He Improved Our Lives

If Kenny Hahn had been alive, it was an event he wouldn’t have missed--a huge church full of powerful politicians, constituents, friends and family.

All his funeral Friday needed was the living presence of Hahn himself to give his farewell a touch only he could provide.

His absence was felt even before the funeral began, as reporters prowled around looking for just the right quote, the perfect mixture of sentimentality, compassion and humor that would put the event in just the right perspective.

But death had silenced the only man capable of summing up the ceremony with a perfect sound bite.

In a cynical world, where government gridlock is accepted as a permanent condition of life, to hear Kenneth Hahn’s extraordinary achievements over 40 years as a Los Angeles County supervisor, echoed by speaker after speaker, was like listening to the history of another era.

He improved our lives--and saved many of them. For it was Hahn who was responsible for freeway emergency call boxes, paramedics and hospital trauma centers.

He brought a hospital, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, to his long neglected, poor South-Central L.A. district, as well as parks and swimming pools. He attacked insurance redlining--the practice of imposing high rates on poor neighborhoods--before anyone else, and deserves much of the credit for today’s limits on it.

He wouldn’t tolerate a single pothole. He’d find them on his way to work and present his staff with a list, dictated on tape. He demanded action within 24 hours.

Hahn was able to accomplish all this--works big and small--because he was a master politician, a deeply religious, old-fashioned liberal who understood the art of compromise and the futility of making permanent enemies. He dealt with conservative Ronald Reagan as easily as he did with liberal Hubert Humphrey.

Former Republican Gov. George Deukmejian was at the funeral, as was Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat. They were joined at the FaithDome, the centerpiece of the Crenshaw Christian Center in South-Central, by two mayors, Republican Richard Riordan and San Francisco’s liberal Willie Brown; an acting governor, Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis; an ex-mayor, Tom Bradley; and a bunch of other past and present pols.

His son, Los Angeles City Atty. Jim Hahn, drew appreciative laughter when he recalled community activist Sweet Alice Harris’ assessment of his father: “Kenny Hahn had more common sense before breakfast than most politicians have all day.”

Hahn also accomplished so much, because the supervisor, a white man representing a predominantly African American and Latino district, soared above the boundaries of race and ethnicity. “He looked past race and saw within,” said Gore.

Speakers recalled how in the 1960s, Hahn, running for reelection at the height of the black power movement, was challenged for his post by one of L.A.’s most popular black politicians, then-City Councilman Billy Mills. Hahn won easily with majorities, as one speaker recalled, as high as 104% in one precinct.

Voters remembered, no doubt, that in 1961, Hahn was the only public official to greet the then-controversial King when he visited Los Angeles.

Hahn would have especially enjoyed the big media turnout at the funeral, with live television reports and newspaper photographers shooting away. Nobody was better than Kenny at getting publicity.

His successor, Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, recalled him telling her, “Take credit for everything that goes right, and when it goes wrong, blame the other guy.”

Los Angeles Dodgers Vice President Tommy Hawkins remembered a valuable lesson from Hahn. Hawkins, then a Lakers basketball player working part time in public relations, was helping with a Hahn reelection campaign several years ago. He noticed how the supervisor pushed his way into the middle of a group during every press photo session. “Isn’t that rude?” he asked Hahn. “Tommy,” Hahn replied, “they never crop from the middle.”

As I listened, I walked down my own memory lane.

Hahn had done me a big favor in the early ‘70s. The Board of Supervisors was choosing a new district attorney to replace one who had been elected state attorney general. As usual, the supes were acting in secret. My boss wanted me to find out what was going on. New to town, I knew only one supervisor, Hahn, whose unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign I had covered in 1970.

When I sat down in Hahn’s office, he lectured me at length on how The Times--and I--had underplayed his Senate campaign. Then he said, “You’ve been good enough to listen to me. What can I do for you?” I said I’d like him to tell me what happened in the secret meetings every day. He did, in a phone conversation every afternoon.

This wasn’t a personal favor to me. Hahn didn’t like secret government and felt the best way to stop it was to expose it.

He knew more about county government than anyone else in the Hall of Administration, which is now named after him. He liked to say county government was like a glacier, and all he could do was ride on top of it and shout a warning to those in its path.

But he knew how to take the glacier’s temperature. He had friends and spies buried deep inside of it, and they would report to him. He used the information to force bureaucrats to change policies; to convince his colleagues to vote with him or, if all else failed, to leak stories to the press. He did this for the public good, not in a spirit of meanness.

He lived simply in the house that he and his wife, Ramona, bought when they were married almost 50 years ago. The house where he was born and the church where his funeral was held were within a few miles of there.

He was deeply religious but always respectful of those with other beliefs.

He fought for the poor, but did not hate the rich. He believed in the promise of America.

Bill Boyarsky’s Spin column appears Mondays and Thursdays in the Metro section.