Oral History Interview with John Y. Brown, Jr., November 20, 1992

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A Ethel White: Conversation with John Young Brown, Jr., former governor of Kentucky. This is November 30th, 1992; we are meeting at his home, Cave Hill, in Lexington, Kentucky. My Name is Ethel White.

White: Governor Brown let’s start at the beginning. When were you born and where?

Brown: Well, I was born Good Samaritan in the hospital here in Lexington, in 1933, December twenty-eighth.

White: What was your earliest memory?

Brown: Oh Gee, I guess laying in the crib [Laughing] White: Do you remember that?

Brown: Yeah, I was a day dreamer back then. I can remember back when I was just--laying in the crib and had the. . .had the banisters or whatever on the side.

White: Let’s talk about your parents for a minute. . .could we start with your father.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: And his name was? 1:00Brown: Same as mine, but he is a senior and I was a junior.

White: And…could we start with. . .his law career, his, his. . .means of making a living. He was a lawyer.

Brown: He was a lawyer, he is the son of a tenant farmer, and. . .was a very. . .

White: Son of a what?

Brown: A tenant farmer down in west Kentucky and, between Morgantown and. . . Sturgis and. . .very much driven and. . .politics was his life, but his trade was law and he happened to be the best at it. I don’t guess Kentucky in our lifetime has ever had anybody quite like him. He was a well read, he could quote the bible or Shakespeare and, and I think people will say that he’s been the number one trial lawyer in Kentucky over the last fifty years, and he just had a talent for that, so he was a very successful trial lawyer.

White: Do you remember any. 2:00. . particulars about, did you see any of his trials, did you. . . .

Brown: Yeah, uh-huh.

White: Was there anyone that, that overshadowed. . . .

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: . . . .or. . . .

Brown: Uh-huh, there was one that Garvis Kincaid who owned all the finance companies in Kentucky, he was a big wealthy banker and not too great of a reputation, and. . .this lady had sued him for harassment because I guess she missed a payment, and. . .she was. . .one of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and it was three days before Christmas and I remember Dad giving the closing argument at a packed house and he was quoting Shakespeare and. . .that little section in Shylock and a pound of flesh, and if you spill one drop of Christian blood, you know, you shall pay for it with your life and, so he used that. . .and he looked over at the. . .at the defendant’s table and he said, “you could find for these money lenders any other time of the year, 3:00but not at Christmastime,” it was almost like we were standing before Jesus in the manger and three days before Christmas and the joy of Christmas, and he repeated that, you know, “you can find for these money lenders any other time of the year, but not at Christmastime,” and he got a ( ) fifty-thousand dollars verdict which was big money back in those days, and they reversed it, the only case the United States, as I understand. In fact, I was talking to a. . .lawyer associated with F. Lee Bailey, who was familiar with the case, and reversed because. . .the jury was too emotional, and the judge and eleven of the twelve members plus the judge were crying, with tears [Laughing] ( ) out, and, and reversed it that he was too emotional and that they weren’t able to come up with a ra-, rational conclusion. But he was quite a, quite a showman, he was five foot six, and he just dominated the courtroom and. . . .

White: Were you there?

Brown: Yes, I saw that tape, 4:00I saw that. . .performance but, he was just a brilliant—he, he had a famous trial in New York where they wrote him up as when he defended Bill Spivey? The famous basketball player at UK, and they wrote up as a little country lawyer that’s running circles around the big city. . .prosecutors and he got an acquittal in that case, but he was one of the kind, and in fact he never lost a case. I got the first case he’d ever lost, and he had it reversed twice from the. . .supreme c. . . court of Kentucky and where the fellow had had. . .the death penalty. He got it reversed twice, this was my first case, I had a big victory when I got him a life sentence. [Laughing] White: And what do you mean you got the case?

Brown: Well I was ( ) my first case as a lawyer and ( ) for the jury I said, “look I’m just young guy out of law school, just passed the bar exam and, you know, you shouldn’t send this man to the. . .electric chair, because you know, I’m trying the best I can but. . .” some way or other I got a life sentence which was better than he had before. That was my first. . .experience as a trial lawyer.

White: Hum. Perhaps we can talk about your father’s political career now for a minute.

Brown: Sure!

White: How did that start? And when?

Brown: Well, it started and never did end. Dad was a perennial candidate because for several reasons 5:00he. . .he was naive as a politician he thought ( ) the best man or woman won and that’s not the case, it’s really a, a matter of selling your product like soap or anything else. It’s unfortunate but that’s just the way it is, but he was naïve if they were the best man will win and I’m better than these people I’m running against and therefore I ought to get elected and, and he never did organize, he didn’t have the money to, you know, campaign on the media at that time, and so he very seldom won, but he did. . . he was, he got elected to Congress and he was nominated to the United Senate on a couple of occasions. . .but didn’t win the general election and he was speaker of the house and, you know, he had a noteworthy. . . .

White: Now this is. . . .

Brown: . . .career.

White: . . . in the state legislature ( ). . . .

Brown: Yes, uh-huh. He had a noteworthy career but he never could get to the big office 6:00and so, I have watched politics for years and I had watched some former governors sit in our living room and I was sitting in the, in the dining room listening, and I heard them say they’d support him for governor, against Happy Chandler which I think he could have won at that time, it was 1955, but they wanted him to be against the sales tax and he says, “no, if I’m going to be against my principles you got the wrong man,” and so they left and this was Earl Clements, Bert Combs, I think was there, I know Earl Clements was there, and then Bert ended up running against Happy, who was, Bert was relatively unknown at that time, but my father was well known, I think with the power of the state administration, he would have had a very good chance of winning but he was a maverick and, and. . .but he never had a black mark come against his name, so I was very proud of, of his career; and he was his own man, and he was, his integrity was always. . .unapproachable and he was one of the few do-gooders down in the general assembly, and. . .Ned Breathitt, I think he was his majority floor leader and passed the first civil rights legislation in the, the state 7:00of Kentucky. In fact, in the south. . .or maybe in the United States, I think it was in the United States. . . .

White: Do you remember when that was?

Brown: Gee, I, let’s see, Ned was in nineteen. . .sixty-three, and nineteen-sixty-seven, so it would have been. . .during that period of time. But Dad loved politics, I mean his interest in politics was so much greater than his interest in law, and yet he was brilliant as a lawyer. If he had spent the same time at law, then he probably would have been a millionaire and, and. . .of national fame. He, even F. Lee Bailey. . .who is a very famous lawyer from Boston. . .told me I was on a little boat ride with him ( ) with some friends about three or four months ago and he said, “you know, John Young Brown was the Clarence Darrow 8:00of Kentucky, and he really was a legend among his peers.” But. . .some, someone wrote in one of the jailhouses up in eastern Kentucky “if John Y. Brown can’t get you out, he’ll get in with you’ [Laughing] so. . .he had the command of the courtroom, it was just talent, and he could quote the Bible or Shakespeare at the drop of a hat and leave you crying or laughing, whatever the mood called for.

White: How long was he in the state legislature?

Brown: I guess he was in about six terms, six or seven terms, and. . .and I guess I grew up having interest in politics, I mean we never—I, we were very close, probably as close as any father and son could be, and he took me everywhere, introduced me to everybody, I mean how many times he’d drag me, “come over Johnny, I want you to meet this person, that person,” and, you know, a kid, he didn’t want to. . .you know, go out of his way glad handing but he taught me that [chuckles] early and I always thought someday I would. . .you know, grow up and probably get in to politics, more to atone what happened to him than perhaps my own personal ambitions, and you know, you watch your father fight and lose, and you think your father is the greatest of all, as most sons do and I really 9:00thought he was, and so I had a deep seated desire to [interruption], to right the wrongs. . . . [Pause] Brown: And I guess if you live by the--my administration. . .I did chapter and verse what I spent a lifetime. . .wanting to do, and that was to clean out corruption and clean out the old political crony system that we’d had, and we threw them out lock-stock-and barrel, in fact, the day, my first day in office, usually the rotunda is full of people coming and get their jobs or their contracts or their goodies for having campaigned; my office was empty, I didn’t have one person on my couch, because nobody had anything to come and see me about the day after I went in to office, because I didn’t make any promises. And I held to it, in four years I never gave away a job or a contract and I am very proud of it, it wasn’t hard to do, it’s not hard to be. . .be honest and, and represent the people’s interest but I got a lot of satisfaction out of that because politics is, in Kentucky has always been. . .a family affair, you know, you own the government, and governors get carried away with. . .what they’re supposed to be doing, 10:00and--or with what they are not supposed to be doing and, and they serve their own interest instead of the people’s interest and I think people will tell you, and in fact the Courier Journal said we had the ablest cabinet in Kentucky’s history because we brought the quality of people that didn’t want to take anything from it, but rather to give to it. But my inspiration was my father and, and you know, when you have preached to you from the time you’re eight and, and quoting poems, and, and I recited them and I, I was in national speech contests, and he sort of groomed me to go in politics after his own dreams more than mine because after I sort of fulfilled a, a rather lofty ambition in success and I was very fortunate to attain a high level of success, 11:00I didn’t really have the same ambition for politics that maybe I did as a younger man, and. . .but then I met Phyllis and, and that sort of put a different twist on it, because she liked being a public person, she’d always been a public person, at least in her adult life, and so that sort of made it a good team to go try to atone for something for twenty, thirty years, I’d cry myself to sleep many a night after an election, and. . .that was my opportunity and fortunately I was given it. But more important than that, equally important is I had a strong attachment and, and. . .feeling about my home state, and everything I have done has been associated with Kentucky, whether it was the Kentucky Fried Chicken, or the Kentucky Colonel basketball team and, and. . .Kentucky has just sort of been in my blood and I’ve traveled this state and so it’s sort of natural that I get in politics and, and that, it served me well, I hope it served the people of Kentucky well.

White: You were. . .one of five children, is that right?

Brown: I had four sisters; I was the only boy and. . . .

White: So, this closeness with your father would have been partially because you were the only, only ( ).

Brown: Out of self-defense and and [Laughing] that’s right [Laughing]. We were outnumbered and. . .but we liked to play golf 12:00and, and we like sports and, and--but he was, really, he took a special interest in me, I was sort of his extension. As it turned out, I guess, if you’ve seen that picture of my father and I the night of the election, you know, and my arm around him and it was a great pose, one I will always remember, and. . .and you know, in, in many ways you don’t do things for your parents, they’re usually for the wrong reason, but this is one for the right reason, and so. . .I treasure the opportunity to do that, but more importantly I, I got so much out of being governor, it gave me a chance to reach to another level, to expand my talents and, and utilize my experiences and I can say looking back as governor there wasn’t a thing that I hadn’t been through before, so I, looking back I was well qualified, and I’ve been through the decision making processes and building an organization and consensus building and, and I really enjoyed it, I, and. . .unfortunately for whatever reason, I never really set politics as a goal once I got in, I said, I’m going to clean it up, I’m going to do it right, and I’m going, you know. . .accomplish as much as we can in four short years, and then I, I 13:00really didn’t have any goals after that, and then looking back, I, I probably should have said, hey where do you go from here, you know, life doesn’t end, it doesn’t stand still, you got to keep moving, like the old colonel had the best line, he said, “a man will rust out before he wears out,” so I’m on my, about my fourth career now, so.

White: And we certainly want to talk about that before we ( ).

Brown: Sure, I don’t mean to getting ahead of the. . . .

