The LuLac Edition #4, 639, December 8th, 2021

 

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY #2

Our “Write On Wednesday” logo.

This week we lost Bob Dole. Eric Mark from the Citizens’ Voice interviews Bill Lewis, a local Red Cross official who met and worked with the late Senator. 

 

LOCAL RED  CROSS OFFICIAL REMEMBERS DOLE FONDLY

Bill Lewis knew Bob Dole through their mutual passion for the American Red Cross and its mission.

Lewis is a Jenkins Twp. resident and a former member of the Red Cross National Board of Governors and mid-Atlantic regional committee.

Dole, the longtime U.S. senator from Kansas and the 1996 Republican nominee for president, died Sunday at 98. He was the husband of Elizabeth Dole, who served as national president of the Red Cross from 1991 to 1999. Lewis met the Doles more than a dozen times through Red Cross activities, he said Sunday. Bob Dole was not there just to support his wife or to make political points, Lewis said.

“He was the spouse of the Red Cross president, but he was clearly into the mission of the Red Cross as much as she was,” Lewis said.

Dole’s passion for supporting the Red Cross started long before he entered politics, according to Lewis.

Dole was seriously wounded in combat near the end of World War II. He spent months in hospitals recovering from near-fatal injuries that cost him the use of his right arm.

“In small private groups he would talk about how the Red Cross helped him,” Lewis said.

Dole had a wonderful sense of humor and loved to poke fun at himself, Lewis said.

In 1996, the year Dole ran for president, the Red Cross held its national convention in Louisville, Kentucky, and Dole greeted Lewis and other officials on one of the city’s famed riverboats.

Weeks later, the same boat flipped over in the river, Lewis said. The next time he saw Dole after that, the man running for president told him, “If that boat had capsized, it would have shortened the election.”

Dole visited Northeast Pennsylvania several times, including appearances in Scranton and Pittston, Lewis said.

After Dole lost the presidential election to Bill Clinton and retired from politics, he lived in Washington, D.C. Lewis said he saw him at several Red Cross events in the nation’s capital.

Lewis said he heard a story about the Doles from sources he trusts.

“Long after her departure from the Red Cross, they would take blankets to homeless shelters in Washington,” he said. “I heard the story many times.”

Dole’s war wounds were severe, but people did not realize that until they saw him up close and he extended his left hand to shake, Lewis said. Lewis said he last saw Dole in 2010 or 2011. Dole retained his positive spirit and self-deprecating sense of humor even as he battled health problems and advancing age, Lewis said. “He would tell jokes about getting older,” Lewis said. “He was very friendly, just the same as he always was.”