Extraordinary, Ordinary People

by Condoleezza Rice

  I loved the pace and the sense of being a part of an adventure. Life had settled into a nice post-provost pattern and I was quite content. I would discuss the campaign frequently with Daddy. When I arranged to have George W. Bush meet my father during a trip to Palo Alto in the fall of 1999, Daddy was hooked. He peppered me every night with questions about campaign strategy that I couldn’t answer. “How in the world did we screw up New Hampshire? George Bush isn’t getting through to people that he is going to be different. That’s what people need to know.” John Rice was a loyal Republican. He loved Governor Bush and my association with the campaign.

  Then, in February 2000, Daddy suffered cardiac arrest. I was back home, helping to rally the troops for the California primary in the wake of the disasters in New Hampshire and Michigan. The night before, I’d told Daddy that I would stop by to watch a Stanford basketball game but that I first had to go to a campaign rally in Palo Alto. I called after the rally and almost said that I was too tired and would just go on home. But I didn’t. I went to his house and we ate pizza and watched the game. Daddy mentioned that he’d forgotten to pick up his heart medication from the pharmacy. “Oh, I’ll get it tomorrow,” he said.

  The next morning I was getting ready to do an interview with a reporter named Ann Dowd for a profile of me. Ann had gone to interview my father that morning and was in the house when suddenly my father had the attack. She called 911 and then my longtime assistant, Marilyn. I was in a meeting, but Marilyn burst in and said that something had happened to Daddy and he was not breathing. I rushed out and sped to his house. It looked like a scene from ER. Daddy was on the floor and they were shocking his heart. I heard the medic say, “I have a weak pulse.” We all rushed to the hospital and waited. It hadn’t been a heart attack, but his heart had stopped long enough to cause what his physician called an “anoxic brain event.” Essentially, he’d been deprived of oxygen to his brain and was now in a coma. No one could say what the prognosis was.

  Daddy continued in a coma for about a week and then he began to stir. But he’d sustained significant brain damage. A few times we were asked those awful questions about life-sustaining support. Here I have to say that I was weaker than my stepmother, who was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to keep my father alive. I just wasn’t so sure and prayed every day and night for guidance about what to do.

  Then one day I was in his room and the basketball game was on television. I thought I could see him tracking the game with his eyes. Nurses and doctors said that this was something families often imagine. But a physician who was also my good friend stopped by, and I asked her to watch him for a moment. “No doubt,” she said, “he’s tracking.” Not long after, Daddy began to improve, and eventually he was transferred to a nursing home for long-term care.

  Soon after, I resumed my campaign activities. I called several times a day to check on Daddy. Friends such as Louis Olave, the long-term partner of my dear friend Chip, took daily shifts to sit with my father. Lytton Gardens had wonderful, caring attendants, especially Carmen, my father’s favorite nurse. But nursing homes are woefully understaffed. Thus, I never trusted the quality of care enough to leave him alone, even for a minute.

  Sometimes Clara or my aunt Gee, my mother’s sister, who’d come out to help us, would put Daddy on the phone. He seemed to know that he was talking to me. I tried never to be away from home for more than seventy-two hours, returning to help oversee his multiple therapies and feeding tubes or struggle with Medicare and insurance. And I would endure those terrible episodes when he would yell out for what seemed like hours. This was, according to the doctors, a good sign that the brain was repairing itself. To me it sounded as if my father were being flung into the depths of hell.

  By the summer, Daddy’s condition had improved somewhat more and we moved him home. We found wonderful caretakers, including a huge but loving Tongan man named Tai. Daddy seemed to understand what was being said to him, but his responses were often off track. Yet at least he was home, where we could sing together and share the occasional flashes of lucidity that would come. Sometimes he’d amaze us all. On Thanksgiving as we gathered around his bed, my uncle Alto said, “Who is going to give the blessing?” Without missing a beat, Daddy reached somewhere deep into the recesses of his memory and prayed.

  He never fully recovered, but he fought to live. Several times he was near death and refused to go. As I watched this giant of a man who’d loved me more than anything in the world approach the end, it was hard to find much good in life. It seemed so unfair that I could no longer share stories of the campaign with my father. Here I was at the height of my professional career and my father couldn’t enjoy it with me. Not surprisingly, my absences from home became a source of guilt, and the campaign, which had been such a wonderful magical mystery tour, became something of a slog.

  I kept going and told myself that Daddy undoubtedly approved of my decision to keep my commitment to the campaign. The pace of the campaign kept me away from home more than I would’ve liked. But slowly the governor was climbing in the polls and clearly had a real chance to be President. After the debates that fall in which Governor Bush fought Al Gore to at least a draw on foreign policy, it was in the hands of the voters. I felt that I had done all I could do.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Florida

  I FLEW DOWN to Austin the afternoon of the election. By the time I arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel, the news stations were chalking up state after state in the Gore column. By the time I made it downstairs to watch with a few Bush friends and family, everything was going against us: Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida were all gone. I sat there with Doro Bush Koch, the governor’s sister, and watched in dismay. “Let’s change places,” I said to Doro, employing a superstition from my days as an athlete and a sports fan: if your team is not winning while you’re sitting on the right side of the sofa, move to the left. Yes, I know it doesn’t matter, but it can’t hurt.

