The Broken Road

by Peggy Wallace Kennedy

  Sybil’s husband, James, was still in the bar business and managing a local country club when Sybil came to work at the mansion. The country club pool became a regular hangout for my girlfriends and me in the summers of 1963 and 1964. In 1965, James suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and out of a job. Sybil approached Daddy and asked him if he would consider appointing James to the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which would have provided him with a paycheck and insurance for his family. It would have been different if James was not qualified, couldn’t be trusted, or was a bumbling fool. But Daddy’s denial came with a “Can’t do it, his name sounds too Jewish.” It was not political, not anti-Semitic in the broader sense. He said it because he could; it was cruel and hateful and he knew that it was. When Daddy was in private, there was always a fine line between saying what he meant and just being mean-spirited and in a foul mood—and it was often difficult to discern which was which.

  With Sybil’s help, Mama delivered on her promise to open the Governor’s Mansion to the public. Volunteers usually ushered tours. Mama made it a point, however, to be available when students were scheduled to visit. Mama had a genuine affection for young people and enjoyed having the opportunity to show them through her new home. To the students’ delight, it was not uncommon for my sister Lee to bound through them or play on the foyer staircase while Mama was conducting a tour.

  Mama’s simple affect and her deep-South drawl made her at times the butt of jokes by those who could not see beyond her upbringing as a farmer’s daughter. Her reluctance to walk among the educated class, due to her own lack of a formal education beyond high school, encouraged her to perfect her warmth and country grace. The overwhelming majority of working-class men and women in Alabama saw in Mama a reflection of their own selves. She came to understand that what one sees in oneself is not always as important as what others see in you.

  As Mama rose to new heights of popularity, her detractors fell silent. They came to see that the very traits of hers about which they had complained, her style and character, propelled her to new heights of power and prestige. My mama’s humble beginnings became a living testament to working-class mothers and fathers that the circumstances of their daughters’ birth had little to do with how far in life they could climb.

  It became generally understood among Montgomery’s women of society that it was best to confine their discussions about the persona of Lurleen Wallace to their country club powder rooms. For although it was an absolute given that none of their husbands would ever be the object of Mama’s affection, the globe-trotting wives were totally flummoxed when it dawned on them that the husbands would prefer to hunt and fish with Lurleen Wallace than dine on fine china and make small talk with their more elegant wives.

  My mama was an extraordinary woman—completely authentic and lacking in pretense. She was clear-eyed and rang true. And to this day I miss her.

  Wouldn’t you know it. Following on the heels of his notoriety after his stand in the schoolhouse door, Daddy turned his attention to the national stage. In February 1964, he concluded a third national speaking tour, which had captured more free media than any other politician in the country. On March 17, Daddy qualified to run in the Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin. With less than a month to campaign, the political prognosticators gave him little chance of success. On April 7, the date of the primary, Daddy received a quarter million votes. It was the beginning of his presidential aspirations, and Alabamians were proud. On April 14 we were at the Montgomery airport, where an estimated three thousand Alabamians gathered to welcome him home.

  Folks were proud that their homegrown governor had become a national political force, standing up to liberals, hippies, and overindulged college kids at every Ivy League college in America (except Yale, where those Communist professors, no doubt, were just too scared to let him even set foot on their campus). But his detractors and the press saw in him a seeming lack of interest in doing the job he was elected to do, and that gave them something to complain about. For Mama and the rest of us it was nothing new: his extended absences from home were a given in our lives.

  Even the Governor’s Mansion couldn’t lure him home. Mama was in charge. While I was always happy to hear Daddy’s footsteps on the back stairs of the mansion at the end of the day, it was never a surprise when there was nothing but silence. We had to accept him for who he was.

  Even with his family surrounding him—when you would have thought he would feel safest and calmest and most content and loved—he became quickly uneasy and off balance. In his mind he was still alone. He drew his brand of self-assurance from strangers and hangers-on rather than from us. But the mansion did give him an incentive to politick at home. There was room to move about, gated grounds to walk through, and a veranda to sit on while stabbing at the dark with the end of a glowing cigar to make a point. The first floor offered quiet and elegant surroundings that were of no particular interest to Daddy but could become a useful tool of persuasion for others.

