[Dialogue] Spong 7-16-08

[KroegerD at aol.com]

July 16, 2008 
Opportunity Time: The Memoirs  of Governor Linwood Holton of Virginia  

An autobiography entitled Opportunity Time, written by A. Linwood  Holton, 
the Republican Governor of Virginia from 1970-74, has just been released  by the 
University of Virginia Press. When I first read the notice of this book's  
publication, a flood of memories overwhelmed me. I lived in Virginia during his  
governorship, serving as rector of the church literally just a across the 
street  from the governor's mansion in downtown Richmond. His was the only family 
that  could walk to church. That church's near neighbors were not private 
homes, but  the buildings that housed the banking and financial institutions of 
the state,  telephone and insurance companies, hotels and the twin department 
stores named  Miller and Rhoads and Thalhimers, which were the Richmond version 
of New York's  Macy's and Gimbel's. The time in which Linwood Holton was 
Virginia's governor  was unsettled in the capital of the old Confederacy, as the 
Supreme Court had  recently ordered the busing of students to achieve racial 
balance. This tense  atmosphere meant that local politicians ran against the 
courts and played on the  rampant racism that was still alive and well in this 
state. 
The Democratic Party in Virginia had long been under the control of the  
ultra-conservative Byrd machine, although its original architect, Senator Harry  
F. Byrd, Sr., had died by this time and had been succeeded by his son, Harry F. 
 Byrd, Jr. "Little Harry," as he was called by his constituents, was 
described by  one commentator as being equal to his father in everything except 
"intelligence,  wit, personality and charm." The other United State Senator in 
Virginia had also  been until the election of 1966 an ultra-conservative Byrd 
Democrat, A. Willis  Robertson, the father of the evangelical television preacher 
Pat Robertson. In  that contest Robertson was defeated in his bid for a fourth 
term by State  Senator William B. Spong, Jr. of Portsmouth in a tight primary. 
Senator Spong  won over his 78 year old opponent by 611 votes out of some 
800,000 cast. We  called him "landslide Spong" and suggested that he request a 
Virginia license  plate with the number 611. Change was in the air. The 1965 
Voting Rights Act,  signed by President Lyndon Johnson had brought black voters 
into the electorate.  The old guard Democratic leadership was losing ground 
with white voters fleeing  to the Republican Party and turning the solid 
Democratic South into the solid  Republican South. A national Democrat named Henry 
Howell, regarded as " wildly  liberal" by the Byrd machine, had been elected Lt. 
Governor and his planned run  for the office of Governor in 1969 brought great 
fear to the white citizens. 
Meanwhile the Virginia Republican Party, identified at that time with the  
western part of Virginia, had defined itself as a moderate alternative to the  
"Byrd Democrats." Linwood Holton had been its standard bearer in 1965, but had  
lost to Byrd stalwart Mills Godwin, who under the Virginia constitution was  
limited to one term. Holton had had little chance of winning in that year, but 
 even then his eye was on 1969. Richard Nixon had put the Republicans back 
into  the White House in 1968, while the Virginia Democrats, seeking to avoid  
identification with the national party, had for years elected the governor one  
year after the presidential contest. 
In that 1969 primary the Byrd candidate was a moderate named Bill Battle, the 
 son of previous Democratic governor, John Battle, but he had to defeat Henry 
 Howell in the primary. That primary was, however, a bitter contest the likes 
of  which the Byrd machine had never before faced. Henry Howell put together 
a  constituency of union voters, black voters, national Democrats and  
intellectuals, including university and college students. The campaign was  raucous 
and feelings ran high. Bill Battle won in a close vote but the Howell  
supporters were so upset by the racially tinged campaign rhetoric used against  
"Howling Henry" that they refused to close ranks behind Battle, either shifting  
their support to Holton or "going fishing" on election day. The result was that  
A. Linwood Holton became the first Republican governor of Virginia since  
reconstruction. He arrived in the governor's mansion a year after I became the  
rector of his "neighborhood church." In my opinion, he was the finest person to  
occupy the office of governor in the last half of the 20th century. 
Holton, a Harvard Law School graduate and a close friend of the present  
Virginia Republican Senator John Warner, moved into his new office with none of  
the racism that had marked the Byrd Democrats. The first decision he had to 
make  was whether or not to send his children to private schools. The location of 
the  governor's mansion put him into the geographic center of Richmond, where 
the  high school population was more than 90% black. Richmond had always had 
a strong  private school tradition with two highly regarded Episcopal schools, 
St.  Catherine's for girls and St. Christopher's for boys, and one 
outstanding  non-church affiliated day school named Collegiate that had offered 
alternatives  to public school education for decades. Most of the population of the 
state,  both white and black, assumed that the governor's children would be 
enrolled in  one of these prestigious and predominantly white private schools, for 
that had  been the practice for years. Dismaying many, however, Governor and 
Mrs. Holton  enrolled their children in the Richmond Public School system and 
on the first  day of school, Governor Holton, like all other parents, escorted 
his daughter  Tayloe into John F. Kennedy High, an almost all black school. 
The effect was  electrifying. The New York Times ran that picture on the front 
page,  sending a new Virginia image around the world. White racism boiled over 
while  black pride swelled. The governor insisted that his children would get 
