What people know about Mario Cuomo was that he was eloquent and that he flirted with the presidency and the Supreme Court and that his keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1984 was a barnburner and the antidote to the Reagan years. He was the torchbearer for people like me, a proud progressive liberal. Year after year, he vetoed legislation that would have reinstated the death penalty in New York State. A good Catholic, he supported abortion rights. Imagine that. His life and career were devoted to public service, the very best kind. Who knows what was going on behind the scenes when he turned down the biggest jobs in the country? Who knows why the plane remained on the runway in Albany with the papers needed to go to New Hampshire? (So dramatic. Now they would be delivered digitally.) Who knows what might have been? Only Mario Cuomo, and he took that knowledge with him on the first day of the year. He was 82.

--Amelia