[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 21, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5454-S5456]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF DICK CLURMAN
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, yesterday morning, May 20, 1996, ``a
gathering to celebrate the life of Dick Clurman'' took place at the
Beth-El Chapel of the Temple Emanu-El in New York City. William F.
Buckley, Jr. led off with a wonderfully moving tribute, which ended,
``It will require the balance of my own lifetime to requite what he
gave to me.'' He was followed by Osborn Elliott, a lifelong friend and
fellow journalist. There followed equally singular tributes from Harry
Evans, H.D.S. Greenway, David Halberstam, Phyllis Newman, who sang a
Gershwin tune, Hugh Sidey, Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, and then the
Clurman family. Rabbi Richard S. Chapin and Cantor Howard Nevison
provided liturgy and liturgical music.
It was indeed a life to celebrate and to remember. I ask that Mr.
Buckley's and Mr. Elliott's remarks be printed in the Record, along
with a fine obituary by Lawrence Van Gelder which appeared in the New
York Times.
The material follows:
Remarks by Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. at the Memorial Service for Richard M.
Clurman
Three years ago, one evening in July, he asked whether I'd
cross the ocean again in 1995, what would have been the fifth
such venture, done at five-year intervals beginning in 1975.
``I'm prepared to go,'' he told me. I suppose I smiled; it
was dark on the veranda when he spoke. I told him I doubted
my crew could be mobilized for one more such trip, and just
the right crew was indispensable. He had done with me two
Atlantic crossings, one Pacific crossing. He was an instant
celebrity for his ineptitudes at sea, done in high spirit
with a wonderful, persistent incomprehension of what was the
job at hand. He was the object of hilarious ridicule in my
son's published journal--and he loved it all, even as
Christopher loved him; even when, while discoursing
concentratedly on matters of state, he would drop his
cigarette ash into Christopher's wine glass, or very nearly
set fire in the galley when trying to light the stove. He
thrived on the cheerful raillery of his companions, but on
one occasion thought to say to me, in a voice unaccustomedly
low, ``I'm good at other things.''
He hardly needed to remind me. Yes, and from everything he
was good at he drew lessons, little maxims of professional
and extra-professional life of great cumulative impact,
instantly imparted to all his friends, at the least
suggestion from them, or from their situation, that they
needed help, or instruction. It is awesome to extrapolate
from one's own experience of his goodness the sum of what he
did for others.
When Oz Elliott, on Shirley's behalf, asked me to say
something today I went right to my desk but I found it
impossible to imagine his absence from the scene. Was it true
that there would be no message from him tomorrow on our E-
mail circuit? That we would
[[Page S5455]]
not be dining together during the week, or sharing a tenth
Christmas together? In the strangest sense, the answer is No,
it isn't impossible that we will continue as companions,
because his companionship left indelible traces: how to work,
how to read, how to love.
It came to me last Thursday when just after midnight my son
reached me at the hotel, that I have always subconsciously
looked out for the total Christian, and when I found him, he
turned out to be a non-practicing Jew. It will require the
balance of my own lifetime to requite what he gave to me.
____
Dick
Good morning, Shirley, and Michael, and Susan Emma, and
Carol, and all you other family members and hundreds of
friends who are here to rejoice in the life of that wonderful
man, Dick Clurman.
I'm Oz Elliott, and Dick was my best friend.
We were close for nearly half a century.
At first, we had no choice: as young writers for Time, we
were thrown together, crammed with our Royal typewriters into
a tiny cubbyhole at 9 Rockefeller Plaza.
Within a year or so, we graduated to offices of our own--
but by then there was no way we could really be separated.
The reason was that while Dick made himself an expert in many
things, his true specialty was friendship--and that came so
naturally to him.
Once you were his friend, you could do no wrong. Once you
were his friend, he could never do enough for you.
If you were stranded in the suburbs by a hurricane, and
unable to visit your sick baby in a New York hospital, not to
worry: Dick would visit that baby and report to you daily.
