Right to the end, William Donald Schaefer was tallying his achievements: A $60 million surplus. A triple-A bond rating. More than 10,600 memos commanding his bureaucrats to fix a problem. Now.
Nearly 40 years in public life, and Mr. Schaefer was still measuring his worth by counting up what he'd done. He wanted his successes numbered and heaped atop each other, a huge pyramid of triumphs, so we all could stand back and admire them.
He ordered his staff to whip up a summary: "The Top 225 Accomplishments of the Administration of Gov. William Donald Schaefer." A few weeks later, he'd expanded the list to the top 390. He may be counting still.
It was always this way, through his 16 years on the Baltimore City Council, 15 years as Baltimore's mayor and eight years as governor:
More. Always more. Show them who's boss. Push and cajole and throttle the bums until you get what you want. Paint your name on all the signs. Invite the citizens to celebrate.
That's government, to Mr. Schaefer's mind. That's leadership.
This week, William Donald Schaefer, 73, is packing up and walking out of the State House -- leaving his mark on Baltimore, the state and our psyches.
Marylanders got used to seeing that freckled dome of a head, a caricaturist's dream, everywhere, in every kind of goofball get-up.
They tried to parse his sentences, which could jerk and ramble, clause piling upon incomplete clause. They braced for his scoldings. And they learned that when his jaw set and his cold blue eyes narrowed, he could whirl into a rage.
He was the Hero of Baltimore, accustomed to adulation. But by his last term as governor, Mr. Schaefer was brooding in the State House, bewildered and angered by low public approval ratings.
He believed in government -- at a time when the public was growing wary of government's tinkering with their lives. He insisted that government take an active interest in almost every problem: schools, crime, roads, welfare -- as well as such ephemera as lagging spirits or poor civic self-image.
He had no fancy theories -- just targets of opportunity. No ideology -- just a frantic desire to succeed. And to do that he had to get people moving. Pronto! This instant! Now.
One loyal aide to Mr. Schaefer summed up his governing strategy this way: "Ready, fire, aim."
"I think that Governor Schaefer always felt that the biggest abuse of power was not to use it," said former state Sen. Howard A. Denis, a Montgomery County Republican.
He did more good, said one Baltimore civic activist. He made more mistakes. "He just plain did more."
Hours after the opening of Baltimore's Harborplace, which drew dazzling reviews in national magazines, an aide found Mayor Schaefer huddled in City Hall, scribbling.
Great day, she said. He shot her a permafrost scowl. "That already happened," he growled. "What the hell else is going on in the city?"
He wanted momentum. He nagged and nudged and did things his own unpolitic way.
The result, fans and critics agree, is that Mr. Schaefer will not be forgotten.
"Without question, he is the most important political figure in the state of Maryland in the last 100 years," said Bernard C. Trueschler, Baltimore Gas & Electric's retired chief executive officer. "He set the agenda. He was not a creature created by anybody. He was unique."
Marylanders saw him on their front pages and television screens, day after day, decade after decade -- beaming, mugging, sneering, cheering. He was devoted. That was clear. But what else motivated this most public of men remained a mystery.
"It wasn't until after I left that I realized I never knew the man," said Joan Bereska, who spent nearly 20 years as his toughest, closest lieutenant. "He is the most intensely private person I've
ever known."
'Think-big mayor'
Mr. Trueschler looks out from his Inner Harbor office and says, "Everything I see, from Camden Yards to that old sewage treatment plant near Little Italy that he renovated, that's all him. He did that."
There's the glass-and-concrete Baltimore Convention Center; as mayor, he pushed the state to build it. And there's the hole for its $150 million expansion, which he finessed as governor. The light rail tracks, the glass pyramids of the National Aquarium, the sleek new Columbus Center, the hotels and condominiums and offices. He begged or battled for them all.
Drive out through the neighborhoods, which Mr. Schaefer once prowled as Baltimore's Great Custodian. Drive farther, and you'll travel on new roads and bridges to the mountains, the bay and the beach. Maybe your downtown has changed: He's been an evangelist for revitalization from Frostburg to Cambridge.
You probably pay one of the many taxes or fees Mr. Schaefer raised, which helped him pull the state through the early '90s recession. Or you can squander your paycheck on Keno, thanks to Mr. Schaefer's appetite for gambling revenue.
