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The Miami Herald

July 8, 2002, Monday

Rep. Carrie Meek to retire; son will seek seat

BYLINE: By Andrea Robinson and Tyler Bridges

SECTION: NATIONAL POLITICAL NEWS

LENGTH: 1925 words

U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, a pioneering figure in Florida politics, announced Sunday that she is retiring
from Congress at the end of her current term.

In 1982, Meek, a Miami Democrat, became the first black woman ever elected to the Florida Senate. In
1992, Meek became the first black Floridian elected to Congress in modern times.

Meek's retirement paves the way for her youngest child to succeed her. Kendrick Meek, a 35-year-old
Democratic state senator, says he will run. He becomes the immediate favorite.

Meek will make her announcement less than two weeks before candidates must qualify for the race. The
Democratic primary is Sept. 10, and the general election is Nov. 5.

To anyone who has watched her lately in Washington or Miami, the grandmother of six will be retiring at
the top of her game.

But Meek says that she has lost a step and is ready to make this her last term.

"I wish I could say that I'm tired of (Congress)," Meek told The Herald last week. "I love it still. But at
age 76, understandably, some of my abilities have diminished. I don't have the same vigor that I had at
65. I have the fire, but I don't have the physical ability. So it's time."

Her son said he was surprised by her decision, which he learned of on Wednesday. He said she made up
her mind after a judge dismissed her lawsuit challenging new congressional district lines drawn by the
Republican-majority state Legislature.

"This was not an easy decision for her," the senator said. "Public service is in her blood, it's in her gut,
but she decided it was time to do something else."

Other than two marriages that ended in divorce, the congresswoman has enjoyed a lifetime of success.
But it has been a long, uphill journey.

Where she works today -- the U.S. Capitol -- stands at the top of a hill in Washington. Where she used
to work -- the Florida Capitol stands at the top of a hill in Tallahassee.

Meek was born in an area known as "Black Bottom," in the shadow of Florida's Capitol, just before the
onset of the Great Depression. She was the youngest of 12 children. Her father's mother had been a
slave.

Her father initially was a sharecropper, eking out a living by growing corn, greens, watermelons and
plums on other people's land. Later, he became a rent collector and a handyman.

Her mother washed the clothes of white people.

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Segregation was rigidly enforced.

"When my mother would take us out walking, we couldn't get a drink of water from the water
fountains," Meek recalled last week. "We couldn't try on clothes in the stores. We couldn't try on hats.
My mother would tell us that we should get off the sidewalk so white people could walk by. And if we had
to use a bathroom, it was terrible because there was no place we could go. I had to ride in the back of
the bus.

"We couldn't have dogs . . . because the police would come around and shoot them. They didn't want
black people to have dogs. The memory of that haunts me today; I love animals so much."

Black people also were not permitted to set foot in the Florida Capitol, except on the day a new governor
was inaugurated.

Meek was called "Tot" because she was small and a tomboy. Taught a love of reading by her mother, she
attended Florida A&M, where she was also a star athlete. She ran in the 50-yard dash, did the broad
jump and played basketball.

She got a master's degree in public health at the University of Michigan.

"I remember as plain as if it was yesterday," Meek recalled, "my mother packing me a shoe box full of
food -- ham and chicken and corn bread -- and putting me on a train because I didn't have any money to
buy food."

The memory caused her to break into tears.

Meek had dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. But being poor and black, she had had no chance. She
pursued the one career available to her: She became a teacher.

She taught initially at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla.

In 1961, divorced and the mother of two young girls, she moved to Miami to teach physical education at
Miami-Dade Community College, as well as shape the women's athletics program for the college.

In time, Meek's bosses recognized her ability to work with others. She eventually became a special
assistant to the president of Miami-Dade's north campus.

In 1979, state Rep. Gwen Cherry died in an auto accident. Friends asked Meek to run to succeed her.

A group of male black leaders invited her to the home of Garth Reeves, publisher of the Miami Times, to
discuss her candidacy.

After meeting among themselves, the men emerged to say that they liked her but were planning to
support attorney James Burke.

"I left that meeting almost in tears. That was the worst night I ever spent," Meek said at the time.

She nearly withdrew from the race. Instead, she defeated Burke and the other 11 candidates.

"I didn't know what my job would be," she said afterward. "But I figured it it meant articulating the
needs of the people I had lived around, if it meant being a spokesman, I could do that."

She won reelection in 1980, and in 1982, she made history when she was elected to the state Senate.

Over the next decade, Meek earned a reputation as a politically savvy lawmaker who knew how to make
friends with those who were not her natural political allies.

During the redistricting process in 1982, state Sen. Dempsey Barron, a conservative Democrat from
Panama City and the Senate's kingpin, helped draw Meek the seat she would win. She in turn helped
Barron win a difficult primary election that year.

