FEATURES – SEPTEMBER 2009

Hampton Roads Takes Over Richmond?

GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION HOPEFULS WITH LOCAL ROOTS TAKE A BREAK FROM CAMPAIGNING TO HELP US GET TO KNOW THEIR SOFTER SIDES

By Phyllis Speidell
Photos by John H. Sheally II

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Back in 1991, on Petunia Crescent in Virginia Beach's Green Run section, Bob and Maureen McDonnell struggled to shoehorn their growing family, newborn twin sons and three young daughters, into their single-story tract house, a former handyman's special.

Bob McDonnell, in his mid 30s with a fresh law degree from Regent University, five years in the corporate world and a couple years experience as a prosecutor in the Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney's Office, had just been elected delegate to the General Assembly from the 84th district, ousting a 20-year incumbent in a surprise victory. He'd simultaneously finished law school and a master's degree in public policy while working as a sales manager for The Virginian-Pilot and serving in the Army reserves while Maureen waited tables at Captain George's.

It was life at a hectic pace for the McDonnells—or as Bob McDonnell puts it, "The years without sleep."

Now, 18 years later, the family lives in a plush Glen Allen golf course community just west of Richmond. McDonnell, the recently resigned attorney general of Virginia, is a partner in Huff, Poole & Mahoney, P.C and the Republican gubernatorial candidate. Maureen runs her own business, Nu-U International, Inc. from home, marketing nutritional consumer products.

The address has changed, the children have grown and the political ambitions have escalated, but McDonnell's "regular guy" persona and his focus on family remain unchanged. It's the family, he says, who relentlessly keep him grounded in the midst of a schedule that still verges on hectic.

When he was elected attorney general, Maureen and the kids were proud, but not overwhelmed, and let him know it. His teasing them that his opinions as attorney general, unlike some of his less popular opinions at home, might actually count for something led to their nicknaming him "The Great and Mighty AGOVA."

But amid the good humored banter the family recognizes his dedication. Sean, one of the twins, tells us "He cares a lot and makes time to just talk to us."

McDonnell, 55, ( June 15, 1954), is generally up early and out the door before the rest of the family awakens. He gave up coffee after 21 years in the Army, rarely drinks tea and is trying to wean himself off Diet Coke, so with a comb in the pocket of his well pressed dark suit and the day's agenda at the ready, he snags a bottle of water. A custom pack of vitamins slips into another pocket while he grabs a banana or a granola bar (preferably chocolate chip or honey nut) from the large glass jar in the kitchen.

Photographer John Sheally and I arrive in Glen Allen on a rare morning when he's still home at 9 a.m. The family rolled in late the night before from a week's vacation on Lake Michigan and, as we chat, more media are lining up outside, waiting, and the kids are just rolling out of bed.

"Politics rule your life, but when Bob was a delegate, that seemed more local," Maureen says. "The difference now is the magnitude."

The McDonnells, married for 33 years, tell us they met at a party in Northern Virginia after his first year at Notre Dame, where he was on an ROTC scholarship. She worked at the State Department and was a Redskinnette, one of the high-kicking dance squad members that predated the Washington Redskin Cheerleaders.

Although they joke that he was hoping only for free football tickets, not a wife, the couple married three years later and launched a fastpaced family life.

"When he first got into politics I made him promise not to change," she says. "For the rest of my life I want to love the same man I fell in love with."

That would be the man, she says, who drove through the night from meetings on the other side of the state to be home when their twin sons left on their first trip to Boy Scout camp. The man who made it to all the swim meets, soccer games and singing performances. The man who loves yard work and still wields a weed whacker while their sons mow the lawn. The man who pitches in to do the laundry— and even windows. And the man who quietly reaches for Maureen's hand wherever they are.

"Throughout all his years of public service, when he comes home, he's still Dad," she says. "He doesn't have an ego—never tried to impress even his own kids."

Caitlin, the couple's 24-year-old daughter assures us he's the same person at home as he is in public. "He's just my role model in every way," she says. "He always puts everyone else first."

That "regular guy" would also be the McDonnell addressing a gathering of Virginia secondary school principals in Williamsburg in June. When his introduction includes a comment that "The man you see in the commercials with the family is real," McDonnell adds, "I'm the only candidate with twin sons who just got their driver's licenses—I know I can handle a crisis."

And he smiles as he mentions that Caitlin and oldest daughter, Jeanine, 28, are both working in his campaign. Jeanine recently finished a tour of duty with the Army including a stint in Baghdad, Iraq in 2005–2006.

He draws laughs recounting his eighthgrade memory of flipping a marshmallow egg in the air and watching it land on the overhead light fixture in the classroom. As the candy melted, the sugary surface caught fire and began to drip burning droplets.

The resulting trip to the principal's office ended, he jokes, with an "acquittal on trumped up charges of trying to burn the school down."

He skips mentioning how proud his mother would have been to see him come so far from the 5-year-old boy who accidentally set his younger sister's hair on fire. That incident surfaced as part of his gubernatorial nomination acceptance speech in May.

Family anecdotes sprinkle McDonnell's conversation as well as his speeches. Riding from his Columbus Street law office in Virginia Beach to an appearance at the A.P. Moller-Maersk Terminal in Portsmouth, he shares more stories.

All four of his grandparents were immigrants including the grandfather who was delayed in coming to the US in April 1912 because he caught chicken pox and missed the boat—the Titanic.

And McDonnell laughs about his two early, and brief, brushes with fame.

"I've always loved a challenge," he says remembering the highlight of his football career at Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria. He was one of only three players to score against the city's newly integrated T. C. Williams High School in 1971, the season portrayed in the Denzel Washington film Remember the Titans.

In 1976 he went on active duty with the Army, assigned to Grafenwohr, Germany, where he was a platoon leader and ran a medical clinic on post. While there he took night classes from Boston University to earn an MSBA degree. He also earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records—for the longest litter carry. He organized and led two four-man teams to carry a stretcher with a 120-pound body on it for 93.4 miles across the German hills in 32 hours in September of 1977—and held the record for three or four years.

"I do have the knack of being in the right place at the right time," McDonnell says. "Might be Divine Providence."

And when you're descended from a huge Boston Irish Catholic clan like his father's family—the kind of family where a portrait of John F. Kennedy hangs on the dining room wall, family ties are strong and no one's a stranger for long—Divine Providence is not to be taken lightly.

"His mother worried that he wouldn't make it past the age of 8," Maureen says of his rambunctious childhood as the oldest of five children growing up on Wagon Wheel Road, on land that was once part of George Washington's Mt. Vernon property.

His father, Lt. Colonel John McDonnell, moved the family there when he retired from the Air Force in 1964 to work for the Naval Investigative Service. Washington became Bob McDonnell's political hero—for his honesty, leadership and entrepreneurship.

"Washington was a man of great faith and knew the limits of power—and in 1799 he was the largest distiller in the U.S.," McDonnell says.

McDonnell's lifelong love of learning led to the trio of graduate degrees he's collected, and shows in his focus and curiosity. We listen as he peppers the executives at the Maersk terminal with questions—about land reclaimed to build the terminal, the depth of the channel, the capability of the cranes, the detection of chemical/biological threats—and the future of the longshoreman displaced by technology.

As we're ready to leave the terminal McDonnell, seeming oblivious to the schedule that has his staffers fidgeting, continues talking, easy in his conversation as the guy next door, that "regular guy," talking over the fence.

For the rest of Hampton Roads Takes Over Richmond, pickup our September 2009 issue where ever magazines are sold.

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