Suchergebnisse

Issue 3.2 of the Review for Religious, 1944. ; :Review,fo¯ r R e h g o u s" MARCH 15, 1944 ,; ~' ~"The Worst of Sinners" . Ar, nold J. Benedeff~' ~ 7 B~beuf on Missionary Vocations . Augustine Klaas - Your PredominantXendency ~ "Pafrlck M. Regan . ~-Su, cjge.~hon from the Fec÷Ory . . . John E~ CQogan~ ':The 'Badder,' the Better" . . ." . . . G_. Aucjusfin~e Ellard Concern|ng, Vocat|ons . The Editors Book Reviews Ouestlons 'Answered Decisions 5f the Holy See. krOLUME III NUMBER :~.VOLUbIE III MARCH 15, 1.94.4 NUMBER 2' Im CONTENTS ON BF.ING "THE WORST OF SINNERS"--Arnold J. Benedetto, S.J. 73 BRI~BEUF ON" MISSIONARY VOCA,TIONSmAugustine Klaas, S.~1. 80 OUR CONTRIBUTORS . , . 93 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT. TENDENCY?m Patrick M. Regan,,S.d . 94 A SUGGESTION FROM THE FACTORYmJohn E. Coogan, S.3. 103 D~CISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE OF INT,EREST TO RELIGIOUS111 "THE 'SADDER,' THE BETTER" G. Augustine Ellard. S.d. 112 BOOKLET NOTICES . ~24 CONCERNING VOCATIONS The Editors . 125 WANTED: LETTERS ON RETREATS! . 128 TRY' ITH S IN YOUR EXAMEN!~RIchard L. Rooney, S.J .:. .,,1,29 WH0'IS SAINT JOS.EPH?Wililam Stritch, S.J .1.3.0 BOOK REVIEWS (Edited by Clement DeMuth, S.J.)-- Aids to Will Training in Christian Education: Instructions~ on Chris-tian Doctrine: St. Theodore of C~nterbury; Thirty Years with Christ:' White Fire: The Spiritual Conferences of St. Francis de Sales; From a - Morning Prayer; The Path of Love; Latin Gra~nrnar; Know Yourself; .The Text ,of the Spiritual Exercises: History of the Third Order of St. Francis of Penance and Charity; Mother Immaculata of Jesus BOOKS RECEIVED . 131 139o QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS~ 10. Jurisdiction of Ordinary Confessor . 140 11., Mass Stipends and Poverty .° . 140 12. 'Permission to Give Away an Inheritance .: ¯ ¯ 141 13. Appointing an Administrator, and Making a Will 141 14. Blood Relatives in Same Community . 141~ 15. Lace V'eil for Tabernacle ." . ~. ¯ 142 16. Number and Quality of Candles for Benediction . 142 1~7. 'Place f¯or the Christmas Crib . 143 , . 18. Duration of Office for Local Superior .143 19. Sacristan Should Wash Chalice and Ciborium -. . 20~. Frequency o~ Cofi~ession o~ Devotion . 144 REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS. March, 1944 Vo[. lII. No. 2. Published bi-monthly: January, March, May, July, September. and November at the College Press, 606 Harrison Street, Topeka, Kansas, by St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as second class matter. January 15, 1942. at the Post Office, Topeka, Kansas, under the act of March 3. 1879. Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.3., G. Augustine Ellard. S.J., Gerald Kelly, S.J. Copyright, 1944, by .Adam C. Ellis: Permission is hereby granted for quotations of/reasonable length, provided due credit be given this review and the author.,. Subsc.ription price: 2 dollars a year. Printed in U. S. A. Before writing to us, please consult notice on inside back cover, ¯On Being "The ~X/Orst ot: Sinners" Arnold J. Benedetto, S.J. N ANYONE;S list of "Perplexing Sayings of the Saints'" there is likely to be found a host of statements in which the greatest of saints profess themselves to be the "worst bf sinners." Now, since self-knowledge is a presupposi-tion for progress in the spiritual life, how can such self-deception .exist in. those who supposedly are far advanced? Or, since humility is based on truth--some saints consider the wo~ds synonymous~--how can we,. without doing violence to our intelligence, consider as examples of humil-ity those whose statements wandered, as it seems, so far from the realms of rigid fact? After all, there is no separate code of morality for the saints. Untruth is untruth. There can be only one "worst" among sinners, and no saint with .regard for truth can claim that he is that one. Of course, we can make allowances for the exaggera-tions of the 01d-style biggraphers of saints. Thei~ love of rhetoric and of paradox, their eagerness to cull from their heroes some "quotable quote", no matter how eccentric it appears when taken out of context--all this, rather than care and attention in making clear the saints' mentality and spirit, may account for some of the less attractive features one comes across in reading the lives of saints. But when all due allowance has been made, there still remains a goodly residue of strict biographical fact leading one to the unescapable ~onclusion that. many saints really did feel themselves to be the least among men, the worst of all man-kind. Further, the Church--which canonizes neither untruths nor errors--seems to extol the humility of the saints precisely in these pa.radoxicaI statements of theirs. 73 ARNOLD J. BENEDETTO Review for Religious The prbblem becomes excruciatingly acute when we read certain books of spiritual guidance and discover to our horror that toe, we o.urselves, are expected to believe, in all humility arid truth, that we, too, are inferior to all other men and more ~inful than all others. We all feel more or ~less willing to accept hi~mbly our place in the universe, but with all the goodwill in the world we fail to see how the proper place for every man is below his neighbor and how each and every person can be a greater sinner than every other person. One" should avoid making even "pious" errors of judgment. Perhaps No Comparison Is Meant One. possible solution of how a saint could ihave said, "I am the worst of sinners," is that the saint was not really making.a rigid comparison with others, bu~ was thinking simply and solely about himself. Thus, the sentenqe prac-tically means, "I am a very great sinner." If theoriginal statement can be reduced to these terms ~:hen we are to c~n-sider the sain~ as completely ignoring the sins of others and as concentrating only upon his own faults. The saints know God much better than others do, they realize more deeply the tremendous value of His gifts, they are more aware of His helping graces. As a result, they are in a bet-ter position to. see the wickedr~ess, the ingratitude, of sin. They contrast th~ boundless sanctity of God with the insufferable wilifulness of the puny man who refuses to admit his dependence on God. Even the least sin is an abomination in the sight of the Lord. Overwhelmed at the thougl~t of~having chosen any finite good rather than the v.ery great, nay, the infinite Good, the saint cries out that he is a very great sinner. A Shift in the Terms of Comparison A very common interpretation given to this difficult 74 March, 1944 ON BEING ~'THE WORST OF SINNERS" saying is that when the saint claims to be the worst of sin-ners he is comparing what he has of himself with what his neighbor has from God. This means either that the saint is comparing his own natural gifts with others' super-natural gifts, or else is comparing his own sins with his neighbors' good acts. In either case, certainly, such a com-parison justifies the conclusion, "I am worse than all oth- .ers." With this interpretation it isquite easy to see how anyone can claim that he is the worst of sinners, for the things that are being compared are no longer on the same plane. Obviously the supernatural is better than the natural, obviously sin is worse than virtue. Such a Simptiste explanation, with its shift in the terms compared, may appear irrational. What it really amounts to is just a clever--some may think, ineptMway of sa)~ing that sin itself is irrational.~ It implies that a certain minimum degree of humility is required if we 'are to avoid sin. At any rate, such an explanation is given by many iearned theologians. It is mentioned by St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica (2-2, q. 161, a.3). Four-Fold Ignorance Some of thesaints, however, when they assert that they are worse than their neighbor, very plainly do not mean that this is so only when comparison is made between what is of God in their neighbor with what is of man in them-selves. .They mean that their own character, apart from the gifts which God has given them, is much more vile than is their neighbor's character considered, likewise, apart from his supernatural gifts. St. Francis of Assisi (one of the most ardent devotees of the policy of. self-depreciation) explains himself thus: "I feel that I am the worst of sin-. nets, for if God had shown such mercy to a criminal hs He has shown to me, that criminal would be ten tim~s holier 75 ~RNOLD d. BENEDETTO Review for Religious than I am.-" St. Francis dearly suggests that the natural dispositions of the criminal are superior to his own. The explanatioh, however, is not.altogether satisfac-tory. Only God knows with certainty the natural dispo-sitions ofeach man. Because of our ignorance of these dispositions of others, arid because we do not know what hidden gifts God may have given others, we cannot claim to .be better than our neighbor. But neither are we strictly justified in asserting that we are worse than he. We may conjecture that we are worse, we may say that possibly we are worse. We cannot claim absolutely to be worse. Similar to our two-fold ignorande regarding the state of our neighbor is our. ignorance regarding our own present and, especially, our own future state. "Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of love or hatred" (Eccles. 9: 1):. .Quite possibly many~ persons who at present are leading holy lives will not.persevere in such a state. God sees the final disposition of their souls and in His sight they very . definitely are great sinners. Experiential Knowledge The solution that we offer as the final one really includes the other solutions," namely, the comparisons and ¯ the four-fold ignorance. But, presupposing those solu-tions, this final solution brings us more deeply into the .psychology of' the sai.nts. It tries to show not 0nly that, ~with certain limitations and qualifications, there is some .objective.truth in .the statement of the saints, "I am wo. r.se than everybody else," but also to give an account of bow the saints actually, within themselves, could feet Sincerely and intensely that they were the most wretched of sinners. The saints did, indeed, have some knowledge of the limitations of others (though they generally ignored that) ; but of their own unworthiness they had an intense:inner 76 ¯ March, 19 4 4 ON BEING ""~HE WORST OF SINNERS" experiential knowledge. The sins and deficiencies of others they knew by observation, :inference, or. hearsay. But knowledge by actual personal experience is more impres-sive and compelling than any other. Whatever might be said of others, they felt, and felt most keenly, that their themselves were guilty. Whatever arguments pro and con one might bring forward juridically regarding the malice .of others, the saints had actual and direct consciousness of their own wickedness. Seeing their own sins and imper-fections in the sigh.t of God, the horror that rose up in their consciousnbss was just as vivid an experience as an attack of acute indigestion. They may have had painful encoun-ters in.the pas.t, when brought face to face with the malice of their sins; this present experiencing, this tremendous illumination laying bare their utter nothingness and worse-than- nothingness, together with the consequent revulsion of a pure, ardent, and sincere soul, this present experience impresses them mdre vividly than any recollection of:past experiences. "Let others claim that they have had o? are having painful experiences when they recounf their sins within themselves--but really they could hardly be suf-fering as I am. My sins must be the worst p6ssible sins. Never could anyone offend the good God as I have." With reference to their very real, present experiential knowledge they are truly the worst of sinners. These "hard sayings", of the saints thus-contain not absolute truth but relative truth--relative, that is, to the source of knowledge. Having this intense experiential knowledge of their own sins, and l~nowing the sins of their neighbor only by observation or conjecture, the saints based their practical conclusion on the evidence of the inner experience and affirmed that they were worse than their neighbor. With reference to the particular type of evidence which alonethey ar.e considering, they are worse than their 77 ARNOLD ~, BENEDETTO neighbor. Another situation in which,~ similarly, the prac-tical,, working truth is different from the theoretical, abstract truth is the case in which a judge knows, as a pri-vate citizen, that the defendant is guilty but, with refer-ence only to the legal evidence at hand, he must, in his o~.- cial capacity, pronounce the judgment that the defendant is not guilty. One may prefer the following example: If a very brigh~ light is focused upon some particular object and one fixes his gaze for a'long while on the object, then that object ~ill be very. cons~picuous, While objects on either side of it will scarcely be noticed; they will be in. the dark, or, at most, in the penumbra surrounding the illuminated object. Ohio's judgment based on what one sees in the light will be much more accurate and detailed than any judgment made coficerning the unilluminated objects. By their inner experiential knowle~lge the saints become acutely aware of their own littleness and of the infinite contrast between even their leastmoral defect and the wondrous sanctity of God. In the light of this knowledge the saints focus their attention on their own defects and at the same time lose sightof, or but dimly notice, their own good qual'ities and thi~defects and gross sins of their neighbor: According to this light they are worse than their neighbor. The Dominican beatus, Venturino da Bergamo, explains that. the intense feeling and percep.tion of one's own defects may be compared to. the suffering of a tooth-ache. The stifferer feels that he is enduring more pain than anyone else; not that he sees in the light of reason that his pain is greater, but that his.own pain is closez tohim than is that of another. And even if he should know intellec-tually that somebody else has an equally bad or a worse toothache, it is still very true that he experiences and his own, not that of the other person. ,Judging on this 78 o ! March, 1944 ON BEING "'THE WORST OF SINNERS" basis, and relatively to this limited criterion, ~ae could say, "My toothache is the worst," "My toothache feels worse." " Conclusion To account for the unusually'intense pain which the saints feel at the consciousness of their, sins and for the' apparent ease with which they become thoroughly con-vinced that they are the greatest sinners in the world, Father de Guibert1 suggests that these great saints receive a very special divine illumination regarding their own sins, that this illumination is of the same order as the higliest degrees.of infused contemplation. We believe, however, that it is also within the power, of each human being to arrive--with less facility and with a less degree of conviction, it is true, than that of the specially enlightened saints--at the. conclusion, that he is the &orst sinner in th~ world. And many saints and spir-itual writers exhort us to judge in this fashion of ourselves. Pride is one of our worst enemies. It is very deep-rooted. J(ny consideration having in itself some real degree, of truth and helping to make us more humble should be wel-comed. It is humbling to consider oneself the worst of sinners. Possibly We shall be aided in forming this judg-ment by making use of the explanations given in the course of this article, namely, by contrasting our natural endow-ments with our neighbor's supernatural ones, by main-._~ "taining the prudent, doubts and suspense caused by our ignorance regarding our neighbor and ourself, and,. espe-cially, by basing our judgment on the evidence or objective truth furnished us by our experiential knowledge of our own faults as opposed to our unfelt knowledge of the sins of others. 1J.de Guibert, S.J. : l~tudes de Th~ologie Mgstique. Toulouse: l~ditions de la Revue ¯ d'Asc~tiqu~ et de Mystique;, 1930. pp. 283-298. :Br beut: on ¯ Missionary Vocal:ions Augustine K!aas, S.J. ON JULY 16, 1636, Father dean de Br~beuf wrote a lengthy " report to his religious superior, Father Paul Le deune, on the. state of .his mission among .the Huron savages, to the east of what is nov,; Lake Huron. The document contains' some fascinating chapters, illustrating what might be called the iomance of the mis-sions. In chh~ter three, however, by way of interlude, the heroic missionary decides to give a timely Word of advice to those in Fiance, .presumably his younger religious brethren, who are ardently longing tpou ngc6h oens' t.'h.e .w floireenig hne m teilslssi oonfs t hoef Nhaerwd sFhriapnsc, et.r iHmes d, oaensd n soutf "feprui.lnl ghsi so(f missionary life, but neither does he omit the ompensatio.ns and con-solations of that aposl~olate. In these lines Br~beuf seems to be giving us the proper technique in dealing with a vocation to the mis-sions. It is' this:~ don't overemphasize the romance, but tell the truth, the whole truth, the bitter along with the sweet, of. the call to the foreign missions. Incidentally, the cbapte~ also reveals the saint's.own virile spir-ituality-- his love of God, his life of prayer, suffering, and apostolic" zeal. Nor is 1-iis human side left out~ He was forty-three when he wrote it. Thirteen years later, tow~irds four o'clock on the after-noon of Tuesday, March 16, 1649, amid dreadful torments, dean de Br~beuf would die manfully the martyr's death for which his whole missionary life was a conscious preparation. BRI~BEUF'S ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE MISSIONARIES1 We have learned that the salvation of so many innocent ,souls, washed and made white in the Blood of the Son of God is stirring very deeply the hearts of many, and is excit-ingin themnew desires to leave Old France in order to come 1The original French of this chapter appears in The Jesuit Relations, edited by R. G. Thwaites, V, ol. 10, pp. 86-115. I have added ~hereferences to the ~Scripture texts, which in the, original are quoted freely and.in Latin. Except for the added captiofis and a few changes in paragraphing, the document is presented intact. ¯ BRI~BEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS. to the New. God be forever blessed, who thus shows us that He has finally ope.ned to these tribes the bowels of His infinite mercy. I do not wish to chill the ardor of~-this gen-erous resolve. Alas! it is these very hearts according ,to God's own Heart whom we are expecting. I wish only to give them a word of advice. It is true that "love is strong as death" (Canticles 8:(5). The love of God has power to do what death does, that is, to detach us entirely, from creatures and from ourselves. Nevertheless, these desires that we feel .of working for the salvation of infidels are not always sure signs of that pure love. Sometimes there may be present a little self-love and Self-seeking, if we look only at the blessing and s~atisfaction there is in putting souls in heaven, without duly conlcider-ing the sufferings, labors~ and di~culties, inseparable from these evangelical works. Dit~cult Journe~t " Wherefore, that no one may be deceived on this point, "I will show him how much he musi suffer here for the name of Jesus" (cf. Acts 9: 16). True, the t.wo who came last, Fathers Mercier and Pijart, did not have as much hard-ship on their journey as we who came up the year before. They did not paddle; their men were not sick, as ours were; the.y did not have to carry heavy loads. Still, no matter how easy the trip with the savages may be, there is always enough to greatlydiscourage a heart not.well mortified. The readiness of the savages does not shorten the road, nor smooth bver the rocks, nor remove dangers. No matter with whom you may be, you must expect to be at the very least three or four weeks on the way, to have as compan-ions persons you have never seen before, and to be cramped rather Uncomfortably in a bark canoe, with no freedom to turn this way or that, in peril fifty times a day of being 81 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Revieu~ [oc Religious upset or dashed upon the rocks. During the day the sun scorches you; at night you are likely to be a prey to mos-quitoes. You sometimes ascend five or six rapids a day, and in the evening you have for refreshment only a little corn crushed between two stones and cooked with ycery clear water. Your bed is the ground and often rough, uneven rocks. There is no shelter but the stars. And with all this--perpetual silence. If you are accidentally hurt, or if you fall sick, do not expect any help from these barbar-ians; for .whence could they get it? And if the sickness is dangerous and you are far from the villages, which are very scattered, I should not guarantee that they would not abandon y6u, if you could not follow them unassisted. When you reach the Hurons you will indeed find hearts full of charity: We will receive you with open arms as an angel from paradise; we will have all the good will in the world to do you good, but we are almost powerless to do it. We will receive you "in a hut so miserabIe that I do not think there is in France any by comparison so wretched that I might say: "That is how you will be lodged." ~Harassed and .tired as you will .be, we can give you only a poor mat, or at most a skin for your bed. And besides, you will arrive at a season ' when miserable little insects, which We call taoul~ac here, but "fleas" in straight French, will keep you for almost entire nights from dosing your eyes, for in these parts they are incomparably more bothersome than in France. The dust of the cabin breeds them; the sa3~ages bring them to us; w.e get them in their dwellings. And this petty martyrdom, not to speak of.mosquitoes, sandflies, ahd other like. vermin, continues usually through the three or four summer months. Instead of being the great professor and learned .tl~eo-logian y6u were in France, you must reckon on being here a humble little school-boy, and, good God! .with. what 82 March, 1944 BRI~BEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS teachers!--women, small children, 'and all the savages-- and exposed to their laughter! The Huron language will be your .Saint Thomas and your Aristotle.; and clever man that you are, and glib speaker among learned and talented persons, you must make up your mind to be for a long time mute among these barbarians. You will have achieved much if, after a considerable time, you begin to stammer a little. Trials and Dangers oI Mission Life And then, how do you think you are going to spend the ¯ winter here? Having h~ard of all that is endured in winter-ing among the Montagnets savages, I can say that it is almost the li~e we lead here among the Hurons. I say it without exaggeration: the five or six months of winter are spent amid almost.continual discomforts~xtreme co!d, . smoke, and the importunity of the savages. We have a cabin built of simple bark, but so well jointed that we have to go outside to learn what the weather is. Th~ smoke is very often so thick, so acrid, and so persistent that, for five or six days at a time, if you are not entirely used to it, about all you can do is to make out a few lines in your breviary. Besides, from morning until night, our fireplace is almost always beset with savages---~:ertainly, they sel-dom fail to be there at mealtimes. If yOu happen to have anything more than usual, no matter how little it may be, youmust reckon on most.of these gentlemen as your guests; if you do not share it with them, you will be considered mean.As regards tl4e food, it is not so bad, though we usually content ourselves with a little corn, a piece of dried smoked fish, and some'fruits, about which I shall speak further on. Up to now we have considered only the roses. As we have Christians in almost all the villages, we must count 83 AUGUSTINE KLAAS on making the rounds of them at all seasons of the year and of remaining there, according to necessity, for two or three whole weeks, amid indescribable hardships. -Add to. all this, our lives~depend upon a. single thread. If, wherever we are in the world, we are to expect death every hour and to be always prepared for it, this is particularly the case here. For, not to mention that your cabin is like straw and, despite all your care to prevent accidents, may catch fire at any moment, the malice of the savages gives, you cause for constant fear on this point. A malcontent may burn you down or split your head open in some lonely spot. Then, too, you are responsible with your life .for the sterility or fecundity of the earth, You are the cause of droughts. If y6u cannot make it rain,, they talk of nothing less than doing away with you. Moreover, I need only mention the danger there is from our enemies. Suffice it to say that, on the thirteenth of this last month of 3une, they killed twe!vi~ of our Hurons near the village ofContarrea, only a day's journey from us. A short time before, at four leagues from our village, some Iroquois were discovered in the fields in ambush, onl~r .waiting to strike a death-blow at some passer-by. This nation is very timid; they take no precautions; they are not careful to prepare arms or to inclose their villages .with pali-sades. Their usual recourse, e.specially when the en.emy is strong, is flight. Amid these alarms, which affect the whole country, I leave you to imagine if we have any grounds for security. However, if wehad here the exterior, attractions of piety, as in France, all this might still be put up with: In France the large number and the good example-of Chris-tians, the solemnity of the feasts, and the majesty of the ~churches so exquisitely adorned, all preach piety to you. And in our houses, the fervor of our brethren, their mod- 8~ March, 1944 BRgZBEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS esty, and the noble virtues that shine forth in all their actions--the~e are so many powerful voices which cease-lessly cry out to .you: "Look, and do thou also in like man-ner" (cf. Luke 10:37). You have the consolation of saying Holy Mass every day. In a word, you are almost beyond the danger of falling--at, least the falls are insig-nificant and you have help immediately at hand. Here we have nothing., it seems, which invites to good; ¯ we are among peoples who are astonished when you speak to them of God and who often have only horrible blas-phe~ nies in their mouths. Frequently you will be com-pelled to deprive yourself of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: and, when you have the chance to say Mass, a little corner in your cabin will be your chapel, and even if you had the means, the smoke, the snow, and the rain would hinder you from decorating and embellishing.it. I pass o_.v.er the little opportunity for privacy there is among barbarians, who almost never leave you alone and who hardly know what it is to speak quietly. Above all, i do not dare to speak of the danger there is of ruining oneself among their impurities, in th~ case of any one whose heart is not suffi-ciently full of God to firmly repel this poison. But enough of this; the rest can be known only by experience. "But is that all?" some one will say. "Do you think that by your arguments you haVe thrown water on the fire which consumes me, and hhve lessened ever so little the zeal I have for the conversion of these nations? I say that these things have served Only to confirm me the more in my vocation. I feel more affection than ever for New Frange. I bear a holy jealousy towards those Who are alr, eady 'enduring all these sufferings. All ~hese labors seem to me nothing, in comparison with what I should like to endure for God. If I knew a place under heaven where one could suffer yet more,:I would go there." ~ 85 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Reo~eu2 for "Reli#ious The Briofit Side Ah! whoever you are,.to whom God gives these senti- :ments and this light, come, come, my dear brother, it is workers such as you that we ask for here; it is to souls like yours that God has decreed the conquest of. so many others whom the devil holds even now in his power. Fear no hardships; there will be none for you, since your whole consolation is to see yourself crucified with the Son of God. Silence will be sweet to you, since you have learned to corn- ¯ mune with God and to converse in heaven with the saints and angels: The victuals would be insipid indeed, if the gall tasted by our Lord ,did not make them sweeter and more savory to you than the most delicious viands in thd world. What a satisfaction to ascend these rapids and to climb these rocks for him who has before his eyes that loving Savior, wracked with torments and ascending Cal-vary laden with His cross. The discomfort .of the canoe is very easy to endure for him who thinks of the Crucified. What a consolation--for I must use such language to please youmwhat a consolation, then, to see oneself even abandoned on the road by the savages, languishing with sickness, or .dying of hunger in the woods, and still being able" to say to God: "My God, it is to do Your holy will that I am-reduced to the condition in which You see me," and to consider above all. the God-man" dying on the cross and crying out to his Father: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?." (Matthew 27.:46). If God preserves you in health amid all these hardships, without a do.ubt you will arrive pleasantly in the Huron c~ountry with these holy. thoughts. "He sails pleasantly, whom the grace of God carries along." Now, as regards shelter, food, and bed--shall I dare to say to a hea'rt so generous and disdainful of all that I have. already said on this point, that, although we are hardly in '86 ,Marcia, 1944 BRI~BEUb ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS a~better position than the kavages, still, in some unknown way, the Divine Goodness makes every difficult thing easy, and each and all of us find everything filmost the same as in France. The sleep we.get lying on our mats seems to us as" sweet as if we were in a goo~l bed; the native food does not disgust us, although there is scarcely any other seasoning than that which God has put into it. No~withstanding t-h~ cold of a six months' winter "spent in the shelter of a bark cabin, open to the daylight, we have.yet to' experience its evil effects; no one~ complains of his head or stomach; we do not know what diarrhea, colds, and catarrh mean. This ¯ leads me to say that delicate persons in France do not know bow to protect themselves from the cold. Those rooms so well carpeted, those doors so well fitted, and those windows closed so care.full);, serve only. to make its effects more keenly felt. It is an enemy from whom one wins almost more by proffering him