Interview with Harvey Sloane, April 4, 2019

Emily Bingham: Well Harvey, it's great to be here with you, and thanks for coming back to town for this interview. It's really an exciting project, and I'm glad we can do it together.

Harvey Sloane: So am I, Emily.

EB: So just to start, give a little background about where you're from and your early years in school and how you came to Kentucky, so the pre-Louisville--

HS: Yeah, I was sort of a roundabout way. I was born in New York, and I had to bear that cross in the campaign, but anyway. And we spent nine days there. Grew up in northern Virginia on a very nice farm, horse farm. My father died when I was eleven, and I'll never forget my mother coming into my bedroom--your father has gone to heaven. And that was a little difficult for me to really process. And she didn't want me to grow up in just a dominant female household, so she 1:00set me off to school. I went to Akin Prep School, and I was homesick there. We moved to Washington, and that was my base afterwards. I went then to St. Paul's School, another elite prep school in the northeast. And I went to Yale University. But all during that time, especially the last couple of years at St. Paul's and Yale, I was greatly influenced by the book The Grapes of Wrath, and I just said, I don't know how the rest of the world lives, and I'm going to go on a series of hitchhiking trips and riding the rails. So I, for about four 2:00summers, I did this, sometimes with a companion, sometimes not. Worked down in the Gulf of Mexico, laying pipe, up to Alberta, Canada, in a place called Peace River, we were setting up a bulk oil station. I worked for blacksmiths one summer as an apprentice, and I worked with the migrant folk in outside of Tijuana in southern California. Tough work, seventy-eight cents an hour. You had your room and board deducted from that. So I got a feel of where folks that did not grow up on my side of the tracks, and how I felt that I wanted to be a part of their journey.

EB: Wow. And so you are at college, you're finishing college. What was your path 3:00from that point?

HS: At Yale, there were three, the three experiences that affected me. One was working with Project Yale. It was working with homeless and all the problems they had. And one was, I'd been in my freshman year--and partly due to the road trips, that I didn't eat very well, and came back on a motorcycle for ten days from California to Washington--and I developed a duodenal ulcer, and so I got to thinking about medicine. And then I took a great biology course, and I said, I want to go into pre-med. And the third thing was we had a tremendous history teacher, a guy named Blum. And he taught us American History, and particularly 4:00during the Roosevelt one years and the Roosevelt two years and the books that Arthur Schlesinger had written about those years, and they influenced me significantly, and I said, You know, I'd sure like to look into politics sometime in my life. From there, I went to medical school at Case Western in Cleveland, and had not taken any science courses, and I just stayed in the library that first year, practically. And I got to know some families in Cleveland, particularly the Crile family. Dr. Crile, the grandfather, had set up the Cleveland Clinic in 1925. He had been on the staff of the Western Reserve hospital, and they retired him. He said, "Okay." He went over the next street and founded this Cleveland Clinic, which is now humongous, a deliverer of 5:00service. And I got to know his son, who was about sixty-five by the time I knew him. He convinced me to go to the Cleveland Clinic for my internship. And I scrubbed in with him on my first surgery with him. It was a man who had a hernia, and George had just beautiful hands. He went so quickly, and you know, hard to follow him. Then he stood up, took his gloves off, he said, "Now you close him." That was my first case, and I looked down at this bloody mess there, and I said, "Holy Christmas." As he was walking out to the door, he said, "You know, this guy's a preacher, and if anything goes wrong, he'll blame it on God." And then he was out. Well, it took me about a half hour and an anesthesiologist 6:00said, "Hey Doc, we've got to close this guy up, he's too long." That was a baptism by fire. Then after completing my internship--in those stages, this was 1964, before the Vietnam War--we had the option of going into the military service or the public health service. And there was nothing really going on in the military that--and I didn't want to check guys for VD for two years--so I joined President Kennedy's Appalachian Health project in eastern Kentucky. And that was a marvelous experience. Many people had not ever received a physical, and we brought families down from the head of the hollows and the forks of the creek, gave them examinations and did referrals. However, one of the really frustrating things was we couldn't treat because the Kentucky Medical Society at 7:00that time said, We're not going to approve of these federal doctors coming in, this is the start of socialized medicine. So, that was frustrating, and that's why the community health center idea really just gave me a sense of real purpose. They were only a couple that were going, one out of Tufts to Columbia Point, Boston. Another out of Mississippi, Mound Bayou. And I visited them and said, you know, they had docs, they had social workers, they had community workers, dentistry, I mean the whole comprehensive service for a neighborhood person. And then I came to Louisville, but before I got that going, I had signed 8:00up for, to be a volunteer in Vietnam. It was part of an AMA--American Medical Association--program, and we were in, I was the only physician, English-speaking physician in Phan Rang, which is above Saigon, about two hundred miles. And it was a cholera epidemic, you know, a lot of things I had only studied about and didn't know anything about. And that was a great experience. We saved a lot of people simply by giving them saline and water by IV and what have you. Under each structure, it sort of structure--there was a hole in a bucket, and I'd just 9:00go every morning, Well this guy needs two liters, and this and that, anyway. Then I, after that, came to Louisville with the idea of a community health center. And there was a woman in Washington called Kay Halle (??) and they said, she said, "There are two people you've got to meet in Kentucky. One is Ed Prichard." Ed Prichard was a Kentucky politician of great renown and unfortunately, he stuffed the ballot box after he came out of Roosevelt's administration. But when I came in he was a well-respected from the standpoint of his efforts in education and what have you. And the other one was Barry Bingham Sr. And of course, Mr. Bingham and Mrs. Bingham were very helpful to us, to me. And Worth, their son, was particularly helpful because he was on a 10:00committee in the American Friends Service Committee. It was headed up by a wonderful woman, Dora Rice--and she was only about five-foot-tall--and she was one of the last people to escape from Germany, when Hitler took over. And they had connections with various neighborhoods in the city, and one was the old Southwick, or Park DuValle. Before Southwick, it was called Little Africa. And we talked a little bit about urban renewal. They came in there in the fifties and just wiped up everything. There were no services, no drug store, and it was just these concrete projects, and in the summer, they would heat up--there was no air conditioning--and everybody had to just go out into the street to just--anyway, they were enthusiastic, and we met many, many times with them and 11:00we got the community health center started.

