From: dsbarr@mindspring.com   
      
   On 2/16/2026 2:16 PM, Louis Epstein wrote:   
   > Former Congressman Richard Ottinger,born January 27th 1929,   
   > died February 16th 2026 according to local media.   
   >   
   > I was a child when he showed up at a rally my family hosted   
   > for his reelection campaign in 1968...we elected him (a   
   > Democrat) only for the district lines to be changed in   
   > 1970 when we elected John Dow (1905-2003) to succeed the   
   > Republican we'd been handed,and then again in 1972 to   
   > give us the third Hamilton Fish(1926-1996) who   
   > represented a district to the north of us,and   
   > beat off all Democratic challengers until retiring   
   > in 1994...we did not elect another Democrat to the House   
   > until John Hall in 2006,after his defeat by Nan Hayworth   
   > in 2010,we eventually replaced her with Sean Patrick   
   > Maloney,but another redistricting gave us Mike Lawler,   
   > who I am hoping will lose to a Democrat this year.   
   >   
   > After losing a U.S. Senate race in 1970 Ottinger won   
   > a different House seat in 1974 and served for another   
   > 10 years but we remained in Fish country.   
      
   I was 14 when I met him at one of his campaign stops   
   for that 1970 Senate race, not near our Westchester   
   home (of now 67-1/2 years) but up at the Concord Hotel   
   in the Catskills where I was spending the summer.   
   With all the subsequent remappings and renumberings   
   I'm not sure which House district we were in in the   
   60s (we're now in the 16th) but he must have been   
   representing us then since his name was familiar to   
   me and that's why I went to see him.  If I go dig   
   through the boxes in the bottom of my closet I   
   probably still have at least one of the buttons from   
   that and/or another of his campaigns.  (I now have   
   to go upstairs and report this news to my father--   
   who it turns out was born a month after Ottinger and   
   IYH will be 97 on Feb 28--since it won't hit the   
   printed NYTimes until tomorrow.)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)