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Carolyn Van Houten

In January 1977, when Walter F. Mondale became vice president, the editors at The Washington Post decided that some reporter should cover the new VP full time. The problem was that none of the senior reporters was interested in traveling around with this notoriously loquacious politician. Our ace political correspondent, David Broder, put it this way: “Cover a speech by Walter Mondale? That’s 2½ hours of my life I’ll never get back!”

So the job was handed to the newest and youngest member of The Post’s national news staff — the guy who couldn’t say no. That’s how I got the Mondale beat. This assignment spawned a friendship that spanned decades and continents. Yes, Mondale, who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/walter-mondale-dead/2021/04/19/c14c277e-a1d6-11e6-8832-23a007c77bb4_story.html">died Monday at 93 years old</a>, could be a bit long-winded, but he was also a decent, thoughtful, generous man. He had a trait that would be invaluable in today’s often-vicious political world: He repeatedly went out of his way to be kind to others, regardless of stature or party.

Early in his vice-presidential tenure, Mondale was scheduled to give a speech in Detroit, at a sparkling new downtown facility called the Renaissance Center. On Air Force 2 en route to that event, I mentioned to the Democratic vice president that my father, a leader in Michigan’s Republican Party, had been part of a city commission that planned the new center. A couple of hours later, when we arrived at the venue, I discovered that Mondale had directed his staff to track down my dad and invite him to the speech. When my father appeared, Mondale grabbed him by the arm and said, “This center is fantastic! And I understand you’re responsible for the whole thing!”

About two months into my time at The Post, our famous publisher, Katharine Graham, invited the new vice president to lunch. All the top editors and political reporters were asked to attend, and somebody suggested that the guy on the Mondale beat — me — should go as well. I grabbed the chance, mainly because I had never seen the publisher’s executive dining room on the ninth floor of the former Post building.

When Mondale and a couple of his staffers arrived, Mrs. Graham graciously introduced each of the Post people in the room. “Oh Fritz,” she said, “You know Dave Broder. And of course you know Ben Bradlee.” And so on, around the room, until she got to me. Then there was an embarrassing, painful pause — because the publisher had no idea who this newly hired reporter might be.

In the blink of an eye, Mondale discerned the problem and jumped into action to solve it. “Oh, Kay, of course I know Tom Reid,” he said, repeating my name a couple of times to make sure she would remember it. “And of course, Kay, you know that his byline is ‘T.R. Reid,’ but to me he’s just Tom Reid.” This intervention worked wonders. For the next 30 years, every time I happened to see the publisher, she would give me a big smile and say: “Hello, Tom Reid.”

A couple of decades later, when I was The Post’s Tokyo bureau chief, President Bill Clinton named Mondale to be U.S. ambassador to Japan. As I <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/06/10/mondale-seen-as-a-ray-of-hope-in-the-land-of-the-rising-sun/0feb2a7b-0760-414d-a7c6-9bf5b399cb8b/">wrote at the time</a>, this appointment was warmly welcomed in official Tokyo, even though Mondale was hardly an expert on East Asia and had had minimal connection to Japan then. Still, the Japanese were delighted with the new ambassador, because he was what they called an “Oh-Mono” — that is, a big shot in America’s ruling party, a guy who could presumably get his friend the president on the phone if needed.

When Mondale arrived in Tokyo, the U.S. ambassador’s house in Akasaka was under repair, so the embassy rented him a temporary home. It was a lavish mansion that had belonged to the Ishibashi family — the scions of the Bridgestone tire corporate fortune. The new ambassador invited my whole family over for dinner. We marveled with him at this elaborate home, with vaulted ceilings and a 10-foot-tall fireplace in the living room. Mondale told us he felt almost guilty living amid such splendor, but he would put up with it. “I’ve always voted for public housing,” he said. “But I’ve never lived in it until now — and it’s not so bad.”

I saw Mondale frequently during his tenure. One fine spring day in April 1994, he invited me to the embassy for lunch. There wasn’t much news at the time, so we just sat around telling stories. It was fun, because Mondale could mimic the style and language of just about anybody in U.S. politics. As dessert was served, just before 1 p.m. Tokyo time, Mondale got a phone call. He turned to me and reported something completely unexpected: Japan’s prime minister, Morihiro Hosokawa, a strong friend of the Clinton administration, had abruptly resigned. “You’re going to have a big story tomorrow,” Mondale said to me.

I glanced at my watch. It was about midnight in Washington. At The Post, the presses were running with the next day’s paper, but I could still get this story in about half of the run — if I could file it right away. “I gotta get back to the office,” I told Mondale. But he had a better idea. “That’s going to take you half an hour,” in Tokyo traffic, he said. “You’d better write it right here.”

The ambassador called on a staffer to produce a laptop, and I banged out the story on his dining room table, with Walter F. Mondale as my researcher, looking up salient facts about Hosokawa’s life and political career as I pounded the keys. Whenever I stopped typing to think about my next paragraph, Mondale would say, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop! The presses are running!”

I’m delighted to report that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/04/08/japans-hosokawa-to-resign/6b972f34-22b7-44fe-ae4b-a71e66b0fcbf/">my story</a> made the front page of The Washington Post for April 8, 1994 — at least, in those papers printed at the end of the press run. And to make it all the sweeter, Mondale later reported to his friend Katharine Graham — my ultimate boss — that he was deeply impressed watching “Tom Reid” sweep aside the luncheon dishes to get the scoop.

Mondale never won the presidency, and he even managed to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/11/07/another-political-career-closes-in-minnesota/2292869a-1599-46c3-9a2a-f3ec77f883ef/">lose a Senate race</a> late in his life. Some might say his political career was less than triumphant. But my experience with him, as a reporter and a friend, told me that he was an absolute winner when it came to human kindness.

T. R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, columnist and foreign correspondent, started work at the paper on inauguration day in 1977. His book on the 1960 election will be published next year.