19

SUCH  INTERESTING  PEOPLE

Sherwood L. Boehlert

            Today my old friend Sherwood Boehlert is an influential member of Congress.  What’s more, he has become widely recognized as one of  the nation’s foremost guardians of the environment.  If he gets any more important I may forgive him for making me parachute into Biscayne Bay.

            What’s more I might even consider forgiving him for nearly causing my wife to throw me out of the house.  But I’ll tell you about that later. 

            Already chairman of a key House subcommittee, Congressman Boehlert seems destined in the future for even more significant roles on the Hill.  Yet he is still the personable, easy-going guy I knew during his 15 years as a House staffer.  A real down-to-earth fellow, he considers the name Sherwood to be a bit stuffy, and he still encourages his friends to call him Sherry.

            He was elected to Congress in 1982 from the district around Utica, New York.  He’s so busy these days I don’t see him much any more, but back in the early 70’s, when he was chief of staff to Congressman Alexander Pirnie, he and I used to do a lot of traveling together.

            In those Cold War days, Sherry’s boss, like my own, was vitally interested in defense issues.  As their staff representatives, Sherry and I occasionally were invited,  along with a dozen or so other fellows in similar jobs, to tour various military bases as guests of the Pentagon. On behalf of our bosses, we looked at weapons, watched maneuvers and sat through endless flip-chart briefings.  These, as I remember, usually consisted of 4,832 incomprehensible charts with lines drawn between dozens of boxes to show the command structures of various military units.  These charts were tightly-guarded secrets because of their awesome power.  Ten of them in succession could have incapacitated the entire Soviet army.  By putting it to sleep, I mean.  Now and then, however, the military people showed us some real interesting stuff.

            One day in 1972, for example, we found ourselves at the U.S. Air Force’s Water Survival School at Homestead Air Force Base, Florida.  Here, in a four-day course, fighter and bomber pilots were taught the latest techniques for surviving at sea in case they had to bail out or ditch their planes.  Far from getting lessons only from textbooks, these Air Force fliers were given actual, honest-to-goodness water survival training in Biscayne Bay, at a restricted site thirteen miles from the main base.

            In our group on that trip were a dozen or so flabby and bookish guys from Capitol Hill who seldom exercised any more vigorously than to get up from their desks to fetch another cup of coffee.  To us, watching these pilots in their training exercises was a new and fascinating experience.  After a few preliminaries, each flier in turn was taken and fitted into a Mae West and a parachute harness.  Once equipped, he was placed near the edge of a large, open deck which stood about twelve feet above the water, some distance out in Biscayne Bay.   At that point, an open parachute was attached to his harness.  To keep the flier from being dragged backward off the deck, the billowing chute was held in place by the wind against a big wire screen resembling the backstop on a baseball field. 

            Then a steel cable with a quick-release mechanism was hooked directly to the front of the flier’s parachute harness.  The cable stretched out maybe eight hundred feet to a powerful vessel about the size of a PT boat.  When the instructor gave the signal, the pilot began walking forward as the boat gunned its engines.  If everything went right, the boat made the parachute act like a big kite and the trainee was lifted into the air.  Not so different from recreational parasailing, right?  Right.  So far.

            But then, when the trainee reached about five hundred feet, a guy on the boat waved a flag.  That was the signal for the trainee to cut himself loose from the cable and to parachute to a big, spectacular splashdown in Biscayne Bay.  There, if he didn’t get tangled up in the canopy or the shroud lines and drown, the trainee was fished out of the water by the boat.  Watching from the platform, we were enthralled.

            “Great!” whooped Sherry.  “That’s really great!”

            If he had shut up at that point, everything would have been fine.  But to my astonishment, he turned eagerly to one of our Air Force escort officers.

            “Will you let us do that?” he asked.

            The officer frowned.  He probably suspected there was a regulation somewhere against Air Force officers drowning Congressional staffers, even at their request.  Anyhow, after mulling over the question for a minute, the officer went into a worried, whispered huddle with another officer.  Then the other officer went off somewhere to talk, I presume, to yet another officer.  In the military this is known as coordinating, or spreading the blame. 

            Frankly I didn’t think there was even a remote chance of Sherry’s request being granted.  After all, killing from one to twelve visiting Congressional aides might be a detriment to an Air Force officer’s prospects for future promotions.  Unless, of course, the victim happened to represent a Congressman who opposed an increase in the defense budget.

