WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

An Oral History Interview with

ELLEN PROXMIRE

First of two interviews Interviewer: .Anita Hecht, Life History Services Recording Date: November 18, 2008 Place: Washington DC. Length: 2.0 hours

Ellen Imogene Hodges was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in 1945 married Wisconsin native Warren Sawall. They moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where she earned her BA from the University of Wisconsin in 1948. Six years later she and Sawall were divorced.

In the early 1950s, she became active in the Democratic Organizing Committee in Madison, eventually becoming the Democratic Party's executive secretary. In 1956, she attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with William Proxmire. Each had two children, each was divorced, and each was committed to Democratic politics. During an evening walk in Grant Park, Proxmire suggested they marry, which they did on December 1, 1956.

In 1957, her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate and the family moved to Washington. For the next 30 years, Proxmire divided her time between raising children, working in the Senate office, starting her own business, and campaigning. In 1963 she published a memoir, One Foot in Washington: the Perilous Life of a Senator's Wife.

In 1967 Proxmire started her own business, Wonderful Weddings, which expanded into a successful event planning business handling major social events in Washington. In 1989, after Sen. Proxmire's retirement, the couple remained in Washington, DC, until his death in 2005 from .Alzheimer's disease.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript Proxmire Oral History Project PROJECT NAME: PROXMIRE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Verbatim Interview Transcript NARRATOR: ELLEN PROXMIRE INTERVIEWER: Anita Hecht INTERVIEW DATE: November 18, 2008 INTERVIEW LOCATION: Washington DC INTERVIEW LENGTH: Approximately 2 hours

KEY: EP Ellen Proxmire BP Bill Proxmire DOC Democratic Organizing Committee

SUBJECT INDEX

HOUR1

0:00 Reasons for Creating Archive EP Family History

9:50 EP's First Marriage Moving to Wisconsin Early Democratic Activities

19:15 BP's Political Views BP's Gubernatorial Campaigns Meeting BP BP Family History

29:03 BP's Parents' Background/Influence BP's Marriage/Death of Wife Raising Children/Early Married Life

39:00 McCarthy's Senate Seat Senatorial Campaign/Democratic Party Reaction EP's Influence on BP's Views

49:38 Children with BP (death of son) Early Years in Washington DC Relationship with Lyndon Johnson Role of a Senator's Wife

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 2 Proxmire Oral History Project HOUR 2

00:00 Lifestyle of Senator's Wife Working in BP's Office BP's Frugality Visits to the Senate BP's Seat in Senate Chambers Gaylord Nelson

10:00 Early Senate Days/Issues Views of Gaylord Nelson Relationship with Wisconsinites Origins of Frugality Traveling Back and Forth to Wisconsin Daily Schedule in Wisconsin

20:12 Memories of the 60s/Assassinations Start of EP's Wedding Planning Business Relationships with Other Politicians/Socializing

30:05 BP's Daily Schedule Importance of Nutrition/Exercise BP's Self-Discipline/Learning Ability Difficulties of 1964 Election

40:00 Stress of 1964 Election Development of EP's Own Interests BP's Relationship with Lyndon Johnson Reasons for Pursuing Genocide Treaty BP's Overseas Travel Chrysler Bailout

49:45 Thoughts on Current Bailout EP's Businesses and BP's Reaction to Them

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 3 Proxmire Oral History Project HOUR1

Hour 1/00:00 Reasons for Creating Archive, EP Family History

The date is November 18> in the year 2008. My name is Anita Hecht and I have the great pleasure and honor of interviewing Ellen Proxmire in her home here in Washington, DC to

record the stories of her husband, the late Senator William Proxmire's life, on behalf of the

Wisconsin Historical Society. So, thank you for doing this interview.

Okay.

7 would like you to state your motivation for embarking on this project. I know you 've been a

motivating force in getting it underway.

Well, I felt his career and his life had history lessons for those in the future who choose politics

as a career. He was a remarkable man who had an unusual connection to ordinary people. At the

same time, he had a brilliant mind that he devoted to legislation that was helpful and perpetual in

its value. I'm a history buff, and I think his life is an example of what you can do if you commit

yourself to public service.

We 're going to get a lot of different stories from a lot of different people about his life andVd

like to know something about the people who surrounded him, and certainly you were one of the

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 4 Proxmire Oral History Project main people in his life. So let's start with a little bit about you, namely where you were born and

when.

I was born November 14l , 1924, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And you are how old today?

I'm sorry?

How old are you today?

Eighty-four.

Eighty-four. Tell me a little bit about your family.

My father was an engineer who lost his job and career during the Depression, just as many

people today are losing their jobs. And when you have a family, it requires dramatic things to

stay alive, so when my father lost his position, he moved the whole family back to Washington,

where he had grown up, my mother had grown up, and my grandparents lived, and that's how the

family ended up in Washington. I went on through grade school, junior high, and high school

here in Washington.

And how did the Depression affect you?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 5 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, we were aware of the deprivation. In fact, an aunt, my father's sister, actually aunt, moved

in with us to help with expenses. She was single and worked as an interior decorator at a

department store so she had a steady income and we were conscious on how limited financially

we were, really for years, as people are facing today.

And your father went to law school?

He went to law school at night while he had -1 can't remember exactly what kind of a job, but

he had to commute to Baltimore for this job and went to law school at night and graduated from

law school, finally, when I graduated from the ninth grade, which was 1939. And he immediately

got a position in the US government at the Department of Commerce in the Patent Division and

he said he would never leave government again because it provided security. And that's

interesting when you think back. By then, he was almost fifty years old.

So he was an educated man. He first was an engineer and then a lawyer.

Very educated and very smart, and loved music and loved building things. And my mother was a teacher.

So she was also educated?

She was also educated and gave us all a love of books and music and learning.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 6 Proxmire Oral History Project Do you know anything about the ethnic or religious background in your family?

Well, we were members of the Presbyterian Church and went religiously, no pun intended, and

actually I have a pin. I went for thirteen years, I think, never missing a Sunday in Sunday school.

The church and family were the center of our lives.

What about politics in your family? Was anybody particularly active?

We really weren't politically involved or motivated. I don't even remember political discussions.

My older brother is a city planner and we always were interested in books and learning, but not

politics.

Do you know how your parents voted, or if they voted?

Well, in the District [District of Columbia] I'm not sure they could vote then. I don't remember.

But politics was not a part of our lives.

So we don't know if they supported FDR or the New Deal or —

I kind of doubt it. (laughter).

You graduated from high school in 1942.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 7 Proxmire Oral History Project Right.

That was the year the United States entered World War II. Did you have any feelings about the

war? Did it have a major effect on your life?

Well, we were frightened. I remember having to pull the shades down in the house to keep it

dark so that no lights showed on the street and they had neighborhood patrols. I guess at that time the government was concerned about some kind of an attack on Washington. So basically the government was decentralized, which I can't imagine happening today. But they took whole

sections of the government and moved them to other cities, and that's how I ended up in

Richmond, where I went to college for four years.

What did those two have to do with each other, ending up in Richmond and the government

being decentralized?

Well, my father's office was sent to Richmond, so the whole family moved with him and it

coincided with my freshman year in college. So I went to the University of Richmond and lived

at home. I was what they call a "day student."

So you expected to go onto college when you graduated from high school?

Oh, all of us did. All of us went to college.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 8 Proxmire Oral History Project And what were your hopes for yourself? What did you see in your future as a young woman?

Oh, I don't think we, my generation, didn't think of it in those terms. You went to learn and to

have a good time and those were war years, so there were no men on the campus. This is another thing that is - eventually, a group called "V5" and "V8" government-subsidized education was

on our campus. But basically it was a coeducational school but no men. (laughter)

What did you study?

I studied French and Psychology, which is a double major and seems to have no relationship to

anything. But there was a group of us who were interested in those subjects.

Were you a good student?

I was Phi Beta Kappa eventually. I always loved studying and so do my children and Bill, of

course, was voted the biggest grind in his school, so he cared a lot about education also.

Well, thinking back on your youth, are there other shaping events or influences that you think

had an effect on you up to that point in your life?

I don't remember analyzing anything in those ways. I think we were fortunate as a generation

because we learned the importance of frugality and determination and when I tell my children

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 9 Proxmire Oral History Project about after the war when we went to school as a couple, our total income was a hundred and twenty dollars a month. And of that, rent was seventeen dollars. The thing is, we never felt

deprived. We never felt deprived in the way of we were missing something, because we were all

in the same boat. And we had a good time. We made our own entertainment. We didn't have a

car. We didn't have so many outside influences in terms of television and cell phones and it was

kind of a narrow life, but concentrated.

You moved at one point away from Virginia.

Right.

Tell me that story.

Hour 1/9:50 EP's First Marriage, Moving to Wisconsin, Early Democratic Activities

Well, my husband, first husband, was stationed in the Air Force in Richmond and we met at a

USO kind of a function. And he went overseas. He was a prisoner of war and when he returned,

we got married and he was from Wisconsin, so we moved to Wisconsin to finish our education

because he hadn't finished his before he left and we married in 1945, so I hadn't finish mine.

And we moved to Badger Village, which is, I think, a subject of the Historical Society, where it

was all students, all living on the GI Bill. And my first child was born in July of 1946.

So your first husband was Warren —

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 10 Proxmire Oral History Project Sawall. S-A-W-A-L-L, and his family was from Fond du Lac and we lived in Madison while we

were in school.

