Those of us who call this town home are very glad you’ve chosen to visit us. There are many things to see and numerous people to meet while you’re here. We certainly hope you’ll find our little tour educational, but even more than that we sincerely intend that you enjoy the time you spend with us.
We know that many of you are here because one of our native sons, born at Sherwood Municipal Hospital, educated in the Sherwood schools, first elected to public office as a state representative from the Sherwood district, Frederick Townes St. Clair, is currently serving as the __th President of the United States. Our tour is thus designed to give you a sense of what it was like for an American President to grow up in a place such as Sherwood—a modest Midwestern suburb.
Although when Frederick Townes St. Clair—F.T., as he was mostly known to those in town who knew him—entered the world in 19__, Sherwood would not yet have been classified as “suburban.” While we are only thirty minutes from downtown St. Louis, in those days there was no interstate to take us the thirty miles in such an efficient way. The roads were unconditioned and littered with traffic lights, and the length of time the trip required made the city seem much farther away than it does to us now.
(You probably noticed on your way into Sherwood that the access area off of the interstate is now very extensively developed, making this interchange seem quite continuous with the many others you will pass on your way into the city. In F.T. St.Clair’s childhood, this area was a cow pasture, the then main highway—also serving as Main Street—instead cutting through the heart of town.)
In essence the people of Sherwood in 19__ considered themselves the residents of a small town poised between what was then the urban and the rural. In this environment, Frederick Townes St. Clair learned everything about the values and the attitudes of middle America that would serve him so well when he later began the political ascent that would result in his winning the White House. We will begin the tour by visiting the more modest house in which President St. Clair grew up, a house, appropriately enough, in the very center of town. From there we will make our way around to the other points of interest to anyone wanting to know how a man rises to such great heights from beginnings as humble, but also as, yes, thoroughly American as those that set F.T. St. Clair onto his fateful path here in Sherwood, Missouri.
We lived across the street from F.T. and his family. (Actually, all through school we just called him “Freddy.” The first time I heard him referred to as F.T. was after he had gone off to college and was reported to be considering a career in politics.) I think I can legitimately claim to have been his best friend while we were in grade school. I would describe him as a kid like any other. We did the usual stuff kids do: played sports, got into trouble, tormented girls. One of my fondest memories is of a game we used to play in my back yard. We had a big sand pile, and Freddy and I would set up two sides of plastic army men all around it and take turns bombarding them with homemade “missiles.” The one who finally had at least one man still standing was the winner.
He spent a good deal of time at my house while we were growing up. I didn’t go over there that much now that I think of it, although we did play a version of street hockey on the big patio they had at the back of the house. His mother was very nice woman. (She still lives in Sherwood, as I’m sure you know.) His father wasn’t unfriendly exactly, but he did seem more aloof—“reserved,” my own mother would say. I can really only remember him being around on a few occasions when I happened to be over at or around Freddy’s house. Later Freddy gave lots of credit to his father for “molding” his own character, but I can’t say I knew him well enough to judge what Freddy meant by that.
By the time we were in junior high we had begun to drift apart. In all three years of high school, even though we still lived so close to one another, I probably didn’t talk to him more than half a dozen times. I was never sure quite why this happened. We did develop separate interests—he played football, I did not, he ran for class offices, I preferred to concentrate on my schoolwork, he liked to socialize, I usually stayed home. We both made good grades, but it was my feeling, to some extent, that he was rewarded as much for his ability to please as for his intelligence. I guess our friendship sort of faded away as much out of my own doing as his. Not that I grew to dislike him, just that we had different goals in mind. But, we can sure see where his led him!
As you see, the house has been well-maintained. Until a few years ago, Mrs. St. Clair, the President’s mother, still lived here, but she has since moved to another home in a wooded area just outside the city limits to our south. Mrs. St. Clair has requested that her privacy be respected—and besides, the road we’d have to take is not the best!—but she sends you her regards and hopes you will feel free to walk through her former home and examine the recreation of its contents and appearance as they would have been during F.T. Sullivan’s childhood.
It is a modest enough home. A ranch-style house of the kind so popular in middle America, neatly trimmed, a brick façade. The light green paint around the rest of the house is exactly the color Bernard St. Clair chose when he had the house built in 19__.
Inside, you will see the furnishings are equally modest, comfortable, but not lavish. It is the sort of house that might serve as the model for a middle-class midwestern family home, whose ordinary but sturdy foundation would provide all the support a future American President would need in setting out on his life’s journey. . . .
