by Anne Edwards
The polls closed at 8:00 p.m. Shirley waited at home with Charles, her children and her key staff members. Television crews had already set up cameras at the Villa Chartier, the designated site for Shirley’s “victory” celebration; McCloskey’s headquarters were at the Thunderbolt Hotel. The first figures came in at 8:15 p.m. With 50 percent of the precincts reporting, the three leading Republican candidates were McCloskey, 4,624; Black 3,046; and Draper 1,926. Archibald had the Democratic lead with 1,134.
The Blacks heard the initial returns on the television set in their living room. “A radio was turned on also, since results were broadcast faster by that medium and a telephone rang repeatedly as aides took down statistical information. Incoming returns were given to Charles . . . who compared them with a voter survey [they] had taken but never publicized.” The poll had reversed Shirley’s and McCloskey’s percentages.
As the night progressed and more precincts reported, McCloskey’s lead grew. Charles remained confident that Shirley had a good chance. The conservative north county vote, which included the Woodside-Atherton-Menlo Park areas, had not yet been tabulated. A short time later, this vote settled the issue. McCloskey led Shirley by six thousand votes. “Face drawn, handkerchief in hand,” Shirley, along with Charles and the children, left for the Villa Chartier, where about two hundred of her supporters awaited her arrival. When she entered, Shirley made her way briskly to the bank of microphones. Television cameras whirred. She thanked her workers in a voice devoid of defeat. There was defiance in the lift of her head. “I will be back,” she warned. “I am dedicating my life to public service because the country needs us now more than ever before, and I want to help. This is my first race—now, I know how the game is played.” No tears were shed; her audience applauded. Over at McCloskey headquarters, as they watched Shirley’s concession on television, McCloskey’s followers burst into a chorus of “The Good Ship Lollipop. ”
The next day Shirley conceded, “I’ve always supported the Republican party and of course [I] will support Mr. McCloskey.” But to Weiner, whom she met a few days later at a so-called G.O.P. “peace meeting,” she complained, “Well, you certainly know some cute tricks.” She remained bitter about the campaign for years. “If I had had two more weeks I could have won,” she later claimed. Although she had been gaining toward the end of the campaign,* so had McCloskey, who went on to win the runoff against Archibald by a wide margin of votes, and was reelected to represent the Eleventh District in Congress for several terms.
Her opponent’s primary triumph was a product of intensive precinct work by three thousand volunteers and sufficient funds to buy radio and television exposure that counteracted the avalanche of free publicity she received. But McCloskey’s Vietnam position (“She wanted to bomb more heavily; I urged gradual withdrawal,” McCloskey says) and his own heroic past drew the needed Democrats to the polls for him.
Looking back, McCloskey feels that Shirley was “truly desirous of serving her country. Most of the national issues were new to her, however, and I’m not sure her campaign advisers were competent or served her well. She should have won, given first-class campaign direction. [I felt that she had the edge] until a September poll showed that her seventy percent name recognition still didn’t give her more than one in three of the people who knew her name and that one-half of the twenty percent who had learned my name were going to vote for me.”
Charles’s inexperience and the tactics of Whitaker and Baxter helped sink Shirley’s chances; and the debate had lost her votes, as had a letter sent by her staff to fellow Republicans alleging, in McCarthyite rhetoric, that McCloskey’s stand on Vietnam would lead to “a slaughter unparalleled since the days of Nazi Germany” and that McCloskey’s sentiments were aligned with Red China.
Privately, Shirley was a “warm, interesting person with impish humor,” a campaign veteran commented. “[But] on the political stump she could be jarring and intemperate. Running into negative reactions on questions or issues, she became intractable and refused to acknowledge her own errors.” She had overestimated the power of her celebrity, guessed badly on Vietnam, and hired the wrong advisers. But even McCloskey found her enthusiasm impressive.*
When he arrived in Washington, McCloskey was given the label “The man who sank ‘The Good Ship Lollipop.’” But Shirley was more buoyant than anyone suspected.
