Douglas Henry, Jr.: ​The Senator at Sunset

• We lost not only his institutional memory but also the certain fade of civility and good manners.
• Keel Hunt, a Tennessean columnist, is writing a new book about the twilight of bipartisanship.

The last time I spoke to Douglas Henry, Jr., he was telling me what a lousy notion it was for Tennessee’s legislature to divert sales tax collections to pay for roads and bridges.

“That’s a bad idea,” he said without hesitation, four weeks ago. “The governor is opposed to that, and so am I. It should be a user tax that pays for highway improvements.”

Henry, mind you, had not been a state senator for three years by this time, and he had not chaired the Senate Finance Committee for a full decade. But he was still expert. Deep into retirement, the man we still called “Senator Henry” helped many know how government ought to work.

When he died last weekend, at 90, I thought about all that has vanished with Henry’s passing – not only his institutional memory of budgets, bills and bonds but also the fade of civility and good manners, of a certain decorum and grace. He was a man from another age, and not of this angry age.

And I thought of all the other questions I now wished I’d asked him. Over the past year, I had asked him a lot.

Starting last February, I was honored to do a series of five interviews with the senator, sitting in the small library of his West Meade home, at the request of a dozen of his dearest friends. The first to call me was state Sen. Steve Dickerson, Republican, who had lost a Senate election to the Democrat Henry in 2010. (Dickerson was elected in 2012 from a newly drawn district.)

“Senator Henry is a great man,” Dickerson told me, back in December 2015, “and I think we need to do whatever we can to capture his stories and his memories, and we need to do it soon while we can.” I agreed.

What followed was an extraordinary set of conversations – and my own journey into the world of a different time.

Douglas Henry was born on the same day as my own mother: May 18, 1926. He attended the old Wallace School, where boys were expected to wear coats and ties. Far into his adulthood the senator was never seen without a business suit, even (or especially) in his home when visitors called.

When I arrived for our first interview, he was sitting in his favorite chair, suit jacket off, reading quietly. The lady who announced me brought in the senator’s suit jacket and helped him put it on. Unnecessary, as far as I was concerned, but he explained that he “had company” now.

Sitting with him in the calm of his study, its shelves heavy with history, I felt an abiding sense of the past. There were moments his hearing might fade, but his mind was ever sharp and agile. With astonishing clarity, he recalled names and amendments and conversations of thirty years ago.

Henry was a conservative on financial matters but told me how he became a progressive advocate for children and for state parks. In the early 1970s he worked with Governor Winfield Dunn (of the other party) to save Radnor Lake.

He revealed to me who his favorite governor was, why he was a Democrat, and his views on the Republican Party. He told me how two different GOP governors, Dunn and Lamar Alexander, had asked him to join their party. Henry, ever the gentleman, politely declined “on principle.”
On my third visit, he showed me through a separate room full of honors, awards and other memorabilia from a long career: “Mementos,” he called them, pushing his walker forward. “Memories of times past.”

He paused at a framed photo of himself with a particular Republican: his long-ago suite mate at Legislative Plaza, the late Senator Leonard Dunavant of Millington, near Memphis. Suddenly, Henry burst into song.

Seems this Democrat and that Republican, who was vice chair of finance, both loved opera. On many days they would treat the office staff in their suite to an impromptu aria (Dunavant baritone, Henry bass) from Rigoletto or La Boheme. It was the best of times.

And their duo of thirty long years ago is something else that has vanished now. In the legislatures of our current day, I believe there is not much opera sung anymore – nor harmony of any type across the hardened aisle that has become a no-man’s land.

Keel Hunt, a Tennessean columnist, is writing a new book about the twilight of bipartisanship. Reach him at Keel@TSGNashville.com.