You’ve gotten to me just in time, I have to say. There’s not much strength left in these old bones, unfortunately. I do still retain the ability to jabber, though, so I guess we’ll be all right.
I was his sixth grade teacher, yes. That was such a long time ago! If I’d known he was going to grow up to be the President, I might have paid more attention! But I remember a few things about him.
He was very polite. He called me ma’am. No other student did that. He may have been the last student to ever do that. I could tell you stories about what some of them did call me. I could write a book about the deterioration in manners I witnessed during my time as a schoolteacher, as a matter of fact. It would speak volumes about what’s happened to this country.
But he never caused me any trouble. As I recall, he sometimes proposed to help me keep things tidy—putting things away and cleaning the blackboard and what-not. He even offered to help me keep the other students in line. I don’t know what he thought he’d do. I told him I could manage on my own.
He made good grades all right. His work was above average, and I couldn’t very well say otherwise. That doesn’t mean I’d call him the best student I ever had or anything. If you really backed me into a corner, I’d even say I never really liked him all that much.
Of course, you should take into consideration that I don’t belong to his political party. I didn’t vote for him. Maybe as President he’ll change things for the better, nevertheless. (Maybe he’ll give everyone lessons in politeness!) But by that time I’ll probably be in my grave.
Downtown Sherwood is still very much as it was when F.T. St. Clair was a teenager. You can see that for a town of Sherwood’s current population this business district seems rather small. For one thing, much of our commerce now takes place around and near our interstate access area. The businesses here on Main Street cater mostly to local citizens who wish to avoid the traffic and the crowds out at the interchange and who are looking to socialize with their fellow Sherwoodites.
It is also true that, at about the time F.T. St. Clair went off to college, among the first businesses to open their doors near the interstate were several discount retailers of the sort we’ve all now become so familiar with in these days of bargain-hunting. (This part of the state was included in the first great wave that saw these kinds of stores spreading their reach, as a matter of fact.) Gradually much of the retail trade in Sherwood transferred itself to these stores, leaving downtown Sherwood a less thriving place.
Eventually the city leaders focused their attention on reviving the downtown quarter, if not to return it to its former role as Sherwood’s hub then to make it a pleasant area to visit. With the election of President St. Clair, of course, we have taken additional steps to rebuild this area both for the convenience of guests like yourselves and to more accurately recreate downtown Sherwood as F.T. St. Clair might remember it. Please stroll along this trim, tree-lined Main Street at your leisure. Perhaps you might even imagine what it would have been like for the man who is now our President to walk down this same street, perhaps to visit the drugstore for a soda or “Dunc’s” hamburger place for a burger and a game of pool, all those years ago when the idea of becoming President was just a dream shared by so many other young Americans.
I went with Freddy for two years. I wore his initial ring, we went to movies together, dances, all the things you’d expect of young people at that time. At least in a place like Sherwood. It really truly was all innocence. We kissed. Quite a lot, in fact. But we never went farther than that. Believe it or not, both of us believed what we were taught about “saving ourselves for marriage,” and all that. I don’t mind saying that I was myself still a virgin on my wedding day.
I can’t say I really thought that Freddy and I would wind up getting married. I knew how ambitious he was, and I just couldn’t see myself as the wife of an Important Person, a politician or business leader or whatever he turned out to be. I really only wanted to remain in Sherwood, become a wife and a mother, maybe take part in the civic life of the town but only as a citizen like anyone else, That’s what I did, and I don’t regret it at all, even if some people do tell me I might have been the First Lady of the United States, if only.
Freddy actually did a great deal for Sherwood, you know. When he was our state representative he brought home the bacon for us, so to speak. It was F.T. St. Clair who paved the way for all of our economic development by securing the land and providing the tax incentives that resulted in those first stores moving in out by the interstate. Later, when he was governor, we felt well taken care of, I’ll just say that. Now, not everyone around here really appreciates what Freddy did for us over the years. He made a few enemies, especially among some of our townspeople who didn’t think the new Sherwood was an improvement over the old and believed Freddy must have lined his own pockets while he was making all those deals.
Of course, I don’t believe that myself. He’s not crooked. I really only have good memories of the time I was Freddy St. Clair’s girlfriend. With all of the attention I’ve gotten from it, I may as well have married him!