            A few minutes later the first officer came back.  To my surprise, he was  wearing a big smile.  “Sure,” he said enthusiastically.  “We’ll be glad to let you fellows try the exercise.”  

            I winced.  “Sherry,” I said, “you got a big mouth.”

            A few minutes later an Air Force instructor started giving us preliminary directions.  “Be sure you listen to this,” he said.  “We’ve only got an hour or so.”

            “Let me ask a question,” I said.  “When Air Force pilots come here for this training, how long does the training last?”

            “The course lasts four days,” he said.

            “Experienced Air Force pilots get four days of training in this and you’re giving us only an hour before we parachute into Biscayne Bay?”

            The instructor smiled.  “Don’t worry,” he said.  “It’ll be all right.”       

            The first part of our first training was simple.  All we did was line up and jump, one at a time, into the water directly below the platform.  The instructor explained that our velocity on this twelve-foot jump would give us an idea of the force with which we would hit the water when our parachute came down.

            As I awaited my turn, the guy in line just ahead walked gingerly up to the platform edge.  Looking wide-eyed down at the water, which appeared to be about a mile and a half below, he nervously crossed himself.

            To the instructor, this seemed ridiculous.  “C’mon, now,” he chided.  “It’s only twelve feet.  Why are you crossing yourself?”

            “Want to hear something even funnier than that?” asked my apprehensive companion.  “I’m not even a Catholic.”

            He made it OK, of course, as we all did.  But I had an important question for our instructor.

            “What happens if I get up there in my parachute and I get too scared to cut loose from the cable?” I asked.

            The instructor pondered the question.  “Well, if you want to land in the water with about eight hundred feet of steel cable tied to you, I suppose that’s up to you,” he replied.

            Despite my reservations, the experience wasn’t all that bad.  As I might have expected, the future Congressman from Utica, New York, insisted on being the first to soar off into the brilliant Florida sky.  When he managed to parachute successfully into the bay and then get fished out alive, drenched but elated, the rest of us felt better about our prospects for survival.  Most of us made it with everything but our dignity intact.  What’s more, it was kind of fun.    I especially liked the part where I came back up to the surface.

            As our little group of Congressional aides swaggered into the Officers Club bar that night to celebrate our having ventured into the wet blue as well as the wild blue, nobody would have suspected that, at heart, many of us were really whimpering cowards.  But before the evening was over,  we were feeling so smug and acting like we had been so contemptuous of danger that we could easily have been mistaken for the  Mercury Astronauts.

            Years later Sherry met and married a pretty girl named Marianne Willey.  Herself a former Congressional staffer, she went on to become an outstanding commercial photographer.  As Marianne and Sherry got to know my wife Eddie, we all became close friends and traveled a lot together.  Eddie liked the Boehlerts so much she finally was able to laugh about what happened the night many years before when Sherry and I came back from Florida.

            It had been dark for hours when our plane arrived at Andrews Air Force Base.  Our escort officer dropped us off at the Rayburn House Office Building.  But when I got to the basement garage, I found my pride and joy, a beat-up old Ford Mustang, was missing from my parking spot.  I rushed to a telephone and called home. 

            “Hi, darling,” I said to Eddie.  “We just got in from Florida.  I’m in the Rayburn building but my Mustang isn’t here.  Do you know where it is?”

            “Charles is using it.  I’ll drive down to pick you up.”

            “No, wait a minute--I don’t want you driving alone down here at night.   Sherry and I just came in from Andrews and stopped here to pick up our cars.  I believe I can hitch a ride out to Virginia.”

            “If that’s what you want to do, all right,” said Eddie.

            Two years passed.  I tried several times to tell Eddie about my exciting trip to Florida, but she didn’t seem to be interested.

            Then one night I worked in the office until nearly midnight.  Even though I didn’t like the idea of Eddie driving alone to the Hill at night, I was so exhausted I called and asked her to come after me.  Her answer was brusque.

            “Why don’t you get your girl friend to bring you home?” she asked.

            I almost dropped the phone.  “My girl friend?  What do you mean by that?”

            “I just thought you maybe you could get Sherry to bring you home again, like she did the last time.”

