Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [16]
After enrolling at Harding College, where his brother Jerry taught, Ken Starr stood out as a serious, cheerful, smart, gregarious, free-thinking student. Lou Butterfield bunked with Starr during freshman year and remained a friend for life. As Butterfield told reporters years later, his thin roommate from Texas “had the manners of a country gentleman when he was eighteen years old.” In terms of dress and physical appearance, Starr resembled many of his male counterparts at Harding of that era. “He didn’t have long hair. It wasn’t over his ears,” recalled Butterfield, who later returned to Harding as a communications professor. Although beefy sideburns were in vogue in the 1960s, “neither of us had long sideburns. He was fairly conservative. I don’t know what else to say about that.”
Starr joined Lambda Sigma, an alternative to fraternities and sororities at Harding, and played flag football and basketball. “He was not an outstanding athlete. But few of us were,” chuckled Butterfield. During sophomore year, Ken was chosen “club beau” for the Delta Chi Omega girls’ club, a “huge honor on campus.” The person selected was “someone [the young women] thought would have a good attitude, represent their club well,” attending all their big functions with them, including “their banquets and their hayrides.”
Harding was initially a good fit for Starr, incorporating many of the building blocks that came to define his adult life. His freshman yearbook included a prominent picture of Harding’s president pointing to a pyramid that had written at its foundation, FUNDAMENTAL BELIEF IN GOD. Above that was situated a block that represented THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, and atop that a smaller block, THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE: OUR FREEDOM, with an American flag flying at the pinnacle.
As Butterfield would explain the significance of religion in Ken Starr’s daily existence, it was always a matter of “choice” for him: “In my life, I have never heard Ken swear. Not one bad word. And some people go, ‘Well, he’s a prude.’ That just wasn’t it. Obviously, he didn’t smoke or drink or any of those things. A good time on Friday night was not going to Little Rock and getting drunk.”
Starr busied himself with a host of other activities. His older brother, Jerry, preached for the Friendship Church of Christ thirty miles away. Ken liked to assist; he would “wait on the Lord’s table and pray, lead sing and that kind of stuff,” recalled Butterfield.
As a reporter-editor for the student newspaper, Starr wrote regular columns under the breezy heading “Starr Dust.” In one column, he reminded fellow students to live by the Golden Rule, admonishing: “Record players blaring at full volume or serenading fellow students with strains of Beatle songs at 1:00 A.M. are examples of our inconsideration for others.”
Above all, Ken Starr was known for his scrupulous honesty. In the summers, he earned money to pay tuition by selling Bibles for the Southwestern Company, working alongside Lou Butterfield, who was the company’s field manager. Together they drove around the Midwest, principally in rural areas of Ohio, selling family Bibles, Bible concordances, Bible dictionaries, and Bible storybooks. Recalled Butterfield: “Country selling was nice back then. Because people didn’t have a lot of salesmen knock on their door. And we didn’t do any of the lying. We didn’t go up and say, ‘I’m taking a survey.’” Folks in rural areas considered it good manners to invite guests in. Starr thrived on this work. Rather than rushing from house to house, he spent time visiting each family, just because he enjoyed people. Frequently, he sold Bibles to eighteen out of twenty families on whose doors he knocked, generating three hundred or four hundred dollars in profit a week, astronomical at the time. “Ken was very good,” Butterfield would recall. “He was so personable and so likable.