
          The Leadership of Leroy Collins.  "I Kept Hammering:" Leroy
Collins 
          By Griffin, JohnJohn Griffin 
          Vol. 11, No. 1, 1989, pp. 17-21, 23
          
          EDITOR'S NOTE: At the 1988 Annual Meeting, held in
Atlanta in November, Leroy Collins of Florida and Margaret Walker
Alexander of Mississippi were honored as Life Fellows of the Southern
Regional Council. Mrs. Walker was unable to attend the awards dinner,
but former Governor Collins was present, and was introduced by his
long-time friend and now fellow life member, John Griffin of
Atlanta. Following the awards presentation, Griffin
"interviewed. Collins about his life and work. Bill Steverson edited
the following excerpts from their remarks.
          JOHN GRIFFIN: Let me just briefly give a word or
two about Governor Collins. He was Governor of Florida from 1955 to
1961. In this period and later he became a regional and a national
leader. He was seen as a spokesman for the new South. During the Civil
Rights struggle he was a moderate, speaking against the organized
resistance that was mounting throughout the South, and calling on the
people of Florida to change their views on racial matters and to
acknowledge the justice of the black claims. When the sit-in movement
hit Tallahassee, Governor Collins made a remarkable statewide TV
appearance in which he appealed for law and order and for the
acceptance of change by fellow Floridians. The speech was given
widespread attention, for it was so very different from what was going
on in other capital cities of the South with other governors under
similar circumstances.
          After the passage of the Civil Rights bill of 1964 Governor Collins
was asked by President Johnson if he would head the Community
Relations Service, the agency that was set up as a troubleshooting
agency with civil rights problems. Governor Collins brought that
agency into being, directed it and got it in good speed before he
moved over to become Undersecretary of Commerce.
          At Selma he accomplished a remarkable compromise to avoid a second
confrontation on the [Edmund Pettus] bridge when he persuaded the
Alabama state police to accept a plan whereby Dr. King and his
followers would march just over the bridge and instead of moving on
would stop and have a prayer service and then turn back. He managed to
sell this idea both to Dr. King and to Sheriff Clark and the others in
the state force, but he didn't know whether it was going to work or
not. He put himself in the middle of that situation, physically
standing in the middle of the highway, knowing that if by any reason
any movement was made toward Dr. King that he would personally make an
effort to intercede. There was much else about the CRS history in this
period that we owe Governor Collins a vote of thanks for establishing
this important agency.
          After the Community Relations Service, Governor Collins for one
year was Undersecretary of Commerce and then he returned to
Florida. One of the saddest things was that his role in civil rights
in my judgment was the factor that kept him out of the United States
Senate, for in 1968 pictures that had been made of Governor Collins
talking with Andy Young and Dr. King and others were used as a device
to keep him out of the Senate by his opponent in the general
election.
          LEROY COLLINS: I think maybe I ought to tell you
of an experience I had when I started practicing law when I was a
young man of twenty-one in 1931. I had grown up there in the community
working in stores and keeping pretty busy around town but nobody ever
thought I was going to become 

a lawyer. But I made it. And I came back and I started practicing
law. I wasn't offered a job with any other lawyer so I just rented a
little office for twenty dollars a month and I got a girl--a young
woman--who wanted to be a sort of apprentice and learn secretarial
work for a lawyer and so she started out as my secretary with even
less pay than I was paying rent.
          In 1931 those were very dark economic times as you have read or
knew. It was very very tough. I had great difficulty getting any
business at all. I hadn't been practicing long before a farmer came in
to me and he said he had had a cow run over by the railroad train. He
wanted me to sue the railroad for damages. Well, I just thought that
was manna from heaven. He said this cow was an unusual cow. While most
of his cattle were old sorry range cows this particular cow happened
to be a fine pure-bred registered heifer--there used to be a saying
that the way to produce a fine pure-bred registered heifer was to take
an old broken-down range cow and cross her with a Seaboard Coastline
locomotive.
          The railroad company wanted to make a test case out of it and take
it on to the state Supreme Court to get some issue of law
settled. They brought down to Tallahassee a whole battery of lawyers,
one from New York and two from Norfolk, Va. Then they had their local
staff. We were in the court room and this great battery of lawyers was
sitting around one table. The old farmer and I were sitting at the
other table all by ourselves.
          It was kind of discouraging but I put on my evidence and I thought
I made out a pretty good case. Then I made the opening argument to the
jury, after all the evidence was in. I thought I reached heights of
eloquence and oratory in that presentation that had never been
achieved--in our community at least.
          Then one after another these railroad lawyers started arguing their
case. I mean, they were fine lawyers. After about the third one spoke,
my client leaned over to me and says, "Say, son have you got
another chance to argue to that jury?" And I said, "Oh,
yes. When they get all through I'm going to make the closing
argument." He said, "Why, that's good. You tell them that the
railroad company is a great big rich corporation and had plenty of
money and could get plenty of lawyers and I was just a poor old farmer
and couldn't get much."
          Well, I told them just what he said tell them. They brought in a
verdict of $500 for that cow.
          
