The Life and Times of Henry Bellmon

In a candid memoir typical of the straight-forward Bellmon manner, the former U.S. Senator and Governor of Oklahoma presents his view of life and politics from his childhood on the family farm and tank warfare in World War II, to the Nixon years and Watergate, to his recent controversial second term as governor. Henry Bellmon has made a political career of taking an unpopular position he believed was right and somehow winning at the ballot box anyway. Beginning as a Republican county chairman in a state where the few people who were Republicans were reluctant to admit it, he built a statewide party organization which helped elect him as Oklahoma's first Republican governor. From there he proceeded to the Senate where his decisive votes in favor of school bussing and returning the Panama Canal to Panama infuriated his constituency. Yet he won reelection as Oklahoma governor a few years later. The source of Bellmon's appeal to voters becomes evident as one reads his autobiography. Here is an essentially unpretentious man who writes frankly, yet without rancor, of his experiences in seventy years of public and private life. The cast of characters in his story includes many of the national and international leaders who have shaped our history - Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Carter, Muskie, Humphrey, and many more. Always Bellmon's focus is not on himself but on events, people, power and politics as he experienced them.