To his allies, he was a political giant, one of the greatest governors of this century.
"I think it is going to take a lot of time for it to sink in what a truly extraordinary governor he has been," says Del. Timothy F. Maloney, a Prince George's County Democrat.
Does he have critics? Does Harborplace draw crowds?
"He was a tax-and-spend, think-big mayor and governor with the proverbial edifice complex," says Blair Lee IV, a Montgomery County newspaper columnist and veteran adversary of Mr. Schaefer. "We do have better roads and more buildings and more stadiums under Schaefer. But I think we've paid a heavy price in other areas," such as higher taxes and reliance on gambling revenue.
Though some question the quality of Mr. Schaefer's leadership. Not even his foes doubt that there was plenty of it.
"Clearly, his epitaph is going to be that he was an activist governor," Mr. Lee says. "He was willing to fight on 18 different fronts and expend his political capital to win where he could. We'll probably never see another governor with as many legislative successes.
1% "The era of 'Do It Now' is over."
'Not a waffler'
Who knew, back in 1955, when Mr. Schaefer was first elected to the Baltimore City Council that this unknown from West Baltimore, this earnest character who couldn't glad-hand or back-slap to save his life, would come to remake a dying city and dominate state politics?
"A workhorse," The Sun said in its tepid 1971 mayoral endorsement. "Not an inspiring leader."
The thin-skinned Mr. Schaefer remembers it thus: "They said I had the charisma of a dead cat."
He was the only child of Tululu and William Henry Schaefer, parents so devoted that they sent him a letter every day he was in the Army during World War II. A graduate of City College, William Donald Schaefer clerked by day at the title company where his father was a lawyer. By night, he studied law at the University of Baltimore.
After the war, Mr. Schaefer returned to his practice. But the law bored him.
In 1950 and again in 1954, Mr. Schaefer lost campaigns for the House of Delegates. But he won a seat on the Baltimore City Council in 1955, after Irv Kovens, the wealthy West Baltimore furniture merchant and political power broker, put Mr. Schaefer on the Kovens ticket.
On the council, Mr. Schaefer tramped through every neighborhood, spending weekends driving through alleys looking for trash and potholes, abandoned cars and weed-filled lots. He carried City Hall files in the back seat of his beat-up car. He marshaled civic groups to lobby for a tidier, prettier, livelier city.
"I had fun," he says.
Other City Hall pols had wives, children, drinking buddies, hobbies. He had Baltimore.
In 1967, he was elected council president. Four years later, he was elected mayor. He ruled neither by the book nor by committee. William Donald Schaefer governed with his gut.
"There's nothing ambivalent about him," said Sandra S. Hillman, who served as his first director of promotions. "He's not a waffler. He doesn't consult others. He's a totally instinctive man."
To some, he was a visionary. Others saw just an agile problem-solver who'd been mistaken for a far-sighted genius.
The first order of business, he decided, was to get people to believe in their city.
That was no easy task. Baltimore after the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King was a gray, dispirited place.
But Mr. Schaefer, who still lived in his boyhood home off Edmondson Avenue, devoutly believed that Baltimore was great. And he wouldn't stop making rah-rah pronouncements about it. Fort McHenry. The Preakness. Ethnic neighborhoods. Lexington Market. The things other city dwellers saw as simply part of their gritty landscape Mr. Schaefer viewed as urban wonders.
He dragged people back downtown.
All the while, he was driving through town looking for things to fix. His one-man reconnaissance missions led him to -- off dozens of "Mayor's Action Memos" to department heads each weekend.
Some reeked of sarcasm. "How come I'm the ONLY ONE who can see this pile of garbage?" he'd inquire. Bureaucrats learned to gauge his mood by how wildly he scrawled and how deeply he pressed pencil into paper.
To Mr. Schaefer, cleanliness was next to urban greatness. Baltimoreans got the message.
"Sure, I picked up trash," said Jack Moseley, retired USF&G; chief. "We all picked up a piece of paper. He cared about it. And we responded."
And Mr. Schaefer wanted Baltimoreans to know who was responsible for everything new or renovated. He decreed that every government project -- from a new school to a water main repair -- be decorated with a sign that read: "Mayor William Donald Schaefer and the Citizens of Baltimore."