  Despite his ruffian style, Daddy looked as if he had always been the master of the stately mansion when he descended the grand staircase to greet awestruck guests standing below. There were always people around, someone to talk to or stand outside with while smoking a Garcia y Vega cigar.

  The mansion’s living quarters on the second floor had a lived-in look with rather plain furniture, family pictures on the walls, and a variety of knickknacks that Mama had retrieved from Clayton and placed on end tables and bookcase shelves. An open mezzanine on the second floor divided the living quarters in half and served as our den. It became a perfect vantage point for eavesdropping on private conversations below. On both sides of the balcony, bedroom doors opened onto central halls that were visible from downstairs. There was often no privacy. I was often reminded that I should be appropriately dressed and groomed when I stepped through my bedroom door while tours were being conducted. Mama said it was but a small price to pay for the opportunity to live in such a grand place.

  Without the burden of impending financial ruin facing Mama, her relationship with Daddy improved. However, they still battled, Mama snapping at Daddy’s heels as he sought either truce or shelter. Following their reconciliation in 1960, Mama and Daddy came to an understanding that if Daddy won the governor’s race in 1962, the office would belong to both of them. They agreed to be partners in the family-owned business of selling the Wallace brand, but each reserved the right to have days off. Mama pursued her interest in hunting, fishing, and being with friends, while Daddy ran the state without Mama looking over his shoulder.

  All of us would have been hard-pressed to make a list of Daddy’s friends: they were few and mostly invisible. His political intimates and allies were advisers but hardly friends. Perhaps the closest he came to friendship as most would define the term were his state trooper security guards who stood by him for the many years he was governor and, later in life, the African American men who cared for him as he lay mostly inert and in constant pain.

  In Daddy’s dictionary there was no such word as relaxation. He was not one to just sit idle. When he felt obligated to join us in front of the television or was called to listen to a favorite song playing on the record player, his restlessness and fidgeting would usually result in Mama’s telling him to just get up and go on about his business. His ability to sit still generally lasted about as long as it took for him to get all the sugar out of a piece of Juicy Fruit chewing gum before he spat it out.

  When Daddy was home, he prowled. He seemed to always be searching for something in his pockets or rummaging through the stack of newspapers spread out around his chair. He was notorious for calling people at all times of the day or night and often had to convince the person who picked up the phone that it was indeed Governor Wallace on the line. A long cord installed on a phone next to the family dining room allowed him to talk, pace, and eat at the same time. He usually kept his shirt and tie on until bedtime.

  And yet Daddy wou
ld occasionally leave off politicking and become a kind and funny husband and father. These were moments when I glimpsed the young man with big dreams and unabashed enthusiasm for life that Mama had met, fallen in love with, and married.

  There were nights at the mansion when Mama and Daddy would dance to Loretta Lynn’s “Before I’m Over You” or Hank Williams’s “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” playing on the stereo. Daddy would sometimes stiffen and draw Mama close if he felt they were out of step. There were moments when Mama twirled away with her left hand extended before curling back into Daddy’s arms, laying her cheek to his. Dancing inspired moments of intimacy without the risk of emotional entanglement. And for most of my life, that is what I thought love was all about.

  I grew slowly used to this new life with its predictable rhythms. I became part of a clique without even knowing what a clique was. I was suddenly popular, always in a hurry and running late. I no longer had to envy girls my age when I saw them shopping with their mothers or overheard them talking about their weekend plans for sleepovers, because my life was becoming like theirs. For the first time I believed I had the right to be happy.

  In the spring of 1965 I graduated from Bellingrath Junior High School. At the age of fifteen, I was nothing like the painfully shy twelve-year-old girl who walked to school with her brother each morning. The glass slipper of good fortune fit perfectly on my foot. Following the ceremony’s closing prayer, Daddy and Mama moved slowly through the crowd as people came up to greet them. On the school’s front lawn, I was surrounded by friends until a state trooper retrieved me. “Your Mama and Daddy want to get a picture of you before y’all leave,” he said, pointing his finger toward a gathering crowd. “They’re somewhere in there!”

