Interview with Ina Russell Stacy, June 28, 1980

Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project

RBROH-158 Ina Stacy Russell interviewed by William W. Stueck

June 28, 1980

STUECK: Would you mind telling me how this house has changed over the years. First, when was--it says out front that this house was finished in 1912, but you moved into it before then, didn't you?

STACY: No, no, it was finished then and we all moved in. We lived across in some woods. There was a house over there that we lived in. You had to then cross the railroad track and the road that is now the highway went on the other side of the railroad track--

STUECK: Oh, I see.

STACY: --and we were all over there and my father had this land and he wanted a larger house. There was a great number of us, as you know, and so he built this house which was then right in the middle of a cotton field, not a tree around. And he and my mother had all these trees planted; the oaks, the pecans and these sycamores are the ones that are here now were planted by them. So it very different now from what it was when it was built.

STUECK: But this home, the home across the tracks then, that's not the same home--

STACY: No, it has burned.

STUECK: --that's in the middle of--

STACY: No, it has burned.

STUECK: So, in essence, after you moved from Athens to Winder, there were three houses. There was one in the center of Winder; there was one across the railroad tracks from this one, and then there was this one.

STACY: Well, there was still another one, nearer Winder--

STUECK: Oh, I see.

STACY: --that we moved into first. And we lived in that. We called it the Gresham House; I don't know why. But that was the name that it had and we just kept on calling it the Gresham House. And we moved into the larger house there and lived there for several years and it wasn't large enough so my father built this one.

STUECK: Now, you mentioned in your oral history interview that is already at the Russell Library that you had a live-in tutor for a good part of your childhood.

STACY: We had several over a period of time.

STUECK: Right. Now was that only in this house or was that before you--

STACY: No, most of it was in the Gresham House--

STUECK: I see.

STACY: --because by the time we have moved over to what we called the Jackson House, I was at Lucy Cobb in Athens. So I was just coming home for vacations and weekends and things like that. So, it was when--see, I'm one of the older ones. I'm even older than the Senator. So we had--we were a great distance from Winder, the school in Winder, so my father had these teachers come and live with us and teach the younger ones. We were all in elementary school then.

STUECK: Just how far were you in the Gresham House from the school?

STACY: Oh, two miles. A mile and a half or two miles. But little children you know. After awhile we did have a horse and surrey and we could go to Winder in 00:03:00that to school. But at first we just had--he had to have somebody to teach us. Now I started school in Winder and then when we moved out home, my older sister and I, and maybe my next sister, (Dick was not even old enough to go to school then) the three of us went to school in Winder at first and then after that, my father realized that he had to have someone to teach us at home. There was no compulsory education in those days.

STUECK: So it wasn't that, really, that he was dissatisfied with the quality of education in Winder--

STACY: Oh no, no.

STUECK: --so much, it was just that it was so difficult to get there.

STACY: It was so difficult to get there with three small girls.

STUECK: Yes. So I would take it that Dick too, even though he came along a little bit after, most of his early education was through a tutor in the home.

STACY: No, I would say--let me see. Dick did go to school in Winder sometime and some of the--I don't remember too much about it because I went away to school quite young. I was less than fifteen when I first went away to school. And Dick himself went away to school when he was thirteen. He went to Gordon Institute in Barnesville.

STUECK: Well now, wait a minute. Was he only thirteen when he went? I thought it was in 1913 when he went.

STACY: He was only thirteen. No, no it couldn't have been. I've always been told that he was thirteen years of age. You probably have dates to back up yours.

STUECK: Well, you're probably right.

STACY: But he was--well he was at the University of Georgia in 1918.

STUECK: Yes, that's when he graduated and I think he graduated from Gordon in 1915.

STACY: He was at Gordon Institute and he was also at Powder Springs, you see. So 00:05:00he had had more than--I don't know. He was born in 1897.

STUECK: Tell me, do you recall anything about him being in leadership positions when he was young--offices in school, in his class, activities.

STACY: Well, that's hard to say because I wasn't in the class with him, I don't remember too much. I do know that he was always felt like a leader because he was very fond of the stories that were in the paper then about the war, especially the Boxer Rebellion and the Japanese-Russian affair, you know. And he would come to my mother with a newspaper. He always called mother "Dear", and he 00:06:00would say, "Read me about the war, Dear." And that was before he could read. And then he had a way of going out walking and he would take this stick with him and he would do this, you know, make all kind of motions, and then he would shoot with the stick, you know, and so one of the farmers near here told my father once, said, "Judge, I know how it is to have a boy that ain't right in the head." Cause he thought that Dick was just an imbecile walking around, talking to himself. But he was imagining battles and leading battles and things at that time. I do know that he belonged to a debating society at the University [of Georgia].

STUECK: Yes, right, Phi Kappa, which your father had also been a member of.

STACY: Yes, and I don't know much about him at Gordon Institute. He used to come home, brought several of the older boys with him that I liked a lot, and things like that, but I don't know much about what he did in school.

STUECK: Well, tell me, since you mentioned the Russo-Japanese War and the Boxer Rebellion, this was about the time when Theodore Roosevelt was president of our country. The Russo-Japanese was 1904-1905.

STACY: 1902.

STUECK: Well, the Boxer Rebellion was about 1900, but the Russo-Japanese War was 1904-1905. Did he ever say anything about Teddy [Theodore] Roosevelt? I mean it strikes me that Roosevelt might have been to a young boy interested in the military, a very dashing--

STACY: I remember when Roosevelt came to Atlanta once to a fair and made a speech. And Dad had us there at the fair and I sat on my father's shoulder and shook hands with Teddy Roosevelt. So Dick was probably very much impressed too, at the time.

STUECK: But Roosevelt, of course, was a Republican.

STACY: Yes, well that didn't matter. He was the president and he came to Atlanta which was most unusual. None of the Republicans or Democrats either paid much attention, you know, to Georgia.

STUECK: Of course, his mother had been a Georgian, from Georgia. So that might 00:08:00have been an attraction.

STACY: That's right. I think he was out at Roswell at the home there, Bulloch Hall, at Roswell.

STUECK: In the oral histories with yourself and your sisters and brothers at the library, there is virtually nothing about him dealing with people outside of the family as a child

STACY: I don't think he did.

STUECK: Was this, were the homes that he was brought up in, were they so isolated that he pretty much--

STACY: We weren't so isolated as there were so many of us, it wasn't necessary for us to go out of the family for our entertainment or amusement or anything. I remember my mother sitting at the piano right here in this room, playing songs for us to sing. I remember my father doing clog dances and, you know, entertaining ourselves at home. We didn't have television. We didn't have any 00:09:00radio or any of the things that they have now. We didn't even have an automobile that we could get around in. So you see, our entertainment had to be right at home. We always had a lot of cousins that came to see us. We had friends that came to see us. As mother said, she'd rather have our friends to come to see us than to not know where we were, if we all spread off in different directions.

STUECK: So he didn't insofar as, for instance, playing games like baseball--

STACY: We had a basketball court out back. We had a tennis court, and so we could do all those things here at home. Dick was fond of hunting. I remember when he got his first rifle. I remember when he got his first shotgun. He let me take his rifle and go hunting with him once. And so, I liked to get out and walk in the fields and everything. He and I used to climb trees together and have a 00:10:00good time. or basketball, was he a real competitor?

STUECK: Well, tell me. What was he like? For instance, if you played tennis or basketball, was he a real competitor? TOC \o "1-5" \h \z

STACY: I couldn't tell you that. I don't remember anything about it. To me he was just a very normal brother, no different from my other brothers and sisters except he was older and I enjoyed being with him more.

STUECK: Would you say that you were with him perhaps more than any of the other brothers and sisters, with the possible exception of Rob [Robert Lee Sr.]

