Robert A. Cashdollar, who as a Congressional staffer drafted some of this country’s landmark rural and agricultural legislation, died on in Washington, DC on July 11 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 78.
Agriculture was a natural career choice for Mr. Cashdollar. Cashdollar grew up on his family’s farm just outside Newbern, TN, and had a lifelong love of the outdoors. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville he served in the Navy as an Oceanographic Division officer responsible for the collection, analysis, and reporting of highly classified oceanographic data, including tracking nuclear Russian submarines from his posts in Newport, RI; Key West, FL; Centerville Beach, CA; and Keflavik, Iceland.
He ed the staff of Tennessee Congressman Ed Jones in 1971 and after settling in the District he earned a master’s degree in public relations from American University.
Cashdollar served first as the congressman’s legislative director. In 1975 he was named staff director for the Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, and Rural Development chaired by Mr. Jones. Following Jones’s retirement in 1989 he formed Cashdollar-Jones & Company, a consulting firm that focused on rural and agricultural issues. He closed the firm in 2009 to accept a position on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as executive assistant to Commissioner Michael Dunn who chaired the Agriculture Advisory Committee. Cashdollar retired in 2011.
During his years on Capitol Hill he was widely respected for his keen mind and the political savvy demonstrated in the crafting and oversight of the enactment of numerous agricultural bills, including a 1980 bill creating a nationwide, multi-peril crop insurance program and a 1985 bill rescuing the Farm Credit System from financial collapse. He also played a key role in legislation that established the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
A life-long Democrat, Mr. Cashdollar worked on the Presidential campaigns of every Democratic candidate from Jimmy Carter to Al Gore, including the short-lived campaign of astronaut John Glenn. He was the full-time director of Farmers & Ranchers for the 1980 Carter-Mondale campaign.
He was an active member of the National Democratic Club of Washington and in the late 1980s organized a popular Friday luncheon group known as Lamb Shank, after a dish popular at the downtown restaurant where the group first met. Open to everyone, the group continues to meet weekly. It is mostly attended by male lobbyists, government workers, international development workers, rarely including an occasional woman.
Cashdollar’s love of agriculture and the outdoors wasn’t limited to the office. He was an avid gardener serving on the board of the Friends of the National Arboretum from 2002 to 2014. For years he kept a garden on Capitol Hill and at a cabin in the Virginia piedmont he shared with Patsy Sims, his partner for more than 40 years.
Widely ired by those who knew and worked with him, Mr. Cashdollar had a wide circle of friends. In the last years of his life when his Alzheimer’s began to make his speech into what is known in care circles as a “word salad,” a group of friends took turns doing Face-time calls to reminisce about old times. These continued even when they were no longer sure that Cashdollar was able to understand or even that he still knew who they were. A call was scheduled for the day after he died.
James Johnson, a longtime friend who worked closely with him in their years together on the agricultural subcommittee, recalls his “insatiable curiosity and dedication to on-the-farm initiatives.”
“I think his working for a Congressman who had grown up during the Great Depression and who witnessed first-hand the ravages of the Dust Bowl gave Bob an insight and the personal motivation to do what he could to address economic and environmental challenges faced by folks in Rural America.”
Paul Weller, president of Agri/Washington who shared an office with. Cashdollar late in his career, re him as “a special person on Capitol Hill.”
“He was a friendly, competent, professional person,” says Weller. “He was truly one of a kind. When lobbyists wanted to make input on the Agriculture Committee’s legislative calendar, Bob Cashdollar was the staffer to see. He and ‘Mister Jones’ were the people who could get things done.”
Many, like Johnson, Cashdollar for his kindness and generosity. “Virtually every conversation I had with Bob would end with him saying, ‘Be sure to let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.’ It was so automatic in Bob’s demeanor to be generous and in his case it was genuine.”
Some attributed that to his “Southern manners” and the “thank you” that always followed anything done for or to him, including during his final days at the memory-care facility where he spent his last four and a half years.
Cashdollar was preceded in death by his parents Stanford Edward Cashdollar and Doris Ditmore Cashdollar. In addition to Ms. Sims he is survived by two sisters Doris E. (Betty) Cashdollar of Newbern and Catherine Cashdollar Davis of San Leandro, CA; a brother Parker Ditmore Cashdollar and wife Sophie of Newbern; nieces Audrey Davis and Jessica Cashdollar and nephews Hunter Cashdollar and Charles (Chuck) Cashdollar; one grandniece and four grandnephews as well as his cousin John Holloway.