This is the site where Sherwood High School once stood. Three years after F.T. St. Clair graduated from SHS, a tornado roared through town and destroyed this building, as well as several others farther up the street. Rather than build a new school building on the same land, the taxpayers of Sherwood approved a plan to build a new and enlarged high school campus on the south side of town. Since then it has been enlarged again to keep up with Sherwood’s growing population. As it happened, the city somewhat overextended itself over the terms of the bond, but a subsequent bond issue has resolved the problem satisfactorily.
Unfortunately, most of the records and mementos of F.T. St. Clair’s time at Sherwood High—such as the district championship football trophy he helped the 19__ team win—were also destroyed in the disaster, so very little remains to document his high school experience. Luckily, the President has donated many personal items accumulated over the years going all the way back to his childhood, and we are in the early stages of planning a new museum (replacing the smaller one you will encounter on this tour) to house this material and to be erected on this spot. It will present as full a picture as possible of F.T. St. Clair’s life in Sherwood, Missouri. We invite you to return when the museum is completed.
One vestige of old Sherwood High School does remain. If you’ll look up the hill behind the site you will see the running track and football field originally built with the school. Because of space limitations at the existing junior high school, the field is still used for junior high events. . . .
F.T. St. Clair and I went off to Harvard together in 19__. Not only were we the only two fellows from our graduating class to attend an Ivy League school, we were among the few to go to college at all. Some people were taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, but in Sherwood, Missouri it was still not the norm for everyone to assume that as a matter of course college followed high school. Those of our classmates who did move immediately to college most likely went to the state university, one of the other state schools, or, even more likely, one of the junior colleges to be found in and around the St. Louis area.
Neither F.T’s family nor mine could be called the wealthiest in Sherwood (although we were both comfortable enough). I was the valedictorian, so I like to think my ticket to Harvard was issued entirely because of merit. I will admit that my record once I got there did not continue to match the one I achieved at Sherwood High, but at that time it wasn’t entirely expected that one had to devote all of one’s time to one’s studies in order to benefit from the college experience. I’m sure you know what I mean?
But damn if F.T. didn’t keep right on making those As. Now, I know he was out carousing just as much as I was because often we did it together. As much as we liked to think we were a cut above, what with our being accepted at Harvard and obviously headed for “big things,” when we got there of course we didn’t know anybody and were just two among many other “promising” young men, so we tended to stick together, At least for the first year or so. We met a few other fellows from the Midwest, extended our circle ever farther, and eventually we even came to feel we “fit in.” F.T. especially. He went in for the secret societies and the drinking clubs and all those things. I did not. I always seemed to remember I was just a guy from Sherwood, Missouri, and was going to go back there. I confined my disorderly conduct to the various establishments up and down Mass. Avenue, my occasional sex trysts to girls I met in the usual way. I can’t say for sure what F.T. was doing after he took up with this other crowd and we increasingly lost contact.
By the time my senior year came around, and the prospect of getting on with it was looming, I buckled down a bit and brought my grades up to a somewhat more respectable level. By this time as well I barely ever saw F.T. St. Clair. One of the few times I did see him, he told me he was going to stay on in Boston, work for a year or two, and then go to law school. He was going to have his way paid, presumably because of that almost perfect grade-point average he wound up with. My parents, on the other hand, had reached the limits of their ability to pay for my education, to I would indeed be returning to Sherwood to take up my livelihood. (It must be said that I did already have a job lined up at my uncle’s factory—lower management, but with potential, etc. Actually, I eventually became president of the company, until it had to close down. That’s another story.) Later, as a business leader in the community I met with F.T. off and on, but the friendship we had during that first year or two at Harvard really just continued to fade. Honestly, even when I see him on the tv addressing the nation, he just looks like the President, not the young man who started off to college with me in the bloom of our youth. Was that young man the “real” Frederick Townes St. Clair? Or was the real St. Clair he who was destined to become, and has become, the President of the United States? Was there a “real” F.T. St. Clair?
You will have noticed that there are a number of small business concerns on our route that advertise F.T. St. Clair-related merchandise for sale. We do not endorse any of these enterprises individually, but you are of course free to examine the items they have for sale once this tour has concluded. Likewise we cannot vouch for the authenticity or the quality of the merchandise, although the city of Sherwood has declared it will revoke the licenses of any vendor demonstrated to be dealing in shoddy goods. The same goes for the various sites you may also have seen that identify themselves as associated with some event in the life of President St. Clair. We do not include these locations on our tour, do not validate their claims in every instance. If you wish to augment your understanding of our President’s younger days by visiting these sites and then judging for yourselves, that as well is you prerogative. We merely advise caution when considering the information you may be provided from these sources.