STACY: I always felt like I was because my two other sisters, one just older than I and one between Dick and me, both liked to stay at home and cook and do all those things. I liked to get out and go with Dick in the fields and walk out and climb trees and go hunting and things like that. And then when I went to Lucy Cobb, I was learning to dance and I would come home and he was learning to 00:11:00dance and we had a Victrola and we'd dance on the porch here. And he told me once, "If you don't stop trying to lead, I'm going to stop dancing with you." And you know, he and I seemed to be more congenial, I guess.

STUECK: So even when you came home from the Lucy Cobb school--

STACY: He would be home from Gordon.

STUECK: All right, he'd be home, but would he frequently have friends here, visiting him?

STACY: Yes, and as I said awhile ago, he brought home friends from Gordon Institute. There was one named Tom Thatcher, one named Hap Stewart and things like that, that I knew.

STUECK: But still, before he went away to Gordon and Powder Springs, you would say that he really didn't have much in the way of friends outside the family.

STACY: None of us did. None of us did. We were isolated; we lived in the country. The only things we had were when--my father and mother were very 00:12:00careful to see that we did certain things. For instance, Dad and Mother went to Montreal, Canada, once. Dad had to go up there. He took Rob and Dick, the two boys, with him. He went to New York once to a convention of some sort and took me, and different ones in the family he would take. When they had the Exposition in Jamestown, Mother got us all ready to go to Jamestown and she found out she was pregnant and we couldn't go.

STUECK: Do you recall anything, you mentioned going to Montreal, on you say it was a business trip?

STACY: No, he belonged to the Royal Arcanum which was an insurance benevolent association no longer in existence, and he was one of the leaders in Georgia in that--in, I guess it was an insurance fraternal thing. But he would go on these 00:13:00conventions. Now several times he would go and just take my mother because he felt like she needed a break.

STUECK: Well, who would take care of you?

STACY: We had a white housekeeper part of the time and then we always had servants, plenty of servants. It wasn't hard to get servants then.

STUECK: What do you mean by servants? You mean people who would come in--

STACY: We had a cook and a maid and a washerwoman and two yard men who worked the garden and took care of the horses and mules. And we had--I remember one little colored boy that was our nursemaid. He played out in the yard with us and all.

STUECK: Now, where did these people live? Did they live on your property?

STACY: Some of them, and some of them didn't. But the one that I'm thinking about mostly was a family of Barnes, B-a-r-n-e-s. We had Bell Barnes as our cook. Arch and Emory Barnes, the two older boys, older men rather, they were 00:14:00grown men--took care of the horses and cows and milked and did things like that and the garden. And then Primus was the boy that took--played with us. And Aunt Milly Ann, the mother of all these was our washerwoman, and Uncle Martin, the father of all of them took care of the farm and the garden and things like that. So that was one family, you see, that lived on our place.

STUECK: You didn't, the children didn't do much farming themselves. I mean, did they have their little plots?

STACY: Well, sometimes we played at it. We never did do much with it.

STUECK: Well, how did you occupy yourselves during the typical day?

STACY: Reading. All of us liked to read. My mother would read to us. We played games and then the girls--we had a--there was a house right near us that my father owned that--we had dollhouses in that house. We had each one a room, it 00:15:00was a four room house, and we would mark off with chalk the rooms in the house, and we would furnish those with anything we could find, broken dishes or anything. Sometimes we would make cardboard beds and furniture. We had very little money; we had very little opportunity to buy things. We never missed it. (laughs)

STUECK: How did you perceive yourselves as fitting into the society around you? I mean, did you feel that you were at the top of society around you or--

STACY: Well, I never thought about it. It never occurred to me. I was friendly with everybody. My father was, he was that democratic type of person that--

STUECK: He had to be. He was a politician.

STACY: He was a politician, and he always said that he was no man's superior but 00:16:00every man's equal. That was his theory.

STUECK: Was there in Winder a good deal of wealth? I mean, were there some--

STACY: No, not at that time. Not at that time. I guess we were as well off as anybody.

STUECK: You didn't have, in essence, a conspicuous leisure class--

STACY: And we did have friends in Winder. My older sister had several friends that she would see and we all went to Sunday School and we had friends at Sunday School. We had friends go on picnics. There was a Whites Mill out from Winder and we would have straw rides and go out there. We had quite a nice social life, but it wasn't anything that was so important that we had to have it. We never missed it if we didn't have it.

STUECK: So I would assume that young Dick would have the same kind of--

STACY: --have the same kind of a background. Yeah. Yes, he had--well, we had 00:17:00cousins there, the Quartermans who were very good cousins of ours, and they had children about meshed in with the ages, you know, in our family and they were always coming out here on Sunday afternoons to play with us or we would sometimes go to their house. And then the doctor had a son that was a good friend of ours, and I had a good friend that she and I just got along beautifully together. We sat together the two years that I was in school in Winder. I was in public school two years and--

STUECK: Well, tell me. Your brother has been referred to variously, as now an adult politician, as a man who knew how to tend to his own business and let everybody else's business alone; as a very smooth operator both cautious and expedient--a people expert. These are all from the oral histories. Could you 00:18:00see, perhaps maybe even if only in retrospect, the beginnings of a superb political leader or politician?

STACY: No, I can't say that I did because, as I say, he was no different from my other brothers and sisters. Of course, as you know, I have quite a variety of brothers who were prominent. My Uncle Lewis Russell, my father's youngest brother, lived with us and he was a lawyer. He had studied law under my father. Dick and Rob used to sit out on this front porch, and Uncle Lewis called them Methuselah and Abraham, because he said that they were so old for their ages. And they would discuss all the topics of the day and all the big things. I never 00:19:00got in on that because I wasn't too interested.

STUECK: Well, do you think that your father, or your father and mother together, kind of had young Dick pegged for a political career right from the beginning?

STACY: No, I don't except I guess you've seen in some of this data that's over there that Dad took him to Atlanta to the governor's mansion when he was about five years, five or six years old. Now that may have had some influence; I don't know. He ran for the state legislature when he was only twenty-two. So you see, he did have the makings of a political life. He liked it and it was what he wanted to do.

STUECK: Did you father, for instance, when he was traveling throughout the state, did he frequently take young Dick with him?

STACY: Yes.

STUECK: He did.

STACY: He took Dick and me to Savannah once to a bar association meeting, and he 00:20:00would leave us at the hotel while he went to the meeting. And there was a Negro porter there in the dining room that he told to take care of us. This porter was so nice, I mean waiter, and he told us that we could have anything we wanted on the menu. So we ordered four desserts. Those are some of the things I remember. And when we went to Savannah, my father had the lower berth with Dick and I had the upper berth, and Dick kept talking to me and telling me what was he was seeing. I guess it was maybe his first--I was about twelve and what he was about nine at that time. And so we were talking so loud Dad was embarrassed and so he made me get down in the berth with Dick and he got in the upper so we could look out the window together.

STUECK: Did you ever have a sense that in traveling throughout the state or in taking his son or sons and daughters sometimes when he traveled throughout the 00:21:00state that he was kind of preparing them, making contacts--

STACY: Oh, yes. He wanted us to, and my mother, too. Mother had us girls go to the grand opera in Atlanta when it would come to Atlanta because she thought we needed that culture. Oh, they were very conscious of making us worthwhile citizens, I'll say.

STUECK: Well, tell me. What newspapers, what magazines did you have in the home ?

STACY: Oh, my Lord, I can't remember.

STUECK: Was there a Winder paper at that time?

STACY: I don't know. There's just a weekly now. But I think we got the Atlanta paper always.

STUECK: How many people do you suppose lived in Winder about the turn of the century?

STACY: I think the last census gave them about 10,000, but there are loads of them that live outside like we do, not in the city limits, you see.

STUECK: That's the last census, you mean in 1970?

STACY: 1970--

STUECK: Yeah, but there would have been nowhere near that many in 1900, would there?

