Huckabee Page 3

  Meanwhile, half a world away in Hope, Arkansas, two generations of Mike Huckabee’s forefathers picked up the Saturday, June 7, 1941, Hope Star and saw in massive font at the top of the front page: “HOPE OBTAINS BIG WAR-PLANT.” The effects of Hitler’s killing machine were headed for Hope. Nothing would ever be the same again.10

  CHAPTER 2

  SMALL TOWN

  c. 1920–1955

  The bride was becomingly attired in a two piece suit of chocolate brown covert with winter white and green accessories.

  —HOPE STAR DESCRIPTION OF MAE HUCKABEE, NOVEMBER 3, 1948

  JUST MONTHS BEFORE THE BOMBING OF PEARL HARBOR, the War Department sent eviction notices to four hundred families near Hope, Arkansas. The government had chosen six locations in Arkansas as sites for the building of ordnance plants, and residents of the acquired lands were given a one-month notice to vacate.1 With war on the way, time was of the essence. The construction of the ammunition testing facility began with a fury of manpower and funding: 40,000 to 50,000 acres seized, $15 million (1941 dollars), 4,000 to 5,000 temporary construction jobs, and 500 permanent jobs until the end of the war.2 The installation was called the Southwestern Proving Grounds, or SPG for short.

  When first constructed, the runways of the SPG airport were the third largest in the nation. The War Department had needed them on that scale so that the large bombers could take off on trial bombing raids over the Gulf of Mexico.3 After the war the city of Hope obtained the airport, and it continues to be used as a municipal airport to this day. Undoubtedly, Hope’s immense runways are the envy of every other town of ten thousand people. Although the testing of ammunition ceased with the end of the war, the economic and cultural impact of the SPG would continue for a generation.

  Nonnatives of Hope who worked at SPG also stamped a lasting fingerprint on the town by bringing their experience and education to the city. For example, engineer Paul Klipsch served as a lieutenant colonel at SPG. People took note of his tinkering around with designs for a brilliant new form of loudspeaker, a “corner horn speaker design.” He obtained a patent for the design in 1945 and began manufacturing the world-renowned speakers right there in Hope. Though endless changes have occurred in every area of audio technology since then, the company is proud to note that “the Klipschorn is the only speaker in the world that has been in continuous production, relatively unchanged, for over 65 years.”4 Klipsch died in 2002 at the age of ninety-eight, but not before publishing a new article in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society—he kept influencing the industry right up to the end. “Paul was a verifiable genius who could have chosen any number of vocations,” said his cousin, a chairman of the company. “But the world sounds a lot better because he chose audio.”5

  Everyone comes from somewhere, and Mike Huckabee’s somewhere was Hope, the same childhood home of former president Bill Clinton. Although his family later moved north to Hot Springs, Arkansas, Clinton lived in Hope until he was eight. The Huckabees knew Clinton’s grandparents, but they did not know much, if anything, about Bill until he first ran for Congress in 1974. His name had been in the Hope Star a few times, but nothing stood out as memorable to place him as being from Hope. Huckabee noted that it wasn’t until Clinton’s rise to national prominence that he started to link himself to the town. “Of course, it sounds better,” Huckabee said. “You know, ‘I believe in a place called Hope,’ and Hope certainly embraced him.”6 If Mike Huckabee had been born first, ahead of Clinton, he could have used the line for his own campaigns. Huckabee did title his 2007 pre-campaign book From Hope to Higher Ground, showing that even if you’re the second man to run for president from the same small town of ten thousand, a bit of creativity will allow you to tap into your small-town roots.

  In 2014, when asked whether or not she thought her son Jeb should run for president, former first lady Barbara Bush said, “If we can’t find more than two or three families to run for higher office, that’s silly.”7 Though she later reversed herself on the issue, she had made a good point. With 100 million families in the United States, it seems strange to keep pulling from the same tribe. Of course, the same thing could be said for a little town in the southwest corner of Arkansas. If the November 2016 presidential ballot reads “Clinton” and “Huckabee,” then three out of four (including spouses) of the people campaigning to move into the White House spent their childhood years in Hope, Arkansas.

