TheStatehouseFile.com

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Years ago, Andy Jacobs Jr. moderated a debate between me and Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson.

Peterson had proposed restrictions on violent video games. I was the executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union at the time. We were going to debate the First Amendment implications of the video game restrictions.

Andy and I were friends who hadn’t seen each other for a while, so we decided to have dinner beforehand to catch up and then drive to the debate together. We pulled into the parking lot just as Peterson’s car arrived.

“Hey, no fair,” the mayor said, laughing as he emerged from his car.

Andy and I both were a bit sheepish, but Peterson came up and put his hands on our shoulders.

I’m only joking, the mayor said. Everyone knows Andy Jacobs is always going to be fair.

That was the thing about Andy Jacobs.

Everyone did know that he always was going to be fair.

Andy died Saturday. He was 81.

The tributes that flowed following the announcement of his death focused on his many significant achievements. His 30 years of service in the U.S. House of Representatives. His role in the drafting and passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. His courage in casting a deciding vote that enabled Congress to establish some common-sense gun restrictions.

Every word of those tributes that is true, but in these hours after his death it is not his accomplishments on the national stage that dominate my attention..

No, I find myself thinking about Andy’s tremendous capacities for friendship and kindness. He was a gentle man in a hard business, but he proved, again and again and again, that strength and gentleness not only could co-exist, but that they often were the same quality.

Andy made friends everywhere. He, a Democrat, and former Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut, a Republican, ran against each other for Congress twice in the bitterly partisan waning days of the Vietnam War. Hudnut won the first race. Andy won the second.

Such an experience would have produced lasting enmity among most politicians.

Not Andy and Bill.

They drove to their campaign debates together. For years afterward, they and their wives socialized together. When Bill traveled to Washington, he stayed in Andy’s apartment. When Andy announced he was retiring from Congress, Bill was there to mark the occasion.

Andy didn’t believe in letting politics get in the way of friendship. He told me often that he didn’t agree with the ideology that Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., espoused – Andy called the little rump caucus of hard-line conservatives to which Burton belonged a “witches’ and warlocks’ coven” – but he adored the man he called “Danny.”

And he wouldn’t let anyone say a bad word about his friend Danny.

People sensed Andy’s basic decency and responded to it. Few people called him Rep. Jacobs. They called him Andy because they liked him.

That’s why he never had to spend more than a dollar and a half on his re-election campaigns. That’s also why attempts to run negative campaigns against him always failed.

Most people just wouldn’t tolerate having someone say a bad word about their friend Andy.

That night of the debate with Bart Peterson, I drove Andy back to his house. He asked if I wanted to come in for a drink. We ended up talking late into the night.

Andy told a lot of stories that night – and they were good ones because he was a great storyteller.

He talked about the reverence he felt for his late father, who also served in Congress. He talked about finding contentment late in life with his wife Kim and their two sons. He talked about being scared and wounded as a Marine in the Korean War, an experience that produced pain that lingered for the rest of his life. He talked about how important it was to stay rooted in public life and to think of elective office as service rather than power.

As I left that night, warmed by the glow of Andy’s friendship, I knew that he’d given me something special – a glimpse of how a good and kind man works at being good and kind.

Andy’s most important legacy will be the sons he and Kim raised together, but his other legacy is pretty profound, too.

That other Andy Jacobs legacy is that of a good leader, a good citizen, a good friend.

Most of all, it’s the legacy of a good man – a really good man.

John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 FM Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.