Beautiful article.....May John Vincent Coulter rest in peace knowing those
he left
behind were blessed by his part in their lives.....AAC
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:26:23 -0500, "Patriot Games" <Patriot@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24379
>
>John Vincent Coulter
>by Ann Coulter
>
>The longest baby ever born at the Albany, N.Y., hospital, at least as of
May
>5, 1926, who grew up to be my strapping father, passed away last Friday
>morning.
>
>As Mother and I stood at Daddy's casket Monday morning, Mother repeated
his
>joke to him, which he said on every wedding anniversary until a few years
>ago when Lewy bodies dementia prevented him from saying much at all: "54
>years, married to the wrong woman." And we laughed.
>
>John Vincent Coulter was of the old school, a man of few words, the
>un-Oprah, no crying or wearing your heart on your sleeve, and reacting to
>moments of great sentiment with a joke. Or as we used to call them: men.
>
>When he was moping around the house once, missing my brother who had just
>gone back to college, he said, "Well, if you had cancer long enough,
you'd
>miss it."
>
>He'd indicate his feelings about my skirt length by saying, "You look
nice,
>Hart, but you forgot to put on your skirt."
>
>Of course, he did show strong emotion when The New York Post would run a
>photo of Teddy Kennedy saying the rosary. I can still see the look of
>disgust. I saw that face in "How To Read People Like a Book" and it was
NOT
>a good chapter.
>
>Your parents are your whole world when you are a child. You only
recognize
>what is unique about them when you get older and see how the rest of the
>world diverges from your standard of normality.
>
>So it took me awhile to realize that by telling my friends that Father
was
>an ex-FBI agent and a union-buster whose hobbies included rebuilding
>Volkswagens and shooting squirrels in our backyard, I was painting the
image
>of a rough Eliot Ness type, rather than the cheerful, funny raconteur
they
>would meet.
>
>Besides being very funny, Father had an absolutely straight moral compass
>without ever being preachy or judgmental or even telling us in words. He
>just was good.
>
>He would return to a store if he was given too much change -- and this
was a
>man who was so "thrifty," as we Scots like to say, he told us he wanted
to
>be buried in two cardboard boxes from the A&P rather than pay for a
coffin.
>
>When I was bombarded with arguments for baby-killing as a kid, I asked
>Father about the old chestnut involving a poverty-stricken, unwed teenage
>girl who gets pregnant. (This was before they added the "impregnated by
her
>own father" part.) Father just said, "I don't care. If it's a life, it's
a
>life." I'm still waiting to hear an effective counterargument.
>
>Father hated puffery, pomposity, snobbery, fake friendliness, fake
anything.
>Like Kitty's father in "Anna Karenina," he could detect a substanceless
>suitor in a heartbeat. (They were probably the same ones who looked
nervous
>when I told them Father was ex-FBI and liked to shoot squirrels in the
>backyard.)
>
>He hated unions because of their corrupt leadership, ripping off the
members
>for their own aggrandizement. But he had more respect for genuine working
>men than anyone I've ever known. He was, in short, the molecular opposite
of
>John Edwards.
>
>Father didn't care what popular opinion was: There was right and wrong. I
>don't recall his ever specifically talking about J. Edgar Hoover or Joe
>McCarthy, but we knew he thought the popular histories were bunk. That's
why
>"Treason" was dedicated to him, the last book of mine he was able to
read.
>
>When Father returned from the war, he used the G.I. Bill to complete
college
>and law school in three years. In order to get to law school quickly, he
>chose the easiest college major -- a major that so impressed him, he told
my
>oldest brother that if he ever took one single course in sociology,
Father
>would cut off his tuition payments.
>
>As a young FBI agent fresh out of law school, one of Father's first
>assignments was to investigate job applicants at a uranium enrichment
plant,
>the only suitable land for which was apparently located on some property
>owned by the then-vice president, Alben Barkley, in Paducah, Ky.