  And Clinton and Huckabee are not alone as prominent officials originating from Hope. Two other men connected with Clinton’s administration also originated from Hope: Vince Foster served as deputy counsel to the White House, and Mack McLarty served as Clinton’s chief of staff. One might argue that these men were made by Clinton, but not so. They had their own successes and career attainments before Clinton called on them for duty in Washington. Also included in the list of Hope natives is Kelly Bryant, who served as the Arkansas secretary of state from 1963 to 1975. And Melinda Dillon, the actress who played the mother in the Christmas cult classic A Christmas Story, came from Hope. Also, two famous singers, Patsy Montana and Ketty Lester, both originated from Hope.

  One more Hope-born politician worth mentioning is Mike Ross, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the Arkansas Fourth District from 2001 to 2013. In 2014, Ross ran for governor of Arkansas and held a political rally in his hometown during the lead-up to the election. He called in the big guns for help. Bill Clinton arrived in Hope, marking his first campaign visit to the town since 1999, when he still resided in the White House.

  Clinton rallied the Hempstead County citizens to turn out and vote Ross into the governor’s mansion. If Ross had won, then Hope would have seen a third native son elected governor in a span of thirty-five years. Of course, out of all the politicians from Hope mentioned in this chapter, Huckabee stands as the lone Republican among the bunch. Huckabee came to Arkansas and campaigned for Asa Hutchinson, the Republican candidate for governor. Hutchinson defeated Ross by a spread of thirteen points, and Ross even lost his native Hempstead County by a squeaker (2,637 to 2,603).8

  “A Slice of the Good Life” has served as a motto for Hope for about as long as anyone can remember. Which is to say, it seems somebody thought it up in the 1980s. The digitized newspaper archives of the Hope Star (1930–1977) never once used the phrase. But one word the old newspapers did print a lot—more than five thousand times in that same time span—was watermelon.9 Big watermelons—record-setting watermelons—are one of the hallmarks of Hope. Hence, the town motto.

  To get close to the record books, you need to raise a melon of at least two hundred pounds, and folks in southwest Arkansas have been perfecting the art for a century. The town inaugurated an annual watermelon festival in 1926, complete with a parade, a “Watermelon Festival Queen,” truckfuls of the melons on hand to eat, and yes, a “biggest watermelon” contest.10 The watermelon festival continues to the present day. So if anyone asks, “Which came first, the melon festival or the motto?” now you know.

  A January 1930 issue of the Hope Star explained the widespread popularity Hope’s melons had achieved the previous year: “Hempstead county, in particular, gained national fame through the gigantic proportions reached by its watermelons. Many carloads of these were shipped to points ranging from coast to coast.”11 An op-ed that same week urged the farmers to band together and solidify the branding of the county’s watermelons. Here’s how this master of melon marketing explained “branding” to his fellow citizens: “The value of a brand is simply this. It establishes a staple as a luxury product. Sometimes there is greater excellence in the product itself. More often it is simply a good product, well advertised, and wrapped up in a standardized package.”12

  As was true throughout much of the rural South during the 1920s and 1930s, neither Prohibition nor the Great Depression had a profound effect on everyday life. Hempstead County had s
hut down liquor in 1854, closing saloons and outlawing stills. It is hard to pinpoint whether the law kept the county dry from 1854 through Prohibition, but the issue certainly never went away during that time. The passage of the Volstead Act (1919) did not fundamentally change the dynamic between law and liquor in Hempstead County, nor did its repeal (1933). If anything, Volstead simply made the knowledge of how to make moonshine more widespread, as people got into the business of it as a means of earning money.

