Richard F. "Dick" Celeste part 2

CW: So you had just arrived in India. How ready do you feel like you were to be in India?

RC: I was totally unprepared for India. You know it was an opportunity for a very young couple to have an adventure while we could still have an adventure. And I arrived uncertain about what my responsibilities would be. Having to forge a new relationship with my boss who was a, I wouldn't say an intimidating figure and literally in awe inspiring figure. He was somebody who I had admired I come to know in public life. You know he'd been a congressman. He'd been a governor 00:01:00of Connecticut. He had been a very successful business man. He built this beautiful house in Connecticut. He lived in Washington. He had you know he dined with all of the top folks in D.C. And I really wasn't sure what working for him would be like, I wasn't sure what the foreign service would be like, and I certainly wasn't sure what India would be like. And that you arrive in the middle of the night. That time it was Pan Am 1 and you go through customs such as they were then and immigration at 3:00 in the morning. But there's somebody there to help you. You really don't see anything as you go into town. They put you to bed in a compound apartment and get up in the morning it's early July probably the 6th or 7th of July 1963. And the thing that struck me was everybody 00:02:00was looking at the sky and I couldn't understand why. And then I learned very quickly that the monsoon hadn't come and they were waiting for rain and that was the beginning of my unanticipated love affair with India. I learned that my principal responsibilities for the ambassador were in a sense personal in nature. I was a personal assistant. He had a he had a, an administrative assistant who was a career foreign service officer a bit older than me had considerable experience already in the Foreign Service. His name was Brandon Grove. So Brandon took on the official responsibilities. I worked on Bowles 00:03:00correspondence which was substantial. I helped draft documents, a responsibility I had not fully appreciated. And I was responsible for things like travel and social schedule and all of the personal support that he required. And you know I learned a number of things very quickly. Number one he didn't sign his own checks. He asked me to sign his checks. So whenever he needed a check at night. And I forged his name I got very good at mimicking his signature. He had a cautionary note for me early on. He said he told me the stories that I had an 00:04:00assistant who had seemed to be doing all right and I would ask him how he was getting along and he would say fine and never complain never brought a concern to me. I was a little, I was a little dismayed because I wasn't getting my usual correspondence across my desk and I ask him a couple of times. He said No everything's fine. And then one night the ambassador said I had to stay in the office late. I needed to find scissors. I didn't have scissors at my desk so I went searching in his desk and I found a big drawer that I opened and it was full of unopened correspondence. He said I'm telling you this story because if you ever fall behind if you ever have a problem I want you to bring it to me. I don't want to discover it in the middle of the night when I open a drawer of 00:05:00your desk. And it was the beginning of an education over the next. I thought it was going to be two years I extended it to four in which Bowles as a mentor shared with me his experience and partly about how to run a team a great deal about his experience in politics and in public life and the public service. And it was it was quite extraordinary every time we had a distinguished visitor to India during the next four years. I was what. In the foreign service they called the control officer. I was the person that was in charge of Hubert Humphrey's schedule, in charge of Arthur Goldberg's schedule, in charge of James Reston's 00:06:00schedule, in charge of Richard Nixon's schedule. When they uh for one reason or another came through New Delhi often in the run up to those schedules I would get stories about whatever Bowles's experience had been with you or Humphrey or with Arthur Goldberg. In addition the social schedule became for me my window on India because I didn't function like a political officer in the embassy who would go to parliamentary sessions and interact with Indian politicians. I really was working for Bowles but that meant in the case of social schedule working with his wife around events that would bring Indians into their home and 00:07:00on his travels which would take him into villages and into the offices of state officials in India. The woman who was social secretary when I arrived an Indian a young Indian woman a few years older than me was named Bimla Nanda. And she because I was baching it she kind of took me under her wing and invited me to come out to her home and enjoy home cooked meals that her mother had prepared. This was really special because Mrs. Nanda had one of the best kitchens in New Delhi. She didn't, she didn't cook everything. She would have a cook but she planned everything and she made sure it was executed properly. And Bim was a Bim 00:08:00had kind of salon a, group of young people in New Delhi who would come to her place two three four nights a week sit for a meal, exchange gossip, talk about what they were doing. People who were working for the Ford Foundation, or the Rockefeller Foundation, the Baltimore Sun Correspondent, The New York Times correspondent often they were there and so I sat in and that's how I settled in in India. Bim became a very close personal friend. She had two sisters. Unusually she had been married in an arranged marriage. She was the eldest sister and then divorced and her parents welcomed her home which was not the 00:09:00normal social mores in India. Often you were shunned if you would if you abandon an arranged marriage but Beam's husband had been abusive. Her father was a very senior veterinarian in fact in charge of the veterinary service for the Indian government. And just a delightful tall gentle elegant man very just very proud of his daughters. Bim's middle sister had married a successful business man and her youngest sister who was my age was unmarried but Meena announced about a month after I got there and before Dagmar had arrived that she was getting married and I said how can you how can you get married you're not even dating. 00:10:00Well she said I know daddy and mama found someone for me. I said Meena, come on, you went a college graduate you've got a master's degree from the University of Michigan. Each of the girls had master's degrees in elementary education had and they started the first pre-school in New Delhi. And as a consequence all of the government young government officials were sending their kids that pre-school. Our son Eric went to play house school, their school. Meena you've got two college degrees. How can you do an arranged marriage. And she said well Dick I mean you know my parents have a lot more experience about marriage then I have, they've been successfully married for 40 years. They love me. They're not gonna 00:11:00do anything that would hurt me. And I don't want, I don't want daddy worrying about whether I have someone in my life to take care of me. And so within two months of arriving in India I was exposed to my first Indian wedding Punjabi wedding full of song and music and the rest. So I was on the one hand Ambassador Bowles and Brandon Grove were sort of inducting me into foreign service and into public policy and on the other hand Bim Bissel in her spare time, she she married and became Bim Bissel, was sort of introducing me to Indian family life and the rich kind of social fabric of New Delhi. It was an extraordinary experience. By the time Dagmar arrived I was you know I felt almost at home. I 00:12:00could I could act like I knew what I was doing with her.

CW: How did how did Mr. Bowles adapt I mean you're adapting on one level but he's also adapting?

RC: Well he was rare because he had served as ambassador to India previously when he was defeated in his re-election bid for governor of Connecticut in 1950. President Truman who was a real admirer of his appointed him ambassador to India. So Bowles had spent two years in India with his family and he loved it. His kids loved it. He wrote about it, his daughter Cynthia wrote a book called at home in India. And so he was excited to go back. A little, I think a little 00:13:00bent out of shape but having been demoted by President Kennedy. He would have preferred to be Secretary of State and he had an awkward relationship let's say with Dean Rusk. So for Bowles the the adjustment was to a changed India. In other words he left in 1952 we came back in 1963 Nehru was still prime minister but Nehru was was no longer than Nehru with whom Bowles had had a very close relationship. Nehru had soured become kind of cynical in his later years and he was fading. So I think one of the challenges that Bowles had when he arrived was that he didn't have the personal relationship that he thought he would have. He 00:14:00insisted on going back to the homes that he had lived in 11 years earlier which wasn't the ambassador's residence any longer. They had built a beautiful residence on the embassy compound. It was ostensibly the deputy chief of mission's residence but Bowles went back there was a wonderful old British bungalow colonial style bungalow and it was modest and it was in an Indian neighborhood which I think meant a lot to Bowles. But he had to adjust to an India that was more assertive, a government that was less sympathetic, a house that didn't have his kids in it, which meant I think for me and Dagmar that we became in some respects also the surrogate children which was another unexpected 00:15:00benefit. He in order to kind of establish himself when he got back he decided to do a series of lectures at Delhi University at the law school. He got an invitation to do a series of four lectures. And so a considerable amount of my time during that first year was working with him and with another young man that Bowles had brought named Doug Bennett. Doug was the son of a longtime friend of the Bowles family and a pal of Sam Bowles and Cindy and Sally Bowles as they grew up and Doug graduated from Wesleyan. He was interested in history very 00:16:00talented young man. And he was assigned to work at USAID but basically also was there as part of the cadre of folks at bulls recruited to come with him. And so Doug and I were the ghost writers of aspects of what became a book published was called the makings of a just society. Bowles, it was really a way of sort of offering public advice to Prime Minister Nehru in a in a manner that wouldn't be impertinent. He really, he didn't direct this at the at the prime minister. It was sort of to an abstract Indian policy decision maker and Bowles talked about 00:17:00the elements of what would create a just society. He talked about agriculture and land reform talked about the importance of education and so on. Anyway it's a thoughtful book and I think it holds up well as a manual for national development.

CW: So part of that must have been discussion of the caste system?

RC: We didn't, we didn't dwell on caste as such. When India became independent the caste system was outlawed. It didn't go away. Caste system was still is present in India although the shape of it has changed particularly in urban India significantly. But in some respects the public policy that was being 00:18:00undertaken didn't take into account caste in a sense because it was the social structure not talked about. Every Sunday if you bought a Sunday newspaper in India there are even today dozens of newspapers and a dozen English language papers each one on Sunday has a matrimonial section that has six or eight pages devoted to personal ads for individuals. Today the language is a little more oblique. So they're interested in educational attainment but they do mention 00:19:00fair skin. For example they do mention convent educated. They have code names for ways to kind of communicate.

CW: So what was Dagmar's first impression?

RC: I think Dagmar fell in love with it as much as I did. She spent quite a bit of time with Steb Bowles. She, we lived, we had an odd situation that developed not long after she arrived. When she arrived she had to deal with the harsh realities of Indian life. I about a week after she arrived I had a bout of bacillary dysentery, which is when you experience it for the first time like okay I'd just as soon die, I don't really want to be around. Fortunately the 00:20:00embassy doctor knew a doctor in the neighborhood, an Indian doctor. So he came and diagnosed it immediately gave me a shot said get in a cold bathtub and cool off. Within 48 hours I was fine. The she accompanied me, we were advancing ambassador's trip to Chundrigar because the Austrian government was going to dedicate, they had provided the foreign aid for the first major hydro-power project in India called Bhakra-Nangal and Bowles was invited along with several other ambassadors because Nehru was going to be there. He called this the temple of the new India this fabulous hydro damn. And because it was the Austrian government Bowles thought well Dick your wife is Austrian you guys ought to go. 00:21:00So we went up to advance his visit and two nights before the actual event I had terrible abdominal pain and it wasn't bacillic dysentery. So we got the local doc he came and after checking my blood pressure and asking me some questions he asked Dagmar for a Bobby pin. He laid me flat on my back with a bare chest and abdomen. He used this Bobby pin and ran around my rib cage and then said well I think what you've got is a severe appendicitis and you should go to the hospital right now. And I can we get back to Delhi. And he said well if you go directly 00:22:00to the hospital there you know at that time the roads were terrible but we had a another American was there with a station wagon and the little hotel where we stayed agreed to put a mattress in the back of the station wagon. They took me to the hospital. They took out my appendix within half an hour after I arrived and is that's Dagmar's initial exposure to India. But she you know once I stabilized and that was the end of my health adventures in India until March before we left I broken an ankle playing softball. But that was a different matter four years later. She really you know she was curious about everything. She was adaptable. She found German speaking friends and she Bim and her sisters 00:23:00became friends very quickly. And so the Nanda family became kind of helpful to her. And you know in India you have a cook even us young people that we had a cook, we had a gardener, and we had a nanny. And you know for a 22 year old young mother that was pretty remarkable. The challenge we had was that not long after she arrived the ambassador called me in and said you've got to move out of your house and move into the boys boarding unit at the embassy school. I said 00:24:00what's this about? And he said well the boy's boarding unit the house parents left unannounced. This was at Christmas time. They went back for Christmas holiday and didn't return. And there were 16 teenage boys whose parents were USAID or information service or CIA. They were not living in Delhi. They were scattered all over South Asia. And so these boys who ranged in age from 15 to 18 were living in this home and they were challenging, let's put it that way. So Dagmar found herself the mother of a six month old and the house mother for all these teenaged American boys. I think it was an unexpected challenge for her, 00:25:00but she she did very well.

CW: Well you had a lot of adapting going on, not only a new job, a new place, you're fairly new to marriage at this point.

RC: Sure.

CW: But you are also a new father.

RC: Yeah.

CW: You haven't had that much time. So how was that?

RC: Right, well I think being I think you know I was fortunate because once we moved into the boys boarding unit I could walk to work. I could come home for lunch if I wanted. It was a wonderful time to be a father. As the work grew more intense I was probably less present for Eric and then Eric and Christopher and then Eric, Christopher, and Gabriela because two of our children were born in 00:26:00New Delhi while we were there. But it's a wonderful place to have children. Everybody welcomes children so you know people would bring their kids our house we'd take Eric or Eric and Christopher or whoever wherever we would go. Doug Bennett and his wife lived nearby. They started their family. Their son Michael was born three months before Christopher came. I taught Doug how to change diapers. Mike has gone on to become a U.S. senator. And so now I can say I changed the diapers of a United States Senator which is pretty rare. LAUGHTER. And I would say the real shock of parenthood didn't occur until we came back to 00:27:00the states. 1967 all of the sudden we had three kids no nanny the challenge of work. And that may have been more of an adjustment for the two of us than for the five of us at that point than heading out to India.

