From the TDN Weekend: The Youngest of Old Masters

[Wandering Eyes]

If there is somebody up there who has granted Ted Bassett long life, then it’s not hard to see why. Because who would want the competition? As a friend remarked, after hearing the 96-year-old’s husky, beautifully measured voiceover for a recent Keeneland promotional video: “What a voice! It’s like listening to God.”

Entering his office and seeing James E. Bassett III rise behind his desk, your instincts are more temporal: you want to click your heels and snap into a salute. For as upright as he remains, in his imposing build, the word applies still more forcibly to the integrity he exudes.

The handshake duly holds you as firmly as those keen, unwavering eyes. Here, plainly, is a man you could turn to, any time you needed a little extra steel-either to do a job right or, because he considers this much the same thing, to do the right thing. After so many decades in the service of his country, his state, his sport, Bassett’s counsel must be as seasoned as any in the land.

Sure enough, the telephone call he had to conclude while you were waiting-as he explains, purely in apology-had come from a certain candidate for high public office. Just seeking a little advice, before meeting with an influential newspaper publisher. Bassett can trust you with their names, because he knows you’ll want to prove worthy of the confidence. And that, right there, is a sample of his leadership style.

If only every aspirant to power and responsibility could have such a man in his or her corner; could absorb the precepts of leadership he learned in the Marine Corps, and applied to earn a Purple Heart and Presidential Unit Citation in the Pacific War. In each of the three main challenges he subsequently embraced-with the Kentucky State Police, here at Keeneland, and with the Breeders’ Cup-that grounding proved crucial.

So how would he condense that grounding?

“Take-care-of-your-men!” Each growled syllable accompanied by a fist on the table. “What that meant, in the Marine Corps, was this,” Bassett expands. “They were fed first. They dug their holes first. Before you dug a hole, your men dug in, and you fed them. Because their welfare is absolutely essential to your survival. You take care of the men, they take care of you.

“It wasn’t necessarily just fighting the Japanese. The idea that they come first is essential to the overall success of the platoon, of the company. And you can transfer that into any organisation. Because you can’t ever do it all on your own. Even if you are a surgeon, you need somebody handing you the instruments. You can stand alone, on purpose and principle. But in achieving an objective, you can’t.”

That, he felt, was the desperate thing about Vietnam: the disintegration of morale, of the kind of comradeship that sustained him and his men on Okinawa. As his country entered that trauma, however, Bassett found himself in another kind of front line. In 1963 he was appointed Director of the Kentucky State Police, at a time when the social rupture that would be widened by Vietnam was already bloodily dividing law enforcement and the civil rights movement.

Arriving as an outsider, Bassett’s status as a decorated Marine gave him half a chance-albeit only half a chance. “If I’d just been some Yale graduate going in there, I’d have been chewed up,” he admits. The fact remained that he was a Yale graduate, and hardly welcomed with open arms. His solution was to get out there among his men. In barely a month, he visited each and every single state police precinct, to ask and to listen.

“Racial discord, the school bus, housing: things that interjected police into situations they generally hadn’t been trained for,” he muses. “The image of law enforcement was pretty near rock bottom. So the question was: what can we do, to change the image from foe to friend? What can we do to make people feel that he’s a partner with us in the community?”

At each post, Bassett ended his presentation by asking the men if they had questions or comments. Silence. But what could he expect? The sergeants and officers were all sitting there, too. So he picked men out at random: “You. And you. And you. And you. I want to speak with you afterwards.”

Taking them aside, he said, “Now listen. I want to know what’s on your mind. Forget that canned speech I gave you. What would you do if you were me? If we want to make this thing better, together, I need to hear what the men are saying. What’s the number one issue? Is it money? Is it time? Is it retirement? Is it the uniform? Is it the car? But-tell -me-what-is-on-your-goddamn-mind!?”

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