Mario Cuomo: A politician you could love
Newsday, January 4, 2015
Mario Matthew Cuomo was a rarity: a politician you could love.
Of course, if he were still alive and reading those words, I can imagine him rigorously parsing that sentence. He'd argue that he doesn't fit into the category of "politician," and he'd launch into a long, learned discussion on love. It would be, as always, a pleasure to hear him out, because one of his most endearing qualities was his boundless delight in the power of words, his vigilant guardianship of the English language.
Reporters are wisely wary of putting too much faith in any public official, and I've used that skeptical lens myself in writing long analytical pieces about Mario. But those he said-she said articles couldn't mention how deeply I admired and enjoyed him. Now, retirement and sadness permit me to say some of that, leaving to others the balanced analysis.
My most vivid memory of him was on a flight to Indiana in September 1984, two months after his towering keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. We were headed for the University of Notre Dame, where he was to give a carefully crafted speech about abortion and the obligations of public officials. Knowing that this speech would stir a storm, we reporters kidded him that God wasn't going to like it.
On the governor's plane, one reporter donned a Roman collar and used make-believe holy water to sprinkle us against divine wrath. Moments after that goofy ritual, a horrific storm shook the plane violently. We joked, but we were scared. Someone screamed. The doors of storage bins flew open. Mario's aide, Tim Russert, who later developed an image of fearlessness as a television sage, was terrified and bloodlessly white. A nonbelieving reporter blurted, "Oh, my God!"
But Mario remained supernaturally calm. I'm convinced that this reflected his belief that he was in the state of grace, on good terms with God. He was a man of faith who firmly embraced the church's social teaching about serving the poor and seeking always the common good. He wasn't driven by any poll, but by the bright polestar of his sense of right and wrong.
It was that sense that led him to stand up against the death penalty in his 1977 mayoral primary campaign against Ed Koch. He often told the story of his mother, Immaculata, warning him that if he persisted in opposing the death penalty, he'd lose. And he did. But he didn't change his position. In the gubernatorial primaries in 1982, he again refused to support a new, wider death penalty bill, which Koch supported. That time, Mario won.
Fittingly, he revered a victim of capital punishment, St. Thomas More, for standing up for his beliefs—until his employer, King Henry VIII, had him beheaded. Another hero was the Jesuit priest-philosopher-scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. His works were rich and dense, but Mario actually read and understood, and liked to quote these Teilhardian words: "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
In a way that stood apart from today's rhetoric of the religious right, Mario was supremely comfortable with God language. A friend of his tells the story of visiting the little village in Italy where Mario's parents had lived, and seeing a monument that boasted of their son, the governor. This friend later told him: "They gave you life, but you gave them immortality." Mario corrected him: "They gave me life, but God gave them immortality."
Though the Notre Dame speech aroused opposition by powerful prelates, Mario was an industrial-strength Catholic, guided by the church's social teaching and grounded in its rituals. When we spoke by phone, he would invariably start with: "Keeler, say your Suscipiat," a prayer that altar boys once said in Latin, and congregations now say in English. So I'd say the Suscipiat, and we got on with the conversation.
In any setting, conversation with him was fun. At news conferences, he was a master.
"No, no, that's not the question you want to ask," he'd tell reporters. "This is the question you want to ask." And then he'd ask and answer it.
My earliest memories of conversations with him date back to his time as lieutenant governor, when his beautiful paneled office near the State Senate floor was a perfect spot to listen to his ruminations. And I loved sitting in his meetings with reporters, editors and editorial writers, where he outthought and outtalked them all, and still effortlessly finished eating his meal. It was like watching an elite athlete playfully dominating an opponent.
And Mario really was an athlete, an outfielder with big hands and a solid build. In fact, baseball was part of my last conversation with him. I'd expected to take five minutes to drop off a framed cover of a 1981 magazine piece I wrote about him. But this was Mario. Our chat went on for 45 minutes. A photo on his office wall led to a reminiscence of a 1985 event he shared with Mickey Mantle, when the iconic Yankee griped colorfully that Mario got a bigger signing bonus, though Mantle reached the Hall of Fame and Mario never got out of the low minors.
