 Welcome to another edition of Vermont Community Commons. Today we have a special guest, Norman James, who from 1959 to 1972 was a veteran news reporter here in Vermont for WDV, WCAX, and then back with WDV before his time as Press Secretary and Communications Director for then Governor-elect Thomas Salmon. Norman, welcome to the broadcast. Thank you very much, Ken. Pleasure to be here. I hope to entertain you so you can continue that inocularity. I've known this fellow for a very long time and we're glad to have you here to tell us some great memories, stories, reflections on Vermont history. You started as a young fellow in your 20s at WDV, it was 1959 Eisenhower's president before John Kennedy, the interstate highway is being built in Vermont and in Waterbury, and so tell us about the beginning. Let me lead up to that, to my sojourn here in Vermont. In 1953, I graduated from Spaulding High School, and I went to work down in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1955, I joined the Air Force. I was going to join the Navy and I walked up the stairs where recruiting offices were and I went to the left to go in the Navy and the guy was set out to lunch. So I walked in to the Air Force and the thing is that Sergeant Wing said, there I am. So I joined the Air Force, four years. The last two and a half years I was in the Air Force, I was stationed in the Philippines at Clark Air Base and I was a headquarters 13th Air Force as a radio and television news announcer for Armed Forces Radio and Television. How I got there is another story, we'll get to that one later maybe. But so I gained whatever experience I had for broadcasting in the Air Force, I want to give them credit for that. So I did come back to DEV, I came back home, called up Rusty Parker, that is, asked me to come in for an audition. It was a CBS audition. And I got everything right until I got to the pronunciation of Haverill and I'm reading the news. Is it New Hampshire? Is it New Hampshire? Or Harriman? Right. And I kept saying, Haver Hill. And after it was all over, Rusty said, it's Havero. But this is interesting because it was the old Ken Squire's father, Lloyd Squire, who listened to the tape and I think had something to say about that. Because right about that time Ken was ending his college career in Boston and coming back and at that time DEV was changing its format in the morning from six to noon. I was on the air from two, actually I was not on the air, I was there at the station from two until 11 at night. And I was on the air at four o'clock with a show called Spins and Needles. Hi there, guys and gals, teens and queens. This is the guy with the two front names, Norm James, sitting twigs and twin turntables dusting off the stacks of wax for your listening pleasure on the Spins and Needles show. This is great. This is great. That kind of knocks your socks off there. Did the Herald Grout pastor about the... Oh, that one. You asked me before we went on the air, you asked me about the trading post. Herald Grout. He did the trading post in the morning. Herald Grout, long time employee at WDEV. A wonderful human being. Cousin Herald, as he was known, that was his air handle. Cousin Herald and he did the trading post every morning from 6.30 to 7 o'clock. Right. Because of Cousin Herald, Ken came up with the following station break. WDEV, the station of stature in Herald Grout's pasture on the hill in Colbyville. Triple tower power. Wonderful stuff. And those were the days, my friend. They were the days. Radio. Those were the days. Radio is today. All those changed, obviously. It's very much changed. God, it was incredible that day. And I enjoyed it so much because it was even before cell phones, obviously. But I always said, give me a telephone, put me in a telephone booth, and I can tell you what's happening. And that's where my introduction into real news. What is happening? And if you're telling the story about what is happening, you're reporting it. Yes. You're not journalizing it. Now, journalists can write until the cows come home. But all of a sudden until they get to describe what the reporter sees on the scene. In radio. Because they can already see it on television. The television was new. It started in 54. It was brand new. So five years 59. Radio was still dominated. Oh, yes. Absolutely. No question. Yeah. And DEB had that time. We had two patterns. One was the nighttime pattern. That when the sun went down, we had to go from 5,000 watts to 1,000 watts. And the circle was actually like an egg. Right. The small part of the egg around Burlington. And the big part of the egg down around White River. That's how big our pattern was. Wow. And so when the sun came up, we shifted to 5,000 watts, which was relatively new for DEV at that time in 1959. And well, DEV had been on the air since 1938, I believe. Right. 37, 38 something like that. The thing was from Burlington to White River. To White River. That's the basic pattern. Right now, you can pick us up in Platsburg and pick us up in Claremont. Right. And almost into Concord, New Hampshire. Right. In Canada. From Claremont. You pick them up in Canada. As a matter of fact, we used to have a conflict with a station around Halifax, Nova Scotia, because they were at 550 on the dial. Oh, wow. And being a Canadian station, they were governed by different rules. Right. And at nighttime, if we went 5,000 watts, we interfered with their signals. Sure. And they complained. I understand. WDV goes to Halifax, Nova Scotia now. Well, it was one New Year's Eve when I was working. It was one New Year's Eve, right? What do you do on New Year's Eve? You don't talk. You play music. Sure. Guy Lombardo. Well, no. No. Not Guy Lombardo, no. Okay. Now you play the good stuff, like Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Okay. Right. Maybe some little George Shearer in there. Benny Goodman. Benny Goodman. Yeah, Guy Lombardo. That's for New York City. I see. You know, the top of whatever, the Ambassador Hotel. Sure. That's something different. The TV people. Well, we were at a thousand watts, and I'm talking to my engineer who's up on the hill. And we have a communication device. I'm saying, you know, I really have a mood to crank this thing up to 5,000 watts at midnight. What do you think? The boys come back and say, I'm with you. And so at 11.59.30, we paused just for a minute so he could do whatever adjustments he hit. And he said, bang, he came back. And he said, you're on. So 5,000 watts. And I gave a big station break, and I nailed that thing with a big Duke, with a Glenn Miller. Right. Like in the mood. We went to two o'clock in the morning. That's wonderful. We got postcards from Pennsylvania. That's great. It was fun. Yes. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. And then the Kennedy Nixon race in 1960. Very close. I was on the board. And the teletype's going all crazy all the time. Yeah. I was on the board at 5 o'clock in the morning and went to the newsroom. This out close to the race. We went to the newsroom, pulled off the UPI, went back to the control room, and I was taking a look at the boat, quick totals like that. There was less than 10,000 boats at that time. That's right. 10,000 nationally. Who would have ever thought about that? And I don't remember it being as divisive as we see politics today. Maybe it was in the back room. But I could never, ever imagine that. There were people who were very opinionated. There was no question about that. And that showed. Right? It showed. And that back in 1959, it just absolutely showed that the population in the United States and it's held fast have differing opinions, two major differing opinions, and now a third is creeping in. And some guys it's called independence, some it's called progressive, some it's whatever it is. It's just a little bit different. But the judicial parties were very strong back then. Yeah. And the Eisenhower period was coming to a close, and then John Kennedy was the new senator from Massachusetts. Right. And then Adelaide Stevenson, for Kennedy to become the new nominee was, he won by 14 votes, by the way, barely got that nomination with the skin of his teeth. Byron White was the reason why he delivered the Colorado delegation in Wyoming. On the floor. That's why he became the Supreme Court person. Of course. I'm sure it is. Later. Sure. So thank you. Right. It's not a payback. It's a thank you. So then Philoff becomes governor in 62, two years later. Boy, this is an event. Let me back up a little bit. Sure. 1960. Uh-huh. Another little vignette of relationship with the governor. This was in 1958, 1959, I joined DEV in the latter part of 1959, Bob Stafford is still governor. Right. And there is a soapbox derby, a derby being held in Barry on Park Street, and it goes like this, right? Uh-huh. So they closed off traffic. Yeah. So I, there, I'm doing something live, right? You know, there he goes, but, so the governor, I say, Governor Stafford, how are you doing this? I'm doing fine. Here's the governor. Right. Bob Stafford. Bob Stafford. He's got a live mic on the state's largest radio station, and I'm asking, giving him the opportunity to say something. Right. Gee, they're gonna go fast, don't they? Sounds like Bob Stafford. Yeah, yeah, fine, and then that went on, right? The campaign 1960, the Republican campaign 1960 between Ray Keeser, the incumbent, and Bob Stafford. Bob Babcock. Not even Bob Babcock. In the primary. In the primary. Because Stafford went to Congress. B. William Meijer. Right. And we're talking about, we're talking about the incumbent, Ray Keeser, against Bob Babcock. Bob Babcock is living in South Burlington. Right. Brian Harwood was given the assignment to go cover Ray Keeser. I was given the assignment to go cover Bob Babcock. And what, what that meant was that we go there and we keep track and we say, what do you think? What do you think? How do you feel? What's in your head? Oh, that kind of stuff, right? And Bob Babcock and I get along very well, and I know that Brian and Ray Keeser get along very well. And at one point Brian said on the air, maybe we could get your guy and my guy to talk to each other. And I said, Brian, my guy is tied up probably for the next three hours. So anyway, that went on and, and the, Keeser wins the primary, all right? Keeser wins the primary, and he goes up against Phil Hoff. Now, there was no, oh, and that was the Republican primary, right? I'm missing something in my mind right here because I was also sent to Ray Niquet's house. Well, one of the, the 1960s was probably Ray Niquet. No. No. Because Hoff was 62. Yeah. And I know Hoff was 62. Oh, I was. I was. Anyway. Right. Ray Niquet lost. Right. So there's, I'm, I'm two primaries right here, and I'm losing twice, right? So 1962 comes along, and it's a general election. And Rusty says to me, well, why don't you set a good job for covering the losers? We'll send you to Phil Hoff's house. In 62 November. In 62 November. And I said, yeah, fine. Okay. That's okay. So I went over to his house election night. General election night, 1962. And I arrived at his house. They were most gracious, he and, and, and Joan, his wife, Joan. And he said, I'm going to be very busy. And I said, I understand that. I'm just going to be watching you, and I'll be just reporting on what you're doing and what I see. And if I have a question, I'll make sure you know it in advance. See? All right. Anyway. Very polite. I did that twice, right? And then the third time I said, okay, it's enough about asking you in advance. Next question. Anyway, as the night progressed, right, the votes were very, very tight, very tight. And with a name escaped from you, a lawyer, very large, I'll think about it as we go along. Fred Fayette? No, no. It wasn't Fred Fayette. Larrow. Bob Larrow. Bob Larrow, right? Well, in, in Phil Hoff's house, you walk in the front door and there is a, you know, it's the entryway. Others go up to the left, go this way to