Leader Never Lost Sight of Constituents’ Needs

At the Zion Hill Baptist Church on Sunday, across the street from Kenny Hahn’s longtime home in southwest Los Angeles, parishioner Charles Collins fished through his sorrow upon learning of the fabled politician’s death earlier in the morning--and remembered the parking tickets.

Years ago, those emerging from Sunday services were finding tickets on their windshields. “He put an end to that,” said Collins, 81, recalling how Hahn took his neighbors’ case to City Hall and got the restrictions changed to help the church without a parking lot.

“He was a very fine man, fine indeed. He did a lot of good for this neighborhood,” mused Collins, who proudly added that he had voted for Hahn every time the veteran pol’s name appeared on the ballot.

As a skillful, enthusiastic player in the political arena, Hahn never lost sight of the fans in the peanut gallery. While tributes poured in from the city’s most powerful players, the people whose everyday lives were touched by the populist Hahn had reason to remember as well.

“Oh, Lord, another soldier, another good soldier, going home,” said “Sweet Alice” Harris, 40-year community activist and head of Parents of Watts, upon learning of Hahn’s death.

Harris recalled how the white supervisor helped her and other impoverished African Americans learn the political skills they needed to be heard at City Hall, at the county Hall of Administration and even in Sacramento.

“So many of us are leaders now because he was there for us, directing us, teaching us and helping us get things done,” Harris said. “He told us how to get petitions and where to send them to get the [Martin Luther King Jr.] hospital built” in Willowbrook, in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots.

Hahn shared his legendary political know-how to help the poor, minorities and other disenfranchised groups make their voices heard, whether it was for a park, more sheriff’s deputies or better treatment in the halls of power, Harris said.

“He loved us; he loved the poor people; he understood us, and he never forgot us. He taught his family to understand us too.

“There is not a family in Watts that doesn’t have his picture on their wall,” continued Harris, who was preparing to break the news of Hahn’s death to a meeting of foster parents she was hosting Sunday afternoon.

“We’ll all have a prayer, and then I’m going over to the house to see his family,” Harris added.

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Hahn got back the respect he gave.

The Rev. Cecil L. (Chip) Murray, pastor of the prominent First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, told an anecdote about the dedication ceremonies for the long-awaited Martin Luther King Jr. hospital in 1972.

As speech after speech unfolded, a group of young African American men stood at the fringes of the crowd, wearing the Afro haircuts of the day and sporting expressions of “cynicism that had come from bitter encounters with the systems of America,” Murray said.

“When Kenny got up to speak after an extended introduction, they led in the applause, and they said to those around them, ‘Hush, hush! Mr. Hahn is speaking.’

“These were grass-roots people who knew he had a grass-roots spirit,” Murray said.

No cause was too small for Hahn to champion--or to publicize.

Once, during a heat wave, he publicly urged county employees to wear cool clothing (as long as they observed good taste, the conservative Christian Hahn added hastily when reporters dutifully set about filing stories on that particular “initiative”).

When the 1979 oil embargo sent gasoline prices soaring, Hahn persuaded the county to open a consumer hotline to take complaints. He fielded the first few calls himself. (“Hi, David. This is Kenny Hahn,” he greeted a startled caller.)

A 1973 incident was vintage Hahn. He found out that a Santa Monica Municipal Court judge had briefly jailed two county maintenance workers for contempt for refusing to turn down the courtroom thermostat. Hahn blasted the judge during the Board of Supervisors’ meeting. He called for an investigation by the state Commission on Judicial Qualifications and demanded an apology. He couldn’t get a majority to back his motion for the investigation, but he did indeed get the judge to apologize to the workers, Matt Olko and Ray Broome.

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Harry Hufford, who was the county chief administrative officer for much of Hahn’s long career, said the consummate politician had a soft spot for those in need.

“He quietly helped people who got in trouble. He was a teetotaler and a very strongly religious man, but he helped people whose values were 180 degrees different,” Hufford said. “He was the first one there to help in a hard time, whether it was booze, losing a job, or poverty,” Hufford said.

Hahn’s grown children, who have followed their father into public life, said Sunday that their father loved what did.

“He always said the smallest task completed is greater than the biggest task considered. . . . He really loved people. He liked helping them,” said James K. Hahn, who is Los Angeles city attorney.

Janice Hahn, elected last spring to a commission charged with developing a proposal to overhaul the city’s charter, noted that people were always coming up to her father to thank him for something he had done for their family or community. She was with him recently when a county lifeguard spotted the retired supervisor and thanked him for getting the neighborhood pool built, one in which the guard had taken free swimming lessons as a youth.

“He never turned anyone away. If they had a problem, he’d say, ‘I’ll take care of it on Monday,’ and he would.”