My Celebration of Jim Bellows: A Man Who Loved Women.

Carey Sipp/March 15, 2009

I have said before that Keven Bellows was the first truly peaceful person I ever met.

I did not meet her until I was 20 years old. It was a big deal.

She was peaceful. Funny. Brilliant. Focused. Able to prioritize and bring clarity to muddled situations in a way I’d never experienced before.

She had honest-to-God REAL relationships with people, and I often saw her meeting some troubled-looking soul one-on-one in our almost bare office where I spent far too much time alone.

A journalism student at George Washington University, I had returned to school after dropping out for a year to get my head together and work on Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign. I was back at GW at night and working during the day when my campaign buddies became White House staffers. It was all strangely depressing, actually. Thank God Keven had let me go with her family to watch the inaugural parade. She was the brightest spot in an ironically dark time. 

When circumstances called for a change in our business and the company was sold, I was suddenly even more alone: Away from friends though they worked just blocks from my home and school, knee-deep in classes that were far too difficult for me at the emotionally-charged time. Now I was jobless, too, with school to finish and an apartment to pay for or sublet. It was then that Keven said, “Let me see if it is okay with Jim if you move in for a while to help with Michael and Justine.”

I knew Jim was the editor of The Washington Star. I knew he was important, and good at stirring things up.  I knew the Bellows had lots of important friends. I was afraid this man wouldn’t want a sad-sack Southern stranger around his children. And yet, he and Keven opened their doors to me, saying that the only thing they wanted me to do was drive Michael and Justine to places sometimes, and to babysit Justine on rare occasions if the request didn’t conflict with my classes. This was before I had even REALLY met Jim. 

So the first time I met him I thought I’d met the wrong guy. Who was this pair of bushy eyebrows with a slight man underneath? Who was this guy who was so brilliant at running a newspaper and evoking earth-shattering communications from top journalists, yet who, himself, MUMBLED?

Who was this man who had all these paintings and sculptures of NAKED WOMEN in his sunlit home? Mercy. I was fromCarrollton, Georgia. We didn’t even have naked cherubs in Carrollton.

When Keven saw me gawking at one of the nudes she said, and I will never forget it, “JIM BELLOWS IS A MAN WHO LOVES WOMEN.”  Of course to me, in my limited experience, what she said evoked thoughts of his “loving women” as his loving sex. After all, he had opened the door with that shirt opened almost to his navel, wearing those funky bell-bottoms, with that cigarette and that drink in hand. What, exactly, had I moved into?

It didn’t take long for me to get beyond those thoughts. 

All I had to do was watch a little while to see how Jim’s loving women was carried out:  In the love he showed for his wife. In the patience and concern he showed for his daughters – the mysterious daughters who lived in California and Colorado and Georgia. In the love he poured on this beautiful little blond-haired child who was just four years old at the time, but who looked and acted as though she was much, much older, in large part because of the TIME invested in her by her father. Jim seemed to look at her with such amazement and so much love that it almost broke my heart, though, at the time, I didn’t fully understand why. Somewhere deep inside of me it must have registered that even though I was five times her age, Justine had had more love and time with her earthly father than I ever had, or ever would.

Years later, when Justine was getting married and I was fortunate to be included in the festivities, I realized that part of my sadness– mixed with a little envy — was based in my own sense of loss, on having missed out on having a dad such as Jim. I could see what having that kind of dad did for Justine. She had the self-confidence to know she was worthy of a great guy, a great career, the whole package. All those Bellows daughters had that confidence. What a thing!

The short time I lived with the Bellows I loved the way Jim took Justine to church on Sunday mornings. He would pull this bizarre orchid-colored car up on the curb– I think it was a Thunderbird or a Lincoln –and leave it running while he went in to gather up this glowing child to take her off to an Episcopal church. Just the two of them.  It blew my mind.

Sadly, it seems, only an incredibly lucky few get the ticket punched for having a present, loving, and inspiring father. If Jim and Keven had their way, I am sure every little girl and boy in the world would know that life-affirming joy.