one's hand than by waging a cruel" ~var against him. As for our food, I ~hall say this, that God has shown us clearly a very special providence: we have secured within a .week our pro.vision of corn for the whole year, without taking a ~ingle step beyond our cabin. Dried fish has been brought to us in such quantities that we are compelled to refuse some of it and to say that we have sufficient. You might say that God, seeing that we are here for His service, wishes~Himself to act as our provider, in order that we may labo.ronly for Him. This same Goodness takes care to give. us from time to time a change of provisions in the form of fresh fish. We areon the shore of a large lake, which affords as good fish as .I have ever seen or eaten in Frfince. It is true, however, aS I have mentioned, that we do not ordi-narily procure them, and still less do we get meat, which is even more rarely seen here. , Even fruits, in season, are not lacking to us, provided 87 AUGUSTINE KLAAS Reoiew [or Religious the year be somewhat factorable. Stra~cberries, raspberries, and blackberries are to be found in almost incredible quan-tities. We gather plentyof grapes, which are .fairly good; the squashes last sometimes four or five months, and they are so abundant that they are to be had almost for nothing, and .so good that, on being cooked in the ashes, they are eaten, as apples are in France. C0nsequently, totell the truth, as regards provisions, the change from France isnot very great. The only grain of the country is a sufficient nourishment, when one is somewhat accustomed to it. The savages prepare .it in more. than twenty ways and ye, t employ only fire and water; it is true that its best ~auce is - that contained in it. Spiritual Advant.ages As for the dangers Of the soul, .to speak frankly,-there are none'for him who brings to the Huron country the-fear and love of Godl On the contrary, I find here unequalled opportunities for acquiring perfection. Is it, no( a great deal to have in your food, clothing, and bed, no other. attraction than simple necessity? Is it not a glorious oppor-tunity to unite yourself with God, when there is at hand no creature whatever to which you can possibly become attached, and when the spiritual exercises you perform con-strain you without effort to inward meditation? Besides your spiritual exercises, you have no other task than the_ study of the language and conversation with the savages. Ab! h6w much pleasure there is for a heart devoted to God " to become the pupil of a savage and of a little child, in order to win them afterwards for God and make them disciples of our Lord! How willingly and liberally God commuiai- -rates Himself to a soul which practises out of love for Him these heroic acts of humility! The words he learns are so many treasures he amasses, so many spoils he carries off 88 March, 19 4 4 BRI~BEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIO,NS from the common enemy of the human race; so that he has /eason to say a hundred times'a day: "I will rejoice at thy ~vord.s, as one that hath found great spoil" (Psalms 118: 162). ,Viewed in this light, the visits of the s.avages,, h.owever frequent, cannot annoy him. God teaches him the beau-tiful lesson he once taught Saint Catherine of Sienna, to make of his heart a chamber and a temple for Him, where he will never fail t~o find Him, as often as he withdraws.to it. And if h~ encounters savages there, . they do not inter-fere with his prayers; they serve only to make them more. fervent, and from. this he takes occasion to present these poor wretches to His sovereign Goodness, and to beseech Him earnestly for their conversion. Certainly we have not. here that exterior solemnity which awakens and sustains devotion. We see only the sub-stance of our religion, the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, to Whose marvels faith must open our eyes, aided by no sensible mark of Its grandeur, just as in the case .of the Magi in the stable. Nevertheless, it seems that God, supplying for what we lack. and recompensing us for the favor bestowed on us of carrying It, so to speak, beyond ~o many seas, and of finding a.place for It in these wretched cabins, wishes to confer the same blessings on us. which He is wont to confer on persecuted CatholiCs in heretical countries, These good people.scarcely ever see either a church or an alfar, but the little.they see is worth double what, they would see, were they entirely free. You can imagine what consolation there is in prostrating ourselves at times before a cross in the midst of this barbarism, and, engaged in our petty domestic tasks, in turning our eyes towards and entering into the place which the Son of God has been pleased to take in our little dwe!ling. Not to be separated from this Well-.Beloved of the nations, except by a little 89 AUGUSTINE KL'AAS Re(~iew for Reli~lious bark or tree branch, is it not to be in paradise day and night? "Behold he standeth behind our wall" (Canticles 2:9). "I sat down under his shadow, whom I desired': (Canticles 2:3). SQ much fo~. the interior. If we go outside our cabin, heaven is open to us, and those great buildings which lift their heads to the clouds in large cities, do not conceal it from our view; so that we can say our prayers with com-plete abandon in that grand oratory, which Saint Francis Xavier loved more than any other. With regard to ,the fundamental virtues,~ I will glory, no~ in myself, but in the lot which has fallen to me. Or if I must humbly acknowledge it at the foot of the cross, which our Lord in His grace gives us to carry after Him, certainly this country, or ~ourwork here, is much more suited to feed a soul with the fruits of heaven than with those of earth. I may be mistaken, but Ithink that there is here a spli~ndid means for advancing in faith, hope, and charity. Are we t0sow the seeds of the Faith here, and not ourselves profit by it? Could we put our trust in anyone but God in a region where,, on th~ human side, everything is lacking? Cbuld we want a fine~ opportunity to exercise charity than there is amid the roughness and discomfort of a new world, where no human aft'or industry has y~t pro- Vided any conveniences? is there a. better occasion for prac-tising charity .t'han by living here in order to bring back to God men who are so unlike men that we must live in daily expectation of dying by their hands, should the fancy take them, should a dream suggest it to them,.or should we fail to open or close the heavens at will, giving them rain or fine weather a~ command. Do they not make us responsible for the state of the weather? And if God does not inspire us. or if we cannot work miracles of faith, are we not con-tinua~ ly in danger of seeing them, as they have threatened 9O March, ~1944 BR~BEUF ON MISSIONARY VOCATIONS to do, fall upon us who have done no harm? Indeed, if He who is Truth itself had ~not declared that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life really and once for all for one's friends, I should deem it a thing equally nobl.e, or even more so, to do what the Apostle said to the Corinthians (I, 15:31): "I die dai.ly, I protest by. your glory, brethren, wh'ich I have in Christ, Jesus our Lord"-~-that is,-to d[ag out a miserable life amid the fre-quent and daily perils of an unforeseen death, which those whom you are trying to sa;ce will procure for you. I some-times call to mind what Saint Francis Xavier once wrote to Father Simon, and wish tl:iat it mhy please God so to act that at least the same may be said or written one day even of us, although we may not be worthy of it. Here are his words: "'Excellent news comes from the Motucbas, namely, dohn Beira and his companions are laboring amid the [Treat-est l~ardships and continual danger of death, to the great increase of the Christian religion.'" . About Chastity, in Particular There seems to be one thing here which might cause ¯ apprehension in a son of the Society, that is, to see himself in the midst of a brutal and sensual people, whose example, unless special precaution is taken, might tarnish the luster of the most and the least delicate of all the virtues--I mean chastity. Inorder to obviate this difficulty, I make bold to say that, if there is any place in the world where this virtue so precious is safe, for a man who wills tO be on his guard, it is here. "Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it" .(Psalms 126: 1). "I knew that I could not otherwise be continent, except God gave it, and this also was a point of wisdom, to .know whose gift it was" (Wisdom 8:21 ). They say that the victories won by~ this .91 AUGUSTINE KLAAS ¯ Review I:O? ~Reli~tious daughter of heaven over her enemies are .won by flight. But I believe it is God and no one else.,who, in the most severe encounters, puts to flight this same enemy before those, who, fearing nothing so much as his approaches, go where His g!ory calls them, humbly and with hearts full of confidence in His goodness. And where are we to seek this glory of His? I should say, rather, where find it more purified and freed from our own interests than in a place where there is nothing to hope for other than the reward of ¯ having left all for the love of Him of whom Saint Paul said: "I know whom I have believed" (2 Timothy 1:12). You remember that plant called "the fear of God," with which it is said our Fathers at the beginning of our Society charmed away the spirit of impurity. ¯ It does not grow.in the land of the Hurons, but it falls her~ abundantly from Heax~en, if one is only a little careful to foster what he brings here Barbarism, ignorance, poverty, and misery, which ren-der the life of these savages more deplorable than death, are a constant reminder to us to mourn Adam's fall,, and to submit ourselves entirely to Him who, after so many cen, turies, still cbastizes disobedience in His children in so remarkable a way. Saint Theresa said once that she never made better meditations thi~n in those mysteries where she found our Lord apart and alone--as though she had been present in the Garden of. Olives--and she called this a sample of her simplicity. You may reckon this among my follies, if you like, but it seems to me that we have here go much the more leisure to caress, so to speak, and to enter-tain our Lord with open heart in the midst of these unin-habited lands, because there are so few people who trouble themselves about Him. -And on account of this favor we can say boldly "I will f~ar noevils, for thou art with me" (Psalms 22:4). 92 March, 1944 BR~BEUF ON MISSIONAR'/ VOCATIONS In short, I i.magine that all the guardian angels of these uncivilized and abandoned nations are continually endeav-oring and striving to save us from these dangers. They know well that if there is anything in the world that ought to give us ~¢ings to fly back whence we came both by obedi-ence and by our own inclination, it would be this misfor-tune, were we not shielded from it by the protection of 'heaven. This is what urges them to prqcure for us the means to guard, against it, that they may not lose the brightest hope they have ever had through the grace Of God, of the conversion of these peoples. I close this discourse and this chapter with the fol-lowing words. If at sight of the difficulties and crosses that are here prepared for us, some one feels himself so strengthened from above that he can say it is too little, or like Saint Francis Xavier "amplius, amplius" ("more, more"), I hope that our Lord, in the midst of the consola-tions which He will give him, will also. draw from his lips another admission, namely, that the consolation is too much for him and that he cannot endure more. "It is enough, Lord, it is enough." OUR CONTRIBUTORS ARNOLD J. BENEDETTO is a student of Theology at"St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas. AUGUSTINE KLA^S, Professor of Sacramental Theology at St. Mary's. made special studi~s in Ascetical Theology. PATRICK M. REGAN, Pro-fessor of Apologetics at St. M~ry's, is the author of a previous article on Se_lf-knowledge. JOHN E. COOC~N, a professor at the University of Detroit, has written much on social questions, and will be remembered by our readers for his~ articles on Spiritual Direction. G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD will be remembered particularly for his very "original" article on Hygienic Mortification that appeared in the first number of this review. 93 What: Is Your Predominant:.Tendency? Patrick M. Regan, S.J.~ 441"='EW things better reveal a man than zealous and *"=| persistent efforts to decrease his handicap. That profound and ancient maxim 'know thyself' might be inscribed on the portal of every GoTf Club. He who would attain self-knowledge should frequent the links. If one seriously attempts the task, one will find oneself in golf." Thus writes Arnold Haultain in :his book, The M~jster~t of Golf. '~Know thyself; frequent the links: attempt the task seriously"--these might be styled the ascetical principles of golf. Religious will be quick to see that, routatis mutandis, these principles also express the asceticism of the spiritual life. "Know thyself" would not be out of place on the portal of the religious house. "Frequent the chapel" is excellent advice at all times. "Attempt )our task seriously" is always necessary for the follower of Christ. Such thoughts are a fitting prelude to the study of the predomi-nant tendency, which, in the language of the author cited, is our "handicap" in the spiritual life. In a former article ("Self-knowledge" in REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, II, 223), we stated: "Many spiritual writers maintain there is one evil tendency that predominates, bne at the root of most of our .defects and imperfections; that, if we work diligently at controlling this one, we need scarcely expe~id any time.or energy on the rest." The present article will furnish meth-ods and suggestions for determining this predominant tendency. According to many .spiritual writers, everyone is apt 94 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT TENDENCY?" to discover his predominant tendency among the seven prin- . cipal tendencies to evil, the capital sins, as they are called. Hence it will be helpful at the very outset to make a study of these tendencies, together with opposite virtuds. The following definitions and explanations will greatly clarify our ideas. Pride is ihe exaggerated esteem of self. The evils that spring from pride are: stubbornness, rebellion and independence manifested towards those over us: contempt, harshness and abuse towards tl~ose subject to us: conceit, touchiness, vanity, arrogance, impudence, boasting, striving to magnify one's own importance. Laudable pride is the esteem of one's dignil~y as being Wholly. due to God's free gift. "My soul magnifies the Lord and .my spirit rejoices in God my Savior" (Luke 1:46). Such pride is. ordinate, for joy at success is permissible provided it be so controlled that' it preserves the correct evaluation of self. Humility is a true estimate of s~lf, of talents possessed, together with acknowledgement of lack of talents. Through humility we recognize that we are creatures of God and hence subjec~ to Him; that our bad qualities counterbalance the good that is in us:. that many others surpass us in various accomplishments; that our .talert~s are G~d's free gift~ rather than our own achievement. Avar;ee (Covetousness).is the indulgence of d~slre forthings we may not possess in present circumstances, at least not Without sin or imperfection. Avaiice leads to: violations of .the vow o~ poverty, discontent, unhappiness, dullness of soul towards spiritual things. In a religious it often involves hankering for trifles to give to friends or to retain fo~: ond's own comfort. Conte.ntment is satisfaction with wl~at, we have or with being poor with Christ. Liberality is readiness to share with others, especially with Christ's poor. En~--bitterness towards those we judge superior to us in talents and advantages. It brings such evils as: dislike, hatred, malice; desire 't.o'deprive those we envy of their advantage or to, injure them. Like pride this tendency springs from the intellectual side of our nature. But whereas pride inflates self, giving a.sort of satisfaction, envy emphasizes shortcomings and lack of talent, making us miserable 95 PATRICK M. REGAN Ret~ieto for Religious with consuming bate. Religious are especially exposed to this tend-ency because they.observe a whole array of excellent, even brilliant, accompl!shments and achievements in their brethren. Beneuolence is good will towards othdrs by which we rejoi.ce over their success, or at least resist bitter feelings aroused by e.nvy. Anger is a hot, strong feeling against somebody or something that displeases us, driving us to destroy or injure them. Anger leads to quarreling, fighting, violence; also to hatred, revenge, and bitter talk against people aiad things; to ill-temper and disagreeableness. Gentleness (Meekness or Patience) controls angry feelings, deters from harshness, calmly endures what.displeases, thus conditioning the soul to restrain the burst of anger. Controlling an irascible nature had" much to do with sanctifying St. Andrew Bobola and has sanctified many another to a lesser degree. The same is necessary to sdme extent for ivory religious. Lusf is the desire for sexual pleasure, urging to indulgence not per.- mitred Us. Evils consequent on lust are: immodest thoughts, imagina- ¯ tions, and actions by oneself or with. others; also the tempting of others to the s~ime sin. Lust closes the mind to higher things, destroy-ing the attraction of spiritual realities. A word of warning is here in place. This tendency is so obtrusive, even when not extraordinarily stro.ng~ that one might easily be led to mistake it for the predominant tendency. Hence mature d~liberation is needed before anysuch con-clusion is re.ached. Chastity is control of the desire for sexual pleasure, avoiding every indulgence of it in thought, word, or deed contrary to God's plan in matters of sex. Religious by their vow of chastity have relinquished all right to marriage and its privileges. Hence absolute control of this appetite is obligatory on them in allcircumstances. "GluH'ony is excessive indulgence, of the pleasure of eating and drinking. Iri religious it usually assumes a milder form, ~uch as inor-dinate interest in food, over-anxiety about quantity/ and quality, crlticism of the meals and the cook, an ill-controlled appetite for cer-tain foods.' Excessive indulgence in food results in ill health, laziness, andsensuality. Excessive drinking is apt to lead to a strong.inclina-tion to lust, anger and quarreling. Both forms of gluttony are debasing and cause distaste for everything' worthy of man. Sobriety (Moderation, Temperance, Abstemiousness) consists in retricting one's food and drink to. the needs of health. For religious. 96 "March, "I 944 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT TENDENCY? some self-abnegation in food and drink is a matter of daily practice. $lo÷h (Laziness) is a slow, heavy habit of. body or mind, shrinking from effort and cultivating idle ease and comfort. Its'consequent evils are: neglect of duty, shirking the unpleasant and troublesome, listless-ness. Idleness leaves the mind open to evil thoughts and desires, and excites temptations to gluttony and lust.: Diligence (Industry) is an instant and constant"fidelity to duty, an eagerness for work. Religious, lacking ihe stern sanction, "work or starve,".can easily fail in dilig.ence, especially in spiritual exercises. Hence" for them. diligence involves zeal for God's glory and the salva-tion of souls. ~ Elimination - Though we may understand perfectly the nature 6f these various tendencies described above, the problem still remains; which one predominates in our souls? A check of the list just giv.en will show us immediately which tend-encies do not hold sway in our soul~. By this simple pro-cedure some individuals have succeeded in eliminating all but the ohe ruling tendency, ' though it must be confessed that this is rather the extraordinary occurrence. As a mat-ter of fact. though, almost invariably five Of the seven can be eliminated even With this cursory examination. There remains then the task of determining which of the remain-ing two predominates. For. approaching this latter ta.sk, let it be noted here, readines~ to face the issue honestly.is the necessary disposi-tion of soul. For that matter, the same disposition is also needed at every point along the way. Hard as it is to admit deordination in our souls, it is still harder to admita ruling ¯ evil inclination. To be good-naturedly indolent is not half as bad as being under the complete .dictatorship Of sloth~ So we incline to deceive ourselves that it is not as bad as painted, .or that it is something else not, quit.e so humiliating. -We even surrender to Satan, allowing him to take over andblind us with his deceits. Courage, there- 97 PATRICK M. REGAN Reoieto for Rel~giotts fore, and honesty, together with a strong resolve to see the task through to ~ finish, are necessary in this quest that leads to self-knowledge. So~trces We begin our quest right in the depths of .our' own souls. Our search is for an outstanding inordinate motive behind our actions. For example, the desire to impress others may ever and relentlessly drive us forward to the various objectives we pursue. On the other hand, the same motive-may sometimes retard us or stop us completely as threatened-frustration drives us to seek an avenue of i~scape. Thus. the deflation of our self-esteem may turn us aside altogether from a praise'~'orthy undertaking.~ It is quite possible for such a relentless drive to exercise considerable dofiaiffation over us without our adverting to the fact. The reason is that We ordinarily observe only our surface acts without ever examining the underlying motive. If upon investigation our findings happen to coincide wi(h the examples just cited, then pride would be indicated as the driving force in our scheme of life and would be set down tentatively as the predominant tendency. We would then proceed to further examination to confi'rm our findings. ,Our next step would be to investigate whether it will explain, at least to a great extent, the deformities we find in our pattern of life. ¯ Hence we question ourselves whether~it explains the difficulties we have in dealing with our superiors, and with others witl~ whom we live or associate, whether it clarifies the reasons for the difficulties which others experience in dealing with us.; whether i~ sheds light on ~he problem of our failure to make progress in the spiritual life. 'If the answers to these various questions point back to the same predominant tendency, we can be quite certain our tenta- 98 March, 1944 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT TENDENCY? tive judgmentwa~ correct. As the work of self-examination goes forward, mbre and more evidence accumulates to increase this certitude. Aversions are excellent indicators of the virtues most needed~ A long-continued aversion for work tells us ever so plain.ly that we need frequent large doses of exhausting labor to build up the virtue of industry in our souls. Hence we ought to examine o~rselves in this matter of aversions. A simple and brief process it will be, since it is intended rather to confirm our previous findings. "Another help in this effort to unravel the mystery of self is to be more observant ofour thoughts and reactions,. even in unrestrained moments. On these occasions it is well to note what is uppermost in our minds. How often, for instance, all unconsciously, we are busy offering i~,zense to self as we give ourselves credit for being better religious than others, of having more brains, of working harder and accomplishing more. The thought that comes first to mind Oh awakening is significant, as is also the thought l~hat recurs most frequen,tly during the day. These are ungfarded moments in which nature is disarmed, stripped of self-deceit; henc~ like a candid child itcan be very ~elf-revealing. But put it on its good behavior in time of meditation, as it gazes on the meek and humble Christ, and the wolf will don sheep's clothing. How exemplary itwill make itself out to be, in its sweet humility and shining obedience. The final check of this search within our souls will be of our daily examens and our confessions. Getting back to that first motive that prompts our sins and faults will fur-nish new confirmatory light. We shall ~ind, for example, that.what on the surface was a flashof anger, at bottom was a manifestation of pride. Incidentally, with this new lightshed on our habitual faults and sins .we shall be able ~o take effective measures to guard against routine confes- 99 PATRICK M. REGAN Reuieto for Religious sions and to reap more abundant fruit from our reception" of this sacrament. Searching Abroad Besides examining within our souls, we must also ven-ture abroad seeking information concerning outselves. The judgments of others on our characters frequently offer revealing sidelights. For one thing there is less danger of their being prejudiced in our favor; hence, if they but will, they can tell with fair accuracy whether we are proud, or whatever it may be. Since accidental circumstances of time and place or of individual prejudice may falsify the judgment, the more trustworthy-opinion, is the one deduced from many testimonials extending over a long period of time. We gather thes~ by recalling what others said of our failings as children. Parents, family, teachers. companions, friends, playmates instinctively recognized outstanding traits, and in their dealings with us adapted themselves accordingly. Our present daily companions are also discerning of our main character weakness; nor do they always hesitate to tell us about it. Their manner of acting towards ui announces it; their joking remarks are often occasions for their pronouncing judgment on us. Nor- .must the advice of. our spiritual director be overlooked, since, if he knows and understands us, he can afford us .very superior help in our search abroad. Critics Disagree It sometimes happens that those we consult in our se,ar~ch abroad disagree in their opinions of us. A certain author gathered the criticisms of his book and found that it was good and bad, dull and entertaining, slow and swift; clumsy and graceful, strong and weak, a romance and a ser-mon, a drama and a tract. He concluded that, though 100 March, 1944 WHAT IS YOUR PREDOMINANT TENDENCY? critics always claim to be right, it was irfipossible for his book to be all these things. Shouldwe encounter the same rather exceptional experience, .we can console ourselves that nothing" of serious consequence is .lost; we have all the other means of self-knowledge still at our disposal. Ashing God rThe last and greatest help is prayer to the Holy Spirit ¯ for light. A strong conviction that we need divine help above all in this search is a powerful aid in this as in every spiritual undertaking. A short aspiration from the longer prayer of St. Augustine is quite appropriate: "Lord Jesus, may I come to know Thee, may I come to know myself." God "will gladly communic,ate, that knowledge, flooding otir souls with light as a reward of all our soul-searching. Humility, let it be n~ted again, is necessary, lest we be deaf to.every admonition, blind to every light, hardened against the love that corrects. God will be giving directions and inspirations about our predominant tendency, but without humility we shall ignore them. Confessors, retreat mas-ters, and others will be telling us ever so plainly of our besetting weakness, but we shall never heed unless, as we seek self-knowledge, we simultaneously grow~in humi~ity. Finally, salutary lessons in self-knowledge, to be gleaned from meditating on the example of Christ and the. saints, will never be learned unless the heart is hungering to know - self no matter what the~cost to that same. self. Godward Self-kn0wledge should lead us to God; otherwise it is not 0nly useless but even a great hindrance to our spiritual advancement. Well did St. Augustine pray: "Lord Jesus, may I dome to know Thee; may I come to know myself," In the foregoing explanations the demands of the subject 101 PATRICK M. REGAN made it necessary to focus attention on self-knowledge to ~he apparent exclusion of other phases of the spiritual life. This fact should .not betray us into putting too much emphasis on the need of.self-knowledge. We should also understand what true knowledge of self really is. A cita-- tidn from a former article on the subject (REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS, July, 1942) will make this clear. "Many are prejudiced against self-knowledge, even fear to undertake the task of acquiring it.; they misunderstand it. It is not to be .confused with morbid, introspection--that avid, uncontrolled interest in self which excludes all else and can be so harmful. No, the acquiring of self-knowledge pos-tulates not only looking inward, but also considerable looking outward to God, to our neighbor, and to our mod-els. the saints. Nor does the study of ~elf mean constant cold analysis of self, for the very reason that it can also be accomplished by noting the ~rirtues of others that impress us and reveal how much we fall short of perfect .design in our own lives. Self-analysis can be a considerable aid to self-knowledge but it does not lead to it infallibly. Some are expert at analyzing themselves, but their self-knowledge is mediocre; while'others have a deep knowledg~ of self, with very little power of self-analysis." As is evident, then, from the method suggested, the predominant tendency itself can be determined~ in a com-paratively~ short space of time, and with not too great diffi.