Barbara Bush Dies at 92

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Former first lady Barbara Bush, who died yesterday at the age of 92, was a remarkable woman, and her attributes are justifiably being remembered today. She said many things that should inspire the rest of us on our journeys through life.

I have felt considerable empathy for the Bush family, especially Mrs. Bush's children, who have had the pleasure of having their mother with them longer than most. I learned when my own mother died that, no matter how old we are when it happens, it feels strange to be a motherless child.

And I have learned that is a feeling that never really goes away.

I have no doubt that George W. Bush, who is now 71 years old, is feeling that way tonight — in spite of his insistence that "my soul is comforted" by his mother's certainty that there was an afterlife waiting for her.

The loss of a parent is a blow for most people, whether it is expected or not.

But it is also worth remembering that she, like all of us, was human and subject to the same shortcomings we all have.

For example, when her husband, then–Vice President George H.W. Bush, debated the first woman to be on a national ticket, Geraldine Ferraro, in October 1984, Mrs. Bush, when asked her opinion of Ferraro, replied, "I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich."

Well, we all have our shortcomings, as I said.

And most of the time Mrs. Bush was inspirational, reminding us of things that really count in life. But she wasn't perfect. None of us are.

We shouldn't lose sight of that fact as the accolades pour in.

Billy Graham Passes Away at 99

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"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost."

Billy Graham (1918–2018)

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It has been more than a decade since Billy Graham's last crusade; consequently, there are many people living today who have no memory of the evangelist in his prime — when he routinely drew huge crowds to massive stadiums and counseled presidents at critical times in our nation's history.

There are people in our lives that we can't imagine living without. They tend to be people with whom we share some sort of personal connection — friends, parents, siblings, etc. My mother's mother was such a person for me. When I was little, I believed everything she said. With the benefit of hindsight, I realize now that there were some things she told me that weren't true, but I understand why she told me most of those things, and she is undiminished in my eyes. She will always be wise and a model to follow, however I may stumble.

One thing she told me — many times and in many ways — was what a wonderful person Billy Graham was, how inspiring he was, how fulfilling it was to be in his presence. She went to a couple of his crusades, and I can recall her vivid description of the experience of a Billy Graham crusade at Texas Stadium.

My personal religious beliefs have been less certain than hers over the years. Let's be clear: I have never regarded myself as an atheist. For awhile, I looked upon myself as an agnostic, but now I tend to empathize with Timmy in "The Subject Was Roses" when he said, "I believe there is something bigger than myself. What you call it or what it is, I don't know."

There may have been a time in my grandmother's life when she had her doubts — most people do — but by the time I came along she was certain of things. She knew what was bigger than herself. I'm not there yet.

Billy Graham gave her that assurance — as he did millions around the world.

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There was a time when I thought my grandmother liked Billy Graham because he was a friend of Richard Nixon. My grandmother was an admirer of Nixon, but I realized that her fondness for Graham was entirely separate from her admiration for Nixon. The fact that they were friends was, for my grandmother, a happy coincidence.

Those who were close to Nixon always seemed to suffer for it. I suppose Graham suffered for it, too, because, after Nixon left office, he tried to avoid the appearance of partisanship. He was mostly successful, too, but he continued to pay a price.

I have written before of people I thought would always be there. That was a foolish state of mind, and I guess I always knew that. Everyone dies. We all know that.

Still, I just always thought that Billy Graham would go on forever. His body did not. He passed away early today after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer, pneumonia and symptoms of Parkinson's. I knew he had been sick, but I figured he was one of those people who would live to be 100. That would have been a suitably biblical age for him. It was not to be, though.

But he built a legacy that will live on — in his writings, recordings and videos — so that those who never knew what it was like at a Billy Graham crusade, even those who can remember when they were still being done but never had the first–hand experience, can learn from them.

Losing Another Part of My Childhood

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A snowy day in another January many years ago. Matt is second from right.

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Life happens in waves.

Life is also, as John Lennon observed, "what happens while you're busy making other plans."

With that in mind, I have been writing a lot about death lately. I didn't plan it that way. It's just how it has worked out.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, I wrote about the death of my favorite journalism professor.

There have been other times when I have been touched personally by death but not lately — until this week. Death is a topic no writer can avoid for long, though. Shortly before Thanksgiving Charles Manson died. A few days ago the mastermind of the notorious 1964 triple slayings in Mississippi died.

As I say, I have enjoyed a respite from personal experience with death — but that never lasts.

And my vacation from the deaths of personal acquaintances ended this week when I learned that a fellow who grew up near me in Central Arkansas passed away. I don't know the specifics, but I have heard it was heart related.

We were friends. I can't say we were best friends or anything like that. He was about six months older, which isn't a lot, even when you're kids and months seem like years — but, because of when our birthdays fell on the calendar, he was a year ahead of me in school, and so he graduated the year before I did. I always felt like that was a bit of a barrier between us as we got older. We went to school each day with different classmates. We had different teachers.

Still we were practically neighbors. We lived in the country — where neighbors has a different meaning than it does in a city or town. We didn't live in houses that were so close that we could see each other's front doors. You had to do some walking through tree–filled hillsides to get from one to the other.

But we were neighbors. My brother and I played with Matt and his younger brother in the afternoons. Our parents socialized regularly.

Would we have done that if we had lived in town? I don't know. Options tend to be much more limited when you live in the country.

But what might have been is speculation. What was — well, that is a matter of fact.

And since I learned of Matt's death, my thoughts keep returning to memories of my childhood — and what was.

Matt's father built a treehouse that we kids used a lot in the summer. It gets hot and humid in Arkansas in the summer, but we spent many summer nights in that treehouse, playing card games and doing things that kids do when the seemingly limitless free time of summer stretches out before them. Heat and humidity was a small price to pay for all that freedom.

Sometimes the four of us would spend the night in that treehouse. We would lug our sleeping bags up there, then we would sleep on top of them because it was too suffocating to try to sleep inside our sleeping bags.

That treehouse was kind of like a junior frat house, though. We didn't do much sleeping there, and things tended to get broken. Mostly we played cards — and Monopoly — by the light of a lantern or told ghost stories.

When it was quiet in the treehouse, I would sit and let the light summer breeze wash over me, and I would look at the stars sparkling in the sky and the shimmering moon.

We all learned to ride bicycles at about the same time, and that really was like being set free. That was the first time that we were truly mobile, and from that moment on if we were going anywhere we were on our bikes. No longer did we need someone to take us to a neighbor's house a couple of miles down the road. We could get on our bikes and take ourselves there.

Later on, of course, cars replaced bikes, and our journeys took us even farther from home. But that came later.

Our parents and their vehicles still had a place in our lives. We rarely got snow in Central Arkansas, but when we did, we usually needed Matt's father's truck to take us to school. I remember all of us piling into the small cab of that truck (this was before the days of club cabs) on winter mornings and listening to his tape of Charley Pride's greatest hits as we rode into town.

