The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
—Eden Phillpotts, A Shadow Passes
Growing up in the military is a singular experience. We never lived in one place for much longer than a year and a half. I practically had to be pried out of Switzerland. I’ve rarely cried so hard as when we had to leave Le Torrent. Donna and I returned to Germany with our parents to pack up for our next assignment.
On the move again, our family came back to the United States, first to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, then, six months later, to Fort Lewis, near Tacoma in Washington State, where my father was taking over as the commanding general. In Tacoma, my closest friend was Jeannie Schwartz. She was a year older than I and the smartest friend I’d ever had. She lived right next door on Generals Row. Her father, a doctor, was the commanding general of Madigan Army Hospital. We spent hours at her house talking about books and ideas. She had a great library and was always lending me books.
I was intent on enlarging my vocabulary, partly to impress her because she seemed to know every word in the dictionary. One day when we were hanging out, I was looking through the books on her shelves and came across a book with the word anti-Semitism in the title. I had encountered that word recently but hadn’t absorbed its meaning. Wanting to show off my newfound word, I turned to Jeannie and asked brightly, “Oh, are you anti-Semitic?” Of course, I didn’t know what it really meant and may not even have pronounced it properly, but she knew what I was asking. She looked at me, shocked. “Sally, of course not,” she said. “I’m Jewish.”
I looked at her, shocked myself. I had no idea she was Jewish. How was I supposed to know? How could you tell? I always wondered that about the Nazis. How could they tell people were Jewish? I was shocked because I didn’t know. My parents had never said a word about the Schwartzes being Jewish. I was appalled and ashamed that I had offended her. I was also deeply embarrassed to have shown my ignorance. I wanted to sink through the floor. All I could think of was Granny in Savannah telling me not to touch anything in Sally Kravitch’s house, and all I could do was bow my head and say meekly, “I didn’t know.”
Jeannie smiled and then actually laughed. She sat me down and gently explained what the word meant. I told her about my father and Dachau and the Holocaust albums and Granny. I certainly didn’t understand where anti-Semitism came from even when I knew what it meant.
We hugged at the end of our talk. I went home and asked my parents if they knew the Schwartzes were Jewish. “Of course,” they said. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. “Why would it matter?” my father asked. And of course, he was right. It didn’t matter. Not to us, anyway—or so I thought.
As I found out later, it did matter to him.
* * *
Whenever we moved, there was always a new school to adjust to, new friends, a new house, a new culture. What that meant was that we established our own family rituals that remain meaningful to me today. They weren’t really religious rituals, but they might as well have been. When we moved into a new house, we would greet the house. When we left, we would say good-bye. I used to go around and kiss the walls of each room. The fact that my parents would always have a party the night they moved into a new house, I now see as a way of blessing the house for the short time we would be there.
So in two years I had added two more schools to my list that, by the time I finished my elementary and high school education, tallied twenty-two schools. After four other high schools—Ludwigsburg in Stuttgart, Germany, Le Torrent in Switzerland, Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, and Clover Park in Tacoma—we had returned for a third time to Washington, D.C. I was now ensconced at Mount Vernon Seminary, an all-girls school (where we wore uniforms) on fancy Foxhall Road where a lot of Southern girls boarded. Donna was there too, and we both loved it. My senior year went by very quickly since I spent most of my time studying—I had my sights set on getting into Smith—but I did find time to start smoking that year, learn to drive, have my first kiss (I was a late bloomer), and play Alice in the school play, Alice in Wonderland.
We moved from a fairly temporary place in Chevy Chase to generals’ quarters at Fort Myer just across the river in Virginia. This time our house was on the parade ground across from the chapel, overlooking Arlington Cemetery. Living there, which we did from 1959 until sometime in 1964 (although I was away at college for most of those years and only there on visits and during the summers), had an enormous effect on my life. By the time we got to Fort Myer, my parents had long since given up on sending us to Sunday school or church. They never went, and we were old enough to point out the hypocrisy of the whole thing. We were living across the street from the chapel, and I don’t think they ever set foot in there except possibly for weddings, christenings, or funerals.
