We usually are silent in this space on Tuesdays but today we must note the passing of former state legislator Wayne Goode. His kind has been missing from our General Assembly far too long. Wayne was from St. Louis and St. Louis County. He and John T. Russell (who died several years ago) served 42 years in the House and the Senate. Only Senator Michael Kinney, who represented St. Louis for 56 years served longer.
He died Saturday of leukemia. He was 83. He was one of the finest people I knew in four decades as a reporter at the Capitol.
Wayne is a prime exhibit in discussing the evils of term limits. Last year, the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis presented him with its highest honor, The Thomas Jefferson Award. I was asked to talk about him.
Some people, it seems, are born for public service and if there ever was one of those people it is Wayne Goode. I will not even try to list all of the boards and commissions on which Wayne has served.
Wayne always was one of the “white hats” in the general assembly. In today’s sometimes irrational political world there would be critics who would say he was just a darling of the left wing fake news media, I suppose. But they’d be wrong.
Wayne wasn’t very good at political rhetoric. But he was great at common sense, sound reasoning, and persuasive credibility. People listened when he talked.
I remember him especially from his work in shaping state budgets. Until he came along, the state budget was pretty much written by the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. But Wayne got the job and decided that if there was a committee, the committee should do the work and state officials as well as common citizens should participate. There were some folks in the Capitol who didn’t know what to make of that process at first, but the process is still used today.
He co-sponsored a resolution to have Missouri ratify the Equal Rights Amendment….only to see the Speaker of the House and the Majority Floor leader introduce one, too…..The leadership resolution went to a committee where the chairman refused to hold a hearing and the Speaker refused to put the hammer down and get one…and the issue died that year. After that, Phyllis Schlafly was in the way and the best chance of Missouri to ratify the ERA was lost.
His love of the outdoors led him to observe great damage was being done to it in the post-war industrial age…which led him to sponsor a hazardous waste bill that was the first major environmental cleanup legislation to pass. We are grateful for that in our household because my wife, Nancy, worked for many years in the Department of Natural Resources Hazardous waste section. I think she still has her big green boots in which she clomped around hazardous waste sites. There is no truth to the rumor that the boots were black before she started clomping around.
He got a bill passed that ended the legal dumping of hazardous wastes down wells.
But one thing he could not stop was the construction of the Callaway Nuclear Plant. I remember hearing Wayne and some other legislative colleagues protesting the plant’s construction. Wayne and three other House colleagues proposed legislation that would have put some strict controls on nuclear plants. The issue made it to a statewide ballot. Union Electric outspent Wayne and Kay Drey and the legislators behind the bill by 3-million dollars to 100-thousand dollars; voters said no, big time, to the anti-plant proposal in 1984 and Callaway was built. I saw an article a few years ago where Wayne admitted the plant was being operated about as well as a nuclear plant can be operated….although the industry still lacks a final solution to its nuclear waste problem.
It was his legislation, of course, that led to the creation of the University of Missouri at St. Louis, for which there is a statue of him on the campus. It’s a good statue. It captures Wayne fully engaged in straightening out a colleague on the bill Wayne holds in his hand.
(Wayne, on the right, poses with sculptor Jay Hall Carpenter and Carpenter’s statue of Goode on the UMSL Campus. UMSL)
There is nothing angry about the debate that is portrayed in this statue. In fact, Wayne is enjoying himself. There is a joy of earnest discussion. There is no animosity. No posturing. This is the Wayne Goode I remember. It is an example of what collegial lawmaking should be. Unfortunately it also is a contrast to what too much of our lawmaking has become.
University students will benefit for years to come because of the Senator Wayne Goode Scholars Program. Goode Scholars, they’re called. The recognitions are handled though the University’s Scholars and Fellowship program. It’s a shame that the Wayne Good Scholars Program isn’t considered a fellowship…..because students happy to win one of those could be called Jolly Goode Fellows.
I saw Wayne in the pose frozen by that statue many times, never outwardly angry, never flustered, always knowing legislation better, sometimes, than the sponsors. I never saw him try to slip something into a bill secretly. I also never saw him stand still as long as he has since being cast in bronze. Wayne likes to be in motion—whether it’s hiking or riding a bike or going about doing—good(e).
I was curious the other day and looked back at some of the people Wayne served with in the House and Senate. I dug out the Blue Book—the official state manual that has not always been blue. The list gives an idea of the eras that he spanned in his 42 years in the Missouri legislature.
When Wayne began serving in the House, Theodore McNeal was a State Senator from St. Louis, the first African-American state senator. The first African-American to serve in the House, Walthall Moore of St. Louis, served in the 1920s, BG (Before Goode)
Senator Michael Kinney was still there, the man who served 56 years in the Senate, the only man in the history of Missouri who served more years than Wayne in the legislature. Kinney had succeeded his brother who had died in 1912, toward the end of his second term. So that part of St. Louis was represented by these two brothers for 64 years. Thomas was serving in the Senate when the Capitol burned in 1911 and Mike served in the temporary capitol while the present building was going up.
The Kinney family, incidentally, apparently believed in naming children after Biblical figures…Michael and Thomas. Thomas’ nickname also was Biblical—Snake.
Here are some of the other people Wayne served with during his time in the House:
William C. Phelps, Melvin Carnahan, James Spainhower, James Conway, Harold Volkmer, John Buechner, Wendell Bailey, E. Thomas Coleman, Karen McCarthy, Alan Wheat, Betty Hearnes, Claire McCaskill, William Webster, Todd Akin, and Robert Holden.
In the Senate, he served alongside Patsy Danner, Roger Wilson, Jeremiah Nixon, William L. Clay Junior, Sam Graves, Joe Maxwell, Peter Kinder, and Steve Ehlmann.
