Oral History Interview with Henry Ward Part I

Start of Tape 1 Side A

JOHN ED PEARCE: When were you born?

HENRY WARD:I was born in in a little community called where my grandfather had been a pastor of a church there for many years.

PEARCE: What church is it?

WARD: Presbyterian.

PEARCE:Where from is it?

WARD:It's about ten miles southwest of , near the county line. It's . . . .

I read many early recollections of it. My father was a farmer and my grandfather had been pastor of the church so he was very active, my father was very active in the church. My grandfather incidentally, I learned later was also the pastor of a little church over in , at Wheel, where Alben Barkley was born. Barkley's mother was a member of the church. Barkley told me much later that his first sweetheart was my aunt, who my grandfather had taken her with him when he was preaching in the church on Sunday. And Alben Barkley said "I fell in love with her." I had one younger brother and I had two, two older brothers and three sisters - so a big family.

PEARCE:What were their names?

WARD:My brothers' names?

PEARCE:All of them.

WARD:Earle was the oldest, Homer, Robert was four years younger than I. My sisters

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WARD:were Nell, Virgie and Mabel. My father believed in education, and because

they had only a very small little school at , when I was only two

years old, we moved to Lone Oak, which had a much better school. And he operated a dairy. And when I was five years old, he was burned fatally in a fire. He was lighting a fire one morning, and using kerosene, or thought it was kerosene - it was gasoline, because it exploded. He was burned fatally. I was about 5 years old. My mother and older brother continued operating the dairy until I was, I guess about 8 years old. My two older sisters had started working in , and so my mother moved to and started running a boarding house so the girls could live at home and so my early years were spent in a boarding house. I learned how to wait on tables and also learned early that if you wanted something to eat you'd better grab it if it was there because other people would get it before you did. When we moved from home to , I wasn't very happy in school. And I was the champion truant player until one day an old lady who was truant officer came and got me and walked me to school. I don't know what she said, but she must have said something that impressed me because I never missed another day of school. It was about the fourth grade as I recall at the time, and I think one thing that was disappointing

because the McCreary county school system was not rated as well as

's. I was in the third grade in the county school and moved to

and put me back in the second, which made me unhappy.

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WARD:But after I decided to behave myself, I must have been a pretty good student

because I skipped the last part of the sixth grade, I recall, and was promoted to junior high school, and I also skipped the last part of the eighth grade. I made up that year that I lost by transferring. I was active in a lot of school activities.

On the Tilghman high school debating team for two years. I was in

dramatics, I was in every play that Tilghman had - in the last couple years. I was a member of the first honor society - the national honor society established

at when I was a junior. I graduated in 1928. I was salutorium of

the class. Of course back then there were no scholarships of any kind

available for school. My mother couldn't afford to send me to college.

The high school principal was interested in me and tried to find . . .

PEARCE:What was his name?

WARD:Hmm?

WARD:Walter Jetton. Tried to find someplace . . .

PEARCE:How do you spell his name?

WARD:J-E-T-T-O-N. Tried to find someplace that had a scholarship. But here were just none available, so I worked while I was in high school. I worked at night most years, as a delivery boy in a drug store. After I got out of high school the only job I got I could find was a soda jerker. I gave up after a couple of months

because I just wanted something better than that. I well remember they

had started a made products association, trying to promote

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WARD:secretary, so I started applying for it. I interviewed with a number of the

directors. And I well remember one old fellow, and he was very polite to me,

but when I started to leave he said "Young man, do you have a hat?" -because I wasn't wearing one. And I said "Yes sir." "Let me give you some

advice - you've got to wear a hat. We older men think you kids running

around without a hat haven't got any sense - so wear a hat." You know I

remembered that many later, when Phil Aubrey ran for senate.

And. . . . Phil and I got very good friends in the legislature, so he was asking me for advice and suggestions and I told him that story. "Phil- you ought to wear a hat. You're a young fella and you look too young and that includes wearing those bow ties, cause they make you look younger still." [laughing] Anyhow, I didn't get the job. But in early September of ’28, this high school principal, Walter Jetton, called me and he said the Paducah News Democrat is looking for a reporter. "And I had suggested to them they consider you so you go down and interview." Well I did immediately. Lloyd Robertson was the editor of the paper . . .

PEARCELloyd Robertson . . .

WARD:Robertson, R-O-B-E-R-T-S-O-N, and he hired me, which is kind of ridiculous, because I had a little experience on the high school paper, that's all, and I couldn't type except for the hunt andpeck system and I was also shy. But I stuck to it. I started working incidentally in the same building that Irving Cobb

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WARD:had worked in and I used his old desk. I worked there, let's see, in 1929. George Goodman, incidentally, who later was relief director of , was the publisher of the paper and we became very good friends. I was very much impressed by him. He had a fine philosophy about what the responsibility of a newspaper was to the public. In 1929, Edwin Paxton owned the Sun - bought the News Democrat and consolidated them into the Sun-Democrat. They fired all the News Democrat employees except one. And so I was left without a job. A couple of friends of mine bought an old T- model Ford. One of my friends had an aunt and cousin in and so we set out for in that old Ford. Sleeping on the ground at night. That old Ford barely made it to . And I spent about two months out there looking for jobs and couldn't find one, because 1929 was getting into the Depression, and there were simply no jobs available. But after about two months of it, they called me from and said come on back, the Sun-Democrat had a job for me. They had started a bulldog edition. The Sun was an evening paper, and the News-Democrat was a morning, so they started a bulldog edition to keep the morning subscribers and they wanted somebody working on the desk. It was a two- man job. One man and a young kid to run errands to put out that bulldog edition.

PEARCE:What were your hours?

WARD:Four o'clock to. . . . it went to press generally about twelve o' clock. I don't-5-

WARD:recall - I must have worked on that, let's see, the rest of '29 and '30. I must have

worked on it about at least two years, before I was transferred to the day side.

