April 1968

On that early April day in 1968, I'd left my office at 12th & Penn, popped into our Austin Healy 3000, a 1967 ... the last year these cool little roadsters were imported to the US ... that was parked about 30' from the main entrance to the handsome old building that was the headquarters of the postal service. I steered it out to Pennsylvania, around the White House and up Connecticut Ave to 'R' Street, where Barb was waiting, then on to the new Washington Hilton. Finding a parking space on the street was not usually impossible, but tonight more than 3000 Democrats were gathering including most Dem House and Senate members, because President Johnson's polls were slipping badly as Vietnam War news was not good and rumors of a run by VP Hubert Humphrey, the headliner at the night's Party fundraiser, were strong ... hence a huge crowd and no street spots to slide our little car into. As luck would have it, the Hilton attendant loved our racing green Healy, and offered - for a little 'encouragement' to give it a safe spot out front. Since our tickets to the event were gratis from the PMG, I slid the guy a $20 and we made the reception in time for drinks and some glad handing before heading in to our seats - not way down front but not bad ... and close to an exit.

The event was run very well, and timely. By the time everyone was served, O'Brien gaveled down the friendly crowd, introduced the head table guests and then brought Vice-President Humphrey ... bouncing and waving into the hall to address some 2500 guests.

Humphrey was a passionate Democrat, the almost certain Democratic Presidential nominee in 1968 - and every lobbyist, and Democratic member of the House and Senate, along with a slew of party Governors, and ever good contributor in the closest five states to DC were there.

Humphrey was about halfway through his address ( I had OBrien's advance copy) when an aide slid in behind him at the lectern and passed him a note ... they spoke for a moment, the crowd buzzed in bewilderment ... and the Vice President returned to face the audience ... now a silent hall ... he announced that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr had been shot and killed in Memphis just a few minutes before, and that his assassin was unknown.

It took Barb and I ten seconds to conclude that the dinner was over and we could get to the nearby exit, through the hotel and out to the Healy if we left instantly ... and we did.

Our car was close, the attendant had our key and we were on Connecticut Ave in three minutes more - well ahead of the crowd ... by then crushing every exit.

Realizing that many DC neighborhoods were going to react violently to the news, we needed to get across the Potomac at the first opportunity into northern Virginia and into our place in Alexandria. So down Florida Ave to 'Q' Street, across Rock Creek to Wisconsin, then to 'M' and across Key Bridge into Virginia and the Parkway to Alexandria.

As we drove, the radio reported riots were erupting all around the African American neighborhoods of DC - we could see fires all along as we drove down the river to Alexandria.

The protests and rioting grew into Baltimore, Philadelphia and other large urban centers with substantial African-American populations all over the south, Midwest, and the west coast, where for weeks, the unrest continued. No city ... or Mayor ... or Governor ... was ready for it.

Labor Day 2015

Though the American labor movement coursed throughout my political life, I grew to appreciate it powerfully only as a young man in the West Virginia state Capitol in Charleston, watching a great Governor's plans fall short time after time in the Legislature - only to be saved by the efforts of a small, well-dressed, serious man named Miles Stanley.
He was not part of the heavy-handed mine-workers, who were co-opted too often by the all-powerful Consolidation Coal Company of Pennsylvania.
Miles Stanley was an extraordinary figure in my state; well-educated, soft spoken (except when crossed), and methodical. He was the President of the West Virginia AFL-CIO.

He led me to never-ending respect for the American labor movement.

My recollection of Labor Day events there ... ? only one .... rising early with my dad - who had the grocery in town, to receive on our front porch dozens of 10-gallon containers of ice cream ... from Groves Dairy in Canvas, WV, a 'suburb' just across Brock's Bridge and up the hill .... belonging to dozens of families planning outings of one sort or another where the centerpiece was one of these large, round containers - with two lids - the first holding a block of dry ice, to keep the contents cold and firm for hours until removed by families in search of the second lid .... which led to wonderful, cold delicious ice cream!

Dad's customers had placed orders for these - or smaller containers - for pickup at the store, but Dad always closed it that day and, not wishing to turn this holiday chore over to another, he had check-out clerks tell all who placed orders to pick there ice cream up at the house!

We were also on that porch early every morning the day before my birthday - July 5!

Happy Labor Day, America. It still counts!

Katrina's Legacy

Pic by Colleen Mullins - full article at NYTimes 

When FDR came into office in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, he turned his attention to creating dozens of programs and projects to

• a) feed the children and unemployed poor families, and
• b) create jobs for those who had no work, and 
• c) creating massive public hospitals in large cities, smaller ones in others, and funded universities across the nation to find and teach students with the best attitudes, most-likely-to succeed chance to be good physicians ... and gave them all support possible to treat the sick, teach poor and uninformed parents how and why to raise sound, healthy kids, and
• d) build public housing ... large complexes and smaller ones ... where the same families meeting a, b, and c ... could live in safety and grow into solid'American taxpayers, and raise their kids accordingly.

In my city of New Orleans there are pluperfect examples of all these.

But the examples I want to bring up are the great Roosevelt public housing projects in my city. The whole world has heard of them ... Desire, Magnolia, Calliope, Lafitte, Iberville, St Bernard. Florida - these and others housed generations of New Orleans families, Anglo, African-American and Hispanic, not poverty-stricken - just underemployed, between FDR and Ronald Reagan. 
Then ... after Katrina ... when billions in federal relief justifiably flowed into the New Orleans area because it's government-designed levies and flood walls collapsed, killing 10,000 people and almost destroying an historic American city - the first two or three public focuses of the federal government were in reforming local public housing.

Though virtually all but the most wealthy citizens were either without social problems, efforts turned to wipe away the stain of ghettos formed around the city's old housing projects by razing them - again, while their residents had been redirected to other cities, and maintained there with federal support - and quickly, with contractors and workers brought to New Orleans from across North America, building smaller 4 and 8- unit housing, then up to ten or twenty-unit housing groups. 

Today, where earlier, rather dilapidated, overcrowded and massive had stood, attractive small groups of homes are spread among the centuries-old live oaks that previously hid the sins of earlier leaders. 
Within five or six blocks of our townhouse off St Charles Avenue in the garden district, families lead good lives, their children safe in the handsome new public charter school structures that replaced the old, scandal-ridden school system.

New hospitals are everywhere. 

When Barbara and I made that trip to Texas in front of Katrina we had no thought that anything in New Orleans might be improved by it - only that it might possibly survive it.
But today our city is pretty glorious - not without flaws, and certainly not finished. But better than when our sons grew up here, and almost certain to improve even more.

Ask anybody - in any neighborhood in town ... Katrina - the monster became our best friend in the end.

Journey to the JFK Funeral, part 3

(previously posted on Facebook)

-The semi, semi-final segment of the apparently unlimited series on my trip to President Kennedy's funeral is here. Thought I could finish it now, but Barbara has chores for us. Promise I'll finish this before the end of the next century! Here's the next part.-


My older brother Johnny, and Chuck Higbee, a nephew - only boy in the Izzy and Dallas Higbee family - located the end of a long, long line of mourners wanting to say farewell to this young, groundbreaking Catholic President, killed by an assassin during a Presidential motorcade in Dallas.


Young Chuck and I drove from Charleston, where I had gone from school in Morgantown once the Governor had cancelled all classes for, first a week, then extended by another by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had assumed the Presidency once Kennedy's death was confirmed. 
We arrived in Summersville that evening to get brother Johnny, slept a few hours at my family's home, then left at I dawn, the morning of November 24, 1963.


