While the world waits for him to move on, here’s a Mandela story for you.
I was in D.C. taking a week long class called Capitol Hill Workshop. During the introductory session, our instructor informed us that later in the week, Nelson Mandela would be addressing a Joint Session of Congress. He noted that it was very rare for Congress to convene a Joint Session, other than the President’s annual State of the Union address, and he suggested that we contact our Congressman to see if we could obtain a ticket to attend it.
I immediately called Steny Hoyer’s office to see about obtaining a ticket. The young lady who took my call said that she would see what she could do and told me to check back with her later.
Well, long story short, after several calls back to Steny’s office on a twice daily basis, the young lady finally told me on the day before the Joint Session that there were simply no tickets available. She apologized and explained that each Congressman had only received a few tickets and the few that Steny had received had already been disseminated.
Wondering why she had not just told me that from day one, nevertheless I wrote it off to bad timing and luck. Mandela addressed the Joint Session and it was quite the event at the time even without yours truly in attendance. End of story except…..
Several months later I was talking to someone who is a good friend of Steny’s. He mentioned how smart Steny is and asked if I remembered when Nelson Mandela addressed the Joint Session of Congress. After acknowledging that I knew of it, my friend then proceeded to tell me that Steny had obtained a bunch of tickets to the event and then had passed them along to all of the black ministers and politicos in PG County so that they could attend the session.
Very smooth move by Steny; but I haven’t voted for him since then. As for Nelson himself, I’ve always been a fan not only for his political abilities, but also for his personal approach to marriage as discussed here by Chris Rock: