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player ready...There’s something in the DNA of Waukeganites who make it big in life. They remember their roots, and where they came from.
Perhaps it’s growing up in the once-small town along the shores of Lake Michigan, about equidistance from the major metropolitan areas of Chicago and Milwaukee. This microcosm of the bigger cities has instilled a loyalty to old friends, neighbors and the community itself. Over the years, the connections have run deep.
Radio, film and television entertainer Jack Benny, who grew up in a house on Clayton Street, a few blocks west of his statue at the corner of Genesee and Clayton streets, would return to Waukegan often. Many times his appearances were for fundraisers to benefit city school music programs, which he had a special fondness for since a junior high school was named in his honor.
Author Ray Bradbury would journey back, including in 1990 to attend the dedication of the small park named for him on Park Avenue. He bequeathed his personal collection of books and artifacts to the city after his death in 2012 at age 91.
Bob Barnett, who died last week in Washington, D.C., was another one of those who never lost his Waukegan connection. Many in this neck of the woods may not recognize the name, but like Benny and Bradbury, he grew up in Waukegan.
Barnett, who died of an undisclosed illness at age 79, spent most of his time in the past decades inside the Beltway as an attorney who many considered the ultimate insider. He may have been a confidant to presidents, but was cognizant of what was going on in Waukegan, which he considered his hometown.
Well-known on the East Coast, during his legal career he represented politicians, best-selling authors, journalists, musicians, TV personalities and presidents, such as Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. His savvy negotiating skills linked clients to multi-million dollar book deals. He was considered a legend in Washington, D.C., where there have been plenty of them over the decades.
Due to Barnett’s work, Sir Tony Blair, who served as British prime minister from 1997 to 2007, sold one of his memoirs for a reported $8 million. He represented writers in finding publishers for their works, including former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, political pundit James Carville and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, among many others.
In her book “Living History,” Hilary Clinton calls Barnett her “personal lawyer.” “Bob became my counsel and adviser in 1992,” she said, “and I could not have asked for a better friend in the years that followed.” He helped prep Democratic candidates for six presidential debates.
In December 2000, he auctioned Hillary Clinton’s memoirs to Simon & Schuster for an $8 million advance. A year later, he sold President Clinton’s memoirs for more than $10 million.
An acquaintance, a friend of Barnett who also spent his early years in Waukegan and fled to Washington, introduced me to him back in the day. Barnett would occasionally call and ask about the goings-on in the city and various personages.
He didn’t call regularly, but I still have several of his phone numbers scrawled in my aging address book. He was an avid supporter of the Waukegan Historical Society.
Barnett was born on Aug. 26, 1946, in Waukegan, the eldest child of Betty and Bernard Barnett, who headed the Lake County office of the Social Security Administration. He graduated from Waukegan High School in 1964 where he was class president and starred as the stage manager in the Drama Department’s production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”
In a 2008 interview in Washingtonian magazine, Barnett compared Grover’s Corners, the play’s setting, to Waukegan which he left for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s where he met his wife, the retired CBS News correspondent Rita Braver, 77, who survives him. He majored in political science and followed that with a law degree from the University of Chicago.
In 1972, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Byron White, which led him to Washington. He stayed in the city, eventually linking up with then-U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale, D-Minnesota.
As many recall, Mondale, who died in 2021 at age 93, was President Jimmy Carter’s vice president and a Democratic presidential candidate in 1984. That introduction gained him entry into the elite of the Democratic Party, where he flourished as an adviser to the rich and powerful.
Not bad for a kid who grew up in Waukegan and remembered where he came from.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
X @sellenews
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