OPINION: One Enchanted Evening

Dancers swung and swayed with Sammy Kaye on the Astor roof and shirt-sleeved crowds jostled up and down Times Square one hot, sticky night last week as 2,000 men and women filed off Broadway and into the Astor’s grand ballroom to pay homage to Roy Cohn. Except for Indian Charlie and Private Dave Schine (on duty at Camp Gordon, Ga.), nearly everyone in the McCarthy crowd was there. New York had probably not seen such a display of sentiment since Lou Gehrig said farewell at Yankee Stadium.

Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, toastmaster and prime organizer of the $7-a-plate dinner, gave Cohn the first plaque. Then, in rapid order, Lawyer Cohn got six scrolls, three more plaques and a paperweight from as many organizations, including the “Anti-Peress Group of the P.T.A. of P.S. 49.” Bellows of hoarse approval went up as Hearst Columnist George Sokolsky attacked “senile” Senators. Fulton Lewis Jr., an “I’m for McCarthy” badge decorating his lapel, criticized his fellow newspapermen for their lack of objectivity about McCarthy. Then Archibald Roosevelt, Teddy’s son, led the crowd in booing the New York Times and Herald Tribune.

The noise rose several decibels when 17-year-old Columbia University Sophomore Goerge Reisman of Students for America called Cohn the “American Dreyfus” and barked: “Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy will be redeemed when the people have taken back their government from the criminal alliance of Communists, Socialists, New Dealers and the Eisenhower-Dewey Republicans.” But the loudest ovation of all came when Rabbi Schultz introduced “My Hero,” Joe McCarthy himself.

Said Joe: “Roy thinks he has resigned [as chief counsel for McCarthy’s permanent investigating subcommittee], but I want to tell Roy Cohn he has not and cannot ever resign . . . I intend to draw on the knowledge and background he has in Communism. The most brilliant young man I’ve ever known is always going to be available, and called upon very, very often for help and advice.” It was nearly midnight, and the room was heavy with eye-stinging smoke when Rabbi Schultz rose to introduce the Junior Hero. Said Schultz: “The plain people know the loss of Cohn is like the loss of a dozen battleships.”

“I never thought the time would come,” said Cohn, “when I’d be at a sincere loss for words.” And, in fact, the time had not come yet. He talked on for 15 minutes. Looking out over the Daughters of I Will Return, the Minute Women of the U.S.A., the Alert Council of the Rockaways and all the other earnest faces, Roy Cohn, a Communist-hunter emeritus at 27, said: “I look at the fact above all that I’ve had the privilege to play a very small part in the most noble cause ever known to mankind . . . I consider myself an extremely fortunate person . . . God bless you all, and God bless America.”