About Books 05-07-08

Alvena Bieri, Special to NewsPress

May 07, 2008 11:07 am

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Fred Harris, former U.S. senator from Oklahoma, has written his memoir, “Does People Do It?” (OU Press, 2008).
The title is from Harris’ childhood when his Uncle Ralph was working on construction projects in California in the 1930s. They were moving big mounds of dirt, and he said, “Does people do it? If people does it, I can do it.”
Harris devotes lots of space to his growing up years in and around Walters in southwestern Oklahoma. The family was very poor, and he remembers living in many different, but all shabby, houses. Other memories — like those of a coal oil stove, a dugout type of cellar where home-canned food was kept and a big floor radio — brought back memories to me of life at that time.
Harris did very well in school. He was chosen all-round boy in high school and easily won the FFA oratorical contest.
He also met his future wife LaDonna, and they were married when each was just 19. They were going to OU, and Fred was good at the printing trade and had a job at the Oklahoma Daily. They are divorced now, and he has remarried, but he and his former wife are on friendly terms.
In 1954, Harris graduated at the top of his class.
His inclinations were toward politics, and he ended up a U.S. senator. Much of the interest in the rest of the book centers on his experiences in the nation’s capital, where he was well-received. In a recent interview Harris said of those years, “Not long after I became a member of the U.S. Senate, Time magazine reported that I was the only person in Washington who could have breakfast with President Lyndon Johnson, lunch with Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and dinner with New York’s Senator Robert Kennedy.”
He has titled his chapter on President Johnson “Most of the Way with LBJ.” He considers him one of the best presidents, but admits that Johnson had an extremely complex personality and was not even friendly with Robert Kennedy. That goes back to the 1960 convention when Kennedy had tried to block Johnson as John Kennedy’s running mate.
I found most interesting the chapter on Hubert Humphrey, whom Harris calls “the happy warrior.”
It is obvious that Harris has loved the politics of Oklahoma all his life. Why then does he now live in Albuquerque? He writes that he loves that state, too, and used to vacation there every summer. So when he left Washington, and the University of New Mexico offered him a teaching job, he was happy to take it. He writes that he didn’t want “to stay mixed up in old home-state political divisions” in Oklahoma.
I think this good book would have been even better with more analysis of issues, not just personalities. And I would like to know more about what he thinks of the present political scene.