Town Topics

Donna Evers •

It’s hard to believe, but true. When Grover Cleveland was president, his young wife used to pick him up at the White House in a horse-drawn carriage and drive him home to their summer getaway in a leafy rural area that is now Cleveland Park. No Secret Service for President Cleveland, no bullet proof glass, no escort carriages leading or trailing the “presidential carriage.” As they drove home, they would pause to watch the girls at the National Cathedral School playing tennis.

Theirs was the only presidential wedding to ever take place in the White House, and even more unusual, the beautiful bride was 28 years younger than the bachelor president. When asked why he waited so long to marry, Cleveland said he had to wait for Frances Folsom to grow up.

As young as she was, Frances was the perfect First lady. She thrilled Washington society by observing the social season with exquisite parties and receptions. Besides, she was an accomplished pianist and photographer, and she read Latin and spoke German and French. Best of all, her political instincts were first rate. Aware that many women were entering the work force, Frances instituted Saturday Open Houses at the executive mansion, so the working women could drop by on their day off and shake hands with the wife of the President.

Like a lot of other people, the President and his wife felt they needed a place to escape the heat of Washington summers. They found respite in a 27-acre stone colonial in what is now the 3500 block of Newark Street. They transformed the home into a fairy-tale Victorian with double-decker porches and a roofline full of turrets, towers and gables. Frances named the home “Oakview” but the reporters called it “Red Top”, because they kept at a distance from the house and all they could spot through the trees were the fanciful red roofs. The house is gone now, but the neighborhood that kept the Cleveland’s name still sports an enviable supply of elaborate Victorian houses.

It’s not unusual that a First lady as pretty as Frances Folsom Cleveland was the darling of the press, whether she wanted the attention or not. Reporters referred to her as “Frankie”, a name she disliked as much as Jacqueline Kennedy was said to dislike “Jackie”. Worse yet, her photogenic face appeared on soap and cosmetic products. A political opponent of Cleveland’s once said, “I detest him so much, I don’t even think his wife is beautiful.” But he was in the minority.

While we know that Grover Cleveland was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms, history books don’t tell us about the prescience of the President’s wife. When they were leaving the White House after Cleveland lost his bid for a second term, Frances said her goodbyes to the servants, but told them to take good care of everything, because they would be back in four years. And they were.

Robert Sacheli •

The June 1970 memo that records Air Force General Peter R. DeLonga’s first staff meeting as Deputy Chief of Staff, Materiel at Tan Son Nhut Airfield in the Republic of Vietnam includes a section that clearly sets out the expectations of the new leader.

“The General will be rough and questioning,” it begins. “He will play the ‘Devil’s Advocate.’ Though things will get hot he will not hold a grudge. He expects the truth and facts — no B.S. He wants a straight YES or NO.”

The no-nonsense tone continues through more admonitions (“Be sure your brain is in gear before you activate your mouth” is one) and concludes with, “when I ask something to be done I mean NOW.”

The memo provides a snapshot of a dedicated, demanding but fair officer with high standards, and that’s how his son Steven DeLonga remembers his father.

“Military was first in his mind,” he recalls, although, he adds, “he was one of the few military officers who did not speak of his past successes.”

In DeLonga’s case, those successes were notable. With a distinguished career that spans the China-Burma-India theatre of operations in World War II, the Berlin Airlift, Vietnam, and beyond, Peter R. DeLonga achieved the rank of major general and was the Deputy Inspector General of the Air Force. In that post he provided the Secretary of the Air Force and chief of staff evaluations of the effectiveness of Air Force units and monitored worldwide safety policies and programs. He also directed the counterintelligence program and was responsible for security policy and criminal investigation within the Air Force.

A roster of decorations — including two Air Force Crosses, the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters and Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters, among others — attests to Major General DeLonga’s career achievements.

Despite his father’s professional responsibilities, Steven DeLonga remembers “We’d have dinner every night at six.” At those dinner tables, no matter where in the world the family was stationed, he learned valuable life lessons.

“My father would put a quarter on the table and ask us what it was,” DeLonga says. The object was to think before answering. “Once you made a statement,” according to his father, “you made sure it’s 100 percent correct. Your credibility is on the line, and you may never be able to get it back.”

That emphasis on integrity and honor was the foundation of his father’s philosophy, and part of the code of what DeLonga describes as “a John Wayne era when your handshake was your bond. It was a different world from what we have today.”