EB: Wow. So--

[Break.]

EB: Can you say the years that you were involved in the health center at Park DuValle?

HS: Yeah, I came in 1967. I lived on Belgravia Court, which is in Old Louisville. And we were doing organizing at that period, and I couldn't get the medical people on board. At that time, the Jefferson County Medical Society was totally white, and the Fall City Medical Society was black. The white medical society saw this as socialized medicine came in, and they said they wouldn't oppose it, they would, sort of, see how it came out. The African-American medical society, many of those members saw that after the passage of Medicaid 13:00and Medicare, they were getting reimbursement, which they hadn't gotten before. And so, they were particularly upset about federal doctors coming in and taking their patients, although they had more patients they would possibly care for. We didn't have any support. The mayor didn't support us; the Board of Alderman didn't support us; the president of the university didn't; the chairman, the president, or the dean of the medical school. There was only one institution, the Kent School of Social Work. Ken Kindelsperger. They, he understood what this meant, and it was not just a medical, but a social institution that was going to relate to the community. So the early days were tough, and we got support from 14:00the Bingham Foundation. We also got support from Jane Norton, who was Thruston Morton's sister. And she ran WAVE, and I guess the powers felt they couldn't challenge both the Republicans and the Democrats in the same breath, so we were able to get the proposal off. It was, it came back one point four million in 1968.

EB: So four million dollars came--

HS: One point four.

EB: One point four. And there was federal funding, as well, correct?

HS: Yeah, and the two, we had a hundred and fifty thousand from the Norton WAVE Foundation and the Bingham Foundation, which really helped out and showed Washington there was local support.

EB: So, as you were working in that field, and I guess we never did say what 15:00kind of specialty--

HS: Public Health specialty.

EB: As a physician, you were a Public Health specialist?

HS: Yeah.

