[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 141 (Friday, October 9, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12241-S12242]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO WALTER SONDHEIM, JR.

 Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, this past July Walter Sondheim, 
Jr., one of Maryland's most distinguished citizens, celebrated his 90th 
birthday with family and friends in Baltimore. It is an accomplishment 
for anyone to reach this chronological milestone, but in this instance, 
Walter's nine decades have marked an extraordinary record of 
unparalleled public service to Baltimore and the State of Maryland.
  As a successful business executive, Walter Sondheim has served in 
``volunteer'' public service positions on important state and local 
boards and commissions and as an advisor to Mayors and Governors for 
the last half century. His grace, good humor, extraordinary 
intelligence, and dedication have been powerful and good influences for 
progress and unity in Maryland.
  Achieving 90 years of age for most ``normal'' individuals, with rare 
exception, implies retirement or reduced activity. But among the 
several articles I am inserting in today's Congressional Record is an 
announcement in the July 30 edition of the Washington Post that Walter 
was unanimously elected to become the new President of the Maryland 
Board of Education. This public demonstration of confidence is a 
continuing vindication of his effectiveness in undertaking difficult 
tasks.
  I am also including an article from the July 25 Baltimore Sun which 
describes Walter's exceptional and inspiring life of service. I know I 
express the deep appreciation of his fellow Marylanders for his many 
decades of commitment and their best wishes in his latest and most 
significant assignment. I ask that these articles be inserted at this 
point in the record, and I yield the floor.
  The article follows:

                [From the Baltimore Sun, July 25, 1998]

                         Not The Retiring Type

                         (By M. Dion Thompson)

       Walter Sondheim is on the phone, trying to get out of being 
     interviewed. He can't understand why the city's newspaper is 
     coming around, yet again, to get the tale of his life. Who 
     cares, he says.
       Yes, he is turning 90, and that is worth remarking on. But 
     all this fuss, the parties, the inquiring journalist. Is it 
     really necessary? Still, after only the slightest bit of 
     nudging, he relents, which is to be expected because, after 
     all, Walter Sondheim is a nice guy.
       On the scheduled day, he takes a seat behind the desk of 
     his 15th floor office at Baltimore's Legg Mason Tower and 
     makes one last halfhearted try.
       ``Why waste the time? It really is embarrassing, because I 
     think my friends who know me well figure. `There he goes 
     again,' '' he says, then gets down to business. ``Now, what 
     do you want? . . . What's on your mind? I feel sorry for 
     you.''
       He is painfully modest, sometimes excruciatingly so. For 50 
     years he has been the consummate citizen, advisor to mayors 
     and governors, a steady presence in his city's decades-long 
     resurgence. He led the school board during desegregation. He 
     was chairman of Charles Center-Inner Harbor Management, the 
     organization that oversaw the renewal of downtown.
       If he were a different kind of man, he could walk you down 
     Charles Street, tug at your sleeve and say, ``See, I made 
     that happen. And over there, Me. again.'' He could stand at 
     the Inner Harbor and go on about how he, Jim Rouse and others 
     turned this town around. He is not that kind of man, not one 
     to revel in yesterday's glory to seek accolades for past 
     successes. There is too much to be done today.
       Every workday he's up early, dressed in a suit and tie and 
     out the door as he has been for nearly 70 years. These days 
     is senior adviser to the Greater Baltimore Committee. He used 
     to be president.
       He could be anywhere. He has the money. He career with 
     Hochschild, Kohn & Co. ended with his retirement at senior 
     vice president and treasurer. Soon after, investor Warren 
     Buffet brought the department store company.
       Money doesn't bring him to this downtown office with its 
     view of the towering NationsBank building, the one old-timers 
     remembers as Maryland National. It isn't a yearning for fame 
     that has him fielding calls, hustling to meetings, offering 
     his considered judgment on public policy.
       Then why is he here, when he could be in Aruba, Martha's 
     Vineyard, the Cape?
       ``Well, you know, you touch on a real issue there, I'd get 
     restless if I weren't doing anything,'' he says. ``I think 
     about it every now and then because I have no reason not to 
     retire. I'm not doing anything that obviously someone else 
     couldn't do. But waking up in the morning and not having a 
     job just doesn't appeal to me.''
       Bring up the Golden Years, and Sondheim likely turns a deaf 
     ear. There's this crazy idea about retirement, as if people 
     can easily walk away from what has sustained them. Retire, 
     and do what? Sometimes there is a consuming hobby or 
     passion waiting. Sometimes, the work is its own passion.
       Sally Michel, a longtime friend, notes how work can fuel a 
     person's life. Think of the great pianist Artur Rubinstein, 
     practically blind and giving recitals at 89; or jazz 
     trumpeter Adolphus ``Doc'' Cheatham swinging at 91; or George 
     Burns at 100 with his cigars and wisecracks. Now, think of 
     Walter Sondheim.
       ``You see that when people have a purpose, a real serious 
     purpose to their lives, that they stay alive a lot longer. 
     Retirement is not a good thing,'' says Michel.
       Yet Sondheim knows longevity has its downside. He says he 
     can remember looking down the table in many board rooms and 
     seeing three or four emeritus members sitting there, ``every 
     one of them sure that he could do the job better than I 
     could, and they were probably right.''
       Now, he's Mr. Emeritus. The position doesn't sit well with 
     him. ``You can't vote, and an emeritus means you're not a 
     participant anymore,'' he says.
       He wonders if he has stayed too long. Maybe he's in the 
     way. If his wife were alive, she would tell him.
       But Janet dies six years ago come September. They were 
     married 58 years. He still wears his wedding ring.
       ``We never had a fight in 58 years. My daughter said it was 
     because we were both too lazy,'' he says and smiles a bit, 
     then talks about his loss. ``To me it has been one continuous 
     period. I don't mean a continuous period of mourning, but I 
     think about her often. . . . Missing her is institutionalized 
     in me.''
       Without her, he turned to his closets friends, asking them 
     to send him an anonymous letter if they thought he was 
     slipping.
       ``I thought it was incredible, an incredible thing to do, 
     to make that suggestion,'' says Michel, who received one of 
     the letters. ``I was just very moved by it.''
       Abell Foundation President Robert C. Embry, Jr., whose 
     friendship with Sondheim goes back nearly 30 years, also 
     received one.
       ``I know that he worries and has expressed this publicly. 
     `Has he overstayed his welcome? Is he losing his acuity? Are 
     people humoring him?' '' says Embry. ``But the opposite is 
     true.''
       Sondheim is on 24 boards and foundations. That sounds 
     impressive, overwhelming, but some meet once a year, some 
     once a month, he says. When officials from elsewhere call the 
     GBC about Baltimore and its redevelopment, they get Walter. 
     He still talks to the mayor, the governor. He was chairman of 
     the ad hoc committee that picked the Hippodrome for an 
     expanded center of performing arts.

