[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

Interviewer: W. W. "Billy" Yeargin, Jr
Narrator: Rodney Stephen Maddox
Date: April 13, 2012

"Billy" Yeargin (0:00)
Yeah, maybe Poland? Well, you know, I went to England, I went to Oxford for two years, in 99 and 2000. Then I saw some of what [inaudible]

Unknown (0:09)
Ask what happened to him when he went over there.

"Billy" Yeargin (0:15)
I was six foot two. All right, first of all, just name and position.

Rodney Maddox (0:24)
Well, right now, my name is Rodney Maddox and I am the Chief Deputy Secretary of the State of North Carolina.

"Billy" Yeargin (0:33)
All right, Rodney. The first thing I want to ask you is your recollections. Talk about your recollections of having met the Senator for the first time.

Rodney Maddox (0:46)
Oh, it would go back, I would say to 1970 1971, I was in the Young Democrats Club, and he was attorney general at that time. And it was a very, very vibrant time in Raleigh, they were changing and rewriting the Constitution. And people were becoming aware of environmental issues and things like that for the first time. And I was a geology major, and a political science major at North Carolina State University. And at that time, you were kind of a heretic if you had a program of study. And both are two different schools within university. Now they give you scholarships and trips, and things for doing that. But in any event, I met him through that, I admired what I saw there, my earliest specific memory with him. And I think this kind of goes to the kind of person I think of him to be is at that time, he was considering running for governor. And in 1970, or 71, I happened to be passing in a hotel corridor, out in the old Lumina, downtown at around Wrightsville Beach, I guess it was, and he and some folks were coming up the hall and I was coming behind a guy who had obviously had too much to drink and was leaning up against the wall to walk down the hall. And I couldn't go past and I observed this exchange where turned out the other guy was also considering running for governor. And he said some ungracious things to Attorney General Morgan infront of his staff. And and the Attorney General's response was, well, come on, you know, you've had a little bit more than you should we can talk another day about things, let them let us help you get to you everyone. Man was by himself, except for a college student, which was me coming behind him. And him and two other people. I don't remember who they were.

"Billy" Yeargin (2:54)
And this man was considering running for governor himself?

Rodney Maddox (2:56)
Yes, sir. He did later run for governor. But I thought, you know, when two political adversaries encounter each other, and one's, shall we say, act and unnecessarily rude. The other one was very gracious. And I thought that demonstrated quite a bit, and made a point after that and to formally make his acquaintance. So that's my earliest memory.

"Billy" Yeargin (3:27)
Did you ever work with the senator, but not not in any capacity.

