The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 10

A10 SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2008 THE ENQUIRER FROM PAGE A1NAT10N Mallorys: Public service ties family together The new generation Mark Mallory Residence: West End Job, former The EnquirerMichael E. Keating Mayor Mark Mallory (center) with his father, Bill, and former Ohio State Senator Stanley Aronoff celebrate as Mark was winning the election to become Cincinnati's mayor over David Pepper. The Mallory political dynasty has taken the forefront in Ohio politics. Cincinnati's other political families Cincinnati has had some family political dynasties before the Mallorys came along. They include: city manager form of government He was mayor in the 1950s and continued on council into the 1970s.

His son, Seth Taft, is a former Cuyahoga County commissioner. The Wlnklers: Ralph Winkler served as a municipal court judge and a common pleas court judge before being elected to the 1st District Court of Appeals in 1998. He retired in 2005, but still serves as a visiting judge. Two of his sons, Ralph and Robert, are now serving as common pleas court judges. His wife, Cheryl, is a former state representative.

The Lukens: Thomas A. Luken: a former Cincinnati mayor and councilman who served the U.S. House through the 1970s and 1980s. James Luken: Thomas' brother; he was mayor in the 1960s and long-time councilman. Charlie Luken: Followed his father prevented the election of black judges.

Sue years later, he won the battle the at-large system was struck down and replaced by a district system. The next year, Mallory's son, William ran unopposed for the 1st District municipal court seat, becoming the first of the second generation of Mallorys to win public office. William Mallory Jr. had gone to Columbus in the 1980s to work in the Ohio Attorney General's office. Running for office, he says, "was the furthest tiling from my mind." "It never occurred to me to come home and run for anything," William Jr.

says. He fended off party leaders who wanted him to run for Cincinnati City Council, but came home when he was offered a job in the city solicitor's office. He became a judge, but he says he never felt pressured to follow his father into elective office. But, for the Mallory boys, there was pressure growing up mostly from the expectations of others in their West End neighborhood. "People would come up to us when we were just kids and say, 'Are you going to grow up to be a politician like your says Dale Mallory.

"After a while, I came to see I had no choice. We're here to serve." Dale Mallory worked for years at General Electric and kept his hand in city politics, working for candidates and the party. But ultimately, he ended up following in his father's footsteps first as president of the West End Community Council and then as state representative. Dale Mallory's term as community council president turned out to be a crisis for the family he became the lightning rod for those in the neighborhood who opposed the controversial City-Link project because he had been an advocate for it In early 2006, he was impeached and removed from office, but turned around a few months later and filed as a candidate for the statehouse seat once held by his father and his brother Mark. He ended up winning easily.

"The whole experience tested me; it put me through the fire," Dale Mallory says. "I was accused of everything you could imagine. But what people outside the family didn't understand was that if I had done anything wrong, my parents would have eaten me alive." It was Dale Mallory who, in 1994, when his father had announced his retirement, delivered a message from the rest of the family to his younger brother Mark that he was the Mallory who was to pick up where his father left off. "We were out on the doorstep of our house on Dayton Street," Mark Mallory says. "Dale said the family had gotten together and decided.

You are the one. You'll run for dad's seat. So I did." There was never any question that he would be elected he spent two terms in his father's old seat before running for the state Senate. He was elected to that with ease, too. By 2005, Mark Mallory was facing term limits.

He decided to run for mayor. Running a low-key campaign where he spoke constantly of the "chaos" at city hall, he was elected over then-councilman David Pepper. Mark Mallory, many believe, is the most like his father goal-oriented, a problem-solver, the kind of person who works around obstacles to getting things done. "He's a teacher," Mark Mallory says of his father. "He guides people.

He's a mentor and a motivator. And he instilled that in every one of us. "That's why I say there was no great plan for us all to go into public service. We were raised to do this." From Page Al It is a political dynasty, but one that the Mallorys insist was not part of a grand design. "It just happened.

