Mario Cuomo, Lincoln Man, in Words and Action

It’s not hard for me to choose my most unforgettable experience with the late, great Mario Cuomo: that would be our 1990 collaboration on “Lincoln on Democracy,” our book of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest words on freedom, self-determination and opportunity. The inspiration for it came—well, from Mario himself, of course—though the seed was planted by the Polish Solidarity union teachers who visited the governor in Albany and asked him to help restock their nation’s library shelves, bereft of inspiring history after half a century of Communist censorship. The governor’s reply: What do you need most? The answer: Lincoln—can you send us books?

That’s when the brainstorm came to him—don’t just buy and ship existing books; do a new one. To make a very long story very short, he called me (I was on his staff then, but working in a different field) and asked if I would collaborate with him (no royalties, he cautioned; those would go to the State). I hesitated for about a quarter of a second. The result has been printed (and reprinted) in English, Polish, Japanese, Indonesian, Hebrew and Korean. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. even called it “splendid.” Not only had Mario Cuomo conceived an instant and enduring Lincoln classic, he had—knowingly, I will always believe—helped me in return to elevate my own reputation in the Lincoln field. After “Lincoln on Democracy” I could write just about anything I wanted. Publishers grew receptive. Audiences responded. And I owe that to Mario Cuomo’s genius and generosity. 

I also got to work with him on the brilliant Lincoln speeches he delivered in Springfield and Gettysburg. As a ghost writer? Not exactly. He asked me to craft outlines, but they weren’t good enough. So he wrote them himself. I still have, and treasure, one of the handwritten manuscripts he drafted on loose-leaf paper, the gift of a generous boss who suspected I wanted a souvenir and needed the documentary proof a historian might later produce if anyone ever questioned the governor’s authorship.

We collaborated on a second Lincoln book in 2004 and had just begun a new project in 2014 when his failing health—and my own repeated and imperfect shoulder surgeries—conspired to delay us until it was too late. It’s hard to believe there will be no further partnerships.

But the Mario I want to remember now is not the aging warrior who believed he had one more book in him, or even the statesman-politician-scholar who sensed a brilliant Lincoln project when a Polish teacher merely requested the loan of a book. I want to recall the Mario I saw in action in the very auditorium where Lincoln had delivered the 1860 speech that made him president: the Great Hall at Cooper Union. On that evening 38 years ago in 1977, Mario was not so much an intellectual giant but a physical one. I’ll never forget what happened.

I was Bella Abzug’s campaign press secretary at the time, and the extraordinary Democratic candidates for mayor—Bella, Mario, Abe Beame, Ed Koch, Herman Badillo and Percy Sutton—were meeting for the heavyweight championship of debates.

No one remembers a word of the actual debate. The vivid, indelible memory is of a crazed spectator who suddenly raced down the aisle and hurled what turned out to be a harmless lemon pie in the direction of the candidates. The missile struck Bella and Beame, by the way. Beame scraped off the chiffon; Bella couldn’t resist swabbing a piece with her forefinger and sneaking a taste. But by that time, Mario was, shall we say, offstage.

For, I swear, at the very moment the pie was flying toward the debaters, Mario Cuomo was flying through the air in the opposite direction, his athlete’s body soaring down toward the protestor from the nearly five-foot-high stage, knocking him to the ground, holding him until startled security forces took over and hauled the pie-thrower out. Then Mario calmly dusted himself off and climbed back onto the stage to resume the discussion.

There was no live TV coverage that night. If any cameras recorded the incident, the tape has long since vanished. The New York Times didn’t even mention it. Yet I couldn’t get the scene out of my mind. Mario later confessed to me that it had been a reckless thing to do—after all, the nut could’ve been armed and dangerous. But what I saw that night was a selflessly brave man of action, someone who could not only string together pearls of verbal wisdom, but was willing to risk all to literally wrestle opponents to the ground. Someone much like Lincoln, the wrestler, debater, and—well, who could then tell what the future held? I congratulated Mario after the debate. If he acknowledged me I don’t remember. It didn’t matter.

I was still working for Bella—that is, until she lost the primary and Mario brought me on to do his press work in the runoff and the general election (we lost both). But that night changed my life even if it didn’t alter Mario’s. That night, the daring young man from Queens claimed the stage that had made Abraham Lincoln a star. And that night, Mario Cuomo brought the three of us, inexorably, together. Thank you Mario, God bless, and wherever you are, please let Lincoln get a word in edgewise and don’t do anything foolish if someone throws another pie.

Harold Holzer is the senior vice president for public affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation.