Steed-Kerr

Tom Steed Remembers Robert S. Kerr

Lasalier: In our talks, Congressman, you have mentioned three men whom you admired and respected greatly: Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, and Robert Kerr. And, of course, of considerable interest to people in Oklahoma is your relationship with Robert S. Kerr. In Ann Morgan’s book on Senator Kerr he is described as a prominent and influential senatorial leader because of his work on the Arkansas River navigation system, the regulation of gas and oil production, the expansion of the Social Security program, the development of Medicare-type legislation, and the manned space program. Now, ah, Bob Kerr served as governor of Oklahoma between 1943 and 1947, and was then elected to the United States Senate and took office in 1949 the same year you went to the House of Representatives. How about taking up there with some of your recollections of Senator Kerr.

Steed: Fine. My very good fortune was that the year I decided to seek public office happened to be the same year that he wanted to go to the Senate, and so serving two decades with him in the Senate was, ah, very important to – not only to me, but the work we were able to do for Oklahoma because he provided the leadership, the vision, and the raw courage it took to tackle some of the things he had us doing.

The – in order to give a little background on – I got curious as to what made a Bob Kerr in the first place, and if you refer to this book, I’d like to read just a little out of there to give people an understanding of his origins.

“William Samuel Kerr, the grandfather of Senator Robert Kerr, was born near Bakersfield, Missouri, on January 13, 1968 [sic]. Violent hatred growing out of the Civil War plagued that border country. When Sam was only 9 months old, Quantrell’s guerillas band of former Confederate soldiers murdered his father in the family front yard. The raiders continued to terrorize southwestern Missouri and after an invalid uncle was killed and his home burned, Sam’s mother fled with him to a relative’s farm near the Arkansas border. His mother died when Sam was five and an uncle, Peter Mitchell, raised the orphan. Mitchell realized that the code of the hills required that Sam revenge his father’s and uncle’s murders. Several of the raiders still lived in the area and the young man knew who they were. Sam’s choice was a big one – kill or be killed. Mitchell persuaded his nephew to forego revenge and make a new life.

In 1885, wearing a suit purchased with the profits of two barrels of molasses made from sugar cane he raised on his uncle’s farm, Sam Kerr left Missouri. He found work on a farm in Ellis County, Tx. In 1895, Sam Kerr married Margaret Wright. Her father, a Confederate soldier, was killed when she was very young. As a Texas peace officer, he was slain while rounding up horse thieves. He was destined to be Bob Kerr’s maternal grandfather.

In 1895, Sam Kerr leased 169 acres in Pecan Valley Grove near what is now Ada from the Chickasaw Nation. He moved his wife and daughter, Lois, in a covered wagon to their new home. Six more children were born there and Robert Samuel Kerr, a robust 12 pounds at birth, was the eldest of five sons. Hard work, absence of luxuries, great dreams, a hatred of failure and a strong religious faith featured the Kerr way of life. Who would have thought this farmer’s son would become teacher, soldier, industrialist, governor, and Oklahoma’s most powerful US Senator.”

Now, in addition to the items you mentioned that he spent a lot of time and got great results with, there were a number of other enterprises in which he participated that more directly affected Oklahoma. Take, for instance, the Aeronautical Center here in Oklahoma City at Will Rogers Field. At the time that came up, Oklahoma City had developed a trust, and they were offering to build the facility for the government and lease it back to them for enough money to pay off the bonds. They had a trust organized there. Well, the only way you can do that if the appropriations committees of the House and Senate would have to OK the agreement for this type of rental to pay off bonds before the bond-buyers would buy them. Well, at that time, Senator Mike Monroney in the Senate and Congressman John Jarman in the House were members of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. A fellow named Congressman Al Thomas from Houston, Texas, was chairman of a House appropriations subcommittee that handled independent office appropriations, which included the Federal Aviation Administration. Well, Mr. Monroney, being a gung-ho aviation man wanted a better plan of funding airport construction and airport projects than we had. So while he was busy doing that Congressman Thomas took it to mean that he and Jarman and Monroney were trying to unhorse him from his prerogatives. So there was a little bit of bitterness between them. So the Oklahoma City people were having a little difficulty of getting the letter out of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that would permit them to sell the bonds, and the bond contract that they had, the time was running out.

