Tom Hayden And I

 Mr. Hayden is dead now, so I feel free to recount the occasions upon which our lives intersected. There were a couple of them. If I seem a bit rough on Tom in the beginning, please consider it in light of the new Netflix movie about the Chicago 7 (or 8). Tom doesn't seem like a particularly pleasant man in Eddie Redmayne's portrayal either. I learned along the way that he was a good man.

The Sixties have been remembered well in popular memory. Much better than they deserve, if one is being honest. The actual results were mixed, and even that is being kind.

There were some successes, some high points, but upon close examination they were either no big deal, or more like the prelude to a backlash that undid all of the good. Sure, we landed on the moon, and made it back alive, that was really something. Nothing much of note followed, however, and the lasting benefits of the “race to the moon” were found only in things like the miniaturization of computers and advances in metallurgy and rocket fuel formulation. Sure, some important legislation was passed with bipartisan support. The Civil Rights Act; the Voting Rights Act. Great Society! War on Poverty! We've all see how those things worked out over the long haul. To be clear: not very well.

I beat the rush, myself. I was already well and truly alienated before the turn of the decade. Happy New Year, 1960! A few years of high school and the assassination of JFK put the icing on the cake. A couple of years of college and a brief stint in the Navy failed to improve my mood. 1968 finished me off. I cut the power, and the blackout lasted for many years.

Tom Hayden was about ten years older than me, and in the late Sixties “ten years older” was an enormous chasm of time. Those were the days of, “never trust anyone over thirty,” and it was true for the most part. They had a very different experience of life; they liked different music; they were politically alien to young people; they were beyond the reach of the draft, and if they had served at all in the military it had been in those lazy days of the late 1950s, early 1960s. The Elvis Army, you know, they send you to Germany or Georgia and they teach you how to make pies. 1968 wasn't like that.

I had been aware of Tom Hayden for years before 1968. Aware of the Students for a Democratic Society, the SDS. I thought that it was a bunch of crap, and I don't recall the subject coming up frequently in my social circles. I thought, in fact, that anything to do with either politics or hippies was a bunch of crap. Not that we thought that the SDS were hippies, no, they were even worse. They were, in our eyes, straight kids pretending to be radicals while playing at parliamentary procedure. I was aware of a few of the individuals who would come to be known as the Chicago 7, or 8. Tom Hayden, Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale. The whole thing was not my scene. Much too public.

Mostly, we didn't waste any time on such things. I, for one, had much more important things on my mind. Things like girls, literature, music, movies, museums, and Italian food, or anything that would tend to enhance my enjoyment of those things. And, I suppose, anything that would help to dampen the signals from the outside world on less delightful subjects.

My experience of 1968, and the Democratic convention, was more like Haskell Wexler's “Medium Cool” (1969) than like the recent Aaron Sorkin film, “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Like Wexler's cinema verite point of view, my life took place in quieter spaces, involving ordinary people, with the worst of the craziness buzzing around the edges, only briefly and occasionally including me in the action.

As usual, it has taken me six hundred words to get to the point.

By the mid-1970s, Tom Hayden and I had both gotten married and moved to Los Angeles. I'm not sure if we did those things in the same order. It's not much of a story, but here it is.

In 1976, Mr. Hayden ran in the Democratic primary for the United States Senate seat of John Tunney. Wikipedia describes it as a spirited contest, with Mr. Hayden closing the gap near the end. Good run, but he lost the primary. That was the beginning of Tom Hayden's quest for a career in California politics.

My wife at the time, my ex-wife you might say, was an educated professional woman who ran her own business during the day and taught classes in her field at the local community college a couple of evenings per week. She was a pistol, that one, full of excess energy. It flew off of her in sparks. A beautiful, vivacious woman with a big personality. People like that sort of women. She was active in the profession's organizations, and this meant that she worked with some people who were very active politically. And, as is the way with such things, with some people who had a lot of money, since politics and money go together like Ben and Jerry. Some time in mid-1982, we were invited to a fundraiser in a ritzy, beachy suburb north of Los Angeles, a fundraiser for none other than Mr. Tom Hayden. At the time he was running for a seat in the California State Assembly, the lower house of the state legislature. He was still questing for that elusive career. Trying to find the doorway, so to speak.

