WHAT A YEAR - 1998

A YEAR FOR THE RECORD BOOKS  1998

Monica who?  Just think, this time last year no one except a few friends, her parents and the President of the United States knew Monica Lewinski.  What a difference a year makes. In fact, things are going so thick and fast that even one day makes a big difference. Wednesday December 17, 1998 was such a day. In one twenty-four hour stretch the nature of the past year rotated 180 degrees.  At 5:15 we turned on the news to see how the House of Representatives hearing on the topic of impeachment were going and got a real surprise.  World events were deteriorating by the nanosecond.  I suppose even a nanosecond was a bit lengthy since events had taken a right angle turn and the picture on the screen was the eerily florescent green typical of a night vision camera.  Through the  phosphorescent green flew shooting stars of bombs.  “Holy smoke” I yelled, “We’re bombing Baghdad again”.  Its been that kind of year.

November of 1997 was the beginning of this incredible personal and public episode.  Mark was in Egypt when news came that things were not going well Iraq.  We all wished he would return home soon.  He did but the night he arrived back in Savannah Page called even as she could hear the planes coming in over her apartment at Mall Boulevard and started wondering if she should call off her engagement.  She had arrived at that time of “oh my gosh I’m really going to make a commitment”, and Mark’s imminent arrival created a personal deadline for her.  A secondary deadline was the knowledge that within two weeks they would join both sets of parents in Florida in an event that would really mark the beginning of their wedding plans.  It was a natural reaction that everyone feels on the threshold of a life-changing event.  She pulled herself together, went to meet him at the airport and one way or another resolved that they were meant to be.  Plans for a Thanksgiving family get together proceeded nicely, and the event was all it was meant to be.

Within three weeks of Thanksgiving both Mark and Page made the decision to find other homes for their dogs Rio and Elvis.  Dogs are like children and as much as one might wish to get rid of them, the actual act is wrenching.  Elvis went to the mid west and Rio traveled by plane to Tampa and a meeting with her new owners who have young children as well as a yard.  Tearful good-byes at the airport and then joyful reunion with grandmothers and parents and on to the cruise.

Christmas 1998 was a family reunion on the S.S. Veendam for a Caribbean Cruise.  December 18 was the big day, but before leaving for the port in Fort Lauderdale the group went to the photographer for a family portrait and to celebrate Gee Ma’s 88 birthday.  At the party everyone received holiday gift shirts of the “eight tiny reindeer’ as well as Santa, Mrs. Clause, Rudolph, the Grinch and our tiny elf, Mark. 

Annette, Page, Margot, Steve, Elena, Steve, Laurie, Jerry, Jane Ashton, Susie and Beth all traveled to Fort Lauderdale to meet Eric, and all thirteen boarded the ship for a week cruise into the Caribbean.   We ate, drank, talked, danced and explored.  Susie and Margot walked their legs off to get “punches” in their exercise cards and Page and Mark concentrated on earning “Veendam” coffee mugs.  Santa arrived by boat just off St. Johns in the Virgin Islands.  The trip was memorialized by a group shot in the grand staircase with everyone dressed in their reindeer shirts and antlers.  We returned spoiled, but knowing each other better.

The trip on the high seas cleared our thinking and by the time we returned it was clear that Page and Mark needed to change their wedding date.  (Having their wedding on June 20 would mean an unnecessary separation while Mark took his new assignment in Pittsburgh.)  We unpacked our bags from the cruise and immediately started making plans for an April wedding.  It took a number of phone calls and resulted in the loss of one bridesmaid and one groomsman (what luck – we’re still even), but April 18^th was selected.  Now the real planning could begin.

Organizing the cruise for thirteen had been like moving troops overseas, but it was only a minor exercise compared with the “all out war” mode we went into planning for the wedding.  Suddenly everything was urgent with the dress being the only certainty since it had been selected right after the engagement was announced.  All else was to-be-done.  The wedding in combination with the resumption of Steve’s Missouri case meant we went into all out attack mode.  Page and I did some preliminary planning by phone, then scheduled face to face meetings with all the “vendors”.  We lost the Cathedral with the change of date and we got cold feet over having a reception in the park since it was an El Nino year and the weather super erratic.  In the midst of all the changes and planning Steve discovered that the selected church didn’t have an organ.  Well, --no daughter of his was going to get married without both an organ and a trumpet. We scratched that church and went on the hunt for a suitable edifice.  The new selection turned out to be perfection.  Not only was the church lovely, but full of Easter flowers the likes of which $5,000 couldn’t have purchased.

