THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER

HOMER?!" A distinguished Democrat could hardly believe the news that Lyndon Johnson had nominated his friend of two decades, William Homer Thornberry, 59, to the Supreme Court. Equally incredulous was a clutch of conservative Republicans, who saw the nomination as a political payoff to an old crony whose judicial credentials fall somewhat short of the standards demanded by the nation's highest court.

Old crony he certainly is; yet this assessment could prove to be unfair. A protege of Sam Rayburn's, the late Speaker of the House, and of Johnson's, Thornberry had an indifferent record during his first years in Congress, but eventually established himself as a man of moderately liberal views, responsive to the needs of an urban America. In 41 years on the bench, most recently as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (covering most of the Deep South and the Panama Canal Zone), he consistently fought segregation.

COSTLY POST

Born in Austin to deaf-mute parents, Thornberry used sign language until he was three, when he first learned to talk. When he was an infant, William and Mary Thornberry slept in shifts so that one could always keep a vigil beside his cradle, since neither could hear Homer's cries. The family was so poor that when William, a carpenter built a home, the windows were boarded with wood for two years until he could scrape together money for windowpanes

Attracted to politics at 14, when he served as a page in the Texas legislature Homer worked his way through the University of Texas Law School as a deputy sheriff. He was elected to the state legislature in 1936, later became Travis County district attorney. After a 3 1/2-year wartime stint in Naval intelligence, during which he rose to lieutenant commander, Thornberry opened his own law practice, served on the Austin city council and as mayor pro tem. The nonpaying city post wound up costing him money, for Homer's law clients expected him to fix such things as $1 parking tickets, and rather than lose the clients, he paid the fines himself. It was as a city councilman in 1941 that Thornberry first showed his clear commitment to civil rights by fighting to keep two new subdivisions at the edge of Austin from becoming parts of the city unless they dropped clauses barring Jews from living there. Though there was scant political profit in his position, Thornberry helped persuade both to drop the clauses.

DOMINO THEORY

After Lyndon Johnson won his famed 87-vote "landslide" election to the US Senate in 1948, Thornberry succeeded him in the House, thus became "my Congressman' to L.B.J. When Johnson was recuperating from his massive 1955 heart attack, Homer often stopped by to play dominoes; and the President recalled, ten years later: "He let me win every game, and now he is on the Circuit Court." He was with Johnson in Los Angeles during the 1960 fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, and when L.B.J. was offered the vice-presidency by John F. Kennedy, Thornberry was one of the first friends he called for advice. "What do you think I should say?" asked Johnson. Why Lyndon," replied Homer, "I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. Minutes later, Thornberry reconsidered, phoned Johnson back. "Lyndon, said "I was wrong. You ought to take the vice-presidency." Three years later he was at Johnson's side in Parkland Memorial Hospital when Kennedy was pronounced dead. The new President turned to Thornberry, declared gravely: "This is a time for prayer if there ever was one, Homer."

Though Thornberry voted against civil rights bills in 1956 and 1957, after Johnson became Vice President, his record grew notably liberal. In the House, he supported John F. Kennedy on 95% of all legislation in 1961 and, as a member of the conservative Rules Committee, helped spring many important Administration measures. Honoring a promise to Rayburn, Kennedy repaid that loyalty in 1963 with a judgeship in the Western Texas Federal District Court. Two years later, Johnson elevated Thornberry to the Circuit Court and had him sworn in on the front porch of the L.B.J. ranch.

Though his stature as a jurist hardly matches that of such colleagues on the Circuit Court as Albert Parr Tuttle and John Minor Wisdom, Thornberry took generally progressive stands on civil rights and free-speech cases. In 1966, he wrote the decision that struck down Texas' poll tax. Last year he sided with an 8-to-4 majority that ordered Southern schools to speed school desegregation. This year he overturned a local Louisiana ordinance restricting picketing with the words: "In an open society there must be the ability to advocate views in the hope of changing existing preconceptions or convictions."

"THAT DEAR MAN!"

Thornberry got the news of his appointment in the midst of a dinner party in Austin, when Johnson phoned him. "Homer," said the President am going to nominate you for the Supreme Court." Replied the overwhelmed Thornberry: "I hope I can deserve this confidence." Homer's wife Eloise was more down to earth. Said she of the President: "That dear man!"

In the view of critics, Johnson was being much too dear. To them the cherubic looking Thornberry, with his wavy white hair, his twinkling blue eyes a his backslapping "How-yew-all? manner, would be better cast as a rural justice of the peace than as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. But the court often has a way of bringing out the most in a man, and Homer's odyssey could well end in triumph.

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