Newspaper publisher recalls Helms as 'great man,' friend

Dunn, N.C. — The founder of a nearly 60-year-old Dunn newspaper has picked up his pen to set the record straight about former Sen. Jesse Helms, whom he claims as a longtime friend.

"I think Jesse Helms is the greatest man in the modern history of North Carolina, if not ever," Hoover Adams, the publisher of the Daily Record in Dunn, said.

Adams said he knew Helms as a journalist, long before the conservative icon became a politician. They met when Adams recruited Helms as high-school graduation speaker in 1968.

The editorials Helms delivered on WRAL News, in newspapers and on radio resonated with him, Adams said.

"He voiced the feeling of the people. He knew what the average Joe wanted or didn't want," Adams said. "He always went to bat for the common man."

Adams joined Helms on the campaign trail. Together, they met former United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and traveled to South Africa.

"The way he handled those little children over there (South Africa), he'd have one in each arm," Adams recalled.

Adams recalled that their friendship rendered great fodder for his newspaper: Helms, a former journalist, was never at a loss for words, and those words were never diluted by political correctness. What Helms believed, he could write "just as good as he spoke," Adams said.

"I'd always call and get a good quote from him," Adams said. "He didn't pull any punches."

Helms' love of words helped him serve his constituents: "Every letter he got, there had to be a reply in the mail at 4 in the afternoon," Adams recalled.

Adams dismissed critics who claim that Helms was racist and controversial. "In the first place, they don't know him," he said.

Adams said he did not allow any negative, false impressions of Helms enter his newspaper.

"He usually called to thank me," Adams said. "We never said anything bad about him."

He added, "Of course, I didn't know anything bad to put in there."

Adams recalled his last meeting with Helms two weeks ago: The 86-year-old former senator was in good spirits and talked, of course, about politics.

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Latest Comments

Wrong AGAIN DRNC, JESSIE HELMS form his opinions according to the polls of his times which were the KLANSMEN...

souljp1
July 8, 2008 12:03 p.m.

"He voted for what was best for North Carolina and the United States - in that order." -drnc

Actually, I think he was ranked 48th in getting federal funds for NC. I'm also not sure how voting "no" for civil rights, nuclear arms reduction, AIDS treatment and research, etc. is best for America. Not my America anyway.

scientistjo
July 8, 2008 10:24 a.m.

Your article states, "Adams said he did not allow any negative, false impressions of Helms enter his newspaper."

I say, "What else is new? Newspapers that censor the truth from being told to the public are only good for fish wrap. Helms was undoubtedly the living connection between the racial politics of the Old South and the religion-based cultural politics of the New Right. He was the one surviving segregationist of stature who never regretted or retracted his opposition to the major civil rights legislation of the 1960s. His career-long opposition to any national gesture commemorating the civil rights movement (most notably, his interminable and often scurrilous rearguard efforts to taint the memory of Martin Luther King Jr.) made his strident rhetoric against voting rights enforcement and anything approaching affirmative action an afterthought.

Helms was not a respresentative of the people, but only for his own personal views. Disgusting and disgraceful.

2btcnav
July 8, 2008 8:42 a.m.

Unlike John McCain and Barack Obama, Jessie Helms didn't form his opinion based on polls. Jessie voted his conscience. He voted for what was best for North Carolina and the United States - in that order.