A FRIEND IN VOICES4HILLARY EDITORIAL CIRCLE RECEIVED THIS UNSOLICITED EMAIL FROM AN AMERICAN FRIEND WHO LIVES IN LONDON. SHE SHARED IT WITH US, AND NOW WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE WRITER, WE, WITH YOU. ENJOY.
Dear Friends,
Now that VP nominee Senator Tim Kaine has addressed the nation, perhaps he's done with introductions.
Certainly those of you who've enjoyed the chance to be with him and hear him speak with authority and conviction on everything from gun control to climate change, to the constitutional imperative of an Authorization of Military Force, may feel you know him well enough to give him your full support.
But here are three things you may not know, things the uncommonly modest VP-to-be would never say.
1) When Tim Kaine was running for his first term in the Senate my husband and I agreed to host a fundraising dinner and offered him a room in our home in London for the night. He arrived via Eurostar from Paris. Our son, then aged 17, met him at St. Pancras, and together they took the Tube to our house in Hammersmith. No entourage, no taxi. Over 75 people attended the event, and by the end of the evening, Tim Kaine had spoken to each one of them. It had been a suit and tie affair, and after the last guest had gone, Tim Kaine went to his room, returning in jeans, shirt sleeves rolled up. When he saw me bent over the dishwasher, he said, "Diana, let me do that." I told him he should sit down and relax—he'd been traveling for days, doing up to four events in each place. But he wouldn't back off, so I stepped away to let him get on with it. And then he took the dirty dishes that I had piled next to the sink, and reloaded the washer before I could stop him.
2) You've heard Senator Kaine pay tribute to his father in-law, former Virginia Governor Linwood Holton, for having had the guts to desegregate Virginia's public schools. I had just moved to Charlottesville at the very time the Governor's order was enforced. In my kitchen the evening of that fundraiser, I told Tim Kaine what it was like entering that first integrated class at my junior high school. There were knife fights and ambushes, lockdowns and locker searches. For the next two years, security trumped academics, and few lessons proceeded without disruption. But, I told him, six years later things had settled down and my younger brother Daniel had an altogether different experience at the school. In fact, while during my time there interracial friendships did not occur, Daniel became best friends with Boyd Tinsley, the violinist for the Dave Matthews Band, who have performed at a number of events with and for Tim Kaine. Tim Kaine asked me whether Daniel had stayed in touch with Boyd, and I said no—Daniel had worried that Boyd would think he was borrowing in on his fame.
Fewer than two weeks later, I received a note from Tim Kaine telling me that Boyd had urged him to have my brother get in touch. While running for Senate in what was then a 1 point race, Tim Kaine had the grace and heart to reunite two friends.
Boyd Tinsley, violinist of the Dave Matthews Band, with Dave. Tim Kaine reunited the author's son with him. They had been boyhood friends.
3) When my father suffered a traumatic brain injury last April, word of my father's condition reached Senator Kaine. During the fraught days of my farther's recovery, I received a personal note of concern from the Senator.
You'll have see in these vignettes that Tim Kaine demonstrates 1) An inbred humility 2) A reverence for the value of friendship 3) An animating compassion for family and friends.
This is why, aside from Senator Kaine's proven progressive positions, I feel even more newly confident in our Nation's future.
I am grateful to Hillary Clinton for a choosing to run with a champion of all we value most and most hope to achieve.
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AUGUST 9, 2016
