Twenty-four years ago this summer, a freckle-faced 12-year-old with two long braids dangling to her waist was drafted by the Teamsters Little League team in Portland, Maine. She was good--her coach described her as "an average to superior ballplayer"--but she lacked the one characteristic that was required to play Little League baseball in 1974. She didn't wear a jock strap.
What normally would have been a happy footnote from an American childhood that summer became, for Grace Reef '83, a test of character and, ultimately, a barrier-breaking activity.
She was Number One; it said so right on her uniform. The first girl in the world to play in a sanctioned Little League program had to overcome frowning adults, mercenary lawyers and patriarchal history. Not that she cared. She had grown up in a neighborhood full of boys, winning them over with a stubborn unwillingness to "act like a girl." So when the national Little League organization threatened to revoke the local league's charter if Grace was allowed to play, the kid with the rabbit's foot hanging from her belt loop decided to throw a high, hard one. She sued.
A few weeks later, Grace was playing ball, Little League, Inc., had agreed to integrate girls into its program, and another gender-based exclusion had been obliterated.
Reef has always had iron in her spine. When a reporter asked her, in the midst of her Little League ordeal, what she would do if a boy on her team got fresh with her, she replied: "Sock him in the mouth."
Her father, Norman, a retired attorney, recalls that his daughter could argue persuasively for her position before she had even started school. "I had to watch myself when she was only three or four years old because she would talk me into a corner and box me in," he said. "If she thinks she's right she won't give in."
That moxie has been an asset during a career on Capitol Hill that has included stints on the staffs of Sen. Majority Leader George Mitchell and Democratic leader Tom Daschle and now as director of intergovernmental affairs for the Children's Defense Fund. Nearly a quarter century after battling heavy hitters as a 12-year-old, Reef continues to push back when pushed, only now she is looking out for other people's kids. "Children need a voice. Somebody has to look out for their needs," she said.
An acknowledged "people person" whose charm equals her grit, Reef is an accomplished Beltway insider. She was instrumental in drafting and amending two major pieces of legislation of recent years, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act and the 1996 welfare reform bill.
As a legislative assistant for Mitchell during her first decade out of Colby, Reef was able to put her imprint on laws that dealt with issues closest to her heart--welfare, foster care and child care. She is proudest of her role in helping push through Congress in 1990 a development block grant program that established federal funding for child care. "That was historic," she said.
She also played a key role in the adoption of the family leave legislation that provides up to three months of unpaid time off following the birth of a child or to deal with an illness of a family member. "It's really important that people not have to choose between their job and their family," Reef says.
In 1995 she went to work for Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader in the Senate. This time, though, the leader was in charge of the minority party. "I can tell you, having worked in both the majority and the minority, I like the majority best," Reef said.
It was during this time that a group of aggressive and ideologically zealous freshman GOP representatives arrived on The Hill, armed with the Contract For America, a document that Reef says "turned the world upside down." Passing legislation became contentious and strictly partisan, Reef says. "The Senate generally is a cordial place. The House in 1995 was different. It was a hard time," she said.
Chief among the disagreements was how to reform the country's welfare system, which Reef says "clearly was not working." Republicans, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pushed for radical changes in how welfare recipients were chosen, the duration of their eligibility and the federal responsibility in providing services. Reef acknowledges that the Republican posture moved Democrats away from their traditionally staunch defense of welfare toward a more moderate position and an understanding that Americans "were tired of people getting something for nothing." Her job, Reef says, was to bring Republicans back toward the center as well. She wrote the Democratic alternative to what she called the "draconian" bill introduced by the Republicans in the House. "It was putting women and children first, but this time they were on the gangplank," said Reef of the GOP proposal. "Basically, we were saying, Œbe tough on the parents, but don't be tough on the kids.' You can't ask single mothers to go back to work and abandon their children. If there is no provision for helping to pay for child care, how can we expect those women to go out and get jobs?"
Confronted with hardened positions against any kind of federal funding for the programs, even for child care for single moms, Reef says she was able to bring a personal perspective to the debate that may have helped cement Democratic support behind Daschle's alternative bill. "I was pregnant with my son, and my daughter was about a year and a half old. I was paying almost two hundred dollars a week for her day care. When I told the members this, they were like, "You've got to be kidding.' They were shocked."
"What it did was bring the discussion down to the level of real people and got it out of the books of charts and statistics," Reef said. "I've found when working with members [of Congress] that if you can give a real example about Sally down the block or Joe at the convenience store that people get it."
Reef managed to bridge the broad ideological spectrum within her own party to win every Democratic vote, but still the bill was defeated. "We broke it down and offered pieces of it as amendments," she said. "We were able to amend the final bill in twenty-one areas. That was a victory."