go into the living quarters. And there is two phones. One is mine, and the other is the house phone. And about 11 o'clock at night, Larrow parks himself right in front of that table. And I know what he's waiting for. He's waiting for the Winooski vote to come in. Everybody is. This time, though, the house is jam-packed. Oh, my God, I never could get into the other side because I had to be there. The phone rings. Larrow picks up the phone and he says, tell me. And all of a sudden I reach around, he didn't even grab my phone, right? The whole thing. Right. Right? Because it was the whole thing. You're hearing a lie. Right. And Phil Hoff walks in because he hears Larrow say, tell me. And so Larrow turns around and he says, you won. I grabbed the governor by the arm, up the stairs we go. First room on the left is his bedroom. Priscilla Laplante, his secretary, follows us upstairs, right? We go into the bedroom. He goes on that side of the bed. I'm on this side of the bed. Priscilla's there. And I say, lean against the door because people want to come in. Sure. And so, and I could hear Rusty saying, we'll go to South Burlington. And here is, here's Norm James. And I said, thank you, Rusty. The Rock River Republican State of Vermont had been cracked to its very foundation with the election of Philip Henderson Hoff as its next governor. And Phil Hoff is looking me across the road and all of a sudden he starts to run his hands through his hair. Like, what am I going to say? Right. What am I going to do? And I said, Governor-elect Hoff, how are you doing? He handed over to, and he said a few words and so forth. But then you could went. Great moment. It was a great moment because then you could feel the whole house rock. Oh, yeah. The house was really a little rock. And poor Priscilla was just leaning against the door, about two or three people on the other side wanted to come in. That moment passed. Phil went out and then, as the story, as you know, he went on to a new ski. The parade. The parade. The big parade. Right? And that was that moment. That was just that freeze that moment. And you were there. I was there. Every second. But I will never forget that look on his face. Looking at me, rubbing his hands through his hair, like, what do I do now? And he went on to have one of the most successful administrations. He was the first governor that I know of to go for three two-year terms. And it was kind of tight that third time around. But the very first thing he did, though, was gather around him very intelligent people. Now, you remember being at that time called the Tavern Motor Inn. It was a capital plaza today. Great big table. He had two great big tables, right? Each filled, ten times, twenty people. And he said, these are the smartest people that I know of in these various skill sets. And he said, I want to start with this. Tell me what you know. And he had people taking notes all over the place. And that was the genesis of his very first legislative thing. And remember, he had to get it done. This was November. He had to get a budget in. By January. By January. A Republican legislature. A Republican legislature. A Republican legislature. The first Democratic governor. Correct. And only the budget. The reapportionment had not happened yet. That's true. That was one man. That was one town, one vote, two hundred and forty-six towns and cities. That's the size of that House of Representatives and thirty senators, but again not based on population. Right. So the town of Stratton had thirty-eight voters and the religion of thirty-eight thousand. Correct. And they each had one vote. Correct. Right. Right. Well, the reapportionment, let me finish this off. He not only had, he had what he called the inaugural address. Right. And at that time, when the governor was sworn in, just a few years ago they stopped doing the following. The Army National Guard brought up their 105 Howitzers up onto the top part of the walkway. And when the governor was taking the oath, they just fired off these cans of twenty-one gun salute. Right? The windows were just rattling. Oh, people were fearful that they'd really want to break. But it was a sign. But it was, that was remarkable. And he went to the legislature, he got things done, Bill Billings was the secretary, was the speaker of the House. Speaker from Woodstock. Yeah. One of the young Turks. Exactly. Well, remember when Phil Hoff was a part of the House, represented from Burlington, he and Bill Billings. Dick Mallory. Dick Mallory. John Downs. You're right. Gibson. Gibson. They were called the young Turks. And a few years ago, the same political philosophy was called Blue Dogs. But these guys were the young Turks. And they were... Mainly young Republicans. Mainly. Mainly, yes. And they were thirties. Right. But they were thoughtful. Forward thinking. Thoughtful is a very good word. Very... Akin Gibson Republicans. Right, yes. Well... Jeffords Stafford. He wouldn't step to that. Right. But anyway, Phil Hoff had a very successful administration. His run for the Senate against Winston Proudy. On the Proudy side, the decision was made by Chuck Colson. Remember that name? Yes, I do. Chuck Colson. One of the guys was indicted because of Watergate. Right. Well, he was the instructor for Proudy's campaign, directly from the Nixon White House. You will not campaign. We will have it. You remember this? Proudy must serve us again. Yes. That's all they play. Right. Great lingo. You never saw him... You never heard him on the radio. You never saw him on television. That's all they had, right? And they cooked up the Colson and his gang. Cooked up some dirty tricks that happened against us. And Phil did have a personal issue with alcohol. Fought it. Didn't let it. Fought it. They brought it out and so forth, and then they just kept hammering on it. Nixon came to Vermont. Nixon did come to Vermont for Proudy. Still a safe Republican state at the time. At the time. Right. Tell us about reapportionment. We