Oral History Interview with William Burkett

Oral History Interview with William Burkett Interview Conducted by Tanya Finchum February 28, 2013 Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project Oklahoma Oral History Research Program Edmon Low Library ● Oklahoma State University © 2013 Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project Interview History Interviewer: Tanya Finchum Transcriber: Adam Evans Editors: Tanya Finchum, Juliana Nykolaiszyn The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Project Detail The purpose of the Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project is to document the development of the state by recording its cultural and intellectual history. This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on April 15, 2009. Legal Status Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with William Burkett is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on February 28, 2013. 2 Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project About William Burkett… William “Bill” Burkett was born in Oklahoma City in 1925. He was the youngest of four boys and attended public schools in Oklahoma City and Norman before going on to complete four years at Kemper Military School. After graduating in 1944, Bill went in the Army as a Second Lieutenant in the infantry. He served during World War II and the Korean War. In August of 1945 he boarded a ship headed for the Philippines and later he was assigned to General MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo. When his tour was completed, Burkett returned to Oklahoma and married his childhood sweetheart. Burkett would go on to earn a law degree from the University of Oklahoma and practiced law in Woodward, Oklahoma for nineteen years. While there, he served as Republican County Chairman in 1958 and met Republican State Chairman Henry Bellmon in 1960. Burkett was appointed county attorney for Woodward County and served six months. Crossing Bellmon’s path placed Burkett in the political arena. He served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives 1960 through 1964 and was state chairman of the Republican Party 1963 to 1965 at Bellmon’s request. From 1969 to 1975 he was the U. S. attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma. He served as Oklahoma County district court judge from 1987 to1988 before starting a three-year period as a member of the Oklahoma Human Services Commission in 1989. Burkett was chairman of the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System in 1996 and was once again Oklahoma County district court judge in 1997 to 1998. He is a past president of the Oklahoma County Bar Association, the Oklahoma Bar Foundation and the Federal Bar Association. Burkett and his wife of over sixty years, Phoebe Cochran Burkett, have four children and continue to call Oklahoma home. 3 Spotlighting Oklahoma Oral History Project William Burkett Oral History Interview Interviewed by Tanya Finchum February 28, 2013 Stillwater, Oklahoma Finchum Today is February 28, 2013. My name is Tanya Finchum. I’m with the Oklahoma State University Library. Today, we are actually in the library with Bill Burkett. He’s come to us today to share some stories for our Remembering Henry Bellmon [oral history project]. We thank you for coming today. Burkett Glad to do it. My pleasure. Finchum Let’s start by having you tell us a little about yourself. Where you were born and when, and then we will just work our way forward. Burkett Well, I was born in Oklahoma City in 1925. Youngest of four boys. I went to public schools in Oklahoma City and Norman. We moved to Norman when my older brothers went to the university down there. We lived there a couple of years. I had a great-uncle who had no children and who also had a lot of money. He took a shine to me and sent me to military school, which my parents could never have done. I went four years to Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri. Graduated from there in 1944, a junior college. It was the hundredth anniversary of the school. Went to the Army—was a nineteen-year-old Second Lieutenant Infantry. 1945—sailed out of San Francisco in an eight ship convoy on the third day of August of 1945. We were somewhere in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands when they told us we had dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. We didn’t know what an atom bomb was. Three days later— Nagasaki. On the fourteenth of August, the War was over. We were still out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. (Laughs) Went on to the Philippines. Was assigned to General MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo. Came home, married my childhood sweetheart. We’ve been married sixty-six years. Went to OU [University of Oklahoma] Law School, moved to Woodward. Practiced law in Woodward for about 4 nineteen years, a little over. I was the Republican County Chairman in 1958, I think. I met Henry Bellmon in 1960, when he became Republican State Chairman. The Republican Party was split in Oklahoma about five to two. Five democrats, two republicans. The party leadership was not interested in growing the party. The state chairman had considerable patronage when there was a republican president, as there had been in the 1950s— Eisenhower. He appointed all of the postmasters. The chairman liked that kind of power. There is a lot of postmasters in Oklahoma. They weren’t interested in growing it, but a man named John Tyler became the national committeeman. John Tyler was from Bartlesville. He found Henry Bellmon, who was a wheat farmer in Billings—Noble County, north of here, Oklahoma A&M graduate, and made him the state chairman. He talked me into running for the legislature in Woodward County. The democrat incumbent announced that he wasn’t going to run for re-election, so I announced. I had lived there about ten years, still a newcomer. The incumbent changed his mind and decided to run anyhow, but I beat him. My campaign cost six hundred dollars, I remember. Times were a little different. Henry was an outstanding state chairman. He changed the party. He was very anxious to have the republican legislators [be active in the party]. There were only fourteen of us out of a hundred and twenty-five. We didn’t exactly run things. Some of those fellows thought they had been elected in spite of being republicans, not because of it. He wanted to make us all active in the party, because they hadn’t been. No one had been active in the party. Henry made us all members of the state committee. He made the leaders members of the executive committee. He arranged for the National Committee to meet in Oklahoma City at the Skirvin Hotel. Barry Goldwater was a speaker. Barry was a candidate for president, of course. Henry just was tireless. He traveled the state. He issued a press release every day, blasting Senator Bob Kerr, who was our very powerful senior senator. He just wanted to be noticed. He traveled the state tirelessly. I was elected to the legislature. That was J. Howard Edmondson’s last two years. He had virtually retired. The state was being run by the Speaker of the House of Representatives—a man named J.D. McCarty, who later went to jail, tax evasion. The Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce paid him a thousand dollars a month to lobby for Oklahoma City, and he didn’t report that on his income tax returns. Henry’s campaign was the most physical campaign you could imagine. He had a wife and three daughters. They traveled the state entirely. South of Oklahoma City was strong democrat country. North of 5 Oklahoma City, that’s where all the legislators—elected republicans— lived, north of Oklahoma City. Henry would come to—like for example, I was county chairman in Woodward. He brought his family to Woodward at night. We had a breakfast for him the next morning. He had what we called “two-party tea parties,” in homes with women sitting around the room with lifted pinkies, drinking their coffee, with Henry Bellmon standing in the middle of the room. He literally had a red neck. Redneck has a meaning. It comes from the fact that the back of their neck was sunburned from wearing hats. Entirely white forehead. He would stand in the middle of the room, didn’t know what to do with his hands, looking down at the floor, but oozing total integrity. Absolutely, totally believable. You knew what you saw was what you got. We had two-party tea parties in the morning, and then a luncheon, then a two-party tea party in Mooreland, a little town ten miles east of Woodward, and another one in Sharon, a little town south of Woodward. At dinner that night, the two previous republican nominees for governor were both from Woodward. Reuben Sparks and Phil Ferguson. He met with them that evening. Then they drove to Alva to do the same thing all over again. Wife and three kids. They went all over the state that way. When the polls began to show that he really had a chance to win, we’d never had a republican governor. The liquor industry offered to underwrite his entire campaign—no deal. He wasn’t going to be obligated to anybody. His opponent was Bill Atkinson, who was a newspaper publisher in Midwest City. Henry beat him by 79,000 votes. Barry Goldwater lost that election to Lyndon Johnson by nearly 200,000 in Oklahoma. Henry won by 79,000. He was just a marvel. He was also a farmer. John Tyler told me one time that Henry called him at five thirty in the morning.

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