Dan Wakefield

Almost 65 years after covering the murder trial that helped spark the Civil Rights movement, Dan Wakefield is finally gaining a fuller appreciation of the struggle.

“He couldn’t hide the fact that he was the smartest person in the room. He was the opposite of ‘folksy,’ which was fine in my estimation—I have always felt ‘folksy’ was often phony, and that was a charge that could never be made against Dick Lugar.”

What I remember most were his eyes—those large brown eyes that seemed to see right through you, right into your mind, and to know at once if you were speaking the truth.

Maybe the time had come to defy Kurt’s injunction against my return in his review of ‘Going All the Way,’ and instead remember his declaration that we could be writers in our hometown as well as anywhere else.