Skip to main content

Cy King's Legacy

Jo and I were largely absent from the recent celebrations of Cy King's life and legacy because of travel and family commitments. However, I've kept my ear to the ground and tuned in whenever possible. One of Cy's most endearing features was his willingness to seek common ground with just about anybody if there appeared to be a chance of working for the common good. His outreach toward the President of Mt. Olive Pickle Company was a case in point. His interest in the welfare of workers at the Tar Heel NC plant of Smithfield Foods was another. It wouldn't be appropriate to say that Cy would have sought an alliance with the Devil, but Cy avoided calling anyone a "devil" if he thought he could find some good in them.

As far as I know, the last recorded interview anyone did with Cy was the 70-minute interview I recorded in his apartment on January 8, 2013. His health was beginning to wain by then, but his mind was sharp. And he had no reluctance to comment bluntly on a variety of topics. (He was never one to cover up his own perceived shortcomings or the blemishes in our church.)

When folks would pour unbridled praise on Cy, he would sometimes deflect the accolades by referring to "mistakes" he had made. I interpreted these references to be acknowledgement on Cy's part that many problems were of sufficient complexity to defy simple solutions proposed by signs displayed on street corners or in public demonstrations. But Cy persevered nevertheless because he knew that somebody had to keep these issues in the public eye.

Cy's work with Mt. Olive Pickle Co. and with Smithfield Foods was brought to mind by Ross Douthat's column Sunday in the NY Times about Hobby Lobby and the dilemma it poses for liberals. Hobby Lobby is a model company in about every way that Cy advocated. But Hobby Lobby clashes with the position that most liberals have taken in the current culture wars. While most liberals are now demonizing Hobby Lobby for the symbol it has become, I think Cy would have a more nuanced view of the situation. Hobby Lobby is in most respects a poster child for the kind of company that Cy advocated, i.e. a company with a conscience that treats its workers very well. The fly in the ointment is that their conscience doesn't match up perfectly with current liberal orthodoxy. And no matter how one comes down on this conflict, it's a conflict that pits the power and authority of government against fundamental concepts of religious freedom. No easy answers. Cy was good at living in a world with no easy answers. He was happy to share his opinion and then listen politely to someone whose opinion was 180 degrees opposite to his. When I brought my friend and neighbor Barb Walsh to speak at the Sunday Forum several years ago, I feared I was throwing Barb into a lion's den. Barb's topic was to explain to the Forum crowd why she had led the effort to defeat a certain Democrat from Cary serving on the Wake County School Board. Cy, who was self-defined as a yellow-dog Democrat, listened to Barb courteously and at the end of the Forum session graciously commented, "What Wake County needs is more people like Barb Walsh." Cy represents a vanishing breed in today's climate of polarization. May he rest in peace and may we all benefit from his memory and legacy.