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How to Remember Him?
Area residents differ on view of Helms’ role
Journal File Photo
Sen. Jesse Helms listened to a critic during a campaign stop at Wake Forest University on Nov. 2, 1984.
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Published: July 5, 2008
"While he was able to use the Senate rulesto keep things from happening, he was seldom able to use it as a positive force...."
Area residents differ on view of Helms' role
Jesse Helms could endear himself to individuals with acts of kindness and anger millions with his inflammatory remarks.
Across the Triad yesterday, people remembered Helms in different ways.
Cisco and Ellen Mitchell of Denton were visiting Old Salem when they heard about Helms' death.
Cisco Mitchell
"I liked him," Cisco Mitchell said. "He was really honest, and he had a great concern for the people of North Carolina."
A few blocks away, Jonathan Parker offered another view of Helms. He grew up in Raleigh, Helms' home base, and said he considered Helms a divisive figure who stood in the way of progress.
Jonathan Parker
"I grew up looking at him through a negative light," Parker said. "Some of his outlandish statements he made against homosexuals, AIDS and race relations, I totally disagree with. I heard he softened those positions when he was out of office. So it's a mixed bag. But he certainly left behind a controversial legacy, I'd say."
Helms is considered one of the top five or 10 most influential politicians in the conservative movement, said John Dinan, a professor of politics at Wake Forest University.
Dinan said that Helms deserves credit for raising the national profile of Ronald Reagan by urging him to contest the North Carolina primary in 1976, rather than surrender it to President Ford. Reagan won the state primary, which set off a winning streak for Reagan.
"From a North Carolina perspective, one of the things that is most interesting is that Helms perhaps keeps Reagan's national political career alive in 1976, which allowed him to go on and win two terms," Dinan said.
Jack Fleer, a professor emeritus of politics at Wake Forest, said that Helms learned early in his career that he could become a more powerful senator by mastering the rules of the Senate. For example, if Helms didn't like a particular piece of legislation, he would make sure it got held up in committee so that it would never hit the Senate floor, Fleer said.
"But the interesting thing about Sen. Helms is that he used this as an obstructionary device, and he became widely known as ‘Senator No,'" Fleer said. "While he was able to use the Senate rules to keep things from happening, he was seldom able to use it as a positive force in a sense that it helped him achieve a major goal."
Though Helms was an opponent of big government, he used his office to help North Carolinians, said Fleer, who was a beneficiary of Helms' attention to his constituents.
In 1988, Helms arranged for the U.S. ambassador to Italy and Italian legislators to meet with Fleer and a group of Wake Forest students who were studying in Venice.
The willingness to use his office for the benefit of North Carolinians was one reason why so many rural and small-town voters embraced Helms, Fleer said.
State Rep. Earline Parmon, D-Forsyth, said that Helms' office always responded promptly to her calls.
"He was always very receptive and very helpful," she said. "He made sure that his office followed through."
Though Parmon called Helms a "gentleman," she said she was disappointed with an advertisement he ran in 1990 that showed a pair of white hands getting a pink slip, a reference to affirmative action.
"I thought that was very much inflammatory," she said.
Fleer said that Helms stayed rooted in the past when it came to racial and gender equality. The famous "white hands" advertisement was a tactic Helms used to divide North Carolinians.
"Even when Sen. Helms retired at the end of 2001, he still had not reconciled the fact that the country had, by and large, made that major decision in the 1960s and '70s to move further along toward equality," Fleer said.
Sim DeLapp Jr. of Lexington got to know the man behind the rhetoric.
To DeLapp, Helms wasn't just a man of principle. He was also the man who served as a father figure after his own father died in 1976. DeLapp's father, Sim DeLapp Sr., was once the chairman of the N.C. Republican Party and a close friend of Helms'.
DeLapp followed in his father's footsteps, becoming the chairman of the N.C. Christian Coalition and serving as a Davidson County commissioner.
Many people didn't get to see the gentle side of Helms, DeLapp said. He remembers how Helms would personally answer his letters seeking advice.
One memory stood out for DeLapp yesterday.
In 1972, DeLapp was awaiting his first child, hoping for a son. Helms and his wife had come to Davidson County for the DeLapp family reunion. On the second story of DeLapp's house, which was under construction, Helms told DeLapp that it wouldn't be a bad thing to have a daughter.
Helms already had two daughters.
"Boy, I'll tell you, them little girls are mighty sweet," Helms told him.
Yesterday, DeLapp stood in that same spot where he spoke with Helms on that day in 1972, reeling from Helms' death.
"Nothing could have been more appropriate than for the Lord to take him away on July 4th," he said. "His critics can say what they want to, but there was a divine hand in that process."
■ Lisa O'Donnell can be reached at 727-7420 or at lodonnell@wsjournal.com.
■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
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