Oral History Interview with Edward F. Prichard, Jr., November 15, 1982

Hellard:An interview with Edward F. Prichard conducted on the fifteenth day of November, 1982 at his law office in , by Vic Hellard. Mr. Prichard I think the last—our first tape ended with your—with our discussion of some of the political activities you were involved in during your high school years, and we may have just about completed your high school years in terms of the influences in your life, and teachers, and—and your high school principal, what—can you think of anything else you need to add? Those formative years in high school, even about your political activities outside of school itself, but it is a—was it during those high school years that you decided that you wanted to be active in politics as a—as an elected, I mean office seeker?

:I don’t know that I ever decided that. I—I—I certainly never ruled it out, but I don’t really know that I ever had absolutely overweening dedication to seeking some particular office. I’d have to say that the possibility always was there and it was attractive, but I’ve never felt that if I didn’t hold elective office my life was a failure or would be frustrated. But certainly the possibility of—of that sort of a thing was opening up appealed to me at that time.

Hellard:Were there not people, such as perhaps Mr. [Pearce] Paton, who—who just assumed that you’d go on to seek public office?

:Oh yes, a lot of people did, thought I should, thought I would. And all those sorts of things are very easily said to a young boy when he’s growing up and shows some interest, and perhaps some little familiarity with the intricacies of politics. It’s very easy for people to say those things and they mean them—I don’t mean they were insincere—but I’m sure they had some affect on me.

Hellard:In your family life you discussed from early childhood, I believe, the issues current to the day, was there ever a time when you—you distinguished between issues and politics per se, and where you just got caught up in the game of politics? Especially in your younger day, did you make a distinction between being for Mr. Paton and looking at how he operated the office, so to speak, the functions of government as opposed to the actual politicking and campaigning for office?

:Well I’m sure I thought about both. How finely I drew that distinction I don’t know. It happened that in the case of the people I was closest to, like Mr. Paton, that issue was never very acutely drawn. ’Cause I think it was universally accepted in that county that Mr. Paton was an outstandingly efficient clerk. He was reelected many times, and most times without opposition. Not just because he was popular, and not just because he was a fine political organizer, but because he was generally reputed to conduct a model office. Many times he was audited and nearly always the auditors who examined his office gave him glowing reports. He never was required to pay back money for excess fees. He never was criticized for any lapses or inefficiencies in his office. So I never felt the necessity of drawing that particular distinction about him. The truth is that in at that time we had a considerable stability in the political structure. The same crowd of office holders stayed in office during all the period of my youth and my teenage years. And they were all generally considered to be pretty—pretty competent officials, and their services were considered pretty satisfactory by the people. For example, I referred to the sheriff’s office the last time we talked. Beginning with Mr. [William] McClintock’s or even before Mr. McClintock’s occupancy of that office, it was handed down from one sheriff to his deputys over a period of twenty-five, thirty years, from roughly nineteen and thirteen to nineteen and forty-one. Mr. Talbot was the sheriff, that was Billy Baldwin’s grandfather. Mr. McClintock was his deputy. Mr. McClintock was the sheriff and he was succeeded by Mr. Peel Collier who was his brother-in-law. Mr. Peel Collier was succeeded by Mr. Bob Guilkey from who was his deputy. He was succeeded by Mr. Doug Thomas who was his deputy. And Mr. Doug Thomas was succeeded by Mr. Luther Rice who was his deputy. And Mr. Luther Rice was succeeded by Mr. Silas Bedford who was his deputy. And that—that chain—

Hellard:So it was—so in the case of so many counties at that time it was whose turn it was to run?

:Whose turn, and it was the deputy’s turn. Then they broke that chain in 1941 when Mr. McClintock backed the losing—the losing ticket and a new ticket came in and they stayed in for—for years then by the same process. So we had a lot—we had the—Judge [George] Batterton was the county judge from nineteen and seventeen to some time, I believe 1940—what ever it was, seven or nine—whenever they had—whenever he did run again. We had great continuity in the courthouse and by and large that continuity resulted in fairly good government by the standards of that day.

Hellard:Let’s talk about your—your completion of your high school. At—at what point did you decide to go to ?

:Oh, when I was young, when I was young. I suppose some time when I—early in my high school life, or even a little earlier.

Hellard:What—what’d you base the decision on?

:Oh, it’s hard to say. I expect as much as anything else, my boyhood worship of Woodrow Wilson, who had been president of Princeton, and was a graduate of . I had—I had friends in who had attended . My next-door neighbor James Wilson, who’s still practicing law over in , was about two years ahead of me in high school, he went to . We were close friends and neighbors. There was a gentleman over there, Mr. John Brennan B-R-E double N-A-N but pronounced Brennan [emphasis on second syllable], who was a great friend of my mother’s and father’s, graduated from Princeton in about 1892, was a close friend of mine, always urged me to attend. Mr. Sam Clay, the father of the present Sam Clay, who’s chairman of the board of the Bourbon Agricultural Bank, attended . And I don’t know, I just had that—that general feeling, and I, that’s where I wanted to go.

Hellard:Did you even consider any other school?

:No, never did seriously.

Hellard:And what year did you enter ?

:The fall of nineteen hundred and thirty-one, middle of the Depression.

Hellard:Let me backtrack just a moment. At our last discussion, we talked about the fairly liberal attitude of the school system.

:Uh-huh.

Hellard:How would you—would you contrast that system which you attended as opposed to education generally today, say at the same level?

:Well, in the first place, it was academically more rigorous. We had a group of good teachers. They were strong disciplinarians. I don’t just mean by discipline maintaining order in the classroom—there was that all right—but intellectual discipline. We—we—the teachers set high standards for us. There were no wide range of electives, elective subjects open to the students. Much of our courses— many of our courses were structured. Latin was required through the sophomore year, for example. And indeed, many students took Latin through the entire high school period, as I did, on into college. Foreign language other than Latin was required, mathematics were required, science was required, English was required, history was required. If you took all those courses, there were a few electives left, such as, you know, the nearest thing to vocational education was what we called mechanical training or mechanical drawing, typing, home—home economics—those were the electives. But everybody took those basic courses no matter whether they intended to go to college or not. That was perhaps lopsided in some ways, but it did give a basic core of general education to everybody that completed that high school. I think that’s very different from what prevails today. And while I think that may have been an overemphasis to some degree, it was far preferable to the wide range of choices students have today. We didn’t have any easy courses, and students were not passed just because they sat there for nine months. And if they didn’t, if they had some lack of attainment, they had to go to summer school and make it up. We had an active summer school every summer there. I—I just think that was very different. It was—may be considered now old fashioned, but it certainly prepared me well for college. Because when I went to Princeton they didn’t—there was no such word then as advanced placement. But certain students who were considered to be pretty well prepared were allowed to take one or two sophomore courses their freshman year in college. And I was allowed to take a course, for instance, in political science, which was a sophomore course, but I was allowed to take it in my freshman year. ’Cause it was not so much thought that I was smarter than anybody else, but that I was just well prepared, and I was. We were all required to take a very rigorous college entrance examination at that time to get into Princeton. That was long before the days of SATCs [SATs], things of that sort. Most colleges let you in with a high school diploma, but Princeton and some of those colleges had requirements for college entrance examinations. I remember taking mine in Lexington, took part of them my—end of my junior year, the rest of them the end of my senior year. And depending on one’s grades in those tests, one was permitted maybe to—to go ahead and take one or two sophomore courses. So I felt that I was well prepared, not that I was so much brighter than anybody else, but that I was just well prepared in that school. And other persons who went to that—to those colleges in those years were able to do the same thing. I don’t think that was true of all the public schools systems in central Kentucky at that time, but I think it was true of certain ones and particularly ones like Male High School in Louisville or Henry Clay in Lexington, and some of the independent—that was in the days when you still had many independent school districts in the cities or the county seats—and many of them had very, I think Frankfort was considered to have a good strong academic program.

Hellard:Let me get this match lit for you Prich.

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:There you are. Well, how old were you when you attended—when you entered Princeton?

Prichard:Sixteen.