PEARCE:Now, the depression was starting to hit , wasn't it?

WARD:Hmm?

PEARCE:The depression was starting to hit ?

HW:It was very rough. The. . . .in fact at one time, we had part of our salary paid in scrip.

PEARCE:Scrip?

WARD:So they, well not because the paper was hard up, because, they were, in order to try to attract factories to , they issued some ( ) and bonds and paid them off. Employees took a lot of their salary in scrip. You had to add stamps to the scrip when you sold them and that way they made some money to pay on bonds.

PEARCE:Were you living at home at this time?

WARD:Yes. Yes. My mother had taken in boarders, because she - we had a very big old house and it was cut into little small apartments. I lived there all that time. Edwin Paxton, who was - owned the paper, was a lot like George Goodman, in his sense of responsibility to the community. And encouraged his reporters to take an active interest in civic affairs. In. . . .it must have been about 1932, I – I persuaded the editor to let us start a column called Ramblers Rambling by the Ramblers, and the idea was other reporters contribute to it. Write items that they-6-

WARD:picked up. It lasted about a month that way. Finally, I was the only one making

contributions to the column. [laughing] But I was -what you would call a little bit of a crusading reporter. We had eight magistrates and constables and three of them ran rackets. One of their favorite stunts of one of the constables was to go and raid places that had slot machines. Incidentally, at that time was wide open. too, was full of gambling. They'd raid places that had slot machines, take them to the magistrate's office, take the money out of the machines, make the owners pay a fine, then give the slot machines back to them. I conducted a campaign on gambling. To break that up and because I was convinced that they were bribing the officials. I wrote numerous articles about gambling activities and went into places that had gambling and wrote stories about it. I was. . . .one of the long time gamblers got hooked, named Red something, I can't remember his last name. But he approached me one time and said "You're kind of stupid writing all this stuff. Just be easy about it and I'll see to it you're well paid for it." I encouraged him to talk to me about it. I wrote a column about the conversation. The next Sunday, I remember, I was downtown, had a straw hat on, sailor tie . . .

PEARCE:Yes . . .

WARD:And I started around the corner to Irving Cobb hotel. He came out of the hotel,

dashed up, threw a fist at me, and we started. . . .tried to have a good fight. Knocked my derby off. The cops came, and by that time I was mad about it, and-7-

WARD:they wanted to know if I wanted to prosecute him, and I said "Hell, no,

prosecuting takes too much fun out of it." I also conducted an investigation into

boot-legging, and this goes back to prohibition days, and there was wide-open boot-legging. Some people from came in there and decided to get organized boot-legging. So I used a fellow that was a notorious drunk. We went around to several bootleggers and he drank their rot-gut liquor, and I encouraged them. Of course, I didn't tell them who I was and encouraged them to talk about how fellows came in, and threatened them if they didn't buy their whiskey from them, they would get shot up. I went and wrote stories about all that. I also took evidence to the grand jury and persuaded them to call in some of the bootleggers as witnesses to testify. And they were reluctant to do so. And I said "You need to testify about these birds threatening your outfits about you selling whiskey." So they did testify and these bootleggers were indicted. I received several threatening phone calls, of course. I was a very courageous reporter. At that time, I bought me a twenty-two pistol and carried it around. The threats never came to anything, of course. They left town after the trial. The. . . .I guess it was in ‘32 I helped organize the first junior congress in . In '33, I was elected president of them. Early in '33. . . . I had. . . .One of my crusading efforts had been expose loan sharking. It was wide-open, loan sharking. We had a lot of evidence and wrote a lot of stories about it. Of course there was nothing you could do about it because the only laws in you-8-

WARD:could charge more than six percent, you could recover the use of, of course, the problem was proving it, because the loan sharks kept no records. People who were their victims had no records. I remember one case of a man who had been borrowing money from sharks for years, and never was able to pay the balance back because the interest every month was all he could afford to pay. The only record he said he had were all how long he had been paying interest. He had borrowed money when his child was born, and the kid was eleven years old and he was still paying on that loan. Because no law covered nothing to do about it, he couldn't prove anything in court. He couldn't prove anything without records. I became very much interested and thought there ought to be something done about the law. I remember one day I was talking with old Con Traig, he was secretary of the board of trade . . .

PEARCE:Who?

WARD: Con Traig. T-R-A-I-G An old friend of mine. And was complaining that I couldn't get the fellow who was now the representative to change the law, and something ought to be done about it. I said "Hell, a lot of things done about it. There ought to be some modern laws, municipal law, come under my fingers, too. “And he said "Well, why don't you run yourself?" I said “All right, that's ridiculous. I'm twenty-three years old, just a kid- don’t know anything about it, about politics at all." "Well, why don't you run?" Of course I thought it was silly, but the more I thought about it, why it started to appeal to me. So I-9-

WARD:decided to run in '33. It wound up there were seven candidates in

that campaign. I . . .

PEARCE:What's your birthday?

WARD:June twentieth, nineteen nine. During the campaign, Judge Price, who was a circuit judge, was a good friend of mine, introduced me one time when. . . .

PEARCE:What was his first name?

WARD:Joe- Joe Price. Of course, we were out making stump speeches all over the

county. So he introduced me one time and said "You all may not recognize him

by the name of Henry Ward, but he's a rambler. He writes this column in the Sun-Democrat." Of course, the column was well-known in the county, because it had been this crusading reporter type of thing. And I think that's what really helped me get elected or nominated, didn’t have any opposition in November.

PEARCE:What office were you running for?

WARD:State representative.

PEARCE:State representative. From what district?

WARD:I don't know, it was all at the time.

PEARCE:All of it?

WARD:Yeah. I think it was, but I don't recall. '34 was my first session. I was twenty-four in June. And, uh. . . .