Funerals . . . there were a lot of them at Fort Myer, sometimes as many as four a day, right outside our front door. All you had to do was look out a window to see throngs of black-clad and uniformed mourners surrounding a casket, some weeping softly or loudly, others silent, looking stricken. The casket would be lifted by soldiers onto the caisson drawn by horses and the procession would turn in to the cemetery followed by a line of black cars. There would be a graveside service and then “Taps,” which we could always hear. Sometimes my brother and sister and I would follow the caisson and stand behind the trees at the cemetery, watching the ceremony. Military funerals are always moving, especially for those killed in battle.
These years coincided with the beginning of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. We saw the toll that was being taken long before the general public did. We saw the grieving families of the boys and men who were dying. None of this made any sense to me. Early on, I had come to believe that the Vietnam War was a really pointless war, so very different from World War II or even the Korean War, though I had questions about that as well.
Mostly I had questions about God. Once again God was at the forefront of much of what I was observing in my life. The funeral-goers would come streaming out of the chapel, having just prayed to God. They would stand in front of their loved ones’ graves with a military chaplain praying to God. What in God’s name were they praying for? The dead? That they would go to heaven and not hell? That God should rest their eternal souls?
Sometimes I would turn away from these funerals in outrage. It all seemed such an exercise in futility and absurdity. I would go back to our house and lie on my bed, which faced the chapel, and I would listen for the next horse-drawn caisson, the clop, clop, clop of the horses’ hooves on the pavement, day in and day out, serving as a reminder of my lack of faith in God.
* * *
The summer before I went off to Smith, I worked at the Pentagon in the intelligence unit called G2, of which my father was head. (These were the days of rampant nepotism.) I was in the office of protocol, where I had a top secret clearance. I’m not sure that meant much because even the menus at the office were top secret. We certainly didn’t want the Russians finding out about our dining habits and flower arrangements.
I fell madly in love that summer. It was the first love of my life. He had just gotten out of the Marine Corps, after graduating a year early from prep school, and was entering his freshman year at Princeton. He was so much more sophisticated and manly than any of the other boys I had dated. He was born in July as well, another Cancer; I was a double Cancer—clearly, this was a match made in heaven, or at least in the stars. I began to read more about astrology, which would become more and more important to me as I grew older. I had our charts done. We were soul mates. I read his palm. He had a long life line, which showed he’d make lots of money and would travel. He also had a solid love line. We spent the entire summer together in a swoon. It gave me an enormous amount of confidence to be entering college with a fabulous guy to call mine. Maybe there was a God. . . .
* * *
Smith was everything I had hoped it would be. At that time, there were no dorms; instead, each student was assigned a house to live in. I was assigned to Talbot House. I loved all of it—the girls in my house, my courses, my teachers, the campus, and particularly the theater. I immediately decided on becoming a theater major and plunged into the first play as soon as I got there. Everyone was so smart. In those days, the Ivy League schools—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, et cetera—were all men. Many of the women at Smith, Wellesley, Radcliffe, and a few others might have been at these men’s schools had it been a few years later.
We stayed up late most nights discussing the meaning of life. Nobody ever spoke of religion. I read everyone’s palms, because I had taken up palm reading again the summer before my first year of college. I had been doing palm reading on and off since all those years ago in Statesboro but began doing it again seriously at Smith.
That fall, my inamorato invited me to Princeton for the weekend of the football game with Penn. It was a nightmare. I was sick. My girdle was so tight I couldn’t breathe. My heels were so high I couldn’t walk. He was enthralled with a very sophisticated beautiful blond model from New York. It rained all weekend. He hardly spoke to me. I cried all the way back to school. A week later I got a letter from him breaking up with me. “It ain’t no mo’,” he wrote.
