He was, quite simply, the best reporter in the state. During
the bulk of his career, nobody talked much about that. Not until he took a
leave of absence from the AP two years ago to begin his fight against cancer.
He came back, worked as hard as he always did until very close to the end. But
a few weeks ago, I sent him a message on his AP Twitter account and I got a
message back saying it had been discontinued.
He worked on stories up until a few months ago, but then it
was time to go home and wait.
Jim Davenport, if you browse the blogs and the S.C. Press
Association, read the obituaries on the Associated Press and in the State
newspaper, was there when a lot of the most recent history in the state of
South Carolina was made.
The general public, on larger scale stories, does not
recognize or care about bylines unless a story has something they want to
challenge or dismiss. They want to find out who wrote this or that, find out
what political party they ascribe to so they can say, “Oh, see, he’s a Democrat
out to get Republicans.” More rarely, but still in South Carolina, the opposite
has been said.
I have seen no one say that about Jim Davenport.
When Jim Hodges was governor of South Carolina, Jim
Davenport asked him challenging questions, and wrote stories that Jim Hodges
did not like. When Mark Sanford took over, Jim asked challenging questions and
wrote challenging stories.
A lot of people, particularly those who feel themselves
victimized by reporters, say that it is impossible to be objective.
Jim Davenport was objective, through and through.
If the average South Carolinian knows him, they know him
because he is the guy who first broke news that S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford was
“missing,” with a spokesman saying the governor had chosen, on a Father’s Day
weekend, to take a hike on the Appalachian Trail. After making call after call,
Jim Davenport got through to the former First Lady and the former wife of the
governor. Jenny Sanford told him, in terse language, she didn’t know where the
governor was.
Jim wrote down the line, but with just enough juice to
let the whole world know what Jenny Sanford had communicated to him. She wasn’t
happy with the governor.
And the story blossomed until the governor was outed as
having taken a trip or two to Venezuela during his term in office to meet a
“paramour.”
Jim wasn't there when Sanford got off the plane from
Venezuela from his Father's Day trip, but I contend no reporter would have been
there to meet him if not for Jim's scoop.
It was just one of many "gets" in his career. A
"get" in newspapers isn't just when you "get" a politician
in a pickle, though it includes many of those. A get is a big story.
Jim was there when the agreement to bring down the
Confederate flag from atop the State House was signed – on a Confederate flag,
no less.
His obituary from the AP said he helped lead the first
statewide audit of statewide FOIA compliance among local officials, which I
contend is wrong. We've only had two, and yes, he organized the first. But he
also organized the second. The only thing I think I ever helped do for Jim was
after the second. I made a point to tell the S.C. Press Association director
that Jim deserved some kind of recognition for that work. He got a special
commendation from the SCPA a little while later.
When the second FOI audit was done, I was editor in Chester.
I was asked to head back to my old stomping grounds of Chesterfield County and
see how that sheriff was doing. "Big Sam" Parker wasn't sheriff when
I left, and I had met him once or twice, but the odds were his new office
people wouldn’t know me. They didn't, and they balked at releasing information
that state law says had to be released immediately.
With both audits, the results were taken and used by the
lobbyists for the SCPA to request improvements in the law, since it wasn't
working as well as it was intended to work. I don't think the law is great, in
practical, day-to-day usage. It can be and is abused too easily by public
officials every day. But it is stronger now than it was 20 years ago because of
those FOI audits. Because of Jim.
On the SCPA website, there is an obituary for Jim, and also
a 23-minute "oral history" video clip, an interview with Jim about
the stories he covered and the battles he won.
Because Jim Davenport took a look at the law and figured out
the clear meaning of the law said the party legislative caucuses, in this
modern era the GOP caucuses, were public bodies themselves because they
received public money and all the real discussion of public policy seemed to be
done at that level, so Jim tried to cover them. They tried to keep Jim out.
They lost.
When Mark Sanford held his first cabinet meeting, this
candidate who had run on a platform of openness tried to have a closed-door
meeting. Jim objected, and struck the first blow in the fight to get them open.
I don't remember if the first was open or not, but there was
a brief period of fussing and negotiation back and forth. State law was
changed, with negotiations from Sanford and staff, requiring the cabinet to
meet, at least at the beginning, in the open, but allowing it, if necessary, to
be closed for certain topics. In other words, it had to perform as any other
public body.
Sanford and his supporters might think with that change in
the law that they had won the point. But no other cabinet meeting under Sanford
was closed to the public, at any time.
Point Davenport.
In one other instance, mentioned on the oral history, when
the legislature switched to being controlled by the Republican Party, Sen.
Harvey Peeler, Jim recalls, wanted to close an early meeting in the session to
remove state Sen. Hugh Leatherman from his post as leader of the Senate Finance
Committee. Leatherman, at the time, was still a Democrat.
Peeler wanted to do that behind closed doors. Jim found out
about, tried to get the new GOP leadership to commit to doing it in the open,
but as a body, it wouldn't commit. So Jim approached senators one by one until
he found one who said, "You been fair to me," and let Jim enter the
chamber with him. When Sen. Peeler made a move to have Jim removed, other
senators, either believing in transparency a bit more than originally thought,
or perhaps sensing the negative headlines that might result from ejecting a
reporter while trying to punish a politician for suddenly being on the wrong
side of the aisle after an election, voted to let Jim stay. I don't think
Leatherman was pushed out, either.