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"The best way to know about life is to have lived at different levels of economics and opportunities and
with different kinds of people," Barron said then. "The movement through life under those circumstances
probably qualifies a person better than any other training, if they are sensitive to needs, to be in the
Legislature. It certainly qualifies Carrie Meek to know the needs of the people of Florida."

It was in the Senate that she achieved her proudest legislative triumph: a measure that provides
subsidies to low-income people to get down payments for home mortgages. Since the program became
law, more than 5,000 homeowners have qualified, which Meek said has enabled entire neighborhoods to
be transformed from blight to middle class.

She endured controversy as well. In 1986, she was paid $30,000 to help push a pro-casino initiative on
the state ballot.

"I don't think an elected official ought to be paid to take a position on an important community issue,"
Robert Carter, director of the No Casinos group, said then. "I've never heard of anything like that
before."

In 1992, Meek made history again when she won the congressional district that stretches through
Miami-Dade's inner core from Carol City to Homestead. No black from Florida had been elected to
Congress since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period.

During her victory party, Meek led the crowd in singing one of her favorite hymns, "Blessed Assurance."
Tears streamed down her face. At 66, she was the oldest new member of Congress.

She won notice in Washington almost immediately when she was the only freshman named to the
coveted Appropriations Committee.

At a retreat for House members, she also won notice for leading senior Democrats in the Electric Slide.
She even coaxed crusty Rep. Dan Rostenkowski into joining the line dance.

In Washington, she has been a partisan Democrat. She slammed then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich in
1995 for a book deal that stood to earn him millions, using such sharp language that her comments
caused an uproar among Republicans.

She lashed out at Republicans for impeaching President Bill Clinton.

"So, you keep on going," she said, looking directly at House leaders. "Your time will come."

But she leavened her partisanship with laughs, smiles and hugs.

"She's so likable that it's sometimes disarming," Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale, said in a 1999
interview.

As much as Meek is respected on Capitol Hill, she is revered 10 times more in her district.

On Friday, Meek ran errands in her 1998 Cadillac de Ville in Liberty City, all within 15 blocks of the
place she has called home since 1960.

On her list: trips to the grocery store and her manicurist.

She was dressed casually: lilac pedal pushers with a matching top and her favorite sneakers.

The attire came in handy as she stopped by Leasa Industries, a manufacturing and processing company
adjacent to the Scott housing project and by a Head Start center that bears her name. Both are symbols
of two cornerstone issues: economic development and education for inner-city areas.

Her relationship with Leasa is symbiotic in a way. Company president George Yap hires residents from
low-income neighborhoods such as Liberty City, Allapattah, Little Haiti and Overtown. Many of the
employees are days removed from welfare rolls or are newly released ex-felons.

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In turn, Meek has used her position on the House Appropriations Committee to secure money to help
keep the firm afloat.

Last year, she cobbled together $2 million in development funds to assist Leasa's $4.6 million expansion
project -- which means at least 60 more jobs for Liberty City.

For Yap, Meek is a savior.

"If it were not for Carrie Meek, I wouldn't be here," he said.

As she entered the sprawling plant Friday, employees flocked to her. The woman, who during most of
the year negotiates with top lawmakers or meets with foreign diplomats and heads of state, was in her
element -- with the real people.

They all got a smile -- and plenty of conversation. Most of them also got a hug or a handshake. Each
employee shared a story with her about their family, job or other personal matter. Meek listened
attentively, no matter how small the item.

Bernadine Ellison of Miami, a three-year employee, talked about her recent purchase of a house near
Liberty Square.

'Oh, you're over by Pork 'n' Beans," Meek said with a smile, referring to the preferred neighborhood
nickname for the Liberty Square housing projects. Then she grasped Ellison in a congratulatory bear
hug. "That's so nice. I'm happy for you."

As she walked away, Meek turned to a Herald reporter, her eyes fixed with determination and pride.

"There's nothing better than seeing women working full-time," she said. "This is what will sustain our
community."

But there is still work left in Washington that she feels is needed to sustain a significant segment of her
constituency: Haitian refugees.

Meek chairs the Congressional Black Caucus' task force on the island.

The group is working for the release of $146 million in Inter-American Development Bank loans to Haiti
that have been frozen since 1998. The money is slated for education, healthcare and transportation in
Haiti.

With her political retirement now on the horizon, it should be noted there were more losses than wins
for Meek in Congress. But her sports background prepared her for that.

"I'm not discouraged by losing," she told The Herald once. "I know how to get back up."

After getting back up time and time again, she is retiring with a view from the top.

"Every time I look up at the Capitol dome and I see Lady Liberty," she said, "I'm in awe, and I can't help
but think about where I came from.

Here I am, the little girl from the bottom of the hill. I have been blessed that God has used me as His
instrument."

(Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler contributed to this story.)

___

(c) 2002, The Miami Herald.

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