UNITED STATES SENATE WASHINGTON. D.C. 20510 PUBLIC DOCUMENT OFFICIAL BUSINESS Oral History interview with Esther Morgan Lillington, North Carolina. By Pete Daniel CHILDHOOD MORGAN: In high school I don't remember that we had very much association in terms of classes because being two years advanced of his class, we didn't do a lot, except for school activities. We rode to school on, I can remember, a Model A Ford that he and a next door neighbor by the name of Truitt Johnson rode. Truitt Johnson was a very important person in our lives, who we grew up with, and Robert spent a lot of time at his home, so much, I don't know if he would have told you the time when our mother was really discouraged with Robert staying at Truitt's home so much that she put some of his clothes in a sack and put them on the front porch and just told him to go up there and live if he wanted to spend so much time at the Johnson's. That sort of stopped Robert from going up there so much. I remember that Robert really did not like to wear overalls, which children on the farm did. He just did not like overalls or blue jeans, even thought he had to wear some of them. I think that on the farm he was not interested in really doing the chores on the farm that we had to do, a few. For instance, if we went out to pick snap beans I usually did the MORGAN 2 the picking, and he did the sitting on the bucket. One of the biggest fights we ever had was he wouldn't pick his share, and I threw a bean at him and it hit him in the eye. Then, of course, I got reported when we got home. DANIEL: On the part of his life that we don't have material on, his younger years when he didn't write anything, like when he was a child, your sister mentioned that he and his father had gone to some kind of agricultural meetings in Ohio or somewhere. She couldn't remember the particulars of it, that is, whether it was with the Farm Bureau people or the county agent? MORGAN: I remember he raised a couple of beef cattle for show, probably through a farm agent, and I think he won a prize. He did, he made a soap, you remember that North Carolina had a soapbox derby race, I don't know if they still have it or not. For a long time, we still had his car that he raced, and I was saying to Lucille yesterday, I said, that's Glenvue Hill that had the soapbox derby on it, which he put his racer on. There must have been a picture taken, somewhere. That little car. That's been a long time. DANIEL: It's gone now, though? MORGAN: Yes, but there was something on the agriculture. I don't remember much about that, however. When you think about at our home, the News and Observer was not always there, because we could not always afford it. The Progressive Farmer was always MORGAN 3 there; that was the one magazine. And the few books that we had, that Robert and I had, were usually a few that we got for 25 at the dime store. On a Saturday night, we probably got a dime, which we bought candy with to last all week for the two of us. It was really hard for our parents. Oh, one of the things that I was going to tell you about college. We never had a checking account, either one of us. We could write a check on our father by putting our name over his, Robert's or mine. But we both kept tabs on each other. Probably the biggest fight I ever remember having with him in college was he bought a dictionary which I thought was useless. I mean that I thought we couldn't afford, because we had spent too much. We knew in Pappa's bank account there was not much money, and here he spent five dollars for a dictionary that we could have used in the library. So I didn't like that. One morning we were walking back from breakfast, and there was a dollar on the ground, and we nearly knocked each other out trying to get that dollar. And I'm not trying to say that we were really starving, but we really did not have very much money, and we knew that. It was hard for them to get us through college. My father had to borrow a lot on land. We never really knew that we lived in what is described by the government now as a poverty area. All the federal funds have come into Lillington and Harnett County because we were such a deprived area. When children have love and food and shelter, and that's, again, the basic things we need. MORGAN 4 Darius Johnson, I guess, is still living. What she can't remember about us I don't guess anybody could unless it's Mattie that lives up there just north of her. Darius is Truitt's mother, and Darius knew our mother, and I've known her as long as I've known anybody. Mattie Johnson, not as long, but she knew a lot about us. DANIEL: Do you remember the relationship between he and his father when he was growing up. Did he do much with his father? Somebody told me he would go with him occasionally on a Hoover cart to sell produce in Lillington. MORGAN: Well, we both did. We had a Hoover cart, but we would also go on a wagon. He would drive the wagon to Coats where they would grind the corn meal. Also, he sold, my father sold, vegetables at the curb market in Raleigh. We would go there and shell beans as he would sell the vegetables from the back of the truck. Seems to me that I did much more of that than Robert, because, again, he never really did like to do those kind of things. If he went, it was because he was told to go. I liked it more than he did. I remember picking up potatoes, not crazy about it, but I could put up with it more than he could. DANIEL: What did he like to do? MORGAN: We both like to read, but we didn't have very much to read. Then our mother felt we ought to work and help. She did teach us all to get up, regardless. If there was nothing MORGAN 5 to do but get up and sit down. She told us we had to get up in the morning and not stay in bed. We've all learned to do it. We played marbles. You know, those little chores, and we would go to Pullen's Park once a summer, maybe. And the church picnics, we always went to church. If Robert and I couldn't go to the Baptist Church, which we had to go to by car, we were sent to the Cape Fear Presbyterian Church. We probably went there as much as we went to the Baptist Church. DANIEL: This was Neills Creek? MORGAN: Yes, Neills Creek. We could walk to Cape Fear, so we went to Cape Fear a lot. DANIEL: Was he very religious? I know going to church and being really interested is different. Where did he fall? MORGAN: Probably in the average group. I think our parents expected us to attend church, gave us a good start in it. We were never instructed that we must sit down and read a chapter before we went to Sunday School. We were taught to put our nickel in the collection plate, that we had to contribute to the church. DANIEL: His best friend was Truitt. Did you have friends that overlapped? MORGAN: We had two other friends who were close in high school, and they were Lynn and Lucy McKinney. Now, their mother is still living. She's probably eighty-five now. Lucy and I were in the same class, and our mothers sewed together. MORGAN 6 One of the things that I learned to hate as a child, we wore the same pattern, the same dress, through high school. They made the same dress, the same pattern, and Lucy and I were always dressed alike. Lynn was Robert's age. They pretty much drifted apart at the end of high school, probably before high school was over. Lynn was more in tune with, well, I think he drove a long distance truck, and then he opened a restaurant where Wade's is now--that was Lynn's restaurant. We used to go back and eat there often. Lucy married and moved up to Virginia. And I've only seen her a few times. Then Ruby Mae Wilder was another one that I knew. Lois Smith, Alida Matthews come to mind. She played the church piano for years. Another one of my friends was the Rickman family, Merle Smith, who is now dead. The only one of that family, and I don't think she would remember much about her sister, is Fannie Lou Smith, and she owned a book store in Dunn. FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS MORGAN: Let's see, I remember that during our childhood being small together and young, our oldest brother Billy, was our babysitter. He rocked us and looked after us more, probably, than any member of the family. I think of that often. That is some of the kind of things that I remember, but generally I would say that we were, we have always been exceptionally MORGAN 7 close as brothers and sisters, and I think I understand that now in that our sister and our next brother who died at age thirty-four, Billy, and then Melvin, being a retarded, handicapped brother, who had a great deal of problems which my mother had to attend to, it left us on our own pretty much. So because we were on our own and we looked after each other, it also, I think, put me in a peculiar situation. Robert and I got along very well. He always seemed to feel that he had to be my protecter and that he was really the oldest when in fact he was two years younger. He seemed not to hesitate to guide me, or think he could guide me, into what was proper to do. I always assumed that Robert was by far the superior intellect that I was, because as a first grader he was chosen the one to tell the stories in other classes. He could tell them well. I don't remember any, being chosen anything. When he came to East Carolian, he was being chosen treasurer of the class or some office, debate team. He continued all these things he started in high school. Again, I don't remember being elected anything particularly along that line. Then it was at the University of Florida, I was teaching there. I must have been thirty-five years old. One of my colleagues, I was reminiscing about the family one day, and he made a statement. He said, have you ever thought for one minute that you might be brighter than your brother? I said, no, I've never thought that. But from that day to this it's never mattered. I might be, I might MORGAN 8 not be, and it's not even important anymore. But it sort of took the shadow off that I'd been under. DANIEL: Your careers have been so different, but both of you have been so successful that it doesn't matter. You both turned out exceptionally well in your field. MORGAN: I think another interesting facet of Robert is his response to the family, having been single for thirty-five years and the very fact that we were very close and I was single also. I guess you have a feeling that if your brother ever marries that's a loss. Things will never be the same. But the day he called me to tell me he and Katie were getting married it never made any difference. I could tell things would be the same, just the way he said it. And they have been. Simply because he makes it the same with every friend he has. They remember the family, and I think that is quite a responsibility for anyone to take on. At that time, in college, we ate in a dining hall with six at the table. We always had our meals together with other of our friends. I remember a couple of instances that were interesting to me. We were never to be late for dinner at East Carolina, and Robert was late. I served his plate rather than have the food come back around, and he came in, but I got reprimanded by the supervisor of the cafeteria who told me that if Robert wasn't there that was tough, that I was not to MORGAN 9 to serve his plate. I've always remembered that; it's rather ridiculous, but it did happen. We were good friends in college. I think we learned to dance together, dance for the first time there. Two things, two or three things, stand out with me at East Carolina. One, his helping me get my grades together so that, and my own pride, I suppose, kept me from being expelled, and I did graduate and I think probably with a C plus average. It was during the war, and I think rubber was difficult to get, and so Robert and I both took tennis. We had to share the same tennis racquet and the same tennis shoes. He took it one period and I took it the next period. We would exchange, stop and take off the shoes and give them to the other one. We shared the same typrwriter which we had bought , a used one for about 25. Robert came along to East Carolina when I was, I suppose, at the end of my sophomore year, and he probably saved my being expelled from East Carolina. He came in as treasurer of the class his freshman year. I think he was treasurer. He also was on the debate team right away. And remember that East Carolina had about a thousand students at the time and only about fifty males. Robert, as I recall, was the first male marshall East Carolina ever had. I think another interesting part of that, of our family, our father really had very little money to send us. Robert MORGAN 10 worked at the bookstore, and whatever he made I had half of it. He really checked out with very little. I think he worked at the soda shop. He would check out with very little cash by the time the two of us had had our milk shake and cokes. Not that I didn't want to work, but East Carolina at the time would not let two in the same family work. I can understand their sharing the jobs around; there are not as many as there are now. DANIEL: Do you remember his feelings about the war, when he was in college? Was he anxious to join up? MORGAN: I don't remember his being anxious, and I don't remember his being upset about it, worried that he would have to go. I think he felt his responsibility, and I think he really enjoyed being in the Navy. I really believe that he might have made a career of the Navy if our mother had not been living alone when our father died. And she was alone with the farm, and if it had not been for that I really believe he would have had a career in the Navy. DANIEL: Was he a good student at East Carolina? MORGAN: I'm sure I don't really know what his grades were, but he was always seemed to be passing and I seemed to be failing. I only really made one or two D's but it was just always on the borderline, by the skin of my teeth that I would get by. I think he was on the debate team. I do not think he was an honor student. MORGAN 11 DANIEL: What was his favorite subject? MORGAN: I suppose, history, as was mine and did start majoring in history but then decided I didn't want to teach history and changed to elementary education, which was really the right place. ESTHER MORGAN'S CAREER DANIEL: And you majored at Carolina in what, in graduate school? MORGAN: I got my masters there in elementary education. DANIEL: But then your career changed, didn't it? MORGAN: Changed. And then I went into, after teaching in second and third grade, I got off into teaching the physically handicapped, which during those times was sort of a brand new field. From there I went to graduate school at Columbia University, Syracuse, the University of Florida, many places. I worked in an institution in Connecticut for the retarded. I've done a great deal of advanced graduate work in both elementary and special ed. DANIEL: Just for the record, what do you do now? MORGAN: I'm an associate professor at the University of Florida in the Elementary Education Department, training teachers, students to be teachers, in elementary school. That's basically my full time payroll job. DANIEL: When did you move to Florida? MORGAN 12 MORGAN: 1948. And at that time our father was still living and died the first year I was there. He was sixty-two. That was a decision that was very hard on my father. He