Michelangelo "Mike" Graziano, BHS 1950

MIKE GRAZIANO, 62, GAVE LOS AL A SENSE OF DIRECTION

Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA) - Thursday, March 2, 1995 Author: Robin Hinch Staff writer

Michael Graziano, BHS 1950

As Mike Graziano was leaving Los Alamitos after 26 years as the small town's city manager, he had only one piece of advice for his successor: ''Have your own sense of direction and make your own statement and hold to it. Then you won't give false signals. Be yourself, and that means you have to know yourself, and that's not so easy to come by.'' They are words by which Mike lived and worked, and that helped him bring stability and success to a community once fraught with divisiveness and controversy.

They are words he learned and held dear from his immigrant parents, who gave of themselves daily through their Glendale delicatessen. Mike, who died of cancer on Monday at the age of 62, knew himself and was himself. ''What you see is what you get,'' he told people, and he meant it.

To his mother, Laura Graziano, her only son, born Michelangelo, ''was a very handsome, very lovable person, very, very lovable.'' To his colleagues he was a fair, straightforward, low-key administrator, a team player who shared both blame and credit equally with his staff. ''

Mike Graziano left the city of Los Alamitos a better community than how he found it,'' said current City Manager Robert Dunek. ''His contributions were significant and his legacy will benefit our town for a long time to come.''

Mike was born in Bari, Italy, and came to Chicago with his parents when he was still a toddler. They moved to Southern California in 1945, where his parents established a successful Italian delicatessen in Glendale. Mike graduated from Burbank High School , got a degree in history from the University of Redlands and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Michigan.

He was a Fulbright Scholar in Bologna, Italy, from 1960 to 1961. His first job was as an administrative assistant with the city of Indio. From there, he became assistant city manager of Montclair, then its city manager, a position he held from 1965 to 1970. He then spent three years as vice president of Rancho California, and in 1973 was hired as Los Alamitos city manager. When Mike took over as the city's chief administrator, the town was at war. ''They were so torn apart,'' he said in a 1981 newspaper interview. ''There was a pending recall and an interim city manager. They would rather fight than switch. You change that mentality slowly, very slowly.'' But he did change that mentality quietly and slowly.

He described himself as ''a plodder,'' and it was a characteristic that worked to his benefit. He never took sole credit for the positive changes in Los Alamitos, saying that every success is the result of a team effort. But he did, at the end of his tenure, acknowledge pride in having brought in ''a management style based on ethics in terms of employee relations and council relations and community relations. It sets a general atmosphere of dealing with people as human beings, professionals, stressing training and a sense of public service as a good thing, not just a job.''

He was also pleased to have spearheaded the development of the city's park system and the community center. ''When I came here, we had a park system that consisted of four tot lots in residential neighborhoods,'' he said in 1989, the year of his retirement. When he left, there was Little Cottonwood Park, Laurel Park and the Oak Gymnasium.

Although friendly and outgoing, Mike had his quiet side, too. He loved the outdoors and was active with the Sierra Club. He was a great lover of classical music and a devoted, through good times and bad, fan of the sometimes beleaguered Chicago White Sox. ''I grew up with the White Sox,'' he said once. ''What a miserable team. But they gave me a sense of perspective.'' He also rooted for the Dodgers. He knew statistics for his teams and others for years back, and preferred the old-time players with character and personality to the young players bidding for dollars today. ''If I had a choice of Mozart or Beethoven, it would be difficult,'' he said, ''but probably Mozart. He had more variety. For baseball, that's easy: Joe DiMaggio.''

He is survived by his mother, Laura Graziano; son, Matthew, and daughter, Catherine; and uncle, Phillip. Funeral services, under direction of Forest Lawn-Cypress, are at 10 a.m. Friday, St. Hedwig Catholic Church, 11482 Los Alamitos Blvd., Los Alamitos.