As we arrived in Washington after a long drive through the Alleghenies, and eased down the GW Parkway onto the highway that passed by Arlington Cemetery, moving toward National Airport (not Reagan" National, as it was later ... ridiculously... named by the minions of a President who had suffered a minor flesh-wound during a shooting during his time in office) we noticed the first minor sign of what was up: the highways leading from the airport to the Shirley Highway bridge into the district was an unending line of black limousines bearing the fender flags of foreign leaders. The Governor of our state had a nice, sedate, sterling silver West Virginia seal on the rear doors of his car ... these guys wanted attention! 


So, as we spent the entire night before the President's funeral, in a line of what was - all together, a reported 400,000 souls, mostly from the eastern seaboard but as we discovered in the give and take of a thoroughly somber-but-cold crowd, charming, and who loved to hear our stories about Kennedy in the Mountain State (because he died so soon after his election everybody knew about that WV Primary!).
 Often during the night bladders weakened, needs had to be met. Along the not-quite-dark, heavily-guarded streets were rows of lovely old, ungodly expensive townhouses that were popular when FDR and IKE were in office, but indescribably expensive now.


We had all held our "stuff" as long as we could. Chuck, way too young to do any drinking other than a swallow of water being passed out by Red Cross folks, could squeeze it up, 
I had more issues, but some tolerance. Johnny had very little.
So, we each pealed off the line periodically- as needed. Johnny more often.
Noticeably on one occasion, he headed back behind a small mansion for a badly-needed whiz. Just as he disappeared behind the corner of the house, a seemingly-kennel of barking preceded his retreat-gripping his crotch. Big $@&€%# dogs yapping at his heels!


This long night was going to have even further complications.

-Sorry, have to run, no time for edits now, return again tomorrow,-

Journey to the JFK Funeral, part 2

(previously posted on Facebook)

Preparing for cool weather, we loaded up my Spider with thermos' of hot coffee that Gladys McClung made fresh. Johnny, thoughtfully, grabbed a quart of scotch from the Major's liquor cabinet as we him at Ft Meade, (the assassination had placed the entire Federal City on high-alert, forcing ranked-officers like him to be placed in duty for the foreseeable future - he was at the Pentagon, I believe) and left for Capitol Hill.

The First Lady, with the help of Attorney General Robert F Kennedy and his brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver, new Director of one of the late President's pet projects -the Peace Corps - had personally made every arrangement for the entire post-assassination official schedule - down to who would stand where, all flowers at the White House, and every pallbearer. I have read that she set all personal trauma aside in order to insure that the slain President was given the historic burial this historic tragedy his life deserved. From our personal perspective, and that of the world television audience, Jacqueline Kennedy surpassed everyone's expectations. 
The President's body - in a closed coffin, as his injuries were said to be impossible to would lie in state in the East Room of the White House for 24 hours, for visits by foreign heads of state and American dignitaries, then be transported on Sunday, November 24, 1963, to Capitol Hill - on a horse-drawn wagon - as President Abraham Lincoln had been, so Members of Congress could pay their respects.

Johnny, Chuck and I left Brother Boniface's residence at Ft George Gordon Meade ( after a fine leader of Lincoln's Union Army) headed down the George Washington Parkway, exited on East Capitol Avenue and - with wild luck - found enough room close to the Capitol to squeeze the car to the curb, and immediately confronted the next problem... the line, which ended at the Capitol, actually began on North Capitol Street, then headed east about forty long blocks, turned south for four, then west - back toward the Capitol- for another forty blocks. 
And, now about 8p, the weather had turned even colder ... now almost freezing.

As we looked at this line, the prospects dimmed. I told Chuck, "Nephew, we may have bitten off more than we could chew". 
Johnny had a better idea. "We probably need to round up another bottle of scotch"!
Across the street to a liquor store for extra scotch, around another dark corner for whizzing all around, and we found the end of the line - not single file but about ten people wide, and untold miles long.

As we joined this mass of mourners, the temperature was steadily dropping. It was about 730p in the 24th of November.

