Steed, Tom

Tom Steed Remembers Carl Albert

Lasalier:         Carl Albert, the Little Giant of Little Dixie. Born and reared in Flowery Mound, or Bug Tussle, as it’s called. Went to school McAlester High School where Tom Steed first became acquainted with Carl Albert. Congressman, tell us about him. 

Steed:              Well, I was news editor of the McAlester News Capitol at the time he was president of the senior class in McAlester High School and they had gone to an interscholastic meet at Durant, district meet, and they had won about everything, including some very desirable honors that Carl Albert won as an orator. Well, when they got back, Professor McPherson, who was principal of the high school, decided to display all their winners to this high school assembly. And I went out from the newspaper to cover it, then write a story about it. So they had a little – didn’t have a loud speaker in those days. They had a little press table and so I was sitting there and they were running all their winners by and the kids were cheering and going on. And finally, they announced that the next one would be the champion winner of the oratorical contest named Carl Albert. Well, the kids nearly tore the place down. He was president of the senior class, and so he came out on that stage with no microphone – no anything – and when they quit stomping and quit cheering and everything, he started out re-giving his oration. Well, when that volume of voice came out of that little (garbled), I nearly fell out of my chair and I’ll never forget it because it was such a startling experience. And he proceeded to give his oration that he’d won the prizes on. And I guess that that’s probably the first time that Carl Albert ever had a real legitimate write up in the newspaper, because I sure did write a story about him that day. And, ah, so this was the beginning of a friendship and grew and flourished in a number of different ways for all through the years until we finally ended up in Congress together and, of course, then our friendship became very, ah, active and very continuous, and, ah, I guess today that he’d tell you same thing about me that I would about him. That he’s the best friend I have, and I think he’d tell you that I’m the best friend he has.  

Lasalier:         Well, 1946, from the time that Carl Albert was in high school up until he went into the House of Representatives, you continued to build that friendship and write articles on him? 

Steed:              Yes, you see, he kept winning prizes. He won the state checker tournament on time. And he just memorized the checkerboard. He could do that. He was a good chess player. He was a very good bridge player. As a matter of fact, when I went to Norman later, I went back to the Daily Oklahoman, and they sent be down to Norman to run their bureau there, and, ah, he was in the university then and setting the world on fire there like he always did. And, among other things, he was working, you know, to pay his way through school. His folks were very poor, and he’d wait tables and do whatever. But he made it into a fraternity. And, ah, he played bridge with these fat cat fraternity brothers on Saturday and that’s why he could eat, maybe, the next week. And, so, he – but he had to watch every little thing. 

                        Now he persevered through all that and, ah, and joined the wrestling team. He won his letter in wresting at the University of Oklahoma. He got to be a Rhode’s Scholar. He got two law degrees from Oxford University. 

Lasalier:         Now, wait a minute. You say he was the state checker champion, and he was a wrestler at the University of Oklahoma? 

Steed:              Oh yes, see the wrestling team there, they – you’re size don’t count. You wrestle somebody in your own size and that’s how he could make it. His great-grandfather, his grandfather, his father, and his son also were wrestlers. It just run in the family, and, of course, his son was on the Harvard University wrestling team. So, he didn’t like me  telling that on him when I nominated him one time. I told that on him and so I don’t know why he didn’t put it in his own biography material. But I thought it was rather remarkable myself. 

                        So, ah, then, at the university I wrote stories about the school and the students and obviously a lot of his achievements there came across the desk and I sent it in. And, ah, we, of course, we’d meet on the campus and chew the fat and visit some, but, ah, then, there was a gap and he got into politics, and, well, he went into the Army first. We both were. He went in as a buck private and came out as a lieutenant colonel. Of course, he was in it a little longer than I was. But I went in it as a buck private and came out as a second lieutenant. But, ah, he, he had been in the ROTC at the university, and, of course, they paid the students for that and that was another way he had of making some chow money while he was in the university. So he got mixed up in a lot of things.  

                        He seemed to have endless energy and he was stationed in South Carolina during the war and, ah, he met a young lady working there in the military office about his size, named Francis (garbled), so he just up and married her. That’s where he found his wife. They’re, well, not midgets, but they are very small stature people. 

Lasalier:         Well, 1946, he went to the House of Representatives for the first time and you’d joined him in 1948. 

