Sad Passages Two deaths last week – one in Washington, one in Chicago – resonated locally. by Jackson Baker ive years ago, when John Branston and I were covering the bank-fraud trial that was ultimately to end in acquittal for then-U.S. Representative Harold Ford Sr., the congressman’s office at one point reported receiving some telephoned and mailed threats against Ford’s life. These were taken seriously enough that Rep. Ford was assigned a contingent of guards from the Capitol Police in Washington. One day, a member of this force, a pleasant, well-dressed African-American man, approached me during a lull in courtroom proceedings. “Good morning, Mr. Baker,” he said. “Do you remember me?” And now that I looked at him closely, I did. “Officer Chestnut!” I said, delighted to encounter again a man whom I was more used to seeing in the uniformed garb of the Capitol Police than in a business suit, but whom I certainly did remember. How could I not? He was the most courteous and thoughtful of an unusually courteous and thoughtful lot of officers who guarded a building I used to work in while an employee of the Congress in the early ’80s. The fact that, after 10 years, he could both remember and be remembered was confirmation of that. I say “guarded a building.” Officer Chestnut and the others did that, for sure, but a good deal of their work was pure human relations, greeting the congressional workforce and the swarms of constituent strangers who came in daily with the cheer and solicitude that was sometimes in short supply in that exacting and competitive city. More than once, while exchanging hellos or small talk with Officer Chestnut, I found myself thinking what a great job this must be – and what a break from danger – for sociable types like him, former line officers in this or that branch of law enforcement. On that day back in the spring of 1993 when Officer Jacob J. Chestnut reintroduced himself to me, I took him by the elbow over to Representative Ford. “Congressman,” I said, “this gentleman took really good care of me in Washington a few years ago. You don’t have to worry about his taking good care of you!” He was taking care of all of us, of course, during all the years he worked with the Capitol Police. That’s what Officer Chestnut was doing the other day, presiding over a metal detector at a north entrance of the Capitol. He had, reports would indicate, looked aside long enough to instruct a father and son in how to get to such-and-such a part of the famous old building when a man with a gun rushed up, put it to Officer Chestnut’s head and pulled the trigger, instantly exploding his brain and extinguishing his life. If that is indeed the case, if that’s how he died, then the last thing Officer Chestnut was conscious of was the act of helping somebody. Truly, he died in the saddle. After this kind and dedicated public servant was killed, of course, that was not the end of it. The paranoid madman, we all learned, then got inside the building, lurched past a souvenir counter in the rotunda (where, way back, I had bought the copper Capitol cufflinks that I wore for many years until getting them lost and separated in a move of house), and staggered into a nearby corridor, where he exchanged gunfire with another Capitol Police agent, this one a plainclothesman named John Gibson attached to the Majority Whip’s office. Gibson was killed, too. The resultant gun battle with other Secret Service agents and Capitol Police would rage on outside the office of Whip Tom DeLay of Texas until, eventually, the gunman, seriously wounded himself, was subdued. This was the same corridor, I finally realized from news reports, where, back in the early ’80s, there existed – and perhaps still does – a smaller suite of offices, next to those of the Majority Whip, reserved for the Whip’s chief deputy. Back in those days the chief deputy whip was Bill Alexander of Arkansas, my boss, who represented the district just across the river from Memphis. I remembered how on a day in 1983 in that very space where the gun battle happened last week, fellow staffer Brent Budowsky and I had charged out of the deputy whip’s office and carried on an intense and highly public argument over who had the right to author for Alexander a key portion of a policy statement on our government’s conduct toward Latin America. It was pure turf battle, this ruckus, the kind that happens every day in the offices of the nation’s Capitol (as well as, probably, in the service stations of the highly disputatious District of Columbia). I won the battle, in the sense that I had been sitting at the typewriter when the disagreement started and I never relinquished those squatter’s rights (nor the congressman’s direct charge to me) even through the prolonged diversion into the hallway. Giving up finally, the peevish Budowsky threw a pen at me and then scampered away in the direction of the marble statuaries of past dignitaries from the various states, those solemn eminences who flanked the narrow hallway as it opened out again toward