Transcripts

Interview 1 – January 25, 2006

Johnson:
This is Kathleen Johnson interviewing Donnald Anderson, former Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. The interview is taking place in the Legislative Resource Center, Cannon House Office Building. It is January 25th, 2006, and this is the first interview with Mr. Anderson.
Before discussing your career at the Capitol, it would be helpful to focus on some biographical information. Where and when were you born?
Anderson:
I was born on October 17th, 1942, in Sacramento, California, which is still my other home to this day. I grew up in Sacramento, was educated in [the] public schools of Sacramento until I received my Page appointment in my senior year of high school, which brought me to Washington initially. I completed my high school education here in Washington at the Capitol Page School.
Johnson:
What were the names of your parents and their professions?
Anderson:
My mother, who is still living, is Sally Anderson, a career civil servant with the state of California. And my late father, Russell V. Anderson, was a civil engineer, who died about 30 years ago.
Johnson:
I read that in 1959 you came across a magazine article discussing the Pages of the Capitol and you subsequently wrote your Congressman, Representative [John Emerson] Moss.
Anderson:
Indeed. In late summer of 1959, as I was about to begin my senior year of high school, I read a lengthy article in Time magazine about Pages in the House and Senate. I decided this was a really extraordinary thing to do. I had developed an interest in parliamentary government because my mother had worked for many years—and would for quite a few years thereafter—in the state capitol in Sacramento, not very far from our home, in the state controller’s office. And so, frequently, after school or during break periods, I’d go down to the capitol and visit Mom at her office. And I got to know many of the members of the state senate and assembly and would hang around the chambers and watch our legislature in action. I became keenly interested in the process of consensus government.
So when I read the article, I thought, well, this would be a wonderful thing to do. But the article wrongly pointed out that unless you were well connected, came from a well-to-do, influential family—the chance of receiving a Page appointment in either the House or Senate was rather far-fetched. Of course those things didn’t necessarily describe my family situation, but in the spirit of nothing ventured nothing gained, I sat down and wrote a handwritten letter, which I still have, to our Congressman from Sacramento, the late John E. Moss, expressing in the same terms that kids do to this very day, why I would like to be a Page in the House of Representatives.
Johnson:
Do you remember what you wrote specifically?
Anderson:
Well, that I had an interest in representative government and politics and [that] I developed that interest watching the state legislature in Sacramento. I felt that it would enhance my own role as a citizen if I could see firsthand how our government at the national level conducts the affairs of the people. I wrote it in longhand, fraught with misspellings. While I flatter myself that I have a great command of the language, spelling it, however, has been somewhat more challenging than understanding it. I put a 4¢ first-class stamp on it and sent it off to Washington with the [4:00] expectation that if I got a response at all, it would be a refusal. And a couple of weeks later I received my first franked envelope from Congressman John Moss, informing me that he received my letter and congratulating me on my interest in Congress and on wanting to be a Page and informing me that he was delighted to be able to bestow the appointment. Call Miss Whomever in his Sacramento office to make arrangements to come to Washington.
I was so stunned by the prospect of the appointment that I didn’t know quite what to do. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to do it. I was a senior in high school at that time—big man on campus involved in all the things that seniors tend to be involved in. And did I wish to give all that up to travel across the United States to a place unknown to do something that, frankly, I didn’t know that much about? But I thought, “It’s a window of opportunity that won’t be open very long. I probably ought not to let it pass.” And so I decided I would go. My mother and my family were rather reluctant at the thought of my going across the United States to live in a strange place with people they didn’t know. It would be my first time away from home.
But in any case, I decided that it was too extraordinary an opportunity to pass up. And, furthermore, if I didn’t like it, it’s not like joining the Army. I wasn’t, after all, under contract; I could come back home. Though that certainly would have been something of a failure in itself.
But in any case, Mother and I flew to Washington on one of the first commercial jet flights. Jet transportation by air had just been inaugurated, I think, the previous year. It was a very exciting thing to do. There were no nonstops from the West to the East Coast. You had to go through somewhere, in our case, Chicago. I’d never been so cold in my life. And we landed at what was then Friendship Airport in Baltimore. (Dulles hadn’t been built yet. National didn’t accept jets). We arrived at Washington late at night. My first view of the Capitol was of a red dome, since it was being refurbished at the time in conjunction with the extension of the East Front, and the dome had been sandblasted down to the bare metal and primed with red lead rust-preventive paint. It was [a] rather extraordinary sight to see the dome painted red.1 So that’s how I initially came to Washington. When Congressman Moss retired in the ’70s after 26 years in the House, in preparing his files for archiving, he retrieved the letter I had written him long before and gave it to me as a keepsake complete with the envelope with the 4¢ stamp on it.
Johnson:
Oh, how nice.
Anderson:
And I have that to this day. I’ve been reluctant to display it much because of the misspellings that recur in it. But in any case it is a treasure, and that’s how it all began. Who knew that it would lead as far as it did?
Johnson:
Can you describe your first day as a Page for the House of Representatives?
Anderson:
Yes. It was January 4th, 1960. Mother and I stayed at the old Raleigh Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, right across from the old city post office. Early in the morning, we got on the trolley car—they still had trolley cars in Washington in those days—and took the ride up to the Capitol, getting [8:00] off in front of the Cannon Building, just a few yards from where we’re seated now…walking across the grounds to the Capitol and of course it was a thrilling experience. In those days people didn’t travel very much unless they were extremely wealthy. And those of us who lived on the West Coast always had the dream of coming back East and seeing Washington just for a few days, fleetingly, and here I was coming to spend quite a while living here.
We walked into the Capitol, and of course in those days there was no security whatsoever. The Capitol Police officer at the House door was engrossed in a newspaper, and we walked in and asked where the Doorkeeper’s office was, which was where I was to report. He directed us. The famous Doorkeeper of the House, “Fishbait” Miller, was in charge of the Page program.2 We went to his office, I did my paperwork, and was given a list of approved rooming houses in the Capitol Hill area where it was suggested that Pages live, since in those days there was no official housing for Pages. I was also told to come over to the Cannon Building and see Mrs. Cram, who was the secretary to the Democratic Patronage Committee, to pick up my letter of appointment directing the Doorkeeper to put me on the Page rolls. In those days this was a patronage culture. Virtually every single position in the structure of the House was appointed by somebody through patronage. So I came over, picked up my letter, brought it back to the Doorkeeper’s office, and that took care of the sign-in procedure.
Then Mother and I went off in search of a place for me to live. Of course, Capitol Hill had not gone through its renaissance—most of the houses were still pretty much as they were in the 19th century when they were built. In fact, some of them looked frighteningly close to something out of Charles Dickens. In any case, we agreed that Mrs. Duckett’s rooming house at 322 Maryland Avenue would be the right place for me to live. She, like most of the elderly ladies who took in roomers, was an old southern lady, a widow of the Baptist persuasion, and had some pretty traditional and old-fashioned views about manners and morals and other societal issues. As she was wont to say, she ran a good Christian home and wouldn’t put up with any racing or running or carrying-on. So Mother was satisfied that I would be in a stable, well structured, and well supervised environment. She was a dear old lady. I think of her fondly very often. And I shared a room with a graduate student at GW [George Washington University] who was a Capitol policeman at the time. The Capitol Police in those days fell into two categories, either graduate students or military veterans. Scarcely a one of them had any real civilian police training. Of course, keeping in mind, that was still our age of innocence before [12:00] assassinations or terrorism. The Capitol Police certainly weren’t asked to do very much. What they did, they did rather well, considering that there was no threat at all.
Then the next morning about 6:00 a.m. I went off to Page School for the first time. It was a bitterly cold January morning. And even though I had bought a topcoat for living in the East—something that in California I really didn’t need, it was still awfully hard to get used to being that cold. School started at 6:10 in the morning.