Self-deprecating stories like that were part of his persona. The reason he publicly gave for not running for president in 1992 was the need to stay in Albany and fight budget battles. But he told a friend in private that he simply couldn't envision himself in that job.
His record as governor included significant accomplishments, such as his sterling, nonpartisan appointments to the Court of Appeals—including its first woman judge—and some things he regretted, like his massive prison-building.
So, if I had covered him daily for years, maybe I'd be more cynical about him. But what stays with me now, as it did when I left his office the last time I saw him: deep gratitude for spending time over the years with someone who was, as he might put it, sui generis—one of a kind.
Mario Matthew Cuomo was a rarity: a politician you could love.
Of course, if he were still alive and reading those words, I can imagine him rigorously parsing that sentence. He'd argue that he doesn't fit into the category of "politician," and he'd launch into a long, learned discussion on love. It would be, as always, a pleasure to hear him out, because one of his most endearing qualities was his boundless delight in the power of words, his vigilant guardianship of the English language.
Reporters are wisely wary of putting too much faith in any public official, and I've used that skeptical lens myself in writing long analytical pieces about Mario. But those he said-she said articles couldn't mention how deeply I admired and enjoyed him. Now, retirement and sadness permit me to say some of that, leaving to others the balanced analysis.
My most vivid memory of him was on a flight to Indiana in September 1984, two months after his towering keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. We were headed for the University of Notre Dame, where he was to give a carefully crafted speech about abortion and the obligations of public officials. Knowing that this speech would stir a storm, we reporters kidded him that God wasn't going to like it.
On the governor's plane, one reporter donned a Roman collar and used make-believe holy water to sprinkle us against divine wrath. Moments after that goofy ritual, a horrific storm shook the plane violently. We joked, but we were scared. Someone screamed. The doors of storage bins flew open. Mario's aide, Tim Russert, who later developed an image of fearlessness as a television sage, was terrified and bloodlessly white. A nonbelieving reporter blurted, "Oh, my God!"
But Mario remained supernaturally calm. I'm convinced that this reflected his belief that he was in the state of grace, on good terms with God. He was a man of faith who firmly embraced the church's social teaching about serving the poor and seeking always the common good. He wasn't driven by any poll, but by the bright polestar of his sense of right and wrong.
It was that sense that led him to stand up against the death penalty in his 1977 mayoral primary campaign against Ed Koch. He often told the story of his mother, Immaculata, warning him that if he persisted in opposing the death penalty, he'd lose. And he did. But he didn't change his position. In the gubernatorial primaries in 1982, he again refused to support a new, wider death penalty bill, which Koch supported. That time, Mario won.
Fittingly, he revered a victim of capital punishment, St. Thomas More, for standing up for his beliefs—until his employer, King Henry VIII, had him beheaded. Another hero was the Jesuit priest-philosopher-scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. His works were rich and dense, but Mario actually read and understood, and liked to quote these Teilhardian words: "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
In a way that stood apart from today's rhetoric of the religious right, Mario was supremely comfortable with God language. A friend of his tells the story of visiting the little village in Italy where Mario's parents had lived, and seeing a monument that boasted of their son, the governor. This friend later told him: "They gave you life, but you gave them immortality." Mario corrected him: "They gave me life, but God gave them immortality."
Though the Notre Dame speech aroused opposition by powerful prelates, Mario was an industrial-strength Catholic, guided by the church's social teaching and grounded in its rituals. When we spoke by phone, he would invariably start with: "Keeler, say your Suscipiat," a prayer that altar boys once said in Latin, and congregations now say in English. So I'd say the Suscipiat, and we got on with the conversation.
In any setting, conversation with him was fun. At news conferences, he was a master.
"No, no, that's not the question you want to ask," he'd tell reporters. "This is the question you want to ask." And then he'd ask and answer it.