Steed:              Yea. Now one of the remarkable things about that campaign in 1946 –  in the third district the incumbent retired. So it was a wide open field, and this young man from Durant – I forget his name, but he was a very fine young man and Carl Albert from McAlester. And they put on what people have said is one of the highest class, most commendable political campaigns, more like the old Lincoln debates. And they came in in a dead heat and they had to have a recount. And the reason Carl Albert won it was that he won a bigger percent of votes of his home town than the other boy did. And that’s where the difference came in. So, he was the first Oklahoma Congressman to ever win a seat in Congress after a recount. And, ah, I won a seat in Congress once after a recount, but that was years later. 

Lasalier:         Well, you had also mentioned that he was the first for a number of accomplishments. 

Steed:              Oh, yes. They’re as long as your arm, I guess. But, ah, some of the outstanding ones – he was the first Congressman from Oklahoma to ever get reelected without an opponent on either ticket. That happens sometimes now, but that had never happened until he came along. Of course, he was the first Oklahoman to ever get any leadership position in the House of Representatives. He was first made majority whip by an act of Sam Rayburn, the speaker. He was the first Oklahoman to be elected Majority Leader of the House, and I had the honor of being his campaign manager and making his nomination in the caucus and so forth. And as I did for the two times he ran for Majority Leader and the three times he ran for Speaker, I was always given the honor of being his campaign manager and making his nominations.  

                        Of course, he was the first Oklahoman to ever be elected Speaker of the House. He served 6 years in that office. He was also the first one to be elected Majority Leader. And then, he was the first man in history that I can find who was twice one heartbeat from being President of the United States. In 19 – when the 25^th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted which provided that in the event of a vacancy of the vice-president, the president will nominate a successor. And both houses of Congress would have to confirm it. All presidential appointments normally are confirmed only the Senate, but in this case it had to be both houses. So, and incident that I’m afraid is going to die in history since neither man has ever mentioned what happened. Vice-president Agnew came out to the Capitol and spent some time in Carl Albert’s office in a very closed-door conference. He went out, and an hour later, he resigned as president [sic] of the United States. Now, what took place in that meeting, even Carl won’t tell me. And, of course, Agnew has never mentioned it. But that, then, immediately put Carl in a heartbeat of being president.  

Well, the last thing he wanted was to be president. And so, he began to get very active to get – help President Nixon find somebody to appoint so he could them confirmed. Well, Jerry Ford was a classmate of mine. He went there the same time I did and he was the Minority Leader, and as such of course was the number one Republican that the speaker, who was in the Majority, worked with. And he and Jerry Ford became very close friends. You know, a lot of people don’t think that these partisans do this, but they had to be close together. They had to trust each other. They had to make all the program – they had to make the thing work. They had to represent their two views so that they’d fit in the way that system’s supposed to work. And so, ah, ah, and with Jerry Ford’s being in our class, my wife and Jerry’s wife got to know each other in their club, and so forth. So, ah, we didn’t want a Senator, being House members. We just – we had enough of them as it was! And so, we decided that the easiest thing to get that filled in a hurry would be to get somebody that we knew that the House would approve and the Senate couldn’t afford not to. And so, we got some other key guys around and they put the idea to President Nixon and he bought it. On the basis that he liked Jerry Ford, too, and of course, Jerry Ford had been his Minority Leader in the House and they worked very close together. So he appointed him and he was immediately confirmed. Well, Carl breathed a sigh of relief because now he’s not a heartbeat from the president. 

