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

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.

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.

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

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

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. Said, “John, I’m sorry to call you so early, but I waited as long as I could.” (Laughs)

His first day as governor, he went to the state capitol at six o’clock in the morning and the door was locked. He had his wheat planted. He made elaborate arrangements to go to Billings to plow after his wheat had been harvested without anybody knowing it. He thought he would be criticized for farming while he was governor. A newspaper reporter from Enid, somehow or other, found out about it. Found him on the tractor— Henry would not talk to him. The fellow took a picture of Henry as he drove away on his tractor. Henry called me and said, “I’m in trouble. They found out. It’s going to be bad.” The reporter wrote a marvelous story about this stranger that he met. Wouldn’t tell his name. Tongue in cheek, entirely. Henry’s press agent, Bob Haught, couldn’t have written it better. People admired it. That was Henry.

He had a plan for going to different cities, county seats, and by executive order, declaring that that was the state capitol for that day. He would

tour the town, meet with various groups, have a luncheon of course. He had Shirley and the three girls with him all the time. We had three senators and fourteen house members, and yet he accomplished a lot. Actually, J.D. McCarty was a good friend and cooperated and helped him. Now, this was never publicized. They would blast each other in the newspapers, but McCarty served him very well.

He had been elected to the legislature when he came home from World War II, one term. He lost his re-election campaign. So he was not a newcomer to it, at all. He was courageous. He was the absolute epitome of honesty and integrity. I was really proud to know him and proud to work with him. It was an absolute delight.

I felt like, as state chairman, I had an inside view of the governor’s office. I had access to him all the time. He could only serve one term. He was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1968 and Richard Nixon was elected president. The president appoints the United States attorneys, federal prosecutors. There are ninety-some of them in the United States, but it is senatorial patronage. Henry nominated me to be U. S. attorney and I was appointed. After two terms in the Senate, he announced that he would not run again. I attended a meeting chaired by a banker from Norman— ten or twelve men, republicans, to urge Henry to run for re-election. He wasn’t going to do it. He said, “Two terms is enough.” I remember the banker said, “Look at Jack Javits.” Jack Javits was the United States senator from New York City—been there forever, republican. He said, “Look at Jack Javits. He’s served…” Henry said, “Yes, look at Jack Javits. He doesn’t know where he is most of the time.” He was senile. He’d been in there for a long time. He was a power. But he didn’t run.

He did run for governor again, and was elected. A little better support in the legislature, but still no majority—not like it is today, where there is a big majority. The statewide officers are republicans. That was not the case, by any means. After Henry was elected governor, he and I were invited to the Republican State Convention for Kansas to tell them how we did it. It was just a marvelous thing, incredible. Nobody expected it. The fact of the matter was, when I was in the legislature—fourteen of us republicans—I think my second term we’d gotten to eighteen. The votes weren’t republican/democrat. They were urban/rural, labor/management. Everybody was conservative, whatever that means. Look at it now, they’re the same people. It was just an absolutely marvelous experience.

He ran for re-election to the Senate and he ran against Ed Edmondson. The Edmondson family is a distinguished family in Oklahoma. They have served this state very, very well—attorney general, congressman. Ed Edmondson was a congressman for a long time. Of course, Howard was the governor for two terms. No, just one. One’s on the Supreme

Court. The Edmondson family is distinguished. Ed Edmondson was certainly a very highly qualified legislator for Oklahoma. But Henry beat him. Ed contested. In Tulsa, the voting machines did not allow you to just punch one button and vote a straight ticket. The statute requires that they be that way and they weren’t. They had two different kinds, and there was some kind of problem with it. You could still vote for anybody you wanted to, and you could vote a straight ticket if you wanted to, but not by just punching one ballot.

The case was tried in the district court—Knox Byrum was the district judge, a democrat, who ruled for Henry. Said that Tulsa had violated the law in not following that statute, but it didn’t change the election. People that wanted to vote straight ticket, they could still vote. Henry carried Tulsa County by, I think, thirty-some-odd-thousand votes. Ed Edmondson wanted all those votes not counted. Had that been the case, he would have won the election. They had to go to the Senate. The Senate is the judge of its own members. He raised it there, too, but Henry won it. That’s my story about Henry Bellmon.

