JoePa Takes the Fall

by Bill Keisling

  They found the plane smashed into the side of the mountain. All four were found dead in the wreckage.

  In an odd twist of fate, by dying, my grandmother saved my father’s life. My siblings and I would have been left fatherless by a state attorney general’s campaign for the governor’s office.

  So I know something about the tragedy of the mix of politics with the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office, and the governor’s office. And I know something about the strange unseen and almighty hand that shadows our lives.

  The other night, after Thanksgiving, I asked my father how he felt when he got the news that Walter Alessandroni had been killed in the plane crash.

  “It wasn’t a very good time for me,” is all he had to say.

  Following Ray Shafer’s election as governor, Shafer appointed Bill Sennett attorney general. Still in his mid-thirties, he’d be the youngest AG in the state’s history. Today, at 81, he says he’s also the oldest surviving state attorney general.

  AG Sennett’s time in office was marked by the state’s last constitutional convention, held in the late-1960s. As Scranton’s Lt. governor, in 1963, Ray Shafer had chaired a bipartisan committee to explore constitutional reforms. Now governor, Shafer championed a constitutional convention to overhaul state government.

  True to the warnings of Scranton legislative secretary Jim Reichley, Gov. Shafer would spend a considerable amount of time fretting over lack of revenues, and considerable political capital addressing badly needed revenue and tax solutions. He’d proposed the state first income tax, which made him unpopular with voters, and paved the way for Democrats to retake the governor’s office in 1970.

  Interestingly, former Attorney General Sennett says he himself never had much involvement with the constitutional convention in his official duties as AG.

  “The constitutional convention ran pretty independent of the governor’s office,” he recalls. “That was a legislative function. The speaker of the house, the president pro tem, all appointed their own delegates to the convention.” The legislative leaders, after all, only agreed to a constitutional overhaul if they could control it.

  In this period, into the early 1970s, my father would leave government and daily political work to help redevelop downtrodden center-city Harrisburg. He’d found the Harristown Development Corporation, and build Strawberry Square, across Walnut Street from the capitol, where the attorney general and his staff find their offices today.

  Barnabas

  As for me, my next personal brush with dark shadows, higher religious powers, and a Pennsylvania attorney general happened around this time. In 1970, when I was 12, I received the Sacrament of Confirmation at my Catholic parish, St. Theresa’s, in New Cumberland, outside of Harrisburg.

  The sacrament required me to pick a sponsor. My confirmation sponsor was required to be a practicing Catholic of good moral standing who would then be like a godparent to me. I would also have to pick a name. The confirmation name I chose was an unusual one: Barnabas. The other kids seemed to have picked more standard names, like John, Paul, Peter, Matthew or Luke.

  I chose for my confirmation sponsor one of my father’s closest friends from his days in the governor’s office, Fred Speaker. As it happened, Speaker was appointed state attorney general in 1970 by Republican Gov. Ray Shafer, to succeed AG Bill Sennett.

  My friend Fred Speaker would turn out to be one of the more notable and memorable attorneys general in our state’s history.

  Attorney General Fred Speaker was one hell of a guy, one of the finest men I’ve ever known, as I’ll get to shortly. He had a big happy open-mouthed smile, and quick, knowing eyes that always seemed to hone in on whatever the problem was. He was a very moral man. He would go away on Catholic retreats. He’d also spend a lot of his spare time attending Penn State football games. AG Speaker was friends with coach Joe Paterno.

  On the night of my Catholic confirmation, Fred Speaker shows up at my parents’ house. We’re getting ready to go over to the church with the family.

  “Barnabas?” he says to me. I can still see him screwing up his face with that big smile. “Why’d you pick that name, Bill?”

  “After Barnabas Collins, in Dark Shadows,” I tell the attorney general.

  There were some lapses in my formal religious training.

  “Huh?” AG Speaker says to me.

  “You know, Barnabas Collins, the vampire in Dark Shadows. It’s a TV show. He’s really cool,” I tell the AG.

  He appeared horrified.

