Her name was Valerie Obenstine and she was the owner of a “Gentlemen’s Club” known as “Bottoms Up”.  She was a tall woman, remarkably well endowed and, though her 20s were well behind her, she was very attractive at 45.  She never carried a purse but instead tucked her driver’s license, lipstick, cash and children’s pictures in her ample cleavage.

In her 20s, when she herself was an exotic dancer, she could have been the lady in the Raymond Chandler novel, Farewell My Lovely: “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window”.

They say that there are certain inflection points in everybody’s life and meeting Valerie was one of mine.

I first met her on March 16, 1980 at a party after the Baltimore St. Patrick’s Day Parade. St. Patrick’s Day was a High Holyday in our house due to my Irish wife and the Parade was a must attend.  In 1980, I marched dressed as Uncle Sam with two daughters dressed in their bright green Irish dancing outfits and our 5 year old son dressed as a leprechaun.  After the Parade, there was a party at the Parade Chairman’s home which Valerie attended.  Valerie’s son was a classmate of the Chair’s son at a selective and expensive Catholic high school.  Valerie knew there would be politicians galore at that party and she needed politicians.

At this juncture, I was a budding lobbyist in the Maryland General Assembly and Valerie also was seeking a lobbyist.  Her need for a lobbyist and politicians was because of a Bill pending in the General Assembly.  On St. Patrick’s Day, it had already passed the Maryland Senate and was well on its way to passage in the House of Delegates.  It was supported by the Mayor of Baltimore, the legendary William Donald Schaefer, who would later become Governor of Maryland. 

The Bill allowed certain clubs to remain open until 4 AM as opposed to the normal closing time of 2 AM.  The 18 favored clubs were on “The Block,” a 3 street strip in Baltimore’s central city which was adjacent to City Hall and Police Headquarters. The Bill was explained as an inducement to tourism which was pretty laughable given the seedy nature of “The Block”.

Valerie’s problem with the Bill was simple. “Bottoms Up” was not included and she wanted “in” or everybody “out”.

If Valerie was open and gregarious, her husband, Frank Siciliano, was the polar opposite.  At least 3 inches shorter than Valerie and reed thin, Frank spoke in whispers and rarely showed emotion.  As it would turn out, Frank had a lot of fire in his belly, but it would be a few years before that appeared.

The hearings on the Bill were right out of central casting. The proponents of the Bill could’ve been Don Corleone’s men from The Godfather, most dressed in three-quarter length leather coats. They showed respect to Valerie who, after all, was the female version of them. However, as to me in my suit and tie, their looks were chilling. They said to me:  “you are Luca Brasi and you will soon be swimming with the fishes”.

Perhaps I over-dramatized their glares but that was before the death threat and the rifle shot that would come a few weeks later.

The Bill was controversial in the Baltimore City House Delegation and only passed by a vote of 15 to 14 when the Speaker of the House, a Baltimore City Delegate, cast the 15th vote. This was the first and only time in the 1980 Session that the Speaker had attended a City Delegation meeting.

At that point, there were heavy odds favoring passage of the Bill because of a rule of legislative courtesy. The rule was this:  Local liquor bills affecting a single jurisdiction were the decision of that jurisdiction and all other jurisdictions would honor that decision when the bill was presented to the full House of Delegates. A second rule was: when the Speaker of the House wanted a bill, the Speaker’s wish was to be granted.

But then the unthinkable happened. The “Indians” rose up against the “Chiefs”.  It would not have been possible without the unrest in the Baltimore City Delegation as witnessed by the 15 to 14 vote. It turns out that the 14 began lobbying members of other Delegations to oppose the Bill and to ignore the legislative courtesy rule. 

One of the first casualties in political warfare is the truth.  While proponents argued that the Bill was necessary for tourism, opponents – particularly liberal female Delegates from Montgomery County ‒ argued that the Bill degraded women.  Sitting in the spectators’ gallery, Valerie and I signaled the 1980 equivalent of “You go girl!”

After an hour long debate, the Bill died at noon on Good Friday, April 4th by a vote of 55-52 with 34 not voting.  The “non-voters” apparently decided that a non-vote would both help the cause and not infuriate the Speaker and they were right.

After the vote, the House adjourned for lunch and many went to Harry Browne’s, a restaurant directly across the street from the State House.  Harry Browne’s had only been open for less than four months and its owner was 21-year-old Rusty Romo.  Soon, the place was packed including our table which was in the center of the room.

At that point, we were drinking celebratory toasts and not thinking too much about lunch.  Many of the delegates were offering congratulations and then the box arrived.  It was a box from the local florist located just doors away from Harry Browne’s.  Inside the box was a single red rose tied with a black velvet ribbon along with a pale pink but unsigned sympathy card.  My Italian friend sitting next to me gasped and said “this is the Mafia symbol of death.” Another person at the table asked me where my kids went to school and got up to call the state police to arrange for protection.

I was a little shaken but not as much as my tablemates.  I decided to go to the florist to find out who had sent the box.  As I turned out the door of Harry Browne’s on my way to the florist a shot rang out and I fell face first on the pavement only to later realize that a liquor delivery truck had backfired about 50 feet away.

The delivery of the box caused quite a stir in Harry Browne’s, so much so that a number of Delegates left, preferring to get lunch somewhere else. Word spread quickly and then a reporter arrived. The drama surrounding the Bill was well known and the delivery of the box was icing on the cake. The next day the Baltimore News American’s front page banner headline was “A Strange Defeat of The Block Bar Bill”.  The News American story noted that “Schwartz’s anonymously sent rose was the last act Friday in what became the strangest side show … [in] the state legislature this year”.

The News American story referred to the “fashionable” Harry Browne’s and that word was catnip to Rusty Romo.  40 years later, Harry Browne’s is indeed “fashionable” and probably the best white tablecloth restaurant in Annapolis; in 1980, not so much.

Rusty was so enamored of the story that he has a handsomely framed replica.  His mother had a different take after reading the story: “Rusty, what kind of people are you serving in the restaurant?”

The News American story certainly didn’t hurt my career.  It cemented my friendship with Rusty who, a few years later, named a luncheon sandwich after me.  The initial sandwich was something I had never eaten and I have had no input on the 5 or 6 iterations since then.

And what about Valerie?  I would last speak to her when she called my house and my, about-to-be, 10-year-old daughter sprang up to answer the phone during Easter dinner and returned to announce that “Daddy, Darling is on the phone”.  Valerie called everyone Darling, pronounced “Dahhling”.

While I did not speak with her after that, a few years later I learned of her death.  It seemed that husband Frank, infuriated with her and her boyfriend, had driven his car through the wall of a bar on the Eastern Shore of Maryland crushing them both.

I guess Rusty’s mom had been right after all.