My Cousin Bill

by John Shelby Spong

He won the primary by 611 votes. There were almost 800,000 cast. We called him "Landslide Spong." In Virginia in 1966 to win the Democratic primary was tantamount to winning the election. Republican opponents in the general election were like walk-ons in a play. No one noticed them and only their families could recall their names. So William Belser Spong, Jr. prepared to enter the United States Senate.

His defeated opponent was a two-term Democrat seeking a third six years in the Senate. His name was A. Willis Robertson. He was 78 years old. Had he been reelected in 1966, he would have been 84 when he completed that third term. It was the age factor that surely led to his defeat.

Senator Robertson was an old-line conservative southern Democrat aligned with what was then called the Byrd Machine. Senator Harry Byrd, Sr. controlled Virginia politics for more than a quarter of a century. So effective was his organization that he could gather on the porch at his family home in Berryville, Virginia, with a few of his closest associates and pick the next governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general of the state. Their power had never been seriously challenged until the election of 1966. The old Senator Byrd had retired with ill health and his son, Harry Byrd, Jr., had been appointed to fill his father's seat. One commentator referred to "Little Harry, " as the new Senator Byrd was called, as possessing everything his father had possessed except "wit, humor, personality and intelligence."

Senator Robertson had no son ready to step into his spot. He did have a son named Pat who would someday be a well-known televangelist who would dabble in presidential politics as the choice of the religious right. But in 1966 Pat Robertson was still sowing his wild oats. So Senator Robertson chose to defy the odds and to run once more.

That is what opened the door of opportunity to the state senator from Portsmouth. Bill Spong was called a "young Turk" in political circles in Virginia. He was able to bring on board a whole new generation while not alienating his seniors which enabled him to eke out the narrow victory that sent him to the Senate.

Bill and I were not just first cousins, we were close friends. His father and my father were the middle two boys in a family of seven children. They were close in age, close enough in looks to be frequently mistaken for each other and were bonded brothers. They both loved baseball and even considered professional careers in the sport. Bill's father, my Uncle Belser, did become sports editor of the Portsmouth Star. My father, Bill's Uncle Shelby, became a traveling salesman living in Charlotte, North Carolina. Death separated the two brothers in 1940 when Belser Spong died at age 49 of a heart attack. My father, hearing the news, drove to Hampden Sydney College to inform his nephew and take him home for the funeral. In the days following my father became Bill's surrogate father. During World War II Bill was in the army at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Every time he had a weekend pass he spent it with us in Charlotte. He was eleven years older than I so he was a special war hero to me. My own father died in 1943 when I was twelve. Bill came to the funeral and he became for me something of what my father had been to him in similar circumstances just three years before.

During the war Bill was in Europe and so several years passed before I saw him again. He returned after VE day, entered law school at the University of Virginia, became a Rhodes Scholar, passed the bar, got married and began to practice law in Portsmouth. I was now a teenager, as lost and immature as any fatherless teenager one has ever known, but I would spend a week each summer with Bill and his wife, Virginia, and he became for me a guiding spirit.

In 1949 I entered the University of North Carolina and in 1952 the Virginia Theological Seminary. During those years I saw my cousin very little, but he did come to my ordination, both as deacon and priest, and we stayed in touch.

When I lived in Tarboro, North Carolina, about a hundred miles from Portsmouth, we would often go to the North Carolina-Virginia football game. When Bill entered Virginia politics, becoming a member of the State Assembly and later a State Senator, he managed to get annual tickets to the Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball Tournament. He included me in his party of political associates, some of whom would later become federal judges and candidates for governor of Virginia. Attending this tournament became my "Lenten discipline" and continued during my years in Lynchburg and Richmond.

Meanwhile Bill's political career was soaring. The quality of public education was to be his major theme. This was in the days when Virginia, ordered by the courts to desegregate its schools, responded with a policy of massive resistance to the law of the land. In some counties Virginia went to the absurd extent of closing public schools and opening white private academies. The quality of education for all children declined in those dreadful days. When the State of Virginia began to emerge from this dark chapter, a statewide commission, designed to seek ways to restore quality public education to all of the children in Virginia, was appointed by the governor. State Senator William B. Spong, Jr. was picked to chair this commission. It won for him a state-wide reputation as a reformer, a moderate and as a politician not wedded to the dying patterns of the old South.

