Wrapped in the Flag (45 page)

Silence.

“Don’t you want to say something to your daughter?” Sarah suggested to her grandmother.

“What should I say?” Mother said.

“Tell her you love her,” Sarah suggested.

There was a long pause. I waited. My daughter waited.

Finally, Mother answered, “I can’t say that,” she blurted out. “I’m not sure I do.”

Those were the last words I ever heard from my mother.

Both of my parents are dead. They lie next to each other in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Marshfield, Wisconsin. There is an empty plot next to my dad’s, a plot for one of the children, just in case. I doubt it will ever be needed. All the Conner kids have moved away now, gone from Marshfield to new lives in other towns.

For the years between my father’s death and my mother’s, I was the grave tender. Early in the spring, I pulled the crab grass crawling up the memorial stone and yanked out the weeds around his bronze veteran’s plaque. On Father’s Day, I brought flowers. In July, I marked the anniversary of his death. In September, it was his birthday.

Every visit gave me time to think—think about my father, my mother, and me.

The day after my mother’s funeral, I made my final trip up St. Joseph Avenue to the cemetery. I turned off the main road onto a narrow gravel path and parked. I picked my way between the headstones until I stood over my parents.

Familiar Wisconsin surrounded me: ripe manure wafting up from Weber’s farm, muddy earth dampened by the night shower, the perfume of climbing roses drifting from a garden on Broadway. A little flock of sparrows hopped
from the metal fence to a nearby bush and back again, chirping and pecking. Somewhere, a dog barked and a horn honked.

Funeral flowers were strewn over Mother’s grave. My father’s plot was bare. I picked a lily from one arrangement and placed it at Dad’s head along with a crumpled photograph. The fading black-and-white was a fifty-nine-year-old picture of me, sitting on my daddy’s lap. I was a funny thing with my thick glasses, wild hair slipping out of barrettes, and toddler-chubby legs. Dad’s arm circled my waist, holding me steady. While I looked at the camera, my father looked at me. Both of us were smiling.

For years, I’d clung to that picture as proof—proof that my dad had loved me. And by extension, proof that my mother had loved me, too. She may not have been in the photo, but I’d decided that she had to have been the photographer, the loving Mom who captured her husband and her baby girl in one perfect moment.

I sat on my father’s grave and remembered my conspiracy-fighting parents who never slowed down or backed down. When their battles cost them their friendships and financial security, they fought the fight. When their dark vision of Communism didn’t happen, they found new enemies. When the John Birch Society was pushed to the fringe of the fringe, they held the fort. Even when their radical politics and their uncompromising positions tore them from their children, they pressed on.

I thought about my parents’ bodies locked in the coffins beneath me and their souls soaring in the vast eternity of an endless July day. I cried because I knew they were not coming back and I’d never know if they had even the slightest regret.

Since my parents died, I understand more about my father and his evolution into a Communist-fighting, traitor-naming right-winger. I have some idea now how revealing the Conspiracy and stopping the Communists before they took over the United States became his focus, his purpose, his everything. My mother was his rock-solid, totally committed partner.

When I left Marshfield that day, I said farewell to my parents and to the ideas that had consumed them. I had no idea that the radical right wing was about to emerge from hibernation and stage one of the most dramatic political resurrections ever. All it took was a financial crisis that paralleled the Great Depression, an African American Democrat in the White House, and huge doses of fear and fanaticism.

The slumbering John Birch Society was about to be born again, wrapped in the flag.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new
.

—R
ALPH
W
ALDO
E
MERSON

Heartfelt thanks and gratitude to my sister Janet, who reminded me to keep writing. “Only you can tell this story,” she told me. One day, when I imagined that my manuscript was finished, I asked her how to find an agent. And she told me.

Janet led me to Jo Ann Deck, an incredible woman who became my literary agent and trusted friend. I’m eternally grateful for Jo Ann’s enthusiasm for
Wrapped in the Flag
and her support during the long, arduous process of getting the manuscript buffed and polished. Thank you, Jo Ann, for asking that “one little question” of yours and for believing in me, even when I wasn’t sure I believed in myself.

Special thanks to Alison Strickland and Judy Huge, who read every word I wrote and offered excellent suggestions for improvements. A big shout out to Ted Strickland for pitching
Wrapped in the Flag
to anyone who’d listen and to Art Huge for attending my talks and offering smart suggestions. I’m also grateful to Karen Casey, Julie Miller, Karen Pell, Frank and Kathy Mann, Ed and Pat Besse, and Nancy Wysocki for loving my early stories. All of you helped me press on as my first two years of writing grew into three and then four and then five. Thanks to Kathy Hepinstall, author of
Blue Asylum
, who reminded me to make my father and my mother come alive.

I’m grateful for the help of tech-savvy friends John Thomas, savior of my computer, and Yvonne and Hank Charneskey, wizards of photography and video. My website—claireconner.com—is the creation of Ja-lene Clark of Gather Insight, who helped me visualize a message in this Internet world.

I owe a huge debt to Ernie Lazar, John Birch Society researcher, who could find everything I couldn’t. Because of Ernie’s extensive FOIA requests, FBI reports of Birch Society activities, including the reports of my father’s efforts, are part of this book.

My friend Caroline Fenderson took up the cause for this book early on, reading my stories, offering great suggestions and introducing me to Abhi Jannamanchi, the pastor of the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, where I have been warmly welcomed. Caroline also said, from the first, that Beacon Press was the perfect home for my book.

