April 27, 2005: Headlines: COS - Solomon Islands: City Government: Beacon News: Solomon Islands RPCV Tom Weisner becomes the first Aurora mayor in 100 years to lead City Hall from behind a beard.
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February 8, 2005: Index: PCOL Exclusive: Illinois :
April 28, 2005: Headlines: COS - Solomon Islands: City Government: Beacon News: Solomon Islands RPCV Tom Weisner sworn in as mayor - Vows to make inclusiveness hallmark of his administration :
April 27, 2005: Headlines: COS - Solomon Islands: City Government: Beacon News: Solomon Islands RPCV Tom Weisner becomes the first Aurora mayor in 100 years to lead City Hall from behind a beard.
Solomon Islands RPCV Tom Weisner becomes the first Aurora mayor in 100 years to lead City Hall from behind a beard.
Solomon Islands RPCV Tom Weisner becomes the first Aurora mayor in 100 years to lead City Hall from behind a beard.
99-year beardless mayor streak ends
By Ed Fanselow
The Beacon News
Aurora, Ill.
April 27, 2005
AURORA - The face of Aurora never looked so good.
And since 1906, it's never looked this hairy, either.
With his inauguration Tuesday night, Tom Weisner becomes the first Aurora mayor in 100 years to lead City Hall from behind a beard.
Two of Aurora's 20th Century mayors, James F. Harley from 1915 to 1918 and Lloyd Markel from 1948 to 1952, sported mustaches (Markel's was of the pencil-thin variety). But not since Mayor H.B. Douglas in 1906 has the man at the helm of Aurora city government worn a full beard.
In all, 26 of Aurora's 56 mayors - including Weisner - have favored a beard during their administrations, the vast majority of them during the late 1800s, when beards were in vogue more so than at any other time in American history.
Since then, only a few have dared to go unshaven.
Weisner's beard, meanwhile, traces its roots back to the late 1960s, when, as he himself once put it, the attitude amongst many young men was "the hairier, the merrier."
It took on bushier proportions in the early '80s while Weisner was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Solomon Islands but has been more well-coiffed over the past two decades during his tenure as a City Hall employee and over the course of the recently concluded mayoral campaign.
While Weisner's fortunes in that race would seem to portend a bright future for other would-be candidates with beards, the truth remains that they still have a lot of ground to make up.
The United States, for one, hasn't seen a bearded president since Benjamin Harrison in 1893, while the Catholic Church's last bearded pope was Innocent XII way back in 1699 - a beardless streak of more than 300 years.
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Story Source: Beacon News
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Solomon Islands; City Government
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