May 1, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks E 889

ECONOMICS JOURNALIST HOBART ROWEN DIES;

REPORTER AND FINANCIAL EDITOR AT THE

POST

(By Claudia Levy and Bart Barnes)

Hobart Rowen, 76, an economics reporter

and editor at The Washington Post who

played an important role in bringing coverage of business news and economics into

the mainstream of American journalism,

died of cancer April 13 at his home in Bethesda.

Mr. Rowen, a leading economics journalist

for five decades, joined the news staff of The

Post in 1966. He was a pioneer in bringing

economic news to Page One and was known

for his ability to explain domestic and global

economics in terms that helped readers relate them to their own bread-and-butter issues.

His work took him to conferences around

the world, to the boardrooms of industry and

business and to the seats of power in Washington and other national capitals. In his

news stories and syndicated columns, Mr.

Rowen broke new ground on such issues as

fiscal and monetary policy, the implications

of appointments to the Federal Reserve

Board and the actions of the World Bank and

the International Monetary Fund.

‘‘He was the first economics reporter of his

generation who could go to a press conference about economics and know more

than the guy who gave it,’’ said Benjamin C.

Bradlee, the former executive editor of The

Post, who hired Mr. Rowen ‘‘to bring the

newspaper’s business coverage from nowhere

to somewhere.’’

When Mr. Rowen arrived at The Post, the

paper’s business and financial staff consisted

of one editor, two assistants and a news aide,

and most of its coverage was devoted to promotions and retirements at local businesses.

Today, The Post’s business section includes

a staff of 55 with bureaus in New York and

Tokyo.

In addition to his work in print journalism, Mr. Rowen appeared frequently on television broadcasts such as ‘‘Washington Week

in Review,’’ ‘‘Nightly Business News,’’ ‘‘Meet

the Press’’ and ‘‘Face the Nation.’’

‘‘We have lost one of this nation’s preeminent economic journalists,’’ Treasury

Secretary Robert E. Rubin said yesterday at

a speech in Los Angeles. ‘‘He was a leader in

bringing to the fore those issues which are so

central to the economic debate.’’

Mr. Rowen was born in Burlington, Vt. He

grew up in New York and graduated from the

City College of New York. In 1938, he joined

the Journal of Commerce in New York as a

copy boy and nine months later was hired on

as a reporter to cover commodities.

He took courses at the New York Stock

Exchange and wrote a pamphlet on futures

trading. He was assigned to the paper’s

Washington bureau in 1941 to cover the new

defense agencies and show their interaction

with business.

Mr. Rowen took a two-year break from

journalism during World War II to work as a

public relations specialist with the information division of the War Production Board.

In 1944, he joined the Washington bureau of

Newsweek, writing a business trends page for

the magazine that interpreted news for the

business community. Until joining The Post

at the invitation of former Newsweek colleague Bradlee, Mr. Rowen remained with

the news magazine.

As financial editor and assistant managing

editor for business and finance at The Washington Post, Mr. Rowen oversaw the launching of the newspaper’s Sunday Business section and an expansion of its business coverage. He continued his column and broke

many stories, including a prediction that

dollar devaluation and wage-price controls

would be imposed before those events occurred in 1971.

In 1967, he drew the wrath of the Johnson

administration with a story quoting a ‘‘high

government official’’ to the effect that costs

of the war in Vietnam would rise sharply

above official estimates. It turned out later

that the unnamed official was William

McChesney Martin, chairman of the Federal

Reserve Board.

Mr. Rowen returned to full-time writing in

1975, and in 1978, he was named international

economics correspondent. He said he found

the beat increasingly important because in

many respects Washington, not New York or

London, had become the financial capital of

the United States and of the world. He covered the fluctuation of the dollar and other

currencies, third World economics, international trade and world economic summits.

In addition to his twice-a-week column,

‘‘Economic Impact.’’ he contributed to publications, including Harpers and the New Republic.

His books included ‘‘The Free Enterprisers:

Kennedy, Johnson and the Business Establishment,’’ ‘‘The Fall of the President and

Bad Times and Beyond’’ and ‘‘Self-Inflicted

Wounds: From LBJ’s Guns and Butter to

Reagan’s Voodoo Economics,’’ published last

year.

‘‘Self-Inflicted Wounds’’ told a story of

‘‘blunder, mismanagement, stupidity and irresponsibility by officials whose chief obligation to govern the nation was betrayed by

their embrace of politics misconceived and

ineptly applied.’’ This had led the nation on

a path of ‘‘slow but steady self-strangulation,’’ he wrote.

In 1992, Mr. Rowen wrote for The Washington Post Health section about the misdiagnosis of his prostate cancer that led to

incorrect treatment at Georgetown University Hospital. He emphasized the need for a

second opinion, even at the nation’s most

prestigious medical institutions.

Mr. Rowen’s honors included Gerald Loeb

awards for best economics column, for a

piece on problems faced by the International

Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and for

lifetime achievement. He also received the

distinguished service award for magazine

writing from the Sigma Delta Chi journalism

honorary society.

He also received the John Hancock award,

the A.T. Kearney award and the Townsend

Harris medal of CCNY. He was elected to the

Hall of Fame of the D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and won the

first professional achievement award of the

Society of American Business Editors and

Writers.

Mr. Rowen served on the Town Council of

Somerset in Chevy Chase from 1957 to 1965

and was president of the Society of American

Business Writers and the Washington professional chapter of Sigma Delta Chi. He was a

member of the National Press Club, the National Economists Club and the WashingtonBaltimore Newspaper Guild.

Survivors include his wife of 53 years, Alice

Stadler Rowen of Chevy Chase; three children, Judith Vereker of London, James

Rowen of Milwaukee and Daniel Rowen of

New York City; and five grandchildren.

AFFIRMING EQUALITY IN RHODE

fISLAND

HON. GERRY E. STUDDS OF MASSACHUSETTS

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Monday, May 1, 1995

Mr. STUDDS. Mr. Speaker, on March 19,

the Rhode Island House of Representatives

approved legislation to prohibit discrimination

on the basis of sexual orientation. If, as expected, the bill clears the Senate and is

signed by the Governor, Rhode Island will become the ninth State to provide such protections to its citizens.

This milestone was marked by the Providence Sunday Journal of April 2, 1995, in a

superb column by M. Charles Bakst which I

am proud to insert in the RECORD.

The article describes the passage of this

legislation through the eyes of one of the people who worked hard to bring it about. His

name is Marc Paige. Among other things, he

is gay and living with AIDS. He is also a

former member of my campaign staff whom I

am proud to call my friend. His personal journey is a familiar story for all who grow up gay

in our society, and the families and friends

who love them.

The article follows:

[From the Providence Sunday Journal, Apr.

2, 1995]

GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST SAVORS BIG VICTORY

(By M. Charles Bakst)

When the House last week passed the gay

rights bill, supporters of the measure were

jubilant. One of them, watching from a gallery seat, was Marc Paige of Cranston.

He is 37. He is a gay activist. He is Jewish.

And he has AIDS.

Paige is part of the army that has long

fought for this measure to ban discrimination against homosexuals in employment,

credit, housing, and accommodations. It has

kicked around the capitol for 11 years and

now, having survived the House, appears

headed for Senate passage and signing by

Governor Almond.

‘‘All Rhode Islanders won today,’’ Paige

enthused after Wednesday’s House vote. And,

of course, he was right. Whenever society

takes a stand against discrimination against

anyone, it is a victory for everyone. But if

you sit and talk with Paige, you will get a

better appreciation of why this bill has such

meaning for gays and lesbians, and of the

hurt and pride that motivate him to seek its

passage.

If the bill is enacted, he says, it will be a

‘‘very big deal.’’ Though not transforming

society overnight, it will be a start:

‘‘It’s going to give gay people the knowledge that they do have recourse if they are

discriminated against. And it’s going to,

hopefully—and I have no delusions that it’s

going to be in my lifetime—make things

easier for, particularly, the children who realize that they’re gay, that they’re lesbian.

Because it pains me the most to know that

kids today are still experiencing the isolation, the fear, that I had to go through.

Being a teenager is hard enough. These are

needless, senseless, tragic emotions that

they have to deal with.

Paige, who has helped organize demonstrations against anti-gay-rights legislators, can

be as militant as they come. But he also can

sound gentle, and sunny.

A friend, former Sundlun administration

staff chief Dave Cruise, says, ‘‘He’s an amazing person. With what his future holds for

him, he doesn’t bear ill will toward anyone.’’

Paige tested HIV-positive in 1989. He says

this was a result of unprotected gay sex

years earlier in a less enlightened age. By

1993, he had full-blown AIDS.

‘‘I feel sometimes like I’m living with a

time bomb inside me,’’ he says. ‘‘And I know

that I could get very sick. But I’m starting

new treatments and I’m trying to stay

healthy as long as possible and I take it a

day at a time.’’
E 890 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks May 1, 1995

He adds, ‘‘I couldn’t say for sure that I’m

going to be here for my niece’s bar mitzvah,

which will be in three years. I’d say it’s even

money. But we don’t know what will be developed, so there’s always hope. As long as

you’re breathing, there’s hope.’’

