MICHIGAN: Governor and God

Luren Dudley Dickinson, the Governor of Michigan, balanced himself on a milk stool on the lawn of his capitol at Lansing one afternoon last week, milking Miss Ormsby, a Holstein cow. The occasion: National Milk Week. Suddenly His Excellency shifted his seat, toppled off his perch. Unless Luren Dickinson, aged 80, abandoned one of his cardinal tenets as he sprawled on the grass, he prayed.

Governor Dickinson is a Republican and a Methodist. Each Sunday at the Center Eaton Methodist Church near his home town, Charlotte, he still teaches a Bible Class. Dry and anti-tobacconist, he was elected Michigan’s Lieutenant Governor seven times, presided over the State Senate in decent obscurity. Then last March conservative Republican Governor Frank Fitzgerald died and Luren Dickinson succeeded him. In the past three months he has given Michigan its godliest and goofiest government.

Craving guidance, octogenarian Governor Dickinson first imported from Charlotte two cronies: Dr. Henry Allen Moyer, his personal physician; Emerson R. Boyles, old-line political warhorse who had served under Governor Fitzgerald as his legal adviser. Dr. Moyer’s duties include protecting frail, doddery Mr. Dickinson’s health, driving with him back & forth to the Governor’s Charlotte farm (20 miles from Lansing), where Mr. Dickinson putters in his garden. Dr. Moyer also spends a good deal of time behind a newspaper in the gubernatorial office, occasionally offering his patient nuggets of statesman’y wisdom (“I have a few ideas about government, too”). For these services, he receives $3,000 a year from the State as a medical secretary.

At $7,000, Crony Boyles is more active. The Governor’s official legal aide and unofficial Pooh-Bah, he not only dispenses legal advice, but sometimes signs State papers in the Dickinson name. Himself and Colleague Moyer he modestly characterizes as “just a couple of fellows hanging on to the public tit.” Other Dickinson indispensables include: smooth, young Secretary Leslie Butler—who siphons callers so carefully into his master’s office that the Detroit Citizens’ League once complained: “Honest citizens can’t get in” —and Personal Secretary Margaret Shaw, whom, the Governor says, God sent him. (“I know there is a girl in my office answering letters in exactly the language I would use. I snooped one time, and there were the letters just as I would have written them. Who has been giving her that language? There is but one answer.”)

No. 1 counselor to the 54th Governor of Michigan is God. In his office every morning the Governor prays for five minutes (see cut). Prayer, he says, brought him Boyles & Moyer, helped him choose many another political appointee. (“We were looking for a man to fill a certain State office. Suddenly the name . . . was made clear to me. I mentioned it. My legal aide, Emerson R. Boyles, said to me: ‘You have a pipeline.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have a pipeline to God.’ “)

Other Michiganders, however, are not so sanguine about their Governor’s brain-trust, view with alarm many an example of Luren Dickinson’s recent statecraft. Since March he:

> Vetoed a bill which would have let a legislative committee continue its investigation of some nasty bridge-fund boodle. (Lawyer Boyles got the blame. Protested Mr. Dickinson to carpers: “Why, I didn’t know that bill terminated the investigation. Judge Boyles told me to veto it.”)

>Vetoed another bill to permit docking horses’ tails, commenting: “If the Almighty wanted the bony part of a horse’s tail six inches shorter, why didn’t He make them grow that way? Don’t ask me to assist in changing His plans.”

> Let Boyles sign a batch of extradition papers.

> Together with the Republican Legislature, he abolished the civil-service system which Reform Governor Frank Murphy contributed toward non-political administration, substituted the old-fashioned spoils system for most State offices. (“It has been said many times that under such conditions I have felt the need for spiritual wisdom. If there ever was a case where I could say this, this was one.”) When the civil-service wrecker landed on the Governor’s desk he said: “I have faith the right answer [whether to sign] will be made clear to me, perhaps this weekend.” Mr. Dickinson and Mentor Boyles passed the weekend together. The bill was signed.

Frustrated civil-service advocates promptly asked Circuit Judge Clyde I. Webster in Detroit to declare 1) that “Lieutenant Governor Dickinson” has no legal claim to be Governor, 2) the civil-service wrecker was unconstitutional, illegally signed by a nonexistent Governor. Their grounds: the State constitution provides 1) in the event of the Governor’s death or incapacity, the Lieutenant Governor shall serve “until the disability ceases,” 2) the Governor shall fill vacated offices by appointment. One William P. Long of Detroit maintains that Luren Dickinson should have taken the gubernatorial office, then ended the “disability” by appointing another to his job.

Looking owlish, Emerson Boyles observed: “Weird. If Dickinson is not Governor, who is?”

Pious Luren Dudley Dickinson has not let this kind of thing bother him at all. Says he: “Everybody is so kind to me. They won’t let me do anything that would tax my strength. Why, I’ve gained twelve pounds since I took office.”