When I was covering the City Council race back in 2008, I would run into this incredibly smart and energetic 20-year-old on Seventh Avenue, who was campaigning on behalf of City Council Member Steve Levin.
Her name was Hope Reichbach.
Dressed with preppy pizazz, she was smart, cute and perky in a serious way like a a political character in a Hollywood movie played by Katherine Hepburn or maybe Reese Witherspoon (with her hair dyed brown).
She made an impression on me because she was young and outgoing and it was inspiring to see someone like her so serious about local politics.
She had FUTURE written all over her. Her future, our future, the future of New York City and the United States.
In a word, Hope was inspiring and she inspired hope in me about the state of local politics. And that was just a flash impression from running into her on Seventh Avenue a few times.
After Levin won the City Council race for the 33rd district, which includes parts of Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Hope became his communications director. In 2010, she ran for District Leader alongside Stephen Williamson. I was sorry that she lost that race but assumed that she’d be on another ballot in an another election sometime soon.
Shockingly and sadly, last Thursday Hope was found dead at the age of 22 in her Boerum Hill apartment. An autopsy is being conducted. There is no suspicion of criminality. It seems likely that it was an accidental overdose rom prescription medication.
Today there were services for Hope at a synagogue in Brooklyn Heights. Kristen Brown at Park Slope Patch reports that there were nearly one thousand mourners in attendance, including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and others active in Brooklyn and NYC politics and journalism.
Patch reports that her father, State Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach, spoke movingly at the memorial. “Perhaps she is not a star, but a comet, whose blaze lit up the sky, but was extinguished much too soon.”
Donations in Hope’s name can be made to: Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. Memorial Foundation, Inc., 413 Baltic Street, Suite 1A, Brooklyn, NY 11217. (More information available at: http://nicholasheywardmemorialfoundation.org/)
