In Memory of Henry Bellmon

Henry Bellmon, one of OSU’s greatest alumni, died on Tuesday morning, Sept. 29, 2009, following a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s. The former Oklahoma governor and U.S. senator was a man of integrity who loved Oklahoma State University and the state of Oklahoma. He will be missed and long remembered by the OSU family and many others.

A STATESMAN FOR ALL THE PEOPLE
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Henry Bellmon’s freshman year in 1938 differed significantly from student life today.
Few people of the Depression era had any money. Maybe a dozen students owned an automobile. And except for church and occasional theater productions or dances at the girls’ dorms, “There wasn’t much of a social life,” Bellmon says.

Campus also contrasted with the homestead in north-central Oklahoma where his family produced wheat and livestock and where his love of farming began.
Bellmon’s father encouraged him to pursue a high-paying profession. “He wanted me to become a lawyer,” Bellmon says. But Bellmon wanted to study agriculture and chose Oklahoma A&M because it was close to home. Preferring the outdoors to class work, he took the maximum course load to graduate a semester early in January 1942.

Bellmon worked his way through college with numerous jobs. He picked pears for a woman on Monroe Street, washed windows at the new Stillwater public library, ground samples in the soils lab, cleaned the college poultry barn and wrote agriculture news for the O’Collegian.
In lieu of the monthly $6 rent at Dickman’s boarding house on Knoblock Street, he made beds and did janitorial work. And he washed dishes at the Aggie Co-op in exchange for the $12-per-month meal plan.

On Dec. 6, 1941, Bellmon was stunned to hear Pearl Harbor had been attacked and ran to the O’Colly to read the Associated Press wire reports.
He graduated the following month, but unable to find employment, he returned to the farm.
One day he took a load of hogs to Oklahoma City to sell for his father and came back an enlisted Marine. He hoped to be grouped with friends who had already signed up. “There was a certain feeling that we wanted to be where the action was,” he says.

As a college graduate, he was assigned to officer’s candidate class the following November. That gave him time to help his family with harvest and hitchhike around the upper Midwest before leaving. To pay his way from state to state, he shoveled wheat in Kansas, skidded logs in Wyoming, cleared weeds from an irrigation canal in Idaho and hauled hay near the Teton Mountains. He toured Yellowstone Park and visited a sister in Texas before heading home in time to help plant the winter wheat.

In November 1942, Bellmon rode his first train to Quantico, Va., for officer’s training. From there he spent one final week in Oklahoma before joining the Fourth Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, Calif., en route to the Pacific Theater.

NEW PERSPECTIVES

Until World War II, Bellmon’s primary interest was to become a successful farmer. But witnessing the “enormous waste of human lives” on both sides of battle would change the course of his life.
“I made up my mind that if I survived the war I would get into government and see if I could improve conditions between governments and races,” he says.

Bellmon witnessed friends die in combat in the Marshall Islands, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. He saw corpses littering battlefields and terrified Japanese families jumping from cliffs rather than surrender.
When anti-tank fire hit his tank on the beach at Iwo Jima, the assistant gunner beside him died instantly, and the gunner was badly injured. Bellmon, who later received a Silver Star for pulling the gunner to safety, was so covered in gore he was mistaken as injured.

More than 20 years later while serving as a U.S. senator, the horrendous realities of war influenced Bellmon’s decision to cast one of the deciding — and highly unpopular — votes to ratify the Panama Canal Treaty. After thoroughly studying the issue, he knew he could not in good faith send American troops to protect a commercial interest in the civil war that would likely ensue if the treaty were not ratified.
“It is difficult to develop a rallying cry around the concept of ‘Whip the Panamanians and keep cheap freight,” Bellmon said on the Senate floor.

And despite vociferous opposition from his party, his constituents and the press, which labeled him a traitor, he stood solidly behind his decision and concluded that legislators are obligated to vote for what they believe to be the public’s best interest, even if it costs them the next election.

Claudia (Quam) Scribner, a 1973 English graduate who began working in the senator’s Oklahoma City office that year, says Bellmon impressed staff by remaining calm despite the negativity surrounding controversial issues such as the Panama Canal.

“I don’t think he let it get to him,” says Scribner, who later worked as Bellmon’s executive assistant when he was governor. “He paid attention to the critics, but then he did what he thought was right. He never let the headlines influence him.

“I don’t think I could have gotten a better education in government — or in life – than I did by working for him,” she says.
Living in Hawaii during the war also opened Bellmon’s eyes to segregation that kept the white population in power and relegated Japanese-Americans to field work, another injustice he considered a great waste of human resources.

Later, as Oklahoma’s governor, he modeled desegregation for state offices by hiring black employees, including a receptionist, Beulah Ponder, who became a friend and trusted adviser on racial matters.
“I think he’s much more of a statesman than a politician,” she says. “Many times, he would ask me my thoughts about how to handle issues that were coming up.”
When the Bellmons were choosing schools for their daughters, Ponder invited them to tour her children’s school near the governor’s mansion. “My kids were so delighted to have the governor visit,” she says. “They knew him and wanted to show him around just like he was part of the family.”

