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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ed Bethune grew up in Arkansas. He joined the Marines when he was eighteen years old and rose to the rank of sergeant. He received an honorable discharge in 1957 and then earned two degrees from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, a bachelor of science from the School of Business Administration and a juris doctorate from the School of Law. He served four years as a special agent of the FBI and then became a prosecuting attorney in his hometown of Searcy, Arkansas. As a private attorney, he was lead counsel in the trial of many important cases, both civil and criminal. In 1978, against all odds, he won a seat in the United States House of Representatives, the first Republican to hold that seat in 104 years. He served three terms in Congress and then lost a campaign for a seat in the United States Senate. After Congress, Bethune joined the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani in Washington, D. C. and became a high profile ethics lawyer, representing Speaker Newt Gingrich, Majority Leader Tom DeLay and others. He and his wife Lana reside in Little Rock, Arkansas. They have two children and eight granddaughters.

  Jackhammered. Copyright © 2011 by Ed Bethune.

  ISBN: 1463753462

  ISBN-13: 9781463753467

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61914-401-9

  LCCN: 2011913137

  Createspace, North Charleston, SC

  Printed and bound in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  For further information: www.jackhammered.com

  Cover: The Snotgreen Sea, oil on canvas, by Lana Bethune

  I dedicate this book to all who have had to deal with shame or embarrassment of one kind or another. Take heart! Live out your dreams! God loves you and has a

  wonderful plan for your life.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing is a lonely endeavor, but eventually you turn to friends and family for support and this is the place to thank them for their good counsel and encouraging words.

  Huey Crisp, a retired professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock was the first to read my completed manuscript and his good counsel inspired me to press on with the hardest part of the project, editing and revising. Joel Anderson, chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock was one of my earliest political supporters and he introduced me to Huey. Jim and Mel Barden, classmates of mine at Pocahontas High School gave me a boost of confidence at an important moment. Sally Meredith, cofounder of Christian Family Life with her husband Don, took time out of her vacation on Bald Head Island to read my book and then gave me some good suggestions. Jerry Climer, my chief of staff when I was in Congress has always been a good sounding board for me and he was again, as was his wife Mary Ann. Jessica Tiahrt, a new young friend, read a number of lengthy excerpts and offered a perspective my older friends could not give. Danny Harris, a fine photographer in Little Rock took the photograph of me that appears on the About the Author page and the one of Speaker John Boehner and me just before Election Day in 2010. Elliot Berke, a fine ethics lawyer I worked with when I represented Tom DeLay, has always been a good advisor to me. My brother-in-law, Bill Hastings, my nephew Scott Hastings, his wife Kim and their daughter Lindsey validated my recollections about my sister Delta Lew and gave me valuable feedback on my writing style. Two longtime friends from the legal community, David Fuqua and Judge Morris “Buzz” Arnold, generously volunteered to read my manuscript and their reviews were timely and insightful. My longtime supporter, Doyle Webb, now chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas confirmed my recollections about the party’s growth over the last quarter-century. Steve Barnes, a well-known Arkansas television personality with an encyclopedic memory, recalled the details of my near-death experience in Conway County, Arkansas, and I am grateful for his help. I am also grateful for French Hill’s fine article on the history of the Arkansas Wilderness Act, most of which I incorporated into this memoir with his permission. Finally, I thank my former colleague, Congressman William Whitehurst of Virginia, who captured an extemporaneous speech I made during the ABSCAM scandal and reported it in a diary he published in 1985.

  My children, Paige and Sam, have patiently listened to my stories for years. In spite of that, they read the manuscript and gave me their unique perspective. I love them.

  My wife, Lana, read what I wrote all along the way and she read and reread the finished manuscript. She has been my constant advisor and encourager from the beginning. Her painting, The Snotgreen Sea, adorns the cover of this book. I love her.