STACY: Oh no. Winder probably had 1500 people at that time. It was just a little 00:22:00country town.

STUECK: So you figure you would get the Atlanta paper?

STACY: We got the Atlanta paper, I'm sure, and we got Life magazine. I remember that. We had the--what was the one before the Reader's Digest--Literary Digest or something, one that went out with the Depression. I know we had several magazines, and my mother was forever giving us books. And I have several books now that she gave me for Christmas. You know, when Christmas came we all got books.

STUECK: Well, what -- you know, one of the major contributions that your brother made as United States senator was in the area of American defense and foreign policy so that I, and other historians, are very much interested in tracing the 00:23:00evolution of his views toward the outside world. And I would assume that what you read in the newspaper, and what you read in books, whatever magazines, perhaps was very influential.

STACY: Probably, and you see, we had worlds of history books. Mother always had plenty of material for us. That was the set of books that she gave Dick.

STUECK: Do you--were the things that you read essentially the same things that he read or was there some segregation to your reading?

STACY: Some difference. He like the Henty books and the Last of the Mohicans and those stories, and I may have gone for Little Women and Jo's Boys and things like that. But essentially I think we all liked good reading.

STUECK: What do you recall, if anything, about well, you mentioned the Russo- 00:24:00Japanese War. Now there are two nations. What were your perceptions of a Russia or a Japan as you were growing up?

STACY: I can't remember if I had any at all.

STUECK: --or maybe Britain, I mean, a lot of books are written.

STACY: See, we had an uncle who was an Annapolis graduate, my father's brother Uncle Rob, and he was in the war. And so I think that was one of the things that Dick was interested in.

STUECK: You mean, he was in--well he was stationed in St. Petersburg.

STACY: He was in the Navy. He was in the Navy. He had been at the coronation of the Czar. And you see, we had outside information coming in through our relatives.

STUECK: So you would get a fairly consistent stream of letters from say, your Uncle Rob.

STACY: Well, I guess my father did, I'm not sure.

STUECK: I don't suppose there would be any chance that those letters would still--

STACY: My aunt who was never married, my father's sister, probably was the one 00:25:00that he wrote to, and I don't have any idea where her letters would be, her material.

STUECK: Do you, are you aware that Dick might've at one time wanted to go to Annapolis himself ?

STACY: Oh, yes. I know he did. He wanted to go to Annapolis. He did not get an appointment. The war came on, I'll tell you, World War I and he was SATC at the University--Student Army Training Corps.

STUECK: Yeah, but by that time--I mean, he was at the University before we entered the war.

STACY: Yes, he had been to Gordon Institute. He had been to a military school, but whether he had--I think he did have ambitions to go to Annapolis at one time.

STUECK: I kind of wonder because your father, being in a position of some political influence, you would think that--

STACY: Well, it may have been Uncle Rob's influence--

STUECK: No, but what I'm saying is that at that time--

STACY: That could have, you mean.

STUECK: So much of the appointments to the service--

STACY: My father was not a person that would influence--I mean, create a great deal of influence because he was very much at odds. You know, he was defeated

and he was defeated for Congress. And we always said, he couldn't get anything but a judgeship, and he was good at that.

STUECK: So it's quite possible, for instance, that he tried to get his son an appointment at Annapolis and simply didn't--

STACY: I doubt it. I doubt if he tried. He may have thought he didn't have a chance.

STUECK: I see. Well, one of the things that is curious about that is that if he had political ambitions in the state, it would seem that the logical place to go 00:27:00to college would have been the University of Georgia, not to go outside of the state.

STACY: Yes, but my father had been a University graduate, you see, so--

STUECK: And if you went to Annapolis then you would at least--

STACY: I don't think he ever really tried.

STUECK: I would assume that he might have even envisioned a naval career, a career in the navy.

STACY: That may have been when he was very young. But I think he really, after that visit to the governor's mansion here, I think his idea was to be a state statesman, and he went on through the house of representatives; he was speaker of the house, you know, and then he went to the governor's office. And so I think that that was what he really wanted all the time.

STUECK: Why do you suppose, for instance, that at the University of Georgia, he never--there is no indication that he was ever elected to a campus office, no 00:28:00indication that he was active in campus politics.

STACY: I can't imagine unless he was just having to dig so hard to get what he was getting.

STUECK: Yeah. Well.

STACY: He just studied more at the University.

STUECK: Well, the interview--who was the interview with--one of his classmates--

(long pause)

STACY: --very low-key politician. He never had pushed himself. If he had been in one of these aggressive, outgoing things, he might have gotten--

STUECK: Well, his father was one like that wasn't he--more aggressive, more outgoing?

STACY: Yes.

STUECK: More controversial, I suppose.

STACY: More.

STUECK: Do you suppose that--

STACY: That had an effect on Dick.

STUECK: He saw how his father did and saw some of the--

STACY: Sort of turned him on the other--that could have been. You've really studied it.

STUECK: Well, it seems from looking at personalities that his mother probably was more influential on him than his father. He spent more time with his mother, a lot more time.

STACY: Oh, yeah. Dad was gone a great deal when I was--the first remembrance I have of my father was him being gone all the week, coming home for weekends. He was solicitor general of the Western Circuit. You see, and then, you know, we didn't see him maybe--Mother was the disciplinarian.

STUECK: Uh-huh. When he was solicitor general, was he based in Atlanta or did he move all around?

STACY: Athens.

STUECK: He was based in Athens? So he would take the train to Athens.

STACY: Athens, and Jefferson and Commerce, and Homer, and Lawrenceville and Monroe. See Winder had not been created then. Winder was created later on, Barrow county, I mean.

STUECK: So he'd be traveling around to these various townships.

STACY: Holding court in various ones, you see.

STUECK: And he wouldn't be home at night a good deal of the time?

STACY: No.

STUECK: --except on weekends.

STACY: Mother was the mainstay.

STUECK: Would you--how about your mother? Would you say, for instance, that she saw the same kind of limitations in you father's career?

BEGIN SIDE 2

STUECK: I mean did he have much of a temper?

STACY: Yes, he could get mad. He could get very mad, angry at different things. I think the last few years he was in the Senate, he was so frustrated because he couldn't do anything.

STUECK: Was this because he was ill, or because--

STACY: NO, because of the Vietnam War which he opposed so much, you know, and yet after our country got in it, he didn't want to get into it in the first place--he was totally against that. And then after we got in, and he couldn't do 00:31:00anything he said, "It's our country and it's my country, and I'm going to have to support it with everything I can." Even though he was against it--

(pause in tape)

STUECK: You were saying that the Senator in his last years was very frustrated with the situation in Washington and you suggested the Vietnam War was a major problem. Well, how about the ultimate defeat of the southern bloc of which, of course, he was a leader on civil rights. Do you think that was a--

STACY: You mean what?

STUECK: The final defeat of the southern bloc of which he was a leader on--the civil rights--

STACY: But you see, so many new senators had come in that he was in the minority. He didn't have--he felt like he didn't have the clout that he used to have, and that was one of the things. Everything was going more liberal, and when he went to the Senate, he was considered a liberal because he was right in 00:32:00there. And as time went on, he began to be more conservative. And that was one of the frustrations. He couldn't run things as he had run them. I think his health too had a lot to do with it. He didn't have the feelings for it, I mean the energy to go into it like he used to.

STUECK: Well, tell me now, other than the fact that he was a decent human being how do you explain the tremendous power that he was able to build within the Senate as a political person?

STACY: I think it was his honesty and his integrity. People knew that when he said something he meant it. He didn't equivocate over, you know, try to get out of things when he was talking. I think it was mainly his integrity that people 00:33:00admired and that they recognized.

STUECK: You wonder about--I mean, you take a Lyndon [Baines] Johnson. Now he was a very powerful man in the Senate, and yet certainly an awful lot of people questioned his integrity, his honesty. So I mean, it just seems to me that there has to be something more, not that honesty and integrity wasn't part of it, but there has to be something more than just that to explain why Richard Russell became certainly one of the most powerful men in the Senate.

STACY: Well, when he believed in anything, he worked for it. If he didn't believe in it, he had no part of it.

STUECK: One of the journalists that I was reading about in the papers the other day made the comment that Russell was the kind of leader who lead without 00:34:00seeming to lead. Would that--

STACY: Well, don't you think that could have been that the people had faith in him because of his integrity and honesty? That they admired him for his stand on things because they knew that he was not trying to gain something by it. He had no axe to grind or anything like that. You're dealing with some very ambitious men. In fact, virtually everyone there is very ambitious, they wouldn't be there if they weren't. And there I would be inclined to say that the element of fear, also, has to do with leadership, as well. I mean, certainly that was true with Johnson. I mean, people were afraid that there might be consequences if they didn't follow him on particular legislation. Now Russell's kind of leadership 00:35:00was much, I suppose, less direct, was much less aggressive. Yet you would think that--well, for instance, his mastery of parliamentary procedure certainly was of some significance. But he also had to be, I would think, a very effective operator behind the scenes as well.

STACY: I don't know if that ever entered into it so much. I can't see how it did, may have. Of course, there were times, I suppose, when he could say, "I see it like this, and if you want to go along with me, I'll help you with another bill you have." They do have that I know in the Senate--"You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". But I don't think he did a lot of that.

STUECK: One thing that has impressed me so far about him is that he could keep 00:36:00his mouth shut.

STACY: He knew when to talk.

STUECK: Yeah, he knew when to talk and when not to, Oh, I think there were references in those interviews in the "Georgia Giant" series there where he commented that some people never knew when to keep their mouth shut. He referred to Hubert Humphrey in that light, and that that undermined his effectiveness in the Senate. You would think that with Senator Russell that was never a problem and therefore, for instance, if he was engaged in a behind-the-scenes negotiation with other senators that they could always be very much assured that what was said by them in private was private--

STACY: Was private.

STUECK: Was private--would stay that way.

STACY: He wouldn't betray a confidence.

STUECK: So that would, I would think, be one thing. Yet I would think, especially as he developed seniority as new people came in, he must have been 00:37:00able to crack the whip in some way, even if it was in a very low key way, much more low key than the way Lyndon Johnson used to crack the whip.

STACY: I don't see how he ever did. I mean I can't imagine him doing that.

STUECK: Yeah, that just doesn't fit the personality.

STACY: It doesn't occur to me that he ever did that.

STUECK: Now you were in Washington for a good bit of his career, weren't you?

STACY: All of it. I was there before he came to Washington.

STUECK: Right. So you were there when he went to Washington in 1933, and you

didn't leave until 1956, I guess it was.

STACY: Right. I stayed there all that time, and then after he was so sick I went back for the last two years and lived with him in his apartment. And that is why when he talked of me more than ever.

STUECK: Would you say that he was a man--well let me put it another way. In the 00:38:00researches that I've done on Russell, so far, it seems to me that if you had to identify three, or if you had to identify people with whom he was inti- mate, personal level, throughout his life, you would cite his mother, you and Rob and that would be about it. Would you agree with that?

STACY: Well, I would like to put myself there. And I do feel like that of all his sisters, I was the one. I think Rob, of course, probably, and Rob's son Bobby [Robert Lee Jr.] Russell, who was his campaign manager when he was in the presidential move. He was very fond of Bobby and very close to Bobby. I would think that maybe Bobby might have had a great deal of influence on him and he had a lot on Bobby.

STUECK: But I get the feeling that outside of the family, although he had a lot of people who certainly you would call friends over a long period of time, there would be no one or two that you would identify as his closest friends or really intimate friends.

STACY: He had some very, very close friends and I meet people in Atlanta now, in fact I go play bridge with one of the widows of his very good friends. Arthur Lucas was a good friend of his, and Harry Thornton was a good friend of his.

STUECK: Now, these were people in Georgia.

STACY: Yes. And then there was Mary and Frank Scarlett in Brunswick who became a 00:40:00federal judge, and Dick was very instrumental in helping get that appointment for him. Frank Scarlett was one of his good friends. And Charly Cox was another one from Atlanta.

STUECK: Now why is it that you choose these, I mean obviously he had so many acquaintances over the years.

STACY: Well, they're men that l think of as being associated with him in his various campaigns when he ran for governor, when he ran for the Senate, and the only time he had any opposition in the Senate was when Gene [Eugene] Talmadge ran against him. And these men were all the ones that stuck with him and were right there to do anything they could.

STUECK: Were you aware, for instance, while he was in Washington that he would consult with them quite a bit? I mean, would he call them at home and talk to them.

STACY: Oh, yes. And they would come up to see him. They'd go out and eat together and things like that. I don't know how much consulting he did with them or whether it was all just political talk. [It] could have been, just discussions on situations.

STUECK: How about in Washington--people who were, you know, part of the Washington crowd and not necessarily connected to his home state. Were there any people that he was particularly close to there?

STACY: No, I can't think of any except the ones who were in the Senate, his Senate colleagues.

STUECK: Nobody, for instance, who would particularly stand out as a member of his staff over the years.

STACY: Well, of course, yes. He did have members of his staff that he was very close to: [William] Proctor Jones and Charles [E.] Campbell. And some of them I can't think of their names. And Leeman Anderson was his administrative 00:42:00assistant, had been his administrative assistant when he was governor and he depended a lot--he talked over things with those men. Marge [Marjorie Groover] Warren was one of the women in his office that--

STUECK: Now, with the exception of Anderson, were these other people from Georgia?

STACY: All of them, so far as I know.

STUECK: Now, as far as senators are concerned, who would you say--I mean LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson], that's a famous friendship, but what other senators would you say he was particularly close to?

STACY: Well, Senator [Leverett] Saltonstall used to come around every night before

he'd go home and have his hat and overcoat on and tell Dick good-bye. And do you know that after Dick's death, I got more letters from Republican senators than I did from Democrats?

STUECK: Well, that doesn't really surprise me. I mean, after all, Russell was very much a leader in the so-called conservative coalition.

STACY: Well, they said he had just as many friends on one side of the aisle as he did on the other.

STUECK: Well, especially in his later years, when they say the Democrats turned more liberal.

STACY: Now when he was younger, I remember when George [Armistead] Smathers, Lyndon Johnson, Dick Russell and Stu [Stuart] Symington, those four, used to go to baseball games together and they used to go to, you know, trips. One time they went to Florida to Arthur Godfrey's hotel; Smathers had to go down for something. And then the other senator from Florida--can't think of names anymore--Mary and Spessard [Lindsay] Holland were good friends of his. And Miss Lucy and Senator [Walter Franklin] George lived at the Mayflower, when he lived 00:44:00at the Mayflower. And they were all good friends. And another one was--oh, the man that--I wish I could think of names. So many names all in my head and they all go out.

STUECK: Did he become more reclusive as he got older?

STACY: Yeah.

STUECK: He spent more time alone?

STACY: More time. I think it was--he had that emphysema, and I think coughing so much and all was an embarrassment as well as an impediment to his conversation.

STUECK: You wouldn't attribute his reclusiveness then in part to the fact that he was a man who had never married. The tendency would be--well, a lot of people would think as he got older to become kind of increasingly self-centered.