I worked at the appliance factory. Started right after high school. It was considered to be a pretty plum job, so I was glad to get it.
I figured I’d work there most of my life. That’s what most people around here did then. They got themselves a job, got themselves married, started themselves up a family. You could say we didn’t have much ambition for ourselves, but this was what seemed possible to us.
There were a few well-to-do families in Sherwood that could send their kids off to college, even fancy ones. But the thing about Sherwood is that even these kids go to the public schools. Or they did in my time. There’s only the Catholic school besides, and none of those good families was Catholic. So we all knew each other. When we got to high school I heard talk about going to this college or that, but it just wasn’t something that me and my friends could consider a real live option.
Of course I will admit that none of us really took our schoolwork seriously enough to make it possible, either.
Now, some people didn’t like Sherwood, and as soon as they could they took off for other parts. (Although lots of people I knew in high school only went in to the city. Especially now, that’s not exactly pulling up stakes.) But this town was made by people who just thought of it as home, and the only way you make a place a home is by sticking to it, doing the job you have to do to raise your family, and passing on what you can to your children and grandchildren.
We made small appliances at the factory. It was a company that produced other goods too, but at our place we manufactured just the appliances—kitchen gadgets. (Later, when we first started hearing that the company was in trouble, we branched out into other products—plastic food containers and so forth.) When I started working there, it was a good job. Compared to what they paid at other places in town, it was good pay, too.
At some point, I can’t really say exactly when, the raises stopped coming. They stopped hiring new people. People who had been there for years got laid off. As a shift supervisor, I kept being spared the axe, but one year—I was 45—they promoted somebody to my position at a lower wage, and I was let go. It was traumatic, to say the least.
As it turned out, the factory was shut down less than a year later. I heard that before they closed it they tried to get the employees to go on some kind of commission kind of plan that would have made everyone work harder just to make what they were already being paid. The employees—what was left of them—refused, and that was that.
I haven’t really had a steady job since then. Just off and on. We make ends meet.
I don’t think much of politicians, period. It doesn’t really matter which party they claim or what they say. So what if somebody from Sherwood is President. He hasn’t been here more than ten days in the last ten years. He doesn’t know I exist, and wouldn’t care if he did.
This is the oldest part of Sherwood. We have brought you here because it is important in considering the journey F.T. St. Clair has taken from Sherwood to the White House to contemplate as well the roots of what Sherwood had become by the time the future President was born. If the word “humble” can be applied to the background from which Frederick Townes St. Clair emerged, it would be in particular to the modest origins of Sherwood itself.
As you can tell, we are in the part of Sherwood closest to the river, as the bridge crossing it looms just above us. Although the current bridge was built some fifty years ago, the site that was to become Sherwood was first developed because it provided a convenient point for crossing the river (which narrows considerably here), the first such crossing point south of the city. The original inhabitants of Sherwood came here to oversee the activities on the landing and later to take advantage of whatever economic opportunities existed because of these activities.
Even later the area just south of us was explored because of the possible existence of important minerals, primarily lead and zinc. When it was determined that the really significant lead deposits were actually to found even farther south, attempts to establish mining operations in Sherwood were effectively terminated. However, the exploratory pits that were dug those many years ago can still be seen if you take the nature walk that winds along the small bluffs that extend to the west of the river bank.
Eventually, of course, the town expanded well beyond this first area of settlement, and the farther it did expand the less this section of town was preserved as a residential area. Most of the original homes were torn down, although some others were built in their place. The house in front of us is actually the oldest in Sherwood, but it stands on a spot previously occupied by an even older one. (It was not torn down but was ruined beyond repair in a flood, which occur periodically down here and is another reason why the area was gradually abandoned.) It is a simple four-room house built in 18__. The last owners moved out about ten years ago; the city of Sherwood recently purchased the house and is in the process of refurbishing it as part of a long-term effort to establish par of this area as permanent historical district. The house is being extensively repaired, so it will not be possible at this time for us to go inside. . . .
I have left Sherwood two or three times, but I always wind up back here. First I tried the city, but where I could afford to live wasn’t none too safe, so I quit that job and moved back. Then I found another one over in Rockdale, but I got involved in a bad relationship with this guy. My daughter didn’t like it there, anyway.