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PEARCE:You hadn't met Gladys yet?

WARD:No. You had to be twenty-four before you can serve, but I was twenty-four before the session started in January. I . . . . there were two pieces of legislation I was very much interested in - the loan shark legislation and municipal ownership. owned its waterworks for years and done a real good job with it. And I was convinced - old Mr. Ed Paxton, who published the paper, was chairman of the water board, and he was also convinced that municipal ownership of utility would be - of a power company would be a good thing. I introduced a bill that, allowed – the cities own and operate park system - at that time had no right to do so. And I also co-sponsored the legislation to - regulations for small loans. We got a lot of criticism for that at one time because they built pools they could charge three percent on the unpaid balance of the loan, which sounded high - on the basis for the entire year was eighteen percent. But of course it was high. But, hell they - the average the loan sharks had been charging was three hundred percent a year.

PEARCE:This was three percent a year or three percent a month?

WARD:Three percent on the unpaid balance. In other words, if they made monthly

payments the three percent would be on the unpaid balance. That's how I

accepted it. Normally the people who went to a loan shark couldn't

borrow money at the bank or anywhere else. They just couldn't borrow

money and the people who were loaning money to that kind of customer

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WARD:taking risk and it was considered it was a fair return on the money. But the most

important thing was it required them to give receipts at the time you made the

loan, a copy of the contract, a copy of the loan, the day she got it, every receipt, every time the money was paid. So we were working toward trying to set up some regulations- anyhow, that bill was passed.

PEARCE:It did pass?

WARD:Oh, yeah. And uh. . . .

PEARCE:Can you remember some of the people, who – who, for example, who was governor at this time? Was that Ruby?

WARD:Ruby Lafoon, yeah.

PEARCE:What kind of governor was he? How did you regard him?

WARD:We got to be real good friends. He was a very kindly old circuit judge who was lost as governor. He was a product of the old political system of picking

at the convention. He was a . . .

PEARCE:Was Tom Rhea in there?

WARD:Of course, he preceded Tom Rhea. Tom Rhea was one of his protégés. His cousin was Polk Laffoon, who was president of Columbia Gas and Electric Power in .

PEARCE:Polk Lafoon?

Ward: Polk Lafoon. He was very powerful. Of course, the county utilities really were powerful in politics. But Polk Laffoon was primarily responsible for

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WARD:Ruby getting on. . . .I well remember that after the election when Rhea lost. I told you that one day he was commiserating about all the damn liars in the state [laughing]. I said “You learn that all right." He was a very nice person, I

thought, totally out of place in government.

PEARCE:Who was in the legislature with you? Do you remember many of them?

Who were the leaders of the legislature, who were the powers?

WARD:No. That's too far back.

PEARCE:Howard Henderson was the Courier's man over there at the time, wasn't he?

WARD:Yeah.

PEARCE:A Courier-Journal man. Do you remember anybody else?

WARD:Of course Happy was lieutenant governor. A fellow named Gunther was speaker of the house. I can't remember his. . . . that first name.

PEARCE:The Capital Hotel was still open?

WARD:Hmmm?

PEARCE:The old Capital Hotel was open?

WARD:Oh yeah. It was the center of activities. Every night, the - the legislators all crowded the lobby. I don't recall any outstanding figures.

PEARCE:Did you go home often, or did you stay pretty much the whole time?

WARD: I pretty much stayed all the time because, because I was so far from

, and there were three ferries to cross, so I . . .

PEARCE:There were three ferries to cross? Where, where they?

WARD:One at the Tennessee River near , the , at . . .

PEARCE:the .

WARD:the .

PEARCE:Your home was just south of there?

WARD:I wrote a column all during that time I was up there. I mailed it back every

day. Wasn't much need in trying to go home. I wrote some special

articles, too. Anyhow, it was too far to go. I started to say - to tell you – about the bill that permits cities to own and operate utility plants. The bill was referred

to a committee which I was a member – no, no I wasn't a member of it. I remember an old fellow from who told me all the time, he was chairman of the committee. "I'm trying to get your bill out.” But it didn't. It went to the rules committee. And I always remember the rules committee. I discovered that this fellow was leading the fight against my bill. And I remember the last day that you could make a motion to take a bill away from a committee. And I was all primed. I was plotting a strategy and thinking about what I was going to say and, finally got up and made a motion to take the bill away from the committee. And the speaker said "You're out of order." The motion to dispense with the orders of the day and proceed had already been made and passed. It was a routine thing. I wasn't paying attention, and that precluded any opportunity to make a motion and take the bill away from the committee. I learned my lesson. The very next session, in '36, on the first day of the session, there was three bills. One permits cities to own and operate the plants. One to take municipal plants out from under the jurisdiction of the public service commission, and one to repeal a provision which it didn't allow for, requiring a city to advertise one year in the expiration of a franchise, for a new franchise. In other words, to make it mandatory, that or just a bill to repeal it. I got – I was in good graces at that time.

I got the bills referred, referred to the committee of which I was a member. I got them out of committee immediately. Got them passed real quick. Personally took them to the Senate, and Lee Gibson was senator from at the time and got him to sponsor it. And worked on the senate and did what he could to get them passed. Got them passed early. Took them down to Happy's office personally, and in my own fountain pen asked him to sign it and then I was in pretty good shape. ( ) wasn't happy, but he went along. Keen Johnson and I were good friends and Keen was helpful and got him to sign them. If I hadn't got it done that way it would never have gotten done, because it wasn't very long until I was on the outs with Happy.

PEARCE:Happy ran against Tom Rhea.

WARD:Yep.

PEARCE:That double primary. I suppose he was a very charismatic character.

WARD:Yeah.

PEARCE:Easy to get along with?