Well, they came to see their delegation and finally when they came to see me, I said, “Well, you know, there’s only one way that you can get this done. Senator Kerr is the key to it. Now, the trouble is that you’ve been kicking him around in Oklahoma City and he’s not very friendly to Oklahoma City and I don’t think he’s going to lose any tears if you never get an FAA center at the cost of letting you have your cake and eat it too.” Now I said, “I believe that if you went over and made peace with Senator Kerr that he can get it for you.” And they said, “Whey can he do it?” And I said, “Well, for one thing. I have coffee with Congressman Thomas almost every morning and, ah , he helped build my post office for me in Shawnee, and we got to be pretty good friends, and Senator Kerr has something that Congressman Thomas wants. And if they could make a deal, why you’d all be happy.”

Well, the result of this story is that they did make up with Senator Kerr and as a matter of fact they had a dinner here in Oklahoma City where E. K. Gaylord was master of ceremonies, and Mr. Kerr felt very good about it. Well, it worked out that I was supposed to take Senator Kerr to the subcommittee that Mr. Thomas was chairman of and get this letter worked out, because we only two or three days left until the bond contract was expired. They all came up there and while they were in the House restaurant over on the House side of the Capitol and Thomas, being a senior member, had his committee office right there on that same floor – you have to be pretty important to have your committee room in the Capitol itself. So while they all went around for coffee, Senator Kerr and I went in the executive session of the committee and Mr. Thomas put on quite a show, and he wasn’t very kind to us or anybody and stormed around, and finally we left and got out in the hall and Senator Kerr said, “What’s the matter with you? I thought you told me you had this all set?” I said, “Well, we won!” He said, “Won? After that tirade he put on?” And I said, “Senator when you get to know the man, if he’d have been bragging on us, I’d have got up and walked out, because,” I said, “he used to be the prosecuting attorney in Houston, and if he loves you he scolds you and if he hates you he brags on you. That’s his way.”

Well, we went in and had coffee and when we were coming, here Thomas was leaving his committee room and we met him. So I said, “Well, ah, Congressman, what about the letter?” And he said, “Oh, Tom, that went down this morning.” So it just shows what – Kerr looked around and said, “I’ve got to get to know you better.” And Mr. Thomas said, “Well, Tom has promised me that you can.” So they met and became very fast friends – became very close friends. Because, you see, it was because Thomas had pleased Senator Kerr, and because Senator Kerr was chairman of the space committee that the space headquarters were put in Houston, Texas, where Mr. Thomas lived. So a little horse-trading like that didn’t hurt either place, did it?

Lasalier: It all had to do with the FAA center. NASA is now located in Texas. And Senator Kerr’s. . .

Steed: Yes. And, of course, we’ve added several more additions to the FAA center here in Oklahoma City. It is the only one of its kind in the world, as a matter of fact. And so, now, to make us a center – this kind of very important center of aviation for the entire world was one of the things that Bob Kerr did just going along on his day-to-day schedule. He’s full of things like this.

There was another that affected all of Oklahoma. After three years on the – when I first started out on the Committee on Education and Labor, and that’s when we passed that federal impact school bill, and we used Midwest City out here as a guinea pig on that. The, ah, matter of the Clay Commission Report and Recommendation to President Eisenhower that we build a superhighway system in America came up. And it was assigned to the Public Works Committee. Well, after three years I got to know enough men in the House to get put on the Public Works Committee. After all, the – all we had on the Commission of Education and Labor was trouble. We had hot potatoes one after another, and I was glad to get off it. And we got on the ‘pork barrel’ committee – can’t get in trouble there!

