Mary Anderson Bain

My favorite old New Dealer.

By Cliff Sloan
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006, at 4:47 PM ET

"You don't need many heroes," legal scholar John Hart Ely once wrote, "if you choose carefully." Mary Anderson Bain, who died Monday at the age of 94, was one of mine, though she surely would have scoffed at the label.

I first met Mary in 1979, when she was only in her late 60s. "You should talk to Sid Yates," an old Chicago political hand suggested as I, fresh out of college, searched for a congressional staff job. "And that means you should talk to Mary Bain." Sid and Mary, I soon came to appreciate, were that rarity on Capitol Hill, a congressman and a top aide who worked together as equals, and who were committed to getting things done rather than getting attention. I later would learn also that Mary had already lived out several careers, including as a high-level New Dealer, an insider on Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaigns, and the founder of a successful advertising agency.