WARD:No, if you didn't, if you weren't for Happy you were just . . .

PEARCE: you were against him.

WARD:Of course I. . . .the double primary bill was passed in '33. The. . . .Alben Barkley had come down from to make a plea for to pass the primary law. But the Laffoon and Rhea crowd didn't want a primary, they wanted a convention. Laffoon went to during the session of legislature for some reason and Sonny was out of the state. Happy called a special session. No, that wasn't a. . . .that was after the session was

over, after the regular session. Happy called a special session. And Lafoon headed back to , and rescinded the call. But, a group of us - I was none of those, because I was for a primary. Stayed at session anyhow. The thing went to court, and the court ruled that once a session had been called the governor couldn't rescind it, from the normal legislature. So we went into session. And making the effort to pass the primary bill. Happy was for it and Lafoon and Tom Rhea against it. The Rhea crowd decided that it'd be better off with the double- barreled primary run-off. And so they had enough pressure to pay us a primary. If it hadn't been for that, Rhea had been nominated because he won the first primary and Happy beat him in the run-off. Fred Wallace primarily was responsible Happy won it, because Fred had run in the primary and ran third and through his support Happy had won the run-off.

PEARCE:Who was Fred?

WARD: What?

PEARCE:Who was he? Who was Fred Wallace?

WARD:Fred Wallace. He had been commissioner of police in . And came back to . - he was a wealthy man. During the Lafoon administration, he’d been named Commissioner of Welfare. He was a very high type man. Very religious man, and in fact I supported him, we carried for him. But he . . . . when he came back . . . . Happy, that primary was responsible - for Happy went into the primary.

PEARCE:He was from ?

WARD:Yeah.

PEARCE:From ?

WARD:Yeah.

PEARCE:You were in the . . . . you were in the session of '36?

WARD:Started in '34. It was my first session.

PEARCE:Then you were re-elected.

WARD:Re-elected '36. Re-elected '38. '38 was the year that Happy ran against

Barkley for Senate and so early in the session, some of us were for Barkley and

decided to do what we could to try to pin Happy in. Happy had, of course as

you recall, ran on a platform with repealing the sales tax , so you would replace them with a whole bunch of special taxes - on everything from candy to soft

drinks, movies. So in the '38 session, I introduced some bills to repeal all those

special taxes he had proposed. And one day Happy's out of the state on some reason, so I couldn't get them out of the committee. Of course, he controlled the committee. So I got up and made a motion to suspend the rules and to take those bills away from the committee in the absence of a committee report and put them on a ( ) vote. Damn if the motion didn't pass. Happy rushed back to the state and raised hell about it. And I said “Happy - I'm just trying to help you keep your campaign promises.”

PEARCE:How did you regard Happy in those days?

WARD:I liked Happy. If he hadn't run against Barkley I think I'd got along with him all right. I mentioned in the '36 session that if I, if I hadn’t gotten those bills on utilities passed early, I probably wouldn't have because I got on bad terms with him, but it was primarily over those taxes. I had voted for the sales tax in ‘34. I almost got beat, incidentally, because of it. So in '36, why - he had said during the campaign that he'd run the state without a lot of taxes - so in '36 when he sponsored all those special taxes, I voted against every one of them. And tried to get them repealed because I said it would help him keep his campaign promises. And of course, Happy’s the type that you had to be for him all the time, or you weren't all the time, then you weren't his man.

PEARCE:How much were you paid as a legislator?

WARD:Five dollars.

PEARCE:Five dollars a day? Did you get travel expenses?

WARD:Seven cents a mile. That was all.

PEARCE:You couldn't afford to. . . .you had to have another job in order to. . . .

WARD:Oh, the newspaper kept me on the payroll all the time I was there. I couldn't

afford to.

PEARCE:Most of the people in the legislature were farmers. . . .

WARD:lawyers.

PEARCE:lawyers.

WARD:A lot of farmers because it was off-season and they could afford to be up there

during the winter.

PEARCE:You got five dollars a day. Seven cents a mile.

WARD:One trip - one round trip a session.

PEARCE:What was the quality of the legislator in those days? Were they any good?

WARD:Oh, fair. I'd say that not more than ten percent of them really knew much about

what was going on. After all, it -you had to work at it if you expected to understand the legislature. One advantage I had in not running back home every time they ended the sessions for it, I had time then to study. And because I always felt that because I hadn't gone to college I had to work harder - and keep on studying and learning all the time. It was a very valuable thing because I didn't think I knew it all and I had to work at it. I did work at it. But the average legislator didn't. Didn't read their bills. . . .were pretty easily influenced then, particularly by the governor because at that time, the governor controlled the legislature. I'd say there were honest people over there. I don't think I ever knew more than one or two crooks at the legislature in the years that I served.

PEARCE:The governor could deny them roads, bridges.

WARD:Jobs.

PEARCE:And jobs. That's a tough thing to go against.

WARD:Speaking of roads. . . .when I first went to legislature, a road be put

on the highway system by an act of the legislature. Which is kind of ridiculous.

Anyhow, I became Commissioner of Highways one of the first acts that I sponsored was one to repeal that thing. No, I did it before I was highway commissioner. Repealed a law, and provided that the commissioner of highways would decide what roads would go on the system. So when I was commissioner of highways, I instituted a program and we got county by county, we completely revised the state highway system, and took a lot of roads off and put some on, but took a lot more off than we put on. But that was the primary interest of the legislators - roads.

PEARCE:The governor had that highway commission at that time didn't he? Ben Johnson?

I've about run out here, didn't want you to run out on me. But it was an honest

but inept legislature. You remember any of the people in that session that were

good or bad?

WARD:Yeah, I'd almost have to go look at a list of them.

PEARCE:Did Keen Johnson live in , or did he live at home then?

WARD:I guess he lived at home, but was close, and so no mansion for the

lieutenant governor.