Well, it wasn’t long after that till Watergate and then Nixon resigned. So Ford goes up to president and here he is, stuck again with no vice president. And here he goes buzzing around again trying to get Jerry Ford to make somebody vice president and they finally counted noses, and discovered that Nelson Rockefeller would be the easiest one to confirm, so that’s who Carl went for and that’s who they appointed and that’s who got to be vice president so he got away from that heartbeat danger again. He looked on that as a threat to his way of life. I just, you know, it’s so unlike most politicians. Most politicians are so ambitious they grab at anything that they consider a promotion. And here was a fellow that he could have delayed that confirmation indefinitely, and all he had to do, if he’d have dragged his feet for awhile, he could have been the President of the United States, just by that particular peculiar thing. Well, anybody that was there at the time will tell you that he moved heaven and earth to make sure that that gap was filled so he wouldn’t be a heartbeat from that job. And I think that’s just a pretty good viewpoint of what made the man tick. He thought he had the best job on earth when he was speaker, and that’s something he really aspired to. And he worked his heart out for it. In fact, he ruined his health being speaker. And, ah, still pays for it to this day. But, ah, he, ah, ah, you know, a lot of people didn’t think he ever got the kind of recognition, but the Carl Albert Junior College at Poteau is one honor that came his way and it’s a fine little school, and the Carl Albert Institute at the University of Oklahoma is very unique and I think will become, oh, in the first five of those type of institutions in the world the way the university is developing it. And, of course, they’ve given him about every honor at the university that they could give a famous graduate and so, I think he’s been recognized where it counts. 

Lasalier:         Would it be a mistake to say that Carl Albert put the nation above his personal ambitions? He was speaker and pushed through Ford and then Nelson Rockefeller for the vice presidency? 

Steed:              No question about it, and as a matte of fact he did it so high some times that I even got mad at him, because I thought – be time to get – be a little bit more practical. No, he had a very high moral concept of what it all meant and I think this is one of the reasons why Sam Rayburn latched onto him. You know, Sam Rayburn was like that, and so, he started Carl in the leadership channels when he made him whip. That’s the first rung of the ladder to climb on up to the top job, and, ah, so. . .  

                        Albert, well, the best way I know to describe him – I only knew two guys I ever said this about. If he’d have wanted to do something crooked, he’d had to go over to the Library of Congress and get a book and read how do you do it! Because he couldn’t conceive of anything that wasn’t on the level. I mean, it just wasn’t his way. And, ah, now he wasn’t exactly a goody-goody, you know, he could cuss a little if he got mad. He was raised out in the country, you know, and he had some barnyard. . . but he, ah, he just – he just believed that if you tried hard enough that just common sense and consultation and the velvet glove approach could solve these problems. And that they were better solved that way. And, ah, I, ah, I used to see some of these rascals that I served with take advantage of his so-called soft approach, but the time came when other members resented them doing Carl that way, and they’d do the dirty work to punish these rascals – Carl didn’t have to. They just defended him whether he wanted them to or not. Because they liked a man that was that fair and that open and above board, and, ah, they just didn’t like anybody that tried to take advantage of him.  

And, so, now, ah, he, ah, he’d come out to the office early in the morning, and he’d stay late at night. He was tense most of the time. And, ah, he was – he just never shunted anybody away. He was as open and above board as anybody you’ll meet in the hall. And a lot of people took advantage of that, so he, he just didn’t have much time where he could relax. Every once in a while he and I would just take off and get in one of our offices at night and lift a glass or two and relieve ourselves of all our mean thoughts about everybody, so we could get it off our chest, and start over again. But, I think that the only good that was was to let a man who was under great pressure and tension have a outlet to let off some steam and get back down to earth. And I guess I was a pretty good punching bag for that because we enjoyed talking.  

Now, in the beginning, I found out that he was such a worry wart – he’s a natural born worry wart. That every time we’d meet, he’d say, “What do you know? Have your heard anything?” So I got to making up something. I didn’t say anything, I just asked a question. Well, he’d take it seriously, and he’d worry. But when I found that it really wasn’t good for him to be worrying, I quit that. It was, you know, I just thought it was fun. To show you how worried he was, Bill Stigler was the second district congressman at the time, and we’d – the filing time was over and we’d all found out what our opposition was and Carl, for the first time in Oklahoma history, had got in for free. He hadn’t an opponent on either ticket. Bill and I are sitting on the House floor and Carl walks up in the speaker’s lobby and we see him through the door, and Bill said, “There’s old Carl, bless his heart,” he said, “for once in his life he don’t have anything to worry about.” I said, “Bill, I’ll bet you a cup of coffee he’s worrying about something.” He said, “Well, I’ll take that.” So he motioned Carl in, and being a good lawyer, you know, he’s led the witness. He said, “Carl, it’s sure nice to be already reelected and for once in your life you don’t have a thing on earth to worry about, isn’t it?” And Carl said, “Now Bill, I know it looks that way, but, you know under the law, my name won’t be on the ballot this year. Four years from now, people may forget who I am.” Bill jumped up and he said, “Blankety-blank! Come on, I’ll buy the coffee.” Carl followed us on into the cloak room and when he found out what we had bet on, he got mad and wouldn’t drink his coffee. And he still gets mad if I tell that story on him. But his is typical of how he worried. 

