“He’s just got to speak at this one Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner. It’s their Party’s only big event of the year. And we promised! ...”
“... This guy is getting pissed off. Gary saw him in Des Moines, told him he really wanted to get to know him. And now he can’t get through! Gary’s got to call him back!”
So Judy passed on the call slips, and the schedule requests, and memos ... for months. But she never saw Gary. And all she heard was: they could forget the J-J Dinner. No. No. ... And as to the calls, well, he had the slips. ...
So she made an appointment. It wasn’t about the calls, really, or the schedule stuff, any of that. She wanted to connect, to talk to him, to tell him how proud she was of him, how far they’d come ... she wanted to see him. But, of course, that had to be arranged. So it was late February when it finally got scheduled, and she went to the law office. But it was zoo-time that day.
The night before, Mario Cuomo had announced, on a New York radio station, that he would not run. Bill Dixon and Billy Shore tracked Hart down at a downtown restaurant, where he’d taken Lee out to dinner for her birthday. Now, the next morning, Gary was rushed. Dixon was flitting in and out. They wanted Gary to go to New York, today, right now, to tie down some New York money, now that Cuomo was out. Elsie Vance, Gary’s personal assistant, was poking her head in the door to tell Gary about new meetings, people waiting on the phone, she had his ticket for New York. ... And Gary had his game face on. He was brusque. He greeted Judy: “What should I be doing better?”
This wasn’t what Judy wanted, or expected. She just wanted to talk.
“Well, you really ought to be taking care of these phone slips that come over here ...”
“Yeah. I got this one right here.”
“Yeah, you left him with the impression that you wanted to extend your friendship with him. You wanted him to come to Colorado or something ...”
“I don’t want to be friends with him.”
“Well, Trippi says ...”
“Look. The guy’s a creep. I don’t want to be friends with him. I don’t want him here.”
“Well, the guy’s poisoning the well in Des Moines, and it takes a thousand staff hours to make up for what you can do with one phone call.”
“Well, you people think it’s so easy to make phone calls. I must call three times for every time I get through. And the phone’s always busy, or I don’t get through. And I can’t sit around here, waiting for them to call back. Or I try to call them from the road, and then it’s impossible ...”
This was getting worse and worse. “What else?” Hart demanded.
“Well, why don’t you relate your candidacy in more personal terms?”
Gary’s face flashed annoyance. Well, he’d asked for it.
“Like last night, today ... why don’t you say, ‘I was really surprised about Cuomo. In fact, Lee and I were out to dinner, celebrating her birthday’ ...”
Hart cut in: “I’m not going to drag my family into this.”
“You have to use your family. You had the perfect opportunity today, and you didn’t use it.”
Hart was shaking his head. “I don’t want to relate to things in those terms.”
“You just have to mention it ...”
Now Hart flashed at Judy that look of scorn and hurt. What business did the press have, knowing where Hart was at dinner last night? What he said to Lee? What he and Lee were doing? He wasn’t going to talk about Lee. Wasn’t going to talk about any of that! And, for God’s sake, he shouldn’t have to explain that ... to Judy!
Across the desk, she shrugged sheepishly. “Why do I have to bring up two things that piss you off?”
Hart just stared at her. He wasn’t pissed off! ... But he had no time to explain. He had to get to New York.
22
Gary and Oletha
IN 1955, AFTER THEIR first year at Bethany Nazarene College, Gary Hartpence and Oletha Ludwig were named Freshmen of the Year. Oletha said she had no idea why they gave it to her—that’s how she was, so offhand about herself.
Of course she knew. She was the princess of the place, by right, almost by inheritance. Her father, S.T. Ludwig, had been president of the college some dozen years before—he’d appointed many of the faculty. It was the faculty who ordained the Freshmen of the Year.
Which is not to say she was undeserving: Oletha was attractive, full of good cheer, outgoing, chaste of heart and mind, observant in the faith—a model Nazarene girl. She was smart, or, to be precise, she was good at school. She’d always done well with grades and teachers. She had an easy, daughterly way with adults, especially church officials, who were around her home ever since she could remember.
