[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 6, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S1550]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO MAYOR RALPH SEARS

  Mr. HEFLIN. Mr. President, long-time Montevallo, AL mayor Ralph Sears 
passed away on February 14, 1996 at the age of 73. A native of 
Nebraska, the young World War II veteran had come to Montevallo in 1948 
to teach broadcasting courses at Alabama College, now the University of 
Montevallo. It was said that he had a golden voice, and he originally 
was lured to the south to teach a year or so and then move on. 
Thankfully for Montevallo, he never got around to moving on. Instead, 
he went on to serve for 16 years as a member of the city council and 
then for 24 years as mayor.
  During his nearly half-century in his adopted city, Ralph Sears and 
his wife, Marcia, raised three children; opened radio station WBYE, 
located between Calera and Montevallo; and bought and published two 
weekly newspapers, one of which was the Shelby County Reporter.
  As mayor, he came to be seen as an uncommon friend to his 
constituents. He accomplished things which had a direct impact on their 
daily lives. He saw that tall horse-and-buggy curbs and crumbling 
sidewalks were replaced by lower curbs, handicap ramps, flowering trees 
in planters, and litter cans. He oversaw the building of a 40-acre park 
with ball fields, playgrounds, picnic tables, walking trail, gazebo, 
recreation building, and Scout hut. He worked with black citizens to 
devise a district voting system that assured their representation on 
the council years before a Federal court decision ordered municipal 
governments to take such action. Mayor Sears was also credited with 
constructing a sewage treatment plant and modern fire station.
  He spent some fairly exciting times in the Pacific theatre during 
World War II. He served in Tokyo and in the Philippines with General 
Douglas MacArther. He and Marcia would customarily travel around the 
world, to wherever news was breaking or about to break. They celebrated 
Alaska's statehood in Juneau; visited South Africa on the brink of 
revolution in 1986; and saw the other side of the Iron Curtain before 
glasnost turned it into rust.
  Mayor Sears was active in the World Council of Mayors; past chairman 
of the Shelby County Mayors Association; and president of the 
Montevallo Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, and board of Shelby Youth 
Services.
  Ralph Sears was truly an institution in Montevallo; he was involved 
in the city's educational, religious, news media, and, of course, its 
governing bodies. He was a gentleman's gentleman who believed deeply in 
the principles set forth in the U.S. Constitution. He was an honest, 
fair, and moral person--a progressive and a visionary who believed the 
American way was the right way.
  At the time of his death, one of the projects he was working on was 
the establishment of a section of Montevallo as an Alabama Village. The 
State and the University of Montevallo are trying to create a community 
similar to Jamestown in Williamsburg, VA, and the city has committed 
funds to buy 115 acres for the project. Hopefully, this village will 
some day stand as a monument to his life and work.
  I extend my sincerest condolences to the Sears family in the wake of 
its tremendous loss. His legacy is one that will last for many, many 
decades into the future.

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