  Fred Speaker corrected me in the errors of my religious thinking. The name I chose was meant to be that of a holy saint to whom I could appeal for help in my time of spiritual needs and tribulations, he explained. In the eyes of the Vatican, it seemed, a television vampire didn’t fit the bill. Even this Bill.

  “Look,” he says to me. “If anyone asks, St. Barnabas of Antioch brought Paul into the church. He traveled with Paul to teach the gentiles. He’s called the son of encouragement, and the son of prophecy.”

  We went over to the church. St. Theresa’s parish had just built a nice new church. The sacrament that night turned out to be a very big deal. The Bishop of Harrisburg himself officiated.

  His Eminence the Bishop, dressed in a formal cassock and high bishop’s hat, said mass and gave communion.

  When came time for me to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, Fred Speaker and I stood with the other boys and girls and their sponsors at the front, by the altar.

  The Bishop -- preceded by a gaggle of nervous altar boys swinging cans of incense, and followed by the entire retinue of dour parish priests draped in their finest white vestments, one splashing holy water, surrounding our kindly old Monsignor Keffer, their hands folded and eyes darting at us, warning against misbehavior -- The bishop dutifully made his way in turn to each boy and girl. They’d kiss his ring, and he’d bless and anoint them each with oil. I was relieved to see that His Eminence didn’t seem to spend much time or speak much with any of us.

  The Bishop gets to me. I kiss his ring, as I’d been taught by the sisters to do. The Bishop blesses and anoints me. He then stops. He looks at me, head on, and says, with a kindly smile, “Young man. Barnabas. You have chosen a very wonderful name. Tell me, why did you choose Barnabas as your patron?”

  I could feel the elbow of the attorney general of Pennsylvania digging into my back.

  The parish priests sternly gazed in a ring down at me.

  I stood there, my small trembling body the only thing separating church and state.

  “St. Barnabas of Antioch,” I whimpered. “He brought Paul into the church. He traveled with Paul to teach the gentiles. He’s called the son of encouragement, and the son of prophecy.”

  “Excellent!” the Bishop beamed. He started off to the next boy, then turned. “Very studious, young man,” he winks at me.

  The priests gave me the fish eye. One of them treated my face to a good splash of holy water.

  Orders for General Eisenhower

  AG Fred Speaker was a man of real gusto, heart, thoughtfulness, and nerve. As a young lawyer he worked in the governor’s office with my father.

  Fred Speaker had a shock of unruly black hair, and a quick, warm laugh. He seemed to take a particular shine to me. We’d talk about this and that. Politics, social issues, books, music, and Penn State football. One day, shortly after my confirmation, out of the blue, Fred came over to the house and gave me an album of the Broadway musical Hair. The record mortified my father, who threw a fit and hid it from me. I started to grow my hair long. As long as I could grow it, my hair. A part of me, you see, was encouraged by a Pennsylvania attorney general to grow my hair long, and to listen to The Beatles.

  I don’t know what, in retaliation, my father may have given Fred’s six kids.

  My father called Speaker simply, “Freddie.” They always lit up around each other. Fred Speaker and my dad at times played intricate jokes on each other, which might often backfire.

  In the
Scranton governor’s office days, when they were young men, they would work long hours, for days in a row, and then come home and collapse all the next day exhausted in bed. At such times Speaker and my dad would each tell their wives not to disturb their sleep for any one, under any circumstances. This was before the advent of answering machines. The phone would ring, and someone would have to answer it.

  If my dad had to reach Fred, he might disguise his voice and tell Fred’s wife, JoAnn, that he was the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, and that he must speak to Mr. Speaker concerning a most urgent matter involving life and death. Speaker would drag himself out of bed to find my dad laughing on the phone.

  Fred Speaker, to return the favor, when he knew my father might be found particularly exhausted in slumber land, might call my mother, his voice disguised, and say that he was the governor, a senator, or some other important personage who must immediately speak with my father.

  One day my dad was snoring in bed when the phone rings. A strange voice on the other end of the line says to my mother, “This is General Eisenhower, can I please speak with Bill?”

