A little while ago I stood at Jim Wright’s grave in Weatherford’s historic Greenwood Cemetery. Weatherford! Though thou be little compared to giant Fort Worth, as Old Testament prophet Micah would write, out of thee came one who would be Speaker of the House and third in line for President. He was your Mayor before he was Fort Worth’s Congressman. Four hours before his assassination in Dallas, President John F. Kennedy glorified him at a Fort Worth breakfast as an outstanding Congressman.
Jim and I were both in World War II. We were both in harm’s way. Jim served the first two years of the war as a Bombardier on a B-24. I served the last two years on the USS Bowie APA-137 as a Sight-Setter on a five-inch/38-cal anti-aircraft gun.
On August 13, 1943, after a 1,400 mile flight from Northern Australia, Jim dropped a bomb that blew up a Japanese oil refinery at Balikpapan, Borneo.
At Okinawa on May 12, 1945, the voice of the Bowie’s Captain came over the speaker: “All hands man your battle stations.” As I was running to my gun, a Japanese Kamikaze flew over the Bowie and plowed into the Battleship New Mexico off our port side. Great balls of fire!
Fast forward nine years to 1954. Jim defeated Amon Carter’s Congressman, Wingate Lucas. In July 1960 we were both Delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles where John F. Kennedy was nominated. During one session of the convention, Jim and I talked strategy on the lawn outside the hall. He was smoking cigarettes. One after the other.
In 1987 after 33 years in Congress, Victory! He was elected Speaker of the House. How sweet it was! But then on May 31, 1989, target of crafty counsel, to use the Psalmist’s words, Newt Gingrich assailing him about royalties for a book he had written, Jim stood up in the House and in so many words told the baying hounds: “Take this job and shove it!” He came home. Back in Fort Worth, he taught a government class at Texas Christian University, gave lectures and wrote books. Two of his last were Balance of Power and Worth It All.
And what about Newt Gingrich, who himself became Speaker? Now it came to pass that under fire as Speaker for his own book deal, he was reprimanded by Congress for improperly using tax deductions. Like Esther’s Haman, it could be said that Gingrich was hung on the same gallows he had prepared for Jim Wright.
In 1991, Jim had surgery for tongue cancer. In 1999, he had surgery again for cancer in his jawbone. The operation removed a cancerous jawbone and allowed him 17 more years. But gone forever was that golden voice and silver tongue. Damned cigarettes!
I sat with him at his last TCU symposium on March 30, 2015. He handed me his last speech, on which he had scrawled: “For love, dear long-standing friend, Don Woodard. Jim Wright.”
His spoken words being unintelligible, his speech about Sam Rayburn was read by Jim Riddlesperger. Just 37 days later, on May 6, he belonged to history.
He met with Kipling’s Triumph and Disaster and treated those two imposters just the same. He heard the truth he spoke twisted by fools and watched the things he gave his life to broken and stooped and built them up with worn-out tools and never breathed a word about his loss.
What Shakespeare wrote about Duncan in Macbeth can with slight change be applied to Jim:
Jim Wright is in his grave.
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.
Cancer has done his worst. Nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.
As I left the grave, I thought of Mark Antony’s Farewell to Caesar:
O eloquent, silver-tongued Speaker, dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure? Was it really Worth it All?
When, like in country-western singer Porter Wagoner’s song, he laid himself down for his eternal rest, Jim chose not Fort Worth’s beautiful, manicured Greenwood but rather Weatherford’s pioneer Greenwood. Oh for a Robert Louis Stevenson Requirim:
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the Mayor of a big, little Texas city,
And the Speaker home from D.C.
Don Woodard is a Fort Worth businessman and author of Black Diamonds! Black Gold! The Saga of Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company.