PEARCE:Did he have much to do besides preside?

WARD:No.

PEARCE:Between sessions he didn't do much.

WARD:At that time, of course they. . . .the lieutenant governor. . . .well his salary consisted of what he was paid during the legislature.

End of Tape 1, Side A

Tape 1, Side B

WARD:....one of the better lieutenant governors. And one of the best governors that I ever knew.

PEARCE:This is getting a little toward '38, now.

WARD:Uh-huh.

PEARCE:You were still a single man. How'd you meet Gladys?

WARD:After the special session in '34, when we passed the compulsory primary law, I went back to . And the newspaper sponsored a. . . .this was in , a beauty contest. Send the winner to the state fair. And I was the master of ceremonies. They had the contest at the theatre one night and all the girls came on stage in evening gowns. We had the girls to gather at the hotel preceding the contest in order to give them instructions. First time I'd ever seen Gladys. Gladys was one of the contestants. She was a waitress at the Cobb Hotel at the time. And Buddy Quinn was the manager of the hotel and put her in the contest. But she was a beautiful gal. And so that night she was picked as . I was elected to go with her to to the state fair for the contest. She didn't win. Some blond won, as usual. But we drove up in the car and I took her over to to introduce her to Governor Laffoon and go back to . By the time we got back to , I was really smitten. I had -I had been dating a girl in Louisville, in fact I had a date planned with her the night I was to be in Lexington - Louisville, but by that time I'd forgotten all about her. And three weeks later we got married.

PEARCE:Not a very long courtship. What was her name?

WARD:Gladys Lindsey.

PEARCE:Lin. . . .

WARD:sey. L -I-N-D-S-E-Y. She was a native of . Her sister had moved to with her husband, who worked Illinois Central jobs, so she came up there with her sister and the only job she could get at that time was waitressing.

PEARCE:Did you all move. . . .did she go with you to during the session?

WARD:No. Let's see. We were married in '34. So, the next one was '36. She came up there I think once or twice, but she didn't come, she was working as a hostess at the hotel at the time.

PEARCE:What are you thinking about there?

WARD:I was trying to think - get dates straightened up because our daughter Pat was born in November of '35. I was trying to remember - we were married in September of ‘34 and Pat was born in November of '35.

PEARCE:You were still on the paper?

WARD:Uh-huh.

PEARCE:Still reporting?

WARD:Oh, by that time I'd been made city editor. Let's see the. . . .I was up there during December of 1942. I was up there in '37. I don't know. I don't remember. I know they had to call several special sessions. The '37 flood hit. We were living in an apartment on the ground floor in in '37.

PEARCE:Do you remember where it was? The address?

WARD:Sixth and - I don't remember the address. And of course they had warnings about the river rising rapidly but woke up one morning and the water was around the street in front of our house. And it kept on rising rapidly. So I took - carried our daughter in my arms and we waded - we got coats and boots somewhere, waded over to my mother's house. She had two story house and went up there and went up on the second floor - everybody crowded on the second floor. At that time the water kept on rising rapidly. Finally a boat came, went out, and took us out by boat. The day before I had tried to drive my car out and the water, it had already backed up into a lower area, cutting off entirely. So I couldn't get my car out. I put it on what I thought was a . Of course, after the flood the water had completely covered the car. We went out and lived with my brother, during the flood, with my brother- he ran a dairy in Lone Oak. That flood really ram-wrecked . The newspaper printed in Mayfield during the flood. ( ) piled the water at the ( ) offices there. I had the job every day of measuring how the water was coming, rising. I used a yardstick, and went down and put it at the edge of the water. I could tell by the yardstick every day whether it was coming up or going down. The way to do it - the perfect way.

PEARCE:You did continue to get the Sun-Democrat out then?

WARD:Yeah. Very small of course. Primarily just personal notes about where, who was where Notes from people asking where so and so was. Four pages.

PEARCE:It did hurt pretty bad, though, didn't it?

WARD:Oh, yeah.

PEARCE: How big was at that time?

WARD:About 32,000.

PEARCE:Let's see, the war was about to begin. It was '37, I know. And then in '38 you were re-elected.

WARD:Uh-huh.

PEARCE:How about in '40?

WARD:Well, I . . .

PEARCE:You see in '39 you were ( ), wasn't it? You beat ( )?

WARD:Yep, I ran for the lieutenant governor in . . . . well let's see. . . .

PEARCE:It must have been in '39.

WARD:No. Happy was governor in '38 and in '40. I don't remember anything about

40's session. Well, let's see. . . .the election was '39. Keen Johnson was. . . .

Well, I do too. Keen. . . .of course Happy had gone to the senate. Replaced

Matt Logan - Mills . And Keen took over and then when I full term.

I, of course, in Barkley's campaign in '38, I was the state publicity chairman. I was in all during that campaign. I well remember one detail of the campaign. Tom Rhea was very active during the campaign. You have to use the organization chairman. I remember one night, right close to the end of the

primary, we had a meeting one night and got talking about organizing for the

primary election and talking about finances. And Tom Rhea said "I've got to have a hundred thousand dollars set aside for use on election day.’ And I said "For God's sakes, what are you going to do with a hundred thousand dollars?" And he says - Tom said "Well think about it. 120 counties. That's less than a thousand dollars a county." And I said “You haven't been out politicking. We'll talk about it. What can you do with less than a thousand dollars a county? And I have to admit that you're right?" Well, it was staggering to me. Anyhow I remember after that campaign I went back home and discovered I was overdrawn at the bank, because funds were so tight that I didn't feel like charging everything I'd spent to the campaign. I well remember how sore I was and I learned later on that they'd saved thirty-five thousand dollars out of the campaign to use on the governor's race next year to start drawing their ground as they can. Of course, I was - I didn't support any of them because Keen and I were good friends, but I did support Keen Johnson in '39 primary. So that at the '40 session of the legislature I decided I was going to become- to try to be an administration man for the first time really to support Keen. I very well remember you mentioned Howard Henderson. Howard wrote a very scathing column about me - about the desertion of Henry Ward.

