For Hoyer, a Life Of Quiet Victories, Redefined Purpose

"He was a very arrogant, opinionated person," Hoyer says. "What I remember was not particularly happy."

The young Hoyer bounced around. At 4, to Texas, when his dad got a job with the military. At 6, to Massachusetts, for prep school. At 9, back to New York, when the money ran out and the father took off.

"I think I saw my father maybe two or three days in the next 20 years," Hoyer says. But the memory of that prickly, apathetic man would haunt him.

"He didn't want to be like his father," says the congressman's daughter Anne Hoyer. "That's what really drove him -- to be not just good, but strive to be the best you possibly could be."

By the time Steny Hoyer was 16, his mother had married an Air Force sergeant and the family settled near Andrews Air Force Base. His stepfather's alcoholism roiled the home. But, entering Suitland High School, the outgoing youth found the two interests that would define his life.

He got involved in politics, running unsuccessfully for vice president of the student government. And he started dating Judy Pickett, a warm, energetic schoolmate who was class secretary.

Judy's home became like his own. Her mother bought him new shoes, cooked for him when his stepfather was on a bender. Judy was at his side through the rocky start in college and the Kennedy epiphany.

She married him at 21, becoming, Hoyer says, "an example and guide."

Success, Then Failure

Fresh out of Georgetown's law school in 1966, Hoyer launched his campaign for state Senate from Prince George's. He was an underdog, a liberal reformer in a county still heavily white and rural. But he had an army of volunteers: classmates, friends from the statewide Young Democrats, interns from the U.S. Senate, where he worked part time.

"It was a youth corps onslaught," laughs Hoyer.

When Hoyer arrived in Annapolis, "he was a ball of energy," recalls Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), then a state representative. But the young reformer quickly befriended the older senators. "Rather than fight the establishment, he really co-opted it," Cardin says.

Hoyer pushed for better treatment of rape victims and funds for lower-income schools. His wife was a strong influence.