I continued to feel unwell and got terribly sick at Thanksgiving. The illness turned out to be mononucleosis. I’ve often wondered if he came down with it too. When you’re in love, even if you’re a nonbeliever, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world. But this God of mine was elusive.
* * *
I dated a lot the summer after freshman year, but none of them was The One. I was still mourning the loss of my first love. The one person I did go out with, whom I found more interesting than the others, was several years older than I was. He was very smart and had a great sense of humor. He invited me to spend the day with him at the family farm in Virginia and I accepted. The day before we were to go he called me. He sort of beat around the bush for a bit. I knew he was trying to say something. Finally he came out with it. “I’d like to bring a friend with me,” he said. “Fine,” I said. I was a bit relieved because I was nervous about being alone with him. I hardly knew him though we had met through friends. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “I wanted to tell you that he is a gentleman of color. I hope that won’t be a problem for you.” I was completely at a loss for words. I simply didn’t know what to say. A gentleman of color? That meant he was a colored person. I had never socialized with a colored person. That’s what we called them at home. The “N” word was never acceptable in my family; only white trash used the “N” word. We had a few “colored” girls at Smith but I didn’t know them.
I could feel the blood rushing to my face. I was embarrassed, but also terribly uncomfortable. I didn’t know how I would handle it. The silence continued. “Well,” he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I worried all afternoon. I worried about my feelings and how I would deal with this, but also I worried about his possible discomfort. Later that afternoon he called back to say his friend wasn’t able to come. I was both relieved and humbled, feeling guilty. I knew his friend wasn’t coming because of me.
When he picked me up, I could tell he was a bit cool. We drove out to the country house, had a picnic, and went to the pond to swim. Sitting on the pier, we were just talking and getting to know each other. He had gone to Amherst, the men’s college only seven miles from Smith. I had dated a few guys from Amherst. I asked him if he belonged to a fraternity. He said he did and told me the name of it. “Oh,” I said enthusiastically, “isn’t that the kike house?” I had no idea what kike meant nor that it had any negative connotations. He looked stunned. “Sally,” he said, “I’m part Hebe.” I had no idea what that meant either, but I somehow assumed it meant he was part Jewish. Much later I figured out it was short for Hebrew. “Oh,” I said, “one of my best friends is Jewish.” With that, we gathered up our things and drove home in silence. I never heard from him again.
I had never associated racism and anti-Semitism with religion. It was only as I grew older that I understood how closely related they were.
* * *
One summer I met Senator John Tower at my parents’ house at Fort Myer, Virginia, shortly after he had won his seat in a special election. I was twenty. My parents were hosting a party for Senator Barry Goldwater. Senator Tower seemed to take an interest in me from the start. There were all these other famous and successful people at the party, but he spent most of his time talking to me. I was good at these parties. I had grown up with my parents entertaining and was very comfortable in the role of junior hostess. In fact, often my parents would take me to embassy parties with them, and on occasion I would go alone with my father if my mother wasn’t feeling well. I wasn’t shy at all and wasn’t surprised that Senator Tower enjoyed my company.
He was singularly unattractive—tiny and plump with little eyes, a puffy face, and very small swollen hands and fingers. Still, he was interesting, talking about politics, and he lit up when he learned that I was a theater major at Smith with a minor in political science. He had taught theater at Midwestern University in Texas before going into politics. We agreed that the two, politics and theater, weren’t so different in the end. I didn’t mention that I had become what some considered to be a flaming liberal at college. He said he’d love to show me around the Senate and asked me if I’d like to have lunch in the Senate dining room one day and a tour.
Even though I had worked on Capitol Hill for Senator Goldwater, a friend of my parents, my first summer in Washington, it had been a few years and I thought it might be fun to see it again from Senator Tower’s perspective. Tower was a friend of Barry’s. It never occurred to me that he might have ulterior motives. Call me naive.