- culty./ But the fruit of our examination we may re, ap all through life, developing for ourselves an intelligent, well-ordered, unified plan of lifeto meet our personal spiritual need and Weakness. This plan will be distinctive of our asceticism; it will assure us spedial'advantages in mounting GOdward. I02 A Suggest:ion ~rom !:he Fact:ory John E. Coogan, S.J. THE factory system, as is now. generally recognized, tended t6 dehumanize labor, making man almost a part of the machine. Little need was left him for intelligence; instead intelligence was "built into the machine." One great manufacturer .remarked, "Any one can work for me who has brains enough to hang up his hat." Even those workmen who had intelligence were often given no adequate opportunity to use it:" the .employer commonly thought of a workman as a "hand," at a time when even cattle were counted by the "head." "i~o stop this debasing of labor, Pius XI, in his encycli-ca!, "Reconstructing the Social Order," reminded employers that man is placed here on earth to develop and evolve all his faculties to the full, to the praise and glory of his Cre-ator. Hence, the Holy" Fathei: declared, "We deem it advis-able that the wage-contract shoul~d, when possible, be modified somewhat by a contract of partnership." Com-menting on these words, Father R. A. McGowan says the workman, in order to develop as ahuman being, should be given some voice in planning the general production policy of his industry, for thus "the soul of man, his will and mind, and his body can breathe more freely, and grow and develop in such work, whereas under any form of regimen-tion., his soul is .starved." If some such participation of subordinates in the planning of the operation of a business enterprise is so, necessary for their full development, it might well be asked whether we are as yet taking full. advantage of such par- 103 ,JOHN E, COOGAN Review for Religious ticipation in our rdigious communities. Among us the practice is of course used widely by a few, less widely by many. But are we even close to exhausting ~ts possibili- " ties? It is true that among us the need in general is not so extreme. Few of our religious are employed at tasks involving continuous mechanical repetition; hence their tasks usually give more opportunity for self-exp~ession and mental development than do the tasks of the ordinary industrial employe. But on the other 1-Jand our religious, because of their frequently superior abilities and education, are capable of a more notable self-exp~ession; hence they languish more if they lack the appropriate opportunities. Every man, the Pope said, is meant by God to develop alI " his faculties to the full. The whole man gives himself to God through the vows; and the whole man, with all his talents, be they one or five, should be used and brought to flower. Since those words of Plus XI urging employers to give their workmen a chance to .use their minds, many employ-ers have seen fit to give such men some share in the formu-lation of the production policies of management. The reason for this more generous policy need not have been that urged by Plus, for even from the standpoint of their own interests employers have cbme to see the wisdom of using more fully the talents of their workmen. It has occurred to them that "the average intelligence ,of the working force is higher .in the United States than in any other country, and native ingenuity, combined with intimate familiarity with processes, can not fail to produce ideas that may advantageously be adopted by the man-agement." This movement,looking to the increase of employe participation in solving the problems of industry has been developing for some years, but early in 1942 it w~is tre- 104 ¯ March, 1944 A SUGGESTION FROM THE FACTORY mendously accelerated when War Production Chief Don-ald Nelson asked that throughout the munitions industry labor-management committees be formed in the interest of increased production. He felt that the laborer's brain-power wa~ largely going, unused where, no positive and .systematic encouragementwas given him to place his sug-gestions before the management with an assurance that he ~vbuld get a respectful hearing, and for fruitful, suggestions a;suitable keward. Within fifteen months after Mr. Nel-son'sp~ 0posal at least 2,000 committees looking to such cooperative efforts Were formed. The result has been a gusher of employe ideas that has contributed heavily to the success of our war effort. In one .automobile plant alone a total of more than 116,000 ideas have been submitted, of which almost 20,000 have been accepted. "War bonds, ranging as high as $1,000 .in value, are awarded for the ideas and $660,895 has been paid out. during the 15-month period. Cash payments--currently are running better than ~ $90,000 monthly:' in that one auto plant. Many of the awards are going to young women still llttle more than novices at machine methods. One such "hand," working on a rifle barrel, promptly suggested an ingeniou~ change in boring thatbrought her a $1,000 award. Another devised a pencil-like tool for picking up small rivet washers, thu~ eliminating the tedious task of picking them up by hand and thus increasing her output. Another hit upon a clever arrangemeiat for telescoping a three-step job into one. '~ In One plant manufacturing cannon, a single machine was devised to take the place ~of ten. machihes, thus "reducing the time on a gun barrel operation from seventy-five'minutes to four.In another plant a worker's sugges-tion reduced the rifling of the barrel of an automatic cannon from three hours and twer;ty-five minutes to thirty minutes. 105 JOHN E. COOGAN Review for Religious ¯ In East Pittsburgh alone, in a single year, the' Westing-house Electric gave awards for more than 2,000 sugges-tions, the largest of these to a grandfather of sixty-two years. And thus the story goes. One device, designed in spare time from scrap mate'rials, has raised the output of certain army tank fire extin, guisher parts from 100 to 400 per eight-hour working shift. Another machine fhat bites off 400,000 rivets a day from spoo.ls of wire is .likewise the happy idea of afactory "hand." Among the first 500 sug-gestions submitted at Douglas Aircraft were enough good ideas tO producea saving of 2,000 man-hours per day. General Electric received more than 40,000: suggestions in ;i single year, 12,000 of these proving worthy of accept-ance. Such suggestions pouring in across the country.have iffsingle instancesmeant savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars, one as much as five hundred thousand dollars in a single year: and this in addition to the many lives saved through speedingup our ~winning of the war. NO wonder, then, that the War Production Board has insti-tuted a system of merit awards, corresponding,to military decorations, for employes who devise means, of increasing or improving war production; these awards" to be in addi- ¯ tion to cash prizes and medals bestowed by employers themselves. The success of this encouragement of employe sugges-tions has been such as to guarantee the continued use of the scheme by intelligent industiialists "after the war., Thor-oughly discredited is the notion that. the workman is only a "hand." One great manufacturer has .predicted .that the .next .fifty years will see "the exploring of the unlimited possibilities of human beings workilag together for a corn- .mort cause ' through mutual understanding, respect, and teamwork." 106 ~- The success of this democri, tizing of industry is but an echo of the success that analogous efforts have long since met with at times in religion. It was in the interest of free-dom for the subordinate that St. Ignatius refu~ed to attempt to prescribe in detail for meeting contingencies that could be only dimly foreseen. "Cut your coat according to the cloth," was the extent of his direction in commissioning a subordinate. Ironclad~directions canonly make for inflexible, blind driving. Wise religious supe-riors have felt themsel~res fortunate at being able to borrow from the pruden.ce and variedexperience of their communi-ties. It is proverbial that those best fitted to govern are the most willing to be governed. In consequence of their -reluctance to rise above their fellows, they minimize their difference of status as much as is compatible.with discipline. Consequently they lend a ready ear to the well-meant sug-gestions of their subjects. Admirers of a more militarized religious discipline have demurred at such deference, feeling it somehow beneath the digni~y of superiors; it is for such that our~ remarks are mbst especially intended. They resemble a friend of New-man's, who felt the latter was being talked down to by an ,intellectual inferior. But the humble author of "Lead, Kindly Light," quietly replied: "'Ar~/or~e can lecture me, and I'll be grateful for it." Thus the large-minded, kindly superior sees no loss of dignity in tt~rning an interested ear to the last and least of the community. .Such ~ superior reflects that only the Holy Father is infallible, and even he only within limits. He knows too that many of the ablest minds in the Church have spent long lives in complete subjection; fortunate the superiors who were able to profit by their wisdom. Many, too, who were once in positions of authority, return with matured minds to the ranks; how valuable may the suggestions of 107 JOHN I~. I~OOGAN" Review for Religious these.be to even the most competent superior~ governing in the, awesome .place of Christ'and only. too. aware of his limitations~ . ~ ~ . ~ ." A Writer of conferences for priests tells t.he: story--v~e hope it is only :that,--of a pastorwho expressed his opinion of his. assistant and house-keeper in the. words, ~'I'm the only One around here-who has brains enough to commit a mortal sin.': That frame of mind will seem inconceivable to the true superior. It~means, for one thing, drawing the blinds against the light; it means poisoning the wells. ¯ In matters coficerned with the salvation and perfection Of immortal souls, there can never be too much light; the .wills dannot flow too clear and pure. If, as has been beau-tifully. said, "One soul' is 'enough for a diocese,"' then the gove.rnment of a religious community can use all the light and wisdom.that might be found in an entire ecumenical council. But readiness to listen to and encourage the suggestions of subjects insures much more than increased .light .in gov-ernment; it makes for more docile, loyal, cdntented, sub-jects: Knowing that their views have been treated with. respect, subjects obey. more promptly-and interiorly. Treated like adults, like adults they now obey. The per-s~ n of the superior is loved and deferred to; and, as St. Ig-natius reminds us, "It is easy to' obey where we-love'that which is.commanded." Gracious superiors thus make for gracious subjects; these subjects in turn are gracious to.their own cbarggs. The example.is fertile and its fruits increase. Another very worth-while result of such respect shown bysuperiors for the judgment of their subjects has been the latter's increased s,elf,respect. An eminent, holy English priest exclaimed some years ago, "Oh, the timidity of the virtuous.". Sometimes.one may wonder whether we do not inculcate in young religious diffidence in:place of humil- 108 March, 1944 A SUGGESTION FROM.THE FACTORY ity.Diffidenceisparalyzing, humility is clarifying. Diffi-dence salts, ~"I can-.do nothing"; humility says, ~"I can:diS all things in Him Who strengthens me.'.'. Sometimes young ¯ people .come to. religion who have. had. responsible pos.i~ tions in the world, and .yet by Vow-time they have hardly enough self-confidence left to pay.their wayon a street-tar. At an age when their companions in the world are managing, large .businesses, these religious tremble at making, the. simplest public appearance or at meeting a, stranger. ¯ Timidity is' not. an apostolic virtue; self-respect emphatically is. Self-respect is prope.r surely to an "Alter Cbristus" or to a "Sponsa Christi," and the deference of _ superiors to. subjects; even to the youngest, by which .that self~respect is built tip must be pleasing to.Christ. It is not enough, as the wise superior knows, that this deference .be shown only to a few.The last and least are most exposed to crippling diffidence and self-contempt~ and they espe.- cially should be encouraged. Even those inclined to be.less-than- loyal~ can be won through this deference; this of course is an essential part of the Boys Town method of Father Flanagan. It is a truism to say tha~ the superiors of tomorrow are the subjects of today. They are now presumably being trained for their high destiny. In.a democratic Order sub-jects can hardly be ~predestined for superiorships and .be given formal and specific training as such. A future Latin teacher may be prepared by courses in Latin, and so of the other branches of instruction. Obviously, future Superiors cannot be set apart and trained in this manner; something of the present system, of relying on Providence for their development must always remain true. But wise"supe~. riots will continue to lend Providence a hand by keeping close to their future successors, letting them see and feel andmwith due proportion--participate in government-in- 109 JOHN -action. ¯ The modern pedagogy is, "Learn.by doing"; and even in the matter of superiorship there is no other way. The experienced superiorfeels, as did the Baptist, "You ¯ must increase; I must decrease," in order that, when another generation must take the helm, it will, be prepared. A final advantage found resulting from the superior's respect for the judgment of the ~ubjects is.a great love of ¯ their vocation: "All good thin, gs have come to me together ¯ with her." Religious are enthusiastic inspirers of new .-recruits when they find supreme contentment in their, reli-gious home. On the.other hand, the attitude of the dis~ satisfied religious to prospective enlistments is, "Enter at your peril." And how could they promise a newcomer the joy they themselves have not found? How important, . then, is this encouragement of joy-in-vocation, as a means of gaining the vocations needed now especially in view of . their recent sharp decline. If religious subjects are encouraged to.a greater initia-' rive, they will quite naturally manifest a greater enthusiasm for the common cause. And here, perhaps, lies a danger. Enthusiasm tends to become insistent. Hence it might be well to remark inclosing that, even with the humblest superior, subjects must always be deferential. After all, it is the superior Who holds the place of God. And while suggestions from a subject may well be in order, not so his insistent demand. Nothing would so discredit a sug-gestion as its giver's failure in religious spirit; for "the wisdom of this world is folly before God." Intelligence is not enough; Satan has that in abundance. But the wise superior will know how to moderate the naturally impe,tu-ous without at the same time discouraging the timid; he will not "quench the smo.king flax." 110 Decisions orr Ho}y January II, 1~44: The Sacred Congregation of Rites, in the pres-ence of Pope Pius XII, approved the decree tuto in the cause for the canonization of Blessed Frances Xavier. Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. hll the prerequisites to h~r formal canonization are now completed. B~sides the cause of Blessed Mother Cabrini mentioned above, there are four other causes completed for canonization. They are those of Blessed Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort, founder of the Daughters of Wisdom and of the Company of Mary, who died in ¯ 1716; Blessed Joan-Elizabeth ,Bichier des Ages, cofounder of the Daughters of the Cross, who died in 1838; Blessed Bernardino Rea-lini, Jesuit orator who died in 1616; and,~ Blessed John Peter de Britto, Jesuit missionary ~vho was martyred in India. in 169,3. Five causes .for beatification have also been compl~ted: those of Ven. Contardo. Ferrini, professor of RomanLaw in various Italian universities, who died in .1903; Ven. Mother Joanna Delanoue, foundress of the Sisters 6f St. Anne of Providence, who died in' 1.736~; Ven. Mother Gioachima de Vedruna de Mas, foundress Of ~he Carmel-ites of Charity,. who died in 1854; Ven, Vicenta Maria Lopez Vicuna, fouhdress of the Spanish Institute. of the Daughters of Mary !mm]lculate, who died in 1'890: and Ven. Alice LeClerc, foundress of the Institute of Our Lady,. who died in 1622. August 18, 1943: The Sacred Penitentiary published a decree an-nouncing that Pope Plus XII granted the following indulgences for saying the prayer, "Lord, save us: we perish": (I) A partial indulgence of 500 days to all who say, the prayer 'with contrite heart. (2) A plenary indulgence, under, the Usual conditions, to all who say the aspiration daily for a full month. .° SOME year's ago, before the Legion of Decency made its influence felt, it was said that the rule in Hollyw.ood was, "The 'badder,' the better!"--that is, the-worse the moral tefidency Of. a. cinema, the more Profitable it was. Whether that statement was true or not, the expression lends itselfto another more wholesome interpretatio~i. In.many cases it is.very dear ~hat.,the worse a thing0is in one respect, the better it is in others. Thus, the harder the examination, the:greater' the satisfaction of the student .-after be'has passed, it. Thelonge~ the workingman's toil, the.higher his pay, especially if it be at the rate of time and a half. The more serious the peri!.that a soldier or sailor .faces successfully, the more honorable the medal or cross . "that he will receive. What is true in life generally is true. particularly in the moral and spirituallife. ¯ The greater a man's trials, the holier and happier he can become. Two classes of people especially could profit by filling their souls with the conviction and persuasion that the :: "badd'er".a thing is from.certain points of.view, thebetter :.,it is from others. Evidently it would be a Source of solace. .and strength to all who are suffering to Se~ that the v~iSrse ¯ "! their plight may seem, to b.e., the'.better 'it :really is,. when considered from the divihe point o.f ,view and in the light of eternity. Again, there are always some strong and vigorous persons who are looking for the shortest and straightest, though it be also the steepest and hardest, path up the mountain of sanctity. Both those who are over- .112 "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" taken with misfortune and those who are.seeking thebest short cut to high holiness should find it advantageous to consider the truths implied in the words "the 'badder,' the better!" And any sensible person who finds that he has to put up with something that is not to his tastemay well be pleased to discover a means of making the best of a bad situation. Pain in the Christian Economy In God's original and preferred plan for man there was no place for pain. Everything was to be p!easant. But since Adam and Eve and all sinners after them have wrongly and perversely sought pleasure, though in itself it is no evil, it is central in the.whole order of providence sub- - sequent to the fall that there should be pain and suffering, and that the happiness of man should be looked for and achieved very largely through them. Man's guilt in tasting forbiddefl pleasure and the unbalanced tendency of his-nature toward pleasiare were to be remedied through pain. Disorder, once introduced into human life, naturally works itself out in difficulty and distress, if not disaster. But it is the merciful and marvelous plan of God that we should convert the consequences of disorder into means to a higher order, the effects of stupidity into helps to a more excellent wisdom, the results of malice into aids to a nobler goodness and sanctitiy. 0 felix culpa! Hence in the entire scheme of the Incarnation and redemption suffering gets a more prominent ~mphasis. It is a leading characteristic of Christ Himself, of His sorrowful Mother, of the Apostles, of all who have done much for the Church, of all who h~ve reached an outstanding degree of sanctity, and in fact of the whole Mystical Body of Christ. In view of the function and purpose of suffering in the whole of the present Chris-tian economy, it is not surprising that, certain necessary 113 (3. AUGUSTINE ELLARD' ¯ conditions being presupposed, the greater the pain, the greater the supernatural results that may be expected. However, pain of itself is not a good, but an evil (physical) ; not a value, but the very opposite, Hospitals, concentration camps, and the world in general are full of people in torment, and unfortunately many of them'do not become better by reason of their suffering; rather, they deteriorate. But pain, borne well, put to morally good ends, can and does occasion an immense amount of good. .The.infinitely wise and loving prbvidence of God sends or permits all.the evils that afflict us for definite good pur-poses, and indeed proportionate good purposes. His ¯ immediate aims are often obscure andindiscernible, but His ultimate and supreme ends we know very well, and the time wil! come when His whole plan will be clearly revealed ¯ to us. Whether or not we see His proximate intentions, we can realize them by prudently, applying His precepts and counsels to the facts of our situation. The wise and good man considers the evils that befall him as parts of the grand divine plan for the universe, reacts as God wishes that he should,.and thus wills and achieves the divine purposes, in this way he pleases God and satisfies himself, and 'also, since our destinies are all bound together, he helps others toward less discomfort and more comfort. Limitations The dictum "The 'bad&r,' the better!" is proposed as true generally, not absolutely and without limitations. If, for example, a man is losing his faculties and sinking into .the moral impotency .of dementia, coma, or death, then it would not be true in the sense in which it is taken here. Sufferirig--and how much there is of it!-~--that is the con-sequence of. one's own folly or fault is not of much use .until at least the error be corrected and good will re-estab- "114 March, 1944. "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" lished. But then al! that is affirmed of the value of suffer-ing is verified. Difficulty may diminish, as well as increase," the moral worth of a good action; it may even completely prevent it from coming into being. Henceit is not corn: mended for its own sake: But if, other factors remaining equal, difficulty calls forth greater goodwill, then it will have the advantages that we are about to indicate. Nothing in these considerations would justify one in imprudently or presumptuously or morbidly seeking to make more trouble for oneself. suffering is like that Pain is an evil, and The rational, attitude to take toward of God Himself in His providence. therefore, except in view of propor-tionate good; to be avoided whenever possible. But,~ in the present state of things, it is also a necessary evil, and, what is more to the point for us, an evil from which intel-ligence and goodwill and effort can extract good. Hence the prudent man will take the ills of life, and, when inspired by the Holy. Ghost, even voluntarily inflict others upon himself--such as, for instance, fasting--in the spirit in which God Himself chastens and corrects His children and puts them upon their mettle. " These limitations being undeistood, we may consider in a simple and practical manner some of the salutary~ truths implied in the prindiple "The 'badder,' the better!" General Values ' In general, therefore; the greater the difficulty or dis-tress or dishonor, the greater.one's opportunity, by reacting ¯ appropriately, to exercise and perfect one's love for the Infinite Goodness of the Blessed -Trinity, to increase the divine glory, to. compensate for past deficiencies; to aug-ment one's own eternal beatitude, and to assist souls in the way of salvation and sanctification. In this sense, the worse a thing is in time, the betterit may be in its results in eter- 1:5 G~ AUGUSTINE ELLARD Review ~:or Religious .,nity. The more Unpleasant it is, humanly sigeaking, the more valuable it may be according to the divine standards of judgment. The Worse it is physically, the better it m'ay be morally and spiritually. The ~harper the pain, the greater the hope of enjoying keener pleasure in the future. The more narrowly pinching one's poverty, the greater the likelihood of amassing better and enduring riches in the h~reafter. The more heartbreaking the mental anguish, thet more exquisite the joys bf the reward that may b~ expected for bearing it well. The deeper a humiliation well borne, the more highly exalted the honor a man can look forward to before God and eventually before the wh~le human race. The harder the .temptation to struggle against, the more glorious the crown of justice that awaits the vic-tor. As creatures become less and less satisfactory, it Is easier to find satisfaction in the CreatOr. In prop6rtion as lovely persons or things of the world allure and beguile us less, the more apt we are to retain the right pe~spectixre and sense of proportion with r~ference to ~reatures and the Cre-ator. To sum up, the worse the evil that afflicts a person, 6f whatsoever nature it may be, thegreater and better the ~pfirposes of God in allowing it, for H~mself, for the suf-ferer, and for others. It is precisely toward the accomplish-ment of these aims, neither more nor less, that these reflec-tions are directed. Means to this Attitude. There are two great means Of truly making the ¯ ".badder" thing turn out to be the better thing. The first is to develop a deep, calm, whole-s0uled, pratical, conviction of these two facts: first, that God in His superior wisdom, benevolence, and power really is directing everything that touches us, including the sins and injustices of others toward us, to our own true and best good; and, secondly, 116 March, 1944 "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" that the best possible thing that we can do for ourselves is to show our good sense and good w{11 by fully co-oper-ating with the operations of divine providence. When God's immediate aims are obscure, then ggeate~r faith and confidence are in order. God could of course give us better opportunities, but wd can never do better for ourselves than to make the most of the opportunties that He does give us. The Other great means is earnestly to cultivate, by serious reflection.and prayer, a true and just appreciation or evaluation of the excellence of the persons whose interests are concerned, and of the magnitude and multiplicity of those interests, in time and in eternity. Among the values suggested by the rule "The 'badder,' the better," the following may be noted. Special Values in the Present Difficulty or dist'ress is a present challerige to one's intelligence and goodwill. It is there to be overcome and vanquished: at least that is the magnanimous attitude toward it. ¯ It tends to provoke and evoke all that is best in a man, to put it to the test, to improve ~nd perfect it. The humble soul will not be presumptuous and overconfident in its own strength, but neither should it be diffident with regard to God. " 'For strength is made perfect in infir-mity.' Most gladly, then, will I rather boast of mine infir-mities, that so there may rest upon me the si:rength of Christ. Wherefore I am well content in infirmities, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in straitsnfor Christ's sake. For when I am Weak, then I am strong!" (II Corinthians 12:9, "10).1 It has always been considered one of the most remark-able manifestations of God's excellence" that He is wise and good and strong enough to.draw good out of every evil that aNew Testament texts in this article are cited from the Westminster Version. 