STACY: Well, I knew him better when he was older. I had known him when, as a young man, and then there was a skip there when I was married and our lives were a little different. I was seeing him maybe once or twice a month or once a week 00:45:00maybe sometimes. But, as far as that is concerned, I feel like I knew him better in the last twelve years after I came home here in 1956. See Bobby Russell and his family had lived here, and when Bobby decided to build his home, Dick had nobody here at the house. He said to me one day, "I have something I want to ask you and I'm scared to." I said, "What in the world?" He said, "I was wondering if you would go back" (my husband had been dead just one year) "I wondered if you would go back home and take over the house for me." I said, "My Lord, Dick, I never thought of leaving Washington. It had never occurred to me." He said, "Well, think it over." And I said, "Well, I'll go down there and get the house in some kind of condition and see if we can get somebody to live there." He said, "I don't want anybody that isn't in the family." So I told him I'd give it 00:46:00a trial. I didn't sell my house in Washington for two years. I was sort of commuting, trying to decide what to do. And finally I sold my house and decided to just be down here. And I never was sorry because I had a very nice life living here and meeting Dick's friends. We had people like [Robert Strange] McNamara when he was appointed Secretary of the war [sic]--

STUECK: Defense.

STACY: --to come down here in his own plane, sit here and talk to Dick all day. When Herman [Eugene] Talmadge was elected senator, he told me one morning, he said, "Senator Herman Talmadge is coming by here. May be here for lunch." And Herman came in about nine and stayed until two, and Dick was calling about getting him appointments on the agricultural committee and the committees he wanted. I got to meet a very great many--the [Ernest Frederick] Hollings from 00:47:00South Carolina were over here once, different people that came here to see him. I had a great deal of contact with outside people. When the "Georgia Giant" was made, they were all here. And then we had another time when he was running, we had a bunch stay here--come down from Chicago, I believe, to interview him, and that was all part of our life here.

STUECK: Would he move out into the community a lot when he was home and talk to people?

STACY: Oh, yes. Several of them, [William] Clair Harris in Winder was one of his good friends, they'd come here and sit out on the porch, or sit in here. And then there were several people from Atlanta that came out here. I'd serve them drinks or whatever they wanted.

STUECK: Was there anyone that you could recall who was an acquaintance that went 00:48:00back to the days, say, before 1920?

STACY: Yes, Clair Harris, I guess he had known always. He was a Winder boy, and he became, you know, the Carwood Manufacturing Company--and then Clair went on and left them 22 million when he died. So Clair was a good friend and a good Georgia boy. I remember when Clair was nineteen years old. He was about a year or so younger than Dick, I think. He used to sweep out a store in Winder when he was seventeen or eighteen going to school. So Dick had known him forever. That was one of his Winder friends.

STUECK: I don't suppose there's anyone who you could recall that is still alive from his boyhood who was outside the family.

STACY: I can't think of anybody.

STUECK: You mentioned, or there is mentioned somewhere a Quarterman, William 00:49:00[H.] Quarterman?

STACY: Yes, he went in the army during World War I and stayed in and retired as a colonel and lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

STUECK: So as far as you know--but they met at Gordon, I take it.

STACY: No, no. He was our cousin that lived in Winder.

STUECK: Oh, I see.

STACY: Bill Quarterman.

STUECK: I see. How about Walton Smith? Do you recall somebody by that name?

STACY: Who?

STUECK: Walton W. Smith.

STACY: Walton W. Smith. I don't know him.

STUECK: How about Frank Kempton?

STACY: Frank Kempton. That name is familiar but--

STUECK: They were roommates at Georgia.

STACY: Yeah. I remember vaguely, but I don't know enough about him to even talk about him.

STUECK: Bob [Robert] Vansant?

STACY: Bob Vansant I knew quite well. He was one of the boys from Powder Springs 00:50:00that Dick knew very well.

STUECK: Do you know when you last had any contact with him, do you know where he was living?

STACY: He's still living in Powder Springs as far as I know.

STUECK: How about Nita Stroud?

STACY: Miss Anita Stroud was one of our teachers that lived with us. She was the first one, I believe. My Uncle Walter Dillard was a Methodist preacher preaching in LaGrange and knew Miss Nita. And he's the one that got Miss Nita to come and live with us. She taught the girls music and she taught all of us our ABC's.

STUECK: Carl Williams?

STACY: No.

STUECK: No. Pinkie [F. M. Jr.] Stewart?

STACY: Pinkney Stewart?

STUECK: Pinkie. I guess that was probably a nickname--Pinkie.

STACY: No. Now, Pinkie Stewart may have been what they called Hap Stewart. What was Hap's name? He was from Gray, Georgia, and I think he's still living.

STUECK: Gray, Georgia?

STACY: Uh-huh.

STUECK: And they knew essentially through Dick's political career--is that?

STACY: No, I don't think he ever did anything in Dick's political career other than vote for him.

STUECK: Oh, I see.

STACY: Maybe contribute--

STUECK: So they might have been old school buddies or something?

STACY: They were from Gordon.

STUECK: I see.

STACY: If this Pinkie Stewart is the same as Hap Stewart.

STUECK: You wouldn't remember another name. Hap is probably a nickname, too.

STACY: I ought to know it. I wrote to him a lot when I was a girl, but I can't think of what it was.

STUECK: I'll try and track him down. There must be--

STACY: Ask anybody in Gray, Georgia, about Hap Stewart, they'd know who it is.

STUECK: Yeah. How about--you mentioned in your interview a Josephine Collins Hardmen.

STACY: Yes.

STUECK: Is she still alive, do you know?

STACY: Yes, I think she is. She's Mrs. Linton Collins.

STUECK: Yes. And she lives in Atlanta?

STACY: No, I think she lives in North Carolina up around Sapphire Valley. I know a friend of mine that goes up and visits her.

STUECK: You also mentioned in the oral history a woman to whom Russell was engaged. You never mentioned her name, and you said that she--that you knew her quite well. She was a graduate of Emory Law School. Do you recall her name?

STACY: Yes.

STUECK: But you don't care to reveal it.

STACY: I tell you. She had--has given an interview and it's sealed. So for that, since she has married twice since then.

STUECK: Okay. I see.

STACY: And I still keep up with her.

STUECK: I see. Okay.

STACY: She lives in La Jolla, California, but she is really a very fine person.

STUECK: And Miss Harriet Orr--that was a person--a woman that Dick met in Washington?

STACY: Yes. He was very fond of her. I don't think he was ever in love with her, but I think he was very fond of her.

STUECK: How--you mentioned that Mayor [William B.] Hartsfield was at-- attended a reunion of yours. Is that because he was a fairly close family friend?

STACY: I think he was. I think Dick and Mayor Hartsfield were very good friends.

STUECK: Would that friendship go back many, many years do you think?

STACY: I don't know about that. It may have started when Dick was governor because Hartsfield was in Atlanta.

STUECK: I see, but he was mayor of Winder?

STACY: No, Hartsfield was mayor of Atlanta.

STUECK: I see. Okay.

STACY: The one that the Hartsfield Airport is named for.

STUECK: All right, I've got a couple more names here. Now Modine Thomas was a housekeeper, right?

STACY: Modine is our good old cook.

STUECK: Yes, I was trying to get a hold of her the other day and her telephone number is unlisted.

STACY: She lives right across the street.

STUECK: She lives right across the street. How about W. B. Thompson?

STACY: Mr. Thompson is dead. Mr. Thompson was really a very good friend from Atlanta, and he used to come out here and with Harry Dwoskin--

STUECK: Right, I got him too.

STACY: And there was a Catholic priest that use to come out with them. Mr. Thompson was a builder and he was working on Marist College in Atlanta at the time and knew this--what was his name?

STUECK: Well, how about Harry Dwoskin. Is he still alive?

STACY: Harry Dwoskin?

STUECK: Dwoskin.

STACY: Yeah. As far as I know, he is retired. He had a big company in Atlanta. Dwoskin--oh, this old wallpaper--what was the name of it--Dwoskin Brothers, I believe was the name. Now they have sold out and Harry has retired. Last I knew about him he lived in the Peachtree-Andrews apartments in Atlanta. I get Christmas cards from Harry and Mary Dwoskin.

STUECK: How about Mr. Demarco?