PEARCE:The desertion?

WARD:Yeah. That I'd been most effective as a legislator but in opposition to the administration and I'd destroyed myself by deciding to join in with Keen. I said "Howard, you may beright, but there's one thing I've learned being around

. You have a lot of fun being anti all the time, but you don't get much done. You can accomplish a hell of a lot more by going on and working with him - he's a decent fella." And I did. Because I made assistant majority leader that session, that '40 session. In '42 I became majority leader. That was the famous fight. . . .

PEARCE:When did you run for lieutenant governor in '38?

WARD:No. That was after the '42 session.

PEARCE:Oh, it was.

WARD:When we had the big fight over. . . .we, the court had ruled that Tennessee Valley Authority - that cities had no right to contract with a federal agency for power. So in order to enable cities to contract TVA in - by that time, was very much interested because was in the TVA area. So I introduced a bill to permit cities to contract with TVA for power. That led to a very famous fight. John Kirtsey was in the Keen’s. . . .chairman of public service commission was violently opposed to the bill. Keen finally came out for it. And we finally passed it after putting it on the ballot. The public utilities were very strong then. And I guess because I'd gotten all the publicity, the Courier Journal was very kind to me all through that fight. And because Keen encouraged me, I ran for lieutenant governor in ‘40, in '43. There were three of us in the race. Bill May, was then commissioner of agriculture. And John. . . .what the hell. . . .I'll think of it -got in the race. Barkley told me that when I first decided to run, I talked to him about it and he encouraged me to run. But after Rhea's boy got in the race, Barkley told me, he said "Tom Rhea's come to me and said 'Now look, you owe me a lot, you know what we've done for you, and I know you're close to Henry Ward, but the least you can do is stay out of the race.' “And he said, "I'll just have to stay out of it." I said I could understand that. So he stayed out of it. I was doing pretty well, although I was such a novice and thought hell, I don't know anything about state politics didn't have the money, didn't have the organization. I was relying on Keen, because he'd said that he was going to endorse me. And I was doing pretty well on my own. I had a lot of support in . I had -I was close to Wilson Wyatt. When first became Mayor he had a lot of legislation he wanted to get passed and he couldn't get any of the delegation to go along with him. So in '42 I was majority leader, so I picked up his bills and got them passed. And felt very obligated to me because of that and I was assuming then he was going to help me in . But the campaign developed, and Ben Kilgore started really scaring Donaldson and his supporters. told me "I'm sorry but I'm so committed to Donaldson and that race is mighty important, and I've just got to concentrate on Donaldson and not do anything until the governor's

race." I had enough friends that I'd developed in the legislature that I carried Louisville, but during the very last of the campaign, I went back to Frankfort after being out in the state and saw Keen and said "Keen, I've been talking to a lot of your people, and they said they haven't had any word from you about the lieutenant governor's race." "Well, don't worry about it, we'll put it out." But I discovered after the campaign that they never did except in my section of the state. Why he told his people – people were told - Ward's your man, and Bill made his area. I'm sure they went along with him. Joe Leary, particularly, who was in very, very strong with the administration put out the word in central and northern Kentucky that they're for John, what the hell. . . .

PEARCE:Whitaker?

WARD:Whitaker, John Whitaker. And of course, that very successfully split the thing three ways. Bill May, Whitaker and I were west Kentuckians, but we split the Barkley support and Bill May ran away from us - didn't run away, but it was a very close race. But he won the nomination. I remember after the election was over I called Howard. And I said "Howard I've spent all my money I haven't got it anymore. I don't have any influence anywhere. It took maybe, right around here, but I'd be glad to do anything I can." They never called me. I've-I never understood what Donaldson was doing in that campaign. I remember one of the stories was that Smith Broadbent, Sr. and his brother Clarence were the

kingmakers in and had traditionally started dividing patronage and ran the organization. In the primary, Smith was for Ben Kilgore and Clarence was for Donaldson. In the final election, Smith proposed to Donaldson, that he'd agree to go back to the old plan, that Smith and he would be the organization, take care of the patronage and Donaldson refused to do it. He just wasn't a very practical fellow. If it was me over there ( ) about politics. Anyhow, of course that it was a combination of things that, you know - that tradition in about every, every twenty years Democrats lost favor and Republicans come along and it was a combination of that. A combination of Happy not being very popular and his promises and repeals the income tax. Simeon Willis was another fine old judge who found a place in the Governor's office. A very fine gentleman, I liked him very much, got along with him fine. In fact, well in the . . . in 1943, Strother Melton was state senator for for years. He came in one day and said "I'm not going to run for re-election. You ought to be in the legislature." Because I'd gone up there in the '42 session - because I wasn't in the legislature after having run, run for lieutenant governor in '43. In '44 session, I wasn't there. But that was when Ray Moss introduced the bill to repeal the TVA enabling act. So I went to and spent a lot of time up there doing that session lobbying against Ray Moss's bill. So Strother told me that "I'm not going to run for re-election in '45, and you ought to be in . Your interest is there. If you will agree to run, I will not say I'm going to run for re-election. You go and file. There's a good possibility, then, you'll be without opposition." That's the way it worked out. I went back and went to the state senate in '46. As I say, I liked Willis and, in fact, he probably liked me, too. I remember I was asked to sponsor a couple of administration bills and did. Ray Moss got real sore about it. He was the Republican leader of the senate. "They don't have any damn right asking a Democrat to sponsor the bill." We had another fight in '46 about a Moss bill.

PEARCE:Yeah.

