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Richard B. Russell Library Oral History Documentary Collection
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Georgia--History
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Oral history collection consisting of interviews conducted for the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies since 2003.<br /><br /><a href="http://georgiaoralhistory.libs.uga.edu/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=3&type=&tags=OHMS&featured=&subcollections=0&subcollections=1&submit_search=Search+for+items">View all OHMS indexed interviews in this collection here. </a>
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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RBRL175OHD
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Georgia
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5.3 Interview with Pete Wheeler, June 14, 2006 RBRL175OHD-007 RBRL175OHD Richard B. Russell Library Oral History Documentary Collection OHD-007 Interview with Pete Wheeler finding aid Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Pete Wheeler William Stueck and James Cobb 1:|11(9)|24(10)|36(13)|50(13)|68(9)|76(10)|87(11)|96(10)|106(12)|115(3)|132(8)|149(7)|158(5)|180(15)|191(1)|200(1)|209(13)|223(3)|238(11)|248(5)|258(12)|266(7)|276(1)|289(14)|302(10)|314(11)|324(1)|332(16)|342(7)|355(4)|365(9)|377(12)|389(4)|399(5)|408(14)|419(5)|429(10)|453(7)|462(5)|471(4)|480(9)|492(4)|504(12)|516(15)|526(6)|534(11)|546(1)|556(1)|569(11)|581(11)|595(15)|606(4)|623(11)|636(6)|656(8)|673(5)|682(6)|700(12)|719(6)|729(9)|742(1)|753(7)|762(3)|781(13)|796(7)|805(15)|815(3)|825(6)|837(5)|847(13)|861(2)|871(11)|884(2)|893(13)|904(8)|917(10)|926(10)|935(7)|948(9)|958(10)|970(12)|979(7)|991(14)|1003(4)|1017(3)|1027(11)|1040(9)|1053(7)|1064(5)|1078(2)|1092(1)|1103(8)|1114(5)|1126(4)|1140(3)|1153(14)|1171(10)|1189(14)|1200(9)|1209(18) 0 http://youtu.be/a12N08vyobM YouTube video 11 Introduction Good morning. 17 61 Early life and education I lived in a little town down there, near the University of Georgia--Crawford. Wheeler discusses his hometown of Crawford, Georgia and the historical significance of its name. He remembers attending Emory at Oxford and the University of Georgia, majoring in education, and experiencing various notable events that occurred during his time at the University of Georgia. He comments on his involvement with the ROTC and participation in World War II, as well as his first job in the Office of Price Administration after leaving the service. army reserves ; Crawford, Georgia ; GI Bill ; Office of Price Administration ; ROTC ; University of Georgia ; World War II 17 494 Work in Department of Veterans Services And then, of course, I came to the Department of Veterans Service. Wheeler mentions his army placement and duties during World War II, as well as attending UGA at the same time as future Georgia politicians Carl Sanders and Ernest Vandiver. Wheeler discusses his motivation for working in the Veterans Service during his more than 50 year long career. He comments on the election process and term length for his position as Commissioner of Veterans Services. Wheeler also discusses improvements in medical treatment services and facilities in Milledgeville and Augusta. Alzheimer's treatment ; Carl Sanders ; commissioner election process ; Department of Veterans Services ; Ernest Vandiver ; Georgia War Veterans Home (Milledgeville, Georgia) ; Georgia War Veterans Nursing Home (Augusta, Georgia) ; Herman Talmadge ; Medical College of Georgia ; veterans medical treatment 17 1081 Duties of Department of Veterans Service Your job, in many ways, is to use both state and federal agencies, so we have what we called GI Bills that are passed periodically by the federal government. Wheeler discusses the role of the Department of Veterans Services in veterans' educational training, job training, and medical treatment. He describes the approval process and monitoring of universities' application for educational entitlements from the GI Bill. Wheeler also comments on the Department's involvement in annual projects, among them the creation and dedication of state memorial cemeteries at Milledgeville, Glennville, and Kent in Georgia. GI Bill ; Glenville Cemetery (Georgia) ; job training ; Kent Cemetery (Georgia) ; veterans cemetery ; veterans educational training ; veterans entitlement benefits 17 1395 Applying for veterans benefits / State funding and department expansion As I mentioned a minute ago, no veteran's benefit is automatic. You got to know about it, and then you got apply for it. Wheeler discusses the application process for receiving veterans benefits and the Department of Veterans Services' active role in educating veterans about their entitlements. Wheeler also clarifies the distinction between federal and state funding for veterans services and describes such state incentives as tax reductions or price reductions. He also comments on the expansion of the Department and the services it provides since he began working there. department expansion ; state vs. federal funding ; veterans tax exemption 17 1893 Veteran memorials / Working with veterans from the Civil War up through the Vietnam War Can you talk about the various veterans of various wars that you served when you first came in 1949? Wheeler discusses the creation of the World War II and the Korean War memorials and comments on the process of fundraising contributions. Wheeler also shares his opinion about General George Marshall and mentions Marshall's pre-war life as well as his creation of the Marshall Plan. Wheeler discusses his work with veterans and widows of veterans from the Civil War and the Spanish-American War and comments on the civilian attitude towards Vietnam War veterans. civilian perception of veterans ; fundraising ; George Marshall ; Marshall Plan ; Spanish-American War ; war memorials 17 2469 Women's army participation and women veterans Could you compare a little bit your dealings with veterans from various wars, say since World War II, in terms of particular needs and services. Wheeler discusses the growth of women's participation in the armed forces and the Department of Veterans Services increased response to the needs of women veterans. Wheeler also discusses the benefits provided to women who served in the WAVES and WACS. He also recounts how he met his wife who was a WACS nurse and talks about his children's and grandchildren's education and occupations. minority veterans ; treatment for women veterans ; WACS ; WAVES ; women veterans ; women war participation ; World War II 17 2765 African-American Veterans / Integration of armed forces We are very proud of the fact that the Department of Veteran Services recognized our African American soldiers. Wheeler discusses the early desegregation of veterans' healthcare facilities in Georgia in comparison to the state school system. He mentions his support for the equal treatment of African-American veterans and also comments on Carl Vinson's role in desegregating the army and representing Georgia's military and veteran interests in Congress. army desegregation ; Carl Vinson ; integration ; NAACP ; veteran facility integration 17 3239 Organizational changes in Department of Veterans Services / Partnerships with voluntary veterans associations Could you tell us a bit about the size of your office in 1949 compared to the size of it today? Wheeler discusses the initial location and size of his office in the state Capitol and mentions the benefits of improved departmental training over the years. Wheeler mentions that the Department of Veterans Services is regulated by the merit system of the Civil Service Act. He comments on his close working relationship with the Veterans Administration and the Department's partnership with voluntary veterans associations across the country. American Legion ; Civil Service regulation ; merit system ; political relationshps ; veterans political invovlement ; voluntary veterans association 17 3652 Responsing to veterans' needs, including special cases Does that mean that we actually have more veterans that live in Georgia because we have more military installations than some places? Wheeler mentions his participation on a commission to study the needs of veterans, whose final report has been used as a reference guide for veterans' affairs. Wheeler also mentions the involvement of various state political figures in establishing military bases in Georgia. He discusses Georgia's response to the needs of various group of veterans--among them retirees and active duty wounded soldiers--by building a special Veterans Administration Hospital. Anthony Principi ; Georgia military bases ; treatment for active duty soldiers ; Veterans Administration Hospital ; veterans affairs ; wounded soldiers 17 4110 Relationships with Georgia politicians Could you talk a little bit about your relationship with Jimmy Carter? Wheeler comments on his relationship with Jimmy Carter and Joe Frank Harris while they were governors. He mentions advising Carter against the incorporation of the Department of Veterans Services with other state departments. Wheeler also discusses the importance of maintaining close relationships with people across departments as a way to ensure the representation of veterans interests. Wheeler also mentions his philosophy on spending Departmental money. budget spending ; fiscal conservatism ; Jimmy Carter ; Joe Frank Harris ; political relationships 17 4544 Supermarket of Veterans Benefits During the 1970s there was a transition from essentially a conscript army to a volunteer army. Wheeler mentions the incident of the veterans from Columbus, Georgia as the impetus for the creation of an event aimed at increasing the accessibility of information about veterans benefits. Wheeler comments on the original idea and name of the Supermarket of Veterans Benefits, and mentions the Aflac Insurance Company that was founded in Columbus. accessibility ; Aflac ; Columbus, Georgia ; organizational coordination ; veterans benefits 17 4923 Golf tournament fundraiser for homeless veterans You sponsor an annual golf tournament. Wheeler discusses the original idea and the logistics behind the annual golf tournament fundraiser for the Homeless Veterans Program. He also reflects on the advantage of establishing personal relationships with politicians and legislators as a way to effectively run the Department. fundraising ; golf tournament ; Homeless Veterans Program ; political relationships 17 5228 Truman and atomic bombs / Border crossing policy I'm kind of curious about any thoughts you have about an incident that occurred in 1995 around the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Wheeler discusses his views on President Truman's decision to drop the nuclear bombs during World War II. Wheeler also comments on the growing importance of National Guard troops in relation to veterans benefits, and he reflects on the border-crossing policies of the U.S. and other countries. He also recounts the story of why the Rose Bowl of 1943 was played at Duke University, as well as some historical anecdotes about UGA alumni Robert Toombs and Alexander Stevens. Alvin Barkley ; atomic bomb ; border crossing ; China ; Duke University ; foreign policy ; Harry Truman ; National Guard ; Rose Bowl ; University of Georgia 17 5838 Conclusion Commissioner that's about all the questions we have for you. Would you like to make any further comments? Wheeler mentions his love for Athens and the University of Georgia. He mentions that Henry Grady--for whom the Grady College of Journalism at UGA is named--was editor of the local newspaper while he was studying there. Wheeler concludes with expressing gratitude for the people he has met while at the University and the pride he feels in being American. 17 Oral History STUECK: Good Morning. It is June 14, 2006 we are in the Floyd Veterans Memorial Building in Atlanta, Georgia to interview Commissioner of Veterans Services Pete Wheeler. My name is Bill Stueck and I am a historian at the University of Georgia, and my colleague Jim Cobb is also a historian at the University of Georgia. We will be asking Commissioner Wheeler questions. The oral history interview is for the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies which is on the campus of the University of Georgia. Good Morning Commissioner. WHEELER: Good morning and welcome. We are happy to see anybody from the University of Georgia. It brings back many fond memories. I lived in a little town down there near the University of Georgia, Crawford. The original Crawford ; much bigger than the Crawford in Texas ; we got a stop light there and they have a blinking light in Texas. You remember Crawford ; let me give you a little about Crawford before we move onto anything else. I am so proud of Crawford. William H. Crawford, you two professors know who he was. He was an ambassador to France and he is the only man that Napoleon Bonaparte ever bowed to. He was a great American. And we have other Crawford' ; s now down in Texas, and I have had an opportunity to kid the President about it. We have twelve more people than they do in Texas, and we are the original. We are proud of Georgia. We have a stop light and they have a blinking light down there. I can go on in detail on that, but that ain' ; t why we are here this morning. STUECK: Can you tell us your date of birth and you have already told us your place of birth? WHEELER: I can tell you this: I am going to quote something from Douglas MacArthur. He had on his wall, while he was over in Tokyo and we occupied Japan following World War II, and I am not going into details, but he had this on his wall. He said, " ; You are as young as your faith, and as old as doubt, and you are young as your self-confidence." ; And " ; you are young as your faith and you' ; re young as your self-confidence. You are old as your fear and I have no fear. You are young as your hope and you' ; re old as your despair." ; I don' ; t have any of them. I am very happy where I am and I have enjoyed every minute of the work that I do here. I was born in Albany, Georgia, Dorothy County, but I grew up and I was raised in the great city of Crawford, Georgia where I just told you a minute ago. STUECK: Can you tell us the schools you attended? WHEELER: Yes, and I might say before I do that, I attended Crawford High School, which doesn' ; t exist anymore. I was president of the Senior Class in 1939. Living there, near the University, I had the opportunity to attend the very first football game played in Sanford Stadium when it opened, named after Chancellor S.D. Sanford. He was Chancellor of the University system when I was there. Harmon Caldwell was president--and living in Athens also gave me the opportunity--Franklin D. Roosevelt came down on the stadium once. A car drove up, he and Governor E.D. Rivers who was governor of Georgia at that time--And I had the opportunity to see the President then and he went on to Barnesville by train and came out against Walter George, who was a U.S. Senator then, and the reason he was against Walter George was he wanted an enlarged Supreme Court in the United States of America--add more numbers so that everything he' ; d do would be Constitutional. Senator George opposed it. I can remember that day when he endorsed another candidate against Senator George and Senator George said these words, " ; Mr. President, I accept your challenge," ; and Senator George won. Senator George was a great man. He lost a son in World War II and is very sympathetic to veterans and very responsible for starting the GI Bill which educated many World War II veterans who would not have had an education had it not been for the GI Bill and education. STUECK: So you graduated from High School in 1939? WHEELER: That is correct. STUECK: And you went straight to the University of Georgia? WHEELER: No, I didn' ; t. I went to Emory at Oxford and then Emory at Valdosta which does not exist anymore. I think they closed it when I left. I transferred as quick as I could to the University of Georgia and graduated there in 1943. While I was there of course World War II started, December 7, 1941. I was at the University and I was taking ROTC and I was in the Cavalry, riding horses with boots. In fact, I fell of a horse in front of the ROTC building over there when we dedicated a memorial to veterans and others fairly recently. It has been a great honor to have been at Georgia. While I was there I was [in] ROTC and in order to remain there we had to sign up to the Reserves in 1942 to complete our education, there at the University. When I graduated in 1943 we were immediately called to active duty. And at that time I went to active duty for the U.S. Army. I had gotten out of the Calvary and I had enough of horses. I remained in the Army until 1946 and then I was in the Reserves and the National Guard and I remained there until 1978. And I retired from the military in 1978. STUECK: Can you tell us what your major was at the University of Georgia? WHEELER: Well, you might say it was ROTC. (laughter) We had to maintain a certain average to stay there, otherwise we would go right into the service and I wanted to make sure I finished ROTC first. It was education, B.S. in education, and later I went to law school here in Atlanta. And while I was working with the Federal Government I went to night school, John Marshall Law School at night. First job I had in 1946 after getting out of the service was with the Federal Government. A government agency known as OPA: Office of Price Administration. That was part of World War II because keeping prices under control--you had to keep--everything was control: price control. I was in lumber enforcement and I had eight states from Florida up to Virginia where we visited and tried to check and make sure that the price of lumber did not exceed the amount that the government allowed. Then when that ended, the price control on lumber and other things ended, we still had rent control. And I was made area rent director for northwest Georgia out of Rome, Georgia, where I lived in a hotel four nights a week and then back in Atlanta that night. And then of course I came to the Department of Veterans Services. I had a good friend that was Governor at the time. I knew him when I was a student at Athens. He was not a student. He was practicing law with his father then. Herman Talmadge. I knew him well and I became associated with his administration then and I have been here--this is my fourteenth term and I am enjoying every minutes of it and I enjoy it because we are helping people. If I was collecting income tax I would have quit years ago or retired, but I am helping people. There is an old hymn by the way that I remember as a child, and I still have it with me and I give it to new members of the staff when they come in and it is " ; Help somebody today, somebody along life' ; s way." ; No, I picked up the wrong one, got the right one now. " ; Look all around you find someone in need. Help somebody today though it is a little neighborly deed, help somebody today. Many are waiting [for] a kind and loving word. Help somebody today." ; Some veterans we are unable to help, but we can listen, and that is very important and try to get them all the benefits to which they are entitled. And no veteran' ; s benefit is automatic. You gotta apply for them and it is our job to help them apply and let them know about it where they can apply for all the benefits they are entitled. We like to point out the fact that we have done quite well in Georgia on veteran' ; s benefits. Compared to other states we have fewer veterans, but we are bringing in more money than five other states that have more veterans. STUECK: Can you--before we get too far away from World War II, can you tell us where you served in World War II? WHEELER: I served mostly in California, training men for combat, and if it hadn' ; t been for the atomic bomb I am sure I would have been in the South Pacific. But we were training people for combat missions, and that was my job in World War II. STUECK: Now you were released in 1946? WHEELER: That is correct. STUECK: Do you remember when in ' ; 46? WHEELER: I believe it March of ' ; 46. STUECK: Ok. But a lot of folks were released earlier than that. WHEELER: We were released at different times, yes. That is correct. STUECK: So, why were you a little later? WHEELER: Well, there is an old Army saying that we used to teach our people, " ; Yours is not to ask why, but to do or die." ; I did not ask why I went out when I was supposed to go out, and I didn' ; t question anything about it other than I wanted to remain in the Reserves, which I did, and I became a member of the National Guard when Governor Vandiver was the Adjutant General. Governor Vandiver, by the way, was a senior when I was a freshman at the University of Georgia, and we were close friends. And he was the campaign manager along with Roy Harris when Talmadge was elected Governor, and Vandiver was Adjutant General when I transferred over into the Guard and remained until 1978. Also, when I was in the University of Georgia Carl Sanders was a freshman, and he was Bulldog Williams' ; s freshman. Sanders was there on a football scholarship his first year, and the freshmen had to wait on the upperclassmen, and he was Bulldog Williams' ; s freshman. Bulldog was a good friend of mine. We would send Carl down to get the Coca-Cola' ; s for us to drink. You notice I did say " ; Coca-Cola" ; --holy water. STUECK: Can you talk a little bit more about what the Commissioner of the Veterans Affairs did in 1949, and I assume it is an appointed position? WHEELER: No, it is an elected position. STUECK: Elected Position. WHEELER: Elected by a board, a constitutional board. We have a seven-person constitutional board. You have to be a resident of Georgia and a veteran, a wartime veteran. And the board elects the Commissioner. And I have been fortunate enough to be elected fourteen times by different board members through the years. STUECK: So it is a four-year term? WHEELER: That is correct. STUECK: And how is the board chosen? WHEELER: The board, the Governor gets one appointment each year, and is chosen the same way as the Board of Regents is chosen, by the Governor. The Governor gets one appointment each year and there are seven members of the board, and it is a constitutional board. And it' ; s working out very well and we think we have the best operation in the nation because we go out and make sure the veteran gets the benefit. Since I have been here, we' ; ve had one major project a year that we have worked on. When I first came in there were ten thousand patients in Milledgeville. It was called then the " ; insane asylum." ; We knew there were many veterans there at Milledgeville, but they were scattered out among ten thousand people. The first thing we did when I got here was to make sure that we identified all the veterans in Milledgeville and then moved them into one building where we could work with them and get them the benefits to which they might have been entitled. As soon as we were able to do that through the Legislature, going through the House and Senate and Governor, we set aside a building at Milledgeville where we did that, which is now a most beautiful facility, one of the beautiful facilities. We have about five or six hundred veterans there now receiving nursing home care and domiciliary care, and we also have the most beautiful Alzheimer' ; s unit in America. The Alzheimer' ; s people designed it where you can walk all you want to walk inside and outside the building and it doesn' ; t look like a prison--it looks like a Ritz Carlton Hotel lobby with beautiful shrubbery outside and there is an entrance where you walk in and out. The Alzheimer' ; s people who are bed-ridden--they can be cared for in a nursing home, because they cannot get out of bed to harm somebody. The walking man or woman with swinging arms could hit someone in the nursing home, and therefore that is the most unmet medical need I think in America today, is the care and treatment of the walking Alzheimer' ; s person, [who is] in a hurry to get there, not knowing where they are when they get there, and then hurry to go on. We have a beautiful unit there in Milledgeville that we are very proud of, and we have recreation for them and we have an outpatient medical care treatment--the VA does that--they come in there to the doctor once a week and we are very proud of it. Now in Augusta during the Sanders administration and then the Maddox administration, we opened the first state veterans nursing home in America, operated by the state to treat the veterans, with federal and state funds to build it. And it is built right across from the Medical College of Georgia. And you get more care there than you get in any VA, well, any hospital in the world, I guess, because the Medical College operates it for us by contract, and the top specialists in that field are through that nursing home every day. It is right across the street from the Medical College of Georgia and we are extremely proud of that. We' ; re also proud of the fact that Georgia is the only state in the Union that does not charge veterans anything--Georgia residents, they have to be from Georgia, legal residents of Georgia and veterans. We don' ; t charge a veteran anything for care and treatment. Every other state does get something out of the veterans