By Donald H. Harrison
(Photo: Wikipedia)
LA JOLLA, California — We’ve all heard metaphors about people judged to be so gentle they “wouldn’t hurt a fly,” but in former Second Lady Joan Mondale’s case, it was literally true, according to her traveling companion during former U.S. Vice President Walter “Fritz” Mondale’s campaign for President.
Elaine Galinson, who in later life became identified along with her late husband, Murray, with Jewish and Democratic philanthropy, traveled every other week with Joan Mondale from mid 1983 through the 1984 election in which voters decided to keep Republican Ronald Reagan on for a second term.
In the wake of news that Joan Mondale had died on Monday, Feb. 3, at the age of 83, Galinson recalled that when they traveled together if a mosquito or a fly came into her hotel room, “she would call me in, and say ‘There’s a fly!’ or whatever it was, ‘catch it!’ So I would catch it and then I would have to release it out the window or out on the balcony. She wouldn’t let me kill it!”
Galinson said she personally has no qualms about swatting an insect, but as an aide to Joan Mondale, she often did things she might not have done otherwise.
For example, she said during a telephone interview on Wednesday, Feb. 5, “I was never a very good ironer– I still am not , and certainly wasn’t then — but on the campaign trail I was the one who every night pressed her clothing so she would look nice the next day. I always laughed at that because I never did it for myself.”
When they lived in the Minneapolis area, the Galinsons met the Mondales, not through politics, but through the nursery school at Temple Israel. The Galinson’s oldest child, Laura, went to the nursery school at the same time that the Mondales’ youngest child, William, attended. The nursery school had a very good reputation, and although they were not Jewish, the Mondales, who lived a short distance from the temple, felt it would be a good place for William. At the time the Galinsons lived much farther away, but felt the school’s quality was such it was worth a long car trip.
Elaine’s husband, Murray, was an attorney who ran successfully for the city council of St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb. He and Fritz Mondale were both Democrats, so they would see each other through politics, and continued to do so even after the Galinsons moved to San Diego.
Elaine Galinson said when the former vice president was weighing whether to run against Reagan, she and Murray were invited to a retreat in Northern Minnesota at which they and others offered suggestions. Almost immediately, she said, it was decided that Elaine should be Joan Mondale’s traveling companion on an alternating schedule with another staff member, Judy Whittlesey.
The weeks when she was not flying with Joan Mondale, Elaine Galinson would be back in Washington, setting up the following week’s schedule. In that way, she would know the names of the advance teams waiting at each campaign event, the itinerary they were supposed to follow, and whom they were supposed to meet.
Most of the time that she traveled with Joan Mondale, up to the time Walter Mondale was formally nominated by the Democrats for the presidency, it was just the two of them. Thereafter, a Secret Service contingent joined them. The Mondales’ children also traveled during the campaign.
One vivid memory of the campaign was of being late for a commercial flight and being sped in an automobile out on the tarmac in order to be put aboard.
“Wherever we went, we would find art as well as politics,” Galinson recalled. “Joan was known as ‘Joan of Art’ and so we would frequently hold political events in art museums, or art galleries, or beautiful homes with art collections. We visited artists’ studios and she was very knowledgeable about art; she was really interested in contemporary art and crafts. She herself was a potter and she gave me gifts of some of her pottery which are still in my kitchen today and I look and think of her. She was always a promoter of American artists and when she was living in the Vice President’s residence, she would on a rotating basis install exhibitions of contemporary American artists.”
Galinson said she has a kaleidoscope of impressions when she looks back on the campaign. One day was one of tremendous juxtaposition, she recalled. In the morning there was an event in a cotton field, and the audience was almost exclusively African-American agricultural workers. They were poor, and a reminder of the old South, Galinson said. That evening she and Joan Mondale attended a black-tie reception at an art gallery in Atlanta, Georgia, and women were wearing their formal dresses and jewelry. Everyone there was white, she recalled, and “it was such a day of contrasts that to this day, it is still mind-boggling to me. It was a reminder of what our country was and in many ways still is. It was a different time, but in some ways we still are not where we need to be,” Galinson said.
Whoever her audience might be, Joan Mondale was “extremely down to earth and friendly,” said Galinson. “She was a very real and genuine person. She was a mid-western, Minneapolis kind of person, who was intelligent, and very knowledgeable about art and politics. But she was very approachable and not stand-offish in any way and not at all taken with her position as the former Second Lady of the land.
“She was just very lovely, warm and friendly,” Galinson said. “She was always pleasant to be with, and she always had a very positive attitude and was a very easy person to be around.”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com