For the first time since she had been elected governor, Betty Raye was forced to start reading what she was to sign and even to make decisions by herself. Terrified that she would make a mistake, she stayed up until three and four o’clock in the morning, poring through books, trying desperately to learn as fast as possible how state government worked, while trying to deal with her two children as well. Hamm would call her from time to time and give her a pep talk, tell her he knew it was hard but that he had a duty and an obligation to the people of America to speak out on their behalf. This might be all well and good for America, she thought, but in the meantime she was left holding the bag, having to make decisions without any help. But she did the best she could. And a few people may have been surprised when their bond issue passed and was signed with the advice and recommendation she had received from Alberta Peets, who had been there and knew what she was talking about. She told Betty Raye she thought an appropriation of $15 million for the restoration of the Mabel Dodge Prison for Women was a fine idea.
Suddenly Betty Raye had to take a good hard look at what was really going on in the state. Paving roads and promoting business and building bridges was fine but she began to see a lot of little things that were wrong that Hamm had been too busy to be bothered with. She began to read all the letters addressed to the governor from women all across the state, letters that previously had always been answered by someone in Wendell’s office. Betty Raye found herself being touched and deeply moved by the real problems she read about. Women whose husbands had either died or left them, with no way of making a living. Some had even had to give up their children. Old women who had worked all their lives and had wound up penniless and without a place to go. Hundreds of letters came pouring in, their writers hoping that because she was a woman she would understand, letters they would never have written to another politician.
Betty Raye had always signed papers and done everything from upstairs. But now there were so many to sign it was getting harder to do. One morning she walked into the governor’s office, and for the first time sat down behind Hamm’s desk and pushed a button she hoped was the right one.
Someone she did not know answered and said loudly, “Yes?”
Betty Raye jumped back.
“Yes,” he said again.
She then leaned forward and asked in a small, apologetic voice, “Could you please bring me a list of all the state trade schools, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“Who is this?” the voice said.
“It’s the governor,” she said, surprised to hear it herself.
There was a long pause and then the sound of sudden realization. “Oh. Oh . . . yes, ma’am, right away.”
Betty Raye looked around the big room and waited. After a moment she picked up the nameplate on the desk that read GOVERNOR HAMM SPARKS, looked at it, then quietly opened a drawer and put it in and closed it.
Hamm was proud of all the trade schools he had opened but Betty Raye, who had never bothered to ask, discovered to her dismay that trade schools tended to be for males only. She also found out that the majority of the state scholarships offered were for boys. There were boys’ clubs, mentor programs, sports scholarships, all for boys, and nothing for the girls. Young boys who got into trouble were sent to boys’ farms and received help. Girls had few places to go.
That’s not fair, she thought. Betty Raye knew she had no real political power but the day she walked into a decaying and crumbling rat-infested building that served as the state school for the deaf and blind was a turning point. These were the children of the poor whose parents had been unable to care for them at home. She saw for herself how badly those children needed a clean place to live and study and how terribly understaffed and underpaid the teachers were. The worst moment was when a blind girl came feeling her way through the crowd, thinking Betty Raye might be her mother, and, once beside her, kept pulling at her skirt, repeating, “Momma, Momma,” over and over. Betty Raye was so shaken she could hardly make it to the car. She went home and sobbed. The little girl looked just like Beatrice Woods might have when she had been that age.
She did not know how she was going to do it but when Hamm came back for any length of time she was going to insist that if she was going to remain as the governor he was going to have to do something about these things.
For the first time in her life she was going to speak up.
The Gold Mine
HAMM CALLED Vita from Detroit as excited as she had ever heard him. He had just come back to his hotel from speaking to over five thousand members of the teamsters union. “I can win this thing, Vita. For the first time, I really see I have to run. Walter told me he could deliver all of the union vote. He said I was just what the country needed, that people were tired of being pushed around.”
“How did the speech go?”
“Great!”
Hamm had been campaigning nationally for just a few months but not only was he popular in the rural areas, as was expected, but to everyone’s surprise he was already starting to draw huge crowds in Chicago, Newark, and Pittsburgh, and was gaining momentum every day. Hamm had hit a nerve or, as one columnist put it, he had tapped into a gold mine of unrest in the country and he was the only candidate who was “telling it like it is,” saying publicly what they were thinking privately. Many people were upset at the way they thought the country was headed. They were angry at the way the federal government seemed to be forcing things on them they did not want. They worried that if someone did not stop it there was no telling where it would end. There was a growing concern in middle America that all the wealthy liberal eastern politicians, with their endless giveaway programs, were leading the nation down the road to socialism and bogging it down with needless bureaucracy.
Almost everyone was frustrated with the way the war was going and what they perceived to be a weakness on the part of the government to do anything to stop it. They were shocked at the lack of respect the protesters had for the American soldiers fighting in Vietnam, particularly those who had served in the Second World War and Korea. Ada Goodnight, who had been a pilot in the Second World War, said she would be happy to go to Vietnam right now if she could. To them war was war and a draft dodger was a traitor. There was racial unrest everywhere and uneasiness about the rise of crime, drugs, and gangs in the cities and how it was being handled. It seemed to numerous voters that, thanks to the growing power of the ACLU, criminals were beginning to have more rights than the victims. Preachers across the country were becoming alarmed about the young people’s apathy and lack of morals. Some blamed television. Or as Reverend W. W. Nails put it, “The devil has three initials: ABC, NBC, and CBS. They love Lucy more than they do the Lord and they would rather leave it to Beaver than to Jesus.” The average middle-class Americans who worked hard every day, who were not criminals, not on welfare, and had seldom complained, suddenly and collectively started showing signs of growing disillusionment, worried that with all the new social programs they were now going to have to carry the rich and the poor on their backs. They were tired of having to pay so much income and other taxes to support half the world while they struggled to make ends meet. They began to feel that no matter how hard they worked or how much they paid, it was never appreciated and it was never enough.
But most of all they were scared. They looked around and saw the bright and shining true-blue America they had known growing up beginning to tarnish, tear, and fall apart at the seams. Hamm Sparks knew exactly how to verbalize their fears and frustration for them. Unlike the rest of the potential candidates, he seemed to understand their point of view.