Well, it was in the middle of a session. Congressman Pickett of Texas had transferred off the Public Works Committee onto the Judiciary and the Texas delegation didn’t have anybody else that wanted the seat so they supported me and I got it, and the first thing it was announced on the House floor one afternoon that I had been put on that committee. And the next morning I can’t get in my office. Instead of a 12 to 12 (garbled) situation I had on the Committee and Education and Labor, I found out on this committee I had 18 people for the St. Lawrence Seaway and 18 against it, and I’m in the middle again. Well, anyhow, we got – I got on the roads subcommittee and we started working on this superhighway bill. Well, I got very interested in that, obviously because Oklahoma was the center of the system and, ah, this was part of the Bob Kerr dream, see, ah, ah, if you could put a label on what meant the most to him I think by calling it transportation because all these things – Arkansas navigation and all that – he found out when Oklahoma was governor that we were discriminated against on freight rates and he was bound and determined to eliminate that so we could get industry in this state.

Well, it got down to the point to where the bill had passed the House and was hung up in the Senate. And there had to be a trust fund in it, and the truckers and the automobile association and all these people had agreed on what new taxes they’d got along with to pay for this road. Eisenhower had agreed with Rayburn that they’d be on a pay-as-you-go basis, and they’d set up a trust fund. Well, the railroad, of course, didn’t like it. They wanted to gig the truckers and there was a lot of controversy over in the Senate. Well, the funny thing about that is that – here we go again. And Mike Kirwan of Ohio was Chairman of the House Appropriation Subcommittee that handled all the money for Public Works, like navigation on the Arkansas River, for instance, and lakes and things. And he also was Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which didn’t have any money. Now, during all this time of getting the bill out of committee I had gotten to know all these 61 different groups of people that had interest in roads, including the trucking association and their national president was Neal Perry of California.

Well, Neal Perry wanted to get somebody in the Senate that could clear that road thing up and get it out of there so we’d have a road program. And there came Senator Kerr. Senator Gore of Tennessee was a fly in the ointment and I had reason to believe that for some reason or other Senator Kerr could pretty well handle him. So, we had a meeting. And now, Mike Kirwan found out what Senator Kerr wanted in terms of dams on the Arkansas and things like that. Senator Kerr found out what Mike Kirwan wanted, which was a lot more money in his fund to reelect House Democrats. And Neal Perry, of course, wanting the roads in the first place, knew that the best thing he could do would be to have the truckers and all their friends, like the people that make gasoline and trucks and oil and cars and everything else get together and help Mike Kirwan fatten up his campaign fund. The long of it was that Kirwan got his $400,000 for the campaign fund, Kerr got all his appropriations out of Kirwan for all his projects until the Arkansas had a barge on it finally, and, of course, Neal Perry and his folks got their bill out of the Senate and the road system was built. Now, this was one of those odd things because Kerr operated the way he did, he knew and could do those things that have to be done to break these logjams. It’s too bad they don’t have him up there now with this budget thing. I just almost bet you anything I got that he’d figure out an answer to it and it would work.

So, these are the kinds of things that I remember about Senator Kerr. They are some of the interesting little things about his – he, he, people often wondered why he and President Lyndon Johnson were such ice cream fans. Well, I asked Senator Kerr – he was on a diet, and I went to lunch with him several times and he’d always eat berry pie a la mode. And I said, “How in the world can a man on a diet eat ice cream and pie?” He said, “Well, I walk an hour before breakfast and I give up everything else so I can have ice cream and pie.” He said, “That’s my main reason for living.” He said, “When I was a little kid on the farm south of Ada, we’d come into town and they had a ice cream parlor there called the Palm Garden.” And he said, “I used to look through the plate glass window and watch people eat ice cream and pie.” And he said, “I just hurt all over.” And he said, “My folks would come and my dad would get my the ear and pull me away from there so I wouldn’t put my nose against the window and watch those people.” Now he said, “I just grew up with a fixation about ice cream and pie, and so when I got able to do it, I started eating ice cream and pie.” He said, “What’s the use in having money if you can’t have ice cream pie?” And he said, “And so, President Johnson told me, he said I wasn’t any fan of ice cream until I started traveling around with Bob Kerr.” And he said, “We haven’t passed a Dairy Queen since!” And so when we were in the presidential limousine going from Tulsa over to Pryor Ordinance Works once, all of sitting in there with the president, we came through the city of Pryor and there was a Dairy Queen. So, we’d stop the parade and, of course, the Secret Service man had to go buy an ice cream cone. And this – this just shows you what human, ordinary country-boy types of guys they were when you got right down to knowing them. But, ah, at the time they could do commonplace little things like that, they could also give you some of the greatest and most important ideas you ever saw.

