Good Time Charlie

Charles Wilson was my congressman when I lived in Orange, Texas. He held town hall meeting when he was home from Washington, which were announced well in advance in the newspaper, listing towns, date, time and place.

There were also scheduled stops at Kroger’s grocery store parking lot for his motor home, with several members of his staff substituting for him. Meeting places varied according to facilities available in each of the towns in his district. In Orange, meetings were at the courthouse, in one of the court rooms.

The meetings were always well attended, audiences being friends, neighbors and acquaintances. I took an interest in all the discussions, including those questions from the audience asking for help with social security or some other problem they thought Charlie could solve for them.

I never asked a question or vocalized an opinion, being content to listen and learn about some of the concerns my neighbors had, until the meeting scheduled the morning after the news of the first casualty in the first Iraq war, a family man with several small children.

I don’t remember now the exact news about the circumstances of the death, but at the time it seemed unconscionable to me that the army would have sent a father with small children on a fatal mission.  Knowing that any soldier is ‘expendable’, the army ‘coulda, shoulda’ sent a single person instead of a family person.

When the meeting started, I stood up and voiced my opinion. When I finished, there were murmurs of approval and loud whisperings indicating others in the audience had the same thought.

Charlie’s response was that the army was an all volunteer army. That was all he said. It took a moment for me to absorb the meaning, and I think for the rest of the audience too. There was silence. Then as Charlie asked if there were any other questions, people began to interact with him and the meeting went on.

When the Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan, I watched the televised broadcasts of Charlie traveling with the Mujahideen and I became opposed to our helping them fight the Russians. I had just finished reading two books about the country, one written by a past ambassador to the country and other about the experience and treatment of a group of men who had the misfortune to be prisoners of Muslim nomads some years prior. When the news told of Charlie giving Stinger Missiles to the Mujahideen, I was more convinced than ever that we had no business being in Afghanistan.

I decided to meet with the staff in the motor home on their next visit to Orange so they could relay my protest to Charlie and other politicos in Washington.

That morning, the area was experiencing one of Texas’s famous rain storms. I parked my car next to the motor home, and even though I held an umbrella, I was totally soaked by the time I entered the motor home.

A young woman was solicitous, taking the umbrella from me and rather than staying in the front of the vehicle where a booth had been made into a mini office, she took me to the back of the motor home where sofas and a coffee table were. She listened to my protest most courteously. I started to leave, but then she began to voice the opposite opinion and we had quite a long discussion about Afghanistan.

One of the town hall meetings I attended took place on the front lawn of the courthouse on a beautiful spring day.  We stood in the shade of a tree while Charlie told us about his work in Washington. He was also campaigning and asked for our votes in the coming election. His republican opponent, a strong anti-abortion advocate, was the daughter of my neighbor and had a lot of local support.  Charlie had loyal supporters of his own.  I spoke up and said that as long as he continued being ‘pro choice’, he would have my vote. He came and shook my hand, put his arm around my shoulders and thanked me.  Others began to crowd around and say they would vote for him too.

I kept my promise and voted for him until he retired.

Charles Nesbitt Wilson (June 1, 1933 – February 10, 2010)