Far left: Tea Party supporter John Holdren with one of his pet rats at his home in Dayton. Left: Henthorn and Unroe, his communications director, at work in the campaign office in Dayton.
Force’s B-52 crews once slept, in an underground bunker he calls a “mole hill.” Later, we dine with his 22-year-old son, Zack, who works at Sta- ples. Zack aspires to serve his dad as a security officer, once Henthorn is elected as sena- tor. “I’m excited about what my dad’s done for this coun- try,” Zack says. “He cares for its people, and I’m proud of him. He’s my dad.” Eventually, I get a clandes-
tine call from a 62-year-old retiree I met on the bus. John Holdren once worked for the Air Force as a civilian, in a di-
I feel a tap on my shoulder. Paul
Weaver, the grandfather, has tears run- ning down his face. He is weeping so profusely he cannot speak. Ann Hucke leans toward him and
gently touches his knee. “Go ahead,” she says. What Weaver wants to talk about
is how he found Christ. Working on the line at the International Harvester plant in Springfield, Ohio, 30-odd years ago, Weaver felt an urge at break time to step into an empty room by himself. “I started praying,” he says. “I asked God for forgiveness, and then it was almost like a movie: I could see that shim- mering light. And it changed my life!” Weaver looks directly at me, his hands quivering as they urgently carve at the air. “We’re not trying to make you un- comfortable here,” he says. “I’m really sorry if it feels like that. We just want to help you.”
I
n the days that follow, as I linger in Dayton, I keep thinking of how caring Paul Weaver was, and I keep being treated to the same sort of earnest caring. One morning,
Henthorn takes me out to Wright-Pat- terson and shows me where the Air
vision that bought special ops airplanes. Now, he raises pet rats. Holdren keeps 10 rats in cages in a spare bedroom and devotes two hours a day tending to them. He wants to show them to me. Problem is, his wife doesn’t want a re- porter in the house. “Can we be a little sneaky here?” he
asks over the phone. “My wife’s about to go out, and when she does, I’ll leave the porch light on. That’ll be your signal that it’s okay to knock.” I rush to Holdren’s neighborhood,
but as I’m killing time strolling past stately homes and well-manicured lawns while I wait for the porch light, a woman drives by, staring me down. A minute later, Holdren calls. “Here’s the thing,” he says gamely. “You’ve been spotted, but it’s my house, too. Why don’t you come on over?” The rats are in the living room,
scampering about in a cardboard box set amid a few dark blue leather chairs. In tender detail, Holdren describes how he ministers to the animals’ injuries and illnesses. “I give them antibiotics,” he says. “If they have bronchial problems, I work with a nebulizer. I take them to the vet for surgery sometimes.” “Sounds like the Obama health plan,”
I crack. “Well,” Holdren says, smirking, “it’s
paternalistic. They’re rats.” Holdren is an eager-eyed man who
trades in ideas. He grew up in an “all- white town,” he says: Westerville, Ohio. He was such a fan of Barry Goldwater and his libertarian allies that during a 1962 election, Holdren wore holes into a new pair of shoes in a single evening skipping up and down porch steps, de- livering leaflets. Today, he spends four hours a day tuning into conservative media: Fox News, Drudge Report and
NationalReview.com. He voices his po- litical views with precision, as though they were mathematical theorems. “I’m not particularly oriented to-
ward embracing other cultures. I like American culture,” he says before add- ing, “Sharia law is not compatible with the Constitution. For starters, under sharia law, it’s legal to stone a woman to death. And the intent of Islam is world domination. If allowed, they will bomb and butcher their way to success. Their goal is to either convert you or tax you into submission or kill you.” Soon, Hol- dren says that back in the ’70s, at the University of Kentucky, he had Muslim friends. “Two brothers studying phar- macy,” he says. “They were Palestinians, and they used to joke about how they carried bombs in their back pockets.” “What were their names?” “Oh, I don’t know,” Holdren says,
chuckling. “They all have, like, five names. We need to control immigra- tion,” he continues. “If you’re willing to say you’re Muslim, you need to leave. We are going to fight them in a big way, and we need to strike them in a way that’s memorable. Myself, I wanted us to make a nuclear strike after 9/11.” Before I leave, I use Holdren’s bath-
room. It’s immaculate, and on the wall by the toilet, there’s a small, oval- shaped wooden sign decorated with painted flowers. It says, “Be ye kind one to another.”
Bill Donahue is a freelance writer in Portland, Ore., and a contributor to the Magazine. He last wrote about American Indian Russell Means. He can be reached at wpmagazine @
washpost.com.
OctOber 24, 2010 | THe WasHingTon PosT Magazine 17
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