An Oral History Edward Washburn

An Oral History

Edward Washburn

Assistant Managing Director

1960 Olympic Winter Games

Organizing Committee

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www.LA84.org LA84 Foundation 2141 W. Adams Blvd. An Oral History Edward Washburn

EDWARD WASHBURN

Margaret Costa: Today is Sunday June the 26th, 1994. This is Dr. Margaret Costa, interviewing Ed Washburn who was ...

Edward Washburn: I was one of four managing assistant directors under the managing director, Mr. H.D. Thoreau. My responsibilities were everything that nobody else had. They turned out to be myriad and diverse, to say the least. Max Dunn was an assistant managing director in charge of all skiing and skating events. This included supervision of the building of the ice rink, the outdoor skating rink, laying out all of the courses, getting the judges, doing all that. That occupied Max pretty fully. He couldn't do much of anything else. Bob Ewen was the personnel manager. He had change of all the hiring, firing, paying and all the rest of all the personnel on the staff, which proved to be a number of hundreds -- I don't remember how many, but there were many -- and also, seeing that the facilities were appropriate and the rest of it, in Squaw Valley. So that took care of Mr. Ewen. Al Ewen his name was [ed. note: The official report lists Robert Search as personnel director and Al Ewen as assistant general manager]. Then Bob Minerich supervised the building, furnishing and operation of Olympic Village, which was basically a hotel for 1,100 athletes. And that took up most of his time. So, anything else that came down the pike was dumped off on poor old Ed Washburn, whether it be ticket sales, or reception of athletes or insurance, or any one of a variety of things. So, I just sort of operated pretty much at the beck and call of Mr. Thoreau and the president of the organizing committee, Prentis Hale, as to what was necessary next. It was all over the place really.

Costa: Tell me about your background prior to the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley.

Washburn: Well, I went to Yale undergraduate and to Boalt Hall at Berkeley at law school. Stepped out of law school, took the bar examinations in the summer of 1941 and since I was unmarried, healthy, I stepped right into the arms of Uncle Sam and spent four and a half years in the service. After I got out of the service, I practiced in Los Angeles for a while and took some time off. I was married, divorced. My second wife, who I got married to, we took some time off and went to Europe for quite a while. I came back from Europe. We decided we wanted to move here. She came from Santa Monica. I came from Pasadena, wanted to live in San Francisco. And I had a lot of good friends here, lawyers.

Costa: Did you and Mr. Thoreau know each other in Pasadena?

Washburn: No, not really. No, we hadn't. But, one of my best friends was a lawyer named Bill Orrick, who is now a Federal District judge here and is the son of the founder of a very old law firm, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, here in San Francisco. So, I went to Bill and I said, "I am moving to San Francisco. I want you to get me a job in a law firm." And he said, "Well, that won't be any problem, I don't think. But, first of all, you've got to do me a favor." And I

said, "What?" He said, "Well, you know, I am the attorney for the Organizing Committee in Squaw Valley for the Olympics." This was in the summer of '59. So, the Olympics weren't all that far off and these other fellows were all on board. So, Bill said, "I want you to go on the Olympics." I said, "Look, I know the problems they are having. I don't want any part of it." He said, "I thought you wanted me to get a job for you?" I said, "Oh, OK." So, I described a … I said, "I'd like to have a middle-level job. I'd like to go up to Squaw Valley immediately, get some trout fishing in this fall, maybe do a little skiing and then have a very nice, kind of a, you know, not-responsible job that would keep me up there." And he said, "Well, we'll see what we can do." So, they found a job for me as housing coordinator. Now the housing coordinator was supposed to go around and find out what kind of public housing was available. There wasn't any, of course. I circulated the territory that I was supposed to cover all the way down to Auburn, Colfax, all around, and tried to jawbone the hotel people and the motel people, into not jacking up their rates sky high during the Games. So, that was the job. The day before we were to leave for Squaw Valley, Prentis had a huge fight. Prentis Hale, who was the president of the organizing committee, had a huge fight with the executive director, a fellow by the name of King. Fired him on the spot. Told him to get out and take his cronies with him. And, overnight, H.D. became the managing director.

So, there was a vacuum in which I was standing in front of. I was sucked up. Instead of this nice little housing coordinator, I agreed to be the assistant managing director. That's how it happened. But, my background was all lawyer. I had practiced law up to the time before the Games.

Costa: Now tell me about what happened from then on.

Washburn: Well, I think, you know, one of the things that was interesting, if you haven't covered it, is why were the Games there assigned to Squaw Valley. This has to do with what we were mentioning earlier. Well, not really, but Mr. William May Garland, who was instrumental in the '32 Olympics, in getting the '32 Olympics to Los Angeles and I guess, was quite well- known by the [International] Olympic Committee as a result of his efforts, the Olympic Committee made an exception. They have a rule that only one citizen of each state can be a member of the International Olympic Committee. Jack Garland, his son, was made a member of the IOC … although Avery Brundage was already also on the IOC. So, I asked Jack this question, I said, "What in the ..." Because the IOC has the final say on where the Games are to be held. And, the way they do it, each country has its own competition and gets its own national … one candidate. Then they go to the IOC and make their presentation [about] how wonderful their place is going to be and the IOC picks it.

Well, Alex Cushing was a frustrated New York lawyer, as you probably know. He worked for one of the big law firms in New York for a couple of years, didn't like it, came out, bought Squaw Valley and took over, much to the frustration of Wayne Poulsen, who had started the thing and who lived in the valley. He was a Pan Am pilot but had a place up there. Anyway, Cushing's idea was, "Well, let's get some really good publicity for Squaw Valley. We'll go into the competition for the American representative. Even if we don't get

it, by gosh, we'll have ink all over the place, and that would be great," never thinking in the world that he was ever going to get the Games. Indeed, nobody much in the United States … I think, Lake Placid put in their usual bid and I don't remember, maybe Aspen, or somebody. But anyway, Cushing got to be the American representative and he played it to the hilt. Then he went over to Paris, to the IOC, to the final presentation.

