Robert Maxfield (Max) Allison (1900–1984)

Robert Maxfield Allison—Max, as he became known, and eventually Uncle Max—was a schoolteacher/coach and a car dealer until, at the age of twenty-six, he was stricken with “sleeping sickness,” which enfeebled him for the rest of his life. Allison won disability benefits from a life insurance company in a notable order from the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1929 and devoted the rest of his life to backroom politics. He plotted and consummated the elections of U.S. Senator John Elvis Miller in 1937 and, a few months later, U.S. Representative Wilbur D. Mills, who as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee would become the most powerful man in Washington DC outside the White House.

Max Allison was born on October 17, 1900, at Alicia, a community south of Walnut Ridge in Lawrence County. His parents, William Wallace Allison and Henrietta Owens Allison, were farmers. Allison never went to college, but, like many people at the time, he passed the state teacher test and began to teach and coach at Newport (Jackson County) and at Batesville (Independence County). Apparently, he was briefly a principal. He married Wynona Arnn on December 26, 1923, in Newport. They had no children.

The illness that eventually was diagnosed as “sleeping sickness”—some form of encephalitis—began with a cold, fever, and pain in February 1925, but Allison continued to teach, thinking that he had the lingering effects of flu. At the suggestion of a physician, he took out a disability insurance policy with Home Life Insurance Company of New York. The following January, he was stricken with what was diagnosed as narcolepsy, a result probably of flu or encephalitis, and the disease disabled him from most forms of work. For the rest of his life, he would fall asleep in mid-sentence, then resurrect his composure after several minutes and finish his thoughts. Late in life, Judge John Elvis Miller, who had been Allison’s attorney in the disability litigation, liked to recall the trial with Home Life in the fierce summer heat at the courthouse at Batesville, when he calculated to put Allison on the stand in late afternoon in the steaming courtroom. When Allison fell asleep in mid-sentence and the judge was about to declare a recess, Miller asked the judge to stay in session for a few minutes. In the witness chair, Allison came to and finished his sentence, and Miller rested the plaintiff’s case. The jury came back in a few minutes with a verdict that the insurance company had to pay the disability benefits. The Arkansas Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the judgment.

Max and Wynona Allison lived in Batesville, Newport, and finally Little Rock (Pulaski County), where she held various jobs and he dabbled in real estate. The 1930 census listed the couple as “newspaper correspondents.”

Senator Joseph T. Robinson, who had started a new term, died in his apartment in Washington DC on July 14, 1937, while leading the battle by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to expand the U.S. Supreme Court by six justices. (One was to have been Senator Robinson himself.) Governor Carl E. Bailey, a political foe of Robinson who had been in office only six months, had the Democratic State Committee nominate him for the Senate  seat at a special election. Bailey’s foes in the Democratic Party, who were legion (he had been elected governor with only thirty-two percent of the vote), planned to hold a convention of independent Democrats to nominate a candidate against Bailey, but when U.S. Representative John L. McClellan of Camden (Ouachita County) pulled out, they were left without a serious candidate. The organizers concluded that it was pointless to nominate an unknown. Several leaders in Little Rock decided on a Friday to cancel the convention for the next Monday, but Allison told them to hold off and to tell delegates to come on to Little Rock.

He telephoned LeVoyn Twyford, Miller’s chief of staff, in Washington on Friday evening. Told that Miller was fishing with Senator Tydings on the senator’s houseboat, Allison told him to find Miller and have him call. Twyford found a johnboat, reached the houseboat, and awakened Miller, who went ashore and called Allison. Miller would many years later recount the conversation. “It’s gone to hell, hasn’t it?” Miller said. “No,” Allison replied, “it’s just gotten in shape for you to pick up the pieces and run yourself.” He told Miller to catch a flight to Little Rock Saturday morning. They agreed that Allison would remain silent about Miller but that he would tell the leaders to prepare for a dramatic development on Monday. Allison and a friend met Miller at the airport and took him to the alley behind the Ben McGehee Hotel and up the freight elevator to a suite on the top floor. Allison led several delegates to meet Miller at the Ben McGehee. At noon on August 9, Miller and Allison walked up the street to the Marion, and he was introduced to a roaring crowd. Miller made a fiery speech calling his old friend Bailey a traitor. “Jesus Christ had His Judas, Caesar had his Brutus, America had her Benedict Arnold, and now Arkansas has her tyrant,” Miller said. The election on October 19 produced a landslide for Miller. Then, a few months later, Allison arranged for another friend, Wilbur Mills, the county judge of White County, to be elected to Miller’s vacant House seat. In 1941, President Roosevelt appointed Miller a federal district judge for the Western District of Arkansas, a seat he held for thirty-nine years.

