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NO CONDITION IS PERMANENT: Former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Reflects on Passion, Politics, Passion and Purpose
I am pretty sure that if you read much of this book, you will find yourself saying: “This guy is too good to be true.”
Yes, that's what the friends of Del Lewis have spent their lives saying. A success in business, in politics, as a husband and as a father, Del is a little hard to believe.
Here's something still more unbelievable: Del's continual success and his reputation for brains, reliability and decency might easily have left a trail of jealous people and of rivals. That didn't happen.
For one thing, Del was never consumed by ambition. He took time to actually do the jobs he had—Peace Corps country manager, telephone company executive, president of National Public Radio—before going on to the next one.
I met Del when we were both young business executives—he with the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company and I with The Washington Post—in a Washington just recovering from the 1968 riots.
There were people who were respected in DC's white community and others who were respected in its much larger African American community. A tiny number were respected in both, and Del Lewis would have led that list.
In a life filled with events, Del leaves out quite a few. He was a director of Apple Computer in the mid-1990's. That doesn't even make the book, and his other corporate directorships don't either.
In a very short chapter of this book, Del tells how an experienced politician suggested he might one day be the Vice-President of the United States—if he just ran for mayor of Washington first. I'm not sure that was at all unrealistic.
Many people in Washington wanted—maybe even prayed for—Del to run against Marion Barry (Mayor Barry is one of several people who is treated more kindly in Del's book than he deserved).
In this book, Del confirms the story we all heard at the time—that his magnificent wife Gayle put her foot down and told him he wasn't going to be a political candidate. It is interesting to ask oneself what might have happened if Gayle had leaned the other way. I think Del would have been quite likely to win a race for mayor. But it's not a job that has made any incumbent happy in my lifetime. Perhaps Gayle was wise.
Del, born in 1938, lived to see a very different America than the one he grew up in. He served on the staff of the first African American U.S. Senator since Reconstruction, Edward Brooke; became the first African American president of NPR; served as U.S. Ambassador to a post-Mandela South Africa; and raised wonderful children.
If you do not know Delano Lewis, I envy you the chance to learn about him in this book. He is a man worth knowing, and worth knowing about. Congratulations to Brian Lewis if he helped talk his Dad into setting down these memories.
Description review by Don Graham, Former Publisher of The Washington Post
Yes, that's what the friends of Del Lewis have spent their lives saying. A success in business, in politics, as a husband and as a father, Del is a little hard to believe.
Here's something still more unbelievable: Del's continual success and his reputation for brains, reliability and decency might easily have left a trail of jealous people and of rivals. That didn't happen.
For one thing, Del was never consumed by ambition. He took time to actually do the jobs he had—Peace Corps country manager, telephone company executive, president of National Public Radio—before going on to the next one.
I met Del when we were both young business executives—he with the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company and I with The Washington Post—in a Washington just recovering from the 1968 riots.
There were people who were respected in DC's white community and others who were respected in its much larger African American community. A tiny number were respected in both, and Del Lewis would have led that list.
In a life filled with events, Del leaves out quite a few. He was a director of Apple Computer in the mid-1990's. That doesn't even make the book, and his other corporate directorships don't either.
In a very short chapter of this book, Del tells how an experienced politician suggested he might one day be the Vice-President of the United States—if he just ran for mayor of Washington first. I'm not sure that was at all unrealistic.
Many people in Washington wanted—maybe even prayed for—Del to run against Marion Barry (Mayor Barry is one of several people who is treated more kindly in Del's book than he deserved).
In this book, Del confirms the story we all heard at the time—that his magnificent wife Gayle put her foot down and told him he wasn't going to be a political candidate. It is interesting to ask oneself what might have happened if Gayle had leaned the other way. I think Del would have been quite likely to win a race for mayor. But it's not a job that has made any incumbent happy in my lifetime. Perhaps Gayle was wise.
Del, born in 1938, lived to see a very different America than the one he grew up in. He served on the staff of the first African American U.S. Senator since Reconstruction, Edward Brooke; became the first African American president of NPR; served as U.S. Ambassador to a post-Mandela South Africa; and raised wonderful children.
If you do not know Delano Lewis, I envy you the chance to learn about him in this book. He is a man worth knowing, and worth knowing about. Congratulations to Brian Lewis if he helped talk his Dad into setting down these memories.
Description review by Don Graham, Former Publisher of The Washington Post
214 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 20, 2018
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