And, that's what I asked Jack Garland about. I said, "Jack, what in the world happened?" He said, "Well Ed, there was a deadlock and I don't remember ..." He said, "I can't remember what it was, Gstaad, and Innsbruck. There were a couple of European places that were really the two favorites. They were deadlocked, and nobody was giving. Nobody was giving after two days." He said, "Obviously, we had to get a compromise candidate." One of the problems that's always dogged the Winter Olympics is lack of snow. And they said, "What about that fellow from California, where they have all of that snow?"

Well, Alex Cushing is a very savvy, very personable … I've known him socially long before the Games, but he does fudge a little bit from time to time. What he had done was submit the snowfall for the weather station, which is at the top of the Donner Summit. I don't know if you've ever been over Donner Summit. The weather station is on the California side of Donner Summit. They have snowfall records going way back. So, he submitted those, not bothering to tell them that the snowfall on the California side is far greater than it is on the Nevada side. So, he put in all these things. They said, "Gee this guy, if he hasn't got anything else, he's got the snow."

So, all of a sudden, Cushing has the Games. And, Squaw Valley was, you know, it was a nothing … The first few things we had to do … One of the things was we had to put in a sewage disposal plant on septic tanks. How do you take care of 45,000 or 50,000 people on septic tanks? So, it was just … The other thing was, there is only … If you are lucky, you have maybe four months of building time. The rest of the time it snowed. So, it was a very, very difficult place to put on the Games. No facilities, no telephones … The telephone company had to run all new lines. We had all of that stuff, which just made it very difficult just starting out. The bridge over the Squaw Creek was no good. They had to put a new bridge over it. All of that stuff which detracted from getting the Games organized because we were really trying to put this little, tiny, remote alpine or sierra village and make it a decent place for the Games.

Cushing, of course, enjoyed it tremendously. He liked all the publicity. He and Prentis Hale, early on, had a falling out so that one of my duties as Assistant Managing Director was to represent the committee on all negotiations in the valley. He said, "You've known Alex Cushing for a long time and I can't talk to him. I can't talk to him at all. So, I want you to do all that." So very difficult, to say the least.

Costa: Can you walk us through month-by-month exactly the kinds of things you were doing and all the little interesting anecdotal kinds of things that happened?

Washburn: Well the things that happened were all … I don't remember necessarily in chronological order.

Costa: That's OK. As you remember them …

Washburn: Part of the problem was, looking back, there's no book on these things. I mean there is nobody who has faced "How do you handle this?" or "What do you do with that." For example, we forget that this was at the height of the Cold War. There were certain areas in the United States that were off-limits to the Russians. The Russians could not go in those areas for reasons only known to the State Department of course. The San Francisco Airport was one of them. Off-limits to the Russians. Now we had two ways for the teams to come in. They rebuilt or expanded the Reno Airport. Really had to do it all over and build a new terminal and everything like that … Or, they would come to San Francisco and we would bus them directly to Squaw Valley.

We were just were too … Well, I guess, we were blatantly optimistic or hopeful. We didn't want to tell the Russians that they had to go to Reno. So, we thought, "They will probably go to Reno. That's easier and it's more direct," and so on and so forth. Well sure enough, they had chartered a bunch of SAS planes. They elected to come into San Francisco. So, Prentis, who is nothing if not confident with his own abilities to do things said, "That's just a matter of going back to the State Department and explaining." So, he and I went back to talk to the State Department. They didn't give us the time of day, "Absolutely not. The Russians cannot land in San Francisco. We can't have them at the airport. It's off-limits and that's that." So, rather than create a big furor about it, we finally made a compromise under which the Russian plans would land in San Francisco and the Greyhound buses that we had chartered would go out on the field. They would get off the plane, walk about 10 or 20 feet and get into the bus and then off they would go. And, that we got permission to do.

So, I was nervous as all get out. They got in about, oh, it was around dusk. It was about 6:00 o'clock, I think, when the planes finally came in. I had a group of very hard-working, very helpful girls, who did the reception of athletes and all that stuff. They sat out at the airport if somebody would be arriving at 2:00 o'clock in the morning. They were all on board. We went out there. The plane came in. They lowered the steps. They came out and they marched into the busses. There were about five or six busses. I was sitting in the front bus. Absolutely dead silence. I mean they … Just with these grim-looking faces, but they got in the bus and off we went.

There was a fellow in Sacramento who owned a restaurant in Sacramento. Do you remember that? It was Hof Brau. Anyway, he was dying to do something for the Olympic Games. He called me almost every day, "What can I do, what can I do, what can I do, what can I do?" One of the things he said he would do is if we had any teams that were going up and wanted a meal break, that he would be delighted to give them a free meal. So, we took him up on the Russians and said, "We'll get a break there." Well this fellow went out and he got every single Russian-speaking person within 250 miles of Sacramento.

When you go in there, there is a long stairway that you go up, up to about the second or third floor, where they have a private dining room, where he was going to serve them this meal. We got off the bus and opened the door and looked up these stairs. There, standing along the stairs, all the way down are all these Russians yelling and screaming at them in Russian and cheering and singing songs. They went up and he served them a wonderful Russian dinner with everything. After we got through, we got back in the bus to go on to Squaw Valley. They were laughing and singing and cheering. It made the whole difference. It just turned the thing around. So, the off-limits to San Francisco wasn't that big a ... Yeah, it worked out very well. That was just the sort of thing that happened.

Costa: Tell us some others.

Washburn: Well, I remember that the Finns and one of the other Scandinavian teams, I think two or three, had never rented the space [on a plane]. They thought they would be smart and send all their equipment ahead by ship so that wouldn't have to take it on the plane, all their skis and all the rest of the stuff. So, they loaded it on a ship three or four months or whatever the time lag was. It got to San Francisco about the time they got here and the customs wouldn't let them in. They said we have to pay an import tax to bring this stuff in. Four or five days of hassling around before these people could even get their skis.

