A reflection on family and home, on the heels of my parents retiring from their longtime business.
Retirement
Most of us in the Capitol press corps know little about the members we watch every day. As it happened, Charlie Howard changed the world. Who knew that (quoting from his bio) “Rep. Howard and his wife, Jo, came to Houston in 1970 from Alabama where they had both worked on…
A friend described Swinford to me this way, and I think it is about as good a tribute as a member could ask for: “He was the same person when he left as he was when he got here.” Not very many members can say that on their way out…
I have a very clear memory of returning from a birthday trip with my wife to Paris, where we were blissfully unaware of the awful happenings back home. This was in late April 1998, when cell phones weren’t ubiquitous and BlackBerrys didn’t exist—even e-mail was in limited use—so my first…