by Ed Bethune
On Election Day, 1972, Richard Nixon carried Arkansas with sixty-nine percent of the vote. He was the first Republican to win the state since Ulysses S. Grant in 1862. The rest of us did not fare so well.
I won my home county (White) and I won Tucker’s home county (Pulaski), where the voters knew us best. I also won in sparsely populated Searcy County, which had a history of voting Republican. In every other county of the state (seventy-two of them), Jim Guy beat me badly simply because he was running on the Democratic party ticket.
In life, there is no rejection as clear or as hard to take as political rejection. When the debates, the speechmaking, and the handshaking are over the voters have their turn. When the officials count the votes, you will have won or lost. There are no draws in politics.
I had plenty of doubts about myself in my early life and I had stumbled many times, but by the grace of God, my screw-ups were private. I had reeled off a string of successes that I attributed to a firm application of the Vermilye worldview, but public rejection was a new experience. To what should I attribute the loss? It was not a lack of will; we had given it all we had. Was it poor messaging? No, it could not have been that because we beat Tucker where they knew us best, and where the voters were listening to us. How do you lose seventy-two out of seventy-five counties in Arkansas? Simple, you run on the Republican ticket.
I was down in the dumps after the loss to Tucker. I liked public service but winning office as a Republican was going to be harder than I ever imagined. President Nixon had won re-election, and he had carried Arkansas but his success was due to a set of unusual circumstances; the Wilbur Mills candidacy, and the emergence of a deep philosophical split in the national Democratic party.
I was puzzled and began to question the workability of my Vermilye theory of life. I was anxious, disappointed, and somewhat confused for the first time since childhood. Fortunately, Lana was not a disciple of the Vermilye approach to life. To the contrary, she is an unwavering Christian. She always does her best, takes winning and losing in stride and does not go into a funk if things do not go her way. I leaned on her, as I would do many times in the years to come.
She was back caring for the kids, and planning what she was going to do with the rest of her life. Her optimism and good cheer should have perked me up, but I was stuck on dysfunctional. Losing is not compatible with the Vermilye way of thinking.
I sulked for days, but my melancholy did not last long, it could not. We were broke—flat broke. Lana had left her teaching job to campaign, I was a defeated candidate with no job, and we had only a few hundred dollars in our personal bank account. We had some equity in our house on One Meadowlane Drive (no more than $4000), our furniture, and our trusty 1963 Volkswagen Beetle that had been with us since graduating from law school. That was it!
In early December, 1972, after weeks of pondering our options, Lana and I decided I should start my own law practice in Searcy. We considered taking a federal job in the Nixon administration, but it had only been four years since we left a federal job, the FBI, to practice law in Arkansas. To take a federal job now, even a good one, seemed to us to be a step backwards.
I would need an office and a few basics, but we could not afford much. I rented a small two-room office on the first floor of the old Mayfair Hotel for $50 per month. I bought a second-hand IBM Selectric typewriter for $75, and we set it on a second-hand dressing table that we bought from a local auctioneer, Colonel Ivan Quattlebaum, for $10. Lana was going to be my secretary until she could get a job teaching English at Searcy High School starting in September of 1973. I had no law books, but figured I could use the county law library. I needed a desk—every lawyer needs one—so I bought a hollow-core door and laid it on top of cinder blocks. Voilà, we had a lawyer’s desk for less than $20! We installed a single-line telephone and paid $25 to have a sign (Ed Bethune, Lawyer) painted to hang in front of the hotel. It was getting close to Christmas, but we were in business!
We scraped together a few dollars to buy a Christmas tree and gifts for Paige and Sam, and we invited my mother and Lana’s mother and father to come to Searcy for Christmas. Lana and I agreed, for obvious reasons, that we would not exchange gifts, but on Christmas Eve, I gave her a “Bond” that I had typed on the Selectric typewriter. It was a simple pledge that I would work as hard as I could and a promise that better times would come to the Bethune family.
My first client was Dan Dunn, a friend who had a small, but successful roofing business in Searcy. We were so grateful that he came to me, that he trusted me, and that he felt I could help him solve his legal problem. It was not a complicated legal matter, but he did need representation. I jumped on his case like a hungry dog attacks a bone. I am sure my aggressiveness astounded the lawyers on the other side, but I needed to close the case so that I could collect my fee. We desperately needed to collect some money so that we could pay our rent, telephone bill, and utilities. When it was clear that we had resolved Dan’s issue, I asked him if he would please write a separate check for my fee, even before we received the money that was due to him from the settlement. I was honest with him, saying, “Dan, you have the right to wait until we get the proceeds from the settlement, but I am struggling to get my practice going and I really need my fee, now.” He understood, and wrote me a check for $600. It is and always will be the most important fee for legal services that I ever collected.
My second piece of business came from Ruby Eubanks and Travis Blue at the Farmers Home Administration. They asked me to approve titles and close FHA home loans. The fees were not great but it was a good piece of business and it would pay the overhead. We were making progress!
