(Danville, California)
Former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, a stalwart of conservative American politics, has died today at the age of 86. He joins a list of famed American politicians whose deaths ironically occurred on the nation's birthday, the 4th of July. The list includes former Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Helms was a fascinating man. People either loved him dearly, or hated him deeply. There was no in between. Helms was a newspaper editor and TV commentator before his first successful run for the U.S. Senate in 1972. He would serve thirty controversial years before retiring in 2002.
Helms was a complex man who could be bitterly partisan or unwaveringly kind. In one of his notorious displays of discourtesy, he purposely sang "Dixie" in a Senate elevator to Senator Carol Mosely-Braun, a black, female Democrat from Illinois, in hopes of making her cry - this after a bitter debate over the Confederate flag. On the other side of the coin, Helms could be a man of great compassion. He and his wife adopted an orphaned nine-year-old with cerebral palsy, after the boy simply wrote the newspaper saying he wanted parents. Now that's heart!
Helms also eased his tough stance on AIDS funding over the years. At first a tough opponent of AIDS spending, he was criticized for being anti-gay. To be fair, Helms made the argument that by the 1990s more was being spent per capita on AIDS patients, than on the far greater number of patients still dying of cancer. In later years, Helms helped back funding for treating AIDS in Africa, where it is simply epidemic and a threat to regional and world stability, not to mention just plain heartbreaking for the number of children left without parents.
I got to interview Senator Helms on a number of occasions when I was a Washington, DC correspondent for WSOC-TV in Charlotte, North Carolina. He could be feisty, belligerent, or as gentle and kind as could be. You were never quite sure what to expect.
One of my most memorable conversations with him occurred as he was getting ready for Richard Nixon's funeral. "We could have had the Nixon Presidential Library at Duke University if it wasn't for Walter Dellinger," Helms said at the time. He was referring to the liberal law professor and former Solicitor General, who helped block the Nixon Library from going to Duke, where the former President had graduated from law school. No matter what people thought about Nixon, Helms argued, landing any presidential library could have been a real plum for tourism and research in North Carolina. Today the Nixon Library is in Yorba Linda, California.
Love him, or hate him - and there are many people on both sides - Jesse Helms will be remembered as an icon of American politics. We are a country of vastly diverse political ideas, from liberal on the left to conservative on the right. Each has had its time and place in our history. We have survived in the balance of the two longer than any other democracy on earth. That is something we can all celebrate this 4th of July! I'll be writing daily about political happenings. Tune in often at www.MarkCurtisMedia.blogspot.com.
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1 comment:
I was saddened when I heard that Jesse Helms died on the Fourth. Primarily because it links a truly bigoted, hateful man with the likes of Jefferson and Adams.
Beyond his pure racist rhetoric his successful efforts to block funding into AIDS research and prevention in the 1980s can clearly be linked to the deaths of thousands of Americans.
I for one am only glad to see him gone and trust that history will place him where he deserves to be, an embarassment to the people of his state and to the United States Senate.
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