New Hampshire Senate President Tom Eaton sits in his statehouse chambers. He’s lean and well dressed.
He’s carefully surrounded himself with furniture, art and photographs.
One of his favorite office photos was taken more than 40 years ago. It’s a picture of him, his five brothers and their father in the same Senate Chamber that Tom Eaton presides over today.
Three of the boys in the photo ultimately landed in politics.
Their father, Charlie Eaton, was a prominent New Hampshire senator in the late 50’s and early 60’s.
While Charlie didn’t go out of his way to discuss politics with his sons, he certainly practiced it at home.
Tom remembers one conversation in particular.
Track 17
1:34 it’s funny, I can remember my father talking on the phone to somebody, and they were having trouble with, I believe it is the governor. The first two years he supported governor Powell. And then he did not, he felt he was going way out there...but my father said, we got him by the balls and now we are squeezing. I always loved that comment. But that was part of politics, you got them in a spot and then you make them see your way.
This blunt comment comes, oddly enough, from a man who is known to prefer compromise to conflict.
Tom’s dad Charlie, started off as a minor local politician and owner of the Stoddard Country Store. Stoddard lies in the southeastern corner of New Hampshire, far from the state’s political center.
Tom and his five brothers helped their parents, stocking shelves and pumping gas.
Their mother operated the post office in a corner of the building.
It was there that Tom and his brothers witnessed politics first hand.
An early lesson came from an unlikely source. Their neighbors, Red and Mabel. Red and Mabel were often drunk and often fighting.
Tom and his brother Danny, now a State Representative, remember the couple well.
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7:08 we would be walking to school...and every once in a while we would be going by the house and hear god damn you rah, rah, rah....and a lot of times you could hear while you were walking, a quarter mile a half mile away. So you knew it was going to be good sport when you walked by. You only hoped they weren’t throwing bullets when you went by.
Back then, their father Charlie was the town constable. The boys watched how he dealt with the couple.
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2:48 ... my father, strapped on his .45, went over to the beer case, took out a six pack and went over to his house. And he’s either going to settle it by having a drink with him, or take him in.
For Dean, who served as a Keene City Councilor for ten years, those moments with Red and Mabel were like Politics 101.
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2:59 it’s the basic, he was prepared to be fair, he was prepared to be tough, he was prepared to make things work.
As their father’s career flourished, his charm and persuasive power extended beyond the neighborhood. He drew the boys more into his political life.
Tom remembers the blend of family and political savvy.
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:07 we campaigned for him in Keene. We stood on street corners and we all wore corduroy maroon jackets, slacks, and a shirt and tie. And we had these brochures that we passed out, they loved us. I can remember years later, one of the guys he beat, I saw him at Elks, and he said, you and those little Eaton jackets, you known you cost me so much per vote.
These forays into the public eye gave the boys a taste of another dimension of politics – a sense of privilege. It was the kind of feeling that any teenage boy might enjoy. Tom’s brother Dean, certainly did.
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1:12 if we said our name was Eaton, it elevated us automatically to a position of being able to get into places, or being treated differently, that wasn’t something we sought. That’s just the way it was. It was a Kennedy mystique. Those are Charlie Eaton’s boys.
But the real power, the real wonder of being Charlie Eaton’s boys came from the parade of politicians who passed through their Stoddard home.
Danny and his brothers accepted this as part of everyday life.
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:03...on any given day you’d walk in and there would be current or former governor sitting here, or current or former Senator, or Rep, or local state reps or senators, and it was always sitting here with a glass of scotch or coffee, and we had the amazingly unique opportunity to sit and listen to these conversations.
Danny, probably more than the other brothers showed an immediate and deep interest in politics.
He became a state Representative in the 70’s.
The fact that he became a Democrat in a very Republican family raised eyebrows but little else by way of reaction.
By this point, his father had become a lobbyist.
Most days when the Legislature was in session, they would do the hour-long drive to the statehouse together and talk.
Thanks in part to his father, Danny found himself invited to some of the more exclusive meetings at the Highway Hotel, an evening hangout for lawmakers.
It was a time, Danny recalls with a sense of amazement.
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3:43 being able to be in a suite, at the Highway Hotel, at 4 in the morning, the last week of June with...chair of senate finance...chief of staff...speaker of the House...3-4 other people...the pillars of state government, sitting on the floor of my room, with ashtrays, beer cans, scotch bottles, glasses playing monopoly with state government. We were getting down to the deadline for the budget. And Trobridge would go, move his ashtray and say, I’ll trade you this Vo-Tech Center for the new building at UNH, I’ll give you this road...it was monopoly with real money, and real stuff, and that’s how the government used to operate.
Danny acknowledges he looks back on these times with nostalgia.
Even though he knows there was plenty of graft, he doesn’t look on those times as fundamentally bad.
Track 39
1:49 ...I saw some good things get done and some good things happen. Was the procedure improper? Yes. Times have changed, and it’s a different world, different rules, and in that time and place, that’s how the rules were, and you knew it. everybody knew this is what was going on.
Neither Tom, Dean nor Danny suffer from any illusions about politics.
In some ways their feelings about it come back to the story of Red and Mabel.
Tom says, even though Red continued to beat Mabel, he came to see that success in politics doesn’t require a permanent cure.
8:08 He solved the situation at the time. Two months later, he solved the situation at the time. Hell, they did that right up till they died. Sigmund Freud couldn’t solve that one.
To Dean, Charlie’s handling of Red and Mabel defined success, absolutely.
Track 5
:00 ... B/c he always came out without using the gun. He made it work without force.
In the words of a member of America’s most famous political family, John F. Kennedy, politics is the art of the possible. These words ring true for the Eaton boys.
At a time when others have turned from politics in disgust, they have retained their faith. Perhaps because, if you never put politics on a pedestal, you’re less likely to be disappointed.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
