Falwell Inc.: Inside a Religious, Political, Educational, and Business Empire
256
Falwell Inc.: Inside a Religious, Political, Educational, and Business Empire
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Overview
Spiritual Street Fighter. Radical Educator. Christian Entrepreneur.
The late Reverend Jerry Falwell was a controversial and divisive religious and political figure whose legacy will long outlive him. Falwell Inc. is the first close examination of how he built his conservative empire, from the inner workings of the fund-raising juggernauts behind his church, university, and conservative causes, to the explosive growth of Liberty University, founded by Falwell to mint conservative lawyers, judges, and politicans. Falwell's religious ventures are now in the hands of his two very different sons. They are expanding their father's empire beyond what he ever achieved.
Investigative reporter Dirk Smillie reveals the financial rapids Reverend Falwell and son Jerry Jr. hit when business failures piled up $100 million in debt and nearly sank his school and ministry. Smillie uncovers the extraordinary impact Falwell, in saving his spiritual enterprises, has had on Lynchburg, Virginia, and how savvy real estate investments and relentless fund-raising saved the empire. Falwell Inc. details the spreading influence his legacy continues to exert on our country.
Falwell Inc. is above all an astonishing behind-the-curtains look at a powerful but flawed man and his multimillion-dollar business, political, religious, and education enterprises, by a reporter with unprecedented access to the family.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250113900 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2016 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 361 KB |
About the Author
Dirk Smillie is a senior reporter at Forbes magazine, specializing in investment fraud and family business dynasties. He has written about notorious grifters in the oil, telecom, and wine worlds, and the financial ventures of Deepak Chopra, Marvin Davis, Warner LeRoy, Mexican billionaire Eugenio Lopez, and the Taittingers of France.
Read an Excerpt
Falwell Inc.
Inside a Religious, Political, Educational, and Business Empire
By Dirk Smillie
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2008 Dirk SmillieAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-11390-0
CHAPTER 1
A Small-Town Killing
In 1929, Garland W. Falwell relished his reputation as a hell-on-wheels outlaw from the sticks. His thundering black roadster churned up clouds of dirt as he sped 60mph along Campbell Avenue, a sand-clay road that was the main southern thoroughfare into Lynchburg, Virginia. When sheriff's deputies gave chase they kept a safe distance behind him, dodging canisters of mustard gas Garland heaved out the window in a sorry attempt to cause a smokescreen. Garland parted his short, chestnut hair down the middle, wore bow ties, and kept the sleeves of his white cotton shirts rolled up. He resembled a pudgy Good Humor man.
Garland and his two brothers, Carey and Warren, all ran gas stations within a mile of one another just east of town. They didn't much like the local cops and the authorities didn't much like them. The Falwell boys thought nothing of settling a minor dispute with a two-by-four, or any other object lying around. One day a reporter at the local paper, the Lynchburg News, skewered Garland in a story that recounted his mustard-gas antics. When the writer had the temerity to stop at Warren's service station for gas one sunny afternoon, Warren recognized the scribe, grabbed a crutch from a crippled customer, and began walloping the journalist over the head. The reporter drove away — without his gas — but the account made page one the next day.
Warren's filling station was at the intersection of routes 10 and 18 (now U.S. Highway 460 and Business Route 501). His business card noted his shop offered "wrecker service and a good place to eat." He operated a passenger-bus line with Carey, using on-board, battery-powered projectors to play Charlie Chaplin movies for their riders. Carey managed the north-south routes; Warren the east-west lines. Garland, Jerry Falwell's uncle, managed his own filling station and helped Carey run an oil-distribution outfit he had started, along with a string of cafes. The Falwell boys earned a good living from these small-town enterprises but had a side venture that made them more money than their bus lines, restaurants, and gas stations combined. At the height of Prohibition they sold moonshine. The Falwells were the biggest distributors of illegal liquor in central Virginia.
