Elaine Rivera loved people: “Two eyes a nose and a mouth—and
all so different!” She loved all kinds of people, from the flower lady in her
Bronx neighborhood to the political operatives she covered as a classic New
York City beat reporter. Well, that isn’t exactly true. She didn’t love
intolerant people—was, in fact, downright intolerant of them. And despite (or
maybe because of) her brief marriage and series of long-term lovers, she had
her reservations when it came to men. Notably, however, she remained close with
almost every one of her exes.
I met her when she
was working at Time magazine on
stories like the crash of TWA Flight 800 and the police shooting of Amadou
Diallo, and, less typically, covering celebrities like Christina Aguillera and John
F. Kennedy Jr. Usually she was a crusader for the underdog,
the poor, the victims of racism and hatred. And she really, really cared. She
went to the Washington Post after Time, but DC was a bad fit. "I
am so outta Virginia, baby. I'm never living in the south again—they can just
kiss my Puerto Rican ass," she crowed as she drove back to the home of her
heart. She resettled near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and worked as a
political reporter for WNYC, leaving to take a journalism chair at Lehman College.
The latter moves, trailing many scarves and bags, were particularly astonishing
because Elaine’s major bugaboos were technology and bureaucracy. “This job is kicking my ass,” she would say,
no matter which job it was. Now I wonder if the reason she was so exhausted was
the liver disease she must have had for years. The only exception, which her
more recent journalist friends got very tired of hearing about, was her golden
era as a staff reporter for almost a decade at New York Newsday. One wonders what time she had to get to work
there, for Elaine was never a morning person.
Elaine was a party person. She always brought the party hats, whether it
was a birthday party—which she adored—or New Year’s or Fourth of July.
Confetti, sparklers, flags, balloons, bought at the 99-cent store. Her stories,
too, made her the life of the party. One favorite was about the time she was
staying over at a friend’s apartment and, mistaking the hall door for the
bathroom door, locked herself out of the apartment nude in the middle of the
night. Wrapping herself in a rug, she got on the elevator to go downstairs to
call her friend, who had slept through the pounding on his door. The elevator
got stuck in the lobby. Elaine pressed the emergency button and a woman over
the intercom said there was nothing she could do. Elaine, of course, asked her
name. “Tookie, Tookie, I’m begging you!” wailed Elaine. “Please call my friend.
I’m standing in the lobby in the middle of the night in a rug!”
Elaine loved being surrounded by celebration and friends, of whom she
had an inordinate number. She was always trying to mix them, with varying
degrees of success. Well, we’re mixed now, along with her devastated family
from Cleveland, in love and in loss.