White: No.

Brown: . . . jumping the gun here but. . . .

White: That’s, you are not getting ahead of it, and that’s just ( ).

Brown: But I have four sisters and, and three of them are living. . . one sister I lost in a balloon incident, she was trying to go across the Atlantic with her husband and. . .she was an actress in New York, to show you that we were fairly driven--at least 14:00Pam and I were.

White: This was Pamela.

Brown: Yeah.

White: Uh-huh.

Brown: And we were fairly driven by certainly our dad to, to excel and. . .I learned from that experience, both good and bad. . .about how much to push your child, or how much to motivate a child. For me it was probably a Godsend, you know, because it made--forced me to make something out of myself, and. . .and you never lose that contact or who--everyone that ever achieved or excels or, where they end up in later life can attribute, usually someone that helped mold them, or someone that made the profound impression on them, and my father was the one that made that impression on me and, in fact, when I’d. . .we lived in Florida, and. . .it was before the governor’s race, and. . .I was divorced and trying to sort of figure out what I was going to do next, and frankly I didn’t have anything planned to do next [Laughing] I was sort of semi-retired, and he just kept saying you ought to go back and run for governor and, and I said, “Dad, you know, I’m, here I am a bachelor, and you know I, 15:00and, and I don’t, you know, belong back in politics,” and he just kept pushing me and, and. . .and then I guess when. . .I got married with Phyllis I said, well that might make sense. I remember at our. . .our party--what do you call it, the evening before the marriage, the rehearsal dinner, I guess, and I’m sitting there next to Governor. . .Julian Carroll, who was governor at the time, and on the other side is Bob Strauss who ended up chairman of the Democratic party and who was on ABC, or CNN, yesterday, and Dad got up and made a twenty minute speech why I ought to go run for governor, you know, a man has to have a purpose, a man has to have a goal, and [Laughing] Phyllis was saying, “what’s your dad talking about?” [Laughing] Here we are getting married, and we go off on our honeymoon and one thing led to another and heck, we end up going back and running for office, so. . . .

White: And you, you really had not given it any thought since. . . .

Brown: Nah.

White: . . . you what. . . .

Brown: Exce. . . .

White: . . .entered the business world? Had ( ) Brown: Well and I was so busy with that and that was my goal. I realize that if I ever really wanted to do what I wanted in politics you have to be financially secure, if I want to do what I want to do in life, you know, I got to make some money, it’s hard to do practicing law, 16:00and. . .so, I took a shot at it and fortunately for me it worked out.

White: Did you--now you said that your, your father tended to push you, all of you as children now, and that it was probably ( ). . . .

Brown: Myself and Pamela.

White: . . .you, now how was it for Pamela?

Brown: Well, I, I just think, if Dad, you know, I guess made us feel that. . .achievement was the most important thing in life and, as I’ve grown older and matured a little bit. . .there are other things more important than achievement, and. . .but he was a driven man, and anyone that ran for office thirty some odd times is driven, and probably it was from his childhood and his poor. . .upbringing and the fact that he was five-foot-six and a little, you know, competitor, and he wanted to make a name for himself and fame and adulation was very important to him, and I got most of that in KFC, so I didn’t have the same need that he had, and. . .you know, my cup runneth over on a couple of occasions and actually, when I got in politics, I was reasonably shy, Phyllis helped bring me out cause, we called her “Phi ( )” she, she’d draw the crowds 17:00and then I’d come in and give my little sales pitch.

White: Where in the family order was, was Pamela?

Brown: She was the youngest.

White: The youngest.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: Now who, who are the other three. . . sisters?

Brown: Well, I have my older sister, do. . . Dotty Anne that’s lives in Sarasota and, and Boo, my sister, she lives here in town, she, in fact she is coming by this afternoon later.

White: Does she have another name besides Boo?

Brown: Betty, uh-huh, we all call her, everybody calls her Boo, and. . . Diana is the younger sister and she lives out in, at some lake out in, in the. . . timberlands of the State of Washington, and I don’t know exactly what the ( ) little town is.

White: Did any of them had careers other than 18:00( ).

Brown: No, just Pam, Pam and I were the driven ones, and every night after dinner we’d get up and make speeches or give poems or she’d give a theatrical. . . performance, we were always on stage before they, the rest of the kids and our parents White: Who do you remember meeting going, when you went around with your father and during his political, whether they were campaigns or wanderings, were there any, any figures that stood out in your mind?

Brown: Oh yeah, yeah, I remember the, I remember going to the Sugar Bowl when I was twelve or thirteen, in 1950, I guess I was seventeen, and Kentucky beat Oklahoma in the sugar bowl, we went down on the train, and I remember we went out to the racetrack that day and I met Fred M. Vinson, who was chief justice of the supreme court. Also, that day I met the gangster Frank Costello and they had all the table of people in yellow shirts and purple shirts and ties and holsters out ( ) and one of the waiters, he used to be a waiter over here at the old Ashland Country Club and he said, “come on Johnny, I’ll introduce you to Frank Costello.” And I remember that night I called my mother and said, “you can’t believe who I met!” And she says, “who is that?” I said, “I met Frank Costello!” - -I didn’t mention Fred M. Vinson who was chief justice of the supreme court [Laughing] but I had a chance to meet a lot of people, I don’t think I ever met Roosevelt, and yet I might have. . .m, I g. . .I might have been too young, because Dad was. . .close to him for a time back in the early thirties.

White: How so?

Brown: When, when he was in congress and. . . .

White: Your father was in congress.

Brown: Yes, uh-huh, 19:00in nineteen thirty. . .I guess ’32 to ’34, that, and he was there through Roosevelt’s first one-hundred days.

White: Di. . .but, did the family stay in, in Lexington since you were born there, in ’33?

Brown: That was about when I was born, I was born in ’33. So, I think I stayed in Lexington, I went to Florida, I went to n. . .to Washington on occasion.

White: Is there anything you remember your father saying about his congressional career, anything that stuck with you.

Brown: Oh yeah, yeah, always calling, and introduced himself as congressman, you know, it didn’t make any difference if it was thirty years ago [Laughing] he said congressman, so that seems a, I remember Mom used to get embarrassed about it, but Ned Breathitt taught me, he says, “when you call, tell him it’s Governor Brown,” he said “I always says Governor Breathitt and you get right through 20:00and. . . . ” So I use, I feel a little embarrassed using it, but if I need to get through to get reservations or something, I’ll use it, it always works [Laughing] White: Your father’s. . . career with the state legislature came after his congressional. . . .

Brown: Yes.

White: . . . four years, is that right?

Brown: I think so, he might have gone to the legislature first, I don’t really remember.

White: Okay.

Brown: But he had about seven terms, I would just guess he was in there about fourteen years.

White: Let’s move on to your mother now.

Brown: Okay.

White: Her name was.

Brown: Dorothy Inman.

White: And what part in your memory does she play? What kind of influence did she have on you?

Brown: [Sighs] well, my mother, I’m probably more like my mother than my father. . .both in, I guess looks and color of our skin and, 21:00and maybe personality.

White: And did you find that. . .a little bit. . . .

Brown: Well. . . .

White: . . .more. . . .

Brown: I think I got her. . . .

White: . . .personality?

Brown: . . .disposition probably, let’s see I, I guess I had her more of her personality and disposition than I did my dad.

White: So how do you. . . .

Brown: I got my mother. . . .

White: ( ) herself?

Brown: Well, I don’t know, mother I, I guess was. . .was taller, more light complected and I have the, our fa. . .I mean I just resemble her more in looks and appearance, and. . .she is a--she had, she had a, a. . .a. . .I think a. . .what would be the word. . .unfortunate. . .adulthood and. . .and she didn’t know about it, I didn’t know about it, none of the family knew about it, and I’ll explain that after I explain a little bit of my relationship with her, but she was an attentive mother 22:00and. . . . she was a very attentive, attentive, yeah, and unfortunately, she was, she was an all A student and. . .very much of an achiever, very much proper, very much well groomed, very much f. . .for the finer things for her children, whether it’s t. . .whether it’s, you know, she is very refined woman, and. . .she grew up in Somerset, one of eight children, and. . .now we’ve learned about it, I, Mother grew up in an alcoholic family and in a dysfunctional family and my father grew up son of a farm family where the man was the boss and Mother grew up with a matriarchal family, she lost her father to alcoholism and I think she was three years old or something and so she grew up in a very dysfunctional family, so she was sort of. . .wanting to control a matriarch environment where my father wanted a patriarch environment and it was a total clash for forty years, and. . .and it’s unfortunate looking back now. . .I, I think Mother was probably an alcoholic and yet dry, she didn’t drink much, but she. . .for a couple of years, I think later in life she had a drinking problem but she grew up, like alcoholics do, that we don’t drink they’re dry, and, and that’s why they have, you know, twelve-step programs, and things 23:00like that to help people work through the emotional, whatever it is. Unfortunately, my father and mother didn’t know about it, and so they had these off-the-wall emotions to conflict with each other, and they got divorced once, had it annulled. I think they loved each other, but it was never compatible. . .because of that dreadful disease, but a number of her family, six or seven brothers and sisters were all alcoholics. So now, looking back on the family. . .I think that was a problem that. . .that she wasn’t aware of, nothing to be ashamed of, but she is a very proud woman. She probably didn’t drink because she probably knew she couldn’t, but then she had no other outlet to take care of whatever, I guess causes the, those kind of emotional feelings in alcoholic families, and. . .and so therefore she was a very talented woman, a very classy woman, but never had a chance to have a pleasant, positive. . .marriage, or a positive productive life, I mean, she was a woman that probably would have been a, a good working mother, 24:00because she had, she was too bright to maybe just sit at home and not utilize a lot of her mental. . .restlessness, and, as I say, she was a top student, so, in looking back, it’s unfortunate they didn’t know about that disease, you know, back in their time, because they probably could have had a happy marriage and been productive, but they didn’t know, Dad was out a lot, mother was of the alcoholic personality, and yet I’ve learned that you don’t have to drink to be an alcoholic, you can be an alcoholic personality, and. . .and our family was, so at least that’s the way I’ve gauged it, for whatever it’s worth.

White: Now did you say they. . .they were divorced?

Brown: Yeah, they got divorced and then they got it annulled. 25:00I don’t remember the year [Laughing] but they, they fought like cats and dogs, but they. . . .

White: ( ) Did you grow up with them married still?

Brown: Yeah.

White: ( ) Brown: And so, I grew up in a dysfunctional household but I loved them both, and, and I love them to, to this day, but unfortunately, they probably left some scars, more on my sisters I think than on me, and. . .it was just unfortunate because they were both great people, I mean I had, I had very talented, well intended parents that never got the most out of life in either productivity or happiness. Now my father came closer, because he did have a, a very successful career in a number ways, but, you know, living with a partner to where it wasn’t compatible, I’m sure was a, a drain on him, I mean he was an unusually talented man but so she was, she was his match, but unfortunately they just never did find a basis to be compatible and happy together, and, and yet they loved each other for what, for whatever reason, you know, sometimes you get addicted to each other, so I think they--I’ve learned about. . .older people since then, and. . .but it--and at the same time I think they both were a positive influence on me, and I look on my childhood with a lot of fondness and a lot of favorable memory.