One of my favorite stories is the Immigration Service. They elected to come in direct to Reno. They had to clear customs and immigrations in Reno. When they built the new terminal, specifically really for the Games, although they've used it since, they built a special place for … A room, a big room and some facilities for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to come and do it. So then, one day -- I don't know whether it was Hugh or Prentis that called -- said, "Have we got that staffed?" I said, "I don't know if they've got it staffed. He said, "You better figure that out because we have to have somebody up there." So, I went over to the Federal Building, Immigration Service and there was a typical, old, wonderful Irishman by the name of Mr. Murphy. Mr. Murphy has been in politics and the rest of it for years and years. So, I explained to him that we needed … Just probably, I don't know, a small staff of people to handle it. We didn't know quite how many people would be coming through Reno, but there wouldn't be an awful lot. And, there were all these nice athletes that were just coming in temporarily and then going on out. And he said, "Well, I just don't know how I am going to do that. I don't have anything in my budget to staff that." I said, "Well, I mean this is an international event. Can't you somehow squeeze this out?" "I don't think I can possibly see my way clear to it." So, we talked back and forth for about a half an hour and you know, when the light bulb goes on? The light bulb went on and I said, "I've got a great idea Mr. Murphy. Why don't you and Mrs. Murphy go up and do it yourself? And, I think we can get you some rooms in the Riverside Hotel in Reno. I am sure we'll have tickets for all the events." "Oh, well, maybe we can do that. But, I would have to take my assistant along with me." So, the assistant and his wife, and Mr. Murphy and his wife stayed at the Riverside Hotel, courtesy of the Winter Olympics for the entire Games and got passes to everything. But, they ran the damn thing.

Costa: Were you aware of problem with the visas with the East Germans?

Washburn: Well, Avery Brundage didn't admit there was an East Germany and a West Germany. There was just Germany. And so, this word was put out early on and the Germans being rather practical had their own sort of eliminations for the Winter Olympics. And, the West German hockey team played the East German hockey team. The West German team won. So, they became the German team. And that's how it went. All the way down they had individual competitions. One of the great athletes was a fellow named Helmut Recknagel, who was the finest ski jumper around. And of course, he made the team, but it was just a mixture. Brundage never admitted there were any difference.

Costa: There was a story about 10 of the East German officials not being given visas. You didn't get to deal with that?

Washburn: I don't know about that. That fortunately must have escaped my ... No, the only thing that we did have, though, the kind of shock that you get, it was about, oh, I think, three or four weeks before the athletes were going to be coming in. I was sitting in my office in the administration office in Squaw Valley. This fellow came in and he said, "I am the special agent in charge of the FBI office in San Francisco and I'd like to know what your contingency plans are for defectors." "Oh really?" He said, "We are going to have about eight or nine agents in the valley, but we ought to coordinate with your plans." So, of course, I hadn't even thought of this thing. So, we talked for quite a while. He said, "All right we'll back you up on all this stuff, but what you have to do is what happens with these fellows, if there are defectors, they will almost invariably go to one of your interpreters who speaks their language."

Our interpreters were a bunch of … Oh, they came from all over. Remember Egisto Beghe, who was the head of the interpreters? He was the head of the international office of the Palace Hotel and he spoke about nine languages. And, I don't know where I got his name, but I got him, recruited him and he was a jolly little Italian fellow who giggled and laughed all over the place. He hired most of the interpreters. I didn't even know who some of these were, but we had to cover so many different languages. These fellows were from all over the place. Some of them were street sweepers. Some of them were doctors … We had to sort of … We had to brief them on -- with the FBI guy – on what to do if one of these fellows showed up. And, it turned out, that there were two.

Costa: From?

Washburn: One was from East Germany and one was from Russia. The Russian got caught up in San Francisco and was taken on home. The East German got away. So, that's the sort of thing that just drove you absolutely crazy.

Costa: What other things can you remember?

Washburn: Oh gosh, what? Well the facilities, to say the least, at Squaw Valley were minimal. The deal was we got the lodge. The Organizing Committee took over the lodge for the month of February, rent-free from the Squaw Valley Corporation, which was Cushing's company. In return for which he got to keep the lifts that the government built, the ski jump and a couple of lifts above KT-22. That was sort of the arrangement.

And during the negotiations we asked Alex, "Alex, how many rooms do you have in the lodge?" We were trying to figure out which of our staff could go in there because it was very difficult to even get staff members. There was nothing in the valley itself. The rents were like $5,000 a day or something. It was just ridiculous and there wasn't very much of anyplace to put anybody. So, he told us how many rooms there were. I can't remember the number, 340 or whatever. So, the day we were to take it over, we went in to take a look at it and we are 43 rooms short. And so, I come in, "Alex, where are these rooms?" "Now what are you talking about?" I remember he said, "There's a room there." We opened it up and it was a linen closet. He said, "Well, that's a room. You can put a cot in there. Somebody can sleep in there." Well, it's just that we were short. We had to get these key people on the staff. So, we ended up, he said, "I'll tell you what. I'll help you out just because. Out of the kindness of my heart, I am going to help you out. I am going to let you use my tennis courts, rent-free, for the duration of the Games." Now the tennis courts were, you know, four feet under snow at the time.

We had to rent … We rented trailers, about 10 trailers, and hauled them up and put them on the tennis courts, which were right next to the lodge. It was very convenient for the staff, but not very good quarters. I remember particularly because the day after the Games were over, the staff had a huge party over at Olympic Village, after everybody had gone. Naturally, it went on forever and ever. I was sitting the next day in the office thinking, "God, what am I going to do." A big hangover and not doing much of anything. The phone rang and it was Cushing. And he said, "Your goddamned trailers are still on my tennis courts!" And I said, "What are you talking about Alex?" He said, "I gave you rent-free for the Games. The Games are over. Now, either pay me rent or get your damned trailers off of the tennis courts!" Couldn't use them for anything, but oh well. So that's the kind of thing.

