Kids & Family

University Park Honors Lifelong Resident Mickey Lucas

The city council issued a proclamation declaring July 31, 2013 Mickey Lucas Day in honor of the former council member's 80th birthday.

Lifelong University Park resident and former council member Mickey Lucas was honored by the town Wednesday as the council issued proclamation in his name.

The proclamation named July 31, 2013—Lucas' 80th birthday—Mickey Lucas Day in honor of his many years of service to the town as a volunteer, as a council member and as a civic leader in the community.

Lucas moved with his family to University Park as a young child the day after Pearl Harbor Day in 1941. He never left, staying on to raise his own family in the town decades later.

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“I just fell in love with the place and never left,” Lucas said.

Lucas’ memories of his childhood are rich with images of a simpler time in University Park, back when Queens Chapel was a two-lane, mostly dirt road.

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“My father would have to get out of the car and shoo the cows out of the road,” Lucas recalls.

Some of his fondest memories are of playing in Wells Run Creek and Nine Ponds as a child.

“I played in the creek, catching turtles and snakes and bullfrogs,” Lucas said, who also said Nine Ponds was once “like the Botanical Gardens.”

It is his love of the creek that inspired one of his biggest contributions to the town, the formation of the Stream Committee. About two decades ago, Lucas noticed a lot of trash floating down the creek coming from what was then called PG Plaza, and he decided to do something about it.

He put up a fence to catch the trash, and it worked. It also motivated the town to begin talking about the pollution in Wells Run and to begin clean up efforts in earnest—work that was spearheaded by Lucas.

Lucas, who is a third generation union steamfitter, was also instrumental in getting the town to take part in the state pension plan for town employees.

“It was a controversial move because it was going to cost the town a lot of money, but Mickey, with a background in labor, said going to a state plan was absolutely the right thing to do and mobilized support for that,” Len Carey (Ward 4), said in an interview.

“That was a hard fight,” Lucas recalled of the town staff pension debate, but it's something he counts a victory from his six years on the council representing Ward 2.

He also pushed Carey to take a more active role the stream clean up and later supported his run for council.

Lucas' impact was felt by other members of University Park Council, several of who credit him with building partnerships with neighboring municipalities and encouraging higher degree of civic participation. 

Mayor John Tabori said he first met Lucas in the mid 90s when they served as “co-conspirators” on the town council, and the two have since remained friends.

“He really taught me to be a better human being and a better mayor,” Tabori said.

Lucas is currently staying in Hillhaven—a rehabilitation and nursing facility in Adelphi—following an illness, but he hopes to return home to University Park soon. Lucas and his wife, Kay, have been married for 60 years and have three grown daughters.


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