It felt like everyone on Capitol Hill knew Dan Turton.
“I. Had. No. Idea. No idea there’d be so many,” said his 80-year-old mother, Catherine Turton, shrinking into her wool coat, in awe of the influence her son clearly wielded in Washington.
I didn’t know the political Turton. I saw him at school drop-off or when his sons came over for a kindergarten sleepover. Mostly, I knew his mother, who became a fixture in the Capitol Hill mommy community when tragedy first visited the Turtons.
Turton wasn’t a boldface name. He didn’t come up in social media rants or political polemics. But his service drew the big players, alongside the behind-the-scenes people who keep our government running — often despite the elected leaders the rest of America sends them; a small town, a community of thousands of doers who grind at their jobs no matter which party is in power.
After he died at a young 56 last week following complications from the Type 1 diabetes he’d lived with most of his life, the heavy hitters came to pay their respects to the man who spent 17 years as a congressional and White House staffer and 12 as a lobbyist.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), a eulogy from President Biden. Former president Barack Obama texted his condolences to Turton’s teen sons.
It was the second time Obama had comforted those boys.
Turton was the House of Representatives liaison to Obama and helped clear the way for legislative achievements ranging from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the Affordable Care Act, which he said was his proudest effort.
“People have no idea how significant Dan was to our nation,” said Jon Turton, one of his older brothers and a man who works in health care and understands the role his brother played in the landmark legislation. “We are proud of him.”
Turton’s days in the White House were also some of his most difficult, personally, after his children — those twin boys and a younger sister — lost their mom.
Washington lobbyist Ashley Turton got behind the wheel of her BMW before dawn on Jan. 10, 2011, heading to an early flight when her car hit the workbench in their Capitol Hill garage and something ignited, engulfing the car in flames. The 37-year-old mother of three died in that car, in that garage, not far from her sleeping children.
The Turton grandparents, Catherine and Tom, who were just beginning to enjoy retirement, moved into their son’s basement apartment and back into the world of school plays and soccer games.
In their late 60s, they folded seamlessly into their second act as classroom parents. Grandma wasn’t the boomer eye-rolling at food allergies and kindness puppets — she was au courant on screen time, sunflower butter and positive reinforcement.
Grandpa was there for all the games and field trips. He was a volunteer tutor in their grandkids’ D.C. public school.
Grandma even made local TV news.
“Woman Fends Off Intruder With Hobby Horse In Capitol Hill,” the NBC News4 flash said.
Pat Collins was on the scene, reporting that one of the kids spotted the intruder with an armload of their belongings. Grandma grabbed the kids’ hobby horse and confronted the man.
“He grabbed my hair and pulled my neck, pulled my head over and shouted obscenities at me,” she told Collins. “I recovered and said, ‘Now, put the stuff down!’”
Police found the intruder hiding behind a car around the corner after Grandma Turton chased him away.
The grandparents returned to their retirement three years later, when their son remarried, finally moving to Florida, and getting to talk about golf, not Little League. Finally getting to exhale.
Their return to Washington this week was a shock. Again.
All those people, the security, the fuss at this huge event in a grand and historic venue. For their boy.
“They had no idea he was that popular,” one of the women from our mommy/granny group, who was helping the grandparents navigate the tumultuous visit, told me.
On Wednesday, Dan Turton’s parents got to experience the awe and respect their offspring has commanded.
They witnessed the huge swath their son cut through our nation’s capital, the unfathomable accomplishments of the guy who made nicknames for everyone, like Spud and Squid, who was known for his pranks and reported for his first day of duty as a clueless congressional staff intern trying to find Dick Gephardt’s office — at the Library of Congress.
A gregarious frat bro and registered Republican who was a two-time foosball champion, orchestrator of epic pranks (gotta give props to getting two tons of sand in the Kappa Sigma basement for the Bahama Mama party) and loyal Grateful Dead follower. His first lobbying effort was to get the frat house brew upgraded from Schlitz to Busch.
And while Turton’s parents saw the scope of their son’s impact on our nation’s leaders, the Hill suits met the parents responsible for Turton’s talents — two courageous people who put the next generation first.