My earliest memories of conversations with him date back to his time as lieutenant governor, when his beautiful paneled office near the State Senate floor was a perfect spot to listen to his ruminations. And I loved sitting in his meetings with reporters, editors and editorial writers, where he outthought and outtalked them all, and still effortlessly finished eating his meal. It was like watching an elite athlete playfully dominating an opponent.
And Mario really was an athlete, an outfielder with big hands and a solid build. In fact, baseball was part of my last conversation with him. I'd expected to take five minutes to drop off a framed cover of a 1981 magazine piece I wrote about him. But this was Mario. Our chat went on for 45 minutes. A photo on his office wall led to a reminiscence of a 1985 event he shared with Mickey Mantle, when the iconic Yankee griped colorfully that Mario got a bigger signing bonus, though Mantle reached the Hall of Fame and Mario never got out of the low minors.
Self-deprecating stories like that were part of his persona. The reason he publicly gave for not running for president in 1992 was the need to stay in Albany and fight budget battles. But he told a friend in private that he simply couldn't envision himself in that job.
His record as governor included significant accomplishments, such as his sterling, nonpartisan appointments to the Court of Appeals—including its first woman judge—and some things he regretted, like his massive prison-building.
So, if I had covered him daily for years, maybe I'd be more cynical about him. But what stays with me now, as it did when I left his office the last time I saw him: deep gratitude for spending time over the years with someone who was, as he might put it, sui generis—one of a kind.
Bill Lindsay: The voice of the common man
Newsday, September 12, 2013
Silver-haired William Lindsay didn't speak with a silver tongue. His was the voice of the common man, spoken in a thick Long Island accent. He didn't yell, and he didn't dazzle.
Lindsay, the presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, died yesterday. He should be remembered as a truly honorable man with a real grasp of the lives of everyday people, as a reasonable person in a too often unreasonable line of work: politics. His steady demeanor and core decency helped him to get things done.
Take those pesky red-light cameras.
The first time I had a conversation with Bill was early in his time as a Suffolk County legislator. It was in the summer of 2001, only weeks after I had joined Newsday's editorial board. We sat down to talk about Bill's idea: using red-light cameras to stop drivers from running lights and hurting people. His wife, Patricia, had been lucky enough to escape serious injury when someone ran a red light and smashed into her car. A Lindsay family friend had spent two weeks in a coma after a crash caused by a light runner.
The idea made a lot of sense. At the time, only the City of New York had the state's permission to use the cameras. Bill wanted them in Suffolk. It took a long, long time, thanks to roadblocks in Albany. But now they're here—and they're changing behavior. I know, because I once got a letter in the mail with a link to a video that showed me not stopping long enough before turning right on red. That changed my driving, and I was actually happy to pay the fine.
That legacy pops into my head because it's linked to my earliest encounter with Bill. But he accomplished a lot since then, rising to lead the unruly 18-member legislature and keeping that job longer than any previous presiding officer. This past January, Bill was elected to the post for the eighth consecutive time—even though he was struggling with mesothelioma.
As a young electrician, Bill was exposed to the asbestos that ultimately cost him his right lung. Later, as a leader of Local 25, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, he put together programs to find out whether his members had been exposed to asbestos. The irony wasn't lost on him. "You try to protect your members from this disease, and then you end up getting the damn disease," he once said.
Bill wasn't without critics. Some felt he didn't make the legislature independent enough from the county executive's office. Former County Executive Steve Levy saw him as too independent, too willing to resist Levy.
The truth is, Bill Lindsay earned wide respect in his own Democratic Party and beyond. Because of term limits, he couldn't run for re-election this year, and his son, William Lindsay III, is a candidate for the same Holbrook seat. Young Bill is heavily favored to win, but his father won't get to sit in the audience in Hauppauge next January and smile as his son is sworn in. I'd love to have seen Bill have that joy.
Silver-haired William Lindsay didn't speak with a silver tongue. His was the voice of the common man, spoken in a thick Long Island accent. He didn't yell, and he didn't dazzle.
