Standing on the Shoulders of Angels

We are a month out from the election, and I have been campaigning for Cook County Board for well over a year. Because there have been few things in my life I have worked this hard at, I have been reflecting in these final days about what this race and these elections mean to me personally.

People I have met on the campaign trail are very kind in thanking me for taking on this VERY hard job, and commending me for whatever it is that I have in me that allows me to be able to rise this challenge.

So I have been thinking about my father and my maternal grandfather who have a lot to do with who I am today.

Both of them were truly great, distinguished lawyers. Exceptionally smart, hard-working, talented men. Deeply Christian, principled and private men. Selfless and serious men who distinguished themselves in their work and their families and in their devotion to their communities. And both active, traditional Republicans from a different time, who showed me the importance of public service.

My mother's father John Bresee was Champaign County States Attorney for decades. He was the chief law enforcement officer during the time of the Civil Rights movement. He stood up for what was right even when it was not at all popular - a brave thing for an elected official to do. He prosecuted a white barber who refused to cut the hair of black customers.

When I was very young I always thought he was a bit too serious - intimidating to a child. I did not learn until later why.

He was raised on a farm in Mattoon, Illinois, the oldest of five children, born in 1899. He worked hard even in the fields from a very young age. While he would walk the rows of corn de-tassling them, he would practice, among other things, memorizing the Presidents' names in order. (He taught me a little jingle to remember them that I used for years with my high school students). He was sent away to live with relatives at a very young age to help on their farm and to make room at home - away from his parents and his four young brothers and sisters. All that would make anyone serious as a grownup.

He was an architecture major in college and a truly gifted artist who was offered a job early on with an unknown man named Walt Disney, but that was not deemed a "real job" at the time. So instead he worked his way through law school. He married a teacher and raised a son and a daughter.

His son, my Uncle Jim, now in his 80's, has a PhD, a law degree and a Masters Degrees in Chemical Engineering. He is one of the leading scientists in the world in Nuclear Waste Disposal. My mother is one of the most beautiful and intelligent women ever, who got her University of Illinois degree in Theater and has graced audiences all over with her stunning leading performances and exquisite singing voice - as Anna in "The King and I" and as the title role in "Mame". She was and IS a wonderful mother, still working hard. Just retired this year at the age of 80 from her work in a Winnetka Real Estate office. She raised me well and adored and admired her father.

GrandDaddy, as I called him, found time on the side to do a few other little things like bring rural electrification to downstate Illinois, and to codify in Illinois law and author the state handbook defining how Illinois Township government was to work.

There are so many stories I could tell about him - no space here - but he was brilliant, and incredibly decent - a great man. And he is my role model for how I will be as an elected county official in Illinois.

My father M. Lee Bishop was born in Pekin, Illinois in 1930. He grew up an only child in a depression era farm. His father Wilbur Bishop, my grandpa, was an Engineer at Caterpillar, and was on the team that invented the Ditch Witch. My father worked his way through the U of I and went on to law school. He was a Marine during the Korean War, ending his career later in the reserves as a Major. One summer he hiked the entire Appalachian Trail. (Check that out on a map - that is a feat!) He was a champion tennis player, nationally ranked, and played tennis for the Marines as well. We had literally thousands of trophies in my house growing up.

My father was an expert in labor relations law. He did corporate labor law for years in the meat-packing industry. He settle huge contracts and worked to employ tens of thousands of people. He was once the president of a Chamber of Commerce. He was an active precinct leader for his local Republican party in Winnetka here on the North Shore. He was really a handsome man, and he was respected and beloved. He never missed his Wednesday morning Church Men's Bible Study. He sang in the choir all his adult life with my mom. He was an Elder of the Church. He worked so hard and was so successful that when it came time for me and my two younger sisters to go to college, he was able to sit down with a national college catalog, open the book and hand it to me and say, "Choose". And he would pay for wherever I wanted to go.

I was fortunate to get a very fine education at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas - the "Harvard of the South".

I can only hope to be a small fraction as accomplished and helpful to the community as those two men. I am standing on the shoulders of Angels.