B. U. G. S.

BoardAd was kind enough to offer me condolences on the death of Jesse Helms. It is another case where BoardAd shows a remarkable understanding of me personally.

I knew Strom much better personally, of course, but I worked with Helms’ office. When we stopped racial quotas imposed on private schools with the Ashbrook-Dornan Amendments, which I initiated alone and we stopped with a 4-1 majority on the House Floor, Helms took over on the Senate side. Many times I would find that Helms had reprinted speeches I had written for AshBROOK and proposals I had initiated for AshBROOK.

In the late 1970s East was elected as Helms’ junior Senator from North Carolina. East was openly and proudly a Helms man. Right after the election, the lead man for moving East onto Capitol Hill, an old friend of mine, called and said “Senator East wants you to know that you are the first person on the Hill we contacted.”

Helms and East had talked about me at length. I had never been in Helms’ office, much less seen the man, but we had had a long and close relationship as fellow warriors.

People usually want to know how many times I SAW Reagan or had cocktails with the big guys. They are always disappointed when I give a vague answer. I almost never spoke with anyone on the Senate side personally, much less the Senator himself.

ANY Senator.

There is an old military saying, “Never send a man where a bullet can go.”

My rule is MORE important, because it deals with more than a skirmish in a battle that, if Congress had done its work right, would never had happened. That my rule of senior staff that is as rigid as the soldier’s rule cited above:

“Never go to a busy, literate man’s office when you can send him a memo.”

I didn’t call the bosses in until I had done ALL the groundwork and no more could be done without them.

Then I thought things out and wrote an excellent, SHORT memo. That’s why they hired a professional writer. If the man in the front office needed more, he would call me. They seldom needed to see me, and I considered it a bit of a defeat when they did.

I felt very close to Helms, although we almost never saw each other. As you can see from the example of Senator East above, he worked very closely with me. I just lost a friend and hero.

Thanks, BoardAd.