Phil Brennan
Wednesday, July 2, 2003

I don't expect this fact to evoke widespread national interest since most people have a lot more important things on their minds than my advancement into my 78th year. (Yeah, that's right – I'll be 77 years old, having completed that many years in this vale of tears, but from 7-8-03 onward I'll be working on my 78th year. Pointing this out used to drive my late wife nuts: "You're always making everybody a year older," she'd say.)

But the day has some meaning for me because I never expected to be around to observe a birthday marking the passage of that many years. As someone once said, "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

But would I have?

For more than 40 years I smoked seven cheap, foul-smelling cigars a day and, unlike Slick Willie, I inhaled. Do I regret it? Heck no! I miss chewing on those stogies, especially after eating. A cigar put a period at the end of a meal. Without that period, the culinary sentence runs on and on. As a result, the waistline also runs on and on.

During my 12 years in Washington, I spent a lot of lunchtimes at Johnny Mandis' Market Inn, eating those great 3-pound lobsters ($3.00 a pound) and swilling his patented birdbath martinis. I have since discovered that the $3.00 a pound I thought was outrageous at the time would now be considered to be a great bargain.

Although I have learned that martinis, birdbath or normal sized, are also poison, at the time they sure went down smoothly. And they helped make sense of what was going on around that madhouse on Capitol Hill where I worked when I wasn't eating 3-pound lobsters and drinking birdbath martinis.

As I reflect on my past, I realize that my whole life has been a series of leaps into the unknown, taking one risk after another that in retrospect appear to have been exercises in madness. I wonder how I could ever have taken the outrageous chances I took – and I thank God I did. What a bore life would have been otherwise.

In 1943, at the tender age of 17 and having reached the point where I could no longer tolerate the discipline imposed by my parents and my Jesuit prep school teachers, I took what I thought was the easy way out – I joined the Marines, seeking a less rigid, more relaxed routine. It took about 15 minutes at Parris Island boot camp to disabuse me of that rather bizarre notion.

I thought at the time that I'd made a colossal mistake, but it was probably one of the best things I ever did. I grew up in a hurry. And it's true: Once a gyrene, always a gyrene. And there are a lot worse things to be.

At the age of 30, married and the father of two sons, I uprooted my family, sold our house in Blue Point, Long Island, and bought a 38-acre place outside Fredericksburg, Va. I didn't have the vaguest idea how I was going to make a living, but it seemed like a great idea and, naively believing that I might be able to make some contribution to the commonweal, I wanted to get involved in national politics, having been heavily involved in local politics back on the Island.

The fact that I had absolutely no qualifications worth mentioning didn't deter me for one second. It's true: Fools do rush in where angels fear to tread.

Besides, I liked Washington, having been stationed there at the end of World War II, and figured I'd find something or other to do in the seat of all wisdom, 50 miles north of our Fredericksburg farm.

Amazingly, I did. With no background whatsoever in the publicity field, I landed a key job working as a PR man on the Washington end of the Alaska statehood campaign. Helping to add a star to Old Glory led to other things, some of them memorable, and put me in the company of some very great Americans and in the midst of some great events during the era of the Cold War.

Looking back now, I realize just how lucky I was. What could have been a disaster turned out better than I could ever have hoped.

Having no journalistic experience of any kind whatsoever, I accepted an offer to write a Washington column for Bill Buckley's National Review magazine under the Cato byline (I couldn't use my real name because the House GOP leadership I worked for wouldn't allow it). The column was widely read in Washington and, incredibly, I lasted three-plus years and I got a jump-start in a writing career that has never ended.

In 1968, I did it again, this time hauling my family, now grown to seven children, two dogs and a cat, to Boca Raton, Fla. I had absolutely no prospects in sight. Once again, against all odds, it worked out. And I haven't had to shovel snow in 35 years.

That's the way it's been. I realize now that I took a lot of risks, following my impulses without having the least idea as to where they would lead me. I entered a lot of dark tunnels, but thanks to a loving God – and a saint of a wife who supported me even when the idea terrified her – I always found the light at the end.

Looking back now, I understand that I exemplified what I was taught by those hard-nosed Jesuits – that, informed by your faith, if you do what you believe is the right thing to do and leave everything else up to God, everything eventually works out.

Stonewall Jackson said it best: "Duty is mine; consequences are God's."

My beloved Barby died 11 years ago after a horrendous three years of suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, and 43 magnificent years of being part of a "we" came to an end. Now I'm just a me. It still hurts after all these years, but life goes on, simply because it has to.

The other night I watched a tape of "Lonesome Dove," one of the finest miniseries ever produced on American television. Toward the end, one of the main characters, a grizzled old legendary Texas Ranger, Gus McCrae, lies dying. He looks up at his longtime comrade in arms and, with a twinkle in his eyes, says quietly, "It's been quite a party, Woodrow, hasn't it?"

It's been quite a party for me, too. And it's still going on.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee, which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

He can be reached at phil@newsmax.com.