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  PREFACE

  HARD HEADS: THE VERMILYE WAY

  SOFT HEARTS: THE BETHUNE WAY

  HARD HEAD MEETS SOFT HEART

  FAMILY LIFE BEFORE THE TROUBLES

  SEPARATION, THEN DIVORCE

  LIFE WITHOUT DADDY

  MY VERY SECRET STRUGGLE

  SINKING, SINKING

  NEW TOWN, NEW LIFE

  OFF TO COLLEGE AND OUT OF COLLEGE

  SEMPER FIDELIS

  HOME, COLLEGE, AND LANA

  ATTORNEY AT LAW

  SPECIAL AGENT OF THE FBI

  ARKANSAS LAWYER, ARKANSAS REPUBLICAN

  DEFEAT, DOUBT, AND SUCCESS

  HIGH PROFILE CASES

  ALMOST A JUDGE

  RUNNING FOR CONGRESS

  POST ELECTION FUNK, THANKS ABE

  CONGRESSMAN BETHUNE

  FIRST DAYS, FIRST ISSUES

  TROUBLE ON THE POTOMAC

  SAVED BY SAILING

  SAVED IN ANOTHER WAY

  THE 1980 CONVENTION, MY HIGH WATER MARK

  1980 ELECTION, REAGAN INAUGRAL

  SUPPORTING DEMOCRATS FOR JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

  JACK KEMP, SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS

  THE REAGAN AGENDA

  RACE AND CIVIL RIGHTS

  CONSERVATION AND WILDERNESS

  POLAND AND THE POPE

  CHEMICAL WEAPONS

  THE PAGE SCANDAL

  CHINA THEN, CHINA NOW

  BLUE WATER DREAM REALIZED

  JIM WATT RESIGNATION

  CONCERNS ABOUT OUR SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT

  RUNNING FOR THE SENATE

  SAILING AWAY

  HOME AGAIN, LAWYER AGAIN

  BACK TO WASHINGTON, LANA SHINES

  LAWYERING FOR NEWT

  THE CALL OF THE SEA, AGAIN

  GETTING UNDERWAY

  GETTING INTO TROUBLE

  GETTING OUT OF TROUBLE

  OUR NEW PLAN, BACKPACKING IN EUROPE

  GOING HOME TO SEARCY

  MOTHER

  FAMILY HAPPY, FAMILY SAD

  POLITICAL UPHEAVAL AND GRANDDAUGHTERS

  ANOTHER NEW CAREER

  THE GOLDEN YEARS

  EPILOGUE

  PREFACE

  History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

  Winston Churchill

  On our life journey, we see right and wrong, good and evil, fair and foul, love and hate. Sometimes the path is easy to see, sometimes not. We struggle, we succeed, we err, and we go on. Eventually, we encounter an inescapable truth. We are not the center of the universe. Our destiny hinges upon acceptance of that truth.

  Winston Churchill’s comment is fair warning. I am the author of a tale that is about me. I wrote what I believe to be the truth, but I doubt my work is perfect. I am human; therefore, I seek your indulgence. I may have misstated an event or mischaracterized my role in something, if so I apologize. However, I make no apology or equivocation for my absolutist view that God in Heaven loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives.

  My overarching
purpose has been to show how events and relationships affected me, how I struggled, how I denied and how I learned.

  I traveled a complicated path. I had an uncomfortable secret to keep throughout my childhood in a broken family. The good people of a small town saved me, an incorrigible child. I served three years in the United States Marine Corps, four years as a special agent of the FBI, three years as a prosecutor, six years as a congressman, and decades as a trial lawyer representing everyone from the poorest of the poor to the speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

  My memoir recalls those experiences, but it also tells about the ill-starred attempt my wife and I made to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in a thirty-one-foot sailboat.

  A jackhammer is easily the most annoying, distracting racket-making device known to man. It creates a noise level of 130 decibels—equal to a rock concert—according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Rock concerts occasionally produce a discernible melody. Jackhammers do not. Sometimes it takes such a racket to get our attention.

