Remembering ‘Fritz’ Mondale, a friend

When Walter “Fritz” Mondale returned to Minnesota in 1987 to practice law, several people at the firm he joined applied for the job as his secretary. The one who was selected, Lynda Pedersen, applied because of who Mondale had been. She stayed for the next  33 years, including three in Japan when Fritz was our ambassador. She left her husband at home running their family marina because Fritz and his wife Joan had asked her to come with them. 

Lynda stayed for more than three decades not because of who he’d been, but because of who Mondale was.

She found what all of us near him found: a guy who was decent, smart, caring, funny, unassuming even in the glory of high office. She told me, “He always treated me with respect and made me feel like an important part of our team.” 

What Lynda found is a large part of what made my first meeting with Fritz a kind of immediate bonding, in just a couple of hours. He was still in law school; I was a technical writer at Honeywell, a dropout from graduate school. A mutual friend who owned a print shop I had once used as a graduate student was our host. He and Fritz had met at a Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party meeting. Fritz was already a campaign veteran: In 1948, he had moved boxes of campaign literature around an office and oversaw its distribution.

In that first meeting, I saw the Mondale he always was during the almost 70 years that followed. He had absorbed his small-town preacher father’s values: caring about others, including the least of us, and a good society for everyone. The sense of mission came young and never abated.

Not long after, we bonded again — recycling Christmas trees left unsold for the holiday. Vendors piled up unsold trees on their lots for disposal. We hauled load after load to the Macalester College student union hall where Fritz was soon to marry Joan Adams (whose father, the college chaplain, performed the ceremony). The trees were like the campaign literature — grunge work that had to be done, and he did it. He would soon be the groom and center of attention, but the tree work had to be done first.

When Hubert Humphrey died, Mondale was vice president, as Humphrey had been, and was returning to D.C. on Air Force Two. He called me from the plane, told me of the death and a service in the Rotunda of the Capitol two days later. He asked me to come to his home to help draft his eulogy: He and I and his press secretary, Al Eisele, worked until exhaustion took Fritz to bed and me home to finish the eulogy.

After he gave it, a reporter came up and complimented him for a moving tribute. Fritz responded without being asked, “Norman Sherman wrote it.” It was his moment, and he shared it with me. As a ghost writer of many speeches for many people, I would have expected silence about who wrote it and a grateful nod for the compliment. Like every political creature, Fritz sought approval, but he shared any glory of the moment when it was appropriate.

We shared another eulogy moment years later. A friend who had served as the director of the DFL office in the mid-1950s had died. Jack Puterbaugh’s memorial service was to be in a small town about an hour from Minneapolis. When Fritz heard I was going, he asked if he could come along. We drove up together. He sat in the pew while I spoke and then came forward as number two, a second thought of convenience.

One day while he was vice president, I was in his office to deliver some writing job he had asked me to do. I said, as a joke, to the woman I handed it to: “Fritz only asks me to do things, and he has never invited us to dinner at his goddamned mansion.”

About a week later, when I got home from work, my wife said, “Fritz Mondale called and wants to talk to you.” I asked which secretary? She said, “No, it was Fritz.” I called the number he had left, and he answered the phone. He explained that Joan would be away, the staff off, and that he had been fishing and had a lot of walleye he would fry for us. I said we couldn’t come since we had a couple from California visiting. He said bring them. They were hippy, counterculture Californians. He fried the fish and treated them as though ambassadors from the Court of St. James.

Last year, I spoke on Martin Luther King Day at an Iowa City high school to a gathering of several social science classes. I asked, in jest like the dinner invitation, if Fritz would like to join me. He said yes, to my surprise. We arranged for his telephone involvement with about 50 kids. Since then, I visited him a couple times and we talked regularly by phone and email, reminiscing a bit about old times, but more about our Trump-world and Democratic politics.

Between our 1953 lunch and this week of his death, many others worked more closely with Fritz, saw him much more often. We share a love of Fritz growing from his unshakable loyalty, embrace, and humility. Like with Lynda, he made us feel an important part of a team, seeking the good society, a vision he brought to that first lunch.

Before, during, and after he was Minnesota’s  Attorney General, Senator from Minnesota, Vice President of the United States, and candidate for president, Walter Mondale was friend in all its embracing meaning. On his last day of life, Presidents Clinton, Carter, and Joe Biden all called — in part, because they knew that.

Rest in Peace.

Norman Sherman was Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, including during the 1968 convention and campaign. He edited Humphrey’s autobiography. During his decades in Washington, he worked in the House, Senate and Executive agencies. He has managed political campaigns in his home state of Minnesota. He held a chair at Louisiana State University as Professor of Political Communication. He is the author of “From Nowhere to Somewhere: My Political Journey,” a memoir covering his various work — paid and otherwise — for Minnesota politicians Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Wendy Anderson and Don Fraser.