But, one of the things, also … Prentis wanted to make this a very big social event. He's big in society anyway and this is going to be what we call the PLU's, what he calls the PLU's, People Like Us, in San Francisco who wanted to get in on the act and have the dinner party for the Lord and Lady of so and so and all this stuff.

Then during the Games he wanted to have very fancy lunches every day for selected members of the international community, including the IOC. The kitchen at the lodge was hopeless, it was just a greasy-bucket type of operation. They made hamburgers and that sort of stuff. Next door to it was the Squaw Valley Inn, which was quite small. The rooms were not very good, but it was very pleasant, had a very nice dining room. So, Prentis said, "OK, I am going to have these lunches here." And he leaned on Ben Swig to lend him the sous chef from the Fairmont for the duration of the Games. The sous chef was to come up prepare these wonderful luncheons every day for the select small group -- I mean there

were probably 25 or 30 people at each of the luncheons -- and cook them a beautiful meal. So, Prentis talked to … Well, he was a German. I can't remember his name, but he was a real problem. And Prentis said, "Now, you get hold of Hans" -- or whatever his name was. I'll call him Hans. -- "And make sure that everything works out fine so that he's comfortable and we can get these darned luncheons going." So, I called Hans, and I said, "Well, Hans ..."

So, anyway, Hans was to come up on Thursday or whatever. I called him a day or so before and I said, "Now what plane are you coming up on? I'll meet the plane that you and Mrs. Whatever-her-name-was at the Reno airport and I'll drive you up to the valley." He said, "The Mrs. does not fly. We are driving. We will leave at 9:00 o'clock in the morning." So, I said, "Are you sure? It's a long drive and the weather can be tricky." "No, we will come in my car." "All right," so I said, "I'll be waiting for you whenever you arrive." As luck would have it, one of those big Donner Summit storms blew up. He got caught in the chain control and didn't have any chains. About 9:00 o'clock at night they finally arrived, obviously, a little out of sorts by then. I said, "Now, look Hans, here's what we'll do. We'll go over, have a cocktail, have a nice dinner and then tomorrow we will talk about the arrangements." "No, I wish to see the facilities tonight." OK, so I took him. He wanted to see the kitchen at the Squaw Valley Inn.

Well, the kitchen … He walked in and looked and he said, "Is this the salad bar?" I said, "No, this is the kitchen." He said, "Oh, well I cannot work in this kitchen. I cannot possibly work in this kitchen. No, you just tell Mr. Hale no, I will not do it. And if he wishes to talk to Mr. Swig, let him talk to Mr. Swig, but I will not do it." I said, "Let's talk about it in the morning." "No!" So, the next morning, Hans and the Mrs. got in the car and went home. Prentis was furious, "God, all you had to do was just get the guy happy." So, in the end the resolution was two or three of the ladies who were working for us, Diana Bridges for one, and a couple of others, brought stuff from ... What's the very fancy deli in San Francisco? I can't remember, but there is one that has beautiful … all kinds of … They were all pre- cooked. And they drove them from San Francisco to Squaw Valley every day for these lunches. They would stick them in the oven, warm them up and serve them. I went to one or two of the lunches and they tasted all right to me.

Costa: Did they have vans? What did they carry it in?

Washburn: I don't know how they did it. They had a couple of pick-up trucks. Of course, there weren't that many for 30 people. It isn't all that much. I think some of the salads and things they did locally, but the main dishes were all brought from San Francisco. Prentis had his beautiful people there and they were all a big success, but geez, that's the kind of thing, it doesn't have anything to do with the Games, it doesn't have anything to do with the athletes.

Costa: It's always very interesting. What about the social things? Did they have parties and balls?

Washburn: Well, they had private parties and several people had rented houses in Squaw Valley, in the valley itself. I am sure you've been there. Wayne Poulsen, the one that Cushing had

eased out of Squaw Valley in the first place, had rented. He bought up some houses and they had rented them. They had parties there. The State of California had a big reception for everybody. There were lots of private parties going on, but the Olympics themselves, other than these lunches, I don't think did much of anything. Besides, the facilities were not there. Squaw Valley, as I said, the dining facilities there left a lot to be desired. There were a couple of parties over there, too. Just before the Games there were a frenzy of parties here in San Francisco, when the International Olympic Committee arrived in driblets.

Costa: Tell us about it.

Washburn: Well you know, one after another and everybody was just vying for the, "Oh, I've got the Lady so and so and I'm entertaining her." There was a lot of that that went on here in San Francisco. And, they didn't actually go up to the Games, I don't think, until just about the starting time. That was most of the social [scene] that I saw anyway. The IOC had a session in San Francisco just before the Games opened, I think. Right, they had a meeting here at the Fairmont, yeah. And, Prentis did a lot of entertaining. He had a big house up behind the lodge up there, he and Pat, his wife. Yeah, there were parties, at the … What's the name of that … German restaurant? It's on the left-hand side just as you get to Tahoe City. Well, it will come to me, but they did parties there too.

Costa: Were you aware of some of the squabbles that were going on because some of the Europeans didn't like the facilities and the accommodations?

Washburn: Well, there were some difficulties about ... it seemed to me fairly minor things. Maybe not minor to them, but the, for instance, the Scandinavians … at first we hadn't planned on having hot tubs.

Costa: Oh, this is a repeat of 1932.

Washburn: Yeah, right away, they had to have those. And, when we put them in they weren't satisfactory. They didn't like them. They weren't at the right temperature. They weren't the right size. They were complaining a lot.

Costa: Did they have saunas too? The Finnish ...

Washburn: Saunas, I mean. That's what I am talking about, not hot tubs, saunas. And then they'd go out and run in the snow and hit each other with ...

Costa: From where did you get the birch twigs?

Washburn: They had to bring their own as far as I was concerned.

Costa: In 1932 there was a big discussion about it in the LA Times because where would they get the birch twigs for the Finns to have their saunas? They had to go to Alaska to get them. I was wondering if you had to go to Alaska to get the birch twigs.

