A bunch of guys loaded the contents of William Donald Schaefer's Pasadena townhouse into a truck the other day while he lunched, unsuspecting, at Petit Louis in Roland Park.
The former mayor, governor and comptroller was moving, only he didn't know it.
A longtime aide with power of attorney had been pushing for him to move to Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville for a long time. And the famously cantankerous politician had been pushing right back.
"I wasn't ready to move," Schaefer, 86, said yesterday, recalling how the aide initially sent movers to his house three weeks ago, not long after a fall at home required a trip to the emergency room and stitches. Schaefer was home when the first movers arrived and sent them packing.
"I said, `I'm not ready yet. Get out. Scram.'"
The push and pull between an elderly person who wants to live independently and relatives and friends who fear he can no longer do so is nothing unusual. So many families have struggled over that issue that it's become a cliche - one voiced in Schaefer's last run for office.
Janet S. Owens, the former Anne Arundel County executive, said when she told Schaefer she would challenge him in the Democratic primary for comptroller, it was like having to tell "Grandpa" it was time to give up the car keys.
"The lifestyle transition is always difficult when you realize other people are sort of telling you you have to do something," said Alexis Abramson, who has a doctoral degree in gerontology and appears on Retirement Living TV, which was created by Charlestown's developer. "It's difficult because you feel somewhat disempowered, that you're not the decision-maker.
"That loss of control and that loss of power, no matter whether you're a janitor or a senator or a governor or a CEO, you were in control of your own life and when that slips away from you ... it's just an uncomfortable feeling," Abramson said.
Schaefer is a lifelong bachelor who, people used to say, was married to the city of Baltimore. It was a long and mostly happy marriage, blessed by twin stadiums and the rebirth of the Inner Harbor. But 50 years in public life came to an end after a series of inflammatory comments. When voters cast him out in 2006, he lost not just his job, but, in a sense, his spouse.