Rodney Maddox (3:34)
As a volunteer, I worked in the 1972 election campaign for attorney general and got to know everybody at that time that was involved in the political campaign side of life. The following year, I actually worked in the attorney general's office in the Consumer Protection Division. And he was personally involved in that. And I'd like to just take one day of what it was like to be there. In those days Consumer Protection Division, and the concept was very new. And we had a tremendous influx of people asking for help of all kinds. We got requests for everything from people to help keep the neighbor's cow out of the yard to any kind of legitimate consumer thing you would encounter. And we had basically three kinds of letters we had one letter that would refer them somewhere else, and we had another letter that would just attach the letter of complaint and that was called number two. And it would be sent to whoever the the person being complained of was and ask them for a response. And we had a very rarely used letter number three, which was when you had not been able to get somebody's attention, it basically says, you know, you better pay serious attention to this because you're, you're on the boundary of being in trouble. Well, there are many different licensing agencies in professional licensing agencies in North Carolina government. And as we were sending these number two letters, we were given the option of instead of sending a number to letter, if it was someone who was licensed by some professional board, we could send it to that board and ask them to take the matter up with personally licensed. And we had almost uniform lack of success doing that. And there's another fellow there that worked with him, named Mike Mann, and Mike and I were the two having to do these letters and, and we talked amongst ourselves and like this just wasn't working sending the letters over to the agencies. So we decided, the next time we got one, we would send the number three letter directly to the person that was licensed. And it was my luck that I drew the short straw, and I was the one that sent the first direct the dirt and die letter to what turned out to be a medical professional in Raleigh. And shortly after that, I got a call from the attorney general asking me to come up and talk with him about the performance of the Consumer Protection Division, which I said, Yes, sir, and said, when would you like for that to be done. And he said now, and that was I went right up to the second floor, and was escorted directly in to meet with the attorney general about this. And he has a letter on his on his desk. And, and he asked me was I was one not short of terrified I'm probably lucky, I didn't mess up my pants. When I saw it was a letter I'd sent. And he asked me why I had done that. And I told him why we had done this because all of the professional licensing offices had just ignored anything we had sent them. And he, he pointed out to me that as I knew every Friday afternoon, he had a staff meeting with all 70 attorneys, and he would bring in professional guest speakers. And I had managed to time my letter to this medical professional, who happened to also be President of the Association of those people in North Carolina and had been his invited guests to come over and speak to the staff of the attorneys of the attorney general's office that Friday. So my timing was very miserable. And I was just waiting to hear whether or not I should clean out my desk or just go on home. And he said, Well, don't do that again. He said you tell Mike, I don't want you all to do the number three letter again. Unless you talk to me. And if you guys have a situation where you think you should talk to me about it. I want either one of you to just call me direct let me know. Well, I said Yes, sir. Because I didn't think it was going to take very long because people made a lot of complaints about some of these licensees. And sure enough, the next day, I got a letter from one. About a veterinarian up in Ashville, some lady had sent fluffy the cat over to be treated and ended up with a $140 bill. And this is 1973 and $140 vet bill and the cat died. And she claimed it was negligence on behalf of the veterinarian. So I sent the normal at this point number two letter. No, no, first I sent it to the veterinarian licensing board or whatever that thing is. And we put it on the [tickler] system. And I didn't hear anything. And Mike and I talked and I said well, let's wait another month. Though at this point we wait two months. And we have not heard anything. And Mike and I were a little wary about sending a letter again. So Mike said why don't you call them so I called up the staff of the board. And I said Can y'all tell me what happened to the complaint about Fluffy the cat we sent over there two months ago? And they said Oh, we're so happy to report that the board took this up yesterday at its meeting and they decided that there was no fault on the part of the veterinarian. Well in a very detailed letter about all the Fluffy's treatment from the perspective of the owner. So I said, Well, what had really happened to the cat? And the staff person said, Oh, we don't know. I said, Well, what were the details about the treatment? Can you tell me they said, Oh, well don't know. We never talked to the veterinarian. And I said, Well, did you talk to miss so and so? Oh, no, they didn't need to. Well, that kind of troubled us that they had disposed of this complaint about that malpractice without talking to anybody and just looking at that letter. So I went upstairs to Mr. Morgan with file, and we laid the file out, and he read the letter about Fluffy. And he looked at that, and so that they had, apparently, in his judgment done what they should have done. So he picked up the phone and called the board and told them to be in his office the next morning at nine o'clock, and they better bring their lawyer with them. And he then turned to me and said, be there at nine o'clock in the conference room? Well, I've never been to the conference room I said yes, sir. And at nine o'clock in the morning, the board representative came in with their attorney who was a fellow by the name of Mayne Albright, he had run for governor years, years before. And the attorney general went through the file. And he turned to Mr. Albright, and said, you understand what should have been done by the board, don't you? And Mr. Albright said, yes, sir, I do. And Attorney General Morgan said, well, y'all fix it, or I will which way you want to go. And they allowed us how that they would change the way that they were handling complaints, and give a little bit more attention to it. And so that, that, for me was kind of quite an experience. And I very much appreciated him taking the time to interact with his staffers, even when he had been embarrassed, which I'm sure he was by the letter we sent to the the first fellow.

"Billy" Yeargin (12:17)
Let me ask you to put this into perspective. The story you just told us, great story. Where would you Where would you pigeonhole that into consumer services, his attitude towards consumer services, because he, he did such he established is, you know, consumer services issues. Is that another Is this a case of his paying attention to consumer needs?

Rodney Maddox (12:46)
I think it was more than that. There obviously was a need for ordinary people to have an advocate within the halls of government. Then that was not being met. But it was also tempered with an understanding of what due process is, when somebody when the when the state legislature basically declares a profession is of such significance, it is supposed to have an extra layer of licensing over the performance of that profession, then they begin to have a responsibility to make sure that people interacting with those professionals have some mechanism where they can have the conduct and professional is reviewed, and professionals at the same time have have a right to have a fair review. But that was basically a dormant function at that time with many of those licensing boards. And part of what came out of the Consumer Protection Division's pressure was that there was an increased emphasis on these kinds of professional licensing boards, which had not existed before. So it wasn't just an advocacy, it was actually trying to make the government function the way the government was supposed to be functioning in regards to those professions. And as I viewed it, the attorney general's office was trying to get them to engage in what was basically a dormant responsibility that they had in many of those statutes. It was very clear that they had that responsibility, but they just weren't choosing not to, to handle it in a way that the outcome satisfied anybody and really didn't comport with what you'd think of as basic due process for anybody. All that pressure ultimately led to the legislature after he went to the Senate in the legislature in 1976 adopted for the first time the Administrative Procedures Act, which kind of codified how people can handle those kinds of things. But I I think the pressure that led to the Administrative Procedures Act came clearly from the Consumer Protection Division.

