Roy Exum: John Jay Hooker’s Legacy

  • Monday, February 16, 2015
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

If the colorful John Jay Hooker were to unfortunately die tomorrow, the legacy he would leave behind – by his own admittance – is that “I am the biggest loser in the history of Tennessee politics.” Last November, at the age of 84, he finished third in the race for governor with two percent of the state’s vote and failed twice before as the Democratic nominee, in 1970 and 1998.

But before he goes to his final reward, he wants a different legacy. As Frank Daniels reported in Sunday’s edition of the Nashville Tennessean, Hooker recently told him, “I want Tennesseans to have the right to choose how they die…it is the ultimate civil right, to be able to die with dignity, while you still have some choice in the matter.”

Only three states in America have so-called “death with dignity” laws that allow terminally-ill persons to choose when they die before a natural death occurs.

Oregon passed first passed such legislation in 1994 and Washington followed in 2008. Vermont created a physician-assisted law in 2013 and now John Jay has a deep personal interest on the subject  – he claims to be terminally ill with a malignant melanoma after it was discovered on his arm last month.

On Thursday of last week, State Rep. Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley), who is the minority leader in the House, filed a caption bill that Hooker hopes will bring the issue before the legislature. Fitzhugh, a strong Baptist that the Tennessean’s Daniels reported has strong “misgivings” about such, wrote the bill because of a deeper respect for Hooker and John Jay’s lifelong fights for civil rights.

Hooker, who was born into privilege in Nashville, went to Sewanee and Vandy Law, and quickly became a liberal firebrand shortly after being admitted to the Tennessee Bar in 1957. Just one year later, at the behest of then-Gov. Frank Clement, Hooker and Nashville attorney Jack Norman famously took on Chattanooga judge Raulston Schoolfield. The iconic Schoolfield had allegedly committed some improprieties, and the House of Representatives impeached the judge based on Hooker and Norman’s findings.

Later, the Tennessee State Senate found Schoolfield guilty on several counts and Hooker had a young lawyer who served as counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee of Improper Activities in Labor and Management actually testify against the Chattanooga judge. That lawyer’s name was Robert F. Kennedy, who because a fast friend of John Jay’s until his assassination in 1968.

In 1970 Hooker lost a bitter bid for the governor’s chair to Winfield Dunn, putting a Republican in that position for the first time since 1925. With Chattanooga’s Bill Brock bashing Albert Gore in the Senate race that same year, it was the first time Republicans controlled both the governor’s and both Senate offices since Reconstruction.

A huge factor in the defeat of both Hooker and Gore was their friendship with the Kennedys, because – as we oldsters will remember -- this was just a year after the infamous Chappaquiddick incident where Teddy Kennedy accidentally drove a car off a bridge into a tidal channel, swam to safety, and then waited nine hours before calling the authorities. When the car was recovered the next day, it contained the body of a very dead young colleague of the Senator’s – Mary Jo Kopechne. Soon afterwards, Kennedy was given a two-month suspended jail sentence for leaving the scene of the accident, this to the outrage of the nation.

Another interesting sidenote: As Hooker campaigned in the 1966 race, he and his wife Tish – she from the prominent Fort family in Nashville -- attended a predominately black church and it was there Mrs. Hooker went out of her way to tell a young black girl that she was “as pretty as a speckled pup.” Many years later, that same young black girl asked Mrs. Hooker to be a guest on her TV show, where Oprah Winfrey told millions of viewers what Ms. Hooker’s comments that day meant to her.

John Jay Hooker has been a state force ever since rattling Schoolfield over 50 years ago. His business deals, his political sway and his colorful manner have endeared him to friends and political foes alike. Call him what you will – a political gadfly, a perennial candidate, a “deal maker” – there is one special trait he carries best. When Daniel told him a “death with dignity” law would be a tough sell in a very conservative state, Hooker’s eyes danced with merriment when he replied, “I have standing.”

Hooker began telling friends he had terminal cancer last week and is quickly ramping up a campaign to choose his own time of death. Melanoma of the bone is a frightening sentence, and if, indeed, it is already to the terminal state, time is ticking.

He told the Tennessean, “I want to be engaged, and vital, and when I can’t be engaged in the debate, then it will be time for me to go. I want to be able to make that choice – when the time comes.”

royexum@aol.com

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