St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 12

A12 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH NEWS TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2000 postnet.comnews 1 Gov. Mel Carnahan: 1934-2000 Caraoai ail Dianes is a tact ot me Wmhm Carnahan's son flew most trips for his father fly," said Robert Carnahan of Rolla, his uncle. "He has flied at one time or another for a long, longtime." Mel Carnahan, too, recently obtained a flying license, Robert Carnahan said, a fact that he was apparently very proud of. In a visit last month to Ridge Meadows Elementary School in Ellisville, Carnahan told fifth-graders that flying was one of his top hobbies.

Stephen E. Sowers, publisher of the Rolla Daily News, who knows the Carnahan family, said he believed Mel Carnahan was pursuing a higher level of flying certification that would qualify him to use the plane's instruments, a qualification his son had earned several years ago. the destination. Candidates for Missouri offices can write off the cost as a campaign donation. Charter flights cost whatever the company charges.

Flying apparently was more to the Carnahans than simply a method of transportation: It was a hobby that they shared. Randy Carnahan's charter business operated mainly out of Downtown Airport in Rolla, community members said. The size and scope of his charter business was not immediately known. It was clear from interviews with prominent Rolla residents that Randy Carnahan was better known for his role as an attorney in the family's law firm than for flying. "Randy (Carnahan) liked to class.

But there are lots of places and times when no commercial flight is available. No major airline, for example, flies from St. Louis to New Madrid, or from Jefferson City to Hannibal. That's where chartered planes fit in. Most of Gov.

Mel Carnahan's charter flights were flown by his son, Randy Carna-han, 44, who owned a charter company in addition to The governor, mindful of past flaps involving his predecessors, said last year that he was careful to avoid using state planes for campaign travel. To fly on corporate planes, congressional candidates must pay the equivalent of a first-class ticket or the cost of a comparable charter, depending on r.Zr.L By Jeremy Kohler Of the Post-Dispatch Moriday's plane crash points to a fact of modern elections: To campaign around Missouri, a candidate has to fly. Most Missouri candidates say their preferred mode of air travel is on TWA, and in coach LAURIE SKRIVAN POST-DISPATCH Gov. Mel Carnahan (right) and his son, Randy Carnahan, eating pears grown on a tree on their farm in Rolla, Mo. Randy Carnahan is believed to have been the pilot of a plane that crashed Monday.

The governor was believed to be on the plane. Russ Carnahan is left pacing floors of St. Louis home, waiting for news By Don Reed Of the Post-Dispatch Russ Carnahan paced the foyer of his home in St. Louis holding a white cell phone to his ear as he learned details of Monday night's tragedy. "All we know is there was some trouble with the plane, they lost contact, that's all we know," Carnahan said.

Carnahan, 42, is one of three sons of Gov. Mel Carnahan. Russ Carnahan, bare-chested and wearing dress slacks, paced the floor as he relayed what he had just heard. "It's just devastating right now," I ft! 4 i I jf i- i. 1 Carnahan said.

"We're going to pack a bag and go to Jeff City to gather with the family." Carnahan's wife, Deborah, was overcome as well, as friends began to show up at their door i 4 Russ Carnahan THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Gov. Mel Carnahan takes the oath of office at his inauguration Jan. 13, 1997, at the state Capitol in Jefferson City. His wife, Jean Carnahan, is at his side. Carnahan around 11:30 p.m.

to offer support. "It's just not real, it's just not real," Deborah said as she lay down on the main staircase of their large home. The Carnahans have two sons, Andrew and Austin, who were asleep upstairs and did not know Monday's news. "We can't tell the boys," Deborah said. "We can't wake them up and tell them something like this." Russ Carnahan is director of government relations for BJC Health System and also a politician.

This fall he won the Democratic nomination for state representative in the 59th District in a close race against Jeanette Mott Oxford. He was considered a favorite to win the Nov. 7 general election over Republican J.R. McDaniel. That meant little to Carnahan on Monday night.

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With a law degree in hand, he then looked for a rural Missouri home. Rolla fit the bill. "It was the largest town in my father's congressional district," Carnahan said. "I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps." But his father lost his congressional seat in 1960. President John F.