"Billy" Yeargin (15:07)
All right. Any other what I'm trying to pull out here is anything that you remember that characterizes his leadership. His, his his ethics. And his concern for for the public and the story, you just told us is wonderful,

Rodney Maddox (15:32)
I've got one very clear memory it again, I had done something that came to his attention that required me to go up to the second floor to talk to him. And as I came in, I think it was me as Benton said, you know, attorney general, you got Sheriff so and so on the phone. Do you want to take the call now or later? And he said, Well, I best take that when now and told me to sit down. So I just sat there, not knowing what the call about the sheriff was. There had been a very brutal homicide, several months before at a drive in cafe restaurant somewhere around Concord, I don't know exactly where. And somebody killed three people, I think just sitting there waiting on a milkshake and fries. And that person was being tried. It was a capital case. And the attorney general had sent a special prosecutor down to try that case. And the trial has started two or three days before and was continuing. The morning I'm there and the sheriff calls is in the middle of that trial. And what had transpired was the night before, the attorney during the trial had gone out with a reporter from Greensboro, Raleigh and Charlotte. And apparently, they had supper together. And the attorney had opined that he personally did not favor the death penalty. But he was as a representative of the Attorney General's office, it was clearly the law and he was there to uphold the law in North Carolina didn't matter what his personal opinion was. Well, the problem came is that one of the three reporters that was there that day, wrote it up that this guy oppose the death penalty, and left apparently the impression for some of the readers that that was a position of the attorney general. So this sheriff is calling to complain to Attorney General Morgan, and he is demanding that Mr. Morgan, take that attorney out of the trial, and send another attorney in to try the case, which anybody that's ever been around trial knows that's a little impractical to do. But the point of this is the way he handled the call. And he says, Well, this was about nine o'clock in the morning. So I don't know how listed transpired before I got in the room. But it had, he had already talked to all three reporters and the attorney. And he relates to the sheriff that well, I've talked to the three people that were there. And the other two reporters, memory is exactly like the memory of the man is quoted in the paper and a third reporter, maybe he just didn't hear the entire conversation as can happen in a restaurant. But I will assure you that this office is supporting the law in North Carolina and that's a capital case and we're treating it as one and we're gonna continue and I know I'm not going to remove that guy from the case. And the sheriff said something else, which I would say provoked the attorney general to the point where he expressed some feeling about the man's biological heritage, and he then told him don't you threaten me, I will come down there and take care of you. And you won't even be a dog catcher when I get through. And he put the phone down and that was the end of the conversation. And I don't remember what I was there for I think I was just shell shocked by this. Never having quite seen anything like it before. But whatever it was, had me up there again having to explain myself just kind of being lost in the recesses of my memory.

"Billy" Yeargin (19:34)
Oh, that's wonderful. I mean, Brian when we did this thing this is gonna be the lead story.

[inaudible]

Rodney Maddox (19:55)
Well he was provoked now I mean, he had done his homework he thought through what he wanted to do, and he expressed it very clearly what was gonna happen and what was not gonna happen. And

"Billy" Yeargin (20:06)
I know, I know you don't [inaudible]. Personally, what was your feeling about this man? Who was the attorney general? And and I want to go back and kind of read out what was your impression of this little man who, who was the attorney general as well, he had so much power-

Rodney Maddox (20:40)
To the extent that it was visible to me. And I was you can think of me as somebody that kind of passed by a room occasionally. And I can see and hear what went on in the room, I did not have day to day or week to week contact with the attorney general. But it was clear from looking around the department that when people did embarrass him or did something that that brought on some criticism, had he uniformly took the time to sit down with them and give them the opportunity to explain to them, to him the full context, why people did what he did, and etc, and so forth. It was not what I saw in some other agencies where if you somehow embarrassed the agency head, you just were gone. Didn't matter whether you were right or wrong. Embarrassment was, was basically something. Employees in those days were basically all employees at will. It was not anything where you had to kind of as a governmental employee, the kind of rights you have today. So the real protection you had in terms of doing your job was to be working for somebody of integrity and moderation. And I was definitely doing that. He realized security. Yes, sir. That was the security.

"Billy" Yeargin (21:57)
Yeah. All right. Let's, let's talk about England trip. First of all, what what do you remember about that? Alright.

Rodney Maddox (22:06)
Well, I was walking up the mall, one day Fayetteville Street Mall, and this would have been in the spring of 1990. Now at that time, I had returned to the attorney general's office and was working for Attorney General Thornburg. And he and Judge Arnold were standing out having a conversation on the mall. And as I walked by I knew both of them, they both spoke to me and they said something to the effect they were they were planning another bicycle trip. I thought they'd go to England, and I said, Well, if you guys really get serious about that, please let me know. I've always wanted to go to England, and I'd enjoy doing that. And I didn't think much about it. And they said, Well, okay. And probably four or five months later, I got a call from Senator Morgan's and, okay, you got a passport. We're getting ready to go. And I said oh good Lord, what have I gotten myself into at this point? And because I knew nothing about what it would cost, or could I get off enough time or a whole bunch of things like that, that I needed to be concerned with. You know getting my wife not to be upset. And after a little bit of exploration on that end, I said, Yes, sir. I'll go because he did not want to go by himself, Judge Arnold was to go, and at some point, Judge Arnold backed out, before we actually left, I don't remember the circumstances of that. And so we're gonna go up to the airport. And and I had had little contact with Senator Morgan there for a while. And so we're riding to the airport. And there are two FBI agents with him. And they were real serious looking guys. And they were all bigger than I was. And I was just trying not to embarrass myself. I was still stunned that I was on my way to England with Senator Morgan. When I was going to make the best things by not embarrassing myself to start with, so we get to the airport and they're unloading, we're unloading these, we're taking our bicycles with us, so we had to unload those things. And while he was distracted off to the side, the two agents came over to me and they kind of got in my face and they said, We're turning him over you. We wanted to go but he won't let us go. And don't you come back without him. Okay, I won't come back without him. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to have to do in England but I was damn sure I wasn't coming back without the attorney general. And that was the beginning of the trip. At that point I had, I was going to reach my 40th birthday while we were over there and it was beneficial to have it time to that way because I was the kind of friends I had, I didn't want to be in Raleigh when I had my 40th birthday, I was better off somewhere else. And he was 65. Well, I was thinking, well, how hard is it gonna be to keep up with a 65 year old guy, you know, we're part of a group of folks will be on this bicycle tour. And of course, he knew how to navigate through airports and passport controls and all that kind of stuff. And we got these bicycles and then we, we get over there and guess what it's raining, you know, and I'm like, Oh my God, I've signed up for a two week bicycle ride in the rain. Anyway, the rain kind of cleared up, and we got going and the next morning we started out. Arundel was the town where we had gone down to the southern coast of England at that point,

