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Monday, January 12, 2009
Akerman’s soundness leaves impression in print
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dr. Bob may have been the last editorialist in the country who wrote his opinions with a No. 2 pencil on a yellow legal pad.
And yet when you go back and read them 15 years after he wrote his last column or editorial for The Atlanta Journal, their intellectual soundness stands the test. The No. 2 pencil allowed him to reflect as he wrote, to approach his commentary with the calm judgment of a superb historian who fully understood the ramifications of public policy decisions.
Dr. Robert Akerman of Kennesaw, a former dean of Kennesaw State College whose commentary appeared on the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal twice a week for almost 20 years, made a final journey back to his hometown of Orlando last week at the age of 80. During most of those years on the Journal, he was chief deputy to Editorial Page Editor Durwood McAlister, who preceded him in death by less than a month. He and wife, Jean, had 60 years together and three children, including Mary Virginia Akerman Frazier and Georgianne Nabors, both of Kennesaw, and Robert H. Akerman Jr. of Largo, Fla.
How quickly in life we find ourselves our parents and our elders.
Back in the days when smoking was allowed, Dr. Bob and his pipe were a welcomed sight at the office door. He’d stand, puffing occasionally on his pipe, and offer follow-up commentary and historical perspective on an issue in the news. He was the wise elder, the historian by training, whose brief conversations were just the touch of restraint often needed by a brash young editorialist who lacked the long view.
Dr. Bob was born into a Southern Republican family, though he found himself at odds with the party of Richard Nixon on its Southern Strategy, which he believed exploited racial division. His great-grandfather, Amos T. Akerman, who practiced law in Elberton, was U.S. attorney general under President U.S. Grant, and a fierce opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. An uncle of Dr. Bob filed suit in 1949 to integrate the University of Florida. On civil rights, therefore, his views and those of most Southern whites were in conflict. Just out of high school in Orlando he took a job as a copy boy, though, as he wrote on retirement from the Journal in 1993, “my journalist ambition was to be an editorial writer and columnist. I knew it would take time and experience, as well as more education, but I thought it would be great to be paid to express my opinions — and I had a lot of them.”
He found early experiences as an editorial writer frustrated by beliefs, especially on civil rights, that were at odds with editors or owners. So he left to pursue a career in higher education, never expecting to return to editorial writing.
As a historian, he spent 15 years in higher education, serving as chairman of the social science division and as chairman of the history department at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, and as dean of Kennesaw State College, then a two-year school. While he loved the classroom, college administration was not particularly satisfying, so he “sort of blundered into an offer to become a writer for The Atlanta Journal editorial page” in 1973, he once wrote.
“These 20 years have been the best of my professional life,” he wrote on retirement. With Dr. Bob, opinion writing was a professor’s opportunity to educate from another pulpit. His commentary was never personal, never hurtful, never ruffled, never written in anger. It was for the reader, as it was when he dropped in to elaborate on the historical perspective that reinforced a point he’d argued earlier, a chance to step back and reflect on the choices we were about to make.
Read his commentary now. Read it tomorrow. It has endured and will.
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Governor in 2010?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Wild Hog Supper, the traditional kick-off of the legislative year, drew a crowd of thousands, reported the AJC’s Aaron Gould Sheinin.
The Thinking Right blog was, no doubt, represented by Mid-South Philosopher. I was elsewhere. Thousands of people packed into the former railroad depot at the lower entrance to Underground Atlanta puts them all in the position of standing in each other’s face shouting or of pulling pork already pulled by hundreds. It’s a fun place, alright, a place ambitious politicians dare not miss.
Among those in attendance were most of the declared, or near-declared, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in 2010. For Republicans the crowd at the top includes Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, Secretary of State Karen Handel and Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine. State Rep. DuBose Porter of Dublin, a probable candidate for the Democratic nomination, was there too.
Today’s topic is a survey of sorts, especially for those inclined to vote in the Republican primary. The question is which of the three, or whether any of them, excite? Why or why not?
For me, I’d like a low-tax, small-government visionary who’s willing to experiment on service-delivery alternatives. No finger-to-the-wind Republicans for me, thanks.
Is there a chance, still, that U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson could rethink 2010? The national landscape could change quickly, but it’s not looking good for the GOP in the U.S. Senate. George Voinovich, the two-term senator from Ohio, is expected to announce today that he won’t seek reelection in 2010. He’d be the fourth Senate Republican to announce other plans. Kit Bond of Missouri, Mel Martinez of Florida and Sam Brownback of Kansas are not running for reelection in 2010. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas could leave earlier if she decides to run for governor of Texas.
If the Democratic Party comedian is eventually given the U.S. Senate seat from Minnesota, Majority Leader Harry Reid will control a Senate that’s within a single lukewarm Republican of being filibuster-proof. Republicans, then, are spectators.
Isakson may recognize that a couple of terms as governor would be more fun. Besides, based on November’s outcome it’s pretty obvious that barring scandal, Republicans have a far better chance of retaining an open U.S. Senate seat here than they do in, say, Ohio, Florida or Missouri.
