Deceased October 10, 1988
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In Memory
Larry Spiegel was a quintessential Maine man: wry, modest and self-effacingly funny. In his infrequent but long, witty and impeccably written letters, he usually saved the most important news for last, so I didn’t learn until the third page of an October 1 letter that he had cancer and that the prognosis wasn’t good. He died at his home in Freeport, Maine, nine days later, at the age of 40.
Despite the illness, he told me, and even though he knew the Democrats and the Red Sox were going to find some way to blow their promising seasons (he was right on both counts), he’d had a good year. He and his wife, Nancy Cohen, had moved from rural Litchfield to a comfortable house in Freeport. His public-relations firm, Arsenault & Spiegel, was handling the successful re-election campaign of Congressman Joseph E. Brennan, the former Governor of Maine whom Larry had earlier served as press secretary and special assistant. Most important, in September he and Nancy had their first child, David Lee, “an event which has turned me into the stereotypical burbling, proud papa.”
A bearish, bearded man whose accent retained a dash of Down East vinegar, Larry was generous in his friendships and enthusiasms. He loved baseball and liberal politics and jug-band music and Maine living. Five years ago, he and three classmates from Deering High School in Portland resurrected their old jug band, named it the Wicked Good Band (“wicked” is Maine vernacular for “very”) and achieved a success that was all the sweeter for being unexpected. The group performed all over the state, released an album, Dare to Be Wicked Good, and even wrote The Wicked Good Book, an irreverent guide to Maine culture, that became a local bestseller.
Larry, whose roommates never called him anything but Spiegel, was an independent study major at Amherst, active at The Student, the radio station and the darkroom in the basement of Pratt. His father, Jack, was a member of the Class of 1939, and an uncle and cousin were both Amherst graduates. After graduation, he worked as a reporter for The Portland Press Herald and Evening Express. He later worked for The Associated Press, serving a bureau chief in Providence and Springfield, before joining Governor Brennan’s staff in 1975. He and Brian Arsenault opened their communications consulting firm in 1984. In all these places, he left behind a trail of good friends, admirers of his dry and unmalicious sense of humor, his charm, his modesty and his courage.
David Corcoran ’69