Sen. Frank Church – ‘Gracious to the End’

  If he’d lived long enough. U.S. Sen Frank Church would be celebrating his 100th birthday Thursday.

  It’s hard to think of him as being that old. At the time of his death, from pancreatic cancer in 1984, he was 59 and looked younger. He was something of a shooting star, burning brightly for a relatively short time but accomplishing more than many of us do with more years.

  For readers unfamiliar with him, Church was a Boise native who served in the U.S. Senate for 24 years. He was, among other things, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, an early and influential critic of the Vietnam War and author of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. He was instrumental in creating the River of No Return Wilderness Area, later named in his honor. To many, it’s now known simply as “the Frank.”

  I barely remember a time when I wasn’t aware of him. Beatrice Hally, a childhood friend’s mother, worked on his first campaign for the Senate in 1956. The Hallys’ home was filled with Frank Church yard signs, pennants, brochures, campaign buttons …The youthful appearance of the person pictured on them was striking. He looked more like someone running for student body president than the U.S. Senate.

  Church grew up in Boise and attended Boise High School. He attended Stanford University and served in the army during World War II. Due in part to the efforts of Bea Halley and other volunteers, he became a U.S.  senator at 32, the fifth youngest person ever to do so.

  In my early years as a reporter, a hush of the type inspired by celebrities fell over the newsroom whenever he came to be interviewed by the editorial board. Governors and celebrities notwithstanding, he was easily the state’s most famous person.

  It never seemed to go to his head, though. When my wife, then new to Idaho, bumped into him at an Idaho Press Club New Year’s Eve Party one year, she mistook him for a freshman candidate for an open U.S. Senate seat.

  “I know you!” she said, excited to meet someone she’d seen in campaign commercials. “You’re Bud Davis!”

  Some senior senators would have been huffy about being mistaken for a political newcomer. Not Church. He laughed, shook her hand and graciously introduced himself and his wife, Bethine. They couldn’t have been nicer about it.

  It was amusing to watch the Churches at a campaign event. His other attributes notwithstanding, the senator was terrible at remembering constituents’ names. Bethine, on the other hand,  rarely forgot a name. 

 “Frank, you remember Bob and Mary Jones,” Bethine would say.

  “Of course!” Frank would reply. “Wonderful to see you both again.”

  In 1976, Church ran for president. I was part of the throng of journalists lining the main street of Idaho City on the raw March  day when he announced his candidacy. He was and remains only the second Idahoan ever to run for the presidency as a major party candidate. The first was Sen. William Edgar Borah in 1936.

  Because of commitments to his intelligence committee, Church announced his candidacy late in the race, after future president Jimmy Carter had already defeated several opponents. Church  referred to it as his “late, late strategy,” traveled in a plane nicknamed The Turtle, wore ties with images of turtles.

  The newcomer stunned Carter by winning four state primaries, but withdrew from the race when it became apparent that Carter would win the nomination. I was a member of the editorial board at the newspaper where I worked at the time and participated in his post-campaign interview.

  “Tim, you remember the senator,” the newspaper’s publisher said by way of introduction.

  “Of course!” I said, and, reaching to shake his hand, spilled a   cup of scalding hot coffee he was holding. It ended up in one of his shoes, resulting in the state’s most famous person hopping around on one foot while frantically trying to take off his shoe.

  Not an auspicious beginning to an interview. As he’d been during the awkward moment at the New Year’s Eve party, though, Church couldn’t have been nicer about it.

  He beat the odds repeatedly by being elected as a Democrat in a conservative Republican state, but feared that his support of the 1978 Panama Canal Treaty would cost him his job. He was right. After 24 years in the Senate, he was defeated in the 1980 election.

  I interviewed him for the last time in 1984, at the Churches’ East Boise home. By then he was dying of cancer, but he answered my questions patiently and articulately. Gracious to the end.

  One of the beside visitors at his Maryland home during his final days was Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy. A witness said it was the only time he had seen a Kennedy cry. 

  Church’s words engraved on his headstone at Morris Hill Cemetery never fail to inspire:

  “I never knew a man who felt self important in the morning after spending the night in the open on an Idaho mountainside under a star-studded summer sky. Save some time in your lives for the outdoors, where you can be a witness to the wonder of God.”

  Thanks for your eloquence and your years of distinguished service, senator. And Happy Birthday. 

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.