David C. Henley: Here’s hoping for a peaceful inauguration

Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States today at 9 a.m. at the U.S. Capitol.

I’ve attended eight inaugurations, those of Kennedy (1961), Carter (1977), Reagan’s first inauguration (1981), George H.W. Bush (1989), both Clinton inaugurations (1993 and 1997) and George W. Bush (2001).

I covered John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration when I was 25 years old, single and a political writer for the Los Angeles Examiner. What an exciting day that was for me. It was snowing and bitter cold, and the evening before the ceremony I attended a party honoring Kennedy held at Washington’s Statler-Hilton Hotel given by members of the so-called Hollywood “Rat Pack” which included Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin and Joey Bishop.

The affair was held in a large four-room suite, and upon entering I observed Martin and Sinatra seated at two pianos and singing Hollywood show tunes. Kennedy soon entered the room and joined in the singing. When the songs ended, he walked over to me and asked, “Who are you?” I blurted out, “David Henley of the Los Angeles Examiner and the Hearst Newspapers, sir.” Kennedy replied, “Well your newspapers supported Nixon, but I won’t hold it against you, Mr. Henley. I hope you have a good time here tonight. Look around you, there’s a lot of good-looking women in this room.” I agreed with his observation, we shook hands and he left me to chat with other guests.

Kennedy served for two years and 11 months until he was assassinated in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald. The day after Kennedy’s death, Nov. 22, 1963, my father turned 77, and my mother, my wife, Ludie, whom I had married five months earlier and I took my dad to a celebratory dinner at a Los Angeles restaurant. We were the only diners there that evening.

Ludie accompanied me to the other seven inaugurations, most of which I covered for this newspaper after we purchased it in 1977.

Of those, Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration, in 1981, proved to be the most exciting. Northern Nevada’s member of Congress at the time, Barbara Vucanovich, a Republican, provided us with excellent tickets for Reagan’s swearing-in ceremony, which was held in front of the west side of the Capitol. Sitting behind us was singer Pat Boone and a half-dozen of his friends. When Reagan’s 20-minute inaugural address was about to end, Boone stood up and yelled out, “Great news, the Iranian hostages have just been freed!”

Boone was correct. He was holding a small radio which had just broadcast a special bulletin that revealed the 52 U.S. diplomats and citizens seized from the U.S. embassy in Iran in early November 1979, had been freed by the Iranian government run by the Ayatollah Khomeni, who had ousted the pro-U.S. shah or king several months earlier. It was only minutes before the audience attending Reagan’s inauguration jumped to their feet and began cheering the news of the Americans’ release. They had been captives of the Iranians for 444 days, and were returned to the U.S. in the few days.

I hope Biden’s inauguration today will be as peaceful as the eight inaugurations I’ve attended during the past 60 years. Many of the rioters and insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6 have pledged to disrupt the Biden event and provoke havoc at the capital buildings in all 50 states. More than 20,000 National Guard personnel, including 200 from Nevada, were sent to keep the peace in Washington this week, so I’m hoping there won’t be troubles from these individuals, many of whom belong to racist and hate groups.

Most Americans and their organizations across the nation don’t provoke anger, hatred and racism. They are civic minded, they promote and fund charities and other good works, and are to be praised. A few folks and the groups they belong to, however, are difficult to place in any capacity.

I’m familiar with two of these that fall in the latter category, the Oregon commune that was founded by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in the mid-1980s and the group of Libertarians who attempted to take over the government of Nevada’s tiny Esmeralda County in the early-to-mid 1990s.

Rajneesh, who came to the U.S. from India, was a self-styled guru who advocated free love and established an ashram or religious retreat in the little town of Antelope, Oregon. It wasn’t long before hundreds, then thousands of Americans and Europeans flocked to Antelope to sit at the feet of Rajneesh to hear his sermons that emphasized his disdain for traditional marriage and his support of free love. Many of his followers were “hippies” seeking a good time and drugs. Others were professionals such as teachers, lawyers and doctors in search of fun-filled as well as meaningful lives that had eluded them. Rajneesh persuaded many of his followers, who had built little homes for themselves in Antelope, to register to vote, and it wasn’t long before they took over the local government.

What intrigued me the most was Rajneesh’s fixation on Rolls-Royce cars. He persuaded countless hundreds of his followers to empty their wallets and bank accounts, and soon the bearded guru had spent millions of dollars he had squeezed out of his gullible, pathetic followers, to purchase 95 Rolls-Royces from foreign car dealers in the U.S. and overseas that he then had shipped to his headquarters in Antelope. Rajneesh had many of the cars repainted in bright metallic gold or with dragster flames or with scenes of mountains, forests, and bubbling brooks painted on their sides.

I came upon two of the cars being gassed up at a gas station in downtown Hawthorne in the late 1980s that were driven by attractive young female members of his inner circle. They told me the two cars and the other 93 in Rajneesh’s Rolls-Royce inventory were for the use of the guru, his lady friends and other higher-ups in his entourage. The cars were sold off a few years later to used car dealers and foreign car enthusiasts after Rajneesh, facing arrest for fraud, fled to his native India. The commune fell apart in a few months, its leaderless members moved away and Antelope today has only a hundred or so residents. Rajneesh died of a heart attack in 1999 at age 58.

As for the Libertarians: They were told to move to Goldfield, the county seat, and register to vote so they could outnumber the county’s 200 or so registered voters. But the Libertarians took out post office boxes because they could find only a handful of trailers or houses to rent. The county clerk demanded they prove they also had a legal, physical address before they would be allowed to vote. They were unable to fulfill this requirement, they weren’t permitted to vote, and the entire project was eventually abandoned.

David C. Henley is publisher emeritus of the Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle-Standard.