Nevada Focus: Clay Jenkinson never set out to become Jefferson expert

RENO, Nev. -- Clay Jenkinson never intended to become one of the nation's premier experts on Thomas Jefferson, much less the leading portrayer of the third president.

"About once a month, when I'm really tired, I think, 'Why am I dressing up like a dead guy? What goofy thing happened here?"' he says.

The "why" is answered each time he reads a letter of Jefferson's or some of his other writings.

"Whenever I get tired of Jefferson, I fall in love with him all over again by just looking at the incredible dignity of Jefferson's soul. Here's Jefferson who, on every possible subject, says, 'What would a just, what would a reasonable, what would an intelligent approach to this question be?' And he always found one."

It's a love affair that evolved during a courtship that started with the conscription of an unwilling humanities scholar to portray Jefferson nearly a quarter century ago.

Now, he speaks from the studios at KUNR-FM on the University of Nevada, Reno campus through 30 other radio stations nationwide to discourse on both historic and current events from the perspective of the shy Virginian.

Jenkinson first donned the wig and breeches in 1976 at a Chautauqua in his home state of North Dakota in which the performers strove for historical accuracy in addition to theatrical performances like that popularized by Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain.

"I never would have chosen Jefferson. I had no interest in Jefferson. I'm actually a 17th Century literature scholar by training. I sort of refused to take it seriously," Jenkinson said. "I became a backdoor Jefferson scholar."

The Chautauqua format required research to produce a historical figure who could deliver an unscripted monologue in character and join in an unscripted dialogue in character and then break character to answer questions as a scholar. It's the pattern Jenkinson uses today on his radio program.

By 1984, the romance between the two men of letters had warmed up as Jenkinson found in Jefferson the perfect humanities vehicle.

"Unlike other figures in history, he can really talk about everything. Every other figure occupies a smaller space in the spectrum."

The challenge to Jenkinson then was to absorb as much of that knowledge as he could from a man who worked off stress by writing letters - some 22,000 are known to exist - but whose private life remained unequivocally shrouded.

Correspondence with his wife was burned. Correspondence with his mother was burned. And if a word ever was written about the currently trendy question of whether he fathered any children with his slave Sally Hemings, there certainly is no record. Jenkinson has no doubt that he did.

It's the racial paradox that gives Jenkinson the greatest uneasiness about his in-character portrayals.

Despite his admiration of Jefferson, Jenkinson readily admits that the president failed on the issue of race. The man who wrote "All men are created equal" owned 200 slaves and deemed them inferior to whites.

So he squirms when he portrays that side of a man on a public radio station in a tourist town where somebody surfing the dial is likely to be hearing him for the first time.

"It may sound like we're promoting racist trash on KUNR," he said.

"It's so volatile and Jefferson is so weak on that issue that, in a sense, it has a way of vetoing his other greatnesses. I really worry about that side of the Jefferson persona, but you have to portray him honestly.

"I want the audience to hear me squirming so they know, 'well, this guy isn't saying this glibly; he's not just endorsing these views."'

In the Q&A portion of his Chautauqua performances as well as the call-in feature of his radio program, Jenkinson has no time to fudge his answers. He has to have a ready reply and, usually, a Jefferson quote to reinforce it.

"If I were trying to be a competent Louis L'Amour or a competent Grover Cleveland, this would not be quite the challenge, but Jefferson knew something about everything, so I also have to know something about everything.

"I have to know enough about wine and enough about architecture and enough about paleontology and enough about archaeology and enough about library classification to get into a fairly serious discussion with anyone on these subjects.

"I haven't been stumped for six or seven years. I have sort of mastered Jefferson within limits."

He gestures toward a tattered copy of "The Jefferson Cyclopedia," a 2-inch-thick compendium of Jeffersonianisms, and regrets that he can't quote more of them. His goal this year is to commit five more to memory each day.

Another goal is to increase his radio audience to at least 50 stations and hopefully to hit the 100 plateau to begin the millennium with a truly national audience.

Even after the inception of the radio program, Jenkinson was reluctant to consider himself a Jefferson expert. That changed when he got the call from award-winning documentary producer Ken Burns to be both a consultant and a talking head on Burns' three-hour special on Jefferson that aired two years ago on PBS.

"When Ken Burns put me in his film on Jefferson, I said, 'Well, I guess I've sort of become a serious Jefferson scholar,"' Jenkinson said.

His book, "The Paradox of Thomas Jefferson," is due out this year.

While he enjoys public performances as Jefferson - His audiences have ranged from school children to the Clintons - radio remains his favorite forum.

"I just close my eyes and meditate my answers and the magic of radio - someone out there is actually envisioning his or her Jefferson. There's a dynamism to his character that people really turn onto in different ways. If I could work it out, I would do nothing but radio because radio involves the imagination in a way that no other form does."

While Jefferson's words - enriched by his penchant for reading the classics in their original Latin or Greek - are perhaps as rich and perfect as those of any American writer, Jenkinson's phrases are effortlessly precise as well.

So convincing is he as Jefferson that people occasionally call up Jenkinson to bawl him out for occasionally criticizing the president.

"How dare you attack Mr. Jefferson - I'm sure he's an honorable man," one said.

Jenkinson's fondest hope would be that, through him, people could virtually turn to Jefferson for sage advice two centuries after he became the third president.

"There's a wonderful feeling of confidence in being Jefferson because I know always that he has the answer.

"We're in such a time of such vacuum of real authority. The church is no longer a real authority. Government certainly is no longer a real authority. What is? Oprah? People are looking for authority. They're looking for clarification of their lives by somebody that they can trust. Within limits, Thomas Jefferson is a perfect trust figure. It's like Walter Cronkite squared. He knows the answer to every question.

"My dream has been to knock Rush Limbaugh out of the water. I think America would be Jefferson's country if every morning 20 million people tuned in to hear Jefferson's pronouncements on the Senate proceedings, Jefferson's pronouncements on the Packers game, Jefferson's pronouncements on the women's movement. Jefferson, I think - rightly interpreted - could be an enormous lens through which we could find clarification."

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