I was having lunch at the Cedar House in Tarrant, Alabama with Al Troncalli who was in the last stages of dying from complications from AIDS when Roger Bass, a Birmingham businessman, approached our table. Al lived a block from me on Highland Avenue in a bungalow everyone in the Highland Park neighborhood knew well. Nestled between two overpowering apartment buildings facing Rushton Park, the charming little house had many admirers.
I remember well the day in 1977 I rounded the corner on my way home from a City Council campaign event at the Highland Golf course and was greeted with at least a dozen “Katopodis for Council” signs festooning Al’s well-manicured yard.
You could not miss them and I was amused and gratified by the sight. I stopped to thank the owner, an obvious supporter I had never met, sitting on his porch holding court with friends. I introduced myself and told him how grateful I was for his enthusiastic support in my first race for public office after being fired from the Birmingham Board of Education and reinstated by a federal judge. (Katopodis v. The Birmingham Board of Education is in the Federal Supplement and was considered to be an important case establishing the limits on powers of a lay board over education professionals). The well-publicized fight between the superintendent and school board, with me as a casualty, had given me huge name identification that I decided to exploit. But what really motivated me to run for the City Council was the fact that it appointed school board members. It seemed like the best way to impact the future of schools in Birmingham by choosing better board members and getting rid of some of its less rational members, some of whom now have schools named after them. I had learned that years ago when Lester Maddox, the former ax-wielding governor of Georgia, was asked how he intended to improve the notoriously bad prison system in his state. He quickly responded, “Get a better grade of prisoner”. Seemed to me that despite the source, there was a lot of truth in this. So getting a better grade of school board member and, in my case, a better grade of City Councillor was a way to improve Birmingham, the city where I was born. (Baptist West End; now Princeton in 1947).
Al Troncalli shared the deeply felt notion that our city government needed improving. He said he was happy to help with my campaign; he just wanted a better Birmingham and he was counting on me to help achieve it. It was that simple. He didn’t want anything; not a contract, free tickets to events; or even to hang out with a politician; just a better community and he knew local government played an important role in making that happen. For every Al, I met on the campaign trail, there were a hundred others like him who just wanted a better city with more opportunity and a better quality of life, for everyone, not just a few.
In every election in which I ran after that, I could count on Al to have signs in his highly visible yard which grew larger in size with each subsequent campaign until they reached almost billboard size, probably violating a zoning ordinance. In addition to the signs, Al often volunteered to hand out literature or staff a telephone bank and could be counted on to help in any way he could. Although we were not social friends and I found his lifestyle a little bizarre, I had a deep appreciation for his political support and encouragement, especially because he never made a single request of me for anything. He never even suggested how I should vote on a particular issue. He was a constant dependable source of support and encouragement. Serving on the Birmingham City Council, and later as it’s president, was not always easy in a racially divided city whose government reflected that divide in every one of its meetings.
Every meeting had an issue that seemed to accent the inherent conflicts between the black and white communities. At one meeting, Councilman Jeff Germany claimed, without a scintilla of evidence, that mosquito spraying done by the City was only being done in white neighborhoods. He often substituted exploiting the racial divide for substantive accomplishment. His record of non-achievement is without equal in the local government posts he held. Always more interested in free tickets to sporting events and concerts so he could scalp them, he spent most of his time hustling campaign donations to finance his hobby of escorting female “cousins” with miniskirts to various places, always traveling by car or train because he was afraid to fly. Given his customary behavior, I understood why he would not want to meet his maker any sooner than necessary. He was one of two young black leaders, William Bell being the other, who was given a great opportunity to serve the community and make a real difference for minority and disadvantaged people in Birmingham. But for both of them, personal gratification took precedence over eliminating slum housing, job creation, education, or anything else that could have really helped someone. After a short stint in prison, Jeff joined the staff of a prominent Birmingham church and may be now doing great things that he wishes he had 40 years ago when he had greater power to accomplish them. But he was a serious disappointment as an elected official, and perhaps to himself.
I spent lots of time trying to deflect his constant kibitzing about discrimination, even after the election of a black mayor who was the most powerful man in the State and able to correct Jeff’s real and imaginary of problems. Of course, even Mayor Arrington could not correct his flawed character and immaturity. After his claim of discriminatory mosquito spraying, I joked that the City was only killing the white mosquitoes so no harm was being done. And frankly, the use of Malathion that was taking the paint off of cars was not something to be wished for. But there were, in fact, many other persistent and serious problems confronting the community where racial disparity was at the root which he could have helped address.
While at the Board of Education as Special Assistant to the Superintendent, I had designed and conducted the “Equity Study” that identified many of the effects of discrimination that left black neighborhoods with inadequate school facilities and resources. So I knew well that we still suffered from the lasting damage done by decades of discrimination and segregation. The question was, what to do about it? After the study showed a consistent pattern of discrimination in hiring and promotions, I took it on myself to review the personnel files of every black teacher or supervisor who had been denied a promotion in the last decade.
Where there was any evidence of prejudice at the hands of white administrators, I expunged the files and re-submitted the person for consideration for promotion. These were cases where there was a note about an argument between a black and white teacher and a code notated to prevent the black teacher from moving up no matter how much time had passed. I never found a single instance where the white teacher was also reprimanded or prevented from promotion. There were a number of black teachers who were promoted to principals and assistant principals after I “cleansed” their files over the objections of the long-serving Assistant Superintendent for Personnel who was known for his white bias. When I ran for City Council, these teachers affected by the Study and my work were outspoken and visible in their support for me which was very gratifying and paid a dividend when I garnered a segment of the vote no one expected me to carry; namely large numbers of Black votes. I learned from this that people of color in Birmingham, perhaps more than any other group, are more forgiving and discerning. They know when someone is genuine in trying to help them and they remember.
I presided over a city council in a city that was transitioning from majority white to majority black and it was wrought with difficult, thorny problems and regular conflicts. Having grown up in Birmingham, Al Troncalli seemed to instinctively understand how hard the job was and did not add to my burdens with uninformed opinions or criticism.
And now he was dying and steadily deteriorating and his political friends like Jimmy Blake, Bill Johnson, Nina Miglionico, and I quietly determined that we would do what we could for him to make his final days as peaceful and comfortable as they could be under the circumstances. That’s just what friends and neighbors in the South do. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone of what disease he was dying.
In the subsequent twenty years since that day I had walked up his driveway, Al had given me hundreds of laughs and helped keep me grounded with his sharp wit and snappy comebacks at inappropriate moments. After my election to the City Council and in my runs for mayor, I had picked up a lot of “faux friends” like Harold Ripps, the multi-millionaire apartment magnate for whom Al worked as a designer and was often called upon to attend dinners at his penthouse apartment he had built on the crest of Red Mountain. As my potential utility to Harold’s business interests increased, I was more regularly included in these events. He was always needing a traffic light, a road paved, or zoning variance somewhere in his real estate empire and thought having a council president, potential mayor, or county commissioner as a personal friend would help cut through red tape or gain special favor. He was wrong in my case.
While I served on the Jefferson County Commission, the County engineer came to my office one day to tell me about a sign that had been erected on County right-of-way near a new subdivision being developed by Rime Companies, Harold’s business. The brick sign was intended to be permanent and beautifully designed. The problem was, aside from it being on property that belonged to the public, it had been maintained by a longtime resident as part of his well-manicured yard, as is common all over the County where it was impossible for County maintenance crews to care for every parcel that is public right of way.
“Call the Rime Companies and tell them to take it down”, I told the engineer. An hour later, Harold called my office to make the case why the offending sign should be allowed to stand. He offered no logical rationale and was unconvincing, thinking his personal friendship with me would cause me to cave on the issue. It was galling that he thought he did not need to ask the County, or anyone, for permission to erect the sign. He had reasoned that I would simply go along on such a minor issue. Notwithstanding our personal connection and his financial contributions to my campaigns, I insisted that the sign be moved or taken down. When he did not immediately comply, I ordered County crews with sledgehammers to get it done and called the homeowner to apologize. So being my “friend” did not always have benefits. In fact, it was a common complaint I heard from supporters who sought favors and expected me to routinely, and without question, comply with their requests, needs, or demands. I heard often how I was not a team player and too independent; meaning not easily influenced or subject to bribes, however subtle. But still, I played the game as best I could, striving to keep my integrity in the process and do what I was elected to do without favoritism.
As egregious as this “build a sign anywhere you like” offense was, it paled by comparison to when Elton Stephens, Jr. of EBSCO wealth, woke up to find a house on the vacant County property adjoining his beautiful home off Rocky Ridge. Seems that Sam Raine, a developer of sorts, had bought a vacant, deteriorating house and had it moved during the night to a lot that was a leftover piece of land from a County right-of-way acquisition to expand Rocky Ridge Road. Mr. Stephens was rightly livid when he woke up and found his new neighbor and called my office in an outraged panic. Shortly thereafter, I had a call from Mr. Raine’s son-in-law, attorney Steve Salter also a friend and supporter of mine, trying to persuade me that this was a reasonable action on Mr. Raine’s part. It clearly wasn’t. And despite Steve’s best effort and my personal history and friendship with him and his especially law partner, Richard Groenendyke, a close friend, I insisted that the house be immediately moved or face the same sledgehammer treatment as Harold’s brick sign.
At Harold’s routine parties to show off his new trophy date or entertain his bookie or Paul Finebaum-a regular at the dinners whose droll wit added little to the soiree, I routinely had to stifle outright laughter as Al would comment on the odds on the length of the relationship with Harold’s latest love interest and whether he would remember her name the following week. Once, when he called me to ask what I thought of his latest conquest, he was disappointed when I said I didn’t remember her. When he went on describing her so I could match a name with a face (or body) I promised I would get a new megabyte for my computer so I could keep up with his dates in the future.
It was more disgusting and sad than amusing as we watched him regularly demean women as no more than part of a collection of objects. A few times I watched him toss his hapless date a roll of cash he had just won from his golf game as if she were a prostitute waiting for payment. All the while, Harold avoided serious relationships and focused on his money, about which he was extremely paranoid. He had a lot and wanted to keep it.
I occasionally arrived a few minutes early for the dinner and would sit and chat with his date du jour while he cleaned up from his golf game. Somehow I identified with these women and often asked myself why I was there being bored and disgusted with his need to gratify his ego with female and political trophies, of which I apparently was one. In a way, I was prostituting myself by giving him time I could have used in more satisfying and productive endeavors. Having Al there now and then, making wisecracks and never being serious made the evenings more tolerable. But it was Al’s observations on the food routinely served at these events that often left me always stifling laughs. Despite being able to afford a full-time butler and a cook, Harold never allowed deviation from the menu of chicken legs and thighs which he apparently preferred because they were the cheapest part of the chicken. Al openly lamented that the only breasts we had never seen at Harold’s were those of a roasted chicken.
Al was always good for a spontaneous laugh on any subject, at any time. After watching the legal proceedings in the Jeffrey Dahmer case, I called Al with a question. I told him that a jury had just declared this deviant who had killed 17 young men, chopped some of them into pieces; had sex with some of those pieces and even ate some parts as sane to stand trial. “ I have a question”, I queried him in disbelief, “ So what does it take these days to be declared insane?” Without hesitation, instantly, Al responded, “ Become a Republican; run for the County Commission; buy an optical company; date a crazy woman; and attend a hundred boring dinners at Harold’s.” “Enough said”, I replied, laughing, though his brutal honesty hit home more than I liked as we hung up.
About a year or so before he died, Al had come to my nearby home to tell me he had AIDS and was resigned to premature death. He wept as he spoke of the only good thing about dying being how happy he would be to see his mother again. He talked about how much she loved him and he loved her and that she cooked pasta every Sunday in an Italian tradition that was the highlight of his week. The following Sunday, I called him to say I was cooking lasagna and invite him to dinner with some political friends. Every week after that, until he was no longer physically able to attend, I hosted a dinner party on Sunday nights where local politicians and other community leaders regularly assembled for at least one Italian dish and spirited political conversation. I perfected my cooking skills with these soirees which were a lot of work as I tried to make them memorable.
Al’s keen wit and well-developed sense of humor made him an ideal guest to keep things moving and resolve conflicts between some of the guests with disparate political views. As I was busy in the kitchen, I could hear loud laughter regularly coming from the living room. The dinners accomplished many unexpected good things, aside from giving Al something to look forward to each week and keep up his spirits in the face of disaster. Years later I would hear from friends like Dr. Jimmy Blake lamenting that after Al died, the dinners stopped. Many of them became good friends with Al, independent of me. It was unexpected as Al was an avowed and obvious homosexual, a fact that he never hid, even if he could have. I never expected people in public office in the early ’80s to be so accepting, much less fond, of someone whose lifestyle was so divergent from their own religious and political views.
Al was the first sexually liberated person I had ever known and his frankness about sex often left me shocked, embarrassed, and blushing. But it was impossible to dislike him or not appreciate his infectious optimism and keen sense of ironic humor. He was a unique character whose authenticity and genuine love of others made you want to reciprocally accept and appreciate him. And now that he was in trouble, it just seemed right to do whatever we could to help him, without reservation or judgment. It wasn’t easy in my case because I had never been married and was often the subject of nasty gossip as people gratuitously speculated why.
At first, it was amusing as I heard reports of their often nasty comments. On one occasion a campaign worker told me she had heard that I had broken up Councilwoman Angie Grooms Proctor’s marriage and was gay. I asked if I was allegedly sleeping with Angie or her husband Reed? I think it was Mark Twain that said genius was the ability to hold two opposing thoughts in your head at the same time. So there were lots of geniuses in Birmingham that I routinely ignored.
But eventually, it became unsettling and disturbing as some jerk would make an invasive and insulting call to a radio show where I was appearing or make catcalls like one did while I was riding in a Christmas parade in Hoover with one of my godchildren. “Faggot” is a word that should be relegated to the same place as the “N” word. It certainly should never have been uttered on the main drag through Hoover in the direction of a child. Britton was 10 at the time and confused over what was being yelled. And I was helpless to do anything but ride on and ignore him as he grew louder.
Being seen with Al with any frequency only exacerbated those rumors and frankly often made me feel uncomfortable. But as his illness dictated that his friends be more available to him, I made up my mind to just deal with it and ignore the comments as I had done with so many unkind and ignorant others I had endured through the years. I had heard much worse said about me, without justification, throughout my political career, making me often question if I really wanted to be in elective office. It took some courage to continue. Being insulted like this was shocking at first, as I had apparently lived a sheltered life and cannot remember ever having experiences like these in my academic or professional life. But it just came with the territory in Birmingham politics where hate, prejudice, ignorance, and , sometimes, just flat out meanness find a happy home where they flourish.
When Al learned that he had developed another side effect of his disease, diabetes, and would need to start taking insulin, he called me in tears saying he just could not do it; it was too much for him to give himself shots on a daily basis; he hated needles. He said he was ready to die. I successfully argued that he was being selfish and the problem had a simple solution: I would go with him to UAB hospital and learn how to administer the shots and do it for him daily on my way to work. He protested that I was much too busy to do this, but I prevailed in my argument that it was going to be simple, easy, and no real inconvenience. Turned out that it was a disaster. On my first attempt, I was stuck by accident by a lancet he had just used to draw his infected blood for testing.
The flustered nurse called in a panic code over the PA system and I was whisked to another part of the hospital for tests and flushing of the pinprick with hydrogen peroxide. All the while, I was thinking to myself how stupid and careless I had been and if hydrogen peroxide could really kill the AID virus, why were we still in a dither over this terrible disease? I came home hours later slightly exhausted and dazed from the experience, but not unduly worried as I had read that the chances of contracting the disease this way were minuscule. My only worry was that if I did get AIDS, no one would believe that this was how I actually got it. The public loves to gossip and has wild imaginations and I learned early on in my public career to not be distracted by other people’s prejudices and fantasies or it would turn into a full-time job. In this case, I was too busy to think much about it, entertaining my own fantasy that I was going to own a building at UAB because of their negligence. Alas and thankfully, I was fine and Al eventually learned to administer the shots himself which was a huge relief for me, but another ordeal for him.
A couple of months later I was in Rome and visited a Capuchin catacomb under a church in the heart of the city. It seemed like a good thing to do until I came face to face with hundreds of human skulls and bones used to decorate the place. A monk approached me and without speaking a word led me to a corner where there was a small shrine that seemed to revolve around one of his deceased colleagues whose skeleton was still not suitable for display among the hundreds of others lining the walls. I remembered that adage about when in Rome, doing as the Romans do and decided to just do what was expected of me. What could it hurt? So, I said a brief prayer for Al as I lit a candle and deposited a few dollars in the slot below the wax-covered box on which dozens of burning candles sat glowing in the dark and depressing space. When I got home, I called to check on Al and he said that while I was away he had started feeling much better and had been taken off insulin at his last doctor’s appointment. I asked him what day that was. It coincided with the exact day I had knelt at the underground shrine and prayed for him. Being a good Catholic at the time, I was absolutely certain a miracle had occurred. But if it had, it was not lasting.
Al was rapidly losing control of his body and could not walk. He would eventually become unable to speak and confined to a hospital bed in his living room that we positioned so he could view Rushton Park and watch the parade of people who trotted or strolled past his home on a daily basis.
In his final weeks, I took to sleeping on his sofa for fear that he would die during the night. I did not want him dying alone and was distressed when his sister, Grace, was very late one day returning from an errand to fetch some cranberry juice he needed to swallow some of his medications. She explained breathlessly that she had stopped by Lily Rubin at Brookwood and had found this “fabulous outfit that would be perfect for the funeral”. In that instant, it occurred to me that her insensitivity to what was happening might not be appropriate. Certainly, it was not comforting. So I volunteered to stay with him at night so she could continue shopping, unfettered by any obligation to Al. To be fair, I’m certain she loved her brother but could not cope with the disease that was taking him from her. She was mortified and angry when I testified in a court case about his assets that he had died from complications from AIDS. She apparently would have preferred some other deadly disease more socially acceptable and less disruptive to her routine. Sleeping on his designer sofa was a real pain. After tossing and turning all night and waking every time Al groaned or coughed, I would eagerly wait for the hospice nurse to show up in the morning so I could walk back to my apartment to get ready for work, often exhausted, physically and emotionally. His illness took a toll on me, his family, and others who loved him.
It was almost a relief when he finally died. It happened while I was there giving him some cranberry juice from an eyedropper. I had stopped earlier in the day by the Blake house where MaryAnn had given me a huge bunch of daylilies to bring to him.
Their strong fragrance wafted through his house as I turned on a boom box and played one of my favorite Andrea Bocelli works, The Prayer, on which he collaborated with Celine Dion who once said that if God had a human voice, He would sound like Andrea Bocelli. And God seemed to be in the room when a young woman appeared at the door and identified herself. She said she was from hospice and was there to give Al a massage to help with his circulation. But as his gaze met hers as if he knew her, though they had never met, she said that she would instead just give his limbs a light rub with fragrant oils. I stepped to one side of his bed to allow her to work.
After a minute or so, she suddenly looked at me and in a quiet but commanding voice, said, “John, Al would like to leave us now, but he wants your permission to go. Tell him it’s ok”. I was stunned and almost annoyed at this awkward intrusion into what had been a peaceful moment, but there did not seem a way out of this. So I almost whispered as I told him everything was under control and, though we’d miss him, it was ok for him to leave us when he was ready.
Within a few seconds, Al bolted up as if trying to get out of bed. I asked, “Where you going, buddy”, as he slumped back and breathed for the last time. I was reciting the Twenty Third Psalm over his lifeless body when by chance, Jimmy Blake was simultaneously pulling into Al’s driveway, coming to take me to dinner. He entered the room, felt for Al’s pulse and closed his eyes, pronouncing him dead as he then asked Al’s sisters who had gathered on his front porch to come in and say goodbye to their brother. Tears flowed as they hugged and kissed his cold, ravaged body. No one seemed to remember at that moment that he had AIDS.
Then I went home to contemplate what had just happened. I was shaken for days by the experience asking all sorts of questions of myself without answers. I still cry thinking about it; not from the grief, but over the beauty of the moment. I now understood why Sister Francis James, who taught me in the fourth grade at Sacred Heart Elementary in Pensacola, would lead us in daily prayer for a peaceful death. At age 9, it seemed a little morbid and premature, but as I come closer to the appointed time, those early prayers give me some comfort, especially if they arrived where they were supposed to. I’d really like a peaceful death, if at all possible, Lord! But if I stay on Facebook, it may not be possible.