Their gas stations were drop-off points for jugs of corn whiskey and peach brandy. You could buy gas for thirty cents a gallon or whiskey for eight dollars a gallon. Sealed in jam jars, brandy went for two dollars per pint. The booze came from camouflaged stills in the densely wooded outskirts of town and arrived in the bumpers of the Falwells' fuel trucks. One of Carey's top runners was Chauncey Spencer, then a bellhop at the Hotel Carroll. Chauncey's mother was Lynchburg's famed poet Anne Spencer, who hosted visitors like Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King Jr. at her Pierce Street home. Mrs. Spencer would have skinned her son alive had she known his hotel job was actually cover for filling booze orders for the Falwells. Chauncey delivered liquor to Lynchburg's top madams, who operated out of a stretch of homes along Fourth Street, and to "nip joints," the term used back then for small-time speakeasies. Carey's free-flowing booze probably minted one thousand entrepreneurs in Lynchburg. "Anybody with a box of Dixie cups and a bottle of liquor became a businessman," says Charles Bennett, Lynchburg's chief of police.
The only problem with distributing booze was, with plenty of the stuff around, it was tempting to partake. The older Falwell brothers could hold their liquor. Not Garland: drinking turned him belligerent and morose.
He was in such a state one October evening in 1929, when a verbal showdown with a group of college students turned into a near-deadly car chase. Garland fired forty rounds into the sedan of the fleeing students, one of whom would have fourteen shot pellets removed from his head. Falwell was charged with attempted murder.
In the late '20s, violent crime like this rarely occurred outside the city. When it did, perpetrators were dealt with seriously. But Carey Falwell controlled some of the very hubs of Lynchburg's small-town economy. His restaurants and gas stations were everywhere and his liquor was consumed by the town's most powerful figures. A judge agreed to release Garland to family custody as he awaited trial. When his court date arrived two months later, so did the crowds. The trial drew forty witnesses and three hundred spectators. A jury convicted Garland of the comparatively minor offense of "unlawful shooting," sentencing him to prison for two years. Carey had hired a smart defense attorney for Garland, who appealed and got the sentence reduced to three months in jail and a one-hundred-dollar fine. Even that was too much for Garland to stomach. He escaped from custody eleven days later, setting off a statewide manhunt. His brother Warren returned him to authorities with a polite apology, promising he'd serve the rest of his time. The incarceration would mean little to him.
On the evening of December 28, 1931, a call came into the Campbell County sheriff's office complaining that gunshots had been fired near Garland's filling station. Only two deputies served the entire county back then; deputies drove their own cars and used their own guns. Radios weren't yet used in many rural areas so calls would be responded to only when an officer learned of it by periodic checks from a call box. At least an hour went by before Deputy W. A. Farmer and his partner climbed into Farmer's sedan to investigate. They had good reason to be concerned: the caller said the source of the trouble was, as usual, Garland Falwell. When police arrived that night they were astonished to discover Garland and two friends not shooting at anyone, but harmlessly setting off firecrackers. The police had no quarrel with Garland. But Garland suddenly had a beef with them. "Who called y'all? Was it Carey?" he screamed as the two deputies walked away. The officers denied it was Carey who made the call, but wouldn't reveal their tipster to Garland.
As usual, Garland was soused with whiskey. But that night he was also flying high on a drug called veronal, prescribed to him by a family doctor to ease pain from his ankle, which was mangled in a motorcycle accident a few days earlier. In his paranoid, semidelusional state he concluded that Carey had indeed ratted him out. The authorities had been summoned in response to Garland's antics a half dozen times in recent months. One complaint came from Garland's own wife, alleging he had beat her. Garland suspected his own family was turning against him. He reasoned that his older brother, once his loyal advocate, had tired of defending him and was scheming to lock him up. He would teach Carey a lesson for this blood betrayal.
Garland retrieved his favorite artillery, a pair of .32 pistols, from his car. He marched across the street to Warren's restaurant, where Carey sometimes lingered into the late hours. Like a drunken Jesse James, Garland burst into the restaurant with both pistols drawn, his muddy perception suddenly jolted by the familiar rush of adrenaline from the cold, deadly steel in his hands. He scanned the tables for Carey, but his older brother was nowhere in sight. Garland limped upstairs to an office, where he heard Carey on the phone. Carey was running down a list of arrival times with a dispatcher at the Lynchburg bus station, checking on whether his rigs had rolled in on time. "With the receiver still in my hand, Garland rushed in with two pistols, the muzzles of which looked as big as barrels, and accused me of calling Farmer," recalled Carey.
