Huckabee

by Scott Lamb

  In a speech to the 2008 Republican National Convention, Huckabee struck a populist tone when he said, “I really tire of hearing how the Democrats care about the working guy as if all Republicans grew up with silk stockings and silver spoons. In my little hometown of Hope, Arkansas, the three sacred heroes were Jesus, Elvis, and FDR. Not necessarily in that order.” After the audience’s laughter died down, Huckabee continued with a personal note of praise about his father: “My own father held down two jobs, barely affording the little rented house I grew up in. My dad worked hard, lifted heavy things, and got his hands dirty. The only soap we had at my house was Lava. Heck, I was in college before I found out it wasn’t supposed to hurt to take a shower.”9

  Huckabee played Little League baseball and football, sponsored by the ever-generous Century Bible Class of the local Methodist church. His annual growth can be charted by scanning the archived summer newspapers. The published team photos show a steady progression of height and muscle as he progressed toward the teen years: an all-American boy lined up with his peers. Of course, in terms of sheer quantity of time spent playing ball, most of it wasn’t of the organized variety. Neighborhood play, however, was an everyday, all-day event in the summer. “We had a neighborhood full of kids. We played all the time,” he said.10 Harris remembered how “he’d get all dirty and was always knocking the knees out of his jeans. These were the days of white denim. My poor mama. She would come home and scrub those knees and get so annoyed because of the grass stains and dirt.”11

  Part of the joy of living where they did in Hope was their proximity to downtown and all the excitement that brought. “Hope was little,” Harris recalls. “We could walk down to the movie theater and back. We had a pretty good area where we could ride our bikes and go all through the neighborhood without any fears or anything.”12

  With Dorsey’s firehouse being only a two-minute walk from home and his schedule being a twenty-four-hour on and twenty-four-hour off rotation, young Huckabee knew his dad was always around if he needed him. Friends remember Mr. Huckabee’s crew coming to the school to demonstrate the ladders on the fire truck. To show how a fireman would rescue a child from the top of a building, they needed a child. Dorsey would grab his son, being close at hand and also kin (and to avoid liability issues), and up the ladder they would go. Dorsey also led training events for other firefighters or citizens in the community. A news clipping from 1966 reads: “Fire chief James Cobb reported today that Dorsey Huckabee, local fire department instructor, has returned from a three-day instructors conference in Little Rock. . . . Chief Cobb said this type of training is beneficial to local training classes which are held twice a month for both regular and volunteer firemen.”13 It’s not hard to imagine the pride Mike Huckabee took in his dad being a fireman. “Most admired vocation” surveys may not have been taken in Hope in 1966, but recent national polls rank firefighting as the number one most-admired vocation across America. Newspaper clips about Dorsey would be hung up alongside the growing number of clips from his son’s and daughter’s achievements.

  “Safe” best describes Huckabee’s childhood neighborhood. That said, danger could be found if one went looking for it. “I remember one time he got into some real trouble,” Harris said. “We lived close to the railroad track and he walked down to what they called ‘Hobo Jungle’—I know that’s not politically correct to say now, but that’s just what they called it at the time. Trains pulled through Hope and these folks would jump off and meet up with one another. Well, our parents couldn’t find Mike and they were just horrified. It turned out he had been down to Hobo Jungle just chatting with the hobos. Nothing bad happened that day, but I can remember our folks pretty well laid down the law.”14 Dorsey and Mae had good reason to be frightened. Every year the Hope Star ran news stories from across the nation about young people who had been murdered or kidnapped by tramps, hobos, and bums. Yes, there is a technical difference, but they’d all get lumped together when a crime at the railroad tracks took place. Little Huckabee’s yukking it up with the hobos scared his parents good. To his credit, he was just honing his political campaign skills, drumming up support from any gathered crowd.

