A packed crowd of well-wishers from as far as Sydney and Ulladulla packed into the former Queanbeyan Council chambers on Friday for its renaming as the Frank Pangallo Heritage Library.

Honoured throughout his long career, Frank Pangallo had spent 31 years on council, 17 of them as mayor.

In 1977 he received an MBE for his service to local government and the community and he was later named as a Cavaliere (knight) by the Italian Government.

It was good, Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council Mayor Kenrick Winchester said, to be able to say “nice words about Mayor Pangallo when he’s still alive and kicking.”

“He was not only mayor, but he was THE Mayor,” Mr. Winchester said, adding that he was not just the town’s first mayor from a non-Anglo background, but the only one.

In a morning ceremony moderator, former Queanbeyan breakfast radio host Brian Leonard, praised Pangallo’s fairness, honesty and integrity, enumerating his contributions to the community, including the establishment of a waste management centre, an indoor heated swimming pool and the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. He said he also left $75m in the council coffers at the end of his final term.

“Your vision was instrumental in shaping the character of Queanbeyan, so it is fitting this museum be named after you,” he told Pangallo.

Federal member for Monaro, Steve Whan, added his praise for what he called “a phenomenal record,” before Pangallo traced his history from the time he had been born in Italy in 1943.

In echoes of the Book They’re A Weird Mob, when first in Queanbeyan, he was baffled when a pharmacist friend told him he should “throw his hat into the ring“ for council elections — an unfamiliar phrase which worried him because he didn’t wear a hat.

But it was not long before he got used to the local lingo and a local punter told him: “You’re the first wog I ever voted for,” an acclamation he still wears proudly.

“I was never backward in saying what I thought,” he said, boasting that he had over the years acquired a reputation in the town for “pushing sh…t uphill.”

Pangallo had one parting word of advice for the present-day mayor and council: “Don’t introduce paid parking, that’s a great advantage Queanbeyan has over Canberra.”