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At a memorial service, former colleagues recall both the tough and the soft sides of the artful Florida politician.
By STEVE BOUSQUET
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 11, 2001
PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- They smiled a lot and cried a little for Dempsey Barron on Tuesday, as his political peers affectionately recalled the man whose artful and fearless use of power made him a dominating figure in Florida politics for three decades.
Barron, a grade-school dropout who went to law school on the GI bill and became a wealthy lawyer, rancher and legislator for 32 years, died Saturday at 79. He succumbed to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and heart disease.
After a private morning burial service, an afternoon memorial was held in an auditorium at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City -- one of the tangible symbols of Barron's support for education and his power to bring home the bacon to his Panhandle constituents.
On one side of the stage was Barron's official portrait as Senate president, showing him on a horse in casual clothes rather than in a dark suit. On the other, a life-size black-and-white cutout of Barron lent an air of personal presence, with Barron in a plaid work shirt, petting a dog.
A video biography of Barron's life -- with portions from a lengthy political ad in his final campaign, a 1988 loss -- began and ended with Barron on horseback silhouetted against a high sky, figuratively riding off into the sunset.
"You didn't scare him. You couldn't intimidate him," former Sen. Doyle Carlton Jr. says on film.
Barron's tough, aggressive political nature was admired Tuesday. But so was his softer side: the horseman who loved dogs and small children, and whose favorite song was Janis Joplin's rendition of Me and Bobby McGee.
Following the 90-minute service, Barron's widow, Terri Jo, spent a half-hour shaking hands and embracing old friends. The crowd included Cabinet members, past and present legislators, lobbyists, friends and Gov. Jeb Bush, who was 3 years old when Barron was first elected to the Legislature in 1956.
The lineup of eulogists reflected Barron's lifestyle. The senator cultivated a taste for hardball politics but relished the companionship of his fellow man, preferably while hunting or fishing and usually while sipping some good bourbon.
The anecdotes reflected a different time, before term limits, when personal relationships were a driving force in the shaping of public policy.
The service might also have been called the first annual Dempsey Barron Symposium on the History of the Florida Legislature.
Former Senate President Phil Lewis of Riviera Beach remembered Barron as a brutal negotiator but someone whose word was his bond. Lewis said Barron supported a fairer statewide sharing of political power, first in reapportionment and later through single-member districts, even though it was unpopular in northwest Florida.
"Barron was one of the great leaders of Florida. For all of Florida," Lewis said.
Referring to Barron's appetite for rewarding friends and punishing enemies, Lewis said of his South Florida constituents: "We got what was coming to us, provided we voted right. . . . I loved him."
Don Tucker, a lobbyist who served as House speaker when Barron was Senate president in the mid 1970s, told of going on a fishing vacation with Barron to Costa Rica, where, conveniently enough, Wilbur Brewton, a parimutuel lobbyist, owned a place. The incident predates a legislative scandal in 1991 that banned such trips.
Reporters got wind of the trip and ambushed Tucker and Barron at the Miami airport. But as Tucker told it, while he got defensive, "Barron said, "I don't know Wilbur Brewton. Tucker made all the arrangements,' " Tucker said. "Now why didn't I think of that?"
Former Senate President Jim Scott also recalled going on some "great hunting trips" with Barron, but avoided the sort of rich detail Tucker provided. Scott's voice broke as he remembered Barron, who had "a great spirit of America."
"He was always a cowboy. He's a cowboy in the greatest sense of the word," said former House Speaker James Harold Thompson of Quincy, who, like Barron, was a country boy who made his mark in the Capitol.
Thompson said the most apt description he ever heard of Barron was one made by then-Sen. Verle Pope in sizing up the House rookie in 1957: "He's just an unbridled guy," Thompson quoted Pope.
Barron's close friend and the only non-politician who spoke at Tuesday's service, lawyer and hunting partner "Whitey" Urquhart, remembered a time when he was invited into the inner sanctum of the Senate president's office while Barron was holding court with a roomful of insurance industry executives on major legislation.
The insurance boys got suspicious when they saw the stranger on one side of the room and asked Barron who he was. "He said, "That's my friend,' " Urquhart recalled. "I've never forgotten that."