Matt's family moved to Arkansas from Texas when he was in elementary school, and there was always friction between us when the Arkansas Razorbacks played the Texas Longhorns in anything — but especially football. Both our loyalties were to the places where our roots were.

So it was ironic that Matt stayed in my hometown the rest of his life — and I moved to Texas.

Sports always played a prominent role in our relationship. When we were about 8 or 9, we collected and swapped baseball cards and football cards — as many boys did (and, I presume, still do). We usually watched major sports events together, and we played the games as best we could.

Folks in town had the advantage over us in the latter. They had empty lots and open fields in which to play. We lived in the country, which was rocky and hilly. If we wanted to play touch football, we had to do it in the dirt road that slithered past our homes. That was not a problem, though. People seldom drove along that road in those days, and we could usually hear cars coming long before they reached us, giving us time to clear off the road until they went past.

I remember one unusually snowy winter that brought a significant snowfall, not just the usual dusting, and we couldn't wait to play football in it — because we could actually play tackle football for a change.

We soon learned that playing football in snow is a lot colder and wetter than it looks on TV. But when we had had enough, we went to one of our homes — where there would be tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches to warm us up.

Matt was a much better athlete than I was. He played youth baseball with my brother (who was also a better athlete than I was), and I remember watching his games with a touch of envy. Matt looked like a big–league ballplayer in his Little League uniform, whether he was playing in a game or getting a snow cone between games.

As I understand it, Matt coached youth baseball after he grew up.

Matt and I seldom saw each other as adults. The news of Matt's death, consequently, triggers no memories of my adult years — it seems to me that the last time I saw Matt was at my high school class' fifth reunion (Matt wasn't in my class, but his wife was) — but plenty of memories of my childhood.

While I am mourning the loss of my childhood friend, I am also mourning the inevitable loss of my childhood. Matt wasn't my first childhood friend to die — and, unless I'm the next one to go, he certainly won't be the last.

But it is a stark reminder of the constant state of change in which we all must exist.

It is also a reminder that life is short, much too short to not do the things you love. Matt's life was shorter than I ever would have expected when we were growing up. I hope he spent it doing things he loved to do.

And I hope I do the things I love to do before my time on this planet runs out.

One Man's Death

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As I wrote here when Charles Manson died less than two months ago, I get no joy from hearing that another human being has passed away, even one who caused great pain and suffering.

That, essentially, is how I received the news yesterday that Edgar Ray Killen, the mastermind in the conspiracy to murder three young civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964, died in prison a few days shy of his 93rd birthday.

By modern standards, plotting to murder three people usually merits little attention outside the community where such an act occurs.

But the '64 murders were different. Everyone from the president on down was watching developments in Mississippi. A priority was given to finding the missing civil rights workers; then, when their bodies were discovered, the emphasis shifted to bringing their killer(s) to justice.

Killen, an organizer for the Ku Klux Klan, was not present when the workers were abducted and murdered, but he was the one who coordinated everything — then made sure he had an alibi.

Homicide is usually a state charge, and juries in the South of the 1960s tended to be all white — and to acquit white defendants in the slayings of blacks. It was believed the only way a conviction could be obtained was through the federal judicial system, and Killen was among 18 men who, in 1967, faced federal charges of violating the civil rights of the three young men.

Seven of the defendants were convicted and sentenced to from three to 10 years in prison, but the jury couldn't agree on Killen. Eleven voted for conviction, but one refused, saying she did not believe a man of God could participate in something like that.

Killen was a part–time Baptist preacher.

He was convicted of participating in the murders in 2005, 41 years to the day after the triple slaying that inspired the 1988 movie "Mississippi Burning," and spent the rest of his life in prison. But he was convicted of manslaughter. So much time had passed since the murders that many witnesses had died, and the jury did not have enough evidence for a homicide conviction. Still three consecutive 20–year sentences were likely to be more than the 80–year–old Killen could survive.

And, indeed, he did not.

Since Killen's death, the only things I have seen written about him were news accounts of his demise. I have seen no columns, no editorials, no commentaries of any kind about him or the era in which he lived — and that he influenced.

I'm not sure what to make of that because I certainly expected to see something, particularly in a polarized time like this. It was only a few months ago, after all, that statues of Confederate soldiers were being brought down from coast to coast — and the Confederacy ceased to exist more than half a century before Killen's birth.

Killen was from the 20th century, about the same age as a fellow who lived down the road from me in central Arkansas. He wasn't, as far as I know, a member of the Klan, but he was a segregationist and an unsuccessful candidate for first governor and then U.S. senator when I was in elementary school.

Well, that was what the public saw. I saw a man who was kind and treated me like a member of the family. In fact, I spent many of my waking hours outside of school at his house, playing with his twin sons.

When he committed suicide eight years ago, I was stunned by the hateful comments I saw on social media sites where folks from my home state tend to congregate.

It was probably because of that experience that I anticipated an equally rabid reaction to Killen's death. Once again, I am stunned — but happily so.

I am inclined to think that maybe that is a good thing. Maybe the fact that a notorious Klansman like Edgar Ray Killen can die in prison and cause barely a ripple is a sign of a maturing society.

That is a welcome development when words like racist, sexist and Nazi are thrown around almost casually.

It is important, once in awhile at least, to be reminded of what those words really mean — and for whom the label is appropriate.

O, Captain, My Captain

When I was in college, it was my honor to study reporting under a professor who truly lived the adage that journalism is the first draft of history.

His name was Roy Reed, and he once worked for the New York Times; in fact, he was there when the landmark Times v. Sullivan decision was rendered, and he enthralled us in class with stories of that time. He also worked for the Arkansas Gazette before becoming a journalism professor at the University of Arkansas.

He was on the front lines of history in the 20th century.

He covered Orval Faubus at the Gazette. In the Times job he covered the civil rights movement in the South of the 1960s.

I will always remember the stories he told in class about covering marches that were led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — and how he feared for his life when he and the rest of the reporters came under the hate–filled glares of the whites who watched the marches from the sidewalks of sleepy Southern towns.

The folks at the Times didn't think that was hazardous enough, I suppose, so they sent Roy to Northern Ireland to cover the Protestants and the Catholics.

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After doing that for awhile, life in Fayetteville must have seemed positively placid by comparison. I never saw anyone as completely happy as Roy was when I was enrolled in his class. He had lived a life to which many — myself included — aspired, and he told us all about it — the good, the bad and the ugly. He was paying it forward, as they say today, sharing the things he had learned in a lifetime in the profession with the next generation.

He didn't give away A's in his class. You had to earn them. And it has always been a source of pride for me that I earned an A in Roy's reporting class. It isn't exactly the kind of thing you can put on a resume. But I'm proud of it, and I carry it with me.

Roy had an aneurysm yesterday and died at the age of 87.

As I understand the sequence of events, he lapsed into a coma on Saturday and was kept alive for a time, but life support was removed today and he passed away.

