EULOGY FOR WARREN MITOSKY

Delivered September 5, 2006

Kathleen Frankovic

My dear Mia, Elisa, Brian, Warren’s family, colleagues and friends --

My name is Kathy Frankovic and I am privileged to speak here.

Warren always liked to say that he “rescued me” from academic life. And it's true. Nearly three decades ago, I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont, and he hired me to be the Manager of Surveys at CBS News. It was a new position, he said, one where he told me it was important to have someone who might speak the academic language, and be credible with academia.

But of course Warren never really needed that sort of credibility – he knew more than the vast majority of academics, and he knew that he did. But it was kind and reassuring to a young academic like me, making what she feared was a risky transition to a world she really didn’t know much about.

All of you know that Warren had high standards, was unafraid to express them strongly and often, and to put them into practice wherever he could. Sometimes this made him tough to work with, in all kinds of ways. I’ve been his employee, his colleague, and the person to whom he reported as a consultant and vendor. We’ve had our share of arguments – many over poll question wordings – and we’ve had our share of fights, although now I don’t remember any blood being shed.

He could be stubborn, and occasionally it would take him a long time to come around to acknowledging that he might have been wrong in the first place.

I remember one warm sunny day not that long ago, in a cab on our way back to midtown from a polling meeting, Warren said he and Mia were going to be married. Now when I first came to CBS News in 1977, Warren was living with Mia. And I said: “So what took you so long?” It was probably the only time I ever saw Warren look sheepish.

But I must admit that it was also true of Warren that, in those very rare cases where he didn’t get something right at first, he would always, eventually, come around.

In recent years, Warren really made “Mitofsky International” an international company. In the last few months, he had been working on the exit poll committee of the World Association for Public Opinion Research, attempting to develop standards for exit polls throughout the world. He was the ideal person for this; he had established exit polling in many countries, including Sri Lanka and Russia. You all know his last exit poll was taken in Mexico, and that, as the New York Times reported this weekend, his poll reflected the actual voting pattern almost exactly.

I received an email this past weekend from Moscow, from Anna and Valdimir Andreenkov, who - like so many of us - called Warren - "a colleague, a teacher and a friend." They also added that he was "a gentleman and honest scientist."

I’d like to quote from that email.  Warren, the Russians said so much better than I could, was "the most intelligent, honest and brave person. When a death like this happens, you sometimes tell yourself - maybe it would be better not to know such a person, you would not suffer losing him. But then you reject this thought - it is better to suffer from the loss, but have a chance to meet such a person as Warren."

If you ever spent any time with Warren in any of these countries, you understood that. I was at a conference with Warren in Mexico City a few years ago, sitting in the back of the room, listening to a panel of Mexican pollsters. Despite all his work in Mexico, Warren didn’t know Spanish. He and Mia had taken Spanish lessons, but Warren admitted that it really didn’t take.

This was a conference without any English translators. Every sentence or so, we heard “Mitofsky….something else en espanol …Mitofsky…. more Espanol…Mitofsky.” Warren found it a little disconcerting (after all, he wasn’t sure what they were saying), but then he really got into it. The speakers were all respectful. They certainly weren’t critical. It had some of the atmosphere of worship. Sort of Warren as “Aztec god.”

It is somehow very fitting that, as the Mexican newspapers referred to him this past weekend, he was “El padre de las encuestas de salida."