White: When you were governor now, I’m the one who is leaping ahead, when you were governor, you, you declared yourself quite. . .you know, sympathetic with, with women and women’s issues and admiring of women’s potential. Do you think that has anything to do with the potential or lost potential perhaps that you saw 26:00in your mother?

Brown: No, I. . . .

White: Or that’s reaching a point?

Brown: I, I, I think that would be, so I think it’d probably just the reverse, because my experience of, of the women dominating environment where there was total conflict was not a positive experience, and, and yet, I think probably both of my marriages, you know, my first wife, Ellie, was a very capable person and, and. . .and she bought a basketball team, if, if you remember back then, but she had it great, and, and, and, you know, I learned a long time ago, there are no geniuses in this life and you’re the product of your experiences and your own drive and initiative and women can do what a men can do if they’re given the same opportunity, so, I think the, when Ellie got the basketball team and I watched her operate, and she found out how dumb I was, that was the biggest mistake I ever made is to go in business with your wife and then they realize you’re just like anybody else, 27:00you know, they all jump on pedestal if you’re out there. . .successful, and, and then Phyllis also, and is quite an achiever as a woman, so, and by the time I got to government I was sold on what women could accomplish if they’re given a, the same opportunity that men have and, and I think I w. . .I, I tried to find those opportunities where I could, my chief-of-staff was June Taylor, who had been a secretary in Louisville for--I mean in Frankfort for forty years. I couldn’t [have] picked a better chief-of-staff if I, if I’d interviewed every Kentuckian, I mean she was just well trained and just outstanding for the job and I had the first woman cabinet secretary. The problem women are having in high level jobs most of them aren’t trained or experienced for it, you got to give them a chance, and so I think we did 28:00a, a, a lot of positions like that. But I would say that, that my mother relationship would not have been a positive towards that way of thinking, I think it came later on in life for me.

White: It is there any other way in which you can describe what it was like growing up in that family. I mean you’ve talked a little bit about. . .politics with your father and being taken around, and you talked about the dysfunctionalism [dysfunctionality] between the two of them, you’ve mentioned the names of your sisters. . . any, any other particular memories about growing up in that particular family?

Brown: Well yeah, the, the one experience I had, and I haven’t done a good job of following it, but the most important time was dinner time when all five kids would sit down there and, Mother always had a good hot meal and something to look forward 29:00to for dinner, she was a, a great cook, and. . .that was always the, the family time, and you know, usually, I guess more times than not, we’d go in and either I’d give a speech, or I’d give a quote, or Pam would get up and do something theatrical and we’d perform. . . .

White: Huh, what ( ) Brown: . . .just hundreds of times over those years.

White: Because you were asked to, or because you were ready to do it yourself?

Brown: Oh, just sort of a game, let’s go in the den and what do you got, you know, and and. . .of course, all the f. . .family fun thing, but I, I guess mine had a happy childhood because I was always so busy, and. . .I was probably the poorest athlete to gain as many letters as possible, I remember I, I got some like seventeen letters in high school because I tried out for everything, and I have been up for football, basketball, I’m, I was a letterman in golf for six years, and swimming for I think for four or five years, and. . .and so, I had a very active youth, which kept me out of all the bickering back and forth, or a lot of it, so I don’t think it marked me like it did my sisters who had to. . .survive and endure it and exposed to a lot of it, I was always on the go.

White: Well, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about that and let’s see if we can focus on the elementary schools. . . .

Brown: Sure.

White: . . .school years first, before you left Lexington for a while, I think.

Brown: Sure.

White: Did you, your interest in sports start at a young age?

Brown: Yeah, because I was big for my size and I remember we played. . .I played on a little team called the Rangers here, just a pickup squad of kids 30:00and I guess twelve or f. . . .

White: Meaning football?

Brown: Twelve, football, and I remember I was pretty good at basketball, and I went to Kenwick High school, and I remember I played football there and played basketball. . . .

White: Would you repeat the name of the high school?

Brown: Kenwick, K-e-n-w-i-c-k. And then. . .I was bigger than most kids, so I thought I was going to be pretty good at it, and. . .so, I played a lot of basketball growing up but then I learned to play golf when I was about ten and, and got to be real[ly] good at that, specially at a younger age, I was better, I shot seventy-two in the city tournament when I was twelve, and. . .I was, I’m not sure I have improved over that, but I played a lot of golf because my dad liked to play, and I used to go to all the golf tournaments with him. I used to love to travel with him, and, and that’s where he’d give the long speeches in the car, quote poems or talk about his dreams 31:00or my dreams and that was great private time that I had with my dad. I learned to be a good swimmer, because my sisters and I, Dad would take us out and, and give us fifty cents a day to train and we’d swim like a mile a day. It was gruesome work, but you know, it’s, he was the coach.

White: Where did you swim?

Brown: And. . . we swam out of Joyland Park is where we--oh no, I’m sorry, Castlewood Park, here in Lexington. But we went to, L. . . Lakeside in Louisville. My sisters and I, we won some tournaments against swimming teams, because each one of us won two or three events, and we all went, we’d win like seven events, which would be enough to, to win the meets, so. . . we were all good, all good swimmers but we all trained hard, and you know, looking back, that was all good discipline for me. The best experience I ever had looking back is when I got a job selling encyclopedias because it taught. . . .

White: Hum, and that was when?

Brown: That was in. . . I guess sophomore in college. 32:00But that’s--was the first time I really went to work and realized that. . . I wanted to prove myself or do something. But that’s when my life changed because. . . it’s the first time I had a chance to do something on my own, and I felt like. . . you know, I just didn’t want to fail at it, and the--I can’t think of anything more distasteful knocking on doors selling books today, but boy I did it with great thirst back then, and I remember co. . . going out with some friends of mine in high school, my year after graduation, and coming home and telling my parents I couldn’t get a job, and I said, “we were offered a dollar an hour down in. . . in Oklahoma for some pea factory,” I remember my mother saying, 33:00“we’re not worth a dollar an hour.” And that really got into my goat, so I showed them, I got this book this job selling books the next week and I made five hundred dollars the next weekend selling Encyclopedia Britannica. And so, then that just gave me a whole new career to show what I could do, and I worked like a slave at it, and. . . .

White: And selling, did selling come by naturally to you?

Brown: Yeah, uh-huh, that was sort of natural sal. . . but that taught to speak, it taught me to control my breathing, how to execute a point, and. . .it really helped me become. . .a good salesman, because you had to handle all kinds of situations and you l. . .had to learn how to posture them, and you had to learn how to build up before you asked for the order, and. . .that training I wouldn’t replace for anything. In fact, in fact in my, I guess my junior year we broke a, my office broke a national record for number of sales in, in a market area the size of Lexington, and, and 34:00I went out, I remember, I was honored by Encyclopedia Britannica as a, as a lifetime achievement award, which was a, a very nice award. [Pause] White: You were talking about what you learned in the process of selling encyclopedias. . . .

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: . . .how to pitch your voice, and that kind of. . . was that entirely self-taught?

Brown: Yes, they had this sales spiel they had you memorize and I guess I memorized it and followed it pretty well, but I always used my own personality and, even when I was governor, I never read a speech, I can’t, I got to give it myself, or I feel like it’s phony and I can’t project, so, it just taught me the art of selling, you know, first of all you had to get people’s attention, and get them to accept you. Then you got to get them interested in what you got to offer, then you got to create some kind of need of why you’re there, and how they’re going to use whatever you got, and then you, you create a desire, and then once you get the desire to a point, then you got to know how to close and, and, and that’s pretty true in any kind of selling, whether it’s politics--I mean politics was a natural for me because it’s basically selling.

White: But you figured that out yourself.

Brown: Yeah, by just 35:00doing, I knocked on many a door and everyone was different, everybody was in a different mood and, and I usually found an approach that--I never got a door slammed in my face, and that’s pretty testy [Laughing] after, because I did this for six years, but it taught me, more important than anything, it first taught me to work, you know, that. . .the harder you work, the lucky you get, and there is no replacement for hard work and, and in KFC when, when I came across that, there wasn’t enough hours in the day to take advantage of it that’s one reason we were the, I think the fastest growing company in the country, like on the New York Stock exchange during the late sixties and, but we worked sixteen hours a day, and. . .and we burned the midnight oil, and we got after the opportunity. . . while the opportunity was there, and we were bigger than McDonalds when I sold out, and so it, it taught me a great work ethic, and. . .I’m more balanced now, I, I was balanced when I was governor, I went to the office when I wanted to, I wasn’t there to show off to anybody, I didn’t have to get there at a certain hour, 36:00leave a certain hour, I just did my job. I knew what I was doing, I mean I, most of my time was spent with my cabinet secretaries, they are the ones they on the playing field and so half my time was spent motivating them so they wouldn’t look up and wonder why they were driving to Frankfort every day [Laughing] and, and also, you know, getting counsel, but you didn’t see me going to all the fish fries and chicken fries and campaigning, and I wasn’t being a, when I m. . .I went to a lot of engagements but I would never commit to go to dinner or go to a party, I was, that’s two or three hours wasted and I can be working and planning and I was really effective because I wouldn’t let the job control me, I controlled the job, and I remember my scheduler Maxine Lutz from Louisville, I don’t know if you know Maxine but she was terrific, and, and I remember sitting down with her, like at Christmastime, I said, “well do you got plan for me January, February, and March?” She had two engagements committed for three months and but did it with a smile, and. . . and I didn’t, you know, she didn’t, I didn’t hear anybody come back to me at, they didn’t get good treatment from the governor’s office but that left me time to do my job, that’s what I was elected to do, and. . .but, with that helicopter, I could stop in 37:00for something important, and you know, stop in for fifteen minutes say hi, do what governor is supposed to do, leave everybody with a good feeling that the governor knew what you were doing but I didn’t waste any time, and, and the press probably thought, I remember John Ed I wrote him--did you read the leader I wrote John Ed? Because John Ed said something like I was lackadaisical and, well I took offense and I wrote him, I said, “I’ll see him at the four-year annual report,” and, and I am crazy about John Ed, but he didn’t know what he was talking about and I said, “John Ed, you, you’re not in m. . . in Frankfort one day during my four years, and, and I said, “nothing could be more of the truth, we had the most productive administration in our lifetime,” and I said, “I ran into Jack Bremer, the Lexington-Herald,” I said, “John Ed doesn’t know what he is talking about, you were the, you know, the hardest driving governor, hard to get a hold of, hard to. . .I mean hard-driving governor we, that he’d seen. So anyway I, I, I might get you that letter, you may, if you know John Ed, I guess you do, don’t you? Yeah. But. . .we were but we did it a different way, I mean we didn’t do it by. 38:00. .a whole lot of press conferences. In fact, I abolished the press operation after about a year-and-a-half, because I felt like what a waste of time, and how phony it is, I’m not interested in, in my reputation as being the greatest governor in the history of time, I’m interested in doing what I came down to do, and frankly, w. . .I, I figured I was spending 20 percent of my day worrying about what the press is going to say, and my people were, and it was just harassment and not doing any, anything productive for the state. And so, I, I abolished the press operation and saved about $400,000.00 a year and I was looking for all kinds of ways to save money and I remember, one of the young press say, “governor, how do we get our question answered every day?” And I said, “well, no problem, if there is anything 39:00important enough for you to write about, I’ll hold a press conference and inform you, otherwise you can catch me down the hallway, or down in the men’s room, I’ll be glad to answer any questions you got [Laughing] and I remember they didn’t know what to do, but I got sassier to get that monkey off my back and realize that--and today all the press dominates all the elections and it’s not productive, and that’s why I felt like Ross Perot had such a hard time communicating because. . .you know, he says one word wrong and then he spends the next four days counteracting it or, or, or doing damage control over something that was insignificant. But at any event, and looking back, I did it my way, I guess is the, might be a. . . focal point of the--and it’s different than anybody else’s, but it was totally for the public interest, and I think the results were there, and that’s the way you should judge things.