Roy's life was all about communication and information — so it was fitting that it was through social media, which didn't exist when I was in Roy's class but is the method for spreading information in the 21st century, that I learned of his death. There is a Facebook page where my friends and former colleagues post news of interest, and the tributes to Roy have been pouring in over there.

We all have our own memories of Roy. For me, there are too many to count, but one stands out. I was in his class in an election year, and he recruited several of us to do volunteer work at the county courthouse on Election Night. I suppose many, if not all, of us were motivated by the lure of extra credit, but I was genuinely interested in participating in the process on an Election Night — which, in those days, required us to spend most of the evening on the phone taking down vote totals from precincts by hand and passing along the totals to others, who would compile them. When all the precincts had been heard from, the numbers were passed on to the secretary of state's office in Little Rock.

After I graduated from college, I participated in similar work for newspapers on Election Nights to come. Whenever I did I always thought back to that night during my college days. Among other things I owe that to Roy.

He influenced so many of us — and he will never be forgotten.

What's Past Is Prologue

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Charles Manson died the other day, and I have struggled with my thoughts about that.

He was, after all, 83. He was in his mid–30s when his "Family" committed the 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders on his behalf, not quite 40 when he was convicted and sentenced to death, only to have his sentence commuted to life in prison when the death penalty was abolished in California.

Clearly he lived a lot longer than he probably expected when his conviction was handed down.

And he was the notorious mastermind of murders that shook the nation then but would hardly merit a passing glance from today's media.

There is no reason to mourn his passing. And yet I am conflicted.

In the past I haven't regretted feeling no sorrow over the deaths of those who were responsible for much suffering and showed no remorse for it. Haven't regretted it at all.

I even sympathized with those who celebrated when Ted Bundy was executed or Jeffrey Dahmer was killed by a fellow inmate or the Night Stalker died of apparently natural causes.

But it's a problem for me. It goes against my upbringing to rejoice when a fellow human being dies. I guess I was able to rationalize it better when I was younger. Not so much now.

I'm sure that when he died, Manson was no better than he was when he terrorized Southern California. Every time that I heard a comment he had made from prison, he seemed just as twisted as ever — and I suppose he will always be a textbook case for the argument that some criminals are completely irredeemable — and thus, there is no real point behind incarcerating them for a lifetime.

Except to preserve a life.

I understand the need some people have for revenge, and I don't want to minimize that. There is something to be said for an eye for an eye. I could even support it if I felt it guaranteed closure for the survivors. But it doesn't — not always, maybe not even a majority of the time.

And as Gandhi said, an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.

The Death of a Patriot

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"The thing that's so appalling to me is that the president, when this whole idea was suggested to him, didn't, in righteous indignation, rise up and say, 'Get out of here. You're in the office of the president of the United States. How can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? This is the presidency of the United States.' But my president didn't do that. He sat there and he worked and worked to try to cover this thing up so it wouldn't come to light."

Lawrence Hogan Sr. (1928–2017)

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One of my most vivid memories of the Watergate era is of Maryland Republican Lawrence Hogan, who died earlier this month at the age of 88 following a stroke.

Hogan was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 to 1975. He left the House to run for governor of Maryland in 1974 — and lost his bid for the Republican nomination.

Maryland is known as a blue state today, but it had two Republican senators and four Republican members of the House (half of its delegation) at the time — and a recent Republican governor, Spiro Agnew, was elected vice president in 1968 but had resigned less than a year before the House Judiciary Committee considered Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon.

There was considerable backlash against Republicans in the 1974 elections, and Hogan may well have been a victim of that — but Hogan, while regarded as a strong challenger to incumbent Democrat Gov. Marvin Mandel, may have been hurt in the primary by the stand he took against Nixon's behavior in office.

Hogan, as I say, lost the party nomination, not the general election. He may well have been a more effective candidate in the general election — Maryland was part of the 49–state landslide that re–elected Nixon in 1972, but it had never supported Nixon for president before that time, and there may well have been Democrats who would have supported him against Mandel.

But the members of his party apparently believed, in spite of all that had happened since the Judiciary Committee's hearings, that Hogan had abandoned the president.

His son, who carries Hogan's name, now occupies that office.

Hogan's political career was essentially over by then — although he did serve as county executive for Prince George's County for four years in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

But he left an impression on me in 1974. Although I now consider myself an independent, I definitely would have called myself a Democrat in 1974. I was raised by Democrats, and I shared their distaste for Nixon.

Then as now America was a polarized nation — just not quite as extreme as it is today. There were many Democrats who were eager to see Richard Nixon impeached, and there probably were just as many Republicans who tried to defend everything he said or did, even when defending Nixon made no sense. It does seem to me that there was more willingness on the part of some elected officials to seek compromise — on both the issues of the day and the question of Nixon's fitness for office.

On the latter, Hogan served on the Judiciary Committee, whose televised hearings were as widely watched as the Senate's Watergate Committee hearings, which laid the groundwork for the impeachment proceedings, had been the previous summer.

There were other members of that committee who gained more national notoriety, mostly Democrats — Peter Rodino, Barbara Jordan, Father Drinan, John Conyers — but I will never forget watching Hogan's anguished lament over the gaping difference between his belief in what should have been and his recognition of what was.

My memory is that Hogan was criticized by many in his party for being what would now be called a RINO — Republican in Name Only.

He didn't believe his obligation was to his party. He believed his obligation was to his country. He preferred principle to pandering — and most likely knew when he gave his eloquent speech denouncing Nixon that his political career was over.

He was vindicated when the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release the infamous White House tapes — and the "smoking gun" that proved Nixon's involvement was discovered. Many House Republicans who had opposed the Articles of Impeachment then said they were prepared to vote to impeach the president — and he resigned.

But Maryland's Republicans were still furious with Hogan.

We need more Lawrence Hogans today.

R.I.P., Dale Bumpers

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Dale Bumpers must be a patron saint for anyone who dreams of coming from nowhere and winning whatever the greatest prize in that person's chosen profession happens to be. Bumpers' profession — his calling, if you choose to call it that — was in politics.

He may not be the patron saint of all such people, though. Jimmy Carter, who overcame low name recognition to win the presidency, must hold that title for presidential aspirants. But for those with low name recognition who seek lesser offices, well, they couldn't do better than to have Bumpers on their side.

I spent most of the first 30 years of my life in Arkansas, and it often seemed as if Bumpers, who died Friday at the age of 90, had always been a part of the state's political scene, but the truth was that he spent the first 18 years of his career, after serving in World War II and then studying law at Northwestern, in virtual obscurity as a mostly unknown city attorney in the town where he was born — Charleston, a village in Northwest Arkansas.

He entered state politics in 1970 as a Democratic candidate for governor. The incumbent was a Republican so the Democratic primary was crowded. Bumpers was polling at 1% when he entered the race, but he elbowed his way into a runoff with former Gov. Orval Faubus and won it easily. Then, in the general election, he handily defeated the incumbent, Winthrop Rockefeller, in the process earning the reputation of political giant killer.

