Category Archives: events

I’ll be around

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(This is the fifth in our series recounting the history of inaugurations.  It includes a lengthy list that is here for the historical record.)

When Eric Greitens becomes Governor of Missouri, there will be six living former governors: Nixon, Blunt, Holden, Wilson, Ashcroft, and Bond.

In 2009, when Jay Nixon took office for his first term there were seven living former governors: Blunt, Holden, Wilson, Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale, and Hearnes.  Hearnes died later that year and Teasdale died in 2014.  The last time there were that many living former governors was when Arthur M. Hyde was inaugurated in 1921.

But has there been a time when there were more than seven?

We’ve combed some records to see if there ever was a time there were more than seven living former governors at the start of a new administration.  And the answer is yes.

John Sappington Marmaduke (inaugurated in 1885) had eight living former governors when he took office, including John Cummins Edwards, who was the youngest governor in state history when he took office in 1844.  His predecessor, Thomas Crittenden, also had eight living predecessors when he was sworn in in 1881.  Charles Hardin (1875) had eight living predecessors.  When Hamilton Gamble took over at the start of the Civil War after Claiborne Jackson fled to the Confederacy, there were eight predecessors including Jackson.

In 2009, when Jay Nixon took office there were seven living former governors: Blunt, Holden, Wilson, Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale, and Hearnes.  Hearnes died later that year and Teasdale died in 2014.  The last time there were that many living former governors was when Arthur M. Hyde was inaugurated in 1921.

Here’s some miscellaneous information about governors as we get closer to getting a new one

Governors before age 40:

Bond (first term) 33 years 10 months 2 days   Born 3/6/1939   Inaugurated 1/8/73

Blunt  34 years 1 month 21 days    Born 11/20/1970  Inaugurated 1/10/2005

Folk 35 years 2 months 12 days     Born 10/28/1869  Inaugurated 1/9/1905

Hadley  36 years 10 months 20 days   Born 2/20/1872 Inaugurated 1/9/1909

Fletcher  37 years 11 months 11 days  Born 1/22/1827  Inaugurated 1/2/1865

Stephens  38 years 22 days      Born 12/21/58   Inaugurated  1/11/1897

Edwards  38 years 4 months 26 days   Born 6/24/1806   Inaugurated 11/20/1844

Bond, Blunt, Folk, and Fletcher are the only governors to complete a term before they were 40.  Fletcher’s term was only two years under the constitution then in effect and Bond was defeated in his first re-election before winning a second term four years later.

Most Living Governors at time of governor’s inauguration:

8–John Marmaduke 1885, Crittenden 1881, Hardin 1875, Gamble 1861, C. F. Jackson 1861

7—Nixon 2009, Hyde 1921, Gardner 1917, Phelps 1877, Woodson 1873, Brown 1871, McClurg 1869, Hall 1864

Fewest living governors at time of inauguration:

0—McNair 1820 (first state governor)

1—Bates 1825, Williams 1825, Miller 1828

2—Bond 1973, Bond 1981. Dunklin 1832, Miller 1825

Governors living to see the most successors:

*15–Edwards 1844

10—Fletcher, 1865, McClurg 1869

9—MM Marmaduke 1885, King 1848, Major 1913

8—Polk 1857, Crittenden 1881, Park 1933, Hearnes 1965 (Greitens will be the eighth successor to Christopher Bond’s first term)

*Edwards’ remarkable record included 1857 when Trusten Polk resigned to go to the U.S. Senate after less than two months in office and Lt. Gov. Hancock L. Jackson served long enough to call the special election that put Robert Stewart in office; Claiborne F. Jackson’s abdication when he fled to the Confederacy after a year in office, the post-Civil War period when Governors had only two-year terms, the death of John Marmaduke and the succession of Albert Morehouse

Here’s a complete list if you’re up to reading all the way to the end:

Living Former Governors at each inauguration:

Greitens 2017—Nixon, Blunt, Holden, Wilson, Ashcroft, Bond  6

Nixon 2013—Blunt, Holden, Wilson, Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale (d. 2014)   6

Nixon 2009—Blunt, Holden, Wilson, Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale, Hearnes (d. 2009)   7

Blunt 2005—Holden, Wilson, Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale, Hearnes  6

Holden 2001—Wilson, Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale, Hearnes   5

Wilson 2000—Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale, Hearnes  4

Carnahan 1997—Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale, Hearnes  4

Carnahan 1993—Ashcroft, Bond, Teasdale, Hearnes   4

Ashcroft 1989—Bond, Teasdale, Hearnes   3

Ashcroft 1985—Bond, Teasdale, Hearnes  3

Bond 1981—Teasdale, Hearnes  2

Teasdale 1977—Bond, Hearnes, Donnell (d. 1980)  3

Bond 1973—Hearnes, Donnell  2

Hearnes 1969—Dalton (d. 1972), Donnell, Stark (d. 1972)  3

Hearnes 1965—Dalton, Donnell, Caulfield (d. 1966), Stark  4

Dalton 1961—Blair (d. 1962), Donnelly (d. 1961), Smith (d. 1962), Caulfield, Stark   5

Blair 1957—Donnelly, Smith, Caulfield, Stark   4

Donnelly 1953—Smith, Donnell, Stark, Caulfield  4

Smith 1949—Donnell, Stark, Caulfield, Major (d. 1949)    4

Donnelly 1945—Stark, Caulfield, Park (d. 1946), Major, Hyde (d. 1947)   5

Donnell 1941—Stark, Caulfield, Park, Major, Hyde    5

Stark 1937—Caulfield, Park, Major, Hyde  4

Park 1933—Caulfield, Major, Hyde, Gardner (d. 1933), Baker (d. 1933)    5

Caulfield 1929—Major, Hyde, Baker, Gardner      4

Baker 1925—Major, Hyde, Hadley (d.1927), Dockery (d. 1926), Francis (d. 1927), Gardner  6

Hyde 1921—Major, Hadley, Dockery, Francis, Folk (d. 1923), Stephens (d. 1923), Gardner   7

