Then & Now:

Meet the Press Interview Brings in New Draftees – Part II

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Last time, Howard Park presented his story, describing the motivation he received from the June 15, 2003, “Meet the Press” interview. Another person inspired by that interview was our “Then and Now” team leader Stan Davis. Since that fateful day that literally changed his life forever, Stan has been the quintessential Clark supporter, providing important leadership and coordination for many Clark/WesPAC activities, as well as those of the Democratic Party in and around his home in Lakewood, CO. He is tireless in his dedication to all things Clark – I can’t believe the timestamps on some of his e-mails.

Stan Davis – Then
“The Moderately Moderate Moderator”

[Edited by Florence Upson and Tom Rinaldo.]

The Boring Stuff

It was a dark and stormy Saturday night-early Sunday morning in Oklahoma City on August 17, 1947, when I entered the world three weeks early. Actually, I have no idea if it was stormy or not, but since I arrived at 2:00 a.m., it surely was dark.

I always considered myself pretty much a normal kid – interested in sports, girls, and working hard as little as possible. A girl led me into vocal music (I wanted to join her school choir), which I almost made my career. (Girls also shamed me into the only two roller-coaster rides I’ve ever taken.)

A child of the Sputnik generation, I wanted to study Math and enter a new field: computer programming. Then by my college days in the late 60s, when we all wanted to save the world, I continued on to grad school to get a Master’s in French (which I ended up not doing much with, he said, ending a sentence with a preposition).

My father, a World War II vet who retired as a bird colonel in the reserves, told me that if I joined any of the services, I would be crazy not to join the Navy. So, seeing the handwriting on the wall as Viet Nam was gearing up, and knowing full well I would face the draft, I went through the Naval ROTC program and, after completing grad school, served my three years on active duty on destroyers in 1971-73.

I then spent the next eighteen years in some facet of mainframe technology, as an applications programmer, computer security analyst, user support analyst, data center capacity planner, and a couple of other things along the way. I spent eleven of those years with Amoco in Tulsa except for ten months in Chicago, and the other seven years with Boeing Computer Services in Wichita.

In 1991, Jan and I moved to the Colorado mountains and abandoned corporate America.

Political Stuff

I had always been interested in politics. In the eighth grade, I was tasked in a mock debate to present the JFK platform on civil rights. As a junior in high school, I read Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative, Allen Drury’s novel Advise and Consent, and JFK’s Profiles in Courage (a sequel today would be a very thin volume). I wanted to be a Senator.

I began college as a Goldwater fan. Then my flaming liberal fiancée opened my eyes. When I spent the summer in France in 1967, I remember very well walking by myself along the beaches at Cannes on the Riviera and having something of an epiphany. I looked at the opulence of the beachside hotels and looked at all the rich people on the beach, who didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves very much.

But I never did anything about my interest in politics until 2003.

Life is Full of Surprises

Things never turn out as we plan, do they? Living in the mountains in Frisco, Colorado, I was diagnosed with hemochromatosis and diabetes in February 1999. Hemochromatosis is a genetic blood disorder in which the body doesn’t metabolize iron. The iron just builds up. My blood had become so sludgy that my pancreas shut down.

Then in August of the same year I had a stroke and was medically retired. My cardiologist gave me six months to live, and Jan put me in the hospice program. Then she moved me to an assisted living facility in Lakewood, the first suburb west of Denver proper. There I languished, not caring about anything, not paying attention to anything, and feeling not only of no value to anybody, but a burden to Jan. I think the technical term is depression. That continued for three years until the fall of 2002.

The physical effects of my stroke didn’t last very long – a few months at most, although my right side is a little weaker than the left (I’m right-handed). I suffered from expressive aphasia for a little longer, and still experience some of those symptoms. An interesting sidenote: Soon after my stroke when I barely could speak English, a good friend who was the high school French teacher came over and my French was fine. I communicated much better in French than in English. Obviously the part of my brain damaged by the stroke impacted my first language, but not my second, acquired language.

Another sidenote: I had a second MRI just this summer to determine my continued qualification for disability benefits, primarily Medicare and two long-term disability payments. I hadn’t seen my first one. Just inboard from my left ear, there’s a golf-ball-sized hole filled with fluid where brain cells are supposed to be. That was a little daunting. No longer will I use the phrase, “I need that like I need a hold in my head.”

Renaissance and Journey to Commitment

[Note: What follows is an updated version of the first blog entry I ever made at the CCN in December ’03.]

Three things began to happen more or less simultaneously in the early fall of 2002.

First, the owner of my assisted living facility gave me a crossword puzzle book for my August birthday. I had tried doing crossword puzzles earlier in my long-delayed recovery, and I couldn't do them. I just couldn't find the words. But this time, I found I could do them and I became an addict, doing 10-12 a day, including a couple of New York Times Sunday puzzles. (I haven't done a single one since mid-July ‘03, when I got more deeply involved in the Clark movement. See below.)

Second, Jan and I decided to divorce. The thing I feared most was going to happen. I learned that actually doing it was not as painful as worrying about it.

Third, President Bush and company started making war noises. I was totally aghast and very pissed off. In our 226 years of America's history (as of 2002), we had never fired the first shot, and this was not the time, place, or reason to start now.

CNN in general, but especially Aaron Brown's "Newsnight" became my primary news source. I hadn't paid any attention to the news for over three years, but I started reading the paper avidly every day and watching the cable news shows. (I hadn't read much of ANYTHING in those 3+ years.)