Badger Village was outside of Madison, is that correct?

Yeah. It was an old powder factory and you can't even call them houses. They were like shacks;

rows of small -

Like Quonset huts?

Like a Quonset hut, right, but there were hundreds of them. I think there were like three thousand

people at Badger Village, all students.

What had you heard about Wisconsin before you came?

I hadn't heard very much, and I had never been there, and never traveled, so it was a big shock in

a lot of ways because it's a very different atmosphere. But we immediately met fine people and

enjoyed those college years, but they were very, very busy because we both were in school, we

had no help and we lived forty miles from campus. So we took turns going back and forth and

once we finished, he got a job at the Wisconsin Rapids newspaper and we moved to Wisconsin

Rapids, which is where my second daughter was born in 1949.

You finished college as well?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 11 Proxmire Oral History Project We both graduated in 1948.

And your degrees were in French and Psychology?

French and Psychology, (laughter)

You said that it was quite shocking to move to Wisconsin. Can you tell me a little bit more about

what was different?

Well, it was a very different community - shall we say, more boisterous? I had never been

around people drinking beer and having a good time at football games and that kind of thing, so

it was different, but it was fine. It was fine.

You enjoyed it?

I enjoyed it.

So you moved to Wisconsin —

I didn't like the winters, but what can you say?

Here we are in another winter. At what point did you start to become politically aware?

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 12 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, Warren was very politically involved. In those years, as you will find and hear from other

people, the Democratic Party did not exist in Wisconsin. There was the Progressive Party and the

Republican Party, and there was a small group of men, including Warren and Henry Reuss and

Clem Zablocki and Carl Thompson and Jim Doyle Sr., who began the murmurs, shall we speak,

of a political unit that would oppose, or be different from, the Progressive movement and the

Republican Party. It was like a cell, almost, because these were all people who were interested in the cause, but there was no office, there was no formal organization, certainly no money.

Did it coalesce during the college years or after?

It was after in Wisconsin Rapids and Madison, mainly, although there were activists, some

you're going to interview like Len Zubrensky, who were involved in Milwaukee. There was a

group of us in Madison that included Pat Lucey and Gaylord Nelson and Carl Thompson and

Horace Wilkie. We began very slowly, very quietly and all volunteer.

And what did you begin doing?

Organizing, getting people to run for office. We ran something which in today's world sounds

ludicrous, but it was called "The Pledge Plan" to raise money and you'd paid a dollar a month to

be part of "The Pledge Plan." [That was] the way we raised our money. But all of it was

volunteers. The main thing was to get people to run for office, because there were no candidates

often on the Democratic slate.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 13 Proxmire Oral History Project And do you remember who some of the first people were that you got to run for office, or that you campaigned for?

Well, we didn't get them. They decided; people like Pat Lucey and Bill [Proxmire] and Henry

Reuss and Carl Thompson and Jim Doyle and Horace Wilkie. And on the county level, I don't

know whether people will remember Eppie Lederer, who became "Dear Abby," the gossip

columnist. She was chairman of, I think it was Eau Claire County. We had to get people first to

say, "I'll be chairman of the county and I'll have meetings and we'll talk about issues," but she

was chairman of that county and she got people to run for office. And you're not just talking

about Congress, you're talking about county offices and sheriff and district attorney and

alderman and member of the assembly. And in many instances, there were no Democrats in those years at all.

And did you enjoy the work?

We all loved it. We socialized together. We all knew each other. We all knew our children. None

of us had any money. Pat Lucey hadn't even begun his real estate business then. And Gaylord

and Carrie Lee [Nelson], we were contemporaries and their children were contemporaries with

my children and it was an interweaving of this volunteer interest with the practical aspect of

making a living and raising your family.

And how long were you involved, then, in this Democratic Organizing Committee?

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 14 Proxmire Oral History Project I'm sorry, what?

How long were you involved in the Organizing Committee?

Well, I can't remember what year I began working. Fran Letcher, who is no longer with us - there was a small office over on the square in Madison on Mifflin Street. We had this small,

crummy office over a bakery, I think, and she and I were the two paid employees for the

Democratic - it was called The Democratic Organizing Committee then, and I remember my

salary was five thousand a year.

Full time?

Big time! (laughter)

Was it full time?

Well, yeah, it was full time.

So you were raising two children. At what point did you move from Wisconsin Rapids, then, back

to Madison?

You know, in the early 50s. I don't remember which year, exactly.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 15 Proxmire Oral History Project Were there certain issues that you felt really strongly about at the time?

Well, Joe McCarthy was a rallying force for a lot of this effort, because Wisconsin had a

wonderful reputation with forward looking, brilliant, clean, honorable, political people, like the

LaFollettes and so forth, and Joe McCarthy made a lot of people anxious to find an alternative.

And, of course, The Capital Times in Madison was a very liberal, forward looking newspaper

and people like Tom Fairchild, who ended up running for Attorney General, and others just felt

strongly against what Wisconsin's reputation was being affected by Joe McCarthy's career in

Washington.

Hourl/19:15 BP's Political Views, BP's Gubernatorial Campaigns, Meeting BP, BP Family History

At what point did you first hear about Bill Proxmire?

Well, he was part of the group. He and his wife were a part of this Madison group that were very

politically active. All of us met in the late 40s.

So you had met him in the late 40s?

Oh, yeah. We all knew each other.

Do you remember anything particular about him, or any thoughts you had about him?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 16 Proxmire Oral History Project No, I don't. I remember people were relieved when he decided to run for Governor because

nobody wanted to. (laughter)

Well, he was an assemblyman before —

He was an assemblyman first. He ran . . . let's see . . . probably in 1948 or 1950, and he won his

assembly seat by shaking hands with everybody in the district, which is, like, twenty thousand

people. And then the next year, in 1952, he ran for Governor. I think of Barack Obama, who

started by running, you know, local level political things in Chicago and then the State Senate

and then leapt to the United States Senate and, of course, now onto the Presidency. But Bill

started small and he was only in the assembly, I think, two years before he ran for Governor. But

people were glad, because nobody wanted to run for Governor. We were for Adlai Stevenson

and Bill Proxmire and we were slaughtered by almost a half million votes that year.

Did you know anything about his political views, or the issues that he felt were important

already back then?

No, I don't. I just know that he always thought the US Senate was the best job in the world and

he was going to give it his all to get there, and by meeting thousands of people. He set out,

almost county by county, to shake hands with everybody in the state, (laughter)

Did he have his eye on the Senate as he was running for Governor already, do you think?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 17 Proxmire Oral History Project No . . . well, who knows? You know, he would have been a great Governor. The jobs are really

quite different and as I have said before, he ran three times for Governor and lost all three times,

so we thought the career was over. We had no plans ever to run again for anything. And then

fortuitously, McCarthy died in the spring of 1957, and people started calling Bill and saying,

"You have to run. You're the best known Democrat." And because it was a special election -

one of the things that happens in the State - if you have no candidates on the slate in your county

or your district, it's hard to win statewide. But in a special election, it's one man against one

man. You don't have the difficulties of the vacancies below you. And they called a special

election for August.

Before we get to that special election, tell me about the different campaigns for Governorship.

Did you work on those?

Well, I was working for the Democratic Organizing Committee. I wasn't directly involved with

his campaign.

You weren 't directly involved?

Um-umm, um-umm. (negatively) But we ran the party. We ran the conventions and we tried to

get people enlisted and we tried to get publicity. And that was another thing Bill was very good

at; writing his own press releases and making his positions clear through press releases. He went

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 18 Proxmire Oral History Project on radio shows in every town that he went into. He was free to debate or discuss any issues that

any constituencies or universities or colleges were interested in.

And, in fact, during each run for Governor, he won more votes. Is that correct?

Say that again?

77e won more votes with each run for the Governorship?

Well, not quite. In 1952, he lost hugely. In 1954, he lost hugely, probably by almost the same,

and then, in 1956, he only lost by forty thousand or so, which improved his position. But again,

1956 was a big Eisenhower year and Stevenson didn't do well and that was the end.

Do you think people held it against him at all that he wasn 'tfrom Wisconsin?

It was an issue, and Walter Kohler, who was his opponent, twice for Governor and once for the

Senate, used that fact. He would design, or his group would design, ads with the outline of the

State of Wisconsin, divided it in half and listed all the Kohler accomplishments and family

history and then on Bill's side, it would be blank. That was the message - he's an intruder, an

imposter! And politics hasn't changed that much, (laughter)

It doesn 't sound like it. So let's back up also to the point where you became personally involved

with him. How did that come about?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 19 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, in very simple terms, my husband left me in 1954, and Bill's wife left him in 1954, and

we, Bill and I, were not involved with each other at all except as friends and acquaintances. And

in 1956,1 was managing the Democratic headquarters at the convention in Chicago, and Bill, I think, was head of the delegation and we went out one night just to take a walk in Grant Park, of

all places, where the Obama rally was, and he asked me to marry him. And he didn't say,

"Please, will you . . . " He just said, "We have to get married." It wasn't very romantic!

(laughter) I said, "Okay!"

Was it a shock to you? Was it really that out of the blue?

Yeah, it was, because we really hadn't dated in a traditional sense, and we both had children and

we didn't say anything to anyone until after the election in 1956, but we were married December

1st in 1956 after the election. But we just knew each other well, but we had not quote-unquote

dated in a traditional sense.

