You’ll see a lot of headlines about the death of former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, an OOIDA life member, at the age of 92.
Campbell died at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at his home outside of Ignacio, Colo., of natural causes, surrounded by family.
He was born in Auburn, Calif, on April 13, 1933. His mother was a Portuguese immigrant, and his father was a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe.
Campbell dropped out of high school to join the Air Force and served from 1951 to 1953, stationed in Korea, eventually earning the rank of airman second class.
While in the Air Force, Campbell earned his GED and later attended San Jose State College in California, where he received a degree in physical education in 1957.
Campbell met his wife, Linda, in 1966 when they worked for the same California school district, where Campbell taught physical education. The school asked Campbell to teach a judo class so PE teachers would know what it was, and Linda enrolled.
They married after just a few months of dating and were married for 59 years. They had two children, Colin Campbell and Shanan Campbell, and four grandchildren.
A trucker at heart
The Cheyenne tribal chief led an extraordinary life as a role model for Native Americans. While he is certainly well known for his advocacy of Native American issues, long-time truckers knew a different side.
Campbell’s first job, when he was 14 years old, was driving a flatbed Model A Ford with no windshield, picking up boxes of freshly picked pears in the orchards, transporting them to a loading dock and then hand-loading them onto a big rig for their trip to a fruit-packing plant in Auburn, Calif.
“I had graduated from ‘picker’ to ‘hauler’ and how I envied the drivers of the big diesels. I distinctly remember there were very few overweight truck drivers in those days,” Campbell wrote in an exclusive article for Land Line in 2012. “No drop and hook, no power steering and mostly hand loads kept drivers trim and strong. Their reputation of being tough was well-deserved.”
In the article, he reminisced about a different time in trucking.”
“My enthusiasm (for driving truck) never waned due to the friendship and camaraderie of the drivers. Can you believe we used to wave to each other when passing on the road and always stopped to help a broke-down rig? Most drivers wore company shirts and felt a professional kinship to other drivers. No one drove in tore-off muscle shirts, shorts and flip-flops,” he wrote.
Especially foreign to today’s drivers were his memories of regulation and enforcement that truckers faced decades ago.
“In those days, there was very little government oversight. No logbooks, no CDLs or endorsements, no anti-idling laws, no GPS trackers or mandatory rest times, no driving tests or physicals,” he wrote. “Catnaps on the seat during fruit harvest while driving 36 to 48 hours or more were the norm. If you weren’t willing to suffer through it, you were gone and someone else would be waiting to take your job.
“Scales and ports of entry were manned by the state patrol in those days and weren’t much of a problem if you were a fast talker. If you were overloaded while working the harvest, usually a few boxes of fresh fruit off-loaded behind the scale house took care of the problem. You try that now, and you go to jail.”
Campbell was 79 years old when he wrote that piece for Land Line, and while retired from the Senate, he was still trucking when he could.
“I’m getting a little long in the tooth now, but still pass my physical and have 20/20 vision. Hopefully, the Lord will let me go down the road for a few more years. After 65 years of no accidents and ticket-free truck driving (not so lucky in cars), I look back on my driving career and trips I’ve made. What great memories,” he wrote.
Some of those memories were trips he called “escapes” from the U.S. Senate between 1993 and 2005.
“When I could, I’d take a break from D.C., go home to Colorado, and climb in my truck. At the time I retired, I was the only U.S. senator who also delivered beer out of the Coors and Budweiser breweries in Colorado,” he wrote.
OOIDA’s Todd Spencer and retired Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell take a break while hauling a load of beer while Campbell was on break from the Senate. (Land Line file photo)
On one such beer delivery in 2000, then-OOIDA Executive Vice President Todd Spencer was riding shotgun.
“This wasn’t a staged media event. The senator drove every mile, negotiated every turn, sometimes on narrow city streets,” Spencer wrote in a 2000 Land Line article about Campbell. “He backed into every dock. … (He was) serious about keeping his driving skills sharp.”
And he had good reason to do so.
In both 2000 and 2012, Campbell was behind the wheel of a custom-decorated Mack truck delivering the Capitol Christmas Tree to Washington, D.C.
The 2012 trek led the caravan through Independence, Mo., home of President Harry S. Truman and the historic Truman Home.
His authentic nature, warm personality and sense of humor have lived on at OOIDA and Land Line HQ.
Perhaps one of the funniest stories is when he and Soendker went to the Truman Home and found the park rangers shutting it down for the night.
Try as she might, Soendker tried to talk the rangers into a quick peek. She played the Capitol Tree card to no avail. She then asked: “Would it make a difference if I said this guy is a former United States Senator?”
The ranger was obviously suspicious of the claim.
Campbell, dressed in faded jeans and long, thick gray hair, pulled through the back of his Mack Truck cap, dug through his wallet and found his permanent U.S. Senator ID card.
The ranger checked the ID twice before giving Campbell, Soendker and the other driver for the Capitol Tree a personal tour.
Retired Land Line Editor-in-Chief Sandi Soendker and U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree drivers, OOIDA Life Member and former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, left, and Duane Brusseau, right, at the Truman Home. (Land Line file photo)
Later on that same trip, semi-retired Field Editor Suzanne Stempinski hopped in the truck with Campbell for the Washington, D.C., leg of the trip. As awe-inspiring as it would be to deliver the Capitol Tree, Stempinski shares many memories of her friend and the time they spent together then and over the years at other events.
Government service
Campbell was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1980s as a Democrat. In the mid-1990s, he sent shockwaves through the party by joining the Republican Party, just three years into his first Senate term. He served two terms in the Senate, announcing he would not run for a third in 2004 because of health issues.
The condolences and statements of admiration for Campbell rolled out of Washington, D.C., following the announcement of his death. That admiration did not start with his death.
Campbell’s entry into politics wasn’t intentional. A story he told many times, but Spencer heard it while hauling a load of Budweiser with the senator.
Campbell attended a local political gathering with a friend where nominees for Colorado state offices were selected. The friend had political aspirations; Campbell did not.
By the end of the meeting, Campbell was persuaded to accept the nomination and to run against an attorney also running for the state seat.
“The attorney looked good, and I’m sure everyone believed he would win,” Campbell told Spencer. “But, he didn’t. I just outworked him.”
He championed several pieces of legislation to benefit truckers, including hours-of-service protections, fuel tax relief, and intermodal chassis maintenance, among others.
“One suspects the senator approached making laws with the same care and involvement (as he does when driving a truck). In every aspect of his life, he is dedicated to achievement – as a lawmaker, a U.S. senator, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a northern Cheyenne chief, a rancher and an award-winning jewelry designer,” Spencer wrote in 2000.
“He was a good man with a restless spirit and totally at ease driving a truck and being in the fellowship of others,” Spencer said after learning of Campbell’s death.
The family plans a private service in the coming days and a public service at a later date, possibly in the spring. LL
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