Herewith, a delightful recollection of one sailing friend written by another. Ken Ringle is an author and journalist.By Ken Ringle
It is said that we only miss monuments when they’re gone. And so it is that Washingtonians of a certain age will greatly miss David Breasted, monument to an era when journalism in this city was more flamboyant, more raucous and a lot more fun.
David, who died last Thursday at 89, was at one level a journeyman reporter who wrote for the old Washington Star, the New York Daily News and other outlets. But in the 1960s and 70s, when many in our trade had a wider and more extravagant range, he was also an accomplished singer, guitarist, songwriter, host, raconteur, chef, ocean sailor and general fixture of press and political life. He was known to everyone from Ethel Kennedy to members of Alcoholics Anonymous of which he was a proud member for more than 50 years.
With his Yale education and Ivy League good looks, David slid easily into the Washington press corps when he joined the Washington bureau of the New York Daily News in the 1960s. He was a perfect fit for the times: an Exeter and Yale-trained grandson of an Egyptologist who helped open King Tut’s tomb, and whose parents palled around with Roosevelts. With his irreverent amiability and hearty baritone and guitar, he also became the master of ceremonies of skits and singalongs between stops of numerous political campaigns. He reached his greatest fame on Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign train, penning and singing a joyously- received anthem called “The Ruthless Cannonball” sending up the candidate’s alleged merciless political instincts. Kennedy loved it.
I first met David when I joined the Washington Post in 1970 and moved into a famous group house in Foggy Bottom, the lease of which he held. The house at 2146 Eye St. NW was owned by George Washington University and has long since been absorbed into the school’s mushrooming campus. But at the time it was the ideal entry point for Washington. Not only was it walking distance from my work at the Post, it had a Chinese laundry across the street, a grocery and liquor store that delivered, two blocks away on Pennsylvania Ave., plus numerous bars and restaurants within walking distance and even the Circle movie theatre, alas long gone.
More important for new arrivals, it came complete with referrals for doctors, lawyers, bankers, and Redskin tickets and even a celebrity dentist we would encounter at fundraisers for the arts.
There is simply no way to overstate the place “Heartbreak Hotel” occupied in the journalistic culture of Washington at that time. It was, among other things, a halfway house for those traveling to and from new employment and to and from divorce. Among those who lived there for various periods, short or long, were Carl Bernstein, Warren Hoge (later of the New York Times), Sally Quinn, NBC TV correspondent Douglas Kiker, food critic Bill Rice and John McCain’s brother Joe. Gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson was a frequent visitor. The house was also centrally located for coverage of the numerous anti-war demonstrations of the day. GW students would hand us their riot plans, police picket lines would parade just outside and we once found an unexploded tear gas grenade in the back yard. Our evangelical Mormon cleaning woman tucked it lovingly into a salad bowl in the kitchen assuming it was a misplaced objet d’arte.
Amidst all of this, David was a perpetual host, throwing regular dinners and drinkalongs for everyone from The Informed Sources (his own bluegrass group) to a touring troupe of the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was impossible to live in the house with David without involuntarily learning the lyrics to one of his favorite regular vocals: “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight” .
Though David was a talented cook, chef for most of these events was his live-in girlfriend—Cindy Moran—a recent American University graduate who worked as a reporter for Gannett. Cindy was one of the highlights of the house—a hysterically funny (not to say indulgent) woman who never quailed when David would arrive home declaring he had invited 26 for dinner. Amid all the hilarity, the real business of Washington was never far away. I remember David being awakened at 2 a.m. one night by a phone call saying one of the radical anti-war groups had exploded a bomb in a restroom of the U.S. Capitol.
Like all of us, David had his demons, but he met some in heroic terms. On New Year’s Eve 1971 (not long after consuming alone an entire bottle of bourbon I had left in the kitchen) he quit smoking, quit drinking and went on a diet at the same time. He kept those resolutions for the rest of his life. He also quit journalism to go back to finish Yale, from which he had departed a few hours shy of his degree. He later said all the younger students of the time assumed he was a narc.
Though he kept in touch with his reporter friends, David then moved on to the real guiding passion of his life—ocean sailing. He had crewed in the 1970 Newport to Bermuda race aboard a Cal 40 owned by his friend Juan Cameron of Fortune magazine, and was a highly skilled technical sailor, ever mesmerized by the challenges of perfect sail trim and the glories of wind and water. But he was also a bit crazy. David suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the intricacies of navigation—particularly in those pre-GPS days—at times drove him a bit nuts. Though he never did anything actually dangerous—OK, so he once insisted I steer a course over the top of Fisher’s Island—he executed celebrated groundings on well-marked shoals in Nantucket harbor and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal while he was literally arguing aloud with an invisible alter-ego we came to know as Walter.
None of this affected his infectious charm or the affection in which he was held by almost everyone who knew him. He gravitated to teaching sailing on Long Island Sound (he reported hearing the news of Nixon’s resignation over his boat’s VHS radio—some guy calling his broker, he said) and exercised his skills delivering yachts for various owners, usually between Annapolis and New England. Off Hyannis he would invariably start telling hilarious Kennedy stories in a Boston accent indistinguishable from JFK, Bobby or Teddy. He also became a yacht broker and found Teddy’s final boat at the senator’s request.
Over the years he alternated between sailing and attending his beloved bluegrass concerts. His former journalistic cohorts saw him less and less. As his health failed in recent years he became occupied with tidying his affairs. A few years ago he phoned to task me with a special mission: when he died he wanted me to scatter his ashes from the Spa Creek drawbridge in Annapolis. The reason, he said, was to honor a fellow alcoholic who years before—in a self-destructive haze— had jumped from the bridge in an effort to end his life. The fellow failed, was fished out, sobered up, joined AA and became employed as the drawbridge tender. David thought a life like that should be memorialized. I’m not sure just how I’m going to do what he asked, but it’s a mission close to my heart.
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