EB: How did you transition from the work you were doing at the community level to political sphere, and also, you know--yeah, I guess, just review a little and sketch your political career in that early time--phase--in Louisville.

HS: Well, I don't know if it was a political career. I wasn't, I mean, I knew I wanted to do--this was after Kennedy had died, and Ask Not was on my memory, so politics was somewhere out there. But the immediate effort was to get this center going. And I mean, it was like doing the first surgery, just thrown in the midst of it, not knowing Louisville or the black community, or you know, and just made my way on a song and a prayer, really. And so we got it going, and we, 16:00last September was the fiftieth anniversary. My whole family came up, the grandkids and everybody. And it was a wonderful occasion, five hundred people, and this health center now is serving other counties, about a total of seven counties outside of Louisville, so it's expanded. There are about--we were the seventh in the nation to get started--there are about eleven thousand community health centers, and they're serving twenty-seven million people, so it's a definite--and Republicans and Democrats have both supported it. George W. Bush 17:00said he was going to double the number of health centers in the country, which he did. So, and this current administration doesn't seem to be making an effort to curtail them, they're going to just let it go. So I think it's a service whose time has come.

EB: So what year was your first run for office? Can you just place us there, and I'd like to, you know, just go a tiny bit into that first stab at public office, and then, you know, move a little bit more into Joe.

HS: Sure. First of all, my marriage. I dragged my wife down from Harper's Bazaar in New York to Louisville. It was a difference in culture, in a sense. And she 18:00got into Louisville community very well. We got married in sixty-nine in June. Our fiftieth is coming up this June, and I asked her about this campaign, and she paused for a moment, she said, "Well, on one condition: that you restart the St. Patrick's Day Parade that was stopped in 1916." She's Irish. McNalley (??) is her maiden name. So, we've started--I left the health center in seventy-two, and we started with coffees, two hundred and fifty coffees. I drank more and enjoyed it less, gave it up finally, and recruited a lot of volunteers. I ran against the President of the Board of Alderman, who was a physician also.

EB: What was his name?

HS: Witten. Caroll Witten. And he was endorsed by the Mayor, Frank Burke. And 19:00all the downtown folks were for him. But we worked the neighborhoods, and my campaign was basically a neighborhood development campaign. There were problems in the bus servicing. And then one incident came about where I was down in Portland, and the Democratic club there. One of the opposition members of the Board of Alderman collapsed, and I went up and gave him mouth to mouth and cardiac massage and couldn't get him going, called the police. That was the MS service. The police came in their station wagon. We got in there, and I'm trying to keep pumping him, and they take off and we almost go out the back door, and 20:00then they stop at a red light, and we almost go through the front window--anyway. He didn't have a chance, and one of the things that I committed myself to was starting a professional emergency medical service, and that was the first one in Kentucky, and certainly in Louisville.

EB: Wow. Wow, and what do you think helped you prevail in that election, in the end?

HS: Well, we had enormous amount of volunteers. For every coffee we went to across the city, we'd get five to ten volunteers. And it was sort of a neighborhood movement, and it was sort of time to think about the neighborhoods opposed to downtown--not that I was against development in the downtown but, you know, that was not what I concentrated on. And our pollster, Peter Hart, came 21:00down, April one, the primary's May twentieth. And his figures were, we were twenty-three points behind. And he said, "Look, your opponent's weak in the south end, people want services, this and that, and you know, just keep what you're doing and add on a little bit to it." And, you know, we were lucky. We won going away. We carried every ward. Before the election, one of the downtown people said, "This rookie liberal won't get one ward!"

EB: [Laughs.] Wow. So, you know, by the time you're running for office, you've seen a lot in Louisville, and I guess I'd like to transition a little toward the kind of interactions, various interactions and perceptions around Joe Hammond 22:00himself and his establishment and the community that he was part of. So, do you have a recollection of first meeting or becoming aware or told about Joe?

