A letter every day to Donald #45 - Ohio Resister

“The things my Dad did for his country were so hard,” Kathy says. “You know what? Darn it, I can write a letter.”

Kathy S. Hayes writes to #President45 every day and often with tongue in cheek narratives.

One woman’s guide to surviving Trump: She is writing to him, daily! — By Andrea Simakis echo published in The Plain Dealer

She’s says that she's pretty ordinary. But, she can write. (And, so she does- every day!)

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration January 20, 2017, Kathy has written to him every day -- stamped letters, not emails -- with the exception of two days in April 2017, a brief hiatus taken after she put her dog, Sammie, to sleep. That’s nearly 1,000 letters if you count the handful she sent before he took office.

Here’s your chance. Try hard not to be a fascist dictator, ok?

Sincerely,

Kathy S. Hayes

Kathy has lived in Richfield, Ohio. That's halfway between Cleveland and Akron, her whole life. When her community voted to send Donald Trump to The White House in 2016, Kathy, who’d mostly identified as an Independent, found herself in a deeply dismayed minority. Rather than commiserating with like-minded friends over cocktails, posting rants on Facebook or planting her head deep in the Lake Erie sand, Kathy put fingers to keyboard.

She addressed her letters to “President Trump” until his comments about “some very fine people on both sides” at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, two years ago. She sent her letters to “Oval Office occupant” after that. 

When some of the letters started being returned, “I started addressing them to President 45,” she says.

Kathy usually composes her letters in the evenings on a desktop computer in her library, her father’s Purple Heart medal in a glass frame on a shelf above her. Her Dad was severely wounded when a mortar shell exploded near where he and his buddies were dug in at the Battle of the Bulge.

“The things my Dad did for his country were so hard,” Kathy says. “You know what? Darn it, I can write a letter.”

Some take a few minutes, others an hour or more, depending on how much research she has to do. That might mean reading the Mueller report or heading to a nearby town to hear former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe speak about why agents opened an investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia.

Once signed and sealed, she drops her Executive correspondence in a mailbox on the way to work. Every Monday morning, she mails two letters -- Saturday’s and Sunday’s. Civic engagement is a 24-7 job; no weekends off.

Kathy is a copy editor and writer for a national business-to-business magazine, so her observations aren’t just incisive and well-crafted -- they are also grammatically correct. Occasionally, she offers the President free “language pointers” in a PS, “so that you can improve your tweets.” Or, she presents him with “a word of the day,” a game her family played when she was a kid as they gathered around the dinner table. “Compassion” was one. “Decorum” another. A third was “restraint.”

She’s gotten 23 boiler plate responses bearing President 45’s instantly recognizable Richter scale (or what I call "EEG style) signature. “I appreciate you taking the time to write. Your support means a great deal to Melania and me,” read one from The White House dated April 9, 2019.

Kathy is sure he’ll never read any of her letters. Sometimes, she’s felt like giving up. But she can’t quit now.

“I think a lot of it is standing up and saying, ‘For the record, this is not OK.’ ”

Fate intervened on a cold, rainy day last spring, when the Presidential motorcade blew by her house. She painted RESIST on a bedsheet, hung it from her porch, called a few friends and staged a “mini protest” in her front yard. Kathy’s 89-year-old mother joined her, holding a sign some 4-feet long that said “RESIGN.” Kathy’s giant sign read “I 🖤 Mueller.”

March 29, 2018

President 45,

You drove right by my house today; I was no more than 10 feet from your limousine. I hope you saw me . . . . As one of your most faithful correspondents, it was very exciting for me to be able to convey my message to you in person.

Thanks for coming to our little town, screwing up traffic for hours and sucking up local tax dollars that could have been better spent on the actual needs of our community.

Sincerely,

Kathy S. Hayes