  Marynell Branch, a classmate of Huckabee’s beginning in fifth grade, said that he always had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh—“always positive and a people person. And he was always making a play on words.”15 There’s not a boyhood picture around where his face does not display his trademark “aw shucks” look. His sister calls it his “most innocent look”—and said it usually came out in full force if he was trying to get away with some hijinks. “He used to sit by me in church and he’d ‘frog’ my leg—pulled up his middle knuckle then punched me in the leg, just to get a reaction out of me—knowing I couldn’t do anything,” Harris said.16

  When Huckabee was ten, his grandma Ernie Jo took him to Garrett Memorial’s summertime vacation Bible school program. He was enticed not by the opportunity for spiritual growth, but because his sister promised him that the leaders would give him all the cookies and Kool-Aid he wanted. “When I got there, I found out they didn’t think I could eat more than two cookies or drink more than one cup of Kool-Aid, but by then, I was already there,” he recalled.17

  Whatever his motivation for going might have been, Huckabee found something more. When the pastor spoke about having a personal relationship with Jesus, Huckabee felt like the message was meant just for him, and he was moved to pray: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re ten years old and in a little town of Hope or whether you’re . . . on the streets of Manhattan. It’s an honest prayer that . . . says, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ And God hears that prayer.”18

  “His conversion came pretty early for a kid, but he never had doubts after that,” Harris said. “He went there for cookies and Kool-Aid and got some Jesus too.”19

  CHAPTER 6

  FORTUNATE SON

  Fall 1967–Spring 1969

  Working hard was just instilled in us. Our parents worked hard, so we would work hard.

  —PAT HUCKABEE HARRIS

  JOHN FOGERTY MUST NOT HAVE BEEN INVITED TO THE WEDDING. The lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival found inspiration for his 1969 hit “Fortunate Son” when he read news about the marriage of former president Eisenhower’s son to Richard Nixon’s daughter. “You just had the feeling that none of these people were going to be involved with the war,” Fogerty told Rolling Stone. “In 1968, the majority of the country thought morale was great among the troops, and eighty percent of them were in favor of the war. But to some of us who were watching closely, we just knew we were headed for trouble.”1 After being drafted in 1966, Fogerty joined the Army Reserves and served in a unit for six months. He was discharged in July 1967 and rejoined his band—though he changed the name. It wouldn’t do to sing protest songs with a band called “the Golliwogs.”

  That same fall, Bill Clinton headed back for his senior year at Georgetown University. He worked for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed by Arkansas senator J. William Fulbright. “I admired him. I liked him,” Clinton said in a 2002 speech honoring his former mentor. “On the occasions when we disagreed, I loved arguing with him. . . . I’m quite sure I always lost, and yet he managed to make me think I might have won.”2 Fulbright served as U.S. senator for thirty years, from 1945 to 1974 and became best known for two things: he opposed American involvement in Vietnam, and he supported the establishment of a student exchange program—now known as the Fulbright Program. Young Clinton represented an intersection of those two interests.

  At Christmas in 1967, the Hope Star printed a national AP news item they deemed of interest to local readers: “Arkansan Is Rhodes Scholar. William J. Clinton, a senior at Georgetown University, from Hot Springs, Ark., has been selected to receive a Rhodes Scholarship for a minimum of two years’ study at Oxford University. Clinton, 21, son of Mrs. Virg
inia Clinton, was one of thirty-two Americans chosen. . . . Mrs. Clinton is the former Virginia Cassidy of Hope.”3 Bill’s grandmother Edith, who had once sought to gain custody of young Bill after raising him for the first years of his life, still resided in Hope and would have taken great joy in her grandson’s accomplishments. She died just one month later.

