Rep. Ed Towns has served 14 terms in Congress, representing Brownsville, Cypress Hills, downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill and parts of Fort Greene, among other neighborhoods, since 1983. He and his son, Assembly Member Darryl Towns, made history by becoming the first African-American father-and-son team to serve simultaneously in New York public office when the younger Towns was elected in 1992.
The elder Towns recently sat down with City Hall to talk about the perks of chairing a committee, hosting his own Internet talk show, his feelings about Sammy Sosa and why he may owe his career to car trouble.
City Hall: Are you a cook at all yourself?
Edolphus Towns: No, not really. My wife is a tremendous cook. She’s just gifted. She’s the type of person that can cook, she can even sew, and she’s a very talented woman.
CH: Does she kick you out of the kitchen?
ET: Yeah—that’s why I don’t even bother. I don’t even try. I put something on the grill when we cook out.
CH: Usually it’s the guy of the house that does the grilling.
ET: Yeah so that’s my thing. And my son is my next-door neighbor, so a lot of times he’s the grill guy.
CH: Whose decision was it to move in—did you move in next to them?
ET: No, I was there first, and then when a physician sold his house, my son bought it. And my daughter lives four houses down on the same block.
CH: So this is, like, the Towns block?
ET: I won’t call it Towns block, but the Towns are on there.
CH: Some families do very well close together and others need more space. How does it work out for you guys?
ET: It works out real well because the grandkids run in and out of the house. I have five grandkids.
CH: I noticed that you have your own YouTube channel. You really seem to enjoy interviewing different guests. Who’s been your favorite guest so far?
ET: My favorite, I guess, is a guy by the name of Armstrong Williams. Armstrong Williams is a journalist and he’s very controversial. His views are not mainstream views, so I enjoyed having a dialogue with him.
CH: Have you ever thought about switching over to do a talk show?
ET: Well, no, I enjoy the weekly show. I enjoy politics, I really do. I’ve been involved now for about 40 years, as a district leader, then, of course, deputy borough president.
CH: A lot of people your age might be going to play golf or relax with their family. Have you ever thought of retiring?
ET: I really have not thought about retiring. I feel good and I generally can compete with anybody out there. And my health is good. I enjoy what I do. I really find it extremely gratifying to be able to assist people, to make life better for them, to watch the smiles on their faces and to be able to help them accomplish whatever they want. That, to me, is very touching, and I don’t want to turn that loose.
[Waitress comes. Towns orders stewed chicken, salad with honey mustard and ranch dressing on the side and a Diet Coke.]
CH: You were a longtime committee member, and now you’ve recently become the chair of the Government Oversight and Reform team. When you become chair, do you get all these big perks? Like a big office or someone dropping off your dry cleaning or a private jet?
ET: You get a lot of staff, to be able to do the kinds of things you need to do as chair of a committee. Of course, we have oversight of all the governmental agencies, which requires a lot of people to do that. Being the only member in the House that has that subpoena power, you know—everybody else has to go to the floor of the House in order to get a subpoena. I’m the only person that can do it without going to the floor. I can do it right from my office.
CH: So you have a lot of people that are afraid of you all of a sudden?
ET: I hope not, because you try not to use that. You try to get people to come forward with what the information is before you have to revert to that. And, of course, with the president, he believes in transparency, and that issue has been raised.
CH: The outgoing chair of that committee was Henry Waxman. Did you guys sit down and have a buddy-buddy talk about what to do?
ET: I talk to him all the time. He and I were on two committees together: Energy and Commerce, and Government Reform.
CH: So you guys used to spend a lot of quality time together. Do you miss him?
ET: I do. We talk on the floor a lot. He’s one of the real senior members here.
CH: On the Government Oversight Committee, you got to talk to a lot of baseball players about performance-enhancing substances. Not as a Congressman, but as a person, is it upsetting to know that some of the best players from the last couple of decades have been using substances?
ET: I regret that the names of some of the great players have come up.
CH: Were there some of them that you said, “Oh god, not him?”
ET: Yes, especially [Sammy] Sosa. Every time I hear his name, I feel bad about it.
CH: Last year, one of the major points that your primary challenger made was that you had been in office too long, you were out of touch and you weren’t really active in the community anymore. Obviously, voters didn’t buy it. But has that changed the way that you’ve approached your job now?