- more on this story tomorrow-

Journey to the JFK Funeral

(previously posted on Facebook)




JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and his funeral was near the end of the month, not yet December but close, and cold weather was drawing in hourly in Washington.

We left Charleston WV early in November 24, after the assassination and Mrs Kennedy's sad trip home from Dallas to the White House. Traveling in my fairly new Chevy Corvair, a hot little four-place "roadster" convertible with a strong little engine and a stick shift, we avoided busy US 60 and blew through the mountains, Summersville, then Richwood, Marlinton ... through the Allegheny Mountains and into Virginia. Just as we settled down into the glorious Shenandoah Valley and began the turn up U.S. 11, it was past dawn but still early, and a bulletin came over the radio announcing that someone named Jack Ruby, who ran a strip joint in Dallas, had talked his way into the Dallas jail and, in front of cops, cameras and the world - shot down Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspect in the assassination.

Johnny, in his wise and thoughtful manner, remarked, "Mother fucker ... somebody's trying to cover this thing up"!

The whole nation was thinking the same thing.

Every hotel in the eastern seaboard was booked as virtually millions of people from all over the world were flocking to the Capitol to pay their respects. We planned to bunk in with my brother Boniface, and his family, who was then a Major in the Army, I believe, quartered at Ft Meade, Md, a very large military base just outside of DC. Gladys knew we were coming, had combed the Washington Post and Evening Star for funeral arrangements and details, and 
had a great lunch all ready. Quick naps and showers prepared us for what we suspected would be s long time on our feet.

We had no idea.


-More on this post tomorrow-

The Jim Wright 1980 General Election

This race was very unusual.

It was among the very first out-of-state races I would handle on my own, meaning unconnected to my old friend, Matt Reese, of West Virginia and Washington. It had been delivered to me by Congressman Gillis Long of central Louisiana ... a very smart guy whose early-70s campaign for Governor of Louisiana I had helped as a Moon Landrieu aide-on-leave - as the Boss had several friends in that particular hunt. Gillis had run third behind Edwin Edwards and Bennett Johnston, but he was the good guy and everybody knew it. 
Gillis, and I (temporary leave from City Hall) both leaned hard for Edwin against Johnston in the runoff, and when our side prevailed I went back to Moon's shop and Speaker O'Neill, of Boston College and Middlesex County, Massachusetts, made Gillis a House Whip. Got us both out of a ditch! 
Tip's boy, Tommy - as Lt Gov. Of Massachusetts - and I became good friends a few years later. When I saw Tip later in DC when the subject of Jim Wright and Gillis Long both came up. The speaker spoke very fondly of Gillis Long, but expressed admiration for Jim Wright.

Also, 1980 was bringing into sight a completely new political agenda. Moon Landrieu was Carter's HUD Secretary, and Wright's 12th District was not just Texas, but north central Texas... Ft Worth and the west-of-Dallas suburbs... Eddie Chiles, and that other nutty family with all the money. 
I walked off a jet at DFW in spring of '80 into a world I thought I was about to learn as a boy, then go off and teach to others across the country - because I would be seen as somebody who had learned to "whip up" on these right-wingers ....!

Wrong. I was lucky. Wright had, as i believed at the start, a strong base of strength and good will. But I, nor anyone else active at the time, had ever experienced what was about to take place.

The race was part of the watershed struggle emerging as the post-war Democratic era headed for an abrupt end. Kennedy had died, Johnson succeeded him in '63 then won what remains the strongest landslide ever handed a sitting President. 
Guns and butter ... Vietnam and a huge domestic agenda.

Nixon had replaced a bitter Johnson, whose past had caught up with him. Then Nixon had left Washington in disgrace - following Watergate.

Then Carter, the nice guy from Plains, who carried his bags and slept in the spare rooms of his supporters as he campaigned in the '75 Democratic Primaries.

Newt Gingrich was now heaving grenades in Congress. Reagan - in Sacramento- was re-creating himself as a soft-spoken bombshell, while Goldwater was beginning to drift away ... Becoming reasonable, thoughtful.