  We did change places. Almost magically, NBC News reported that we had won Georgia. Then Jean Becker, the elder George Bush’s assistant, got a call. Jean had been a reporter, and a friend from USA Today called to tell her that they were about to reverse the call on Florida. Within what seemed like minutes but was much longer, the TV screen suddenly began showing “George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States.” It was quite a moment, and immediately I just wanted to call my father. I decided not to, fearing that he would be too disoriented to share the moment with me.

  I jumped in a minivan with other Bush supporters for the trip to the capitol for the victory speech. It was freezing cold in Austin and we stood on the square, rocking to “Y’all Ready for This” from the Jock Jams album, and hugging each other. But something was wrong. Al Gore hadn’t conceded. I could also see the big screen displaying CNN’s election coverage. The margin of victory in Florida was shrinking very fast.

  Then Karen Hughes, who was with the Bushes, called her husband, Jerry, and reported that Gore had withdrawn his concession. After another hour or so, we all shuffled back to the minivan and went back to the hotel. There was confusion but not really despair. I went to bed and woke to the news that Florida would be contested.

  When I spotted Fox News reporter Carl Cameron in the lobby, I asked him, “What’s going on?”

  “I thought you might know,” he said, and then went on to tell me that there would likely be a recount.

  I also ran into Bob Blackwill. “You know what this is like? It’s like eating a really spicy meal before bed and having a bad dream. You think to yourself, ‘Must have been what I ate last night. Boy, I’m glad to wake up from that one!’ ”

  But of course it wasn’t a dream. I stayed in Austin a few days. I hung out near Karl Rove, trying to understand what was really happening via his sophisticated county-by-county analysis of our chances in Florida.

  Governor Bush called the morning after the election to say that he wanted me to be national security advisor, but we’d obvi
ously have to wait a bit on any announcement. It was surreal, but we went through the motions of planning a foreign policy transition that might never happen. One particularly bad idea was to have a photo op of the governor and me sitting in front of the fireplace discussing foreign policy. It looked like a faux Oval Office shot and was properly ridiculed. I decided to go home to California.

  The return to California gave me a chance to spend quality time with my father. I watched the ups and downs in Florida, my mood swinging with every court decision. Sometimes Daddy seemed to be tracking, becoming agitated and shedding tears when the news was bad.

  I left on December 8 to attend a meeting of the foreign policy team in Washington. We were planning for the transition in case there was one. After the session, Steve Hadley, who had worked with me on the campaign, and I were sitting in the conference room of his law office when we got word that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a manual recount. We walked outside toward the restaurant for dinner. “Steve,” I said, “I would have loved to serve with you. You would have been a great deputy national security advisor.” I flew home to California the next day believing that it was over. When I got off the plane and into the car, my driver, Mary Reynolds, gave me an update. The Supreme Court had by a 5–4 decision issued a stay, halting the manual recounts and setting a hearing for the matter on Monday, December 11. This meant that the judges in the majority were likely to rule in favor of Bush on the merits of the case, certifying Bush as the winner of Florida’s electoral votes. George W. Bush would indeed become the 43rd President of the United States.

  That night I went to a surprise birthday party for George Shultz at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. The mood was very festive, and everyone congratulated me on my appointment. It hadn’t been announced, but it had been assumed for a long time that I would accompany the governor to Washington as national security advisor. I accepted the thanks, but the next morning I called the governor and told him that I didn’t think I could go to Washington. I explained that I couldn’t leave my father in his current state. In fact, I’d already told a couple of close friends. I remember a conversation with my friend from my early days at Stanford, Janne Nolan. “People would understand if I said I can’t do it because of the children,” I said. “They won’t understand my obligations to my father.”

  “Rent a baby,” Janne said. We laughed, but she was one of the few who seemed to understand.

  The governor called back and said that he understood but that it was important I go. “I’m not asking you to leave your dad alone. He’s always been there for you, and you want to be there for him. We’ll make it work.” We agreed that I’d come to Washington but travel back to California every two weeks. In my heart I knew that it wasn’t a practical solution, but I wasn’t prepared to leave my father alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “The Saints Go Marching In”

  THREE DAYS before Christmas I went to have dinner at the home of my good friend and sports buddy Lori White. I stopped by to see Daddy on the way, and he seemed in pretty good spirits. I called a few hours later as I was leaving Lori’s house, and Daddy got on the phone.

  “I’m going home,” he said.

  “Daddy, you are at home,” I answered.

  “No, it’s time for me to go home.”

  I knew in my heart what he meant, and it terrified me. My father, a Presbyterian minister and a man of great faith, believed that at the end of our earthly existence, God calls us home to eternal life.

  I rushed to his house. He seemed fine, and I left. I drove the ten minutes to my house. As I walked in the door, Clara was calling. Daddy had stopped breathing. We rushed to the hospital. This time the physical and mental damage were irreparable. On Christmas Eve, after slipping into a coma, my father died.