            “Can you please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

            “I’m talking about Sherry--that bitch you took to Florida a couple of years ago,” she said.

Claude D. Pepper

            When I finally got a chance to meet Claude Pepper, he was nearing the end of an incredibly eventful life.  He wore a pacemaker, had a hearing aid in each ear, and took a nap every afternoon.  Long before he died at 89, he had become a genuine national institution.

            Millions of Americans loved him, for a lot of different reasons.

            To senior citizens, Mr. Pepper was the savior of Social Security and the father of Medicare.  To his colleagues on the Hill, he was a paragon of integrity as towering and unshakable as the Washington Monument. 

            To old-time liberals, he was one of the last surviving stalwarts of the boldest economic revival program in American history--President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.  To me, he was a truly admirable gentleman, a fascinating storyteller and, most importantly, a living link to a cherished memory of my father. 

            My dad died in 1969.  Having lived most of his life in the tiny South Texas farm town of Bishop, he never got a chance to meet Mr. Pepper.  That’s a shame, because he would have admired him as one of the national leaders who offered hope back in the days when hope was a very scarce commodity indeed.  

            Somehow I never got around to telling Mr. Pepper about a tiny incident, on a day ever so long ago, that gave me my first glimpse into how a person’s spirit sometimes can be buoyed and infused with hope by a seemingly insignificant symbol or act.  It was years before I really understood, but one bleak day during the Depression, I saw how a spark of hope can be generated by nothing more than piece of printed cardboard.  It happened in the cramped little office of the Lynam Auto Company in Bishop.

            To most people today, this long-ago incident will sound inconsequential, maybe even silly.  But I’ll bet Mr. Pepper would have loved hearing about it.  At least he would have understood.

            I was privileged to meet this remarkable man because he and my boss the Speaker were good friends.  In fact, Jim Wright was still in his Army Air Force uniform the first time he saw Mr. Pepper.  Returning from combat duty in the Pacific, the young red-headed flier had been assigned to a base in Florida.  Deeply interested even then in the art of politics, he went to a Claude Pepper campaign rally to hear for himself the Senator everybody described as a spellbinding orator.  He was not disappointed.   

            Mr. Pepper had been elected to the Senate nearly a decade before, in 1936.  Despite his extraordinary record as a stalwart champion of President Roosevelt’s leadership in the New Deal and World War II, he was defeated fourteen years later by George A. Smathers, a onetime friend and political ally.  Even today, many people still consider that race as one of the dirtiest political campaigns in U.S. history.  In a speech spiked with cruel innuendo, Smathers reportedly accused Senator Pepper of being “a shameless extrovert” who committed “nepotism with his sister-in-law,” whose sister was “once a thespian in wicked New York” and who “practiced celibacy” before he was married.  Senator Pepper also was denounced as a “Nigger-lover,” a tool of union bosses and a Communist sympathizer.

            After this devastating defeat, Mr. Pepper practiced law for twelve years while he got his life and his finances back in order.  Then, in a 1962 comeback, he was elected to the House of Representatives.  During this campaign Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson came down to Florida to speak at one of his fund-raisers.  Afterward he asked Johnson to suggest another good speaker in case he needed to hold an additional fund-raiser.  In his autobiography Mr. Pepper quoted the Vice President’s reply:  “I’d suggest Congressman Jim Wright from Texas.  He’s an eloquent, forceful speaker who always makes a great speech.”  

            Even though Jim Wright was never called on for a campaign speech,  the two men became good friends after Mr. Pepper’s election to the House.  In 1977, with Jim Wright in his new role as Majority Leader, Mr. Pepper was named Chairman of the newly-created House Select Committee on Aging.  It was in this role that he achieved national recognition as the indefatigable champion of America’s senior citizens.

            In those days and later, as Chairman of the Rules Committee, Mr. Pepper dropped by occasionally to talk with Jim Wright.  At times when my boss happened to be out of the office,  Mr. Pepper would rap on the door of my adjoining office and ask, “May I come in, Mr. Lynam?” 

            It isn’t every day you get to talk with a five-foot, eight-inch chunk of history in a three-piece suit.   I was delighted by these visits, and as we waited for the Speaker, I always tried to lead Mr. Pepper into a story.  This wasn’t difficult, because he enjoyed telling them as much as I enjoyed hearing them.   