Johnson:
And school at this time…
Anderson:
The school was where it is now, on the third floor of the Library of Congress. It was called the Capitol Page School and provided education for Pages of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court. In those days we had four Supreme Court Pages. There were 51 House Pages and 26 Senate Pages. Something that was very interesting about the transition to the new school—not only its small size and extraordinary location, being in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, clearly the most magnificent high school campus in the world—but it was all boys. And not just all boys, but all white boys. Integration hadn’t come to the Page program and wouldn’t for several more years. Class began with a prayer and a reading from the New Testament. We did not have prayer in school in California; it was my first exposure to it. I must say I rather liked it at the time but, thinking back, it had to be uncomfortable to the handful of non-Christian Pages that we had because it was so patently Christian. We had the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and then began our class day, which extended until about 10:30 in the morning, with a midmorning break at 8:00 for 15 minutes during which we would pile in the elevator and go down to the basement coffee shop, where a blind vendor ran a coffee bar operation. We would have a snack and a cup of coffee. Of course, everybody in those days—including us—smoked, even though in the Page handbook, which was scarcely more than a small pamphlet, we were forbidden from smoking. But everybody did, and in the school itself, which absolutely blew me away, the one place where you could smoke was the principal’s office. There were several filthy ashtrays on a table. I don’t think those ashtrays had ever been washed—just emptied. If you preferred not to go down to the coffee room in the basement you could go into the principal’s office and smoke. And I don’t know how Dr. DeKeyser stood it, since he was a nonsmoker.3 The room often looked like an old-fashioned pool hall in the middle of the morning, with maybe 30 guys in there puffing away. But I discovered quickly that everything in the Page booklet was not exactly what it appeared to be.
Johnson:
Do you have another example of that besides the smoking?
Anderson:
Well, of course, drinking was forbidden. Of course, in those days young people did not, I think, drink excessively. It was more the thrill of the chase than it was the idea of getting absolutely blown away. On weekends we’d occasionally get on the trolley car and go downtown. A favorite [16:00] gathering place was the old Bavarian restaurant, a German-style place on 11th Street, where the Marriott is now, that had German oompah music and beer in big steins, and we’d often go down there for dinner and a couple of German beers. But it was never with the thought of getting drunk—just to get away with it. In those days, there was an 18 legal age for beer and wine in the District of Columbia, which made the operational drinking age more like 15 or 16. Enforcement was, shall we say, uneven in most establishments in Washington. And most of the bars and restaurants near the Capitol on the block facing the Jefferson Building where the Madison Library now stands, and beyond would gladly enough serve us if we went in for a beer. I generally tended to be kind of cautious about that, because they were frequented by Members of Congress, not that they particularly cared either, but we tried to confine any activity that was at least nominally illicit somewhat further away from the building.
Keep in mind, in those days society was not fraught with the perils that it is today. As I say, drinking was not binge drinking, the kind of thing which seems to be so prevalent among young people today. Drugs simply were not there, they weren’t part of the culture. It was not a question of choosing whether to use drugs or not; nobody did, because they weren’t around. Neither did people have the same casual attitudes about intimate behavior in those days. It was still an age where there was such a thing as shame. And it was not a double standard. It was viewed as just as shameful for guys as for girls to engage in intimate behavior. It simply wasn’t done among decent young people.
So our lives were actually pretty tame by contemporary standards. Of course, if we did go out for a beer, we had to be very careful not to run into our landladies when we came in because, as I said, they were good Christian ladies, mainly of the Baptist persuasion, who would not put up with drinking, and if [you were] caught, there would be two phone calls regardless of the hour of the day or night—one to parents and one to sponsors—to point out where “Little Johnny” had failed. I wasn’t that much of a drinker, so it was not something that I really had to live in dread of.
Johnson:
Going back to your education, can you describe the curriculum at the Capitol Page School?
Anderson:
The curriculum at the Page School was pretty much focused on the three Rs, as it is today—the kind of education that was necessary for college admission: language, history, science, English, mathematics. The faculty was really outstanding. Most of them had day jobs at local colleges and universities, and they were all highly tenured teachers and really excellent. Class sizes then, as now, were small, and so the education was very focused. Page School in those days was a four-year school, like any other [20:00] high school. We had very few freshmen, but we did have a handful of them. Most of us tended to be either juniors or seniors, and most of us served for a year, maybe two years, as Pages; while there were some that stayed for the full four years, there weren’t very many of them.
I ought to point out that the Page program was not as formalized as it is today. It would probably be more accurate to describe it as a program now than it was then. Congress had an ancient tradition of employing young boys in their service, and because minors are required to be educated by law, the Congress had made arrangements to educate the boys that they employed. More of the boys that attended in those days came from the greater Washington area than they do today. Probably a quarter to a third of the Pages were natives of the Washington metropolitan area; the rest of us came from further away. So many of the boys that stayed longer than a year really weren’t living away from home. They lived at home and got up extra early to catch the trolley car to the Library of Congress to attend classes. As time passed, fewer and fewer of the boys came from the Washington area, and it became a more national program, which it entirely is today. We might have four or five Pages from the Washington area now, and most of them come from all over the United States and even its territorial possessions.
Johnson:
Were there any courses or guest lectures or any other type of exercises to prepare you for what you were going to witness on the [House] Floor?
Anderson:
No. The education of the Pages was surprisingly quite separate from the work experience. Nowadays, of course, a very great effort is made to tie the formal education at the Page School to the work experience and to the business of government, but there was no connection whatsoever. The school was freestanding. It was operated by the public schools of the District of Columbia by direct reimbursement through a congressional line-item appropriation to the D.C. government to provide education for our Pages. We had no guest lecturers, we had no field trips, we had no activities that were school-sponsored, save for a winter dance and a spring dance. And that was really sponsored by the school parents’ association, and since we did have a number of parents that lived in the Washington area, there actually was a viable parent-teachers organization. Which, of course, wouldn’t be possible today because the parents simply aren’t in the area. I don’t suppose I thought too much about it at the time, but as the years went by, I and others thought that we ought to make a greater effort to tie the work experience—which is why the Pages come here in the first place—to the formal education program administered by the school. We like to style our Pages as student-employees, “employees” being the noun [24:00] and “student” being the modifier. We bring Pages here to be employees of the House of Representatives, but they are students as well and there ought to be a real connection—which there certainly is today—to tie the two together and to provide an explanation of what they are witnessing as Pages to the academic setting and bring in people from time to time who can share an insight through their own personal expertise into those things.
Johnson:
Switching focus to your work experience, can you describe a typical day for a House Page in 1960?
Anderson:
Well, it was absolutely heaven compared to how hard the kids have to work today and the long hours. We would come over from school usually [at] midmorning, about 10:30, quarter of 11:00, put our briefcases in the Pages’ Cloakroom, the same one which they still use today down on the terrace level of the Capitol—along with our coats and whatever we had with us—and then report to our work assignments either on the Democratic or Republican side.
We had some jobs in those days that don’t exist today, simply because of the changing times. For instance, we had newspaper Pages that would rack the hundreds of daily newspapers to which the House subscribed that came by mail, largely, and so were hopelessly out of date by the time they got here—from all over the country. We had tall, sort of A-frame easels all over the Speaker’s Lobby, and the newspapers had to be put on rods that hung on those easels that were categorized by states and regions so that Members, when they came over, could find their local newspapers where they ought to be. The Pages then kept the lobby tidy during the day, re-racking the papers after the Members had read them, and as new papers would arrive by mail—sometimes a week or more out of date—putting the new ones up and taking the old ones down. We don’t have but a few papers in the lobby now, because Members now have information that is immediately available from all over the country, and there’s just no need to subscribe to newspapers anymore.
We had door Pages that sat with the doorkeepers at the various doors to the chamber. And they would actually look for the Members when they had callers. The doorkeepers, who tended to be middle-aged and beyond, kind of sat there and made sure that no one entered the floor of the House that didn’t have the right to be there, but the Pages would actually look for the Members on the House Floor. Other than that, the duties are essentially unchanged.
We wore blue suits and black neckties and white shirts, not the more attractive blazer outfits which the young people wear today. If the House wasn’t in session, we could wear clothes other than our navy blue suits as long as it involved a jacket and tie of some description or a sweater and a necktie, but always with a tie. And if the House wasn’t in session, or had [28:00] adjourned early, we quit work at 3:30 in the afternoon—the kids work at least until 5:00 today. Night sessions were more the exception than the rule, as they have long since become, so we usually had the opportunity to get home, get our homework done at a reasonable hour. Most of us ate in boarding houses. I ate at Mrs. Eberhardt’s boarding house, which was a couple of doors from where I lived on Maryland Avenue. She cooked meals for the many transient men who lived in the neighborhood. We had a lot of seasonal workers in construction and that sort of thing that would live in rooming houses, kind of follow the work wherever it led them, most of them highly skilled craftsmen, like marble setters and stonemasons. She would have two or three evening sittings and, as I recall, it was $1.10 for dinner, which was eat-all-you-want-home-cooked food. Of course, you only had 30 minutes in which to eat it because she had to turn the table. It was in the dining room of her house. She could get about a dozen people around the table for each sitting. But you know when you’re hungry, and particularly when you’re young, you can pack a lot of food away in half an hour, but there was no lingering at the table for coffee and conversation. Up and out, so the next group could come in and eat.
