It isn't often that one of your heroes gets to be one of your friends but when I count my blessings, I must include my friendship with one of America's greatest patriots. So when Jenni came in needing an expert to tell her something about the "Nifty Fifties," my thoughts wandered to memories of John Henry Faulk.

Echoes of an American patriot

by Diana Finlay

GET ALONG RANCH, TEXAS -- I had heard that history has a way of catching up with us, and our children would be studying things in their history books that had happened in our lifetimes. But I had somehow always thought they were talking about that old kind of history - that happened when my grandparents were young.

It's beginning to catch up, folks. My daughter came in the other night with her social studies book. "Do we know anyone who lived during the 'Nifty Fifties?'" she asked.

She went on to explain that she had to interview someone who had lived in the 1950's for Mr. Fleming's social studies class. She showed me her textbook. The decade had been reduced to several pages of print. The chapter looked as though it had been written by someone who had overdosed on television reruns of Happy Days.

I thought of my friend, John Henry Faulk. How wonderful it was to have known this American patriot who had survived the horrors of the "Nifty Fifties."

I wished that he hadn't gone and died on us. Jenni could have interviewed him. I can see him leaning forward in the rocker on the porch as he shared the "Nifty Fifties" with her - with a little more depth than a quarter page in a textbook. He probably wouldn't have glossed over it as slickly as a junior high textbook author, though.

Yes, he would have told her about the 1950's. But I'll bet he would have started by telling a story of being eleven years old in South Austin and playing Texas Ranger in the back yard with his friend, Tom Sikes, establishing law and order with toy pistols, fighting imaginary outlaws.

He would have told her about the morning his mama asked those two brave Texas Rangers to get a chicken snake out of the hen house and how the top tier of nests was a little too high to look into. He would have leaned forward to tell Jenni about standing on tiptoes and looking at a chicken snake six inches from the end of his nose - and how it took on the proportions of a boa constrictor.
He would have told her about all of his frontier courage draining out his heels - or trickling down his leg - and about the new door he and Tom made in Mama's hen house that day. He would have explained that a chicken snake can't hurt you - but it can scare you so bad it'll cause you to hurt yourself.

Then he would have told her about the 1950s... about a time when good people who were conceived in liberty, whose forefathers proclaimed liberty as the cause of fighting the American Revolution, became so frightened at the guaranteed freedoms that uphold liberty that they tried to trample those freedoms in panic. They, too, were scared so bad it caused them to hurt themselves.

The Nifty Fifties. What a scary time for freedom. Johnny would have told her about an outfit called the FBI and a fella named Hoover who made it their business to surveil the political beliefs and associations of the American people. Johnny would have explained that to criticize this organization was to get into big trouble.

Johnny would have told Jenni about being in high cotton in New York City at that time - as a folk humorist on CBS Radio during the birth of television... getting paid for something he'd just about pay to do. Oh, those "Nifty Fifties!"

Then, as he rocked back in his chair, he would have told her about a group called AWARE that was organized to "combat the communist conspiracy in the communications industry." He would have explained how AWARE blacklisted people for having entertained , or having attended a function with people that AWARE didn't approve of... people who didn't think the "right" way, in AWARE's opinion.

Johnny knew first hand about this because, as he would have told Jenni, AWARE put out a bulletin that said things about him. They said in sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee that "John Henry Faulk was a speaker at a dinner at the Astor Hotel in 1947, under the auspices of a pro-communist organization with a man who had an unrepudiated record of communist activities."

Johnny would have told Jenni that he looked in an old date book and, sure enough, he had been at the Astor Hotel on that date in 1947. The part that AWARE had left out of their sworn testimony was that this was the Year One birthday party for the Security Council of the United Nations. And yes, he would have admitted to Jenni, there was a full-blooded, un-American communist named Mr. Gromyko sitting right there, free as you please. AWARE also forgot to mention that Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt was there along with many other American dignitaries, and that CBS had sent Johnny over there because the program was being broadcast across the country on CBS radio.

Johnny would have paused and looked off into the distance, when he told her that, at the time, AWARE won, sort of. They sent this bulletin out to CBS and the sponsors of his radio show... and they did get him fired and they destroyed his career. They took away his "pursuit of happiness."

He sued AWARE. They had done this very thing to countless high-profile actors and celebrities. AWARE had smashed lives and asserted their self-proclaimed power in frightening ways. It came to be known as blacklisting.

But no one had fought back before. Maybe none of the other victims had grown up in Central Texas... seen a chicken snake... had a mama who wouldn't put up with tom-foolery or a daddy who fought for civil rights long before it was a fashionable thing to do. Johnny had been raised with an understanding of the principle this country was founded on... of the precious freedoms our soldiers had fought and died in wars to protect.

Johnny had plenty of time during the "Nifty Fifties" to think over his position. He had not been, nor had he ever had an inclination to be a communist. But, according to the guarantees that were the foundation for this country, he didn't have to prove it to a bunch of witch hunters - or anyone else, for that matter.

That was the basis for John Henry Faulk's fight. AWARE and the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy were a true threat to the basic rights on which these United States had stood so proudly as a beacon to the rest of the world.

After five years, AWARE was finally brought into the courtroom. A jury awarded Johnny $3.5 million from AWARE for conspiracy to destroy his career (which they had done). It was, at that time, the largest amount of money anyone had ever won in a libel suit.

He would have chuckled as he admitted to Jenni that he didn't get all that money. There was a little - most of which went to pay the lawyer fees and to pay back the loans he'd accepted to keep food on the table since he'd been fired from the broadcast industry.
Johnny would have leaned back in his rocking chair and scratched his head, as he remembered how suddenly, folks he didn't even know were saying he was a hero... a true American patriot. It always seemed silly to him that they'd make a fuss over something anyone should have done for the country they loved. He didn't fight AWARE for fame or fortune. He did it because it was the right thing to do.
Oh, his eyes would have twinkled with mischief as he explained that he got something far more important than money. He rediscovered the Declaration of Independence - truly understanding it for the first time. And the Constitution and Bill of Rights... what concepts! Who would have dreamed that people could be the bosses and the government would be the servant?

Who would have dreamed that some rag-tag revolutionary group could have come up with such letter-perfect documents granting us - "We, the people" - even Johnny Faulk and Jenni and Mr. Fleming's social studies class - such precious gifts as freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, and the right to complain if the government is heading in the wrong direction. All of these and so much more was handed to us on a golden platter. And people have died protecting and saving these freedoms for us.

Johnny would have told Jenni that some of these precious gifts of freedom came all too close to being lost in dusty archives and dreaded junior high history books back in the "Nifty Fifties."

He would have sat up in his rocking chair and looked her square on - and told her that it is her assignment... her obligation... her job - and the job of Mr. Fleming's entire class - to learn about these freedoms and understand the fragility of these freedoms - and to protect them from witch -hunters and other engines of repression.

Because some day these children will have children of their own who will come home from school and ask, "Do we know anyone who lived in the 'Shiney Nineties'?" And those children will deserve these freedoms, too.

John Henry Faulk, I miss you.