Watching the scene unfold was one of Carey's cousins, who yelled "Garland!" The one-moment-diversion was all Carey needed to spring from his wooden chair and bolt through a doorway leading to a back window. He opened it and lunged through the opening, with Garland in hot pursuit. Garland rushed to the window, but Carey had vanished. The younger Falwell fired three rounds at the nearest tree as he cursed his brother and tried to scare him into the open. Garland squinted his eyes through the clouds of gunpowder in the night air, but there was no sign of Carey, who was crouched motionless behind another tree some thirty yards away.
Garland left the window, his whereabouts unknown to Carey, who turned and walked cautiously along Route 10. But like Cary Grant in North by Northwest, he was soon running again. Garland was back in his car and fast approaching from behind. Carey could hear Garland's roadster roaring in the distance. In the dim moonlight, Carey ducked behind a shed, and hid until his brother's headlights blazed by.
The road dark again, Carey started walking, shivering in the night air as he approached the home of one of his oil-company employees, Robert Johnson. He had recently loaned a shotgun to Johnson for duck hunting. In the pitch dark, he anxiously rapped the front door with his knuckle. "It's Carey, open up!" Johnson came to the door and let his boss in. "Garland's gone wild. I need ma gun, Bob," said Carey, who went to wash blood from his hand. One of Garland's shots had nicked a finger. Carey lingered a while, then picked up the long-barreled shotgun Johnson had set down on a table, along with two cartridges. Carey cracked open the barrel and popped in one cartridge. He left without a word.
Walking stealthily through the woods, Carey found his way back to Warren's filling station. He could see the lights on inside behind the silhouettes of his father, Charlie Falwell, and a cousin on the porch, who were keeping watch for Garland. Carey walked up to the building, shotgun at his side. "Where in hell is Garland?" asked Carey. Carey's father just shook his head. "The boy's gone mad," said Carey. "He's crazy on dope." The trio walked back inside Warren's restaurant and sat down at a table, as Carey asked his companions who had called the sheriff on Garland. Carey kept his hand on the shotgun.
A few minutes later, they heard footsteps outside. Carey felt the hair stand up on his neck; he knew his brother's limp. "Garland?" yelled Carey. "Leave them guns outside." Garland burst through the door, pistols again drawn, his glassy eyes casting about like a deranged animal. Carey's cousin and father, both unarmed, flew out of their chairs. Carey sprinted upstairs to Warren's office as Garland fired two shots in his direction. Carey turned toward the open doorway, cocked the hammer on his shotgun, and swallowed hard. There was no time to find cover or jump out the window again. "Boy, don't come up here!" yelled Carey as he heard Garland clambering up the stairs. Garland stepped through the door frame; the brothers weren't fifteen feet from one another. Carey stepped backward, tripping over Warren's desk as he pulled the trigger. At that range the shot hit Garland like a cannonball; the pellets from Carey's gun would have no time to disburse. The blast jerked Garland's body grotesquely backward into the door frame, one pistol tumbling from his hand down the stairs as his stocky body crashed to the floor. There was just smoke and silence — and a hole the size of a baseball just above Garland's heart.
For a moment Carey could hear Garland gasping, then nothing. Carey cautiously stood up and glimpsed at the carnage. Garland's blood had splattered across the entire middle of the open office door. Carey was dumbfounded; he felt short of breath. He knelt next to Garland, calling his name, but his little brother did not move. Charlie appeared at the top of the stairs. Carey looked up at his father, who said nothing, his hand covering his mouth as he stared down at the still body of his son. Carey gathered his wits and picked up the phone to call the county sheriff. It would be another hour before Farmer and his partner returned to Warren's filling station.
Carey was arrested and released on $10,000 bail. The next day a judge went over the events of that evening with Carey, the two deputies, Carey's father, his cousin, and a handful of witnesses. Carey was found not guilty in Garland's death. He had acted in self-defense. But this single tragedy, occurring in a hair-trigger moment, eventually ruined Carey Falwell's life and left an indelible mark on the life of his son, Jerry.
* * *
Nine generations of Falwells have lived, worked, thrived, and died in Virginia over the past three hundred years. Their remains lay scattered in cemeteries in Goochland, Buckingham, and Campbell counties. Not much of their history is known before 1869, the year several generations' worth of records were destroyed in a fire at the Buckingham County courthouse. The Falwells' modern history begins in 1850, when Jerry Falwell's great-grandfather Hezekiah came to Lynchburg and bought most of the northern face of Candler's Mountain, an undulating series of peaks along the western edge of town. It is land where dozens of family businesses would sprout: tobacco farms, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, dairies, restaurants, filling stations, hotels, a trucking service, and even an airport.
