CELEBRATING BALTIMORE'S WORLD SERIES VICTORY
Governor Schaefer remembers Edward Bennett Williams as "a good man; a wonderful, warm individual." He also remembers how he and Mr. Williams would meet "secretly" to conduct their negotiations.
He would call me up, and we'd meet secretly at a hotel. A little hotel on Pleasant Street. The Tremont. We used to go up to the top floor and we'd sit down and we'd start to eat. And then we'd start to do negotiations. Everything would be pleasant and then all of a sudden he'd get up and start walking up and down, up and down. And he'd say, "That's the thanks I get. All I've done for you and all I've done for the city -- and this is what you're doing to me." I said, "What am I doing to you?" And he said, "You're not doing what you should be doing for me." Then we'd negotiate.
Next time we have dinner and he gets up, storms up and down. "Oh, my God, how could you do this to me, Don? All I've done for the city." The second time I'm watching him do this I thought, "He's pleading a case before the jury." And this time I'm laughing to myself. Then he'd say, after he put on his performance, "I want this, I want that, I want this." And we'd negotiate. And I'd say, "Yes, yes, yes."
When Governor Schaefer stopped to look at this photograph he didn't see H.L. Mencken. He saw someone else: his father.
That's my father! That's exactly what my father looked like! Take away the hair, that's him. My father always had a cigar stuck in his face, he had horn-rimmed glasses, he wore short-sleeve shirts and, most times, suspenders.
My father believed in hard work. He worked for the Maryland Title Guarantee Company and he used to work five and a half days -- a half-day on Saturday. And then time came on when they cut out the half-day. My father thought he was stealing from the company. He couldn't understand that... He was really a good, good man. I guess the honesty, and the hard work are the things I inherited from him...I also got my great interest in planting my own flowers from him. When I go out in the yard (at the West Baltimore home) I remember how my father used to love to come home at night and work in the flowers. That was a tension release for him. Then I got started doing that.
In the summers of his childhood, the entire family would vacation down at Marley Creek in Anne Arundel County. Young Donald and his mother would spend the entire week there; his father would come on weekends. Father and son were very close.
"If they were both sitting on the sofa, one of them would have his arm around the other's shoulder," a niece, Anita Kienzle, once told The Evening Sun. Now the five-year-old boy in the picture is a 72-year-old man. But he remembers vividly those days at Marley Creek.
I used to play on that beach all the time. There was a little pier with a sandy beach at the bottom. I used to go fishing there. My father liked to fish and we used to row, my father and I, to a cove back there. There was a sandbar there and we'd anchor the boat to the sandbar. And we'd catch yellow perch and white perch. And crabs. I remember that so well.
But the photograph jogs loose other memories, more recent ones, of his father. Of how, for instance, when Donald spent four years overseas in World War II, his father wrote him a letter every day. And of how his father died. That day in 1959 when his father had a heart attack is etched clearly in his mind: the detail, the texture, the exact minute it happened.
One Saturday I said to my father, "We've got to clean up the front yard."...So we went outside and clipped the hedge -- there was a big hedge right in front of the slope. So we were cutting the hedge and the clippings were all over the place. So I said, "I'll go in and get a bag." So I went up the steps and I went in. I came out. I looked for him. Couldn't find him. And so I walked down the steps. And there he was. He was lying out on the sidewalk. He was dead.
Describing Robert Irsay as a "very odd, strange man," Governor Schaefer recalls the winter night that the Colts' owner showed up at BWI airport to scream and rant at reporters -- and then to suddenly depart in his private plane.
Irsay called me the night before and said, "I'm flying in to Baltimore. I want to go to Tio Pepe's." And I said, "Jeez, Mr. Irsay, I can't get you a reservation there. It takes two weeks." And he said, "I don't care. Get me a reservation at Tio Pepe's." So I called Tio Pepe's and said, "I need a reservation." They said, "Sorry, we can't help you." And I said, "I've got to have it. Irsay's coming." So they said, "All right. We'll do it." So he flies in. And he's absolutely wild. He gets before the cameras, and he lets them have it. And I'm trying, I'm really trying, to understand why he's acting this way...Anyway, I'm dying. But he finishes and I say, "OK, Mr. Irsay, are you ready to go to Tio Pepe's?" And he says, "No. I'm going back to Chicago. Goodbye." Said he didn't remember calling me up to go to Tio Pepe's.
The last time Governor Schaefer saw Colts' owner Robert Irsay was in October 1993. The NFL team owners had gathered to vote on which two cities among the five finalists would be awarded expansion teams. "He waved, and I waved," recalled Gov. Schaefer. But just before leaving for Chicago, Gov. Schaefer bit the bullet and "actually called him up."
I called him and asked him to vote for us. He was surprised that I called him. He didn't say no, he didn't say yes. But I knew he wasn't going to be for us. Even though he morally should have been. He morally should have been. Without any hesitancy he should have been standing up and yelling for Baltimore.
When William Donald Schaefer entered the City Council in 1955, "Old Tommy" D'Alesandro was mayor. When City Councilman Schaefer was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1971 he took over the office from "Young Tommy" D'Alesandro.
Now there are some great guys. There's old Tommy. I learned so much from that guy. He was a magnificent man. Go-get-it-done kind of guy. Very excitable. McKeldin. He was a great, great speaker. We didn't get along too well when he was Mayor. I remember one thing he did. There was this bill -- the One-Percent-for-Art bill, I think. Well, he vetoed my bill and then he put the bill right back in -- under his own name. But after I became Mayor, he and I became really close friends.
That's Grady. J. Harold Grady. He was the smartest of them all. He was misplaced. He didn't want to be Mayor. And that's Tommy the Younger. He had the biggest heart of all...He was just a real, real, nice, good man. And the community took advantage of him. Of his goodness. He let them push him around. Which is not right. He got tired of politics. Got out early.
He remembers with astounding precision the old neighborhood as it was sixty years ago. Beck's Bakery, Thomas' Grocery Store, Lilly's Hardware, the Edgewood Theatre. When he stops in front of this picture he points with excitement at a dog sticking his head through the porch railing. "That's my dog, Skippy," he says. "He's getting old there. See the gray?" What he remembers most, however, about the neighborhood is his mother.
I was her life. Strong-willed woman. Determined. She used to stand right there on the porch and yell up the street when we played street hockey up on Edgewood. She used to stand there, yelling "Donaaald." And that would be it. I'd be on my way home...My mother wasn't so happy when I ran for city council. She wanted me to stay a lawyer. But she came round eventually.
My mother and father were very close to the people on both sides of us. They used to compete to see who had the prettiest yard...My mother loved to talk over the fence. Back then the porch always had furniture on it and my mother and father would sit out there and talk. And there were always canvas awnings you could pull up and down. I think about her and my father both. Remember the things they were interested in. Oh, boy. The Governor stops and covers his eyes with his hand.