(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Springhill Senior Living in Erie, Pennsylvania, offering a wide range of maintenance-free apartments with balconies and patios, and garden homes designed to provide an active and engaging lifestyle, where residents can spend more time focusing on what they want to do, not what they have to do.

Springhill also includes a continuum of quality healthcare services for added peace of mind.

Learn more at springhillerie.org.

An equal opportunity housing provider.

- [Announcer] "Chronicles" was made possible thanks to a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority, Springhill Senior Living, support by the Department of Education, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

- [Announcer] This is WQLN.

- [Joyce] I was thinking, usually when they do it here, they use those gigantic chairs, and I think this will be all right.

- You think?

- Yeah.

And if you wanna take this.

Yeah, we're good.

(laughs) - Give it time, Joyce.

- Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

- I'm gonna sort fish this back.

- I'm not opposed to change.

Believe it.

And it may sound like I am.

It's inevitable.

But there's also bad change as well as good change.

So one of these days, we'll learn the difference, I guess.

(bright music) (Joyce laughs) (bright music continues) I think, like, anybody that comes from immigrants, and we're a nation of immigrants, the traditions, the values, and so on, that they brought with them are very much in the children and grandchildren that they have.

Anybody that comes from an Italian background, the way in the meals that you eat, I mean, you always had pasta and meatballs on Sunday.

That was a given.

And the family would get together.

And I still find myself in that mode, that I still want pasta and meatballs.

But the other things that I think are more important than just the food, you have family, that family came first, and everybody shared in each other's lives.

Well, it's very hard telling one's life story.

But I think, generally, looking back over my life and and where it led me, I was very fortunate to have fantastic parents and a wonderful family.

- [David] Esther and Danny were well known in they Erie community.

All politicians are shaped by their environment and by their experiences in life.

And that's particularly true of Joyce Savocchio.

She is Erie.

In the time period where she grew up, the '40s, '50s, '60s, she reflects kinda in a sense the very best of Erie that way.

- She went to a public school, and I went to a Catholic school about three or four blocks away, and I met her because she came up to my other friend on my block that went to the same school.

So that's how we actually met.

But we really, in reality, lived only about three blocks or four blocks away from each other.

So we could, we walked, you know, back and forth.

We were like, really, sisters.

And my mother was, she always called her second mother.

She always called my mother second mother.

She kind of was a member of the family at a certain point.

(laid-back music) (laid-back music continues) - [Joyce] My parents owned a grocery store.

- [Rita] I worked there after school and I worked there in this summer.

People would come in, buy a Coke, stand by the machine, talk BS, you know, whatever.

I'll tell you the truth, if you wanted a good laugh, you had to be there.

If I had talent, I could do a sitcom here because of the characters that would come.

- People came in, and not just, you know, had a drink, or not just bought a loaf of bread or a quart of milk, where they visited each other, where they shared things together.

And I grew up in that grocery store, and I'm very grateful for having me do that, because it taught me, I think, the value of work and how important it was.

But equally important, I think it gave me a sense of community.

All of those things influenced me, and then in turn, going to school, teachers that had such great influence on me.

(upbeat music) My grandparents had, like all immigrants or most immigrants, have come to America for a better way of life, and they worked hard.

But the one thing they truly valued was education.

They understood, what they couldn't have or didn't have was important.

And so I was raised in an atmosphere with grandparents and parents that viewed education as being very, very important.

Strong Vincent's played a a fairly large part in my life.

I was a student there.

I think, overall, it was another step in my life where I had opportunities there, too.

The activities that I participated, the moments that I could have leadership, or learn leadership as a student, or experience it, all of that enabled me to live my dreams.

And those dreams led me to being a teacher.

(laid-back music) When my grandfather learned that I was going to be a teacher, he looked at me, he smiled, he kissed me, and he said, "Ah, maestra, maestra," teacher.

To him, that was as good as being president of the United States.

(laid-back music continues) And I must say that television influenced that.

Television had just come into being.

And there was a program on, I was about five years old, and it was called "Ding Dong School."

(bell ringing) ♪ I'm your school bell ♪ Ding dong ding ♪ Boys and girls all hear me ring ♪ ♪ Every time I ding dong ding - [Joyce] It was one teacher, a woman who sat on a little chair, and rang a bell to start school.