thought it was too far away, and I would be run over on the beach, or drown. And very hard on the family, and I think, if you see, I'm the only member of the family that strayed away very far. I think a lot of the early childhood home feelings that I grew up with, perhaps, I needed distance to find myself. After I got to Florida, I started back to graduate school. I was going to the University of Florida. Our father died, and I felt that I could help by being closer and went to Chapel Hill instead of graduate school and became, finally, a student. And I suppose Robert became the best student in law school himself, or after the war. DANIEL: And when did you graduate from college? MORGAN: I graduated in '44. DANIEL: And that's about the time he went into the Navy? MORGAN: Navy, yes. DANIEL: Did you stay around East Carolina? MORGAN: I finished East Carolina, stayed and finished, and he came back. He was at Chapel Hill, I think, part of that time. And he came back. I remember his coming to my graduation. There were a couple of pictures made on the campus of East Carolina in his Navy hat, which our mother carried in her wallet MORGAN 13 for years. That was her favorite picture. I think of both of us. DANIEL: Then did you go to work? MORGAN: I went to Roseboro, then Goldsboro, North Carolina, out in the rural area. Went to work there. DANIEL: Teaching elementary school? MORGAN: Teaching and living in a teacherage, which no longer exist now, you know. Jobs were hard to get when I graduated as they are now for teachers. Drove down in a Ford; now, we never had a car at East Carolina. We were able to take the car back and forth two or three times. But generally we rode the bus. Sometimes we would walk from where the cemetery is here home, leave our luggage in the ditch, then get the car and come back. We couldn't afford to call home and tell anybody we were coming. In high school I perhaps felt the most unloved of the family. I was extremely, a real behavior problem in high school. I remember slapping one of our teachers, and it being suggested that I be expelled. Our parents were in Florida and came back, and it got smoothed out. I then wanted to go to college, wanted to get away from home, I suppose. I said I would not go to college if I had to go to Buies Creek, Campbell, because that would be staying at home, and I now know that I needed to be away from home. I did go to East Carolina and did spend the first two years MORGAN 14 barely making grades. Again, I now can observe that this stemmed from an emotional problem within the home. When I was in high school, I wore a size sixteen dress, and that tells you how overweight I was. That again I can see as an emotional problem coming from the fact that our parents had to take care of a son that needed more attention immediately, not realizing that two others also were there needing a pat on the back. ROBERT'S MARRIAGE DANIEL: Did he meet Katie at East Carolina? MORGAN: Yes. DANIEL: She was in school and he was in school and you knew her too? MORGAN: Yes. We were all good friends. Katie was very much an entertainer in those days. She would wack out her tunes and pick up a guitar and sing corny songs. I remember seeing her on stage several times. I'm not sure that Robert and Katie were there when the president was ousted, the before Jenkins. Anyway, the president was ousted and we had long student body meetings. Seems like it was all night long we had to go in as students and sit in that auditorium and make decisions about that, president. DANIEL: Students were called in to make decisions? MORGAN: Yes, I don't know why we were called in. Robert might remember that. I can remember being in that auditorium MORGAN 15 for hours. Katie was there and we were friends. She was not one of my best friends. But we all knew each other quite well. The campus was so small. I think that East Carolina really gave me my start, a good professional start. In light of the fact that I'm not a real good student, they taught me how to teach, basically. Their theories and philosophies were far ahead of most teaching institutions in those days. I was a student member of the Association for Childhood Education. I never dreamed that I would be the international president. But I think, going back, that East Carolina gave the basic principles for teaching. I never had a leadership role until I was twenty-eight, and that was president of a woman's club in Daytona Beach, which makes me look back at young kids today, and say if somebody would encourage them to stand up, to speak out, they could probably accomplish a lot more earlier than I did. DANIEL: Getting back to his relationship with Katie, they kept in touch, I guess, for years? MORGAN: Yes, and during the time he was state Senator and all, they kept in touch. And I can remember more times than one he would have a date to see Katie and have to concel it. And I really never understood why she would consider giving him another one, because seems like he was cancelling more than he was keeping. And that went on for a very long time. MORGAN 16 DANIEL: How long did he court her? MORGAN: He was thrity-five; it must have been ten or twelve years, off and on. Not that he didn't meet other people in between. I think too, mother was alone, he was involved in politics and very happy in doing what he was doing. I remember saying to him one time when I was home that I really did not feel that he should sacrifice not getting married simply because our mother lived alone, that he should live there. I said, when the day comes when you want to get married, I think you should get married, and we will then decide what plans we can make for her. I really meant that. I don't know how long after that, but I felt like I needed to say it because he was taking a lot of responsibility in not really being a farmer and not wanting to be a farmer. He'll really tell you that he's not a farmer, but he's had to play that role a lot and made a lot of mistakes at it. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY DANIEL: One question that I would like to ask is, he readily admits that he has changed his opinion on any number of issues as he's gone along, so I would like to know how you've seen him change, that is, his growth as a, well, his world perspective. He started out in Harnett County and then moved to state politics and now he's at the national level. Do you see any kind of ideological change? How would you interpret his growth? MORGAN 17 MORGAN: I think he has somewhat, but I'm not sure he has changed his basic principles at all. He basically believes in saving, balancing budgets, he's always believed that. He doesn't believe people should have everything in the world just because it's available, never has. I think probably he's learned to accept a lot of things, that we grew up with values that, for instance, integration was not something that our parents would have ever tolerated. We've learned to accept and understand the need for integration. I think his scope on world affairs is by far greater because he's been much more involved in reading and with people at that level that he couldn't help but grow. Because he wanted to. But I see him nationally just as concerned in a broader way and probably more frustrated because the world is bigger than the state of North Carolina, or Lillington, that he can accomplish more for the world as he probably did in North Carolina as a state Senator. Those are his frustrations. I don't know that his philosophy has been so greatly changed. DANIEL: You see more consistency than you do change? MORGAN: I do. DANIEL: But you also see growth in that he's broadened what he's interested in? MORGAN: Yes. As I said, I think his acceptance in changing of values, it been more of an acceptance. What is really MORGAN 18 important is that he gets insight into it. But I see his consistency in basic principles, what's right--his concern for people has always been and will always be, his unselfish- ness in terms of not needing himself a lot of material things to be secure and successful. Our mother used to say many times, Robert will never have anything materially. And I would say, why. She said, well, he'll give it all away. And I said, well, isn't that great? If's he happy doing it, let him do it. But I'm always so sure that he will always have something to eat. But he will never have a huge bank account. DANIEL: How did he get interested in politics when he was so young? Was he talking about that even at East Carolina? MORGAN: I think he had that gift, of speaking, of telling stories in the first grade, on the debate club in high school in Lillington, and running around the state with that, and continued it at East Carolina. At Wake Forest I suppose the fellows in Lillington that wanted him to run for clerk of court saw him as a potential. I don't think either one of us had any counseling as to what we ought to be by our parents because they were not educated parents. We were pretty much free to do what we chose. I think he has been very successful with thinking and planning ahead. DANIEL: Did he write you when he decided to run for clerk of court? MORGAN: I don't remember. There may be something. I have MORGAN 19 one of his cards when he was running for clerk of court, one of the early handouts. DANIEL: Did he write you during the Korean War? MORGAN: I can't remember. Robert has always written to me a lot. It's only been in the last, well, since he's been in the Senate, that he hasn't written, but he calls. And I always feel like I get the telephone calls when he's most depressed. I think basically as I think about it, it's because, you can say what you want to to someone in the family and be understood. I think when he did not run for Governor was one of the roughest times in his life. The people in North Carolina wanted him to be Governor, and I never ever once thought he ever would run for Governor. I just really could not visualize him. The reason I felt that is because the governor's role is terribly short, and it a bunch of appointments which he can't tolerate just handing out appointments, undeserved. So he called often, depressed, and just before he made his decision, he called, and he said, I really don't know what to do. I need to go somewhere and make a decision. And I said do you want to come to Florida? I said do you want to come to Gainesville, or do you want me to meet you at the beach, or do you want to go by yourself? Well, he just didn't know. And I said, well, let me know. He couldn't decide on the phone, so I said let me know what you decide. MORGAN 20 So about three days later I got a letter from Chicago, and he had decided to go and plead his case. He was Attorney General at the time, his case with the state of Minnesota. That was what he had decided to do, and he met Senator Humphrey at a fair and they had introduced him there. He was in the hotel in Chicago. That note might be important, because it was at a point shortly thereafter he made his announcement, just a few days after that that he would not run for governor. I heard that riding in the car. I picked up Charlotte, North Carolina, that night, and Robert came on for about a five minute, they picked up his press conference, that he decided not to run, and I already knew he was not going to do it; I could tell from the last phone call that he was not. But he couldn't tell people here at that point. I don't know if Lucille described that press conference. DANIEL: No, she didn't. MORGAN: Lucille said she was there. They had all gone, all the workers, to hear him announce that he would run for governor. He walked in and announced that he was not running for governor. He'd made his decision not to do it. And she said, it was like a funeral. She said everybody began to cry, take out their handkerchiefs. I said what did you do, Lucille? She said, I cried too. And I said, what did Robert do? She said, he just walked off the stage and left us. MORGAN 21 DANIEL: It was probably rough for him. MORGAN: Yes. That was interesting, that people were so disappointed that he'd made that decision. Of course, that turned the wheels in politics that day in the state of North Carolina. Because if he were not going for governor, who was? And there was a lot of editorials following that press conference, in every paper in the state. DANIEL: Do you think that when he talked to Senator Humphrey in Chicago that maybe that conversation opened a new ambition, that was to be a Senator like Humphrey? To follow his career. MORGAN: It maybe encouraged him. I think he always basically had it. I've always felt that when he was in the state senate that Robert would run for U.S. Senate. I never thought he'd run for Governor. I can't say that we ever sat down and talked about his running for the Senate. I don't ever remember that. But somehow I think underneath, he felt, and I felt for him, that he could be a good Senator, simply because he could be far enough from the people, yet close enough to do the things that he needed to do independently of the people who were trying to tell you how to run your office. DANIEL: When he first went to Washington, did he call you? Because he admits, and a newspaper report a few weeks ago said, that he was a little dejected about Washington and there were certain reservations that he had then, which he doesn't have now. Did he talk to you about that? MORGAN 22 MORGAN: Yes, well, I got a phone call, I guess probably the day he got his phone in. He was concerned about how to set up everything, even the call buttons, how much it would cost for extra buttons on his telephone, frustrations. L think he really did feel from the very beginning that, I'm not accomplishing anything. It's too big a world, too big an issue, too many, and so mcuh, that I remember last September a year ago I was there and just happened to walk in and sit down, and he threw his pencil down, and he said, I wish I'd never seen this durn place. And I said why? He said, you just can't get anything done here. And I said, well I suspect that you've accomplished far more and had far more influence than you realize you've had. And I think that's true. DANIEL: I think when he was Attorney General, where he could make a decision and execute it, he had in that realm a lot more power, whereas in the Senate it's much more complicated and diffused. MORGAN: It's way down the road. I think that's very true. It's hard for him to listen to all the philosophy, all the debates, and maybe next year make a decision. The two things that he likes most are law, the Constitution, and what it entails, and people. And the Attorney General's office provided both law and politics He was an attorney and he liked that, and it was definite and you could make some definite decisions within a few days about any issue almost. And I think that's the thing that he really misses the most. I don't think he would cry his heart out if he were not reelected. MORGAN 23 DANIEL: You don't? MORGAN: No, I think he would be disappointed if he was, naturally; that's human nature, but I think he could find a positive nitch in law or in a judgeship or in some other area that would involve more definite decisions than the Senate does. For those reasons I think he wants to be a good Senator and do all the things, well, for historical reasons. He knows that he is the first U.S. Senator