I’ve been a big advocate for world trade. I had worked in the political arena to get funding for a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture called Foreign Agriculture Service. Well, if you feel the calling, opening these wider doors is important to fulfilling your mission. I’ve been one of the first trying to get Cuba opened up. Castro, he invited me to come see him. I was the first ag chief to go to Cuba. Well, I was very much a front-runner and a very active advocate of business. I knew enough about the Communist system to know that if we didn’t have him on board, these deals would go nowhere. When he invited me to meet with him, he stole the role from me, telling me how bad he needed us to do business with him. I had already been very active in promoting trade with Russia and briefly active, probably as active as most any other leader, in trying to get China opened up. I think it’d be a great place to get these countries like that to buying our product.
PLATE 29 “Castro, he invited me to come see him.” Tommy meeting with Fidel Castro in the early 1990s
You know, our own government don’t want us to sell, to do business with Cuba, and the only reason is they think it might enhance the Communist system. Whether you’re Communist or whether you’re not, trade will bring us closer together, and I think freedom has been a great hallmark for me. I don’t know of a thing I’ve done that’s given me more satisfaction, been more important, than establishing trade with the Russians, Cubans, Chinese, and all of the other ports around the world.
I told someone in south Georgia when I first became Commissioner—they’d ask me, “What do you grow in north Georgia?” And I’d tell ’em, “Well, we’re diversified,” but I used to use the phrase “Our number one commodity is chicken.” We also grew cotton, corn, and peanuts in south Georgia, tobacco in middle and south Georgia, and sweet potatoes. These different commodity groups have been kind of my base. We have what we call commodity commissions now. We have one on all these different commodities—allows us to generate funds, and we’ll invest a major part of those funds in research. For every dollar we spend on research, with a little time, we’ll give you back a dividend of ten to one. We were able to do a lot of that through innovation.
The farmer’s biggest problem today is market—if you got a strong market, you’ll see prices very strong. If the market is weak, the market will go down. I’ve always said, talkin’ about the economy, it’s kind of sick right now, but to go back up, agriculture will help lead it, and I think it will. Tobacco used to be a big commodity in Georgia. At one time, it was about a hundred-fifty-million-dollar-a-year commodity. It’s practically down to just a small percentage of that now.
You see a lot in the media now about the green industry. Organic fruits and vegetables make up a large part of the green industry. We get a lot of those commodities that we do extremely well in. We have to police them. We’ve caught these people, what we call misbranding, trying to sell organic ’cause it pays a premium, when in some cases it’s not genuine. We can seize that and have it relabeled, if it can be done, or destroyed. You’re beginning to see aisles in the store now where it says “organic.” Our folks will check it to make sure it’s genuine. You, as the consumer, will be paying a premium if you take it home. I wanna get in one that you’ll recognize: the Vidalia onion. That’s come along under my leadership. It’s highly recognized. I spent years and years to keep people from south Georgia, and unscrupulous people out in Texas, from getting a transfer load of their white onion, bring ’em here, put ’em in bags, and sell ’em as Vidalias. We got a law now that makes it a felony to mislabel them; I think we’ve done extremely well in accomplishing that.
When Jimmy Carter was governor, he come forth with a whole bunch of what we call consolidation, and he had in his consolidation plan to put gasoline with us because we have a weights/measures laboratory. We have a weights/measures law, and what it goes back to is being a good move that I agreed with him on and supported his efforts because automobiles now are very sophisticated. We refine gasoline different in the summertime than we do in the wintertime, so that you get performance.…You don’t want to allow gas to be sold and put in your car, and you drive down the street, and it vapor locks, goes dead, and you can’t get it to crank. That could happen if you allow an unbranded product to be sold.
