“… they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.” Hebrews‬ ‭11‬:‭13‬‬ ‭(KJV‬‬).

I took my seat in the Kentucky State Senate in January 1991. I was thirty-nine. I had won the election by two votes. That is just a teaser for another story on another day.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was powerless. I was one of seven Republicans in the Senate. Thirty-one Democrats ran the show. Republicans never mattered. Indeed, when I was elected in 1990, there had never been a Republican- sponsored bill passed in the history of the state of Kentucky. That sounds absurd, but believe me, it was true. Never.

The President of the Senate in 1991 was the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, a nice man named Brereton Jones. He was a horseman and stayed busy running for Governor that year. He won in a landslide, as expected, since Kentucky had only had one Republican governor in history. He was kind and cordial to everyone, even me. But he was also part of the majority that kept Senate Republicans powerless.

By the 1992 session of the Legislature, Jones was the Governor. And for me, I was realizing the powerless condition of being a Senator who was ignored by the majority. All the pro-life bills that mattered to me (and many more on other subjects) were killed in Committee. Literally. It was frustrating for sure.

Governor Jones was, in some ways, the essence of a Kentuckian, a horseman of good reputation. He had been a young Republican legislator in West Virginia once upon a time. But he was ambitious, and noticed that ONLY Democrats get elected Governor in Kentucky, so when he moved to the Bluegrass State, he flip-flopped. I didn’t hold that against him.

He never met my father, Ford Philpot, but they are connected in a story that only God could orchestrate. When Gov. Jones went to his heavenly reward last year, in 2023, I remembered this rather remarkable story.

The 1992 session in the Kentucky legislature was a battleground. Three ‘pro-life’ bills passed in the House by overwhelming margins (even in an environment of over 70 Democrats and under 30 Republicans). All three bills were more common sense than “Pro-Life”. Roe v Wade put obvious limits on what bills could be passed, but things like “parental consent” and hygiene regulations on “abortion clinics” made it is easy for “conservative” Democrats to go along, especially when they all knew that once the bills got to the Senate, the Democratic Judiciary Committee chairman would “kill” the bills and never allow a Vote. As a minority member of the Judiciary Committee, my head exploded, and indeed, I even filed a Lawsuit to challenge the constitutional right of a Committee Chairman to refuse to consider Bills. Again, another story for another day.

Needless to say, I said some partisan and ugly things about Democrats in general, and our Governor took offense, as would be expected. He was, in theory, a conservative and called himself ‘pro-life’, but he allowed the bills to be killed in the committee. I was loud in my protests. When I sued the Senate for the release of the bills from committee, even my fellow Republicans thought I had lost my mind. My wife too, to be honest.

Each year, there was a “Governor’s Prayer Breakfast” planned by a committee of local pastors and religious leaders at the Governor’s Mansion. It was always expected that the Governor would appear and speak for five minutes. Some pastor or other person would share a brief message and prayer for the Commonwealth. Well, someone on this committee decided to invite my father, a well-known preacher and now the father of a Senator, to be the speaker. And he accepted. Oh boy, I thought. My dad was really not even aware that the Governor and I were somewhat estranged. He was unaware that 80% of the state Senate thinks his son is a nut-case. I feared that he might say something stupid. Plus, the speaker was supposed to take 12 minutes max, and Dad was a fiery preacher who was just getting warmed up at 12 minutes.

But then, the Lord Himself probably intervened. I say ‘probably’ because the ways of God are far beyond me. In late February, my dad had a heart attack. He was in the hospital, expected to recover, but not able to go to the Governor’s mansion on March 3, 1992. I called the organizer to explain. He immediately said, “Then you will have to speak", not knowing that my speaking would be awkward for both me and the Governor. Oh boy. Now what?

Well, I woke up that morning with a simple message. Something like this.

“We all love My Old Kentucky Home.” I started in. I sang a few bars of My Old Kentucky Home, which brought some smiles and grimaces since I am not much of a singer. I told the story of how my mom and dad met in 1939 at Renfro Valley, a famous country music place just off I-75 in Rockcastle County. The founder was John Lair. My mom was his secretary. My dad was a 22-year-old hillbilly from Clay County who ran the restaurant. I told a couple of funny stories that I had heard from my preacher father too many times. I basically told a short version of his testimony- how Jesus, with a lot of help from my mother, saved him from alcoholism at age thirty and turned him into a preacher.

And then the punchline. “We all love Kentucky, but Kentucky is not my home. Heaven is my home.” It took just two minutes to share with the crowd of politicians that I was a sinner and needed a Savior in 1970. They had already figured out the sinner part. I asked for forgiveness and shared that thanks to Jesus, I was on my way to heaven. We are just “pilgrims passing through”, as we are told in Hebrews 11. Kentucky is not my home.

When it was over, the Governor and I shook hands, and while no one said “Sorry”, it was silently understood that from this moment forward, we would try to follow Jesus, not our political parties. Not easy to do.

It was about a week later when my father took a bad turn and was back in the hospital. He died in the middle of the night on Monday, March 9, 1992. The funeral visitation was a long and winding line later that week- about an hour wait to get to the casket, where I stood with my mother and brother. The line was out into a hallway where we could not see who was waiting. At some point, I looked up and saw Governor Jones. He was standing in line with everyone else. He had not used his position to push to the front. He stood in line quietly. When he finally arrived, I introduced him to my mother, and we hugged. We knew we would be friends forever. Political differences were not worth estrangement.

Helicopter which crashed with Governor Jones onboard

A few months passed. The chaos of the legislative session had ended in late March. It was now August 7, 1992, when the news hit that the Governor’s helicopter had crashed. Everyone on board miraculously survived. In a later documentary, Gov. Jones related his panic-stricken conversation with the state trooper assigned to him that day, “I said, Danny, let’s hold hands and let’s pray because there’s only one way out of this. I think that crash came so I could really put my focus where it ought to be, and that is on the most important things in life.”

Click the link for a news story about the crash. https://search.app/WxK kE7sVThLYm89u5/

Governor Jones left politics in 1995 at the end of his term. I left as well in 1998. He went back to his horse farm. I went off to be full-time President of CBMC, and later family court judge. I honestly am not sure I ever saw him again after our 1992 connection, which in some ways saved us both. We both found Jesus in new fresh ways. We both knew politics was a dead end road.

Still is, by the way.