CW: So you found that India where you were was much more helpful for children?

RC: I mean anywhere in India the Indian culture. Children are really by and large treasured I mean there are some cases where that isn't the case. But I would say as a cultural imperative. You don't let a child cry. People pick up a baby disconcertingly they like to pinch your cheek so they'll come up. Mmm, what a nice little boy. What a nice what's the boy's name and still holding on his 00:28:00cheek. So these kids would come home with sore cheeks but and Eric. Eric started preschool in India. I don't think he sat at a table to eat until we got back to the states he sat on the floor with the servants and their kids. Ate with his hands. That was what you did, right. And I traveled a fair amount too which was another thing. I mean it was really wonderful for Dagmar to have a secure place to be and support when I was off, you know, with the ambassador helping him do a five day swing through East India or a week long swing in South India or whatever. As part of my responsibilities.

CW: What was the thing you think you fell in love with the most about India?

RC: Well, India at that time was still a very young country. And Nehru's whole his whole vision was in and mission was to unite a country that had never really been a single country except under colonial power under the Mughals when the British ruled. They ruled through indirect rule so that the British colonial service kind of ran over all India. But there were six hundred and eighty four princely states and these states. Didn't really become part of a united India 00:30:00until Indian independence. So he he initiated something called a national malaria eradication program. This was vital because when I arrived in India the population was probably 280 million. And every year 20 million people would get malaria and every year two million people or more would die of malaria. And so malaria was a was a brutal disease it struck at harvest time. So it impacted harvests and meant that the harvest was even in a good monsoon was less. So we would travel around and in villages you'd see these mud walls and on the mud wall would be an N M E S in huge letters National Malaria Eradication Scheme which meant that they had been through to spray and to eliminate the causes of 00:31:00malaria there. And this was a major push by Nehru. And so one of the things that impressed me in the early days of my stay there in the 60s was the struggle of a nation to understand who it is and get a sense of national unity because the diversity of India from Nagaland in the northwest to Kerala in the south is unbelievable. I mean it's geographic, it is ethnic, it is religious, it is linguistic. All of these challenges right. So from a kind of a public policy standpoint I was fascinated by this challenge of nation building and Bowles' perspective on it which was thoughtful and engaged. But at the same time I had 00:32:00this growing personal relationship through the Nanda family which was just remarkable. The day after Bim's sister got married in this wonderful Punjabi wedding we were summoned to the ambassador's residence. Didn't know why he wanted to both Dagmar and me there and it was because the two of us along with Ambassador Bowles and his wife were going to be witnesses as Bim married an American expatriate who I'd seen hanging around her place for the previous six months. He'd actually been hanging around longer. His name was John Bissell. His family were friends of the Bowles he had fallen completely in love with Bim but she couldn't marry until her youngest sister had gotten married. So the day 00:33:00after that the Hindu priest came and put a little fire in the back porch of the ambassador's residence and Bim and John walked around the fire three times and they were married and we were the witnesses and you know Bim became a sister of mine, she's still a sister of mine and her son and daughter eventually educated in the United States but I was there for their births. And so there was this other aspect of India which there were two values that stood out for me that were important when I came back. The first is the respect for the elderly. When I arrived at the Nanda house every time I arrived I'd take my shoes off at the door which was common in India. And then I would touch the feet of Mama and 00:34:00Daddy which was a symbol of respect because that's what kids did to their parents and grandparents. That's what when I was with Steb Bowles at the train station in Calcutta one of the most madhouse scenes imaginable as older people would get off the train there would be a young person to meet them. But the first thing they do is you know they might be in a suit and a briefcase. They put the suit and the briefcase down and they'd reach down and they touch their feet of the older. So respect for the elderly was something that you know I had a whole new appreciation of as I came back to the US. The other aspect of India which was striking and Bim's invitation to her home was part of this is the 00:35:00reflection of a bait a Vedic injunction. The Vedas say the guest is god. The guests this god. And so for Indians this has nothing to do with caste for Indians. It for any Hindu being extending hospitality is a chance to get close to god. And so one experiences incredible hospitality. You know I would talk to American visitors who would come and they would say I was riding. You know I've been in India for two weeks I was riding a train someplace or another second class train. I was sitting next to a young Indian and he asked why I was here and I said well I'm here on a trip trying to see India. And I said why are you here and well I'm going to my cousin brother's getting married you should come 00:36:00to the wedding. Oh no no way. I don't know anyone. No no you should come to the wedding. And he persisted and he persisted so I got off the train and he arranged for me to stay at their home and they seated me in the front row of the wedding. Well that's because you were special for them. You were god sent as far as they were concerned. So the notion of kind of this enthusiastic hospitality not grudging but just we want to share what we have with you was the other kind of overwhelming lesson that I brought home. And I think for Dagmar and me it meant we kept an open house. We had people who stayed with us for short and long periods of time. We loved the opportunity to welcome a guest. Of course they 00:37:00came back and worked in housing for the elderly with my father. So both of these kind of Indian lessons if you want to call it that were, became part of my life later on.

CW: How long were you, if you're having guests obviously, how long were you in the boys boarding?

RC: We were in the boys boarding unit until the end of until the end of spring. They brought a new I wanted to get out of that as quickly as I could. Brought in a new house master. You know come to think of it there was another lesson that I learned in India that was important. Bowles began the, his lectures and the makings of a just society talking about agriculture. And he quoted another great 00:38:00book of wisdom the chorale in India which says ":agriculture is the linchpin of the social chariot" and you know for somebody who is a sophisticated New York and Connecticut guy. He understood the importance of agriculture in a remarkable way. And we spent a lot of time visiting Indian farms. India was going through a terrible drought. We were there for the beginnings of the Green Revolution and work that the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations did to develop hybrid rice and hybrid wheat that would grow even in very tough conditions. And the development of a fertilizer industry that could help the management of water resources and so on. And so when I came back and got involved in Ohio politics I at the back 00:39:00of my mind I would go to northwest Ohio to visit a farm in the back of my mind. There's an Indian saying agriculture is the linchpin of the social chariot. I'm not sure that I use that very often with the Ohio Farm Bureau or the Ohio Farmers' Union but it meant that I took rural Ohio very seriously. Who knew right. Who. Who knew in 1963 64 65. That was.

CW: So you've got two years in and you had the opportunity to extend.

RC: What happened at the end of two years. Brandon Grove because he was a career officer was rotated out. He was sent to Jerusalem to become our consul general 00:40:00and Bowles had an opportunity to bring in another career foreign service officer. But he liked having people who were kind of committed to him and whose skills and temperament he knew. And so he asked me to become his administrative assistant and persuaded the foreign service leadership the people who handle foreign service personnel that I was up to the job. So for the next two years I was responsible for the running of the office we brought in somebody else to work on some of the things that I had handled. And it meant I screened all of the cables that came in. I coordinated country team meetings I did a little bit 00:41:00less travel with him. But I was more, you know, I was more of a real foreign service officer rather than a personal country, than a country bumpkin who was brought along for the ride. Right. And toward the end the woman who was the Assistant Secretary for South Asia was a wonderful woman tried to recruit me for the Foreign Service. You know, asked me if I would be willing to enter the Foreign Service. And I told her that I was reluctant to do that because I'd been given more responsibility in the time that I'd been in New Delhi than I would get if I stayed in the Foreign Service. I'd have to go through about six or eight years before I'd get back to the responsibility I had. And, you know, I 00:42:00mean during that second sort of second half of my service in India I accompanied Bowles to Vietnam. We were briefed on what was going on. The reason for our visit to Vietnam was India was a member of the three member international body that supervised the truce or that that demilitarized zone. Poland representing the Eastern Bloc, Canada representing the West, and India as a neutral. We were worried about the incursion of North Vietnamese through Laos and so on. And so 00:43:00we wanted to try to persuade the Indians to get serious about a role with the international commission and Bowles wanted to inform himself on that front. So we went uh to Thailand and Laos us to get briefed and then to Vietnam. And we flew around Vietnam in helicopters I spent the night on a carrier in the South China Sea and came away with an enormous appreciation for that commitment of our soldiers and sailors and airmen not convinced that we could that what we were doing was gonna be successful because the biggest frustration was that South Vietnamese government and the South Vietnamese army seemed less inclined to 00:44:00carry the weight that they needed to than we were. And but that was an interesting you know that. Again if I hadn't been with Ambassador Bowles I would never have had an opportunity to see Vietnam up close and personal as a noncombatant.

CW: You would have got a waiver for conscription?

RC: I was. Yeah they, well as a student then as us because I was married and then we had a kid I kept. As Lyndon Johnson up the ante I kept upping my game so to speak.

CW: They did eventually lose the waiver for children but that was later.

RC: Yeah, yeah, yeah and I was old and not really fit for the service by the 00:45:00time I came back from India.

CW: But yeah you could have experienced Vietnam with a very different way.

RC: Yeah. Yeah.

CW: So were there other places that you traveled to outside of India during this time or was most of it in India?

RC: No. You always virtually on India we went to Nepal once. We went to Bhutan once, Bhutan is, we do not have formal diplomatic relations with Bhutan. So the ambassador the US ambassador in India is our interlocutor with the king and the kingdom of Bhutan that you know at that time it was totally isolated. Later it's become more like a little bit more touristy. Not a whole lot but some otherwise 00:46:00my travels were in connection with getting to or from India. When we met back on home leave after our second year we came back through Vienna. And at that time in 1965 there was a war going on between Pakistan and India and I could not fly back to India as I had planned because they said there's a war going on. I had gone from Vienna to Ankara to interview a woman who Bowles was considering as his executive secretary. And from Ankara there was nothing flying to India. So I 00:47:00flew to Beirut and I spent probably 48 hours in the airport in Beirut trying to find a plane that was going to India. Finally I found a Middle East Airlines flight that was flying in empty to pick up people who were leaving and they were willing to have me fly. I was literally the only passenger in this very large international carrier. I had very good service and that flight. You know I said wake me up when we get to Bombay because I want to see you. Supposedly there were air com... There was air combat going on and we weren't sure what we would encounter. Well it turned out there was nothing of the sort. And it turned out there was no threat to the Indian to real India although the major battle was a 00:48:00tank battle that was fought up in the Punjab. Probably one hundred and fifty miles from Delhi. And ironically it was Bim's uncle who was a general in the Indian army who captured about one hundred and twenty American tanks that belonged to the Pakistan army. They launched this tank battle late in the season when corn had grown to its highest and sugar cane had grown to its highest. And so they are coming through fields of corn and sugar cane. They couldn't see what was in front of them until the tank knocked over the cane or the corn. And the Indians just let them come and their tanks ran out of gas. They had, they 00:49:00literally ran out of gas and the Indians captured the tankers and the tanks without firing a single shot. It was incredible. And so one of my duties became to take a congressional delegation up to visit this sort of tank parking lot that the Indians had acquired much to the embarrassment of our military who thought the Indians don't know how to fight. The Pakistanis are tough. They're going to mow these Indians down. Uncle Krishna was very proud of his achievement. He and his troops were mostly from up along the north they were like Sherpa troops and others and I mean they were fighters.

CW: Did they have their own set of tanks?

RC: They did have their own tanks but they just. And they set a line with tanks 00:50:00if these tanks had made it. But he knew the capabilities of these things and haw them and he said they're outrunning their logistics. They're going to. They don't realize what's going to happen. And they're so excited they're going to run all the way to the capital of India. They were on their way to Delhi. They get stuck in a cornfield.

CW: So you're up in Europe visiting. Is there any blow back from the fact they're driving American tanks, or did the Indians?

RC: Oh no. This is one of the reasons why Prime Minister Nehru is not altogether happy with the United States. I mean he thought that he didn't believe that we should be fighting a war in Vietnam. We have given all of our military equipment 00:51:00to Pakistan as part of an alliance, Southeast Asian treaty alliance with the United States. And he felt we'd taken sides when we didn't need to take sides. They looked pretty substantially to Russia for their military assistance. And interestingly I mean Nehru died a year after I got there. So I made the reason why I hosted Hubert Humphrey was that he was this senior representative of the US government at that funeral. The new Prime Minister was a man named Lal Bahadur Shastri. He was very diminutive. He was a smart, very honest, decent person who was chosen I think because he had an unblemished record. He was a Gandhian in his way of thinking. He was in Tashkent for a meeting with Russia, 00:52:00Soviet leadership and died of a heart attack a year after he took office. And that was an incredible shock to the system. People understood that Nehru was you know he was in his early 90s he wasn't going to live long. An English writer wrote a book after Nehru about a year and a half before he died. I don't know whether Shastri was at the top of his list but so Shastri died after a year and then Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister and she was tough and she was not favorably disposed to the United States. And I think Bowles had you know he had 00:53:00a correct relationship with her. But I think she may have seen him as condescending and I think he may have you know he came from a generation that probably wasn't quite sure how you treat a woman who is Prime Minister. Right. And he related to her father, for crying out loud. Right. And so it was a challenge and our policy was a challenge.

