Living History by Unknown (the lemonade war series txt) 📗

for Bill’s brother, Roger, who was ten years younger and had developed a close relationship with Jeff. Losing Jeff was painful for all of us. Virginia had endured so much over the years. I was amazed at her resilience and saw the same trait in Bill, who had emerged from his difficult childhood without a shred of bitterness. If anything, his experiences have made him more empathetic and optimistic. His energy and disposition drew people to him, and until stories emerged during his presidential campaign very few knew about the painful circumstances he had endured.

Bill returned to the campaign trail after Jeff’s funeral, and I explored life in a small college town. After the intensity of New Haven and Washington, the friendliness, slower pace and beauty of Fayetteville were a welcome tonic.

One day when I was standing in line at the A&P, the cashier looked up and asked me, “Are you the new lady law professor?” I said I was, and she told me I was teaching one of her nephews, who had said I was “not bad.” Another time I dialed information looking for a student who hadn’t shown up for a class conference. When I told the operator the student’s name, she said, “He’s not home.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s gone camping,” she informed me. I had never before lived in a place so small, friendly and Southern, and I loved it. I went to Arkansas Razorbacks football games and learned to “call the hogs.” When Bill was in town, we spent evenings with friends eating barbecue and weekends playing volleyball at the home of Richard Richards, another of our colleagues on the law school faculty. Or we got together for a round of Charades organized by Bess Osenbaugh.

Carl Whillock, then an administrator at the university, and his delightful wife, Margaret, lived in a big yellow house across the street from the law school. They were the first people to invite me over, and we became fast friends. Margaret had been left by her first husband when her six children were under ten. Conventional wisdom decreed that no man would assume the burden of marriage to a divorcee with six kids, no matter how vivacious and attractive she was. But Carl didn’t follow convention, and he signed on for the whole load. I once introduced Margaret to Eppie Lederer, otherwise known as Ann Landers, at the White House. “Honey, your husband deserves sainthood!” Eppie exclaimed after she heard Margaret’s story. She was right.

Ann and Morriss Henry also became close friends. Ann, a lawyer, was active in politics and community affairs on her own and on behalf of Morriss, who served in the State Senate. She also had three children and was deeply involved in their schools and sports programs. Ann, who freely expressed her well-informed opinions, was superb company.

Diane Blair became my closest friend. Like me, she was a transplant from Washington, D.C., who had moved to Fayetteville with her first husband. She taught political science at the university and was considered one of the best professors on campus. We played tennis and traded favorite books. She wrote extensively about Arkansas and Southern politics, and her book about the first woman to be elected to the Senate on her own, Hattie Caraway, Democrat from Arkansas, was sparked by her strong convictions about women’s rights and roles.

During the national debate about whether or not the country should ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, Diane debated ultraconservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in front of the Arkansas General Assembly. I helped prepare her for the Valentine’s Day confrontation in 1975. Diane won the debate hands down, but both of us knew that the combination of religious and political opposition to the ERA in Arkansas wouldn’t yield to compelling arguments, logic or evidence.

Diane and I regularly met for lunch in the Student Union. We always chose a table by the big windows that looked out toward the Ozark Hills and share stories and gossip. She and I also spent long hours with Ann at the Henrys’ backyard pool. They loved hearing about the cases I handled at the Legal Aid clinic, and I often sought their opinions about some of the attitudes I encountered. Ono day. the Washington County prosecuting attorney, Mahlon Gibson, called to tell me an indigent prisoner accused of raping a twelveyear-old girl wanted a woman lawyer. Gibson had recommended that the criminal court judge, Maupin Cummings, appoint me. I told Mahlon I really didn’t feel comfortable taking on such a client, but Mahlon gently reminded me that I couldn’t very well refuse the judge’s request. When I visited the alleged rapist in the county jail, I learned that he was an uneducated “chicken catcher.” His job was to collect chickens from the large warehouse farms for one of the local processing plants. He denied the charges against him and insisted that the girl, a distant relative, had made up her story. I conducted a thorough investigation and obtained expert testimony from an eminent scientist from New York, who cast doubt on the evidentiary value of the blood and semen the prosecutor claimed proved the defendant’s guilt in the rape. Because of that testimony, I negotiated with the prosecutor for the defendant to plead guilty to sexual abuse. When I appeared with my client before Judge Cummings to present that plea, he asked me to leave the courtroom while he conducted the necessary examination to determine the factual basis for the plea. I said, “Judge, I can’t leave. I’m his lawyer.”

“Well,” said the judge, “I can’t talk about these things in front of a lady.”

“Judge,” I reassured him, “don’t think of me as anything but a lawyer.”

The judge walked the defendant through his plea and then sentenced him. It was shortly after this experience that Ann Henry and I discussed setting up Arkansas’s first rape hot line.

A few months into my new life, I received a call from a female jailer in the Benton County jail, north of Fayetteville. She told