The name Ludwig, see, was a great name of the church, its history stretching back to Oletha’s grandparents, Theodore and Minnie Ludwig, who were traveling evangelists when the Nazarene sect was young. Theodore was a German Methodist, preaching to the faithful in the old tongue, before he came over to the Nazarenes (at that point, a church only six years old) after his entire sanctification at a service near Sylvia, Kansas, in 1912. Minnie Ludwig was every bit the speaker and evangelist he was: in fact, she was even more of a drawing card at tent revivals and camp meetings. (“Come on in close,” she’d urge the faithful, in her piercing plains twang. “I don’t know whether my gospel gun will hit all of ye, s’far scattered ...”) For decades, they traveled town to town—forty-seven states, Canada, and Old Mexico, as Theo used to say—sharing the Good News, and winning souls for Jesus. By and by, their handbills also advertised a cornet player, who would complement their preachings ... that was their son, young Sylvester Theodore, or as he would come to be known, S.T. Ludwig.
And in S.T., Oletha’s dad, the Nazarenes found a compleat churchman: raised on a steady diet of revival, schooled in the Nazarene Academy in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he later served as principal, then president—at age twenty-three. That was the same year he felt the call to preach, and so, in time, he was ordained, and as a pastor and educator, he served the church in another dozen jobs. After his presidency at Bethany College, in Oklahoma (where he wiped out the school’s debt in a single year), he was called to church headquarters, Kansas City—the First Church, the Nazarenes called it—to serve as general secretary, sixth in command of the church, worldwide. There, in comfortable circumstance, he raised his two daughters, Martha and Oletha. Meanwhile, he poured out a steady correspondence to Nazarene churches everywhere; he traveled widely; at home, he hosted a procession of visiting churchmen: deacons, parishioners, preachers, professors—and not just Nazarenes, but Protestants of all stripes. S.T. was surely the most outgoing and open-minded Nazarene in the top leadership. He was a neat man, a careful talker, strict in his doctrine, but considerate and friendly ... he always had a kindly word, and he enjoyed a joke, of the broad slapstick sort. He may have been the best-loved man of the church, and wherever there were Nazarenes, his girls had only to say their names, for someone to answer: “Ohhh! You’re S.T.’s daughter! ...”
Yes, a princess of the church was Oletha Ludwig, and determined to wear that crown lightly, with grace. At that point, at Bethany, she didn’t want to be singled out, even for honors. She was shy, actually—very shy with boys—and her vivacity was a shield to hide that discomfort. It was a ruse of long standing with Oletha, who’d developed a dozen tricks like that, through a childhood on display for all those years, for all those dinner guests, all those eyes looking down the table at her ... when she’d ask a dumb question (that she knew was dumb—see?), which made everybody laugh and pay attention in fond and fatherly ways to a little girl who always saw herself in second place.
Of course, to understand that, you’d have to know Martha, who was perfect—beautiful, petite, polite, smart, a musical prodigy—and five and a half years older than Oletha, who never thought she could stand as the equal of her sister. Oletha was so different: louder, big-boned, with her father’s social and organizational skills, but alas, little of the musical ta
lent. Oletha felt gawky, clumsy (though she was actually quite athletic, once she’d grown into her form). She never thought she was as pretty as Martha, nor as smart. She certainly could not entertain, the way Martha could astonish and charm all those guests, at the piano in the living room, after supper.
What could Oletha do? Well, she could seek approval in a hundred other ways. She could, for instance, shine at school, which she did. It seemed she was president or secretary of everything in her high school, which was a large one: more than a thousand kids, in five grades. Girls did not often run, in those days, for student council president, but she could manage a campaign for a boy, so she did ... and then, next term, she got up the gumption, and ran herself—though she lost out, to a football hero ... but she served as vice president, and as a class officer, on the newspaper, and the yearbook, and the choir, and whatever else. ... On the playground, the kids nicknamed her Bossy—she always hated that, but she could organize—and she could chat a blue streak, amiably, volubly, to anyone, which Martha, after all, could never do. ... In short, Oletha became a very popular girl.
