Well, thank you very, very much, Bob. This is unexpected. Many times, if you’ve been in Senator Bennett’s office you’ll see this picture of the two of them. They look a lot like twins. I mean they are spitting images of one another, and I’ve always said to Bob, “Gee, Bob, I would love to have that picture.” Well, I never got it. Here we are tonight, and I’m glad I was able to finally merit it.
I am very humbled with Bob’s presentation. We have been very, very close friends. And I might also say how proud I am to be on this same podium that Senator Nickles and Cal Dooley and Senator Breaux are going to come up. And I saw Tom Korologos who received this award. And I just want to say that this all ties in. It’s only really appropriate that Bob would make this presentation, and I think you can tell from his remarks, why. But there is even a bigger reason. And that is, that the two of us, along with Bryce Harlow, fought many, many battles in the sixties. We were, as Bob said, very few Washington reps. We represented companies that were very affected by the consumer movement, and so we fought the excesses of that movement along with Ralph Nader. And probably the biggest thing we took on was to defeat Ralph’s idea of a Consumer Department, which would have been with Cabinet status. And there are two men in the audience who have come back. One of them is Clarence Brown of Ohio, a Republican, and Grand Purcell, a Democrat. Where are you? Please stand up.
Oh behalf of Bob and Bryce, who is not here but he’s up there looking down, we thank the two of you because we were much indebted. But I might say that it was a great working relationship, and I was very honored with the two. And there is more to tell about that because it was Bob Bennett who convinced Bryce Harlow that Watergate was serious and was not going to go away. And Bryce, in turn, had convinced Bob to go to the Department of Transportation to run their congressional affairs. And as Bob mentioned, I was smart enough to recommend him to the JC Penney Company.
I came here in 1959 for Sears Roebuck, that struggling little mail order house out of Chicago. And I was very blessed. Senator Gore, now, not the Senator you are thinking of, but the father. This sort of gives away how old I am when you know Bob’s father and I are very close. Senator Gore introduced an amendment, which completely destroyed the lump sum distribution of the capitol gains treatment that was being given on our lump sum distribution and our profit sharing. This meant so much. And I was able to find, and I will remember very well, a tire changer at Sears. And Miss Telly (and I can’t remember her last name), Miss Telly in yard goods and I brought it down for the hearing on this Gore Amendment, but also because each of them had over a million dollars in the fund. And so it was very easy to explode the grass roots of thousands of employees within a twenty-four period. We were flooded with mail here, and some people thought that our grass roots were magic. But it was just that Senator Gore, the elder, deceased, picked the wrong issue and picked certainly the wrong company. But then to add to it, Bryce called me, he said we got the same problem. I had never met Bryce. He had just left the White House. That’s how Bryce and I got acquainted. I’m telling you, that’s when I say I was also blessed again because Bryce was a confidant, he was a mentor, and he helped me walk my way through the early time here in Washington.
Now, I want to tell you a little bit about Bryce that you didn’t know. And if you don’t believe me, the first thing I’m going to tell you is he was a Democrat. Now most of you didn’t know that, but he saw the light, came over to the Republican Party, and said, “Juncture!” And I won’t get into that because I have too many friends out there, like Jim Moran and so forth and Steny Hoyer, to say any more than that, but Bryce did come over to the Republican Party. But why a Bryce Harlow Foundation, you know? It’s very easy. He served two presidents, President Eisenhower and President Nixon, on their staffs. In fact President Nixon made him a Counselor to the President and gave him cabinet status. He also was a close advisor to President Ford and to President Reagan. Bryce Harlow, believe this or not, also is the only Washington rep I know of that ever received the President’s Medal of Freedom. He also was Chief of Staff of the Armed Services Committee, under Carl Vincent. None of you probably remember Carl Vincent, but he was a powerful human being in the town when I came from. And he was powerful because we had just gotten over World War One and then we were starting into Korea and Armed Services was everything. And Bryce was the Chief of Staff, and in that mix, Bryce met many people, including General Eisenhower.
Bryce, one of his carnal attributes, and I’m going to speak a little more about it in a minute, was integrity. Bryce was from Oklahoma and he had come here, started in the basement of the Library of Congress, and worked his way up to chief of staff. But a member of the Truman Cabinet lied under oath on the witness stand up in the Congress, and that just so turned Bryce because of his compassion for integrity and honesty that he went back to Oklahoma, he ran the family business, and then, while he’s running the family business, he wrote a letter to President Truman. And President Truman was contemplating, or already had announced he was not going to run for another term, so Bryce wrote to him and he said, “There is only one man in the United States who has a global view of what this country should be.” And he said that there are too many of the other candidates, if not all of them, that are just nationalized. And he said, “That ought to be the next president.”