My unsuccessful race for attorney general branded me as a Republican lawyer, one of the few in the state, certainly in Central Arkansas. For that reason, my name came up as a possible replacement for Bill Smith, one of the state’s finest lawyers. He was stepping down from his part-time post as chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board for the Ninth District, which included Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. Bill Smith’s daughter, Kay, had been a classmate of Lana’s at Little Rock Central High School, and I used to play golf with Kay and her husband, Bill Patton, when we were in law school. Bill Smith (the senior partner of the Smith, Williams, Friday, Bowen, and Eldridge law firm) supported me to be his replacement and I became chairman of the Ninth District Federal Home Loan Bank Board in late 1973. The appointment exposed me to the world of high finance, but most importantly, Lana and I made many nice trips to board meetings and I received a much-needed fee for each monthly meeting that I attended. In one of the great ironies in my life, I got the telephone call from Bill Smith to see if I would be interested in the appointment in early 1973. At the time I took the call from Arkansas’s most distinguished lawyer, I was sitting on a folding chair behind my $20 hollow-core-door desk in my $50 a month office at the Mayfair Hotel.
After a few months of law practice and collecting more hardearned fees, I borrowed $5000 cash from Mother (it almost wiped out her savings) and made a down payment on a little house on the corner of 210 East Vine Street in Searcy. We made a loan that covered the purchase of the house and left enough money for us to buy proper furniture and convert the house into a law office. We were glad to get out of the Mayfair Hotel, and our move to the new location sent the right signal to the people of White County. My law practice took off. The business community, long committed to other lawyers, did not hire me, but the ordinary folks trusted me, so I handled a lot of divorce, personal injury, and criminal defense cases. I did well, much better than I ever expected to do.
Many of the people who came to my office did not have a legal problem and they did not need a lawyer. They just needed someone to talk to because they had let their imagination get the best of them. When I was in the FBI, I often took random calls from the public—alligators coming up through the toilets to wreck marriages—Martians stealing government secrets—you name it, I have heard it. Everyone in law enforcement will tell
you that the nut-jobs are most active when the moon is full.
The stuff I heard in my law office was less bizarre, but there was one exception: It involved an attractive middle-aged woman, slightly plumpish, who came to my office and told me of her belief that someone was breaking into her house on a regular basis. She had not reported it to the police because she thought the intruder might be her ex-husband and she did not want to make trouble for him. I asked her whether the intruder had taken anything of value and if she had any proof. With a perfectly straight face she said, “Yes, he goes into the attic—I know he has been there because he has made my wedding dress smaller.” I thought she was kidding so I cracked a little smile, but I quickly wiped it off with my hand when I realized the woman was deadly serious. We sat there in silence for what seemed an eternity. I tried to think of something to say, but I could not. I was speechless.
The nice woman seemed relieved to have told her story. She thanked me for listening, stood up, smoothed out her dress and left.
We might have lost the race for attorney general, but the attention we garnered in the losing effort was definitely good for business. In September, Lana returned to her teaching job at Searcy High School and I hired a secretary. Our income stream was strong so I made good on the Bond that I had given Lana for Christmas just ten months before. I bought her a brand-new gold 1973 Lincoln Continental Town Car from Duane Treat at Capps Motor Company. Then, in January of 1974 I bought a lot from Kenny Rand and we started building our dream home, a two-story traditional brick home that backed up to the tee on the eighth hole of the Searcy Country Club golf course.
I was back to believing there might be something to the Vermilye way of thinking after all.
In early 1974, less than a year from the date she loaned us the money to buy our law office, I repaid the $5000 that I had borrowed from my mother, in full, with ten percent interest. She was happy for us, and we were happy that we were on a sound footing.
Things were definitely looking up for us, but there was a fly in the ointment. In an unexpected turn of events, the Republican party got a bad name due to the incredibly stupid Watergate burglary that led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. It was a rough time to be a Republican, particularly in Arkansas. Richard Nixon resigned under pressure and Vice President Gerald Ford became president of the United States. The Democrats picked up a huge number of congressional seats that year, and those members, many of them young liberals, became known as the Watergate Babies. It looked as if the Republicans would never recover, nationally or in the state of Arkansas, so I focused on family, my burgeoning law practice, and living out a host of unfulfilled dreams.
In the late spring of 1974, I was driving by the Searcy Airport and, as if pulled by a magnet, I impulsively turned into the parking lot and went inside to ask Elmo Everett, the aircraft mechanic who doubled as airport manager, if there was anyone there who could teach me how to fly. It was a dream from my youth that stemmed from my reading, repeatedly, the full page of the Johnson Smith & Co. Catalog that told how I could build an airplane and power it with a washing machine motor. Why not learn how to fly? I had missed the chance to become a pilot in the Marine Corps because of a deviated septum, and for most of my life I could not think about spending the kind of money that it would take to learn to fly. Now I had some extra cash in my pocket, and by damn, I was going to do it.
