The Governor's Club  

         When I was 13 years of age, the Governor of Florida visited our high school. This would not have been notable if our school had been large or famous or politically connected, but it was none of these things. It was a relatively unknown institution tucked away in the south-central part of the Sunshine State, a sleepy school in a small Southern town set among broad pastures and vast orange groves that rolled like the sea in every direction, ending only when they collided with the heat-tinged horizon.
        Sebring High School, in those days, was a ratty plaster palace in the process of dissolution. It teetered on the verge of collapse like a worn-out convict on death row, awaiting its hour of condemnation; yet it would not go quietly into that night. The old building had a bad case of the shakes. It sweated dust like bullets, shed termite scrabble like dust as it fretted against the day when it would melt, like Oz's witch, down into the earth from whence it came.

        The students who inhabited this crumbling building were not unlike students in small towns throughout the rural south: a newly integrated mix of good-old-boys and neighborhood kids, players and workers, cowgirls, cheerleaders, jocks, nerds, and unnamed anomalies. Because of our lack of fame or honor, we could not have been more surprised when The Honorable Governor Claude T. Kirk came to our anonymous field of dreams to give a speech in the Year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty eight.
        When the principal's voice called us into the ancient auditorium on that historic day, his voice crackled from the tinny speakers like a siren's song. The reason for the assembly could have been anything; we could not have cared less, filled as we were with infinite gratitude at this unexpected break from the classroom. We had no idea of what we were in for, but soon enough we would be enlightened.
        "Students," our principal said from the stage after a thirty- minute wait, "you may have heard rumors that the Claude Kirk, our Governor, will be addressing this assembly. This rumor is true." A buzz swept through the auditorium.
        "We have been informed that the governor's plane has arrived at the airport, and he is on his way to our school at this time." A smattering of applause greeted these announcements, and the buzz turned into a jocular roar as students shared their amazement. The Governor? Coming here? The thought was unbelievable, yet we had to believe it. He was coming to our school, whether the Democrats liked it, or not!
        As the first Republican governor of Florida since Reconstruction, Governor Claude T. Kirk was an outsider from the beginning. Witty and acerbic, smarter than the smirking journalists who misunderstood and misquoted him, he was a full-blown portrait of contradictions, an out-sized Picasso abstraction come to life: raging outlaw, defender of the oppressed, outspoken mover and shaker of ideas, institutions, and all who dared to stand in his way.
        He was an idealist and a realist, charming and abrasive, a Siamese twin of a man joined to himself at the hip, unable to outrun his own excesses as he nobly struggled to do the right thing in a world overrun by hypocrites and yes-people. Love him or not, no one could honestly say that there was any question regarding where Claude Kirk stood on any issue - or, for that matter, upon which member of the press he happened to be standing. He was an in-your-face governor, warts and all, that rarest of endangered species, the frank politician.
        The press hated Claude Kirk for all the right reasons, or so they assured one another. In fact, they resented his superior intellect and sense of humor, his charisma and success. The realm of ideas was supposed to be their sandbox, after all, and Florida governors were supposed to cleave to the standard liberal agenda that they had been weaned upon. The press was innately suspicious of him. "Progressive Republican" seemed, to them, a contradiction in terms. From Claude Kirks' first day in office they had sniffed suspiciously at his outstretched hand, skulking like surly hounds at the heels of his political agenda.
        From the unfriendly atmosphere of Tallahassee, where the daily paper was named, "The Democrat," Governor Kirk had descended into the mosquito-ridden outback of Florida to address a large hall packed with perspiring students, grades 7 through 12. When he entered the auditorium, he strode swiftly from the rear, several steps ahead of his aides and cohorts.
        As his group swept down a side aisle, glaringly out of place with their dark suits and pale complexions, the crowd of students applauded heartily. It may have been in gratitude for the assembly, in relief that he had finally arrived, in awe that such authority had stooped to our level, or out of sheer respect for a Republican pit bull who was game enough to enter this den of Democratic rottweilers. For whatever reason, we clapped until we chapped our hands.
        After a hasty introduction and words of effusive thanks, Governor Kirk stepped up to the microphone and gazed intently at the gathered throng. We must have looked like pimply squirts to him, little cabbage-heads in a row, but he nodded to us and smiled as if we were Tallahassee colleagues who had just caught his eye at the Governor's Club.
        "Hello," he began, "I'm Governor Claude Kirk." He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out some papers, fumbling with them as he spread them on the lectern. "I'm here to tell you about my vision, and what I have planned for the people of Florida."
        His vision, what does that mean? we wondered. Nobody spoke like that in the 1960's. Still, we could scarcely believe our luck. Claude Kirk? The Governor? At our school? You have got to be kidding!
        The governor's speech - or should I say, his meandering address - must have gone on for well over an hour, but the time raced by. As an opinion-page junkie, I was fascinated by his insider's take on the political battles being acting out in Florida's capital city. His sentences were varyingly pithy or lengthy, his ideas simple or complex as they shot from his mind in concentric bursts, like bundled bolts of lightning from the heart of a troubled cloud. He seemed preoccupied, his mind far away as he described, in some detail, his dreams and hopes for a better state.
        The governor delved deeply into his travails with the press and his concerns that they refused to accurately convey his policies. As his thoughts returned to the students seated in front of him, he exhorted us to choose a career of public service in spite of the inevitable heartache. This was heady stuff for high school kids, but his delivery was so entertaining - so full of sudden humor, personal anecdotes, and pungent asides - it kept the students nailed securely to their seats.
        At last the great man was finished, the papers folded and tucked safely away. Seeing this, a hush fell upon the assembly. Then, of one accord, we stood and cheered, clapping until our hands were little more than stinging hamburgers at the end of numb arms, shouting acclaims until we were hoarse. The governor was surprised, shocked almost, by our response. He stood behind the podium in awe, incredulously soaking it in. When the volume finally dropped below the threshold of aural pain, he meekly thanked us and stepped hastily from the lectern.
        As the principal stood to formally thank to the governor and dignified guests, we could scarcely restrain our conversation. They left the room as they had come, flowing swiftly down the aisle, a splash of dark-suited paleness sweeping behind a multi-hued foreground of sunburnt teenagers. Then, the floodgates were opened and our joy burst out in waves. Full of giddy pleasure, we laughed and chattered among ourselves, ignoring the pleas and threats of our principal.
        As long as we lived, we would always remember this moment, when the governor of our state had met us where we lived, on our own, lowly level, in the steaming boondocks of Sebring, Florida. We didn't understand what it meant, but we felt that, somehow, we had arrived.
        The Governor of Florida cared about us. We, the nobodies of Florida - the sun-scorched, the drawl-inflected black, tan, and red of us - were important. We counted for something in the grand scheme of things.
        We had made it big… bigger than our teachers told us we could be, bigger than the principal, the football coach, the ancient moldering school.
        We had arrived.
        We were somebody, after all.