Jack Ellis: This he knows

We have this feature at the paper called "This I Know." If you missed Sunday's, with now former Mayor Jack Ellis, you should check it out. I've met most of the major figures in state and local politics in the last 8 years, and he's the one I've probably interviewed the most, and he's still the one I'd most like to interview again.

Joe Kovac did the interview.

The biggest trouble that I got in as a boy was lying to my father that I had performed a chore. I think I was supposed to feed the cows or something. ... He asked me, "Did you do so and so?" I think it was feeding cows or chickens. And I said, "Yes sir," and tried to go and do it, and he caught me doing it. That was the first and only time that my father whipped me. He said, "I'm not whipping you because you didn't perform this chore. I'm whipping you because no one lies in this house. I don't raise liars."

My father always said to all of us, "If you will lie, you will steal."...

The worst sound that I've ever heard was to hear grown men in a bunker in Vietnam that had taken a direct hit. ... Hearing them scream for help when you could not give them any help. You knew they were gonna die, and all of them did die except for one. That was the worst sound that I still hear to this day, grown men screaming to be saved.

CLARIFICATION: I was thinking, Ellis is up there as a favorite interview, but there are other people on that list. Warner Robins Mayor Donald Walker, who goes to work each day in a building named after his father, comes to mind. So does Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson, who you can say a lot of things about, but boring isn't one of them.

And I was thinking last night, what is it these guys all have in common? And I don't know how well formed this idea is, but it seems like a fascinating mixture of power and vulnerability.