Staying True

by Jenny Sanford

  Yes, too true. Shortly after settling into the rental home I discovered I was pregnant. This was a real surprise to both of us; starting a family was a few years off on both of our lists of goals. I was immediately excited nonetheless. Mark, however, was quite anxious at first. He thought he would be better suited to be a father if he was a bit older (his father was 45 when Mark was born) and he worried too what he would do, how he would react, the way he would play and interact, if this baby was a girl. At first his mumblings seemed funny. I couldn’t quite believe that the idea of a baby girl would cause him so much fear. But I soon realized that his anxiety was real. Even as he started to get excited about the idea of a baby—and he did; we both embraced it pretty quickly—he imagined boys, sons. His sister was always “one of the boys” in his childhood household. I often think that a girl would have been great for Mark. She might have softened him up a bit, and I know he would have been a wonderful father to her. But somehow God gives you only what you can handle. Maybe sons are what Mark could handle. Little did either of us know there would be four!

  Mark and I worked together on plans for the new house and then watched it being built as my belly grew. Friends held a baby shower for me, and I prepared a small nursery in the house while Mark continued to keep his fingers crossed for a boy. I was able to continue playing golf and tennis and even worked planting fields at Coosaw while pregnant, though I did tire more easily as I grew quite large. Mark joined me at one Lamaze class before deeming it a waste of his time since, as he explained, “I’ve spent many long nights helping cows give birth and I know what to do when the baby gets stuck.” Of course, many fathers still didn’t attend births in those days, so Mark didn’t really feel he needed to know too much about the human birthing process. Instead, my sister Kathy came to be with me for the birth. We spent lots of time taking bike rides on the cobblestone streets in Charleston hoping to help nudge delivery along, to no avail.

  When I was almost two weeks overdue, my labor was induced. Delivered at 10 pounds, 5 ounces, on June 23, our first son, Marshall, was a healthy, very content baby whom Mark delightfully began to refer to as the “little man.” Mark was instantly a very proud and very doting father. He called his family and mine to brag of this fine baby boy and to tell them all how healthy and handsome he was. Mark’s mother, Peg, came to stay with us for a few days and I was thankful for the help since I was not all that nimble after the delivery.

  Mark’s enthusiasm for Marshall was wonderful to witness, but I could see changing diapers would not be his strong suit. He had planned a trip to climb Mt. Rainier with a few friends and, as the baby had been late in coming, his trip would begin when Marshall was only two weeks old. Marshall took to nursing right away, and he usually slept well between feedings. I was comfortable and confident in my mothering instincts. I didn’t really see any reason for Mark not to go off and enjoy his adventure.

  Actually, taking care of a newborn alone while Mark traveled turned out to be much easier in many ways than assimilating to life at Coosaw with Mark and his siblings while raising Marshall.

  I remember waking up with Marshall as the sun rose one morning on a family-filled holiday weekend and having a difficult time keeping him safe in the kitchen while I heated his bottle. He was crawling around the floor, which was, as usual, littered with farm dirt and dead cockroaches, and I saw scattered shotgun shells too. If that wasn’t enough, that morning there were also beer bottles left by Mark’s younger siblings who had likely gone to bed just hours before. I happen to love the abandon with which the Sanfords look at cleanliness at Coosaw, but throwing a baby into the mix and then adding his siblings and their habits made it all quite a challenge at times.

  Pulling a shotgun shell from my baby’s tight grasp was all the more ironic given my mother’s involvement in gun control. Mom has long had a can-do attitude, and when I was about eight, she became particularly frustrated reading about so many shooting deaths in Chicago. She decided to do something about it and worked with a few fellow moms to create an organization that soon became one of the first national efforts toward handgun control. They started a campaign to “Ban the Bullet” with slogans like “We need guns like we need a hole in the head!”

  This brought her all sorts of good attention and some unwelcome as well. We had to unlist our home phone number due to the many threats we received from outraged gun owners, and a national hardware store chain even refused to do business with Skil as a result of mom’s gun-control lobby. She was invited to appear on the Today show in the early 1970s, and my sister Gier and I were lucky enough to travel with her to New York. I remember being excited about flying to the big city for the first time, staying in a hotel, and eating at a fancy restaurant, not the important work our mother was doing there.

  I now fully understand the many people—in South Carolina and elsewhere—who take seriously the right to bear arms, but remain amazed that my mom’s gun-control efforts were not brought to light and used against Mark in our campaigns. I also remain amazed that our babies survived those early days pioneering at Coosaw.

  FOUR

  BY FALL OF 1992 I WAS ENCHANTED WITH THE NEWFOUND JOYS of motherhood and enjoying every minute of life in this historic, eclectic, and sophisticated little town. We had a beautiful baby, were building a dream house, and shared an exquisite farm nearby. Also, I had developed many new and dear friendships with such women as Virginia Lane, an architect down the street, and Sally Coen, then my across-the-street neighbor, who had recently had her first son, too. I had also become close with Lalla Lee Campsen, who wasn’t anything like my traditionally Irish Catholic New York and Chicago friends. Lalla Lee is sweet and very Southern, and she is a great shot, drives a boat well, and doesn’t drink. Lalla Lee’s family has a hunting spot near Coosaw, and she and her husband Chip met through Mark. Together she and I shared time outdoors with our boys and our tennis games, but we also shared our spiritual sides.