CW: So what was your exposure to all these high level Indians were you regularly meeting with them?

RC: No.

CW: Was it more like through Mr. Bowles?

RC: My contact with high level Indians did not exist. I once entertained the senior secretary to the Prime Minister for tea at my house because we 00:54:00communicated over scheduling matters. But I didn't. I never did attend. I mean for years I didn't attend the meeting of parliament. In four years, the political figures I met through the Nanda family through Bim and John and through folks who would come to that wonderful home even after Bim and John were married they stayed with her parents extended family right. And the dinners went on and so as often as I could I was out there and you know I'd meet young ambitious politicians who had no following. I met, bought a painting from a wonderful Indian artist it was an impulse buy. Spent more money than I really should. His name was Satish Gujral. He's one of India's really fine painters at 00:55:00that time. This was a big acquisition that cost I think all of six hundred dollars but that was a lot for me as a young man. And his brother was a politician. And Satish said you have to meet my brother and introduced me to his brother, his name was I.K. Gujral and we became friends and stayed in touch his sons came to the US to study. Who knew 30 years later when I went back to India as ambassador that he would be the Prime Minister of India. So if I met a handful of Indian politicians that was a lot, one of them turned out to be next to a future prime minister

CW: It is a small world.

RC: Yet they in India they would say it's karma. One of those things

CW: what was your. Does your relationship with Mr. Bowles change as your job functions changed or was it pretty much steady throughout?

RC: We were very close. I mean he. He. There was a lot of work. I mean he wrote long cables to Lyndon Johnson on policy. He didn't he didn't restrict himself to talking about you know what was going on in India although he did regularly lobby on behalf of India. With one of the, one of his agreements with Kennedy when he went to India was that he would not have to communicate through the Secretary of State to the President. And he Kennedy assigned a senior CIA 00:57:00official who's been included South Asia to receive messages occasionally from Bowles. And so Bowles would use that channel to communicate. Bowles was in Washington when Kennedy was assassinated. Which may have been, you know, talk about a shocking event. To experience it ten thousand miles away is it in some respects maybe more shocking. I got up the 23rd of November is Dagmar's birthday. So I get up on the 23rd of November seven o'clock that morning to fix, 00:58:00I was gonna fix him breakfast for her put some presents out and I would get three newspapers every morning to read three English language papers. I picked up the papers and I put them on the dining room at the breakfast table and went to start some coffee and then I realized I didn't take in the headline the headline is Kennedy dead and in huge print and somebody was pranking me. And I looked at all three papers and then I called the embassy and the Marine guard said yes the President was assassinated you should come in as soon as you can. And you know that was impossible to believe. Kennedy was was worshipped in India. So the outpouring of grief by Indians was remarkable. And the interesting 00:59:00thing about I suppose about something like the Foreign Service or you know there's a lot of protocol. It really goes back, much of it goes back to the age when Kings sent personal representatives to other kingdoms, right. So there was a protocol as soon as the head of state dies the flag is lowered at half staff a condolence book is put out where a public can come and get it. Everybody, every event is canceled. I had Pete Seeger the singer coming. He was going to perform for the US Information Services and he was coming with his family. Everything was canceled. He ended up staying in our house with his wife and son. So Bowles 01:00:00was in Washington in that period and Bowles met with Johnson before he came back and had that same channel to Lyndon Johnson. So that channel was well used and I was busy helping to edit, write, and do other things like that. Well talking about the CIA, did you have any of that kind of intrigue going on in the background at the embassy or was that something that wasn't occurring? Oh there was plenty going on and I mean at both Doug Bennett and I made a point with Bowles support meeting young Russian diplomats. Many of those Russian diplomats 01:01:00were trying to recruit potential agents they could run right. And I think even more with Doug than me because Doug spoke Russian he had studied Russian his field was Russian history. So he was often propositioned by one of these guys. The drill was when you have a conversation when you meet with a Soviet official or a Soviet citizen. If you are a Foreign Service officer you write up a report. That's a memorandum for record. I must have written you know 15 or 20 memos for the record. My hunch is that the Doug probably wrote twice as many. And there was you know there was. Well we were cognizant of the fact that we had an active 01:02:00intelligence program being run in India. One of our officers had just a wonderful man and had been parachuted into Tibet and helped lead the Dalai Lama out through the mountains to safety ahead of the advancing Chinese army. So you know our interests were understanding Soviet aims in South Asia. There were people who felt that the Soviet Union wanted to kind of move down through Iran down into South Asia and dominate that area. That part of the world. We were also very interested in China at that time and the Chinese embassy had been shut 01:03:00down. So they didn't have a diplomatic presence in India. But we were eager to know what was going on up along the Chinese border. Tibetans were a good source of information for us for much of what was going on. And then you know because of the war in Vietnam we were eager to know what Russia was doing in terms of support for Vietnam. What the Chinese are doing in terms of support for Vietnam. So there were a variety of reasons to be interested. That was not my beat. I was totally focused on Ambassador Bowles, but as my tour came close to an end. That 01:04:00changed dramatically for me. We started planning our return and sort of at the end of 1964 late 1964. And I had developed a relationship with a man named Valery Ostapenko. Valery was my equivalent with the then Soviet ambassador in New Delhi. And Valery and I we'd get together once every couple of months sort of a home and home series we'd go to his apartment on the compound for dinner with Dagmar then he and his wife would come to our house near the embassy for dinner. And keep. You know it was kind of friendly exchange of things. It was a 01:05:00way for Bowles that if he wanted to get a message to the Soviet ambassador sometimes I would say yeah Ambassador Bowles can understand why blankety blank is happening right. Try to get Ostapenko to say something about it. In March of 1965 as we were getting ready to leave we actually had a dinner party at the house which didn't happen all that often for some friends because part of our farewell. Our plan was to leave in June. And I got a call from the embassy. The ambassador was home sick with bronchitis. A call came from our station chief a man named David Blee now deceased. And he said Dick you have to come to the embassy. I said well I got a dinner party Dave. Please. You have to come to the embassy. Dave we have houseguests Dagmar will kill me. Dick get to the embassy. 01:06:00So I walked four minutes or five minutes to the embassy. The door was locked that was the only time in the four years that I was in India at that time. This a way before terrorism. There were no walls. We'd have 1000 visitors a week. The door was never locked. The door was locked. I walked in and said to the Marine guard wouldn't you know what. Where's where's Mr. Blee at. Upstairs in the deputy chief of missions office. What's going on? He said well some woman walked in said she's Stalin's daughter. Right? So I went upstairs and Blee is there and a young political officer named Roger Kirk who was a specialist in Russian 01:07:00matters. His father had been our ambassador to Moscow. So Roger had actually spent a couple of years in Moscow right after the war. And Blee explained that a woman had walked in identified herself as Stalin's daughter and asked for asylum and she was being interviewed by our consular officer which was the standard procedure. We did not believe she was who she said she was. And her story was, I mean her story made it even more difficult to believe. She claimed that she had arrived in India the previous November with the ashes of her common law husband and had taken these to be immersed in the Ganges up in Uttar Pradesh and near 01:08:00his family home. And she claimed that his nephew was the deputy foreign minister under the Indira Gandhi government. The deputy foreign minister a man named Dinesh Singh was rumored to be Mrs. Gandhi's paramour. She claimed that she had lived there from November until the previous weekend when she'd been summoned by the ambassador to come back to Delhi and prepare to go back to Moscow because she was embarrassing the Soviet government by overstaying her time here in India. She claimed to have a manuscript that she'd written about her experiences in the Kremlin. Well we knew that only a few weeks earlier a new senior official 01:09:00had been assigned to the Soviet Embassy in New Delhi who specialized in black propaganda and things like provocations false stories things like that. And so you know the idea that Stalin's daughter could come to India and reside in India for four months and we wouldn't know anything about that. There's no way no way. I mean there was no information that the agency had that anybody else had that this was going on so we had to treat this like a provocation. On the other hand you know if she was who she said she was. We had to be serious about that too. So Blee and I drove to Attendant Road the place where Ambassador lived and sat on the edge of his bed briefs of woman has arrived from claims that she's Stalin's daughter a little bit of background. She's asked for asylum. We see 01:10:00three potential courses of action. One is to say no way and turn her away because we think that in all probability this is a provocation. We could do what diplomatic protocol requires of us which is to keep her at the embassy and notify the government of India that we have a person seeking asylum. And let them sort it out or we could give her a visa to the United States but only buy her a plane ticket as far as Rome was what we had figured because the first flight out that next to three hours was a Qantas flight to Rome and Bowles quickly took this in and he said Look if somebody asked for asylum it is our 01:11:00tradition to respond positively. And certainly if Stalin's daughter if she proves to be Stalin's daughter asked for asylum in the United States and we turn her away that would be terrible. On the other hand if we inform the government of India we're going to have a Caucasian Chalk Circle problem on our hands with the Indian government tugging on one arm and the Russian government tugging on the other arm and we're tugging on our feet or something. I mean you know and we had just had a sailor on a Soviet ship jump ship in Calcutta and come to our consulate and he had been held at the consulate for four months until we could get permission from the government of India to have him leave. So Blee and I go back to the embassy we send a cable to Washington it's now 8:15 at night. She'd arrived at 7:15 and we in one paragraph say a woman claiming to be Stalin's 01:12:00daughter arrived at the embassy at 7:20, asked for asylum, being interviewed by consular officer. We're concerned she may be a provocation, but on the off chance that she is Stalin's daughter we propose that we give her a visa put her on a plane take her to Rome hold her in Rome until we can sort this out. Please advise. Right? Send it highest priority eyes only Secretary of State which means 20 people look at it. That's a good way to get it paid attention to. Ten minutes later we get an acknowledgement that it is received and they are considering it. We never heard from them again that evening. At 1 o'clock Blee takes her out to the airport. We had, he assigned a CIA agent to get on the plane ahead of her. 01:13:00She was going to have to walk on by herself which she did and flew to Rome. Only the next morning did we get a message back. Did the agency send a message back that after going through their files carefully they discovered a low level source report from Moscow. That is like 10 years old that there was a rumor that Stalin's daughter was the common law wife of some Indian guy working in the foreign language press in Moscow. Well they didn't, you know, they didn't have the computers like what we have today to get that information quickly. And that was the first, plus the fact that she got on the plane and didn't say I'm being kidnapped or something like that. Well it's a much longer story. But for my involvement was, you know, Bowles asked me to write up a report on it. And so I 01:14:00wrote a two page report of all the steps that were taken. What happened as soon as the Soviets realized that she had defected was they pitched a fit and everywhere around the world any social contact between Russians and Americans was broken off. Except in New Delhi where my dinner with Valery Ostapenko was due to come up on Friday. So I called him Friday morning he said Valery I assume our dinner's off. No no he said the dinner is still on. I said really. He said yes. And so I was worried that maybe they were going to grab me and Dagmar and try as bargaining chips although we wouldn't have bet worth much. And so I 01:15:00arranged for the Marine guard that I if I wasn't back by midnight they should notify the authorities. And I asked Bowles what he wanted me to say and Bowles said look if he asks you tell them exactly what happened. A woman walked in. She claimed to be Stalin's daughter. We didn't believe her. She asked for asylum. We grant asylum. And, but we didn't want to create an embarrassing situation for your country. So we didn't take her to the US. And we want her to have time maybe she'll reconsider and we're not going to, we don't want to embarrass you on this. So long and the short of it is I debriefed Valery when he asked. I gave him a substantial debriefing about a week later the Indira Gandhi sent her 01:16:00person her private secretary to Switzerland where at this point Svetlana was staying and he appealed to her to go back to Moscow. That her defection was creating a problem between India and the Soviet Union. And she said she wasn't interested and he appealed to her to talk to her children who she'd left behind two adult children and arranged a phone call with them. She and they asked her to come home. And she said No I'm not coming home. And so L K Jha (Lakshmi Kant Jha) went on to Moscow to report to somebody in the foreign ministry or in the Kremlin. You know we trying to persuade her to go come home and she refuses. And 01:17:00there's really nothing we can do about it. So Bowles gets summoned to the Foreign Ministry which rarely in fact the only time it happened. And the foreign secretary has L K Jha there and L K Jha says who the hell is Celeste. What's he doing talking to the Soviets and not talking to us. Bowles said the Soviets asked him and he told them nobody asked us or we would have told you exactly what happened. You know. That was sort of the end of it. Until on on my way home I stopped in Moscow because I had planned way before Svetlana defected that I was going to spend two or three days in Moscow on my way home. It's the 6th or 01:18:007th of June and I have arrived for my intourist led. My intourist led three days in Moscow. My first afternoon and evening I spent at the Moscow University was my request, went to bed in my nice hotel, and the next morning this young intourist guide picked me up. We're supposed to be going out to a collective farm because agriculture is the lynchpin in the social chariot. I want to see a farm. I'm sorry Mr. Celeste we can't go to the farm. The road is under repair. So you asked to see a city planner. I'm taking you to see a city planner. So you arrive at some office in downtown Moscow. I know nothing. I've never, this is, I'm in your hands. The we go upstairs and we walk into an office and the office 01:19:00is probably 20 feet by 20 feet. It's a substantial office. There's a desk, a guy sitting behind the desk chain smoking, a chair in front of the desk, and that's it it's totally unfurnished no carpet no nothing. And she says I'm going to, this is Igor whatever his name was Ivan. Ivan. He's a city planner. I'll leave you with him and pick you up when you're finished. She closes the door and he said Mr. Celeste I'm afraid you've been brought here under false pretenses. Oh what is this? He said I'm not a city planner. He said I don't even like cities. I'm, I only live in a city to practice my trade. And I said well could I ask what your trade is? He said I'm a journalist. I'm a task correspondent and I want to talk to you about what's happening in the Middle East. This is right in 01:20:00the middle of the Six Day War. Israel had captured all of Egypt's tanks. And what Ivan wanted to talk to me about was the fact that there was a delegation coming from actually it was called the United Arab Republic, but Egypt to try to persuade folks in Moscow to give them new tanks, new military equipment. So they didn't get totally beaten by the Israelis. And for the next. I said Listen you don't understand I know nothing about the Middle East. I understand. But you don't understand I'm not even a diplomat. Oh no no I understand. I said no I don't have a diplomatic passport. They took my diplomatic passport the day I stepped away from New Delhi as I got on a plane to Moscow. I had an individual 01:21:00personal passport. No diplomatic status for me. And he said no no I understand. I said no no I don't think you do. No, I want to talk to you about the Middle East. And finally I said look if you insist on talking to me about it you have to give me a pad and paper so I can take notes because otherwise I'm going to be lost. So he pulls out of a legal pad and a couple of pens and hands them to me and then for the next 45 minutes or an hour he talks Middle East policy to me places things like this. I'm frantically taking notes. He said he'd been a task correspondent in the US covering the UN for 8 or 10 years. And he had written about the Middle East at that time. So he referred me to articles he'd written and you know whatever. About an hour and 15 minutes later he wraps up and 01:22:00magically this young woman appears at the door my intourist guide and we go down to the car she says I imagine you want to go to the American embassy. And I said Yes please I'd like to go there. And so I arrived at the embassy fortunately Roger Kirk had given me the name of a colleague of his who is also a young foreign service officer but in Moscow. And said you know if you need tickets to the Bolshoi or something call Johnny and Johnny will take care of you. So I get there and I said to the Marine guard I need to see you know Johnny Jones so Johnny this comes downstairs and I introduce myself. My name is Dick Celeste. I'm visiting for three days I'm a friend of Roger Kirk. And I just had an experience that I need to describe to you. I spent the last hour and a half with 01:23:00Ivan. Ivan how did you find Ivan we've been looking for him for the last three days. I said I didn't find Ivan, Ivan found me. What do you mean. I told him my intourist guide took me to see Ivan. He wanted to talk to me and I've taken notes. Well let's go to the bubble we've had a talk in the bubble because the bubble is where no one will hear what we say. I said No I don't want to go to the bubble. You don't want to go to the bubble. And I said no I want to go to the place where they're most likely to listen to what we say. Why do you want to do that? I said I want them to know that I faithfully reported the conversation I just heard. Oh yeah. It's nothing I'm going to say is a secret for them. That's what Ivan told me. OK, let's go to the cafeteria. So I went to the cafeteria I unloaded my notes with him, went outside the young lady was there, 01:24:00and I went off to the ballet that night. So that was as close to spook-dom as I got in my time.

