And now my soul is rested…

Letter from Denver
by Brooks Boliek

DENVER, Colo., Aug. 28 — As I made my way out of the Parking Lot of Death and onto the Sidewalk of Hope, it began to dawn on me that we might actually make it into the Stadium of Salvation before The Obama spoke.

Earlier on Thursday, I thought about going to a mountaintop. I wondered where my soul would be happier. I am, at heart, a mountain man. True they are different mountains. Older and hump-backed from eons of erosion, my mountains rise from suspect terrain. These, the Rockies, are new and less worn down by time, but they are mountains still.

In the end my political soul won out. The Rockies will be there for at least the rest of my lifetime, but the chance to see the first black man get the presidential nod from a major party won me over.

Still, as the sun beat down on me, the Big D and Kelly Girl in the Parking Lot of Death, I wondered if we would make it.

The Democrats don’t know how close they came to disaster on Thursday. Maybe things will actually break the Democratic way. Democrats find a kind of desperate solace in the thought first expressed by Will Rogers, that we don’t belong to an organized party. In recent years, it is expressed more crudely: Come on. We’re Democrats. We’ll find a way to screw it up.

After years of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the reverse may finally come true. And, that tide may have started to turn in the heat of a black-top expanse that may, or may not, have been the end of a miles-long line that became known as the Parking Lot of Death, or simply the P.L.O.D.

Me, the Big D and Kelly Girl ended up in the P.L.O.D. after a week of scrambling to find credentials to see Barack Obama make history. More than once we didn’t think we were going to make it. Credentials were hard to come by. It seems everyone knew this is the political Woodstock, and they wanted to actually be there.

After searching for days the Bog D finally had a line on a pair of the coveted sheets of plastic that show Barack’s profile in one light and the word CHANGE in another. There was only one catch, one of them may not work. It hadn’t been registered on the Internet.

As fate would have it, on the way to meet the congressional staffers that had the coveted community, we bumped into a friendly lobbyist who passed us a “HALL” pass. Now, after days of searching we had an extra. While the “HALL” pass was paper, it was a better credential, but I wanted the one that changed, depending on how you looked at it.

As we talked to our congressional friends at a coffee shop on the 16th Street Mall, we struck up a conversation with Kelly Girl. A member of Red Sox Nation she’d come down town to take in the scene. We invited her along with the caveat that if one of our three passes didn’t work she was the odd one out.

We began or journey to the Stadium of Salvation in high spirits. It wasn’t a short walk, but it wasn’t that long either. It was around 2 p.m. and the gates had just opened. Still, we couldn’t believe the line to get in on the Stadium of Salvation’s east side entrance. On the advice of officials who claimed to know, we’d be better off on the west side.

That was our first mistake. To walk to the West Side of the Stadium of Salvation we had to walk over a Highway of Major Proportion, and follow a trail that led down some rickety wooden steps behind a bar. It seemed like the end of the line was just a few more yards away. Those few yards stretched into hundreds and ended, we thought, in the P.L.O.D.

There we waited for hours. No water. No food. Well, there was a Burger King nearby. We didn’t move. We could see the Field of Salvation. It was tantalizingly close, but we felt doomed to stand in the P.L.O.D. I began to regret my decision to forgo the Rockies.

At about hour three in the P.L.O.D., things began to get ugly. I began to sense fear. Not for myself, mind you. No, I began to fear for the old people and the children, the sick and the lame. It could turn ugly.

Kelly Girl went to see if the line actually made it out of the P.L.O.D., or just turned into a circle and consumed itself. Her answer was not encouraging.

Big D began to mutter dark terrible thoughts. This could be a disaster of Biblical proportions. It would give the Forces of Darkness the ammo they needed to bring down The Obama.

“The Evil One is taking pictures of this right now,” Big D said as he looked furtively over his shoulder. “He’s writing the commercial right now. Obama can’t even run his own rally. How can he run the country?”

I came under his spell. Depression, the heat, thirst and hunger began to weigh on my mind.

I’m not sure if it did any good, but Big D sent an email to a friend of ours who know several Big Time Democrats. If someone dies out here in the P.L.O.D. it will be a disaster he wrote.

Maybe it did some good. Or, maybe reports from the helicopter overhead did some good. I don’t know, but within 15 minutes angels in blue appeared with water, and soon after that the line magically began to move.

In the nine conventions I’ve been to the cops were the best here. I know there was that incident with the ABC reporter, but the cops here were the most polite and professional I’ve seen. I actually thought that they cared for my safety, and I was never more glad to see them with bottles of water, then I was there in the P.L.O.D.

I asked one what happened.

He told me the DNC hadn’t planned it out. That there were only two entrances because of the screenings people had to go through.

“They just thought everyone would come out here and line up nicely,” he said. “They didn’t figure out how to organize everyone outside.”

