Menza

March 9, 2007 - 12:08pm

Cohen salutes fallen mentor Menza

There are few ceremonial silences in the Statehouse to rival what is created by an oration for the dead.

Former State Sen. Alexander J. Menza died this week of a heart attack in Rome after a long battle with cancer. On Thursday, Assemblyman Neil M. Cohen went to the floor to speak about his former boss, who brought him up in Union County politics.

"I was the kid licking stamps," Cohen told colleagues of his days as an aide in Menza’s office. "At all times he encouraged those who worked for him."

Cohen choked up as he recalled his political mentor, who in 1978 quixotically challenged Bill Bradley in a primary for the U.S. Senate. Menza met Dollar Bill’s account of his flashy basketball youth with allusions to his own work as a lawyer registering voters in the Deep South at the height of the Civil Rights movement.

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