STACY: Demarco was an Italian that Dwoskin and Thompson worked with in connection with their building. And Demarco was out here at one time and laid the tile in the record house up here and finished the bathroom and did all that--helped with the designing of the record house.

STUECK: How about Dr. Alexander Russell, his brother?

STACY: My brother is still here. I was kind of curious about that, whether he had been approached.

STACY: Really? I didn't know. Alex is funny like that. He might not have wanted to. He is an M.D. and he has this nursing home up here, this big nursing home. And he lives across here, across the railroad tracks from here.

STUECK: I'll let it go for a few seconds. (pause in tape) You mentioned in your first interview with--

STACY: Hugh Cates.

STUECK: --Hugh Cates, that you got quite a few spankings as a child. Can you remember--there is the incident that you mentioned in that interview about--dealing with a neighbor's clothes because she had fouled up your dam.

STACY: (laughs)

STUECK: Do you remember any other incidents that might have led to a whipping from your mother?

STACY: No, mother had a closet that she put us in very often, and told us to go in and sit in this--it was a big closet, had a window in it, you know, and they had shelves around that the sheets and pillow cases and towels and things were kept. And there was a barrel in there that we put the soiled clothes in for the washwoman, and Mother would send us in there and if she

wanted to spank us she had a little end of a strap about so long that had broken off a trunk. And she would just take it and whap, whap, whap, whap like that you know, and it would just sting you like everything.

STUECK: She didn't whip Dick any more than anybody else, did she, or any less?

STACY: No.

STUECK: He got into just as much trouble as everybody.

STACY: Everybody else. She had so many children. But, I don't remember anything 00:58:00that Dick and I--except that one incidence where we both got whipped for.

STUECK: You mentioned that you thought that she kind of favored Dick, and the sons, in general.

STACY: Well, she was so--well, yes, I think Mother always did. In fact, even her son-in-laws, she was very partial to her son-in-laws. One of my sisters wanted to--she was having a little trouble and she came and told Mother all about it. And Mother says, "All right, Marguerite [Russell Bowden], you can leave Jim [James Harris Bowden] but you can't come home." Marguerite went back to Jim and stayed with him till they both died.

STUECK: But when they were children. How about when you were children? I mean, can you give any illustrations of the fact that your mother tended to favor the boys over the girls?

STACY: Well she would always have excuses for the boys, why they did certain things.

STUECK: Well, boys were supposed to do certain things differently than girls.

STACY: Well, I don't know, but she would excuse them and it would make us all furious because we always told her that she favored the boys, and she said she didn't.

STUECK: Well, that's pretty normal, I suppose.

STACY: I think it is. I think it is.

STUECK: Mothers tend to--

STACY: She was a very, very good psychologist, I would say, my mother.

STUECK: You figure Dick probably picked up an awful lot of that from her.

STACY: I guess he did. He was a lot like Mother. He had that easy, smooth disposition that she had. It took a lot to rile her, but when she got riled--Dick was the same way.

STUECK: She didn't, as far as you know, she didn't talk much about politics. I mean, that was something that pretty much the men talked about?

STACY: I don't think she liked it too much. I know when Dad was elected to the 01:00:00Supreme Court, he wanted to move the family to Atlanta, and Mother picked out a house that she liked and she told him when he could buy that house, she'd move to Atlanta; and she knew he couldn't ever. (laughs)

STUECK: She is so--when you would sit around the table and have some debates or talk politics, it would be pretty much the men who were doing the talking.

STACY: Oh, absolutely. Yes, I was the first one to break in when I went to law school, you know. I'd come home and try to get a word in edgeways and couldn't. But--

STUECK: They wouldn't let you.

STACY: No. I felt so terrible. I said right then I believe in women's rights.

STUECK: You lived three generations too soon.

STACY: I'm not in favor of the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] as it is now, but then I was all for women marching against anything that was wrong.

STUECK: You resented it that they wouldn't let you--

STACY: I would have been a good suffragette when they were marching for the vote.

BEGIN SIDE 3

STUECK: (Gee whiz. It's terrible. There we go. Now we shall wait a few seconds). Did you ever get a sense that young Rob had as a major objective in life promoting his brother?

STACY: No.

STUECK: That he kind of, for instance, as a young man kind of sacrificed him- self, his own career for his brother?

STACY: I don't think he did because he didn't have to sacrifice himself. He got appointed to the judgeship, you know, and Bob was a very successful lawyer. He was my father's law clerk when he was quite young, and I don't think he ever wanted anything but law.

STUECK: I see.

STACY: No, I don't think he had any political ambitions. If he did, he never showed them, not to me.

STUECK: Tell me. To get back to this issue of segregation of roles between men 01:02:00and women in your house, was there ever any discussion of woman's suffrage?

STACY: I don't believe so.

STUECK: No.

STACY: I think they all just took for granted that the men were superior to the women. Even the women felt it, I think. (laughs) I know I looked up to Dick and I was three years older than he.

STUECK: Tell me, what--do you recall having any political, any discussions in the house even if you weren't involved in them. For instance, when Booker T. Washington was entertained in the White House by Teddy Roosevelt, that was something that was a big issue in the South--a race--kind of stirring in the South. Do you recall any talk in the house--

STACY: Not a thing. I don't remember anything at all.

STUECK: How about the Atlanta race riot in 1906 when your father was running for governor?

STACY: I was twelve years old. I don't remember too much about it. I remember 01:03:00they had one, but I don't remember much about it.

STUECK: Did you have any sense when you were growing up that your father was, at least in comparison to the politicians that he was competing with, more liberal or more conservative on the race issue?

STACY: I don't ever remember the race issue being an issue. I really don't. We never figured it was any kind of an issue at all. We had a certain form of life that we lived, a certain life style, and everybody followed it. We were good to our servants. The servants never complained. We never had any trouble with them or anything like that, and I don't ever remember race being an issue when I was growing up.

STUECK: How about now, in terms of within this community, do you feel that there 01:04:00has really been a major change?

STACY: Oh, definitely, yes, very much of a major change in more ways than one. They can go anywhere they want to now, do anything they want to do, and the government is taking care of so many of them, and I'm all against all this welfare that's being poured out. I think it's all right to take care of the ones that need it, but it burns me up to see those that don't need it making a business of getting it.

STUECK: Do you notice any difference, for instance, in the behavior of people-- of blacks, for instance, around here over time. I mean people that you--blacks for instance that you would have associated with over the years, have they changed in their behavior?

STACY: Some of them have, some of them haven't. Some of them are what we used to call uppity, and show that they know what's what right now. But I've been to 01:05:00several places. I've been to Bainbridge this past weekend and there were two black couples at the wedding reception of my great nephew. That's something we never would have thought of, you know, it never would have occurred to us. Somebody said they called one of the men, "Judge", so he may have been a county judge or something like that. Then I was in Statesboro at Georgia Southern College where my brother Fielding taught for so many years, and we went to an open house one afternoon and there were several black couples there, and I've grown very used to seeing them around. It doesn't worry me at all.

STUECK: Did it worry you when you first saw them around?

STACY: I can't say that it did. I was in Washington. I served on the Commission for the Administration of Justice. It was an American Bar Association thing. This Judge [Charles Blakeslee] Law was then, got me on it and one of the men on the subcommittee that I was on was a black man from--he was the assistant superintendent of schools there in the District. And we worked right along together; it didn't worry me at all.

STUECK: Well, that was my sense too. I mean, in being here. Now I've only been here for a few months, but that whites and blacks despite all the changes have in many ways reached--

STACY: Of course, we have it in Atlanta everywhere you go. But--

STUECK: Tell me, what about--I heard, oh, from a couple of people in the last few days, that your father was at one time a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Do you have any recollection of--

STACY: I do not believe that.

STACY: My father was not born until the year that the Civil War started. So he was not old enough to have been in the Ku Klux Klan--the original.