So there must have been something about him that made you say yes quite quickly.

Well, he was the most fascinating person, and no matter who met him over the years, you always

had wonderful conversations and analysis of what was going on. He was devoted to the children.

He always took them places and introduced them to the world and he was devoted to his own

father. We'd go to see his own father in Lake Forest on a regular basis and he was just a

fascinating person to be around.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 20 Proxmire Oral History Project Let's take some —

And solid.

And solid. I wanted to ask you now to tell me about some of his personal history, what you found

out, you know, about his family background and his youth and his early life.

Well, I didn't know this at the beginning, but he did grow up in Lake Forest, Illinois, and his

father was a doctor, an absolutely extraordinary man who was beloved. He delivered something

like three thousand babies in Lake Forest, Illinois. But at that time, people of means sent their

children to private school. Bill and his brother went to The Hill School in Pennsylvania starting, I

believe, in eighth grade and then it wasn't hard to get into private schools. If you had the money,

you were normally accepted and, as I said, Bill was voted the biggest grind. He studied and

worked and he was always one of these people, if you saw pictures of him with Gerry Ford, the

article I showed you, he'd try out for football and he was too small and too thin, but they put him

in for one play so he could get his letter. He was a boxer and he was a hiker and he was into

physical fitness, but he wasn't quote-unquote, "an athlete" but it was an important part of his life.

Hourl/29:03 BP's Parents' Background/Influence, BP's Marriage/Death of Wife, Raising Children/Early Married Life

What do you know about his parents' backgrounds? His father was Theodore and he was a physician.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 21 Proxmire Oral History Project Right, and his mother was Adele, and she came from Missouri; Adele Flanigan. She was very

Irish. I never met her. She died before we married, and he had a brother who was killed in World

War II in a plane crash and a sister who had MS [multiple sclerosis], so a lot of tragedy in his

family. And his father lived to be seventy-eight, I believe. But he died soon after we were

married.

Did Bill ever talk about his mother?

Oh, yeah. He was crazy about his mother and she evidently was a real character and they'd go to

Canada as a family to a place called Desbarats. I've never seen it or heard about it, but Dr.

Proxmire would come up on the weekends or for part of the time. But again, they were a very

close family and she was full of life, I understand, and very social and his sister was beautiful.

She graduated from Sarah Lawrence and learned she had MS when she was twenty-one years old

and lived for forty years with it.

What kind of influence do you think his parents had on him ?

Well, his father was a conservative Republican, I think, but he was thrilled with Bill's choice of

career and life and was very supportive and - he was a great influence, though. He was very

community aware and it was one of those old fashioned things. His house and his office were the

same, which almost -1 don't think exists any more. In other words, his physician's office was in their house, so the neighbors and neighborhood and people were free to come see him.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 22 Proxmire Oral History Project Do you think he had the sort of kind of single-minded discipline that Bill showed?

No, probably not. I don't know what the source of that was, that single-minded devotion to a

cause. Someone told me he gave up movies for a year because he thought it was important not to

be distracted from thoughtful things. That was a theme throughout his life, this single-minded

determination to create or to achieve.

77e was a very ambitious person.

He was very ambitious, he really was. He went to Harvard after Yale and he got all his degrees at

Harvard and he could have been a financier on Wall Street. I think he did for awhile, try that, but

it wasn't satisfying and he was determined to create a political career and studied the whole

United States and picked three states that he thought were possible for a political career, where there weren't heavily entrenched parties that determined who was going to run for things and one

of them was New Mexico and one was Wisconsin, and he chose Wisconsin, and went to work

for The Cap Times. That was his job when he moved there.

Had he already married by then?

Yeah. He was married in 1945 or 1946,1 think.

And tell me about what you know of the first marriage to Elsie Rockefeller.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 23 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, it was a very troubled marriage.

Do you know how they met?

I don't; in New York, I think maybe when he worked on Wall Street. I just don't know the

details. But she had a hard time adapting to the fact that if you're going to shake twenty thousand

hands, you're gone a lot on the weekends and it was hard for her to accept that. And so she fell in

love with a newspaper man at The Capital Times and left Bill.

And took their two children with [her]?

Well, we lived, like, two blocks from each other, (laughter)

Oh, really?

So the children, from the beginning, saw a ton of each other.

And where was it in Madison?

It was on Buckeye Road. Right after Bill died, someone sent me - a neighbor - that they had torn

our house down, and they had driven by and taken pictures as the house was demolished on

Buckeye Road.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 24 Proxmire Oral History Project Sad.

It was funny, because when we had the memorial at the Capitol that February, I said to one of

my daughters, "Why don't we drive by just while we're in Madison and see the house?" But I

decided I couldn't do it. And I would have seen it gone, so I'm glad I didn't do it.

So that marriage ended in 1954 as well as yours, and then there were two years when both of you were single and working?

We were working; right, right. [It was a] busy, busy, hard time. Bill was devastated when she left

and I don't know what they talked about or anything like that, but I know he was very hurt.

And she came from the Rockefeller family?

Right.

Do you know anything about her background or how much that influenced their marriage?

I don't. I don't know anything about that. You probably know the demise of her second

marriage, which was horrific. Her husband shot her and then killed himself. We were not in touch over the years that frequently, but at the weddings, the children's weddings and things like

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 25 Proxmire Oral History Project that, I would see them. I mean, they were wonderful people, but troubled people, is the only way

I can describe it.

How involved were you in raising his first two children?

Well, they came every weekend and every holiday and every summer and, of course, we were

married in 1956 and he won in 1957, so basically I moved to Washington with - both of us

moved. We rented a house because we didn't know whether he'd win again in 1958, and Teddy

and Cici came for the holidays and for the summer the whole time we were here. And Teddy

ended up living with us when he was in high school.

So you became another parent to those children?

Yeah, the kids, they were ten, nine and eight when we married. It was always a household of a

lot of children, a lot of people, (laughter)

How do you think all of these tragedies affected him? I mean, certainly the death of his first wife

happened much later.

Right. It was 1972,1 think.

I think it was 1982.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 26 Proxmire Oral History Project Was it 1982? I can't remember what year. Bill was not one to wallow in feeling sorry for

himself. He moved on, basically.

And your early years of being married, did you learn anything about him that was a surprise?

Not really. I mean, that first year, you can imagine the trauma of getting married, moving to

Buckeye Road, having a campaign, moving to Washington! We just put one foot in front of the

other. But I was thrilled when he won, because I wanted to come home.

You did?

And I loved being here. I loved this city and my parents were here and my sister was here and it

was like a new start for us.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the moment, though, when you got married. He had lost the third

run.

Right.

You were going to settle into a life on Buckeye Road and do what?

Right. Well, I was still working at the Democratic Party.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 27 Proxmire Oral History Project And what was he going to do at that point?

Well, he worked with Art Craft Press, or was a part owner of a print shop in a suburb of

Madison, I can't remember [where]. But that was his paying job, was with Art Craft Press, but that position gave him the freedom to continue to campaign.

Hourl/39:00 McCarthy's Senate Seat, Senatorial Campaign/Democratic Party Reaction, EP's Influence on BP's Views

So, what went through your mind when McCarthy died?

Well, I was shocked, and Pat Lucey, he remembers more than I do. He called the house and he

said, "Bill, you have to run!" And I remember saying, (laughter) "Oh, no, we don't!" And he

said, "You have to. You're the best known, and we'll help and we'll coalesce behind you" I

mean, I had barely gotten settled.

So you weren't terribly enthusiastic about him running?

Well, I wasn't at first. But I knew what we were in for, another six months of constant travel.

There was controversy in the party. There were people who didn't think Bill should be the

candidate.

Tell me about that.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 28 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, I can't remember who all the candidates were, but Clem Zablocki, who was a

Congressman from Milwaukee, ran. Several others ran. They had to have a primary, which must

have been June, to determine who the nominee would be. I think Bill got discouraged sometimes

because the party hierarchy really wasn't sled length behind him.

Were any of your closer friends opposed to his running?

Well, the chairman of the party, Philleo Nash, and I'm working for the party, was opposed to

Bill's running. There were some difficult - they used to have caucuses in the districts where the

candidates would come and present their case - and that was hard for Bill to go and have people

criticize his being the candidate. But, he hung in there and kept going and easily won the primary

because he was well known.

Do know what some of the issues were that he campaigned on?

Against his colleagues?

Um-hmm. (affirmatively)

I really don't. I have all that stuff recorded somewhere.

7 mean to me it shows quite a bit of perseverance and fortitude that after losing three state

elections, he would even consider running for Senate.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 29 Proxmire Oral History Project I know, I know. It is when you think back on it.

How involved were you in that campaign? Did you travel?

Well, we ran it out of my kitchen.

You did?

We had no office. We didn't know that Lyndon Johnson was holding onto his majority by, like a

vote; like now, it was 51/49 or something like that. So the actual campaign gained national

attention and they started sending people out, like Joe Miller came from Washington, and I

remember he and Bill and we were sitting in the living room and talking about the campaign. Joe

Miller was basically an emissary from the national party and Bill said to him, "I run my own

campaigns. You're welcome to be here and you can get out the vote or help, but I make the

decisions on this campaign." And we literally didn't know how important it was to the national

majority that he win. And that's a funny story that I will show you a copy of - Robert Caro wrote

about it - that supposedly the night of the election, Bill called Lyndon Johnson and said, "Here I

am, your best birthday present ever." Well number one, we didn't know it was his birthday and

Bill never said that. But I was going through scrapbooks and I found a telegram from Lyndon

Johnson sent to Bill ten years later that said, "Time and life always get everything wrong. You

really were my best birthday present ever." So it originated with Johnson years later.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 30 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, good that you set the record straight!

