But the high schoolers, uncomfortable in their seats as the hot sun played down on their stiff, starched uniforms, were probably not the best audience. When Mario returned to Albany, he called for a critique. “Well, first of all, never follow Ron Silver to the microphone again!” he was told. But then the governor said, “Did you see the skinny kid with the tuba, the only one who kept his hat on? I think he got it. I could tell by his eyes—he got it.”
I often wonder if that young man, now grown to adulthood, will remember the Westchester afternoon he sat there with the weight of the largest and lowest-pitched instrument of the brass family pressing on his lap as a graceful man named Mario Cuomo spoke to him and his bandmates about protecting some river for future generations.
INSPIRING THE YOUNG?
There was one young man who definitely got it. Mario always took a keen interest in the sons and daughters of his friends. One November day in 1988, my own young son Matthew Thayer O’Shaughnessy volunteered to accompany me on a barnstorming tour with the governor, going with us from Queens out to the end of Long Island to drum up support for a controversial bond issue to rebuild roads and bridges. An entire trainful of VIPs, officeholders, and union leaders were aboard the special train as it paused for whistle-stop rallies in Jamaica, Hicksville, and Huntington before heading out to the Hamptons. As the train chugged into Suffolk County I started looking for Matthew. And after a nervous few minutes I found him chatting it up with the governor. Later that night Matthew asked me to get him some books by “a guy named Bacon . . . Francis Bacon. The governor said I should read his essays. He was a philosopher, statesman, and a scientist too, Dad.”
Mario also took great pleasure in mentoring young staffers like Andrew Stengel. “I thought I was destined for a career in politics, and one day the Gov gave me some advice that changed my life. He sat me down and said: ‘Andrew, you can do more than this. First go to law school; and second: marry a rich girl!’ ” Young Stengel took Mario’s advice about law school. And accompanied by his trusty law degree he served with distinction as a prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.’s Office and is now in private practice. He’s still looking for a rich girl.
STAN LUNDINE
To replace our late Westchester neighbor Alfred B. DelBello as lieutenant governor in 1986, Mario chose Stan Lundine, an obscure congressman who had been mayor of Jamestown. Lundine entered the fray willingly, but he was clearly out of his comfort zone in a statewide race. So Mario, in effect, took over as Lundine’s “campaign manager,” taking the upstater with the twangy, nasal western New York voice and inflection by the hand and introducing him to the power brokers as “my lieutenant governor.”
To introduce Lundine to members of the prominent and influential Jewish community in the New York area, the governor enlisted the help of his dear friend Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz, the Conservative rabbi with a national reputation who headed the huge Hillcrest Jewish Center in Queens. The rabbi promised to introduce Lundine to some of his friends.
When the governor called the rabbi for a “how did it go?” report, he was told, “Mario, he’s a very nice man, but he doesn’t quite come across in front of my crowd.”
Mario thought for a moment and said to his dear friend, “Rabbi, here’s what we do—the next time, introduce him as ‘my friend Lun-deen, Lun-deen,’ as in Levine, Levine!” The governor and his rabbi had a great, good laugh!
And apparently it worked. The soft-spoken Lundine was elected as Mario’s running mate in 1986 and again in 1990 and served with distinction as lieutenant governor of New York for eight years.
Mario’s friend Rabbi Mowshowitz passed away in 1992. At a standing-room-only service for the beloved Jewish leader, Mario said, “My rabbi was a great spiritual leader, an eloquent preacher whose greatest sermon was his life. He was a man of God too sensible to ignore the world and too wise to embrace it as the only reality.”
Stan Lundine was on a Buffalo radio station a few days after Mario died and said, “It caught me by surprise when he chose me to run for lieutenant governor. I never thought I had a chance because I’d backed Ed Koch, with whom I’d served in the Congress, in the primary. One thing I remember so well about the governor is his capacity for work. All my life I had never encountered anyone who worked as hard and diligently and with such devotion.”