That wasn't the last giant he toppled, either. In 1974, after serving two two–year terms as governor, Bumpers challenged five–term Sen. Bill Fulbright in the primary and won by a 2–to–1 margin. He went on to serve four terms in the U.S. Senate.

His most memorable moment in the Senate most likely came a few weeks after his retirement from it in 1999, when he was asked to deliver a closing argument in Bill Clinton's Senate impeachment trial. "H.L. Mencken said one time, 'When you hear somebody say, 'This is not about the money,' it's about the money," Bumpers said. "And when you hear somebody say, 'This is not about sex,' it's about sex."

I always love it when someone works in a quote from Mencken.

Bumpers was frequently mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, and I always thought he would have been a good one. He did whatever he thought was right, not what he thought would win him votes. It's my understanding that, even after serving as governor and senator over a period of nearly 30 years, the accomplishment of which he was most proud was playing an important role in the integration of the school district in his hometown — the first in the old Confederacy.

He always had a sunny disposition, whether he actually believed what he said or not. The thing was that he could make others believe it.

I recall when I was on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma, and I attended a lecture being given by former Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, the year Bumpers was re–elected governor in a landslide. After the lecture, I went up to McGovern to introduce myself and shake his hand. I told him I had seen him once, late in that '72 campaign when he made a brief stop at the Little Rock airport, and a crowd of both the curious and the committed gathered in a hangar to see him.

McGovern told me he remembered that stop because Bumpers had assured him he would carry Arkansas when the votes were counted about a week later. It didn't work out that way. Richard Nixon carried 69% of the vote, the first time in precisely one century that Arkansas voted for a Republican for president. It has now done so in all but three of the 10 presidential elections that have been held since — and native son Clinton was the Democrats' nominee in two of those elections.

But through that transition, Bumpers continued to win elections. When he was elected governor, observers speculated that he would be one of a new breed of Southern governors — a group that, at the time, included the likes of Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Carter, as I have pointed out, enjoyed his own meteoric rise when he came from nowhere in 1976 to win the presidency. Bumpers later said he had long believed that 1976 was his best opportunity to be elected president.

Bumpers was often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, but the talk seemed to be loudest in 1980 and 1984. He declined to enter the race both times. I always thought he would have been successful because he had qualities that served Ronald Reagan so well — that sunny disposition I mentioned and remarkable oratorical skills. On a few occasions as a reporter, I covered Bumpers speaking at Labor Day Fish Fries and Chamber of Commerce luncheons in Arkansas, and I always marveled at his speaking style. It was so engaging, so folksy.

He had a real knack for connecting with people, regardless of their political philosophies. It is why in these last couple of days since his death, both Democrats and Republicans in Arkansas have been speaking highly of Bumpers and his ability to reach across the aisle.

Of course, the political landscape in Arkansas has changed considerably since Bumpers was governor. In those days, reaching across the aisle wasn't really the issue. Democrats held nearly every seat in the state legislature, but Bumpers still had to build a consensus on most issues. The legislature had conservative Democrats, liberal Democrats and moderate Democrats. It was the same challenge that Bumpers' Democratic successors, David Pryor (who followed Bumpers to the Senate four years later) and Bill Clinton, faced as governor.

All three understood that it is necessary for each side to give a little, to compromise if great things are to be accomplished. They may not be quite as great as each side envisioned, but they will be better than doing nothing.

Arkansas was fortunate to be governed by such men in times of tremendous change — and doing nothing was not an option.

Death of a Statesman

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"What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

Sen. Howard Baker
While questioning John Dean
June 28, 1973

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Howard Baker, who died today at the age of 88, might have been vice president. Or president.

When Gerald Ford won the 1976 Republican nomination, Baker reportedly was the front–runner to be Ford's running mate. But Ford chose one of Baker's colleagues in the Senate, Bob Dole, instead.

The Ford–Dole ticket went on to lose to the Carter–Mondale ticket. It also lost Baker's home state of Tennessee — but, even if one assumes that Baker's presence on the ticket would have given Tennessee to the Republicans (which is not much of a stretch, given that Tennessee had voted Republican in five of the previous six presidential elections and was close on Election Night 1976), that wouldn't have been enough to change the outcome of the national race.

By itself.

In hindsight, though, it is possible that Baker could have helped Ford win a few more Southern states — such as Mississippi (which remained too close to call until nearly 3 a.m. on Election Night), Louisiana (which gave a rather tepid 51% of its vote to fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter, who won every Southern state but Virginia that year) and North Carolina (which was even closer than Baker's home state) — and claim a narrow victory.

Baker was considered the "safe" choice for running mate, journalist Jules Witcover wrote, but, in the end, Ford opted for Dole for a number of reasons: Surveys suggested that Baker didn't have as much name recognition as most observers thought, and the public's perception of his performance during the Watergate hearings was "fuzzy," which dramatically lowered his potential value to the ticket.

Another factor, wrote Witcover, was that "Ford did not feel particularly comfortable with Baker."

If Ford had won that election, he would not have been eligible to run in 1980 because he had served more than half of his predecessor's term — and if Baker had been Ford's vice president, he probably would have sought the nomination.

He actually did seek the 1980 nomination, but he fared poorly in the Republican primaries, and Ronald Reagan eventually won the GOP nomination. It seems likely that, as the incumbent vice president, he would have been in a stronger position than he actually was — and might well have been the nominee.

At the very least, he probably would have done better than he did.

Baker might also have been a Supreme Court justice. Richard Nixon reportedly wanted to fill one of two vacancies with Baker — but Baker apparently took too long to tell Nixon whether he would accept, and Nixon offered it to William Rehnquist.

Baker finally did make it to the White House — as Ronald Reagan's chief of staff.

He had the kind of biography that even a skilled fiction writer couldn't make up. Baker was married twice, both times to women with prominent ties to the Republican Party. His first wife, Joy, was the daughter of longtime Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. She died of cancer.

His second wife, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, was the daughter of 1936 Republican presidential nominee Alfred Landon. She survives him.

Howard Baker was the kind of man most people say they want in political office — a man of integrity. He was known as the "Great Conciliator" for his skill at brokering compromise agreements between seemingly irreconcilable groups while (usually) preserving civility.

He was also very personable, soft spoken, a political centrist. America always seems to have a shortage of genuine statesmen, but Baker was one of them. He always seemed motivated to unite, not divide.

I've heard it said that a reporter once told a Democrat senator that the reporter's informal survey indicated that more of the senator's Democratic colleagues would support Baker for president than anyone else.

It is hard to imagine anyone on either side of the political fence commanding that much support from the opposition party today.

The Passing of Nelson Mandela

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"I was not a messiah but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances."

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013)

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Nelson Mandela died yesterday at the age of 95, and I have been struggling over what to write about that.

It really seems as if I said all I wanted to say five months ago when the world braced itself for this moment. At that time, to borrow a famous line from Mark Twain, any reports of Mandela's imminent death seemed to have been "greatly exaggerated." Nevertheless, many people the world over began to accept the idea that Mandela was not immortal, that death would come to him eventually as it must to all men.

