by Brad Herzog
I suppose I am here in Athena to explore exactly what that makes the rest of us.
“I’m a fifth-generation Athenian,” Bill Hansell begins. He is sixty years old, with a head of white hair that is thinning but hanging on gamely and glasses set in rectangular frames that rest slightly askew on his face. He leads me into his living room and hands me a soda, and for the next twenty minutes I hear a family history like something out of a James Michener novel.
The paternal side of Bill’s family reached the West Coast via the Oregon Trail, settling in the Willamette Valley. Two sets of families made the trek together, each with teenaged children. Two of these teenagers fell in love and, as many pioneers did, returned to land that they passed through along the way—back to Umatilla County. They raised a daughter, who married a carpenter named George Hansell, a fellow who had come out from the Midwest on the train.
One of George’s children, M. W. Hansell, used his eighth-grade education to become a horse trader—literally, rounding up strays and selling them in the Athena area. He had a business partner whose family boarded a schoolteacher assigned to a one-room schoolhouse out in the country. She and M. W. fell in love, but she told him, “I don’t want to be the gypsy wife of an itinerant horse trader. If you’re serious about marriage, then I want roots.” So they bought a 640-acre farm just north of Athena, raising wheat and peas. The family eventually got into ranching, too, primarily a cattle and hog operation. But M. W. never quite lost his horse trader’s instincts, which paid off considerably during the Great Depression when he purchased another 640 acres, much of it covered by forest, for $640. When he died nearly a half-century later, the family sold the timber from that section of land to Boise Cascade for nearly three quarters of a million dollars.
“That money paid the inheritance tax and saved the ranch,” Bill says with a grin.
Bill’s mother, Joyce, was a pharmacist. His father, also named Bill, was a veterinarian who was shipped over to China during World War II, where he doctored animals as they came over the Himalayas. When he came back home, he decided to return to farming, which is all he ever desired in the first place.
“So my dad is one of the few people who, for his entire adult life, did exactly what he wanted to do more than anything else in the world,” says Bill, and he says it with great pride in his voice, as if it represents the pinnacle of existence. Which, come to think of it, it damn well might.
The younger Bill, on the other hand, didn’t much care for farming. He had been born when his father was overseas, and it may be impossible to have a more enviable birth date than his: He arrived on 01/23/45. Bill lived in Athena until the third grade, then moved to the family ranch and was raised on the farm. At the University of Oregon, he met his wife, Margaret. They were married during their senior year.
“When I enrolled, John Kennedy was in the White House. Everybody had a crew cut. I remember an article about what a unique thing it was on campus that one of the professors had a beard. As far as I know, the only drug on campus was alcohol. And I couldn’t have found Vietnam on a world map if my life depended on it,” says Bill. “By the time I graduated four years later, we had Vietnam, Berkeley, the Summer of Love, the riots, just a cauldron of turmoil.”
Bill was the furthest thing from a radical. In fact, after he graduated with a degree in political science, he and Margaret joined the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ, an interdenominational ministry dedicated to spreading the gospel of Jesus.
“I knew a lot about God, but I never recall feeling that I had a personal relationship with Him. I remember hearing how many of my peers made decisions. They were telling me they heard God’s call, and I was envious because I wasn’t hearing any voices or seeing any direction. I remember praying and saying, ‘God, I’m willing to do anything you want me to do, but I need to know it’s Your call on my life. I don’t want to just respond to something emotionally. And unless You lead, I’m going to law school.”
Instead, Bill was assigned to minister in Berkeley, of all places, in the summer of 1967—quite a revelation, if you will, to a straitlaced Oregon farm boy. Apparently, God has a sense of humor.
There is a touch of Odysseus in Bill’s account. Early in the Odyssey, Aeolus, king of the winds, takes measure of our protagonist’s run of misfortune and suspects that he must be hated by the gods. Odysseus himself is tempted to agree. But over the course of his adventure, he learns to trust in the gods, specifically Athena, who becomes to him the voice of the Olympians. In Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, Athena is the model of supernatural aid—“a protective figure…who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass.” So Odysseus’s spiritual journey is much the same one Bill has made (and I have not)—passage from uncertainty to faith.
“I was born again,” Bill announces. “I know at times that has a negative connotation, but that was the experience I had.”
After Berkeley, Bill and Margaret ministered for six years in Sacramento and for another five in Sydney, Australia, before returning to Athena to raise their children in the kind of rural environment they preferred. For a few years, Bill worked on the family farm. But, he says, “Farming’s pretty isolated. I’m more of a people person.”
So he ran for public office instead, becoming Umatilla County commissioner in 1983. His is the kind of family history—intrepid pioneers, soldiers shipped to war, generations of farmers, and a country teacher and horse trader thrown in for good measure—that makes for a solid politician’s backstory. But don’t call him a politician.