Gardner 1917—Major, Hadley, Dockery, Francis, Folk, Stephens Stone (d. 1918)  7

Major 1913—Hadley, Dockery, Francis, Folk, Stephens, Stone   6

Hadley 1909—Dockery, Francis, Folk, Stephens, Stone, Crittenden (d. 1909)  6

Folk 1905—Dockery, Francis, Stephens, Stone, Crittenden   5

Dockery  1901—Francis, Stephens, Stone, Crittenden  4

Stephens 1897—Francis, Stone, Crittenden, McClurg (d. 1900), Fletcher (d. 1899)   5

Stone 1893—Francis, Crittenden, McClurg, Woodson (d. 1896), Fletcher    5

Francis 1889—Morehouse (d. 1891) Crittenden, McClurg, Woodson, Hardin (d.1892) Fletcher   6

*Morehouse 1887—Crittenden, McClurg, Woodson, Hardin, Fletcher, Edwards (d. 1888)  6

John Marmaduke 1885—Crittenden, McClurg, Woodson, Hardin, Fletcher, Phelps (d. 1886), Brown (d.1885) Edwards   8

Crittenden 1881—McClurg, Woodson, Hardin, Fletcher, Phelps, Brown, Hall (d. 1882), Edwards  8

Phelps 1877—McClurg, Woodson, Hardin, Fletcher, Brown, Hall, Edwards  7

**Hardin 1875—McClurg, Woodson, Fletcher, Brown, Hall, Edwards, Polk (d. 1876), H. Jackson (d. 1876)   8

**Woodson 1873—McClurg, Fletcher, Brown, Hall, Edwards, Polk, H. Jackson   7

**Brown 1871—McClurg, Fletcher, Hall, Edwards, Polk, H. Jackson, Stewart (d. 1871)  7

**McClurg 1869—Fletcher, Hall, Edwards, Polk, H. Jackson, Stewart, King (d. 1870)   7

Fletcher 1865—Hall, Edwards, Polk, H. Jackson, Stewart, King, Price (d. 1867)  7

*Hall 1864—Edwards, Polk, H. Jackson, Stewart, King, Price. MM Marmaduke (d. 1864) 7

*Gamble 1861—Edwards, Polk, H. Jackson, King, Price, C. F. Jackson (d. 1862), MM Marmaduke, Stewart  7

C. F. Jackson 1861—Edwards, Polk, H. Jackson, Stewart, King, Price, MM Marmaduke, Boggs (d.1860) 8

Stewart 1857—Edwards, Polk, H. Jackson, King, Price, Boggs, MM Marmaduke   7

*Hancock Jackson 1857—Edwards, Polk, King, Price, Boggs, MM Marmaduke   6

Polk 1857—Edwards, King, Price, Boggs, MM Marmaduke   5

Price 1853—Edwards, King, Boggs, MM Marmaduke 4

***King 1848—Edwards, Boggs, MM Marmaduke 3

Edwards 1844—Boggs, MM Marmaduke, Dunklin (d. 1844), Miller (d. 1846)   4

*MM Marmaduke 1844—Boggs, Dunklin, Miller  3

Reynolds 1840—Boggs, Dunklin, Miller   3

Boggs 1836—Dunklin, Miller, Williams (d. 1839)  3

Dunklin 1832—Miller, Williams   2

Miller  1828—Williams   1

*Miller 1825—Williams, McNair (d. 1826)  2

*Williams—1825—McNair  1

Bates—1824—McNair   1

McNair—1820—First state governor (Missouri admitted to the Union August 10, 1821)

*Morehouse succeeded John Marmaduke, who died in office

*Hall succeeded Hamilton Gamble, who died in office

*Gamble was installed in office July 31 1861 after Governor Jackson fled to the Confederacy

*Hancock Lee Jackson was Lt. Governor when Polk resigned in 1857 after serving the shortest term of any Missouri Governor to become a U. S. Senator. Jackson served until October, 1857 when Robert M. Stewart was sworn in after a special election.

*Meredith Miles Marmaduke succeeded Thomas Reynolds, who committed suicide Feb. 9, 1844.

*John Miller succeeded Frederick Bates, who died in office, and Abraham J. Williams, who became acting governor because Bates’ Lt. Governor, Benjamin Reeves, had resigned to join a surveying party for the Santa Fe Trail.

*Senate President pro Tem Abraham J. Williams served only long enough to call a special election to replace Frederick Bates, who had died.

**The 1865 Missouri Constitution limited governors to two years in office. The 1875 Constitution restored four-year terms

***King was elected on November 7, 1848 and sworn in thirteen days later, serving more than four years before Price’s term began with the now customary January inauguration.

The governors club

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(This is the fourth in our series—we don’t know how many there will be eventually—leading to the inauguration of the state officials.)

January 20, 1953 was the day the nation’s most prestigious club was founded.  One claim says it’s the WORLD’s most exclusive group.  It has no clubhouse. No golf course.  No tennis courts. No swimming pool.  Today it numbers only four members.  A potential fifth member is weeks away from becoming qualified.

The club’s founding began on the day Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated President.  Harry Truman met former President Herbert Hoover on the inaugural platform and Hoover said, “I think we ought to organize a former presidents club.”  Truman responded, “Fine.  You be the President of the club and I will be the Secretary.”

Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy have written in The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, “Truman was a mortal enemy of Hoover’s, but he also knew that only Hoover had the experience and stature to overhaul the executive branch to meet the challenges of the nuclear age. As a result of their partnership, the Hoover Commission, which Congress created, Truman sanctioned, and Hoover chaired, produced the greatest transformation of the presidency in history…Every president who followed would have reason to thank them.”

When President Trump takes office in less than two months, there will be only five people alive who bore the burdens of leading the world’s greatest nation.  They are bound together by history.

Today the club includes two Bushes, a Carter, and a Clinton.  The most members it has ever had is six, when it had two Bushes, a Carter, a Clinton, a Ford, and a Reagan. Congress has passed legislation giving the Presidents Club formal recognition, with certain privileges.

Presidents, regardless of their differences with their predecessors, often have called on members of the club for advice and sometimes for specific missions. Some have grown close—Clinton and George H. W. Busch, for example.  Truman and Hoover for another.

When Eric Greitens becomes Governor of Missouri, there will be six living former governors: Nixon, Blunt, Holden, Wilson, Ashcroft, and Bond.