117 AUGUSTINE ELI]ARD Reoieto ~o~ Religious occurs in His universe, and no doubt the w0~se the evil,:the greater the good must be. "We know that for them~that love God.He worketh all things together unto good,~ for them that are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). It is understood that those who love God are intel-ligent and virtuous enough to co-operate with Him. The Christian life was long ago defined as an imitation of God; and to be able to extract good out of evil, and greater goods out of greater evils, would be a mark of an excellent Chris-tian life. In increasing one's efforts to meet the challenge, one's own wisdom and goodness and power are perfected and made more and more like God's. Thus difficulty over-come or pain well borne gives one something of 'which to be supremely proud. "We. exult in the hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we exult.in our tribulations also, knowing ,that tribulation worketh endurance, and endurance experience, and experience hope: And hope doth not prove.false" (Romans 5:2-5). An aviator: who is trying to run up a high record of victories against enemy planes would seek out, rather than shun, dangerous encounters; so. the good man who would like to distinguish himself in the service of the Divine King would look upon-any hardship or surfeiting as so much opportunity to win glory for his Sdvereign and for him-self. The very best physici)ins and surgeons prefer the more difficult, the "more interesting," cases, because thus they have a chance to use and to improve their superior ~kill. They feelthe challenge and are glad to accept it. Many good people have moments when they regret that they do not, have more occasion to showthe magnanimity and heroism that are in them. To be consistent, they ought to acknowledge practically, when the time comes to put up with the unpleasant, that the worse it is, the greater the opportunity for which they have been looking. Since the 1'18 Marc& 1944 "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" time of Aristotle, the difficult has been-considered to be in a peculiar way the province of art and virtue. St. Paul knew and welcomed the.challenge we speak of: "But as for me, Heaven forbid that I should make boast of aught save the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified to me, and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14). With. Respect to Past Our principle contains most 'valuable lessons with respect to the past. Perhaps nothing discourages people more in their moral and spiritu.al lives than a past record which brings shame rather than pride. Even here these people have their chance. The worse they have been, the greater their need to make up for what they havelost, and hence the more welcome the opportunity to. effect that compensation. When one.has sinned, the sensible attitude to take Would seem to be: "Willy hilly, now I must suffer for it! The sooner it is Over, the more patient I am, the better!" The deeper one is in the red in his accounts with God, the more solicitous one should be about getting into the black again. A person who attacks his past in the spirit of "the 'badder,' the better!" Would have the optimism, ~lan, and force that go with taking the offensive. A little punishmer~t here may save one from much torment in, pur-gatory, and besides it has a positive value (merit), whereas that after death does not. The souls already undergoing the penalties of ptirgatory must have an overwhelming conviction that they would have done well to bethink themselves seriously and see the advantages of their disad-vantages, the comforts of theirdiscomforts~ ~nd the abili-ties of their disabilities. When a man sins or even omits the better alternative in a choice between two goods, God's antecedent plan for His own glory is to that extent frustrated. God would like 119 G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD Review for Reliqious ~o see the loss made good, unless, 6f course,, it betoo late. In sending or permitting difficulty or tribulation, He intendsand hopes that it Will be used for that end: Thus again, the worse one's affliction, the better the chance it gives to satisfy God for past failures. ,Many devout people nowadays talk much about making reparation fo~ t.he injuries and insults that have been heaped upon the patient and-!ong-suffering FIe~art of 3esus. D0 they realize always that the better their patience in. all that is disagreeab!e, the fuller the measure in which they make that reparation? Other fervent, souls: would imitate St~ Paul and would make up in their "flesh :what is lacking to the sufferings of Christ, on behalf of his.b6dy, which fs the Church'~ (Colossians 1:24). The more and better they suffer, the less they will leave lacking to that Mystical Bgdy. For ~he Future ." But it is with reference to future values that :the rule :"'T.he 'bad&r,' the better!" is best verified. ,The most obvious advantage here is the merit of suffering well. The tiniest and most minuscule bit of discomfort, or dishonor borne meritoriously means an increase of grace: of.sancti-fying~ grace,".that, is, of higher participation in the nature and life of. the.Divinity; of the infused virtues and the,gifts ¯ of the Holy Spirit, that.is, of proximate principles of dei- ¯ form thought, volition, .and activity; of actual graces, that is;.o.f-salutary ideas,., impulses, and aids helping one to live .On:a~ higher plane of the rational and the diyine life; and finally; of a richer share in the . ineffable, beatitude of the most blessed Trinity in. heaveia .throughout the unending aeons of eternity. One's ability to behold: and contemplate .the,Infinite Truth, to love.th4 Infinite Goodness, to enjo.y ¯ .the.Infinite. Beauty, and to.rejoice in the company of: the Divine Persons and : of: .the .whole . celestial society, is pro- .t!20 March, l 9 4 4 ¯ " "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER'.' portionately augmented. God is glorified more," the quondam sufferer himself thrills with a more exquisite sense of the divine beatitude, and everybody else in that. blissful region is better pleased and more happy. And Goal repays sincere human effort£, not according to results, but according to a generous~cost-plus system. Meanwhile his own moral stature will be rising at an accelerated speed. Faith will be clarified,, hope fortified., ahdcharity intensified; prudence will become more sharply discerning, religion more devout, humility deeper, fortitude stronger, patience more enduring, and magnanimity greater. Really and consistently to face suffering with ,the disposi-tion "the worse, the better!" is no child's play, and if it be kept up in severe trials and over a protracted period' 6f time, the man who does it shows himself to be something of a hero. If personal sanctity is raised to higher,levels, then, other things being equal, one's efficiency and ability to.d0 God's work and to save souls will be increased also. General resolutions and offerings of self to God cast in some such form as this: "All that Thou Willest, O. God, and the harder, the better!" should prove to be more ¯ effectual. If in the crisis of temptation a person can exclaim ,"The harder, the better!" or, "The worse I have been, the better I am determined to be!" his chances Of coming of( ~he victor will be enhanced. . A JoyousAttitude Taking this view of the unpleasant makes it less unpleasant and more bearable. Evidently this attitude ig less pessimistic and more cheerful. Moreover, such a posi-tive and aggressive reaction,, besides conferring the advan-tages .of offensive strategy over the merely defensive, lessens pain, partly because of the consciousness" of .doing the nobler thing, and partly because a man suffers less when 121' G. AOGUSTINE ELLARD Review ~'or Rdigiotts ¯ he is active and not simply passive. Every football player and every soldier knows that while he" is in actual combat . minor hurts are not felt so keenly. The saying of the old Roman poet that it is sweet as.well as honorable to die for the fatherland, has received universal approbation. For a much stronger reason it ought to be sweet and consoling to suffer for God's sake, or for souls' ~sake, and that swee(ness should bear a proportion both to the loveliness of the Great Beloved and to the amount of evil endured. Everybody who has been in love knows well from experience that there is a certain satisfaction in demonstrating love by sacrifice. As a matter of fact, it can only be suggested, not at all adequately expressed, that in suffering in union witch ,Jesus crucified holy men and women have been thrilled with the most exquisite and indescribable delights. Not that they ceased to feel their agony; but with it, or after it, and by reason of it, they also felt the most rapturous and ecstatic joys. "For according as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so through Christ doth our comfort also abound" (II Corinthians 1:5); they who "for a while. h~i.ve beeia grieved somewhat by divers teHptations . . .~ exult with an unspeakable and glorified joy" (I Peter 1: 6-9). ¯ Moreover, heavier crosses have always been consid-ered a sign of divine predilection. To acquire the heroic attitude.toward suffering,.cert~iin. ardent souls will find themselves helped most by .such reflections as the following. Who is desus who suffered for me.? .What His dignity, goodness, lovableness? How worthy of being pleased even if He had never felt incon-venience because of me? How much didHe suffer for my sake? With what love, mercy, patience, and l'ong-suffering? Why did He suffer? What does He desire of me? With what right? How much-pleased would He be ifI.~hould suffer with Him? To.what extent could I.thus 122 March, 1944 "THE 'BADDER,' THE BETTER" help Him "accomplish His aims in enduring so much pain and humiliation and. such a death?' How much could I aid His Church and His cause with souls? .Would it gratify Christ to see me pr.efer.ring poverty, pain, and opprobrium, not of course for their own sake--that would be perverse-- but for His sake and to further His designs? Pertinent Prayers John of the Crossl-who taught, and in his own person illustrated the fact, that one who is destinedfor a very high degree of divine union, "of total transformation into God,:' must first undergo very severe and thoroughgoing purifications, was v~.ont to pray: "O God, to suffer and to be despised forThee!.". Before Teresa of Avila reached the summit of her myst.ical ascensions, she, Whose latter years ~vere one great battle with difficulty and distress of every sort, would exclaim: "O Lord, either to suffer or to die!" The Italian Carmelite, Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi, outdid her: "O Lord let me suffer or let me die---or rather--let me live on that I may suffer mote!" But before the end Of Teresa's life, .when a furious st6rm of troubles was begin-ning to break over her head, she wrote to a less stouthearted confidant and collaborator:. "Let use make the :attempt, ¯ . . for the more we suffer, the better it Will be" (Walsh, Saint TereSa o[ Avila, 567). It would seem that anybody with faith and reason could pray: "O God, enable me through Thy grace to see ~11 that befalls mein the light.and setting of Tby wise and benevolent and pcwerfu[ providence, to realize practically that Thou makest all things, good and bad, to work together for the best interests of those who love Thee and react rightly, and. thus really and truly to achieve Tl~y beneficent, purposes; all this, out of love for the infinite, .eternal, and ineffable goodness of Thy most blessed Trin- 123 G.' AUGUSTINE ELLARD ity; out of zeal to co-operate with Thee in communicating that same goodness and Thy knowledge and Thy love of it; out-of eagerness to participate in the redemptive sufferings and work of. the God-man crucified; out of fear lest, being too. shortsighted and cowardly, I incur more grievous woes; and finally from a longing to share, and to bring others to share, in Thy own inexpressible and everlasting beatitude." All things considered, whatever is to be said of the theory of evil, the best practical philosophy of evil seems tO be found in the alliterative and ungrammatical oxy-moron: "The 'badder,' the better!" It provides a rational ¯ and Christian means of transforming negative, into posi-tive values, disorder into order, discomfort into comfort, and dishonor into honor. BOOKLET NOTICES Sp;rifual ChecI(-up for Religious, by Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D. A good booklet t:or occasional examination of conscience and for monthly" recollection. 32 pages. Single copies, 10 cents: 9 cents each in lots of 25; 8 c~nts each in lots of' 100. Published by: The Catechetlcal Gdild, St. Paul, Minnesota. Heart of Jesus. Our Consolatlon---Special devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the Sick and Afflicted. written and compiled bs' Clara M. Tiry. Contains a veritable treasury of devotions in honor of the Sacred Heart. 72 pages. Single copies, 15 cents: 4 copies for 50 cents: 8 copies for $1.00; cloth bound copies, "50 cents each. Published by: The Apostolate of Suffering, 1551 North 34th ~t., Milwaukee 8, Wisconsin. Good Samaritan Almanacman almanac forthe sick. 64 pages Single copies, 25 cents; 5 copies for $1.00. Published by: The Apostolate of Suffering. What Tho Mass Means, an explanatio~ of the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass, .by the Rev. Victor J. Hintgen. For study clubs. 92 pages. Single copies, 30 cents: redhction in pri~e for 6 or. more. Published by: Our Sunday Visitor Press, Hunt-ington, Indiana. Listens-It's God's Word, an introduction to the New Testament, by the Rev. '"Victor 3. Hintgen: For study clubs. 144 pages. Single cop!es, 30 cents; re~tuc-tion in price for 6 or.more. Published by~ Our Sunday Visitor Press. Modern Youth and Chastity, by Gerald Kelly, S.J. in collaboration with B, R. Fulkerson, S.3., and C. F. Whitford, $,J. Formerly published for restricted cir-i: ulation under the.title Chastity and Catholic Youth. 105 pages. Single copies, 25 cents; 12 copies, $2.70; 25 copies, $5.00;. 50 copies, $8.75: 100 copies, $17.50. Published by: The Queen's Work, 3742 West Pine Blvd. St. Louis 8, Missouri. 124 Concerning Voca!:ions The Editors ~a~JlTH this number of the REVIEW we. close our correspondence W on Vocations. Since we asked for communications on this subject (July, 1943) we have received a number of letters, suggestions~ leaflets, programs; and so forth. We give .he.re a brief account of the material sent us that has not yet been mentioned in the REVIEW. Booklet : Follbw Him, by Godfrey Poage, C.P., is a vocational booklet on the Sisterhoods. It is the companion .booklet to the boys' Follow Me (see REVIEWFOR RELIGIOUS; II, p. 385). It is an dxcellent piece 6f workmin explanation, pictures, and in its universal appeal.J~ll possible .communities are listed and briefly described. No favoritism is shown. This-. booklet is distributed.exclusively by the Thomas .More Book Shop, 22 West Moriroe St., Chicago 3, Illinois. Prices: single copies, .postpaid, 15 cents; 2 or more copies, 10 cents each; per hundred, $8.00. Programs. Father Poage sent us the Program for the Promotion of Voca-tions for use in the Archdiocese of Chicago during Vocation month. The essential points in the program.are of value, not merely during Vocation month, but all through the year. . . To deepen the spiritual life of the students ik the first objectiv~ of the Chicago program. This is to be done by prayer, more frequent Mass and Communion, and the cultivation of a spirit of sacrifice and ~enerosity. The program points out that we should ~train our youth more in the use of ejaculatory prayer, as there is a common misunder-standing that by "prayer" we mean long prayers such as the Rosary or the Stations. With regard to frequent Mass and Communion the suggestion is made that all too often boys and girls have the.f_alse notion that they must go to confession every time they, go to Com-munion; hence we should impress them with th~ truth that ,confes-sion is "necessary only after mortal sin. Thi,s, of course, does-not mean that we are not to teach our students ihe manifold advantages 125 THE EDITORS Review for Religious. of fre~quent c0nfessio~. It seems to us that the last point in the program--the cultivation of a spirit of generosity and sacrifice-- cannot bestressed too much. Today, in particular, all vocations-- not merely religious--require such a spirit; and only too often fail-ures in marriage, as well as in religion and the priesthood, must be attr~ibuted to sheer selfishness. To impart adequate instruction is the second.objective of ~he Chicago program. This. is to be done by allowing questions, by suggesting reading (especially of Follow Him and Follow Me), and by simple talks on such subjects as: The Signs of a Vocation; How to Overcome Ditticult.ies; The Apostolate' that Lies Open; and The Need of Generosity in Following the Promptings of Grace. The. Mission Helpers of the" Sacred Heart (West Joppa Road, Towson, Maryland). sent in this sample program for a Dag of Retreat made by the Our Lady of Good Counsel Club: i0:30: Assembly in Chapel, H~'mn, Prayer. ' 10:45: Is It for Me?--conference by a Sister. I 1 : 15 : Interviews, Visits to Chapel, Stations. 12:00: Lunch. 1:00: Rosary (on the grounds). 1:30: What Would It Mean?-:-cbnference by a Sister. 2:00: Interviews, Visits to Chapel, Stations. 3:30: Address--by a priest. ¯ 4: 15: Benediction. The re£reatants were urged to keep strict silence. Bdoks and pamphlets about various religious communities were placed at their 'disp6sal. An~l they were asked to make known iheir requests for any specifil literature beforethe opening of the retreat. Leaflets l~ather Thomas Bowdern, S.J., (The Creighton University, Omaha 2, Nebraska), once made a. nation-wide survey of those who followed vocations to the priesthood and the religious life during the y6ars i919-1929. He :has written several articles about his survey. and be now prints a 4opage leaflet giving some of the principal findings and a definite program for fo~teriiag vocations~ The leaflet is entitled A Study of Vocations. It may be obtained from Father Bowdern--~2 copies for 5 cents. Marcl~f 1944 . CONCERNING VOCATIONS The Sisters of the Good Shepherd i931 Blair Avenue, St. Paul 4, Minr~esota) sent us a very attractive leaflet, also a postcard folder containing 22 pictures, used to inform lik.ely candidates of the tre-mendous apostolate carried on by the Sisters. Communications Reverend Fathers : For many years while.traveling about the country as a missioner I have been absorbed in the problem of the dearth of vocations. Here are a few brief observations that may throw some additional light on the subject. ~ There is no foundation for the complaint that our Catholic . youth lack the spirit of sacrifice. The communities that have been overwhelmed with vocations are those which offer the greatest hard-ships. The newer communities attract in proportion many more voca-tions than the older established communities. Some of the former had more subjects than missions, while many of the latter had to refuse new missions for lack of subjects¯ Some may attribute this to-, their American foundation, while too many of the older communb ties were of "foreign" origin. Another factor that is Overlooked is pu'blicity.° Many of~- the older communities are forbidden by rule to u~e persuasion in seeking subjects. This has.been interpreted rigorously as forbidding adver-tising of any kind. .If the community in question is not established in the large Catholic centers, it can hardly expect to attract vocations' there. One cannot join a community unless one first knows of its existence. It is unreasonable to expect God to work. miracles to com-pensa. t.e for our neglect o~ human means readil~ ;ivailable. )~ simple attractive pampble't stating the origin arid purpose of the.community would merely make God's work known. More popular pamph!ets on the saints of the Order would also attract vocations. The new communities advertise. Too many of the older-communities are still unknown. Virtue will attract,.vocations. Let.me qu'ote from a letter of a young novice: "My thoughts and .~tesires were of One Whom I wished to serve, so naturally I observed those who were already serving Him, and seeing the goodness and happiness they seemed to display I was quite convinced . . . that the convent was my life'~ home.'~ On the other hand I could quote examples of otfiers who ¯ 127 THEI EDITORS Review for Religious had practically made up their minds to join ii certain community but were absolutely repelled from doing so because of the obvious lack of ~ustice and charity in someone wearing the garb bf that order. Care in selecting subjects means more vocations eventually. Abil-ity to judge character on ~the part of the Novice Master or Novice Mistress will help to exclude those who do not belong. Weakness in admitting one poor subject may mean the subsequent loss of ten worthy vocations. A Priest Reverend Fathers: PerhaPs my experience is no( a common one, but I have found that one thing that sometimes creates'dissatisfacti0n with a reiigious Vocation is the fact that many of us older religious refuse to allow our former pupils to "grow up." Even after these former 'pupils have beeri in religion for several years, we continue to look upon them and treat them as our "boys .and girls." Many of them feel this intensely. E~ienwhen they do not actually give up their vocations, the sense of frustration hampers their work and their natural, growth to a whole-some independence. As a means to p~eserving voc~itions, and to the full fructifying of vocat,ions, I suggest that we "old teachers" examine 0ur~elves periodically on our "maternal" and "paternal" attitudes. A Priest WANTED: LETTERS ON RETREATS! Whim you make a retreat, are there some things that you find particularll, h~lpful--things that yo~. expect and that you'd like the retreat director to be sure to give? And when you give [1 retreat, do you look for a certain disposition on the ~art of the retreatants, yearn for a response that som~,times does not come? :- If you have good ideas, why not air them in our Communications? We w~nt to start some communications on this very practical subject in our next number ¯ (May 15). If you have Somethingtb say and~you want to say it in that num~ber, send it to us immediately. Keep the following points in mind: (1) Make communications as brief, ai possible--withdut, 6f course, sa~rific- ~ing thought for brevity. . (2) Save us editorial wor~ by writing neatly and clearly. Typewritten letters are:~preferred. .(3) Your name will not be printed unless you. explicitly request this." (4) Address communications to: The Editors of P~eview for Religious. St. Mary's'College, St. Marys, Kansas. 'i28 Try This in Your Examen! Richard L. Rooney, S.~. THE Archangel of Religious sat at his celestia! equivalent of a desk in the Mansion of the Guardians and ruefully read the recent reports. For the most part the vows were intact and the spirit of'work was tremendous. But by and large, the particular examens just weren't being kept! His friend~. Ignatius of Loyola, who dropped in now and then for a chat, wouldn't like that, for he had put great. stress on the examen as a means of sanctification. And even the mod-ern psychologists (some of whom had arrived in heaven!) considered it a good device for. self, improvement. But these modern religious-- priests, Brothers, and Sistersmseemed to think quite" differently, if .one might judge from results. The Archangel leaned back and pondered the situation. Perhaps these poor human ¯beings found the thing tedious, had let routine creep in and rob them of zest. Perhaps they had asked the same'old-questions in the same old way and, seeing no advancement, had given up in disgust. Or perhaps they had forgotten th_attheir firs~t job is to be g.o'od human beings; hence they had been pitching their examen= too high ! The Archangel scribbled a set of questions on a piece of skyey paper. He would have the Angel Guardians suggest these to their charges, and then see if the examens wouldfi't improve.~ Here is what he wrote: -1) Do you get along with practically everyone in the com-munity? " 2)~ If not; is it because you practise one or more of the following easy ways of getting yourself disiiked: a) Do you'do your best to let the "other fellow" know he doesn't amount to much?¯ make it clear that his ideas are. awrY, that¯he expr.esses them poorly? that what he does is°really not im-portant? b) ~ Do you try to arrange other people's lives, for them? . c) Have you let your disposition become morose, mood_y, touchy, and sarcastic? " d) Do you find fault on every possible occasion with the R~¢HARD.L. ROONY , food, the weather, the work, superiors, the whole life--always, of course, for the glory of God? e) Do you pick.out and air" abroad tO certain chosen souls the small defects of others? f) Do you pass over no chance to argue--to turn-every recreation into a debate? g) D6 you gossip? (Absolutely the best way in the world of wasting time--God's time--~as well-as showing your own inferiority.) b) Are ygu suspicious, sure that no one is up to any good or has a good motive? i) Are you always center-stage, in the spot-light, talking about that most interesting of topics, yourself? j) Or are you just the opposite--a silent, uninterested bore at recreation? k) Do you always take orders in bad grace--make things as hard for superiors as you can? 1) Are you one of those omniscient people whom no one can tell anything? WHO IS SAINT JOSEPH? Saint Joseph is: ¯ . ¯ the guardian of chastity and of the honor of virginity,---St. Augustine ¯ . .~ the faithful coadjutor of the Incarnation.---St. Bernard . . the perfect example of humility and obedience to God's inspirations. -~t. Francis Borgia . . the man mbre beloved by Jesus and Mary than ail other creatures.---St, lsidore . . the master of prayer and the interior life.-~St. Teresa ¯ . . the model of priests and superiors.---St. Albertus Magnus ¯ . ¯ the mysterious veil which covered the virginity'of Mary.mBossuet ¯ . . the third person of the earthly trinity.--Gerson The foregoing are but a few of the brief panegyrics of St. ,loseph that can be culled from such books as Cardinal Vaughan's Who is St. Joseph? and Pete Binet's Divine Favors granted to St. Joseph. They might be apt subjects for brief medi-tations, during the month of March. w'qC'ILLIAM STRITCH, ¯130 ook Reviews AIDS TO'WILL TRAINING IN C~HRISTIAN EDUC:ATION. By TWO Sis-fers of Nofre Dame. Pp. xvl ~ 237. Frederick Pusfef C~o. (Inc.), New York and C~inclnnaff, 1943. ¯ $2.S0. This work is mostly a development and adaptation of Lind-worsky's doctrine on training the will.The will is formed prin-cipally by suitable motivation suitably inculcated, rather than, for instance, by a sort of will-gymnastics: The three great instincts in human nature, namely, those to superiority, s6ciality, and to self-preservation, are, since the fall, perverted and lead todisorders of every kind. With the help of divine grace; a clear conception and an adequate evaluation of the true destiny of man, and constant co-operation of the will, these three fundamental tendencies can be redirected to what is wholesome, and re-educated, and thus help, rather than hinder, man in reaching that destiny. Character ~s to be judged by these three c~iteria: what a man wills, wh~/, and how. A person is good or bad like his motives. Right motivation depends~ very largely upon keeping attention and thought turned to what is true and good and bea.utiful, and upon appreciating its values. Right emotions follow naturally, and then right attitudes, and these tend to bring about righ~ volition. If all these be maintained and strength: ened with appropriate habits, the result will be the desired good will ¯ and go.od character. The procedure recommended for correcting--n0t for breaking-- the will may be adduced as representative of the book. Suppose a student has an excessive fondness for freedom. It is likely that he really .does not well understand the differences between trueliberty and license. These must be clearly pointed out to him. Then he is to be brought to see and appreciate the advantages of liberty and the disadvantages of license. The corresponding emotions are aroused and fostered~ Then opportunity is given for practice and for finding satisfaction in it. Th~ will must always be cultivated from within, that is, by exciting a.genuine desire for what is good; external rneans~ like setting up sanctions; should be secondary. What has been said will give an idea of the main .psychological principles entering into the structure, of the book. Over and above these there is a multitude of minor pedagogical aids, tables of values, 131. BOOK REVIEWS .- Review for Religious natural and supernatural, lists of attil~udes, of virtues and faults, questions and topics for discussion, etc. The religious and Catholic note is most prominent throughout. As far as~I know, there is no work which would seem to promise more help. for the generality of religious teachers who are eager to direct and perfect the wills of their students. " G. AUGUSTINE ELLARD, S.J. INSTRUCTIONS ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE: VOLUME IV. By the Rev- " erend Nicholas O'Rafferfy. Pp. viii -f- 300. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1943. $3.25. The first three volumes of this series treated of the Creed, the Sacraments, and' the Commandments of God. The present volume includes instructions on Prayer (the Our Father, Hail Mary, and prayer in general), the Precepts of the Church, Sin (mortal, venial, and the capital sins), and the Virtues (the theological virtues and those contrary to the capital sins). It is difficult to estimate the value of a book like this. Judging the matter as objectively as I can, I should say that priests and Reli-' gion teachers who have the time to consult several books in preparing sermons, instructions, or classes, would find in this book an added help, especially because it contains a wealth of Scripture ,texts. But it is hardly ideal for those who must confine themselves to one or two books. In general it makes .rather hard reading. Except for the fact that the divisions are indicated in introductory paragraphs, con-cluding surveys, and numerals'sepagating the various sections, no ¯ effort has been made to use the 'abundant mechanical .helps that im-press matter on the mind and memory. There are some minor ihac-curacies in the text " inacc~aracies that might escape the notice of those who are not well-grounded in theology. One inaccuracy in particular should be called to the attention of our readers. The authorstates that the Church demands physical intdgrity in those who enter the cloister (p. 226). This'must be a slip of the pen. Perhaps some orders require this; but it certainly is .not demanded by canon law.--G. KELLY, S. d. ST. THEODORE OF CANTERBURY. By the Very Reverehd William Reany, D.D. Pp. ix ~ 227. B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, 1944. $2.00, The scholarly Doctor Reany has added to his former publica-tions, the biography of a great seventh-century Churchman. This St. Theodore is usually known, from the Nace of.his.birth, as St. 132 ~ March. 1944 . BOOK REVlE~WS Theodore of.Tarsus, but is here more properly call~d .from' the place of his See. Divine Providence had very .leisurely prepared the simple.--. monk, Theodore, by studies at Athens and monastic life in both EaSt and West.for the appointment as Archbishop of Cantdrbury in his sixty-sixth year. Tonsured, ordained, and consecrated, h~ came ~to England in 668. He was the first prelate to rule over all of Eng-land, and to weld its differing Christian missions, of Celtic, Roman, and Gallic origins~ into one unified national Church. His hand held the l~elm until his eighty-eighth year, securely guiding the youtig Churc,h into orderly and scholarly currents so truly beneficent for generations to come. The late Cardinal Lepi'cier, O.S.M., Who writes-the preface of this volume, states that it is the firs~ completew0rk bfi Theodore. The painstaking assembling of fragmentary data on Theodore's activities, in chronicles, bishops' installations; ~onciliar acts and the like, is se~ out in such seemingly artless fashion that the writer has had the pain that we may have ttie pleasure. It is easy to see why Engli~hmen of today, who do not share Theodore's Catholid faith, can still see in him one who "laid the foundation of English national unit~;." --- GERALD ELLARD, S.J. THIRTY YEARS WITH CHRIST. By Rosalie Marie Levy. Pp. 2,46. Pub-" llshed by the Author, P.O. Box 158, Station. O, New York I I,.N.Y., 1943. $2.00. . This autobiogiaphy discloses how Miss Levy in her thirty years as a Catholic ~onvert from Judaism has sought to bring the truth to her own race and to whomsover else she can. It tells of her leanings toward Catholicism from youth; of her attempt at religious life in a convent, frustrated by ill health: of a visit to Europe and a pilgrim-age to the Holy Land. The narrative reveals a zeal for Christ that shames the matter-" of-fact attitude of.many a "cradle" Catholic toward the faith. In ¯ 1936 Miss Levy organized the Catholic Lay Apostle Guild whose members circulate Catholic literature and spread Catholic truth bY answerin, g questions regarding Catholic. truths and practices at opeii-air. meetings. Since 1922 she has been active in the Guild of our Lady of Sion~an.organization aimed at the conversion of Jews. Her books include The Heavenl~l Road, designed to bring Jews to the true faith. Other devotional and apologetic titles total six books and~two pamphlets." " : The present work concludes with short biographical sketches of 133 BOOK REVIEWS Ret~iet~ for Religious four notable 3ewish converts; a valuable chapter entitled "The Proper Approach to the 3ewish Mirid"; a short presentation of apologetic q~est[ons and answers; and a ~ollection of correspondence odcasioned during the years of Miss Levy's apostolic work. It is an inspiring autobiography, a valuable handbook for the apologist, and an indispensable aid to those working toward the cofiversion of Jews.--R. SOUTHARD, S.J. WHITE FIRE. By the Reverend E. J. Edward, s. S.V.D. Pp. 219. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1943." $2.7S. Effective contrast points to artistic pla.nning and execution. To take such seemingly diverse physical phenomena as a convent garden, brilliantly beautiful with tropical flowers, under a Pacific summer sun, and the malformed, rotting, shocking face of "a half-dead leper in a leprosarium ward; such antagon.istic characters as a young American nun, filled with the love of God and enthusiasm for her work among the lepers for whbm she has willingly given up every-thing, and a despondent, despairing victim of the disease, whose love of God and man and self has turned to fierce hatred; the hdart-wa. r.ming hu.mor of a 'F~ther Doro, and the d~pth,touching pathos of a self-sac.rificing little leper girl, Dolores; nigh-breathless action of plot, and periods ~)f quiet, pr6found contemplation; to take all these--and more and blend and shade and work them into a pleasing comP0.sitel devoid of hash impressionism, calls for an artist's gift arid touch. Father Edwards has done this. Some. may feel that the story--the action--lags occasionally because of the "introspections" of Sister. Agnes Marie. However, the~e are integral parts of the whole an'd give the motivating force of ardent love of God and neighbor which makes Sister Agnes the heroine she certainly is. There-are scenes in White Fire which will beo long remembered: .old Lion Face, the realistic picture of the scourge of. leprosy; the simple, sincere,, and heroic offering of self niade by Dolores to the Santo Nino: and the finale on Christmas Eve which leaves dne thriliing.~M. F. HASTING, S.J. THE SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. Pp. Ixxl ¯ -f- 406. The Newman Bookshop, Wesfm;nsfer, Md., 1943. Repr;nf. $2.75. Two or three times a week, when the weather was fine, Bishop Francis de Sales Would go over to the convene orchard of the Visita- 134 March, 1944 BOOK REVIEWS tion motherhouse at Annecy, in southern France, and sit down on. a rustic bench¯ When the nuns, among' them St. Jane-Frances de Chantal, had grouped themselves on the ground around him, he would talk informally on spiritual topics and answer questions; In bad. weather; for he came "even in bad. Weather," they would assemble in the convent p~rlo~. After the conference,a nun, appointed .because of her good memory, jotted down what the bishop had said and supplied, omissions from the memories of her companions. These conferences continued with lessening frequency from 1610 until the l~ishop~s death in 1622, the audience numbering three in the beginning, ten in the second.ye~ar, and increasing steadily thereafter, As other convents of the Visitation were established, the conferences were copied, sometimes not too carefully, and read with great avid-ity and profit¯ in them also. When some Un.scrupulous editor got hold of a copy surreptitio.usly