I still don’t know from where the woman with the oils had come, but for me on that afternoon, she was an angel sent by God who helped end the suffering of a kind and decent human. I spoke at his wake and was allowed to do a reading at his funeral as we mourned his loss. I donated a tuxedo shirt and some gold tuxedo shirt studs and cuff links so Al could be buried in his tuxedo. It was a request he had made. “Why a tuxedo?, I asked. He responded, “Because everyone looks good in a tuxedo and I want to look as good as possible. ” His comment gave me another laugh at an inappropriate moment.
But on this particular day in Birmingham, Al was very much alive and had called to ask for a favor. Could I take him to lunch at the Cedar House, a cafeteria restaurant in Tarrant City run by a devoutly Catholic Italian family we all knew from the Inglenook neighborhood and Mass at St. Bernard’s? He craved Grace Romano’s home-style, soul food cooking which was among the best anywhere.
I physically hoisted his frail body into my car and was surprised at how light he was. When we arrived, I carried him to the closest table at the small restaurant favored by working people, politicians, executives, lawyers, and a host of others who would come from all over the Birmingham area to regularly eat there. Grace was normally affable and generous of spirit, but was greatly disturbed by Al’s deteriorated appearance and clearly not happy about his presence. It was an awkward, but natural reaction. I assured her that his disease was not contagious from casual contact but fully understood her recoiling at the sight of his dissipated body.
Her reaction was no different from the one I got from cafeteria workers at Lewis School who refused to wash the lunch trays of disabled kids from nearby Lewis-Slossfield for fear of catching what had caused the children’s disabilities. The superintendent had sent me to solve the problem and it took several meetings, lots of patience, and the participation of a doctor to convince them to resume work so that those children could have hot lunches. With so much misinformation and fear about AIDS circulating, I could not fault Grace for being apprehensive or worrying about his presence’s effect on her business. I had had a few of those moments myself, even though I had thoroughly educated myself on the subject and was relatively fearless about the disease. Still, in the back of my mind, there was occasional apprehension over my close proximity to the deadly AIDS virus.
Despite his physical infirmities, Al was alert and very aware of his surroundings. So when Roger Bass, whom he had never met, approached our table, obviously going out of his way to speak to me, he was paying attention. “Where have you been?”, Roger gregariously blurted in an almost sincere way to convince me he cared about the answer. “You never return your calls.”, he complained. The encounter was short as I smiled weakly without an answer to his question which was awkward and absurd as Roger and his friend, another politician still in office, shuffled through the serving line.
As Roger walked away, Al could not help himself. “I don’t know what that was about,” he said. “But anyone who knows you knows you’d return a call to the devil. That guy is full of it.”. “It’s a long story,” I replied, briefly sharing how I knew Roger and why his comments were particularly disingenuous and annoying.
I could not have guessed that it would be almost thirty years later before I would get around to telling the story again or frankly, give Roger Bass any thought. But the memory of my brief friendship with him came flooding back after he sent me a friend request on Facebook a month or so ago, right before my 72nd birthday, reminding me of a trip I had taken with him for a birthday twenty years ago. I debated whether it was a good idea to accept it, but ultimately decided it couldn’t hurt. I was so wrong. After reading his comments on some of my posts, a couple of which were personally insulting, and being reminded of painful and unpleasant events in Birmingham in which he played a part and that changed my life forever, I decided his was a story worth telling and a saga of how things routinely work in Alabama politics.
Roger, like Harold Ripps was another of those “friends” who seemed to just come with the job in politics. I only became aware of him after my election as a Jefferson County Commissioner where I surprised lots of political observers when I assumed the position as Commissioner of Roads and Transportation. Somehow, an image of me had been created by those who did not know me, thinking I would take some other position less taxing or more elegant where I would not have to get my hands dirty. I had a hard time understanding this. I had personally renovated an entire apartment building on Southside, partly became I intended to live there, but also because I wanted to demonstrate that a landlord could be a responsible real estate investor and make a profit without being a slumlord. In the ’70s this was a real problem in Birmingham as Olshan and other apartment owners allowed buildings and rental houses to deteriorate as they maximized profits by exploiting powerless tenants.
I was pushing landlord-tenant legislation at the City Council to try and get better enforcement of building codes and eliminate Birmingham’s ubiquitous slum housing as one of my first priorities after being elected. I reasoned that setting an example was a good idea from which I might also learn a few things. I also wanted to promote the cause of historic preservation which was just coming into public consciousness at the time. So I bought a deteriorating 8 unit apartment building that was built in 1918 and could be found there every weekend, covered in soot or paint or doing other repairs about which I knew nothing. There was no YouTube so, for me, everything was by trial and error. More than once I jolted myself while working in the attic dealing with the old knob and tube electrical wiring. And I almost fell through one of the plaster ceilings when I misstepped on one occasion missing a rafter. It was sometimes lonely and dangerous work, but I took great satisfaction as I worked to transform my building which I dearly loved.
When I decided to add air conditioning to the units, to preserve a rock wall and hide ductwork to keep the buildings historic character, I hand-dug a large trench with a small shovel in the crawl space under the building, disappearing for hours with no one knowing where I was. This was also well before the days of cell phones and I sometimes shudder to think if I had been bitten by a rat or snake or had a heart attack, how long it would have taken for someone to find me. I might have still been there if this had happened as I doubt many would have thought to search for me in the narrow crawl space.
When the building came back to life and was beautiful, I felt like all the hard work had been worth it. There was a waiting list for the units because I kept the rents within reason and relatively low. I had lots of interesting tenants. One of my favorites was Frank Stitt who had moved to Birmingham to open a restaurant. He was a hard-working, guy with a really lovely disposition and I helped him find a location and loaned him my Greek painter, Mr. Leontis, to paint the space near where I had located my campaign headquarters. I did a few other things to help, as well. I always enjoy going there and still seeing the set of French doors I gave him from my building that separates the bar from the main dining room.
Last year, it gave me great satisfaction when Highlands Bar and Grill was given the James Beard Award as the best restaurant in the Country. No one deserved this more than Frank. He transformed fine dining in Birmingham and paved the way for many other restaurants in this genre. When he asked to rent the apartment and told me he was trying to open a restaurant, I asked him what he knew about the restaurant business with a comment that “You don’t look Greek to me”. Turns out, Greek or not, he knew a lot. He has always been a great citizen as well and was very helpful as we worked to create the fountain at Five Points South as a memorial to our mutual friend, Cecil J. Roberts.
I had foolishly also climbed on the roof of the Lewis-Slossfield School to replace it with the help of a group of my friends who volunteered to do the dirty and dangerous work after the Birmingham School Board claimed they could not afford to make the repairs. Disabled children, some with fragile health, were getting wet while sitting in leaking classrooms. They also had no air conditioning and were stuffed in classrooms where they could not turn around their wheelchairs or easily ambulate with crutches. The new roof really helped, but the building was a WPA project built in the Thirties and had seen better days. I did not know at the time that this project would pay political dividends down the road. Entering elective politics had never crossed my mind. But when I announced for the City Council, I received a call from Helen Shores Lee telling me she and her family had decided to support me for Council. I did not know who she was at the time, but as we became close friends, I realized how pivotal the endorsement of her father, Arthur Shores, had been in my election success. They had made the decision to support me, in large part because her son Robert had severe developmental handicaps and was a student at the heretofore ignored Lewis-Slossfield School.
Eventually, I conceived of the idea of just replacing the school and “mainstreaming” the disabled like I saw them do while I studied in Sweden. 
This complicated project became what is known today as EPIC School, described by Ethel Kennedy as a national model for educating special needs children. To the annoyance of his wife, Kay, Dr. Paul Houston and I obsessed over this special project for years, talking of nothing else as we imagined what the school might be. I wrote the grant and secured the last bit of funding to build it from Governor George Wallace after I met with him in his office and showed him stark and depressing pictures of the children.
I had been told by state officials that there was no money for such a project. But as he thumbed through the black and white photos John Northrup (now director of the Alabama School of Fine Arts) had taken for me, I saw him soften with tears in his eyes. Then he said, “You know, when I travel, they sometimes have to take the jams off the doors to get my wheelchair and me through them”. I nodded in sympathy and then said, “But you have state troopers and staff to do this for you, Governor. These kids can’t order people to help them. They are at our mercy.” With that, he rang for his finance director, “Jimmie, get in here. Cut him a check for the $200,000 he needs to complete the school”. At the Board of Education the next day, everyone was in disbelief as I handed the check to superintendent Wilmer Cody, not least of which was me.
Every time, thereafter, that I wanted to think ill of George Wallace, I remembered that moment and prayed for God to bless his soul. As he lay dying at his modest home, I would sometimes visit him to bring him cigars and discuss politics. His favorite subject was a Birmingham woman named Virginia on whom he apparently had a crush in his youth. For him, she was always the one that got away, to his great regret. He could not believe I did not know her but thought my election in Birmingham was a huge mystery. He had never carried Birmingham in any of his elections.
To communicate with him as his deafness increased, it was necessary to type messages on a computer screen to which he would verbally respond. Whatever sins, he may have committed in his life, he seemed to pay for them in the last days of his extreme suffering.
The notion that I was some kind of wimp was irritating and false, but somehow persistent. Maybe it was because I did not like football and often gave away the free tickets I received because the City ran Legion Field. I even gave away Alabama-Auburn tickets, to people at the dry cleaners or grocery store. If I had been smarter I could have given them to Jeff to scalp for me. Or maybe it was just the goofy look I wore regularly and seem to have perfected. The ties also didn’t help convey my inner macho! 
After my election to the County Commission in 1986 where I took the position as Commissioner of Roads and Transportation, some of the County employees came to my office to tell me I had messed up their “pool” where they had taken bets on which newly elected commissioner would take what position. No one had gotten it right, thanks to my taking the transportation post and throwing a monkey wrench into things, so they decided to use the money to hold a welcome party for the commissioners. But Roads and Transportation was the largest and most complicated division in County government and I feared what might happen if it were left in the hands of someone who might use it politically and foster corruption. Turned out, it was the Environmental Services division I should have been concerned about. Who knew sewers could be such a filthy, but very lucrative business?
I’m sure my becoming Jefferson County Commissioner of Roads and Transportation also came as a surprise to Roger Bass. Roger was president of Dunn Construction, a local road paving company that had been in business for a hundred years. He was the first non-family member to head the company owned by Jamie French and his wife’s family; almost Mountain Brook royalty in what we called the “Tiny Kingdom”, where marrying your cousin is almost obligatory to keep the wealth in the family.
Roger was a Florida native and not to the manor born and it was a singular accomplishment for him to hold this post. He was attractive, pleasant, and apparently competent and talented enough to gain this position and, ultimately, prominence in the road building industry. He used his attributes to his advantage when he was elected president of the Alabama Roadbuilder’s Association, a very powerful political force in the State. They routinely made substantial financial contributions to politicians they favored and who would advance their cause. They proudly and publicly boasted of their influence with powerful Alabama politicians, like Senator Richard Shelby whose campaign coffers bulged with donations from their members.
My ostensible friendship with Roger started with his visit to my office and then an occasional invitation to lunch. It was a casual relationship based on business and politics and his perceived need to have a relationship with the County where his company did business. But it was an unnecessary courtship. I had determined long before my election as commissioner that contracts would be awarded only on the basis of who was the low bidder for the work, no matter how much I liked the contractor or how much they liked or disliked me. And if you were a contributor to my campaign, it would make it more difficult to obtain work as I exercised extreme caution and avoided the practices I had witnessed in the City where I could predict votes of Council members on most issues based on who was in the council chamber and how much they had given to the campaigns of my colleagues. Of course, the more accurate predictor of Birmingham City Council behavior on any one issue at that time was what the Mayor favored as he wielded unparalleled political power. But where special interests placed their political donations, like in all politics at all levels, could not be discounted and played a major role in every Council and Commission decision.
I hated the way things worked. I remember well when Councilman Russell Yarbrough told me one day on the city council election campaign trail that John Harbert, of the namesake construction company he had founded, wanted to see me in his office. I naively asked why? “He wants to make a contribution to your campaign,” he said, sounding a little bewildered by how almost stupid I was about politics and specifically, politics in Birmingham. “Can’t he just mail it?” I asked.
When I had entered the 1977 race for the City Council along with 27 other candidates, Nina Miglionico had sarcastically commented that “It would be a wonderful opportunity for me to learn something about my city.” Boy, did she make an understatement! I not only learned about the City, it’s geography, demographics, and its problems, but gained a greater understanding of human nature and how politics could bring out the best and the worst in people. And I learned for sure that certain people like John Harbert demanded more attention and petting than others to bring out their best.
I had piously promised God that if I got elected to the Council, I would always try to do the right thing, no matter the consequences. (Remember, I was Catholic and while in high school had considered entering seminary and becoming a priest. Guilt, self-punishment, and sacrifice were ingrained in me at an early age.) And I intended to keep that promise and do things differently, even if it meant political peril and the end of my public career. But insulting a guy, who at the time was the richest man in Alabama, did not seem like the way to start. It would have been really dumb. So I made an appointment and nervously trotted out to Shelby County and the chic, intentionally rust-covered complex that was Harbert Construction.
Sandy Falkenhagen, Mr. Harbert’s devoted secretary greeted me and made me comfortable as I anxiously waited to meet one of the most powerful men in the State. He came out and reached for my hand in a warm greeting I did not expect and immediately allayed my discomfort. His beautiful office was adorned with priceless things, like silver made by Paul Revere, old master paintings, and a sculpture done by an Italian artist friend of his, Enzo Plazzotta, of the many faces of the actor Peter Ustinov. Mr. Harbert also commissioned Enzo’s studio to make copies of Leonardo DaVinci’s Vetruvian Man which he donated to various places, including one to the Birmingham Museum of Art.
He presented the piece to the Museum with great pride and fanfare. It never occurred to him that the naked body depicted would offend some of the women of the Museum. While president of the City Council, I got a call from Margaret Livingston, a really lovely person dedicated to the Museum who asked me to find a way to give the statue back to Mr. Harbert without hurting his feelings. I asked why, in disbelief that she would risk insulting one of the museum’s most generous patrons. She then took me to the loading dock to show me the work and delicately explain why it was offensive. It became obvious. It was simply a matter a perspective in more ways than one. On the loading dock, the Vetruvian Man’s crotch was at eye level and the first thing that greeted your gaze. It was indeed somewhat daunting. So I came up with a plan to elevate it on a green marble pedestal to match the building, outside on the west wall of the Museum (which the City owns, by the way.)
At the dedication of the statue in its new spot, I joked that I had been the model for it. No one seemed to buy it, least of all Mr. Harbert. Marvin Engle, commented out loud, “You wish.” The beautiful statue worked for a while, suspended fifty feet in the air, but then the Puritans and evangelicals mobilized and insisted it be taken down from its perch as it was too easily viewed from the Expressway and passing traffic. I think it now resides at the Civic Center’s health forum, but who knows? It’s Alabama so it might have been melted down by now to make bullets.
Someday I hope someone will honestly explain to me why Vetruvian man’s small penis was more offensive than Vulcan’s large bare ass which has graced the City for decades and still does. 
When Enzo lay dying, Mr. Harbert rushed to his side to be of comfort. Despite his humble, almost redneck beginnings, John Harbert was a man of remarkable sensitivity; charming, intelligent, and sophisticated. It surprises me that no one ever accused him of being gay. He boasted that he had started his multi-million dollar empire with winnings from a crap game as he was leaving the Army. But he was a shrewd businessman and astute political player. And, as I was about to learn, he was also adamantly and obviously racist.
After some complaining about the City and how the “niggers were taking over”, he got down to business questioning me on how I intended to win my race. My answers did not seem to matter. All that mattered to him was that I was white, and in the runoff election, was one of five white candidates pitted against five black ones. To his mind it was very simple; the five whites had to prevail if the City were to survive. Concern about the racial dynamics of this race had led me to pressure one of my strongest support groups, VOTES-Voters of the Eastern Section- to endorse William Bell for the Council to encourage integrated political slates. (Their endorsement effectively launched William’s long political career, a fact which I have regretted several times.)
I had been endorsed by the powerful black political organization, the Jefferson County Democratic Council, headed by Arthur Shores and David Hood in a gutsy move that created much controversy and, I suspect, some grief for them. I have previously mentioned the role his grandson’s disability played in this decision. Their endorsement, which excluded Jeff Germany, is what gave rise to the Citizens Coalition, founded by Richard Arrington, that soon overtook them as the most powerful black political organization in the State of Alabama. But they fervently shared my belief that racial politics that ignored qualifications of individual candidates was a bad thing. Diversity is a good and necessary thing. I was honored to have the endorsement and ignorant of how really powerful it was at the time. I soon learned that this endorsement was tantamount to being elected, foisting me to the top of the pack in the Council race and assuring my election to City government and launching my political career, for better or worse.
Mr. Harbert did not know this as he pulled a checkbook from a drawer in his expansive and expensive desk and asked, “How much will it take for you to win?” I told him we had run a conservative campaign and I estimated the runoff would cost another $2000 ( It was 1977 and things were lots cheaper then!) He began writing a check for that amount. “Oh no, you misunderstood,” I said. “That’s the total cost of the campaign and I am only accepting maximum donations of $250 from individuals who can afford it.” “Why’s that?” he asked with a tone of disbelief that bordered on disdain. I stammered, “So that if I am ever put in a position where I need to return a donation, I’ll be able to afford it,” He scowled as he peered over his reading glasses and tore up the check he had started. Then, without comment, he wrote another for $500 and tossed it at me. “Take this and go”, he said. “And good luck”. I left feeling like I had been violated in some way, but the campaign needed the money and alienating this guy did not seem like the best idea at the time. He was not just a political player and super-rich, he was also being appointed by the Governor to the board of the Alabama School of Fine Arts where I had just begun working. I was no fool. I reasoned that I would find other ways to demonstrate independence and integrity down the line. But it would not be easy.
Years later, I had a similar experience where I fell short of the mark, choosing discretion over political courage when I received a call in my Commission office from a federal judge. I had never received a phone call from any judge, much less a federal one and I was taken aback. I was more polite than usual, anxious to hear why he was calling. He began by saying that it was against the law for a federal judge to make a campaign contribution to anyone, so he could not help my campaign for re-election. I jumped to a conclusion that he must have been solicited in a direct mail appeal and apologized saying I would be sure to have his name removed from our mailing list. I went on explaining that the list had probably not been updated since he had given to my Council campaign as a private attorney. “Oh no,” he said. “That’s not it. My mother found some cash on the street and she swears it belongs to you. Can you come by my office and get it?” When I protested that it could not have been mine, he adamantly repeated the claim. It jolted me as his meaning became clear.
As I hung up, I debated on how to handle this obvious violation of campaign laws. But again, I reasoned, how stupid would it be to insult a federal judge with a campaign finance morality no one else seemed to be practicing. Besides, I reasoned, when will I ever be in a position where there might be a conflict of interest with a federal judge?
The future can be hard to predict. I could never have imagined at the time that I would one day file a formal complaint against federal Judge Karen Bowdre for her conflicts of interest and prejudice as I did in 2011. It’s a story for another time and one I should have told long ago. And I will tell it in detail in a later piece. ( I see a book coming).
Her husband, Birch Bowdre, was a member of a law firm I hired to sue the City to create districts in future Birmingham City Council races. I did this with the help of Marty Connors and others for many reasons, among them to give ordinary people without resources to run an expensive city-wide, at-large race, a chance to win. It was also to assure more racial balance on the Council, which frankly did not work out quite as well. His law firm made lots of money off the lawsuit as it settled. But Judge Bowdre saw no conflict here as she presided over my trial in 2009 for “theft of honest services”, a crime prosecutors employ when they can come up with nothing else to take down someone they’ve targeted. It was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010.
It’s hard to imagine her in the company of great judges I have known or had dealings with, like Hobart Grooms, Foy Guin, Sam Pointer, Bill Acker, U.W. Clemon, and Sharon Blackburn. In my informed opinion, Krane Bowdre has no business being on any bench, much less the federal one, as I will explain in the future blog piece unless I get zapped ahead of time. I have kept up with many of her decisions and I can’t fathom the number of lives she has ruined while moralizing, as an allegedly devout Baptist, about how St. Paul served jail time and it did him good. She apparently thinks everyone should go to jail for the moral experience.