Hellard:Did that—did that age difference—I’m assuming there was about a two-year age difference—

Prichard:Yeah.

Hellard:—between you and your fellow beginning classmates.

Prichard:That’s right.

Hellard:Did that cause you any difficulty?

Prichard:Yeah. Not academically.

Hellard:Well, socially?

Prichard:Yes indeed. I felt, you know, there were two reasons that I probably felt somewhat ill at ease socially when I entered Princeton. And that feeling probably continued during the first two years that I was in college. And those two reasons were, one, that I was younger, and you know, the difference between sixteen and eighteen, certainly in those days, was a substantial difference emotionally and socially, and—and you know, I felt a little bit awkward about that. The second thing was that in those days the great preponderance of the freshman that entered college like Princeton came from the various preparatory schools, private schools like Exeter, and Andover, and Lawrenceville, and Hill, and Choate, and Woodberry Forest. And those boys that came to Princeton from those schools came into a much familiar milieu than a boy coming from a small-town high school in Kentucky. Now that doesn’t mean there weren’t other classmates of mine who were from that same background, but we were a minority, and we felt a little bit less at ease and in less familiar surroundings than they did.

Hellard:Were you treated as a country bumpkin?

Prichard:Oh, I never thought that, but I think I was probably regarded as a bit different. I don’t know whether they went so far as to say a country bumpkin; I mean, I wasn’t.

Hellard:Well, I mean, as a—as a—as a group—

Prichard:Well, we were, no, we—we—we were probably considered a little bit just a lesser—a lesser breed.

Hellard:I see.

Prichard:I don’t know whether they centered or zeroed in on the country side of it, it’s just that we were less sophisticated, less familiar with what might have been called, in a loose sense, the great world. And it took me a couple of years to overcome that. I think that once I had finished my sophomore year, I began to feel much less that way. Think I was much more accepted.

Hellard:Did you do anything particularly to—to overcome that, or is it just the maturing process of being there two years?

Prichard:Oh, I think being there for two years. When a group of boys, young men, whatever you want to call them, have associated with each other over a period of more than two years, I think they begin to feel more at ease with each other, and the various differences are less acutely perceived. I suppose the fact that I did reasonably well had something to do with it, although that can be exacerbating, you know.

Hellard:Uh-huh.

Prichard:You know, there were probably people that thought that, you know, that I thought I was smart. I was perhaps a bit brash in some ways, you know. Was always the one that talked up a lot in my classes, expressed myself rather freely, particularly after I became associated with the college newspaper. And I guess in some ways I attracted more attention than some people did, and that had both its good and bad sides as far as acceptance by others is concerned. You know, some said “he’s proved himself,” others said “he thinks he’s smart doesn’t he?” And so I never quite knew. It was always a mixed bag.

Hellard:What about any—did you have any professors your first year that you particularly remember as being good or having influence on you? That must have been a very difficult year for you, being so young.

Prichard:Well, yes, it was hard; yeah, I had to work hard. My—my marks in my first year were—were all right, but they weren’t stellar. You know, the standards of achievement and requirements were quite rigorous. And I don’t mean that I, you know, came close to flunking, but my marks weren’t nearly as good as they were later. And yes, I can remember some teachers that I had my freshman year. They weren’t the teachers that I became personally closest to throughout my—my college experience, but I remember them. Particularly I remember a freshman history teacher I had named Pomfret P-O-M-F-R-E-T, who later became president of William and Mary. He was an excellent teacher, and I enjoyed him very much. And he had a lot of influence on me. Jack Pomfret.

Hellard:In what manner?

Prichard:Well, he had a sardonic way about him, sort of objective and—and satirical attitude toward historical experience that was interesting to me. And—and one thing I certainly remember that impressed itself on me: it was from him and his—and our study of history in freshman class, which was sort of a world civilization class, that I began to appreciate the irrationality of racism. I’m, you know, in my own childhood, all the attitude of my family on the matter of race was very tolerant, but it was more in the line that, you know, you had an obligation not to—not to put down, or impose upon, or exploit weaker people; that—that one abstains from the mistreatment of people that belong to another race or group. But I don’t suppose in my family we ever went, you know, clearly into the intellectual basis of racism and its shallowness. But in that freshman history course, we began with the sort of anthropological view. We studied a little anthropology before we got into ancient history. And it was in that time that the views of early racists like Houston Stewart Chamberlain, some of the Germans, were explored in our history class. And I remember learning from the lectures of Jack Pomfret, and the things, text we studied on anthropology, how shallow the intellectual basis for racism was, and that, I think, affected my whole attitude toward race through the rest of my life. Then of course we, you know, we studied ancient history in that same course, Greek and Roman history, and that, you know, widened—not that we hadn’t in our Latin courses in high school done some exploration of that, but we never studied ancient history in depth in high school. We studied European history, and English history, and American history. But I began to in—in my Latin courses and my history courses I began to get an appreciation of the—of the ancient civilizations, Greece and Rome, and, I suppose that and my sophomore political science course. We read the—you know, as part of our reading material in political science we read The New Republic every week and had a partial discussion of—of current events in the political science course, as well we—as well as the, you know, theories of political science. And I can remember very well my eyes being opened by reading some of the comments on the economic policies of the [Herbert] Hoover administration in—in The New Republic. I can still remember one of the first articles we read in that course. I believe it was written by either Stuart Chase or by one of the editors at New Republic named George Soule, S-O-U-L-E. And the title of it was “Pink Pills for Panic.” [Hellard laughs] And it—it analyzed the approach of the Hoover administration to the—to the Depression. Those things stick in my mind. All my courses I—I—I’m interested in, those are things that just sort of stick in my mind now, fifty years later.

Hellard:Did you immediately become active in the debate club?

Prichard:Oh early, and all through college, certainly did.

Hellard:And what other kind of outside activities did you have when you got there?

Prichard:Well, the Daily Princetonian was the other one that was important for me. I became what you call a candidate, that meant you went into competition to be elected to the board of the Daily Princetonian. It was a daily newspaper, a very good daily newspaper. I would say—I’m trying to think how many pages. I believe it was either six or eight pages every day during the week, we didn’t publish seven days, I guess we published five or six days a week. And I became a candidate and was elected to the board at the end of my freshman year and served on the paper all the rest of the time through college. And that was a tremendous experience for me. One thing is it—it helped to improve my ability to write. Just as debating and public speaking helped to improve my ability to speak, so the newspaper would improve my ability to write because the pressure of the deadline is a tremendous— You know, Dr. [Samuel] Johnson said, “There’s nothing so concentrates the mind as a sentence to be hanged.” Well, there’s nothing that so concentrates one’s ability to write on short notice as the necessity to meet a deadline for a story. And I’d always been afflicted with what I use to call pen paralysis, of sitting down to write something, and putting it off, and thinking about it, and then putting it off to the last minute. And I acquired a certain fluency in writing from my experience on the Daily Princetonian. Also, the strokes to the ego that came from seeing one’s own handywork appear in print is a little bit of a heady wine, and I enjoyed that. I’m afraid it gave me a little bit of an exhilaration, sense of power, sense of being able to influence other people’s perceptions of events. And that’s good in some ways and not so good in others.

Hellard:I would say that’s an accurate perception. What—first of all, who did the electing to the board?

Prichard:Oh, the members of the board. They—they—it was completely free from any control by the college or the university administration. No censorship. No—it was a private organization and it was operated in a modest way for profit. After setting aside certain reserves for maintaining the stability and continuity of the paper—and it was a very old college paper—the revenues in excess of expenses were distributed among the editors in proportion to their responsibility. And that was helpful to me. Remember this was in the depths of the Depression and I was on a scholarship, and you know my family was hard up during the depression, subject to severe financial reverses, and anything that I could do to pick up extra money was a tremendous help. And I can recall that the—the first year I served on the board of the editors I think I got $200 or $250, and maybe the second year a little more and the third year a little more. So that—that was a, you know, that was a lot of money then, a lot of help.

