In my long experience, I have only heard of two male Beverly’s. Where I come from, Beverly was usually a female name. The other person, aside from the subject of this essay, was a baritone who seems to have devoted his life to Billy Graham. His name is George Beverly Shea.
I am not a fan of Billy Graham whom I always regarded as a devout windbag. In recent years since his ill-fated recorded discussions with the sainted Richard Nixon, in which the two men cast hurtful remarks about Jews, his stock has taken a nosedive with me. I now regard him as a religious bigot.
From time to time as I occasionally surfed the television offerings when there were no ball games to watch, I would come across Billy Graham. He has a fixation with demons. I mean he thinks demons are real. I believe that demons to Graham’s way of thinking operate in tandem with Satan or Lucifer or the Devil. Don’t laugh. Even today, the Catholic Church sponsors exorcisms of demons.
A special exorcist is brought in to drive the demons away. His main stock in trade is prayer. I suppose that when Graham was making his disparaging remarks to Nixon about Jews, that he could say demons were troubling his soul. He didn’t say that. He said he was misquoted even though recordings make it clear that he was verbally bludgeoning the Jews.
When I did run into one of Graham’s “Crusades,” I hung around long enough to hear him make a fool of himself about such things as demons and angels. But mostly, I hung around to hear George Beverly Shea sing. Now I want to make this clear. I have no use for religion but I do like good singing. For example, the theology of the Latter Day Saints or Mormons, causes me to shake my head in disbelief. But the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is something else. When I was a boy in Missouri working in filling stations on Sundays, I always tried to listen to CBS at 11AM to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Some of the most moving pieces of music also come from black churches, congregations and choirs. The spirituals that black folks sing are often quite moving and excellent pieces of music. I like the music but not “The Message.”
So, I have nothing to do with the sermon and warnings that my conduct is leading me straight to hell; I just like the music. That is what got me tuned to Billy Graham’s programs. It was the hope that George Beverly Shea would sing. Incidentally, the home folks in Missouri always insisted that a man who used three names could usually not be trusted. But Shea has been the baritone in Graham’s ministry for as long as I can remember and he seems to be alright.
When Graham finished his sermon, he gave what is called an “altar call.” With the choir singing softly in the background, Graham would call for sinners to come to the altar to get his blessing and perhaps forgiveness. I have always been struck by the number of people answering Graham’s altar call. Those people in his audience are there because they already belong to churches and they wanted to see Billy in action. They couldn’t get tickets without belonging to a Protestant Church. Maybe making the altar call would give them some sort of satisfaction or publicity, but I can’t believe that Graham’s audience at the arenas he uses are filled with such large numbers of sinners. I suppose I will have to pray over that one.
While the altar call was going on, George Beverly Shea would sing endless verses of the hymn, “Come Home.” It goes something like this:

Patiently, tenderly Jesus is calling
Calling to you and to me,
Patiently, tenderly Jesus is calling
Calling all sinners Come Home.

Old Shea could really belt that one out – so I listened to him. It was a lot better than listening to Graham’s imbecilities.
Now Shea has nothing to do with our man Beverly who is the subject of this essay. In the first place, no one ever called him Beverly. Maybe his mother would do that, but all the rest of us would call him Bevo Swango. He was always the droll storyteller from North Carolina. Bevo’s stories and his gentle demeanor made him a favorite in company and union circles.
In the late 1940’s, Bevo was on the fast track at AT&T. I met him when he had a job in St. Louis as Area Plant Superintendent. That particular job combined the St. Louis and Denver divisions which meant that plant operations from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean, came under his direction. That job at Bevo’s age marked him as a comer. Indeed, at the end of the 1940’s, Bevo was brought into the headquarters of Long Lines of AT&T and installed in what appeared to be the number two man in the Personnel Department. He was doing alright for himself.
I next met Bevo in the Spring of 1951 when the union came to bargain a whole new contract, or to use Nixon-speak, the whole enchilada. Haldeman and Erlichman made Mexican food popular everywhere in this country, but not for me.
Our union committee was represented by two plant department representatives, John Lotz of New York City and my old friend from Utica, New York, Joe Darling. The traffic representatives were Ernestine Locknane from Cincinnati and Averill Hildebrandt of New York City who came originally from Kansas. I was the representative of administrative personnel. The team was completed with Director Carl Peters and Ray Boatman of Memphis, his assistant. We had no back-ups and no legal assistance. It was just us against this billion dollar corporation.
On the company side, there was Bevo Swango. Everyone liked him. A young man who came into the company anointed for greater things was Peter Grace whose family was very well connected in business circles. He took company notes and reported to Swango.