Although the governor was always drawn to the great, overarching cosmic issues, he was also, as Lundine indicated, very astute and diligent in dealing with all those nitty-gritty, recurring Earth-bound matters that face our state’s chief executives: homelessness, public safety, health care, addiction, criminal justice, judicial matters, the courts, the arts, education, immigration, transportation, infrastructure, labor problems, energy, the economy. The list is long and daunting. Our workaholic governor, shaped by the example of his mother and father, found time for all of it. In other words, his public life wasn’t all poetry. In truth, Mario Cuomo, he of great vision, brilliant mind, and gifted tongue, was also a hands-on administrative and policy wonk. I hate to admit it, but he was something of a perfectionist nerd who did sweat the small stuff, as anybody who worked for him will confirm. He applied himself with great dedication and a laser-like focus on domestic pocketbook issues.
The governor had considerable admiration for the Bush family. And vice versa. President George H.W. Bush always made a point to acknowledge any gracious reference or comment by Mario in one of his books or speeches. And I vividly recall a summer meeting of the New York State Broadcasters Association at the fabled Gideon Putnam, an historic old hotel in Saratoga Springs. William “Billy” Bush, who spent the summer with us as a news intern at our Westchester community station, “covered” the upstate confab, with broadcasters from all over the state, at which the governor was the featured speaker. After Mario’s formal remarks, he opened it up for a Q&A session. The very first question came from the attractive young man in the back of the room: “Mr. Governor, my name is William ‘Billy’ Bush. I am an associate of your friend Mr. O’Shaughnessy. I’d like to ask you why must it always be ‘us’ against ‘them’ in the public discourse?” The room hushed and waited for Mario’s response to the excellent philosophical question, which was right over the heart of the plate for Mario Cuomo. “Well, I can tell from the elegance of your question that you are indeed a Bush. . . .” And then Mario hit it out of the park with a beautiful ten-minute reply.
After the conference was over, I received a call in my car going down the Hudson River Valley. “Who was that attractive young man; is he really a Bush?” Mario asked. When I explained that Billy was the son of Jonathan Bush, Mario said, “Oh, I like his father very much. He’s the one with the great personality, the one all the other Bushes wish they were like.”
The governor and Jonathan Bush also had a lively correspondence about some of the great issues of the day. I received a copy of one such letter from the governor with a note: “I like him a lot.”
(Jonathan Bush is a brother of President George H.W. Bush and an uncle of President George W. Bush. His father, of course, was Prescott Bush, U.S. senator from Connecticut. Jonathan’s son Billy is today a television star and host of Inside Edition. And he may be on track for even greater things. Jim Griffin, the uber–talent agent, once proclaimed that Billy Bush “will be the next Johnny Carson.” He is, even now, slated to take over the last hour of the Today show.)
LIKENESS
For years Mario Cuomo resisted the entreaties and pleas from the archivists of the State Capitol to sit for an official portrait that would take its rightful place among the fifty-one others in the great Hall of Governors. He found the whole exercise “pretentious.” It took a while and a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering by his family, but he was finally persuaded to give at least nodding agreement that the well-known portrait painter Simmie Knox could do a likeness using photographs. Mr. Knox was the first African American to have painted a presidential portrait. He did both Bill’s and Hillary Clinton’s White House portraits.
At t
he unveiling, at which Mario was careful to show neither pride nor satisfaction nor pleasure, Governor Andrew Cuomo stole the show with his comment that trying to persuade his father in the matter was “above my pay grade.” He assured his father he had “no knowledge” of the long-overdue gesture. “I thought they were giving him a watch,” said Mario Cuomo’s son and heir. Matilda knew better. And so did Mario.