Hellard:What were your responsibilities—

Prichard:My tuition at Princeton each year during those years was $450. Now that didn’t include room and board, but that was my tuition. So you can see how far $250 went, that was over half my tuition and that made a difference. And, you know, gradually I—I was on the board and my senior year I was the editorial page editor, which was the highest I ever got. I did not become editor-in-chief or chairman of the—of the paper. One of my close friends, a boy named Francis Smith, was the editor-in-chief. I wrote a column my senior year, which incidentally had the title “Left Turn.”

Hellard:That’s interesting.

Prichard:Well I was fairly far to the left in those days. I don’t mean that I ever, you know, joined any communist organizations or anything like that, but I had a pretty leftist approach. We were in the depths of the Depression and it was much easier to espouse radical measures for social and economic reconstruction than it might be in a later time when things were somewhat different.

Hellard:What other responsibilities did you have during the—your time—

Prichard:Time what?

Hellard:—on the paper? What was your first—your initial responsibilities? You looking for your coffee or your pills?

Prichard:Well it’s my juice, my pills and my juice.

Hellard:Here’s your juice.

Prichard:Well let me have the pills first ’cause I swallow them. Thank you. Well—

Hellard:Here’s your juice.

Prichard:Uh-huh. Thank you. Well, when I was first—you know, first I served as a reporter. And I would write interviews with visiting celebrities. I would cover various lectures by special lecturers. Or I would just be assigned to cover different—you know, sometimes I’d cover the chapel ceremonies on Sunday and write them—write a little article about them.

Hellard:Now, how come you developed this interest in journalism?

Prichard:Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know how. I guess I’d always been an eager reader of the newspapers. You know, when I was young and in high school, I read the Lexington paper every day, didn’t read the Courier-Journal that regularly; in Bourbon County we were not heavy subscribers to the Courier-Journal at that time. We read the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Lexington Herald, and we took the Sunday New York Times. And, you know, we had magazines at home, The Atlantic always was in our home, and Harpers and the American Mercury and other—other magazines.

Hellard:How did you maintain contact with the folks back home, with your family?

Prichard:Well, I—

Hellard:Or did you—did you—did that especially—was that a special a concern of yours at the time?

Prichard:Well, I don’t know if it was special concern, it was a concern. I wrote home very week and they wrote me every week. You know, the long distance call was then usually something that took place only if somebody was real sick, or broke, or dead. You know, the long distance call was still not the regular currency of social intercourse that it’s become today.

Hellard:And is that how you kept up with news events from back home?

Prichard:Oh, no, mother—I believe she sent me the paper. I believe I got the Lexington paper up there, maybe she’d mail it to me after she read it, I don’t know that I got it directly from—

Hellard:Well, what were your family circumstances during the Depression? Was your father still in the horse business at that time?

Prichard:Well, he—he was—

Hellard:The automobile business?

Prichard:Oh no, he hadn’t been in the automobile business since the early ’20s. He continued to farm and to be in the horse business until, you know, the Depression sort of broke him. And he and his mother lost most of their—their land, most all their land. And then he started in the wholesale beer business in 1933 and stayed in that for twenty-five more years. And then he got back into farming later, acquired some more land and got in the dairy business.

Hellard:How was he received by the—by the horsey set of the—of the old line horse people in Bourbon County and central Kentucky when he entered the horse business?

Prichard:Well of course he entered it when I was very young so I—but I—I assume all right. I never felt any—any barriers. Now the Hancocks were very close friends of our family, for example. You know there weren’t a whole lot of horse people in Bourbon County at that time. There were—you could pretty nearly name on the fingers of one hand, maybe two, all the people in Bourbon County that were active in the horse business. I can pretty near name them now: the Hancocks; Charleton Clay, Mrs. Hancock’s brother; Ed Thomas, who’s still living; Mr. Tyler Young, got into it about that time, and is still living in his—at the age of about ninety-seven; Mrs. Simms out at Alapa. And those were the main ones, they were a few others but they—there just weren’t that many people in the horse business in Bourbon County at that time.

Hellard:In your freshman year at Princeton were you active in any other organizations? Did you join a fraternity?

Prichard:Well, you don’t have fraternities at Princeton. I joined a club in my—you join those at the end of your sophomore year—and I joined a club at the end of that—that year.

Hellard:And how did you spend the first summer between your freshman and sophomore year?

Prichard:Came home.

Hellard:Did you work during that summer?

Prichard:Well I’m trying to think if I did. If I did it was maybe around the farm, something like that. I don’t remember working—I don’t remember working in a regular job outside the family. In fact, I can’t remember any summer during those four years when I did any regular salaried work other than just working around the farm or working maybe some in my grandfather’s wholesale grocery.

Hellard:Well, what about the remainder of your years at Princeton? What—what club did you join?

Prichard:I joined the club known as the Court Club. There were eighteen clubs and that was one of them.

Hellard:And they were just—they were just social clubs, public service?

Prichard:Well, eating, eating clubs. You ate there you didn’t live there. They were not places where you lived; they were just places where you took your meals.

Hellard:And what about your—your professors that you had your junior and senior year?

Prichard:Well I had much—I had much closer ties with members of the faculty in the last three years than I had the first year. You know, freshmen are not calculated to have as close a touch with the faculty members as the upperclassmen. I mean I—I think you’d understand that. Most of the freshman classes are—are fairly large classes, they are lectures and then sections. Sophomore classes are smaller and then in junior and senior years at Princeton your classes are mostly—you have lectures but you—in addition to the lectures there were small groups of six and eight students called preceptorials, with a preceptor, and those preceptorial groups would meet once a week for—for two hours. And that was very intimate discussion and brought the faculty and the students very close together. And I formed some very close friendships and associations with faculty members the last three years. In the sophomore year I can remember very well, one was a professor who’s still living from whom I had a letter this very summer, he’s eight-three years old. He was a young assistant professor, named Willard Thorpe, and I suppose I had the closest relationship with him of any faculty remember—any faculty member during my Princeton years. He taught Victorian poetry my sophomore year. He taught American literature later. And we became very close and he had—had an apartment on Nassau Street, he and Mrs. Thorpe. She was very brilliant. She was a scholar too. Her name was Margaret Farrand, F-A-R-R-A-N-D, and her father was a secretary of the board of trustees at Princeton. Her uncle was either president or professor of history in Cornell. And she was—she was very bright, very intellectual. And they had sort of a little open house for their students on Sunday and served tea. And some of us use to go there to tea rather regularly on Sunday afternoons, and those were very, you know, close knit, important things to us. And when he retired in 1965 a group of us had a dinner for him at our thirtieth reunion at Princeton. And he’s still living, he’s a widower, lives in Princeton, has a graduate student that sort of looks after him in his home, he’s not institutionalized and— Otis Singletary took a course with him when Otis was at Princeton in the Navy. And they are great friends, and Otis had been to visit him, and so he wrote me this letter this summer and I was delighted to hear from him.

Hellard:You going to light that?

Prichard:I—I can do it.

Hellard:Here I’ve got them right here.

Prichard:Oh, thanks. I had another professor my sophomore year who taught me European history. He was a graduate of Yale, his name was Walter Phelps Hall. He was deaf and wore a hearing aid, even from the time he was young, and we called him Buzzer Hall. And he was a very dramatic lecturer. And his lectures in modern European history were attended not only by his own students but by overflow crowds of other students that wanted to hear him, and had certain famous lectures that drew a packed house. One was a lecture on Garibaldi, another was a lecture on Disraeli and Gladstone, and those—another was a lecture on Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt as contrasting personalities. And when he would give those lectures to his sophomore class, the room would be packed, people would be standing in the aisles, standing around the back, and when he finished they would stand up on the chairs and cheer him and cheer him and cheer him and throw their notebooks up in the air. And it was a very dramatic performance. Another thing I remember about my sophomore year is that, as I’ve said, Willard Thorpe’s course in Victorian poetry. And I can remember the three or four poets that we studied, Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and Swindler, others too, but those were the core of the course. And he opened my eyes to many of the subtleties of literary criticism. And I from then on, you know I’d always been a reader, but that gave me a new—new interest in, and a new sort of dimension in, literature and literary matters. I first studied economics my sophomore year. I don’t know that my teacher was, you know, particularly great. That was a basic economics course, and I remember the professor and he was all right, but most of the lectures were given by the different professors. It wasn’t a single lecturer. And I—I enjoyed, you know, that’s when I began to be interested in some of the theories and issues of economics. All those things came my sophomore year, and I continued to take Latin, I studied—I guess I studied the hardest during our sophomore year. And we had a very elegant and sophisticated Latin professor named Duane Reed Stewart, who I believe was a graduate of the University of Michigan, but had been one of Wilson’s preceptors that he brought to Princeton when he was president. And he was a most elegant and sophisticated man and I thoroughly enjoyed that course. Those are things I remember from my sophomore year.