Lindsay, the presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, died yesterday. He should be remembered as a truly honorable man with a real grasp of the lives of everyday people, as a reasonable person in a too often unreasonable line of work: politics. His steady demeanor and core decency helped him to get things done.
Take those pesky red-light cameras.
The first time I had a conversation with Bill was early in his time as a Suffolk County legislator. It was in the summer of 2001, only weeks after I had joined Newsday's editorial board. We sat down to talk about Bill's idea: using red-light cameras to stop drivers from running lights and hurting people. His wife, Patricia, had been lucky enough to escape serious injury when someone ran a red light and smashed into her car. A Lindsay family friend had spent two weeks in a coma after a crash caused by a light runner.
The idea made a lot of sense. At the time, only the City of New York had the state's permission to use the cameras. Bill wanted them in Suffolk. It took a long, long time, thanks to roadblocks in Albany. But now they're here—and they're changing behavior. I know, because I once got a letter in the mail with a link to a video that showed me not stopping long enough before turning right on red. That changed my driving, and I was actually happy to pay the fine.
That legacy pops into my head because it's linked to my earliest encounter with Bill. But he accomplished a lot since then, rising to lead the unruly 18-member legislature and keeping that job longer than any previous presiding officer. This past January, Bill was elected to the post for the eighth consecutive time—even though he was struggling with mesothelioma.
As a young electrician, Bill was exposed to the asbestos that ultimately cost him his right lung. Later, as a leader of Local 25, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, he put together programs to find out whether his members had been exposed to asbestos. The irony wasn't lost on him. "You try to protect your members from this disease, and then you end up getting the damn disease," he once said.
Bill wasn't without critics. Some felt he didn't make the legislature independent enough from the county executive's office. Former County Executive Steve Levy saw him as too independent, too willing to resist Levy.
The truth is, Bill Lindsay earned wide respect in his own Democratic Party and beyond. Because of term limits, he couldn't run for re-election this year, and his son, William Lindsay III, is a candidate for the same Holbrook seat. Young Bill is heavily favored to win, but his father won't get to sit in the audience in Hauppauge next January and smile as his son is sworn in. I'd love to have seen Bill have that joy.
Remember Mike for the right reasons
Newsday, 5/22/12
What do Mike McGrady and Bill Buckner have in common? Or Mike McGrady and Mookie Wilson?
It is the curse of the One Big Thing that pushes its way into the lead of their obituary.
In baseball, it was a ground ball by Wilson that Buckner, a good fielder and a great hitter, let get past him in Game Six of the 1986 World Series. Wilson's Mets went on to beat Buckner's Red Sox. That will lead their obits, but there's so much more to their careers and their lives.
The same is true of McGrady. In his case, sadly, we don't have to talk about the obituaries in the future. Mike died May 13, and the accounts of his passing were far too full of one famous prank he and others played, cowriting a sexy hoax book, "Naked Came the Stranger."
But Mike was a substantial person and writer, who helped shape this newspaper for the better in many ways. So some of us have chosen to chime in and say basically the same thing: Remember him for something beyond that book.
Let me start by saying that I was once Mike's boss. He was the restaurant critic, and I was the editor of The Newsday Magazine, where his reviews appeared. Even to say I was his editor borders on the absurd. He was a writes-like-an-angel guy, in the best Irish tradition. To me, that meant that messing with his words was unthinkable. As a result, "editing Mike McGrady" was the easiest job I ever had in journalism.
In terms of this nation's and this newspaper's history, Mike wrote some pieces that helped ease the sting of one of Newsday's least lovely episodes. A former colleague, Stan Isaacs, mentions it in his column on TheColumnists.com. (Honest, Stan, I'm not plagiarizing. I've wanted to say this for a week.)
Harry F. Guggenheim, who started Newsday with Alicia Patterson, had an eye for the stars, including the great novelist, John Steinbeck. It was Patterson who first recruited him to write for Newsday. An easy sell: Steinbeck, the writer of fiction, yearned to be a journalist.