I think it’s important to have the power that we have. If we see some unscrupulous person trying to sell something not safe, I can stop it in its tracks. I can tie it up and force ’em to either correct it, if it can be corrected, or destroy it. I know I’ve been called on for years to strengthen the federal safety net; safety is better than it has been, but it’ll never be as good as we like to see it. The feds oughta concentrate on lettin’ us know what they know about the products that are comin’ in here. We had some places in California that were shipping these products, and they did not meet our standards. I told ’em they had to fumigate it, or they couldn’t sell it here. They took me to the U.S. Supreme Court. The feds came in and said, “We’ve approved it. You can’t do what you’re trying to do.” I said, “I might not can in your sight, but I’ve already done it.” Caution should always be a major factor in how a product is handled.
A major concern for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta was piroplasmosis, a protozoal infection of horses that some of the horses to be competing from Europe had. Many horse owners here in Georgia did not want these horses to enter the state over fear of infecting horses here. We went to Europe with the equine leadership here in this state: My tale was that we needed to make sure we could host an international event. We could not do anything that was gonna cause piroplasmosis to be inflicted on our equine industry. Those racehorses are mighty valuable, you know. We had a special facility for those horses coming in from foreign countries—had a holding pen out at the airport where they were piloted in, and every one of ’em was fully inspected to make sure they weren’t bringing in something that would carry a tick. Ticks are the vectors that carry piroplasmosis. All the areas where the horses were boarded or performed were treated for ticks—if the vector is not there, the disease cannot be spread.
We had a fellow named Bo Helander. He was one of the international leaders in the equine industry, and he came up to me on Sunday afternoon out here at Conyers the last day of the Olympics. He said, “I want to congratulate you, Commissioner. I didn’t think you could do it.” He says, “You proved me wrong.” We put in place a system that we felt reasonably sure would be successful; our plan worked. Our plan became the international plan; I went with Dr. Lee Myers, my state veterinarian, over there to Sydney, Australia, to show them how we did it here.
Well, we skipped over several stories, but one I want to tell is, I was selected as a delegate to the [Democratic] National Convention in 1960. I was lucky to be there. I was kind of a nobody back then, but I was a member of the state legislature. I remember when John F. Kennedy came in the room where we were at, and I was fortunate enough to have a seat on the aisle as you go up to the podium. He came by, and I was able to say a few words to him and shake his hand. I came back from that convention all farred [fired] up, and I campaigned for the president.
I didn’t support Jimmy Carter when he ran the first time, but I go to some functions occasionally now over at the Carter Center. President Carter shook my hand as we were going in, and I was the only person that he recognized in his speech. So you know, I made a good impression on him, even though, politically, he had a lot of critics to him.
I was always anxious to get messages to the “head man.” If a president was coming to Georgia, we’d get invited to greet him as he got off Air Force One. Sometimes you’d get in the car with him and go to wherever his destination was; sometimes not, but I come up with a smart idea. I says, if I have somethin’ I wanna tell ’im, you don’t know if you’ll have an opportunity to tell ’im or enough time to tell ’im, so I would write me out a little note and two or three one-sentence bits of information, and when he come through the line, I’d say, “Mr. President, put this in your pocket. When you have t
ime, please read it.” I know that he did [laughs]. [Editor’s note: Mr. Irvin shows an article printed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that shows President Bill Clinton reading Commissioner Irvin’s notes while standing on the tarmac.]
President Clinton told me, I’m gonna be here in Georgia. I was in a meeting in that car with him with that [African American] lady who used to be in Congress out here in DeKalb County—Cynthia McKinney. He also called me and asked me to introduce him at that college out in Macon—Mercer University. They picked me up here at the Atlanta airport. I got on a jet, and he was already on the jet. It was his campaign jet, I guess. He was very sensible, and I suspect that President Clinton would have offered me some physical appointment, but I let them know that I didn’t want it. Mrs. Clinton said, “Commissioner Irvin, you can’t introduce yourself to me.” Says, “I know you.”
I have to say I’ve been absolutely lucky. I’ve been out front in so many of these areas. If something’s gone wrong as far as the politics in this office, in this elected office, they’d show me out the door. It’d be like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said: I kept the seat warm until the people of Georgia selected a new ag leader.
