Memories of Jerry: He was good copy

Darrell Laurant
Lynchburg News & Advance
May 17, 2007


When I started writing this column in 1981, the Rev. Jerry Falwell was just hitting his stride as a national figure.

I had never heard of him when I came to Lynchburg in 1977 as a sportswriter, and for a while, my only real contact came in connection with Liberty University (then Liberty Baptist College) athletics.

That changed when I changed jobs. Not writing about Jerry as a Lynchburg columnist would be like not writing about gambling in Las Vegas or football in Green Bay. He was unavoidable.

And Jerry was good for The News & Advance, if not necessarily good to us. He almost always returned our phone calls (except for the two years he stopped talking to us altogether), and was an ideological magnet who drew national figures to the city for us to write about.

Plus, he was always finding himself in hot water of one kind or another, whether it was financial trouble or attacks from some group infuriated by his often-outrageous pronouncements. He was, as they say in the news business, good copy.

Unlike an elected official, Falwell didn’t have to worry about what he said. The only people he had to please were those in his own constituency.

I always saw Jerry Falwell as two people. First, there was Jerry from Fairview Heights, the happy-go-lucky small-town preacher who loved to officiate at weddings and go to football games and play practical jokes on his friends. He enjoyed sneaking up behind people he knew and grabbing them in a sudden bear hug (he did that to me once, and it was pretty startling).

The other Jerry thought of himself as a political kingmaker and arbiter of American morals in general. He was well-read, shrewd, calculating and a canny judge of people. He wore a three-piece pinstriped suit so regularly that I often joked that he probably had three-piece pinstriped pajamas.

Nothing I write is going to convince Jerry’s followers that he was anything less than a saint nor his detractors that he was any better than a bigot. And who cares what I think, anyway?

Instead, I wanted to list my 10 favorite Falwell moments over the years. If nothing else, it may give you an idea of what good copy he was.

• The Falwell-Flynt trial, later made into a movie starring Woody Harrelson as Larry Flynt.

It took place in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, and Flynt attorney Roy Grutman tried to get under Falwell’s skin by referring to him repeatedly as “Reverend Foulwell.”

At issue was an ad parody Flynt ran in his Hustler magazine in which Falwell supposedly confessed that his first sexual experience had been with his mother, in an outhouse.

“Rev. Foulwell,” Grutman asked him at one point. “Did you or did you not have sex with your mother in an outhouse?”

Falwell looked at the defense counsel as if he were a cockroach and said, with as much dignity as he could muster: “Certainly not.”

• The waterslide stunt. Back in 1987, when he temporarily took over the financial operations of Jim and Tammy Bakker, Falwell vowed he would go down the waterslide at Heritage USA - the Bakkers’ Christian amusement park in Rock Hill, S.C. - if donations to the PTL Club reached a certain level. They did, and he did.

It happened on a Friday afternoon, and despite the fact that hundreds of people went down that slide daily, there were two rescue squad vehicles parked at the foot in case something went wrong. Falwell made his descent wearing, of course, a three-piece pinstriped suit, arms folded across his chest.

• The PTL press conference. A couple of months earlier, Falwell had stood on a stage at ground zero of the Bakkers’ crumbled empire and single-handedly answered questions from over 100 reporters, many of them from national publications.

• Jerry and Ted Kennedy. In October of ’83, for reasons that escape me now, Falwell invited his ideological arch-enemy, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, down to Lynchburg to speak at Thomas Road. The night before, there was a reception at Falwell’s house in the Sandusky area, and it was decided that the only media allowed in would be the local newspaper - which meant, at the time, me and photographer Mark Bailey. I sat at a table next to the swimming pool and interviewed Kennedy as dozens of other media types glared at us from beyond the restraining ropes.

• Jerry and Jesse Jackson. The Rev. Falwell was never reluctant to make comments about international politics, often from the hip, and his criticism of South African bishop and apartheid opponent Desmond Tutu in 1985 flushed out the equally outspoken Rev. Jackson. They both spoke on a warm night inside Court Street Baptist Church, and Falwell used the opportunity to confess to having been a segregationist in earlier years. This wasn’t news to anyone, but it provided a bit of drama.

• Jerry the sports fan. Lots of memories here, such as Falwell being passed down through the bleachers like a rock star by Liberty students during a football game.

I also remember sitting in the press box at another game and talking with a writer from a North Carolina paper.

“Do you ever see Jerry Falwell?” he asked. “Does he ever come to games?”

Just then, Liberty scored a touchdown and Falwell rose up from the row right in front of us and started high-fiving everybody in sight.

“That’s him!” said the North Carolina writer.

• Jerry threatens to leave. Unable to convince the city to give him a tax break on some Old Time Gospel Hour properties, Falwell threatened to move his ministries to Atlanta. The move never materialized, but I had some fun noting the occasion with a song parody of Billy Joel’s “Allentown.”

• Oliver North re-emerges. North’s first public appearance after he was convicted on three charges in the Iran-Contra affair was at Liberty University’s graduation. The national media descended upon Lynchburg, and North received several standing ovations when he spoke.

• Hosting a president. That crowd was nothing, however, compared to the mob scene when President George Bush (the elder) gave the commencement address in May of 1990.

• The 70th birthday party. A relaxed Falwell entertained well-wishers on the lawn outside his Liberty University office, the same two-story house once home to U.S. Sen. Carter Glass, Lynchburg’s other national figure.

At one point, I asked him what he thought would happen to his empire when he left the scene, and he talked about it freely. It was the last conversation we ever had face-to-face.