After her death in 1963, Guggenheim also wanted him writing for the paper. Steinbeck agreed, suggesting a "Letters to Alicia" format. An odd choice, given that she was in the grave, unable to read them.
The letters did have their charm, until Guggenheim pressed Steinbeck to go to Vietnam. In that campaign, he got some help from President Lyndon B. Johnson, who met with Steinbeck and also urged him to go. Guggenheim and LBJ both thought Steinbeck would see the war their way. And he did.
Beyond railing against the protesters and lionizing the military, Steinbeck privately wrote to Guggenheim, asking for help getting a truth drug or LSD to interrogate Viet Cong prisoners.
His widow Elaine said he had changed his mind on the war, but died before he could rectify it in writing. Mike McGrady rectified it publicly, in real time. He didn't like Steinbeck's letters from the war and proposed that he go there to write a series called "A Dove in Vietnam." The publisher, Bill Moyers—LBJ's former press secretary—liked the idea. The resulting stories told the ugly truth about the war. They also soured Guggenheim's relationship with his star, Moyers.
Steinbeck's pieces have just now come out in a book, "Dispatches from the War," many years after Mike's became a book, "A Dove in Vietnam."
When people talk about Mike, that book should leap to mind—not the naked hoax book. The Vietnam War was a far more deadly hoax, and Mike wrote powerfully to expose it for what it was.
In the pages of Newsday, on that poisonously divisive war, John Steinbeck was flat wrong; Mike McGrady was absolutely right. That is no small epitaph for a great life.
What do Mike McGrady and Bill Buckner have in common? Or Mike McGrady and Mookie Wilson?
It is the curse of the One Big Thing that pushes its way into the lead of their obituary.
In baseball, it was a ground ball by Wilson that Buckner, a good fielder and a great hitter, let get past him in Game Six of the 1986 World Series. Wilson's Mets went on to beat Buckner's Red Sox. That will lead their obits, but there's so much more to their careers and their lives.
The same is true of McGrady. In his case, sadly, we don't have to talk about the obituaries in the future. Mike died May 13, and the accounts of his passing were far too full of one famous prank he and others played, cowriting a sexy hoax book, "Naked Came the Stranger."
But Mike was a substantial person and writer, who helped shape this newspaper for the better in many ways. So some of us have chosen to chime in and say basically the same thing: Remember him for something beyond that book.
Let me start by saying that I was once Mike's boss. He was the restaurant critic, and I was the editor of The Newsday Magazine, where his reviews appeared. Even to say I was his editor borders on the absurd. He was a writes-like-an-angel guy, in the best Irish tradition. To me, that meant that messing with his words was unthinkable. As a result, "editing Mike McGrady" was the easiest job I ever had in journalism.
In terms of this nation's and this newspaper's history, Mike wrote some pieces that helped ease the sting of one of Newsday's least lovely episodes. A former colleague, Stan Isaacs, mentions it in his column on TheColumnists.com. (Honest, Stan, I'm not plagiarizing. I've wanted to say this for a week.)
Harry F. Guggenheim, who started Newsday with Alicia Patterson, had an eye for the stars, including the great novelist, John Steinbeck. It was Patterson who first recruited him to write for Newsday. An easy sell: Steinbeck, the writer of fiction, yearned to be a journalist.
After her death in 1963, Guggenheim also wanted him writing for the paper. Steinbeck agreed, suggesting a "Letters to Alicia" format. An odd choice, given that she was in the grave, unable to read them.
The letters did have their charm, until Guggenheim pressed Steinbeck to go to Vietnam. In that campaign, he got some help from President Lyndon B. Johnson, who met with Steinbeck and also urged him to go. Guggenheim and LBJ both thought Steinbeck would see the war their way. And he did.
Beyond railing against the protesters and lionizing the military, Steinbeck privately wrote to Guggenheim, asking for help getting a truth drug or LSD to interrogate Viet Cong prisoners.