Hellard:What about the junior and senior years?

Prichard:Oh, then I—of course my—

Hellard:You were coming into your own during that—

Prichard:I was much more active, much more at presence around there, and not meaning that in very egotistical sense, but I lost whatever anonymity I might have had in the earlier time. I became a voice on the paper. And you know, I may not have been exactly appreciated, but I was listened to. And we formed a Democratic club somewhere along in that period, probably in 1932. And I was elected president of it, and we—we, you know, went around and campaigned for [Franklin] Roosevelt in Trenton, nearby places, in 1932. And I got to be sort of active in local politics. Got to acquire some little acquaintance with the local New Jersey politics. In those days, Frank Hague was the Democratic boss in New Jersey.

Hellard:Did you have the opportunity to meet him?

Prichard:Never. Oh I guess once, but never met him really—close handed. But I met the local politicians in Mercer County and around, and went around and made speeches at street corners and things. And one of our teachers ran for the legislature and we helped elect him. And he later went up to Darton, was elected to the New Hampshire legislature. And we— I got to be more and more active in college debating. And—we had a—a very interesting chapel at Princeton, a beautiful really rather pretentious modern Gothic cathedral designed by Ralph Adams Cram. Probably wasn’t too appropriate, but it was very impressive. And we had a dean of the chapel who in effect was the college minister, named Robert R. Wickes, and he was a very unusual minister. He was a socialist. He was a, you know, I won’t say unorthodox exactly, but he was probably a follower of what we would now call neoorthodoxy, the theology of people like [Reinhold] Niebuhr and [Paul] Tillich. And that was very unusual. And we would have visiting preachers. He preached every other Sunday. And we had compulsory chapel at Princeton during my time. You had to go half the Sundays and you signed a ticket and that’s the way they found out when you went. And of course if you wanted to cheat you got somebody else to sign your name. But I usually liked to go, because we had wonderful sermons. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Niebuhr, Norman Thomas preached in that chapel, Paul Tillich, many, many outstanding ministers. And the—it was really very much worth while. And I—I use to—use to write editorials about the chapel sermons, newspaper stories, and Dean Wickes use to always praise those things, thought I did a good job on them, and naturally that made me like to do them. We had a, oh, there were other professors I could talk about. I had a professor of American history my junior year. I majored in history. I—I entered the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, but that required that you majored in one of three social sciences—politics, economics, or history—but you took courses in all three of those disciplines. And I majored in history. And when in the—in the—each semester you would have one course, the equivalent of one course, was what we—what they called the Conference in Public and International Affairs, where you would act to deal with some special issue, like article ten of the League of Nations, or disarmament, or reparations, things of that sort. And we would have outside speakers come, you know, ambassadors, Wall Street bankers, labor leaders, and politicians from other countries. And that—that was a very interesting course. But of course my major was in history, and I had some very fine professors. I had a professor of American history named Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, who was a great authority on the colonial history. He had written a very fine book called The Founding of Virginia. His father was librarian at the University of Virginia. His wife was a native of Lexington. And, in fact, I—I took her to dinner about ten years ago when she came down here to visit one of her girlhood friends who’s still living in Lexington. And—

Hellard:Did he have any special influence on you?

Prichard:Well, a lot. He was a very charming person and a very fine scholar, yes. Not a political influence, intellectual influence, I don’t know that he was that much— He was probably a Wilsonian Democrat in his philosophy, but I—I didn’t feel terribly, you know, influenced in the sense of influencing my direction of thought. But he certainly influenced me in scholarship and careful consideration of historical matters. Then I had another professor of American history named Clifton Hall, a bachelor with strong convictions, very liberal, and very passionate in his views. Now his nickname was Beppo, we called him Beppo Hall. And he certainly was an influential professor. From him, I remember his lecture on the populist movement and culminating in their convention of 1892, how that was when I first began to be deeply interested in those political movements like the Granger Movement, and the Populist Movement, and the Greenback Movement, those rebel movements in—in the late nineteenth century. And that got me caught up in write—everybody has to write a senior thesis at Princeton. Theoretically everybody takes an honors course at Princeton and everybody must do— In the senior year you take only, at that time only four courses, and your fifth course was one-fifth of your academic credit for your senior year, was your senior thesis. And I wrote my senior thesis under Dr. Wertenbaker, and it was on popular political movements in Kentucky, 1875 to 1900, dealing with [William] Goebel and the populists and the constitutional convention of 1891, all those Granger movements. And I got a prize for that thesis, got a high mark on it, and that enabled me to graduate summa cum laude. I also—I also had a very interesting professor in economics my senior year, named David Aloysius McCabe. He was a little peppery Irishman and he taught a course called “Theories and Problems of Social Reorganization,” which in effect deal with the economics of all the various movements to reorganize society: socialism, communism, you know, social credit, fascism, all those things. And that was a fascinating course. And I remember—this was typical of professor McCabe—there was an old building there called the School of Science, which was sort of a white elephant and everybody wished they could get rid of it, and finally it burned up and most people thought somebody set it on fire and that the university didn’t do much to stop the fire ’cause they wanted to sell it out to the insurance company. And so one of the reporters on the Princetonian called professor McCabe and said, “Professor McCabe, do you think that the fire at the School of Science was a result of incendiarism?” And he said, “Incendiarism hell, somebody set it on fire.” [Both laugh] That was a famous joke on McCabe. But—

Hellard:Now hold it just a minute Mr. Prichard.

[end of tape]

Let me get it started here.

Prichard:Well I haven’t talked to you at all about any of the friends and classmates.

Hellard:Well I’m going to get to that, I’m going to get to that. What I wanted to know though—my question is—

Prichard:Well, I’d say the difference was just age, maturity, you know, the difference between sixteen and twenty. Twenty was young to graduate, but sixteen was younger to matriculate. And you know I felt much more at ease the last two years, much more at home, much more, I don’t mean smug, but more satisfied with myself, less like a fish out of water. You know, regardless of how I was accepted, I was something of an accepted figure around the campus. You know, I was voted by my classmates, you know, I don’t know whether it’s second or third or most likely to succeed. I was voted one of—the student with the biggest drag with the faculty, whatever that meant. I—I just enjoyed myself more.

Hellard:What about your thought process—

Prichard:I had no trouble, I had, you know, I had no trouble with my courses. I could, you know, I didn’t feel any—any sense of apprehension the way I did the first year. Now the second—

Hellard:Do you think—do you think you came out with a more liberal attitude or a more ( ) attitude or a—

Prichard:Oh, I would think that I—

Hellard:( )

