Just Plane Crazy: Estes’ Wyoming Adventure

The campaign trail can lead to some strange places. Few candidates understood that better than Estes Kefauver.

Throughout his career, he was frequently asked to campaign for fellow Democrats around the country. That was especially true in 1956, when he was Adlai Stevenson’s running mate. Kefauver was typically deployed to small towns and rural states, the areas where he was most popular and where his person-to-person campaign style was most effective. In addition to stumping for the Stevenson/Kefauver ticket, he campaigned for candidates in state and local races as well.

All of these factors combined for a hilarious campaign-trail anecdote that from Clara Shirpser, a Democratic National Committeewoman from California who was an avid Kefauver supporter and staffed both of his Presidential campaigns.

During the ’56 fall campaign, the Kefauver Mainstreeter was on its way to Idaho, where Kefauver was to speak on behalf of Senate candidate Frank Church. The campaign received a wire from Senator Joseph O’Mahoney of Wyoming, asking Kefauver to stop along the way and campaign with him. The staff was largely opposed to the idea – they already had a packed schedule and Stevenson had no shot at winning Wyoming – but Kefauver insisted.

“I can’t turn him down,” Kefauver told his staff. “He’s one of my best friends. He has always been cooperative.”

So Kefauver told the pilot of the change in plans. The O’Mahoney event was taking place in a town called Rock Springs, population 10,500 (give or take). Naturally, the airport wasn’t exactly spacious; the pilot expressed concern that the landing strip might not be long enough for a jet that size. He managed to execute a safe landing, to a round of applause.

Once they’d safely touched down, however, the traveling party faced a different challenge. Typically, upon landing, the ground crew would roll a stair ramp up to the plane exit door, and Kefauver would come out like this:

But the Rock Springs airport wasn’t equipped for jets the size of Kefauver’s plane, and they didn’t have a stair ramp. How would Kefauver and the others get out?

Fortunately, one of the stewardesses had an idea: they could use the emergency chute. This plan was quickly adopted, and the chute was unfurled. Out came the members of the press, one by one. Shirpser noted that most of them came out head over heels, and some of them wound up doing somersaults down the chute.

Once the members of the fourth estate were safely on the ground, it was the campaign staff’s turn. The staffers gallantly insisted that the two women on the staff – Shirpser being one – go first. However, Shirpser was hesitant, and not just for safety reasons. “I’m not going to go down with television cameras on,” she told Kefauver. “Nobody is going to take a picture of me with my dress pulled up around my neck.”

Kefauver gently prodded her, but she stood firm. Finally, she yelled out the plane to the assembled press, “Do I have your word of honor that you won’t take any pictures? Because if you do, I’m not leaving the plane.” They gave her their word, and out she came.

After that, the male staffers came out. Finally, it was the candidate’s turn. And naturally, the press captured a picture of that moment.

Having survived this harrowing ordeal, the press immediately went to work composing a song to commemorate the occasion, entitled “No Steps At All.” It begin like this:

Come all ye people and listen to me
While I tell you of the senator from Tennessee
He campaigned by copter and many odd things
But the strangest of all came in little Rock Springs

(Chorus)

Slide, Estes, slide
Slide, Estes, slide
You’ll coast into office
So slide, Estes, slide!

After several verses laying out the situation (including verses poking fun at reporters who were thought to be too fat to go down the chute, and a reference to Shirpser’s reluctant trip), it ended like this:

So down went McGinty and down went McGrath
And finally Estes came down the same path.
He grinned as he landed, and then his next crack,
Was, “Now how in the Hell are we going to get back?”

Kefauver’s question was a good one. After all, they couldn’t very well climb back up the chute.

By the time the event in Rock Springs ended and the entourage returned, the crew on the ground had fashioned a solution of sorts. They’d rigged up a series of platforms and ladders. At each platform, there was someone standing to help people up the next ladder. None of it was tied or linked together in any way, and Shirpser recalled the entire setup wobbling the whole way up.

She (and the rest) made it, but only by telling themselves, “Look straight ahead. Don’t look down. Don’t look sideways.”

(There are no pictures of this part, which is probably for the best.)

I enjoy this story because it’s a great picture, but also because it’s a fascinating snapshot in campaign history. Politics was entering the jet age, when candidates could fly from coast to coast in day. But things were still informal enough that the candidate could decide on a whim to make an extra stop at a tiny airport in the middle of nowhere, where there wasn’t even a stairway to get people off the plane.

The idea of a modern presidential campaign plane changing destination on a candidate’s whim, or landing at a tiny regional airport, is laughable. But for Estes Kefauver, it was just part of the ride.