Long-serving councilman Heide reflects on tenure in Lafayette

LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Many in town know him for his youthful complexation and his boyish charm, but at the young age of 87, former city councilman Lon Heide felt that it was finally time to retire from Lafayette’s City Council.

He made this announcement Nov. 1 during that month’s city council meeting. Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski spoke on Heide’s behalf, explaining that due to some health issues, Heide no longer felt like he was able to serve the city to the fullest.

Heide recently had surgery on his back, addressing an issue that made it difficult for him to stand for long periods.

“He’ll be stepping down due to some health concerns that he has, and he believes will make it very difficult to continue to participate and to get to the meetings. Being the honorable person that he is and a man of incredibly high integrity, he doesn’t believe that that’s correct and to continue to participate or accept a salary and not be able to work to his fullest and highest,” said Roswarski.

After all was said and done, Heide sat in his chair, visibly shaking from the tremendous weight that had finally fallen off his shoulders, and all he could say was, “I love Lafayette.”

Heide served on the council for almost 18 years. He was serving his fourth term as city councilman at-large. The way Heide explained the position, “… if the district councilman focuses on the micro, my job was to focus on the macro, so like roads and the day to day function of the city.”

But before being elected in 2004, Heide had no interest in the idea of politics. At the time Heide was working at Purdue in one of the university stores. The job came with benefits and reasonable pay, and for Heide, this was a great job to hold onto until he was ready to retire.

Before working at Purdue, he ran a store called The Athlete.

Although he was asked to run as a councilman back in 1996, he rejected the idea, believing he wasn’t the right guy for the job. To him, politics was too big of a headache and he’d rather focus his time on his family and helping others.

While in 2003, Heide received another knock at his door asking if he’d be willing to run for city council, but this time, the salesman’s pitch worked. Heide packed his bags and joined future Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski on his political journey.

“Back when I first ran for mayor in the very first election, I went out and talked to people about who we needed to get on the ticket and being a part of the team, and Lon was one of the first names that came to mind,” said Roswarski.

“For a lot of us who were born and raised here, he was a role model. From when he worked at Deckers to when he owed The Athlete, his work with schools and youth groups. His commitment to the community was very very strong and quite frankly he was one of those people I could trust, and that he would do whatever was right for Lafayette. He didn’t have his own personal agenda, that he wasn’t trying to do something to aspire to higher office but that he wanted to do the right thing for the citizens of Lafayette.”

Although Heide had joined Roswarski’s team, he didn’t believe he had what it took to win the seat. In that year’s election, he was competing against Mike Dowler, Steve Schreckengast, Kevin M. Klinker and Steven P. Meyer, all of whom he believed had a more impressive resume for the job compared to him.

And yet, on election day of 2003, it was announced that Heide had tied for the position with two others. This meant that the final decision of who would become the next city councilman at-large would be decided at a special election, which he won.

“I didn’t think I could win, because the guys I beat were Republicans and they were business owners and a real estate guy. But Tony was so good at sending me voters, that they got me a lot of straight-ticket votes. A straight-ticket vote means it didn’t matter if they were Republican or Democrats, they voted for me because they liked me. I mean I get it, I’m pretty cute,” said Heide.

“Once I won, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I learned pretty quick. I read a little bit of what to do and the main thing I knew was if you support the people and you support the businesses and the mayor with what they want to do, the city will end up outstanding.”

For Heide, stepping into the role was a daunting endeavor at first; he had recently turned 70 and had no prior political experience, not a recipe for success.

But Heide decided that the best philosophy to follow while he was in office, “listen to the experts, they’re the expert for a reason,” and “to be the change I wanted to see as a boy.”

Heide was born in Lafayette in 1934, during the heights of the Great Depression. To help visualize what that may have looked like, based on the 1940’s census, Lafayette had around 29,000 people living in the city and West Lafayette housed around 6,000.

The streets were primarily dirt roads, main street only had a handful of businesses and the city was still segregated between races. Definitely not the city of today.

“I remember when I was a kid, I went to the cinema with my parents. I had noticed that the African Americans could only sit on the balcony level and not with us. I never knew why that was the case as a kid, but I knew I didn’t like the idea of it,” said Heide.

This nagging feeling at the time became a seed that would eventually blossom into a root tenet that Heide lived by, which was especially demonstrated in how he ran The Athlete.

“You know, I named my store The Athlete because I wanted to make sure it was clear that my store was for EVERYONE. I knew there were other stores in town that didn’t serve certain people. It didn’t matter who it was, they were welcomed to my store,” said Heide.

Heide also remembered the struggle that his parents were dealing with due to the Depression.

“I remember as a boy, my dad had me walking around handing out union literature to his co-worker. You know, information wasn’t readily available like it is today, so I knew I was doing something important.”

But there was one thing that brought a glowing radiant smile to his face, and that was Columbian Park.

“Do you remember the elephants that were at Columbian Park,” Heide asked his wife.

“We also had tigers, monkeys, bears and a buffalo at one point.”

“My daughter was 3 years old I think, and when I would get home from work it might be five, five-thirty, or six o’clock, and she would just look at me and say, ‘Buffalo.’ That meant we were going to see the buffalo. And we might go there for a minute or fifteen minutes and he was one mean buffalo. He would just ram that fence with his head,” said Heide.

Perhaps it’s fitting that the magnum opus of Heide’s career as a councilman was the work, he did in revamping Columbian Park for the next generation.

“We weren’t able to afford elephants, so I bought us penguins instead,” joked Heide.

When asked what else about Columbian Park stood out to him, he had a time remembering and decided to call Roswarski to help jog his memory.

“He was just so proud of us getting Columbian Park renovated. The new baseball stadium because obviously, he was in the sporting goods business. His kids did a lot of sports, people went through Loeb Stadium that he had known for decades and decades. And Columbian Park for the older generation really was a place that people went and the old Loeb Stadium. Even when I was a kid, the old Loeb Stadium that’s where we shoot off the city fireworks,” said Roswarski.

“He just couldn’t get over the park, the lagoon looks great, we got a new amphitheater, we got the train redone, we got a carousel coming back like the old days, and a new Loeb Stadium that families and kids and grandparents are going to make memories there for the next 50 to 70 years just like the old Loeb Stadium. He just really loved that we were able to accomplish, when it’s all said and done, almost 40 million dollars worth of work done at Columbian Park”

With Heide’s chapter coming to a close, it felt appropriate to ask Roswarski how he felt about the situation.

“Well you know there is this feeling of a sense of loss because I’ve personally known Lon for a long time and I consider him a mentor of mine even though it wasn’t in the political realm necessarily. Just the way he treated people, the way he acted, his sense of humor. You know he was just a good person and I saw that. He’s always been a mentor of mine and that he was someone that I could talk to. I could go to him a say, “here’s what we’re trying to accomplish and why, and here’s how we’re going to do it” and he would always ask good questions and at the end of the day it always came back to — is this the right this for the citizens of Lafayette,” said Roswarski.

As Heide reflected on his career, he wanted to make sure to share some parting words to the man who won his seat on Nov. 16, Steve Snyder.

“Don’t ever stop learning. Listen to the experts when dealing with new projects, they’re the expert for a reason. And always think about how your decision will affect the people.”

Noe Padilla is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. Email him at Npadilla@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter at 1NoePadilla.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Long-serving councilman Heide reflects on tenure in Lafayette