  I’d told Daddy just after the election that George Bush wanted me to go to Washington and become national security advisor. He was able to communicate his understanding, but he also cried, and I couldn’t tell whether they were tears of joy for my achievement or tears of despair because he knew that we would be separated. With his death he resolved my dilemma. Was it coincidence? I’ve always prayed that it was, because I can’t bear to think that John Wesley Rice Jr. deliberately did this one last thing to make sure I fulfilled my dreams. Honestly, it would have been just like him.

  The funeral for my father stood in stark contrast to the private service for my mother. John Rice loved people and people loved him. Jerusalem Baptist Church, where Clara worshipped, was filled to the rafters. Jonathan Staples, the Jerusalem pastor, gave the eulogy. He was yet another young man whom my father had befriended and mentored. I made certain that there was a Presbyterian minister participating, given my father’s long association. Frank VanderZwan from Menlo Park Presbyterian, my church, had worked with my father in outreach to East Palo Alto. Clara and I sang “In the Garden,” a song that my father remembered and sang until the very end.

  I come to the garden alone,

  While the dew is still on the roses;

  And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

  The Son of God discloses.

  And He walks with me,

  And He talks with me,

  And He tells me I am His own;

  And the joy we share as we tarry there,

  None other has ever known.

  The service ended with a little jazz ensemble playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” for this son of Louisiana.

  We laid Daddy to rest at Alta Mesa Memorial Gardens, not far from the Stanford campus, on December 28. A few years before, I’d moved my mother’s remains from Denver to the same cemetery. When I decided to do so, my father was very pleased. But he reminded me that the grave is not really a Christian’s final resting place. “The Lord’s eternal home is the final destination,” he’d say. At the end of Daddy’s life, I was comforted by my faith in the truth of what he had said and my belief that he and my mother were united again.

  I LEFT for Washington about a week later. There was so much to do as the new national security advisor. I told myself that I couldn’t afford to be debilitated by my grief. I just powered through the meetings, the briefings, the calls each day, determined to do what needed to be done. Yet ever since my mother’s first bout with cancer I had wondered how it would feel to live without my parents. We had been so close. Would I ever feel whole again?

  Oh, how I missed them. At the inauguration in 2001, I ached to have my parents sitting on the Mall watching George W. Bush take the oath of office, ushering me into the White House as well. When I landed in Moscow aboard a plane that simply said “The United States of America,” I wanted to send them the photograph. Visiting the Holy Land, I thought of how much my father would have relished walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. Sitting in the Presidential Box at the Kennedy Center, I thought that my mother would have loved to have seen Aïda there and that my father would have hated it but gone along for “Ann’s sake.” And, of course, in 2010 I wanted my father to know that the New Orleans Saints had won the Super Bowl. He would have loved that!

  But often it has been their presence, not their absence, that I’ve experienced. I could almost see John and Angelena Rice at the door of my West Wing office as national security advisor, and again hovering over me as I flew into a combat zone in Baghdad or Kabul as secretary of state. “You are well prepared for whatever is ahead of you,” I could hear them say. “Now don’t forget that you are God’s child and He will keep you in His care.” They remain by my side. And I feel today, as before, the overwhelming and unconditional love of the extraordinary, ordinary parents that I was so blessed to have.

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  I CONSULTED SEVERAL sources to supplement my own recollections of the events that shaped my life experiences. In recalling my early childhood in Birmingham, I benefited greatly from interviews with friends and neighbors as well as from former students and colleagues of my parents. I am grateful to Eva Carter for helping to organize some of t
he interview sessions that brought me back to Alabama, and I am thankful to the following people for sharing their own memories of my mother and father: Carolyn Armstrong, Deborah Cheatham Carson, Margaret Cheatham, Gloria Dennard, Harold Dennard, Ann Dowling, Lillian Ford, Raymond Goolsby, Linda Harris, Willie Harton, Helen Heath, Eugenia Henry, George Hunter III, Vanessa Hunter, Edythe Williams Jones, Ann Lampman, Jim Lampman, Dannetta Thornton Owens, Ricky Powell, John Smith, Julia Emma Smith, Leola Smith, Carole Smitherman, John Springer, James Stewart, Elaine Thompson, Carol Watkins, and Cora Williams. I am also grateful to Harold Jackson, Sheryl McCarthy, and Amelia Rutledge for helping to clarify my recollections of their achievements.

  To help reconstruct the historic events of the early 1960s in segregated Birmingham, I consulted Clay Carson, professor of history at Stanford and director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, who provided valuable insights and perspectives. I also drew upon Glenn Eskew’s remarkable But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, which was particularly valuable in helping me to recall details of the “selective buying campaign,” the 1963 municipal elections, the “Children’s Crusade,” and the May 11 riots. Stanley Robinson at the Birmingham Park and Recreation Board provided a number of helpful articles from the Birmingham News and the Birmingham Post-Herald on the city’s segregated recreational facilities. Jim Baggett at the Birmingham Public Library’s archives department and Wayne Coleman at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute provided me with key documents and photographs from this era.