>
>One day, a group of FBI agents saw the beautiful Nell Husbands Martin at
>lunch with her mother. They asked the waitress for her name and flipped a
>coin to see who could ask her out first. Father lost the coin toss, so he
>paid off the other agents. And that's how Nell became my mother.
>
>Mother swore she'd never marry a drinker, a smoker or a Catholic, and she
>got all three, reforming Father on all but the Catholicism. Even in
foreign
>countries where none of us spoke the language, Father went to Mass every
>Sunday until the very end.
>
>Of course, toward the end, he probably didn't even remember he was a
>Catholic. But on the bright side, he didn't remember that Teddy Kennedy
was
>a Catholic, either.
>
>Father spent most of his nine-year FBI career as a Red hunter in New York
>City.
>
>He never talked much about his FBI days. I learned that he worked on the
>Rudolf Abel case -- the highest-ranking Soviet spy ever captured in U.S.
>history -- during one of my brother's eulogies on Monday. But when Father
>read a paper I wrote at Cornell defending McCarthy and came across the
name
>William Remington, he told me that had been his case.
>
>Father mostly had contempt for Soviet spies. In addition to damaging
>information, such as military plans and nuclear secrets, the spies also
>collected massive amounts of utterly useless information on things like
U.S.
>agricultural production. These were people who looked at a flush toilet
like
>it was a spaceship.
>
>He told me Soviet spies reveled in the whole cloak-and-dagger aspect of
>espionage. One spy gave weirdly specific details to a contact before
their
>first meeting: He would have the New York Herald Tribune folded three
times,
>tucked under his left elbow at a particular angle.
>
>When the spy walked into the hotel lobby for the rendezvous, Father
nearly
>fell off his chair when the man with the Herald Tribune folded under his
>elbow just so ... was also wearing a full-length fur coat. But he
couldn't
>have told his contact: "I'll be the only white man in North America
wearing
>a full-length fur coat."
>
>In the early 1980s, as vice president and labor lawyer for Phelps Dodge
>copper company, Father broke a strike against the company, which
culminated
>in the largest union decertification ever -- at that time and perhaps
still.
>President Reagan had broken the air traffic controllers' strike in 1981.
But
>unions recognized that it was the breaking of the Phelps Dodge strike a
few
>years later that landed the greater blow, as described in the book
"Copper
>Crucible."
>
>There was massive violence by the strikers, including guns being fired
into
>the homes of the mine employees who returned to work. Every day, Father
>walked with the strikebreakers through the picket line, (in my mind)
>brushing egg off his suit lapel.
>
>By 1986 it was over; the mineworkers voted against the union and Phelps
>Dodge was saved. For any liberals still reading, this is what's known as
a
>"happy ending."
>
>To Mother's lifelong consternation -- until he had dementia and she could
>get him back by smothering him with hugs and kisses -- Father wasn't
>demonstrative. But all he wanted was to be with Mother (and to work on
his
>Volkswagens). They traveled the world together, went to DAR conventions
>together, engaged in Republican politics together and went to the New
York
>Philharmonic together -- for three decades, their subscription seats were
on
>the highest landing, or as we Scots call it, the "Music Lovers" level.
>
>When Mother was in a rehabilitative facility briefly after surgery a few
>years ago and Father was not supposed to be driving, we were relieved
that a
>snowstorm had knocked out the power to the garage door opener, so Daddy
>couldn't get to the car. It would just be a week and then Mother would be
>home.
>
>My brother came home to check on Father the first day of this arrangement
to
>find that he had taken an ax to the side door of the garage, so he could
>drive to the rehab center and sit with Mother all day.
>
>When she left him for five days last summer to go to a family reunion in
>Kentucky, at some point, Father, who hadn't been able to speak much
anymore,
>looked up and asked his nurse, "Where is she?"
>
>And last Friday morning at 2 he passed away, in his bedroom with Mother.
The
>police and firemen told my brother that they kept trying to distract
Mother
>to keep her away from the bedroom with Father's body, but she kept
padding
>back into the bedroom to be close to him.
>
>Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. I hope they stop
laughing
>about the Reds long enough to talk to God about smiting some liberals for
>me.
>
>
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