for their care and treatment, but we don' ; t in Georgia and most of our funds that we appropriated in the state go to Augusta, where we have about two hundred veterans down there and over five hundred in Milledgeville. STUECK: So your job-- WHEELER: That is one phase of it. STUECK: In many ways, is to use both state and federal agencies, so we have what we call GI bills that are passed periodically by the Federal Government. WHEELER: I am glad you mentioned the GI Bill. The Georgia Department of Veterans Services is a state approval agency for all veterans' ; educational training, and it may come as a shock for you to know that the University of Georgia--where you represent the University of Georgia--we have to approve the University of Georgia and we check there once a month to see that you are doing--we have a check list and we check if you are training veterans at the University of Georgia and any other school in Georgia that trains veterans. We have to approve that and check on it to see that they are getting what they are entitled to. The reason we have to do that, some schools, I won' ; t name any of them now, but they have been prosecuted because the veteran wasn' ; t required to go to school, they would just give them the money. Some people were sent to prison for that. We have a state-approved agency. We are number one in the nation for veterans' ; on-the-job training. We train businesses, we approve businesses all over the state to train veterans and the veteran receives this GI money for being trained for the position. So we are the state approval that is one of our functions here in the Department of Veteran Services, in addition to the nursing home and the domiciliary and the Alzheimer' ; s unit and, as I mentioned a minute ago, we always have one project--at least one big one a year. We built the most beautiful cemetery I think in the world in Milledgeville, a state cemetery with federal funds, one hundred percent federal funds. The land was transferred from the forestry commission over to us. It is on the Carl Vinson Highway near our nursing home in Milledgeville. We have a chapel there with stained glass windows in it pointing up. The architect brought it up to me and it had square windows and I said " ; No, we want them pointed up, give some people an idea where they ought to be trying to go" ; --although we can' ; t tell them--we can point the direction and make them think about it. We have a beautiful lake behind the cemetery, we have a coliseum area, we have an office there and we have a clarion that plays a hundred hymns, and " ; Amazing Grace" ; is the most requested of all hymns to be played during the funeral. Since we have completed that, many veterans have been buried there every day in Milledgeville. We are now working on a new cemetery, establishing a new cemetery at Glenville, Georgia, near Fort Stewart. Fort Stewart as you know is a very active military base and there are a lot of retirees there. And we are establishing a state cemetery there. Last Sunday afternoon, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs and I had the honor of dedicating a new cemetery, about forty miles north of Atlanta, [at] Canton. Seven hundred seventy-five acres of land was donated by a wealthy Georgian who served and landed in Normandy on D-Day, Scott Hudgens. Scott came to the office one day and said, " ; I landed in Normandy on D-Day." ; He' ; s a billionaire by the way, and he said " ; I went back over there recently to visit the graves of those who were killed the day we landed," ; which was sixty-two years ago June 6 this year. And he said, " ; I had a vision while I was there and looking out you can see the English Channel, and I have land in Georgia that we can do the same thing with overlooking Lake Allatoona. Seven hundred seventy-five acres of land. Nobody has ever lived on this land, not even Indians. There are streams running through there. The river--the water is as clear as the water you drink." ; It is a beautiful place, we dedicated that last Sunday. It is a beautiful place. We have a project all the time that we are working on and that is what makes it very interesting to be in this work. We are helping people and getting them what they deserve. As I mentioned a minute ago, no veteran' ; s benefit is automatic. You got to know about it then you got to apply for it. That is our job: to make sure that every Georgia veteran gets every benefit, state and federal, that he may be entitled to, and we have been very successful in doing that. STUECK: We try to be a little more specific on the distinction between a federal benefit and a state benefit. Now, you talked about Georgia being the one state where all the expenses for a disabled veteran are covered. WHEELER: That' ; s in a nursing home situation, the state nursing homes, which the federal government pays part of the cost, and we have a contract with them to pay part of the cost, and the state pays part of the cost for the operation. Every other state has one and we just happen to be the only state that doesn' ; t charge. STUECK: Ok, now the Federal Government is when we talk about the GI Bills. We historians tend to focus on education and housing, low cost mortgages and so forth. Can you talk about where the state kind of picks up from what the federal government is doing in terms of funding? WHEELER: Well, we have the same tax exemptions in the state for homes and wholly financed a hundred percent by the VA. One hundred percent disabled veterans--there are many statutes on the state law books that give us the right to give them certain things like hunting and fishing licenses. The driver' ; s license for example, to drive an automobile or a truck, the veteran gets the benefit of a free driver' ; s license in Georgia if you are an honorably discharged veteran in war time service and we approve it. And then the state, they have changed several times who issues the drivers licenses. It used to be the state patrol, but now it is another agency. We approve it and they get a free driver' ; s license. There are many other benefits they get, if you are disabled in any way, as much as ten percent, you are entitled to go into state parks for a reduced fee, and many other state benefits. STUECK: When you talk about all the buildings that you have had a role in being built, were those built predominantly from federal or state funding? WHEELER: Both state and federal. The building as I mentioned before in Augusta, we had Carl Vinson, Congressman Carl Vinson, a great American and Congressman, introduce the legislation and gave state money. We got half of the appropriation for building nursing homes in Augusta and he was expecting that to be built in Milledgeville, his home. And he called me one day and he said, " ; I got the legislation through." ; First, when he called you on the phone, I am talking about Carl Vinson the great American Congressman from Georgia, when he calls you on the telephone, the first thing he would say is, " ; Are you for me or against me?" ; I said, " ; I am for you Mr. Vinson." ; He said, " ; Well do so-and-so then." ; That was the way he started a conversation. If you called him, he would answer the phone, " ; Alright." ; That is the way he would answer the telephone: " ; Alright." ; But anyway he was very upset with me because we went--Carl Sanders was Governor by the way and he wanted it built in Augusta across from the Medical College. Vinson wanted it in Milledgeville, but the governor controlled the state funds that are necessary, so it was built in Augusta. But I told him that the first one we built after that would be in Milledgeville, and we did, we built the Carl Vinson building there where we house the veterans that need nursing care and then later we dedicated one, the Richard B. Russell building. I think the last picture that the Senator had made, when we took him a copy of that, I mean a picture of that building up there to show him. Mr. Vinson passed there one day and passed by it one day and looked at both buildings and called me on the phone said, " ; I passed my building and passed Russell' ; s building this morning and I noticed that my name is in smaller letters than his. Why is that?" ; I said, " ; It will be changed, Mr. Vinson. We will get them both the same size." ; And we did right away, made them both the same size. He was a great American and so was Richard B. Russell and this state benefited from the service of both of these great men. I am happy to say that I am old enough that my uncle went to school with Richard B. Russell at Gordon Military Institute then. The first inauguration I attended was Richard B. Russell' ; s inauguration as Governor. Governor Hardman was going out, a doctor from Commerce, Georgia, and Richard B. Russell had been Speaker of the House and that' ; s the first time I went into the Governor' ; s office and I have tried to remain close there ever since. One Governor told me that he thought I came over here with General Oglethorpe and we established the Veteran' ; s department then, but that wasn' ; t correct, it' ; s been since then. I have enjoyed every minute of it. COBB: Because of that, your long tenure here, could you give us an idea of how large this place was when you came, and some sense of the expansion? WHEELER: Well, this building that you are in now, the twin towers building, was a railroad station when I came here, and the train ran from here to Augusta once a day, went down to Augusta and came back here to this spot. The Capitol at that time was un-air-conditioned, and we worked half a day on Saturday, and we had no merit system, and no retirement system. A lot of things have changed for the better in the years that I have been here and it has been a great pleasure. I enjoy being here every day because we are helping somebody when I go home at night, I think about how many people that we have been able to help today, get what they are entitled to as a veteran from the federal and state government or their families. And we are losing about five hundred to six hundred veterans a month, passing on. That creates work on our field officers. We have field officers all over the state, they cover every county. A hundred and fifty-nine counties and we go into every one of them at least once a month, or at least [we] are available to them. We assist the veteran' ; s widow and we assist with the funeral arrangements. I told you a minute ago about the cemeteries and they have a beautiful place to have a ceremony and we have grave liners already in the ground, and put the marker up after they are buried. And those that want to be burned, I am going to let the Devil do that if it is done at all. I am going to go out the regular way. STUECK: Can you talk about the various veterans of various wars that you served when you first served, when you first came in 1949? WHEELER: Well, it took a long time for the World War II Memorial to come about. It was the last memorial of any importance, just about, built for veterans in Washington. The Vietnam Memorial was built and the Korean Memorial was built there before our World War II Memorial. We just dedicated it last year, which I was very fortunate to be the chairman of the Advisory Commission for that. And we were able to bring in Bob Dole as chairman of the Campaign Committee to help raise money. And I want to tell you a little story about that while I am thinking about it. The first man Bob Dole called was a former Marine from Memphis, Tennessee. When he got out of the Marine Corps, he decided he wanted to get his master' ; s degree in business administration at Harvard. So when he went to Harvard the professors told him he had to do a thesis on how to start a business. And he worked on it hard and came up with it and the professors laughed at him and said, " ; No. You' ; re going to have to redo this, this is impossible you' ; re going to have to redo it." ; He said, " ; No, I am not going to do it, I am not going to rewrite. I am going to go back to Memphis and show you." ; FedEx, Federal Express was the thesis and Fred Smith started the Federal Express and he wrote us a personal check for two million dollars and says " ; I will help you raise the rest of the money." ; Now Fred didn' ; t tell me this, but I understand, and being two professors you can understand this too. I understand slowly every day a double trailer FedEx truck slowly rides around the Harvard campus. (laughter) So he helped us get started well and he helped us raise 192 million dollars and we have a beautiful monument there and I just learned the other day, I have a picture of it in there somewhere. [Gestures to conference room.] Kilroy, somebody discovered, he is there on the backside of the monument, for World War II veterans. For anybody familiar with World War II, " ; Kilroy was here." ; He [Kilroy] is overlooking. It' ; s inside, I will show you it in a minute. Somebody discovered he is engraved in the Georgia granite that is up there right behind the Washington Monument facing the Lincoln Memorial. Kilroy is part of the World War II Memorial. The state of Georgia contributed a dollar for every veteran that served in World War II toward the purchase of this, establishing this memorial. World War II was a great victory for America. We wouldn' ; t have a Washington Monument today or Lincoln Memorial, either one, if we had lost World War II. We freed a lot of people and the German people are now our allies and the Japanese are our allies today thanks to people like George Marshall, to me one of the greatest generals in World War II. General Vandiver, Governor Vandiver now, had the opportunity of spending the afternoon once with General Marshall. It might interesting to people from Georgia to know that General Marshall, before World War II, was stationed in Georgia heading our Civilian Conservation Corps, CCC camps, where young men went to get three meals a day and they established parks and did a lot of work improving the conditions of our state. He was in charge of the CC camps in Georgia before he went up as Chief of Staff. As a sideline I understand, he had a photostatic memory by the way, he was very proud of the fact that he could remember everything that ever happened and everything he ever looked at. He could name every county in Georgia and every precinct and every county just by his photostatic memory. President Roosevelt heard about his photostatic memory. He had met General Marshall. He had called him--this is George Marshall, later Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense--he called General Marshall into the Oval Office. And Roosevelt had a cigarette holder [and said], " ; Hello, George, old boy. Have a seat over there George." ; General Marshall stood at attention in front of the President, at attention, and looked him in the eye and said, " ; Mr. President, my name is General Marshall." ; He [Roosevelt] said, " ; You are exactly the man I am looking for. You are exactly what I want." ; General Marshall, although he was not given the credit he should have gotten, he led us to victory in World War II. He was Eisenhower' ; s boss, MacArthur, all the rest of them and he was a great American and he didn' ; t go to West Point either. STUECK: VMI? WHEELER: That' ; s correct. You are correct, he went to VMI. STUECK: Well, he has gotten plenty of credit from historians. WHEELER: It is about time. He deserves every bit of it. After the war the Marshall Plan, which helped bring our enemies--making friends out of them and they are now our allies, thanks to General Marshall. He was a great American. I don' ; t think you can give him too much credit. He was great. STUECK: I take it from your response to the question about the veterans from various wars that you dealt with, that basically you started with World War II. WHEELER: Yes, we can go on if you want to. STUECK: That is, you didn' ; t have much to do with say veterans from the Spanish American War. WHEELER: Yes we did, in fact something to do with the War Between the States. My buddy there from Connecticut, I tell him the War of Northern Aggression, but it' ; s really the War Between the States. When I came in here we were paying pensions to the widows of the War Between the States, The Civil War. I didn' ; t believe we had that many and I made sure our people went out and checked to make sure. We sent the money to the Ordinary of the County, and the Ordinary of the County delivered the checks to the widows. We had a confederate nursing home when I came in here, and it was for the widows when I was here, or got here, and we took care of the widows even if they were not entitled to anything from the federal at that time. Actually, this department started with the pensions part long before I got here. When I got here there were a lot of veterans of the Spanish American War of 1898 in Spain, when we freed Cuba and we got the Philippine Islands straightened out at that time. We had a lot of veterans from 1898 that were living a long time after I got here. In fact, we had one employee who was a veteran of the Spanish American War. One of our distant relatives, I am told, was an Army Officer in the U.S. Army before the War Between the States and then he became a Confederate General. After the war was over, [he] got his commission back in the U.S. Army and went on to fight in the Spanish American War, General Joe Wheeler. I understand he got excited once when they were fighting the Spaniards and he said, " ; Come on boys, we got the Yankees on the run." ; (laughter) But we kind of lost a little interest in him. He was from Georgia, but he moved to Alabama and became a Congressman in Alabama and there is a little stop over there, Wheeler, Alabama where he lived, beautiful place still open to the public. But I don' ; t think that I was in the active National Guard during that time. I was in the Korean War and also the Vietnam War and I can remember very well, being in uniform and members of my staff being with me in a Howard Johnson here in Atlanta having lunch one Sunday and we were actually insulted. If you walked down the street in uniform people would make fun of you. During that war, they were not treated right when they returned home. Vietnam veterans were never honored as they should have been, but we made sure they got all the benefits, and [are] still making sure they get all the benefits to which they may be entitled. STUECK: Could you compare a little bit your dealings with veterans from the various wars, say since World War II, in terms of particular needs and services? WHEELER: Well, we have a lot of lady veterans now and of course the VA hospitals are now in the process of being remodeled to have more private rooms, new bathrooms, more female doctors. We have a lot of outstanding women who have served in the military. In fact, we have a lady who has been chairman of our board who is in the military and we are very proud of her. She was a sergeant in the Marine Corps. The service has been the same to all of them. We try to treat everybody equally: veteran and non-veteran, veteran and his family, or her family. And we try to do all we can for the widows of all wars, and we have been able to do that. STUECK: Did you have any responsibilities in relation to women who served in the WAC [Women' ; s Army Corps] or the WAVES [Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service] in World War II? WHEELER: Well, my wife. My wife was an Army Cadet Nurse in World War II, she is right there. [Gestures] I met her in a hospital and we have been married since 1949. I think we' ; ll be married until one of us pass on. She is a beautiful lady and we have been in love for many years. We' ; ve been married since 1949 and I think it will last forever. I know it will. She was an Army Cadet Nurse in World War II and her father was active duty military who served the country during that time. STUECK: Did veterans benefits apply to her at that time, in 1949? WHEELER: Yes, but the war was over before she actually got her commission. World War II was over before she got her commission. She worked temporarily with the VA after that, and then she went into public health nursing after that and then our first child was born she has looked after our kids. We have three children. My son is a graduate of the University of Georgia, and also Mercer, and also Georgia State. He has three degrees. He is a general counselor for the Gwinnett Hospital system, (unintelligible) Chip Wheeler. He is an attorney and represents the hospitals in Gwinnett County. There are two large hospitals there, he is their general counsel. We have a daughter, Francis that graduated from Georgia State and Oglethorpe University and she attended the University of Georgia and was a Tri Delt there. She is a teacher in Gwinnett County. She is married to son of Bishop Bevel Jones of the Methodist Church, and they have three fine children, all boys, three boys. One of them is in college, and one is in high school, and one is in grammar school. Then we have another daughter, Jane, who is a teacher also. She was a Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Georgia. She was a Pi Mu, and she has passed on. And her son is over there now as a student at the University and he' ; ll get two degrees this fall, all he needs a PE course. He has an A.B. degree and a B.S. degree, and he plans to go to law school. He was accepted to Oxford, but he is going to go to law school in Athens. And we are very proud of our children and our grandchildren. All three [children], [and our grandchildren] we have five boys and one girl and she is in charge. She is going to Georgia State this fall, Joanna. Veterans of all wars are all veterans, and they are all great Americans as far as I am concerned. We show no partiality to any. You may be interested in this, and I am sure it will be one of your questions perhaps. We are very proud of the fact that the Department of Veterans Service recognizes African-American soldiers, and we were the first state agency to equalize and join together the races in our home in Milledgeville, Georgia. Georgia War Veterans Home in Milledgeville was desegregated. We ended segregation, and we were the first agency even before the University of Georgia. We ended segregation in our department, the first one and I am very proud of that. STUECK: Do you remember the date of that? WHEELER: Not exactly right off hand, I can look it up and tell you, but it was before the school system was desegregated. We desegregated our people first. We are very proud we did. I had four or five members of the NAACP from Milledgeville, Georgia, nice guys, came up to see me one day in my office. They said, " ; We don' ; t want to cause any problems or any trouble. We think that our veterans ought to be treated the same way in our home in Milledgeville as others. We would like to do more for them." ; And I said " ; I agree with you." ; I got the approval of our board to do it, and we were the first ones to do it, and we are very proud of that fact. And I point that out to a lot of people that we are so proud of the fact that we took the first step. Now also the man that introduced the legislation that desegregated Armed Forces was Carl Vinson from Milledgeville, Georgia. He deserves full credit for desegregating the Armed Forces and I was real proud of him for doing it. STUECK: I don' ; t quite understand that point. WHEELER: He was chairman of the Armed Services Committee ; he was also, before they established the Armed Services Committee, chairman [of] the Naval Affairs Committee. In fact, he was chairman of Naval Affairs during World War II and so was Roosevelt, at one time, chairman of Naval Affairs. Vinson was able to do many things that many people don' ; t realize he was able to do. For example, he went in to see Roosevelt one day, President Roosevelt, who had been Secretary of the Navy, and he said, " ; Mr. President, I want to build a Navy Hospital in Dublin, Georgia." ; The President, who was Secretary of the Navy said, " ; Well Carl, what port is that? I don' ; t recall that being a port." ; And he [Vinson] said, " ; ' ; It' ; s not it' ; s in my district." ; He [Roosevelt] said, " ; Well, how are we going to get ships in and out of a place that doesn' ; t have a port?" ; He [Vinson] said, " ; We are going to have an airport there. You are going to build an airport for the Navy Hospital and we are going to fly them in there. It' ; s in my district." ; He was smart enough to include in the legislation--not may but shall--should the Navy ever give that facility up the Veterans Administration shall establish a VA hospital there. And we have a VA hospital in Dublin, Georgia because of that. It was a Navy Hospital first, and they have an airport there in Dublin, GA because of Carl Vinson. I could tell you many more things about him, he was a great American, so was Senator Russell. STUECK: Could you tell us, in dealing with the segregation issue in terms of benefits to African-American veterans in Georgia coming out of World War II, were they administrated--? WHEELER: The same way. Everybody is treated equal on the benefits. STUECK: But is that administrated through the federal system of government completely? WHEELER: Federal and state. Maybe I ought to make myself clear. The state has certain benefits, but our main job as far as benefits are concerned--no veteran is benefited automatic. You got to know about it first and then you got to have some assistance in