from Harnett County, first Attorney General from Harnett County, and I think it's obvious he's proud of Harnett County or he wouldn't maintain a home here all these years. DANIEL: There's no doubt about his pride in Harnett County. In fact, when I was here two weeks ago, he would every morning stop at Wade's Restaurant. He just loved it. That was very interesting to me, to see how close he still is to people like that. MORGAN: You know, that's what I'm saying, and with the family, every nephew, somewhere gets, he touches base with at sometime, or a neice, no matter how small or how old. So the relationship, no matter what level he's been on, he never changed with his friends and with his family, the grass roots. I don't know what influenced all this except our parents. I give our parents credit. I guess we inherited two or three good things--love, integrity, and hard work. Good health, we inherited that too, because we have been sick very little. MORGAN 24 DANIEL: Does he ever visit you down in Florida? MORGAN: Yes, Quite often. Whenever he gets half of an opportunity. He was there once about two years ago, and we were walking through St. Augustine at our beach place, a condominium, and I said, why don't we stop in here and get a card from the oldest school house and send the children, Mary and Margaret. He said, you can send them one if you want, but no one knows I'm in Florida. But there are times, I think, when he just has to have a place where no one can ring the telephone. So he's been there several times, and he, Katie, and the children spent about ten days there about a year and a half ago. DANIEL: Does he like the beach? MORGAN: He likes it for jogging, but he's not really a beach bum like the rest of us. DANIEL: Does he still read a lot? MORGAN: I think he reads a lot. I think one of the things, jogging, has been an outlet for him, which is good. But I suppose for Robert and for myself, when you have a spare minute, we don't really know how to go out and play golf, play tennis, or some of the sports that other people have taken up. As children we used to visit old cemetaries and old museums, and he and I both did. I think coming from liking history and acquiring old things. I suppose if we took a trip together that's what we would look at, museums and such things. MORGAN 25 DANIEL: So his recreation then is jogging and doing things like walking around looking at museums? MORGAN: Yes. He couldn't stand to be on a fishing boat all day. Well, he's told me somebody wanted to take him out one weekend fishing. He dreaded it no end. And he did catch a couple of fish, but really he just had rather have been home. He's not one to want to vist even a good friend's home for two or three days and be in the household and not have anything to do but party. That's not for him; he can take it about three hours. One of the things that I think is really hard for him in Washington is the fact that so many people want to take him to a nice place to dinner, and it's a five hour affair, and it bores him to death. Because by the time you get your wine and your drinks and your dinner and your after dinner drinks, five hours have passed, and he looks on that as lost time that he could be on to something else. But it's part of being a Senator. DANIEL: I've heard him express that same kind of feeling, like things just don't get done as fast or with as much dispatch as he would like. MORGAN: I guess one of the other little personal things that bothers him is the people who hang on to his coattails that way. We've all been independent; I think our mother taught us to be independent and yet be close with the family. MORGAN 26 I think a lot of people who have a chance to meet the Senator feel like they've got to walk beside of him and sit beside of him the whole weekend that he's in their town or that he might forget their name or something. That's really very irritating to the Senator, or to any politician, but he gets a lot of those. DANIEL: Your sister was telling me that he had a temper that he inherited from his mother's side of the family. Did you see any examples of that when you were growing up, of him getting short with people? MORGAN: I see a little, but it's more to me irritability. I think it's pretty controlled, and I think he expresses well his displeasure. He has strong definite, I think all of us have, strong feelings about things that you pretty well know where Robert stands, where your sister stands, where I stand. I think that does come from our mother perhaps. Our father was the more patient,kind, concerned man with a lot of creative ideas that were expressed in odd ways. I don't know if anyone has told you about that or not. DANIEL: No. MORGAN: Well, he's the kind that could make, buy a cow and sell one for $25 more. In those days it was hard to make $25. He could buy scrap iron, a truck load, and sell it and make $50. He had a lot of ways besides just farming to pick up extra money. You've got to have a few ideas in your head to do MORGAN 27 that, and I think he did have a lot of, as Robert and I have often said, he was more creative in his thinking than people thought he would be. He was quieter in his nature. I think our family, my mother was the stronghold for all of us, even the in-laws respected her in their decisions. Even if you didn't abide by them, you asked her first. She kept the family together, or did, and it still is. Robert is more sentimental and worried about the family going astray than any of the rest of the family. It might not be true, but I just feel like he worries about it. I don't; I feel that we're all secure, that too many years have passed that we would drift apart now. I don't think he has quite that certainty. DANIEL: Well, have we about covered everything? My main concern, of course, is from the point of view of a historian-- any insights you can give into his development as he was coming along, any significant things that may have happened? MORGAN: One person that may be living around here that might see us both was Mrs. Walker. She was a teacher. Judy would probably know if she's living here. She was a young civics teacher, Mary Walker, I think is her name, and did more to change my behavior than any teacher that Lillington ever had. Several years after I'd gone to graduate school I was in the beauty shop and she was in there, and she said to me, she said, I have followed you with a great deal of interest. And I laughed, and I said, I suppose you have, because I have certainly changed around a lot since the day I slapped Mr. Melvin. MORGAN 28 I'm sure Robert had her, because she stayed there several years. And if you could talk to her she would probably know us both. The only living teacher that I can think of who would know about how we behaved in school, what kind of things Robert did. And if she was a civics teacher, she would probably have been in charge of his debates. We had one teacher that killed us in English when I was there. I always said that was the reason that I failed English. DANIEL: He has always been a good student? In debate and all? MORGAN: Been in debate. One of the things, we would come to the movie and go home, and he always had to tell our parents everything, the whole movie over again, and it just, we just always wished he'd quit that. Mainly, I guess I just didn't want to talk about it. Another thing, hamburgers; we both loved hamburgers. He would go out and I'd say, bring me a hamburger, and he'd come back and I'd be asleep but I'd get up to eat that hamburger. Those have always been some of our childhood memories. I know that in feeling successful as he does, and I do, I've often said to my own college students, not use our names, but if you're happy in your profession it really doesn't matter where you live. You can live in a small town and be just as influential as to be in Chicago and try to be top of MORGAN 29 the hill there; it just depends on what your commitments are. Robert has a lot of sentimental feelings about our home place. I'm sure Lucille has probably mentioned that. I thought it was significant when our mother, remembering that she was not an educated person, knew lots of psychology in her leaving in her will the opportunity for Lucille and I to give Robert our home place. I have felt confident that it would be written down in black and white that it would be Robert's place the rest of his life. I made that assumption. But the will did not make that assumption. '1y mother's psychology made the assumption that Lucille and I would give it to Robert. DANIEL: So everything was left to you and Lucille to decide? MORGAN: Well, it was left in all three of our names. DANIEL: Oh, I see. MORGAN. The only thing that was really, well there were two or three things singled out, was the thing that struck me was that she had confidence in Lucille and I to make that decision. And, of course, this is not significant for the records, but that decision we never settled and it's fifteen years old. It's almost unheard of in the family. DANIEL: So, it just where it was? MORGAN: Yes. DANIEL: Will you make a decision, or just let it go? MORGAN 30 MORGAN: Sometimes I think we will. I think we should, in Lucille's favor. And whatever is hers she can just be planning with it. Well, I'll get you those letters. DANIEL: OK. MORGAN: And any other little things. Then you can hang on to them until we can talk to Robert. And we can make the decision about what we want to do about it. I have a letter that he wrote during the time he was Attorney General when he learned there was a contract on his life. I have it on file in my papers. It is very interesting for you to read sometime. I'll xerox you a copy and get it to you. DANIEL: Did he later talk about any of the particulars? MORGAN: Very little. Robert, it seems to be almost a closed subject to him. Or maybe it's because when I'm home I never really have enough time to get back to those days. Katie and I have talked about it a few times and questioned who we thought, what the contract was all about, and who really wanted his life. And I think Katie would be more appropriate to take it from there. But the letter describes some of his concerns about those days. DANIEL: I talked to Sheriff Wade about that, and he was reluctant to go very far, but he said that he learned about it. MORGAN 31 MORGAN: The letter was addressed to Rupert, his son, and a copy was sent to me. I think he simply dictated it, for the fact that if something did happen to him there would be some record of his feelings on it and that Rupert at that time was in Thailand and I was in Florida and that we were far enough away that we would be the logical ones to hold copies of the letter. Ynt)Y14" in high school I don't remember that we had very shd.' much asso6iation in terms of classes because being two years advanced of his class, we didn't do a lot, except for school , activities. We rode to school on,a Model A Ford that at. • el P % t 406 he,and anether boy, a neighbor by the name of Truitt Johnson/ Truitt Johnson was very important person in our lives, who we grew up with,and Robert spent a lot of time at his home, so much, I don't know if he would have told you the time when our mother was really discouraged with Robert staying at Truitt's home so much that she put some of his clothes in a sack and put them on the front porch and just told him to go up there and live if he wanted to spend so much time at the Johnson's. That sort of stopped Robert from going up there so much. I remember that Robert really did not like to wear overalls, which children on',;the farm • 11100 s). did. He just did not like overalls or blue jeans, even he had to wear some of them. I think that on the farm he was not interested in really doing the chores on the farm that we had to do, a few. For instance, if we went out to pick snap beans I usually did the picking, and he did the sitting on the bucket. One of the biggest fights we ever had was he wouldn't pick his share, and I threw a bean at him and it hit him in the eye. Then, of course, I got reported when we got home. MORGAN 22 aw DANIEL: I guess that's one of the hazards. Well,,the part of his life that we don't have material on, his younger years when he didn't write anything, like when he was a child, -a-ftd your sister mentioned that he and his father had gone to some kind of agricultural meetings in Ohio or somewhere. She couldn't remember the particulars .11-- s of it, that is, whether the Farm Bureau people or,county agent? MORGAN: I remember he raised a couple of beef cattle for show,titatprobably through a farm agent, and I think he won a prize. He did, he made a soap, you remember that North Carolina had a soapbox derby race, I don't know if they still have it or not. For a long time we still had his car that he raced, and I was saying to Lucille yesterday, T said that's Glenvue Hill that had the soapbox derby on it, which he put his racer on. There must have been a picture taken, somewhere. That little car. That's been a long time. DANIEL: It's gone now, though? on MORGAN: Yes, but there was something .i the agriculture. I don't remember much about that, however. 1.144.—w. when you think about at our home, the News and Observer was not always there, because we could not always afford it. The Progressive Farmer was always there; that was the one magazine. And the few books that we hadi MORGAN 23 that Robert and I had, were usually a few that we got for 25( at the dime store. On a Saturday night, we probably got a dime, which we bought candy with to last all week for the two of us. It was really hard for our our parents. Oh, one of the things that I was going to tell you about college. We never had a checking account, either one of us. We could write a check on our father by putting our name over his, RaL el t t. But we both kept tabs on each other. Probably the mileN biggest fight I ever remember having with him in 6, college was he bought a dictionary,) which I thought was useless. I mean that I thought we couldn't afford, 62tause we had spent too much. We knew in pappa's bank account there was not much money, and here he spent five dollars for a dictionary that we could have used in the library. So I didn't like that. One morning we were walking back from breakfast, and ther4as a dollar on the ground, and we nearly knocked each other out trying to get that dollar. And I'm not trying to say that were really starving, but we really did "I rhed ilvr not have very much money, It was hard for them to get usA My father had to borrow a lot on land. -JSZ wenever really knew that we lived in; what is described by the government nowjas a poverty area. All the federal funds have come into Lillington and Harnett County because we were MORGAN 24 such a deprived area. AOhildren have love and food and shelter, and that's, again, the basic things we need. Darius Johnson, I guess, is still living. What she can't remember about us I don't guess anybody could unless it was.Mattie, that lives up there just north of her . Darius is Truitt's mother, and Darius knew our GY)d, 7 . • /C mow,' `1,y A 1 4 e AJes.c.„4 etvly motherA Mattie Johnson, not as long, but she knew a lot about us. DANIEL: Do you remember the relationship between he and his father when he was growing up. Did he do much with his father: Somebody told me t-4.1.1a&ei-e.