DeLonga closely observed how his father treated the people under his command. “My dad was known as an enlisted man’s general,” who believed they were the backbone of the Air Force. “He was very considerate” of those men.

Steven DeLonga still marvels at his 24-year-old father’s resourcefulness and courage in April 1945 when he was forced to spend 16 days in the Himalayan jungle after his plane was disabled during one of the 86 missions he flew during World War II. “He thought of other people before himself and had the presence of mind to rescue two fellow crew members,” says Delonga.

He’d parachuted into the “Tin-Tin Jungle” — so called because the terrain was strewn with the remains of American and Japanese planes. “He ate lizards, snakes, rats and talked himself out of being eaten” by tribesmen. (“Headhunters Are Friendly to Three Yankee Aviators” was one headline back home in Pennsylvania.) “I don’t know how I could have survived,” says the younger DeLonga.

His father’s was a generation that put country before considerations of financial reward, Steven observes. He cites Chuck Yeager, a good friend of his father’s, who, when asked why he continued to face the dangers of test flying despite being pursued by lucrative opportunities, replied: “I like flying. That’s my life.”

It was also a generation that saw military service as a chance to advance themselves as Americans. Peter DeLonga’s Italian-immigrant father was a foreman in a coalmine, and, says his son, “the military was an equal ground, where people were judged on merit and performance, not family.”

Though Steven DeLonga’s own military career was a brief stint in the Army (“My military bearing was non-existent”), his brother, Peter, spent a decade in service, receiving the Army’s Bronze Star for heroism in ground combat in Vietnam. His nephew, Nick, is a Marine captain who’s a veteran of tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Dad would be disappointed” at how the military is generally viewed today, suggests DeLonga. “The caliber of Army recruits is probably the highest it’s ever been, but we’re not fully supporting them. We need a commitment from the executive branch to support the military for the future.”

DeLonga attributes much of his own success (he is the founder and CEO of Ste-Del Services, an Alexandria company that deals in corporate apartment rentals) to some of his father’s qualities “that carried over to me.” He knows which are the most influential: “Honesty and integrity are things I pride myself on.”

“How do you measure success?” he asks. “In business, it’s monetary. But for the older generation it was more about altruism,” citing John F. Kennedy’s famous “ask what you can do for your country” challenge. “They saw a bigger picture.”

“Honesty. Integrity. Devotion to country and to duty. That is why my father succeeded,” says Steven DeLonga. “His was a generation I was lucky to be around.” [gallery ids="99133,102725,102721,102712,102704,102689,102696" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post •

Nassau Valley Vineyards

Producing a wide variety of wines, Nassau Valley is Delaware’s first and only farm winery. The winery is open for free tours and tastings year-round. The self-guided tour includes a chronicle of wine’s 8,000 year history, up to the process and production of modern day vineyards. Picnickers ?are welcome, and specialty tastings and wine and food pairings are available on site or off. Theater and musical groups perform during the summer months. This is an ideal stop on a rainy beach day or a midweek break from the pulsing July sun.

Chincoteague and Assateague Islands

Chincoteague Island, just a 30-minute drive from Bethany down Route 1, is Virginia’s only resort island, and one of the more beautiful islands that salt and pepper Virginia’s eastern shore. This bucolic beach is famous for its wealth of breathtaking and accessible wildlife, oyster beds and clam shoals, migratory birds, and wild horses (often grazing casually around the parking area).

Throughout the summer, crowded beaches give way to stretches of secluded shoreline, marshes and forests, if you’re willing to walk beyond the crowded entrance. As a Natural Wildlife Preserve, the Chincoteague and Assateague islands harbor plenty of inspiration for the adventurous, Thoreauvian journeyman.

Cottage Café

Set in what looks like an over-sized bungalow, with warm yellow lights strung across the frame, the Cottage Café is, has a comfortable atmosphere and quality, unpretentious seafood.

A wide bar sits in the center of the restaurant, with dining on either side. Among the many choice menu options and a solid brunch buffet, a notable item is a generous plate of “dune fries,” a deliciously fun seafood spin on chili-cheese fries.

Dogfish Head Brewery and Brewpub

No one does beer like Dogfish Head. What started as the smallest commercial brewery in America in 1995 single-handedly brought the culture of craft brewed ales back from near extinction.

