booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

No public figure in Washington State history has been written about so intensely
for so long. Other politicians and the press corps had never seen his like. They couldn’t
resist playing armchair shrink. “Basic psychology is one of my subroutines,” Arnold
Schwarzenegger says in Terminator 3 when someone asks how a cyborg can size up
humans so easily.
Dubbing him “Prince Faintheart,” one columnist said Gardner was a governor
who would rather schmooze
through photo-ops with school
kids than play hardball with
the Legislature. A lawmaker
called him “The Cabbage Patch
Governor.” Others, however,
saw him as “a phenom” and
“a visionary.” He was inspiring,
exasperating and endlessly
fascinating, all at once. He is a
Democrat who easily could have
been a Republican; rated one
of the top three governors in
America in 1991 and mentioned
as vice-presidential material.
Who Booth Gardner is is complicated. There are days now when even he isn’t sure.
Like a million other Americans, notably Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali, he is fighting
Parkinson’s. It’s a nasty disease that deprives the brain of dopamine, the chemical that
coordinates your muscles. Parkinson’s can give you tremors and make you feel slow as
a slug and stiff as a board. Depression is a frequent side effect. When he first realized
something was wrong, Booth says he felt like The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.
Two deep-brain surgeries gave him a reprieve but Parkinson’s is stealthy. It finds new
ways to short-circuit neurotransmitters. Nearly 20 years on, it has taken the sparkle from
his eyes and given his wonderfully expressive face a mask-like countenance. He is intensely
competitive – absolutely hates to lose. He accepts, however, that this is one battle he’s not
going to win, so he tries to make the most of every day and “stay useful.” In 2000, he helped
found the Booth Gardner Parkinson’s Care Center at Kirkland, which offers specialists,
physical therapy and many other forms of assistance to patients and family members.
Parkinson’s is the last challenge in a life filled with exultant highs and tragic lows. An
avid baseball fan since childhood, he calls the lows “curve balls.” They’ve been coming his
way for as long as he can remember. “Oliver Twist was a piker compared to Booth,” says Mari
Clack of Spokane, who first met him when they were teenagers in Seattle. “He overcame so
much in childhood” but still has bouts of depression and guilt “that really weigh on him.”
Booth hugs Margaret Rogers, a member of the Bellevue Drill Team.
Dale Blindheim ©The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) 1986 Reprinted with permission.
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