applying for them. And that is our job ; we have a claims staff that represents veterans before VA rating boards, they have boards. We actually act as their attorney, or representative, before these boards. And we try to convince the board that they meet all the requirements of a certain law, that they are seeking compensation for service connected disabilities or anything else related to federal benefits. We also assist on state benefits, getting all the benefits that they may be entitled under federal and state. But the VA doesn' ; t go out looking for people to give them money ; we do. It is not a gift, they earned it. We want to make sure that the people who earned the benefit that they receive it. We have offices scattered out all over Georgia that actually assist veterans first hand to make sure veterans get all the benefits to which they may be entitled by the federal and state government. And, by the way, we [are] just getting back quite a few new veterans who went overseas last May and they came back this May. We got several thousand new veterans in Georgia. We are meeting with them to see [that] they receive all the benefits to which they may be entitled, in about twenty seven locations over the state. After they have had the opportunity to come home and relax and spend time with their family, we' ; ll attend the first drill and be available to assist them in getting all the benefits to which they may be entitled. The Georgia National Guardsmen who have been in Iraq, and a lot of them have been under a lot of pressure over there, it is very hot over there and twenty-six did not make it back. Of course, we try to assist their families in any way we can for the fact they didn' ; t come back. STUECK: Before the veterans' ; hospital in Milledgeville was desegregated was there a veterans' ; hospital for African-American veterans? WHEELER: Yes. STUECK: There was? Where was that? WHEELER: In Milledgeville. Well, there wasn' ; t one for any veteran when I came in here, as I told you earlier in our conversation. When I came in, there were ten thousand patients in Milledgeville and the veterans were scattered out among the patients. I sent in team of about four people there and spent months there trying to find out who was a veteran, and who wasn' ; t a veteran, and where we could help them. We went in to all veterans regardless of race, class, or anything else and made sure they got all the benefits to which they may have been entitled. We got them separated from the other ten thousand patients where we could see that they got all the benefits they were entitled to. Then a short time afterwards we asked for and received permission from our board to integrate the two together, which has worked out wonderful in Milledgeville [and] of course our other facilities also. STUECK: Can you tell us about the size of your office in 1949 compared to the size of it today? WHEELER: Well, it was probably bigger then than it is now. STUECK: Well, I would be very surprised if it wasn' ; t, but how many people were there? Well, where was your office in 1949? WHEELER: It was in the Capitol, the State Capitol on the ground floor. I had offices around the Capitol here and an office across the street over on seven hundred street. At one time, we had offices in what is now the Georgia State University. In fact, the State Retirement System was started in the lobby of my office. STUECK: How big was your staff in 1949? WHEELER: Larger than now. We had a lot larger staff. I don' ; t recall. I can look it up. We operate with fewer people now than we had in 1949. STUECK: Why? I mean--why has there been a reduction? WHEELER: Because we are getting more service out of the people that are working. We are training them better, and they know what they are doing, and we demand more from them then when I got here. STUECK: Are they, in terms of people--? WHEELER: They have to pass a certain test and all merit system tests--not merit system tests but--before we can represent a veteran before a VA rating board, you have to be certified to do that so we have to train our people to make sure they understand the law and the regulations. STUECK: When did your employees come under Civil Service Regulations? When was that change made? WHEELER: I don' ; t recall the exact date, but I am glad we are under it. We were not under it when I came here--there was no merit system when I came in. I think that the first department of the state government to have any merit system was maybe the Department of Labor at that time, that' ; s mostly federal funded. We get federal funds for our education division. They pay a hundred percent for that. The state approves and we check the schools and on the job training sites. We get federal funds for our cemetery and we also receive federal funds for our hospital, our nursing home and domiciliary operation and Alzheimer' ; s unit. So we have a very close working relationship with the Veterans Administration in Washington. I have had the honor of knowing every head of the VA, meeting them one time or another. We have had many good people heading the Veterans Administration, and it has been an honor to work with them, as well as the Presidents we' ; ve had, and the Governors we' ; ve had. Beginning--you can see over there on the wall the various governors I have been with, all of them great Americans and interested in veterans. Most of them are veterans themselves. COBB: Commissioner, historians are just now starting to realize how important World War II veterans coming back were in terms--they seemed to get much more involved with politics after the war, and I know Herman Talmadge was a veteran.. WHEELER: He was in the Navy. He was in the Navy. COBB: And so was Marvin Griffin and Earnest Vandiver too, for sure. WHEELER: Carl Sanders, Jimmy Carter COBB: So that hopefully translated into a lot of sympathy for what you were doing and your capacity. WHEELER: They are all very cooperative. I have--we have never had a Governor that I didn' ; t work closely with. We got much done for veterans through the years and I am in my fourteenth term now. I expect, good Lord willing, to serve it out. STUECK: Could you talk a little bit about-- WHEELER: I will have sixty years state service at that time and before that, I told you, I was in the federal government. STUECK: Could you talk a little about your relationship with voluntary association such as the American Legion, the VFW? WHEELER: I don' ; t like to refer to them as voluntary. They are a hard working group ; a lot of them are voluntary of course. They devote their time free of charge to hospitals and all. STUECK: How about NGO' ; s? WHEELER: We represent the American Legion in Georgia before the VA rating boards that decide on claims. The State Services Officer for the VFW is a member of our staff and the American Legion also. And we represent other veterans' ; organizations and work with all them. All of them are great organizations. I don' ; t think we would have any benefits today if it wasn' ; t for the veterans' ; organizations all over the country working to see that we maintain them, and lobbying for veterans. All of them are doing great jobs: the American Legion ; the VFW ; the Am Vets ; the DAV: Disabled American Veterans ; Paralyzed Veterans Association ; all of them are doing great jobs for the veterans. And then the Old Reserve Officers Association is called now the Military Officers Association Enlightenment. I' ; m a member of that. I have been a member of the American Legion for sixty years. That is my sixty year plaque over there. While I am looking over there, [gestures] you might see that is Winston Churchill III along the wall with General Myers. Churchill [III] was there for the World War II Memorial dedication when we dedicated it. He was there and he said it was the first time he had been back to America since his mother--her funeral. She was married to Averell Harriman, of course, and her funeral was there in the National Cathedral in Washington. COBB: Commissioner, you were talking about Carl Vinson and of course Richard Russell, just two great advocates for the state and for their constituents, but how has the fact that Georgia does have, let' ; s say, a pretty good share of military installation, used to have more, how does that--has that affected the work your office has done? Does that mean that we actually have more veterans who live in Georgia because we have more military installations than some places? Does that make for a more supportive environment for the military? WHEELER: Well, we rank number nine or ten in the nation in the number of veterans. You mentioned the name of two great Americans when you mentioned the names of Russell and Vinson. I have told you a little earlier I attended Russell' ; s Inauguration when he was Governor. Through Russell I met Lyndon Johnson who was later President of the United States. He established the first steady commission that went in-depth studying the Veterans Administration and the needs of veterans. And we held--he appointed me to that position when he was President--and we held hearings all over the United States trying to find out in what direction we needed to head in the future for the VA. I gave you a copy of the annual report that we presented to the President at the conclusion of that study. I can remember meeting Carl Albert, who was Speaker of the House then, from Oklahoma and others. We held hearings in Oklahoma City and all over the country, New York and other places, Philadelphia. It' ; s been used as a guide since then for veterans' ; affairs. Senator Russell really had a lot to do with making Lyndon Johnson majority leader and later President--a close relationship there. Carl Vinson was one of the greatest men I think that we' ; ve ever had from Georgia. They were responsible for having many military bases in Georgia ; Warner Robins for example wouldn' ; t be there if it hadn' ; t been for Vinson and others all over the state. So, it has been a great trip and I have enjoyed every minute of it, knowing these great people. I told you a minute ago about President Johnson driving a limousine once from Austin down to Johnson City. He decided to tell the Secret Service he was going to drive. So he was driving this limousine fast and State Trooper pulled up next to him, didn' ; t know who it was and came up. Johnson let window down, he said, " ; Oh my, God." ; And he [Johnson] said, " ; Well at least you know who I am." ; (laughter) STUECK: You mention that Georgia is ninth or tenth in total number of veterans. WHEELER: Yes, that is right. STUECK: What number would Georgia be in terms of population, in other words, do we have a disproportionate number of veterans? WHEELER: No, we do not. STUECK: So, it is about average? WHEELER: That' ; s right. Keep in mind we got the largest state east of the Mississippi River, the state of Georgia. We used to go all the way to Louisiana--had Alabama and Mississippi. And if they don' ; t start acting better we gonna take them over again. (laughter) COBB: People have discovered that Georgia is such a great place to live. We get a lot of retirees who come in as veterans. WHEELER: A lot of them are moving in and we are happy to have them. They are good people. It is an honor to work with them. And some of them are now reaching the age where they need the disabilities increase as they get older. And that is what our officers are out in the field are for, to assist them in getting the benefits to which they may be entitled from the federal and state government. And then once the office fills out the application, we have trained people at the VA Regional Office that represent the veteran before the rating board and make a decision on what the disability should be. We have offices located in each of the VA hospitals in Georgia, and there are three of them: one in Augusta, one in Dublin and one large hospital here in Atlanta. And since you mentioned hospitals--we are talking about hospitals. We have the first hospital in America, VA hospital in America, only one up until now where we are taking active duty people who have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are taking care, I say we, but the Veterans Administration Hospital in Augusta, Georgia is taking care of wounded active duty people who haven' ; t been discharged from the services, all branches, Army, Marines, Navy, and the Air Corps., and the Coast Guard, the rest of them all of them are there. The way that came about, about two years ago Secretary Principi was Secretary of Veterans Affairs at that time. It came to our attention that at Fort Stewart there were soldiers there waiting as long as six months to see a doctor, who were in un-air-conditioned barracks without running water. When we heard that we called Secretary Principi and he immediately got with the Secretary of Defense and his people and made available a beautiful place in Augusta, Georgia. Beautiful grounds, beautiful hospital, available only to active duty people of the Armed Services. First it was Army and now it' ; s the others. I had an opportunity to call Secretary Principi and tell him the situation and he immediately acted on this. We helped cut the ribbon for that facility in Augusta and I highly commend the VA of the great job they are doing for these wounded troops down in Augusta. I saw a Lieutenant who was totally blind--had been blinded without legs, without arms, and with other disabilities. I am so proud of the fact that the VA has been able to take active duty people and give them the care and treatment that they certainly deserve. And they are getting good care and treatment there down there at Augusta, Georgia now, and that is a great facility. Once they are discharged, they go back to other parts of the country probably. Some of them are Georgians, but not all of them. [They are] from every part of America because they are all branches of the Armed Forces. That is the first hospital in America, first VA hospital, and the only one now that takes care of active duty people that need hospital care, and they are doing a great job. It is pitiful to see some of these young men that they are having to take care of. But they are getting good care I am glad to say at last. STUECK: We' ; ve talked about a number of personalities in the interview ; Russell, LBJ, could you talk a little bit about your relationship with Jimmy Carter? WHEELER: Jimmy Carter is a good man. I liked him very much. We disagreed on some things. We didn' ; t agree on everything, but I think he probably thought I needed it. We always had a lot of meetings and he was always calling me to pray, and I appreciate that. He wanted to--he did reorganize the state government and the original plan was to take the welfare department, which was a separate department, the public health department which was a separate department and the veterans department which was a separate department and join them all together. And in a very friendly way I told the Governor that we would have to oppose that because we didn' ; t feel that a veteran should be in the lobby with a welfare person. The veteran earned his benefit and he was entitled a special service and special department. I am happy to say that Governor Carter, after giving it much thought and after many people talked to him about it, agreed with us and we maintained the Department of Veteran Services which is a constitutional department same as the Board of Regents--constitutional board rather. The Governor gets one appointment each year and they serve for seven year terms, [they] have to be a veteran of course, and a legal resident of Georgia. We have had very excellent boards, constitutional boards, that govern the Department of Veteran Services and they in turn elect the commissioner to a four year term, which I am in my fourteenth now. I have enjoyed every minute of it and looking forward to--now--we have always had one project underway at all times. We are now working on a cemetery in Glenville where we will open it and have a dedication ceremony approximately next September of next year, ' ; 07. We have new projects going on all the time improving the care and treatment of our veterans and our facilities. STUECK: Would you talk a little about your relationship with Joe Frank Harris? WHEELER: Joe Frank Harris is a great American. I remember when he first came to the Legislature, as a member of the Legislature. I was a close friend of Sloppy Floyd, James Sloppy Floyd was chairman of the Appropriations Committee and was also a full time employee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was Quartermaster (unintelligible). We were very close friends and I used to spend a lot of time with him, particularly when we had a session legislature. He controlled a lot of the money really. A young man came in one day that had just been elected to the Legislature in Cartersville, Georgia. And I never will forget Sloppy Floyd saying, " ; This boy is going to amount to something one day" ; and sure enough he did. He became Governor and was a great Governor and served two terms. And I served with him eight years and he was a great Governor. His son and my son went to law school together and we are good friends, even today we are close friends. All the Governors have been great people and I have enjoyed my work with all of them. Zell Miller and I are close friends and have been since he was in the Senate. He got elected to the State Senate and I knew him at that time. He was of course Lieutenant Governor, and then Governor, and then Senator, a great American. All of them have been great. STUECK: Could you talk a little bit, in being in the job of Commissioner for so many years, decades, there obviously are peaks and troughs in terms of funding. Could you talk a little about some of --? WHEELER: We have always managed to get along. You have to know the people that make the decisions, and I made it a point to know the people that made the decisions. Most of them very fortunately have been close friends of mine that make the decisions. Even today we are happy to know that the people over there are our friends and most are very sympathetic, all of them are sympathetic with veterans. And we are very proud that we get what we need to operate efficiently and operate the department as it should be operated. We are not extravagant. I am extremely conservative, very conservative on money and other things that are unnecessary to protect the tax payers' ; money. We get full value of the dollar. Our people are well trained out in the field. We have field officers, 41 field officers, over the state and each one receives the training where we can make sure that the veterans in their community get all they are entitled to. We report that to the House Members of that area that he can--that we have isolated--to say--there is an area with a man in Athens for example, at the University of Georgia. He would send letters out to the Senators in that area that he covers, and representatives, telling them how much we were able to do for the veterans of that area during the past year. And tells them also how we compare with states that have more veterans than we do and are getting less than our veterans. Showing him [the Senator or Representative] that the money the state spends for our department is money well spent. We brought in altogether--helped bring into Georgia last year over two billion dollars in federal benefits. That includes hospitalization and education and everything, but over two billion dollars last year. Two billion as compared to about thirty two million in state funds spent. That is spent mostly for nursing home care for our sick and disabled veterans. We never ask for a bonus in Georgia. We' ; ve always thought the money should go to the sick and the disabled, not the well. We have never paid a bonus, and probably won' ; t pay one because we think the money should go to people who need nursing care, who are Alzheimer patients and people like that deserve it, and then a beautiful place to rest when they pass on which would be beautiful cemeteries. We are working on that now. STUECK: During the 1970s there was a transition from essentially a conscript army to a volunteer army. Could you talk a little bit about the significance of that from your perspective in terms of the people that you serve? WHEELER: Veteran is a veteran as far as we are concerned. I can' ; t see any difference really other than one is a volunteer and one is--a lot of volunteers in World War II, not all were drafted. In other wars, they were not all drafted. We had a lot of volunteers in all the wars that we participated in and I commend these young men and women that are volunteering to go into the service. And we are happy to serve them as we were their fathers before them and their grandfathers before them and make sure that they get all the benefits they are entitled to. We don' ; t show any distinction between one war to another war. A war is a war whether it is declared or not. The war in Vietnam for example back in--the first Calvary division was the first large group of soldiers going into Vietnam. They went in from Columbus, Georgia. At one time in the early ' ; 60s, in the early part of the Vietnam War--Vietnam was affected--I mean the Columbus, Georgia residents were more affected by the Vietnam War than any other city in America. We got together with the mayor, and the newspaper down there in Columbus, and the veterans organizations, and the agencies that dealt either directly or indirectly with veterans' ; affairs, about thirty agencies federal and state. We got them all under one roof, not to make speeches, but to bring in--we had the secretaries and the farms there and we had over five thousand people show up one day and we started there the first supermarket of veterans benefits which is now spread national. We have had one a year since then. The reason we had to limit it to one [is because] we have to invite these agencies and we cannot force them to come. We can get them once a year, all agencies and this gets the person called a procrastinator. Pronounce it for me professor, procrastinator. STUECK: Procrastinator. WHEELER: You are right, and a lot of people are procrastinators. For example Social Security Administrator has an office in most of these cities where we go. People put off going there, but if you go just one day between certain hours you get that procrastinator out of his house and he comes over and the social security does a lot of business even though they have an office located in that location. It gets that procrastinator out seeking his benefits. We now give flu shots and blood pressure checks. The VA hospitals have a place for that. We give--drivers licenses have been issued in the past at our supermarkets. The Game and Fish Commission issue fishing and hunting permits. For the veterans who are seeking jobs, we have the U.S. Department of Labor and the Georgia Department of Labor there who assist in that. We also have what used to be the Civil Service Commission which is now Personnel Management, and the federal government has a Navy surveyor assisting veterans in obtaining employment. So that' ; s the reason it' ; s called a supermarket of Veterans Benefits. It goes from hospitalization--we have people from the cemeteries there talking about burial benefits. We have people from the insurance there talking about the veterans' ; insurance matters. We have people from the schools and universities in the location where we go talking about education. We have our state approval agency people there. We have all together about thirty federal and state agencies that are set up to do business in one day, and we always have at least three to five thousand people present at these. STUECK: Who came up with the name Supermarket of Benefits? WHEELER: I give it credit to a fellow who later became--we discussed it together since we are bringing in all these different agencies not just in the field of education, but jobs, hospitalization, burial benefits, insurance, various licenses and all. Later he was editor, one of the assistant editors, of the paper in Columbus. He later moved over to a little insurance company in Columbus which is now known nationally: AFLAC, the duck. I give him credit for helping me get started in the right way with this. And he was with the Columbus paper and shortly after we held the supermarket, he went over with AFLAC, just a small company. It was started by a close friend of Senator Talmadge, John Amos who was from Alabama originally and went to law school. He was a city attorney for Fort Walton Beach before he moved to Columbus to start that little insurance company. John Amos and his son are still there and [his son] is President of it I think now. It is a nationally known company now. STUECK: You sponsor an annual golf tournament? WHEELER: Yes, we have a golf tournament every year to raise money for the homeless veterans. We usually raise forty thousand dollars or more each year. We have been in several locations, right now we are playing in Fort McPherson and before that we were at Eagles Landing, beautiful course there. The VA hospital has a group of people who work with homeless people. They locate them. Some of them are under bridges and doorways. First of all, you need to give them hospitalization and get them well. We give them care and treatment and encourage them to take it. They get them in good shape [and] once they are rehabilitated