A senator looks back: Stennis comes alive (The Clarion Ledger)

The Clarion-Ledger

Put part of it down to homesickness. David Dallas, who grew up in Cleveland where his father teaches history at Delta State, was living in Philadelphia, Pa., working at Drexel University.

He’d always wanted to be an actor and writer. He also wanted to reconnect with his Mississippi roots. So he went into acting full-time and wrote a play about the late John C. Stennis, who represented Mississippi in the U.S. Senate for over 40 years.

This week Dallas, who has performed his one-man play more than 50 times, is doing it before the home folks at New Stage Theatre. “It’s been wonderful for me,” he says. “I've gotten a chance to reconnect with Mississippi people.”

Dallas comes at Stennis from a unique perspective in A Gentleman from Mississippi. When he was a graduate student at Mississippi State, Dallas helped care for Stennis, who had retired from the Senate and was in failing health.

“I tell the stories he told me as an old man,” Dallas says. Stennis had good days and bad days, “but when he was on, I’d go to my room, and thank God I got to meet this man. When he would tell me stories, I would write them down.”

The result, according to people who were close to Stennis, is breathtaking.

An ear for nuance

Former Congressman David Bowen served with Stennis for 10 years. “It’s really eerie, he sounded so much like him. The nuances in the speech patterns ... it’s sensational, an outstanding concept and piece of writing.”

Rex Buffington, director of the Stennis Center for Public Service at Mississippi State, served as the senator's press secretary from 1978 through 1989.

“It really does give a very good glimpse into the kind of person Sen. Stennis was and what he stood for. His humility comes through, his genuine caring and, concern for others.

“It’s a good way for people who don't know anything about the senator and his background to learn something about him.

“I left the show wishing more people could have known Sen. Stennis in his prime,” Buffington says. “But his character and essence are there.”

Thundering history

Stennis in public life bridged the history of the United States from the start of World War II very nearly to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. He was a hawk on Vietnam. Race? He was perhaps the most prominent Mississippian in the public eye during a time when the state was known nationally only for Ole Miss quarterbacks, Miss Americas, and brutal racial repression. But he changed with times, signing the Voting Rights Act in 1982.

“His idea was, that's in the past, let's move forward,” Dallas says. “He told several senators when he got ready to retire, “I know I fought it (the civil rights movement), but I can look back now and realize it was good for the country.”

Stennis was a complicated man who lived through complicated times, and Dallas tries “to give a very rounded and different perspective” of him.

“I spent a lot of time questioning the senator,” Dallas says. “He called me that ‘sassy boy.’ He’d call Rex and tell him to get this sassy boy out of here.’”

And now, for an hour and 15 minutes a night: that sassy boy is the great man himself.

Written by Orley Hood, Columnist for The Clarion-Ledger