He was lucky enough to take over the mayor's office while the federal government was still sending fat grants to cities. He hated regulations and red tape. Because he wanted flexibility, he created the city Trustees, who financed his favorite renewal plans with almost no public oversight.
And he kept up the hype. In July 1981, came the event to end all Schaefer events: The Seal Pool.
He'd vowed that January that the National Aquarium would open on time or he'd jump in a tank. That July, with construction hopelessly behind schedule and network television crews on hand, Mr. Schaefer donned an old-time bathing costume and swam with the seals.
The photos ran in Time and Newsweek. At last, the rest of the country would get to see Baltimore as he saw it.
Tantrums and turkeys
Sure, Mr. Schaefer could play the role of everyone's favorite uncle. But people who watched him at work understood how tough he could be.
"He is probably one of the most aggressive and progressive spirits as far as renewing certain aspects of urban life -- the downtown development, etc.," said the Rev. William Calhoun, of the Baltimore Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance. "But, I would say he is a person who is minuscule in his relations with persons who did not always agree with him."
His staff knew. Mr. Schaefer's motivational techniques were not included in management textbooks.
He enjoyed theatrics. At a luncheon, as a councilman badgered the mayor for new equipment for a Northeast Baltimore playground, Mr. Schaefer suddenly flung himself onto the rug.
The legislators stared: The city's mayor was crawling on his hands and knees, scissoring his fingers as if he were clipping the carpet.
"This is what I expect," he said, still crawling, still clipping. "I expect them to help maintain the playground."
He reduced people around him to size. "Hello, girls," he'd call to a room full of men. Cabinet members routinely were "Junior."
When he was truly angry, anything was possible.
Ms. Bereska remembers trying to follow an enraged Mr. Schaefer into his office. He slammed the door, breaking her toe. She limped for weeks. He never said a word.
For one six-month stretch, Ms. Bereska said, Mr. Schaefer communicated with her only by memo -- and she was his chief of staff. Her sin? She'd shrugged off a last-minute request to attend an event in his place. After brooding for six months, he hissed, "You never tell me you can't do something for me."
State Sen. George W. Della Jr. remembers a City Council budget discussion that ended badly. Mr. Schaefer flung an ashtray past council members, smashing it into a door.
"But it worked," Mr. Della said. "Half of it was put on. It was an act. Most of the time, he got his way."
Business titans who would not have tolerated such behavior from anyone else found themselves subjected to Schaefer tirades.
J. Henry Butta, a now-retired C&P; Telephone chief executive, was called to the mayor's office with other executives in 1981 to hear a Schaefer request for money for city projects.
When they didn't get right back to him, they were summoned again to the mayoral chamber.
"He chastised us up, down and every which way," Mr. Butta recalled with a laugh. "So then one of us said, 'Are you asking us to pay for projects that would be paid for with tax dollars?'
"He stopped and he said" -- and now Mr. Butta does an impression of Mr. Schaefer at his most sarcastic -- 'Ohhhhh. We have a GEEN-ius in our group. A GEEN-ius.' "
The executives marched out and started raising money.
His City Hall Cabinet members sat through meetings in which he handed out "turkeys" and "eagles" -- a management tool at once juvenile and shrewd. Grown-ups slunk in their seats when they were that week's turkey. They sat taller when their work earned an eagle.
Yet for all Mr. Schaefer's imperiousness, his staff was loyal.
If he was unhappy, Ms. Bereska remembers, the team -- made up largely of players some called "the Worshipful Women" -- rallied. "The more down he is, the more points we have to score: More touchdowns. More field goals. If we could only do better, we could make him happy."
Team members said their dedication was repaid with unusual liberty.
"He left me very free to run the agency," said Robert C. Embry Jr., president of the Abell Foundation, who served as Mr. Schaefer's housing secretary. "In almost every other city there would be a great deal of interference with redevelopment efforts. Who would get to buy a piece of property. What lawyer was hired, what architect, what insurance broker. There was not one instance of that in the nine years I was in my job."
Why did they put up with his rages and his sarcasm?
"You had to have a tremendous amount of respect for the guy himself," says Robert S. Hillman, who served as Mr. Schaefer's city labor commissioner. "He was scrupulously honest. He worked harder than any of us. And if you had a good idea, he'd give you a tremendous amount of rope and all the support in the world."
'Enemy territory'
William Donald Schaefer stormed into the State House vowing to do for Maryland what he did for Baltimore.
