A potent pen for the powerless

Imagine this: They've come to give you that last big send-off and amid the strains of "Amazing Grace" and "The Old Rugged Cross" they're calling you a -- gulp -- liberal! The unkindest cut of all?

Oh, not if you're Charlie Clay. Not by any means.

It was part of his make-up, something rooted in the youthful years he spent at the Methodist Orphanage in Raleigh during the Great Depression. He had an abiding empathy with people who, because of nothing much more than the luck of the draw, were unlikely ever to be wealthy or powerful. And as the Rev. Jack McKinney, pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, went on to tell funeral-goers last Monday, Clay was a liberal who believed in the role of government as a force for good.

In his unassuming, unflappable way -- this was not a fellow given to putting on any sort of airs -- he would have taken it all as high praise.

Charles Aiken Clay, 77 when he died, was a newspaperman who had ventured more than once into the parallel worlds of political activism and government service. I felt a particular connection in that, several organizational eons ago, he was a predecessor of mine in The N&O's editorial shop.

That was during the tenure of editor Jonathan Daniels, a Southern liberal in the grand tradition and a prolific writer. If Charlie could pass muster with Jonathan, I always figured, that told you just about all you needed to know both about his philosophy and his writing skills. He went on to serve with distinction as editor of The Fayetteville Observer for a number of years and finally as a member of the N.C. Industrial Commission, the agency that decides workers compensation cases.

Corks must have popped at insurance companies when his term finally expired -- while the injured workers he helped may have popped a few in his memory.

Clay's identification with folks on the margins probably qualified him as a bleeding heart. But if there's one good adjective to describe him it might simply be "tough."

Not tough as in mean or nasty. In our occasional dealings, which as often as not involved his complaints that The N&O was cutting conservatives too much slack, he was always gentlemanly, seeming driven more by sorrow than anger. But he was a resolute fighter for his principles, and capable if he wished of ripping the bark off you with understated scorn -- perhaps in his tobacco-belt drawl, or as we came to anticipate, in rapier-sharp letters to the editor.

It wouldn't surprise me if that toughness was another legacy of his upbringing. Slight of stature, one can imagine him compensating with scrappiness after he was sent to the orphanage at age 9, along with younger brother Russell (also a future journalist and also recently deceased). Their father had died, and seven children were too many for their mother to handle. Fortunately, she was able to stay in touch from the family home in Roxboro. Charlie saw himself as one of the lucky ones.

When Clay was profiled as a Tar Heel of the Week in 1987, he told The N&O's Guy Munger that he wished he had managed to write about his orphanage experience, using it as a creative wellspring. With Daniels helping him, he recalled, "I got some little stuff started but I never finished it. That would be my big regret, that I didn't test myself to find out whether I could do it."

Well, he eventually put himself to the test, and by all accounts passed, with his novel "The Alien Corn." But this newspaper's readers who encountered Clay's letters over the years in The People's Forum learned that he was holding himself to additional standards. He would not fail to speak out against those he saw as the foes of social and economic justice. Nor would he look the other way when his old newspaper seemed to be yielding hard-fought progressive ground in its editorial positions or failing to keep its news antennae oriented to detect abuses of power and privilege.

Since The N&O's electronic archiving system went operational in the summer of 1990, we've published 54 of Clay's letters (the last was in July). Reading back through them is to savor both his intellect and his passion. They were not windy diatribes, but masterful miniatures of argument.

And they could pack a punch: "For 12 years now under Republicans Ronald Reagan and George Bush," Clay wrote on Nov. 14, 1992, hailing Bill Clinton's election, "the nation has suffered with government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich." To say that he had little use for Senator Helms is to put it mildly -- a lot more mildly than Clay put it in his letters.

Those who came to Pullen Church the other day -- his church, where the liberal legacy must have suited him just fine -- heard Charlie Clay remembered as a news professional and public servant who would not be intimidated, or swayed from his convictions. He knew what life was like on the ragged edge, and how much it meant to be able to grasp a helping hand. Growing up poor, he gained riches of the spirit and left them for the rest of us to ponder.