“Gadfly: A persistent, annoying critic.”
That was George Spitz, all right. Often annoying, but always persistent. Persistent enough, at least, to sometimes actually get something accomplished.
Spitz, who died last Friday at 92, for decades was a perennially unsuccessful candidate for office. Most of his issues were lost causes, like getting a trolley line up Second Avenue.
But he left at least one lasting imprint on the city he loved: It was Spitz who in 1976 first proposed expanding the New York City Marathon from a race around Central Park into a five-borough extravaganza.
Even Fred LeBow, the race’s founder and great champion, thought the idea crazy.
But Spitz won the support of then-Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, who persuaded Mayor Abe Beame — then deep in the morass of the city’s fiscal crisis — that it would be a great morale booster.
It was such a hit that the idea, which shut much of the city to traffic, became an annual event. Other cities around the world followed suit, and the urban marathon was born.
Most of Spitz’s other ideas remained stillborn, but he never stopped pressing reporters and public officials to consider them — always motivated by his passion for the city in which he spent nearly a century, and to whose betterment he dedicated his life.
RIP.