Champion of The Elderly

(4 of 9)

His weekends are scarcely less regimented. Not long ago, he traveled to Austin for a Saturday speech, then flew to Miami for a funeral on Sunday. He took a 10 o'clock flight that night to Boston, getting to bed in Cambridge at 3 a.m. A limousine picked him up at 7:45 a.m. Monday for breakfast with Harvard President Derek Bok. (A gentle flirt with women, Pepper probably would have preferred eggs and bacon with Bo Derek.) He held a series of press conferences, spoke for an hour to a Harvard Medical School gerontology class, then returned to Washington for an afternoon of House business. That night, Pepper made another speech.

Often described as a millionaire (he says he would qualify only if some Florida beach land he owns were sold for his asking price of $600,000), Pepper has no qualms about drawing some $650 a month in Social Security benefits that he qualified for at the age of 72. And he says he will not mind paying tax on this pension, as required under the new law for high income earners. Says he: "Social Security is an insurance program to which I have contributed. It isn't welfare."

The Peppers had no children, and he has long referred to his staff as "my family." But he has been lonely without Mildred. He sadly recalls the day when he and his wife sat at a small table in their Miami home after she had begun treatments for cancer. "Well, Claude," said Mildred, his wife of more than 40 years, "it looks as if we may be coming to the end of the road." He embraced her and said through tears, "Don't talk like that, Mildred. I can't think of life without you." In their Washington apartment, there is still a note in his wife's handwriting attached to a shower curtain. It reads: "After your shower, please close this curtain."

"He has flair," says Anne Ackerman, 69, a Democratic leader in Miami's Dade County. "He has style. He epitomizes what a public servant should be. Claude Pepper represents an America that is a civilization rather than just a country with borders. He is what you want life to be."

Part of Pepper's style is his droll humor. Some of his jokes may be as old as he is, but his deadpan delivery delights his audiences. Arriving late for a speech, he tells his listeners about two men in colonial days who were set to duel at dawn. Only one of the antagonists showed up. The other sent a note by messenger. It read: "I'm running a little late this morning. Please go ahead without me."

Another Pepper story, which Reagan has taken to telling on occasion, involves a bishop and a Congressman who arrive in heaven together. St. Peter shows the Congressman a lavish suite of rooms, while assigning the bishop a small one with no view. When the bishop complains that his lifetime of service to the church rates something better, St. Peter replies: "Don't feel bad, Bishop. You know, we have thousands of bishops up here, but this is the first Congressman we ever got."