Richard J. Riordan, a Queens-born lawyer, businessman and former mayor of Los Angeles who helped stabilize a metropolis troubled by racial protests and introduced a free-enterprise strategy to rebuilding the town’s infrastructure after a devastating earthquake in 1994, died on Wednesday at his house within the Brentwood part of Los Angeles. He was 92.
His daughter Patricia Riordan Torrey confirmed his demise.
Mr. Riordan, whose unfiltered speech often acquired him into hassle, started his profession in business and turned to politics later in life. He was elected mayor in 1993, in his first effort at electoral politics, and served till 2001, prevented by time period limits from searching for a 3rd time period.
Before that, he was a shrewd investor who turned a modest inheritance into a big private fortune. He was a enterprise capitalist within the Nineteen Sixties, earlier than such buyers had acquired that title, and gave his personal cash away nicely earlier than philanthropy got here into vogue amongst California’s newly rich.
A average Republican, Mr. Riordan got here to politics in 1992, when it grew to become clear that Tom Bradley, the Democratic five-term incumbent mayor, wouldn’t search re-election. Mr. Riordan, then 62, was inspired by buddies to run, partially due to his stable ties throughout the political spectrum. He gained handily, with 54 % of the vote.
But Mr. Riordan was bequeathed a metropolis that was nonetheless reeling from riots stemming from the acquittal of 4 white cops in 1992 after the beating of Rodney King, an unarmed Black motorist, the 12 months earlier than.
“The city was out of control,” mentioned Patrick Range McDonald, a journalist who ghostwrote Mr. Riordan’s 2014 memoir, “The Mayor: How I Turned Around Los Angeles After Riots, an Earthquake and the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial.” “Residents did not feel safe.”
Mr. Riordan expanded the police division to 10,000 officers and usually introduced a “calming influence to the city,” Mr. McDonald mentioned.
Mr. Riordan’s most dramatic second got here with the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake in 1994 that destroyed buildings and roads all through the Los Angeles area.
“Dick worked day and night, visited neighborhoods throughout the city, made sure people received supplies and health care, and constantly sounded a theme that Angelenos needed to work together,” Mr. McDonald mentioned. “So while the rest of the world was waiting for post-riot Los Angeles to descend into complete chaos, residents instead banded together, with Dick leading the charge.”
Mr. Riordan took an unorthodox strategy to rebuilding the Santa Monica Freeway, an important connector between downtown Los Angeles and the town’s coastal areas. City officers had estimated a loss to the native economic system of $1 million for on daily basis the freeway was closed.
Mr. Riordan provided contractors a $200,000-a-day bonus for ending forward of schedule. The work was completed 74 days earlier than the contracted deadline. “This demonstrates what can happen when private sector innovation and market incentives replace business as usual,” he mentioned on the time.
He was additionally a longtime advocate of public faculty reform and a believer in constitution faculties, serving to to finance a number of of them all through Los Angeles.
“That wasn’t within his formal job description of mayor,” mentioned former California Gov. Pete Wilson, whose tenure as governor overlapped with Mr. Riordan’s time as mayor. “Nonetheless, he really took it up.”
Neither a elegant nor eloquent public speaker, Mr. Riordan was well-known for his impolitic wisecracking. In one well-known incident in 2004, throughout a quick stint by Mr. Riordan as California’s secretary of training, a 6-year-old lady at a library occasion in Santa Barbara instructed him that her title, Isis, meant “Egyptian goddess.” He responded that “it means stupid, dirty girl.”
He later apologized, saying it was a failed try at humor. The comment was broadly reported and brought about public outcry, with some advocacy teams calling for his resignation, however Mr. Riordan remained in his state authorities position.
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, when requested if he was sorry for among the jokes he had cracked over time, Mr. Riordan mentioned: “I’ve learned to count to three before I tell a joke. Usually something’s funny, click click, and you forget you’ve just insulted every Italian in the city.”
Richard Joseph Riordan was born on May 1, 1930, in Flushing, Queens, to William and Geraldine (Doyle) Riordan, the final of 10 youngsters in an Irish Catholic household. He grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y. His father was a profitable division retailer govt. His mom taught prisoners to learn and write.
Mr. Riordan entered Santa Clara University in California on a soccer scholarship in 1948 and two years later transferred to Princeton. He obtained his bachelor’s diploma in philosophy there in 1952.
Soon after graduating, he joined the Army and served within the Korean War as a primary lieutenant. After the battle, he entered the University of Michigan Law School, graduating in 1956.
He returned to California, a state that had all the time fascinated him, and started working for a big legislation agency in Los Angeles. In the late Fifties, after his father died, he inherited $80,000. A neighbor who was a stockbroker really useful that Mr. Riordan spend money on know-how firms. Three a long time and plenty of ventures later, he was value tens of tens of millions of {dollars}.
Mr. Riordan additionally appreciated to provide cash away, “almost as if it burns his hands,” The Los Angeles Times wrote in a 1988 profile. He created the Riordan Foundation with a slender purpose: to advertise childhood literacy. The basis, which has given away greater than $50 million, has expanded over time to incorporate broader instructional and civic initiatives.
Mr. Riordan’s first marriage, to Eugenia Waraday, lasted practically 25 years however led to divorce, as did his second marriage, to Jill Noel. He married Nancy Daly in 1998, they usually divorced in 2008.
Mr. Riordan’s life was scarred by private tragedy. Four of his siblings, together with his twin brother, died younger. Mr. Riordan had 5 youngsters along with his first spouse. His solely son, Billy, drowned in a scuba diving accident in 1978, at age 21. His youngest daughter, Carol, died in 1982, at 18, of cardiac arrest related to anorexia.
In 2017, Mr. Riordan married Elizabeth Gregory, who survives him. In addition to Patricia, a baby from his first marriage, he’s survived by two extra daughters from his first marriage, Mary Elizabeth Riordan and Kathleen Ann Riordan; a stepdaughter, Malia Gregory; a sister, Betty Hearty; and three grandchildren.
Mr. Riordan ran unsuccessfully for governor of California in 2002. He grew to become secretary of training below Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, however, annoyed by the paperwork he encountered, left the publish after 17 months.
Mr. Riordan additionally owned eating places round Los Angeles, together with the Original Pantry Café, a preferred diner. Mr. Riordan mentioned he first fell in love with the Pantry when a waiter determined he was taking too lengthy to eat his meal.
“I had a book I was reading,” he instructed The Los Angeles Times in 2008. “I was very relaxed, and the waiter came over and said, ‘If you want to read, the library’s at Fifth and Hope.’” Instead, he purchased the restaurant.
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
Source: www.nytimes.com