Mandela emerged from that experience and lived to observe his 95th birthday a few weeks later. Turned out it was his last.

Whatever one's opinion of his politics, it must be said of Nelson Mandela that he was resilient. I think everyone could agree on that.

From there, you could expand your remarks to include additional adjectives with which others might or might not agree. But no one could say that a man who spent nearly three decades in prison for what was widely seen as a quixotic quest to rid South Africa of white minority rule was not resilient.

It was that very resiliency, I'm sure, that prompted so many of his countrymen to resist the idea that he was dying last summer. And their faith was rewarded by what I (and, I am sure, many others) felt was a miraculous recovery.

But the season of miracles held no miracles for Nelson Mandela. His legacy will forever be the miracle in which he played a part in South Africa long before the arrival of this Christmas season.

That would be plenty, but what I will always remember, what I will always appreciate the most about Mandela is his commitment to constitutional government, peace, freedom, democracy, those bedrock values that define the character of the United States and all the countries in the world that have sought to live up to its example.

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Not that the United States is perfect, but it makes its transitions of power peacefully, no matter the circumstances. And that is precisely what Mandela sought to achieve when he became South Africa's first black president. He and F.W. de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their transition from apartheid to a democratic South Africa.

Mandela was elected president of South Africa once, then chose not to seek a second term. Like George Washington in my own country, Mandela believed that, like the United States, South Africa would benefit from periodically changing its leadership.

He retired from the presidency but not from his involvement in the direction his country was taking.

After all his years in prison, Mandela could have used his position as president to seek retribution. He didn't. He could have used his position to seize power indefinitely and essentially become a dictator. He didn't.

In the New York Times, Lydia Polgreen writes that, with Mandela's death, South Africa is left "without its moral center at a time of growing dissatisfaction with the country's leaders."

You could say the same thing of the rest of the world.

The Passing of a 'Giant' Among Journalists

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"Before politics was fed into computers and moveable maps came out, Jack Germond had it all in his head."

Walter Mears
Former Associated Press reporter

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Journalist Jack Germond, who died last week, was, in the words of colleague Jules Witcover, "a giant" of American journalism.

Many years ago, I read — for the first time — "Marathon," the book Witcover and Germond co–authored on the 1976 presidential campaign. I have read it several times since, each time with greater admiration.

The task was something of a marathon itself. The campaign was legendary at the time because the eventual winner, Jimmy Carter, had been running for a couple of years and, in that time, had risen from virtual obscurity to the presidency.

But you couldn't really tell the story of that campaign without going into a certain amount of detail on the Watergate scandal and the resignation of the man who won the previous presidential election, Richard Nixon.

So, whereas historian Theodore White had the luxury of writing about a single year — and, perhaps, a portion of another — in his groundbreaking accounts of presidential elections from 1960 to 1972, Witcover and Germond had to write about virtually the entire four–year period between the 1972 and 1976 elections.

They also had to write about something that was new in presidential politics at that time. Carter rose to prominence in large part because, unlike previous presidential hopefuls who chose to enter some primaries but not others, Carter ran everywhere. Germond and Witcover chronicled that development meticulously.

Nixon probably was the last president to take the traditional route to the White House. His campaigns in 1968 and 1972 were the transition from old–style presidential politics, in which nominations were decided by delegates who were handpicked by party elites, to modern presidential politics, in which the popular vote in primary elections tends to determine how a state's delegation will vote at the national convention.

And Witcover and Germond were there to report on it — for their contemporaries and the generations to follow.

"Jack was a truly dedicated reporter and had an old–fashioned relationship with politicians," Witcover told the Baltimore Sun. "He liked them, but that did not prevent him from being critical when they did bad things and behaved badly."

Journalists like Germond achieved a new influence on American politics during the transition of which Germond wrote. He was, in the words of NPR's David Folkenflik, "one of the reporters who helped to determine presidential winners and losers."

Howard Kurtz echoed Witcover's sentiment.

"Germond ... was a throwback in more ways than one," Kurtz wrote for Fox News, "a poker–playing, racetrack–dwelling, Falstaffian figure who would close down the bar at New Hampshire's Wayfarer Inn, then be up at 7 the next morning interviewing county chairmen."

Ah, yes, the horse racing thing. That is another passion I shared with Germond. I don't know how Germond came by it.

I've always enjoyed horse racing, but I discovered a true passion for it when I worked as a copy editor for the Arkansas Gazette's sports department.

I don't know if Germond ever did any better than I did at the track. I hope he did.

I do know that he achieved things in journalism I probably will never achieve. And I'm all right with that.

Because there aren't many Jack Germonds — maybe one or two — in a lifetime.

The Footsteps of a Pioneer

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"I don't speechify. I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And that's what I ask. But they get mad at the straight line. I just want to ask a tough question."

Helen Thomas

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Helen Thomas died yesterday.

Many things were said about her during her lifetime. Many things have been said in the hours since her death at the age of 92.

To me, she has always been one thing — a journalist. You could modify that, I suppose. Make that a trailblazing journalist, a pioneer.

And, by the way, that is journalist in what I consider to be the truest sense of the word — a print journalist. Not a talking head — although young Americans can be forgiven for knowing her only from those televised presidential news conferences.

Lots of folks probably do associate her with those news conference — even though there really haven't been many of them in the last four years, and the memory of them tends to fade — until the current incumbent of the Oval Office decides to interrupt a news briefing and seize the lectern for as long as he cares to speak.

She was there from the start of the evolving presidential relationship with television, in the Kennedy administration. Actually, she was there before Kennedy — in the last months of the Eisenhower presidency.

And she did, indeed, ask tough questions.

But she seems to remain an enigma to many of the new generation of journalists — non–journalists, too, for that matter — which may explain my appreciation for what Brad Knickerbocker of the Christian Science Monitor had to say about her: "In the news cauldron that is Washington, there are journalists who are loved, there are journalists who are respected, and there are journalists who are feared. Over the course of a long, remarkable and ultimately controversial career, Helen Thomas was all of those."

Actually, though, I kind of preferred what the Monitor's Jimmy Orr wrote about her five years ago. Thomas, he wrote, was "outspoken, blunt, demanding, forceful and unrelenting."

My kind of journalist.

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The longevity of her career was not its only distinguishing feature.

She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents' Association and the first female member of the Gridiron Club.

Thomas was the only female member of the press corps to travel to China with Richard Nixon in 1972. Not long after that, she was frequently on the receiving end of Martha Mitchell's phone calls in which she complained that the Nixon administration was setting up her husband to take the blame for Watergate.

She often encouraged young journalists to "Get into the game!" but the game can be rough.

In 2010, when asked to comment on Israel, Thomas replied, "Tell 'em to get the hell out of Palestine."

When asked for a followup, Thomas, who was of Arab descent and said so, said, "Remember, these people are occupied, and it's their land, not German and not Poland's." Where should they go? she was asked. "They could go home." Where is home? "Poland. Germany."