If you were in a panic because your child was late coming
home on a dark winter evening, Dick would be there in a flash
to search the neighborhood.
If you were fired from your job in mid-career, Dick would
find you a new one.
If you suffered from writer's block, Dick would help you
write a lead.
Dick did all these things, most of them for me.
In later years, we were fierce competitors--he stayed at
Time, while I moved to Newsweek. Yet even in that head-to-
head combat, whenever I faced a tough ethical decision, I
would always call Dick for advice.
He was a superb journalist--ever the skeptic, never the
cynic, always a stickler for precision.
One summer dawn we were out fishing together--and to our
utter amazement we spotted a baby seal in Westhampton waters.
Dick got on the ship-to-shore right away:
``Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is Sundance. Over.''
``Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is Sundance. Over.''
After repeated calls, some sleepy Coast Guardsman answered:
``Sundance this is Coast Guard. Over.''
``Coast Guard, we have located a seal--that's a Sugar-Easy-
Able-Love,'' said Dick. ``Is that of any interest to you?''
``A what?
``That's a seal,'' Dick said, ``a Sugar--Easy--Able--
Love.''
``You mean the animal?'' asked the bewildered Coast
Guardsman.
``That's the mammal,'' Dick responded.
He was precise, and caring, and incredibly well organized.
The other day, as some of us were helping Shirley--manning
the phones, calling friends, informing the press, planning
this morning's service, Michael said it all:
``Where is Dick Clurman when we need him most?''
My best friend.
____
[From the New York Times, May 17, 1996]
Richard M. Clurman, a Leading Editor at Time, Dies at 72
(By Lawrence Van Gelder)
Richard M. Clurman, whose passion for journalism brought
him to prominence at Time magazine and Newsday and whose
passion for New York City made him a leading figure in its
cultural affairs, died on Wednesday at his summer home in
Quogue, L.I. Mr. Clurman, who lived on the Upper East Side of
Manhattan, was 72.
The cause was a heart attack, according to his wife,
Shirley.
In a career at Time that spanned 23 years, Mr. Clurman held
such posts as press editor, chief of correspondents and head
of the Time-Life News Service, overseeing a network of 105
staff correspondents deployed throughout the United States
and in 34 cities abroad.
From 1955 to 1958, he interrupted his tenure at Time, which
began in 1949 and ended in 1972, to become the editorial
director and executive assistant to Alicia Patterson, the
publisher of Newsday.
In 1973, he became administrator of Parks, Recreation and
Cultural Affairs for Mayor John V. Lindsay. Mr. Clurman was
also chairman of the New York City Center and a member of the
board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
His commitment to journalism and his fascination with its
practices and lore led him to write several books, including
``Beyond Malice: The Media's Years of Reckoning,'' a 1988
analysis of the clash between the public and the press, and
``To the End of Time: The Seduction and Conquest of the
World's Largest Media Empires,'' a 1992 account of the merger
between Time Inc. and Warner Communications.
Toward the end of the book, Mr. Clurman wondered if Time's
objective of adding ``to the quality of knowledge people had
about the world'' would survive what he called the cultural
gap between the corporations.
``No one should ask that benevolence be the priority of
Time Warner or any other public company,'' he wrote. ``What
can be asked is that this new company, with its human and
material assets, have a spine that is more than stocks,
bonds, rights, deals and tightly rolled greenbacks.''
At the time is his death, Mr. Clurman was at work on a book
about The Wall Street Journal.
As sophisticated and accomplished as he was in journalism,
Mr. Clurman adopted a self-deprecating attitude toward his
activities in other realms. When named board chairman of the
New York City Center of Music and Drama in 1968, Mr. Clurman
said; ``The suggestion came out of the blue. For 44 years
I've done nothing outside of journalism. I haven't even
belonged to the P.T.A. or the Red Cross.
