By MIKE LAWRENCE Memories: Four faces from the past

House Speaker W. Robert Blair, the powerwielder who helped create the Regional Transportation Authority and was never forgiven for it. Secy. of State Michael J. Howlett, the amiable pro who ran a doomed campaign for governor to save the Democratic party. Lt. Gov. Dave O'Neal, the maverick who said he quit his post because the job was boring. Senate President Cecil A. Partee, the trailblazer who lost in his bid for statewide office. Where are they today and what are they doing? What do they have to say about their careers, the risks they took, the price they paid? We sent Statehouse reporter Mike Lawrence to find out. Mike Lawrence is Springfield bureau chief of Lee Enterprises.

IT IS a Loop law office, not the podium of the Illinois House, but Bob Blair is once again presiding. The former speaker is not exercising power on this day, but he is talking about it and so summoning memories of a dramatically different epoch in state government.

The Republican's reign came during the period of activism — a period when patronage prospered and political punishment punctuated aggressive leadership. It was a time for wheeling, dealing, bully-like leaders who glanced at polls but danced with a sense of destiny. Indeed, as he shares his recollections, it seems somehow more than nine years since Bob Blair departed the speakership, having helped raise taxes to meet what he saw as great needs in transportation, education and state services.

"On the issues that are tough issues, unless you intend to be in the political process the rest of your life, you ought to be willing to go at risk if you really sincerely believe that something ought to be done and done this way. You ought to lay it on the line to get it done. There's a great deal now of put your foot in the water and test it and if it's cold, run away from the water."

Blair liked the water. He liked to splash in it, convince some to join him and dunk others. He also enjoyed the company of such swimmers as Republican Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and House Democratic leaders Gerald Shea and Clyde Choate.

"I was a very activist guy. Ogilvie and I didn't always see eye to eye. I was no rollover for Ogilvie. But I liked Dick, and I think I liked him for the same reason I liked Daley. Both of them knew how to wield power."

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Blair says he was on the telephone so frequently with the mayor that he quipped to Shea, Daley's floor leader, "You're going to have to move the red phone out of your office and put it over here in mine."

Meanwhile, Ogilvie's proclivity for using punch helped Blair keep House Republican troops in line. "Party discipline at that point . . . still related to the governor's office. If the people from the governor's office expressed interest in any particular piece of legislation, obviously any member would think about the consequences of not going along. It was their recognition of his power. Ogilvie was never afraid to use power."

'I'd like for someone to show me how much more it has cost the State of Illinois just to staff agencies to prepare annual budget documents' Republican W. Robert Blair of Park Forest was first elected to the Illinois House in 1964. Formerly a corporate attorney, he served five terms as a state representative, including two as speaker of the House, from 1971-1975. He was also chairman of the Illinois Transportation Study Commission. Failing to win a sixth term in 1974, he lost again in his 1978 bid for the Republican nomination for state comptroller and in the 1982 primary race for state treasurer.

Neither was Blair, who suggests a far more subtle use of muscle than that which helped mold his reputation. "You ran the House and you made appointments to chairmanships and vice chairmanships and you were in a position to help with respect to campaigns, and the fund raising apparatus was such that they respected that. And, what the hell, if you helped somebody with campaign money, he appreciated that. There's a lot that's just understood."

Whether subtly or oppressively, Blair applied his muscle behind one of the most controversial actions ever taken by the General Assembly. He became known, in fact, as the father of the Regional Transportation Authority, suffered retaliation from those offended by his offspring and later tried to mollify his critics by turning into a critic himself. But now he seems generally comfortable with his parenthood.

"The commuter railroads were ready to shut down. The people up here, especially in the Republican collar counties, developed antipathy toward me because they thought I was taking care of Chicago. But the fact of the matter is that the two legislative proposals that first came into the legislature came from the commuter railroads. So, I figured the only way we could make sure that we kept the state subsidy going to the commuter railroads was to tie into the voting power in the City of Chicago. And, if you take the collar counties and the City of Chicago, you'll see that they've got the strength to pass and defeat things, and I thought that was great leverage.

"There was a real crisis coming on then, and my solution was not just to do it by pure subsidy. I thought we ought to try to set up some kind of authority to handle it and to get some dollar contribution from the taxpayers of this area."

Blair says he knew the RTA was being underfunded, but "that was all we could pass." What the speaker did not anticipate, however, was the adverse impact the RTA matter would have on his gubernatorial ambitions. It contributed greatly to his 1974 reelection defeat, though he also notes the post-Watergate balloting was generally disastrous for Republicans. It also haunted his 1978 and 1982 tries for state comptroller and treasurer, respectively.