White: I, I was just reminded by something you said, you, you had mentioned speech contest back when you were in school.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: When 40:00did that start and ( ). . . .

Brown: I remember I was in a speech contest in, in the eighth grade! How old would I be then, thirteen?

White: Uh-huh.

Brown: Uh-huh, and guess what the, the title was? ‘Effort Makes Success.’ And so, I guess I learned that early, and, and I remember saying that if you think good thoughts you’ll do good deeds, you do good deeds, you make good habits, you make good habits, you’ll build a strong character, and if you build a strong character, you’ll be a man my son, you know, in the, in the. . .Rudyard Kipling’s, ‘If,’ that’s the last line. But I remember that when I was in the eighth grade, I wrote it and. . .but it was. . .you know, Einstein’s--was it Einstein that said--No, Thomas Edison said that success is 90 percent perspiration, 10 percent inspiration. So I learned early in life that work is really in, and Bill Clinton won the campaign because he outworked everybody else, and he burnt the midnight oil, and he thought it through, and, and, and that’s the same way in sports, and that’s the same way in business, 41:00and you try to get a little more balance in life. . .as you grow older, and, I was obsessed in KFC, I wasn’t obsessed in governor because I was very secure and now I’m sort of back obsessed again because it start-up and I feel like I have to be all over it to get it to a certain stage and then I can delegate, but. . .how did we get on this subject? I forgot where I. . . .

White: Well, we were talking about selling encyclopedias which taught, taught you a certain amount of ( ).

Brown: Yeah, it taught me to work, and it taught me to make money, and the pride of making my own money, and one year I still keep some of the checks in my wallet here. . . I made twenty-five thousand dollars in one year.

White: Selling encyclopedias?

Brown: Selling encyclopedias, in nineteen fifty--I don’t know--six or something, and I had a couple of weeks I made over a thousand in a week and if I keep these checks. . . in fact I showed them to Senator Bidden, he used to own Encyclopedia Britannica, here is one of my checks there and. . . .

White: Are you going to frame them?

Brown: Well, 42:00you know, I should, you know, I’ve ( ) around with me, I ought to frame them, you know, and that was a thousand dollars and a thousand and forty-four, and I had another one here the week before for thirteen hundred.

White: I’m going to interject that we are actually looking at these checks, which have been carried around in Governor Brown’s wallet.

Brown: Yeah, here is a, here is another one here, and. . .let’s see here, that’s thirteen-hundred and seventy-two dollars, see there? And. . .so anyway, this was the best training in the world for me, and. . .I probably should frame these, you know, because I am a, of course I have been carrying them for what, thirty years now? 43:00[Laughter – Brown and White] and so, I guess I’m having too much fun, yeah.

White: You got your proof.

Brown: That’s right.

White: Let me see if we can just get a couple of facts along the way. What was the first school you went to?

Brown: Uh, I went to. . .let’s see, I guess Cassidy was my first school, Uh-huh, here in Lexington.

White: When did you start? How. . . .

Brown: Well, I guess I was. . . .

White: First grade, kindergarten?

Brown: . . . six, in k. . .and I went to kindergarten, uh-huh.

White: And. . . .

Brown: And then I went to Kendrick. I went to public schools all my li. . .all my life except for KMI.

White: Did, did you. . .leave Louisville at some point for a couple of years, as--I mean Lexington, is that correct?

Brown: Uh-huh, yeah, well we went, moved, moved a little, Dad practiced law for a year or two and I lived at. . . .

White: Now why did that happen?

Brown: I don’t know, and I think he opened up a law office over there, or I don’t know why he moved, I guess it was for business or some big case he had that we actually moved to Louisville.

White: Wa. 44:00. .was he in practice by himself in Lexington, or was he with a firm, another firm?

Brown: No, he was Brown, Sledd and McCann and. . . I might be getting a little bit ahead but, we opened our law office and. . .in Lexington, the name of the office was Brown and Son, in Louisville, it was Brown and Father, and. . . .

White: You’re serious--I mean is that literal?

Brown: Yes, that’s exactly the way…all those United States, it had Brown and Son, and Brown and Father [Laughing] it was in Louisv. . .(that year?) called Valentines, it was (Hubbick?) I forgot the--Martindale. Martindale is the big law guide. . . .

White: Directory.

Brown: . . . directory, and we were the only ones in there, and the reason I did is my. . .a member of the family, in-laws, m. . .resentful that I was making so much money, I was making--because I, it, it took me the same amount of time to ask for a five thousand dollar fee as it did for a thousand, and you know, I was a criminal lawyer, so I was making, you know, twenty-five, thirty thousand a year and he thought I was riding the coattail with my dad too much and so I just said, well 45:00the heck with that. So, I just moved on to Louisville by myself and opened an office [Laughing] that’s how I am in the ( ) and. . . .

White: And that was what year?

Brown: It was nineteen fif. . .sixty-one, I guess. But I didn’t want anybody to think I was riding his coattails and. . .so, I left and the next week I just said, I am not staying in this kind of environment, so I left and went to Louisville.

White: Well, back to the first move to Louisville.

Brown: Yeah.

White: When you were still in, what, what ( )?

Brown: Yeah, I was probably in the, I was, I went to St. X High School one year, so we must have been there just a semester or a year, but I alw. . .I always went to public high schools here in Kentucky. I went to KMI for about a year and a half because they had one semester in Florida and I was pretty good at basketball at that time, plus I loved Florida, even back then.

White: A semester in Florida, when?

Brown: With KMI, Kentucky Military Institute.

White: Oh, I see, with KMI.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: Uh-huh. ( ) Brown: I went there, I went there in. . . .

White: Was that after ( ) Brown: . . .I went 46:00to in the eighth grade--uh-huh, I went there. . .I think before and after.

White: Before.

Brown: I went there in the eighth grade and then I think one semester in the ninth, and one semester in the tenth, I went there a total of about two years.

White: And so, you w. . .you were in Louisville a year or two.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: Where did you live in Louisville?

Brown: Rainbow Drive, it was off, off Lexington Road.

White: I didn’t ask you where you lived in Lexington. . .before that.

Brown: Well. . .I was, I was born on Eldemere Road, Eldemere and then that’s when I grew up until I was, I guess about seven or eight, I think 1941 we bought the second house on Chinoe Road, Chinoe’s now got, I guess three-hundred homes on it, it’s one of the largest street[s] in Lexington, and. . .my next-door neighbor, believe it or not was W. T. Young, that started Humana 47:00and. . . .

White: When you were growing up?

Brown: Uh-huh. And he was--and he is probably my best friend around Lexington today, and we. . . .

White: Was he your best friend when you were young?

Brown: Didn’t know him very well, you know, just respectful as a family, and. . .but just a great man, been a great influence on my life, and. . .and we live there until, I guess the late 1950s. [Pause] White: I, I need to un. . .explain just for the purposes of anybody who listens to these tapes.

Brown: Sure.

White: When I have pushed the pause button a couple of times it’s because either the phone has rung, or somebody has come in.

Brown: Sure.

White: So, that, they always wonder when the tape has been turned off, what, what’s going on so.

Brown: Okay.

White: Was there anything in particular that stands out about the years in Louisville, year, or years. . .any particular experiences, any particular people you met, friends you made? 48:00Brown: Well, in, later in life yes, but not, not during my y. . .my formative year, not in my. . . .

White: No, you know, these I’m, I’m still back when you are about eighth, ninth, tenth grade?

Brown: No, I, really. . . .

White: Brief year.

Brown: . . .just sort of a blur of the memory, uh-huh.

White: Okay.

Brown: I went down to the St. X High School, didn’t know anybody but, I always got along, I went to, I guess seven or eight different schools along the way.

White: And there was nothing that particularly sticks in your mind at all why your father decided to move to Louisville?

Brown: I think it was for the purpose of practicing law that he thought he could broaden his law practice that he had it all tied up in the mountains and he was just trying to broaden his law practice, as I recall.

White: Geographically.

Brown: Yeah.

White: Commercially.

Brown: Uh-huh, make more money, I guess, I. . . .

White: And then when you moved back to Lexington, did he close the Louisville law office? He didn’t, he didn’t keep it up.

Brown: I think he had an affiliation down there. He. . .he had an affiliation. . .with Squire Williams and Stan Shevin and, and Mike Clair, another time, 49:00but I, I don’t really remember much in those days, I wasn’t really.

White: Okay. Then you moved back to Lexington, and you finished your high school career where?

Brown: At Lafayette, uh-huh.

White: At Lafayette.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: You had been to Kenwick.

Brown: Went to, I went to Cassidy, then Kenwick, then Morton. . . .

White: Morton!

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: Also, in Lexington.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: And then Lafayette, and, and did you move back to your house on Chinoe or had you sold that?

Brown: You know, we moved to Louisville, we built that house in 1941, we moved to Louisville bought a nice house over there, so I assume we had to sell our house, and then we bought a house out here at. . . Lakeside, or Lake, Lakewood, I guess, it’s right here off of. . . .

White: Here.

Brown: . . .Tates Creek, uh-huh.

White: Okay.

Brown: And that seemed like that was in the late fifties, but 50:00that would have been in the early fifties. It seems like we came back to the, to the Chinoe Road house and maybe we didn’t sell it during that period of time.

White: Okay. Was there anything different about your years at Lafayette High School, at, when you returned to Lexington than had been at the other schools, or. . . .

Brown: Yeah L. . . .

White: . . .ready for ( ) Brown: Yeah, Lexington was, I mean Lafayette was sort of. . .the experiences I remember the most. (It’s all chopped out?) I mean I went to, to. . .Morton’s as the seventh grade, KMI in the eighth grade, the ninth grade I guess that’s when I went to. . .to Louisville, and then the tenth grade, one semester I went to KMI, but I started at Lafayette in the tenth grade, and then I went my junior and senior at Lafayette, so, I guess that’s the only sustained period I had in my, you know, last six years of high school and, and I, I just g. . .I guess I learned just to be a regular guy there because I grew up with regular people, 51:00and, and that’s what I want my son, I don’t want him to go to private schools, I mean I want him to go to public schools, probably more so than private. Even though he goes to a very good private school now, but I mean you need to know what the rest of the world’s like, and you get sheltered so much at these private schools. One of my kids went to Country Day and, and they really started blossoming when I, I sent them to. . . I guess Ballard.

White: Ballard.

Brown: And. . .even John went down to Central.

White: This is in Louisville, right?

Brown: In Louisville, uh-huh.

White: For the purposes of the tape.

Brown: And so, I’m a great believer in, in. . .you know, throwing the kid out there, and let he see the real world, and. . .it might be painful, but the, the experience will be a positive one.

White: Were you still engaged in a lot of sports those last high school years?

Brown: Uh-huh, I played football, after that I played basketball, I wasn’t real good, but I, I practiced with the varsity and played with the varsity and I lettered, I lettered in football and I was there sort of a semi-star on the golf team, so they gave me a, some self-respect in school, 52:00and, I guess I just concentrated there on being a good guy and getting people to like me, I guess you know, back at that, at that age that’s the most important to you.

