The waiting room was small, not much more than a large cubicle with a coffee machine, a couple of televisions, and maybe twenty other parents, all of us equally nervous and trying not to show it. A better artist than me might’ve been able to capture it with his brush, the anxiety like a physical object that each one of us carried. I had been there nearly an hour when Karen called. I walked toward one of the room’s corners, as much privacy as I could find, and whispered hello.
He had been such from the beginning of his long and remarkably productive career—a career that stretched more than six decades and saw the publication of more than 15,000,000 words, including more than 40 books. Born in Riverton, North Carolina on Aug.6, 1890, he graduated from Wake Forest College in 1911 and served in France with the A.E.F. during World War I.Upon returning to America and assuming the post of associate editor on the Greensboro Daily News, he attacked the Ku Klux Klan (they threatened to visit his house at night but never showed up) and criticized the governor of North Carolina. Discussing the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee during the hot summer of 1925, he championed freedom of speech. Five years later, he denounced the Southern Agrarians and their controversial manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, and the ensuing battle lasted for decades. During the 1930's, he attacked the opponents of the New Deal and found himself at war with his employer, the Baltimore Sunpapers. As World War II approached, he lambasted the isolationists. During the 1948 presidential campaign, the Dixiecrats felt his wrath; he thought them unenlightened reactionaries. In brief, Johnson refused to keep quiet and refused to back down, and his career was marked by considerable bellicosity.
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