            And what stories he could tell.  Born in 1900, he was the embodiment of 20th Century America.  He had met Orville Wright and greeted the Apollo Astronauts.  He saw Halley’s comet in 1910 and again in 1986. 

            He foresaw war after hearing Adolf Hitler speak in Nuremberg in 1938 and introduced the first lend-lease legislation in 1940.  In 1945, as the Cold War loomed, he talked with Josef Stalin. 

            But the role for which history may remember him best was as a close friend and confidant of Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Even though Mr. Pepper’s election to the Senate came in 1936, four years after Roosevelt’s first election, the two had been friends and political allies since 1928.  In that year Mr. Pepper wrote a personal letting urging him to seek the White House.  “I was a New Dealer before there was a New Deal,” he liked to say.  

            Once Mr. Pepper was elected to the Senate, President Roosevelt had no more vigorous supporter.  Even though forced by his conscience to oppose the President’s “court packing” plan, he remained Roosevelt’s ideological soulmate. So consistently and forcefully did he speak in behalf of New Deal programs that the New York Herald-Tribune observed:  “When the White House has an important balloon to send up, it invites Senator Pepper to supply the necessary oratorical helium for the ascension.”  In his memoirs Roosevelt praised him as “a fighting liberal” and “a model for a new kind of Southern political leader.”

            While Washington struggled to find policies and programs to end the Depression, out in  everyday America the matter was far less academic.  In Bishop, it robbed people not only of food and housing but, more importantly, of hope as well.  To kids like me, it was all very confusing.  We understood that jobs and money were scarce, but we could not understand why.  Nor did anybody seem to know what to do about it.  Our family was lucky enough never to go hungry.  But it seemed strange that something called a Depression could make us give up our house, and even cause my granddad to lose his beloved blackland farm with its beautiful picnic grounds out on Caesar Creek.  I wondered, too, what his thing could be that  forced some people to line up every day on Main Street in our town to get a bowl of stew.  And why did the Depression cause the bank down by Hart’s hardware store to close one day and never reopen?  

            Still open at that time was the Lynam Auto Company, located only a block from Main Street.  It was a Ford dealership owned by my dad, Lee Lynam, and his brother Roy.  Once the company had displayed gleaming new Model A’s in the showroom and did a thriving business selling cars to the farm families. 

            But now the showrooms were empty.  When farmers would come in, they often would shuffle glumly up to my dad and talk in a low voice, like they were ashamed.  “Lee, I’m already two payments behind and I can’t make this one, either.  The car’s out at the house.  I’ll bring it in and give it back to you.” 

            “What am I going to do with it, Charlie?” my dad would ask.  “Go ahead and keep your car.  Pay me when you can.”

            The finance company, however, was not as generous as Lee and Roy Lynam.  Before long the business went bankrupt and, like the bank around the corner, was closed forever.  

            But one day before the padlock was put on the front door, my dad took me to the office with him.  It must have been on a Sunday, because there was nobody else around.

            As I toyed with the office typewriter, my dad sat down at his desk and started opening a pile of mail.  One of the large envelopes contained a cardboard poster.  He looked at it, smiled, and got up to show it to me.  It was a strange sign.

            Printed in red, white and blue, it carried a drawing of an eagle.  In one of its claws it held lightning bolts.  In the other it held what looked like a gear wheel.  On it were the words, “We Do Our Part.  National Recovery Administration.”

            Then my dad walked to the office window, raised the blind and placed the sign in a prominent spot.  In a simple expression of hope that would have been gratifying to the elderly New Dealer who would be sitting in my office half a century later, my dad looked at me and grinned.

            “Happy days are here again,” he said.

George H. Mahon

            If your job was to decide how to spend $325 billion a year, what would you eat for lunch?

            George Mahon usually had a baloney sandwich and a glass of milk.

            After patiently waiting in line with the clerks and secretaries, he would pick up his modest lunch in the cafeteria line in the Rayburn Building.  Then, using both hands to balance his tray, he walked carefully out to the seating area.  On occasion he stopped at my table.

            “May I sit with you, Marshall?” he would always ask.    

