When words fail, sometimes a picture can stand testament in their stead.

In my mind, there is a picture of Al Weinstein standing at a microphone, giving literal hell to Jerome Blue and the RIOC Board of Directors, addressing them nonetheless in words and tones at once respectful and firm.  He is dressed to appear before a World Parliament.  He is prepared.  He is defending his beloved Tramway on his own behalf and on behalf of every resident of Roosevelt Island.  He is a man with a mission, and his zeal is both palpable and irresistible.  He speaks with a youth and vigor that would be enviable in a charging executive of 35, though his presence commands the respect due a man in his 80's, as is Al.

Another picture puts Al in his chair at a meeting of the Common Council of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association, on which he served for many years, sent by Rivercross voters to speak for them.  They knew, of Al, that their own love for the Island's icon of aerial transit would be in good hands.  Al waits, impatiently, to be recognized by Patrick Stewart.  He waits, and across the room I can feel his anxiety that his fellow delegates may leave before he is able to make his point.  Then, at long last, he is recognized, and he speaks.  Here, he is among colleagues, and he allows himself to rail.  He shares information that nobody else has, and from that platform of his special relationship with both the Tramway and his RIRA cohorts, he marries passion and an argumentative skill into a warning of terrible things that may happen if the Council is not alert.  But they are alert, for Al Weinstein has spoken and they have heard.

In another picture, Al is in Trellis with Fran.  He has just returned from the United Nations, where despite his retirement earlier this decade, he has the privilege of an office and duties that honor his skill in the profession of stenographic reporter.  He is telling Fran about his day.  But I pass by, and he interrupts himself to stop me and be sure I am aware of something The WIRE should report – about the Tram, of course.  Or he might be stopping me only to say, “That was some issue,” always encouraging, always appreciative, always ready with a kind word.

There is a voice picture of Al, too.  When I close my eyes, I can hear him asking for “just five minutes,” in person, of course, because he knows that he is a better advocate when he can look me in the eye and press me for the attention the Tramway deserves.  Often, I would put him off, pleading other demands for those five minutes.  But more often, I would find the five minutes – which, of course, would become 20 before he finished with me – and I would listen attentively.  This is, after all, Al Weinstein, Defender of the Tramway.

There is the moment when Al sees me with my mother, who is his age, and stops us to deliver himself of kind words about her son, knowing that this is a kindness not just to me, but to her.  He is gracious, charming, and working his special mischief of compliments carefully and joyfully rendered.

I have many pictures of Al Weinstein in the gallery of my mind.  His own favorite picture of him, among many I took, appears here, and it shows him at his constant best:  a diplomat, an advocate, a gentleman, a friend to all the Island, and a great bearer of the passion he would leave with us, ask us to remember and share, and to carry forward in his name.

Goodbye, Al, we will miss you so much.

DL

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