Now to show you kind of jokes he’d tell, he tells a joke about how down in the Kiamichis, you know, it’s so far back in the woods that the hoot-owls mate with the chickens. And he’d say, well they were having an election down there one time and the highest ranking public official in the community was a justice of the peace and so along the middle of the morning a Republican vote showed up and they were so alarmed they called this justice of the peace and said we’ve got an emergency. We have a Republican vote here. What are we going to do with it? Justice said, that’s pretty serious. Just lay it aside. I’m busy and I’ll be down after awhile and take care of it. Well, in the afternoon, the judge hadn’t showed up, so there was another Republican vote showed up, so now they really are alarmed. And they called and said, judge, you got to come down here right now. We’ve got a second Republican vote. So he came running down there and he came in, you know, and banged the table and said the court’s in session. He said, where are those two Republican votes? And they laid them in front of him and he looked at them and said, the court’s ready to rule. It’s obvious to this court that this crook voted twice, so we’ll throw them both out! (laughter) 

He’d tell stories like that, you know, that just tickle people to death. And, so, one of his famous humorists was Bob Burns, the Texas humorist, you know. And the one he liked the most, of course, was about his – Bob Burns was always telling it about his drinking and how they tried to cure him of drinking, and they told the story about they was going to scare him. And they’d wait till he got drunk, they figured he sleep so long and, he went out a dug a grave in the middle of the graveyard and they figured he’d wake up about three o’clock in the morning and that would scare him so bad, he’d quit drinking. Well, the trouble was he got hold of some different kind of moonshine and he didn’t wake up on schedule, so it was dawn when he waked up. And he staggered around, bumped around, I guess, the open grave and looked at all this fresh dirt and looked at all these tombstones and then he looked up at the sky and it was the first crack of dawn. And he scratched his head and he said, well, what do you know, here it is Resurrection Morning and I’m the first one up! Carl could tell these stories really funny. And that’s his idea of humor, and, so, people would try every way in the world to get him to tell stories, but he, he just couldn’t. If he had the mood to, he did, if he didn’t, you couldn’t talk him into it.  

But, these are the sort of things that a man who’s under tremendous pressure of the most important things in the whole world – affecting the whole human race – when he lives with that until it just becomes almost unbearable, he had to have some down-to-earth easy outlet to unwind and come back down to earth, and so that’s why, I guess, that he and I were together a lot and are like – of course, our districts are joined and we had a lot of the same problems, and, ah, a lot of the members there called us the Gold Dust Twins. When he got to be speaker, a lot of them couldn’t understand why I didn’t get a lot of favors out of him. Well, I tell you the kind of favors I got. He took advantage of me. I didn’t take advantage of him. We had a recording studio where the members had these tapes made, and they had to pay for them. Well, they’d charge them. Well, they had over thirty thousand dollars worth of unpaid bills. So he says, “you’re the chairman of the recording studio and the General Accounting Office is on our neck – you’ve got to collect that money.” Well, I collected it, alright, but it’s a good thing I wasn’t running for any offices around there, because the methods I had to use were not the ones that make friends. So that went along alright and I got off of that – finally got it all straightened out and I said, “Carl, they don’t need me on there anymore. I got something else to do.” So he let me off the hook.  

So he called me in one day and he said, “Now, Tom, I don’t want you to throw a fit or anything, but I’ve got a problem and you can help me.” He said, “The dining room is running a big deficit and there’s something wrong about it. And I’m going to put you in charge of the restaurant committee so you can collect those unpaid bills and get it straightened out.” And I said, “Carl, you know, I hope – I’m glad you don’t love me anymore than you do – I don’t know what I’d do it you did!” So I got that – now, that was his idea of what friends were for, see. He, he had a job that had to be done and he wanted somebody that he trusted to do it. And, ah, so, my reward for being his campaign manager to making speaker was that I got put on some stinkers, and, ah, he just – he said, “Tom, you know, you always impose on your friends. You don’t ask favors of your enemies.” And that’s his way to this good day.  

