91�ؿ�

When other mayors ask Jeffrey Sherwin (LAW ’78) how he’s been elected to office for eight terms—and has run unopposed in the town of Northlake, 91�ؿ�, for the last seven—he says the answer is simple.

“I just tell people: don’t do anything stupid! Don’t hire any relatives. Drive your own car—I don’t want a city car in my driveway anyway,” Sherwin says. “Treat people how you’d want to be treated. A lot of times people get big heads when they’re elected and think they’re hot stuff. You can’t do that. You have to relate to people one on one.”

He adds, “And always take the call. At least if you listen to people—even if you can’t do what they want—at least they feel respected and heard.”

It helps that Sherwin was born and raised in Northlake and has never thought about leaving. His parents first moved there in the 1950s to lay down roots.

When Sherwin was a kid, he says, even back then he saw things that needed fixing. When he walked to his local high school, he remembers one side of the street didn’t have sidewalks, forcing kids to sometimes walk through mud.

“I told myself, ‘If I ever get to be mayor, I’m going to put sidewalks here.’ The year I got in, we put in sidewalks,” Sherwin says.

An even bigger accomplishment—one that he now looks back on as one of his best—was the restoration of 1.5 miles of wetlands along a creek that was once dammed-up by a now-defunct golf course to create water hazards. As a kid, he was warned to stay away from the green space due to contamination.

As mayor, the restoration of Addison Creek became a multi-year project that now has resulted in a clean, correctly sloped area that attracts birds and  
local bikers.

“That one will have the most lasting impact,” Sherwin says. “It’s really improved water quality, and it’s a place to come and see.”

After graduating from law school, Sherwin returned to Northlake and entered private practice as a neighborhood lawyer. He handled mostly transactional cases, including real estate, bankruptcy, divorce, wills, and a few personal injury cases. Over time, he built so many relationships that many urged him to run for office.

He ran for the local library board in 1983 and the Northlake Fire Protection District in 1985, winning both on his first try. He remained on both bodies until running for mayor in 1997 as the head of the bipartisan Northlake Independence Party and beating a two-term incumbent.

In addition to the creek, Sherwin is proud of helping to bring in three subsidized senior citizen buildings and a market rate condo building, adding 250 new housing units to the town of roughly 13,000 people located just south of Chicago O’Hare International Airport. He also helped to bring a trio of large data centers to the town.

“Retail politics is dealing with people. A lot of politicians get elected and lay low. People see me and tap me on the shoulder,” Sherwin says. “I’ve learned with social media, people there don’t even live in town. I don’t even read those—I pay attention to who shows up at city council meetings and who I meet in the grocery store.

“I feel if people greet me in the grocery store with a smile, then things are going right.” —Tad Vezner