Finchum Let’s back up a little bit. You said that when he first started, he didn’t know what to do with his hands?

Burkett He didn’t. He was the worst public speaker you ever saw.

Finchum How did he improve on that?

Burkett He took lessons and he worked at it. He became as good a public speaker as you’d ever hear. Maybe not as good as David Boren, but he was a good public speaker. His first vote in the U. S. Senate was to raise the pay of U. S. senators. He came back to Oklahoma City very shortly after that and met with the Chamber of Commerce, Lion’s, Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs. Somebody asked him about that vote to raise his pay. His response was, “Well, I told you when I was running, I was going to take care of the [farmers] and I took care of this one.” Everybody laughed and it was never mentioned again. He had a really good sense of humor, but he was not a good storyteller at the beginning.

When he had the Republican National Committee meet at the Skirvin, he had Barry Goldwater speak to the luncheon. He introduced him. He was state chairman. I introduced Henry. I didn’t know him socially, at all, but the hallmark of Henry Bellmon was this incredible integrity. I wanted to tell a story that illustrated that. So I said, “The other day, one of Henry’s sons…” that got a nice laugh that I didn’t appreciate…he didn’t have any sons, he had three daughters, “…asked him what was meant by the meaning of ethical?” He said, “Well, I’ll tell you a story. The other day, a fellow paid me a hundred dollars that he owed me.

Gave me a brand new hundred dollar bill. After he’d gone, I discovered he’d given me two hundred dollar bills stuck together. I had an ethical decision to make. ‘Should I tell your mother?’” Henry didn’t miss a beat. He came up and he said, “The first thing I have to tell his mother is about that son.” (Laughs) He was just something else.

Finchum If you didn’t know him socially at that point, did you later?

Burkett Much better. I made trips with him to the state capitol for a day with the family in the limousine, which could pass anything on the road except a gas station. That thing just ate gasoline. So I got to know the family pretty well.

Finchum Were you there election night, when he was first elected governor?

Burkett No, but I can tell you a story about it that he told me. He was in Tulsa and Bob Kerr came to see him. Bob Kerr was just an incredibly powerful senator. He had national power. He was the guy we hated. It would have been hard for me to be civil to him because that was the way the land laid. He said, “Young fella, it isn’t often that you get dealt a royal flush in politics, but you’ve got one. You can go as far as you want to go.” Most gracious and truthful, I just couldn’t believe it. But no, I was in Woodward. It was my election night, too.

Finchum I guess we should back up, too. How early in your life did you decide you wanted to go into law or politics even?

Burkett My trip from San Francisco to Manila on ship was twenty-eight days. They had the forerunner of paperback books on that ship—Armed Forces editions, they called them. They had boxes of them. I picked one up written about a lawyer named Perry Mason. I read all of them that I could find and decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. I had been interested in politics. I worked in Eisenhower’s campaign very little. I was brand new in Woodward. That was when I got started in politics. I was elected—I was appointed County Attorney for Woodward County. Served for six months. Probably the most crime-free area in the world, at that time. We had speeders. Went into the U. S. Attorney’s Office. I’d never been in federal court. I’d never prosecuted a criminal case. I’ve been very lucky and very fortunate, mostly thanks to Henry Bellmon.

Finchum That’s usually a good question, “How did his life impact yours?”

Burkett Yeah, that was it. Henry asked me if I would be United States Attorney. I didn’t even know what a United States Attorney was. I had a vague idea, he was the federal prosecutor. Woodward was a marvelous little town. When we moved there in 1950, it was 5,000 population. It had

been hit by a really terrible tornado that killed ninety-nine people and injured two or three hundred. I didn’t know anybody there. We moved out there. My dad thought that was where the state was going to grow. The Bar kind of took me under their wing. I had been there a year and I got called back into the Korean War. I had to be gone. When I came back, the town wanted to help the returning veteran. It was a marvelous place to practice law. You knew your clients in some relationship other than the law. You knew them socially, many of them.

