Frank Longstreth

Lucy's visit to Cambridge

When I was about 12 years old, I went to visit Stretchie at Harvard. First he got me stoned and then he took me to a version of Alice in Wonderland in the round. It was quite an adventure. He also felt it was his job to cultivate my musical taste and taste in literature. The first album he ever sent me was Frank Zappa. He liked to send me JD Salinger books and said the two of us reminded him of Franny and Zooey.

The Scarf

In the Fall of senior year at Western Reserve Academy (AKA WRA or Reserve) where both of us went to school, Frank came back from a visit to Cambridge with a crimson and white banded Harvard scarf which he wore conspicuously, even ostentatiously, through that winter and into the spring. He began wearing it before we had finished sending in our applications to college and months before we would know whether we had been admitted. It was his way of proclaiming how certain he was that he would get in. Some of our classmates grumbled about his cockiness; I was just impressed. In April, of course, he was proved right when his acceptance came in a fat envelope from Harvard and our classmates' rejections came in thin ones. It was only years later that Frank told me that the scarf and the air of confidence that went with it was all show – he had been just as anxious about his chances as the rest of us who had hoped to get in. But his bold choice to mask his worries with a bright crimson and white scarf marked him as the coolest in the class.

James Boster

The Language of Love

Once while riding shotgun with George C. Scott at the wheel, Frank and Eva (his girlfriend at the time from LSE) were in the back seat cooing to each other about Marx and Weber. I never realized before that social science could be the language of love.

James Boster

London

I remember Stretch, not so much from Jordan J, but from when I visited London after my graduation. Once in London, I called Stretch and he invited me to join him, Eva, and their housemates for dinner one evening. The conversation at the table went over my head (smart Sociology graduate students) - it was so intellectually mature - but talking with Stretch when we were washing up was so cozy and natural. I was touched by his friendship and grateful to him for easing the loneliness I was feeling on my own in London.

Jill Einstein

The Father I Remember

My father would start his day early in the morning, collect the paper off of the door mat, turn on BBC Radio 4 and begin listening to the news. Next he would prepare his teapot for the 20 or so cups of tea he would drink that day. He would wash it out, pour warm water in the pot and let it sit there whilst the kettle boiled with filtered water. He would empty the warm water and put in three tea bags, fill it, and let it brew for three minutes.

With his first cup of tea to hand, my father would read through the day’s paper and inform us what was happening in the world. At his kitchen table he would surround his space with current affair magazines, newspaper cuttings, cookery books and his latest thriller novel. Of course all this literature made an impression on me, and so I would find myself reading the latest Economist and New Yorker magazines so that I could form my own opinion to discuss with him. We would talk about politics and economics I would read to him the latest “Funny Old World“ in Private Eye, which would make us both laugh. It was at his kitchen table where I developed my views of the world.

His love of music meant that our home was never silent for too long. We had Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis, Van Morrison, Charles Mingus, Neil Young, Brad Mehldau and John Coltrane. I think it is safe to say, that for at least half of my life I have had a saxophone wailing in the background. But his music wasn’t confined to our house. In the summer months whilst my father planted and pruned his garden, he would take his portable hi fi player and carry it through mud, bushes, flowers and plants, so that he could recreate the comfort that surrounded him at his kitchen table.

My father had his difficulties with life. But he taught me and my sisters to have strong principles. He taught us about culture and current affairs. He showed us the world and always pushed us to pursue our dreams. I shall treasure our conversations together, our moments chopping up onions and peeling carrots I will deeply miss my father and my best friend.

Kimber Longstreth

The Gift

Every morning before school my father would teach me something. It would sometimes begin with an article in the Guardian, or sometimes an item on the news. or a question of my own. Whatever it was, it was his cue to start a lecture and his book recommendations.

Over time my questions at breakfast evolved into a genuine interest in my father’s field of sociology and this is even what I have ended up studying at university. The book recommendations turned into reality and I now have a small collection of sociological books from him, with unique inscriptions of his scrawled across the inside page.

Out of all the books my father loved and recommended, I believe that The Gift is closest to his philosophy of life and my relationship with him.

The Gift is by Lewis Hyde, an American poet and translator. It follows the work of Marcel Mauss and Marshall Sahlins, asking how the arts and sciences can survive in a commercial world. It speaks of the gift as an exchange or donation of priceless entities; knowledge... life... (??)

My father passed on his gifts in many ways. He gave us the gift of a beautiful garden. He gave us the gift of a cooked dinner at the end of each day. He gave Hayesfield Girls’ School and Batheaston Primary School the gift of his labor as a governor. He gave people in need the gift of life through organ donation. And he gave many his gift of knowledge. (??)

