Bumpers, Dale L(eon) 1925-

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BUMPERS, Dale L(eon) 1925-

PERSONAL:

Born August 12, 1925, in Charleston, AR; son of William Rufus (a hardware store owner) and Lattie (Jones) Bumpers; married Betty Lou Flanagan (a teacher), September 4, 1949; children: Dale Brent, William Mark, Margaret Brooke. Education: Attended University of Arkansas; Northwestern University, J.D., 1951. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES:

Office—1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036-2109. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 201 East 50th St., New York, NY 10022.

CAREER:

U.S. senator, governor, businessman, and attorney. Admitted to the Bar of the State of Arkansas, 1952; Charleston Hardware and Furniture Co., Charleston, AR, president, 1951-56; attorney in private practice, Charleston, 1952-70; cattle rancher, 1966-79; governor of State of Arkansas, 1970-74; U.S. senator, 1975-98, committees: appropriations, energy and natural resources, small business; Center for Defense Information, Washington, DC, director; Arent Fox, Washington, DC, attorney, 1998—. President, Chamber of Commerce, Charleston, AR. Military service: U.S. Marines, sergeant, 1943-46..

AWARDS, HONORS:

All with wife, Betty Bumpers: Citizen of the Year Award, March of Dimes; Excellence in Public Service Award, American Academy of Pediatrics; Maxwell Finland Award, National Foundation for Infectious Diseases; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases named the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center in honor of the couples' advocacy in the areas of public health and childhood immunization.

WRITINGS:

(With others) Religion and Politics, edited by W. Lawson Taitte, University of Texas Press (Dallas, TX), 1989.

The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town (memoir), Random House (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dale Bumpers never lost an election, and he served the State of Arkansas as its governor and U.S. senator. He was succeeded as governor by William Jefferson Clinton who, when he was impeached as president, asked Bumpers to make the closing argument at his trial. Bumpers, who worked while in the U.S. Senate to increase funding for the improvement and purchase of childhood vaccines, has been honored along with his wife, Betty, for their work as health advocates.

Bumpers was a child of the Great Depression in a town with a population of fewer than a thousand people. When he was twelve years old, he saw President Franklin Roosevelt campaigning in Arkansas, being physically supported by two men at the back of the train. Bumpers's father pointed out to his children that if FDR, who was afflicted with polio, could be president, then so could any of them. The young Bumpers earned money by picking cotton, potatoes, and peas and began working in a store when he was fifteen.

During World War II he served with the U.S. Marines and was to be part of the invasion of Japan when that war ended. Upon returning to Arkansas, Bumpers completed his education and became a lawyer. He also managed the retail hardware business of his father after both of his parents were tragically killed in an automobile accident while he was in law school.

In eighteen years of practice, Bumpers lost only two jury cases. He was instrumental in Charleston's decision to become the first Southern city to integrate its schools following the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision. In 1970 Bumpers defeated segregationist Orval Faubus's comeback attempt and became, at age forty-four, the youngest governor in Arkansas history, unseating incumbent Republican governor, Winthrop Rockefeller. In 1974 Bumpers defeated J. William Fulbright for a U.S. senate seat, which he filled for twenty-four years.

Bumpers provides the opening essay of Religion and Politics, in which the contributors explore the relationship between the two in both an historical and a constitutional context. Stephen N. Dunning noted in America that Bumpers cites sources as various as James Madison and the Shah of Iran "in what is a zesty defense of the American system that protects religion from encroachment by the state and the state from domination by any religion." Bumpers was the only Southern senator to vote against the prayer in school amendment.

In an interview with a representative of the Center for Defense Information, Bumpers said, "I have defended the Constitution at every chance. I voted against thirty-seven constitutional amendments since I've been in the Senate and for one, and that one was a mistake. I wish I hadn't cast it. But people around here trivialize the Constitution. It's the document that's made this country great, it's made us free, the longest living organic law in the world, and yet, people around here treat it as though it's just a rough draft. So, as I look back, as I say, I cast courageous votes, I stood up for what I believed."

When Bumpers announced that he would not seek a fifth term, he added that his frustration had increased "exponentially." Commenting on Bumpers's departure, Alan Greenblatt wrote in Congressional Quarterly Weekly that "a stem-winding and restless orator on the Senate floor, Bumpers carried to Washington his reputation for opposing wasteful spending. The proposed space station was long a favorite target.… Bumpers's populism has kept him at odds with the GOP, despite his tight-fisted fiscal voting record and his efforts to look out for small-business interests in a variety of legislative arenas." Bumpers was frustrated in his attempts to reform laws governing grazing and mining on federal lands, essentially taxpayer-owned lands from which, in the case of mining, billions of dollars in minerals are extracted and no royalties paid. Another favorite cause was the preservation of wilderness through the expansion of the National Park system.

Rolling Stone's William Greider interviewed Bumpers after he left the U.S. Senate. Bumpers expressed his disgust with the state of politics in the United States and said, "I have this inordinate, probably foolish, almost childlike hope that one of these days people are going to say, 'Look, with the amount of money that we spend in this country and the amount of ignorance, environmental degradation, and problems with our health-care system we have, there's something wrong about our spending priorities.'" "If the people in this country ever wake up and realize that they can have it all for the taxes they're paying," continued Bumpers, "they'll figure out how misguided our priorities are and will demand a different caliber of leadership."

Bumpers's passion and love of country are as evident in his memoir The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town as are his wit and wisdom. A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that "it is the author's total candor, combined with his facility for humor spun out of rural America's plain talk, that lifts this remembrance well above the ordinary."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that "this witty book indicates he may have a new career as a humorist on the printed page."