---- wIth him, he would go with him occasionally on a Hoover cart to sell produce in Lillington. MORGAN: Well, we both did. We had a Hoover cart, but 0—, we ilank _a wagon. He would drive the wagon to Coats where they would grind the corn meal. Also he sold, my father sold, vegetables at the curb market in Raleigh. We would go there Tr em The be.rr oc: +.v,,c tr. and shell beans(as he would sell the vegetablesA Seems to me that I did much more of that than Robert, because, again, kind of he never really did like to do thosel,things. If he went, it was because he was told to g I liked it more than he did. I remember picking up potatoes, not crazy about it, but I could put up with it more than he could. MORGAN 25 DANIEL: What did he like to do? MORGAN: We both like to read, but we didn't have very much to read. Then our mother felt we ought to work and help. She did teach us all to get up, regardless. If there was nothing to do but get up and sit down. She told us we had to get up in the morning and not stay in bed. We've all learned to do it. We played marbles. You know, those little chores, and we would go to Pullen's Park once a summer, maybe. And the church picnics, we always went to church. If Robert and I couldn't go to the Baptist Church, which we had to go to by car, we were sent to the Cape Fear Presbyterian Church. We probably went there as much as we went to the Baptist Church. DANIEL: This was Neills Creek? MORGAN: Yes, Neills Creek. We could walk to Cape Fear, so we went to Cape Fear a lot. DANIEL: Was he very religious? I know going to church and being really interested is different. Where did he fall? MORGAN: Probably in the average group. I think our parents expected us to attend church, gave us a good start in it. We were never instructed that we must sit down and read a chapter before we went to Sunday School. We were taught to put our nickel in the collection plate, that MORGAN 26 we had to contribute to the church. DANIEL: His best friend was Truitt. Did you have friends that overlapped? MORGAN: We had two other friends who were close in high school, and they were Lynn and Lucy McKinney. Now, their mother is still living. She's probably eighty-five now. Lucy and I were in the same class, and our mothers sewed together. One of the things that I learned to hate as a child, we wore the same pattern, the same dress, through high school. They made the same dress, the same pattern, and Lucy and I were always dressed alike. Lynn was Robert's age. They pretty much drifted apart at the end of high school, probably before high school was 11,.‘vOc over. 4eeftlict-siLynn was more in tune with, well,ther11.121111Wr drove a long distance truck and then he opened a restaurant where Wade's is nowg. that was Lynn's restaurant. ha c K We used to go,b11,_and eat there often. Lucy married and moved up to Virginia. And I've only seen her a few times. Then Ruby Mae Wilder was another one that I knew. Lois Smith, Alida Matthews, come to mind. She played the church piano for years. Another one of my friends was the Rickman family, Merle Smith, who is now dead. The only one of that family, and I don't think she would remember much about her sister, is Fannie Lou Smith, and she owned a book store in Dunn. Oral history interview with Esther Morgan. September 11, 1979, Lillington, North Carolina. by Pete Daniel, for Senator Robert B. Morgan. MORGAN: Let's see, I t-iTtrrr-tITE Mo 'T'-w•at-Crut a 6 e That (1,4,.-1 A our childhood1441 being small together and young, ,Our oldest brother, Billy, was our babysittert -a.4-1-1 he rocked us and looked after us more, probably, than any other member Aat of the family.,„ I think that generally during our childhood That is some of the kind of things that I remember, but generally I would say that we were, we have always been exceptionally close; as brothers and sisters, and I think our I understand that now in that our sister and mgAnext brother who died at age thirty-four, Billy, and then Melvin, being a retarded, handicapped brother, who had a great deal of problems which my mother had to attend to, it left us on our own pretty much. So because we were on our own and we looked after each other, it also, I think, put me in a peculr situationo ,g, Robert and I, got along very well. He always seemed to feel that he had to be my a,„, a protecter,,ini that he was really the oldest when in fact he was two years younger. He seemed not hesitatate to guide me, or think he could guide me, into what was proper 14 to do. Al MORGAN 9 for the record, if you want to talk I always assumed that Robert was by far the superior intellect that I was, because as a first grader he was chosen totell the stories in other classes. He could tell them well. I don't remember any, being chosen anything. When he came to East Carolina, he was being chosen treasurer of the class or some office, debate team. He continued all these things he started in high school. Again, I don't remember being elected anything particularly along that line. Then it was at the University of Florida, I was teaching there. I must have been thirty-five years old. One of my colleagues, I was reminiscing about the family one day, and he made a statement. He said, have you ever tho ht for one minute that you might be brighter than your brother? I said, no, I've never thought that. But from that day to this it's never mattered. I might be; I might not be, and it's not even important anymore. But it sort of took the shadow off that I'd been under. DANIEL: Your careers have been so different, but both of you have been so successful that it doesn't matter. You both turned ou*xceptionally well in your field. MORGAN: I think another interesting facet of Robert is his response to the family, having been single for thirty-five years and the very fact that we were very close and I was single also. I guess you have a feeling MORGAN 10 that if your brother ever marries that's a loss. Things will never be the same. But the day he called me to tell me he and Katie were getting married it never made any difference. I could tell things would be the same, just the way he said it. And they have been. Simply because he makes it the same with every friend he has. They remember the family, and I think that is quite a responsibility for anyone to take on. At that time we ate in a dining hall with six at the table. We always had our meals together with other of our friends. I remember a couple of instances that were interesting to me. I would 13crvcrjwe were never to be late for dinner at East Carolina, and Robert was late,an-c1) I served his plate rather than have the food come back around, and he came in, but I got reprimanded by the supervisor of the cafeteria who told me that if Robert wasn't there that was tough, that I was not to serve his plate. I've always remembered that; it's rather ridiculous, but d!cL it, happened We were good friends in college. I think we learned to dance together, dance for the first time there. Two things, two or three things, stand out with me at East Carolina. One, his helping me get my grades together so that, and my own pride, I supposeikept me from being expelled, and I did graduate and I think probably with a C plus average. It was during the war, and I think rubber was difficult to get, and so Robert and I both took tennis. We had to share the same tennis racquet and the same tennis shoes. He took it one period and I took it the next period. We would exchange, stop and take off the shoes and give them to the other one. We shared the same typewriter which we had bought, a used one. for about 25. Robert came along to East Carolina when I was, I suppose.at the end of my sophomore year and probably saved my being expelled from East Carolina. He came in as treasurer of the class his freshman year. I think he was treasurer. He also was on the debate team right away. And remembers that East Carolina had about a thousand students at the time and only about fifty males. Robert, as I recall, was the first male marshall East Carolina ever had. I think another interesting part of that, of our family, /Our father really had very little money to send us. Robert worked at the. bookstore, and whatever he made I had half of it. He really checked out with very little. I think he worked at the soda shop. He would check out with very little cash by the time the two of us had had our milk shake' and cokes. Not that I didn't want toverk, but East Carolina at the time would not let two in the same family work. I can understand their sharing the jobs around; there are not as many as there are now. • 7 MORGAN DANIEL: Do you remember his feelings about the war, llee. Was he anxious to join up`? when he was in co g ? MORGAN: I don t remem 'ber his being anxious, and I don't remember his being upse t about it, worried that he would have to go. I think he felt his responsibility, and I bein in the Navy. I really believe think he really enjoyed g that he might have made a careerAwsk of the Navy if our iving alone when father died. And mother had not been l if had not been for that she was alone with the farm, and really I believe he would have had a career in the Navy. DANIEL: Was he a good student at East Carolina? MORGAN: I'm sure I don't really know what his grades were but he was always seemed to be passing and I seemed to be failing. I only really made one or two D's but it was 0,14441 just,,on the borderline, by the skin of my teeth that I would get by. I think he was. I think he was on the debate team. I do not think he was an honor student. DANIEL: What was his favorite subject? MORGAN: I suppose, history, as was mine and did start majoring in history but then decided I didn't want to teach history and changed to elementary education, which was really the right place. MORGAN 10 /It; 8 S 0 At, became finally a student. And I suppose Robert became the best student in law school himself, or after the war. DANIEL: And you majored at Carolina in what, in graduate school? MORGAN: I got my masters there in elementary education. DANIEL: But then your career changed, didn't it? MORGAN: Changed. And then I went into, after teaching in second and third grade, I got off into teaching the physically handicapped, which during those times was sort of a brand new field. From there I went to graduate school at Columbia University, Syracuse, the University of Florida, many places. I worked in an institution in Connecticut for TAc retarded. I've done a great deal of advanced graduate work in both elementary and special ed. DANIEL: Just for the record, what do you do now? MORGAN: I'm an associate professor at the University of Florida in the elementary education department, training teachers, students to be teachers in elementary school. That's basically my full time payroll job. ; lIct W.1 at East Carolina. can MORGAN: Well, sometimes IAuse that as an illustration that people do mature. I think this might be interesting DANIEL: When did you move to Florida? MORGAN: 1948. And at that time our father was still living and died the first year I was there. He was sixty-two. That was a decision that was very hard on my father father. He thought it was too far away, iek_ I would be run over on the beach, or drown. And very hard on the family, and I think, if you see, I'm the only member of the family that strayed away very far. I think a lot of early childhood home feelings that A I grew up with, perhaps, I needed distance to find myself. After I got to Florida, I started back to graduate school. I was going to the University of Florida. Our father died, and I felt that I could help by being closerjr and went to Chapel Hill instead to graduate school and MORGAN 6 pa,,;!,4 4,44". AA44 9eof -;na0-4444A MORGAN: I graduated in '44. DANIEL: And that's about the time he went into the Navy? MORGAN: Navy, yes. DANIEL: Did you stay around East Carolina? MORGAN: I finished East Carolina, stayed and finished, and he came back. He was at Chapel Hill, I think, part of that time. And he came back. I remember his coming to my graduation. There were a couple of pictures made ont campusof East Carolina m,ad-Ec" in his Navy hat, which our mother carried in her wallet for years. That was her favorite picture. I think of both of us. DANIEL: Then did you go to work? MORGAN: I went to Roseboro, then Goldsboro, North Carolina, out in the rural area. Went to work there. DANIEL: Teaching elementary school. MORGAN: Teaching and living in a teacherage, which no EX longer exist now, you know. Jobs were hard to get when I graduated as they are now for teachers. Drove down in a Ford; now, we never had a car at East Carolina. We were able to take the car back and forth two or three times. But generally we rode the bus. Sometimes we would walk from where the cemetery is here home, leave our luggage in the ditch, then get the car and come back. We couldn't afford to calliN.Yre-ad 1-e114-^^1 i)'e 4,,eve C4111/ .13. MORGAN 3 in high school whet-6'I perhaps felt the most unloved of the family. I was extremely, a real behavior problem in high school. I remember slapping one of our teachers, and it being suggested that I be expelled. Our parents were in Florida and came back, and it got smoothed out. I then wanted to go to college, wanted to get away from home, I suppose. I said I would not go to college if I had to go to Buies Creek, Campbell, because that would be staying at home, and I now know that I needed to be away from home. I did go to East Carolina and did spend the first two years barely making grades. Again, I now can 1....1MOR observe that this stemmed fromremotional problemt,411 the home. When I was in high school I wore a size sixteen dress 3 and that tells you how overweight I was. That again I can see as an emotional problem coming from the fact that our parents had to take care of o2 a son that needed more attention immediately, not realizing that two others also were there needing a pat on the back. MORGAN 27 DANIEL: Did he meet Katie at East Carolina? MORGAN: Yes. DANIEL: She was in school and he was in school and you knew her too? MORGAN: Yes. We were all good friends. Katie was very much an entertainer in those days. She would wack out her tunes and pizzkxaxgNitax pick up a guitar and sing corny songs. I remem 12-r seeing her on stage several times. I'm not sure that Robert and Katie were The one 1.," f Go . there when the president was ousted, Anyway, the president was ousted and we had long student body meetings. Seems like it was all night long we had to go in as students and sit in that auditorium and make decisions about that president. DANIEL: Students were called in to make decisions? MORGAN: Yes. I don't know why we were called in. Robert might remember that. I can remember being in that auditorium for hours. Katie was there/and we were friends. She was not one of my best friends. But we all knew each other quite well. The campus was really so small. I think that East CarolinaA gave me my start, a good professional starts in light of the fact that I'm not a real good student in.t-itat'they taught me how Their to teach, basically. , theories and philosophies were far ahead of lit most teaching institutions in those days. MORGAN 28 I was a student member of the Association for Childhood Education. I never dreamed that I would be Y 1 the national president. But I think, going back, that East Carolina gave the basic principles for teaching. I never