Prichard:Oh, I would think that I came out with a more liberal attitude, more radical attitude. I—I probably was pretty radical in those days. You know, I, as I say, I never joined any Communist organizations, but the editorials I wrote in the Princetonian and the column that I wrote had a pretty leftish slant. Now, I believed then, much more than I do now, that the wave of the future, and the—the desirable wave of the future, was some rather radical reorganization of our society in the direction of collectivism. And I was—had strong egalitarian impulses. I still have some of those, but I’m less, you know, less ideologically fixed about them now than I was then. And, on the other hand, I was much influenced by the theology of people like Niebuhr, and Tillich, and others of the what was then called the neoorthodox movement in theology, to have a certain religious dimension to my thought about social change and social institutions. And on the one hand, I—I still had this hopeful feeling that—that a collective—collectivist society would be an improvement in justice, and humanity, and compassion. But I also began to think, under the influence of people like Niebuhr, that no perfect social order would ever evolve, and that there would always be some kind of a moral judgment pronouncing the imperfections of any society, and its inadequacies, to be fatally flawed, and that there was always a constant tension between the idea of progress and the idea of justice on the one hand and the ideal morality on the other which found them all to come short. And that always left me for the rest of my life, and I began to acquire at that—with what I read. I can think of two books I read at Princeton that had profound influence on me in somewhat contradictory directions. And one was John Strachey’s The Coming Struggle for Power. John Strachey was an English upper-middle-class intellectual, nephew of Lytton Strachey, the writer who first left the Labor Party because he thought it wasn’t radical enough and joined Sir Oswald Mosley’s new party, which was sort of semi-fascism. And then he left that and became a Communist. And when he was a Communist, he wrote The Coming Struggle for Power and made a very powerful case, within liberal precepts, for Communism, trying to reconcile the ideals of liberal democracy with Communism. And that had a powerful effect on me, although I never became a Communist. On the other hand, I read at the same time Niebuhr’s Reflections on the End of an Era, which clarified for me the feeling that no society would ever be perfect, that every society would be flawed by—by the dangers of original sin, man’s inevitable bent for self aggrandizement. And those two divergent tendencies have always operated in my mind and thought ever since, and have always left me in some sort of uneasy and precarious balance in my own thinking. And much of the mold of all that, which has been with me the rest of my life, came right at Princeton. So I’m bound to say that my experience, and my studies, and my reading there had a profound effect on me which has lasted through my whole life. And I’m very grateful for it.

Hellard:Well, you have been quoted as saying—I’m paraphrasing from John Ed Pearce’s column—that working on the Daily Princetonian was one of the most happy—happiest experiences of your life?

Prichard:It was indeed.

Hellard:Did you—what—did you carry that—did you ever work on any—any papers or magazines after you graduated from—from Princeton? You’ve had profound impact on the journalism here in Kentucky, in my judgment, in terms of being a source for editorial writers, a source for many reporters, you obviously have a—a very strong liking for people in the—the print medium.

Prichard:I do indeed. I have a very strong liking for them and for it. And I acquired it right there. But the Daily Princetonian was my last—and the Nassau Literary Magazine—were my—I had some essays in there—they were my last experiences, other than you might say the Harvard Law Review, in any kind of working journalism. But they left me with a great love of journalism, a love of reporting, a love of editorial comment, a love of good writing, and they greatly improved my own ability to think, to clarify my thoughts, and to put them down in what I hope is reasonably comprehensible and persuasive form. That’s something somebody else would have to judge, but to the extent I have it, that’s where I got a lot of it. Just as whatever fluency I have in—in speaking, whatever fluency I have in debate and oratory and speaking came to me from my high school English teacher as my debate coach and from my experience as a debater in Princeton. I spe- —I traveled my senior year around the country debating college teams in the spring, for instance. We went to North Carolina, debated at Duke and Chapel Hill, and we debated here in Lexington, we debated various places. And I enjoyed that. One of my—one of my fellow debaters is now a distinguished history professor in retirement at Stanford University, Gordon Craig, whose great book The Germans is considered by German historians to be one of the finest historical works by an American dealing with German history. Another of my classmates, and one of my closest friends and roommates, was Edmund Gullion. Whose father was a Judge Advocate General of the army and whose family came from Henry County, New Castle, and Carrollton—Carroll County. His father was professor of military science at the University of Kentucky when he was born. He was born in Lexington.

Hellard:How do you spell that last name?

Prichard:G-U-L-L-I-O-N. And he and I were very close. He was one of my closest friends in college. We were roommates our senior year. And he went into the foreign service where he had a distinguished record, was ambassador to the Congo in the Kennedy administration. Retired from the foreign service and became dean of the Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University where he served until a year or two ago when he retired. He and I maintained a close and intimate relationship all through the—through the years. It’s been strained just a little bit in the last few years because he’s become a right strong hawk on matters of foreign policy. And while that hasn’t broken our friendship, there has been a divergence in our attitudes on that. It may have kept us from being quite as close as we once were. He was certainly one of my close friends.

Hellard:Well, let me—let me go back to—to the journalism thing just a minute. Did you ever consider a career in journalism?

Prichard:No sir. Only—only in this respect. There have been many times through the years, and even now, when I wished that I had the time to write a regular column of comment for some paper, and could get paid enough for it to make it worth my while. I—I—I—I—you know, Lucy has always claimed that I was a great source of information and conversation with other journalists, but that I never—that I took time away from my own professional life to do that. And I think that she’d feel a little bit frustrated if I took on something like that and didn’t get paid well for it.

Hellard:I can understand that.

Prichard:But I have always had a hankering for that. And if I ever were in a position to retire from the practice of law or to go into what I might call semi-retirement that’s one of the new vocations I’d like to take on. Two things. One is that and the other might be a regular television comment—comment kind of a program. You know those are things I enjoy so much that I’d almost like to do them free of charge, but which I probably would feel, in the light of everything, I ought to get paid for and I don’t know how much—how well one could be paid for one of those things in my circumstances. But I—I’m attracted by it very much. And think I would do reasonably well at it. I don’t think it would put any of the big commentators out of business, but I think there might be a little niche I could fill in that respect.

Hellard:Well we’re kind of going far afield here, but your—your—

Prichard:That starts with my college life, though, in that sense—

Hellard:Yeah.

Prichard:—we’re not far afield. All those things came to me in college.

Hellard:Yes, but I’m—my question, my next question is going to be, now you’ve—you’ve had a very active career in—in politics and government in Kentucky, and how—how well has that experience you had and your love in journalism helped you or—or aided you in that career? I mean obviously your connection with the editorial board of the Courier-Journal could—at times has put you in a position to, because of the respect they hold for you, to influence their decisions on—on writing editorials pertaining to certain governmental acts.

Prichard:I think, within limits, that’s true.

Hellard:Now that’s been because you have in my perception—you can certainly correct me if I’m wrong—cultivated a friendship with these folks over the years and have a common interest in the—

Prichard:All right.

Hellard:—in the—

Prichard:That’s correct. I think we have a common interest. And I think that in general my influence has been with people that see things, in a broad way, the way I do. Who don’t necessarily agree with me on every detail, or I with them, but, you know, I wouldn’t have influence on a [William F.] Buckley or I wouldn’t have influence on a—

Hellard:( )

Prichard:—or a George Will even, for whom I have a lot of respect. But I think that for some people I have had a little influence, yes, and been a source of information.

Hellard:Well now, you know, I think it’s fair to say that with reference to positions on higher education ( ) you’ve certainly had—

Prichard:That’s right.

Hellard:—a significant amount of influence.

Prichard:That’s right. I think so. I think so. I think just a little bit.

Hellard:But what about—what about the—the small weekly papers? Have you had the same kind of relationship with many of those—

Prichard:I doubt it.

Hellard:—those publishers. I mean Mr. Alverson who use to run the Paris paper.

Prichard:Oh the Alversons were always really sort of on opposite sides from us politically. The truth is we never had much use for the Alversons or they much use for us. As the years have gone on those asperities have softened a little bit, I mean that it’s become a matter of more neutrality now. But we never—we never saw things along the same—the Alversons were always on the Chandler side in those days, kind of halfway Republican. I don’t, no, I don’t know any of the small papers. I’d say the nearest to anything like that would be my relationship with Al Smith. I think I’ve had a good relationship with him. We exchange ideas a good deal, see things, you know, fairly well alike. But other than that, I—I mean had friendly relations with some of the other people, but I’ve never had close ties with the Paxtons, although Ed Paxton was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard Law School when I was up there and I got to know him pretty well, but in later years I haven’t seen that much of him. I would say that such contacts that I’ve had have been foremost with the Courier-Journal—

Hellard:What about the Lexington Herald?

Prichard:—and the Lexington Herald since Don Mills’ time, and the present regime there, and to a moderate degree with the Kentucky Post, not—not as close. But beyond that I can’t say I really have much impact. I have very friendly relations with the State Journal, but I don’t think I have much influence on them. They’re all friendly to me, they—they—they’re certainly not hostile to me. But—

Hellard:But I think your influence goes beyond just the—the ( ).