[[Page S12242]]

       ``Walter is the quintessential public servant,'' says Mayor 
     Kurt L. Schmoke. ``He remains an important adviser in 
     business and political activities in this community. I just 
     met with him as recently as this week to talk about downtown 
     development.''
       It all started long before he was appointed to the ``Jewish 
     slot'' on the city school board in 1948. It started July 25, 
     1908, in the front room, second floor of 1621 Bolton St. 
     That's where he was born. He graduated from Park School in 
     1925, then went on to Haverford College. There were 81 
     graduates in the class of '29. A dozen remain.
       On his yearbook page, the editors wrote: ``By 
     simultaneously preserving his pride and refusing to take 
     himself seriously, he has practically forced us to consider 
     him seriously as one of the prides of the class.''
       Not much has changed in 70 years. In the mid-1950s, his 
     calm approach made Baltimore the first school district south 
     of the Mason-Dixon Line to respond to the Supreme Court's 
     landmark ruling outlawing ``separate but equal'' education. 
     Some one burned a cross on the lawn of his Windsor Hills 
     home, but it didn't stop him.
       During the 1960s Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro III sought his 
     help.
       ``His calling card is integrity and, as I said before, he 
     has no hidden agenda,'' says D'Alesandro. ``My whole concept 
     of Walter was that he was a cut above.''
       He does not have a ``typical'' day. It depends on where he 
     is needed. Just the other day, he showed up for the Maryland 
     Art Place's dedication of its miniature golf course at Rash 
     Field. He called himself ``Tiger Wouldn't.''
       ``Me, who's opposed to all exercise,'' he says, of what 
     turned into an awful day. He tripped and fell on the 17th 
     hole. ``I ripped my suit beyond repair. I went to get my car, 
     it had a $20 ticket on it.''
       He still drives his black Acura Legend, and walks when 
     there is a purpose. Not too long ago he walked from his 
     Harborview apartment to a dinner party on Federal Hill. The 
     hosts were very concerned.
       ``You know, you shock people if you drive. You shock people 
     if you walk,'' he says.
       At 90, he goes where he wants, when he wants. He does 
     acrostics for fun, and surprises himself by still being able 
     to recite the Keats he learned at Haverford.
       ``I've had a lucky life,'' he says, pale blue eyes shining 
     behind his glasses. ``It's not because of me. I've been lucky 
     to be in places.''
       Now there are rumors that he's the odds-on favorite to be 
     the next state school board president. He says he doesn't 
     want the job. Yes, he has been involved with education for 50 
     years, but he doesn't consider himself an expert.
       ``I don't think it would be wise for them to pick me,'' he 
     says, wondering aloud how it would look, a 90-year-old man.
       So often in the past people have come to him, seeking his 
     perspective, his gift of compromise. He has said ``yes'' 
     probably more times than he can remember. His resume lists 78 
     committees, boards and foundations he once served.
       ``My wife, who used to chastise me for saying `Yes,' said, 
     `It's your curiosity,' '' he says. ``The truth is, I'm a 
     little bit of a sissy. I don't like to say `No.' . . . That's 
     not a strength, you known. That's a weakness.''
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, July 30, 1998]

