John A. Nevius (July 15, 1920 – April 23, 1993) was a member and chair of

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

's pre-

Home Rule Home rule is government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens. It is thus the power of a part (administrative division) of a state or an external dependent country to exercise such of the state's powers of governance wit ...

city council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counc ...

. Nevius was first appointed to the council by President

Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

from 1967 to 1969. In 1972, President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

appointed him as Chairman of the council. In 1974, the advent of home rule brought DC's first elected council and council chairman. Nevius, a self-described "

WASP A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

Republican," did not run for the position, and he was succeeded by

Sterling Tucker Sterling Tucker (December 21, 1923 – July 14, 2019) was an American civil and political rights activist and politician in Washington, D.C. He was the first chair of the Council of the District of Columbia and was an unsuccessful candidate for ma ...

. He ran for the first D.C. Delegate to Congress, losing to the Reverend Walter E. Fauntroy, in 1970. He was also a long time member of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration (WMATA) board of directors during construction of Washington's Metro system, including serving as chairman. Prior to his public life, Nevius graduated from Princeton University's class of 1942. He was a naval officer in the Pacific during WWII, and a lawyer afterwards. Married to Sheila Sheldon in 1950, Nevius had two children, Katherine and Theodore (Ted). He and his second wife Sally (née Cunningham) had one daughter, Kristina. Sally later gained some notoriety by co-founding the

Parents Music Resource Center The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was an American committee formed in 1985 with the stated goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to have violent, drug-related or sexual themes via labeling albums ...

together with

Tipper Gore Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Gore (née Aitcheson; born August 19, 1948) is an American social issues advocate, activist, photographer and author who was the second lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. She was married to Al Gore, the 45th vi ...

and several other "Washington wives." Nevius died at the age of 72 from complications due to lymphoma and ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).

Notes

1920 births 1993 deaths Lawyers from Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., Republicans 20th-century American lawyers {{WashingtonDC-politician-stub