"Billy" Yeargin (26:01)
Did you go into Gatwick?

Rodney Maddox (26:03)
We flew into Heathrow but we then had to take a bus over to Gatwick because that's where the tour folks were and they picked us up there. So we got to say Gatwick and Heathrow. And we spent the night right there at the airport. And the next morning, we went down to Arundel, which is a beautiful little city down on the southern coast. And we started out and we rode through this nice little town and I noticed it was the slope was beginning to get a, you know, increase. And we went around the corner of this building. And I looked up to where the road was going. And it looked like I was going over Soco Gap up there in between, Haywood and Swain County. And he just like he's got some kind of jet propulsion on his bicycle. And I was determined that I was going to get up there. And I ultimately got up there without having to walk. But I was I was blown for the for the for a while there and then I fortunately could coast down for about the next two hours. And we then found ourselves on the Roman roads. And I would say there were many hills that I had to walk up. And he never walked at all. he pedaled up anything they threw at us. We had that now there were some real characters accompanying us on this trip. I mean, it was, it was about like you had gone to the phonebook and just picked out random some people but they all knew how to ride a bicycle better than I did. And there was one guy there who owns a factory in South Carolina. And he was very proud of his cycling skills. And he had a $2,000 handmade Italian bicycle, which he talked about us with us all the time. And he had if any of us had ever done anything, he had done it twice, or at least twice as good. Now, one of the things I learned early from Judge Arnold and the attorney general was that you better stay hydrated with plenty of water and stuff. And we realized that water was not enough at the the amount of biking we were doing. And he said, Well, there's some stuff we can buy over here in the grocery store. I don't know what it was called. But it looked to me like glucose, and it tasted about like glucose. And you were supposed to cut it about five to one with water. And he said and he knew we could just do it three to one. So we It must have been pure sugar. I don't know Anyway, kept us going. Well, the thing is that after two or three days of this, the guy with a $2,000 bike, he'd seen us drinking this stuff all the time, you know, so he decided he wanted some of it and he had kind of gotten under our skin a little bit because we were just wanting to have a good time. We weren't trying to prove anything and we didn't think we were in a race. So Mr. Morgan said, Well, I'll tell you what, he showed him the label and he said why don't you go over the store and get some guy said okay, what, but now the senator, for whatever reason, failed to tell him he needed to cut this stuff with water. So as the day progressed, and it got kind of hot, this guy had not taken any water along with him. And he stopped at one crossroads and Mr. Morgan and I were coming up behind him and he essentially says well here he goes, see the guy pull out in the bottle. It was it was orange him very distinctive and he took it off. And he took a big glug glug glug like that. And I thought he was gonna fall on his butt I mean he clearly staggered back from that and after that he kept his distance from us because he never really realized that we were we were cutting this stuff with water every time Mr. Morgan was always getting a good exhibit. He just glug glug glug the whole thing. But those were the kinds of things that were happening to us. Yeah, oh, hell no, I have never told that guy that at gunpoint.

"Billy" Yeargin (30:38)
That was coming. But what what you heading that way? He kept his distance from you? What? I'm asking you this because what I'm going to do is come back at some point and ask the senator, I'll look at this and then I'll come back and get your senator the feelings of oh, gosh, what you're doing is is jogging his memory. But what was said that where did you go up? Other than south of London?

