[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 122 (Wednesday, September 19, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9501-S9502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO PETER MARUDAS
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, my longtime Chief of Staff, Peter
Marudas, retired recently from public service. It has been both an
honor and privilege to work with Peter these many years. He has been
not only a superb member of my staff, but also among my closest and
dearest friends. I consider myself, and the citizens of Maryland,
fortunate to have benefited from his service, counsel, and commitment
to the highest standards of conduct and ethics.
In addition to his many years of service in the United States Senate,
Peter's illustrious career includes service for several other public
officials, including three former Baltimore City Mayors: Theodore
McKeldin, Thomas A. D'Alesandro III, and Kurt Schmoke. While working at
the highest levels, Peter has remained a down-to-earth, committed
public servant, known for his exuberant good humor and generosity.
The attached Baltimore Sun article of August 18, 2001, accurately
reflects not only Peter's individual and unique personality, but also
the admiration and esteem in which he is held by all who are privileged
to know him. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From The Baltimore Sun, Sept. 18, 2001]
Hail and Farewell
(By Carl Schoettler)
National television cameras catch Peter Marudas, Sen. Paul
S. Sarbanes' chief of staff, and Allan Greenspan, chairman of
the Federal Reserve, head to head in deep confab at a Senate
banking committee hearing about a year ago.
Marudas immediately starts getting calls: What did he tell
you? A hiccup from Greenspan can jump-start the stock market,
up or down.
Marudas laughs. He likes telling this story.
He and Greenspan were talking about jazz.
As a young man, Greenspan played clarinet, flute and a
little sax in New York jazz bands, including one led by
Leonard Garment, who became President Nixon's White House
counsel. Marudas is a lifelong and knowledgeable jazz fan.
A couple of months earlier, Marudas had asked him, ``Who do
you think is the best saxophone player?''
Greenspan replies, Ben Webster, a mainstay of the Duke
Ellington band.
``That's really an aficionado,'' Marudas exclaims. ``You
got to know jazz to say that.''
So the next time Greenspan comes before the banking
committee, Marudas gives him a Ben Webster tape. And the two
are recorded for TV posterity talking about jazz, not G-8
economics.
Bringing Greenspan the Webster tape exemplifies Pete
Marudas' style: kind, thoughtful, generous and politically
astute. For nearly 35 years, Marudas has brought his
particular, perhaps unique, political acumen to Baltimore,
Maryland and national politics. Now, he's bowing out.
The farewells began Wednesday as he celebrated his name day
at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation. It was
the Feast of the Dormition, the Assumption in most Western
churches. Marudas' name in the church is Panagia, which is
roughly Greek for ``Our Lady,'' the Virgin Mary. He's a
devout Orthodox Christian and of course active in church
politics.
Thursday he celebrated his 64th birthday, basically working
in his Washington office, although well-wishers flooded the
Sarbanes switchboard with birthday wishes and goodbyes.
Friday was his last day at work and the end of his own
remarkable chapter in Maryland politics.
``It's an existential decision,'' he says of his
retirement. ``We got the senator re-elected in the fall and
he's now a chairman, which is what we were working for all
the years. The Banking Committee, you can really do a lot
there, the predatory lending business, you know, and just the
integrity of the capital markets.''
He still had a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on his
office wall yesterday as he got ready to leave. ``I got
Truman, Roosevelt and Jefferson. And I have a labor union
organization picture from the C.I.O., `March with CIO to
Victory.' Well, we [See Marudas, 8d] owned this bar where all
these U.A.W. workers came in, when I grew up in Detroit,''
he says.
As a kid, he spent his summers in Baltimore where his uncle
ran a dry-cleaning shop on Light Street in what is now
Federal Hill, and he had relatives who lived in Brooklyn.
Another uncle ran a restaurant in Curtis Bay.
``The first political event I ever attended was in the 1952
campaign,'' Marudas says. ``The Democratic candidates always
kicked off their campaign in Detroit on Labor Day.''
Adlai Stevenson was the presidential candidate.
``My cousin and I got up real early, 5:30. Our mothers
packed our lunches. We took the bus down. We were right down
in front. Walter Reuther [the leader of the United Auto
Workers union] introduced Adlai Stevenson,'' Marudas recalls.
``I was 15, my cousin was 12 or 13. It really made an
impression for me. Stevenson was a man of such dignity.''
As a college student at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, Marudas attended a lecture by Reuther, who spoke on
labor economics.
``He was a real force. He put the U.A.W. on the progressive
side of the political spectrum,'' Marudas is remembering.
``You had people who came up from the South, white and black,
where down there they had nothing to do with each other. They
worked together as shop stewards. We saw all that going on.
It really was something.
``You look at society: Wherever you have free trade unions,
they're one of the essentials of a free society.''
new deal democrat
He says it twice during a couple of long conversations. He
remains an unreconstructed Roosevelt New Deal Democrat, with
perhaps overtones of Adlai Stevenson.
``He's very strong democrat with a small `d','' Senator
Sarbanes says. ``He's a good Democrat with a big `D'. But
more importantly he's a democrat with a small `d'.
``He doesn't have an ounce of meanness in him, at all,''
Sarbanes says, with obvious fondness in his voice. They've
been personal friends longer than they've been political
colleagues. ``He's really very generous and respectful with
people. He really accords people their dignity.''
The two met when Marudas was covering City Hall for The
Evening Sun. Marudas had studied journalism and earned a
master's degree at Ann Arbor. He came to Baltimore to work on
The Evening Sun in 1963.
Sarbanes, who had been working for Walter Heller, the
chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson, came back to Baltimore to become
executive director of a commission to revise the city's
charter.