Richard Richards ; The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection include interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, WeberState University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ; 81p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 video disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program Richard Richards Interviewed By Rebecca Ory Hernandez 7 August 2012 13 August 2012 24 September 2012 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Richard Richards Interviewed by Rebecca Ory Hernandez 7 August 2012 13 August 2012 24 September 2012 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in the University Archives, which also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection include interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Richards, Richard, an oral history by Rebecca Ory Hernandez, 7 and 13 August 2012 and 24 September 2012, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Richard Richards October 2012 1 Abstract: Richard "Dick" Richards, WSU alum, attorney, author and Republican Party National Committee Chairman (1981), grew up in Ogden, Utah and became involved with politics as a young man in high school. Richard is now retired and resides in South Ogden, Utah after spending most of his political career in Washington D.C. He sat down with Rebecca Ory Hernandez from Weber State University to discuss his life growing up in Ogden, his family, education, career and devotion to Weber State University. Richard endowed the "Richard Richards Institute of Politics and Ethics" at Weber State University which awards scholarships to high school students, and currently serves on the board. He and his wife, Annette Bott Richards, have five children. ROH: Today we are beginning an oral history with Richard Richards in his home in South Ogden, Utah. My name is Rebecca Ory Hernandez. Why don't we go ahead with you just stating your name and where this interview is being held? RR: My name is Richard Richards, most people call me Dick. I'm in my home at 5273 Daybreak in South Ogden. I'm prepared to discuss my early history with Rebecca and I look forward to it. ROH: When and where were you born? RR: I was born in Ogden at the old Dee Hospital on May 14, 1932. Nearly all my brothers and sisters were born at the same hospital and had the same doctor, but that was a long time ago. The hospital is now gone. ROH: Where did you grow up? 2 RR: I grew up in South Ogden. I lived in Ogden until I was about 12 years old, and then moved to South Ogden and lived here until I was drafted into the army in 1952. ROH: What part of South Ogden? RR: My first home in South Ogden was 3999 Norton Avenue. That's just next to 40th Street and 40th Street was the dividing line between Ogden and South Ogden. My father bought that home during the war. It was a 1,000 square foot home and I had seven sisters and a brother. So, 11 of us lived in this 1,000 square foot home. There were a couple of bedrooms in the basement that accommodated us, but 11 people in that small home. I can't even remember how we ate dinner. There's no way we could have eaten at the same time because the kitchen wasn't that big. I have no recollection of how exactly we operated in the home, but we lived there for several years. ROH: Where did you fall in the family line-up of children? RR: My brother was the oldest child and I was next to him about a year and a half later. All seven girls came after me. Four of them were born in the month of May one year apart, so the family grew rapidly and it was all girls after my brother and me. ROH: I can't imagine having that many children under one roof. RR: I don't know how we did it. I really don't. I had one sister that was really fastidious and she needed the bathroom for a long time. We agreed that she could have 3 the bathroom for an hour starting at six o'clock in the morning. After that the family had it. ROH: Are all of your siblings still around? RR: One of them passed away. That's the one I was talking about. All of the others are scattered around from California, Idaho, Oregon and I have two sisters living in the Ogden area. ROH: Do you stay in touch with them? RR: We have family reunions. We just had one at Park City in July. We had 123 family members there. We've been doing this for about 20 years and we have not had one death in the family or one child born with severe disabilities out of all 153 of us. We have been a blessed group. We have MBA's, Ph.D's, and a couple of doctors. We've got some pretty good children and grandchildren. My father came from the coal mining camps of Utah when he was in the tenth grade. He didn't graduate from high school. He was tired of living in the coal mines and said, "I'm not going to be a miner, I'm getting out of here." He went up to Salt Lake and got a job helping a sign painting company called Bird and Jex Company. Later on, he decided he didn't want to work for them and he set up his own company here in Ogden. His first shop was no bigger than this living room, but he's the guy that brought us out of the coal mines. ROH: What was the name of the sign shop? 4 RR: Richards Sign Company. That was a long time ago, but that business still carries the name. It's gone through three generations. My father had a stroke many years ago and as a result he couldn't work so he sold his business to a guy by the name of Derek Warner. He ran it for some period of time, then he retired and gave it to his son. His son retired and now it's the next generation working the Richards Sign Company. The company was so well respected that no matter who owned it, they wanted to keep the name. It's still there on Grand Avenue and a bustling business, but it's different. They don't even have a paint brush down there anymore because everything is done by computer. When my dad sold it, we did it all by hand. ROH: Did you learn how to paint signs as well? RR: I did and I earned my living painting signs while I was in law school. Even after I graduated and I was practicing law, the income was so meager that at night I painted signs to make some money to take care of my family. I always hoped that potential clients didn't see me painting signs or they'd wonder about my ability as a lawyer. ROH: That's interesting. What about your mother? RR: My mother lived in Ogden. She met my father in a church activity and her father was a railroader and they lived down on Grant Avenue. My mother did graduate from high school and I don't know if she worked before they were married. ROH: Do you recall which high school she graduated from? 5 RR: It would have been Ogden High School because that's the only one there was. ROH: Okay. They met at a church activity, but can you be more specific? RR: Apparently, it was a Golden Green Ball, a dance of some kind where my father met my mother or shortly after because they participated in the dance and won a prize. A great uncle of mine introduced them. AR: What I understand is that she had caught his eye and she was walking along the street and he pulled over and said, "Could I have a date?" She said, "Yes, if you'll go to church with me." They did enter a contest with the Golden Green Ball and they won. ROH: Did you inherit their love of dancing? RR: No. I don't' dance. ROH: I'm surprised. I thought all politicians liked to dance. AR: He's got a son that dances. ROH: What were some of the things you did as a young person? RR: Before we moved out to South Ogden, I lived on Monroe and we played Kick-the- Can and all kinds of games in the streets. We didn't have television of course. We didn't pay too much attention to radio so we played outside. We played with each other. ROH: Where did you go to school? 6 RR: I went to school first at Quincy for the first grade and so on. Later on, I went to Madison. I was at Madison for a while, then my family went to South Ogden and I went to Riverdale Junior High School. After Riverdale I went to Weber High School. ROH: So you lived on Monroe for a little while? RR: Yes on 26th and Monroe. The family lived there, but as the family grew and more kids were born in the family we had to find a bigger place and my dad bought a house in South Ogden during the war for about $5,000. The house we lived in on Monroe is now a little parking lot for a neighbor. There's nothing there, but it was a very small yard and very small house. ROH: Are there any memories that you have from being at Quincy or Madison that you'd like to share? RR: Not at Qunicy, but when I moved to Madison, I was the newcomer and they had to see whether I was tough enough to be in that environment. They picked fights with me and forced me to fight. I wasn't going to fight. Kids carried me over to the park across the street and I was to fight with a guy and I beat him up, so I was successful there. Then, I had to try one more and I got in a fist fight during art class. The teacher came down, banged our heads together and stopped us. I punched the guy in the nose and his nose was bleeding. I was crying and I didn't want to fight. The teacher came down and knocked our heads together. The guy I was fighting hauled off and punched her and knocked her down. He was expelled from school. They didn't do anything to me because they knew I didn't 7 want to fight with this guy and that was apparent. He was kind of a bully and it was good. I passed the test fighting those two guys and from then on I was accepted. ROH: I just can't imagine that. Annette said she had something she wanted to share. AR: An interesting thing, I was at Quincy School and I was standing over by the water fountain. His brother, Jim, was a year older than me and Dick was a year younger than me. I remember thinking, "Oh, that's Jimmy Richard's little brother." He was running around. That was our first meeting and then he went to Madison and I continued on at Quincy. ROH: Okay. Were there any favorite subjects that stood out to you at that time as a young boy? RR: I liked the art classes, but we didn't have many of them until I went to high school. I was not a good student. I was a troublemaker and I just got by as far as the academics were concerned. There was always trouble, and a lot of it was my fault. I remember when I went to Riverdale Junior High School we rode the bus from South Ogden out to Riverdale and there was a kid in the neighborhood by the name of Tommy James. Tommy crowded in front of us in line for the bus. As I walked past him he took a seat up front and I hauled off and smacked him in the back of the head. When we got to Riverdale I chased him down and picked a fight with him and he just beat the hell out of me. That was the only time I was ever really beat up. He just kept pounding me, the big tall guy with long arms and I would be swinging at him and I'd be missing him by about four of five inches. 8 Incidentally, the principal came down and grabbed us and took us up to the principal's office. He said he was going to give us the board of education. He had a board that he used to paddle kids with and the board had holes in it so he could get a good swift whack. He asked what happened and I owned up. I said, "I picked the fight, it's my fault." I guess that impressed him and he said, "Well, get going and get back to class and I don't want any more of this." ROH: In junior high, Did you have any particular subject that you were fond of? RR: No, I was just getting by doing what I could do. ROH: Being a kid. RR: We rode the bus and I always rose a rumpus on the bus, so the driver kicked me out and said, "You're going to walk home." I said, "Okay." Instead of walking home I went around to the back of the bus and climbed in the window on the side he couldn't see. I rode in the bus with him until we got to Ogden and we got to the bus stop. I jumped out the window and ran up front and said, "Haha Clink, I beat you." He felt bad that he was going to make me walk and before he left he said, "Hey where's the Richards kid, I was only joking I wasn't going to make him walk." I played a joke on Clink. Incidentally, I've had an occasion to work with the Fernilius' again in my business. When we get to that I'll tell you. ROH: You went to Weber High. Tell me about that experience. RR: Well, I shaped up. ROH: Did your parents have a car growing up? 9 RR: Yes. In fact, I remember when I was six years old my brother and I had our tonsils taken out. We went to the doctor's office in the old First Security Bank building and had our tonsils removed. My father picked us up in his brand new Pontiac car. He paid $600 and got a beautiful blue Pontiac car. That's the first car I can remember my folks had. ROH: When you were young, do you remember where you went shopping for new supplies and clothes and things like that? RR: As a kid, I didn't do that. I don't remember that. As I grew up a little bit I remember being in town because I would go to the paramount theater that had the Popeye club. On Saturdays, they'd have Popeye and a series of the Lone Ranger or something and I remember going to town for that. Other than that, I don't remember going to town. ROH: In town are you talking about Ogden? RR: Yes, I'm still talking about Ogden. These were younger years. ROH: Is this the 25th Street area? RR: Yes. Actually there were several theaters in town at that time. There was an Orpheum, a Colonial, Lyseum, The Egyptian, and the Paramount. That's five theaters. Most of the kids went to the Paramount because that had the Popeye Club and the series. Movies cost about a dime and I would work around the yard and I'd get a dime or 25 cents and I was able to go to the movies. ROH: Okay, so we're going to go back to high school now. 10 RR: Before high school, let me talk about Riverdale Junior High School because that was really a turning point for me. That was a rough school. When I went there I was in the 7th and 8th grades and we were rough on teachers there. We drove a couple of teachers out of the room crying. There were several of us that were involved in this kind of stuff. ROH: How did you do that? RR: Just by not paying attention or throwing spit balls or whatever. We drove a couple of substitute teachers out of there. We were upstairs in a room that was called Idaho because it was kind of shaped like Idaho. My friend and I were in the back of the room raising the devil and there were two kids in the middle of the room that were raising Cain and the teacher came in and he just stood there with his arms folded for a few minutes waiting for everybody to shut up. They didn't shut up so he walked down the aisle and gave each of these kids a karate chop on the side of the head and whacked them in the kidney and knocked both of them out. Both of the kids fell with their faces on the desk and my friends and I shut up. That cured us. He really knocked the two kids out. One of the kids' families sued him because when he hit him in the kidneys he bruised him. This teacher didn't say anything and I don't know what happened to him, but I didn't see him again. That was sort of a turning point for a lot of us. After I left junior high school and went to Weber I shaped up. It was a 180 degree change for me. ROH: How many kids were in your class in junior high? RR: I would say there were 20 or something like that. 11 ROH: That was a good-sized class. Is there anything else from junior high that you can recall? What was your favorite part about being in school? RR: Recess. I remember I was supposed to be in arithmetic class, but before the class started I went down to the shop. There was nobody in there except a few kids. The teacher wasn't there and I had never had any experience with some of these tools like the buzz saw. I picked up a chunk of wood and I was going to cut it, but I put it in the wrong way in the saw. It threw the wood and knocked the window out of the class. It would have killed a kid if it hit him. I didn't know what I was doing. I got out of there and sneaked into my arithmetic class by crawling on my hands and knees to the desk so the teacher wouldn't see me coming in. It was a funny school, I had a friend called Toshi Shiba and he went around the junior high school with a water gun and he would shoot the light bulbs and it would pop them. In those days they didn't have a chandelier glass over them, they just had a globe. My friend went around shooting those things and the shop teacher caught him and grabbed him and shook him up and said, "I never did like you Japs anyway." Nothing ever happened as a result of that, but today that would be a disaster. ROH: It sounds like you were a bit precocious. RR: I was not a good little boy. I never did anything really bad, but I did a lot of things that were border line. ROH: Did your parents ever get called to school? 12 RR: No, and I never told them when I had a couple of teachers assault me in junior high school. One guy was a music teacher and he was in the auditorium with the music class and a kid in that class had stolen my baseball mitt. I spotted it because it had my name on it. He had used a leather puncher to punch holes in it so that my name would not be visible, but I saw it anyway. I went into the class and confronted the kid about the mitt. The teacher said, "You get out of here." I said, "I'm not going until I get my mitt." He came down and grabbed me by the shirt and took me out in the hall and he was slapping me on the side of the face front-hand and back-hand. He hit me several times, but I never told my parents about that. You know, that just happened. It was not uncommon in the schools for a teacher to whack a kid. ROH: That is true. Moving on to high school at Weber High, where was Weber High? RR: Weber High School was on 12th and Washington Blvd. We had to take a bus from home to school. When I got into high school I really settled down. It was a major change in my life. I was elected sophomore class president when I went out there. Right out of this junior high school environment to the high school and we had kids from other junior high schools come in from Eden and Huntsville. I don't know the circumstances, but I was elected sophomore class president. ROH: You don't recall running for president? RR: No, I don't recall any of that except that I was elected and I was in a sign painting class and I painted some signs for sophomore assemblies. I misspelled the word "sophomore." They said, "It's got an "o" in it." 13 ROH: You said you got more serious in high school. What were your academics like? RR: I was a good student. It was the beginning of a new life for me. AR: One of the teachers said that Dick was the worst and best student that she ever had. ROH: Did you go to high school together? AR: No, I went to Ogden High School. ROH: Did you have a favorite subject in high school? RR: Yes, I liked the debate class and I participated in the debates and extemporaneous competitions and I did well. So, I did a lot of it. It's interesting because the debate teacher at Weber High School was the same principal that dragged me up to the principal's office when I was at Riverdale. ROH: Is that right? He moved from the other school to that school. He must have had some kind of impact on you. Who were your friends in high school? RR: I had several that lived out here in South Ogden like, George Palmer, Carl Hassel and Bud Reed. I had a lot of friends. We did things in a group out here. Nobody played alone. ROH: What were some of the things you were involved in other than debate? Were you involved in any clubs or activities? RR: No, because I worked after school. Instead of taking the school bus, I would take the city bus and go from 12th Street down to my dad's shop and work after 14 school. I didn't have any time for any of the athletics. I did win the intramural boxing championship for my weight when I was in high school. I didn't play football, basketball, or baseball or anything. Those intramurals took place within the classroom for the most part. ROH: So you continued to fight in high school. You got into boxing? RR: Not a lot, but we had an intramurals program in boxing and I won that in my class. I boxed with the kids that were in the other class. I also wrestled. I met another kid in the other class wrestling, I got down on the mat like you're supposed to and he was over me and the referee said, "Go!" He pinned me so fast I didn't even know what I was doing. I was out of that competition in 15 seconds, just as long as it took for the referee to count me out. This kid was a skinny kid with a glass eye and he went on to win the state championship in his weight a couple of years. He was a very good wrestler. I think his name was Garcia. ROH: So, if you ran for sophomore class president, you were interested in politics at that time. RR: Yes, and that is one of the things that I gravitated toward was the speech class and the debate and that sort of thing. About that time I had developed my philosophy as a Republican. One of my debate partners was a democrat, one that I called the yellow dog democrat. He would rather vote for a yellow dog than a Republican and that's still his philosophy. My father talked politics to us at the dinner table. He talked about a conservative writer at that time called Westbrook 15 Pegler. Pegler was a conservative and he hated the Roosevelts. Most of his column was anti-Franklin and Eleanor and my dad talked about that. There were also some things happening in our life that got me to be a conservative. During that time when we were growing up, we had a coal furnace. The coal man would come to your house, open the coal chute and empty the coal out in the basement. John L. Lewis was the head of the coal miners' union and he called a strike. When he called a strike, we couldn't get coal and everybody complained about that. Even my grandmother and my father complained about it. My father said, "I'm not going to be at the mercy of John L Lewis," and he changed the coal furnace to a gas furnace. John L. Lewis was really big at that time. ROH: When was this? RR: I would say in the early 1940's. Coal mining was a big deal. My grandfather was a coal miner and he still lived down in Carbon County. Coal miners liked John L. Lewis because he got the wages up. He forced people to pay more and if they weren't willing to do that he would call a strike and limit the coal production. My dad talked about that a lot at the dinner table and that had an influence on me. ROH: Who was your friend that was the person who would vote for anyone but a Republican? RR: Jerry Hatch. He was my debate partner. His dad was in the state legislator as a democrat. Jerry always was a democrat. He never changed. He is still a democrat. 16 ROH: When you were in high school did you realize that you wanted to go to college at that point? RR: Yes. In fact, I wanted to be a lawyer at that time and when I wrote my name on the book just to identify it as my book I would write, "Richard Richards Esquire." AR: I've got a page out of something when he was the student of the year and he tells what he wants to do in the future. RR: When I was a senior in high school, I was chosen to give the Valedictory speech. I was not the Valedictorian, but I was chosen to give that speech at the graduation. ROH: So you ran for president and got interested in debate, how did that come about? Were you listening to the radio at that point or did you hear other people speak that influenced you? RR: We listened to the radio and read the newspaper. We always had newspapers and I even take four newspapers here now. I spend a couple hours every day reading the Wall Street Journal and the Investor's Business Daily, The Standard, and Deseret News. ROH: That's incredible. Did your dad take a lot of newspapers too at your house? RR: I don't know how many he took, but I know we took some. ROH: I was just trying to find out where the influence of the debate would have come from because you were interested in both battling physically and verbally so I find that fascinating. 17 RR: Well, I think the word "debate" means to "beat down." ROH: Did you have teachers that inspired you in high school? RR: My debate teacher was the principal out at Riverdale that banged my head. He was my coach all the way through. ROH: You were in school and you were working so give me an idea of your schedule. RR: I would go to school and after school at 3:30 p.m. I would go to my dad's shop and work for a couple of hours and go home. I always worked on Saturdays. My dad probably was the greatest influence on me of anybody because he always said, "I'm not going to give you money, but I'll give you a job. You can work for it and you can have the money." That's the way he was. ROH: So you were student of the year in your high school. RR: Well I don't know if that's what they called it, but maybe they did. ROH: Yes, we will get a copy of this. I'm looking at a photograph that says, "The typical boy graduate is Dick Richards, he's only 5'8" but he has short brown hair and warm brown eyes. He likes school this year but in the past years he skipped school every chance he got. Now he's sorry he's leaving." Is this college or high school? RR: That's high school. ROH: Do you remember what you talked about in your speech? 18 RR: I don't think I have a copy of that speech, but I have a copy of my college speech when I spoke at graduation there. ROH: You were public speaking at a young age. We're going to finish up talking about high school years and move on to college. When you graduated from high school, you wrote the commencement speech. What did you do after high school? RR: Obviously, during the summer I worked for my dad. In the Fall I enrolled at Weber Junior College. Weber Junior College at that time was on 25th Street at about Monroe and Madison. There were about four buildings there and one of them is still there— it's the Deseret Gym building. The other buildings are gone. It was a very small school. Interestingly enough, the president of that school was Dr. Henry Aldus Dickson. He knew an awful lot of the kids by name. We were all very friendly with him. He took a liking to me and I'm not sure why, but he said to me one time, "Dick, are you having a little trouble raising money to go to school?" I said, "Yeah, I'm working but I don't have the money yet." He said, "Well, you drop in my office and see the secretary and she'll give you a scholarship." So I walked in the office and they gave me a twenty-five dollar scholarship. That was a full quarter's tuition. I actually have a copy of that scholarship. ROH: That's fantastic. RR: He liked me and he wanted to help me out. I guess he knew I came from a family of a lot of kids. All of my siblings were still at home. ROH: Did your brother ahead of you go to college? 19 RR: I don't remember. I guess he went to college before me, but I didn't have a lot of relationship with my brother at that time. He was a year and a half older than me and he had different friends. We did some things together, but mostly we each had our own friends. ROH: What did you study at Weber College? RR: I studied debate, philosophy, political science, and economics. I did a lot of those subjects, I didn't do any basket weaving and that stuff. No political correctness at that time. I got enough credits in what I studied in history, philosophy and economics that I was able to transfer them to law school without having a bachelor's degree. When I applied to law school they said, "Well you haven't got a bachelor's degree, you can't come here with what you've got." I said, "Look at the catalog." The catalog said, "153 acceptable hours," or something and I had them. I said, "There they are." He said, "Well, I guess you're right." They enrolled me in law school without having a degree from Weber. ROH: Where was that? RR: University of Utah law school. ROH: How old were you when you started law school? RR: I started law school after I'd been in the army and returned, so there's a gap there. ROH: Did you go into the army after Weber? 