Marvelous news. I’ve been appointed to Officer Candidate School. It won’t be Annapolis, but it will give me a chance to go into flying later on. I’ve already told Mother and Dad, and I want to tell you, too, but nobody else. I stood either at the very top of all the men who took the exams, or close to it. It’s going to come true, Penny.
Just as she was kissing the signature, Senator Grant came by with the good news: “Navy tells me to go ahead.” And on this assurance she sent the telegram: SENATOR GRANT HAS APPOINTED YOU TO ANNAPOLIS. I AM PROUD OF YOU. PENNY.
She would always remember the ensuing years as among the richest of her life-not the most exciting, for they were [167] to come later, but the most rewarding. She worked m the office of a fine man, whom she could respect increasingly. She worked beside a brilliant man, Tim Finnerty, whose shrewd insights into political maneuvering she envied. She was attending a fine university whose professors, Finnerty pointed out acidly, “are exactly the kind of Catholic subversives you yokels from the West ought to come up against.”
She was beginning to see, from the inside, that the Democrats were not the inept slobs she had said during the campaign and that Harry Truman was a rather more substantial President than she had at first perceived. “Watch out, Finnerty. That man won’t be a pushover in 1948.” But both Grant and Finnerty were satisfied that Dewey would win easily.
Because she was taking pre-law courses at Georgetown, she became Senator Grant’s liaison with the Justice Department and developed a burning admiration for the manner in which the Supreme Court of the United States served as a buffer between the various branches of government and especially between the forty-eight sovereign states.
On four different occasions she had an opportunity to meet Justices of the Court: twice she carried papers to Chief Justice Vinson. who seemed austere and preoccupied. Justice Burton she liked immensely, but Justice Douglas made her suspicious; she agreed with Senator Grant that some of his dissenting opinions were asinine. But the Court as a whole, especially the stalwart conservative judges like Burton, Reed and Jackson, satisfied her that the system evolved by the founding fathers was a good one, probably the best known to any nation.
But when the work was done, and her explorations finished, it was to the lovely town of Annapolis that she repaired, always delighted by the first sight of its towers, the stateliness of the Naval Academy, the delicate charm of its little streets and Southern mansions. Sometimes, as she drove her Plymouth in from Washington on Friday evening, she would draw over to some curb and simply look at the beauty of this rare town, checking the old brick houses she had not seen before, then driving slowly down to the enchanting harbor that crept right into the heart of town, with small craft lining its shores. It must be, she [168] thought, the most beautiful state capital in America.
To her left, as she studied the harbor, rose the old gray buildings of the Naval Academy, where John Pope was learning the rules of his profession. In his plebe year he was allowed few privileges; sometimes Penny made the trip to Annapolis and wasn’t even able to see him. But she came to know the widow of a naval captain who ran a small boardinghouse on colorful Pinckney Street, and when John was not available, there she nestled down to study her law books. When he was given freedom he joined her there for dinners which the widow delighted to prepare, after which John took over the Plymouth for a drive through the Maryland countryside.
Once when he had a full day off, they boarded the ferry and rode across the bay to the Eastern Shore, where they entered a strange and beautiful world that seemed locked by history into the eighteenth century. They ate crabs and oysters and beaten biscuits and told each other how different this was from Fremont and Nebraska. On one drive back John spotted an ice cream stand, from which he purchased a pint of rum raisin ice cream, and as they finished the last bites, licking the wooden spoons, Penny whispered, “I was going to say that I wished life could go on like this forever. We don’t have to wish it. You and I can make it continue.”
After their first sexual experience in the autumn of 1944 it had been understood between them that they could repeat it whenever an opportunity occurred, and during John’s senior year in high school they had found many occasions for relaxed and extended explorations. They were in love and there was every expectation that some day they would marry; they both wanted this, equally, and no attractive girl that John met as a football hero diverted him from Penny, and not even a man as gifted as Tim Finnerty distracted her.