When Henry asked me if I wanted to be U. S. attorney, I told him, “No, I wasn’t.” I had a good friend, a lawyer there, who had served as assistant U. S. attorney much earlier. He asked me one day, “Who is going to be the new U. S. attorney?” Because Nixon had been appointed—have to have a republican president to have republicans appointed. I said, “I don’t know. I guess I could have been.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, Henry asked me.” “What did you tell him?” I said, “I told him I wasn’t interested.” He said, “You don’t know what you just did. You get a hold of him and find out if that job is still available and you take it. You haven’t got any choice.” So I did. My family did not want to move to Oklahoma City, four kids. But they did. Well, two of them were in college by that time. My oldest daughter is a—Henry appointed her district judge in Oklahoma City. She is going to retire next month after three terms, three eight-year terms, as United States magistrate judge, federal.

Finchum His arm reached a little further, huh?

Burkett Reached a lot farther.

Finchum People who know him are very loyal to him. Do you have an explanation for that?

Burkett He was loyal to them. When Henry was in the Senate, early on, Nixon wanted to close the Panama Canal to our navy ships. We had no battleships that could go through it, they were too wide. Henry voted for that and was called by Ed Gaylord, the publisher of the Daily Oklahoman, the “Senator from Panama.” But that was the right thing to do. He was just unerring in that respect. He was not without influence in the Senate. Ed Muskie, democrat, good friend. Senate was different in those days, too. They were all good friends. They’re not now, it doesn’t look like. He was made for that. You know, the lord gave us George Washington when we needed him and Abe Lincoln and Henry Bellmon when we needed him.

Finchum Were you surprised when he didn’t want to do it again, run for the U. S. Senate?

Burkett Yes. I knew that that meeting wasn’t going to change his mind. He was a little stubborn.

Finchum Just a little bit, huh?

Burkett Just a little bit.

Finchum Did you ever get to go to the farm?

Burkett Oh, yes, sure.

Finchum Do you have any Bellmon Belle stories?

Burkett My wife was a Bellmon Belle, of course. We’ve got pictures and still got her dress—red, white and blue, and they had a hat. Bud Wilkinson ran for the Senate and used that same kind of scheme. We called them Bud’s Broads. Nobody else called them that, you understand. (Laughs) It was a whale of a good idea. It worked. There are more women than there are men, at least there were then. I don’t know what it is, now. They voted for him. His opponent looked like he just stepped out of a band box everywhere he went. He was dressed with a tie and cufflinks. Of course, he was a very wealthy newspaper publisher.

The Oklahoman had a political reporter named Otis Sullivan who wrote think pieces about politics. He did a story on each of the candidates and when he talked about Bill Atkinson, he reported that he took two baths a day. In contrast, Henry campaigned in his shirt sleeves on the back of a flatbed truck with a Western band, no hat, no tie certainly, never. It appealed to people. They could identify with him. It’s hard to identify with Bill Atkinson, who also wanted a tax increase. Henry had everything going for him in that respect.

Also, Atkinson had had a bitter, bitter primary with Raymond Gary. I mean, it was war. They did not even speak to each other afterwards. Raymond Gary supported Henry Bellmon in that election. Henry carried every county north of Oklahoma City. Just draw a line across the center of the state, he carried all those counties, and the county down on the Red River where Raymond Gary lived. He carried that county. It was just a remarkable election. He had a lot of things going for him, and they all came together at the right time. That campaign cost about $800,000. That’s nothing. I mean, today. Of course, that was a long time ago. Well $800,000 was more money, then, than it is now, but it didn’t compare with today’s campaigns.

Finchum And you said yours was around $600…?

Burkett Mine was $600. (Laughter)

Finchum I don’t think you could get an ad in the paper for that, today, could you?

