So you say you wanna kick the South out of the Union, eh?

[Fawke Em]

16. I wouldn't want to lose my mayor, either.

Madeline Anne Rogero (born July 26, 1952) is the mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, elected in 2011. She is the first woman to hold the office and the first woman to be elected mayor in any of the Big Four cities (Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga) in Tennessee. Before entering politics, Rogero worked as a community development director, non-profit executive, urban and regional planner, and community volunteer. She served on the Knox County Commission from 1990 to 1998, and first ran for mayor in 2003, losing to the current Governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam.[1]

Early life

Rogero (the "g" is pronounced as an "h&quot was born in Jacksonville, Florida, one of three children of Gerald Rogero, a plumber, and Anita Ghioto, a former nun.[1] She spent her childhood in Eau Gallie, Florida, and later in Kettering, Ohio, where she attended Archbishop Alter High School.[1] Rogero attended Temple University and Ohio State University, before graduating with a degree in political science from Furman University in 1979.[1]

During the mid-1970s, Rogero and her first husband, Mark Pitt, worked as organizers for César Chávez's United Farm Workers, a labor union that sought better wages for migrant farm workers.[1][2][3][4] She and Pitt moved to Knoxville in 1980, where Pitt helped run the textile workers' union, Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers, now UNITE HERE.[1] Rogero obtained a master's degree from the University of Tennessee's Graduate School of Planning, having been inspired to enter the urban planning field while helping fight an attempt by a developer to install temporary trailers in her neighborhood in anticipation of the 1982 World's Fair.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Rogero