Over the years I was privileged to orbit this family: receiving letters from Keven that I’ve saved for decades because they were THE TRUTH; visiting Keven and Jim and Justine in New York for them to say grace over my first husband; connecting with Felicia almost 20 years ago when she moved to Atlanta and Keven asked me to meet her and welcome her back to town; visiting with Keven and introducing her to my children when she came to Atlanta with “DL”; going to California for holidays and Justine’s princes-like nuptials.

On those occasions and others I was always welcomed along with the other various and assorted strays Keven and Jim had taken in over the years. I was welcomed to the parties and the dinners and the family breakfasts and the whatever else was going on – all of it fascinating to me  –  all of it such a privilege.

At the center of it all were Keven and Jim. Jim and Keven. Keven and Jim.

He was as baffling as she was clear.

He was, though, as clear in his insight, editing, and VISION as  anyone in the world. He could read a muddled mess – and he did with a book that I had worked on for years and years – and mumble ten words about structure that put miraculous order to the dozens of essays I’d written.  Order that made the book publishable.

I know I am not alone in that experience.

If I were one of those Bellows women, I would feel so, so proud right now, to have been loved by a man who, as he matured, loved and understood women, and helped them to better understand each other and themselves.

Jim was indeed a man who helped generations of women find their rightful place in their careers, be they graphic artists or stock brokers or international financiers or builders, as were the careers of his daughters. What a rich and wonderful timing God had in having a man who so loved women — and so loved to buck the system — be in a position of influence during the women’s movement, where he could be SO DANGED USEFUL. 

His story is bigger than what most people would think “loving women” meant.  Jim respected, inspired, uplifted, and guided women, and men, toward becoming the something he saw in them that was good, especially when they could not seem to find that good themselves. I know it worked that way for me, by my being welcomed, included, listened to, TAKEN SERIOUSLY, and edited. Who knew that becoming unemployed in 1977 would result in 32 years of my having a pair (Keven and Jim) of world-class communicators in my corner?

I cannot imagine the loss this family has felt over the last two or three years since the Alzheimer’s managed to dim some of Jim’s brilliance.  The fact that with THAT disease a person dies in stages is heartless and kind at the same time.  It is heartless to see the body alive and the abilities fade; it is kind to give everyone the chance to get used to the idea of the person being gone without the loved one actually being gone all the time – at least for a while.

During the memorial service for Jim on March 13, I was also struck by Jim’s faith and his willingness to be a witness for Christ to an audience filled with so many who probably think faith and Christianity are for gullible sissies.  If Jim thought having faith and being part of a church community was cool, no doubt a lot of people left that service rethinking their own faith, and making plans to show up for church come Sunday.

After the service I thanked Pastor Orr, who had officiated the service, and talked with him for a few minutes about the strong message Jim had delivered in the scriptures and hymns he’d chosen, and in choosing to have such a service, period. The pastor, who obviously loved and knew Jim well, said in all his years he could think of only three journalists whom he knew personally who made public the fact of their faith. He said faith usually didn’t become journalists, who, by nature and somewhat by job description, were called to be cynical and mistrusting.  How wonderful it was that Pastor Orr had commented, in his service remarks, on Jim’s unfailing optimism, his always looking for the good in people, his love of mankind.

I believe all of that – the optimism, the looking for the good in people, the love of man and womankind – was a part of Jim in large part because he so much wanted those qualities for his daughters and for his stepson Michael.

Mercy. He would have been so proud of Michael’s words at the memorial service. I know he was proud of the way Michael himself had become a husband, a father, and a man of faith.  I have no doubt that Jim’s optimism helped bring that out in Michael, and in so, so many people who looked up to him, myself included.

Back home in Atlanta now, finally coming out of my red-eye induced jet lag, I have reflected on my friendships with this remarkable family, and have said prayers of thanks for them. For Keven, who brought me in, for Jim, who went along with it when Keven asked him to do something that would benefit me, for those daughters who were so mysterious 32 years ago and are now people I so look forward to seeing. For Felicia, that youngest daughter of the first batch of children, who is such an important part of my life.

As I think about and give thanks for all of them, I am grateful beyond belief to have been included in the Bellows’ generous orbit, and to have been illuminated a bit myself by the man in the middle of all those women, that bright star behind those bushy eyebrows.

 

Thanks be to God!

 

3.16.09