For reasons that escape me, the company brought in the District Superintendent of the Richmond, Virginia plant district. His name was Claude Ballenger. Someone must have thought he was a comer, but the bargaining in 1951 proved that Claude Ballenger was not only a failure but a company embarrassment. Claude, coming from tobacco country, would alternate between smoking cigars and cigarettes. In one tense moment, Claude put a fresh cigar in his mouth. I suppose he must have thought it was a cigarette because, for an instant, he held the ignited match against his nose rather than at the end of the cigar. I was glad that I had nothing to do with cigars after Ballenger’s attempt to set himself on fire.
The General Plant Superintendent Gil Jones sat in for about 75% of the bargaining. Gil Jones was not far from retirement. He was well respected by the union’s bargaining team. Joe Darling told us that when Jones was the Division Superintendent in Albany, he would catch a streetcar that ran in front of the office. He would use the streetcar to go to the railroad station to visit other districts in his division. Joe claimed that while Gil Jones was waiting for the streetcar, he would engage another person or persons in conversation. When his streetcar arrived, he would climb aboard leaving his suitcase at the stop. According to Joe, the craftsmen grew tired of chasing him down at the railroad station, so when he planned to depart, a craftsman would stand by in the street car stop to remind Gil Jones to take his suitcase with him. After seeing Gil in action in the bargaining session, I came to believe Joe’s story implicitly. Gil was always leaving documents and papers on the table and walking off when someone came along he wanted to talk to.
While all kinds of company lawyers appeared from time to time in the bargaining room, the nominal head of the company team was the Vice President of Personnel, Vern Bagnell. In Part I of this New York series of essays, I have mentioned my feelings about telco engineers. Vern Bagnell was an introverted, telco engineer who disliked small talk and tall stories. He more or less said that the company would contribute “A” and the union would contribute “B” to the proceedings, so according to his engineering background, the outcome ought to be “C,” so why are we wasting time. Bagnell never understood the give and take of bargaining and the part that personal likes and dislikes might contribute to the end result.
Bagnell had never been in bargaining with the union – and it showed. He was a decent man but his naiveté was obvious to anyone who had spent some time in Union – management relations.
And most of all, Bagnell liked to be obeyed. He issued the orders and his subordinates jumped to see that his instructions were carried out. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in World War II. So when he said jump, we were supposed to say “How high?” In Bagnell’s world, back talk from union people would not be welcome at all. So the stage was all set for Joe Darling to give Brother Bagnell loads of insolent back talk.
Bagnell was given to repeating company slogans. Because Long Lines operated in some 430 communities in the United States, the company always hung its hat on community practice. If, for example, business in a given community paid substandard wages, that’s what Long Lines wanted to do citing its rigid adoption of community practices. Bevo Swango knew that the community practice argument had major flaws, but Bagnell was Bevo’s boss and he was the Vice President of Personnel, so he could say what he wanted to say.
My old friend Joe Darling who was somewhere around 18 years older than I was, often took a back seat in the arguments which took place over the bargaining table. It was not disinterest on Joe’s part; he had seen it all before. But Bagnell repeated the company slogan about community practice too many times. Joe engaged with Brother Bagnell. Bevo knew what was coming, but I suppose he figured this was a good a time as any to let Bagnell get chopped up.
Joe asked Bagnell to state once again the company’s view of community practice. Bagnell stated the company’s slogans with increasing fervor. Quietly, Joe asked Bagnell if the company would always lean toward what ever practice that the community found desirable. Bagnell answered in the affirmative. Bevo Swango and the rest of the union people knew the game was up.
Joe then asked Bagnell what if the union could show you a community or several communities where the practice is to kill women and children. The Korean War was going on at the time. Well, Bagnell bobbed and weaved and said that’s not the community practice he was talking about. Joe called Bagnell’s attention to the answer he had given Joe a few minutes earlier where he said that the company would almost always adopt the standards adopted by the community in question. Poor old Bagnell was hopelessly tangled up in his own underwear. We didn’t gloat over this amateur mistake, but Bevo obviously let it happen. His boss Mr. Bagnell, said no more about community practice for the rest of the bargaining.
It was Bevo’s penchant for telling home spun Southern stories which came in handy at tense times like the end of the Bagnell-Darling episode. Swango was a good natured man who understood that not everyone held the same set of views. And for all of his courtly Southern charm, Bevo was a cagey man. In the words of a latter day country song, he knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. By all odds, he was the most skilled negotiator for the company.
Bevo never displayed anger. He might say we disagree but we are not enemies. On one occasion, the company had made a proposal that was a complete bunch of silliness. Bevo had nothing to do with this bizarre business. It fell to me to state the union position with respect to the company’s proposal. I thought of a line that Time Magazine had used about a Senator McReynolds from Bevo’s home state of North Carolina. I wanted to dispose of the company proposal as quickly as possible because it made no sense and it was demeaning. So I quoted Senator McReynolds, who when faced with a similar cockeyed proposal from some senator he disliked, said, “This proposal is like a mackerel in the moonlight. It shines and it stinks.” Bevo laughed his head off and we never heard of this proposal again.
