South Water Filtration Plant could be renamed for Eugene Sawyer

Chicago’s South Water Filtration Plant would be renamed in honor of former Mayor Eugene Sawyer, under a resolution quietly introduced by the City Council’s most powerful alderman and by the former mayor’s son.

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, acknowledged there is a cost associated with permanently renaming the plant at 3300 East Cheltenham Place as the “Eugene `Gene’ Sawyer Water Purification Plant.”

But after belatedly renaming the plaza surrounding the Chicago Water Tower in honor of former Mayor Jane Byrne — and only after years of ignoring Chicago’s first and only female mayor — Sawyer said the mayor’s office was “looking for something to do” to honor his father.

The south filtration plant made sense because Eugene Sawyer taught chemistry and mathematics at Alabama State University before moving to Chicago, then started his career in city government with a 12-year stint as a Water Department chemist at the Jardine filtration plant, Roderick Sawyer said.

After the 1987 death of then-Mayor Harold Washington, Eugene Sawyer was elected acting mayor during a tumultuous City Council meeting that ended in the early morning hours of Dec. 2 — with then-Ald. Dick Mell (33rd) famously standing on his desk in the City Council chambers demanding to be recognized.

Sawyer’s election was engineered by the predominantly-white bloc of aldermen known as the “Vrdolyak 29” that had thwarted Washington’s every move during Council Wars.

Eugene Sawyer was mayor for just 17 months, then he lost the 1989 special mayoral election to Richard M. Daley.

But Roderick Sawyer argued that his soft-spoken father accomplished enough in the job he never sought to be deserving of a permanent honor.

“He passed most of the initiatives that Harold could not pass during his tenure: lights at Wrigley Field; the Human Rights Ordinance; landmark contracts for police and fire; the Clean Indoor Air Ordinance” that banned smoking in Chicago restaurants, Roderick Sawyer said.

“Those are all things that were not done during the 4.5 years [that Washington was mayor],” Sawyer said, adding that his father’s tenure came during “a very difficult time. Even though he was there for a short time, he left an impact for the things he did during that short time and it warrants recognition.”

The resolution was quietly introduced at the April 13 City Council meeting by Sawyer and Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke (14th), the City Council’s resident historian.

Burke was a leader of the Vrdolyak 29 that elected Sawyer to the post of acting mayor as protesters who favored Ald. Tim Evans, Washington’s City Council floor leader, ringed City Hall.

The elder Sawyer died in 2008 at 73.

He was subsequently remembered by the City Council as a gentle giant who overcame his fears to heal a racially divided city after the death of one of its most beloved mayors.

Then-Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) recalled on that day in 2008 that only nine aldermen remained from the Council that elected Sawyer — and two of them had supported Evans.

“They were on the wrong side of history that night,” said Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th).

The Council meeting that honored Sawyer was in stark contrast to the marathon that thrust him into the political spotlight. There were no chanting protesters. No hateful insults.

There was only praise for the man who was elected by a predominantly white coalition and ended up surprising his benefactors by carrying out Washington’s legislative agenda.

“There were folks [who] wanted him to clean house. I might have been one of them. But he did not do that. He kept Harold Washington’s dream alive,” then-Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) said on that day.

Burke recalled praying with Sawyer and his pastor, the Rev. Addie Wyatt, in Sawyer’s aldermanic office as Sawyer decided whether to accept the job.

“We prayed for courage. We prayed for acceptance and we prayed for peace. . . . Two decades later, it is true to say that we received what we prayed for,” Burke said on that day.

Daley closed with a tribute to the man he defeated in 1989.

“People thought quietness and calmness was a weakness. It was never a weakness in Gene Sawyer,” Daley said then.

“At perhaps the most divisive time in Chicago’s political history, Mayor Eugene Sawyer started us on the road back to civility and racial understanding,” he said.