Whether looking for a finely balanced, classic ale, or a beer based on the chemical analysis of pottery fragments that revealed the earliest known alcoholic beverage, Dogfish Head brewery is a good time with some great beer. Tour the brewery, sample fresh brews, and talk with the casual, friendly staff. Their brewpub, on the Rehobeth Beach boardwalk, pairs their ample beer offerings with classic American cuisine, and features house-made vodkas from a small distillery operation in the back. Live music plays throughout the summer.

Dickey’s Frozen Custard

Well before the days that Bethany Beach became the Delmarva tourist haven it is today, Dickie’s Frozen Custard was serving the local in-crowd from their modest corner store, just off the main boardwalk drag.

This is quintessential beachside custard. The employees are often found without shoes. Young customers, five or 10 at the most, commonly sit against the wall in the shade of Dickie’s awning, licking and slurping at their over-sized cones with sprinkles as they drip down their knuckles, chins, and shirts. Yeah, it’s cheesy. Yeah, it’s nostalgic and silly. Yeah, it’s just custard. But I’m willing to bet it’s the best you’ll ever have.

Coastal Kayak

Offering sail-boat rentals, guided kayak and bicycle eco-tours, Coastal Kayak allows guests to experience the bay-side marshlands and wildlife from a completely new perspective.

The salt marsh tour is a brilliantly fun addendum to any list of activities. Paddle through the salt marshes around a state wildlife refuge, the feeding grounds for many animals, some of which include herons, osprey, horseshoe crabs and skimmers. One of the premier offerings is the exploration of a small sandbar where you get out of your kayak and comb the beach for a variety of beach dwellers such as fiddler crabs, starfish, and clams.

Grotto Pizza

If you’ve been anywhere near the Delaware Beaches, you have doubtless fallen prey to the wafting, tantalizing scent of Grotto’s pizza in the salty air. Synonymous with Bethany and Rehobeth beach culture, there is hardly another pizza joint in town — not that you would ever want one. It is awfully, awfully good.

The local restaurant behemoth and area staple, with its signature “bull’s eye” pizzas, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a summer-long celebration. Whatever time you’re there this summer, keep an eye out for special deals and promotions.

Dewey

A one-street town sandwiched between its larger siblings, Bethany and Rehobeth, Dewey Beach is undeniably the college crowd’s scene. With a slew of bars, crab shacks, and motels, Dewey makes for a pretty fun night if you’re looking to get away from quiet evenings in Bethany and knock back a beer and a basket of fried shrimp with your friends.

Stop by The Starboard, voted one of the top 25 bars in America by Men’s Journal magazine, and concoct one of their build-your-own Bloody Marys, with over 700 ingredients and 18 brands of vodka. Or check out the Bottle and Cork, an outdoor bar and music venue.

Donna Evers •

Washingtonians may be surprised to know that the first computers were invented right here in Georgetown, and if you go to 1054 31st Street (now Canal Square), you will find a plaque marking the place where Herman Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company was located at the turn of the last century.

It all started when the federal government ran into problems taking the national census in 1880. The process took too long and was full of mistakes. So in 1886, the U.S. Census Office decided to hold a contest to see who could come up with a better system.

Herman Hollerith would have seemed an unlikely winner of such a contest when he was in grade school in Buffalo, NY. He had such a hard time in school that he used to hide from his teacher. His German immigrant parents took him out of school and got him a tutor, and this helped him realize his amazing potential. He entered college at the age of 15 and got a degree in mining engineering at the age of 19. Eventually, he got a doctorate from Columbia University, where he wrote his thesis about a very special invention of his, an electric tabulating machine. He got the idea from his girlfriend’s father, who told him about the French jacquard weaving machines which were set up with punch cards to automatically weave intricate repetitive patterns. Hollerith created his own punch card system of tabulation, and got a patent for the invention in 1889. When he entered the census office contest, his sample census took a fraction of the time of his nearest competitor. So instead of seven and a half years to do the U.S. census, Hollerith finished the initial count in six weeks, with the final tabulations completed in two and a half years. Better yet, he saved the government $5,000,000, which was a huge sum at that time.

In 1896, Hollerith started the Tabulating Machine Company. The first factory employed mostly women, who worked on their individual tabulators in a large open room. These women were called “computers,” because that was their job description. Hollerith’s business thrived, and his machines were sold to countries around the world for census taking. His fortunes grew, too, and he built a grand mansion in Georgetown at 1617 29th Street, overlooking the Potomac River. By the way, the home, which stayed in the family for 80 years, was on the market recently for $22,000,000.

