An Interview with DEANELL REECE TACHA Conducted by Calder M. Pickett Endacott Society University of Kansas Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Positions at the University of Kansas: Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs University of Kansas, May 1981 - December 1985 Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs University of Kansas, 1979-81 Associate Dean, School of Law University of Kansas, 1977-79 Professor of Law University of Kansas, 1977-85 Associate Professor of Law University of Kansas, 1974-77 Director, Douglas County Legal Aid Clinic Lawrence, Kansas 1974-77 Education and Degrees: University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas B.A. Honors in American Studies, 1968 University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan J.D., 1971 2 August 18, 2000 Interviewer - Calder Pickett I've been doing these interviews now off and on since 1989, and I've done a great many of them. This is one I really looked forward to because it's with someone I still think of an a young lady I first knew when we were on the University Centennial Committee back in '66 or '67. In fact, a number of years ago when she was still Vice Chancellor, I called the office and said I'd like to talk to Deanell Reece and the secretary said, "Who?" and I was really perplexed, and then suddenly I remembered and this was in the '70's or 80's and because I guess that I still thought of you as the bright, vivacious little college girl who was on that committee with me and that's how we got to know each other. I will want to talk with you in a while about your college days. Q: Deanell, I would like you to start with some basic kinds of things. Tell us your date of birth, place of birth, the names of your parents, what your dad did for a living and so on to get us started. A: Okay, well I was born in Goodland, Kansas, on January 26th, 1946. My grandparents lived in Kanorado and my mother had been with my father at ports while he was in the Navy. She had gone back because she was pregnant with me. My dad was off the coast of Morocco during World War II on a Navy destroyer so mother was alone and went back to Sherman County. Her brother had just died the previous year. He was a pilot over England and died in a plane crash during the war so she went home to live with her parents in Kanorado. To diverge a little bit, my grandmother, her mother, was the surgical nurse for the elder Franklin Murphy when she was at the medical center and used to baby-sit with young Franklin Murphy, who ended up, of course, being the chancellor here. My grandfather, to the contrary, was a land man, rancher, banker, one of those kind of western Kansas cowboys who had a ranch in Sherman County between Goodland 3 and Sharon Springs and then ultimately ended up in Kanorado. So, I was born at Goodland. My dad got back by the time I was born, but just barely. He had graduated from the School of Business here. His name is H.W. (Bill) Reece and my mother's name is Marynell Dyatt Reece, and her mother was Nell Dyatt. She was in the first nursing class from Bell Memorial. When dad came back he didn't know what he was going to do. He had worked as an efficiency expert for Better Homes & Gardens before he went off. He went off to be skipper of a destroyer and, the story goes, had never seen the ocean. When he came back, it was just when they were beginning to look at paving roads and trying to get a highway system through the state of Kansas. The post-war years were the years in which really all of the Midwest became so dependent on the automobile to get people from one place to the other as opposed to riding trains. Dad and his father (his father had been in the highway construction business right after the Model T Ford) and his brother formed a construction company in Scandia, Kansas, where my dad grew up, and started building paved roads and were among the pioneers really. You can still today go across roads in Kansas where dad will say, "We put the first pavement on here or build the first bridges." Q: Well now, Scandia, I don't think I've been there. I've been through Kanorado many times and I've been to Goodland, of course, many times. The part of the state that a lot of people like to put down, you know. I always kind of liked it out that way. But Scandia, where is it? A: Scandia is in the north-central part of the state. If you went to Salina and went directly north to within eight miles of the Nebraska line to Highway 36 and go nine miles west, that is where Scandia is - right along Highway 36 west of Belleville. The closest real town is Concordia. Q: So, if s really central Kansas. We came down through, not that way, we were up on Interstate 80 because the construction on 70 had been driving us crazy. We like going across Nebraska and we came down through Red 4 Cloud, Willa Gather's town, and got onto Highway 24. I was determined to stop in Cawker City and take a picture of the ball of twine. I had never done that. I had to have that for my collection. So actually you were brought up mainly in Scandia? A: Yes. We moved for a short while to Topeka before we moved back to Scandia because dad and his brother also thought they'd build houses, but that didn't last long. I moved back to Scandia when I was about 4 years old and grew up my entire young life there. I went to a very, very small high school where I like to say I was the top 10% of my class because my memory is there were 11 people in my high school graduating class. Q: It was that small? A: Yes. Q: Tell me a little bit about your parents. They were college people, both of them? A: Oh, yes. Mother graduated from the Journalism School and Dad graduated from the Business School and, of course, that was right during the war. Q: You know most of the people I interview, their parents didn't even go to high school. A: My parents were very unusual for the time from those small towns. Both of them had been to college and both of them had degrees. And, interestingly, Mother's parents both had degrees. We were in this small town where my dad ran a construction company. He was out traveling a lot while I was growing up because he was building roads and building a construction company. My mother early on became involved in politics - not as an elected person but she started working in the Republican party as long ago as I can remember. One of my first memories, I always hesitate to say this but people get quite a laugh, when I was in about fifth grade, I think, was when she was the campaign chairman for Bob Dole when he ran the first time for the House of Representatives. I was a "doll for Dole" at all the grocery stores and little places around what is now the 1st District. It wasn't as big a district as it now is. I guess it was the old First and we have the new First. We went all over that part of western Kansas campaigning for Bob Dole for his election campaign. My mother was always actively involved in politics as well as the United Methodist Church. My vision of my mother is that she was always the fire that was lit underneath me and never thought there was any boundary to what a woman could do. It never crossed my mind that there were any limits. Q: Of course, you know when you're in Kansas I guess you had become a Republican. I told someone I was going to ask Deanell why she's a Republican. A: I was born one. Q: I've been tempted to drop a note to Sandy Praeger and ask her why she is because she sounds like a Democrat to me and which is often the case. A: Of course, I don't do politics any more but I always think Kansas Republicans defy all the stereotypes. I always thought for example Nancy Kassebaum and Bob Dole fit the Kansas model. Really, we're much more populist than those who I would call stereotypical national Republicans. Q: Yes, of course, there's a rather extreme wing that's developing. My daughter lives over in Johnson County. She was saying that Greg Musil should have been a Democrat and she has a strong dislike for Phil Kline and I think maybe I do too. I don't know him personally. Do you have brothers and sisters? A: I had three sisters. I was the oldest of four girls. All of us went to KU. All of us pledged our mother's sorority. We were all very active in our school and in our church and our various things. In a small town, as you know, Calder, you don't just do one or two activities.