had a leadership role until I was twenty-eight, and that was the president of a woman's club in Daytona young Beach, which makes me look back at kids,today,and say if somebody would encourage them to stand up, to speak out, they could probably accomplish a lot more earlier than I did. DANIEL: Getting back to his relationship with Katie, they kept in touch, I guess, for years? MORGAN: Yes, and during the time he was state Senator and all, they kept in touch. And I can remember more times than one he would have a date to see Katie and have to never cancel it. And I reallyflunderstood why she would consider giving him another one, because seems like he was cancelling more than he was keeping. And that went on for a very long time. DANIEL: How long did he court her? 4Nve MORGAN: He was thirty-feaur; it must have been ten or twelve years, off and on. Not that he didn't meet other people in between. I think too, mother was alone, he was involved in politics and very happy in doing what he was doing. I remember saying to him one time when I was home that I really MORGAN 29 did not feel that he should sacrifice not getting married simply because our mother lived alone that he should live there. I said, when the day comes when you want to get married, I think you should get married, and we will then decide what plans we can make for her. I really meant that. I don't know how long after that, but I felt like I needed to say it because he was taking a lot of responsibility; in not really being a farmer and not wanting to be a farmer. He'll really tell you that he's not a farmer, but he's had to play that role a lot and made a lot of mistakes at it. MORGAN 12 MORGAN: I think he has somewhat, but I'm not sure he has changed his basic principles at all. He basically believes in saving, balancing budgets; he's always believed that . He doesn't believe people should have everything in the world just because it's avaliable, never has. I think probably he's probably learned to accept a lot of things, that we grew up with values that that, for instance, integration was not something our parentslmukxpax inkx would have ever tolerated. We've all learned to accept and understand the need for integration. I think his scope on world affairs far greater because he's been much more involved in reading and with people at that level that he couldn't help but grow. Because he wanted to. But I see him nationally just as concerned in a broader way; and probably more frustrated because the world is bigger than the state of North Carolina, or Lillington, that he can accomplish more for the world as he probably did in North Carolina as a state Senator. Those are his frustrations. I don't know that his philosophy has been so greatly changed. DANIEL: You see more consistency than you do change. MORGAN: I do. DANIEL: But you also see growth in that he's broadened and what he's interested in. DANIEL: One question that I would like to ask, is, he readily admits that he has changed his opinion on any number of issues as he's gone along, so I would like to know how you've seen him change, that is, his growth as as a, well, his world perspective. He started out in Harnett County and then moved to state politics and now he's at the national level. Do you see any kind of ideological change? How would you interpret his growth? MORGAN 13 MORGAN: Yes. As I said,I think his acceptance in changing the values, it's been more of an acceptance. What is really important is that he gets insight into it. But I see his consistency in basic principles, what's right` His concern for people has always been and will always be, Xis unselfishness in terms of not needing himself a lot of material things to be secure and successful. Our mother used to say many times, Robert will never have anything materially. wF and I would say, why. She said he'll give it all away. And I said, well, /t it, let him isn't that great? If's he happy doing so do it. But I'm always sure that he will always have something to eat. But he will never have a huge bank account. DANIEL: How did he get interested in politics when he was so young? Was he talking about that even at East Carolina? MORGAN: I think he had that gift, of speaking, of telling stories in the first grade,A the debate club in high school in Lillington, and running around the state with that, and continued it at East Carolina. At Wake Forest I suppose the fellows in Lillington that wanted him to run for Clerk of Court saw him as a potential. I don't tiN;r1K _0114.0p-e either one of us had any counselling as to what we ought to be by our parents because they were not educated MORGAN i4 parents. We were pretty much free to do what we chose. I think he has been very successful with thinking and planning ahead. DANIEL: Did he write you when he decided to run for Clerk of Court? MORGAN: I don't remember. There may be something. I have one of his cards when he was running for Clerk of Court, one of the early handouts. DANIEL: Did he write you during the Korean War? MORGAN: I can't remember. Robert has always written to me a lot. It's only been in the last, well, since he's been in the Senate, that he hasn't written, but he calls. And I always feel like I get the telephone calls when he's most depressed. I think basically as I think about it, it's because, you can say what you want it to someone in the family and be understood. I think when he did not run for Governor was one of the toughest times in his life. The people in North Carolina wanted him to be Governor, and I never ever once thought he ever r ten (1511 -weefticed-44..-4e Governor. I just really could not visualize him. The reason I felt that is because the governor's roll is terribly short, and it's a bunch of appointments which he can't tolerate just handing out appointments, undeserved. So he called often, depressed, and just before MORGAN 15 he made his decision , he called, and he said, I really don't know what to do. I need to go somewhere and make a decision. And I said do you want to come to Florida? I said do you want to come to Gainesville, or do you want me to meet you at the beach, or do you want to go by yourself? Well, he just didn't know. And I said, well, let me know. He couldn't decide on the phone, so I said let me know what you decide. So about three days later I got a letter from Chicago, and he had decided to g0000t plead his case, he was Attorney General at the time, his case with the state of Minnesota. That was what he had decided to do, and he met Senator Humphrey at a fair and they had introduced him there. He was in the hotel in Chicago. That note might be important, because it at a point wasAshortly thereafter he made his announcement just a few days after that that he would not run for governor. I heard that riding in the car. I picked up Charlotte, North Carolina, that night, and Robert came on for about a five minute, they picked up his press conference, that he decided not to run, and I already knew he was not going to do it; I could tell from the last phone call that he was not. But he couldn't tell people here at that point. I don't know if Lucille described that press confeence. DANIEL: No, she didn't. MORGAN: Lucille said she was there. They had all gone, all the workers, to hear him announce that he would run MORGAN 16 for governor. He walked in and announced that he was not 01L' running for governor. He) made his decision not to do it And she said, it was like a funeral. She said everybody take out began to cry, A their handkerchiefs. I said what did you do,Lucille. She said I cried too. And I said, what did Robert do. She said, he just walked off the stage and left us. DANIEL: It was probably tough for him. MORGAN: Yes. That was interested, that people were so disappointed that he'd made that decision. Of course that turned the wheels politics that day in the state were of North Carolina. Because if he ^ not going for governor, who was? And there was a lot of editorials cery.teva,(e) aLaw44.--PeJfferachs—.461,TtT'±rrto every paper in the state. DANIEL: Do you think that when he talked to Senator INta Humphrey in Chicago that maybe 1+6.--had--ett conversation ic.i.e'?opened a new ambition, that was to be a Senator like Humphrey. To follow his career. MORGAN: It maybe encouraged him. I think he always basically I've always felt that when he was in the state Senate, that Robert would run for U.S. Senate. I never thought he wie4,14, run for Governor. I can't say that we ever sat down and ever talked about his running for Senate. I don't remember that. But somehow I think underneath, he felt, and I felt for him, that he could be a good Senator, simply because MORGAN 17 he could be far enough from the people, yet close enough to do the things that he needed to do indepently of the +.0 lov tnpla 1-6 people who were trying toprun your office. vw,-t DANIEL: When he first e to Washington, did he call you. Because he admits, and a newspaper report a few weeks ago said that he was a little dejected-b-a? Washington -"It44344-4---144-&41.4=1,gtari- and there were certain reservations that he had then, which he doesn't have now. Did he talk to you about that? p1-064613 MORGAN. Yes, well, I got a phone call, I guess the day ,IA he got his phone in. He was concerned about how to set up everything,even the call buttons, how much it would cost for extra buttons on his telephone, frustrations. I think he really did feel from the very beginning that,I'm not accomplishing anything. It's too big a world, too big an issue, too many, and so much, that I remem ber last September, a year ago, I was there and just happened to walk in and sit down, and he threw his pencil down, and he said, I wish I'd never seen this durn place. And I said why? He said, you just can't get anything done here. And I said well I suspect that you've accomplished far more and had far more influence than you realize you've had. And I think that's true. DANIEL: I think4144 when he was Attorney General, where he could make a decision and execute it, he had in that realm a lot more power, whereas in the Senate it's much MORGAN 18 more complicated and diffused. MORGAN: It's way down the road. I think that's very true. It's hard for him to listen to all the philosophy, all the debates, and maybe next year make a decision. The two things that he likes most are law, the Constitution and what it entails, and people. And the Attorney General's office provided both law and politics. He was an attorney and he liked that, and it was definite and you could make some definite decisions within a few days alabt.J .4)..plany issue almost. And I think that's the thing that he really misses the most. alageut t-he Senate? I don't think that he has any other interests in a higher level than the Senate. I don't think he would cry his heart ,,ettS out if he wa-aLnot re-elected. DANIEL: You don't? MORGAN: No. I think he would be disappointed if he was, naturally,f,human nature, but I think he could find a positive nitch in law or in a judgship or in some other area that would involve more definite decisions than the Senate does. For those reasons .;-.01. 't t4. f I think he wants to be a good Senator and do all the things, well, for historical reasons. He knows that he is the first U.S. Senator from Harnett County, first Attorney General from Harnett County, and I think it's obvious he's proud of Harnett County or he wouldn't maintain a home here all these years. MORGAN 19 DANIEL: There's no doubt about his pride in Harnett County. In fact, when I was here two weeks ago, he stop at would every morning , Wade's Restaurant. He just loved it. That was very interesting to me, to see how close he still is to people like that. MORGAN: You know, that's what I'm saying, and with the family, every nephew, somewhere gets, he touches base with at sometime, or a neice, no matter how small or how old. So the relationship)t4atno matter what level he's been on, has never changedAhis friends and with his family, the grass roots. I don't know what influenced all this except ft4snimmaXamdmimm our parents. I give our parents credit. I guess we inherited two or three good thingsi love, integrity, andThard work. Good health, we inherited that too, ,because we have been sick very little. DANIEL: Does he ever visit you down in Florida? MORGAN: Yes. Quite often, whenever he gets half of an opportunity. He was there once about two years ago, and we were walking through St. Augustine at our %each place7/\ Xnd I said, why don't we stop in here and get a card from the oldest school house and send the children, Mary and Margaret. He said you can send them one if you want to,but no one knows I'm in Florida. But there are times, MORGAN 20 I think, when he just has to have a place where no one can ring the telephone. So he's been there several times, and he, Katie, and the children spent about ten days there about a year and a half ago. DANIEL: Does he like the beach? MORGAN: He likes it/ for jogging, but he's not really a beach bum like the rest of us. DANIEL: Does he still read a lot? MORGAN: I think he reads a lot. I think one of the things , jogging has been an outlet for him, which is good. But I suppose for Robert and for myself, when you have a spare minute, we don't really dont know how to go out and play golf, play tennis, or some of the sports that other people have taken up. As children we used to visit old cemetaries and old museums, and he and I both did. I think coming from liking history and acquiring old things. I suppose if we took a trip together that's what we would look at , museums and such things. DANIEL: So his recreation then is jogging and 4aaeJ doing things like walking around looking at museums? MORGAN: Yes. He couldn't stand to be on a fishing boat all day. Well, he's told me somebody wanted to take him out one week-end fishing. He dreaded it no end. And he did catch a couple of fish, but really he just had rather have been home. He's not one to want to visit even a good MORGAN 21 friend's home for two or three days and be in the household and -84 not have anything to do but party. That's not for him: Ae can take it about three hours. One of the things that I think is really hard for him in Washington is the fact that so many people want to take him to a nice place to dinner, and it's a five hour affair, and it bores him to death. Because by the time you get your viky,e. and your drinks and your dinner and your after dinner drinks five hours have passed, and he looks on that as lost time that he could be on to something else. But it's part of being a Senator. DANIEL: I 've heard him express that same kind of feeling, like things just don't get done as fast or as with as much dispatch as he would like. MORGAN: I guess one of the other little personal things that bothers him is the people who hang on to his coattails that way. We've all been independent, I think our mother taught us to be independent and yet be close with the family& rI think a lot of people who have a chance to meet the Senator feel like they've got to walk e's beside of himL^sit beside of him/the whole week-endlr ' in their town/or that he might forget their name or something. That's really very irritating to the Senator, or to any politician, but he gets a lot of those. DANIEL: Your sister was telling me that he had a temper that he inherited from his mother's side of the family. Did