Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 27, 1993 TAG: 9304270029
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
It is early evening, and the students in Virginia Commonwealth University's senior seminar on the "The Writing Art" are warming up with verbal calisthenics.
"Give me some new words!" barks the professor.
"Tintinnabulation," comes a reply.
"Ah-h-h. That's a good one," says James J. Kilpatrick, his scrunched-up fist of a face relaxing into rosy calm at the thought of Edgar Allen Poe. "The tintinnabulation of the bells, bells, bells . . . "
"Hokum," suggests a second student.
"You never came across hokum before?" demands Kilpatrick. The brow is crinkling again. "It's a splendid word. Rubbish! Balderdash!" His voice lowers to a growl, massaging the vowel sound as the word rumbles out. "Hokum."
This is Kilpatrick as we have not seen him.
For 28 years, ending last winter, "Kilpo" was the often-bombastic, always-literate, thrice-weekly author of "A Conservative View." The syndicated column, appearing in hundreds of newspapers, showcased Kilpatrick's opinion that matters such as affirmative action, legalized abortion, gay rights and American intervention in Somalia were . . . well, so much hokum.
Millions knew him also as the former point-counterpoint sparring partner of liberal Shana Alexander on CBS's "60 Minutes." And in Virginia, he is remembered for his 17 years, beginning in 1949, as editorial page editor of the Richmond News Leader. It was he, following the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, who introduced Southerners to "interposition," a highbrow excuse for massive resistance to integrated schools.
Now, at 72, Kilpatrick is tackling a new job: college professor and language coach, Mr. Chips with an acid tongue.
For five weeks, he is tutoring a hand-picked class of 15 students on one of the great loves of his life - the English language.
Each Tuesday and Thursday night, he critiques their writings. ("Their marriage was as rough as a jet plane landing in a rock quarry." "Oooh." Kilpatrick grimaces. " . . . As rickety as a drunk on stilts." "Now you're percolating," he says, punctuating the words with the arched eyebrow and wispy smile that pass for high praise.)
He lectures them on "my crotchets" - abhorrence of the "quick second," "the long mile," and a junkyard of worn words and phrases.
And he seeks to inoculate them with his own sense of the magic and power in the written word.
"It's a beautiful, commodious, flexible, wonderful language; and it deserves to be used deftly, exactly, accurately," says Kilpatrick, when asked what he most wants to teach.
Noel Brady, a 23-year-old senior, is explaining why - unlike some other VCU students - he put political differences with Kilpatrick aside and signed up for the course.
"He's a master of the language," said Brady, pausing for a mischievous smile. "I thought it would be kind of like taking a speech course from Hitler."
The distrust, Brady should be advised, was mutual. After reading an initial batch of papers from his prospective students, Kilpatrick almost gave up on the seminar. "They were dreadful, just dreadful," recalls Kilpatrick. "No sense at all of the music of words."
To be fair, the assignment was not exactly a cinch. Compose a limerick on Arthur Ashe as a spokesman for AIDS, for instance. Or write a sonnet about the love life of Elizabeth Taylor.
Kilpatrick's withdrawal letter was in the word processor. But he thought twice about reneging on old friends. His $10,000 fee is being paid through an endowment set up by Media General, owners of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and - until it folded last year - The News Leader. Anticipating the seminar, "I was blue," he recalled.
The return to Richmond from Charleston, S.C., where Kilpatrick and his wife moved recently, has been bittersweet.
"No former Richmonder can come back as an expatriate and walk down Grace Street to the Capitol and not want to cry," said Kilpatrick, who has aged along with the city he left behind. The fringe of hair grows whiter, the paunch more pronounced. He walks with a slight limp, one of the few lingering results of a small stroke.
The lingering feelings in Richmond toward Kilpatrick are bitter and sweet also, although the two seldom combine in a single individual.
"The delay Mr. Kilpatrick made possible gave the opposition to `Brown' a chance to set up alternatives to public education," said state Sen. Henry Marsh, D-Richmond, a civil rights attorney. The impact of those years still is felt in a Richmond public school system that many whites have abandoned, he said.
Kilpatrick's argument was that because of interposition, each state had a right to follow its view of the federal Constitution, regardless of Supreme Court rulings. In the case of public schools, that meant states could refuse to integrate.
Segregationists across the South latched onto the theory, laid out by Kilpatrick in a series of News Leader editorials that had a ring of legal scholarship.
The ideas still have their apologists. Kilpatrick's writings have been "not discredited, but superseded," said D. Tennant Bryan, retired publisher of the Richmond newspapers. He insists Kilpatrick's editorials have not harmed race relations or public education in the long run.
"Just like the Roman Empire . . . there's been no lasting impact," Bryan said.
Kilpatrick also insists that he played a useful role in the 1950s. "We bought time and it worked," he said, arguing that "violence was right under the city waiting to break loose."
Still, he acknowledged, "Probably, looking back, I should have had better consciousness of the immorality, the absolute evil of segregation."
It is that bow to changing times, along with his command of words, that have allowed Kilpatrick to survive an era and a cause that might have torpedoed others.
"He has been able to adapt his philosophy to be provocative in each decade," said Marsh. "He's always had style, so he's remained a marketable item."
It is Kilpatrick, the wordsman, who has captivated his VCU student audience. In that role, he earns almost universal praise.
"It's the best course I've ever had," said Deveron Timberlake, a graduate student from Richmond. "Some people will go on to be published writers because of this course."
"For the first time, I can see a career in feature writing," agreed Lana Bortolot. "I never thought about it before. It intimidated me."
In the classroom conversations that pass for lectures, Kilpatrick speaks the language much as he has always written it, sharply, boldly, unequivocally. He is alternately appalled and encouraged by the work of his students. But his direct criticisms, most on the order of "I think you might have sandpapered that a bit," are uncharacteristically tame.
He keeps a volume of H.L. Mencken on the desk for comfort.
"Juggle words. Throw them up in the air. Play with words," he admonishes.
The warm-up is at full pace now.
"OK," says Kilpatrick. "Give me some fat words . . . some skinny words. . . . You're getting the feeling of them, getting the texture of words. They have weight. Heavy words and light words."
There is no political debate here, no ideological friction.
All that matters is cadence, and simile, and sound.
by CNB