Ben Barnes once apologized to me for having to interview him so much. I worked for the Tyler Morning Telegraph in the late 1960s and early 1970s and any time he came within 50 miles of Tyler my editor would send me out to interview him.
He was Texas lieutenant governor at the time, from 1969 to 1973. He had been speaker of the Texas House of Representatives before that.
I could possibly have gotten into the inaugural ball for the governor and lieutenant governor with my press credentials, but Ben wanted me to have a special invitation. It was the most beautiful and elaborate invitation I had ever seen. It was at least 5x7 in size and had beautiful engravings and indentions. It listed some of the wonderful foods that would be available at the ball and also stated that Buck Owens and the Buckaroos would provide live music for dancing.
It was prophesied by many that Ben Barnes would soon be President of the United States.
There was little, if any, talk of him running for governor. In his early 30s, many were thinking his next run would be for President.
He spoke at a big July Fourth event at the Rose Bowl in Tyler in 1971 and was introduced as “The next President of the United States.” Lyndon Johnson had also predicted that Barnes would be President.
Barnes was a handsome, well built, blond headed young man with a humble personality. I don’t know what positions the men who traveled with him held, but when he walked down the street he was often flanked by three or four stout men who looked like bodyguards.
Barnes, who was born in 1938, grew up on a peanut farm in Central Texas. For the first eight years of his life, he lived in a farm house that had no electricity. He worked his way through college, attending one semester at TCU, another at what is now Tarleton State University in Stephenville and then on to the University of Texas where he got interested in politics and became a state representative at the age of 21.
At age 29, after being speaker for one term, he ran for lieutenant governor and carried all 254 counties in Texas.
But the hopes that he and many of his supporters had for him to make a run for President came to an end in 1972 when he, Gov. Preston Smith, House Speaker Gus Mutscher and others in the Legislature were accused of fraud and other misdoings in connection with what became known as the Sharpstown Bank Scandal. None of them ever did prison time.
Even though that ended Barnes’ political career, he was not to be pitied as a poor boy.
He moved to Washington, D.C., and started making money left and right in real estate and other investments and today is among the wealthier people in the world.
He was a lobbyist in Washington for a while and later created the Ben Barnes Group, an investment advisory firm which has offices in Washington, New York City and Austin.
He turned 88 years old on April 17.