Burkett No, I had signs that—a friend of mine in my church got orange crates and spray painted “Burkett for Legislature.” They didn’t cost me anything. I had a radio—two minutes on the radio. I had probably ten or fifteen of those. Not much.

Finchum Did you have a campaign manager?

Burkett No. I remember meeting with the teachers, telling them that I thought that we ought to have school twelve months. I didn’t, I was kidding, of course. It was a lot of fun.

Finchum Do you remember your swearing in day?

Burkett Oh, absolutely. I remember every time I’d drive [south] on Lincoln, north of the capitol, I remember that day driving down there. Of course, no dome in those days, but it was still very impressive, to me at least. I remember that day very well.

Finchum Your thoughts when you were doing the oath? What was going through your head?

Burkett I hoped I could not embarrass my electors. (Laughs) That I could do it. It was a remarkable time.

Finchum Did any women serve with you?

Burkett There was one who served with me. Sat right across the aisle from me, as a matter of fact, democrat.

Finchum Do you remember her name?

Burkett No, I don’t.

Finchum I should know it, too. What year was that?

Burkett In 1961.

Finchum That was before Hannah Atkins.

Burkett Oh, yes. I knew Hannah well, but not from that. Boy, there’s a remarkable woman. She was a honey. She was just like Henry. Honestly,

her whole—she was never partisan. Never thinking, “I’m a democrat, I have to do this.” She was just for the state. She did some good things. Henry appointed me chairman of the Department of Human Services Commission. We had a black senator, Vicki Miles-LaGrange, who looked after our budget and took good care of us. Another good democrat.

Finchum Was it Mina Hibdon?

Burkett No, that was after.

Finchum I’ll have to go back and look it up, then. [Pauline Tabor]

Burkett My memory is just not that good anymore.

Finchum Where was your office in the capitol?

Burkett It was on the fourth floor. No, I take it back. It was on the fifth floor, and there were five of us in there. We were in there early, we’d just gotten there, and J. D. McCarty came around to introduce himself. He said to me, “If there is anything I can do for you, let me know.” I said, “Well, I’d really like an opportunity to go to Washington, D.C.” Well, two months later, he appoints me to a committee to go to Washington for a conference on hiring the handicapped. My purpose, I called Page Belcher, my congressman, I said, “I want to be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court.” You had to go up there, then. You can do it by mail, now, but you couldn’t then. Page arranged it. Gosh, Earl Warren, Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, all those honored names right there. Quite a deal.

Finchum While Henry was serving as a senator, how much interaction did you have with him during those twelve years?

Burkett I was U. S. attorney part of that time. Well, all of that time, really. I guess Dewey Bartlett was elected while I was U. S. attorney. I met with Henry and Dewey when they came back to Oklahoma City. I went to Washington a time or two and met with Henry. I prosecuted the state treasurer for tax evasion. Well, it wasn’t tax evasion. I wanted to make it tax evasion, but we didn’t get that. He contended that Dewey Bartlett was the reason he was being prosecuted. I never talked to Dewey Bartlett about that prosecution one time. Didn’t convict him, either. Tried him twice and he was acquitted. Got a hung jury the first time and tried it again. But I prosecuted David Hall, who was a governor, and sent him to prison for bribery while I was U. S. attorney. It was an exciting time.

Finchum Which job did you prefer that [U. S. attorney] over the legislature?

Burkett Oh, much. U. S. attorney was a marvelous job. I was in court every day, practically, with judges who knew what it was all about. Knew better than I, certainly. That makes a difference.

Finchum I noted that your degree is from OU, and Henry was a strong OSU fan— did you ever have discussions?

Burkett I probably know more Aggie jokes than anybody. Delighted to tell them to him. He took them. He would say, “Now, no Aggie jokes.” This is a really fine university. We’ve got two of them. Burns Hargis is a good friend. As a matter of fact, he was chairman of the Human Services Commission. He and Henry came to my office in Oklahoma City one time. Burns wanted to run for governor, he did run for governor, and Henry wanted me to take his place. I said, “How much time does it take?” “Oh, one day a month,” which was a deliberate lie, of course. It takes more than that, but they wanted me to do it, and I did it.

