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Bob Bolen, Mayor of Fort Worth and
1st V.P. of National League of Cities

Mayor Bob Bolen of Fort Worth, Texas, is first vice president of the National League of Cities, a post that puts him in line to become NLC president in 1990.

Mayor Bolen was elected to the Fort Worth City Council in 1979, became mayor in a special election held in 1982, and has been reelected to three additional two-year terms. He has been a Fort Worth businessman since 1952, and his firm, Bolen Enterprises, now operates 20 Hallmark Card shops in the Dallas-Fort Worth region and San Antonio.

Mayor Bolen has been a leading figure in the development of local and regional strategies for his community, and he is currently taking a lead role in an ambitious strategic planning process for the greater Fort Worth area, involving virtually every aspect of public and private sector activity. He was instrumental in establishing the Fort Worth Transportation Authority while a council member, and he has served as chairman of the 17-county Regional Transportation Authority as well as the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, with which he continues to serve as a board member. He also played a lead role in the award of the city's first cable franchise and was a key member of a special NLC task force that helped develop cable TV legislation enacted by Congress.

Mayor Bolen chaired NLC's Transportation and Communications Policy Committee in 1985 after serving a year as vice chairman, and he was elected to the NLC Board of Directors at the 1985 Congress of Cities. He is a past president of the Texas Municipal League, which he led in 1987.

Mayor Bolen has been a leader in developing cooperative efforts in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. He has worked on numerous joint projects with neighboring jurisdictions, including a high technology education task force for the region, the successful atomic supercollider bid by the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a robotics center, a U.S. Treasury printing and engraving center, and the acquisition of the Rock Island Railroad right-of-way between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Mayor Bolen grew up in Fort Worth and Shreveport, Louisiana, where he attended public schools. Following a year at Texas A & M University, he entered the U.S. Navy and served as a gunnery officer on the U.S.S. Iowa until his discharge in 1946. He then returned to college at Texas A & M, where he earned a degree in business administration in 1948. Last year he also received an honorary doctor's degree from Texas Wesleyan College.

Mayor Bolen is active in the leadership of many business and civic organizations in his community and also serves as an elder of the Westminster Presbyterian Church of Fort Worth. He is married to the former Frances Ciborowski, and they have six children including a foster son. •

August 1989 / Illinois Municipal Review / Page 13


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