JACKSON - The late, beloved U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery is recognized for many things, but hardly for having played Cupid to the man who could be the next president of the United States.
Chuck Hagel, the maverick Republican senator from Nebraska, a likely 2008 GOP presidential contender and thorn to the Bush administration, met and married Lilibet Ziller of Meridian in the early 1980s when she was working on Montgomery's committee staff in Washington.
Hagel, twice wounded as a grunt soldier in Vietnam, was then deputy director of the Veterans Administration and Montgomery was the leading congressional voice for veterans as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
Lilibet (her name is actually Lillian Beth, but her late father favored the contracted version and it stuck) is remembered by some ex-Montgomery staffers of those days as quite a looker.
Matter of fact, says Charlyne Berens, a professor at the University of Nebraska School of Journalism and author of the 2004 book, "Chuck Hagel … Moving Forward," Lilibet "is still a good-looking woman."
Now the mother of a 16-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son (who is named Ziller), Mrs. Hagel keeps an active pace, ranging from teaching English twice a week as a second language for adults in McLean, Va., to running marathons.
She and the bachelor Hagel met at a Washington party in 1982 and soon began dating. As Veterans Administration deputy, Chuck, needless to say, began working even closer with Montgomery's Veterans Affairs Committee.
After Montgomery's death in May 2006, Hagel, in remarks on the Senate floor, told the story of how the veteran Mississippi congressman brought him together with his future wife. That, Hagel said, was "one of hundreds of stories of people who somehow Sonny Montgomery was close to and had some responsibility for connecting."
Lilibet says she tries to get back to Meridian once or twice a year, and Meridianites say it is not unusual to see her and the Nebraska senator strolling down Front Street peeking into shop windows and heading to Jean's Restaurant.
So much for the warm and cuddly side of Chuck Hagel. On Capitol Hill, he's seen as anything but, especially by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Hagel, who has emerged as the leading Republican critic of the Iraq war and now the escalation ("surge" as Bush calls it), has become Bush and Cheney's worst nightmare. Last week in an interview in Newsweek, Cheney said in the case of Hagel, he found it "very hard" to adhere to Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment: "thou shall not to speak ill of a fellow Republican."
Until Bush began rattling sabers about Iraq, Hagel had voted almost solidly conservative Republican. With strong reservations, he had voted for the so-called war resolution in 2002 that Bush used as cover to invade Iraq in March 2003. (Hagel says he regrets that vote but it was his understanding then that it would be used only multilaterally and not for a pre-emptive use of force.)
While Hagel has become best known as an arch-critic of Bush's foreign policy, he has also broken with the administration on some other key issues such as the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill that he voted against, labeling it as a "ripoff" by the pharmaceutical industry.
In 2000, Hagel co-chaired the campaign of his fellow Vietnam veteran, Arizona Sen. John McCain, for the GOP nomination, and the two had since been seen as close allies in sticking a thumb in the eye of Republican orthodoxy.
But as the 2008 presidential race looms, and with Bush pushing his new plan to send 21,000 more troops into the Iraqi morass, Hagel and McCain have parted ways, personifying the division in the party ranks over Iraq.
McCain, who has already formed his campaign organization, will carry the GOP burden of defending Bush's widely unpopular Iraq war and his troop escalation. Meantime, he's shaping his appeal to court the religious right.
Hagel has not made up his mind on a presidential bid but seems to be leaning that way. If he does run, he would hold the high ground for the growing Republican wing opposing the Bush-led war. In that role, the big question then would be: Could he win the party nomination?
With his younger brother, Tom, Hagel had enlisted in the Army as a private during Vietnam and worked his way up to sergeant. By chance, the Hagel boys wound up in the same unit and almost died together when their armored personnel carrier hit a land mine. With his own body on fire, Chuck had dragged Tom to safety.
The left side of Chuck's face suffered burns, which until this day makes it impossible for him to grow a beard. His eardrums were blown out by the concussion, and now when he's weary, his brow droops.
Don't count out it being Chuck and Lilibet in the White House in January, 2009.
