Eugene Nickerson passed away last week. He was one of Long Island's great public figures and one of America's great federal judges.

There were his famous trials: Louima, Gotti, Gigante, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." But I'm writing about his nine years as Nassau County Executive. I can only scratch the surface and must leave out lots of juicy bits, because the room's not here. I won't be able to describe the man's personal class, and I'll leave out the politics. It doesn't matter which political party claimed him. It only matters that he was here and that he left some important things behind.

Gene Nickerson was the ideal frontperson for 1960s Nassau, reflecting a county that seemed young, fresh, idealistic and ambitious. He took his job seriously, was a tough boss and surrounded himself with a golden age of talented staffers (he once had his top officials take a speed-reading course to move things along faster).

The Nickerson administration was Nassau's "Great Society," with all the positive connotations that the term once held. Nickerson recognized that what once was a rural county peppered with little villages faced grown-up, daunting social problems. Housing, open space preservation, drug addiction, hunger and health care were approached head-on.

County parkland increased nearly five-fold. The skating rinks, the natural history museums and the Nassau Coliseum were Nickerson projects. Nassau was the first county in New York, and often in the nation, to do so many things.

Before anyone else, Nassau had a code of ethics, an Open Housing Law, a Human Rights Commission, civil service reform to reduce patronage waste, a model community relations program for the police department, a professional budget staff, even centralized purchasing. When Nickerson took office, the community college had a few hundred students. When he left, there were over 16,000. So much of it worked, and it was popular.

The increase in social spending and an avalanche of state mandates took their toll on the tax rate. Nickerson's last budget (for 1971) contained a major hike that left the county portion of residents' tax bill 82 percent higher than when he took office. But the contrast with our present situation is striking. Even accounting for inflation, the 2002 county budget is 30 percent higher than Nickerson's last, even though we have precisely half the number of county employees. And many county buildings, parks, programs and services are shadows of what they were.

Nickerson was one of America's first municipal executives to bring in efficiency and management experts to pare costs and increase productivity. County employees were treated well and morale was high.

He never could get some of the big things through. Charter reform and serious local government consolidation never passed. We didn't get the huge education-cultural-recreational center at Mitchel Field which would have given Nassau a real hub.

I met Judge Nickerson only once, at a dinner party several years ago. He named as his proudest county accomplishment the expansion of little Meadowbrook Hospital into what is now the Nassau University Medical Center health care system. Ironically and sadly, county officials are quietly considering dismembering what's left of the system and selling off pieces to private investors.

When he took office, every file and every piece of paper had been removed by his predecessor, and Nickerson complained that he hadn't even been left a pencil or pad. On his own last day in office nine years later, he left the files in place and on his way out he symbolically placed a legal pad and a pencil on the desk. Perhaps current elected officials might consider mounting a legal pad and a pencil somewhere in their office, as a reminder to leave something for those who will come next, to leave a legacy for the future. Gene Nickerson left us a lot of legacies.

Michael Miller was formerly Director of Public Affairs for the Town of North Hempstead. He is a public relations consultant.