Finchum So you didn’t tell him “No” on too many things, then.

Burkett You don’t tell the governor “No”. Not ever.

Finchum When he was governor, did you refer to him as that, or was it Henry?

Burkett Oh, no, it was Governor. Yes.

Finchum If your wife was a Bellmon Belle, can you talk a little bit about what she did in that role?

Burkett They just campaigned door to door. That was the secret of the campaign.

Finchum Just in her county?

Burkett Oh, yeah, just in Woodward. Coffees and parties…

Finchum Did she make her own outfit?

Burkett Oh, yeah. They all made their own outfits.

Finchum I’d read a little about the Bellmon Belles, but there is not much you can find about them. It’s nice to hear a little bit about her.

Burkett Gosh, I think I probably have some pictures.

Finchum Did you go to the inaugural?

Burkett Oh, absolutely. Henry was asked if he would serve alcoholic beverages in the governor’s mansion. He said, “No, I might serve buttermilk…” That was a joke. He didn’t even like buttermilk, but it went all over the country, “Oklahoma Governor to Serve Buttermilk in the Mansion.” He had a dance in the capitol building the night of his inauguration. It was jam packed. I mean you couldn’t wiggle. It was so close.

Finchum Good times. Is there anything you can think of that people might not know about Henry, that wasn’t common knowledge?

Burkett Gee. Nothing comes to mind.

Finchum Do you know how he made his decisions? I mean, what thought processes and that type of things he did?

Burkett He was incredibly well-informed. He worked hard. When he commented on a bill, he had read the bill. He had not only read the bill and knew what was in it he knew what the impact would be. He had a lawyer with him, Dale Cook, who was later a federal judge in Tulsa. Sharp as a tack. He had some good senators, too. Bob Breeden, too, I remember from Northeast Oklahoma. Those guys worked hard with him.

I’ll tell you something else, when he got elected, some of those people didn’t think he was smart enough to be governor. A senator from northwest Oklahoma I know, the man Henry had appointed chairman of the highway commission and several others had the idea that they would serve as his Board of Directors and he would be their executive, and they would tell him what to do. I remember that the highway commissioner was telling John Tyler, who was like this (gestures tight) with Henry Bellmon, at a bar in Oklahoma City, the Skirvin Hotel Bar— we were there one night, the three of us. The fellow was sitting there with his hand on the table, telling John Tyler how Henry wasn’t really smart enough to be governor but he was well-intentioned and they would serve as his advisers. John Tyler was smoking. I remember that he was looking off, he wasn’t looking at the guy, saying “Really? Is that right?” “Yes.” He took a drag of his cigarette and put it out on the man’s hand. He said, “You burned my hand!” “Did I, now?” He was just furious at this presumption that these guys had. It didn’t go anywhere. They didn’t serve that way. He was the governor.

Finchum While he was serving as governor, would you have lunch and things like that pretty regularly?

Burkett Oh, yeah. The day that Bud Wilkinson, the election in which he was running for U. S. Senate, I had lunch with Bud and Henry at the

mansion. It was to fill a vacancy. Bob Kerr had died after being re- elected. Howard Edmondson was governor. The governor appoints the person to serve as U. S. senator until the next general election. Well he resigned. It made George Nigh (the lieutenant governor), governor, and he appointed Edmondson to serve as U. S. senator. The next election, Edmondson ran and wasn’t re-elected. We had lunch and Bud was going to have to go to Washington the next day. His term was starting immediately, we were talking about that. He lost by 19,000 votes. Goldwater lost Oklahoma by 79,000 and Bud lost by 19,000. He was a very popular candidate. Everybody knew him. Everybody knew who he was. You can take John Doe off the street and spend ten million dollars on a campaign and more people would have known Bud Wilkinson. But the Lyndon Johnson landslide—I think Goldwater carried seven states— killed Bud. It’s too bad, but that’s politics.

Finchum Do you think it took much persuasion to talk him into running for governor the second time, when he came back from Washington?

