Gov. Martin O’Malley’s first taste of political success occurred in childhood. In 1976, O’Malley ran successfully against five other candidates for eighth-grade student body president at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Bethesda.
“This was the first time that I ran into the O’Malley political machine,” recalls Tim Mullin of Chevy Chase, one of O’Malley’s competitors. On the day of the election, Mullin arrived at school armed with posters, only to find the O’Malley family out in full force with “Vote O’Malley” signs and handing out lollipops with “Vote O’Malley” stickers on them. “I am coming around the corner after I hung my signs and, lo and behold, there is my younger sister Libby, [then a first-grader], licking one of the [O’Malley] lollipops and passing others out to her classmates,” Mullin says.
Though only 45 now, the governor has accomplished much since that first election. He was an assistant state’s attorney for the city of Baltimore for three years, a Baltimore City Council member for eight years, a twice-elected mayor of Baltimore, and is now in his second year as governor. O’Malley’s view of the world and his role in it were shaped as he grew up in Bethesda and Rockville. In this strong Irish Catholic household, the principles of faith and a commitment to assisting others were front and center alongside the history and music of his Irish rebel ancestors, which fueled his passion for the underdog.
“You had to care, you had to have plans to help people,” says his mother, Barbara O’Malley of Rockville, who, “after 33 years of staying home with children,” went back to work full time in 1987 as a receptionist for then-freshman U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski. More than 20 years later, Barbara O’Malley still works full time for the Maryland senator.
O’Malley’s grandfathers were New Deal Democrats: one, a city, county and district chairman in Fort Wayne, Ind.; the other, a ward leader in Pittsburgh, Pa. The governor’s parents met in the early 1950s at Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. Barbara O’Malley (then Barbara Suelzer), having worked on the campaign of the Fort Wayne, Ind., congressman she helped to elect, had moved to D.C. to work in his congressional office.
After serving in World War II in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a bombardier, Thomas O’Malley, the governor’s late father, earned undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown University. He eventually became a criminal defense lawyer, first in Washington and then in Rockville. Barbara O’Malley says she met her husband when he and a friend came to DNC headquarters to go through newspaper clips. The two were married for 51 years, until Thomas’ death two years ago.
Until age 8, O’Malley lived on Sleaford Road off East-West Highway behind Bethesda-Chevy Chase (B-CC) High School. “Bethesda was a bit smaller and a bit slower than it is now,” O’Malley says. The governor has fond memories of walking the few blocks to school at Lourdes and of being surrounded by great places to play and explore, including Lynbrook Park and the railroad tracks at the end of his street.
“Many evenings, my father and I would go for long walks,” O’Malley reminisces as he sits in his Annapolis office. They would walk through the neighborhood, by the Hiser movie theater (where the Hyatt is now), past Gifford’s ice cream (then located behind Claire Dratch) and by various sporting events at B-CC. “I had a great childhood in Bethesda and Rockville,” O’Malley says. “It was a great place to live.”
“We had a very Norman Rockwell-like childhood,” says Eileen Schempp, the younger of the governor’s two older sisters. Schempp, sister Bridget, Martin and younger brother Patrick took advantage of all the Bethesda area had to offer. “We got to play in the streets and roam the neighborhood.”
Schempp, who lives in Rockville, says O’Malley, who is six years her junior, was a typical little brother, always wanting to get into his sisters’ business. She recalls him as gregarious and energetic and eager to play sports and participate in the Cub Scouts. Schempp also describes O’Malley as smart, “very much attuned even from an early age,” as well as “a history buff ” like all the boys in the family.
Politics were a part of life in the O’Malley household. Schempp remembers her mother taking them to Hubert Humphrey headquarters and holding an election night party at home to celebrate Lyndon Johnson’s win. The governor says his first real political memory is the day after Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968.He recalls going downstairs, getting a bowl of cereal and looking for cartoons on TV, only to find news coverage. “I remember sensing that something was very wrong,” O’Malley says.
When he was 7, O’Malley helped campaign for his father’s law school friend, Republican James Gleason, who was on his way to becoming the first Montgomery County executive. O’Malley passed out campaign material and had his first experiences canvassing door to door.
In 1971, a year after twin brothers Paul and Peter were born, the O’Malleys moved from Bethesda to the Fallsmead area of Rockville because the family—now with six children—needed more space. Martin, who was 8 when the family moved, recalls realizing that there “was much less hustle and bustle” in Rockville than in Bethesda. O’Malley attended third grade at Lakewood Elementary School, but Barbara O’Malley says he asked to go back to Our Lady of Lourdes the following year because he really liked the school. And that’s where he and his brother Patrick went.
As the oldest of the four boys, Martin led his brothers in games of football or green army men and tanks in the backyard. Peter, one of the twins, recalls his older brother encouraging them to build forts in the woods. “He was always very creative and had a great imagination,” Peter says.
The O’Malley house was filled with political buttons and paraphernalia, including framed photographs of President John Kennedy and one of presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt standing with Martin O’Malley’s maternal grandfather during a campaign stop in Indiana. The dinner table conversation often focused on the family’s interest in history and on local, national and international politics.
Peter O’Malley says his father, after serving in World War II and seeing the mushroom cloud rise over Hiroshima, developed a “good perspective” on life. “He truly appreciated what was important in life and what was not,” Peter says. “Our father believed that we are all responsible for trying to contribute to the betterment of society…and to not be shy about participating.”
Peter, now chief of staff for Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr., remembers his mother taking the kids on day trips to the Maryland State House, Monticello, Baltimore Harbor and Mount Vernon. On weekends, with their father along, they explored Gettysburg and other area battlefields. Martin recalls how his father pointed out the historical pictures of the signers of the Declaration of Independence during a trip with brother Patrick to the state Capitol in Annapolis. Usually articulate, the governor was first at a loss for words when asked to describe his father.
“My father was a very religious and spiritual person,” O’Malley says. “He had a huge influence on me. He had tremendously high expectations for his kids. He was a very complex guy. He was a maverick, an iconoclast, a defender of the rights of the little guy…like the character Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.”
O’Malley’s childhood friends say Barbara O’Malley, who shared a passion for her faith and public service with her husband, was always the more reserved of the two. One childhood friend of the governor’s recalled Martin saying that his mother ruled with a quiet iron fist. When O’Malley was asked to testify on the foreclosure issue on Capitol Hill last spring, he e-mailed his mother that he was coming, in case she could break away from her Senate office to see him. In the self-effacing manner that her children became accustomed to over the years, Barbara O’Malley messaged her son not to acknowledge her if he saw her at the hearing. “I told him, ‘If you see me over there, don’t notice me.’”
‘Men for Others’
On one of the final days of his freshman year at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., O’Malley had taken The Metro’s Red Line to what was then its last stop at Dupont Circle and was waiting to take a bus back to Montgomery County. Michael Enright, a classmate from Bethesda, was sitting at the same bus stop.
The two boys, who had not spoken all year, both were engrossed in their reading when, Enright says, a homeless man came “staggering” toward O’Malley, who was eating a bag of Goldfish Crackers. “Martin holds out the bag as if to say, ‘Do you want some?’ and the homeless man puts his hand right into [it],” Enright recalls. “That was the icebreaker.” The two boys struck up a conversation and quickly became close friends.
Enright, who is O’Malley’s chief of staff, was the oldest boy in his Irish Catholic family of seven children. He recalls liking O’Malley’s passion for current events and history and was impressed with his friend’s knowledge of politics at such a young age. Referring to the fact that O’Malley had already campaigned, Enright says, “Here was a guy who had actually walked the walk.”