But the RTA alone did not put Blair, House speaker at 41, in a posture of retirement from the campaign trail at 53. His speakership was known as a regal one, marked by empire building and power politics. He perfected his modus operandi before the strength of county chairmen, his kind of folks, was sapped by television. He became associated with a governmental assertiveness that turned unfashionable even as he was serving his final years with Dan Walker in the Governor's Mansion: "When Walker came in, he said, 'To hell with this active government and all this.' People were fed up with government in all shapes, sizes and forms. There was reaction to Dick [Ogilvie] getting beat, to the income tax. All of a sudden the period of activism was over in Illinois."

Since he left the legislature, Blair has explored new career avenues. In addition to his law practice in Chicago and Joliet, he has formed Government Relations Associates, owns a restaurant in his hometown of Crete and continues as a paid consultant to the Illinois Transportation Study Commission. "The law practice — there's always something going on. And with respect to Government Relations, that's interesting because when I was speaker, I made contacts with my counterparts all around the country . . . and they're still involved in one respect or another. They're practicing law or they're in government relations activities, so there's sort of a network building up around the country . . . and those things are helpful in determining who I should be talking to."

His clients' interests range from manufacturing voting equipment to waste disposal. Blair's interests range from touching base with business contacts, to a family that includes his wife and three grown children, to reflecting on what he helped create when he and others advocated annual state budgets and almost continuous sessions of the General Assembly. "I'd like for someone to show me how much more it has cost the State of Illinois just to staff agencies to prepare annual budget documents," he says.

But Blair apologizes for little else he advocated or did as speaker of the Illinois House. "I was a high roller. I always thought I was playing for high stakes," he says with a twinkle in his eye that suggests his disappointment in defeat is more than occasionally overcome by the magnificence of some memories.

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'There are no great political organizations left I believe we were the last one' Democrat Michael J. Howlett of Chicago first worked in state government as a bank examine in 1934. After many years in business and in city and federal posts in Chicago, he was elected state auditor of public accounts, and served from 1961 until 1973 when the state auditor was replaced by the state comptroller. In 1972, he was elected secretary of state. Winning the Democratic nomination for governor over incumbent Dan Walker in 1976, Howlett was defeated in the general election by James R. Thompson.

MIKE Howlett, raconteur par excellence, is plucking a relished recollection from his doomed 1976 try for governor. "One of the things I'll always remember about Walker: People around him were spreading stories that my health wasn't good. So, we appeared before the League of Women Voters one morning in Springfield, and I met Walker. He said, 'Mike, how are you? How's your health?' And I said, 'Wonderful, Dan. I swam three miles this morning in the Sangamon River!' "

With that, Howlett laughs that contagious belly laugh of his. It is indeed a memory to be savored. It is also rare in that respect. Howlett, among the most successful statewide candidates in Illinois history, turned back Gov. Dan Walker's bid for renomination only to be buried by Republican James R. Thompson in the fall. And the defeat was not the worst of it. Howlett's once-unsullied reputation took a beating.

"The only thing that bothered me about the race — you know, I've been winning and losing all my life in athletics and politics — is that people I knew, some of whom I knew very well around the state, were willing to believe things that people told them, like that I was living with a woman on Michigan Avenue. Of course, the woman was my wife. And they were willing to believe that when I became governor, I would take all the money from downstate and only build highways in Cook County, which is the most ridiculous thing in the world. And they were willing to believe that I would close all the downstate hospitals, that we'd build hospitals in Cook County."

It was a race Howlett was loath to make, and for that reason alone, it was a race laced with irony. He had the gubernatorial itch in 1968, but Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley would not scratch. Instead, the mayor tapped Samuel Shapiro, who had been Otto Kerner's lieutenant govenor and had then become chief executive when Kerner went to the federal bench. Howlett won a third term as auditor while Shapiro was losing to Republican Richard B. Ogilvie, but his interest in the governorship had waned. Thus, as 1972 rolled around, Howlett seemed satisfied to be slated for secretary of state and elected. And, as 1976 approached, he was hoping to win another term and qualify for maximum pension benefits. But that was not to be.