you see any examples of that when you were growing up, of him getting short with people? MORGAN: I see a little, but it's more to me irritability. I think it's pretty controlled, and I think he expresses well his displeasure. He has strong definite, I think all of us have strong feelingtbout things that you pretty well know where Robert stands, where your sister stands, where I stand. I think that does come from our mother the perhaps. Our father wasAmore patient kind, concerned man with a lot of creative ideas that were expressed in odd ways. I doh't know if anyone has told you about that or not. DANIEL: No. The k MORGAN: Well, he'sA that could make, buy a cow and sell one for $25 more. In those days it was hard to make $25. He could buy scrap iron, a truck load, and sell it and make 50. He had a lot of ways besides just farming MORGAN 11 to pick up extra money, You've got to have a few ideas do in your head toxthat, and I think he did have a lot of, as Robert and I have often said, he was more creative in his thinking than people thought he would be. He was quieter in in his nature. I think our family, my mother was the stronghold for all of us, even the in-laws respected her in their decisions. Even if you didn't abide by them, you asked her first. She kept the family together, or did, and it still is. Robert is more sentimental and worried about the family going astray than any of the rest of the family. It might not be true, but I just feel like he worries about it. I don't; I too feel that we're all secure, that A many years have passed that we would drift apart now. I don't think he has quite that certainty. DANIEL: Well, have we about covered everything? My main concern, of course, is ;1 from the point of view of a historian-,; anytaring insights you can give into his development as he was coming along, aOrignificant things that may have happened. MORGAN: One person that may be living around here that might see us both was Mrs. Walker. She was a teacher. Judy would probably know if she's living here. She was a young civics teacher , Mary Walker, I think is her name, and did more to change my behavior than any teacher that Lillington ever had. Several years after I'd gone to graduate school I was in a beauty shop and she was in there, and she said to me, she said, I have followed you with a great deal of interest. And I laughed, and I said, we-14 I suppose you have1 Because I have certainly have chavfed around a lot since the day that I slapped Mr. Melvin. I'm sure Robert MORGAN 30 had her, because she stayed there several years. And if you could talk to her she would probably know us both. The only living teacher that I can think of who would know about how we behaved in school, what kind of things Robert did. And if she was a civics teacher, she would probably would have been in charge of his debates. We had one teacher that killed us in English when I was there. I always said that was the reason that I failed English. DANIEL: He has always been a good student? In debate and all? MORGAN: Been in debate. One of the things, .We would our parents come to the movie and go home, and he always had to tell_ atzoilakEig everything, the whole movie over again, and whatever we did over again, and it just, we just always wished he'd quit that. Mainly , I guess I just didn't want to talk about it. Another thing, hamburgers, we both loved hamburgers. He would go out and I'd say; bring me a hamburger, ald he'd come back) and I'd be asleep but I'd get up to eat i±2ixg2txupxmikxofxlsieepxxxkoxcakxaxhamisairgx have always been that hamburger. ThoseeRrtxadwaxx some of our childhood memories. I know that in feeling successful as he does, and I do, I've often said to my own college students, not use our names, but if you're happy in your profession it really doesn't matter where you live. You can live in MORGAN 31 a small town and be just as influential as to be in Chicago and try to be top of hill there; it just depends on what your commitments are. Robert has a lot of sentimental feelings about our home place. I'm sure Lucille has probably mentioned that. I thought it was significant when our mother, remembering that she wasiot an educated person, knew lots of psychologyj in her leaving in her will the opportunity for Lucille and I to give Robert our home place. I have felt confident that it would be written down in black and white that it would be Robert's place the rest of his life. I made that assumption. But the will did not make that assumption. psychology made My mother's- f the assmption that Lucille and I would give it to Robert. DANIEL: So everything was left to you and Lucille to decide? MORGAN: Well, it was left in all three of our names. DANIEL: Oh, I see. MORGAN: The only thing that was really, well there were two or three things singled out, was the thing that struck me was that she had confidence in Lucille and I to make that decision. And, of course, this is not significant for the records ,but that decision we never settled and it's fifteen years old. It's almost unheard of in the family. MORGAN 32 DANIEL: So it's just where it was? MORGAN: Yes. DANIEL: Will you make a decision, or just let it go? MORGAN: Sometimes I think we will. I think we should, in Lucille's favor. And whatever is hers she can just be planning with it. Well, I'll get you those letters. DANIEL: OK. MORGAN: And any other little things. Then you can hang until we can on to them talk to Robert. And we can make the decision about what we want to do m644wilisem about it. I have a letter that he wrote during the time he was Attorney General when he learned there was a contract on his life. I have it on file in my papers. It is very interesting for you to read sometime. I'll xerox you a copy and get it to you. DANIEL: Did he later talk about any of the particulars? MORGAN: Very little. Robert, it seems to be almost a closed subject to him. Or maybe it because when I'm really home I never have enough time to get back to those days. Katie and I have talked about it a few times.. and questioned who we thought, what the contract was al4about, and who really wanted his life. And I think Morgan 33 Katie would be more appropriate to take it from there. But the letter describes some of his concerns about those days. DANIEL: I talked to Sheriff Wade Stewart about that,and he was reluctant to go very far but he said that he learned about it. MORGAN: The letter was addressed to Rupert, his son, and a copy was sent to me. I think he simply dictated it, for the fact that if something did happen to him there would be some record of his feelings on it and that Rupert at time was in T and and I was in Florida and that we were far enough away that we would be the logical ones to hold copies of the letter. Oral history interview with Esther Morgan. September-11, 1979, Lillington, North Carolina. by Pete Daniel, for Senator Robert B. Morgan. MORGAN: Let's see, I think the most that I remember about our childhood/ 410f being small together and young /ur oldest brother, Billy, was our babysittert, he rocked us and looked after us more, probably, than any Gt-he-emember riunx. of 7)of fen— of the family.A I think that generally during our childhood that he and I got along, Robert and I, got along very well. He always seemed to feel that he had to be my o."14 protecter44that he was really the oldest when in fact he was two years younger. He seemed not hesitatate to guide me, or think he could guide me, into what was proper to ,do. In high school I don't remember that we had very • much association in terms of classes because being two years advanced of his class, we didn't do a lot, except for school c•.4 activities. We rode to school on,a Model A Ford that let oe, he ands a tha-b „---1 neighbor by the name of Truitt i ro4c. JohnsonA Truitt Johnson was very important person in our lives, who we grew up with and Robert spent a lot of time at his home, so much, I don't know if he would have told you the time when our mother was really discouraged with Robert • MORGAN 2 staying at Truitt's home so much that she put some of his clothes in a sack and put them on the front porch and just told him to go up there and live if he wanted to spend so much time at the Johnson's. That sort of stopped Robert from going up there so much. I remember that Robert really did not like to wear overalls, which children oni,the farm did. He just did not like overalls or blue jeans, even he A had to wear some of them. I think that on the farm he was not interested in really doing the chores on the farm that we had to do, a few. For instance, if we went out to pick snap beans I usually did the picking, and he did the sitting on the bucket. One of the biggest fights we ever had was he wouldn't pick his share, and I threw a bean at him and it hit him in the eye. Then, of course, I got reported when we got home. That fs some of the kind of things that I remember, but generally I would say that we were, we have always been exceptionally closef/as brothers and sisters, and I think our I understand that now in that our sister and myiAnext brother who died at age thirty-four, Billy, and then Melvin, being a' retarded, handicapped brother) who had a great deal of problems which my mother had to attend to, it left us on our own pretty much. So because we were on our own and we looked after each other, it also, I think, put me in a peculeew situation MORGAN 3 in high school where I perhaps felt the most unloved of the family. I was extremely, a real behavior problem in high school. I remember slapping one of our teachers, and it being suggested that I be expelled. Our parents were in Florida and came back, and it got smoothed out. I then wanted to go to college, wanted to get away from home, I suppose. I said I would not go to college if I had to go to Buies Creek, Campbell, because that would be staying at home, and I now know that I needed to be away from home. I did go to East Carolina and did spend the first two years barely making grades. Again, I now can n f" observe that this stemmed fromnemotional emi e home. When I was in high school I wore a size sixteen dress, and that tells you how overweight I was. That again I can see as an emotional problem coming from the fact that our parents had to take care of mg a son that needed more attention immediately, not realizing that two others also were there needing a pat on the back. Robert came along to East Carolina when I was, I suppose/at the end of my sophomore year and probably saved my being expelled from East Carolina. He came in as treasurer of the class his freshman year. I think he was treasurer. He also was on the debate team right away. And remember that East Carolina had about a thousand students at the time and only about fifty males. Robert, MORGAN 4 as I recall, was the first male marshall East Carolina ever had. At that time we ate In a dining hall with six at the table. We always had our meals together with other of our friends. I remember a couple of instances that were interesting to me. I wo ld were never to be late for dinner at East Carolina, and Robert was late0 ftrtoirI served his plate rather than have the food come back around, and he came in, but I got reprimanded by the supervisor of the cafeteria who told me that if Robert wasn't there that was tough, that I was not to serve his plate. I've always remembered that; it's rather ridiculous, but it, happene, We were good friends in college. I think we learned to dance together, dance for the first time there. Two things, two or three things, stand out with me at East Carolina. One, his helping me get my grades together so that, and my own pride, I supposeikept me from being expelled, and I did graduate and I think probably with a C plus average. It was during the war, and I think rubber was difficult to get, and so Robert and I both took tennis. We had to share the same tennis racquet and the same tennis shoes. He took it one period and I took it the next period. We would exchange, stop and take off the shoes and give them to the other one. We shared the same typewriter which we had MORGAN 5 bought, a used one,for about 25. I think another interesting part of that, of our family, /ur father really had very little money to send us. Robert worked at the bookstore, and whatever he made I had half of it. He really checked out with very little. I think he worked at the soda shop. He would check out with very little cash by the time the two of us had had our milk shakes and cokes. Not that I didn't want tovork, but Fast Carolina at the time would not let two in the same family work. I can understand their sharing the jobs around; there are not as many as there are now. DANIEL: Was he a good student at East Carolina? MORGAN: I'm sure I don't really know what his grades were but he was always seemed to be passing and I seemed to be failing. I only really made one or two D's but it was alkiel I jus%on the borderline, by•the skin of my teeth that I would get by. I think he was. I think he was on the debate team. I do not think he was an honor student. DANIEL: What was his favorite subject? MORGAN: I suppose, history, as was mine and did start majoring in history but then decided I didn't want to teach history and changed to elementary education, which was really the right place. DANIEL: So when did you graduate? MORGAN 6 MORGAN: I graduated in '44. DANIEL: And that's about the time he went into the Navy? MORGAN: Navy, yes. DANIEL: Did you stay around East Carolina? MORGAN: I finished East Carolina, stayed and finished, and he came back. He was at Chapel Hill, I think, part of that time. And he came back. I remember his coming to my graduation. There were a couple of pictures made -0Ae- ontcampus of East Carolina14a4...ein his Navy hat, which ou' mother carried in her wallet for years. That was her favorite picture. I think of both of us. DANIEL: Then did you go to work? MORGAN; I went to Roseboro, then Goldsboro, North Carolina, out in the rural area. Went to work there, DANIEL: Teaching elementary school. MORGAN: Teaching and living in a teacherage, whidh no tif longer exist now, you know. Jobs were hard to get when I graduated as they are now for teachers. Drove down in a Ford; now, we never had a car at East Carolina. We were able to take the car back and forth two or three times. But generally we rode the bus. Sometimes we would walk from where the cemetery is here home, leave our luggage in the ditch, then get the car and come back. We couldn't afford to call aid k I e e coy., MORGAN 7 DANIEL: Do you remember his feelings about the war, when he was in college. Was he anxious to join up? MORGAN: I don't remember his being anxious, and I don't remember his being upset about it, worried that he would have to go. I think he felt his responsibility, and I think he really enjoyed being in the Navy. I really believe that he might have made a career of the Navy if our mother had not been living alone when father died. And it she was alone with the farm, and if had not been for that really I believe he would have had a career in the Navy. DANIEL: When did you move to Florida? MORGAN: 1948. And at that time our father was still living and died the first year I was there. He was sixty-two. That was a decision that was very hard on ,— A, my father. He thought it was too fir away, Ao-k I would be run over on the beach, or