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A legacy begins
PICTURED: The merger negotiations team included, back row: Emanuel Kafka, Ken Deedy, Dan Sanders, Abel Blattman, Antonia Cortese, Walter Tice; front row: Sandra Feldman, Ed Rodgers, Al Shanker, Tom Hobart, and AFT President David Selden.
After months of intense negotiations and meetings around the state, the merger agreement was signed on March 30, 1972. Hobart and Shanker directed the interim governance structure of the 200,000-member statewide union until the new organization's first Representative Assembly was held in March 1973. That election marked Hobart's first victory as president, and installed a slate that included Vice President Antonia Cortese, who would serve with Tom until she was elected American Federation of Teachers executive vice president in 2004. "Tom always started out of the gate a couple miles ahead of the rest of us," Cortese recalled.
 "No one was more loyal or," Hobart says with a grin, "more hard on me than Toni. You need people who will tell you when you're wrong because that will at least slow you down."
While Shanker was a well-known activist from New York City, it was Hobart who sold the rest of the state on merger, noted Sylvia Matousek, president of the North Syracuse Education Association and a veteran NYSUT Board member.
"That saying, 'all for one and one for all' was just a saying for many of us when we thought about merger with the 'radical' downstaters," she said. "But having Tom there made us feel more secure. Shanker could not and would not have sold merger on his own. It was Tom's reputation on the line with all the upstate locals," Matousek said, noting that his availability became his trademark.
"He wouldn't let a meeting go unattended or a member's question unanswered," she said. "His commitment simply never ended."
Hobart's first major task was to solidify the merger and, in fact, he and Shanker had high hopes for a national merger. After helping to form the National Council for Unity, NYSUT leaders traveled across the country talking up the dream of a national merger of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. Working with Al Shanker during that year was "one of the greatest honors of my life. There were so many things he taught me,"Hobart said. "He was a remarkable mentor."
Dorothy Hobart agrees: "He always said the greatest privilege was working with Al." By this time in their marriage, she had realized that she had to share her husband with the union: "In the beginning, when he became president of the BTF, I thought it was a short-term thing, but then as it kept growing, and I saw how dedicated he was to this cause of helping people, I realized I would have to do some adjusting."
That included taking on the primary responsibility of raising the children during the week while Tom was away on union business. Perhaps it helped that teaching was her chosen profession and she agreed with the cause, Dottie Hobart said. "I've heard him say the union was his fifth child. I tell people it's his first love - I'm only half joking. He loves this organization and the work, and I support that, although there have been times he's driving back to Albany from a meeting late at night, and I've asked why he drives himself so," she said.
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