Senator Robert Torricelli: Suburban Boy Patriot, Bianca Jagger Boyfriend, Flaming Partisan
Though he was raised by progressive parents, Bob Torricelli (b. 1951) became a teenaged superpatriot who decorated his room in red, white and blue while most boys his age were putting up psychedelic posters. Three decades later, he dated Bianca Jagger. Times change.

BY MICHAEL GROSS
Interviewed at his home in New Jersey in fall 1998, and by telephone from his Senate office, just after the impeachment of President Clinton, in winter 1999.

Michael Gross: You were born in '51. Your parents are second-generation?
Robert Torricelli: Actually, my father's family emigrated from Corleone, Sicily, and they came to New York operating a fruit business, which went bankrupt, and they moved back to Sicily. While they were in New York the first time, my father was born. So he was born here but raised in Sicily, and then later returned. My mother's family was half-German and half-English, but the English side had been here since pre-Revolution. The German side, Prussian, came in the late 19th Century. My grandfather on my mother's side was a steelworker; my father's mother and father were both in the garment industry.
My grandmother on my father's side was an early member of the Ladies Garment Workers Union, I guess in the period right after the [Triangle] Shirtwaist Factory fire. My grandfather was a tailor who lost a finger in an automobile accident and committed suicide when my father was very little. My mother's family were Republicans; my father's were Democrats. Both parents were committed New Dealers.
RT: Marine Corps. Fought in Saipan, was wounded. Lost hearing in one ear from a Japanese grenade. Grandparents on my mother's side fought in World War I.
MG: Were they already married, or did they get married after the war?
RT: It's a movie script. My parents met after my father was wounded. He was in the Naval Hospital in St. Albans, Queens, and my mother had joined the Red Cross. They married, moved initially into my mother's parents' house in Clifton, New Jersey, which is why I was born in Patterson, and then moved, bought what was a summer bungalow in Franklin Lakes, and over the years built a house there, and we spent our entire lives in Franklin Lakes.
MG: Do you have an older sibling?
RT: Yeah. Four-and-a-half years older.
MG: Are they comfortable by the time you come along? Did you grow up middle class?
RT: I never remember wanting for anything. I had the feeling of living a life of comfort and being extremely blessed. It was an idyllic setting. It was two acres. I had my own stream, my own lake, endless acres of woods to wander through. It was a very lonely childhood in that there were very few children in the area, but it was a wonderful place to come of age. Looking back, my parents probably struggled greatly. My mother was a schoolteacher and a librarian; my father was a local attorney. Neither ever made considerable money. My mother was obsessive about saving.
MG: A classic Depression mentality.
RT: Right. I suspect they had some very difficult days. But as a child, I was entirely unaware of it.
MG: Did Mom work through your childhood?
RT: My mother worked my entire life. I'm particularly sensitive about day-care because I was the only child I knew in our community whose mother worked, and worked hard. She was very ambitious, and she was an English teacher and then became the school librarian. She founded the school library in Mahwah. She was very involved in her profession. I never remember coming home from after school and having my mother in the house. I was a generation ahead of what is now the modern American experience, and it's made me very aware of day-care and what life is now like for this generation.
MG: Was your school one of those built for the postwar Baby Boom kids?
RT: No, it was actually built during the Depression. But as the '60s went on, the town grew rapidly, and there were schools placed throughout the community.
MG: What are your first memories of the world outside?
RT: There was no division between our home and the events of the world. Every evening, dinner was focused on conversation about the events of the day. And I never remember a time in our family when international tensions or economic problems and American politics were not discussed.
My parents were very anti-war, much more so than I ever was. I'm not really a political reflection of my parents. They were very shaped by the War experience and somewhat traumatized by the entire McCarthyism experience. Very sensitive to ideological dogma. Both genuinely intellectuals. My father was a real product of the New York City schools -- intellectual, progressive world view. My mother was very much that way, too, although she didn't live in New York City. So yes, I remember this intense concern about the anti-Communist movement in this country, and I think my parents saw the reality of the Cold War, but were very sensitive to its exaggeration. I must have been in the fifth grade, and my teacher told me one day that in Russia no more than two people could meet on a street-corner and talk -- it was against the law. My mother called the teacher and said she didn't want me hearing any of that crap.
Franklin Lakes must be 15 to 18 miles from midtown Manhattan. But it was Small Town America. I often believe that I succeeded politically because I lived the experience of my own generation. Born after the war, a feeling of relative affluence, though in families that genuinely economically struggled, so some sense of economic insecurity in my environment, in a small-town atmosphere that was overwhelmed by suburbia. Conservative surroundings with influences of race and the Cold War. But I saw both the Civil Rights Movement and the Antiwar Movement meet the borders of our community, cause divisions and eventually overwhelm it. I don't know how long I'll be successful in politics. But I always believed I would be successful so long as these experiences of my life typify so much of the American population. That I have lived the postwar generation's suburban experience.
In fact, when I ran for the Senate, I argued that I was the first of the future to get elected. That for generations, New Jersey's state-wide elected officials had come from either the landed gentry or they had come from the urban experience. They were either from the Morris County-Christie Whitman set, or they were from Newark or Jersey City. I was the first elected state-wide from Bergen County, I think, in the 20th Century, maybe ever, even though it's the largest county in the state -- from suburbia, and born after the war. My guess is from now on, everybody is. I will bet you that the next Senator or the next Governor elected in this state, and for the next 20 years (all born, obviously, after the War), will be from suburbia, from smaller communities, and ethnic.
MG: Your father was a politician, wasn't he?
RT: He ran locally, but the town was overwhelmingly Republican. He ran for Councilman and Mayor, and I always saw those campaigns. In fact, in 1965 my father ran for Mayor, and the school ran a contest...all the schoolchildren in the community, at all grades, elected a Mayor for a day. He was running for Mayor as a Democrat, and I ran for Mayor of the day, and I won and he lost. It was a source of considerable humor in the community.
MG: He was quoted saying that you took his losses harder than he did.
RT: I did. Because they knew they were going to lose, and I didn't understand that victory wasn't possible. I hate to speak badly of my community, because I admire Franklin Lakes and I love its people, and it's really the only home I've ever known. But it needs to be seen in reality. It was racist, very prejudiced... Franklin Lakes was unlikely to ever elect a Democrat. It certainly was never going to elect an Italian-American.
MG: Was it all-White?
RT: 100 percent. Mostly Dutch, blood English, Protestant. When the first Catholic church was built in the community, it was a source of considerable speculation. There was not a synagogue, but when there was one built even in proximity of the community, it was widely discussed. I remember when I was in high school, a girl joined our class who was Black. Her father was a diplomat in the United Nations. She left after several weeks. Just couldn't do it. This is hard to believe in northern New Jersey in the 1950's; I tell people this now, and they're shocked. I remember lectures when I was in grade school from teachers who taught us that Blacks were better off in slavery than they were after the Emancipation Proclamation, and that real poverty of Blacks only began at the end of slavery. And for all the admiration of Martin Luther King, I can remember teachers spoke about him with disdain.

n e x t  (c) 2000 Michael Gross