There's a trick to military parade marching. It's called cadence. The rhythm of cadence keeps every head bobbing at the same time, in the same direction. Cadence moves every left boot as one boot, every right arm as one arm. Cadence creates a beauty of unity.
As a 20-year-old Marine recruit slogging through boot camp in 1942, Henry Bellmon - whose 92nd birthday would have been today - heard no cadence. His parade march was an awkward, ungainly flinging of elbow, foot, head and hand that perturbed his drill instructor into unprintable rantings. Bellmon simply had no rhythm.
Yet his DI came to admire Bellmon's movement in another context - the forced march. The farm boy, who had plowed behind horses because his father disdained tractors, exhibited tremendous endurance. On his training platoon's first forced march, the DI planned to show recruits how out of shape they were. He set a blistering pace and smiled as one after another his charges fell out from exhaustion.
A single man remained with him step-for-step, Henry Bellmon. The DI increased his speed; Bellmon kept pace. The DI ran; Bellmon trotted. In the end, the DI surrendered.
Bellmon was not a pretty Marine, but he was a persistent one.
He took part in four amphibious invasions, including two of history's bloodiest: Saipan and Iwo Jima. For those two, the Corps decorated him for bravery. On Saipan, he was shot out of two tanks, yet kept battling. Enemy shells disabled his third tank. He stayed in it so he could use its radio to direct his armored platoon to eventual victory despite armor-piercing fire raining on his position.
Bellmon was not a pretty Marine, but he was a brave one.
He brought the same characteristics to politics and government. Bellmon was perhaps the worst public speaker ever to hold office anywhere - even after he took a Dale Carnegie public speaking course. He was not photogenic. In the television era, he was poorly equipped to be the Kennedyesque figure - glib and handsome - Americans expect of their politicians.
Yet he shone in the give-and-take of question-and-answer sessions with constituents. He enjoyed explaining his positions. He relished providing information to create a better-educated electorate. When he occasionally cast unpopular votes, he sought to explain them; he didn't hide from constituents.
After he voted to ratify the Panama Canal treaties in 1978 - a move that was highly unpopular among the most vocal Oklahomans - Bellmon drove back to the state and met voters' discontent head-on in public sessions. Little known is the fact that when he spoke in Vinita, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol confiscated a handgun from a man believed intent on shooting the senator. Bellmon continued his speaking engagements around the state, eschewing additional security.
"If someone was going to shoot me, they would have shot me in the war," he said.
In his memoirs, U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, recalled the highly charged emotions surrounding consideration of the treaties. He noted that a vote for the pacts was considered political suicide for many Republicans and certainly for the two GOP senators from Oklahoma.
Bellmon's was "the bravest vote I had ever seen cast," Bentsen said. Bellmon knew his political career was over, Bentsen wrote, but he voted for what he perceived as the best course for the nation in the long run.
Bellmon was not a pretty politician, but he was a brave one.
Today, despite dire warnings of treaty opponents, the Panama Canal remains open and is being enlarged to accommodate larger ships. Turning over the canal, removed a major propaganda target of revolutionary agitators, and the whole of Mesoamerica turned away from communism, toward a friendlier relationship with the United States.
Although the U.S. would later oust Manuel Noriega when the strongman ignored his country's electorate, America enjoyed popular support and avoided guerilla war in the jungles of Panama.
Bellmon was not a pretty politician, but he was a wise one.
Throughout his public service, Henry Bellmon operated on the premise that his job was to receive information, to analyze it thoroughly and to make decisions best for the nation or state as a whole. If the decision was unpopular, voters could kick him out of office at the ballot box.
He rejected the concept that his job as a government official was to keep his job. He was prepared to lose it at any moment so he could help make Oklahoma and America better places.
Just as he remained in the tank to accomplish his mission on Saipan and kept pace with his DI on the forced march, he stayed his course for the nation and state.
Bellmon was not a pretty politician, but he was a persistent one.
Oklahoma and America would be well-served to have another rhythmless marcher in office.
Andrew Tevington served Bellmon in a variety of posts, including chief of staff.
Original Print Headline: Bellmon wasn't pretty, but was heroic
Reader Forum
The incarceration rate in Oklahoma is among the highest in the nation with approximately 26,000 people behind bars at any given time.
The Nov. 28, 2008, Tulsa World published my Readers Forum piece, "Antietam," in which I reported on a visit my then-8-year-old grandson, Stevie, and I made to Antietam battlefield in rural Maryland.
