Audio

  • Memories of Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas

    Personal memories of Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas.
    Interview recorded January 25, 2006 – View transcript

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    I remember when I got here I expected Sam Rayburn would be a rather giant looming fellow. Of course we didn’t have the mass media that we have now. You saw people mainly in photos in newspapers. Where it’s kind of hard to make a judgment as to how big they are unless you have some solid reference point. And I thought Sam Rayburn would probably be over six feet tall and a giant of a man. And when I first laid eyes on him he was scarcely five-six, a rather smallish man, but very broad in the shoulders. Of course with his absolutely bald head he was very intimidating. And he was fairly old at that point and in declining health. So he was kind of a solemn figure, very intimidating. We looked at him with almost a religious awe. The Speaker had such a huge persona and dominated any setting in which he was to be found. In fact whenever he would come to the cloakroom for a cup of coffee or a sandwich or just to sit in the back and smoke a cigarette the Sergeant at Arms would usually come to the cloakroom first to announce that the Speaker is coming so that we were all prepared and braced up at attention. Nowadays of course Speakers come and go and nobody pays much more attention to them when they go to the cloakroom than they would to any other Member of the House. But the appearance of the Speaker in the cloakroom was an occasion that required some preparation and so his messenger was sent in advance to announce that he intended to come to the cloakroom. Which meant that if the snack bar was busy, room was made in case that’s where he wanted to go. So that he would have room at the counter. Or if all the chairs in the back were taken some Member, usually a more junior one, would get up to be sure that there was an armchair for the Speaker in case he decided to sit. And when he would come in we would all very politely, “Good morning Mr. Speaker” or “Good afternoon Mr. Speaker.” And if we were very lucky he might acknowledge us with a glance and a “harrumph.” But he was never one to stop and visit with the employees. In fact he didn’t visit that much with his own colleagues except some of his more senior pals.

  • Technology in the House

    Account of the changing technology in the House during the 1970s.
    Interview recorded February 23, 2006 – View transcript

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    And I suggested to Congressman Charlie Rose, who later became chairman of the House Administration Committee, but he was kind of…we always kind of called him the bionic Congressman, because he loved the technology. Really, he was as responsible as anybody for bringing a lot of high-tech to the House, sometimes kicking and screaming, but after it happened they were happy enough to get it. But he was always on the cusp of what was going on with new technology, and had the foresight to see how it could be applied to the House. And, so if I had an idea that related to technology, I always had a receptive audience in Congressman Rose. And so I said, you know, “Could we get a pilot program where we get Motorola”—who was at the time the only one who was really manufacturing those things—“to give us a demo system, and maybe get a dozen, two dozen units that we could let Members try out?” Hopefully those who would not be opposed to carrying around a beeper. Because there were a lot of Members who really wanted no part of it. This is one of those things when people see somebody else that has something they don’t, they get kind of interested in it. It’s sort of envy, which is not unknown with a lot of things in our society. So he said, “That would be a great idea, let me call some people at Motorola and see if they can set up a demo system.” So they put a temporary antenna up on the roof of the Cannon Building and put in a transmitter, and put in the base station in the cloakroom, which was a fairly large box. Nothing was compact in those days. And, I got some of our Members, and Charlie Rose talked to some of his colleagues, to try out these beepers so we could give them a live voice message from the House Floor, wherever they happened to be. They didn’t have to leave a I-can-be-reached-at number. Of course, sometimes you want to be reached, but you don’t want people to know exactly where you are. So they kind of liked it. And then other Members saw the Members who was part of the test using these things, and they got interested. And, before long, we had a groundswell where the Members, for the most part, wanted these beepers.

  • The Democratic Cloakroom

    Recollections of the Democratic Cloakroom.
    Interview recorded January 25, 2006 – View transcript

    Full Text: The Democratic Cloakroom

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    But they were fascinating and they still are places where, you know, they’re very small and compact, and the Members would kind of stand there shoulder to shoulder and talk about things that were very important, cut their deals, and make their agreements and discuss things rather candidly. Because the cloakrooms are really their private space. And, you know, if you were the soul of discretion you could kind of stand nearby and pick up on a lot of things and, you know, as long as you didn’t run your mouth about what you heard, you were kind of taken for granted. I remember when Mr. O’Neill was the Speaker I used to see him often come in by himself, when there wasn’t anybody at the snack bar, and get a cup of coffee or something, and then lean way over the counter and it looked like he and Raymond who ran the snack bar were whispering in each other’s ears, and I often thought what are Raymond and the Speaker talking about? It’s so mouth to ear, so clandestine looking. And I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. And I one day said, “Ray what do you and the Speaker talk about so confidentially? Not that it’s any of my business and I’m sure you’ll tell me if it’s not. But I see you kind of shushing together all the time.” He says, “Are you kidding?” And I said, “Well, no I’m kind of curious.” And he said, “We’re talking about sports.” He said, “We’re both big fans, you know, he follows the same teams and games that I do. And so that’s what we’re talking about.” Occasionally it might involve a little wager. Oh, okay. I thought isn’t this great, you know. The Speaker, you know, always looking to Ray as his source of turf information as to what’s going on in the world of sports because Ray really knew his teams and the various competitions and rankings. And the Speaker loved that. He was an avid sports fan.

  • Whip Call

    Description of Whip calls during the 1950s and 1960s.
    Interview recorded February 23, 2006 – View transcript

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    When I started as a Page, if the leadership wanted to put out a Whip call to Members, which they did very rarely in those days, to say that a certain vote was anticipated, it was leadership-critical, Democratic Members—or in the case of the other side, Republican Members—were expected to vote in a particular way when that vote occurred…we would drop everything in the cloakroom and each one of the five or six cloakroom Pages would get into a phone booth, we would get a Capitol operator…remember I said that those were all manual telephones in those days, where you actually got an operator when you picked up a phone, not a dial tone. And we would say, “We need to put out a Whip call.” And that operator would stick with us. Each of us had a segment of the Democratic membership in front of us, the alphabetical list, we broke it up into five or six different parts. And, you know, we’d start off with “I need to be connected with Congressman Joseph Adabo’s office.” And she would manually place that call. And then we would read from our little script, that “At 3:00 or thereabouts, a vote will occur on the Jones Amendment to HR 1234. It is a leadership ‘aye.’ The leadership is expecting the Congressman to vote yes when that vote occurs. And be sure that he gets that information. Yes.” Then we'd click the receiver and the operator would come back, and we’d go to the next name on the list. That’s how we put out a Whip call.

Video

  • Congresswoman Helen Meyner of New Jersey

    Recollections of Congresswoman Helen Meyner of New Jersey and gender barriers in the Democratic Cloakroom.
    Interview recorded October 23, 2006 – Deed of Gift

  • Electronic Voting

    Discussion of the consequences of electronic voting in the House.
    Interview recorded October 23, 2006 – Deed of Gift

  • Running the Democratic Cloakroom

    Detailed explanation of the work of the Democratic Cloakroom staff during the 1970s and 1980s.
    Interview recorded October 23, 2006 – Deed of Gift

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