Ruralite Cafe: Published 08/01/02

By Lynn Hotaling - Associate Editor

Brinkley author to be in Sylva Saturday

"The Bizarre Careers of John R. Brinkley," though fascinating, takes some effort on the reader's part, but it's time well spent.

The son of a country doctor, Brinkley was born at Beta, orphaned at age 10 and raised near East LaPorte by his stepmother (also his great-aunt), Sally Mingus Brinkley.

Brinkley supported himself as a teletype operator for Southern Railway before putting himself through medical school. He hit on the idea of treating male impotence by transplanting goat glands into aging men and performed hundreds of such surgeries at hospitals he founded at Milford, Kan., Del Rio, Texas, and Little Rock, Ark.

Brinkley is thought by many to have been elected governor of Kansas in 1930 through a write-in campaign. However, he lost the election because many of the votes in his favor were disallowed due to technicalities.

When Brinkley ran afoul of Kansas authorities, who stripped him of both his radio and medical licenses, he moved his operations to Del Rio, Texas, and constructed his radio transmitter across the Rio Grande in Mexico to avoid Federal Radio Commission regulation.

One of the first to realize the advertising potential in the then new medium of radio, Brinkley once owned the most powerful radio station in the world. Through painstaking research, Lee, an American history professor for 30 years, tells the story of Brinkley's humble Jackson County beginnings through his rise to fame and fortune to his end in bankruptcy court. Brinkley died a broken man in 1942.

The author began researching Brinkley's life after retiring from the Unversity of South Dakota in Vermilion, S.D., and returning to his native Kansas. Lee, who was born in White City, Kan., in 1931, about the time Brinkley left the Sunflower State for Texas, said he heard rumors about the goat-gland doctor as a child.

"Among people of my generation, he is well-known in Kansas," said the 71-year-old Lee.

The author's research took three years. He relied heavily on documents housed at the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka and also traveled to Jackson County.

Lee cites Betty Foxx of Sylva, who he acknowledges in his book, and the late Bill Smith as being particularly helpful while he was here. Brinkley himself always spoke positively of Jackson County, said Lee.

"It was 'home,'" the author said.

With regard to Brinkley's near-miss at taking up residency in the Kansas governor's mansion, Lee said that "if the estimates were even close, Brinkley would have won the 1930 election. There was a real groundswell for him."

According to Lee, country folks who believed in Brinkley went to the Kansas polls in record numbers that year.

"People would come in and ask, 'Is this where we vote for Doc Brinkley?' only to be told by the poll worker ­ whether Republican or Democrat ­ 'Yes. And be sure to put your name on your ballot ­ he'll want to know you voted for him,'" Lee said.

Or the poll workers would make a mark on the ballot and disqualify it that way, Lee said. Estimates place the number of votes that were thrown out at around 50,000, the author said.

When Lee began his research, he didn't like Brinkley, he said.

"But the further my research progressed, the more I discovered this was a complex man, not one you could categorize in black and white," Lee said. "He was far more than the medical con man I had always heard about ­ I wanted to discover what John Brinkley was really like."

In the end, Lee said, he had a grudging liking for Brinkley.

"He might have been a nice fellow to know," Lee said.

Several errors in the text, though they are all in minor details, will be apparent to a careful Jackson County reader. Lee refers to legendary local fiddler Harry Cagle, who played on Brinkley's radio show as "Henry" Cagle; the author credits "These Storied Mountains" by Sylva literary giant John Parris to "John Parrish"; and he places the grave of Sarah Candace Burnett with its angel marker in Love's Chapel Cemetery when she is actually buried in the cemetery at Lovedale Baptist Church.

Lee will discuss his Brinkley biography at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday at City Lights in Sylva. Prior to the author's visit, the bookstore and the Jackson County Historical Society will sponsor a tour and program to celebrate Brinkley's local ties.

Featuring stops at the Brinkley Farm and Aunt Sally's Curve, the tour will begin at Tuckasegee Baptist Church at 5 p.m. Participants are asked to call City Lights at 586-9499 to reserve a spot.

The group will return to Sylva at 6:30 p.m. for a reception at the bookstore to be followed by a program that will include a talk by historian George Frizzell and musical reminiscences of Cagle and Samantha Bumgarner. All the events are free.

Spring Street Cafe will provide refreshments for the reception. Rumor has it there will be goat cheese.

Back to Archive: 08/01/02.