Lucky neighborhoods have a champion.

In the South Parkway-Heiskell Farm Historic District, it was Janet Hooks, a woman so determined that right be done and that neighbors actually know each other that, for many, she was a cross between a modern-day Welcome Wagon hostess and code enforcement.

Dead trees were removed. The medians were picked clean, often in cleanup drives she organized herself.

When neighbor AC Wharton, even as city or county mayor, had some issue needing attention on his curb, he didn’t call his director of public works. He called Hooks.

“She would get it done,” Wharton said, chuckling.

“When someone was ill, or someone had died, she was the one to let us all know,” Wharton said.

Janet Hooks dies at 70

Hooks worked under Wharton as head of the city parks division. He saw her nearly every day in that role, but he knew her better as the neighborhood guardian, a mantle she picked up out of her sense of decency and order.

“She knew how many inoperable vehicles were in your back yard because she literally walked the neighborhood. She could tell you how long that vehicle had been in that yard and what the code said about it,” Wharton said.

“She was a fist in a velvet glove. She spoke with authority, but she spoke respectfully. ‘I’m not asking you to do this because my last name is Hooks. I am asking you to do this because the neighbors out here deserve this. They are paying their taxes for a safe and clean community.’”

Heiskell Farm is missing her now. A death as large as hers would have sent bereavement coordinator Hooks into overtime.

Hooks, elected in 1991, was the third Black woman in the city’s history to win a city council seat. She died Tuesday, Oct. 10, of COVID complications. She was 70.

TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, elected to the city council in 2000, was the fourth Black woman. They formed a lifetime rapport.

“My public service came at a time when there were so few women that we really found camaraderie in our work together. You would have thought with so few women there would be competition, but there was not,” Stout-Mitchell said.

“Janet was loyal. Janet was kind. I tell everybody she was not the kind of friend you had to talk to daily or once a week. She was the friend you would talk to two or three times a year and pick up where you left off.

“But if there was a crisis going on in your life or your family’s, you could expect to hear from her or see her,” Stout-Mitchell said.

The two saw each other for the last time about a month ago outside Stein’s restaurant on Lauderdale in South Memphis, a longtime hangout for Black politicians.

Stout-Mitchell was in the car with her husband. When she saw the Hooks’ car, she told him to stop. The women rushed into the street — traffic coming and going — for a long, raucous hug.

“We were giggling and jumping up and down like schoolgirls,” Stout-Mitchell said. “We were just so glad to see each other.”

‘Miss Janet’ was no pushover

Hooks served 13 consecutive years on the city council, resigning in 2005 to take a position in then-Mayor Willie Herenton’s administration. Interim Mayor Myron Lowery named her head of the city parks division in 2009. When Hooks left city government in 2015, she had given more than 23 years to the city, including two terms as council chairwoman.

“She wasn’t just some civilian participant in the process. She really absorbed the information that was provided to us and did her best to make educated decisions,” said Jack Sammons, who served on the council with Hooks and later as chief administrative officer in both the Lowery and Wharton administrations.

“I didn’t always agree with her position, but I always admired that she had done her homework, and she voted her conscience.”

In the more than two decades Sammons was part of city government, he never saw anyone manage the council better as chairperson than Hooks did, he said.

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“She was a fiscal conservative in many ways. She didn’t want taxes to go up. She was sensitive to the fact that that much of her constituency was in poverty and couldn’t afford additional taxes. And as a result, she wanted her money to be spent efficiently.

“She was really just a driving force,” Sammons said, chuckling that when Hooks was elected, some city hall staff thought she would be an easy mark and were ready to take it easy. 

“She very quickly fired a few people, and that got everybody’s attention. They all realized, if you were going to work for Miss Janet, you were going to work hard.”

She fought for what she believed in, said several council colleagues, including John Vergos, elected in 1995. He remembers that Hooks was firmly for construction of the Bluffwalk, the controversial path that would allow uncontrolled pedestrian access to the back lot lines of the multi-million-dollar homes in South Bluff.

“She worked very actively for the Bluffwalk. There were some very powerful interests that didn’t want the Bluffwalk running by their condos,” Vergos said.

It was built.

Hooks was in her first term as council chair when Vergos was elected, running a council that had become majority Black in the 1991 election.

“With Janet as chairman, we got together and just made a pact that we were not going to vote down racial lines. And I don’t recall a single vote in those eight years was ever seven Black and six white,” Vergos said.

In 1996, council members were making $5,000 a year.

As chair, Hooks spearheaded an effort to ask voters to boost council pay to $20,000 a year in a referendum that stipulated the pay would increase to $30,000 in the following year.

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The voters approved it, a sign to Vergos to this day, he said, that voters appreciated the evenhanded way a very mixed council went about its business.

In the late 1990s, Hooks was the sponsor of the plan to build infrastructure for high-speed internet in Memphis.

The cash-strapped telecommunications venture — partly owned by MLGW — was put on the market in 2006 after almost eight straight years of operating losses.

“They ran out of money, but we invested a lot of money in that. So, the infrastructure for a high-speed internet is right here in Memphis. And now here comes the federal government, ready to give money to cities to build that and finish that project,” Stout-Mitchell said.

Last month, the city announced it was partnering with a French firm for a $750 million buildout of infrastructure to expand high-speed internet in the poorest parts of the city.

The city hopes to obtain federal infrastructure funding to help finance the build-out, but Mayor Jim Strickland said the majority of the cost will be borne by the French firm and its partners. 

