eslie Sutherland is among the most important of Yonkers' mayors. When he died April 6,1945, the Herald Statesman published this article.

Leslie Sutherland, former Mayor of Yonkers, died early today in his eightieth year at Manteo, North Carolina, where he made his home for two and a half years. Acting City Manager Norman P. Henderson immediately ordered the flag at City Hall at half staff. Sutherland's career was virtually unparalleled in its inclusive scope insofar as it involved public service, the professions and business.

He was Alderman, President of the Common Council, Mayor, County Clerk and Surrogate's Court Chief Clerk, School Trustee and President of the Board of Education, and he was chairman of Mayor Fogarty's committee on public relief. He was a law clerk, an architect, a bricklayer, a school teacher; a bank president, general manager of the Yonkers Railroad Company through its bankruptcy as receiver and then vice-president of the Third Avenue Railway System for many years until he retired in 1942.

He was Republican City Chairman for a quarter of a century and a lending party official in state and national conventions. In World War I he led the County Home Defense Committee and raised millions in war loans. He led four Red Cross drives and a Community Chest campaign.

Mr. Sutherland was thrown into jail as a boy and helped frame laws to make that practice illegal. He initiated many departures, authoring an eight-hour day for building trades, and opened the first municipal bath in the United States.

He raised money for the YMCA the Masonic Temple, St. Joseph's Hospital, St. John's Riverside Hospital, Yonkers General Hospital, Yonkers Lodge of Elks, and many other institutions. He was a member and director of the Surdna Foundation.

Death followed a second stroke in the last few weeks, which had been preceded nearly two years ago with an attack that left his side paralyzed. For months he was more or less confined to his home in Manteo, moving about in a wheel chair.

He had gone to Manteo because of the milder climate, first settling there for the winter and then deciding to remain there in retirement. From time to time he enjoyed visits there of Yonkers friends, most particularly those of his dear friend, former Corporation Counsel Daniel J. Cashin.

With him at the time of death was Mrs. Sutherland, the former Matilda Karg of New York City, whom he married in l901 and also his daughter Beverly, who lives in Manteo. Friends said they may remain in Manteo.

Funeral services will be at Manteo, where Mr. Sutherland will be buried. Although arrangements have not been completed it is expected that Robert Sutherland, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Cowell will attend the services.

Mr. Sutherland relinquished his office with the Third Avenue and with its subsidiaries, including the Yonkers Railroad Company, in November 1942, when he moved to the South.

Although a member of a pioneer Yonkers family, Leslie Sutherland was born in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, on April 21,1866. He loved to tell audiences humorously during his long political career that the only reason he could not aspire to be president of the United States was that he was not born here.

His parents, the late Joseph and Ann Sutherland, moved to Canada shortly before he was born and lived there 12 years before returning to Yonkers. Mr. Sutherland's first home here was on Jefferson Street.

The family later moved to Herriot Street where they resided for the next 30 years. Before moving to the South, Mr. Sutherland resided with his wife at 66 St. Andrew's Place, "in the house on the hill by the side of the road", as the former mayor put it.

His mother was born on a little farm in what is now Van Cortlandt Park She had attended the old Lambs School, the first public school in what was then the Village of Yonkers.

Mr. Sutherland attended School Two on Waverly Street, but his formal education was cut short early and he began work as an office boy in a law office.

Mr. Sutherland used to tell how he left school "under a cloud" as a child, because of a fist fight with the late Richard Edie Jr. with whom he later was associated closely for many years on the Board of Education and in other community affairs. However; Mr. Sutherland withdrew flora his post on the Board of Education in the second year of his second term, in 1931, when Mr. Edie was elected board president.

During his boyhood days, Mr. Sutherland roamed barefoot about South Yonkers, which then was virtually an open country dotted with farms. He went to work first for Dee and Turner; furniture dealers and next for the Eagle Pencil Company on Dock Street. Later he was employed in the old Copcutt Silk Mill on Nepperhan Avenue.

Despite employment with other firms in his boyhood days, Mr. Sutherland always contended his first job was for Ellis and Sweeny, lawyers, as an office boy. At fifteen he became a law clerk for the firm of R.E. and A.J. Prime.

A sudden turn came at eighteen when physicians told him his health was so poor he "could not live." Undaunted, he sought outdoor employment and proceeded to learn the trade of bricklayer. Meantime he attended Cooper Union School of Science and Alt to study architecture.

As a student there, he was told by an instructor he "never could hope to become an architect." Years later he designed a home for that very instructor and came to teach architecture in the Yonkers public school system.

At a dinner years back at the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City; at which Mr. Sutherland sat with William Howard Taft and former Supreme Court Justice Joseph Morschauser; the former Yonkers Mayor said: "I had a big part in this building, I laid brick on it!" Mr. Morschauser then replied: "I was a cook here." Both men on the spot took out their union cards and showed them to Mr. Taft.

