Camelot No More

An Untold Story

It was a time like this one. Not a life like this, a time.

It was the beginning of another Presidential election year much like the one we are in now.

But this Untold Story is not about now.

This is about a time when Republican Vice President Richard Nixon was his party’s candidate for President.

And it is about three Democratic Senators – Tennessee’s Estes Kefauver, Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey and Massachusetts’ John F. Kennedy running for the Democratic nomination.

This is about 1959/1960.

But this is more than a history lesson. it is about now because there is a Kennedy running against Democrat Joe Biden for the nomination. It is about the Kennedy’s – a remarkable family which has served this country in many admirable capacities; a family who played the game of politics so well that their time was fancied as a version of Camelot; their good looks, smart behavior, boundless energy, riches and the influence of The Father – Joseph P. Kennedy… was everywhere in domestic and foreign affairs.

But most of all it is about their fierce determination to get what they want…no matter how.

WEST (BY GOD) VIRGINIA

We were in Logan, West Virginia, to continue a budding career as a radio personality.

Once the soft coal capital of the United States, Logan was so important to the war effort that the soft coal mines throughout the county and the surrounding counties ran 24/7 and the miners were loaded with cash.

The Roosevelt cabinet had easily convinced FDR that if everyone worked, money would be made and industries would look away from their products and instead build battleships, aircraft carriers, bomber and fighter planes and munitions of all kinds.

Soft coal was critical to the energy needs for these efforts and the people of Logan County were right there working day and night.

By the time we came to Logan to work at WVOW, we saw the slow but real beginning of the end of soft coal as a principle energy source.

It would take years, but coal mining companies had already begun to save money by lopping off the tops of mountains rather than digging beneath them. Machinery could do that far easier, faster and lots cheaper than the manpower needed to go beneath the earth and dig.

What that kind of activity did to the countryside, to the previously pristine valleys, rivers and streams and to the very communities of coal miners who now lived in them was shocking…frightening.

Now these areas were threatened by mountains of Earth suddenly breaking loose and coming down on them washing away everything in their path.

It was apparent even to a newcomer that the mining powers that be couldn’t have cared less.

Logan and many cities and counties across West Virginia could no longer look to the future in the hope that coal would continue to be their salvation.

Neither did the fact that West Virginia was in the heart of Appalachia one of the very poorest areas in all of the United States…an area best known as hillbilly country.

Appalachia was a massive mountainous area which included parts of northern Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, northern Virginia…even parts of Pennsylvania and all of West Virginia.

The overall poverty, illiteracy and essential hopelessness in that area came at a time when America was in its greatest development after the War…when working class Americans were building a middle class, when unions and management no longer went to war, when America’s suburbs grew and when more Americans could own a home, a car and send their children to college than ever before in history.

And yet all of that was completely and totally lost on those who lived in the mountains, valleys, hollows and near the creeks and rivers of that part of Appalachia.

Teachers would report that children often came to school in shifts: ten children at home, three pairs of shoes and so the children took turns.

None of this was a secret. It was clearly going to be a highlight of the coming Presidential campaign.

But it too had nothing to do with the special importance of the West Virginia primary.

THIS is what did: Could John F. Kennedy, become the first Catholic to ever be elected President of the United States.

If Kennedy went into Baptist country, as West Virginia proudly proclaimed itself to be, and won, he would be able to prove that a Catholic could become President.

BAPTIST INDEED

One of the personal joys of coming to Logan was befriending a Baptist Minister leading a church in a nearby community. ‘Preacher Joe’ Pizzino was a former coal miner, built like a pro football linebacker with a Kirk Douglas cleft in his chin, who worked and lived hard but whose love for a woman turned his life around so that he became a most respected and well known Minister in the area eventually leading a large Baptist Church in Charleston, West Virginia, the center of business life in the entire State.

It was an extraordinary relationship that lasted for 54 years.

The friendship was still in its earlier stages when Preacher Joe drove us through the heart of Appalachia country into nearby Kentucky and the home of the great Hatfield and McCoy feuds.

Now he would help me to understand why that political question even existed.

His own comment summed up what we came to see was the reality.

”Don’t you know that an American President who is Catholic would take orders from the Pope in Rome.”

Was he kidding? The Catholic Church in 1959 certainly could be considered the most powerful, wealthiest religious order in the World.

But the idea that a President who was Catholic would be taking orders from the Pope seemed seriously preposterous.

Was he serious?

A week later we spent a weekend driving throughout several neighboring counties visiting churches and talking to Baptist Ministers.

And every single one of them thought and said exactly what Pizzino had said.

This was all real. This is what parishioners all over West Virginia would be hearing. These were the folks who would vote. What chance would Kennedy have?

THE VISITATIONS

The Kennedy brothers and sisters began to appear in Logan and throughout the State as the cold months of 1959 faded into the early Spring of 1960. They came in pairs usually…sisters Eunice and Jean, brother Teddy and sister-in-law Ethel, Bobby alone and surprisingly Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. a name that carried enormous weight in West Virginia because his Father had been considered a savior and a hero.