a  superior education at these public schools, which of course flew in the 
face of  "common wisdom." He was, in fact, correct and his children went on to  
outstanding records in Ivy League colleges and his youngest daughter Anne, a  
Princeton graduate, is today the wife of Virginia's Democratic governor, Tim  
Kaine, and thus Virginia's present "First Lady." "Old Virginny" had moved into 
a  new day. 
This Republican administration was also marked with other forward looking  
actions. Holton built racial harmony throughout the state by working for open  
housing. He created the governor's school for the environment. He consolidated  
Virginia's ports and cleaned up its rivers. He rebuilt Virginia's  
infrastructure. To pay for these initiatives he increased the state income tax  with the 
support of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce! At his term's end, he  could 
claim that most of Virginia's rivers were swimmable again. He engineered  the 
rebuilding of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and  
Mary, from which my second daughter is today a proud graduate. He was an  
outstanding man and a first rate governor. 
I was enormously proud to have Linwood Holton be the public face of my state  
in those years. His wife, Jinks, the granddaughter of the former Episcopal  
Bishop in Roanoke, was herself an admirable first lady, just as their daughter  
is today. I doubt if politicians fully understand the lasting impact that 
occurs  when they seek power by playing to the prejudices of the past. I think of 
Ross  Barnett in Mississippi, who encouraged the violence that was loosed on 
James  Meredith, or of George Wallace standing at the school house door in 
Montgomery  saying, "Segregation yesterday, segregation today, segregation 
forever." Some  elected officials enhance their electability by playing on the fears 
of the  people, dividing the populace by race, gender and sexual orientation. 
Linwood  Holton worked to bring the people of Virginia together to face the 
future with  common purpose. He recognized, as few politicians seem to do, that 
who he was  sometimes spoke louder than what he said. It is important for 
those who seek  public office to recognize that the citizens of our nation invest 
their pride  and their hopes in our elected leaders and that the public trust 
must be taken  seriously. Linwood Holton did just that for Virginia. I always 
admired him for  it. His autobiography tells the story of a very effective 
leader. 
Leadership is frequently costly. It was for Governor Holton. The Republican  
Party that he struggled to build in his own image was taken over when he left  
office by the Byrd Democrats who fled the increasingly black Democratic Party 
 for one last stand in the cause of racial superiority. When the 
gubernatorial  election was held in 1973, the Republican nominee was Mills Godwin, the 
former  "Byrd Democrat." Holton was himself now anathema to the "new" Republican  
leadership. Integrity pays dividends, however, and a new Democratic party has 
 finally emerged in Virginia led by new south moderates like Mark Warner and 
Tim  Kaine, who have been successive Democratic governors for the last eight 
years.  In the 2006 Senate election Democrat Jim Webb upset the incumbent 
George Allen,  a former Republican governor, who kept a Confederate flag on his 
desk and  uttered the famous "Macaca" word about an American citizen of Indian 
background  that enabled him to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. In the 
2008 Senate  election Mark Warner is the heavy favorite to replace retiring 
and hugely  respected Republican Senator John Warner (they are not related). 
This is not the  old racist South. That is gone forever. America is evolving 
into a new nation  today as the consciousness of our people is visibly rising 
beyond the prejudices  of yesterday. The political process of 2008 has shown us 
that a woman can be a  viable candidate for the White House, so can an African 
American, an Hispanic, a  Mormon and even a three times married former mayor 
of New York. People in none  of these categories would have been serious 
contenders for that office just 25  years ago. Still there is a place in today's 
America for an old school war hero  like John McCain, but he must convince the 
electorate that he is more about  tomorrow than he is about yesterday to have a 
chance to win. There is little  place in American politics today for 
yesterday's world. 
Linwood Holton heralded this new consciousness. His book Opportunity  Time 
tells his exciting story. I recommend it and I am very glad that I  have known 
this man. 
John Shelby Spong 
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Harry Bird from Maine writes:
A couple of years ago, I preached at our  local (Grace Episcopal Church in 
Bath, Maine) trying to communicate biblical  scholarship and truth and their 
relationship to our contemporary society. After  the service a fellow retired 
priest said, "You wouldn't last two weeks!" I  haven't been asked to preach 
since... is that common today?
Dear Harry,
It was a good try. Sorry it did not work out. Single shot  sermons rarely do. 
Change requires a relationship of trust. Even then there are  churches so 
deeply concerned about religious security that truth is always a  casualty. 
People have to be lulled into a sufficient level of security that will  enable them 
to begin to ask questions and re-form traditional answers. 
However, people do not live in a time warp. They listen to television, read  
newspapers and use the Internet. So the world crowds in upon them daily. If 
the  church is a ghetto espousing yesterday's certainty, then it will die. You 
don't  even need to help it to do so. 
The hope for a Christian future will never be located in places or among  
people who really believe that change is wrong, that the Pope is infallible or  
that the Bible is inerrant. 
I hope you do not give up. 
John Shelby Spong



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