enough to have a job, they are assisted in finding one and they use this money to pay for transportation to and from their first job, and to pay for clothes, clean clothes, and workable clothes to work in and a place to stay and a place to eat until they are out on their own. About ninety nine percent of them have jobs, otherwise they would be in doorways. We are very proud of this program, Homeless Veterans Program, operated by the VA hospital here in Atlanta. We have another one ; we usually have it in October. I usually hit the first ball, if I don' ; t miss it that' ; s the reason they got the name " ; play it again" ; ; I missed the first ball. You have to keep your eye on the ball never look up--you gotta keep your eye on the ball and then look up and see how far it went, but I make a mistake and look up to see how far it went before I hit the ball, but I play it again. STUECK: When did your golf tournament start? How long have they been going on? WHEELER: About--I' ; d say about fifteen years something like that, twelve or fifteen years. I' ; ve forgotten. I can look it up. STUECK: What gave you the idea? WHEELER: Well, the people at the VA hospital and I were talking about how we could raise money and help veterans, and I agreed to help them sponsor a golf tournament. I was interested in golf back then. I don' ; t play golf much anymore ; in fact, I don' ; t play it at all. To do it right it' ; s a full time job, and I don' ; t have time to do it right. I am able to hit one down the fairway. One a year, I can still do it. We got a VA hospital, I think as a result of a golf course in Augusta, Georgia. At the time George Sancken was mayor of Augusta. He was a member of the Augusta National Golf Club. At that time a Senator from South Carolina, I won' ; t call his name he is gone now, a good man, but he had the hospital set to go, a new VA hospital for Columbia, South Carolina. We knew that the people [who] had made the decision in Washington were big golfers and George Sancken was able to set aside the golf course one day and we brought down the top people, the decision makers, from Washington. We visited Eisenhower' ; s Cabin, he was still living then, but he was living in Pennsylvania. He is still there. They kept full time staff there in his cabin. We went in there and around the mirror were--he and Maimie every place they had ever lived--around the mirror--and bridge tables, he played bridge. His room was a little cubbyhole with one bed in it and a telephone and a mirror overlooking the par three course at the Augusta National. And we went in there and around there was the pictures made all around the time they were married all the way until the time he was in the White House. And then the people that were down there, we played the course, Augusta National. We had lunch and dinner down there. Thanks to George Sancken, who passed on last year I believe. He was mayor of Augusta who was a member. We wound up getting the hospital in Augusta rather than Columbia, I don' ; t know whether that had anything to do with it or not, but we certainly encouraged it during that golf match. So we' ; d be talking about golf and we would go into that. STUECK: Part of business in America just as much as in Japan and Korea, right? WHEELER: I am not familiar with Japan or Korea, but it certainly helps to know the people you are dealing with. It doesn' ; t hurt to get acquainted with them on a name basis, if you want to get anything done. STUECK: I am kind of curious about any thought you have about an incident that occurred in 1995 around the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II ; the controversy over the historical exhibit over the atomic bomb at the end of the World War II at the Smithsonian. Did that--? WHEELER: Saved my life. I was ready to go to the South Pacific and I praise the Lord, I should praise Him every night for dropping it. Harry Truman did the right thing and he saved a lot of American lives and a lot of Japanese lives by dropping that bomb or we would still be over there fighting today. It saved my life and I wouldn' ; t be here today if he hadn' ; t dropped it. In my office I have a picture of the man that dropped it, Paul Tibbets. He was a great American. And he visited here not too long ago--and Paul dropped it and I am proud to say he is a great American in my book and he ought to be honored in every way possible. He is an unusual fellow ; he' ; s a great fellow, a great American. But I' ; m glad he dropped the bomb. Thank God we had Harry Truman there that dropped it. One thing that tickled me about Truman was it took Mrs. Truman ten years to teach him, to teach Harry, to use the word manure rather than the other way. STUECK: There are some other words too ; she had to work with him. WHEELER: He was a great American, Harry Truman was. Thank God he was the President of the United States. Alvin Barkley was a great man from Kentucky. Very few people know that Alvin Barkley, who was Vice President during that some of that time, graduated from school here in Georgia. Did you know that? He went to Emory at Oxford before it became Emory Atlanta. His wife passed away and he remarried. I can remember when five dollars was just a tremendous amount of money. On his honeymoon he spent the first night at the Ansley Hotel in Atlanta and then went down to Sea Island. He tipped the bell boy five dollars and it made the front page tipping so much money. STUECK: Wish we could get away with that today. WHEELER: He graduated from Emory when it was at Oxford, Georgia, well it still is Emory at Oxford Junior College now, but he was a graduate of Emory University. A lot of people don' ; t know that. That is where he got his training, in Georgia. He is a great American, Vice President. COBB: I am curious about the War in Iraq and the obviously the much increased reliance on National Guard Troops. Do you foresee--I mean--back when I was in the National Guard unless you served I think it was six months on active duty for purposes other than training, you weren' ; t really eligible for veterans benefits. Obviously a lot of National Guardsmen are now eligible for benefits they [otherwise] wouldn' ; t have. Would you foresee that because we are clearly going to be relying on these people more, that there is a likelihood that all National Guardsmen will be eligible for more benefits? WHEELER: I would hope so. We would be in bad shape if we didn' ; t have a National Guard and I am very proud of the fact that they are now going down to the border to stop illegal' ; s from coming into this country, some of which could be terrorists. For all we know they all could be, I don' ; t know. I think everybody coming into this country ought to be checked as they are in other countries, as they are checked in Mexico when you' ; re going there. They check you out pretty well. People from South America are checked out pretty well. I know they check them out in Australia. They want to know where you are every night that you are there, and what you are doing there, and what you are going to do there, and how long you are going to be there, and whether or not you are going to work there or not when you go into Australia. I have been there several times. They check you very closely in New Zealand and other countries, China. And China is coming to be a great competitor of ours. I spent some time there, over in China. I am happy [about] the fact they recognize a Georgia product in China, and I have got to show you this. On all the airlines in China, if you fly from Hong Kong to Beijing, that' ; s across the backseat of every airline, that' ; s Coca-Cola, holy water. It' ; s in Chinese and I took one off the back of my seat when I was flying from Beijing from Hong Kong. Coca-Cola is doing well in China. A lot of Georgia products are going into China and we are getting a lot of Chinese products into Georgia, probably too many. But it' ; s a growing country and they check people going in and out of there too you know, and other countries too. COBB: They check you after you are there as well. WHEELER: You are right about that. It is a big country too and a fellow from Atlanta, John Portland, has built a hotel over there in Sang How I believe. We have a lot of interest over there. I never will forget, I visited the American Embassy one time over in Beijing. President Bush Senior was one of the first Ambassadors to China. He goes back quite often I understand. COBB: We haven' ; t talked about Richard Nixon since that was one of his great initiatives in terms of opening up-- WHEELER: Henry Kissinger did a great job as Secretary of Defense and Nixon went to school at Duke as you know, up in North Carolina, a little school up in North Carolina called Duke, which has been in the news lately, they have a soccer team up there. While we are talking about Duke did you realize that the Rose Bowl in 1943 was played at Duke in Durham, North Carolina? Did you know that? COBB: No, I didn' ; t. WHEELER: You know why it was played in Durham? COBB: Probably because they were afraid of-- WHEELER: They attacked at Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 and they were very worried that the attack was going to extend to our west coast including Pasadena. Duke was in the Rose Bowl as I remember, and so they played the Rose Bowl in 1942 in Durham. I have got to say this, in 1943 the University of Georgia from Athens town, played UCLA in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and I was there, and we won. I was still at the University of Georgia and I saw President Caldwell there and told him, " ; I may be a little late. Can you help me get back in school when I get back?" ; And he said " ; Yes, I' ; ll help you." ; I knew the Registrar very well at the University, Uncle Tom Reed. Uncle Tom Reed was a Registrar and he lived on the campus there at the University and he taught Sunday school at the First Methodist Church. I was smart enough to go to his Sunday school class and walk with him over to the First Methodist church on Sunday morning. I lived in Old College which was one of the oldest dormitories on campus at the University. Several of us were the last students to live there then move out of Old College and then the Navy took it over and I don' ; t know what you have over there now. COBB: It is about the home of the Franklin College and Sciences. WHEELER: Well, that is good. It is a great place and I lived in a room that Robert Toombs lived in and Alexander Stevens. Show you how long their room was still there and we moved out of it. Robert Toombs you know had an Oak tree named for him over there. He was an unusual man, number one in his class, but he made the graduation speech under an oak tree. He indulged a little bit too much probably (laughter), but everyone came out of the chapel to hear him speak. Is that correct? COBB: That is correct. WHEELER: You are the professor. COBB: Of course, it was an awfully hot day that may have had a little to do with it. WHEELER: I don' ; t think they had any air-conditioning then. Toombs was a great speaker and there are many a great stories about Robert Toombs as you know. Little Alexander Stevens and I know they had a debate one night and Alexander Stevens said, I mean Robert Toombs, " ; You little drawled up shrimp I could eat you up." ; And he said, " ; If you did you would have more brains in your stomach than you head." ; (laughter) You remember that? COBB: I remember reading about that. WHEELER: They were great Americans. The University is a great place and I would like to go back. STUECK: Commissioner, that is about all the questions we have for you. Jim would you like to make any further comments? WHEELER: Well, let me say this I am happy that I was fortunate enough to live near the University of Georgia at the city of Crawford. And I am glad to see that Crawford has a stop light and the city in Texas Crawford has a blinking light, and we have twelve more people than they have. I am glad I lived there because I got to see the first game played at the stadium, Sanford Stadium. I am proud that I knew Sanford, Chancellor Sanford and lived in Athens while he was Chancellor. He tipped his hat to every lady he saw in the street. Great American, Chancellor Sanford. Harmon Caldwell was the President of the University and Uncle Tom Reed worked on the Banner Herald in Athens when Henry Grady, who the school of Journalism is named after, was editor. He later came to Atlanta after Uncle Tom Reed worked with him on the Banner Herald in Athens before he moved to Atlanta to become editor, I think of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Henry Grady, you have the Henry Grady school of Journalism. First game we beat Yale and I met Catfish Smith that day and he was All-American from the University of Georgia. And of course Frank Sinkwich and I were good friends and there is a picture on my desk of Wally Butts, Frank Sinkwich and I. Sinkwich was the best man at my wedding and we were dear friends. He won the Heisman trophy that year and was athlete of the year from Youngstown, Ohio. I am glad I was there in school when Carl Sanders was a freshman and Ernest Vandiver who was later Governor was a senior. So Athens means a great deal to me and the University does. I am very proud I have a grandson there now who is going to get two degrees in the fall. An AB degree and a BS degree at the same time and I know he will be Phi Beta Kappa, his mother was. And God bless you. It is such an honor to live here in Georgia and be a citizen of the greatest country in the World, the United States of America and I am very proud of our flag and all it stands for and all it represents. It represents the blood of so many of our veterans, and when I pass on and I hope, I' ; m not getting up a crowd to go today, but when I do hope to have the American flag on top of it. And I will be saluting it, laying there saluting it. It is great to be an American, and be proud of it, and stand up for America whenever you get an opportunity, and stand up for our veterans who made it possible for all of us to enjoy the freedom that we enjoy and many of us take for granted as Americans. Thank you. STUECK: Thank You. COBB: Thank You. [End of Interview] Resources may be used under the guidelines described by the U.S. Copyright Office in Section 107, Title 17, United States Code (Fair use). Parties interested in production or commercial use of the resources should contact the Russell Library for a fee schedule. video 0 RBRL175OHD-007.xml RBRL175OHD-007.xml http://russelldoc.galib.uga.edu/russell/view?docId=ead/RBRL175OHD-ead.xml http://russelldoc.galib.uga.edu/russell/view?docId=ead/RBRL175OHD-007-ead.xml
Location
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Atlanta, Georgia
Duration
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105 minutes
Repository
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Dublin Core
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Interview with Pete Wheeler, June 14, 2006
Identifier
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RBRL175OHD-007
Creator
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Pete Wheeler
William Stueck
James Cobb
Format
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video
oral histories
Subject
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World War, 1939-1945
Veterans--Services for--United States
United States--Veterans
Politics and Public Policy
Description
An account of the resource
<span>A Conversation with Pete Wheeler is a discussion, with Dr. William Stueck and Dr. James Cobb, of Wheeler's long career as Georgia's Commissioner of Veterans Services. Wheeler discusses his early life, attending Emory at Oxford and the University of Georgia, and his work with the Office of Price Administration after getting out of the service after World War II. Wheeler discusses the importance of the Department of Veterans Services and explains the duties of the Commissioner of Veteran Affairs. He mentions a specific project he undertook to identify all the Veterans in the former state mental hospital, Central State Hospital, in Milledgeville and to provide the services these veterans are entitled to. Wheeler also discusses his work with veterans from other wars such as the Spanish-American War and the widows of soldiers who had fought in the American Civil War. He explains his wife's experience during World War II and the employment of the rest of his family during the war. Wheeler recalls the desegregation of the veteran's home in Milledgeville and the importance of the Veteran's Administration. Wheeler also comments on his relationships with Senator Russell, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Zell Miller, and Joe Frank Harris.<br /><br />Peter Wheeler was born in Crawford, Georgia on October 19, 1922. He attended the University of Georgia, where he majored in education, and was called to active duty in the army upon his graduation in 1943. He was discharged from the army in 1946, and attended the John Marshall Law School in Atlanta at night, while working for the Federal Office of Price Administration. In 1949 he was named Commissioner of Veterans Services in the Herman Talmadge administration, an office he has held for 14 terms under eleven governors. Mr. Wheeler was president of the National Association of State Directors of Veterans Affairs in 1964 to 1965, has served on the National Veterans Day Committee, and was Chairman of the National World War II Memorial Advisory Board from 1994 to 2004.<br /></span>
Date
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2006-06-14
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Coverage
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Georgia
Type
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moving image
OHMS
-
Dublin Core
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Title
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Richard B. Russell Library Oral History Documentary Collection
Subject
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Georgia--History
Description
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Oral history collection consisting of interviews conducted for the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies since 2003.<br /><br /><a href="http://georgiaoralhistory.libs.uga.edu/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=3&type=&tags=OHMS&featured=&subcollections=0&subcollections=1&submit_search=Search+for+items">View all OHMS indexed interviews in this collection here. </a>
Creator
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
Date
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2003-ongoing
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Format
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Oral histories
Identifier
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RBRL175OHD
Coverage
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Georgia
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Location
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Athens, Georgia
Duration
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90 minutes
URL
<h3><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><a href="http://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL175OHD-014-01/audio" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Access Part 1</a></span></h3>
<h3><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><a href="http://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL175OHD-014-02/audio" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Access Part 2</a></span></h3>
<h3><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><a href="http://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL175OHD-014-03/audio" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Access Part 3</a></span></h3>
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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RBRL175OHD-014
Title
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Interview with John Ehrlichman and J. Stanley Pottinger, May 29, 1986
Subject
The topic of the resource
United States--Officials and employees
Civil rights
Student movements
Public policy
United States--Civil rights
Politics and Public Policy
Description
An account of the resource
Chief Domestic Advisor in 1971. In 1975 Ehrlichman was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury for his role in the Watergate Scandal. J. Stanley Pottinger served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the United States Department of Justice from 1973-1977 and is considered one of the first people who knew that Deep Throat was Mark Felt. William Stueck interviews John Ehrlichman and J. Stanley Pottinger about the Nixon Administration's approach to Civil Rights. Other panelists include Professor Robert Cohen, Professor [Jonathan Houghton?], and graduate student Chris [Schutz?], all of the History Department. Part 1: John Ehrlichman recalls the process of nominating a successor for Justice Abe Fortas of the Supreme Court. He discusses the failed nominations of Clement Haynesworth and G. Harold Carswell. Ehrlichman comments on the role of Leon Panetta in the Office for Civil Rights and Nixon's compliance with desegregation. J. Stanley Pottinger additionally reflects on the effect of Hubert Humphry's unsuccessful presidential campaign on the enforcement of school desegregation. Part 2: Panelists discuss outside criticisms of Nixon's Civil Rights activism, bussing and the Kent State Shooting. They comment on the controversy of the Scranton Commission and the Nixon Administration's reaction to the shooting. Part 3: Panelists comment on a plan to consolidate all intelligence agencies to prevent domestic terrorism. They comment on the increased wiretapping and efforts to find people planning to hurt Americans. Panelists take questions from the audience regarding public opinion polls, Judge Rehnquist, and the identity of Deep Throat.<br /><br /><span>Chief Domestic Advisor in 1971. In 1975 Ehrlichman was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury for his role in the Watergate Scandal.</span><br /><br /><span>J. Stanley Pottinger served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the United States Department of Justice from 1973-1977 and is considered one of the first people who knew that Deep Throat was Mark Felt.</span>
Creator
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John Ehrlichman
J. Stanley Pottinger
Robert Cohen
Jonathan Houghton
Chris Schutz
William Stueck
Date
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1986-05-29
Rights
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Format
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oral histories
Type
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sound
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Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project
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United States--Officials and employees
State governments--Officials and employees
Politics and Public Policy
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The Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project consists of 175 oral history interviews relating to the personal and political life of Richard B. Russell. Interviewees include members of the Russell family, his staff and interns, other senators and public figures, and friends. The primary interviewer was Hugh Cates, a public relations manager at Southern Bell and secretary of the Russell Foundation (1977-1981). Most of the interviews were recorded between 1971 and 1979, but the majority during 1971 after Senator Russell's death. Other interviewers include: William Stueck, Karen Kelly, Barboura Raesly, Robert G. Stephens, Jr., Dwight L. Freshley, Tom Jackson, Angus Hepburn, and Russell Library staff. Interviews provide insight into Senator Russell's political career as State Representative, Governor, and U.S. Senator, his views on various topics such as civil rights and Vietnam, and his personality and family life.<br /><br /><a href="http://georgiaoralhistory.libs.uga.edu/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=23&type=&tags=OHMS&featured=&subcollections=0&subcollections=1&submit_search=Search+for+items">View all OHMS indexed interviews in this collection here.</a>
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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1971-2002
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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RBRL216RBROH
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Georgia
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Transcript, 64 pages
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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RBRL216RBROH-022
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Interview with Ina Russell Stacy, April 5, 1971
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1971-04-05
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Ina Russell Stacy
William Stueck
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Interview with Ina Russell Stacy, lawyer and sister of Senator Russell. Topics include Bureau of War Risk Insurance (later Veterans Administration); Race relations; Theodore Roosevelt; Russell family; Ina Russell (mother); Richard B. Russell, Sr.; Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975; Woodrow Wilson; Women's rights; World War, 1914-1918.