HS: Well, Milton Young, a physician, introduced me to Joe Hammond. He said, "You've got to meet him and he's going to open your vista opportunity significantly." And we met up at Joe's Palm Room where, you know, everybody would meet with Joe. And he talked about two African-American figures, Mae Street Kidd was in the state legislature. Georgia Powers was in the Senate, also 23:00a friend of Martin Luther King. And so, I just went from, he kind of opened the door, and I went and, you know, met with him where you, This is what I like to do and what are your thoughts, and can you give me some suggestions? And that helped an awful lot.

EB: Do you think, was that as a candidate that you first encountered him personally?

HS: Yeah. Well, no. I, when I was trying to set up the community health center.

EB: Going all the way back.

HS: Yeah, and he--Joe brought the East and the West together, the black and the white together. Although he never tried for office, he would have won significantly, perhaps been mayor. But he was a convener, and also he was an encourager. He wanted to see young people succeed and give them advice on business or politics or the tenor of things in the African-American community. 24:00So he was just a monumental figure, at least for me, and for many, many other people.

EB: Can you recall whether that meeting, would that have happened in the evening at Joe's, or would that have been something you did during the day time. Was it sort of his office, as well? I'm just sort of looking for--

HS: He did it in the evening, and you did it after ten pm. [Both laugh.] And Joe said, "Don't bring me anything before ten pm." And he'd service Joe's Palm Room and what have you. But he was just, he was on the Pack Ten Leadership. That was formed in the late sixties. There were two members of that who were in my first administration, Charlie Roberts and Bill Gatewood. And, you know, Bill Summers 25:00Sr. was a very important figure for us, his radio station. Woodford Porter and many of those great leaders were helpful.

EB: And Joe was really a part of that group?

HS: Yeah, and he would sort of convene.

EB: So, you've told us some about how he, the role he was playing in the community. Can you recall anything just about, you know, the impression he gave as a person? How did he interact with others? What do you think enabled him to do some of the things that you just described?

HS: Well Joe was really dignified, and he did not disparage other people, and that made you comfortable. He and Lenny Lyles were together and great leaders together. I remembered when we had court-ordered busing in 1975, and one of the 26:00big--we had six weeks to prepare, and I had gone up to Boston--my wife Kathy and I went up--and Boston had gone through, in 1974, really tumultuous reaction to the busing. Louise Day Hicks gave herself, benefited herself with a national reputation. She ran for office afterward by being against busing. And we met with Mayor Kevin White and also the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore Globe.

EB: The Boston Globe.

HS: I'm sorry, the Boston Globe. And also, just some citizens about what was done right and what was not done right. And of course, the training of the police were very important, the federal judge had to be firm. The one in Boston, 27:00Garrity (??), said, "Well, let them have a little bit of rumble," and unfortunately it was out of control. And do rumor control. In Boston there would be a rumor--black boy assaults white girl--and God, everybody just went bezerk on that. So, when I came back, I visited with Barry Bingham Junior, who was the editor and the publisher. And said, "Barry, is there anything that you can do to work on this rumor control?" He said, "Yeah, I think so." And he met with all the visual, the TV, and the printed, and the radio media and asked, "Would you 28:00guys be up to having a common broadcast? Which means we would review every rumor to see what's true and only broadcast those that are true. We're not going to, you know, we're not going hold news back, but we're not going to have rumors." And that really helped. You couldn't do that today. First of all, no one would agree to it and secondly, you've got all that social media that--Joe Hammond was very important during this time. I had met with him before school opening, and I said, "Joe, can you help us with getting to the black pastors, the ministers of the African-American church?" Because what they say the Sunday after the Thursday or the Friday after it starts is going to be very meaningful. And we did that with the white community, because if they said Well, this is, you know, 29:00evil coming, then obviously it's going to--anyway, we were able to hold the black community together, and I rode the buses with the black students from Shawnee down to Fairdale. And there would be a whole group of parents meeting that bus, they knew were coming down, and they would ask me, you know, Mayor, we don't understand this. Where's our freedom? We left the West End and those schools because our kids were not getting good education. We've come down here, both my wife and I are working, and you're telling us we've got to send our child back to where--because they were matched up, whites going back to the West End and blacks going--well, you didn't argue that one out, you know, I just said, "Well, this is a federal court order, and we're going to implement it peacefully."

