The County Council plans to elect Charles Columbus Feaga, a Republican and a farmer as its chairman Dec. 6 -- something the 62-year-old county native never thought would happen.
"Democrats ran Howard County 100 percent," when he was growing up on the same 211-acre spread he farms today in West Friendship, Mr. Feaga said. "You had to become a Democrat to get a job [in government] -- even school bus driver."
Had the Republicans been in charge, they probably would have done the same thing, he said, in which case he probably would have become a Democrat. Mr. Feaga nearly always identifies with the underdog.
It is part of the Feaga tradition. The first Feagas came to this country as Hessian soldiers fighting for the British in the Revolutionary War. They were captured and imprisoned in Frederick, and after the war, married two Frederick farm girls.
"My kids always beg me not to tell that," Mr. Feaga said with a laugh. "They want me to brag about Mama's side of the family. She could trace her lineage back to the first 20 families of Virginia."
But Mr. Feaga -- Charlie to his friends -- talks about his Hessian ancestors anyway. He doesn't know how to be other than candid.
"He's an honest, hard-working man who has always told me what he thought whether I liked it or not," said Martha Clark, president of the county Farm Bureau. "He's an excellent farmer -- one of the sharpest cattle people around."
The third of five children, Mr. Feaga has been farming as long as he can remember -- something people meeting him for the first time might never guess. The only clues are his powerful, weather-worn hands and his rock solid build -- 165 pounds compacted into a 5-foot, 8-inch frame.
In public, he is nearly always nattily attired in a blue blazer, gray slacks and a tie given him by one of his seven children. His conversation is not about livestock, crops and weather, but about people and places.
He tells, for example, about how as a small boy, German prisoners of war volunteered for work on the Feaga farm. "We gave them fried chicken, ice cream and beer on the way home," he said, but "they worked their hearts out for us -- beyond what they needed to do."
Like his father, Mr. Feaga became a farmer by necessity, not by tradition. His father bought the farm in 1932 -- the year Mr. Feaga was born -- as a way of coping with the Depression.
Charlie Feaga had planned to follow his older brother into the military. But he had to take over the farm when his father suffered a stroke during his senior year in high school. His father died four days after Mr. Feaga's graduation.
Ellicott City High School classmates kiddingly called Mr. Feaga teacher's pet because he was allowed to play varsity sports -- soccer, softball and boxing -- without having to attend practice. Coaches knew he was milking cows at 4:30 a.m. and again in the evening after school.
After his father's stroke, Principal Omar Jones called Mr. Feaga aside and told him, "Boy, come to school when you can [in the morning] and leave when you have to, but don't abuse that privilege."
"He was a lot like a dad to me," Mr. Feaga said of Mr. Jones. "He was tough in school but the kids loved him." Eighteen years later, Republican Charlie Feaga would help Democrat Omar Jones become Howard County's first county executive.
Meanwhile, Mr. Feaga was making a name for himself outside of politics, becoming president of the Howard County Farm Bureau, the Glenelg High School PTA and the West Howard County Civic Association.
The local Republican Central Committee asked him in 1970 and in 1982 to fill out their slates and run for an at-large County Council seat. He lost both times to Democrats.
He decided to make a serious run in 1986 when the county started electing council members by district. He first sold his dairy cattle and began raising beef cattle. He then put together a bipartisan coalition. "I had been working 14 hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "I knew I couldn't run for public office with those hours and I felt I needed a change for health reasons. We were debt-free. It felt like a good time to make a change."
He won easily and soon became conspicuous as the lone Republican on the council. When he spoke -- and he spoke often -- he got a hearing. "I survived the first term knowing how to get along," he said. "Maybe one out of every five things I wanted got done, but I was treated with respect."
The best thing he did, he believes, was help crush a zoning proposal sponsored by three council Democrats. The plan would have allowed only one house per 20 acres in western Howard County. "That [proposal] did more to destroy farmland than any other piece of legislation ever to become before the council," he said. "Property owners became scared and rushed to sell" to developers.
In Mr. Feaga's eyes, zoning proposals aimed at keeping farmland from subdivision border on theft. They "devalue the only asset most farmers have," he said. "It is the equivalent of destroying someone's life's savings."
Slow-growth activist John W. Taylor of Highland thought Mr. Feaga might be vulnerable on the zoning issue and twice ran against him, losing to Mr. Feaga as a Republican in 1990 and as a Democrat this year.
If Mr. Feaga had lost this fall, he would have retired from politics and may not run again anyway, he said. Midway through the last term, he discovered he had prostate cancer. He had no symptoms and never would have gone to the doctor had not his wife insisted. He opted for surgery rather than radiation treatment. He has had two checkups since and been told he is free of cancer. "I feel great," he said.
Mr. Feaga handled his cancer operation with so little complaint that few people knew about it. But the word gets around. He still gets phone calls and makes visits to people who are to have the same operation.
Never much of a door-to-door campaigner, Mr. Feaga did exactly that this fall, although he doesn't call it that.
"I dropped in and said hello to friends I've made over the years," he said. "You never forget the people you've known over the years." One friend, surprised by the visit, asked him: "You want me to put out some signs, Charlie?"
"No," Mr. Feaga replied. "No signs. I'm just here to say hello."
But the word went out, "Charlie Feaga's in trouble." And people responded. After two terms in office, his hoped-for political legacy -- "people trusted you and they liked you and they would still call you a friend of theirs even after you left office" -- still seemed very much alive.
He was rewarded with re-election and a Republican majority on the council for the first time in its history. Council members of both parties say that by virtue of his seniority he will be elected chairman.
Some farmers both here and elsewhere wouldn't be farming today were it not for Mr. Feaga's help, said Ms. Clark, the Howard Farm Bureau president.
"Charlie's the kind of friend who if you're in need or have a problem, will do everything he can to assist you," she said.
For himself, Mr. Feaga takes his political ascendancy in stride. "I've always had the idea that most people don't like politicians, and I've tried not to be a real politician," he said. "I've never had my sights on something high and mighty and it may have made things easier for me. I care about my family very, very much. I want to have time with my family."