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

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

I want to believe…

I am not kidding when I say I cried when I saw and heard it. And I cried again when I read it.

I don’t know for sure if we really can do it or not, if we can turn back the near complete destruction of the American Dream by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their corporate cronies.

Barack Obama knocks it out of the park in Mile High Stadium. Full text of the speech in the comments below…

I don’t know for sure whether enough people can truly get over the race issue and vote for “the black guy.”

I don’t know for sure whether we can keep Karl Rove’s hackers from stealing another election.

But as I sit here in The Bunker and take in this story on television and the Web — literally in a place on the planet that is situated on the suburban dividing line between the remnants of the Ku Klux Klan on one side and violent urban gangs on the other, on the front lines of the mortgage crisis with half the houses in the neighborhood empty and abandoned — I believe with all my heart that Barack Obama is right when he says this is a “defining moment” in our history.

I recently called it a “decisive moment,” which is actually a better term, but it’s connotations may not be as simple and saleable for the mass audience.

According to Obama, who is said to write his own speeches, this is “a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more [because of] the failed policies of George W. Bush.”

As far as the speech itself is concerned, there is no doubt that on TV, and in writing, it was the most important piece of oratory in American politics at least since John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address when he pledged to send U.S. astronauts to the moon in a decade.

I don’t care what any news organization or blogger decides to lede with as important about this week in Denver, but there is no doubt in my mind this is the lead quote:

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Now is the time to end this [oil] addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close.

I mean, Obama had Pat Buchanan, Nixon’s speechwriter and a former Republican presidential candidate himself, almost in tears on MSNBC, gushing over key passages. He called it a “moderate” speech appealing to the public’s “heart, spleen and guts,” and he really liked this part:

So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America — they have served the United States of America.

What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose — our sense of higher purpose. And that’s what we have to restore.

Obama appealed to “the better angels of our character,” without using the cliché:

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

But he pounded home the decisive moment theme:

I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land — enough! This moment — this election — is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive.

And lest any pundit accuse him of being soft on his opponent, Obama then hit McCain in the mouth on his judgment:

Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a ten percent chance on change.

John McCain doesn’t get it.

Later on, he said on the same theme, “John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.”

Obama espoused a policy that only the most hard-hearted anti-government conservative would oppose:

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American…

He offered a practical way to get on with re-tooling the economy to get on with dealing with the energy and global warming crisis.

I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I’ll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels, an investment that will lead to new industries and five-million new jobs that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced.

He offered this for those of us without health insurance, although I think it may be the hardest goal for him to achieve.

Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.

He came out tough on defense, which he has to do to win, but I like the way he did it.

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country. Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans — have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.

I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the twenty-first century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.

I like his theme of talking about “one America,” although I’m not sure he alone can do this. It will take some serious healing time and the economy has to turn around for a lot of people.

…one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism.

I really liked this part, but I doubt the Republicans will…

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.

The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.

…if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

You make a big election about small things.

And you know what — it’s worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn’t work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it’s best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know.

I get it. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don’t fit the typical pedigree, and I haven’t spent my career in the halls of Washington.

But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s been about you.

You have shown what history teaches us — that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it — because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit — that American promise — that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance.

And it is that promise that forty-five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

Let us keep that promise — that American promise — and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

“We cannot walk alone,” the preacher cried. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

Of course he was talking about Martin Luther King Jr. on the Washington Mall and his “I have a dream” speech. It might have gone over many people’s heads since Obama didn’t reference him by name. But here in “Bomingham,” we get it.

So here’s what I have say to Mr. Obama.

“Good luck. You are one hell of a thinker and speaker, certainly compared to the current occupant of the White House, as well as your opponent. We not only need someone who instinctively knows how to say the right thing on TV. We need someone who believes in ‘thinking’ through our problems and soliciting the advice of ’smart’ people, not loyal dumbasses like Brownie.”

Speaking of which, and I’ll end with this for tonight, as of now, Hurricane Gustav is headed right for the mouth of the Mississippi River and New Orleans, and should arrive just in time for the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, a stark reminder of the Bush administration’s abysmal handling of Katrina.

Looks like nature’s hand may yet play a role in this election.

(Full text of the speech in the comments below).

In search of Denver’s soul

Letter from Denver
by Brooks Boliek

DENVER, Colo., Aug. 28 — For the first time since I got here the Rockies are obscured by smog. During my stay here, I have often felt like Tom Horn. Actually I feel more like Steve McQueen’s portrayal of Horn in the 1980 movie.

Tom Horn movie sound track

In the movie the renowned former army scout and “range detective,” is hired by ranchers to hunt down rustlers. Horn finds himself on trial for the murder of a boy when he carries out his job too well. He is tried, convicted and hung for the murder, but he is so obviously railroaded that no one will pull the lever that opens the trap. His execution is performed by a machine.

While the screenplay by novelist Thomas McGuane and Bud Shrake wasn’t exactly historically accurate, the feeling it portrayed of a man trapped by the changing times and his on efficacy was spot on. McQueen as Horn kept looking out his jail-cell window at those mountains and the freedom he would never see until his own weight actuated the water-powered gallows and released his soul.