Well, it's an old raggedy, yellow telegram. So that was a momentous time and we were talking

about it yesterday. When he won, we were told we had to immediately come to Washington, and

I didn't even have time to go home and get clean clothes or anything. We got on the plane and

flew to Washington so we could be sworn in, and I remember crying and saying, "What about the children?" (laughter)

What did you do with the children? Did they come with you?

Friends came and took them and it was wild! I had nothing to wear. Fortunately my parents were

here. My sister was here and I borrowed clothes from her, and he was ushered to the floor of the

Senate and then Vernon Thomson had to certify the election and he postponed doing it

immediately. I mean, we didn't know ... it was just -

Why that postponement?

I don't know, but Bill had run against him for Governor the last time, and I remember being in the cloakroom or behind the scene somewhere and Strom Thurmond was filibustering and -1

mean, we were just thrown into it. And Life Magazine covered us, followed us for a week, and it

was goofy!

7 suppose in those days you didn 't have any Secret Service following you around?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 31 Proxmire Oral History Project Oh, we never did.

Never did?

And that's another thing. I've had visitors come and say, "Well, where's your Secret Service?' or

"Where's your driver?" I mean, the Senators don't have any of that; no protection, which is fine.

So you went straight from the election night results onto an airplane, flew here, stayed a week?

Wasn't quite a week; maybe four days, and then we flew back to Madison and there were

hundreds of people at the airport, and they had gone to our house and scrubbed it had food in the

refrigerator and then I immediately had to start looking for a house because we didn't have a

place to live in Washington. And he began to campaign for 1958.

Right away?

Because he knew he had to run again.

What was the reaction in the Democratic Party in Wisconsin?

Oh, I think they were thrilled. If you'll read some of the articles I've given you about the DOC, it

was the beginning of the wave of Democratic victories in the state, followed by Gaylord and Pat

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 32 Proxmire Oral History Project and Henry Reuss. I think we eventually ended up with almost every member of the congressional

delegation and the Governorship. But Bill was the crack that opened it, and they couldn't help

but be pleased.

In some of my reading, though, it seems that it was already apparent to some people that he

wasn 't a strict party loyalist.

Well, again, one of the things he did early on, and I don't remember which year - the unions, for

example, had been very supportive. They had run to get out the vote and the phone banks and

had been very supportive of his campaign, and they were having a convention - you'll learn

more of this once you talk to some of the people who worked through it, but they were having a

convention somewhere, and Bill, I don't know, hadn't been invited, but he literally walked on the stage and said to them, "You don't own me. I'm my own man and I thank you for your

support, but I am not your sole emissary to Washington." And people were shocked. But it was the beginning of his taking positions that he believed in, and he didn't just represent unions and

farmers. He represented all the people, and I see a lot of this in Barack Obama, this "I'm not a

divisive figure. I'm not a single minded supporter of corporate or unions or farmers. I'm

representing the people of the State." And that's what he became.

How influential do you think you were on his views?

Oh, I don't think I was influential. I loved working in it. I worked in his office for nothing, for

years here, before our last child was born. And I loved the process and I love politics and issues

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 33 Proxmire Oral History Project and I wrote a column for Wisconsin papers and did things like that that I enjoyed. But policy

wise, I wasn't influential in any way.

Did you have a lot of discussions with him about the issues?

Oh, yeah. We talked about everything. We talked about everything and I don't remember

disagreeing with him on anything except maybe the Vietnam War, but it wasn't a big -1 mean,

he supported the war at first and then I think later regretted that decision. But we'd sit down

every night at the dinner table, not like so many families today where they never sit down and talk, and in addition to finding out what the children were up to and what they were interested in

and what they were doing, we'd talk about the issues of the day. We took them to the Capitol on

a regular basis and Douglas, the youngest one, campaigned with him. We have great pictures of

him holding his nose while his father is talking, (laughter)

Hour 1/49:38 Children with BP (death of son), Early Years in Washington DC, Relationship with Lyndon Johnson, Role of a Senator's Wife

Did you go out on the campaign trail with him before —

Not very - because I basically was housed here in Washington.

But I mean before you moved to Washington. Did you go out with him throughout Wisconsin'?

Well, we were married less than a year when we moved.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 34 Proxmire Oral History Project So when he traveled throughout the state during that year —

I really was keeping the home fires burning. I really didn't do much on the road. In later years

[yes], but after the 1964 campaign, I began to think of other things, and that's when I started my

own business.

So when you moved out here, back here for you, you came with your two children and Bill and

then you had two children with him. Is that correct?

Our first son died, yes.

And who was he?

His name was William. Well, he died right after he was born.

What year was that?

1958,1 think, 1958. That's another reason why I couldn't campaign in the 1958 election. And that was a terrible, terrible time. Bill's father was a doctor and he said I was O Rh-negative. At that time they didn't know.

Oh, that was why?

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 35 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, no. The cord was tied around the baby's neck and he suffocated and died soon after he was

born, and my obstetrician didn't catch it. I knew something was wrong a few weeks ahead of time because the baby wasn't moving. But then they didn't have as sophisticated techniques for

figuring out what was happening, so that was tough.

And that was here in 1958?

That was here, in 1958, yeah.

Right after, not long after you had moved here.

Um-hmm. (affirmatively)

Oh, that's terrible.

Um-hmm. (affirmatively). And then I had a miscarriage after that and so, anyway, we finally had

Douglas.

In what year?

1961.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 36 Proxmire Oral History Project In 1961.

Right.

Tell me about those first few years here back in DC.

Well, the first year was hard because we were renting our house. We couldn't commit to buying

a house because we didn't know if he'd win again, so we rented a house and I had to get my girls

settled in school in Bethesda and my parents lived near us, so we spent a lot of time with them.

And then, when he won in 1958, he and I, I think, came alone and probably left the children ... I

don't remember exactly how that happened, but he gave me, like, one day to find a house! And I

found a house in Cleveland Park near here, and it was forty-five thousand dollars. I had a friend

here, Max Kampelman who used to work for Hubert Humphrey, and I called him and I said,

"What do I do? Bill told me we couldn't pay more than thirty-five for a house," and he said,

"Offer thirty-seven five." So we offered thirty-seven five and we got it for thirty-seven thousand,

five. It was a four-bedroom house. In today's world, it seems like insanity. But it was a great

house, near good schools, near now a subway - there wasn't a subway then - great

neighborhood, and we bought it, and all Bill said was, "Does it have a good shower?" He wasn't

into creature comforts! (laughter)

He was not?

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 37 Proxmire Oral History Project He was not. Again, like Barack, I read about him the other night where he has this bachelor

apartment here when he was a member of the Senate and she stayed in Chicago and she said she

saw it once and she never saw it again. Well, Bill slept in his office for six months once when we

were in the 1964 campaign.

So he was an asthete, in a way. He didn 't go for any kind of comfort.

Well, it wasn't important to him. In terms of clothes, I mean, I bought his clothes and car -

again, we had a Chevy that had a hole in the floor and Mrs. Obama was talking the other night

about this old car they had with a hole in the floor. We had a Chevy Vega that was our only car.

It didn't bother him. Someone stole it once and the police said it was our car and they couldn't

believe it belonged to a United States Senator! (laughter)

Did any of this ever bother you? Did you have any pet peeves or any difficulties with some of his

Well no, not really, not really. And once I had my own business, I had my own income and it

worked out fine.

Those early years in the Senate, do you know much about how he positioned himself and what

happened?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 38 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, again, I have scrapbooks, and if any historian wanted to come - my mother kept a

scrapbook every year for about the first ten or eleven years; not about him only, but about the

issues of the day and, of course, his position. He was great at getting publicity. He was on all the talk shows and he would do press releases on Friday because Saturday's a slow day and he knew

he'd get coverage and we had lots of friends in the press who didn't necessarily come out

publicly and support him, but Martin Agronsky and David Brinkley and a lot of- Sam Schafer -

people who followed his career closely. He was a master at getting attention, plus he opposed

Lyndon Johnson.

Well, that's what I was going to ask you. You said in the early years, you had some stories about

that.

I don't remember when that started. But there was one famous cartoon. On George Washington's

birthday, the least senior person in the Senate gets to read George Washington's farewell

address, and Bill was asked - maybe it was 1958 or 1959 - in the early years. And the cartoon

was Lyndon Johnson sitting on a throne and here's like David [and Goliath], little tiny Proxmire,

[with the cartoon] saying there were two farewell addresses today, because Johnson controlled the Senate, thoroughly, completely, and he was a brilliant politician and they would play games.

Some of it would make me upset. We were at a parents' weekend, for example, with Cici, and

Lyndon Johnson called Bill and literally summoned him back to Washington. I don't remember the cause, and then kept him waiting hours and hours outside his office. They played games and that's politics, I guess, but he deprived him of a Chairmanship. And we weren't enemies, but Bill

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 39 Proxmire Oral History Project was determined to be independent and to make decisions based on what he thought was right,

whether it was or not, and not be beholden to the leadership.