  So my mom goes to the door of their darkened bedroom. She shields the mouthpiece of the phone. She whispers somewhat urgently in to my father that President Eisenhower is on the line and wants to speak with him.

  My father was wise to Fred’s little game. His head was still under the pillow.

  “Bill,” my mom tells him again. “It’s General Eisenhower. He says he has to speak with you. He says it’s important.”

  My father lifted his head, very annoyed.

  “Why don’t you tell ‘General Eisenhower’ to go fuck himself,” my father tells her.

  “Because dear I think you should tell him that yourself.”

  My father, by this time quite annoyed at Fred, clamored out of bed, took the phone, and, without mincing words, repeated his instructions.

  “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, General Eisenhower?”

  Unfortunately, Dwight Eisenhower was on the phone.

  I mean, the liberator of Europe, the five-star general, the former President of the United States, really was on the phone. And my father had just given him rather caustic instructions.

  It turned out that Eisenhower was calling from his retirement farm in Gettysburg, and had some business with the governor’s office that he wished to discuss with my father.

  My father and others I’ve spoken with over the years remember Eisenhower as someone with whom you didn’t joke around. Fortunately for my dad, in this instance, Eisenhower took the call in stride. It seems the general was in the habit of picking up the phone and making his own calls, and had grown used to, and perhaps was even amused by, all kinds of interesting surprised reactions when he rang you up.

  Attorney General Fred Speaker’s magic moment

  So that’s my dad and his good friend, Fred Speaker.

  Fred, as I said, was also into football. Penn State football, to be more precise. Joe Paterno football, to be exact.

  How much of a Penn State football fan was he? AG Fred Speaker missed only four Nittany Lions home games in thirty years. He was nuts about the Nittany Lions, and Coach Paterno. He was there for long practices on the loamy fields with Joe barking at the boys to dig in deeper, and harder. The snap of the ball and the clash of the helmets. The smack of the shoulder pads and the zip of the ball through the air. The backfield in motion. The sure-handed Paterno run up the middle. And always, always, defense, defense. All these things were in his blood. The grassy excited games under lights were in his blood too.

  They were all building Beaver Stadium. While the rest of America was going to hell, Fred was with them in State College while they were all building the house that JoePa built. It was a big part of Fred Speaker’s life. How could any of this be bad?

  AG Speaker went to most of the Penn State away games too. Only thing was, Fred Speaker was afraid to fly. (I do not know but suspect that the death of AG Walter Alessandroni must certainly have played into Fred’s dread of flying.) So he’d drive not only up to State College, but also to most nearly all of the Penn State away games. He’d take off in his car to crazy places like Nebraska and Michigan to root for his Nittany Lions.

  Speaker’s intimate familiarity with the countryside around State College, I suspect, played an important role in his defining moment as Pennsylvania attorney general.

  In 1970 Gov. Ray Shafer, of Meadville, was a lame duck, and was leaving office.

  In the last year of Gov. Shafer’s term, AG Sennett quit to manage the reelection campaign of Senator High Scott. (As you no doubt begin to see, the state attorney general, for much of the twentieth century, and before, has been intimately entwined in the politics of winning the governor’s office and the state’s other high offices.)

  Looking around for someone to fill out the last of Sennett’s term in the AG’s office, Gov. Shafer picked Fred Speaker. In 1970 Speaker was himself just 40 years old.

  “He is an outstanding Pennsylvanian,” Gov. Shafer said when he announced that Speaker would be his new attorney general. The governor said Speaker “has shown deep concern for the problems of Pennsylvania and he has the energies and devotion to meet those problems.”

  Attorney General Fred Speaker’s deepest concern was the death penalty. Like my father, he simply didn’t like it, on human, moral and legal principle. He felt it barbaric, and not in keeping with the state and federal constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Trouble was, it was nearly impossible to get the voters, the courts, and the cumbersome political parties and government apparatus to do anything about it.

