The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

Riding with histoRy 111
gan, he called ahead to an Episcopal church in Toledo. One of the priests
gushed that the trip sounded exciting, offered to put them up for the
night and said he’d meet them a few miles ahead. The expedition was
transiting a suburb called Sylvania on a wide street with no traffic when
a blue light flashed and a young cop pulled them over. “Don’t you know
it’s against the law in Sylvania, Ohio, not to ride in single file? You’re riding
double!” Slade was contrite. “Oh, officer, we didn’t know.” The officer
shook his head and began writing a ticket. The laws of Sylvania were not
to be trifled with. Gorton decided to flash his attorney general ID card. At
that moment, not one but two exuberant priests pulled up and greeted the
travelers with hugs and handshakes. The young cop, faced with both
church and state, closed his ticket book and departed.
the Rising sun was in their eyes on July 12, 1973, as they pedaled east
along Lake Erie, just inside Pennsylvania. They were up and rolling at 6
a.m. to avoid heavier traffic along a four-lane highway. Then disaster
nearly struck. Slade was riding last, just a bit behind and slightly to the
left of Becky, when a car clipped the saddlebag on his bike and punctured
his left hip and upper leg with a spear-shaped piece of chrome trim. Slade
tumbled onto Becky’s bike. Pigtails flying, the 11–year-old was knocked to
the ground but emerged with only scrapes and bruises. “Dad crashed
onto the cement and his glasses went flying, but he jumped up quickly
and asked if I was OK. Then we saw the piece of chrome hanging out of
his leg and I screamed. He just pulled it out.” Although bleeding profusely,
Slade—ever the lawyer—attempted to get the license plate number
of the fleeing car. A motorist on the other side of the highway saw it
all happen, hung a U-turn, gave chase and returned with the number.
The 24–year-old hit-and-run driver was soon in custody and Gorton was
en route to the emergency room. “If anyone had a worse day than I did in
that part of Pennsylvania it was that driver,” Slade quips. Forty stitches
later, they were on the way out of town—except that Dad, to his frustration,
was confined to a rental car for two days. State police said he was
lucky to be alive. The big saddle bags on their bikes absorbed some of the
impact, especially for Becky. 11
Approximately one state and 500 miles earlier, Nat Gorton had realized
it was time to buy a bike. “They’re going to be in awfully good shape,”
his wife Jodi noted. “I don’t know how you’re going to keep up.” Etched in
family lore is Nat Gorton’s rejoinder: “Anything an 11–year-old girl can do,
I can do.”
The Gorton party was averaging 80 miles a day. “Our cruising speed