On a Sunday morning in February 1996, I was awakened by the ringing phone. I lifted the receiver and a gravelly voice inquired: “Is this Bill McIntyre’s Arab cousin?”
“I’m not Arab, but my husband is Syrian,” I replied. Intuitively, I asked: “Am I speaking to Maury Maverick?”
The answer was that it indeed was Maury Maverick JUNIOR. He wanted to know more about the situation of my newly widowed Cousin Bill, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease and was recovering from a broken hip.
I recounted that I’d found a residence for Bill in an assisted living facility in San Juan Capistrano where he could be close to his two college-age grandsons. I suggested it would be terrific if Maury would visit Bill at some point.
“I don’t travel well,” he gruffly replied.
From there on we kept in touch by phone and correspondence which, for Maury’s part, was terse postcard messages. He also sent me his columns in the San Antonio Express News whenever they focused on justice for the Palestinians and later on the pending war with Iraq. Almost always these clippings contained a handwritten notation for my ailing cousin Bill.
Maury and Bill met in 1943 when both were in officers’ training school at the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, VA. They had something in common: family history steeped in the Old West. Bill’s maternal great-grandparents were on the first wagon train to arrive in Bozeman, MT in 1864. Maury’s great-grandfather, Samuel Augustus Maverick, was in Texas before the fall of the Alamo.
Maury sized up 6’ 4” inch, movie-star-handsome Bill and decided he should run for president of their officer’s training class. Bill may have held a bachelor’s degree from UCLA, resembled Cary Grant and most recently was an underpaid animation artist at Walt Disney Studios, but he was a shy man. It took a lot of arm-twisting before my cousin acquiesced to run in what he called a popularity contest.
Maury appointed himself Bill’s campaign manager. Bill duly was elected president of that class of officers who soon would serve in some of the earliest battles in the Pacific.
The two young officer candidates relished breaks from rigorous Marine Corps training on weekends they enjoyed at the Mavericks’ wartime home in Washington, D.C. Maury Sr. was perhaps the most liberal New Deal Congressman in the years 1935 to 1939. He was mayor of San Antonio from1939 to 1941 and then was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt to head the Smaller War Plants Production Board for the duration of the war. Bill wrote to relatives in Long Beach, CA, about being invited by Maury Sr. to parties where he met many figures within FDR’s inner circle.
Bill and Maury shared the knowledge it was unlikely they would survive World War II; these trepidations forged a bond that lasted a lifetime.
As World War II unfolded, my brother and I were taught the words of the Marine Corps anthem by our aunt, Bill’s mother. When Major McIntyre returned from Japan in 1946, we saluted our cousin and began singing “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” Bill was our hero, we always felt lucky that this elegant man was in our lives and, at times, served as a surrogate father.
While Maury made Texas history as a state legislator and won cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, Bill was an editor of national magazines in New York City and later became a publisher in Laguna Beach, CA.
Maury was disturbed in 1995 when he learned Bill was lonely and severely handicapped by Parkinson’s. I think I remarked that one of Bill’s consolations was watching PBS on his dilapidated TV. Soon after Maury sent a check for $500 and instructed me to buy Bill a new TV. He also wrote to Bill stating: “Don’t be a horse’s ass and turn down this gift.”
A lifelong supporter of the underdog, Maury squared off against the Red-baiting, blacklisting and Communist witch-hunts launched by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and 60s. He challenged Jim Crow laws and was one of a handful of lawyers in the U.S. who represented conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War. It was during the 1970s that Maury’s liberal Jewish associates conveyed to him their concern that the Zionist lobby was playing too heavy a hand in influencing Congress to favor Israel over the Arab nations.
In 1980, Maury started writing his weekly column for the Express News. From the get go, it was much loved or equally detested by liberals and right-wingers in that order. Whenever he wrote candidly about Israeli persecution of Palestinians inside Israel or in Gaza and the West Bank, angry protests flooded the phones and faxes of the newspaper.
While he believed nothing could shock him after his bruising encounters with vicious McCarthyites, Maury told me he found a newer breed of equally mean-spirited adversaries once he publicly took up the cause of Palestinian statehood.
My husband, Samir, and I visited Maury and his wife Julia in April 1997. At the Express News, editorial page editor Lynnell Burkett told me: “Maury’s column has become an institution that has developed over the years. Obviously there is a much larger Jewish community in San Antonio than Arab, but it’s important to understand different viewpoints. Maury defends liberal views in a lot of areas, but this is a conservative city. One thing special about his column is it is predictable – but unpredictable for any given week when the topic might range from Purple Martin swallows to world over-population.”
Maury gave us his renowned tour of the River Walk promenade which Maury Sr. is credited for founding by mustering WPA funds. He guided us through the Alamo and the historic graveyard where his illustrious great-grandfather is buried. Julia and Maury gave us a tour of the hill country and it was at a Mexican restaurant that we witnessed the soft side of the curmudgeonly iconoclast.
I told Maury of my recent difficulty to make an appointment with Bill’s physician. Finally, my exasperated brother phoned the neurologist and said: “You better damn well find time for an appointment for William McIntyre. He rotted in fox holes all over the Pacific so you can enjoy the kind of life you’re living”
Maury wiped a few tears from his eyes and smiled when I told him the doctor agreed to see Bill the next day.
