In the early 1970s in a room on the Queens College campus, then President, soon to be University Chancellor, Joe Murphy had gathered his key advisors, including Dave Fields and Jay Hershenson. When the meeting began, the players included the Queens Borough President, a state assemblyman, a state senator, and a chief administrative judge to discuss the advisability of opening a public law school in Queens. The answer was an emphatic yes. Dave served as the staff director of the President’s Advisory Commission to establish CUNY School of Law, later serving as its Associate Dean for Administration and Finance for many years. In 2006, he returned to CUNY Central where he was unfailingly an ardent advocate for the law school. We join Jay in expressing our sorrow for the loss of Linda, the love of his life. We are honored that he has chosen to remember and honor Linda through the establishment of the Linda Fields Public Interest Grant.
– Dean Mary Lu Bilek
Dave and Linda Fields appear with their arms around one another, smiling, as the crowd gathered to honor Dave with a roast looks on
The first time I met Linda Fields was at Queens College, in the “J” Building across from the big dining hall, where she was sitting in the closet-like studio of WQMC Radio, the campus station, across from the control board being operated by Dave Fields.
I had transferred to Queens College from Queensborough Community College in the fall of 1969, and Bob Braun, the WQMC News Director, asked me to read the news in between the music shows of the station disc jockeys. So I grabbed some Associated Press copy (that was then called “rip and read”) from the loud machine in the College Memorial Center (CMC) and entered the studio.
Dave and Linda introduced themselves to me, and I learned that he was both the DJ for his “Blue Haze” show and WQMC Chief Engineer. Linda, more conventionally, was an early childhood education major. She was sorting through some record albums we now refer to as “Classic Rock.” He was talking on the air to the many tens of thousands of listeners we all dreamed of, including the three hundred students in the Dining Hall.
Even then, I could see how kind and friendly she was and how perfectly they fit together in the cramped studio (which somehow miraculously was later moved to a much larger location in the same building — but that is another story). This all took place over fifty years ago. We were about eleven years old at the time. We were in the early College Now program.
I asked Dave the other night when he and Linda first met. They met in high school.
She was born in Brooklyn, moved to Nassau County, and then on to Queens, right near Queensborough Community College, and she went to Bayside High School. Dave was born in Brooklyn and raised in Bayside, Queens, and went to Brooklyn Technical High School.
In the evening, high school kids hung out at Joe’s Pizza at Springfield Blvd and Horace Harding Expressway. Dave invited Linda to a “Young Rascals Concert” at Brooklyn Tech, where, of course, he had access to the audio-visual control room and was involved with all the equipment needs. He was the head of the audio-visual squad and had an all-buildings pass, the gold standard for access. Easy to impress a first date.
Soon he gave her his high school ring, a serious commitment. This was around 1967, and pretty soon they were both on their way to attending QC; Dave in the fall of ‘67 and Linda in early ‘68.
They were looking to get married four years later while Linda was on her way to becoming a teacher and then a director of a United Nations school, The International Nursery School in Parkway Village. Dave was serving as Special Assistant to President Joseph S. Murphy, after staffing the Towers Commission on the Re-Structuring of Queens College.
So on January 13, 1972, Linda (age 22) and Dave (age 23) went to Queens Borough Hall to get married. The clerk looked them over, long-hair and dungarees, and said, “We do not do marriages for young people on Fridays!”
Dave asked about the age limit of this so-called policy. The clerk incredulously opined, “YOU are the special assistant to the president of Queens College?” He would not be budged. So Dave and Linda, along with some family and friends, headed to Manhattan and the city clerk’s office.
There on the line was a greatly worried, elderly couple who were also looking to tie the knot but without the requisite witnesses available. So Linda and Dave filled the void by serving in that important capacity. Then they made their own marriage official. This was emblematic of their well-known kindness and enduring compassion for those in need.
It is not possible for me in this short essay to easily characterize or quantify a relationship that lasted over half a century other than to say that these two free spirits found each other and were inseparable together. Linda’s work with children as a teacher went beyond classroom settings; she liberally shared her love and knowledge with family and friends and their children. Rebecca and I are profoundly grateful that both our children Bradley and Haley benefited from every conversation and communication they had with Linda. She always made their birthdays extra special with thoughtful gifts and gestures.
My strongest memories relate to how supportive she was as Dave and I devoted endless hours to plotting new schools, programs, political and advocacy strategies on all subjects, including higher education access, quality, and opportunity. We had many successes, but there is none that Dave is more proud of than his critical contributions to nurturing the idea of a law school for the University into the nationally-recognized, premier public interest institution it has become. At the same time, usually in between discussions of the world of politics, I learned about Linda’s love of nature, of animals of all kinds, of architecture, of wellness, and of reading.
Everyone who came to know Linda benefited from her generosity of spirit, independent thought, and consistent kindness. And that is what I remember most. We can all learn from Linda’s lifelong example of how we ought to relate to each other, to our family, friends, and neighbors. Linda Fields will be remembered always with the deepest appreciation for her incredibly thoughtful love and friendship.
She will always be, to paraphrase Tennyson, a part of all of us.
Dave has requested that for friends who would like to, please help the CUNY School of Law establish a summer public interest grant in Linda’s honor. The grant will support a law student as they take on work as advocates, organizers, and champions of change through opportunities often unpaid or underfunded.
You can donate as you wish at law.cunytuesday.org by clicking on the “Give” button and later checking the box to give in memory of someone. You can then indicate that your donation is in honor of Linda Fields.
Thank you.