William Marshall Redd, Jr., Mayor of Newark between 1973 and 1989, died on September 13, 2013 at Christiana Hospital. The cause of death was complications from heart surgery, which had been performed in June. Mr. Redd was 92. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Anne Harris Redd; daughter, Cathy Anne Redd (Byron Woodbury), of Washington Crossing, PA; daughter, Nancy Redd Lewis (Gary Scott Lewis), of Drexel Hill, PA; granddaughter, Elizabeth Redd Woodbury, of Boston, MA; and grandsons, Scott William Lewis and Todd Robert Lewis, both of Drexel Hill, PA.

Mr. Redd was born in Baltimore, MD in 1921 to William Marshall Redd, Sr. and Eva Marks Redd.

His only sibling, John Edward Redd, died as an infant when Mr. Redd was 10. Mr. Redd’s father, a Merchant Marine in World War I and later a chief engineer on international freighters, died of a heart attack when Mr. Redd was 13. His parents had poured their life savings into unsuccessful brain surgeries at Johns Hopkins for his infant brother, so his father’s death left Mr. Redd and his mother with little more than their house and each other.

Mr. Redd graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in May of 1938 at the age of 16. To pay his college tuition, his mother, formerly a home maker went to work at a department store in Baltimore, and Mr. Redd took a year off to sweep floors in a clothing factory and work as a proof reader for a legal newspaper. In September of 1939, Mr. Redd entered engineering school at the University of Maryland at College Park. He graduated three years later, in June of 1942, with a B.S. in Civil Engineering.

As his widowed mother’s only surviving child, Mr. Redd was exempt from the draft during World War II, but neither he nor his mother ever considered that he would not serve. He joined the Navy in hopes of following his father in service at sea, but the Navy wanted the benefit of his engineering expertise. Accordingly, it offered him a commission in the Civil Engineer Corps, USNR, and in February of 1943, Mr. Redd became a Seabee.

Mr. Redd’s battalion, the 145th Seabees, spent two years in the Pacific theater, much of it in the Solomon and Russell Islands.

Attached to the First Marine Division, the 145th Seabees participated in the beach invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, a date which was L-Day (Landing Day), Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day all in one; Mr. Redd kept the menu from the lavish pre-invasion dinner for the rest of his life.

When much of the world was celebrating the end of the war in Europe in May of 1945, the 145th Seabees were ordered into battle with the First Marine Division again, this time as part of the first wave of US troops that was to land on Japan. Mr. Redd did not think it remotely possible that he would survive both the landing and the certain ferocity of the Japanese defense of their island. He often said that when Japan surrendered, he felt like the luckiest man in the service.

Mr. Redd was released from active duty as Lieut., CEC, USNR in February of 1946. He loved the Navy and said that had the Seabees not been all but dismantled after the war, he may have remained a Navy officer for his entire career.

Following the war, Mr. Redd returned to College Park where he served as President of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, earned an MBA from the University of Maryland in 1949 and taught in the university’s Civil Engineering Department between 1947 and 1951.

He dated quite a bit during this period, but not having met anyone who made his heart pound by the time he was 29, he had concluded he would never marry. He changed his mind abruptly at a Thanksgiving Day 1950 cocktail party in Baltimore when he met Anne Harris, a young CIA analyst from Chevy Chase who was two years out of Goucher College. Mr. Redd would light up when recounting the moment he first saw his future wife across the room, wearing an orange knit dress with a leopard skin belt, regaling a crowd around her with Harry Truman jokes. After a courtship that included a concert by Billie Holiday, a romantic evening of dancing at The Shoreham Hotel and a disastrous cocktail date at The Silver Fox restaurant (which a famished Miss Harris had assumed would include dinner), the two were engaged at Christmas. Mr. Redd resigned from his teaching job at the University of Maryland and joined the Engineering Department of the DuPont Company in 1951. The couple married in Washington on May 3, 1951 and moved to Wilmington. They moved to Newark in 1954 and then back to Wilmington in 2000, but having moved to Delaware in 1951, they never again lived anywhere else.

Mr. Redd remained at DuPont until he took an early retirement from his job in the Employee Relations Department in 1983, but the two loves of his life were his family and public service.

Mr. Redd was fond of leading small organizations, a skill he honed in his fraternity president days, and his capability led others to seek him out. In 1970, he was drafted to run for Newark City Council from the Fifth District. His opponent was his veterinarian; he was quoted in the Newark papers as declaring that his dog was no longer speaking to him. While he said he ran to lose and get his name out the first time around, he fought hard, knocking on many doors to meet Newark residents and listen to their concerns.

He won his first election, surprising himself and prompting supporters to wear buttons declaring, “Redd Takes Fifth.”

He later became Deputy Mayor, and in 1973, succeeded Norma B. Handloff as Mayor of Newark upon her retirement.

Mr. Redd was elected Mayor many times thereafter, but never cared for party politics. Many found that surprising, but the fact of the matter was that he liked being Mayor of Newark because it allowed him to pursue his deep interest in government and political science in a non-partisan environment.

As Mayor, Mr. Redd was a stickler for Robert’s Rules of Order. He ran a tough meeting and to the intense amusement of his family, once broke a gavel while banging proceedings to order. He was utterly devoted to the City of Newark and served on many organizations where he felt his participation would benefit the City: the Transportation & Communications Steering Committee of the National League of Cities, the Policy Board Advisory Council of the American Public Power Association, and the Policy Board of the Water Resources Agency for New Castle County.

He also served as President of the Delaware League of Local Governments and Chairman of the University Communities Caucus of the National League of Cities. He worked hard on town/gown relations with the University of Delaware, but was firmly of the opinion that Newark was far more than the setting for a university.

Mr. Redd joined St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Newark in the 1960s. A former vestryman, he remained a member of St. Thomas until his death.

Mr. Redd retired from city government in 1989, the same year in which the Newark Post named him Newark’s Citizen of the Year, along with University of Delaware President E.A Trabant. Mr. Redd went on to become President of the Friends of the Newark Free Library, Chairman of the New Castle County Library Advisory Board and Chairman of the Delaware Council on Libraries. During this period, he and his wife took many trips to Europe, often living in the same French, Spanish or Italian village for months at a time so they could immerse themselves in local life.

Mr. Redd retired from public life altogether after suffering a heart attack and undergoing quadruple bypass surgery in the late 1990s. He and his wife left their beloved Newark and moved to Methodist Country House in Wilmington. Notwithstanding his heart condition and a kidney transplant at age 84, Mr. Redd led a full and active life at Country House and made many new friends during the 13 years he lived there.

Mr. Redd had gone into civil engineering as a young man because he had been under intense pressure to support his mother and himself during the Depression; serving later as a Navy Seabee gave him invaluable practical experience in the field. Under different circumstances, though, he probably would have studied to become a history or English professor.

After completing his MBA requirements at the University of Maryland, he used the balance of his GI Bill benefits to take courses in what he called “the fun stuff,” radio script writing and other liberal arts disciplines, and he excelled at all of them. He loved college campuses, young people, teaching and reading. Indeed, when he wasn’t working on one public service project or another after retirement, he dove into stacks of novels and books on American government and the Presidents (particularly his favorite, Harry Truman), happily declaring that he had “finally found his niche.”

A memorial service for Mr. Redd will be held on Saturday, September 21, 2013 at 10:30 AM in the Danby Chapel of Methodist Country House, 4830 Kennett Pike, Wilmington, DE. Mr. Redd will be buried in a private ceremony at the church yard of old St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Newark. In lieu of flowers, his family asks that any contributions in his honor be made to St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 276 S. College Ave., Newark, DE 19711-5235