CW: That's pretty close.

RC: Yeah. Yeah.

CW: At least a toe in it there.

RC: Oh yeah. Well I mean probably somewhere in Moscow there's a file that thinks I was an intelligence operative for Chester Bowles during that time that I was in India.

CW: Did you. Did you actually get to meet Stalin's daughter?

RC: No, I saw her at a distance. You know because we thought she was a provocation they kept all of us away from her and the only people she saw were the consular officer. Who interviewed her. She spoke pretty good English. And then the station chief as he drove her to the airport.

CW: So were you worried when you were in Moscow getting in or being given 01:25:00information by Ivan that something more was going to happen?

RC: Well, I, it once it was clear that he wanted to use me as a conduit. I felt relief. I mean because I had value for him. But initially you know I'm afraid you've been brought here under false pretenses. Whoa whoa whoa what is this?

CW: It's quite a way to end your.

RC: Yeah it was. It was you know the final. Well. This is a footnote in the history. Her defection was in March of 67 in May of 67. Just before we left it was the annual Ambassador's party for all Peace Corps volunteers who are in New Delhi or who can get to New Delhi. He would have a pool party for the volunteers 01:26:00and they'd have hamburgers and hot dogs and beer and coke. It was you know was a great it was a little bit of America for Peace Corps volunteers who'd been out in the boonies. So I'm at at the party because one of my responsibilities was liaison with the Peace Corps folks in India and there are a couple of guys sitting on the edge of the pool with their feet in the water. And I went up, introduced myself. How's it going? What are you guys doing? Well we're teaching animal husbandry. We had a project to develop chickens as a you know raising chickens to help supplement diet and income for poor rural families. So they were in a village in Uttar Pradesh. I said really if you like your service. 01:27:00Yeah. You know we had a great time. Every Saturday we'd get together with Stalin's daughter. What are you talking about. Well she was staying at this really big place not far from our village. And you know we would go in and she invited us in and we would talk. Did she defect? She told us she was going to defect. So yeah we always made a point of making sure that CIA and Peace Corps were kept separate and that to me was a measure of how totally separate they were. These guys had no idea that they had information that would have been really of interest to American authorities in New Delhi. But Stalin's daughter we'd you know read books talking about him. Did she ever defect?

CW: So the guys in charge of chicken husbandry.

RC: Yeah.

CW: Were the first people to know.

RC: Oh yeah yeah yeah. They were the first Americans to know

CW: Certainly strange.

RC: Yeah.

CW: And that was that was kind of like one of the that wrapped up your?

RC: Well there were other. Yeah. There were a lot of things that we had. I did. The Bowles threw a really wonderful party for us. That was ostensibly the beginning of a political campaign and people had very funny messages about you know there were sort of like telegrams from different people in Washington offering advice on this, that, and the other thing. Ambassador Bowles really kind of totally blew me away because about a month before we left he called me 01:29:00into the office. I thought you know I brought in my pad and paper figuring I'm going to get an assignment. He said Dick I just have something for you I want you to have. And he handed me an envelope, a small envelope. He said you can open it if you want. I opened it and in there was a handwritten note and a check for thirty five hundred dollars which in 1967 was a lot of money. And the note expressed appreciation for the work that I'd done and for Dagmar's presence and his hope that he would be remembered as having made the first contribution to the Richard F. Celeste political campaign. So May 1967 I got my first campaign 01:30:00contribution for an office I didn't even know I was running for. Of course when I got home and we started looking for a house we used the money for a down payment on a house. And when I decide to run for state representative in 1970 I called Ambassador Bowles. He is now back in Connecticut and I said just once you know I've announced that I'm running for state representative today. He hoped I'd run for Congress. He said why and I explained his passion about state government had really persuaded me that was the place to make a difference. And he said well you've got at least a campaign contribution for a start. And I said yeah we use that as a down payment for a house. He said That's fine you're gonna have to mortgage your house to run anyhow.

CW: So he did indeed give you the first campaign contribution.

RC: Absolutely. The first campaign contribution.

CW: You really need that campaign headquarters right?

RC: I didn't have any. I came home. We moved back in with my parents for a while because we didn't know where we're going to live.

CW: How did your, I mean your children knew nothing but India. How did they take coming back to the states?

RC: I don't know that. You know kids at that age are incredibly flexible and and I think and they had grandparents around and I think they were they did fine. And it got more complicated as I began to run for office and we kept having 01:32:00kids. And so you know Dagmar decided that it would be a good thing to send a kid off to Vienna for a year. And so Eric went to Vienna for a year skipping first grade. Did his first grade in Austria. And what we didn't realize. I mean I was in one respect it was wonderful for her parents to have their grandchildren for a while. It was a growing experience for the kids but it also I think was probably pretty traumatic in a way that we never fully understood that they felt some other get sent away a year is a long time and neither parent was with him. And you know the lifestyle that that evolved was probably more challenging than 01:33:00any adjustment after India.

CW: What did. So coming back what was the thing you're most happy to see?

RC: Well I was you know happy to be home. Ohio is always home. I was excited to think about what came next but I wasn't really sure. You know I think it would have been tempting to stay in India Bowles asked me to stay on. He stayed for another year and a half. He stayed into the Nixon not for long but into the Nixon term. So I could have probably had another year and a half in Delhi. But my feeling was if we stayed any longer we would never have left. We would have become expatriates living in India doing something. And I needed to get home. My 01:34:00dad was running for office. I wanted to try to help him. I had urged him not to do that. I told him if he was gonna run. Well I didn't urge him not to do it but I said but before you decide to do it and say yes that there were a number of people urging him to run for mayor of Cleveland. Before you say yes you need to talk to Carl Stokes because if Carl Stokes runs I don't think there's gonna be space for you. You had an incumbent Democrat Ralph Locher. It would be a rematch between Locher and Stokes you're just gonna be you know a third wheel. He he got promises from a number of muckety mucks in Cleveland that if he ran they would support him. Allegedly the Democratic Party chair. County Chairman said he would 01:35:00support him. The publisher of the Plain Dealer said he would Press and Plain Dealer the two papers were gonna support him. And Jack Reavis of Reavis, Jones, Day, Reavis, and Pogue said he would raise sixty thousand dollars for his campaign. And the only one who kept this commitment was Reavis. They raised the money. But my father his line because he was always he had a sunny personality his line was he made more friends and got fewer votes than anybody in the history of a race for mayor of Cleveland. he knew toward the end, he knew He had no chance and so he sent me to represent him at the last debate against Carl 01:36:00Stokes and Seth Taft who was also a candidate at that time. Which I found very enjoyable.

CW: So a lot of people were. Did you have any. did you help with the race up until then or were you still kind of transitioning?

RC: Well no I, from the time I got back I was involved in trying to help him. I mean it probably took a couple weeks I had to spend some time in Washington debriefing there and I think I think it wasn't until late June that I finished up and I came back and we got settled in. I suppose I worked on that campaign from early July until the primary in September.

CW: So you're out knocking on doors?

RC: Yeah I was. I mean it was a little of everything he had, his campaign was it was how not everything about how not to run a campaign. Everything about how not to run a campaign. He had no idea what his base was in the city. He could have focused on senior citizens. He had a relationship with black pastors but that had been preempted by Stokes. He didn't know where to go for votes. He had no relationship with the Italian American community in Cleveland. So I learned by watching, you know, what wasn't working. He had a few volunteers in his office. He had a lovely Secretary named Carol Frody. There was a young lawyer named John 01:38:00Keely who I think because he was in love with Carol came in regularly volunteered at the office. There was a guy named Jim Gadfly (Nolan). He ran against Jack Gilligan 74 in the primary. Irish American you know west-sider in Cleveland. Anyway, he was a volunteer and there was a wonderful man named Joe Moll who was a leader in Lithuanian community or Latvian community and was treasurer of the Democratic county Democratic organization. And he had said in a meeting where the county chairman said he would support dad and endorse Dad for 01:39:00mayor. And when that endorsement didn't happen when they endorsed Ralph Locher the incumbent Joe M. resigned as treasurer. He was a lovely man he tried to help dad on fundraising and the rest. It wasn't all that hard because the business community was gonna write checks but they were writing checks for a lost cause. And about three weeks before the election a senior business leader party guy came to my father and said look we'd like you to drop out because this is, the only way Locher got a chance is if he's one on one with Stokes. My father said I'm not dropping out. He said well people have contributed 60 thousand dollars and three contributions. This guy said we'll repay all those contributions few 01:40:00if you drop out. And my father said nope I'm in it. You know win or lose. I'm making friends. And of course he lost his vote total was less than the margin between Stokes and Locher. I mean he that most people in the White community thought he was the spoiler but they didn't pay attention to the numbers. I think emotionally he was a spoiler. I mean you know I was he was evidence that Locher wasn't doing his job and in the newspapers and newspaper The Plain Dealer endorsed Carl Stokes and then had a nice sentence or two about Frank Celeste. Frank Celeste would be qualified for mayor, but we think that it's time for 01:41:00Stokes. And one of the lessons, one of the harsh lessons of that campaign was not simply how poorly organized and fought out my dad's race was. I mean he knew he was qualified to be mayor. He would have been the best mayor of the three of them. He would have been terrific. But just because you're qualified you know, it's like saying well Hillary Clinton would've been the best president, you know, in my lifetime. Fine. But if you don't get elected. You don't. You can't do it right. Joe Moll who for whom the Democratic Party was part of, you know, really his citizenship. Three weeks after his election he committed suicide. He said this is not a place I want to be. And so I always from then on I felt you 01:42:00don't do anything lightly in politics. You have to realize that you know you have people's hopes and dreams and fears resting on your shoulders when you do this. I don't think my father ever realized how deeply troubled Joe was by watching his Democratic Party. The party he had devoted himself to fail to deliver on a commitment.

