Editor's note: This is one in a series of profiles on candidates for Lawrence City Commission. Each day this week, the Journal-World will profile one of the six candidates in the race.
Sue Hack isn't the first member of her family to try a hand at city politics, but she hopes to be the most successful.
Her grandfather, Henry Wilkinson Flagg, was a Stetson-wearing Texan who served one year as mayor of Galveston starting in 1942.
"Being a good Southern Baptist," Hack said, "he took it upon himself to shut down the city's red-light district."
Death threats followed, she said, and Flagg took to carrying a Colt .45 pistol with him. The next election, voters turned him out of office.
Still, Hack said she learned a few lessons from her grandfather's experience. Despite the problems, she said, Henry Flagg listened to people and respected them something she hopes to emulate if she becomes a Lawrence city commissioner.
"When people feel they've been ignored, disconnected, out of the loop of decision-making, that's when the process goes bad," she said.
Not that Hack will entirely follow Flagg's example.
"My plan," she said, "is if I'm elected, that I don't have to pack heat."
Keeping in touch
Hack was born in Springfield, Mass., and spent portions of her childhood in Cincinnati, California and St. Louis before coming to Lawrence as a Kansas University freshman in 1965.
She graduated in 1970 with an education degree. She returned a year-and-a-half later to teach and marry her husband, Al Hack III. The couple have two children: Brian, 22, and Anne, 20. They divorced in the 1990s, Hack said, but plan to remarry this spring.
During the past 30 years, Hack has taught at Lawrence's South, Central, West junior high schools before her current job as a civics teacher at Southwest Junior High. Her contact with students and parents over that time, she believes, has provided her with name recognition to aid her campaign.
"I think that's true," she said. "I've had former students stop me, congratulate me and tell me they plan on voting for me."
Her civic involvement extended to work for United Way, Lawrence's Sister City program, a berth as a class member then board member of Leadership Lawrence, and membership in the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce.
Hack said she was inspired to get involved in activism by her parents, who worked on school issues when she was a child.
"I saw that kind of political activism, admired it, and I guess it became a part of me," she said.
'Core values'
Working as a teacher on school committees, Hack said, helped her see that she could accomplish goals with people of differing opinions.
"I think that's essentially what governing is," she said. "It's essentially dealing with a diverse group of people and appreciating what each brings to the table."
That doesn't mean making everybody happy, she says, but it does mean making "principled compromises."
"You have to have a core set of values you operate from," she said. "Ultimately, the person in the leadership position has to take the information and come up with a decision, know that some people will be pleased, others will be unhappy."
Hack said the city does a good job of responding to neighborhood concerns, preserving history, meeting social needs. She also praised the city's new transit system.
"It's growing and it's in its infancy, and we need to support it like we would any young venture," she said. "It's going to be successful."
The city can do a better job of addressing traffic concerns, she said, as well as keeping taxes down. Mostly, though, it can do a better job of communicating.
"If there's a perception that a decision was made before it comes to the public, that's wrong," she said, adding that she had no specific issue in mind.
She said her election to the commission might change the public's perception about a board that currently is made up entirely of white men.
"I don't want to sound like Gloria Steinem, but I think I would bring diversity to the commission," Hack said. "I'm not running because I'm a female; that's not my mission. My mission is to put me on the commission."
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