Michael Harrington, A Sentimental Story

Annamaria on Monday

The results of last week's election outcomes has dominated political discussion, including lots of chat about the newly elected mayor of New York being a Democratic Socialist.  My mind and my heart are full of memories.  I am writing them down here.  Mostly, this about friendship with a brilliant and delightful person who was a founding member of the party New York's new mayor claims as his own.

You can find out alot about Michael here.  Below are clips of what I have been reliving over the past couple of months.

In 1973, my dear departed David and I moved to the West Village, so that my five-year-old daughter could attend PS3, a progressive NYC public elementary school.  As so often happens with families, when she met and became best friends with Alexander Harrington, David and I also became friends with his parents: Michael and Stephanie.

Image: NY Historical Society

Here's a thumbnail sketch of who they were.  Michael was well known as the author of the 1962 book The Other America, which is credited with inspiring Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.  He was a professor at Queens College.  Stephanie was a freelance writer whose articles were regularly published in The New Yorker, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Harper's, etc. etc, etc. All of that, and they were both warm and charming.  And on the same wave length politically with me and David.

When it came to our backgrounds, Michael and I joked that we "went to different schools together."  He in Missouri and I in New Jersey.  He was 13 years ahead of me, but like me he went to Catholic school in elementary, secondary, and college.  By the time we met, we were both atheists.  He once said to me, "We've left the Church, but we will be running along beside it for the rest of our lives."  He was so right!  I have heard echos of him voicing those words all my life.

The two families spent a lot of time in one another's company.  Play dates.  Dinners.  Time in park, with kids in the sandbox and parents on a bench, in discussion. We went to the country with the kids (our one, their two).The four of us never ran out of things to talk about.

For a couple of years we looked for a town house we could buy jointly and divide between us, but we could never find one that would divide evenly, except Bob Dylan's two houses side-by-side.  But we couldn't afford them!

Once, when I was working on a strategic planning project with a client in Nutley, NJ, I lost track of time.  Suddenly, it was too late to take the bus back to NYC in time to pick up my daughter from school. I knew Michael would be going to get Alexander, so I called him and asked if he could collect my daughter too, and then I would pick her up from his house asap.  "Wait a minute," my client said.  "Michael Harrington is going to pick up your kid from school for you?"  When I said Michael would, my client said that he would drive me to New York himself if I would introduce him to Michael. I didn't have to take the bus that day!  Michael signed my client's  copy of The Other America that he just happened to have on his office bookshelf.

As the children grew, they drifted apart. Alas, all too young, Michael became very sick.  Stephanie and he moved away to a place where it would be easier to care for him.

Stephanie went, also too young.  And David too. Over the years, I've thought about our friendship from time to time, as one does. But then, starting with this year's Democratic mayoral primary, the words Democratic Socialist kept coming up in connection with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.  And there they are again!  My Friends of long ago.  In all their loveliness.