drown. And very hard on the family, and T think, if you see, I'm the only member of the family that strayed away very far. I think a lot of A early childhood home feelings that I grew up with, perhaps, I needed distance to find myself. After I got to Florida, I started back to graduate school. I was going to the University of Florida. Our father died, and I felt that I could help by being closeriv and went to Chapel Hill instead to graduate school and MORGAN 8 became finally a student. And I suppose Robert became the best student in law school himself, or after the war. DANIEL: And you majored at Carolina in what, in graduate school? MORGAN: I got my masters there in elementary education. DANIEL: But then your career changed, didn't it? MORGAN: Changed. And then I went into, after teaching in second and third grade, I got off into teaching the physically handicapped, which during those times was sort of a brand new field. From there I went to graduate school at Columbia University, Syracuse, the University of Florida, many places. T worked in an institution in Connecticut for retarded. I've done a great deal of advanced graduate work in both elementary and special ed. DANIEL: Just for the record, what do you do now? MORGAN: I'm an associate professor at the University of Florida in the elementary education department, training teachers, students to be teachersiin elementary school. That's basically my full time payroll job. DANIEL: That's quite a switch from barely making it at East Carolina. can MORGAN: Well, sometimes IAuse that as an illustration that people do mature. T think this might be interesting MORGAN 9 for the record, if you want to talk about family. I always assumed that Robert was by far the superior intellect that I was, because as a first grader he was e 0),)e. chosen A to tell the stories in other classes. He could tell them well. I don't remember any, being chosen anything. When he came to East Carolina, he was being chosen treasurer of the class or some office, debate team. He continued all these things he started in high school. Again, I don't remember being elected anything particularly along that line. Then it was at the University of Florida, I was teaching there. I must have been thirty-five years old. One of my colleagues, I was reminiscing about the family one day, and he made a statement. He said, have you ever tho&ht for one minute that you might be brighter than your brother? I said, no, I've never thought that. But from that day to this it's never mattered. I might be;- I might not be, and it's not even important anymore. But it sort of took the shadow off that I'd been under. DANIEL: Your careers have been so different, but both of you have been so successful that it doesn't matter. You both turned oukxceptionally well in your field. MORGAN: I think another interesting facet of Robert is his response to the family, having been single for thirty-five years and the very fact that we were very close and I was single also. I guess you have a feeling MORGAN 10 that if your brother ever marries that's a loss. Things will never be the same. But the day he called me to tell me he and Katie were getting married it never made any difference. I could tell things would be the same, just the way he said it. And they have been. Simply because he makes it the same with every friend he has. They remember the family, and I think that is quite a responsibility for anyone to take on. DANIEL: Your sister was telling me that he had a temper that he inherited from his mother's side of the family. Did you see any examples of that when you were growing up, of him getting short with people? MORGAN: I see a little, but it's more to me irritability. I think it's pretty controlled, and I think he expresses well his displeasure. He has strong definite, I think all of us have strong feeling4bout things that you pretty well know where Robert stands, where your sister stands, where I stand. I think that does come from our mother the perhaps. Our father wasAmore patient kind, concerned man with a lot of creative ideas that were expressed in odd ways. T doh't know if anyone has told you about that or not. DANIEL: No. The MORGAN: Well, he'sAthat could make, buy a cow and sell one for $25 more. In those days it was hard to make $25. He could buy scrap iron, a truck load, and sell it and make $50. He had a lot of ways besides just farming MORGAN 11 to pick up extra money, You've got to have a few ideas do in your head toAthat, and I think he did have a lot of, as Robert and I have often said, he was more creative In his thinking than people thought he would be. He was quieter in in his nature. I think our family, my mother was the stronghold for all of us, even the in-laws respected her in their decisions. Even if you didn't abide by them, you asked her first. She kept the family together, or did, and it still is. Robert is more sentimental and worried about the family going astray than any of the rest of the family. It might not be true, but I just feel like he worries about it. I don't; I too feel that we're all secure, that 4 many years have passed that we would drift apart now. I don't think he has quite that certainty. DANIEL: One question that I would like to ask, is, he readily admits that he has changed his opinion on any number of issues as he's gone along, so I would like to know how you've seen him change, that is, his growth as as a, well, his world perspective. He started out in Harnett County and then moved to state politics and now he's at the national level. Do you see any kind of ideological change? How would you interpret his growth? MORGAN 12 MORGAN: I think he has somewhat, but I'm not sure he has changed his basic principles at all. He basically believes in saving, balancing budgets., he's always believed that . He doesn't believe people should have everything in the world just because it's avaliable, never has. I think probably he's probably learned to accept a lot of things, that we grew up with values that that, for instance, integration was not something our parents%makxpainutkx would have ever tolerated. We've all learned to accept and understand the need for integration. I think his scope on world affairs is Lj far greater because he's been much more involved in reading and with people at that level that he couldn't help but grow. Because he wanted to. But I see him nationally just as concerned in a broader way/and probably more frustrated because the world is bigger than the state of North Carolina, or Lillington, that he can accomplish more for the world- as he probably did in North Carolina as a state Senator. Those are his frustrations. I don't know that his philosophy has been so greatly changed. DANIEL: You see more consistency than you do change. MORGAN: I do. DANIEL: But you also see growth in that he's broadened and what he's interested in. MORGAN 13 MORGAN: Yes. As I said,I think his acceptance in changing --ttra,values, it's been more of an acceptance. What is really important is that he gets insight into it. But I see his consisltncy in basic principles, what's right` is concern for people has always been and will always be /is unselfishness in terms of not needing himself a lot of material things to be secure and successful. Our mother used to say many times, Robert will never have anything materially. weil) and I would say, why. She said he'll give it all away And I said, well, isn't that great? If's he happy doing so it, let him do it. But I'm always sure that he will always have something to eat. But he will never have a huge bank account. DANIEL: How did he get interested in politics when he was so young? Was he talking about that even at East Carolina? MORGAN: I think he had that gift, of speaking, of telling stories in the first grade,- the debate club in high school in Lillington, and running around the state with that, and continued it at East Carolina. At Wake Forest I suppose the fellows in Lillington that wanted him to run for Clerk of Court saw him as a potential. I don't -ONInic either one of us had any counselling as to what we ought to be by our parents because they were not educated MORGAN 14 parents. We were pretty much free to do what we chose. I think he has been very successful with thinking and planning ahead. DANIEL: Did he write you when he decided to run for Clerk of Court? MORGAN: I don't remember. There may be something. I have one of his cards when he was running for Clerk of Court, one of the early handouts, DANIEL: Did he write you during the Korean War? MORGAN: I can't remember, Robert has always written to me a lot. It's only been in the last, well, since he's been in the Senate, that he hasn't written, but he calls. And I always feel like I get the telephone calls when he's most depressed. I think basically. as I think about it, it's because, you can say what you want ko It tosomeone_ in the family.and be understood. I think when he did not run for Governor was one of the toughest times in his life. The people in North Carolina wanted him to be Governor, and I. never ever once thought he ever r kh far —itittid-4e-4e Governor, I just really could not visualize him, The reason I felt that is because the governor's cold is terribly short, and it's a bunch of appointments which. he can't tolerate just handing out appointments, undeserved. So he called often, depressed, and just before MORGAN 15 he made his decision , he called, and he said, I really don't know what to do. I need to go somewhere and make a decision. And I said do you want to come to Florida? I said do you want to come to Gainesville, or do you want me to meet you at the beach, or do you want to go by yourself? Well, he just didn't know. And I said, well, let me know, He couldn't decide on the phone, so I said let me know what you decide. So about three days later I got a letter from Chicago, and he had decided to go c,,-(11 plead his case, he was Attorney General at the time, his case with the state of Minnesota. That was what he had decided to do, and he met Senator Humphrey at a fair and they had introduced him there. He was in the hotel in Chicago. That note might be important, because it at a point wasAshortly thereafter he made his announcement just a few days after that that he would not run for governor.. I heard that riding in the car. I picked up Charlotte, North Carolina, that night, and Robert came on for about a five minute, they picked up his press conference, that he decided not to run, and I already knew he was not going to do it; I could tell from the last phone call that he was not. But he couldn't tell people here at that point. I don't know if Lucille described that press confeence. DANIEL; No, she didn't. MORGAN: Lucille said she was there. They had all gone, all the workers, to hear him announce that he would run MORGAN 17 he could be far enough. from the people, yet close enough to do the things that he needed to do indepently of the fed lay I-lbw 1-6 people who were trying to run your office. DANIEL: When he first -Qamre,to Washington, did he call you. Because he admits, and a newspaper report a few a6out weeks ago said thathe was a little dejected-1).y, Washington and there were certain reservations that he had then, which he doesn't have now. Did he talk to you about that? 6 j MORGAN. Yes, well, I got a phone call, I guess the day he got his phone in. He was concerned about how to set up everything,eyen the call buttons, how much it would cost for extra buttons on his telephone, frustrations. I think he really did feel from the very beginning that/ I'm not accomplishing anything. It's too big a world, too big an issue, too many, and so much, that T remern ber last September, a year ago, I was there.and just happened to walk in and sit down, and he threw his pencil down, and he said, I wish I'd never seen this durn place. And I said why? He said, you just can't get anything done here. And I said well I suspect that you've accomplished far more and had far more influence than you realize you've had. And I think that's true. DANIEL: I think when he was Attorney General, where he could make a decision and execute it, he had in that realm a lot more power, whereas in the Senate it's much MORGAN 18 more complicated and diffused. MORGAN: It's way down the road. I think that's very true. It's hard for him to listen to all the philosophy, all the debates, and maybe next year make a decision. The two things that he likes most are law, the Constitution and what it entails, and people. And the Attorney General's office provided both law and politics. He was an attorney and he liked that, and it was definite and you could make some definite decisions within a few days iDcv -Qptiany issue almost. And I think that's the thing that he really misses the mostoabouthe S a-t-e!"- I don't think that he has any other interests in a higher level than the Senate. I don't think he would cry his heart LAie,e out if he wa-sl_not re-elected, DANIEL: You don't? MORGAN: No. I think he would be disappointed if he was, naturally,hhuman nature, but I think he could find a positive nitch in law or in a judgship or in some other area that would involve more definite decisions than the Senate does. For those reasons I think he wants to be a good Senator and do all the things, well, for historical reasons. He knows that he is the first U.S. Senator from Harnett County, first Attorney General from Harnett County, and I think it's obvious he's proud of Harnett County or he wouldn't maintain a home here all these years. MORGAN 19 DANIEL: There's no doubt about his pride in Harnett County._ In fact, when I was here two weeks ago, he stop at would every morning A Wade's Restaurant. He just loved it. That was very interesting to me, to see how close he still is to people like that. MORGAN: You know, that's what VIII saying, and with the family, every nephew, somewhere gets, he touches base with at sometime, or a neice, no matter how small or how old. So the relationship)t4at'no matter what level w i1 he's been onihas never changedAhis friends and with his family, the grass roots. I don't know what influenced all this except our parents. I give our parents credit. I guess we inherited two or three good thingsTiove, integrity, andflhard work. Good health, we inherited that too/ $ecause we have been sick very little. DANIEL: Does he ever visit you down in Florida? MORGAN: Yes. Quite often, whenever he gets half of an opportunity, He was there once about two years ago, and we were walking through. St. Augustine at our each CZ or) place/A And I said, why don't we stop in here and get a card from the oldest school house and send the children, Mary and Margaret. He said you can send them one if you want to,but no one knows I'm in Florida. But there are times, MORGAN 2Q I think, when he just has to have a place where no one can ring the telephone. So he's been there several times, and he, Katie, and the children spent about ten days there about a year and a half ago, DANIEL: Does he like the beach? MORGAN: He likes it/ for jogging, but he's not really a beach bum like the rest of us, DANIEL: Does he still read a-lot? MORGAN: I think he reads a lot. I think one of the things , jogging has been an outlet for him, which is good. But I suppose for Robert and for myself, when you have a spare minute, we don't really dont know how to go out and play golf, play