So he was good at getting publicity but not necessarily —

I think some people might have felt that he couldn't get legislation through efficiently because of this. But he ended up, again, by seniority and I think Bill was opposed, maybe, to some of the

rules of seniority where you become a Chairman only because you've been there twenty years,

not because you know the subject. But because he stayed so long, he got to be very influential. If

it was an issue like genocide, he just pounded away at it for twenty years until he got it passed.

Let's spend the last few minutes on this tape talking about the role of the Senator's wife.

Well, it varies and we used to meet once a week. They still do, I think. I don't participate that

way anymore, but we would meet and role bandages for the Red Cross. That was the purpose of the get together. But we got to know each other and become good friends, which I did. Well, we

had the time then. Now most congressional families, the wife works full time or has a business in the home state or doesn't even live here. Many of them never move and we have a lunch once a

year for the first lady and the first lady gives a lunch for us, which is a - they're wonderful

occasions - and I treasured those because we got to know each other and I don't think the

families get to know each other in the same way these days. I've never met Mrs. Schumer, for

example, or this Mrs. Salazar doesn't live here, and Mrs. Obama I met once. But then we all

lived here, we brought up our families here. I knew Senator Dodd's parents! And so there isn't

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 40 Proxmire Oral History Project the same kind of camaraderie, maybe [today], or family - Paul Douglas and his family, we saw

each other all the time. We'd swim at their pool. It was just a different atmosphere, I think.

HOUR 2

Hour2/00:00 Lifestyle of Senator's Wife, Working in BP's Office, BP's Frugality, Visits to the Senate, BP's Seat in Senate Chambers, Gaylord Nelson

This is hour number two of my interview with Ellen Proxmire on November 18? , 2008. We're in

the early 60s in Washington and you were talking about being a Senator's wife. Tell me more

about what happens when you enter public office at that level. Did you lose privacy? Did you feel a sense of—

Not really. That is one of the joys of being a Senator or a Congressman as opposed to being

Governor. I mean, we had our own home. We never had to worry about security. People didn't

drive us around. We drove ourselves around. And here, of course, my children went to Sidwell

Friends School which is a Quaker school in our neighborhood, and Al Gore was a contemporary

and he was over at Saint Albans, and the Nixon girls went to Friends, so that there were a lot of

prominent families in the school system and in town. You could go to a restaurant and not have

people hound you or bother you. You can really be kind of anonymous unless you want to be on the news all the time.

Were you ever on the news for things that you didn't appreciate or that were controversial?

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 41 Proxm ire Oral His to ry Project Not really, because you're one of a hundred. Think how many anonymous Senators there are. I

mean, you really - you can - Bill always took the subway or ran to work. You never felt like you

were being hounded by press. If you wanted to be on Face the Nation, someone called.

You wrote a book, early on, in the early 60s.

1964,1 think it came out.

And you did describe some of the difficulties with the lifestyle in terms of it being unpredictable.

Well, daily, very unpredictable. And when Douglas was little and I had teenagers, I'd feed one at

five, feed the older kids at six and feed Bill when he got home. Those early years in the 60s, I

was home a lot and that's when I wrote the book, because I had the time to do it. And you never

knew, sometimes they'd end up sleeping down there. They don't do that much anymore, but if there was a filibuster that went on for days, they'd put cots out in the corridors and Bill, early on,

set his sights on never missing a roll call vote, which he ended up having the longest "not

missing a vote" than anybody in the history of the Senate, which fits his discipline. But, again, that put another pressure on him and me and the staff that he didn't miss a vote. And I never

liked having our income tax returns on the front page of the papers and things like that that, in a

way, are an intrusion into your private life, but that's a small price to pay.

You said you worked at his office on and off. Was that already in the early 60s?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 42 Proxmire Oral History Project That was before Douglas was born in 1961. Once he was born, I'd stay pretty much home.

Tell me about working in the office with Bill, how he ran his office and what you did together and separately.

Well, I worked on my column for Wisconsin papers and I helped out. I didn't have a leadership role or anything like that. It was a way for me to keep up with what was going on and to be involved in what issues were prominent. And I think I started to tell you, one of the moments when Bill was absolutely at a loss for words, which was rare, he was on Meet the Press and this might have been before the 1958 campaign, and someone said, "We understand you have seventy-five employees in your office," and I thought Bill was - I mean, he was absolutely dumbfounded and what had happened, you have what's called "clerk hire" in the Senate. You have a block of money and, as I said, Senior Senator Gore had eleven on his staff. You can pay a few people substantial, or you can pay a lot of people very little, and because he had a campaign coming up, whoever did the hiring just hired tons of people at low salaries, I gather, and Bill was very upset, shall we say.

So, early on, he was sort of known as a spender in his campaigns?

No!

Or misconstrued to be a spender?

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 43 Proxmire Oral History Project A spender? No.

7 was just thinking if they thought he had seventy-five employees . . .

Well, this was the Senate payroll. Because you can hire a lot of people if you pay them very

little, and some of those people, I think, are on your list, maybe: Maurice Sonnenberg in New

York. They were college students or interns, where you could have tons of people doing jobs to

see that you got re-elected, basically.

So was he known as very frugal from the outset?

From the outset, barebones. Of course, he never let that get out of his control again, about

knowing how many people worked. I mean, there were people out in halls.

Was he frugal in his personal life as well?

Very, yeah. That's what I said. I had to go out and if he needed new socks, I had to buy them,

because he would never figured out, "I need new socks." (laughter) And because he ran to the

office and he ran home, his clothes were never home and I remember someone in the office

called me once and said he was on the floor in his pajamas, and I said, "Oh, he's not." But no

one was paying attention to keeping his clothes orderly in the office. But, as I said, those things

didn't concern him.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript AA Proxmire Oral History Project Did you go to the Senate with him in the early days at all, or go listen to hearings?

Well, I sat in the galleries early - the first few years before Douglas was born, I could go down there and observe what was going on. I loved doing that; sitting in the family gallery and just

watching. If you go there, though, you're always shocked that there's nobody on the floor most

of the time. Those who have a speech to make or a bill to support are there, but the rest of the

hundred people don't sit around and listen.

Do they read the Congressional Record, then, afterwards, or how do they get their

[information].

No, they have the stenographers who are there taking down every word and actually, one of my jobs was to read the Congressional Record every day and analyze for him -1 mean, it's a book that comes out every single day - not analyze for him, but to suggest to him that "so and so" had

made such a speech on such a subject that he might be interested in, kind of thing. So that's how

I learned what was going on and kept up with the news of the day, or the cause of the day.

Do you have any specific memories of listening to him speak on the floor?

Well, he was a wonderful speaker and a great voice and interestingly enough, when you're on the

floor, as you gain seniority, you can move toward the front of the seating arrangements and he

chose to remain on the aisle in the back row his whole career because it was a great place to

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 45 Proxmire Oral History Project speak from and it was easy to get in and out of the chair, so he never moved. He was the most

senior Senator when he retired, and he could have been number one, where Bob Byrd sits now,

number one in the front row, but he always chose to remain in the back row on the aisle, and

Jack Kennedy was his seat mate in the early years before he became President, so that's how we

got to know them.

That says something probably about his sense of democracy as well, that he didn 't have to go

right to the front.

Well yeah, but he did it logistically. If you're in the last row at the end on the aisle, you can slip

in and out of chamber quite easily (laughter) without going through a phalanx of other members

or staff that are in there.

Hour 2/10:00 Early Senate Days/Issues, Views of Gaylord Nelson, Relationship with Wisconsinites, Origins of Frugality, Traveling Back and Forth to Wisconsin, Daily Schedule in Wisconsin

Tell me what you remember about the Senate in those days that you were visiting, what the issues

were.

Well, he and Paul Douglas worked together on a lot of projects, environmental projects. I

remember there was one debate on - it was called "The Great Lakes Water Diversion" that had to do with Lake Michigan and Chicago and Milwaukee, and they were on opposing sides of that

issue. But Bill's main interest was always small business and the economy and banking and

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 46 Proxmire Oral History Project those were his committee assignments and he eventually became Chairman of the Joint

Economic Committee and the Banking Committee. Paul Volcker and others who knew him

during those years always said he was the most thoroughly prepared of anyone that they had ever testified before. He didn't need a staffer behind him saying, "Talk about this," or "Bring up this."

He was always very thorough and not demeaning to the witnesses. He listened to their opinions

and absorbed the information that they were testifying about. But you'll learn more about that

when you talk to other members who actually served with him on these committees or staffers

who worked behind the scenes.

You just mentioned "The Great Lakes Water Diversion", and I'm wondering about his

relationship with the State of Wisconsin and the Democratic politicians there, and whether there

was ever [controversy].

Well, it always surprised me. When we came, Senator Wiley was the senior Senator and then

Gaylord, of course, came - I think it was . . . was it 1962, or around in there, and I always thought, "Oh, that's really neat, that we were both from the same party." But Bill often said

sometimes it's harder to have a colleague in the same party because you're positioning yourself

often on the same issues, and not competitively in the real sense, but if your opposing Senator is

of the other party, you're dealing with different issues and different positions and, again, it's the

relationship with the press. Gaylord always was a favorite, I think, with the press because Bill, he

didn't. . . what's the right word ... he didn't go out at night and have a drink with the reporters, that kind of thing, where there was a convention or even here. He didn't spend free time with the

reporters.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 47 Proxmire Oral History Project Socializing.

