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Hundreds gather at former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed’s visitation; funeral mass is set for Monday

  • Charles Thompson/PennLive
FILE PHOTO: Former Harrisburg Mayor Steve Reed looks over the crowd before the start of the first game at the completely renovated Metro Bank Park.

 Joe Hermitt / PennLive

FILE PHOTO: Former Harrisburg Mayor Steve Reed looks over the crowd before the start of the first game at the completely renovated Metro Bank Park.

(Harrisburg) — There’s no separating Stephen Russell Reed from the role that dominated his life: Mayor of Harrisburg, Pa.

“The mayor” was the man.

But what kind of man was the mayor? At some point even our most prominent public officials have to have real-life relationships, right? They have to eat, manage personal relationships, help people, disappoint people. Laugh. Cry. Love.

So what kind of man was Mayor Stephen Russell Reed, who died Jan. 25 at age 70 after a long battle with cancer, after the cameras turned off and the public meetings were over?

You certainly won’t find the complete answer to that question here.

But you sure could find a lot of glimpses into the man behind the public persona through a 90-minute informal remembrance session that closed visitation ceremonies for Reed at the Geigle Funeral Home in Susquehanna Township Sunday.

Speaker after speaker remembered Reed as the public policy titan of South Central Pennsylvania that he undeniably strived to become, and the savior-by-redevelopment of the City of Harrisburg as responsible as anyone for the downtown hotel, Harrisburg University, the Whitaker Center, and the Harrisburg Senators minor league baseball team.

But there were just as many remembrances of the regular guy who people loved to talk history, or sports, or politics, with; who had an insatiable itch for collectibles and the physical representation of important things to know that they represented; or who gave people a much-needed shove to reach their potential; and who didn’t forget a friend, even though, several acknowledged Sunday, a number of Reed’s friends appeared to forget him at the end of life.

Reed would have loved this day, though. Because he would have heard first hand just how much he meant to so many.

Carol Crago, whose parents helped Reed launch his first political campaigns in their basement, remembered the man who loved hot tea with lemon, or, on different occasions, a Coors Light with ice. Who liked to sing (John Denver and Kansas were personal favorites). Who loved talking to kids, and who also loved dogs.

There were tales about dispatches from “Unit 100”, the mayor’s personal calling card on the city’s public safety radio network.

Reed’s longtime barber, Jeneelynn Maugans, recalled how Reed would command her salon when he came in for his regular cut, with a handshake for every man and kiss on the hand for the women and regaling everyone for the next thirty minutes with his stories. “We always hated to see him leave,” she recalled.

A visitation and memorial service for former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed was held at Geigle Funeral Home, Susquehanna Twp., on February 2, 2020.

Vicki Vellios Briner / PennLive

A visitation and memorial service for former Harrisburg Mayor Stephen Reed was held at Geigle Funeral Home, Susquehanna Twp., on February 2, 2020.

And, who could forget, the incessant chain smoking.

“The only time he put the cigarette down in his right hand, was so he could light the one in his left,” joked friend Mike Groff.

Crago’s daughter, Jamie, recalled the man who became like family to her during Sunday dinners with her grandparents, Tony and Dot Dodaro, or who would have them on the Mayor’s barge for the riverside 4th of July celebrations, but whom she also gradually came to learn was also the person who helped transform the city she grew up in before her eyes.

“I’m still not into politics,” she said, “but I saw what he did for the city, and more than that, just the kind of friend that he was.”

Veterans lauded Reed – who was rejected for his own bid for military service in the 1960s because of a heart murmur – for his constant attention to their needs.

Larry Carter, a member of Chapter 542 of the Vietnam Veterans of America who served as an honor guard for Sunday’s visitation, was moved to suggest to everyone willing that Harrisburg’s City Island – one of Reed’s biggest reclamation projects – be renamed as Steve Reed Memorial Island.

Kevin Nelson, a former employee of the city’s police bureau, talked about how Reed bluntly called a spade a spade during one New Year’s Eve celebration in the mayor’s office at City Hall, flatly suggesting to Nelson that he was never going to follow up on his oft-stated goal of earning a master’s in business administration.

It might have seemed a bit rude or impertinent – Nelson was embarrassed by someone he respected in front of his future wife. But it was also, he said Sunday, something he needed to heard.

Pedestrians walk across a bridge over the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg on Aug. 19.

Ian Sterling for WITF

Pedestrians walk across the Walnut Street Bridge over the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg on Aug. 19, 2019.

Several months later, Nelson called Reed up after he finished his first night of classes for his MBA.

“We talk about generational impact. He encouraged me to the point where 13 years ago I started my business,” said Nelson, who now runs a consulting business aimed at helping develop leadership skills in public safety professionals. “Pay it forward, whatever he gave us,” he implored the audience. “Pay it forward, because he certainly put it in us.”

Others, like former Carlisle Mayor Kirk R. Wilson, spoke to Reed’s influence across the South Central Pennsylvania region. Among the floral arrangements surrounding Reed’s closed casket was one from former Pennsylvania Ed Rendell, who remembered Reed as “a great mayor and a great Pennsylvanian.”

And, finally, there were a battery of Harrisburg residents who Reed had helped out along the way:

  • Loretta Barbee Dare, who recalled the mayor’s help in the redevelopment of the Sylvan Terrace neighborhood, including, specifically, one night at a fire scene that took out several homes where the mayor stayed on scene for hours until he was personally sure that all the victims had at least been connected with someone who could help them in the days ahead.
  • Evelyn Hunt, who spoke of her appreciation for Reed’s attention to every complaint that she ever made about city issues. “We appreciated Steve, because he responded to people regardless of what their level in society was,” Hunt said.
  • Mack Granderson, the former proprietor of two different jazz clubs in the city, who thanked the mayor for his vision for making Harrisburg a hub city for the region at a time when there really wasn’t much more to the downtown besides porn theaters and a perception of bad street crime.

“His heart was so much a part of Harrisburg,” Granderson said. “He was always a good friend, one that was not a politician that you could not talk to, but one that you could talk to.”

Some did not shy away from Reed’s fall from grace at the end of his term, either – the abrupt end to his seven-term tenure via an upset loss to Linda Thompson in the 2009 Democratic primary, the collapse of the city’s finances, and the arrest on scores of theft and other charges after a lengthy state grand jury investigation.

But they argued that the same people who would criticize Reed for being too autocratic, or for failing to be dissuaded from what would become a destructive obsession with buying artifacts for city museum projects, or making too many bad bets on the faltering incinerator project, might also want to think about whether they abandoned a guy who had helped them more than he had hurt.

“Steve was a lonely, lonely person at the end. Believe me,” said Pete Wambach, the former state representative from Harrisburg.

Wambach also noted how important a recent appointment to the Harrisburg Area Community College board of trustees was so important to Reed. “That position gave him his dignity, because it meant the community was beginning to accept him again,” Wambach said.

He went there during his remarks, Wambach said, not to bring anyone down. Rather, it was his way of encouraging all in attendance to remember those who have been important in our lives, and to drop a line, say hello, or just check up on them, before it’s too late and you’re left wishing that you had.

That’s the way, they agreed, Reed had always cared for his city.

The former mayor’s funeral mass is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 212 State St., in Harrisburg.


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