WARD:They passed it in the senate and it went over to the house. One day - one Friday afternoon, it was real quiet, it was about ready to adjourn in the senate, I got up and sent a resolution to the desk, had it read, and there was a resolution charging that the effort had been made to bribe legislators, calling for an investigation. Calling for the appropriate committee, to investigate. Kenneth (Tolle) was lieutenant governor. And the resolution passed. Old Ray Moss came rushing over "What in the hell's going on, what's going on?" Kenneth appointed me chairman of the committee - a three man committee to conduct the investigation. Of course, that was on a Friday. And I said "We'll start the investigation Monday." There was a lot of publicity and the Courier Journal, again, was very nice – they really spread it. Several members of the house on Monday said "What in the hell are you doing ( ?" ) Well, one member of the house made the mistake of telling me that he'd been approached and offered five thousand dollars to vote the bill. By god, I called him as a witness. And he was "Don't do that to me, it's terrible." I said “Well, you told me - you didn't tell me it was a secret.” He testified that he'd been approached by a fellow who owned a company that worked for KU. ( ). He'd been approached and offered five thousand dollars to oppose the bill. I called him as a witness and he refused to say. . . ."That's a lie, no such thing. . . ." Bob Watt insisted he wouldn't testify, but (Click Anderson) did. He got mad, of course, didn't do his cause any good. We didn't prove anything. I didn't expect to prove anything. We got a hell of a lot of publicity. Scared a lot of members of the house and beat the damn bill! I think that's what beat it. As I say, I didn't expect to pass it.

PEARCE:That was the Moss bill did ( ) to deal with TVA.

WARD:To repeal the act that gave them authority over it. I expected of course, that we'd make another effort in '48 because Clements had been very close to KU, particularly all of his life. When he was a member of the senate, he'd side with KU all the time, so that I assumed he would be for their bill. So I went up there prepared to have another fight over it.

PEARCE:This '48?

WARD:'48, uh -huh. That was why we decided it was a better strategy to introduce the bill in the house to take the REA away from public service commission. Give them something different to fight about. And it was a hell of a fight of course.

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WARD:Passed the house, and came over to the senate and I got the bill out of the committee. Clements said for me to come down and talk to him. He said "Now, I should have told you this before the session started. I told Bob Lott, that I was not going to be for this bill. That I would not do anything for the utilities, but that also I would not let anything be done to them. This bill would do something to the utilities - take them away from the power of the public service commission, and I've got to oppose it." I said “Earl - Earl, if you had told me this at the beginning of the session. You're right. Maybe this bill had never been introduced, because it was a defensive measure, and we don't much care if they were being under the public service commission would hurt them." The truth of the matter was I thought that a little jurisdiction, I mean, supervision would be helpful to them because they were a bunch of farmers trying to run a utility company. They hadn't heard about it. They wouldn't have made the effort to get interested in it. Of course he was set to take the bill out of committee, anyhow, hell I knew that, he had the votes. He took it back and made them work. I thought Earle was sincere about it. It was nice the fact. . . .

I had never heard. . . .

PEARCE:Where were you in the fight, in the race between Earle and Harry Lee Waterfield?

WARD:I was very much for Waterfield. I was very active. I was practically his first

district organizer. Harry Lee and I were personal friends, ran a newspaper down in . I served legislature with him. He'd been on my side at the Moss fight.

PEARCE:Was he speaker?

WARD:Uh-huh.

PEARCE:Speaker of the house.

WARD:But. . . .I - I went up in '48. I had no desire to go up and just being anti except on the matter of the utility bill. Was prepared to fight them on that. But other than that I. . . .I was willing to try to work. Dick Maloney told me later that they assumed I was going to be a hell-raiser. And I surprised them. In fact, he said he had asked ( ) keep me busy. He asked me if I wouldn't take a special committee of one to supervise. At that time, we had bills introduced in my areas to permit people to sue the Commonwealth. And it had to be worked on and scrutinized very carefully and they asked me if I would take on the job of scrutinizing those bills. "O.K., I'll cooperate." And so I worked with him and didn't raise any hell. And in addition. . . .I had been for in the primary for lieutenant governor. For no particular reason, except he came down to looking for help and didn't have any. He and the county attorney had

been friends.

PEARCE:Who was the county attorney?

WARD:John Kirksey. Had been to school together. I liked him and liked him pretty much. Of course I'd had close ties with for years. So I supported him in the primary.

PEARCE:Who ran against him?

WARD:Didn't Bill May?

PEARCE:Yeah. Almost beat him, too.

WARD:We carried him in McCracken county, yeah. So, because he was lieutenant governor, I had supported him and had motive then, for trying to get along. During the. . . .back in the '44 session, incidentally, you remember Willis had run on the campaign to repeal the income tax. And the Democrats couldn't really put him in a lot of trouble by helping him keep his campaign promise. But I was among those who said stop. It isn't the right thing to do because the state can't get a lot of revenue and I was among those who proposed repealing the income tax. Toward the latter part of the session when it got time to pass the budget bill, of course the legislature wouldn't pass the blessed budget bill, so it passed the house and came over the senate. appointed a three-man committee to work on the budget bill. Dick Maloney, Les Cox and me. But we. . . .we met several times and went over to Les Cox's office and worked on the budget bill. I had become interested in 1938, after the Barkley election, I took Gladys and Pat. We made a tour of the state. I had been out in the state enough that I'd seen the light. And particularly on parks. Because I had already become interested in the possibility of doing something when they built and eventually developing into a park. So we went and made a trip each. . . .all of the parks at that the time – there weren't very many. was the only one that had any development of any kind and it was very crude and we stayed there.

PEARCE: had that real nice lodge, I don't know if you stayed there or not.

WARD:Yeah, we stayed there, it was, of course at that time, it was a wreck.