You know, a lot of people have wanted me to resign from this office so this current governor could pick a successor. I don’t believe in that. Well, you know, with my health, I probably should, but I think the people of Georgia would find some fault in me if I’d had the position they had and said, “I don’t believe in that,” and then I’d contribute to that.…People ask me, now, would I have any advice for my successor? I say to most people who raise that issue that as quickly as we find out who our new commissioner is gonna be, I’m gonna invite him to come to the capitol. I want to spend some with him and tell him what he’s really taking charge of. I happen to think we have one of the best departments of agriculture in the U.S., but it’s not good because of me. It’s because we had a good team—a lot of good people.
You know, I was able to accomplish everything that I even dreamed I thought I could. I know that Lester Maddox used to pay me compliments—said that I made him the proudest of my service to him of anyone else in his administration. That’s quite a compliment coming from the governor.
The headlines in the Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution—we had two separate papers back then, but they call themselves combined now—I think the Constitution editorial was “Irvin Keeps Seat Warm till the People of Georgia Can Choose a New Ag Leader.” I kid folks today; I say that after forty-two years, I still keep it warm. A lot of things has changed in those forty-two years. We’ve got, probably, four hundred fewer employees than we had when I went there. Over the years, the legislature has given me more authority, more to do, and it becomes very important that you learn how to do more with less. We’re right now facing a budgetary problem here of a magnitude we’ve never heard of before. It’s gonna hit us hard. I wanna leave this department in just as a good a shape as I can for these next six months that I’ll be here. I hope that whoever comes here will build him a team and move this department forward.
How I met my wife is a great story. We used to have a Southeastern Fair—leased that fairground there so they could start making movies here. We’d carry a busload down to the fair there in Atlanta. We got all the way in Gwinnett County, and the bus stopped for refreshments. Some young man was sitting back in the bus by this pretty young lady. He got up to go get a soft drink. I tell folks I got his seat, and he never got it back [laughs]. That’s where I met her was on that school bus. We were both teenagers when we got married. I certainly was attracted to her. She was born in Delaware. Her parents moved back here to Habersham County, and she graduated from North Habersham High School. We went on our honeymoon instead of her going on what we call a senior trip. My wife, Bernice, has been a real partner in all of the things that I’ve been involved in. She would praise me when, I guess, I really needed it, and she also criticized me when I needed it.
I guess since I really had a very limited formal education, I wanted the best for my children. We have five. My oldest son is James. He’s a lawyer and state court judge in Stephens County. My second son is Johnny; he runs Rabun County Bank. My son David was a CPA. He and Johnny opened up a chain of Burger Kings. My oldest daughter, Londa, is a paralegal. She works for the Whelchel firm in Gainesville, which is the most prominent law practice in northeast Georgia. My youngest daughter, Lisa, works in the home. My kids turned out real well. My wife and I, we were really blessed. Well, I tell folks the great thing about my children: I never had to get up in the middle of the night and go and get ’em out of jail. A lot of young folks mess up, you know. My grandson was here with me earlier today—the one who is running for state representative. He lives up in Stephens County, in Toccoa. I kid folks; I say, “He’s starting exactly where I started.”
As for other accomplishments, I used to go speak to the government class at the high school. I think one of the real rewarding things I did is, I would take the county registrar with me—these were seniors—and register ’em to vote and make that part of the teaching process. I was very pleased with the feedback you get.
PLATE 30 Tommy Irvin as a Grand Master Mason, seated in a chair that George Washington sat in, at Solomon’s Lodge in Savannah, Georgia
I’m past Grand Master Mason of Georgia. Governor Maddox, he had been aware that I was gonna get appointed to this, his comment was to me, he said, “Being Grand Master Mason, that’s more important than being in line to be governor.”
