PoliticalGraveyard.com
The Political Graveyard: A Database of American History
Mayors and Postmasters of Gary, Indiana

Mayors of Gary, 1909-2012 (may be incomplete!)
Thomas E. Knotts 1909-13 Roswell O. Johnson 1914-15 Lee B. Clayton as of 1937 Joseph E. Finerty 1943-44 Eugene H. Swartz as of 1950-51 Peter Mandich as of 1952-56 George Chacharis as of 1959 Rudolph M. Clay 2006-11 Karen M. Freeman-Wilson as of 2012

Events and Candidates (may be incomplete!)

  • 1929 Nov 5: Roswell O. Johnson (Rep), elected; Emmett N. White (Dem), defeated.
  • 1963 Nov 5: A. Martin Katz (Dem), elected; Theodore D. Nering, Jr. (Rep), defeated.
  • 1967: Richard G. Hatcher, elected; Joseph Radigan (Rep), defeated.
  • 1975: James F. Hilton (Rep), defeated.
  • 2007 Nov 6: Rudolph M. Clay (Dem), elected; Charles R. Smith, Jr. (Rep), defeated.
  • 2011 May 3: Karen M. Freeman-Wilson (Dem), nominated; Ragen Hatcher (Dem), defeated in primary; Chip Lowe (Dem), defeated in primary; Jeffery L. Tatum (Dem), defeated in primary; Harold Foster (Dem), defeated in primary; Rudolph M. Clay (Dem), defeated in primary; Richard L. Nash (Dem), defeated in primary; Saba S. Mohammed (Dem), defeated in primary; Robert L. Lewis (Dem), defeated in primary; Larry Evans (Dem), defeated in primary.
  • 2011 May 3: Charles R. Smith, Jr. (Rep), nominated unopposed.
  • 2011 Nov 8: Karen M. Freeman-Wilson (Dem), elected; Lavetta Sparks-Wade (Ind), defeated; Eddie Tarver (Unicratic), defeated; Charles R. Smith, Jr. (Rep), defeated.

    Postmasters at Gary, 1950-77 (may be incomplete!)
    James Neugebauer 1950 James Neugebauer 1950-54 Sid Charais 1954-55 Sid Charais 1955-63 James Neugebauer 1963-67 Larry C. Wilburn 1967-68 Larry C. Wilburn 1968-77

    • "Enjoy the hospitable entertainment of a political graveyard."
    Henry L. Clinton, Apollo Hall, New York City, February 3, 1872    		 The Political Graveyard

    The Political Graveyard is a web site about U.S. political history and cemeteries. Founded in 1996, it is the Internet's most comprehensive free source for American political biography, listing 338,260 politicians, living and dead.
     
      The coverage of this site includes (1) the President, Vice President, members of Congress, elected state and territorial officeholders in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories; and the chief elected official, typically the mayor, of qualifying municipalities; (2) candidates at election, including primaries, for any of the above; (3) all federal judges and all state appellate judges; (4) certain federal officials, including the federal cabinet, diplomatic chiefs of mission, consuls, U.S. district attorneys, collectors of customs and internal revenue, members of major federal commissions; and political appointee (pre-1969) postmasters of qualifying communities; (5) state and national political party officials, including delegates, alternate delegates, and other participants in national party nominating conventions; (6) Americans who served as "honorary" consuls for other nations before 1950. Note: municipalities or communities "qualify", for Political Graveyard purposes, if they have at least half a million person-years of history, inclusive of predecessor, successor, and merged entities.  
      The listings are incomplete; development of the database is a continually ongoing project.  
      Information on this page — and on all other pages of this site — is believed to be accurate, but is not guaranteed. Users are advised to check with other sources before relying on any information here.  
      The official URL for this page is: https://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/IN/ofc/gary.html .  
      Links to this or any other Political Graveyard page are welcome, but specific page addresses may sometimes change as the site develops.  
      If you are searching for a specific named individual, try the alphabetical index of politicians.  
    Copyright notices: (1) Facts are not subject to copyright; see Feist v. Rural Telephone. (2) Politician portraits displayed on this site are 70-pixel-wide monochrome thumbnail images, which I believe to constitute fair use under applicable copyright law. Where possible, each image is linked to its online source. However, requests from owners of copyrighted images to delete them from this site are honored. (3) Original material, programming, selection and arrangement are © 1996-2025 Lawrence Kestenbaum. (4) This work is also licensed for free non-commercial re-use, with attribution, under a Creative Commons License.
    What is a "political graveyard"? See Political Dictionary; Urban Dictionary.
    Site information: The Political Graveyard is created and maintained by Lawrence Kestenbaum, who is solely responsible for its structure and content. — The mailing address is The Political Graveyard, P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106. — This site is hosted by HDLmi.com. — The Political Graveyard opened on July 1, 1996; the last full revision was done on February 17, 2025.