White: Were you academically inclined, or. . . .

Brown: Not at all.

White: . . .not much, Uh-huh.

Brown: Not at all; I think if I had been in. . .inclined, I will probably have been a good student, because I am a quick study and. . .I’ve had one, you know, complaint about me is my attention span is, is so quick [sighs] but I’m just a restless active get-to-the-bottom-line kind of mentality, I guess, and I never did enjoy in-depth studying or reading. I am a great. . .glancer or pursuer of, of new, of newspapers, magazines and, and I, I have sort of a photographic memory, I can remember, you know, phone numbers, I can tell you my phone number back in the first house on (Orion?) Road, you know, 426-1631, I’ve just never, a couple of months ago, I said, “what’s that number?” But I have a, a really good memory retention, 53:00but I have never been a good sit down and enjoy a book for three or four hours, I’ve just never been of that temperament. I wish I had been, you know, I hope I can teach my son to, to apply himself more, to, to being a studious type, but I just wasn’t a studious type, but I managed to always get by, I mean I stayed up the night before and crammed, went through law school and didn’t study a lick but I’d stay up all night right before the exam and I got through, and I was sort of a, there, they, I, I knew how to deal with my teachers, because I, I was selling books, and even the dean, to his credit, W. L. Matthews said, “John, you know, you’re learning more being a manager--I was state manager for Encyclopedia Britannica—than anything we can teach you here.” And he really. . . was ver. . . .

White: This was the dean of, of which?

Brown: W. L. Matthews of the Law school.

White: Of the law school?

Brown: And he let me, because he, you had a rule back then you couldn’t work more than ten hours a week, and here I was state manager making you know, real good money [chuckling] and more money than most young guys are going to make practicing law when they get out. So, he let me do it and I spent 54:0080 percent of my time selling books and 20 percent time studying law, but I wouldn’t trade the law for anything because it’s given me a big advantage in business. You almost have to be a lawyer and almost a CPA to survive in business anymore, it’s so highly regulated and. . .and I didn’t like law school, I mean it was a bore, but I forced myself to do it, I force-fed myself from, I’m so glad I did, it helped me in politics, it helped me immeasurably in business. So, if I can get advice to the young people, I would always have a year or two of, of finance, accounting. . .economics, and then a year or two of law school; because you really need it, if you, if you want to be a businessperson.

White: Were there anybody, was there anybody who influenced you particularly during those high school years? Anybody standout, whether it’s a, a teacher, or another adult, or a coach, or a peer perhaps? Anybody that. . . .

Brown: Well, I think Miss Thelma (Beeler?), she 55:00is still living, bless her heart, she must be eighty-five, I still get notes from her, she is still part-time teaches at Lafayette.

White: What did she teach?

Brown: She taught speech and d. . .and drama, and she just took a special interest, I think she gave me confidence that I could really be good in that, and I remember my l. . .life’s most embarrassing moment, I’ve never had one as embarrassing as she asked me to read the bible and give the pledge of the flag to the student body and we had about sixteen-hundred students at that time, which was one of the largest schools in the state. And I remember. . .asking everybody to stand, please repeat after me the Lord’s prayer and everybody stood, and I forgot how it started. I wanted to say our gracious heavenly father and my God! [Laughing] and I ( ) went blank. I just went blank, and finally the person behind me started, after about thirty seconds, which seemed like an eternity, and but I knew I blurted out the pledge of the flag and I mean I got, I got, but to me that was--but I had a lot of good. . .training 56:00in, in speech and drama because I had a lot of opportunities to be in plays and give speeches and I was in the national speech contest and I was runner up in Ypsilanti, Michigan and. . . .

White: This was all the way. . . .

Brown: All, enti. . . .

White: . . .through the end of high school?

Brown: It, it was just at the end of high school. Now college, I didn’t do anything, I worked, I sold books, and. . .and I got by on my wits.

White: Let, let me back up. . . .

Brown: Okay.

White: . . .and then I will ask you about the plays. You were also in plays. . . .

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: . . .in high school. Name one.

Brown: ‘No Dangers Dan McGrew.’ White: Were you dangerous Dan or were you ( )?

Brown: No, I was, I was the, I was the man from the. . .I guess I was the coal miner.

White: You enjoyed being ( )?

Brown: Yeah, and I enjoyed, uh-huh.

White: Sort of like making speeches?

Brown: Yeah, and it gave me chance to get up in front of the class and talk and not being intimidated by it, and when I got to selling books that’s just sort of getting my real trainings, selling books really gave me my training, because you had to meet all kinds of people and it, you know, I guess it’s a form of politics 57:00and my dad always taught me several things that always helped me, he said, “always say yes sir, no sir, and thank you, and, and please, and always look people right square in the eye and s. . .and give them a good firm handshake.” So, I was still trying to teach one of my son’s get a good firm handshake and I have a hard time making him say yes sir, and no sir, and please, and thank you.

White: Well, you did say that selling encyclopedias was your fist job, is that right?

Brown: Yeah, you’re talking about people influencing me, yes.

White: Oh, well, all right ( ) that.

Brown: Now, now that’s because I, I gave one (Tom Bitter?) but the one that really had the most influence, almost as much as my father, was a, a man named Chuck Collova that was my boss in selling books.

White: Would you spell the last name?

Brown: Collova, C-o-l-l-o-v-a. First name is Chuck, and he was a dynamo, and he was regional manager for the Encyclopedia Britannica, and he the one that sort of gave me confidence and built me up and made me realize what maybe my potential was and, and I remember every day on s. . .on. . . Friday afternoon 58:00I’d talk to Chuck, and I’d be planning to go to the ball game or something. And he said, “now, if I were John Brown, when he calls in Monday morning, he is going to say Chuck! I didn’t get a chance to work this weekend because of the ball game coming up but, incidentally I got five orders for you.” So he’d always just motivate me to where I was just climbing the wall to please him, and. . .and anytime I wanted to go drive up to see him, we’d have, to a real nice restaurant and he was you know, making big money in those days, seventy-five thousand and I was his star district manager and. . .he taught me a lot about working, about handling people, and, and he really sort of, I, I guess that was a period of life where I learned the most about what to do when an opportunity came, because when Kentucky Fried Chicken came, I was prepared to handle the job. It was a fortunate opportunity, but I was a salesman, I had a law background, I knew, and it fit me. When I was governor, I was qualified, I had, you know, been through managing and been through organizing, 59:00and been through making decisions. . .and I felt like I was prepared, so I was very fortunate for the two great opportunities that came on my life that I knew what to do about it. Often times opportunity comes and goes, and you don’t know really how to handle it, or how to take advantage and that was just one, and the, the book selling experience of six years with the Britannica, really trained me for KFC when it came along.

White: When did K. . .KFC come along.

Brown: K on nineteen. . .sixty-three.

White: Okay. And do you. . . .

Brown: If you, I, I was trying to think anybody else who influenced me in college. I got, I got most of my. . .experience playing poker in college. That might sound odd, but it taught me to compete, it taught me to judge people, it taught me the discipline of, of decisions, you know, most of them are a matter of percentages, and it taught me who to trust, who not to trust, 60:00it taught me to pay off and to get paid, it just taught me a lot of things that. . .and some of my best friends, Harry and Larry Jones in Louisville, that owns Jones Plastics, we were, we played, none of us had any money [Laughing] but we played every night and Bob Hardy, who played quarterback at UK, and we all became--Ralph Beard there in Louisville, and. . .and we’d usually get, you know, one person with money in the game and [Laughing] split it up among us, but that was. . .I just wasn’t interested in college and, and I just studied to the extent I needed to, to get through, and, but to me it was just a. . .I never was really introduced to college as something that was going to influence the rest of my life, and all I wanted to get that law degree and practice law, and so, and also the, the opportunity of the Britannica was unusual and I learned as much there as I could have in a classroom, 61:00and I never have felt thwarted because I had picked it up the hard way; like I tell the story, in fact I used it in the campaign quite often that after I was in KFC for three years, I went to the Harvard Business School to learn what you’re supposed to do. Have you ever heard me tell the story?

White: The tape needs to hear it.

Brown: Okay. It’s a true story, it’s true as I know how to tell it, and, and we were all convinced because I just hired a bunch of guys out of UK that I thought were honest, were hard working and had some smarts, and, and we go along and you know, everything seems to be doing pretty good but you--I don’t have anything to compare to, I’ve never been in business, I don’t know what other businesses do and, so we were talking about me going up and take a six-week course to find out what you’re supposed to do to run the company. And so I went up and had lunch with nine. . .what they call associate professors at the George T. Baker Harvard Business School, and we’re setting there and I’m telling about Kentucky Fried Chicken and how we franchise and we put chicken in a bucket and, and in a box, and we got these little take-homes and I was just telling them the story, and they’d never heard of us because Colonel, back 62:00before we bought him, didn’t have much use for the Yankees and so we didn’t have any stores up there, and after about an hour--and I thought you know, if you want to come you have to be some kind of genius, you had to go to, you know, Stanford, or Harvard, or Princeton, or one of these big league colleges to really know what to do and, and I was really sitting there wanted to learn something, and so after about an hour one of them asked me, he said, “well Mr. Brown, how have your sales been?” And I said, “oh, we took the company over, we’re doing about three million and three years later we’re doing a little over a hundred million this year,” I thought everybody did that, and I didn’t know there was anything unusual, and. . .and they sort of looked around each other and like professors do, they frowned and one of them asked me, he said, “well, what about your profits?” And I said, “Oh we’ve gone from about three hundred thousand to a little over ten million pre-taxes this year.” And they all looked around each other and, and the host just smiled, he said, “Mr. Brown, why don’t you go back and just keep doing whatever you’re doing, don’t let us confuse you.” And that’s the first time I realize there are no experts, and we knew more about our business than anybody else, you know, we were with it morning and night 63:00and just--that’s why I always try to hire people that are inquisitive, because if a person ask enough questions they’ll find the answers and. . .that was a learning experience for me, and that’s the first, that gave me more confidence that I could do most anything I want to because there are no geniuses, and if you go back through your life, if you find enough people on one hand that you can name that are s. . .are s. . .truly outstanding, intellectually or. . .then, then you, that’s unusual, so. . .and I, I learned most of my experiences through. . .exposure and I think that’s probably the best way you can learn them.

White: What do you tell your children about education, you know, given, given the fact that. . .you were not terribly interested in it yourself, and I, if I’m making the right. . . .

Brown: I know, that’s the right. . . .

White: . . .presumption.

Brown: . . .assumption because I was working and I think to make my mark in life, it was so important growing up in an ambitious family, and my father used to go tell everybody, you know, tell everybody I was the manager for the Encyclopedia Britannica 64:00and I guess in my own mind, that was more important than college and, and yeah I think I’ve grown up a fairly well rounded, a fairly well educated person, I just wasn’t the intellectual type that sat there and liked to. . .get heavily involved a lot of subject matter I didn’t think I was going to apply later on in life, and, I guess I’d tell my children that. . .I would take those courses that you think you can benefit from in life, that are important in life, whether it’s raising a family, whether it’s interchange of people like psychology and, and I learned, you know, those basics of, you know, geography and history and math, but there are a lot of subject matters out there that--one was the foreign language that I never felt I would have to apply, I am not going to move to a foreign country, and I had the hardest time forcing myself to take two years of Spanish and I never used a word of it since, and I guess I would relate my experience, the good and the bad of it. I think the only thing that I would have liked to have improved on my college education was to. 65:00. .enjoy reading, and I think you teach people, teach students of young age to learn to read, because by the time I--and, and I forced-fed myself to read, I mean I’m, when I took the bar exam, I stayed up all night for thirty days, I’d go to bed at eight o’clock in the morning and sleep until twelve or two and then I’d get--I never got out of my robe and, and I had a crash course on the bar but I passed it, and how embarrassing it would have been to fail the bar exam, they would have thought I was some old dummy and my father was such a great lawyer, but. . . .

