The Broken Road

by Peggy Wallace Kennedy

  “And he acts like him sometimes too,” I said with a smile.

  “Walk over here with me for a minute,” she said. “Somewhere where nobody will be listening.”

  I handed Leigh off to Mark and followed.

  “When I walked down there to the governor’s platform to check on things,” she said, “I noticed your name places were pasted on the chairs in the middle of the back row. Well, I knew that wasn’t right, so I was pulling them off to move y’all up by your daddy when a man pranced up and asked me what I was doing.”

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “He said he was the new chief of protocol for the State of Alabama, whatever in the hell that is. Said his name was Jimmy Hatcher. Well, I happened to look down and damn if he didn’t have on purple velvet shoes. Not really shoes, more like what ballet dancers wear. They had gold buckles. So I asked, ‘Is that why you are wearing those purple velvet shoes?’ ”

  “What did he say?”

  She leaned in closer. “Get this. He says that the governor has a new family and I needed to leave those stickers alone. So you three get down there before the new family shows up, whoever in God’s name they are, and grab you a seat.”

  As Mark, Leigh, and I walked down the capitol steps and onto the reviewing platform, the Wallace crowd waved and nodded our way. “At least those folks think we should be down here,” Mark said as we ripped the stickers off three chairs on the second row.

  The soon-to-be new First Lady was apoplectic when she saw us sitting there. No doubt the chief of protocol was going to receive a tongue-lashing before he could even take off his shoes.

  That evening, an inaugural concert was held in a local high school auditorium. A hand-held spotlight caught Daddy and Lisa coming down the center aisle. Although the First Lady’s voluminous pink ball gown accented with pink hair ornaments may have seemed a bit overwhelming for a high school auditorium, it was no doubt lovely.

  As the concert came to a close, family members, both new and old, were called to join Daddy and Lisa as the orchestra played “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Leigh, dressed in a sailor suit, refused to take off his overly large Scooby-Doo sunglasses as he walked across the stage. With a need for a moment of hilarity in an otherwise ostentatious display, the crowd pointed to him and cheered.

  Following the finale, Lisa was kind enough to walk over to me. “Well, your child certainly stole our show with those sunglasses on,” she said.

  “You’re damn right he did,” I replied.

  As the three of us drove past the Governor’s Mansion on our way home, Mark slowed the car down, as any tourist would have done, so that we could gaze through the mansion’s wrought iron fence and into the golden glow of candles as the new Wallace family mingled about.

  “Let’s go home,” Mark said. “I’ve had enough pink for a lifetime.”

  On January 20, two days after Daddy’s inauguration, the Tuscaloosa News published the reporter Jack Wheat’s article titled “The Enigmatic First Lady.” According to the interviewee, Louise Wilson, a close friend, almost like a mother to Lisa, stated that singing was only one of Lisa Taylor’s interests. “She’s a Bible scholar. She can quote Shakespeare with the greatest of ease. She plays the piano beautifully, she likes to read, she’s interested in interior decoration, she’s a horsewoman … She’ll have interests. I think she has already shown that when she was campaigning and went to the steel mills.”

  As to the hat that Lisa wore to the inauguration, Louise said, “My telephone kept ringing off the hook the other day. People telling me how pretty she looked in that hat and they asked me if I had anything to do with it. And I said I wish I had.”

  According to the article, Mrs. Wilson was well known for making hats and in 1967 appeared on the television program To Tell the Truth along with the hats she made out of Alabama forest products including wild hydrangea, pine cones, and mock orange.

  Interestingly enough, just below the “Enigmatic First Lady” newspaper article there was a handsome photo of the “Little Mr. Snowflake Winners.” According to Urban Dictionary, a “snowflake” is “a person who has an inflated sense of their own uniqueness and an unwarranted sense of entitlement.”

  “That little snowflake picture right underneath that Lisa article was an act of God,” Mamaw would have said.