A Missouri Governors Club exists only as a list of men who have held the office.  We know of no suggestion that the six living former governors would be interested in some kind of formal recognition of their shared executive experience. But they share a great deal in common.  Leading Missouri government, whether it has been for a few weeks, or for eight years has given them a perspective on power, opportunity, and obligation that no one else has. Would Governor Greitens profit from recognizing them, even calling them together from time to time, or simply calling them individually?   Only he will know if such a thing would be useful.  Only he will decide if there is value in a Missouri Governors Club, unofficial though it might be.

Our recollection is that it’s a tradition for the incoming governor to invite all former governors to take part in the inauguration but we do not recall a time when all of them did.  One special inauguration does come readily to mind—when Christopher Bond was sworn in for his first term in 1973, he invited the last previous Republican governor to be part of the event. And Forrest C. Donnell, who was sworn in later than usual in 1941 because of a dispute about the certification of the election, was there and stayed up real late for the celebration.  He was 88 by then, 95 when he died in 1980.

History awaits the governor Missouri will inaugurate on January 9.  But history remains in six men who have sat behind the desk Eric Greitens will sit behind.  And history is a useful thing to call upon in making decisions that will shape the future.

The learning curve of the newbies

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(Part three of our series leading up to inauguration day looks at the loss of experience Missouri faces in its top offices and ponders what fresh attitudes might mean.)

College students used to call it “cramming.”  Maybe they still do.  “All-nighters,” some said, referring to last-day, around-the-clock studying for finals, sometimes trying to make up for leisure approaches to the books during the semester.

It occurs to us that several of our elected people are having something of an equivalent experience in these weeks leading up to their assumption of office.  We’re trading a lot of experienced leaders for a new group that has a lot to learn before inauguration day and will learn a lot in the first year afterwards.

Consider:

Jay Nixon is leaving the governorship after eight years in that office, sixteen years as Attorney General, and six years in the Missouri Senate.  Thirty years of experience in state government.  Replacing him is Eric Greitens who has never held elective office.

Peter Kinder holds the record as the longest-serving Lieutenant Governor in Missouri history and is just the second person elected to three terms.  Frank Harris, first elected in 1933, died during his third term in 1944, a few days before he would have finished twelve years.  Before becoming Lieutenant Governor, Kinder was a state senator for twelve years.   To illustrate how times have changed, remember this: Kinder was the only Republican elected to statewide office in 2008.  Next month, the only people on the inauguration platform who will raise their right hands in the chill January air will be Republicans. Kinder will be replaced by Mike Parson, a sheriff in Polk County for twelve years before serving six years in the Missouri House, and six years in the Missouri Senate.  Kinder leaves with 24 years in state office.  Parson comes in with 24 years in elective office, half of that time in the legislature.  Although a newbie in statewide office, he’s no stranger to elective positions or to the state government process.

Jason Kander leaves the Secretary of State’s office after four years there and four years at a state representative.  He’s made it clear we haven’t seen the last of him although what that means is open to some speculation that has been fueled recently by a trip to Iowa for a major speech.  His replacement is Jay Ashcroft, who has never held elective office before—although he knows some of the pressures and pleasures of doing so by growing up as his father served as Missouri Auditor, Attorney General, Governor, and U. S. Senator. Looking ahead, we should note that there has been only one time in Missouri history when the son of a former governor was elected to that position.  John Sappington Marmaduke (elected in 1885, died in office in 1887) was the son of Meredith Miles Marmaduke (who became governor in 1844 after Thomas Reynolds committed suicide).

State Treasurer Clint Zweifel became Missouri’s youngest State Treasurer in more than a century when he took office eight years ago at the age of 35.  He was in the House for six years before that. He decided fourteen years in state politics is enough, at least for now.  His successor, Eric Schmitt, won’t be the youngest but is likely to lay quick claim to being the tallest.  He leaves the state senate after eight years.  He was a city alderman in Glendale for four years before that.  Schmitt has enjoyed claiming that he is the tallest person ever to serve in the state senate although our research suggests there was a senator early in the last century who might have been just as tall.  For more on that controversy, you can check our investigative piece on the old Missourinet Blog, http://blog.missourinet.com/2014/04/04/bmis/.

Chris Koster steps down after eight years as Attorney General, four years in the Missouri Senate, and ten years as a county prosecutor.  He’ll be replaced by Josh Hawley who has not held elective office before.

All of this means that three of the five statewide offices that will be filled on inauguration day will be taken over by people who have never served in elective office. We will leave it to another person to determine if this is unique in Missouri history.  It certainly seems to be in our experience.

The raw numbers, which are interesting if not particularly meaningful in terms of measuring capability to do a job, look like this:  Missouri is losing 88 years of experience in state-level office experience and getting twenty years of state-level office experience.

To round things out, we note that State Auditor Nicole Galloway, whose office comes up for election in the off-year of 2018, was the Boone County Treasurer for four years before becoming Auditor less than two years ago.

This is the first time since 1993 that new people will be sworn into these five offices on inauguration day. Mel Carnahan became Governor in ‘93. Roger Wilson was Lt. Governor.  Judy Moriarty became Secretary of State. Bob Holden became Treasurer.  Jay Nixon became Attorney General.

This is only the fifth time in sixty years that we’ve had a turnover of all five offices.  It has happened only seven times in the last 88 years.

The five relative newbies who will take office next month know they will assume a state with a lot of problems, as their predecessors knew they were inheriting the state’s problems. This will be an interesting, maybe an exciting, time for Missouri as we see how government is viewed through fresh eyes and shaped with new hands.

The survivors who weren’t at Pearl Harbor

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On this 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I want to tell you about two people who were at the other end of that story.

In 1974, I met an old man who ran a sandwich shop and pinball arcade in Jefferson City.  He had been the first news director of the local radio station I was working for then (just before the creation of The Missourinet) and I had gone to interview him about the days when the station went on the air twenty years earlier.  After we talked about those times, I asked him how he wound up in Jefferson City and for the better part of an hour, Bud Wills and his wife, Phyllis, told me life stories that were jaw-dropping.

