Continued: Small battles and bruises earned leader lasting respect

It was Christmas Eve, and the young man pounding on Al Kordiak's door was frantic. "We think Mom killed Dad," the kid screamed. "Please, do something."

The Kordiaks, who have controlled a seat on the Anoka County Board for 56 years, have long been considered pillars of their community, people folks in Columbia Heights seek to solve problems. Albert Kordiak, 81, says he's been asked to settle thousands of disputes and once was beaten and thrown down a flight of steps while protesting a rally by communists in Minneapolis. But rarely had he been thrust into anything like this family confrontation years ago.

It began with an argument between the father and a stepson over a bottle of orange juice, Kordiak recalled recently. Grease stained the wall after one of the combatants apparently threw a turkey across the room. As the father and stepson wrestled on the floor with the mother screaming, the father rolled on top, the other young man told Kordiak.

That's when the mother apparently smashed a flowerpot against the father's head.

"I came over, yelling the man's name, doing anything I could to get him to respond ... until he began shaking his head and I knew he was alive," Kordiak said. "Everyone in the room is screaming. All I could think of saying was, 'It's Christmas Eve and look at what the two of you are doing. Shame on you.'"

Kordiak remembers the father, suddenly full of life, grabbing Kordiak and "smashing" him against the wall. Kordiak broke free of the man's grip, the police arrived -- and grabbed Kordiak.

"I told them, 'You got the wrong guy,'" he recalled. "They finally got it right [and released him]. Just one of thousands of cases that came up during my 32 years."

To be feted May 14

For 32 years, Al Kordiak served as an Anoka County commissioner, many of them as chairman of the board. He will be honored at a dinner on May 14 at the Courtyards of Andover, a benefit for the Anoka County Historical Society's endowment fund.

Great public leaders aren't necessarily measured by years served, money raised or problems solved and avoided. Sometimes, Albert Kordiak knows, the sweat -- and, yes, bruises -- in the trenches that few ever see are what really build legacies.

"Even in a great community like Columbia Heights, a blue-collar community where there aren't many rich people, but there's a fine ethnic blend of good families, strong families, nobody works like crazy like the Kordiaks," said Jim Kordiak, 58, Al's oldest son.

He says his father was somewhat a "mystery to me because he was gone so much," and that his mother, Mildred Kordiak, now 80, "dominated" the household. (Al Kordiak, who apparently hasn't lost a step in retirement, quickly agrees.)

But the son closely watched the county commissioner from a respectful distance. Jim Kordiak has been an Anoka County commissioner 18 years.

"Dad and I are two very different people," Jim Kordiak says. "Dad worries about everything. I don't. I just think life has a way of working out."

Still comes to work

Yet, the two men are incredibly similar. Look at an old photo of Al Kordiak when he was chairman of the Anoka County Board and you'd swear you were staring at Jim. And beyond the surface?

Both are respected family men who have devoted much of their lives to preparing people's tax returns -- with Al still showing up at the office each day. Jim Kordiak has spent hundreds of hours in recent years helping seniors with taxes -- donating his time for free.

The son earned a degree in psychology from the University of Minnesota, where his father went to General College. But Jim Kordiak learned about people by working at a Columbia Heights hardware store ("where you got to know everybody"), through the Jaycees and as a juvenile probation officer for 14 years.

Then, in 1986, while camping in his pop-up tent trailer near Brainerd, Jim received a "frantic" call from his folks. Albert had yet to tell his son of his plans not to run for reelection. In previous elections, he'd run unopposed. And now, someone else had filed for his county commissioner's seat.

Al Kordiak, so beloved that a county park in Columbia Heights is named in his honor, was retiring.

The son said he had "no signs, brochures, strategy or money" to put into a campaign. But Jim Kordiak raced to Anoka, beating the filing deadline. And getting elected.

"It exacerbated my father somewhat that I didn't go back to him and seek counsel, some guidance, some direction," Jim Kordiak said of his early days on the County Board. I never meant to be Al Kordiak and Dad let me become who I was.

"But there were lessons he and my mother taught me: You live legally, live a good healthy life, take care of the people around you.

"And there was this: Dad told me, 'Draw your friends close to you, and your enemies closer.'"

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419