All You Direct - Book Reviews

The Land, the Law and the Lord: The Life of Pat Neff

By Dorothy Blodgett, Terrell Blodgett and David L. Scott

When news broke recently that the Texas Department of Transportation was attempting to buy interstate highways in Texas from the federal government so they could be turned into toll roads, the appropriate response was: “Gov. Neff must be spinning in his grave.”

Pat Neff was governor of Texas from 1921 to 1925 and was responsible for the creation of the state highway system and the gas tax. But that’s not all Neff accomplished. He founded the state’s park system, established Texas Tech University and pioneered the appointment of women to state boards. Later in life, Neff was the president of Baylor University as well as president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“He had a triple career,” says Terrell Blodgett, co-author of “The Land, The Law and the Lord: The Life of Pat Neff.”

Blodgett, along with Dorothy, his late wife, and David L. Scott, has written the first

comprehensive examination of Neff’s life. Well-researched from original sources, the book supports Blodgett’s argument that Neff has been underrated as a governor.

Blodgett will discuss and sign copies of the book on Tuesday at the Twig Book Shop in Alamo Heights.

The book is a dense rendering of Neff’s achievements told in glowing terms, with no detail too small to exclude.

Times were tumultuous in Texas during Neff’s two terms as governor. No longer the Wild West, the Lone Star state was still mired in post-Reconstruction blues — an economically depressed producer of raw materials for the north.

“The average man in Texas arose each morning from his Pennsylvania bed to the sounds of an alarm clock made in New England and put on his pants which were made in New York,” Neff said, according to a newspaper report of a stump speech.

Hopes were high when Neff won the keys to the governor’s mansion. A former Speaker of the House, he was assumed to have the political savvy to drive reforms through the state’s constipated bicameral system.

“But he was very aloof from the legislature,” said Blodgett, “He would make one speech to the legislature saying he wanted to be friends and co-workers and then he would turn around and lecture them.”

Blodgett says enforcing Prohibition was the main point of friction with the state’s lawmakers; Neff was a lifelong teetotaler.

Other challenges that rattled Texas during Neff’s leadership were the cotton-destroying boll weevil, violent labor clashes, the anarchy of the oil boom and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

There is one item of trivia that elevates Neff above the clatter of mediocre Texas governors. In his last days in office he granted Huddie William Ledbetter a pardon. Ledbetter is more widely known as Leadbelly, the legendary bluesman.