on,” he said in a voice that's part growl and part grit.

        Healy has been a household word in this small northeastern suburb of 6,500 residents. When he wasn't working on their minds on city affairs, he was probably working on their heads; Mr. Healy has been a barber there for 40 years.

        “I had more discussions and received more complaints on city affairs in the barbershop then I did in City Hall,” he said.

        As a city official, colleagues said, Mr. Healy could be direct and demanding in one moment; cunning and compromising the next.

        In the heat of a discussion last year between Deer Park and Silverton over creation of a joint fire district, he snapped at a Silverton city official: “Why don't you just sit down and shut up.”

        In the next moment, he told the group, “There is no need to get all riled up. We can calmly work this out by working together.”

        He was born in Deer Park 74 years ago on Virginia Avenue, where he still lives.

        He is single and claims marriage was close three times, but “I slipped away.”

        His marriage is to Deer Park, where he once could walk down practically every street and call everybody by name.

        “I think of Deer Park as a nice little community,” he said. “It is stable, but there is a change of a younger generation taking over. It looks good. I see more and more young families, pushing baby buggies. I can count 14 children now living on my street.”

        Looking back at his days as mayor, Mr. Healy said: “The one big contribution I have made to the city is that I have appointed good people to head city departments. I looked at their qualifications rather than their politics.”

        He said he doesn't like discussing politics and religion, even in the barbershop.

        Being involved in practically everyone's life in Deer Park was a hobby and a profession. When he wasn't discussing city affairs, or cutting hair, he was arguing with a referee while managing Little League baseball.

        “The public had complete access to him all the time,” Councilwoman Sandra Hall-Rymer said. “His leaving is like the beginning of a new era. He is very much a part of everybody's life. He performed my wedding ceremony last August.”

        Mr. Healy's departure is almost like losing a piece of City Hall, Safety and Service Director Dave O'Leary said. Mayor Healy appointed Mr. O'Leary 20 years ago.

        “We have always worked very well together,” Mr. O'Leary said. “He has complete trust in me. He has been such a prominent fixture in City Hall until his leaving is like destroying part of the building.”

        Mr. Healy attended St. John the Evangelist School and Deer Park High School, leaving in his senior year to join the military.

        Three years in the service, a short stint as a factory worker, and the rest is barbershopping.

        On political philosophy, he said, “I am very conservative when it comes to spending taxpayers' money, but on most issues, I kind of go down the middle.”

        He will still be listening to complaints and discussing baseball at his barbershop on Ohio Avenue

        “I can't leave the barbershop. I wouldn't know what to do with myself.”

       

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