For a dozen years, the diminutive dynamo, Fiorello La Guardia, ruled New York City as a progressive Republican mayor. Nicknamed “the Little Flower,” La Guardia bestrode the city like a colossus, making war on the Tammany Hall political machine, and providing an example of honest governance for cities all over the country.

Fiorello Raffaele Enrico La Guardia was born in Greenwich Village to Italian immigrants on December 11, 1882.

La Guardia’s father served in the U.S. Army, but his various assignments took him—and the family—throughout the United States and Europe. Later, the younger La Guardia—who had a gift for languages—got minor diplomatic posts in Hungary and Croatia, returned to the United States to study law at NYU-refined his knack for politics—and eventually—picked up a job in the office of the New York Attorney General.

In 1916—his second attempt—La Guardia won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives but spent much of his term training pilots in Europe and flying bombing missions against Austria. He was re-elected but resigned; then in 1919 he ran—successfully—for President of the New York City Board of Alderman; two years later he was defeated in his first try for mayor. Barely pausing to take a breath, La Guardia switched—and won—in a different New York district and remained there for more than a decade. He was a left-wing Republican who eventually declared himself a socialist, but eventually—though never comfortably—returned to the GOP fold. In 1929, he campaigned for mayor a second time, but lost; finally, in 1933, the stars aligned, and he ascended to the office he had coveted for so long.

Barely five feet tall, La Guardia seemed an unlikely political giant, but his three terms have passed into New York legend. The New York Times would later say of him: “Mayor La Guardia attempted—and even his opponents credited the honesty of his efforts—to give the city an honest administration, to eliminate graft and to rid the city payrolls of unneeded employees. Never did Mayor La Guardia swerve in his announced determination to make New York a better place in which to live.”

La Guardia was far too left wing for most Republicans, but his energy and intelligence enabled him to stitch together a winning political coalition. His position was strengthened by his unwavering support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal; a grateful Roosevelt steered massive amounts of federal aid to the Big Apple. As mayor, La Guardia was constantly on the move, traversing his vast city and traveling to Washington to serve as director of the Office of Civilian Defense. It always seemed that no single job, however weighty and responsible, was enough for the Little Flower.

Eventually, he was stretched too thin, and his popularity suffered. America’s entry into World War II ended the Depression and diverted federal funds to a vast military buildup away from New York City. Absent the federal largesse to which he had become accustomed, La Guardia’s big-spending approach to politics became unsustainable. He declined to run for a fourth term and temporarily returned to private life in 1946.

But the career of La Guardia did not end with his mayoralty. Like his fellow Republican Herbert Hoover had before him, he took the lead in helping to feed millions of Europeans threatened by famine. Appointed Director General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) by President Harry Truman in 1946, he crisscrossed the continent, meeting foreign leaders and directing food aid to nations ravaged by World War II. But, impatient with the lack of American and British support for the effort, he quit after nine months.

The Little Flower died of cancer on September 20, 1947, at the age of 64. According to the New York Times, “A city of which he was as much a part as any of its public buildings awoke to find the little firebrand dead. Its people had laughed with him and at him, they had been entertained by his antics and they had been sobered by his warnings, and they found it difficult to believe that the voice he had raised in their behalf in the legislative halls of city and nation, on street corners and over the radio, was stilled forever.”

La Guardia was laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, remaining forever a part of the city he had served for so long. Of all the posthumous tributes, the most gratifying would probably have been the renaming of New York Municipal Airport—(which he helped found)—after him.

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Michael F. Bishop, a writer and historian, is the former executive director of the International Churchill Society and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.