His widow Elaine said he had changed his mind on the war, but died before he could rectify it in writing. Mike McGrady rectified it publicly, in real time. He didn't like Steinbeck's letters from the war and proposed that he go there to write a series called "A Dove in Vietnam." The publisher, Bill Moyers—LBJ's former press secretary—liked the idea. The resulting stories told the ugly truth about the war. They also soured Guggenheim's relationship with his star, Moyers.
Steinbeck's pieces have just now come out in a book, "Dispatches from the War," many years after Mike's became a book, "A Dove in Vietnam."
When people talk about Mike, that book should leap to mind—not the naked hoax book. The Vietnam War was a far more deadly hoax, and Mike wrote powerfully to expose it for what it was.
In the pages of Newsday, on that poisonously divisive war, John Steinbeck was flat wrong; Mike McGrady was absolutely right. That is no small epitaph for a great life.
Joop rhymes with hope
Newsday, September 21, 2007
The life of Joop van der Grinten traced an improbable arc, from outsmarting Nazis in Holland to using tomatoes to teach children nonviolence on Long Island, and it showed that it's possible to advocate fiercely for peace, but be peaceful with adversaries.
Its final irony was the intersection of this tireless peacemaker and his polar opposite, a famously xenophobic and bellicose former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms.
When I learned that they were regularly sitting across from one another in the dining room of a North Carolina nursing home, it made me laugh, as van der Grinten had done so many times since we first sat quietly together in a darkened classroom in East Patchogue during the Gulf War and prayed together over war and peace.
So, when I visited him on Sept. 1, and he talked about his readiness for death and the funeral arrangements he had made, he didn't hesitate when I asked him how he was getting on with the senator.
"I've decided to let bygones be bygones," he said in his sharp Dutch accent, between long pauses for breath, caused by his struggle with congestive heart failure. "He lived his life and I lived mine." With obvious enjoyment, my friend described the senator as "shocked" when, despite the chasm between their views, van der Grinten addressed him with a courteous "yes, senator" or "no, senator."
Recently, Helms joined rock star Bono to fight AIDS and poverty in Africa. But in his prime, the senator used his power to block treaties and advance a fevered nationalism that was foreign to everything that van der Grinten believed in.
Still, as they sat across from each other, the peacemaker didn't jump on the senator rhetorically. "Just because I disagree," he told me, "that's no reason to be impolite." One of his great peacemaking skills was to carry on a dialogue without rancor, even with someone whose views offended him.
As we spoke, he was wearing a "Still Against War" button, but his was more than a buttons-and-bumper-stickers opposition to war. From counseling young men on conscientious objection to the draft during the Vietnam era to keeping his income low, so the government couldn't tax it and use the proceeds to build bombs, van der Grinten was fiercely committed to nonviolence. But finding inner peace was a struggle.
During the brutal occupation of the Netherlands, when his father's Catholic newspaper resisted the Nazis publicly and van der Grinten worked against them in secret, it was easy for him to hate the occupiers. For years after he left Holland, came to the United States in 1948 with almost no cash, and found a job and a wife in the same Huntington nursery, he struggled against the anger.
Until his death last Sunday at age 88, he believed that the poison of hatred brought on the cancer that once attacked his body. But he vanquished the cancer and, with spiritual weapons ranging from Christian prayer to clothing-free moments in American Indian sweat lodges, he stilled the anger.
Along the way, he became a white-maned Everyman, as hard at work in the fields of peace and justice as he was in the soil of organic agriculture. Though he spent his final four years in North Carolina, living with his daughter as his health declined, he left a major imprint on Long Island.
It wasn't just about war. It was about food and fairness for the poor and about equality for everyone. Van der Grinten and his family picketed regularly outside Brookhaven Town Hall to protest racial discrimination in housing. But he didn't just protest. He put in hard work seeking real housing solutions.
Later in his life, he became a leader in creation spirituality, a view of the Earth not as a vast store of exploitable resources but as a single, living, breathing organism.