CW: Your father obviously didn't actually sway.

RC: No he wasn't. Not the outcome. But let me just say when I say that when three years later when I ran for state rep you know a third of that district was Cleveland and I had precinct committee people who would not support me because 01:43:00they saw Frank Celeste as the guy you got in the race to help Carl Stokes win. And they were hard-nosed west-side leaders. And that was a black and white election and dad and in their view dad cost the white guy. So I had to work really hard to win the respect of those individuals. And I worked you know eventually they came around.

CW: Not, not for your own good but would you for your father's sake. Would you have really pushed him not to get into the race knowing the outcome of it? Do you think it was something.

RC: No no no no I did. We exchanged correspondence. We started corresponding about politics in probably 1964. I asked him for a map of congressional 01:44:00districts because I wanted to think about that. He sent me some information, not much. He said here's where you can get it. And then he wrote to say that you know a number of the leaders in Cleveland had encouraged him to get into the race and he was giving it serious consideration. And you know in newspaper, in the business community, and the rest of those things you would be weak. You've got to have voters. Right. And so I mean my big point was if Carl Stokes is in a race I don't think you can win. And you know I question whether you should run. He never had that conversation with Carl and it wouldn't make any difference. I mean Carl would have said I'm running and frankly I'd like you to support me. And I don't think my father would have done that.

CW: So you, but you ended up learning a lot about.

RC: Well I learned about how not to put a campaign together. And then I worked Dagmar and I volunteered for the Stokes campaign. The last two months of that campaign and helped on the west side as much as we could. But we were also finding a house and putting the Chester Bowles political fund to work as a down payment on a house and things like that.

CW: So at the same time you're working at Crash or setting up Crash?

RC: Crash was one of the things that when I came back Citizens Revolt Against Substandard Housing I got involved. Well we were doing, I was doing a lot of 01:46:00work in housing with my dad too. And that was all focused on senior citizens. And that was not all in Cleveland or necessarily even in Ohio we did projects around the country but that was useful when I spent. I went to, there was a White House Conference on Aging in probably, I want to say the 60 maybe 69, 68. Those were, you know it was my get educated in business time. And.

CW: you set up the national housing development corporation.

RC: Yeah he did. That was Dad's notion and he hired, he brought in a guy who had been at HUD in Washington named Sid Spector but then Sid Spector was hired by Carl Stokes to go into the administration and you know. So I ended up doing more having more responsibility then I thought I would have initially I was gonna be kind of working as an acolyte to Sid Spector and then he's gone so I had to start doing more learning as I went.

CW: So what was that? There was the National Housing Development Corporation was that focused on senior citizen or was this something larger? What was that project?

RC: Well there were two, two different entities National Housing Consultants worked on senior centers and the National Housing Development Corporation our National Housing Associates. I we went through several iterations was a partnership that was my dad Cyrus Eaton Junior a guy named Jack Davidson. And they were going to invest in real estate development projects that we I don't think they may have made one or two investments. About the time I got there. But from then on we never made an investment through that vehicle and virtually all of what I did was the consulting work with. What we did was to work with non 01:49:00profit organizations who wanted to build housing for the elderly so it could be St. Rose Catholic Church the Villas St. Rose. It could be the Teamsters Union that's building a project. It could be a Council of Young Israel that's doing a project in Detroit. It could be the Presbyterian Church in some town in Iowa. I mean that was what we did.

CW: So before you can come back to Ohio you you're thinking about running for office of some sort. How sure of that were you that you wanted to do it's something you want to look into or is this like something you knew want to do?

RC: I was and I had thought about it a whole lot more than I you know then before I went out to India. I mean Bowles you know politics he knew he loved 01:50:00politics and public policy. So I I spent four years with somebody who was most at home when he could be talking about how do we, how do we, how we can make this better. What is it that we do or about the housing program he initiated when he was governor of Connecticut or about the fight over funding education in Connecticut whatever they were these were story after story after story. What he did with FDR and in the office of Price Administration and OPA in the old days, in the in the old days then right. So I you know I had ambivalent thoughts about myself doing this. I mean there was still a part of me that thought maybe teaching was right but I wanted to learn about business and I really wanted to learn about business because I thought that if I went into politics I should 01:51:00know I should understand business so that I didn't I didn't get pushed around by business men or intimidated by businessmen. I think I mentioned that I thought Bowles thought that was a bad idea get right into politics. And yet he had been successful in business and that and it made him a more compelling voice on policy I thought. So I want to try to understand how business worked. It wasn't I was doing occasional public speaking. I would go. Somehow or another the Jesuits had gotten a hold of me and they sent me to one Jesuit high school or another and I'd go talk to a group of students about overseas service because I had a little bit of a Peace Corps relationship and I had this I had this time in 01:52:00India and so it was probably I had been back for some time. This is after the after I survived the 68 election at the Democratic convention. Where I was making a talk at one of these high schools and you know like I was kind of pushing about some policy. And one of these young men put up his hands and said Mr. Celeste let me ask you a question if you care about that so much why don't you run for office? And Dagmar was with me and I hemmed and hawed and hemmed and hawed and when we got home she said you did not have a good answer for that question. It's time we figured it out. So that was but in the time after dad 01:53:00lost I that was on the eve of 1968 and we had a presidential you know the primary I had I ran a private primary in Ohio during that period of time. The August primary which was kind of a weird thing to do but it convinced me that it was both fun and value in kind of thinking outside the box politically. Right. So in 1968 the Ohio Democratic Party had put together a delegation for the in 01:54:00the primary that was devoted to Steve Young as the favorite son. Our senior senator. And the reason they did that was to hold everybody in line for Lyndon Johnson. And then Lyndon Johnson announced he's not running. So what happens to the favorite son delegation in Ohio. Well McCarthy's scurrying around and doing his stuff Bobby Kennedy announces. My old friend John Nolan from Bobby Kennedy's shop who had come to visit India when I was out there and we'd stay in touch. John Nolan says I want you to come to Indiana and help Bobby Kennedy and I can't do that. And then I got a call from Al Lowenstein who was one of the leaders of the McCarthy effort and Lowenstein said I want I need to meet with Pete O'Grady 01:55:00the Democratic chairman do you think you could arrange it. And I invited O'Grady up to the house and Lowenstein came and I think I've told you this story already am I repeating myself to you. Never quite sure, at this point I don't think so. OK. So Lowenstein sits down with O'Grady and says listen you know I've been very devoted to Gene McCarthy but I don't think Gene McCarthy can carry the convention. And Bobby would have carried the convention but he's dead. The only person I think who we can nominate that will beat Richard Nixon is Teddy Kennedy. And you know can we persuade the Ohio Democratic Party to support him. Well O'Grady said look we've got a favorite son delegation. I don't know. We'll 01:56:00have to see. And I can't make any commitments on their behalf. You know, Steve Young is gonna have a voice in that as the favorite son. So after he left Lowenstein says to me and I known Lowenstein from Yale. He was very interested in Africa stuff as I was. He said I want us to influence the voters here in Ohio. Would you be prepared to run a privately organized primary to see how Democratic voters feel about our candidates. Sure why not. Right. And so was born the August primary and we picked a Saturday in August. We organized 01:57:00volunteers. Lowenstein committed to send me up to ten thousand dollars and and some volunteers and a number of the volunteers who were dropping off the McCarthy campaign had adopted a slogan "On to Chicago." And so Lowenstein said stop in Ohio and work on this primary on your way to Chicago. And the idea was to hold this primary a couple of weeks before the convention. We would get an indication of how Ohio voters felt and that would help try to persuade our delegation to move. We probably ended up with 100 or so locations we got the firefighters union agreed that we could use firehouses as polling stations. So 01:58:00we created you know ballot boxes. We had literature. Our ballot included McGovern, Humphrey, Teddy Kennedy, Gene McCarthy. And you know we invited the Democratic voters to vote and we counted the votes in the basement of St. Agatha's Church and Father Finian Murphy oversaw the vote count. We flew ballot boxes back from that Saturday vote and on Sunday we counted the vote on Sunday evening. We announced the vote. It was interesting. Kennedy was preferred but not by as much as one would have thought because the black community was very strongly committed to Humbert Humphrey. And so overall those were the two top 01:59:00vote getters. And we put a letter together and sent a package with this information to each of the delegates at the convention. My pal Jerry Austin who had kind of gotten in on the fringes of this was a volunteer for McGovern. And I think he flew to Washington on a McGovern plane in any event my Mike DiSalle asked me to come to Washington and I wasn't sure why so Jerry and I walked into DiSalle's suite. He's sitting with Jesse Unruh, California and they're planning in a draft Kennedy movement at the convention. And so I had Lowenstein and DiSalle working on this so I had a very interesting perch on which to view the 02:00:00convention. The long and short of it was when we announced this draft effort volunteers came from everywhere and I learned something that the Kennedys never put a first name on a piece of Kennedy literature so that there were Kennedy buttons that were Jack Kennedy buttons and were Kennedy buttons that were Bobby Kennedy buttons they were Kennedy buttons. So we had plenty of Kennedy buttons and Kennedy literature. And we I think we succeeded in shaking up the convention with this kind of emerging draft. We got people to do hand painted signs. We smuggle them on to the convention floor. We had folks collecting petition signatures at every delegate hotel. I agree that I would support Ted Kennedy on the first ballot. I think if Ted Kennedy had been willing to run he would have 02:01:00gotten the nomination. But the Kennedy family gurus who were sitting over in the campaign headquarters said Nope not gonna do it. And so he took his name out of consideration and Humphrey won the nomination. I watched the police battering demonstrators who they chased out of Grant Park toward the hotels came back home really you know disheartened. But then you know the thought of Nixon as president was enough to persuade me to do what I could for the Humphrey campaign. And I met Humphrey. I liked Humphrey. He forgot his, he had a black 02:02:00homburg that he had for the funeral and he forgot it in the car going back to the airport. So when he got on Air Force Two he didn't have it. We got a frantic message from the airplane because he'd rented this homburg. He didn't own a homburg and he needed to get it back and I had to figure out how do you get a homburg back to Washington uncrushed. And I did enlist the CIA agent who was on his way back to do that. I said this is a really sensitive mission. He said really. I said Yeah it's a sensitive mission you're carrying the vice president's rented homburg to the White House. So I liked Humphrey and you know I finally got over my feeling that he had too much baggage. But it turned out he 02:03:00did have too much baggage.

CW: You come out of the Democratic convention. What were your feelings coming out of it?

RC: Well I was disappointed. I was disappointed by the outcome because I thought we had a better candidate who would sparked more enthusiasm and Ted Kennedy and of course this was before Kennedy had this problem at Chappaquiddick. I mean a lot of things might have been different had he been the nominee . As usual we're very smart in hindsight right. But I got I got over it. I mean I think that there's the notion that you know Nixon might be I elected was enough to motivate me and get me to work on any election. And it did. Toward the end we felt like 02:04:00there was hope that there was an opportunity to win. I think a lot of people have said if an election had gone on another week Humphrey might have actually won the election. One of the one experiences I had was to accompany Humphrey during a stop he made in Cleveland and I was very. I was really surprised because he took a call from an aide and he was upset. I wasn't sure what he was upset about it turned out that this aide had somehow not gotten a mortgage payment in on time and he was going to have to pay a penalty. And I didn't realize how ordinary a life he had. I mean he was not a wealthy man. He lived 02:05:00like many of us you know. I got to get my next mortgage payment taken care of. And if I'm going to pay a penalty that's hard for me right. And I thought how can somebody run for president and be distracted by the need to keep up on mortgage payments. I mean that's tough. It was a little bit of a kind of glimpse of reality that I hadn't anticipated that came through on the campaign trail.

CW: Chester Bowles is much different he was very wealthy by the time.

RC: He. And that was a reason why I thought felt it was important to have some business experience to provide some financial security although I wasn't in the Bowles class at all. But you're right. I mean it made a big difference for him 02:06:00and he could he could afford to be quite independent in his views because you know what would be the worst that could happen. He'd be sent back to a beautiful home in Connecticut where he could read and he could write books and he could travel and he could live a very very good life. So yeah.

CW: He could stop working and do what he wanted to do.

RC: He could do and say what he wanted to do. Yeah.

CW: So did you ever feel like, did you ever worry that not being independently wealthy would mean that you would have to tailor yourself sometimes?

RC: I was fortunate I both my dad and my father in law chipped in to help us with things like you know college for kids and the big things that come along 02:07:00that could be a problem. And I made enough money just to be able to meet you know the budget. I think when I when I finish my public life recently going through my papers I found a statement of net worth and I think my net worth was like one hundred and ten thousand dollars with pensions and everything kind of figured in when I retired from the governor's office in 1991 . I mean you know.

CW: It's pretty amazing.

RC: And at that time the salary of the governor was sixty thousand dollars a year. So my pension was based on my final three years as governor.