“The word I’ve used is servant leader. You serve the people you lead, if you will. That’s sort of the philosophy,” says Bill. “My time in the ministry prepared me in a whole lot of ways for public office. I’ve never been a Christian candidate. I happen to be a Christian who’s running for office. But I’m not part of the Religious Right or this or that. I am who I am. I pray for guidance. I pray for understanding of the issues. But that’s not all I do. I study. I do the research. I get the background.”
Umatilla County commissioner Bill Hansell in Athena, Oregon
Here again, Athena is a suitable reference. She is a remarkable figure in Greek mythology, because she seems to represent two opposing concepts. On the one hand, Athena is boldness personified—from the very beginning. Her birth consists of splitting open the head of Zeus and climbing out fully formed and clad in armor with shield and spear at the ready (which is something I will have to remember the next time I hear one of my wife’s friends claim that males could never endure the pain of childbirth). She is the goddess of war, who descends from Olympus and strides between the two armies at the battle of Troy.
But Athena is also unlike the other Olympians in that she has found a harmonious equilibrium between extremes. She is said to be the immortal who walks most often with the mortals, frequently taking human form, as if approximating humanity herself. While the other gods are rather one-dimensional in their behavior—Aphrodite the lustful, Ares the wrathful, Hermes the rogue—Athena seems more complex. She is belligerent in battle but benevolent in peace. Although she is the archetype of the invincible warrior and is credited with inventing the war chariot, she is also the goddess of intellect, a model of measured judgment, inventor of the flute and the potter’s wheel.
Sometimes bold, sometimes conciliatory, appealing to various interests—of the twelve Olympians, Athena would seem to have made the best politician. She values cleverness above all, and what is Mount Olympus if not a jumble of faith and politics and concealed trickery?
Over two decades, Bill has been reelected county commissioner five times, usually going unopposed. He has served as president of the Association of Oregon Counties. About ten months before my arrival in Athena, he discovered that his most recent campaign had been fruitful and had multiplied his influence exponentially. He had been elected president of the National Association of Counties, an organization giving voice to the nation’s 3,066 counties, nearly two-thirds of whic
h are members, including most of the nation’s largest.
Bill offers the usual motives for pursuing a career in public service—the joy of helping people, whether that means creating dozens of jobs by relocating a big business to the area or assisting an elderly lady on Cabbage Hill whose chickens won’t come down from the rafters of her barn.
“In the county, I can help seventy-two thousand people,” he explains. “When I was president of the state association, I could help several million people, most of whom had no idea who I was. All running for the national association did was expand my base.”
But it seems to me that with this last campaign he also has entered the maelstrom of politics. He has testified before Congress and has visited the White House, shaking hands with the man who lives there. Bill’s schedule in the weeks after my visit includes trips to Washington, Montana, Mississippi, Florida, New Mexico, even Germany. He is the face of a national organization, a sort of mega lobbyist.
More than that, he is a man in charge. And that is why I wanted to meet Bill Hansell. Because I most certainly am not.
Leadership is not a prerequisite for a heroic legacy, and it certainly doesn’t guarantee one. But it is a fine start. The minions may do the dirty work, but the managers get the credit. History has never recorded the names of the frostbitten fellows who paddled Washington across the icy Delaware, imploring him to please sit down; or the brave Carthaginians who followed Hannibal over the Alps, dodging mountains of elephant crap—just as Homer never bothered with the names of Odysseus’s men who were snatched by the jaws of the monstrous Scylla or turned into swine by Circe. General, commander, emperor, king…those are the titles that allow access to immortality.
My driving buddy Emerson defined heroism as “a self-trust which slights the restraints of prudence.” I don’t seem to possess the fearlessness, the ambition, or the self-belief to strive for a position of leadership—and by that I mean management of any sort. I have pals from my days in Ithaca, old buddies whose juvenile antics are seared into my collegiate memory, and now they have titles like vice president for acquisitions and development. My close friend and neighbor since the age of four, a guy who was so terrified of junior high that he puked on the first day of school, is now president and CEO of a real estate development corporation. They have accepted the notion that much of professional life is predicated on hierarchy, and they have impressed their way toward the top. They have underlings and personal assistants—people who actually answer the phone on their behalf.
In contrast, I have crafted a career in which I am my own boss but also my only employee. I am instinctively antiauthoritarian, so I have never been much of a follower. But I am also uncomfortable with the idea of giving instructions, evaluating performance, handing down grand decisions that actually affect the lives of other professionals. Not that I wouldn’t mind a minion or two, but it is enough of a challenge for me to take responsibility for myself. And I am not sure I would ever feel entitled to such a position.
“This is not an endowment. It’s not something that people owe to me. I’ve been hired by them through the voting mechanism to perform a service. I never take it for granted,” says Bill.
“And what about politics, in general?” I wonder. “What kinds of motivations have you seen?”
