Perspective | Politically minded college students found D.C. the place to be in 1972

“The entire thing was very surreal,” Kathy mentioned.

A movie crew was taking pictures a scene from “The White Home Plumbers,” an HBO miniseries concerning the Republican operatives who broke into the Democratic Nationwide Committee’s workplace within the Watergate constructing in June 1972. It was a summer season Kathy will always remember.

She was Kathy Postel again then, 20 years outdated, from Dallas, between her sophomore and junior years on the College of Texas. “I wished to return right here as a result of this was the place issues have been taking place with politics,” Kathy advised me. “I wished to get entangled.”

She advised her dad and mom she’d discover an internship in D.C. and reside in a George Washington College dorm whereas taking a category at GWU. Her mom mentioned Kathy may go if she promised to not discuss to strangers or put on halter tops and hip-hugger denims that confirmed her stomach button. (She would rapidly break these guarantees.)

Kathy arrived in D.C. on a Braniff Worldwide Airways flight on June 8. She lived in Thurston Corridor with two roommates. One was on Weight Watchers. The “fridge is so full that I don’t have any room for my Tab,” Kathy wrote to a good friend again in Texas.

She’d achieved poorly on her civil service typing examination however nonetheless managed to land a spot on the Air Pressure civilian personnel workplace within the Forrestal Constructing close to the Nationwide Mall. The skilled secretaries usually despatched her throughout the road to deal with herself to popcorn, since she couldn’t actually be trusted with the typing. After work, Kathy took a global politics class at GWU.

On June 18, The Washington Publish carried a narrative on the arrest of 5 males within the Watergate. Their base of operations turned out to be within the Howard Johnson’s lodge throughout the road.

“Keep in mind how I wished to be the place historical past is occurring?” Kathy wrote to a good friend. “At the least twice every week I stroll to Howard Johnson’s to reward myself after one other unbearable class. I all the time get the identical factor — a double scoop of butter brickle ice cream. I wasn’t truly at Howard Johnson’s when the break-in occurred. Darn.”

In one other letter she wrote: “Are you able to consider every little thing that’s popping out now about Nixon’s connection to the Watergate break-in? I believed D.C. was going to be thrilling, however I by no means thought like this. And, it’s all taking place just some blocks from me! I really feel like I’m in a film, with actually evil gamers. ‘Manchurian Candidate.’ ”

Then as now, D.C. was full of individuals like Kathy: younger women and men excited about politics, in serving the nation, in making the world a greater place.

“I used to be each idealistic however cynical on the identical time,” she advised me. The scandal energized each these qualities.

“The joy was palpitating,” she mentioned, “like, ‘We will’t wait until the following chapter. What’s going to occur subsequent?’ ”

For Kathy, the following chapter meant returning to Texas, graduating from school, then coming again to Washington to work within the civil rights division of the Justice Division. Then extra levels, and jobs in city coverage and in assist of the First Modification. She married a TV journalist — Les, who died in 2018 — they usually had two sons.

At this time Kathy, 70, is a professor educating public service at Georgetown College, the place she directs the Heart for Public and Nonprofit Management.

And never way back — caught at dwelling throughout the coronavirus pandemic — Kathy got here throughout her scrap e book from that summer season 50 years in the past: the letters she acquired in 1972, copies of the letters she despatched, images of her on the point of go to Blackie’s Home of Beef on a date …

Strangest of all to her, Kathy now lives within the Watergate. Final fall, she walked out the foyer and into the previous.