Prichard:Oh yes, I’ve been a source of news for them. I think they have thought through—through good many years that I, you know, know things that are going on in town, and that I would not tell them things that weren’t true or were irresponsible. And I think there have been times that I have given them information or helped them with information that’s led to news stories, no question about it. And I think they’ve always believed that I told them the truth and that I wasn’t trying to use them.

Hellard:Well, I don’t think you could have had that influence if they hadn’t felt like that, but that—that—that respect they have really comes from your understanding that you gained at Princeton of what it takes to be a reporter, and—

Prichard:Right. I think that’s right. I think I acquired early an understanding that you can’t manipulate them, that you can’t make them serve your end unless it’s something that they are finding out that fits what they want. That—that they’re not going to be—and that the way—the way to lose any credibility or standing with them is to use them.

Hellard:Well I want to pursue this matter fairly later on in the—in the interviews, especially with reference to the various administrations. Going back to Princeton now, in the associations that you did make there, what were the most lasting associations that you made at Princeton?

Prichard:Well, there were some of those faculty members. Another close friend I made there was an economics professor, taught me my senior year, who’s still living, who was dean of the graduate school later on, named—named Douglas Brown, one of the founders of the Social Security system, graduated from Princeton in 1919. And I heard him on the television this past year on the fiftieth anniversary of Social Security or something like that. He had an influ- — But other than those associations there were plenty on the faculty. One was my constitutional law professor in the political science department. One of the great scholars of constitutional law in the whole country, professor Edward Corwin. He and I became close friends and I had the privilege of studying constitutional law twice. Once in political science under Corwin and again at Harvard Law School under one of my great teachers Thomas Reed Powell. And so that gave me, I think, a fine background in constitutional law. But others were students, you know. I had—I had classmates that—Edmund Gullion was one. I had a roommate named Calvin Fox who had a ranch, a dude ranch, out in Flagstaff, Arizona. He and I have been close friends through the years. I haven’t seen much of him lately. Another one was a classmate named George Vandermule, who introduced me to Justice Frankfurter, whose uncle was a great professor of international law in Switzerland, and—

Hellard:Now when were you introduced to Justice Frankfurter?

Prichard:When he came to Princeton my senior year to lecture, give a series of endowed lectures there, which later were a little book that he—he wrote. And I went to interview him for the Daily Princetonian and George Vandermule took me to introduce me. George just visited me frequently here. He’s spent his whole life in a movement that I never had much sympathy with, namely Moral Re-armament. He became very dedicated to that and has spent his whole life on that. I guess he inherited enough money to be independent. And he’s a very sincere, lovely, good Christian, and I don’t in any way denigrate the sincerity of his convictions, but Moral Re-armament has just never been by bag. But we’ve maintained a close friendship. He came to that dinner for me that they had down in Louisville, for instance, which I thought was a lovely thing for him to do. Edmund Gullion came to that dinner.

Hellard:At what point did you meet Phil Graham?

Prichard:Not till I went to law school.

Hellard:Law school, okay. Was there anybody else at Princeton that—

Prichard:I had a very close friend who died in the war, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton—I had a couple that were a year ahead of me—named Bill Sheldon. He was from Washington, D.C. His father was an admiral in the navy. And he was a year ahead of me. And we were both on the Daily Princetonian, both strong Democrats. He went to Harvard Law School and was ahead of me there. And we had very—we were very intimate friends. He left me his books when he died. And he was one of my very closest friends, and he was one of the loveliest human beings I ever knew. A person who had the deep respect of everyone. And when he died, Justice Frankfurter wrote a lovely letter about him to the Washington Post, which I cherished greatly. And Bill—Bill unfortunately when he went in the war he saw very heavy action in the Solomons, was shot in the heel, wasn’t hurt, but shot his shoe off, and he had a bit of a nervous reaction when he got off the Solomons and they wouldn’t let him go back because they thought his nerves wouldn’t stand it, and the poor boy took his own life—

Hellard:Uh-huh.

Prichard:—’cause he was ashamed of not being sent back. And he was one of my most treasured friends. And I’ll tell you another one, and this is journalism, another close friend of whom I—with whom I still have some continuing relationship, was John Oakes. John Oakes was the nephew of Adolph Ochs, who owned the New York Times. And his father changed his name to Oakes during World War I, not because of the Jewish issue but because of the Germ- —German issue, and in 1917 he changed his name to Oakes ’cause Ochs was a German name. But Johnny was later the editorial page editor of the New York Times until he retired a few years ago, and he’s still in New York. We still hear from him. And he’s a very close friend. And Lucy’s very devoted to him. His wife—he and wife Margaret are dear friends of ours. Those are some of the close friends I had there, and I’m sure I could think of others.

Hellard:Are most of these people, Prich, people who were in your club, or are they people who were on the paper, or just an assortment of people that you met in various ways?

Prichard:Various ways. Bill was on the paper. John Oakes was on the paper. Doug and I were in the same club. But just various ways I knew them.

Hellard:When you were in the debate team at Princeton did you all win? What was your record?

Prichard:Well, I can’t remember, but we seemed to me to win most of them. I—I don’t—you know, I never—

Hellard:Did you win any national competitions, I guess is what I’m asking?

Prichard:There weren’t any such things, no. We just—we’d go around and debate other colleges and they’d come there and debate us. And we’d debate other teams in the college. But I don’t recall anything equivalent to the state high school debate tournaments that we use to have here, which I think we won. And then every Washington’s Birthday, in Princeton, we’d have an oratorical contest too, and I won that a couple of times, they give a medal for it and so forth. They had two societies there that were devoted to public speaking and debating, called the American Whig Society and the Cliosophic Society, which dated back to the 1770s. And the debaters and orators all went through that organization. And I was president of the American Whig Society, I guess my senior year.

Hellard:What was the criteria for membership in that?

Prichard:Nothing but to be interested in public speaking and debating, and I don’t know—to be elected if you showed enough promise in it.

Hellard:Some of the—some of the—

Prichard:And they had two very old, beautiful marble buildings there that were twin buildings with a library.

Hellard:A few moments ago you spoke of the “Left Turn” column that you wrote.

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:Did any of those columns ever make it back home to Bourbon County?

Prichard:No, I’m sure they didn’t. I’m not sure I wanted them to.

Hellard:That’s what I was going to ask you, if you thought they would have any bearing. At the time you were at Princeton did you—were you thinking in terms of returning to Kentucky to practice law?

Prichard:I think I always thought of that.

Hellard:Were you thinking in terms of at that time running for office again?

Prichard:Only in the same sense that I always did, I thought of it as a possibility but never as a necessity.

Hellard:No definite plans.

Prichard:The nearest to a definite plan I ever had was much later, after I came back here, and that was to run for congress, and I decided not to do it ’cause I had just married. I—I had only been practicing law here in Kentucky a couple of years, and I thought at that time that it would be too great a risk if I won or if I lost, so I—I decided not to do it.

Hellard:Now, hold on just a minute. You entered Harvard Law School in 1935?

Prichard:Uh-uh, yeah, fall of 1935.

Hellard:And what was your feeling when you entered Harvard? Did you—did—did you have—consider any other law schools, or was it just automatically Harvard the place you wanted to go?

Prichard:Never considered any other one. I don’t know why. For some reason—

Hellard:Was it considered the best thing in the nation at that time?

Prichard:—for some reason I just had an idée fixe that the best education you could get as a combination of an undergraduate education and a legal education was Princeton and Harvard Law School. That—that wasn’t necessarily based on some rational calculus as just a feeling I had.

Hellard:And what was your—how were you received at Harvard?

Prichard:Well, I graduated Princeton summa cum laude. My senior thesis had won the, whatever the prize was that they gave for the best essay in American history. I had—I was the Class Day orator. I had a, you know, felt that I had had a satisfactory experience at Princeton after some problems I described to you in my early years, particularly my first year. When I went to Harvard, it was entirely different. I had all kinds of classmates who had been at Princeton with me. I, you know, felt that I went into—into Harvard Law School, you know, sort of a reasonably established figure, with sort of known boundaries. I don’t mean that I thought I was some great shakes, but—

Hellard:You were full of confidence?

