A Wise Man Passes

Word came this evening, in a sudden flurry of sad and reflective messages, that Tommy Wiseman has died.

This news has put me in a swirl of remembering, thoughts both personal and public, about the good life of this fine Tennessean, this stalwart citizen and our friend of happy memory.

Wiseman dwelt in many quarters of our public arena, and in each of them he lived and served with great probity and good humor. His long career took him from lawyering to lawmaking to judging, and along the way he also touched most of the important cases and moments of Tennessee’s history of the past half-century. (Just one example was the Geier case that desegregated higher education across our state.)

The day I met Wiseman was in 1974, when he ran for Governor. It was a steamy morning in July, far away from the newsroom in Nashville. There were so many candidates running that year (twelve Democrats, four Republicans) that our newspaper could not cover the race in the traditional one-on-one manner. Instead, a half-dozen Tennessean reporters were deployed statewide by region. The editor’s assignment to each of us was to write something about any candidate who came through your zone on a given day. My territory was Memphis and rural southwest Tennessee.

I remember, like it was this morning, that morning when Wiseman rode in my car. (He had a tight schedule that day so offering him a ride was the only chance I’d have for any solo time with him.) As I steered us past soybean fields, he talked knowledgeably about Tennessee’s agriculture policy, and he answered my every question.

He struck me then and later on as an exceptional sort of politician – engaging, thoughtful, seriously interested in current issues - the type you hope we can see more of, then and especially now. In fact, it was in that car, then and there, that I decided my own vote would go to this man in the August primary. He lost that one, running third behind the Democrats Ray Blanton and Jake Butcher. Years later, after Blanton and Butcher were both doing time in federal prisons (for different crimes), Wiseman would famously say of his loss in the 1974 primary: “I came in first among the non-felons.”

Years before this, Wiseman had been a leader in the state House of Representatives, where he was an ally of the young Speaker Ned McWherter. Later he served as the State Treasurer, which is one of the constitutional officers elected by the General Assembly. Later on, President Carter put Wiseman on the federal bench.

I especially recall visiting him in his home one morning in 2011. I wanted to capture his memories of the days surrounding Blanton’s eventual downfall. By the morning of our interview, Wiseman was no longer the chief federal judge for Middle Tennessee (he had taken senior judge status in 1995) but his aging eyes were clear and his memories ever sharp.

He remembered the night all right, and in great detail. Among other stories, he explained to me how a particular writ that he had signed in his chambers late that afternoon, at the U.S. Attorney Hal Hardin’s request, had kept an especially dangerous felon in the state prison even as the governor’s office was releasing others. (Sitting there Wiseman even spelled out for me, from memory, the long Latin word that is the proper name of that writ.)

Today there will be many Tennesseans, especially lawyers, who will have their own recollections of Judge Wiseman and his good life and long service. To me, he was first a friend who remembered my name, from a long time ago on a two-lane through a soybean farm, and as a public servant who did right by all the people.

Tommy was what his last name said he was: A wise man. He was of a particular time, to be sure, but also a man for all time. I doubt we will see his like again. And that, for we who remain in this sideways time of different government, is the greatest sadness of all.