In a recent case, she sent a father of small children to prison for 26 months because his six-year-old son found a gun in his mother’s bedroom and took it to school, shooting himself in the hand. No one can argue that the man should have not had the gun as someone with a prior felony, or that he was not irresponsible in leaving it where it might be found by a child. But a reasonable question of decent Christian people might be how the long term interest of this child and his siblings was served by depriving them of the breadwinner in the family and the influence of their father? I can’t imagine the hardship this created for their lives.
But things like this are of no concern for the proselytizing Judge Bowdre, who is known for handing out exceptionally harsh sentences, except in cases like that of Ken Livesay which is discussed later. In her courtroom, she regularly dons a Kente cloth stole with religious symbols as an outward sign of her piety. Of course, it could just be a bad fashion statement. But I doubt it having heard her preach from the bench while screwing me. What’s wrong with wearing this or any religious symbol in court is this is that it implies that she has been anointed by God and is infallible in her rulings. It is apparently routine for her to ruin people’s lives, lecture them, and then pray about it later. The good news is that she is retiring in 2020, probably to join a law firm, like that of her friend lawyer Julia Boaz Cooper. Or maybe she will become a Baptist missionary. In any case, God bless her. I have a recurring fantasy that we will meet in the afterlife and have an opportunity to discuss our differences. But maybe not.
After Julia Cooper testified in my trial on some trivial point, the Judge told her she was excusing her as she knew she was anxious to get to California to see her significant other. They both giggled at the prospect. I wrote down the precise time and date that the exchange had occurred and was stunned when it had been expunged from the trial transcript. It was relevant for many reasons, not least of which was that during Julia Cooper’s representation of Healthsouth against me in the conflict over the Pita Stop Building, she had been paying Jack McNamee, my attorney, for his services in another case without revealing this fact to me. I had complained over and over that her law firm, Bradley Arant, could not represent anyone against me without my express permission, as I had been a client of her firm for many years and they had sensitive financial and other information in their files that could be used against me.
When she refused to step aside, likely because of the huge fees she was being paid by HealthSouth, I contacted John Whittington, my attorney at Bradley. Turned out he had left the firm and was nor Senior VP and Legal Counsel for HealthSouth. But he did respond and agree that there was a conflict that he would ask the manager of the Bradley firm, Bo Grenier, to handle. He never did and Julia continued to direct the fight against me in court, using a surrogate attorney, Hope Cannon, as the frontwoman.
I never understood why my many demands of my Attorney Jack McNamee that he insist that Bradley recuse themselves from the case went unmet until I got new information years later. From the very beginning of my case, Mr. McNamee had been taking large payments from HealthSouth, approved by Mr. Whittington and Julia Cooper. He had simply fucked me over for this money, throwing my case and even stealing $150,000 from a later settlement. It is an unbelievable tale of greed and ethical violations by at least three, and maybe six lawyers who knew what was happening. I was the only one kept in the dark as they raped me and laid the foundation for my future problems. In any other state, they all would have lost their law licenses. And while Bradley attorneys can strut around like respectable professionals, I will always know the truth about this stain on their integrity.
Of course, this is not the only ethical lapse for Julia. The guy in California she was rushing to meet was the attorney on the other side of a case against HealthSouth. She capitulated and settled with him for $40 million of HealthSouth dollars and then married him.
Judge Bowdre is not the only one with a bogus commitment to integrity in public office, free of personal politics. I can’t count on my hands and toes the number of public officials who are there for what they can take; not give. At least Julia is honest in her dishonesty, demonstrating she’ll do anything for money, position and a false image of respectability.
More than once I had attempted to persuade fellow commissioners to adopt a policy of eliminating no-bid contracts in all County business, including personal service contracts which were exempted by State law from the bid process. If you were a lawyer or engineer, you could be hired on a negotiated contract and paid whatever the Commissioner in charge decided and might get past the full Commission. It was not hard to do as self-serving Commissioners had adopted a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” practice. You could do whatever you wanted in your division, as long as, you did not question what other Commissioners were doing in theirs’. I didn’t buy it and often “meddled” in the affairs of other Commissioners, arguing that I had not been elected as Commissioner of Roads and Transportation, but as a County Commissioner and needed to be involved in all aspects of County government, providing oversight where needed. Most Commissioners, with the exception of Jim Gunter who was a remarkably decent and competent public official, strongly disagreed. Clearly, lawyers had designed this loophole in the law and lobbied for its passage. But engineers and other “professionals” also loved this irrational exemption which no one could adequately explain or justify. And every Democrat on the Commission fully embraced this practice as a way to reward financial supporters and advance their own political security.
I was dismayed and more than shocked when my proposal to end the practice of no-bid contracts met with adamant opposition, even from small engineering firms that would have benefited from my resolution. I had reasoned they would like a policy that evened the playing field and gave them a fighting chance against large firms with deep pockets and professional lobbyists. I was dead wrong. When it failed miserably, I did the next best thing and adopted a policy for my division that banned the acceptance of anything of value from companies with which the County did business. Only after pressure from the County Engineer, Jerry Drake, for whom I had great respect and appreciation, did I modify the policy to allow for “the reasonable cost of a meal” to allow him to continue his practice of regularly dining with engineers and contractors from whom, he argued, he regularly obtained useful professional information.
After my own desk became cluttered with gifts from one particular engineering firm, Cecil Jones and Associates, I wrote Mr. Jones with as kind a letter as I could, explaining that these gratuities would no longer be accepted and were unnecessary to obtain business from the County. They were, in fact, harmful to a fair process for awarding work. Cecil was not happy after so much effort to successfully master the art of gift-giving with things like bottles of liquor with commissioners’ names engraved on them or desk sets likewise personalized and not returnable. He was already predisposed to dislike me, having always supported my political opponents in City races and this did not help. I had no objection, however, to his and Jerry Drake continuing to play golf and maintaining their long-standing friendship and association. Unfortunately, every time his company’s name appeared on a road engineering contract, I became paranoid and paid particular attention to make certain the amount being paid was appropriate to the amount of work being rendered. It wasn’t an easy process, especially since I was the only commissioner who seemed to have any concern or problems with unbid contracts or gifts from contractors and vendors.
Cecil Jones wasn’t alone in relying on gifts to pave the way for special favors from Commissioners. I remember well receiving an expensive Mont Blanc pen from O.Z. Hall, the tax collector, for inexplicable reasons. He followed this up with an envelope containing five-hundred-dollar bills. It was allegedly a Christmas present from a colleague and other commissioners said I would hurt his feelings if I made a big deal out of it. His gifts were especially puzzling to me as it was well known that Mr. Hall had no love for me. He blamed me for his son’s loss in the Republican primary after Sheriff Mel Bailey revealed that he had been arrested on drug distribution charges while a student at Mountain Brook High School. Despite this revelation, O.Z. Jr. used his father’s name identification to inch into a run-off election with me where I had missed winning outright by just a handful of votes. I tried to persuade the young O.Z. that his race against me was a waste of time and money and a distraction from beating the Democrat Chriss Doss in the general election. He did not seem to care and got trounced, leaving his father very unhappy over this setback in his attempts to build the Hall dynasty. Returning his money would not help our working relationship.
Several years later, the Sheriff also leaked to the press details of an extortion plot where two young men who Mr. Hall had solicited for sex tried to blackmail him for money to remain silent. They had found his business card in his pants which he had removed for the occasion and thought they had hit the jackpot. The money he had paid them was apparently not enough and they wanted $10,000 from a guy who seemed to have deep pockets.
When Sheriff Bailey told this story to commissioners, all I could think of was the scene in 1971 classic film, Harold and Maude, where Harold’s priest counsels him about his bizarre relationship with an octogenarian and expresses, in graphic terms, his disgust at the thought of Harold’s supple young body pressed against Maude’s 80- year-old sagging frame.
O.Z.’s story rivaled this one and was one no one, even with a wild imagination, could have invented. This incident forever changed Mr. Hall’s relationship with the Sheriff who at that time was the most popular politician in the County.
Mel Bailey was what Matt Dillon wished he could have been. His opinion mattered and influenced commissioners who expressed disgust and shock at the revelations. But, in fact, there had been many hints about O.Z’s proclivities. In fact, it had been obvious that under his guidance, the Tax Collector’s office had become a haven of always attractive young men who served as drivers and errand boys for him. But the extortion details were just too disturbing for Sheriff Bailey who became adamant about the disgust he felt for this self-proclaimed pillar of the community who had made a name for himself in the car business before becoming Tax Collector. It was a powerful position where he regularly gave favor to large landowners and friends. (A delay of collection of tax payments of millions would earn money for the favored businesses.) He liked the job and its power and would have been there until he died if these enterprising hustlers had not discovered his business card.
This incident occurred well after his attempts to gain favor with Commissioners. Fully aware that he would be angry, I bit the bullet, made copies of the currency he left in my office and my note refusing the money and hand-delivered them to his office. It made no sense to me for an independently elected public official to be making these types of gifts to Commissioners, even if we did control the air conditioning in his offices or whether he got new carpet or a budget increase to hire more boys. But why?
Weeks later, the real reason for his generosity became clear when he appeared with some of his Mountain Brook friends to lobby the Commission for money for a cause they were promoting. The group wanted the County to subsidize the salaries of doctors who delivered services to the indigent at Cooper Green Hospital and elsewhere. Billy Hulsey, a wealthy businessman and the principal spokesman for the group, refused to answer a question I posed to him about whether anyone from the County was being paid or given anything of value to assist in this effort to lobby commissioners. I already knew the answer, having learned quite by accident that Mr. Hall was driving a new car provided to him for his services to this group. His County car was being driven by one of the young men in his office while he sported around in a new Mercury Marquis provided by his wealthy benefactors. I think it fair to say, his motives in promoting the cause of allegedly underpaid doctors were not entirely altruistic, unselfish, or honest.
The same was true when he used his stretch limo leftover from his car business to take Commissioners to lunch at Shoal Creek with Hall Thompson, the founder of the elite golf club which had seen its fair share of negative publicity for its racially discriminatory practices. We were ushered to a very private basement room where we were served lunch and given large elaborately framed prints of Lee Trevino on the 18th green at Shoal Creek, signed by Mr. Trevino himself. O.Z. told delighted commissioners that the prints were selling for about $1500 each.
Mr. Thomson, with O.Z.’s help and guidance, finally revealed why we were there. It wasn’t just a social event to get gifts and lunch. The reason we were receiving this royal treatment was that they wanted the Commissioners to fund retiring the debt of a couple of hundred thousand dollars on the Harbert Center, located in downtown Birmingham. Mr. Hall had been a very close friend of John Harbert and they had collaborated to build a building so their Rotary Club would have a suitable place to regularly meet. It was now called the Harbert Center in honor of John Harbert, its principal benefactor.
I was involved in the original request by Mr. Harbert to the City to help with its initial seed money to get the project off the ground. My meetings with him on the topic came rushing back to mind as we chomped on steak and potatoes. The City was inclined to help, but a condition of its contribution was unfettered use of the building without charge to community groups. “You mean, you want me to allow niggers to use my building?” Mr. Harbert exclaimed in alarm. “Exactly”, I said, “but maybe without the derogatory terms ”. “OK”, he said, “but it’s going to cost you more money and they can only use it if they pay the going rate.” After months of my shuttling back and forth between City Hall and the rust palace, he finally agreed to drop the conditions and accept the City’s money, allowing minority civic groups to meet there for free. He even made a trip to City Hall to appear before a fawning City Council. finance committee, chaired by William Bell to make his case. Without uttering a word, he got everything he asked for as no one on the Council challenged him on his racist views which everyone acknowledged as part of his persona and unchangeable.
Now Hall Thompson wanted funds from the County to pay off the building’s debt and the Commissioners were feeling generous, armed with a new special gift and proximity to one of the community’s richest and powerful and philanthropic citizens.
I openly expressed misgivings about the contribution as other commissioners pressed me to agree to the funding. “Alright,” I said after being badgered for fifteen minutes, “But if we agree to leave Chris and Reuben home the next time, can we be allowed to eat upstairs in the main dining room with the white people?” Commissioners squirmed in their seats thinking that their new acquired, signed prints might not make it to the limo.
Later, Mr. Thomson called me at my office, after he got the money, to tell me what an “asshole” I was. He also objected to my telling the story of John Harbert’s regular use of the “N” word which he also deemed appropriate on regular occasions. I pleaded guilty and did not argue with him.
Chris McNair came to my office later and told me I was either crazy or the bravest white boy he had ever known to confront Mr. Hall in this way. When I asked him why he supported this generous gift from the County which we really could not afford, especially in light of the well-known racism of Mr. Hall, he responded that he was used to attitudes like his and besides, he added, he (Chris) was the first minority member of the Rotary Club for which the building had been built. He was going to enjoy it.
Meanwhile, O.Z. Hall took credit for having convinced the Commission to make the donation of taxpayer money so the Rotary Club could keep meeting in semi-regal splendor without the worry of how to pay for it. Meanwhile, back in Sherman Heights, Wylam, Ensley, Tarrant, West End, etc., life went on as usual with poverty, crime and despair rising and no funds to meet basic needs. In fairness, however, the building gets lots of use for community functions and now serves the entire community. Mr. Harbert might be proud to have his name on it, even in a majority Black city.
Mr. Hall eventually wound up under investigation by the U.S. Attorney when he fired one of the County’s insurance bond underwriters after that business refused to make a substantial contribution to Gary White, a former Homewood Councilman and state representative, who was opposing me in the Republican primary. O.Z. used his office to raise other monies for Gary, personally accompanying him on visits to vendors to extort whatever he could from them, making the case that I had to go and I was unfit for office because of my “lifestyle”. I laughed when one businessman on whom they called told me they said they thought I might be “queer”. Really? Coming from O.Z Hall, a concern that someone might be homosexual?
The case against O.Z. was settled after the election (which I lost to Gary in one of the nastiest campaigns ever run in Jefferson County) when he agreed to resign. It came too late to correct the damage and injustice that was done to me. But no one, including me, really wanted to see O.Z. Hall do prison time at his advanced age no matter how disgusting his personal and political life was.
The corrupt patronage system was ingrained in other ways and difficult to end with other commissioners supporting doing business as usual and accepting whatever they could get to supplement their income and enjoy a better lifestyle. They viewed the Commission as part-time work which did not pay a fair wage, so taking advantage of opportunities when they presented themselves seemed rational, Besides, no one seemed to be paying close attention or really give a damn, especially the Birmingham News; at least until things were well out of control.
In the sewer division, run by Chris McNair, tens of millions of dollars were handed out to engineering firms like Engineering Services Associates in Homewood, run by Frank Lindstrom. Chris objected to my attempts to end no-bid contracts, even in the area of County auctions of “surplus” equipment over which I had sole control as part of my Commission responsibilities. I was shocked when I reviewed the auction process dominated by Mike Acton, an auctioneer. (See my previous post on him and his cozy relationship with Jabbo Waggoner). We were literally giving away valuable heavy equipment and trucks and vehicles with significant useful life as they were auctioned for pennies on the dollar to favored individuals, companies, and municipalities which depended on the County to regularly replace their worn-out equipment through this flawed process.
My attempts to open up this process and make it fair prompted Chris to invite me to a meeting in his office where I was shocked to find Mike Acton sitting at the conference table as Chris excused himself because of some emergency at his photography studio, which was his priority business. Being a Commissioner was almost a hobby to him and he devoted as little attention to it as possible.
During the meeting to persuade me not to open up the auction process to competition, Acton showed me a handsome Rolex watch and offered it to me “at his cost” which I assume would have been minimal. I politely refused the offer and became more convinced that I was right to try and break up the monopoly he held on County business. But people like Jabbo Waggoner, the dean of the Jefferson County legislative delegation and “respected” Republican leader, made it near impossible with their longstanding and close relationships with Acton and others like him. For him, things like this were just politics as usual in Alabama. Jabbo had no ostensible skills and every job he ever held that paid a reasonable wage was given to him because of his influence in the Alabama Legislature. Without his senate position, he would have been under-qualified to get work at McDonald’s. A disgusting womanizer, he hit on every skirt that moved. But he’s now an icon in Local Republican circles where his behavior has become the norm.
There was little I could do about some of the other benefits Commissioners routinely received from vendors and lobbyists. First, one had to know about them and that was hard although, occasionally, I would glean some disturbing information from an unexpected source. At a social event attended by Frank Lindstrom who was related to friends of mine by marriage, I learned he had taken Chris to the Caribbean on a vacation for which Lindstrom had paid. This came as a surprise to me, even though I was aware of his penny-pinching ways. Chris always carried an ironing board in his van so he could iron his own shirts to save money. Still, it more than irritated when he would always oppose improvements to City of Birmingham facilities or properties, under the guise of saving taxpayer money. He even opposed my paving the lot of the Western Mental Health Center which was eventually renamed in his honor. Seriously!. But it was hard to imagine that he was accepting gifts like this and even harder to prove this trip and others like it had anything to do with influencing his awarding of no-bid contracts to Frank’s firm, ESA in Homewood. Moreover, attacking the integrity of a Commissioner and public figure who had made a supreme sacrifice to the cause of civil and human rights when his daughter had tragically died in the Sixteenth Street church bombing would take more courage (or stupidity) than I was capable of mustering.
Despite his failings, Chris was a very likable guy. The Birmingham News and most white conservatives loved him while reviling me as the agitator who was never satisfied until there were chaos and trouble. They even blamed me for simply abstaining on a vote to elect the Commission president when the choice between David Orange and McNair had tied at two votes apiece. There was a blistering editorial attacking me even though simple logic and math dictated that any Commissioner changing his vote would have broken the tie. I was not essential to the process and did not want to be. 
It was hard to imagine David Orange and Chris McNair colluding after their bitter race for the presidency of the Commission. David was a former aid to the Sheriff and proud of the fact that he was the last person to arrest Martin Luther King when they booked him at the Bessemer Courthouse. After he was elected to the Commission, he was a continuous thorn in the side of Sheriff Bailey, prompting me, one day, to ask him why his grudge was so bitter. He fought the Sheriff on every issue, no matter how small. It was a mistake to ask him if the Sheriff had slept with his wife, but his opposition was so personal I could not imagine anything on par that would have prompted his vitriol and one-sided feud. Of course, while throwing rocks and hiding his hand, Commissioner Orange became an active minister of the Gospel and continued to preach after his defeat for re-election by Mary Buckelew who exploited his advocacy of the hated County occupational tax. But somehow Chris and David made peace and voted lockstep on every issue, especially if I were on the other side.
While I generically warned of the corruption that might come from lack of full Commission oversight of contracts and accountability, I could not have remotely imagined the depth of the corruption that was festering and would eventually cause the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history when the County was forced to face the consequences of the Commissioners’ willing ignorance of ,and refusal to challenge, what was happening in the “Environmental Services” division. There was certainly plenty of blame to go around, but the record, at the Courthouse and in the morgue of the Birmingham News, will show that I regularly and loudly warned of what might happen if this system that provided no oversight or accountability was allowed to go unchecked. And I was regularly criticized for it.
The sewer disaster came years after I had left the Commission, defeated by Gary White who acted at the direction of Bill Slaughter, the principal architect of the sewer mess and the financial arrangements to correct an artificial problem. (See my previous posts that explain this issue in more detail and how corporations like Haskell Slaughter, USX Realty, and others benefited.) Mr. Slaughter was aided and abetted by the County Attorney, Andy Strickland, who retired with a taxpayer-funded pension of over $25,000 a month. (Not a misprint.)
The tale of Roger Bass’ influence is slightly different but no less insidious. The County owned paving equipment and regularly paved roads, but apparently, there were times when it was economically advantageous to use an outside company. In these instances, it was always the low bidder who got the contract, though there may have been some exceptions in special situations and there could be change orders which drove up the price after acceptance of a low bid. I don’t remember the details of every contract, but I think it is likely that any non-bid road contracts would have gone to Dunn Construction. They were local, did good work and at, what I was told by professionals, was a fair price. But the fact that Roger was known to all Commissioners, had made political contributions to some of us, and was ostensibly a personal friend of mine would not have hurt his chances at County business.
On more than one occasion I had been forced to stop sweetheart deals negotiated with vendors that employees in the Roads and Transportation division assumed were friends of mine and held some sway with me. That impression was often influenced by one of my staff assistants, Joey Sanders, who had been an aide to Senator Jeremiah Denton. I had hired him against the advice of other respected Republicans because l was anxious to prove I was a team player and good Republican and I was committed to helping Senator Denton place his staff after he lost re-election. I also reasoned that Joey’s well-known ultra-conservatism could act as a foil to my tendencies to lean toward the middle, if not left of center. If not progressive, I was definitely not regressive and it apparently showed. It was a bitter battle between conservatives and moderate Republicans when I was elected secretary of the Alabama Republican Party by a narrow margin after Emory Folmar used the full weight of his influence as a former chair of the Party to help me. You know you’re in conservative hell, and trouble, when you’re in a place where Emory Folmar is the most liberal guy in the room.