Not only was the church wonderful, but the organist was a wealth of contacts and information - a real pro - and with the help of organization, good luck and a cell phone Page and Margot arranged most of the details in one small weekend in January.  While Margot and Page were planning the perfect Savannah wedding Mark concentrated on selling his home.  Luckily it sold fast, but then everything including Page’s furniture had to go into storage while Mark went to Kansas for training.  (The furniture had its wedding before Page and Mark.)  Page was left with rather skimpy furnishings made up of a large popcorn can with a glass top for a table and one small lamp.  It was on this table that she addressed all two hundred and fifty invitations in perfect calligraphy. 

A train trip to Clearwater in February for a bridal shower added a party to a special weekend of planning the flowers and selecting the veil with her grandmother.  Gifts started to stack up in my foyer and everyday brought another pile of responses, and the need to shuffle people around at the reception tables.  Two of the nicest responses came from former neighbors.  We were thrilled that the Valentines and Bensons would be attending.  It certainly doesn’t seem possible that more than twenty years have elapsed during which time the “Trowbridge Trawlers” have all grown up. 

Margot and Steve had planned a trip to the Philadelphia Flower Show long before the wedding speedup up, and so right in the middle of wedding plans they took off for a week in Pennsylvania seeing glorious sites.  From Philadelphia Steve went directly to Missouri for another round of hearings, and did not return until two weeks before the wedding.  Time was getting shorter and shorter.

The wedding was perfection.  Everyone stayed at the De Soto Hilton.  We arrived five days early giving us time to meet and enjoy Mark’s family as they came into town.  We had several dinners together and walked around the lovely town for hours. April 18^th was a perfect day and all of the plans pulled together beautifully.  Savannah is the most romantic city and the wedding with its military honor guard was a most romantic event.  Page and Mark left on Sunday morning, and we partied on going to Cleary’s for breakfast and revisiting all the “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” haunts including a trip to Bonaventure Cemetery for “cemetery dirt” to bring bad luck to the FDIC in their hearing against Glen Garrett.  On Monday following the wedding we delivered the presents to Page’s apartment and showered the empty place with confetti as we left.

In this year of party party we couldn’t leave July 4^th untouched.  Susie, Beth, Page, Mark, Margot and Steve joined Eric in Boston for a real July 4^th celebration.  There were two highlights.  First, the walk through the old cemetery (at dusk) where Samuel Adams is buried followed by fireworks on the Esplanade accompanied by The Boston Pops.  We used our cell phone to call all those who were not with us to let them know we were thinking about them..  We all decided that we simply had to return to Martha’s Vineyard again.

Our goodbyes were short lived as we knew we would meet again in Atlanta on July 25^th for Elena and Steve’s wedding.  Margot and Steve were terribly relieved not to have the planning project for this event.  As Lyn Schlaug said, “Just show up, wear beige and keep your mouth shut.”   The wedding was lovely and we were so glad we had met many of Elena’s family at earlier events.  The day was perfect and the reception was delightful at Rivermont Country Club.  My best memory was the sight of Steve and Mark sitting on the sewer lid at 5690 Cannonero Dr. smoking cigars just at dusk following the reception while Elena packed to go on their honeymoon.  It brought back all kinds of memories of past years on Trowbridge Cove with the kids sitting on the sewer lid at dusk talking about life.

August was not a quiet month; just different.  We traveled to Ft. Lauderdale to the Community Bankers convention and to see the opening of Home Federal Bank, then returned to prepare for our Greek and Turkey Odyssey, but first there was a side trip on Labor Day to Pittsburgh to see Mark and Page’s new home.  Pittsburgh is a wonderful place.  Forget all the negative things Pittsburgh might bring to mind.  It is a perfectly charming town full of very intelligent looking people and beautiful neighborhoods.  The absolute highlight of the trip was an expedition to East Liverpool in search of the elusive James Blakely.  We stopped at the pottery museum and saw some Blakely items as well as learned the details of the old family story that began with “Blakely Looses Millions”. We walked the town, scouted out the old Blakely property, found the bridge, cemetery and yes, the hospital – all the players in the Blakely history.  Even met a Vodry descendant of a former Blakely partner.  What a thrill to be back in this place where so much family history occurred.  As an extra treat we went to the library in Pittsburgh and found revealing new family information in a random book that Margot picked up just on intuition. 