Now I should mention that it was not only SDS that had always rubbed me the wrong way. Tom Hayden had always had the same effect. I was somewhat abrasive for what amounted to at least half of my life, but I had learned to be civil. I was properly dressed, and I knew some of the people at the affair. I was fitting right in for most of the evening. My wife and I were introduced to Tom and I shook his hand. We exchanged pleasantries. For all he knew, I might be rich, so I'm sure that he was on his best behavior. We both were.

We all had a few drinks, and some expensive finger food, and Mr. Hayden gave a little presentation in support of his candidacy. Then it was question time, like a press conference. It was going pretty well, but then the devil on my left shoulder fed me a doozy of a question and I let it fly.

“Mr. Hayden,” I said, “you started out in the race for the U.S. Senate, and it didn't go your way. Then you tried for the House of Representatives, then the California state senate, and now you're in the race for the state assembly. My question is: if you lose your run this year, will you lower your sights still further and try again? And what position in politics would be too low for you to consider?”

I was way too pleased with the question to pay much attention to his answer, but I recall that it was brief. He won that election and served in the California Assembly for ten years, followed by eight years in the California State Senate. He did a pretty good job of it. I'm sure that he was a much better person than I had given him credit for.

Five years later, he showed me a different side and indirectly did me a solid. Our lives again intersected, although on that occasion it was not in the same room. He was still in the assembly, and by a total coincidence he and one of my wife's professional friends were seated next to each other on a commercial flight. They were well acquainted, and happy to see each other. First, a bit of background.

I was not the only abrasive personality in my family, and my ex-wife had gotten us into license trouble with the Department of Social Services. She had brusquely asserted her right never to be bossed around by anybody, under any circumstances. Not an unusual occurrence in itself, but on this occasion the person receiving the metaphoric back of her hand was a DSS official. They pulled our license, which put us in a spot. Luckily my wife was very popular in her professional circles, and well loved by her business clients. A couple of things happened rather quickly.

First, one of her ex-clients, a high-powered lawyer with offices in Century City, asked her if she was represented by counsel. No, so he simply said, “I'll take it on, don't worry about it.” DSS was accustomed to running these drills against unrepresented individuals, so imagine their surprise when, in quick succession, they receive a representation letter, and a phone call to quickly set up the hearing in the matter. “As soon as possible, please, because lost revenues are adding up,” he said. “Next week, if possible, and please allow two days for the hearing.” That made the poor DSS attorney swallow his bubble gum. “Two days?” he said. “Well, we will be calling quite a few witnesses and references.”

Very soon after, our friend took her seat next to Mr. Hayden on the plane. A flight scheduled to take about one hour. Tom had a situation that our friend might be able to help with, and he asked her if she'd mind if he ran it by her. He was seeking her advice, she's as bright as the sun. She said, “sure,” and for about a half hour they discussed Tom's situation and she had some ideas for him. With ten minutes to go in the flight, she said, “Tom, I have something that you might be able to help with too.”

She wrote down our names and address to give him, and told Tom the story of our license problem. He said, “I'll call them. It should be fine, from what you told me.” Being officially in state politics comes in handy in these situations, even if you are only in the assembly. The next day, Tom called the head of the legal department at DSS in Sacramento, who gladly took the call from a famous assemblyman. After telling the guy our name and address, he said, “do you know who these people are? Do you know who they know?” Donors, he meant, Democratic donors. That attorney then called the guy handling the matter in the Los Angeles County, who almost immediately sent a letter to us, and called besides, more or less apologizing for the mistake. License restored as of this second. We never saw the offending official again.

In light of all of this, it occurs to me that I owe Tom Hayden an apology for my rude question, and more of a thank you for helping us out of that jam. Those I now send with great reverence into the void, because Tom was part of the great die-off that we all experienced in 2016. That was a banner year for death, wasn't it? Really got the ball rolling.

Tom died of a stroke. I hope that he did not suffer too much. He was 76.