When Kerr was governor, see, we were getting over the Dust Bowl. We were coming into a situation where the – about the only income we had was the military bases we’d been able to get and they were phasing out. And everybody remembered that after World War I when they closed Fort Sill down it wrecked Lawton and it caused a great economic set-back all over Southwestern Oklahoma. So, they were concerned about it. As time went on he talked to industrialists, you know, trying to get them to come into Oklahoma to open factories down here. As governor he could do that. And he kept running into one obstacle – the freight rates. Then, that’s when he found out that Kansas and Missouri and Arkansas and Louisiana and Texas – all the states around us – had water-imposed freight rates. They had barge traffic service and we didn’t. Now the Interstate Commerce Commission had two types of freight rates. One was what they called ton-mile freight rates that we were under, and the other was water-imposed freight rates. Well, of course, in ton-miles we had lots of miles and not many tons, so we had one of the highest rates in the nation. And these others had these water-imposed rates which are the lowest in the nation. The difference is that a farmer in Oklahoma – the first barge that came up the Arkansas River cut the cost of sending a bushel of wheat from Oklahoma to the coast markets 12 cents a bushel. And that was out of the farmer’s pockets. That is what that first barge did for the freights in Oklahoma. He knew that you had to get your water in control. He knew that you had to reclaim your soil. He knew that you get transportation.

Now Mike Monroney had promoted and we finally ended up with seven of the kind of airports that would take any airplane ever made before or since to this good day. It’s the only state in the union that has seven airports. Geographically, we’re in the center of the country; we’re the crossroads for civilian and military aviation. With the superhighway system we were the hub of it. You could get on a superhighway in Oklahoma and drive few miles to more markets than any place in America. Then we had to have the vo-tech schools and all these other accoutrements that goes in training your workforce. So this was that Kerr land-water or wood and water thing. That’s what he was talking about. All these things were here, but you had to do something with them to make them useful and to make them give Oklahoma its place in the future.

And, of course, the first week I was in Congress he had a luncheon, and incidentally, I still remember he served us a very delicious steak for lunch which was a little over my head at the time. I still hadn’t drawn my first paycheck. And when he got through he had the army engineers and he had all these staff experts he surrounded himself with and he started out – the first words he said, he said, “All I ask of you is don’t laugh until I’ve finished.” And then he teed-off on us about what all this whole thing was all about. And all he had it in line for the delegation our first year target was 160 million dollars. Well, I tell you, I just, through – after the election, through the good offices of Senator Elmer Thomas, who was the senior Democratic Senator, got a million dollars to help Sapulpa get the Hayward Dam in Creek County. And so, that was all the money in the world, you know. And besides that, I got $45,000 through Senator Thomas to build a water line from Shawnee down to the Indian sanitarium there south of Shawnee, and that was a lot of money. This guy wants 160 millions dollars.

Now, we survived that shock and, Carl Albert and I, we kind of wondered about what was ahead of us with all that kind of talk. Exactly ten years later in the same identical room, the same bunch of folks, and Senator Kerr again being the host. All he wanted this time – he added a lot more stuff to show us – all he wanted this time was a billion six hundred million dollars! (laughter) And I lived to see the day when I was astonished to the fact we did them both, believe it or not. He said – Kerr would say, “If you don’t think big, you can never be big.” And, I asked him one time – I found out, you know, he was very cordial with me and seemed to – he’d insist I stay in his office when he was talking personal business over the phone and stuff. And I was always amazed at the amount of taxes – I was in there one day when he signed all the checks to pay all his taxes, which is more money than I’ve had from beginning up to now, almost. And so, I said, “Senator, why do you spend all this money out of your own pocket over and above what the government gives you to run your office.” He said, “Tom, if I can’t use this money to make the things happen that I want Oklahoma to have, what good is it? And what good can it do me?” He said, “I can’t take it with me. I want to get these things done for Oklahoma.” I used to wonder sometimes when people would criticize him, how they’d feel if they really knew him like I knew him.