As Dylan had been wailing, the times were changin'!

The Republicans saw our race as a major opportunity, where President Carter's perceived weaknesses could be attached to the House Democratic leader at a time when he was virtually isolated on the ballot. No President, no U.S. Senator, no other statewide Texas offices at contest. The Republicans had drawn a bead on the Texas 12th
and pulled the trigger.

Wright was in the position to raise all the money necessary.
I had prepared a pretty aggressive campaign budget - an incumbent's campaign that I felt would surely do the trick, but I just didn't know Jim Wright. Man could not utter the word "No" to anybody. As the old saw goes, if he had been a woman Jim would have been knocked up all the time! 
By September - I had arrived in late spring - we were 30% over our spending plan. Things were going well, but the signs were troubling. I ordered up an early tracking survey, just in case. Looked pretty good. Bill Hamilton from DC, a great polling pro and savvy, was cautious but optimistic when he flopped the results before us. Said he felt good, but wanted to talk about our plans for the last 90-days, and we sorted it through, tinkered a bit but kept the structure of the race pretty much as it was. Wright felt he needed a solid win to be able to convert his role as Majority Leader to Speaker when and if O'Neill chose to hang it up. The two of them had no deal as far as I knew, but they were close. In the bitter, earlier battle for 
Majority Leader, Wright had won a surprisingly strong victory over San Francisco liberal Phillip Burton - with a wink and a nudge from the Speaker. Wright wasn't too easy to like, but compared to Burton ... all Tip wanted to do was not get caught!
So, we upped the budget a bit that fall, added mail, increased street-operations among African American and Hispanic voters in the east and north sides, where Patti Everitt and Robert Jara of our campaign staff knew exactly what had to be done. And the Wright phone banks were ratcheted up to buzz-saw levels. When Jim and I had first talked in the spring of 1980, I had asked what kind of outcome would serve his future adequately. He suggested the mid-50s. Our tracking was demonstrating an acceptable lead for Wright, but Democratic values were falling badly as summer turned to fall ... voters liked Jim Wright just fine, but Carter was beginning to fold like a bad suit. I hadn't planned a lot of TV ... huge, sprawling market divided between Ft Worth and Dallas, and a ton of suburbs and exurbs mixed in between. Got my attention. I called a good media guy out of Austin. Roy Spence road into town on a Harley - no shit. I'd talked with him without Wright's okay, since I hadn't planned much television - given the market. We went over the polls. I explained my reluctance to authorize a negative approach on television and he agreed. 
He went away, came back quickly with some divine scripts and proposed to create a couple - not negative - designed to head off those among Wright's backers who would bash Jim Bradshaw, our unknown opponent. Bradshaw wasn't the issue, it was the Eddie Chiles' of the world with huge check books ... with voters beginning to get more and more angry at President Jimmy Carter. Spence shipped in a terrific production crew over a weekend in early October who turned his scripts into magic.

Little Sarah, 8, quivering voice ... "Mr Wright, why can't we pray in school?" Jim - really cheesy-grin (everybody reading this who knew him even a little knows this grin!). "Of course you should pray in school ... every morning, before Congress dies anything for anybody ... a priest, or a minister, or a Rabbi comes before us and leads all Members in a prayer to the almighty."
Sarah smiles ... like a sweet child.

Cut.

Three weeks before the election, Wright upped the budget by about 20% to air Sarah's spot.

And just before election weekend, President Carter, a great guy who was about as popular as a Yankee in Dixie at the moment, called from Anchorage offering to swing through Ft Worth on the way back to the White House to "give you a hand". Wright put his hand over the phone, wrinkled those bushy eyebrows into a twist and stared at me ...

I whispered, "Leader, Sunday or Monday before the election .... but suggest to the President that we keep it quiet, try to make it a huge surprise!"

Election Night -60%.

Jim Wright was one of the really good guys.