27 MONTHS IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
It was a crisp fall day when I took the train from Philadelphia for my interview with Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry. I had barely walked into his inner office when he said I needed to accompany him to a community event. For the next 27 months, from February 1987 to September 1989, it was go, go, go. As the press secretary to the mayor I worked in the eye of the storm, but it was never calm. Barry was so busy that he kept three schedules, one public, a semi-public schedule for the staff and a private schedule for friends and confidants. Rasheeda Moore, the woman seen in the infamous FBI video offering a crack pipe to the mayor at the Vista Hotel, appeared more than once on the private schedule.
The second part of my interview took place later in the evening in a private room on the second floor of the Hawk and Dove, a popular Capital Hill watering hole. En route, Barry grabbed the cologne he kept in the back seat of the town car, slapped a little on his neck and patted his hair. He was always conscious of how he looked and smelled. He asked me a few questions between sips of Hennessey.
Barry was the biggest local story in Washington. He used to say he was responsible for keeping The Washington Post's circulation up. “They just using me to sell newspapers,” he said more than once. The rumors about his drug use fed the flames. Although he seldom was caught unprepared for a quote, he hated the ambush interviews by television crews. I became the heavy in these situations. When reporters were on hand, I was always the first one out of the car to find out what the reporters wanted and to give Barry a chance to rush by while I played the bad guy He told me early on, “you do the bad news and I do the good news.”
We were in the mayor’s office one day when security called to say several television crews were in the lobby waiting for the mayor. Like the soldier pushed out of the airplane to test the drop zone, I was dispatched to mollify the reporters. I was in the middle of an interview when word reached the mayor that the story was not about drug allegations. The next thing I knew, he bounded from the elevator behind me to command the attention of the cameras.
Fueled by the crack epidemic, there was a record 369 homicides in D.C. in 1988. Barry decided that one strategy for fighting the war on drugs was to make himself more visible in the neighborhoods. I would call the media and Barry, with a phalanx of police, would strut past neighbors railing against drugs and crime. It usually only resulted in a photo op. As we were preparing to make one of these walks through a Southeast block, Barry strapped on a bulletproof vest. “Come on John, walk up here with me.” Without a vest I declined his invitation. “My name’s not James Brady,” (the Reagan press secretary who was seriously wounded in an attempted assassination on the president).
It didn’t matter how many stories about his alleged drug use were published or broadcast, people loved him. What the press didn’t understand was that Barry was one of the people he represented. He never stopped being the man from Itta Bena, Mississippi. He was never too busy to hug a voter or to shake a hand. And he never paused to wonder why someone didn’t like him. We were once in the middle of a large white Georgetown crowd and the disdain on their faces was barely hidden. Barry, dressed in a white sailor’s outfit, pretended not to notice their various reactions. He walked up and grabbed hands and kissed cheeks. He refused to let them turn away. I asked him how he could do that and he said simply, “Its just politics.”
As the press secretary for Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry I worked in the eye of the storm, but it was never calm.
A few days before Christmas 1988, I was getting ready for bed while watching the 11 p.m. news when the telephone rang. It was Reggie Smith, the police department chief spokesman. “John, Ike [Deputy Police Chief Issac Fulwood] wants you to come down to police headquarters.” Before I could ask what’s up, he said, “It’s about your boy.” I knew that this meant don’t ask any questions. “I’m on my way.” When I walked into the chief’s office, I could hear Barry over the speakerphone. He sounded excited. Ike was angry. Ike said, “Get off this damn phone. Don’t you know they’re listening to you?” Barry was riding around the city trying to pull things together. As soon as Ike hung up he tried to explain to me what had happened earlier that evening at the Ramada Inn on Rhode Island Avenue.
By John C. White
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