I mentioned to Mayor Folmar my problems with Albert Lee Smith, the arch-conservative Republican congressman who had replaced John Buchanan, a Baptist preacher who had held the post for many years until he was defeated by Smith because he had become too liberal. He was actually a thoroughly decent and rational guy who had served the community well,m especially as a member of the Steel Caucus, protecting Birmingham’s steel industry. But that didn’t matter. He must have failed some litmus test administered by the Right-wing of the Party and he had to go.
Albert Lee had interviewed me in my commission race as he allegedly was trying to make up his mind about who to support. After hours of answering questions about abortion and Star Wars, where I was dismayed while wondering what these things had to do with service on the Commission, he told me he was leaning toward Stuart Gaines, the head of the Moral Majority in Alabama. I was frustrated that I had valuable wasted time with someone who had a closed mind and limited intellectual capacity. He was a demonstrator for stupid.
So Mayor Folmar said this, “You know, I satisfied the Catholic Archbishop of Mobile with my position on abortion when I was running for governor. But I could not satisfy Albert Lee Smith. There’s only one way to handle him. Call him up and tell him to kiss your ass.”
So the next day I did just that. My only regret is that I did not include his wife Eunie in the insult. As evangelicals and other Regressives try to paint her as some sort of secular saint, I see her as a force for ignorance, hatred, and stupidity as she crusades against abortion and moralizes about how others should live. Her husband fell off a ladder and was killed. Would it be mean to say, he was brain dead before he hit the ground? Probably, but the pain this comment may cause is nothing compared to the pain and suffering their ignorant position on many personal issues have caused many others.
My trust and confidence in Joey diminished when he was caught joyriding in a County vehicle with a couple of state legislator friends of his and caused damage to the vehicle. He was generally a good guy, but perhaps at the time, a little immature and self-serving. I overlooked his youthful indiscretions but drew the line at awarding contracts to his, or my, friends. He was competent and did many good things for the community from my office and in other positions, he held in Republican circles. He was actively involved in the Young Republicans which held a fundraiser by “roasting” me. I turned the tables a little by inviting to the event the head of the Communist Youth Organization in Russia who was visiting Alabama on some State Department-sponsored program. But the people in attendance evened the score when they all donned glasses and mustaches to mimic my ethnic (Carlos Santana) look before I became a Republican.
Joey was the driving force in the effort to establish City Stages and without his influence, this music festival would never have received seed money from the County or gotten off the ground. Aside from approving County money, he persuaded me to allow the County bridge crews to help construct the various performance stages, saving the organization, eventually headed by his cousin George McMillan,
tens of thousands of dollars. Of course, this did not offset the thousands wasted on security details and other positions for attractive young men that George insisted upon hiring. He and Joey eventually parted company over George’s predilections, which shared much in common with O.Z. Hall’s. Many have forgotten the story in the news media of the recovery of George’s wallet from some young male drifters he had met at the Trailways bus station and invited back to his law office for coffee. Misusing City Stages as a personal harem of sorts contributed to its eventual demise. It was a shame as many people loved this music festival that gave people something to do in downtown Birmingham in the summer.
Obviously, Peyton Place had nothing on Birmingham. I know, I know; I can hear it now as people remember the stories in the Birmingham News about my hiring a porn star on a charity’s dime that suggest I might be a huge hypocrite. In another of my blog piece’s about Ryan Idol, aka Marc Anthony Donais, my oldest Godchild, I try to set the record straight with the facts which really don’t matter to people who always look for scandal and the worst dirt they can find to prove that no one is better than they are. But Anthony, who had been an internationally famous adult film star in his youth, was financially well off when he volunteered to help get Computer Help for Kids off the ground, helping renovate the Pita Stop Building in which it and other charities were housed with his physical labor and a loan of $35,000 to get the charity off the ground. We had previously worked together on other projects and this one was one in which he believed and thought he might be of help. He and I speak regularly and are still working on projects together and I have watched his evolution into a decent, caring person through the years with a past he deeply regrets.
He wrote Joey Kennedy of the Birmingham News to correct their slanderous articles implying that he was hired by me as a boy toy and did no work. They even published a cartoon of me in heart covered underwear doing a pole dance at a gay strip club which seemed like a new low, even for the Birmingham News. Commissioner Jim Carns called me the morning it appeared and suggested I not look at the newspaper and the cartoon because it was so revolting. My only comment was how did they know I had boxer shorts with hearts on them? They’re next to my moose and penguin underwear from Sweden. But it really wasn’t funny.
He did not know my history with what I often called the “Fourth Avenue Rag” or he would not have been shocked by anything they printed. Their Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, John Archibald once secretly taped me in an interview with his editors, the normally prudent and professional journalist, Tom Scarritt, among them. He then published selected excerpts from the tape while lying about it being surreptitiously recorded. There was nothing there that I found particularly embarrassing or disturbing, but it was the principle of the thing that an allegedly professional and noble journalist would outright lie about his underhanded tactics. Apparently, you don’t have to write particularly well or have character to win a Pulitzer. Depending on how this tome is received, I may apply myself. Or should I hold out for a Nobel? Ever since I saw Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn receive his Nobel Prize in Literature while I studied in Sweden in the mid-’70s, I’ve really wanted one. I still have the ticket and program framed on the wall of my study. So I’m halfway there.
Of course, the Birmingham News publisher, Victor Hanson the Second, was as devout Christian as was Victor the Third, his successor. But he uncharitably and viciously attacked me after he was thrown off the board of directors of the School of Fine Arts. He blamed me for his demise, but it was actually John Harbert who told Governor James that Victor Hanson II was useless and needed to be replaced. He was also miffed at my opposition to using taxpayer money to fund a parking lot on Fifth Avenue near their new building for the News’ almost exclusive use. Councilman Russell Yarbrough had warned me years earlier to never cross anyone who had a “warehouse full of paper and bought ink by the barrel.” Another time I should have listened.
But I don’t fully blame the Birmingham News for printing what they were leaked by Bradley Arant. The rumor that I was having an affair with a porn star was actually begun by Hope Cannon, the previously mentioned surrogate attorney with Bradley Arant, who was grasping at straws to prove her case in a lawsuit between me and HealthSouth over the fate of the “Pita Stop” and nearby historic Methodist Church buildings. The properties had been pledged to charities to preserve them and used them for community purposes by Richard Scrushy before he was abruptly removed as chairman and CEO of HealthSouth. He intended to transfer the properties, which were in a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) when the new digital hospital on Highway 280 finally opened.
Hope made a case that Anthony had no technical computer skills and therefore should never have been used by the charity after I readily admitted that I did not know of any special training or skills he had with computers. In fact, he did have computer skills, but that was really not the issue, He was completely irrelevant to the case and every dollar he had been paid for helping renovate the building and refurbish old computers was simply the repayment of his well-documented loan. But like many lawyers, winning is everything to her and her colleagues; reputations and the truth be damned. She clearly knew the truth and it did not matter. Her client had deep pockets and when you are billing them tens of thousands of dollars a month, success means everything to your firm’s pocketbook and your utility to the firm. I’m sure she did not want to disappoint Julia Cooper who was still seething from my attempts to have Bradley recuse themselves from the case.
Oddly, I took some consolation in a final meeting with Ms. Cannon and other attorneys in the courtroom of Scott Vowell when she could not look me in the eye while we discussed her firm’s conflict of interest in representing HealthSouth against me. I sometimes wonder how she rationalizes all that happened to me since she helped lay a foundation of sleaze and poisoned the air with a theory and storyline she knew was false. I doubt it bothers her as she continues to spend HealthSouth’s money and enjoy the opulent surroundings of Bradley, Arant, Boult, Cummings and the prestige that comes working for a venerable law firm, once Birmingham’s largest.
It was a particularly sad moment for me to realize how sleazy the firm could act because I had for many years called a number of attorneys at this firm, friends. Among them were John Adams, Mabry Rogers, and Jodie Smith who I helped with an application to law school. He impressed me in our meeting where he reviewed my resume as a template for designing his. He commented that he was amazed when he read I had won Harvard’s Sheldon Prize as a graduate student. He is the only person in my entire life, other than the people who awarded it to me in 1974, who knew what that was, much less that T.S. Elliott had also won it. I was impressed with him and believe he may be one of the only entirely ethical attorneys still working at Bradley. I would have thought this even if he did not know what the Sheldon Prize is.
I did get a few laughs out of the lawsuit ordeal, especially in arbitration with Judge Art Hanes, Jr. who said all this talk about a gay porn star was going to hurt me in Judge Vowell’s Court. “Really?” I asked. “How so?” He argued that Judge Vowell was a “straight arrow” and would hate all this sleazy stuff. “Interesting”, I responded. I then began to relate a story to him in confidence that seemed to only mildly surprise him.
While visiting my friend Al Troncalli during his illness, he had shown me a photo album of better times with his friends. His closest friend was an openly gay and very successful man in Atlanta whom I had met several times, named Ian Waters. He pointed to one picture and asked me if I knew who it was? It was hard to recognize Ian as a physically fit young man with hair, in contrast to how he looked the day Al showed me the picture. . “So who is that with his arm around him,”I asked. “Scott Vowell”, he said.”They were a couple for many years”.
I have always liked Scott Vowell and think he is a fair and decent man and was a good judge. His personal life was no one’s business. And it certainly had no effect on how he did his job as far as I could tell. But I was not about to be intimidated into settling the case in an unfair way because of what others, without as much information as I had, speculated about his prejudices. I was also still angry over having so much garbage interjected by Ms. Cannon and her colleagues into what should have been a simple breach of contract case. I intended to reveal anything I needed to prevent this.
It really enraged me that my innocent, unselfish, and paternal relationship with Anthony Donais, which never included intimate contact of any kind, was being used to steal from me. Judge Hanes who once represented James Earl Ray, the killer of Dr. Martin Luther King, is likely to still remember this conversation as one of the more interesting ones he had in his long and storied career.
I don’t think Anthony’s letter was ever published after he refused to allow their gutter prone editors to edit its content, unfettered. But it can be read on another of my posts called “Letter from a Porn Star.” When I speak with him, we still laugh at the ludicrous notion that we were ever intimate or ever could be. He and his beautiful Iranian girlfriend, Ellie, to whom he was once engaged, joined friends and other Godchildren like Damien and Danielle Shores-Larkin, on a trip to Italy I sponsored in the mid-Eighties.
One of my favorite pictures is of Anthony and Ellie in St. Peters on each side of Miss Nina Miglionico holding her hands in the archway of St. Peter’s Basilica. And it was fun watching them interact with Damien and Danielle as they hung out together with other young people. Everyone on the trip knew of Anthony’s distant past and no one seemed to care.
I fully understood how Anthony’s childhood led him into a sleazy business where he was easily exploited and abused. It’s interesting and inexplicable how evangelicals can forgive Donald Trump for his association with Stormy Daniels, but jumped on my entirely altruistic relationship with Anthony where I made valiant attempts to help him overcome alcohol and drug abuse and live a decent life, even enrolling him in AA in New York City after he attempted suicide by jumping from a window in his hotel. He spent weeks at the Blake’s summer place at Orange Beach, recovering from serious injuries which still negatively affect his health today. Being dragged into a controversy in Birmingham in which he played no part was very unfair. And judging me by one association out of hundreds I have had in my life is, as well. I would argue that Anthony was in many ways more moral than most of the politicians, and certainly the lawyers, I have known. I may just have a higher tolerance for mistakes people make in their youth. Or perhaps, more likely, a different interpretation of the New Testament and what is commanded of Christians.
In my old age, I have come to a number of conclusions about the God who made me. I’ve decided to reject the God of the Old Testament, always throwing down punishment and wrath about something, wiping out whole tribes of people and smiting those who He deems as not making the cut on any given day. To say He is painted as arbitrary and capricious in the Old Testament is an understatement. No more perversely violent book has ever been written.
Take for example this verse from the book of Samuel:
“David arose and went, along with his men, and killed two hundred of the Philistines. And David brought their foreskins, which were given in full number to the king, that he might become the king’s son-in-law. And Saul gave him his daughter Michal for a wife.”
And here’s another one from Deuteonomy, just one of hundreds to be found in plain sight in the “Good Book”:
“If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.”
Selah.
Instead, I’m preferring and sticking with the God of the New Testament who is loving and nurturing, and above all, tolerant and forgiving. I think maybe having a son softened him up. Anyway, that’s how I’m rolling until I leave the planet. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Tolerance takes patience and huge amounts of sympathy, if not empathy. There was the time when a County employee had turned over a County dump truck and admitted he had been smoking marijuana prior to the accident. I’ve never turned over a truck or gotten high on anything, so it was hard to relate. Alcohol makes me sleepy, not high or happy.
In his hearing before me, the staff lined up in favor of firing him. I had never met the guy and he didn’t make the best case in his defense, but when I learned that his wife was eight months pregnant and they would be without health insurance, not to mention income, if he were fired, I decided instead to send him for treatment through an employee assistance program. The problem was that the County did not have one.
I called Hunter Copeland, who had devised an effective employee alcohol and drug rehab program and asked for his help which he readily gave even though the County was not a member of his employee assistance consortium. was a kind and decent man who later gained some minor fame as the stepfather of Courtney Cox of “Friends”. Mr. Copeland gladly helped for free and later was rewarded for his compassion when the County agreed to hire his organization to administer a formal employee assistance program to address increasing abuse of drugs and alcohol by County employees.
I don’t think I ever received thanks from the almost-fired employee or his pregnant wife, and the staff stayed miffed for a few weeks for my being too soft and a “liberal pushover”! But it seemed like the right thing to do at the time and still does in retrospect. I assume the junked truck wound up in the County’s rigged auction which would have made Mike Acton and Jabbo Waggoner happy. An unintended consequence of this particular incident was the popularity I gained with employees in the field when they learned how I had bucked the central office establishment to keep this guy on the payroll. When I left office, they invited me to the Bessemer Work Camp and gave me a plaque they had made and I joked that I hoped it had been made with recycled wood on their own time, not the County’s.
The intensity of my casual friendship with Roger Bass changed when a tragic accident took the life of his son Chris, a student at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. While attending a party on a nearby lake, he apparently fell from a boat and went missing. It was a horror beyond words for Roger and his family and my heart broke for him as he obviously suffered waiting for news. I sent a Catholic priest with whom I was close friends to visit him and his wife, Rene, to offer whatever comfort religion could provide. And during that period of painful waiting, I instructed my secretaries to put Roger through to me whenever he called, no matter what I might be doing at the time. I wanted to be available to him to help in any way I could to see him and his family through this tragic and difficult time. Our friendship seemed to grow and continued even after his son’s body was found, bringing what we all prayed would be some closure to this horrific and senseless tragedy.
I believed we had become personal friends and gave no thought to taking a trip with him and Rene and a girlfriend when they suggested we go to the Bahamas to celebrate my birthday that July. The truth is that I hate the sun and avoid beaches whenever I can. (And no one has ever asked to see me in a Speedo!)
On the trip, Roger chartered a small boat and delighted as I turned green from awful seasickness. After he egged it on with comments about the “greasy bacon and greasy eggs” we had had for breakfast, with emphasis on the word greasy, my nausea became violent and I spent the rest of the day lying below deck. My condition was not helped that night at dinner at Greycliff, a favorite restaurant of Winston Churchill when my birthday gift was a severed turtle head that they insisted I blindly pull from a paper sack. My nausea quickly returned and I’m not feeling so great right now as I write about it. The rest of the trip is a blur. It was, after all, over thirty years ago that it took place and remembering any of my birthdays lost appeal years ago.
In honesty, I do not remember the details of the trip; like where we stayed or who paid for what. My hope is that I did not allow my friendship with Roger to cause me to turn a blind eye to maintaining independence from undue influence or allowing him to foot all the bills. Frankly, it would not be characteristic of me. When invited to a dinner or luncheon where someone else is paying, I always intentionally order the cheapest thing on the menu, a habit I was taught as a child. I still do this today along with other childhood quirks, like not eating English peas or raw oysters.
I had made an assumption, apparently incorrect, that first and foremost we were friends and his dealings with the County were separate and apart from that personal friendship. I don’t remember any other gift exchanges except one Christmas when he gave me a funky designer tie of the type of which he was particularly fond. I think it was Japanese. I’m certain I would have given him something in return, although I can’t remember what it might have been. But all this was soon to stop.
Al Troncalli looked on with a sort of astonished look as I continued my story saying that, despite all of our history, I never heard from Roger again from the day I lost my primary election to Gary White until that very moment at Cedar House; not a call, not a note; nothing. But I did reflect that from time to time I would hear from friends of his playing golf with Gary and how close they had become, taking trips together with their current wives and regularly socializing. I also noted large contributions he, Dunn Construction, and the Road Builders made to Gary’s re-election campaigns over the next twenty years Gary held the office until he was defeated by Jim Carns. In my naivete, Roger’s friendship with Gary somehow surprised me and I can only imagine how many times I was trashed for the sake of his economics.
For certain, he was not the only “friend’ who abandoned me when I was no longer in public office and useful to them. John Hawkins, a former state senator and representative who worked for Alabama Power after he retired from the legislature, started regularly courting me after I won election to the Commission. He was a kind and decent soft-spoken man and often invited me to join him and his wife, Betty, at the Vestavia Country Club where they were members or at Joe’s Ranch House, a favorite spot of theirs that also required membership so black people could not dine there. Although they were perfectly acceptable to wait on tables and work in the kitchens, black people could not dine next to white patrons.
I once stirred things up in the City when I suggested we revoke the liquor license of The Club, another well-known segregated private club that would not admit minorities. I argued that a liquor license was a privilege granted by the public and no organization which discriminated against people on the basis of race should be permitted to have one. Without the white power structure suck-ups, Jeff and William, it went nowhere.
Another painful part of dining with the Hawkins was the terrible treatment Betty would give the wait staff, especially if they were a minority. John and Betty both drank way too much. And he would get sentimental and teary while she just got meaner. She drove me crazy with her demands of servers at restaurants, regularly insisting in a loud and irritating voice that they bring her bourbon and water in a tall glass, like it made some major difference. She would send the drink back if it did not come as prescribed. I’ve heard of height discrimination but hating short glasses was new to me. I think she just liked the power she lorded over the staff.
Of course, she joined dozens of other screeching bleached blondes in Republican women’s groups as a leader imposing her views of morality and political correctness on others. One of the best things about losing the commission election was not having to bite my tongue and smile pleasantly as this crass woman insulted anyone and everyone and made a fool of herself on a regular basis. I never heard from them again after losing the primary until my phone rang one night and the caller id identified it as a call from John Hawkins. No one spoke as I answered.
I like to think it was John checking on me because he missed our political discussions and chats, but it may have just been Betty, drunk and misdialing. I finally figured out that I had been nothing more than an assignment from Alabama Power who paid John to entertain me. I am likely just one of hundreds of political figures in the State on whom they kept close watch to prevent anyone from challenging their unchecked rate increases and other deals where ordinary citizens and rate-payers never fare well.
But in the case of Roger Bass, I was willfully delusional and had mistakenly assumed a real bond of friendship existed. Thankfully, unlike Betty Hawkins, he was always well behaved and not demanding so having lunch or dinner occasionally was not an ordeal. I don’t even remember what size glass he preferred or even if he drank alcohol. But he was, nonetheless in retrospect, a false friend who made me his assignment for business purposes and I blame myself for not being more cynical, or at least aware of when I was being used. It’s hard to admit that people don’t really like you for anything other than what they can get from you. It assaults your ego and makes you want to change your mouthwash.
I have never been lacking for friends, but it has taken a lifetime to sort them out and learn who among them were sincere and authentic. I have lucked out over the years with genuine friendships. Currently among them is my dear friend, Rene (pronounced Rainey) who is someone I can always count on, like when I decided to do a plumbing repair and broke the under sink valve spraying water everywhere at 10 o’clock at night. I had no idea where the water cut off for my building was and had run out of solutions to fix the gushing leak. So, i called Rene who showed up in a record 30 minutes since he lives an hour away and handled it as I sat in a pool of water dripping from head to toe. HE wanted to take a picture, but spare me the preserving of the indignity of it all.
