The Artistic Adulterer

The Artistic Adulterer

                              Doctor Toby Goodfellow, a leading citizen of Dullsville, a sleepy, little town on the coast north of San Francisco, fancied himself as a fine amateur artist, and spent many weekends painting seascapes, landscapes, weather beaten old barns and architecturally interesting structures in roadside country villages. His portfolio was expansive, a display of the most scenic views throughout the North Coast counties. He always stayed in a resort or motel with a beautiful view, and often rented two rooms, one of which was reserved for his easel, paper, canvas, brushes, oils, water colors and acrylics. In that room he painted undisturbed, often for hours on end, leaving his companion to entertain herself.  Often he painted three, four, even five or six paintings over the weekend, but he never failed to paint the view as seen from the veranda of his motel or resort room, his weekend studio.  He hung his paintings in the waiting room of his office, in the treatment rooms, even in the bathrooms.   It made his day whenever one of his patients remarked, “Oh, Doctor, I just love your paintings.  It’s like I’ve seen some of those places myself!”            

                               One Monday during the annual physical examination of a patient, who was in fact not only a patient but also the doctor’s good friend in whom he often confided, declared how much he liked a seascape that was hanging in the examination room.  Goodfellow, who loved to talk about his art, smilingly confided that the seascape, just completed the previous weekend, was “…painted yesterday, during a weekend tryst with my sweetie.” The friend, a bit of a libertine, received this declaration with a sly wink at Goodfellow, assuming of course that the sweetie was a mistress. The friend could not wait to tell his best friend that Goodfellow had a mistress who was the inspiration for his artistic creations. That friend in turn confided in yet another friend and before the paint was dry on the seascape, word had spread far and wide as the townsfolk put their heads together and shared the tantalizing piece of gossip that Dr. Goodfellow has a mistress who accompanies him on his painting excursions. In cafes, barbershops, beauty salons, supermarkets and even during coffee hour in church fellowship halls everybody was sharing their speculations as to just who was the mysterious mistress.

The collection of paintings grew--more landscapes, seascapes, even moonscapes, each of which he hastily commenced and completed during a weekend of painting, interrupted only when he turned from his canvas to the bedsheets, where his Sweetie lay patiently awaiting his creative attention.  Notwithstanding the haste with which he applied his brushstrokes, the paintings were pleasing, and Sweetie was pleased as well.

                               Overnight Goodfellow's business boomed. Titillated by the rumor that the paintings were memorabilia of the doctor's dalliances with his paramour, patients, new and old, lined up to see the doctor on the slightest suggestion of pain or irregularity, ailments that more often than not were artfully invented. The doctor’s waiting room overflowed with men and women suffering a common ailment, dying of curiosity. They studied the paintings, took smart phone photos, and chatted amongst themselves, comparing theories on just where such and such a painting had been rendered and what nearby resort or motel had been Goodfellow’s love nest.   

Doc-teling became a county-wide favorite weekend activity for husbands and wives,  lovers and friends, even groups of high school kids, all looking for the scenes of the paintings and the motels where Goodfellow had conducted his artistic and amorous activities.  Armed with their digital cameras on which they had recorded images of the paintings in the doctor’s waiting room, they traveled hither and there throughout the county on their titillating treasure hunts.  Those couples who were successful, or at least who had convinced themselves that they had found a locale of  an affair stood, their arms encircling each other, quietly enjoying the discovery of the very spot the doctor must have painted such and such a picture. Filled with voyeuristic excitement, lusty emotion and even some measure of true affection, they renewed their love at the nearest motel, certain that it had been a site of one of Goodfellow's dalliances.

Business boomed in the motels, whose owners marveled at how many couples actually seemed to be married. Showers were planned for middle-aged women, some of whom were grandmothers, who unexpectedly learned that they were expecting.  Balding, middle-aged fathers of grown children walked about town, a bounce in their step, back straight, chest out, rejuvenated and energized by many doc-teling weekends.  They beamed with pride and handed out celebratory cigars as they bragged about still having what it takes, even at their age, each swearing that they had not needed the little blue pill.  Indeed, the only prescription needed was a dose, once weekly, of doc-teling.