While his magical machine was a big success, other innovators came up with similar inventions. He merged his company to diversify and broaden its hold on a diminishing market. When Herman retired in 1921, his successor, who happened to be a marketing ace, merged the company again and changed its name to International Business Machines. Yes, that’s IBM, otherwise known as Big Blue. And so, our own Herman Hollerith, the child who couldn’t spell in elementary school, went on to become the father of the modern computer, an invention that has made a revolutionary impact on the way we live and work.

Gary Tischler •

As February comes to a cold, long end, with it ends the annual celebration, commemoration and acknowledgement that we call Black History Month, celebrated and noted in an especially strong and defining way in Washington, D.C.

Events throughout the month noted one aspect of black history or another — Frederick Douglass’ birthday and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, because the two leaders are intertwined and wrapped up in the times of their time, the agony of the Civil War, the triumph of Emancipation. At Mount Vernon, there were commemorative services and wreath-layings for the slaves at the first president’s Virginia plantation.

The Smithsonian Black History Month Family Day Celebration will be held Feb. 27, rescheduled from an earlier day in the month and featuring the theme “Tapestry of Cultural Rhythms.” The idea of a black history month, first begun as far back as 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson as “Negro History Week” before becoming what we know as Black History Month, remains strangely controversial. Some of this is, of course, due to the lingering feeling that the very existence of a black history month forces people to think about, and often actually talk about, race in America. In Washington, the longer you live here, the more the idea of Black History Month seems hardly novel at all, as natural as breathing. This city, in function, culture, politics, economics, identity and social structure, is so Sybil-like, schizoid, diverse, multi-faceted and multi-tasked that it resists a wholesale identity. It is the capital of the United States, politically and governmentally, but that doesn’t necessarily amount to an identity. The White House, Capitol Hill and Congress are hard-core presences of the city’s function. They are not its heart and soul.
That honor belongs to us: we the people that live here. If the city has a defining identity, in terms of history, the idea of black history has played itself out here from the beginning. How black and white residents have built, lived, worked, created a social and cultural environment here tells you an enormous amount about the history of race in America.

In this city, you don’t ask the question of whether there is a black history here, because you’re living it every day, and confront it, embrace it, see it in every neighborhood and ward of the city. One of the things you find, past the historic homes and buildings, past the large number of churches, many of them built from the ground up after emancipation by black pastors and ministers, is that black history is everybody’s history in this city, it is, as a young essay contest winner wrote, “American history.”

This is the city where in all the time of Jim Crow, local blacks, their number swollen by the great migration to northern cities in the first decades of the 20th century, created a thriving black community apart from all the places in the city where they could not shop, eat , hear music or go to school. Thus a large section of Washington, spurred by Howard University, had its own lawyers and doctors, its shops and shopkeepers and businesses, its culture.

While lots of major urban centers in America have large black populations, Washington is different because of its politics and structure. Until the 1970s, it had no self-rule of any sort, and even now has no voting rights in Congress. Its history of home rule is brief, only some 40 years or so.

Every street, and maybe every street corner, and certainly every neighborhood large and small, is a part of black history. Three of the major churches in Georgetown on or near P Street are reminders of a large black population that existed early in the century and thrived for decades before dispersing into the suburbs.

Walk the African Heritage Trail, a guide to the entire city’s heritage of black history, and you’ll discovery all of our history here, along with the rich contributions of African American civil rights leaders, educators, teachers, politicians, political leaders, athletes and artists. Memories of segregation and Jim Crow live in memory here.

In almost every ward and neighborhood of this city, you’ll find the strong presence of African American men and women who made history, who helped create institutions, movements and ideas that live on, who lived here, day in and day out, who created or were leaders in their communities.

Black history resounds in the homes, buildings, institutions and churches of Washington: at Howard University, at the Lincoln Theater and the True Reformer Building in Greater U Street, where Duke Ellington lived early in his life, at the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum at the old Howard Theater, the Black Fashion Museum and the Whitelaw Hotel, at the Supreme Court where Thurgood Marshall became a towering figure.

You can find it at the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House, the first headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women, which Bethune founded, and which is still led by the indomitable civil rights leader Dorothy Height, who in turned founded the Black Family Reunions held annually on the Mall and across the country. It lives in the Shiloh Baptist Church in Shaw, in the slave cemeteries in Georgetown, at the DAR Constitution Hall, where Marian Anderson was not allowed to sing by the DAR, and at the Lincoln Memorial. It’s in the Frederick Douglass National Historic City at 14th and W Streets SE, at Fort Stevens in Brightwood and at the Summer School Museum and Archives.