Prichard:I felt plenty of confidence, yes sir, and had lots of friends. You know just as going— when one went to college with a lot of prep school friends, one felt a certain sense of confidence and belonging that I hadn’t had coming from the Paris High School. But going to Harvard from Princeton, I felt a part of a crowd.

Hellard:Who were some of the more significant individuals at Harvard that you encountered?

Prichard:You talking about faculty or students?

Hellard:Well, let’s talk first about faculty.

Prichard:Oh, just a host of them. Of course [Felix] Frankfurter is the one with whom I had the closest association and had the most influence on me. As I told you we had already met at Princeton, and he had suggested that when I got to Cambridge I look him up. I was a little bit standoffish and didn’t do it. And one day crossing the campus I encountered him, and he said, “Prichard, why haven’t you been to see me?” And I said, “Well, I didn’t get an invitation.” And his reply was, “Are you one of these people that have to have a Tiffany engraved invitation? Why don’t you come to my house Sunday afternoon; turn up at the house.” That was one of his great— “Why don’t you turn up at the house Sunday afternoon.” So I went that Sunday afternoon for tea, and from then on I was there many Sunday afternoons, sometimes for dinner, saw a great deal of him, worked with him, even as a student he—even when—you know, was constantly in his company.

Hellard:Let me backtrack to the interview you did at Princeton with him. Do you remember the content of the interview? Well obviously he was impressed with you at that time—

Prichard:I interviewed him on current—whatever the current political questions were, you know, the economy and the Depression.

Hellard:Now, why do you think he was impressed with you?

Prichard:Oh, I don’t know, I think more because of my interest in Kentucky history, I mean the local side of things. He was a great believer—at least thought he was—in [Louis] Brandeis’ idea that people should go back to their home communities and should be interested in smaller communities as well as bigger ones. And when he found out that I have a—he—he use to be very much taken in, or taken up, in my—what he thought was my great knowledge of my own community where I grew up, and all the various, who belonged to the various churches, that kind of thing, who belonged to the various political parties, what were the, you know, divisions and groupings in the community, and he loved all that. He didn’t practice it much himself, he was a city man in his whole living, but he professed to admire this in others, and I think that had something to do with it.

Hellard:Was there a parallel between he and Mr. Paton in terms of their collection of young people?

Prichard:Yes, in a different way, much more intellectual in the case of—of—of Frankfurter. You know, he picked—he picked the ones he thought—and frankly, there was a good deal, a little bit of snobbishness there, intellectual snobbishness with him. I mean, he drew clear distinctions, but told them those he thought were going to be the movers and shakers, at least intellectually speaking, and those that weren’t. I don’t know—why I expect Mr. Paton, if he drew it, was between those he thought were going to be politically influential and helpful and those who wouldn’t, although he was good to all of them. I mean he believed, he was more political in that sense, in that he would—he would not draw those distinctions so obviously. Mr. Paton, you know, he had an ice cream cone, or a Hershey bar, or an all-day sucker for every kid.

Hellard:Now back in—to go back to Harvard now and the—the dinners and get-togethers at Justice—

Prichard:By the way, just a few weeks ago I had a telephone call asking me, said, “Are you the Prichard that use to live on the corner of Houston Avenue and Mount Aerie in Paris, Kentucky?” I said, “Yes indeed sir, to whom am I talking?” He said, “This is Ed Paton.” This was Pearce Paton’s son, who about ten, twelve years ago married late in life and moved to Arizona on account of the climate, had some arthritis, and his wife had just died and he brought her back to bury her. He’s seventy-six years old and he just called me within the past couple of weeks when he was in Lexington.

Hellard:Well how nice.

Prichard:Wasn’t that nice?

Hellard:It certainly was.

Prichard:And that was Pearce Paton’s only son, succeeded him as clerk, and then retired as clerk and went—went to Arizona after he married.

Hellard:Well, what—the—the gatherings at Frankfurter’s house, you know, what—what type person—persons were—were included? One—one gets the impression from reading The Powers That Be—

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:—that it was strictly a male gathering.

Prichard:Predominantly, yes certainly. I expect Frankfurter was, would have been rated today a male chauvinist. In fact, if you read what he wrote about marriage in his own diaries, I think if you read the book called The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter, a book I don’t like, but does have some points in it, he was much dominated by his mother when he was young. And—and—and he was a male chauvinist, you know, he—he—he—wasn’t—he wasn’t anything of a woman’s libber, really.

Hellard:Yeah. Of course that wasn’t a great cause in those days anyway. Did—were—were those occasions, occasions of heated debates—

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:—and discussions…

Prichard:Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yes.

Hellard:Did he enjoy that? Did thrive on that kind of thing?

Prichard:Why of course. He tried to stir it up. He tried to stir it up. And then if it got out of bounds, he’d try to control it, and he couldn’t always do it ’cause he could set loose a damn whirlwind. Oh yes, it was a, you know, very active, full discussion, and sometimes we’d get out of hand.

Hellard:In what way?

Prichard:Well, hell, people would get heated and get a little personal.

Hellard:Were there ever—ever any fistfights?

Prichard:Oh no, no, no.

Hellard:Not that heated.

Prichard:No, no, no, no.

Hellard:Not like Bourbon County politics.

Prichard:No, just loud voices.

Hellard:And who were some of the people you met at those occasions?

Prichard:Well, are you talking about students? Because primarily they were students.

Hellard:Students.

Prichard:Although he would have people, now I can remember such people as Harold Laski, [John Maynard] Keynes would be there, and he’d invite a bunch of people to have—have tea with them, people of that sort. David Lilienthal, Tom Corcoran, Ben Cohen, Dean Acheson, people like that. He—if they were visiting in town, he’d have students out for a drink or tea. Well, particularly some of his English friends. He’d have Sir Isaiah Berlin. I first met Keynes at his house, Harold Laski, Archibald MacLeish, Dean Acheson.

Hellard:Now, were all these people—did—were these discussions going on at the time these people were there too?

Prichard:Oh sure, you bet they were.

Hellard:And he always encouraged a—

Prichard:Uh-huh.

Hellard:—aggressive discussion?

Prichard:Uh-huh. And then—

Hellard:Did he do this just because he liked to do it, because he enjoyed it, or because it was broadening, or a combination?

Prichard:Well, I guess he thought that was the way to educate, and help to add to the education of these young men. I think that, you know, he thought that was a part of education. And it was a way, whether this was conscious or not, Vic, it was a way by which he acquired great influence with these young people. You know, he cultivated a father relationship with them. He had no children. And in a sense, they were his surrogate sons. And one of the ways he continued to—to live through them was to have these close encounters of the first kind [laughing], or second kind or whatever you want to call it, and on the other hand to help promote them in their careers. And that meant that he had a—a vital, living relationship with people who were active and influential in the next generation. Now, I don’t mean to say, as perhaps [H. N.] Hirsh says in his book, that this was a means by which he consciously sought to dominate events and dominate people, but it was a sort of fulfillment for him, particularly since he had no children of his own.

Hellard:What other faculty members had—had—well let me ask you this question. What—you know obviously you were his law clerk later on—but during those years in Harvard, what—what was the most valuable influence that Frankfurter had on you?

Prichard:Oh, I suppose—

Hellard:If you had to say this—this is the one thing that—that was most important in my relationship during those years with Frankfurter, what would it be?

Prichard:I think probably, more than anything else, more than any intellectual influence—which was great—was that he brought me into contact with the larger world of affairs and events, more than I had ever been before. That I got closer to people who were movers and shakers. I think that’s probably—either intellectual movers and shakers or worldly movers and shakers. You know, he had some friends that were big business people, bankers, as well as in public life, and labor, close to Sidney Helman. I guess I first met Sidney Helman through Frankfurter, for example. And all those things, those—that was very heady wine to feel that through him one knew these people of power and influence who had something to say about shaping the country.

Hellard:How was Frankfurter perceived by his—his fellow faculty?