Not everyone was pleased by this turn of events. Marriage counselors and divorce attorneys suffered a disastrous drop in business.   On the other hand, business at the cafes, taverns, beauty parlors, barber shops surged as townspeople gathered to boast about how many of doc-teling sites they had discovered. A friendly competition developed as to who could find the most doc-tel motels. The entry fee was $25, deposited in escrow at the local title company and to be awarded to the winner.  When disputes arose, they were settled by a committee composed of the mayor, the police chief and the fire chief, who visited the alleged scenes to make a final and binding determination by comparing photographs of Goodfellow’s paintings to the scenic view claimed to be the subject of the painting in question.  The town clerk eagerly assumed the task of keeping a tally.  The town leaders decided that it was only fair that there be three prizes, $500 for first prize, $300 for second, and $100 for third. To encourage participation, the town fathers set aside funds to reimburse participants for their costs of participating in the contest—dining out, expensive motel and resort accommodations and pills for E.D. The town fathers, all in their 50’s and 60’s and all participating,  wisely determined that winning participants would not have to itemize their expenses.

The community was reaping such enjoyment from the doctor's affair that no one breathed a word of what was going on to Goodfellow’s wife, Innocence.  Innocence’s best friends, fellow members of the sewing circle and the Women’s Aid Society, inwardly sympathetic with Innocence’s plight were tempted to expose the doctor's infidelity but dared not. They did their utmost to keep the secret, to protect the new life injected into their lives that would be destroyed if Innocence were to discover Goodfellow’s infidelity.  There was a silent conspiracy: do everything possible to prevent a return to the dreary, boring life of the “old” Dullsville.

Dullsville loved its Renaissance. The newfound vitality of the town cried out for a more fitting town name.  The town council passed an ordinance changing the town’s name to Loversville!-- complete with the exclamation point. No longer was the town Dullsville or dull.

But then Goodfellow’s daughter Prudence returned home from college. One evening her boyfriend proposed that she go doc-teling with him. She insisted that he explain what that meant. He hemmed and hawed, torn between being forthright and honest with Prudence and threatening the town’s rebirth by disclosing Goodfellow’s infidelities. The boyfriend’s stammering evasion of her demands just ignited her curiosity and planted the suspicion that perhaps the “doc” in doc-teling could somehow relate to her father. After all, he was the only doctor in town.  She hammered on her boyfriend until he finally relented.   He poured forth the story of Goodfellow’s role in Dullsville’s revitalization.  As he spoke he feared that no good would come from the revelation. He was so right.

                              Prudence was outraged. She vowed to seek vengeance on behalf of her mother. Her first impulse was to find her father's shotgun and pepper his derriere and that of his mistress with buckshot. She discarded that solution. It was too simple. She needed a plan that befitted a Phi Beta Kappa. She decided not to tell her mother. Learning that her husband was a chronic philanderer would break her heart. But it must be possible, Prudence thought, to put an end to his affair without devastating her mother and precipitating a divorce. She did not want to do anything that would disclose her father's infidelities to her mother, but she was determined not to let him off the hook unscathed. She spent many sleepless nights considering and rejecting plan after plan, some too harsh, others to lenient, but none just right. The solution came to her in the middle of the night. She threw back the covers, got out of bed, found paper and pen and scribbled some notes, the outline of a plan that she smugly believed would put an end to her father's artistic dabbling without collateral damage.

During one on Goodfellow's weekend trips Prudence spent the better part of a day in removing the paintings from his office and hanging them in the Fellowship Hall of the First Evangelical Church, where Goodfellow served as a deacon, at least on those Sundays that he was not worshiping at another altar. She telephoned all of her father's business and social acquaintances, including the mayor, police chief, fire chief as well as his patients, urging them to drop everything and come to the church to help her "to do the only proper thing that a daughter could do to honor such a talented father, to provide him with public recognition for his artistic accomplishments."  Everyone agreed to attend.  Word of the event spread throughout the community by twitter and text. Fellowship Hall was filled to capacity an hour before the event was scheduled to begin. 