Teaching is a gift.

My father has taught many students, many friends, and his whole family. He has taught me how to cook, how to think, how to love, and how to be a sociologist. I have so much left to learn in sociology, and in life, and it is sad that my father is no longer here to teach me as I know he had so much more knowledge to give... to pass on.

Everything my father has taught me, I will treasure forever. And I promise, in honour of The Gift, that I will pass on this knowledge to all who are in need of it.

Along the way I will try to remember these words by Lewis Hyde:

‘’The gift moves towards the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns toward him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosities may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us.’

Pandora Longstreth

Remembering Stretch

I first met Stretch on the soccer field freshman year. He was the third-string left-wing (he could dribble lefty), and I was the fourth-string right-wing (no left foot). I started hanging out in his Wigglesworth dorm both because my roommates were so stiff and he was so cool. Just this month in 2022, Jim Boster told me that I was there so often that he had been convinced that I was Stretch's roommate.

His dorm room, and later our suite at Adams House D-42, was the place to listen to music, get high, and have fun. We shellacked an ancient pair of George Scott’s blue jeans and stood them up by the fireplace. And we had a kangaroo rat living in our funky couch that would come out at night, hop around, and scare the hell out of guests.

Stretch turned me on to so much great music: Big Pink by the Band, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, Nashville Skyline. We played them on my KLH Model 11 until they were popping and skipping, while dancing the funky four corners that Stretch taught me.

Stretch was a pied piper. He drew people in with his laugh, his political fervor, and his curiosity about other people. He swept me, George, and Jim, first from the Yard to Adams House, next to Barnard Hall, and finally to Jordan J. He had great stories about driving around the country in a jeep the summer before starting Harvard. His stories of Western Reserve friends and family were entertaining as hell but foreshadowed messy divorces and alcoholism.

We developed our own code language, including “Don’t Tempt the Bone God”, and S-K-C-U-S--T-I--Y-L-L-A-C-I-S-A-B, (pronounced SCUSTEELAKISAB) and meant to be read backward. We had many adventures—driving slowly out to Central Mass in George’s Wonder Bread truck, camping in a field and digging out pots and pans at an old house site, and driving to Cape Cod to watch a solar eclipse from the beach.

When I visited Stretch in Bath, England twenty years ago, he was a generous host. He prepared a great kebab dinner while shuttling back-and-forth between house and garden to change the jazz and blues CD’s. His daughters Pandora and Helen were surprised and pleased to see their Dad with an old friend enjoying himself. I think of Stretch often and miss him a lot, but we are happy that we have kept in touch with Maureen and have seen her and the two daughters in California a number of times.

Bob Houghteling

Boys will be boys.

Frank grew up as a Western Reserve Academy faculty brat along with his brother Kimber, his sisters Helen and Lucy, and many other children of the WRA faculty. Reserve didn't pay their "masters" very well, but they did provide housing; the faculty inhabited the same campus as the students. This meant that the children grew up socialized into the culture of the school; its ethos was the sea they swam in from birth.

WRA was an excellent school with dedicated teachers and a regimen that had us spending enormous amounts of time either in class or studying. (The rest of our time was mainly in the dining hall or on the athletic fields.) I think Frank and I may have received a better education there than we did at Harvard; it's certainly where we both learned to write. But it was also an all-boys school with a testosterone-charged culture to match.

When we think about how the world has changed from the one we were born into, we usually focus on technology -– the novelty of personal computers, cell phones, cognitive appliances like Alexa with voice recognition, etc. But the cultural changes have been equally large. One of them is that many of the things boys did when boys were boys would now be regarded as symptoms of toxic masculinity. Hazing and casual cruelties were just part of life; when you were abused, you were expected to accept it without protest. Just suck it up. Bullying was one of the ways that the students established and maintained a dominance order with older "cooler" boys harassing younger socially-awkward ones.

Some of the hazing was very mild, of a sort that just took advantage of innocence for the amusement of others. For example, every year freshmen were invited to be inducted into the Siam Club. At the initiation, a faculty member presided wearing a turban and a flowing robe accompanied by several upperclassmen dressed as a retinue of warriors. In a rich baritone, he welcomed the freshmen recruits into this exclusive fraternity. To join, one had to chant

O Wah

Tah Nah

Siam

As the chant was repeated over and over, faster and faster, it gradually dawned on the inductees that they were proclaiming in unison "Oh what an ass I am." For the crowd gathered around, the embarrassment of the inductees was hilarious, but I wonder whether it would be regarded as equally funny today. The amusement of the crowd was bought with a lesson to the innocent to be less trusting of others. Yes, no one was harmed -- nobody died of alcohol poisoning or suffered grave bodily injury; but still, I wonder whether the show was worth the price.