Trouble was, Maryland refused to cooperate.
Where Baltimore's City Council capitulated with little fuss, the General Assembly resisted him. City neighborhoods enlisted in most of Mr. Schaefer's crusades. The state's diverse regions remained suspicious of his vision of Team Maryland.
Right away, Mr. Schaefer tried to appoint a state treasurer, only to have legislators tell him that that was their constitutional right. He demanded a larger staff. Lawmakers tried to cut it back. He strode into the Senate Office Building one day and declared it "enemy territory."
"He was firmly ensconced as an urban autocrat in Baltimore, and there had to be more give and take in Annapolis," said Marc K. Levine, a University of Wisconsin professor who is writing a book about the Baltimore renaissance. "He just wasn't trained for it by his 15 years in the city."
Most State House veterans were used to being treated with respect, even deference by governors. They were in for a shock.
"Early on, when we had Cabinet meetings, he'd start right on time, at 8 a.m.," recalled Lt. Gov. Melvin A. Steinberg, former president of the state Senate. "He'd say, 'Lock the doors.' Anyone late couldn't come in." Mr. Steinberg came at 8:01 once and found the door bolted. He was admitted only after a humiliating wait.
Mr. Schaefer used language and gestures so vulgar that they could unsettle legislators accustomed to the General Assembly's frat party culture. In a meeting with legislative leaders in his State House office, Mr. Schaefer grabbed his crotch: "This is where you got me," he said. "Would you let go?"
To the annoyance of Democratic regulars, Mr. Schaefer refused to act the party's elder statesman. He was stingy about endorsements and ungenerous to younger, popular politicians. Some grumbled that it was if he believed in only one political organization: the Schaefer Party.
As governor, Mr. Schaefer lived a life of privilege. He watched football with President Bush at Camp David, flew first class and zipped around, exceeding the speed limit, in chauffeured limousines. He accepted a 41 percent raise in 1990, to $120,000 a year -- making him, at the time, the nation's highest paid governor.
But his personal tastes remained rooted in those of the middle-class Baltimore of his youth.
One aide joked that the governor stopped at every McDonald's in Maryland. (He likes Happy Meals.) He cheered on pro wrestling's Hulk Hogan. He vacationed in Ocean City. He liked call-in radio shows, John Philip Sousa marches and Las Vegas lounge music. When they played Kate Smith's "God Bless America," he cried.
In some states, if the governor's girlfriend had moved into the mansion, outraged voters might have driven him from office.
Not so Mr. Schaefer, whose longtime companion -- Hilda Mae Snoops -- began staying in the governor's residence early in his first term. Maybe people shrugged off this odd arrangement because Mr. Schaefer, a bachelor who lived with his mother until her death in 1983, seemed otherwise so lonely.
Mrs. Snoops took on the role of the state's "official hostess." The pair came to act like an old married couple -- sticking close to each other, conferring intimately, at times even bickering.
Mrs. Snoops banished from the mansion's public rooms the period furnishings assembled by former Gov. Harry R. Hughes and featured in Architectural Digest. Then, using private funds, she redecorated in a style some critics called tacky.
Overhauling the mansion was politically foolish: It jarred with the urban populist image Mr. Schaefer had earned as mayor and helped redefine him as a big spender.
Perhaps, though, Mr. Schaefer felt driven to erase part of the legacy of Mr. Hughes, whom he publicly scolded and privately blasted as a do-nothing governor.
Mr. Hughes is still bitter about the mansion redecoration. And he angrily recalls Mr. Schaefer's insults.
"I've been exposed to his temper tantrums and his fits of profanity," the former governor said. "I was in public life for 32 years, and no one ever acted, in relation to me, the way he has. Democrat or Republican. At whatever level."
'He cared'
By the time he ran for his second term in 1990, Mr. Schaefer faced an economic slide and a disgruntled electorate. When 40 percent of voters backed a little-known Republican in the general election, Mr. Schaefer was devastated.
"I thought, 'Gee. They don't love me no more.' "
Afflicted by melancholy in the best of times, Mr. Schaefer now sulked. He brooded. He came to speaking engagements, then tossed aside his prepared comments to lash out at voters.
When a motorist gave him a thumbs-down, Mr. Schaefer traced her license plate and sent a sarcastic note: "Your action only exceeds the ugliness of your face. Have a nice day!"