  Daddy saw me first and waved his hand in the air. “Sugah, come on over here and stand by us while we get a picture. These folks won’t mind a bit.” When I was within a few steps of where he and Mama were standing, he said to no one in particular, but to everyone within earshot, “You are a pretty little thing. Your Mama and I sure are proud.” I glowed inside.

  “God just bless all you Wallaces,” someone called. “We just love everything about you.”

  And then an elderly man stepped forward and said the kind of thing that killed that glow and had begun more and more to disturb me. “I got a granddaughter that graduated today,” he said as he jostled himself to the front of the crowd.

  “Well, that’s mighty fine,” Daddy replied.

  “Yep, her mama and grandmamma think so.” The man leaned in closer. “Yeah, and I’m just glad you kept the blacks out of here.” They belong here too, I said to myself. They are my brothers and sisters and I want them at my side.

  The photographer asked the crowd to move back a few steps so he could set the shot. “Peggy, let’s put you on the end with the governor beside you. Mrs. Wallace, you stand next to the governor and we will let the little one stand in front.”

  Me and Daddy, Mama, and Janie Lee at my graduation from Bellingrath Junior High School, May 1965.

  Daddy put his arm around me and pulled me close to him. Just before the camera flashed, a woman in the crowd said, “Now, that is picture-perfect!”

  12

  A Storm’s a-Comin’

  My dear, I think of you always and at night I build myself a warm nest of things I remember and float in your sweetness till morning.

  —Zelda Fitzgerald

  The Fort Morgan Road in Gulf Shores, Alabama, is twenty-three miles long and ends at the mouth of Mobile Bay. When I was a child, the road to Fort Morgan was barely touched by civilization. Occasional wood-framed houses painted in summer pastels rose on creosote poles above sugar-white sand, strung out along otherwise desolate beaches. Empty trailers hitched to the backs of pickup trucks sat along the road’s shoulder near primitive boat launches on the bay. Seabirds sat atop the stumps of washed-away piers.

  In the spring of 1963, Lamar Little, a Louisiana real estate developer, and his partners constructed a 7,500-square-foot, two-story cinder block mansion along the shoreline of the Gulf and deeded it to Daddy. In turn, Daddy deeded it to the state with the stipulation that it would be for the exclusive use of Alabama governors. It became a summer retreat for our family. A ten-foot concrete wall on the west side of the house provided privacy and security while the east side faced nothing but miles of sand dunes. The property’s desolation and a beachfront devoid of people was part of its allure for Mama. Along with the lake house, it became a refuge.

  I grumbled in the early summer of 1965 when Mama told me we were going to the Beach Mansion for an extended stay. My declarations to Mama that she was ruining my life and that I should be allowed to stay in Montgomery at the Governor’s Mansion were met with stone-faced rejection. “You are completely boy crazy,” she said. “And I don’t trust your daddy to keep an eye on you.” As a last-ditch effort, I reminded her that she and Daddy were married when she was sixteen. Bending her head a bit so that she could look at me over the top of her reading glasses, she replied, “I rest my case.”

  Mamaw and Mr. Henry went with us along with Mama’s new secretary, Catherine Steineker, who carried with her the 1962 edition of Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette everywhere she went. There would never be a table setting mishap, or a thank-you note not handwritten, as long as Catherine was around.

  At the beach, Mama woke early and walked the shoreline. The love of solitary sunrises had been a part of Mama’s life since she was a child. Her feet were always the first ones to hit the floor in the morning. As for Daddy, he preferred to get up a bit later. I have mentioned that even on Christmas mornings, Mama always sat alone to cheer our good fortune as we plundered through gifts under the tree. Cheerfulness among young children with their Christmas oohs, aahs, and “Look what Santa brought me” in the early morning hours was more than Daddy could bear. He finally appeared about noon. “That’s mighty fine, mighty fine, sugah,” he wanly said as I showed off my spoils. “Wonder how much that set Santa back?”

