A Homage To My Friend, H. Jefferson Herbert

This is posted as my personal tribute to Jeff Herbert, but I only knew him for the second half of his life. There is much more to him and a lot of it can be found in his obituary at https://www.hatchersaddler.com/obituaries/hiram-herbert-jr

Even those of us who are not Jedi knights felt a huge disturbance in the Force on December 15 when Hiram Jefferson Herbert, Jr., left our dimension.  This is no surprise. When titans like Jeff leave us, such a mighty void results that everyone is affected. His impact on the community of friends he held dear was that immense.

I first met Jeff in 1983, shortly after becoming Superintendent of Glasgow Electric Plant Board. He was already there when I arrived, and he was bristling with knowledge that he was anxious to share with me. In addition to being Corporate Counsel for EPB, he quickly became my friend, mentor, and the bright star I used to navigate the balance of my career. And I was not alone in seeing Jeff this way. He was also Corporate Counsel to other booming concerns in Glasgow. He represented City of Glasgow, Gray Construction Company, TJ Samson Hospital, and many others. In short, just about every business or board or commission that played a major role in the success of Glasgow through the 80s, 90s, and beyond, had Jeff Herbert playing a big part of their success. Maybe you didn’t know that, but you should.  

I cannot fill in all the stories about how he impacted other businesses, but I can tell you about the Jeff Herbert I knew through our work at Glasgow EPB, because I am convinced that the EPB was his favorite client. I should also point out that Jeff’s personality and knowledge warped the classic definition of the lawyer-client relationship. It is a bit difficult to explain this, but Jeff just couldn’t be contained to focus on legal matters for his corporate clients. Rather, he was more of a “corporate gadfly.” That is to say, he developed such a vast understanding of the inner workings of the businesses he represented that he moved around in the organizations with the aplomb of attorney, board member, technician, accountant, and engineer. As he did this, he could also go back and forth between valued advisor and exceedingly frustrating meddler. There, I said it.

Over the last 40 years, he had a knack for being at the right place at the right time while armed with the right tools. In a way, he was like Forrest Gump.  For example, when I arrived at Glasgow EPB, my first assignment was to try to complete several hydro-electric projects which EPB held licenses to develop. My first airliner ride was with Jeff to Washington, D.C. to discuss the Barren River Reservoir project with the folks at Army Corps of Engineers. Jeff also arranged a meeting with Congressman William Natcher. I followed him around in slack-jawed awe of the way he navigated the Metro subway system and the halls of Congress. I sat in a corner of Natcher’s office while Jeff and he kicked around ideas about convincing the ACOE to allow our project to move forward, but the bigger item of discussion was the recent general election of 1984 (just a couple of weeks before) when Walter “Dee” Huddleston lost his Senate seat to an unknown, Mitch McConnell. I was mesmerized as these two masters of political science observed that there was simply no reason for Huddleston to have lost to McConnell. The consensus opinion was that Huddleston simply failed to identify and promote a big initiative for Kentucky. Jeff agreed and even suggested a couple such projects. Natcher agreed with Jeff. Many years later, I realized that McConnell’s rein began right then and there. Had Dee Huddleston taken the counsel of Jeff Herbert and Bill Natcher, everything about our country, from that moment on, would have been different.

It is certain that similar events occurred within the bounds of the other corporations he helped. These events should be catalogued and recorded as the Jeff Herbert Effect. For Glasgow EPB, the biggest of those events was the development of Glasgow’s Broadband Network, which largely exists because, at the right time and place, Jeff Herbert was there. The EPB elected to build the first municipally owned broadband network in 1987. Construction began about a year later, and by early 1990, the incumbent cable television company (Telescripps Cable at that time) filed a federal lawsuit, followed closely by a state lawsuit, against Glasgow EPB in an attempt to stop the project. It was going to be a big fight...just the kind of thing Jeff was born to participate in.  