I almost got married to another guy here in town who was planning to move us to Omaha. He said he had job lined up with a meat-packing company. Just before the wedding he went there to get things all squared away, but I never heard from him again. Later I heard the company had moved to Texas. Since then I decided that things probably wasn’t all that better in other places than they were here. I might as well stay in Sherwood and make the best of it. I have two more kids now, and no husband, but I do have a job, and my mother is able to watch the kids for me, so I’m not that bad off.
At least I’m still around people I know. A lot of the girls I went to high school with still live here. Some of them got married right out of school, but not many of those marriages lasted. It makes me think it wouldn’t have mattered much if I had done that too. (Even if there’d been someone who wanted to marry me.) Some of the boys in my class are around here too, but it seems like more of them did leave Sherwood. Mostly to St. Louis. (One or two of them are in jail!)
Most of us work in one of those restaurants or retail stories out by the interstate. At least there does seem to be enough jobs out there to go around. Some new business moves in there it seems like every month. Maybe by the time my own kids grow up Sherwood will be a big and really prosperous place where no one would want to leave.
I had heard he was from Sherwood. We didn’t learn that much about him when I was a kid. All of a sudden he was running for President, and then the whole town got itself fixed up as the “hometown” of Frederick T. St. Clair. I see the people coming through here all the time, but it doesn’t register very much with me, usually.
Welcome to the Sherwood St. Clair Museum. Here you will find our current collection of artifacts associated with the life and career of Frederick Townes St. Clair. For those of you who would like to see a film presentation entitled “Only in America: Sherwood’s President,” you may go right to the viewing room on your right. Feel free to browse through the rest of the museum when the film is over. The film includes news footage of the President at work and on the campaign trail, as well as interviews with many people in Sherwood sharing their memories of F.T. Sinclair.
You are also invited to join us on a guided tour of the museum’s contents. Most of the items on display have been donated by President St. Clair and other members of the St. Clair family, although where necessary the museum has substituted facsimile copies of such artifacts as are either unavailable or have been lost. It is nevertheless the most concentrated collection of materials relating to the career of F.T. St. Clair anywhere in the United States. Outside of the White House, that is!
Here our focus is especially on those moments in F.T. St. Clair’s life that reveal the direction he was seemingly fated to travel on his way from being an ordinarily ambitious American youth to a career as a prominent politician, dedicated public servant, and finally, of course, the leader of the nation, the commander-in-chief. . . .
I voted for St. Clair the first time he ever ran for office. And every time thereafter. At the beginning I just thought he was the sort of fellow who would represent us well in the state legislature, but after that I also liked the idea that someone from my hometown could be governor, then an important ambassador, and then Vice-President, for goodness sake. By that time I don’t know if I even agreed with his politics, but then politics is not very interesting to me.
A President from Sherwood! Who would ever have thought such a thing could be possible? Not only has it put Sherwood on the map, we’re now in the history books forever more! The birthplace of a President, a quintessential American town.
Everyone here ought to be grateful to President St. Clair for bringing us all this recognition. Not to mention the great opportunities he’s given us to better ourselves, to raise ourselves above the common lot of all the other run-of-the-mill towns in this state. We’d be crazy not to take advantage of them. I think all of us could agree on that.
Here is a photograph of sixteen-year old F.T. St. Clair shaking hands with U.S. Senator Aldington Stewart during a ceremony in which the Senator recognized that year’s state officers of the National Merit Society.
In retrospect the photograph takes on a somewhat bittersweet quality, as later on Governor St. Clair and Senator Stewart had a well-publicized falling-out over the Senator’s bid for one last term in the U.S. Senate (after already serving for thirty years in that august body). The full details of this episode are recounted elsewhere, so we do not dwell on it here. . . .
You’ll find that we ran plenty of stories about Fred St. Clair over the years. Most of them just report what he did or what he said on the many occasions it seemed important for us to remind ourselves he was ours. Much of it is probably just piffle.
I don’t think we ever lied or covered up the truth. If you looked up all of the major stories about St. Clair’s political career you’d get a pretty good idea of what really did happen. We even got a few scoops the bigger papers missed out on.
I’ve been going back over some of them myself. I’d even say that my memory had become rather washed out of late, my awareness of what Frederick Townes St. Clair had actually done and said over the course of his career somewhat faded at the edges because of the hoopla we’ve all gone through the past several years. For example. . . .