Upon Goodfellow’s return from his weekend of paint…and paramour so far as Prudence suspected, Prudence propelled him, confused and questioning, his latest canvas in hand, into the church.  Confronted with the collection of his paintings and two hundred of his friends and patients, he turned to Prudence demanding, “What in the world is going on?” Her response was lost in the applause, cheering and lengthy standing ovation of the excited crowd.  To this cheering crowd of aging couples, nearly all of whom were doc-telers, Goodfellow was a hero. After all, he had prescribed, albeit unknowingly, the medicine that had rescued them from their dull and monotonous lives and marriages.  

Prudence grabbed his hand and pulled him to the stage. He angrily demanded, “What in God’s name is this all about?”  Her response was a silent sinister smirk.  Goodfellow’s expression passed from anger to confusion and then to pride as he realized that the crowd, still standing and cheering, was present to recognize his artistic achievements.  He smiled at Prudence. She did not return his smile; she smirked again, turned away and approached the podium.  When the applause quieted, Prudence began her speech. 

"Friends, in this age of lost values in art and life, it is indeed marvelous to discover a man such as my father whose art reflects none of the cheap adulteration," --at which point she paused, focusing a cold stare upon her father, and then continued. "No, none of the cheap adulteration so common in life today. As you study his paintings, appreciate the purity of his palette, the strength and deliberation of his sensual brush strokes, the unsullied beauty of his paintings.  In a few minutes you will be able to take time to study and appreciate his work.  Take pleasure in viewing these paintings which have brought pleasure to others whom we may never meet, admirers known only to the artist." 

Prudence turned to her father. "Dear father, please share your thoughts with us.”  Goodfellow, although beaming with pride and completely loving his five minutes of fame, at heart was an unselfish man and knew that this moment must be shared. "Dear friends, these paintings, collected here for you by my loving daughter would not exist but for the inspiration of my sweetie, who on many of our weekend outings, waited alone patiently and unselfishly for long hours as I painted."  He looked out at the crowd and spotted his sweetie. Stepping to the edge of the stage, he extended his hand and said, “Sweetie, please join me here on the stage.”

A deadly hush fell over the crowd. Yet in that silence the unspoken outrage, incredulity and for some, amusement, was deafening.  Dr. Goodfellow was about to reveal his lover in public!  How incredible! How unbelievable! How shameful!  It was one thing voyeuristicly to enjoy Goodfellow’s doc-tels and to paint their own canvases, so to speak, but quite another to be confronted in public with the very characters of their fantasies. Whatever outrage, embarrassment or disbelief they harbored, not one person stormed out in anger.  Indeed, everyone looked around. Some even stood so as to survey the entire room, searching for an unfamiliar face, searching for this shameful hussy Sweetie. 

Goodfellow extended his hand to a woman in the front row.  Innocence rose and joined him on the stage.  

Overnight, the town reverted to its sleepy, boring self.   The ordinance changing the town's name was repealed.   Loversville became just a fond memory, a legend, a fond reminiscence – but it did leave a lively heritage, a constant reminder of those happy days: nearly two dozen toddlers whose parents are often mistaken as their grandparents.

©Kerry Gough 2016

                                                     Shopping at Nordstrom
                                                       
            While my wife is trying on dresses, I sit in the overstuffed chair sipping coffee which the salesgirl has served. A coffee table separates me from a matching chair where another husband sits. There are copies of Elle, G.Q. and Esquire on the table. The other husband also has coffee. Nordstrom’s sales strategy is to comfort and pamper us husbands, lulling us to inaction as our wives freely shop.  But I am hardly inactive.  Here, among the designer dresses, I am on the prowl, the hunter, the lover, the psychic seducer.
         
           I sip my coffee.  The wife of the other husband exits the dressing room, approaches her husband tentatively and asks, "What do you think?"  He is clever.  He smiles and asks in turn, "Do you like it, honey?"  "Yes, but what do you think?"  "It's great," he says, but he can hardly disguise his impatience. I know that his real thoughts are, "Hurry up! Buy it and let's get out of here."