Washburn: No, I think we let them use pine trees. I don't remember anything about birch. We did have a lot of complaining, particularly at first about the size of the rooms. The Olympic Village was rather Spartan, to say the least. They had … I've forgotten how many bunks they had in it, but they had upstairs and downstairs bunks. They were quite, quite tightly fit.

But ,actually in the end, after they all settled in, one of the things that the Organizing Committee and the staff did very well was … We did not want the athletes to be bugged all the time by the press and by the curious public and all the rest. So, Olympic Village was off-limits. It was very tough to get a pass to get in there. The press couldn't get in. Nobody could get in. So, they were left to their own devices pretty much. They had a nice big rec hall, ping-pong, all that stuff, but they enjoyed it amongst themselves without a lot of outside interference. It worked out very well. They got to know each other and they enjoyed it. We got a lot of compliments about that. About the only people who could go in … Walt Disney put on an entertainment for them. Every night there was a different show of some sort, and very good shows, but nobody from the general public could see them. And then, what else happened? Oh, when Nixon came ...

Costa: Well where did he stay?

Washburn: Nixon? He didn't stay overnight. No, he came up to the Opening and went over afterwards and talked to them. That was the worst day I had during the entire Olympics.

Costa: Tell us about it.

Washburn: Well, Prentis had made arrangements for the vice president to come to the Games and open the Games. He said, "Now you're in charge. Make sure you get all the facilities. Get it arranged, how you are going to bring him, all that stuff, that's up to you. But, I am just telling you one thing, under no circumstances do I want him to not make it and have that big, fat Pat Brown" -- who was then the governor, who would have been the standby – "to open these Games." Prentis hated him. I wouldn't say hated him, but he didn't want him. So, about three weeks before the Opening a very nice advance man, Nixon's advance man, came out to look over the lay of the land. A fellow by the name of Bob Haldeman. And, Haldeman stayed with us ...

Costa: The Haldeman that we know?

Washburn: Oh yes, we thought he was very attractive. He stayed with us for two nights and we went over the whole plan. The plan was that Nixon was going to have some sort of a political breakfast in Sacramento that morning. He was then to fly to Stead Air Force Base, which is a big Air Force base right outside of Reno, where the Air Force would take him over, take him and bring him up to the valley in a helicopter. He would land. I remember being mad because the helicopter knocked out 28 parking spaces in the parking lot. It was a great big thing and would carry about 20 people. Then, we would meet him there with a limo, take him to the first reception, to the second reception, to lunch and to the ice rink to open the Games at 2:00 o'clock. So, we went over this whole thing and Haldeman said, "We've got

to have a dry run. We've got to make this so." So, we went down to Stead and met the commanding officer, all those guys are Southern colonels, little Southern colonels. "Oh yes," he said, "That's going to be fine. We'll take the vice president up in a helicopter."

So then, we got in a helicopter and it was huge it seemed like to me. It carried about 20 or 30 people anyway. And, Haldeman and I timed it. We went up, found out how long it took to land in the valley, limo was there, we timed that, went up to the first reception and so on. So that was it. He said, "Well, I think it's all set then." So, the night before the Games opened, Mary and I hadn't found a house outside of Tahoe City. We didn't rate enough to get a house in the valley or anything like that. Anyway, we wanted to have some friends up. I said, "I'm nervous, I don't know, I may not be able to get here or something, the roads ..." So, I stayed in the valley overnight instead of going home.

I woke up about 5:00 or 5:30, it was awfully dark. I walked over to the window and opened the thing. It was snowing so hard you couldn't see a foot in front of your face. And, it snowed and it snowed and it snowed. About 9:30 Bob Haldeman called from Sacramento and he said, "Ed, it doesn't look like the vice president is going to make it." He said, "Stead is closed and opened. Reno Airport is closed and opened. It's just very iffy. I think we better just scrub it." "I can't do that. Please!" So, he said, "Well we've got many things we can talk about down here. So, we'll stay down here and maybe we'll take off a little before noon. We'll get in touch with you. If the fields aren't open we'll just overfly Reno and go on back to Washington. If something's open, we'll land."

By this time, they had canceled the receptions because we knew we weren't going to make that. So, they took off. In the meantime, the colonel called and he said, "Ed, it's no time of day to be flying around in a helicopter. So, I guess you'll have to figure out how to get the vice president up there." I said, "Oh no, colonel. That isn't what I heard at all. I heard you were bringing him up. I don't care if you bring him up by submarine, but you've got to get him here." "You wouldn't do that to me." I said, "Colonel, you work for him. I don't." So it was, they took off from Sacramento. As luck would have it, just as they got over Reno, Stead opened up. So, they landed at Stead. Now it's about 1:00 o'clock, 12:30 or quarter of 1:00 and by this time the new freeway, the then new freeway that they built for the Games, coming from Reno, is gridlocked. It is bumper to bumper all the way up with people coming in. So, what they did do? They got every darned highway patrolman and deputy sheriff that had a badge up there getting in on everything. And, MP's were around. So, the colonel lined up a whole bunch of these fellows and they went up and they closed all of the on-ramps to the westbound, to the eastbound and they brought him up the wrong way.

Costa: Did they meet any traffic on the way at all?

Washburn: No, none because the whole thing was ... There was one little … Remember that damned underpass under the railroad that you had to squeeze through? It took them about 15 minutes to get through there and then they got on the side of the road because it's very wide, although it's only two lanes. So, by golly, at five minutes of 2:00 the limousine zipped

up to the ice rink. Nixon gets out. The snow stops. The sun goes out. And, he declares the Games open. Remember how it, all of a sudden, the snow went away and the sun came out? Oh well, they had all that stuff, yeah.

And, of course Brown, Pat, was calling every half hour wanting to know if he should be standing by. Then I remember afterwards we had a whole schedule for Nixon to go around and visit various people who wanted to have a reception for him and everything. Not at all. He said, "No, I am not doing that". He said, "I want to go over and talk to the athletes."

Costa: He was really interested in sports.