ET: No, because it wasn’t true. Basically, I just ignored it. The statement was false, and at the end of the day he lost almost 2 to 1.
[A fellow diner comes over and compliments the Congressman, saying he wasn’t sure if it was him at first because he looks like he’s 28 years old.]
CH: You do look very young for 75. Do you have a secret?
ET: No, I try to take care of myself, I really do.
CH: And you do look just like your son. Do people ever confuse the two of you?
ET: Yes, all the time. I go to senior centers and people say, “Tell your dad I said hello,” and, “I love your dad.”
CH: Does your daughter look like you too?
ET: No, my daughter is actually adopted. Well—she looks like the family. I guess if you feed them long enough, they’ll look like you.
CH: You grew up in North Carolina. So how did you end up in New York?
ET: My family moved to upstate New York, to Niagara Falls… it was too cold there. As soon as I had enough money to get out of there, that was it.
CH: So how did you pick Brooklyn?
ET: Some of the guys on the basketball team were from Brooklyn.
CH: You played basketball?
ET: Yeah. So when I was separating from the military, I was making phone calls, “Hey, what’s going on?” And [my friend] says, “Why don’t you come through?” Because I was going back to Niagara Falls. So I came through. And had car trouble. And in the process of trying to get my car fixed, I started looking for a job.
CH: So basically, you ended up in Brooklyn because you had car trouble, and you never left. That’s a good story. What kind of car was it?
ET: It was an old Corvair. It had the engine in the back. … Shirley Chisholm had a lot to do with my career. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to be elected to Congress and I probably would not have met her if my car hadn’t broken down.
CH: I’ve talked to other members of the New York Congressional delegation, and they have nothing but horrible things to say about the food in Washington. What’s your take?
ET: I believe that the food in New York is definitely better than the food in Washington. It’s a major difference.
CH: People complain that you can’t get a good pizza or a good bagel.
ET: Yeah, same thing with the hamburgers there. The only thing you might be able to compare is steak, but New York hamburgers are much better.
CH: What about your wife—how long have you guys been married?
ET: 51 years.
CH: You must have had a big party for the 50th anniversary.
ET: We did. It’s been really fun. I asked her, “Would you marry me again?” And she said she’d have to think about that.
The elder Towns recently sat down with City Hall to talk about the perks of chairing a committee, hosting his own Internet talk show, his feelings about Sammy Sosa and why he may owe his career to car trouble.
City Hall: Are you a cook at all yourself?
Edolphus Towns: No, not really. My wife is a tremendous cook. She’s just gifted. She’s the type of person that can cook, she can even sew, and she’s a very talented woman.
CH: Does she kick you out of the kitchen?
ET: Yeah—that’s why I don’t even bother. I don’t even try. I put something on the grill when we cook out.
CH: Usually it’s the guy of the house that does the grilling.
ET: Yeah so that’s my thing. And my son is my next-door neighbor, so a lot of times he’s the grill guy.
CH: Whose decision was it to move in—did you move in next to them?
ET: No, I was there first, and then when a physician sold his house, my son bought it. And my daughter lives four houses down on the same block.
CH: So this is, like, the Towns block?
ET: I won’t call it Towns block, but the Towns are on there.
CH: Some families do very well close together and others need more space. How does it work out for you guys?
ET: It works out real well because the grandkids run in and out of the house. I have five grandkids.
CH: I noticed that you have your own YouTube channel. You really seem to enjoy interviewing different guests. Who’s been your favorite guest so far?
ET: My favorite, I guess, is a guy by the name of Armstrong Williams. Armstrong Williams is a journalist and he’s very controversial. His views are not mainstream views, so I enjoyed having a dialogue with him.
CH: Have you ever thought about switching over to do a talk show?
ET: Well, no, I enjoy the weekly show. I enjoy politics, I really do. I’ve been involved now for about 40 years, as a district leader, then, of course, deputy borough president.
CH: A lot of people your age might be going to play golf or relax with their family. Have you ever thought of retiring?
ET: I really have not thought about retiring. I feel good and I generally can compete with anybody out there. And my health is good. I enjoy what I do. I really find it extremely gratifying to be able to assist people, to make life better for them, to watch the smiles on their faces and to be able to help them accomplish whatever they want. That, to me, is very touching, and I don’t want to turn that loose.