And all along the Heritage Trail, you’ll find the names and homes of familiar historic figures: Willis Richardson, Paul Dunbar, Anna Julia Cooper, Christian Fleetwood, Ernest Everett Just, Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace, Alain Locke, Mary Jane Patterson Carter G. Woodson, Anthony Bowen, Benjamin Banneker, Howard Woodson, Lois Mailou Jones and many others.

The National Mall is where the Revered Martin Luther King gave his resounding “I Have a Dream” speech, which energized the entire country and fired up the imagination of generations to come. His assassination in 1968 sparked a full-scale war and deadly, destructive riots — known simply as “the riots” — the effects of which devastated the local economy for years to come. That too is black history.

All the changes — downtown development, the decline of black population, the rise of condoland, our loyalties to schools and sports — make up the common knowledge of living here. We all see this all of the time, yet, it’s fair to say, we — black and white — don’t know as much about each other and interact as much as we should, and certainly could. Race is an integral, if not integrated, part of this city, and black history is also a history of race in America. This is a city where, in one mayoral election consisting entirely of black candidates, one of them was designated by others as the “white candidate.” Major political, emotional and cultural discussions about crime and education inevitably have components of class and race to them.

But our city’s history is a shared one. It exists for all of us in memory, if we access it. It snows on everyone, on all the neighborhoods, even though some might fare better than others when it comes to snow removal. We are a string of connected neighborhoods, with a history that we all own and share. Whatever you might say about our transit system, it moves on tracks that criss-cross every part of the city and outside of it too.

All of us lead daily lives, and in this way, we are more closely connected to each other, like a family, than to any temporary residents in the White House, in Congress and on K Street.
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Veena Trehan • August 8, 2011

Dr. Richard Goldberg is a 21st Century Renaissance Man. The Georgetown University Hospital President explores next-generation technology and psychiatry by day, rides motorbikes on his vacations, and reads the classics for fun. At RIS last week, he shared insights that he has gained during 42 years at Georgetown.

From Psychiatrist to President

When asked about his career path, going from mind doctor to hospital president, he gave a sigh of appreciation. “It’s an interesting journey because psychiatry is frequently at the bottom of the food chain,” he said.

His choice of a psychosomatic specialty brought him to other hospital physicians and their patients, aiding a progression from resident to faculty member to department chair. And in the financially challenging times of late 1990s he became (simultaneously and for the same salary) dean of clinical affairs, dean of graduate medical education, chair of psychiatry, and president of the 450-doctor faculty practice group, the last that lay the groundwork for promotion.

His practice area may not have the reputation as a hospital power broker, but it often confers leadership ability. “As a psychiatrist—as long as you don’t behave like a psychiatrist—you have a certain degree of emotional intelligence about people and how they best work together…It’s very helpful in managing a hospital, managing a physician, managing people.”

In 2000, Medstar bought the Georgetown University Hospital and faculty practice, and Goldberg began overseeing hospital quality and safety as vice president of medical affairs, a position he jokingly compares with serving as an assistant principal in a high school with wayward physicians. He’s held the hospital presidency for two years.

Over the last decade the hospital has changed deficits into surpluses, gained leverage with equipment suppliers through Medstar, and earned the number 3 ranking among the 57 DC Metropolitan hospitals, as well as the only “Magnet” status (for nursing excellence).

Goldberg’s DC life is a far cry from his childhood along the New York shore. The Long Beach resident played basketball and baseball with Billy Crystal (who showed Oscar promise even as high school variety show MC) and frolicked by the bay, but according to him the island life was insular. “I thought everyone was from Brooklyn. It turns out that’s not the case.”

Along with his worldview, this city and hospital have transformed over several decades. Visiting DC in the 1950s, he admits being shocked by the Washington Monument’s separate restrooms and water fountains for blacks and whites. Georgetown Medical School in the late 1960s was likewise wholly different from today: 98 men were paired with two women per class, there were no CAT scans and head scans, doctors mixed their own IVs, and psychiatry focused on psychotherapy. He relishes many of the changes, describing 50/50 student ratio as “humanizing” and new technology and drugs as “outstanding” in their potential impact.