And one thing that you couldn’t do with him and make him like it was to beat him out of a few cents playing gin rummy. Now, he just didn’t like to lose. We were playing gin rummy and flying in his airplane one day and we got to Oklahoma City and I was about 15 cents ahead of him, and the game wasn’t over, so he made us fly around until the game was over (laughter)! So he didn’t owe me 15 cents.

Lasalier: Well, was he any good as a rummy player?

Steed: Oh, you bet. He played with the toughest in the world. Now, he’d play for chicken feed with a guy like me, but when he got a hold of some of the other boys, now, he, he could look them right in the eye and handle his own with him, and they all were afraid of him. There was one guy that – I don’t know whether I ought to mention this or not, but, ah, there was a character in the Senate once named Joe McCarthy, who became quite a rascal in the minds in a lot of people including me. And he played gin rummy with him. And that’s why Joe McCarthy stayed broke all the time. He, he couldn’t get over the fact that he couldn’t beat Bob Kerr at a game, and so, Bob would accommodate him and had no mercy on him. But he – in the final analysis it was the winning, not the money that was – it just didn’t add up to that much to him. And, ah, he – look what he did for his staff. He always wanted winners on his staff. And he always was good to them. He couldn’t want anybody around him that was in any financial strain, and he work out deals to help them get a stake in life and be financially independent. He just liked people around him that he considered them winners.

And, ah, so, then there’s – oh, I don’t know – there’s all kinds of stories about things that happened in Oklahoma that you’d run into one of these blind alleys and Kerr would always have some means or methods to help you break it out to get it back on the track. That’s why I found it such an intensely interesting thing to work with the guy. And, ah, he didn’t want any dissention on the delegation. If two of us got a little crosswise with each other, he’d get a hold of us and say, “Now we can’t afford this. You’ve got to kiss and make up. We’ve got to be a team.” And he kept this thing on that basis.

Lasalier: Well, he was trying to get the nomination for president, was he not, in 1956?

Steed: Yes, sir, and you know what, I tell you I think there was a little side of that story that maybe some of his family don’t know. When I grew up in Ada and he was just starting there, out on North Broadway, north of where the newspaper office where I worked, there was a colored lady who told fortunes. And she had quite a reputation. Well, I was dating a little old gal and I took her out there one Sunday and she told our fortune, and she said that we were going to get married. Now, in a few months we’ll celebrate our 59th anniversary, so she was a pretty good fortune teller as far as that’s concerned. Bob Kerr went out there, and he told me this one time, and she told him that he was going to be rich, that he was going to be nationally famous, that he would be governor, that he would be a great industrialist, and that he’d be president. Now all the things she told this guy happened to him, except that one. Now, by the time that he – and also Senator. By the time he’d gone through all these things up to the Senate point, he had – he’d become convinced that this was a true fortune that she’d told him. And so, he set his sights for that, and I guess the fact that he delivered the keynote speech at the national convention was more of the same and so forth. Incidentally, when I first knew him, he couldn’t make a speech any better than I can, and he had to get a tutor and be trained on how to make effective talks. And he learned his lessons well because he became quite a powerful speaker.

Ah, my first contact with him, I used to tease him about it, and, ah, I was surprised that they let him put mention of it in this book. I used to say, “Now I’ll have to tell off on you when you used to pedal cabbage.” Well, see, he and his brother-in-law had a produce house in Ada, and I was on the Ada News. And the thing burned down, and they had all their new produce in for the big Thanksgiving season, and the thing burned down. Burned all night as a matter of fact and it was just two blocks down the street from the newspaper office. So I was sent down there to get the information from the owners about this fire and about the insurance all this. And he had other things on his mind, and finally, he said, “Kid, why don’t you get out from under my feet. I’ve had all of you I want.” (laughter) So that was my first experience with him. Well, I used to tease him about that. He said, “Now just don’t bring that up. That’s water under the bridge.”

