I was the first woman (actually, just older than a girl) elevator operator employed in the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol. I arrived in Washington, D.C., from California just before Title IX passed in June, 1972 and at the moment of another crisis in the District, the Watergate burglary on June 17. It was also a time of great civic unrest with large and frequent D.C. marches for civil rights and to end the Vietnam War.

I was hired because of a sporting event, a much-heralded softball game between Sen. John Tunney’s team, my home state senator for whom my college roommate worked, and Sen. Ted Kennedy’s team. The two men roomed together in law school, so the competition was stiff. I showed up as a Tunney fan after driving cross country to be the maid of honor at my roommate’s wedding. Tunney’s team was losing when someone yelled the team needed a girl to pitch because there was a boy-girl rule for the co-ed competition. My roommate suggested that I do it, and being an avid baseball player as a kid, I was all in.

It was a slow pitch game, and I had a good arch to my underarm toss. I got Kennedy’s players to hit little pitty-pat balls to the infield. Even Tunney’s bad players could field them. Gradually, Tunney’s team tied the score and don’t you know, I was the hitter in the bottom half of the final inning with two players on base. I hit a blast to right field because that’s the weak point on every amateur team. Two runners scored, Tunney’s team won, I was a mini hero, Tunney asked “who is that girl,” and that’s how I distinguished myself enough to get hired in this patronage job at the elevator.

Tourists swarmed the Capitol that summer. It was an election year with President Richard Nixon v. Sen. George McGovern, hot and humid, and the building offered respite plus the thrill of seeing the home of our republic. My job was to move tourists entering the Capitol from the basement of the Senate side elevators up and down and to clear the elevators for Senators coming off the Senate subway for votes.

I met all the Senators that year. I divided them into lopers and strutters. They were mostly either tall, as with my patron, Senator Tunney, or short, like the Senator from Texas, John Tower. They had interesting habits. Sen. Strom Thurmond was an aged, small man who dyed his thinning hair reddish and pressed little candies into my hand whenever he entered the elevator. Sen. Kennedy smoked thin cigars, stubbing them out at the ash container outside the elevators. I was tempted to collect them and put them into boxes to sell to Catholic nuns who were smitten at the time by anything Kennedy.

The best part of the job was seeing the faces of visitors in awe of the building. Despite the great civic tumult, people were universally excited and polite when they got off the subway from the Senate offices and entered my elevator to move to the floors of the Capitol itself, especially the third floor gallery where they could view the action.

Visitors showed even greater awe and institutional respect when they returned to the elevators to exit the building. The Capitol always lived up to expectations. No one would have dreamed of yelling “Get that mf” or using an American flagpole as a weapon to stab a Capitol policeman.

Even on Jan. 6, 2021, as a seditious mob invaded the building to overturn a free and fair election; carried Confederate flags and unlawful weapons; broke through windows and smashed doors; threatened and wounded defenders; bashed to death a protector, and turned red, white, and blue into brownshirt, the Capitol shined as a symbol of the whole nation.

The goons seek to put a liar and grifter back into the White House and “reclaim” the people’s house as if it’s theirs alone. Their next house should be jail, then prison. The sadness lies in the future. Fences will go up and barricades. Windows and doors will be boarded. Access to our Capitol will be reduced. Our nation is now weak and battered. These traitors’ desecrations make me weep.