the elevator bank. I remember the open-eyed startlement in the eyes of the tourists who witnessed this conflict, such as it was. (That Budowsky could holler!) It was, I reflected the other day, probably the most violent thing – shouts, pen-throwing, and all – that had occurred in that hallway until the horrific events of last Thursday. Well, the times, they have certainly been a-changing. The concrete buffers and barricades and street-blockers that now surround the Capitol building (as they do the White House) were first being created on my watch. No longer can you simply drive your car – as I did upon first arriving in 1982 – onto the Capitol grounds, park it, and sashay into the building just as though it belonged to you. (Which, of course, technically speaking, it still does.) Officer Chestnut (and perhaps Officer Gibson as well) belonged to a transitional breed. Given the tragic events of last week, and the capital’s ever-growing sense of embattlement and, for that matter, of intractable partisan gridlock, it is highly possible that the crop of guardians who will henceforth stand sentinel at the gates of the Capitol, starting now and continuing into the next millennium, will be a harder-eyed, less humorous, and more un-courtly bunch than were Mr. Chestnut and his cohort. Yet another reason why this pleasant, brave, and kindly man will be missed. n Another unexpected – and untimely – departure occurred last week when Tommie Edwards, a much-admired local civic and political figure, died while attending a family reunion in Chicago. At the moment of his passing, Edwards – known for his gargantuan frame and equally big heart – was fully immersed in two local election campaigns, those of Larry Finch, who is running for county register, and Stan Howell, a candidate for Probate Court clerk. He was a member of the nine-member steering committee of the Shelby County Democratic executive committee. And Edwards was, as always, fully occupied with the details of the Park Avenue Group, the charitable civic organization he founded in order to provide scholarships for Orange Mound youth and honor members of that vintage African-American community – like Finch – who had become role models to others. Finch was one of the many political figures who attended either Edwards’ Thursday-night wake at his own Shiloh Baptist Church or his Friday funeral at Berean Missionary Baptist Church – a venue shifted to when it became obvious that a large crowd, later estimated at 600 to 800, would be on hand. Others attending one or both remembrances were: Howell, local NAACP head Johnnie Turner, Linda LaRue, city court clerk Thomas Long, ministerial friend Al Huqq, county commission candidate Irma Merrill, sheriff candidate Melvin Burgess, David and Jerry Cocke, and John Freeman, an aide to U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. Others on hand were many local funeral home directors (Edwards was the owner of Victory Funeral Home) and several members of groups made up of reformed cocaine and alcohol abusers. (Edwards himself was a former drug and alcohol abuser and lent himself to a number of public education and rehabilitation projects.) Among those who spoke at the funeral were Edwards’ wife Lisa and his 4-year-old daughter Tamisha. State Senator Steve Cohen, whose reelection bid Edwards had unsuccessfully opposed in the 1996 Democratic primary, arranged for a flag to fly over the state capitol building in his late opponent’s honor. Early Voting Heavy Out East Early voting, which has had an uneven degree of acceptance in Shelby County since it was first introduced with the 1994 election season, got off to a good start this year, with some 15,000 people having voted by the close of the weekend on the new computer-like touch-screen machines in use at some 19 locations around Shelby County. (The Shuptronic machines in use for all recent elections will be employed on election day itself.) Figures tabulated by the Election Commission for the first nine days of early voting indicate a higher incidence of participation at East Memphis or suburban locations than in the inner city. White Station Church of Christ, for example, was the most frequented location, with some 1,398 votes recorded through Monday, July 27th. By contrast, only 111 people, had cast early ballots through that date at the North Memphis Civic Club location. Republicans interpreted that data to indicate a trend toward disproportionate voting in areas friendly to their candidates. (The official Republican Party sample ballot, mailed out more than a week ago to 90,000 households, listed only eight early locations – those in mainly GOP areas). Spokespersons for both parties were guessing out loud that turnout on August 6th might be higher than previously thought – perhaps in the low 30s, percentagewise. (That would compare to the roughly 40 percent of eligible voters who turned out for the 1994 general election or the roughly 39 percent who voted in the 1990 general election, the last occasion for a full-scale judicial balloting.)