One of D.C. Mayor Marion Barry's closest friends called on him yesterday to consider resigning from office because of health problems he refused to identify, saying in an extraordinary news conference that Barry faces "a battle for personal survival" and must concentrate on "complete healing and recovery."
Only hours after Barry went from a retreat in rural Maryland to a more distant church facility near St. Louis, boxing promoter Rock Newman made public his concerns. Newman declined to say whether he believes Barry has returned to alcohol or drugs, but he urged the mayor to consider "abdicating the throne" of city government.
Newman, a Barry confidant and staunch political supporter, offered the most dire public assessment of the mayor's condition since Barry began an unscheduled sabbatical Saturday. Newman said that for more than a year, the mayor repeatedly has refused to act on friends' entreaties to take better care of himself and that yesterday's public statement was a last-ditch effort at persuading Barry "to stop the maddening process toward relapse and personal destruction."
"I as his friend can no longer remain silent as I witness the personal unraveling of one of this nation's most committed public servants," Newman said. Directing his words at the mayor and his wife, Cora Masters Barry, Newman said, "You must fearlessly accept the truth of your circumstances and confront the demons that threaten your existence."
Newman's impassioned plea caught Barry's aides and city political activists off guard and left many of them thunderstruck. Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy reported yesterday that Barry had told him that he had not suffered a drug or alcohol relapse, Barry's only public comment on the subject since he began his retreat. But Newman's equivocal statements yesterday only accelerated a stream of rumor and speculation that already was running wild.
The statement "really raises the level of concern about the mayor's health," said D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3). "This a period of time when people feel somewhat vulnerable about the city's future, and questions about the mayor's health add to that sense of vulnerability."
Council member Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7) added, "What this shows is that public life can highlight or compound whatever personal problems that you may have."
Barry's office issued a brief statement from the mayor late yesterday that did not address much of what Newman said, including his comments about substance abuse. "Cora and I agree with our friend Rock that, for too long, we have neglected our personal health and well-being," the statement said. "Our being here in St. Louis is as continuation of what we clearly understand will be a lifetime process."
Early yesterday morning, the mayor and his wife left Skinner Farm, the Maryland retreat where they had stayed since Saturday, and flew to St. Louis, where they entered the Thompson Center, an ecumenical religious conference center. Barry (D) appeared briefly but did not take questions from reporters. Officials at the Thompson Center said that the 32-acre facility is designed to encourage meditation and introspection in a sheltered environment and that it does not offer drug rehabilitation programs. Neither Barry nor his staff has said when the mayor will return to his job.
Newman's remarks at his midday news conference yesterday were, by any political standard, unusual. He said his decision to speak out was "agonizing and gut wrenching," in part because he knew many would consider it "the ultimate act of betrayal." But Newman said he hopes his speaking out will result in "another 25 years of friendship with some friends who I love."
Because Barry is a workaholic and his job is a "furnace," Newman said, the mayor has settled into a "cycle of pressure . . . that would, in my estimation, inevitably lead to collapse." Although Newman played a vital role in the 1994 campaign that returned Barry to the mayor's office after his conviction on a drug charge, Newman said he now has second thoughts about what he did because he believes Barry's work is damaging his health.
Clearly, however, Newman's most politically charged remarks dealt with substance abuse. When asked about substance abuse, Newman refused, after a long pause, "to confirm, deny {or} verify . . . whether relapse has taken place."
He went on to say: "I think there needs to be a very healthy debate about that specific term called relapse prevention, because it means what it says, preventing a relapse. And there is something noble about relapse prevention, as opposed to being something that should be seen negatively."
Newman's opinions carry great weight because he is one of the key members of Barry's inner circle, a group that rarely airs its opinions in public. The bond between him and the city's first couple was forged over many years.
Newman and Cora Barry met in the late 1970s through their mutual love of boxing. Newman eventually became a surrogate father to her two daughters. She served as a mother hen to a young boxer named Riddick Bowe in whom Newman had taken an interest.
Bowe is now a top-ranked heavyweight and employs both Newman and Cora Barry. Newman is his manager; Cora Barry is executive director of the Riddick Bowe Better Life Foundation, where she coordinates charitable donations.
In 1988, before her marriage to Barry, the then-Cora Wilds was forced to resign as the District's boxing commissioner after she pleaded guilty to double billing the city for $2,680 in travel expenses. One of the first people she called was Newman.
"He just said, We won't let you fall. We will wrap arms around you and hold you up,' " Cora Barry said in an interview two years ago. "Unconditional love, unconditional support, at my lowest. You will never know what that meant to me."
Newman performed a similar service for Marion Barry when his political career appeared to be over. After Barry finished serving a prison term for a drug conviction, few others would publicly embrace him, but Newman urged him to soldier on.
By his own estimate, Newman gave $50,000 to Barry's 1994 mayoral campaign and headed Barry's transition team after he won. He has defended Barry repeatedly since he took office and continues to praise Barry's job performance.
Cora Barry said after the election: "There are people God puts on this Earth to touch a lot of people. Rock is one of those."
Newman said yesterday that he told the Barrys over the weekend that he was likely to go public with his concerns about the mayor's health. "The reaction was an understanding that if I thought that this was something that was right and that I had to do, that they understood," he said in an interview.
At yesterday's news conference, Newman spoke contemptuously of people around Barry who remained silent while he struggled with and publicly denied drug and alcohol use in the 1980s. Barry's problems made worldwide headlines when he was videotaped smoking crack cocaine in an FBI sting.
"The duty of friendship requires me to be talking to you all today," Newman said. "We who supported Marion Barry to become mayor {in 1994} . . . certainly don't wish to be seen as the leech kind of yes men and women who were around him in the past.
"There is a propensity by so many people who surround {the Barrys} to always tell them what they want to hear. . . . You know I've been the devil's advocate. I consider myself sometimes as having been a one-man truth squad."
Newman spoke highly of the job Barry has done as mayor -- "he's done an admirable job that he should be applauded for" -- but said he thinks the personal price is too high. "I would love to see him detach {himself} to some extent from the rigors and the pressures of the madness of this pressure cooker," he said.
Despite Newman's belief that he had no choice but to go public, he made clear yesterday that he would rather have stayed silent.
"Let me tell you something. This is a lonely feeling," he said. "It's a very lonely feeling." Staff writers Hamil R. Harris, Vernon Loeb, Roxanne Roberts, Howard Schneider, Steve Vogel and Debbi Wilgoren contributed to this report. CAPTION: Mayor Marion Barry follows his wife, Cora, through Baltimore-Washington International Airport as they move his retreat to a new location. CAPTION: Rock Newman conducts news conference during which he urged Mayor Marion Barry "to stop the maddening process towards relapse and personal destruction."