Just last April while on a cross-country jaunt in a new car, I could not get it to move after I stopped at a traffic light in Washington, D.C. I was in a panic as angry motorists blew their horns as they were forced to go around me at a slow pace. Some even made obscene hand gestures. The owners manual was in the glove box, but why use it when you can call Rene, my mechanic on call? What’s best about him is he never laughs or makes you feel like a doddering fool even when the solution is simple enough for any idiot to figure out. He calmly suggested I might have hit the parking brake button next to the shift knob and he was, as usual, right. Who knew? One press and I was on my way again thinking I might out to study the owner’s manual before my next trip.
Rene and his wife Kim only had one son, Rylee who married Michelle and they have two amazing children whom we mutually adore. Rene agrees with my new rule that I only want to hang out with people under five feet. The taller humans are more trouble and can’t be trusted.
I had lost other elections, most notably two for mayor of Birmingham without losing many friends or my reputation. In the first case, David Vann was the incumbent and I was one of seven or so candidates opposing him. It was a wild race with Larry Langford and the head of the Alabama KKK, Don Black, among my fellow challengers to the mayor who was widely unpopular for irrational reasons. Most just criticized the way he dressed and his general sloppiness. But had they thought about it more or had more information, they would have really despised him because there was no more “dangerous liberal” in Alabama. He had clerked for Justice Hugo Black and helped shape some of the justice’s opinions that turned this former KKK member into a liberal icon on the Court. David was creative and committed and no one could doubt where his heart was on any issue. He would always be on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed. He was a thoroughly decent and, in some ways, a very unappreciated man who loved the City. But he was definitely going to lose his bid for re-election and I reasoned that I was the next best choice to bring justice to Birmingham and get it moving in a progressive direction.
The race ended in my contesting the results of the close election that edged me out of the run-off. I went to bed winning the slot by three votes and woke up down by 97. There was confusion and incompetence at the polls and things did not seem right. We wanted a re-count which seemed impossible and had never been done before in a mayors’ race. But the esteemed attorney Douglas Arant, now in his mid-seventies and founder of the aforementioned Bradley, Arant, Boult Cummings law firm, volunteered his time to guide a group of young attorneys in making the legal challenge. Many of those young attorneys went on to do great things, some even becoming judges themselves later in life.
Miraculously, they were successful in getting a recount ordered by a judge and I will always be grateful for the work of Steve Salter, Richard Groenendyke, Alton Parker, Gordon Pate, Sam Frazier, Gary Pate, Jim Lloyd, Bill Lloyd, Curtis Gordon, and many others who helped in this endeavor, although our relationships have changed through the years sometimes for the worse and I have not seen any of them in at least a decade. And of course, I remain proud of the role Douglas Arant was willing to play in this effort. He was a prince who, no doubt, has turned over in his grave several times as he has watched the venerable firm he founded, in its current configuration of Bradley, Arant, Boult, Cummings, slide into greed and power plays that make them appear to be just another bunch of sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyers with fancy offices and well-developed greed and situational ethics.
I wonder how he would have viewed the ethics and professionalism of Hope Cannon, Julia Boaz Cooper, and David Hymer. Of particular interest to him might have been Julia Boaz Cooper, the ex-wife of mayoral candidate Patrick Cooper, who I have mentioned earlier. I’m sure she and her current husband are living happily ever after off HealthSouth’s money she recklessly and intentionally gave away. If this had just been a simple wrestling match she had thrown, she’d be in jail. Rich people get away with things like this. The poor must just endure.
Unfortunately, despite the favorable ruling from the judge hearing the case, the voting machines had by now been taken back to the voting machine warehouse on 8th Avenue North and had jostled along the way. The mechanical odometer-like counters had changed so much in the bumpy ride on Birmingham’s neglected streets that it was impossible to get an accurate reading. A recount would be inaccurate and futile. So I accepted my loss and licked my wounds and prepared to fight another day. But I did it without malice or lashing out at anyone, least of all Richard Arrington, who ultimately won the race becoming Birmingham’s first African-American mayor and an important historical figure in a city defined by racial strife for decades.
Years later, before being elected to the County Commission, I was happy to lead the negotiations to acquire the voting warehouse property from the County for the Alabama School of Fine Arts. John Harbert and I met with the then commissioners, Chriss Doss, Ben Erdreich, and Tom Gloor who agreed to sell the property to the newly formed Alabama School of Fine Arts Foundation so we could build a new campus in downtown Birmingham. It was an idea I had hatched when a friend told me of the availability of the Eva Comer Home for girls that was being sold by his church. It had served as a hideaway for unwed mothers in a brick dormitory-style building located on 8th Avenue North adjacent to the County property. After the School acquired most of the block, a deal was cut with the City of Birmingham to move the new school one block east to the property the City-owned to make the school more central to downtown and closer to the Birmingham Museum of Art. It also gave the school a construction staging area where lives of kids were not endangered during the building of the new school. That alone was a good thing.
Having an urban arts school in Birmingham seemed like a great idea to me and I was pleased that Jim Nelson, the director of the State-sponsored arts school located on the Birmingham Southern campus, agreed. So it was my mission to help them locate there and build a suitable facility even before I joined the staff as associate director. Acquiring that property adjacent to the home the school now owned helped me to close that chapter of the “dancing voting machines.” I spent several years handling the politics of the school’s funding, having to annually justify it before the Alabama legislature who referred to it as my “tippy-toe dancing school” in an effort to demean the school’s value and purpose, but as I hear from graduates of the school from time to time, I affirm that they were wrong, like they are on so many other things that could bring progress to Alabama.
John Harbert gave $5 million to jump-start the ASFA project after I argued the case for the release of money he had pledged but was withholding for some unknown reason. I got a clue as to why when he finally released the funds while complaining that the school was almost 40% black because of my recruitment of minority students. I retorted that I had no control over to whom God gave artistic talent. And the school admitted students based on credential and auditions, I argued in my defense. But assured him I would ask that God be more careful and discriminating in the future and give white kids more talent and opportunities. He didn’t appreciate my reasoning.
Every major project on which I have worked over the years started out as a bloody battle. I cut my teeth on EPIC School with board members and parents of deaf children wanting to burn me in effigy over its plans. Now that it has been in operation for decades, people take it for granted and seem to “get the concept. The same is true of the science center I worked long and hard to create that eventually morphed into the McWane Center when Jamie McWane donated 10 million and the McWane was deservedly placed on the complex. But the concept was something Council members could not fathom until I sent half of them to Toronto to see the Science Center there and the other half to San Francisco to tour the Exploratorium. They were junkets to be certain but accomplished my mission. They all reluctantly agreed upon return to put $5 million in an upcoming bond issue to provide seed money for the project. The public was skeptical and it came in last on the ballot, but passed, nonetheless. And that’s the Reader’s Digest version of how McWane Center got started. So the battle for funding of the Alabama School of Fine Arts was not unexpected. It was like the Art of War where one had to always to planning the next move to survive attacks. Cleverly, I added a science and math component to the School which was used as leverage in future debates when legislators said that’s where the public’s money should really be going. That gave rise to a State-supported Science and Mathematics School in Mobile which we happily supported in a trade-off for support of ASFA. Must still be working as the school is still in operation and it would be hard to imagine Birmingham without it.
My sometimes testy relationship with Mr. Harbert had become more comfortable over the years, so much so that he contributed $25,000 to my campaign for mayor earning him some criticism as my “sugar daddy”. He didn’t seem to care, so neither did I. Having a sugar daddy might be a useful thing as long as it was kept in check. We finally learned how to like each other and that made for a better and more productive working relationship. I did my part doing things like giving him a priceless piece of silver from the 15th Century I had owned for many years to partially repay him for his generous contribution to my campaign. He was surprised at my attempts to repay him and seemed to appreciate the gesture, saying he was not accustomed to thanks like this.
Sometime later, after I learned he was going to be hospitalized with eye problems, I gave him the latest music technology, a Sony Walkman, and some Country-Western CDs. Sandy told me he would not be able to read or watch television for a while so I reasoned this would be a good way to keep him from being bored while lying in bed. He apparently loved Country music which somehow surprised me. But it did the trick and he often expressed his gratitude for the thoughtfulness.
He wanted to build the tallest building in Alabama and planned a quality building on the corner of Fifth Avenue North that became the AmSouth-Harbert Plaza, now Regions Tower and Harbert Plaza. He openly stated he would never build the building as long as Richard Arrington was mayor, with whom he stayed unhappy. But I realized that changing his color to satisfy Mr. Harbert might not be something the mayor might want to do, even if he could and this appeared to be the only reason he disliked him. Every time I would say the mayor was doing a good job on something, Mr. Harbert would challenge me. So it was best to talk about other things around him.
He changed his mind about the building after a rare occasion where I was invited to his office and Sandy asked me what kind of wine I preferred. “What, am I being executed? How long do I have?” I joked. As we shared a bottle in his office, I appealed to his better nature and told him the building would be a legacy to his generosity and vision.
He was being crowded by admirers at the dedication of the granite building he built with the with marble balls on top when he saw me approaching. He immediately reached for his belt buckle and started taking off his belt as people looked on, almost horrified. They may have thought he was going to whip me or something worse, but we all were relieved when he proclaimed that he could still wear the alligator belt I had given him as a Christmas present ten years earlier, showing off the belt that had a gold buckle bearing his initials.
Somehow we had turned a corner in our relationship although our politics were never exactly aligned. He sometimes defended me when I was under attack and became a regular adviser, calling me now and then with suggestions. One I never took was his insistence that Sloss Furnaces should be taken down and sold for scrap. He almost beat that horse to death, bringing up over and over again. I could never understand why someone who built a new building with rusting iron could not appreciate the aesthetics of Sloss.
Once, he raised money for me in a fundraiser at his office with many of his rich friends in attendance. At one point, Tom Bradford, the wealthy owner of Bradford and Company in Birmingham, stood up and said he didn’t want to contribute a cent to my campaign. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between him and Arrington”, he said going on in a rant, “One’s a black nigger and the other is a white nigger”. Others int he room groaned and I could only smile a wan grin as I suppressed my urge to slap out his false teeth. I often thought of this moment when the majority-Black City Council named a park after him in the Eastern section of town off Edwards Lake Road. Even Mr. Harbert seemed horrified by the remark and he and Mrs. Bradford apologized to me for years afterward. But I suspect they both were more amused than offended. It surely was not the first or the last time he had used that word in polite company.
When Mr. Harbert died, I intentionally did not attend his funeral when I realized it was being turned into a sort of social event for the who’s who of Alabama. I knew his family would be devastated, especially Jay, his namesake who suffered from a severe intellectual disability. Jay would sometime hang out at his father’s office and we always talked as best we could about things that were happening in his life. He would loudly greet me every time he saw me drawing attention to us both. I would ask about him whenever I saw Mr. Harbert and it was clear as his face lit up how much he loved Jay. He bragged on his Jay’s every accomplishment, no matter how small. But for a man of John Harbert’s drive and ego, there must have been a lot of private pain knowing his oldest son would never have the capacity to inherit or run his empire. Even the most powerful among us have secret burdens to bear.
At one time, Mr. Harbert talked to me about running the private foundation he intended to create to give way some of his fortune. He mentioned the idea to his accountant, and my friend, Sam diPiazzo of Coopers and Lybrand who also did accounting work for me. Sam and I discussed all the good we could do if we were involved together in this developing Mr. Harbert’s idea. But ultimately, I decided that it would never work. Mr. Harbert enjoyed handing out his money to various causes like the Boy Scouts and it was a pleasure that should not be constrained by bureaucracy and interlopers like me. Sam accepted a new challenge from me to run a City advisory group on the proposed science center and as a consequence of his involvement in this project, also got tapped for leadership positions with the Alabama Symphony and Alabama Ballet, fundraising and helping them to achieve financial stability. He deserves much of the credit for MacWane Center as he raised money for it, chose the location, and developed the initial plans. the group he chaired to study this project morphed into what became the Metropolitan Arts Council.
A few years later, my disappointment in losing him to the Chicago office of his accounting firm, was tempered when he invited me to lunch at his offices while I visited relatives there. He told me if it had not been for my insisting that he get involved with the City, he would not have been offered his current position. When I visited him again a couple of years later, he was in New York and now the global president of Price Waterhouse Coopers and one of the most influential accountants in the country, if not the world with clients like Coca Cola and At &T. Not bad for an Italian boy who grew up with his father running a grocery warehouse in Tarrant City.
Four years after losing to Richard Arrington in our first race for mayor, I ran again against him again. It was a really dumb idea. Some may find it hard to believe, but I did so knowing my chances of winning were negligible. I loved Birmingham and could not stand the thought of another vicious election where race-baiting would play a prominent role as candidates tried to motivate their bases. So I intentionally and systematically forced other candidates to bow out, convincing them that I was the only one who had any real chance of beating Arrington.
The former police chief and Councilman Bill Myers reluctantly agreed, but Jim Parsons, also a former police chief, allowed his inflated ego to keep him the race until the last minute, draining resources and wasting valuable time. Fortunately, he was not without talent and had other irons in the fire, eventually landing the job of police chief in New Orleans, where my friend Councilman Mike Early, a former Catholic priest, often reminds me of what a disaster he had been and chides me for not warning him before Parsons was hired. “It could have been worse”, I often retorted, “He could have been mayor of Birmingham and would have done anything necessary to be elected by motivating his white base. So we owe New Orleans a big one.” Parson had many attributes, but I think most would agree that he would definitely have been a disaster for race relations and peace in our community. He was, however, a likable and colorful character and decidedly better than some, like Artie Deutsch, who succeeded him in the role of police chief.
After his election in 1979, Arrington did a very respectable job as mayor and expanded his base into white, liberal Southside, my home base, while annexing large groups of African-American voters from unincorporated areas of the County. I joked to the media when asked why the Council was being called into emergency session by the mayor on one occasion to de-annex some territory that had been mistakenly been captured in a blanket annexation. “He must have discovered that the property in question has white voters”, I said. In hindsight, this sounds a little racist, but it was funny (and true) at the time. It would have taken a miracle for me to win that race in 1983 and they are few and far between in politics.
And so I lost to Arrington for the second time. But the effort was not without a silver lining. The Mayor and I had pledged to prevent “the bloody shirt of racism”, as Vann had called it, from being waved in our race and we conducted ourselves as civilized people ought to. The notion that two guys with earned doctorates were running against each other in Birmingham garnered national attention. I was especially pleased when the New York Times wrote an editorial lauding the quality of the race and quoting my impromptu concession speech as a sign of a “new day in Birmingham”.
After the election ended, the Mayor and I were honored with a brotherhood award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews. It was an optimistic time. Moreover, it was a time of more civility and decency in politics which dramatically changed when New Gingrich and Roger Ailes invented the new Republican norm of negative ads and the scorched earth politics of destruction in the ’80s. It did not take long for the slime to trickle down to the local elections where this new breed of amoral Republicans was involved.
If I had known then when I met him at a Harvard function, what I know now about Mr. Ailes and Fox News, I doubt I would have been smiling.
After his loss to Arrington, David Vann went to work for him as one of the City’s attorneys. His brilliance would have been welcomed in any law firm, but he was dedicated to Birmingham and chose to continue to serve the City in this lesser paying position. He and I worked together on a number of city projects, as well as political ones. And despite a perception in the general public that Dr. Arrington and I were bitter enemies, we continued to cooperate on projects of mutual interest until I voluntarily retired from the Council after learning that my close friend and icon, Miss Nina Miglionico, intended to retire. In my “exit” interview with the mayor, I offered a few suggestions and criticism of his not having groomed any young Black leader to succeed him. I also lamented that of all the projects on which I had worked or played a leadership role, I was most disappointed when I was not even invited to the opening ceremony for the McWane Center. He agreed that it had been my constant pushing of the project and persuasion to include it in the bond issue that had created it. But after he shared a few slights he had endured as mayor, I decided my complaint was trivial.
After serving a term as Council President and running twice for mayor I had achieved a wider bully pulpit and the highest name identification of any white boy in Birmingham.I was named to the Top 40 Under 40 list and given other accolades as I tried to depart the scene. But my name was so well known and my popularity so great at that time that I was recruited by the Democratic Party to run for Congress. I studied their polls and decided against the move. In retrospect, I should have taken the opportunity, although I suspect I would not have lasted long with my opposition to the death penalty and reasonable positions on other issues that were out of step with the majority of voters in Alabama. The FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) which had been staunch supporters in my council and mayoral bids, vowed that they would never let me go to Congress, or even Montgomery, because of my views on the death penalty and the criminal justice system.
I went to Ben Erdreich armed with the poll data and my analysis and convinced him he might win with the right campaign. His name was not well known, but those who did know him really liked him. He decided to run and called me one day with a dilemma. “What should I do about this abortion thing?”, he asked, “It’s just such a difficult issue.” “I know”, I responded. “I’m Catholic and against it on religious grounds, but I’ve met so many people in my political career that should have been aborted, I think I’d be for it if they raised the age limit.” He said he didn’t think he could use that answer and won despite a fuzzy position on this issue becoming the first Jewish Congressman from the State, only to lose down the line to a Republican after the district was gerrymandered in their favor.
In 1986 when I ran successfully for the County Commission after being personally recruited by Mary Connors, the executive director of the Alabama Republican Party. It was a difficult race to say the least. Chriss Doss the entrenched Democrat was an intelligent and reasonable man, but politics can test one’s integrity and judgment like no other activity and he wanted to be re-elected very badly. When the polls showed my winning, he encouraged and permitted some of the vilest tactics used to date in any commission race. They were normally quiet affairs without debates or significant issues. Most people did not even know what the Jefferson County Commission did. It’s profile changed, however, when federal Judge U.W. Clemon ordered that commissioners be elected by districts to allow for African-Americans to be elected to the previously all-white body. He expanded the three-member commission to five members and defined the single-member districts. He did not, however, define how the new commission was to be structured or operate.
The district in which I lived included a part of Southside and all of the over the mountain communities to the Shelby County line, including the cities of Homewood, Vestavia, Hoover, and Mountain Brook, the most affluent areas of the County. My campaign was positive, as all my previous ones had been, trying to focus on a vision for the County and the mechanics of making the government work better.
But I knew things must be going too well when a barrage of ads targeting me and using language that was decidedly racist was unleashed by the Doss campaign. Another sign that I might be winning came when hundreds of packets of smear sheets were delivered to every barber and beauty shop in the County, accusing me of everything under the sun. Among the main charges were that I had broken up the marriage of Angie Grooms Proctor, had prevented the promotion of my priest to bishop by sleeping with him, and had also done cocaine and marijuana parties with Richard Groenendyke and his wife on a regular basis and probably sleeping with them too. I was apparently a very busy guy.
He also charged that Harvard had no record that I had studied there and I had faked my doctorate. In response, my attorney Mike Renniker, the brother-in-law of the greediest attorney in Alabama, Bill Slaughter, released my college transcripts from Harvard, proving at least this claim to be false. The others were harder to disprove, though equally false. Mr. Doss, a lawyer, Baptist minister, and member of the faculty at Samford University had no problem attempting to ruin the reputations of many other people in a ploy to stop my campaign from succeeding. Clearly, he had thought unsigned smear sheets an effective way to disseminate gossip and slander. Most decent people were outraged and it only helped me in my race against him. And I did get a lot of offers for dates after that! ( Just joking).
Years later, his public relations man who had created the smear sheets, Cy Steiner, came to my Commission office seeking to make peace. He obliquely asked for forgiveness. My response was that, as a Catholic, I truly believed in forgiveness;it was fundamental to our theology. But there were a couple of steps before absolution could be given. The first was to admit the sin by confessing it; then asking for forgiveness and doing some penance. Then, and only then, could absolution be given. So if he wanted forgiveness, he had to go through those steps. He left dejected.
I was disturbed and saddened when I learned that months later he had killed himself. Clearly, he had problems that went well beyond his advocacy of sleazy political tactics. Nonetheless, I always felt regretful that I had not been more forthcoming with my forgiveness of his sins against me. When a close friend I had not heard from in years, called me from an EST seminar out west, saying as part of the touchy-feely program he had to call someone he had hurt in the past to apologize, I quickly accepted his apology. But after I hung up, I regretted it and realized I was still pissed and am to this day over things he did to me. So maybe i was just being honest when I told Mr. Steiner I could not forgive him at that time. His motive, like that of many others, was to win at any cost. And to make money off the office of the person he helped elect. Hmm, sounds a little like old Roger Bass.