EB: I want to dial to a story that we discussed a little earlier this morning. One of the questions here is about Joe's engagement in the community, any boards or organizations or social clubs, and I know you have one story about that that I want you to share. Is there anything else in that category besides--

HS: Well, let me just go over that. My wife Kathy joined the dance council, and in 1971, she was chairman of it.

EB: And just to explain the dance council for the--

HS: Oh. Yeah, it's the ballet and, you know, among all the arts, she joined that board.

EB: And her name was Kathy Sloane?

HS: And her name, yeah. She had gotten information that the Endowment for the 31:00Arts would match a local contribution of five thousand dollars. And the Bingham Foundation agreed to the five thousand. And she announced this to the board, and she was chairman at that time. And then they asked her after if they could have two or three women a cup of coffee. And they said to her, You Know, the black people can't come on pointe because of the structure of their foot. And she brought that back to me, and I said "Gee, that's just not true." Anyway, Joe was Vice-Chairmen, and he spoke up and was very affirmative about it. Arthur 32:00Mitchell was to come in on a Saturday.

EB: Can you explain who Arthur Mitchel was, for those who might not know?

HS: He was a great ballet dancer who had a company in New York, very popular, and I've seen his--I mean, he's just unbelievable in dancing. So, the tickets had gone out for people to buy, but fifteen minutes before, there was practically no one there.

EB: This was a black company, coming to Louisville?

HS: Right.

EB: Integrated company?

HS: Well, it was a black company, yeah. And this was at the Macauley Theatre. So, we all were worried, but suddenly about five minutes before, I mean, everybody comes, and it's packed. And Arthur gives a tremendous show. And one of the things he said, coming to Louisville, he wanted to meet in some schools, African-American schools--of course, it was before busing--black schools. And he 33:00went down to Central High and he told the headmaster, "Please lock the doors. I don't want anybody leaving, the football team, you know, soccer, basketball." So they met in the gym, and for at least two, two and a half hours, he performed for them and told them the opportunities in ballet. It was a huge success. So, Joe was very instrumental in integrating the dance council and the arts in Louisville, which were not integrated at that time. You know, he was always behind the scenes and very, very effective in what he did and what he said and people knew when he said something, it wasn't a flip kind of comment, it was 34:00real soul searching that he had, and it came from his heart.

EB: Do you think the audience that came that night had to do with his, was part of his doing?

HS: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he got word out in the African-American community, Hey, this is pretty special. You know, we have Arthur Mitchell coming, please come. And they really responded.

EB: So, that's a great--any other organizations that you can recall him being engaged with? You know, community organizations or--

HS: Well, he was very helpful, particularly to me, with the start of busing. I had gone, we had only six weeks, I had gone to Joe and said, "You know, this community's not really prepared for this court ordered busing of twenty thousand 35:00kids. Can you help us with the African American pastors and the African American minsters? I just don't have the time to go around and get to all of them. I've got to deal with the white community, which is bigger and more hostile." And he really helped with that. And the, what message we got from Boston was: the sermon the Sunday after the start of busing is telling because if the pastor's not going to support it and says so at that time, you know, there's going to be trouble. So we had really good support.

EB: Right, so where do you think--I'd like you to see if you have any thoughts about Joe as a business person, and maybe how his business connected with the other things you're describing, his influence? Do you recall the Palm Room as 36:00business? How you would describe--

HS: Well, that's the only business I knew him by, and I mean the Palm Room was the meeting area for folks across the community, and Joe was always a graceful host, and people felt a warm reception when they came in, white and black. And also he was a mentor to young, particularly young blacks, to get started in business, how to go about getting a loan, how to go about getting a board, and he was very important in the transfer of that experience that he had.

EB: Were you aware of specific individuals that he helped in that way, Harvey? Or you just heard about it?

HS: Yeah, not specifically, but this was his mantra that people felt, and I 37:00mean, going to him about the community health center, which was in controversy before it started, and he sort of calmed the waters for it to becomes a reality.

EB: And I mean, in some ways that seems--you have to say that had quite an influence.

HS: Oh yeah, no question, yeah.

EB: On your career.

