Fells Point Fighter

Senator Barbara Ann Mikulski celebrated her 90th birthday last week. Still a Fells Point favorite she was feited in several public events. It brought back some memories.

You can't judge her by her size. She is short in a field that rewards tall. You can't judge her by her looks. She has a face made for radio in the age of TV. You can't dismiss her by gender. She was the first woman to hold the powerful position of Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. I think the best word to describe Former United States Senator Barbara Ann Mikulski is tough.

A social worker by education and training, Mikulski broke onto the scene when she organized the protests against routing interstate 95 through her native Fells Point neighborhood in Baltimore. She formed the Southeast Community Organization to improve Baltimore neighborhoods on her way to a seat on the Baltimore City Council. A seat in Congress and election to the United States Senate followed.

To her credit, she never forgot the people who sent her into elective office and kept her there for 46 years. She used her tough as a fighter for women, minorities, veterans, and ordinary Americans. Probably the most reliable progressive vote in the Congress, she was loved by her fellow women legislators and respected by all for her integrity, honesty, and work ethic.

Barbara has a nice smile as shown in this July 4, 2005, photo. It is one of those full face smiles where the eyes simultaneously shutter to slits. While I enjoyed seeing the Senator smile, her “at rest” face was more of a sneer.

That sneer and her impact on staff was legend and it took high quality armor to protect your ego. One memory stands out.

I was standing in the doorway of a Dirksen Senate Office Building committee room one day awaiting the beginning of an appropriations hearing. The room was packed with press, lobbyists, and spectators with the standing room spilling into the hallway. A young woman whose ID badge identified her as Senate staff was standing next to me and clutching a black three-ringed binder. I noticed her because she couldn’t stand still. She was trembling with nerves. Also, instead of looking into the hearing room, her attention was locked on the hallway behind us.

At the appointed hour for the hearing, I heard the young woman say, “I know this is late, Senator, and I am so very sorry.” I looked over my shoulder and realized that Senator Mikulski had arrived and was standing nose to nose with this young staffer.

There was a split second of absolute silence. Senator Mikulski then slowly spit out the following seven words. “Get the f**k out of my way.”

Everyone, including the young woman stepped aside and Barbara Ann Mikulski walked through the entrance without even touching the binder. Whatever it was, she was going to do the hearing without it. The woman stood there for a few seconds and then retreated down the hallway. No one in that doorway will ever forget it, I’m sure.

Then there are numerous stories about the Senator’s footstool. At 4 feet, 11 inches every lectern in the land looks like Boston’s Green Monster to someone as short as Barbara Mikulski. So, a footstool to stand on when giving a speech isn’t a luxury, but a vital necessity. The comic effect of a disembodied voice coming from behind a wooden box is something no politician could survive.

The Senator knew this. The staff had this fact branded on their brains. They knew that the stool needs to get to the speech late enough that some helpful stagehand doesn’t move it, but early enough that it is not carried to the stage in the presence of the boss. A "royal stool carrier" is not the progressive vibe the Senator wanted her staff to convey.

On at least one occasion that I can recall, Senator Mikulski came to the National Archives to give a speech at our old 5th floor theater. I greeted the young stool carrier at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance and took her up to the theater about 30 minutes before the Senator’s arrival. We went into the dimly lit space, and she carried the stool to the stage and carefully placed it behind the ornate lectern. The tricky part was not to make it an awkward tripping hazard for the person introducing the Senator but keeping it accessible enough to allow Mikulski to maneuver it into place with her toe. We thought we had gotten it right.

After greeting the Senator and bringing her upstairs for her remarks, I introduced her to Acting Archivist Trudy Peterson and retired to the back of the theater with her traveling aid and the young carrier of the footstool.

The introduction that I had written went off without a hitch, but at some point in the choreography, the stool slipped a bit too far under the lectern for the Senator to see when she arrived at the microphone. Her conclusion was that it was not there, and she looked around the corner of the wooden box with an expression that would have knocked a buzzard off a dumpster.

The staffer took off down the side aisle in a trot that quickly became a sprint, bounded up the steps and reached under the lectern to pull out the footstool for the Senator. Those unfamiliar with the protocol couldn’t figure out what was going on and the staffer’s final moves were hidden by the lectern. But the Senator knew that this was not how it was supposed to go and would never have thought to blame herself for not exploring the dark space under the lectern shelf.

When the young staffer returned to the back of the theater, even in the dark I could tell that her face was ashen.

Some folks stayed with the Senator for years, but many could not take the abuse and the revolving door needed frequent maintenance. I actually hired one verbally battered young woman to serve on my Congressional Affairs staff.

One loyal soul who stuck with Senator Mikulski for years was the mother of Martin O’Malley, former Mayor of Baltimore, and Governor of Maryland. Barbara Suelzer O’Malley joined the Senator’s staff shortly after her first election victory and stayed with Mikulski for 27 years. Just as tough as her boss, her wit and mothering skills made her a favorite on Capitol Hill and her gatekeeping made her legend. All Senators are hard to get in to see and Mikulski was no different.

We had some extra barriers at the National Archives. Our appropriator on the other side of Congress was Steny Hoyer, also of Maryland. Steny had always been supportive, but the deal he cut with the University of Maryland to host Archives II, our 1.8 million square foot College Park headquarters made him our official godfather. He helped shepherd the money and the financing scheme through Congress and he became synonymous with The National Archives at College Park. We named our research complex after him.

Maryland is a small state with an equally small congressional delegation. I always had the impression that while Mikulski was never going to be a barrier, she was slightly jealous that all the Archives initiative and laurels belonged to Steny. Only once did she bare her claws on funding and that was her eleventh hour demand for an expanded daycare facility that would accommodate not only our staff, but also the children of staff from the University of Maryland. We quickly agreed, and all was well.

She would brush off requests for face to face meetings with the Archivist of the United States and the standard message that would come back was always, “why meet? Go see Steny.” But as we approached the need for major funding to support our Electronic Records Archives (ERA), I knew the jump in our annual appropriation was going to need all the help we could get. This new technology was going to give future generations the ability to read electronic messages despite changes in hardware and software. With our annual appropriation averaging $300 million, the $500 million lifetime estimate for the new ERA was a heavy lift to say the least.

So, if the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.

As a native Marylander, I did have one advantage. Barbara Mikulski was my home state Senator.

Also, she rode in an open convertible in my hometown July 4th parade every year. The parade formed up on Montrose Avenue in my old neighborhood and the cars of the dignitaries were always sitting in the same block prior to parade time.

The catch was that as the home of the Declaration of Independence, the National Archives in Washington, DC was ground zero for the Independence Day celebration and I had congressional breakfasts to host and dignitaries to shepherd at Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street NW every year. The good news was that the Archives festivities were early on the holiday morning and the Catonsville Parade was early afternoon. With a quick 45 minute drive back home to Maryland, I could do both.

So, for several consecutive years, I would stow my car at my parent’s house and either with my family or solo, stroll Montrose Avenue for a “chance” meeting with Senator Mikulski. I always feigned surprise at the meeting and usually got a solid five minutes of her time. She’d have her Campaign Barbara face on, and our chats were pleasant. Each one gave me the opportunity to say thanks, and remind her how important she was to the records of our nation and the ongoing preservation of the national story.

After three years of those Independence Day rendezvous with the Senator, she would acknowledge me as a fellow human being when I’d see her on Capitol Hill. Not as a friend, not as a worthy professional, just as a member of the same species. That was all I ever hoped for from the Fighter from Fells Point.

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