Ask MRN: Question about Banks’ key to the city solved; has Quincy mayor ever stepped down before finishing term?

QUINCY — As soon as Chuck Scholz saw a photo of the key, he knew the answer to the question.

A Sept. 11 story on Muddy River News asked the question, “Did Mr. Cub ever receive a key from the city?”

Heritage Auctions, an American multi-national auction house based in Dallas, auctioned several items from Banks’ estate on Aug. 19-20. One item was labeled as a “Circa 1960s Quincy, Illinois Key to the City Presented to Ernie Banks from The Ernie Banks Collection.” 

The key was described as one of many keys to the city that “Mr. Cub” received during his storied major league career. The die cast piece was described as exhibiting moderate wear throughout, while “Quincy, Illinois” is stamped on one side. The key also came with a letter of provenance from the Banks estate.

However, research for when Banks received the key was not fruitful. Banks made appearances in Quincy in 1968 and 1973, but no mention of a key to the city was mentioned in accounts written in The Herald-Whig by long-time Sports Editor Chuck Brady, one of Banks’ biggest fans.

Scholz said he gave Banks the key to the city on March 28, 1998, when he was the mayor.

“Those are the keys I gave out,” Scholz said.

(The “Circa 1960s” description on the auction website fooled us.)

Banks gave a speech before the Critics Choice Dinner, an American Lung Association fundraiser, in the Quincy Holiday Inn. Scholz said the Cubs’ great agreed to make an appearance at a reduced rate.

“I called my guy in the commissioner’s office (Gene Callahan), who was huge Cub fan,” Scholz remembered. “He set it up for me, and he said, ‘I’ll get him to cut his rate in half, but you’ve got to go out and buy three nice baseballs and have him sign all three of them.’ Gene was doing a fundraiser for SIU baseball (where his son, Dan, was the coach). He wanted to auction those off.”

Scholz said he gave out more than 100 keys during his stint in the mayor’s office from 1993-2005.

“There was an article one time in Architectural Digest about the Naval Observatory (the home of the vice president of the United States),” he said. “There was a picture of a wind chime, and it had a key to the city of Quincy. I saw that and remembered I gave one to Tipper Gore (wife of Al Gore, who was vice president from 1993 to 2001).”

Has a Quincy mayor ever stepped down before his term was complete?

Yes. Don Nicholson stepped down as mayor in December 1976, and 7^th Ward alderman Don Heckenkamp took over as mayor pro tem.

The 14 aldermen on the Quincy City Council approached Nicholson on Dec. 14, 1976, and asked him to take a leave of absence for the remainder of his term — which was to end in May 1977 — and to withdraw as a candidate for re-election.

Nicholson was charged with driving while intoxicated after a two-car accident on Dec. 12, 1976. It was the third time in a seven-month span in 1976 he had been charged with DWI. He had pled guilty to a charge in Quincy and to one in Carthage. He apologized the next day and pledged to “make whatever amends are possible for recent public indiscretions on my part.”

Nicholson announced on Dec. 16, 1976, he would take a leave of absence. The City Council then voted on Dec. 20, 1976, to request for Heckenkamp to take over as mayor until the May 1, 1977.

“I did not seek this, and certainly I do not desire it,” Heckenkamp told The Herald-Whig. “I don’t know if I should thank the council or not.”

Judge Leo Altmix eventually sentenced Nicholson to one year of probation, a $500 fine and forced alcoholism counseling in Springfield.

Heckenkamp was replaced as the city’s mayor on May 1, 1977, after 31-year-old Republican David Nuessen defeated Joe Bonansinga, receiving 55 percent of the 14,768 votes cast in the April 5, 1977 election. 

The last time Quincy had a mayor pro tem was in 1946 when Mayor Ed Schneidman died, along with three other Quincyans, in a historic fire in the LaSalle Hotel on June 5, 1946. The City Council selected 4^th ward alderman William Sass as acting mayor after Schneidman died.