Capitol Hill

Not long after I surrendered my life to Jesus, I co-founded a small offset print shop. My partner was a fourth-generation printer, and I handled sales and promotion … though I wasn’t particularly good at it.

In 1984, I got a call from a friend from church who said she felt the Lord had told her to contact me about a job that had opened in her office. She was the receptionist for a U.S. congressman.

It sounded so much like Holy Spirit and so little like me that I scheduled an appointment.

As I sat with the congressman in his office, he asked me if I had any political experience.

I didn’t.

“Do you know your way around Washington?”

“No.”

“Have you ever written a press release?”

“No.”

“Why are you here?”

“I just felt the Lord was leading me here.”

And I guess it was the Lord, because I started the following Monday.

I had just been shown where my typewriter was when the chief of staff called me in and said the congressman needed a press release. So, I returned to my desk and wrote one. Minutes after I turned it in, it came back. I rewrote it. It came back. I edited it. It came back. I edited it again. It came back.

It was nearly 5 pm (I won’t say it was nearly the end of the day, because time on Capitol Hill is measured in sessions, not hours). I winced when I saw the chief of staff approaching my desk again. This time, however, he told me he had sent the press release to the congressman. It had been approved.

And that began a crash course in learning to write the congressman’s letters-to-the-editor, op-ed columns, fliers, tabloids, brochures and speeches, official correspondence, campaign literature, radio/TV scripts and magazine articles, beside coordinating news conferences and serving as liaison with constituents, federal agencies, administrative officials and special interest groups—skills that would be invaluable for the work I would one day do as an author and ghostwriter. And God knew I would need every one of them.