Burkett No, I think he wanted to do it.

Finchum And he could have done a third term at that point.

Burkett He could have. By that time, he could be elected to succeed, but he didn’t want to.

Finchum By that time, he would have been, what, in his sixties? Somewhere in there?

Burkett A mere boy grown tall.

Finchum I would guess that he did a lot of his thinking on the plow or on the combine or whatever.

Burkett No question. That’s right.

Finchum I understand he would take catnaps, power naps.

Burkett I have a picture of Henry. We went to Oklahoma Day at the World’s Fair in New York City. Henry was sitting there next to a Tulsa oilman who married a movie star. They’re sitting next to Henry. Walt Helmerich. Henry is waiting, he’s going to speak, and he was sound asleep. Sound asleep. I have a picture of it. I had to wake him up so he could say his…yeah, he’d take catnaps. He was good at it.

Finchum Listening while he slept…I understand that he seemed to have a way of comprehending what was going on around him even if his eyes were

shut.

Burkett Oh, yeah. Yes.

Finchum So you have four children. One went into law. What did the other three do?

Burkett My youngest son has a law degree but he doesn’t practice. He sells houses. My oldest son went to work for John Deere when he got out of OU and worked for them until he retired a couple of years ago.

My youngest daughter lives in Norman. Her husband played football for Barry Switzer. She has four kids, two boys. Her oldest son was quarterback for Norman High School, got a scholarship to Wake Forest. They redshirted him his first year and they changed coaches. He played some the second year, but he’s a passer. He was a passer, and they changed their philosophy so he left Wake, went to a junior college in Kansas, where he had an outstanding career, and then he was recruited by Nebraska. He was their quarterback for two years. He was Big XII Offensive Player of the Year. Coached at Nebraska as a graduate assistant, and then at Texas A&M for two years, where his father-in-law was the head coach. They are both now coaching for the Miami Dolphins. Zac is the quarterback coach.

His not-so-little-brother, Press, played at the same junior college in Kansas for two years, and then at Marshall. He was a quarterback. He served two years as a graduate assistant, coaching quarterbacks at Tulsa. The Philadelphia Eagles came down and hired him this year. He just went to work for them. You know, the coaches in the Super Bowl were brothers. We’ve got the same thing going.

Finchum All the way from Oklahoma. Well, do you have one or two favorite Henry stories that you want to end with?

Burkett Gosh…

Finchum If he was sitting here today, what do you think you all would talk about?

Burkett Probably J. D. McCarty. That was quite a deal. McCarty was the ultimate politician. He knew what everybody in that room, house members, what they wanted. If they wanted to be appointed committee chairman, if they wanted whiskey, if they wanted a woman—he arranged it. He was a consummate politician. We only met every other year, in those days of the legislature. A lot of those guys were there because it was four days away from Momma in the big city. They didn’t read the bills, they didn’t pay any attention. Fortunately, I think, we

survived because there were leaders in there and they followed them and voted the way they voted. It was a wonder to me that we did as well as we did.

Henry, in his inaugural address, told them his motto was, “To forgive, and remember.” I remember that. He did, he remembered. But he accommodated a lot of people. In those days, that is what politicians did. They accommodated each other. There was a down side to that, I’m sure, but there was an upside to it, too. I had a dear friend across the aisle, democrat, from Cherokee, Oklahoma in Alfalfa County. He voted with us all the time, and I told him, he ought to be a republican. He said, “My party may leave me, but I’ll never leave my party.” His party did leave him, and he became a republican. Not in the house, it was after his time. It was a different time.

Finchum Integrity was the key for Henry.

Burkett What you saw was what you got. There was no façade, no games. He just didn’t do it that way. Remarkable man.

Finchum Well, if there’s anything else?

Burkett I think I’ve covered everything..

Finchum Well, he sure will be remembered.

Burkett He will be.

Finchum He has been with this project, too, so thank you so much for coming.

Burkett Oh, I’ve enjoyed it. I really have.

------End of interview ------