The future President’s first job out of college was as a legislative assistant in the Massachusetts State Senate. Here are a variety of keepsakes the young F.T. St. Clair preserved from this time, including a copy of an appropriations bill on which he worked during a session of the legislature.
When the Senator for whom F.T. St. Clair had worked was subsequently elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, F.T. followed him to Washington, D.C. as a staff member. This exhibit presents a miniaturized model of Capitol Hill as it would have been in 19__, the year in which the future President first arrived in the nation’s capitol.
After these introductions to the real world of American politics, F.T. St. Clair enrolled in the Georgetown University law school, from which he graduated three years later. Among the items in this case is a paper written by law student St. Clair, entitled “The Law of Eminent Domain and Local Commercial Development.”
When F.T. St. Clair first ran for the legislature from here we endorsed him. He was a young man full of bright ideas, two qualities that were definitely not to be found in the incumbent at the time. We thought his earnest enthusiasm was something Sherwood could use in its state representative, even though we probably agreed more with the political views of his opponent.
It’s certainly true that F.T. St. Clair worked hard for Sherwood after he was elected. If it hadn’t been for Representative St. Clair it’s likely that other towns up and down this interstate highway would have gotten the lion’s share of the service business that now keeps us afloat.
There is an increasingly affluent area, and a presumably larger tax base, out around what used to be called Federal Hill, but this is outside the city limits and doesn’t do us much good. These are people moving here from the closer suburbs, where the property taxes have gotten pretty high.
We decided to support him when he ran for governor as well. Again we were not in complete agreement with his ideas, but how could we endorse the opponent of our own representative, one we had helped to put in office in the first place? Furthermore, we had several “discussions” with candidate St. Clair, during all of which we were assured of the consideration Sherwood, and this whole region, would get from a St. Clair administration. Not that he promised us anything in particular. . . .
And of course it was at Georgetown that F.T. St. Clair met the future Mrs. St. Clair. Here are numerous indications that Roberta Ray St Clair was herself both an outstanding student and subsequently an accomplished attorney in her own right—including the citation she received for graduating first in her class at Georgetown Law School, as well as various items associated with her distinguished law practice over the years.
Although this museum is dedicated to the career of Frederick Townes St. Clair, you may purchase in our gift shop a copy of Mrs. St. Clair’s book, Village Lawyer, which chronicles her own career as a practicing attorney during the years of her husband’s political ascendancy. Much of the book, of course, covers the time she spent in Sherwood practicing law while her husband served in the state legislature. (At that time the state paid its legislators only a modest stipend, and thus Roberta St. Clair was the couple’s steadiest source of income.) Mrs. St. Clair worked on a number of cases involving local clients that are still remembered for the skill with which they were carried out to a successful conclusion. . . .
It was really Roberta St. Clair who most often met with us to discuss her husband’s campaigns. She did this with newspapers all over the state, in fact. Of course, it’s been said before that it sometimes seems that Roberta Ray St. Clair knows more about his policies that does F. T. St. Clair himself. (This is not the most extreme thing that’s been said about Mrs. St. Clair’s role in her husband’s career, as I’m sure you know. There’s a sizable faction of people around here who resent St. Clair’s success, and badmouthing his wife is part of expressing that resentment, in my opinion.)
I would never question Mrs. St. Clair’s ability as a lawyer. I haven’t read her book. Some people who have tell me it’s quite a piece of work. . . .
We have consolidated the story of F.T. St. Clair’s political triumphs into the exhibits you will encounter in the next two rooms. These exhibits will chronicle what now seems the foreordained process by which an aspiring politician from Sherwood increasingly gains the stature needed to become the governor of his state, to hold other high and distinguished offices, and finally to assume the highest office in the greatest country on Earth.
It is a dramatic tale indeed, and we suggest you make your way through our presentation at your leisure. There is one final exhibition you will not want to miss before completing your visit. Just follow the arrows on the way out of the “Political Pathway” exhibit.
The duel between Governor St. Clair and Senator Stewart more or less sums up the St. Clair approach to politics, if you want the view of someone who has observed it fairly closely. Stewart intended to run for one more term (although in all fairness he had said the same thing when running six years previously), which impeded the Governor’s plan to succeed Senator Stewart in that office. But St. Clair wasn’t sure he could defeat Stewart in a direct challenge—not unless he resorted to tactics that would probably tarnish his own image—so instead he threw his support behind a primary challenger with fewer scruples.