But, ah, he – that’s when he, of course, it got it him out of that business. Now his dad had had some produce business there before and it – he got his law degree then, and, ah, he got his law degree working – or studying in a lawyer’s office. And after he got admitted to the bar he became a member of that McKeel firm there in Ada. And, ah, he told me that he was going to be the commander of the American Legion, and he was. And, ah, I was in the National Guard there in (garbled) company in Ada and he organized another National Guard company and we spent the first year after World War I encamped in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And he was a captain, and I was just a company clerk, so. . . I remembered him.

But, ah, I didn’t have too much contact with him then until we really got back together in, see I being in the newspaper business and floating around different places. I was on the Oklahoman three times, but ah, I didn’t cover the Capitol but just a part of that time, and he wasn’t governor then. So when we got to Washington together, why what he said, you know, appealed to the newspaper type mind about what all we had to do for Oklahoma, what a future Oklahoma had, if we could just get all this stuff done and in line for it. And I’ve often wondered if somebody couldn’t have made a better explanation or put a better label on Land, Wood and Water so the people of Oklahoma would have really known what he was trying to do. He said, “It’s all here, including the people. The easiest people to train to do all sorts of things in the world. We found that out when the Dust Bowl drove them to California.” And he said, “These are raw assets this rate waiting to be put together like they should.”

Well, it’s not an accident Oklahoma is the most prosperous state in the union now. This is the fruits of what that fellow set out to make us all bring about. And I finally got to where – I wouldn’t have questioned him no matter what he had said. In fact, goodness, I didn’t think the space program was going to work, but he did. And, ah, it – after you have – I’m kind of like he was by that fortune. After you have about 10 miracles run over you, why you begin to think that they’re all alright, see? (laughter) But you can’t have associated with Bob Kerr in enterprises in the public interest and ever get over it, because it’s an experience that very few people could ever hope to have. There’s not many of his kind of men in the world.

Lasalier: A true Oklahoman, but he was also an American in terms of thinking about Medicare. Now how did he get that – when that legislation was first proposed, what was it the Kerr-Mills proposal?

Steed: Yes.

Lasalier: How did he get that across, because there seemed to be a great deal of opposition to it when it was proposed, was there not?

Steed: Well, it was. And I never get into the details of it, but, ah, they finally worked it out. See the people in the union had to be concerned about their employees and they get a lot of antiquated members, too, you know. And he finally got them all together and he finally got the medical people together, and he said, “Look, you can’t stop history. Now this thing is going to happen, and if you work with us and do it right, you can have something that will beneficial and everybody can live with. Otherwise, there’s no telling what you’ll get crammed down your throat.” So, he said, “I’m giving you your last chance to work with us and do this job right,” and they believed him. He finally convinced them. And so the thing went through almost without any friction at all finally. And, ah, it’s just kind of like public power, and things of that sort. He knew how to get the two extremes and set them down. You know, they had the little dam and the big dam issue. Well, he took charge of both of them. And we built a whole lot of both of them. The small watershed program was one of the great – I don’t know of – it’s not very dramatic because it’s scattered out all over the place, but if you fly over Oklahoma on a sunshiny day, it looks like it’s broken glass all over the state. And that has changed the climate, it’s impounded water, it’s stopped erosion. It has made a whole lot of difference and also it’s given a lot longer life to these big lakes we’ve built. He never would call them lakes. He’d call them warehouses where you stored a commodity called water. And all that stuff. . .

Lasalier: Well, we can remember 1943 and the flood on the Arkansas River, and what Senator Kerr’s legislation has meant to eastern Oklahoma since that time.

Steed: Well, you see, here’s something he called to our attention in that first meeting that I’ve thought about a lot. All the streams in Oklahoma go from the northwest to the southeast clear across the state. So, and we are a part of the country that we’ve seen some of them lately have cloudbursts, and especially in the western part of the state because of the climatic conditions or geographic or something. Well, when you get over to eastern Oklahoma that’s where all the mountains are. That’s where the terrain permits the impoundment of water. So, by having it all run clear across the state from west to east and then be able to stop it in the mountains down in southeastern Oklahoma he thought was a perfect natural situation. Therefore, we had the best of the whole works. And he wanted to keep this water from, from ah going to waste, and at the same time stop it from being a killer along with it. And, I think there’s so much of it done now that no one would question that.