HS: Certainly, yes. And then of course, going into the first administration. That was very important. But Joe was always ready to take on a challenge if you asked him, if one came and what have you. And you know, the Palm Room was the oasis that you went to after ten.

[Both laugh.]

EB: And why the after ten, do you think?

HS: Well, I mean, he had a lot of other customers before ten so, you know, he 38:00could do some talking and meeting and what have you, after ten.

EB: Do you recall him introducing you to other people at the Palm Room, saying--

HS: Yeah, he said, "I'd like you to meet Harvey Sloane, he's running for mayor. Or He's starting a health center down South Wick, at Park DuValle."

EB: And by having him do that--

HS: Yeah, opened a door. And I could go back to them and try to get their support and explain what we were trying to do.

EB: Wow, so would you say that his influence on the white community was significant? I mean, this was, you know, with the health center, that was located in the black community of Louisville, but do you think he had an impact on the overall Louisville community through some of these activities?

HS: Well, yes. I mean, look at the dance council. You look at deseg, and you know, Joe was behind the scenes. He was working behind the scenes, he did not want to be out there taking credit, but he wanted to get the job done. So no, he 39:00was a blessing, as far as I'm concerned.

EB: If there was one good thing you would say about Joe Hammond, what would that be, if you could put it in a nutshell?

HS: Well, he was a generous person. He was a wise person, and the information that he would give to you, you would know it was not tainted by a dislike of this person, or what they did. I mean, it was the true blue. So, you know, and he was a kind person. He was always ready to meet and, you know, what can we do? So, that was Joe.

EB: So the location that you went, can you just--because there were two Joe's Palm Rooms, let me get that out--was it the Magazine or the Broadway one?

HS: The Broadway one.

EB: Jefferson, sorry. Why did I say Magazine? I don't know.

EB: Oh, Magazine! Jefferson or Magazine, okay. So, you recall the Jefferson?

HS: Yeah.

EB: Okay, and can you just describe anything about just being in there? Sort of, what the layout, the music, the entertainment. Was there live music?

HS: Yeah, there was.

EB: Was there food?

HS: Food, there was all that. And even in those days, smoking was pretty heavy. So it was atmosphere of gaiety and food and drink and it was pleasant to be in there.

EB: How many times would you say you went through those doors?

HS: Oh, I don't know. Certainly fifteen, twenty. Talked to Joe on the phone quite a bit.

EB: Right, so he was on your speed Rolodex.

HS: Yeah, certainly on my--

EB: I guess, do you feel that Joe was a Democrat? Was that clear, politically?

HS: Oh, yeah. He was a Democrat, yeah.

EB: I think that's important to be clear about.

HS: I mean this was in the era of Kennedy, going into Johnson. You know, he certainly didn't support Nixon.

EB: Right. [Laughs.]

HS: He did support Jimmy Carter because I did, and I got him to. So, no. He was 42:00a Democrat, in the old sense of the word.

EB: If you think about what Joe's business and also personal influence were on the community, can you explain any about that model that might help someone today? Think about how they might also exert that kind of influence, as well as being a part of the business community.

HS: Well, first of all, you've got to be someone who loves people. You know, you can't be an accountant in the back room. And someone who has grown up in the community and loves the community and wants to see it benefit. And someone who cares about other people, particularly young people. Help them and their career. Joe had gone through some hard times, and, you know, he was sympathetic to other people. So, and he just commanded respect, how he looked and how he talked. I 43:00mean, this was a leader, a natural leader.

EB: That's wonderful. So, let's see. There are a few specific questions about some of the events that were going on during this period. Sanitation workers strike, we talked about busing already, air pollution issues. Are those things that you recall having any involvement with Joe on issues like that?