Socializing with them, and I think you'll learn that when you talk to Frank Aukofer and Bill

Cherkasky and Carl Eifert and people who covered the Hill then. Where Gaylord was very

convivial and cordial and generous with his time, so, in a sense, a little competitiveness

developed, but we were always good friends because we'd known each other forever.

77e wasn 't, in my reading, very interested in pork barrel spending for the State of Wisconsin.

No, he wasn't.

Did that put him in disfavor with Wisconsinites in any way?

It did, and people brought that up often, and particularly when he didn't raise any money from those sections of society. And he was burned in effigy once, somewhere, for not bringing money to this county for a particular project. And because he didn't bring earmarks to the State, a lot of

people felt that he wasn't as successful in helping them as he could have been. But he opposed

any kind of spending and he opposed showers in the Senate gym, I think at some point, and

Senator Stevens, who is still in the Senate, was furious at him. He said, "You don't care about these issues because your wife is rich." Well, it was ridiculous. But no, he was a watchdog and

his office was barebones, just family pictures, and he refused to fly on corporate jets back and

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 48 Proxmire Oral History Project forth. He always took commercial airlines. He always rode coach. The volunteers who drove him

were volunteers.

Where did this come from?

Well, I think after the 1964 campaign, which was his toughest campaign. The last time we raised

money, I was responsible for raising - I think we raised a quarter of a million [dollars], if you

can imagine, in today's world, where they spend eight, ten, fifteen, twenty million in the state. I think after that campaign, he just said, "I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not raising money. I'm

not spending campaign dollars," and he didn't. And in 70, 76 and 82, he just didn't spend any

money. Again, you have to realize it was a different time. There was no television in the early

years, and that's where the majority of the money goes when you're running a campaign is

buying television time. But, we spent money on radio and pamphlets and car top signs and things

like that.

But this distaste he had for government spending on the showers in the Senate and all sorts of

different things like that, I mean, he had grown up in a family that was fairly privileged and he

had experienced what money can buy. I'm just curious as to whether you think that ethic of his

came from having grown up in the Depression, or —

I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, he'd buy his suits at Robert Hall and he never wanted to spend money on himself for expensive clothes and things.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 49 Proxmire Oral History Project Because he was certainly ambitious in other ways, but not materialistic.

And he was very generous. He paid for all of the children's very expensive educations and thought it was the best way he could possibly spend money was on education for the kids and they went to private schools and good colleges and he was never parsimonious in that way. None

of them had to work their way through or anything like that. But he just didn't spend it on

himself and he didn't like the government waste that he was aware of that existed. One of his

books was called Uncle Sam: The Last of the Big Time Spenders, and it's all about government

waste. And, the Golden Fleece [award], of course, is about government waste and those became

his issues.

Tell me a little bit more about going back and forth to Wisconsin. He did that a lot, didn 't he?

He went every weekend. It was hard, and I think Michelle Obama reiterated that. That's hard for

a family, especially if you have young children, to have them gone every weekend and Bill

would go every recess and every holiday and that's the area, I think, that was the most difficult

for us as a family. But he saw that as essential to meeting as many people as possible and I found

an old schedule from ... it might have been the late 50s or the early 60s. He'd do six and seven towns a day and high schools and dinners and breakfasts and union meetings day after day after

day. I don't know how he did it, but he thrived on it. He walked the whole state at one point so

he could meet people in small towns. Maybe it was excessive, but that's the way he saw his role

as well as a legislator is a man of the people.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 50 Proxmire Oral History Project So you didn't see him on the weekends?

Um-umm (negatively); practically never. I remember after the 1958 campaign, I said, "Whew!

Now you can stay home for awhile," and he said, "Well, 1964 is going to be a really tough year," and I said, "Oh, okay." (laughter)

So his daily schedule while he was in Wisconsin was just going out to —

Town to town to town to town, and I have some of those schedules, and people like Jerry Bruno and Mark Marotta and other people would drive him; Matt Flynn and Mary and they loved it. I mean, they enjoyed being with him and the experience of - I think someone said, maybe in one of the memorials, that he'd insist they drop him off on one end of Main Street and pick him up on the other. That was John Finerty, I think.

Hour 2/20:12 Memories of the 60s/Assassinations, Start of EP's Wedding Planning Business, Relationships with Other Politicians/Socializing

So you didn't go back with him on those jaunts?

Um-umm. (negatively) Well, in 1964, we moved out there. We rented our house in Washington, and unrented our house in Madison and I moved out there for six months. That was hard.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 51 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, before we get there, there's a lot that happened in the early 60s, historically. What stands out to you about those years, the Kennedy years and we 're talking Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War and —

Well, we were good friends of the Kennedys and we had dinner with them and they had dinner with us and it was never fancy, but I remember, I'd have dinner parties and I'd always have maybe a member and someone from the press and someone from Washington, so we'd have a mixed group and the dinner parties were not just frivolous. They usually were times where people could talk over issues. And we were devastated when President Kennedy was assassinated. That was one of the most horrible -1 mean, I almost couldn't breathe thinking about it. I had picked up my son, who was then three - my sister-in-law and I used to trade. On

Thursdays, she'd take him and give me a day off, and that day I had picked up Douglas in 1963, and I guess he was just two, and I heard on the radio and I could hardly drive home. And I remember Douglas was just barely beginning to talk and he'd say, "Poor Kennedy. He's dead.

Poor Kennedy, he's dead," and then we went to the White House where they had the viewing and Arlington. I mean, it was just - and it was gloomy, it was - it was about now. It was

November of 63 and the whole mood of the country changed and I think it's been rough ever since in a lot of ways. And then I saw Martin Luther King the Sunday before he was assassinated. He'd come to Washington. He spoke at the National Cathedral and I went with one of my daughter's friends and the Cathedral has - well, you saw it if you watched the memorial for Bill's service - they have these pulpits that are kind of risen out of the space at the altar, and for some reason, I thought, "What a perfect target he would be." Can you imagine thinking such a thought? But, again, there were thousands of people. They were even outside on the lawns and

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 52 Proxmire Oral History Project the next Thursday, he was killed. And again, I had - I would go back and forth to the office and

bring clothes and I was meeting a friend for lunch off of 14 Street and on my way home, and I thought, "What is going on?" I mean, there were people burning cars and that's how I heard that

he'd been killed and the city was locked down for days. I remember I got the kids home from

school and we couldn't leave our house. They had police on every corner and I'd been really

driving down the riot corridor and I didn't know what had happened. And then when Bobby

Kennedy was killed, we were watching that on television a few months later, and, again, we

knew him. He had come to Wisconsin and campaigned. He was a brilliant - and I think he would

have won that year. And that's when I sort of decided I was going to back away from politics and that's when we started our company.

What year?

1967 and 1968 and it was the wedding business then. It didn't amount to a hill of beans, but that's when I said, "I think I'll just move away from such close involvement with politics." I

mean, there was agony for all of us, and Jerry Bruno and people who had worked for us in the

early years were working for the Kennedys, so a lot of people were involved. It didn't mean that

I lost my interests, but my involvement became less.

What do you think it meant for your husband, all of these losses or experiences?

Well, I don't know.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 53 Proxmire Oral History Project Did he ever question pursuing or continuing his career in the Senate?

No, no. No, he always said it was the best job in the world. He thoroughly loved every aspect of

it. And he had some personal concerns. In his quixotic way, he would never go to a State of the

Union, for example. He said, "What a perfect place for someone to blow up the whole

government in one fell swoop." And so he wouldn't go to the State of the Union where both

House and Senate sit in the same chamber and the Cabinet and the President and the Vice

President, but I thought that was kind of an interesting - he just wouldn't go. I don't think he

ever went, as far as I know. I would go, or I'd go to occasions like when John Glenn returned

from space, they had a Joint Session to honor him and it was wonderful to be able to participate

in some of those history making times, but Bill never considered any other career.

I just wanted to put us back in the early 60s and talk a little bit more about the other historic

events that were happening and what you remember in your discussions.

I said we didn't disagree on many issues and, if there were, you can learn more when you talk to

some of the staff people, but I think at one point, he had voted for the Vietnam War involvement.

And I remember when McNamara testified before one of those committees and Bill came home

and said that he thought he was the most brilliant man he'd ever met. Well it turns out

McNamara was the mastermind for a lot of what went wrong with Vietnam. And Bill's positions

on gun control I'm not sure about, but, again, Wisconsin's a big hunting state, and women's right to choose. I'm not sure about those, but they never really came up that frequently because - at

least in the campaigns that I can recall.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 54 Proxmire Oral History Project Yeah. We weren 't into the 80s yet. We 're still back in the 60s. Other Wisconsinites came to

Washington. Gaylord Nelson became a Senator in 62. You talked a little bit about how they were

different. Are there any other thoughts you have about his relationship with other Wisconsin politicians, whether it was Senator Nelson or the Governor, Reynolds, or Patrick Lucey?

Well, as I said, we saw the Nelsons frequently. Our children were contemporaries. In fact, I think

when they came I gave a party to introduce them to Washington or the people we knew.

