William F. Cellini (born November 5, 1934) is an American businessman and convicted felon. He co-founded the New Frontier Companies, a group of Illinois-based real estate companies with headquarters in Chicago. He was previously the chairman of the NYSE-listed Argosy Gaming Company, was the treasurer of the Sangamon County Republican Party, and has held several public offices within the state of Illinois.
Cellini has served on the boards of Lakeside Bank of Chicago, the Illinois National Bank of Springfield, Roosevelt National Life Insurance Company, Illinois College Board of Trustees, and the Boys & Girls Club of Springfield, Illinois. He was the statewide chairman of the USO, and has appeared on numerous professional panels for the road-building industry. In 2007 he received the Bradley University Department of Engineering Outstanding Achievement Award. He is a member of the Lanphier High School Hall of Fame. From 1957 to 1988, Cellini served in the Illinois National Guard and retired under the rank of colonel after 31 years of service. He was convicted on federal corruption charges in 2011.
Early life and family
William Cellini was born in Springfield, Illinois. His family lived and worked in the blue-collar North End of the city. From the 1930s until the 1960s, the neighborhood where he lived was an enclave of Southern and Eastern European families. Most fathers on his block were coal miners or they worked in Springfield's factories. Cellini's father started out as a coal miner until he was 22 when he became a 37-year member of the Springfield Police Department. During Cellini's childhood, his mother took in laundry and worked as a waitress at their family's restaurant.
Cellini was president of his graduating grade school class, and he attended Lanphier High School in Springfield, graduating in 1952. He was the first member of his immediate family to attend college, earning a degree in physics from Illinois College in 1958. In 1960, he served on the faculty at Niantic-Harristown High School in Niantic, Illinois, where he taught physics, algebra and English. To help pay his way through college, Cellini played dances in Central Illinois with his own bands, The Hi-Fis and the Bill Cellini Orchestra. His first professional music job was in 1953.
Cellini married Julianna Cellini, a former reporter. They are the parents of a son and daughter.
Cellini plays piano and had a dance band that played throughout the Midwest from 1953 to 1969. He was elected chairman of the American Federation of Musicians Local 19.
Career
In 1959, Cellini ran for his first public office as police magistrate of Springfield but lost his bid for election. Cellini went on to lose another election for circuit clerk of Sangamon County, Illinois, but eventually won a seat on the Sangamon County Board of Supervisors in 1961. In 1963, he was elected to serve on the Springfield City Council as Commissioner of Public Works. At 28, he was the youngest man ever elected to the Springfield City Council and the youngest to head its public works department. He was re-elected in 1967 having no opposition.
In 1969, Governor Richard B. Ogilvie appointed William Cellini to be the Director of Public Works and Buildings for Illinois. In 1971, he was appointed Illinois' first Secretary of Transportation and directed several thousand employees while administering an annual budget of over a billion dollar dollars in public works programs.
In April 1972, the Illinois State Senate unanimously confirmed Cellini as the first secretary of the newly created Illinois Department of Transportation, putting him in charge of 10,000 employees and a budget of more than $1.5 billion. The election of Democrat Dan Walker as Governor the following year ended Cellini's career in state government.
Beginning in 1974, Cellini embarked on a long and successful career in the private sector. With his business partner Larry Haddad, he co-founded the New Frontier Companies, a full service real estate development firm, and in addition, Cellini became executive director of the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association.
Cellini remained politically active in the private sector serving as Treasurer of the Sangamon County Republican Central Committee in Springfield. In the mid-1970s, he was appointed by the President of the United States to serve on the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee and in 1976 at the age of 41, Cellini was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri where from the floor of the convention hall he seconded the nomination of Gerald R. Ford for President by giving a brief speech he wrote on the back of a campaign sign.