Adrian Fenty’s reputation as a demanding, decisive leader extends about as far as the now-guarded entrance to his Crestwood home. Beyond the front door, the District’s mayor-elect is husband and dad: His children rebuff his calls for calm, his wife deftly returns his jests.
“Guys, come here right now,” Fenty said Saturday afternoon as his spry twin 6-year-old boys, Matthew and Andrew, played tackle football on the lower level of their home, on a nondescript but peaceful street two blocks east of Rock Creek Park. “Do you know how to say ‘excuse me?’ ”
For down-to-earth Team Fenty, life is little different today than before Dad’s stunning primary and general election victories, in which he won all 142 precincts. While life races around them, and the Jan. 2 inauguration inches closer, the young family appears unphased — decorating the Christmas tree in white lights, visiting with college friends or watching a college football game on the 60-inch television.
“We have been in public life, public service for six years, really for the entire time since they’ve been born,” Fenty said, his wife, Michelle, at his side. “We’re accustomed to the pace.”
Adrian Fenty, his 36th birthday only a week away (he’s planning a birthday/thank you party for his campaign volunteers), maintains a frenetic schedule as the mayor-elect and second-term Ward 4 D.C. council member. But even with his BlackBerries buzzing at his side and his transition in full stride, he cherishes taking the boys to Tots Developmental School most mornings or accompanying them to their Pop Warner football games on the weekends, or eating dinner with his family three days a week.
“I love being with my family,” the mayor-elect said. “I love the work. I love everything.”
He is also assigned to rake the leaves, which still cover the home’s large stone patio and healthy front and back yards. Michelle Fenty didn’t buy her husband’s rationale, which he offered with a wink, that the leaves “just fell last night.”
In addition to herdemanding job as mom, Michelle Fenty, 37, is a full-time attorney with Perkins Coie, specializing in global technology deals, who picks up her sons daily from their after-school activities — and in her off-time rearranges the house as the family’s interior decorator. She cooks dinner — chicken curry is the mayor-elect’s favorite — while her husband prepares breakfast.
As a team, husband and wife keep the Fentys grounded, even as they prepare to lead the nation’s capital, an ever-evolving city of 575,000 residents, through at least its next four years. The only outward signal that this is the home of the next first family of Washington: A withering, slightly bent “Fenty for Mayor” sign still sticking from the front lawn.
“We’ve had a chance to develop this,” Michelle Fenty said. “We’ve just learned that you’ve got to be fluid, keep up with what’s happening around you. For us it doesn’t feel fast. It just feels natural.”
To Michelle Fenty, joining the ranks of the District’s first ladies is simply another layer on an already crowded existence: “We just feel like we have a lot to accomplish,” she said.
“I’m a mother, so I’m attracted to causes involving children, especially low-income children,” she said, promising to further refine her role in the administration. “I have to find a way to build that into my life, and continue to keep a balance given my other responsibilities.”
Michelle Fenty, born and raised with two sisters just outside London, immigrated to the United States in 1987 with her Jamaican mother and father. They left their home to be closer to her grandparents, who had moved to New York City in the 1970s.
After three years in New York, she left for the District and Howard University Law School, where she met Adrian Fenty in 1994. They dated like any normal couple, though the relationship quickly turned serious. He said, jokingly, that she chased him. She said, “In your dreams.”
The couple were married in 1997 and moved into their circa 1956 home, which Michelle has since completely transformed in neo-classical fashion. Once a single-level rambler, the house is now a split-level with a sunken basement, brightly lit and simply decorated — her favorite piece is a reproduction of Paul Gauguin’s “When Will You Marry?” that hangs in the library.
The sitting room downstairs? It used to be the garage.
“It’s a hobby,” Michelle Fenty said of her decorating.
Before her husband’s meteoric rise in politics, Michelle Fenty envisioned him heading off “to a law firm, to work.” But his career in law, as a probate attorney, committee clerk and counsel to the D.C. Council, was brief.
As a former intern for U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D, and Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., and as president of the 16th Street Neighborhood Civic Association, as a Ward 4 advisory neighborhood commissioner and as Ward 4 Democrats’ legislative director, Adrian Fenty clearly was bent toward a future in progressive Democratic politics.
“He’s the only person I know who wanted to go into politics,” said Matt Burkett, a friend from Fenty’s days at Oberlin College, who was visiting the home Saturday. “And he did it, and did it well. I’m not surprised he’s been successful.”
A long-distance runner for 20 years, Fenty, a native of the District’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood, said he learned his work ethic from his parents, Jan and Phil, owners of the Fleet Feet sporting goods store in Adams Morgan. They work seven days a week, he said, consistent with the life of small business entrepreneurs — or a budding politician.
“When you build life into ‘always going,’ then I think you’re more productive,” the mayor-elect said. “If you love what you do, you’ll work all night.”
But for a District politician, working 24/7 can only takeyou so far. With no Congressional seat for which to campaign, the mayor’s office is the pinnacle of accomplishment. “Maybe the two goals,” Fenty said of D.C. voting rights and his future, “are intertwined.”
“I don’t think we think in terms of personal political aspirations,” he said. “All we’re looking to do is make the city the best city it can be.”
All about Adrian Fenty
» How do you start your day? Running
» Favorite artists on your iPod? Kanye West and Green Day
» E-mails received per day? 300
» Favorite food? Indian cuisine
» Favorite beverage? Vitamin water
» Favorite vacation spot? Jamaica
» Favorite movie? “A Few Good Men”
» Book on the bedside table? “85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy” by Jules Witcover
» Most inspiring book? “Manchild in the Promised Land” by Claude Brown
» Your hero? Parents/wife
» Motto you live by? Take nothing and no one for granted