He grew up in a middle-class family.

As a teenager, he realized he was gay—and

that he felt isolated.

‘‘Teenagers especially want to fit in, and,

when you’re gay, when you’re lesbian, you

don’t fit in. So then I threw my energy into

other causes. I was very involved with B’nai

B’rith youth . . . I worked very hard on

Jewish causes, on Israel.’’

He was a student at Cranston West and he

was still in the closet:

‘‘I knew a couple of gay people at my high

school. They were constantly tormented and

harassed. So the messages I received

throughout all of society were, ‘This is very

bad.’ So I kept it hidden, as most gay kids

do.’’

Then he went to college in New Jersey:

‘‘One night, when I enrolled at Rutgers

University, my freshman year, a snowy December night, I got up my courage and I

went to a meeting that was advertised in the

school newspaper for the Homophile League,

which is a very antiquated term, but this

was back in 1976, and I expected to find the

monsters that society told me would be

there, and what I found were wounderful,

supportive, warm, welcoming people and I realized then I wasn’t some terrible person.’’

Now it was Christmas vacation:

‘‘I wanted to share the joy that I was feeling with my parents. I was finally able to be

comfortable with who I was, and I shared

that information with them. Their reaction

was shock, disappointment.’’

Did they send him to a psychiatrist?

‘‘No, because I wouldn’t have gone to a

psychiatrist. There was nothing wrong with

me . . . It took me about six years of torment, really, to come to this position, so I

wasn’t going back and I wasn’t going to feel

badly about myself ever again on this issue.’’

Eventually, he says, his parents came

around, ‘‘because they loved me, whoever I

was.’’

Paige often speaks in schools and in temples, including Barrington’s Temple

Habonim, where I first encountered him. He

says his Jewishness played a large role in

shaping his gay activism:

‘‘Growing up, my parents instilled in both

my sister and myself a strong sense of Jewish identity, and also we learned about the

injustices that were brought upon the Jewish

people throughout the ages, particularly, of

course, only 50 years ago, when 25, 30 percent

of the world’s Jewry was eliminated from the

planet. I have seen what the seeds of hatred,

bigotry can do.’’

He no longer works—he was in the fashion

industry and, for awhile, in the state Department of Administration—but he’s still out

speaking, often on AIDS prevention.

This past Tuesday, he was buttonholing

legislators, and on Wednesday, the day of the

House vote, he was at the State House again

to take in the scene.

Outside the House entrance, we happened

upon Linc Almond, a backer of the bill. ‘‘I

want to thank you very much for your support,’’ Paige said. In fact, he had some news

for the governor. When Almond was barraged

by anti-gay-rights calls on a recent Steve

Kass WHJJ talk show, Paige’s was the only

supportive call that got through.

We went up to a House gallery and there

was Eileen Gray, Paige’s 66-year-old mother,

sporting a button that said, ‘‘I’m straight.

But not narrow.’’

I took her aside for a moment and asked

why she was there.

‘‘Because I believe in the bill and I’m supporting my son,’’ she said.

Many parents would say, ‘‘It’s bad enough

that he’s gay. Why does he have to be public

about it? The last thing I want is to be public.’’

Gray said, ‘‘I’m his mother. I love him

with all my heart and soul. I don’t think

there’s anything wrong with him. I don’t

think he’s ‘sick.’ I have become educated and

wiser, hopefully, to understand that a certain percentage of the population, from the

beginning of time, is born gay. What’s the

big deal?’’

Not that it was easy for her to accept initially. She said when she first heard Marc’s

news, she spent a day in bed with a headache,

and her daughter, three years older than the

son, phoned.

‘‘My daughter Robin called me and said,

‘Mom, what’s the matter?’’’

‘‘I said, ‘It’s Marc.’’’

‘‘She said—in a frantic voice suggesting a

fear of something like cancer— ‘What?’’’

‘‘Marc told me he’s gay.’’

The daughter, relieved it was only that,

said, ‘‘Thank God.’’

That helped, Gray said.

Now Marc, with AIDS, does face a grim future. But Gray was upbeat.

‘‘He’s very good,’’ she said. ‘‘He takes very

good care of himself.

And, with medical technology, I think he’s

going to be here a long, long time. I truly believe that.’’

