The morning after the election we held a press conference at City Hall. Throughout election day we had received many rumors and complaints that white off-duty police officers were intimidating voters at the polls—asking things like “Do you have your driver’s license on you?” “Have you ever been arrested?” “Are you a citizen?”—and driving potential voters away. We did not have documentation, but we were getting similar calls from around the city, and I believed them. As word got out, people were very angry. We held the press conference to air these complaints and put them on the record, knowing that ours was only anecdotal evidence, that true or not the charges would be denied, and that the election had been decided nonetheless. In this country we don’t have coups and revolutions, we have elections. I said, “The people have spoken. . . .” But the next morning I looked at my bride and I said, “You know what, we’ve got less than sixty days to get out of Gracie Mansion, find a place to live, a means to pay the rent, and simultaneously transition an entire government in a responsible, professional way, lest they say, ‘You let those people in and see what they did.’”
Bill Lynch, Norman Steisel, and all the other deputy mayors and commissioners had the same problems as I. They had to pay rent and tuition and all the continuing expenses of living in New York. But, to a person, they were magnificent.
And I was lucky. Percy Sutton called and said, “You want to do a radio show with WLIB?” (His company owned the station.) I said, “Hell yeah.” I was on for two hours a week, live, and they paid me a lot of money. Then I heard from Vernon Jordan. “Ron Perelman’s gonna call,” he said. “He’ll ask to see you. See him.” I said, “Okay.” Perelman was a very wealthy New Yorker, a mover and shaker with a wide variety of business interests.
“He’ll make you an offer. Take it.”
“All right.”
Sure enough, Ron Perelman called, he came to Gracie Mansion, he brought his executive assistant Richard Halperin with him. We sat down and had coffee, and he offered me a position as a consultant with an office and a secretary and a seat on the board of directors of one of his boards, which I held for eight years.
Peter Johnson said, “You ought to teach at Columbia University.” I said, “I can’t teach at Columbia, I haven’t practiced law since 1975.” He said, “No, SIPA—the School of International Public Affairs. You’d be good at it. You’d speak and have guest lecturers.” Peter negotiated with the president of the university and the dean of the college and kept saying things like, “He’s a former mayor, he’s gotta have an office. He’s a former mayor, he’s gotta have. . . .” I have been there since 1994 and am presently teaching a course called “Practical Problems—Urban Politics.”
I had the good fortune of having a lot of friends. That’s what got me elected in the first place: friends. I did not come from money. I did not make a point of amassing a fortune; I preferred to serve. I would never have been able to survive if it had not been for these same friends.
There is also family.
I have always liked kids. They are literally and figuratively our future, and I would often prefer to spend time with children in their guilelessness than with some adults and their stealth. When I was in office, sometimes it got me in trouble with the press, who are always looking for more of a mayor’s time. One day we were in a big hurry, and my press secretary cut off a session with a pack of reporters by saying, “Sorry, he doesn’t have any more time, we’re late going to Brooklyn.”
“No, I’m sorry, we’re late.”
So we went rushing out, and there on the City Hall steps were some children, awed by the environment or just getting their first sense of the grandeur of government. I stopped to play with them.
The reporters got mad! How dare I play with kids when the fourth estate was not done with me? I guarantee you, I had more effect in those few minutes with the children—they will remember talking to the mayor—than the press did in the creation of that day’s reportage.
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My son, Davey, graduated from Case Western Reserve with a degree in communications and earned a fellowship to its graduate school for speech communication. As part of this fellowship, he won a position at the local NBC affiliate. Within a year, he returned to New York as the assistant to a producer at ABC Sports, a job that suited his interests perfectly. Davey worked at ABC for several years, and then briefly at Inner-City Communications as an assistant to Chairman Percy Sutton. When an ABC Sports colleague moved to CBS, Davey was offered a promotion and put on the fast track to a job as a network producer. At the age of twenty-eight, he was producing, a fine accomplishment considering the paucity of African American producers and directors at the network level, then and now. Davey tells me that while there are at present more African Americans on camera than ever before, people tend to be comfortable with the folks they know, and the number of minorities and women at the production, executive, and corporate levels of that business remains limited. Referrals are infrequent, and the avenues for opportunity remain quite narrow, he says; the ratio one sees on camera does not extend to the top decision-makers.
Davey has done well for himself. After working with promoter Bob Arum, contributing to Olympic and concert coverage, and producing college football and basketball with ESPN, he is now senior vice president and executive producer at Showtime and spending most of his working hours producing boxing telecasts for that cable network. I could not be more proud.
And we are playing tennis together! Davey did not have the access, opportunity, or inclination to play the sport when he was younger, but when he neared the age of forty, he picked it up as a means for the two of us to spend more time together and have a hobby in common. I thought this was a wonderful gesture, and I surely do enjoy playing with my son. I am told that my game is sound—big forehand, good strategist, move people around the court, very competitive, make line calls accurately and honestly. One day Davey finally beat me, and when we told his mother she said, “You let him win.” I did not, but I was happier than he was at the result!