Rodney Maddox (31:08)
Well, we we started out at Arundel and we started going west, we went through the town of Winchester and and we were owned. In at least in that part of England, they have a wonderful network of what I would call farm lanes that are paved. And they're used. For people that do a lot of hiking, as well as biking at about every six miles, they'll have a bed and breakfast. So you can kind of gauge yourself as to how much you want to do each day. And you don't really have a lot of travel where they're large amounts of vehicles. Now when we will get into the left town like Winchester or Saulsbury. And that kind of stuff. It'd be about like driving through downtown Raleigh on a bicycle, which you can do, but you better have your wits about you. And that's, that was what we were doing, we would stop and see things like Roman ruins, we'd stopped and saw one what they called a Roman farmhouse and it had a floor one room in that farmhouse mosaic floor where they had uncovered was 271 feet long. Whatever those Romans were doing, they must have been doing it with a lot of money to have a house with a one room 271 feet long. It would have been probably around 300 AD. Now of course the English, I mean, the Romans just withdrew rather abruptly. So I think that was around 400 AD. We we went to mostly bed and breakfast places and we would be scattered there were at least two dozen of us as a part of this trip. And sometimes we take the wrong turn they were we didn't have very good maps and the guides were marking with chalk where you were supposed to make a turn. But if you were going along and you didn't notice you're supposed to turn right down a road you'd find yourself several miles from where you're supposed to be and have to have to work your way back. And one day he and I got off like that. And we got to that we finally got to the right village and it was after dark and we were supposed to meet everybody at this this house for supper or this bed and breakfast and he and I went into the wrong house.

Rodney Maddox (33:49)
I'd rather not have done that. But ultimately we did get to the right place. Well, they were not happy to see us didn't know who we were what these two sweaty looking guys coming in wearing nylon tights and gloves and things and you know, they were just like most anybody would have been I mean, the door was unlocked. I mean, we just opened up the door and walked in and they are these people there and they were like looking at us like who are you? I think they thought maybe we were something out of a Clockwork Orange movie or something. But anyway, we didn't get physically hurt but they did kind of hurt our feelings. But anyway, we left that but the most to me the funniest thing was at one bed and breakfast we stopped and they would we would be spread out amongst several bed and breakfast. We were not two dozen people in the same one. And frequently it was just he and I would be at one bed and breakfast by ourselves and we got up and they would provide breakfast and there was this cute young girl she was like four or five and she had her golden retriever there and her mother put flowers in her hair and all this sort of thing and the father comes in and sits down and it turns out he's a stock broker in London. And he actually commutes every day and that had to be at least 100, 125 miles from London, I thought it odd that a man would have a commute like that. But that's his choice. And the conversations just going gangbusters. And he's telling us all about his family, and he knows everything. And then he finally gets ready. He says, What do you guys do? And Mr. Morgan says, hands him his card says, Well, I'm the Director of the State Bureau of Investigation. And the guy looks down at that and says, Oh, and then he looks at me, he says, What do you do? And I said, Well, I'm the Assistant Attorney General. And I thought the guy was gonna bolt from the table. I don't know what he had anxieties about with his stock broker business. But the idea that the attorney, Assistant Attorney General was turns out to be a loftier title in England than it is over here. And Head of the Bureau of Investigation was just more than he could take. He didn't even finish his food. He got up and left. And he and I were, we were like, Oh, my God, we've somehow embarrassed him in front of his family. And we quickly got out of there, but I never quite knew just what that was all about.

"Billy" Yeargin (36:22)
You heard the story of him and Gerald and the [inaudible].

Rodney Maddox (36:28)
I certainly have.

"Billy" Yeargin (36:29)
I thought he was the I thought you were heading that way. Is he sparking any memory that you can.

Unknown (36:40)
Oh yeah. Yeah. I'd forgotten a whole lot of this stuff. I wouldn't take anything.

"Billy" Yeargin (36:48)
That is that is a great story. I can see that. I can see that happen right now. Where else did you go?

Rodney Maddox (36:56)
We went to Salisbury and ultimately turned north and the Cotswold. I think of them as mountains. We we did not pedal through that stuff. But we took the van and went around to the other side. And then we went from there to Bath. Which was a hard pedaling around there we went by Stonehenge. And Oh,

"Billy" Yeargin (37:29)
Talk about y'all at Stonehenge.

Rodney Maddox (37:30)
Well, I had read a lot about Stonehenge, but nothing prepared me for it at that time. You could actually walk right up practically and breathe on them, they didn't want you to touch on those stones now. I think they keep visitors much further away. But when we got through there, he said, Well, there's some other stuff. It's even more interesting over I think it was a place called Avebury it was a nearby little village. And he says, Let's go over there. Now the rest of the group was not going, they were just going to go back wherever we had spent that night. And I said, Well alright, not knowing any better. And I said, Okay, so we get out and there's the road to go there. It looks like an interstate highway. Now, we had not really ridden on that kind of stuff. And I was a little bit weary of it, but he takes off. And I'm like, What am I gonna do, I don't know how to find my way back to the other place. He had the map. So I gotta follow him. So we're going down this interstate highway, and I'm worried about somebody running over me. And I have of course a speedometer on the bike. And when it got to 34 I was afraid to look down after that goes out. You know, if you come off one of those bikes going 35 miles an hour, you you're not going to be pedaling the rest of the trip, you're gonna be going home and at best in traction. And he left me I know, I was going at least 34 And he was pulling away. And fortunately, after a while he stopped and waited on me. But now that was that was the most frightening thing I had happen except for getting my ear pierced. We were paddling down this lane. And I was like number seven or eight in line of bicycles and this guy comes driving down this lane and for whatever reason chose to run me off into the ditch which happened to have a big thorn bush on the other side and I actually took a thorn right through my ear. And that was the only unfortunate incident any of us actually had on that trip we're probably lucky considering all that we were doing on one of the things that I think was harder on him than it was on me is that we went through many little villages where you can tell there had been a village and there was basically nothing left but a small church or chapel. There'd be a big, circular driveway in the middle would be a World War One Memorial list and everybody from that village that had died in the village no longer even existed. And you could, I mean, it was incredible. The length of the body count from just these little places. And everywhere we went that once people realized we were Americans, they just came out of the woodwork. Because it was everything at that point was was a celebration in a sense of the victory of the those people during the height of the air war with Hitler's Germany. And and I mean, they would just stop you on the street. I mean, we had we had one scrawny little guy, he heard us talking and he came over here, let me show you where they've [inaudible] in the neck, you know, and stuff like that. And they'd tell you all about their family members that were killed or, you know, blown up, getting chickens out of the coop or whatever it was. And it was hard for me I knew him having lived through it, it had to have been even more difficult. But it was a sobering thing to be there at that time.

