THE BOYS FROM ILLINOIS

                                      THE  BOYS  FROM  ILLINOIS

                                                NORM KELLY

Just so we don’t forget I thought I would help write a very brief story on a couple of our elected officials that the State of Illinois has become so used to reading about.  Of Course it continues to this day and we may be the only State in our history that will have two Governors in the State prison at the SAME time.  Nice, huh?  I am not sure that is true….but who cares?

ORVILLE HODGE…he was a House of ‘Reprehensive’ stooge for a few years before he became the Auditor of Illinois. He held that office during the years 1952-1956.  As a result of his antics they did away with that title and now we have a Comptroller.

 

Good old Orville was born in Indiana but he knew where he wanted to get in politics and of course it was over here.  He quickly began a scheme of cheating, embezzlement and fraud and one time declared an emergency lack of funds.  His office received the sum of $529,000 in emergency funds which he kept for himself. He then began rerouting State payments to himself, becoming a very wealthy man.  Truth is he never earned more than $30,000 a year in salary.

The thief managed to amass a fortune plus 36 cars, and homes in Illinois and Florida. In addition to that he lived far beyond the means of a king…of course, he shared that with his ‘friends.’

It came crashing down on him in 1957, when he was charged with 54 indictments of every kind imaginable but murder.  He went to jail for 12-15 years and was released in 1970.  He went to work for his sister as a hardware clerk.  When he died in 1986 his estate was  evaluated at 6.5 million.  Did the State of Illinois get any money back?  Oh Yeah, you bet.

                                                    PAUL  POWELL

Paul was born in Illinois and became a star rather quickly in Illinois even winning over a Daley backed Democrat…which was amazing.  He got into politics in the 1930’s and held quite a few jobs including Speaker of the House. In 1965 he became the Secretary of State and was well-regarded.  When we wrote out a check to Paul Powell for our license plate he managed to keep most of that in his many personal accounts. Good old Paul…huh?  He held that office from 1959 thru most of 1963.

Paul never made a lot of money, some of them paying him a bit more than $30,000 a year, but he was a thrifty fella, the records show.  When he died in 1970 at the age of 68 up in Mayo Clinic, folks were in for quite a surprise.  He lived in a hotel room and when officials went in there to ‘tidy’ things up they found a few dollars scattered around.

They found money in shoeboxes, brief cases and several unlocked strong boxes.  Among his ‘souvenirs’ they found 49 cases of whiskey and hundreds of other ‘gifts.’ Of course that was a headline for numerous papers and the scandal was immense.  After his estate was closed the final value of it was set at 4.6 million dollars.  Not bad for a man that cried poverty most of his life.  So for all you young politicians out there…keep up the good work…Illinois will reward you.

Norman Kelly is a local historian and author.   norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net