  With good girlfriends to complete the picture, Mark and I had such a wonderful quality of life, unlike anything I had experienced while in New York. We had enough money, but this wasn’t about riches. For lack of a better way to say it, I was so pleased by all Mark and I had accomplished in the few years we had been married. I knew every compromise I’d made to bring this about had been wise and I didn’t think of any of the choices I had made as sacrifices. For all of the pieces of my identity—my work, most importantly—and my family traditions that I’d surrendered, I’d received blessings that were so much stronger and more precious to me: my husband, our child, our home, and our rich life in Charleston.

  Mark and I were smiling one hot, sticky evening as we watched Marshall sleeping peacefully in his crib when Mark said, “Jenny, with the exception of that little man, I’m bored with life. I want to be stretched and pushed to the point of exhaustion. I want to be consumed. I don’t want to just exist.”

  A little taken aback, I noted that this was ironic, since he had been so concerned about whether I would be bored when we moved here. It now seemed our roles were reversed. He acknowledged this irony, but he brushed it aside. His restlessness was awake again and apparent on his face.

  I understood Mark’s need to travel and to seek adventure, and all along I encouraged that, while hoping he would find what he needed to settle his spirit. Now, as his wife, I sensed his frustration and shared it in a way, absorbing what I could for him but unable to cure whatever it was that lay at the heart of his angst.

  Shortly after announcing the need for something new to do, Mark considered some more significant real estate ventures, and his angst began to take a more specific direction. As he looked at the local and regional markets and the economy, he also considered the national climate that affected his ability to accomplish his goals. This was during Bill Clinton’s first administration, and Mark began to worry about the big-spending ways of our federal government and what that meant for our young and growing family if spending was not brought under control. On many occasions, we talk
ed at length and deeply about his frustrations. As a way to focus his thinking, he wrote a thirty-page paper on the national debt and the problems with our Social Security system. I engaged in the policy talk over countless dinners, though I have to admit that the paper made my eyes glaze over. What was exciting, however, was that it ignited a passion in Mark, and I was happy to see him energized and focused.

  Mark began to pay attention when the congressional seat for our coastal district, which runs from just south of Charleston up the coast to the North Carolina border, opened up when the incumbent retired. The race for the seat had already attracted a number of people who were actively campaigning. There were two well-financed candidates running (the favorite, Van Hipp, had run the state Republican Party) and a third who had very high name recognition because his father, who had the same name, was a long-time Congressman for the district in years prior. Mark met with local business and political leaders to discuss what they wanted from the next person who would represent that district in Congress. I saw how interested Mark was in getting the right person in that position, but I didn’t think he imagined he might be the right person. Aside from Mark’s exploring candidate positions, we had talked very little of party politics. In South Carolina, you don’t register to vote with a party affiliation, so I actually had to ask Mark which party he considered himself to be a part of. While unwavering in his conservative principles, he considered his answer before declaring he was a Republican.

  While Mark was pondering deficits and Social Security, I found myself pregnant again. This time, neither of us was much surprised. We both wanted several children and had wasted no time working toward that goal after Marshall was born. Soon after settling into our new house, we welcomed our next son. My labor was induced before the due date because Marshall had been so big. On September 28, 1993, John Landon was born easily, weighing in at a mild 7 pounds, 10 ounces. Mark was wild with joy at having a second son. He was tender and sweet with both Marshall and Landon from the very first moment he held them. As one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 127, puts it: “Like arrows in the hands of a fighting man are sons born to a man in his youth. Happy is he who has his quiver full.” Mark was well on his way to enjoying a quiver full.

  Still, he was restless.

  I was in the hospital recovering from Landon’s delivery when Mark formalized something that by then I’d known he was seriously considering. He announced he’d decided to run for Congress. He said that the decision felt right and that he felt compelled to run in this particular race. Then, he dropped another bombshell:

  “And, Jenny, you are going to run my campaign.”

  “Me? You have got to be kidding! I’ve never even volunteered on anyone’s campaign!”

  “But you’re free,” he continued.

  “Free? I think my plate is pretty full right now!” I said. I was still in the hospital bed, after all. Clearly he meant a different kind of free.

  “You can do this with the babies at home,” he explained “and we can just put a phone line in the kitchen. The only way this will even possibly work is if we keep our expenses incredibly low and that’s why I really need you. You are free. I know why I am running and have my ideas all mapped out but I need someone to keep the trains running on time, and you are great with that kind of stuff.”

