Seeing a story in the newspapers the other day about a world wide “toilet revolution” reminded me of one of the accomplishments of the late House Speaker John L. O’Brien of Seattle that I hadn’t included in his obituary when he died last spring at 95.

The news story by Reuters and AP concerned the first meeting of the World Toilet Association. in Seoul, South Korea, in November, attended by public health officials from around the world and UN agencies.

It was brought on by the desire to improve public restrooms to deal with the problem of the 2.6 billion people worldwide who do not have access to some.

Nearly 2 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases blamed on inadequate sanitation, most of them children younger than 5 and mostly in Asia.

In some places you have to squat over a hole in the floor. In one place I visited the facilities, you sat on a board with a hole in it, beneath which there was a running stream of water. And this was downtown.

It was common to see little children on the street suddenly stop, spread their legs and let it fly from the pants that were not sewed up the middle.

It also was common for tourists, women anyway, to hear apologies from Chinese women for the condition and odor of the restrooms.

The World Toilet Association was formed by a member of the South Korea parliament when the World Cup was held in that country in 2002. Its purpose is to raise funds for improving sanitation in developing countries.

It’s the second such group. The World Toilet Organization was founded in 2001 by a Singapore man whose goal also was to improve toilet sanitation in the third world and has 44 member countries.

The United Nations has gotten into the act by declaring 2008 the “Year of Sanitation.” It says $10 billion a year could cut the number of people lacking basic toilet facilities in half in five years.

But to get back to O’Brien, late in his career, 26 terms in the House, eight years as speaker, one of his constituents came to him and complained about the lack of public restrooms in grocery stores.

She had to take her children with her when she went shopping, she told him, and one or all of them would require a trip to the john while they were at it.

When she asked store personnel for toilet access, they told her they didn’t have public restrooms, and said they couldn’t allow use of the employees’ facility.

That got John O’Brien’s dander up. He drew up a bill that required that when all new grocery stores over a certain size were being built, they had to include restrooms for the public.

Not shared restrooms with the employees but restrooms for the public.

Grocers got the message fast. Most grocers aren’t dummies. They recognized immediately that not only was John O’Brien in a position to get passed whatever bill he wanted, customers who had to go or were accompanied by kids who had to wee wee, weren’t going to stay long to shop.

All over the state, public restrooms were not only being built in new stores but already established ones. Signs appeared over doors leading to the backs of the stores, informing the public that if anybody had to go, there was a place for it.

If there was a single complaint from a grocer, I never heard of it.

O’Brien solved the problem without ever bringing the bill to a vote. It died a quiet death at the end of the session, having accomplished what he sent out to do.

Adele Ferguson can be reached at

PO Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.