She Came a Long Way for a Presidential Lunch

Six surprised, nervous and delighted citizens from across the country had lunch with President Reagan moments after his Inaugural Address Monday. Marilyn Hamilton, 35, came farther than most, and not just because her geographical starting point was Clovis, Calif.

Six years ago, the adventurous Hamilton took off with her hang glider from a 2,300-foot cliff, but had neglected to make an important equipment adjustment. She plunged several hundred feet and broke her back, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down and emotionally “devastated.”

Faced Challenges Hamilton didn’t know what she would do with her life. Certainly she couldn’t imagine that she would go on to overcome the breakup of her 13-year marriage, become a successful businesswoman marketing “ultralight, high-performance Quickie wheelchairs,” or that she would be able to live alone in a house with a pool “for exercise” and a Jacuzzi “for relaxation.” She couldn’t have contemplated that she would one day stop in Washington on her way to a ski competition in Switzerland for a lunch with President Reagan at which she would chat with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin as if they were old friends and pin on him a button that said “Get a Quickie.” Several people told her that she was the hit of the lunch.

Even after Hamilton had made major life adjustments and become a disabled national tennis and ski champion, she still couldn’t have imagined the call that came to her office recently.

“Someone in my office said, ‘Sen. Mathias on line four,’ and I assumed it was a joke,” Hamilton said. Besides, she wasn’t sure exactly who Sen. Mathias was.

He was Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. of Maryland and he was inviting her to join five other Americans from everyday life outside politics to come to Washington to have lunch with the President and other dignitaries after Reagan’s public swearing-in ceremony and Inaugural Address.

Mathias, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, formed a group that selected a representative cross-section of Americans, although all enjoyed above-average success.

Accident-Free Trucker There was N. F. Plunkett of Midfield, Ala., who has driven a truck for 36 years without an accident and who described the lunch to TV interviewer Roger Mudd: “I don’t know what they called it, but it was veal cutlets.”

There was Joseph Petronella of Buffalo, N.Y., who was named deputy of the year by the Erie County Sheriff’s Department and who had worried about what he would say in the company of so many people who were not on dope or otherwise crime-related.

There was Stan Ahlerich of Winfield, Kan., chairman of the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Young Farmers; Ernest Mass of San Antonio, a 19-year veteran of the San Antonio Fire Department, and Charles Stover, labor leader and engineer from Suitland, Md. (Their trips to Washington were privately financed.)

The Inaugural luncheon is traditionally reserved for the President, vice president, members of the Cabinet and Supreme Court and congressional leaders. This year it was expanded.

“I was proud to represent small business people, women and the disabled,” Hamilton said after the lunch. “I suppose I’m a pretty good package.”

Hamilton was planning a trip this week with her ski coach to Switzerland to compete with athletes from eight countries in a “sit-ski” competition, skiing in a fiberglass, sled-like device.

‘It Was Hilarious’ She said that before the lunch, “I was pretty nervous. What do I talk to these people about? I thought it might be difficult to chat with such prominent people, but we were laughing the whole time. It was hilarious.”

Although she did not sit within chatting distance of the President, she did speak with him briefly before lunch.

“I told him he was doing a heckuva good job and to keep it up,” said Hamilton, a Democrat who turned Republican eight years ago. “And I asked him to please keep in mind small business people, women and the disabled.”

Critics of the President’s budget cuts in programs affecting women and the disabled might have expected Hamilton to disapprove of the President, but she said she did not. She said she had voted for him.

“I think he is trying very hard to meet our needs,” she said during an interview after the lunch. “And I hope he continues.” She said she wanted to thank the President for what he had done for America, and not join in the chorus of special interest groups who are “wanting more all the time.”

Like most people who meet the President, Hamilton thought he “looked fabulous” and was “very down-to-earth from a common person’s point of view.”

At the luncheon, Hamilton found herself seated between Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Gen. George Vessey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and close to Dobrynin, who she figured would be “stuffy and difficult to talk to.”

“But he wasn’t. The first thing he did was to toast ‘the women at this table.’ He never stopped talking. He was hilarious,” Hamilton said. “He wanted to know about our business, and I gave him a ‘Get a Quickie’ button. He had the courage to wear a Quickie button. He left with it on and asked for two more for his wife and daughter.

“He was very chatty and American-like. He was telling me that when he was in Hawaii, he wanted to be in the water so badly that he took off his trousers and waded in in his briefs.”

When she wasn’t hearing the intimate details of Dobrynin’s life, she was handing out business cards and demonstrating her wheelchair for the press.

“It’s a high-performance, lightweight wheelchair. Even after California red wine, white wine and champagne I can still do 360s,” she said, tipping her chair back and whirling around in complete circles.

A Sales Pitch After her accident, Hamilton went through three wheelchairs the first year and finally asked her hang-gliding friends to help her figure out a lightweight, highly maneuverable wheelchair built of some of the same materials as hang gliders. They finally came up with the “Quickie Ultralight,” which weighs 25 pounds, in comparison to the normal 50 to 60 pounds of a steel chair, and has many accessories, which Hamilton will rattle off like a used car salesman.

“It has modular construction and interchangeable parts,” she said. “It has low brakes, high brakes and arm rests that come off. It comes in 12 different colors. (Hers is red.) They’re fun!”

Hamilton is now a partner in Motion Designs Inc., which began manufacturing the chairs four years ago. Since that time, the business has blossomed to a bustling output of 500 chairs a month. And although Hamilton chose not to reveal her salary, she is quite comfortable with her jet-set life style that takes her to Europe for skiing competitions.

After her accident, Hamilton said, she felt a strong sense of gratitude for being alive at all, but she couldn’t help pondering the immense adjustments she would have to make. She was an activist, someone who had gone to Australia to start her teaching career “just for the adventure of it,” someone who hung from a glider to relax.

Hamilton had been married for 13 years, but soon after the accident the marriage broke up without bitterness, she said. “He was my biggest supporter,” she said. “Our lives just weren’t paralleling any more.”