29533 | Close Calls and Tragedies
A
fte the 1994 eR Lection, Gorton went East to visit his brothers.
He was staying with Nat, a federal judge in Boston, when he set
out one morning for his usual run. Halfway through, he began to
feel awful. His chest hurt and his legs were heavy. He also had a curious
pain near his collar bone. It couldn’t be a heart attack, he reasoned. At 66,
with his lean runner’s body, he was as fit as an active man 30 years his
junior and every family doctor’s dream patient. He’d never smoked, drank
sparingly, handled stress remarkably well and maintained a healthy
diet. “It doesn’t matter how good something is, he doesn’t have a second
helping,” Sally says, marveling at his self discipline. After his morning
routine of stretching, pushups and sit-ups, he ran every day—still does—
rain or shine. His cholesterol was low. He slept like a baby.
Something, however, was very wrong. He walked back to Nat’s house,
thinking the feeling would pass. His sister-in-law, Jodi, thought he looked
drawn and extremely serious as he headed straight upstairs. Sally saw
how disconcerted he was and had Jodi call Nat’s doctor, who listened to 30
seconds’ worth of the symptoms and said, “Call 9-11.”
Slade was soon at Massachusetts General, undergoing an angioplasty
to roto-rooter a clogged artery. He told his brother he felt chagrined be-
cause somebody in his condition shouldn’t have had a heart attack. When
the head of cardiology assured him it was an aberration—a “biological
accident”—and predicted no further problems, he was relieved. “How soon
can I resume running?”
On January 4, 1995, Gorton was sworn in for his third term. He was
out running again by the end of the month.^1
He exchanged get-well cards with Patty Murray, who was recovering
from a hysterectomy. Their relationship was improving after a chilly start.
Murray’s chief of staff was a hard-nosed New York Democrat averse to
any kind of cooperation with a Republican running for re-election. Jeal-
ous over Gorton’s relationship with Boeing, he even attempted to scuttle
a bill Slade’s staff had crafted to make it easier for struggling airlines to