DOING RIGHT BY YOUR NEIGHBORS. Official and workaday Milwaukee bids farewell to Frank Zeidler.

As members of Redeemer Lutheran Church, Frank and Agnes Zeidler made it a point to go to every funeral for parishioners, even if they sometimes were the only ones there.

A simple gesture and the right thing to do.

That was the Frank Zeidler remembered Wednesday by mourners at the church - a simple man who, as mayor of Milwaukee and in the four decades since, always seemed to do the right thing.

The church was far from empty, though, for the funeral for Zeidler, who died Friday at 93.

Mourners filled the 12 rows of pews, plus the 36 folding chairs set out in back. They squeezed in with the choir in the balcony and lined the brick walls and packed into the foyer, finally standing in the doorway and spilling down the stairs.

How things have changed in the years since he left office.

"He will be missed, we already miss him," said Jeanne Zeidler, the youngest of six children and now mayor of Williamsburg, Va. "If Frank Zeidler were here, he would know exactly what to say. He always did, in any circumstance."

Here is what was said Wednesday:

Frank Zeidler, who served as mayor from 1948 to 1960, oversaw a growing and expanding community. He was dedicated to improving public services, building public housing for the poor and for veterans returning from World War II. After leaving office, he remained vigorously engaged in his community, even as his 93 years were catching up with him.

He was the last Socialist mayor of a major U.S. city and in 1976 was the party's presidential nominee. An older brother, Carl, was mayor before Frank. He was killed in World War II.

In some ways the city is still living off that postwar inheritance.

In the next 12 years, the size of the city doubled, the population hit an all-time peak, horse-drawn garbage crews received their first trucks, nine new firehouses were built, the size of the Central Library was doubled and the Milwaukee Arena built.

[Richard] Leonard, a former editor of the Journal, recalled the time Fortune magazine labeled Milwaukee the second-best managed city in the nation.

"Frank was furious," he said.

He wanted the top slot.

The mayor was a transit advocate to the end.

There were past political figures, such as former Ald. Don Richards and former Milwaukee County Executive F. Thomas Ament, and current ones. Nearly the entire Common Council came, with some taking the No. 30 bus back to City Hall.

Zeidler would have approved.

Indeed, a bus ticket was folded into the red, white and blue flowers that sat on the front seat of the hearse, which led a procession of family and friends to Forest Home Cemetery.

One wonders, though, what this cartoon says about the Milwaukee County Transit System.

Stuart Carlson cartoon from the July 11, 2006 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, linked without permission.

Mayor Zeidler's successor Henry Maier was able to create the transit authority in 1974, by which time The Transport Company had sold off the streetcars to buy the trackless trolleys, and then sold off the trackless trolleys to upgrade the diesel bus fleet, and when those buses wore out, the farebox receipts were insufficient to buy new ones.