There was no master plan." Mark Mallory says. "There was never a time when we all sat down with Dad and he said, "You're going to run for this' and 'You're going to run for that' It was just the way we were raised." West End political empire It was, indeed, the way they were raised. Each, from the time he could walk and talk, roamed the streets of his father's West End district, stapling campaign posters to telephone poles, handing out fliers at the corner of Linn and Liberty. It was so much a part of growing up Mallory that when the boys would help old folks in the neighborhood carry home their groceries, they were told by their mother, Fannie, never to ask for money it might cost their father votes. Politics is the Mallory family business, and it became so for a myriad of reasons some improbable, some seemingly inevitable.

It came about because, 65 years ago in the West End, there was a skinny, poor black kid the son of a laborer and a maid who became enthralled with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal, the plan that was to lift all Americans out of poverty. It came about, too, because 20 years later, that same kid now a grown man with a growing family signed on to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and began laying the groundwork for a career in politics. And, perhaps most importantly, it came about because the sons of that budding politician had a mother, Fannie, who insisted that her six children five boys and a daughter, Leslie Denise, the oldest of the children make something of their lives. "It was our mother as much as our father who motivated us," Dale Mallory says. "Once Dad was elected to the Legislature, he was gone a lot.

But Mom was always there." Fannie Mallory, their mother, told the boys and their sister again and again: I don't know what you are going to do with your lives. But you are going to do something." Dwane Mallory says that it was their mother who introduced them to history and culture, giving them a sense that there was a world beyond their neighborhood. "When we'd go on school field trips, to the art museum or Music Hall or whatever, it would always be our second visit there," Dwane Mallory says. "Mom had already taken us there before." Listening to politics Leslie Denise Mallory, 52, says she has no interest in running for office; politics is not her thing. But, to a man, the Mallory males say they were all influenced by her.

"She helped our mom raise us," Dale Mallory says. "She was tough. She was our protector." Despite a father's example and their mother's gentle persuasion, this political dynasty might never have happened except for one improbable fact: William mother, Drusilla, a domestic who worked hard in the homes of wealthy Cincinnatians, suffered from asthma. His mother's asthma meant that, in 1943, 12-year-old William Sr. was sent off to the family doctor to pick up his mother's medicine.

The family doctor was R.P. McClain, a West End physician who was a city councilman, only the second African-American to be elected. "I'd sit there for hours on end and listen to him talk politics," William Sr. says. "He's the one who got me excited about poli- political offices: Mayor of Cincinnati, former state senator and state representative Bio, tidbits: Single.

First direct ly-elected African-American mayor in Cincinnati history. The youngest of the six Mallory children. Earned a bachelor's degree in administrative management from the University if Cincinnati Salary. $120,000 Dale Mallory Residence: West End Job, former political offices: State Representa tive, former president of West End Community Coun cil Bio, tidbits: Single. Lives two doors down from the family homestead in the West End.

Salary: $60,584 William Mallory Jr. Residence: Blue Ash Job, former political offices: Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judge, former municipal court judge Bio, tidbits: Former assistant attorney general. The first of the second generation of Mallorys to be elected to public office. Salary: $121,350 Dwane Mallory Job, former political offices: Elected to a Hamilton County Municipal Court judgeship in November, takes office Monday. Bio, tidbits: Formerly in the Hamilton County Public Defenders Office.

Salary: $111,000 Joe Mallory Residence: Forest Park Job, former political offices: Administrator at Hamilton County Board of Elections, former vice hiayor of Forest Park Bio, tidbits: A U.S. Navy veteran who served in Beirut Formerly worked for the U.S. Postal Service and was an officer of the letter carriers' union. He spent eight years as a model. Salary: $78,808 Leslie Denise Mallory Residence: Avondale Job, former political offices: Works as sales representative for the Ohio Lottery Commission Bio, tidbits: Age 52, the eldest of the six Mallory children.