Washburn: Yeah, right. And, he said, "This is the kind of thing you never forget." He said, "However, you'll have to get a pair of size 6 snow boots for Pat." So, we scrambled around. And then, of course, I said, "Well, Mr. Vice President, are you going to go alone? He said, "Just with my staff." I said, "You might want an interpreter too. None of these people speak English." I don't know what he thought he was going to do. So, we got a crowd of interpreters together. They all went over and he talked to the athletes and he shook their hands and they had a wonderful time, and Pat was walking around with the size six snow boots. He left that night and went on. There were just all, little things like that.

Costa: Tell us about them.

Washburn: Well gosh, I can't think of anymore. I don't remember.

Costa: We were talking earlier about the local people were not allowed to charge more than $12.50 a night for housing.

Washburn: Well, that was a jawbone effort. There was no authority behind it. That's what they were trying to do, but actually it didn't work out. People were coming from all over. They were staying as far away as Auburn and Colfax and down at the lake.

Oh, another thing I remember is about Curley Grieve and the bad publicity. Curley Grieve was the sports editor of the San Francisco Examiner. Early on we found out, to our sorrow, that if the parking lot was full, there was a limited parking up around the lodge, used by the staff. There was some public parking, but very little. And it was very hard for anybody to get a parking pass. But, if the parking lot was full and then a snowstorm came along, you couldn't clear the thing because you couldn't get the machines in to get the snow out of there. And, we were going on the cheap. Remember those Army guys with the bulldozers? That was our snow clearance program. And these guys, they didn't mind going around and scooping up cars as long as it wasn't the snow.

Costa: They were not all that sensitive.

Washburn: Exactly. So, what we had to do was leave about 1/6th of the parking lot empty and so they would carefully kind of push the cars into that and then scrape some snow and then push

some more and then scrape and then work their way out of it. But, you had to leave this area … And, so that was that.

All of the press -- there were a little over a 1,000 accredited press, radio and print media -- we put up at the old Tahoe Tavern, which was still then going. It's been since knocked down and there are some condominiums. So, all of the press, we thought, "Geez, this is great. The fellows can get to know each other and all. Get their meals there and everything." We had Greyhound busses going every 10 minutes or something over to the valley so that they could go anytime they wanted … and coming back. It was just a shuttle bus going back and forth. Well, I was sitting in my office one morning and bang the door came open. And this guy said, "You Washburn?" I said, "Yes sir." He said, "Well, my name is Curley Grieve, I am the sports editor of the Examiner and I want to tell you something, Washburn. I have been to, I think, probably 17 or 18 Olympics now. It's got to be at least 17. I have never ... I have never ever had to ride a bus to a venue and I am not doing that now, particularly since you obviously have parking out there. There is some space open in your parking. I want a parking pass and I am going to park in there."

I started to explain about the snow clearance problem. He didn't listen at all. And I said, "I am just sorry, but no press get parking passes." Well he stormed out. He was the guy who invented "Squawk Valley," if you remember. Every day in the Examiner after that, some damned story would come out about somebody had screwed up, up at "Squawk Valley." I remember those. They were miserable stories. He was a real curmudgeon, you know, and you can just imagine he'd been around.

Costa: He'd been treated much better ...

Washburn: Well, that's right and he thought that the idea that he had to ride a bus …

Costa: How did you set up for the press to get their information back to their newspapers? That was a "first" in 1932 … having teletype operators and everything. So, I was wondering how you did it?

Washburn: Well, that was very interesting, what they wanted to do. All of the foreign press were going to use telephone lines to the Atlantic and then transmit by wireless radio. So, they have been … In each Olympics, invariably the host country owns the telephone system. You know, true in France, true in most of the European countries. And of course, this is an international event in which they either get the service for free or they get it for a very, very nominal rate. So, this became, "What's the rate here?" Well, American Telephone and Telegraph Company says, "Regular rate." Of course, they were shocked at the amount of the rate.

So, Prentis said, "We better go back and explain to them why they should give us a big break on this thing." So, he and I flew back to New York to meet with the American Telephone people. They had just the week before gotten squashed by the FCC in a big rate case. The government had come down heavy as hell on them. They were not in any

mood. So, we walked in there. It was like standing in front of a walk-in freezer when they open the door. That's what it felt like when we went into the boardroom. Here are all these guys standing around and they said, "No way ... No way. We can't do that. It's illegal. You can't do this or the government won't support us. We're not asking favors from the FCC. They'll just have to pay it." So, they had to pay it and they were furious about it. They thought it was much too expensive. And, I guess it was considering what they had paid at other Olympics.

Costa: Did you have to have banks of telephones set up?

Washburn: We did, yeah. Pacific Telephone took care of all the local things, though. They did a great job. They brought in … I talked to … I can't remember the fellow's name, but he was the head of the Pacific Telephone crew that did all this. I asked him, "What's going on?" He said, "You realize there are only eight pairs or something like that, going out of the valley before. That's all". He said, "We're putting in equipment you wouldn't believe and spending a lot of money." He said, "If they ever knew down in Cucamonga, where they don't even have dial telephones yet, what we are spending in here, they would be shocked." So, they did a very good job. Brought [phone service] right to the valley and also to the lodge, where they were housed. Extra facilities so they would have ...They got out in pretty good shape. It was also, by the way, the first Winter Olympics that was ever televised.

Costa: It was the first Olympics to my knowledge, Olympic Games.

Washburn: I don't know about the summer Games … A relative by marriage, my first wife's sister's husband or somebody, was on that CBS team. He told me the problems that they had. You can't imagine now when you think about these little camcorders. They had huge sleds. They had to let them down by rope, halfway down the downhill. They were going to take a position here and catch them as they were all going by, that sort of thing. They spent a lot of money and televised it. I think they televised 45 hours of the total, something like that, 10 days.

Costa: And, they may have had one or two cameras too. Not a lot of cameras.

Washburn: Oh no, they had huge, these huge cameras … take three guys to carry them around.

Costa: For each event?

