Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 23, 1995 TAG: 9509260003
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHATHAM LENGTH: Long
Out of a hole in the screen door comes a black Lab named Ike.
The dog greets a familiar face and a visitor, then trots off to mill around in a pile of old clothing that he dragged out into the back yard.
The old clothing belongs to the familiar face, Claude S. Whitehead Jr. of Pittsylvania County.
Whitehead - dentist, tobacco farmer and political candidate - concedes that his stuff is now Ike's, who's made himself at home down on the farm.
And quite a farm it is.
Whitehall, as it's called, is Whitehead's 620-acre spread a few miles outside of Chatham.
The Bannister River forms part of the property's boundary. On a hill at the front of the farm sits the brick farmhouse where Whitehead and his wife, Dixie, live, and where they raised their three children.
Whitehead's father built the house in the 1930s.
Leading up to it is a gravel driveway framed on both sides by a quarter-mile of tall oak trees.
Generations of Whiteheads have roamed the rolling farmland in Pittsylvania County - they were one of the first families to settle in the area.
Whitehead's family has a rich political history. His grandfather, Joseph Whitehead, was a congressman in the 1920s. Two of his uncles - John Whitehead of Radford and Hunt Whitehead of Chatham - served in the House of Delegates at the same time about 20 years ago.
Whitehead says his father, Claude Whitehead Sr., was the most influential force in his life.
When Claude Jr. was 14, his father turned over Whitehall's dairy operation to his youngest son.
"He told me I could have the profits if I made any," Whitehead remembers. "And I made sure I didn't lose money."
Claude Whitehead Sr. was worldly wise. He spent 17 years running the operations of the British American Tobacco Co. in Central America. In 1938, he returned to Pittsylvania County and later started its first Farm Bureau.
He also instituted the quota system that's used today to regulate the tobacco crop and its annual sale.
The quota system - and tobacco - are under attack nationally.
Claude Whitehead, just like his father, took a lead role locally to fight anti-tobacco legislation and sentiment.
"Tobacco is the lifeblood of this area," he says. "It's [a] $36 million a year industry. And that's money that stays here in the community. It would have a tremendous impact if that was taken away."
Whitehead helped start - and is now serving as chairman - of Concerned Friends of Tobacco, a Pittsylvania County-based political action committee.
The Virginia Tobacco Growers Association - based in Halifax County - has been established for years as a political vehicle for farmers. However, Whitehead says he felt the need for a new organization. "We just felt we could have more influence with the state and national politicians through the PAC."
Whitehead, who deems himself a conservative Virginia Democrat on all counts, believes in planning ahead.
"So many times government reacts instead of acting with vision," he says.
Whitehead's vision of massive changes proposed by Gov. George Allen and his Republican administration are what he says pushed him to run against Del. Allen Dudley, R-Rocky Mount.
"It worries me what will happen if the Republicans take over the legislature," he says. "I think we've always had a good state. Virginia, to me, is a cut above, and I don't like the direction were heading."
So far, the Dudley-Whitehead campaign has been a quiet one compared with other state races in the region.
But, according to the people who know him, that fits Claude Whitehead's style.
"He listens and he doesn't rush into anything," says Lionel Reynolds, a member of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors. "But he's always working."
Reynolds, who served with Whitehead for four years on the board, said it speaks volumes about Whitehead's ability that his peers chose to elect him chairman for six straight years from 1982-88. The board later appointed Whitehead acting county administrator - a job he filled for four months in 1993.
"He's a real bright man and he's an easy fella to work with," Reynolds says.
But not to fish with.
Reynolds remembers a fishing trip that he and Whitehead and several others took to the Eastern Shore a few years ago.
"All we wanted to do was go fishing," he says. "But we couldn't get Claude off the phone. He was trying to get an industry to come to Pittsylvania County. And you know what? We got it."
The industry was Intertape of Montreal - a company that employs more than 200 workers and operates an $80 million plant near Danville.
The county's economic growth is something that Whitehead speaks of with pride.
He founded the county's first economic development organization.
As a supervisor, he served on a board that laid the plans for a successful $23.5 million bond issue for a new library, renovation of the county courthouse and improvements to the county's schools.
Whitehead voted against increases in school budgets that he thought were unnecessary - although he says no school budget was cut below prior-year funding - and he voted for increases and reductions to the county's real estate tax rate.
"I voted to change the tax rate according to the amount of services we needed," he said.
As county administrator, Whitehead, knowing the landfill was nearing capacity, worked with supervisors to add a landfill initiative onto the $23.5 million bond issue that was later approved by voters.
The initiative enabled the county to expand its landfill and prevent an 11th-hour scramble to find a place to dump its trash.
"We were progressive," he said.
An editorial that ran in the Danville Register & Bee in 1986 - a short time after Whitehead announced he would not seek another term on the Board of Supervisors - mentioned the community improvements he had a hand in, and said his leadership would be missed on the local board.
But Whitehead's political career has had its down moments.
He lost the Democratic nomination for the 5th District seat in Congress to L.F. Payne in 1988.
In the 1970s, he lost the party's nomination for Pittsylvania County's state house seat after an infamous mass meeting was held in a Chatham parking lot.
The same Register & Bee editorial suggested that Whitehead's chances may have been spoiled by publicity surrounding the public downfall of his brother.
Joseph Motley Whitehead, Pittsylvania County's commonwealth's attorney from 1964-75, was convicted in 1977 of conspiracy to promote interstate prostitution and racketeering involving a ring of truck stops. He was convicted in 1978 of conspiracy to commit bribery in a 1974 drunken-driving case.
The case drew statewide attention.
"I was totally shocked when it happened," Claude Whitehead says. "All I could think about at the time was the effect it was going to have on my mother."
Did his brother's troubles affect Claude Whitehead's political standing?
"I don't know," he says. "I don't think about things like that."
Reynolds says Whitehead has spent his time building contacts across the state - something he's used to his advantage to accomplish many of his goals.
"He just knows so many people. I remember we were at a function at the Homestead when Gerald Baliles was governor. We're walking down the hall to eat breakfast and the governor comes up and says, 'How are you Claude?' I mean, here's the governor, and he knows Claude by name."
On a Wednesday earlier this month, Whitehead spent the morning - as he normally does - attending to dental patients, most of whom he's served for years out of a big white house on Main Street in Chatham.
He then made a quick trip to the post office a short distance away and stopped to gobble down two hot dogs and two cups of coffee - black - at Pat's Place, a local diner.
There's not a person at either stop that he doesn't know.
Back at home after lunch he pours a Pepsi into a plastic cup as Dixie Whitehead, a math teacher at Chatham Hall, prepares to run some errands.
The Whiteheads met as students at the University of Richmond, and they've been married 31 years.
When his wife leaves, Claude Whitehead moves to the living room of his home, where he leans back in a recliner.
Cuddles the cat jumps into his lap.
A painting of the Whitehead children dominates the room.
It's apparent that Whitehead, 56, is happy where he is.
He's asked why at this point in his life would he want to run an exhausting campaign for state office - as an underdog against a solid incumbent - in a district that stretches from Chatham to Moneta in Bedford County to the mountains of Floyd County.
"It would be easy to fade into oblivion, but it's not our civic responsibility to do that," he says. "What's going to be there for our children? That's important to me. I'm out there to give people a choice."
CLAUDE WHITEHEAD
Party: Democrat
Age: 56
Occupation: Dentist and tobacco farmer.
Residence: Whitehall, his farm outside of Chatham
Family: Wife, Dixie; son Claude III, 27; son Hunt, 25; daughter, Catherine, 21.
Keywords:
PROFILE POLITICS
by CNB