“I have found people who have run for office because they really focused on a single issue. I think that’s the wrong reason. I’ve seen people for whom it’s just an ego trip. I’ve seen people who have done it, believe it or not, for the benefits package. And I’ve seen people who are retired and bored and they think, ‘Hey, I’ll run for office.’ And sometimes, the people who go in maybe for the wrong reasons turn out pretty good.”
But it is the purpose-meets-poise aspect of leadership that dominates my thoughts—the self-assurance. There is the story of ancient Chaerephon, who traveled to Delphi and boldly asked Apollo to tell him if anyone had greater intellectual powers than his friend Socrates. The oracle replied that no man was wiser. But when Socrates heard of this, he was dismayed. He did not believe he was the wisest, nor did he believe the oracle would tell an untruth. He concluded that it was a riddle of words—that no man was truly wise, only the gods, and that the only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.
“As much as you may want to help people,” I tell Bill, sounding a bit more cynical than I intend, “it seems to me that it requires a healthy ego—some sort of gene that leads you to say, ‘I can do this. I’m worthy of this. I’m qualified and skilled and intelligent enough to be able to handle it and to be able to lead.’”
“If you’re talking about confidence”—Bill smiles—“that often comes with experience.”
During his brief college days, Bill was president of his dorm, fraternity representative on the student senate, and president of his junior class. On the other hand, I can think of only two times in my entire life when I accepted any sort of mantle of leadership. Just two.
When I was nearly fifteen years old and nearing the end of my six-summer stint as a camper at a boys’ camp in northern Wisconsin, I was tapped to lead one of the teams during an all-camp competition. Back then, before political correctness reached the North Woods, the event was known as Pow Wow Day. The camp would divide into four tribes—Cherokee, Chippewa, Navajo, and Sioux—and compete in activities ranging from basketball to archery to canoeing relays. I was a Big Chief, which is about as close as I will ever come to CEO. Essentially, my role was to dress in faux Indian garb and convince a collection of several dozen campers that, no, they weren’t just a bunch of scrawny suburbanites. They were the mighty Cherokee.
I well recall my first few Pow Wow Days, when I was nine or ten. I would stand openmouthed, marveling at the muscle and command of the big chiefs. They were teenagers, for goodness’ sake, confident and vaguely heroic and ten feet tall and fully deserving of their lofty titles. Now that I was one of them—a nearsighted, shallow-chested, self-doubting big chief—it was like discovering that the great and terrible wizard was a bumbling oaf behind a curtain.
We mighty Cherokees lost each and every one of our first thirteen preliminary events—nearly a statistical impossibility. Ours was a comedic montage of errant jump shots, missed targets, and tipped canoes. Heading into Pow Wow Day itself, we were already so far behind that victory was virtually unattainable. So I borrowed a notion from the Bill Murray movie Meatballs, which had been released a few years earlier, and led a procession of Cherokees through the dining hall at lunchtime: “It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter!” And significantly, it didn’t.
I wish I had recalled that sentiment four years later when I was a freshman in college and a fraternity pledge. For some reason, I decided it would be a sensible idea to run for pledge president. It was a “What was I thinking?” moment, not unlike the time when brave Odysseus arrived at the land of the Cyclops and said to his men, “My good fellows, the rest of you stay here, while I take my ship and crew and see who these people are; whether they are wild savages who know no law, or hospitable men who know right from wrong.”
I suppose I wanted instant credibility in my new collective, having been previously acquainted with only a handful of my pledge brothers. So in this, the one leadership position I ever chose to pursue, I was motivated primarily by social panic. And what did I get out of it? I became a target for the slings and arrows of a bunch of upperclassmen drunk on power and Mad Dog grape wine. That semester, I lost ten pounds and earned the only C-minus of my life (in a philosophy class, no less), not to mention the enmity of a few of my pledge brothers, who fancied themselves Fletcher Christian to my Captain Bligh.
Of course, given their series of hardships, it is a wonder that Odysseus’s men didn’t plan a mutiny themselves. But I suspect that some men simply have the makeup of a leader, while the rest of us are easily revealed as mere imposters.
Bill, the rancher’s son, likes to refer to his history working with the animals that populated the fam
ily farm. His constituents are smart, he says, more like hogs than sheep. From a farmer, that is a high compliment indeed, and it may well describe life’s universal managerial system. But even wily Odysseus puts his trust in Athena, just as Bill often refers to the Twenty-third Psalm: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
We all need guidance, one way or the other. Heroic leadership, of course, is another animal entirely.
“Often, we view our heroes in response to a crisis situation and how they react to that—9/11 or Pearl Harbor. You save somebody from drowning. You fight back a grizzly bear. You crash-land a plane to safety,” says Bill. “Most of the time, in the average occupation, you don’t have that type of crisis situation. I think politics probably fits into that as well. Even if you make a courageous vote, often the consequences of that aren’t evident until years later.”
The phone rings, and Bill answers it. He talks for a while in another room, pacing a bit while I sip my soda. Then he returns and adds a caboose to his previous train of thought.
