His Light Shone on Urban America

He was very, very strong--physically, mentally and spiritually. His values were clear, his integrity was legendary. He knew exactly what he stood for, and he urged us to reach toward that and follow him. He never shied away from responsibility or adversity, no matter how high the personal burden or political cost. He was extraordinarily resilient. He had to be, because the years he was New York City’s mayor required him to absorb enormous punishment.

You would have to say they don’t make many like John V. Lindsay anymore. His tall, youthful figure and his unquenchable optimism and determination appealed to the best part in each of us who lived and worked in New York, and he became the symbol of hope for urban America.

Lindsay served at a time of intense change and uncertainty and set himself against many established interests. Some bore resentment at those changes and at him for representing them. For others, he was an inspiring champion who legitimized those changes. He was in the forefront of a national transition: defining it, explaining it, living it. Today, when so many aspects of race, of opportunity, of both domestic and foreign policy are settled, we forget how wrenching they were.

Lindsay faced those issues squarely. He was one of the first elected officials to oppose the war in Vietnam. He was uncompromising on civil rights. He fought insider deals and special privilege wherever he found them and worked to build a level playing field spacious enough to include those who had been kept out of the game. He brought minorities into the life of the city on a large scale and a fair footing, and yielded no quarter to those who urged him to compromise on that subject.

He went where no other American leader went. During nights of restlessness and danger in New York’s ghettos, he walked the tense streets alone--communicating, reasoning, reaching out to those who were angry or desperate. His personal courage and political honesty brought hope, calm and a measure of tolerance to the troubled city during years when all over the U.S. the nation’s poorest neighborhoods were visited instead by looting, rioting, fire and often the National Guard.

Lindsay brought an energetic new wave of talented men and women into city government to tackle long-standing problems with new ideas and managerial innovation. Over the next two decades, members of this large and gifted generation of public servants went on to provide much of the best professional leadership in New York at both city and state levels.

Lindsay came to the job when the city was tired, and he succeeded in rejuvenating New York’s signature worlds of commerce and culture. Either as the direct result of Lindsay’s policies or within the scope of the principles and values that he established, the city launched a massive neighborhood housing program, modernized and reformed the police department, made city government more responsive to neighborhood concerns and instituted open admissions at City University of New York. Lindsay’s fiscal policies were modern, transparent and disciplined, and he used the budget as an instrument of policy reform and executive coordination.

As a boss, Lindsay was open, frank, searching and supportive to the hilt when he thought you were right. He never undercut you for narrow political reasons. If he thought what you were doing was good for the city, he believed his job was to back you and take the political heat that often came with doing the right thing.

Above all, Lindsay brought passion and deep personal conviction to this grueling job. Time and again, he jeopardized his political standing to pursue what he thought was right--never the reverse. When faced with a chance in 1968 to go to the U.S. Senate and leave City Hall, he decided to stay with the city.

He was not always a popular mayor in some quarters. He was a strong one and a principled one, deeply engaged and dedicated. He put his life and his political career on the line, over and over, for what he believed in. And what he believed in was very, very good.

You would have to say they don’t make many like John V. Lindsay anymore.