Now the House debate began and droned

on—with exquisite odes to equality and dignity, but also with ugly, arrogant talk of

gays and their so-called lifestyle that is, in

some eyes, such an abomination before God.

Paige told me had a headache. ‘‘I don’t

know if it’s from this or the AZT I took a

couple of hours ago.’’

He sat with a House seating diagram, with

notations of the expected vote lineup, which

was thought to be very close.

And then the actual tally came—passage

by a surprisingly comfortable 57 to 41.

Thrilled, he turned to me and said, ‘‘Wow!’’

As they made their way out of the gallery,

he and his mother kissed.

EXEMPLARY VA EMPLOYEES

fHON. G.V. (SONNY) MONTGOMERY OF MISSISSIPPI

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Monday, May 1, 1995

Mr. MONTGOMERY. Mr. Speaker, our

human vocabulary does not contain the words

to accurately describe the horror, the sadness,

the profound feelings of grief and loss we

have all experienced since the April 19th

bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. This monstrous act—targeted at our

young innocents, at the elderly seeking their

Social Security benefits, at disabled veterans

checking on their vocational rehabilitation or

compensation benefits, at the hundreds of

Federal employees laboring conscientiously to

serve their fellow citizens—epitomized man’s

inhumanity to man. In response, we want to

reach out to the injured and to the families of

those who are missing or dead, and speak the

words that will relieve their suffering. Knowing

this is impossible we nonetheless struggle to

share with these blameless victims our concern for them and the pain we feel on their behalf.

In contrast to the ugliness of the bombing,

countless men and women in Oklahoma City

epitomize, by their selfless heroism, courage,

valor, and determination, the deep concern

most of us feel for one another in this country.

I am particularly proud of the extraordinary response of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs

[VA] employees in Oklahoma City. Most of you

read in the April 23, 1995, edition of the

Washington Post the remarkable account of

the brave actions of the VA staff who were in

the Federal Building at the time of the explosion. I will not soon forget the description of

Paul Heath, a VA counseling psychologist,

who, having escaped the collapsed building,

returned to his ruined office with a stretcher to

rescue his badly-injured colleague. For the

benefit of my colleagues who did not have an

opportunity to read the Post article, a copy follows:

[The Washington Post, April 23, 1995]

PELTED WITH GLASS, BURIED BY WALLS, THIS

OFFICE OF EIGHT PULLED THROUGH

(By William Booth)

OKLAHOMA CITY.—They began an extraordinary day as the most ordinary of people.

On Wednesday morning at 9, they sat at

their computers or leaned on their desks in

the Department of Veterans Affairs’ small

office on the fifth floor of the Alfred P.

Murrah Federal Building. There were eight

of them that morning, people similar to hundreds of thousands of federal employees

across the nation.

‘‘Just the most normal day,’’ rehabilitation specialist Diane Dooley would recall

later. ‘‘That’s how the day started, just the

same old, same old.’’

But not for long. In the time it might have

taken to retrieve a file, the office was ripped

in half by a massive explosion from a car

bomb set off just outside the building’s front

entrance. Those inside were buried by an avalanche of debris or swept away in a blast of

flying glass.

In the torrent, they lost fingers and eyes

and ears. Their bones were broken and twisted. Some even lost their sense of where and

who they were, becoming white ghosts covered in dust and blood, wandering in shock

through a building filled with the dead.

Later, at least one of them would wonder

why he was not more brave; another would

claim they were not heroes. All of them

wept. But all of them survived the bomb that

went off at 9:04 a.m.

‘‘We were so lucky,’’ said Jim Guthrie. ‘‘I

know if things had just been a little bit different, that we could all be buried out there

in the rubble.’’

The VA office was not unlike the 14 other

agencies’ offices in the building. Each was

filled with bureaucrats, secretaries, clients—

perhaps 800 people in all that morning, now

grimly divided between the survivors and the

dead. Although its occupants were more fortunate than many others, the story of the

VA office is in many ways the story of them

all.

The eight VA employees pushed papers but

they also pushed disabled veterans, helping

them get jobs and benefits. They thought of

themselves as a family: They told jokes,

they made calls, and they filled file cabinets

with stories of veterans getting ahead in life

or spiraling ever downward. Of the eight

workers, five were veterans themselves.

They called themselves by alphabet letters, as federal employees so often do—CPs

and VRSs and LVERs: Counseling Psychologists and Veteran Rehabilitation Specialists

and Local Veteran Employment Representatives. On Wednesday morning, they were discussing their QRs, or Quality Reviews. They

were busy, one recalled without irony,

‘‘reinventing government.’’