Seeing the schools’ rundown conditions intensified Bellmon’s support for integration and his later decision as a U.S. senator to support the “imperfect” solution of forced busing. “I became totally convinced black children in Oklahoma City were not getting a fair or equal education,” Bellmon says. “No one liked busing, but it was a means to an end toward moving black children into good schools.”
Ponder has no doubts about his sincerity. “He believed people were people,” she says. “Everyone knew how Henry Bellmon felt about education. He didn’t believe one school should be above another.”

POLITICAL LIFE

Throughout his life, Bellmon earned a reputation as a non-conformist who voted his conscience regardless of party politics or popular opinion.
“My rule is to get your facts, make your decision, and stick with it,” says the 87-year-old.

“If I had been a conformist, I sure wouldn’t have registered as a Republican,” he jokes. Oklahoma Democrats outnumbered Republicans 5-to-1 when Bellmon’s father took the liberty of registering his 21-year-old son as a Republican while Bellmon was overseas.

Within a year of returning home, Bellmon entered politics with the encouragement of fellow Noble County resident and former OSU football player Robert “Bob” McCubbins, who was leaving the Oklahoma House of Representatives and asked Bellmon to consider running for his seat.

Bellmon did run, and within two months of winning the November 1946 election, he married Shirley Osborn, a neighbor six years his junior who had “grown up” while he was away at war.
During his two years as a state representative, he discovered living on $6 a day when the House was in session would not support a family, which by March 1948 included baby daughter Pat.
When voters did not reelect him in 1948, he learned the painful lesson that politicians must campaign even when they think they’ve done a good job. He took the opportunity to focus on his family and his livelihood.
He returned to the circa 1895 farmhouse, which lacked indoor plumbing or running water until well after the birth of all three daughters, Pat, Gail and Ann. Bellmon resumed creating ponds and waterways with a military-surplus bulldozer he purchased before entering the legislature.

The whole family pitched in to raise sheep, poultry and wheat during their 12 years on the farm. Youngest daughter Ann (Bellmon) McFerron remembers climbing inside big burlap bags and stamping down the newly shorn wool. “The natural lanolin in the wool made our skin feel so soft.”

She also remembers her father singing sweet songs about her mother as he drove to Enid to sell eggs.
In the mid-1950s, Bellmon became active in county politics and in 1960 was elected Oklahoma’s Republican state chairman. He built a formidable statewide foundation with chapters in each county, but he still couldn’t persuade anyone to accept the 1962 gubernatorial challenge.

“We didn’t have a candidate, so I ran,” says Bellmon, who was confident his party could elect a candidate it believed in but unsure it would be him.
His political networking paid off, however, and Bellmon became the first Republican governor of a Southern state since Reconstruction. During his term, he established Oklahoma’s outstanding vocational education system, a state employees’ retirement program and passed legislation to exempt seed and fertilizer from sales tax.

When his first term as governor ended, Bellmon consented to help with the national campaign committee for Nixon and was soon designated as national chair.
After Nixon won the New Hampshire primary, Bellmon left the committee to run for U.S. Senate, triumphing over incumbent Mike Monroney, who served 12 years in the House and 18 years in the Senate.
During two terms in the U.S. Senate from 1968 to 1980, Bellmon served on the Senate Agriculture Committee that passed target-price legislation for farmers and authorized farmer-owned reserves. He also served on the Interior Committee and was the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee.

As a politician, Bellmon worked with presidents, national leaders and foreign dignitaries but treasured his friendships with staff and others closest to him.
“I think everyone who worked for Mr. Bellmon felt like part of his family,” says John Baird, a staff researcher for Bellmon in the early 1970s. “He’s a man of conviction, and he’s not shy about sharing his thoughts when they need to be shared.”

Lee Paden, who worked as a special assistant to Bellmon in Washington, D.C., and in Oklahoma, remembers being outraged when a high-ranking Democrat successfully introduced legislation that Paden helped prepare for Bellmon.

“I thought this guy stole our amendment, and I was ranting about it,” Paden says. But Bellmon, who was in his first year in the U.S. Senate, calmed him down and explained recognition wasn’t the objective.
“It doesn’t matter if my name is on the legislation,” Bellmon told Paden. “What matters is whether it finally becomes a law.” The legislation, still a part of Internal Revenue Service code today, requires the IRS to pay legal fees a taxpayer incurred when successfully defending an IRS investigation.

“Many of the issues he worked on in the Senate, such as water quality and equal rights, are still relevant today,” Paden says. And his “Bellmon amendments” to the Foreign Aid Bill have prevented wasteful grain exports from going to countries where the influx would hurt local farmers or where storage is inadequate.

Paden, now an energy and environmental consultant, says Bellmon’s inherent concern for the long-term interests of the citizenry continues to influence how Paden analyzes information and advises his clients.
“Governor Bellmon is truly a futurist whose ideas stretch well beyond the present, and I count it a distinct privilege to have learned from him.”

GOVERNOR AGAIN

When his second term in the U.S. Senate ended, Bellmon returned to Oklahoma, and like many farmers in the early 1980s, struggled with more than $700,000 in farm debt. To make ends meet, he sold property and also accepted various jobs, including teaching government classes for OSU and other universities.