  While Lisa was standing beside Daddy on his inaugural day, a friend of mine told me she heard the woman next to her lean over to her husband and say, “If Cornelia Wallace looked like she just stepped off a train in some village in Scotland, with that tam o’shanter hat she was wearing back during her days, Lisa Wallace looks like she just fell off a train in Russia with that beige seal fur skullcap she’s got pasted on her head.”

  Several days later, Jimmy Hatcher, the new and only state chief of protocol in the history of Alabama, was no doubt wearing his velvet shoes when he called me at home and invited me to tea at the mansion the following day.

  “Peggy,” Mark’s secretary, Jeanette, said when I called her the next morning to tell her that I was taking Mark with me to the mansion, “Judge Kennedy has sentencing this morning. I don’t see how we can reschedule his entire docket.”

  “Well, I may be on his next criminal docket if he doesn’t go with me,” I replied.

  “Hold on, let me go in the courtroom and see what is happening.” After a few minutes, Jeanette returned to the phone. “The jury box is full of felons from the county jail, the second and third rows of the courtroom are full of the felons that got out on bail, and the deputies, parole officers, and lawyers are hanging around the district attorney in the back. I can handle this until the judge gets back.”

  The first day Mark walked into the Montgomery county courthouse and stepped into the reception area of his courtroom and office, his soon-to-be assistant, Jeanette Harris, looked up from her desk, smiled, and asked, “Can I help you?”

  Jeanette and Mark still laugh at the rest of the story. After Jeanette asked him if she could be of assistance, Mark told her he was the new judge. Then there was dead silence, until she said, “You have got to be kidding me.” Mark was twenty-six.

  On the day Mark retired from the Alabama Supreme Court, twenty-one years later, Jeanette was still by his side. “You’ve come a long way since that first day I met you,” I heard her say. “Because I was smart enough to know you were smarter,” Mark replied.

  In January 1983, if not before, Jimmy Hatcher was no doubt Alabama’s most notorious thespian. And according to him, he was “thrilled to the moon and back to be appointed as Alabama’s chief of protocol.” I couldn’t help but wonder whether Daddy’s favorite dish, sardines and saltine crackers, would be served on the state china, garnished with watercress.

  While there was neither a job description nor any historic precedent as to what an Alabama chief of protocol’s duties would include, Chief Hatcher’s first official act was to rename the state jet The Lovely Lynda Lisa in honor of the First Lady. This lovely new name was emblazoned in hot pink fluorescent paint on both sides of its fuselage. The Lovely Lynda Lisa would soon become the darling of control towers across the nation.

  Jimmy Hatcher was born in Enterprise, Alabama, a midsized town in southeast Alabama. Like so many other towns that stretched along the soil of the Alabama Black Belt, it had risen to prosperity amid white blankets of cotton. That is, until the boll weevil showed up and laid waste to “the land of cotton.” Then, thanks to George Washington Carver, a former slave who became world-renowned for his research on the many uses of peanuts, Enterprise was reborn as the peanut patch of south Alabama.

  In the middle of the Enterprise downtown district, there is a monument in honor of the boll weevil. The oversized cast-iron insect sits atop the outstretched arms of a female figure dressed in cascading robes as she stands in a fountain of falling water. Talk about Southern! In December 1982, in Enterprise, the only two things that were made in France were the statue of a woman holding up a foraging insect pest and the purple velvet shoes that woul
d carry Jimmy Hatcher to the Governor’s Mansion the following month.

  Mark’s calendar was cleared so that he could go with me to the mansion. As we approached, the front door was flung open. “Welcome, welcome, on behalf of the governor and First Lady of Alabama, to the Alabama Governor’s Mansion,” Jimmy Hatcher said. “I am so honored to serve the First Family as the chief of protocol. This old house is about to become a haven of peace and tranquility for those that abide here.”

  Mark looked at me and gave me the smile that said “We can do this.”

  “The governor is in the private dining room having breakfast. He has requested that you have an audience with him before we have our chat,” Hatcher said. “I assume you know the way.”

  “If this is not the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen, I don’t know what is,” I said. “Let’s say hi to Daddy, see if any of my friends are still working in the kitchen, get the meeting over with, and go to lunch.”

