When ShaRita Alexander drives to class at National-Louis University at 7 AM she often sees her father, Roosevelt Alexander, ambling down the sidewalk. He’s always alone, moving slowly, his eyes focused straight ahead.
“Why don’t you come to church with me?” she says, softening her tone.
Early in his career, his fellow aldermen told the Review, Roosevelt earned a reputation for “acute self-awareness,” theatrics, and an ability to pose “the devastating question at the appropriate moment.” When the Review endorsed his reelection in 1971 it editorialized, “The city council would be operating in a vacuum without him.”
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ShaRita couldn’t see that side of her father, whom she adored. When she was small, he didn’t visit her mother’s apartment often, but by the time she was in second grade she would leave school each day and hurry to his law office a few blocks away. She saw it as her office too, and would peck at the typewriter and giggle into the telephone. “I’d play like I was his secretary,” she says. And she’d tiptoe down the hall to his private suite. “It was the bomb–bathroom, leather couches, dark lighting, real smooth music. Every time I hear a certain song it reminds me of my dad’s office.”
There were things about him that amused her. “He has a loud mouth,” she says. “Every time we went somewhere it drove me nuts.” But he also knew people wherever he went. “I thought that was very cool.” When he walked in Evanston parades she rode on his shoulders, waving proudly.
At his mother’s funeral service ShaRita watched tears trickle down her father’s face. They were sitting together but apart from the rest of the family. His hand swallowed hers. “Daddy, don’t cry,” she said. “It’s gonna be all right.” He looked down at her and she said, “If you cry you’re gonna make me cry.” That only made him cry harder, and she cried with him. She says she felt privileged to share her father’s sorrow, and she wanted to help him however she could.
In March 1990 Roosevelt, then 48, was arrested and charged with selling small amounts of cocaine and heroin. The charges were later dropped, and his lawyer and his ex-wife encouraged him to get help. He entered a 30-day treatment program and lasted a week, though that May he spent a week in another program. In November he was arrested again and charged with felony possession of ten grams of cocaine. He was found guilty and sentenced to three years’ probation.
