"An honor to have been one of his students"

I can think of three brief Ted Lowi stories worth telling.

In early 1984, former Wisconsin governor, Patrick Lucey, made a trek to Ithaca. He’d been former Congressman John B. Anderson’s vice-presidential running mate in the 1980 election. They’d laboriously qualified their new National Unity Party for the ballot in all 50 states, and now four years later this gave them a line on the ballot almost everywhere. Neither man wanted to repeat the experience of running nationwide, but they wanted someone who could be credible, articulate and telegenic in setting forth a reform agenda, and so they asked Ted to be the party’s presidential nominee in 1984. Lowi told me about this almost immediately, and it was obvious from his demeanor that he’d instantly shot down the idea. Still, I thought the idea of barnstorming the country with Ted as he set the world to rights was truly inspired. I can assume that Ted, on the other hand, intended to continue to change the way politics was understood and practiced in a different way.

The second was from when I was the head TA of Government 428. I sat up in the front and merely enjoyed the words pouring over me, usually not taking any notes. Ted suspended his lecture’s narrative and began what appeared to be a long aside, although it was not immediately clear where he was going with it. An undergraduate a few seats away from me put his pen down, thinking that this was not material he’d be expected to master. But Ted effectively delivered the rest of the lecture within that aside, never overtly returning to his main discourse. The student kept looking at me as if I would tell him when he needed to start taking notes again. Most of the class went by before the student decided he needed to be getting this down. Afterwards he looked like he wanted to lodge a complaint but decided he had no grounds.

Finally, I was as shocked as anyone when [Lowi] took a phone call in his office and introduced himself to the caller as Ted “Low-eye,” which I had never heard before. I think it was someone from Gadsden, AL, his home town, and so he reverted to pronouncing his name as it must have been spoken in the Deep South some 50 or so years earlier. I’d never thought much about that legacy.

It was an honor to have been one of his students.

David Lytel

Lowi research assistant, 1984, and graduate student 1985 to 1993