Footnotes
*The program was eventually called the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies.
*A naturalistic film about children’s covert sexual explorations
†Jesse Arthur Younger was born April 11, 1893, in Albany, Oregon, and did not move to San Mateo County until 1937, as executive vice-president of Citizens Federal Savings and Loan Association in San Francisco. He had been elected as a Republican to the Eighty-third through the Ninetieth Congresses (January 3, 1953-June 20, 1967).
*The other Republican candidates to declare were: Paul N. McCloskey (thirty-nine), Portola Valley lawyer and decorated Korean War veteran; Robert Barry (fifty-two), Woodside businessman and former two-term Congressman from New York; William H. Draper III (thirty-nine), Atherton investment executive; and Earl B. Whitmore (forty-nine), San Mateo County sheriff.
*Reagan and Murphy were the two obvious others, although John Lodge, who had played Temple’s father in The Little Colonel, had also gone into politics, to become governor of the state of Connecticut (1950-54).
†That year had seen a rash of violent eruptions in the black ghettos of Detroit, the Watts section of Los Angeles and in Cleveland.
*San Mateo County’s Eleventh District had in 1967’s registration 117,862 Democrats, 96,972 Republicans and 7,127 miscellaneous registrants, making the total 221,-961. Though the district was historically Republican, student voters registered heavily as Democrats—and this was the time of student revolt in nearby universities.
*McCloskey, Wilson, Mosher and Marten
*The final votes cast were: McCloskey (R) 68,920; Black (R) 34,521; Draper (R) 19,566; Archibald (D) 15,069; Keating (D) 8,813. Total Republican vote, all candidates, was 120,263. Total Democratic vote, all candidates, was 33,671. Black lost Woodside to McCloskey 793 to 397, and Atherton 1,465 to her 830.
*By 1988, McCloskey and Black would work together in George Bush’s presidential campaign. “She is far more politically astute and sophisticated today,” he says, “and she is a pleasure to work with.”
14 FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT, 1968 was to be “the cataclysm that nearly happened.” Flower children would be replaced by street-fighting youths, and army gear would overtake crushed velvet. Revolution was in the air. Young radicals appeared in the United States and all over Europe. The Old Guard had become the enemy, and the year was to bring a monthly calendar of activist horrors, assassinations and challenges to authority. Shirley was regarded as a symbol of the status quo, and her forthright espousal of her views on Vietnam served to label her right wing.
SHIRLEY SAYS DECLARE WAR appeared as a headline in the San Mateo Times on February 20, 1968. “I feel quite strongly that we should rescind the Gulf of Tonkin Agreement and Congress should declare war [on North Vietnam,]” she had stated in an address at an “Abe Lincoln Dinner” sponsored by the Waukegan [Illinois] Young Republicans, and had added: “If war were declared we would be able to blockade Haiphong. . . . There’s a great danger in escalating the war without a declaration. But I would not want to see the bombing cease until Hanoi sets a date for the negotiating table.”
Three weeks earlier, she had announced her decision not to challenge McCloskey when he was to stand for his first full term later that year. But her bitterness was underscored by her remarks to the press the day she ended all speculation as to her future plans: “Congressman McCloskey may have been nominated by less than one third of the Republican party (on November 11) and elected by less than one half of the electorate (on December 12). However . . . as he lowers himself into our [Eleventh District] chair in Washington, I intend to provide him time to sh
ow his true political colors.” She then concluded, “If he develops those qualities of mind and principle which warrant our trust, he will deserve to stay. But if his actions are erratic . . . he should be duly replaced by one who puts public trust above political self.”
With Susan away at Stanford University and Charlie and Lori fairly independent teenagers, Shirley had even more time to devote to her political ambitions. She was a most desired speaker and was invited to be mistress of ceremonies at political rallies and dozens of social, civic and charity affairs. Although her concern for Sonny and her dedication to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society had not dimmed, she was not yet ready to settle for becoming “a lady of charity.” More speaking invitations streamed in from the conservative wing of the Republican party. She accepted these now, hoping to have some small influence on the coming presidential election.
