Among the thousands of people that came through the doors at William Penn House during my nine years as Executive Director, some stand out in memory more than others.
For instance, there was a group of perhaps a dozen Russians booked to stay with us for several days under the sponsorship of American University for some kind of cultural exchange program.
The morning after their first night at WPH I showed up for work and House Manager Barbara Silverman was waiting for me at the front door. “This can’t be good,” I thought as I bounded up the steps.
It wasn’t.
Barbara told me that a number of the Russians were drunk during the night (alcohol and drunkenness were against the stated rules for guests at WPH), wandered into rooms occupied by other guests not associated with their group, and made suggestive overtures toward Barbara and others. After thinking about what to do, knowing that Barbara was very upset, I asked her to point out the miscreants to me, which she did.
If you ever saw the movie The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, there is a scene in which Burt Reynolds, in the role of the town’s sheriff, goes after Dom DeLuise, who played a sensationalist reporter seeking to gain attention and fame by exposing on television the town’s open secret. After the reporter makes a televised public statement calling out the sheriff and the town, the sheriff breathes fire on the reporter, backing him down the sidewalk of the town square, the reporter tripping and stumbling, the sheriff calling him every name in the book while the townspeople look on.
Except for the fact I wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat, I was the sheriff, giving the Russians, whom I had cornered, an explicit and colorful earful of what I thought of their behavior. And then I threw them out. The people at American University were not pleased by this turn of events and tried to talk me out of it, but I said, “Get their stuff out of here by this afternoon.” And they did.
Actually, I had a positive relationship with folks from that part of the world. The Soviet Union still existed when I began my work at William Penn House, and numerous times I was able to get representatives from the Soviet Embassy to speak to students. They always seemed willing to comply. I got to know one of the First Secretaries at the embassy, and he was my regular contact for such arrangements. He sometimes came and spoke to groups himself. We never were invited to the embassy, however.
There was another person the embassy sent on a few occasions to speak at WPH. One day I received a telephone call from the FBI asking me about this particular person. Now, how did they know I knew him? The FBI even sent an agent over to William Penn House to question both Barbara and me about this man. We really didn’t have much to tell. All I know is, the next time I called the embassy to invite the man to speak to another group at WPH, my contacts there never heard of him.
The Secret Service showed up one day, too, about an entirely different matter. Apparently, some threats were phoned in to the White House, and the Secret Service thought they traced the call to a pay phone on our premises. I actually was on a stepladder changing a light bulb in the seminar room when the agent came in (my duties were far-ranging at William Penn House). The only guests in the building that day were a small planning group from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker lobbying group on Capitol Hill, upstanding citizens all. After a few questions, about which I had nothing enlightening to offer to him, the agent asked me, “What is William Penn House, anyway?” I told him we were a Quaker seminar center. He flipped his notebook closed, and said, “OK, thanks.” Then, he left.
Some of the individual guests who showed up were of a different sort, I must say. One man came and gave his name as George Washington America. He didn’t have any money, but thought we should let him stay, anyway. He was dressed like someone from the Grand Ol’ Opry in its heyday, but spoke with a foreign accent. We suggested some alternative lodging for him.
Another person I remember engaged me in a long conversation in which he swore he visited William Penn House years before with a woman he described as a significant other for him, whom he referred to as “Sunshine,” and who was a “major media personality. You would recognize her name right away, but I can’t tell you.” He, of course, did everything BUT tell me her name, giving enough hints that I knew his imaginary friend was Vanna White of the Wheel of Fortune game show. Finally, he departed, and I was surprised when he called me from National Airport as he was leaving Washington, thanking me for all I did for him.
“But, I didn’t DO anything,” I said. I didn’t even try to buy a vowel.
One day I answered the door at WPH and there stood a young man with tissues jammed into each nostril. He was asking for donations and had a petition, for which he was seeking signatures, calling for the first Bush Administration to hand over power to him and a group with which he was working. The tissues-in-his-nostrils guy explained how the Bush crowd was not adequately serving the country, and that he and his friends had a plan to get everything straightened out. He just knew if he got enough signatures on the petition President Bush and everyone in his administration would agree to a peaceful transfer of power. As I recall, there even was a target date set for Bush to vacate the White House. I chose not to sign the petition or make a monetary contribution.
“Not even a dime to cover the cost of photocopying the petition?”
“Sorry, man.”
Another humorous incident occurred as a couple of guests were attempting to leave. They were two women who came to Washington for a purpose long forgotten by me, but the day of their departure I do recall. We had a two-car garage behind WPH, one of the old detached “carriage house” buildings seen on Capitol Hill, and sometimes we were able to allow guests to park in it. Usually, when they left, all we did was open the garage door for them and away they went.
Their car would not start, however. After numerous failed attempts they called their roadside service.
A tow truck eventually arrived, and one of the interns and I went out to help. I took one look at the guy who came with the tow truck and became very amused. The nameplate on his shirt, instead of “Tom” or “Skip,” read, “Donkeyman.” For some reason, I thought that was pretty funny. I nudged the intern, he saw it, and we both laughed.
