… wrote UD‘s colleague, Lee Sigelman, to her in an email in January 2008. Lee, who died last December, was an eminent political scientist. With various colleagues, he had his own blog, The Monkey Cage.
From The Monkey Cage, some memories of Lee.
i had professor sigelman for one class, intro to US politics. you rarely find heads of poli sci departments teaching intro classes to masses of freshmen but i think he enjoyed teaching it (i cant come up with any other reason why he would).
he started the class by asking everyone to fill out notecards with our contact info and one interesting thing about us. I put that my [only] real skill was the ability to draw homer simpson, and then i drew him. this made it onto the projector at the start of the next class.
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He was a wonderful mentor. And, if he’s out there reading this in the great beyond, I promise I’ll never use the word impact as a verb again!
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Lee was a remarkable person—funny, witty, engaging, and, despite all the heights he reached, exceedingly modest. It was humbling and inspirational to see how he lived his life and comported himself in the face of enormous adversity over the past two plus years.
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[One evening, at a fancy restaurant, Lee and I] were greeted with much enthusiasm and escorted to a semi-private room where a waiter and several assistants helped us into our chairs, grabbed the neatly folded napkins off the plates, and snapped them onto our laps.
Our waiter, a young, officious and somewhat pretentious fellow, introduced his staff, told us at length about the wonderful specials available to us, and, at the end of what had been a five minute peroration asked if Lee had any questions. Without skipping a beat, Lee replied, “What’s the capital of Albania?”
The waiter looked stunned, but managed to stutter out, “I don’t know, but we’ll find out before you leave.”
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Lee and I were friends and riding buddies who came from completely different professional backgrounds. He was the academician and I spent a career in business. The common ground we shared was our love of riding our bicycles.
One summer afternoon, a group of us had ridden out MacArthur Boulevard from the District into Maryland where we rode River Road. Lee particularly liked riding River Road; it was hilly and he loved to climb. He was a great climber and no matter how hard I tried I could never catch him on the long climbs.
We had finished our ride and the group was heading back down MacArthur into the District. Normally I jump off and take the Chain Bridge home, but [I] decided to stay with the group and venture home over the Key Bridge. Riding MacArthur into the District is relaxing, especially after a tough workout, because it’s flat and when it’s not, it’s downhill. We rode to where MacArthur meets Canal Road and the road narrows. From that point, past Georgetown University, to M Street at the start of Georgetown, the road becomes very bicycle unfriendly. Over the next quarter mile, cars, buses and trucks all jockey to either take M Street, the Key Bridge or the Whitehurst Freeway. Bicyclists and motorized vehicles always have an uneasy truce, and the truce is often stretched to its limits on this very short roadway where there are no shoulders.
Unusual as it was, I happened to be at the front of the group and Lee was behind me when a small passenger bus pulled up alongside us at the red light at the beginning of the run to M Street. The door opened next to where Lee was patiently sitting waiting for the light to change and I heard the driver say: “Why don’t you take the bike path?” Without missing a beat, Lee answered: “Why don’t you take 495 (The Capital Beltway).”