For six years, he watched the state’s agriculture and banking industries collapse, and decided Oklahoma needed a leader more concerned with problem-solving than reelection.
“We needed someone willing to make tough decisions,” says Bellmon, who won the governor’s seat for the second time in 1986.

Making changes wasn’t easy, though. Bellmon’s attempts to cut costs by eliminating one of the state’s three medical schools and $5 million in incentives for rural physicians were unsuccessful.
But he did corral the state legislature into passing a public education reform bill in 1990 to increase teacher salaries and reduce class sizes.

His proudest accomplishment, he says, was creating Oklahoma’s endowed chairs program for higher education in which the state matches gifts to college endowments.
“I hope the endowment program has had the effect of keeping talented academicians in Oklahoma and recruiting other top educators to our state,” Bellmon says. “Education is the key to the long-term health of our country.”

Bellmon retired from politics in 1990, and despite Parkinson’s disease, open-heart surgery in 2004 and Shirley’s death in 2000, he continues to reside on the homestead where he grew up and is married to longtime friend Eloise Bollenbach. Two of his daughters also live on the family farm, now converted into a retreat center called Turtle Rock Farm.
Looking back, Bellmon still marvels that he could win an election.

“I don’t know why anyone would vote for me,” he says. “I’m not eloquent. I can hardly get two words to stick together. No money, no fame.”
Yet his honesty and moral virtues have impressed Oklahomans as well as world leaders.

“Henry Bellmon is the quintessential Oklahoma success story,” says OSU President Burns Hargis, who worked on Bellmon’s 1974 Senate campaign.
“He’s brought great distinction to Oklahoma,” Hargis says. “I can’t think of anyone of his era who’s accomplished more.”

Bellmon says his own life proves that winning elections doesn’t require a person to be a radical or a genius or to be wealthy or have a famous name. “What’s required is the ability to instill trust, to get people to believe in you and to work hard at your job.

“I think people see me as someone they can approach if they need help,” Bellmon says. “And someone they can trust.”

An Enduring Legacy
Bellmon’s Foresight Paves the Way for Top Students
He didn’t realize it at the time, but Henry Bellmon sowed the seeds that grew into OSU’s elite standing as a Truman Honor Institution.
“Little did he know his inspiration would result in a whole generation of outstanding OSU graduates,” says Robert Graalman, director of scholar development.
Graalman remembers the day Bellmon stopped by his office in the Student Union nearly 15 years ago.

“Mr. Bellmon wondered why he hadn’t seen many qualified OSU students as Truman finalists since he knew OSU has outstanding students,” Graalman says.
Bellmon had served on the Truman scholar selection committee after leaving the U.S. Senate, and he knew the scholarship criteria correlated with OSU’s land-grant mission of public service and outreach.
Through Bellmon, Graalman contacted Louis Blair, executive secretary of the Truman Foundation, and invited Blair to present a seminar on campus about how to prepare winning applications.
The results were instantaneous.

“Bryan Begley, president of the Student Government Association and an outstanding engineering student, attended the seminar and won a Truman Scholarship in 1994,” Graalman says. “Bryan also became a state finalist for a Rhodes scholarship the following year.”

Since then, OSU’s Office of Scholar Development has produced more than 50 national and international scholars and is a national model for other universities.
OSU enhances academic experiences for approximately 400 top students annually with additional research opportunities, individual mentoring, travel and special academic classes.
The OSU Henry Bellmon Endowment can help make more of these enrichment opportunities possible.

When Bellmon was a freshman in 1938, his expenses totaled $225 and were fairly affordable for a young man working his way through college.
“I didn’t buy most of my textbooks because I couldn’t afford them,” says Bellmon, who earned high grades anyway and was a member of the freshman honorary society Phi Eta Sigma and routinely listed on the Dean’s honor roll.

“I learned to be a good listener,” he says.

Today’s top students, however, increasingly rely on scholarships to achieve their full potential, which often depends on advanced graduate degrees and international experience.
OSU’s latest Truman scholar, Cortney Timmons, implemented a campus-wide recycling program in addition to her research that focuses on converting agricultural waste into renewable energy.
Her commitment to the environment also won the biosystems and agricultural engineering senior a Udall scholarship her sophomore year.

National competition is tough, she says, and students with access to leadership opportunities, research and international study have a distinct advantage.
“OSU is a great place to gain experience with all three,” she says.

Like Bellmon and Timmons, OSU’s first Rhodes Scholar, Blaine Greteman, hails from a small, rural Oklahoma community, Hydro, and proved he could succeed at national and international levels.
“I felt really well prepared because of the mentoring I received and the university’s general culture that reflects the land-grant ethos,” says Greteman, who studied at Oxford with his 1998 Rhodes scholarship. Today he teaches English and will lead a group of OSU students to Cambridge this summer.

Bellmon says OSU’s investment in students like Greteman and Timmons will produce the greatest returns for the state, the nation and the world.
“As world situations become more complex, those who serve best will be the ones who understand the root of problems and can develop solutions,” Bellmon says. “I can’t think of anything more important for a university than a reputation for building scholars.”