Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Icons we lost in 2016

  At the close of every year my tradition is to acknowledge the passing of significant political players in Alabama. We have truly lost some political icons in the Heart of Dixie this year.

  Lucy Baxley passed away in October in Birmingham at 78. She was born on a farm in rural Houston County in the community of Pansy. She went to school at Ashford. After graduation from high school she went to work at the courthouse in Dothan and worked for Judge Keener Baxley.

  When Judge Baxley’s son, Bill, got elected attorney general in 1970, young Bill Baxley asked Lucy to come to Montgomery to be his administrative assistant. Eight years later she and Bill married. She was an integral part of Baxley’s first campaign for governor in 1978.  Bill became Alabama Lieutenant Governor in 1982, then lost in the race for governor in 1986.  Soon, thereafter, Bill and Lucy ended their ten year marriage.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Remembering Chief Justice Perry Hooper, Sr.

  A few weeks ago former Alabama Chief Justice Perry O. Hooper Sr. died at his home in Montgomery at age 91. He was the epitome of the southern gentleman. He was also one of the founding fathers of the modern Republican Party in Alabama.

  Hooper Sr. was a GOP leader long before it was cool to be a Republican in Alabama. He was the state’s longtime National Committee Chairman as well as a one-time party chairman. Many of Hooper’s early GOP stalwarts, like Wynton Blount and Jim Martin, used to jest that there were so few Republicans in the state that they could call a state executive committee meeting or convention in a phone booth.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Where are they now?

  A good friend and loyal reader suggested to me that he would like to see a column titled, “Where Are They Now?” Then I ran into former Gov. Albert Brewer at a Birmingham restaurant and it prompted me to do that column.

  Governor Brewer has always been admired by Alabamians as one of the finest people to have ever served in state government. I got to know him when I was a young page in the Alabama House of Representatives and Brewer was a youthful Speaker of the House. In fact, he has the distinction of being the youngest Speaker in state history. He was elected to the House from Morgan County at 28 and became Speaker during only his second term at age 33.