And so we’d go back to where we lived, finish our homework if we had any left, and get to bed at a reasonable hour. We didn’t have the distractions in those days that we have today. You know, some people had black and white television sets, but there really wasn’t a whole lot to watch. You know, we didn’t have our personal music players and the other things which nowadays we can’t seem to live without, so life was kind of unadorned and more focused than it is now. We focused on the things before us, which was our homework when we finished the day. We never went out on a weeknight; those things were reserved for the weekend—going to the movies or to the amusement park or whatever it was. But a school night was a school night, and since we had to get up around 5:00 in the morning, we were usually in bed fairly early, by 9:00 or 10:00. People just didn’t stay up late in those days so the days were pretty focused.
Johnson:
A few minutes ago you mentioned some of the assignments that Pages typically had. And I saw listed in your Page yearbook that you were in charge of telephones.
Anderson:
I was a telephone Page. We would now call that a cloakroom Page. I was assigned to the Democratic Cloakroom on my second day as a Page. Congress didn’t spend nearly as much time in session each year, and the Page program was not a year-round activity. Congress would often finish its work by mid- or late summer and simply would go away for several months. The Pages were only paid to the end of the month or two weeks after adjournment, whichever was the longer, when Congress finished its business for the year. Which meant that only the Pages by and large who lived at home in the Washington area could stay on, because they weren’t paid. And they would continue to go to school. The school operated year-round, like any other school. Many of the Pages would find work on [32:00] Members’ payrolls and work in Members’ offices until Congress began the new session, in which case they’d switch over to the Page role again for their compensation.
So we’d often lose a lot of Pages after the final adjournment each year because they’d have to go home because they weren’t getting paid. So when I arrived, I was immediately assigned to the Democratic Cloakroom, which was considered a rather prestigious position, because it was totally floor-based. I was faced with the daunting responsibility of learning very quickly—not 435 Members, but then about 280 Members—which then made up the rather substantial Democratic majority in the House. We learned to recognize the Members from the little picture book, which was small black and white, usually hopelessly out-of-date photographs of the Members. We often used to jest that many of the pictures were so old, they were probably high school graduation or first Holy Communion or bar mitzvah or whatever photographs.
Johnson:
Was this the Congressional Pictorial Directory?
Anderson:
Pictorial Directory. I still have mine. The Members were not required to submit current photographs, and so many of them didn’t. They preferred to be ageless for their official photographs in the Pictorial Directory. We’d cut up directories and paste the pictures on 3 by 5 cards to make flash cards with the names on the back side so that we could practice recognizing the Members from those.
And it was a little easier, because Members spent much more time on the House Floor. We didn’t have electronic voting.4 And the committees didn’t sit nearly as much. And Members would often spend hours in the afternoon sitting on the House Floor, not necessarily following debate but socializing with each other, visiting, sitting in the cloakroom telling jokes and stories. And so there was a lot of exposure to the Members. We actually got to see them up close and personal. It became much easier to learn who they were because they weren’t just running in and out every hour or so for a vote, where it was entirely possible, as it is now, to hardly ever see some Members of Congress who just nowadays aren’t floor people. But in those days the floor was a much busier place all day long than it is now.
The communications in those days, of course, were considerably less complicated than they are today. The 14 phone booths in the Democratic Cloakroom are still there. The phones were, of course, rotary dial, but when you picked up you didn’t get a dial tone, you got a cheery Capitol operator who would say, “Capitol,” and then you’d tell her if you wanted an outside line or a long-distance operator or to be connected to a certain Member’s office or support office. And using the huge board with all the plugs that we see now only in antique photographs of switchboard operators sitting at these huge switchboards actually plugging cords into the board in front of them, that’s how they would set up and take down phone calls—simply tell the operator what you wanted and she would make the connection for you. And because the Members were somewhat more accustomed to being waited on in those days, Members would simply walk in the door and say, “Get my office,” and you were expected to know [36:00] who they were. They didn’t like being asked who they were; they expected the Pages to know who they were when they walked in. So it was all the more important to be able to recognize the Members so that when Congressman Smith walked in and said, “Son, get my office,” we knew it was Congressman Smith, and if there were more than one Smith as there sometimes were—which one he was. And then we’d get on the phone and tell the Capitol operator, “Congressman John Smith’s office, please.” He would stand outside the booth until the call was set up, and then you’d step out and politely hand the Member the phone, and he would get in and be sure to close the door behind him as he sat down on the stool in the booth.
Of course, there was no such thing as direct dial long distance. Members would come in and they might give you a number for an out-of-state city, and then you’d have to ask for a long-distance operator. Once connected to the long-distance operator tell her who was calling so she knew how to bill the call and who was being called and where. And then she would have to get a long-distance routing to set up that call. And those of us who were clever would often write down the routing for frequently called places so that we could save that time by giving the long-distance operator the routing. And, of course, they were often amazed how would someone know what the routing for a call was. I’m not quite sure what that meant, but it was in telephonese that only a telephone operator would understand, but we would write down routing for places like New York or Chicago or San Francisco—cities that were frequently called—then place the call for the Members.
The other duties were, we had running Pages, of course, like they still do, the kids that actually ran through the hallways delivering things amongst the Members’ offices. In those days we only had two office buildings because the Rayburn Building was a hole in the ground; it was under construction. It wouldn’t be finished for another five years.5 Its namesake was still the Speaker of the House of Representatives when I came. [Samuel] Rayburn was a Speaker, not an office building. We only had the Cannon and Longworth buildings, which in those days were called the Old and New House Office buildings; they had yet to be named.6 And so we had a much smaller physical plant to cover. We didn’t have the annex buildings that exist today. Pages once in a while would be called upon to deliver things downtown, like to the White House or maybe one of the executive agencies, in which case we would usually be sent by streetcar, given carfare to do that. But that didn’t happen very often. We didn’t do much off-site.
The same old buzzer system on the Members’ seats still exists that we used to respond to Members’ buzzers when they wanted service on the House Floor. The overseers sat behind the Page desks and would call out numbers as the Members pressed their buttons, and using the little cards that we carried in our breast pockets we could locate where that button was and go down and see what the Member’s need was. More often than not, he wanted a copy of whatever was pending before the House. Sometimes he’d say, “Go and call my office and tell them there’ll be a vote [40:00] shortly and I’ll come back after that vote is completed.” Members used to have somewhat more flexibility since, when we voted by roll call, votes averaged 25 to 35 minutes. If their name was early in the alphabet, they could vote right away and leave with the security of knowing that even if another vote occurred, they’d have the better part of an hour to come back. Roll call votes weren’t as frequent because they were so time-consuming, but when they occurred, Members had more time to get to the House Floor to answer than they do today with electronic voting.
We had then, as now, the one Page who was first among equals, who was the Speaker’s Page—who was the Speaker’s personal attendant at all times—and, of course, it was quite extraordinary to be so close to the legendary Sam Rayburn all day long, following him around. He had been Speaker for so very long, that he was probably almost as well known nationally as the President of the United States.
I remember when I got here, I expected Sam Rayburn would be a rather giant, looming fellow. Of course, we didn’t have the mass media that we have now; you saw people mainly in photos in newspapers, where it’s kind of hard to make a judgment as to how big they are unless you have some solid reference point. And I thought Sam Rayburn would probably be over six feet tall and a giant of a man, and when I first laid eyes on him, he was scarcely five [feet] six—a rather smallish man—though very broad in the shoulders. Of course, with his absolutely bald head, he was very intimidating, and he was fairly old at that point and in declining health. He was kind of a solemn figure, very intimidating. We looked at him with almost a religious awe. The Speaker had such a huge persona and dominated any setting in which he was to be found.
In fact, whenever he would come to the cloakroom for a cup of coffee or a sandwich or just to sit in the back and smoke a cigarette, the Sergeant at Arms would usually come to the cloakroom first to announce that the Speaker is coming, so that we were all prepared and braced up at attention. Nowadays, of course, Speakers come and go, and nobody pays much more attention to them when they go to the cloakroom than they would to any other Member of the House, but the appearance of the Speaker in the cloakroom was an occasion that required some preparation, and so his messenger was sent in advance to announce that he intended to come to the cloakroom, which meant that if the snack bar was busy, room was made in case that’s where he wanted to go, so that he would have room at the counter. Or, if all the chairs in the back were taken, some Member, usually a more junior one, would get up to be sure that there was an armchair for the Speaker in case he decided to sit, and when he would come in, we would all [say] very politely, “Good morning, Mr. Speaker” or “Good afternoon, Mr. Speaker.” And if we were very lucky, he might acknowledge us with a glance and a harrumph, but he was never one to stop and visit with the employees; in fact, he didn’t visit that much with his own colleagues, except some of his more senior pals. [44:00]
Johnson:
What about the other Democratic leaders, John McCormack and Carl Albert?