Several other incidents marked the protracted bargaining in 1951. There was old Claude Ballenger again, the man who tried to light his nose instead of a cigar. In explaining how thorough company practices are with respect to promotion, Ballenger said that 95% of the promotions he proposed were turned down by the next level of management. Obviously, Ballenger was trying impress us with the thoroughness of the company’s promotion procedures. But what he did was to indict and destroy his own judgment on promotions. When Claude made his 95% remark, no one on the union side of the table said anything. That silence earned Bevo’s appreciation because he knew what everyone else knew in the bargaining room, that Ballenger was occasionally given to completely duncey thoughts and statements.
Someone had a hand on Ballenger’s shoulders as he was promoted in a short while to two levels higher. As a director, his bosses found Claude incapable of performing at that level. Soon he found himself retired.
Soon after 1951 bargaining started, the company announced that it was moving much of the decision making from headquarters to three new area organizations. The company had picked Vern Bagnell to run the Western Area which was to be based in Kansas City. Bagnell was to take up his new duties at the conclusion of 1951 bargaining, which was expected about July 10th or thereabouts.
As a St. Louisan, I was involved in the new area under Bagnell’s direction. I attempted to make a joke with Bagnell by telling him that he was going to have tough sledding in Kansas City. Summer daytime temperatures in Kansas City ordinarily exceed the 100-degree mark. Bagnell was going to start his new job in July, so I said that he might find tough sledding in Kansas City.
Bagnell didn’t get the joke. He said, “Why should it be tough sledding? I’ve always done well in other jobs.” Clearly, Vern Bagnell didn’t get whatever joke was there. Old Bevo came to my rescue and explained to Bagnell that what I had said was a joke. I dealt with Bagnell on very friendly terms for a year or so after that in Kansas City, but that man was humorless. I never joked with him again.
As the contract was agreed to early one morning after an all night session, Gil Jones asked me to have a drink with him that evening. This was an extremely unusual invitation. So that evening, I met Gil Jones at a midtown hotel, and among other things, he told me that I would be offered a management job in Kansas City by Vern Bagnell of tough sledding fame. I respected Gil Jones a great deal. I suppose that he had some authority to tell me that Bagnell would be calling me with a job offer, but with Gil’s reputation as a maverick, maybe he did it on his own. Nonetheless, I always thought Gil Jones was a first class piece of work.
I am reasonably certain that Bevo Swango had much to do with the offer Gil Jones made to me over drinks. The company suspected that I was going to get a full time union job in New York or Washington or in St. Louis. In point of fact, I had made up my mind to look for other employment after 1951 bargaining was completed. Carl Peters, the Director of the Union, was close to Bevo and I feel certain that he had made mention to Swango that I might be moving on.
There were major problems with offering a management job to a union representative directly after bargaining a new contract. From what I later learned, Bevo argued that the company should move quickly to prevent another Creasey case. Creasey, you may recall, was a Dallas craftsman who rose to become the President of the Union and then went on to become an Assistant Secretary of Labor in Harry Truman’s cabinet. In any case, I am indebted to Bevo for his efforts on my behalf and for our long friendship.
As I told you earlier, Bevo Swango had the number two job in the Long Lines Personnel Department. But the President of Long Lines was a completely bigoted man. His name was Henry T. Killingsworth. He loved to see people grovel before his power in the company. Bevo was too proud to grovel or to shout approval of everything Killingsworth did. Bevo was a man’s man. Killingsworth was a despicable tyrant. Although Bevo and Killingsworth were fellow Southerners, Killingsworth saw to it that Bevo never had a shot at the top job in Long Lines Personnel. What a shame. What a crime.
Things change with time. Somewhere in the 60’s, Bevo began to inherit less prestigious jobs. He clearly was no longer the comer he had been in 1951. As his fortunes seemed to decline, mine were doing better. By leaving Long Lines and going first to the New York Telephone Company and then to the AT&T lobbying job in Washington, my fortunes were looking up. When I returned to Long Lines as a director in 1969, I was able to return a favor or two to Bevo.
Bevo was a good and decent man who was denied the top job in Long Lines Personnel by a man so bigoted that his intellectual integrity must be questioned. Be that as it may, not many people had so many admirers on both the company and the union sides of the fence.
So Bevo Swango, you can’t sing as well as George Beverly Shea, but you are our Beverly and all of us like you just fine.
E. E. CARR
June 4, 2002
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“A man who used three names could usually not be trusted” — what? I could see the case for calling such men pretentious, but untrustworthy seems like such a random conclusion.
Anyway, this essay just gives further insight into the fact that Killingsworth was a prick. And that Bevo seemed like a good guy; it takes a strong person to admit defeat or concede a position, however absurd it may have been. Similarly, for an avowed atheist to praise religious music and regularly attend religious concerts throughout his life, I think it takes someone who is very confident in his own views, likes, and dislikes — and someone who can be comfortable in any environment.