May 19, 2004
Reggie Zelnik is gone — suddenly, to the overwhelming grief of his innumerable dear friends.
In my mind, I keep a list of “friends of a lifetime”. These are the people who during one or another period were true soul mates. These are individuals without whom my life would have been significantly diminished. The list is indelible, though the intimacy of any friendship may ebb with changing circumstances.
For over thirty years, Reggie was my dearest friend on the Berkeley campus. It began soon after I came to Berkeley, when two young Assistant Professors, Larry Levine and Reggie, responded to the nascent free speech movement, joined with the students, and helped rally the faculty to the cause of free speech. They put their potential and eventually illustrious academic careers at risk. Reggie was actually only an Acting Assistant Professor, and the Regents later voted to block his promotion to tenure. They were compelled to back down. At the time of his death, forty years later, Reggie was already long celebrated as the most important and popular faculty mentor of the FSM student generation. That, of course, was an adjunct to his academic achievements as a historian and his place in the hearts and esteem of successive generations of students and faculty.
From 1964 through to the recent publication of his book on the Free Speech Movement, edited with Robbie Cohen, Reggie and I shared ideas and involvement with almost every issue that came along on campus and in the whole wide world. After FSM, we worked together daily in the Faculty Peace Committee, opposing the Vietnam War. Reggie marched, spoke and, together with Franz Schurmann and Peter Scott, wrote “The Politics of Escalation”. Reggie had a lot in common with Mario Savio, with whom each of us developed a loving friendship. He had Mario’s freshness and independence of thought, immunity to mantras and clichés, and a fierce commitment to his own integrity. Above all was his humanity and natural sense of equality, his remarkable caring and accessibility to everyone. No wonder he was loved by so many.
When I went to the History Department’s impromptu gathering yesterday, I was thinking I’ve lost my best friend. When I listened to so many others who were there, I realized there must be literally dozens who felt the loss of their best friend. That was Reggie. As people in shock began to reminisce, it was clear that while we all knew the same Reggie, his personality and talents made for a patchwork of deep, but different kinds of friendships. Everyone remembers his sense of humor, but some shared more than others in his fondness for the mandolin, or baseball, or songs in many languages. Perhaps because Roz and I are a generation older than Reggie and Elaine, our best friendship was more an intense mix of views, values and affection.
For most of our time together, we were remarkably close in our attitudes toward people and events. That wasn’t quite so in the last couple of years, when we argued about aspects of humanitarian intervention and the role of the United States in the world. That started with the Balkans and became sharper in the wake of 9/11. Reggie challenged my thinking and influenced it to a degree; I will probably never know to what extent that was mutual. If labels mean anything, Reggie was somewhat of a radical liberal, while I remain a somewhat liberal radical. “Thanks” to George Bush and the war in Iraq, our views came into essential harmony again. The last e-mail Reggie sent me, May 2, 2004 was in strong agreement with my web posting of May 1st. In answer to his “warmest greetings”, my last message to him was: “Thanks, Reggie. You know how much I appreciate hearing from you. Can the four of us get together before long? We'd like you to visit us when you can. Very best, Leon”
At our age, Roz’s and mine, our peers are fading away month by month. But it’s harder to take in the loss of younger loved ones, lives still full of vigor and purpose. Our grief upon the loss of daughter Carla nine months ago spills over into the pain over Reggie’s sudden death and into the loving sympathy we feel for Elaine and the children, Michael, Pam and her family.