At the other extreme were assaults of the sort that Robbie, the French teacher, would inflict on boys in the public showers. (In those days, there were no such things as shower stalls, everyone showered together in full naked view of each other.) Robbie would give the unwary an "electric noogie," driving his knuckles into the boy's temples and causing considerable pain. He regularly attacked boys this way; he was famous for it. It probably would have led to his termination had he done it today. My mother would have said that Robbie was more to be pitied than censured – he was an angry, barely-closeted gay man who committed suicide shortly after we graduated.

In between these extremes were pranks like ganging up on a freshman, pinning him down, and giving him a "pink belly" -– slapping his stomach until it turned red. Pink bellies were applied to the vulnerable in general -- even younger sisters. And then there were "crotch fights," ambushes of freshmen who were jumped and hit hard in the genitals. It was much more fun for the attacker than for the attacked. The abused shouldn't complain, they should just suck it up.

When I retell this story to myself, I try to convince myself that it was for my own good – that as a naive seventeen-year-old, my problem was not my inability to trust but that I was far too trusting and gullible. But it wasn't done for my benefit; Frank took the opportunity when it came up and got some momentary pleasure from my hurt and protest. But it was a casual cruelty that I was expected to quickly get over. Just suck it up. The fact that I still remember it clearly fifty years later suggests I didn't.

This episode was a one-off during our first semester when we were still carrying with us our previous lives together at WRA. Frank was a quick study of the cultural scene and in tune with the '60s zeitgeist. He reliably kept up with the latest trends in music, drugs, ... even alternative comics. He was the one who pulled us leftward into progressive politics and was the only one of us who joined the occupation of the administration building during the student revolt of '69. And he was the lead feminist among us, guiding us first to Radcliffe to make room for women moving south into the Harvard Houses and from there to Jordan J to help form the first co-ed cooperative at Harvard.

We remained friends for the rest of his life – a span of 40 years – and had many interesting conversations and adventures at many different times and places. And he did teach me something important that winter evening -- not to blindly put my trust in other people, no matter how close I might think they are. I never really learned the lesson but instead resolved that getting hurt by trusting too much was worth the risk.

But he might have been right.

James Boster

Sunday Phone Calls

In the last years of his life, I had a special connection through the telephone company where I could speak to him indefinitely at a very low price. We would talk about gardening, we would talk about cooking, but mostly we would talk about our children. It was five in the morning here and he was just getting up, but I tend to be an early riser. We would exchange recipes and I would give him gardening tips on his tiered garden, and then we would talk about his work as a professor and my work as a lawyer. We had these conversations every Sunday and they would go on for over an hour. I treasured them.

Stretchie was always trying to give me advice about how to run my life while I was clerking for the chief justice of Rhode Island and had a job as a lawyer in Boston for one of the top firms. But none of that mattered. We talked about simple pleasures like how to get delphinium to grow in full shade. And he drank coffee while I just listened and spoke about the simplicity of my life.

My brother was very dear to me as was I to him. Our discussions stayed away from politics because we had opposing views; I am a true Quaker and a pacifist and he was not. So we just agreed to disagree and we would move on to cooking, cleaning, gardening, and children.

Lucy Longstreth

From the Harvard Class of '72 Red Books

— 15th — (1987) Ronald Reagan

Life over the past five years seems, in retrospect, mainly a time of coping — with the demands of two small children, of teaching and researching when the university system and particularly the discipline of sociology have been under attack, of trying to keep up the appearances of being middle-class despite eroding salaries and increased financial commitments (I classify myself as part of the welfare bourgeoisie these days). It has also been difficult to keep up one's morale in the face of eight years of Thatcherism when either writing about British trade unions or being a local activist in the Labour Party. However, I hope we have seen the worst of all this — if not, I might actually give up on British socialism and return. Highlights of the past year — taking my (then five-year-old) son on his first tour of God's country, retracing King Kong's footsteps around New York, Fourth of July picnic, etc.; also, rescuing younger brother from the clutches of the Ivans when he came down with acute appendicitis and subsequent complications while in Moscow for Gorbachev's Peace Forum. Low point — the Brown's defeat in the semi-final in the last forty seconds — still recovering from suicide attempt. Next year, Bernie.