Tower’s secretary called to make a lunch date for the following week. I wore a pink-coral-and-white linen print dress with a bolero jacket to work. It was in the middle of a sweltering summer. I wanted to look nice but not too dressy, summer professional. Shortly before lunch his secretary called. Unfortunately the senator had a very important emergency meeting and couldn’t make lunch. Could I possibly come by his office on the Hill around six P.M.? He would give me a tour and take me to dinner instead. I knew what a senator’s schedule was like, but dinner?! That was not in the plan. I stuttered and stammered. I really didn’t want to have dinner with him (he was married, of course), but I didn’t know how to say no without implying that his intentions were not honorable. So, feeling very uneasy, I said yes.
I showed up at his office right on time. He offered me a drink, which I declined. I didn’t drink anything but wine or champagne then, and nobody ever drank either or served them except at formal Washington dinner parties. He apologized for the late hour. He had been tied up in very important meetings, and of course there would be no tour of the Senate since everything was closed. He had made reservations at the most posh French restaurant in Georgetown, Chez Francois. To my disappointment, he asked for a discreet banquette indoors. It was incredibly hot outside, and in those days there was no air-conditioning. Everyone was sitting outside trying to catch a breeze. He motioned to the waiter, snapping his fingers, and calling out “garçon, garçon” (“boy” or “waiter” in French) in his Texas accent, only instead of pronouncing it correctly, as in gar son, he said gar con as in con man. I was horrified, as was the waiter.
Still, he was a senator and commanded a certain amount of deference even though he was acting as if he were the president. He had no idea what he was ordering and refused to ask the waiter for help, so I suggested a few things on the menu and ordered the wine. He began to tell me how beautiful I was and how sexy and how smart.
When he pulled out his wallet at the end, it was a cheap wine-colored gold-embossed one, which sold on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence for about $4.00. I remarked that he had an Italian wallet, anything to deflect his attention. He narrowed his squinty eyes and drawled, “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”
I was beginning to squirm and was so desperate to get out of there I nearly knocked over the table as we left. However, I was not to escape so quickly. Once we were on the street, I tried to hail a cab, but he grasped my arm rather tightly and insisted that we go across the street to a rather sinister-looking nightclub called L’Espionage, which had a masked and cloaked man painted on the entrance.
We were led upstairs to a cozy, dimly lit little parlor with love seats. I thought I was going to die. He plunked us both down, still holding tightly to me, and confidently ordered two brandies. He was definitely on home territory here. Without loosening his grip, he took my hand in his pudgy little one.
Going into survival mode, I quickly offered to read his palm. Being the egomaniac that he was, he succumbed. His palm was sweaty and showed little character; it was a palm of such pure debauchery that I shuddered. But I rambled on for dear life to keep him distracted. By the time I had exhausted my repertoire he had knocked back his brandy and was preparing to order another.
With that I leaped up from my seat and announced that I had to get up at dawn the next day to get to work. While he was paying the bill I dashed down the stairs and out to the street and was hailing a cab when he appeared. “I’ll come with you,” he said, pushing me into the cab.
“No, no, you don’t need to,” I practically screamed. “You live on the Hill and I’m at Fort Myer. It’s the opposite direction.” My protest was to no avail. Before I could say another word I was in the backseat of the cab, gasping out my address, and he was on top of me. I was in shock. He threw his weight over me, putting his hands up my skirt and grasping at my underpants. I was desperately trying to fend him off, pleading with him, “Senator, Senator, please stop,” and begging the cabdriver to hurry.
The poor driver, an elderly man, was clearly distraught. He could see what was happening, but hearing my assailant’s Southern accent as he grunted amorously and aware I had called him senator, the taxi driver was afraid to do anything except speed. I think we were probably going about ninety miles an hour as we pulled through the gates of the army post just across the Potomac River from Georgetown. Tower had managed to partially pull down my underpants as I was beating at him and trying to wriggle free. He was surprisingly strong. I also noticed he had unzipped his trousers. Finally I shouted at him, as haughtily as I could, under the circumstances, “Senator, kindly remember your status, both marital and senatorial!” I actually said that.