"Billy" Yeargin (41:23)
You mentioned the Roman roads. Kind of ironic I teach Western civilization. And last year, we winded it down [inaudible] my students into Roman Catholic [inaudible]. Did you go up around Oxfordshire?

Rodney Maddox (41:48)
We went all the way up to Stratford-upon-Avon and then came back down.

"Billy" Yeargin (41:56)
That's not far from [inaudible].

Rodney Maddox (42:00)
Yes, we went by there. With the Churchill's family estate, we went by there. There was a the the Roman baths at Bath were astounding to me, I've not been to Italy. But if it's anything like what I saw in Bath, it's well worth the trip. But when we got to Bath, we were we were kind of tired. And we just went to our room. I think we got there before everybody else did for once we were in the head of the group. Well, he has difficulty hearing out of one ear. And you know, it's very far north. So even though it was like seven o'clock at night, it was still very light outside. And I just said lay down and take a nap. And after a while I was hearing this sound. And I got up and it was people beating on the door, they actually got the manager to get the key to open up the door because they thought something had happened to us because they'd been trying to awaken us. And they could not awaken us and our alarm clock had gone off because we had set it to get up when the other folks would be ready for supper. That's the pace at which we were going. And the fatigue level we had that people could not wake us up knocking on the door. But we we had an interesting episode, we went up to Shakespeare's hometown, and then they have all these theaters, you know, doing live performances of the various plays. And I think it was Midsummer Night's Dream. And we got in there. And not only was they they had English accents, they were using old English with English accents. And he and I couldn't tell anything about what they were doing. And got up and left about midway through it, which some of the people that were attending their performance did not like and thought we were rather pedestrian to have done that. We were willing to admit defeat. I mean, we couldn't tell what these guys were saying.

"Billy" Yeargin (44:20)
We went there when I was in the early 2000's you mentioned the Roman baths. My daughter. My baby was at the University of London when I was a doctor. And she also had gone then she after she married and last year she and her husband went to Italy they went to the Roman Bath. And but she's never really said the contrast of what she had seen in Bath, England. I'll have to ask her about that.

Rodney Maddox (44:54)
Well, we got down to London, you know, and I think he and I stayed a day or two in London and everybody else went on back. And we went to the British Museum and we went somewhere else. And we were to using the subway, we were not biking around London, he had had an experience with his daughter's driving around London, apparently, with a rental car and knew better than for us to take that kind of episode. And what I didn't know, I don't know what he knew. But what I didn't know was that some of these underground subway things are far underground. And we came off of one of those things. And we were there was this elevator and everybody's lined up to take the elevator to go up to the surface. And he says, Oh, we're not gonna wait on that. I'm not waiting. I've waited enough on these people today. I mean, they've gotten something and gotten on his nerves. I don't know whether it was me or what it was. But he goes over and opens up the door and says, we'll just take the stairs. 171 steps later, we get to the surface, I'm not sure if we were still speaking after that or not. I don't know if it would have been a way to get off of that stair without having to go all the way to the top, I would have taken it.

"Billy" Yeargin (46:22)
That's good. That's good. Brian, can you think of anything? Senator, the what I will do now is when Brian gives me this, the disk of this, there's a by the way I'll give you when he gets it. I'm gonna give it to you and let you take a look at it, make some notes and see what you can pay him. With what right, it's after.

