By Clyde Noel
Town Crier Correspondent
The first thing you notice about Janet Reno is her distinctive voice and her stature. At 6 feet 2 inches, the former U.S. Attorney General stands taller than Dick Henning, the moderator of Foothill College’s Celebrity Forum.
The 63-year-old, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, appeared on the Flint Center stage in her customary shag haircut and a stylish black dress. Her easygoing manner put everyone at ease immediately.
Reno commented that her recent fainting spell on the stage at the University of Rochester would not hurt her campaign to become the governor of Florida. The audience patiently waited as she alternated her subject matter, choosing her words carefully.
As the nation’s first female attorney general, Reno served under President Clinton from 1993 to 2000. She approved the FBI raid that led to the deaths of some 80 people at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas. Cult leader David Koresh was among the adults and children killed in the assault.
“I made the decision. I was accountable. The buck stopped with me,” she said. “Nothing can ever erase the children in the fire. I will never know what the right thing was, but we must accept responsibility and avoid situations for the future.”
Reno said you have to take criticism and pressure as attorney general. “I can’t remember the time when the Washington Post and the New York Times ever let up on criticism,” she said.
Reno took a personal interest in the battle over Elian Gonzalez, the young boy who survived the trip while his mother died fleeing Cuba. Reno met with his Miami relatives who tried to keep him from returning to Communist Cuba.
“I made the decision the little boy should be with his daddy. As a good father he deserved his son,” Reno said.
When the Miami relatives defied a U.S. government order to hand over Elian, Reno authorized federal agents to grab the boy in an armed raid in April 2000 and reunite him with his father who took him to Cuba.
Reno lives in the home her mom built with a little “heavy lifting” from her dad. She recently campaigned over the entire state of Florida in a little red Ford Ranger pickup she bought used.
“I want to preserve the Florida that I remember,” Reno said. She mesmerized the Flint Center audience with a dreamlike vision of a Florida that few recall.
One of her building blocks is education. Our public schools are the bedrock of our democracy, she said.
“Teachers are an important part of our nation and our democracy,” Reno said. “Something is wrong in this nation that pays football players seven-and eight-figure salaries and provides a school teacher with little money.”
Reno said the last eight years have been an opportunity to use the law to make American safer, freer and to give people more equal opportunity. Our democracy is a fragile institution. Unless all the people are involved, the law is weakened. If people are left out, if they can’t get jobs, if they can’t get their civil rights restored, they become angry and alienated and we become weaker for it.
The most important lesson she said she learned was to never forget those who cared for her. “Never forget those closest to you. Never forget your family,” she said as her speech ended in a standing ovation.