Just at that moment, thank God, the cab screeched to a halt, and the driver got out to open the door for me in front of our quarters. “We’re here, ma’am,” he mumbled, and I think Tower suddenly realized I could start screaming and the general and several MPs would appear on the scene. He reluctantly let go of me.
I tumbled out of the car and sprinted to my front door, locking it behind me once I had gotten inside. I went upstairs to my room and began to sob. That would not be the last time I cried about this. In fact, I was upset for years afterward every time I thought of it.
I was overwhelmed with guilt and shame. How could I have been so stupid? Why did I agree to have dinner? Why did I let him take me to the nightclub? Why didn’t I just insist on taking the cab home? What did I do to make him think it was okay to behave that way? I must have been leading him on in some way for him to think he could get away with it. I was devastated and traumatized.
I didn’t tell my parents or Barry Goldwater about it for years. When I finally did, it had been so long in the past that I don’t think they realized how much it had affected me. Besides, Tower was still a senator, a friend and colleague of Barry’s, and a social friend of all of theirs. I think Daddy and Barry just wanted to sweep it under the rug. My mother was much more upset. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him after I told her. Still, there was not the kind of outrage I had hoped for or expected. It was, after all, the days of the old boys’ club. That’s what powerful men did. And they got away with it. Only he didn’t—at least that time.
In 1989, five years after Tower had chosen not to run for reelection, President George H. W. Bush nominated him to be secretary of defense, a post the retired senator and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee badly wanted. From the moment his nomination was made public the damaging stories started appearing. Tower had a drinking problem; he had questionable relationships with defense contractors; and most of all he was a terrible womanizer and probably guilty of sexual assault. I had heard rumors about his sexual exploits over the years and there were always endless jokes about his office being constantly filled with “babes,” but then that wasn’t exactly a unique situation in the Senate. I had only told a few close friends of mine about what had happened between Tower and me. I was still so mortified. (Actually I still am. Now, though, I’m angry as well.)
I was married to Ben at the time of the nomination. I had obviously told him the story. He was properly outraged and disgusted but not surprised. He had always thought Tower was a repugnant little “pissant.”
One day during the hearings I was at home when the doorbell rang. I answered it and two FBI agents were standing there holding out their identification, asking if they could come in. I ushered them into the front hall but did not invite them into the living room. We stood there staring at each other. They were clearly uncomfortable and wouldn’t look me in the eye; instead, they were shifting from foot to foot.
They had come, they said, because they were vetting Senator Tower for the job of secretary of defense and had heard the story about his sexually assaulting me. They would like to ask me a few questions. I refused to confirm it. “But you don’t understand,” one of them said to me, “this will be totally confidential.”
I burst out laughing. “Are you kidding?” I said. “Where do you think the Washington Post gets its stories? From guys like you who leak.”
They left empty-handed.
Shortly after that visit, John Tower’s confirmation was defeated. As was reported in the Washington Post, it was the first time in history that a new president had been denied his first choice for a new cabinet position, the ninth time that any cabinet-level nominee had been rejected by the Senate, and the first time since Eisenhower’s choice for secretary of commerce that a cabinet nominee had been turned down. One of those voting against Tower was Kansas senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum, the only Republican to vote no. I later learned from a friend who was working for Teddy Kennedy that Nancy had voted against Tower after she heard my story.
“It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” said Ben. Barry and Daddy were not displeased either.
Later, Anita Hill made a decision I did not. She agreed to testify “confidentially” about Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. I could have been Anita Hill, or something close.
The common belief is that forgiving always makes you feel better. If you hold a grudge, you’re only hurting yourself more than the person you are angry with. As the saying goes, you take the poison hoping someone else will die. People say that letting go is the best revenge, that holding a grudge is like a cancer, that forgiving is the healthy thing to do, the right thing, the Christian thing. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I don’t buy it.