Prichard:Oh, some idolized him, some had a rather balanced view of him, and some hated him [laughing]. It all just depended on where you stood. I mean there was a cult of Frankfurter devotees on the faculty, a few. And then there were some who—

Hellard:Well, did those perceptions—those perceptions in any way affect you, or those people who were in this group that Frankfurter would have in discussion groups?

Prichard:Well, now, explain that a little more.

Hellard:Well, for example, if a particular faculty member didn’t think much of Mr. Frankfurter, would he or she—or he I guess at that time—

Prichard:He wouldn’t—

Hellard:—hold you—

Prichard:Would he what?

Hellard:Would he—would he—

Prichard:Pick on me?

Hellard:Yeah, pick on you, put you down—

Prichard:No.

Hellard:—give you a hard time, give you a more difficult time—

Prichard:Oh, he might give me a hard time about Frankfurter, but he didn’t, wouldn’t give me a hard time in—in his class any more than anybody else, ’cause I could give and take. You know, I—I didn’t—I didn’t get a feeling that, you know, love me, love my dog. I knew there were people for whom I had respect, and even affection, that didn’t care for Frankfurter. We had a first-year property professor that was the original of The Paper Chase, Professor E. H. Warren, known as Bull Warren. Well, he’d been a great friend of Frankfurter’s when Frankfurter was young, but he had turned very conservative. And he once told me, when he was about half drunk at a dinner club we belonged to, that Frankfurter had a devious, sinister, oriental mind. And I just laughed. I didn’t, you know, hell, I know people feel differently about people, and, you know, I didn’t like it, but I—it never broke my relationship with Professor Warren. There were all kinds of different feelings people had about him. T. R. Powell, the great constitutional law teacher, had a very up and down relationship, you know, they were close, very intimate, but you know, a lot of hostility too. Powell thought Felix was, you know, bent the bough intellectually to reach is results. He thought of himself as a strictly neutral judge of constitutional issues, whereas he thought Frankfurter was emotionally biased. Frankfurter thought that Powell was a—thought himself excessively pure in those intellectual ways. But that didn’t keep me from being a close friend of both of them. I’ve always, you know, had some friends that didn’t like Frankfurter, and that he didn’t like. And it may be some of them, like Arthur Crock, that I didn’t like either, we’ll talk about that later in Washington. But I didn’t, you know, I didn’t draw lines based on people’s attitude toward Frankfurter.

Hellard:So you weren’t really—yours was not really a hero worship, necessarily, of Frankfurter?

Prichard:Well, he—

Hellard:You had a—you had a balanced view of him?

Prichard:Yeah, well, I had almost a worship of him in some ways, but it wasn’t a hero worship. I adored him. But I also saw his faults and could laugh at his peccadilloes and knew that there were people I could like and respect that didn’t like him. Now that didn’t mean there weren’t a lot of people that didn’t like him that I didn’t respect, too. But, for instance, Justice [William O.] Douglas hated him, but Justice Douglas and I were always on good and friendly terms. And—and Justice Black and I were very close in many ways—we’ll get to that later—but Justice Black, though, was never personally on as bad terms with Frankfurter as Justice Douglas was. But I didn’t—my dear friend Chief Justice [Fred] Vinson, he and Frankfurter hated one another.

Hellard:Well, what kind of fellow was Frankfurter?

Prichard:Well, it’s—

Hellard:Outside what you’ve already told me about, you know, liking students and surrogate sons and, could he laugh at himself? Did he have a sense of humor?

Prichard:He had a sense of humor, but he didn’t laugh at himself that much.

Hellard:Would he tolerate other people—

Prichard:A little bit. He tolerated from me more than he would somebody that was more neutral, you know, he knew I loved him so he’d take more from me then he would— For example, Archie MacLeish wrote a story in, I guess Life Magazine, about—this was later on when he was on the court. We use to have breakfast parties on Sunday out at Hockley, where we lived in Virginia. And we’d invite a lot of, you know, guests from the big world, Frankfurter, and Acheson, and Lernedhand, Stanley Reed, people like that. And, you know, we had—we put on a pretty good show there. We had—we had—we’d have a lot of guests, and we’d serve fried chicken, and grits, and country ham and, you know, brandy milk punch, had pretty nice parties. And the Frankfurters were out there one day and it got very, very noisy and I said, “Justice Frankfurter,” I said, “I want to apologize for all this noise.” He said, “Noise, noise, Prich what makes you think I had any objections to noise?” I said, “Well, Justice Frankfurter, this is other people’s noise.” [Hellard laughs] And MacLeish [laughing] quoted that in one of his articles. Well, he—he put up with that from me because he knew I loved him, but he could be very—

Hellard:Well I take it he didn’t have a particularly thick skin, then, when it came to criticism?

Prichard:No, he didn’t. Not from others—not from those—not from those that he didn’t feel really were his, no, he did not have a thick skin, no indeed. And was very self-righteous when he got into an intellectual controversy, very apt to draw ad hominem arguments in a very objectionable way. It was one of his worst qualities. But I—I saw a lot of him in law school, very close, saw much of him in law school. And, of course, after I graduated, I went back for one year to be his teaching assistant. And that year was interrupted by his appointment to the court in January of 1939. I had to remain to complete that year, for I was committed to it, and his successors in teaching his courses professed to want me to continue to help them. But—

Hellard:What other faculty members down at Harvard did you develop a close relationship with?

Prichard:Oh, as I’ve told you, Professor Thomas Reed Powell, who taught constitutional law, had a very close relationship with him. Professor Henry Hart, who died fairly young, was a protégé of Frankfurter’s, took over his course in federal jurisdiction and procedure when he went to—to the Supreme Court.

Hellard:Well, what kind of person was—was Mr. Powell?

Prichard:Oh, he came originally from Vermont. His father was state auditor of Vermont for many years, a colonel in the Union Army. He—he taught at—at Columbia before he came to Harvard. He was a brilliant cynic, what you would call a legal realist, who, you know, was not—oh, he probably voted the Democratic ticket most of the time, but he wasn’t very ideologically committed. He—he—he pretended to be disinterested about social issues and to think only of intellectual issues. He drank a great deal. We’d have a long party, as you know, and stay up late and drink a lot. I mean, I wouldn’t drink all that much, but I drank more than I do, by far, now. And he’d get drunk. But we were very close, saw a lot of him.

Hellard:Now, why—why—why was this closeness? What—

Prichard:He was just such a bright, brilliant observer and such a keen analyst of—of legal behavior and of people. And you know, that cynicism, or professed cynicism, appeals to people. And he—he was a close friend of Justice Stone. He’d served on the faculty at Columbia Law School when Stone was the dean. And he probably thought of himself as a more analytical legal scholar than Frankfurter, but they were close friends at the same time. You know, these relationships are off and on, up and down, but he was one of my most brilliant teachers and had a profound influence on me in the direction of what we now used to call legal realism, that you look at what the courts do and not what they say, and that you try to look deeper than their explanations of what they do and look to the reasons which compelled them to do it and see if you cannot better predict what they’ll do next time.

Hellard:What about, Professor Hart was it?

Prichard:Yes, Henry Hart. Well Henry Hart was a very high minded, scholarly, deeply committed person of high—high moral standards. Deep interest in young people, young himself, died young. Was Frankfurter’s favorite protégé, probably, on the faculty at my time. Graduate of the Harvard Law School.

Hellard:What other faculty members?

Prichard:Well, Professor Calvert Magruder, a native of Maryland, sort of a Maryland aristocrat, later a judge for many years of distinction on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the first circuit, taught labor law, kind of a southern liberal aristocrat, very delightful. Had a younger wife, named Anita, who was very charming. We had a middle-aged professor of corporation law named E. Merrick Dodd, who looked like the most stuffy, little dry New Englander you ever saw with a big heavy broom mustache, and was probably the most radical member of the faculty, [laughing] was really kind of a socialist. “Ah, ah” everything “ah” between every phrase, you know, nervous, short, tousled hair, as I said, and a big mustache. But really, a very radical social thinker in legal affairs.

Hellard:Mr. Prichard we’re out of tape.

Prichard:Well—

Hellard:It is now two o’clock.

Prichard:Well, we just hit—