She was labeled anti–Semitic, and her career was over. It was unfortunate that this brief — and, frankly, ill–advised — segment of the interview sparked a controversy that ended an otherwise distinguished career.

I was especially disappointed that the Society of Professional Journalists, a group with which I was affiliated as both a student and a professor, chose not to consider the accomplishments of Thomas' lifetime and, on the basis of the interview, discontinued its Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement.

That can't erase the many achievements of her lifetime nor should it change the fact that she continues to inspire young people of both genders to get in the game.

The Iron Lady Dies

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"She was a tigress surrounded by hamsters."

John Biffen
The Observer December 1990

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Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of Great Britain, died earlier today after a stroke. She was 87.

They called her "The Iron Lady." They called her a lot of things — "Attila the Hen," for example.

The names reflected the fact that, as I said to my father only a few weeks ago, she was a tough old bird. And she found a philosophical soulmate in Ronald Reagan, who was also a tough old bird.

As the Washington Post's "Five moments that show why Margaret Thatcher mattered in American politics" demonstrates, they were frequently of the same mind — although Thatcher, as I recall, did not agree with Reagan's decision to invade Grenada 30 years ago.

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Many people have credited Reagan with the toppling of the Soviet Union, but I've always felt that Thatcher played an important role in that as well. It was the vice–like grip of Reagan and Thatcher policies on both sides of the Atlantic that crushed the Soviet Union. That, I think, is Thatcher's true legacy to the world.

In the wake of her death, tributes have been pouring in from around the world.

Barack Obama focused on her contribution as a role model. "[S]he stands as an example to our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can't be shattered," Obama said in a statement released through the Office of the Press Secretary.

There was more to her than that, though.

She had certain principles by which she lived, and they weren't for everyone — but she did express the way most people feel (or, at least, felt at the time) when she said, "You know, if you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything, wouldn't you, at any time? And you would achieve nothing!"

Not everyone agreed with her when she said, "Socialists cry 'Power to the people,' and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean — power over people, power to the state."

Or when she said, "A world without nuclear weapons may be a dream but you cannot base a sure defense on dreams. Without far greater trust and confidence between East and West than exists at present, a world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us."

But such positions stemmed from the principles upon which she was raised.

"My policies are based not on some economics theory," she said in 1981, "but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police."

She will be missed.

Daniel Inouye

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During the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973, the attorney
for H.R. Haldeman called Daniel Inouye "that little Jap."

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When I think of Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who died yesterday at the age of 88, I think of his soft–spoken dignity during the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings.

As Emma Brown observed in a Washington Post obituary, Inouye "rarely sought the media spotlight" in more than half a century of service in Congress. That seemed especially true during the days of Watergate,

In an age when bipartisanship is a popular buzzword, though, Inouye's absence is likely to be felt. He didn't just give lip service to such concepts, he lived them.

I didn't grow up in Hawaii, where Inouye was a well–known figure before Hawaii became a state in 1959. If I had, I would know more about his life than I do. But I still know quite a bit about him.

He served with distinction in World War II and was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Clinton. He was a member of Hawaii's first congressional delegation as its representative in the House, and he became a senator in 1963. Only Robert Byrd of West Virginia served in the Senate longer.

When Byrd died in 2010, Inouye, by virtue of being the most senior member of the majority party in the Senate became its president pro tempore, a title he held until his death. Constitutionally, that made him third in the line of presidential succession behind the vice president and the House speaker.

Most of what I know about Inouye I learned from watching the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973. As a Democrat investigating the campaign activities of a Republican president and his staff, Inouye may have felt additional pressure to be fair, but my impression was that it was a genuine aspect of his personality.

Anyway, there were times when the testimony of the president's men offended him, and it showed. Another thing that showed was his eagerness to see the best in people.

"You are a wise man," I remember Inouye saying comfortingly to Watergate burglar Bernard Barker.

"If I were a wise man," Barker replied, "I probably would not be sitting here right now."

Inouye was the last surviving Democrat from the Senate Watergate Committee. Two Republican members survive him — Howard Baker of Tennessee and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut.

Memories of a Mentor

It is my understanding that the word mentor has its roots in Greek mythology.

It was the name of a contemporary and friend of Odysseus (also known as Ulysses) who befriended and advised Odysseus' son. Because of Mentor's relationship with the younger man, over the centuries his name has come to mean someone who shares what he has learned with a younger and less experienced comrade.

Well, that's my understanding, anyway. I really have only a modest background in mythology, and I could be wrong.

Nearly everyone has a mentor, I suppose — to some degree. A few of us thrive in spite of growing up in adverse conditions — including not having an older and wiser influence to keep us grounded and focused — but, thankfully, for most of us, there always seems to be a teacher, a minister, a professional role model.

Someone. Usually several someones.

In my case, it was a man named John Ward. He was the editor of my hometown newspaper, the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway, Ark. I met him through my mother, who must have known nearly everyone in my hometown. I'm not sure when that was, but it was long before he actually became my mentor.

He actually became my mentor, I guess, when I was in high school. I had always been interested in writing, and my mother encouraged me to apply that interest to newspaper writing. As a result, she prodded me to seek John's counsel, and he was quite obliging.

Many were the days I spent in his newsroom office as a teenager, learning from him and soaking up the wisdom he had acquired. My memory is that John was a large, gregarious man, larger than life in many ways — although perhaps he only seemed so to me.

I know he was a presence in the community, helping to establish Toad Suck Daze, an annual festival in my home county that gets its name from an actual town along the Arkansas River. He was an accomplished musician and probably performed at the early Toad Suck Daze festivals although that would have been after I left Conway.

He was an admirer of Winthrop Rockefeller and played important roles in both his gubernatorial candidacy and statehouse tenure. John wrote two books about Rockefeller, the first of which I bought and gave to my mother. She enjoyed it so much that she asked me to get him to sign it, which I did.

After Mom died, I kept that book. John's inscription read, "To Mary Goodloe, a wonderful friend and a lady I admire very much. ... Glad you enjoyed this. I wish now I could write it all over again."

Those weren't empty words. When John said something, he meant it.

John gave me my first freelance assignments and showed me, when I brought him my earliest journalistic efforts, what I needed to do differently. Somewhere in some musty microfilm room — or wherever such data is stored these days — you can see (if you want to, that is) my first bylines.

Shortly thereafter, I got my first bylines in my high school newspaper followed by my first bylines in my college newspaper — and, after that, my first bylines as a professional writer. I like to think that the stories that followed those early bylines got progressively better; and, if that is so, it is in large part because of John's influence on me.

A life in writing had been launched, for good or ill, and John had been the one to smash the champagne bottle at its christening.

John died a week ago, and I have been trying to think of a way to honor him.

And I have concluded that the best way is what I've been doing.

For the last 2½ years, I have been an adjunct journalism instructor in the local community college system, sharing with my students what I learned in my years of newspaper work.

But I have come to realize that my students are getting more than that. They are getting the benefit of wisdom I acquired from John — and it is often shared, I have discovered, in the same words he used when he shared his wisdom with me.