Anderson:
John McCormack and Carl Albert were much friendlier, much more approachable than the Speaker. They both spent a lot of time on the floor. Of course, that’s where Members were to be found all day long. The Members tended to spend much more time on the floor. The cloakrooms were always very crowded, and if you had a chance to stand in the corner and listen, just to hear the jokes and the stories…We had wonderful storytellers in those days that would just tell stories all afternoon, and the Members would all sit there and laugh uproariously and, of course, it was a very much inner sanctum for the men. The handful of women Members of the House never sat in the back. They would come in occasionally for a refreshment at the snack bar but never linger, because it was like going into the men’s locker room.
Johnson:
Can you provide an example of any of the stories or the social interaction among Members?
Anderson:
Well, some of the greatest storytellers who would sit there by the hour were Billy Matthews from Florida—these are all very senior, older Members—George Andrews from Alabama; Mendel Rivers from South Carolina; Hale Boggs from Louisiana, who eventually became a Majority Leader of the House, [Elijah] “Tic” Forrester from Georgia; “Fats” Everett—his name was actually Robert Everett—from Tennessee, but he weighed about 350 pounds, and he had the nickname “Fats.” There were perhaps a couple of dozen of them who would just spend most of their day in the cloakroom. Members weren’t under the same strictures of pressure or time constraints that they are nowadays. You know, people didn’t come to Washington or the Hill in the numbers they do now, so they weren’t keeping endless appointments in their offices all day long. When they’d come to the floor in the afternoon they generally planned to spend much of the afternoon there, or their callers would be sent over to call them off the floor to visit in the hallway.
But some of the stories were reminiscences about political events and happenings, others were just stories that guys tell when they get together about their pastimes: hunting, fishing, going to the racetrack, whatever. I can’t say that much of it was particularly lurid or had, you know, a sexual connotation to it. Members’ speech was rather more pure, like everybody’s was in those days. There were some topics that were just off-limits amongst gentlemen—or if they were discussed, they were discussed with a certain amount of reserve and delicacy, but not with the no-holds-barred approach to things that people have a tendency to take today. Rather interesting, considering that the place was overwhelmingly male-dominated, that the language and the conversations would not have been somewhat more lurid than they actually were, but it was just interesting to hear the stories about how Members interacted with Presidents in bygone times, how various pieces of legislation that were considered landmark came to be, as they rehashed their involvement in some of the things that they held to be most dear. [48:00]
Johnson:
You alluded to the handful of women that were Members at this time. Do you remember any of them? Martha Griffiths and Edith Green come to mind. 7
Anderson:
Sure. There, as I say, weren’t very many of them. Maybe 15 or 20, max. Most of them were widows of Members.8 That was the usual path that brought women to Congress, was succeeding deceased congressional husbands. Every once in a while, Members—women—would succeed on their own, but usually it was through widowhood that they came to the House. They were all pretty tough, hard-nosed people; they had to be to survive in that kind of environment—not abrasive, not strident or shrill, but they had to be assertive to demonstrate that they could hold their own in an overwhelmingly male environment. Otherwise they would be regarded as kind of cute little things, not to be taken too seriously.
But we did, because of the seniority system, probably have a surprisingly equitable distribution of chairmanships, because seniority tended to be color- and gender-blind. In those days where Southern Members were extremely senior and solidly Democratic, if chairmanships were chosen by secret ballots, as they were for a while in the Democratic Caucus much later, we probably would not have had black committee chairmen or even women committee chairmen because the attitudes that prevailed in those days would not have accepted that sort of thing. But because Members rose on the basis of seniority, which had its good and bad points, it ensured that we did have some black committee chairmen, as Adam Powell and Bob Nix and Bill Dawson were—all outstanding legislators.9 And certain women eventually became chairmen of the committees of the House, such as Leonor Sullivan was chairman of the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee—that immediately comes to mind.10 But the women by and large left the cloakroom to the men. They did not intrude, other than to come in for a cup of coffee or a sandwich, but never sit in the back.
In the ’70s, when Helen Meyner of New Jersey was elected to the House—and of course she came with a rather extraordinary political pedigree—her husband, Bob Meyner, was a longtime, extremely popular governor of New Jersey, and she was a first cousin of Adlai Stevenson, her maiden name being Stevenson.11 She one day saw a vacant couch in the back, and she decided to stretch out on it as the men had always done. And to see the looks on their faces, and it was just the shocked silence as they were all staring at Helen Meyner lying on her back taking a nap on one of the couches. It had never been done before. The idea that a woman would take off her shoes and lie down on a couch like they had been doing for generations was just stunning. And I don’t think she ever thought about it. I don’t think it was any conscious effort on Helen’s part to integrate by gender the back area of the cloakroom. She was tired and decided to take [52:00] a nap.
Johnson:
Right. Did the logical thing.
Anderson:
And she just did it. And I didn’t even hear any particular discussion about it. And she started doing it on a more or less regular basis. I can’t recall that I ever saw any of the other congressional women taking a nap in the back, but Helen Meyner frequently did.
And it’s kind of like so many things: once the ice is broken, it’s no longer exceptional; the next time it happens it’s less remarked upon and less noticed and very quickly becomes accepted, but the first of anything is always the most difficult. After that, the adjustment is generally much easier than anticipation of the adjustment.
Johnson:
What about the African-American Members at the time? You mentioned Powell and Nix, and then also Charlie Diggs was in the House.12
Anderson:
Charlie Diggs was in the House.
Johnson:
Did they spend a lot of time in the cloakroom?
Anderson:
Yeah. Bob Nix, who was from Philadelphia, was definitely a floor Member. He spent his entire afternoon on the House Floor. When not sitting back in the Pennsylvania corner, which still exists to this day, he would often sit in the cloakroom wearing his sunglasses, which he was never without, and puffing on his pipe.
And he always seemed to be embraced broadly by his colleagues. I think if there was racism—well, there was no question about racism—but it was not terribly overt. As a matter of fact, I was often surprised that some of the worst racist remarks that I heard from Members of Congress weren’t from the Southerners but were from some of the Northern liberals that would use some of the magic words which nowadays would be so offensive and career-killing if anyone were to be heard using them. But I heard Northern liberals often using some of those slurring words regularly—and, of course, being careful to notice who was around, but rather unguarded about it—where I heard frankly rather little of it from the Southern Members. You know, whatever their views or prejudices might have been, they kind of did what they did without giving a great deal of voice to it.
Johnson:
Adam Clayton Powell was very flamboyant. Did you have any interaction with him?
Anderson:
Adam Clayton—well, I don’t know that I would call him flamboyant. He was an elegant man. He was a very tall, handsome man, a really imposing figure. I mean, he would have drawn attention in any setting where he happened to appear. He was always very well and tastefully put together, paid a lot of attention to his grooming and his ensemble. He was a real gentleman, a very warm, friendly person, very approachable. He was viewed very fondly by the staff, and he was one of the best legislators in the House. I don’t think anybody, regardless of their personal views of Adam Powell, questioned his ability as a Member and his understanding of the complicated subjects that he dealt with. He was chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, which had a very broad jurisdiction. And he handled that with great adroitness, a great depth of understanding [56:00] of the issues within the province of that committee. He had, of course, his own personal problems with, after a while, not showing up very often to attend the House, and he was under a certain legal situation in New York where he had accused someone of something and was under threat of subpoena if he showed up in New York, which he could only do on Sunday, when the process wasn’t served.
Johnson:
Right.
Anderson:
So he would come into the city on Sunday. He was pastor concurrently of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which was and remains one of the biggest and most important black congregations in the city of New York—a very important power base in Harlem. But he was sure to be out of town after Sunday and then after a while he didn’t attend the House much at all and kind of took up residence on the island of Bimini. And it became an issue of nonattendance. He clearly had the worst attendance record in the House—probably historically one of the worst ever, but his genius was respected.
I always had a great fondness and personal respect for him, mainly because he was so warm and so genteel and I always felt him to be quite genuine. My bottom line with judging Members of Congress has always been how did they treat the help, as opposed to what they believe in or do philosophically. You know that was never my business to pass on what Members did legislatively or what their approach to government was, but basically were they kind, appreciative men and women who validated those who served them by kind expressions and gestures, and he always did.
Johnson:
Earlier you mentioned “Fishbait” Miller, Doorkeeper of the House.
