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Can We Profoundly Affect Other Souls in Brief Interactions?

By Walter Donway

February 7, 2022

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In a sense, William Safire entered my life in June 1973 with his New York Times op-ed piece “Gunga Dean.” The only story, right then, was Watergate and the only journalistic passion was to eject President Richard Nixon from the White House. And, if possible, send him to prison. Nixon’s personal lawyer, John W. Dean III, joined the project by testifying before Sen. Sam Ervin’s committee to investigate Watergate.

I suspect that just as he changed my life with a few deft moves, he must have changed many others.

Bill Safire exited my life three decades later, in 2002, discussing my retirement from the Dana Foundation where (as if he needed more to do) he was chairman. I suspect that just as he changed my life with a few deft moves, he must have changed many others.

But go back to where my rendezvous with Safire was set in motion. The chairman of the Dana Foundation, which I joined in 1982 as a program officer, was David Mahoney, known as a founder and CEO of the first U.S. “conglomerate,” Norton Simon. At some point in his rise, David hired a public relations agent named William Safire. Safire told me: “David said my job was to get his name in the newspaper every day.”

The 1972 presidential election pitted Richard M. Nixon against the most leftwing major party candidate in U.S. history, Sen. George McGovern. David and Bill Safire took a break from earning a living to work for Nixon’s election. When Nixon won by a landslide, Safire’s reward was to become his senior speech writer. Mahoney’s reward was to become chairman of the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission.

To skip ahead: Things went bad. As Bill Safire put it: “I worked for Nixon and managed to stay out of jail.” Worked for Nixon and defended him to the end. It was like Safire. And his most brilliant effort was a knock-off of Rudyard Kipling’s “Gunga Din.” As an aspiring poet among other things, I told him I thought it was fantastic. How often did he use poetry in his column? “Never more than once a year.”

David Mahoney later sold his creation, Norton Simon, for a record amount. He had money and nothing to do. He slipped into a serious depression. One of Bill Safire’s favorite terms was “reinvent yourself.” He steered David Mahoney into “reinventing” himself as a lay advocate of brain science.

Speaking of reinventing yourself, Safire said of his beginnings as a columnist for the Times: “It didn’t work out.  I had to reinvent myself as an investigative reporter.” And that did work. In 1978, he won a Pulitzer Prize for a column on Bert Lance, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter.

Fast forward: I was communications director for the Dana Foundation when Safire became chairman in 2002 after David Mahoney died and then full-time CEO in 2004, the year he finally gave up his Times Column.  The first thing I ever said to him, at a dinner for trustees, was “Sit closer to the podium, Mr. Safire.”

And the first thing he ever said to me was “No, Walter. Podium, podiatry, feet. A podium is a box a speaker mounts. Over there is a lectern.” You don’t forget something like that. I was a fan of Safire’s weekly column begun in 1979 for the Sunday Times, “On Language.” I wondered if I might end up there as an example.

A table in the board room of the Dana Foundation was the next scene. As the foundation’s director of communications, I was responsible for its quarterly newsletter. And proud of it because I had begun my career as a reporter (for the Worcester Telegram) and thought I did real reporting for the newsletter. Bill Safire made a few comments about the newsletter that (later) I realized were euphemistic.

I said: “I don’t know exactly what you’re saying.”

“It’s boring.”

You would write it well, but not about anything negative or controversial. Obviously, to Bill Safire, that was firing blanks.

All my colleagues were at the table. I didn’t agree, but I didn’t argue. I knew what he meant. This was a “house organ,” a publicity vehicle. You would write it well, but not about anything negative or controversial. Obviously, to Bill Safire, that was firing blanks.

I had been at Dana as neuroscience—specifically, building public understanding of the brain and support for brain research—came to dominate the foundation’s programs. But my portfolio, including the annual report and the “boring” newsletter, never called for any of the “real writing” I always had intended to do. That so far had been on my own time, freelance.

Then, Bill Safire said, “This foundation needs a real publication on brain science. A high-end publication for lay readers and scientists. Do you want to do it?”

Did I want my job? Bill even provided the title: “Cerebrum: The Dana Forum on Brain Science.”  It was the first time in my official career that I could be a “real” writer and editor. This was going to be brain science as written by the country’s and world’s leading neuroscientists—and edited for readability by my associate editor, Cynthia Read, and me.

Bill Safire seemed to read every issue of Cerebrum before we published it. I have no idea how he had time. Once, we took on the arguably most politically incorrect topic imaginable. An associate professor with a joint position at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins made the case that decades of IQ-testing had confirmed a significant average IQ difference between races, which no attempt at eliminating “confounding factors” had changed. She argued that the best thing we could do for Black Americans was to base policy on reality.

Cerebrum published it. Safire strode into my office. He said, “Okay, now get me critical comments from three top neuroscientists. When the three strongly condemnatory comments arrived, he said: “Send them to the author, let her reply.” That was Bill Safire.

In 2002, I was called to a meeting with Safire and Edward Rover, president of the foundation. Yes, Cerebrum was viewed as the best initiative of the foundation, but it also cost $1.0 million a year (including my salary and Cynthia’s). We needed to retreat from the physical world to the online world. And publish one article a month.

“Well, that isn’t a full-time job,” I said.

No, they both said.

“What are you going to do?” Safire asked.

A brain-related theme of the foundation was never, ever retire.

“Retire, I guess.” (A brain-related theme of the foundation was never, ever retire.)

“You’ll go out of your mind,” he said.

“I think I’ll write poetry.”

“Okay, but take it seriously. Take courses.”

The last thing I did was thank him for giving me an opportunity before the end of my career at Dana to create a “real publication.” I am afraid I teared up, a bit. He brushed off the compliment.

In fact, I began writing books (more than a dozen, now) and articles (hundreds), but also three volumes of poetry, and now my collected poems, and have continued to write daily for two decades.

I heard from Safire no more. I was in retirement, visiting a spa in Colorado with my wife, when I saw in the news that Bill Safire had died on September 27, 2009, in a hospice in Rockville, Maryland. He was 79 and the cause of death was pancreatic cancer.

His life had brushed mine only in passing—but changed it.

 

 

Feature Image: William Safire receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush in 2006.
 

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