            Actually, the dress looks like a loose sack on her.  It hides what I had observed earlier to be a curvaceous body.  I had closely studied her as she displayed a number of dresses still on their hangers to her husband before she disappeared into the dressing room.  

            My imagination had followed her into the dressing room and watched her strip to her underwear to try on the dress.  She wore a pink lacy bra that hooked in front.  There was a spattering of freckles sprinkled across her full breasts which were lovely and which should not be lost and unseen in that sack.  Her legs were exquisitely shaped, from narrow ankles to supple and firm calves and thighs.
 
            Now she stands before her husband, still undecided about the dress and uncertain about his easy acquiescence to her choice. I stare at her with a bemused look.  When she glances my way and notices my stare, I move my head in a slight, nearly imperceptible negative nod.  She blushes, looks away and darts back into the dressing room.  She returns without the dress.  "I don't think it really fits well," she says, and her husband shrugs, gets up and walks away.  She starts to follow him, but as she passes in front of me, she glances down. And I again nod at her, but this time with an approving slight nod and with a small smile.  
 
            Our eyes meet. She hesitates, stops, and returns my smile.  She does not look away, permitting me to imagine us connected in an immeasurably brief moment of intimacy, holograms of ourselves embracing in space, in open but secret defiance of our oblivious spouses.  When she averts her eyes, the hologram vanishes.  It is over, we are done, and she is gone.

            My wife soon emerges from the dressing room, three new dresses in hand, unaware of my psychic, silent, secret infidelity. As is our usual habit, we terminate our outing in Nordstrom’s third floor cafe, where we sip cappuccinos and chat. Across the room from us, I see my anonymous lover from the designer dresses section. I catch her eye and smile.  But the magic of our earlier intimacy is not repeated. She turns away as if I were a total stranger.  

           I shrug and return my attention to my wife.  We talk about my daughter's wedding plans, how lucky we are to have a good cleaning lady, and when am I going to get around to cleaning out the garage, an item on the honey-do list for the past year or so.

          When my cappuccino is but a residue of foam at the bottom of the cup, we leave.
My wife is pleased with her new dresses.

          I, too, am content.  It has been a pleasant afternoon shopping at Nordstrom.

© Kerry Gough 2013-2015

Dear Jeff review selected for publication in Kirkus Magazine

A few weeks ago Kirkus Book Reviews reviewed Dear Jeff. Today I was thrilled to receive the following 

email from Kirkus. 

 

"Your review for “Dear Jeff” was selected by our Indie Editors to be featured in Kirkus Review 8/15 Issue. Congratulations! Your review will appear as one of the 35 reviews in the Indie section of the magazine which is sent out to over 5,000 industry professionals (librarians, publishers, agents, etc.) Less than 10% of our Indie reviews are chosen for this, so it's a great honor." 

Learn more about this book at www.dearjeffbook.com 

From time to time I will post a piece short piece of fiction or whimsy.  Here is some whimsical fiction

A Birkenstock Betrayal

A few years ago I betrayed my wife.  I bought a pair of Birkenstocks.  You see, she hates Birkenstocks.  There is an explanation for this irrational reaction to this trendy footwear. She associates it with Berkeley.  That is, the Republic of Berkeley, with its own foreign policy, its aid programs to the dropouts camped out on Telegraph Avenue, street barriers that make it impossible to cross town in a direct route, and its middle and upper middle class gentrified, hippified citizens, pony tailed males ambulating and braless moms publicly lactating, in—you guessed it—their pricey Birkenstocks. 

In a moment of shameless selfishness, insensitive to my wife’s disdain for all things Berkeley, I bought a pair of Birkenstocks.  Never before had I ventured so far from the mainstream of conservative dress.  On days that I was not seeing clients, my typically attire was a pair of freshly pressed khakis, a blue, button down dress shirt, sans tie, and a navy sport coat with my simple gold oak tree lapel pin signifying my former service on the Oakland Civil Service Board.  When I went to court my dress was more formal: a nice suit and carefully coordinated shirt and tie. And of course, the latest in Italian footwear, notwithstanding the punishment it inflicted upon my hammertoes.