In the week before John enlisted in the Navy, they had made love every night, as if trying to store up memories sufficient for the long years ahead, and whenever he managed to snatch a leave, they did the same. Once she traveled to Chicago to be near the Naval Training Station when he was granted two days of freedom, but now that he was a fully registered midshipman at the Naval Academy he felt constrained: “The Navy would knock the devil [169] out of me if they found I’d been registering with you in some cheap hotel.” This they refused to do, so their lovemaking was restricted to the Plymouth, parked in some dark Eastern Shore lane, or in the home of some girl friend in Washington. But their affection for one another increased with each meeting, whether they were able to go to bed or not.
Mostly they talked, neither ever growing weary of learning what the other was engaged in. “They have some of the brightest professors at Georgetown. Really brilliant men whose teaching is entirely different from that at Fremont U. Question. Question. Question. They want to drive you in a corner, and if you can’t fight your way back ... goodbye.”
John said that his studies at the Academy were tougher than he had expected, especially in mathematics. “You’d think the Navy ran on a slide rule. Sometimes I can hardly keep afloat, until I remember that the others are having an even tougher time with the formulas than I am. You know, Penny, we got a damned good education back there in Henry Clay High School.”
On one visit, when the widow either accidentally or prudently had to visit relatives in Baltimore, they hurried to bed, where John confided the good news: “As you know, I put in for aviation training, and three days ago I received confirmation. I go either to New Mexico or Pensacola for real flight training. Not exploratory stuff, but the real thing.”
Before he could do this, however, he had to master smallcraft sailing, and the Navy kept some nineteen two-man boats in the Severn River, where he learned to handle sails, cast off ropes and dock his little yacht, as he and Penny called it. Twice he was able to take her sailing, and on one glorious weekend he and six other novices, under the eye of a former Navy captain, were able to take their girls on a two-day cruise down the bay to the enchanting town of Oxford, which dated back to the 1600s. The men slept aboard; the girls checked in at the old inn on the waterfront, and at dusk they met for crab cakes and beer. On the quiet sail back to Annapolis, John whispered, “The day I graduate, we get married.”
“I decided that three years ago,” Penny said. She was well on her way to becoming a lawyer, and told him, “When [170] you’re flying off some carrier, I’ll be fighting government cases in some town like Boston. You watch.”
Even though she had learned to respect the quiet, tough manner in which Harry Truman handled the perilous tasks of the Presidency, she was astounded when the 1948 election drew to a close with him still in contention. She had assumed, like all Washington people from the Western states, that Governor Dewey would win easily, and she had even played the game of who would be invited to join his Cabinet: “There’s a real chance that Senator Grant will be offered Secretary of the Interior.”
“And I’ll advise him not to accept,” Finnerty said.
“Why in the world not?” Penny asked. “When Dewey wins this year, he’ll be good for eight years. That’s better than being a senator.”
“There’s nothing better than being a senator,” Finnerty said.
Together with Grant, they returned to Fremont to campaign for the entire Republican ticket, and when she saw once more that stable, solid grou
p of Republicans she was reassured: “Dewey has it. And you, Senator Grant, are going to have to make some tough decisions. How do you incline?”
At such moments she became vaguely aware that her boss and his wife were not having an easy time handling his new responsibilities. Elinor Grant was as attractive as ever, her dark hair still framing the pallid face austerely, her controlled smile still giving an aloof but pleasing impression. What seemed lacking was any conviction that she approved what her husband was doing. When Midshipman John Pope took his girl Penny to the ArmyNavy game in Philadelphia, it was a total event: both of them wanted Navy to win, silly as it might seem to others; both of them cheered, and drank beer afterward, and yelled at their friends in a day of irresponsible delight. And whenever Penny negotiated a new milestone on her way to a law degree, John exulted with her. When Mrs. Grant refused to participate in any celebration of her husband’s achievements, Penny said, “Maybe she doesn’t comprehend what an enormous thing it is to get a bill passed through the Congress. Especially one that will benefit the entire West.”