STUECK: No, we're thinking of the Klan of the Twenties.

STACY: Oh, no, I'm sure he wasn't. I was old enough to know then. Now, somebody said that Dick and Rob had been in. But I don't believe that. But you know, it would have been normal for young boys to go into something like that if they were talked into it. I don't think they were; so many of them were around here.

STUECK: Do you have any--I asked you about Teddy Roosevelt. Do you have any recollection of your father or your brothers' attitudes toward Woodrow Wilson?

STACY: Well, Dick went to Washington to his inauguration. I think that my father 01:08:00admired Woodrow Wilson.

STUECK: Young Dick did? Now this was 1913.

STACY: He was twelve years old--twelve or thirteen. He went up there to stay with Uncle Rob and went to the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson. I told you my father and mother were anxious at every opportunity that they had for us to do things and go with--see what was going on--

STUECK: Do you remember him saying anything when he got back. I mean there must have been tremendous excitement--

STACY: Well, he had a wonderful time, but I can't remember any particular thing that he said, no.

STUECK: Is that the only trip you can recall that he made to Washington while he was a child?

STACY: Yes, I think it was.

STUECK: And he probably--

STACY: He may have been up there before that.

STUECK: He was able to do it basically because his Uncle Rob--

STACY: He wasn't in the Senate in 1927, was he? Well, he came through Washington then because I was there. He had been to Paris to the American Legion 01:09:00Convention, and I know he came back through Washington and was there quite a while then. I think he may have gone to Washington many times because we had two uncles that lived there, Uncle Ed and Uncle Rob, and Dick may have been there several times. I just don't remember.

STUECK: Now, Uncle Ed, was he the one from Texas, who lived in Texas?

STACY: Uh-uh. We don't have anyone in Texas. Uncle Edward Russell was my father's brother, and he was with the post office department in the foreign mail section until he retired and moved to Waynesboro, Virginia.

STUECK: Well, the one I was thinking of was a cousin, Gordon J. Russell.

STACY: Oh, that was long, long years ago.

STUECK: From Whitfield county. He moved to Texas and became a congressman, and there is some mention in one of the--Oh, in one of Senator Russell's letters 01:10:00about your father going to Washington to help--to talk to Hoke Smith to try and get Russell a judgeship. And apparently--

STACY: Oh, yes, I do remember that. TOC \o "1-5" \h \z

STUECK: You do.

STACY: See, I had been in Washington just about a few weeks maybe when my father came up. My father used to come to Washington quite often.

STUECK: And you went to Washington when?

STACY: 1918.

STUECK: 1918.

STACY: I didn't like teaching school. I had some friends up there and my sister,

older sister, married in Washington at my uncle's home. Her fianc lives in, well well, he was from Georgia, but he was at the Rowsden arsenal during World War I. And he could only get about three days and he thought he was going to Europe, so my father and mother and several of us got on the train and went to Washington. She was married in my uncle's home. But I was up there-- I talked 01:11:00with these friends of mine who had taken civil service examinations, and they told me to--when they were going to have the next one, and I came back and stood it. And when I got my appointment to the Veteran's Administration, or called the Bureau of War Risk Insurance then, I felt like I had inherited the world because I was getting $450 a year teaching school--fifty dollars a month for nine months in the year. And I got appointed a bureau--a clerk in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance at a $1000 a year, over twice as much as I was making. Well, that's when I went to Washington.

STUECK: There weren't that many women in your position, was there?

STACY: No, but--

STUECK: But that wasn't really a clerical position.

STACY: It was clerical, but--

STUECK: But not secretarial.

STACY: No, just clerical. Filing and stuff like that. And I did work up into 01:12:00correspondence, you know, answering correspondence and doing things like that. And then some of my women friends were studying law and getting good jobs and I decided to study law and get me a job, which I did.

STUECK: How active was you mother in the community?

STACY: Mother never did anything at all in the community except go to church.

STUECK: Was she on committees in the church?

STACY: I don't think so.

STUECK: How about the United Daughters of the Confederacy?

STACY: That was later on after we were all grown and out of the way, Mother became active in the church. She became very active in the Women of the Church and she became active in the Daughters of the Confederacy, UDC's and she did do a lot of things like that afterwards. But we were all out of the nest by that time.

STUECK: Tell me, what were Dick's faults?

STACY: Faults?

STUECK: Yes.

STACY: He could--no, I started--I was thinking of Rob--he was sort of that way too. He could be sarcastic sometimes, and he was a great tease. He was more introverted; maybe that was one of his worst faults.

STUECK: What do you mean by that?

STACY: When he was around people, he could just go into a shell unless he wanted to. I don't guess you'd call that introverted.

STUECK: Well, would you--did you observe that within the family or would this include, for instance, when he was a senator in Washington and--

STACY: I've seen him do it in Washington. And you know when he went to Washington, he said he tried about two weeks of the cocktail circuit and then 01:14:00decided it didn't pay. So he never would accept invitations to cocktail parties and things like that. He didn't like people en masse. He was a great people lover as individuals, but--and I'm that way.

STUECK: He, as a child, although he seemed to read a good deal, wasn't an outstanding student in school.

STACY: I think he was bored, more or less, with the trivia.

STUECK: Yet, you know, you talk about being bored with trivia, I mean he was a man who, at least as a senator, had a reputation for taking great care--

STACY: Well, I shouldn't have said that about trivia because he used to remark that he had the greatest store of unnecessary information of anybody he had known. And he could, he could quote things like what team, baseball team, won 01:15:00what pennant, and he could go back and tell you the names of everybody on the football team and just any old things like that, you know, he said unimportant--the greatest storage of unimportant information of anybody.

STUECK: Yeah. Well, he read a lot of history. He apparently knew an awful lot about the Civil War and the battles--

STACY: Oh, the Civil War was his love. He was crazy about reading about the Civil War.

STUECK: But it seems when he was in the Senate, he had tremendous self-discipline in mastering certain areas, like parliamentary procedure--

STACY: Oh, I would say he was one of the best disciplined people I had ever known.

STUECK: Like the armed services and army. He was considered to know more about that than virtually anybody in the Senate. So he was perhaps one of those people--

STACY: Dick had a good sense of humor. He really had a keen sense of humor. And he used to tell us very funny stories of things that happened. Remember when he 01:16:00went on that five-man tour of Europe--of, you know, China and--

STUECK: During World War II?

STACY: During World War II. He told us how Happy [Albert Benjamin] Chandler, who was later baseball commissioner, everytime they'd get on the plane and shut the door, he'd go and lie down on that bench that they had right there and he said, "Let me know when we get off the ground." (laughs) Scared to death, you know--things like that. And then he told us once about Carl [Trumbull] Hayden wanting him to fly to Arizona with him. Carl Hayden didn't like to fly and he was invited out there to make a speech or do something, and he wouldn't go unless Dick went with him. And he had a lot of incidents, you know. About Madame Chiang Kai-shek, you know, he visited them. You've heard the story of when she 01:17:00was at Macon--

STUECK: Yeah, right.

STACY: --and then she they invited her back to get her doctorate, and she wouldn't go unless Dick went down there. And so he went down there and he told--said why he had never married, you know, that he had seen this beautiful little Chinese girl and since then he had never wanted to marry. He could make up good stories like that, you know, and he was interesting.

STUECK: Well, you give the impression that, although the community that you lived in as children was very isolated, the family was very close and didn't in terms of playing and so forth, didn't really mix all that much with people outside. That nevertheless, through reading and through traveling outside of the 01:18:00state--not necessarily outside of the country--but outside of the state and perhaps through communications with this Uncle Rob, or someone else who had traveled outside of the stae, really had a vision of what was going on outside of Georgia--

STACY: I think we did. I think my mother and father were anxious that we should know.

STUECK: I mean, for instance, when you left Georgia--when did you leave Georgia for the first time--not necessarily to live somewhere else but, say, to go to school somewhere else.

