On the Wings of a Plastic Dove

Foreword: Given the impending end of the election season, it seemed appropriate to tell another story about what can happen on the campaign trail.

Each of the three Congressional campaign I helped coordinate -- 1962, 1964, and 1966 -- had high and low points.   The most outlandish situation occurred in the last of the three, occasioned by the opening of a short stretch of highway on Milwaukee’s South Side.  The roadway was just a final small piece in the local interstate network.  The big celebrations had taken place months before when most of the roadway opened.

A group of tinhorn South Side Milwaukee politicians, however, decided that there should a ribbon cutting anyway.  They invited  Zablocki.   I advised him against going that morning on the grounds that there would be no other dignitaries above the rank of alderman attending.  Never one to duck an occasion,  he ignored me and went anyway.

About two o’clock that afternoon,  the phone rang.  “Was Congressman Zablocki at the ribbon-cutting this morning?” the male caller asked.   We confirmed it.   “Were there flowers in the ribbon?”  he wanted to know.   Unsure,  I asked Clem who was working next door in his office.  Yes, there had been flowers in the ribbon. 

“Those flowers,” the caller shouted into the phone, “were stolen from my mother’s grave.   We don’t care so much about the flowers,  but we want the plastic dove back!   If it is not returned immediately,  we’re going to the newspapers.”

As Zablocki later reconstructed events,  the cemetery was adjacent to the ribbon-cutting site. One of the politicians apparently decided that no one would miss some flowers from a grave,  jumped the cemetery fence and snatched them.  How the plastic dove got involved was never adequately explained.

It took little imagination to see the headline in the Milwaukee Journal the next day:  “Politicians Purloin Poseys and Plastic Pigeon.”  The tinhorns would get what they deserved but Zablocki also would be implicated. 

“Ask the family to come over here this evening,” sighed a weary Clem.

In the meantime we got in touch with the  organizers of the ribbon-cutting.  They stoutly denied having stolen the flowers and feigned no knowledge of the whereabouts of the highly treasured plastic dove.  They later delivered us a copy of a flower shop receipt that was a patent phony, then cleared out before the irate family arrived.

I can still remember the son of the deceased, a 30-something man about six-six and weighing a good 270 pounds. He refused to sit down, instead kept striding back and forth in Zablocki’s small office, waving his arms and shouting repeatedly about how he was “going to the papers.”   It took all of the Congressman’s ample diplomatic skills to calm the situation but after a time and multiple apologies he succeeded. The family shook his hand warmly as they left.  We exhaled and poured double martinis.

The press never knew. The plastic dove, alas, was never recovered.