| Notes |
- C.R. voice falls silent
City Council-meeting regular Casten, 76, commits suicide
By Rick Smith, The Gazette
Cedar Rapids – H.J. “Doc” Casten has been a regular citizen voice at City Council meetings and the kind of critic elected officials come to love.
A former truck drive and business agent for Teamsters Local No.238, he always sprinkled suggestions for better government with a good thing to say about the city and the council.
It was a dependable mix. Casten 76, never surprised.
Until now.
After emergency colon surgery and the pain and discomfort that his wife said would not subside in the month following the surgery, the mild-mannered Casten killed himself at his home, 187 Carter St. NW.
His wife Shirley, said she had gone to the pharmacy May 22 to pick up some stomach medicine for him and found him dead when she returned.
Shirley Casten said her husband had insisted on no obituary, no funeral and no burial. He was cremated.
Mayor Paul Pate said this week that the suicide startled and saddened him and his council colleagues.
:He’s always been upbeat, uplifting,” Pate said. “He never complained about himself. He always had good things to say about the city.”
Shirley Casten said her husband began attending council meetings several years ago when he tired of people who would complain about City Hall but would never go there to voice an opinion. He decided he would.
Some probably thought Casten showed at the council gatherings – which are taped for telecast on the local cable station – so he could see himself on TV. But he couldn’t.
“We don’t have cable,” his wife said.
The respectful retiree sat apart from the handful of other citizen regulars who often speak at council meetings, and it was his stew of praise and suggestions that earned Casten credibility among council members, Pate said.
“He’d say, “This is one I think you missed, and I hope you do better the next time,’” the mayor said.
Casten was a strong advocate for veterans, public transportation and public safely and recently had been named to a City Hall task force to study the city’s police helicopter program.
This spring Casten suggested that the council delay more spending on bike trails so it could save some jabs slated for layoff at the Street Department.
In the past, he questioned why the council raised the bar from $5,000 to $10,000 on the size of city purchases that needed council review, saying, “Accountability, when you’re handling large sums of other people’s money, cannot be overdone.”
Casten had been known, too, to tell the council to be careful raising taxes and utility rates, saying the increase hit retirees hard.
“I don’t want to leave Cedar Rapids, but every time someone aims at my pocketbook, I have to look at a road map,” Casten said once.
Casten, who grew up in Morning Sun in Louisa County, was called “Doc” and not his given name, Herman. The nickname stuck after he returned from mechanic school as a young man with a doctor of mechanics certificate, his wife said.
Shirley Casten said she met her husband in the Kansas City area and they married a week later. They were married 51 years and had a son and daughter, she said.
After heart surgery a few years ago, he made a point to walking two miles every day in his neighborhood.
“Sometime it took him a while to get back here if he found somebody to talk to,” Shirley Casten said. “People said he always knew what was going on in the neighborhood.”
More than that, he made it a point to try to know what was going on in all of Cedar Rapids.
But he never hinted that he knew it all or that he ever would.
“He was a gentleman, “Pate said. “He was a breath of fresh air. He’s a voice we’re going to miss.
The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Friday, 11 June 2004.
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1927 - 2004 (76 years)
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