Rodney Maddox (46:46)
There were two other things if you got the time, I'd like to relate to them. Okay. Well, as I pointed out earlier, my wife and I were going to school out in Portland, Oregon. And and this was in 1976. And we get a call from the senator's office in Washington, which we had not gotten a call from them in the two years we've been there. And his scheduler says, you know, Rodney, the Attorney General has gone to Japan, and he wants to know if you'll meet him in Seattle. And it was gonna be three or four days in the future. And on his way back, he's stopping over in Seattle, so Well, certainly, you know, she, I think it was Pat Benton. But anyway, whoever the scheduler was, it made it clear that Lacey and I were both invited to go meet with the Attorney General and on his stopover in Seattle. So we were just tickled and called back and to get the details and found out that the plane was stopping over I think it was at 3:38am. Now, that was AM. At that time, of course, you could actually go to the gate where people were coming off the plane. So it's not like it is today. So Lacey and I said, Well, you know, we'll just go spend a night in a hotel and, you know, get up and go over to the airport and meet the Senator. So we did we were just tickled. It was it was a fun trip. And we were tickled that we were gonna get to see him, because we had not seen him since he. He had gone to the Senate. So he gets off the plane easy, like fresh as a daisy, I was amazed because I think he's probably been on the plane look, probably 10 or 12 hours. And there was this rather bedraggled grim looking guy in uniform with him. And Mr. Morgan says, grabbed me by one arm and Lacey by the other says, Come over here, I want to talk to you all privately. And he made it real clear. And so we're talking to him. And he's not talking about anything sensitive, or you know, you're just friends catching up with each other, and so forth and so on. And I was, had formed the opinion of maybe there was some reason he wanted to talk to us in particular, and maybe I should ask Lacey to kind of, you know, give us a chance to talk just the two of us together. And he meant, oh, no, no. So, and he finally I think, realized what was in my mind, and he says, was very appreciative of us coming cozy. It was only like an hour layover for him to catch his next plane to Washington. And he said, I had been under surveillance by this guy and his friends through this whole trip. And he said, I wanted to make sure they understood I can arrange a meeting was somebody they didn't know about. And he said, look at what that guy's doing. And the guy was just pacing around. He was about 30 feet from us watching the whole time goes on my hair was about like this. And my wife has very blonde curly hair and it was out about like that. And this was in the mid 70s. And I know he thought we were a bunch of hippies. And Mr. Morgan was speculating at that time well, how in the world he was going to this colonel was going to put in his trip report about the senator who he's escorting. Meeting with these two hippies in the Seattle airport in the middle of the night, it obviously had some significance to the to everybody, and he would, he wouldn't have any idea what that might be. And we all really enjoy. But to go back a couple of, you know, move forward in time I returned or Lacey and I returned from the West Coast in 81. And I was working in state government again, at that point and on good days, used to understand a little bit about public opinion, public policy, politics and things like that. I've learned a lot in my time. And I formed the opinion that unless there was some intervention, or things were headed towards, in, in the 94 election, there would be a Republican elected governor unless something was done. And I worked it out in my head what the problem was, and it was that the hunt era had compressed the normal political forces that had been able to work through things to the point where once that pressure was off, you were going to have every faction within the Democratic Party, running its own candidate for governor. And that that would not be able to put the genie back in the bottle in time for a November election. So I thought it through and concluded that what needed to be done to prevent that was that there needed to be a force in being that got in the race, that would cause some early compression, and probably narrow it down to a one or at most three, person, two, or three person race, you wouldn't have six or eight. So I went to see Mr. Morgan in January of 1983, in a quest to persuade him that he should run for governor. And he heard me out. And I've went through it in more detail. And I have with you about where I thought the pieces on the board were and how they would spin out in the absence of a dominant figure coming into the race. This is in 84. This was the 84 election, I was talking to him in January of 83. And he was kind enough to say my analysis was probably correct. And he sat there for a period of time and didn't say anything. And finally he turned to me, and he said, I'm not going to run for governor. And he said, but I think your analysis is correct. If there is not an intervening force, that is what will happen. And I of course was a little bit disappointed, that he was not willing to consider it, I had thought through if he was what should be done to actually pull together an analysis to see what it would take to do it. He chose to sit there and he thought through for several minutes, and he turned back to him and he's not gonna do it. And he said, Let me tell you why I'm not gonna do it. He said, I know what it takes to be elected governor in this state. And I know myself well enough that I'm not willing to do what it takes to be elected Governor of this state. And he went on to say, I have a number of good personal friends that need to be with the winner for their professional and business life. And if I get in it, they will go with me. And for me to do that to them, knowing I'm unwilling to do what it would take to be governor is just not something I'm going to ever do. And I think of that conversation as one of the most beneficial I've ever had. For him, public service was just that it was not an ego trip, where somebody was trying to play out some deficiencies in their childhood. And he always seemed to convey clearly, he is concerned about other people that went with him and supported him.

