Today, I will be helping Columbia television station KMIZ telecast and webcast his memorial service from the rotunda of the Capitol where he served for ten years, two years as state auditor and eight years as governor. The Capitol is less than an hour’s drive from Mexico, his hometown.
The memorial service will be at non today, after which he will lie in state until mid-day tomorrow. A celebration of his life will take place Thursday at Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church in St. Louis.
He called himself “Kit,” and signed all of his letters that way. But I never called him that. I think “Kit” is okay for a child but not for somebody who earned the prestigious titles of governor and senator. A grownup, especially a governor or a senator, should be Christopher. I’ll let a frontiersman from two centuries ago get away with it, but it’s just not dignified when applied to a Governor. Or a Senator and, once upon a time, in a time far, far away, a potential candidate for vice-president.
THIS is Kit:
Kit is about forty years old and it’s the time of year for it to go live outside for the summer. We bring it indoors when the weather starts to turn a little crisp and park it next to a window so it can view winter, as we do, from the warmth of the house.
This is Christopher.
That’s fifty years ago, after he had helped me get the American Freedom Train to come through Jefferson City for the American Revolution Bicentennial. I was the local committee Secretary and Carolyn McDowell was the committee chairman. My friend, Jim Wisch, who also helped me build a grandfather clock from a kit (I’m sorry, it’s unavoidable in telling the story), did the woodwork for the plaque with the locomotive on it.
Some people have asked me to talk about Christopher Bond and I’ve talked about some of his legislative successes, his actions overturning a 140-year old extermination order by one of his predecessors telling Mormons to get out of Missouri or he would have the state militia kill them, his work on realigning government, his work ethic, and other things. But I overlooked one of his best accomplishments. Alan Greenblatt, the editor of Governing magazine brought it up after learning of Bond’s death. He headlined it “When a Governor Preserved Part of His State’s Heritage.
With his reminding me, I recalled it well. Half a century ago, the St. Louis Mercantile Library decided to pay for a new air conditioning system by selling more than 100 drawings by Missouri’s most famous 19th Century artist, George Caleb Bingham. Bingham’s works are universally appreciated not only as art but also because of the historical stories they tell. The drawings are of people who appear in one of his most famous works—County Election.
Bond mobilized school children to donate their dimes and pennies to help the state buy the drawings. Any school that raised $250 got a Bingham print. More than three-hundred schools took part and their children raised about $40,000.
The children inspired adults, businesses, and the legislature to put up the rest of the money, more than two-million dollars, to make the purchase.
The drawings, now in a trust, are protected from being sold.
Greenblatt concludes, “After I learned about Bond’s intervention… it became a habit for me to ask governors and former governors if they had ever done something similar — something that wasn’t part of their larger political agenda but something that had an impact they could talk about with their grandchildren. None have yet given me a satisfactory answer. So kudos to Kit Bond, as he was known, for using his bully pulpit in this particular way.”
I first met him when he was running against incumbent Congressman Bill Hungate, one of the stars of the Watergate hearings, in northeast Missouri. He came to the radio station where I was in my first year as news director, the late KLIK, and we sat on a couch in the front office and talked about why he thought he was qualified to go to Congress. He lost but he gave Hungate a stronger run than he had ever faced.
That was 1968, the year John Danforth broke Democratic control of state politics. He hired a bunch of young assistants, Christopher Bond being one of them. The list of people who came through the “Danforth Incubator” includes future governors, judges of the state supreme court, federal prosecutors, Republican Party leaders, and a couple of future governors—Bond and John Ashcroft.
Before Bond became governor he had to prove he was a Missourian. His primary opponent, Representative R. J. “Bus” King, charged Bond would not have lived in Missouri for the required ten years before the election. He had gone to law school in Virginia, clerked for a federal judge in Georgia, worked for a law firm in Washington, D.C., applied for a marriage license in Kentucky and lived in DC after his marriage.
Bond argued all of those addresses were temporary and were connected to his education and his professional development. But, he said, he never intended to abandon his Missouri residence. The court ruled that “residence” is “largely a matter of intention” not requiring a physical presence. Therefore residence was “that place where a man has his true, fixed and permanent home and principal establishment, and to which whenever he is absent he has the intention of returning.”
Bond became the youngest governor in Missouri history in January, 1973. Some of the old guard, even in his own party, treated him with some disdain, some even referring to his as ‘Kid” Bond.
1972 also was the year Missourians approved a realignment of state government. Our youngest governor’s first big job was a complete reordering of the hundreds of state agencies, boards, and commissions into a little more than a dozen departments.
When a tornado hit Farmington in ’74, Bond and some members of the Capitol Press Corps hopped on a National Guard helicopter and flew over to check the damage. Bond and the press corps got along pretty well but on this flight there was no collegial chit-chat. Bond had his briefcase and was working on things all the way over and all the way back, a work ethic I appreciated.
By re-election time, Bond had won the respect of the old guard and was such a rising star in the party, nationally, that President Ford had Bond on the short list as a running mate. But when Joe Teasdale ran a populist campaign that Bond never seriously challenged, Teasdale emerged a surprise winner by about 13,000 votes. The stunning defeat ended his hopes of rising to national importance.
I remember hearing him talk about how his loss not only was difficult for him, it was doubly difficult for his wife. While he was mourning the end of his dreams, she was dealing with the loss of HER dream. And she had to deal with the end of his national ambitions, too. It’s a lesson I’ve told other potential first-time candidates to think about—-that they don’t run for office alone; that their family is running, too, and is living all of the joys and sadnesses the campaign produces.
Bond filled his time as the head of the Great Plains Legal Foundation while working to rebuild the Republican Party. He came out slugging in the 1980 campaign and clobbered Teasdale by about ten times more votes than was the losing margin to Teasdale in ’72.
He laid out for a couple of years then ran for the U. S. Senate and won the first of his four six-year terms.
When he retired from the Senate fifteen years ago, he said,
“There is no greater honor than being given the people’s trust, to represent them. I have done my best to keep faith with my constituents in every vote I have cast and every issue I have worked on.
“As I look back, the successes we have achieved during my time here have always come because people were willing to reach across the aisle for the common good…
“In a world today where enemies are real—the kind who seek to destroy others because of their religion—it is important to remember there is a lot of real estate between a political opponent and a true enemy.
“Public Service has been a blessing and a labor of love for me. Little in life could be more fulfilling.”
Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri was known for his pork-barrel politics, the politics of getting as much federal money for his state as possible. While some think being “The King of Pork” is not a distinction, Bond was proud of the title—-because it was done for his folks back home.
I saw him occasionally in the years since (such as at the Greitens Inauguration in 2017). Age shortened his height but not his public stature. He always had the smile, always the twinkle in the eye, always was glad to see someone, always ready with a quip.
He was 86 when he died last week.
One final story—about Kit.
In those days the press corps was made up of a lot of young men and women. We had our softball teams and our basketball teams. One day the press corps played a game against Governor Bond and his staff. The press corps won. I hit a shot that nailed the governor in the shin at third base.
In May of 1984, my city league softball team played the governor’s staff and I had to leave my position at third base to fill in for an absent pitcher. Early in the game, one of the governor’s staff hit a shot straight back at me. It hit me in the left eye and I was in the hospital for a few days after doctors stitched the eye and the surrounding area back together. On day a nurse brought a nice plant to my bedside. She and the other nurses were really impressed that the governor would send a plant to one of their patients.
We call the plant Kit. And it will always remind me of a guy named Christopher.
(photo credits: Kit—Bob Priddy; County Election—Art.com; Old Bond—UPI; Official portrait of Bond—Bob Priddy)