State

THE STATE Page Nineteen June 2, 1934 LEGISLATIVE PERSONALITIES OLONEL Edward Gaskill Flana¬ gan, of Greenville, a member of the past four sessions of the state House of Representatives, will not be a member of the 1935 General As¬ sembly and some one else will have to step into his shoes and spread rays of sunshine about the legislative halls on Capitol Hill next winter. A legislative session bereft of the presence of the genial Colonel from Pitt County will, I dare say, hardly seem the same, and those of us who for four House sessions have heard the reading clerk call the roll and roll off his tongue the name of Flanagan of Pitt will prob¬ ably feel just a little bit lonely next winter with the doughty colonel missing from the House. On and off the House floor, Colonel Flanagan is a good fellow, a good racon¬ teur, and more than a run-of-tho-mine legislator. During the four sessions he helped to make history in legislative halls. It was not on the fields of battle that Pitt’s best known legislator won his title of Colonel. As I recall, it was back in 1928 that lie had a friend who was Governor of Kentucky. Lieutenant- Governor Brenlhil of Kentucky visited this state, speaking in behalf of A1 Smith’s candadacy. Ed Flanagan made such a good impression upon the Blue Grass State executive that he would never rest until the Pitt lawmaker ac¬ cepted a commission as a Kentucky colonel. Merchant and banker that he is in Greenville. Colonel Flanagan could al¬ ways be depended upon in House ses¬ sions to know what he was talking about when he laid bare the problems of East¬ ern North Carolina in the dark years of the depression. True it was that at times he might have become just a little bit impatient as he fought for measures he believed would be panaceas for the East, but never was he the man to harbor grievances that might have arisen on the House floor. I have seen him get mad in House ses¬ sions more than once, but I have never seen him seek to ambush a man with whom he had had a misunderstanding over legislation. Easterner though he is, the members from the populous Pied¬ mont liked him and while they fought him on the House floor they forgot their differences with him onco they gathered The Colonel from Pitt ★ together to enjoy themselves. Veteran legislators who return in 1935 arc going to miss Colonel Flanagan, f am sure, and so will those of us who chronicle legislative work for the taxpayers of the state. He was a prince among good fellows. As chairman of the House’s Penal Institutions Committee for the past two sessions, Colonel Flanagan worked diligently for the improvement of the state prison system. About him there is a fairly general feeling that he was interested in modernizing conditions ns much as possible for those kept behind the bars by the state. In the 1931 ses¬ sion he did a good job in helping estab¬ lish the highway prison camps when the legislators laid the major portion of tho groundwork that took the short-term prisoners from the several counties and put them to work for the state. He supported O. Max Gardner’s bill to abolish the county road systems and make of them one great state system. As a member of the House Financo Committee for the past two sessions, Colonel Flanagan was active in helping write the taxing laws for the state. He gave to that committee the viewpoint of a business man and not that of a lawyer, so many of whom serve in the North Carolina General Assembly. In¬ telligent as many of the lawyer-mem- No. 34 E. (i. FI;iiia&;in By Wade II. Lucas bors of that committee were, I dare say none understood better than Colonel Flanagan the viewpoint of business men. Politics is just a side line with the Colonel. His varied business interests do not permit him to make a business of politics, but like most men he ap¬ parently likes to dabble in politics in¬ stead of whiling away his time trying to get the fish in some Pitt County mill¬ pond to bite his hook. His record does not show he became active in politics until his election to the House in 1927. but prior to that he attended the 1928 Houston Democratic Convention to vote to nominate Л1 Smith for President, and the 1932 Chicago Convention to nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt. Between Colonel Flanagan and Con¬ gressman Lindsay Warren there is al¬ most a brotherly bond. So long as the Colonel is able to get nbout, Lindsay Warren will cncouuter no stiff opposi¬ tion for his scat in the Pitt end of his district. They are a sort of Dnmon-and- Pythias couple and through the Con¬ gressman the Colonel not only knows many Congressmen but many of them arc so charmed with him that at times they sneak away from Washington and enjoy the Colonel's hospitality in Greenville. Whoever is Speaker of the 193"» House will, I know, get a big kick out of extending the “courtesies of the floor” to Colonel Flanagan when lie comes to Raleigh to get a first hand glimpse of what is being done to and for the taxpayers. Near the end of the 1931 session when the members bad in a sense assembled their shattered nerves again after a most nerve-racking session, Wake's Willis Smith, who was Speaker, slyly called Col. Flanagan to the chair to preside. Now the Colonel can be serious-minded, and he ascended the Speaker's dais with considerable dignity, ignorant of the fact that Speaker Smith and a number of others had “framed” him. So many parliamentary questions were pumped at him that he not only became con¬ fused but slightly mad too, as his wife was watching him. But no one enjoyed the Colonel’s discomfiture more than Mrs. Flanagan, who was also in on the joke. The Colonel also laughed when he found out ho had been taken for a ride.