20 RR: In August of 1952, I was drafted. The Korean War was on and we were all drafted. It was kind of interesting at that time because there was a lady by the name of Agnus Christe who was the head of the selective service office who really resented Mormon kids going on missions and not going in the army. So, the day you turned 18 you got a draft notice. You couldn't go on a mission. ROH: Did you have any other friends that you were in the army with at that time? RR: I was drafted ahead of my friends for some reason by a matter of a few months. I was drafted with one kid from Ogden by the name of Jim Pollus and we went to basic training together. I went on to leadership and OCS and he did not. He's passed away since. My friends I had here in South Ogden came to Fort Ord after several months that I had already been there so I was ahead of them in the army. ROH: Well, we just kind of skimmed over Weber College, so the next time we meet we'll talk about Weber College, the Army, and Law School. Thank you very much for sharing your young years with me and we will continue next time. This is the end of the interview on August 7, 2012. Thank you. RR: You're Welcome. ROH: Today is Monday, August 13, 2012. We are in the home of Richard Richards, who goes by Dick. I am Rebecca Ory Hernandez from Weber State University and we are going to continue his oral history. We will pick up with your university years from where we left off last week. Why don't you tell me a little bit about your time in law school? 21 RR: After I came home from the Army, I decided to go to law school. I had done some other things in the meantime, but when I found out I was going to go to law school I needed some more credit hours. I went back to Weber and picked up some more hours in political science, history, and philosophy. I was married and had two children. I had to work because I had to make a living, so I worked for my father part-time and painted signs. I worked in Ogden for my dad about 20 hours a week and went to law school. That was an hour a day going down and an hour a day going back. That didn't leave me a lot of time for studying. I really didn't study very hard in law school, but I studied all day Sunday and started at 5:00 a.m. It was a tough grind. I decided it ought to be easier if I lived in Salt Lake because I wouldn't have to commute. So, I got a job with the state liquor commission. It was a political job. Governor Clyde was the governor and I think Laurence Burton was his assistant at that time. Anyway, I got a job with the liquor commission selling liquor out on 23rd South and 13th East. They paid $1.65 an hour and that wasn't enough for me to make a living so I decided even though I'm going to live in Salt Lake I better commute to Ogden to work because I could make $2.50 an hour painting signs. I moved to Salt Lake to the student housing. It was called "Stadium Village." That's where the stadium is now. Rent was $30.00 a month so it was livable for a student. While I was in law school, I was active with the Young Republicans and I was asked to become the Young Republicans state chairman. I didn't know about that because it takes time and doesn't pay so I thought I'd 22 better check with the Dean. He said, "I think you could be of help to us so you go ahead and take that job." I took it and the interesting thing is, later on when the law school was trying to get an appropriation from the state legislature to build a new law school. Jerry Hanson and I invited his grandfather who was a leader in the state legislature to come to the law school and see what kind of shabby condition it was in. He visited the law school and said, "Boy, this is bad." Our main classroom in the law school was a row of tables about 24 inches deep and about six or eight feet long and they were covered with Masonite. They were really old-fashioned. The chairs were all separate and it was a noisy place. When they saw that they said, "Let's make an appropriation for a new law school." They usually invited the governor to come speak on "Law Day" which was the first of May. The assistant dean said, "The governor doesn't like lawyers, he won't come here." I was up to the governor's office talking to Laurence and I asked, "Would the governor like to go up to the University of Utah law school and speak on May Day?" He said, "Sure, we'd love to do that, but we haven't had an invitation." I asked, "Will you come if you get an invitation?" They said, "Yes." I drove back to the law school and went in the dean's office and said, "The governor would like to come if you'll give him and invitation. You type one up and I'll hand carry it to him." He was really pleased that we could get the governor there. The assistant dean that said the governor wouldn't come was embarrassed. ROH: Who was the governor at the time? 23 RR: George Dewey Clyde. The dean of the law school was Dean Diksra. He was a good dean. The assistant was a fellow by the name of Emory. Emory was a democrat and he didn't want the governor up there anyway. ROH: It must have been really good for the law school. RR: These were big helps in getting a new law school. Anyway, I hadn't graduated because I was seven hours short for graduation. I did it in two years. I didn't have time to go for three years. I was married with kids and didn't have time for that. I took extra credit and went through the summers. A couple of the fellows were in the same plight so we asked if we could take the Bar early with the preceding class. They agreed to let us take it. We took the Bar and I passed the Bar before I graduated. I had to go back to pick up seven more hours. Needless to say, I wasn't a very diligent student after having passed the Bar already. They changed the system after that. From then on you had to have a degree. They won't let you take the Bar until you've completed law school. We ruined that for the next-comers. ROH: Did you specialize in anything in law school? RR: No, I just graduated. I was not at the top of my class. I was in the top third of the class, but I did not strive to be number one. I didn't have time to study and do all that because I was working. In fact, working 20 hours was against the rules. They said if you go to law school you can't work 20 hours because you wouldn't be able to keep up. They tested me when they found out I was traveling to Ogden, but I did okay and that all worked out. After I got out of law school, I got a 24 job with the Clayton and Gould law firm in Ogden. Since they were both prosecutors I couldn't do any criminal work. If you can't do criminal work as a young lawyer, you're never going to do any trial work. I said, "I want to get courtroom practice so I'm going to quit." I quit and went on my own. I remember my first month I did not make one dime practicing law. The second month I made $50. It was a struggle. By the end of the year I was making pretty good money, but our total was $6,000 a year my first year. ROH: Do you remember your first case? RR: Yes. I remember my first major cases anyway. I went to the judges and said, "I want to try lawsuits. Give me your guys in jail who don't have any money and can't bail out and I'll represent them for free." Between the judges they gave me ten felons and they were spread out over about a year's time. I got eight acquittals out of the ten. Immediately, I had a lot of criminal clients. They would ask, "Who's your attorney?" They would give them my name and that generated a lot of business for me. I got tired of the criminal stuff, but it was a great experience to try the cases. The first murder case I had was a fellow that came into town on a Greyhound bus, got out of the bus station, walked across the street to the Friendly Tavern, pulled out a pistol and said, "So you're the "blankety-blank"?" He shot a guy about seven times. That was Joe Edgington. He killed him right on the spot. He didn't even know him and the guy was completely nuts. He thought he was somebody else. He casually walked across the street toward the police 25 station. Several witnesses saw him throw the gun in the bushes and keep on walking and they arrested him. L.G. Bingham and I were assigned to defend him pro bono and that was my first major criminal case. L.G. Bingham, in my opinion, was the smartest lawyer in town. He was a good thinker, but he was not a real studious guy and he didn't spend a lot of time preparing the case. Sometimes he would go into court without any defense in mind. He'd find a defense as the prosecutors put on their case. He won a lot of cases. He was very talented in doing that. He and I defended this guy and ended up pleading "not guilty" by reason of insanity. That stuck and he went to a mental institution. I haven't heard anything from him since. That was my first case. L.G. Bingham and I defended another case of a couple of fellows that murdered a man on North Ogden Divide. Maybe you read about it. They picked up a sailor from Salt Lake and took him up to Ogden. They'd been drinking and they thought he had money so they took him up to rob him. The guy resisted and they hit him. They took off all his clothes, threw him in the car and left the guy naked. He was walking down the highway naked and finally fell over the side and froze to death. They were looking through his clothes because they thought he had some money in it. They looked through his shirt and no money in his shirt and threw it out the window as they traveled down the canyon. There was no money in the pants, so they threw the pants out along with the shoes and socks. His clothes were strewn down the canyon for a half a mile and nobody really understood what it was all about. One of the boys called the police and gave himself up. They arrested the other guy a few days later. Ray defended one of 26 them and I defended the other one. They got off with a voluntary manslaughter and two years in prison. They were young guys, drinking and doing stupid stuff and ended up killing a man. I tried cases from 1961 until 1980 when I went to Washington to work full-time with Ronald Reagan. I did spend some time in the early 1960's in Washington with Laurence Burton. That was for two years. I was there at the time that John Kennedy was killed and the Senator of Texas and John F. Kennedy's Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, became the president. ROH: How did it come about that you ended up moving to Washington? RR: Laurence Burton asked me to help him on his campaign. I was one of two major campaign managers on his campaign for congress and he won. He invited me to come back to Washington. I went back there as his legislative assistant and after a year I was made his administrative assistant. Dr. Aldus Dickson, who was a good friend of mine as I indicated earlier said, "Dick, do not stay there more than two years. Laurence is going to ask you to stay, but don't do it." ROH: Why not? RR: He said, "If you do you'll get caught up as a professional staffer in Washington and you'll never develop a career of you own." The pay is good and it's an exciting thing if you're a staffer to a senator and they have big issues. I followed his advice and I came home. ROH: When did you come home? 27 RR: I came home in 1964. I was here when the election was held and Barry Goldwater was soundly defeated. I decided I wanted to run for party chairman. I'd been Young Republican chairman, so I ran for party chairman and won overwhelmingly. The reason I did is because while I was working for Laurence I traveled to all of the counties in the state when they held their county convention. Those were the guys that were going to be delegates to the state convention. When I met them on the county level and they came to the state, they at least knew who I was. I ran against a guy from Salt Lake that should have won. He had a lot of money, was a prominent business guy, and kind of a moderate fellow, but I beat him about six or seven to one. Afterward he said, "I knew you were going to beat me, but I didn't think you were going to stomp me into the ground." He was a good sport. I was the party chairman for two years. In 1966, the state of Utah turned from a Democratic state to a Republican state. People say this has always been a Republican state. However, they were heavily Democratic all over. All of the counties were controlled by Democratic county commissioners. In Weber County, prior to that time, only one Republican had been elected to county office for 50 years. That was Sherriff Mac Wade. This county was so strongly Democrat that a Republican may as well not even get on the ballot. We turned that around in 1966 and won control of the legislature, both the House and the Senate, by a vast majority. I think there were only five Democrats in the Senate when we got to it. There were only ten in the House. In fact, we elected too many. It was a bad deal to have that many Republicans and 28 so little opposition. That gradually faded out. That was one of the most exciting elections of my life because it was such a wonderful victory. I was re-elected party chairman in 1968. I had a good record and got a call from the Republican National Committee in Washington. The chairman of the Republican National Committee asked me if I'd come back and interview for a job working for the National Committee. I went back and I remember the feeling. I got out of my hotel and got that stinky, humid Washington air and I said to myself, "Dick, what in the hell are you doing here? Turn around and go home." I went to the interview with the deputy chairman and the chairman of the committee at that time, Rogers Morton. They offered me a job and I took it. I became the head of party development. After I did that for a while, I was promoted to the political director of the National Committee. I brought my family back and we lived in Maryland. We also lived in Virginia down by the Pentagon and had some nice experiences. We went to the grave site ceremony of John Kennedy when he was taken to Arlington National Cemetery. Later, at the top of the cemetery, they put a forever memorial for John Kennedy. Laurence and the other congressman from Utah, Sherm Lloyd, were there. Somehow or another we got on the parade route out to the cemetery. The soldiers and the Marines were lined up all the way and we had no way to get off. Laurence was joking and said, "Don't throw out any beer cans." We went up past the soldiers and when we got to the cemetery, the guy that was in charge told us we had to leave. We didn't want to after all that effort, so we sneaked into the press section and got kicked out of the press section too. We 29 went up the road and nobody paid attention to us there, but everybody including the Kennedys came up that road. The Carsons and the Kennedys were there. The Emperor of Ethiopia and Charles Degall came in. We were almost within touching distance of each of them. It was really kind of interesting to see that. In part of the ceremony they had the Irish Guard do a drill procedure and when they were through they marched out. As they marched out me and this kid marched in where they had been and we ended up right in front of the congressman. Laurence Burton said, "Hey Dick, look who's standing behind you." I looked behind me and there was Adlai Stevenson, who was the ambassador, and all these big-shots. We stood directly across from the grave site where the Kennedy casket was standing. The Kennedys were all on the other side. I was not even 20 feet away from Jacqueline Kennedy and her kids when all of this happened. In fact, we had a chance to walk by the casket. That was a good experience. Then, of course, Lyndon Johnson became the president and in 1964 he forced the passage of the Civil Rights Act that Kennedy could not get done. Kennedy didn't have the horsepower in the Senate to get it done. The House passed it, that wasn't a big problem, but it was the Senate that didn't want to pass it. They filibustered and did everything they could to avoid passing it. Lyndon Johnson just beat them up and on the 4th of July, they passed the Civil Rights Act. ROH: What was that like living in Washington when that happened? 30 RR: That was an exciting time. They had Martin Luther King Jr. speak at the Lincoln Memorial. There were hundreds of thousands of people there. I was at the Capitol and we talked about going down, but we figured it wasn't a good thing to do to go clear down there and get involved in that crowd. We were also there at the time the Blacks rioted on 14th street and burned a lot of the buildings. That was pretty close to the same time Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic speech at the Lincoln Memorial. That was a big event at that time. It was an exciting time and an exciting point in history. ROH: Do you remember having conversations with your family about those events in the evenings when you were home with them? RR: My kids went with me when we saw the Kennedy ceremony. I explained that to them and when we got home and they were excited about it. They liked John Kennedy, they though he was a wonderful fellow. They got to do things that other kids don't get to do. They got to go to the White House, the Capitol building, Williamsburg and Jamestown. We went down to Jamestown and that was one of the great experiences where we saw replicas of those three little boats that brought the pilgrims here in 1607 and built the first permanent settlement in America. They gave us the history about how most of them starved to death or were killed by the Indians or by something else. There were very few survivors. That was a real eye-opener to us about early history. We got up to the Baltimore Harbor where Frances Scott Key saw the Star Spangled Banner and we saw the battlefield of the fight between the British and 31 the Americans on the Potomac River. Of course, the British captured Washington and they burned down a lot of things. They tried to burn down the White House and burned down a lot of it. They torched the various places in the Capitol and you can still see where the smoke was where they had gone with their torches. That was a great experience for my kids. They all became far more interested in American government. ROH: You've written a lot about your time in Washington in your book, so I won't repeat a lot of that, but tell me a little bit about how you felt about your career at that time. You had some significant leaps and bounds from Ogden to Washington at that point. RR: Reagan was anticipated to be a candidate for president in 1968. The convention was held in Miami Beach and Nixon, George Romney, and Rockefeller were candidates. Nixon was the clear leader. I was the state party chairman at that time. I knew the Nixon people and they knew me. They talked to me many times about helping on the Nixon campaign and I said, "Well, I'm the chairman of the party so I can't do that." We invited Ronald Reagan to come to our convention and the Nixon people were just livid after Reagan spoke. We only had about 14 national delegates at that time. This was the year we picked our delegates to go to the national convention. Nixon was clearly the favorite, although George Romney had some friends here because of his Mormon ties and ties to Utah. A guy from Cutbank, Montana who was a close associate of Reagan and a guy I knew as a party chairman said, "Dick, how would you like to have Ronald 32 Reagan be the keynote speaker at your convention, he'll do it for free." I said, "Hey, great. We want him." He came and Annette and I met him in the old Hotel Utah the night before he spoke. That was the first time we met Ronald Reagan. Annette was enamored because he was a movie star, and I was enamored because he was a politician. Anyway, he spoke the next day and he just mesmerized our delegation. Every one of them would have turned around and voted for him against Nixon if he ended up being our candidate. As we got down to Miami Beach, Nixon was nominated and Reagan withdrew his name, but George Romney stayed in and I was given the opportunity to second the nomination of George Romney for president back in Miami Beach. That was a high point for me. Nixon won of course. After he won the convention delegates, they hired me to do some ground work as a field man for Nixon in about 8 Western Rocky Mountain states. I had Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Arizona. I organized the ground campaign and it is interesting because the thing that attracted me to the National Party Leaders to begin with was my organizational technique for recruiting people to go door-to-door. We called it the neighbors program. I was called back to New York after Nixon was nominated to meet with John Mitchell who was in charge of the campaign. They asked me about this program that I had in mind and Mitchell liked it, but some of his aides didn't like it and they started to argue with me. Mitchell sat there and just smoked his pipe and never said a word during my presentation. When it was all done, they started asking, "How do you know this is going to work?" I said, "We've done 33 it, we know how this thing works, you don't have to worry about that." Mitchell said, "We're going to do it. I like it. Richards, we'd like you to come to work full-time for us." I said, "I can't do it because I'm the party chairman out in Utah, but I know somebody who can do that program for you." They wanted to do it in Oregon first and he was running a primary against Rockefeller. Oregon was a liberal state and Nixon's people said, "We're not even going to go there, it's just a waste of time." So they didn't go there, but they sent my friend Alan Peterson, who was the guy that I recommended to do this. Peterson was an intern to me when I was party chairman in Utah. He knew my program, so they hired him to run the program and Nixon won. Nixon had never been there and Rockefeller had been there three times. Rockefeller's slogan was, "He cared enough to come." Everybody expected Rockefeller to win, but Nixon did win. Nixon said, "That's my secret weapon. I want to do that." Peterson was hired to run this program all over the country and did a great job with it. After the Nixon campaign, the next effort I got involved with was when Ronald Reagan was running against Gerald Ford. Nixon left, Ford became the president and Ford wanted to run. These same people that brought me back to Washington all thought I would be for Ford and wanted me to be involved in his Ford campaign. They asked me to get involved and I said, "I can't do that. I'm for the other guy." They said, "You're for Ronald Reagan? You can't be against the seated president. You're a party chairman and you're against our incumbent president?" In fact, the owner of Zion's Bank in the state of Utah, Roy Simmons, 34 met me at the airport and said, "Dick, that's crazy. You're going to go for that "class B" act against the president." ROH: Why was that? Why were you so pro-Reagan? RR: I just really liked the guy. I saw something in him and I thought, "This is the guy that ought to be the president." Reagan and Ford contended against each other at the convention in 1976 and it was a very close battle. We lost it right at the last minute and we felt bad about that. Prior to the time that I went to work with him Ronald Reagan had a group called Citizens for the Republic. This was a political action committee that was not for his benefit but where he could raise money and give to conservative candidates. Paul Laxalt was Reagan's closest friend in Washington, the former governor of Nevada and the Senator at that time. He invited me to join the Citizens for the Republic. I got a letter from Ronald Reagan saying, "I understand you're willing to do this, I'd love to have you join us." I became a member of the executive committee for the Citizens for the Republic. After we lost to Ford, we held a couple of monthly meetings and the meetings were usually held in Florida or someplace a distance from me and I had to fly over there and I had to pay a hotel bill. It cost me money to do it, about a thousand bucks every time I went to one of the meetings. After I went to a couple of them I thought, "This is a big waste of time." I got up in a meeting Paul Laxalt was conducting and said, "You know the next battle we're going to have is a convention fight just like the one we just lost and I don't see us getting any better prepared than we were then. I think we're wasting time." Ronald Reagan was 35 sitting at the far end of the table and he was doodling. After I said that he stopped and said, "That's right," and he pointed the pen at me. Paul said, "Well, does anybody else have anything to say?" We said, "No." No one else was going to interfere after the president said that. He said, "Okay, Dick, I'm appointing you to form a committee to come back to the next meeting and tell us what we ought to be doing. Richard, you're the chairman of the committee." We held some meetings after that and came back to the next meeting and gave him a report on what I thought we ought to be doing. We put together a program and I presented it. Everybody at the meeting thought it was a great idea except for two people. One of them was John Sears, who later became the chairman of the Reagan campaign. The chairman was fired at the night of the New Hampshire primary. The other guy was a fellow that had been with Reagan for many years named Nofziger. They all said, "Hey, this is great we want to do it. So after the meeting was over, I headed home and Paul Laxalt remained there for a while with this guy from Cutbank, Montana and Paul said, "I like Dick's idea, but who's going to get to run it? The program entails some work." Frank said, "Well, why don't you ask Dick?" Paul said, "He's a lawyer, he doesn't have time to do this and we don't have money to pay him to get it done. That's a lot of time involved." Frank said, "Well, before you write him off, ask him." So Paul called me on the phone and asked, "Would you run this program that you proposed to us? We will pay all of your expenses and enough money to pay your overhead of your office while you're gone working for us, but we don't have the money to pay you for your time." I said, "Okay." 36 I spent several months doing that and after Reagan got nominated and he was going to do the campaign, he said, "Dick, we want you to run the Western half of the country." Dick Wirthlin was put in charge of it and Bill Casing was the chairman. Dick Wirthlin was the strategist and would say, "We want you to take everything West of the Mississippi River except Texas and build the ground organization." After we won, Reagan wanted me to be the chairman of the transition team for the Department of Interior. I headed the team where we transitioned the Department of Interior from the Democrats to the Republicans and that was an interesting experience because they were paranoid about us and we were paranoid about them. It was common courtesy for the outgoing administration to cooperate with the incoming and let them have whatever information they wanted. So, we went down to the Department of interior, I recruited a group of guys to work with me on the campaign. Paul Laxalt had a couple people he wanted to do that and we took over down at the Department of Interior. We decided what we wanted to do, what people we wanted to remove and what changes we wanted to make. During that time, there were a lot of rumors in the paper about what was going to happen to Dick Richards. You saw them in Ogden. Is he going to be Secretary of the Interior? Is he going to be chairman of the party? When we got through with the Department of Interior, I got a call from the White house and they asked, "Dick, will you be available at 5:00 p.m. to take a call from the White House?" I said, "I'll be here." At 5:00 p.m., I get a telephone call from Ronald Reagan and he said, "Hi Dick, this is Ron, you've been reading about rumors that I was going to 37 appoint you chairman of the National Committee, so I want to make those rumors a reality. Would you take that chairmanship for me?" I said, "Mr. President, I'd be glad to." That's how it happened. ROH: It was that simple. RR: That simple. That's the way Reagan was, he was straight forward and simple. Let me tell you a thing I learned. This is a little out of order, but it shows Reagan. After I was elected, I was invited to go to the meetings that took place once a month between the president and the leaders of the House and the Senate. Bob Michael was a minority leader of the House. He was from Peoria, Illinois. One time, as we walked into the meeting, President Reagan says, "Hi Bob, how are things in Peoria?" Bob says, "Shucks, Mr. President, we've got it tough. We've got 5,600 caterpillar workers unemployed. We're trying to get a contract to sell our ditch-digger to the Russians and we just can't get it done." The president said, "Well, what's the matter? Is that a piece of high-tech equipment or something?" He says, "Hell no, it's a ditch digger, anybody can make a ditch digger." The president said, "Then I don't understand." He said, "Well, we have to get permission from the Department of Commerce in order to make the sale and they haven't made a decision." The president walks over and put his hand on his shoulder and said, "Bob, they just did." That day, Bob announced to his people in Peoria that the President approved their sale and they all went back to work. That's the way Reagan did it. I would have thought that he would have said to his Chief of Staff, Jim Baker to call Secretary Mossbacker and see what's holding 38 this up. Well, he didn't need to do that, he was president he could make the decision. ROH: Today is Wednesday, September 5, 2012. We are in the home of Richard Richards continuing his oral history. This is Rebecca Ory Hernandez from Weber State University. Present are Rebecca and Richard Richards as well as Annette Richards. Why don't we pick up from when you were still in Washington D.C. and you've finished your political piece of working with the White House? Tell me what you did after that presidential term was completed. RR: After I completed my two year assignment at the Republican National Committee, I chose not to run longer because there were too many problems fighting with people that wanted to control the National Committee and all that stuff. As I left, Ronald Reagan called me down to the White House and said, "Dick, you've been a loyal lieutenant to me for a long time, but you've never really been in my administration. I would like you to come and be part of the Reagan administration. What I'd like you to do is go over to the Department of Interior and be the Under Secretary to Jim Watt. Jim is having trouble and I think you could help him out. I said, "Well, Mr. President, I've been a volunteer for you for about six years and I'm broke. I need to get out and make some money. So, I really don't think I can do that." Not only that, I was beginning to have some health problems and I knew that it would be a torture chamber to go through some kind of hearing with the Senate controlled by the Democrats. I could not imagine that the Democrats would approve someone who had just been chairman of the Republican Party to go be the Under Secretary of the Department of Interior. I 39 passed that up and I opened up a lobbying lawyer business in Washington and began representing