I feel a bit like that as I look at the now smog-obscured Rockies. They are there: So tantalizingly close; so achingly far.

When you’ve done as many political conventions as I have, they take on a certain sameness: the hard-to-get tickets, the over-sold parties, the overblown speeches. They are a constant.

This one is different, of course. The Black Guy gets the nod. As a journalist without portfolio, I may or may not get on the field. It is my ninth convention, and probably my last.

I’m torn. Do I stay here and try to hustle up a ticket to the field? Or, do I go out there to the mountains? Where would my soul be most comfortable?

Nine conventions, eight different cities (I went to New York twice.) In every city I tried to do more than just cover the speeches, the controversy, the delegation. I wanted to find a bit of each cities’ soul.

I like to think I was successful.

In New York once I went to every place where Tammany Hall had ever been. There’s still a New York Democratic Club. When I was there for Bill Clinton, it was in Hell’s Kitchen. It wasn’t a tony neighborhood then. It was still Hell.

In Houston, I found it on a bridge over a river. Could it have been the Houston Ship Channel? I can’t remember, but I do remember the oil refineries spread out like the lights of a gigantic city. The petroleum residue settled on my skin, and I had to take a long-hot shower to wash it off.

My organizational incompetence in Boston landed me an apartment near the Kerry’s house on Beacon Hill. I got to take some swings at Fenway Park. It’s still the best convention I have been to.

In Atlanta, I thought Dukakis had it sewn up. What a young fool, but then, that’s a city that lost its soul long ago.

New Orleans, pre-Katrina, exuded soul. It was a strange combination of Bible-thumping right wingers in a city where sin, if not exactly celebrated, is embraced. I’d been to the Big Easy before, but I fell in love with it then for all it’s wonderful contradictions and it’s decaying beauty.

Philadelphia is, of course, where the country was founded, but I think it’s soul rested with the driver that hauled me and now disgraced congressman Mark Foley and his staff around. He drove his own car, and knew every backstreet, twist and turn, and the best place to get a cheese steak. Foley let me be a fly on the wall. It was an incredible insight into the workings of what was a hard working politician. My paper buried it.

Los Angeles. Well, for 16 incredibly fun years I was THE Hollywood Reporter in Washington. I love L.A. because, it’s, well, L.A. It’s where the movies are made, and we all know how much I love movies. I spent my nights with a buddy who hit it big and lives in Pacific Palisades. It’s a wonder I didn’t get arrested.

Big D

Brooks Boliek tooling around Denver on a bike

Now, I’m in Denver. I like Denver a lot. I’ve spent a lot of time downtown. It’s cool down there, especially in LoDo. But like so many of these renovated downtown or waterfront districts, it has a certain sameness of feel that every other renovated district in America does.

My hotel is in Cherry Creek. It’s a four-and-a-half mile walk from here to downtown. I hoofed it there and back one day, and did it by bicycle on another.

On November 22, 1858, General William Larimer, a land speculator from eastern Kansas, placed cottonwood logs to stake a claim on the hill overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. In what may have been the first political move in the history of the young state, Larimer named the town site Denver City to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver.

The people here are unfailingly nice. Those of us from The East wonder what they put in the water to make them that way for the convention. I am assured, however, by Patty Rousot, the “captian” of the volunteers in my hotel, that people are always that way here. Patty is a gem. She’s been tour guide a surrogate mother for most all of us hacks here at the Cherry Creek Hotel.

Patty tells me Denver’s soul is in Wash Park. I never made it down there, so I couldn’t tell you if that was for sure. While I want to believe her, I don’t think she’s entirely correct. I don’t think Denver’s soul is anywhere near Wash Park or LoDo.

I think Denver’s soul is out there. Out there, right now obscured by the smog of it’s own making. Out there in the Rockies where Tom Horn’s soul went when the water ran out.

EXCLUSIVE!

by Glynn Wilson

The ailing Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, one of Birmingham’s most important icons from the Civil Rights days, was ecstatic to hear the news Wednesday that the Democratic Party had nominated Barack Obama as the first African-American standard bearer for any political party in American history.

Bonnie M. Fountain

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

Obama is the first black man to have a really good chance of becoming president of the United States, about 50 years after the struggle for equal rights kicked off in Alabama when Shuttlesworth was still a fairly young man fighting Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham.

“Anything is possible in America,” Shuttlesworth said when told the news of Obama’s nomination in Philadelphia, where he will attend his 75-year-old brother Clifton’s funeral Thursday.

“I’m looking forward to Obama rebuilding our nation and our reputation around the world, which is at an all-time low,” he said.

With his health problems of the past year since he suffered a stroke, Shuttlesworth, 86, was not able to travel this week to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.

But just like Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, one of Martin Luther King’s lieutenants who was interviewed on MSNBC Wednesday, Shuttlesworth reacted emotionally to the moment.

“We need the immediate end to the Iraq war, a sensible health-care plan and a fix for the plunging economy, as well as solutions for our serious problems with education, housing, banking, and the disastrous mortgage situation in this country,” he said. “The world used to look up to us for leadership. We need to regain their trust. I believe Obama is the man for the job.”