Millions of words have been spent to try to capture John Dingell, Michigan icon, longest-serving congressman in history, who left this life Feb. 7, merrily tweeting mostly wry and sarcastic observations about life, pop culture and Donald Trump till almost his last day.
No, he didn’t know Abraham Lincoln, whose 210th birthday is today. But when John Dingell was born in 1926, there were still people around who remembered Lincoln, including, for a few weeks, the Great Emancipator’s only surviving son. But that wasn’t the President Dingell most identified with; it was one who actually died long before Lincoln did.
Once, decades ago, I asked Dingell, then still the all-powerful chair of the Energy and Commerce committee, how long he thought he might stay in Congress. He answered with a question. “Do you know your history? Do you know about John Quincy Adams, son?”
Yes, sir, I said. “Well, then,” said Dingell, seeing in my eyes that I did know – and offering me a flicker of respect for my knowledge of history. John Quincy Adams, the only president to be elected to Congress after his term in the White House was over, had collapsed on the floor of the House; I had been shown the very spot where he died.
For a long time, I expected something like that to happen to John Dingell, who first walked into the place with his daddy in early 1933, during the worst of the Great Depression, while Herbert Hoover was still clinging to a last few days in power. He was there as a 15-year-old page when Franklin Delano Roosevelt made his famous Day of Infamy Speech.
He went off to the tail end of the war, then college and law school in the nation’s capital, still working part-time as an elevator operator in his sacred Capitol building.
He then returned to Detroit, about long enough for a cup of coffee as a young lawyer, and then came back in late 1955, after his dad had died and he’d won a special election for his seat.
The legendary Sam Rayburn swore him in. Barack Obama wouldn’t be born for another six years. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s parents hadn’t yet been born. Dingell was tall, lanky, looked a bit goony. But he learned his job, and stayed and stayed.
Once, in the early years of this century, I asked him if he had ever thought of higher office, such as running for governor or senator. “Yes, once I was young and foolish,” he said.
But then he told me he thought representing the people of his district was about as high as anyone could get. The district had migrated; when he was first elected, it was in Detroit.
By the end, it stretched from Dearborn to Ann Arbor. Whomever he represented, he did it well, with the tenacity of a terrier. I don’t think he ever wanted to leave, and intellectually, he was all there till the moment he died. But his body gave out, and dealing with the new ideologues, unwilling to compromise, negotiate, or even be civil was not fun for him.
Besides, his wife Debbie, who was 27 years younger, was more than qualified. So he stepped away, though I think part of him would have liked to have breathed his last in his House, the one that more than any other, belongs to the people. He was, finally, a giant, one of the last who worked with giants from John F. Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan . They all believed in this country, and knew they had to work together.
There’s too little of that today, which is part of why we are so sad.