Back in Florida for a quick wash of clothes, trip to the bank and on September 25^th headed to Atlanta for Robin Valentine’s wedding.  We left under evacuation orders as hurricane Georges was bearing down on Florida.  The neighbors all asked if we were evacuating and we said yes, - to Turkey.  Everyone thought that was a bit of an overdo, but given the kind of year its been not completely outrageous behavior.  There was just enough time for Margot to get sick with an infection in her thyroid that made her very tired and achy.  Somehow she squeezed in time to get to the doctor who determined there wasn’t a thing to do for it except take aspirin and the choice was either to stay home and be sick or go and be sick.  We went with a bushel basket of aspirin.

Robin Valentine’s wedding put a nice top on the “year of the wedding” and gave us a chance to reacquaint with the Moores and the Gunns.  There was even a photo opportunity for a regrouping of the “Trowbridge Trawlers”.  Page was there without Mark and slipped away to party with the old gang one more time.  What fun. 

September 28^th was the beginning of the six week odyssey that took us to Turkey and Greece and we “left no stone unturned”.  We saw every important city in western Turkey and Attica Greece.  Steve kept copious diaries giving full details, and we recorded every step on video for posterity.  It was a large and wonderful trip, but we missed our home and started thinking fondly of it about half way through the expedition.  Once home we were amazed that the United States is such a lovely clean country and each day give thanks for the opportunity we have to be in St. Petersburg, Florida where things are practically perfect.

Mama is back using her computer.  She checks her stock account ever day and marvels at how rich she’s become.  Her days are full with playing Mahjong all night and watching impeachment hearings and bombings of Baghdad by day.  A phone call to her is certain to start her on those “damn Republicans”, but she won’t have Newt Gingrich to kick around anymore.  Miracle of miracles he resigned while she was on her trip to Greece. 

Today is December 17th and there are two more weeks to go in 1998.  One wonders what they will bring.  Iraq bombing continues, the Republicans continue to debate impeachment even while the bombs roar, the media continues to chew on the same old stories and the stock market continues to make everyone rich.  Where will it end?

December 20^th is Jane Ashton’s 89^th birthday and a dinner is planned for the Wine Cellar.  Susie and Beth arrive on the 22^nd for Christmas and the group will see Beauty and the Beast on December 23^rd.  Duff and Sharron are coming on January 6^th (the one year anniversary of Monicagate) and we might just start planning a trip to Mexico to see them.  Can’t let those suitcases get mildewed in the closet.

Postscript written on April 18, 1999  Page and Mark’s first anniversary.  Things have continued to hum along at an even faster clip.  We took Gee Ma to dinner at the Wine Cellar and the service was horrible.  Mama said, “that’s what happens when you have full employment”, Bill Clinton was impeached and acquitted, Monica had her fifteen minutes of fame and wrote a book, Mark made Major, Page got a raise, the daffodils Page planted came up, the stock market passed 10,000, and we are now bombing Kosovo daily with lesser shots at Baghdad.  Steve settled the Missouri case and declared a win and got a great “report card” from the client.  Mama talks on the internet daily and has made a killing in the market and Steve and Margot are planning a trip to Iowa for the fourth of July.  All seems well in the family as the 20^th century winds down.  We just hope Gee Ma doesn’t run her scooter off another curb and get killed.  If she does her death notice would say she died after being thrown from her horse.  John Blakely died Good Friday April 2, 1999.  The Washington Monument is swathed in scaffolding for repair.

THOUGHTS - IMPEACHMENT DAY FEBRUARY 12 1999

February 12, 1999

The future will know the true meaning of this day with all its anomalies and allegories.  Steve and I flew to Washington this morning and landed at BWI airport under the most turbulent air conditions we’ve ever experienced.  The plane seemed to take an extraordinary time to find the airport and complete the descent.  During the entire time it shook, wavered and dipped.  Everyone was outwardly clam, but a huge unspoken sign of relief was palpable when the wheels finally rolled on the landing strip.  An otherwise smooth flight from Tampa concluded with a theme-park thrill ride. 

Approaching Washington from the Baltimore Washington Parkway flooded my senses with memories of how delightful it could be on a bright “spring-like” February day.  We rode with interesting folks among whom were the Peterman’s who announced that their son was a St. Petersburg city Council member.  They were coming from Ft. Lauderdale to Howard University probably for some sort of Black History event.  We chatted our way through the north east section of Washington past Howard University, Catholic University and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  Between chats we listed on the radio to the two roll call votes for the impeachment of Bill Clinton.  Our driver seemed to have some sort of ‘bet” going on the vote’s outcome for he mentally kept score and verbalized his delight when several of the congressmen changed their vote.  The van reached the Peterman’s hotel just as the final tally was being taken on the first article of impeachment (the vote followed the cold reading of the charges against William Jefferson Clinton), and pulling under the portico caused static that blocked out the final announcement of the actual count.  Mr. Van Driver returned from helping the Peterman’s with their luggage to inquire about the final ‘score”, and was disappointed to learn that we had not heard it.  (Perhaps his rapt attention to the proceedings explain why he earlier failed to listen to the Peterman’s destination and took us first to Howard University rather than their hotel; but then this is Washington., D.C.)

