CHATTY BILL, ORVILLE HENRY AND NEW SHOES

Fulbright stories abound at forum; former senator left impression

Jim Blair (center) discusses his recollections of the late U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright on Thursday at The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History on the square in Fayetteville, along with Fulbright’s niece Patty Fulbright Smith and former Fulbright aide Hoyt Purvis. Others also shared their memories.
Jim Blair (center) discusses his recollections of the late U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright on Thursday at The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History on the square in Fayetteville, along with Fulbright’s niece Patty Fulbright Smith and former Fulbright aide Hoyt Purvis. Others also shared their memories.

FAYETTEVILLE -- Bill Clinton just wouldn't stop talking.

As a student at Georgetown University in the 1960s, Clinton got a gig driving U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright around Arkansas.

"Fulbright liked to sit and think and not be bothered," said Jim Blair, who managed Fulbright's unsuccessful 1974 re-election campaign. "At some point, I don't remember the context, [Clinton] winds up driving Sen. Fulbright around the state of Arkansas."

Afterward, Fulbright went to an aide and said, "That young man Clinton, he's smart but he likes to talk a lot," remembered Blair. "He said, 'I need to think, and I can't think when he's talking.' He said, 'I think yesterday there might have been 11 minutes in the day when he wasn't talking.'

"So Bill Clinton lost his job driving Fulbright around the state of Arkansas," said Blair, who later served as general counsel for Tyson Foods Inc.

Clinton later became president.

That was one of the stories told Thursday during a panel discussion on "personal recollections" of Fulbright.

The event was held at The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History on the downtown Fayetteville square.

Members of the U.S. State Department's J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board attended the panel discussion. The board met in Fayetteville from Tuesday through Thursday and signed a memorandum of understanding reaffirming its partnership with the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where the college of arts and sciences is named for Fulbright.

Participants in a panel discussion on U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright watch a short documentary on Fulbright on Thursday at The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History in Fayetteville.
Participants in a panel discussion on U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright watch a short documentary on Fulbright on Thursday at The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Oral and Visual History in Fayetteville.

Fulbright served for 30 years in the U.S. Senate and introduced legislation in 1945 that created the international educational exchange program that bears his name.

Another story told by Blair involved a case of mistaken identity.

In 1988, when Fulbright was 83 years old, he returned to Fayetteville, where he grew up, attended college and served as the president of the university before going on to a long career as a powerful Democratic senator.

"He has walked around all day and nobody has paid him any attention," said Blair. "Nobody has recognized him."

Blair and his wife, Diane, were standing with Fulbright and his second wife, Harriet, in the parking lot of a Walmart Supercenter.

"A woman rushes up and says, 'I know who you are! I know who you are!'" remembered Blair. "You could see him straighten his spine a little, and the light gets a little brighter in his eye.

"And she says, 'You're Orville Henry!'"

Henry, who died in 2002, is the best-known newspaper sportswriter in Arkansas history, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.

"Well, Bill Fulbright didn't admit to being Orville Henry, but he didn't deny it either," said Blair. "He stood there and listened to her for a while, and finally Harriet said, 'Come on, Orville, we've got to go.'"

Dave Capes, a former staff member for Sen. Fulbright, said he learned about a lot of Arkansas issues -- particularly fish farming -- by writing research reports for Fulbright.

"He loved to bum cigarettes," said Capes, who is a partner at Capes Sokol Law Firm in St. Louis. "He was a health-conscious man, but he had a little thing about smoking. He didn't smoke a lot, but if he thought you had some cigarettes, then you got on his good list."

Hoyt Purvis, another former Senate staff member for Fulbright, recalled the time he got Fulbright to do an interview for a 1974 documentary film about the Vietnam war called Hearts and Minds.

Several trucks and trailers showed up with lots of lighting equipment.

After the film crew got set up, they turned on their lights, and the entire Senate office building went dark, said Purvis, who is a UA journalism professor emeritus.

When the lights came back on, Fulbright was gone.

"He had wandered off," Purvis said. "But I found him. He'd gone up to the Foreign Relations Committee Room in the Capitol."

Fulbright's shoes were made for wandering.

When Blair took over Fulbright's re-election campaign in 1974, he was appalled by the senator's shoes.

"They looked terrible," said Blair. "I asked him about his shoes, and it turned out he had been wearing them for 35 years. They had been soled and resoled a dozen times. This led to some deep philosophical discussion between the two of us. I wanted him to get a decent looking pair of shoes. ... He was very reluctant to do that."

Fulbright told Blair that after his father died, his mother "traumatized" him with stories about how the family was going to end up in the county poorhouse. It didn't happen, but Fulbright never forgot those economic warnings.

"It engendered a frugality in him that was extraordinary and it led to his inability to buy a new pair of shoes," said Blair.

Blair finally got Fulbright to agree to buy a new pair of shoes, "and we threw in four new suits," he said.

But Fulbright still lost that 1974 re-election race to Gov. Dale Bumpers, who went on to serve 24 years in the Senate.

Blair said Fulbright lost the race because of his opposition to the Vietnam War.

"The polls showed he absolutely couldn't win the race," said Blair. "But everybody in their life should tilt at an occasional windmill."

A Section on 11/16/2018

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