            GRIFFIN: I think an appropriate starting point would
be to ask you to talk a little bit about leadership and political
leadership and statesmanship.
          
          COLLINS: Not so long ago I was talking to a
group of youngsters down in Tallahassee about leadership. I told them
they had to start off with a basic bedrock of character to expect to
be good leaders. They had to have character and values and they had to
tell the truth. They had to walk a good straight line. Over and beyond
that I told them that I had been surprised at how many youngsters
their age were completely unmindful of the obligations of leadership
of I people in public life. Several of them told me that they wanted
to become governor someday. I asked why and they said, "Well,
you've got this great big house you can live in. You've got that
limousine. You've got these highway patrolmen. You go into these
parades." They were thinking entirely in terms of the show and the
ostentatious part of being a governor. They weren't thinking at all in
terms of what they were going to do as governor. I said if you are
going to be a leader you need to determine what you want to do so that
you can establish some goals.
          In my own situation, when I was about that age representing that
farmer, I was thinking very deeply about how I could help on some
problems that were in that community. I wasn't thinking about being in
public life, actually. I had represented the school board and so I saw
what a horrible situation we had in schools in Florida. We had our
counties divided up in districts. Each district had a school and they
were dependent on tax revenues produced in that district to support
that school.
          So the poor districts had poor schools that were little or
nothing. The in-town districts were pretty strong with a tax base and
they had pretty good schools.
          I thought that if I could get into the legislature that I could
have an opportunity to make laws and to set up programs. I found that
I could when the people elected me to the legislature.
          When I got into the legislature, well, it was the greatest thrill
of my lifetime that I could find some people who were thinking deeply
about what we came to call a Minimum Foundation Law that would put the
state for the first time in the business of guaranteeing every child
in Florida a decent education in public schools.
          So I got involved with that. Two people came up with a plan. It was
an excellent plan. It wee immediately repudiated by legislators, by
the then-governor and by the people because it wee very complex. We
organized a plan to go all over the state and tell people what it
meant and what it would mean in terms of developing citizens of the
future and developing educational opportunity for all of our
children. We got the PTAs to listen to us and we got other
organizations to listen to us. We got enough public sentiment. In a
short time, the next session of the legislature, we passed that in
Florida. It's been a stalwart of supporting educational progress over
the time since. The same basic idea has been utilized in many states
since. I always had the satisfaction that I had found something that
was of great use to the people that I could accomplish and help
accomplish in public service.
          So that's one thing that I would insist upon them. I would insist
an element of leadership is the ability to see and to find useful
goals and not be just thinking in terms of people holding positions
and holding office.
          There is the Thomas Jefferson memorial in Virginia. You all are
aware of this, but Thomas Jefferson insisted and 

made provision
requiring all the details of his [tombstone]. He specified that there
would be three things carved into that monument. These three things
were: Author of the Declaration of Independence, Author of the
Virginia Article of Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of
Virginia.
          I think that's very interesting. Jefferson has always been one of
my great heroes. Here he was thinking exactly in the terms of what was
important in contributions that he was able to make in his
lifetime. You know he didn't mention a single office he held. There
was a man who was in the legislative service of the state of Virginia,
he became Governor of Virginia, he was in the Congress, made laws
there, he became Vice President of the United States, he became
President of the United States, he became Ambassador to France. Yet
not one word did he want put on that monument in respect to his
service except those three things. Why? Because these three things
embraced basic ideas for human progress that would be limitless in
their application for all the years ahead. He was thinking in terms of
the use of power and not in terms of holding power.
          I couldn't help but think and I hope that I won't be accused here
of trying to prolong a campaign that's over, but I couldn't help but
think of the recitation of all of these offices held that we've heard
about President (Bush): United Nations, China, and we just heard them
over and over and over. What was said about what he did at the United
Nations? Nothing. What did he do when he was in China? Nothing. Or if
he did nobody's telling about it and they're missing the most
important thing. Because that would have been the real basis of
judging the quality of his service to mankind and to his country.
          