Hammertoes, for those of you spared that often painful ailment, are toes characterized by the first joint that ignores the established protocol that toes are to extend straight forward from the end of the foot. Hammertoes, on the other hand, or foot as the case must be, arrogantly, proudly, and indeed, self-righteously, thrust their first joint straight up, defying any stylish shoe to fit comfortably.

In my younger days, as a drug defense lawyer, my LSD manufacturing clients praised my stylish attire.  My hair curled in a flip over the shoulders of my navy blue, double breasted polyester suit with bell bottom trousers. A carefully trimmed, reddish brown beard completed the look of the day, the hip lawyer seeking justice for his hippy drug dealer clients.  In those days, Birkenstocks would have been de rigueur on Mondays through Fridays, the casual days at the office.

Those days are long past.  I gave up criminal defense work and hippie attire to devote myself to more honorable legal pursuits, in the civil arena suing bad drivers and bad bosses in accident and employment cases.

I repeat-- I am in a quandary. Why, at age 70, did I purchase my first pair of Birkenstocks?  Why at this late stage of life did I buy a pair of sandals that are commonly associated with youth and vigor, college students and young singles and married couples, climbing upward in middle class society in their Birkenstocks? 

 Perhaps I have always been a Birkenstock person. I lived in Berkeley (during a former marriage) for 12 years, raised my kids there, and drove a VW wagon.  I back packed, snow camped, cross-country skied, represented a neighborhood group against development of a 7-11 in the Elmwood District of Berkeley, and did all those

Birkenstock kinds of things.  Moreover, I am a liberal Democrat, former president of the Alameda County Democratic Lawyers’ Club, a civil rights attorney, many years a Sierra Club member, occasional contributor to the ACLU and other right minded causes—apparently well qualified to wear Birkenstocks.

Why did I wait until the 17^th year of marriage to a Republican (present wife), did I choose to purchase Birkenstocks, for goodness sakes?

Was this a passive -aggressive act of defiance, an expression of my sovereign independence and exercise of my freedom to be shod as I please, notwithstanding my Republican wife’s disdain for Birkenstocks?  I think not.  She and I had enough to discuss given our political diversity. My choice of sandals is an issue that does not rise, unlike my hammertoes, to a level deserving debate.  Oh, I have paid the price. My wife’s sidelong glances of imperious disapproval have not gone unnoticed, nor have I been oblivious to her distancing herself from me when I accompany her shopping at Saks, which, by the way, does not carry Birkenstocks. 

                       

When I buckled on my first pair of Birkenstocks, it was not an act of rebellion, defiance or infidelity. What I did was an act completely consistent with my political beliefs and career of fighting for the underdog.  It is all about freedom. It is civil rights and emancipation of the oppressed.  For years I have hidden my ugly hammertoes, ashamed to display them in public.  On the beach I burrowed them beneath the sand, and at work I shamefully imprisoned them in cruel, unusual and uncomfortable positions in painfully narrow and thin Italian shoes, smothering their cries and anguished yearnings to be free.

Many, many times I had strolled by the Birkenstock store on College Avenue in Oakland glanced in the window, hesitated, fighting temptation to enter, but always sighed, turned and walked away, hammertoes protesting with each step.

I never entered until that fateful day last year.

I am no Abe Lincoln, I am no Rosa Parks, but on that day I became, in my own small way, an emancipator and freedom fighter.  I entered the Birkenstock store. I cast aside my Ballys, I buckled on my first Birkenstocks and proclaimed the freedom of my hammertoes.

Now, shod in Birkenstocks, my ten little friends and I ambulate free and unfettered, free, free at last.

©Kerry Gough

                                    

50th Anniversary of My Summer as a Civil Rights Volunteer in Rural Mississippi in 1965

FIFTY YEARS AGO my wife and I woke up every day in Clarence and Millie Hall's immaculate farm house on the Mississippi River. . Clarence and Millie were active in the Civil Rights Movement and had volunteered to host us for the summer.