  Shakespeare wrote, “Life is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I understand the point he was making because my life has involved much sound and a lot of fury. Nevertheless, I hope to defy Macbeth’s lament that the sound and fury signifies nothing. If but one man, woman, or child profits from the lessons I have learned then that will be something.

  In writing this memoir, I mentioned my children and grandchildren only when it was necessary to complete the narrative. I have not told the full story of our children, Paige and Sam. Such a work would be much longer and they are surely happy that I decided against such an exposition.

  I shared opinions about other members of my family, especially my mother and my father, only to explain how I came to be me, and my thoughts about the beliefs of the Vermilyes and Bethunes pertain solely to my lineage.

  I reconstructed my family history from conversations with relatives and from my own recollection. When possible I squared my conclusions with public and private records, but some of the events I wrote about—particularly those from long ago—rest solely on what my grandparents, parents, and other relatives told me before they died.

  Finally, I give tribute and thanks to my wife, Lana, for what she has made of me, for her tolerance of me and for her unwavering love and support.

  1

  HARD HEADS: THE VERMILYE WAY

  Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing

  itself into the place of the intellect.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  My riddle begins on a summer day in 1941. Before the sun got too high, my mother, my sister, and I caught the Missouri Pacific bus from Little Rock to Pocahontas, Arkansas. We were on our way to visit my grandmother, Mama Lewallen, and the rest of Mother’s clan. I was almost six years old.

  We made this trip every August. I do not know that on my own because my life before then is mostly a blur of kids and things happening at Miss Mary Dodge Hodge’s kindergarten—wispy images of singing, crying, laughing, and looking up at big people, big cars, big houses, big trees, and big skies.

  This day was different. The vivid sights, sounds, and smells of the day come in loud and clear to me, even now, as I whiz through my seventh decade of life. The general hubbub in the station reached code red levels as our bus pulled into the angled loading spot where we would board. Mother had me by the collar, but I kept squirming and giggling. I could not help myself.

  The snout-nosed Missouri Pacific bus, one of the delicious red ones, made a ppffishhhhhing sound as it air-braked to stop mere inches from where I stood. I felt the warmth of the engine and can still smell the weird mixture of grease, gas, tobacco smoke, and traveling people.

  It is the first day of my life that I remember from beginning to end.

  Mother was holding a full-fare ticket for herself and a half-fare for my sister as she herded us to the head of the line so that we could be the first to board. The other ticket holders gave her the small-eye as she jockeyed for position, but it did not slow her down. She needed to get a seat up front to carry off her plan and she was not going to be outmaneuvered. It was my first outing as a player in one of Mother’s pinchpenny operations, but I still rank it as her all-time best effort.

  This was her plan: The snoutnoses had a luggage compartment by the door, just across from the driver’s seat. So, as we climbed the big steps leading up into the bus Mother quickly lifted me up and over the stainless steel rails and sat me down in the luggage area. She then announced to the driver and everyone within earshot, “He gets to ride free. See, he’s so little that he takes up no more room than a teeny-weeny piece of baggage.” She coupled that with her patented stare of defiance; no one, least of all the driver, challenged her claim that I did not need a ticket. Score one for Mother.

  I hated this part of the operation because everyone was getting a good snicker at my expense, but I absolutely loved riding in the luggage compartment. It was my special place, set apart from everyone with a good view of the road. I dreamed I was a real bus driver wearing the perfectly creased grey gabardine uniform of an official MoPac motorman, complete with a shiny lapel pin. The pin looked just like the wings of gold that Navy pilots wear, except for a logo in the center of the pin that said MoPac. I kept squirming and giggling, forever it seemed, but finally our bus pulled out. We were underway.