When we had the superhighway bill, we had a – of course that limited access was something people didn’t really understand. And, ah, our committee used this commissioner of highways in Missouri – you know, they built a by-pass around Springfield, Missouri, but the didn’t limit it, and so the whole town moved out there and it’s still out there. The downtown part of Springfield is just kind of a museum now. So this engineer, this commissioner, he knew that you had to – you couldn’t have superhighways and move a lot of traffic unless you limited the access to them. So he sold that on – that idea to this superhighway – the autobahns in Germany were like that. And so, well, this meant that farm to market roads and the beer joints and the filling stations all on the main highways going down main street, they were going to take their traffic away from them. There was a lot of opposition to it. And so, he told me, he said, “You take the lead on the limited access stuff, Tom. You’re for that.” And I said, “Well, I drive through Missouri all the time and I’ve learned to like it. And Illinois had begun to do a little of it on their roads.” And I said, “After you fight your way through the main street of about 10 or 15 towns that you wish you didn’t have to see, you can believe that limited access has some merit.” And so, I said – he said, “Well, I’ll take the farm to market road part of it, and you take the limited access part.” But he said, “If we can both survive long enough for them to see some this in being, well, we’ll be alright.” And it worked out that way.

But, ah, it, it was interesting that how a man that you’d think would be in the oil business, and yet he knows more about the freight business than people in that business, and he’d get himself surrounded with experts and find out all about something. He did his homework and he practiced what Sam Rayburn preached. Sam Rayburn preached, he said, “In Congress, knowledge is power.” And that’s why he became powerful. He took his knowledge a lot further than just knowing about the issue. He knew about the guys in the issue, too. He knew what Al Thomas wanted. Actually, Al Thomas became the victim of cancer. And Kerr had him come down here and meet some experts he knew down here in Oklahoma City, and they became close friends. Now old Mike Kirwan, you know, he, ah, that great oil and gas man from Oklahoma, he came to – no man on earth thought more of Bob Kerr than he did. Until – they did things together. And, Kerr just had that knack of being that kind of leader.

And, I’ve often thought that sometimes the press was a little bit off beam and unkind of some of his work. And, I happen to know personally of one year when he spent over $100,000 out of his own pocket to operate his office in Washington. When you figured it out, I listened to him sign his income tax one day, talking to his auditor over the phone. He insisted I sit there and he got to keep less of his salary than the pages of the Senate. He was already in such a high tax bracket, you know, and all this other stuff. Didn’t mean a thing to him. It was only an opportunity to get some things done. He got his company interested in uranium before any other of the industrialists would have anything to do with it. And this, ah, gas, you know, helium, he got into that because after he saw that balloon – that Hindenburg blowup, he said, “They got to have something better than that to float those things with.” And these kind of things were the way his mind worked.

So, I guess I’m quite a Bob Kerr fan, but you think of all the years we walked the hot sands together you can’t hardly blame it, because we not only got the message and made the effort, but we got the results.

Lasalier: Well, he came into power quickly in Washington, and by the time John F. Kennedy took office, Bob Kerr was thought of as possibly the uncrowned king of the Senate.

Steed: Well, I tell you, this is probably beside the point, but Kerr had contact with all types of people, including all the top industrial and financial powers of the nation. See his company got that big, and ah, he had a way of getting his hands on campaign funds. And he would help any Senator, Democrat or Republican if they were on his side. And, ah, in other words, in terms – if they believed in flood control and these kinds of things, you see. And so, if they worked with him and helped him, he helped them. He said, “You have to be a friend to have one.” And so he practiced that and he could get his hands on money when the others couldn’t. And, ah, it probably wouldn’t do if the record was ever told on who all he did help, because sometimes there was some smart-aleck Democrat running around and trying to outsmart him and he didn’t last the next election or something, you know. These kinds of things do happen, and, and I just couldn’t recommend anybody unnecessarily cross Bob Kerr.

Lasalier: Did you ever get out on the campaign trail with him here in Oklahoma when he had a Republican opponent?

