Brooks Hays: A Christian in Washington - Page 3

Magazine article in Home Life magazineSteele Hays, eighty-five-year-old father of Congressman Hays, beams proudly on his granddaughter, Betty Hays Bell, and great grandchildren Keith and Caroline. A leader encouraged him, however, and he kept trying. Soon he was being called "a natural-born orator." At sixteen he heard E. E. Lee, enthusiastic field man from the Sunday School Board in Nashville, Tennessee, at a state convention at Arkadelphia. Brooks was so fired with "Hot Dawg" Lee's ideas that he returned home to help enlarge the training pro-gram of his church. How He Won Her He put his new-found abilities to work at the University of Arkansas, taking a lead in student government. His position doubtless helped him, as a senior in 1918, to win the favor of Marion Prather, the prettiest freshman to attend the reception that fall. Graduate studies at George Washington University took Brooks to Washington. Looking for a part-time job, he applied at the treasury department, "because I guessed that's where most of the money was." "They had me count twenty-dollar bills all week and then let me take one of them home on Saturday nights," he quips with characteristic good humor. Though he went back to Russellville to enter private law practice with his father, his heart was set on a life of public service. He married Marion Prather in a church ceremony at Fort Smith in February, 1922. By spring he had persuaded his dad that the elder Hays should be in Congress. The two of them staged a hard-fought campaign that summer- and lost. That Brooks was no novice at campaigning, even at twenty-three, is evidenced by a fan letter still cherished by the elder Hays. The letter praises Brooks's first effort at campaign oratory: "That speech was just long enough and just short enough and just learned enough and just boyish enough and just manly enough and just instructive enough-in fact, just enough of everything and not too much of anything, and with sufficient pep and powder to make it stick to the spot and stay on the target where it was shot." That campaign marked the beginning of many disappointments for the would-be statesman and his bride, however. He made four major political races before he won. Then once he got to Congress in 1943, he came face to face with many decisions where political friends back home urged him to vote one way and his conscience dictated another. "Marion and I decided early," he says, "to rely upon the simple, fundamental truths we had learned from a Christian environment. Our determination not to let bitterness and discouragement over-take us would have been impossible with-out religion in our lives." Not Bad for a Start His first personal bid for major office was for the Arkansas governorship at the age of twenty-nine. "The Boy Scout candidate," his opponents labeled him. He finished second in a field of eight- not bad for a beginner. He tried it again two years later, and though he polled a much heavier vote he again came out second best. This defeat was a dark hour for Brooks and Marion Hays as they realized their investment of savings (and credit) had been for naught. They slipped away from the crowd for hamburgers in a neighbor-hood restaurant. "Maybe it's better this way, Brooks," Marion said pertly. "If you had been elected we couldn't have come in for a hamburger, just the two of us together like this." Disappointment dogged them again in 1933 when Brooks made his first race for Congress. Though his victorious opponent was credited with 1,850 votes in a county where there were only 1,632 registered voters, a court suit failed on a technicality. He campaigned for Congress again in 1942. Brooks was forty-four now, had served his state as assistant attorney general and the federal government in the Department of Agriculture. He also had sold insurance. The campaign was a hard one. Results would be crucial, for he knew that success must come now or never. Brooks and Marion faced election day with prayerful confidence, sure of the Lord's will in the outcome whether or not it brought political victory. Hamburgers were not possible that night. Marion started packing suitcases for Washington the next day. Deacon Brooks Hays has done much more in Washington than is expected of an ordinary congressman. Not only has he sought to represent his home district 10 HOME LIF