It was a highlight of the campaign for me when Mr. Doss and I were invited to appear before the CAC (Community Affairs Committee), established by Operation New Birmingham to tamp down racial conflicts in Birmingham politics and keep elections fair. They were for me no more than an arm of the Democratic party, supporting only those they viewed as like-minded liberals. And somehow my graduating from Harvard, living in Socialist Sweden, and desegregating schools did not qualify me as a liberal by their standards.
It was my chance to personally and honestly confront all the trash the Doss campaign had strewn all over the County. Luther Smith, Brigadier General of the local Salvation Army, and the group, clearly fans of Dodd, nodded in agreement as he spoke in his labored, distinctive twang, clinging to his every word. Then I stood and played one of his racist radio commercials from the boom box I brought with me, claiming that if I won the elections, “they” would take over the County and ruin it like “they” had done the City. The meaning was clear. I minced no words as I denounced the ad for what it was, thinly veiled racism.
And then I chastised the CAC for their silence, not condemning these ads and told them I understood how it felt to find out that their gods have clay feet, but their obligation was to the larger community. I went on to say that I did not want their biased endorsement and after winning, the group would have no influence with me, so not to ever seek it. They had also remained silent in my campaign for mayor of Birmingham when cartoons of me standing atop City Hall cracking a whip over Black people were widely circulated. Another professionally drawn cartoon showed me holding the reins on a pack of police dogs straining to be released on Black children. Somehow these were so outrageous that they were ignored by most voters, but they were personally offensive and stinging. The subtle racism of the Doss campaign was more insidious and vile; so much so that even the Birmingham News took note of his nasty campaign. I often thank God that he was restrained by his deep faith as a Baptist minister, or it could have been so much worse.
After lots of hard work, including doing something never before attempted; personally calling thousands of voters by phone to ask for their vote. I won. I was exhausted by the race and sitting for hours hooked up to a telephone headset dialing one voter after another with the same pitch almost wrecked me. If it had not been for Snickers and Diet Cokes, I would not have made it! But voters seemed to really appreciate hearing from me and were often shocked to hear my voice in real-time. Of course, there was the occasional nasty response or hang up, but for the most part if was encouraging to hear people pledge their support or, at least, listen to my pitch.
My election to the Commission made me one of two of the first Republicans elected to County government and the first former official of the City of Birmingham to take a seat on the Commission. Until then there has been some untested notion that the County and City interests were far apart and no one associated with Birmingham city government could be elected to County office. With hard work and determination, I proved it wrong.
While on the Commission, I used things I had learned in my previous eight years on the Birmingham City Council and my training at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to try and bring positive change to the County. I was determined to dispel old ways and theories, like the one that County services were reserved only for unincorporated areas of the County. Cities were supposed to take care of cities and the County would handle the unincorporated areas. Never mind that citizens of those cities paid County taxes and, in fact, residents of the City of Birmingham, as the largest population center in the State, paid taxes that made up the bulk of County revenues. It made no sense for them to forego services to which they were entitled and were paying. I set about to do things like pave parking lots at municipal schools and build the lake and parking lot at the Botanical Gardens so City taxpayers could recoup some of their money.
I even had the underutilized County bridge crew build boat ramps on the Cahaba River and an overhead walk across deadly Highway 78 highway to allow Forestdale school children to cross safely. City politicians like Jeff Germany, who lived in the nearby Daniel Payne neighborhood, lined up to take credit, but it was the County that accomplished this long-needed improvement. I did similar things for smaller municipalities across the County winning favor and support from their political leaders. They were especially grateful for the help I gave North and Western mayors in support of the completion of the Northern Beltline, taking them to Washington to meet with our senators and representatives to discuss its importance to the region’s future.
The other commissioners, even Chris McNair, did not share my zeal for helping the City. I heard later that he still smarted from not being tapped to be the first African-American mayor of Birmingham and wanted to make Dr. Arrington look bad whenever he could, But somehow I doubt this. I think it was just his conservative nature to oppose anything that looked progressive.
I sincerely felt I had done a good job in a difficult role as County Commissioner trying to make progress while dragging along the community and fighting other politicians who liked things just as they were. Change was not going to come easily to the Commission, even with new players and a new structure we designed. I say we, but it was actually Don Ammons, the County finance director, and I who designed the new departments by tasks, trying to even the responsibilities of each of the commissioners who were to serve as administrators of the various departments, along with being a member of the legislative body. Despite our best efforts, the structure was seriously flawed with commissioners having administrative, legislative and judicial powers in one officeholder. I pressed for a county manager, but Chris McNair argued with some validity that it was only after Blacks were elected to the Commission that this idea was floated. After the sewer debacle and bankruptcy, the County hired a county manager and I’m sure Steve Ammons, a current commissioner, and son of Don Ammons who was the principal architect of the previous design, finds the job more manageable under this arrangement which should have been done at the beginning.
It was a difficult job to layout an acceptable new structure, and from the outset, there were squabbles and conflicts among commissioners over what the pie, previously divided by three, should look like divided by five. Especially thorny was the issue of who would head each division. My suggestion that commissioners-elect submit resumes showing relevant experience to the tasks of each proposed department of County government they wanted to run, was met with stone-cold silence and some hostility. They even rejected the idea that just some statement of what they intended to do with the department would suffice. So they insisted on being handed complex administrative tasks and millions of dollars without any rationale for why they were best equipped to handle it. The Birmingham News again took note as we tried to work it out.
Despite the hassles and the fact that I developed severe, life-threatening allergies that a world-class allergist at NYU diagnosed as a likely reaction to extreme stress, I wanted to be re-elected for several reasons. For one, I had unfinished work on things like the Shades Valley Plan where I was proposing to use the old school property to create a gateway to the Birmingham Zoo and its expansion as the area’s number one tourist attraction. I also wanted to finish my plans for Highway 280 improvements to relieve the intolerable congestion. And I was committed to seeing the County contribute its fair share to supporting MAXX, to create a more viable public transit system.
And there were many other unfinished projects as well. But overriding this was my ambition to use my personal friendship with George Bush, Jr. to get myself appointed as ambassador to Sweden. I reasoned that it made sense with my degrees from Harvard and Swedish language facility and government experience. The political component was an important part of this and it helped that I had been a delegate for his father, twice elected state-wide. and I was currently Secretary of the Alabama Republican Party and a dependable advocate for the Party.
There were also very personal reasons for wanting this job. And it seemed like a good way to gracefully get me out of elective politics and the sheer horror it sometimes brought. I hated the glad-handing and constant scrutiny and second-guessing. Mostly I hated the people who criticized my ideas but never offered any solutions of their own. They always knew exactly how it should have been done, after the fact.
There were many unpleasant aspects of the job that left me with mixed emotions, but re-election was essential to my long term career plans and I was still young at 44. I was only 27 when I was elected to the Birmingham City Council and 31 when I became its president. And I was a young 39 when elected to the County Commission. Under normal circumstances, with or without the title of Commissioner, a bright future would still have lain before me.
I had worked hard and served the public with integrity and vision and youthful energy, actually trying to accomplish something in every position I had held. But in Alabama, that is not enough. One can be totally incompetent and corrupt as long as you are pure of heart and anointed of the Spirit, as determined by under-educated, mostly ignorant, right-wing Regressives or those seeking to make millions from the position.
The onslaught of negative campaign ads, fueled by the greed of Bill Slaughter, a bond attorney, who needed a compliant puppet in my seat on the Commission and designed by Jeff Pitts and Matrix, were impossible to overcome in my 1990 race for re-election. Slaughter conservatively spread about $200,000 among several Montgomery PACS to disguise how much he was personally spending to win the race against me. Though it was an unheard-of amount of money at that time to spend on a commission race, for Mr. Slaughter it was a good investment where he intended to get a return of millions and ultimately did with me out of the way.
I simply did not have the energy or will to respond in kind with negative ads and mudslinging that would be needed to win the Republican primary. I had never run a negative campaign and did not intend to start with this race no matter what the consequences. It was a huge mistake in terms of the future I hoped for and my peace and security.
I had overestimated the voting public, assuming they would reject these tactics and see through them. They did not. Complicating things further was the fact that there was a hotly contested governor’s race happening at the same time and many Republicans were anxious to crossover and vote in this race. Some political observers believed it would have been impossible to defeat me in the general election where both Democrats and Republicans would be voting. But in the narrow primary, where only devoted Republican ideologues were voting, I would have a hard time surviving a well-organized smear campaign. The death of my close friend Cecil Roberts, for whom the fountain at Five Points is dedicated, in the days before the election was a major distraction for me. I was in grief at her unexpected death. But mostly, to win I would also have had to become someone I was not, telling people what they wanted to hear, instead of the truth and selling my soul in the process. It was just not in my character.
I had made no friends in the Eagle Forum by refusing to play semantic games about abortion and supporting the establishment of a Robert Wood Johnson school-based health clinic at Ensley High School. Eunie Smith and other neo-Puritans like her were afraid the kids in a school with the highest teen pregnancy rate, number of out-of-wedlock abortions and incidence of STDs in the State might learn about birth control. And God forbid that someone mentions condoms. Somehow this was against the moral code they wished to impose on others.
My just being against abortion was not enough for these nutcases. They wanted some kind of blood oath that I would oppose it in every case and somehow personally stop others from ending unwanted pregnancies. They worked hard to defeat me for this and my general disdain for their bogus causes with crocodile tears and pious utterances. None of them had ever adopted an unwanted child or supported any program to sustain a decent quality of life for them. But they were experts on how other people should behave and, more disturbingly, think.
Frances Wideman was one of those neo-Puritans that railed loudest. Her husband Gil was a respected and well-liked doctor. Frances was the daughter of Alice deBardleben, who after working for him as a secretary had married the president of Birmingham’s richest bank. Thus, she married into one of Birmingham’s wealthiest and most socially prominent families. It gave Frances advantages of money and position and she used both for her causes.
But she was a truly miserable woman. In fact, the only time Frances was tolerable was when she was drunk. On one occasion at her home, she entertained me and other guests with a spot-on imitation of Tiny Tim, complete with long frizzy hair, ukulele, and a high pitched falsetto voice, signing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”. It was the only time I remember laughing in her presence. She was normally very stern about her moralizing and did not invite humor.
To put up with her, Gilder took a mistress and ensconced her in the Park Tower apartments on Southside along with her young child. Sandra and her remarkable five-year-old were friends of mine and often visited me as we lived only a block from each other. She was, without doubt, one of the most beautiful women I had ever known and it was easy to see why Gil was attracted to her rare beauty and lively spirit and made her, sadly, a kept woman. Armed with this secret, I can’t count on my hands and toes how many times I wanted to respond to Frances’ public rants about family values with an admonition that charity begins at home and she should get her own house in order before lecturing others. But despite his double life, Gil was too nice of a guy to punish in this way. He called me after my election loss to Gary White saying how sick he was about it. “We just wanted to slap your hand,” he said, “not kill you.” Too late.
Gary White was a dull, unimaginative, and mediocre politician at best, but he had made a name for himself by helping to indict a number of black legislators ( mostly women) in the early Eighties for alleged corruption and was popular among white conservatives. I’m sure the irony of his conviction and long prison term was not lost on those he sent to jail years earlier. But he trounced me in the primary as I was haplessly stunned into inaction from the shock of his negative and slanderous campaign. I truly thought he was not capable of such a thing.
Joe Perkins and Jeff Pitts of a company that specialized in this type of campaign, Matrix, proudly ran one of the nastiest political campaigns ever conducted in Jefferson County. It was disgusting but effective. Ironically, I was called on to work with Jeff in Larry Langford’s commission and mayoral campaigns and decided to let his role in my earlier commission loss go without mention. But I had not forgotten it and how despicable the campaign became, at his direction. It’s a sort of schizophrenia that many otherwise nice and decent people experience in politics where they toss out all ethics and the morality they have valued in their lives as soon as the need to win at any cost takes over. I’m not certain there is an effective treatment for it. And winning with mudslinging and lies just reinforces them that they were right to do what they did to achieve their goal.
Jeff is a likable, energetic, and persuasive advocate for his clients and it helped that his company was funded primarily by Alabama Power who have perfected the art of buying politicians in Alabama. As their surrogate hatchet man he played an important role; one that almost destroyed his career in later scandals involving the indictment and conviction of lawyers at Balch Bingham, Alabama Power’s law firm of choice for many, many years. Jeff makes no value judgments as he designs campaigns. He just does what has to be done to win; damn the consequences. In fairness, he was always kind to me after he had destroyed my career and in different circumstances, I would have liked having him and his wife as friends.
In anticipation of winning the race, Gary White had substantially jacked up the salary of commissioners with his bill in the Legislature, giving him another incentive to win. His side was motivated. Mine was tired. The salary while I served was $49,000. Try Googling what commissioners make today. With new, swank offices and other perks, and lots of free time if you are not motivated to accomplish anything, it may be the best public office job anywhere.
In the race against me, Jeff and Gary’s other handlers mastered the art of taking a little bit of the truth and twisting it into something diabolical and sinister. Here is just one example:
I was surprised one day to find a young black woman waiting in my office to meet with me. She lived in Ensley, which was not in my commission district. She was not looking for a job and didn’t seem to need a road paved so I was anxious to hear why she was there.
She told me of having a lifelong dream of wanting to live and study abroad, but her family did not have the financial means to help her. She told me she had devised a plan and had discovered a program through the Institute for International Education for which she qualified. But there was an obstacle. The program required that she find a sponsor in the United States who would take a foreign student in exchange.
“So why have you come to me, ” I asked. “Why not meet with Reuben David or Chris McNair? I think you live in Commissioner Davis’ district and I’m sure he would be happy to help”, I continued hoping to get out from under this potential burden.
” I thought of that”, she replied, “But my mother said you were the one who would get it done”. I laughed as I responded, “Always listen to your mother. She has wisdom and is right. I will get it done for you.”
So I set about persuading the Commission to join the IIE and then created a temporary low-level job to offer the foreign student. The exchange was made and the young woman wrote me a note thanking me as she left the Country. The student we took was a young man, who I believe was from Switzerland, who would work in at the County engineer’s office. To make thing simpler, because the student would only be in Alabama for a few months and it would be hard to find him a decent place to live for that short a period, I arranged for him to stay in one of the apartments in my building I owned; without charge. I told him he could use the money he saved to travel and see as much of America as he could while here. When he asked why I was being so generous, I responded that I was just repaying some of the kindnesses that had been shown to me when I was studying on my scholarships to Sweden. Many people, total strangers, had been very kind to me in that dark and lonely place when I was so young. without them, I would have been suicidal.
The program was so successful that we continued it through the year, affording other local minority kids the opportunity to go abroad, while we accepted two more foreign students who also used my vacant, furnished guest apartment.
That was it, the whole story. But when Gary’s campaign looked for things on which to attack me, it became an issue. He told the story in a misleading and slanderous way saying, “John used County money to hire young boys who were living with him”, And the Republicans, especially the religious ones, loved it.
Do you get his point? I don’t even remember any of the student’s names and had no social connection to them, whatsoever. My penchant to help in this case is no different from the example sent to me by Jacqueline Lockhard on Facebook a week or so ago. Here is what she wrote:
“Hi Mr. katopodis I am writing you because over 40 years ago you came to my elementary school, West Center Street in Bham., AL. I was performing in a play I wrote or reciting a poem. However, you recommended I attend ASFA. Needless to say I did and have gone on to amazing opportunities. Even more amazing my children are in the arts. I sent you a picture of my daughter, Rachel Lockhart who graduated from ASFA this year and will start Juilliard in the Fall. I want to thank you and share with you the seed you helped to cultivate is still growing. I pray all is well with you. Sincerely, Jacqueline Lockhard”
A week ago Ms. Lockhard accompanied her beautiful daughter as she enrolled at Julliard. I am now giving thought to how I can help her succeed there. It’s what I have done all my life and will to the end. It’s hard to change habits at my age.
But once again, in the usual Alabama Yahoo politics, I was expected to respond to innuendo and slander with just a shred of twisted truth. It was sleazy, insulting, and disgusting, but just one small instance of this type of nasty, mudslinging Gary seemed to relish. Over and over again I was met with undeserved personal attacks on my character and assaults on my integrity. But there was little of substance to criticize about my performance as a commissioner. I had done my job. The Ronald Reagan rule of not speaking ill of a fellow Republican did not matter as supposedly decent Republicans said nothing about his vile, unfounded assaults and distortions.
I decided to ignore them. I was better than that and had nothing to apologize for. And still do not. But who in their right mind would tolerate this type of crap for $50,000 a year and a case of hives? And we wonder why decent, capable people won’t offer for public office and we’re left with what we are? This is why.
So I was involuntarily retired from public elected office at the age of 44, at the height of my productivity, connections, and effectiveness. In some ways, it was a relief. My allergies and hives went away and I no longer had to smile when I did not feel like it or suffer nasty idiots who felt they had sway over me because they had a vote. But I missed the opportunities to solve other problems in a more direct way and some of the great people in the City and County with whom I had worked on so many worthwhile projects.
I was not idle for long after Dr. Arrington saw opportunities for the City in an idea I had fostered to create a secondary airport in Alabama to relieve Atlanta’s Hartsfield and connect our cities by high-speed rail. He courageously bucked advisers to create the Council of Cooperating Governments and offered me the position of executive director. We gave it a good run and had some successes; most notable in creating the federally-recognized Southern High-Speed Corridor that included Birmingham as a key hub. There was no anticipated high-speed rail connection between Atlanta, Birmingham, Meridian, and New Orleans until we successfully lobbied the Federal Rail Administration for it. the plan had been to eventually connect to Dallas and then on to Los Angeles. And I still believe the day will come when that happens, especially as fossil fuel energy sources are depleted and ensuing devastating climate change make alternatives imperative.
There were other benefits of the Council as communities came together to cooperate on special projects. It was here that Larry Langford formed his idea for Visionland and bound together western communities to make it a reality. We can debate its history, but Visionland got off to a grand start through municipal cooperation, heretofore unheard of, and created a sense of optimism about the future of western Jefferson County that was sorely needed.
I would argue that racism like it does on may things in Birmingham and elsewhere, played a significant role in the downfall of the water park. White parents simply did not support an integrated water theme park in the projected numbers, greatly reducing revenues and leading to the eventual financial collapse of Visionland. White folks were simply not going to let their kids swim in a contained pool with Black kids on the other side of town no matter how much their kids begged them.
The public seemed to understand this as they went on to elect Larry to the County Commission and as Mayor of Birmingham in a remarkable race against the incumbent, the ever pompous, insincere and grudge-holding Bernard Kincaid, and ten others, including Valerie Abbott, where he won without a runoff. It was a miraculous win and I was brought to tears election night as we watched his astonishing win and contemplated the thought of all Larry could accomplish in that position. His slogan was “Let’s Do Something.” And he took off running and did a lot, a whole lot, in a short period of time. It was downright amazing.
Jeff Pitts ran the mayoral campaign and I am still disgusted over the $100,000 he paid from campaign coffers to the ever sleazy Jesse Lewis, publisher of the Birmingham Times, who constantly uses his race to extort money from politicians while claiming to speak for all Black people. He became a multi-millionaire from City, County, and State campaigns regularly using this technique on intimidated candidates not wishing to take a chance on offending Black voters he claimed to control.
You might be surprised to know that at one time I owned a third of his newspaper, The Birmingham Times, but sold it to his son, Jesse Jr., for a pittance when it became clear I would never collect a dividend from the investment.
While Jesse, Jr. visited my apartment, unannounced and uninvited, to make a pitch for my relinquishing my shares, he toured my place, making comments about various things, especially my Bang and Olufsen stereo I had purchased while studying in Sweden. A few days later, an enterprising young black man picked my apartment from all others on Southside and robbed it. Among the many valuable and sentimental things stolen, was the stereo. Jesse Jr. had admired. they caught the guy and I was able to identify the tennis shoes he was wearing from the red paint on them that I had spilled while painting my dining room. I asked the judge to be lenient with him as I was ceratin he was not the mastermind of the crime and was just following orders. Jesse Jr. died some months later in a car accident so it is unfair to connect him to the robbery. But I have always believed that his penchant for loose white women and cocaine had a connection to this robbery and the need to fuel his wanton lifestyle.