White: But you felt about the same way of, about law school as you did about college, right?

Brown: Yes.

White: Something to be going through.

Brown: I, just gotten through, because I, I’m, first practicing law because of my father, now I tell in speeches, I tell kids you do what, what you do best, you do what you enjoy doing, I did, for the wrong reasons, I became a lawyer because my father was a lawyer, well that’s no reason for me to be a lawyer, and. . .and yet now in hindsight, the, the three years invested was well worth it. But, if I ( ). . . . my philosophy probably hasn’t changed a whole lot, and, if I ever run for governor 66:00again, this can be used against me, but, because I just feel like you go to college to learn those things, I know the, the, the d. . .overall, is that students ought to be well balanced, they ought to learn a little bit about everything, and that’s all well and good, but I guess I want my children to n. . .ha. . .be more targeted on what they like to do and, and the one thing we don’t give students when they go to college, is any direction. We just throw them in there, this is good for you, as you learn whatever they teach you there, instead of saying, what do you think you’d like to do, what do you think you’re really best in, and just sort of direct you, I mean if there is any course in college, it would be a pre-course of evaluating all those things and aptitudes of what you would like to do later on in life, because I wasted frankly, s. . .you know, three years of my life or seven years, with no direction. I was just going to school because you had to get a college degree, but if somebody had sat down says, you know, you’re really good salesman, you sold vacuum cleaners, you’ve done this, you like meeting people, you like being outgoing, now these are professions you’re not going to be an accountant, and you’re not going to be a night watchman, and, and these are some areas that you ought to explore. 67:00However in business, you know, you make money and when you make money you build houses, you travel, you do things and I haven’t thought about what I wanted to do, I had, money was never a goal of mine until I realized after I was practicing law say, I can’t ever make enough money practicing law to ever do the things I want to do in life. I can’t ever go in politics. And so that’s when I decided later I’m going to leave this law practice, I’m going to take a shot in business and, and that might be a, a totally opposite attitude that most universities have, but most universities are, are interested in size and breadth than, than clear direction, and I feel like the one thing, if we fail to give our students in college is a clear direction of how to take advantage of the time they spend there. And I’ve always been one never to want to waste any time and. . .and even in law school there is certain subject matters that are invaluable to me like contract law, tort law, they, they taught me the principal law, the fairness and the equities law, but in college, 68:00I would say most of my time in college was not spent in learning, but just getting by, and I am not a shame of it because it didn’t interest me, you know, geology just, just did not interest me and the Spanish did not interest me, now psychology interested me, philosophy interested me, history interested me. . .geometry and physics, they just didn’t interest me, you know, because that wasn’t anything, I haven’t applied a bit of that today, and, and so anyway, that’s where I am coming from and I guess I’ll probably tell the children the good and bad of what college meant to me.

END OF TAPE 1 SIDE A START OF TAPE 1 SIDE B White: Was the fact that you started selling encyclopedias emblematic of something you were learning about yourself? I mean the fact that you even started the job.

Brown: Sure.

White: I know you learned that you were a natural salesman, why you were doing it, but what were you figuring out ahead of time?

Brown: Just to prove myself, I never worked, I never had a job, and I had sold vacuum cleaners, 69:00in high, in high school in summer and I made good money, I was a really good salesman and, I sort of enjoyed that and but it is, you know, now I’m going to college, and now it’s time for me to make my own money and I was challenged by my mother, saying that you know, she questioned whether I was worth a dollar an hour and I guess I had to prove that, I had no other way to prove it [Laughing] and so I got my dander up and. . .and I just went out and showed them, and then it became a, a mark for me, that you know, here I did something that’s unusual, nobody else was working in college and nobody else was managing the office and making the kind of money I was making so it sort of gave me a point of distinction and, and. . .and. . .I, I was proud of it and I just built on that and, and that was the first accomplishment, I guess, you know, the most important thing you can do for a child is let them do something good to raise their self-esteem, whatever it is, playing the piano, running track, so they think they are as good or better than other people at least in one thing, so, I made my mark and then that mark of expectations carried over into other things that I did.

White: Had you had any other job in high school besides selling vacuum cleaners?

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: What was it?

Brown: I sold in the summer and sold for Electrolux and. . . I did pretty well, I was a good little salesman, I’d sell sometimes six, eight, ten of them in a week and. . .and made good money, but I never did work at it, you know, I didn’t go to or. . . work 70:00at nine and worked until nine and the books, I really worked, I mean I’d be in the office, and I had a crew of eleven, twelve people working for me, and, and older people reporting to me and, and. . .and it . . .it, it just taught me how to manage money, and how to handle people and how to motivate them, but I got my lessons of business and training from my old boss Chuck Collova. And he was a master, he was a master salesman and a master at motivating me and I think I got my style of motivating other people, part through him and part through. . . watching “Bear” Bryant, and “Bear” Bryant was sort of a. . .I guess you’d, I don’t know if you’d call him an idol, but he was the man of the moment when I was growing up, and I love the way that. . . that he made everybody reach and everybody loved him, and. . .and I grew up with that class that, that played under Bryant or I would just, maybe they were a couple 71:00of years older than me, but I ran around with them and I was here when, during the ( ) years, and even today, I, you have to think he was probably one of the great motivators that’s every [ever] been in sports, and yet he is, you find yourself picking him up, like I remember saying, you know, suck up your guts and you know, just little things like that that sort of gave you a style and I just ( ) he picked it up either noticeably or not noticeably, but looking back I, I think he had the impression I decided to pattern myself after him in some ways.

White: You went to law school right after college?

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: All four years of college, three years of law school.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: And by the time you got out of law school it was what, nineteen. . .fifty-nine or so?

Brown: 1960, I think I took the bar.

White: And you didn’t start KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken until 1963, so in those three intervening years or so, you practiced law?

Brown: Uh-huh, two years, from ’61 to ’62 72:00and then I guess ’63 is when I went to work on Kentucky Fried Chicken, I opened my first store, then signed the deal to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken on January 6th, of 1964.

White: Let’s just interject that you did get married. . . .

Brown: Uh-huh, got. . . .

White: . . . In around. . . .

Brown: About ’60.

White: In ’60?

Brown: Uh-huh, the year after I graduated, I got married and I ( ) my last year of law school, and. . .and then I practiced law about two and a half years in Louisville, criminal law, and I had ten murder co. . .ten murder trials, you know, that’s more than most people have in a lifetime.

White: Did one stand out?

Brown: Yeah, I, I remember most all of them, and. . .they were all hard cases, and I figured that I may have lost just one of them, I mean really lost them. I wasn’t a lawyer, my father was, he could just walk in and dominate a courtroom and, and I wa. . .I would have been a good, I would have been an outstanding trial lawyer, because that’s just selling, it’s all that is, 73:00but. . .I enjoyed that, the little bit I did, but I didn’t apply myself as a career, because I was always looking restless to--and you know, once I’m, I got about twenty thousand in debt after I got married and got a home in Louisville, and I figured it was going to take me ten years to get out of debt, at saving two thousand a year, and then I realized well heck I don’t want to, you know, take a lifetime t. . .and I figured, well, if I could ever save up a hundred thousand in, in the bank I’d, I’d have it made, and then I learned something about business and the kind of opportunity you have there and that’s when I said gee I got to, I got to get in business, I can always go back practicing law.

White: Now let’s, let’s focus on that.

Brown: Yeah.

White: When did you start thinking, really seriously, about business? It was during these three years, sometimes.

Brown: Yeah, I mean, I sold books making twenty-five thousand a year and practicing law and you know, I might make fifty ten years from that date, and I was making twenty-five to thirty, but I was still benefiting riding 74:00on my father’s coat tail, whether I liked it or not, and I didn’t feel real[ly] comfortable about that. I think I would of, you know, gotten to a point where I would have earned my way. And he never made me feel that way, but that’s why I moved to Louisville, I wanted to be my own man, and. . .but I looked at. . .oh, car washes and selling pesticides, and I looked at a bunch of crazy little, you know, side deals, and. . . .

White: Were you mostly looking for a business to buy?

Brown: I was looking for a business that I could get into, that I could afford to get into, make some extra money, and. . .and when the thing hit me with the colonel, the colonel saw me on that breakfast program, I was the state’s speaker chairman, and I was introducing Ned Breathitt. . .on. . .I guess WHAS and he called me and said he wanted to talk to me and got. . . .

White: The colonel did?

Brown: Yeah. I didn’t know what about, you know, we thought he was a little bit off the wall driving around his Cadillac with his mug on the side of the car, 75:00and, but I had known him, and Dad knew him down in Corbin, I’d stay all night in his hotel and I used to sell books down there. I always liked the old man; I didn’t really know what he was up to. And so, after the election I stopped down to visit with him and he was interested in hiring me as his real estate lawyer. And I said, “well Colonel, I don’t know anything about real estate, you know, I am a criminal lawyer and a salesman.” And he took me upstairs in his accounting department and showed me the checks he got in from all these different franchises, he would franchise a restaurant and they would use his name and his picture and sell chicken, you know, it might be a part of a family restaurant, but it also featured Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I was amazed, you know, two hundred dollars here, four hundred dollars here, every month, you know, for all these hundreds of stores, and I said, my gosh, you know, I went and tried his chicken that afternoon and it was the best tasting chicken I ever had, and what a character, he was wearing that white suit, and a goatee and I was just, immediate hit, I said I’m going to have a seat around here somewhere, I mean this is, this is the most exciting thing I’ve ever run into. 76:00And that particular day he was talking about, talking about starting a barbecue franchise. So, we went over to Scotty in Frankfort, Scotty’s Barbecue and. . . talked about starting a barbecue franchise and I said, “Colonel, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll. . . I’ll stop practicing law and put together this barbecue franchise, we will be partners.” And he said, “that’s fine Johnny, I’ll, we’ll do that, I’d like to start a barbecue chain.” And so, I built the Porky Pig House over on Preston Highway and it was next door to a funeral home, across the street from the graveyard, had been three failed businesses there but I could afford it, at. . .two hundred dollars a month was my rent. And. . .but I didn’t know in that contract I got with the colonel, that. . .I could put in Kentucky Fried Chicken in all my stores. Well, he gave away a lot of rights, I mean I had it in the contract saying I could put in Kentucky Fried Chicken in stores all over the country. . . .

White: In your barbecues?