Washburn: Oh, yeah. You'd just get … You had one picture of it, maybe the downhill at one corner and the finish.

Costa: Yeah, and they had a very ....

Washburn: It was very difficult for them to cover because the most spectacular of the TV coverage was the ski jumping. They can get it pretty confined in the first place and very spectacular. You see the guys go off the ramp, but trying to cover cross country or even slalom or even

downhill was ... On the downhill … I remember Willy Schaeffler.[ed. note: Director of Ski Events]. Schaeffler had to put bumps in it to make it more difficult because it was too easy. The downhill, yeah, and it lacked 20 or 10 meters or whatever it was. It wasn't long enough. So, they built a hill with a big scaffolding and put some snow on it. You had to climb up. After you got all the way up to the top of Squaw Peak lift then they had to walk all the way up to the top of this thing.

Costa: On a ladder?

Washburn: Yeah, and start from way up there, which made it just within the confines of the Olympics. They have very, very ... It's like Little League. You have to do everything by the book. So Schaeffler ... They'd complain it was much too easy. So, Schaeffler put all these bumps and tight turns in and everything else to make it harder. But, the TV people had a very hard time covering anything like that, the downhill or even the slaloms.

One other thing, this is my favorite story about our snow clearance fellows. One of my duties, as I explained, was dealing with the press. So, one day a German fellow came in to see me and he said, "Are you in charge of insurance?" I said, "Yes, I am in charge of insurance." He said, "I wish to file a claim. I wish to be paid immediately." I said, "Well, Mr. Springermueller what happened? And he said, "I had a beautiful, specially built, specially equipped Karmann Ghia. And, I parked in your parking and your fellows, those soldiers, backed their bulldozer over my Karmann Ghia and squashed the top. And, they ruined the back." And, he said, "I wish to have the Karmann Ghia replaced and I need it every day." I said, "I'll tell you. Have you got insurance?" "Well, of course, I have insurance." I said, "I am not trying to get out of it because obviously our insurance company will have to pay for this, but it will take a long time because we have to go through channels and everything else is going on. Why don't you file a claim with your insurance company, have them pay you off and then in due course they will have to collect from our insurance company. It happens all the time. It's called subrogation." "No, I do not file with my insurance company." "So, I don't know what I am going to do Mr. Springermueller."

The next thing I heard was a call from the manager of the Volkswagen in Reno, who said, "Do you know a fellow by the name of Springermueller? And I said, "Yes I do." He said, "Well, this guy is some kind of a kook. He has driven a Karmann Ghia down here. He had to look out of it like it through a slit like a tank." The damned guy had gotten in the car and had driven it down, looking out of it as he drove down the highway. And, arrived at the Volkswagen dealer and they had another Volkswagen, now the only one there. He said, "He's ordered it and said, 'You charge it to the Winter Olympics. They pay for it, of course.'" I finally explained to the fellow and he said, "Well, geez, I guess, I'll let him have it." So, Springermueller got his new Karmann Ghia.

He was a very forceful fellow. And, he finally filed a claim and they paid the car off. I will never forget him. He was not from Germany. He was from Vermont, but he was a Kraut of the Krautiest Krauts. He was appointed by one of the big German newspapers to be their correspondent and save a little money. They'd sent him out from Vermont instead of

shipping some fellow over there. I've never forgotten him. I can just see the guy. The car was a mess. I don't know how he got in the thing in the first place.

The insurance thing turned out to be a real dog too because the architect hadn't figured on … The eaves all of the buildings had decks along the first floor. Then the snow would melt during the day. It would drip down and it would freeze at night. There would be ice all over these decks. We had I don't know how many slip and fall cases. There must have been 60 or 70 of them. And, of course, we laid it off on the architects, everybody we could find, but I don't know who all paid. I know our insurance company didn't like them very much. They were talking about assumption of risk and all that. I didn't get involved with the claims.

Costa: How about the medical facilities? What kind of medical facilities did you have?

Washburn: Well they had a pretty good first aid thing in the Squaw Valley Lodge itself. It's nothing if not extremely well-run. There also was a hospital in Truckee. Now that one's all been rebuilt and it's very good. They see thousands of ski breaks. I've been in there twice with fellows with broken legs … But, as far as I know, that's all they had. I don't remember of any hospital or anything like that. I think they just used those first aid facilities and they were quite complete. They had x-rays and all of that stuff. And, I don't think anybody got badly hurt. I don't remember anybody having any bad falls.

You remember the Monty Atwater incident?

Costa: Tell us about it.

Washburn: Monty Atwater was a federal employee. He worked for the … Forest Service. The weather was critical. It would start raining and snowing and all that. And, one of Monty's self- appointed duties was avalanche control. The way he controlled avalanches, he had a French 75 cannon and he would shoot this cannon off. They'd go out and they'd spot places where there was a dangerous situation and they would shoot a cannon shell into the thing. It would disrupt it and it would all come piling down. And, that would be the end of that avalanche threat.

Well, Cushing had a terrible little lift called the Jigback that went from the top of Squaw Peak lift up to Avalanche, which is a big run. And, it was a terrible thing, sort of a tram thing. It ran on a trolley. You sat sideways on it and your skis stick out. It was always breaking down and that sort of thing. And so, one day Monty spotted a couple of dangerous avalanches. And, he let fly with the French 75 and the moment the gun went off, the Jigback fell down. Just collapsed. I am not surprised. I am sure it collapsed of its own weight but, of course, Cushing immediately said, "You fired your shell into my Jigback and knocked it down." It would be almost impossible. This would take an artilleryman with beautiful sights in the middle of the eyes to even be able to hit the damned thing. But, the stickiest lawsuit that we got into was Cushing sued us because we'd ruined this Jigback thing. It was a terrible ... It was really a hazard. We were lucky to get it knocked down. They didn't use it for the Games.

Costa: What about the leaking roof? Was it the ice rink or somewhere that there was a leaking roof discovered just before the Games?

Washburn: Yeah, but that wasn't in my area ...