            GRIFFIN: Do you think a leader ought to deal with
goals he's not sure he can achieve? Should he leave those off the
agenda or not?
          
          COLLINS: Yea sir, if it's a worthy goal he ought
to stand for it whether he feels it's attainable or not. In the first
place he's not going to attain it if he doesn't try. I've got a little
piece on the wall in my office written by a German philosopher who
said, "Sometimes it is more important to make a beginning than to
produce the finished article." It is important that beginnings be
made.
          I heard a governor and a man that I respected very highly say one
time when he wee talking to his primary supporters and the people on
his team that he wanted to go for things that they could be assured
would be attainable. He said, "I don't want to waste our energies
and waste our time and all fooling with things that we can't
accomplish."
          Well, I just disagree with that philosophy. I believe that if there
is a cause that needs sponsorship and you believe in it that you ought
to do what you can to achieve it. For a number of reasons. Even if you
don't achieve it you've built a step. You've started toward that goal
and you've made it easier for somebody else coming along to push it
further. Maybe after a process of sponsorship like that the ultimate
goal will be accomplished very easily because as that progression
goes, why, popular opinion is developed and then it's easy to do.
          
            GRIFFIN: Were there things in your administration aa
governor that you didn't get accomplished?
          
          COLLINS: I was determined when I ran for
governor to do something about Florida's apportionment of its
legislature. We had one of the most malapportioned legislatures in the
country. I made this an issue in my campaign for governor. All the
little counties were just benefiting tremendously because of their
benefit from malapportionment. We had less than 17 percent of the
people scattered around in these smaller counties, but they were
exerting a majority power in the legislature.
          I was determined to get something done about that. I didn't know
how but I was determined to do it and I told the people very frankly,
and as a consequence I didn't carry any of the little counties. The
big ones elected me. I went into the legislature determined to get
that done. Well, we were frankly face-to-face with an almost
impossible task, because the Supreme Court of the United States had
held that at the state level apportionment would be controlled by the
legislature. Local rule, home rule. The equal protection of the laws
guarantee did not apply. Our state Supreme Court, following that, had
held that whatever the legislature said that apportionment would be it
would have to be.
          Well, I just hammered away. Sometimes it looked like I could get
some little bit done but then I'd fall back. I kept hammering. I put
that legislature in three or four special sessions to get legislative
apportionment because the constitution obligated the legislature to do
it on a fair basis every ten years.
          I failed to do that. But I want to tell you the rest of this
story. Soon after I finished my sex years as governor, the United
States Supreme Court reversed that old decision and with the petitions
that Florida and Tennessee and Hawaii had filed, they said that under
those showings in those states that this was a violation of equal
protection of the laws and that that legislature had to be apportioned
on the basis of population. The legislature still wouldn't do it so
the court ordered a professor of political science at the University
of Florida to figure out what would be fair and the court approved
that. So we got it reapportioned.
          After I went to Washington I went to one of these beautiful
Georgetown dinner parties and Justice Hugo Black was there. He said,
"Governor tell us about some of your successes as Governor." So
I just ticked off quite a few, you know, schools, and all these
various things that I'd been 

working very actively in. And he said,
"Now what was your greatest failure?" I said, "My failure
was that I could not get our legislature reapportioned in spite of my
commitment to the people to do it. I failed." He said,
"Governor that wasn't a failure. Well, you know our court passed
upon this case? You know how we saw the light? We knew what you were
doing down there in Florida. We knew what they were doing in
Hawaii. We knew what they were doing in Tennessee. This court came to
understand that we had to in all logic and soundness decide that it
was a breakdown in equal protection of the laws. That wasn't any
failure." I said, "Judge you don't know how good that makes me
feel. Even so, I didn't get it done my way." But he said, "You
got it done our way."
          Now, this is the point I wanted to make. This is where we
started. If I had recognized that it was unattainable like other
governors had over and over again, they would not have gotten that
message from Florida. They would not have gotten that message from
those people in Tennessee and those people in Hawaii. They learned
that. So you never can tell. If you've got a good cause, if you know
you're right, do the best you can with it. That's my philosophy of a
leader.
          