Brown: In my barbecue, yeah. And so. 77:00. .I fo. . .the store opened [clears throat]. It had, oh paneled walls and had a big fireplace that you know, I, where you see the fire roaring and had barrel furniture, and it really looked like the real barbecue house, and it opened up and I put his picture out there on the front with a bucket, also selling Kentucky Fried Chicken, but it was basically ‘Porky Pigs Barbecue’ also featuring Kentucky Fried Chicken. We had 80 percent chicken, 20 percent barbecue. So, I knew I was on the wrong end of the right business, and. . .I didn’t have any financing for the store and the fellow that I, had got the financing from, Jack Massey, he was my eventual partner, and, and we debated over half a percent for like four hours. I had never nego. . .I didn’t know what a good interest rate was, because I, you know, I never did borrow from a bank, other than five hundred dollars [Laughing] and he said, “oh, it’s just unlikely that we can get together, it doesn’t look like we can get together after we debate over a, a 6 percent”--it 78:00was 6 percent add on, which made it, multiply like 15 percent, and I had heard that’s not what you ought to pay. So, I was just sitting there debating like I knew what I was talking about. He got up to leave. I said, “Mr. Massey, you sit down, and we are going to make a deal before you leave here.” So, he wrote me a check for six, sixteen thousand dollars and, and I built my first store, and then we got to be good friends and he was almost like a father-son relationship and, we even bought the colonel out about, oh, three or four months later.

White: Now how did, how, what happened with that? Buying the colonel out? Did you approach the colonel?

Brown: Yeah! See I was already with the colonel and his barbecue deal, and I didn’t have any money, so I was looking for financing and Jack Massey financed my first store, and then he liked to play golf and play gin rummy and we became good social friends as well as business friends and, and. . .I remember at his house, that Sunday morning, I said, “you know, we ought to buy the colonel’s business,” and not knowing whether Jack 79:00would have the interest. He was retired; I had no idea what kind of money he had. He said, “yeah, let’s try to do that.” And so, I remember, I went to the Colonel, I said, “Colonel, I like you to meet Jack Massey, he financed my first store, and he is interested in, in financing some of your stores,” and he said, “now don’t you bring some slick. . .person in here that’ll want to buy my company.” [Laughing] And he’d had already figured it out before I ever, I was. . . .

White: Now who, who said this?

Brown: Colonel Sanders did.

White: He said, “don’t bring some slick person.” Brown: Yeah, and he’ll want to buy my company. And I said, “no, no, Colonel, I just want to talk to you about maybe, you know, financing some equipment, and he is a fellow from Nashville, and he will be good for your needs.” So, we met down there and that’s the first thing he said to Jack, and Jack was, you know, looked like a Wall Street type in his stripe suit and gray hair, and they didn’t hit it off at all other than Jack, you know, he had the appearance of money, and. . .and that was the first thing he said to Jack when he said, “you know, don’t, don’t think some, you know, fast talking, slick talking 80:00finance guy is going to come here and buy my company from me.” So, anyway we le. . . one thing led to another, and we finally got the colonel to talk about whether or not he ought to sell, he is seventy-four and didn’t have anybody to run it, he had family all in there squabbling with each other, and. . .so, he said, “okay, I’ll, I’ve got a number in mind.” And we went to Nashville, and had a ( ) meeting in, in the bank boardroom down at Third National Bank, very impressive place, and we had lunch and I remember Webb Johnson and, and Sam Fleming who were p. . .chairman and president of Third National, and Jack was on the board there. So we went in the other room to talk about what we ought to offer the colonel, and I knew the colonel’s magic figure was two million dollars, and they said, “well, we ought to be able to get it for a million and a half,” and I said, “don’t even go in there and offend him, because if you come in one dollar less than what he is thinking, he will walk out of here and that will be the end of it. If it’s worth a million and a half, it’s worth two million, you know, we are not talking about something that’s just going to go a little bit, I mean this is either a big idea 81:00and it was worth two million, and so, to Jack’s credit, he agreed. That’s why there’s an old saying I like, just give a little, take a little, don’t break up the game, you know, when it comes to business. And so, we matched his offer and so then he had to accept it, and, then he said. . . .

White: Did he hesitate?

Brown: No, he sat there on his ( ) but two million dollars is my new number. If we had come in a million nine, or a million nine-ninety, he either probably, he said, no two million is what I want. And--because I, I really know the colonel and I, I was very fond of him, and. . .I was probably the only one that got along with him because he has a, he is very contemptuous personality, and--but a great man, I mean, he was the idea behind it and. . .any time he get grousing about anything, because that was his style of management put people on the defense all the time and complain and cussing and, and I’d just change the subject, you know, if he started ( ) I said, “colonel what, what does that mean ( ),” and then he’d stopped and then he’d forget what he got mad about see [Laughing] and so I remember one, 82:00I remember one day at one convention when we wore black suit to the convention, we had like two-thousand franchisees there, and boy we were going gangbuster, we’re going public, and he got up and just blasted us, the, you know, we are out to get--take their money and we don’t know what they’re doing, we don’t know anything about the chicken business--everybody was crying, my wife’s crying, (Claudia), his wife’s crying, and. . . I mean, everybody’s dreams being shattered. . . .

White: This was at what point?

Brown: This was the second year in Kentucky Fried Chicken, or maybe the third year, it was ’66 is when it was, and we’d gone public and, and, and I probably gave the finest speech in my life, I never give one on the spot, more impromptu, that ( ) I hadn’t given any thought to it, how it came to me, I don’t know, but I said just the right thing because for forty minutes, you know, he was as much as called my partner, you know, everything in the book, he didn’t say anything mean about me that I was still. . . still dry behind the ears, or wet behind the ears, I guess, and didn’t know what I was doing, and. . .but just would, it went 83:00on a tirade for forty minutes, so everybody expected me, I remember Jack was sitting on one side of him, I was on the other, had two thousand packed ballroom at the Deauville Hotel, and we just had given the colonel twenty-five thousand in checks from the company for his Easter Seal Campaign or something, and Jack says, you know, “can I, we take our check down?” I said, “no Jack just, just let me handle this.” And I had no idea what I was going to say, and so when the colonel got through blasting us, he sat down over, I mean you could hear a pin drop in that place, and so instead of getting up and saying, “well, you know, the colonel is mean, or he is old, or he is bad, or whatever,” I just got up and I said, “you know, the colonel is an artist, and like all artists, they are perfectionists and we’re all part of the colonel’s dream, he is painting his dream for all of us and you have to sometime pinch yourself to realize that this really is a dream, and it’s our commitment to try to strive and to always live up to the colonel’s expectations of perfection,” and then, so I sort of covered that and then I went on, I said “colonel 84:00when we bought this company, we told you that we would honor all your commitments and there is not a person in this room that. . . can say that we haven’t honored every commitment that you made to them and that we made to them since we’ve had your company. And he said, “oh you all raise your hands up, raise your hands.” Not a hand went up, and I said, “Colonel, you know, we’ve tried to be more than fair with all your people, because they know what they meant to you and we tried to keep the family kind of relationship, and since we’ve had your company, we haven’t raised a single price, we haven’t had a single lawsuit, we’ve given stock to the franchisees on option basis that they made more money out of then they ever paid us since we’ve had your--so we just wiped it all out and that was really the start of us taking over the colonel and. . .but of all the events happening in Kentucky Fried Chicken, that was the most nerve racking, and yet it ended up as a cutting the cord and that was so helpful as we, we grew the company.

White: What do you think 85:00was really going through his head when he was making that speech?

Brown: He was just jealous, so here is Sander’s dream, I mean it was his idea, his recipe, his white suit, and, and, and I always give him credit, I never tried to, I mean it was his idea, we just knew what to do with him when the time came.

White: And, and when you were in the process of buying the company, did you see some potential that he wasn’t seeing. In other words, were you seeing. . . .

Brown: Well, he was. . . .

White: . . .bigger or. . . .

Brown: Yeah, I just said, gee whiz, this ought to be tremendous, the chicken is fantastic, you couldn’t get chicken, he is the first one that came along seasoning chicken, you know, the grocery stores just leave it for you to put your own salt and pepper or whatever, you know, marinate or whatever you want to use on it, and so it was, it was, it was ( ) and it, the cutting edge of a whole new industry of, of take outfitted. . .and, and I think I probably. . .there was one take home and I remember when we bought the company, we stayed there and we did not franchise for a year until we decided what we wanted to do and we, we decided to go all take homes, and that’s why. . . .

White: Now you said he had franchised it.

Brown: They were like a restaurant, they used to be a restaurant 86:00called (Callens?) in Louisville that had Kentucky Fried Chicken, they invented the cheeseburger, I don’t know if you knew that or not.

White: Or so his food was not takeout, you. . . .

Brown: No.

White: . . .you were the ones who ( ) Brown: Yeah, we started the take, ( ) and chose to strictly take homes, and. . .but I, I knew, I knew that it had a, it was a f. . .fabulous idea and. . .he had gone about as far as he could go, because he was going to make every decision on what paper ( ) went out, or how to mix the seasoning, or, or how to cook chicken and he was one-man show, and it was hard work for the colonel, because he was very intimidating, that was a smart thing, you know, the company’s, you know, we were bigger than McDonalds and, and we were ( ) far from, he really changed the eating habits of the world, I guess, and that’s eating at home.

White: Now I don’t, I don’t want to be insulting by saying, but I’m gathering this from what you said, that you really didn’t know anything about running a business when you started, when you ( ). . . .

Brown: You’re absolu. . .after I sold books and I was a lawyer, and that’s why I went to Harvard Business School, that’s 87:00all amusing that I knew a lot more than I knew I knew, you know. . . .

White: What. . . .

Brown: I. . . .

White: Go ahead.

Brown: And, and I mean I’d never heard of a balance sheet, I never had P & L, and, and I figured all that out.

White: But by the time you went to Harvard Business School, you had already. . . .

Brown: Yeah, I had been up to th. . .yeah, I figured things out, yeah, we, we, we, most of our decisions were right on target, because we weren’t limited by tradition, we just figured it out and we didn’t know it could be done until we did it, I always like to use that in my speeches.

White: So, you really, you had no models to follow?

Brown: Uh-huh, none.

White: You, you literally invented the wheel.

Brown: Just, yeah, just figure it out, and we figured it out, look, you know, they’re going to make ten times more money if we have a take home selling just chicken, than if we have the item on the menu where you might be 10 or 15 percent of the restaurant sales, much harder to control, and the restaurant got a bad reputation of serving bad food, and you are over here stuck with your chicken, that gave him a basis to get started and that was a network of people that we used to expand this, I mean we built eight-hundred-and-sixty stores in one year, and that was a. . . lot of those 88:00were the colonel’s old people, and. . . .

White: So, they were your nucleus.

Brown: They were the nucleus. But we changed the whole complexion of the company to build just take homes and we, we automated, and we were the first ones going in and we ( ) managed to c. . . we try anything.

White: Okay how, you--I mean you figured out how to price.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: How to market.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: How to order meat.

Brown: Uh-huh.

White: And I mean would you call some people who would, who would give you ( ) Brown: I asked a thousand questions.

White: Yeah.

Brown: Just like when I was governor no one knew it, I mean, I didn’t even know how many cabinets there were, but I was never too embarrassed to ask questions, that was the only way to get an answer, and that’s why when I interview people I, I like to find out how inquisitive they are, because if they are inquisitive they’re going to have a lot of answers they’ve picked up along the way.

White: Who, who would you ask? What kinds of people? I mean would you just pick up the phone. . . .