We were there as volunteers for the NAACP Inc. Fund, working on a school desegregation project. The Federal Court had ordered the school district encompassing Sharkey and Issaquena Counties to allow Black kids entering grades one through three to enroll in the white elementary school in Rolling Fork.

On registration day, many of the Black kids were turned away for frivolous reasons, such as they did not have written permission allowing them to transfer from  the rundown Black elementary school, Of course there was no such requirement in the court order.

About 30 kids enrolled, and many of them survived the resulting hostility, which included Ku Klux Klan cross-burnings at their homes.

NOW, FIFTY YEARS LATER conditions are better for Black kids in rural Mississippi, They have better schools, well at least somewhat integrated schools.  I say somewhat integrated because most of the white kids are enrolled in private white schools, where Black kids are excluded by discriminatory policies or less overt barriers such as prohibitively expensive tuition.

If you would like to read more about that summer of 1965 and how it contributed to Judy and my decision to adopt 7 year old abandoned black twins, and my later work as a Justice Department attorney assigned to southeast Mississippip, please read Dear Jeff, available at Amazon.com
Also, learn more at  dearjeffbook.com.

Book Published and I Am Back to Blogging

        You may have noticed that after I returned from Africa 7 years ago, I stopped posting blogs. I turned my writing efforts to completion of my book, Dear Jeff, which had lain dormant for many years after its commencement. I completed and published DEAR JEFF in February and it is now available at Amazon, or directly from me.
       DEAR JEFF is a series of posthumous letters to my adopted African American son, Jeff, and is a chronicle of our adventure in cross-racial adoption, growing up black and white, volunteering in the civil rights fight in rural Mississippi in 1965, and the story of an integrated family's hope, disappointment, joy and despair, ending in reconciliation. The reviews of Dear Jeff have been encouraging:
      Touching "I just finished you book, which I found a very honest, very touching, very worthy tribute to the complexities of family relationships, especially to your loving and sad and beleaguered relationship with Jeff." Judith Viorst, Author of Necessary Losses, a New York Times bestseller.
      Heart-rending "A personal, heart-rending story of struggle and anguish in the face of unconditional love...While more broadly exploring the bonds and strains of interracial adoptive parenthood,the brave, cathartic writing also offers a window to street-level racial tensions during the civil rights movement." Kirkus Reviews
       A Must Read "The book is honest and direct and causes each of us to ask questions about individuals who are placed in our own destiny--what can we do when the outcome is headed for a very different direction? Gough's tenacity is not only personally reflecting his own journey of insecurity and continuous changes as a child but also perhaps his career as a civil rights attorney defending the rights of the disadvantaged. Dear Jeff is a must read for all of us who wrestle with overcoming obstacles that we really have no role in creating." Arthur Ammann, M.D., Founder of Global Strategies.
      Amazing Read "Thank you for sharing your wonderful and amazing story with me. It was deeply touching, educational and says so much about the human capacity for compassion." Thelton Henderson 
      Elegantly and sensitively written "A fascinating story of the troubled relationship between father and adopted son. Heartbreaking and brutally honest, but elegantly and sensitively written. No sloppy sentimentality to be found anywhere." Charles Farnsworth, author and civil rights attorney.

      Enough about the book. Future blogs will feature short fiction and fantasies, or whatever whets my creative appetite.

Desegregating Monterey

“Specialist, just exactly what does this mean?” demanded the African American Army captain, pointing to an item on the rental listing card, “Restrictions: Racial, yes.”

During my first year and a half of cushy service as Ford Ord’s Military Housing Representative stationed at the Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce no one had every remarked, much less complained, that over 85% of my rental listings were racially restricted. It was early 1963 and there were no laws prohibiting housing discrimination. I routinely and thoughtlessly directed African Americans to Seaside, a small city nestled between Ft. Ord and Monterey, the only community on the Monterey Peninsula relatively free from housing discrimination.