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Families
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United States
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oral histories
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sound
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
United States--Officials and employees
State governments--Officials and employees
Politics and Public Policy
Description
An account of the resource
The Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project consists of 175 oral history interviews relating to the personal and political life of Richard B. Russell. Interviewees include members of the Russell family, his staff and interns, other senators and public figures, and friends. The primary interviewer was Hugh Cates, a public relations manager at Southern Bell and secretary of the Russell Foundation (1977-1981). Most of the interviews were recorded between 1971 and 1979, but the majority during 1971 after Senator Russell's death. Other interviewers include: William Stueck, Karen Kelly, Barboura Raesly, Robert G. Stephens, Jr., Dwight L. Freshley, Tom Jackson, Angus Hepburn, and Russell Library staff. Interviews provide insight into Senator Russell's political career as State Representative, Governor, and U.S. Senator, his views on various topics such as civil rights and Vietnam, and his personality and family life.<br /><br /><a href="http://georgiaoralhistory.libs.uga.edu/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=23&type=&tags=OHMS&featured=&subcollections=0&subcollections=1&submit_search=Search+for+items">View all OHMS indexed interviews in this collection here.</a>
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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1971-2002
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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RBRL216RBROH
Coverage
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Georgia
Oral History
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL216RBROH-158/ohms
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5.3 Interview with Ina Russell Stacy, June 28, 1971 RBRL216RBROH-158 RBRL216RBROH Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Ina Russell Stacy William Stueck oral history 1:|23(10)|48(8)|68(10)|86(14)|105(13)|115(13)|129(3)|153(2)|172(5)|185(5)|202(7)|222(1)|235(8)|254(11)|270(2)|284(9)|302(4)|314(1)|324(2)|344(14)|357(11)|385(7)|398(1)|413(8)|437(10)|456(8)|476(12)|495(8)|527(2)|547(2)|576(11)|595(1)|607(6)|621(13)|632(6)|644(5)|665(4)|687(14)|698(3)|711(12)|726(12)|745(4)|765(4)|779(7)|799(3)|810(4)|824(7)|838(7)|854(2)|887(3)|910(9)|943(6)|975(2)|998(3)|1023(2)|1038(4)|1058(2)|1079(8)|1096(2)|1120(6)|1138(7)|1165(6)|1186(9)|1200(10)|1216(2)|1226(11)|1243(3)|1260(9)|1288(1)|1305(8)|1328(4)|1348(4)|1366(7)|1387(6)|1402(8)|1422(6)|1435(9)|1449(5)|1468(12)|1481(12)|1500(13)|1517(11)|1529(2)|1544(4)|1559(8)|1587(17)|1604(16)|1616(3)|1633(5)|1645(10) 0 Kaltura video < ; iframe id=" ; kaltura_player" ; src=" ; https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/1727411/sp/172741100/embedIframeJs/uiconf_id/26879422/partner_id/1727411?iframeembed=true& ; playerId=kaltura_player& ; entry_id=1_o0x2ahyp& ; flashvars[localizationCode]=en& ; flashvars[leadWithHTML5]=true& ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.plugin]=true& ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.position]=left& ; flashvars[sideBarContainer.clickToClose]=true& ; flashvars[chapters.plugin]=true& ; flashvars[chapters.layout]=vertical& ; flashvars[chapters.thumbnailRotator]=false& ; flashvars[streamSelector.plugin]=true& ; flashvars[EmbedPlayer.SpinnerTarget]=videoHolder& ; flashvars[dualScreen.plugin]=true& ; & ; wid=1_b1g49f86" ; width=" ; 400" ; height=" ; 285" ; allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozAllowFullScreen allow=" ; autoplay * ; fullscreen * ; encrypted-media *" ; frameborder=" ; 0" ; title=" ; Kaltura Player" ; > ; < ; /iframe> ; 5 Senator Russell's early life: family home, education, and social life Would you mind telling me how this house has changed over the years? Athens ; dancing ; entertainment ; farm ; friends ; Gordon Institute ; hunting ; land ; Lucy Cobb ; parents ; Phi Kappa ; property ; Roosevelt ; school ; siblings ; tutors ; University of Georgia ; Winder 17 758 The Russells' domestic servants / Priming the children for success Do you recall anything, you mentioned going to Montreal, on you say it was a business trip? Barnes family ; class ; housekeepers ; maids ; parenting ; Quarterman ; Richard Russell, Sr. ; wealth 17 1285 The Russells' media and political sources / Mr. and Mrs. Russell Well, tell me. What newspapers, what magazines did you have in the home? Annapolis ; population ; Richard B. Russell, Sr. ; University of Georgia 17 1827 Senator Russell's leadership I mean did he have much of a temper? civil rights ; dixiecrats ; integrity ; Lyndon Johnson ; southern bloc ; southern senators ; Vietnam ; whip 17 2248 Russell's friends in his later life Now you were in Washington for a good bit of his career, weren't you? Clair Harris ; Frank Scarlett ; Lyndon Johnson ; Robert Lee Russell Jr. ; Saltonstall ; Smathers ; staff ; Symington 17 2927 Inquiring about Russell's childhood contacts from Winder I don't suppose there's anyone who you could recall that is still alive from his boyhood who was outside the family. 17 3421 Russell family dynamics / Gender and race issues Do you remember any other incidents that might have led to a whipping from your mother? 1906 Atlanta race riot ; family ; gender roles ; Ina Dillard Russell ; KKK ; Ku Klux Klan ; mother ; segregation ; servants ; welfare ; women's rights 17 4063 Richard and Ina's travels and work in Washington, D.C. / Richard Russell's personality Do you have any--I asked you about Teddy Roosevelt. Do you have any recollection of your father or your brothers' attitudes toward Woodrow Wilson? American Legion Convention ; civil service ; clerical work ; humor ; introversion ; memory ; sarcasm ; self-discipline ; teaching ; Veteran's Administration 17 4652 Russell family travels / Women working in Washington / Richard and Ina's Washington social life Well, you give the impression that, although the community that you lived in as children was very isolated, the family was very close and didn't in terms of playing and so forth, didn't really mix all that much with people outside. New York ; president pro tempore ; teaching 17 Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project RBROH-158 Ina Stacy Russell interviewed by William W. Stueck June 28, 1980 STUECK: Would you mind telling me how this house has changed over the years. First, when was--it says out front that this house was finished in 1912, but you moved into it before then, didn' ; t you? STACY: No, no, it was finished then and we all moved in. We lived across in some woods. There was a house over there that we lived in. You had to then cross the railroad track and the road that is now the highway went on the other side of the railroad track-- STUECK: Oh, I see. STACY: --and we were all over there and my father had this land and he wanted a larger house. There was a great number of us, as you know, and so he built this house which was then right in the middle of a cotton field, not a tree around. And he and my mother had all these trees planted ; the oaks, the pecans and these sycamores are the ones that are here now were planted by them. So it very different now from what it was when it was built. STUECK: But this home, the home across the tracks then, that' ; s not the same home-- STACY: No, it has burned. STUECK: --that' ; s in the middle of-- STACY: No, it has burned. STUECK: So, in essence, after you moved from Athens to Winder, there were three houses. There was one in the center of Winder ; there was one across the railroad tracks from this one, and then there was this one. STACY: Well, there was still another one, nearer Winder-- STUECK: Oh, I see. STACY: --that we moved into first. And we lived in that. We called it the Gresham House ; I don' ; t know why. But that was the name that it had and we just kept on calling it the Gresham House. And we moved into the larger house there and lived there for several years and it wasn' ; t large enough so my father built this one. STUECK: Now, you mentioned in your oral history interview that is already at the Russell Library that you had a live-in tutor for a good part of your childhood. STACY: We had several over a period of time. STUECK: Right. Now was that only in this house or was that before you-- STACY: No, most of it was in the Gresham House-- STUECK: I see. STACY: --because by the time we have moved over to what we called the Jackson House, I was at Lucy Cobb in Athens. So I was just coming home for vacations and weekends and things like that. So, it was when--see, I' ; m one of the older ones. I' ; m even older than the Senator. So we had--we were a great distance from Winder, the school in Winder, so my father had these teachers come and live with us and teach the younger ones. We were all in elementary school then. STUECK: Just how far were you in the Gresham House from the school? STACY: Oh, two miles. A mile and a half or two miles. But little children you know. After awhile we did have a horse and surrey and we could go to Winder in that to school. But at first we just had--he had to have somebody to teach us. Now I started school in Winder and then when we moved out home, my older sister and I, and maybe my next sister, (Dick was not even old enough to go to school then) the three of us went to school in Winder at first and then after that, my father realized that he had to have someone to teach us at home. There was no compulsory education in those days. STUECK: So it wasn' ; t that, really, that he was dissatisfied with the quality of education in Winder-- STACY: Oh no, no. STUECK: --so much, it was just that it was so difficult to get there. STACY: It was so difficult to get there with three small girls. STUECK: Yes. So I would take it that Dick too, even though he came along a little bit after, most of his early education was through a tutor in the home. STACY: No, I would say--let me see. Dick did go to school in Winder sometime and some of the--I don' ; t remember too much about it because I went away to school quite young. I was less than fifteen when I first went away to school. And Dick himself went away to school when he was thirteen. He went to Gordon Institute in Barnesville. STUECK: Well now, wait a minute. Was he only thirteen when he went? I thought it was in 1913 when he went. STACY: He was only thirteen. No, no it couldn' ; t have been. I' ; ve always been told that he was thirteen years of age. You probably have dates to back up yours. STUECK: Well, you' ; re probably right. STACY: But he was--well he was at the University of Georgia in 1918. STUECK: Yes, that' ; s when he graduated and I think he graduated from Gordon in 1915. STACY: He was at Gordon Institute and he was also at Powder Springs, you see. So he had had more than--I don' ; t know. He was born in 1897. STUECK: Tell me, do you recall anything about him being in leadership positions when he was young--offices in school, in his class, activities. STACY: Well, that' ; s hard to say because I wasn' ; t in the class with him, I don' ; t remember too much. I do know that he was always felt like a leader because he was very fond of the stories that were in the paper then about the war, especially the Boxer Rebellion and the Japanese-Russian affair, you know. And he would come to my mother with a newspaper. He always called mother " ; Dear" ; , and he would say, " ; Read me about the war, Dear." ; And that was before he could read. And then he had a way of going out walking and he would take this stick with him and he would do this, you know, make all kind of motions, and then he would shoot with the stick, you know, and so one of the farmers near here told my father once, said, " ; Judge, I know how it is to have a boy that ain' ; t right in the head." ; Cause he thought that Dick was just an imbecile walking around, talking to himself. But he was imagining battles and leading battles and things at that time. I do know that he belonged to a debating society at the University [of Georgia]. STUECK: Yes, right, Phi Kappa, which your father had also been a member of. STACY: Yes, and I don' ; t know much about him at Gordon Institute. He used to come home, brought several of the older boys with him that I liked a lot, and things like that, but I don' ; t know much about what he did in school. STUECK: Well, tell me, since you mentioned the Russo-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion, this was about the time when Theodore Roosevelt was president of our country. The Russo-Japanese was 1904-1905. STACY: 1902. STUECK: Well, the Boxer Rebellion was about 1900, but the Russo-Japanese War was 1904-1905. Did he ever say anything about Teddy [Theodore] Roosevelt? I mean it strikes me that Roosevelt might have been to a young boy interested in the military, a very dashing-- STACY: I remember when Roosevelt came to Atlanta once to a fair and made a speech. And Dad had us there at the fair and I sat on my father' ; s shoulder and shook hands with Teddy Roosevelt. So Dick was probably very much impressed too, at the time. STUECK: But Roosevelt, of course, was a Republican. STACY: Yes, well that didn' ; t matter. He was the president and he came to Atlanta which was most unusual. None of the Republicans or Democrats either paid much attention, you know, to Georgia. STUECK: Of course, his mother had been a Georgian, from Georgia. So that might have been an attraction. STACY: That' ; s right. I think he was out at Roswell at the home there, Bulloch Hall, at Roswell. STUECK: In the oral histories with yourself and your sisters and brothers at the library, there is virtually nothing about him dealing with people outside of the family as a child STACY: I don' ; t think he did. STUECK: Was this, were the homes that he was brought up in, were they so isolated that he pretty much-- STACY: We weren' ; t so isolated as there were so many of us, it wasn' ; t necessary for us to go out of the family for our entertainment or amusement or anything. I remember my mother sitting at the piano right here in this room, playing songs for us to sing. I remember my father doing clog dances and, you know, entertaining ourselves at home. We didn' ; t have television. We didn' ; t have any radio or any of the things that they have now. We didn' ; t even have an automobile that we could get around in. So you see, our entertainment had to be right at home. We always had a lot of cousins that came to see us. We had friends that came to see us. As mother said, she' ; d rather have our friends to come to see us than to not know where we were, if we all spread off in different directions. STUECK: So he didn' ; t insofar as, for instance, playing games like baseball-- STACY: We had a basketball court out back. We had a tennis court, and so we could do all those things here at home. Dick was fond of hunting. I remember when he got his first rifle. I remember when he got his first shotgun. He let me take his rifle and go hunting with him once. And so, I liked to get out and walk in the fields and everything. He and I used to climb trees together and have a good time. or basketball, was he a real competitor? STUECK: Well, tell me. What was he like? For instance, if you played tennis or basketball, was he a real competitor? TOC \o " ; 1-5" ; \h \z STACY: I couldn' ; t tell you that. I don' ; t remember anything about it. To me he was just a very normal brother, no different from my other brothers and sisters except he was older and I enjoyed being with him more. STUECK: Would you say that you were with him perhaps more than any of the other brothers and sisters, with the possible exception of Rob [Robert Lee Sr.] STACY: I always felt like I was because my two other sisters, one just older than I and one between Dick and me, both liked to stay at home and cook and do all those things. I liked to get out and go with Dick in the fields and walk out and climb trees and go hunting and things like that. And then when I went to Lucy Cobb, I was learning to dance and I would come home and he was learning to dance and we had a Victrola and we' ; d dance on the porch here. And he told me once, " ; If you don' ; t stop trying to lead, I' ; m going to stop dancing with you." ; And you know, he and I seemed to be more congenial, I guess. STUECK: So even when you came home from the Lucy Cobb school-- STACY: He would be home from Gordon. STUECK: All right, he' ; d be home, but would he frequently have friends here, visiting him? STACY: Yes, and as I said awhile ago, he brought home friends from Gordon Institute. There was one named Tom Thatcher, one named Hap Stewart and things like that, that I knew. STUECK: But still, before he went away to Gordon and Powder Springs, you would say that he really didn' ; t have much in the way of friends outside the family. STACY: None of us did. None of us did. We were isolated ; we lived in the country. The only things we had were when--my father and mother were very careful to see that we did certain things. For instance, Dad and Mother went to Montreal, Canada, once. Dad had to go up there. He took Rob and Dick, the two boys, with him. He went to New York once to a convention of some sort and took me, and different ones in the family he would take. When they had the Exposition in Jamestown, Mother got us all ready to go to Jamestown and she found out she was pregnant and we couldn' ; t go. STUECK: Do you recall anything, you mentioned going to Montreal, on you say it was a business trip? STACY: No, he belonged to the Royal Arcanum which was an insurance benevolent association no longer in existence, and he was one of the leaders in Georgia in that--in, I guess it was an insurance fraternal thing. But he would go on these conventions. Now several times he would go and just take my mother because he felt like she needed a break. STUECK: Well, who would take care of you? STACY: We had a white housekeeper part of the time and then we always had servants, plenty of servants. It wasn' ; t hard to get servants then. STUECK: What do you mean by servants? You mean people who would come in-- STACY: We had a cook and a maid and a washerwoman and two yard men who worked the garden and took care of the horses and mules. And we had--I remember one little colored boy that was our nursemaid. He played out in the yard with us and all. STUECK: Now, where did these people live? Did they live on your property? STACY: Some of them, and some of them didn' ; t. But the one that I' ; m thinking about mostly was a family of Barnes, B-a-r-n-e-s. We had Bell Barnes as our cook. Arch and Emory Barnes, the two older boys, older men rather, they were grown men--took care of the horses and cows and milked and did things like that and the garden. And then Primus was the boy that took--played with us. And Aunt Milly Ann, the mother of all these was our washerwoman, and Uncle Martin, the father of all of them took care of the farm and the garden and things like that. So that was one family, you see, that lived on our place. STUECK: You didn' ; t, the children didn' ; t do much farming themselves. I mean, did they have their little plots? STACY: Well, sometimes we played at it. We never did do much with it. STUECK: Well, how did you occupy yourselves during the typical day? STACY: Reading. All of us liked to read. My mother would read to us. We played games and then the girls--we had a--there was a house right near us that my father owned that--we had dollhouses in that house. We had each one a room, it was a four room house, and we would mark off with chalk the rooms in the house, and we would furnish those with anything we could find, broken dishes or anything. Sometimes we would make cardboard beds and furniture. We had very little money ; we had very little opportunity to buy things. We never missed it. (laughs) STUECK: How did you perceive yourselves as fitting into the society around you? I mean, did you feel that you were at the top of society around you or-- STACY: Well, I never thought about it. It never occurred to me. I was friendly with everybody. My father was, he was that democratic type of person that-- STUECK: He had to be. He was a politician. STACY: He was a politician, and he always said that he was no man' ; s superior but every man' ; s equal. That was his theory. STUECK: Was there in Winder a good deal of wealth? I mean, were there some-- STACY: No, not at that time. Not at that time. I guess we were as well off as anybody. STUECK: You didn' ; t have, in essence, a conspicuous