Grabbing Lunch with Sam Donaldson

Unabashed Texan Sam Donaldson

When I visited Washington DC to tour Georgetown Univesity and GWU with my father in 1975, we stayed at the grand and stately Mayflower Hotel.  As a rube in the big city, I was amazed at the size of this hotel - a full city block long: one could enter on Connecticut Ave. and exit on 17th street.

The northern edge of the hotel was bounded by DeSales Street, NW, a one block long mid-block connector between the two avenues.  And opposite the Mayflower (just outside our window), across DeSales Street at mid-block, was ABC News' Washington DC bureau.  How cool - people making television, right there!

Ten years later, I was working 1/2 block away on 17th Street at the National Geographic Society, and we usd to graze around the neighborhood, picking off a number of researchers from NPR and ABC News when we were staffing up NG EXPLORER.

ABC sits chock-a-block with a parking garage and there was a small, greasy spoon lunch counter there in the mid-80's.  I don't remember the name of it but one day we were all piled in there, jockeying at the counter, when a loud, bold and insistently-recognizable voice cut through the din: "Ham and Swiss!  Right Here!! - That's Mine!!!"  He reached above and across the throng, grabbed the bag, threw a $5 bill at the counter guy who laughed, and he bolted.

"People ask me about my relationship with President Reagan. I say it was a case of two 'hams' discovering each other. Only I played the 'straight man' and he always had the last word."

One of his most widely remembered questions during his tenure at the White House came during the Reagan administration: "Mr. President, in talking about the continuing recession tonight, you have blamed Congress and mistakes in the past. Does any of the blame belong to you?" To which Reagan retorted: "Yes, for many years I was a Democrat!"