One of my great regrets is that I helped Jesse Sr. become president of Lawson State College after my close friend Helen Shores Lee and her father asked me to endorse him to the governor. Helen had been chair of my campaign for the Council in 1977 in a move that had been unheard of prior to my naming a Black woman as chair of a campaign for a white man. And we had grown close through the years, often traveling together and working on various projects. I was also close to her sister Barbara whose twins were two of my Godchildren. So when she and her father asked for my help, I gave it.
But Jesse turned out to be a disaster in that post and almost wrecked the college. He had a limited education, giving himself an honorary doctorate, and no significant experience to qualify for the job, other than being a token in the Wallace administration. By contrast, Perry Ward, who was a Birmingham school administrator whose promotions were advocated by me and Dr. Paul Houston while we worked together at the Board of Education, has done an excellent job moving the school forward. When Dr. Ward asked me to help Lawson secure a donation from Richard Scrushy to build the school’s technology center, I met with Richard to present the request. At the school’s graduation ceremony a few weeks later, Richard announced he was giving them a million dollars, the largest donation ever to a community college in Alabama. It was a gift that was very much appreciated.
It must have been embarrassing for Jesse and his step-son James, to always be attacking me on the front page of a newspaper I partly owned, just because I was white. But the Patriarch of the Lewis family showed long ago he has no conscience and a well-developed sense of privilege. That’s why he never flinched after a long day on the Highland Golf course of parking in the handicapped spot at the MAXX board meeting where he also collected a huge fee for doing nothing. Maybe he though mental disability qualified him. I keep thinking that because he is now in his 90’s, he can’t last much longer, but when all you do is play golf and extort money, you apparently don’t wear out easily.
Mayor Arrington and I worked together for several years fighting the prejudice against the City that slowed our progress at the Council of Cooperating Governments. Unfortunately, 911 and the World Trade Center attack brought the desire to expand air travel to a temporary halt and put projects like funding high-speed rail corridors, which has been a priority of the Clinton administration, on a back burner. Of course, it’s more complicated than just this, but it is a story for another time and is off point, as is much of this missive!
It is notable, however, that the Council of Cooperating Governments had twenty-six member governments, including Birmingham, Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, and two dozen smaller municipal and county governments across the Southeast. Heretofore, this level of cooperation among governments was unheard of and should have garnered praise from the Birmingham News and all civic leaders with good sense who understood the value of regional cooperation and elimination of duplicate services. It did not.
(You can read the report on the proposed high-speed rail connection between Atlanta and Birmingham here bu cutting and pasting this link in your browser: http://www.rpcgb.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Final-Report-ATL-BHM
At Gary White’s insistence, Jefferson County withdrew from membership in the Council, once again demonstrating how petty, short-sighted, and vindictive he could be. Mary Buckelew who had been an initial ardent supporter went along under pressure from him, as she did in other matters that eventually bankrupted the County and led her to almost being indicted along with Gary.
Everyone knew, if I were not involved in this project, the County would resume its membership in the Council. I considered resigning for the sake of what was an important undertaking but was persuaded to stay on despite Gary”s opposition. Somehow, it seemed that he could never get over winning the election.(Similar to Trump!) He did everything he could to continue to damage my reputation and prevent me from ever running again for public office. Most notably, he led the successful effort to gerrymander me out of my old Commission district with no other purpose than to exclude me as a potential opponent. And he sought to undo many of the policies and practices I had instituted at the County.
He did all of this with the implicit blessing of friends like Roger Bass, aiding and abetting him with unfounded praise and contributions to continue him in office. His unchallenged power corrupted him further and set the stage for the massive sewer debacle that bankrupted the County and saddled Jefferson County citizens with unimaginable debt for decades to come. All the while he handed out lucrative, unbid, and in some cases, nonsensical, contracts to buddies like Bill Slaughter, Jeff Pitts, and Roger Bass and others.
Prior to the sewer debacle in which he was a major pawn for Bill Slaughter, Gary and the other commissioners, including Bettye Fine Collins, went on a drunken spending spree with the new revenues from the County occupational tax Jim Gunter and I had opposed. They built themselves new, lavish offices at the other end of the Courthouse. (Bettye’s had a make-up room so she could always look her best for television appearances). They were in the same suite so they could collude more easily without being seen walking between each other’s offices. And to top off the “improvements’ befitting rulers of their importance, they installed a massive bronze facade to the 19th Street entrance to the Courthouse under the guise of needed tighter security. Millions were spent at the direction of Republicans whose conservative constituents did not yell until the sewer rates hit an all-time high and their monthly bills reminded them of the excesses and ineptitude of these wanna-be royals.
But now Roger wants to banter on Facebook as if I should respect his opinions which are neither original, accurate, nor intelligent. Seriously? it’s just too tedious to deal with him and I plan to drop him as a Facebook “friend” as soon as I know he has had time to find its link to this blog piece. I don’t want him to miss it after his weeks of trolling me for no good reason.
I have tried my best to forget the outright lie and his feigned regret at allegedly not hearing from me that day at the Cedar House. And I even ignored the fact that he apparently is an ardent devotee and sycophant ( I call them MAGAites ) of the most incompetent, crass, and corrupt president in the history of the United States. But somehow, his observation, devoid of facts or proof, that most of my comments in a previous blog piece about Gary White’s release from prison were “bullshit” crossed a line and hit a nerve.
I have grown weary of nasty, wacko opinions without facts to support them; and especially weary of people who will use any connections and betray friends, and their grandmother if necessary, to line their pockets. It would be interesting to have a full accounting of the total amount of money Roger and his ventures have gleaned from his well established personal connection to Commissioner White. This taxpayer money, generously allowed for bogus work, has apparently helped make him the prosperous guy he is today; able to afford yet another trophy bride and live abroad, albeit in Russia which is not exactly Monaco or the French Riviera. Though they do have free dental care.
Moreover, he now proudly takes credit for using his influence with Washington politicians to make certain Gary White did not feel the full impact of his prison sentence for public corruption by having him transferred to Maxwell AFB to complete his sentence closer to his wife and friends in very favorable conditions. Roger’s deficient ego, similar to that of his national hero’s that demands they always have some adoring beauty hanging on their arms, required that he take credit for this success in getting Gary White special treatment he did not deserve. I don’t think he realized he was revealing just how corrupt he had become by doing this. It wasn’t so much an act of friendship or compassion as it was just an IOU being repaid. Here’s why:
After years of receiving favorable unbid contracts for Dunn from Gary and the County, in 2006, Roger formed a new company with Jeff Pitts, the campaign manager for Larry Langford’s successful commission race (and later Larry’s mayoral bid), previously mentioned as a principle in Matrix, the nasty campaign experts. The company was incorporated as Strada Materials. I think this was probably a nod to Vulcan Materials which has been one of Birmingham’s most successful companies. Of course, Strada which means “street” in Italian sounds much better than a company named “Street Materials”.
It is a well-documented fact that Roger and his company received a number of no-bid, lucrative contracts from the County, fostered and approved by Gary White. One of these apparently involved counting sewer manhole covers. It must have been harder than might be thought to cost $100,000 for this task. He, no doubt, sloshed some of this money toward other campaigns to maintain the influence he had with Shelby or Sessions, or both, to gain Gary favorable treatment by the federal Bureau of Prisons and Justice Department. Seems like I remember some guy from Alabama used to run that department.
Laughably, Roger took strong exception to my assertion that it was Gary’s long-suffering second or third wife, Judy, who had successfully lobbied to have him moved to Maxwell within shouting distance to Birmingham. He wanted full credit for having pulled off this feat, an anomaly in the federal prison system. And he offered an insult which I am certain Judy will not take lightly as he made his case that he alone deserved credit for this feat.
Meanwhile, Larry Langford, dying from cancer, was left to languish and suffer seven hours away from his family, for whom it was a financial burden to visit, requiring overnight stays. In his last days, Larry was allowed to come home on compassionate release in December 2018, only to die a few days after his arrival, never to leave a hospital or see his home again. It assaults my sense of justice and will always be an example of how terribly unfair life can be. Some, while claiming to be devout, practicing Christians, say he should have been made to die in prison for his crimes. These people universally use their Bibles as doorstops.
So it’s fair to say that Roger and Gary’s friendship was symbiotic. Like in most political relationships, they regularly scratched each other’s backs with considerable success and Roger was just thanking his friend Gary for his considerable unearned financial windfalls from the County when he pulled strings not available to ordinary citizens without lucrative contracts and resources, or access to power. What’s wrong with this is that it wasn’t Gary’s money he was generously awarding. It was the public’s. And all the while he was giving it away, he was lining his own pockets and enjoying the high life with his convivial friend, Roger. Here are his own words in an exchange with me from a post in early July:
Roger Bass: There is a lot of truth in what you have spent many words to say my old friend. And there is also a lot of bullshit.
Katopodis: You tend to use many glittering generalities in your comments and posts without substantiating details to validate your opinions
Roger Bass: Good. That’s the reason they are called opinions. However, I have some important facts about this subject that would fill in some of the gaps in John’s story. One this is certain, I will not be posting those facts on Facebook.
Katopodis: Would you please elaborate on the parts that are “bullshit” so I might correct them?
Roger Bass: Here is one of many parts. I asked a friend in Washington to move Gary to Maxwell. He called and told me it was done. Judy then demanded to ride with the marshals in the transport. It damn near ended the transfer.
Katopodis: Oh yea that’s big one.
Katopodis: So I guess I owe Judy White an apology for being so naive and blaming her continuous yapping for getting an indefensible transfer of Gary White to Maxwell. If I had given it more thought I should have realized that in your capacity as president of the Alabama Roadbuilders Association you would have garnered lots of IOUs, especially with senators and congressmen from Alabama looking for campaign funds. And as a close friend of Gary’s, it was only logical for you to use these in his behalf. In fact, the Roadbuilders Association has publicly bragged that “individually and collectively, our industry makes significant contributions to the advancement of … Richard Shelby”. A call from you to him or one of those accepting large contributions would have certainly done the trick. But as I said, I’ m naive.”
Make no mistake, Roger Bass is not alone in using the system to his advantage. But he may be unique, or at least in a much smaller group, in his willingness to throw friends under the bus and use hie resources to give respectability and cover to those who don’t deserve it. I suspect sadly, that he probably does not have many friends today and that is why it has been so easy to locate in Moscow after decades in Alabama.
I doubt his valiant and successful effort to make Gary as comfortable as possible may not sit well with those still facing outrageous sewer bills every month for the rest of their lives because they live in Jefferson County and were blind to what he and other commissioners were doing, lining their pockets and those of their friends. But I doubt Roger cares much living in Moscow, likely without a sewer bill.
In one of his recent posts, Roger explains to his Facebook friend who said he had always “wondered” about me (whatever that means) that I am now “an angry old man”. He’s right. For certain, there’s no question that I am old at age 72 and I definitely have lots of obvious and well-documented reasons to be angry. I definitely think I have the right to be angry that my life was turned upside down and my long history of dedicated public service that I have tried to outline in the many preceding pages was dashed in a few weeks of slander and lies for the sake of obscene greed by people who were already well off. It’s easier to forgive the guy who steals to feed his family than the one who steals to be able to afford more Dom Perignon and a Mercedes.
I am indeed prejudiced about many things, as you have read in these pages, but as I see it, my life was significantly altered and almost ruined as I was handed many days of needless, undeserved suffering for the sake of the wanton and unbridled greed of people like him, Bill Slaughter, Gary White, and sadly, Jeff Pitts. It was not enough to just defeat me in the election; it was important for them to destroy me personally and poison the air in such as way as to pave the way for negative things that were to come which affected my life which was on a positive, contributing trajectory, in unimaginable ways. Bill Slaughter was joined by Gary White in often boasting of wanting to see me homeless on the streets. He came close to achieving the goal, but, thankfully, not quite.
I would hate for him to know that the changes he helped make in my life gave me the chance to escape any obligation I may have felt to Birmingham and I am finding the last chapter in my life to be the most satisfying and enjoyable as I focus on various charitable projects and the children of families with whom I am close.
The saddest part for me is the amount of work left unfinished that I was uniquely positioned to accomplish as they employed a vile and disgusting campaign that destroyed any possibility of my ever returning to public life. For sure, people forget, just as they have the many good things I did for my community without ever seeking acknowledgment. Among them are EPIC School, the Alabama School of Fine Arts and McWane Center, projects in which I played a decisive leadership role. But I also fought other battles like the ones for historic preservation, personally suing at my own expense to save several historic downtown buildings. If I had been around at the time, I can assure you that the Terminal Station would not have been destroyed. And personal projects restored buildings like my Southside apartment building and preserved other landmarks like the Pita Stop Building. The waited until I was gone to teach down the Methodist Church on 11th Avenue South after lying about an intention to preserve it.
And I regularly fought zoning battles on the City Council and the County Commission to protect residential neighborhoods, although in one instance I engaged an attorney to fight for the right of a Mormon Church to create a new “stake”, or congregation, in my district after the usual forces of ignorance opposed the church’s right to locate on land they owned because they considered them to be a “cult”.
One of the best zoning attorneys in the State, Doug Coretti helped me protect the First Amendment rights of the church in federal court where I testified in their behalf. This angered many in the neighborhood and they raised money to defeat me. Ten years later, however,I received a letter of apology saying they had been wrong and the Mormons had been the best neighbors they had ever had. They wanted me to run again. Sure. Hope no one held their breath.
And then there were issues like the fluoridation of the community’s water supply, my personal favorite accomplishment, to bring dental health to children, especially from low-income families.If your children and grandchildren have no cavities, did you think this happened by accident? I was watching a PBS special on a coal mining feud in West Virginia and had always wondered why people in those days always seemed to pose for photographs without smiling. Then in one newsreel, one of the miners, a Mr. Hatfield of the feud with the McCoys, had a close-up while he was grinning. His teeth were black and a number of them, missing. And the same was true for many others in the film. I did not want this happening in Birmingham and, thankfully, it does not, thanks to the prudent use of fluoride.
I waged a huge battle to provide this medical aide to Birmingham, with my focus on disadvantaged children who could not afford regular dental treatment, if any at all. I used my influence as a school administrator with Bessie Estell who was a former school principal to change her vote to become the decisive vote in adding fluoride in trace amounts, parts per million, to the City’s water supply. Some years later, after she died, I pressed to name a park adjacent to EPIC School in her honor because of her vote.
Dr. Bill Roper, chief medical director of the Jefferson County Health Department and I teamed up while I was a Councilman to devise a plan to accomplish this, but I was the one who got the death threats from the crazies that opposed it. One of the great things that came from this battle was my friendship with Bill and his wife Maryann. I was pleased to be able to help him in his quest for the White House Fellowship that had been denied me two years earlier because of my firing by the Board of Education. This honor launched his career as head of Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the director of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. Roger Porter, a professor at the Kennedy School who made this happen, and I recently discussed Bill’s latest accomplishment when he was called out of retirement as dean of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine to take the reins as president of their college and university system. He has made Pleasant Grove proud with his singular accomplishments.
![Langford and XO laptop[15847]](https://johnkatopodis.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Langford-and-XO-laptop15847.jpg?w=700)
There are other things for which I have more than willing to allow others to take political credit with relative silence about my key role. But I have seen first hand that people really don’t pay attention and I may never be judged fairly without mention of those accomplishments people now take for granted as part of the landscape. For example, Karen Bowdre, in denying me bond and holding me for over nine months in one of the worst county jails in Alabama, argued that I had “no ties to Alabama”. Seriously? Other than two homes, an office, my only remaining relative from my mother’s family, and my name on several buildings, she was right. I have no ties to the prejudice, ignorance, stupidity, racism and flat out meanness she and others like her seem to appreciate.
Aside from Computer Help for Kids which refurbished hundreds of HealthSouth computers, replaced in Y2K, for re-use by disadvantaged children, most notable among them was the One Laptop Per Child program, which for a brief moment in Birmingham’s history provided free laptops to every elementary school child in the City. I actually enrolled in a class at MIT to convince the head of the Media Lab there, Nicholas Negroponte, to make Birmingham the only city in America to do this. After I laid the foundation and designed a framework, Larry came to Cambridge to seal the deal and followed up to make it happen. He definitely deserves political credit for the program, but not for the concept or the actual work to make it happen. I’m certain he would agree with this if he were here to speak.
As I learned from our early days of serving together on the Birmingham City Council in 1977, Larry had a talent for recognizing and appreciating a good idea. We were fast friends for many many years with him often referring to me as closer to him than his brothers. He definitely was not insecure about his role or mine in many projects and neither of us ever felt threatened or demeaned by the other. But my role in this project and many others was significant. whether or not I received, or took, any public credit at the time. A little research will confirm that part I played in all of these things I have mentioned. But who care? The good these projects have done in people’s lives is sufficient.
What a shame that William Bell was always more interested in his hedonism as a serial philanderer with an active extra-marital sex life than the education of Birmingham’s disadvantaged children. I can give you a list of them, if pressed. He ended the program for unspecified reasons and terminated Bob McKenna who was the City’s liaison to MIT. In doing so, William ignored Bob’s competence and popularity and his inspiring representation of the disabled community as someone who uses a wheelchair from a spinal cord injury in his youth. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that William replaced Bob was replaced by someone with a short skirt. 
Because of William, who should have been removed from office when he committed domestic abuse against his long-suffering wife, Sharon, aka Shelly, the technology gap between the rich and poor has likely only widened. In that respect, he has contributed to keeping Birmingham’s children lagging behind the rest of the community and at a competitive disadvantage.
Miss Nina Miglionico was Sharon’s attorney when she filed a complaint against him for physical battery. It all went away quietly but had it happened in today’s “Me Too” climate, he would not have survived the ensuing scandal. Years later, Nina shared the full story with me at one of our many dinners. It made me regret the years of support and friendship I had given him. Emotional battery is bad and hard to confront, but the physical battery of any woman or child can never be tolerated. For that matter, battery of anyone is wrong.
Larry counted on me for many things, especially if they related to education. We worked together to save Holy Family High School, one of his and Melva’s favorite causes, along with the affiliated elementary schools. While in Boston for a Kennedy School meeting, I learned of the Cristo Rey program from my friend Mary Truong’s brother, Van, and the possibility of making Holy Family a Cristo Rey school. I introduced the concept to Larry and Melva who followed up and the rest is, as they say, history. This program saved the high school, without a doubt.
Saving the Catholic elementary schools proved more problematic. Oddly, we were sealing these schools’ fate by working to significantly improve the public schools. Why would parents choose an expensive parochial school over a free public one if the quality of the education was equal of better in the public school?
The final nail in the coffin came after I persuaded Larry to pass the 1 % sales tax increase to fund refurbishing or replacing every public school in the County. The revenues generated were used to float bonds in the tens of millions to build some of the finest physical plants of any public schools, anywhere. Larry stoically took the political heat with me constantly assuring him that his personal and political sacrifice would be worth it. I reasoned that without substandard facilities, the community could now focus on other things to make the schools the best anywhere. He did this while on the County Commission. But as Mayor of Birmingham, he took it a step further wanting to find a way to pay for college educations for every high school graduate in the City. He enlisted my help and that of Dr. Neal Berte of Birmingham Southern to devise a plan, but was removed from office before any workable plan could be implemented. He would be pleased to see the current efforts of Mayor Woodfin to make this happen. He would, as I do, wish the young mayor the best in this important endeavor.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I have no apologies whatsoever to make for my long history of unblemished service to my community. I served with vision and integrity, often sacrificing to make things happen. I defy anyone to prove otherwise. There is not a hint of impropriety, theft, or scandal during any of my years of service in elective office. My troubles began only after I had been out of office for almost 20 years and only after I refused an outrageous demand that I help unethical and overly ambitious federal prosecutors entrap their targets of Larry Langford, Richard Scrushy, and Milton McGregor.
I will die believing I deserved better than I got from Birmingham and “friends” like Roger Bass. Unlike Roger’s, my claims are well documented in the Birmingham Public Library records and the archives of the Birmingham News, wherever they are now that Al.com has replaced them. If you are that interested in proving me wrong, you can do the research.
It’s probably past time to tell the story of my brush with the feds from my point of view with a some of the facts that might alter public perception of my case and the fairness of my conviction. Frankly, it has not been important to me to correct the record and tell what some might find a fascinating saga, especially in light of the Supreme Court ruling in Skilling which suggested the charges should never have been filed in the first place. But when you become a target of the feds, any charge and indictment will do. If it had not been this, it would have been something else to force my cooperation. After a five year investigation by the IRS and nothing that was chargeable, they came up with their theft of honest services” BS. Had the situation been delayed a year, they could not have used it. All in all, i have delayed telling the full story because it is a very complicated one that cannot be told without possibly casting aspersions on some politicians and businessmen I liked. But not that Larry and Milton are gone, it may be possible. But I suspect that it may be a little too much for me to ask Richard Scrushy to kick off so I can tell the story, completely unfettered. (Just joking, Richard…live as long as you can).
