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Who was Paul Tsongas?

Taylor Carito
Connector Contributor

The Tsongas Center is home to the UMass Lowell River Hawks, where the Division I hockey team impresses thousands of cheering fans each year. While many of the current student population were growing up in the ‘90s, the namesake of this building was living out the last years of his life.

Paul E. Tsongas was born on Feb. 14, 1941 in Lowell, Mass. to a Greek immigrant father and Massachusetts-native mother. His childhood was spent working in his father’s local dry cleaning business during the economic decline in Lowell as a result of the lessening use of industrial textile mills.

He attended Lowell public schools growing up and worked at his father’s business all through college. In his later years of college, Tsongas was heavily influenced by President John F. Kennedy. It was his influence that, in 1963, inspired Tsongas to join the Peace Corps.

After four years in the Peace Corps, including three years as a teacher in Ethiopia and one year as a training coordinator in the West Indies, he returned to the United States and attended Yale Law School in 1967. Once he graduated from there, he returned to Lowell in an attempt to help out the local economy and better the town altogether.

He was elected into the Lowell City Council in 1969, which allowed him to put his plans for the City of Lowell into action. After four years of serving on the city council, he was then elected as the Middlesex County Commissioner.

Two years into this position, Tsongas was elected into the House of Representatives for a four year term. His service in the House led to his election into the Senate in 1979. Tsongas had plans to run for a second term as Senator in 1983, but was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. After his diagnosis he decided to take time away from politics to focus on his health.

In 1986, after a bone-marrow transplant, Tsongas was deemed cancer free. With a newfound pride and ambition, Tsongas announced that he would run in the 1992 presidential election.

He was quite popular in the race, especially in states such as New Hampshire. He was the “only candidate in the 1992 Democratic Presidential campaign to offer painful solutions to the nation’s economic problems,” according to Karen De Witt from New York Times.

Unfortunately, due to lack of financial support, Tsongas had to pull out of the race, allowing Bill Clinton to step in as the leader of the Democratic Party.

Tsongas’ loss in the presidencial race did not stop him from being active in his hometown, where he returned to continue reconstruction and restoration. He helped revive the Lowell Plan, which was proposed back in 1979, and put it into action. The plan was set in place to urbanize downtown Lowell and preserve old textile mills which still contines today.

Tsongas also cofounded, along with former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman, the Concord Coalition. At the start, it had over 200,000 members and still remains active today advocating for a balanced federal budget and a responsible fiscal policy.

In May of 1996, Tsongas was diagnosed with Myelodysplasia, a condition than can occur in people who have had lymph cancer. To cure this, he needed another bone marrow transplant; the donor for this was his twin sister, Thaleia Schlesinger.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, Tsongas was hospitalized on Jan. 3, 1997 with liver failure. His condition resulted in a contraction of pneumonia which ultimately led to his passing on Jan. 18, 1997. He was just 55 years old.

In those 55 years, Tsongas grew up in a town with a declining economy, worked his way through college, traveled to less fortunate countries with the Peace Corps, went back to his hometown to make a difference, tried to make changes for more towns as a commissioner, then tried to make improvements for the country in the House of Representatives and the Senate, fought cancer and won, ran for president, and in the end returned to the now beautiful city of Lowell.

There were three things Tsongas wanted to be defined by: working as a young man in his father’s dry-cleaning business in the economically depressed city of Lowell, Mass., serving in the Peace Corps and contracting cancer that interrupted his political career in 1983.

He said the first made him aware of economic hardships, the second brought him a joy in public service that led to a political career, and the third tempered what he referred to as “an overriding ambition.”

Tsongas did not want to be defined by his political achievements, but rather by his victories and efforts to help those in need and restore underdog cities such as Lowell. For a man who put so much into this city, why would we not name our stadium after him?

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