HS: Well, I can start with a tornado. And I was out of town when it, April third, seventy-four. And I was way up in northern Quebec, skiing, tromping, snow 44:00shoeing with a French-Canadian up there who I had known in the summer. And then suddenly, this guy came down the lake on a skidoo and yelling and screaming, he said "____(??) Louisville damage." You know, I got back up and got to where there was a telephone and called in, which you know was about two or three hours, and I couldn't get a plane out of there because no planes were landing during that tornado, they only came the next day. And just looking over the rubble, particularly at Cherokee Park. I mean, in ninety seconds, there were about eighty thousand trees that were just leveled, it was just the brute force of it. Anyway, there were many neighborhoods that were hurt, and in a way, it 45:00was an advantage to our administration because it was, it allowed us to really get out in the neighborhood, with the neighbors, to plan what they wanted in the future. They want to block this street off, or they want to, you know, have a park here. And I worked with the planning commission, Don Ridings, and it was--and then the private sector really helped out with planting trees and, you know, other amenities. And it was a real community that came together. So it took a while, and the fact that people didn't leave--or few people left--was very, very important. And I think it almost helped us in the next year with 46:00court-ordered busing, because people had gone through a "Man, am I going or coming?" There were some in the busing that went out to the surrounding counties for private schools, but not an awful lot. And Joe, as usual, called up and was like, "Can I help?" And I said, "Yeah, we need to do this, that, and the other thing." And he was always in that centerfold, saying "What can we do?"

EB: Wow. Any other final words about Louisville and where it is now, where Joe left it, and where you see the kind of efforts that you and he participated in going now? What remains to be done?

HS: Every community has got things to do, but an awful lot has been done. After 47:00my administration, Jerry Abramson and Fisher and what have you. One of the things I was particularly proud about was the EMS service because we really set it up from the ground. The second one was about the TARC Referendum, where people were going to vote on an increased tax, on the occupational tax, which, you know, everybody wasn't very excited about. And we passed it, and it wasn't just a few votes, we passed it, and everybody got together on it.

EB: And that funded, to be clear for the tape here, did the occupational tax fund?

HS: Right, and so the bus service route. The county, which had not received much bus service before. The city, and it brought the city and the county together. 48:00And then, of course, the whole consciousness of the neighborhood was, I think, very important. We also did some downtown work, the galleria we helped start. We went out to Edmonton, Alberta, where this Don Love was the developer, brought him down and he was very helpful. It was a good--I just had a very good friend who died last night, or yesterday. And he, I'm writing a memoir, and he--I called him about eighteen months ago, and I said--Luke Byron is his name--I said, "Luke, can you think about our first administration?" And he immediately said, "You know, we didn't know what we couldn't do." And I mean, things were coming right and left, and we just had a young staff, optimistic, and can-do 49:00staff. There was a great spirit that we were in. Then I was lucky enough to serve a second term and completed some things we started. And I just want to refer, after I left Louisville in 1991, I went to Washington, and I worked on national health insurance and some of those things. But then, I joined Marion Barry's administration. This was the fourth administration, and he had been caught on camera--it was a sting operation--smoking crack, and they sent him up for six months. And he came back on a campaign redemption--we all have sinned and we all need to be redeemed. And I joined his administration, and it was the most chaotic experience of my life. The first day, I went into the health department. There was a DJ outside, raising money. I said, "Well, what are you 50:00raising money about?" He said, "Well, the health employees need toilet paper." Oh. Went upstairs and I met the staff and I said, "You know, I've got a good friend in Baltimore and what do I do to get him?" And they said, "Well, you'll have to go outside to the payphone." Oh. Then a congressman called and said, "Mayor, I had a constituent who died six months ago, and the family can't get the life insurance because you all haven't done the autopsies." Oh. So, I called 51:00the morgue, the medical examiner, and she said, "Unfortunately, we're five hundred autopsies in the rears that we haven't done because, you know, we don't have the reagents and this, that, and our crematorium is broken, so we have all these bodies in the refrigerator." So, you know. So it was as dysfunctional as you can imagine it, and I just thought, Gosh, it was nice back in Louisville. We didn't do everything right, and we couldn't do everything, but it worked.

EB: Do you all feel good? Do you want to circle back to anything? I certainly enjoyed this. This is a very rich and tense period in some ways for our community, and to me, the thing that really comes through is this urge and 52:00effort and steady effort on the part of someone like Joe Hammond to just be engaged and really keep at it and try and bring people together. And having the skills he had and having the venue he had--

HS: And the respect.

