Mayor John Garner’s wit made him unforgettable

In 1950, while he was edi­tor of the Winchester Sun, William C. Caywood Jr. pub­lished a book enti­tled Kentucky Mayor. His sub­ject was John Garner, Winchester’s sec­ond and most famous may­or. Caywood focused on Garner’s humor and philosophy.

Winchester’s favorite son, John Edwin Garner (1851−1941), was a son of William and Rachel Foster Garner, one of thir­teen chil­dren. As a youth, he lost sight in his right eye after being struck by a hurled stone, but it nev­er proved a hand­i­cap and remained unknown to many of his col­leagues. Garner mar­ried Mary Elizabeth Gordon, and they resided at the cor­ner of Maple Street and Lexington Avenue (now the site of CVS Pharmacy).

At age twen­ty-one, Garner became the co-pub­lish­er of the Clark County Democrat. Caywood writes, “That expe­ri­ence pro­vid­ed an out­let for his writ­ing tal­ents, while the demands upon his time for speak­ing pro­grams a few years lat­er opened the flood­gates for his ora­tor­i­cal supremacy.” 

Much of his writ­ing and speech­es were humor­ous, and the sub­jects he touched on were vast. He became a renowned ban­quet speak­er through­out the nation. Caywood quotes from dozens of Garner’s speech­es and arti­cles. I can only include a few here.

Speaking to a group about the state’s need to improve edu­ca­tion, he said, “The peo­ple of Kentucky edu­cate their cat­tle and turn their boys out on grass. We pay two dol­lars a day to train our hors­es and four cents a day to edu­cate our children.”

In anoth­er speech, he said that peo­ple who rec­og­nize the excel­lence of liv­ing in Clark County remind­ed him “of the man who became dis­sat­is­fied with his home in the coun­try and put it in the hands of a real estate agent to sell. When he read the agent’s descrip­tion of the farm, he said, ‘That’s the very kind of a farm I have been look­ing for all my life,’ and he took it off the market.”

In sev­er­al instances, his humor extend­ed to let­ters he wrote that were quot­ed for years after­ward. In 1909, a dis­as­trous fire destroyed the 50-room Court View Hotel. Three years before the fire, Garner & Fitch insur­ance agency had trans­ferred the hotel account to Poynter’s Big Four agency. After the fire, the insur­ance home office want­ed to know why Garner & Fitch trans­ferred a very bad risk to anoth­er com­pa­ny. Garner was called upon to respond.

My dear Sir,

Mr. J. W. Poynter this morn­ing hand­ed us a let­ter in which you in sub­stance ask why Garner & Fitch did not write the Court View Hotel risk them­selves instead of plac­ing it with you, and why, when we con­trolled the hotel inter­ests, none of our com­pa­nies were on the loss.

We could more near­ly answer your ques­tion if we know what pur­pose you want­ed to serve; whether you want­ed to find out how we did busi­ness, or how you did. You will par­don us for sug­gest­ing that your agent was the prop­er source of infor­ma­tion, and the ques­tion to him should have been “Why did you accept it?” and not of us, “Why did you offer it?” It may have been that we made a mis­take in shift­ing busi­ness from our com­pa­nies to yours. Assuming that to be true, our account­abil­i­ty is to them and not to you.

It may have been that your agent was new in the busi­ness and an orphan, and we want­ed to do him a kind­ness to encour­age him. We may have been mis­led into believ­ing that your agent had done busi­ness with­in the block of the burned build­ing for six­ty years. It may have been that we were under the impres­sion that if you con­clud­ed the risk was not desir­able, you would enter com­plaint on receipt of the pre­mi­um, and not wait until after notice of the loss.

The veiled inti­ma­tion in your inquiry is that we knew three years ago that this build­ing would burn at this time, and that we unloaded on your com­pa­ny and stood from under. Let me assure you on the hon­or of a gen­tle­man that we did not. We nev­er claimed to be able to tell more than six­ty days ahead what build­ings would burn, and had not dared to exer­cise this pow­er for fear of destroy­ing the insur­ance busi­ness. Were we to noti­fy the com­pa­nies of those that will burn, com­mon fair­ness would demand that we tell the peo­ple of those that would not burn. If the com­pa­nies would not insure those that would burn, and the own­ers would not insure those that would not burn, the insur­ance busi­ness would stop.

Trusting that this expla­na­tion will be sat­is­fac­to­ry, we remain

Respectfully, John E. Garner

In 1924, Garner received two let­ters from the freight agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad demand­ing pay­ment for a ship­ment by Garner’s lum­ber company.

Dear Sir,

In your let­ters you state that in 1917 Winchester Lumber and Manufacturing Company con­signed P.R.R. Car No. 510,742 to Gassinger Bros., Baltimore, Md.; that by some mis­take it was shunt­ed to some oth­er road and deliv­ered at some point oth­er than that des­ig­nat­ed in the bill of lad­ing; and when final­ly returned to the prop­er des­ti­na­tion you failed to col­lect $116.18 freight due from Gassinger Bros. You are fur­ther informed that the Winchester Lumber and Manufacturing Company has dis­solved and been out of busi­ness for six or sev­en years, and that unless I, who was pres­i­dent of the com­pa­ny, remit the $116.18 it will be turned over to the legal depart­ment for adjustment.

My rea­son­ing for not answer­ing your two pre­vi­ous let­ters was that I attrib­uted your writ­ing them to some phase of the moon which seems to affect cer­tain indi­vid­u­als pecu­liar­ly. Possibly they were the result of a long for­got­ten blow on the head. Inasmuch as you are so con­ve­nient to Johns Hopkins Hospital I feel that it is due to the peo­ple you have prob­a­bly annoyed hereto­fore, those you are annoy­ing now, and those you may annoy in the future to go over there and have your skull examined.

If I were so astute a rea­son­er as you seem to be, I would have con­clud­ed that to have sent this car to a point oth­er than that des­ig­nat­ed in the bill of lad­ing was neg­li­gence; to have failed to col­lect the freight due on deliv­ery was care­less­ness; and to expect me to pay the freight is damn foolishness.

In the event the head of the legal depart­ment of your road con­sid­ers the claim seri­ous­ly, have him come down. Our fed­er­al judge is a fine fel­low with a good fun­ny bone, and he would doubt­less enjoy a com­ic opera in his court.

Trusting that a minor oper­a­tion or the run­ning of time will restore you to nor­mal­cy, I remain

Sympathetically yours, John E. Garner

Twenty years lat­er, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked an aide to bring him a copy of the famous letter. 

I count Kentucky Mayor a good read — it’s in the library.