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Living with Bill Knowland may be like living with a whirlwind but, as their son Joe, an Oakland Tribune deskman, remarks: "Mother knows how to handle him." She handles by helping. In his earliest California campaigns she worked night after night addressing campaign literature and copyreading speeches. When Bill went into the Army, Helen took over his job, but not his title, assisting J.R. at the Tribune. Bill rarely spares more than 15 minutes apiece for visiting California constituents (he eases them out of the office by rising, walking to his window, remarking on the beauty of the view and, when they come to admire, shaking hands in farewell), so Helen lunches with visiting firemen three or four times a week in the Senate restaurant.
Bill Knowland is a tireless public speaker, but strains painfully in his attempts at casual conversation, even with his family (the Knowlands have two daughters, one son). But Helen says: "But we know he loves us ... It's Billy's way, and it's all right with me." Bill once reprimanded her for jaywalking on the grounds that the wife of a lawmaker should avoid even the slightest infraction of law. But Helen merely says, half facetiously: "His high principles can be almost a nuisance at times." She encourages him in his only real hobby: pasting items about the life and times of Bill Knowland into scrapbooks. Begun when he was nine years old, the scrapbooks now number 41, increasing at a current rate of four a year, with entries ranging from college dance programs (filled out mostly by Helen) to some of the press's sharpest jabs, e.g., Knowland is an "old man's young man," a "young fogy," etc.
The Critical Test. Despite Knowland's devotion to the Senate, it does not fully satisfy his sense of destiny. When nobody was certain whether the 1955 heart attack would keep Ike from running, Knowland began making presidential noises. Recalls young Joe Knowland (who is devoted to his father but somewhat awestruck): "The hardest thing I have to do is carry on a conversation with my father. Everything has to be just right or he won't talk. But he was so happy when he was getting ready to run for President that he was bubbling. He could talk about anything. He was relaxed and gay." Knowland never did announce his candidacy, but he kept hinting strongly that Ike should reveal his intentions or throw open the lists. After Ike's announcement Knowland gave up without a struggle.
Some Knowland associates believe that his political destiny, as well as the responsibilities of dynasty, may take him back to California after his Senate term expires Jan. 3, 1959. There he could be on hand for the inevitable day when J. R. Knowland leaves the management of family interests in his hands. There too, he could run for governor on the theory that Senators rarely get presidential nominations.* California's present Republican Governor Goodwin J. Knight might have plenty to say about that. Although a Knight-Knowland battle would be a historic political struggle, Knowland is in a strategic position. Goodie Knight and Dick Nixon are longtime feudists. Knowland has maintained cordial relations with both, taken sides only when he thought one clearly right and the other clearly wrong, and he is generally conceded to hold the balance of California's political power.