Were there differences or controversies between —

Not really, and we didn't live very close to each other. And people forget, we were all busy with

families and there wasn't a lot of time to socialize and if they're gone every weekend, which is the time to have Saturday Night Live or whatever (laughter), they weren't here. So if you did

entertain, you entertained during the week and it would usually be a dinner for eight or ten. It

would be over by nine-thirty. As you've read, Bill goes to bed at nine-thirty even if people are

still there, (laughter)

Even if people are still there?

Like George Bush, (laughter)

Oh, tell me that story.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 55 Proxmire Oral History Project No, but George Bush goes to bed at nine-thirty every night and his wife has talked about it

several times when she speaks before the Gridiron or the National Press Club. But Bill was very

rigid about - I mean, he wouldn't be rude, he would just go and if people wanted to stay another

half hour . . . but basically Washington entertaining isn't - it's not a late night town, even if it's a

formal dinner like the Press Club or the White House Correspondents. They're over by ten or so,

because all these guys get up early and go to work.

Hour 2/30:05 BP's Daily Schedule, Importance of Nutrition/Exercise, BP's Self- Discipline/Learning Ability, Difficulties of 1964 Election

Tell me about his rigid, daily schedule.

He always got up at 6 or so, 6:00am, and he did floor exercises. He could do more pushups and

sit ups than Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think he and Gaylord used to compete sometimes on who

could do the most push-ups. And then he would have a breakfast. He usually fixed his own

breakfast. He ate healthy before people were concerned about nutrition and diet. I mean, he had

wheat germ and skim milk and whole wheat bread and plenty of fresh fruit and he'd run to work.

Five miles?

Five miles each way. And he didn't always run home, but for some years he'd run home as well.

But I never knew when he was coming home. I think that Congress was a lot more flexible then than it is now where they try to keep everything within Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday so that

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 56 Proxmire Oral History Project people are off Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. We never knew if there was a vote at eight

o'clock or ten o'clock. They stayed in session so we never knew, and there were lots of times if I

had a dinner party, and some of them wouldn't even be able to come if Congress was still in

session, so it's always a question mark. But if he was home or if it was a holiday, he'd always take Douglas to the park. He wasn't rigid in that sense.

But on a normal day, he would get up, do push-ups.

Right; have his breakfast, run to work.

And then what? Did you know what his schedule was at the office?

Well, they'd start early, eight or nine. Again, you'll have to ask Arlene and people who worked

with him. But again, freshmen often opened the Senate and he would often - they have what they

called "The Morning Hour" before they take up real business, and that's when he could do a lot

of the things he wanted to bring attention to and he was always participating in The Morning

Hour and he loved to preside. Again, that's something that the freshmen are assigned to do and

he said, "That's the way you learn the rules of the Senate, by presiding," and he knew them, and that's how he could filibuster or control the agenda, by knowing the rules and how to use them.

So he did The Morning Hour, and then he had the morning session.

He had a Spartan lunch at his desk.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 57 Proxmire Oral History Project Which consisted of?

Cottage cheese and fruit, usually, skim milk or whatever, and someone would bring it to him. He

rarely ate in the Senate dining room. He'd have a Spartan lunch and I think he took a nap, a brief

nap, every afternoon and then come home when he came home.

Did he ever eat sugar, fat, drink alcohol, smoke, do anything?

No, no, he never smoked. Years and years and years ago, he used to drink once in awhile, but he

really didn't on a regular basis, ever. Oh yeah, he'd have cookies and if we went out to dinner,

he'd eat whatever was in front of him. He'd eat whatever I cooked. And I cooked all the time. I

still enjoy cooking and he wasn't Spartan about that, but he studied nutrition and long before it

was chic.

Yeah. He was ahead of time in many ways.

He was ahead of his time with exercise and nutrition.

Did he seem happy? Did it seem like something he enjoyed or was it more of a sort of discipline?

Well, I think the discipline was comfortable for him. I don't know whether he was dyslexic as a

child, which might have been part of this. It's what kept him alive during Alzheimer's, frankly,

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 58 Proxmire Oral History Project was his discipline and writing lists for himself, "to do" lists kind of thing. But he had to work

very hard to acquire whatever knowledge and skills, but he was willing to give it the time to do

it. He wasn't frivolous about education and reading. I mean, I love classical music and I'd have

operas on and symphonies on all the time, and he said, "If I listened to it all the time, I'd grow to

like it, and I don't have time"; that kind of leaving out what's a distraction.

Even if it was enjoyable?

Even if it was enjoyable. We'd go to the Kennedy Center occasionally or see a play, but it wasn't

a passion for him. To me, if I didn't have my music and my books and my tennis and things like that. . .

So he didn't, as far as you know, get any of that regimen from his family, from his father?

Well, his father was a very disciplined, dedicated physician. He was on-call. I don't know the

basis of it, or the source of it, but learning might have been difficult. As I said, at the Hill School,

he was "the biggest grind," which meant that he studied the most. He wrote to his mother every

day.

So it didn 't come easily for him. He wasn 't somebody who read something once and just —

Well, he was so brilliant, I don't know why there would be a sort of feeling, "I have to

concentrate to do this," because he was brilliant. But, for instance, we took a speed reading

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 59 Proxmire Oral History Project course. Most people had never heard of speed reading, but there was a woman who had a course

here, Evelyn something was her name, and the idea being - this is how you can learn to read

without reading every word. And it was a long course and I hated it and Bill loved it, because I

love to read for enjoyment, not just for knowledge or learning. It's a nice combination, but that's

how he could absorb as much as he did as quickly as he could, because he took that course.

And he did absorb it?

And he did absorb it, and there is something to her system. If you need to learn a lot of

information in a short period of time, this is a way to do it. But, I found it very difficult.

The 1964 election, you said, was a hard election. Tell me about that.

Well, it shouldn't have been, because Lyndon Johnson won in a landslide, but three weeks before the election, a magazine called Pageant, which was like The Reader's Digest, one of these small

- actually it was published in Madison by someone we knew, Jerry Bartell. They published a poll

saying Bill was among the five "worst" was the phrase, Senators, least effective, "worst" and it

was such a blow, because every time he'd go shake hands at a plant gate or be with lots of

people, they'd be handing out these sheets of paper saying, "Bill Proxmire: Voted by the

Washington Press Corps as one of the five worst Senators."

Who would hand those out?

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 60 Proxmire Oral History Project All the Republican Party that operated. And fortunately Paul Douglas was in the group [of worst

Senators], one of our closest friends, and we couldn't get endorsements. They said the press had

been polled and this was the result of the press polling, so we called maybe six or eight of our

friends in the Press Corps like Martin Agronsky and David Brinkley and Sam Schaffer and

people like that and said, "Were you ever polled?" and they never had been polled. We had to

redo whatever ads we had scheduled for radio or television and say, "This seems to be a fake

survey, because none of these people ..."

Hour 2/40:00 Stress of 1964 Election, Development of EP's Own Interests, BP's Relationship with Lyndon Johnson, Reasons for Pursuing Genocide Treaty, BP's Overseas Travel, Chrysler Bailout

They couldn't say, "We support Bill Proxmire" as members of the press, but they could say they

were never polled. But he got so discouraged. He said, "I'm not going to a plant gate or

anything." And the next morning I got up and he had gone to a plant gate and he won, but he

lost, I don't know, maybe ten percentage points just from this one [ad]. But that's what happens

in campaigns and it was a hard campaign for him and it was very hard for me. I had teenagers

and a three year old and I remember we were so exhausted. I think of Obama every time I see -

we only had to do this for six months, and he did it for two years. And for the first time in my

life, we went to the Caribbean after the election and it was like heaven on earth. Because I'd

never been, he'd never been, and we took Douglas and that was it. But it was the hardest of all the years. With teenagers and a three year old and the constant -1 traveled the state with Jean

Lucey and Patty Reynolds and we did tea tours and he was in one town, I was in another town,

and worrying about all the kids and Douglas hated it when I left and, you know, it was very

stressful.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 61 Proxmire Oral History Project And this was the six months that you actually moved back to Buckeye Road?

Right, right. It was tough. But after that, it got easier.

Was there ever a time for you when you thought — I know you had said in 67 you backed away from politics — where you thought, "This is too much for this relationship to withstand? "

Well no, but Bill had some - he gave me a tennis racket in 1965 and I had never had the time -

by then, I was forty or forty-one - to develop something outside of the family requirements, so to

speak, and it opened up a whole new world for me. And I started playing tennis and met friends that I still have and Douglas would go with me to the tennis court. And then I started the business

in 67, which sent me off in another direction. But in a way, you are able to concentrate on

something that is more about you than about politics and the requirements of politics. And all our

husbands, the three husbands: Tommy Boggs and Gretchen Poston's husband, Raymond, and

Bill, we sat around and told them what we were planning to do, and all the husbands said, "Have

fun, stay out of trouble, and don't make any money." (laughter) They thought we were nuts.

They just didn't want anything to interfere with their reputations, or their income taxes.

(laughter)

Which it probably did later on.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 62 Proxmire Oral History Project Which it did later on, yeah. We all made more money than they did eventually; not Tommy, but

- (laughter)

We '11 talk more about that as we move forward in time. So we 're in the mid 60s now, were there

any particular political successes of Bill's that you recall or want to talk about in more detail?

I don't know them in detail enough to talk about them. Paul Volcker has some interesting stories.

I think maybe he was later.

Do you remember any of the famous filibusters that he did and what those were about?

Oh, I remember them and paid attention to them, and he and Lyndon Johnson had a difficult

relationship in that four-year period, but I don't remember it in any detail. We went to the White

House and Lyndon would invite us and we'd go.

