My Phil Donahue Story

On October 11 of 1995, Newt Gingrich was in full swing, and a vacillating Bill Clinton was in office. 

That morning, I stepped out onto the porch of my house in Arlington, Virginia, clad only in my boxers, to grab the newspaper.  At 5 am, I did not expect any observers.

On the front page of The Washington Post was an announcement that Thomas Bliley, the Republican Chairman of the House Commerce Committee, was holding a markup on a bill to cut Medicare. There had been no hearings, and there would be no testimony on this day. This was a ram job.

I swung into action, and by 10 am, I had over a dozen seniors at the hearing, each with testimony I had hammered out, a guy with $10,000 cash bail money in a paper bag (not kidding), and a killer line to bring the house down, voiced by Theresa McKenna: “Mr. Chairman we demand to be heard.  This Medicare bill is one than only an undertaker could love.”

This was the “killer” line because Chairman Bliley (a bag man for the tobacco lobby), had made his fortune in the undertaker business.

Not kidding

Chairman Bliley slammed down his gavel, and demanded that Capitol Police clear the room and arrest the seniors for disturbing the peace — an event filmed in color thanks to my earlier notice to the press.  The arrest of the seniors lead the national news that night.

I had barely gotten back to the office when I got a call from a booker on The Phil Donahue Show.  Could the seniors fly up to New York for tomorrow?  Uh…. No?  These are old folks; they normally need 36 hours to get to the grocery store.  How about day after tomorrow?

And that’s how my 92-year old friend Joe Roark got up to the Phil Donahue Show, with half a dozen other seniors.  I will forever remember Joe getting asked a question, and his answer, with tears in his eyes:  “I’m not doing this for me.  I’m 92 years old.  I don’t have long. I’m doing this for the next generation.”

I didn’t write that.  That was all Joe. Joe Roark was a union retiree who, I was told, had been a serious hell-raising organizer. He was my friend, and I was glad to help him get in one more punch in for change.

None of this would have happened without great staffing from folks like Hugh Layden, Noreen Banks, Bette Cooper, and Cindy Fithian, to say nothing of local senior activists always ready to step into the breach.