Lasalier:         Well, now, was he not also the first Oklahoman to serve as the chairman of the Democratic Party Convention in 1968? 

Steed:              Yes, that is known as the most disgraceful Democratic National Convention ever held. First off, there was a lot of demonstrators on the outside creating riots all over the place, and then there was a lot of internal friction in the party itself between the ultra-liberals and the ultra-conservatives and so forth. And Carl being the speaker was tabbed to be the chairman of the convention, which was a normal thing, you know, Rayburn before him. Well, he came down with a very high fever and should have been in the hospital, but because the heads of the different factions didn’t trust each other and they had no one else that was a commonly accepted chairman-type, they all prevailed on Carl to stay in there. And, of course, he ran that convention with a fever so high, I’m sure there must have been times when he had difficulty knowing where he was. It worried me a lot. I was there, but there was no way to get him to – say no to him. He went ahead and toughed it out, and it didn’t do his health any good, but, he got a lot of criticism because he was such a poor chairman, but I’m surprised he even had the strength enough to lift the gavel before it was over. But he never told anybody that he was very ill, and just went ahead and took the wrap for it. But it just was unfair in my book. But it was – I don’t think the man was alive that could have made a convention out of that mess it was in. Him or anybody else, and, ah, if Sam Rayburn had been alive, the only thing – only difference between what he’d have done and what Albert did, Rayburn would have busted about 15 gavels banging them so hard. 

Lasalier:         He might have gone from that podium down to get things straight with Richard Daley, too, out there in the audience.  

Steed:              Yea. 

Lasalier:         Carl Albert’s accomplishments while he was in the House of Representatives. You mentioned as Speaker of the House, how about his support for legislation? 

Steed:              Well, Carl was, of course, a traditional Democrat type that had, of course, the New Deal and the Fair Deal and these sort of things. And since Oklahoma was benefiting by most of these programs, like the REA, the small watershed programs, the (garbled) school bill. Sure, he supported all those things. And, we, we felt like the Bob Kerr Land, Wood and Water Program that he was very active in was most important to Oklahoma’s future. And so we felt like we all – he filled a very heavy role on getting all these projects authorized or funded and built, and so, I think that you take the superhighway program, you take anything that has made Oklahoma better, he had a major role in every one of them. And as time went on, and he got more friends and more influence he contributed more and more to the success.  

                        Now one thing he did that I think did Oklahoma more good than any other single thing was he was on the Agriculture Committee when I got there. And the southeastern peanut growers had – through some congressmen they had – had put a stinger in the farm bill. They had fixed a percentage of peanut acreage based on a certain percent of certain years. Well, they just happened to pick the years when Oklahoma had no peanuts, so we were going to get a certain percent of zero. And that was – it read alright if you didn’t know what it was. Well, Carl Albert being the kind of fellow he is, he read that down and he found that little stinger right early. Well, we didn’t have enough – we were mostly all – not – second, third or fourth term guys in those days. We had no chairmanships. So we were short on votes. Well, we couldn’t get it knocked out. Our amendment was defeated because these southeasterners – incidentally they paid for that later on – but not right then, they didn’t. So Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma was senior Senator and Chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee, and there was a guy from New Mexico named Anderson who had been Secretary of Agriculture and now he was a Senator from out there. And Anderson was in charge of this particular bill when it came to the Senate. Carl and I went over to see Elmer Thomas to explain to him about this amendment, how deadly it was for Oklahoma. Well, the Senator said, “Now look, I haven’t got time to go into all those technical details.” He said, “Just a minute.” He called his secretary and said, “Get Senator Anderson on the phone.” He called up and he said, “Senator, about this bill.” He said, “Until you get Carl Albert and Tom Steed to tell me it’s alright, you got any bill, so get with them and straighten it out.” And that took that amendment out.  

                        Now, if Carl Albert hadn’t had that ingenuity, that determination. and that intelligence to figure that out, there wouldn’t have been any peanuts grown in Oklahoma from that day to this. Now, it’s funny, but he never did try to cash in on that, and neither did Thomas, but I understand that in Thomas’ case, a lot of peanut farmers in this state voted to oust him. They thought he was against the REA and so they punished him for that, but the didn’t know that he’d literally saved their life, because he had the power and the seniority to do it. So these are the kinds of things Carl Albert was good for.  