Of course there are some things you can and should forgive. However, I don’t believe in forgiveness without an apology, a sincere apology. There are too many nonapology apologies. They happen in love, in business, in politics, in foreign policy, in every area of life. “I’m sorry if I offended you” or “I’m sorry if you were hurt” are not apologies.
In this case, even an “I’m sorry I tried to rape you in the back of a cab when you had just turned twenty and were innocent and I was a U.S. senator” wouldn’t be good enough. Some things can’t be forgiven unless there is true remorse. Tower never apologized for anything.
Aaron Lazare, in his book On Apology, wrote about a time when two friends betrayed his trust, which led him to “question both my trusting approach to relationships and my overall ability to judge people.” It occurred to him that if they “would sincerely apologize, our relationships could be restored.” He elaborated:
This idea, which may seem simple and obvious . . . was an epiphany to me, a sudden, spontaneous realization of something I felt was important and perhaps even profound. I was intrigued that an apology, which appears to be such a simple event, could change so much.
Bishop T. D. Jakes once said to me when I was interviewing him about his book on forgiveness, “I may forgive. But I never forget.” That’s true for me as well.
The important thing about this incident in my life is that it was so searing and so traumatic that I never got over it. I can’t help thinking now that if he had raped me, it would have affected my views on sex, love, trust, and maybe even marriage, all things that have given me great joy throughout my life. No, this experience didn’t ruin my life. It really didn’t change my life, but it made a huge impression on me in many ways. I wasn’t the same person after that incident. I became more cynical and less trusting. If I had been a nonbeliever before that happened, this experience certainly wouldn’t have changed my view. It wasn’t that I had suffered the worst trauma anyone could suffer. But I felt that I had seen the face of evil, up close and personal. I was aware for the first time what it truly felt like to be dehumanized. There was too much of that in the world.
* * *
My sophomore year I returned to Smith no less confused than I had been at the end of my freshman year, by which time I still didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to be doing. Consequently, this next term I dove immediately into the theater and stayed there. I found I had a particular talent and proclivity for the theater of the absurd, especially Ionesco. It would serve me well in life and help prepare me to eventually work in Washington.
That fall we had an assembly at John M. Greene Hall and attendance was required for the whole student body. The speaker was a young woman named Marian Wright, the first black woman to enter Yale Law School. There was considerable snickering among the students. Why did we have to listen to this colored girl talk? they said. I was curious.
I ended up being stunned by the effect that her speech had on me. What happened next changed my thinking entirely. Marian talked about her life. She spoke eloquently about growing up black in the South, with no hint of anger or bitterness or self-pity. Her tone and manner were so contained that her story was all the more powerful. I had goose bumps and was deeply moved. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
She—this “colored” girl—was not my equal; she was undeniably my superior. She was brilliant, funny, persuasive, authentic, and certainly engaged in work that mattered.
I had never seen anyone like her.
On the way back to Talbot House with my Southern friends I was silent. They were laughing and tittering and making jokes about Marian. Had they not just seen what I saw, heard what I heard? Then they broke into song:
Alabama niggers should be free,
hail to the N double ACP;
Throw Jim Folsom [former governor of Alabama] out the door:
Roy Campanella [black baseball player] for gov-e-nor.
Hail Autherine Lucy [first black student admitted to the University of Alabama],
Hail Autherine Lucy.
Yo so big and black and juicy,
how we loves you, Autherine Lucy.
Hey, hey, what’s all the fuss?
We wants to ride in the front of the bus.
I was incredulous. The words were immediately burned into my memory. I felt shocked and outraged and yet I said nothing. Another shameful moment. I just ran into the house and up to my room to get away. Who was I? I thought of myself as someone who was looking for meaning, yet I had just seen myself behave by being silent when I should have spoken. Right then I felt devoid of morals, ethics, and values. I felt I had no sense of myself. Was I not a person of courage? Not only did I need to find myself, but I needed to find friends who were enlightened and knowing and learn from them.