various interests. ROH: What was the name of the company? RR: Initially, I was with a couple of other lawyers, but when I started my own company it was called, "Commerce Consultants International" (CCI). When I left the National Committee, I had a going away party sponsored by the National Committee. It was to introduce my replacement, but also it was sort of a going away party for me and Ronald Reagan came. I heard from some inside people that some of the folks at the White House said, "Don't go for Richards, you didn't go when Dick Allen left or when others left. Why go for him?" Reagan said, "Well, I like him and we'll go." So, Reagan came and he spoke and said, "Dick Richards was my friend when it took courage to be my friend." That refers to the fact that I was the only state party chairman that supported Reagan against Gerald Ford while Ford was the president. That set me apart from the others and that's why Reagan appreciated me. It took courage to do that. I opened my office and immediately got some clients. One of the first clients was Sikorsky Helicopter Company. They had been trying to sell their helicopter to Taiwan for about six years. At one time they had a deal, but when Jimmy Carter was president he killed it. I met with a representative who was a lobbyist for Sikorsky and also a General from Taiwan. He came to my office and said, 'We want to buy the Black Hawk, and if we can't get it in the next six months we're going to write it off and we're going to buy the French helicopter 40 called the Augusta. We'll give you six months to get this done." I contacted Ed Meece who was counselor to the president and told him what we wanted to do. He went to the president and the president said, "Let them have what they want." That was six years of red tape cut by the president. I became a hero to Sikorsky because they'd been trying for six years. I developed a pretty good base of aerospace clients. I represented Sikorsky and I did some work for Boeing, General Dynamics and Pratt Whitney jet engines. I did a lot of work for them over many years. It turned out to be a very good client. ROH: Were there any other major clients when you were working? RR: I had some interesting ones. I was asked to represent the Kingdom of Thailand. I was the foreign agent for Thailand here in the United States. The United States was pressing some trade violations against Thailand. They were copying some of our medications. I remember they had a fake Sudafed that they sold and they copied our movies and all kinds of stuff. They stole a lot of intellectual property. The United States was going to punish them for it. When I was representing them, I talked to the Prime Minister and saw the other people that were movers and shakers over there and I asked, "What's your deal?" They said, "We'll stop stealing in two years, but we've got to do that now because the American products like medications are too expensive for Thai people to buy so we have to copy them and sell them at a lower price. We'll stop in two years." I asked, "Why?" They said, "Because we're working on our own copyright and patent laws and when they're in place to protect us then we'll protect you, but we're not going to protect you until we're ready." I went to the White House and I talked to the 41 domestic advisor of the president who was a friend of mine, Roger Porter. I said, "They said they'll quit in two years." He started to laugh and he says, "How am I going to tell the president they're only going to steal for two years?" I said, "Well, you know, the Japanese lied to you, the Chinese lied to you, everyone else lies to you, but these guys are at least telling you the truth." They withheld the sanctions against them. I represented this fellow by the name of Chachi. He was the first elected Prime Minister and after a couple years he got on an airplane with one of his generals by the name of Suchinda. The general pulled out his pistol and said, "Okay, Mr. Prime Minister, you're out and I'm in." He took over and executed Chachi right there with the airplane. Later on, Suchinda was trying to establish himself there and a lot of students rioted and picketed and so forth. About 1,500 of them just disappeared. I guess he had them killed and removed. When the king found out what happened he told him, "You're out. You can't be the prime minister here." Suchinda walked away. The king had a great deal of moral influence, although he had no legislative or statutory right to make those decisions. That was an interesting experiment. ROH: Did you ever have to travel to Thailand? RR: I traveled to Thailand once in a while, but my area was mostly in the Far East. I did a lot of traveling. In fact, someone asked me about traveling to Hong Kong and I looked it up and found I had 22 round-trips to Hong Kong in the 10 years of my passport. I did a lot there. 42 ROH: What about in Bangkok? RR: I did a lot in Bangkok. Later on, I represented a company in California called Sunrider International. I went to Bangkok, Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries to get permission for Sunrider to sell their product there and to convince them that our method of selling was legitimate. It was multi-level marketing and that was not common in the Far East, so we had to talk them into letting us do that. ROH: What happened next in your career? RR: That went on for several years. I represented people during the George Bush administration and did some part-time volunteer work for George Herbert Walker Bush in his campaign. I did some organizing in neighborhoods and in Washington, Oregon and here in the West. In fact, I was telling Annette that while I was involved with George Bush, he invited me to fly out with him to Boeing in Seattle. They were honoring the astronauts. They had the living astronauts there and I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to who was there, I never took any pictures or anything because I was there on a political trip. I think about a half a dozen of those guys and Neil Armstrong was there. They were given an award by Boeing Company for their exploits. They had an airplane like the one George Bush flew when he crashed into the ocean and he was rescued. He was really excited about that. He was looking at that and reminiscing. I was talking to Barbara Bush while he was doing that and she was excited for him because he hadn't seen one of those airplanes for a really long time. 43 ROH: Did you do any lobbying after that? RR: I did lobbying almost up to the time that I came home to Utah. Having been the Republican National Chairman, I had excellent contacts with Republicans and the Republican presidents. After Bill Clinton got elected, most of my contacts were gone. They were now Democratic contacts, so I figured that was a good time for me to go home. ROH: What year was it that you came home? RR: I think I came home about 1993. We were looking for a place to live here. I had a nice home in Washington and the value of it increased significantly. I had a profit on that property, but the tax laws were such at that time that if I sold my house, even though I bought another house I didn't get any kind of tax break on it and the government would have taken about $70,000 from me in taxes. I said, "Well, I'm not going to do that. I'll put the money into a new house." I bought a house here in South Ogden. I bought it without Annette seeing it. I came out and I saw this house and I walked in and it was a beautiful house on 46th and Jefferson, a big gray rock house. I walked in there and the neighbor was a real estate agent for Weber County. I walked in and looked in the foyer and I didn't even go through the house, it was just so beautiful and I was impressed so I said, "I'll take it." I gave him a check that night for earnest money. I said, "One condition, my wife has a week to decide whether she wants to come here." I called Annette and she didn't want to be bothered coming out. My daughter who lived here went to see it and she said, "Oh mom, you'll love the house." We agreed and we moved 44 into the house. We lived there until I started having a pretty serious heart problem and we couldn't keep up the land. The property was too big and complicated. We had to move, so we moved here into the condominiums. ROH: Tell me a little bit about your health problems you are referring to. RR: When I was living in Virginia I went out for a bike ride with my youngest son. As I pumped up a hill I had severe chest pains and I stopped at the top and I said, "Brian, I have to stop and rest." He wanted to go on so I told him he can go on but I had to rest. When I went home Annette saw me and she said, "Dick you look terrible, you need to go to a doctor." I said, "Well, I'll do it tomorrow." I was kind of gray and having a lot of pain. I waited until the next day and went to a doctor. They examined me and said, "You've had a major blockage of your arteries, but don't worry about it because the worst that could happen to you already happened." We thought that was pretty crazy to say that, so I went to a very famous cardiologist I had contact with as a result of some of my business. He ran a heart hospital in Phoenix. They tested me and said, "You've got some blockage." They gave me an angiogram and put in a stent. The stent lasted just one day and it was clogged up again. This was just a couple of days before Christmas. I said to the surgeon, "What do you recommend?" He said, "I think you ought to get a mechanical fix." He meant a bypass. I said, "Well, I ought to do it. This is a good time for me to do that. Business is slow in Washington. So when can you do it?" He said, "I can do it 45 tomorrow." I called Annette and said, "I'm not coming home for Christmas, I'm getting open-heart surgery tomorrow." Annette had Christmas in Virginia with the family before she came to see me. I remember after the operation when I looked in the mirror; I looked like my father looked on his death bed. My voice was just like him. Annette saw me and she started crying. That was my first open-heart surgery. I got over that for a while and later on I developed another problem. In fact, I'd been in Korea and worked out in the exercise room in the hotel in Korea and I thought, "I'm doing great." By the time I got to the airport I was having trouble, so that was the sign that I needed it again. Then, I ended up having open-heart surgery again here in Ogden with Dr. Cain at the McKay-Dee Hospital. That one was kind of interesting because I went to Salt Lake to the Beehive House and I was participating in a political meeting there. The pains became more severe and more severe. I didn't think I was going to make it home it was so bad. Immediately, I saw a sign that said "Hospital Next Right" so I took the road up to the hospital on Antelope Drive and went to the emergency ward and went in and told the lady, "I need some help." She said, "You look terrible. Sit down." They got me in a wheelchair and got me some oxygen and said, "You need to see your heart doctor tomorrow." I went to see him and that's when he said, "We'll do another operation on you." So I got another open-heart surgery here. The one I got in Phoenix I got about five or six bypasses. When I was here in Ogden I got a couple more. It seemed like every two years I would have problems. 46 Later on, I had a problem again and I saw the same doctors and they said, "We won't open you up, we've opened you up twice and we're not interested in performing another open-heart, we never know what we're going to get into." I was in serious trouble and nobody would touch me. I went to the LDS hospital in Salt Lake and they didn't want to do anything and McKay-Dee didn't want to do anything. My son got on the internet and found a vascular surgeon out in Daly City, California who was doing some experimental laser surgery. We decided to try that. I went out to see them and they acknowledged that I needed some surgery, but it was experimental and the FDA would not let them perform that surgery unless I had an independent doctor look at me beforehand to say, "If he doesn't get it he'll probably die." It was one of these compassionate things. They said, "There's no insurance, so if you come out here, you'll have to bring cash with you." The vascular surgeon's secretary or nurse negotiated with the hospital and everybody involved and I had to take $15,000 out to Daly City Hospital and they performed that surgery on me. It's called TMR Transmyocardial Revascularization. They open you up and pull the ribs apart and punch holes in your heart with a laser. They move the laser right up to the heart muscle and punch a hole and blood will start coming out and they rub their finger on it and it seals it over and they move over and punch another until they punch 25 holes, sew you up and that's it. I'll tell you, it was the best operation I've ever had. The impact was dramatic. I walked out of there in a couple of days and the only thing that was wrong with me was I hurt a 47 lot on the soft tissue. Otherwise, it was like I'd never had a heart problem. That lasted me for several years and we decided I could go on a mission. Annette and I volunteered to go on a mission and we were called to the Rochester, New York mission and that included Buffalo, Rochester and Palmyra. While I was there I had the problem again and I was hospitalized. When I got home everything looked pretty good. I ended up over here at Ogden Regional and had a few more stents put in. I got to a point where I was really in trouble and my doctor said, "I tried to go in there and put in another stent, but I couldn't even get my wire in the artery. I tried four times and then I gave it up. I have to tell you, you're in pretty serious shape. I don't think you'll live on too much. I'd give you about two months unless somebody can fix this and we don't have a doctor with the ability to fix this particular problem." It was the main descending right artery. ROH: What year was this? RR: It was about 2007. The doctor said, "Let me call Mayo, Johns Hopkins and Cleveland. If anybody could do it one of them can, but I don't even know if they'll touch you." Cleveland said, "Come on back and we'll look at it and decide what to do." So we went back there and we checked in on a Monday and they did all kinds of tests on me until Friday and I met with the surgeon and he said, "Mr. Richards, you're in pretty bad shape. You've got about two months and that's about all you can live with this. The only way we could avoid that is if we could fix it. We don't even want to try. We don't open up people three times, now you want 48 us to open you up the fourth time. We don't normally do that." I said, "Well, doctor, you're the best hospital in the country to do this, you're the best doctor and I'm a tough patient. I want you to do it." He started laughing and he said, "I guess if anybody can survive it, you probably could. I won't agree to do it, but stick around for a day or so and I'll talk to some other surgeons and we'll see if we can work something out. But you have no promise from me." On Sunday, we got the telephone call from them and they said, "If you're still willing to take the risk and give appropriate releases, we'll do it on Tuesday." They called back and said, "We've got a cancellation Monday, come on in Monday morning." So I went in Monday morning and that's when they did the operation on me. It was kind of interesting though, the doctor did not want to do it. I knew he didn't want to do it, so he was looking pretty glum when they were about to do it. They did twelve open-heart surgeries a day at that hospital. He looked kind of glum and I said, "Well, doctor, let me tell you something that will make you feel better. I'm a Mormon, and we have a scripture that says all men are given a gift and you have a gift to heal people and I have the gift to be healed." He gave me the thumbs up and shoved me in the operating room and that was it. He called my doctor here and said, "You know, if it hadn't been for his attitude, we would have never touched him. He had such a good attitude. We thought he had a reasonable chance to survive." After about a year my doctor said, "Write to this guy and tell him you're still alive, I think he'll be interested in hearing it." ROH: It's been five years later. Are you doing well now? 49 RR: I'm doing pretty well. I've got some problems, but I'm doing pretty well. ROH: So does this heart issue run in your family? RR: Both of my parents had strokes, so I presume it runs in the family. I've got seven sisters and none of them have the problem. I have one brother and he's had one little problem, but hasn't had a stent put in. I've ended up with nine bypasses, four open-heart surgeries, fourteen stents, and a pacemaker and I'm just ticking along until it's time to go. ROH: Were there any prominent surgeons here in Ogden that worked with you on this? RR: Doctor Cain at McKay-Dee Hospital and my cardiologist here is Doctor Diehl at Ogden Regional. He's put in about seven of my stents. He's not a surgeon, he's a cardiologist. So, that's my medical history. ROH: Let's back up here a little bit. You moved back here from Washington. Were you involved in law practice when you moved back to Ogden? RR: I still represented Sunrider Corporation out of California. I was their general council. I really wasn't though. I had the title, but I was more of a consultant to them and did routine corporate work for them. I did a little bit of other lobbying. I did not do legal work, but I did some lobbying for people. ROH: Were you lobbying for Utah constituents or people back in Washington? RR: Mostly back in Washington. 50 ROH: Can you tell me some of the people you were working with then? RR: I was working with people in the aerospace business and I had to lobby the congress for them to put a little pressure on Taiwan to buy a bunch of Boeing aircraft. Taiwan Airlines wanted it, but they had some guys in the Taiwan government that didn't want to spend the money although they had billions on hand. Our job was to build a little bit of fire under the head of the government in Taiwan so they'd buy the airplanes from us. We had a bad balance of trade. They sold us a lot more than we sold them. To sell them eight or ten 747's was a big deal and we promoted that pretty aggressively. I didn't do a whole lot more, I really was quite retired. ROH: Did you get involved with any groups in the community? RR: I got involved with some friends and we played golf once a week. I did a little work in politics. I helped Orrin Hatch and other Republican candidates. I didn't do a lot. I didn't have the energy to do a lot and I didn't feel safe to travel. I did do some traveling to visit my son in Alabama and my daughter in New York and stuff like that, but I've been retired. However, I'm writing some papers on how I think we can improve the presidential election system in America. ROH: I know you have written a lot. RR: I've had people ask me to represent them and I've turned them down because I couldn't be reliable. If I had to go someplace tomorrow at 10:00, I'm not sure I could do it because of my health. I wake up some mornings and I just can't operate. 51 ROH: I know about you're involvement with Weber State and you've indicated that you guest lecture at the University of Utah. Why don't you tell me a little bit about that? RR: My interest was primarily with Weber State. When I left Washington after having seen the legal profession and the lobbyist I thought, "We have a real problem with ethics in this country." I wanted to do something about ethics and I talked to Ann Milner who was president of the university. I embarrassed my wife in what I said, but I said, "Ann, you ought to teach ethics on the campus. If you do that, you'll be a hero and if you don't do it you'll be a bum." She said, "You mean I'll be a bum?" I said, "Yes." We laughed about that. We talked about ethics and the development people got in touch with me. He said, "If you want to do something about it, why don't you put up some money to start a foundation?" So I did. I put up quite a bit of money for it. We started our ethics program and what we've been doing is giving scholarships out. For the last couple of years we've given scholarships and I think last year we gave about $20,000. That is, $1,000 scholarships to 20 people. ROH: Tell me a little bit about who is receiving the scholarships. RR: We put on a program in conjunction with Garff Motors, who has a program for high school students. We decided to have each of the high schools in the area participate in a contest to write the best essay on how we can improve ethics in our community. The people who wrote the best essay in 20 high schools were given a $1,000 scholarship to Weber State. We've done that for two years and I 52 presume we will continue to do it. In the meantime, I decided to write a book. I started writing my book about what I had done and so on and I've got some good help from Gene Sessions up on the campus. It took me a long time. Writing a book is not an easy project. My wife had a lot of good notes. My secretary kept a lot of good notes. I had a lot of press releases. A lot of what I put in there I got from newspapers because most everything I did was written up in the press somewhere. The book is called, "Climbing the Political Ladder One Rung at a Time" That was designed primarily to encourage young people who like politics to get involved. Also, to tell them how I was able to go from nowhere to the National Chairmanship and that they can do the same thing. As I give talks around, one of the first questions everybody asks is, "How did you ever get to become the Republican National Chairman?" The press says, "He came from Podunk Utah. Where's Ogden?" They had no idea where Ogden was. I had no family that was previously involved in politics. My family didn't have money, so how did I get to be National Chairman? ROH: Do you think that in today's environment that something like that could happen to someone? RR: It would be pretty rare because I've never heard of it happening before either. ROH: I'm sure that's what a lot of the students say is that it's really remarkable. RR: Well, what I tell them is that if they are willing to do the grubby, unglamorous work like licking the envelopes, putting on the stamps and running the errands, 53 you can work yourself up that ladder. Candidates love volunteers and if you're a good volunteer, you will just keep progressing up the line. The guy that I hired to be the executive director of the party here when I was the national chairman was Dave Turner, a young kid out of Utah State that volunteered to drive a car for me when I was a candidate. He was just a young kid interested in politics and he was a driver. From there he just moved up the ladder until he ended up in a pretty good position. ROH: What is he doing now? RR: He worked for Hudd for a while and he's just trying to get some years in for government service and he's working for the national security people at the airport. ROH: Back to this ethics business. It's curious to me because I don't know of a lot of ethics programs at other schools, so what inspired you to create something related to ethics at Weber State? RR: Well, because we needed it. We really need it. When I talked to them, Ann said, "Talk to the head of the business department." I talked to him and he said, "Well, we devote an hour or two in the course of study on ethics." I said, "That's nothing. We ought to have a whole program of ethics." I really pushed it hard and Nathan Clark pushed me to put up the money to start it and that's what we've done. Every day you can read in the newspaper about some major breech of ethics on the part of a governor, a senator, or someone that works for the city— everybody. There's ethical breech all around us and a lot of times these kids 54 don't know any better. I've seen surveys where they ask kids if they have ever cheated in school. Seventy-five percent of them say they've cheated and when you ask why they say, "Well, everybody else is cheating and I'm competing with them. If I have to compete with them then I guess I have to cheat." I thought, "We need to start teaching them a little bit earlier." If we can get a hold of these kids in high school and get them involved in ethics, it's going to a make a difference. Someone asked me, "How are you going to measure success?" I said, "I don't know that you can, but somewhere along the line you're going to touch somebody and that's going to improve their attitude on ethics." That's what it's all about. It's a difficult thing. It's prodding all the time and trying to get people to buy scholarships for the kids, but we have had some experience from these young kids that won the scholarship that say, "I could not have gone to college without that scholarship. That made all the difference in the world to me." We give it to them not because they are rich or good students, but because they have the best ideas about ethics. I still spend a lot of time and effort on this ethics stuff. ROH: I think that's great. RR: However, I do have a complaint against the university on this and I've talked to a lot of these guys that raise big chunks of money. I say, "Why don't you tell the people that are giving to earmark some of that money for ethics?" The university doesn't want to do it because they want the money to go into the building or whatever they do. There's no reason why we can't tell a guy that's going to give a million dollars that $50,000 of that can go into ethics, but the university has their 55 own program and it isn't channeling the ethics program. We're getting the new president soon and I'm going to be approaching him. Ann has been supportive, but nothing has happened other than holding those meetings. We had the former governor speak to our group a year ago and we gave out all these scholarships and there wasn't one word in the press about it. Standard Examiner never wrote one word about it. We had the pictures taken of all these kids that got scholarships and we were hoping they'd get their picture in the paper and they did not. I called Doug at the Standard and I asked if he would run a story on the ethics program. He said, "Yes. When is it?" I said, "It was last night." They did not even know what night it was and I said, "You guys at the university and the public relations department failed, you should have seen that the press was there." Again, this is the second year they didn't do it. We've decided that we've got to have a public relations guy on our board. It's their job to get the press. ROH: Is there anything nationally that you're aware of happening with ethics? RR: No. It was kind of interesting when Jon Huntsman was the governor, he came up when they named the Richard Richards Institute. Governor Huntsman and Jake Garn were there and they named it. Huntsman said, "You're the only university around here that's promoting ethics. I'm going to support you. I'm going to help you." Well, he hasn't. I sent him an email when he was over in China and said, "You said you wanted to help us I thought it meant you were going to give us some money or get other people to give some money." We hate to have to go out 56 and grub money a dollar at a time to give these scholarships. Zion's Bank has been a big supporter. They have given us $12,000 each year for two years. That was very helpful to us. The university has paid for the meals when we have the banquet and that's about all the university has done. It really hasn't caught on yet. ROH: It takes some time. How many years has it been now? RR: I've been working on it for about three or four years, but we've been giving out scholarships for the last two. Alan Hall is a big money raiser for the school. I went to Alan and said, "Alan, why don't you tell these guys that are giving money that they can earmark some for ethics." He said he would do it, but I don't think he has. However, in the next week or so that committee meets again and I'm going to go back to Alan Hall and say, "Look, give us some money." In fact, because he writes this business article and I told him, "Alan, why don't you write an article about ethics?" He wrote a paragraph about it out of probably 30 or 40 columns. We got two inches referring to ethics. We're going to have to press it. ROH: I think it would be good for you to write a column too because you've got more experience. RR: I've written some columns only they've been political columns. ROH: What do you think about ethics in politics these days? RR: Well, politics today is meaner than it has been in a long time. When Jake Garn decided he didn't want to run again and Howard Baker from Tennessee, the 57 senator from Colorado said, "It isn't fun anymore. It used to be fun, but it is just mean now. Your colleagues are mean, your constituents are mean, the press is mean and it just isn't fun." Senator Baker told me, "If I knew how good it was on the outside, I would have quit the senate a long time ago." It's just a bad environment and it is getting worse. You can go back in history and you can see even in George Washington's time they slandered one another, but we slander them day after day in the press that gets to millions of readers every day. That's why it appears so bad. ROH: How do you inspire the youth? Let's say these high school kids that you're helping to go to university. How do you inspire them to change when what they're seeing is so slanderous? RR: We've made a couple of attempts to do that. We were assigned by the governor to sit on the committee to tell how to improve elections in the state. I got the students up at Weber to write a program on it and we submitted it to the governor. We also got one on ethics and what the ethics reform ought to be. Our kids on the campus wrote a program on how to establish an ethics program in the state of Utah and the legislation didn't pay any attention to it. We gave it directly to the governor and we gave it to legislatures and we gave it to the press. Everybody saw it but the legislature pre-empted everybody and wrote their puny little ethics reform which is nothing. 