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1 ARLINGTON COUNTY LIBRARY Oral History ARLINGTON COUNTY LIBRARY Oral History Project CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT COMPLETED: 06/04/94 NARRATOR: Edmund D. Campbell INTERVIEWER: Cas Cocklin DATE: 04/12/91, 05/8/91, 05/13/91 NAME: camp-ed.int TRANSCRIBERS: Pat Johnston, Bette Cohen INTERVIEWER: This is April 12, 1991. We are in the Columbia Pike branch of the Arlington County Library with an oral history interview. This is Cas Cocklin interviewing a very distinguished Arlington resident and one who has contributed greatly to the community as a whole and specifically to the oral history program because he has been doing these interviews for a number of years. Now he's on the receiving end. However, in 1975, he did do an interview from the Zonta Oral History Project, interviewed by Theda Nichols. So we will skip a few of the early details which were covered by that interview and let Mr. Edmund D. Campbell talk today about his various activities without so many questions 1 to interrupt. But I do have one specific question. The original interview mentioned your educational background. You were an economics major--graduate--from Washington and Lee. And then you switched later to law. Why was that? NARRATOR: I really didn't know what I wanted to do in a profession. I was not at all sure that I would like the law, and I was interested in the possibility of economics, the study of economics, and possibly the analysis of economics in, shall I call it, economic systems. But economists did not make a good living. And there were very few of them who could operate in society, that is, the business society. I did get this masters degree at Harvard in economics, but not knowing what else to do, I came back and finished my law at Washington and Lee. INTERVIEWER: It was in law, then, that you perhaps could have more of a hands-on effect on things than an economist whose view is very long-range? NARRATOR: Yes, but I still wasn't sure I wanted to practice law, and I got this job with an economist in Washington. That was after I'd become a member of the bar. And I was with him for two or three years. The question came, how did I get into law. Well, I got into law because my economist employer went broke. And I had to get into law to make a living. 2 INTERVIEWER: And what year was this? NARRATOR: This was in 1925. I really didn't like the law for a while. It was not until I got actually trying cases and using the law as a vehicle for getting into civic work and matters affecting community generally, that I became really enamored of it as a profession. INTERVIEWER: It seemed a more useful profession? NARRATOR: That's right. INTERVIEWER: When you first started practicing law, what were you involved in at first? NARRATOR: Simply routine cases, claims against people who didn't pay their debts, and drawing wills, and learning to draw trusts for people who wanted to set up trusts for their assets, and getting a general knowledge of general law from very distinguished lawyers, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Obear in Washington. INTERVIEWER: Which Mr. Douglas? NARRATOR: That's Charles A. Douglas of Winsboro, South Carolina. 3 INTERVIEWER: And you eventually set up your own law practice? NARRATOR: No, I became a member of the firm of Douglas Obear and Douglas, later known as Douglas Obear and Campbell, and practiced as a member of that firm, oh, until 1975 when we merged with another firm, now known as Jackson and Campbell. INTERVIEWER: And what brought you to Arlington? You originally had gone to Washington. NARRATOR: I suppose I came to Arlington to live, because my first wife's family was in Arlington. And we acquired a little house there. INTERVIEWER: So you came to civic life through what medium? NARRATOR: Well, after Esther, my first wife, and I, came to Arlington, I got to know Charles Fenwick quite well. Charles Fenwick was very much interested in Arlington politics, served Arlington for two generations really, as a member of the House of Delegates in the Virginia General Assembly and the state Senate. And he got me originally interested in it. Arlington was in the early throes of a mammoth change in 1930. Hugh Reid was an Arlington lawyer of real intellectual caliber. He was a member of the House of Delegates, the lower branch of the General Assembly. And he got the idea that this old rural small county, 4 which consisted then of isolated neighborhoods in three different districts, ought to be a single developing county with a county manager form of government. There was only one county or city manager form of government in the United States at that time, and that was in Stanton, Virginia. He had the idea that Arlington could use a county manager form of government. And he introduced really a revolutionary form of legislation in the General Assembly, which was adopted in 1930 as a Special County Manager Act. Reid was able to get the General Assembly to adopt this Act as special legislation denoted as general legislation. Counties who by referendum wished to adopt it must have had a population of at least 500 persons per square mile. When you think of 500 persons per square mile, it doesn't sound like many people. But it gives you an indication of how rural Virginia was at this time. We now sometimes have almost 500 persons per square block in Arlington. In any event, this special legislation for Arlington was approved by voter referendum, enacted by the General Assembly in 1930, and in 1932 the first elected County Board took office. At that time, there were five members of the County Board elected at-large and serving at- large. I got interested generally in that election, though not really participating much in it, largely through Charles Fenwick. The Chairman of the County Board was Charles Fenwick's father- in-law, Harry Fellows. He arranged to have me appointed as a 5 member and Chairman of the Arlington Public Utilities Commission, which was a volunteer, non-salaried, part-time commission. INTERVIEWER: It had been in existence before this? NARRATOR: No, it had just been created. It was charged with the duty of seeing what we could do with high gas rates, charged by the Washington Gaslight Company, which served Arlington. And these were Depression days, as you know, here in 1933. Well, we filed a petition with the State Corporation Commission, for a reduction in gas rates and argued the matter before the Commission. INTERVIEWER: Were you handling that matter as a lawyer? NARRATOR: I was handling that as a member of the Arlington Public Utilities Commission, acting as a lawyer too. We were able to get the State Corporation Commission to agree, or to use its weight to get the Washington Gaslight Company to agree to a compromise reduction of rates. That reduction in rates, although it affected only a minority of the people in Arlington, brought me into some prominence, and gave me some public recognition. I got to talking a number of times with the members of the Arlington County Board on political matters, at their request. Now let me turn to the episode, which was referred 6 to in my earlier interview, in which the County Board of Arlington sought to ignore the judge's appointment of two people to fill vacancies in the County Board. In the Virginia Statutes, if there is a vacancy on a County Board of Supervisors, that vacancy was to be filled by the circuit judge until the next election. There were two vacancies on the Arlington County Board, due to resignations in 1933. Young Judge Walter McCarthy, the circuit judge in Arlington who had been appointed by the conservative Virginia General Assembly, appointed two people who actually were quite distinguished, to fill those vacancies. One was Ben Smith, who did so much for Arlington in making contributions of land for old people's homes and whose son, Ed Smith, has already given his interview in the oral history project. The other was Christopher Garnett, a rather distinguished lawyer. Both of them were quite responsible appointments, and I didn't really realize at the time just how responsible they were. I was a little fresh, and hadn't gotten completely dry behind the ears at that time. But anyway, Chairman Kelley, as shown in my previous interview, declared Judge McCarthy's appointments to be invalid, on the theory that the County Manager Act of Arlington said that the County Board would have all the powers of councils of cities and towns, which had the right to fill vacancies. We took the position that that Act applying to Arlington superseded the other statute, which gave the circuit judge the right to fill such vacancies. So, at this meeting of the County Board they declared by motion that 7 Judge McCarthy's appointment of Mr. Garnett and Mr. Smith was invalid, and proceeded to name me and a man named Joseph May as replacements for these two persons who had resigned. INTERVIEWER: Let me interrupt. Your objections to this were not really based originally on possible illegality but on the fact that they were appointments by a very conservative judge. NARRATOR: That was the reason the other three members of the County Board wanted to get into the matter. And obviously the persons who were knocked out didn't care for it, and proceeded to file suit a mandamus in the Supreme Court of Virginia to have it declared invalid.
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