Today's New York Times, July 25, 2008, includes an obituary for Roosevelt Island resident Richard C. Wade who passed away last Friday. Mr. Wade lived in the Rivercross building and is survived by his wife Liane Thomas Wade.
From the Times:
"Richard C. Wade, who helped put cities on the map as an academic subject and who advised Democratic candidates including Adlai Stevenson, Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern, died last Friday at his home on Roosevelt Island in New York City. He was 87."
I will not try to recap the man's life here on this blog but his career included being a well respected historian that opened up the field of studying cities as a source of growth in this country. Two books he wrote or co-authored include Urban Frontier, and Slavery in the Cities. He was also involved in politics but was mostly known and respected for his work as a historian.
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He was about as zealously left-wing as they come. Over the last 10 years, I knew him as a crackpot who was virulently opposed to privatization. His rantings and ravings, stuffed under my door on a constant basis whenever the subject was raised, were useless except to the bureaucrats at DHCR and RIOC who choose to cite them for their own purposes. Maybe he was once intellectual and relevant, but Good Riddens!!
ReplyDeleteHe was a very nice man who would have had a good chuckle at the above comment. Even if no longer "intellectual and relevant", he probably still knew how to spell "riddance". Idiot.
ReplyDeletePoint taken. I misspelled riddance. I am no idiot, however. But I am also not a knee-jerk liberal who never met a gov't program I didn't like. I didn't know Wade personally, but I take serious issue with his political and social points of view.
ReplyDeleteAn amazingly talented man, hugely intelligent and relevant in the early 1960 days of Civil Rights, he is found on the University of Rochester Hall of Fame for 5 sports, baseball, football, basketball, tennis, and track, was an Assistant U of R Football Coach and was able to wiggle his ears as few could. Warm, jovial, humble, adviser of Presidents, saw a hope for the future and sought put it to action, without end. Perhaps he felt privatization would go unchecked and eventually cause a gross economic decline. Such foolishness -- not! You too will be irrelevant some day, whether your ideas speak for the common good or not. He was well loved. Peace out homey.
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