http://www.alanstang.com/
As I See It: A Brief Memoir
Some of you may be too young to know, or too old to remember, who I am; so,
before we show you why we brought you here, you need to know what qualifies
me to speak. My name is Alan Stang. I am the author of ten books, three of
which the Society published via Western Islands. One of them was It's Very
Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights, a best-seller Bob Welch asked me to
write. Another was The Highest Virtue, a novel that won rave reviews in the
Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and five stars--top
rating--from the West Coast Review of Books. Here's a letter about it, from
Ned Dunn, a member of the Council of JBS.
I was one of Mike Wallace's original writers. I have been a network radio
talk show host. I went head to head with Larry King in Los Angeles, and,
according to Arbitron, had almost twice as many listeners. I wrote my first
article for American Opinion in April, 1963. That magazine was of course the
predecessor of The New American, and that article began my long association
with the John Birch Society. For many years, my wife and I were Life
Members. An article by me appeared in every issue of American Opinion for
the last 15 years of its life, with a single exception--when Managing Editor
Scott Stanley asked for a piece on the sex lives of the Kennedys. Editor
Stanley apparently didn't fully realize what the sex lives of the Kennedys
were. When he found out, he pulled the piece, but the information therein
later showed up in other pieces in the magazine.
Here is a fan letter I received from Elizabeth Linington, the best-selling
novelist who wrote as Dell Shannon, Lesley Egan, and so on, and who was a
member of the Society. I wrote for The Review of the News, also a
predecessor of The New American. For a while, the Society syndicated my
daily, national, radio news commentary, which aired in hundreds of markets.
While I wrote all those articles and did the daily news commentary, I
traveled regularly on speaking tours for the American Opinion Speakers
Bureau, doing about three tours a year, on subjects ranging from education,
to China to the treasonous surrender of our Panama Canal. Some of those
trips were four, five, even six weeks long. Every summer, for many years, I
spoke at the youth camps the Society conducts, either as the final,
Friday-night speaker, or throughout the week. Here is a camp newspaper story
about my arrival. There was also considerable travel for the magazines and
to the Council meetings and dinners. To refresh your memory, I was the third
penguin from the end in the back row. It is probably fair to say that I
traveled nationwide for the Society on those speaking tours longer than
anyone else--twenty years--which no doubt is the reason I have only five
kids.
Because of all that travel, I was apparently one of the few outside Birchers
some people in out of the way hamlets ever saw; some of them mistakenly
believed I was an important Society official. They were surprised to learn I
had never even been on the staff. In one amusing contretemps, KTRH, the
50,000 watt clear-channel monster in Houston, retained me to do election
night commentary. When my wife and I arrived in town, Hal Kemp, then station
manager, proudly showed us the promotion he had done. It included
substantial display ads in both the Houston Post and Chronicle--the biggest
papers in the state--identifying me as "National Chairman" of the John Birch
Society. Hal was so proud of his work, I didn't bother to explain; the
damage was done. The papers were long since in the streets. Later, in his
office, I told Bob Welch that, since I now was "National Chairman," I wanted
higher fees. He smiled archly and replied, "Well, Alan, you're 'National
Chairman.' You arrange it."
Headquarters of the JBS then were located in Belmont, Massachusetts, a
suburb of Boston. Bob Welch had been a student at Harvard Law School--had
left when he found it overrun with Felix Frankfurter's "Happy Hot Dogs,"
such as Alger Hiss--and had stayed to enter the candy business and marry
Marian Probert. Bob insisted that my wife and I live in the Belmont area and
office at headquarters. We wanted to live there only a little more than we
wanted to live in Moscow, which is also a suburb of Boston. Indeed, Texas
Congressman Ron Paul, M.D., my friend for many years, once asked me in
exasperation, "Alan, can you explain why the John Birch Society--which is
fighting Communism--is located in Boston, of all places?" I didn't tell Ron
the answers were candy and romance.
But Bob insisted so strenuously, we came. For many years, his office had
been on the first floor at 395 Concord Ave. When I arrived, he had moved to
the second floor, for greater security, and the first floor office he had
vacated was divided into two smaller offices. I was in one; Jack McManus had
the other. For a long time, I wondered why Bob had been so adamant that we
come. What was I supposed to do there? I
