John Hechinger, 84, Chairman of Washington's First Council, Dies

[Harry Tuttle]

His close association with the Brady gun control org did not make his Obituary...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
John Hechinger, 84, Chairman of Washington's First Council, Dies

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/19/national/19HECH.html
By JOHN FILES

Published: January 19, 2004



WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 — John W. Hechinger, a civic and business leader who guided a chain of home improvement stores for four decades and was the first appointed chairman of Washington's City Council, died on Sunday at his home. It was his 84th birthday.

The cause was a respiratory problem, after a long illness, said his daughter Nancy Hechinger.

President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Mr. Hechinger to be the city's first City Council chairman in 1967.

Mr. Hechinger, one of the city's leading Democrats, was a strong advocate for civil rights and diverse neighborhoods. He supported home rule in the city and saw his appointment to the Council as an opportunity to push for it.

"This is definitely the next step to home rule," Mr. Hechinger said of his appointment in a 1967 interview with The Washington Post. "We will work very hard to make it a big success in order to convince the critics and Congress of the good of self-government as a prelude to home rule."

In 1973, President Richard M. Nixon signed a home-rule law empowering Washington to elect a mayor and council. But it did not allow the city to be represented by a voting member of Congress.

An article in The Washington Post in 1967 said Mr. Hechinger had "a wide range of knowledge in all the fields of most immediate interest to Washington as a capital, as well as a big city," including architecture and civil liberties and housing issues.

Mr. Hechinger said public officials had a responsibility to strive for a mixed society by calming racial tensions in changing neighborhoods.

The Hechinger Company was founded in 1911 by Mr. Hechinger's father, Sidney. Mr. Hechinger took over as president in 1957, after his father's death, and served as chairman of the executive committee of the board of directors until he retired in 1996.

The company went public in 1972 and became a multibillion-dollar concern selling hardware and plumbing, electric and other building material supplies at more than 100 stores in the Midwest and eastern United States.

The company was sold to a California investment firm in 1997, and filed for bankruptcy in 1999, a casualty of the trend toward large national hardware chains like Home Depot.

John Walter Hechinger was born in Washington on Jan. 18, 1920, and graduated from Yale in 1941. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II as a combat intelligence officer.

Mr. Hechinger was a fifth generation Washingtonian. His great-grandfather Leopold Gassenheimer was a founding member of the Washington Hebrew Congregation, which was established in 1852.

In addition to his daughter Nancy, of Manhattan, he is survived by his wife of 57 years, June Ross Hechinger; and three other children, John W. Jr. of Bethedsa, Md., S. Ross, of Washington, and Sally Hechinger Rudoy of Upper Montclair, N.J.

 

[Mike Irwin]

A huge anti-gun advocate and managed to drive a Washington tradition out of business through poor management tactics.

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

Mr. Hechinger, one of the city's leading Democrats, was a strong advocate for civil rights and diverse neighborhoods. He supported home rule in the city and saw his appointment to the Council as an opportunity to push for it.

"This is definitely the next step to home rule," Mr. Hechinger said of his appointment in a 1967 interview with The Washington Post. "We will work very hard to make it a big success in order to convince the critics and Congress of the good of self-government as a prelude to home rule."

Crack smoking clown-Mayor Marion "dat-bitch-set-me-up" Barry managed to undo all of it.

 

[JohnBT]

"A huge anti-gun advocate and managed to drive a Washington tradition out of business through poor management tactics."

Your use of the word poor is extremely kind and generous. I loved going to Hechinger's in the '60s before they ran it into the ground. John

 

[Mike Irwin]

I didn't know Hechinger's in the 1960s.

I did, however, know it in the 1970s when it started to slip, the 1980s, when it was slipping badly, and the 1990s, when it was literally hell on earth incarnate.

I lived in DC in the early 1990s and would, when I needed something, go into the old Sears store in Tenleytown and pay higher prices to avoid going into the Hechinger's across the street and supporting the family's gun grabbing ways or dealing with the surly, poor excuses for employees and the jumbled, tangled mess that were supposed to be aisles.

Bob Levey, another wonderful gun grabber and columnist for the Washington Post, wrote an impassioned "pity Hechinger's" piece in which he castigated Washingtonians for abandoning Hechinger's, a "Washington tradition."

