THE REAL ORIGINAL MAVERICK
Taking Back a Family Name
It didn't bother us when Ford Motor Company used the Maverick family name for their new car. We didn't care that Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun was named Maverick, and we were amused when Madonna used our name for her record label. It is part of the American vernacular. But when McCain and the media placed it in a political context, using the maverick label as the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, each and every member of this family was appalled. We continue to be.
Fontaine Maverick
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This is by far my favorite photo ever taken. The little guys (baby javalinas) are named Anthony and Cleopatra. He picked them up on a trip to Mexico. |
The original maverick was Maury Maverick, the grandson of Samuel Maverick, from whom the name Maverick first entered the American lexicon. Because Samuel never branded his herds, unmarked cattle became known as mavericks.
While the family name is an old one, Maury was a radical politician from San Antonio, Texas, who who served two terms in Congress (1935-1939). There, he led a bloc of progressive Democrats who supported Roosevelt and the New Deal and even sought to push them to the left. In 1935 the Washington Herald labeled this posse of liberals “The Mavericks.”
Maury Maverick and his namesake, Maury Maverick Jr., champions of the common man, peace, and conservation, embodied what the word came to represent.
Michael King in the Austin Chronicle wrote, "The late Maury Maverick Jr. was a friend of mine ... and, like all the Mavericks before him (especially his legendary father, who once faced down a right-wing lynch mob), was a truly independent thinker and politician who regularly defied entrenched corporate and political power, including his own Texas Democratic Party, in defense of minority rights, workers rights, anti-war activism, and the whole panoply of human rights."
More on the extraordinary Maury Maverick, including his tale about how his grandfather's cattle came to be unbranded, can be found in his own words in the online version of his 1937 autobiography, A Maverick American.
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This was him posing as an "undercover" hobo during the depression. He actually rode the rails so that he could see what was really going on in the camps.
Some of the other hoboes were suspicious...he was too well fed. |
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There are a number of differences between McCain and my grandfather and my uncle. One that comes to mind is cynicism - this move to get Sary on the ticket is purely political cynicism. There was not a cynical bone in my grandfather's body. He would be appalled at giving away good governance to curry favor with the radical religious right. |
As supporters of the Democratic candidate Barack Obama, whose values are much closer to their family tradition, members of the Texas family oppose the co-opting of their name to promote the current Republican Presidential ticket.
Maury Maverick's granddaughter Fontaine, had this to say: I just got a call from my brother, Maury Maverick, who said that if he hears that John McCain is a Maverick ONE MORE TIME, he is going to shoot the tv. Well, my brother doesn't even own a gun, but I know exactly how he feels. Every time we hear that use of our name, it is like fingernails on a blackboard times ten....
Maury Maverick was part of FDR's New Deal administration, which came into power in 1932 in time to literally save this country from the Great Depression with bold innovations and bold moves. John McCain has voted with Bush administration 90 percent of the time. It is this administration, and these Republicans, who are mostly responsible for bringing this country to it's knees with its foreign policy and it's economic policy. McCain is the antithesis of what we need to pull us out of this terrible situation.