Friends recount unique Moynihan

"His farm was about three miles away from ours and we'd get together and visit, sit out on the back porch and talk about different things," Christensen said.

"When we had the bad flooding in '96, he couldn't do enough to help us out," Christensen said. "But that's the way he was, always there when you needed him."

Christensen, who once was president of the Charlotte Valley Central School board in Davenport, said he met Moynihan in 1976.

"He was running for his first term in the Senate and he came to the school to make a speech. We were dedicating the new gymnasium," he said.

Moynihan was a "very colorful" speaker, Christensen said. The former Syracuse University professor went on to win that election and, later, three more before retiring from the Senate in 2000.

David Brenner, former Oneonta mayor and former chairman of the Otsego County Board of Representatives, said Moynihan was approachable, likable and never shy about speaking.

"I remember one Memorial Day he was going to give a speech and when he showed up, I saw the seam in his pants had split wide open.

"I told him, 'Senator, there's a rip in your pants.'

"And he said, 'Is there anyone here who can pin that back together?'

"Well, I told him, 'I think there's someone here who can do that.' So, he backed up to her and she pinned his pants. Then he pulled his coat down a little lower than usual and gave that speech.'

"I remember another time when he gave the commencement speech at SUCO," said Brenner. "He got up there and said the wind was blowing so hard, he couldn't read his speech.

"He just put it in his pocket and delivered one of the most concise, interesting speeches on foreign policy I've ever heard."

Later, Brenner said, he saw Moynihan's paper was blank.

"He was funny, he was smart and when he sent his newsletter out to constituents, he wrote those lead articles himself," Brenner said. "They just don't make them like that, anymore."

John Nader, dean of liberal arts and sciences at the State University College of Technology at Delhi, said Moynihan "embodied what the founding fathers wanted a senator to be. He was a learned statesman."

Although Moynihan had a reputation as an academic who periodically was called to public service, he was a shrewd politician who served four presidents, Nader said.

Moynihan was sometimes controversial and often ahead of his time, some say. About a decade before the Soviet Union broke up, he spoke of its decay.

And in 1965, he wrote "The Negro Family: The case for national action," a paper establishing the link between fatherless families and poverty. Nearly three decades later, Moynihan's work was cited as the federal government overhauled the welfare system.

Nader said when he was a college student, he often didn't agree with Moynihan, but as years have gone by, he has come to see the former senator's wisdom.

Moynihan was able to pick his successor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and she paid tribute to him Wednesday, saying, "Today we lost more than 'the gentleman from New York,' we lost one of the greatest minds of our times. He was our Jefferson, our Lincoln. He was New York's architect of hope."

New York's other senator, Charles Schumer, said, "Pat Moynihan showed that one man with ideas could change the world and make it a better place."

Ross Frommer, Moynihan's aide in Oneonta from 1996 to 1998, said, "He was a wonderful man, and working with him was an education."

Oneonta Mayor Kim Muller said Moynihan was a great storyteller.

"He wove history into his stories and that made it easier to understand his point," Muller said.

"He was a very gracious man," she said. "We're all going to miss him."

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Tom Grace can be reached at grace@ascent.net or (607) 547-2431.