— 20th — (1992) George H. W. Bush

For those of my friends not apprized of the changes in my life over the past year, I have not just sired my sister by a complete stranger. In fact, I have just undergone the typical mid-life, middleaged crisis, namely, divorce. It turned out to be every bit as horrible as I had expected it to be, the usual male nightmare — moving three times in less than a year, mainly from one small bedroom to the next, living out of rubbish bags, bank-breaking debts (or at least they would be if the banks did not ensure that they gouge you every step of the way) and spending most of your non-working (and working) hours in the company of lawyers. Still, at the end of it all, I find that rather than losing two children, I've gained three more, including the latest addition, Helen, named after my sister and maternal grandmother and born in Oxford on September tenth (she was due on Labor Day which seemed appropriate but decided she wanted to stay warm a while longer). Moreover, I find myself now in the unenviable position of being hooked up with a Cliffie (like teaching, something I'd sworn I'd never do). One thing I will say for Maureen (a writer with the dubious distinction of having had her first novel, Mother's Helper — a story set in a familiar college town — banned in Boston, while her latest, The Stork Club, set in San Francisco in the early 1980s and concerning the trials of a house husband when facing the terrors of his child's play group, is about to be published in the U.S. — buy it, we need the money) the one thing about Maureen is that since I met her my life has never been boring, not for one minute. When you are taking care of five children every other weekend and most of the vacation, boredom seems as remote as the promise of eternal salvation. And yet, I also find myself blessed (that is the right word) with another child, something I never expected and for which I am deeply grateful to the powers that be.

Speaking of the powers that be, over the past year or so, I have been experiencing the peculiar enjoyment, to paraphrase the fascist protagonist in Bertolucci's The Conformist of watching a government fall. To be slightly more specific, having managed to dump Thatcher, we are still awaiting the death throes of Thatcherism, which I fully expect to have expired around the time that this appears in print. [N.B., social scientists who actually make predictions in black and white are as rare as hens' teeth, so you can call me on this one if you see me — I'm definitely taking bets. In fact, I predicted the change in political mood as early as June, 1989 (see my "Midsummer Madness and Maggie", the Washington Post Outlook section, and, no, Iggy did not commission it — he was out of the country or something.)] In the midst of the depression which I suffered more or less continually throughout that horrible decade in the 1980s, I used to console myself with the thought that in ten years or so my generation would come to power, and that while we would no doubt screw it up again, at least we would get our second shot. Having seen or heard of some of my cohorts recently I'm not sure I want many of them near anything that looks like a lever of authority (the usual friends and misfits excluded). However, something is happening here, and I have a strong feeling that the 1990s are going to look a lot better than the 1980s. Who knows, maybe we'll even get the Republicans out of the White House. I'm so optimistic these days, I'm actually planning to come to a Harvard-Radcliffe Reunion (with at least some of my children). Moreover, I'm expecting to have a good time and see some friends. So be there or be square.

— 35th — (2007) George W. Bush

I am still living in a small village outside Bath, England, with Maureen Freely '74, although, fortunately, most of our combined six children have left home by now. Helen and Pandora, the two teenagers, are enough, loveable as they are.

I am still laboring as an economic sociologist at Bath University. If you want to know, the full version of the research program I am engaged in is comparative historical institutional political economic sociology (or CHIPES), and what I am mainly doing is analyzing the impact of the integration of a Continental market on, e.g., the various national political economic systems of the E. U., the European "social model," trade unions and civil society organizations, etc. At the moment I am working on the integration of European capital markets and the potential for an expanded market in corporate control. Doesn't that sound like fun? Actually, it is pretty interesting, although at the moment it is sort of bad news for the European "social model," but in a disarticulated European-ish way, not American, and largely politically driven. There, that's what I do apart from raise children.

Maureen just achieved the honor of being the English translator of the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who just won the Nobel Prize in literature, and who is a friend. Turkey has become the other focus of our lives in the last ten years, as Maureen's family mainly live in and we spend the summers in Istanbul. I am also collaborating with academics there, and over the previous year, both of us were involved in defending Orhan when he was put on trial in Turkey for "insulting Turkishness" (among the many trials of journalists, academics, and others for similar "crimes"). So life has not been dull. I appear to be going to China in the new year in my new role as expert on European integration. The news of the November elections, if not exactly restoring my faith in democracy, at least seems to serve notice that the insanity of the last six years has finally reaped its harvest of failure. Didn't that sound moderate? Don't worry-I still believe in things like a guaranteed minimum income. DTSDTW "Dare to struggle, dare to win."