The first Falwells likely arrived among early waves of English settlers landing at the Jamestown colony in the late seventeenth century. They apparently spelled their name "Falwelly," but dropped the "y" sometime before the mid-nineteenth century. It's unknown whether they sought religious freedom or came to strike it rich in the New World.
Jamestown was supposed to help England cut its reliance on expensive goods from other European countries by becoming a new source of cheap imports. Launched by a group of London investors called the Virginia Company, their three ships brought 107 colonists to the settlement in May 1607. Many of the carpenters, barbers, farmers, and bricklayers who came ashore that month didn't care much about highfalutin' aims to strengthen the English economy — their interest was in finding gold, a dream that quickly fizzled.
The émigrés decamped on an island inside the Chesapeake Bay, whose briny depths teemed with oysters, mussels, crabs, and rockfish. It was an oceanic Eden, except that it was also the hunting and canoeing grounds of 14,000 Algonquian Indians making up the tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy. The settlers fought one bloody skirmish after another with the Powhatans as they tried their hand at glassmaking and cultivating sassafras. They sent their meager shipments to the British Isles. Much of England was deforested, so the colonists tried cutting lumber and shipping it east. None of these ventures amounted to much. Then, in 1612, a tobacco entrepreneur named John Rolfe arrived and planted at Jamestown a South American variety of tobacco called Orinoco, which oozed a sweet tangy flavor when smoked or chewed. He cured it over a fire, then shipped two hundred pounds of the leaf back to England. Rolfe's business partners were astounded. It tasted just like the Spanish varieties that were all the rage in London. Rolfe's partners sent word back to rev up production of the new crop as fast as possible.
Tobacco was planted everywhere: along dirt roads and hillsides, in home gardens, and even the new colony's cemetery. The Powhatans, whose culture revolved around the cultivation of corn, squash, and beans, were amazed at what little acreage settlers devoted to food crops for their own survival. The new cash crop astounded the colonists, too. Their tobacco harvests would be the seeds of the very economic foundation of Virginia, creating unimaginable wealth for the South over the next 250 years.
The early Falwells are believed to have owned a handful of tobacco plantations along the James River and probably earned a good living from them. The average grain farmer made about eighteen dollars a year planting wheat; the same land used to grow the more labor intensive tobacco in the new world could make the planter one hundred dollars a year. The magnitude of difference is accounted for by inexpensive slave labor employed to plant, weed, water, cultivate, cut, stem, cure, pack, and transport the leaf. It was nasty, back-breaking work requiring some forty steps during the entire growing season. Forests were flattened and a layer of ash was laid down for the small tobacco seeds to germinate. When the plants grew to four inches, field slaves would transplant them into a larger growing area, setting them in rows four feet apart. A single slave crew might be responsible for 20,000 plants; they would spend hours weeding and searching for hornworms, whose giant caterpillarlike bodies inflated with green fluid as they sucked nutrients from the plant. When the buds arrived a month later, the plants were pruned; in another six weeks the leaves would be harvested, then dried in a curing barn. The leaves would be jammed into wooden barrels called hogsheads. "A barefoot slave stood inside the barrel and layered the 'hands,' packing the tobacco tight with the aid of blocks and levers before 'heading' (putting the lid onto) the hogshead. When the shipment was ready, slaves rolled, carted, or transported the 500-to-1,300pound hogsheads by boat to the planter's wharf."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Falwell Inc. by Dirk Smillie. Copyright © 2008 Dirk Smillie. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
TITLE PAGE,COPYRIGHT NOTICE,
DEDICATION,
INTRODUCTION,
1. A Small-Town Killing,
2. Verbal Vigilantes,
3. Microphone Missionary,
4. Biblical Bling,
5. Magic City,
6. Righteous Brothers,
7. Immaculate Inflection,
8. Lords of Lynchburg,
9. Falwell 2.0,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
NOTES,
BIBLIOGRAPHY,
INDEX,
COPYRIGHT,