            GRIFFIN: When I was at Florida State University I
remember so well the sit-in strikes developing in Tallahassee and the
magnificent response you made by taking a Sunday afternoon time to a
network of TV stations and without notes and without a script, making
a speech calling on the people of Florida to change and to be aware of
the necessity of change. Talk about that, if you will.
          
          COLLINS: It was a very critical time. It was
about Easter time and I had just been to church. We'd gone over that
story about the crucifixion, about Pontius Pilate. We were having
these stupid, silly rows in the street in Tallahassee and in one or
two other places around over the state in response to the sit-in at
the lunch counters. It was growing and growing and I just went down
and had that (TV) hookup. I sat down there and I just talked to the
people of Florida about that whole problem. I said that so far as I
understood that the (State) Court had recently ruled in Florida that a
person who has a store that has different departments can offer
service to everybody in some and can discriminate and eliminate by
virtue of the racial background and color of black people from
others. I said, "To me even if it's legally right, it's morally
wrong. How can you justify and say it's right in your heart and mind
for a store owner to invite people to come in there and take his money
for business at one counter and not let him trade at another counter
if he wants to trade there?" I said, "I just can't equate that
with a decent attitude toward fellow people and our fellow
man."
          I told them about the crucifixion. I said, "Now what's happening
here reminds me of this Easter story and the crucifixion. When Pilate
was judging the guilt and innocence of Christ, why, he found him
innocent. And yet the mob outside, the mob became so raucous and so
demanding that this strong Pilate, who was supposed to be a strong,
able person, wilted and withered and lost his sense of obligation to
do right and say the right thing. He just told, the crowd to take it
and do what you please. Do what you want to about it." I said,
"We simply as citizens of this state cannot turn Florida over to a
mob. Because there is a small number of people out there howling in
the streets, we've got to have the strength to stand up for right and
justice and follow that course. I'm doing something that I don't know
whether it's been done in other states or not. But we are going to
have us some bi-racial committees, black and white on them.
          "I've appointed one at the state level that's being headed up by
at my request by Cody Fowler, who was then president of the American
Bar Association, a very distinguished and a fine and a just person. We
picked other people to serve with him, black people and white
people. They are going to start sitting down and we are going to find
ways that we can begin adjusting our attitudes and feelings and
standing against turning this state over to any mobs or any people
running around with an ax."
          There was a tremendous reaction from the people of Florida. I just
got thousands and thousands of letters, most of them supporting me.
          
            GRIFFIN: Governor Collins, another time when you were
in a very difficult leadership situation was when you were made
permanent president of the Democratic Convention in 1980, the
convention where Mr. Kennedy was nominated. Some things existed in
that situation which under slightly different circumstances might have
put you on that ticket.
          
          COLLINS: The convention was run completely
differently than they are run now. In those days it was really more of
a parliamentary function. I mean, the chairman was in charge. He had
motions made from the floor and there were all kinds of maneuverings
around that he was involved in You don't even see now or know who the
permanent chairman is. It's just a TV show now, really.
          There was a very favorable press to my service in that
respect. There was some talk and some reference in the newspapers to
the possibility of me being a vice-presidential nominee. I did not
encourage it because I was determined to get that job (chairman of the
convention) over and I didn't want to be in the position of being any
candidate or anything like that. I just wanted to follow it through as
I had told them I would on a completely impartial basis.
          Kennedy actually made the choice of Lyndon Johnson and I suppose it
was a very wise choice because Johnson was able to carry Texas and it
was by the margin of Texas that Kennedy won.
          
            GRIFFIN: There was wide applause for the way you
handled that very raucous convention. I remember one comment that was
made by a woman from New' Jersey who said, "If the Democrats had
nominated LeRoy Collins for president every woman in the United States
regardless of party affiliation or age 

would have voted for him."
          
          COLLINS: What a doll she was!
          My biggest problem in keeping order there in the convention was the
commotion that the group on the floor created when Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt came. She came about three times and she wouldn't tell us
when she was coming, so we couldn't be prepared for it. She would just
turn that convention into just complete disorder. I could bang on that
gavel and it wouldn't make any difference at all. It was tough.
          Adlai Stevenson was another who wanted to be a dark horse at that
time. He had run before and failed. But he really wanted, I think, to
be drafted and there was not that sentiment but there still was a
strong favorable sentiment for Stevenson so he caused some commotion
there.
          That's the reason I got some sympathy from around over the country
because the convention was so unruly.
          