have about eight minutes left on this segment. Eight minutes left. We may have to do three segments. It's going to be a part one, part two, maybe a part three. But reapportionment was 64. You went to Channel 3 at the time. In 1959, I went to Channel... No, in 1964, it was after the election in November of 1964 that I went to Channel 3. I was hired from WDEV. Mickey Gallagher had talked with Red Martin, the owner of Channel 3 at the time, about setting up a Montpelier Bureau. And when Mickey gave me a call to want to have lunch, he talked to me about that concept and I liked it very much. I thought that it was time for Channel 3 to expand because that bureau could also be used for other news directly out of Montpelier or even Barry. Right. You know, you could have a live satellite situation. You've already got the satellite yet, but it was all film, right? I call it non-compatible black and white film because that's exactly what it was. It was before Technicolor. And Bob Mesterton was one of the cameramen. And you sit down for an interview like this. And if I'm the camera, he would take a tape measure to go from the lens to your nose and set the aperture. Hi, Jack. Yeah. Well, Walter Cronkite called it the one-ton pencil. And that's what it was. Yeah. But it was fun. Also... And you're the first bureau chief for Channel 3 WCAX in Montpelier. That's true. 64-65 time period. Correct. Right. And that happened in November. We had the bureau set up in December of 64. And it was at that time I was getting myself adjusted to who's in the legislature because they were going to come back in January. And I wanted to make sure that I was up to speed and 1965 was going to be the reapportionment year. Right. There were about three pieces of legislation on the House side that were introduced. One calling for a 90-member house, the other for a 210 and the other for a 150. And understand at the same time the Vermont legislature was under federal court order to reapportion. Mm-hmm. I mean, and they had to reapportion by June 30th. Well, they did. But it was very emotional. I would say that more than ever, not only were the changing almost political philosophies at that time because I think that's when the bend came from being more conservative Republican to being more moderate Republican and the introduction of the Democrat philosophy in terms of public policy. Mm-hmm. That was the whole thing. Reapportionment. The watershed moment for Vermont history. Oh, there's no question about that. And I hope that that one piece is taught in Vermont history in all of the schools, whether or not the school carries Vermont history, it's a part of the economy. It's a part of every other everyday life. From that moment on, things changed. So it was 240 members? It was 246 members. And they went to 150. They went to 150. They lost about 100. That's a lot. They lost about 90. Yeah. Emory Hebert of Glover was the chair of the reapportionment committee, 25 members. And it was his committee that had to go through the 90, 150, 210 versions and what that was going to mean. It wasn't just picking a number because he also had a mathematic issue. You had to discern which contiguous districts would give you a certain amount of voters. Right. Because one man, one vote, right? So the person from Burlington, that's why Burlington ended up with so many representatives, right? And that's why Stratton is now in with a group of towns that equal that number of voters. So that was the whole basis of reapportionment. In the Senate, they stayed at 30 senators, but they realigned some of the Senate counties. They used to be based on counties. Now they're senatorial districts. And so you will see like Chittenden Grand Isle, Essex Orleans and Caledonia separately. Right. Now you see those senators to equal, I think it's 3,000, used to be 3,000 voters. So that way, I remember Frank Hutchins from Standard, way up in the northeast kingdom, 90 people I believe, something like that. And he, as you walk into the house, he's on the right hand side. Tom Schmidt, represented from Burlington, is on the left and upper back. And I'm up next to the rosters at the camera going, that's where we were, capture it all. Frank Hutchins stood up and reached up, clicked the camera on, and he got to talking about don't forget a small town. Reached into his back pocket, pulled out his white handkerchief, tears were rolling down his eyes. And he says, just don't forget a small people. That's a poignant moment. That is a moment that tells everything about reapportionment, about the establishment of public policy. Because if you really believe that public policy starts at the grassroots bottom up, then you have to remember those folks. Next question. Well it's really Vermont from the 1800s moving into the 1900s. Yeah, but I wasn't there in the 1800s. The legislature was an ornament from the 1800s that had one person. Reminds me of a story at one of the local watering holes many years ago, I'm enjoying it. The Brown Derby or the Tavern? No, no, the Thrush. The Thrush. Oh, if you can speak. I came later. You can speak, speak of the Thrush. And so, no, it was just about age and so forth. You've got nothing to do with anything except they're playing trivia. And somebody said, so what was the name of the play at Port Cedar when Lincoln got shot? And I said, our American cousin. Somebody left me and said, how do you know? I was there. Also a vineyard for 65, it was the year that there used to be more cows than people, but from 65 on, there's more people than cows. Big shift. And the town of Victory finally had electricity. 1968. 1968 was when Victory was electricity. And those are my roots there. In Victory. In Victory. My grandfather was born there, and my great-grandfather was born there. In 1968, then they used to have the Holiday in the Hills to celebrate that. It was George Akin that was responsible, the United States Center was responsible for rural electrification. It's nomenclature that represents what they did, and they strung that electric line, I think, from North Concord right up Victory Road. And by golly, the lights came on. The last town in Vermont to receive. Yeah, but can you imagine what that was? What month? 