New Memoir “Jolly Times in Washington” Coming Soon to Barnes & Noble, Tracing Six Decades in the Nation’s Capital
Retired lawyer and lobbyist Thomas R. Jolly shares firsthand stories of presidents, senators, and Supreme Court history in a new book that will be available on Barnes & Noble soon
michael samish1 Retired lawyer and lobbyist Thomas R. Jolly shares firsthand stories of presidents, senators, and Supreme Court history in a new book that will be available at Barnes & Noble soon
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Thomas R. Jolly, a retired Washington lawyer and lobbyist who spent nearly six decades
shaping federal public policy, has released his memoir, Jolly Times in Washington: The Lifetime Adventures of a Man About Town in Our Nation’s Capital and Other Intriguing Places. Written with longtime friend and collaborator Rick Jerue, the book will soon be available in e-book, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook editions on Barnes & Noble.
Jolly arrived in Washington in December 1968 to attend law school, beginning a career that spanned five presidential administrations and put him in the room with some of the most consequential figures in modern American politics. The book follows his path from a working-class childhood in Dearborn, Michigan, through service in the United States Air Force, where he trained as a Russian linguist and monitored Soviet military communications in Germany and Turkey, to a career on Capitol Hill and in Washington law and lobbying.
Other passages describe flying aboard Air Force One with President Bill Clinton for a commencement address at Eastern Michigan University in April 2000, and an exchange with Senator Kennedy involving then Judge John Roberts, later Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Jolly also reflects on the changing composition of the Supreme Court over his career, from Chief Justice Earl Warren’s tenure through the appointments of Justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and on the evolution of the Republican Party from the era of Senate leader Everett Dirksen to the present day.
The memoir is built around Jolly’s personal recollections of the people he came to know over more than fifty years in the capital, including Senator Edward “Teddy” Kennedy and Congressman John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, to whose memory the book is dedicated. Jolly also reflects on the many friendships and professional relationships he developed throughout his decades in Washington, as well as his work helping preserve Welch Hall, a historic building at Eastern Michigan University, through federal legislation.
“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was, I had such friends,” reads the William Butler Yeats line that opens the book, a fitting frame for a memoir built as much around friendship and loyalty across party lines as it is around policy and power.
“This is not a traditional autobiography,” Jolly writes in the book’s prologue. “It is a collection of memories about the many amazing people and events that have made my life so remarkable.”
Jolly, a U.S. Air Force veteran, worked as a congressional staff member before becoming a lawyer and lobbyist with a major Washington, D.C. law firm. He is the father of two daughters and a son and the grandfather of four. He lives with his wife, Judie, in the Old Town section of Alexandria, Virginia.
