No, I've often said, this is true, that if someone had told me a year or
eighteen months before I ran for lieutenant governor that I would be
involved in and seeking public office, I would have laughed out loud.
No, I really did consider myself as having a career in agriculture and
looking after the farming operation. I was happy doing that and enjoyed
it. Back in those days, you could make a little money farming if you
watched your pennies closely enough. I was always, I guess, an extrovert
and active in organizations. I, too, worked with the North Carolina
State Grange, which was a farm organization, and served as the field man
for them for a while in addition to farming. Then served two years
full-time as their chief executive officer. They call it the Master of
the Grange, president of the Farm Bureau Federation, but anyway the
full-time chief executive which
Page 16 my father had
served in around 1930, '31. But you know that was not a big thing.
I was active in the church. Helped start a Jaycee chapter in the little
town of Haw River—that is Junior Chamber of Commerce, Jaycees. I was,
you know, I guess, as a young person who's got a little extra energy
would do—be involved, in other words. But in terms of state wide
activity, no. So it's rather interesting how I got involved in politics.
I think it's interesting anyway. Maybe for those who are interested in
knowing, it might be a little surprising.
One of the traditions that grew up around my Dad during his later years
was in September, early September, on the opening day of the dove
hunting season, he always invited a number of his friends from over the
state to come to the farm and shoot doves on the opening day of the
season. This was a semi-political gathering. They would spend the day
hunting doves and then gather in the evening for ham biscuits and
sandwiches and so forth and so on and talk politics and have fellowship.
Usually he invited, being the politician that he was, some of the
political writers from the major daily newspapers in the state, the Charlotte Observer, the Greensboro paper, the Raleigh
News and Observer, the wire services, and so on.
After my Dad died in 1958, my uncle, his younger brother, Ralph,
continued this at his place which was an adjoining farm and part of the
old original home place of my grandfather. They kept it up for a number
of years.
Page 17
In 1963, yes, 1963, I suppose it was, yeah, in the fall of 1963, we again
had one of these dove hunts. The race for governor was beginning to take
shape. The candidates being most talked about were Dan K. Moore, I.
Beverly Lake, and L. Richardson Preyor. There was the inevitable talk at
the dove hunt of which of those candidates would the Kerr Scott
supporters back. There was some conversation that they weren't all that
happy with any of them. Incidentally, I wasn't privy to all this talk.
Being one of the hosts I was busy running around trying to clean up and
keep them fed and so forth. I learned about this later. Some of the
conversation was, well, if they weren't satisfied with those candidates,
who then could they get behind. Somebody said, "Well, what about Kerr's
young son, Bob." That was about as far as the conversation went. Well,
Woodrow Price who was then political reporter for the Raleigh
News and Observer, and Jay Jenkins, who has the
political reporter for the
Charlotte Observer, and
Noel Yancey who was the Associated Press writer, reporter, among others,
were there at that dove hunt. They were regulars at the dove hunt. They
always came. They picked up a lot of political gossip. So there was a
little two paragraph blip in the
News and Observer I
know of and maybe one of the other papers that reported the fact that
there was some speculation that the branch head boys—and this was the
term used for my Dad's supporters, and that's a story in itself—said
that they weren't all that happy with either Dan Moore, Richardson
Preyor, or Beverly Lake and so some speculation about Kerr Scott's son,
Bob, might run. Well, you know I saw that in the
Page 18
paper and I just assumed that was a sweeping mandate for me to run.
I jumped in the car and started traveling over the state. "What do you
think?" I was getting some interest, more curiosity than support. A lot
of people would say, well, that's fine but I was either too young, or
they were committed to one of the other candidates, or they thought that
maybe I ought to run for some other office. Well, I was about half way
through with all of this traveling around when the assasination of John
F. Kennedy occurred in November, I believe, of that year, or maybe
December, I've forgotten exactly. Anyway that stopped all talk of
politics cold. Everybody was just sickened by what had happened. Didn't
want to discuss politics and even if you engaged somebody in a
conversation about it, it inevitably turned to the assasination of
President Kennedy and what a tragedy it was and so on. So I wasn't
finding out anything. I just knew that I just as well forget it for a
while. Then Christmas vacation came along, and nobody talks politics
much during Christmas time. By the time I got out on the road again in
January it was too late. The other candidates had pretty well gotten
their ducks in a row, and it was too late for me to get into it because
the primary was in May of that year, in 1948.