Tom Roeser

Thomas F. Roeser (July 23, 1928 – May 29, 2011) was a

Early life and education

Roeser was born in

In 1953, after a short time spent in the advertising agency business in Chicago, Roeser moved to Minnesota to become the city editor of the Saint Cloud Daily Times, serving also as a stringer for the Associated Press. He was named director of research and news-information for the Minnesota Republican party in 1955, where he stayed until 1958, supervising the party's communications program, including media coverage and advertising. In 1958, he was named press secretary to a newly elected Republican congressman, Rep. Albert H. Quie of Minnesota. The following year, he also served as press secretary to Rep. Walter H. Judd of Minnesota, then the ranking Republican on the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

In 1960, with election of a Republican governor of Minnesota, Elmer L. Andersen, Roeser was appointed news secretary and supervised news dissemination for state government. At the completion of Andersen's term, Roeser returned to the Minnesota Republican party in an enhanced role: Director of Communications, where he served from 1963 to 1964 when he left to return to Chicago to initiate a program of public affairs and government relations, as well as community relations for The Quaker Oats Company.

Roeser launched Quaker's government relations program as well as its urban affairs program in the inner city of Chicago and at plant locations throughout the company. He remained in this position with Quaker Oats until 1969 when he was recruited by the Nixon administration as an assistant to the United States Secretary of Commerce to begin a new federal program involving aid to minority business enterprises. He formed the nation's first program to assist minority business (now the Minority Business Development Agency). In 1970 in a dispute with the Nixon administration which, he felt, was not serious about the program, he recommended the abolition of his own agency. This was highly unpopular and he was let go by the administration, which then appointed him as the director of public affairs and Congressional relations for the Peace Corps. As a foreign service officer, he managed the agency's worldwide communications and advertising program until The Quaker Oats Company requested he return — which he did in 1971 — after which he became its vice president of government relations. ^{[citation needed]}

He became the first corporate lobbyist to be an appointed Fellow of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, serving in its Institute of Politics, where he taught in addition to continuing his role — on leave — at Quaker. Shortly thereafter, he was named a Woodrow Wilson International Fellow in Princeton, New Jersey. Upon returning to Chicago to resume full-time duties at Quaker, he also taught after hours at the

Long active in Chicago civic, religious and political life, Roeser was a founder of Project LEAP (Legal Elections in All Precincts), the city's anti-vote-fraud organization, was president of the City Club of Chicago for seventeen years and its chairman; was chairman, founder of the Republican Assembly of Illinois, an organization of grassroots conservative Republicans, and a co-founder of Catholic Citizens of Illinois. He was a member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, a board member of the Howard Center, Rockford and program chairman of Legatus (Chicago), an organization of Catholic CEOs and was vice chairman of Haymarket Center, Chicago, a leading rehabilitation center for victims of alcohol and substance abuse. ^{[citation needed]}

Broadcasting career

Roeser began hosting a talk show on WLS-AM in Chicago in 1994. He began on a fill-in basis, substituting for