Anderson:
Oh yes, “Fishbait.”
Johnson:
What do you recall about him?
Anderson:
Now “Fishbait” absolutely was flamboyant. As you can imagine, with a nickname like “Fishbait,” there has to be a character that goes along with it. “Fishbait” Miller was a native of Pascagoula, Mississippi. And he came to Washington as a 20-something under the patronage of Bill Colmer of Mississippi, who represented that area along the Gulf Coast, which he did for more than 40 years. Mr. Colmer brought him up as a clerk in the House Post Office. And like so many young people who come to the Hill, he kind of turned that into the beginning of a long career—rather like myself—that spanned decades. He eventually became the Doorkeeper of the House, which until a dozen years ago was one of the officerships of the House. The Doorkeeper was primarily responsible for a variety of services to the institution: the barbershops, beauty shops, the folding room, the document room, the Pages, the doorkeepers, the prayer room, things like that. And “Fishbait”—his name was actually William M. Miller—kind of created an aura about himself and about his office that probably didn’t historically go with it. He created a national image. He was highly visible. He kept an extremely high profile, which of course nowadays would be most unwelcome among the servants of the House, and I’m not sure ever [60:00] was encouraged. Throughout my career I always felt that anonymity was my great shield. The less publicity I got, the more effective I thought I could be and the better I could do my job. So I avoided press exposure; I did not like to see my name in print or my face in the paper or on television.
But he loved it. He absolutely thrived and fed on publicity. There wasn’t an event of any dimension here that he didn’t show up at, and usually very intrusively. He was kind of a caricature of a Southerner, and, as a matter of fact, towards the end of his career he became so much of a caricature, that the Southern Members, who should have been his natural constituency, viewed him with an anxiety that he was the essence of what Northern people thought they all were like and really weren’t—you know, a yahoo sort of a hick, an uncouth sort of clownish individual, redneck. And that’s where he lost his natural constituency, the Southern Members.
He always carried a cigarette lighter, even though he didn’t smoke and didn’t like the habit very much. And would obsequiously light cigarettes for anyone that pulled one out. And, of course, in those days the number of smokers was very, very high amongst the Members and everybody else around here. He was constantly brushing dandruff off of the shoulders of Members, and he had a particularly annoying habit of kissing every woman that he encountered. Usually, I think, it was on the left cheek.
Johnson:
Did that include Members?
Anderson:
Oh, sure. Anybody. Nuns in their habit. And he would cite a citation of Scripture—I think it was Second Corinthians: “Greet ye one another with the kiss of charity”—to kind of mask what was really aggressive behavior, which now in many cases would be viewed almost as simple assault. And it would surprise some, delight others, horrify many who weren’t used to being kissed by strange men.
I remember my late grandmother came here in June of 1960 with my grandfather to attend my graduation from the Page School, and I introduced her to my boss, “Fishbait” Miller, and he planted a kiss on her cheek, and she, I could see, was absolutely thunderstruck. I should have prepared her for that, I guess I neglected to. And she kind of pushed him away and said, “Sir, that is a liberty that I reserve for my husband and other near relatives.”
And, of course, you couldn’t insult him or embarrass him. He was just not the kind of person who could ever be embarrassed. He was absolutely impervious to that. But he was kind of a clownish, almost boorish, individual. He went from being sort of cute and eccentric to being bizarre, which eventually led to his defeat in 1974, when he lost his office to Jim Molloy.13 But he was an interesting person to work for. If he liked you, he was your best friend and would do anything he could for you. However, if [64:00] you rose to a certain point where he viewed you as a possible threat, if you were getting to be too visible or developing a constituency amongst the Members of your own then he could turn on you like a stray dog, and be very cruel and very mean and try to suppress the fact that someone around him was becoming a threat in terms of their own achievement or developing bona fides amongst the Members. For many years I was most devoted to him, and he was very good to me, and then I reached a certain point after many years in the cloakroom where I think he viewed me as something of a threat because I was developing a constituency and a credibility among the Members. And the relationship suddenly cooled, to almost iciness. And we were not on particularly good terms when he left the service of the House.
Johnson:
Did you have the opportunity to get to know the other [House] Officers at the time?
Anderson:
At the time not very well. Well, as years passed, yes.
Johnson:
But while you were a Page?
Anderson:
No, the Officers of the House were remote figures of some reverence and awe. It was a place where the hierarchies were much better observed in those days than they are today. It would be unthinkable in most cases for people on staff to call a Member by his or her first name. It just wasn’t done. If you developed a friendship and developed that kind of intimacy where first names would be used, you never did it in front of other people; it was reserved for private occasions. But there was always the very respectful interval, which was rather typical of society generally in those days, where the honorifics of “Mr.” and “Miss” and “Mrs.” were much more widely used than they are today, where they have fallen into almost total disuse, much to my regret.
Officers of the House did whatever they did from their rather grand offices in the precincts of the Capitol. We didn’t see much of them. Mr. Roberts, who was the Clerk of the House at the time—Ralph R. Roberts from Indiana—had been the Clerk for a very long time and would be for a few more years afterwards.14 Very imposing man—tall, trim, black hair, always was partial to inky-blue suits and very dark subdued neckties and white shirts. Of course, that was pretty much the uniform that most men wore in those days—very conservative business attire. Very dour, kind of pokerfaced, hardly ever cracked even a trace of a smile. And, of course, I learned early on that next to the Speaker, amongst the officers of the House, the Clerk was the most prestigious of the officers. And as a result, he had a wonderful office, now the Congressional Women’s Sitting Room, just off Statuary Hall—which had been the Clerk’s Office for 105 years—would be for 105 years—before it was moved to the suite in the East Front extension that I later occupied.15
And one day I was sent to carry something to Mr. Roberts personally and went to his office. And, of course, there were only a couple of people in the reception room; staffs were very tiny in those days. And they said, “Oh yes, he’s expecting that, go right on in.” And, of course, it was this wonderful vaulted-ceiling room with antique furniture, including the couch on which President John Quincy Adams died in that very room in [68:00] 1848.16 And Mr. Roberts was sitting arrow-straight behind his desk, which was a large partners desk. I used it myself later on. And I almost bowed as I handed him the envelope. And I started to withdraw, and he very kindly asked me what my name was, and I told him. And he said, “And where are you from?” And I said, “Sacramento, California.” And he said, “And you’re enjoying your Page service?” “Oh, very much so, Mr. Roberts.” “Well, sit down and tell me about it.” And he motioned me to sit on the Adams couch. And I knew about the couch, was the first time I’d ever seen it. And I certainly didn’t expect to be invited to sit on it. And with barely the trace of a smile throughout the conversation, which lasted perhaps five or 10 minutes, he asked me about how I was enjoying my experience as a Page. And I asked if he would mind telling me about what he did as the Clerk of the House. And he was forthcoming about that. And I sort of made up my mind then and there being Clerk of the House has to be the best job in the world, and my fantasy as a 17-year-old high school senior was to be the Clerk of the House—little knowing that 27 years later I actually would become the Clerk of the House.
Johnson:
That dreams can come true in this case.
Anderson:
Yes, yes, and that fantasies can become reality. Best part of it was the reality was even better than the fantasy. But in any case, that was my, as a Page, probably my only real encounter with an officer of the House, including the one that employed me, the Doorkeeper “Fishbait” Miller. But it was one of those life-altering experiences where as it turned out, when I did decide to stay on and continue my education in Washington later and then at a certain point decided on pursuing service of the House as a career path, that I would eventually become the Clerk of the House. And that kind of remained my fantasy, and it actually came to fruition. Is this a great country or what?
Johnson:
Certainly is. I’m just going to switch CDs.
Anderson:
Go ahead.

End of Part One – Beginning of Part Two

Johnson:
We ended talking about the House Officers, and while the microphones were off, the tape was off, you started talking a bit about the culture of the institution. If you could just elaborate on that point.
Anderson:
Sure. In the House of Representatives, as in other areas of American society, distinctions were more carefully and clearly drawn than they are today. When I came here, I was brought up in a culture of officers and enlisted men, the enlisted men being the people who were the servants of the House who served the Members and the Members being the officers, with a little “o,” and that distinction was very clearly and carefully observed. Only the most senior employees ever called a Member of Congress by his first name, and then not very often; it just wasn’t done. We were always very meticulous about “Mr.” and “Mrs.” and “Mr. Chairman” and “Mr. Leader” and “Mr. Speaker,” whatever the appropriate appellation happened to be.