President Truman turned around, wrote to General Eisenhower, and General Eisenhower politely (he was at Columbia University) and said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” But on the Christmas of 1951, General Eisenhower wrote to President Truman and said, “I’ll do it.” Now the first person, or one of the first, he called, was Bryce Harlow. And he said, “Bryce, we need Congressional relations, we need Congressional relations with the White House taking the initiative. I want to form a White House Congressional Relations Office, and I need you.” Bryce was in Oklahoma, he packed his bags, brought his family here, and that’s how Bryce entered into the Eisenhower administration.
He was just a wonderful asset, not only in what he did to establish that office, but throughout the Eisenhower Administration. And he stayed until the end. Then of course was the election between Vice President Nixon and JFK, and JFK won. And I think for a day, Bryce thought, “What am I going to do next?”
And a phone call came through from the chairman, Neil McElroy, of Proctor and Gamble in Cincinnati, he said, “Bryce, I want you to come in to Cincinnati. We want to interview you.” And he said, “We want you. We don’t have a Washington office.” But after being in Washington, you may recall, Neil McElroy came down at Eisenhower’s request with Secretary of Defense, and that’s how he got to know Bryce Harlow. And he said, “Bryce, would you open a Washington office?” which Bryce did.
Now, what I’m trying to show you is that as we went through Bryce in his early days, because of his past record, he was able, like nobody else has ever been able to do, to bridge the business community to government and government to the business community. So that is why he’s the namesake of this foundation. There was just no one like him.
Let me tell you a little bit about Bryce himself. I told you about his integrity, but Bryce had an uncanny ability. When you had more than three people in a room, and you were trying to solve a problem, Bryce would always speak last. I don’t care whether there were three or twenty, Bryce would listen carefully to everybody, and he had this uncanny ability to take a little bit from each of the persons who spoke, capture one or more of their ideas, and some how wrap it up into a conclusion which became a position or a policy for those in the meeting. Now, Bryce had one advantage over all of us, which a lot of you didn’t know. He took shorthand, so he was able to capture every word that was said in that meeting. But at the same time, at the end of that meeting, he was able to put it all together and say, “Here’s what I’d recommend to do.” And everybody felt, “Well, gosh, they’ve got a piece of my idea in there, it sounds good to me.”
So that was Bryce Harlow. Now, Bryce had two great characteristics, in addition to his belief in integrity. And by the way, Bryce used to say, “You know, when you give your word, that is your bond.” I’m quoting Bryce now, “and if you break your word, it will destroy you.” And I, in my career here, have seen that happen on a number of occasions, where people gave their word, it was their bond, they didn’t keep it, and they were destroyed.
But this other characteristic or hallmark that Bryce had was his humility. He was a very humble man. And he had humor; great humor. I remember when it was announced by Proctor and Gamble that they were going to hire him, the press came in on Bryce because he had been in the White House, so he was well-known in the Washington press. They said, “What do you have to say about this?” And he said, “Well,” he said, “This is Proctor’s greatest gamble.” So, that gives you an idea of this man; who he was. And how he was able to do what he did.
Now I just want to say a couple more words if I may. As I look out into that audience, and as I turned around and looked at all my former associates from Sears Roebuck and from GMA, and now there is a table here of my partners from the law firm. And I just want to say to all of them, I am up here tonight because of you. You won’t know this song because none of you are old enough. But there was a song, and it had a refrain in it., “You made me what I am today, and I hope you are satisfied.” Well, I just want to say, you made me what I am today. It’s because of you I’m up here. And I want you to know that. Because I think of Bryce who used to always say, “You can accomplish so much, if you don’t care who gets the credit.” And that’s the way all of you were. We accomplished great feats that nobody thought we’d be able to. Not because of me, because of you. I’m up here to get the credit. I also want to thank my wife, Helen. She certainly made me what I am today. But also those great children that stood up. And I don’t know if you can see the grandchildren, but there are nine of them somewhere in this audience. But I’m also very, very indebted to them. They made much sacrifice, as Bob said. They did, they really did. And anybody in our business of government relations realizes the hours that you are away.
So I thank you all for being here tonight. Good luck, good health, and God bless you.