leisure class-- STACY: And we did have friends in Winder. My older sister had several friends that she would see and we all went to Sunday School and we had friends at Sunday School. We had friends go on picnics. There was a Whites Mill out from Winder and we would have straw rides and go out there. We had quite a nice social life, but it wasn' ; t anything that was so important that we had to have it. We never missed it if we didn' ; t have it. STUECK: So I would assume that young Dick would have the same kind of-- STACY: --have the same kind of a background. Yeah. Yes, he had--well, we had cousins there, the Quartermans who were very good cousins of ours, and they had children about meshed in with the ages, you know, in our family and they were always coming out here on Sunday afternoons to play with us or we would sometimes go to their house. And then the doctor had a son that was a good friend of ours, and I had a good friend that she and I just got along beautifully together. We sat together the two years that I was in school in Winder. I was in public school two years and-- STUECK: Well, tell me. Your brother has been referred to variously, as now an adult politician, as a man who knew how to tend to his own business and let everybody else' ; s business alone ; as a very smooth operator both cautious and expedient--a people expert. These are all from the oral histories. Could you see, perhaps maybe even if only in retrospect, the beginnings of a superb political leader or politician? STACY: No, I can' ; t say that I did because, as I say, he was no different from my other brothers and sisters. Of course, as you know, I have quite a variety of brothers who were prominent. My Uncle Lewis Russell, my father' ; s youngest brother, lived with us and he was a lawyer. He had studied law under my father. Dick and Rob used to sit out on this front porch, and Uncle Lewis called them Methuselah and Abraham, because he said that they were so old for their ages. And they would discuss all the topics of the day and all the big things. I never got in on that because I wasn' ; t too interested. STUECK: Well, do you think that your father, or your father and mother together, kind of had young Dick pegged for a political career right from the beginning? STACY: No, I don' ; t except I guess you' ; ve seen in some of this data that' ; s over there that Dad took him to Atlanta to the governor' ; s mansion when he was about five years, five or six years old. Now that may have had some influence ; I don' ; t know. He ran for the state legislature when he was only twenty-two. So you see, he did have the makings of a political life. He liked it and it was what he wanted to do. STUECK: Did you father, for instance, when he was traveling throughout the state, did he frequently take young Dick with him? STACY: Yes. STUECK: He did. STACY: He took Dick and me to Savannah once to a bar association meeting, and he would leave us at the hotel while he went to the meeting. And there was a Negro porter there in the dining room that he told to take care of us. This porter was so nice, I mean waiter, and he told us that we could have anything we wanted on the menu. So we ordered four desserts. Those are some of the things I remember. And when we went to Savannah, my father had the lower berth with Dick and I had the upper berth, and Dick kept talking to me and telling me what was he was seeing. I guess it was maybe his first--I was about twelve and what he was about nine at that time. And so we were talking so loud Dad was embarrassed and so he made me get down in the berth with Dick and he got in the upper so we could look out the window together. STUECK: Did you ever have a sense that in traveling throughout the state or in taking his son or sons and daughters sometimes when he traveled throughout the state that he was kind of preparing them, making contacts-- STACY: Oh, yes. He wanted us to, and my mother, too. Mother had us girls go to the grand opera in Atlanta when it would come to Atlanta because she thought we needed that culture. Oh, they were very conscious of making us worthwhile citizens, I' ; ll say. STUECK: Well, tell me. What newspapers, what magazines did you have in the home ? STACY: Oh, my Lord, I can' ; t remember. STUECK: Was there a Winder paper at that time? STACY: I don' ; t know. There' ; s just a weekly now. But I think we got the Atlanta paper always. STUECK: How many people do you suppose lived in Winder about the turn of the century? STACY: I think the last census gave them about 10,000, but there are loads of them that live outside like we do, not in the city limits, you see. STUECK: That' ; s the last census, you mean in 1970? STACY: 1970-- STUECK: Yeah, but there would have been nowhere near that many in 1900, would there? STACY: Oh no. Winder probably had 1500 people at that time. It was just a little country town. STUECK: So you figure you would get the Atlanta paper? STACY: We got the Atlanta paper, I' ; m sure, and we got Life magazine. I remember that. We had the--what was the one before the Reader' ; s Digest--Literary Digest or something, one that went out with the Depression. I know we had several magazines, and my mother was forever giving us books. And I have several books now that she gave me for Christmas. You know, when Christmas came we all got books. STUECK: Well, what -- you know, one of the major contributions that your brother made as United States senator was in the area of American defense and foreign policy so that I, and other historians, are very much interested in tracing the evolution of his views toward the outside world. And I would assume that what you read in the newspaper, and what you read in books, whatever magazines, perhaps was very influential. STACY: Probably, and you see, we had worlds of history books. Mother always had plenty of material for us. That was the set of books that she gave Dick. STUECK: Do you--were the things that you read essentially the same things that he read or was there some segregation to your reading? STACY: Some difference. He like the Henty books and the Last of the Mohicans and those stories, and I may have gone for Little Women and Jo' ; s Boys and things like that. But essentially I think we all liked good reading. STUECK: What do you recall, if anything, about well, you mentioned the Russo- Japanese War. Now there are two nations. What were your perceptions of a Russia or a Japan as you were growing up? STACY: I can' ; t remember if I had any at all. STUECK: --or maybe Britain, I mean, a lot of books are written. STACY: See, we had an uncle who was an Annapolis graduate, my father' ; s brother Uncle Rob, and he was in the war. And so I think that was one of the things that Dick was interested in. STUECK: You mean, he was in--well he was stationed in St. Petersburg. STACY: He was in the Navy. He was in the Navy. He had been at the coronation of the Czar. And you see, we had outside information coming in through our relatives. STUECK: So you would get a fairly consistent stream of letters from say, your Uncle Rob. STACY: Well, I guess my father did, I' ; m not sure. STUECK: I don' ; t suppose there would be any chance that those letters would still-- STACY: My aunt who was never married, my father' ; s sister, probably was the one that he wrote to, and I don' ; t have any idea where her letters would be, her material. STUECK: Do you, are you aware that Dick might' ; ve at one time wanted to go to Annapolis himself ? STACY: Oh, yes. I know he did. He wanted to go to Annapolis. He did not get an appointment. The war came on, I' ; ll tell you, World War I and he was SATC at the University--Student Army Training Corps. STUECK: Yeah, but by that time--I mean, he was at the University before we entered the war. STACY: Yes, he had been to Gordon Institute. He had been to a military school, but whether he had--I think he did have ambitions to go to Annapolis at one time. STUECK: I kind of wonder because your father, being in a position of some political influence, you would think that-- STACY: Well, it may have been Uncle Rob' ; s influence-- STUECK: No, but what I' ; m saying is that at that time-- STACY: That could have, you mean. STUECK: So much of the appointments to the service-- STACY: My father was not a person that would influence--I mean, create a great deal of influence because he was very much at odds. You know, he was defeated and he was defeated for Congress. And we always said, he couldn' ; t get anything but a judgeship, and he was good at that. STUECK: So it' ; s quite possible, for instance, that he tried to get his son an appointment at Annapolis and simply didn' ; t-- STACY: I doubt it. I doubt if he tried. He may have thought he didn' ; t have a chance. STUECK: I see. Well, one of the things that is curious about that is that if he had political ambitions in the state, it would seem that the logical place to go to college would have been the University of Georgia, not to go outside of the state. STACY: Yes, but my father had been a University graduate, you see, so-- STUECK: And if you went to Annapolis then you would at least-- STACY: I don' ; t think he ever really tried. STUECK: I would assume that he might have even envisioned a naval career, a career in the navy. STACY: That may have been when he was very young. But I think he really, after that visit to the governor' ; s mansion here, I think his idea was to be a state statesman, and he went on through the house of representatives ; he was speaker of the house, you know, and then he went to the governor' ; s office. And so I think that that was what he really wanted all the time. STUECK: Why do you suppose, for instance, that at the University of Georgia, he never--there is no indication that he was ever elected to a campus office, no indication that he was active in campus politics. STACY: I can' ; t imagine unless he was just having to dig so hard to get what he was getting. STUECK: Yeah. Well. STACY: He just studied more at the University. STUECK: Well, the interview--who was the interview with--one of his classmates-- (long pause) STACY: --very low-key politician. He never had pushed himself. If he had been in one of these aggressive, outgoing things, he might have gotten-- STUECK: Well, his father was one like that wasn' ; t he--more aggressive, more outgoing? STACY: Yes. STUECK: More controversial, I suppose. STACY: More. STUECK: Do you suppose that-- STACY: That had an effect on Dick. STUECK: He saw how his father did and saw some of the-- STACY: Sort of turned him on the other--that could have been. You' ; ve really studied it. STUECK: Well, it seems from looking at personalities that his mother probably was more influential on him than his father. He spent more time with his mother, a lot more time. STACY: Oh, yeah. Dad was gone a great deal when I was--the first remembrance I have of my father was him being gone all the week, coming home for weekends. He was solicitor general of the Western Circuit. You see, and then, you know, we didn' ; t see him maybe--Mother was the disciplinarian. STUECK: Uh-huh. When he was solicitor general, was he based in Atlanta or did he move all around? STACY: Athens. STUECK: He was based in Athens? So he would take the train to Athens. STACY: Athens, and Jefferson and Commerce, and Homer, and Lawrenceville and Monroe. See Winder had not been created then. Winder was created later on, Barrow county, I mean. STUECK: So he' ; d be traveling around to these various townships. STACY: Holding court in various ones, you see. STUECK: And he wouldn' ; t be home at night a good deal of the time? STACY: No. STUECK: --except on weekends. STACY: Mother was the mainstay. STUECK: Would you--how about your mother? Would you say, for instance, that she saw the same kind of limitations in you father' ; s career? BEGIN SIDE 2 STUECK: I mean did he have much of a temper? STACY: Yes, he could get mad. He could get very mad, angry at different things. I think the last few years he was in the Senate, he was so frustrated because he couldn' ; t do anything. STUECK: Was this because he was ill, or because-- STACY: NO, because of the Vietnam War which he opposed so much, you know, and yet after our country got in it, he didn' ; t want to get into it in the first place--he was totally against that. And then after we got in, and he couldn' ; t do anything he said, " ; It' ; s our country and it' ; s my country, and I' ; m going to have to support it with everything I can." ; Even though he was against it-- (pause in tape) STUECK: You were saying that the Senator in his last years was very frustrated with the situation in Washington and you suggested the Vietnam War was a major problem. Well, how about the ultimate defeat of the southern bloc of which, of course, he was a leader on civil rights. Do you think that was a-- STACY: You mean what? STUECK: The final defeat of the southern bloc of which he was a leader on--the civil rights-- STACY: But you see, so many new senators had come in that he was in the minority. He didn' ; t have--he felt like he didn' ; t have the clout that he used to have, and that was one of the things. Everything was going more liberal, and when he went to the Senate, he was considered a liberal because he was right in there. And as time went on, he began to be more conservative. And that was one of the frustrations. He couldn' ; t run things as he had run them. I think his health too had a lot to do with it. He didn' ; t have the feelings for it, I mean the energy to go into it like he used to. STUECK: Well, tell me now, other than the fact that he was a decent human being how do you explain the tremendous power that he was able to build within the Senate as a political person? STACY: I think it was his honesty and his integrity. People knew that when he said something he meant it. He didn' ; t equivocate over, you know, try to get out of things when he was talking. I think it was mainly his integrity that people admired and that they recognized. STUECK: You wonder about--I mean, you take a Lyndon [Baines] Johnson. Now he was a very powerful man in the Senate, and yet certainly an awful lot of people questioned his integrity, his honesty. So I mean, it just seems to me that there has to be something more, not that honesty and integrity wasn' ; t part of it, but there has to be something more than just that to explain why Richard Russell became certainly one of the most powerful men in the Senate. STACY: Well, when he believed in anything, he worked for it. If he didn' ; t believe in it, he had no part of it. STUECK: One of the journalists that I was reading about in the papers the other day made the comment that Russell was the kind of leader who lead without seeming to lead. Would that-- STACY: Well, don' ; t you think that could have been that the people had faith in him because of his integrity and honesty? That they admired him for his stand on things because they knew that he was not trying to gain something by it. He had no axe to grind or anything like that. You' ; re dealing with some very ambitious men. In fact, virtually everyone there is very ambitious, they wouldn' ; t be there if they weren' ; t. And there I would be inclined to say that the element of fear, also, has to do with leadership, as well. I mean, certainly that was true with Johnson. I mean, people were afraid that there might be consequences if they didn' ; t follow him on particular legislation. Now Russell' ; s kind of leadership was much, I suppose, less direct, was much less aggressive. Yet you would think that--well, for instance, his mastery of parliamentary procedure certainly was of some significance. But he also had to be, I would think, a very effective operator behind the scenes as well. STACY: I don' ; t know if that ever entered into it so much. I can' ; t see how it did, may have. Of course, there were times, I suppose, when he could say, " ; I see it like this, and if you want to go along with me, I' ; ll help you with another bill you have." ; They do have that I know in the Senate--" ; You scratch my back and I' ; ll scratch yours" ; . But I don' ; t think he did a lot of that. STUECK: One thing that has impressed me so far about him is that he could keep his mouth shut. STACY: He knew when to talk. STUECK: Yeah, he knew when to talk and when not to, Oh, I think there were references in those interviews in the " ; Georgia Giant" ; series there where he commented that some people never knew when to keep their mouth shut. He referred to Hubert Humphrey in that light, and that that undermined his effectiveness in the Senate. You would think that with Senator Russell that was never a problem and therefore, for instance, if he was engaged in a behind-the-scenes negotiation with other senators that they could always be very much assured that what was said by them in private was private-- STACY: Was private. STUECK: Was private--would stay that way. STACY: He wouldn' ; t betray a confidence. STUECK: So that would, I would think, be one thing. Yet I would think, especially as he developed seniority as new people came in, he must have been able to crack the whip in some way, even if it was in a very low key way, much more low key than the way Lyndon Johnson used to crack the whip. STACY: I don' ; t see how he ever did. I mean I can' ; t imagine him doing that. STUECK: Yeah, that just doesn' ; t fit the personality. STACY: It doesn' ; t occur to me that he ever did that. STUECK: Now you were in Washington for a good bit of his career, weren' ; t you? STACY: All of it. I was there before he came to Washington. STUECK: Right. So you were there when he went to Washington in 1933, and you didn' ; t leave until 1956, I guess it was. STACY: Right. I stayed there all that time, and then after he was so sick I went back for the last two years and lived with him in his apartment. And that is why when he talked of me more than ever. STUECK: Would you say that he was a man--well let me put it another way. In the researches that I' ; ve done on Russell, so far, it seems to me that if you had to identify three, or if you had to identify people with whom he was inti- mate, personal level, throughout his life, you would cite his mother, you and Rob and that would be about it. Would you agree with that? STACY: Well, I would like to put myself there. And I do feel like that of all his sisters, I was the one. I think Rob, of course, probably, and Rob' ; s son Bobby [Robert Lee Jr.] Russell, who was his campaign manager when he was in the presidential move. He was very fond of Bobby and very close to Bobby. I would think that maybe Bobby might have had a great deal of influence on him and he had a lot on Bobby. STUECK: But I get the feeling that outside of the family, although he had a lot of people who certainly you would call friends over a long period of time, there would be no one or two that you would identify as his closest friends or really intimate friends. STACY: He had some very, very close friends and I meet people in Atlanta now, in fact I go play bridge with one of the widows of his very good friends. Arthur Lucas was a good friend of his, and Harry Thornton was a good friend of his. STUECK: Now, these were people in Georgia. STACY: Yes. And then there was Mary and Frank Scarlett in Brunswick who became a federal judge, and Dick was very instrumental in helping get that appointment for him. Frank Scarlett was one of his good friends. And Charly Cox was another one from Atlanta. STUECK: Now why is it that you choose these, I mean obviously he had so many acquaintances over the years. STACY: Well, they' ; re men that l think of as being associated with him in his various campaigns when he ran for governor, when he ran for the Senate, and the only time he had any opposition in the Senate was when Gene [Eugene] Talmadge ran against him. And these men were all the ones that stuck with him and were right there to do anything they could. STUECK: Were you aware, for instance, while he was in Washington that he would consult with them quite a bit? I mean, would he call them at home and talk to them. STACY: Oh, yes. And they would come up to see him. They' ; d go out and eat together and things like that. I don' ; t know how much consulting he did with them or whether it was all just political talk. [It] could have been, just discussions on situations. STUECK: How about in Washington--people who were, you know, part of the Washington crowd and not necessarily connected to his home state. Were there any people that he was particularly close to there? STACY: No, I can' ; t think of any except the ones who were in the Senate, his Senate colleagues. STUECK: Nobody, for instance, who would particularly stand out as a member of his staff over the years. STACY: Well, of course, yes. He