RADIO DAYS
Among his many enthusiasms over the years was our own medium of radio. He took to the airwaves often. For many years he jousted on the air with Fred Dicker, the dean of the Albany press corps, and with Albany’s brilliant Alan Chartock on a weekly program carried on public stations all over the Northeast; and on countless occasions he would favor our own WVOX in Westchester, during which he would have to submit to my own off-the-wall questions on life issues as well as current political and governmental developments and concerns. During these “lemon squeezes” we ranged far and wide, and transcripts of many of these memorable broadcasts appear in my four previous anthologies published by Fordham University Press.
In 1995, the Sony conglomerate tried to take Mario coast-to-coast and even worldwide via a Saturday talk show envisioned as something of a counterbalance to all the right-wing chatter. They even built a network around him: the SW Network. Sony spent big bucks on the effort, building a huge amphitheater-style studio at their corporate headquarters on Madison Avenue. But this noble experiment to provide a national platform and forum for the governor’s genius was short-lived. Mario was great at answering questions and dazzling in the give-and-take part of it. But he was not at all comfortable with small-talk and meaningless chit-chat. Example: “How are you, Governor?” “Not bad for an old guy.” And that was it. Idle, vacuous, casual, worthless dialogue was just not his thing. The Sony experiment lasted for about thirteen weeks.
But our WVOX broadcasts went on for many years after that. We would call the great man and put him on the radio live whenever one of the great issues of the day required his wisdom and interpretation. And in all those years—several decades, in fact—he never ducked or finessed a call from me or mine. Often, if we didn’t initiate the call, Mario would ring us up! We always kept a studio “hot” for those calls. I mean, we talked about everything. Our audience loved it. And loved him.
AN UNLIKELY POLITICIAN
Leonard Riggio, the dynamic and colorful impresario of Barnes & Noble, who is still very close to the Cuomo family and has great expectations for Andrew’s ambitions, was among those admirers who couldn’t quite define or label Mario’s unique genius. “Sometimes I think he’s more like a monk than a politician,” said the book baron. “Mario was very uncomfortable shaking the money tree, and he hated the rubber-chicken circuit.”
REMEMBERING JAVITS
At seventy-eight, I’m at an age where everything reminds me of something. Like, for instance, the recent New York Auto Show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. That fabled venue might today be known by a different name, but for Mario Cuomo.
One day the phone rang at the radio station. “Brother Bill, about that new convention center. Some people in my office want to name it for Sol Chick Chaiken: The Sol Chick Chaiken Convention Center. How does that sound to you?”
“Well, sir, forgive me, but who the hell is Sol Chick Chaiken?”
Mario replied, “You see, O’Shaughnessy, I didn’t think a Republican from Westchester would have a clue. He’s quite a great man: president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and a power in the AFL-CIO!”
“Well, with all due respect to you and the geniuses in your office, it just doesn’t work. Somebody comes to New York on convention and says he’s going to meet you at the Sol Chick Chaiken Center—it just doesn’t sound quite right . . . .”
And then the governor got around to the real purpose of the call: “I agree with you. How about if we named it for Senator Jack Javits. You should like that; he’s a Republican.”
“That’s a sensational idea! The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center! Go for it.”
“Well, there’s just one problem. We need Jack’s permission, and not one of the guys in my office is brave enough to call Marian, his wife.” (Marian Borris Javits was the senator’s formidable and outspoken wife, fiercely devoted to Jack Javits.) “They’re afraid she’ll take over and try to fire the architect or rip up the carpet. Even my faithful Fabian [Palomino] won’t call her.”
It took me a while, but I finally got the message. “I’ll call her.”
Mrs. Javits could not have been nicer. She called back within twenty minutes. “A lot of folks have wanted to name things for Jack. He’s turned them all down. But I just went into his bedroom [the great liberal lion was ill, in the late stages of ALS—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease]. Jack thinks this one would ‘fit.’ He thanks Mario for the gesture.”
A few weeks later Senator Jacob K. Javits, father of the War Powers Act and one of the brightest men to ever serve in the Senate, passed into history—with a new convention center named after him.
