2 Responses to “Houston Flournoy”

1. bill.leonard@comcast.net Says:
   January 10th, 2008 at 12:00 am

   Matt you are correct. Houston was always a gentleman and if the 1974 election was on Thursday instead of Tuesday he would have beaten Jerry Brown.

2. tkaptain@sbcglobal.net Says:
   January 10th, 2008 at 12:00 am

   As a young high school student (and already a Democrat), I volunteered in the Flournoy campaign and because of some people on his campaign staff that liked to help young people with an interest in politics (Thanks after the fact to Doug Kranwinkle and Rick Rashman) I got to spend a lot of time with Flournoy who was an outstanding person in every sense of the word. He will truly be missed and he had incredible accomplishments as a public servant.

   I have a lot of stories I remember picking up on that campaign, my favorite being how he filed for State Controller, but I will leave that post for someone that knew him better and can tell the stories more accurately if they are inclined to share their memories.

   However, one of my favorite memories which was personal and I will share happened at a fundraiser at the Kranwinkles house where I was at a sign in table.

   With camera’s running as Flournoy spoke (I didn’t know at the time and still don’t know if they were media or his own campaign) and everyone watching intently, about halfway through one of his answers he suddenly stopped on a question about tuition fees and called on me as a student who soon would be in college asking me to tell people how worried I was about being able to get into college.

   I nearly fainted, but after I answered, about half of the people there had to come up and have follow up conversations with me which I will admit made me feel like a bit of a hotshot and a few of them I have met in the years since, so it is a good memory.

   I would compare Flournoy to Will Rogers (I never met a man I didn’t like) but that’s not completely true. I think Mr. Flournoy would gladly have strung up the nonsmokers rights people who have such political power nowadays without having the slightest sympathy for them.

   He not only was a smoker, but also believed in a moral sense that all of these types of laws
   were wrong, although I heard from a friend that in later years he thought some limitations on smoking in restaurants where children were customers might be acceptable but even that was something he wasn’t sure of and the rest of it he still regarded as nonsense.

   That is not such a popular view nowadays, but to me it helps remind me that all people are individuals with individual beliefs and values and that is why it’s important to listen to others to try and find common ground.

   I will also say that I don’t know what the rules will be at the services for Hugh Flournoy, but if they really wanted to do something appropriate for memory of the person I knew, the first thing that should be said in the services is the old Army saying, “Smoke em if you got em.”