Steed: Oh yes. Well, you want to hear one of the famous jokes he told? We had a big rally at McAlester. Carl Albert put on a big bar-b-que and it was in the middle of the day. And they had a big platform with the flags and bunting on it and all and here we all were with – Roy Turner was governor and all of us sitting up there on the platform and so, we had all voted just before then to override a Truman veto on something or other, and there was quite a lot of publicity about it. So, here we are sitting up there and had about 3,000 people down there in that park in McAlester. And they’re not going to feed them until the talking’s over, see, that’s the way they all did. So he’s up there doing, you know, he’s the big gun. And, ah, he’s saying that “Stamp the Rooster. Vote ‘er straight. Be a loyal Democrat.” And you know how he’d take off his glasses and hold it up like this, and that’s his invitation for you to applaud him. So he came – very dramatically talking, and he came to one of those points in his speech, and he stopped and took off his glasses, and it was quiet you know, and some loudmouth out there said, “Well, if that’s so important how come all you guys up there voted against old Harry the other day?” Well, that’s when Kerr told his first public lie. He said, “Brother, I’m glad you asked that question.” (laughter) Well, what he did, he said, “That reminds me of the day I was a kid down on the farm south of Ada.” He said, “Our dad was a stern man, and he told us to do all the chores and to do them well. And it was his habit every Saturday to go into town – into Ada, and he’d give us chores. And one Saturday he designed us a lot of work we didn’t particularly like, and he went on into town and we were fooling around and not doing the work and thought we had plenty of time and all of a sudden in the middle of the day, here he came. He came home early and caught us red-handed.” He said, “Knowing his ability to throw a fit,” he said, “we stood there rooted to ground, terror stricken, wondering what in the world he’s going to do to us.” He said, “He looked at that mess he’d left us to do that we hadn’t done and he looked at us, and then he looked up at heave and he said, Lord, I thank you for not making ignorance fatal, else I wouldn’t have a son to my name.” (laughter) Well, I bet that guy got home before out what answer he got! But he always did things like that, you know.

But, sure, campaigning with him was a barrel of fun. We had a big rally at DePew once. And, ah, he had this habit of telling little jokes on somebody with a little sting to them, and sometimes you can overdo that. It’s kind of dangerous. And they had an audience there and I got a good hand, but he didn’t get much. He picked on a couple of local boys there, you know, with a couple of jokes and the crowd laughed, but they didn’t. So we were driving back up to Bristol together and he said, “Tom, you got a big hand and I laid and egg. What happened?” And I said, “Sir, if you want to know something, I think. . .” See I had been through this propaganda school during the war. I said, “I think that you use your propaganda a little badly.” I said, “Tell these jokes on yourself, not on somebody else.” I said, “You know, if a hurt a guys’ feelings, make him the laughing stock in his home community, they’ll kid him about that tomorrow when you’re not there. And he won’t like you so good.” Well, it’s about a month later I met him and he said, “You know, Tom, that was good advice. I’ve taken your advice on that.” And he said, “I’m just having the best time with it you ever saw.” He said, “I can just handle a crowd the best you ever saw.” He was always picking somebody’s brain about something, see, if anything didn’t go the way he thought it ought to, he’d try to find out who does know how to do this? And I guess that’s one of the reasons why he never let his ego or anything get in his way. He still looked at this one thing – that is, is it a deal – did it happen? Did you get the result? And if that did, why the rest of it was alright.

Lasalier: Any final thoughts on Robert S. Kerr, the Oklahoman, the Senator?

Steed: Well, I think the sum of it is that he not only did all these things that had been laying there waiting for somebody with the, with the knowledge and the foresight and all to do them, and get the rest of us into it. And it made Oklahoma a great state. We are on sound ground now and we have a great future. And that’s because I think Bob Kerr is going to be more important to Oklahoma in the years ahead than he already has been because he has made sure that those foundations that you have to have to have a future are well laid in this state. And so, I think that somehow, someday, the people will come to realize that he wasn’t a money-grubbing crude fellow at all. That he had the greatest dream and hope and compassion for his fellow man of anybody you’ll ever meet.