Norwich — When a site for a minor league baseball stadium in Groton fell through in 1994, Republican Norwich City Council President Harry Jackson ushered the majority Democratic council into a quick meeting and won approval to endorse a site in the Norwich Industrial Park to become home to the AA minor league team of the New York Yankees.

Norwich attorney Glenn Carberry, who led the effort to bring minor league baseball to the region, marveled at Jackson’s swift action to secure council support for the $700,000 needed to match the state grant to build the $10 million Thomas J. Dodd Memoral Stadium.

“I still remember riding up to Hartford with him to deliver an application check on behalf of the city,” Carberry said Monday.

Jackson, who served two terms from 1993 to 1997 as City Council president — the city’s top elected office prior to the 2001 charter revision that changed the position to mayor — died Oct. 25 at age 89 of heart failure, his wife, Linda, said. No services are planned in the near future.

“He led a City Council that was heavily Democratic and really worked well with everyone,” said Mayor Peter Nystrom, who was a state representative during Jackson’s tenure. “He tried to work well with everyone. After Election Day, they all worked together.”

For many years after he left politics, or politics left him, as Linda Jackson, his wife of 41 years, put it, the couple enjoyed sitting in their season ticket seats at Dodd Stadium, greeting fans, team staff and political associates.

“He loved his politics,” she said. “Truly, truly loved his politics. They didn’t always love him, but he loved to express his feelings and say how he felt. He was honest about it.”

Several past and current city officials on Monday recalled Jackson just that way. He was direct, forceful, and at times abrasive from his council president desk. The council at one point insisted he use his own letterhead rather than City Council stationery when he dashed off letters as he frequently did.

In an angry 1996 Christmas Eve letter to then-Bozrah First Selectman and Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments Chairman Raymond Barber, Jackson protested New London City Manager Richard Brown’s opposition to expansion of a state social services agency in that city.

“In effect,” Jackson wrote, “Mr. Brown asked SCCOG to endorse what amounts to blatant racism! No matter how inconvenient it is to require poor people to kill the better part of a day to receive services the state is willing to provide in their own backyard, he and his Council are opposed and continue to support the Norwich office as providers of services for their constituents.”

In another letter on March 11, 1997, Jackson urged the leaders of the Mashantucket-Pequot and Mohegan tribes to funnel all requests for funding from Norwich entities through the City Council. Jackson said some groups “have sought to capitalize” on the city’s close ties with the two tribes as their casinos were becoming prosperous.

“He was always very direct in his position, and he wasn’t a typical politician in that sense,” Carberry said. “I always found him very easy to deal with, because you knew where he stood, and he always told you where he was coming from.”

Jackson was elected twice as council president in 1993 and 1995 and decided not to run in 1997, citing business obligations. A frequent critic of school operations, Jackson tried unsuccessfully to run for school board. He did serve on a school building committee.

Jackson ran again for council president as a petitioning candidate in 1999 — the last year of the precinct and council president system — and lost to Democrat and former police chief Richard Abele.

William Kenny, secretary of the Charter Revision Commission that ushered in the current mayor-council structure that retains the city manager for daily operations, recalled that memories of Jackson’s at times abrasive style played a role in the charter panel's decision against forming a strong mayor government in Norwich.

“I am saddened to learn of Harry’s passing,” Kenny said in an email. “He was relentlessly and often brutally honest. I can NEVER recall not knowing where he stood on an issue, ever. We shan’t see his likes again.”

Jackson ran the Colchester weekly newspaper, The Standard, and Linda Jackson ran Linda’s Super Little Market on Lafayette Street. Harry Jackson later turned to another passion, automobiles, and worked as a dealer at Norwich Auto Sales. In retirement, he was an usher at Dodd Stadium. “He loved that place,” Linda said.

Dodd Stadium wasn’t the only major project Jackson saw to fruition. Construction of the Rose City Senior Center and the new Norwich fire station on North Thames Street were completed during his tenure.

Former City Manager William Tallman, now a state legislator in New Mexico, said he admired Jackson for his “brilliance.” Jackson was a member of Mensa, an organization for people who score in the 98th percentile in IQ tests.

“He championed Norwich,” Tallman said. “He really wanted to promote the betterment of the community. He was well meaning, probably controversial, but I had no problem with that. Sometimes, you have to be controversial and aggressive to get things done."

c.bessette@theday.com