And when she got to Bethany College—a school no bigger than her high school, in a town much smaller, and less worldly, outside Oklahoma City—well, it was ... no big deal. Many of the students came from farm towns (like Ottawa), and she was from Kansas City—First Church. ... She knew more church bigwigs than any of the teachers, probably more than the college president. Their authority struck no awe in her. ... And she’d had all those honors in high school, done all those clubs, all that razzmatazz: she really didn’t have anything to prove. In fact, her one social fear was that people might think she was stuck up, because of her family and all. ...
So when she was named Freshman of the Year, in 1955, Oletha Ludwig said quickly: she had no idea why they’d picked her. She was so casual, so offhand about the honor ... it only increased her campus cachet: Freshman of the Year! And she just shrugged it off!
Of course, no one at Bethany had any idea what a complicated little shrug that was.
When Gary Hartpence was named Freshman of the Year, he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t feel like a Big Man on Campus. Even on a little campus like that. In fact, when he came, he had no idea whether he’d even make the grade ... how could he know?
He felt, in fact, that he was a nobody: his father wasn’t a minister, or a churchman of any kind, and he came from a town no one knew—there were no other kids from Ottawa there. And he wasn’t handsome, or well dressed, or rich—didn’t have a car ... and shy was too mild a word.
But his name got around after the entrance exams: everyone knew everything about everybody in the tiny world of Bethany ... and Hartpence aced the tests—clobbered the tests. Of course, the faculty knew that first, and that’s why Prescott Johnson came after Gary.
Dr. Johnson was head of Bethany Nazarene’s philosophy department: tell the truth, he was the department—he and a half-dozen students who were his coterie, whom he’d picked out for their raw smarts, which he meant to turn into a capacity to think. Johnson went through those entrance tests like a major-league scout, culling from each new crop the boys and girls (mostly boys, in those days) who had the talent to make his league. In his league, the game hinged on the fundamental questions of Western thought. Prescott Johnson was a quiet and unassuming man, but a serious teacher of serious subjects, and he meant to make serious students of his boys. He meant to make philosophy at Bethany something more than multiple-choice learning (Which of the following analogies is found in Plato’s Republic? ...). He meant to make theology more inquiry than rote.
Of course, that made him something of a subversive at Bethany Nazarene. Oh, everybody recognized that there had to be philosophy—three credits were required. But it shouldn’t interfere with the business of the school, which was propounding the truths of the faith. And here was Prescott, spurring his boys to consider: In what did salvation really consist? ... What was a personal relationship to God? ... What had that to do with religion? ... What was the soul? How might we know? ... What certainty was that? ... How were those assumptions defensible? ...
For Heaven’s sake! He was chewing at the foundations of the church!
Prescott was always willing to challenge assumptions—even his own, especially his own. That was the essence of his method, that questioning. And although he was a man of faith (he preached at assemblies, once or twice a term), his practice and profession (and perhaps his profoundest belief) was about rigor in inquiry. So his own readings, and those of his boys, ranged far beyond the safety of the Aristotle-to-Aquinas axis, and into dark, provoking modern realms: Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, Kierkegaard. ... There were times when Prescott’s boys could be seen leaving his office, carrying Kierkegaard’s slender and dangerous book: Attack upon Christendom.
Lord, help us!
Of course, Prescott knew how he was regarded by much of the faculty, and certainly by the administration. There was one time he was carrying Attack upon Christendom down a school hallway, and he came upon a dean with the Dickensian name of Ripper. And as he passed, Prescott held the book before him with two fingers, like a dirty diaper, murmuring past Dean Ripper: “I am unclean ... I am unclean ... I am unclean.” (Prescott’s humor didn’t much help him, politically.)