CW: You don't become governor in order to pay your bills.

RC: No you don't, if you run for public office thinking that somehow it's going to enhance your financial standing then you're in for the wrong reason. There are people who make money in public life but they do it by acting improperly.

CW: Or by using those skill after they're out of the public service.

RC: Yeah, I think that that happens too. And you know sometimes the relationships you you've made over the years can be helpful to you when you leave office. But you know it's interesting when I came to the legislature I was not a lawyer I was not an insurance agent I was not somebody who you know I fortunately I had a relationship with the company where I could work part time 02:09:00for national housing and also be a state legislator. But it you know there are a lot of people schoolteachers or nurses or people who are home health aides would have a hard time even running for the state legislature because even with today's salaries it's not it's not necessarily uh what they're capable of earning if they if they work outside .

CW: So we're at 69 now living in Lakeside (Lakewood).

RC: We're living in Cleveland. The house we bought was directly across from Edgewater Park and the summer of 69. We had a party at our house a cookout for 02:10:00the Fourth of July because the fireworks occur just off Edgewater Park so we had 10 or 15 people at the house and just before we put the food on the table this terrible storm blew up and I looked across the street at the park and I saw limbs of trees break off and just fly parallel to the ground. And there were 60 and 70 mile an hour gusts of wind torrential rain this thing hit really suddenly. Power went out we've got a houseful of people. A tree went crashing on to our house. I said everybody get in the basement. I thought we were in the midst of a serious tornado. Turned out to be just sort of tornado force winds 02:11:00that went through Edgewater Park that day and I think three or four people died either of boats that were capsized or people were hit by falling branches in the park. We when we came up 5 or 10 minutes after the noise the roar of this storm died down. We came upstairs and the water was coming up in our basement. So we had another reason for coming upstairs and somebody came pounding on our door and said. Do you. Is there a doctor in the house? We have somebody who's in labor and we didn't have a doctor in the house. But we had Father Finian Murphy who counted votes for us during the August primary. He was there so he said I ran over just in case they need a prayer and never forget that. And that 02:12:00insurance money for the damage that was done to the house helped us to remodel the house and we hadn't finished the back of the house. The kitchen was still partially open to the outdoors on Christmas Eve when Noel arrived. So we were celebrating Christmas with work going on a house, new baby, a lot was going on in 1969.

CW: When did you decide to run for state rep?

RC: Well it was several months after the conversation with the young fellow. Let's say St. Ignatius High School I'm not sure it was St. Ignatius but one of the high schools that I visited. And I had a call from one of the folks at the Democratic Party downtown encouraging me to run for Congress. And I really didn't have much of a desire to go to Washington. It may have been sort of 02:13:00resenting the way in which I thought Bowles had been treated by people in Washington. And it may have been I think it was probably more his enthusiasm for state government because in the two years that he'd served as governor of Connecticut he could make real things happen. He clearly had loved that time. The people who had worked with him were still close to him. And so there was something about the notion of state government. After all State Government does more on education than the federal government. State government on housing and urban issues played an important role. I just felt states are much closer to where people were. So I decided to run for state rep in a district that was traditionally Republican but had you know my father as a mayor of Lakewood had 02:14:00won twice in the suburban piece of it and in the city piece was was a Democratic territory. So I decided I run for state rep and I didn't know how to announce that I was a candidate. Once I got up close to the reality I realized you know there's an expression throw your hat in the ring. Where's the hat where's the ring. I mean I did not know how to announce that I was going to run for office. I mean I know my father. I hadn't been around for its announcements but I didn't think he got off on a very good foot. So I called Carl Stokes press secretary who I'd met during the Stokes campaign and I said I want to run for state 02:15:00representative and I want to announce that I'm a candidate. Well there are twelve State Rep districts in Cuyahoga County. It was not going to be front page news on the Cleveland Plain Dealer or other Cleveland Press. And he said here's what you do. You write a three paragraph statement about who you are why you're running and you take it to the sun post which is the weekly newspaper and I'll call the editor and just tell him that you're gonna come by and you've got something for him. So I said What can I write this release and will you look at it for me. And he said OK you know if you want me to take a look at it I will. So I struggled and I struggled and my I think I got it down to a page and a half right. And I took it to him and he got his red pencil which he kept handy 02:16:00because he was handling Stokes press stuff and he's crossed out this paragraph and cries out that paragraph and cross out the other paragraph. He said why don't you redo this it's gonna be about a page which is a little long but that should be all right. And you take it in and I'll make sure that he sees you. All of my really important stuff had been cut out I thought and I re-did it and took it to the Sun Papers offices on the west side. The editor was very gracious and I handed him the press release. I have decided to run for state rep in forty nine. It was in the forty ninth district and he said well that's that's interesting. I'll tell you what. Why don't you take this press release out. And he pointed to a guy sitting in sort of the bullpen outside. He said his name is 02:17:00Chuck and just go up to Chuck and show him say I've sent you out with this press release and then he'll interview you and you can get a couple of quotes. So I did and this he was. His name was Chuck Austin. And no relation to Jerry who later became very much a part of my campaigns. But Chuck was a young reporter he'd been working for the Sun Papers for about four months and he was interested in politics and here's a live politician coming to him. So he was about as new at his job as I was at being a candidate. And he said do you have any speeches planned. And he said well I have one. I'm giving a talk on housing at the in the basement of the Episcopal Church on Friday night he sort of made a note of that. Yeah. I didn't think much about it. And that Friday night I go to the basement 02:18:00of the Episcopal Church now an announced candidate for state legislature. Well nobody came because of that they'd come because I was gonna talk about housing and there were like nine people there and one of them was Chuck Austin. He was covering this. So I gave my little 20 minute talk and we had a conversation about it and afterwards Chuck came up. People want to talk to me but another fellow came up and he said I have a message for you. And I said What's that. So I was supposed to deliver this there time ago he said I was on an airplane and this is 19 late 69 I'm running for office. On an airplane flying from New York 02:19:00to Cleveland and I got up I realized I was we were standing we were waiting for the door to open and I realized I was standing next to a familiar figure. And it was Richard Nixon. And I said hello Mr. President. And he wasn't President this time he was running for President. This was this had been in late 1967 and Nixon was very cordial and he said where are you from. And I said I'm from Lakewood, Ohio. I don't usually say Cleveland I always say.And Nixon thought for a moment. 02:20:00He said I know somebody from Lakewood, Ohio. And I said really. He said Yeah. This I think he's involved in politics. His name is Celeste. And I said well that would be a Frank Celeste. No his, his name wasn't Frank. I think his name was like mine. I think his name was Dick Celeste. Well he must be the mayor's son. And Nixon said well you tell him that I really appreciate everything he did for me when I was in India. He had spent four days in India. I'd been his control officer and he wrote me a really nice thank you note for the service that I provided for him while he was in India. And when when he was getting ready to leave he made a point of thanking me and saying listen Dick I think since you're interested in politics. I said well I'm interested in it. He said 02:21:00Well you know I've had a lot of ups and downs but I want to tell you something. It's a wonderful calling and I would encourage you to get involved even if you're not a member of my party. And I don't think you're a member of my party. And so Nixon sent me a message sent me two messages a handwritten thank you note in which he reiterated the thought that I should get, he wished me luck in public service. And then he sent me a message through a business guy who never got around to delivering it until I gave a speech a couple of years later in the basement of a church. By that time Nixon was president. Of course.

CW: Do you feel like that was karma?

RC: Well the real karma was when I put it when I reproduced the Nixon letter in my newsletter that I used as campaign literature. My Republican opponent went 02:22:00ballistic because here I had a letter from the president United States at this point. Long before he was the disgraced president of the United States encouraging me to get involved in public service.

CW: So it worked out to your benefit.

RC: You know if I were to jump ahead I can give you the rest of the Nixon story. I did not see him between 1997 or I'm sorry in 1967 when he visited India and the memorial service for Woody Hayes that took place at First Community Church in Columbus when I was governor. And I went to Woody's memorial service and they put me up front and I realized I was sitting next to Richard Nixon. And he 02:23:00leaned over and he whispered. He said I see you took my advice I hope you're enjoying it. And I said I am and afterword neither of us was going to the cemetery so we went into the pastor's study. And I remember that I said Mr. President why are you here. He said well Woody and I were always friends. He was a big Republican and I was interested in sports and we talked football and we talked. We just we could talk to each other a lot. He said after I resigned and went back to California I was probably suffering a serious depression. I could not get out of bed. Pat didn't know what to do with me and I'd probably been 02:24:00almost a week at home I was living in my pajamas. If I came downstairs once a day that was a lot. And that morning she came upstairs and said Dick get out of bed you've got to come take this phone call. I said I don't want to take a phone call. She said it's Woody. He wants to talk to you. So I took the call. It was Coach Hayes and he said Mr. President I'm here in L.A. I'm just finished recruiting my top two recruits I have some time on my hands before the airport. Why don't I come out and have a cup. Can I come out and just have a cup of coffee with you? And Nixon said I didn't know how to say anything except yes. So I quickly shaved and dressed and Woody came. And we spent an hour in the kitchen 02:25:00talking football and everything else. I think Woody Hayes saved my life. Pretty remarkable story about both of them about Nixon and about Woody Hayes. And I was that was the sort of the other parentheses around my experiences with Richard Nixon.

CW: From what you've just said you've figured out how to reach out to your constituents in a reproducible way?

RC: So what, we put together. We put together a very fun campaign. My volunteers, the backbone of my volunteers were the kids who'd babysit babysat our kids. So they were you know maybe just out of junior high school early in 02:26:00high school. Right. And they were girls who had gone to either Lakewood High School or to St. Augustine Academy which is the Catholic girls school in Lakewood. And we set up a headquarters we you know my budget for that campaign was I think eight thousand dollars and I think I raised nine thousand dollars. My biggest contribution was one hundred dollars. And I got the architect who'd done work on reconstruction in the house after the storm to design a store front and we had a beautiful he created a kind of flag panel that ran all across this store front it looked beautiful. Set up a little desk with a volunteer in the front and then behind that wall all of our phone banking everything else went 02:27:00on. And we you know, my father hadn't thought strategically that was the one thing I was going to do. And so I enlisted, I enlisted as my campaign manager Jim Asbeck who had been my classmate who defeated me for president of student council. Jim was a Republican, his father was a big Republican, Jim wasn't. He was a young business man with a very buttoned up system of management. I enlisted my classmate V. (Virginia) Waldheger who had been my co-editor of the year book at Lakewood High School as my you know organized the volunteer file. And I enlisted John Keeley who is a champion volunteer for my dad to help 02:28:00coordinate our canvass. And you know and then we were going to get literature where we're going to go out and and knock on doors. I strategically I knew what I wanted to do and I had about a six way primary. A number of kids Mark McElroy's nephew he was the county treasurer I think treasurer or auditor his nephew was running. The son of a Judge. Brennan was running there were people with good political names who are running. So we targeted highly Democratic precincts in Cleveland and in that part of Lakewood that is called Birdtown because the streets are named Robin, Quayle, Lark, and so on. And Birdtown was heavily Democratic. Very ethnic mostly Slovak and Polish, Slovenian and Eastern 02:29:00European. The churches reflected that and so on. So that was my target area before spring had warmed. There was a knock on my front door and a young man introduced himself said my name is Dennis Heffernan. I'd like that work on your campaign. I said where are you from? He said I'm from Cleveland Heights. So what are you doing here. He said well I was doing some volunteer work for Charlie Vanek who is a congressman and he said I'd like to get involved in a campaign and he said well there's a young guy running on the west side I know his dad. I think he's probably pretty good why don't you go volunteer for that. So Dennis Heffernan ended up living in our basement for the next several months. His day 02:30:00job was roofing which was terrible but he you know he had a knack for meeting people and is really very very good at it. And he wanted to help me. Right. So every every weekend let's go campaign let's go you know let's start knocking on doors. I had all kinds of excuses. I mean I knew intellectually what I needed to do but I wasn't up for it emotionally. So my last excuse was we don't have any brochures. So at the end of April in 69 the brochures arrived and Heffernan grabbed my arm and said okay it's a beautiful Saturday morning let's go canvass. So he and I headed off to Birdtown to knock on doors. And I got into a rhythm you know hi I'm Dick Celeste I'm running for state representative I need your 02:31:00vote. People many people mistook me for the mayor which didn't hurt I mean because they liked the mayor. My most memorable moment of that very first day of real campaigning. I'd gotten totally into it right and I'm I wouldn't let anybody go by without shaking their hand. And I saw a little guy bringing his groceries back. He was you know it was a beautiful spring day. You didn't need an overcoat but he had on his overcoat he had his hat and he was carrying two big bags of groceries. I walked up to him and I was probably a foot taller than he was. He's looking up at me. I said I am Dick Celeste I'm running for state rep. I need your support. And he just shrugs. He shrugs. He and his bag of groceries. And I said well you're a Democrat aren't you. And he shook his head. 02:32:00He said no Romanian. So I you know I well okay we have all sorts of political parties you know Democrats and Romanians. Anyway Heffernan became the single best volunteer I had throughout my 20 years in politics. He He stayed with me through victory and defeat. He went down to Columbus became a staffer for Vern Riffe when I was in the state legislature. He met a young recent college graduate from Cleveland. She'd gone to Radcliffe by the name of Elizabeth Blossom after whom, her family, the Blossom Center was named. And they married 02:33:00in a white tie and tails wedding. I was in his wedding party. And he was my chief fund raiser and he did all sorts just about anything it needed to be done. You know we did an aggressive campaign we did you know house parties all over the district. We knocked on doors in the primary. We knocked on virtually every registered Democratic door in the district and distribute literature with usually with a gaggle of 8 or 10 girls from our volunteer corps. John Keeley leading them and at the end of canvassing on Saturday we'd come back and he'd 02:34:00get doughnuts from. There was a doughnut store that would always have fresh donuts he'd pick them up and bring them back and the kids called him Coach. We won the primary. My most the vigor most vigorous opponent was Tommy Brennan and Tommy Brennan had four girls who were Irish step dancers who were the quote the Brennan girls. And after his little talk at a precinct committee meeting or wherever he would then say okay I finished my talk now time for the Brennan girls and they'd come in and somebody put some music on and they do an Irish dance, right. And so after I won the primary I ask a couple of the Brennan girls if they'd help me and they said sure. Where do you want us to dance. I don't want you to dance. I want you to canvass with me. I want you to help me find lineup house parties and the rest. And one of the Brennan girls ended up working 02:35:00in my administration when I became governor. We stayed in touch. I think one of the reasons why I had so many of these young women volunteering is our headquarters was right opposite St. Edward High School. And I think the first time they walked in they thought maybe they'd meet some boys from St. Edwards but that didn't happen. So there was maybe some disappointment but we won the primary and in the general election I was running against George J. Usher and George Usher had an insurance agency. He was a member at large of Lakewood City Council. And he had never lost an election. And all summer he was the biggest sponsor of kind of little league baseball. So all summer there were probably 02:36:00several hundred kids between the ages of 8 and 14 who would wander around the city with George J. Usher T-shirts on for the insurance agency. I was worried about that but you know we just canvass the dickens out of the district and got a lot of help from Republicans as well as Democrats. It wasn't a heavily partisan district of my that the chairman of my campaign was named Phil Ranney was a school board member and a Republican and so I said Jim Asbeck was running the campaign. We did a fundraiser that was unusual. The Lakewood High School during the summer had something called the Great Lake Shakespeare Festival. So we decided to buy the house. I said you know what would it cost to buy every 02:37:00seat in the house. And they said that's going to cost two thousand dollars and there were let's say five hundred seats in the house right. Well we could sell those tickets for 20 bucks apiece and make 15 bucks roughly right. And so we did a Shakespeare night for Celeste and I got Larry J. B. Robinson who was a the diamond man. He had the most prolific advertising on radio in Cleveland. And he had a voice that was a radio voice, J. B. Robinson the diamond man. I persuaded Larry Robinson to emcee the Shakespeare Festival. And we raised probably 02:38:004,000-5,000 dollars out of my 9000 dollar goal. It was good.