Speaking of naming rights—or “rites”—there was yet another call to the radio station from the executive chamber in about 1993. I remember it all too well. “We want to name something for your friend Governor Malcolm Wilson.” Wilson, a great orator, served in New York government longer than anyone, first as an assemblyman from Yonkers, then as lieutenant governor under Nelson Rockefeller, and finally as the fiftieth governor, filling Rocky’s unexpired term for an entire year in 1974 after Nelson resigned. “Our people want to attach his name to the Liberty Scholarship Program, the first state-run effort to cover all college costs for low-income students. It was really thought of during Malcolm’s time. Or they would like to do a vast tract of land in the Adirondacks in his honor.”
Just then Nancy Curry, who also admired and loved Governor Wilson, interjected: “Why don’t you name something ‘important’ for him, like a bridge—something like the Tappan Zee Bridge.”
“That’s not a bad idea, Nancy. Let me see if it will work.” And so in 1994 the name of Malcolm Wilson was added to the bridge’s name upon the twentieth anniversary of his leaving the governor’s office, though to this day it is almost never used when the bridge is spoken of colloquially. I, however, always make it a point to refer to the span, soon to be replaced, as the Malcolm Wilson Tappan Zee Bridge. And as memory has it, at the dedication in Tarrytown, as the huge green sign with white lettering was unveiled for all the dignitaries there assembled on the Westchester side of the bridge, it was discovered that the name “Malcolm” was misspelled “Malcom.” Everyone had a great, good laugh. Especially Mario and Malcolm.
Speaking of naming, I recall a fitting line written by Sir Terry Pratchett: “A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.” From time to time, I would ask Mario what he would like named for him, because Malcolm Wilson, Ed Koch, Hamilton Fish, and Bobby Kennedy had their bridges and Hughie Carey had the Midtown Tunnel! And always the answer was the same: “Just put my name on a stickball ‘field’ in some alleyway in Queens. That’ll be fitting enough. In fact, it’s more than I deserve.”
He talked often about returning to one’s roots. In his writings and musings, Mario admired and often glorified intellectual strivers and truth seekers in matters religious and philosophical, but he also one day dispensed a none-too-subtle caution to those eager to bail out of the old neighborhoods in their efforts to escape urban blight, crime, and a deteriorating quality of life: “I know these people. I’ve seen them. I’ve talked to them. They leave Brooklyn and move over to Queens. Then they do a little better and settle in Nassau County, which gets a little ‘crowded,’ and they’re off again to Suffolk County and a long commute. Next thing you know, they’re doing well at work and they’re in the Hamptons, thinking they’ve got it made. But they wake up one morning surrounded by traffic jams and rich weekenders from the city. So they move to Montauk. And they’re faced with the sea! They don’t know what do. And then it o
ccurs to them: ‘Maybe, just maybe, the old neighborhood wasn’t so bad after all! I think I’ll go back and try to build it up and return to my roots and my friends and where I came from.’ And, incidentally, they find, after their frantic upwardly mobile odyssey, that they’re not alone. . . .”
For this reason among others he openly admired the magnificent actor-activist Ossie Davis and his spectacular wife, Ruby Dee, who lived all their lives in New Rochelle, not far from where they had family in Mount Vernon in southern Westchester. “They’re so successful they could easily live in some upscale, tony place like Greenwich or Bronxville or Scarsdale or Bedford. But they stay close to their roots and their friends.”
And then, unable to resist a playful jab at me: “You’re doing pretty good; why don’t you move to Pound Ridge and become a Congregationalist?”
MARIO’S SENSE OF HUMOR
For all his profound, thought-provoking pronouncements at the lectern, Mario was also possessed of a marvelous sense of humor. Here are some examples.
In 1988 Mario told this story to a room full of Irishmen at a Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick dinner:
“The Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick want you to speak, Governor,” Michael Patrick Joseph Finnerty, my budget director, told me, “Because although you’re Italian you personally embody many of the outstanding qualities associated with Irish American politicians.
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