"Almost every labor leader of any consequence called me up and asked me to run for governor. There were businessmen who called me up and asked me to run for governor. Apparently, they were urged to do so by Daley. And, finally, the late Jack Touhy [state Democratic chairman] and I went out for breakfast one morning and he said, 'You've got to run for governor. It's the only way to save this party. The way Walker is going, we won't have any Democratic party.' And he was really the one who sold me on that."

For his part, Howlett had sought to end the acrimony between the maverick and the mayor, but it was seemingly a mission impossible. "I don't think there was really much that Walker did in the legislature or the operation of the state that really made that much difference. I think it was mainly that he irritated a lot of people in the Democratic party by making statements about the party and about Daley and so forth. He at least gave the impression that he would do something about the Democratic party if he had a chance. Well, as it turned out, it really didn't make any difference because after Daley died ... we were in a whole new ballgame. Things seemed to change not only here but all over the country. There are no great political organizations left. I believe we were the last one."

To be sure, the route to election was changing even as Howlett ran his final race. As secretary of state, he had ingratiated himself with reporters throughout the years by providing valuable background information and opening public records to them. He enjoyed the backing of the vaunted Chicago Democratic organization and had made numerous friends downstate with his gift for gab and remembering names. But the heavy-jowled Howlett failed the television test, and Walker and Thompson glittered. "If when I started out in politics, a candidate went around with a dog, like Thompson did, that would have been a joke. But, with the media, it was a plus."

More serious, however, is the trend toward attack, Howlett believes. "It used to be fun. You went out and you campaigned all over and you met a lot of people, and your opponent did the same thing. And there were certain things that were off limits. You never

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brought a man's family into it under any conditions. But today everything goes. If anybody thinks dirty tricks ended with Nixon, he's crazy. ... A whole new group has taken over campaigns now. You have the media consultant and campaign consultants who do things because it's more important for them to win than it is for the candidate."

The trend, he suggests, has governmental ramifications. Perhaps, Howlett says, greater independence from party is worthwhile in some respects. But, he notes, "When it comes to the operation of government, it's necessary to have compromise, and it's much easier to work out if you have party loyalties. Now, we were successful in keeping this government going all the years because we had responsible people in both parties who always got together on the big issues and solved them."

Howlett still maintains contacts with some of his fellow problem solvers. "Sam Shapiro and I have a close friendship. I have lunch every couple of months with Dick Ogilvie, and we talk on the phone now and then. I see Bill Stratton quite often." Moreover, he contacts others in a business sense because he and William Perkins, who retired as a full-time advocate for an insurance company, have a Chicago-based lobbying operation of their own. Their clients range from truckers to a frozen juice business, and they use their persuasive powers on federal and state lawmakers.

Howlett has benefited from longtime associations, including relationships with congressmen who once served in Springfield. "The truth of the matter is the legitimate good lobbyist is the one who has the contacts that enable him to get the information to a leader or member of the legislature." And the truth of the matter is that Mike Howlett, who will become a septuagenarian August 30, continues to live and breathe politics. He regularly eats breakfast at the Bismarck Hotel with old friends and "we always solve all the important problems of the world." He stays active in political campaigns. He also enjoys having more time for his wife, their six children and some grandchildren. But, he says, "I'd go crazy if I tried to retire."

FOR decades, Cecil Partee kept busy blazing trails as he became the first black to head a chamber of the Illinois General Assembly. Now he is not quite as busy, but he is still trying to blaze trails. He challenges the inclination of policymakers to wear liberal or conservative blinders. He strongly believes the thrust of formal education is unrealistic today and must be changed dramatically. And he suggests it might be time to reassess the wisdom of having virtually a full-time legislature in Illinois.

He no longer is in a position to advance those notions through direct legislation. But he still has a platform and, more importantly, he has more time to marshal his thoughts and to mix knowledge gleaned from his vast and remarkable experience with that he can glean from reading in depth about other pioneers.

Partee, 62, has been the elected treasurer of the City of Chicago since 1979. The post is largely custodial, although he makes decisions concerning investment of temporarily idle funds and helps form policy for several pension systems. Thus, he is enjoying a luxury heretofore denied him. "My actual moment by moment involvement has not been as strenuous or as strident, and it causes me to have some additional time to do a little reading and to do some thinking and to make some assessments about what I think life ought to be about. So, it's worked out very well for me. You can't skip rope all your life. You don't want to be on a merry-go-round your entire life. You don't get a chance to really think."

