When Robert Eschbach became mayor of Ottawa, Illinois, in 1999, his community was in serious trouble.
Ottawa was in a dispiriting descent, battered by job loss, recurring flooding, a badly deteriorating downtown and sagging community morale. Many residents believed their community was in inexorable decline, destined to be another failed Midwestern community that was the victim of a rapidly changing global economy and well-meaning but inept leadership.
But Eschbach saw hope and opportunity. He urged his fellow citizens to come together, roll up their sleeves and build a hopeful future for their town of 18,000.
A native of Ottawa, he attended Illinois Valley College and graduated from Illinois State University. He earned a law degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and then returned home to practice law. He also plunged into community affairs, volunteering for environmental protection, historic preservation, and downtown and neighborhood revitalization projects. He served on the city’s planning, zoning and historic preservation commissions before he was elected mayor in 1999.
As mayor, he crafted a comprehensive city plan, the first in Ottawa’s history. It was later updated and won the prestigious American Planning Association’s Daniel Burnham Award in 2016. He worked with colleagues to create a floodplain plan that won national awards and has protected Ottawa from the ravages of flooding. He led a successful citywide effort to attract jobs, revitalize downtown, develop the riverfront and beautify the city. Ottawa received recognition from The America in Bloom organization for the “most dramatic transformation of a downtown streetscape.”
Those who have worked with Eschbach describe him as kind, optimistic and confident. He encouraged hundreds of citizens to join advisory boards, committees, commissions and volunteer groups to revitalize Ottawa. In true Lincoln style, he even reached out to defeated opponents and invited them to serve the city in various capacities.
During his 20-year tenure, Mayor Eschbach did not preach or lecture about leadership. He practiced it. A quiet and self-deprecating man, he accomplished extraordinary things by combining a long-term vision with the practical skills needed to bring people together.
We often think of statesmanship as involving towering figures operating on dramatic national and international stages: Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela.
However, statesmanship can also occur in smaller venues by regular people who, rather than plunging into existential struggles in faraway lands, stay closer to home and make their communities better.
Leaders like Robert Eschbach.
In his final state of the city address, the mayor presented a simple and compelling vision of leadership and self-government. “We are all ordinary people working together to accomplish extraordinary things,” he said, “and though we may have many different titles and stations in life, we all share in a common heritage of self-government, and we all share in probably the most precious of titles — that of citizen.’”
We should recognize the powerful and profound contributions of leaders such as Eschbach and support them to make our communities — and our democracy — flourish.
John T. Shaw is the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.
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