Rest in peace, Jesse Helms

Former Senator Jesse Helms passed away July 4. The first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina in the 20th century, Helms was one of the founding fathers of the American conservative movement and one of the last of the old school Southern gentlemen.

One thing is for sure: people either loved him or hated him. Conservatives revere him as a champion for the unborn and the sanctity of marriage and as a voice for the "little guy."

Liberals eschew him for those same reasons as well as his opposition to civil rights legislation, the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and AIDS funding.

Into the 21st century, at a time when being a southern, white, Christian male was supposedly something to be ashamed of, Helms stuck to his principles and continued to be a thorn in the left's collective side. He said what he meant and didn't mind whose toes he stepped on, and he was vilified as a racist, sexist and homophobic demagogue.

Those who wanted to crucify him were as bigoted as they claimed him to be, but to the liberal mind, obviously, tolerance is a one-way street.

I never met Sen. Helms in person, but I carried on a years-long friendship with him through the mail. We corresponded on a number of issues, as well as on a personal level. He was always kind and he encouraged my political aspirations. I sent him a Bill Clinton $3 bill for Christmas one year, and he sent me a hilarious thank you note telling me how much fun he was going to have with it and how there were a lot of people in D.C. who would love to print the bills for real.

Last semester, I wrote my senior thesis in history on the 1984 Senate race between Helms and Gov. Jim Hunt and learned of a special relationship between Sen. Helms and this university.

In 1973, when Gov. Jim Holshouser and moderate Republicans in the General Assembly were dragging their feet on funding for the new ECU medical school, Helms convinced conservative Republicans to ally with Democrats for the establishment of the medical school.

It's interesting that there was no mention of that on any of the message boards I've read concerning the senator's death, nor any mention of the times he helped Vietnamese families living in NC to bring their relatives over from the communist state.

There was scarcely mention of how he worked across the aisle with both of Bill Clinton's Secretaries of State to reform the United Nations. There was mostly just a lot of whining from a bunch of pansies with no respect for the dead. They even failed to mention that Helms admitted he was wrong to block AIDS funding for so many years and that he worked to rectify that during his last years in office.

One writer said we would never forget Jesse Helms, nor should we ever forgive him. Then he went on to complain about the various aforementioned issues and ended by saying he hoped Helms enjoyed his stay in hell. Everyone who tries to demonize this one man seems to forget that more than half the voters of this state obviously shared his views to a certain extent or he wouldn't have been elected five times.

It came as quite a blow when I learned of Jesse Helms' death. No, we'll never forget him, and there's nothing to forgive.

Rest in peace, my friend.

This writer can be contacted at opinion@theeastcarolinian.com.