The Anniston Star from Anniston, Alabama • Page 16

.1.. Veelierid! ir SIk Pmm ky Km imtM Anuncommon dream Gerald Willis starts his 'common man' campaign "Lei the people rule. the country, primarily in the Midwest (40 percent of his Andrew Jackson business is in Wisconsin) and South, even in Venezuela. By DENNIS LOVE Willis bills bit customers about $2 million annually. SO WILLIS the businessman hat done well.

His rural paradise In Nances Creek has all" the trappings of an accomplished, self-made man: The sprawling, ornate Hermitage, tnrougn which 10,000 visitors have toured the 300-plus acres of pines and pasture, dotted with Hereford cattle; the grassy landing strip next to an autumn-brown soybean field, where Willis guides his private plane to lurching, dust-spewing halts after ex cursioni to Montgomery, Washington and the Midwest as going to be looking for something entirely different. The people in Washington have run out of answers. We have more regulations, more borrowing, m5fe debts than al any time fh our history That's not the answer. Our founding fathers would roll over in their graves if they knew how overtaxed and regulated we are right now someone needs to be there to represent the common people." The "common people." The phrase surfaces time and again as Willis scales up and down his philosophical ladder, inviting again the inevitable comparisons with Jackson, the man he unabashedly admires and emulates. From the Willis home (a $200,000 replica of the Nashville Hermitage) to an arguable physical resemblance accentuated by Willis' hair swept back from his Jackson-like widow's peak, there are surface parallel! to be drawn -'tAndy Jackson was the first man to govern the people who was a common man," Willis says, a note of reverence in hit voice.

"He made hit way up. to the? presidency by hard work and determination. He represented what the founding fathers stood for. He was tops as far being president is concerned. Too many presidents get elected, and then turn 180 degrees from what got them there in the first place." SO WHAT HAS convinced Gerald Willis that his destiny is to follow Jackson's footsteps? There are clues in Willis' childhood, when his family "struggled by on a shoestring." Hit father, the minister who also farmed and worked carpentry jobs provided character and ambition.

Willis' father's father also apparently weighed heavily on him at a Granddaddy WUlia always told me I waa going to be president one day," Willis recalls. "He always said 1 was the smartest among hit grandchildren, and he always called me 'Mr. So the seeds, perhaps, were being planted. At that stage of life, however, Gerald Willis only concentrated on earning money to help the family through hard timet. At a 15-year-old student at White Plaint High School, Willis drove a school but, worked a variety of odd jobs and actually brought home more pay than hit father.

It waa during this period he met Frances Keener, a prim and quiet brunette he would later marry. After graduating from JUgh school in 1959. Willis worked construction and other jobs before settling down for three yean at an electrician In Annltton. By 1965 he had saved 1350, and with that he borrowed 11,700 from Fanners and Merchants Bank in Piedmont He established a null sawmill business, hired four employees and rang up sales of $14,000 the first year. Today, the Gerald Willi Lumber Co.

ships finished products across SUr Staff Writer NANCES CREEK Gerald Willis sits In the study of his palatial Alabama Hermitage, reclining easily In a mahogany and black leather rocker, a decorative brass spitoon at his feet the hardwood floor. Outside, it is a gray, thundering October morning, and a persistent rain pelts the double windows behind him, forming streaking rivulets of water in non-stop sprints-toward the ground below. Two marble busts stand to Willis' right, separated by a maplewood bookcase centered under an aged, signed portrait of President Andrew Jackson. The bust on the left is of Jackson, frontiersman, war hero, America's seventh commander in chief. The bust on the right is of Willis Piedmont lumberyard owner, former county commisioner, one-term state legislator, and, now, Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

It is true Gerald Willis, 42, the soft-spoken son of a lay minister, father of three, a self -described- "common man" absorbed by Jacksonian history and who as a child affectionately was called "Mr. President," has decided to seek the free world's most powerful office. His goal is no symbolic, spit-in-the-wind, why-not fantasy; he wants to be president, and he believes that only in America can the Gerald Willises of this world rise up from among the masses and attain heights normally Teserved for the rich and chosen few. Andrew Jackson did it; Gerald Willis figures he can, too. "Ever since I was a small child," Willis says, gazing up at Jackson's staring, omnipresent likeness on the wall, "I always thought I would have the opportunity to serve the American people as their president.

When I was 14, 1 told my mother about several things that would happen to me In my life; one of them was that I would be grow up to be president." THE WORDS are spoken carefully, slowly, in a quiet, country manner, words to which Willis listens at closely as his visitors. As be would relate later, he has turned down other requests for interviews; now, however, he says "the time has come" to talk about the mission, has charted, and he, too, wonders how It all sounds. It is as if be is verbalizing his aims and objectives for the first time, and be teems In wonderment of it all. The campaign hat begun. "The big stion that hat to be answered is whether a common ma can ever be elected to that office again," Willis tays.

By ttu Ume 1984 rolls around, folks are ne attempts to keep hit business and, recently, presidential politic! in check. The only element missing, it seems, is a swimming pool, an omission Willis intends to correct toon. He plans a pool in hii back yard, shaped in the outline of the state of Alabama, with a star pinpointing the location of Nances Creek. "There's one like that at the governor's mansion, with a star for Montgomery," Willis says, standing on his rear balcony overlooking the potential pool site. "It looks mighty sharp from an airplane." IN 1171, hit business success well under way, the 30-year-old Willis decided he was ready for politicsHe ran for the Calhoun County Commisskr.

ignoring what he says were not-so-hidden smirks and subtle put-downs cast his way. "It wasn't until a few days before the primary that my opponents realized they had a candidate on their hands," he says. Willis won. In 1978, Willis set his sight! a little higher: The Alabama Legislature. He filed for the House seat which represents northern Calhoun County, and found former Jacksonville Mayor John B.

Nisbet Jr. as his chief opponent. Nisbet was the favorite, it seemed, but when the imoke cleared Willis was in the runoff and went on to defeat Nisbet. As wai hia tenure on the commission, Willis' legislative service was solid but mostly uneventful. He chaired two committees somewhat unusual for a freshman legislator and authored a few bills, but primarily sat and listened.

"It was an educational experience," Willis says. His heart was clearly elsewhere. As observer! began to speculate on now state races would take shape in 1982. Willis began to hint to reporters he had a loftier goal in mind. Most people figured he might make a try for the state Senate, or, at the outside, lieutenant governor.

But, earUer this year, WilUt told a startled reporter his intentions: He would not seek re-election to hit House seat; he would run for president..