Three grown sons. Lives in Avondale. Salary: $47,797 in 2006 1 t. What people say Hamilton County Democratic Party co-chairman Tim Burke, who once served as co-chairman of the party with Mark Mallory: "Maybe the biggest impact that Bill (Sr.) and Mark have had over the years is that they both'were constantly working in the party to make sure we had a high level of diversity. This was something they were dead serious about; and they achieved it Mark Mallory, Burke said, was responsible for recruiting an African-American physician, O'dell Owens, to run for county coroner.

Owens ran in 2004 and won, putting the office in Democratic hands for the first time in generations. State Rep. Louis Blessing, a Republican who served In Columbus with William Sr. and Mark: "They both have the same style. They're both low-key consensus-building types.

They're likeable guys, which helps them win friends, so they can get things done. Bill and Mark are a lot alike in many ways." Hamilton County Republican Party chairman George Vincent, on the Mallory family running Dwane against a Republican African-American Judge, John Bur-lew, In the 2007 election: "I guess you can't fault them for running somebody. But it's too bad that they had to go after John Bur-lew, who didn't deserve to be gone after." tics." But McClain, like many black Cincinnatians of the time, was a Republican the party of Lincoln. William even at 12 years old, was a Roosevelt Democrat. William kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, and he could name every member of FDR's cabinet, from Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins.

At 12, he showed up at the 18th Ward Democratic Club and was put to work door-knocking, passing out literature on the streets of the West End for council candidate Ted Berry, doing odd jobs for party leaders. It was about that time he won his first election -secretary of student government at Bloom Junior High School. William Sr. dropped out of high school and went to work on odd jobs selling newspapers on the steps of city hall, hauling ice, setting up pins in a bowling alley, working as a junk man all to make some extra money for his family and, he admits, to "buy some of those fancy clothes we all wore in those days." But he went back to East Vocational High School and graduated, then enrolled at Central State Uni The Tafts: It began back in the Civil War and Reconstruction era with Alphonso Taft, who was U.S. attorney general and secretary of war.

His son, William Howard Taft, was president of the United States in the early 20th century, and, later, the only former president to become chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Taft Court. Two of William Howard's sons went in opposite directions politically: Robert A. Taft known as "Mr. Conservative" was U.S.

senator from Ohio from 1939 until his death in 1953, He ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination in 1940, 1948 and 1952. His son, Robert Taft was a U.S. congressman and served one term in the U.S. Senate in the 1970s. The grandson, Robert A.

Taft II, served as a state representative, Hamilton County commissioner, and Ohio secretary of state before elected Ohio governor in 1998. Another son of William Howard, Charles P. Taft, became one of the leaders of Cincinnati's reform movement in the 1920s, which led to the versity, a predominantly black college in Wilberforce. There, he first saw Fannie, a fellow student, walking across the college green. The love bug hit me," he says.

They were married and returned to Cincinnati where he spent eight years teaching language arts and social studies at several elementary schools, Dyer, Sands and Taft But it was in 1965, when he ran for president of the West End Community Council and won, that his political career began to take shape. There was a bus drivers' strike that year, and hundreds of West End residents who depended on the buses to get to work were stranded. So Mallory went on the radio and organized a car pool, with 10 volunteer drivers who would take folks to work. "I told them they could accept money if they were offered it, but they were not to charge anything," Mallory says. "People started accusing me of running a cab service, saying I got a cut But I was just trying to help people in the neighborhood.

I thought it was my job to do that" The next year, Mallory Sr. took on the Democratic Party establish it mr into Congress for a term in the 1990s, after serving on council and as mayor in the 1980s. After a stint as a local TV news anchorjhe returned to politics in the Luken 1990s and was reelected to council, becoming mayor. ment by challenging the party-endorsed candidate in the 72nd Ohio House District primary. He won the primary and was easily elected in the fall.

It began a 28-year run in the Ohio House the longest term of service of any Hamilton County legislator in history. And an amazing career it was -20 years as the majority leader of the Ohio House, most of it served at the right hand of Vera Rife, the Scioto County Democrat who was the most powerful House Speaker in Ohio history. Four governors came and went during William years in Columbus. And it was the elder Mallory's political standing that laid the groundwork for today's Mallory dynasty. 'A politician like your In 1986, Mallory with his son Mark, who was working at the public library, went to the federal courthouse in downtown Cincinnati and filed a lawsuit that, ultimately, changed the face of Cincinnati politics.