  The “dry county” debate is best illustrated in a 1935 op-ed piece written by an older resident of Hope: “I have been in Hempstead County over 60 years, and there has been whiskey here since I have. . . . I never saw the time when whiskey was not sold in Hope. . . . When the Eighteenth Amendment was passed there was not one man out of fifty, that knew how to make whiskey, or had seen any made. Today, 95 out of 100 know how it is made, or have seen it made.”13

  Even today, thirty-five of seventy-five Arkansas counties are dry, though cities within a county may opt for allowing alcohol sales. On the other hand, Huckabee has never even tasted beer. He claims his teetotalism isn’t merely a moral high ground but is due to being repelled by the smell. Within the Bible Belt of Huckabee’s youth, however, total abstinence from alcohol cannot be separated from Protestant piety. Only in the past few years have a slight minority of younger Baptist ministers and churches opened to the acceptance of drinking alcohol in moderation. But that position would have been completely out of bounds for a young pastor-in-training in the 1970s, or even for a layperson in the pew. Of course, many “good Baptists” tipped the bottle in private. Hence, the old saw: “Lutherans drink on the front porch. Baptists drink on the back.”

  The Great Depression did not affect Hope, Arkansas, in the same way as it did urban cities and industrial centers. As many people who grew up in the rural South have said, “We were so poor we didn’t notice any Great Depression.” Two other factors come into play as well. First, rural areas would be hit less by food shortages because they were already accustomed to growing so much of their food close by—or in their own yards. Eva Huckabee, Mike’s grandmother, was known for having canned eight hundred jars of vegetables in one season.

  Second, in response to the economic depression, the federal government poured money into public works projects. Hope benefited from one such project when the Public Works Administration (PWA) helped fund the construction of the two-hundred-thousand-dollar, five-story county courthouse.14 The art deco–styled architecture made a big splash among residents upon its opening celebration the last week of November 1939. Later, this courthouse served as the place of employment for the mother of Janet McCain—better known now as the wife of Mike Huckabee. When Mike and Janet married, it was the county clerk who issued the marriage license. Janet’s mother held that position during Janet’s teen years. Small world. Small town.

  The PWA also helped fund the 1939 construction of Hope’s fire station. The newspaper account states: “One of the most modern fire station buildings in Arkansas is that of the City of Hope’s new building at Second and Laurel streets, completed this past summer and now being occupied.”15 The building, costing $26,681 to construct, would factor into Mike Huckabee’s life. His father worked from this location—just blocks away from the Huckabee home—and young Huckabee could walk over and see him most any time.16

  If some aspects of the small-town picture being painted sound reminiscent of The Andy Griffith Show, it’s because they are. When the show debuted in October 1960, child actor Ron Howard (Opie) was six years old and Mike Huckabee was five. Picture Opie running in to see “Pa” and Barney in the sheriff’s office, and then imagine Huckabee running around the corner to see his father at the firehouse. Or picture the various episodes where Sheriff Andy and Deputy Fife break up a moonshine still. In fact, photos exist showing Hempstead County sheriffs doing the same thing, and they could easily pass for characters from the television show.17

  Dorsey and Mae (Mike’s parents) came of age during the Great Depression, and their economic worldviews were forever affected. They avoided debt and prided themselves on paying their own way through hard work and thrift. Mae was the first of seven children, so there were more mouths to feed at her table—and her father died when she was in her twenties. They were poor, but never destitute or in poverty.

  Being frugal in areas where they could, families could save a few dollars here and there for extras. In April 1936, the Hope Star ran a full-page advertisement on behalf of The Modern Encyclopedia, a one-volume source of self-knowledge that could be bought for $1.25. The paper also ran a grocer’s advertisement: roast beef for twelve cents per pound (making the encyclopedia worth ten pounds of roast beef) and sausage for ten cents per pound—those were the days.18 The encyclopedia ad displayed a list containing the names of Hope’s citizens who had purchased the volume. Virgil Huckabee is on the list, having bought the volume for thirteen-year-old Dorsey.

  Six months later, the paper published a “Coming and Going” news item, stating, “Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Huckabee and son Dorsey and Mr. and Mrs. Irvin Huckabee have returned from the Texas Centennial at Dallas and Fort Worth.”19 The Coming and Going section would list travelers to and from Hope. These news items would be called in by the family or friends, presuming that their fellow citizens wanted to know such information. In reading these submissions today, one catches small glimpses into the life of the Huckabee family, revealing a modest lifestyle, yet one that still made it possible to take a road trip for a grand event. Two years later, in 1938, fifteen-year-old Dorsey helped his parents welcome home his only sibling, a sister named Alta Joyce, or “Aunt Joyce,” as young Mike Huckabee would come to know her.