The Future of Health Care

Goldberg believes computers will shape our future through nanotechnology, robotics and genetics, trends emerging in medicine. In a new era of personalized medicine, he explains, doctors will use genetics to identify the likelihood of developing a disease and the best medications for an individual. It will be possible to inject patients with nanorobot sensors, which will float around the blood system and organs, giving feedback to detection devices to indicate if an illness has occurred or tell about a treatment’s progression.

Robots like the da Vinci Surgical System will allow doctors to operate easily and intuitively for prostrate and thoracic cancer, and other ailments treated at the Lombardi Cancer Center.

Viruses packed with chemotherapy will use receptors to find and join cancer cells and release the chemotherapy while sparing normal tissue, increasing the survivability for a broad range of cancer disorders.

Yet there is a huge paradox in health care. The underserved population and Jesuit traditions contrast with a depersonalized and potentially costly high-tech future.

The hospital relies on its heritage for guidance. While Jesuits, a Catholic order that stresses lifelong education, are less visible than in the past, they guided the mission adopted in 2007. “Cura personalis” (meaning care of the whole person) is a reminder that pills and technology must serve the broader goal of satisfying emotional, spiritual and physical needs.

The giving nature of the order also prompts charity care for the poor. A children’s van goes out to the most underserved areas of Washington DC, treating kids who wouldn’t ordinarily get medical care, and the hospital offers free cancer screenings to adults.

Goldberg sees many gaps in the health care system but says he is optimistic that a country as great as ours can meet them.

“We need to have more accessible care for individuals,” he says. “We need to cover more individuals. We need to have more emphasis on wellness than sickness.

“We need to be more aware of care as not just a single episode, but a continuity of care. We need to be safer and higher quality in terms of or care.”

But as with most things, he understands that progress will be incremental. “I don’t think can be created de novo out of somebody’s head. It has to, like any good system, evolve.”

From Motorcycles to Mahatma Gandhi

One way he deals with work pressure is to exit his element. For 25 years—starting with a Harley Sportster, now on a BMW 3 Touring Bike—he has cycled the country. His fascination with human narrative is given broader play, meeting people like those recently out of prison that would otherwise be unlikely confidantes. He also enjoys communing with the environment, whether the national parks of the Southwest or the seascape of Key West.

“There’s something about being on a motorcycle that is relaxed concentration,” he says. “You have to concentrate all the time, but you’re in this zone, you’re participating with the road and nature rather than observing it.”

If motorcycling is a social and spiritual quest, his literary projects are an intellectual journey. His free time is not occupied by friends, restaurants and movies. Rather, he has taken on a sort of literary project. He reads classics and listens to biographies (currently Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography) while he exercises on his Octane seated elliptical machine. The biographies have provided personal instruction, including two major life lessons.

“Every person no matter how successful or how much we idealize them has incredible unevenness. They can have great contributions in some areas and weaknesses in other areas,” he says.

“And they have been down and out at various times in their life,” he adds. “The path to greatness is not a straight line. Its really enduring and learning how to get out of those troughs in your life, whatever they are.”

“Aging well is about being adaptable, learning how to find meaning in activities that you might not have been interested in before, but that you can now do.”

He summarizes with a common phrase given deeper resonance by his inspiring example in psychiatry, literature, and leadership. “That’s what life is about – meaning.”

To Listen to interview, click here

Gary Tischler • July 26, 2011

Legacy, like passion and professional, is an overused word today. Lives lived in full to the end let us see the real meaning of legacies—passion in action and professionalism as a matter of course and duty. Herewith, we celebrate the lives of three men who embodied those qualities.

Sidney Harman

Only last year, Sidney Harman, past ninety, bought the national news magazine Newsweek for a dollar, picking up its considerable debt. Harman, who loved news and newspapers and magazines, was thinking about how he could turn around the venerable and respected magazine in an age where publications of any sort are in decline and at risk.

This is a little like the story about the 100-year-old man who married a young girl and drew up plans for a nursery. Harman, as you may know from his history, was an optimist, a forward-looking-guy with a boundless curiosity about his fellow man.

In the course of a lifetime that was rich in achievement and experience, Harman, who passed away from complications from acute myeloid leukemia at the age of 92, April 12, managed to create a legacy of family and community, as an enterprising and empathic businessman and employer, and a philanthropic citizen with a keen love of culture which benefited and enriched everyone.