I got into a nasty e-mail exchange with him when I informed him that if anyone abandoned anyone, it was Hechinger's abandoning their customer base by becoming complacent, driving prices through the roof, de-emphasizing customer service to the point where (and I quote) "the staff views the customer as roughly equivilent to dog feces on the bottom of a shoe," and making absolutely no effort to remain competitive in the face of growing competition.

Of course, the response to that was some version of his decidedly socialist bent -- probably a screed about how customers should be forced to subsidize Hechinger's just because it's a hometown store...

Great, this isn't my hometown, so I'm off the hook.

Wow. That turned into a nice rant.

I guess Hechinger's still pisses me off after all these years!

 

[moa]

Mike Irwin, what you say is 100% true. Good riddance in my book, only it came about 35 years too late.

 

[Leatherneck]

Mike,
Check your prescription, Man. Hechingers is gone, Levey is leaving, and you live in Virginia now. There, doesn't that feel better?

TC
TFL Survivor

 

[AJ Dual]

My mom lives in Virginia inside the beltway, and I remember going to Hechingers for hardware and home improvment stuff as a kid.

Even as an oblivious young kid, I could tell that the store had the "stink of retail death" upon it. Imagine a Home Depot or a Lowe's organized and run like a current K-Mart and you'll have some idea.

I had no idea that it's founder was a prominient liberal bigwig in the D.C. area.

Just another shining example that socialist groupthink ideology is doomed to failure when applied to an otherwise productive enterprise.

 

[Mike Irwin]

"Hechingers is gone, Levey is leaving, and you live in Virginia now."

And the bitterness lingers, Tom, the bitterness lingers.

 

[Harry Tuttle]

JOHN HECHINGER, SR., 84.
A LIFETIME FIGHTING GUN VIOLENCE



For Immediate Release:
01-19-2004

Contact Communications:
(202) 898-0792
Washington, D.C. - In 1987 John Hechinger, who passed away Sunday on his 84th birthday, wrote an opinion essay for the Washington Post.

"In my business," he wrote, "I deal hourly with federal regulations designed to protect customers in the use of certain products. In 1963, we stopped selling handguns, a normal staple of many stores of our type. I realized that handguns are a potentially dangerous product whose sales should be carefully monitored and controlled."

John Hechinger took that courageous stand four decades ago. And he never stopped being a strong advocate for sensible gun laws. In 1968, he led the way, as the first Chairman of the District of Columbia City Council, to pass one of the strongest municipal handgun bills in the country. Then, in 1974, he joined forces with Pete Shields to help get a small citizen's lobby in Washington DC called the National Council to Control Handguns, later Handgun Control, Inc., on its feet. Hechinger was the longest serving member of the Board of Trustees, serving since May 26, 1976.

"John Hechinger fought for many decades to save our communities from gun violence," said Sarah Brady. "John was there when I first came to the movement, and he has been there throughout all our battles to pass sensible gun laws. Jim and I valued his friendship and wise counsel.

"John and his family business were amongst the first to be blacklisted by the NRA, and yet he continued to work for public safety," Brady said. "We will miss him."

"He was a gentle man, but he was very strong-willed and resolute," said Phyllis Segal, chair of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence united with the Million Mom March. "He truly believed that rational policies about guns in America were inevitable, because he truly believed that Americans are rational people."

Brady Campaign President Mike Barnes, a former Washington area member of Congress, called Hechinger "one of the most common sense smart men I've ever had the pleasure to work with. He believed in getting things done. He believed that the policy debate about gun violence was remarkably simple."

After the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, The June and John Hechinger, Sr. Charitable Trust for their Children and Grandchildren supported the Brady Center's Straight Talk about Risks (STAR) program with a $200,000 gift. STAR was a curriculum for teachers, guidance counselors, youth service workers and probation officers that provided youth with the information and skills necessary to reduce their changes of becoming victims or perpetrators of gun violence. The program reached more than 1.7 million children and adolescents in more than 1400 schools in 107 cities.

In 2001, the Hechinger Charitable Trust endowed the Hechinger Speaker's Bureau. The Speaker's Bureau is a strong national network of well-trained, well-informed volunteer speakers who educate those in their communities about the threat of gun violence and what can be done about it through prevention and sensible gun laws.


# # #


As the nation's largest national, non-partisan, grassroots organizations leading the fight to prevent gun violence, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence are dedicated to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in their communities.

http://www.bradycampaign.org/press/release.php?release=536

 

[Mike Irwin]

Thanks, Harry, I had just finished eating my lunch and that brought it up again...