  With the onset of World War II, Hope’s citizens focused their efforts on securing victory for the nation and her allies. In 1941, the town raised $4,035 for the Red Cross, a record amount for Hope, and the paper lists Virgil Huckabee as a contributor to the cause.20

  Dorsey Huckabee attended high school alongside Virginia Cassidy, the mother of Bill Clinton. Her name appears in the paper on a regular basis throughout the 1930s, as she earned honors in school or performed and worked in school plays. During Memorial Day weekend in 1941, she and seven friends in swimsuits made the front page of the paper. The headline above their large photograph read: “Summer Weather Brings Out the Bathers at Hope’s Pines Pool on Opening Week of the Swim Season.”21 Five years later, the September 28, 1946, paper printed this birth announcement: “Births: William and Virginia Blythe, Hope, boy, William.”22 William, the father, had died in a car accident the previous May, even as he and Virginia were in the process of setting up a home in Hope.

  In 1943, Dorsey was called on to report for induction into the military but did not make it past the physical: flat feet.23 So, he did the next best thing and went down to Houston with his father, Virgil, and uncle Irvin to work in the shipyards. Uncle Irvin had been a fireman with the Hope fire department until 1941, and this may have been what led Dorsey into firefighting as a career. At some point, probably in 1953, Dorsey began working for the Hope fire department, though not yet on a full-time basis. In January 1954, the town council decided they needed another “regular” fireman, and Dorsey got the job. This promotion took place in between the births of Mike Huckabee and his older sister, Pat.

  “Like a plate of spaghetti” is how current residents of Hope describe the fact that “everybody knew everybody” in the town. To trace anecdotes of the friends and family of Bill Clinton is to bump continually into the friends and family of Mike Huckabee.

  One such “plate of spaghetti” comes by way of the November 8, 1948, Social and Personal section of the Hope Star, with a news item about a birthday party for a trio of two-year-olds, held at the First Methodist Church. Fifteen children are mentioned by name, including the Weisenberg children, Billy Blythe, and Phil McLarty. You are already familiar with the Blythe and McLarty name
s, but the “Mrs. Weisenberg” was the wife of Judge Royce Weisenberg, whose sister was married to Irvin Huckabee, Virgil’s brother. Virgil was the father of Dorsey, who was the father of Mike Huckabee. Confused? In summary, a toddler Bill Clinton attended a birthday party hosted by the wife of the brother of Mike Huckabee’s aunt. That’s what people in Hope mean when they say that everybody is either related or best friends.

  And just one week prior to this party, the Weisenbergs got all dressed up for a different occasion, also at a church. This time it was for the wedding ceremony of Dorsey and Mae:

  Miss Mae Elder, daughter of Mrs. L. R. Garner and the late W. T. Elder, became the bride of Dorsey W. Huckabee, son of Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Huckabee, Saturday evening [October 30] at six o’clock in the Hope Gospel Tabernacle. . . . The bride was becomingly attired in a two piece suit of chocolate brown covert with winter white and green accessories. . . . Dale Hockett of this city was best man.24

  So members of the Weisenberg family attended the wedding of Mike Huckabee’s parents one weekend, then attended a birthday party for toddlers the next weekend, with Bill (Clinton) Blythe in attendance.

  And the best man for Dorsey, Dale Hockett, not only stood alongside his friend that day, but he also later contributed the middle name to Dorsey’s firstborn son: Michael Dale Huckabee.25

  Everyone comes from somewhere. Whether or not they remain there for all their life, the “there” remains in them—a fixed point of biography, referring back to something that made and marks them. None of the living “famous people from Hope” mentioned in this chapter actually live in Hope now. Most, if not all of them, left Hope as soon as they became adults. The town gave each of them something important they needed, something that contributed to their success in life, but it couldn’t hold them there.