Frank Wheat

Full Disclosure: I am one of the activists in this book. Of course I like it. I knew he wanted to do the book... it has a humdinger of a cliff to fall off in real life, and he captured it in style. The miracle is also that Frank was able to finish the book, so the title fits in many ways. Frank organized the book around the higher profile leaders of the campaign, as Chapters. He covers most of the leaders of the campaign for the CDPA (California Desert Protection Act). His interview with me was brief, and he was ill at the time, so he doesn't have as much detail on me as some of the others. What I learned from reading the book myself was how active Frank himself was. He described his numerous solo visits to Washington DC to meet with friends and fellow attorneys. You don't have to remind a retired attorney to be careful of facts, and I trust his chronicle as far as it goes and as far as I know. Another activist mentioned in the book told me once that if I knew everything that was going on, that there wasn't enough happening. Well I didn't know what Frank was doing... he modestly refrained from identifying himself as the "and friends." It reminds one of how a the "loss of a nail" can actually make or topple a plan that was 15 years in the making. Frank's visits to WDC were not just Desert centered. He maintained friendships from the days when he wrote "The Wheat Report." for the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1968. They returned the courtesy by attending his funeral barely a week after a day he spent signing his newly published book. We owe him for documenting the years of struggle.… (més)