RUST COMMENTARY: REMEMBERING GREAT LEADERS OF CHARACTER, INTEGRITY AND HONESTY

I received a letter June 22 from Senator Kit Bond who was a close friend of Gene Huckstep. These are some excerpts from the letter.

"I very much appreciated receiving the copies of the editorials on Gene Huckstep. We will long-remember him with great fondness, humor, and love. Also, I enclose a copy of the statement I submitted for the Congressional Record memorializing Gene. I had hoped to be able to deliver it in person. Submitting it for the Record was the best I could do and I figured it was appropriate to establish another permanent record in tribute to Gene."

Tribute to GENE E. HUCKSTEP, Senate Congressional Record

"Mr. BOND. Mr. President, a very popular Sunday night television show, entitled, 'Touched by an Angel' focuses on stories where people's lives have been affected in a positive way by angels who are sent from Heaven to serve among us.

"I rise today to pay tribute and honor to a very dear friend who might just qualify as one of those angels that serves to minister to his fellow man.

"This past week, a former Presiding Commissioner of Cape Girardeau County, Gene Huckstep, completed his successful service on Earth just before reaching his 70th birthday.

"Gene Huckstep was widely loved and universally respected, but he was at first appearance not one you figure to be an angel. Gene was a powerfully-built man who could be as rough as he needed to be. He laughingly told stories about his educational career, which at times bordered on juvenile delinquency. He was sent to the military to shape up.

"Then, in a career fueled with brushes with death, by his calculation he used up about 39 lives. In the Army as a tank driver he once was badly burned when the tank caught fire when it was being refueled, and another time when his tank went into water 25 feet deep he barely escaped drowning.

"After his service career he returned to his native Cape Girardeau and saw death and destruction first-hand when the May 21, 1949 tornado struck. After taking a baby from the hands of a dying man impaled on a two-by-four, he searched for other survivors and fell into a cellar fracturing three vertebrae and leaving him in a body cast from hip to neck.

"His outstanding service to his fellow man began in 1965 when his family-owned body shop bought a gas-powered saw which led law enforcement agencies to begin to call on Gene to rescue victims in serious car accidents.

"He faced many life and death situations cutting people out of burning automobiles to save their lives; in some cases losing the battle to flames before he could extricate them.

"One time he was trying to retrieve a drowning victim when friends on the bank saw swarms of cottonmouth water moccasins coming toward him. They pulled him out with a grappling hook that saved him from potentially fatal snake bites.

"Over his career in 22 years he personally extricated victims from 1,976 serious car accidents. For these victims and their families, Gene Huckstep truly was an angel.

"His service to mankind continued well beyond his extrication business. In 1978 he was elected Presiding Commissioner of Cape Girardeau County with strong bipartisan support and led the way on many improvements in the county including a new jail, a veterans home, and many other worthwhile benefits.

"In the private sector he led the drive for a new emergency room at St. Francis Hospital, and he served as Chairman of the Board of Cameron Mutual Insurance Company.

"His specific charitable contributions are far too many to recount, but it is safe to say he left his community a far better place because he touched so many things for the good of the community and his fellow man.

"As one who was blessed by his friendship as well as his political support, I shall always remember his generosity, his good humor, and his genuine concern for others. Our thoughts and prayers are with his lovely wife Betty, his family, and his many close friends. I shall always treasure his memory and the fact that he was spared from dangerous situations so many times to carry on his work among the people of Southeast Missouri."

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Culture War: New York City fired a popular teacher recently -- not for child abuse or passing out condoms but because she told her students that another student who died in a drowning accident was in heaven. Her comments came in response to an 11-year-old girl who asked if the drowned boy was in heaven. "Of course he went to heaven," the teacher responded. She then told the class she would be happy to talk to them about it if they wished. All 29 students stayed and ask her questions. For this she will get no second chance and no warning or slap on the wrist. The teacher cleaned out her desk while her students cried. One student summed it up: "We talk about guns and condoms -- and they give us condoms to have safe sex on the streets. But then we can't talk about the One who made us." -- Washington Update

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George Washington, in his First Inaugural, April 30, 1789, declared that "the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; ... the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained ... "

In his Farewell Address, Sept. 17, 1796, Washington stated: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports ... [R]eason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government."

Our second president, John Adams, agreed: "Statesmen ... may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand ... the only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure virtue." Adams also declared: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

President TEDDY ROOSEVELT -- who peers from Mt. Rushmore as one of America's Great Presidents said: "We can afford to differ on the currency, the tariff, and foreign policy; but we cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is ... an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest we have no right to keep him in public life, it matters not how brilliant his capacity. Without honesty the brave and able man is merely a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by every lover of righteousness. No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law. Under the higher law, under the great law of morality and righteousness, he is precisely as guilty if, instead of lying in a court, he lies in a newspaper or on the stump; and in all probability the evil effects of his conduct are infinitely more widespread and more pernicious. We need absolute honesty in public life; and we shall not get it until we remember that truth-telling must go hand in hand with it, and that it is quite as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell the truth about one who is not decent."

Theodore Roosevelt, excerpts from The Strenuous Life (published 1900)

But, my friends, as I was researching this article, I discovered that the Founding Fathers spent much less time and energy on the office and particularities of the President than they did on the character and responsibilities of the American people. Their high expectations were of you, the people; it is upon your shoulders that the country's future rests.

The Founders constantly point out the efforts citizenship requires: "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it," said Thomas Paine.

Thomas Jefferson expected the people to inform themselves: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." The people, said Jefferson, "are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty." -- Rush Limbaugh, The Limbaugh Letter

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Lawyers ... would you believe they have a good sense of humor?

Well, some of them do. Not only do they tell lawyer jokes among themselves, some of them have been circulating a list of dumb questions by attorneys. The list allegedly was compiled originally by the Massachusetts Bar Association's Lawyers Journal and I picked it up on the internet.

The Journal's editor, William Litant said he collected the examples from newspaper articles.

Some of the questions in the Journal had their own answers by witnesses, like these two:

-- "You were shot in the fracas?"

"No, I was shot midway between the fracas and the navel."

-- "All your responses must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?"

"Oral."

But some of the questions had no answers. So we offer our own:

-- "Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep he doesn't know about it until the next morning?"

"Only if he won't wake up to the idea."

-- "Were you alone, or by yourself?"

"I was together, with the most singular of thoughts."

-- "The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?"

"Not quite old enough to legally drink."

-- "Was it you, or your younger brother who was killed in the war?"

"I was. We switched identities."

-- "Did he kill you?"

"Yes, I believe he did."

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.