He has been thinking a lot lately, and it was not long ago that he had the opportunity to crystalize some of that activity at a gathering near Lake Michigan where he was asked whether he regarded himself as a liberal or a conservative. "I looked at the lake, and the answer revealed itself to me: 'I hope that I am neither. It occurs to me that a conservative person would see someone drowning 50 feet from the shore and would throw him 25 feet of rope with the admonition that you got to do some things for yourself. And a liberal would throw him 200 feet of rope and then drop his end and walk off to do another good deed for someone else. In either event, the poor fellow would drown.' We don't need conservatives and liberals as such. We need people who can react individually without being label-conscious.

"One of the things that I think grew out of all this biographical reading for me is that I think sometimes we circumscribe our minds, we penalize our thought processes, we keep our thought processes in a certain parameter based on our personal evaluations of ourselves. To put it another way, there are persons who describe themselves as conservatives who could never proffer a solution to a particular problem if they had to deviate from what they feel is their prescribed course, and the same could be applied on the other side of the coin to a liberal."

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Partee's views on education may be even more controversial. "I think we have to start developing some scholastic kinds of programs that maximize the brightness and talent of people, be they black or white. I think we must revamp our entire school system along the lines of our understanding that everybody is not going to like to read Shakespeare, that not everybody is going to read American literature, that there are people who could spend their time more profitably reading blueprints and being involved in kinds of activities other than being a doctor, being a lawyer or something like that. . . . We are trying to give everybody what is probably an overdose of liberal arts, and there are a lot of people who don't need it, who can do with something else that might be better."

In addition, Partee has been reconsidering his previous support of annual state budgets and more frequent legislative sessions — from which have evolved full-time legislators. "People come in who want to be professional legislators, and that flies in the face of the real theory of what a legislature such as ours is supposed to be. It is supposed to be an amalgam of people who come from various parts of the state — farmers and teachers and carpenters and other kinds of people — who each bring with them a particular knowledge, a particular expertise, a particular approach to life. . . .

"But now the approach is different ... all because it is a job within itself. Party discipline is not there. Also more and more people are involved in various elements of politics, and there are more who have a focus on one or more issues. People tend to evaluate a legislator not on his overall proficiency and his overall competency and his overall addressing of the many problems which he is facing."

Changes involving the General Assembly, however, are not the only ones that concern Partee. He has seen television diminish the role of political parties. He has seen the Chicago Democratic organization which helped him make history divided by a racism that threatens, in his view, the stability of the city itself. He has seen, in the last mayoral election and its aftermath, the dramatizing of divisions that he has sought for years to eradicate.

One of his proudest accomplishments, he says, was to enforce punctuality when he presided over the Senate. He insisted the proceedings begin on time each day, and his motivation tells much. "I was the first black president, and there was a thing they used to say — that people of my ethnic persuasion were late all the time — and I just wanted to show that it was not an ethnic failure."

Even before then, as a champion of fair housing legislation confronted by a wall of resistance, Partee chose not to let stereotypes prevail. Rarely would he turn accusatory or carry the battle into other issues. "You cannot permit yourself," he says, "to become wound so tightly that you lose your overall perspective. You cannot permit yourself to become so gnawed by any kind of problem that you negate your ability to fight again tomorrow. You can never so alienate the opposition that you never get anybody to come across to your side."

He has sought to win not through strife but through finding common cause. That is why, though some had speculated he could have become the first black mayor of his adopted city, he would not seek it without the blessings of the organization that helped boost him near the apex of state government.

Accordingly, it is not difficult to understand his distress over the Chicago developments, and it is easy to understand why he prefers to accentuate his efforts to bridge gaps, to talk about how he brought animals and vegetable gardens to a city fair in Chicago during his pre-treasurer days as commissioner of the city's Department of Human Services. After all, Cecil Partee likes compartmentalizing even less now that he has had an opportunity to think more about it.

DAVE O'Neal determined soon after quitting as Illinois lieutenant governor that he had not achieved sufficient anonymity. "I colored my hair just for the hell of it. Right after I left, I wanted to get away from everybody, and I had an apartment more or less under an assumed name up in the northwest part of Cook County."

News reports in the summer of 1981 had suggested he was moving to Florida, and "all of a sudden I'm totally alone. All my friends think they can't get in touch with me. It was kind of a wild time in my life. Lieutenant govenors aren't the most easily recognizable people around, and I decided — well, let's let the rest of them not know who I am. So, I was just horsing around and dyed my hair. Right now, it sounds really silly, but at the time, I though it was a great idea. People would see me and they would say, 'You look just like . . .' and I'd say, 'No kidding.' "

It is vintage Dave O'Neal — seeking to become even more anonymous after leaving a low-visibility office that brought him the nickname "Dave Who?" Unpredictable and occasionally uninhibited, he was entertaining to insiders throughout his four-and-a-half-year tenure despite the drabness of his duties. He was also entertaining when he had the temerity to declare the job boring and depart it. But that declaration, combined with marital turbulence, plunged O'Neal into an adjustment period marked by far more than a change of hair color.