58 ROH: I was wondering if that had anything to do with it. I remember hearing about ethics reform a little over a year ago, so I was wondering if that is just one of those things that will take more time. RR: Yes, it will take time beyond my time to get, but whatever we do to get it going is worth it. Like I said, if you ask, "How do you measure your success?" There are no definitive measures, but if you touch the heart and mind of a half a dozen kids, that's good. Out of our first year we had one of our students that got an ethics scholarship and they worked on our committee. They went to Washington to be an intern at the White House for Obama. Another one went to work for congressman Bishop. The kids did get involved and they're doing some stuff. I can pick out two or three kids that I know we've had an impact on and will do something in politics. As I look back, when I was party chairman in Utah, Karl Rove was one of my interns. I didn't even know him. I didn't pay attention to him at that time. Another one was this guy Dave Hanson, who runs Orrin Hatch's campaign and I had lunch with him yesterday. Another one named Alan Peterson who did a nationwide organizational program for Richard Nixon and we had some guys from Ogden participating. Alex Hurtado, he was one of my best political friends and he got involved in this national organization for Nixon. I've seen a handful of people that have become involved and have been very successful, but it's got to be more. ROH: Is there anything else you'd like to add about ethics? 59 RR: There is one thing that's happening. Isaac Goeckeritz is putting together a film on ethics to promote the ethics up here. He has interviewed Jake Garn, Richard Wirthlin, Mr. Mack, the governor, and a whole lot of people talking about ethics in their business. Bob Garff talks about the ethics of his father in the automobile business. They're talking about ethics and he's preparing it and his wife said he is coming close and maybe by Christmas he will have it done and it will go on the air at KUED. I think it will be good enough that it will open up a lot of other things. Another guy that's in that is Dan Jones and he talks about ethics in the polling business. ROH: That will be good to see. Isaac Goeckeritz, for future reference, is a local historian, film documenter, a Weber State graduate, and one of Richard's relatives. RR: We were involved with the one on the Union Station, he did the one on the hill out in Uintah, "The U," he did one on homeless vets and now he's doing one on ethics. He's also doing other stuff. KUED loves him, they say he's got a great deal of talent and they're going to keep using him. ROH: Today is September 26, 2012 and we are in the home of Dick Richards. Present are Rebecca Ory Hernandez and Dick Richards. We are going to continue your oral history. The last time we spoke we talked a lot about the Ethics Institute at Weber State, so today I would like to talk a little more about present day and what is happening in your life. What are your involvements here in Ogden and in 60 the state related to politics? I know that you have been a guest on a few T.V. shows, so why don't you tell me a little bit about that? RR: I was on two Ted Capner shows, that's the Sunday afternoon broadcast. The first one after he read my book he invited me to come and talk to him and we talked about the things that are in the book. You've seen many of them. The other discussion we had just a week or so ago was on how we can cut down the cost of presidential campaign. This year's presidential campaign will probably cost 4 billion dollars. Each one of the candidates will raise about a billion dollars for their campaign and the political parties will make another half a billion. Then, 527 committees, or so-called super-packs, will each raise about a half a billion or more and that will put us at least $4 billion for the presidential campaign. The point that people don't understand is that the Supreme Court has rules that anyone can get involved in a campaign and spend all the money they want provided they do not coordinate with the candidate. All these committees raise money and you know what their message is going to be, they don't have to say vote for Obama or vote for Romney, you can tell what they're promoting. They get involved in it and that will bring the cost to over $4 billion. My proposal was that in order to prevent this limit the time, since you can't limit the money. Reduce the time of the campaign and allow the candidates to do their exploratory effort up until about the 15th of April in the election year. By the 15th of April they have to announce whether they will or will not be a candidate. If they say they will be a candidate, from that day on they can start raising money. They'll have to go through the primaries of the various states from that time before November. 61 If you're in a state with a caucus convention like we have, you might have your first caucus about three months after the candidate announces. We'd have the county conventions and the state conventions and if you had to have a primary you'd push the campaign between the Republican and the Democrat clear back to about August of September. They can't raise or spend a billion dollars between September and November, so it will really force the whole process to slow down to eliminate cost. Romney had been running for about 6 or 8 years and Obama has been running for 3 and it's just boring, wasteful and non-productive. The conventions and the debates they have are really about nothing and they reduce themselves to just petty criticism of the other guy. If you had only a three month campaign period they'd talk about what they want to do. They'd talk about the positive aspects of their campaign. ROH: Who profits from all of this money? RR: I made that point on television. The only ones that profit are the television stations, the radio, the newspaper, the campaign managers, and the advertising firms. The public doesn't profit by it. It's the guys that make money out of the campaign. Professional fundraisers get a percentage of the money they raise, the television people get money for everything they run, the campaign managers and the public relations people get 15 percent of what they spend on television. Just imagine a $200 million campaign on television and the guy is going to make about $30 million for putting the ads on the air. That's a big deal. ROH: So the candidates don't actually make any of the money they are raising? 62 RR: No, the candidates don't get it. It's those that are in the campaign business that get the money. Nobody likes to give it, but when you've got a campaign and they keep hitting you up for money, you feel the pressure and you make contributions. Everybody but the guys that make money on the campaign would like to see it shorter. ROH: Do you think that will happen in our lifetime? RR: It could, but I don't know whether it will or not. There has been a drive in the past for regional primaries or a national primary. If we had regional primaries, that would help a lot because then the candidate would have to talk to all of the American people instead of just eight states. Where they are now they go to Illinois and they talk about automobile manufacturing because that's the big issue there. They go to Ohio and they talk about the agricultural subsidies. It really isn't a national campaign, it is a series of little local interest campaigns. That's not good for the country. ROH: Are there any other shows that you've been featured on other than the one that you just mentioned? RR: No, I've been on his show a couple of times and I speak once in a while at the Hinckley Institute. I get invited more to the University of Utah to speak than I do Weber State, but I do participate on the campuses and I've been asked to talk to civic groups in town. My health is such that I have been turning them down. I don't know whether or not I'm going to feel well enough to do it. I just say, "No, I don't do that anymore." 63 ROH: Are you doing any local speeches during this campaign? RR: I write down suggestions for the candidates to send to them and they never follow those. What happens is that when a guy gets to be the campaign manager doesn't want other people telling him what to do. They look at guys like me and say, "Oh those guys are over the hill, they don't know the campaigns are different today." They don't pay any attention to us. They're wrong. I found my way to the national chairmanship by doing a good campaign on the state and local level and then on the national level. The principles of running the program we run is the same today as it was 20, 30, or 50 years ago. The average American has nothing to do with the campaign. They don't know the candidate. They don't meet the candidates and they don't even know who they are. If you put on a program where you give them the opportunity to participate in the campaign they're flattered by it. They want to do it. What we had done over the years was recruit people. For Richard Nixon, we set up a telephone operation and called people in the various neighborhoods and said, "I'm a volunteer for Richard Nixon, we think he's uniquely qualified to be president of the United States. We're doing what we can, will you help us?" A lot of people say yes and ask what they can do. We send them brochures and ask them to go door-to-door and tell the people about Richard Nixon and give him their personal endorsement. We know it flatters people and they think their job is very important. 64 Many years ago, one guy up in Portland called up after we went through the primary and said, "I did my work in the primary, but I'm 82 years old and legally blind. I don't think I can do it in a general election. So, you better get someone to take my place." He thought that the little role he had in the neighborhood was so important that if he didn't do it, there would be a problem so we'd have to get somebody to take his place. T The campaign chairman doesn't make any money if you do this volunteer work and neither does the television or anyone else, this is a very quiet campaign. The only person that makes any money on this is the guy that rents you the building and maybe the telephone company that has telephones from it. ROH: That's interesting. Are you doing any other kinds of present day consulting? RR: No, I'm actually retired. I'm helping a couple of little businesses, but I'm basically retired. I'm one of the 47 percent that's living off of the government program called Social Security. ROH: Can you share a little bit about the businesses you're helping? RR: I've been helping a company that makes a gasoline additive that reduces the pollution of your automobile and increases your gas mileage. Interestingly enough, my role is to get government people to look at it and try it out. I have found that people that work for the government in the motor pools don't care if you save money on gasoline. It's not out of their pocket. You can give it to them and ask them to try it out, but they don't do it. We talk about the need to increase 65 mileage and reduce pollution, but the guy that's running the motor pool at the state of Utah, Salt Lake and Ogden don't care. ROH: Is it corn-based? RR: No, it's not a food-based. It's made of algae. It does not affect the corn prices or the wheat prices. I use it in my car and I get five more miles per gallon in the city and on the highway. ROH: That's fascinating. RR: It's just a little tablet you put in the gas tank. It looks like a jelly bean and when you fill your gas tank you drop it into the tank. ROH: Is it available on the market? RR: Yes, but it's only on the internet. You can't sell it at the gas stations because it cuts down their gas sales they don't want that. I've got to give my wife credit that she put up with all of the things I've done and all of the moving. I have dragged her and my kids around the country time and time again and they've never complained. I think they've had a great benefit from doing it, but at the same time a lot of people complain if they've had to pick up and move every year or two. We never lived in a house for more than 10 years until we were 13 years in that house in McLean, Virginia and that's the longest we've ever been in a house. AR: Actually, we've been here now about as long as we've been there. It wasn't easy, I'll tell you. 66 ROH: Annette, you do history, right? AR: Yes. I've been doing that. I went to a meeting in Salt Lake on this new family search and they asked how long people have been researching and I'd been researching the longest. Over 50 years. I started when I was pretty young. Our oldest daughter was three months old when I got involved. ROH: Okay. Thanks Annette. Let's talk a little about present day politics, just a couple of quick questions. Are you involved at all in present day politics as far as on the national level? RR: Once in a while a candidate will call me and ask if he can sit down with me for a while and talk about the campaign and I give him some ideas. Otherwise, I'm really not involved. I was called by the campaign chairman for Governor Rick Perry and asked if I would be the Utah chairman for Perry and I said, "We've got to get passed John Huntsman first." I couldn't work for Perry as long as John Huntsman was in the race, but if Huntsman was out I'd be glad to help Perry out. I think he was a good candidate except he can't talk and answer questions. ROH: Other than Perry, are there any other names? RR: Well, I gave a little bit of advice to Hatch's opponent, but I said, "Orrin is a good friend of mine. I can't tell you how to run against him, but I can tell you what I think the issues ought to be." I spent an hour with Dan Lillianquist and I thought he was a good candidate, but he ran a bad campaign. ROH: What makes a bad campaign? 67 RR: If the campaign doesn't connect with the public and the voters it's a bad campaign. What you've got to do is talk about a message that they want to hear about and you have to have a good point of view on it. That's what these polls are about. They're polling all the time, "How do you feel about immigration? How do you feel about this or that?" The candidate tailors their message to appeal to those people. Unfortunately, it gets to be just a pandering deal to them. I respect Jon Huntsman because he said, "I'm not going to go to Iowa because I'm against ethanol subsidies. If I got to Iowa they're just going to "boo" me and I won't make any headway there, so I'm not going to go pander to them." I respect him for taking that position. Most of the candidates will go to one place and pander to them and it's just not healthy for the country and I think it's too bad. I'm 80 years old and my health isn't good, so I deliberately took myself out of a lot of this. I did join the tea party and I'll tell you why I like it. Number one, this is middle class America, the silent majority starting to make a little bit of noise. They're not looking for something special for themselves; they just don't want things special given to everybody else. They say, "We've got to cut down our spending." It isn't a question of raising more money, it's spending less money. When they go out and they have a rally of 15,000 people, there's no paraphernalia on the ground or a mess. They don't create a problem. It's clean, it's nice and these are good American citizens voicing their opinion. I read where people say, "The tea party is fading and they are not going to be all that critical in the campaign." They're kidding themselves. The tea party is alive and well and they will be very active in the campaigns when it comes closer to election time. 68 They don't campaign all year long, but they will be out working and they will have an impact. ROH: I think it's interesting that today that we have a new party. I think most people would find that interesting historically to look back and see the beginnings of this new party. Thank you for sharing. RR: One of the things that I propose in election reform is that they allow all parties to campaign in primary elections. Let them all get into the campaign and you'll wash out those that aren't really going to be a contender and you're going to end up with two or three. Maybe there would be three candidates in November, but there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe the guy that wins the presidency only had 47 percent of the population, but that's okay. Other people ought to have the right to voice their point of view and have the American people hear it. ROH: I had a young political science student ask me a question that they wanted me to ask you. He said that a lot of his friends are just not interested in politics at all. I would say between the ages of 19 and 26 are the age of his friends right now. He wanted me to ask you why they should be interested or get involved in politics because their perception of everything they see is negative. RR: That's unfortunate. A lot of people are turned off by the negative campaigns. I am. I'd get tired of listening to them. In fact, I asked Ted Capner if he watched all of the debates and he said, "No." I said, "Neither did I." I couldn't watch them all because they were not productive. I'd tell these young kids, "If you are really interested in politics, find a candidate that you like who's telling the story the way 69 you like it and join that campaign. If you get involved in it you will see your way through all of these things. You'll see how productive it can be." When you're only 19 years old, you're not thinking about retirement, medical expenses, or high taxes. You just haven't been out in the real world yet. As soon as you get a job and get your paycheck and you find out how much money was taken out for social security and worker's compensation and all these other things you think, "Hey, I thought I was getting $200 and I got $150." That shocks them and that's the eye-opener to these people. It kind of goes along with what Winston Churchill said, "When you're 19 years old, if you're not a liberal you've got no heart, but when you're 55 years old, if you're not a conservative you've got no brains." ROH: Right. That was what he asked, "How does it impact my life? All I'm trying to do is survive." He's actually got a wife and a child. He's working, going to school and he's involved on campus in leadership. He said, "I don't see how I can even be a blip on the radar of what's going on nationally." RR: Well, that's a story I tell in my book. I started out as the junior Republican chairman at Weber Junior College in 1952. In 1980, I was the Republican National Chairman. I climbed up. President Reagan said, "He's had every job on the way up. This is the first chairman I know that's worked his way through the state and national chairmanship positions." There's opportunity out there for these guys and in order to really understand it, I think you have to get involved in a campaign. The guy who's going to school and has a wife and kids says, "I'm 70 worried about my health insurance and if we have another baby we can't afford the cost of it." Then insurance becomes interesting to him. After a while, he gets hurt on the job or he gets sick, then social security, Medicare, and disability becomes interesting to him. These things become interesting as he grows older and he's facing that proposition. Young people don't look that far ahead. They think they're invincible and indestructible. They just don't see the problems down the road. ROH: Right. So let's talk a little bit about your family. I know you've got lots of children. RR: I've got five. ROH: That's a good-sized family. Are any of them involved in politics? RR: No, that is the interesting thing. My oldest son is a professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama. His name is Richard Albert Richards. He was named after Annette's father. He started out to be a dancer professionally and he danced around the world as a ballet dancer. He was quite good, but not good enough to be a star, and if you're not a star you can't make a living doing it. He finally decided that it wasn't for him and he went back to school to study philosophy. When he went back to school, he took the college ACT test and he got in the 98th percentile and he was offered a full fellowship at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He got his degree there. He was a very good student and he had very good recommendations by the number one philosopher there and he went around to some of the colleges to seek employment and he ran into people that 71 said, "White men need not apply, we're going to hire a minority or a woman. So don't bother to apply." My oldest daughter, Julie Dockter, is married to a real estate salesman and they have four sons who are all doing very well. One of them is a businessman doing a lot of business with China and has made a lot of money. Another one is a medical doctor and his name is Dr. Dockter. Another one is in college studying something in physical sciences and the other one is a computer expert at Novell in Provo. My next daughter is married to a lawyer who's practicing law in New York. She's interested in politics, but she doesn't do much of it. She reads a lot and she gets involved a little bit but she has three kids and teaches early morning seminary and some other things. Her name is Jan Stevenson. My next daughter is Amy Hartvigsen and her husband is a landscape architect down in Alpine and they have four boys. The oldest is now on a mission. They have really talented kids. There is a lot of talent around my grandkids. My youngest son, Brian, works for the state of Utah in Utah Workplace. That's my family. I have ten grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren and four of those great grandchildren are part Chinese. My grandson, Chris Dockter married a Chinese girl from Taiwan. 72 ROH: I couldn't help but notice that you have a lot of art hanging in your home. RR: It's all family art. My father was the artist. ROH: Other people in your family are also artistically inclined. RR: Yes. My brother is an artist and he taught art at Dennison University in Dallas. My son, Rich, painted that big picture on the wall there. On the wall up there I've got paintings of my father, my brother, my daughter, and my son. We've all got a painting up there. My father is the best artist of the bunch. I have sisters that are very good. I think you saw the picture of the dogs in my bedroom. One of my sisters did that. There are a number of good artists in the family. The etching above the piano was by my brother. That big picture there is done by my son, Rich. The Abraham Lincoln was given to me by the Republican Party of Utah when I completed my term as state chairman. The star is a little thing that Richard Nixon gave out when he was elected president. The eagle is from the inauguration of Reagan and Bush. Geronimo is one that I just purchased. A friend of mine, Jay Taggert, former superintendent of the schools for Utah gave me the Teddy Roosevelt. ROH: Is there anything else that I might not have asked you that you would like to address? RR: I tell people jokingly that I used to be a genius, but now I'm just very bright. As a result of my heart operations, I have lost some mental acuity and I'm not as sharp as I used to be. My memory isn't as good. I have bad days so I'm limited. As a former National Chairman, I always have access to a seat at the national 73 conventions. They have one for former chairmen and I couldn't go so I asked them if my nephew could use my credentials so he went to the last convention. I went to every convention from 1968 until George W. Bush ran. I did not go then, but I went through Nixon, Reagan, and H. W. Bush. I've been to a lot of conventions. ROH: Is your nephew involved in politics now? RR: He's a lobbyist so he's a little bit involved in politics, but he likes to get involved. He has worked for candidates in the past. I don't have any children that wanted to be lawyers or wanted to be in politics. I wouldn't encourage them to be lawyers because I'm unhappy with the profession now. ROH: I was going to ask you if you encouraged them at all when they were younger to go into law or politics since they were living in Washington. RR: My girls were more enamored by living in Washington than my sons. They loved going to the White House and going to Kennedy Bunk Port and going to the parades and inaugurals and so on. They really enjoyed that. Everybody really loved being in that historical place, including me. ROH: Are there any stories about Ogden that many people might not know about or historical stories that would be just interesting to share? RR: Did you see the film that Isaac did on 25th Street? There is some historical stuff that I'm involved in on that 25th Street thing. When I went to law school, I drove from Ogden to Salt Lake and I had a couple of people that paid me to ride with 74 me. One of them was Annabelle Weakly and the other was Jane Larson. She was about 70 years old and she wanted to go back to school. She graduated from Weber College when she was 70 or 72. I got to know both of them fairly well. After I got out of law school I wanted to try lawsuits and I wanted to go to trial. If you want trial experience as a young lawyer you're not going to get it in a civil case. I went to the judges and said, "I want some trial experience so give me your criminals that don't have any money that are in jail and can't make bond." We didn't have a public defender system then. Over a period of one year they gave me 10 criminals and I tried the 10 felonies to a jury. I got 8 acquittals out of my 10 and that put me in business. I had lots of criminal business. In fact, it was too much. I ended up trying to get rid of it because I got tired of the criminals, but that's where I got my experience in the court room. I'll give you a quote from a guy if it won't sound politically incorrect, "One day I was walking along the street and this black guy came up to me and said, are you Mr. Richardson Richardson?" I said, "Well, I guess I am." He said, "Are you the man that represented Copeland Griffin?" I said, "I guess that's right." He said, "Well, let me shake your hand. You must be good. He was the biggest crook in town." Two of my defenses were for one guy and I won both of the cases and this impressed those in the black community. All my life I've been interested in politics, not for the sake of winning, but for the sake of helping the country. I've been concerned about the country. I see things that I don't think are right and I don't know whether I told you this story but when I was pretty new in the practice, we saw some misconduct and what I call 75 criminal activity on the part of elected officials in Weber County. I was instrumental in getting a grand jury called and ended up putting a sheriff in jail and some other things. These guys were doing a lot of things wrong. ROH: No, you didn't mention that? Who was the Sheriff? RR: It was LeRoy Hadley. I was representing a guy by the name of Ralph Anderson. He was a federal prisoner being housed in Ogden and waiting for his appeal in the tenth circuit. He appeared to have the run of the jail. Every time I'd go up to jail to see another client I'd see him hanging around. He wasn't in a cell, he was hanging around. One of these guys that had tattoos on his arm and had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his shirt sleeve tried to hire me to represent him and he wanted an appeal to the tenth circuit. He was in jail for burglarizing a couple of post offices. He and his brother-in-law would drive a particularly adapted automobile up to these small post offices, break in, wheel the safe out and put it in the trunk of the car and drive up into the mountains and blow it up with dynamite and take out the money orders and postage stamps. He said, "Dick, I'll hire you. I'll give you $10,000 to represent me. I've got $60,000 stolen in postal money orders up in Pocatello. I can sell those for $20,000 and I'll give you half of it." I said, "No thanks. Not interested." Anyway, as time went on I talked to the guy and one day his wife came to me and said, "Mr. Richards, they're going to let Andy out of jail again this weekend. I'm afraid if he gets caught out of jail when he's supposed to be in jail the sheriff will say he escaped and he'll get an extra 5 or 10 years punishment." 76 When I found out they were letting him out of jail I said, "I've got to tell the judge. I am an officer of the court so I have to tell Judge Anderson, the federal judge in Salt Lake, what's happening here." I called the judge and he said, "You ought to call Judge Ritter." I said, "Judge, I don't like Judge Ritter and he doesn't like me so I'm telling you. I've now done my duty." As a result of what happened here a grand jury was called and the grand jury heard the evidence that the sheriff would let him out on weekends and he'd go burglarize someplace and share what he stole with the sheriff. The grand jury said to contact him and ask him to give some specifics about one of the burglaries that only the burglar would know. We'll find out if he's telling the truth. He said, "I knocked off the Red Pantry Café on the corner of Ogden Avenue and 25th Street. I got in by kicking in the back door with my foot and I left a shoe print on the door so I had to get rid of the shoes afterward. When I went in I got into the cigarette machines, I got into jukeboxes and I stole the stuff out of there. One thing that was very peculiar is when I got the jukebox money, there were a lot of quarters with red fingernail polish on them. I don't know what that meant, but that's what I took." They called in the man that owned the Red Pantry Café and said, "What about the money in the jukebox? Is there anything unusual about it?" he said, "Oh yeah, part of those quarters are what I call show quarters. I put red fingernail polish on the ones I put in so I get them back. When somebody saw other people put in for music they'd play music. They were show coins. I got to keep them and 77 the guy that owned the music company would take all the others." That was proof that my guy stole the money out of the jukebox. Finally, they put the sheriff on trial. When it was known that the sheriff let the guy out, his attorney said, "Sheriff, isn't it true that the reason you let him out was to take him to your home and show him what good law abiding citizens lived like and to get a little spirituality in your life?" The guy said, "No, that isn't true." The lawyer asked the question, "Well, why did you let him out?" He said, "Greed, Mr. Alsup. Greed." They convicted the sheriff and the sheriff was put in jail down in Davis County. ROH: What year was this? RR: I don't know what year it was. I went back to Washington shortly after that. The sheriff came up to me one time when I was alone and said, "Richard, you son of bitch. I'll get you for this." He threatened me, but I didn't say anything about it. He went to jail and some of the other public officials lost their jobs and it kind of cleaned up the community. The interesting part of that is that one of the guys that we had as our plaintiff in our action against the county officials was the lieutenant governor's father. He ran a janitorial supply place in Ogden on 25th Street. His name was George Bell. His son is now the Lieutenant governor. It took courage on the part of his father to act as a plaintiff in the case. It was a taxpayer's lawsuit filed against him because they were crooked. The