The suit challenged Hamilton County's at-large election system for the municipal court, saying it diluted black voting power and Landless tribe, stripped of history, seeks federal recognition 1 By Matthew Brown The Associated Press GREAT FALLS, Mont Long after the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa was stripped of its land and scores of its people had been moved to Canada, the 4,300 surviving members are fighting to reclaim the shards of their past. Through the years, and with intermarriage with Canadian fur trappers, tribal members have been left in such an ethnic and cultural limbo that to some, it would appear they have lost their identity. But tribal leaders say it's that history of tragedy and perseverance that defines them. "People look at us and say "You're not said Little Shell chairman John Sinclair. "We say We're not We're Little For now, the bond remains largely of the tribe's own making.

The federal government has yet to recognize the tribe despite a campaign spanning more than a century. The Little Shell and 95 other groups are actively pursuing tribal sovereignty claims, many of which have languished cording to the tribe. To be recognized, the Little Shell must prove not just who they are but who their parents were. And their grandparents. And their great-grandparents back to the 1860s.

About 300 Little Shell members recently convened in Great Falls for their annual Joe Dussome Day. Surveying the crowd was an anthropologist from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who measured the depths of tribal relations and studied the deference given to tribal leaders. The anthropologist declined to be interviewed, but R. Lee Fleming, director of the bureau's Office of Federal Ac-. knowledgment, said such visits can determine if there is sufficient "continuity" to support a tribe's recognition claim.

In 2000, Fleming's office announced it was leaning toward recognition for the Little Shell. But the government also said the tribe's case needed to be bolstered. Thousands more documents have since been submitted. A final decision could be made by the spring. Sinclair, the tribal president, said he has learned not to expect too much.

Crow reservation in southeastern Montana. "If we wait 50 years more, it will be." The forefathers of today's Little Shell were a band of the Chippewa who migrated to the Northern Plains in the 1700s. After ending up in the Turtle Mountain region of North Dakota in the late 1800s, the tribe was approached by federal agents seeking to buy land for white homesteaders. The offered price was 10 cents an acre. Chief Little Shell refused to sign what he considered an unfair deal.

His people were taken off the Chippewa tribal roll and became a "landless tribe" an estimated 5,000 people roaming in search of the last great bison herds. The bison were soon nearly wiped out by white settlers and the Little Shell scattered. Because of their mixed ancestry, many of today's Little Shell have pale skin. Some are blond. In the early 20th century, a tribal leader named Joe Dussome revived the Little Shell's federal recognition hopes In the 1930s, federal officials promised a reservation but later backed out after being unable to raise the money for the land, ac Work to address the backlog has moved at the rate of barely one decision a year while groups like the Little Shell struggle to keep their claim on history alive.

Frustrated at the bureaucratic morass, some members of Congress, tribal leaders and Indian advocates are calling for an end to the current recognition system, established in 1978. "It's been a 30-year experiment that's failed," said Jack Campisi, a retired Welles-ley College anthropologist who worked on recognition petitions for more than two dozen tribes. Of those petitions, only three have been successfully resolved. Federal officials blame the glacial pace on a combination of stretched resources and rigorous standards. A spokeswoman for the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs said the agency had no choice but to adhere to the system established by Congress.

Legislation to scrap the current system has not advanced beyond the committee level but the stacks of documents submitted are steadily growing. One petition, by the United Houma Nation in Louisianahas ballooned to more than 100,000 pages The Associated PressPablo Martinez Monslvais Jimmy Goins, tribal chairman of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, (left) is seated next to John Sinclair, tribal president, Little Shell Tribe Montana. Little Shell members say recognition would provide access to federal health care, affordable housing and education grants. And it would give new focus to a people pulled apart by time, distance and repeated rejection. "We want to try to get the culture back in our family before it's gone," said BniRe Landrie, a Little Shell who grew up on a.