Powerful political families are no stranger to folks in Illinois; the brand names of Daley and Madigan are well-known throughout the state.

Washington, D.C., has political families as well, starting with father and son presidents John and John Quincy Adams and progressing to modern times with the Kennedys, Clintons and Bushes.

Not so well-known are the families in Washington who operate behind the scenes; those not holding elected office, but who wield great influence nonetheless. One such family is the Kimmitts.

Their role in government began with Joseph Stanley "old Stan" Kimmitt, a career Army officer and gentleman who was once described as "a man of influence in Washington's permanent substructure of power." Smart and tough - he was an artillery officer on Pork Chop Hill in the Korean War - Kimmitt retired in 1966, deciding to stay in Washington, where he became a legislative assistant to the powerful Montana Sen. Mike Mansfield.

Later, he was selected to be secretary of the Senate, responsible for keeping the records and minutes of the Senate, supervising Senate clerks, educating Senate pages, maintaining public records, purchasing supplies, disbursing payrolls; in short, keeping everything on track in an institution where every elected member deep down thinks he or she could be president.

In 1981, Kimmitt left the Senate to represent Hughes Helicopter as vice president for Governmental Affairs, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing in Washington, before founding the consulting firm Kimmitt, Senter, Coates and Weinfurter.

Given that he personally knew every U.S. senator, he was influential, indeed. He passed away in 2004. Perhaps Kimmitt's greatest legacy was not his extensive accomplishments but, rather, those of his three sons: Bob, Jay and Mark.

Bob Kimmitt also began his career as an Army officer, graduating from West Point in 1969. After departing active duty some five years later, he served on the National Security Committee staff and was general counsel to the U.S. Treasury Department. He really hit his stride in the 1990s, serving as the undersecretary of state for Political Affairs, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and a member of the director of Central Intelligence's National Security Advisory Panel. From 2005 to 2009, Bob Kimmitt was the deputy secretary of the Department of the Treasury.

While Stan Kimmitt had been a staunch Democrat, Bob Kimmitt has been an equally avid Republican, showing that the same family can get along in Washington, regardless of the nature of the administration.

As with many in Washington, when a "player's" political party is out of office, he or she obtains a lucrative position in a private sector job that, while it may not formally be titled as a lobbyist, is one in which previous governmental contacts are valued as priceless. Jay Kimmitt, a talented individual in his own right, has proven this axiom so true.

Another graduate of West Point, Jay Kimmitt served as an assistant staff and legislative director for the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee from 1984 to 2001 and deputy staff director of the Senate Appropriations Committee in 1997. In 2001, he left government and became executive vice president for Government Operations at the Oshkosh Corp. Oshkosh is one of the largest producers of military trucks in the nation; in the last eight years, its revenues have grown from $1.3 billion to $7.14 billion.

The youngest of the Kimmitt brothers, Mark, made brigadier general and retired in 2006. Mark Kimmitt is smart, really smart. He graduated from West Point in 1976, earned a masters in business administration from Harvard and later served as an assistant professor of economics at West Point.

Back in 1988, Mark Kimmitt was one of only 52 majors to be selected to attend the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies, and back then, there were about 5,500 majors in the Army. You may remember him later on TV as the chief military spokesman for Coalition Forces in Iraq.

After his Army days, Mark Kimmitt served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Middle East and then assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. Now, he often appears as a military analyst on network TV.

But the days of government influence for the Kimmitts are probably not over. They are a Washington power family. And unlike Gen. Douglas MacArthur's famous quotation about old soldiers, Washington power families neither die nor just fade away.

French MacLean is a retired Army colonel living in Decatur.