I also fully believe that people demonstrate their true character during athletic endeavor. For example, Davey and I were on one side of the court, playing against a friend who will remain anonymous and someone younger still. We were talking a lot of smack, as is customary on these occasions—nothing vulgar, nothing overtly insulting, simply an informed estimation of one another’s athletic prowess and the relative likelihood of each other’s success . . . with examples—and it came to pass that my adversary really drilled me at net. I did not think anything of it, these things happen in the heat of competition, but apparently this close-range assault did not sit well with my son. He waited for the next opportunity and then banged a heavy forehand off the man’s hip. Got him good.
There is a tennis convention that demands, in times such as these—a ball hits the net cord and rolls to one’s advantage; a shot gets away from a player and strikes another—that the perpetrator acknowledge his benign intentions by raising his hand or racquet in a gesture of amity and saying “Sorry.” Davey said the word and made the gesture. When he turned toward the baseline, he saw me chuckling.
“Why are you laughing?!” he said.
Well, of course I knew he did it on purpose. “That’s just the first one!” I told him. “That’s just to get even. Now I have to hit him one more time!”
Before I could avail myself of the opportunity, Davey got him again. This time I was near tears; I couldn’t see I was laughing so hard and had to hide my face lest my opponent think I was laughing at him. (To be clear, I do not sanction or encourage retaliatory on-court violence or expressions of improper sportsmanship. But I was so amused that my loving son would feel the need to exact a pound of flesh on his father’s behalf . . . and then another!) I kept repeating under my breath, “That’s my Little Fella!”
The guy didn’t go near me the rest of the day.
Donna married Jay Hoggard, a talented jazz vibraphonist and composer, and worked as a visiting nurse and in a prenatal program for a community health center while their children, Jamal and Kalila, were young. My son-in-law Jay has played with vibraphone masters Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, Tito Puente, and Bobby Hutcherson; toured with Kenny Burrell, Dr. Billy Taylor, and many others; guested with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band; and is now an adjunct associate professor of music at Wesleyan University, where for fourteen years he has been director of the school’s jazz orchestra.
My daughter earned a degree from the Columbia University School of Nursing and did postpartum work on an obstetrics floor. As their children grew Donna decided to go back to school and get her master’s. I encouraged her to study at Wesleyan, where her husband had faculty privileges. “It’s free,” I reminded her.
“They don’t have what I want, Daddy,” she told me.
Donna earned her master’s in social work from the University of Connecticut and is now a clinical social worker. This is her third academic degree; Joyce and I tell her she collects them. She is a good person, she truly cares about people, and I am very proud of her.
And unlike her brother, she has contributed to the grandchildren pool! Her son Jamal was barely more than a toddler when I became mayor, but we sat him in the big chair behind my desk, and I have pleasant memories of him careening around Gracie Mansion. Her daughter Kalila, as an infant, bounced on Nelson Mandela’s knee! Both of my children remind me that I am much more doting as a grandfather than I was as a father. I suppose that is not unheard of. If either of my grandkids dropped a quarter into a sidewalk grate, I would gladly give them another.
Jamal and Kalila are both computer-literate. Jamal graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in communications. Kalila, a disciplined and organized student, graduated from Columbia University with a double major in political science and anthropology. She is interested in international relations and in possibly working for a nongovernmental organization or the State Department. Like her mother, she is bright enough to do whatever she sets her mind to. She is Granddaddy’s Cupcake.
My bride has tolerated me all these years and been at my side through thick and thin. We celebrated our sixtieth wedding anniversary on August 30, 2013. I say to Davey, “Your mother makes good children.” He tells me, “Well, Dad, you’re half right,” but he never says which half! Davey refers to Donna as “the Golden Child.” They love each other, and of course we are extremely proud of both of them. And thank God they love and truly care about their parents! I love children, and I love our children most of all.
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When I was privileged to serve New York City as mayor, not infrequently the press would surround me and fire questions. I would give what I felt was an appropriate response, and they would say, “You mean, in other words. . . .” My response was, “No, not in other words; in the words I’ve just given you.”
There will be no other words. These are the words.
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In 1889 there was a big flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Now this really happened, you can look it up in encyclopedias. The dam above the town gave way, and 20 million tons of water came down and more than two thousand people lost their lives. There was a wooden railroad trestle that had been constructed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Some people clung to it and thought they’d be saved, but debris piled up along the trestle, friction caused a fire, and they too perished. So this really was a tragedy of immense proportion, the Johnstown Flood.
A man survived this ordeal, lived to be a hundred and five. He was a good person, and when he went to heaven he found out there is a custom in heaven that when your turn comes you step forth and tell of a momentous event in your life. This man knew that he would be an instant celebrity in heaven; after all, he had survived the mighty Johnstown Flood.
Finally his turn came. He strode down the center aisle toward the lectern, confident in the knowledge that within a matter of seconds everyone in heaven would know who he was, for after all, he had survived the mighty Johnstown Flood, this tragedy of immense proportion. As the man passed an angel, the heavenly representative reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The angel said, “I think you should know that Noah is in the audience.”