Driving along Jones Street between the old Capitol and the Legislative Building, I usually feel a sense of pride and belonging. Now the emotion that invades me is disgust as the Speaker of the House makes plea deals about corrupt acts we used to think only happened in other states — never here, where former long-time State Treasurer Edwin Gill famously stated: “Good government is a habit in North Carolina.”
I grew up when state government was Raleigh’s premier industry. My father’s firm was the associated architect with Edward Durell Stone for the Legislative Building, one of the most unique buildings in the US. Its concept typified the intelligence of the people in the state well before our emergence as an intellectual global center.
The concept for the building came from the desire to avoid the mistakes of other states that simply added on to their existing capitol buildings as government grew rapidly during the 1950s. Our original Capitol building was built with great expense as a testament to North Carolina’s pride of place in the Revolution. The first building burned and was replaced in the 1840s with a better, sturdier model. The pride remained and the desire to preserve the old building led to the original idea of a “legislative building,” the first in the nation. The new building would house the functions of the General Assembly while keeping the old Capitol for the governor’s office and ceremonial special events.
I always note when I drive by or visit the Legislative Building how the design achieves the nobility modern architecture strives for, and rarely accomplishes. The building, now 45 years old, has matured gracefully while the buildings around it built in the same era are grotesque in their ugly, upthrusting brutality. Laying my prejudices aside, I think it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.
At the time of the dedication of the new building, stewardship was the clarion call. From around the state, public servants came to the Capital City to serve. At least that was the sense we all had, even though I am sure that underneath shenanigans occurred.
The Sir Walter
In those days, the Sir Walter Hotel on Fayetteville Street — now a home for seniors — was the hub of political activity. The place had the cushy aroma downtown hotels exuded in those days. The mezzanine lobby featured sofas and plush chairs where guests and salons would sit and smoke and make deals. Above the mezzanine, sequestered dining rooms accommodated the privacy needed to pass legislation, and the men’s only Sphinx Club offered clubby rooms for total seclusion.
Office-holding grandees — as well as non-government residents — actually lived year-round in the Sir Walter. Mr. Gill, as he was always called, maintained a bachelor existence with his own suite of rooms, as did Hunt Parker, Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court. Mrs. Blanche, a well-dressed widow, could be seen wandering the halls in her nightgown. Most legislators checked in for the bi-annual and mercifully short sessions of the General Assembly. The pages from out of town stayed there too, giving Raleigh boys a place to hide out from the glare of adults.
I was a page in the 1963 session of the General Assembly, the year they moved into the new building. Back then pages served for six weeks, allowing kids the opportunity to be intensely involved in the processes and rituals of the General Assembly. We were assigned a legislator for the duration, so we learned the ropes of procedure and how to navigate the maze of state agencies when sent on errands for our Member of the Senate or House. Learning to move efficiently in the vastly larger new Legislative Building was a ground-floor lesson in urban orienteering. During the planning for the Legislative Building, I visited the Governor’s Mansion with my father while he conferred with Gov Luther Hodges. Later, I visited with the Sanford children in the private living quarters. State government then was up close and personal.
Lost Innocence
My affection for our state and our Capital City stems from those days. And perhaps I’m simply naively nostalgic lamenting the lost innocence at such an advanced age in the wake of today’s scandals afflicting state government. But others are telling me the same thing. We remember legislators who actually came to serve and state agency chiefs who cared about the people of the state.
Today, these agencies are too big and unmanageable, allowing inefficiency and breakdowns of ethical behavior. The Department of Motor Vehicles seems to suffer chronic corruption due to its size and functions, creating more and more jobs to be dangled in front of campaign donors and workers. But who would have thought the Department of Agriculture would be stained by Secretary Meg Scott Phipps — a daughter of a former governor — after decades of rule by the Sodfather himself, Big Jim Graham?
Now we lack characters, and people with character. There is a sort of babbitry you can detect in the legislators, a far cry from the larger-than-life Cousin Waylon Spruill from Down East who wore white suits and used his cane to get attention on the House floor. There is a certain sameness to the state agency chiefs and staff that gives off the scent of ambition over service, of slickness over genuineness. From the governor on down, there is a distance, and you can sense that government’s job is more concerned with serving the careers of its employees.
And there is the reality that today’s office-seekers pitch their campaigns to those who take rather than give to the commonweal. The loony redistricting gerrymandering rampant in the South — brought on by the Voting Rights Act — further alienates voters from their representatives. Can you name your state representatives? And today, state workers and teachers are welded into the most potent voting bloc, meaning elected officials are at their beck and call. It was Jim Hunt who initiated this strategy when he ran for lieutenant governor and then governor by galvanizing state government employees into the tail that wags the dog of state politics.
Whatever the reasons, North Carolina has lost its innocence and with it its former status as the leader in the South in education and road-building. And now the whiff of corruption corrodes the corridors of state government. We now seem rather than be.
Notes from La-La Land
Hats off to an unlikely hero, Peder Zane, book editor of The News & Observer, who stood up and confronted author Eliot Weinberger for using The National Book Critics award ceremony to slam the nominated book While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer as racist. Said Zane, “He’s also saying that those of us who put the book on the finalist list are racist or too stupid to know we’re racist.” Everyone should stand up and slap down the self-righteous radicals who impose their PC doctrines in order to obscure the truth.
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In Beaufort County, commissioners are banning non-English signs under county control “to stop the weakening of English as a result of legal and illegal immigration.” (Go to www.metronc.com and click on my column “Lingua Franca” to see my views about the subject.