Word: laguardias
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Reluctantly, last spring, greying Fiorello LaGuardia admitted to himself that he was not well. He was 64, but he awaited a cure with characteristic impatience. As a radio commentator, columnist and freelance oracle, he was as full of furious plans as he had been during his twelve years as mayor of New York. He went to Manhattan's Mt. Sinai Hospital for an operation in June, hoping to hear that he could soon go on breaking lances against the enormous villains with whom his frenetic world was peopled. Instead, he heard his death sentence-he was suffering from cancer...
...autumn morning, teletypes clacked in all police stations, ordering flags flown at half-mast. Signal gongs in all firehouses began beating out the 5-5-5-5 rhythm which heralds the death of firemen and of great public servants. Newspapers began spilling off the presses with the black headline: LAGUARDIA DEAD...
...Yorkers knew his history. He was born in a tenement on Manhattan's lower East Side, the son of poor immigrants from Italy. But his father, a musician named Achille LaGuardia, joined the U.S. Army and became bandmaster of the 11th Infantry Regiment; Fiorello's boyhood was spent in Arizona Army posts. It was a good boyhood. He learned music (all his life he worshiped opera, and as mayor he took delight in leading bands and orchestras). He also rode half-wild range horses and learned early that brashness could be a substitute for size...
...Congress in an uproar. He railed against Andrew Volstead and his dry law, once concocted home brew in a Harlem drugstore in a fruitless attempt to get himself arrested. During a speech on high prices, he waved a lamb chop at his congressional colleagues. He helped write the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which banned "yellow-dog" labor contracts and strikebreaking by injunction...
Comeback. Actually, it had just begun. When the Seabury Investigation forced dapper Jimmy Walker out of New York's City Hall, a Fusion Party was born and Fiorello LaGuardia, its candidate for mayor, rode noisily into the third biggest political job in the land. On election night, although he had not yet taken office and had no real authority, he ordered police to send 400 patrol wagons out to bring voting machines to police headquarters-he suspected Tammany henchmen of trying to alter the vote for comptroller. The police obeyed, and the Fusion candidate won. In the next twelve...