Submitted December 15, 2006, 8:36 PM
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The loss of Larry Levine is a huge blow to the profession, but it an even greater loss for many of us who called him friend. I have many friends within the profession and many historians whom I deeply respect. Larry Levine was at the top of both lists.
Larry was my favorite historian and my favorite person in the historical profession. More than that, he was one of my favorite people in the world.
I came to know Larry when I was chosen to participate in his NEH summer seminar, “The Folk in American History” at Berkeley in 1978. It was one of the great intellectual experiences of my life. Beyond that, Larry took a keen interest in my project, letters written by “ordinary” Americans during the Great Depression. I had been excited about the project when I had started it several years before, but had put it on the back burner until Larry’s enthusiasm led me to go forward and produce the book that became Down and Out in the Great Depression. Without his encouragement, that book might never have been completed and my writing career might never have gotten started. Of course Larry’s interest in the letters was entirely sincere, as he showed by producing with Cornelia The People and the President: America's Conversation with FDR years later.
A little over a year later, Larry came to Jackson to participate in a four-day symposium on the fifteenth anniversary of the Mississippi Freedom Summer that I organized at Millsaps and Tougaloo Colleges. As always, he was sharp in his commentary and diplomatic in his dealings with potentially combative groups and individuals in attendance. I’ll always remember the very lengthy concert on the last night of the symposium and Mary Travers asking when it was over around midnight where we could all go for a drink. In those days, nothing was open that late in Jackson, so we packed Mary, Pete Seeger, Larry, my wife, Anne, and our friend Dan Hise into a car, went to Dan’s house, where he quietly raided the liquor cabinet while his wife slept, and then all went on to Mary’s room at the less-than-opulent Admiral Benbow Inn to drink and talk for several hours.
Over the years since then, I saw Larry often at history conventions, he came (twice, if my memory is correct) to give talks at Millsaps, and he was enormously helpful to me in a variety of research projects.
Larry was one of the most alive people I have ever encountered. His loss leaves a genuine void in my life that can never be filled. Our profession is much richer more vital because of you have been part of it, and the same is true of my life.
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