Lincoln also had a unique ability to craft arguments of raw power and breathtaking beauty—and to argue with the seamless logic of a great lawyer and the large heart of a great humanitarian. He produced unforgettable words that his mind sharpened into steel and his heart softened into an embrace.
Walking to the elevator, after listening to Mario Cuomo talk about his latest paean to Abraham Lincoln, I thought that practically everything the New York lawyer with too many vowels in his name said about the great Lincoln could easily apply to Cuomo himself.
I almost held the elevator to tell him. But when it arrived on the 42nd floor, I got in and pressed “L.” Mario Cuomo went back to continue writing his love letter to a tall, craggy man who died 138 years ago and left us only with a national holiday and some wisdom that endures in gorgeous words.
But as I walked across town to meet Nancy Curry, my mind kept drifting back to Mario Cuomo with the thought that maybe God is not yet quite finished with the former baseball player who grew up behind a grocery store in Queens, and who was to be found this day up in a Manhattan ivory tower trying to apply to the challenges of our age the words and wisdom of a president who came out of a log cabin in Illinois.
I had heard a few of Mario Cuomo’s recent stem-winding speeches myself, most recently at Iona College, where the president—a Christian Brother—called him “the greatest thinker of the twentieth century.” I’d also heard him at the Bedford Democratic Dinner, where Cuomo recited for a room of well-heeled WASPs the simple instruction of the ancient Hebrews: “You are all children of one God entitled to dignity and respect from one another” (Tzedakah) and “Repair the universe” (Tikkun Olam).
In the summer of 2003, Mario Cuomo and Lincoln worked the same territory.
4
Mario’s Legacy
I first learned of the awful malady that would eventually take him after three and a half years, while I was standing outside a posh hotel. I remember the night. The governor had just given a wonderful speech for our mutual friend Joe Spinelli at the St. Regis in Manhattan. I was sitting in the back of the ballroom, plotting my getaway, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Are you going to walk me out, O’Shaughnessy?”
“I’ve been doing it for thirty years; let’s go,” I said as we headed for the elevator.
Outside on 55th Street we were descended on by shy, modest, retiring Ariana Huffington, who was chatting up her latest book. When she finally yielded and we were alone on the sidewalk, the governor, out of earshot of the doormen, said, “That wasn’t good enough for Spinelli; I should have done much better for him.”
“Look, you could have read from the damn Manhattan phone book. You were terrific. The crowd loved it. Don’t give me that stuff. You were wonderful,” I assured him.
But as we stood there under the ornate porte cochere, I sensed something was bothering the great man beyond his tribute to Spinelli, which he alone found lacking. He then described a condition in which the body creates too much amyloid protein. “It’s not curable, but it’s manageable. Don’t worry,” he said as he got into a cab. He never told me—or anyone in his family—that the doctors had told him he had three years.
I think he knew right away the prognosis was not good.
My mind drifts back to an early-morning phone call on October 17, 2011, just a few days after the governor made a surprise appearance at the West Side penthouse of Eric Straus, scion of a great broadcasting family. His mother was Ellen Sulzberger Straus, who, with her husband, R. Peter Straus, ran WMCA back in the 1960s and ’70s. A cousin of Punch Sulzberger, publisher of the mighty New York Times, Ellen Straus was an attractive, formidable woman who made sure her station was deeply involved in the urban civic issues of the day. She also founded the first on-air “Call for Action” to assist listeners with neighborhood problems. She provided a platform for Barry Gray, “Long John” Nebel, Malachy McCourt, the legendary provocateur and Cuomo nemesis Bob Grant, and an articulate young Italian lawyer from Queens who was starting to make a name for himself in the city.
The occasion that October night was billed as something of a farewell “salute” to our mutual friend Joe Reilly on the occasion of his retirement from the New York State Broadcasters Association after thirty years.
The governor spoke with great affection about Reilly and greeted his successor David Donovan. He then thanked Eric Straus and his wife, Varinda. And as we took the long ride down the elevator from the penthouse, I noticed something in the governor’s eyes—a far-away look. As I put him in the waiting car, I wondered, I wondered. . . .
I found out a few days later via a phone call during which I made these notes about our conversation.
“Brother Bill, I tried to reach you over the weekend. I hope I was OK at the Straus thing. I was really unprepared when you put me on. The reason I went is because I’m looking back on a whole lot of situations in my life and I’m trying to ‘right’ them, because I don’t know how much time I have left. Ellen Straus, back in the WMCA days, gave me the first opportunity before a microphone, even before I became secretary of state; and I wanted to repay that by going not only for our pal Reilly but for Eric Straus, her son.
“And, Bill, if you know of any other situations where I could play some catch-up ball and make a few things ‘right,’ I hope you’ll let me know. I had to leave early and I hope they didn’t mind. I had had a very long day at the office and had to make three very important phone calls about that ridiculous, complicated [Bernard] Madoff matter.” (He had accepted a difficult assignment as something of an arbitrator or special master.)