Such are the often subtle ways a mentor influences.

For all I know, they may have been the same words that were shared with John many years before that. Who knows the lineage of a pearl of wisdom? My students don't know it, but what I tell them is never something that I was the first to discover. Journalism is like anything else. There are truths about it that remain constant.

Sometimes, I must admit, I feel like a bit of a plagiarist when I share things with my students that John or my college mentor, Roy Reed, told me — but I guess that's a reflection of my training. I always feel compelled to attribute that knowledge to my source (even if it wasn't the original source of the knowledge).

I feel I learned from the best. There are/were others almost as good — but none was better.

Thanks, John. Vaya con Dios, amigo.

Death of a Good Guy

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I knew when I heard that George McGovern was in hospice care that he was not long for this world.

According to reports Wednesday afternoon, the 90–year–old was "unresponsive" at a hospice center in South Dakota, the state he represented in Washington.

He lingered for a few days — never, to my knowledge, regaining responsiveness — and died earlier today.

History — or destiny or fate or whatever you want to call it — had an unusual plan for George McGovern's life. He was a real long shot to win his party's nomination, but he did — albeit with the help of Richard Nixon's "dirty tricks" squad.

But then he went down in flames in the 1972 general election. He lost every state but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia for a total of 17 electoral votes. It was the most one–sided election in 36 years — and, frankly, I doubted I would ever see its like again.

Twelve years later, though, Ronald Reagan trounced Walter Mondale. Reagan didn't receive as much of the popular vote (percentage–wise, that is) as Nixon did, but he held Mondale to fewer electoral votes than Nixon did against McGovern.

I heard that Mondale spoke to McGovern after the 1984 election and asked McGovern how long it took to get over a landslide loss. "I'll let you know when I get there," McGovern assured him.

(I don't know if McGovern kept that promise, but Bob Greene writes at CNN.com that he did overcome that massive landslide loss — although perhaps not in the way one might expect. Greene covered McGovern's 1972 campaign as a young reporter. His assessment of the man? "[H]e was an awfully good guy.")

Whenever I heard about McGovern over the years, I always thought of Mom. She was a diehard supporter of McGovern — in part because she agreed with him and admired his stance against the Vietnam War but also in part, I'm sure, because she despised Nixon.

In the fall of 1972, Mom went door to door in our county in central Arkansas, ringing doorbells for McGovern. I went with her on several occasions. Many doors were slammed in our faces so I guess she wasn't surprised when Arkansas voted better than 2–to–1 against McGovern that year.

Mom followed the news so I'm convinced she knew McGovern wouldn't be victorious. She had seen the public opinion polls.

(And, even though Greene recalled that McGovern confessed to being baffled by the discrepancy between what the polls were saying and what he was seeing on the campaign trail, I always thought McGovern must have known. My memory of that time is that everyone knew how the election was going to turn out.)

Mom never spoke to me about it, but I'm quite sure she knew what was coming. Hell, even I knew what was coming, and I was just a young boy.

I've been reliving those days this year. 2012 is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break–in and McGovern's improbable march to the Democratic nomination.

I shook hands with McGovern twice that year. He made airport stops in Little Rock a few weeks before the Democratic convention that summer and again a few weeks before the general election that fall, and Mom and I were there on both occasions.

I worked my way up to spots where I was sure to be able to shake his hand when he came through — and I did, both times, but we didn't exchange any words other than cursory greetings.

Twenty years later, though, we did. I was in my first semester of teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, and McGovern came to the campus to deliver a speech about two weeks before the 1992 election.

When he finished speaking, I practically sprinted from my seat to greet him as he stepped from the stage.

"Senator," I said to him, "I'm sure you don't remember me, but I shook your hand at the Little Rock airport in 1972."

McGovern smiled and nodded. "I remember stopping in Little Rock," he replied, "and I remember that your governor, Dale Bumpers, told me we were going to carry Arkansas in the election!"

And we chuckled. We both knew how far he had been from even thinking about the possibility of winning Arkansas — much less actually winning it — even if he never said so publicly. Bumpers was one of McGovern's colleagues for the last six years of his Senate career. We both knew what a spin artist he was.

At that point, McGovern's attention was drawn away from me to others who wanted to shake his hand and speak with him briefly. I never spoke to him or shook his hand again.

As an adult, I didn't always agree with McGovern, and, on the occasion of his death, it has been mostly the notable figures from McGovern's own party who have offered tributes to him, but even Newt Gingrich had something nice to say.

McGovern was, he said, "[j]ust a great guy."

Man on the Moon

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"He was the best, and I will miss him terribly."

Michael Collins
Apollo 11 command module pilot

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There may be no more vivid memory from my childhood than that of Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the moon in July 1969 and declaring it "[o]ne small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Before his historic moon walk, I don't recall hearing Armstrong's name. I think he flew in space once before — one of the Gemini missions in the mid–'60s, I believe — but I don't think he did anything that was especially noteworthy.

Certainly not when compared to being the first man to walk on the moon.

Armstrong was an inspirational figure then, and he continued to be an inspirational figure throughout his life, largely because of the values he acquired in his youth in Ohio and carried with him as an adult.

He did not seek the spotlight and often appeared uncomfortable discussing his role in the space program. When the subject of his moon walk came up, as it inevitably did, Armstrong always seemed eager to give credit to all the folks at NASA whose collective efforts had made it possible.

"Those who know him say he is a smart and intensely private, even shy, man determined to live life on his own terms despite having floated down that ladder into the public domain," wrote Kathy Sawyer in the Washington Post Magazine on the 30th anniversary of the first moon landing.

I knew Armstrong was getting old, but I didn't realize just how old (82) until I heard the news yesterday that he had died of complications following heart surgery.

As many have already said, he was a genuine American hero. Forty–three years ago, he was the first man to walk on the moon, inspiring millions of American boys to dream grand and glorious dreams.

But I always believed Armstrong would have happily piloted the command module on that trip and never even walked on the moon if that had been what was asked of him. Instead, Michael Collins was asked to perform that solitary task while Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the moon.

Armstrong was a team player — not unlike another pioneer from America's space program who died recently, Sally Ride.

Armstrong and Ride were good foot soldiers in the quest to conquer space. If they had been called upon to sweep up or fetch coffee, they would have done so.

But fate had much bigger things in store for them. Armstrong would be the first man to walk on the moon, and Ride would be the first American woman to fly in space.

At a time when positive role models are in shockingly short supply, we've lost two in the span of a single month.

We are much poorer for it.

Farewell, Eleanor

I was looking at the obituary section of my hometown newspaper's website, and I saw that an old friend of the family passed away this week.

Her name was Eleanor Opitz, and she was one of my mother's closest friends. They were community activists together in the central Arkansas town where I grew up. They frequently supported the same political candidates and volunteered in the local campaign headquarters, giving out pamphlets and bumper stickers and buttons and answering phones.

Even though I was quite young, I put in some time with them at the campaign headquarters. I learned a lot from both, and it was from Eleanor that I learned much about people and politics.

