Charity’s go-to woman

Calling the highly visible Mrs. Dingell a socialite gives her grief.

“I hate it. I’ve worked hard,” she protests - a rare note of anger in someone who is almost preternaturally calm amid daily crises in the three- and four-ring circus that is her Washington world.

The petite blond dynamo has status in her own right and is proud of it: executive with one of the country’s largest corporations, supervolunteer on the charity circuit and - to the people who know her best - loyal and sympathetic friend in a town where, as the old adage goes, a dog often is a more reliable substitute.

Her life is spent traveling back and forth between the couple’s homes in Detroit and Washington, where she handles public affairs and community relations for General Motors and serves as vice president of the GM Foundation - while managing to belong to, and lead, innumerable charitable organizations.

“She’s got a nuclear battery; when she puts her mind to something, she is unstoppable. … She is like the Good Housekeeping Seal of approval in D.C.,” says friend Chris Downey, who was among a core group responsible for founding the Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health more than 20 years ago. Mrs. Dingell is being honored for her work on behalf of the inn at a gala at the National Building Museum Wednesday night. It is expected to raise more than $1 million.

The nonprofit inn provides a harbor for families and children undergoing treatment at any of the Institutes of Health who, as pediatric outpatients, otherwise might have to pay for lengthy stays at nearby hotels.

Hotel employees have not always been sympathetic to the sight of bald children - “not the holiday spirit,” says Carmala Walgren, who, like Chris Downey, is a former congressional spouse long active in inn affairs. “Children taking part in research studies were giving great benefit to medical science - we all have benefited from them.”

Ms. Walgren first got involved when her children’s baby sitter was diagnosed with cancer and being treated at NIH. At then-Rep. Tony Coehlo’s suggestion, she told Mrs. Dingell “about parents sleeping on shelves in hospital rooms” and the problems oncologist Dr. Philip Pizzo and other NIH staff members were having arranging lodging. Soon the Friends of the Children’s Inn was born.

“I had the idea, but she did the job,” Ms. Walgren says.

“The concept of a Children’s Inn at the NIH was a dream for nearly a decade before it came to fruition,” Dr. Pizzo says by e-mail from Stanford University, where he is dean of the medical school. “But it would have likely remained a dream without the engagement, dedication and support of Debbie Dingell and her congressional spouse colleagues. Together they opened doors that were inaccessible and created a community of support rather than one of resistance.”

“She gets more done in one day than anybody I know. … She is ubiquitous,” offers Mike Berman, president of the Duberstein Group, a prominent government relations and lobbying firm, who was active as an inn board member until recently. As a longtime friend of Mr. Dingell’s, he says, “Debbie brought me to the game.”

“Hello [from] Grand Central Station,” Mrs. Dingell says cheerily, answering a phone from her office on an especially hectic afternoon. Electricity was cut in the couple’s McLean town house the previous night during a heat wave, making sleep difficult, so she got up to read by portable lantern, she says.

Talking about herself isn’t her favorite activity, but she is quick to dismiss any suggestion that she gained professionally through marriage to the powerful current chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Nor is she any sort of conduit because of her position.

“Nobody can say I got my job because of John Dingell,” she says. “I was working at General Motors before I met John. This is something I’ve earned on my own and worked hard to be appreciated on my own. Yet it has impacted my career.”

It didn’t hurt, however, that the future Mrs. Dingell - born Deborah Insley - comes from Michigan aristocracy of sorts, as granddaughter of one of the Fisher Body Co. brothers who founded General Motors.

She stopped lobbying for the company upon becoming engaged to Mr. Dingell - a divorced father of four - in 1980 and changed her voter registration from Republican to Democrat. (She ran Vice President Al Gore’s Michigan campaign in 2000.) There is a span of several decades between her and her husband - she is 54 to his 81 years - but their close and affectionate relationship is legendary.

While the famously irascible committee chairman wins praise as the longest-serving House member, Mrs. Dingell earns plaudits for her secondary profession as a civic and community activist.

Primary among her interests are women’s and children’s health issues, bridge-building (between different cultures as well as different political parties) and education. Holder of an master’s degree from Georgetown Uni versity, where she has served as regent, she is a superdelegate like her husband and pushed for the early Michigan Democratic primary that caused so many problems within the party.

So what makes Mrs. Dingell run?

“There is something in me - I have a passion in me that burns,” she says, going on to attribute her sense of caring and responsibility to teachers at a Catholic boarding school she attended when young. “They taught you what it is like to be part of a community and your part in giving back to it.” Helping her cope with her dual community duties, she adds, has a great deal to do with being “blessed with neighbors in both cities.”