It was on the basis of this reputation that he defeated Senator Robertson. Entering the strange world of Washington politics, he was invited with other freshmen senators to address the National Press Club. Fearful that someone in the media would call him Senator Sponge, he used his five-minute introductory speech to secure proper name identification. His first act as a senator, he announced in his southern drawl, would be to introduce a bill to protect the rights of songwriters in Hong Kong. He would be joined in this effort by the senior senator of Louisiana, Russell Long, and the junior senator from Hawaii, Hiram Fong, and they would present the Long Fong Spong Hong Kong Song Bill. His name was never mispronounced by members of the media.

Bill was a thoughtful senator, independent and issue-oriented. He did not know how to attack his opponents' character. His two most strategic votes were on the confirmation of Nixon appointees to the Supreme Court. He supported Clement Haynesworth, whom the Senate failed to confirm. He opposed Harold Carswell whom the Senate also failed to confirm. Both were conservative judges. Bill's opposition to Carswell was based on his conviction that the man was not qualified. Senator Hruska of Nebraska had defended this appointment on the basis that the common people of this country needed to be represented on the Supreme Court by a common, rather than an outstanding judge. It was a strange argument. Bill's vote, however, was one that neither conservative Virginia nor Richard Nixon would forget.

When Bill ran for a second term a sea change had occurred in Virginia politics. The word Democrat had become identified with anti-Vietnam war protest, riot-torn urban areas and the burning of the American flag. The Democratic Party nominated George McGovern, who lost Virginia to Richard Nixon by a 70-30 margin. Bill's seat was targeted as vulnerable. On the night before the election, Vice President Spiro Agnew flew to Richmond to address a giant rally in which he castigated the McGovern-Spong wing of the Democratic Party. Right wing money poured into Virginia in the last two weeks of that campaign which bought a media blitz portraying Bill as a radical Democrat, supportive of every left-wing cause imaginable. Bill felt these charges were so absurd that he would not defend himself against them. When the votes were tallied he had lost the Senate seat by a 51-49% vote. The man who defeated him, William C. Scott, was later voted by the Washington press corps "the dumbest man in the U. S. Congress." It was small consolation.

His defeat devastated me. Bill was remarkably calm. We spent the night after the election together. I was so offended by the way he had been misrepresented that I vowed never again to be silent on justice issues. I would publicly take on the right-wing political and religious lobbies on the issues of race, human rights and the immorality of war.

Bill left the public glare and became Dean of the law school at William and Mary until his retirement. My life became more and more public and even political as I spoke frequently to public issues in Virginia from my pulpit in the heart of Richmond and from my position on the Richmond Human Rights Commission. The public nature of my life was enhanced when I was elected bishop in 1976.

Bill Spong attended the consecration and read the Epistle at that service. I became his family's chaplain. Over the years I performed the weddings of his daughter and his son. I baptized his grandchildren. I buried his mother, my Aunt Emily. Three years ago I buried his wife, Virginia. While I was on sabbatical in New Zealand, Bill died very suddenly of an aneurysm. I grieved that I could not conduct his funeral. I should not have worried. His will stated that I was to conduct that service at a time convenient to me and to his two children. So a public memorial service was held at William and Mary shortly after his death, but his funeral was postponed until my return. On December 27th Chris and I went to Charlottesville, Virginia, where the surviving members of his family gathered with my family. Between the two of us there were seven grandchildren present. It was in that setting that I buried my cousin. His wife's cremated remains I also interred. It was the final act of love in a relationship that has been lifelong.

The essence of life is that we give to others what someone else has given to us. My father gave to Bill what he could when Bill's father died. Bill gave to me what he could when my father died. I have now given to his children what I could when he died. Someone will give to my children what they can when I die. That is what the Communion of Saints is all about. One always lives in debt to someone else. That debt never can be paid to the one to whom it is due. It is always given to someone else. Jesus said "freely you have received, so freely give." I think I understand what that means.