Thursday, April 22, 2010
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Sheriff Edward P. Nemeth
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
BOARDMAN
Former three-term Sheriff Edward P. Nemeth, who presided over the opening of the Mahoning County Justice Center during his final year in office, died of cancer at 5:35 p.m. Wednesday in Hospice House in North Lima.
Nemeth, who resided in Boardman, was 62.
The opening of the new $32 million electronically controlled county justice center, which tripled the county’s jail capacity, was the crown jewel in Nemeth’s law-enforcement career.
“He was the first sheriff to bring true professionalism to the office and brought the department from an organization of 65 employees to 265 by the time he left office,” said Maj. James Lewandowski of the sheriff’s office.
“He built two new jails and negotiated the first labor contract with the department’s employees,” Lewandowski said, referring to the minimum-security jail on Commerce Street, which opened in 1994, and the main Fifth Avenue justice center, which opened in March 1996.
“As a lieutenant in the department, he was a charter member and organizer and, in fact was the first president, bringing the FOP Lodge into the sheriff’s department” and improving the pay and benefits of deputies, Lewandowski said.
He was a graduate of Ursuline High School and Youngstown State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.
The future sheriff, a son of city detective Emil Nemeth, was a security guard at Wilkoff Steel in Youngstown before becoming a deputy sheriff in March 1970.
In his first year with the sheriff’s office, he received the Youngstown Area Jaycees’ Law Enforcement Officer of the Year Award for his handling of an attempted jail break by four men, during which the would-be escapees jumped him and beat him over the head with a broomstick.
In the mid-1970s, he was a loss-prevention supervisor at General Motors in Oklahoma before returning to the Mahoning Valley and becoming risk manager for Schwebel Baking Co.
He was elected to his first term as sheriff in 1984, succeeding Sheriff James A. Traficant Jr., who was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives that year. Traficant went on to serve 171/2 years in Congress before being convicted of racketeering and tax crimes and landing in federal prison for eight years.
Nemeth pledged to end petty politics and favoritism in the sheriff’s department during the campaign that led to his first being elected as the county’s chief law- enforcement officer.
In 1988, he defeated Floyd Crater Jr. in the Democratic primary and Republican challenger Terrence Shidel in the general election.
In 1992, he defeated Phil Chance in the Democratic primary, but four years later, Chance defeated him by a mere 357 votes in a bitter primary campaign that coincided with the opening of the new justice center.
Chance didn’t get to complete his term after a jury convicted him of racketeering in July 1999 and he was sentenced to six years in federal prison.
In his later years, Nemeth owned and operated a computer and Internet service company and lost a close Democratic primary in March 2004 to the present sheriff, Randall A. Wellington.
Funeral arrangements are pending at Cunningham-Becker Funeral Home in Poland. A funeral Mass will be in St. Columba Cathedral.