Costa: The ice rink wasn't in yours?

Washburn: Old Max Dunn, he had that problem. He was in charge of all the skiing and skating events, including the construction of the ice rink.

Costa: What about the 60-foot kink in the transcontinental cable that caused that near black out in the community. Were you part of that?

Washburn: I don't know about that. No, I don't remember. It was so long ago.

Costa: I just thought that you may have been aware of that.

Washburn: Where did you hear about that?

Costa: It was in an article from Sports Illustrated.

Washburn: Oh, I see. Well, if you have a computer that has access to the San Francisco Examiner data processing as far back as 1960, you can get almost anything you'd want in Curley Grieve stories.

Costa: Any international incidents that you remember because of the Cold War?

Washburn: No. Well, the Russian thing, of course. We were almost certain that the Russians showed up with so many trainers and managers that we were sure that there were KGB all over the place. They came with far more … The ratio of non-athletes to the athletic team was huge for Russia. I am sure that they were there. But, we didn't have much of a problem except for the two defectors.

Costa: And, no incidents like happened in '56 between Hungary and the Soviet Union in the water polo?

Washburn: No, there didn't seems to be any of that. Of course, the hockey was the thing because the Americans won. They beat both the Swedes, who were co-favorites … They beat the Swedes and then the last game was with the Russians. I don't know how that American team beat the Russians. The Russians were far better. They eked out a victory, and that went very, very well. Everybody went wild.

I never knew I had so many friends who wanted tickets to the ice skating. What did it hold? About 3,000 or something like that, not very big. It's a good example of why really they

shouldn't have that kind of an event that attracts big crowds and attempt to have it in a venue where they are going to have skiing events. They really should have it … If they had it in Reno even, or in San Francisco … The ice skating, the figure skating for instance, attracts big crowds. But, you can't build a huge facility just for one or two things like that. They would be far better off having those at some other venue.

Costa: Yeah, for large groups, and the transportation problem.

Washburn: Yeah, all of that.

Costa: Did you learn to ski through all of this. Did you learn to ski?

Washburn: I never got on skis once during the Games, no.

Costa: What would be your daily routine?

Washburn: I'd get up about 6:00 and wander over to the administration building and see what problems there were for that day. There were always millions of things to do. Many, many people wanted to volunteer. I never had so many people want to come up, "No, I don't want to be paid. I'll just come up." "Well," I said, "We haven't any facilities. Where are you going to stay?" "Well, can't you get me a bed?" "No, I can't get you a bed. What are you going to do?" "Well, I don't know, anything. What do you want me to do?" and all that.

Though, I did ... you'll get a kick out of this. Remember that secretary who was so good that I had, Andy Purdy. I don't know if you remember her or not, but she was just great. She was so good that after I went to work for Prentis down at Farmland, I got her to work for me. She lived in San Francisco, but she would call. She'd either drive or take the train. She'd call and put in a person-to-person call and ask for Mr. Julius or whatever. I'd say, "I am sorry. You've got the wrong number." That was the signal that she was coming on the train and I'd meet her at the station.

Well, the other day I was walking out … I took the train into town and I was walking through the ticket place there and there was Andy Purdy. She recognized me immediately. I wouldn't think I would have recognized her and she wanted to know about the Games, and "We've got to get together and talk about it" and all that.

Costa: What had been her job?

Washburn: She was my secretary and did all the usual secretarial things and also making appointments and doing letters and all of that. But, she was extremely helpful and supervised a crew of volunteers that I had as well. Mostly women, for some reason, wanted to do that. But, they were very helpful, I must say.

Costa: Now tell me the story about this gentleman not wanting to go near snow again or something after the Games.

Washburn: [H.D. Thoreau. I said to him] "I don't know if I ever met you before the Games, I don't think so. But, your reputation as a sports buff, athlete and in particular an absolute track buff who can remember who ran fourth in the 1920 100 meters, had preceded you. And so, I just assumed you'd also had some experience in winter sports." However, [I came] to find out Thoreau had not only not much experience, he didn't know anything about skiing at all and hated the snow. As time went on, we found out how much he hated the snow and he did make that remark. I don't know if you remember but I sure do. When the Games were over, I said, "What are you going to do?" He said, "I am going to get out of here and I will never be seen in another ski resort, ever again."

Costa: Can't remember any other antidotes or stories? This is wonderful.

Washburn: I think I have run out of them. I don't remember. Well, I do remember … This is … I don't think this is unfair to Prentis because it just shows you how organized and how focused and the way he works. Anyway, I will just tell you the story. At one point after -- this was maybe a month before the Opening -- the runs were all in place. We really had to do it on the cheap because we didn't get a lot of money from the state. We didn't get a lot of money from the feds … Everything where we could cut, we did.

And, one of the things, in making the runs and packing them down, we got a company from the Mountain Division, Army. They packed them by walking up and down with skis. Didn't have any machines. So, they were all prepared, and ready to go. Everything was in pretty good shape. Then a storm came along. It was pretty warm and it started to rain. And, we were all sitting around in the board room in the administrative building in Squaw Valley and it rained, it rained.

Monty was there. We'd keep calling him about every 10 minutes, "What's going on?" "Well, the temperature is dropping a little. It may turn to snow, I don't know, but I predict certainly the storm is going to be here." So, it was really a very tense few hours. And Willy Schaeffler, who was the Denver ski coach and organized all the skiing events under Max Dunn, came in. He said, "Another hour of rain and we've lost our runs." So, we are all just sitting around and waiting. Prentis was there then all of a sudden he said, "Oh my God. Give me the phone." And, he picked up the phone and he called Pat, his wife, and he said, "You know, we are having Lord so and so for dinner tonight. Are you having peas? You had peas the last time he came for dinner. Change the vegetable." And, hung up. I couldn't believe it. Well, it tells you something about him. Prentis is a cool cookie, I will tell you that.

Costa: No other stories?

Washburn: No, I can't think of any. I think you've run me out.

Costa: Well, I really appreciate it. It's wonderful.