            GRIFFIN: Soon after that you were asked by the
National Association of Broadcasters to become their president and you
moved to Washington as president.
          
          COLLINS: Yes. That was an interesting
experience. They wanted me to come as soon as I finished up the
governorship in Florida and to be president of the National
Association of Broadcasters. I was rather interested in that. In the
first place I had gotten badly in debt as governor and I needed to pay
off some debts and they offered me a very fine salary, particularly
for that time. They offered to provide me a home in Washington. They
offered to provide me an automobile. They were just very generous to
me.
          I wanted to make it clear and I tried to make it clear that what
appealed to me about it was the close relationship between
broadcasting and the public interest. I had become oriented in
government to the public interest. They said that they wanted me to
appear before the congressional committees for them and advocate the
cause of broadcasting. I told them at the time that I thought I could
do an effective job as long as we kept our standards in place and put
them in place so that broadcasting would be responsive to the public
interest. That's the basis upon which they gave me the job.
          As time went on we started to get some division in the ranks of the
broadcasters. The majority of them always supported me. But there were
some who felt, they were extreme conservatives I guess you'd call
them, that everybody in private business should be on their own to
make what they could by doing what they wanted to do. It came to a
climax when the Surgeon General ruled that cigarettes smoking was a
direct cause of cancer. I looked at my television one day right after
that and here was Roger Maris, a baseball hero for every young
boy--and girls, too--in the country, and he was down in the dugout
surrounded by all these Yankee baseball players and he was puffing on
this cigarette talking about how wonderful it was to be smoking one of
these cigarettes.
          I told the broadcasters that I thought they should take steps to
deny broadcast advertising that would promote the use of cigarettes by
young people. That was a first step. Then the whole subject should be
studied carefully looking toward the possibilities of getting
completely out of it.
          The [broadcasters] who wanted to be left alone to do what they
wanted to, they really got furious about that. Figured that they were
going to lose $10 billion a year in revenue from cigarette
advertising. So we had a couple of meetings of our board that they
were really taking me to task. I reminded them of the basis upon which
I was engaged and I said, "This is the way I want to do it. If you
want me to do it my way, well, I'd like to stay with you. If you don't
want me to do it my way, well, I don't went to do it your way. Let's
find some way to terminate this relationship."
          That got a little sticky. They took two or three votes. In all the
votes I got more than a majority of support and I could have stayed on
there, but that was just about the time of the [1963] march on
Washington.
          I went to that march, that great congregation of people down there
on the mall. I was tremendously impressed with it. I went by myself
and I just went in the crowd. I wasn't a guest of anybody's or
anything like that. That moving, mass of people who were so deeply
intent on their goal and what they were hoping to achieve. There
wasn't any disorder anywhere. There wasn't anybody screaming, wasn't
any rowdiness or demonstrations like happened in Chicago and a lot of
other places. It was just a quiet mass of humanity. There were black
people, brown people, white people--everybody was there. I was right
in the crowd.
          I heard Dr. King's speech there. This made a profound impact on
me. I thought, this is history. This is really history being
made. This is America moving to a better society in a big way. It
wasn't three or four days after that that President Johnson called me
and said that the Congress was about to pass this Civil Rights Act of
1964 and that in it was a Title X which created a Community Relations
Service. He needed to get a director for it. He said, "I know what
you're making in that broadcasting job. I've found out all about
that. I'm not offering you anything like that. The salary is going to
be $20,000 a year. That's some reduction from whet you're making
now." But then he said, "I'm not asking you to do this as a
political matter. I've talked to Congressmen, I've talked to other
people all over this country and they feel and I feel that you can do
this job for your country at a critical time in its history better
than anybody else in the United States."
          I agreed to try it. It was one of the greatest experiences I ever
had in my life.
          
            GRIFFIN: You put some of that same pressure on some
of your friends.
          