That seems to be apart of being a politician that you have to be able to disagree and still be

agreeable.

I'm not sure Lyndon Johnson was agreeable, (laughter) He wanted to be in control and he was a

masterful legislator in the ways that he organized the coalitions to pass, like the Voting Rights

Act and the Civil Rights Act of 64 and 65. You can't deny his skill and his determination. It was

very hard for him, and I'm good friends with Lynda Bird. I see her all the time, his daughter, and

we didn't carry these disagreements over into social life, such as it was.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 63 Proxmire Oral History Project Do you remember any particular political failures that stand out that Bill experienced?

Um-umm. (negatively)

No?

Um-umm. (negatively) I mean, I'm sure the people, like Ron Tamtnen and Marty [Lobel] and

Howard [Schumann] and maybe Mark Shields, the people who know the issues better than I do.

But, he was a loner in a lot of ways in terms of- The Genocide Treaty, for example, should not

have been hard to ratify, but it took twenty years for him to have that kind of success with

something like that.

What did he take that on? Why do you think he took on —

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

He got up every day, though, and gave a speech.

Made a speech. Mark Shields jokes about it. He was assigned - he had to write to say something

different every day on the same subject, (laughter) But he was persistent.

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 64 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, he had fought in World War III wonder whether it had anything to do with — well, he

didn 't fight; he was stateside.

He never went overseas, no.

But I wonder if it had something to do with the Holocaust or what he experienced?

I don't know. He only went overseas once. I always thought this was kind of interesting, and I

can't remember what year it was. Again, Lyndon Johnson thought it would - it might have been

after the 51 election, before the 58 election, thought it would help him with the constituencies in

Wisconsin that are German and Norwegian. And he sent Bill to three countries to the Bundestag

and to some of the governmental bodies. Bill didn't want to go, but he felt he should not alienate

him. So he called his father and his father paid his way because he wouldn't take government

money on this trip and there are pictures of- Bill had a suitcase with a rope around it and it was

barebones. But he never went overseas again. I think Lyndon Johnson thought it would be

helpful, but it turned out The Cap Times, that opposed junkets, berated Bill for going and calling

it a junket. "He's been there for a year and he's over there in Germany and Holland," or

wherever. He didn't have an interest in foreign travel at all, and I was fortunate to have friends.

Barbara Boggs and I, every year we took a trip for almost fifteen years to another country or

another culture and, in fact, we were in Israel during the Chrysler bailout. That was one of Bill's

- he opposed the bailout of Chrysler, and Tommy Boggs was with Lee Iacocca because they

were rich. And Lee Iacocca said, "Well, where is Barbara?" and Tommy said, "Oh, she's in

Israel with Ellen." (laughter) "What is she doing with her?" Well, we were in business together.

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 65 Proxmire Oral History Project So Bill took stands like that. It turned out the Chrysler bailout, it made money for the United

States government, but there were issues like that. The bailout of New York City was another

one. It's fun to read the legislative causes that he took on.

Do you have any feeling about what he would think about today's bailout?

Hour 2/49:45 Thoughts on Current Bailout, EP's Businesses and BP's Reaction to Them

Well, I just wish he were here. The past three or four months would be - well, as I said, people

have e-mailed me on a regular basis and said, "This would never have happened if Bill would

have been alive." That he would have hearing upon hearing upon hearing until he got to the

bottom of it before it disintegrated into the massive mess we're in right now, and I just wish he

were here to get his -

Nobody's really taken on his mantle in quite the same way.

Nope. People say, "I wish he were still there." He was an advocate.

Back to his lack of desire for foreign travel. What was that about?

I don't know, I really don't. He loved to go to baseball games with Douglas. He said, "We'll see

every stadium in the United States." And he'd take him to Cubs games and Brewers games and -

it wasn't the Brewers then, whoever they were. He loved sports, football. But he said he didn't

speak a foreign language and he always felt that would be a detriment. And, again, he was busy

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 66 Proxmire Oral History Project and when he wasn't working on Senate duties or making speeches, he would read or hike or - he

loved movies. He loved Matlock and Perry Mason on television. But he wasn't interested in

foreign travel at all, so that's why Barbara and I went on a lot of trips.

And so in the late 60s you started this business. Tell me a little bit about what evolved over time.

Well, in 1967, Mary Ellen, who you will meet in Milwaukee, was married and she married a

Jewish doctor from Milwaukee and we helped, Barbara and Gretchen Poston and I, and it was in

a synagogue. I'd never been in a synagogue. I didn't realize there was no music in a synagogue

and no pipe organ. So I had music taped, the kind of music I wanted for a wedding, and the

whole thing was just a very complicated - it was so complicated that I couldn't enjoy it, almost.

So when this wedding was over, Barbara, Gretchen and I sat down and said, "I wish someone

had been there to help so I could have enjoyed the occasion." Plus, if you're dealing with a

religion that you're not familiar with, there's a lot to learn or to deal with, and his family and a

whole bunch of Milwaukee people came in. The day of the wedding, we were the last seated and

whoever was back stage didn't turn on the processional music at the proper time. In the

meantime, the rabbi is already up there and I said, "Oh, Bill, they're going to start playing the

processional when he begins the service. You have to go back stage and tell him not to play it."

And everyone thought there was a national emergency because he left! (laughter) So, anyway, that's how we began. We just announced we were Wonderful Weddings. That was the name of

our company and we were here to help, and we did it. We learned by going with florists and

caterers to weddings so we could learn what the needs were. And, again, like you were talking

about women in that era, at first the men who owned the catering business and the florist

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 67 Proxmire Oral History Project businesses - "Who needs them? We've been doing this without them." Well, they learned how

helpful it was to have someone like us and that's how we learned the business and we did that for

five years. We'd do sometimes thirty or forty weddings a year. But it turned out weddings were

always on weekends and holidays and we'd [thought] - "We don't want to do this the rest of our

lives." And someone asked us to do a meeting, an international CPA firm, and I said to Gretchen,

"We've never done this," and she said, "We can do it, because you're dealing with the same

vendors. You're dealing with transportation and food and sights." And so we changed our name to Washington, Inc. We were really, by then - we learned it slowly and we did everything

ourselves. We had no staff and no assistants for a lot of years, but then it grew and grew and

grew and in the 80s, we did a multi-million dollar business.

You were quite successful and ambitious in your own right.

Well, we were, but you know, it grew so slowly. It wasn't a cause celebre for us and there were

lots of times when we thought we'd failed. We'd look at the board and we'd have no business.

It was really one of the first, if notths first event planning business?

It really was, and I didn't learn that. I started to write a book about the history of the business and

I did some research and there's an organization called Meeting Planners International, which is the association of meeting planners, and it didn't even form itself until 1972. By then, we'd

already been in business for five years and it had a hundred and fifty members. It has ninety thousand members now. And, in a way, we created an industry, but now every association and

Ellen Proxmire interview Transcript 68 Proxmire Oral History Project every corporation, every law firm, has a meeting planner in house. But then nobody did, so they

called on us for everything.

You should write a book about this!

It's really fascinating. Well, I worked on the first Kennedy inaugural. I had the schedule from the

inaugural balls typed on manual typewriter. It was the history of that period.

How did Bill respond, react?

Well, the husbands, they were all pretty much - as I said, at the beginning, they dismissed it as,

"Just have a good time and don't get into any trouble." There were some conflicts that developed

after we got going between - there are rooms on the Hill, for example, where you can have a

lunch or a dinner or a reception and any member can sponsor any room at any time for nothing.

And people within Bill's office were afraid that if I had an event on the Hill, that it would

besmirch his reputation for being honest and, you know ... I don't know what the right word is,

because we were doing this as a business.

There was some conflict of interest or something?

That kind of thing, and I finally said to someone, "Do you want me to, whenever I come in the

Capitol, put a bag on my head?" I mean, Bill didn't have to sponsor the rooms. Lindy Boggs

could do it or any one of our - if it was a business or a corporation could get a host. So that was

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 69 Proxmire Oral History Project tricky for me because I didn't want to be responsible for others' stories. There was Evan

Thomas, who you see quite frequently on talk shows, he's the editor of Newsweek, and he

implied in an article once that people got to Bill through me. In other words, if I worked on a job

for Merrill Lynch or Exxon, that they'd hire me to get through to him. And I still have the letter I

wrote back to him. I mean, it was just ridiculous.

Was Bill ever threatened by your success?

Do you think he was?

Yeah. Was he threatened by your success at all?

No, no, um-umm. Well, it was nice to have - we all liked having our own money and as

somebody said - you would buy a refrigerator or something, (laughter) And eventually we made

a lot of money, but in the early years, it was modest. We put everything back into it until we

really had the money to get an office and hire someone.

So he was not a male chauvinist, your husband, in the sense of not wanting his wife to work?

Oh, no, no. But the husbands really didn't participate. I don't think any of them ever came to the

office, frankly, in all the years we were in business; maybe once or twice.

So you lead very separate lives in certain ways?

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 70 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, in a lot of ways. It kept me busy and it was very rewarding. I mean, we had opportunities to do one of a kind, once in a lifetime events, over and over and over again and that's kind of

neat.

And that's where we '11 end our second hour.

Okay.

End of Interview

Ellen Proxmire Interview Transcript 71 Proxm ire Oral His to ry Project