Monday, December 6, 1999
Proud Republican wore skiing medal to bed
By Bill Whitaker
Last week’s visit by former first lady Barbara Bush gently
massaged the hopes and dreams of local Republicans, but just 24
hours earlier it was their collective funny bone that was getting
scratched.
And all at the considerable expense of Republican mover and
shaker Tucker Bridwell.
Little happens in local Republican circles without Tucker Bridwell’s
involvement. A longtime businessman and influential civic leader
who now serves as executive director of the Dian Graves Owen Foundation,
the lanky, low-key Abilenian maintains a modest profile, yet is
the first man to see when Republicans come to town.
Which is why it apparently seemed a swell idea to roast the
man, lest he begin taking himself too seriously. So friends and
associates such as Joe Canon and Sherri Statler decided to conduct
a proper roast, except that it was disguised as a surprise birthday
party, which itself was a pretty feeble excuse because Tucker’s
48th birthday was two months ago.
The whole thing was then mounted as a GOP fund-raiser.
“Actually, I think it’s a pretty weak excuse for
a fund-raiser,” Joe admitted during the evening’s festivities,
a statement U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm — one of Tucker’s closest
friends — promptly disagreed with, just as any politician
facing re-election in 2002 would.
“Any reason is a good reason!” Gramm insisted, referring
to some of the political gatherings held at the Bridwell home
in times past. “If I were doing a fund-raiser with Tucker,
I’d do it at his home. I’d ask (Tucker’s wife)
Gina to do the cooking and I’d ask him to pay for the food.
And the thing is, he’d do it.”
Some of the roast’s strangest and most baffling put-downs
came from state Sen. Troy Fraser, who only several years ago admitted
coming to Abilene, hat in hand, seeking Tucker’s attention
and support in his bid to become the district’s senator.
Most of the put-downs came in the form of a list the senator
and his staff put together concerning Tucker. They came under
the heading, “Top 10 Reasons Tucker Bridwell is Over the
Hill.” They are:
 Whenever he brags
about burning the midnight oil, he means anything that he does
after 8 p.m.
He blames his
high golf handicap on the glare from the sun hitting his bifocals.
Because after
he hits a golf shot, he hears the same four words: “It’s
still your turn.”
Every year he
continues to put more and more starch into his white shirts to
prop up his upper body.
He has reached
the height of diplomacy — when anyone asks him what his favorite
color is, he always answers, “Plaid.”
He was so “enamored”
by winning a downhill skiing bronze medal that he pinned it on
his pajamas and wore it to bed to show off for the other Abilene
guys on the trip.
When he tried
to navigate his way to the airport in Paris, he looked up and
found himself almost in Germany.
Because he refuses
to eat at any fine French restaurant unless they supply proper
certification of his numbered duck.
Because his latest
project is to try and move the Eiffel Tower to Abilene to promote
the Texas Forts Trail project.
The senator insists these put-downs are all true — at
least, most of them. For instance, he told me he was along on
the skiing expedition at the famed Purgatory Resort in Durango,
Colo., when Tucker proudly pinned a skiing race clinic medal to
his pajamas and promptly went to bed that way: “It was just
Tucker trying to mess with us.”
Sen. Fraser tells me he was also along during Tucker’s
trip to Paris to visit daughter Jordan during her stay as a Southern
Methodist University exchange student. It was then that Tucker
led family and friends to a “snooty” French restaurant
where, at meal’s end, “the waiter brought a certificate
with the bill proving it was a numbered, officially documented
duck.”
For the record, Sen. Fraser himself was a bit reluctant about
even doing the aforementioned top 10 list. After all, as he informed
his staff one day, friends of Tucker Bridwell and Abilene Republicans
would expect him to be plenty funny during the roast and, he conceded,
he was anything but funny.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” one of the senator’s
staff wisecracked. “Obviously, they haven’t been to
Austin and watched you perform.”
Bill Whitaker, who routinely insists that all his ducks
be numbered whether he eats them or not, can be reached at 676-6732
or whitakerb@abinews.com.
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Copyright ©1999, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews
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