If Penny was confused by Elinor’s indifference, she would [171] have been appalled had she Learned that Mrs. Grant still protested the fact that the senator had brought Penny to Washington. “Mark my words, Norman, that girl has her cap set for you. Sooner or later, there’s bound to be a scandal.”
Once, in the moment of victory over the hapless Democrat who had opposed him in the senatorial race, Norman Grant had kissed his ablest lieutenant Penny Hardesty; Elinor had seen this and it rankled.
She nagged her husband so incessantly that one morning in 1949-when Harry Truman was in the White House for four more astonishing years and big, friendly Tom Clark was on the Supreme Court-Senator Grant summoned Penny to his office. “Penny, I’ll let you have the bad news straight, and I don’t want to discuss it. You’re fired.” She gasped, and then he added quickly, “And five different senators want to hire you. I’d take Glancey of Red River. He’s a mover.”
“Why?” she asked, stunned by the two messages, one so devastating, the other so commendatory.
“I can’t say.”
“It’s Mrs. Grant, isn’t it?” When he said nothing, she added, “It’s got to be.” When she carried the news to Finnerty he gasped, although he had been forewarned by the senator, and she said, “It’s got to be Mrs. Grant, doesn’t it?” All he would admit was “He doesn’t have an easy time with that one.”
“He advises me to take the job with Glancey of Red River.”
“So do I.”
“Then you knew?”
“Yes, and that’s all I’ll say.”
“Well, I’ll say something more. Elinor Grant is going to destroy her husband, you watch.”
“Nothing can destroy our boy, and you know it.”
She sat on his desk. “Why is it that women hate other women? Every senator I know has a wife who despises all the women who work for him. Why can’t women ...”
“Frankly, this is the wrong time to discuss the problem with me. I’m getting married next month.”
“That’s wonderful. Who’s the girl?”
“An Irish girl. From Boston. A good Catholic, like you said.”
[172] “Now I can kiss you!” Penny said, and suddenly she was lost in tears. She was being separated from two men who meant so much to her, Grant and Finnerty. She had helped propel them toward the stars and now she was being cut loose. “You’re buzzards, all of you. And I love you, all of you, even old double-dealer Gantling.”
Before she shifted jobs she was requested to join in a series of conferences, which determined many of her future attitudes. Paul Stidham, Elinor’s father, now old and enfeebled, hurried to Washington to look into the problems that seemed to be immobilizing his daughter, and as soon as he arrived she appeared to improve, regaining her wit and her quiet competency.
Paul asked if he could meet with Penny Hardesty alone, and when they sat together in the senator’s inner office he asked bluntly, “Did my daughter have any justification in having you discharged?”
“Sexually, none, although I believe she feared that. Tim Finnerty in our office wanted to marry me. I’ve been engaged for some years, more or less, to John Pope, whom you probably remember as a football hero at Henry Clay High School. He’s a midshipman at Annapolis, only a few miles away.” Speaking almost harshly, she said, “I am not a sex-starved young secretary.”
“What was the problem?”
“You know better than I,” Penny said coldly.
“Her inability to get Washington in focus?”
“Or anything else,” Penny said with asperity. This man’s daughter had damaged her grievously and she felt no inclination to treat him gently; had he educated Elinor better, this would not have happened.
“What’s her trouble, Miss Hardesty?”
“You’ve surely known for a long time, Mr. Stidham. She’s unable to face the reality of her world. So she engages in fantasies about people like me ... and her husband. She has no concept of what his job entails, or the power he might command, or the good he might do.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to work for a real senator, a tough, brawling man who knows what he wants and who gets things done. A Democrat, God forbid.” She laughed heartily, then apologized: “I’m sorry, Mr. Stidham, that I’ve been so blunt.
But unless you get your son-in-law off dead center, where [173] his wife has forced him to stand, he’s going to be a very poor senator indeed.”
“My own opinion.”
