By By Tray Smith
Ralph L. Smith Sr. moved to Atmore from South Carolina in 1949. Three years later, he proposed to his future wife Juanita Durr, advising her to say no if she was unwilling to meet two conditions. First, she would always go with him to be with his mother on Christmas. Second, they would always be Presbyterians. His would-be wife agreed.
More than 50 years of happiness followed and a longstanding Presbyterian commitment was passed down through the generations.
Conspicuously, no political condition was offered as a prerequisite to marriage. There was no need for one; all reasonable people were Democrats.
Still, the Smiths followed current events closely. On Sunday nights, they joined Bill and Aimee Bartel to watch “60 Minutes.” These gatherings sustained both a close friendship between the two couples and their mutual attentiveness to public affairs.
Eventually, watching “60 Minutes” became a tradition. It continued even after Aimee Bartel died in 1988. When Bill Bartel died four years later, it remained a Smith family routine, observed by Ralph, Juanita, and a new participant: their toddler grandson, Ralph L. “Tray” Smith, III.
It was at my grandparent’s house on Sunday nights as a young child that I suppose I first took note of politics. It has since come to define much of my life. Now, “60 Minutes” plays only in the background of Sunday evening visits with my grandmother, a relic of the much more social era that once brought politics and friends together to watch the news.
Today, the time that was once spent interacting with one another is consumed by iPods, laptops and other individualistic forms of entertainment.
Last fall, on a Sunday night at the height of the presidential election, my grandmother commented that 16 years prior, Bill Bartel and Ralph Smith departed from one “60 Minutes” episode announcing that they would vote for Bill Clinton. Exasperated, I called Bill Bartel’s daughter Bonnie for verification, asking “Did your daddy and my Paw Paw really vote for Clinton?”
Laughing, she replied, “Alas. It is true.”
While I knew both of my grandparents had been raised as Democrats, I was surprised that Paw Paw still supported Clinton even after the Democratic Party had lurched so far to the left. From Bonnie, I learned that he and the Bartels were simply southern conservatives, who always voted for the person they felt was most inline with their values, mostly regardless of party. One of those values was fiscal responsibility, which they both thought was the most important issue at the personal, local, state and national level.
So important, in fact, that when my grandmother revealed that the milk shakes she bought for Paw Paw and me on the way home from school in the afternoons were more than a dollar, he instructed her not to buy them anymore.
Logically, then, when Bill Clinton came along in 1992 promising to restore fiscal sanity to Washington, Paw Paw voted for him, thinking that the Republicans had let the deficit get out of control and that the Democrats would build a more secure future for his two-year-old grandson. Paw Paw and Bill Bartel were in agreement with their fellow citizens, and Clinton won with 43 percent of the vote. Consequentially, that was the last election in which Bill Bartel ever voted. He died about two months later.
Yet, he left clues of how he would have voted should he have lived through the Democratic primaries last year, telling family members that Clinton had a “really impressive wife.” Bonnie and her sister Betty Adams go on record as respectfully disagreeing with their daddy - then and now.
Thirteen years later, Ralph Smith died. His passing signified the end of a social-political culture in which people were pragmatically involved for the good of the country, not fighting along divisive ideological lines.
Despite being a staunch Republican, I sometimes find myself longing for a return to those values out of my great admiration for Paw Paw and the principles for which he stood. From those principles, I have learned the importance of not questioning the motives of people who disagree with me. I have learned to put a priority on fiscal responsibility in politics. Most significantly, I have learned to keep at least somewhat of an open mind, and always pragmatically put the well being of my family and community first.
That is the bottom line.
Tray Smith is a former page in the U.S. House of Representatives. He can be reached at tsmith_90@hotmail.com. His column appears weekly.