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My grandpa on my mom’s side, Elbert Lane, led a pretty interesting life. Born the year the Titanic sunk, 1912, he grew up poor like most other folks in rural Pinnacle, N.C.
Unlike most people from rural Mt. Airy in those days, he went to college, attending N.C. State until he took appendicitis. He then enrolled in and graduated from High Point College (present day High Point University).
Mom even credits Grandpa Lane with having secretly integrated N.C. State’s campus. So the story goes, Grandpa had to go to N.C. State overnight one time, and he asked a black neighbor, affectionately called Uncle Jim by the Lane family, to go along. According to mom, Grandpa snuck Uncle Jim into one of the dorms to spend the night.
At various points in his life, Grandpa Lane was a U.S. Postal carrier, a tobacco farmer, a school teacher, a soldier and a Sunday School teacher. He even built a small house with his own hands for his family after World War II.
Grandpa Lane was older than the average soldier, in his 30s when he went to war. He served as a bomb loader for the Army Air Corp, the precursor to the modern Air Force, on the island of Saipan in the South Pacific.
They tell me he coached girls’ high school basketball. This was back when guards were limited to the defensive end of the court and the forwards were limited to the offensive end. This was before “rovers” (who could move back and forth) had even been invented yet.
Mom and Dad like to recount how later in life, Grandpa used to gripe and complain about “the federal judges.” According to him the federal judges, who were (and still are) unelected with lifetime tenure, were ruining the country by making law from the bench through judicial opinions.
Most in the family made light of his “senile” ramblings at the time. On family visits, they used to lay bets on how long it would be until Elbert mentioned the federal judges.
Well, almost everyone in the family now admits Grandpa Lane was right about the federal judges. He was ahead of his time. Or maybe he just saw what it took everyone else a lot longer to see.
I’ve also been told he was prolific writer of letters to the editor regarding politics. I guess I get my urge to write honest. The other day, I came across a 20-year-old newspaper clipping from one of his letters to the editor.
Under the headline “Congress wastes money” (not much has changed, right?) he went on to list a dozen or so things Congress was spending money on unnecessarily. He then urged readers to call their congressmen and senators.
To name a few, he listed $15 billion for foreign aid; $25 billion for farm subsidies, $560 million for the United Nations; $580 million for the U.S. Postal Service (noting that the Post Office is supposed to be self-sufficient); $40 million for the Interstate Commerce Commission; $2.7 billion for military bases inside the U.S. that the Defense Department, according to the Grace Commission, didn’t consider significant to our national defense; $2 billion for student loans.
He was part of the Greatest Generation that saved the world from fascism, yet he felt foreign aid, the United Nations, and certain military bases were wastes of money. He was a tobacco farmer, postal carrier, and educator who thought farm subsidies, Postal Service, and student loans were a waste of taxpayer dollars.
The more I have thought about this letter to the editor, the more I realize how profound it really is. I didn’t know this man too well; he developed Alzheimer’s when I was still elementary school age and died when I was a freshman in high school. But this letter, and the stories about his railing against federal judges, really shed light on his character and the things he believed in.
At some point after reading this letter to the editor, it dawned on me that Grandpa Lane was a libertarian. Now he probably wouldn’t have considered himself a libertarian, and he might have even taken offense at such a label.
I know that most of my life “libertarian” has been a label about as desirable as “communist” or “dope head.” Libertarians were always people who had loose morals and wanted to put dangerous drugs out on the streets.
Just the other day I mentioned to my dad that Grandpa’s letter sounded like he was a libertarian. Dad just answered, “He was conservative, that’s for sure.”
No, I think he was more than that. Defunding the Postal Service and cutting off farmers from government subsidies is pretty radical for a mere conservative. All these criticisms sound awfully libertarian to me.
And maybe this just goes to show that libertarian isn’t a bad word; and maybe my politics and ideological didn’t fall far from the proverbial tree. People like Grandpa and me just want a small, constitutionally based government. If that makes us libertarians, so be it.
I don’t know if Grandpa Lane would consider himself a libertarian or not, and I hope I’m not mischaracterizing his beliefs. If I am, I’m sure I’ll get a chance to apologize to him one day and I’m sure we’ll have a lot politics to talk about.
Tar Heel Dispatch is written by Tyler Younts, a second-year law student at Campbell University. Younts, who grew up in Farmer, has a passion for writing and for politics and for writing about politics. E-mail comments to news@randolphguide.com or directly to Younts at tlyounts0209@email.campbell.edu