tennis, or some of the sports that other people have taken up, As children we used to visit old cemetaries and old museums, and he and both did. I think coming from liking history and acquiring old things. I suppose if we took a trip together that's what we would look at., museums and such. things,: DANIEL: So his recreation then is jogging and .thdoing things like walking around looking at museums? MORGAN: Yes. He couldn't stand to be on a fishing boat all day', Well, he's- told me somebody wanted to take him out one week-end fishing. He dreaded it no end.. And he did catch a couple of fish, but really he just had rather have been home. He's not one to want to visit even a good MORGAN 21 friend's home for two or three days and be in the household and ,sai-not have anything to do but party. That's not for hime 1 can take it about three hours. One of the things that I think is really hard for him in Washington is the fact that so many people want to take him to a nice place to dinner, and it's a five hour affair, and it bores him to death. Because by the time you get your win e. and your drinks and your dinner and your after dinner drinks /five hours have passed, and he looks on that as lost time that he could be on to something else. But it's part of being a Senator. DANIEL: I 've heard him express that same kind of feeling, like things just don't get done as fast or as with as much dispatch as he would like. MORGAN: I guess one of the other little personal things that bothers him is the people who hang on to his coattails that way. We've all been independent, I think our mother taught us to be independent and yet be close with the family& I think a lot of people who have a chance to meet the Senator feel like they've got to walk beside of him sit beside of him /the whole week-end he's in their towni/or that he might forget their name or something. That's really very irritating to the Senator, or to any politician, but he gets a lot of those. MORGAN 22 DANIEL: I guess that's one of the hazards. Well,i,the part of his life that we don't have material on, his younger years when he didn't write anything, like when he was a child, -a-ndryour sister mentioned that he and his father had gone to some kind of agricultural meetings in Ohio or somewhere, She couldn't remember the particulars of it, that is, whether,the Farm Bureau people or county agent? MORGAN: I remember he raised a couple of beef cattle for show)t.-Probably through a farm agent, and I think he won a prime. He did, he made a soap, you remember that North Carolina had a soapbox derby race, I don't know if they still have it or not. For a long time we still had his car that he raced, and I was saying to Lucille yesterday, I said that's Glenvue Hill that had the soapbox derby on it, which he put his racer on. There must have been a picture taken, somewhere. That little car. That's been a long time, DANIEL: It's gone now, though? on MORGAN: Yes, but there was something 4.1aLthe agriculture, I don't remember much about that, however. N4 eaiJy,, when you think about at our home, the News and Observer was not always there, because we could not always afford it, The Progressive Farmer was always there; that was the one magazine. And the few books that we had, MORGAN 24 such a deprive ed area, Akhildren have love and food and shelter, and that''s, again, the basic things we need.. Darius Johnson, I guess, is still living, What she can't remember about us I don't guess anybody could unless ittsw,as-,Mattie, that lives up there just north of her , Darius is Truitt's mother, and Darius knew out /C,ci.Am her c, 3 I r.-.1 qs /(,,),,zad motherA Mattie Johnson, not as long, but she knew a lot about us, DANIEL: Do you remember the relationship between he and his father when he was growing up. Did he do much with his father? Somebody told me wit4-414A-T—e-p. he would go with him occasionally on a 0 Hoover cart to sell produce in Lillington.. MORGAN: Well, we both tUd. We had a Hoover cart, but cr,‘ - we` ila•dLa wagon, He would drive the wagon.to Coats where they would grind the corn meal. Also he sold, my father sold, vegetables at the curb market in Raleigh. We would go there • 5t ern The boct of the .1 t uctc. and shell beans/ as he would sell the vegetables4 See-ms to me that I did much more of that than Robert, because, again, kind of he never really did like to do thoset,things, If he went it was because he was told to go. I liked it more than he did. I remember picking up potatoes, not crazy about it, but I could put up with it more than he could, MORGAN 25 DANIEL: What did he like to do? MORGAN: We both like to read, but we didn't have very much to read. Then our mother felt we ought to work and help. She did teach us all to get up, regardless. If there was nothing to do but get up and sit down. She told us we had to get up in the morning and not stay in bed. We've all learned to do it. We played marbles. You know, those little chores, and we would go to Pullen's Park once a summer, maybe. And the church picnics, we always went to church. If Robert and I couldn't go to the Baptist Church, which we had to go to by car, we were sent to the Cape Fear Presbyterian Church. We probably went there as much as we went to the Baptist Church. DANIEL: This was Neills Creek? MORGAN: Yes, Neills Creek. We could walk to Cape Fear, so we went, to Cape Fear a lot. DANIEL: Was he very religious? I know going to church and being really interested is different. Where did he fall? MORGAN: Probably in the average group. I think our parents expected us to attend church, gave us a good start in it. We were never instructed that we must sit down and read a chapter before we went to Sunday School. We were taught to put our nickel in the collection plate, that MORGAN 26 we had to contribute to the church. DANIEL: His best friend was Truitt. Did you have friends that overlapped? MORGAN: We had two other friends who were close in high school, and they were Lynn and Lucy McKinney. Now, their mother is still living. She's probably eighty-five now. Lucy and I were in the same class, and our mothers sewed together. One of the things that I learned to hate as a child, we wore the same pattern, the same dress, through high school. They made the same dress, the same pattern, and Lucy and I were always dressed alike. Lynn was Robert's age. They pretty much drifted apart at the end of high school, probably before high school was over. irtee-Lynn was more in tune with, well,t\heVattralP drove a long distance truck and then he opened a restaurant where Wade's is now4 that was Lynn's restaurant, b a-c We used to goAbl_and eat there often. Lucy married and moved up to Virginia. And I've only seen her a few times. Then Ruby Mae Wilder was another one that I knew. Lois Smith, Alida Matthews, come to mind. She w.e-r4€1,4-a-tf--4-;-heA-- played the church piano for years. Another one of my friends was the Rickman family, Merle Smith, who is now dead. The only one of that family, and I don't think she would remember much about her sister, is,,i4aa-ollanag-- Fannie Lou Smith, and she owned a book store in Dunn. MORGAN 27 DANIEL: Did he meet Katie at East Carolina? MORGAN: Yes. DANIEL: She was in school and he was in school and you knew her too? MORGAN: Yes. We were all good friends. Katie was very much an entertainer in those days.. She would wack out her tunes and piuzkxaxigNikax pick up a guitar and sing corny songs. I rememl-t.r seeing her on stage several times. I'm not sure that Robert and Katie were The onE A4'10) e ..(c—r/A5. there when the president was ousted/ Anyway, the president was ousted and we had long student body meetings. Seems like it was all night long we had to go in as students and sit in that auditorium and make decisions about that president. DANIEL: Students were called in to make decisions? MORGAN; Yes. I don't know why we were called in, Robert might remember that. I can remember being in • that auditorium for hours. Katie was therej'and we were friends. She was not one of my best friends. But we all knew each other quite well. The campus was really so small. I think that East CarolinaAgave me my start, a good professional starts in light of the fact that I'm not a real good student 141 ;they taught me how Their to teach, basically. theories and philosophies were far' ahead of at most teaching institutions in those days. MORGAN 28 I was a student member of the Association for Childhood Education, I never dreamed that I would be (ntey- the national president. But I think, going back, that East Carolina gave the basic principles for teaching. I never had a leadership role until I was twenty-eight, and that was the president of a woman's club in Daytona young Beach, which makes me look back at kids-today,and say if somebody would encourage them to stand up, to speak out, they could probably accomplish a lot more earlier than I did, DANIEL: Getting back to his relationship with Katie, they kept in touch, I guess, for years? MORGAN: Yes, and during the time he was state Senator and all, they kept in touch. And I can remember more times than one he would have a date to see Katie and have to never cancel it. And I reallyxunderstood why she would consinr giving him another one, because seems like he was cancelling more than he was keeping. And that went on for a very long time, DANIEL: How long did he.court her? 4\v MORGAN: He was thirty, Sou-is it must have been ten or twelve years, off and on. Not that he didn't meet other people in between. I think too, mother was alone, he was involved in politics and very happy in doing what he was doing. I remember saying to him one time when I was home that I really MORGAN 29 did not feel that he should sacrifice not getting married simply because our mother lived alone that he should live there. I said, when the day comes when you want to get married, I think you should get married, and we will then decide what plans we can make for her. I really meant that. I don't know how long after that, but I felt like I needed to say it because he was taking a lot of responsibility/in not really being a farmer and not wanting to be a farmer. He'll really tell you that he's not a farmer, but he's had to play that role a lot and made a lot of mistakes at it. DANIEL: Well, have we about covered everything? My main concern, of course, is / from the point of view of a historian- anyvtgcng insights you can give into his development as he was coming along, anAsignificant things that may have happened. MORGAN: One person that may be living around here that might see us both was Mrs. Walker. She was a teacher. Judy would probably know if she's living here. She was a young civics teacher , Mary Walker, I think is her name, and did more to change my behavior than any teacher that Lillington ever had. Several years after I'd gone to graduate school The I was in , beauty shop and she was in there, and she said to me, she said, I have followed you with a great deal of interest. And I laughed, and I said, 11. I suppose you haver *cause I have certainly have changedaround a lot since the day that I slapped Mr. Melvin. I'm sure Robert MORGAN 30 had her, because she stayed there several years. And if you could talk to her she would probably know us both, The only living teacher that I can think of who would know about how we behaved in school, what kind of things Robert did. And if she was a civics teacher, she would probably would have been in charge of his debates. We had one teacher that killed us in English when I was there. I always said that was the reason that I failed English. DANIEL: He has always been a good student? In debate and all? MORGAN: Been in debate. One of the things) would our parents come to the movie and go home, and he always had to tell ahxmiukmig everything, the whole movie over again, and whatever we did over again, and it just, we just always wished he'd quit that, Mainly , I guess I just didn't want to talk about it, Another thing, hamburgers, we both loved hamburgers. He would go outl and I'd say/ bring me a hamburger, aid he'd come backy and be asleep but I'd get up to eat i±dxgatxxpxolakx212xxixlapxxxkoxRakxaxhamtxrgax have always been that hamburger. ThoseetrRxaiwa*s some of our childhood memories. I know that in feeling successful as he does, and I do I've often said to my own college students, not use our names, but if you're happy in your profession it really doesn't matter where you live. You can live in MORGAN 31 a small town and be just as influential as to be in ChicagO and try to be top of hill there; it just depends on what your commitments are. Robert has a lot of sentimental feelings about our home place. I'm sure Lucille has probably mentioned that. I thought it was significant when our mother, remembering that she was' t an educated person, knew lots of psychology/in her leaving in her will the opportunity for Lucille and I to give Robert our home place. I have felt confident that it would be written dawn in black and white that it would be Robert's place the rest of his life. I made that assumption. But the will did not make that assumption. psychology made My mother's, the assmption that Lucille and I would give it to Robert. DANIEL: So everything was left to you and Lucille to decide? MORGAN: Well, it was left in all three of our names. DANIEL: Oh, I see. MORGAN: The only thing that was really, well there were two or three things singled out, was the thing that struck me was that she had confidence in Lucille and I to make that decision. And, of course, this is not significant for the records ,but that decision we never settled and it's fifteen years old. It's almost unheard of in the family. r MORGAN 32 DANIEL: So it's just where it was? MORGAN: Yes. DANIEL: Will you make a decision, or just let it go? MORGAN: Sometimes I think we will. I think we should, in Lucille's favor. And whatever is hers she can just be planning with it. Well, I'll get you those letters. DANIEL: OK. MORGAN: And any other little things. Then you can hang until we can on to them talk to Robert. And we can make the decision about what we want to do 4,*44wetiom about it. I have a letter that he wrote during the time he was Attorney General when he learned there was a contract on his life. I have it on file in my papers. It is very interesting for you to read sometime. I'll xerox you a copy and get it to you. DANIEL: Did he later talk about any of the particulars? MORGAN: Very little. Robert, it seems to be almost a closed subject to him. Or maybe it because when I'm really home I neverAhave enough time to get back to those days. Katie and I have talked about it a few times and questioned who we thought, what the contract was all\about, and who really wanted his life. And I think Morgan 33 Katie would be more appropriate to take it from there. But the letter describes some of his concerns about those days. DANIEL: I talked to Sheriff Wade Stewart about that)and he was reluctant to go very far but he said that he learned about it. MORGAN: The letter was addressed to. Rupert, his son, and a copy was sent to me. I think he simply dictated it, for the fact that if something did happen to him there would be some record of his feelings on it and that Rupert at time was in Th' land and I was in Florida and that we were far enough away that we would be the logical ones to hold copies of the letter.