Shortly before my anticipated “early out” discharge so I could start law school, my complicity in the Army’s perpetuation of race discrimination came to an abrupt end upon the African American captain’s arrival at my desk. A rainbow of service ribbons adorned his jacket. His silver captain’s bars sparkled. His bright, cheerful disposition matched his bars. “Good morning specialist, I understand that you have some houses for rent. I need a place for my family. Base housing told me nothing was available on post.” I opened up a map of the Monterey Peninsula, oriented him to it, and handed him binders containing listings for two and three bedroom homes on the Monterey Peninsula.

Within seconds he addressed me again, cooly and courteously, but with a restrained anger in his voice. “Specialist, just exactly what does this mean?” “Sir, that means they will not rent to you because you are a Negro.”

“Don’t you know that the President has ordered the military not to cooperate with landlords who discriminate?” “No,sir,” I replied, “I have never been told that.” After several minutes of flipping through the listings, he told me he was going to go back to the base housing office, thanked me, turned and left. I immediately called the sergeant and related what had happened. He told me not to worry about it, that there was in fact a vacancy on post if he came back. But what about the President’s order? The sergeant brushed me off. The order was just for PR, it meant nothing and for me to get back to work and quit hassling him about things that were none of my business.

It became my business. I was uncomfortable disobeying an order of the Commander in Chief, PR or not. I began to dread it when Black soldiers came in seeking help that I could not give them. The image of the captain, so impressive in his stature and bearing, so restrained in his anger, would not leave me. The injustice of what had happened gnawed at me. I met with some civil rights workers in Seaside. That night I fell asleep with their command ringing in my ears, “You’ve got to do something.” But how could a lowly Specialist 4th class take on the army?

There was a way. I had been a journalism major the year I spent at U.C. Berkeley and was assistant editor of the UCSB newspaper. I knew something aout the power of the press. I called the local newspaper. The next morning the story ran. The headline proclaimed the Army’s discriminatory practices. I was quoted. My statistics were quoted. The President’s order was quoted. Upon my arrival at work that morning, the Chamber manager coolly told me to call my sergeant immediately. I was in deep trouble. A car was being sent for me. The sergeant, the base housing officer and I were to report to the Commanding General. “You can forget about getting your early out,” the sergeant threatened, “because your next duty post will be in the swamps of the south, where they know how to take care of “nigger-lovers.”

Within minutes the brown Chevy sedan pulled up in front of the Chamber office. We stopped at the base housing office. My sergeant and captain got in. Nothing was said. When we got to the Commanding General’s spacious office, I was instructed to sit down and wait.

The sergeant, the base housing officer, the Commanding General and several other officers conversed at a conference table across the room. I waited, as ordered, on an unpadded oak chair next to the door. As the brass quietly debated my fate my mind raced wildly, agonizing about the punishment they were plotting for me. The early release for law school was out, that was certain. Would they court martial me? No, it would be simpler to send me to the south to die in a swamp at the hands of red-neck soldiers. My fate was sealed. I was dead meat.

After an eternity, the Commanding General addressed me. “Specialist!” I came to attention. “Come here, please.” I marched to the conference table and stood rigidly at attention. He did not put me at ease. He studied me forever. Finally he spoke. “Specialist, you are to return to your duty post. Call each of the landlords. Explain that you cannot list racially restricted property. Remove every listing that remains restricted. And Specialist, the next time you want to talk to the press, clear it first with the base public relations officer.”

“Yes, sir!”

That order ended my civil rights confrontation with the Army but marked the beginning of a career of fighting discrimination. The experience ignited a passion for civil rights. I joined the Law Students’ Civil Rights Research Council, spent the summer of 1965 in Mississippi working on a school desegregation project, went to work for the Civil Rights Division of the U. S. Department of Justice upon graduation and was a trial lawyer for 42 years, with a major part of my time devoted to civil rights cases.

I owe a lot to that distinguished Army captain. He launched my civil rights career by challenging the illegal status quo by asking a question that had to be asked, “Specialist, exactly what does this mean?”