[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.

                          ____________________