I have always thought Mom was the most knowledgeable person I ever knew, but Eleanor was a close second. And I'll tell you something that is funny.

My mother died more than 17 years ago (that isn't the funny part). But ever since I saw Eleanor's obituary, I've had the same thought bouncing around in my head. I have to tell Mom that Eleanor has died. She would want to know.

And then I remember that, of course, I can't tell Mom.

I haven't had that feeling since the Christmas after Mom died, when I went through the stores and saw all kinds of things that I would have given Mom if she had still been around. And I had to remind myself that, of course, she wasn't around anymore.

There aren't many people in this world — outside of my father and brother — I associate that closely with my mother.

Once, I recall chatting with Eleanor on a primary day.

In those days, you practically had to have sworn affidavits in your possession affirming that you really would be out of town on Election Day in order to cast what was known then as an absentee ballot. Otherwise, you had to vote on Election Day. No exceptions.

Today, early voting periods are commonplace, and no one has to jump through hoops to vote early.

Anyway, Arkansas held its primary in June in those days so I was out of school and I had gone early that day to the headquarters for whichever candidate it was that Mom and Eleanor and I were supporting.

Eleanor wasn't in the office when I got there around 9 a.m. She showed up a few minutes later and explained that she had been voting. I didn't think much about that, and I didn't ask her why she had gone to the polling place in the morning, but she told me, anyway.

"I always vote early in the day," Eleanor told me. "That way, if I get hit by a bus or something in the afternoon, I know my vote will be counted!"

The more I think of it, she may have told me that on the day in 1974 that Bill Fulbright lost the primary for his Senate seat to Gov. Dale Bumpers. Mom and Eleanor and I were supporters of Fulbright, and the outcome wouldn't have been affected if Eleanor had been prevented from voting. My memory is that Bumpers won by a 2–to–1 margin.

But Eleanor impressed on me the importance of showing up. On one of my favorite TV shows, The West Wing, the point was often made that "decisions are made by those who show up." Eleanor was a believer. She made me a believer, too. It's probably why I always vote in the early voting period.

The other memory of Eleanor that stands out probably was from around the same time.

Mom and I were visiting Eleanor one day, taking advantage of her swimming pool on a hot summer day. I brought along a book I had just started reading — a paperback copy of the edited White House transcripts that Richard Nixon hoped would satisfy congressional investigators who had been trying to gain access to the tapes of Oval Office meetings and telephone conversations.

And I read it between dips in the pool.

When Nixon released the transcripts, they only succeeded in re–igniting a debate over executive privilege, supplemented by discussions about the content of the transcripts. A lot of people criticized the frequent "expletive deleted" labels that were inserted to hide Nixon's private swearing from public view, but many others read them more critically — including Eleanor.

Eleanor compared the transcripts to what had been said in congressional hearings and took a pretty even–handed approach to it all. Mind you, she loathed Nixon, but she was nothing if not fair. She wouldn't kick a man when he was down unless she had been given ample reason.

"There are times," she told me, "when I read the transcripts and I am inclined to say, 'Hang him!' But then I will read something else and I will think that, just maybe, his story is plausible."

If you are old enough to remember Nixon, you may agree that that is about the fairest thing anyone could say about him.

(I learned something ironic from Eleanor's obituary. Her birthday was August 10 — which was the day after Nixon resigned.)

I don't know what caused Eleanor's death. Her obituary didn't mention a cause, but my guess is that she had some sort of illness — and that, at some point recently, she knew that she was going to die.

I say that because the obituary explicitly stated that Eleanor asked that anyone who would be attending her graveside service wear casual clothing. She wanted everyone to "be comfortable," the obituary said.

That really was typical of Eleanor. It's supposed to be 104° in my hometown Saturday. The graveside service will be in the morning, but it is sure to be in the 90s by then.

Yet, even with her own mortality staring her in the face, Eleanor's thoughts were of those who would be left behind.

Eleanor was a remarkable woman, an inspiration to me when I was young and I'm sure she was every bit as inspirational to others in her last years.

Rest in peace, Eleanor.

R.I.P., Sally Ride

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Sally Ride.

Twenty–nine years ago, it seemed like the ideal name for America's first woman in space. Well, it seemed that way to me, anyway.

And I didn't even realize it had already been immortalized in a song, "Mustang Sally."

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"All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride."

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(I'll admit, it doesn't seem like much without the music.)

She joined NASA in 1978 and, in 1983, she rode on the space shuttle Challenger, becoming America's first woman in space.

She wasn't the first woman of any nationality to travel in space. That distinction belonged to Valentina Tereshkova of Russia, who flew in space 20 years before Ride.

But she was a pioneer — an American pioneer.

It would be a perfect narrative, I suppose, if it could be demonstrated that Ride's parents named her after the song. But that isn't possible. Ride was born in 1951. The song was first recorded in the mid–1960s.

Ironically, Ride's historic trip into space came almost 20 years to the day after Tereshkova's.

And Tereshkova and Ride had something else in common. As young adults, neither woman seemed destined for space travel. Tereshkova worked in a factory; Ride was an aspiring tennis player.

But Tereshkova was recruited for the Soviet Union's space program. Ride was among thousands of people who answered an advertisement seeking applicants for NASA.

So their groundbreaking stories, while similar, were not identical.

In fact, there were times back in the 1980s when I thought Ride's achievement was overshadowed by other, higher–profile advances for females — almost two years before Ride went into space, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice. And the year after her trip into space, Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to be on a major party's national ticket as Walter Mondale's running mate.

There are certain ironies connected with Ride's death at this particular time. Ride died of pancreatic cancer yesterday at the age of 61.

For one thing, it is ironic that she should die less than a year before the 30th anniversary of her first space trip. What a tragedy it is that she will not be here for that.

It is also ironic that Ride's death should coincide with the renewed search for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane. That search, incidentally, ended recently with more new questions than answers.

Ride's death came the day before the 115th anniversary of Earhart's birth. Another irony. Both women were pioneers in aviation.

It is even more ironic, I think, that Ride's death and the search for Earhart's plane should happen at a time when the national conversation has been centered on Barack Obama's remark about how entrepreneurs did not build their businesses alone.

No man is an island, the president and his supporters contend.

But, if anything, Ride and Earhart did the things they did in spite of the resistance they encountered. It was probably more pronounced in Earhart's day because few women attempted to succeed in any field that was regarded as the domain of men — but little had really changed in 50 years.

I have a vivid memory of the men in the central Arkansas community where I was working at the time dismissing Ride's accomplishment and earnestly wondering why she would want to do what men had been doing since the dawn of America's space program.

So I know that misogynistic attitudes were alive and well when Ride flew in space.

It may not fit with the president's election–year narrative, but that entrepreneurial, risk–taking spirit isn't limited to the business world.

And, while Ride got her opportunity with the help she received along the way, as we all do, her success as an astronaut was entirely her own doing.

Rest in peace, Sally Ride.