Funny thing is, it almost worked. We pretty much lined up, but at the end of a line that stretched for miles, no one knew what to do. Everyone was willing, but it took the cops to get us to do it.

No matter. Disaster had been diverted, and in another small miracle, all three passes worked. So, me, the Big D and Kelly Girl were among the 84,000 strong inside the Stadium of Salvation.

In the end, it was worth it to hear The Obama. While it was an emotional experience, way up in the nose-bleed section the acoustics were pretty lousy. The Big D had a better ticket and said later he had no problem hearing. For me and Kelly Girl, however, it was different.

From my vantage point, four rows from the Stadium of Salvation’s edge, I only give The Obama’s speech a B-plus grade. It wasn’t that I was disappointed exactly, but the full impact of the speech will have to wait until I can see a recording.

One of the things that I tell people about political conventions is that there are two different animals.

There is the one convention for the party faithful that takes in the arena. That has a very different feel. It’s like an Alabama-Auburn game where both teams win.

Then there is the other one. The one on TV, and now, on the Web, that is for the American people. That one is the more important.

While I think the Democrats booted the ingress and egress from the Stadium of Salvation, it dodged the bullet, and may have actually turned the tables of history.

I haven’t heard from Kelly Girl since we parted at the Stadium of Salvation, but Big D said The Obama hit it out of the park

In the end, after our escape from the Parking Lot of Death, journey down the Sidewalk of Hope, ascent into the Stadium of Salvation, and the speech of The Obama, my soul is rested.

Editor’s Note: When I heard the other day that Jimmy Faulkner of Bay Minette had died, it brought back a lot of memories. And while we usually stay focused on the big national news on this independent news Website, there are times when we will reach back into the past and into local climes for interesting stories.

I must say that when I read all the glowing feature obituaries on Faulkner, no relation to the literary family from Mississippi that I know of, I just had to laugh out loud. Faulkner got the unchallenged praise in print he angled for his entire life in the Mobile Cash-Register and Gulf Coast Newspapers.

While we realize that it is an American journalism tradition to give people their due when they die — even political monsters such as George C. Wallace — we could not let this moment pass without at least a small tinge of criticism. After all, that’s what bloggers do.

Before we get to the obit, a couple of memories.

When I first met James H. “Jimmy” Faulkner in his office around the corner from The Baldwin Times newspaper office, which was across the street from the Baldwin County Courthouse on the small town circle, as a young cub reporter I thought he was a major head of state or something. That’s how he presented himself, with his secretary greeting you warmly in the outer office and making you wait for a little while before he would usher you in like he was the governor himself, even though he only served a couple of terms in the Alabama Senate.

But in South Alabama, as I found out over the next year in 1984-85, he was a political force who could call up George Wallace at any time and get pretty much whatever he wanted.

He was always gracious, but he exuded power.

The last time I saw Mr. Faulkner, he was fairly feeble and almost blind. It was 2002 and I was free-lancing for The New York Times, visiting Bay Minette to find out how the 2002 election had swung overnight from Don Siegelman to Bob Riley. Even though he had a reputation as being a life-long “Yellow Dog Democrat,” I got the distinct impression that Faulkner had supported Riley in that race. He tried to convince me that Baldwin County had never had an instance of election fraud in its entire history, but I was not thoroughly convinced then, or now.

In the one time I saw Faulkner really rattled and upset about something, he had been involved in a deal to sell a chemical plant he co-owned to the Uniroyal corporation, which was suing him after residents discovered that a nearby creek had been contaminated. He was pretty upset since because of the lawsuit, the bank had frozen his accounts and seized his assets. I don’t remember how the case came out, but I still have that front page hanging on my wall. It was my first lead story in newspaper as a professional reporter (not counting The Crimson White student newspaper at the University of Alabama).

So let’s just say that while Faulkner was a class act in his own way, he was not above wheeling and dealing as a business man in ways that might not have been as squeaky clean as the image he worked hard all his life to project.

The bottom line is he was a big fish in a little pond. But here’s his due…

GW

by Glynn Wilson and Dan Rutledge

James Herman “Jimmy” Faulkner, a long-time political power in Alabama politics, died August 22 after a long illness. He was 92.

Dan Rutledge

Faulkner’s face on the sign for the college named after him

He leaves a legacy of service to Bay Minette and Baldwin County, where he moved in 1936, for numerous economic development achievements, the primary focus of his life. During his life, he was a world traveler, touring more than 100 countries, as the legend goes.

At the age of 20, shortly after his arrival in Bay Minette from Tuscaloosa, he purchased The Baldwin Times newspaper, launching a career which he expanded into becoming a radio executive, a mayor, a state senator and a founder and president of an insurance company. He also ran two unsuccessful campaigns for governor, but became a long-time associate of George Wallace. And he published a newspaper column called “Mumblings” for 72 years.

