Spanning the century

by Rudy Abramson

"When Averell Harriman was born in 1891 during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison, the life expectancy for the American male was fifty years. The telephone was a new invention, radio was still in the future, and trolley cars were drawn by horses. When he died in 1986 at the age of ninety-four, during the Reagan administration, the final cables of his unique diplomatic career were transmitted by satellite; and he returned from the last of his more than a hundred round trips across the Atlantic aboard the Concorde supersonic airliner. Under any circumstances, his accomplishments would have been remarkable; as it is, his life, perhaps more than any other individual's, can be seen as a metaphor for the history of America in the twentieth century." "Socially, he was born the son of one of the richest and most vilified men in America, made his mark as an international sportsman and playboy, and popularized downhill skiing in the United States. Financially, quite apart from the fortune to wh