did have members of his staff that he was very close to: [William] Proctor Jones and Charles [E.] Campbell. And some of them I can' ; t think of their names. And Leeman Anderson was his administrative assistant, had been his administrative assistant when he was governor and he depended a lot--he talked over things with those men. Marge [Marjorie Groover] Warren was one of the women in his office that-- STUECK: Now, with the exception of Anderson, were these other people from Georgia? STACY: All of them, so far as I know. STUECK: Now, as far as senators are concerned, who would you say--I mean LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson], that' ; s a famous friendship, but what other senators would you say he was particularly close to? STACY: Well, Senator [Leverett] Saltonstall used to come around every night before he' ; d go home and have his hat and overcoat on and tell Dick good-bye. And do you know that after Dick' ; s death, I got more letters from Republican senators than I did from Democrats? STUECK: Well, that doesn' ; t really surprise me. I mean, after all, Russell was very much a leader in the so-called conservative coalition. STACY: Well, they said he had just as many friends on one side of the aisle as he did on the other. STUECK: Well, especially in his later years, when they say the Democrats turned more liberal. STACY: Now when he was younger, I remember when George [Armistead] Smathers, Lyndon Johnson, Dick Russell and Stu [Stuart] Symington, those four, used to go to baseball games together and they used to go to, you know, trips. One time they went to Florida to Arthur Godfrey' ; s hotel ; Smathers had to go down for something. And then the other senator from Florida--can' ; t think of names anymore--Mary and Spessard [Lindsay] Holland were good friends of his. And Miss Lucy and Senator [Walter Franklin] George lived at the Mayflower, when he lived at the Mayflower. And they were all good friends. And another one was--oh, the man that--I wish I could think of names. So many names all in my head and they all go out. STUECK: Did he become more reclusive as he got older? STACY: Yeah. STUECK: He spent more time alone? STACY: More time. I think it was--he had that emphysema, and I think coughing so much and all was an embarrassment as well as an impediment to his conversation. STUECK: You wouldn' ; t attribute his reclusiveness then in part to the fact that he was a man who had never married. The tendency would be--well, a lot of people would think as he got older to become kind of increasingly self-centered. STACY: Well, I knew him better when he was older. I had known him when, as a young man, and then there was a skip there when I was married and our lives were a little different. I was seeing him maybe once or twice a month or once a week maybe sometimes. But, as far as that is concerned, I feel like I knew him better in the last twelve years after I came home here in 1956. See Bobby Russell and his family had lived here, and when Bobby decided to build his home, Dick had nobody here at the house. He said to me one day, " ; I have something I want to ask you and I' ; m scared to." ; I said, " ; What in the world?" ; He said, " ; I was wondering if you would go back" ; (my husband had been dead just one year) " ; I wondered if you would go back home and take over the house for me." ; I said, " ; My Lord, Dick, I never thought of leaving Washington. It had never occurred to me." ; He said, " ; Well, think it over." ; And I said, " ; Well, I' ; ll go down there and get the house in some kind of condition and see if we can get somebody to live there." ; He said, " ; I don' ; t want anybody that isn' ; t in the family." ; So I told him I' ; d give it a trial. I didn' ; t sell my house in Washington for two years. I was sort of commuting, trying to decide what to do. And finally I sold my house and decided to just be down here. And I never was sorry because I had a very nice life living here and meeting Dick' ; s friends. We had people like [Robert Strange] McNamara when he was appointed Secretary of the war [sic]-- STUECK: Defense. STACY: --to come down here in his own plane, sit here and talk to Dick all day. When Herman [Eugene] Talmadge was elected senator, he told me one morning, he said, " ; Senator Herman Talmadge is coming by here. May be here for lunch." ; And Herman came in about nine and stayed until two, and Dick was calling about getting him appointments on the agricultural committee and the committees he wanted. I got to meet a very great many--the [Ernest Frederick] Hollings from South Carolina were over here once, different people that came here to see him. I had a great deal of contact with outside people. When the " ; Georgia Giant" ; was made, they were all here. And then we had another time when he was running, we had a bunch stay here--come down from Chicago, I believe, to interview him, and that was all part of our life here. STUECK: Would he move out into the community a lot when he was home and talk to people? STACY: Oh, yes. Several of them, [William] Clair Harris in Winder was one of his good friends, they' ; d come here and sit out on the porch, or sit in here. And then there were several people from Atlanta that came out here. I' ; d serve them drinks or whatever they wanted. STUECK: Was there anyone that you could recall who was an acquaintance that went back to the days, say, before 1920? STACY: Yes, Clair Harris, I guess he had known always. He was a Winder boy, and he became, you know, the Carwood Manufacturing Company--and then Clair went on and left them 22 million when he died. So Clair was a good friend and a good Georgia boy. I remember when Clair was nineteen years old. He was about a year or so younger than Dick, I think. He used to sweep out a store in Winder when he was seventeen or eighteen going to school. So Dick had known him forever. That was one of his Winder friends. STUECK: I don' ; t suppose there' ; s anyone who you could recall that is still alive from his boyhood who was outside the family. STACY: I can' ; t think of anybody. STUECK: You mentioned, or there is mentioned somewhere a Quarterman, William [H.] Quarterman? STACY: Yes, he went in the army during World War I and stayed in and retired as a colonel and lives in Asheville, North Carolina. STUECK: So as far as you know--but they met at Gordon, I take it. STACY: No, no. He was our cousin that lived in Winder. STUECK: Oh, I see. STACY: Bill Quarterman. STUECK: I see. How about Walton Smith? Do you recall somebody by that name? STACY: Who? STUECK: Walton W. Smith. STACY: Walton W. Smith. I don' ; t know him. STUECK: How about Frank Kempton? STACY: Frank Kempton. That name is familiar but-- STUECK: They were roommates at Georgia. STACY: Yeah. I remember vaguely, but I don' ; t know enough about him to even talk about him. STUECK: Bob [Robert] Vansant? STACY: Bob Vansant I knew quite well. He was one of the boys from Powder Springs that Dick knew very well. STUECK: Do you know when you last had any contact with him, do you know where he was living? STACY: He' ; s still living in Powder Springs as far as I know. STUECK: How about Nita Stroud? STACY: Miss Anita Stroud was one of our teachers that lived with us. She was the first one, I believe. My Uncle Walter Dillard was a Methodist preacher preaching in LaGrange and knew Miss Nita. And he' ; s the one that got Miss Nita to come and live with us. She taught the girls music and she taught all of us our ABC' ; s. STUECK: Carl Williams? STACY: No. STUECK: No. Pinkie [F. M. Jr.] Stewart? STACY: Pinkney Stewart? STUECK: Pinkie. I guess that was probably a nickname--Pinkie. STACY: No. Now, Pinkie Stewart may have been what they called Hap Stewart. What was Hap' ; s name? He was from Gray, Georgia, and I think he' ; s still living. STUECK: Gray, Georgia? STACY: Uh-huh. STUECK: And they knew essentially through Dick' ; s political career--is that? STACY: No, I don' ; t think he ever did anything in Dick' ; s political career other than vote for him. STUECK: Oh, I see. STACY: Maybe contribute-- STUECK: So they might have been old school buddies or something? STACY: They were from Gordon. STUECK: I see. STACY: If this Pinkie Stewart is the same as Hap Stewart. STUECK: You wouldn' ; t remember another name. Hap is probably a nickname, too. STACY: I ought to know it. I wrote to him a lot when I was a girl, but I can' ; t think of what it was. STUECK: I' ; ll try and track him down. There must be-- STACY: Ask anybody in Gray, Georgia, about Hap Stewart, they' ; d know who it is. STUECK: Yeah. How about--you mentioned in your interview a Josephine Collins Hardmen. STACY: Yes. STUECK: Is she still alive, do you know? STACY: Yes, I think she is. She' ; s Mrs. Linton Collins. STUECK: Yes. And she lives in Atlanta? STACY: No, I think she lives in North Carolina up around Sapphire Valley. I know a friend of mine that goes up and visits her. STUECK: You also mentioned in the oral history a woman to whom Russell was engaged. You never mentioned her name, and you said that she--that you knew her quite well. She was a graduate of Emory Law School. Do you recall her name? STACY: Yes. STUECK: But you don' ; t care to reveal it. STACY: I tell you. She had--has given an interview and it' ; s sealed. So for that, since she has married twice since then. STUECK: Okay. I see. STACY: And I still keep up with her. STUECK: I see. Okay. STACY: She lives in La Jolla, California, but she is really a very fine person. STUECK: And Miss Harriet Orr--that was a person--a woman that Dick met in Washington? STACY: Yes. He was very fond of her. I don' ; t think he was ever in love with her, but I think he was very fond of her. STUECK: How--you mentioned that Mayor [William B.] Hartsfield was at-- attended a reunion of yours. Is that because he was a fairly close family friend? STACY: I think he was. I think Dick and Mayor Hartsfield were very good friends. STUECK: Would that friendship go back many, many years do you think? STACY: I don' ; t know about that. It may have started when Dick was governor because Hartsfield was in Atlanta. STUECK: I see, but he was mayor of Winder? STACY: No, Hartsfield was mayor of Atlanta. STUECK: I see. Okay. STACY: The one that the Hartsfield Airport is named for. STUECK: All right, I' ; ve got a couple more names here. Now Modine Thomas was a housekeeper, right? STACY: Modine is our good old cook. STUECK: Yes, I was trying to get a hold of her the other day and her telephone number is unlisted. STACY: She lives right across the street. STUECK: She lives right across the street. How about W. B. Thompson? STACY: Mr. Thompson is dead. Mr. Thompson was really a very good friend from Atlanta, and he used to come out here and with Harry Dwoskin-- STUECK: Right, I got him too. STACY: And there was a Catholic priest that use to come out with them. Mr. Thompson was a builder and he was working on Marist College in Atlanta at the time and knew this--what was his name? STUECK: Well, how about Harry Dwoskin. Is he still alive? STACY: Harry Dwoskin? STUECK: Dwoskin. STACY: Yeah. As far as I know, he is retired. He had a big company in Atlanta. Dwoskin--oh, this old wallpaper--what was the name of it--Dwoskin Brothers, I believe was the name. Now they have sold out and Harry has retired. Last I knew about him he lived in the Peachtree-Andrews apartments in Atlanta. I get Christmas cards from Harry and Mary Dwoskin. STUECK: How about Mr. Demarco? STACY: Demarco was an Italian that Dwoskin and Thompson worked with in connection with their building. And Demarco was out here at one time and laid the tile in the record house up here and finished the bathroom and did all that--helped with the designing of the record house. STUECK: How about Dr. Alexander Russell, his brother? STACY: My brother is still here. I was kind of curious about that, whether he had been approached. STACY: Really? I didn' ; t know. Alex is funny like that. He might not have wanted to. He is an M.D. and he has this nursing home up here, this big nursing home. And he lives across here, across the railroad tracks from here. STUECK: I' ; ll let it go for a few seconds. (pause in tape) You mentioned in your first interview with-- STACY: Hugh Cates. STUECK: --Hugh Cates, that you got quite a few spankings as a child. Can you remember--there is the incident that you mentioned in that interview about--dealing with a neighbor' ; s clothes because she had fouled up your dam. STACY: (laughs) STUECK: Do you remember any other incidents that might have led to a whipping from your mother? STACY: No, mother had a closet that she put us in very often, and told us to go in and sit in this--it was a big closet, had a window in it, you know, and they had shelves around that the sheets and pillow cases and towels and things were kept. And there was a barrel in there that we put the soiled clothes in for the washwoman, and Mother would send us in there and if she wanted to spank us she had a little end of a strap about so long that had broken off a trunk. And she would just take it and whap, whap, whap, whap like that you know, and it would just sting you like everything. STUECK: She didn' ; t whip Dick any more than anybody else, did she, or any less? STACY: No. STUECK: He got into just as much trouble as everybody. STACY: Everybody else. She had so many children. But, I don' ; t remember anything that Dick and I--except that one incidence where we both got whipped for. STUECK: You mentioned that you thought that she kind of favored Dick, and the sons, in general. STACY: Well, she was so--well, yes, I think Mother always did. In fact, even her son-in-laws, she was very partial to her son-in-laws. One of my sisters wanted to--she was having a little trouble and she came and told Mother all about it. And Mother says, " ; All right, Marguerite [Russell Bowden], you can leave Jim [James Harris Bowden] but you can' ; t come home." ; Marguerite went back to Jim and stayed with him till they both died. STUECK: But when they were children. How about when you were children? I mean, can you give any illustrations of the fact that your mother tended to favor the boys over the girls? STACY: Well she would always have excuses for the boys, why they did certain things. STUECK: Well, boys were supposed to do certain things differently than girls. STACY: Well, I don' ; t know, but she would excuse them and it would make us all furious because we always told her that she favored the boys, and she said she didn' ; t. STUECK: Well, that' ; s pretty normal, I suppose. STACY: I think it is. I think it is. STUECK: Mothers tend to-- STACY: She was a very, very good psychologist, I would say, my mother. STUECK: You figure Dick probably picked up an awful lot of that from her. STACY: I guess he did. He was a lot like Mother. He had that easy, smooth disposition that she had. It took a lot to rile her, but when she got riled--Dick was the same way. STUECK: She didn' ; t, as far as you know, she didn' ; t talk much about politics. I mean, that was something that pretty much the men talked about? STACY: I don' ; t think she liked it too much. I know when Dad was elected to the Supreme Court, he wanted to move the family to Atlanta, and Mother picked out a house that she liked and she told him when he could buy that house, she' ; d move to Atlanta ; and she knew he couldn' ; t ever. (laughs) STUECK: She is so--when you would sit around the table and have some debates or talk politics, it would be pretty much the men who were doing the talking. STACY: Oh, absolutely. Yes, I was the first one to break in when I went to law school, you know. I' ; d come home and try to get a word in edgeways and couldn' ; t. But-- STUECK: They wouldn' ; t let you. STACY: No. I felt so terrible. I said right then I believe in women' ; s rights. STUECK: You lived three generations too soon. STACY: I' ; m not in favor of the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] as it is now, but then I was all for women marching against anything that was wrong. STUECK: You resented it that they wouldn' ; t let you-- STACY: I would have been a good suffragette when they were marching for the vote. BEGIN SIDE 3 STUECK: (Gee whiz. It' ; s terrible. There we go. Now we shall wait a few seconds). Did you ever get a sense that young Rob had as a major objective in life promoting his brother? STACY: No. STUECK: That he kind of, for instance, as a young man kind of sacrificed him- self, his own career for his brother? STACY: I don' ; t think he did because he didn' ; t have to sacrifice himself. He got appointed to the judgeship, you know, and Bob was a very successful lawyer. He was my father' ; s law clerk when he was quite young, and I don' ; t think he ever wanted anything but law. STUECK: I see. STACY: No, I don' ; t think he had any political ambitions. If he did, he never showed them, not to me. STUECK: Tell me. To get back to this issue of segregation of roles between men and women in your house, was there ever any discussion of woman' ; s suffrage? STACY: I don' ; t believe so. STUECK: No. STACY: I think they all just took for granted that the men were superior to the women. Even the women felt it, I think. (laughs) I know I looked up to Dick and I was three years older than he. STUECK: Tell me, what--do you recall having any political, any discussions in the house even if you weren' ; t involved in them. For instance, when Booker T. Washington was entertained in the White House by Teddy Roosevelt, that was something that was a big issue in the South--a race--kind of stirring in the South. Do you recall any talk in the house-- STACY: Not a thing. I don' ; t remember anything at all. STUECK: How about the Atlanta race riot in 1906 when your father was running for governor? STACY: I was twelve years old. I don' ; t remember too much about it. I remember they had one, but I don' ; t remember much about it. STUECK: Did you have any sense when you were growing up that your father was, at least in comparison to the politicians that he was competing with, more liberal or more conservative on the race issue? STACY: I don' ; t ever remember the race issue being an issue. I really don' ; t. We never figured it was any kind of an issue at all. We had a certain form of life that we lived, a certain life style, and everybody followed it. We were good to our servants. The servants never complained. We never had any trouble with them or anything like that, and I don' ; t ever remember race being an issue when I was growing up. STUECK: How about now, in terms of within this community, do you feel that there has really been a major change? STACY: Oh, definitely, yes, very much of a major change in more ways than one. They can go anywhere they want to now, do anything they want to do, and the government is taking care of so many of them, and I' ; m all against all this welfare that' ; s being poured out. I think it' ; s all right to take care of the ones that need it, but it burns me up to see those that don' ; t need it making a business of getting it. STUECK: Do you notice any difference, for instance, in the behavior of people-- of blacks, for instance, around here over time. I mean people that you--blacks for instance that you would have associated with over the years, have they changed in their behavior? STACY: Some of them have, some of them haven' ; t. Some of them are what we used to call uppity, and show that they know what' ; s what right now. But I' ; ve been to several places. I' ; ve been to Bainbridge this past weekend and there were two black couples at the wedding reception of my great nephew. That' ; s something we never would have thought of, you know, it never would have occurred to us. Somebody said they called one of the men, " ; Judge" ; , so he may have been a county judge or something like that. Then I was in Statesboro at Georgia Southern College where my brother Fielding taught for so many years, and we went to an open house one afternoon and there were several black couples there, and I' ; ve grown very used to seeing them around. It doesn' ; t worry me at all. STUECK: Did it worry you when you first saw them around? STACY: I can' ; t say that it did. I was in Washington. I served on the Commission for the Administration of Justice. It was an American Bar Association thing. This Judge [Charles Blakeslee] Law was then, got me on it and one of the men on the subcommittee that I was on was a black man from--he was the assistant superintendent of schools there in the District. And we worked right along together ; it didn' ; t worry me at all. STUECK: Well, that was my sense too. I mean, in being here. Now I' ; ve only been here for a few months, but that whites and blacks despite all the changes have in many ways reached-- STACY: Of course, we have it in Atlanta