In the News - Full Article
Tulsa World
MEMOIR PUTS HUMAN FACE ON LEGENDARY CAREER
By Howard Upton
In 1970 an obscure small-town lawyer named Dale Bumpers defeated the legendary Orval Faubus in the Democratic primary race for governor of Arkansas. He went on to defeat the wealthy incumbent, Winthrop Rockefeller, in the general election.
After completing two terms as governor, Bumpers ran for the U.S. Senate. He soundly defeated J. William Fulbright, who had held the Senate seat for 30 years and for whom the Fulbright scholarships are named.
Bumpers served 24 years in the Senate, retiring in 1999. Two weeks after he stepped down, his friend and fellow Arkansan President Clinton telephoned to request a favor. Clinton's impeachment trial was under way in the Senate. Would Bumpers be willing, Clinton asked, to come back before his former legislative colleagues and deliver the closing argument in support of the president?
Bumpers agreed to do so, and the force and logic of his hourlong speech is widely credited with the ensuing vote in which the Senate rejected impeachment.
Now Dale Bumpers has written his memoir, "The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town."
Most political memoirs are pretentious, dull and self-serving. In his book, however, Bumpers manages to avoid these perils. He writes clearly and entertainingly; he makes fun of himself; he confesses his shortcomings.
Dale Bumpers was born in 1925 and grew up in Charleston, Ark., during the Depression years. Charleston, 23 miles east of Fort Smith, was then a village of 851 people. The family home was a two-story house, built the year Bumpers was born at a cost of $1,500.
In those days Charleston had one drugstore, two doctors, one bank, and a town band with 10 members. Only the main street was paved. The community had no plumbing system; the grounds of each residence included an outhouse.
Bumpers' father worked for -- and later bought -- a dual business in Charleston: a hardware store and funeral home.
When he finished high school, Bumpers went off to Fayetteville to the University of Arkansas. World War II was in progress and soon he signed up with the Marine Corps. At war's end he was doing MP duty in the Pacific.
Instead of returning to Fayetteville, Bumpers elected to use the GI Bill to enter law school at Northwestern University. While there he received a devastating telephone call from a relative in Fort Smith. He was told that his parents and another couple had driven over to Vian, Okla., earlier in the day. On the way home, as they were passing through Roland, Okla., a drunk driver -- speeding down the wrong side of the highway -- had crashed head-on into his father's car. Within 10 days both of his parents were dead.
Upon finishing law school, Bumpers returned to Charleston. Money was short. He decided to take over the operation of his late father's hardware store (the funeral business had been sold) and to begin practicing law. He set up his law office in a room at the back of the store.
In the months that followed, he sometimes would find it necessary to excuse himself while consulting with a legal client in order to go out and help a hardware customer with a purchase.
"The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town" is peppered with amusing anecdotes related to Bumpers' law practice in Charleston.
In one case Bumpers was representing a husband who was seeking a divorce and who claimed to have witnessed his wife engaging in an adulterous act with another man. In his testimony, the husband used a four-letter word to describe the action in which his wife and her lover had been engaged.
"The judge went apoplectic," Bumpers writes. "He sternly gaveled his bench, scolded the witness, and warned him that he did not 'tolerate such foul language in my court.' " The judge went on to admonish the witness that if, in future testimony, he again found it necessary to refer to the adulterous act he must use the word 'fornicate.' "
The witness said he understood. Later, when he was being cross-examined by the wife's attorney, he found himself once more describing the carnal scene he had observed. As he started to relate what he had witnessed he paused and turned to the bench. "Judge," he said, "what was that nickname you told me to use for ****?"
Bumpers has little to say in his book about political issues, but much about the practical aspects of politics. While he was attending the dedication of the McClellan-Kerr Navigation System at the Port of Catoosa, someone handed him a note asking whether he would like to spend the rest of the day at Lyndon Johnson's home in Texas. He said he would, and soon he and David Hall, then the governor of Oklahoma, were boarding a private plane in Tulsa for a trip to the Johnson ranch. Once there, the two of them were driven about the spread by the former president himself, who, between stops to spray red ant hills, talked at length about his long political career.
Much of the appeal of "Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town" relates to Bumpers' candor. He clearly dislikes religious evangelists, for example, and does not hesitate to say so. Ironically, the drunk driver responsible for the death of Bumpers' parents became an evangelist following his release from an Oklahoma prison.
This ex-prisoner scheduled a revival at an Assembly of God church in Bumpers' hometown, and he let it be known that he would give testimony on "how he had found Jesus as a result of the wreck and his subsequent incarceration."
Bumpers declined an invitation to attend the revival service.