And as society changed, of course, the House—which was always a reflection of American society—started changing with it; informality became more commonplace. Members, far from preferring to keep the distinction, started encouraging the staff to call them by their first names, which I always abhorred. I think when lines of responsibility are blurred, it makes people on both sides…makes it more difficult for them to carry out their duties. I always felt that I could do my job better if I could keep an interval of separation. There comes a time when Members of Congress, just like anyone who occupies a superior position, has to come down on a subordinate. And if you’ve engaged in debauch or have a very personal, familiar relationship, it’s awfully hard then suddenly to become hard-nosed and demand the kind of respect and service and immediate obedience which must exist when people’s responsibilities are clearly distinct.
I have always been rather uncomfortable about calling Members of Congress by their first names. As I got older and they got younger, and I stayed here longer and they came more frequently, it became kind of awkward not to, particularly if they insisted. And so with some reluctance, I started calling Members by their first names. And even with, you know, some of them I never could bring myself to do it; the respect that I had was just so much that I couldn’t possibly use a first name. You know, some of the Speakers I have served, if not directly, have certainly given me clear hints that it would be acceptable if I chose to do so, to use their first names. I think they sensed the fact that if they asked me to, it would put me in an uncomfortable position because I’m reluctant to do it. So that option is kind of there by implication—that it’d be okay with them if I decided I wanted to pick up that option. I never have. For instance, in the case of the current occupant of the chair, Speaker [Dennis] Hastert, I knew him for years as “Denny,” from the day he took his seat in the House. But once he became the Speaker, I’ve never called him Denny again. I’ve always called him “Mr. Speaker.” It’s a singular position, and I think that must be recognized. And the Speaker and I are no less friends because I have made that distinction, any more than with the two Speakers I served as their Clerk, Speakers [James] Wright and [Thomas] Foley [4:00] who clearly would not have been the least bit offended by my calling them by their first names and even kind of gave me the option of doing it. I never did. And so we maintained that respect and that, I think, healthy interval and at the same time enjoyed a closeness and a confidence and a mutual respect.
Johnson:
Reverting back to your time as a Page, did you have any particular role models that may have influenced your philosophy that you’re speaking of now, and also influenced your long and very successful career on the Hill?
Anderson:
Well, there were a lot of role models. I’ve always been a good listener, and I like to think that I’ve been a good observer. That was the way my mother trained me, to watch people and listen. I think, quoting Benjamin Franklin, that “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and dispel all doubt.” And Mother always said, you know, “Watch out for the quiet fellow, because he’s listening, he’s paying attention.” And as the time went by and I was exposed to the movers and shakers of the nation, I started making critical judgments as to why some rose above the others in terms of leadership and the respect and the influence that they could wield within their peer group and why that occurred. And to those that seemed to be kind of always in the pack or even those who were from time to time conspicuous failures that just couldn’t seem to handle the responsibility of high elected office. And so I was influenced both by positive and negative examples, because a negative can be a reinforcer, too, in terms of a lesson learned as to why something should be avoided.
In terms of my role models, I suppose it was those who could simultaneously enjoy the friendship and warmth of their colleagues while at the same time being able to exert a strong and compelling influence on them, because sometimes the two are mutually exclusive—where you either lead and sort of insulate yourself so that you aren’t influenced by personal relationships or exert influence because you have developed strong personal relationships where people just automatically will agree to do what you’d like them to do because of the warm feeling and relations that exist between you. I suppose one of the examples that I like to cite is Speaker [Thomas “Tip”] O’Neill, who was my friend and mentor, who was a very warm, outgoing, friendly person, very accessible, very approachable. He enjoyed a tremendous well of friendship and respect among his peers and yet could bring great force to bear when he needed to to achieve a legislative objective. And he did that very successfully. And it was, I think, kind of a fine balance about maintaining the power and authority that must repose in someone in high office, and yet at the same time the bonding of personal relationships built by carefully developed friendships and associations. He was a master at it and a very sincere person. I never [8:00] found any guile in him. That you kind of felt that you always knew what was on his mind and that when he said something, that was what he was truly thinking. That there wasn’t an ulterior motive or a hidden agenda.
And I always tried in my own dealings—as I grew in stature within the structure of the institution—to be approachable but at the same time try to ensure that when I had to act sometimes negatively, that I could do so effectively. I liked to be, you know, known to my employees [so] that they felt comfortable around me. Clerks had a tendency to be rather remote people. Clerks just weren’t seen very much, even by their own employees. And I remember when I became the nominee of the Democratic Caucus in 1986 in December of that year, and one of my soon-to-be department heads invited me to his departmental Christmas party, which was in one of the committee rooms in the Rayburn Building, and said, you know, “Come on over, we’d love to see you.” And I hadn’t taken office yet, but I would the following month, and so I came in, and people in the room kind of looked because they knew that in a few weeks I would be their employer, and the place almost fell quiet. And I said to the department head, I said, “Well, why don’t you take me around and introduce me to these good people, some of whom I already know and others that I don’t; [it would] be a nice occasion to establish a rapport in a purely social setting.” And I remember being introduced to one fellow who was in his late middle age, I would judge, at that point, and he said, “Hey, you’re the new Clerk, you’re the man.” And I said, “Well, yes. I will be next month.” And he said, “I've never met a Clerk before. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one.” And I said, “Really? And how long have you been a member of the Clerk’s organization?” “Twenty-four years.” That gave me a message right there: I will give myself much better exposure. There’s no excuse for anyone not to know who their employer is or having never met their employer or a series of them.
So I tried to walk that fine line between being warm and approachable and [at] the same time keeping a certain separation so that when I had to be tough and demand immediate response, I could do it without people not taking me seriously.
Johnson:
So this began while you were a Page observing different Members?
Anderson:
Sure. Making constant judgments as to why some clearly succeeded far more than others. What was it? And there were some who, at least for the short term, were successful because they were bullies. They were really nasty SOBs, they were scary people. And you can intimidate for a while. Fear can be a motivator, and sometimes it’s not a bad motivator at least to have a little bit of fear in the equation. When it takes over, though, it lasts only for so long, and you develop such hostility, that people will seize on it to be your undoing as soon as they possibly can. There needs to be a certain dread of the boss, but it shouldn’t be an unwholesome fear or something that is intimidating. But to know that the boss, you know, has the right and will assert that right, you know, to be in charge when it’s [12:00] necessary to do so. You know, you have to leave a workforce with that understanding that no matter how nice a guy or person you are, that you can assert authority effectively when you need to. And they need to understand when that moment has arrived that the other cordial relationships are set aside for the time being while something has to be done or achieved.
But I just watched that process for a long period of time. As I say, the journey took me 27 years before I was elected Clerk, so I had a lot of time to study and observe. I never wrote anything down, but I made a lot of mental notes about the people that I liked and why I liked them and why some were clearly more successful than others—why some people enjoyed a respect and a trust and a fondness and others didn’t…where there was no fondness or trust or real respect. And I hoped that I would adopt those good points and avoid the bad points.
Johnson:
And this journey all began with you starting off as a Page.
Anderson:
Yes.
Johnson:
I don’t want to neglect to ask you to look over your page from the senior yearbook in 1960.
Anderson:
Oh, must I?
Johnson:
If you don’t mind. Your memories and reflections from years ago.
Anderson:
“Fashionable young political aspirant who recently made his political debut on Capitol Hill.” Well, perhaps I made my debut—it didn’t seem to make the papers at the time. But who would have known at that time—of course, to me to have been a Page was the be all [and] end all; if my career had started and ended there, to this day I would have reflected on it no matter what I achieved later in life as one of the most extraordinary things that a young person could have done. As I say, it led me all the way to the top of the tree. As the time passed, I ran out of rungs in my ladder since the Clerkship is the highest office within the gift of the House to one of its servants. And even though I had a certain hope, it wasn’t until the three or four years immediately before the event that I thought it was actually within the realm of possibility that this might happen. And I still to this day have not quite gotten over the fact that it did happen. People occasionally will say, you know, “Aren’t you disappointed that you’re not the Clerk of the House anymore?” No, not at all. I would have been disappointed if I had never become the Clerk of the House. But so far, only 33 Americans have ever been the Clerk of the House, and I’m one of 33 who could comfortably fit in this room right now, all together.17 Not bad company, I think.
Johnson:
Not at all.
Anderson:
So I have no regrets at all. I miss it, but not a lot. I kind of like my life as it is now—sort of free from stress and aggravation—and I can focus on other things. But really, very little was left undone. Let’s see, well, I did leave behind my 1959 Chevy Impala, which was not quite a fate worse than death. And I did find indeed that living in Washington has its compensations.18
Johnson:
One thing that I wanted to ask you, it’s just a simple point, but I thought [16:00] something that was important nonetheless. You were coming from such a long distance and hadn’t lived away from home. Were you homesick at all?