Lasalier:         Carl Albert’s been described as a Truman Democrat. He was no doubt a partisan on many bills before he became Speaker of the House. Once he became speaker, then he was fair and square with both parties, right?

Steed:              That’s true. You see, under the – our system, the Speaker of the House is the only protector the minority has. They are supposed to have certain rights, but they are not worth the paper they are written on unless the speaker sees to it that they are followed. So the speaker, whichever party is in power, if they get a speaker that doesn’t live up to that then you have a lot of turmoil in the House. Now you take – there never was a day when a vote of confidence in the integrity and ability of a speaker – if that had been made while Carl Albert was speaker, you’d have gotten 99% of the Republicans to vote that he was trustworthy. They knew he protected their rights. They knew he was always fair with them. They didn’t expect him to agree with them on issues, but when it came to their rights on the floor and their having the opportunities to present their side of things, their having some notice in advance of the legislative program so they could prepare for it – all that the speaker saw to.  

                        Now, we haven’t had many speakers that didn’t do that. And, ah, mostly it’s when there’s been friction, it’s been a matter of breakdown in communications.  

Lasalier:         During the time of the impeachment hearings on Richard Nixon, I suppose, must have been some of the most excruciating for the speaker. 

Steed:              Well, yes, he finally got involved in it after the House Judiciary Committee had voted that they would uphold three items of impeachment. And that’s before Nixon had resigned. Albert was in a press conference, and they pinned him down and he said, “If the impeachment is voted by the House Judiciary Committee, it will immediately – when it reaches the House – it will immediately be scheduled for debate.” He said, “I’ll even select Congressman William Natture of Kentucky to preside over the trial.” So this is the nearest he got to that. But of course, Nixon ended all that by resigning. But the, ah, and the amazing thing was Nixon and John Kennedy and Carl Albert all went to Congress the same time. And they all remained warm friends until Kennedy died and Nixon and Albert still have a very cordial relationship. Not that they agree with each other, but they just went through – they work together and they respected each other and they still do. In all their associations there wasn’t any off-color facets to it. And you get that way. You know, it’s funny how two guys will just debate furiously on the floor, and then get their wives and go out to dinner together that evening and enjoy each other’s company. You get to where you respect a strong man, even if he does disagree with you.  

Lasalier:         Is that a major value of the Congress’ ability to compromise – accept that compromise? 

Steed:              Well, the way Sam Rayburn put it, they learn the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. And, ah, you see, Carl Albert and I disagreed on some things. You know, what Sam Rayburn always said, he said, “If two men agree on everything, one of them is doing all the thinking.” So, ah, the idea that you run into fellow with different viewpoints – you obviously expect a guy from New England to have some views that a guy from the southwest wouldn’t have and vice versa. So you have to make allowances for that. That’s what this representative thing is all about. This is a melting pot, and you throw your chips in the pot and they do, and you deal the cards and somebody wins. But you don’t – you don’t impugn a man’s integrity because you don’t agree with him. It just isn’t done. 

Lasalier:         Would you characterize, in comparison to Tip O’Neil, the present speaker, would you characterize Carl Albert as a gentle leader? 

Steed:              Well, Tip O’Neil is a pretty easy-going fellow. Generous fellow. Good-natured fellow. Liked people. He comes from a large city. And his environment and his background is entirely different from the boy from Bug Tussle’s would be. And so their approach to things is sometimes somewhat different, but I think that in the final analysis of it, is when it comes to – if you’re chairman of a committee and in charge of a bill that you’d say one of them would see that you had your way on the floor about as well under one as the other. I don’t think either one of them tried to abuse their power, their authority. I think they tried to see to it that the work load moved efficiently and properly.  

Lasalier:         Carl Albert was speaker during an extremely difficult time, too, wasn’t he? When all of the changes were being made in the senior system? 

