The headline could have read: “Hometown Boy Makes Good”.
St. Louis’ President of the Board of Aldermen was featured Tuesday in his hometown newspaper, The Herald News, which serves Joliet, Illinois, the town a young Lewis Reed started his journey from wrestler and part-time janitor to the second-highest elected official on our city.
The current president of the Board of Aldermen for the City of St. Louis was a wrestler at Joliet Central High School, but he didn’t spend much time picking himself up after a match. A mainstay of the Steelmen teams of the late 1970s and early ’80s, he moved to the varsity as a freshman and wound up earning a third-place trophy in the state competition in his senior year.
“I went through a transformation as a person in those years,” Reed said. “The lessons that Coach Mac (Eural McLaughlin) taught are the same lessons I used to get where I am today. He said everything in life is a matter of preparation and execution, and I’ve never forgotten that.”
Reed, now 45 and well over the 155-pound weight class in which he used to compete, had to prepare himself to unseat a better-funded, better-known 20-year incumbent to win the election for the second most powerful position in St. Louis government. His campaign signs were blue and gold in tribute to his days as a Steelman.
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