"Sorry," he wrote to another critic, "but you only placed second in the stupid letter contest."
"He should have been the happiest person in the state of Maryland," Mr. Denis said. "He was elected by overwhelming margins, with a lot of people willing and anxious to help him.
"But the thing that always struck me about Schaefer, even when he was at the peak of his ability to move his legislation, he was always unhappy about things -- complaining about the press when I thought he had terrific press, complaining about obscurity at a time when he was a household word."
At the signing of a controversial abortion rights bill in 1991, Mr. Schaefer was greeted by cheers. A single abortion foe cried out. The governor lowered his head.
"Life is funny," he said. "You can hear 10,000 clapping, but the boo comes in the loudest."
Once he had been hailed by the national press. Now he was featured in a supermarket tabloid that labeled him: "The Wackiest Governor in America."
In 1993, Money magazine and ABC's "20/20" called him "the most pampered governor in America," reporting that the state spent nearly $2.3 million a year on his salary, mansion, yachts, security, limousines and other goodies.
Late in his last term, Mr. Schaefer's approval ratings sank to just 16 percent. They have rallied in recent months. But not much. A poll last week showed that only Baltimore voters gave him an overall positive rating.
As his popularity waned, Mr. Schaefer knew whose fault it was. He blamed it all on the negative, negative, negative things written by reporters and columnists -- those quibblers, quislings and busybodies of the press.
For decades, he had waged a war of correspondence on newspapers in general and The Sun in particular. Using sarcasm or bathroom humor, he accused journalists of stupidity, bias, cowardice and sloth.
At a State House event, Mr. Schaefer leaned toward John W. Frece of The Sun and said, in a low voice: "I . . . hate . . . your . . . guts."
He has increasingly sought refuge in his State House office, spending evenings before the fire. Always sentimental, in recent months he has been pleading to be remembered as a selfless humanitarian. Over and over, he says he wants only two words on his tombstone: "He cared."
Maybe he feels driven to seek public validation because he has no family.
"You talk one to one with him sometimes," said Peter Kumpa, a former Sun reporter. "He lamented that he had no family: 'You're lucky. You've got kids. You've got grandchildren. I don't have anybody.' "
Maybe it's because many of those he loved and respected are gone. Every Christmas season, he dutifully buys 14 wreaths and visits cemeteries, placing them on the graves of his mother, Mr. Kovens and others.
To prop up his spirits, aides have arranged a kind of victory lap around Maryland -- a round of groundbreakings, banquets, luncheons and other feel-good events, where his admirers shower praise on him. In Cumberland recently, Allegany County business and political leaders all wore caps emblazoned: "We Luv The Gov."
Mr. Schaefer treasures these public accolades.
"I've gotten so many letters and so many awards, more than the average person," he said.
A professorship awaits -- based at the University of Maryland at College Park but including an office at the Johns Hopkins University. No one expects him to teach. Instead, he intends to use the post to work on economic development.
Even in his last days in office, Mr. Schaefer has been a man in motion, still driven to get things done.
Instead of deferring to a new governor, Mr. Schaefer prepared his own budget for the coming fiscal year. He's interviewing judges. He's been voting on state contracts at Board of Public Works meetings. He's still struggling to broker the return of a National Football League franchise to his beloved hometown.
"He's going down to the wire," said Elaine "Lainy" LeBow-Sachs, Schaefer's longtime appointments secretary.
He also has invited those scribblers and quibblers of the press to chat, the better to write his political epitaph. Mostly, he has trouble talking about himself. He calls himself "slightly colorful," and seems stumped when he's asked to name his five best friends. His deep funks? "Ups and downs," he says.
But if he's unable to describe himself, he finds it easier in relaxed conversation to assess exactly what the past 40 years of his public life have been about.
Mr. Schaefer sat in his State House office with Sen. Gerald W. Winegrad in 1993, a fire blazing in the hearth. The two old adversaries spoke quietly, trying to find common ground.
"You haven't always agreed with me, but I can say this about you," Mr. Schaefer told the Anne Arundel Democrat. "Unlike some of those people down there who don't do anything or believe anything, you're a zealot."
Mr. Winegrad shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Was that supposed to be a compliment?
Mr. Schaefer smiled.
"I'm a zealot, too."