The local newspaper carried stories and interviews with all of the Kennedy’s before they moved on across the State.

And then in late Spring, JFK appeared to make a speech in Logan’s most popular and largest restaurant.

The State’s primary election was coming up in a matter of weeks and Kennedy was taking his time touring the State.

It was a Saturday afternoon and the restaurant was crowded. We had laundry to do and took it along finding a tight spot in a corner. Kennedy spoke at length about what he wanted to do to help the people of Appalachia work their way out of poverty and illiteracy and begin to get the help from government that other sectors of the nation received.

He sounded like a solid liberal Democrat in a community which expected to hear him sound just like that.

He talked about how important Logan had been to the war effort and how its people seemed like the very best Americans.

He pledged forthrightly that he would be an American President taking directions from Americans like those in the room.

That was as close as he got to the “subject”.

There were a few questions and then the meeting was over.

The restaurant was all but empty of anyone but a few staff members readying the move to the next community.

Laundry bag slung over shoulder, we approached him.

Up close he looked frail, almost fragile and in pain. The strabismus in his eye was disconcerting. His pictures masked it somewhat but in real life it seemed very prominent. One had to wonder why his parents hadn’t corrected it when he was a baby.

He was surprised to meet a New Yorker and a Liberal in Logan West Virginia and we explained it was a stop on the way to the New York market.

And then told him that his staff should be a bit more careful because the restaurant we were standing in was segregated.

He became very pale, instantly annoyed and thanked me as he moved quickly away and out the door.

We had never been a fan of his believing he spent lots of policy time on the fence waiting to see which direction he should take.

We knew Hubert Humphrey was coming into town the next week and would be holding a meeting in an auditorium at the radio station.

It had been fun meeting JFK and it was easy to think that would be that.

Wrong.

THE DEAL

The telephone call came two days later on a Monday as we were just leaving the station.

It was from Anthony, the manager of Logan’s only movie theater. We thought he wanted to talk about a commercial for a new movie we would be taping the following day.

But it wasn’t.

“Got a couple of minutes this afternoon. Come up to my office about 3. I want to show you something.”

Going up to his office meant climbing a series of metal steps all the way up the outside of the movie building until you reached the roof line.

He was sitting in a large office with two desks and lots of filing cabinets.

He stood up, held out his hand for a shake and said look…

He pointed to the floor and we saw that all around the room, lining all four walls were large, black leather bags with large handles. There must have been fifty or sixty of them.

He said the Kennedy people had brought them up to him two days ago and said they would retrieve them two days before Primary Day in a few weeks.

He bent, unzipped one of them and pulled it open.

It was full of money…five dollar bills and singles. All of them the same.

“What do they think they can do…buy votes?”

“You don’t know what the counties around here look like or you wouldn’t bother asking.”

To this day we have no idea what he expected us to do with the information.

But leaving the office and climbing slowly down the side of the building an idea came to mind before we reached the last step.

Two days later Hubert Humphrey and his charming Murial enthralled our little auditorium packed with admirers.

When it was our time to shake hands and wish him well, we told him why a New York guy was in Logan and then told him what we saw two days ago.

His broad smile narrowed and for a moment he seemed thoughtful but then the smile appeared again and he wished us well with our career and we wished him well in the primary.

Looking back in years past it was obvious that he would do nothing about the issue. He was in the primary to take votes away from Kefauver and that is what he was going to do.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

You know the ending. Jack Kennedy won the West Virginia primary and went on to defeat Nixon buy a margin so thin that people believe to this day that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley made it possible by having enough dead people vote for JFK.

The Liberal Party had Kennedy on its ballot in New York and gave him the votes he needed to defeat Nixon. He would have lost without those Liberal Party votes.

Nobody has ever spoken or written of what happened in the West Virginia primary to persuade tried and true Baptists that it was safe to support a President who was Catholic.

But this is what we saw.

If you lived in the cities most of the polling places were in local churches.

You voted with a pencil and paper and put your ballot in a slotted cardboard box.

But if you lived in the counties voting places were placed on football fields, in large parking areas near buildings, on grass fields near high schools. It seemed that all those voting places were set up outdoors.

And this: if you could not read or write your name, it was permissible for you to ask for assistance in voting. Most of these assistants seemed to be police or sheriffs or someone within the justice system of each community.

The price was five dollars or a pint.

When the votes were counted most of the Kennedy votes came from the counties around the State. He won very close votes in Charleston and Huntington but lost most of the cities including Logan.

He won the State where he knew he could win. And he knew how to do it.

We have never read anything about this in any book we have read about the Kennedy era. But we saw it and it happened.

Today a Kennedy seeks to challenge a sitting President. Most of his family have denounced his effort.

No comparison is suggested about the man and his nephew.

But he is a Kennedy and should not be ignored.