Indeed, Caroline was right. At Beacon I have found a team of dedicated professionals who believe in
Wrapped in the Flag
and in me. Helene Atwan, extraordinary editor, asked such insightful questions during the first edits that I ended up rewriting much of the book. I’m grateful to Helene for the faith she placed in me and for her enthusiastic support for this project. Thanks also to Crystal Paul for helping me get the hang of the editing process and for keeping communication flowing smoothly between my office in Florida and Beacon’s offices in Boston.

The Beacon staff—from the copy editors and designers to the marketing team—has exceeded my expectations. You are the best team a writer could have.

Special thanks to my children: Brian, for reminding me to take out “the textbooky parts”; Kevin, for listening to me while I sorted out ideas; Sarah and Sean, for offering a welcoming home away from home; Andrew and Lisa, for understanding that Mom hasn’t vanished; Sophia and Veronica, for pulling me out of my world with wonderful stories about theirs.

Thanks to my brother Larry, who walked so much of this journey with me, and to my sister Mary and my brother Jay R., who were there during the toughest of the John Birch days. Special appreciation to Bill, who offered help in more ways than I can count. Finally, my husband, Bob, has been my rock. Without him, this book would never have been written. You are my darling.

1
.   Kent Biffle, “Incident-Free Day Urged for JFK Visit,”
Dallas Morning News
, Sunday, November 17, 1963, in
The Assassination Story: Newspaper Clippings from the Two Dallas Dailies
(Dallas: American Eagle Publishing, 1964), 6. Television appeal of Jesse Curry, Dallas police chief: Gerald Blaine,
The Kennedy Detail
:
JFK’s Secret Service Agents
Break Their Silence
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 155–56.

2
.   “Newly Discovered Footage of JFK’s Final Moments,”
YouTube.com
.

3
.   The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza collections, object #1999.023.0017,
http://www.jfk.org
.

4
.   “Suspected Killer Defected to Russia in ’59,”
Dallas Morning News
, November 23, 1963, in
The Assassination Story
, 5.

5
.   Original broadcast, KRLD-TV, November 24, 1963,
YouTube.com
.

6
.   Procession of John Kennedy’s casket to the Capitol, funeral procession, and burial at Arlington National Cemetery, November 24 and 25, 1963,
YouTube.com
.

1
.   Joseph McCarthy, “Enemies from Within,” speech, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950,
History Matters
,
http://www.historymatters.gmu.edu
.

2
.   Speech on the Illuminati and founding principles of the conspiracy: Robert Welch, “More Stately Mansions,” in Robert Welch,
The New Americanism and Other Speeches and Essays
(Boston: Western Islands Publishers, 1967), 125–38.

3
.   India photos: Bengal Famine of 1943, parts 1–4,
http://www.oldindianphotos.in
.

4
.   Discussion of the Korean War: David Halberstam,
The Fifties
(New York: Random House, 1993), 62–86.

5
.   General Douglas MacArthur, “Farewell Address to Congress,” April 19, 1951,
The Annals of America: Volume 17, Cold War in the Nuclear Age
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968), 79–84.

6
.   Halberstam,
The Fifties
, 49–59; Robert Griffith,
The Politics of Fear
:
Joseph McCarthy and the Senate
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), 214–16.

7
.   Lee A. Daniels, “Ralph W. Zwicker, 88, General And Figure in McCarthy Censure,” obituary,
New York Times
, August 12, 1991.

8
.   Arthur Herman,
Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator
(New York: Free Press, 1999), 247–53.

9
.   Thomas C. Reeves,
The Life and Times of Joseph McCarthy
(New York: Stern and Day, 1999), 672.

1
.   Richard Hofstadter,
The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays
(New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 3.

2
.   The director of
Black Beauty
was Max Nosseck, a German-born director who left his
country when the Nazis came to power.
Black Beauty
(1946) was his biggest commercial hit, but he never considered the film representative of his style. He left the United States in the 1950s and returned to Germany, where he resumed his career.
http://www.allmovie.com
.

3
.   Griffin Fariello,
Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition
(New York: Avon Books, 1995), 315–20.

4
.   David Halberstam,
The Fifties
(New York: Random House, 1993), 9.

5
.   Robert Welch,
The Politician
(Belmont, MA: Belmont Publishing, 1963). After my father’s death, in 1992, my mother explained that Dad had been given a copy of the manuscript in 1956 during their first visit to Welch’s home in Belmont.

1
.   Helene Zuber, “Can Spain Overcome Franco: Poking into the Hot Ashes of History,”
Spiegel Online International
, December 31, 2004,
http://www.spiegel.de
. Retrieved April 18, 2012.

2
.   In-depth discussion of the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on chastity, birth control, and sex: Peter De Rosa,
Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy
(New York: Crown Publishers, 1988), 318–65.

3
.   “The Catholic Encyclopedia: Occasions of Sin,”
New Advent
, 2009,
http://www.newadvent.org
.

4
.   In 1917, three children in Fatima, Portugal, claimed to have seen six apparitions of Mary. As young children in Catholic school, we heard frequent remarks about the promises of Our Lady of Fatima to the children, and we waited for the Pope to reveal the details of those promises. He never did. See more at the Fatima Network,
http://www.fatima.org
.

5
.   Hugh Thomas,
The
Spanish Civil War
(New York: Modern Library, 2001).

6
.   Mother’s story was not totally accurate; here’s another version: Antony Beevor,
The Spanish Civil War
(New York: Penguin, 1982), 103.

7
.   Antonio Cazorla Sanchez,
Fear and Progress: Ordinary Lives in Franco’s Spain 1939–1975
(Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 17–56.