Len Connors Steps Down After A Half Century Of Service To Surf City

SURF CITY - The mayor’s nameplate on the council dais read the same for 50 years - Leonard T. Connors.

That changed after the November general election, when Francis Hodgson took over Connors’ seat after the longtime mayor decided not to run for another term at age 86.

Surf City was different back in the mid-1960s. Connors was in his mid-30s. The beaches were bigger and the homes were smaller. All that has changed over the decades, according to The Press of Atlantic City.

Despite more than five decades of public service, Connors doesn’t sound like he is completely resigned to retirement.

“I do miss the aggravation and some of the smart talk and then my comebacks,” he said. “But I am proud of how I left the city. I miss it all.”

And he wasn’t just mayor during some of those years. He served two terms as an Ocean County freeholder and was elected state senator in 1982, a position he held for 26 years.

But being mayor of Surf City was his great love.

“He once told a news reporter, he would give up his seat in the Senate before he’d give up being mayor,” said his wife, Lorraine.

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Photo credits: New York magazine.