"Billy" Yeargin (55:16)
[inaudible]

Rodney Maddox (55:17)
Would you mind listening to us and tell us what you think the solution ought to be? You gotta understand, I've been living in Oregon for the bulk of the previous six years. And I said, Well, I'll tell you if whatever thing for what it's worth. And what they described to me is what we would now describe as the Religious Right. And, and the I think this was the first time that the organized stuff was coming to fruition. You know, it had started in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, when the Republican Party base had been shattered their their GOTV efforts had been shattered their capacity to do on the street work. And they had to have a new base. And the Congress, before he got there had passed the [ERISA] law. And the Southern Baptist Convention had set up a pension plan 100 under it for their by vocational preachers, they had a lot of preachers in there, that wouldn't have a pension otherwise. So the convention was providing one and the money managers in New York apparently convinced the convention that if they opened up the convention, to other denominations, that they could have a healthier pension plan than they otherwise we're gonna have. So they opened it up not because of the religious doctrine, but they opened up the membership of the State Baptist Convention in a sense to bring in people whose religious doctrines were actually hostile to the traditional Southern Baptist doctrine. And those folks, as a result of that were entitled to send messengers to the National Southern Baptist Convention. And in those days, every church no matter what its size, could send 10 delegates. Well, the the oil company guys in Texas, I can name them if you want to go into that. But that's not the purpose of this, started putting money into the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. And within five years, they had created a network of the religious right, what we now call a religious right, and they financed to their TV stations, and they financed a whole bunch of things. But for a North Carolina political campaign, I think 1980 was the first time at all that really came together. And what Mike had said described to me, was the visible manifestations that had just recently become visible to democratic campaign operators. And they asked me, okay, Rodney, here, here's the campaign team is kind of divided about how to handle this, what do you think we should do? And I said, I want to think about this. I've got to go down to Georgia and visit my aunt and I will come back to Raleigh. And I will tell you on the weekend, I was gonna be gone about three days, and they said, Well, we will be in Asheville on Saturday night. Would you mind meeting us in Asheville? Well, that was actually better for me. I said, Sure. So I worked out a campaign plan for how I would deal with that. I don't remember much about it. But I do remember spending a lot of time on that trip doing that. And when I got to Asheville that Saturday night, it was on event that Bill Stanley's placed there. And they said Mike came in I said, Okay, fellas, can we go somewhere quiet where I can tell you what my my recommendation is? And they said, well, the decisions already been made, how are we going to handle this since you've been gone. And I never got to talk to them about what I thought they should do. They expressed to me they thought they had it under control the political threat of what that represented. And when we were back in Oregon, you know and the time zones are three hours later than they are here. And when the result is such a thin margin of defeat, you know, Lacey and I had offered to see it and Mike that if they thought Mr. Morgan was really in trouble that she and I would take leaves of absence and come back and just be full time volunteers for for September and October. And they had told us that was not necessary. And I remember Lacey expressing to me like, my god, if we had just gone on back and been there for two months, you know, we could have had an impact on more than 5000 votes. Yeah. So we we were pretty depressed. I know, he wasn't feeling all that good after the after that election, but we were also very depressed.

Unknown (1:00:50)
If I can get you to comment, it seems like you were part or witnessed parts of two, maybe the most unique parts of Senator Morgan's life, in my opinion, is one of them was his Consumer Protection Program as Attorney General. And the second was what you just described his being maybe the first one to have to go face the Religious Right. Well, you know, do you see that sort of just like, you know, maybe like [inaudible].

"Billy" Yeargin (1:01:28)
[inaudible] about that comment about that, because I want to, I want to use that just start answering these questions and just discuss it.

Rodney Maddox (1:01:41)
Well, there began a struggle that continued in North Carolina, between those forces that were trying to take control of that. And they ultimately did take control of the National Southern Baptist Convention. And then there was a struggle for a number of years between those folks and the more moderate Southern Baptist about the state convention. And he was instrumental, or as were some other people in this town in making sure that those folks were unsuccessful, or Senator Roy Hill at that point was seeking reelection, and they were very involved on the other side. And I and Randolph [Cloud] shall we say, provided the some of the thoughts that went into keeping them from taking the convention that year. And it was the first time that I think a woman was elected as a Vice Chair of the State Baptist Convention. And I think she defeated a fella by the name of Sam [inaudible]. But anyway, that that was a struggle that went on for a long time. And now the political forces that they have created, and they fostered and nurtured and and enabled, have basically turned on them, the folks that put it in motion. And I think you've seen that play out in this recent election, the presidential election for the Republican nomination. But in terms of how to deal with that, I don't think it was fully understood. In the early 80s, it was certainly not understood. It was kind of obscured by Jim Martin's election. That was 84. He wanted to take control of the judiciary in 86, because he had been able to appoint a lot of people to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. And I ended up being selected to manage the Democratic campaign for the combined judicial election in 86. And we basically swept the board. But that was that was always a part of it. And the Hill's forces were the ones in that era that basically controlled that. Not the Martin forces. And in 86, I went way out of my way to make sure we did not antagonize them. And I actually sent some emissaries over to talk to what we would call the congressional club. And the response I got back was, you guys just do what y'all been doing. We're gonna stay out of it. And by the way, we want you to understand that we have never had any difficulty with any of the democratic judges and we don't see any need for good judges to be pushed out of office just because they are democrats. And so when 86 election that was really muted, but that was how that came about.

"Billy" Yeargin (1:06:14)
Which could have been in my class. I did a politics two years ago, and [inaudible]. All right. We need to cut it.

Unknown (1:06:33)
That sounds like the [inaudible].