“That ground level was established by her, and now Mayor Strickland wants to carry that out with federal funds. That is a testament to her vision,” Stout-Mitchell said.

Study first, talk later

Hooks’ confidence, Wharton said, was borne of her commitment to research the facts before she opened her mouth.

“Knowledge is power. It wasn’t, ‘My education is better than yours’ or ‘I’ve been here longer than you. It’s just that I have studied what I am discussing with you. You may disagree with me.’

“Everybody has a right to their own interpretation,” Wharton said, “but they do not have a right to their own facts.

“She had her facts. Someone may have had a different opinion about those facts. But she had the facts, and that was it.”

Hooks was raised in Nashville where her father was a well-known physician. She attended Fisk University there and earned her bachelor’s degree from Western Kentucky University.

She moved to Memphis after meeting her husband-to-be, Michael Hooks, also a Memphis politico, in Nashville.

They had two children, Kristin Nicole Hooks and Marcus Addison Hooks.

Sammons knew the couple well. He attended their wedding and many other social occasions, including a train trip six Memphis couples took to New Orleans to see Memphis beat Tulane in the early 1980s.

“Three of the couples were white; three were Black,” Sammons said.

“We’re friends. It didn’t have anything to do with race relations. Somebody said, ‘Well you know, Janet’s Black and Jack’s white.’ Really? I never noticed,” Sammons said.

“That wasn’t on our radar. We were friends and enjoying each other’s company. Those were good times, but Lord, have mercy, it has been 40 years ago.”

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But he remembers perfectly well that Michael was in charge of the tickets, and when they arrived, he didn’t have them. 

“Janet wore him out. ... But Michael is the master of charm. And somehow or other, he got us all in the stadium.”

Janet Hooks, Sammons said, was heads and shoulders above many of the civil servants at city hall when it came to intellect. 

“Janet did not suffer fools very well. That’s a building down there that has a disproportionate number of those folks. In any city hall, you’re going to find colorful characters,” he said.

She stood tirelessly by her husband, who once was beaten and left for dead in their driveway in a suspicious crime. He later served a prison sentence for accepting a bribe from undercover FBI agents in the Tennessee Waltz scandal in 2005.

He resigned his county commission seat the day his trial began.

‘We would talk and talk’

As a public servant, Stout-Mitchell long ago tired of unannounced visitors at her home. The rule did not apply to Janet Hooks, who was always welcome and sometimes arrived with a bottle of wine.

“I would laugh and say, ‘OK, we need therapy today,’” Stout-Mitchell said.

“She’d come in, and I’d pull out the cheese and crackers, and we would talk and talk. Before we knew it, we’d been talking for hours about everything.

“Janet was a public face in this community with the Hooks name, but a very domesticated, family person. She loved all her family. She looked forward every year to going on a trip with her two sisters. … She loved reading. She loved gardening. She loved decorating. She loved cooking. She loved dogs.”

Both women had blended families, often a topic of their heart- to-hearts.

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“It can be challenging, but you want it to work. So, you’re creative in things you do to try to make sure everybody gets to know each other and love each other,” Stout-Mitchell said.

Michael Hooks Jr. was Janet Hooks’ stepson from her husband’s previous relationship. Michael Hooks Jr.'s half-sister, former county commissioner Tami Sawyer, was an equal member of the family. The two have the same mother.

“She took everybody in; she loved them all. And it didn’t matter how they came. It mattered that they were at the table, and they were family,” Stout-Mitchell said.

‘Not a crybaby’

Hooks’ presence on the city council inspired countless young, Black citizens who watched her move with ease in the halls of power. 

Deidre Malone, elected to the county commission in 2002, was one.

“I was interested in politics and watched everything going on with city and county government. Janet always led with style, class and authority. She did her homework and asked the tough questions,” Malone said.

“I loved seeing her in action. You knew that when you went before the city council or a committee she chaired, you better be prepared.”

Lowery was another.

“She always had something logical to say about an issue. It was never emotional; it was always logical,” he said.

Later, Lowery was the one who gave Hooks the job of managing the city parks division. He had watched her maneuver in politics for years and trusted her innate judgment.

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Wharton kept her on as the division chief when voters chose him city mayor in the special election in 2009.

She stayed until Wharton lost to Strickland in 2015.

Part of her assignment was managing Memphis Animal Services shelter, a job most dog-devotees would find difficult.

“The thing about it is, she did it,” Wharton said. “She was not a crybaby. She buckled up. It was thankless job. You could never do anything right. But she never did boil over. She did her job the absolute best she could.”

Stout-Mitchell knew stray dogs and their advocates had a champion in Hooks. 

“Ooooo, they never have to worry because that girl, she is going to hurt you about her animals,” Stout-Mitchell said.

For as sophisticated as Hooks was, she had a down-home manner, Wharton said. He’d watched her in enough settings to know, including the grocery store, where he noticed it took Hooks as long to shop as it did him. Both were constantly stopped.

“People don’t come to you if they think that you are standoffish or if you hold yourself up to be higher than they are. You can just tell,” Wharton said.

The two shared the kinship of being from the state’s mid-section.

“She was very approachable and had a great sense of humor,” Wharton said. “Sometimes it was a bit dry — typical of Middle Tennessee — that the more expressive folks on this end of the state don’t always understand.”

Visitation will be 3 to 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 16, at Serenity Columbarium Chapel, 1626 Sycamore View Road, and 10 to 11 a.m. Tuesday at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 1720 Peabody Ave. The funeral service will follow at 11 a.m.