BALTIMORE — Former Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer was remembered Wednesday as an effervescent community leader and “chief cheerleader” with an indelible passion for public service — both empowering and aggravating to those he worked with. “He challenged us daily to make a difference,” former congressman and Baltimore City Council member Kweisi Mfume told hundreds of people who attended Schaefer’s funeral at Old St. Paul’s Church. Mfume and Schaefer were often political opposites. “Never in my life have I had a more formidable foe,” Mfume said.
“Don is a person that changed politics: He put a human face on it,” said Mfume, former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “He was simply a good man with a good heart.”
Schaefer, who was Baltimore’s mayor from 1971 to 1986 and Maryland’s governor from 1987 to 1995, died on April 18 at the age of 89.
Long-time aide and lifelong friend Lainy LeBow-Sachs described Schaefer as a tireless public servant. He was known for regularly canvassing the streets of Baltimore scouring for trash, potholes and anything else that seemed out of place.
“Nothing else mattered but helping the people,” Lebow-Sachs said.
Schaefer expected his colleagues to care just as deeply about public service — and if he suspected apathy in someone, that person became a target for one of his expletive-laced rants.
“There were times when he was just unbearable,” Lebow-Sachs said. But “that’s when we would find ourselves working even harder.
“We truly were his children,” she added. “He nurtured us, encouraged us — if you had one shred of untapped talent he’d find it and pull it out of you.”
The two-hour funeral service was punctuated with laughter from the hundreds of people in the crowd as colleagues recalled the crass hilarity that tinged Schaefer’s cantankerous attitude.
LeBow-Sachs recalled when he sent the editorial page editor of the Baltimore Sun a bar of soap and a note that read, “for all those dirty things you say about my administration.”
“He thought he knew best,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who served on the Baltimore City Council with Schaefer. “Well, that’s vintage Schaefer.”
“He harassed [Maryland’s congressional delegation] in D.C.,” she added. “He felt sorry for presidents. He felt sorry because they weren’t mayor. [And he thought] he would do what he could to help them.”
Friends say he never lost his humor.
When Schaefer received 250 cards on his 89th birthday, he quipped, “How come I didn’t get 300?”
If he could attend his own funeral, Schaefer would demand that no one waste time mourning his death, Mikulski said.
“He would ask us: ‘What are you going to do to help somebody today?’ ”
