Not many parties end with back-to-back singing of “Happy
Birthday” and “God Bless America", but those were the main sentiments Sunday
afternoon for one of the Baltimore area’s most celebrated public figures –
Helen Delich Bentley.
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| Helen Bentley (Photo by Bonnie Schupp) |
And in a “roast” leading up to the songs, many of Maryland’s
top politicians and business leaders gave voice to their love for (and yes,
even fear of) the 90-year-old former newspaper reporter, Federal Maritime Commission chairman and five-term
congresswoman.
Hundreds of invited guests from all aspects of her life --
including relatives, extended family, even her dentist – heard testimony from the
likes of congressional leaders and former governors on the influence Helen had
both on them and the city and state. The turnout filled the main hall of the waterfront
Baltimore Museum of Industry, which was decorated with photos showing scenes
from her life, including her husband, antique dealer Bill Bentley, who died a
decade ago.
Matter not that she is a Republican. No less a liberal
Democrat than the Baltimore area’s Elijah
Cummings, among the most senior African Americans in congress, called her “my
dear sister” who “helped me to dream bigger dreams.”
It was Helen, Cummings said, who first told him he was being
named chairman of the House subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Affairs
and, more bluntly, to “take it.” This notwithstanding his tendency to get
seasick “even on small boats” and that “I can’t swim.” A day later, Nancy Pelosi
delivered the offer, with the admonition that “I want you to keep it a secret,” he said.
Nothing affecting the Port of Baltimore could be kept secret
from Helen Bentley, who began reporting on maritime affairs at The Baltimore Sun soon after her hiring
in 1945 and held the title of maritime editor when newly-inaugurated President
Richard Nixon changed the course of her life with an appointment to head the
maritime commission in 1969.
I intersected with Helen during the last year and a half of
her newspaper days, mostly as an editorial assistant and young reporter taking dictation over the
phone and through a static-faulted dictation recording device to which she
radioed or phoned in some of her stories from distant assignments –
interspersed with salty language when that primitive technology seemed to be uncooperative.
Legend has it that she could out-cuss
the most-hardened longshoremen.
As a longtime denizen of the city desk, including nearly a
quarter-century as a rewriteman and my final six years as night metro editor, I
had the bad habit of answering phones on the first ring, and knew many of the
regular callers simply by voice – Helen among them.
I rarely saw her, and that she even remembered who I was
over the years was flattering. But she seemed to remember people of all sorts, among
them The Sun’s longtime telephone
operator, the late Betty Cramer who, after leaving the newspaper because of
multiple sclerosis, received Christmas baskets every year, and other help, from
the congresswoman.
The printed invitation to her party was headed by its
honorary co-chairs, former Maryland Governors Marvin Mandel, a Democrat, and
Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican who, before his lone four-year term in that
job, had succeeded Helen in her House of Representatives seat. It was Ehrlich
who prompted the renaming of what is now the Helen Delich Bentley Port of
Baltimore, as part of its 300th anniversary celebration in 2006.
Mandel, now 93, spoke
briefly of Helen and some of the notable guests as “the people who made this
the great state it is.”
“I thought this was a memorial service, and then I saw her,”
joked Ehrlich, looking around at what he called “a room full of people who both
love her and fear her.” He also told of
Helen’s influence on his life – and his dating habits. He said she disapproved
of some of his girlfriends, but eventually found one she deemed right, and how he’d
bring her over to visit with Helen on a date. It was an odd threesome, but
Helen would put him to work moving heavy things around her house while she sat
and talked to the young lawyer friend, Kendel, who would eventually become his
wife and, during his term as governor, Maryland’s “first lady.”
The state’s senior U.S. senator, Barbara Mikulski, recalled
a time early in her political career when Helen Bentley was pushing for the deepening
of Baltimore’s harbor to accommodate
larger ships and disposing of the dredge spoil at tiny Hart and Miller Islands
off Baltimore County. Mikulski, with concerns that included fear of possible
toxic contaminants, was initially an opponent but said that Helen played a big
role in changing her mind.
The project was eventually approved, including a share of
federal money. The port channel was deepened, and the enlarged islands eventually
became a popular recreation area for boaters.
Former U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes noted that Baltimore, in
large measure because of Helen’s continued efforts, now is one of just two ports
in the nation that can receive the super-size container ships that soon will be
accommodated by a deepened and enlarged Panama Canal passageway.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer included Helen as among the
four former Republican members of congress present who had identified
themselves as members of the Maryland delegation – “not as Republican members
of the Maryland delegation” – in a lament that “we’re at a time where we have
real polarization, confrontation and gridlock in the Congress of the United
States.”
Hoyer also alluded to Helen’s championship of American
manufacturing, and how as a congresswoman (and no stranger to a sledgehammer) she
staged public bashings of Japanese-made electronics and even an automobile
outside the Capitol building. “I have here a letter from the Japanese ambassador
that, because we have a mixed crowd here, I won’t read,” Hoyer joked. (There
were children in the crowd.)
Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger said even in running against Helen
for her old seat when it was vacated by Ehrlich, “we always agreed to fight it
out fairly and squarely.”
“Helen and I had 11 debates. After it was over, we shook
hands.... She is an adviser to me in the House.”
But it was Cummings, the black Democrat, whose remarks about
Helen “as a mentor of mine” were the most emotional and, likely to some,
unexpected.
At his request, Cummings said, Helen became a board member
of the Baltimore Maritime Industries Academy Foundation, and for seven years
has attended its monthly meetings and visited its public high school program
that has introduced many teenagers – in particular, the congressman noted, African
American children -- to maritime skills and the world of the port.
“The kids love her, and she loves them,” he said, finishing
up his remarks by telling her, “I will go to my grave appreciating the impact
you’ve had on my life.”
Helen had the last word. A little stooped from the effects
of aging, and thus a few inches shorter than she used to be, Helen stood on a
low, carpeted riser behind the podium and told about why she wanted to have the
huge “birthday bash.”
As the daughter of Serbian immigrant parents and growing up
in Ruth, Nevada, she could not recall having had a birthday party. “You were given a kiss and a
piece of cake.”
She added: “I decided
I wanted to see all of this while I was still above ground.”
The invitation specified no gifts, but listed her favorite causes
for contributions, among them the museum, the state goodwill vessel Pride of
Baltimore, the Maritime Industries Academy Foundation, animal-protection groups,
the Bentley scholarship fund at the University of Baltimore, and the one we
chose, Wounded Warriors.
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