And I fell in love with her and the idea of teaching.

- [Teacher] Look, an iron, just like your mother's.

See the handle?

Well, I can put it up like this.

(laid-back music) - East High School was really a very special time for me and a very special experience.

I entered East High School right after college, and that was in 1965.

And if you look at the times and you look at our city, the city was divided.

It was divided by State Street.

You had a west side of the city and an east side of the city.

And like most Westsiders, I was not on the East Side that many times in my life.

So the first encounter was, I was going over to the East Side.

The second thing that became very noticeable on the first day of school, on the front lawn of East High School, I saw the student population and the number of Black students.

And as strange as this sounds, I didn't know if I was prejudiced.

In the world that I grew up in, there wasn't an opportunity to encounter many Black young people, old people.

I made a promise to myself, and said, "If you find out that you are, you can't do that to children."

I found out quite the opposite, because my students helped me to find that out.

I think, in a lot of cases, they taught me more than I taught them.

So I'm forever grateful.

I think that was very transformational in my life.

As a first teaching experience, there was a fabulous faculty that really took me under their wing.

We were very fortunate to have, for most of the years I was there, a woman by the name of Viola Andrews, that just was outstanding, and gave me a lot of room to work in, and allowed me to experiment different ways of teaching, And she went along with it.

It also introduced me to the idea of being a teacher and being a professional.

And I have to say this honestly, I went on an illegal strike.

Strikes were not allowed under Pennsylvania law.

And the reason that the school, the teachers in the school went on strike is Viola Andrews.

The district actually wrote her a letter, and this was before women's rights, the women's rights movement, that they knew she was capable, but she was a woman, and didn't think she could have discipline.

They didn't know Viola Andrews.

Viola Andrews had served in the military.

She knew discipline.

And we went on strike, an illegal strike, and parents and students backed us in it.

That experience of being willing to be fired for what was right was very important, and was transformational for me once again.

(laid-back music continues) - Of the many special obligations incumbent upon an educated citizen, I would cite three as outstanding.

Your obligation to the pursuit of learning.

Your obligation to serve the public.

Your obligation to uphold the law.

If the pursuit of learning is not defended by the educated citizen, it will not be defended at all.

- When I was a junior in high school at Strong Vincent High School, we used to get a magazine called "Scholastic" magazine.

And in it, there was an article on a young senator by the name of John F. Kennedy.

And I read the article, and I guess I was as presumptuous as a lot of teenagers are, and I said, "Oh my goodness.

He thinks just like I do."

I was hooked.

And from that point on, John F. Kennedy became a hero to me.

And when he ran for office, I became a Kennedy girl.

And that was, I think, the first direct moment that I entered political life actively by going door to door.

(crowd cheering) - The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it.

And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans- - [JFK, Joyce] Ask not what your country country can do for you.

Ask what you can do for your country country.

(crowd cheering) - That quote alone, that statement alone in his inaugural address launched my generation into action.

That and his vision, his vision for a new America, a new era that was coming in.

And I think when he said to America and to the world, we can reach the moon.

- We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

- He was a leader, and he could deliver his message in a not only eloquent way but a way in which it reached so many Americans.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (crowd cheering) - [Reporter] Victorious Joyce Savocchio was enthusiastic about being tapped the Democratic Party's choice for mayor.

- I think people want unity and they want progress, and the challenge now is to keep that going.

- Mayor Tullio, I had made a promise to him several years before when I was doing a graduate paper down at Pitt, and I was writing a paper on Erie, And as we talked, he said, "Well, who knows.

Someday you may run for office."

I said, "Well that could be."

I said, "Right now, it's not on the horizon."

I said, "But Mayor, if I decide to do that, and you're still mayor, I will come and let you know."

And he smiled.

Well, that came to be true.

I told him, I said, "I'm gonna run for city council."

And his remark was, "Well, wait.

Wait.

Don't do it now."

And that was purely because there was a council member that had only served two years, filled in a vacancy, and he felt that should be the person that should win.

And I said to him, "Well, thank you for those comments, but I told you I would come and promise to tell you that I was going to run.

I'm not asking for your go-ahead or your permission."

- There's a difference between power and influence.