            “By all means, Mr. Chairman,” I answered, arising to help him get settled and to dispose of his empty tray.  I try to be friendly to everybody.  It would have been rude to brush him off merely because he exercised more control over more money than probably anybody else on earth.  Besides, I admired the old gentleman. 

            Like Claude Pepper, George Mahon was born in 1900.  His father, a cotton farmer in Louisiana, moved the family to the remote West Texas town of Loraine when George was eight.  After high school he won a teacher’s certificate and rode a bicycle fourteen miles a day to hold classes in a grammar school.  He won a law degree from the University of Texas in 1925, began practicing law in Colorado City, Texas, and was elected county attorney in 1926 and district attorney in 1927. 

            In 1934, with West Texas in the grip of  both the Depression and disastrous dust storms, Mr. Mahon was elected to Congress.  Five years later he won an appointment to the House Appropriations Committee and became Chairman in 1963.  When he used to visit with me in the 1970’s, his was clearly one of the most influential voices in the nation on how the government spent its money.

            Even today I’m not sure why he used to single me out as a luncheon companion.  One reason, I suppose, was that I never asked him for anything.  As the Congressman mainly in charge of divvying up federal dollars, he was forever being importuned by colleagues wanting funds favorite projects, as well as by business people with special interests.  

            Mr. Mahon knew, of course, that I worked for his friend Jim Wright, and that in a previous incarnation I was a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which in the old days used to specialize in covering West Texas.  Several times he asked me to explain the inner workings of  the newspaper business--the motives of the publishers, for example.  I used to chat with him about that, but I finally had to tell him the truth.  I didn’t have a clue.

            To a disciple of rectitude like Mr. Mahon, who paid for his own baloney sandwich in the House cafeteria when any lobbyist in town would have been delighted to fly him to Paris for lunch, newspaper coverage of  the Hill was disheartening.  He couldn’t understand why so many stories promoted political fights, nor why they took such zest in intrigues and scandals.  Imbued with a sense of responsibility and thrift that would have gratified his Scottish forebears, Mr. Mahon didn’t generate much hot copy.  His 44 years in Congress must have surely left cobwebs on the typewriters of  sensation-hungry journalists.  Himself frugal, he expected frugality in others.  Take his Metro visit, for example.   

                                          While Washington’s subway system was being constructed back in the early 1970’s, one of Mr. Mahon’s good friends, Congressman Bob Poage of Waco, wanted to take a first-hand look at the tunnel-building work.  Mr. Poage’s bristlingly efficient Administrative Assistant, Dayle Henington, promptly called Metro officials and set up a tour.  Then, at Mr. Poage’s invitation, Chairman Mahon decided to come along, also.                         

                                    When Dayle Henington called about this additional guest, the Metro official gasped. 

            “What?  The Chairman himself is coming?” he asked in almost reverential tones.

            To Metro, this was a very big deal indeed.  Building the subway system was an enormously expensive undertaking, and its officials were acutely conscious of Mr. Mahon’s grip on the federal money faucet.  A top-ranking Metro official, in New York at the time, hurried back to Washington.  To the two Texas Congressmen, he gave positive, upbeat briefings on the massive project, as well as an on-the-spot look at the tunneling work going on under the streets.

            Where the tunnel was being dug beneath the National Portrait Gallery, construction crews were working with an enormous hydraulic lift.  Enthralled by this operation, Mr. Poage turned excitedly to his friend and asked, “George, did you ever see such a fascinating piece of machinery?”

            Mr. Mahon grunted.  “I wonder how much it cost,” he said.    

            When the tour was over, the two lawmakers from Texas expressed their thanks, and Dayle Henington still remembers the Chairman’s final word to the Metro bosses. 

            “Just be sure that you don’t have any scandals on this project,” Mr. Mahon ordered.  “We don’t need any scandals.”

            For a man in his seventies, Mr. Mahon seemed extremely fit.  He stood six two, weighed about 175 pounds and still had a full head of hair.  But one day Keith Mainland noticed him limping.

            Keith was one of his most trusted aides on the House Appropriations Committee.  Many mornings he came by the apartment where Mr. Mahon lived with his wife, Helen, to pick up the boss and drive him to the Capitol. 

            “You’re limping, Mr. Chairman,” Keith said.  “Are you all right?”

            “Oh, yes, I’m fine.”

