Let's get the adolescent guy-stuff out of the way first. Kathleen Willey, Kathleen Willey as presented via television, magazine and newspaper, passes all the babe tests. To put it another way, if you are going to have to sit across from your wife and admit an affair, may you be lucky enough to have it involve a woman of substance instead of having to admit something stupid like knocking boots with interns.

It's not the babe factor here, it's the class factor here, and it is that sense of class -- it runs like a vine though the solid old families here -- that makes this woman such a credible witness. This is a story of a woman going to court to try to stay out of court

But we've got more important issues to address first.

   .....

   The local paper here had a problem. After years of reluctance, Kathleen Willey was getting into the news, and the Times-Dispatch didn't have a picture of her. The paper wrote a marvelous story about it, including the dogged reporter going through reams of file negatives to find an old one. Good, but not good enough.

This being the polite south, the newspaper was not about to stake out her house. This makes perfect sense to me; in my reporter days, chasing down the doctor who paid a PI to dish dirt on a senator, I would not stake out his house either. He was a private citizen who had broken no laws.

As it turns out with the Times-Dispatch, they went through various friends to get an appropriate photograph (complete with pearls, no less.) They didn't have to resort to running old high school yearbook photos, which is generally proof positive that you've gotten famous for all the wrong reasons. (Just like no one ever has a middle name until they hit death row -- Karla Faye Tucker, John Wayne Gacy).

This polite reluctrance must seem quaintly absurd to Yankees and hard-driving reporters, but it's the context of the old classy south, and it's in that context where Kathleen Willey must be placed to be best understood.

None of this was her idea, you know.

   .....

   Disclaimer time: I've never met this woman, but I covered her father-in-law for years. He ran the state, well, he didn't run the state, but as head of the Senate Finance Committee, he ran the money -- and anybody who knows how statehouses work knows how close that is to the same thing.

Ed Willey stood on the floor of the Senate one day to take umbrage at the suggestion that he had made a deal on a bill. "I have nevuh made a deal," he proclaimed.

What started with a chuckle or two spread about the chamber and cascaded into a rolling howler of a joke -- the lieutenant governor was crying from laughing so hard. Ed Willey glanced around the chamber, and with great dignity sat down.

The laughter petered out. The dignity remained.

   .....

   Kathleen Willey's husband got into financial trouble and got into embezzling and wound up killing himself. I can't imagine any man leaving his wife behind to clean up such an ultimate mess. The suicide occurred the same time as the alleged Clinton incident.

I cannot imagine being that woman under that kind of stress. I can only admire the way she has survived.

Only to get rewarded by becoming a most reluctant victim.

I sure wish this woman well, and as a recovering reporter I apologize to her on behalf of my former brethren. I cannot imagine that events could so dominate your life that talking on 60 Minutes -- and getting in the middle of a full-fledged media circus -- would be preferable to silence.

It would be one thing if all this disruption in her life meant something. But in a true tragic sense, it might not. How ironic that the Republicans in charge of any possible impeachment proceedings do not want to see Clinton leave. They do not want to see Gore made stronger and they like having Bill Clinton to kick around. In the meantime, I wonder if she worries about seeing Sam Donaldson on her doorstep. And knowing he's not going away even if you tell him please.

In her most classy Southern way.

.   ....

   One reason I opened with a lament on the sheer beauty of strong, classy women is because I'll never know one. I live like a monk -- the only difference between my house and the VMI barracks is a few plants. Her's is a totally different world than the one in which I live.

But as long as she remains in the news, that world, that world of classy old Virginia families, will be on view. And at least Kathleen Willey is an excellent ambassador.

If a reluctant one at that.

-30-

Mr. Marshall appreciates all those who have found this essay via Google, and offers this 2006 update with considerable sadness: the following is the Wikipedia entry on Willey, verbatim: