DIXON – One Sunday, just days before Roy Bridgeman’s 71st birthday, he and his wife, Jill, were at home with a basketball game on.

Like any good Peoria-area native, Bridgeman loves basketball.

For the first time in 24 years, Bridgeman won’t have to worry about missing any Monday night sporting events. The longtime city commissioner lost his April 5 re-election bid.

His service to his community, on the council and in the schools, is remembered fondly.

“Whenever I think of Roy, it always comes back to basketball,” said Lyle Bogott, 83, who was the athletic director when Bridgeman joined the Dixon High School faculty.

The highlight of his 40-year coaching career was when the 1981-82 girls basketball team finished third in the state.

“He had a good rapport with his basketball players,” Bogott said. “He seemed to be able to push them just a little more than what their ability was.”

Bridgeman still is in touch with many of the players, who are now older than he was when he coached them.

Bridgeman also coached football, basketball, track, wrestling and golf.

Fellow City Commissioner David Blackburn, 57, graduated in 1971; Bridgeman was his freshman football coach.

“He was too nice to me,” considering Blackburn, in his own estimation, “wasn’t very big or very good or very mean or very fast,” he said.

A teacher

At the time Bridgeman first ran for City Council, he was a business teacher at Dixon High. When he retired in 1993, he had taught for 32 years, including a stint as a first-grade physical education teacher.

“First-graders in PE, they’re just having a great time. They’re just so active and everything,” Bridgeman said. “High-schoolers are a little more reserved.”

City Comptroller Rita Crundwell had Bridgeman as her typing teacher her sophomore year. Blackburn had him his senior year for business law – one of the reasons he listed during his campaign as why he was qualified to sit on the council.

“He was a great teacher,” said Crundwell, who graduated in 1971 with Blackburn. “I loved him.”

She still uses a typewriter a lot for envelopes and filling out forms. It sits behind her desk cater-corner to her very modern flat-screen Mac.

Roles reversed when Bridgeman joined the council in 1987. Bridgeman said he learned a lot from Crundwell, who was comptroller then.

Bridgeman started as the public property commissioner in 1987, but when the next election came along and he was the only incumbent left on the council, he became the accounts and finance commissioner.

“There’s a lot involved, a lot of people don’t really realize what it all entails,” Crundwell said. “He really is the main person who negotiates all our labor contracts. He has to make the decisions on the health insurance and the liability insurance.”

Bridgeman said his background in business really helped. He graduated from Illinois State with a degree in accounting and business law and went to Northern Illinois University to get a master’s degree in business management.

Despite saying he had no political aspirations, Bridgeman served 24 years on the council, making him the longest continuously serving commissioner.

He said he was first encouraged to run because he had been complaining over some issue that he no longer can remember.

Somewhat surprisingly, Bridgeman was not re-elected in April.

Blackburn said this may be, in part, because Bridgeman was gone part of the month, vacationing with his family in South Carolina and unable to campaign.

There also may have been anti-incumbent sentiment carrying over from the last national election, he said.

“I thought things would be a lot easier if he were re-elected,” Blackburn said. “As the votes came in that night, I was disheartened to see he was lagging behind.”

Bridgeman had considered not running again, Crundwell said.

“He wasn’t going to run,” she said, “and we kind of talked him into it. I guess he probably felt like the city economically was in probably the worst position we’d been in in a while, so he didn’t want to bail out.”

Bridgeman was frustrated with “the half-truths going around” during the election.

Whenever the election comes up, he always mentions the debt the city incurred to upgrade the sewage treatment plant and water system. The upgrades were mandated by the federal government, he said, comparing the bond to a home mortgage paid over many years.

At home

Bridgeman lives in Dixon with his wife, Jill Bridgeman, 70, their “very needy” dog Daisy, 4, and two cats, 11 and 16, who don’t know their real names because the Bridgemans call them Itty Bit and Kitten Cat.

They have four children, Julie Bridgeman, 47, of Columbia, S.C.; Jeff Bridgeman, 45, of Ashton; Dayle Sanders, 43, of West Des Moines, Iowa; and Brad Bridgeman, 40, of Dixon; and eight grandchildren.

He likes playing golf, fishing and reading. Right now he’s reading “a cheap mystery” on his Kindle.

He’s thinking about working with seniors, helping them with whatever they need, taxes or chores, but he’d like to stay away from the financial stuff, Bridgeman says.