“Governor, you were magnificent, and you don’t need me to tell you. Joe Reilly’s friend Lydia had tears in her voice and on her face when I went back up to the Straus apartment. They were just so damned grateful for your presence. And you don’t need to ‘make up’ for anything, with anyone. Sirio Maccioni has a great line he typically attributes to his own when he says, ‘Italians have a saying that if you wake up in the morning and nothing aches, you’re dead!’ You’re not going anywhere for a good long time. I can’t imagine a world without you and your magnificent heart and your strength. Nor can anyone else. I spoke with ‘The Extravagant One’—your daughter Maria—and she tells me your heart is strong. So stop feeling ‘few’ about things.”
“I would feel a lot better if you told me [that] Margaret—my daughter, ‘The Doctor’—told you that!”
“You will stick around long enough to see your son and heir with his left hand on a damn Bible and his right held aloft swearing to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution and all of us. You have led a generous, loving life and inspired millions who aren’t finished with you yet. You have lessons yet to teach. The universe is not yet complete. I love you, Mario.”
“I know, Brother Bill. Talk to you later.”
He knew. . . . Mario knew that God had pulled his file and that he was on the back nine headed for the clubhouse and was fast approaching the end of what he himself called “my already long life.”
We spoke often of the “diminishments” we all suffer as we get older. It’s a word appropriated from the Jesuit philosopher-paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a perfect word from a brilliant Jesuit. But forget diminishments. Mario Cuomo always said he wanted to go out sliding across home plate with an inside-the-park home run!
For me, there were no such aspirations. I always told Mario I aspired only to be the third-base coach, waving him home and yelling, “C’mon, Mario, you can make it!” Phil Donahue, some years ago, had a similar notion. He told an interviewer he wanted one day to be “a herald for Mario Cuomo.”
And so as if it were ordained, in the final years of a magnificent life, he battled that rare but nasty, draining condition called amyloidosis, which assaulted and finally smothered his powerful, loving, and generous heart. In the face of it he even tried experimental therapies and untested regimens as his physicians at Columbia-Presbyterian, with the constant, loving encouragement
of his daughters and Matilda, helped him fight the relentless and debilitating disease for which there is no cure. But by holding on until his son and heir Andrew Mark was sworn in for a second term as governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, the failed baseball player with too many vowels in his name, made it, with his last and final breath, safely across home plate as America cheered through tears, with respect and admiration for the greatest public orator of our time.
But he was more than that, a lot more. Like the title of that magnificent collection of his speeches published in 1994 by St. Martin’s Press reminds us, Mario was always about “more than words.”
The Boston Globe once called him “the great philosopher-statesman of the American nation.” In early December 2014, exactly one month before he died, the New York Observer, in a graceful editorial written by Ken Kurson, called Mario “a national treasure and a living legend of the rarest sort: He commands respect from friend and foe alike.” And Kenneth Woodward, a well-known writer on matters religious, said of Mario, “Everything which proceeds from his bright, fine mind glistens with the sweat of moral conviction.” I can’t do any better than that.
And so I’m absolutely convinced that hundreds of years from today, long after the dust of centuries has fallen over our cities, searchers and strugglers and scholars will discover anew some of his magnificent speeches and soaring pronouncements and realize that during our awful time, and in the midst of all our mistakes and confusion, there was . . . there was someone. Those gracefully crafted speeches from his mind and heart will surely last as long as anything conjured up by the great Churchill.
He maneuvered words the way Nelson Riddle arranged notes. And his phrasing, like Sinatra’s and the classy Mabel Mercer’s, was exquisite and impeccable.
Again was “Ah-gain.”
Japanese was “Jap-aneess.”
Opportunity was “Ah-pour-teeyune-it-ee.”
Governor was “Guh-ver-nor.”
Here’s a beautiful example of Mario’s way with words. It was written for one of his daughters forty-eight years ago, in July 1968, when he was thirty-five. He called it “A Picture with a Theme”:
Before us sit the green hills, behind and above one another. Some standing on shoulders, pretending at majesty.
All kinds of green; deep and dark, almost black green, traces of the recent gentle rain, the rain’s gentlest kiss on the earth’s cheek.
Up from behind the dark hills the sun rises with a massive gentility; quietly, inexorably, its blinding brilliance softened by the clouds between; its warmth lying easily over everything; gently erasing, as it comes, the rain drops before it, breathing its soft warm breath upon it all and with an invisible stroke polishing the hills and grass to a high brilliance, making the emerald hills glitter gemlike, bedecking the crown of each of the small lake’s numberless ripple waves with a tiny shining diamond.
And the beauty hums its own song—not a siren or a sullen song but a silent, soothing serenade.
Nearly without warning the clouds darken. Slowly at first, then feeding on their own advance, faster. Dark now and ugly. Black clouds, swollen and bloated. Mean brothers of the gentle rain, blowing and roaring their ugly ceremonial song. Then finally spitting out their howling distemper—battering at the quiet defenselessness, churning to distraction the quiet waters—flailing wildly with sheets of hard, stinging water—clubs and knives, roaring, crashing, howling, hating, furious.