          COLLINS: I had John Griffin, and Max Secrest and
just hundreds, just a lot of them. We had about half white and half
black. That's the first time I'd been in any environment like that. We
hadn't progressed with desegregation in Florida. You see, I was
Governor down there before the Civil Rights Act was passed. That was
the time this nation really committed itself, under that Civil Rights
Act of 1964. Before we were just talking about school
desegregation. But once that federal law was passed why, people
realized that something was happening.
          I was proud of our work. I won't try to tell you all that we did
but we did a great deal. Under the law we were required 

to keep all of
our doings secret. So unless the newspaper people saw us in action,
why they didn't get any stories because we didn't hold any press
conferences and tell them what we were doing. We were just getting
that job done, working in these big cities all over the country.
          Selma was a tremendous stress for us. I went down there and there
was a proceeding before the court. Judge [Frank M.] Johnson was one of
the best federal judges we had in the country and one of the most
understanding and helpful ones in racial matters. He had a petition
before him to enjoin Dr. King. See, they'd had an attempted march just
five days before and it had broken down. These troops [George
Wallace's Alabama state troopers] met them and brutally beat these
people and had a number of them in the hospitals. Dr. King then called
on the nation and called on preachers especially, from all the
denominations, to come to Selma within four or five days after
that. And he was determined to make that march. Yet there was a court
order by a good judge preventing him from making the march. So I was
trying to find some kind of compromise.
          I tried to get help from the Attorney General [Robert Kennedy]. He
said he couldn't do it because the Attorney General had to comply with
the court mandate enjoining them doing anything. So this little CRS
Service was all by ourselves. We tried to feel where we might make
some kind of way to avoid another massacre on that bridge. We worked
out that plan that while ultimately they were going to Montgomery, so
far as this time was concerned they would go across the bridge and
stop there across the bridge and pray and talk a little, for 20
minutes, and sing, and then Dr. King would ask them to go back, with
the understanding that they would go on to Montgomery at a later
time.
          Dr. King--we were up with him the night before. At two or three
o'clock in the morning--he was staying with a dentist there in
Selma--and he said, "I can't agree to this because I don't think
these people are going to stop. If they go and go across that bridge
they're going to want to go right on to [Montgomery]. Troops or no
troops." I said, "Well, can you ask them to stop? And plead
with them to stop? They are going to get to Montgomery, but we've just
got to have a lit le time here. Let's see what this order of the court
is going to be."
          He agreed with me that he would try to do it if I could get the
others to do it. So then we spent the rest of the night talking to
Governor Wallace's people and the county people and the city people,
all of whom were out there beyond the bridge barricaded across the
road.
          
            GRIFFIN: And you were right in the middle of
it.
          
          COLLINS: And then the next morning I told
Dr. King, I said, "I tell you, I'm going to be, when you come
across that bridge now I'm going to be standing right there with those
troops. It's not that I'm on their side but I want to be there so that
if one of them moves into you I'll grab him. I'll sure personally grab
him. I don't know what I'll do with him after I get him, but I'll sure
try. Ill stop him for a while."
          It was a momentous occasion and very terrifying to think of what
might happen but the troops finally got word from Governor Wallace and
the city people agreed end the county people agreed that if they'd
come they would allow just what I had proposed that they do. If they
would go back and then wait for the court order. So they came and they
went back and then in a while, in just a few days, Judge Johnson ruled
that they were no longer under an injunction.
          Then I had the problem, our service had the problem, of going with
the march. We went ahead of them to find out what roads they should go
through to get around a certain town, the route they should take. We
were working in liaison with the municipal authorities and the county
authorities and all, and the marchers. I was not actually a part of
the march but for a good deal of that time I was walking along with
Dr. King telling him what they were going to do down the road and
working out things, you know, so that we'd understand everything.
          We got to Montgomery and I was able to try to see my way home. It
was about midnight. That day these pictures had come out all over my
hometown newspapers with me right there talking away with Dr. King at
the march. I got my wife on the telephone and she said, "What on
earth are you up to out there?" I said, "Well, we were just
doing our job." She said, "Well, these papers have got all
these pictures in them and the people are calling me. 'What's Roy up
to? What's Roy doing, running the march?'" I said, "Well, I'm
ready to come home. I've got a private jet here the government
owns. Well be in there about twelve-thirty to one o'clock. I want you
to be sure to come out there and get me 'cause there won't be any
taxis or anything like that I can catch at that time of the
morning." She says, "I can't come." I say, "Why can't
you come?" She said, "I've got grandchildren in the house
here. I can't go off and leave them. They're spending the night here
with me. I just can't get them up out of bed and come out there."
I said, "Well, how on earth am I going to home?" She said,
"March!"
        