Well, there are gonna be a lot of opportunities when I retire. I might work a day a month without pay, or I may not do anything. I find a lot of people in the university system want me to help get a good agriculture person on the Board of Regents. The Board of Regents [the University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences] has most of the ag programs now. I would be honored if they wanted to talk to me. See, you never know; I may be asked next year to do something, and if I really feel that I can make a contribution, I’ll give it a lot of consideration. If I don’t feel that I can do those goals, I will say no.
I am often asked why I didn’t run for governor. If I had wanted to run, I would’ve run and won and served and then been forgotten about now [laughs]! I tell folks that power is very important, but with power you have to be correct. If it’s misused, it can be very destructive. I try to weigh all that. I had reasonable amounts of success keeping the politics out of what’s best for the people of Georgia and the department. You’ve heard me say this: “I don’t know of a time that I hadn’t felt we had more successes than we did failures.” If our new commissioner will devote his time to what we have and build on it and not try to disassemble it and redo it, we’ll both be winners. If you get too ambitious, you can do more harm than you can good. Being able to respond is a very critical thing to get along, especially if you’re in an elected office. Nobody is gonna be a hundred percent successful and do everything exactly like it oughta be done, but if you get the bits and pieces and put those into the master plan, you’ll establish yourself a genuine leader. I think it’s very rewarding. I don’t know anything I’d do any different if I could do it again.
Knoxville Girl*
I met a little girl in Knoxville, a town we all know well,
And every Sunday evening, out in her home I’d dwell,
We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town,
I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down.
She fell down on her bended knees, for mercy she did cry,
Oh Willy dear don’t kill me here, I’m unprepared to die,
She never spoke another word, I only beat her more,
Until the ground around me within her blood did flow.
I took her by her golden curls, and I drug her ’round and ’round,
Throwing her in the river that flows through Knoxville town,
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl with the dark and rolling eyes,
Go down, go d
own, you Knoxville girl, you can never be my bride.
I started back to Knoxville, got there about midnight,
My mother she was worried and woke up in a fright,
Dear son, what have you done to bloody your clothes so?
I told my anxious mother, I was bleeding at my nose.
I called for me a candle to light myself to bed,
I called for me a handkerchief to bind my aching head,
Rolled and tumbled the whole night through, as troubles was for me,
Like flames of hell around my bed and in my eyes could see.
They carried me down to Knoxville and put me in a cell,
My friends all tried to get me out, but none could go my bail,
I’m here to waste my life away down in this dirty old jail,
Because I murdered that Knoxville girl, the girl I loved so well.
* Precisely when and by whom this was written is unknown; the song has always been credited merely as “traditional” whenever it has been recorded.
Life was simple back in “the good ol’ days.” Crimes were rare and murders were virtually unheard of. Doors were not locked, and windows were left open night and day to take advantage of the air-conditioning provided by nature. The few crimes that did occur were met with disbelief and disgust by the residents in and around the surrounding communities. With no electricity in most homes for news coverage, the stories of horrid crimes were spread by word of mouth from family to family throughout the area. These stories were passed down through the years from generation to generation. Several of these events were documented in the bluegrass ballads that wailed from an old wind-up phonograph, spinning the twelve-inch, 78-rpm recordings. These ballads, recounting stories of death and dying, were usually sad and often true. I remember as a child hearing The Louvin Brothers sing “Knoxville Girl,” the Blue Sky Boys harmonizing on “Katie Dear,” and Jimmie Osborne crooning out the words to “The Death of Kathy Fiscus.” These songs saddened the hearts of listeners while bringing them close to the strangers whose life and death had been documented in the lyrics of a song. My mother and daddy often shared stories of crime with us as we were growing up. I will always remember the story my mother told of Grace Brock’s murder. Approximately four thousand people had traveled to the little town of Cornelia, Georgia, to view the body in an effort to identify the victim. My mother and grandfather had participated in this viewing. Although my mother was a little girl, she often recalled the event and told of the body lying on an old sheet-covered iron bed. She distinctly remembered a sand-filled shoe and the necklace lying beside the victim.
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