My Good Friend KJM.

 By S.E. Schaible

It was a sweltering day in September of 1987, the first time I walked into Suite 717 of the Hart Senate Office Building. The dark sweat mark across the back of my Brooks Brothers glen plaid suitcoat had partially evaporated after starting the day with a sauna-like bus ride and walk to the Capitol. Even holding the jacket and waving it about like a matador didn’t completely dry it in the humidity. Most of my college friends had recently gone straight to Wall Street and were into their first months at Morgan, Lehman, Merrill and the like. I decided I wanted to put my International Affairs degree to some intentional use and arrived in Washington, DC the prior weekend. I didn’t know it at the time, but the person I handed a piece of watermarked Southworth 100% Cotton Fiber Paper would have an immediate – and then a lasting – impact on me.

I think he saw me coming – a bit cocky, good eye contact, fraternity social chairman, started poorly in school then pulled it together academically to finish out strong. I thought I was all that and a bag of chips, and yet I was a total rube – not even wearing a t-shirt under my dress shirt for Christ’s sake. I would soon learn this was one of the oldest tricks in the DC playbook to stay cooler, the way Britons drank hot tea during the day in India. We had a brief chat, I thanked him, and he glanced down at the sheet I’d offered. Just as I pushed the heavy glass door to leave, he did something that none of the other Senate staffers had: He chimed in and said, “Hey, come back in for a minute. Are you open to a couple quick suggestions?”  His voice carried a deep timbre. The door closed behind me, and I noticed his name on the walnut desk wedge: Kevin J. McDonald. 

In five whirlwind minutes Kevin gave me a tuneup that motivated me to discard a ream of printed résumés and start my job search over. I don’t remember if I ever asked him later on why he did this for a New Jersey punk like me, and now I won’t be able to. He handed me a pen and told me to mark up the page as he went along. He was like a cool substitute teacher telling me exactly what to expect on the exam. 

“Starting at the top, your New Jersey address has to go,” he said. “You need to update that with a DC, Virgina or Maryland address – maybe you have a friend here in town? Use theirs for now. As soon as staffers see that New Jersey address on there, it goes straight into the circular bin.” I must have looked puzzled as I wrote some notes. He kept talking. “Everyone comes down on the Amtrak or the shuttle for two days and thinks they will land an interview – you have to already live here to get the interview, or at least appear to live here,” Kevin said, raising his eyebrows and looking above his hornrims as if to say, you following along, Chief? 

“I’m staying with my friend Kelly, and I think she will be cool with that,” I said.

He nodded and continued. “Next line, your phone number with the 201-area code? That’s poison. An automatic no-go,” Kevin said. “Same as above – get a local 202, 703 or 301 number – only those get called for an interview. Trust me on this. Will Kelly let you use her phone number?” 

I nodded my head in the affirmative, not wanting to interrupt him. Like the hapless high school George McFly to Kevin’s future Marty, I think I blurted something foolish. “I’m writing this down. This is good stuff.” It was a gift, even though he didn’t know me from Adam. There were a couple other things that he suggested – nobody cared about my Departmental Distinction award from high school. People on the Hill don’t care that I had a radio show in college. Make it more concise – go with brevity. I realized in my brief tutelage that I had entered the Senate buildings hours earlier with the wrong set of tools, and this guy just taught me how to fake it until I make it. Now I had the inside baseball – I had it all dialed in. 

“One more thing,” Kevin said as I shook his hand and thanked him sincerely. “Get a pack of white t-shirts. Hanes or whatever. You might think another layer will make you hotter, but it’s the opposite,” He had noticed my rumpled suit and gave me this final parting tip. He had only been working on the Hill a couple of years – we weren’t that far apart in age – but he was light years ahead of me in practical knowledge. I felt like I had just jumped the turnstile, won some kind of lottery. Thanks to this amazing and generous person, someone who treated me almost like a brother, I was going to get a gig here. I could sense it. 