It is undeniable that I could have avoided my legal troubles had I been willing to throw these community leaders under the bus. George Martin, the mousy and diabolical ( a bad combination) Assistant U.S. Attorney for Northern Alabama, and his crony, Matt Hart, wanted me to wear a wire and “help design the crime” by which these guys would be convicted…of something; anything would have done. George wanted to bring them down no matter what it took or what law was trampled.
It was an outrageous demand of me and I adamantly refused, fully aware of the consequences for my future. Did I know things that they could have used and which would have prevented my prosecution on scurrilous charges? I seriously will never tell. But we all know the answer. I learned in Catholic school to always pay close attention. Despite my advanced age, I still remember things that some might still fear being revealed. A warning: don’t be like Roger and tick me off or I might just tell all I know about you, at least until the dementia sets in.
People like Ken Livesay of HealthSouth fame cut deals to save their assets and asses, while gleefully pointing fingers at others. Judge Bowdre, as just and impartial as she claims to be, only gave him six months in jail for his pivotal role in the HealthSouth fraud that resulted in Richard Scrushy’s criminal indictment and almost destroyed the company, costing hundreds of innocent, unsuspecting people their jobs and thousands of trusting investors, millions of dollars. I have wondered from time to time how Ken lives with himself, but I’m sure he has rationalized his actions, as he still enjoys large sums of undeserved money from his profitable association with HealthSouth. But I would not recommend him as a friend or even an acquaintance. He’s a dangerous coward who owes many, including me, an apology.
Unlike him, I refused to cooperate in destroying others and willingly paid the heavy price. And unlike Roger, I remain loyal to friends, even when they might be wrong. Right or wrong, I would never knowingly participate in anyone’s destruction no matter how much money, security or pleasure I might garner. And I certainly wasn’t going to do it to satisfy George Martin. Has anyone ever seen his name on anything in the community that might demonstrate his love of our city and devotion to its improvement? Let me know when you find something.
I often think of all the good Richard Scrushy did for our community and the enormously unfair price he and Gov. Siegelman paid for something they absolutely did not do. With inside information from a close friend of mine involved in the matter, I knew what had happened and was convinced early on that Richard Scrushy never paid anyone to be appointed to a board in which he had no interest and that held no sway over his multi-billion dollar business. As the president and CEO of the largest rehabilitation company in the world, he was doing the State a favor by agreeing to serve, although he seldom personally attended meetings of the State Healthcare Planning Agency. Moreover, I think of all Richard and Don could, and would, have done to make Birmingham and Alabama better if it were not for people like Ken Livesay and others whose names history will not remember. Somehow I doubt they will even be a footnote.
Now, what is the point of all this meandering and admittedly self-serving rambling missive, for which I am bound to be criticized?
Clearly, I could have made my point about Roger being a lousy friend and greedy trough feeding lobbyist with a penchant for young women in a couple of paragraphs. But I thought it would be particularly annoying for him to have to wade through the entire trope that borders on being a novel to get to the parts where he, no doubt, will claim he has been slandered. Frankly, in my acknowledged old age, it is gratifying to vent my spleen and place on the Internet where, unlike me, it will live forever, the story of the greed and excesses of those like Roger which have affected the progress of Alabama and the lives of people like me.
Unlike Al Troncalli, who just wanted a better community, nothing more, Roger Bass has always been motivated to be politically involved by greed to fuel his hedonistic lifestyle. We all make mistake in our youth and have less lofty values than usually come with age But many of us spiritually and morally mature as we age.
Interestingly, in his old age at almost 75, Roger has taken a Russian bride who I mistook for his granddaughter when I first saw her photograph. He has also become enamored with all things Russian. As a major supporter and defender of Trump, with whom he shares, like Jeffrey Epstein, an appreciation for “younger women”, he opposes socialist ideas like Medicare for all, except apparently where it applies to him and his teeth (and his wife’s). Here is one of his recent posts about the Russian health system he admires.
Posted to Facebook 08/18/2019 by Roger Bass:
“ I have been taking Tatiana to the dentist two times a week for a while. It was my suggestion. Yes, I know about checking a horse’s teeth before buying it! The cost of an excellent dentist here is about 20% of the typical US cost.
The picture of the waiting room I am posting shows a rather spartan space. However, all other facilities are the latest technology.
Tatiana’s dentist speaks excellent English. I have a little dental issue that has me concerned about being abroad. I had a conversation with him. I asked him if he would see me in case of a dental emergency. He said, “Of course.” He then asked me to have a panoramic X-ray made. He wanted to start a file. He spent 15 minutes with me. He charged me nothing.
I understand this isn’t an exciting post. But, it might help my friends understand a little more about this very misunderstood country. I hope so, because the people here are different and some of the customs are a little weird, but there are good people almost everywhere. Almost.”
I’m not a psychiatrist and I normally don’t try to play one, although I did major in experimental psychology in college, but this post is revealing in many ways. (BTW, in experimental college the focus is on behaviors and uses a lot of mice and rats in experiments so it may have been more relevant than I realized at the time for a career in politics.)
I really don’t think I would have mentioned buying the horse before checking her teeth as the buying part seems like it might hit a little closer to home than is comfortable. Nor would I have made the case that Russia is misunderstood. Rational and informed people understand full well what Russia’s intentions in the world are and have always been. The people of Ukraine and Crimea might have a different take on Russia, especially her leaders. And the protesters in the streets of Moscow on a regular basis in recent weeks, crying for democracy and fair elections, might as well.
I have never told this before but in 1973, while studying as a Fulbright Scholar in Sweden, I was recruited by USIA, the U.S. Information Agency, to carry a book to a Russian woman in the Soviet Union. I had visited Russia several times and often took the overnight steamer from Stockholm to Finland and then to Leningrad to visit the Hermitage, one of the world’s great museums, built on the backs of Russian peasants. I also liked to visit the summer palace of Peter the Great. Leningrad was one of the world’s most beautiful cities, but Moscow not so much and I only visited there once and left in a hurry.
No one explained why I was to go to Russia on this mission and I never asked. I had worked at the embassy part-time, doing a number of tasks assigned to me and was well known there as I regularly lectured in Swedish schools about the American education system. Of particular interest to Swedes was the racial strife in the American South and I showed the Cecily Tyson film, the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, with considerable effect to large Swedish audiences at the lectures. I still get chills when I think of her drinking from that all-white fountain in front of the Courthouse. It reminded me of the segregated fountains at the Sumter County, Georgia Courthouse when I was there in 1970, prior to Harvard, working on school desegregation. This may be a topic for a good second book if I get through this one. With Jimmy Carter as chairman of the school board, the tale might attract some interest, but my monograph, “Re-segregation in the South: The Case of Sumter County, Georgia” can be found online and in the archives of the libraries at Harvard. You can also find my dissertation, ” Pre-school in Sweden: The Formation and Implementation of a National Policy” in the same place. I hope you get the idea that my commitment to the well-being of children is not new or an affectation.
Still, I was surprised when I was given this mysterious assignment which was easily accomplished and seemed mundane. But months afterward, when I continued to communicate with the woman who received the book, Helena Kotomkina, whose address I still have, I was politely reprimanded and taken off the courier list.
For years after returning to Alabama, I would mail her books, not all of which made it through the Soviet censors. I took to sending books not easily translated or understood like, “A Member of the Wedding” by Carson McCullars. Sometimes she would get them, sometimes she would not.
This is Roger’s Russia, even today. But I often reflect on the incomparable beauty of Russia and the many days I spent visiting her museums, the ballet, and her historical sites. But unlike Roger who seems to be enamored like some tourist that has never visited abroad, (which I know is not true), I have no illusions about their political system and strong-arm, underhanded tactics. Even with a young bride by your side, it cannot be a warm and inviting place. So I assume he will soon grow weary of it when the novelty wears off and return to America.
More recently and perhaps more relatable for Roger is my experience with one of my Godchildren, a retired Lt. Commander in the Navy (U.S.) who met a young Russian woman on the Internet and married her weeks later. He was totally smitten and thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He had divorced his third wife and essentially abandoned his three children by her before meeting his Russian babushka. It was his fourth marriage and her second. Her first husband had met her when she was 20 and he was 69. Willard Summers told his wife he wanted a divorce on their 50th wedding anniversary, shocking their families and friends and the whole community who still talk about it. While I was there helping Polina refurbish Willard’s home, which is now a bed and breakfast, I used to hate going to the post office in Ramer, Tennessee to pick up letters or pay taxes in her name for fear people were thinking I was the next old man on the list of her potential husband-victims. Dateline, are you listening?
It made more sense for me as to why Willard had married Polina after I made a shocking discovery while cleaning out a closet in his home during some renovations and found what could have been a lifetime supply of Viagra. There was literally a king’s ransom of maybe a thousand blue tablets. It boggled the mind. But it only became clear as to why Polina married Willard when he died a couple of years later and left her all his property and assets that she had not already had transferred to her name.
It is well known that many Russian women are anxious to come to the United States to escape the oppressive life in Russia, even today, years after the collapse of the Soviet regime. You can literally buy a Russian bride on the Internet. And I suppose if you are in your declining years and need an ego boost, this is as good a way as any to do it. In fact, to satisfy your insecurity, why not buy two or three as backups?
People certainly have the right to pursue happiness wherever they can find it no matter how ridiculous it makes them look. But assuming people will view it as normal marrying someone a third of your age and expecting them to pretend it is and swoon over her alleged beauty as anything other than a vacuous trophy wife ( see Melania Knauss Trump) is ludicrous and absurd. And it is especially true for those, like Roger, who have enthusiastically embraced and encouraged the age of Trump where manners, civility, and decorum have been obliterated and made passé.
There is no subject that is off-limits. So please don’t tell me that commenting on Roger’s latest hedonistic indulgence should be taboo. Unless, of course, he wants to disavow and condemn every crass, demeaning, hurtful thing Trump has hurled at women, the handicapped, war heroes, etc. in the last three years. I would wait, but it won’t be forthcoming. MAGAites never apologize. So I won’t either for thinking and saying that seeking intimacy with someone so young is sick and reveals either a personality disorder, a character flaw, or deep-seated loneliness…or maybe, all of the aforementioned.
Honestly, if a woman aged 74 married a man in his twenties what would the reaction of the community likely be? (Insert giggles and whispers here.) So why is it totally acceptable for a dirty old man to take a young bride and expect anything less?
In fairness, It’s hard to know what private pain people may have secretly suffered that encourages them to seek whatever happiness they can, wherever and whenever they can, even in inappropriate or odd places. We all deserve happiness and no one should argue otherwise. But when you set yourself up as a critic of others’ beliefs and values, you become fair game for criticism and judgment. I have no problem being judged. Fire away. But I also reserve the right to dispel illusions and offer facts to support my opinions without gratuitous personal attacks or a response. One of the things people seem to like about Trump is that he fires back when attacked. If that’s the new rule, I will play by it, even at the risk of sounding like a spurned lover. Did something happen on that romantic Bahamas trip between me and Roger that I may have suppressed?
And as much as I’d like to avoid the discomfort of reserving judgment on Roger’s personal lifestyle which taxpayers have helped fund, I won’t. At the least, he looks like a foolish old hypocrite as he anxiously waits for his wife’s visa to come to America while supporting Trump’s anti-immigration policies for everyone else. I’d delay it as long a possible. Armed with a valid visa, even with a pre-nup, the marriage might be not as secure. While he’s marking time waiting for the visa for his new wife, it angers me when he groans about the feds dragging their feet, but ignores the plight of other real and deserving refugees, languishing in detention centers waiting for their turn to make their case for entry into the Country. If I were a good Republican who thinks like he does, I’d say, “Tough. Get in line and wait your turn.” Of course, she may have some special skills that are needed here, but your Chosen One will tell you that chain migration, even from Russia, should not be allowed.
Moreover, I feel sorry for anyone who is so twisted as to think this that any marriage like this is one made in heaven that should be blessed by adoring fans on Facebook. Did anyone think that by friending someone on Facebook they would you lose all discernment and join a chorus of ass-kissing friends to laud the incomparable beauty of any store-bought bride? Everyone is cute when they’re young. Check back with me in 30 years but I’m unlikely to be able to comment further.
In case you may have missed it, I have nothing but disdain for Roger Bass and dropping him from Facebook, like I have done others of his ilk so I don’t have to be further subjected to ignorant, insipid comments, and frankly, stupid posts, will be a pleasure, if not a relief.
Let me acknowledge that I may have this all wrong and owe everybody involved a heartfelt and sincere apology. It is entirely possible that Roger and Tatiana met at a world conference on climate change where Tatiana was a featured speaker with expertise in fossils. And perhaps they married after they found amazingly similar interests and intellectual compatibility. But maybe not.
A good thing to come from all this is that Roger’s posts have made clear to me that we have nothing in common and share no values and likely never did. Wasting more time watching him try to regain his youth and act relevant to anything, even from a long distance, is futile and counterproductive and slightly painful. I’m sure he will have an appropriate response to my evaluation of his worth, and self-serving politics, which are antithetical to mine. In one of his posts, he derided my education for which I also have no intention of apologizing. And his assessment that my political arguments are “weak” is without supporting evidence.
But does it really matter? I have no regard for his opinions, lifestyle, values. And his existence is irrelevant to mine. I only regret that I did not discover this in the ’80s and act accordingly. But I encourage him, like the most famous trophy wife of all, Melania, might do, to be best or at least try your best, although I cannot imagine what further damage he might do to me or my reputation which his dollars from the County have already helped besmirch and nearly destroy.
In all the examples of things I did to try and make Birmingham better during my public career there, I only briefly referenced something more important to me. During it all, I tried to use what resources and gifts God afforded me to help as many people as possible with their very real problems. And I have never, ever, expected anything in return. Whether it was a scholarship for a child at Holy Family Elementary, or a letter of recommendation to Harvard, or refurbishing a computer for a kid who needed one or giving some a job who needed it desperately, I have gone about my business without vanity or need for recognition or praise. But I damn sure never expected to rewarded with sarcasm, hatred, and actions to destroy me.
From time to time, I am reminded, sometimes on Facebook, that I have helped a lot of people in my life, especially children, achieve their dreams. And in many ways, it makes some of the slings and arrows I have endured worth it. And I am blessed that I have survived all of them, knowing who I am and have always been and happy in my old age, without too many regrets.
While Roger and company were busy doing things to make themselves richer to support lives of self-indulgence and pleasure-seeking, I was working as hard as I could to make life better for others, especially the poor and powerless in Birmingham. And while he was sucking up to Gary White and other self-serving jerks, I was quietly working, without pay, for children in need at various non-profit community agencies.
I chose a different path fro my life but could have easily used my training and education to get rich or better serve my own interests. So in my declining years, no matter how self-serving it may sound, I have decided to reclaim my history and spell out in unvarnished detail some of the reasons I abhor many of the characters I have encountered and endured along the way. To be sure, I have only mentioned a small number of them here. And I apologize to those friends not mentioned or given short shrift in this piece. Let me know and I’ll be sure to include you in the next one.
I started this rambling free association talking about Al Troncalli for a reason. As a new devotee to Russia, Roger might want to read House of Matryona by Solzhenitzen. In it, he describes, in tedious and grueling detail, the life of a peasant woman who was so humble that she helped to push the trailer carrying a segment of her pathetic house with which she was being forced to part. Even in the pain of her loss, she did was not angry and did what she always had done and offered to help. She died when the trailer was hit by a train. In short order, her neighbors rushed to her house to claim her meager belongings, including her prized sweet potato plant.
Solzhenitzen intended this short story to be a commentary on post-war Communism, but it assumes a deeper meaning when his narrator proclaims that Matryona was the one righteous (perhaps Christian in today’s lingo) person without whom no civilization can long stand.
In contrast to Roger Bass, and those like him, this is what Al represented for me. The one person who never harmed anyone never sought anything in return for his friendship but gave as much as he could to make his community a better place. There are thousands more like him in Birmingham. But Roger and others are not among them. There may be a lesson here for Roger, Jeff, Bill Slaughter, and others as they move forward in life, at least what remains to us at our ages. But as we know, leopards never change their spots and the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Their values, like mine, were set long ago and unlikely to change.
So as I part company with any more thoughts about Roger, Gary and much of the crap I endured in Birmingham, I’ll just keep humming an old gospel song that I learned as a child from my aunt and uncle, Bill and Mildred Powell, simple, decent evangelists who sang gospel songs as part of their ministry. It summarizes my feelings about some of the people there whose paths I wish I had not crossed. The song by Dorothy Love Coats goes like this:
There’s always somebody talking about me, Really, I don’t mind. Trying to stop and block my progress, most of the time.
But the mean things you say, don’t make me feel bad, ’cause I CAN’T MISS A FRIEND THAT I NEVER HAD.
Well you may scorn me, turn your back on me
God’s got his arms wrapped all around me
And he fights down the devil till he makes him give up
And that’s enough (that’s enough) that’s enough,
I still have my self-respect and that’s enough.
Also on point are the words in the gospel song by Johnny Cash I also learned in childhood:
Oh the world is full of people with money just to burn Affording all the things in life for which a man might yearn Some can take life easy but I live from day by day God has my fortune laid away I search for sunshine every day but there always comes the rain The hope over my horizon was smoke without a flame Pockets that stay empty dreams that go astray God has my fortune laid away Oh how often I have wondered why some things have to be Some people live in riches while some live just like me The more I try to work and save the more I have to pay But God has my fortune laid away (laid away)
I am not quite as destitute as the song laments, but I have not sought riches in this life, confident in many ways that God has my fortune laid away. But even if there is no next life, I am satisfied and the reward has been that I have lived as I chose and may have helped a few people live better lives. That’s enough.
P.S. So ends this long and wandering saga done without the help of anyone, especially and obviously, an editor. The admittedly biased opinions I express are taken from my life experiences and based on facts, some of which can be found in the minutes of the Birmingham City Council and Jefferson County Commission and media reports concerning these governments and my activities while a member of each of them. They are available in files at the Birmingham Public Library, the “morgue” of the Birmingham News and Online. If you see a mistake or some fact that should be corrected, let me know. Or if you can make an argument to change my misguided opinion, let’s hear it.
If I get enough energy, time, or some other pissant like Roger Bass makes me mad enough, I may do another installment. Also, could you be thinking about who ought to play me in the movie? (Just kidding, I already have him picked out!) Thanks for reading, if you made it this far! Amazin!
john katopodis: the path well travelled 
wOw !!! Helen Keys was my mother’s closest, lifelong friend. (Marilyn Suvalle)
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Helen played a major role in establishing the legacy of JFK and the library. She was a lovely person who introduced me to the “nuts and bolts” of campaigns at a time I never realized I would use what she taught to get elected to public office. I have nothing but fond memories of her. I’m sure she was good to have as a close friend and your mother must have also been a lovely person. I did not go back and read what I had to say about Helen but I do recall that this is one of the nastiest pieces I have written as I grew weary of being criticized for my opposition to Trump from Roger Bass with whom I became totally disillusioned. Can I ask what led you to read this piece. Unless you are from Alabama, i would be interested to know. I get the statistics on who reads the blog on which I have not posted for some time and am amazed that people in Iceland and other places would take an interest in what I have written. I plan to start posting some of my more detailed biographical material as soon as I handle a legal matter that took 15 years to resolve. Thanks.
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Hi John,
I’m not from Alabama. My family is from Brookline, MA and years later from Lexington. We moved out of the area in the sixties and my mother and I moved back there at the end of the eighties. She kept in touch with Helen all her life and then when we moved back they met for lunch once a week.
It was actually my brother Jay who found this blog of yours that I referred to. We are both very sentimental about our lives there and because of our history, seeing the name Helen Keys in print was an emotional blast from the past.There is only ONE Helen Keys. I do remember the thrill of finding her picture in my 11th grade history book. I was a bit young to know much more about their connection except to know they adored each other as well as seeing them together in photos that my mom had kept. She passed away in 2009.
Although my mother spent a lot of time with Helen from the time they were young girls, she did not know the Kennedy family well. She was an interior designer and did do work for them on some of their offices and homes. That probably came from knowing Helen so well.
Thank you kindly for responding.
Ellen Zaslaw
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