And we sit huddled and clasped, backs to the fierce tempest. Frightened at first, but then remembering that it has come before—and will again—but always, after a while, it spends itself.
And the sun will return with its song.
Gently and inexorably.
And, if we are here, we will hear it again.
Even those you might expect to have significant disagreements with Mario Cuomo held him in high regard. I don’t know if I do greater injury to the reputation of Richard Nixon—or the governor’s—by recalling the many thoughtful exchanges they had with each other via handwritten notes and late-night telephone calls over the years. And George H.W. Bush would dispatch notes telling friends, “Make sure Mario Cuomo knows how much I appreciate the reference to a former president in his book.”
Famous for his magnificent speeches, the governor was also a masterful letter writer, and he took special delight in crafting persuasive letters of recommendation to colleges and universities. And hundreds of deserving men and women were almost instantly accepted as a result of glowing missives from Mario Cuomo to the presidents and admissions directors at Yale, Harvard, the Kennedy School of Government, MIT, and, of course, St. John’s University and Fordham. As he liked to say, “The best exercise for the heart is reaching down . . . to help someone up.”
BLESSED IS THE PEACEMAKER
Mario’s 1974 book, Forest Hills Diary, about his efforts as a mediator in that famous contretemps between a group of outraged citizens and the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay over the city’s plan to build 840 units of low-income housing (in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood), helped establish Mario, then a young Brooklyn lawyer, as a brilliant and skillful negotiator. Mario never lost the conciliatory touch, and over the years he was often called upon to act as a special master and court-appointed mediator in federal cases.
The governor also reluctantly played a critical peacemaking role by calming furies and resolving disputes in many difficult situations among his personal friends. Difficult and painful as it was, he always devoted the time, effort, and infinite patience to ameliorate the roiling difficulties and feuds buffeting some of his closest friends in their personal lives.
And he was very good at it. A parish priest or professional family counselor really had nothing on “Father” Cuomo when he would wade gingerly and skillfully into family rivalries amidst all the hurt feelings. And I’m not just referring to the times I sought his wisdom and counsel in my own confusion and chaotic life. In every telling, he was very adept at the mediation game—both professionally and on a deeply personal basis—because everyone trusted him as an honest broker and confidential repository of their feelings and interests.
He also wrote letters of support to all manner of co-op boards and condos and banks for his friends. There were many assistants over the years in the service of the great man, but only three personal and confidential secretaries: Pam Broughton, Mary Tragale, and Mary Porcelli, his dedicated last amanuensis, who remembers one letter to a parole board for a young man who had turned his life around. His father was a maintenance man who never forgot the governor’s kindness.
He also kept up a great correspondence over the years with a wide range of friends and acquaintances, mostly in the form of timely handwritten notes of consolation and encouragement when life had turned sad and difficult for the recipient. One of his favorite words to use in these situations was avanti!
GRANDPA MARIO
The governor, who did some of his best work alone at his desk in the early hours before daybreak, took pen to ink one November day in 1999 just before the commercial Christmas descended, to write this gorgeous missive to his grandchildren. It’s as lovely—and relevant—years later:
A New Millennium Letter to My Granddaughters
To My Granddaughters,
It will be a while before most of you are able to read these words and understand them, but what I want to tell you will be as true ten years from now as it is today and I want to be sure to write it all down while I have the opportunity.
Less than two months from now the world will celebrate the beginning of a new millennium. It’s a good time to remind ourselves how quickly the days and years pass, and to think about what we want to do with whatever time is left. One of the things I want to do is to share with you as much as I can of what I have learned along the way. That’s why I’m writing you this letter.
God can do anything. God could have delivered the world to us as a perfectly finished product, but He chose not to. Instead, He made it a work that changes from mom
ent-to-moment and day-to-day. In recent years the changes have been more rapid and dramatic. Every day there are exciting developments: new ways to learn things, to communicate with one another, to cure illnesses, to travel in space—even new ways to give birth to human beings.
More and more, people are using computers for fun and for business, and they’re replaced by more advanced models even before you have mastered the old ones.
Altogether the years ahead will create a dazzling new world of endless opportunity for you. But it will be a world that demands high skills, and if you don’t have them you will fall behind.
You know how important education was to your grandparents. You’ve heard from us all the stories about how our parents came to America from other parts of the world with little or no formal education. How they worked day and night just to be sure their children would have the learning they themselves were denied. Because they did, we were able to educate ourselves, keep up with the changes of our times and provide ourselves—and your parents—with a reasonably comfortable life. The changes that lie ahead for you will be more rapid and more substantial, making your need for education even greater than ours was.
My advice is that you start early, work hard at learning everything you can, and never stop. Knowledge is power, and with that power you will be able to earn a good living, have a nice place to live, enjoy the finest music, art, literature, and gather much that the world has to offer.
Mario Cuomo Page 7