Жон Пуррой Митчел: Нью-Йорк мэрі және әскери қайраткері

American politician

John Purroy Mitchel (July 19, 1879 – July 6, 1918) was the 95th mayor of New York, from 1914 to 1917. At 34, he was the second youngest mayor and he is sometimes referred to as "The Boy Mayor of New York." Mitchel is remembered for his short career as leader of reform politics in New York as well as for his early death as a US Army Air Service officer in the last months of World War I. Former President Theodore Roosevelt, endorsing Mitchel's re election bid in 1917, stated that he had "given us as nearly an ideal administration of the New York City government as I have seen in my lifetime." The Purroy family also included leading politicians in The Bronx. He graduated from a Catholic secondary school at Fordham Preparatory School in the late 1890s. He obtained his bachelor's degree from Columbia College in 1899 and graduated from New York Law School in 1902 with honors. Mitchel then pursued a career as a private attorney.

In December 1906, Mitchel's career took flight when he was hired by family friend and New York City corporation counsel, William B. Ellison to investigate the office of John F. Ahearn, borough president of Manhattan, for incompetence, waste and inefficiency. As a result, Ahearn was dismissed as borough president of Manhattan. Mitchel began his career as assistant corporation counsel and then became a member of the Commissioners of Accounts, from which he investigated city departments. Mitchel gained results and recognition for his thorough and professional investigations into various city departments and high ranking officials. Mitchel, with the help of Henry Bruere and other staff members of the Bureau of Municipal Research turned the insignificant Commissioners of Accounts into an administration of importance. After nine ballots, Mitchel was nominated as a candidate for mayor. During his campaign, Mitchel focused on making City Hall a place of decency and honesty. He also focused on business as he promised New Yorkers that he would modernize the administrative and financial machinery and the processes of city government. Mitchel aimed to get rid of corruption wherever he saw it. Mitchel's administration set out to restructure and modernize New York City and its government. Mitchel was able to expand the city's regulatory activities, ran the police department more honestly and efficiently and much like in 1910 he maintained impartiality during garment and transportation workers strikes in 1916. Mitchel's early popularity was soon diminished due to his fiscal policies and vision of education. Mitchel was heavily criticized for combining vocational and academic courses in the Gary Plan. Mitchel began to trim the size of the Board of Education and attempted to control teachers' salaries.

After failing to get re elected, Mitchel joined the Air Service as a flying cadet, completing training in San Diego and obtaining the rank of major. On the morning of July 6, 1918, when returning from a short military training flight to Gerstner Field, near Lake Charles, Louisiana, his plane suddenly went into a nose dive, causing Mitchel to fall from his plane due to an unfastened seatbelt. He was one of the ablest mayors in the judgments of many and provided an outstanding administration, but was exasperatingly guilty of every blunder that could be attributed to youthful stubbornness, unnecessary asperity, and poor judgment both by himself and his advisers. A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Mitchel as the seventeenth worst American big city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993. Mitchel Field on Long Island was named for him in 1918. A bronze memorial plaque with Mitchel's likeness is also affixed between the two stone pylons at the western end of Hamilton Hall, the main college building at Columbia University. A plaque of his likeness is on the entrance to the base of the Central Park Reservoir jogging track at the 90th Street and Fifth Avenue entrance to Central Park. The Fire Department of New York operated a fireboat named John Purroy Mitchel from 1921 to 1966. In 2015, indie folk artist Joanna Newsom released a song named "Sapokanikan" in advance of her album Divers. The song, which contains numerous references to the history of New York City, prominently features Mitchel and the circumstances of his death.