everywhere you go. But-- STUECK: Tell me, what about--I heard, oh, from a couple of people in the last few days, that your father was at one time a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Do you have any recollection of-- STACY: I do not believe that. STACY: My father was not born until the year that the Civil War started. So he was not old enough to have been in the Ku Klux Klan--the original. STUECK: No, we' ; re thinking of the Klan of the Twenties. STACY: Oh, no, I' ; m sure he wasn' ; t. I was old enough to know then. Now, somebody said that Dick and Rob had been in. But I don' ; t believe that. But you know, it would have been normal for young boys to go into something like that if they were talked into it. I don' ; t think they were ; so many of them were around here. STUECK: Do you have any--I asked you about Teddy Roosevelt. Do you have any recollection of your father or your brothers' ; attitudes toward Woodrow Wilson? STACY: Well, Dick went to Washington to his inauguration. I think that my father admired Woodrow Wilson. STUECK: Young Dick did? Now this was 1913. STACY: He was twelve years old--twelve or thirteen. He went up there to stay with Uncle Rob and went to the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson. I told you my father and mother were anxious at every opportunity that they had for us to do things and go with--see what was going on-- STUECK: Do you remember him saying anything when he got back. I mean there must have been tremendous excitement-- STACY: Well, he had a wonderful time, but I can' ; t remember any particular thing that he said, no. STUECK: Is that the only trip you can recall that he made to Washington while he was a child? STACY: Yes, I think it was. STUECK: And he probably-- STACY: He may have been up there before that. STUECK: He was able to do it basically because his Uncle Rob-- STACY: He wasn' ; t in the Senate in 1927, was he? Well, he came through Washington then because I was there. He had been to Paris to the American Legion Convention, and I know he came back through Washington and was there quite a while then. I think he may have gone to Washington many times because we had two uncles that lived there, Uncle Ed and Uncle Rob, and Dick may have been there several times. I just don' ; t remember. STUECK: Now, Uncle Ed, was he the one from Texas, who lived in Texas? STACY: Uh-uh. We don' ; t have anyone in Texas. Uncle Edward Russell was my father' ; s brother, and he was with the post office department in the foreign mail section until he retired and moved to Waynesboro, Virginia. STUECK: Well, the one I was thinking of was a cousin, Gordon J. Russell. STACY: Oh, that was long, long years ago. STUECK: From Whitfield county. He moved to Texas and became a congressman, and there is some mention in one of the--Oh, in one of Senator Russell' ; s letters about your father going to Washington to help--to talk to Hoke Smith to try and get Russell a judgeship. And apparently-- STACY: Oh, yes, I do remember that. TOC \o " ; 1-5" ; \h \z STUECK: You do. STACY: See, I had been in Washington just about a few weeks maybe when my father came up. My father used to come to Washington quite often. STUECK: And you went to Washington when? STACY: 1918. STUECK: 1918. STACY: I didn' ; t like teaching school. I had some friends up there and my sister, older sister, married in Washington at my uncle' ; s home. Her fiancé lives in, well well, he was from Georgia, but he was at the Rowsden arsenal during World War I. And he could only get about three days and he thought he was going to Europe, so my father and mother and several of us got on the train and went to Washington. She was married in my uncle' ; s home. But I was up there-- I talked with these friends of mine who had taken civil service examinations, and they told me to--when they were going to have the next one, and I came back and stood it. And when I got my appointment to the Veteran' ; s Administration, or called the Bureau of War Risk Insurance then, I felt like I had inherited the world because I was getting $450 a year teaching school--fifty dollars a month for nine months in the year. And I got appointed a bureau--a clerk in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance at a $1000 a year, over twice as much as I was making. Well, that' ; s when I went to Washington. STUECK: There weren' ; t that many women in your position, was there? STACY: No, but-- STUECK: But that wasn' ; t really a clerical position. STACY: It was clerical, but-- STUECK: But not secretarial. STACY: No, just clerical. Filing and stuff like that. And I did work up into correspondence, you know, answering correspondence and doing things like that. And then some of my women friends were studying law and getting good jobs and I decided to study law and get me a job, which I did. STUECK: How active was you mother in the community? STACY: Mother never did anything at all in the community except go to church. STUECK: Was she on committees in the church? STACY: I don' ; t think so. STUECK: How about the United Daughters of the Confederacy? STACY: That was later on after we were all grown and out of the way, Mother became active in the church. She became very active in the Women of the Church and she became active in the Daughters of the Confederacy, UDC' ; s and she did do a lot of things like that afterwards. But we were all out of the nest by that time. STUECK: Tell me, what were Dick' ; s faults? STACY: Faults? STUECK: Yes. STACY: He could--no, I started--I was thinking of Rob--he was sort of that way too. He could be sarcastic sometimes, and he was a great tease. He was more introverted ; maybe that was one of his worst faults. STUECK: What do you mean by that? STACY: When he was around people, he could just go into a shell unless he wanted to. I don' ; t guess you' ; d call that introverted. STUECK: Well, would you--did you observe that within the family or would this include, for instance, when he was a senator in Washington and-- STACY: I' ; ve seen him do it in Washington. And you know when he went to Washington, he said he tried about two weeks of the cocktail circuit and then decided it didn' ; t pay. So he never would accept invitations to cocktail parties and things like that. He didn' ; t like people en masse. He was a great people lover as individuals, but--and I' ; m that way. STUECK: He, as a child, although he seemed to read a good deal, wasn' ; t an outstanding student in school. STACY: I think he was bored, more or less, with the trivia. STUECK: Yet, you know, you talk about being bored with trivia, I mean he was a man who, at least as a senator, had a reputation for taking great care-- STACY: Well, I shouldn' ; t have said that about trivia because he used to remark that he had the greatest store of unnecessary information of anybody he had known. And he could, he could quote things like what team, baseball team, won what pennant, and he could go back and tell you the names of everybody on the football team and just any old things like that, you know, he said unimportant--the greatest storage of unimportant information of anybody. STUECK: Yeah. Well, he read a lot of history. He apparently knew an awful lot about the Civil War and the battles-- STACY: Oh, the Civil War was his love. He was crazy about reading about the Civil War. STUECK: But it seems when he was in the Senate, he had tremendous self-discipline in mastering certain areas, like parliamentary procedure-- STACY: Oh, I would say he was one of the best disciplined people I had ever known. STUECK: Like the armed services and army. He was considered to know more about that than virtually anybody in the Senate. So he was perhaps one of those people-- STACY: Dick had a good sense of humor. He really had a keen sense of humor. And he used to tell us very funny stories of things that happened. Remember when he went on that five-man tour of Europe--of, you know, China and-- STUECK: During World War II? STACY: During World War II. He told us how Happy [Albert Benjamin] Chandler, who was later baseball commissioner, everytime they' ; d get on the plane and shut the door, he' ; d go and lie down on that bench that they had right there and he said, " ; Let me know when we get off the ground." ; (laughs) Scared to death, you know--things like that. And then he told us once about Carl [Trumbull] Hayden wanting him to fly to Arizona with him. Carl Hayden didn' ; t like to fly and he was invited out there to make a speech or do something, and he wouldn' ; t go unless Dick went with him. And he had a lot of incidents, you know. About Madame Chiang Kai-shek, you know, he visited them. You' ; ve heard the story of when she was at Macon-- STUECK: Yeah, right. STACY: --and then she they invited her back to get her doctorate, and she wouldn' ; t go unless Dick went down there. And so he went down there and he told--said why he had never married, you know, that he had seen this beautiful little Chinese girl and since then he had never wanted to marry. He could make up good stories like that, you know, and he was interesting. STUECK: Well, you give the impression that, although the community that you lived in as children was very isolated, the family was very close and didn' ; t in terms of playing and so forth, didn' ; t really mix all that much with people outside. That nevertheless, through reading and through traveling outside of the state--not necessarily outside of the country--but outside of the state and perhaps through communications with this Uncle Rob, or someone else who had traveled outside of the state, really had a vision of what was going on outside of Georgia-- STACY: I think we did. I think my mother and father were anxious that we should know. STUECK: I mean, for instance, when you left Georgia--when did you leave Georgia for the first time--not necessarily to live somewhere else but, say, to go to school somewhere else. STACY: When did I first go out of Georgia? I can' ; t remember, but--Oh, I know. My father and mother took me to Washington when I was eleven months old. STUECK: Well, you wouldn' ; t have any recollection of that. STACY: I never had any recollection. STUECK: Well, how about after that? I mean, when you went places that were, you know, several hundred miles away. STACY: I went to New York when I was about seventeen with Mother and Dad. STUECK: For how long ; do you remember? STACY: That was the first time I guess that I went out-- I remember we went on the train to Norfolk. We had to lay over there some time. We went out to Virginia Beach, and my father was sitting on the beach, took off his shoes and socks, you know, to walk in the ocean and an unusually big wave came up you know, and I remember seeing my father--Whoop! Do this, you know to go under it. (laughs) And wet his socks I remember--had to put on. But they took us whenever they could, but I don' ; t remember too many trips out of Georgia. STUECK: Well, how strange did the world seem to be when you, you know, went to New York? How strange did New York--I can remember I grew up only ninety miles from New York and it seemed pretty strange to me when I visited New York when I was in my teens. Did it seem like an entirely different world to you? STACY: Well, I had been to Atlanta so many times and I had an idea of what Atlanta was like, was a big city to me because coming from Winder, you know. So when I went to New York, it was just a bigger city. STUECK: Yeah. How about-- .did you have a sense, for instance, when I was brought up being brought up in the north, we would be brought with a sense of being very different from southerners. You were brought up, I assume, with a sense of being very different from the northerners. When you went to New York-- STACY: I thought they were all terrible. STUECK: Right. Well, when you went to New York, I mean, did you anticipate people with horns, you know, that they would behave an awful lot differently than the people that you were used to down here. STACY: I don' ; t know what I expected really. I know that we knew some people up there and one of them had a son that came around to the hotel and took me out to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We went to the McAlpin and saw--what is it? Brother and sister that danced--did the dancing?--We went to a tea dance. They had tea dances at the McAlpin Hotel, and I just did a lot of things like that, and he had been living up there all the time, and I didn' ; t think he was different than anybody else. We had an awfully nice time together. He thought I talked funny. I' ; d say something and he' ; d say, " ; Oh, say that again." ; (laughs) STUECK: How about when you went to Washington in 1918. Now was that-- where were you teaching school? Was that in Virginia? STACY: Winder. STUECK: Oh, you were teaching school in Winder. So the first time that you actually went to live somewhere outside of Georgia was when you went to live in Washington in 1918. How about that? Was that a real big adjustment? STACY: That was a big deal. My father had a brother there. He also had a man, who had been his legal secretary, when he was on the court of appeals who was then with a congressman. And they had lived right over here and his wife was about my age. And they had a young baby, and they wanted me to come and live with them. And my father said, " ; No, you go to Uncle Edward' ; s house to live." ; His daughter was going off--the first one that had ever flown the coop. So, Mr. Perry and Uncle Edward both met me at the station. And I had to go with Uncle Edward to his house. So, I didn' ; t like it very well there, and it was sort of boring and I couldn' ; t wait to get to my job. STUECK: Now, when were you married? STACY: I wasn' ; t married until I was forty-four years old. I had my career all made and had been through law school and everything when I met my husband. STUECK: And your father probably thought you were a little bit weird. STACY: No, he thought I was wild. I was doing something unusual, and then after I had been in Washington for a while, my sister and her husband were sent there. He was in the army then--the one that--oh, we had all gone to Washington for her wedding in 1918. That' ; s when I got the idea of going to Washington first. And so he was sent to Washington then to work in the war department. And they got an apartment, and I lived with them for a while. And it just went on like that. I made friends and, finally, I entered law school. And then I got my own apartment. Well, at first I lived with three others, and Dad thought that was the worst thing in the world--you couldn' ; t imagine, an unchaperoned three women, four women, living together--four girls. STUECK: Were there many girls in Washington that did that? STACY: Everybody in Washington. There were more women in Washington during World War I than you could shake a stick at because, you see, the men were in the army. The women came there to do the clerical work, and there were a few that joined the navy or the army as WACs or WAVEs. But the most of them were just ex-school teachers, ex-secretaries, ex-everything else, that were bored with what they were doing of else it was a patriotic--The government was advertising for people to come to Washington to work. STUECK: Were there any other people from Winder that you knew who went? STACY: Yes, there was a woman up there that joined the navy. And she' ; s in the hospital right now, brain tumor. But I don' ; t believe there were any of the others--there must have been others in Winder that went. STUECK: Did Dick visit you much when you were in Washington? Now this was 1918? STACY: 1918. STUECK: Yes, did he visit you much, say between 1918 and 1925? STACY: Oh, yes, there were lots of visits. STUECK: He did. But he would go up to Washington-- STACY: Dick was in school, you see. He was still in school when I went to Washington. STUECK: Right, right. STACY: And then when he got out of school, he started practicing law in Winder. And so that was a different life for him. I was away at that time and I didn' ; t know much about it. STUECK: But he didn' ; t visit much then in Washington. STACY: Never saw him except when I came home on visits. STUECK: I see. Did he think that you were a little bit crazy, too--a little bit wild? STACY: Well, I don' ; t know that they thought I was too wild. They just thought I was unreasonable. I guess they thought it was unreasonable for me to want to do something like that. Dad thought that the only dignified thing that a woman could do was teach school. STUECK: Or be a nurse? STACY: And I hated school ; I didn' ; t want to teach. And I didn' ; t like--I was teaching elementary school, of course, and I didn' ; t like the little girls coming up and hugging me and putting their arms around me and the little boys sassing me and all that kind of stuff. I liked the boys better than I did the girls. But I got along all right with teaching. In fact, the superintendent at school was very disappointed and very peeved when I told him I wasn' ; t going to teach again next year. And that' ; s when I went to Washington. STUECK: Did you see Dick quite a bit when you first went to Washington in 1933? STACY: Oh, yes. I use to see him all the time. And it' ; s the funniest thing. You know my brother-in-law, Hugh Peterson and my sister Pat, the four of us--my sister Pat and Hugh and Dick and I--the four of us used to have an awful lot of good times together. And we' ; d go out to Pat' ; s and Hugh' ; s and have dinner and sit around and talk a lot and everything. And I had a good friend up there that went through law school with me, Leila Brown. Leila and I used to beg Hugh and Dick to pass a four-four bill, we called it. It was four hours of work, four days a week. And you know, they' ; ve just about come into that four days a week. At that time, we were working six days a week. And then we got to where we had half a stay on Saturday, five and a half days a week, and then later on they had five day weeks. But-- STUECK: So Dick, when he got up there, he didn' ; t have much trouble adjusting to the new situation, to the life up there? STACY: I don' ; t think he did. I don' ; t think he did. He lived at the Hamilton Hotel when he first came up there, and Huey Long lived at the same hotel, and several other senators--I don' ; t remember all of them. You' ; ve heard the story of how Roosevelt called Dick one night-- STUECK: Oh, yeah, at 12 o' ; clock at night. STACY: And he said, " ; This is Franklin Roosevelt." ; And Dick says, " ; I' ; m--" ; -- what did he say? hung up. In the middle of the night, you know. And so, soon the phone rang again and the operator said, " ; Senator, you were talking to the president of the United States." ; (laughs) And Dick said, " ; Well, put him back on." ; You know, when I lived in Washington with Dick during his last days, he was speaker pro tem of the House--of the Senate, and he had a little green telephone that he told me not to ever pick up the receiver because, you see, he was the fourth in line for the presidency. If anything had happened to the Speaker of the House and the vice president, he would have been the next in line for president. So he said that phone was put there for him. At any time, so at any time the White House could call him, or he could pick it up and call the White House any time he wanted to, but he didn' ; t want me playing with it. STUECK: Well, I think that about covers it. You have been very pleasant to talk to, and I think the interview has been very informative. STACY: Here' ; s Modine now ; I want you to meet Modine. Resources may be used under the guidelines described by the U.S. Copyright Office in Section 107, Title 17, United States Code (Fair use). Parties interested in production or commercial use of the resources should contact the Russell Library for a fee schedule. video 0 RBRL216RBROH-158.xml RBRL216RBROH-158.xml http://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL216RBROH/findingaid
Duration
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90 minutes
Repository
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Title
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Interview with Ina Russell Stacy, June 28, 1980
Identifier
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RBRL216RBROH-158
Creator
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Ina Russell Stacy
William Stueck
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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audio
oral histories
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sound
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Families
Gender
Date
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1980-06-28
Coverage
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Georgia
OHMS