  The first high point of my excellent adventure as a make-believe bus driver came about an hour out of Little Rock, in the little town of Cabot. There were passengers to pick up, but the most important thing that happened at this stop was the coming of the Popcorn Man. To me he looked old and used up, like a rickets or beriberi survivor. Groaning, he pulled himself up into the bus and sidled down the aisle selling greasy paper bags brimming full of hot, smelly popcorn. Some passengers could not afford to pay ten cents a bag but many of them could, or at least they could not resist.

  Mother, in character, at first refused to buy a bag saying that we had just finished breakfast. Then, seeing the look on our faces, she painfully fished a dime out of her purse and bought one bag for the three of us to share. The bus took on the smells and sounds of the Roxy Theatre. The other passengers rattled the bags and munched the corn, but by careful rationing and urging us to eat one kernel at a time, Mother made our bag last most of the way to Newport, the halfway mark of our trip.

  The driver said we would be in Newport for thirty minutes and our fellow travelers went inside a diner for lunch, but we did not. Instead, Mother found us a shady spot outside where she opened a paper sack full of stinky tuna fish sandwiches.

  When the lunch break was over, the driver came out massaging his belly and puffing a cigarette. It was time to scramble back to my spot in the luggage rack. Safely ensconced, I dreamed on as we pulled back onto the two-lane road to Pocahontas. It was good to get going because we needed a breeze to sweep out the heat that had everyone fanning. On and on we went, stopping in all the little towns, picking up passengers and letting them off.

  Then, as I was busy driving, passing slow cars, and occasionally beeping that magnificent horn, Mother woke me from my dream. It was just in time for me to see our real bus driver speeding across the Black River Bridge, making a beeline for the bus stop in Pocahontas. The long, 136 mile all-day trip and my dreamy day as an official MoPac driver was over. We collected our stuff out of the luggage compartment and walked by the old courthouse on the town square. The Lewallen Café, owned and operated by my grandmother, was a local favorite. It sat kitty-cornered from the courthouse on the northeast corner of the square.

  As we neared Mama’s café, a dozen men, fighting and yelling, came barreling out of a tavern on Everett Street just across from where we stood. The tavern was on the corner by an alley that fell sharply downhill and away from the café. They were shouting words I had not heard before and the two men that seemed to be the main attraction were on the ground rolling toward the alley. One of them was biting the other one’s ear and right before our eyes the ear came o
ff and that pretty much ended the fight.

  I wanted to get closer to find out what the earless man was going to do, but Mother hurried my sister and me into the café. The last thing I saw was the man holding his bloody hand over what I figured was now an ear-hole instead of a sure-enough ear. I do not know what became of the ear itself. The people in the café watched the fight through a big solid glass window that had LEWALLEN CAFÉ hand-painted on it in big black letters outlined in gold. By the time we got through the front door most of the customers had returned to their tables, but some were gathered at the long mahogany-topped bar that was on the right as you entered the café.

  My grandmother, Thema Lewallen, was behind the bar drawing a beer for an old man with a white beard and they were laughing and talking about the fight. No one else seemed to be worrying about the fight or the man’s ear and the thing I remember most was that Mama’s laughing revealed her big gold tooth. It was right up front, so in addition to being good for biting it served as a piece of jewelry. Back then, it was a sign of prosperity to have a gold tooth. Mama was extremely proud of hers.

  She was tall, trim, and very tough; exuding the unmistakable air of a no-nonsense businesswoman, which is exactly what she was. My mother, Delta Odessa Lewallen, barely five feet tall, was not nearly as big as Mama, but she was prettier and had a shapelier figure. Mama had the straight up and down look of a hard-labor woman, whereas my mother was more ladylike, at least she seemed so to me. Nevertheless, what Mother had, by then, that was identical to Mama was personality. They were both hard as nails and had no time for sluggards or fools. The hardness and toughness came naturally to them as it did to most folks raised in that era in the hill country of Arkansas.

  I count that day in 1941 as the starting point of my memory but my story, a riddle, began long before my birth. It began in 1919 when my mother was a little girl. A terrible thing happened when she was nine years old. It changed her and the change in her, later on, affected me.