In Part II of Tina Zakowsky’s
interview with retired livestock transporter John Finn, she learns about a very
unique set of Angus cows John transported to Georgia from Alberta, and how he
unknowingly helped contribute to the downfall of a United States President.
Tina: Now you
also mentioned something to me about the Carter administration. Could you tell
me more about that?
John: There were
300 head of bred Angus cows sold by the Stampede Cattle Station to the first
Vice-President of the Calhoun First National Bank of Georgia. A guy named Billy
Lee Campbell bought them. My first load going down of 38 head, I get to the
Stampede Cattle Station and Jim Mowbray is there, and while we were sorting out
cattle I spot this one cow and I say to Jim, “That cow looks like she’s
springing. When’s she due to calve?” And Jim goes, “Hopefully not until you get
to Georgia.” She and one other cow looked close to calving, so I put them both
near the back. We get on the Trans-Canada heading east to Winnipeg before
turning down towards the border at Minnesota. Well I stop and check in on the
cows in Brandon and everything’s normal. I check in Winnipeg, and I got a calf
on the ground.
By the time I get to the border, I have papers showing I
have 38 head of registered Black Angus cows, health and animals papers for 38
cows, and a trailer showing 38 cows and a calf. When the vet comes over to
check everything out I have to get the calf, help weigh it so we can figure out
how much duty it’s going to cost—I think it was something like 4 cents
per pound at the time because she had no papers and so was therefore seen as a
commercial animal—and fill out all the necessary US health and animal
papers. Once that’s all done, the vet looks at me and says “Don’t you ever
arrive here at customs with a calf born en route.” I say I know, and that if I
knew this calf was going to be born so quickly I wouldn’t have loaded it in the
first place.
But the vet shook his head. “No, no, you don’t understand.
If this ever happens again, you pull up
in front of customs, you walk in and you say ‘I got 38 cows on board,
give me the papers,’ and you walk outside to check the cows then you walk back
in and say, ‘while I was parked here in front of customs, on American soil, a
calf was born.’ There’s no duty, no health and animal papers, no nothing.”
So that was my first load going down, and I do have a
picture of the calf somewhere…
So we are now at the border of Minnesota and I got a newborn
calf. I let it have a good first drink from the cow, but then I took the calf
up in the cab of the truck with me. After that every once in a while I’d stop,
let the calf and the cow out, then load them back up again. After we got down
to Kentucky I left the calf in with the mother and just one other cow I thought
she’d be safe with. I took a photo of the calf somewhere in Wisconsin, sometime
around the second stop.
Well after that, every trip down there I had to check on
that calf. Something like that gives you a personal connection, you know?
So these cows were going down to some Billy Lee Campbell’s
place, eight loads all together. When I delivered them I thought I would never
hear about these cattle, or Calhoun, Georgia, or Billy Lee Campbell ever again.
Well a few years later in 1977—I think it was September—I
was getting on an airplane and the flight attendant comes over and gives me a Newsweek magazine. As I’m thumbing
through it I notice there’s this big scandal in the U.S. about Bert Lance, the
Director of the Office of Management and Budgets for the Jimmy Carter
administration, being investigated. I’d sort of heard a little bit about it on
the news prior to this, but not much. I remember reading this story and all of
a sudden here’s Billy Lee Campbell being investigated for embezzling almost a
million dollars to buy purebred Angus cattle from Canada, and over 1,500 cattle
in total for his farm. So now it’s got my attention.
As it turned out,
Burt Lance was the chairman of the board of the corporation that owned the
Calhoun First National Bank of Georgia, and when Campbell was charged with
embezzlement, he said, “I’m not going down alone” and started naming names. He told
everyone about the corruption all through the Georgia banking system and Jimmy
Carter’s supporters started calling for Burt Lance to step down. That scandal
basically led to the Carter administration going on a downward spiral, and
Jimmy Carter was the first president in a long time that was not re-elected for
a second term.
So there. Canadian Angus were responsible for bringing down
Jimmy Carter’s administration.
Tina: There’s the
headline.
John: Yep,
there’s the headline. I’m pretty sure it was a Newsweek article from either
September 11th or the 17th, somewhere in there.
Tina: Now tell
me, did they name that calf after you?
John: (laughing) I’m not sure, but it was a
heifer calf so I sure hope they didn’t.
 |
| John Finn's Calf born en route to Georgia |
Post by Kiani Evans
Feedback: cdnangus@cdnangus.ca