One of the best things of that visit was the friendship Maury established between Palestinian American poet and author, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Samir and me. Maury introduced us at a memorable luncheon he hosted in the Liberty Bar. We’re been friends ever since.
In June of 1997, a virulent smear campaign was launched against Maury by hard-line Jews accusing him of inciting anti-Semitism. Their grievance was that he quoted Texas writer Grace Halsell’s statement that Jews were driving Christians out of the Holy Land.
Middle East experts all over the United States wrote to the Express News in support of Maury and verified that the Israelis indeed make life so miserable for Palestinians that the more affluent Christians emigrate.
Maury’s assessment of the effort to silence his column was: “I don’t understand the American and Israeli persecution of Palestinians. I resent right-wing, means-spirited Jews just as I do right-wing, mean-spirited Christians and Muslims.
“American Jews are suffering their own internal McCarthyism. It’s coming from radical Zionists who are making the deadly mistake of convincing Gentiles that Zionism and Judaism are synonymous. If American Jews don’t stand up to their own bullies, a hard wave of anti-Semitism could sweep America.
“While I’m at it, I don’t understand the silence of Arab Americans. Why don’t they do more in getting out on the ramparts and speaking for the Palestinians?”
Maury began a correspondence with another underdog, Mordechai Vanunu, the whistle blower on Israel’s stockpile of nuclear bombs, who was languishing in solitary confinement. Maury published a Q&A with Vanunu on Oct. 25, 1998. On Dec. 11 of that year, he warned against the Clinton administration’s flirtations with opening a war on Iraq.
“War, not sex, Clinton’s impeachable offense” read the headline for Maury’s Feb. 21, 1999 column.
A handwritten note at the bottom of the page revealed that at age 78, he still was actively researching legal aspects of any future topic: Pat, Last November, the California Court of Appeals came out with a decision regarding the Anti-Defamation League’s spying on individuals and groups. Can you get me a copy of the decision on the official citation” (Not a paraphrase). Plus any press background you might have. Ask a lawyer if the case is on appeal to the California Supreme Court.
He sent another request on a Feb. 28 column that railed against Iraqi children suffering from economic sanctions. This time, he wrote: Pat, Please keep trying to find me the formal name and law citation of the California Court regarding the Anti-Defamation League. Thank you, Maury
On April 14, 1999, Maury quoted the American ‘Friends Service Committee and the Pax Christi Catholic peace group on United Nations sanctions that were starving and killing Iraqi children. This was followed May 16 with a column documenting how the Israelis purposefully tried to sink the U.S.S. Liberty on June 8, 1967.
Maury mused in a July 18 column about the low comfort level of mixing state and religion in Israel’s theocratic state. And on Sept. 19, 1999 he argued that deadly sanctions on Iraq were truly un-American.
I sensed time was taking its toll when Maury sent a hand-written note on a May 7, 2000 column: Pat, the reason I don’t call your Uncle (sic) Bill is because he has such a low voice and I am deaf.
Further evidence came with a May 21, 2000 column, entitled “Elian controversy isn’t that hard of a call.” Maury wrote: At your urging and good deeds – I am writing more to Uncle (sic) Bill. My eyesight also is Very Bad.
His note intended for Cousin Bill, was written at the bottom of an Aug. 20, 2000 column, headlined “Sanctions won’t end the suffering in Iraq.” Bill, he wrote, Bette Davis says old age ain’t for sissies.
”Gore must bring back party of Roosevelts” was the headline for an Aug. 27, 2000 column. Beneath it were Maury’s comments: That was a good letter from you. I sent the above (column) to Bill. I often do. I can’t hear him and he can’t talk. My dog, Samantha, died and I am in mourning.
On June 24, 2001, Maury warned Israel that it needed to stand up to its right-wing bullies. At the top of the page, he penned: My vision is BAD. When you write, please type or use DARK ink. Tell me again Bill’s address. What’s his status?
Maury listed Middle East peace groups he deemed worthy of support in a column dated Sept. 2, 2001.He acknowledged my letter sent a few days earlier with the words: I’m glad Bill isn’t suffering any more.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001 and, curiously, we never discussed the tragedy. He no longer answered the phone or my letters.
Maury did send me his Sept. 30, 2001 column in which he warned “Revenge can be a dangerous game for the U.S.” He presciently observed: “A risk in getting revenge is that instead of helping Middle East countries become open societies as America tends to be, we risk becoming a closed society as the countries of the Middle East tend to be.”
The columns stopped coming in 2002. Naomi Nye sadly informed me that Maury's eyesight was all but gone. He still was passionately against a war in Iraq. Hours before his death on Jan. 28, 2003, Maury repeatedly asked: “Has the war started yet?”
Maury’s opponents in San Antonio were as varied as the Ku Klux Klan and today’s zealots for Zion. Nevertheless, he always remained steadfast, standing up for what he believed and, in his self-deprecating manner, winning most of his battles with his dry but deadly wit. Above all, he was fiercely loyal to his friends.
Semper Fidelis, Bill and Maury.
—Los Angeles, California |