One of Allison’s many political disciples was Sam Boyce of Newport, a family friend. Boyce, the prosecuting attorney for the Third Circuit and a losing candidate for attorney general, planned to run for governor in 1966. He and Allison decided that a good stepping stone would be the presidency of the Young Democratic Clubs of Arkansas, then held by Governor Orval E. Faubus’s administrative assistant, John Browning. Most of the delegates to the YD convention would be Faubus supporters and vote for his candidate, young Sheffield Nelson, the executive assistant to W. R. “Witt” Stephens, president of Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company, known as Arkla. (Nelson eventually would become president of Arkla and run two losing races for governor, against Bill Clinton in 1990 and Jim Guy Tucker in 1994.)

Boyce quickly sought to organize new YD clubs around the state—mostly law school associates—but by the convention it seemed futile. The old guard controlled the credentials committee, which probably would not seat the new Boyce delegates. Allison had a solution for his friend, which he consummated with the help of James D. (Jim) McDougal, an aide to Senator J. William Fulbright (and, thirty years later, the central figure in the Whitewater national uproar). Nelson, the outgoing YD president, and others were in the hospitality suite on the third floor of the Marion, waiting to enter the convention hall in the Marion ballroom at 1:30 p.m., the appointed time for the convention to open. Allison, who was a familiar figure in the hotel lobby and the nearby courthouse, situated himself in a chair near the elevator and pretended to be asleep when Nelson and the others entered the elevator to go down to the ballroom to open the convention. Allison, with a dime-store walkie-talkie, sent the signal to have the power to the elevator cut off, trapping the men between floors for several minutes while McDougal opened the convention, seated all the delegates, and prepared to elect Boyce by acclamation. Most of the other delegates lingered nearby waiting for Nelson and the leaders, who would claim that they were delayed by a “slow” elevator. They then assembled separately and elected Nelson. However, the national YD organization recognized Boyce as the Arkansas leader a few months later. He ran for governor in 1966 in the Democratic primaries, which were won by Supreme Court Justice James D. “Justice Jim” Johnson, who then lost to Winthrop Rockefeller in the general election.

Allison’s other political protégés in the Arkansas General Assembly, like David H. Pryor and Jim Brandon, were called the “Young Turks.” Others in his orbit included Ray H. Thornton Jr., Pulaski County Judge Roger C. Mears Jr., Deputy Attorney General Roger A. Glasgow, and Representative Virgil J. Butler of Batesville. All of them embraced Allison’s passion: the need for a new state constitution to replace the 1874 charter that was designed to hamstring government after the ordeal (for white men) of Reconstruction. But voters twice, in 1970 and 1980, defeated new charters that Allison had worked hard but quietly to produce.

Allison died on October 11, 1984. He is buried in Oaklawn Cemetery in Batesville.

For additional information:
“Boyce Faction Recognized; Nelson Forgoes Challenge.” Arkansas Gazette, October 16, 1965, p. 1A

Dumas, Ernest. “Arkansas 1937: An Old Political Adage Proves True.” Arkansas Gazette, December 27, 1970, p 4D.

———. “Arkansas 1937: John E. Miller Sweeps on to Victory.” Arkansas Gazette, January 3, 1971, p. 4E.

———. “Boyce and Nelson Both Are Elected as YDC President.” Arkansas Gazette, May 9, 1965, pp. 1A, 2A.

———. “YDC Opens Meeting with a Fizzle.” Arkansas Gazette, May 8, 1965, p. 3A.

Glasgow, Roger. Down and Dirty Down South. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2016.

“Insurance Company Liable.” Arkansas Gazette, February 26, 1929, p. 8.

“John E. Miller Chosen Nominee to Oppose Bailey.” Arkansas Gazette, August 10, 1937, pp. 1, 6.

“Sam Boyce Faction Gets YDC Records.” Arkansas Gazette, May 16, 1965, p. 4A.

“Strategist in State Politics for 4 Decades Dies at 83; Was Behind-Scenes Influence.” Arkansas Gazette, October 12, 1984, p. 15A.

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas