By Ben Cox
Photos/Submitted to The Source
Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar passed away from complications of pancreatic cancer on Sept. 14. He was 79.
Edgar served as Illinois’ 38th governor between 1991-1999, bookending nearly 20 years of public service that took him from the Illinois General Assembly to serving as Illinois Secretary of State. The moderate Republican has been complimented for his level-headed approach to government, his ability to work across the aisle politically and his years of fiscal responsibility.
“My first job interview was with Governor Jim Edgar,” says Jacksonville Mayor Andy Ezard. Ezard says that he served in Governor Edgar’s office right after graduating from college as an intern with the Michael Curry Summer Internship Program. He says the internship led to a full-time job interview with the governor himself.
“That’s a story itself,” Ezard recollects, “He canceled on me a few times, because as you would imagine, he had other pressing needs that he had to take care of besides interviewing me for a low-level position.”
Ezard says he landed the job in the fall of 1991 shortly after Edgar started his first term in office. The low-level position was more like being a personal assistant to the Edgar family. Ezard says that the family instilled in him a great deal of trust as he was often going to the airport to pick up the governor’s children or being entrusted with the family’s dogs for several days while they traveled.
Ezard says he was acquainted with the Edgars some years prior, but didn’t know them. “Brad [the Edgars’ son] was an athlete at Chatham,” Ezard says, and the two of them used to face off in basketball, often with Brad’s father in the stands watching the games.
“Trust and loyalty were very important to him,” Ezard recalls of Governor Edgar, “The impact that he had on me was that I wanted to continue [in public service] because of the way I saw him operate. He fought to the very end, and that’s what everyone expected. He had a great demeanor and a great style. Some called it arrogance but it wasn’t arrogance. It was just him calculating and [thinking about] how to treat people properly as far as not making them look bad publicly. And, to do the scolding or the talking behind closed doors and get your word and points across when things were bad or people were in trouble. He was always doing those things before you had to do things in public.”
Ezard says several members of the Edgar Administration’s interns and staffers also went on to have various careers in public service. Ezard left the administration in 1997 to go to work for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Ezard says that while he was no longer working under Edgar’s guise, he was still in essence, working for him, “If he needed things on the side that I could provide as far as family support, errands run, just eyes on a project — he leaned on me and there was a network of others he leaned on for things. It wasn’t just me, but up to the end, we were still working for him.”
Ezard says that his former boss always kept track of what he was doing and checked in on him. He says that Edgar was one of the first people to reach out to him to offer help when the Town Brook flooded in 2011. Ezard didn’t get to meet up with Edgar in his most recent trip to Jacksonville, but he says he and former First Lady Brenda Edgar loved coming to Jacksonville on occasion.
“I know that he and Mrs. E liked to come over and go shoe shopping at Brown’s Shoe Fit.” Ezard says another fond memory and longer story was Edgar’s visit to the Morgan County Fair one year to watch the local harness racing.
Ezard eventually went on to fulfill his own personal obligation to public service, serving first as Jacksonville City Clerk from 2005-2009 and now as its four-term mayor.
