To Wellesley’s credit, it made an effort to recruit minority faculty and students that began bearing fruit in the 1970s.
Senator Robert E Kennedy’s assassination two months later on June 5, 1968, deepened my despair about events in America. I was already home from college when the news came from Los Angeles. My mother woke me up because “something very terrible has happened again.” I stayed on the phone nearly the whole day with my friend Kevin O’Keefe, an Irish-Polish Chicagoan who loves the Kennedys, the Daleys and the thrill of high-stakes politics. We always liked talking about politics, and that day he raged against losing John and Robert Kennedy when our country so badly needed their strong and graceful leadership. We talked a lot then, and in the years since, about whether political action is worth the pain and struggle. Then, as now, we decided that it was, if only, in Kevin’s words, to keep “the other guys away from power over us.”
I had applied for the Wellesley Internship Program in Washington, D.C., and though dismayed and unnerved by the assassinations, I was still committed to going to Washington.
The nine-week summer program placed students in agencies and congressional offices for a firsthand look at “how government works.” I was surprised when Professor Alan Schechter, the program’s Director and a great political science teacher, as well as my thesis adviser, assigned me to intern at the House Republican Conference. He knew I had come to college as a Republican and was moving away from my father’s opinions.
He thought this internship would help me continue charting my own course―no matter what I eventually decided. I objected to no avail and ended up reporting for duty to a group headed by then Minority Leader Gerald Ford and including Congressmen Melvin Laird of Wisconsin and Charles Goodell of New York, who befriended and advised me.
The interns posed for their obligatory photographs with the members of Congress, and years later, when I was First Lady, I told former President Ford I had been one of the thousands of interns whom he’d given an introductory look inside the Capitol. The photo of me with him and the Republican leaders made my father very happy; he had it hanging in his bedroom when he died. I also signed a copy of that photo for President Ford and presented it to him with thanks and apologies for having strayed from the fold.
I think about that first experience in Washington every time I meet with the interns in my Senate office. I particularly remember a session Mel Laird held with a large group of us to discuss the Vietnam War. Al though he may have harbored concerns about how the Johnson Administration had financed the war and whether the escalation went beyond the congressional authority granted by the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, he remained publicly supportive as a Congressman. In the meeting with interns, he justified American involvement and advocated vigorously for greater military force. When he stopped for questions, I echoed President Eisenhower’s caution about American involvement in land wars in Asia and asked him why he thought this strategy could ever succeed. Although we didn’t agree, as our heated exchange demonstrated, I came away with a high regard for him and an appreciation for his willingness to explain and defend his views to young people. He took our concerns seriously and respectfully. Later, he served as President Nixon’s Secretary of Defense.
Congressman Charles Goodell, who represented western New York, was later appointed to the Senate by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to replace Robert Kennedy until an election could be held. Goodell was a progressive Republican who was defeated in 1970 in a three-way election by the much more conservative James Buckley. Buckley lost in 1976 to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, my predecessor, who held the seat for twentyfour years. When I ran for that Senate seat in 2000, I delighted in telling people from Jamestown, Goodell’s hometown, that I had once worked for the Congressman. Toward the end of my internship, Goodell asked me and a few other interns to go with him to the Republican Convention in Miami to work on behalf of Governor Rockefeller’s last-ditch effort to wrest his party’s nomination away from Richard Nixon. I jumped at the chance and headed for Florida.
The Republican Convention was my first inside look at big-time politics, and I found the week unreal and unsettling. The Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach was the first real hotel I had ever stayed in, since my family favored either sleeping in the car on the way to Lake Winola or staying in small roadside motels. Its size, opulence and service were a surprise. It was there that I placed my first-ever room service order. I can still see the giant fresh peach that came wrapped in a napkin on a plate when I asked for peaches with cereal one morning. I had a rollaway bed shoehorned into a room with four other women, but I don’t think any of us slept much. We staffed the Rockefeller for President suite, taking phone calls and delivering messages to and from Rockefeller’s political emissaries and delegates. Late one night, a Rockefeller campaign staffer asked everybody in the office if we wanted to meet Frank Sinatra and got back the predictably enthusiastic screams of delight at the prospect. I went with the group to a penthouse to shake hands with Sinatra, who courteously feigned interest in meeting us. I took the elevator down with John Wayne, who appeared under the weather and complained all the way down about the lousy food upstairs.
Although I enjoyed all
