This Thursday, a whole slew of programs are planned as part of Rock Island's Summerfest celebration, to make note of the premiere of the Steven Spielberg/Dreamworks movie ``Road To Perdition.''

The movie is based on a book written by local author Max Collins, loosely based on the life of notorious Rock Island gangster John Looney.

Mr. Looney controlled Rock Island with an iron fist during the teens and early 1920s, as you will find out from the historical series appearing this week in The Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus. Gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, stolen autos, extortion and libel all produced income for Mr. Looney and his gang of thugs.

He was able to control the city because, for at least a portion of the time he was in power, he had the mayor and police chief under his control as well.

The Looney years created a reputation that Rock Island was sort of the dark, seamy, deadly, underbelly of the Quad-Cities. Rock Island's reputation, rooted in the Looney years, continued for decades.

If you had told me when I arrived here in the late 1980s, that Rock Island would some day be celebrating an event linked to this unseemly past, I would have been writing in this space that such a celebration was wrong. Warranted or not, Rock Island was still battling a reputation for being a drunk and disorderly sin capital.

But shortly thereafter Mayor Mark Schwiebert, Dan Carmody, and others started promoting the concept of redeveloping downtown Rock Island as an arts and entertainment district. In the early 1990s The District was born -- promoting the downtown as the place people go to have fun.

Today they have taken what's good about music, liquor, gambling, night life and fun. They've mixed in the arts, great festivals, historic renovation, and a safe and festive atmosphere. Many of the old landmark dives have been either torn down or destroyed by fire.

The result is a downtown that doesn't ignore the good things about Rock Island's past, but has built on it to create the downtown of the future.

As you read the series of articles in this week's papers, you'll come to understand what a really bad, bad man John Looney was. That history will never change. It is important at this time to recall the Looney history so people will understand how very, very different it is from the Hollywood version.

``Road to Perdition'' has very little to do with John Looney. The celebrations planned in conjunction with the movie don't celebrate Mr. Looney's acts. They don't attempt to resurrect and honor the city's lurid past either.

What will happen is that Rock Island will attempt to capitalized on the 15 minutes of fame that this highly acclaimed movie provides.

We should applaud the accomplishments of author Max Collins, who also happens to be a force behind the Midwest Writing Center which recently opened in The District.

We should realize that the opening of ``The Road to Perdition'' is nothing more than another reason to party in The District.

We should also prepare to embrace and encourage any amount of tourism interest this movie might generate for Rock Island and the Quad-Cities. Beyond that, John Looney be damned.

Roger Ruthhart is managing editor of The Rock Island Argus.