It’s not that we handle most people’s issues this way; if I’ve seen 500 city residents at these meetings, that leaves some 99,500 that I haven’t. More people call our 311 system in a day than I can meet this way in a year. But it matters, not only as a venue for problem-solving but as a refresher on why we even have governments and politics in the first place: to support people going about their everyday lives.
Our city administration’s mission is to “deliver services that empower everyone to thrive.” A government process can’t single-handedly decide whether people will thrive or not. But we can make it more likely that they will, sometimes by acting and sometimes by getting out of the way. I see our role reflected daily in the faces of fellow residents. A seven-year-old smiles, exuberant, as she runs through a splash pad we installed in the low-income Kennedy Park neighborhood. A mother of three from the Southeast Side weeps at an act of gun violence we failed to stop. A family’s eyes reflect the red, then blue, then green glow of a light pattern painted by LEDs across the cascading whitewater behind the Century Center, a new kind of public art for our city. So many things that will happen today in any one life are possible only because of a functioning local government: mundane yet vital things like a hot shower, a drive to work, a stroll under the streetlights at dusk. The more people can thrive in daily life here in our once-rusting town along the St. Joseph River, the better our city can make a claim to greatness, and the more its example becomes useful to others.
On deployment in Kabul, I encountered the Afghan proverb that says, “A river is made drop by drop.” It must have been inspired by the Amu Darya on the Tajikistan border, but of course I pictured instead the St. Joseph, as it coursed by my house in South Bend some seven thousand miles away. It is usually invoked at the outset of a big undertaking that requires countless individual steps. But it also captures the importance of working at the local level as part of building a better nation: tearing down obstacles to a good everyday life in a single community, knowing how the small adds up to the great.
I’ve learned that great families, great cities, and even great nations are built through attention to the everyday. That lesson, once I began to understand it, proved to be the unexpected and consistent theme of two decades’ education and work. Seeking wisdom and purpose at the age of eighteen, I rushed to escape the hometown that had shaped me. Then, slowly and imperceptibly, like one of those muted winter sunrises over South Bend, a pattern became visible across all I’d learned in philosophy and literature, business and service, politics and love. At last there is now enough light to see that the meaning I sought was to be found very close to where I had begun, on a path that proved in my case to be the shortest way home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No one invents himself, and a good South Bender is raised to know that his achievements rest largely on the support and indulgence of countless others. This is particularly true for a mayor who decides to write his first book while in office, and I am in debt to all those who made this possible.
They are, of course, too many to name, stretching back through my career and formal education all the way to the cradle, where my mother, Jennifer Anne Montgomery, and my father, Joseph Buttigieg, first gave me the gift of language as well as that of their love.
As this concept went through its first iterations, my agent, Chris Parris-Lamb, gave me the insight and guidance needed to venture into the literary world.
My publisher, Robert Weil, made an author of me, patiently reading draft after draft and forcing me to find an authentic storytelling voice on the page. His faith in this project and in me as a writer propelled me, and this book is the result of his expert, energetic management of both text and author. Bob’s colleagues at Liveright and Norton, especially Marie Pantojan, provided me with vital support, and the copyediting by Dave Cole was uncannily precise and perceptive.
Jennifer Huang is a superb research assistant, catching inconsistencies and running down references to corroborate or correct my recollection at every turn. A brilliant interviewer, she also gathered many of the stories that make this book worth reading, and her insights helped throughout. Of course, any factual errors that did survive into the published edition are my sole responsibility.
From the earliest conception of this project, my friend Ganesh Sitaraman provided expert guidance, unvarnished advice, and steady encouragement. Trusted friends and colleagues read drafts, and I am thankful to Mike Schmuhl, Kathryn Roos, Nathaniel Myers, James Mueller, and Lis Smith for their time and insights.
South Bend’s story is far from mine alone to tell, and I am indebted to South Bend residents and others who shared their own stories in interviews for this project, including Pete Mullen, Gladys Muhammad, Chuck Hurley, Bob Urbanski, Mayor Greg Goodnight, and Governor Joe Kernan. In a broader sense, the book belongs to the people of South Bend, since they have shaped and authored the city’s story and, in so many ways, my own.
Writing a book places monstrous claims on a politician’s most precious and contested resource: time. Members of my staff including Laura O’Sullivan, Yesenia Garcilazo, Andre Adeyemi, Suzanna Fritzberg, Matt Cruz, Cherri Peate, Mark Bode, and others went to great lengths to help me carve out enough time to undertake this work amid all the demands on our office. And I would not have a very good story to begin with if it weren’t for the brilliance of current and former office and campaign staff members, phenomenal department heads, and more than a thousand dedicated employees doing great work for our city. Among them, Aaron Perri, Stephanie Steele, Santiago Garces, and Eric Horvath also helped me to verify factual and technical information about their excellent work.
While writing this book, I gained a new family in the Glezmans, whose love has enriched my life and buoyed me, and whose story I have been honored to share.
No one has sacrificed more for this book than Chasten, my love, who has put up with countless hours of lost time together, even as I worked to express on the page what our time together means to me. His loving scrutiny of my text and of my heart has made me a better writer, a better mayor, and a better man.