Stewart survived the primary and went on to be re-elected, but it was a bruising ordeal all the way through. Now, there are those who say that F.T. knew that Senator Stewart was in failing health, and, if he did not deliberately cause it to fail faster he knew very well he was precisely positioned to take advantage of the Senator being unable to complete his term.
When Senator Stewart had a debilitating stroke a year and a half later, everyone expected Governor St. Clair to appoint himself to the vacant seat. His own term was coming to an end, and it was quite likely he would eventually win the special election to confirm his hold on this next rung up the political ladder he was climbing.
But before the election was even scheduled, St. Clair accepted the position of Ambassador to Japan. (The President at that time, as we know, had been a governor himself and had long expressed his admiration for St. Clair.) The governor resigned his own office, elevating his lieutenant governor and making it possible for him to appoint Mrs. St. Clair to the vacant Senate seat.
Now, you might think all these machinations might have made the voters angry. But they didn’t. Mrs. St. Clair won the special election, and she served as U.S. Senator until F.T. St. Clair decided to run for President. It all happened so fast we could barely keep up with it. Looking back on it, we could have done more to investigate what was really going on, although the likelihood is that it was all just what it looked like. A bunch of ambitious politicians doing what they needed to do to sustain themselves.
If there is a story behind the story, this is really it. F.T. St. Clair got to be President because he had an unerring eye for the main chance and was willing to do everything that was required to take advantage of his opportunities. This is not unusual in the annals of American politics—or of all the other “careers” you care to name, for that matter. In that way you could say that Frederick Townes St. Clair is indeed representative of much that’s truly American about America.
I was Senator St. Clair’s lover for three years—the entire time the husband was in Japan. I’d known her much longer than that, but it wasn’t until the husband was literally gone, out of the way, that she felt willing to risk taking things further in this way. Not that she thought the husband would have anyway suspected anything, regardless of when and where we carried on. Roberta said on many occasions that he was too obsessed with advancing his career to pay much attention to what she did when she wasn’t helping him advance it.
Myself I think he wouldn’t have cared even if he had known it. Unless he thought we’d be careless enough to let it be revealed. On the other hand, I wouldn’t put it past him to exploit such a scene for his own benefit. Trading exposure for exposure, so to speak. If he thought the sympathy factor would get him votes, he’d arrange a betrayal every night of the week.
She wasn’t getting back at him for fooling around on her. I never got the feeling she thought he did that. Even if he had an occasional dalliance, Roberta said there was such an emotional emptiness at his core that any such activity on his part would have been meaningless to him.
In my opinion, even if he could get it up, his dick was as hollow as his soul. “Stiff” is just a word that describes his entire being.
When he was chosen to be the candidate for Vice-President, Roberta decided to end things between us. How the husband got onto the ticket is a story in itself. It was Roberta who was initially being considered. In fact, it was when she learned she was among those in the running that she told me she couldn’t see me anymore. How it turned out that the husband was picked instead I’m not entirely sure, but I’m pretty sure it was corrupt. Morally, if not actually.
I haven’t talked to her since. I know she would deny it all, given her current circumstances. I fear she’s compromised herself in exchange for the trappings of power. She doesn’t need to worry about me, though. I won’t tell anyone about it.
We are of course hopeful that the President will decide to locate his future Presidential Library in Sherwood. We would be the logical choice. Or so we like to think. Even now representatives of the town’s political and business leadership are in negotiations with President St. Clair’s people, and we are optimistic about our chances. In the end, we believe the President’s loyalty to and affection for his place of birth will outweigh other considerations that might affect his plans for the library.
Ordinarily we might expect some help from the state, but there’s also a bid to locate the library in the state capital. We’re more or less on our own. But we think the President will understand that placing such an important landmark as a Presidential Library in Sherwood will only complete the job of building up this area into a model of mid-American enterprise and initiative he himself helped to start so many years ago. With the library we could become one of the premier destination-spots in the state, if not the entire Midwest. Not to mention the service we would be performing for historians and scholars from all over the world.
The material benefit all of this attention would bring us is certainly quite obvious. We’re not so scrupulous as to deny we would welcome it.