As the prospect of war heightened, I became more and more disturbed. I also began to notice one of CNN's military analysts, Gen. (Ret.) Wesley Clark. How intelligent! How articulate! I agreed with everything he said and the way he said it.

The war started in March. I bought a car on March 24. On March 28, I decided to move to an independent retirement center, voluntarily removing myself from the assisted living facility and from associated insurance payments. Prior to moving in I bought a complete computer system and furniture in which to house the system in my new apartment. I hadn't used a computer of any kind in 3 1/2 years, nor had I driven a car in that time. When I moved in on April 28, the first thing I did was a search on Wesley Clark. The more I saw, the more I became interested.

At about that time, Aaron Brown mentioned the possibility that Gen. Clark might throw his stars into the Presidential ring. Wow! That would be great! I thought. In June I discovered Gen. Clark's own web site, Leadership for America. I joined up and started posting away. I think I had posted more than 80 times before abandoning LfA in favor of the Yahoo! discussion group, WesleyClark2004.

I saw the June 15 "Meet the Press" interview, and that locked in my support for Clark as my President. I signed up at both major Draft Clark sites and on July 7 joined the only existing Yahoo! discussion group after attending the first Denver Draft Clark Meetup. My Founder's Pin is one of my proudest possessions (which I finally received the first week in November).

Here's why I've committed my support...and my life...to Gen. Clark's candidacy. I've never selected candidates for their programs and policies. I choose candidates for how they think...their values, their decision strategy, and their principles. Wesley Clark fit that bill perfectly for me. Everything he said, the way he said it, the way he acted, and the way he led his life were 100% congruent with all the things I value and hold dear. I had never been involved in politics before, just like so many others who have joined the Clark movement, except for an unsuccessful run at the Frisco, CO town council. (I finished fourth out of six, and the top three got seats.) Too often I had settled for someone, but not someone who excited me enough to really do something about it. Gen. Clark made it easy to spend almost all my waking hours trying to advance Clark's candidacy. (And I have lots more waking hours than I really should.)

After the July MeetUp, with 16 or 17 people there, I concluded that if Gen. Clark accepted the draft, there would not be much time, and we would need to hit the ground running. I volunteered for the FAQ team, and from that work I developed a tri-fold flyer and an introductory presentation. I proposed the slogan, "Make America All It Can Be," and decided I wanted a bumper sticker with that motto on it. (By January 2004 I had 5500 flyers in circulation that I know of, along with 500 bumper stickers and a 5' x 3' vinyl banner. These are materials I paid for personally as "individual expenditures" under FEC regulations. Others may have downloaded the flyer file to print on their own.)

Ellen Nagler and Denyse Rackel became my political mentors. Denyse made me a moderator of the Yahoo! forum on July 31. Somewhere along the way Spokane’s Chuck Tilson christened me “The Moderately Moderate Moderator.” If that moniker held any truth in it, then I was successful in helping to maintain a tone of dialogue congruent with Gen. Clark’s values.

These three factors--crossword puzzles, the divorce, and discovering Wes Clark--combined to...well...save my life. My ex-wife Jan, during my "Dark Days," always said I needed to commit myself to something bigger than myself. I don't think she had politics in mind...something more spiritual, probably. But making that kind of commitment did get me out of my cocoon, and I became a real person again. It was nice to be back.

Because of my health history and my bad habits, I don't expect to live to a ripe old age. I will die a happy and satisfied man when Wesley Clark becomes President. I will know that in some small way, I helped and might even have made a difference. And that's a great feeling.

Stan Davis – Now

Since I got more formally involved on July 31, 2003 as a group moderator, I’ve read over 220,000 e-mails in a dozen or so groups as well as countless blog entries. By the end of October, I will have attended 27 Clark events in person on 14 dates in 11 cities in 9 states. I’m stumbling along as the Wes Clark Countdown to Change state coordinator (see www.Colorado4Clark.com

I firmly believe in Woody Allen’s line, “90% of success in life is just showing up.” Just through showing up and becoming known in my area, I’ve been elected as a precinct chair (I ceded that role to another this year), member of the steering committee of my county, congressional district, and state levels, and am Vice-Chair of both my state House and Senate districts. Not too shabby for this kid from Oklahoma who had never done much about his interest in politics before.

I want to conclude by describing how I felt when the 2004 campaign ended and how I will feel if Gen. Clark decides not to try again.

I can handle not putting in the hours I do. I can handle Wes’s not running, although he’s clearly the best choice to lead America to a brighter future. I can handle returning to doing crossword puzzles and watching Netflix movies. I can handle getting more sleep.

What I couldn’t handle is having all my friends drift away. I couldn’t handle not having a reason to get up and boot up my computer to see what my friends are saying. The people in Clarkdom are the best in the world. I only half-jokingly say that I no longer have a mother, wife, boss, or commanding officer, and I don’t do a single thing I damned well don’t want to do. But I do have my Clark family. I’m not sure I want to think about ever losing that family.

If like Howard and Stan Davis, you joined the Draft movement during the summer of 2003, perhaps motivated by the “Meet the Press” interview, we would love to schedule your story for one of our next postings. Once we finish with these stories, we will start the stories of those like me (Florence), who joined the ranks of Clark supporters right after he declared for the Presidency. No matter when you joined the ranks of Clark supporters, we want to tell your story. Please let us know you are interested in participating, so we can keep you in mind. Thank you for your interest.

The “Then and Now” Team
Stan Davis (sdavis8585@msn.com)
Florence Upson (f.t.upson@comcast.net)