Brown: Yeah, if, if it had to do with, with purchasing, I’d find out where, who are the people with good companies, where do you buy the kind of things we’re looking for, then I’d call the company and well, do you know, you don’t make buckets but who makes buckets, or who’s set up with molding they can make this kind of bucket and advertising is a natural for me and 89:00I spent all my time. . . .

White: What was natural?

Brown: Advertising, being a salesman and, and I didn’t know how you buy or bought, but I figured it out, I just asked a lot of questions but. . . I spent all my time getting the colonel on TV shows, he was on thirty-one National TV shows free of charge over the first three or four years we had the company.

White: How, how did you do that?

Brown: I had Sheri Lewis, the gal with the puppets, her husband named Stan Lewis and. . . he was a Jewish fellow from New York that knew the ins and outs of television and he just got the colonel--we’d set up, at three or four o’clock in the morning talking on the watts line about different angles. I remember on the Johnny Carson show, I said, “why don’t you have the colonel bring in two million in cash.” Here is a guy, seventy-five years old, he got two million cash, it’s not c. . .gross for him to come in with his money, so they brought in the big cage and security guards, and here is the old colonel in the white suit and bought in a two million in cash and that made a hit, and he dashed on the Lawrence Welk show, he was on What’s My Line, Paul Hornung helped me get him on What’s My Line, 90:00and it just had to be created, just had to, that’s why the more you absorb yourself in something you come up with answers, and I absorbed myself in this and came up with the answers we needed and I am not too bashful to ask for help or to ask for advice and I was confused a lot then, because I had no, nothing to compare those answers to now, I, and I think Jessie Jackson said you get your learning from your burning, I learned a lot more from mistakes than I ever did from my successes. The successes all came eas. . .easy, they came natural, and. . . .

White: What, what would you say, I mean. . .what were the major hurdles, or, or perhaps, what was a, a mistake that you learned from, in those early, say five years?

Brown: at KFC?

White: At KFC.

Brown: Well, I never reached a level where I was comfortable. The Peter Principle was always nipping at me, okay, and I was always just learning one level and then we went to another level, like we’d just got in this business we are making money, I didn’t make money before, and at, once I was in it, I realized hey I’m going to be a millionaire 91:00at this, hey man, this is great, I knew it was going to be, you know, great, but I never could. . .( ) to money, then I went public and so then I went public and I had a whole public market to try to meet projections and do audits, and had a public responsibility, and then next we had to. . .we had three-thousand franchise stores, and one company owned store, we didn’t know how to run a store, we knew how to teach it, we knew how to cook the chicken, but. . . our franchisees knew more about that than we did, I went the week before last to Nashville and they honored the, the original KFC franchisee E. P. (Harmit?) for his forty years and, so I went down there, and Dave Thomas, you know, who owns Wendy’s, Dave used to work for me, and. . .and so, we both, we both appeared down there. But we had to, I had to learn how to run stores, because then to make big money we used that high multiple stock to buy back stores and we bought back six hundred. Don Greer who was my vice chairman 92:00works for me now, he handles all my franchising. So, we go back you know, almost twenty-five years and. . . and we were very aquis. . .I never made an acquisition in my life, I made fifty-two, but I am a lawyer, I know how to count and. . .we were buying back these earnings for five or six times earnings and our stock was selling for sixty or seventy times earnings, so we could just multiply earnings every year, that’s how we kept our stock up, but our stock went from fifteen to four hundred, but that was a nerve racking, the way of the world was on my shoulders, because I was chief executive, I was running it, and. . .and Jack was m. . .getting more and more retired towards the later years, he was a good partner, but he was sort of my counselor, and while I was the power driving force, he was a good counsel and, and. . .( ), we went public, that was a whole new dimension when we bought back stores, and it was a new dimension, it was another dimension when we went public, I mean when we went overseas, international, 93:00and then you had to make big decisions like do you go on computers with pencil and paper, pencil and paper I knew what the numbers were, and put all our stuff in, in computers, George (Fisher?) was my computer guide, do you George in Louisville?

White: I know the name.

Brown: Yeah, and, and I said, “what if doesn’t work, I mean what if you lose all your inventory, all your accounts receivable and. . .” and this back, you know, and so the computers were sort of a modern thing back in the early. . . .

White: When did you computerize?

Brown: I guess sixty-y-y-y-y-eight? We didn’t have an organizational chart until ’69, I remember I was trying to hire the president of International for. . .the Holiday Inn, and I, I was talking about our organization to the--Holiday Inn was a giant back then, and this guy named Jeff (Mann?) he was president of International and I was interviewing him to be president of KFC, and. . .I said, “we’re just now working on our organizational chart,” and I had nineteen people reporting to me, and he was laughing at--the Holiday Inn had just put their organizational chart together the year before. We were just figuring it out, and as you, 94:00as I look back, we made very few mistakes, we didn’t get it complicated, we were on the top of the business, and we were innovative to make decisions and, and most of them worked, I mean like automation was the key. That was a major decision, what if that machine didn’t work, what if it lasted six months out there in the stores and they all broke down all over the country, and then you don’t have any cookers to serve chicken to the public, so there were some major decisions and, and you learn how to make those decisions and you learn how to build up safeguards for them and, most of it just throwing in the heat of the battle and figuring it out and coming out with, with the right decisions.

White: When did you ( ). . . .

Brown: And I, I guess the only thing that I regret is I didn’t have time to get involved in management team, but we were growing so fast I had to bring franchisees in from the field to make up my management team, they didn’t work for anybody and, and they were chicken cooks, I mean chicken fryers, and. . .and so I never had a chance, I would have never sold KFC, if I could of built a management team, but I was also young, 95:00you know, you, you learn how to judge people, I learned through women, women are suspect to people because they’ve been pursued and chased and conned all their life and they look at an interview like what’s wrong with this person and what are their motives, instead of what’s right about them. I always look, boy this looks scandalous ( ) salesman, and so I got burned and now I’m very good at picking people up because I look at what’s wrong and, you know, what’s, what’s his short comings and, and what’s the problems you’re going to be instead of just you know, fill in the spot. I used to, we were growing so fast, anybody walking that door they looked like they could fill the spot, I was ready to sign them up [Laughing], but, I learned a lot and that’s why when I was governor I’d four, five, six interviews, and I was very deliberate, and I took, you know, I loo. . .I took the opposite approach of what’s wrong about this instead of what’s right, and it, it, I think I learned a lot of growing up on that.

White: So, there were a few people you hired that did not work out.

Brown: Well, no, I had all these professional managers, all these great resumes. I was quoted in a book, ‘Swimming with the Sharks,’ I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Harvey MacKay but he re. . .had 96:00a best seller, ‘Swimming With the Sharks,’ I’ll give you the shirt off my back, or something, or beware of the man that give you the shirt off, of his back, but one of the paragraphs was. . . he quoted me as the lead on the paragraph, it says, “there is no such thing as a bad resume,” and I was reading his resume, boy this guy looks great, let’s hire him, sign him up, I wonder if we can him, the guy had been out of work for six months [Laughing] looking for a job. But that was just naiveté, I didn’t think it was my youth, I was only thirty-four, thirty-five, and. . .but now, you know, I’ve learned how to pick people, I don’t pick them on resumes, I don’t pick them on titles, I pick on. . .and it’s hard to get good references, so you really have to n. . .you know, there is an art to doing that, and. . .and so, I have gotten much better, I mean the cabinet I picked, I think the Courier Journal is the one that said, you know, he is the ablest cabinet in Kentucky’s history. It took a lot of time, and, and I went for the, I went for the best I could get and. . .and got most all of them, but that’s just, you know, that’s part of the experience, that’s why when I hire people, 97:00I look for experience, I look for his good old common sense, I look for high energy.

White: When did you go international?

Brown: Oh, another problem I had is, is, I, I, before I get to that, is, is I didn’t understand about bureaucracies and, and turf building and posturing and I thought we’re all in this together we’re all on the same team, and everybody drove me crazy about you know, gossiping behind each other and you know, each other turn everybody else down to want to get, move closer to the throne, and all my head guy, because I wanted everybody to love each other you know, and I was naïve, so I got, I got a good burning from that, and which I didn’t when I was governor. I remember. . . .

White: You did or didn’t?

Brown: I did not, I didn’t tolerate it, because I remember Frank (Metz?) and Larry Townsend who were my two closest confidents they wanted to get rid of George Adkins, and George was my secretary of finance, and the fellow dropped out of the governor’s race and you know, good clean cut, well intended young man, and and. . .I didn’t know what they were talking about, 98:00but they were jealous because George was a real political pro, and they were afraid he was leaking things and making them look bad, or they couldn’t get things timely enough out of finance, and I said, well you write down all your complaints, they said, “John, you got to get rid of him, he is poison to us, you got to get rid of him,” and I said, “well you all come in and I’ll listen to you,” and so they sat down had a big yellow pad, Frank did, and these are my two best friends in government, and so I said, “hold on just a minute,” and I said, “June,” June Taylor was my secretary at the time, I said, “would you ask George to step over here a minute?” George, a big six-foot-six imposing guy, very articulate and knew government backwards and forwards, a lot better than. . . Frank and Larry do, and so they went through, I said “Larry and Frank here got some concerns, and, and some, frankly, complaints, very serious about you and, and. . .and your department, and I’d like for them to discuss it with you.” And after about the third. . .they sounded like a couple of little old maids and he just, you know, knocked them out of the park [Laughing] everything they complained about, and so they went out with their tails 99:00tucked between their legs, I didn’t have another person come to me backbiting somebody else and I put a stop to it, but I, you learned that you’re your experience, and. . .but anyway KFC got frustrating and that’s where the Peter Principle got to me, because I never ran a big organization and I didn’t know that’s just part of the course, if you tolerate gossip, you’ll get it all you want, and, and so now I, I learned that lesson and, then we went international, and that was a new dimension and, I did it very simple, a new approach in KFC today or until the last couple of years was the largest fast food company overseas. I didn’t do it the professional way, most companies like McDonald’s they would send the real estate person over and the finance person and the R&D person, and an operations person, and a marketing person. They study for five years! And I sent a young man by the name of (Loy Weston?) to Japan. I sent another young man named Bob LaPointe to Australia, I told each one of them the very same advice, I said, “build one, 100:00if it works, build two.” And they went over there and, and Lloyd built seven hundred and just it’s, it was the biggest fast-food company in Japan and here is the report on Japan right here, I was interviewing somebody on the. . .on the. . .Japanese marketing, they were just giving me some reports on it, and in Australia they built a hundred stores before any of the other fast-food companies came into Australia. And that was just keeping it simple, it didn’t get, didn’t have to be ( ), that’s the worst that’d happen, we blow two hundred thousand dollars on the whole country, but we learned, and. . .so anyway that, that simple approach has sort have been. . .been my philosophy, I learned some of the hard way.

White: How long did you stay in at KFC?

Brown: A little over eight years. We bought the company in, in March 4th, we closed in 1964, I sold out I think in May of ’71, so 101:00that would be May. . .say four or five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eight years.

White: And what year did you go international?

Brown: Oh, I think I sent (Loy?) to Japan in 1969, we signed a joint venture with Mitsubishi, which is mor. . .second or third largest company in Japan, it was a great experience, and I went to Australia--those are the two countries, we s. . .I sent a representative, Don Felini to Germany, Europe was a tough market. But Australia and, and Japan, I guess KFC, their big growth is overseas. They built four hundred stores overseas last year; I think forty domestically.

END OF INTERVIEW