Phyllis was born in Canada, raised Japan by English missionary parents, and returned to what was then called Formosa when it was in Japanese hands in the early 1930s.  Bud had gone to Japan about 1928 to work for an English-language newspaper for three years and had stayed after the contract ran out.  In 1938 he and an unidentified American “with money” founded another English-language newspaper, Japan News Week, about the time the increasingly nationalistic Japanese government was putting other English-language newspapers out of business.  About the same time, Bud became the CBS correspondent in the Far East.

In that role, he covered the Japanese war with China, which many consider the real beginning of World War II when it started with the Japanese invasion in 1932. The same year that Bud founded his newspaper, CBS began its World News Roundup program that is best known for building the reputations of the Murrow Boys because of their reports as Europe disintegrated into war.   Forgotten in the telling of the story of the Murrow Boys is the non-Murrow Boy who often concluded the Roundup with his report “from halfway around the world” describing Japan’s increasing threat to peace in the Pacific, W. R. Wills.

Bud and Phyllis were at the home of a Tokyo friend, as usual, on Sunday night, December 7 (Tokyo time) for dinner and evening card-playing.  But instead of card-playing that night the group of people sat around the fire and somberly discussed when they thought war would begin with the United States.

A month, two months, said the others.  “Sooner than you think,” forecast Bud.

A heavy knock on his door at 5:30 next morning awakened him. He found officers of the Kempeitai, the Japanese Gestapo, there to arrest him.  As the bombs were falling at Pearl Harbor, Bud, Phyllis, and about sixty other American and British citizens were being arrested.  Bud and Phyllis were among those taken to the high-security Sugamo Prison (those who have read the Louis Zamperini story, Unbroken, will recognize the place).

They were held in small cells where they had to sleep on mats that would be rolled to the side during the day so they had some small space in which to pace.  They were forced to be in a squatting position for hours each day during interrogation.  Bud lost some teeth from being slapped repeatedly.  Phyllis suffered eye problem to her dying days because of the lights that were always on.  Both suffered from the cold in their unheated cells during the Japanese winter.

She didn’t learn about Pearl Harbor until about Christmas.  He didn’t learn about it until later.

Finally, in June, they were convicted of espionage—Phyllis being the first white woman convicted in a Japanese court of that charge.  He faced two years of hard labor; she, one.  But the sentences were stayed because the Swiss government at last had arranged an exchange of Japanese diplomats for American and British prisoners.  They left Tokyo by ship in June and didn’t land in New Jersey until August. They were married in Canada in September.

Wills,WR_Phyllis_Montreal_9-3-42001

A few years later they wound up in Steeleville, Missouri running a weekly newspaper. In 1954, they came to Jefferson City where Bud worked in radio for a brief time and eventually ran his sandwich and arcade shop. Phyllis became a journalism teacher at Lincoln University, and the foreign student advisor.

I interviewed them in 1974, the year Bud turned 81.  Phyllis, more than fifteen years younger, still spoke with her English accent.

Both died in 1977. Few people, if any, in Jefferson City remember Bud and Phyllis Wills today.  Fewer, perhaps nobody, ever heard them tell their story about being some of the first American POWs of World War II.  They were at the other end of the geography of the Pearl Harbor story.   And the interview that day in that little cubbyhole business at 626 East High Street in Jefferson City is the only recording ever made of them relating their experiences.

When I left the radio station to put a news department together for the Missourinet, I left that interview and many others I had done for the station’s 20th anniversary in one of two boxes of material gathered for a series of commemorative programs that were never produced because of my exit.  As the years went by and the station moved a few times and was sold a few times, old files and old boxes of recordings went into dumpsters.  The Bud and Phyllis interview is in a landfill somewhere now.

BUT:  Not long after I did that interview, their son, Bill, asked for a copy of  the recording and a few months later as I was passing through Indianapolis on a trip, I stopped by his house and gave it to him.  Shortly before my retirement two years and five days ago, a friend—Steve Morse, the chief engineer at Missourinet affiliate KWOS—dropped by my newsroom with a manila folder that had the typed transcripts I had made of all the interviews I had done more than forty years earlier.  The transcript of the Bud and Phyllis interview was in it. Steve and a friend had rescued one of the boxes from the dumpster but the other was gone before they got there.

I wondered if Bill Wills was still around and if he still had the dub of that lost interview.  I tracked him down through the internet, dropped by his home in Carmel, Indiana a few weeks later, and he arranged to provide a copy of the interview.  And he has provided me with a lot more.  I’ve been digging around since then for even more of their story. Someday I’ll be able to tell it to you, I hope.

The CBS World News Roundup is America’s longest-running network newscast. The Murrow Boys are legends in broadcast journalism history.  But there was somebody else who was there at the beginning.  And he and his wife told me their story that day long, long ago.

Bud & Phyllis, taken mid 70's

(Thanks to Bill Wills for the clipping and for the photograph of Bud and Phyllis about the time they told me their stories)

 

Transition

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Several years ago your observer was strolling through the Capital Mall when he spied Lt. Governor Bill Phelps and his wife, Joanne, having a casual lunch in the food court.  They probably had driven to the mall and had done their shopping with few if any distractions from fellow shoppers. I remarked to him as they sat surrounded by other folks who were paying them no mind, “You know, if you win the election this year, you won’t be able to do this.”   Phelps was running in the primary against Christopher Bond who wanted to get his old job back from Joe Teasdale.  It was 1980.

Phelps lost the primary and probably has been eating his meals out for these last thirty-six years without any hassles from the voting public.

But had he won and then defeated Teasdale, his life would have changed. The Phelpses probably wouldn’t have driven their own car to the mall.  They likely would have been chauffeured by a Highway Patrolman.  And they wouldn’t be shopping anonymously because people would recognize that The Governor(!) was in their midst.  They’d be living in a great big house that would not contain much of their own furniture.  Somebody with a badge and a gun—sometimes more than one somebody—would be with them wherever they went.

We recall that John Ashcroft had a Mustang he liked to drive.   He didn’t get the chance to do that much after he became governor.

Ashcroft, Bond, and Phelps had some understanding of the transition to the governorship because they had been in public life at increasingly higher circles. They knew that the private life would diminish markedly when they became the state’s highest-ranking public official.

