Today?s a big day for Santa Rosa?s Mark Felt, the former No. 2 man at the FBI who settled one of the nation?s greatest mysteries in 2005 by revealing he was Watergate?s ?Deep Throat.?
Felt turns 95 today.
His daughter, Joan Felt, had planned a party at the Santa Rosa home they share. But last week her dad was feeling poorly and spent several days at Memorial Hospital.
Doctors there traced Felt?s symptoms to congestive heart failure. He was feeling well enough on Friday for Memorial to send him home.
As he turns 95, Felt is a contented man who no longer remembers much about the times in the early 1970s that he met secretly with Bob Woodward. Felt directed the young Washington Post reporter to compelling evidence that President Richard Nixon committed crimes related to a botched burglary of Democratic Party headquarters in Washington?s Watergate building.
Explosive stories by Woodward and Carl Bernstein contributed to Nixon?s downfall and to the arrest and imprisonment of some of his key aides.
Joan Felt recalled that during her father?s FBI days he was so thoroughly occupied that she felt shortchanged by him. Now that he is long retired and has let go of the secret he kept for three decades, his daughter celebrates having him back.
?Before, he didn?t look me in the eyes,? she said. ?But now his cards are on the table. And if I want to look into his eyes, he lets me look as long as I want to.?
She said her father lives in the moment now and enjoys his meals, his family and caretaker and his frequent rides in the car.
There won?t be a big party today because he?s just home from the hospital.
But Joan Felt said a few friends will come by and some quite musical ones, includes Sonoma County ?Mr. Music? Jim Corbett and mezzo-soprano Bonnie Brooks, will serenade the man whose whispered secrets changed history.
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