Steed:              Nothing like it in the history of America. You’d never had – you never had a president resign, or a vice-president resign. You never had to have the confirmation of vice presidents taking part in both houses. You never had a lot of the international problems that you had. And, ah, so, there was a – there was a – it was a very difficult time. But some of it, you know, was quite pleasant. Now when, when the Queen of England came and he was her host at the – at the luncheon in Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol, that was a first. And of course, you know, it’s a small room, comparatively, and getting an invitation to a luncheon became one of the greatest games in the history of Washington. That was more important than getting invited to the British Embassy or the White House, and Carl Albert had to approve the guest list. Well, he had to have certain seats of the British Embassy people, of course, obviously, and certain other dignitaries of the foreign community and he also had to take care of some of the people at the White House and State Department and he had colleagues all over him like bees. Take me, for instance, I had a wife, and she wanted to go to that luncheon. Well, I was willing to forego it. I think it would have been nice to go, but I understood the situation. Well, Carl Albert has a wife who’s a very close friend of my wife. And guess what? They both went to that luncheon! Now, Carl had sense enough to keep him and me both from losing our scalp. But this was the sort of thing that he carried off with great credit, you know. No Oklahoman would have done anything but swell with pride if they could have seen him under that tremendous social – whatever you want to call it – international event. Think how embarrassed the nation would have been if he’d have been a clunk-head. But he carried that off with a flourish and, ah, and, I wish everybody could have seen and heard him do it. When he came to that sort of thing, that work in Oxford paid off. He knew exactly how to do it. Now he also was able to persuade those British to let that Magna Carta come over here and stay on display and tens of thousands of Americans saw it for the first time in history and they never let it leave England before. And if he hadn’t have been speaker and a Rhodes Scholar at that, and made a hit with the queen, I doubt if it would ever have got here. But, ah, he was very modest about that. He was just happy that every could see the Magna Carta.  

Lasalier:         The Carl Albert School of Diplomacy paid off with the Magna Carta? 

Steed:              It sure did. And, of course, it was a tremendous drawing card with Americans, because after all, we look on that as the father of our Declaration of Independence.  

Lasalier:         Just want to digress for just a moment. You mentioned invitations to the White House or to the British Embassy – do those kind of rank one and two in Washington social circles? 

Steed:              Oh, in the main, yes, because, of course, the British Embassy is the big embassy in Washington, and they have some of the most notorious or notable or desirable people coming in there, and they are the old international protocol inventors. Now the White House is a different thing. They try to rotate. Even unfriendly Congressmen will get invited to a White House state affair sooner or later. Now the favorites will be invited to quite a few. Well, let’s suppose that the – some big shot from Italy was coming – a government official. And you’re an Italian American in Congress. Well, you’d probably get invited. You see what I mean? Or if you were Polish. Hey would let this visitor meet some of his own folks – people of his own origin in this country because it creates a little bit warmer atmosphere. Now if it was the Shah of Iran, since Kerr-McGee had signed an agreement with him, ah, President Nixon invited my wife and me to be at the dinner that night for the Shah and his lady. And then, he wanted – he’d already – he’d signed up with this Oklahoma outfit, so he found out an Oklahoma Congressman was present, and the Shah asked to meet him. And I visited with him awhile. And, incidentally, I knew enough about his background I made two or three remarks about his ancestors, which pleased him, and he said, “You have to come over and be my guest.” Well, I never got around to it, thank goodness! I might not be back yet! But these are the kind of things – women go in for that more than men, I guess, but some people just think that’s the thing, I guess, but I always found that just a pain in the neck – you go to one of them, fine, but just to make a way of life of it is not my dish.  

Lasalier:         I suppose like the speaker would – it would be kind of a demand which he would have to fulfill? 