  Mark and I walked into the dining room to see Daddy. A woman sitting in the chair next to him turned to me and said: “You are not allowed to be in here. This area is restricted.”

  Daddy stared and said nothing.

  “That man looks like he’s a prisoner in his own house,” said Mark as we backed out the door.

  “I was led here by God,” said Irene McDonald, the woman who only a short while before had thrown me out of the dining room. She settled into a chair across from us in the mansion sunroom. “I praise God’s name for the life of your father and his First Lady. I prayed and God told me to come to this house. What I am to Lisa is a praying mother. I am her friend. I protect Lisa. I am someone Lisa can trust and talk to.”

  Irene’s piety fit right in with the pink script on the fuselage and the purple velvet shoes—they were all part of a tableau of Southern absurdity.

  Her matronly business attire, a modest wool nubbin dress and matching jacket, was accessorized by a pair of reading glasses hanging from a decorated cross clip; a ballpoint pen attached to a black string lay in her lap. I would have liked to see you and my mother square off, I thought to myself. Lurleen Wallace would have decked you with just one punch.

  Mr. Hatcher joined us. “Please sit,” he said, taking charge and pointing to a sofa on the sun porch.

  “My dear Peggy,” he said when we were all settled. “The governor wants this to be a home, something that he has never had. He wants to be happy for the first time in his life. I love our First Lady Lisa, and I am going to help her fill this house with happiness.”

  Irene interrupted. “I don’t enjoy small talk when there is business at hand, so, Mr. Hatcher, if I may, let’s just get to the point. Take a moment to read this.” Irene handed us a document entitled “Admission to the Mansion and Grounds.”

  I read the document with growing alarm. My first reaction, rather than anger, was fear for Daddy’s safety. As we were sitting there, all of the locks on the second floor were being changed to deadbolts.

  “Now, we are going to go over every item with you so that there will be no misunderstanding,” Irene said. “Rest assured, a breach of these rules will result in an immediate expulsion and potential arrest. There will be no exceptions. Now, as you will read, no one is allowed on the grounds without twenty-four-hour’s notice. When you arrive at the gate, you must state your name, your purpose, and what area of the grounds or the house you intend to visit. Failure to follow this simple request will result in your expulsion. The troopers at the gate will call into the home and request permission for you to enter. If allowed, you will be escorted to a parking spot and accompanied by a law enforcement official at all times. No one will be allowed on the second floor at any time. If approved, your escort will show you to the area you have requested. There will be no wandering around.”

  “If Mama were alive, that woman would be staked out in an ant bed by now,” I said as we drove off the mansion grounds.

  Several weeks later, Mark and I took Leigh to the mansion to have his picture taken on the mansion’s staircase in the entry hall. I had obtained prior approval as required. A state trooper followed me inside and stood to watch.

  “While we are here and Leigh is dressed up, let’s take a photo of Leigh in front your mother’s portrait,” Mark suggested. Mama’s portrait, along with those of all of the other former First Ladies who previously lived in the mansion, hung in the sitting room adjacent to the foyer.

  Mark pointed to the portrait in the next room. “That’s your grandmother,” he said to Leigh.

  The trooper stood in the open entryway to the sitting room. “I can’t allow you to go in there,” he said. “You are only authorized to take photos on the staircase.” With Leigh trailing behind, the three of us walked into the room. “After I take this picture, you can arrest all three of us if you want to. Now that would be a judge, a daughter of two governors, and the grandson of two governors,” Mark replied.

  Both Mark and I knew that all the mansion guards and the staff from the cooks to the gardeners were our friends. Many of them had been there when I was a child. They were in the same situation we were. As we were heading back to the car, we apologized to the trooper.

  “It’s really bad over here, isn’t it?” Mark said.

  The trooper didn’t answer.

  In the midst of this farce sat Daddy, wheelchair-bound and often in pain. He was serving what would be his last term in office.

