Here's a blast from the past!http://www.domemagazine.com/departments/bookit/bookit_apr08.html
Wallace (Wally) G. Long
Bloomfield Hills, MI
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Another of Philip A. Hart’s Well-Trained Retrievers
Buck O’Leary’s delightful tale of his assignment to collect all outstanding Hart campaign buttons by snatching them from the lapels of the Senator’s supporters reminded me that Buck was not the first with such a task.
Both episodes demonstrate Hart sometimes exaggerated concern that he be accused if impropriety.
In Buck’s case, the button panic was generated by an obscure, World War I era Michigan law prohibiting the “commercialization” of the American flag, a law that Hart was apprehensive about even though no one had ever been charged with violating it. (By the way, though Buck graciously disguised it, I was the guy who designed and produced the offending button.)
I wished that Buck in 1970 had been told the experiences of Hart’s driver in 1968, the Senator’s first Senate campaign. That driver was Fred Burke, who later joined the staff as liaison to party forces in the state.
On this occasion, Fred drove the boss to the Democratic Party state convention in Grand Rapids. There, Hart supporters were selling delegates a number of campaign items, including fountain pens and socks embroidered with the candidate’s name. For some reason, sock sales were going well.
Hart became the nominee to run against the Republican incumbent, Charles Potter, a conservative who believed that the public was best off without any government intervention and did his best to see that Congress provided none. Potter, like Hart, was badly wounded in World War II and he was left with two artificial legs.
Among reporters covering the convention was Frank Morris, political correspondent for the Detroit Times and very good at his job during those few moments of the day when he was sober.
Morris spots Hart at a table and lurches over. “I see you’re selling socks all over the place, Phil,” he slurred. “What are you trying to do, call attention to the fact that Potter has no feet?”
Hart blanched and hurriedly called Fred to his side. “ Buy back the socks!” he insisted. “Get them back, BACK.” And the rest of the evening, Fred was occupied with bartering for socks. He reported that some conventioneers were wearing them. “Offer them double” Hart ordered. But only a few were retrieved. Luckily for Fred, Morris’s sock story never appeared in print.
Jerry Kabel
Bloomfield Hills, MI
Hart Press Secretary 1962-73
Both episodes demonstrate Hart sometimes exaggerated concern that he be accused if impropriety.
In Buck’s case, the button panic was generated by an obscure, World War I era Michigan law prohibiting the “commercialization” of the American flag, a law that Hart was apprehensive about even though no one had ever been charged with violating it. (By the way, though Buck graciously disguised it, I was the guy who designed and produced the offending button.)
I wished that Buck in 1970 had been told the experiences of Hart’s driver in 1968, the Senator’s first Senate campaign. That driver was Fred Burke, who later joined the staff as liaison to party forces in the state.
On this occasion, Fred drove the boss to the Democratic Party state convention in Grand Rapids. There, Hart supporters were selling delegates a number of campaign items, including fountain pens and socks embroidered with the candidate’s name. For some reason, sock sales were going well.
Hart became the nominee to run against the Republican incumbent, Charles Potter, a conservative who believed that the public was best off without any government intervention and did his best to see that Congress provided none. Potter, like Hart, was badly wounded in World War II and he was left with two artificial legs.
Among reporters covering the convention was Frank Morris, political correspondent for the Detroit Times and very good at his job during those few moments of the day when he was sober.
Morris spots Hart at a table and lurches over. “I see you’re selling socks all over the place, Phil,” he slurred. “What are you trying to do, call attention to the fact that Potter has no feet?”
Hart blanched and hurriedly called Fred to his side. “ Buy back the socks!” he insisted. “Get them back, BACK.” And the rest of the evening, Fred was occupied with bartering for socks. He reported that some conventioneers were wearing them. “Offer them double” Hart ordered. But only a few were retrieved. Luckily for Fred, Morris’s sock story never appeared in print.
Jerry Kabel
Bloomfield Hills, MI
Hart Press Secretary 1962-73
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