  During his first year of study in England (1968–1969), Clinton received notice that he had been drafted. But with help from Senator Fulbright and Arkansas governor Winthrop Rockefeller, Clinton made arrangements to enter the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas Law School that fall, 1969. Instead, he returned to Oxford and held demonstrations against the Vietnam War. A profile piece of Clinton’s protests was printed in various Arkansas newspapers, though not the Hope Star.4

  As noted earlier, Dorsey Huckabee proudly answered the call of his country for World War II military service by reporting for induction in March 1943, but couldn’t get in due to his flat feet—a Huckabee heritage he passed down the line to his son. “I was born with flat feet,” Huckabee wrote in his 2005 weight loss book, Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork. “Now when I say flat feet, I don’t mean just nominally flat; I mean the bone structure in the arches of my feet is essentially inverted. My parents told me regularly that at birth my feet looked so hideously deformed, the doctors first warned them that I might never even walk.”5

  Huckabee told how his feet kept him from advancement in his college’s ROTC program. All freshman males were required to take a semester of the program, but “when the army colonel saw my feet, he told me there was no point in my continuing because the army wouldn’t have me anyway,” Huckabee said. “My flat feet ended what I’m sure would have been a heralded military career in the post-Vietnam 1970s.”6

  Since Dorsey didn’t make it into the Army, he signed up for service in the National Guard. He also headed down to Houston with his dad and uncle to build ships for the Navy. The one thing he didn’t do, however, was finish high school. “Our dad was very smart, but he only had an eighth-grade education,” Harris said.7 In fact, no male in Huckabee’s lineage had ever graduated from high school.

  Not so for Mae. Huckabee’s mom completed high school and desired to go to college too. The responsibilities attached to having so many younger siblings and the death of her father prevented her from doing so. She began working at a young age—even before the war’s increasing demand for female workers—and she never stopped. “She wanted to go to college, but her chances were gone. She worked in an office as an administrative assistant for an oil company,” Harris said. “That was at a time when most women were stay-at-home moms.”8

  For the two Huckabee children, their parents’ story inspired them to work hard in school and to go to college. “Because neither of them had a college education, our going to school and college and doing our best—that was never an option,” explained Harris. “I don’t remember ever—and Mike doesn’t remember either—our parents ever having to ask, ‘Do you have your homework done?’ We just knew that our privilege was to work really hard in school. Give it your best. And it wasn’t based in fear—as if they were going to beat us for poor grades. Because of their own lack of secondary education, our parents really let us know you need to be lifelong learners.”9

  Harris remembers how, even as a boy, her brother read voraciously. “Sure, I used the World Book Encyclopedia when I’d have to do a report. But Mike was that kid who just read the World Books from A to Z. I thought that was a little creepy then. Actually, I still think that’s creepy—but that’s a true fact about Mike. Seriously though, Mike’s always been big into reading—books, magazines, newspapers—all the time.”10

  Dorsey and Mae provided a living example of a strong work ethic, and their children caught it. “Working hard was just instilled in us. They worked hard, so we would work hard,” said Harris. “I’m not trying to make it sound like we were superheroes—we’re talking about simple stuff like taking the initiative to help out with supper or the laundry. That’s just the way we were raised. Don’t put yourself first—you’re down on the list. Take care of your responsibilities first. We can give a hearty thanks to Mom and Dad for that.”11

  Harris also credits her parents for the way she and Mike relate to everyday people, regardless of where they are from or what their current station in life happens to be. “We treat everybody well, just like our parents trained us. It doesn’t matter who the person is: treat them with respect. Remember people’s names, call people by their name, look around at everybody when you’re in a room, think before you speak, give back to others, and remember that no matter your situation, there’s always somebody else worse off.”12

  One powerful example of Dorsey and Mae’s selfless care for others came during the fall of 1967, as Mae invited her terminally ill bachelor brother Garvin into their home to die. Huckabee took an entire chapter of his book A Simple Christmas to relate the story of Uncle Garvin’s four-month stay with them at the losing end of his fight with cancer. Of all the dozen or so books and thousands of speeches Huckabee has written, this chapter may be the most poignant. He wrote about caring for Garvin in the midst of vomit and feces, watching his robust, dignified, and fashionable uncle waste away before their eyes. As a bachelor, Garvin had limited options for where to go when he needed help. But as Robert Frost wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”13 Mae and Dorsey gladly took Garvin in, and then called on Mike and Pat to assist in the hospice care.