If you try to use power, people resent that.

I think people resent power.

But influence, they like influence.

If you influence them and know and explain your objectives and the goals that you're trying to reach.

And people like influence, but they don't like power.

- Lou Tullio was among that genre of the, the last of the gregarious city mayors, and everyone knew that this was going to be his last term.

This was his sixth term.

He was suffering severely from amyloidosis he had had for the last several years.

He was getting worse and worse.

He was not showing up at City Hall, of course.

City council was starting to make a little bit of a fuss over that.

And Pat Liebel, his longtime assistant, and the budget director, she became the acting mayor.

- [Reporter] Not long ago, mayoral candidate Pat Cappabianca announced at a news conference that the City of Erie had lost $1.2 million in extra pension aid because it had missed the deadline for filing applications for the state funds.

Today, business administrator Pat Liebel said charges that the city has lost the money are not true.

- Several years later, eight years later, nine years later, when I ran for mayor, and I kept my promise then, and went to tell him, and he said, "Well, maybe you better wait.

And his reasoning was, there was another woman running.

There would be two women running.

That was Pat Liebel, who had been his assistant.

And, as he put it then, too many Italians running, which I found very interesting.

So he was looking at it from purely a political point of view, and how things should go or how things would go.

And while I didn't take offense at, you get to understand people's thinking.

I told him once again, "I'm here to tell you, not to take your advice.

I said, I'm running."

(gentle music) - [Reporter] All the campaigning aside, it has been the voters' turn.

For the first time in 24 years, Louis Tullio's name does not appear on the ballot for Erie mayor.

Voters have instead been given the choice of democratic city councilwoman Joyce Savocchio and Republican Stanley Prazer, the former Water Bureau chief under the Tullio administration.

- I never truthfully thought of myself specifically as a female candidate or as a female council member, as a female mayor, but I knew that would be a concern for others, and I knew I had a responsibility toward that.

I think I understood, going into office, that there were going to have to be times when I would be treated differently.

And you have to be prepared for them, and you have to understand that's going to happen.

But I think you have to always stay focused and not get sidetracked by this.

And there are different situations that occurred, and you have to try to be somewhat tolerant of it rather than, you know, pontificate or lecture a person about the fact of they're being anti-female or they're being sexist or whatever.

I didn't view it as pressure, but I felt it was a responsibility, since I was the first woman to be in that office, that I had a responsibility to do the very best I could, and in fact be better, in a sense, to be equaler so that the community could understand that being a woman or a man isn't what made the difference, it's the person that makes the difference.

So I think it was in a way an asset.

I felt a great responsibility to make sure that I did things as well as I could so that it wouldn't block the way for other women.

- I also feel equally strongly that, in order to begin a new administration, it should be new, and I think that should begin in January.

- [Announcer] The following is a special State of the City Address.

And now, mayor of Erie, Joyce A. Savocchio.

- Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our local television stations for so generously providing me with this time to address you concerning the condition of our city.

In early 1990, there are reasons to feel optimistic about Erie's future, but we must first honestly address the depth and reality of Erie's growing fiscal crisis.

Limited funds, a declining city population, loss of tax dollars from individuals who have sought reassessment, the inability of city government to increase taxes, the complete inability to borrow money because of a low bond rating, a loss of tax revenue from approximately 35% of our real estate base, which is tax exempt.

We have no more assets to sell, and limited leeway with regard to revenue.

Our backs are against the wall.

- You know, and as I look at it in hindsight, although I felt it even when it was happening, the '90s (modem beeping) was a time when America was going through a new rebirth in a way, a way of thinking, a way of leadership, a way of commitment that's very different from today.

And that made it easier.

It didn't make it easy.

The idea that you weren't completely living in a bubble.

You had a greater sense of community and common purpose, but you knew you had to build consensus.

So things happened.

I think it was also a time of hope.

(upbeat music) - The mayor had a State of the City Address, and indicated that there were some problems ahead that all of us have to take some serious steps to address.

To start things off, we have with us Dr. David Kozak from Gannon University.

Dr. Kozak served as the coordinator of the transition team for Mayor Savocchio.

What does a transition team do?

Well, we wanted to study city government so that we could give the mayor the information and advice she needed in order to take over as the CEO of Erie.

