He scaled bridges, paddled Manhattan — and loved Morristown: Michael Rockland dies at 90

 

Michael Aaron Rockland, who died Sunday at 90, will be missed in Morristown — but not mourned.

Author, veteran, foreign diplomat, emeritus professor, urban adventurer, unabashed cheerleader for all things Jersey, community volunteer, great grandfather  — his nine decades were crammed with enough life for several obituaries.

You might have to go back to Ben Franklin to find a guy with such persistent curiosity and joie de vivre.

“I think of him as a Renaissance man; he never lost his excitement about learning something new,” said his former Rutgers colleague, Louis Masur, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History.

No, mourning won’t do. Michael Rockland should be celebrated.

How many people do you know who scaled the George Washington Bridge, on a cable swaying 600 feet above the Hudson? Or circumnavigated Manhattan in a canoe? Or bicycled Route One?

He was on a first-name basis with Martin Luther King. Meryl Streep “died” in his Morristown living room. He survived being throttled by a troubled Marine in Japan, where he almost got tossed from the roof of a military psych ward as a young medical corpsman. (Grist for Navy Crazy, one of his 16 books.)

Then there were the four hydrogen bombs the U.S. Air Force accidentally dropped on Spain, where he was a cultural attaché in 1966.

“I’m there trying to get everyone to read Huckleberry Finn…and we’ve dropped H-bombs on them!” Rockland once recounted to Morristown Green, with a husky laugh.

He could laugh because the bombs never detonated. You can read about that — and Rockland’s day as Madrid tour guide for a jet-lagged MLK (“I was greeted by the greatest American of the 20th Century in his white boxer shorts”), and about his then-4-year-old son getting cast as Sasha in Dr. Zhivago  — in An American Diplomat in Franco Spain.

“He was just incredibly curious about people and about life,” said Rockland’s wife, Patricia Ard.

It’s a trait that served him well over a half-century at Rutgers. He created the American Studies department and taught a popular course called Jerseyana. 

“Too many professors never had any life experiences,” Rockland said when asked about his classroom appeal. “They’ve been in school since kindergarten.”

‘URBAN ADVENTURES’

Michael Aaron Rockland was born in 1935 in the Bronx, NY. His father was an accountant, his mother a nurse and homemaker. He went to Lehman College, and later earned a doctorate in American studies at the University of Minnesota.

He served in Japan with the Navy, and in Argentina and Spain during six years with the State Department.

But it was New Jersey that captivated him like no other place. From the 1970s to the end of his life he was a contributor to New Jersey Monthly. He co-starred in a PBS film, Three Days on Big City Waters, about a Labor Day Weekend canoe expedition from Princeton to New York City.

The story was drawn from his book Snowshoeing Through Sewers, Adventures in New York City, New Jersey and Philadelphia.

“He called them urban adventures,” said his wife Patricia. “Thoreau’s whole idea was that you have to go to the woods to appreciate nature. But he felt that there was just these interesting things around urban areas.”

Comparisons to Forrest Gump are inevitable. Rockland was not quite as fearless.

“Going up the cable of the George Washington Bridge, he definitely was frightened,” his wife said.

It was a colossal misunderstanding. Rockland was writing a book about the iconic span.

“When he said he wanted to go up to the top of the bridge, he meant in a little elevator. He didn’t think they’d have a whole group taking him up the cable. And he just felt like he couldn’t back out.”

Nor would he back down as a staunch defender of the Garden State.

“Yeah, we’re the toll booth capital of the world. So what?” Rockland told CBS Sunday Morning.

Video: Michael Rockland on CBS Sunday Morning, 2011:

Co-writing a book about the Turnpike, he came to appreciate the highway’s “exercise in ugliness.”

“Bruce Springsteen and The Sopranos are the two greatest things in modern times that New Jersey has produced. Are they pretty? No,” Rockland told Morristown Green in 2024. “Bruce isn’t trying to be pretty. He’s telling the truth. That’s why we love him so much.”

A NOVEL CURE FOR WRITER’S BLOCK

Angus Gillespie collaborated with Rockland on Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike. Rockland hired Gillespie at Rutgers when no other university would. Gillespie had not yet completed his doctorate. And there was another catch.

“You know, I have been teaching high school, not college, for the past eight years,” Gillespie told him during the job interview.

“Well then, you must be a pretty good teacher, or you would not have lasted that long,” Gillespie remembers Rockland responding. Rockland added that he, too, had earned his PhD while holding down a job.

Working on the book, Gillespie fell behind. Rockland patiently asked about his friend’s writing habits, and quickly diagnosed the problem as perfectionism.

“Angus, you don’t know everything about the Turnpike. I don’t know everything about the Turnpike. Just tell them what you do know,” Rockland counseled.

“This was a real turning point for me,” Gillespie said. “I realized that my perfectionism was the cause of my procrastination. Michael’s advice has served me well over the years.  I became much more productive.”

Their book was cited by the New Jersey State Library as one of the 10 best about the state.

Rockland developed his own peculiar cure for writer’s block: Juggling two book or magazine projects at a time.

“You can look at it and say it’s nuts, and it is technically nuts,” he once explained, “but it gets me to relax and gets my imagination flowing.”

Rockland adhered to that regimen into his 88th year, when he updated the Turnpike and G.W. Bridge books and published his 16th title, the delightfully quirky Life on the Delaware: The Other Jersey Shore. (He dismissed retirement as “suicide.”)

The author promoted the books at well attended talks in the Morristown & Township Library, repository of his papers.

“He provided an added spark to our library just by coming in, and raised our institution to another level simply by being present,” said library Director Chad Leinaweaver. “Morristown has lost a gem and a good friend.”

‘DON’T GIVE UP’

Rockland was a familiar sight around his Historic District neighborhood, too, often pausing to chat while walking his dog George, Mayor Tim Dougherty, his neighbor, fondly recalled.

In summer, Rockland padded barefoot to the nearby Kellogg Club pool, for half-hour swims his doctor prescribed for back pain.

Sometimes he joked about rescuing the club from financial ruin. While he and his family vacated their house for months during filming of the 1998 drama One True Thing (yes, Meryl Streep’s character expired in the living room), the production company paid to dine at the Kellogg Club.

In between books, Rockland was an avid gardener. A founding member of the Morristown Shade Tree Commission, he pitched in at many plantings and for one Arbor Day even sang Joyce Kilmer’s Trees, before finally hanging up his spade last year, said commission Chair Kristin Ace.

“Michael had a verve for life. He loved hiking. He loved his children. He loved his wife Patricia…He just lived his life and didn’t slow down. How beautiful is that!” Ace said. “What an incredibly lived, beautiful life.”

Rockland was talking about his first novel, the critically acclaimed A Bliss Case, but could have been describing his irrepressible spirit when he recounted landing a publisher after 27 rejections.

“It was like being at the high school dance, and 27 girls tell you, ‘Get lost, loser!’  And suddenly, the prettiest, nicest, smartest girl of all comes to you and tells you she’s secretly in love with you, and asks, ‘Would you dance with me?’” Rockland said.

Put simply:

“If there is something you really want to do, do it. Don’t give up.”

Michael Rockland is survived by his wife, Patricia Ard; children David Rockland of Maryland, Jeffrey Rockland of Ohio, Keren McGinity of Massachusetts, Kate Gillan in Madison, and Joshua Rockland of Morris Township; 13 grandchildren and two great grandchildren. A memorial may be held at a future date.