We’d also appreciate it immensely if the President were to come back here to live once again after his time at the White House is over. We understand that the future former President will remain a busy and active man, and would often be away, engaged in the kinds of duties ex-Presidents still are called on to perform. But it would be a tremendous service to us and the whole metropolitan two-state region if we were hereafter always known as the place where President Frederick Townes St. Clair was born and raised, as well as where he chose to return after experiencing the greatest rewards available to a citizen of this great country. Already plans are underway to build a new home appropriate for a former President, on the property where his mother currently has a somewhat more modest home. Even if he used it only sporadically, it would sill be something to brag about.
His mother is quite elderly, of course, but she still gets by well enough. She’s never left Sherwood. Never entertained the idea, as far as I know. I’ve always believed she didn’t much approve of her son going into politics, even after he got to be governor of the state. As far as that’s concerned, by that time she never really saw him much anymore, only on these few times a year he came back for a visit—Christmas, a weekend or two.
When he got to Washington, at first he would bring her there every now and again, mostly to show off dear old Mom and her middle-American values. In my opinion. Once he became President that became less necessary, so she hasn’t been back since the first inauguration. And he’s been here only the one time, when he was running for re-election. He does pay to keep the place maintained and her well-attended. As far as that goes, she’s satisfied with the situation.
She always got along well with Roberta. That surprised me. They didn’t seem to have anything in common. She never worked a single day outside her home, and Roberta never worked a single day inside. Maybe they didn’t see themselves as competing with one another. Not even over F.T. Perhaps she thought that once F.T. had decided on a life in politics Roberta was just the one to look after him and to help him succeed. She was probably right.
As you know, the President’s father has been dead for twenty years. He wasn’t much interested in politics either, but he did take more visible pride in the obvious success his son had become. I’m reasonably sure if he’d lived to see his son become President of the United States he would have felt great satisfaction, to say the least. Isn’t this every father’s dream? Isn’t it? What greater achievement is there for an American to aspire to?
You have followed the posted arrows and have arrived at the final exhibit. At first you think there must be more to it, something hidden behind the curtain on the far wall, something about to descend from the rafters, some audio feature that will presently begin to announce what this thing in front of you is all about, provide you with the information you need to understand why you are staring at this model, this sculpture, statue, wax figure, store dummy. Whatever it is.
After standing and confronting this life-size sculpture—you have decided that this is indeed what it seems to be—for a minute or more, you conclude there is nothing else. You are being asked simply to contemplate this full-scale replica of Frederick Townes St. Clair, your President. It does look remarkably like him. The square features, the wide-set eyes that to you have always in their constant vigilance seemed to have a pleading look to them, the silver fringes to the hair that admittedly lend him a reassuring air of perspicacity and experience. The blue suit in which the sculpture is draped nicely emphasizes the President’s sturdiness of frame, the solid but not excessive bulk of body that can only suggest the equally solid and unassuming values that shaped him and that he has now come to embody.
You begin to wonder what material the sculpture has been made from, the medium from which the likeness has been molded, manufactured. It’s not marble, nor any other unformed mineral or natural matter. Nor is it wax. It doesn’t shine or glisten. Surely not papier-mâché. The shoddiness of such a work as that would be plainly visible to even the least attentive of those who come through here. It could be plastic, but upon touching it (violating the posted warning not to do so), you think that it’s more substantial than plastic, something more like metal. When you chance breaking the rules again and tap gently on the figure’s chest it has a kind of echo, as if the sculpture were in fact hollow inside.
You stand back once again and wait a few additional moments to see if anything else is going to happen, and when nothing does you again follow the arrows and finally exit the building. What had been a warm and sunny day has now become darker, the wind is rising, and the initial smell of oncoming rain is in the air. As you look at the western horizon you can see the black clouds of an imminent thunderstorm looming. You are a native of this region, if not this town, and you know that these storms, under the right conditions, can be quite violent. Sometimes they spawn tornadoes that reduce vast stretches of countryside and whole sections of towns and villages to rubble. You rush to your car in the hope that you can quickly make it back home, since it appears to you that this storm has it sights set on Sherwood. As you pass through the congested commercial strip on your way onto the interstate, the first flashes of lightning can be seen slashing their way through the towering stacks of cloud.
Impressive story. Elegantly captures the vapidity and half-heartedness of our American myths-in-the-making. A cautionary tale and a must-read for everyone in Crawford, Texas. Your endings/summations are superb--towering stacks of cloud.
Posted by: Frances Madeson | December 01, 2008 at 08:53 PM