Transitions for incoming governors involve far more, however, than coming to grips with the fact that your life is not yours any more.  The responsibilities of being a public servant, the state’s highest public official, can be beyond the expectations of the candidates who seek that job.

So while an incoming governor who has no previous public office experience has to spend the two months between election and inauguration preparing to meet the challenges of governing, he and his family also have to come to grips with any number of personal issues.  What do we do with our house?  What about our furniture?  What things are so meaningful to us personally that we want to take them to the Executive Mansion so it feels like home?  What about schools?  How will we adjust to having a security officer with us?   How will we deal with a loss of our personal freedom?  How will the family deal with the things that are likely to be said about the husband and father who happens to be the Governor of Missouri?

Here we offer a slight diversion because the spotlight might be on the new governor but it also shines, at least in its dimmer edges, on his family, particularly on the person who is to become the state’s First Lady.   What are her obligations?

Most First Ladies have adopted a public role in one form or another.  But one First Lady was different and because she was, future First Ladies might owe her a debt.  Theresa Teasdale wanted nothing to do with the spotlight.  She was not Mrs. Governor.  She was Mrs. Teasdale, wife and mother.  She didn’t advocate for a particular cause (as we recall).  She and Joe did not make the mansion a great social event location.  It was their home.  It was where the Teasdale family lived.  It was a house where there was a family that was apart from the intense world of governing. This reporter tried to interview her once and came away almost embarrassed that he had intruded.  Theresa Teasdale was a First Lady who made it alright for future First Ladies to remain private citizens.

The new governor thus has two transitions to deal with—the personal and the public.  He has just two months to assemble a team of people in his office as well as those who will lead state agencies.   He realizes he will inherit a state budget sixty percent of the way through a fiscal year and will have to immediately deal with possible income shortfalls; Governor Nixon already has withheld tens of millions of dollars to keep the budget balanced.  He will have to prepare his first major address to a joint session of the legislature outlining budget recommendations for a fiscal year that will start July 1 and outline issues he hopes the legislature will pass laws about.

And that’s just the surface.  He also is responsible for finding and appointing about 1,700 people to state boards and commissions.  About 1,300 of those nominations will have to be pleasing enough to the Senate to be confirmed.

We checked with Scott Holste, who has been on Governor Nixon’s staff as governor and attorney general for more than twenty years, and Scott reminded us that the governor also has to make appointments to fill vacancies caused by death or resignation or conviction of judge in circuits that aren’t part of the Non-partisan Court Plan.  He also appoints prosecutors and county officials as needed in non-charter counties.  And he has to make appointments of judges from lists submitted to him under that same court plan.

There’s another important component that has to be decided.  How public will the administration of the state’s top public official be?   What will be his relations with the press?  It’s not a parochial question.  How open will he allow his administration to be in providing expertise to those with questions about public policy issues?  Will he allow department staffs with expertise to provide information to the public or will he limit the flow of information by limiting access to them—as, to be frank, the current administration has done in many agencies?  The operative word in the phrase “public official” should be public.

We have scratched the surface of what a governor-elect has to go through to be ready to govern as soon as he takes the oath of office.  It’s a steep, steep learning curve even for those who have been in and around state elective office.  To go from private citizen to public leader relatively overnight is a major test.

All of this is why a two-month well-organized transition effort is essential but why it also is highly stressful, not just on the governor-elect but on his family—because life on January 8th will likely be worlds different by the end of January 9th.

A different PC

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Okay, that’s over.  Presidential Debates.  Our mind is kind of blurred this morning but we think one of the most important results of these debates has to be that somebody fondled some emails and somebody else denied anything was wrong, whatever it was.

One of the things your faithful observer observes is newspapers as he travels about.  A fellow named Craig Hastings, who writes for the Tuscola Journal, a paper in a small town a few miles south of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, has characterized the presidential debates as “three television special events that will break advertising revenue records for most all of the networks that aired the 90 minutes of not much.”

He touched on the PC issue—not political correctness, but political COURTESY, referring to both participants in a column after the first confrontation.

Neither have earned Mr. or Mrs. before their names when we speak of them.  Most of us, and it’s what I hear daily, will simply refer to Donald Trump as “Trump” and Hillary Clinton as “Hillary.”  The majority, which is inclusive of me, has forgotten our manners when speaking of the elitist holding the highest of government offices in the land.  Like them, love them, or don’t care of them shouldn’t matter when we speak of them in conversation. It’s bad manners and inept of us to deny these people, whoever they are, our respect. After all, they have chosen to seek an office that enables them to pursue goals that might make the lives of all of the rest of us in America a little better.

And he probably captured the mood of a lot of voters when he hoped for the last two debates—

Not a word about Trump’s taxes, don’t care.  Not a word about Hillary’s deleted emails, don’t care anymore.  Extramarital affairs of Donald’s or Bill’s, don’t care…How much you’re worth Mr. Trump, don’t care. How much you think Mr. Trump is worth, Mrs. Clinton, don’t care.  How many awful things Mr. Trump has said about women in the past 50 years, don’t care.  How many deplorable people Mrs. Clinton believes are voting for Mr. Trump, don’t care.

It appears the participants didn’t care what he didn’t care about although he was undoubtedly far from alone in his feelings. He had some simple advice for the two of them:

Grow up and act like potential leaders.  How about discussing the “what matters?” For instance: how do people find jobs that are not available?  How will ISIS be contained somewhere in a sandy desert so they might dry up, die, and blow away?  Will America start to harvest our own natural resources, reopen the countless closed coal mines, and produce the power for this nation or not and why?  Will the police of the individual states remain governed by each states’ standard or will the Federal government step in and dictate how all police will conduct business as one giant “catch all?”

Craig Hastings wanted “answers and opinions on concerns that really matter and please, no more Soap Opera b. s.”

All three presidential debates are now done and we aren’t sure in our lofty perch if we have witnessed 270 minutes of “not much” or 270 minutes of “Soap Opera b. s.,” but we have witnessed 270 minutes of something.  Whatever it was, we’re glad they won’t be back in the sandbox for still another 90 minutes.  It has been amazing television (and radio), but enough in this case has been more than enough.