Although Marudas grew up in Detroit and Sarbanes in Easton,
Marudas says their roots were in the same province in Greece,
Laconia, in Sparta.
``Our villages are 15 or 20 miles apart,'' he says. ``We
got to know each other, became personal friends and then our
careers came together in `71.''
Sarbanes had been a congressman about nine months when
Marudas joined him in Washington.
first political job
Somewhat paradoxically, Marudas' first political job was
for a Republican, Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, who had been
governor of Maryland and was in his second term as mayor of
Baltimore. McKeldin was a liberal Rockefeller Republican of a
type virtually extinct in today's GOP.
One of McKeldin's aides was leaving and he called Marudas:
`` `The Governor'--we called McKeldin the Governor then--
would like you to take my place.
`` `Me!' I said. Then I thought he's got less than a year
to go. I went home and talked it over with my wife and my
mother-in-law.''
His wife, Irene, has been perhaps his closest advisor.
They've been married for 39 years.
``I thought, Baltimore is the sixth largest city,'' he
continues. ``It will be a chance to get a look at the inside
of government and maybe come out again and pursue a career in
newspapering.''
[[Page S9502]]
He worked for McKeldin for 10 or 11 months.
``He was a quick learner,'' says Gene Raynor, the former
head of the state election board and an astute political
observer in his own right. ``He became a master of precinct
politics in the Byzantine world of politics in Baltimore City
in the mid-'60s. There were not many people around who
understood it as well as Pete Marudas. If I were a candidate
anywhere in this state I would seek out Pete for advice.
``Paul is a kind of brainy guy, very, very smart, very,
very brainy,'' Raynor says. ``But he was in the clouds.
Marudas was right down to earth. They complemented each
other.''
Thirty years ago, a somewhat wistful McKeldin told an
interviewer. ``He [Marudas] was the best in history. If only
I had had him earlier in my career.''
The same reporter who quoted McKeldin said a half-hour
interview of Marudas stretched into a 90-minute discourse on
Baltimore, the nation, Greece and the Orioles.
Marudas has not changed much over the years. He's an
animated talker whose conversation moves by digression. His
conversation veers happily from local to national to
international politics like a bumper car in an amusement
park.
Today, you'd certainly have to add the Mideast and the
Balkans--and jazz.
some tough years
Marudas stayed on with Thomas A. D'Alesandro III after
McKeldin left the mayor's office. They were tough years for
Baltimore and the nation.
``I was thinking what I have been through and seen,''
Marudas says. ``In the summer of '67, Newark and Detroit
exploded. We felt we got through that summer. In '68, we had
the assassinations. We had the urban disturbances. We had the
Catonsville Nine trial. We had the [George] Wallace campaign.
``Then the war came in. Kent State, Johns Hopkins, they
lost control over there. We had to helicopter [Charles McC]
Mathias, then an anti-war member of the House of
Representatives, to speak to the students. We had all those
demonstrations. We didn't have what I'd call a normal year
until '71.''
That's when D'Alesandro decided not to run for a second
term and Marudas went to Washington to work for Sarbanes.
``He brought one outstanding faculty as far as service to
me as mayor and I think maybe to Sarbanes as senator,''
D'Alesandro says. ``He could sense sincerity or baloney.
``He was almost like my alter ego. I sort of found in him
somebody who thought like I thought. And he sort of read me,
in the sense he knew the things I was interested in. He
encouraged me in some things and cautioned me in other
things.
``And never had a hidden agenda. You knew you were getting
a real honest critique . . . And if we made a decision
against him he went along. He sang the song.
``I don't ever remember his trying to take credit for
anything. Everything was for me as mayor and Sarbanes as
senator . . . I loved the guy.''
And Sarbanes tells roughly the same story.
``When you draw advice and counsel from Peter,'' he says,
``the bottom line is always do the right thing.''
He laughs.
``If he thinks you're going in the wrong direction he'll
tell you in no uncertain terms. And he'll keep telling you if
you keep moving in that direction.''
prized discretion
Marudas' discretion is also legendary, highly prized by his
bosses, but sometimes irritating to council members at City
Hall. He's the reigning master of obfuscation.
Former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke remembers council members
complaining that they often did not understand what Marudas
had just said.
``That was Peter being creatively enigmatic,'' Schmoke
says. ``That was his trademark.''
Marudas picks up his own narrative thread: ``I go over to
Washington, saying maybe we have all this stuff behind us and
in a couple of years we're into an impeachment. And Sarbanes
is on the Judiciary Committee and he offers the first article
of impeachment as a junior member.''
Perhaps inevitably he thinks the Nixon impeachment was
justified and Clinton's was not.
``You don't impeach a president for a lack of personal
judgment,'' says Marudas, who read every single constituent
letter on the Clinton impeachment received in Sarbanes'
office. ``He has to have violated his constitutional oath.
Then you have to have really very strong constitutional
grounds, not some flimsy excuse.''
He returned to Baltimore again in 1987 for a stint as a
seasoned senior member of the administration of Schmoke.
``I always wanted to work for someone younger than me,''
Marudas says. ``My grandfather always said when you're young
learn from the old. When you're old learn from the young.
Schmoke actually had been an intern in Sarbanes' office in
the House of Representatives. He's as effusive in his praise
of Marudas as the other politicians.
``If I were designing a course at a public policy school,
and including a description of the effective staff person,''
says Schmoke, ``I'd model that person on Peter Marudas.''
Everybody asks if Marudas can actually leave politics
behind. Sarbanes expects to be able to call on his advice
when he needs it.
But right now Marudas plans to go to a wedding in Detroit
with his wife, Irene. He'll listen to a lot of jazz. And
he'll do a lot of dancing. He and Irene love dancing,
especially salsa.
____________________