In 1990, Jeff led me into the Federal District Court Building in Bowling Green. A hearing was held there to consider Telescripps Cable’s motion for a Temporary Restraining Order against our construction of the network in Glasgow. Judge Ronald Meridith was United States District Judge handling the complaint filed by lawyers for Telescripps,  and they were an imposing group. Four members of a prestigious Washington D.C. law firm made a compelling and impassioned argument against Glasgow EPB’s project. Jeff, aided by Uhel Barrickman and Randy Young (a friend also from Washington), defended the EPB project. Jeff controlled the narrative and used up most of the oxygen in that courtroom. He spoke about local economics, the inability of cities to actually regulate the cable companies, and he talked about our vision for a high-speed data network. Most of all, he focused on the propriety of a distant corporation controlling the programming for a rural community like Glasgow. After the arguments were completed, Judge Meredith gazed over his glasses and looked at Jeff, in apparent full agreement with Jeff’s statements, when he then moved his glare to the assembly of Telescripps lawyers and said, “After considering this motion and hearing all of the arguments, I am convinced that you bastards (looking directly at the Telescripps team) just do not want any competition. The motion for a restraining order is denied. Further, if you all do not come up with something more clever than you brought to my courtroom today, you will not enjoy being here.” Whereupon Jeff leaned over and spoke in my ear, “That is good.” The initial victory in Judge Meredith’s courtroom paved the way for Glasgow’s successful construction of the first municipal broadband network in the United States. After that victory, all other legal challenges against Glasgow’s project dissolved. Once again, Jeff Herbert, armed with his education, rapier wit, and dedication to a cause, was, at that precise moment, exactly what was needed to change the world. Since then, over 750 similar municipal broadband networks have been built across the country, and none of them faced successful legal challenges. Jeff Herbert’s work that day in 1990 is the reason for that. It was another Forrest Gump moment.

There are likely dozens of other similar events in which Jeff was prepared, fearless, and educated enough to win the day. However, there was always someone he feared – Betty. When I first met Jeff, his courtship of the former Betty Reece had already begun, and I got to watch as some friends exploited this obvious weakness in his armor. In 1985, at a meeting in Los Angeles with a construction company interested in the hydroelectric project, we found time to play a round of golf. Betty was along for the trip and had planned a little reception at the hotel where we could honor the newly engaged couple. Now, Don Doty was in the golf foursome, and no one enjoyed making Jeff sweat more than Don.  We were scheduled to finish in plenty of time to be there for the reception. But things didn’t stay on schedule. Don began to take a lot of time with the golf, and even more time with the drive back to the hotel, laughing all the while. Jeff got more and more nervous, as he compared his watch to our progress. When we finally arrived at the parking structure for the hotel, Jeff jumped out of the still-moving car and sprinted to a bank of elevators while practically crying in the prospect of being late. So, take note that his fearlessness had limits. 

In addition to putting fear in his heart, the romance between Jeff and Betty changed him, for the better. With Betty’s influence, he became an advocate for justice far beyond the bounds of those who hired him for that purpose. Jeff became a citizen of the planet. He also became very adventurous in the restaurants and bars he was willing to try. I will never forget a time we were in Louisville, and he wanted Betty to meet us at a new place (at the time) called Rudyard Kipling. He wanted to show off his skill at finding really new and cool places, and this place was, in a word – terrible. But he didn’t complain, he just beamed at the hilarious nature of the scene and that Betty had seen him stumble but not fall. Under Betty’s influence, he became a kinder, gentler person. Betty even made Jeff a John Prine fan, but sort of by accident. They found themselves in a restaurant/bar out west where a young musician with an acoustic guitar was belting out John Prine's ballad about western Kentucky -- Paradise. Jeff had never heard of John Prine or his music, but the song about the coal fields of Western Kentucky made Jeff instantly proud of his home state, and thereafter, every time he encountered anyone with a guitar, he begged them to sing Paradise. As a certified wordsmith, Jeff was struck by John’s earth-shaking truth in lyrics like:

“And Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County? Down by the Green River where Paradise lay. Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.”

No matter how you feel about lawyers, learning that Jeff was a John Prine fan must make you feel a little different. Would Judge Meredith have bought his argument if he had known Jeff was a John Prine fan? We’ll never know. 

