White’s legacy
State’s last living former Democratic governor sought to make life better for all Texans.
On a weekday morning a couple of years ago, Mark White was uncharacteristically late for a meeting with the Chronicle editorial board. He soon called, explained that a doctor’s appointment had gone longer than expected and assured us he would arrive shortly. When he walked through the door later in the morning, he sported puffy, white bandages on his nose and one ear. Never mind that he had just undergone minor surgery. When the former governor had something he wanted to discuss, he would not be deterred, although the bandages kept coming loose that morning and he confessed to being a bit groggy.
White, who died of a heart attack Saturday at his Houston home, was a happy warrior. Although he had not held office for decades, the former secretary of state, attorney general and governor from 1983 to 1987 was as engaged and involved with issues and ideas as he was during his years in Austin, perhaps more so. Whether the issue was justice for wrongfully convicted inmates or strengthening our public schools or preserving this state’s unique past, he was still in the arena, still seeking to persuade.
He was a lifelong Democrat to be sure, but he never allowed party allegiance or partisan rancor to corrode his gregarious good nature or his genuine respect for others, regardless of whether they agreed with him on the issues. Kind words from former Presidents George H.W Bush and George W. Bush, Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans who knew and worked with him attest to his unfeigned decency.
It’s sadly ironic that White departed this life at a time when a rancorous Texas Legislature has tied itself into knots over, in White’s words, “some silly restroom bill.” The son of an East Texas first-grade teacher, he believed in public education. He lost the governorship after one term in large part because he was willing to tell his fellow Texans that they were too focused on games their children played and not on whether they were learning in the classroom.
With the assistance of Dallas billionaire H. Ross Perot, he persuaded lawmakers to institute a controversial no-pass, no-play policy for high school athletes. His education reform package, known as House Bill 72, also included limits on elementary class size and the first-ever statewide testing standards. It’s hard to imagine today, but he managed to persuade skittish lawmakers to pass a $4 billion tax increase to help pay for teacher pay raises and class-size limits.
The state’s 43rd governor was proud of the fact that a west Houston elementary school, not a building or a street, bears his name, and yet his reward at the time HB 72 went into effect was galling defeat at the polls. He lost his bid for re-election to Bill Clements, the Republican incumbent he had defeated four years earlier. The loss was hard to take, and yet White drew strength from a guiding principle espoused by a predecessor in the governor’s office.
“Do right and risk the consequences,” his hero, Sam Houston, said. The iconic Texan lived it. So did White, who in 2009 told the Houston Public Library’s Oral History Project that he had no regrets about his efforts on behalf of Texas schools.
“To have young people come up today and say, ‘Thank you for no-pass, no-play,’ ” he said, “to have teachers come up and say: ‘Thank you for the benefits that you gave to retired teachers back when it was tough to raise money’; to have people who say, ‘Yes, I did not get to play football but we were able to pass.’ ‘What are you doing now?’ ‘Well, I am a doctor.’ So that is kind of nice.”
White loved this state (almost as much as he loved his wife, Linda Gale, and his alma mater, Baylor University). In fact, his post-surgical visit to the Chronicle editorial board was prompted by his concern that Texans were neglecting their monuments to a proud past — at Goliad and Gonzales, in and around the Alamo, at Washington on the Brazos and especially at the San Jacinto Monument, where he served on the board of the San Jacinto Museum of History.
A few weeks after his Chronicle visit, he visited the monument with a reporter in tow and recalled getting stuck in a creaky, ancient elevator on the way to the observation floor high above the battleground, the battleship Texas and the tangled metal forest of massive refineries symbolizing today’s Texas. He laughed about the elevator incident, but he was serious about our neglect of Texas treasures. He wanted everyday Texans to speak out; he wanted their elected officials to listen.
In the San Jacinto museum that morning, among the glass cabinets filled with maps, portraits, uniform sand early-day weapon ry, he struck up a conversation with a group of African-American youngsters on a field trip with their Houston church camp and then with a retired couple from Georgia touring Texas. Neither the kids nor the couple knew the tall, white-haired man was a former governor, and that was fine with him. He was more interested in getting to know them. He was eager to share the love and fascination he felt for his native state.
We will miss the inveterate table-hopper. We will miss the distinctive Mark White voice, a sonorous baritone leavened with an East Texas twang, as well as his stories about the old days around the Capitol, usually punctuated with laughter. We will miss his efforts, to the very end, to make life better for all Texans.