Steed:              Oh, he was constantly under pressure to attend things. No matter who you are, if you’ve got a reception or party or something and the speaker shows up, it makes it a success for you, you see? He’d average up to six of them a night. He’d go and stay thirty minutes, maybe, at one, and he’d be three hours at it. And go home tired as he could be, been on the floor all day and this stuff. That’s a killing job. And it’s a – I guess it’s a – something – now, John McCormick didn’t let it do him. He had a rule. He’d never go out anywhere. He never left his wife. He went home and spent the evening with her. For all their lives he did that. He never was anywhere without her. And they didn’t go to those things because her health didn’t permit it, so he just didn’t accept them. And he was very generous about seeing you in his office during work hours, and that sort of thing, but at night he just went home to that wife of his and took care of her. And, ah, when one of them died, the other one didn’t live very long after that. Their world ended. They were that type of devoted couple. Well, of course, Carl was younger and more energetic and he tried to accommodate the members, you know. A guy would have a fund-raiser or something and he’d go and show his face and mix with his folks from home. A lot of people, if you got some big shot from your district in and he said something nice about the speaker and you got a chance to introduce him, you would. And, see, he has to be a little bit of a showman for everybody. So, it’s – a lot of times, I know I got invited to participate in some of the conferences around there because they figured that would mean the speaker would come. This kind of stuff goes on. But, he, he filled his office with great credit. I don’t think any member every had any reason to be ashamed of the way he ran his office. And many of them had many reasons to be darn glad he ran it the way he did because he helped them. And, ah, he’d even, ah, you know, sometimes some old boy would be in a bind if something had happened beyond his control and he’d be in danger – couldn’t reelect him. Carl would be very concerned about it, and every now and then he’d have some connection where he could put the guy in touch with somebody that would help him financially and things like that. He worried about them all, just like they were his kids. And, ah, for some of them – were very good at letting him do that worrying for them, too, and of course, being the brotherly love type he was, he never turned them down. I, ah, I scolded him sometimes about it, but it didn’t do any good. I never changed him! But I just hated to see him get imposed on when I knew he needed to rest and that he should be more careful of himself. And today he’s not in good health because he wore himself out as Speaker of the House. He put the job before his health and he’s paying for it today. That I believe and I think that its, ah, well, maybe it, ah, you can’t feel as strongly about responsibility and the government and its welfare and your part in the affairs of the world and not give it all you’ve got. Especially if your as conscientious if he is, but, ah, still and all, there ought to be a way for a man to avoid just gradually putting himself in a wheelchair.  

Lasalier:         Maybe at the time Carl Albert was Speaker of the House of Representatives that a stronger man or a lesser man might have meant even more devastating and racking sort of experiences for the United States at that time – that the impeachment committee hearings might have gone on for months longer, and really taken the country down. . . 

Steed:              Well, I’ll tell you, that’s true. Now here I can give you an example. John Kennedy and I were on the same committee in my first term. And I didn’t know he was going to get to be a big shot, but he did, and, ah, and so after he was president we were in a meeting one day and something came up about what the House would do on a certain issue. And, ah, so President Kennedy said, “Well, I know what they’re going to do. They’re going to do thus and so.” And they said, “How did you find that out?” And he said, “Carl Albert told me. I’ve never known anybody that can read that House as that man can.” He said, “I’ll take his word over anybody’s.” And, now, see what a help it is to the president for him to have that sort of information in advance. Ah, this sort of thing Carl did for all the presidents. They all had that faith in him. And they all like to have his advice because, you know, if you’re sending up a trial balloon, of it you’re messing with a hot potato, if you can get any reading on what you may be heading into, it’s a help to those fellows, and so they all valued Carl, and that’s why they conferred with him all the time. I don’t think that all the time he was speaker there was more than very few weeks that he wasn’t in conference with whoever was president at least an hour or so.  

Lasalier:         In summary, are there any things you would like to conclude about Carl Albert, U.S. Congressman from McAlester? 

Steed:              Well, of course, I’m glad that Carl, ah, was able to set so many firsts. Here’s what I think he did the most. It showed that a man didn’t have to be big physically. He didn’t have to be brassy or grabby. He didn’t have to be rich. He was a coal miner’s son, you know, and worked and paid his own way through school. He is as typically as pure an American story as you can find. And above it all, he proved that you can be elected to office in a state like Oklahoma, that you can make your way with your colleagues to become their leader. That you can do all these things and you never have to say ill or smear any human being. If he hasn’t set that example to young Oklahomans on the fact that politics are clean and can be clean, that clean campaigning does pay, where will you ever find a better example? And I think he stands as a very fine statue for young people to look up to and have more respect for public service. You know, the government needs its share of brains, too. And, you can’t be having all this bad apple sort of thing to it. It’s got a lot of fine people in it and he is the paragon of what it – the best in public service can be. And for the fact that he made his life so demonstrative and set such an example, I think that’s his biggest tribute and will be his monument for the future – for history.

Lasalier:         Alright. Congressman Tom Steed on Carl Albert. Thank you.