booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

was fascinated by the machinations of the global economy. Gardner was no neophyte.
He had traveled widely, especially along the Pacific Rim, pursuing trade alliances for
the state. In 1987, Washington had entered into a joint-venture with Hyogo Prefecture
in Japan to jump-start demand for value-added forest products and introduce Western
housing technology. “The Washington Village,” a subdivision of American-style 2X4 frameconstruction
homes was constructed near Kobe.
Across the Rue de Lausanne from the sprawling GATT headquarters, in a
nondescript office building a mile from the center of the city, Ambassador Gardner
immersed himself in the arcane details of tariffs and treaties. He quickly became fluent in
trade jargon, a chore only a wonk could relish. Through the haze of bureaucratese, he saw
one thing clearly: It was a pivotal moment for relations between the U.S. and China, which
was demanding to become a founding member of the WTO. Now was the time for the U.S.
to extract concessions from the emerging economic giant, Booth said. Yet his role remained
undefined. “It’s a tough feeling to be sitting out here with no specific objectives,” he told a
visitor in the summer of 1994.
He was also unusually tired. He found it hard to focus on those mounds of paperwork.
It was “a nagging malaise,” disquietingly different from the Attention Deficit Disorder he’d
long since learned to work around. He was stiff all over. Sometimes he was jolted by a sharp
shiver that radiated from between his often-repaired shoulders. When he went skiing, he was
disconcerted to discover he couldn’t make right turns. He was bewildered and afraid. “What’s
wrong with me?” he asked himself. He tried to walk it off. Up and down the halls he’d go.
Even though he’d had trouble with his shoulders since his youth, he’d always had an athlete’s
coordination. Now he felt “like the Tin Man” in The Wizard of Oz.
Rosalie Gittings, his personal assistant during most of his years as governor, was
hiking in Europe with a friend in the fall of 1995. He greeted them with hugs at the train
station and they spent the afternoon at his lovely apartment, chatting about old times and
the attractions of Europe. “I noticed there was something different about him,” Gittings
remembers, “but I wasn’t sure what it was. He walked back to the train with us, and when
we said goodbye I realized his eyes were wide open in a strange way. He had the most
beautiful, intense eyes. Now they were different.”
Booth caught a cold he couldn’t shake and decided it was time to go to the doctor.
The one recommended to him also spoke English. That made him feel better because he
knew it would be hard to describe how he felt. They reviewed his medical history and
recent symptoms and talked amiably about America and Europe. Then the doctor said,
“Would you mind walking down the hall and back?” “I thought it was a strange request,
but he was the doctor. Then he sat me down and said, ‘I think you have Parkinson’s.’ I was
stunned. I vaguely knew what it was – tremors in the hands. I asked him how he could tell,
and he said, ‘We’ve been together for 10 minutes and you haven’t blinked or changed your
facial expression.’ ” His wooden gait was another giveaway.
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