With the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, student rioting on over two hundred campuses and blacks “putting some of the biggest cities to fire,” Johnson’s presidency seemed to have failed. The country had taken his decision not to seek reelection “as an admission of defeat.” The election appeared wide open, and Shirley was vehement in her wish to see her old friend Richard Nixon win the Republican nomination, certain he could then carry this victory on to the White House. Coordinating her ideas with the Republican National Committee, she traveled to forty-six cities in twenty-two states and gave over two hundred speeches in support of her candidate in the six months between February and July 1968, raising well over a million dollars for his campaign.
After the Richard Nixon-Spiro Agnew ticket was chosen at the Republican Convention, she headed an effort to organize American voters living abroad, planning to “barnstorm” foreign countries where large numbers of Americans resided and taking advantage of her European trip to help set up a new branch for the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies (“I call the Federation my little U.N.”), of which she was vice-president.
Worldwide violence had erupted in the last months before she was to leave on her tour. In London, on March 17, one hundred thousand protestors had crammed Grosvenor Square outside the American embassy screaming, “Hands off Vietnam!” In the United States, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the black Civil Rights Movement and winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, was assassinated on the balcony of a Memphis motel on April 4; in May, tens of thousands of Parisian students hurled themselves on police and army with a vengeance that startled both sides; Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot down on June 5 in a Los Angeles hotel directly after delivering his victory speech upon winning the California presidential primary; a steamy summer brought disruptive sit-ins at the Pentagon and the brutal clubbing of protestors by the Chicago police during the Democratic Convention in that city.
Czechoslovakia, where Shirley was going in order to organize a federation branch, had been a Soviet satellite since 1948. Under President Ludvik Soboda and First Party Secretary Alexander Dubcek’s recent regime, many liberalized reforms had taken place. Stringent censorship had been eased, and relations with the West and with humanitarian organizations encouraged. But not long after the Czechoslovakian Central Committee won government endorsement for its policy of resisting pressure from the U.S.S.R., the Soviet Union announced that maneuvers were under way in areas near the Czechoslovak borders. Dubcek had refused to abandon his country’s sovereignty, and as Shirley was readying herself for the journey, Yugoslavia’s President Tito arrived in Prague, the Czech capital, to show his support for the liberation drive. Shirley expressed no untoward concern about the prospect of going there at a time of such unrest.
She arrived in Vienna, the home of the federation’s secretary, on Wednesday night, August 14. On the weekend, she was in Prague, where a meeting of the organization was to be held the following Tuesday, August 20. She was then to continue to Copenhagen, London and Paris to campaign for Nixon before returning home. The meeting in Prague between Shirley and a group of neurologists and biochemists had been arranged through the joint efforts of the minister of health and the president of Charles University in Prague, himself a physician.
Shirley was met late Saturday afternoon, August 17, at the Prague airport by a Czech driver from the American embassy and taken directly to the Alcron Hotel on Štěphǎnskǎ Street. At the hotel, a once-grand establishment whose elegance had long since dimmed, she was given a rear room, number 21, which looked out at “a bleak stone wall across a light well.” Since she was to leave in four days’ time, the accommodations did not seem to matter. Her original plans had included a courtesy visit with Dubcek on Monday, but a message canceling the social call because of “an emergency” was waiting for her upon her arrival. She dined that night at the American embassy. Conversation was light (the ambassador made no mention of any serious concern about Czech-Soviet relations), the food rich and delicious, with plenty of slivovic poured as a further relaxant.
Her schedule included a tour of the “hundred-towered” ancient city with its avenue of statues, its looking-glass view of the Vltava Valley and its numerous bridges spanning the beautiful Moldau River. She observed the people, whose native gaiety had been subdued by years of war, occupation and struggle for personal freedom. Their obdurate will could be detected in their brisk pace as they came and went with purpose.