1968. I don't know the month. But can you imagine what it was like before then? Kerosene lanterns all over the place are candles. Right. You know, talk about being in the forest with a lighted match. We'll take a short break, and we'll be back in just a moment with Norman James. About 1.30 in the afternoon, and all of a sudden, there's music on, so I wasn't on the air per se, but I was reading a commercial, getting it ready. And all of a sudden, the red lights go, zoom, zoom. And I could hear the machine banging, banging, banging. The bells going off, bells going off. Oh, wow. So I got up and walked up, and UPR was saying, all off. Everyone off. Excuse me. I said, Kennedy shot, flash, Kennedy shot, bang, and then the paper came up, all off, all off. Dallas has the wire. And then President John F. Kennedy shot, bang, man, that's coming off. Rusty Parker's office, the control room, one end of the building, 9 Stowe Street, 2nd floor. Back of the building was control room, the front of the building, up over Edtown store at that time, was Rusty Parker's office, right? So you come out of the newsroom, we call, where the cell-time machine is, and I yelled, hey, Rusty. And he looked up, and I said, let's go. And so he came in and he was running through the record library, and I said, Kennedy, he's been shot. And he said, okay. So he took the bulletin, and he went on the air with it. And in the meantime, I've got some, we call it long-playing music, but it's not a drab symphony, it's just different kind of music. Rusty put it right on and said, well, you interrupt this broadcast and bring you this following, and so I was feeding him, and then I was on the phone calling the governor, calling Lieutenant Governor, calling all state officials, calling everybody I could find for a reaction to all of this. It was fresh news. And then at the typewriter at that time, a royal, manual, banging this stuff out, ripping it off and taking it into the control room. Ken came bouncing up the stairs. Ken Squire. Ken Squire, yeah. Came bouncing up the stairs. He said, wow, what's happened? The office staff, Barbara Butterfield, Conny Therrien, and I have forgotten for some reason the other third lady that was there, oh, and not a Conny Therrien, but Conny Graves and a fourth lady, I forgot her name, all of a sudden, they're speechless. And they're just so emotional. And so that was that moment. It was really tough. It was tough. I saw a leader, the Walter Cronkite video, when he took off his glasses, right? Boy, I know exactly how he felt at that time, and I think everybody did, regardless of political strike. They did that, right? So that happened on that Friday afternoon. Sunday morning, I'm on the air, the following Sunday, right? By that time, there was a cartage for the funeral procession going to, on this way, to the cemetery to Arlington. And I'm listening to a mutual network on the wire. That was our, you know, listening to them describe what's happening. And then all of a sudden, I'm playing in the middle of a church program, right? A live church program. And all of a sudden, a mutual comes on and says, Oswald has been shot. We'll take you now to the Dallas County Jail. And they had a reporter there. And the reporter is talking, you know? And I'm sitting there with a church thing going on here, national news happening, okay, here we go. So open the mic. We interrupt this program for this news from Dallas, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested as the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy has been shot in the jail. And I'm listening and saying the same thing. I was doing that before they do it today. It was, it was there. And finally, okay, that was news, mutual came out, put them on and that was that. What the hell of a weekend. Amazing weekend. I went home. Exhausted. I did. It was a Saturday night. It's always been a hockey night in Canada. And where we lived, we could pick up Channel 6, CBM Montreal. And they had a hockey game going. And I said, I, so I put the hockey game on. I hit it on for two minutes and I said, I can't watch this. I've got to get back. That is how strong that was. And that was, how was that? November of 1963. Correct. In 1964, you go to Channel 3, CX. I go to Channel 3. 65 is a reapportionment section. And they're about 10 years old. They started in 54. Channel 3. Yeah, yeah. Right. And they had a one-ton pencil. Did they have like a 15-minute news show at 6? They did have a 15-minute news show. Was it Mickey Gallagher the maker then? Yep, yep. Richard Gallagher, Mickey Gallagher. And Tony Adams was doing sports. Sports and Tony Weather. Right. Ken Green was doing whatever. Charlie, Charlie, he was in charge of development. I see. PR development stuff. And Charlie... Lewis? Lewis was in charge of public affairs. Right. He did the You Can Quote Me program. And that was fun to be on. You get a guy on and ask him questions. Mickey was the consummate news person. He really, really tried very hard. He admitted that he was, you know, a very conservative guy. But he really tried very hard to be open to that. And he used to tell me, well, what are you? I said, I'm a moderate. Well, you can't be because the opposite of a moderate is immoderate. So we talk political philosophy. Every Friday night when I go over to do the program. Right. So, yeah. I was going to mention, oh, in 1966, that was the reapportioned 150-member house. The new election of 1966 produced the new... Correct. The new house. Correct. Correct. And what happened there was... Post-3rd term begins as well. Yeah. The 3rd term begins. But then all of a sudden, reform begins. Welfare reform begins. The poor farms are taken away. The overseer of the poor is gone. Every time it's got a health