Born March 1, 1916, near Vernon in Lamar County, Alabama, Faulkner began his life enjoying the positive guidance of his father, farmer, and mother, a school teacher. He received his advanced education at Freed-Hardeman Junior College, Henderson, Tennessee in 1933-1934, and the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, in 1934-1936.

Upon arriving in Bay Minette, he began working to build his newly acquired newspaper and seeking ways to enhance the growth of his hometown and Baldwin County. Faulkner was elected mayor of Bay Minette, serving from 1941-1943. He was the youngest mayor in America at that time. He was a World War II veteran, joiining the U.S. Army Air Corps, attaining the rank of First Lieutenant while serving as a pilot and flight instructor from 1943-1946.

Upon returning from military duty, he was elected state senator, serving from 1950-1954. While serving in the state Senate, he was a primary figure in improving education in Alabama, attaining the best retirement benefits in the nation for teachers and education administrators.

His political activities, in addition to serving as a mayor, state senator, and two campaigns for governor, have included being a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee, 1948-1952, finance chairman of the Alabama Democratic Campaign, 1976, and secretary-treasurer of the Baldwin County Democratic Executive Committee, 1936-1978.

His newspapers were widely recognized for their excellence over the years, often receiving the top award of General Excellence in their circulation category from the Alabama Press Association. His radio stations also received numerous awards for excellence in broadcasting. He co-published two books, Five Dollars A Scalp, in 1976, and Massacre, in 1989.

Two biographies have been written about him, the first Faulkner – Jimmy That Is, by Sandra Baxley Taylor, published in 1984 by The Strode Publishers (a vanity press); and Faith and Works, by Elvin Stanton, published in 2002 by NewSouth Books. He has had two additional books published, compilations of his newspaper columns spanning 72 years. The first is Mumblings, published by J.C. Choate Publications in 2004, and the second Byways of Baldwin, published by NewSouth Books in 2007.

Faulkner became a member of the Board of Directors of Alabama Christian College, Montgomery, Alabama, serving as chairman of the board from 1963-1989. He was instrumental in bringing a solid financial foundation to the college and assuring the success of a law school there. In April, 1985, the college was named in his honor, Faulkner University, and now has additional campuses in Huntsville and Mobile. He also was instrumental in acquiring a two-year college for Baldwin County, later named Faulkner State Community College in his honor. The main campus is in Bay Minette with additional campuses in Fairhope and Gulf Shores.

His professional achievements are lengthy. To name the most important few, he was founder and president of Loyal American Life Insurance Company of Mobile in 1955; owner and publisher of three newspapers in Baldwin County from 1936-1974; president of Faulkner Radio, Inc., a chain of seven radio stations in Alabama and Georgia from 1958-1985; president of Faulkner Phillips Media, Inc., 1985-1997; director of the First National Bank, Fairhope, 1976-1978; vice chairman of the board, David Volkert and Associates, Inc., 1984-2008; and chairman of the board, Alpine Laboratories, a chemical plant in Bay Minette, 1975-1979.

His memberships include the Bay Minette Church of Christ, where he was a member for 72 years and served as Elder and Treasurer for 50 years; Rotary Club; American Legion; President’s Club, Freed-Hardeman College; Who’s Who in South and Southwest; Who’s Who in World Commerce; Who’s Who in America; and Newcomen Society.

Faulkner received more than 35 awards during his lifetime, including eight Honorary Doctor degrees. Faulkner’s civic organization memberships and activities have been extensive over the years.

His family received friends Tuesday, August 26, at Norris Funeral Home. A private funeral service was held Wednesday, August 27, at the Bay Minette Church of Christ with private graveside services following in Bay Minette Cemetery. A memorial service was held at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the L.D. Owen Performing Arts Center at Faulkner State Community College in Bay Minette. The family asks that contributions be made to the James Herman Faulkner Scholarship Fund at Faulkner State Community College, 1900 South Highway 31, Bay Minette, Alabama 36507 or Faulkner University, 5345 Atlanta Highway, Montgomery, Alabama 36193. Funeral arrangements were by Norris Funeral Home, Bay Minette.

He is survived by his wife, Karlene Faulkner; two sons, James H. Faulkner, Jr., and his wife Beverly Faulkner, and Dr. Henry Wade Faulkner and his wife, Ann Blackburn Faulkner; eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Henry L. Faulkner and Ebbie Johnson Faulkner; his first wife, Evelyn Irwin Faulkner, the daughter of the late Wade and Ella Irwin; and his brother, Dr. Thurston L. Faulkner, who served as Alabama Director of Vocational Education.

Other obits:

Gulf Coast Newspapers: So long, Jimmy!

Mobile Press-Register: Faulkner’s impact on area was enormous