Anderson:
Not particularly. Of course, I was so psyched with the great adventure of crossing the United States and coming to the city of Washington. And that was the excitement about kind of having an idea what was ahead of me—but not in precise terms—and everything always turned out to be better than I thought it was going to be, which is kind of nice when that happens. Sometimes things can be disappointing or a bit of a letdown. In my case, everything always seemed to be better than in my expectations.
When I saw my mother off at Union Station on the train platform when she began her journey back to California, and she decided to turn it into a vacation on the way home for her; she went to New York first and spent a few days there and then continued by train leisurely back to California. But I was doing just fine until I saw her onto the train. And then I almost came apart because here I am standing on the train platform at Union Station in Washington, D.C., almost 3,000 miles from home, absolutely on my own and having to sink or swim on my own. Fortunately, she prepared me well for what was to follow. I think I learned my lessons at my mother’s knee very well. She gave me a sound and solid upbringing so that I was prepared to handle myself well in most of the situations that presented themselves. But I was really distraught for a while when the train pulled out and here I am all by myself, not really knowing anybody in this city—I mean, I didn’t even know the Congressman who appointed me. I didn’t meet him until I got here. Because the appointment was made entirely on the strength of the letter that I wrote him.
But, you know, quickly I started making friends with my peer group, and they were very open and welcoming. Some had been here for quite a while. Others were new, like myself. And one thing about bonding in Washington is, to this day most of us are out-of-towners. We come from other places, and so we have that much in common, which is very little. And so people have a tendency to bond very quickly. So I adapted, and of course I was only going to be here for seven or eight months. I knew I was going back to California. It wasn’t like I was going away for years and to be separated. Now granted, in those days, you know, people didn’t fly back and forth like they do now, you know; it was a very expensive proposition. They didn’t have bargain fares. And even long distance was a very expensive proposition. You just didn’t pick up the phone and call from Washington, D.C., to California just because you wanted to hear someone’s voice, it was expensive.
Johnson:
You were responsible for paying for your transportation to D.C.
Anderson:
Yes. Yes, the only thing that we got was our education, which we still provide free, but out of my paycheck, which after deductions was $218 and change each month, I had to pay for room, food, clothing, entertainment—anything else that came up. Granted, though, everything was kind of cheap in those days. And there wasn’t a whole lot to spend money on. And I have often pointed out that on my modest salary as a [20:00] Page, I probably had more disposable income than at any other point in my life until I was elected Clerk of the House, when my salary spiked. You know, nowadays there’s so much that somehow while we don’t seem to need it, we can’t live without it. Where you can spend every penny and much more on all this consumer stuff that is constantly being produced to tantalize and tempt us. But in those days, there really wasn’t much to buy unless you were a clotheshorse. There wasn’t much to spend money on. Food was cheap. Entertainment was cheap, which took the form mainly of going to the movies, which hardly cost anything. Or you could go to the ballgame for 75¢ or a dollar at the old Griffiths Field [Stadium], where the Washington Senators used to play. That’s where I saw my first Major League Baseball game. So you know we weren’t spending tons of money. There just wasn’t much to spend it on. You’d have to work at extravagance in order to eat up your paycheck.
That gold ring I just showed you—my Page ring—when I bought that ring, this was the top-of-the-line-ring. I could not have spent more on my Page ring from Jostens if I had wanted to. It cost $35. It’s a 14-karat ring. But just to put it in perspective, my rent was $30. So it was more than a month’s rent. You know, all of that seems laughable today, but you know, I kind of thought about it before I paid $35 for that ring, did I want to spend that much money. And, you know, now we’ll go out to dinner and spend $35 and think nothing of it. But there were good times. We always had plenty of money. I managed to put some aside. I didn’t need to spend everything that I made.
Johnson:
Before we move on to other topics and wrap up your time as a Page, I wanted to ask you about the lunch counters in the cloakroom. So Helen Sewell and her father were on the Republican side.19
Anderson:
Yeah.
Johnson:
But who was on the Democratic side?
Anderson:
When I came, Virginia and Clinton Gibson ran the Democratic snack bar—husband and wife. They had been running it for quite a long time. They were in late middle age when I became a Page. They took it over from old Mr. King, who was a blind black gentleman who had run the snack bar for quite a long time. I don’t know whether that law still exists, but there used to be a law that gave preference for concession stands in public buildings like post offices [and] courthouses to blind people. And when I was a kid many snack bars and concession stands in public spaces were run by the blind because they had that special privilege of doing that.
So Clint and Virginia Gibson took over from Mr. King; I think he decided to retire. I think he was quite old, and he left, I believe, in the ’40s. There were a lot of Members that still remembered and spoke fondly of Mr. King. And they were there five days a week, whether the House was in session or not, and very rarely were in session on Friday, but they were open, and there would be a few Members who would come over in midday and have a sandwich. Once in a while the Speaker would come in and have a cup of coffee, which of course would always create utter silence because we were afraid to open our mouths when he was in there, and sometimes he would just be in there by himself having a cup of coffee at the snack bar. But [24:00] they had good, freshly prepared food, very reasonable. They made real milk shakes with real ice cream. In fact, I have the old milk-shake mixer that came from the Democratic snack bar when it was replaced with a much newer, sleeker machine. They were going to trash the old one, which was perfectly serviceable. So I asked if I could take it home. Someone said, “Sure, we’re just going to throw it out.” And I’m very proud of that old milk shake machine.
Then when Clint and Ginny started getting on in years and decided they wanted to retire, Virginia’s youngest brother, Raymond Roebuck, took over the snack bar.20 These were kind of family sinecures, and Raymond ran it for another 20-some years before his health began to decline, and then he retired. It did not pass on to a relative, but he had the inside track on who would replace him. It was all kind of an incestuous operation.
But they were fascinating, and they still are places where, you know, they’re very small and compact, and the Members would kind of stand there shoulder to shoulder and talk about things that were very important, cut their deals, and make their agreements and discuss things rather candidly. Because the cloakrooms are really their private space, and, you know, if you were the soul of discretion, you could kind of stand nearby and pick up on a lot of things and, you know, as long as you didn’t run your mouth about what you heard, you were kind of taken for granted.
I remember when Mr. O’Neill was the Speaker, I used to see him often come in by himself when there wasn’t anybody at the snack bar and get a cup of coffee or something, and then lean way over the counter, and it looked like he and Raymond, who ran the snack bar, were whispering in each other’s ears, and I often thought what are Raymond and the Speaker talking about. It’s so mouth-to-ear, so clandestine-looking. And I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. And I one day said, “Ray, what do you and the Speaker talk about so confidentially? Not that it’s any of my business, and I’m sure you’ll tell me if it’s not, but I see you kind of ‘shushing’ together all the time.” He says, “Are you kidding?” And I said, “Well, no, I’m kind of curious.” And he said, “We’re talking about sports.” He said, “We’re both big fans, you know; he follows the same teams and games that I do. And so that’s what we’re talking about. Occasionally it might involve a little wager.” “Oh, okay.” I thought, isn’t this great, you know. The Speaker, you know, always looking to Ray as his source of turf information as to what’s going on in the world of sports, because Ray really knew his teams and the various competitions and rankings. And the Speaker loved that. He was an avid sports fan.
Johnson:
So that was indicative of the sort of laid-back atmosphere that you’ve been describing in the cloakroom.
Anderson:
Yeah, yeah. And I used to tell new Members that, you know, take some…and I participated in new Members’ orientatio…that, you know, you’re overwhelmed when you start here, with all the things you’ve got to learn, and got to do, and get your committee assignments and choose your staff. And learn, you know, how the House functions. But take some time and make sure you just force yourself to set it aside to stay in the cloakroom or sit on the House Floor. It’s a very informal place. If a seat is not taken, it’s yours. Sit down and you might find yourself sitting next to a senior committee chairman or your party leader or the Whip or even the Speaker. And it’s a good way to break the ice and start cementing relations with your colleagues. And rather than taking your lunch at your desk or going to the restaurant, come over and stand at the snack bar. You might be having a sandwich with the Speaker, and it’s a good way for him to get to know you, and you can know him and get a head start in [28:00] cementing your relationships. Very casual. You know, if there’s a spot open, it’s yours; it’s not reserved for anybody. And a lot of Members told me they followed that advice and started coming to the cloakroom, even if it was only for 30 minutes. The chance to get to know people informally, without an agenda. You know, I’m not sitting down because I have something I have to talk to you about; I’m just sitting down because you’re here and I’m here. You know, where are you from, you know, what about your family, the kind of thing that people have in common. Did you move the wife and kids here? Or leave them at home? Or, you know, whatever. It’s a good way to start developing friendship.
