A journalist remembers Jerry Fry's benevolent reign at Monterey City Hall.

Photo by Randy Tunnell: You''ve Come A Long Way, Jerry: Former Monterey mayor Jerry Fry doesn''t bound up the stairs any longer, but he still gets to harrass local reporters.

Watching Mayor Jerry Fry at the helm of the city of Monterey''s weekly council meetings was like attending the board meeting of a small, well-run company. With his genial and gentle manner, Mayor Fry had a sublime way of directing fellow council members. And he could disarm even the fiercest audience critic with a mild gibe or subtle touch that never demeaned the complainant.

The Monterey City Council under Fry''s leadership would have been a case study in a graduate school government course. Business was conducted efficiently, fairly and in a reasonable amount of time. As the Monterey beat reporter for the Herald in the late 1970s, I walked from the former newspaper office at Pacific and Jefferson streets through Friendly Plaza to council chambers, then hustled back a few hours later. The length of the meeting was a paramount issue.

Years later, reflecting on the countless government meetings I have attended as a journalist, I still marvel at the tightness and brightness of the Fry-led agendas and the smoothness with which the city ran.

"It was my philosophy to allow for a fair and concise public hearing, but to move the meeting along." That is how Fry says he tried to run Monterey City Council meetings.

When city editor Tom Walton assigned me to cover Monterey, Fry and I were both rookies of a sort. Although he had been on the City Council since 1963, he was just starting as mayor. Although I had been at the Herald for five years, I had spent my first three as a sportswriter and was still drying my ears as a news reporter.

Fry was aware of my inexperience, as well as the fact that I was a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, whose alums were frequently to the left of his politics, and whose reputation was decidedly different from that of the University of Santa Clara, his own alma mater.

Fry was not opposed to challenging me with pointed political questions or mentioning things he found curious-or worse-about the Herald. But he never meandered close to the territory where meanness resides. He just liked to have some fun with me.

Thanks to the foresight of Fry, fellow council members and city staff, Monterey came a long way during the 1970s. The adult bookstores, pool halls and dirt parking lots (when they weren''t muddy) at the lower end of Alvarado disappeared, thanks to then-highly controversial and hotly debated urban renewal project that Monterey city government knew was necessary.

Outside of government, the community knew a second Jerry Fry. He was the man who could resolve any office supplies problem, first as the manager of a downtown Monterey stationery store and later as the owner of Office Products Inc., now more than capably run by his son Luke. The same man who on Tuesday nights would steer the city of Monterey through familiar and unknown seas would, on Wednesday mornings, hurry up the stairs in a crowded store on Alvarado and ferret through stacks of merchandise to find mimeograph paper, oversized manila folders or just the right pen-and-pencil set for waiting customers, many of whom had no idea he was the mayor. It was the essence of the citizen form of government.

When I was promoted from city editor of the Herald to associate editor in 1988, my duties included writing many editorials. No longer in city government-he served for 20 years on the City Council, including six as mayor-Fry was nonetheless not shy about sharing his opinions with me periodically. It may be paradoxical to say so, but I didn''t always welcome those conversations, though I appreciated that they occurred.

Over time he told me about his growing up in Pacific Grove, where he lived across the street from Caledonia Park. His father, Fred X. Fry, was the golf pro and manager of Pacific Grove Muni, which he helped to open in 1931.

"I had an absolutely wonderful childhood," Fry says. "My father lived across the street from his work. We were two blocks from the beach and two blocks from downtown."

Fry, the middle of five brothers, was playing in Caledonia Park on the Sunday in December 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was 13. Just as his father had enlisted in the Marine Corps and served during World War I, his two older brothers now joined the Marines. Fry would enlist in the Marines during the Korean War. Another brother signed up for the same branch and served during the Vietnam War. The fourth brother became a Catholic priest.

Fry''s life was not without its share of tragedy. Two days after Christmas in 1974, his mother, Helen, and her sister were struck and killed by a car one rainy night while in a crosswalk on Lighthouse Avenue in New Monterey.

Fry and his wife, Mary, a retired schoolteacher, have been married for 47 years. They raised their three daughters and one son in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom Toyon Heights home that they purchased for $15,000 in 1956 with a GI loan-nothing down. Monthly payments were $85.

Unlike the days when he ran a stationery store, Jerry Fry doesn''t hurry up steps anymore. He walks deliberately, the result of congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease and their required medications. His father and two older brothers died from heart ailments decades ago.

At age 74, Fry has undergone quadruple heart bypass surgery three times-in 1971, 1985 and in 2000. When I lightly remark that, given his history, he will be due for another set in 2015, he responds quietly, "I would be happy with that."