STACY: When did I first go out of Georgia? I can't remember, but--Oh, I know. My father and mother took me to Washington when I was eleven months old.

STUECK: Well, you wouldn't have any recollection of that.

STACY: I never had any recollection.

STUECK: Well, how about after that? I mean, when you went places that were, you 01:19:00know, several hundred miles away.

STACY: I went to New York when I was about seventeen with Mother and Dad.

STUECK: For how long; do you remember?

STACY: That was the first time I guess that I went out-- I remember we went on the train to Norfolk. We had to lay over there some time. We went out to Virginia Beach, and my father was sitting on the beach, took off his shoes and socks, you know, to walk in the ocean and an unusually big wave came up you know, and I remember seeing my father--Whoop! Do this, you know to go under it. (laughs) And wet his socks I remember--had to put on. But they took us whenever they could, but I don't remember too many trips out of Georgia.

STUECK: Well, how strange did the world seem to be when you, you know, went to New York? How strange did New York--I can remember I grew up only ninety miles from New York and it seemed pretty strange to me when I visited New York when I was in my teens. Did it seem like an entirely different world to you?

STACY: Well, I had been to Atlanta so many times and I had an idea of what Atlanta was like, was a big city to me because coming from Winder, you know. So when I went to New York, it was just a bigger city.

STUECK: Yeah. How about-- .did you have a sense, for instance, when I was brought up being brought up in the north, we would be brought with a sense of being very different from southerners. You were brought up, I assume, with a sense of being very different from the northerners. When you went to New York--

STACY: I thought they were all terrible.

STUECK: Right. Well, when you went to New York, I mean, did you anticipate people with horns, you know, that they would behave an awful lot differently 01:21:00than the people that you were used to down here.

STACY: I don't know what I expected really. I know that we knew some people up there and one of them had a son that came around to the hotel and took me out to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We went to the McAlpin and saw--what is it? Brother and sister that danced--did the dancing?--We went to a tea dance. They had tea dances at the McAlpin Hotel, and I just did a lot of things like that, and he had been living up there all the time, and I didn't think he was different than anybody else. We had an awfully nice time together. He thought I talked funny. I'd say something and he'd say, "Oh, say that again." (laughs)

STUECK: How about when you went to Washington in 1918. Now was that-- where were you teaching school? Was that in Virginia?

STACY: Winder.

STUECK: Oh, you were teaching school in Winder. So the first time that you 01:22:00actually went to live somewhere outside of Georgia was when you went to live in Washington in 1918. How about that? Was that a real big adjustment?

STACY: That was a big deal. My father had a brother there. He also had a man, who had been his legal secretary, when he was on the court of appeals who was then with a congressman. And they had lived right over here and his wife was about my age. And they had a young baby, and they wanted me to come and live with them. And my father said, "No, you go to Uncle Edward's house to live." His daughter was going off--the first one that had ever flown the coop. So, Mr. Perry and Uncle Edward both met me at the station. And I had to go with Uncle Edward to his house. So, I didn't like it very well there, and it was sort of boring and I couldn't wait to get to my job.

STUECK: Now, when were you married?

STACY: I wasn't married until I was forty-four years old. I had my career all made and had been through law school and everything when I met my husband.

STUECK: And your father probably thought you were a little bit weird.

STACY: No, he thought I was wild. I was doing something unusual, and then after I had been in Washington for a while, my sister and her husband were sent there. He was in the army then--the one that--oh, we had all gone to Washington for her wedding in 1918. That's when I got the idea of going to Washington first. And so he was sent to Washington then to work in the war department. And they got an apartment, and I lived with them for a while. And it just went on like that. I made friends and, finally, I entered law school. And then I got my own 01:24:00apartment. Well, at first I lived with three others, and Dad thought that was the worst thing in the world--you couldn't imagine, an unchaperoned three women, four women, living together--four girls.

STUECK: Were there many girls in Washington that did that?

STACY: Everybody in Washington. There were more women in Washington during World War I than you could shake a stick at because, you see, the men were in the army. The women came there to do the clerical work, and there were a few that joined the navy or the army as WACs or WAVEs. But the most of them were just ex-school teachers, ex-secretaries, ex-everything else, that were bored with what they were doing of else it was a patriotic--The government was advertising for people to come to Washington to work.

STUECK: Were there any other people from Winder that you knew who went?

STACY: Yes, there was a woman up there that joined the navy. And she's in the hospital right now, brain tumor. But I don't believe there were any of the others--there must have been others in Winder that went.

STUECK: Did Dick visit you much when you were in Washington? Now this was 1918?

STACY: 1918.

STUECK: Yes, did he visit you much, say between 1918 and 1925?

STACY: Oh, yes, there were lots of visits.

STUECK: He did. But he would go up to Washington--

STACY: Dick was in school, you see. He was still in school when I went to Washington.

STUECK: Right, right.

STACY: And then when he got out of school, he started practicing law in Winder. And so that was a different life for him. I was away at that time and I didn't know much about it.

STUECK: But he didn't visit much then in Washington.

STACY: Never saw him except when I came home on visits.

STUECK: I see. Did he think that you were a little bit crazy, too--a little bit wild?

STACY: Well, I don't know that they thought I was too wild. They just thought I was unreasonable. I guess they thought it was unreasonable for me to want to do something like that. Dad thought that the only dignified thing that a woman could do was teach school.

STUECK: Or be a nurse?

STACY: And I hated school; I didn't want to teach. And I didn't like--I was teaching elementary school, of course, and I didn't like the little girls coming up and hugging me and putting their arms around me and the little boys sassing me and all that kind of stuff. I liked the boys better than I did the girls. But I got along all right with teaching. In fact, the superintendent at school was very disappointed and very peeved when I told him I wasn't going to teach again next year. And that's when I went to Washington.

STUECK: Did you see Dick quite a bit when you first went to Washington in 1933?

STACY: Oh, yes. I use to see him all the time. And it's the funniest thing. You know my brother-in-law, Hugh Peterson and my sister Pat, the four of us--my sister Pat and Hugh and Dick and I--the four of us used to have an awful lot of good times together. And we'd go out to Pat's and Hugh's and have dinner and sit around and talk a lot and everything. And I had a good friend up there that went through law school with me, Leila Brown. Leila and I used to beg Hugh and Dick to pass a four-four bill, we called it. It was four hours of work, four days a week. And you know, they've just about come into that four days a week. At that time, we were working six days a week. And then we got to where we had half a stay on Saturday, five and a half days a week, and then later on they had five day weeks. But--

STUECK: So Dick, when he got up there, he didn't have much trouble adjusting to the new situation, to the life up there?

STACY: I don't think he did. I don't think he did. He lived at the Hamilton Hotel when he first came up there, and Huey Long lived at the same hotel, and several other senators--I don't remember all of them. You've heard the story of how Roosevelt called Dick one night--

STUECK: Oh, yeah, at 12 o'clock at night.

STACY: And he said, "This is Franklin Roosevelt." And Dick says, "I'm--"-- what did he say? hung up. In the middle of the night, you know. And so, soon the phone rang again and the operator said, "Senator, you were talking to the president of the United States." (laughs) And Dick said, "Well, put him back on."

You know, when I lived in Washington with Dick during his last days, he was 01:29:00speaker pro tem of the House--of the Senate, and he had a little green telephone that he told me not to ever pick up the receiver because, you see, he was the fourth in line for the presidency. If anything had happened to the Speaker of the House and the vice president, he would have been the next in line for president. So he said that phone was put there for him. At any time, so at any time the White House could call him, or he could pick it up and call the White House any time he wanted to, but he didn't want me playing with it.

STUECK: Well, I think that about covers it. You have been very pleasant to talk to, and I think the interview has been very informative.

STACY: Here's Modine now; I want you to meet Modine.