— 45th — (2017) Donald Trump

— Obituary —

FRANK HOOVER LONGSTRETH JR. died from a stroke on November 18,2012, in Bath, England. The son of Frank Hoover and Cynthia Sykes Longstreth, he was born in Akron, Ohio, on January 6, 1950, and prepared at Western Reserve Academy, in Hudson. He was a resident of South House while at Harvard, receiving his AB, magna cum laude in social studies, in 1973. He went across the pond to study for his PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which he completed in 1983, and remained in Britain for the rest of his life. He was a professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Bath for many years. An economic sociologist, he analyzed the impact of the integration of a Continental market on such institutions as the European Union, the European social model, trade unions, and civil society organizations. He was one of an international group of scholars who helped develop the approach called historical institutionalism in the field of political economy, and as such was the coeditor of a seminal 1992 book, Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis. He was an excellent cook and a lover of jazz, rock music, and the blues. He was survived by his wife, the novelist and academic, Maureen Freely '74; three daughters, Rachel, Pandora, and Helen; a son, Kimber; two stepchildren, Matthew and Emma; and his former wife, Judith (Oates).

University of Bath - Dr Bryn Jones - 28 November 2012

Frank 'Stretch' Longstreth, Lecturer in Sociology, who died following an irreversible stroke, was a pioneer analyst in the comparative, historical sociology of national economies; a thoughtful and nurturing teacher to generations of students; and a long-serving governor on local schools around Bath.

Born in Akron, Ohio in 1950, he was one of many American social science students who found the political and cultural environment of Britain, and the London School of Economics (LSE), more congenial than Nixon's Vietnam war regime.

After Harvard University in 1972, and his undergraduate year at LSE in 1973, his academic career began with an LSE doctoral investigation of the role and influence of the City of London on British economic policymaking. Publications from this PhD research were widely cited. He then undertook a brief stint as a temporary lecturer at the University of Birmingham, which was followed by a permanent lectureship at the University of Bath in 1979.

As part of Professor Stephen Cotgrove's team of economic sociologists, he dissected Thatcherism's break with trade union corporatism (From Corporatism to Dualism? Thatcherism and the Climacteric of British Trade Unions in the 1980s). Then as one of an international group of scholars, he helped develop the emerging approach of historical institutionalism in political economy. Their co-edited, seminal book Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (1992) identified national institutions as critical structuring variables in the development and divergence of political and economic regimes, both historically and geographically. Mental health problems dogged Frank from the 1990s onwards and he was unable to contribute as much to these wider, intellectual currents. Nevertheless, he made further, more recent contributions to international networks, including a prescient 2007 talk on the Role of Financial Capital in European Integration to China's Shandong University.

Until his death, Frank remained a conscientious and inspiring teacher to generations of postgraduate and undergraduate students at the University of Bath. His encyclopedic and versatile knowledge of many social science fields, as well as modern jazz, provided invaluable support to students and colleagues alike, while maintaining a personal touch that became increasingly rare as universities bureaucratized teaching.

Obituary

Longstreth—Frank Longstreth, 62, on November 18, 2012, in the United Kingdom, following an irreversible stroke. Stretch, as he was sometimes called, was born on January 6, 1950, in Akron, Ohio, and was a member of Haverford (Pa.) Meeting. He attended Harvard University in 1972, but finding the political and cultural environment of Britain and the London School of Economics (LSE) inviting during the Vietnam War years, he took an undergraduate year at LSE in 1973 and began a doctoral investigation of the role and influence of the City of London on British economic policymaking, resulting in publications that have been widely cited. He then undertook a brief stint as a temporary lecturer at University of Birmingham, followed by a permanent position at University of Bath beginning in 1979. As part of professor Stephen Cotgrove’s team of economic sociologists, he dissected Thatcherism’s break with trade union corporatism in From Corporatism to Dualism? Thatcherism and the Climacteric of British Trade Unions in the 1980s. With other international scholars, he helped develop historical institutionalism as an approach to political economy. This group’s seminal book, Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (1992), identified national institutions as important variables in political and economic development and divergence. Mental health problems dogged Frank from the 1990s onwards, and he was unable to contribute as much to these intellectual currents as he had done earlier. Nevertheless, he made recent contributions, including a prescient 2007 talk at China’s Shandong University on the role of capital in European integration, and until the stroke that led to his death, he remained an inspiring and nurturing teacher. He was a pioneer analyst in the comparative history of national economies, a thoughtful and nurturing teacher to generations of undergraduate and graduate students, and a long-serving governor on local schools around Bath. Students and colleagues alike enjoyed his encyclopedic and versatile knowledge of many social science fields, as well as modern jazz, and he maintained a personal touch in his teaching that became increasingly rare as universities became more bureaucratic. Frank is survived by his ex-wife, Judith Longstreth; their two children; his present wife, the novelist and academic Maureen Freely; their two children; and two stepchildren. Society of Friends