Victor De Grazia Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Q: Then he was practicing law and there were no more attempts to run him
for anything . . .
A: No, well this was . . .
Q: . . . through the 1960's. What was happening during that period of
time from 1959 to say, 1968 when he became so visible?
A: Oh, we were friends, we would talk about various offices, but there
was no strong movement.
Q: Had he sort of lost interest in running for office? It didn't seem
to be a burning desire for him?
A: Yes, it's hard to say; it was always there but it was not at the top
of the agenda. Oh that's right, so that was 1960's; yes, that's right
because it was the 1960 election, right. hat's right. hat's when I
first went into government with Kerner and then left and set up the
Maremont Foundation.
Q: What job did you hold in the Kerner administration?
A: What did I do for Kerner? After Kerner was elected . . . Maremont
had been one of his supporters, large financial supporter, and they liked
each other. At that time I had a little consulting organization and I
suggested to Maremont and he then to Kerner, that economic development
was probably the best political vehicle that a governor could ride, and
that Illinois had absolutely zilch in the way of an economic development
program. And what Maremont did was that he hired me to do a study of all
the states' economic development programs and make a proposal for Kerner,
which I did. And I met with Kerner and we discussed it and he liked it,
and he asked me to come in and implement it.
At that time the only economic development program was wit,hin the
Department of Registration and Education. There was a title called,
Superintendent of Industrial Planning and Development, and it was an
absolute washout kind of thing. What I proposed was a Board of Economic
Development which would be chaired by the governor and have as its
members those members of the cabinet who had the most substantial impact
on economic development in the state. So we set it up, got it through
the legislature--very difficult job--and I became its executive director.
So, I was the executive director of the Board of Economic Development of
the state under Kerner. And this lasted until there was this terrible
falling out between Maremont and Kerner over the Public Aid Commission,
and when Maremont left government he asked me to leave with him and set
up this foundation to rehabilitate housing for low and moderate income
people, which I did. And I did that through the rest of the 1960'9, in
Chicago and California and New York.
Q:
Did your leaving create bad feelings between you and Governor Kerner?
A: It's funny it wouldn't have. It's a kind of long story but it's a
story of really the way government operates and the kinds of things that
make up relationships in government. Kerner had as his director of
Mental Health a very good man named Dr. Francis Gerty. A wonderful guy.