Donkeyman said, “Are you guys laughing at my name?” I replied, “Sorry, man, but I never saw anything like that before.” He really didn’t seem all that upset. And it was one of those times when once you start laughing everything compounds it until you lose all control.
Well, Donkeyman decided that the intern and I should push the car out of the garage into the alley, with him steering, so we could get the car in place for an attempt at jump-starting the battery. So, that’s what we did -- as we laughed and made silly comments. The two ladies seemed confused as to why the intern and I were enjoying this so much.
Finally, we had the car backed into the alley, but Donkeyman felt he still needed a better angle in order to connect the cables.
So, he got back into the car. The intern and I resumed pushing, this time from the rear, but couldn’t budge the car. I yelled, “Hey, Donkeyman! What gives? You got your foot on the brake or somethin’?” We were doubled over with laughter. He said, “Oh, sorry! I put it in park instead of neutral.” We were hysterical by then, and, gasping for breath, I said to the intern, “Hence, the name.”
A person I always enjoyed presenting to student groups was Colman McCarthy. At the time, Colman was a syndicated columnist, writing out of the offices of The Washington Post. He was a bike-riding vegetarian, referred to by some critics as a “mad-dog liberal.” In addition to his journalistic work, Colman taught courses on peace and peacemaking at a local high school and offered a curriculum on peace through an institute he founded.
He seemed to relish opportunities to speak to students, always challenging notions and assumptions.
He would list names of historical figures to see whether students recognized them. One list included names such as Robert E. Lee, George Washington, and George Patton, all of whom the students recognized as military leaders. The second list included Dorothy Day, Jeanette Rankin and others he termed as peacemakers. Few, if any, students ever recognized their names, which, of course, was the point he wanted to make. “How can we have peace in the world if we never teach young people about peace? Why does history always have to be about wars and violence?” were his plaintive mantras.
Colman always told the story of Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress. Actually, she was elected twice, decades apart, taking office in her initial term four days before the vote pertaining to U.S. involvement in World War I. She voted no, which Colman suggested led to her serving only one term that time around. Years later Ms. Rankin again won a seat in Congress, just as World War II was heating up. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, she was in position once again to vote on U.S. participation in war. Remaining consistent, she voted no a second time, and as Colman told the story, Jeanette Rankin reported back home, “The boys are at it again!”
Colman routinely made a case for vegetarianism when speaking to groups. One time, as the session began, he turned to a young man in the group and said, “Would you like a cheeseburger?” The student, incredulous at his dumb luck, enthusiastically said he would. Colman reached into his satchel and pulled out a large test tube filled with what looked like solidified meat drippings. “Here you go. This is what you put into your body whenever you eat one of those things.” He said a rule of thumb to follow before eating was to look at what was on your dinner plate and ask, “Did it have a mother?” Colman McCarthy was a gas. I always enjoyed being with him.
One day as I walked to WPH from the Metro I saw that an empty storefront in the next block from WPH suddenly was a bookstore. Making a mental note to visit the shop in the near future I went into my office. Before long we noticed a film crew set up in front of our building, and the same car kept speeding down East Capitol Street, narrowly missing clipping the same guy walking across the street. Each time, he ran toward the bookstore. Somehow, we eventually found out it was a crew from the television show, A Man Called Hawk, starring Avery Brooks.
When I headed back to the subway that evening to begin my trek home, I saw that the new bookstore was completely gone, and the storefront was empty once again.
Another day, we noticed a person or two running and jumping across the roofs of a couple of the row houses across the street from WPH. It turned out filming was underway for one of the Harrison Ford movies based on a Tom Clancy book.
The Eddie Murphy film, The Distinguished Gentleman, shot some scenes a couple of blocks down from WPH, using one of the nearby row houses as the residence of a character in the film. We found out about it when a guest returned to WPH and told us she saw Eddie himself leaning out a window and shouting at someone on the sidewalk.
Moving around the city, either escorting groups to their appointments with speakers, or on my own for various reasons, it was not uncommon to encounter prominent people.
Some I remember were civil rights icon, Rep. John Lewis; Defense Secretary Les Aspin; Leon Panetta, who held various positions under Clinton and Obama; First Lady Hillary Clinton; former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern; Rev. Jesse Jackson; Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork; Attorney General Janet Reno; D.C. Mayor Marion Barry; Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee; former Attorney General Elliott Richardson, who stood up to Nixon during the “Saturday Night Massacre;” Al Franken, long before he ran for public office; actress Kelly McGillis, who was renting a house around the corner from WPH while appearing in a production at the Folger Shakespeare Library; Sen. Jim Bunning, baseball Hall of Fame pitcher who also served as a member of the House from Kentucky; Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who stopped me one day on the street to ask for directions; Rep. Joseph Kennedy, II, son of Robert Kennedy; and Sen. and Mrs. Daniel Moynihan, who lived two doors down from WPH.