EB: And the respect that he carried, it seemed to have had, the grooves really came together in that way. Generationally, as well, did you feel that he--that's actually an interesting question. Did he relate generationally easily?

HS: Yeah, I think he did because he was a mentor and he liked young people and 53:00helping them with their career and no, he certainly did.

EB: And he didn't have his own children, is that correct? Right? Were you aware that he--

HS: I really wasn't aware of that.

EB: Did you know his wife? Did you ever meet her?

HS: What was her name?

EB: Pete.

HS: I did meet her. I did meet her, but not a lot. It was usually Joe. And Joe and Lenny, Lenny Lyles, and I forgot--Joe got Faith Lyles on the dance council, which was, that really broke the barrier in the arts and integrated them.

[Discussion between crew members in the background.]

Eric: Were there any plans in place for an event like that, or was this totally 54:00something that wasn't even planned for, you know, a tornado hitting smack in the middle of the city? And maybe, which neighborhoods did you think were the hardest hit?

HS: Well, there certainly weren't any planning for it, I'll tell you that much. When I got down here finally, I didn't really know about civil defense. I mean, I studied about the Public Works department and the sanitation, but not civil defense. We had a pretty good director there, and there were some emergency plans, but you know, a tornado doesn't come every other year. It's quite an experience. You know, we compared it to the thirty-seven flood. And what you've 55:00got to do is improvise. And we were working with Todd Hollenbach, who was County Judge, and it was a pretty good relationship there. But we were all I'll learning, I'll tell you. You know, every day was something, we had something else going on. The security of the neighborhoods, a lot of them were in the East End, around Bardstown, around Crescent Hill, or you know. And some in the county, a whole neighborhood shot, it was just torn apart. So, it was a county and a city devastation, and everybody--you know, the private sector came forward and did a lot--I mean, the importance of trees, and you don't appreciate trees until you don't have them. And particularly around Cherokee Park. People really identified with that park, and Frederick Law Olmstead was the original planner 56:00for it, and we went back to the Olmstead Firm outside of Boston and got the original blueprints. And then we got, we had to get a company to remove the trees that had fallen down and remove them in a way you don't bust the, you know, just wreck the whole earth and what have you. And then, a designer, a builder. So, that was an example, and many, many trees were donated by the 57:00private sector, and particularly in the neighborhoods, and trees are so importance to the ambience of a community, not just in summer, but in winter. So I mean, there were a lot of things we learned, and a second tornado would have done better than the first tornado. But, it wasn't for a lack of will and interest and commitment.

[Conversation between crew?]

Eric: Was there any problems with communications between agencies and the city and the state and things like that?

HS: Well, I'm sure it was, but that wasn't a major--for instance, you think 58:00about 9/11 in New York, and how the firefighters could not communicate, even among themselves, and not with the police, and they went down in that second tower and many, many were killed. But we didn't have that kind of communication. The biggest was security. The nights, we didn't want people to come in and take things and break into houses and what have you. But we didn't have any of that problem, it was just great.

Eric: Because the National Guard was called out at some point in time, weren't they?

HS: Yeah, they were called out a little later. I mean, it was so much to do. And those neighborhoods were hit. I mean, they had to get that debris out, and wrecked houses out, and all that stuff. So, there were a lot of hands on.

Crew: You mentioned stopping by the Palm Room fifteen to twenty times, and you said you'd speak to Joe over the phone often. What did you talk about, in general and specifically?

HS: I said, on the busing, I said, "Joe, we got a problem here. This is coming here in six weeks, and in that much time, I need to meet with you and what we can do and how we can work together." You know, there were a couple police shootings that were going on at that time too, and "Joe, I can't get the community rising up on this, and having some more violence. What are your ideas? 60:00The health department doesn't seem to get any support from the Board of Alderman. Can you help us?" ____ (??) Brown and Lois Morris and some of the members of the Board of Alderman. I mean, it was those kinds of conversations. And also, "Joe, can you come on over to the house? We're having a few people over and, you know, we'd really like to have you." And that's when I met Pete, you know.

[End of interview.]