Hearing of the death of a 92-year-old man shouldn’t be a shock, but Harman’s death seemed like a surprise. The man exuded energy; he had a look-you-in-the-eye way about him and a pretty strong handshake. There wasn’t much he hadn’t done and there wasn’t much he didn’t know about, and if by chance he was in the dark, it’s certain that he would correct that situation.

Today’s billionaire tycoons might take note of the model Harman presented as a businessman and employer. His company, which specialized in sound systems, was famous for initiating quality of life programs for its employees.

Among many things, he was trustee on many boards, including policy institutes and symphony orchestras. He served as Undersecretary of Commerce under President Jimmy Carter, wrote books, golfed into his 90s, was a higher education leader and left a good chunk of his own money in a way that will outlive him far into the future.

The most visible legacy is Sidney Harman Hall, the downtown state-of-the-art theater, which houses Shakespeare Theatre Company productions, visiting performance arts institutions and the Washington Ballet at times.

“Sidney Harman enjoyed an extraordinary life, characterized by great passion for his wife, for the performing arts, for ideas and for life itself, said Michael Kahn, Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company. “All of us, privileged to know him, enjoyed our own lives more because of him.”

He loved music. He was the co-inventor of the high-fidelity stereo back in the 1950s. He loved the arts and he always looked for new challenges. He was married to Jane Harman, a Democratic Congresswoman from California. He is survived by his wife, six children and ten grandchildren.

Also surviving is his reputation as a modern Renaissance man, a historical description that moves far into the future. He was a man who lived a life in full.

David Broder

The Washington Post, the newspaper for which he worked most of life and won a Pulitzer Prize for, described him in its headline for his obituary and appreciation as the “Dean of Washington Press Corps.”

He was 81. He was a man passionate about politics, the subject he wrote about all of his life. He was a professional in the entirely true sense of the word. He made you proud to be a part of the profession he practiced just by reading his work, because he brought honor to it all of the time, with his judicious care for the truth, with a keen passion to get it right, with a curiosity that died only when he did.

Covering politics, being a part of it that way or any way, isn’t always considered a noble profession. Hackery lives here, as does the indelicate art of brown-nosing, affliction from the kind of pollen that fills the air in the spaces occupied by proximity to power, or worse, the desire for power. Broder more often than not ennobled the profession; he took it seriously enough not to let his biases get in the way of accuracy and completeness.

They say he loved politicians as types perhaps a bit too much, an experience that can be a little like being in love with the girl that you know will always have other boyfriends. He didn’t wear his heart too much on his sleeve, and he took little that politicians or elected officials said for granted. What got into his columns was the process, and he was astute in its observance, and what he got from it came from regular people, who talked to him about the issues they cared about, what mattered in their towns and workplaces. He got that right almost all of the time. The love was in going on the road to see campaigns in action. What got into his columns were such qualities as accurate information, hard-nosed intelligence and insights fed by years and every minute of his experience.

He got it right and gave his readers and his peers respect and the right stuff.

Few like Broder remain.

Sidney Lumet

No one every accused Sidney Lumet of being a fancy-pants artist. This prolific film director, who died at the age of 86, came to the movies by way of the theater and live television from “You Are There” to the estimable Playhouse 90. Faces and words, words and faces were the cornerstone of his work, not fancy, haunting camera work.

Maybe that’s why a good chunk of his movies are classics, along with the words and faces: Picture Peter Finch yelling out the window “I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore” in the classic and prophetic “Network.”

Picture Henry Fonda browbeating bigots Lee J Cobb and Ed Begley in the claustrophobic jury movie “Twelve Angry Men.”

Picture Al Pacino as “Serpico” and Treat Williams as “The Prince of the City,” two classic New York cop movies, and Paul Newman in his best-ever performance as the lawyer-as-drunk in ‘The Verdict.” (For the record, my favorite line is when Newman asked about his adversary James Mason. “Is he any good?” “Good?” says gruff Jack Warden. “He’s the f—–g prince of darkness.”)

He was a pro. He left a huge film legacy underwritten by a social conscience, an eye for urban landscapes and a love of the human species. “Every picture I did was an active, believable, passionate wish,” he said. “Every picture I wanted to do…I’m having a good time.” Plus he spent married time with remarkable women, like the actress Rita Gam, the socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, Lena Horne’s daughter Gail Jones and Mary Gimble, who was with him at the time of his death on April 9 from lymphoma.