PEORIA, Ill. – Very personable.
That’s how former Peoria City Council member, Lieutenant Colonel Lester Bergsten, remembers former Mayor Richard Carver, who died in Florida Friday at age 85 after an illness.
And Bergsten says that attitude extended beyond the City Council.
“He was always interested in your family, and what’s going on,” said Bergsten. “I had two careers with him: one on the City Council, then I was a liaison officer for the Air Force Academy. I worked with twelve high schools and [Illinois Central College] in this area, with the counselors and students who were interested in the academy. Dick was a regional officer for the Air Force Academy. There were several of us under him in Illinois.”
Bergsten served most of his time on the City Council with Carver. He says Carver saw running Peoria like a business, and that he wasn’t a politician. But, Bergsten says Carver wasn’t afraid to do what was necessary to get something passed. Even though it was approved on a 5-4 vote, that included the building of the Peoria Civic Center.
“We had items that were pretty controversial, and he know that I wasn’t too keen on it (like the Civic Center vote),” said Bergsten. “He would call me, or sit down with me, and we would have a nice, long discussion about it. He would give a lot more facts. He didn’t pressure me, but he would say, ‘Les, here’s some other facts you need to know about.’”
Bergsten says there were plenty of times in both his and Carver’s time on the council where that had to be done in order to get things done — even in what were some otherwise lean budget years in the 1970’s.
Ultimately, Bergsten says, they don’t make public servants like Richard Carver anymore.
“He was a businessman, and not a politician,” said Bergsten. “He used a lot of traits from business as to how to run a city. That worked out very well. That’s the difference I’ve seen between him and some other people that are just strictly politicians.”