  As attorney general, Fred Speaker came in to office with his head and heart set on doing everything in his power to effectively strike a blow against the death penalty in Pennsylvania. Above board, he could write an official opinion as AG declaring the death penalty unconstitutional. He knew the new governor’s AG would in all likelihood quickly rescind his opinion. He felt he must do more, but what?

  Time didn’t appear to be in his favor. Gov. Shafer’s term in office was quickly running out. In November 1970, Democrat Milton Shapp, a businessman from Philadelphia, was elected to succeed Shafer. That’s when AG Speaker’s carefully considered, premeditated, and sub rosa plan of action swung into play. He would use Gov. Shafer’s expiring term, and Gov.-elect Shapp’s incoming new term, to his advantage.

  Kurt Vonnegut astutely observes in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

  “In every big transaction… there is a magic moment during which a man has surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An alert lawyer will make that moment his own.”

  And so, between two governors’ terms in Pennsylvania, Attorney General Fred Speaker decided to make that magic moment his own.

  Writing in The New York Times, Robert McG. Thomas, Jr., offers a lively account that doesn’t quite jibe with everything that I know. He writes that Fred Speaker “never doubted for a moment that his greatest achievement was a stunning, quixotic gesture he made in January 1971, on his last day as state Attorney General, when he single-handedly abolished the death penalty in Pennsylvania.” Thomas continues with his story:

  “Mr. Speaker, a Republican who had been appointed Attorney General by Gov. Raymond P. Shafer six months earlier, had been planning the move ever since he paid a chance visit to Rockview Penitentiary at Bellefonte and had been taken to the state’s death chamber, where he saw the big wooden electric chair sitting starkly in a room with an overhead exhaust fan to remove the stench of death and holes in the floor so the official witnesses to an execution could have a place to throw up.

  “As Mr. Speaker later recalled, it was all he could do to keep from throwing up himself, as he suddenly realized that for all the legal trappings and statutory authority, executions, which he had previously supported, were no more than premeditated, cold-blooded ‘administrative murder.’

  “ ‘All I had to do was see that electric cha
ir,’ he said. ‘I looked at the place where somebody pulls the switch and burns somebody to death. That just wiped out all the great philosophical views that I had.’”

  This is the Fred Speaker that I knew acting at his Socratic best. When I was young Speaker might discuss some moral subject with us kids Socratically, with questions, as if needing himself to be convinced by our arguments. He’d play the devil’s advocate. I think we must even have discussed the Sophists, those morally bankrupt proto-lawyers who would argue anything -- for a fee.

  I have reason to believe that AG Speaker had been planning his move long before he first visited Rockview Penitentiary. I also don’t think Fred paid a “chance visit” to Rockview, as the Times recounts. I think he was there for a purpose, quite literally casing the joint. I also suspect that Fred’s familiarity with Rockview came from his continual visits to Happy Valley to watch Nittany Lions and Joe Paterno football. As any Lions fan will tell you, Rockview Penitentiary, where the state’s death chamber is kept, hulks darkly over what in those days was a main road out of town to Bellefonte and Route 80 beyond.

  And so it has been for millennia. The Romans too would crucify on the road into town. The occupied crosses served as a stern warning.

  I also don’t think Fred, while visiting the death chamber and seeing Old Sparky, suddenly had some epiphany that caused him to see through all his “great philosophical views.” Seeing the bullshit in another lawyer’s self-serving and immoral sophistry was precisely Fred Speaker’s bailiwick.

  Immoral bullshit, hiding behind any guise, is what Pennsylvania Attorney General Fred Speaker chiefly taught me to be on the lookout for, and to oppose.

  If it walked like a duck, talked like a duck, and acted like a duck, Fred believed, chances are, it probably was a duck. Those vomit holes punched in the floor of the Rockview death chamber were not there because witnesses were unaware of the finer points of the legal arguments in the court papers that had led the condemned to be executed. The vomit holes were in the floor because the witnesses were reacting to the violent death of another human being, restrained, put down and killed in an organized fashion, like an animal.