But there was no way Gary Hartpence could have known all that when he stood in the registration line and a small man with wire-rimmed glasses and slicked-back hair presented himself:
“I’m Professor Johnson, head of the philosophy department. I’m your adviser ...” (In fact, Prescott had rushed right over when he saw Gary’s test scores—two national tests in the ninety-ninth percentile, a third in the ninety-eighth percentile. Gary was supposed to have another adviser, but Prescott meant to swipe him.)
“Just thought I’d come by,” Johnson said, “see if you need any help.”
“Well, uhm ...”
“Let’s see what you’ve got there.”
So Hartpence showed him, and Johnson began shaking his head. “No, no ... what you want is some philosophy.”
So by the time Hartpence got to the head of the line, Johnson had him signed up for twenty-one credits in philosophy—the first year. Gary was going to be one of Prescott’s elect.
But even Professor Johnson could not have known how ripe was this lad for election. What Johnson wanted were young men who would dive into things, take them apart, proposition by proposition, testing all assumptions, to the root, where knowledge stopped and belief must take over ... or doubt: Johnson was not averse to honest doubt. And that was always the way young Hartpence went into things, bearing down with that diamond bit, toward the center of the earth, to the rock of inarguable fact, or a truth so self-evidently solid that he could build a mountain of belief upon it.
Even Johnson could not have known how willing Gary was to dispense with the common wisdom; how even as a boy, in Ottawa High, he always had to know why.
Nor could Gary have known that in this “prof” (as the students called the teachers in those days), in this adult (who must have looked in the eyes of an eighteen-year-old like a finished being, a man possessed of the truths of life), in this adviser, he had found a man who was working off the certainties of his own strict church upbringing, who was wrestling with his own doubt, and his growing contempt for the unexamined dogmas of the Nazarene establishment.
What Gary did know (once he got back to the dorm that night) was that no one else had a schedule like his, so the next day, he went to Prof Johnson’s office, to ask:
“Uhm, do you really think I can do this?”
And Johnson, who was anxious to get out of there, to tuck in an afternoon’s work on his own dissertation, snapped at this crew-cut kid who didn’t even know what he had between his jug-ears: “Of course you can, with a mind like yours. So shut up ... and get to work!”
So he did. Gary Hartpence dived into philosophy as he had into every study in his life, whole hog, to know. And he hung out among Prescott’s boys, the most brillian
t one or two from each class in the school. There was Don Conway, the sharpest wit among a thousand kids; and Dale Tuttle, the drama star, the campus’s leading man; and Tom Boyd, who was such a dynamic speaker that he was already featured, at age nineteen, in revival meetings in towns nearby—Tom could draw a thousand souls to his Sunday school class.
And they all hung out with Prescott, who was the chief character, so deliciously, unflappably individual ... driving through town with his wife and two kids in his ’38 Olds, an old whoopee of a car, which Prescott maintained lovingly, in mint condition, by his own labor. He was not a man of wealth, after all, and he had better things to do with his small salary than to buy new cars ... or new suits. He only had a couple of suits (an old-fashioned double-breasted navy blue was his standard), but he dressed—coat and tie, all the time. And then, there was his music. He was always running off to Oklahoma City for the symphony ... his students would baby-sit. But then, too, they were welcome in his home any evening, or he’d come with them to their hangout, Ned’s Pizza, and happily spend his evening helping them work through a philosophic problem. Prof Johnson always had his own ways—and his own opinions, which he shared without fear, no matter how subversive.
He didn’t mind asking aloud why so many cigarette lighters were sold on campus. No cigarettes were sold, of course. No tobacco, no smoking allowed. That was one of their precious rules, which they substituted for personal faith ... so why were they all buying lighters? “It’s not for lighting candles, I don’t think,” he’d say to the chuckling young men at his side. “Last time I looked, we had electric lights.”
What It Takes Page 51
