From The Hotline Latest Edition for Wednesday, April 30,2008

LEAHY

For Some Reason, Doesn't Use The Elevator

Wed. Apr. 30, 2008


Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) "has accomplished a great deal throughout his political career, including one feat that no other lawmaker may be able to claim. He has memorized almost all of Capitol Hill's stairs."

For Leahy, this is "a matter of safety -- or even life and death." "Falling is the leading cause of hospitalization and death by injury for people over the age of 65, which covers a sizeable portion of the U.S. Senate." More than 40% of current senators are over 65, "and several have experienced nasty falls." But it's "a particular problem for Leahy," who was born "legally blind in one eye and sees all stairways as flat." To avoid falling, he has "memorized the way each staircase feels, as well as the spacing differences from one to the next." Leahy: "The [stairs] I had the hardest time mastering were the ones in the front of the Capitol. Once I got those, everything else was a piece of cake."

Leahy also "has a special mechanism to keep himself upright; his wife, Marcelle. When the couple travel, she lets him place a finger on her arm as a point of reference when they venture down sets of stairs that have not been engrained within his memory yet" (Yager, The Hill, 4/30).