Elmo put me in touch with a former Air Force pilot who was giving flying lessons, and within a couple of months I soloed and made the requisite cross-country trip that permitted me to get my private pilot’s license. I rented airplanes from Elmo for a year, mostly Cessna 172’s, and had the usual number of hairy experiences that new pilots have with bad weather and stupid mistakes. Once when I was taking off, the engine sputtered and I pulled back on the throttle thinking I ought to abort the takeoff but I was already too near the end of the runway so I jammed the throttle to full-on and barely cleared the trees at the end of the runway. It is a wonder I survived but I was determined. I bought a one-third interest in a Cherokee 180 owned by Dr. Cliff Ganus, the president of Harding College, and his sons. It was a good little airplane. We used it to fly to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas and later, we flew the kids to John Newcombe’s tennis camp in New Braunfels, Texas.
Those two trips with the family convinced me I needed to get an instrument rating. The Cherokee 180 was a little slow and not a good plane for learning how to fly on instruments, so I parted company with Dr. Ganus and his boys and got into a three-way ownership of a Cessna Skylane with Dr. Jay Bell and Dr. Gene Joseph. It was a great arrangement because neither of them flew very often and the airplane was a perfect platform for learning to fly on instruments. Zearl Watson gave me some introductory lessons, but I finished my work and got my IFR rating with Dave Ridings, who later became a pilot for Harding University.
My law practice continued to grow and I began to use the airplane to travel around the state. The most interesting destination was the grass strip at Cummins Prison. In those days, I could fly right in and a security guard would come out to meet me, check my identification, and then drive me to the administration building where I would put in a request to see a client.
The most challenging trip was to fly into Gaston’s fishing resort on the White River near Mountain Home, Arkansas. Unlike the strip at Cummins, the Gaston strip was nestled among rolling hills along the river and it required some good piloting to get in and out.
My thirst for adventure took me to other grass strips, but soon I was so busy with my law practice that I had a hard time maintaining my proficiency as a pilot. On several trips, I made mistakes—not fatal, but stupid—and I convinced myself that the worst thing a pilot can do is to fly when he, or she, is preoccupied with other business. I disciplined myself to focus on flying when I got in the airplane and that worked well, at least for the next few years. Later, when I started my campaign for Congress—the ultimate preoccupation—I stopped flying altogether.
In 1975, I got a chance to strike a blow for competition in politics, and I took it. As general counsel for the Republican Party of Arkansas, I filed a suit to nullify Governor David Pryor’s attempt to call a “limited constitutional convention” without submitting the call to the electorate for ratification. The Arkansas Supreme Court agreed with our position. In a 4-3 decision, the court said, “all political power is inherent in the people.” It was a solid legal decision that once again proved the need for a two-party system.
Many of the matters I handled in my solo law practice were standard fare for a small town general practitioner. I read abstracts of title and closed hundreds of loans for the Farmers Home Administration. I handled divorces and child custody matters, some were contested and painful, but most were blessedly uncontested and peaceful. I probated estates, did adoptions, wrote contracts, set up small businesses, and worked on a host of other matters. These cases formed the backbone of my practice and paid the bills. They were not glamorous matters, but they were important to the people involved and I took satisfaction that I was helping others get along in life.
One day I was in Diaz, Arkansas looking for a witness that I wanted to depose. Diaz was just a crossroads. There was part of a cotton-ginning operation on one corner and an old country store kitty-cornered from that. I was using tobacco at the time so I went into the store to see if they had any cigars. When I got inside the first thing I noticed was that a fine layer of dust covered everything. The proprietor, an old man wearing well-worn one-strap overalls pointed me to a shelf where I saw a box of Mississippi Crooks, an unwrapped cheap cigar that is actually crooked. I picked one up out of the box. It was so dry that it crumbled in my hands. I was sure it had been there since the Great Depression. If I had tried to light one it would have caught fire. I decided to ask the storekeeper if he had any other cigars. I knew it would be useless to ask for a fancy cigar so I down-graded my request. I asked him if he had a Roi-Tan or a King Edward—popular, but cheap cigars that were selling for around eight cents
each at that time. He gave me a puzzled look and said, “Naw, Mister, we don’t get much call for them good cigars.”
There is nothing like working in the backwoods of Arkansas.
17
HIGH PROFILE CASES
Celebrity is the advantage of being known to
people who we don’t know, and who don’t know us.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort
I was establishing a reputation as a good, all-around country lawyer but my work on the Criminal Code Revision Commission, my time as prosecuting attorney, and my background as an FBI agent led people to see me as a criminal defense attorney. I handled two cases in early 1973, my first full year of practice after the race for attorney general that enhanced that image.
In February of 1973, Federal Judge G. Thomas Eisele, a friend from the days when we were both helping Governor Rockefeller, assigned me to represent a young man from Memphis charged with robbing a bank in Cherry Valley, Arkansas. The FBI and the media referred to him as Billy the Bank Robber, because he was a suspect in a string of bank robberies in and around Memphis and Eastern Arkansas. Billy had an alibi, saying that he was elsewhere at the time of the robbery, and that was his main defense. The case came to trial in Little Rock in March 1973 and, being a former FBI agent, I picked holes in the testimony of the FBI agents who investigated the case and testified against Billy. I doubt I would have known how to do that effectively if I had not been an agent myself. After five days of trial the case went to the jury, and after hours of deliberating, it was apparent that they were hopelessly deadlocked. Judge Eisele declared a mistrial.