Kennedy, an old congressional colleague, offered an ambassadorship to the elder Carnahan. He asked for a stint in a new country and got Sierra Leone in Africa. That tour had fallout back in Rolla. Brothers Mel and Bob Carnahan decided that the traditional blackface minstrel shows were denigrating to blacks, although they performed in them through 1962. Mel Carnahan said it really hit home when an educator from predominantly black Sierra Leone came to visit the family in Rolla and "we had trouble finding him a place to stay or places to eat.

We had to make special arrangements." "Our consciousness was waking up," Carnahan said. "I'm just sorry we weren't doing it sooner." African and Asian artifacts, from his father's years abroad and travels of other family members, fill his family room in Rolla. In 1960, Mel Carnahan ran for municipal judge when the job came open. Right before the filing, the local pool hall manager also filed. "I was going door-to-door to get elected a police judge," Carnahan said.

He won and then found out that local Democratic leaders had instigated the pool hall filing as a joke so that he would work. He credits that door-to-door contact with his success two years later when he ran for the Legislature, defeating three other Democrats. He rose quickly in the state House and was majority leader when he ran and lost a bid for the state Senate in 1966. Carnahan turned his focus back to Rolla, where he attended to his law practice and civic concerns. He served on the local School Board for five years, bringing in a new superintendent and persuading the public to approve the bonds needed to build a new junior high the community's first new school building in 28 years.

In 1980, after 14 years in private life, Carnahan saw the right opportunity for statewide office when then-state Treasurer Jim Spainhower ran for governor. Carnahan won a contested primary and, a few months later, won the general election to become Spainhower's successor. Carnahan was so determined to succeed in that political comeback that he put his law practice in Rolla on hold. For 15 months, he campaigned around the state, supporting himself and his family on his savings and by borrowing against his assets. Carnahan's success in politics was continual from then on.

In 1988, he ran for lieutenant governor and was the only statewide Democratic candidate to win. The governor with whom he served John Ashcroft. Ashcroft left the governor's office after two terms to run for the Senate in 1992. Carnahan ran to succeed him and won by a wide margin after William Webster, the Republican candidate, became embroiled in scandal involving use of a state fund. In 1996, Carnahan won re-election as governor, again by a wide margin.

Having reached his legal limit of two terms as governor, Carnahan, at 65, took on both a new challenge and an old fore Ashcroft, the incumbent in the U.S. Senate. At one point during that pivotal 1980 summer, Carnahan observed: "Someone asked me if it cost me all my assets other than my home, would I still run for public office? I said if that was the only decision I had to make, I'd do it every day of the week and twice on Sundays." Nineteen years and three offices later, Carnahan offers a more mature take. "Perhaps I went at it with a little too much youthful enthusiasm. But my commitment to public service remains just as strong." The Carnahans have four children.

Their eldest, Roger, also known as Randy, is believed to be the pilot on the plane that crashed Monday night. Mel Carnahan has a wife, Jean Carnahan; a daughter, Robyn, of St. Louis; two sons, Russ and Tom; his brother, Bob of Rolla; and two grandchildren. ing will happen." A life full of contrasts In an interview last winter, Steve Betts, another resident of Rolla, suggested that Carnahan represented one side of the town's split personality, in politics and atmosphere. "You've got college students.

You've got Fort Leonard Wood," he said. Those contrasts, rural and urban, conservative and progressive, have shaped Rolla for decades. Similar splits shaped Carnahan as well. He was born February 11, 1934, in tiny Birch Tree, in south-central Missouri, the second son of two struggling teachers who operated a farm on the side primarily to feed the family. His father, Albert Sidney Johnson Carnahan, was supposed to be named after a Confederate general (Albert Sidney Johnston), but Carnahan's grandparents got the name wrong.

His father was known by his initials: A.S.J. By the time Mel was 5, his family had moved east to Ellsinore, near Poplar Bluff. A.S.J. rose up the education ranks to become superintendent. He started a free hot lunch program because many of the students couldn't afford to bring or buy lunch.