[Waitress comes. Towns orders stewed chicken, salad with honey mustard and ranch dressing on the side and a Diet Coke.]
CH: You were a longtime committee member, and now you’ve recently become the chair of the Government Oversight and Reform team. When you become chair, do you get all these big perks? Like a big office or someone dropping off your dry cleaning or a private jet?
ET: You get a lot of staff, to be able to do the kinds of things you need to do as chair of a committee. Of course, we have oversight of all the governmental agencies, which requires a lot of people to do that. Being the only member in the House that has that subpoena power, you know—everybody else has to go to the floor of the House in order to get a subpoena. I’m the only person that can do it without going to the floor. I can do it right from my office.
CH: So you have a lot of people that are afraid of you all of a sudden?
ET: I hope not, because you try not to use that. You try to get people to come forward with what the information is before you have to revert to that. And, of course, with the president, he believes in transparency, and that issue has been raised.
CH: The outgoing chair of that committee was Henry Waxman. Did you guys sit down and have a buddy-buddy talk about what to do?
ET: I talk to him all the time. He and I were on two committees together: Energy and Commerce, and Government Reform.
CH: So you guys used to spend a lot of quality time together. Do you miss him?
ET: I do. We talk on the floor a lot. He’s one of the real senior members here.
CH: On the Government Oversight Committee, you got to talk to a lot of baseball players about performance-enhancing substances. Not as a Congressman, but as a person, is it upsetting to know that some of the best players from the last couple of decades have been using substances?
ET: I regret that the names of some of the great players have come up.
CH: Were there some of them that you said, “Oh god, not him?”
ET: Yes, especially [Sammy] Sosa. Every time I hear his name, I feel bad about it.
CH: Last year, one of the major points that your primary challenger made was that you had been in office too long, you were out of touch and you weren’t really active in the community anymore. Obviously, voters didn’t buy it. But has that changed the way that you’ve approached your job now?
ET: No, because it wasn’t true. Basically, I just ignored it. The statement was false, and at the end of the day he lost almost 2 to 1.
[A fellow diner comes over and compliments the Congressman, saying he wasn’t sure if it was him at first because he looks like he’s 28 years old.]
CH: You do look very young for 75. Do you have a secret?
ET: No, I try to take care of myself, I really do.
CH: And you do look just like your son. Do people ever confuse the two of you?
ET: Yes, all the time. I go to senior centers and people say, “Tell your dad I said hello,” and, “I love your dad.”
CH: Does your daughter look like you too?
ET: No, my daughter is actually adopted. Well—she looks like the family. I guess if you feed them long enough, they’ll look like you.
CH: You grew up in North Carolina. So how did you end up in New York?
ET: My family moved to upstate New York, to Niagara Falls… it was too cold there. As soon as I had enough money to get out of there, that was it.
CH: So how did you pick Brooklyn?
ET: Some of the guys on the basketball team were from Brooklyn.
CH: You played basketball?
ET: Yeah. So when I was separating from the military, I was making phone calls, “Hey, what’s going on?” And [my friend] says, “Why don’t you come through?” Because I was going back to Niagara Falls. So I came through. And had car trouble. And in the process of trying to get my car fixed, I started looking for a job.
CH: So basically, you ended up in Brooklyn because you had car trouble, and you never left. That’s a good story. What kind of car was it?
ET: It was an old Corvair. It had the engine in the back. … Shirley Chisholm had a lot to do with my career. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to be elected to Congress and I probably would not have met her if my car hadn’t broken down.
CH: I’ve talked to other members of the New York Congressional delegation, and they have nothing but horrible things to say about the food in Washington. What’s your take?
ET: I believe that the food in New York is definitely better than the food in Washington. It’s a major difference.
CH: People complain that you can’t get a good pizza or a good bagel.
ET: Yeah, same thing with the hamburgers there. The only thing you might be able to compare is steak, but New York hamburgers are much better.
CH: What about your wife—how long have you guys been married?
ET: 51 years.
CH: You must have had a big party for the 50th anniversary.
ET: We did. It’s been really fun. I asked her, “Would you marry me again?” And she said she’d have to think about that.