hub. In other words, socially. The bar was being slowly raised here in the state of Vermont. And for all the right purposes. But then after that came... I was there and went back to DEV. After the... In 1968? November of 1968. And I stayed there. Back to radio? Back to radio. Russell Parker gave you a raise? Yes. He was struck. He did. Yes, he was a director. He did. How could they live without you? Covering the state house again. Still, I should say. Right. Only this time I didn't have the big one-ton pencil. Had a little tape recorder to a microphone. More mobile. More mobile, right. And my office was literally the size of a telephone booth. All I needed is all I needed. Were you guys up in the crow's nest? Yes. That's where I started there at DEV. Up in the crow's nest. Under the dome, which you can't get to today. There's going to be some reconstruction up there. Yeah. UPI, AP, the Press Bureau, which was Rutland-Herald and Times-Argus. The Free Press and DEV were all up there. So whose press were the... Steve Terry? Was he there? Steve Terry was in charge of the Press Bureau. John Mahoney worked for him. Bill Moran was the head of AP. And Bill Moran went on to CPS as a producer in New York. Right. Vic Markey was with the Free Press. But Mavis Doyle was a Free Press at that time. Right. Because Mavis Doyle went to Channel 22. Wait a minute. Vic was with the Free Press in Burlington. Right. Then he went to Channel 22. Right. With Brian Harwood by the way. Correct. And then he went on to public radio. After... He went from there to Bob Stafford's office in Washington. And then from there to public radio in Washington. Right. But Mavis Doyle then worked for the Free Press. Right. After Vic Markey. Right. Right. So what was she like? Well, Mavis was a great reporter. Sometimes very victorialic, but boy, she really... You've heard this before. And I don't know who came up with it, but they were right. Mavis had a mantra. All right? Is you comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted. And she wanted just to make sure that the people on the short end of the stick got a fair shake. That was her mantra. And she did that. Another Mavis Doyle story. One time there was a... I won't mention him, a former lobbyist from Massachusetts government came to Vermont to live and work in our state house as a lobbyist. And Mavis was probably about five, ten, six foot tall. She was a tall lady. And she smoked Chester Fields. She did. She did. And this guy was standing on the first step going upstairs to the governor's office in the state house. And she was standing on the floor. And she was face to face with him. She had the cigarette hanging out of her mouth. And she's poking him on the chest. The last thing we need here is a dirty rotten Massachusetts politician. And this poor guy is out. Hello? Mavis Doyle. The Mavis treatment. Right. And Steve Terry was for the... Before he went to Juerk for George Akin. That's correct. He was doing the rellin arrow. Yeah. He was in charge. John Mahoney wrote for him. Who was in UPI? Tony Merrill also wrote for him. Right. At that time. Go ahead. And UPI was this before Ron Clark? Oh, yeah. Ron Cohen. Okay. Ron Cohen was the press bureau. He was the UPI press bureau back then. And he went on UPI all the way to the top. He was there when it was sold. He wrote a book about it. Wow. A co-author. Right. Down to the Wire. The book is Down to the Wire. Google it. Down to the Wire. Ron Cohen. But he wrote a second book about his memoirs. And he's got two or three memoirs about what happened in Vermont. Wow. And that is called, of course, you can have ice cream for breakfast. And that is, that's it. Google this. Google this. Of course you can have ice cream for Christmas. For breakfast. For breakfast. Try that. Ron Cohen. C-O-H-E-N. Ron Cohen. Right. UPI in Montpelier, 64-65. And then he moved up the ladder. Wow. Oh, yeah. A great reporter. Is he still alive? Oh, yes. Yes. We correspond on Facebook quite frequently. Where does he live? In Washington. The future episode of our program. Well, that's true too, I can tell you some Ron Cohen stories. Go ahead. Gee, look. Oh, it's just. So, you're up there in the crows nest. Yeah. And you're back with DEV in 68. Correct. And of course Bobby Kennedy's, but it was November of 16 you come back with DEV. So the Kennedy assassination of Bobby Kennedy was in June. Martin Lattenian was in April. Yeah, yeah. But still, 60 is the last year of the Phil Hof period. Correct. And that was a tumultuous campaign for Phil Hof because of that problem, that it was exploited by Chuck Colson. That was 70. He's rearing for the Senate in 1970. 70. Yeah. Oh, that's 68. But Dean Davis was elected in 1968. Dean Davis. Right, right. Exactly. And actually 50 came in. Yeah. Because the Republicans reclaimed the governorship in 1968. Actual 50 came in for all of the right reasons. Sponsored by the Republicans. Yes. Right. And then. Sponsored by the Democrats, actually. Well, and then later it was called, what is it, Gallagher called it, statewide zoning. Right. And I forget the name of the bill, but it was Actual 50, Act 258, which dealt with the water. Right. So forth, all of those. And Mickey was just against it. Right. Said it's statewide zoning. I don't know that it was, but it sure did set up some parameters to protect our environment. I'm sorry. Was that the big issue of that time period? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And do you remember the Mount Snow episode that created it or other things? Well, all I know down there is that the effluent was rolling down the hill. Right. Dean Davis saw it and said, we've got to bring this to a screeching halt. And he proposed a legislation and it did. The, you know. Arthur Gibbs, part of the. Art Gibbs was the champion of all of that. Right. Yeah. He wrote the legislation. You know, from, it was Middlebury. Addison. Addison County. But he was the environmentalist in the state house. Yep. Yeah. There's a big portrait of art up there in the state house. But remember the labor folks were against Act 250 because it affected jobs and construction interests. That's what they thought. That's what they thought. In the beginning. So there's early Republicans were the champions. The Teddy Roosevelt Republicans conservationists became the environmentalists. Well, they were always environmentalists. Right. And they just had different nomenclatures. And the problem is that we can't have effort in rolling down. Right. Being totally exposed to the public. Come on. So whatever you, nomenclature, whatever handle you want to give it, it's crap. Right. And it has to be taken care of. Right. And everybody understood that. And the question was, well, how are we going to do this without affecting what we've already known. But we've always known. It's always. Every time there's new public policy, it always says, well, how is it going to be? It used to be this way. Oh, I remember when. Right. We'll do it for now. Well, for now, never come. And that's really, I think, an issue. You remember the Roland Stewart quote about it all? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. So Roland Stewart, he was from. Yeah. Say it to me. But what town was he from? Rutland. Yeah. So we're dairy. Right. The dairy people. Right. And he was Republican National Committee man. Yeah. What are you saving the environment for? Animals. Right. Exactly. Right. And he was picked up on that. Yeah, he was. Yeah. Right. Well, it's one of those kinds of things. It's a slip of the tongue that you say unconsciously, but you really feel it, and somebody hears it. Interesting. In Vermont history, though, that the early pioneers of the environmental movement were Republican moderates. Because that's what we're telling them. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. That's what we're in town. All right? The Dems never got here. Right. You know, in terms of their influence on public policy until after reapportionment. And it was only beginning at that time to come around. Sure, we probably could take it, but to me, it goes way beyond party label. It's people who are concerned about the quality of life. We hear that quite frequently about living in Vermont, the quality of life. Anybody, a Democrat progressive independent, want to take that on as saying that I invented it, go right ahead, but it's here. Right. Right. Yeah. I'm going to go back to you. I'm your DEV. Right. There's a four-year period here. Right. Tom Salmon becomes elected governor in 72, but from 60 to 70, what were some of the news stories? What were some things that were happening? Well, the big thing was the campaign. Obviously, Dean Davis was between Phil Hoff and Tom Salmon. Yeah, I know. And that was the Act 250 years and so forth. It was quite progressive. Tom Hayes, lieutenant governor, Republican, former Winston Proudy legislative assistant in Washington, comes back, very, very thoughtful, comes back to Vermont, relocates his family, Jenny and his kids in Burlington. And he gets involved in politics. He's a politician. He runs and he's elected lieutenant governor, you know, a separate ballot, you know, and Dean Davis liked the governor. So here's Dean Davis, a well-respected businessman. National life. National life, a very, rather conservative individual, except when it got to Act 250. And here's Tom Hayes, an up-and-coming Republican who is a bit more progressive. Kent State happens. And the National Guard shoots some students at Kent State campus and the news just hits all over. Dean Davis is out in Colorado. Tom Hayes immediately asks for the flags to be flown to half-staff. Dean Davis jumps on a plane, comes back to Vermont and raises the flags back up. All of that happened, well, with two or three days, but that was news at that time. Yeah, I can remember that Tom Hayes went for governor in a primary. Against Dean Davis. Yeah, against Dean Davis. About the sales tax. Right, about the sales tax. No, it wasn't about the sales tax. I'll tell you what the sales tax was, sales tax. There was never any issue of the sales tax. Tom Hayes made up some bumper stickers that say, it was something like we don't need or say no to sales tax. It was never on the ballot, it was never an issue, but people thought it was. It was one of those campaign techniques that you just bought into it and said, yeah, there was an issue. Well, it really wasn't at that time, excuse me. So that's what, and Tom lost, but Tom Salmon, after he became governor, hired Tom as governor's lawyer, a gubernatorial legal person. Norrie Hoyt was also that, but Norrie Hoyt was a tax person. And Norrie Hoyt was the guy that came up with the Tom Salmon tax plan. The property tax. The property tax, and that was to be more than that. That was to fight development, making money on development, that's the way I can explain it. Let me explain the issue. You buy a piece of property and you turn it over in a year, you're taxed at 60%. And it goes down, each year if you hold it out for five years, you hold it up for five years, you don't pay any tax on turning it over. So it was to prevent people just coming in and buying and selling property and prices going way up and cutting the Vermonter out. Well Norrie came up with the formula and he came up with the legislation. Tom Salmon campaigned on that issue. In 72 against Fred Hackett. Right. And he also campaigned on one other issue. Fred Hackett went down to Massachusetts to Boston during the campaign, was speaking to a group of engineers. And he said, well I don't think we need that bottle bill in Vermont. He wanted to repeal the bottle bill. So he came back up, we caught wind of it. Joe Gimelli caught wind of that at that time, a very good friend of mine. And he turned that right around. And especially in the agriculture community, because we don't have bottles and cans being thrown into pastures or environmental community alongside the highways, transportation, all of that stuff. We roll that all together. Well make a long story short, Tom Salmon won that general election and went on to four years, ran against Bob Stafford for the U.S. Senate. In 76. 