Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993 TAG: 9302140032
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MITCHELL LANDSBERG ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MIAMI LENGTH: Medium
ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE EMBRACES PIONEER LIFE
One key to understanding Janet Reno lies beneath the swaying scratch pines and stubby palm trees that surround her house, which her mother built by hand on the edge of the Everglades.Friends laugh at the thought that Reno, President Clinton's nominee for attorney general, might have the sort of housekeeper problem that destroyed two earlier nominations.
"If you've ever been there, you know they've never had anybody clean that house," said Lyn Parks, one of Reno's closest friends.
This is the place to which Reno is rooted - a solid, unpretentious, rough-hewn oasis in the midst of slick suburban sprawl. Just off the property are tile-roofed townhouses and strip shopping malls that could be in any new suburb in America.
But within Reno's four acres, amid gumbo limbo trees and flocks of wild peacocks, lies a slice of America's pioneering past.
"I think the house reflects my mother and my father," said Mark Reno, Janet Reno's brother, who is a ship captain off the coast of West Africa. "They were very special people and had their own characteristics, and she got all of them."
Mark Reno was doing guard duty Saturday, fending off the curious from his newly famous sister, who returned from Washington on Friday.
Clinton nominated her after two earlier choices, Zoe Baird and federal Judge Kimba Wood, were taken out of consideration because they had hired illegal aliens.
Reno, so far, has attracted no similar controversy. Both friends and political opponents have praised her integrity, and the nomination has attracted support in Miami from Democrats and Republicans alike.
"Maybe the only criticism that could be directed at her by the press is that both her parents were reporters," joked Dr. Joseph Davis, the Dade County medical examiner, who describes his own politics as "six sheets to the right of Genghis Khan."
There has been criticism, mainly by those who believe Reno wasn't aggressive enough in prosecuting public corruption. Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen wrote last week that Reno has an "icy and blunt" personal style and might lack the spine to fight corruption.
But Hiaasen, and other critics and political opponents, generally concede her integrity.
"Janet Reno is a breath of fresh air," said Jose Garcia-Pedrosa, a strong critic who unsuccessfully challenged her when she ran for re-election as Dade County state attorney in 1984.
Perry Adair, a local lawyer who has defended cases against Reno's assistants, said of her: "Anybody who's in office that long without anybody saying they did anything dishonest is remarkable in this county,"
Reno comes from a remarkable family.
Her father, Henry Reno, was a renowned police reporter for The Miami Herald who died in 1966. Her mother, Jane Reno, was a reporter for the old Miami News, but that only begins to describe a woman who wrestled alligators, drank whiskey from a coffee mug, read Proust and went rowing in hurricanes.
She died in December at age 79.
"Janet really worshiped her mother, which wasn't easy at times," said John Keasler, who was a columnist at the now-defunct News. "She could cut loose with words a Marine drill sergeant would blush at."
Mark Reno said his sister would never have accepted Clinton's nomination had her mother, with whom she lived, still been alive.
From Jane Reno, friends say, Janet Reno learned self-sufficiency, integrity and the ability to speak her mind, although not as profanely as her mother.
"She's wonderfully open about the way she lives and the way the Renos live, and it's very different from the way other people live," said Lyn Parks, who has been a friend for 25 years.
Once, Parks recalled, Janet Reno ran into George McGovern at a party shortly after he lost the 1972 presidential campaign. Parks said Reno looked him straight in the eyes and declared, "You know, you weren't really the best candidate running."
Besides forthrightness, Reno inherited her mother's love of the outdoors - of swimming and hiking and canoeing and diving, activities she still indulges at every opportunity.
Those, along with friends and family, occupy the time that she doesn't spend working - not much, given her 12-hour workdays and frequent speaking engagements.
She dates men, friends say, but hasn't found anyone she wanted to marry. At age 54 and 6 feet, 2 inches tall, she described herself last week as "an awkward old maid who has a very great attraction to men."
Neighbors spot her hauling her garbage down the long dirt driveway to the curb, or pruning the prodigious growth that threatens to overwhelm her property - the Reno Ranch, as friends call it.
Hurricane Andrew proved the structural integrity of the house. While surrounding houses were being battered and torn, the Reno house lost only one shingle, which is now nailed to a wall inside as a remembrance.
Friends see the house as a metaphor for the woman. "There's nothing false or fake about it," said one longtime family friend, Cox News Service columnist Howard Kleinberg. "It's very real."
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