| I began to drive down to the Ozarks once or twice a week to review the files and interview the old miners, with the understanding that any pay I got would come from fees from the cases I won
Lonnie knew I cared a lot about the issue and was familiar with how the program workedIts true that when the black-lung program was first implemented the evaluations were too lax and some people did get benefits who didnt need them, but as so often happens with government programs, the attempt to correct the problem went too far in the other direction
Even before I took over Jack Yatess cases, I had agreed to try to help another man in his fight for black-lung benefits from a small town south of Fort Smith, was the father of the administrator of Ouachita Hospital in Hot Springs, where Mother workedHe was about five feet four inches tall and couldnt have weighed much more than one hundred poundsJack was an old-fashioned man of quiet dignity, who was severely damaged by black lungHe was entitled to the benefits, and he and his wife badly needed them to help pay their billsIn the months we worked together, I came to respect both his patience and his determinationWhen we won his dolce and gabbana bags case, I was almost as happy as he was
I think there were more than one hundred cases like Jack Burnss in the stack of files Lonnie Turner gave meI enjoyed going down to Ozark from Fayetteville over the winding road known as the Pig Trail to work on themThe cases were heard first by an administrative law judge, Jerry Thomasson, who was a fair-minded RepublicanThey could then be appealed to the federal judge in Fort Smith, Paul XWilliams, who was a sympathetic DemocratSo was his longtime clerk, Elsijane Trimble Roy, who was a great help to meI was elated when President Carter appointed her Arkansas first female federal judge
While I continued my teaching, politics, and law work, Hillary was settling into life in FayettevilleI could tell she really liked being there, maybe even enough to stayShe taught Criminal Law and Trial Advocacy, and oversaw both the legal-aid clinic and the students who did work for prison inmatesSome of the crusty old lawyers and judges and a few of the students didnt know what to make of her at first, but eventually she won them overBecause there is a constitutional right to a lawyer in a criminal case, our judges assigned local lawyers to 18k omega watch represent poor defendants, and since poor criminal defendants almost never paid, the bar wanted Hillarys clinic to handle their casesIn its first year, it served more than three hundred clients and became an established institution at the law schoolIn the process, Hillary earned the respect of our legal community, helped a lot of folks who needed it, and established the record that, a few years later, led President Carter to appoint her to the board of directors of the national Legal Services Corporation
Jimmy Carter was our featured speaker on Law Day, near the end of the spring termIt was clear that he was running for PresidentHillary and I spoke with him briefly, and he invited us to continue the conversation down in Little Rock, where he had another engagementOur talk confirmed my sense that he had a good chance to be electedAfter Watergate and all the countrys economic problems, a successful southern governor who wasnt involved in Washingtons politics and could appeal to people the Democrats had lost in 1968 and 1972 seemed like a breath of fresh airSix months earlier, I had gone to Dale Bumpers and urged him to run, saying, In 1976, someone like you is going to be replica cartier tank electedIt might as well be youHe seemed interested but said it was out of the question; he had just been elected to the Senate, and Arkansas voters wouldnt support him if he immediately started running for PresidentHe was probably right, but he would have been a terrific candidate and a very good President
Besides our work and normal social life with friends, Hillary and I had a few adventures in and around FayettevilleOne night we drove south down Highway 71 to Alma to hear Dolly Parton singI was a big Dolly Parton fan, and she was, you might say, in particularly good form that nightBut the most enduring impact of the evening was that it was my first exposure to the people who brought her to Alma, Tony and Susan AlamoAt the time, the Alamos sold fancy performance outfits in Nashville to many of the biggest country music starsThats not all they didTony, who looked like Roy Orbison on speed, had been a promoter of rock-and-roll concerts back in California, when he met Susan, who had grown up near Alma but had moved out west and become a television evangelistThey teamed up, and he promoted her as he had his rock and rollersSusan had white-blond hair and often wore louis vuitton diaper bags floor-length white dresses to preach on TVShe was pretty good at it, and he was great at marketing herThey built a small empire, including a large farming operation manned by devoted young followers as transfixed by them as the young acolytes of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon were by their leaderWhen Susan got cancer, she wanted to come home to ArkansasThey bought a big house in Dyer, her hometown, opened the place in Alma, where Dolly Parton sang, as well as a smaller version of their Nashville country outfit store just across the road, and had a big truckload of food from their California farm delivered each week to feed them and their Arkansas contingent of young laborersSusan got on TV at home, and enjoyed some success until she finally succumbed to her illnessWhen she died, Tony announced that God had told him he was going to raise her from the dead someday, and he put her body in a glass box in their home to await the blessed dayHe tried to keep their empire going with the promise of Susans return, but a promoter is lost without his productWhen I was governor, he got into a big fight with the government over taxes and staged a brief, nonviolent standoff of sorts around his pink vuitton bag ho |