The day, however, that people such as Craig Hastings lose hope that it is possible our presidential candidates “can act like potential leaders”—despite the daily or hourly evidence to the contrary that inundates us this year—is the day we are truly lost.

Maybe next time, Craig.  There’s always next time.

Craig undoubtedly knows the importance of being hopeful for “next time.” Tuscola is Chicago Cubs country.

Mayhem, 1924

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Perhaps you’ve seen the “Mayhem, like me” television commercials for an insurance company—a guy who is always causing various kinds of incidents, accidents, crashes, and explosions.  Mayhem.

Dean Winters is the actor’s name and he is no stranger to mayhem. Seven years ago he collapsed in his doctor’s office where he’d gone for treatment of a bacterial infection.  He went into cardiac arrest in the ambulance and was revived by paramedics, then was in the intensive care unit at a hospital for three weeks.  During the next year, gangrene cost him two toes and half of one thumb. He also had ten operations including a skin graft.  After living through mayhem he became “Mayhem” in 2010.

It’s not a new advertising concept.  As we were recently leafing through the program for the St. Louis Fashion Pageant of 1924 (historical research takes the researcher on some interesting side journeys), an ad for the Missouri State Life Insurance Company sounded a familiar theme:

I ride on the point of a pin.                                                                                                     

Or the pilot of a locomotive. 

I lurk in the bottom of the bathtub with a cake of soap.

Or in the shaky corner of a skyscraper—

I cling to the baby’s toy automobile left at the top of the stairs.

Or sit in the driver’s seat with the near-sighted motorist who won’t wear glasses—

I fly through the air with the sign wrenched loose by the wind

And with the cinders borne from the spouting chimney—

I stalk the hunter as he pursues the fleeting rabbit.

And slink behind the errand boy who eats a banana and throws away the peel—

I am ever present.

I am—

                                    An Accident

There is only one protection against me—

                                Accident Insurance

                         GET YOURS TOMORROW

All the reader had to do was call the St. Louis Branch of the insurance company at Central 1700.

Other than “cinders…from a spouting chimney,” all of these dangers remain ninety-two years later.  Mayhem never goes away—although sometimes it adjourns for a few months.

Blaming Grandpa

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We live in a time when we have “friends” throughout the world but we don’t know our next door neighbor. 

 We wave at our neighbors but we don’t talk to them very much and certainly not about anything significant. But we’ll text people in other cities. We’ll link in with them or we’ll book our faces with them or we send them an Instagram.  Some still twitter to share things with people we’ve never met.  But we just wave at our neighbors—-and what was their name again?

My grandfather didn’t invent the internet but he might have set in motion the sorry state of affairs outlined by Media writer Eric Burns almost thirty years ago when he wrote, “Every improvement in the technology of communications during the last century has led to greater isolation among people. It is a remarkable paradox, as if every improvement in the technology of hygiene had led to greater illness, every improvement in the technology of transportation had led to greater distance.” 

 If you need proof, put your cell phone away when you’re walking along a busy street and watch the crowd and see how many people are walking while they’re talking on the phone or texting or checking emails, never looking at the people around them, not even talking with friends or associates walking with them.   

“It began with Rural Free Delivery that brought the mail to the person,” wrote Burns.  

One of my grandfathers was a rural mail carrier in Mitchell County, Kansas in the 1920s and 1930s, delivering mail to people such as my other grandfather, a farmer. 

“Before RFD, the person had to come to the mail, which was deposited for him at a centralized place.  Usually the place was a general store; usually the person was a farmer who would kill two birds with one stone, picking up his mail at the same time he shopped for groceries and supplies,” wrote Burns, who noted the farmer also would “socialize, visit with the other farmers and their families who were at the general store for the same reason.  And this was one of the few chances such people had to pass time with their neighbors; their farms were many miles apart and their days too busy with chores to allow for casual dropping in.  It was a lonely life. Ironically, the inefficiency of the postal system made it less so.”

But, he says, when people like my one grandfather started delivering the mail to farmers like my other grandfather, the farmers had more time to farm and the general store as a social institution died.  He cites one of this writer’s favorite historians, Daniel Boorstin, who wrote, “From every farmer’s doorstep there now ran a highway to the world. But at the price of dissolving the old face-to-face communities.”  

Then along came radio to make things worse.  It brought entertainment and information into the home.  It wasn’t necessary to go to town for those things.  And it killed the Chautauqua movement and eliminated more face-to-face interaction.

The telephone system had improved to the point where—as NYU Professor Neil Postman put it–
“a strange world of acoustic space in which disembodied voices exchange information intimately and in specially developed personas” developed.  The telephone did not require face-to-face communication.  Then television. Then home video. Then computers.  And e-mail.  Burns quoted Henry David Thoreau: “Lot! Men have become the tools of their tools.”

The progression suggested by Burns in 1988 was continued in 2012 by Dr. James Emery White, the former President of the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts and senior pastor of the Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.  He wrote of “hyper-connectivity” in his blog, saying analysts are split on this “bane of the so-called millennials, the generation born from 1981-2000.” 

 “Some feel it will make millennials ‘nimble analysts and decision makers.’ Others feel it will mean an inability to retain information, a tendency to be easily distracted, and a lack of ‘deep thinking capabilities’ and ‘face-to-face social skills.’”  White leaned toward the latter and cites a UCLA study in 2007 that showed “the internet is weakening our comprehension and transforming us into shallow thinkers.” 

He, too, quotes Boorstin: “The greatest menace to progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge,” which leads him to compare the words “hyper” and “hypo.”   HYPER means “above,” or “over,” he says.  HYPO means “below” or “under.” 

He concludes, “So while it is an age of hyper-connectivity, perhaps we should also acknowledge the inevitable result.  Hypo-intellectualism.”  

Other analysts can cite other reasons for our contradicting lifestyles that isolate us from those next door to us but bring us influences from far away.  This observer, for instance, thinks the window screen, not the rural mail carrier, is a major factor in this social, and therefore political, decline in thought.   And the contradicting effects of the debilitating involvement in Vietnam and the glorious success of the Apollo space program changed out national outlook to inward thinking.  But screened windows, a war, and a space program are discussions for another time. 

Why go through this pondering?

