In 1944, Bertie Bowman a poor, impressionable thirteen-year-old heard South Carolina senator Burnet Maybank declare: If you all ever get up to Washington, D.C., drop by and see me Bertie took those words to heart, and when he arrived in Washington, Senator Maybank, surprisingly true to his word, saw to it that the young runaway had a place to stay and a steady income earned by sweeping the Capitol steps for two dollars a week. Bowman would rise to become hearing coordinator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the U.S. Capitol and this is his remarkable story.
For sixty years,...