Johnson:
One final point I wanted to ask you about your time as a Page.
Anderson:
Sure.
Johnson:
In your graduating class, there was you who went on to become Clerk and there also was Jim Kolbe.
Anderson:
Jim Kolbe, who was a Senate Page. He was Barry Goldwater, Sr.’s Page in the Senate for four years, I might add. He was the one person in our class who would have utterly amazed me if he had not become a Member of Congress someday. I told him that just recently, in fact, at his Christmas party last month at his house, which is just a block up the street from where I live. I told him, “You know, Jim, I would have been most surprised if you had not become a Member of Congress.” And, of course, he’s announced his intention not to seek re-election after 22 years. Ron Lasch was also our classmate.21 Republican. Stayed on for a total of 40 years. He just retired five years ago. Ran the cloakroom for the Republicans, parallel to the time I ran the cloakroom for the Democrats and then became a minority officer, not that those titles had any real bearing to those offices. And they used to use them, but they don’t anymore. And he just retired five years ago. So at one point, there were three members of our class still in the service of the House, one as a Member, one as an officer, and the other as a minority officer. So out of the small senior class not bad, I think.
Most of us, like most of the Pages generally, don’t pursue careers in politics. Many of the Pages leave here saying, as I’m sure most of us did, “We’ll be back someday with an MC [Member of Congress] behind our name.” But, in point of fact, you know, you quickly discover as you move on—the next step being college and the diversity of options that that brings, and new horizons, new perspectives—that there are a lot of wonderful things going on in this great big country other than politics. And I tell the kids, with whom I still have close contact—I just chaperoned their winter formal this past Saturday night—that, “Fine, if you want to pursue a career in Congress or elective office, go for it, but before you make a commitment, you know, look around and see what else is going on. There are other worthwhile things to do with a lifetime. And as far as Congress is concerned, we’ve been doing business at the same address since 1800; we’re not going anywhere. We’ll be here if you decide you want to come back, but don’t lock yourself into a commitment too early on.”
And politics is a fickle business: For some of us it works out just fine, for others it’s a life of disappointment and frustration. In my case, everything went swimmingly well. As they say, I’ve lived a charmed life. Others don’t [32:00] find that kind of progression involved. So many of them go on to other things. What we’re trying to do with the Page program—and I think then, as now—is not run a school for candidates, but run a school for good citizens. To sensitize young boys and girls from our society as to what representative government is all about, what it means to be a committed, involved, enlightened citizen of the republic. And how to participate more actively and more ably in the body politic. And if that takes the form of holding an office someday, that’s fine. But that’s not the only way, you know, to practice citizenship, and there are all sorts of avenues for those who feel a commitment to do something for the public good. The private sector is full of those options, just as the public sector is.
Johnson:
Was there anything else you’d like to add about your time as a Page that we haven’t covered today?
Anderson:
I’m sure the moment I get up from this table, I’ll think of 100 things that I would like to add. To me, being a Page was one of the two most formative experiences that I had, and the other came not too many years later: being a Page and serving in the military. Finding worlds and horizons beyond my own limited view of things, meeting people that I otherwise never would have had any exposure to…While society is much more mobile now, in those days you had a tendency to stay pretty close to where you grew up and kind of do something nearby. People didn’t move around that much, and the diversity of the world was more of an abstraction than it was a reality which you understood from experience. So, serving here as a Page, seeing the United States literally come together in that one room, and then later serving in the United States Army and being thrust into a bunkroom with people I otherwise never would have met and probably wouldn’t want to have met, but then becoming associated with the brotherhood that comes from doing something that requires teamwork and a lot of commonality, I think were two of the most wonderfully formative experiences that I could possibly have had. And while I would gladly be a Page again, I’d sooner open my veins than go back on active duty, which probably would kill me anyhow. A lot of time has transpired since then. But I wouldn’t take back a minute of either of those experiences.
Johnson:
Thank you very much for everything today.
Anderson:
Well, you’re very welcome. It’s been my happiness. To be continued.
Johnson:
And I’m looking forward to it. Exactly, thank you.

Footnotes

  1. For information on the construction and preservation of the U.S. Capitol, see William Allen, History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2001).
  2. William “Fishbait” Miller was Doorkeeper of the House during the 81st and 82nd Congresses (1949–1953) and from the 84th Congress (1955–1957) until he retired on December 31, 1974. For information on the career of “Fishbait” Miller, see William “Fishbait” Miller, Fishbait: The Memoirs of the Congressional Doorkeeper (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1977); William Gildea, “Fish Bait at the Door: The Power of the Odd Job,” 17 February 1974, Washington Post: M1.
  3. Henry L. DeKeyser was the principal of the Capitol Page School when Donn Anderson was a House Page. For information on Mr. DeKeyser, see the 1960 Congressional Page Yearbook.
  4. The House of Representatives instituted electronic voting in 1973. For information on electronic voting in the House, see “The First Electronic Vote,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://artandhistory.house.gov/highlights.aspx?action=view&intID=94.
  5. To learn more about the construction history of the House Office Buildings, see “The Congressional Office Buildings,” Architect of the Capitol, http://www.aoc.gov/cc/cobs/index.cfm.
  6. For a detailed history of the Cannon House Office Building, see “Cannon House Office Building: A Congressional First,” Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://artandhistory.house.gov/art_artifacts/Cannon_Centennial/.
  7. For information on Congresswomen Martha Griffiths and Edith Green, see Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, Women in Congress, 1917–2006 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006): 358–363, 352–357, and http://womenincongress.house.gov.
  8. During the 86th Congress (1959–1961), 17 women served in the House and two women were in the Senate. For information on the “widow’s mandate,” the term coined to explain the path to office utilized by many women between 1917 and 1976, see Office of History and Preservation, Women in Congress: 5–6 and http://womenincongress.house.gov.
  9. For more information on Congressmen Powell, Nix, and Dawson, see Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008): 300–309, 318–323, 292–299, and http://baic.house.gov.
  10. Office of History and Preservation, Women in Congress: 306–309 and http://womenincongress.house.gov.
  11. Ibid., 526–529 and http://womenincongress.house.gov. For more information on the American politician and United Nations ambassador, see Anthony Lewis, “Adlai Stevenson Dies in London Street at 65; Johnson Leads Tribute,” 15 July 1965, New York Times: 1.
  12. Office of History and Preservation, Black Americans in Congress: 310–317 and http://baic.house.gov.
  13. Doorkeeper of the House from December 19, 1974, through the 103rd Congress (1993–1995). For information on Jim Molloy, see Martin Tolchin, “The Keeper of the Door and Other House Parts,” 5 June 1985, New York Times: A18.
  14. Clerk of the House from the 81st through the 82nd Congress (1949–1953) and from the 84th through the 89th Congress (1955–1967).
  15. Originally reserved for the Speaker and later for the Clerk of the House, H-235 was designated in 1962 as the Congresswomen’s Reading Room. In July 1991, the House of Representatives honored Congresswoman Lindy Claiborne Boggs by naming the room off of Statuary Hall after the Louisiana Representative. See, Donnie Radcliffe, “A Room With a Past for Lindy Boggs,” 30 July 1991, Washington Post: C2; for information on Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, see Office of History and Preservation, Women in Congress, 1917–2006: 500–505 and http://womenincongress.house.gov.
  16. For information on the death of John Quincy Adams, see “The Death of Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://artandhistory.house.gov/highlights.aspx?action=view&intID=14.
  17. For a complete list of Clerks, see “Clerks of the U.S. House of Representatives,” Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://artandhistory.house.gov/house_history/clerks.aspx.
  18. Reference to Mr. Anderson’s senior page in the Capitol Page School yearbook.
  19. For information on Helen Sewell, see “Longtime House Employee Helen Sewell,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://artandhistory.house.gov/highlights.aspx?action=view&intID=88; Bree Hocking, “Friends Remember the Smile Behind Café Helen,” 24 July 2006, Roll Call.
  20. For information on Raymond Roebuck’s career in the Democratic Cloakroom, see Congressional Record, House, 98th Cong., 1st sess., (1 August 1983): 22035–22043.
  21. Ron Lasch was a House employee for more than 40 years. For information on his career, see Congressional Record, House, 106th Cong., 2nd sess. (11 July 2000): 5820–5821.