Because something has to explain why this nation is in the political mess it is in, particularly at our state and our national levels. Self-absorption is one thing.  But self-absorption about our self-absorption can only make the situation worse because studying our navels only drives us further inward and farther away from the general store and the Chautauqua.  

Even this entry is an example.  We could be having this discussion around a table at the general store if such a thing existed. Or in more contemporary times, the coffee shop (free Wi-fi available).  But instead, we are connecting hyperly.  

I think that today, when I see my neighbor, I will cross the street and talk to him, not wave. 

Statistics

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The end of a legislative session gives us, the voters, a chance to evaluate what we hath wrought for ourselves through those we have chosen to represent us.   Sometimes what we hath wrought is writ in numbers that are Practical (as opposed to theoretical) Political Science 101.  Lend ear and eye to today’s lesson that begins with statistics.

The Senate Information Office gives out a summary of the legislative session minutes after adjournment each May, a series of numbers that probably wouldn’t mean much to Mr. or Mrs. Joe Missouri if they got these numbers in their mailboxes.  However, let’s spend some time thinking about those numbers and what they might tell us.  The numbers are only part of the story of about seventy days of a legislative session, of course.

What passed and what didn’t pass is the real measure of a session and the motivations of its participants.  Senator Emory Melton once told your observer that passing legislation is only part of the job.  Defeating legislation is as important. Capitol Press Corps members exhaust themselves each year telling that part of the story.  They have to believe that readers, listeners, and viewers care enough to pay attention to their stories. There are times when fatigue is so heavy that only that belief keeps them going.

Two-thousand-forty bills were introduced this year (1,457 of them in the House).  The Senate passed 113 of its 583 bills.  Twenty-five of them were consent bills, non-controversial measures.  That leaves 88 bills that faced confrontational debate, that faced efforts to amend them, and passed with recorded votes of the Senators.  Those 88 bills represent only fifteen percent of all bill introduced in the Senate. Of those eighty-eight, only 57 were approved by the House and sent to the Governor for signature or veto.

The Senate received 254 of the 1,457 House bills.  Of that 254, sixteen were appropriations bills.  Passing a state budget is one of only two responsibilities the legislature has each year.  Actually, its responsibility is even less than that.  It is charged with paying the state’s debts and setting aside money for public schools.  But the legislature could have gone home after providing the money to keep state services flowing to Missourians.  Eighty-one of the 254 surviving House bills were approved by the Senate and sent to the Governor.

Of the 2,040 bills introduced, only 138 made it all the way through the session.  That’s only 6.8 percent.

But there’s more.

Twenty-eight proposed constitutional amendments were introduced in the Senate, 59 more in the House.  Of those 87 proposed changes to the state constitution, only one got final approval.

So, as we interpret the Senate Information Office scoresheet, 139 of 2,127 measures introduced were able to get majority votes in both chambers, 6.5%.

The raw figures are a little deceiving because (a) several bills were identical and (b) several bills passed were combinations of several different bills.  But still, the number of issues that got overall legislative approval is quite small.

Some will look at that final number and think the legislature has wasted a lot of time and money.  While there might be a certain amount of truth in that suggestion (why the House and the Senate each have their own information offices AND partisan information staffs for each party always struck us as an extravagance), the numbers speak of the legislative process.

Sometimes the title of a final version of a bill is an indication of the difficult path legislation follows.  Here’s a pretty extreme example:  CCR#2 SS/SCS/HS/HCS/HBs 3021, 2979, and 3054 with SA1, SA2, SA5, SA6.

Theoretical House Bill 3021 went through a committee hearing.  Other bills had identical wording and also were heard. Several amendments were offered, leading the committee to combine the amendments and the identical bills into a new House Committee Substitute for 3021 and the other two proposals.  During floor debate, several more amendments were added so the sponsor introduced a new substitute on the House floor incorporating all of the amendments to make the bill a cleaner proposal for the Senate to consider.  A similar process happened in the Senate, where a committee combined several committee amendments into a Senate Committee substitute bill that picked up more amendments during debate, leading the floor handler to incorporate the changes into a single clean Senate Substitute that was approved with even more amendments, at least four of the six (actually there had been eight) that were offered being adopted.

The changed bill went back to the House where the sponsor wasn’t sure of the acceptability of the Senate changes so he asked for the formation of a conference committee made up of four members of the House and four members of the Senate to consider the changes and recommend a final version it thought would be acceptable to both chambers. In this case, the first conference committee report faced enough uncertainty that it was sent back for another review and a second report indicated the amended Senate substitute was, indeed, acceptable.  Since the bill originated in the House, it had to be approved there first before the final version was approved by the Senate and sent to the Governor for his consideration.

Not all bills go through that gauntlet but creating the laws that will govern six-plus million people in Missouri every second of every day can be a painstaking process.  Yes, there are times when even more pains need to be taken to get it right, but most of the time the process works.  And yes, sometimes the process works better for some Missourians than for others and, yes, more could be done if less time was spent on fighting over issues that pander to one voting bloc or another.   But it is all part of a process that gives elected humanity equal opportunities to display its worst nature as well as its best. And in the end, voters have a chance to display their worst and best natures and their decisions are reflected in the way the process functions.

In a competition of ideas, ideals, agendas, and ideologies, the gauntlet bills must run is exacting and highly competitive.  We’ve commented from time to time that it is a miracle that anything is accomplished.

Watching that process or being part of that process is an absorbing thing that draws you in and won’t let you go.  And then the gavel falls at 6 p.m. on a Friday evening and the numbers are added up and the pressure goes away and the process has more or less worked again.

C’mon, Bob, Lighten Up!

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We’ve been much too serious in observing the world from our lofty perch recently and some circumstances have reminded us that life shouldn’t be lived by frowning at others.  At least not all the time.  So we thought we’d share something that began with a recent telephone call.

We heard from somebody we didn’t know a few days ago who, for some reason or another, started doing some genealogical research on our family.  It’s okay, we guess. Everybody needs a hobby and if they’re a genealogist and they’ve tracked their own families back to the people who drew horses on cave walls in France, they need to find somebody else’s family to occupy their time.  Not that this was the case with this person, but my family for some reason had become an attractive matter for study and by using various genealogical sites on the internet, this person had gone back several generations—-although (and this happens sometimes with internet genealogy where bunches of people contribute to what they think are their family lines) the chart being developed was traveling down some wrong tracks.