76, lost by 5 percent of the vote. It was very close. It was very close. It was very close. There was a, the issue had to do with the Ticonderoga paper mill, about them dumping sludge into Lake Champlain. And the argument at that time was that Stafford was turning a blind eye to it. And that issue tried to be developed into a campaign issue. But it was close. The 72 race with Salmon was very much a watershed. I remember being a delegate to the National Convention, and it was in July. We still did not have a candidate for governor. That's right. And so we were actually, we were having a couple of beers with Wisconsin delegation. So we went to Tom's office and said, will you please run? And he agreed to do that. And John Letty was another, became his driver. But he started pretty late, late August, September. But he did the listening tour. But he was smart enough to make the 72 election a referendum on property tax reform. Right. He did. But let me back up for just a second to add to your story. Is that Chuck Delaney, a state senator from Chittenden County, had put his name in. Right. As a spaceholder. Right. So when Tom came back from that National Convention, talked to Chuck, Chuck pulled out, Tom put in, but there was no opposition. Correct. So he had the time to do that listening tour. And he did make it about property tax relief and the whole issue of property tax. And he won by 40,000 votes. Yeah, he did. And Nixon won Vermont against McGovern by a landslide. He was still a pretty Republican state in 72. Yeah. And he had a cabinet, a big cabinet, then you have what you call the kitchen cabinet, but a big cabinet. I can remember it. We'd get in the conference room, around the table, and there was no rubber stamping. People were encouraged to speak their mind. And I can remember one time we were talking about raising gasoline tax. And the comment was made, if you wanted to pretend you're crazy, go right ahead. That's a hell of a comment to make, because people couldn't afford five-cent increase in the cost tax. Right. And then there was the energy crisis. Right. We developed an energy office and we tagged forest ore from the Environmental Conservation Agency to be our energy czar. And all he could do was answer the phone because, you know, there's people calling me, you know, the price of gasoline. Going into a gasoline station. In the odd-even days? In the odd-even days. We even thought about that. And no, we're not going to do that. We're just going to go along with our course. We even talked about changing daylight saving time, changing the time, and so forth. No, forget that. We're just going to go along as we are. We used to get calls into the office about tankers being cited off the coast of Massachusetts, refusing to dock. Yeah, right. So Joe Gimelli was running Tom Sammons. He left the Vermont Press Bureau to run the campaign with Don Webster. And then you're still a newsman at a DV. But Sammon wins and they make you the Press Secretary Communications Director. Well, I wasn't Communications Director so much. Something would happen. Well, what happened was, Tom gave me a call, said, I'd like to have you come to work for me. All right? Absolutely sure. And the very first thing was, and then appointments came up, Don Webster was made the Commissioner of Economic Development. Joe was appointed Secretary of Civil and Military Affairs. I was assistant to the governor. Joe and I took a piece of paper out the state government organization chart. We divided it in half. He had health and welfare where Tom Davis was. And I told him I had the cows over here for agriculture and Martin Johnson and natural conservation. So he had people and I had the environment, basically. And all we did was just keep tabs on what can we do, is just keeping tabs and making sure that the public policy created by the legislature is followed by the administration. And you're there all four years? Yeah. To the end? All right. I enjoyed it very much. I enjoyed it very much. It was a great window onto what creates public policy, everything that goes into it. And sometimes it is, and has been said before, watching sausage being made. Yeah. An awful lot of mechanical stuff, heart stuff, emotional stuff, it's all of that. Peter Kennedy is the House Speaker. And he had a sense of humor. And John Burgess was the Lieutenant Governor in the Senate. Yeah, he was our Lieutenant Governor in the Senate. Replaced by Brian Burns. Later. Later. Brian Burns was a big, rough guy, young guy from Chittenden County. Yeah. Definitely a Burlington politician. Right. Well, he had quite a primary against Stella Hackle for the Democratic primary. And John O'Brien was in that primary as well. It's correct. Yeah. Which produced Richard Snowing in the end. That's exactly right. But let's back up to Peter Kennedy. Peter Kennedy was the guy that rammed, I say rammed, they don't like the word rammed, but pushed through that act, through the 4% sales tax. Right. Through the House. And that was Dean Davis' big, big issue at that time. 4%, food exempted, clothing exempted. And it was for education. All was for education, right? So 4% went in. That was a big battle. Peter's from Chelsea. Chelsea. Was he a speaker through all of Dean Davis? Yes. I believe so. So he was a power broker. He was. But not the same power broker. And here's another story. It's about Ralph Wright, former representative from Bennington. Right. Massachusetts born. Democrat. Massachusetts born. Right. Quincy Mass Roots, who was a real power broker. Very Massachusetts kind of guy. Yeah. Nice guy though. Yeah, sweet fellow. They all worked. They all worked. They all worked. They still alive. We'll be back for another episode with Norman James, Memories and Reflections on Vermont History. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.