But I had become interested in the parks and realized if was ever going to do anything it had to do something about them. And also realized we weren't going to get anywhere getting any park in west unless interest developed more state-wide. So in the '38 session, I mean in the '46 session, I took advantage of being on that budget committee and getting them to appropriate eight hundred thousand dollars for state parks. First state money of any consequence every appropriated for parks. Appropriation prior to that time had been thirty-five thousand dollars a year. And. . . .we got . . .

PEARCE:Thirty-five?

WARD:Thirty-five thousand a year. Of course, they got the receipts, which were very little.

PEARCE:Yeah.

WARD:In '48, when Earle approached me about being commissioner of conservation, and incidentally, that happening, at the very end of the '38 session, he asked me to come down and see him. And he asked me to be commissioner of conservation. And I thought, hell, they're all right, but, I don't want a state job. I'm a newspaper man. I'd been away from so much I can't afford to think about getting away. And he kept on pressing me. I learned later, incidentally, that Lawrence and Dick Maloney put him up to it.

PEARCE:Oh, really?

WARD;Yeah. That they were talking one day about departments and they said you ought to appoint Henry Ward. They knew of my interest in park development and that's what Earle. . . .Earle came down to in '47 after the primary and called me and asked me if, he said "Can you get Mr. Paxton to meet with me?" And I did. Went over and had lunch with him. And he asked if the newspaper supported it. And Mr. Paxton said "Well. That's one thing we're very much interested in. That's the development of the parks. We want another park over at ." And Earle said "I'll commit myself to support the public park system." So on the way back to the office, Mr. Paxton asked me what I

thought and I said we ought to support him. He's going to win. And it'd be silly not to be on the winning side. Because he's got commitments. So, in – in '48 when Earle asked me to be commissioner of conservation, he reminded me of that discussion about parks. He said "Now, you've got to be committed to parks, and I them, but I'm willing to help and do whatever I can. " But I said "I just can't do it. I've got too much obligation at the newspaper. " But I went on back home. And he called Mr. Paxton. And he said "Now you all been promoting this idea of parks all these years, and I'm committed to it, and want to do something about it, but I have to have help. I have to have somebody to take the program and Henry's the only one I know that's got the energy and the ambition to do something about them, and you ought to let him take this job." Mr. Paxton told me about the conversation. He said "As much as I hate to lose you during this time, I think you ought to do it. " And he said, "If you'll do it, we'll give you a leave of absence from the paper." So I finally told Earle, I said, well. . . .I. . . . talked to him about some ideas. I said "Now one big problem, Earle. Lucy Smith was your campaign chairwoman. You've already appointed her to direct the parks . And if I'm made commissioner of conservation - that was the division of conservation, I'm not willing to be in there with a conflict with your chairwoman." He said " No problem. Not at all, I've already talked with Mrs. Smith. Told her that I'd try to get you to take the job and if you take it, you're going to be the boss." Well. . . .I. . . .we talked about a lot of things, including the politics, and government, and he made his famous statement about 'Good government is good politics'. And I said Earle " I'm not a patronage man, I don't believe in it. I'm not going. . . .do anything improper. I'm going to have some professional people. Not a bunch of damn political bums." He said "Well, alright. I'll tell you my policy. If you got two applicants for the job, one is my friend and one is my enemy, I'd appreciate you appointing my friend, if equally qualified." I said "Fair enough. " And he's correct - he lived up to that all the time I was there. So I finally took it with the agreement to stay two years, but within a year I told Mr. Paxton, " It's no good, I can't do a job in just two years, there's too much to do and too much planning goes into this program, I can't do anything in two years, so I'll have to give up. It's not fair to you if the leave of absence is running." "You don't need a leave of absence, anyhow, come back when you want to." Ed Paxton, Jr. reminded me of that in 1968 after I lost the governor's race. He said "You remember you're on a leave of absence. I'm expecting you to come back, now." Earle kept his commitment. One of the things I told him - I remember I told you I've got eight hundred thousand dollars from the budget in '46. As soon as I got over there I started checking around and discovered that. . . some of this before, because Willis appointed me on a state park advisory committee so that during the last two years of his administration I was on an advisory committee and knew what was going on. Russell Dyche was director of parks. He was very conservative and I kept pushing about this money I'd got put in. He said "The costs are too high now. We're going to wait now until the costs come down." And I raised hell but it didn't do any good. So when I got over there they had about seven hundred thousand of that eight hundred thousand still there. And I knew it was there, and I told Earle "Now I told you about this thing." I said "Now, I know one thing for sure, if you appoint me, I'm going to spend it before the first of July." Because if you didn't spend it by the first of July it goes back to general fund. He said "Go ahead, go to it." Well, I was appointed in April. . . .April 15. The first part of May he called me over and said "I've been checking around and I've discovered there's one hundred thousand dollars in construction fund available to the governor, which goes back to general fund if it isn't under contract by first of July. You can have it if you can get it under contract - you can have it." I said "Oh, for god's sake, Earle. This is May, we have to have plans. . . .but . . . .O.K. we'll do it ( ). The biggest project of mine was a hotel at . Got an architect, designed a hotel real fast. Goes out to the bids expecting it's probably be at half million dollar. . . .came in at about three hundred sixty-five. We got a bunch of other projects . . .

PEARCE:Was that Kenlake . . .

WARD:Yeah. Did a bunch of other projects. So. . . .advertised for bids to come in before the first of July and. . . .I talked to Earle, I said "Not only we got enough bids, good bids to use your million, but I need two hundred fifty thousand dollars more." He said "O.K.". I never asked Earle Clements for a thing but what he gave me. I was reasonable. I'd been around the legislature myself and knew the responsibility, but I didn't try to gouge him. But he supported me one hundred percent all the way. Earle Clements had more--.

End of Tape 1, Side B