I loved Miss Reno.
An improbable leader, the fact of her is one of those stories you tell when you want to be super proud of America. How she made it from there to there? Remarkable in every respect.
I worked for her for a long, but not long enough time, before I’d been to her house, the one she was born and raised in. The house her mother built. I mean literally built; not had someone build on spec. The house with one of those outdoor refrigerators with the very long extension cord to the house. And the water pump. And peacocks that roamed the backyard. Without air-conditioning, in Miami.
She was Ma Kettle, who happened to go to Cornell and Harvard Law, and ran and won five times to be State Attorney in one of the more raucous places in the country, Dade County, Florida.
The thing about Miss Reno, the thing that has me crying at the counter at Wagamama in Heathrow Airport right now as I wait for my flight home, is that every single room she entered had its level of integrity, and kindness, and fairness, raised. Not just raised, but focused.
She had her detractors, my people in Miami among them, angry that we sent Elian Gonzalez back to his Dad, who wanted him. But up close, she had people who were cajoled to be our best selves around her. And I mean best selves.
At Justice you execute people. At the time, you deported them. You incarcerate, wiretap, indict and defend people. It’s hard and weighty stuff. I don’t think I once had a meeting or conversation with her which didn’t explicitly start with “what’s the right thing to do?”. Miss Reno really understood politics; she was an elected official, and she surely knew public messaging. But it was subsumed to fairness, and justice, and integrity. Always.
She always took the bullet. There are tens of thousands of people serving you at Justice, each charged with being there to take responsibility for something. Miss Reno started at the top. First to offer to testify, first to sign the letter, first to say I’m responsible. Mama Bear.
I loved Miss Reno. We shopped in the Talbot’s catalogue together (for her). And went to the Hair Cuttery (for us). We giggled, and sat, and traveled for work together. I learned a lot from that amazing woman. About the law, about policy, about politics. About the trees and the forest. About the veto threat, and the thank you note.
We worked on Waco and Ruby Ridge and aid in dying and impeachment and Oklahoma and… I have to stop i’m getting a migraine again.
She fretted about what to wear for opening day of the Supreme Court, there never having been a woman Attorney General and the tradition was formal tails. We went with a black dress with big white buttons; it was tux-like. I was the first openly gay male to be confirmed to a law enforcement agency in the United States (J. Edgar Hoover: eat your heart out), and it was because Miss Reno had the courage to recommend me to President Clinton, and sent me up to that Senate and defend me.
She was, to my knowledge, mad at me only once. We were alone at dinner in Houston on an official trip. Tired. I referred to my wonderful daughter and used the word “kid”. She was furious, oddly. “She is not a ‘kid’. She is not to be called a ‘kid’. She is your magnificent and beautiful and amazing child. A precious child. And you are to remember that.” I don’t know what I triggered in her, but I appreciated the admonition, and have never done it since.
The thing about Miss Reno is that if you worked for her and had to be somewhere she would drive you mad. We’d have 10 minutes to get to the Senate for something, and she’d be standing in the door of the elevator at Justice asking the janitor if his mother had made it through surgery, and how she was doing? You’re that person, tapping your foot, coughing, making it clear we are going to be late.
Miss Reno was doing what she wanted to do, and what she did best — treat us each as we are; meaningful, important, beautiful and complicated in our own way.
I really loved Miss Reno. God bless her.