As fate would have it, I briefly served as an intern and then joined the staff of Senator Lautenberg from New Jersey, where I reported directly to Kevin J. McDonald. My fleeting, fortuitous advisor became my mentor. He was the Senator’s scheduler, and I was his deputy – which meant I spent that next year at the front desk, where we first met. The tips of the trade never ceased – one time early in my tenure Kevin overheard me struggling to answer a question from someone who asked if the Senator was available. I was caught flat-footed – I had no idea what the protocol was – and Kevin stepped in seamlessly. “I think he’s over in the Capitol, but I can double check. Can I get your name, and did you have an appointment?” It turned out to be a random New Jersey constituent visiting DC on a business trip who thought having a random drop-in with a Senator was feasible. Kevin’s response was perfect and I adopted it by rote.

Fall turned into winter, not that DC gets much of a winter compared to where I grew up. We were in campaign mode, the Senator’s first re-election bid, and James Carville, Paul Begala and some other ninjas came aboard to run the 1988 campaign. It snowed one night in February, maybe 2-3 inches, and I drove to the office without snow tires and without a second thought. It was the first time I needed to unlock the front door with my key, and after a few minutes I strolled into the main office and realized nobody was there. I went back to my desk and waited another 20 minutes and finally called Kevin.

As soon as he answered I could tell he was groggy, still asleep. “Um…hello?” 

“Kevin, it’s Schaible. Are you sick? Hey, sorry to bother you, but nobody’s here.”

“Wait, are you at the office,” he said annoyed but also slightly amused. I told him yes, I was sitting at my desk.

“News flash, dumbass. When it snows enough to see it on the sidewalk, the entire Federal Government is closed,” he said, and chuckled. It sounded a bit like Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter, but far sweeter and less obnoxious. He wasn’t making fun of me; he was simply laughing out loud at something he found to be humorous. The Senator went on to win his re-election that November, an historically negative campaign that is still cited in poli-sci classes today, and some months later Kevin took me to lunch, swore me to secrecy, and shared the news that he was on his final interview toward taking a position with another Senator, a very senior Senator, and he just wanted me to know so it wouldn’t feel like he just vanished.  

“Who’s going to do your job if you go,” I asked.

“I don’t know, but I plan to recommend you for the position. You’re ready and the boss seems to like you.” 

Kevin and I never lost touch. I took a position in the state office a couple of years later and moved to Colorado a couple years after that. He was a “lifer” and I moved on. I don’t believe we ever went 6 months without a call, an email or a card. He stayed with me during the 2008 convention in Denver and it was like old times again for a week, Kevin getting us on the list for what felt like every VIP event, and some crazy late nights. The last time I saw him was a few years ago when he came to Colorado for a wedding. I sent him some pages from my upcoming memoir last summer and he promptly offered great notes and fact checking on some events from back in the day.

One of Kevin and my favorite people, Julie, called me late last September to tell me Kevin had died, a tragic and seemingly random turn of events. I call her Jules, and as comforting as her North Carolina accent and her demeanor were, I was reeling as she told me the heartbreaking news that our friend had stepped on the rainbow. I did the math in my head and then checked it on a calculator; somehow, I’d known Kevin for 38 years, almost to the day. For more than half of my life I regularly sent Kevin off-color postcards to his Senate office, knowing he would be embarrassed when a confused mailroom intern handed it to him. Sometimes he would call upon receiving my correspondence and would already be laughing when I answered, and on the occasions when I missed his call, he would leave a message while cracking up and then dish some smack talk or old friend gossip my way. I don’t think I ever deleted any messages from Kevin, just left them alone and only lost them when I switched phones along the way. One thing he and I could always count on as we ended our phone calls or signed off on voice messages was a simple truth: 

“Love you, Amigo.”

Footnote - I wrote this today, hours before I was scheduled to fly to Washington, DC for a memorial service for Kevin. I anticipated seeing many former colleagues and old friends and – assuming we ended up properly lubricated in an Irish bar – I thought I might retell the snow day story from 1988. My flight was canceled last night, but it was of no consequence: Kevin’s memorial was to be held in the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office Building, but right on cue, all Federal Government offices remain closed for a second day today.