“Oh, Finnerty will keep getting him elected, and he’ll fill a spot. But that’s not what he intended when he took that oath in the life raft.”
“What oath?”
“Finnerty and that wonderful Negro told me about it. When the second night ended and it looked as if they would all perish, Norman went kind of wild and swore that if he survived ... Well, he was going to do something with his life. He’s not doing it.”
A plenary session was called; to which, significantly, Mrs. Grant was not invited. It, was held in the back room of a Washington restaurant, ostensibly to bid Penny Hardesty farewell. Grant attended, of course, and so did Finnerty and Paul Stidham. The head of Grant’s office in Fremont was there, and to Penny’s surprise, so was her new boss, Senator Michael Glancey of Red River, a ruddyfaced, boisterous Democrat from the oil fields.
“I have asked you all to join me,” Paul Stidham said in his soft, high voice, “because my son-in-law Senator Grant needs your advice. Frankly, I long for him to pull a strong oar in the Senate, and he isn’t doing it. What’s wrong?”
Senator Glancey was not hesitant: “When a freshman comes in here, he’s wise to keep his mouth shut. Norman’s done that. But he’s also wise to start chopping out a niche for himself. And you haven’t done that, Norman.”
“I’ve worked on agriculture.”
“And very well, too. But men seem to attain stature in this body not by attending to the issues that please the people in their home state. We’re all obliged to do that. What counts is the way a man tackles the big issues, the ones that affect us all.”
“Meaning?”
“The biggest thing in the world right now is atomic energy. What we do with it. How it fits into the national and international defense posture.”
“You’re handling that rather well. You and Lyndon Johnson.”
“Thank God for Lyndon; he has his head screwed on right. If he can hold his seat in the Senate, he’ll be a force for good.”
[174] “What has atomic power to do with me”?” Grant asked.
“Not a damned thing,” Glancey snapped. “But advanced aviation and rockets and what they’re calling space are also going to be of major importance. I’m sure of it, and on my aviation committee we need a good man from the Republican side. A strong fellow likely to be reelected term after term.”
Finnerty said, “I think we can guarantee the elections, Senator Glancey”
“I thin
k so, too.” As a successful senator, Glancey had learned to pay attention to what the field managers of other senators said, for he appreciated how much an elected official owed to the men who kept the machine rolling. Turning to the man from Grant’s state office, he asked, “Do you concur? Can you keep getting him elected?”
“There’s not a cloud on the horizon.”
“There’s always a cloud on the horizon,” Glancey corrected. “It’s just that sometimes we don’t recognize it.”
This encouraged the Fremont man to speak more frankly. “Our senator is safe for one more election, of that I’m sure. But if he has not established himself ...”
“Exactly,” Glancey said. Then he chuckled. “God knows I’m not here to elect Republicans. But the solemn fact is that we’re never going to carry Fremont. So what we want is a good Republican rather than some clown. A feisty young Republican will knock you off one of these days, Norman. Not a Democrat. That is, if you allow yourself to become an old clown like Gantling. We all knew he was doomed.”
“And you think Norman will be doomed if he doesn’t get off dead center?” Stidham asked.
“Definitely. What I offer you, Grant, in return for this very bright young lady that you’re tossing my way, is full partnership on our aviation committee. We need you as a former military man, a hero if you will. We need a strong, continuing man in your party.”
“I’ve never piloted an airplane.”
“Nor have I. To tell you the truth, I’m what is known as a white-knuckle flier. I’m scared to death of the damned things. But I fly in them because my job demands it.”
Senator Glancey asked for another drink, then said, “Our country’s the same way. But we must learn to handle [175] planes and all the things that’ll come after. And you’re the man to help us.”
So in the spring of 1950 John Pope and Penny Hardesty, not yet married, committed themselves to aviation, he at a naval air station in Pensacola, where he would master advanced fighter training, she to Senator Glancey’s office, from which as a lawyer she would be encouraged to exert constant influence on legislation dealing with aviation and the burgeoning field of rocketry.