  Huckabee wrote,

  We did the most menial and at times unpleasant and degrading tasks to make sure he was comfortable. In so many ways, I became a man that year. I was forced to face the realities of death and the uncertainties of life. I saw life in its ugliest form when a disease robs a person of his strength, his pride, his privacy, and his ability to choose even the simplest things. More than being robbed of my youth, I was endowed with an extra dose of maturity and adulthood the very year I would become a teenager, 1968. Uncle Garvin lived through Christmas and died on April 6, 1968, when in the early morning hours of that day, two days exactly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the voice of my dad woke me up as he climbed to the top of the attic stairs to tell me that Uncle Garvin had just died.14

  On the campaign trail, Huckabee often says, “I grew up having a lot more in common with the people working in the kitchen instead of those sitting at the head table. . . . I had to learn how to sit at the head table.”15 Or, a favorite Huckabee metaphor is that he stands for “Wal-Mart Republicans, not Wall Street Republicans.”16 The truth is, his “working folk” language reflects his home life. Mike says that he has authentic respect for the working class because when he looks at them, he sees his own parents. Mike’s higher educational and economic position has not stripped him of remembering who he is—Dorsey and Mae’s son.

  Gratitude for the gift of their parents is a recurring theme rolling from the lips of Dorsey and Mae’s grown children. “There was nothing remarkable about our childhood or our family except that we had the most wonderful parents in the world,” Harris said. “We were very fortunate.”17

  A September 1967 issue of the Hope Star reported news from Michigan: “Governor George Romney took his undeclared quest for the Republican presidential nomination into a Negro neighborhood Wednesday night, looking for answers—and got some hard questions.” Romney didn’t earn the nomination. But if you scan over just two inches to the right of the Romney news, you’ll see the picture of a twelve-year-old Boy Scout named Mike Huckabee, who had just earned his “second class” award.18

  The first Scout troop for Hope came in 1911 when F. R. Ethridge was commissioned as the original scoutmaster for the town. Ethridge’s 1911 certificate lists “Theodore Roosevelt” and “William H. Taft” as honorary president and vice president of the Boy Scouts of America.19 For sever
al decades, the First Methodist Church had served as the sponsor of Huckabee’s unit, Troop 62. A 1937 newspaper ad exhorted citizens to “Boost the Hope Boy Scout Movement.”20

  Today, the scouting movement continues on in Hope and Hempstead County. In fact, Huckabee’s lifelong best friend, Lester Sitzes, serves as a scoutmaster for Troop 5—sponsored by the Century Bible Club of First Methodist Church. In the fall of 2013, Sitzes brought in the Huckabees to help dedicate a new building and grounds for Scouts, the Harlan Scouting Center.

  “It is terrific to be back in Hope,” Huckabee said at the dedication. “I grew up in Hope and I was both a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout here. Lester has been my best friend for about 50 years, since the third grade. We’ve been through a lot of good times and some bad. Hope has changed a lot since I was growing up.”21

  Looking with hindsight at the years 1967 to 1969, most people would agree that there was an unprecedented amount of turmoil and revolution. A loss of innocence. Huckabee, in numerous interviews and in his books, equates this time as the season when the wheels fell off the bike for our nation. He recalled how the events of the period—“the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the shooting of George Wallace . . . the Chicago Democratic Convention, the hippie movement . . . Vietnam”—upset the balance of everyday life: “The world was changing so rapidly . . . We go to church on Sunday, and we go to school and get our homework, and we behave, and we say yes sir and no sir. . . . All that was sort of going out the window, and suddenly we were listening to Jimmy Hendrix, and we were watching people burn buildings down in American cities, and throwing Molotov cocktails at police cars. And it was a shocking time. I think that maybe was the pivotal moment in American history in many ways. . . . It was a tough year.”22