A Matter of Heroes

A blue-and-white sound truck, trailing behind it the jumble of static and jazz music, rolled along the narrow roads of western Pennsylvania last week into the town the maps call Brush Valley, and the 500 residents call Mechanicsburg. As it stopped before the general store, a dozen children gawked at its placarded sides: "Mrs. Robert L. Coffey Sr. for Congress. Brave Mother of a Brave Son."

From a car following the truck stepped Mrs. Coffey herself, a grey-haired, motherly woman of 55, in a lacy black hat. She was ready to speak a few words, but found no crowd. "Ain't many Democrats around here," explained the postmistress. "I'm one." Candidate Coffey bleakly drank a Coca-Cola, then moved on.

Bewildered Candidate. Every so often, between the jazz records, the loudspeaker would blare out a four-minute record: "This is Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.... I appeal to you to vote for ... a brave mother of a brave son . . . Bob Coffey and I had a lot in common. We believed in progressive, democratic government . . . We were veterans together." Mrs. Curry Ethel Coffey, who used to work in the millinery department of Johnston's largest department store and had never been in politics before, was now travelling through the mined-out towns and hilly farmlands of the 26th Pennsylvania congressional district--Indiana, Armstrong and Cambria counties. She was campaigning to fill the unexpired term of her son. Colonel Robert Lewis Coffey Jr., World War II fighter pilot, killed last April in a jet-plane crash.*

With no knowledge of campaigning and little understanding of issues, gentle, bewildered Mrs. Coffey had been thrust into the race by the district's ambitious Democratic boss, flashy, dark-eyed John R. Torquato. Torquato's organization had upset the dominant Republicans hst November by sending War Hero Bob Coffey to Congress. They did it with the help of the 55,000 union members in the district, nearly half of them mineworkers. They were out to repeat.

The Deep Freeze. In the Cambria County seat of Ebensburg, the Republicans fought the ghost of Colonel Coffey with 1949-style campaign oratory: "It's the first election since the deep freeze and the last chance before socialism takes over in the United States." A party worker addressed 100 Republicans. "All the heroes are not dead and all the heroes are not in the Democratic party," he said. "John Phillips Saylor is a hero . . ."

Into the applause stepped big (225 pounds), bustling John Saylor, World War II Navy officer. He was the candidate of 86-year-old G.O.P. Boss Joe Grundy. "Your ancestors and mine established a new idea of government," said Saylor. "That new idea of government lasted 175 years--until the present Administration in Washington, which came out for the Socialist welfare state . . ."

Underneath the issue of who had the best war record, or even who was related to the best war record, the adversaries were dueling with the kind of small arms and fieldpieces most Democrats and Republicans would be firing in next year's regular congressional elections. So far, most political wiseacres were betting on Mrs. Coffey to win in next week's election, but she had proved so ineffectual a campaigner that it might be close.

* Mrs. Coffey's youngest son, William, was also killed in an Air Force bomber crash in the U.S. A third son, John, a World War II navigator with 35 missions, is now helping his mother campaign.

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