Harris Fawell, former congressman from Illinois, dead at 92 – Quad City Times
Harris Fawell, former congressman from Illinois, dead at 92
CHICAGO — Former U.S. Rep. Harris W. Fawell of Illinois, who served seven terms in Congress and was a state senator, has died. He was 92.
Fawell died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease Thursday at his home in suburban Naperville, his wife Ruth told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Fawell, a Republican, represented a Chicago-area district in Congress from 1985 to 1999 when he retired. He was known as a fiscal conservative, and spent time on a bipartisan panel that objected to excessive government spending on lawmakers’ pet projects.
Family members recall a caring man of quick wit.
“He was a loving, honest and intelligent man,” his wife of 69 years said. “A husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.”
Fawell was born in West Chicago in 1929. He earned a law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law and practiced as an attorney. He was part of a well-known family in DuPage County politics; His late brother, Bruce, was a circuit court judge and his late sister-in-law, Beverly, was a state senator.
Harris Fawell began his Illinois Senate career in 1963, leaving office in 1977 for an unsuccessful Illinois Supreme Court bid.
While he was a Republican, he supported Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008 and was one of 30 former GOP members of Congress who in 2016 publicly said they would not vote for Donald Trump.
A few Chicago Bears rookies and second-year players have made significant strides in development, a sign of one task the coaching staff has accomplished that might not be showing up in the win-loss record.
In later years, Fawell reflected on his work as an elected leader in essays, including for a 2007 volume of Gonzaga University’s International Journal of Servant-Leadership.
“I have come to believe, after 14 years in our nation’s government, that eventually we all must learn that we need an ability, indeed, perhaps better referred to as a response-ability, to drop our negative judgments, defensiveness, resentments, hatreds and criticisms that serve only to short-circuit our natural gifts of love,” he wrote. “We do, indeed, need to remind ourselves constantly that love is the only reality there is and that we are all here to love and serve.”
Funeral services were private, according to Beidelman-Kunsch Funeral Homes & Crematory in Naperville.
10 things to know about Rivian IPO
3,136
Employees at the Normal factory. Rivian in 2017 paid $16 million for the former Mitsubishi plant, which now houses vehicle and manufacturing engineering, manufacturing operations, supply chain and logistics, IT, quality and customer support workers.
20
Percentage equity stake that Amazon has in Rivian as of Sept. 30, for a total of about $1.35 billion.
2009
Year Rivian was founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate R.J. Scaringe. Today, the company has about 9,000 employees and is headquartered in Irvine, California, south of Los Angeles, with offices in Michigan, Arizona and elsewhere.
1.2 trillion
Market cap of electric vehicle industry leader Tesla. Numerous legacy auto makers and startups are racing to capitalize on interest in electric vehicles and incentives. Illinois lawmakers last week passed the Reimagining Electric Vehicles Act, which provides tax credits for purchases and financial assistance for companies to start operations.
100,000
Custom EV vans Rivian is building for Amazon.
10.5 billion
Dollars Rivian has raised from investors since 2019, including Ford, T. Rowe Price and Amazon.
150,000
Annual capacity of Normal factory. The IPO filing says an expansion is expected to bring production up to 200,000 in the next two years. The company has filed paperwork with the town to add 623,000 square feet, bringing the total footprint to 3.9 million square feet.
Dominant
The Rivian Automotive site in Normal. The company is seeking a valuation of more than $53 billion in its forthcoming initial public offering.
55,400
Preorders for the company’s inaugural models, according to the IPO filing. The R1T truck, which starts at $73,000, rolled off the assembly line September. The R1S SUV, which costs $75,500, is expected to be sold starting in January. Both have about 300 miles of range and go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds.
135 million
Class A common shares that Rivian is planning to offer, priced at $57-62 per share, according to the SEC filing. The company filed papers in August to go public and at the time set the valuation at about $70 billion. Federal filings show the company has lost about $2 billion since the beginning of 2020 and plans to spend about $8 billion on equipment and infrastructure until the end of next year.
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