The second roll call reached its conclusion at exactly the moment the van carrying Steve and me approached the northern most foot of Capitol Hill.  The surreality of the event and the moment will stay with us in the same way as the memory of where we were when we heard Kennedy had been shot.  I said to Steve, “Just think, we could walk right up there and be in the gallery for this very moment.” 

We turned right at the foot of Capitol Hill and followed Constitution Avenue toward the FDIC building just one block west of the White House.  Our route followed exactly the path of Inaugural Parades every four years and caused a vision of Hillary and Bill Clinton walking for a portion of their first parade six years ago to flash into my mind on this balmy bright February noontime.

The van driver dropped Steve off at the FDIC as the surreality of the day continued.  Suddenly I realized we were at a place that had changed so little since the first day he entered in 1964 as an FDIC employee.  Its been thirty five years, and our life story seemed sucked into this one tiny block of the universe.  As I watched Steve cross 17^th street I remembered viewing the Fourth of July fireworks from the FDIC balcony, waiting in the car at 17^th and New York to pick Steve up from work and watching the “stabile” art work displayed on the outside corner of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (in fact, I even sketched this “stabile” once during a wait, and later this weekend would discover it installed at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Museum).  The more things change the more they stay the same.

Washington is remarkably the same as it was when I was growing up.  Many buildings look better as a result of cleaning, and attention to making the public spaces friendly.  The Department of the Interior remains on the park filled with magnolia soulangiana, and I half thought I might see my father come out its north door as we pass it on our way to the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge going to Virginia.  From the bridge I see below us was the formerly serene “Roosevelt Island” formerly known as “Analostin” Island, and known even earlier as an assortment of other names by the various Indians and white settlers who once called the island home.  It remains a small oasis of some calm in a vibrating town, but is no longer an island.  The super-ugly Roosevelt Bridge lodged one of its supports right in the middle of the lovely natural swamp more than thirty years ago, and forever removed the unique tranquil sense of being on an exotic island that I remembered from childhood when getting to the island meant taking a boat or canoe.  Today the island is accessible by a footbridge on the western side allowing visitors to walk to the Theodore Roosevelt monument a forest of upright stele that replace the thick forest of trees.  Does anyone but me remember the place as it once was?  So recently it was a archetypical forest of large hardwood trees interspersed with vine entangled foundations of former dwellings that rose mysteriously from the shade like the ancient temples of the far east.   Once a visit to Roosevelt Island was like a trip to a foreign land.  The quiet amidst the city, the call of birds and rustle of leaves and sense of being alone were exceptional feelings.  No summer was complete without a walk on the paths followed by a picnic beside the water. 

Home for this “President’s Day” weekend was “The Virginian”  Now, there is a place full of memories!  It has been a hub of our lives for more than thirty-five years, and remains mostly unchanged, and is like coming home to Washington for it is so familiar.  There is an enormous sense of completeness in our being here at the beginning of the closing of the Garrett case, but that’s a story in itself.  Its only one in the afternoon but already a full lifetime has flashed in front of my eyes.  This is Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday now called “President’s Day and celebrated on February 15^th  along with George Washington’s Birthday formerly known as February 22^nd.  In times past both were separate Federal Holidays most welcome in a dreary month.  Now they are combined and have lost their flavor and become the generic “President’s Day”.  Today hearing the impeachment vote brings a whole new meaning to the very bland  and generic “President’s” day.  Clinton’s actions and predicament certainly put more “spice” into the day than anyone could possibly imagine.  What would we expect?  Its Washington!