 Jeff Herbert could not be defined, nor understood just by his profession. Although certainly successful fighting battles in a courtroom, Jeff was also constantly fighting battles in the pursuit of justice in every room. If you became a friend, he was constantly struggling to make you better by using his knowledge and understanding of the world to help you become more like him. His work to improve our lot was also applied to those who didn’t know him as a friend. As a true public servant, the ways he fought to make his family, his neighborhood, his community, his state, and his country more in tune with the beatitudes, was always on his mind and displayed in his actions. All of this adds up to why we felt a shudder in everything around us when he passed. Now we are tasked with remembering Jeff by attempting to pick up the gauntlet of beliefs he left behind. For my part, Jeff Herbert was one of the best friends anyone ever had, and I will do my best to carry on in a world he no longer shares with me. I will bet though, that his final wish went like this:

When I die, let my ashes float down the Green River

Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam;

I‘ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'

Just five miles away from wherever I am.

A Four-Count Rhythm

Back in my grade-school days, everyone was treated to a basic music education that included something about notes, scales, timing, and melody. I can only vaguely remember that class, but I am sure there was a piano in the room and that the room still exists in the repurposed Liberty Street School building in Glasgow. Beyond that, everything about that segment of my education is fuzzy. But I feel sure that was when I was first introduced to the concept of the four-count rhythm and that rhythm has followed me for all the ensuing decades. 

Like most things we were taught in our pre-teen years, that rhythm is a part of the fabric of my understanding of everything, though it is rarely front-and-center in my consciousness. Still, it is there. I also never really think about my pulse, but thankfully, so far it has always been there too. 

I’m visiting this odd subject today mostly because of the recent passing of Robert Redford. Thinking about him always leads me to thinking about Norman Maclean and his novella – A River Runs Through It which was the basis for the movie directed by Redford. For me, it is something I read repeatedly, and Robert Redford’s passing has caused me to do that again. The story is chock-full of goodness and some of the best use of the English language that has ever been composed, but for me it is the closing passage that always grabs me by the throat when the author says: 

              “Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them." 

“Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fisherman in western Montana, where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise."

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs." 

"I am haunted by waters.” 

In all the beauty of those phrases it is easy to miss his reference to a four-count rhythm, but there it is. In my life there was precious little reference to the rhythm between grade school and my late thirties, when I bought my son and myself our first fly rods. Shortly after those purchases, we traveled to Cashiers, NC for some schooling on fly casting. And there, the four-count rhythm again came into my consciousness. Count one is using the rod to pick the fly line up off the water. Count two is the back-cast which lasts as long as a quarter-note until the line is fully back and unfurled. On count three the rod is loaded with energy to propel the line forward to the intended spot on the water and count four is when the line is allowed to peacefully settle on the water to present the fly. That is what Norman Maclean was talking about. That is when the four-count rhythm associated with flyfishing became part of my fabric. 

A few years later, it sprang up in my mind again while playing golf with my forever friend, William Travis. We played a lot of golf in the 90s and I got to watch his swing a lot. It needed something. Eventually I figured it out. He needed the four-count rhythm applied to his golf swing (we all do). I couldn’t really explain that to him, so I opted to take him to an Orvis flyfishing school so he could get the rhythm from an expert. It worked, and the ubiquitous four-count rhythm deepened in both of our minds. He also became a legendary fly fisher! 

Another decade passed before I hit the four-count rhythm head-on again. I started cycling and pretty quickly, I was an avid cyclist (addicted might be a better adjective). A cyclist soon learns, especially in the hilly terrain of Kentucky and Tennessee, that an efficient partnership between the cyclist (the bicycle’s engine) and the gear-train of the bicycle must be developed if one is going to cover thousands of miles per year on the road. For me (and I suspect for many others) the same four-count rhythm became the key to developing that partnership. Modern road bicycles have many different gear ratios. Finding the right one for every segment of a ride came down to choosing the one to make my pedal revolutions fit nicely into the good old four-count rhythm. It is everywhere, and it seems to make everything work as it should.

Then last year I bought a guitar, and guess what came along with it – the same old four-count rhythm. There is no escaping it. Nearly every song I (or anyone) try to play on the guitar is in 4/4 time (fancy music talk for the timing of how the notes are played to produce what the song writer had in mind). The rhythm goes just like this: one, two, three, four (timed just that way you just read it). Playing golf, flyfishing, playing music, and even speaking in the southern drawl we use in our part of the world, all is best presented in a four-count rhythm. 

I this coincidence? I think not.  Rather, I think the universe was established in this rhythm and the sooner we figure that out and listen for this remarkable language in everything we do, the sooner we will finally understand each other.