- Were there any surprises?

Was there was something you stumbled across, or people of the transition team- - No, not really.

I think the fiscal difficulties facing the City of Erie, it was surprising to the extent that we knew that some very strong measures had to be taken, some serious steps had to be taken.

I think that was an opportunity to learn as much as she could about the nuts and bolts, and to put together a consolidated calendar.

She felt that was the most important thing, that we had to get a calendar for the city of all the major deadlines, the suspenses, timetables that had to be addressed in her first not only few days in office, but the first year.

- You need a team.

(upbeat music) There were so many times, I call them my angels, (laughs) they came at the right time.

Don't ask me.

I always say there's no such thing as coincidence.

I wish I could single-handedly take credit for all this, but that is not true.

- [David] The inner circle was extremely important to Joyce Savocchio.

And of course, she needed it vitally, because she was gonna have to kinda reinvent the government of Erie.

In that inner circle was, first and foremost would be Rita Cappello.

She was kind of the doorkeeper and the person that brought it all together.

- Now, I remember, first day, we go in, and we're sitting after we had all this (indistinct), and then finally we went upstairs, we went into the office, and everything was fixed real nice and all that.

And I remember, I went and sat behind my desk, 'cause my office was right... Well, we shared a door, so we were... You know, so I was sitting there, and I said, "Well, what do we do?"

You know, "Hey, we never ran the city before.

What do you do?"

But you know what?

It took two phone calls and we were busy.

- I was one of a few people within our administration who had a tie with the previous administration, with the people who had been in for the better part of 24 years.

So there was a balancing act of change versus status quo.

And (laughs) wherever the two shall meet I found myself on many, many occasions.

- Now, no crisis goes without benefits, right?

So you take advantage of a crisis.

She put together a collection.

These were leaders of corporations.

They had been people who were promoting a better Erie, a better future.

And she actually brought them into city government, and she made them her right-hand man.

- It's not only our best option.

I think it was good thinking on her part, because there's a tremendous amount of talent here, and we all live in the City of Erie, or surrounding Erie.

We depend on the City of Erie, and we all have a stake in this and, and we want to help.

- [David] You had Ralph Wright, who was at the time, I believe, the CEO of Reed Manufacturing.

A Republican, a good government type, and a rather progressive Republican, who really championed a concept that Joyce had long embraced of partnering.

And it was Ralph Wright who was the point person, as I recall, on the very important Partners Program that Joyce Savocchio had throughout the community with business and other governmental leaders.

- If you just look at the women that came into office when I did as mayor, you had a woman mayor, you had a woman treasurer, you had a woman controller and you had two women, we gained one, two women on city council.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) I think, at the time, the estimate was, there were between 30 and 35 women in elective office, everything that ranged from tax collector to mayor to county executive.

- Some people don't realize this, but thankfully there was someone else to kind of pave that way, and that was Judy Lynch.

She was in office in a top job 10 years before.

She had come out of education as well, she was a schoolteacher, and also came off of county council as well.

Before Joyce came into office, Judy was the the top elected official in the county, And she had to deal with that 1985 May tornadoes that killed all those people in the Albion area there.

- The first disaster was natural, the second was manmade, because FEMA, when it showed up to take care of my constituents, to take care of the communities and the people that have been devastated by the tornadoes, simply did not do its job.

- She was in charge of that.

She fought the federal government over getting more aid and such.

So, you know, she was at the top of her game.

- So the whole idea of acceptance of change was there.

Why was it at this moment in time that these women could get elected when they hadn't been elected in the past, and had reason to come to common purpose?

And I think that's why the '90s generally is going to be remembered for that, I think, not only in Erie, but I think around the country and in American history.

- [Announcer] Next time, on part two of Joyce Savocchio.

- I think there's some truth to the fact that we view ourselves as underdogs.

- Poverty creates that kind of tension.

- This is the most difficult time in the history of the City of Erie.

- If we value something, it's worth the investment.

♪ This is only a matter ♪ It can only get better, it can only get better ♪ ♪ And this is only a matter ♪ It can only get better, it can only get better ♪ (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] Chronicles was made possible thanks to a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority, Springhill Senior Living, support by the Department of Education, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

(bright music) - We question and learn.