Tom Moore
2007-11-26 08:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

Maryland’s greatest politician since Revolutionary figure Samuel Chase is finally slowing down. The lion known as William Donald Schaefer is in the winter of life.

After 51 years of his life spent in politics, winning elections as city councilman and mayor of Baltimore, governor and comptroller of the state of Maryland, Don Schaefer has found the first opponent that could really beat him — time.

The great governor once held press conferences attended by every major newspaper and television station in Maryland, and sometimes Washington, D.C., too. Now, he spends his days accepting awards (“I’ve got too many already,” he says), sleeping and going out to eat.

“Don is always on stage,” says friend and former mayoral candidate Mike Schaefer. A recent dinner outing saw diners readily coming over to our table to say “thank you” to the man who has meant so much to Maryland politics, and for the betterment of the state.

“William Donald Schaefer was one of my greatest challenges as governor,” said former Gov. Robert Ehrlich, at a recent speech to Rotary and Kiwanis clubs. “Schaefer is an old-school politician. Where my generation was the TV generation, and today’s generation is the Internet generation, William Donald Schaefer’s generation was the newspaper generation,” said Ehrlich.

“Schaefer read the newspaper every day, and his mood [at meetings of the Board of Public Works] depended on what he read in the paper that day. If some homeless shelter needed saving, and he read about it in the paper, he would give up everything to save it,” said Ehrlich.

Schaefer owns the same two houses he has owned since dating Hilda Mae Snoops, his longtime girlfriend and former gubernatorial ‘official hostess’ (Schaefer calls her his First Lady), who died in 1999.

Don Schaefer doesn’t walk very well anymore, making the climb up and down his Pasadena steps an ever-increasing challenge. “Don, you ought to move into my apartment building,” says Mike Schaefer, a former hotelier. “It would be much easier on your legs. I can give you an entire floor with a doctor and a nurse nearby.” Schaefer just says, “Oh yeah?” and smirks in a curmudgeonly humorous manner.

He jokes about how the media never latched on to him. “The Baltimore Sun always hated me,” he says slyly.

“But you fooled them, didn’t you?” I ask, “When you said you were going to run for mayor of Ocean City.”

“You got that right,” says Schaefer, of a jest he made at his final press conference as comptroller, taken seriously by media members from The Sun to The New York Times.

In all his years in politics, Schaefer calls being mayor of Baltimore “the greatest job I ever had.”

On an appearance on my radio show, Schaefer spoke of driving through Baltimore neighborhoods and pointing out to aides potholes that needed filling or lights that needed changing.

He was the consummate caring politician, love him or hate him, always doing what he thought was right.

“That’s why he’s the most beloved Maryland politician of the last 100 years. There will never be anyone like him again,” said Ehrlich.

Schaefer, on this night at dinner, talks about the night a deranged man named Hopkins tried to kill him during his time as mayor. “We wouldn’t give him what he wanted, I think … but I never met the man,” says Schaefer.

“I told my secretary I didn’t want to be disturbed during lunch that day. ... Then there was this loud knocking on my door, but I didn’t respond to it, because I asked her to keep the door locked,” says Schaefer.

“So he went down the hall with her at gunpoint and killed a city councilman. My secretary was my angel. She saved my life. I don’t fear anything anymore now, not even death.”

Tom Moore hosts “The AES Tom Moore Show” Saturdays 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. His Web site is http://www.tommooreradio.com