  I wish I could say that I threw my head back and laughed at Mark’s logic or that I was wildly enthusiastic at the prospect of working hard for no pay. Instead, my honest reaction was that Mark had devised a plan that was textbook blind leading the blind. But I did know a sparkle in Mark’s eye when I saw one. This decision might be the thing that would still his restlessness. Even though this work was really about achieving Mark’s dream and not my own, I felt it was worthy and I thought it would be something we could do together while raising our family in the midst of it all. I think I waited until I was home from the hospital with Landon, but I accepted Mark’s challenge. I signed on to help him to achieve a goal. I was excited, and at the time it didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice.

  I suppose you could say that women are built for sacrifice. After all, we “sacrifice” a youthful, firm body to child-bearing. Imagining holding that sweet baby in your arms can make the discomforts of pregnancy endurable. Over the nine months of sharing space with a growing child, a woman can find the joy that comes from physical generosity. As the baby grows, you give him life, your life: nutrients, oxygen, protection and, bit by bit, your heart. Then you launch him into the world and experience a wrenching release—emotional and physical to be sure—and then the joy that this new little person brings to you and all around you. You’d give anything to keep that child safe and to make his life good. Sacrifice? By any definition, it becomes a part of everyday life.

  When Mark announced his candidacy on November 16, 1993, shortly after Landon was born, he said, “I am running because I believe that unless we do something about the debt and the deficit, it has the capacity to undermine the financial foundation on which all of our businesses, jobs, and savings rest.” The local paper noted the next day that “[Sanford] has no previous experience in elected office, no name recognition and little backing” (Post and Courier, November 17, 1993). The paper continued, “‘What’s wrong with regular folks who don’t have name recognition going out and getting involved in politics?’ he [Mark] asked. Will it work? Not too often in South Carolina politics will an unknown step in and win a race for Congress.”

  I told Mark that I would put all my efforts toward helping him get elected this one time, but if he did not win, I was not willing to do it again and again as so many others seem to do. One shot. Thus I agreed, quite naïvely, to run Mark’s race for U.S. Congress. Never once, to my recollection, did either one of us question or discuss what would happen if he were to win.

  FIVE

  AS A CHILD IN CHICAGO, WE SULLIVANS WERE FANS OF THE Cubs, but when push came to shove, we were Braves fans through and through. My father, mom’s brother (my Uncle Tom), and a few of their friends owned the Milwaukee Braves long before owning baseball teams was profitable. When the team became the Atlanta Braves and even after the team was sold, we continued to think of them as our home team; we cheered for them over the Cubs any time they were in town.

  We Sullivans also, of course, had brand loyalty to Skil products. We steered clear of all things Black & Decker.

  As I got older, I understood loyalty to be the intangible thing on display between siblings and cousins—I had so many living nearby that it seemed we were one big mutual fan club. What an incredible gift it was to have such a supportive family clan, a ready and reliable cheering squad for any and all of us. I think I also understood that loyalty was at the root of good marriages. I could see that my parents were unfailingly loyal to one another, as were both sets of grandparents. This was not blind loyalty, but the kind of support that comes from knowing another person deeply, having committed to helping them succeed in life, and loving them warts and all.

  It was not until Mark decided to enter politics, however, that I felt profound loyalty in my own bones and recognized it would be essential to our marriage and our goals.

  That first intense congressional campaign was such an uphill challenge that it seemed to others, and sometimes to me, that the effort was hopeless, a pointless quest that could never end in victory. In many ways, the hopelessness of his quest was irrelevant to him. Mark was an ideologue with strong beliefs and a sense of urgency for change that would not be stilled. He saw this run at government office as a chance to inform others of the risks of debt and deficits. Whether he won or not, he hoped to change the public discourse on these issues. This, he felt, was an undertaking that would satisfy his need to be challenged intellectually and that would give him the exhausted thrill that comes with a job well done and a battle well fought. Simply put: The prospect of running a different kind of campaign, one based on principles and values, energized him. When Mark put his real estate business in the hands of a partner so he could focus full-time
on the campaign, I knew he was serious.

  Mark and I understood that as a complete political unknown, he would have trouble raising money. To get started, however, we needed some base capital. We decided to loan our campaign $100,000 of our own money—money we had earned and saved and some I had inherited—so we could compete with the better-financed opponents.

  Our strategy was to raise as much money as possible and spend very little of it until the end of the race when most regular folks were deciding who would get their votes. Our first big expense was campaign stationery, which we used to write to anyone we had ever known asking for contributions. This included old friends and people we had worked with. My father showed his support by writing his friends as well. Many sent us money despite our slim chance of success, and we were grateful for every dime we received. Others honestly told us why they could not support us. We were surprised that some ignored our requests altogether. At least, we thought, we had discovered who our real friends were.

  Mark created his campaign headquarters—my office—by building a wall to partition off part of our garage. He dragged an old carpet and a few folding tables from the barn at Coosaw to furnish the windowless space. It is an understatement to say that this office was not glamorous! I think we had two phones, and it seemed terribly sophisticated that I could answer the lines from phones upstairs in the house as well.