There were hundreds of others but the ones I’ve just mentioned have special distinctions.
Ten of these folks became members of the United States House of Representatives—Harold Volkmer, Tom Coleman, Jack Buechner, Wendell Bailey, Karen McCarthy, Todd Akin, Alan Wheat, Pat Danner, William Lacy Clay, and Sam Graves.
One, Claire McCaskill, became a U. S. Senator—after she had been state auditor.
There were four who became governors: Mel Carnahan, Jay Nixon, Roger Wilson, and Bob Holden.
Betty Hearnes was a first lady when Wayne showed up in Jefferson City and later became the only former First Lady to serve in the legislature.
Five of these names were Lieutenant Governor—Mel Carnahan, Fulltime Bill Phelps, Peter Kinder, Roger Wilson, and Joe Maxwell.
Three were state treasurers: Carnahan, Bob Holden, and Jim Spainhower.
Two served as Attorney General—Jay Nixon and Bill Webster.
James F. Conway became Mayor of St. Louis.
And Steve Ehlmann runs St. Charles County government.
What I can’t figure out is why we are here tonight.
We’re honoring the guy who went nowhere—except to Jefferson City and back…and to Jefferson City and back….and to Jefferson and back…for 42 years.
Wayne, you coulda been somebody!
But for some reason, it’s you, a man of low ambition, that we’re honoring tonight..
However, this stay-at-home, low-ambition guy is, I think, the only one of the 24 people I have just mentioned who has a statue of himself. That’s pretty special. Not even James S. Rollins, who is considered the “father” of the whole University system has a statue. A bust, but not a statue.
Wayne served in a far different Senate and a far different House during his 42 years. There were filibusters every now and then but they weren’t the self-serving filibusters that we see so much today. Filibusters in Wayne’s time, were often funny, and often had a purpose of forcing two sides to find some middle ground that would let the Senate move ahead. Today, in the days of supermajorities, filibusters aren’t funny; they’re often futile efforts by a weak minority; and quite often are not just ways to force two sides to work out a troublesome issue. They’re unfunny and they’re boring. I know. I was there for many of them and found laughter helped stay awake.
A few weeks ago I asked some capitol staffers who remain from the Goode Old Days to share some thoughts about Wayne. Most talked about how hard he worked—and in the process how hard he sometimes worked THEM. One comment that I enjoyed was that Wayne was always careful with what he ate during legislative sessions. I was told that he didn’t like potatoes…and often had rice with his meals.
You might have noticed potatoes were not on our plates tonight.
I planned to bring Wayne a gift from Jefferson City tonight. I suspect, Wayne, you’re not a fan of bumper stickers and it wouldn’t fit on your bicycle anyway. But I wanted you to have this bumper sticker that says “Eat More Rice. Potatoes Make Your Butt Big.” But the one I have that I was going to give you is in a box that I have filed too far away. Be watching for it in the mail, though.
In his closing years in the General Assembly, Wayne was increasingly concerned about term limits and the loss of institutional memory that they would cause—among other concerns. In the years since their adoption we have seen his fears of term limits—and similar fears voiced by many others who have served in the legislature—come true.
I watched it happen from the House Press Gallery and from the press table on the Senate floor. I can tell you from personal experience all of the negatives we were warned about have come true…and there are darned few positives.
There are three portraits that hang in the Senate Lounge at the state capitol. One is Senator Kinney. Another is Senator A. Clifford Jones who was from Ladue and was known for his humor, his tight-fistedness (he didn’t like spending money to redecorate his office, for example), and for not suffering fools gladly during debate. The third is Senator Richard Webster, who was the last Republican Speaker of the House before Catherine Hanaway arrived, and who became one of the most powerful men in state government as the minority leader in the Senate.
I have suggested, always to deaf ears, that two more portraits should be in that Lounge—two men who served in the legislature together for 42 years. One is a strong-conservative Republican from the city of Lebanon, in southwest Missouri, John T. Russell, and the other is Wayne Goode, a strong-liberal Democrat. I don’t recall, as I mentioned earlier, ever hearing Wayne raise his voice. I heard him speak firmly at times, but I don’t remember that he ever showed a temper. Russell was different. He had a resonant voice and there were times—brief ones—when he could thunder.
The legislative session in the year that Republicans took control of the Senate, began with some vacancies, leaving Republicans and Democrat with the same numbers. For a few weeks there were co-presidents pro tem, for example. And for a short time, Wayne Goode—the dedicate liberal—was the co-chairman of the Senate appropriations committee with John T. Russell, the dedicated conservative.
When Republicans won enough of the special elections to take the majority in the Senate, Russell became the stand-alone chairman. But he and Wayne, as the ranking minority member, worked together on the state budget, respecting the experience and the knowledge and the shared legislative history that each brought to the process.
To those of us who watched them, they represented the best that government can be. Two men of widely-different political loyalties showed what statesmanship means. We lost both of them at the same time because of term limits. Both served the people in Jefferson City for 42 years—not just THEIR people, but THE people.
In 1892, Maine Congressman Thomas B. Reed, who also served three terms as Speaker of the House, received a letter from a citizen who asked him, “What is a Statesman?” Reed wrote back, “A statesman is a successful politician who is dead.”
Harry Truman embroidered that comment in 1958, after he’d been promoted back to private citizenship, as he liked to say, by saying, “A statesman is a politician who’s been dead ten or fifteen years.”
But both Thomas B. Reed and Harry S Truman were wrong. Politicians can be statesmen in their lifetimes….and we have living proof with us tonight of the goodness that comes from that living statesmanship.
Term limits robbed the legislature of the influence of people such as Wayne Goode. Time now has robbed all of us of this good man.