My goal for the afternoon was the National Gallery of Art.  The day was warm and sunny, but nevertheless, I grabbed the umbrella I’d bought for four dollars last October at the Istanbul market and slung it over my shoulder.  Perhaps I wouldn’t need it for rain on this glorious day, but then again, if I needed a weapon to defend myself it might come in handy.  As I stood on the metro platform waiting for the train to downtown I heard very loud ranting and raving from a semi-street person, and nuzzled my “weapon” securely under my arm.  I still clutched it closely as I emerged into the bright sunlight of Independence Ave.  A mistake in choosing subway stations brought me up above ground right at the very old Smithsonian Institute Arts and Industry building once the home of the 1876 Centennial exhibit, and a short walk along and across the Mall toward the Capital and the Art Gallery.  This walk was meant to be.  The voting events of only two hours previous combined with the view of the Capitol in one direction and in the opposite direction, the Washington Monument in the traction of scaffolding brushed a sweep of history through my mind.  The whole of the American experience was present in one moment and I was swallowed up in the experience.  How fortunate I felt to have been born a Washingtonian and to have the experience of the city when it was my back yard.

The rotunda of the National Gallery of Art is one of the most stupendous places I’ve experienced.  It ranks right up there with the Parthenon – smaller, but in better condition.  To me it is second only to the main hall of the east building of the National Gallery  which is my favorite place on earth.  Suddenly I was in the midst of both on this incredible day.  The east building opened in 1978 just at the time my father died, and I remember coming to visit it as a break from his funeral weekend and all the necessary details of settling of his estate.  He died on June 14^th.  The Sunday following his death we attended Mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception then visited the National Gallery to see the Treasures of Dresden exhibit and have lunch in the wonderful upstairs restaurant.  The building has changed very little and I still enjoy its Zen-like serenity with the super enormous Calder mobile silently swimming in the air currents.  No cathedral or church has ever left me with the pure serenity that I feel in this building.  Is it the shape, the light, the art? 

Three hours passed in bliss until I surfaced at the coat check in the west building to find that the weather was half way through its 180 degree turn.  As Maureen Dowd says in her column we went from Midsummer’s Night Dream to King Lear in one afternoon.  Outside the fierce cold wind of a February front scoured the Mall that had only recently been a springtime park.  Rain came in horizontally in floods and cold buckets.  The weather was a mirror of the past year.  One moment things are well, and then they change and blow and turn cold.  I found a taxi to the FDIC and huddled on a bench in the lobby hoping to catch Steve as he left his meeting;  Another flashback to when the FDIC building was new and shiny and sophisticated.  Now it looks dowdy and neglected with a once shining floor dull and dusty.  A bored guard sits in the corner just past beeping security gates.  Is he here to fend off any malcontent banker who might storm in with a bomb to put the pace out of its misery?  The old glamor and majesty of the foyer has disappeared, and we are in just another government building.  I watch the employees leave the elevators on their way to the parking garage.  They are dull looking robots who plaintively cry out to one another “have a good weekend” as they slip away for the “President’s Day “ federal holiday. 

By and by a lady wearing a walking foot cast and casual clothes comes and escorts me to the third floor, and deposits me in a wing chair in the upper elevator lobby.  Perfect viewing from this position so I fade into the upholstery to watch different versions of the same dull people do their time until they can leave for the weekend.  These inmates serve a lifetime sentence here paying homage and offering sacrifice to the goddess “Regulation” with no knowledge of the outside world.  Not one of them has ever had to take a business risk or worry much about the consequence of their actions.  They minister to their goddess and play petty political charades and pass their lives in rapt contemplation of the rules.  I fully realize how fortunate Steve and I are to be on the other side now.  We escaped.  The trip “over the wall” produced scars and hurts, but we are truly free, and live a life full of fresh air.  We’ve succeeded on our own merits, and by our own will and intelligence.  Blessed is the fact that we can proclaim the cracks we see in the visage of  her majesty “Regulation”. 

The night is as raw, cold and windy as the day was sunny warm and balmy.  Like drowning city rats we scurry to the Farragut Square Metro Station right in the shadow of my childhood.  Only steps away was the Farragut Medical building, home of my childhood dentist, across the park from my optometrist where I spent hours waiting for the dilation drops in my eyes to take effect, and just down the block from Louis Hairstylist home of the $5.00 permanent, and only two blocks from 1710 H. St. former home of Travelers Insurance company and my very first job.  Washington is really a small town.  We are hungry, but the weather is too bad to search for a restaurant.  We are forced to take shelter in the train to Roslyn.  The best we can do is a Chinese restaurant at the Roslyn Metro station. 

What a day President’s Day February 12 1999 has been.  Born in sunny Florida, it became a toddler in a stormy airplane descent, then matured into a dream afternoon, and expired after a stormy joust with a cold front.  A day such as this is one to remember forever.  It was full of allegories of all descriptions, and I was so full of delight at our being a part of the city again.