CW: What do you think the most valuable lesson about campaigning was you learned in that?

RC: To listen as much as I talked. The house parties even when you were on a porch handing somebody some literature you know they would, people will tell you what is on their minds. And you know I think I probably learned as much about the district going around and talking with folks. The most vivid memory I have of the early days of that campaign were going to the home of a woman who'd 02:39:00volunteered she lived on West 82nd. It's a street that's kind of right on the edge of the railroad tracks and warehouse the industrial part of Cleveland. Working class neighborhood. And she was the widow of a firefighter. And she told me how important it was for her to count her change when she came back from the grocery store. The grocery store was probably a six block walk. This woman was 60, 78 or 79 years old and the pension she was living on was pathetic. It was shameful that somebody should have to live on this pension. Her husband who worked his whole life as a firefighter died shortly after he retired. And I just 02:40:00you know I couldn't believe that we were that stingy in the pensions for these retired employees and it became an issue that I took an interest in from the time I got into the legislature. So listening was an important part of running for office.

CW: Did you find that seniors were a big part of your constituency? Who was your biggest part?

RC: Well seniors and young families. I mean I had a lot of help from young people who were volunteering but you know I had a young family. People saw it as a young family. Education was something I was interested in and that's important for them. It's a district that by and large had a decent housing stock. It was 02:41:00and people were working. Jobs became an issue later. By 1982 it was a big issue. But it was less of an issue then.

CW: So you would have been 27, 28?

RC: No, let's see I ran in 1970. I was 32. Yeah. Yeah.

CW: So no one would have mentioned your age (experience) by that point? You weren't a young kid.

RC: I was you know people. There were some people who tried to make it. George Usher you know he's young and inexperienced he's just running on his father's reputation. I think the degree to which I could articulate positions on issues 02:42:00and to the degree that I was present for people you know on their porches and in the rest that word got around the house parties were very effective. I didn't have a lot of support there was no real Democratic Party in Lakewood that could be part of what I was doing. So I had to do a lot of it on my own. But that year was also, you know, that was the year Jack Gillingham won the governor's race. And so it was a pretty good year for Democrats. And I'm sure I benefited to some degree from that as well. But yeah.

CW: Did your father, you mentioned that he assisted financially during your campaign. Did he assist, partake in the campaigning?

RC: Well he was, you know, my dad was always promoting his kids just whatever we 02:43:00were doing right. And so, I don't suppose there was an event he went to where he didn't make it clear that he was the father of the next state representative. With your help. Right. You know, I may be biased because I'm his dad but I think he'll be a great state representative. And my father was very good at that. There was one very large Senior Center in Lakewood that he had that had been built while he was mayor and he was very identified with called Barton Center. And I'm sure that he worked that to a fare thee well. My grandmother, my mother's mother, Bessie Lewis who was staunch Republican. Changed her registration so she could vote for me because her nursing home was in the district. And then in the general election the Eliza Jennings Home on Detroit 02:44:00Street had twenty seven registered voters and I got all twenty seven votes. My grandmother made sure she delivered better than any political boss I had. She had a walker and she put my bumper sticker on the front of the Walker so that she went around the Eliza Jennings Home it was always a Celeste stick on the front yeah.

CW: If you had a couple more Heffernans and your grandmother you would have been able to clean up.

RC: Yeah. Yeah well we did all right.

CW: Did, so you won the primary and the election. Did that, how did that affect your life? Just your every day-to-day life.

RC: Well so the election is in November. Noel was born in December and in 02:45:00January I'm taking office. But between the election in January there is a decision about who should be the Democratic leader in the house. And there was a contest going on and that contest was between several people but the most prominent candidates were A.G. Lancione from Bellaire, Ohio who was the speaker was the Democratic leader, minority leader and a fellow named Don Pease from Oberlin, Ohio. Don, younger, kind of liberal. A.G. older, conservative Democrat or traditional Dem and I get lobbying calls on behalf of both of them. And I 02:46:00have, Pease appeal, called me first and had a lot of appeal and I kind of like the young. You know I identify with the young change agents right. A.G. Lancione called me, was very pleasant and you know he knew who my dad was and how nice fellow ??? American like me. He'd like to have my support. Well I ended up going to support Don Pease and in that election in 1970 there were three kind of quote liberal Democrats. Nerdy Democrats who got elected John Sweeney from Cleveland Heights nice Irish Catholic professor at John Carroll with eight kids, Harry Lehman a Jew from Shaker Heights lovely wife a couple of kids, and Celeste a 02:47:00Protestant from Lakewood. And the three of us became kind of we were at a Liberal caucus within the Democratic contingent from Cuyahoga County. So we decided to caucus as a county group before we went down to choose leadership. And Harry and John and I agreed that we should support Don Pease. Carl Stokes like Don Pease. And so Carl Stokes encouraged the black members of the caucus to support Don Pease. That left a kind of three or maybe three guys who were old timers. Tony Russo, Lenny Ostrowsky they were traditional party sort of the 02:48:00character of state reps right. And so we got together and did a very illiberal thing. We agreed that what we should do is to have a unit rule on our vote. So we voted as a caucus and the caucus predominantly went to Don Pease. We're going to have a unit rule we'll have 12 votes for Don Pease. He needed to get I think 18 to win in the caucus. Because I think we had 35 people at the time. If you have twelve coming out of Cuyahoga County and he's got two from Lorain County himself and Lenny Camera who was the other guy. And he said he had some other votes lined up from downstate. Right. So we're feeling pretty good about it. We go down to Columbus. We meet in the legislative chamber. Lancione is presiding 02:49:00and Myrl Shoemaker who's state rep I didn't know Myrl at that time but he was an experienced guy. Turns out he was also a candidate for speaker but I didn't know that. And Shoemaker stands up and says A.G. it's unfair for you to preside you're a candidate you know so somebody else ought to preside who's not running. So Lancione says fine I'll give the gavel to Vern Riffe he's the next most senior member of the caucus. Myrl said wait a minute, wait a minute Vern has been twisting arms on your behalf. Now you've got to give him the gavel that's not fair. And Lancione repeats the rules of the caucus are clear when the senior member steps down the next most senior member will preside. That's it. Next thing I know Lenny Ostrowsky the Cuyahoga County delegation moves to have a 02:50:00secret ballot. And so you know before I before any of us really know what's going on there's a vote for the secret ballot. Meanwhile A.G. Lancione comes down from the chair, the speaker's chair and he's walking down the aisle to to sit. He walks past us and Harry Lehman sitting on the aisle. He said you know A.G. it would mean a lot to have those rules of caucus written down. And and Lancione looks at him scornfully and says write them down hell I make them up as I go along. I'll never forget write them down hell I make them up as I go along. I knew then that some something wasn't up. And as a result of the secret ballot. You know it's A.G. Lancione 19 votes Pease like 7. We didn't even get all of the 02:51:00caucus from Cuyahoga County and we were a bit chastened by that. We went over Lancione and Riffe had a cocktail party to welcome the new members and so you know we didn't quite know what would how the three of us were gonna be treated and Harry and John urged me to go in first so Vern is standing at the door welcoming people. Vern I'm Dick Celeste oh yeah I know you are your dad my dad or friends. My dad was mayor of New Boston. I said New Boston huh that's where you're from. He said yep. And then he said well I don't know whether they teach you how to read or write but they sure as hell teach you how to count. And he roared with laughter. That's the best I've heard. They sure as hell taught us 02:52:00how to count. He said listen don't worry. You tell me what committee assignments you want. We'll do our best to give them to you. And that was my introduction to the Democratic caucus, conniving, getting defeated, understanding the power of leadership when you know where the votes are and you know it was fascinating. From then on I just was a study in the folks who make up the legislature. Chuck Kurfess was speaker. He made it clear that you know Democrats weren't gonna get much done. So I get one bill had a hearing while I was in my two years but nothing else. I mean everything else was negotiations between the governor and 02:53:00the speaker and the leader of the Senate because the Republicans controlled the House and Senate. And you know a good chunk of the first year was spent in support of Gilligan's effort to get the income tax adopted. Well we had a great time and my education several aspects of my education as a legislator. The most important was every night because I commuted from Cleveland and I slept on a couch in my brother's house down here. He was working in the welfare department at the time. I didn't really have anything to do in the evenings so usually the 02:54:00committees will meet until eight thirty or nine and then we'd adjourn and go over to the Neil house for libation. Right. And I made a point of sitting picking out a couple of Republican state legislators who I could, who would tolerate me and my questions and I sat with maybe the oddest couple in the legislature. Lloyd George Kerns who was chair of the House Finance Committee from Marion, Ohio and Carlton Davidson. Kerns is a lawyer a country lawyer from Marion and Carlton Davidson who is a retired school superintendent. Bachelor lived with his sister down in just in Ironton in along the Ohio River. And I 02:55:00probably, my guess is during my first two years in the legislature I spent you know 40 nights I'd nurse one beer with them. None of us drank very much. Maybe one or two beers and I just ask them questions or get them to tell me a story and they told, they told so many stories about their life in the legislature and you know I and I'd say well what about so-and-so. Well what about Chuck Kurfess or what about Ron Mottl or what about you know whatever and they had a story for every member of the legislature. And you know some of them, you know, unexpurgated history right. So they were talking about the night that they came 02:56:00back from partying and they had a fund raiser and there was a lot of partying going on and they got. They shared hotel room in the Neil house and they got up there and both of them had to go to the bathroom at the same time. And George Kerns made it into the toilet first. So Carlton pees out the window of the Neil house and 10 minutes later there's a knock on the door and a policeman saying somebody reported a guy peeing out a window and we think it was this window. Oh officer I don't know who that could be. It's just us two state legislators. Nobody's come in here. They dodged a bullet. And then there was a something called the Playboy Club it wasn't run by the Playboy organization but there was a Columbus version of Playboy Club that it opened in 1970. And it got a reputation and so one night Carlton is telling me I decided Lloyd and I should 02:57:00find out what was going on at this Playboy Club because everyone is talking about it. So we went over there and we discovered it was a big line out in front of it. Well I don't want the chairman of the Finance Committee to have to wait in line. So I went up to the woman who's at the door and I said Listen I'm here with Lloyd George Kerns he's the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee or the Finance Committee of the House. I wonder if we could get in. She said No you're not. I said What do you mean. No you're not. I'm with Lloyd George Kerns he's back there. You know we're roommates. And she said no no you're not like George Kerns is already in here. He says what do you mean Lloyd George Kerns is already in here? He comes every night. He's in there at his regular table. Lady, Lloyd George Kerns, the real Lloyd George Kerns is with me. I know what you're trying to get in here. So Carlton said I grabbed Lloyd and 02:58:00took him up front and I said Lloyd George Kerns show her your driver's license. So he takes out his driver's license. And he's a little embarrassed by this. And she said Well I'm surprised by this. She said just a moment. She went back to her desk or whatever and she pulls out a card and she brings it back and somebody had Lloyd George Kerns business card and had presented himself as Lloyd George Kerns at this club. And every night he came as Lloyd George Kerns. Probably some lobbyist who'd been given the card or whatever but who knows. Anyway they were a hoot. And Kerns to his credit, you know he I ask him how you managed? You know as he was in his early 60s. I suppose, how do you, because he 02:59:00put a lot of extra time in on the Finance Committee and particularly because Gilligan is trying to pass the income tax and the Republicans didn't want to give it any votes. And so twice. Gilligan vetoed Republican budgets and we'd do an interim budget for 30 days or whatever. So Kerns is putting in a lot of time. I said How do you manage this? He said Dick when I was a young lawyer I would write wills for all of my young friends. I didn't really charge them anything and all of these guys were farmers right. I put those wills in a safe in my office he said about five years ago these guys started dying off. And all I have to do is probate two or three wills a year and I can do a mighty fine business he said. My safe is my business now. They were something else. And that was the 03:00:00education the other side of it was what people think of as the seamy side of politics. I got a call maybe a month after I'd been elected by a guy named Sam Bradley. Sam was a friend of my father's. He owned the largest restaurant equipment supply company in northeastern Ohio. And he contributed one hundred dollars to my campaign which was sort of my maximum gift. I got maybe three or four one hundred dollar contributions. So Sam called and said Hey Dick I need to see you. Can you come to my office when you're back this Saturday. I said sure Sam. I'll come by. And I went by. He asked me how it was going and I said it was 03:01:00great. You're enjoying yourself? Yeah, I'm learning a lot. He said well I need your help on something. And I said what would that be. And he said about once every three years I will bid on a state contract for restaurant equipment. Usually it's kitchen equipment going into a university facility or a state facility of some kind or another. In this past year I bid on a state contract and it was supposed to be awarded at the end of October. And about three weeks before the award I got a call from a guy who didn't identify himself saying that for two hundred thousand dollars I can have this contract. And I said I'm sorry I don't do business this way. And he said well you know there's other folks competing for this. And I just want, if you want this contract 200,000 dollars 03:02:00you can have it. And I basically told him to go fly a kite because I don't want to do business anonymously. He said frankly when I got that call I figured I got the lowest and best bid. And they're just trying to get some money out of me. But the bid but they never opened the bids in October and so I think there was some hanky panky going on and I'd like you to check on it for me. I say great. Tell me what it's about. He said before I tell you what it's about I just want to have an understanding with you. He said if I get this contract I should make about three hundred thousand dollars and you know I would give you a third of the contract, a third of my profit. I said Sam you don't have to give me anything you pay me. I'm your state rep, you're paying my salary. Dick I don't 03:03:00know I want you to take this seriously and so I'm prepared to pay you. On that basis if I get this contract you're going to get a proper fee for it. And I said Sam that's not necessary. He said are you saying I wanna do something wrong? I mean I don't want to do anything wrong. I just want to make sure that you're properly compensated. I said No I'm not saying that you're doing something wrong. I said Look Sam here's my take on it. I worked for you and I worked for all the people of Ohio. I don't want to feel like if I have to put this ahead of something else that comes in because I've got money riding on it specifically it's not it's not about you it's about me and how it would influence me. So I just am not comfortable taking it. He said well if you're not prepared to take 03:04:00any money I'm not prepared to ask you to go after this. I never got the details. Never found out what happened. Sam and I were friends never changed. Anyway that was kind of a lesson.

