but in my head if you need a toc and to start sections anew for each part, you do not write an article ;).
You caught me; I'm not writing an article. The article class is just the one I'm most familiar manipulating. I'm also not releasing the source for my document, so I'm more comfortable with unorthodox hacks.
It turns out there's a simple preamble command that accomplishes what I want: \...@addtoreset{section}{part}. It turned up after hours of poring over documentation when Google searches failed.
--Andrew Hills