            Obviously he did not care to elaborate, so Keith let the matter drop--until the next day.  The Chairman’s limp was more pronounced than ever. 

            “Mr. Chairman, I’m worried about you.  Why are you limping?” Keith demanded.

            “Oh, I’ll be all right, Keith.  It’s nothing.”

            “No, you’re obviously in pain.  Now I insist that you tell me what’s wrong.”

            “Well, I guess I sprained my ankle a little.”           

            “What happened?  Did you twist it stepping off a curb?”

            “No, not really.”

            “Then how did you hurt it”

            It was a moment before an answer came from this dignified-looking gentleman in his mid-seventies who approved the tax dollars used for everything from subway systems to moon rockets.  Finally, with a sheepish look on his face, he came clean.

             “Well,” he said, “when you brought me home a couple of days ago, there were some children playing out on the sidewalk.  They had a piece of chalk.  On the sidewalk they drew this game of hop-scotch....”

Billy Graham

            In Washington the National Prayer Breakfast is a very big deal indeed. Started in 1953 when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President, it has become a renowned Washington tradition.  Held in one of the big hotels every February, the event today attracts about 4,000 people, including heads of state and all manner of famous poobahs.

            After Jim Wright became Majority Leader, he was one of the invited speakers.  He invited me to accompany him to the breakfast, but reminded me that we needed to get back to the office early.  We were scheduled to fly to Texas together that evening. 

            Among notable guests at the Prayer Breakfast was the Reverend Billy Graham, a man I had always admired.  He didn’t know me, of course, but I had seen him several times during his appearances in Fort Worth.

            From time to time he spoke at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on the far south side of Fort Worth.  Eddie and I happened to live in that neighborhood.  In fact I used to trade at a little filling station only a stone’s throw from the campus.  It was owned by a portly, gregarious fellow I knew only as Mr. Ward. 

            Many of his customers were seminary students, and Mr. Ward always kept a Bible in plain sight beside the cash register.  Its presence never deterred him from being a shrewd trader, however.  He once sold me an ancient Buick whose shock absorbers soon afterward stopped absorbing shocks.  I still remember kids on the street laughing uproariously as my Buick hiccupped in short, spectacular bounces along Jones Street, whose maintenance, in another day, could well have been under the direction of  Marion Berry.  Even so, Mr. Ward tried to take good care of people living near the seminary.  Only thing was, when the station got real busy, sometimes he became momentarily distracted.

            In the 1950’s filling stations had attendants who routinely checked the water level in a car’s radiator.  One day Mr. Ward got so busy servicing cars he absent-mindedly started running a water hose into a customer’s gas tank. 

            “Hey, Ward!  What are you doing?” shrieked a helper.

            Embarrassed, Mr. Ward jerked back the water hose only a moment before the owner returned and drove off in the car.  Knowing what was sure to happen, he went inside and waited by his telephone.  In a few minutes it rang.

            “Mr. Ward, I’m over here on Hemphill and my car has stalled.  Can you come and help me?”

            “Be right there,” said Mr. Ward, jumping behind the wheel of his wrecker.

            Once he had towed the car back to the station, he wasted no time.  He ordered his mechanic to drain the tank and refill it, using nothing but gasoline this time.  The car was running beautifully when he owner returned.

            “Good job,” he said.  “What do you think was wrong with it?”

            “You had a little water in your gasoline,” Mr. Ward said.

            “Hmm--that’s curious.  I wonder how on earth water got in there.”

            Mr. Ward chose his words carefully.  “I’m not saying this is what happened, mind you.  But I know of cases where condensation has caused water in a gas tank.”

            “Well, thanks for fixing it, anyway.  How much do I owe you?” 

            “Not a thing,” Mr. Ward said.  “This is on me.”

            The owner looked puzzled.  “What do you mean?  Surely I owe you something.  You towed me in and gave me a full tank of gas.”

            “Look,” Mr. Ward said in fatherly tones.  “I own this station and you are my friend.  If I want to do this for you, it’s OK.”

            On his visits to the seminary I don’t suppose Billy Graham ever met Mr. Ward.  I sincerely hope he never bought an old Buick from him.

