Four thousand years ago, when I was a college sophomore, I was sitting around my dorm room, playing air guitar to Jimi Hendrix.
This was 1974, and Mikva was relatively new to Evanston, having made his name as a state representative and congressman from Hyde Park.
Pardon me for the partisanship. But that’s how many people from my mother’s generation viewed the world.
‘Cause my mom was right: Mikva needed every vote he got to scrape by Samuel Young and become the first Democratic congressman out of Evanston.
He did good work until the day he died. He and his wife, Zoe, founded the Mikva Challenge, a not-for-profit group that teaches Chicago teenagers to get involved in politics. One of his daughters, Mary Mikva, is now a Cook County judge.