It was the planet that gave him his livelihood, through the trees and bushes that he grew at his Brookhaven nursery and planted all over the Island. And it was the planet that gave him a way to show young people about nonviolence, by teaching them to be gentle to the tomatoes they grew in his community garden at St. Joseph the Worker Parish in East Patchogue.
Joop starts with a sound like a "Y" and rhymes with hope. For me and everyone whose life he enriched, he will always be—like the trees he planted—an eternal sign of hope. He was a man of peace who became, despite the angers born of war, a man at peace.
The life of Joop van der Grinten traced an improbable arc, from outsmarting Nazis in Holland to using tomatoes to teach children nonviolence on Long Island, and it showed that it's possible to advocate fiercely for peace, but be peaceful with adversaries.
Its final irony was the intersection of this tireless peacemaker and his polar opposite, a famously xenophobic and bellicose former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms.
When I learned that they were regularly sitting across from one another in the dining room of a North Carolina nursing home, it made me laugh, as van der Grinten had done so many times since we first sat quietly together in a darkened classroom in East Patchogue during the Gulf War and prayed together over war and peace.
So, when I visited him on Sept. 1, and he talked about his readiness for death and the funeral arrangements he had made, he didn't hesitate when I asked him how he was getting on with the senator.
"I've decided to let bygones be bygones," he said in his sharp Dutch accent, between long pauses for breath, caused by his struggle with congestive heart failure. "He lived his life and I lived mine." With obvious enjoyment, my friend described the senator as "shocked" when, despite the chasm between their views, van der Grinten addressed him with a courteous "yes, senator" or "no, senator."
Recently, Helms joined rock star Bono to fight AIDS and poverty in Africa. But in his prime, the senator used his power to block treaties and advance a fevered nationalism that was foreign to everything that van der Grinten believed in.
Still, as they sat across from each other, the peacemaker didn't jump on the senator rhetorically. "Just because I disagree," he told me, "that's no reason to be impolite." One of his great peacemaking skills was to carry on a dialogue without rancor, even with someone whose views offended him.
As we spoke, he was wearing a "Still Against War" button, but his was more than a buttons-and-bumper-stickers opposition to war. From counseling young men on conscientious objection to the draft during the Vietnam era to keeping his income low, so the government couldn't tax it and use the proceeds to build bombs, van der Grinten was fiercely committed to nonviolence. But finding inner peace was a struggle.
During the brutal occupation of the Netherlands, when his father's Catholic newspaper resisted the Nazis publicly and van der Grinten worked against them in secret, it was easy for him to hate the occupiers. For years after he left Holland, came to the United States in 1948 with almost no cash, and found a job and a wife in the same Huntington nursery, he struggled against the anger.
Until his death last Sunday at age 88, he believed that the poison of hatred brought on the cancer that once attacked his body. But he vanquished the cancer and, with spiritual weapons ranging from Christian prayer to clothing-free moments in American Indian sweat lodges, he stilled the anger.
Along the way, he became a white-maned Everyman, as hard at work in the fields of peace and justice as he was in the soil of organic agriculture. Though he spent his final four years in North Carolina, living with his daughter as his health declined, he left a major imprint on Long Island.
It wasn't just about war. It was about food and fairness for the poor and about equality for everyone. Van der Grinten and his family picketed regularly outside Brookhaven Town Hall to protest racial discrimination in housing. But he didn't just protest. He put in hard work seeking real housing solutions.
Later in his life, he became a leader in creation spirituality, a view of the Earth not as a vast store of exploitable resources but as a single, living, breathing organism.
It was the planet that gave him his livelihood, through the trees and bushes that he grew at his Brookhaven nursery and planted all over the Island. And it was the planet that gave him a way to show young people about nonviolence, by teaching them to be gentle to the tomatoes they grew in his community garden at St. Joseph the Worker Parish in East Patchogue.
Joop starts with a sound like a "Y" and rhymes with hope. For me and everyone whose life he enriched, he will always be—like the trees he planted—an eternal sign of hope. He was a man of peace who became, despite the angers born of war, a man at peace.