            At any rate the Prayer Breakfast went well, and in a casual conversation afterward a prominent Texas businessman told Jim Wright he was sending Billy Graham down to Texas in his executive jet.  The businessman couldn’t go, so he invited Jim Wright to go along as company for the evangelist.  The Majority Leader  readily accepted.  But since there was only one seat available, the boss said I should catch my commercial flight as planned and we would meet in Fort Worth.  But then he answered an urgent call from his Executive Assistant, Kathy Mitchell.  He called me aside. 

            “Marshall, Tip wants to see me this afternoon,” he said.  “It probably won’t take long, but I don’t want to delay Dr. Graham’s airplane.  Let’s switch plans.  You fly down with him and I’ll come on a commercial flight right behind you.”

            So it was a few hours later that I found myself aboard a small jet at National Airport.  There was only one other passenger on the plane.  Sitting face to face with me across a small table was the best-known Christian evangelist in the world--a man who, even then, had taken the Gospel personally to more than 60 million people.  His crusades had spanned the United States and reached Great Britain, North Africa, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.  In one 16-week crusade in Madison Square Garden, he preached to more than two million people. 

            As we taxied out to take off, a crew member came back to make sure Dr. Graham and I were strapped in.       

            “As soon as we get up to cruising altitude, I’ll come back and get you something to drink,” he said.      

            “Fine,” I said, wondering what kind of drinks he would offer with the renowned Baptist evangelist on board.  Having just survived a nerve-racking, rush-hour cab ride and the bedlam of National Airport,  I would have loved a vodka tonic.  But  I wasn’t sure I would be comfortable drinking one sitting face-to-face with Billy Graham.         

            This, after all, was no ordinary man.  A one-time North Carolina farm boy and door-to-door Fuller brush salesman before answering his call to the ministry in 1938, he had gone on to become the best-known Christian evangelist in the world and a confidant of Presidents. 

            Even though I had expected to feel a bit intimidated, I found Dr. Graham an easy man to talk to.  I recalled his visits to Southwestern Baptist Seminary (without mentioning Mr. Ward) and told him a little about my job on the Hill.  He talked about some of his crusades overseas and specifically mentioned a flight to Africa in which he had unwisely remained too long in his airline seat.  He suspected that experience was to blame for his having developed thrombophlebitis, a disease which involves blood clots in the leg veins, and which for a time threatened his life.

            Before long a crewman emerged from the flight deck and asked if he could get us anything to drink.  I felt very uncomfortable.  Personally I enjoy a cocktail in the evening.  Even the Bible seems to take a tolerant view of a little nip now and then. 

            On the other hand I clearly remembered my Baptist upbringing.  The preachers in Bishop gave no quarter in their righteous condemnation of the evil liquid that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys homes, creates misery and poverty and leads to the bottomless pit of degradation and despair.

            And here I was, sitting three feet from the best-known Baptist in the world.  Moreover, at 30,000 feet, I felt we might be close to his home office.

            The crewman was waiting for my drink request.

            “What all do you have?” I asked, hoping Dr. Graham, who had invited me to order first, would not detect the uncertainty in my voice.

            “Almost anything you want--Cokes, Dr. Peppers, fruit juice, any kind of soft drink,” he said.

            Seldom in my life have I heard better news.  Since a vodka tonic was no longer an option, the crewman had spared me the necessity of  turning it down and thus becoming a full-fledged a hypocrite.  As it was now, I would be only a simple liar. 

            “A Coke sounds real good,” I said.

            As we sipped our soft drinks and our plane bored on toward the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the weather began to turn bad.  Clouds increased, and a blanket of murk began to obscure the lights on the ground.  As an executive aircraft, we were scheduled to land at Love Field in Dallas.  Jim Wright, in a commercial plane an hour or so behind us, was due to land at  Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, which is only eight miles to the west.

            As we started our landing approach, I was astonished to see that, despite the clouds hanging all around Love Field, the airport itself was as clear as a bell.  Every detail of the runways and the terminal area stood out vividly.  With bad weather all around, visibility right here was perfect.  Our landing was a piece of cake.

            On the ground, I thanked the crew and told Dr. Graham how much I enjoyed his company.  Then I rented a car and drove to Fort Worth, only to discover that the weather had forced Jim Wright’s commercial plane to land in Houston.  The airline said it regretted this, but DFW was completely socked in.  Jim Wright should have flown with Billy Graham.