It is with great sadness that I learned today that Mayor Marvin Gillum has passed. It’s still early and I have a lot of thoughts on this but I’m still forming them. At this point, I’ll simply offer this: The real measure of that man is the number and diversity of the people who knew him and held him in very high regard. He really was a gentle giant in our community and he’ll be missed.
I know that many folks have their stories about the Mayor and I’ll relate a couple here: I met the Mayor a pretty long time ago and he was always, in my eyes, an authority figure. The guy had done everything, what did I call him? Doctor? Mayor? Chairman?. I wasn’t sure so I went with “Sir”. I never served with him on the Council but I did solicit his support and endorsement when I ran. I was pretty nervous about it but he was pretty steady about it and it wasn’t a big deal. He was very gracious and made it pretty easy for me.
Honestly, I’ve got a bunch more but my favorite story is from Steve Randolph. I’ll probably botch it so I’ll look to Steve to fix it but there was a tough vote coming up for the Council when Marvin was Mayor. I recall that it was a large capital project like the Pavillion. The supporters of the project, including Mayor Gillum, had been lobbying for approval and thought they had the votes lined up. The night of the vote came and, after everyone had said their piece, someone made the motion and it was seconded. Now, there’s kind of an unwritten rule on most legislative bodies that, on a contentious issue, when a motion is finally made that the heat subsides and the vote goes with a minimum of fuss. Always remember that you have to work with your colleagues tomorrow to get the people’s business done. In any event, the motion is made and seconded. Mayor Gillum, appropriately, asked if there was any comment; very likely with the expectation that there wouldn’t be any. Steve raised his hand and started to speak some more. He recalls that he could just see about half the Mayors face but that his right eyebrow arched slightly. This was warning enough and Randolph thought better of continuing and clapped his mouth shut.
Kind of a long story but that’s the power a leader has and Marvin had it in spades. Godspeed.