Jim was there for a lot of the history that has been made in
the past 13 years, and the one thing everyone said about Jim was he was fair,
objective. And he was great.
If you met friends, you might hear tales about guy with a
wicked, slightly off sense of humor. Goofy smile. He used to be part of our
card game for a couple of years back in college.
Being at his funeral, a lesson I learned was I need to know
my friends better, and I need to not compartmentalize them so much.
But the really surprising thing about that funeral, which
had a sizable contingent of journalists at it, and perhaps a public official or
two, though I didn't catch any, was that the funeral wasn't about Jim
Davenport, the mover of events, the rattler of government cages, Jim, the
just-damn good reporter.
The funeral was a mass, and it was about Jim Davenport, the
Catholic. I don't remember it ever coming up when we were back at USC, but of
course, for most kids, particularly those taking a liberal dose of liberal arts
classes, your religion isn't a topic of discussion at college. And if it had
come up then, well, I had begun a long period of serious lapsing, so it
probably wouldn't have made us any closer. We were buds who played some cards,
worked on student publications together, made jokes about the student reporters
who thought they were good but ... weren't. And we
made a LOT of jokes about the university president.
But in the intervening years, I lapsed less and less and
have tried to make a better go of my faith.
I knew Jim was married and had heard him talk about his wife
a few times. But I didn't know he was a father.
If you knew Jim Davenport at all, you probably knew the
reporter. But to the priest giving the sermon at the funeral mass, his career
went almost unmentioned.
It couldn't go completely unmentioned, because, if the
priest wasn’t sure, I can guarantee it for him. Jim was a good reporter, and he
was the kind of reporter he was, because he was a good Catholic.
In the movie "The Siege," Denzel Washington plays a goody-two-shoes, completely-by-the-book,
black-and-white, good-and-evil, never-the-twain-shall-meet FBI agent. He was,
simply put, too good to be true, and I was on the verge of writing the movie
off. But halfway through, Annette Bening's fallen-from-grace CIA agent says she
has been sizing him up.
She says, "Catholic school boy," and he replies,
"St. Raymond's, in the Bronx."
The first time I saw it, I actually shouted out in the movie
theater. I realized that there was a possibility he could be that good and that
uncompromising. I think the character might have been talking about the boys'
high school and not the elementary school, which I attended. But the
indoctrination in what is good and bad and what is fair was strict at both.
It was an "aha" moment.
When I saw St. Joseph's Catholic Church listed as the place
of his funeral mass in the obituary, I had the same kind of moment.
"Well, that certainly explains it," I said.
Being a good reporter (or fictional FBI agent, for that
matter) isn't the province of a parochial school or even of the Catholic faith.
Goodness and fairness is taught in many places.. I am not saying you have to be
a good Catholic to be a good reporter. Too many good reporters have been
without faith.
But Jim Davenport was as good as he was because he was a
Catholic. It had to inform his sense of fairness, but also his dedication to his
readers. He believed in the truth, both little t and big T.
I didn't catch the name of the priest who said Jim's mass
and gave the sermon. But during that sermon, he talked about Jim's love of his
faith, and of its symbols. I've not been to enough funerals to know even what a
full-bore Catholic funeral mass might be. The one I remember most, my Aunt
Kathleen's, I remember as much for the fact that I was allowed to give a eulogy
for her, and Catholics generally don't allow eulogies.
But this priest, I think, sensed he was going to have an
audience he might not normally have in attendance. I think he knew he was going
to have a higher percentage of non-Catholics. So he went over carefully, the
symbols used. A white pall was put over the casket. This is used as a
remembrance of baptism, when Catholic children are put in a white baptismal gown
(even us guys). There was a candle, like the candle given at baptism. The
casket was sprinkled with water, again, a reminder of baptism, which our faith
tells us removes the taint of original sin and sets the clock anew for us,
giving us a chance to make our way to heaven.
And incense was used. It was used back in the ancient days
to remove bad odors, but it is considered a pleasing fragrance, both to man and
to God.
The incense rises, the priest said, as if going to God, to
ask if Jim had led a "fragrant life," one pleasing to the Lord.
The priest had made clear that Jim was a very good Catholic.
Jim didn't go through the motions, and he had his beliefs.
I never knew that about my friend, or that he had a
daughter. We were both journalists, USC grads, card players, scoundrels (at
times). But we didn't share with each other perhaps the two most meaningful
"traits."
Catholics, and fathers.
I will miss my friend for what I did know about him, but I
will miss him even more for what I found out too late about him.
My parish priest likes to confuse people, not on purpose.
But he asks all the time, "Do you want to be a saint?" And
people tell him no. He is shocked, he says, shocked.
If he asked, "Do you want to go to heaven?" they
would of course say yes. They just don't want to be saints to do it. But the
questions are one in the same. To go to heaven is to be a saint, and to be a
saint, one must be worthy to go to heaven, head to the front of the line.
We are called to be saints, my priest says frequently. Everyone is
called to be saints, and Catholics have no excuse for not knowing that is their
calling.
So like I said, I was surprised during that funeral mass for
my old drinking buddy.
It sounded, I swear I do not exaggerate, like the funeral
mass for someone who might be a saint, and if not, is on the express elevator
through Purgatory.
If so, an awesome story. And a roomful of the best reporters
in the state of South Carolina might have missed it.