It was while he was a small boy that an incident occurred which he fondly recalled often. Plundering a farmer's orchard, Mr. Sutherland was arrested for stealing apples and thrown into jail overnight, occupying the same cell as adult criminals. He would recall proudly that the policeman who arrested him was head of the police force here when he became Mayor "and was forced to resign," and then Mr. Sutherland would add, "And that small boy who was arrested for stealing apples went up to the state legislature and got a bill put through to prevent people from putting children in jail with criminals."

The former mayor's first elective office was that of delegate to the Bricklayers and Masons International Convention at Toronto, Canada. He introduced the eight-hour work day resolution in that convention, which established the eight- hour work day for all building trades in the United States and Canada.

He introduced a resolution for the first inland public bath in the United States and saw it established at the comer of Jefferson and Vark Streets, In 1896 he became president of the Board of Aldermen which carried with it the responsibilities of acting mayor in the absence of the city's chief executive.

When he was elected mayor in 1897, the City of Yonkers had a population of 47,000 and when he left office four years later it had 62,000 inhabitants.

In 1901 Mr. Sutherland was elected County Clerk of Westchester and was reelected in 1903. He was reelected to every public office he ever held and was never defeated at the polls.

As mayor a wide range of public improvements were created through his efforts including Grant and Irving and Washington public parks. He established a public weighing scale for which there was a great demand at the time and under his administration the public dock at the foot of Main Street was enlarged crowned by the public pavilion. This improvement was dedicated by the then Governor Benjamin B. Odell. Despite a wide variety of new municipal undertakings as mayor; a low tax budget was maintained by Mr. Sutherland. When he left public office he was appointed receiver for the Yonkers Railroad Company.

In 1912 he was elected vice-president and general manager of the Yonkers Railroad Company and in 1918, when the company became part of the Third Avenue Railway System, he was elected vice-president.

Mr. Sutherland was the leader of Republican forces in Yonkers for 25 years. He was one of the men who forced the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt for the vice-presidency in 1900, witnessing his elevation to the Presidency six months later on the death of President McKinley.

Mr. Sutherland was delegate to all national, state and county G.O.P. conventions for 25 years and was a potent force in the party. He organized the Yonkers National Bank and Trust Company and served as its president for 10 years.

During World War I, he was chairman of the Westchester County Home Defense Committee, which organized 12 military units throughout the county. He was an active member of Yonkers executive committees of Liberty and victory Loan campaigns in World War I. In those campaigns $15,000,000 was raised here for the war loans.

Mr. Sutherland was chairman of all four Red Cross drives which raised other millions during the First World War. He was key man in a YM.CA. drive that raised $250,000 for the erection of the present "Y" building and was chairman of a committee that raised $75,000 by public subscription for the construction of the Masonic Temple on South Broadway.

He also was one of the chief forces in a $100,000 campaign for a new wing for St. Joseph's Hospital and again was in the fore in a successful campaign to raise $750,000 for St. John's Riverside Hospital. Mr. Sutherland also was active in raising funds for the then Homeopathic Hospital and Maternity, now the Yonkers General Hospital.

Mr. Sutherland was a charter member of the Yonkers Ledge of Elks and was one of the four men who advanced the money to start the construction of the Elks' Clubhouse on South Broadway, now the School Administration Building. At the outbreak of the depression he was chairman of a Mayor's Committee which raised $219,000 for public relief He was a Community Chest campaign chairman.

Mr. Sutherland was a member and director of the Surdna Foundation and Julia Dyckman Andrus Memorial endowed and created by the late mayor and congressman, John F. Andrus.

While he was President of the Board of Education, Hawthorne and Longfellow Junior High Schools and Roosevelt High School were erected. Putnam County named him president of its Planning Commission during the Twenties.

Mr. Sutherland was a member of nearly every fraternal and benevolent order in the city. He was a 32nd degree Mason and a past master of Nepperhan Lodge of Masons.

He always visualized the City of Yonkers as a residential rather than industrial area, "It always will be a town of small-home owners instead of a factory town," Mr. Sutherland often commented.

A great lover of nature, he would sit for hours and talk of his 600-acre farm near Carmel, where he would say, "are grapefruit plants and lemon trees I raised from seed."

He and Mrs. Sutherland would motor to their farm each Friday tight for weekend stays.

On the eve of his seventy-third birthday, April 20, 1939, Mr. Sutherland was honored at a testimonial dinner at Ben Riley's Arrowhead Inn when it was located in Riverdale. The dinner was held when he and Mrs. Sutherland returned from a two-week ocean cruise. City Judge Martin J. Fay was chairman of that city-wide event.

—Tom Flynn