ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 21, 1996 TAG: 9604230067
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY ROBERT HILLDRUP
HARRY BYRD OF VIRGINIA. By Ronald L. Heinemann. University of Virginia Press. No price listed.
In the history of state political bosses - the Talmadges of Georgia, the Longs of Louisiana, for example - Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia has to rank in a special class, so much so that it is hard to believe that he has been dead for 30 years or that the heir to his political philosophy, if not his organization, is a Republican like Gov. George Allen. Such are the contrasting changes in the political winds, and Ronald L. Heinemann, Squires Professor of History at Hampden-Sydney, presents the swirls and eddies in the life of Byrd - those which moved his organization to generations of power and those, at the end, which were blowing him rapidly away.
Byrd was born in 1887, the heir to a distinguished Virginia name, one with Tory antecedents that were to stand him in good stead. At 15, he dropped out of school and asked to take over a Winchester newspaper that his father owned and was preparing to abandon to its creditors.
Byrd made it work by counting pennies and spending each as if it had been plucked from his hide with red-hot forceps. A year later, at 16, he became manager of the local Bell Telephone and, in another year, was also president of the Valley Turnpike Company (at $33 a month). Is it any wonder that as governor in the '20s he demanded and received each day at 3 p.m. a detailed statement of disbursements, receipts and balances of state funds for the day? In a very real sense, Harry Byrd, whether as governor or during his long career as a U.S. Senator, spent every dime of the public's money as if it were his very own. It was a characteristic that endeared him to generations of Virginians, many of whom still remembered having lost everything to the Civil War.
Not that this was all altruism. Heinemann gives most of his conclusions about Byrd early in his narrative. Byrd, he writes, entered politics "to preserve or advance that which was beneficial to himself and his interests."
Heinemann also concludes that Byrd's lack of education "likely stunted his intellectual development," left him "unrefined and provincial" of mind and "wanting in tolerance, empathy and detachment." His world, Heinemann continues, "was restricted to ledger sheets and election results."
Despite these statements, this is not a hostile biography. Heinemann lauds Byrd's personal character. Nor, he says, was Byrd "dictatorial, impulsive or isolated" in "giving the nod" to those chosen to succeed to the governorship, a charge often made by Byrd opponents.
What Byrd had done, of course, was to use the poll tax to restrict the electorate, amend the law to give his organization, through the General Assembly and the governor's office, tight appointive control of such key posts as judges and the State Corporation Commission, and use "courthouse rings" to ensure local support of his state policies. What Byrd could not do, however, was change, and the desegregation movement was the catalyst that finally shattered much of his organization. He was a massive resister while some of his former allies, including Gov. J. Lindsay Almond of Roanoke, were giving way.
The Byrd who emerges in these pages is, ironically, a very thin-skinned person, particularly for a newspaperman. Most of his fights with the press were behind doors and seldom reported. What he never seemed to understand was that he was, in essence, coddled by the press, particularly in Richmond and late in his career, and certainly in comparison with coverage given political leaders in other states.
Heinemann restricts his book to Byrd Sr. Better perspective might have been obtained had he discussed his legacy, particularly as it applied to his immediate political heir, his son Harry Flood Byrd Jr. In retrospect, the Harry Byrd who emerges in these pages was a creature of his age. The politics of many of his supporters was not quite as clean as Byrd admirers are fond of advocating, but his financial practices stood Virginia in good stead for decades, even given their lack of a social dimension.
Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Harry Byrd.by CNB