On Tuesday morning, she was taken directly by car to the university, with its superb Gothic oriel. The meeting was held in an anteroom of the seventeenth-century, two-story-high assembly hall. Attention was focused entirely on the matter at hand—bringing Czechoslovakia into the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies. By the end of the discussions, Shirley “had been charmed out of” her boots by the group, whom she found “friendly” and “intelligent.” The long day and evening had gone well, ending with the Czechoslovakians’ agreement to work with the federation.
Her departure for Copenhagen was scheduled for early morning. The midnight news was broadcast over Radio Prague shortly after she returned to her hotel, but since she did not understand the language, she had no idea of what was being said. A few hours later, she was awakened by the telephone. The operator told her a man who had “just come from the airport . . . was there, speaking excitedly.” He asked to see her immediately. Shirley, unable to ascertain who he was, told the operator to take a message. The man, apparently her driver, had wanted to inform her that Prague was under siege by the Russians and that the airport had just been closed.
Unaware of the events that would soon endanger her life, Shirley fell asleep again, but was soon awakened by a hammering at her door. Outside, there was “the shriek of a low-flying jet plane . . . distant shouts in the street and a rattle of gunfire.” A member of the hotel staff had come to warn her of the invasion. “Tanks and troops are entering Prague!” he shouted. He also confirmed that the Russians had control of the airport and that it was closed. She dressed quickly and packed her suitcase in readiness, although she was not sure for what. Down below in the stark lobby, people milled nervously about. A number of other Americans and British, though strangers to each other, spoke and speculated. They knew little more than that their embassy or consul had told them to stay put and await directions.Štěphǎnskǎ Street rumbled with the weight of massive, oil-streaked, dark green tanks with red Soviet markings, their crews staring “grimfaced” from the turrets as “they fired over the heads” of the disbelieving street crowds. The hotel manager insisted the guests move away from the front doors and windows.
Rumors proliferated in the Alcron; 250,000 Soviet troops were already in the country, hundreds had been killed or injured. The hotel management informed the guests that a “dark-to-dawn curfew” was in effect. But with the false cheer of an August sun streaking its way through the black smoke from planes and gunfire, the crowds had not dispersed. A knot of hotel guests remained close to the hotel’s only television set in the dry bar. At noon, a newscaster, unable to control her sobs, announced that all public broadcasting had been o
rdered halted. A moment later, the screen went blank.
Lunch and dinner were served as usual in the dining room, the sound of distant machine-gun fire a steady accompaniment. The Alcron’s two telephone operators had remained on duty, but outgoing calls were impossible, and incoming ones limited to local exchanges. By now, the guests had been augmented by several dozen East German plain-dressed “monitors” stationed on the landings and in all the ground-floor reception rooms.
A few of the new Czechoslovakian federation members came by the hotel to see how Shirley was managing. And shortly before dusk, a woman she had met at the meetings entered, drew her aside and cautiously told her, “The American Embassy cannot help you. We [the federation members] can get you out safely. It is all arranged. You must come immediately.” But Shirley could not get herself to countermand embassy orders, and from the talk in the lobby, she knew “the nearest border was [over] one hundred kilometers away, through a darkened countryside presumably teeming with Russian men and armor.” She refused the woman’s offer as gracefully as she could.
At nine o’clock the following morning, a man appeared in the lobby, claiming to be the driver from the American embassy. He insisted Shirley and several other Americans come with him. Shirley could not recall if this was the man who had picked her up from the airport and taken her to the embassy dinner. But he did look vaguely familiar, and the station wagon that he had parked before the hotel bore a diplomatic license plate. She decided to accompany him and hurried to her room to collect the few odd bits not already packed. A bellman helped her to the car, and a chambermaid presented her with a bouquet of the country’s national flower, red carnations, wrapped in a crumpled old news sheet that bore a photograph of Ethel Kennedy swathed in widow’s weeds attending her husband’s funeral. It did not seem a very good omen.