  When I reflect on the years of Daddy’s last term as governor, I think of Daddy in his wheelchair, vulnerable and out of touch. He was often isolated and alone. What could have been his last four years of opportunity to reclaim the love of his family, to tell stories to his grandsons as the grandfathers of their friends would do, was severely hampered not only by Daddy’s health and lack of vitality but by his personal circumstances.

  In early January 1983, prior to Daddy’s inauguration, Lisa invited Mark and me to dinner at their house. After our meal, Daddy excused himself, as was his custom, and left the table. In the midst of a reasonably normal conversation, Lisa insisted that Mark persuade Daddy to have a new will prepared that made provisions for her.

  “George is not going to be long for this world, and for me to stay I have to be provided for,” she said. The conversation was more than strange to me. Daddy was about to be sworn in as governor for a four-year term.

  “I wonder what she knows that you don’t?” Mark asked as we drove home.

  On February 21, 1984, Daddy was admitted to a Montgomery hospital for what was diagnosed as a colon infection. Lisa called to tell me that Daddy wanted privacy. “There is not going to be any more traveling for him,” she said.

  Less than a month later, on March 11, Daddy was readmitted to the hospital for a reaction to medication. In both instances, following his discharge, his condition worsened. Daddy’s longtime valet and caretaker, Eddie Holcey, who had looked after Daddy for years and was close to him, was now banned from the second-floor living quarters.

  On March 19, Daddy’s detail of security officers entered the Governor’s Mansion without notice. After gaining access to the second floor, they took Daddy to a waiting ambulance parked at the rear of the mansion and took him to UAB Hospital in Birmingham. They remained with him and refused to allow any visitors without their permission. He was discharged a week later. “This is the second time we saved his life,” one of the security officers told me.

  On the afternoon of July fourth, after returning from an outing with Daddy, Lisa fired Eddie. Two days later, following Lisa’s departure on a trip, Eddie was rehired. “I can do without y’all,” Daddy said to Mark. “But I could never do without Eddie.”

  On September 1, 1984, Daddy was admitted to the hospital for still another reaction to medication. And on September 27, he was hospitalized for two weeks for a urinary tract infection.

  On July 9, 1985, a fire heavily damaged Daddy’s private residence, which was vacant at the time. Although the point of origin was determined to be in the interior of the house, the ca
use was undetermined. Following the house’s repair and renovations, Lisa left the mansion and moved to Daddy’s newly refurbished house in January.

  Daddy was notified several months later that a state audit of the mansion’s furnishings revealed that seventy items, including historic furniture and art, were missing. The mansion property manager stated that most of the items had been moved to Daddy’s house when the First Lady had taken up residence there. In November of that year, an audit indicated that while thirty items were returned, the rest could not be found. Daddy’s office issued a terse statement to assure Alabamians that Governor Wallace had always been an honest man and would never have taken items that did not belong to him.

  Although the charge was serious, Mark and I both had to laugh at the thought that Daddy would steal furniture. “He wouldn’t even buy Mama a new sofa after his cigar caught the one we had on fire!” I told Mark.

  On March 27, 1986, Mureal Crump, an officer at AmSouth Bank, where Daddy and Mama had banked for years, came to Mark’s office at the county courthouse. According to Mr. Crump, the issue of Daddy’s AmSouth Bank campaign accounts was the subject of a meeting he had with Daddy and Lisa at the mansion.

  “I was caught in a crossfire between the governor and Mrs. Wallace about those accounts,” he explained. “Lisa became angry and made threats of what she would do if George refused to transfer all the money in those accounts to her. Finally, the governor just gave in. I felt I needed to let someone know. I’m not sure George wanted to do that. There was over four hundred thousand dollars in those accounts.” Following the meeting, Mark called Uncle Gerald. Within a week, what remained of the money was transferred back into the original accounts.

  Lisa and Daddy were divorced on January 29, 1987, just weeks after his term as governor expired. In the span of less than two weeks, Daddy had retired from both politics and marriage. Daddy’s last term as governor was no doubt the most challenging time in his life. He missed the opportunities to be with us. He was in and out of the hospital and always overmedicated. What should have been his personal victory lap was taken from him.