                 Sondheim to Head Maryland School Board

                          (By Ellen Nakashima)

       At 90, Walter Sondheim Jr. protested that he was too old to 
     head the influential board that sets education policy in 
     Maryland. Just Friday he insisted, ``You don't get wiser with 
     age.''
       But other members of the Maryland Board of Education would 
     not hear of it. Yesterday, they unanimously elected the self-
     deprecating Baltimorean--the godfather of the state's school 
     reform efforts--as their new president.
       A man who has urged friends to write him anonymously when 
     they felt it was time for him to ``hang up the spikes,'' 
     Sondheim is now the oldest person in the country to lead a 
     statewide education board.
       ``I'm very grateful to all of you,'' he told his colleagues 
     yesterday. ``It's a nice thing to do to an old man.''
       Although it's a part-time job with no pay, heading the 
     state board requires an ability to smooth out the ripples 
     created by 12 strong personalities. In the past months, board 
     members have clashed over such issues as whether to require 
     teachers-in-training to take reading courses and how to 
     institute new high school exams for graduation. And Sondheim, 
     a consensus-maker par excellence, was the best candidate to 
     keep the board on a fast track to education reform, board 
     members said. He replaces Rose LaPlaca, whose term has 
     expired.
       ``This is a man who's a cut above everyone,'' said State 
     Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, herself a recognized leader 
     in school reform. ``Very few people have intelligence coupled 
     with integrity. He is as intellectually sharp as someone half 
     his age. Most people have lost more gray matter in their 
     thirties than he has in his lifetime.''
       Sondheim has a wry sense of humor that is almost always 
     directed at himself. (A Navy lieutenant in World War II, he 
     never served overseas--``It could possibly be why we won the 
     war.'' What did he do in the Navy? ``I didn't interfere.'')
       He was appointed president of the Baltimore City school 
     board in 1954 on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court handed 
     down the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation 
     decision. He has headed the state's Higher Education 
     Commission. And in 1987, then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer 
     tapped him to head to Governor's Commission on School 
     Performance, which in 1989 released what has come to be known 
     as the Sondheim Report--or the blueprint for school reform in 
     Maryland.
       They are all posts he says he did not seek.
       ``I've just lived a long time,'' he said, shrugging off his 
     achievements. ``You will find that the older you get, the 
     nicer people are to you.''
       Sondheim, born and bred in Baltimore, serves on 24 boards 
     and foundations and works full time as a consultant to the 
     Greater Baltimore Committee, a booster group he once headed. 
     He chaired Charles Center-Inner Harbor Management, which 
     sparked the revival of downtown Baltimore. Today, he works on 
     the 15th floor of the Legg Mason Tower, a few blocks from the 
     state board office. His dress is impeccable, from buttondown 
     shirt to wingtip shoes.
       ``I don't know anything about his genes, except his 
     remarkable physical ability,'' said Schaefer, 76, who 
     declares himself ``just a child beside Walter.'' Said 
     Schaefer: ``He's got the stamina of a man 55 years old. He's 
     amazing. He can outwork guys in their fifties, sixties.'' And 
     he doesn't exercise.
       ``Oh, God forbid!'' Sondheim exclaimed. ``I'm opposed to 
     it. I don't believe in exercise. It's partly because I've 
     never done any form of athletics very well. I'm not an 
     athletic type. I get kidded about that a lot.''
       He stood for two hours Tuesday night at a birthday party in 
     his honor despite having fallen and hurt his leg. About 100 
     of his closest friends served him up a three-foot-long cake 
     with 15-inch-high candles. According to Schaefer, he blew 
     them out with one puff and declared: ``No presents. No 
     speeches. No exceptions.''
       Sondheim, whose wife, Janet, died six years ago and who has 
     two children and two grandchildren, gets asked all the time 
     when he'll retire.
       ``I have no idea,'' he said. ``Somebody may tell me it's 
     time to do it. I keep a watchful eye out for being past my 
     time. And I have some friends I expect to tell me when my 
     time has come.''
       But Schaefer believes Sondheim will never hang up his 
     spikes. ``He'd be bored to death,'' Schaefer said. ``He 
     couldn't retire. He just couldn't. Besides, nobody wants him 
     to.''
       Sondheim's agenda for the coming year is simple.
       ``I think what I hope to do in the next year,'' he said, 
     ``is wake up every morning.''

                          ____________________