As it happened, one of our own family members had set out on the same voyage some years ago and seemed to be headed in the right direction.  Until she ran into a circumstance where the family lines started to resemble the famous Cawker City World’s Largest Ball of Twine.  Following the threads became almost impossible.  We recall Aunt Mavis telling about it one day.  She had heard it from her Aunt Florence when she was younger. Aunt Mavis was well up in years when she told it to us and was talking about a few generations back when one line of the family lived in Pennsylvania, probably a little bit after the Civil War.  As near as we can recall—because we’re up in years now ourself—this is what she said, or something like it.

“You have to remember this was back in the days and in a part of the country where some people got started young in the family-making business. But not Uncle Irv.  He was about thirty, I guess, and for some reason had never gotten married when he met this widow lady named Bessie.  Bessie probably was pushing forty.  She’d gotten married when she was fourteen or so and she popped out a kid not too long after that, just before her husband died in a coal mining accident, you know, so the daughter wasn’t much younger than Uncle Irv.  But Irv had eyes only for Bessie, not June, and they got married and started a family of their own.   

“Now, Uncle Irv’s daddy, Martin, was still alive and he was only a little older than Bessie and when Irv and Bessie started sparkin’, Martin started looking at June, who was in her twenties by now, and they started to hit it off and the next thing you know, Martin married June!  Martin had a pretty successful general store, so he offered his younger bride some financial security, which was important because June, she was kinda plain anyway and didn’t want to be a spinster, so she decided she better jump the first broom that came her way and Martin was the first guy who offered her a broom.

“And this is why you’re having so much trouble trying to put together your family tree—because all of this meant that Martin had become his own son’s son-in-law by marrying his son’s daughter-by-marriage.   But that also meant that Irv’s father’s wife had become Irv’s mother, also by marriage!  In other words, Irv’s daughter was now his mother because she married his father. 

“You realize, of course, that there’s a lot of “steps” in that arrangement.  Step-mother, Step-father, step-daughter, but it’s easier to explain this mess if we don’t get all tangled up in the “step” stuff or in the “by marriage” stuff.

“Well, as nature ran its course, Irv and Bessie had a boy they named Charles (and with this, she paused for a few minutes while she made sure she had all the information straight in her own mind).  And that made Charles–let me make sure I have this right–Martin’s brother-in-law and also Irv’s uncle in addition to being his son.  

“Now, that also made Charles a brother of June, who was the daughter of Bessie, who was Irv’s mother because she was the mother of Irv’s father’s wife. 

“Now it gets a little complicated (she said this with a bit of a smile) because June and Martin had their own son, Lemuel—we called him Lem. And that boy therefore became Irv’s grandson because he was the son of Irv’s daughter, June. 

“Okay, now let me work this out.  Bessie, who was Irv’s wife, became the mother of Irv’s mother who was the wife of Irv’s father which made Bessie Irv’s grandmother. But as the husband of his grandmother, he therefore also was his own grandfather!

“And it was all legal.

“But that’s where the family tree turns into a swamp Cypress.”

—-

Now comes the time when we have to tell you, as they say in the movies, this story was “inspired by some actual events.”  That’s Hollywood-ese for saying, “One or two things in this story might be related to something that might actually have happened but most of what you see is made up.”

Someone did call the other day about researching the family tree and she was off on some wrong tracks. And we are familiar with the Cawker City ball of twine—my father was unable to keep the A&P Store open there during the days of the Dust Bowl and the Depression many years before Frank Stoeber started forming leftover baling twine into a ball, and we’ve visited the ball a few times.  I did have an Aunt Mavis but the rest of the folks were part of the “inspired by” thing.

The story of Irv, Bessie, Charles, June, Martin, and Lem is an old one that goes back at least as far as a London newspaper in the 1820s.  We were inspired to relate it because we were listening to the “Radio Classics” satellite channel the other day and heard Phil Harris sing one of his hit songs from the 1940s, “He’s his own Grandpa.”   It was a cover recording of a Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe country song recorded for the first time by Lonzo and Oscar, the country music duo of Lloyd George and Rollin Sullivan, in 1947.  The song, “I’m my own Grandpa,” remains a staple of country music.  Even Willie Nelson has recorded it.

Here’s Lonzo and Oscar on the Grand Ole Opry performing it:

 

And here are the lyrics to Phil Harris’ version (from an internet site of Phil Harris lyrics):

I met a guy today I knew years ago, when he was 23, And he was married to a widow who was as pretty as could be. Now this widow had a grown-up daughter who had beautiful hair of red, And this guy’s father fell in love with her and soon the two were wed.

Now this made the guy’s dad his son-in-law and changed his very life For his daughter was his mother because she was his father’s wife. Now to complicate the matter even though it brought him joy, He soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.

Now his little baby then became a brother-in-law to his dad, And so became his uncle and though that made him very sad, For if the baby was his uncle then that also made him brother, Of the widow’s grown-up daughter who was of course his step-mother

[chorus] (He’s his own grandpa) Now you’re catching on. (He’s his own grandpa) Well naturally! It sounds funny I know, but really its so. (He’s his own grandpa) Well wait a minute, get a load of this!

Now his father’s wife had a son who kept them on the run, So he became his grandchild for he was his daughter’s son. His wife is now his mother’s mother and of course that makes him blue Because although she’s his wife she’s his grandmother too!

(He’s his own grandpa) Fun in the living room (He’s his own grandpa) Absolutely! It sounds funny i know, but really it’s so. (He’s his own grandpa) Yea, but look, get the payoff.

Now his wife is his grandmother, then he is her grandchild. And every time the guy thinks of it, it nearly drives him wild! For now he has become the strangest case you ever saw, As husband of his grandmother, he’s his own grandpa!

(He’s his own grandpa) And loving every minute! (He’s his own grandpa) Oh tell me more! It sounds funny I know, but really it’s so, He’s his own grandpa. He’s his own grandpa!

And THAT, my friend, is a real example of the badly-abused phrase “traditional family values.”