  After her morning walks, Mama returned to the grounds of the Beach Mansion and with a cup of coffee in her hand watched sand crabs skitter into freshly excavated holes just to the north of small piles of broken shells that marked the high tide line. Driftwood lay in the dunes. Mama pocketed unbroken sand dollars. After breakfast every morning, Mama and Mr. Henry set up umbrellas and beach chairs and planted two eight-foot casting rods in sand spikes just out of the waves’ reach. Mama set her tackle box on top of a metal ice chest filled with frozen shrimp and cut bait. She tied weights to fishing lines as Mr. Henry studied the current.

  “Mutt, come up here and help me find the flow. The tide is right but the water is slow. We need to find the trough that’s taking those fish in and out of town.”

  Mama took off her sunglasses and covered her eyes with her hand. “Just look straight out a ways. See it?”

  “Not yet.”

  Mama took Mr. Henry’s chin in her hand and slowly moved it to the left. “Look straight ahead. Where that bird just dove.”

  “See it now! Ready to catch some fish?”

  Mama smiled and patted Mr. Henry on the cheek. “Those fish don’t stand a chance when Mutt and Daddy are in town.”

  By the time Mamaw pulled herself together and settled on the beach, Mama and Mr. Henry had caught enough fish for supper.

  “I quit cleaning fish long ago,” Mamaw grumbled. “I’m going to sit right here, have a cigarette and a Seven-Up and watch out for Peggy Sue in that water.”

  Building driftwood fires in the sand was one of the things I enjoyed most about being with Mama at the Beach Mansion; even I couldn’t put a sourpuss on such romantic fun. It was also a treat to see Mama so carefree.

  One night toward the end of our stay, Mama sat in front of the driftwood blaze, her knees pulled up tight against her, gazing into the heart of the flames. She was quiet and pensive, a contrast to her gently ebullient mood of recent weeks. My grandparents came out of the house and down to the beach to
join us. They settled into chairs set low in the sand. The fire blew this way and that. “The wind’s picking up,” Mamaw said after a while. Mr. Henry threw some more wood on the fire. My mama was so still, so removed. It made me uneasy. Perhaps she was thinking about all that Daddy had done. A recent poll showed the mood of the country turning toward civil rights and against Daddy. She knew the trip to the beach was coming to an end and that she would have to return and once again step into the role of Alabama’s First Lady.

  Thunder rolled over the black water. The wind rose. Gusts carried spray from the surf roaring up the beach. The top of a styrofoam ice chest missed Mamaw’s head only by inches as it cartwheeled into the dark.

  “Come on y’all, grab all your stuff, we got to get up and get in,” Mamaw said.

  Still, Mama didn’t move. She sat as if in a trance. Lightning stabbed the restless Gulf and thunder pounded us. Mama didn’t flinch.

  “Lurleen, you need to get up!” Mamaw yelled. She tugged on Mama’s arm. “A storm’s a-comin’, and we need to get on home.”

  13

  Success Is to Succeed

  I used to get things done by saying please. Now I dynamite ’em out of my path.

  —Huey Long

  Daddy’s lifelong ambition of being governor was not just for one four-year term. The problem was that the Alabama Constitution of 1819 prohibited the governor from succeeding himself.

  In Daddy’s mind, he needed a second term for the purpose of fueling the engine of his presidential aspirations. Without a second term, he wouldn’t have a strong platform to run on. In retrospect, I can say without a doubt that our family’s situation and finances—where we would live and what we would live off of if he was out of office—never entered his mind.

  Still riding high among whites for his “stand,” in June 1963, Daddy suggested to his legislative allies that it was time to pass a succession amendment and let the voters decide if they wanted to keep him around for four more years. The proposal did not pass. The second time around, in August 1964, the same thing happened. While members of the house of representatives were easy to manage, there was a group of recalcitrant state senators who seemed impervious to his shouted demands, determined to stop the Wallace Roadshow before it became the Wallace Dynasty. By September 1965, time was running out. The hoped-for “third time’s a charm” special session was called to order on October 4, less than seven months before the gubernatorial primary. By that time there were no bonds of civility left in the Alabama state capitol between the warring factions of Daddy’s men and his opponents.