He was divorced from his wife of many years and remarried. He moved from southern Illinois to the Chicago suburbs. He is now involved in his second business venture since leaving government.

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"I'm a pharmacist who didn't want to go back into pharmacy. I wasn't a lawyer, and the only guys who really make out in public office are the lawyers because they can really get name recognition and use it. My net worth dropped off tremendously when I was in government, and the divorce didn't help. So, I was starting over." O'Neal, 46, began that process as senior vice president of a plane parts company known as Aviation Systems, International, and based in Elk Grove. He left after about 16 months. "I went into that at a time when the economy was falling fast and furious, and I think any expectations that company might have had for me were negated to a certain extent. In other words, I enjoyed the business, but the business at that time was really slowing down so I couldn't reach the goals I set for myself."

Now he is a partner in Design Business Forms, a relatively new company headquartered in the Loop. "I make contact with different businesses, different individuals who might have need for printing. . . . It's like selling anything. We're a small company. . . . We can do anything . . . memo pads, any kind of padded form, snapout forms, continuous forms for the computer, a lot of envelope business, everything from a regular 'number 10' to a custom-made window."

Business, he says, "has been slow to start, but I knew it would be, and things are picking up." Meanwhile, he is cushioned by receipts from earlier investments. And, he says, he is enjoying life in suburban Lisle with his new wife, Ellen, her two young children and his first-marriage daughters, who live nearby. "Chicago has so many more things than St. Louis does. For example, you've got the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum ... the different theaters, the symphony. . . . They bring Broadway in all the time. You're very close to Milwaukee and some of the beautiful Wisconsin area. Where I live, I'm 30 minutes from Chicago, one of the greatest cultural centers in the world, and about five minutes from the cornfields."

He occasionally misses "just being there," mixing with the mighty and strolling the red carpet while acting as a surrogate governor. It bothers him that his two-time ticket partner, Gov. James R. Thompson, did not return calls during a six-month stretch, as "it would bother anybody with ego." O'Neal has seen some who courted him shun him because "they know you are out."

However, he seems reconciled. "Sure, I would like Jim to drop everything he's doing and talk to Dave O'Neal. But I also understand . . . and if I had called and said, 'This is really important, I need to talk to Jim,' I'm sure I would talk to him."

In fact, O'Neal says, he has retained more friends than anticipated. And, as far as the red carpet is concerned, he believes he and others should guard against taking themselves too seriously. "This country is going to survive because of the greatness of the country, whether Dave O'Neal is involved or not, whether Jim Thompson is involved or not, whether Ronald Reagan is involved."

Indeed, he is certain his decision to depart was correct. Recalling his 1976 campaign, he chuckles and says, "Somebody asked me, 'Why are you running for lieutenant governor?' I looked him right in the eye with a straight face and said, 'Since I've been a small child, I've dreamed of being lieutenant governor.' " But the office, as it exists today, is truly sought as a steppingstone. And O'Neal left it because he believed himself at a dead end and because, he contends, the only hope he had for strengthening his office was to ditch it.

"There is one way I could have been elected United States senator without any problem. . . . If I would have taken a position as a proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment and if I had been in favor of abortion, I think I would have gone on," he says. But O'Neal adds his unsuccessful 1980 senatorial bid showed him he could not succeed and keep a pledge "to be my own man," and he simultaneously decided his proposals to fortify the lieutenant governor's office would stand a better chance if he were not the occupant. "I was tainted from the fact I was opposed to ERA, which meant no matter which position I took on anything, the Sun-Times and the Tribune were going to be against me."

His proposals have languished. But O'Neal seems to have few regrets. "I don't begrudge myself the fact that I ran, that I served. I don't have any bitterness about myself anymore. I went through a very trying period when I got divorced. I didn't think I would but, even though we still like each other and it was a joint decision, emotionally it caught me unaware. I went through about a two- or three-month period that was one of the most difficult times of my life. But that had nothing to do with government. I know I'm honest. I've always kept my honesty. I was true to myself on the issues. So, I feel pretty good."

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