He personally bought a truck, the governor said, to haul the available federal food commodities. The family usually boarded a couple of students at their house, because it was too far for some to commute daily between school and home. His father preached the same hands-on approach to solving problems at home. When Mel's older brother, Bob, wanted a car, he cut a deal with his father to allow the boys to raise the money by operating a milk-delivery business using milk from the family cows. "We charged 50 cents for seven quarts a week," Bob Carnahan recalls.

Seven-year-old Mel started out cleaning milk bottles, graduating as he got older to milking the cows. Bob raised enough money for the car; Mel can't remember how he spent his share. Their father, says Bob, "was a crafty old devil. He was one of the most lovable men I've ever known, but he was strict." Shortly after Bob left home for the Navy, the elder Carnahan sold the cows and switched careers. He ran for, and was elected to, Con gress.

Wife Mary and son Mel, now in the sixth grade, moved to Washington in 1945. The boy found himself in a school with 1,500 children several times the size of his old hometown. "I hated it. You had high walls. I thought it was a prison," Carnahan said.

He wasn't there long. His father lost his first re-election bid in 1946. Mel Carnahan was back in beloved Ellsinore until the middle of 10th grade, when his father won back his seat and the family was back in Washington. Tliis time, the change went better. Shortly after the family's return, 15-year-old Mel met a classmate at the local Baptist church and ended up in a seat next to hers the next day at Anacostia High School.

The girl was Jean Carpenter. "I don't know that Mel or Jean ever had a boyfriend or girlfriend other than each other," said Bob Carnahan, who lives with his wife within walking distance of the governor's farm. The brothers get together often. After high school, Mel Carnahan crammed his college years at George Washington University into three years in part to meet the -graduation recommendation of his father before Mel and Jean could get married. The couple tied the knot in 1954, the Saturday after Mel got his diploma.

A member of the Air Force ROTC in college, Carnahan joined the service after graduation and sustained his first major disappointment. He failed the physical to become a pilot. "When I doodled at school, I drew airplanes," Carnahan said. He had fainted during the blood test. Attributing it to stress or fatigue, he begged for reconsideration but was turned down.

He served his two Air Force years from mid-1954 to October 1956 at a desk, mostly with the department's Office of Special Investigation. The Korean War armistice was signed in July 1953. Because he had been inducted prior to the January 1955 deadline set by Congress, Carnahan qualified near Bamhart. See area of detail.below Continued from Al I Aides have told of being chided if he spotted an reference in a speech draft. Friends and foes who disagree on his policies found common ground on his personality: a polite, principled and disciplined man who avoided public displays of passion or pique.

"Mel's not one to gush his emotions," said former Lt. Gov. Ken TCothman of Clayton during an interview last winter. "I've never heard him utter a profanity." Carnahan's daughter, Robin, 38, a lawyer in St. Louis, acknowledged the contrasts in his charac-' ter.

"He's not a gregarious, outspoken person," said Robin last winter. "That doesn't mean that he's not competitive or passionate about things." His critics agree. "I must say, he has been effective in getting what he wants," said Sam Lee, head of Campaign Life, an anti-abortion group regularly at odds with the governor. The Legislature's override of Carnahan's veto of a bill banning some abortions last year was a rare loss for the governor, Lee said. "Objectively speaking, he uses his staff well to advance his agenda.

I just wish he wasn't governor," Lee said. Amid all the turmoil and triumphs of this second term, Carnahan also managed to fulfill a lifelong and now ironic dream: completing his certification for a pilot's license. It's hard to pigeonhole Carnahan, personally or professionally. Carnahan disliked any labels or any comparisons. "My creed is that I want government to work and I want programs that people depend on to work well," he said on a sunny Saturday as he relaxed in the family room at his Rolla farm a pot of his own pea soup simmering on the stove.

"I don't know how you can put a conservative or liberal label on -f "that," Carnahan added. "It is activist. But if you don't do that, noth MISSOURI Destination was 1 New Madrid i cAm 0F DETAIL Arnold i Site of crash nn Both 30 A I i 1 Pevtly Hillslara JjEFFERSON POSTDISPATCH.