``At first I thought they were seeking my advice about
someone else and then I thought they'd confused me with
Harold,'' he said, referring to his uncle, the critic and
director Harold Clurman. ``I am neither an impresario nor a
tycoon, and impresarios and tycoons are often the moving
spirit behind cultural organizations of this sort.''
But within a few years, he was being credited with
expanding the activities of the City Center.
Mayor Lindsay, who was president of the center and leader
of its selection committee, clearly valued the fresh eye Mr.
Clurman brought to the center and to his post as Parks
Commissioner.
There, Mr. Clurman touched off an immediate furor by
declaring at his swearing-in ceremony that he would withdraw
all maintenance and services from parks that were
repeatedly vandalized and where the community made no
effort to halt the destruction.
He took pride in coming in the inner workings of the city
as an outsider unwise to the way to political patronage.
``In the world I came from, I had only dispensed jobs on
merit,'' he wrote in 1974 in the New York Times. ``So I set
about hiring, firing and moving people on the basis of what I
thought the parks administration needed. Mr. Lindsay was so
bemused by my political innocence that neither he nor his
staff ever suggested I do it any other way. The club house
politicians, whose names I eventually learned but from whom I
never heard a word, either considered me so ignorant or so
temporary as to be unworthy of their presumed power.''
In another article, he recalled his introduction to George
Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein of the New York City Ballet
in his capacity as chairman of the board of the ballet
company and its parent organization, the New York City Center
of Music and Drama.
``I informed them that although I appreciated the other
arts and was certainly informed about world affairs, I had
been to the ballet only once in my life,'' he wrote.
``Balanchine half rose from his chair and asked
incredulously, `Do you hate the ballet?'
`` `Not that I'm aware of,' I replied, `but if I were you,
I'd make something of how seldom I've gone.' ''
Balanchine asked, ``Would you open your mind to learning
about the ballet?'' and, Mr. Clurman wrote, ``promptly made
an offer that only a dolt could refuse: `I would like to
teach you about it.' ''
Mr. Clurman suggested that he prescribe a bibliography and
a list of people to talk to, his usual mode of inquiry and
learning as a journalist. ``No, just watch and listen,''
Balanchine said. He produced a program and listed seven or
eight ballets. For six weeks, Mr. Clurman said, he tried to
figure out what was going on.
``Then one night in the middle of Balanchine's pioneering
`Agon,' I had the epiphany that my teacher had so artfully
arranged. Nothing was going on. It was just bodies moving
gloriously to music. From that moment, the ballet became my
favorite spectator experience.''
In 1975, after he left Time and municipal administration,
Mr. Clurman formed his own public policy consulting company,
Richard M. Clurman Associates. From 1980 to 1984, he also
served as adviser to the office of the chairman of Joseph E.
Seagram & Sons. In 1981, he returned to journalism, serving
for a decade as the chairman of Columbia University's
seminars on media and society.
Engaged with ideas, Mr. Clurman was noted for dinner
parties at which he would tap a spoon against a glass,
commanding the attention of his guests--people like Robert F.
Kennedy, William Buckley, Edward Albee, Barbra Streisand and
Norman Podhoretz--and announce a topic they were expected to
discuss.
``I refused to be bored,'' he said.
Mr. Clurman was a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations and of the board of the Citizens Committee for New
York City.
He was born in New York City in 1924. He received a
Bachelor's of Philosophy degree in political science from the
University of Chicago in 1946 after serving during World War
II in the Information and Education Division of the Army. He
began his career in journalism in 1946 as an assistant editor
on the magazine Commentary. After joining Time in 1949, he
served for six years as its press editor.
In addition to his wife, the former Shirley Potash, Mr.
Clurman is survived by his son,
[[Page S5456]]
R. Michael Clurman Jr. of Manhattan; two daughters by a
previous marriage, which ended in divorce: Susan Emma Clurman
of Manhattan and Carol Duning of Alexandria, Va., and two
grandchildren.
____________________