When I moved to California in 1984, Jesse Helms was once again running for Senate. As the only North Carolinian at Harvey Mudd, I had a little party to sign my absentee ballot voting against him.

He was running against Jim Hunt, NC “Governor for Life” (he served four terms, the first two after changing the rules to allow a sitting governor to run for re-election, and the next two after an eight year stint by Republican Jim Martin) who founded my high school. “He won re-election in 1984 by a slim 52 to 48 per cent margin in the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history” (circa 1990).

In 1990 he ran against Harvey Gantt, the African American mayor of Charlotte, NC’s largest city. Just before the election, his campaign ran a pretty race-centric ad which played on just enough fear to swing the campaign in his favor.

Needless to say, I never liked this man. I disagreed with him on just about every issue there is, and if I missed one I’d probably take the other side just for spite.

When he was Senator I met him during a Close Up trip to DC. He was pushing, at the time, for a bill to outlaw abortion. Actually, the bill was to declare that life begins at conception, which would then lead to a law outlawing abortion.

Now, I’m anti-abortion – I think we should prevent unwanted pregnancy with aggressive birth control education – but as I am never going to have the need to have one, I refuse to support any legislation to take away that choice from women. And I was going to get into it during this group meeting with the senator, but I didn’t. First of all, it wouldn’t have changed anything, and second, he was a pretty darn good public speaker and I’d have lost.

But I did respect that you always knew where he stood, unlike politicians today (both sides) whose opinions change with the poll results.

So why am I bringing this up now?

A friend of mine, Dave Martin, is about as opposite of Jesse Helms as you can get. All of his life he has lived and taught others about living in ways that have a low impact on the environment. He worked hard to preserve the health of our rivers and the wetlands created by beavers. He was also an accomplished painter, and we have several of his watercolors in our house.

Dave is 83, and unfortunately has been in poor health lately. He and his wife Betty celebrated their 50th anniversary this summer, and shortly after that his condition deteriorated until he could no longer walk. He suffers from the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, probably brought on by vascular dementia. Recently he was moved to Mayview, one of the most respected convalescent centers in Raleigh, and a couple of weeks ago Andrea and I went with Betty to visit him.

So, it was with some surprise that we saw that Jesse Helms is two doors down from Dave. Since almost all of the residents eat together in a central area, he and Dave eat at the same table every day.

We were waiting with Dave for his food to arrive (Betty tends to visit until mealtime) and they wheeled in Mr. Helms. He actually looked pretty good for 84, and his wife was there with him. Dave, who does have moments of clarity, motioned for me to bend down so he could whisper, “Do you know who that is?” and then he giggled.

There sat Jesse Helms, terror of liberals everywhere, firebrand of the conservative party, as an orderly placed a bib around his neck.

I guess we all end up there someday.