CW: Do you remember if he got the contract?

RC: No he never, he would not tell me the details he never told me what happened. I and I you know I mean I suppose in retrospect if I really got serious I could try to track down who was bidding what. You know probably could have figured it out. But he clearly didn't want me involved. About three weeks after that I got a call from a friend, a strong supporter in Cleveland. Who'd 03:05:00gone to work. In, no he was, he hadn't, he was in Cleveland he was a part of the teacher's union. He called me, he said Dick I wonder if you could help me out. He said I have a friend who, I have a friend who took the civil service exam to try to earn a pay raise six or seven months ago and he never got the result of that exam. And he just, he mentioned it to me and I thought that's pretty odd. Maybe somebody lost the file or something there so could you check on it. I said well what's the guy's name and he gave me his name. And I said Well let me check on it and I'll let you know. I had time. I was sitting in the members lounge 03:06:00when this happened. So I called the department of state personnel and I said listen I wanted to introduce myself I'm a State Rep. I have a constituent who who took a promotion exam. Here's his name. He never got the results of that exam. Could you check on it. Well whoever took this call apparently also had some time and she called back probably 15 minutes later and she said you know Representative Celeste I'm really glad you called because when I checked on this. He passed that exam eight months ago and should have received A) notice that he passed B) should have received his promotion and he's entitled to eight months of pay at the higher pay grade. So he's gonna get a check for nine hundred and forty dollars or something whatever it was and that will be in his 03:07:00next pay period. Thank you for calling us to our attention. So I called my friend Paul Corey back. I said Paul I just got a call back. Your buddy passed the test and was entitled to a promotion and is gonna get back pay from the date that that promotion should have occurred nine hundred and some dollars. And Paul is you know it taken all out thirty minutes or forty-five minutes it is amazing how this is one of those things. He said well that's wonderful and then maybe a week or ten days later he called me he said listen my friend wants to say thank you to you. I said fine him bring by the office. No he wants to give you some support. I don't take anything from him. All I did is make two phone calls. I'm a state representative. That's my job. Paul hemmed and hawed but that was it. In 03:08:00November of 1970 Dagmar said to me you know I got something really strange. In the mail today I got a two hundred dollar gift certificate to Halley's and a thank you card. No name. You know just address to me. What do you think. I think I'm getting a thank you from a guy. Yeah, I never knew his name. There was no on the gift certificate. There was no identification of who it had come from.

CW: Was that something you had to be cautious of the law or something that's rare?

RC: Not a lot. I think it was rare. I mean I did a lot of constituent service and constituent service could be I mean it's all of it in one way or another is personal right. So I had a guy call me because his son had and gotten in trouble 03:09:00been convicted of something or other and was in a juvenile facility in the juvenile facility in Lancaster, I think it was. And he described his son as kind of young and very nice looking and fragile and his son was being bullied and felt unsafe in the juvenile institution. And could I do something to get him protected and safe. And so I said Well let me check on it. And I called the 03:10:00superintendent of the facility and described the story and said who this was. And he said well let me check on it and get back to you. And one of the questions was he entitled to some kind of an early release under these circumstances. And so I got a call back from the superintendent about a week later and Representative Celeste you know I've checked on this and it's true that this young man is pretty vulnerable. He's younger than most folks. He's smaller. I'll do my best to protect him. I said well his father really wants to see whether he could get an early release. Yeah I'm not sure that we can do an early release but let me get back to you. I'm back and forth, the fathers 03:11:00calling me frantically every three or four days. So the superintendent called me back and said listen I'd like to come talk to you about this. I don't even want to have a phone conversation I want to talk to you face to face. The superintendent comes by, comes to the legislature. And we get a private office he closes the door he said listen here's the situation. I think this young man should be released but, I cannot release him back home to his family. And I said you think he should be released but you can't release him back to his family. No. This boy has been sexually assaulted by his father for years and is unsafe as he feels in Lancaster. He feels even more unsafe more endangered if he goes home. He said if you can find a youth a place where they will take a young 03:12:00person and we can make an arrangement. I would I would release him. And so I did. There's a Lutheran home in Cleveland that specializes in working with young men who have difficulties. And I suggested that the superintendent talk to them and they were willing to take this boy on a release program. So then I had to have a conversation with his dad. And I called his dad in and I said let me just level with you. Your son can be released on one condition. He said what's that? That he can't be anywhere near your house and his face fell. Why is that? And I 03:13:00said I'm not gonna tell you why, you you know why your son would rather stay in Lancaster than come back home with you. We'll release him to a place where he could be properly looked after. But that's how it has to be. And this man you know is in tears right. Well that's constituent service for state rep. You have, you never known what kind of issue problem whatever comes up.

CW: Well during your first two years as state rep. That would have been the time of the Kent State shootings.

RC: Well Kent State shootings occurred. Uh yeah. 1970.

CW: It wasn't in your.

RC: No it's not my district.

RC: I didn't mean at the time other than being incredibly dismayed at the 03:14:00decision we actually that happened in 69, that happened in 1969, I'm sorry. And because Rhodes was governor at the time and I was painting the bedroom in our house we still hadn't finished completely all the work that was going on. So I'm up on a ladder with a roller and I hear that report that shootings at Kent State and I just was stunned and you know I had become pretty firmly of the view that we needed to get out of Vietnam as quickly as we could so I was pretty sympathetic with the demonstrators. And you know if you've been in 03:15:00demonstrations and I had been in demonstrations you know where the police carted me off in England when I was in England. And I demonstrated in a variety of ways I was you know you think about it could have been me could have been my friends who were there. And in fact that first term we had a group of Ohio State students who were demonstrating against the war who came down to the statehouse and demanded to demanded to see the leaders in the legislature. And none of the leaders of the legislature were prepared to go out and meet them. So Don Pease and Harry Lehman and John (Patrick) Sweeney and I went out to meet them on the steps of the statehouse. And we took the petition that they were delivering and 03:16:00probably we thanked them for their you know their expression of concern and conviction. And when we went back into the chamber we heard Charlie Fry the state rep from Springfield I think who is denouncing us as traitors and we were encouraging you know seditious behavior. I thought that was pretty outlandish. I think Diane Pease responded on our behalf and it came back as a campaign effort to make that a campaign issue in 1972. Didn't didn't work but.

CW: Did anybody ever demonstrate against you while your were state rep?

RC: Did anybody demonstrate against me while I was a state rep. No their demonstrations really started when I cut when I closed the savings and loan when I was governor. Those are the serious demonstrations. I was pretty fortunate as state rep.

CW: So after two years you then went on for another two years as state rep. Was that a done deal for you like after two years you were hooked?

RC: Well I'm being I think I wanted to be I wanted to be there for the rest of Gilligan's term. I wanted in some respects a re-election campaign is an opportunity to get a grade on how you've performed in your first two years 03:18:00right. And if you're to serve one term and not run again you can claim anything. But it's the voters who have a chance to give you a report card. Right. And I really I think I wanted that report card. I wanted to be able to go back the voters say here's what I said we would do. Here's what I worked on. We've got more to do. I need to go back for another two years. And you know. And of course by 72 we were able to win a majority in the house. And it meant that I could finally get a bill passed if I wanted. It was a totally different thing. And it gave me an opportunity to pursue a leadership position. For example after after 03:19:00I won. We have a delegation we always had elected a delegation leader and our delegation leader was Jimmy Celebrezze who was the brother of Frank Celebrezze the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court at the time. And Jimmy hadn't been a very effective delegation leader not that anyone knew what the delegation leaders should do but maybe that was a sign of being ineffective. And so I thought you know let's make something of the delegation leader. Let's have the delegation leader let's create an office for the delegation in downtown Cleveland. Let's think about what we can do that is focused on the county et 03:20:00cetera. And so I talked to my friends Harry and Don because we drove back and forth Columbus every week and he said look I think I'd like to be delegation leader. And then I called Carl Stokes and I said you know would you be going to support me with the members of the Black Caucus if I want to be delegation leader. He said who's delegation leader now is Jimmy Celebrezze. Yeah I'll support you. And so I let it be known that I was going to run for delegation leader and I got a call from the chief justice of the Supreme Court who threatened me. That wasn't a demonstration. It was a threat. I just. Sooner or later you're going to need me and I'm going to be I will remember this you've got to get out. You know you don't. If only had one term. What right do you have to run for blah blah blah. He didn't. He started, when he started cursing me I 03:21:00hung up on him. Dagmar said what did you do? I said I just hung up on the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Why? He wants to persuade me not to be delegation leader. So I became leader of the delegation and that gave me an opportunity to negotiate with Vern Riffe who knew how to count. You know, positions of leadership committee chairs and the rest for members of our delegation. And I became the minority whip. A job with a title but no responsibility. Vern didn't need a whip he knew where every vote was before some people knew that's where their vote was. So I was that was the big difference between term one in term two was to be in the majority and be able to make a difference.