Bernadette & Jim McMahon · 2018 Honorees

It was government jobs that brought both Bernadette and Jim McMahon to Washington, D.C., fifty years ago. When they met, at a party across town, Bernadette responded to Jim’s introductory line to her – “I was about to leave and then I saw you” – with the deadpan observation, “You must be Irish.” They quickly realized that they had a lot in common, besides Irish heritage, including the fact that they both attended St. Peter’s Catholic Church on the Hill. The following winter, in a February blizzard, they were married there.

Bernadette grew up in Elmira, New York, where her father owned a women’s clothing store. In a high school journalism course, she discovered a love of writing and edited her school newspaper. At Nazareth College in Rochester she majored in chemistry but also enjoyed working on the college paper. After graduation she headed to Washington and worked for 34 years as a chemist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, primarily as editor of FDA’s Pesticide Analytical Manual. She raised two sons, Joe and Kevin, volunteered at their schools, and edited newsletters for the Boy Scouts and the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, on whose board she served.

Jim was from Brooklyn, New York, where he grew up in a diverse neighborhood and his father was an NYPD detective. He attended the elite Brooklyn Technical High School, where he was president of his class, and then commuted to Fordham University. He was commissioned an officer in the Navy and, a few weeks later, shipped out on an aircraft carrier for service in Vietnam. By the time he met Bernadette he had graduated from law school at Catholic University and begun his career in federal service, which included time as a senior attorney for the Federal Trade Commission and the CIA, staff positions in several congressional offices, and 25 years in the Navy Reserve. After retiring, he became a volunteer docent at the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

In 2001, not long after they had each retired, Jim and Bernadette were invited to be part of the Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project, which, thanks to their commitment, has turned from an idea into the reality of a website offering almost 200 accounts of life on Capitol Hill in the voices of a wide variety of people. Bernadette and Jim have recruited and trained over 150 volunteer interviewers and transcribers, kept lists of future interviews, maintained equipment, and have done so with perpetual good humor. Their contribution to our community is a lasting one.