Interview with Congressional
Rep. Jim Kolbe
continued
(Shull) Now, you described a little about
rural life and working on the guest ranch. What do you think you
learned? What were some of the major experiences that you learned
that you carried into your adult life? From that?
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(Kolbe) Well, I think the major
experiences I learned was about the value of hard work. I mean
I didn't know anything but working as a kid. And in fact, I have
often thought in reflection that is really the reason my parents
bought that ranch is for the children.
Is my father, because he had
grown up with no father and the only model he had for a parent,
was a parent that worked. And that all the kids worked so he
assumed, I believe today, that was his model.
He thought what he was supposed
to do was provide for his children and he could not bare the
thought of raising them in Chicago, on the North Shore of Chicago
where they were going to go to swim camp or tennis camp and be
in this tony, ritzy school on the North Shore.
He wanted them where they were
working. Well, he did it in spades I will tell you (he chuckled).
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Kolbe was chosen as
Tucson Man of the Year
by the Tucson Chamber of Commerce
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He got a ranch that 40 kids, much less 4
could have taken care of. And so we always worked, every day,
because the cows had to be milked every day the cattle had to
be fed every day, the round up had to be done every day and then
the guest ranch in the winter had to be done every day and in
the summertime you were plowing and you were irrigating and there
was no day off for that kind of work. So a lot of hard work.
I guess that a lot of my workaholic traits
from the experience of growing up on that ranch [he yawns, it's
after 6 p.m. and he mentioned earlier that he didn't get much
sleep the night before].
Well, then let me interject here real
quick. My father grew up on a wheat and dairy farm in Kansas and...
Well, then you know what work is.
I spent all my summers there. And I loved
the experience. It was just a summer thing. But my father told
me that one of the reasons he got the heck out of there is because
he couldn't stand that kind of work and he really felt that he
was almost used as almost a work animal.
Well, we were. In a sense felt that way.
I never had a vacation as a child. Well, I shouldn't say never.
My grandmother, who had stayed back in Illinois. She came out
and spent winters with us. But then she would go to Illinois in
the summer. And she had a summer cottage that had been, she had
her husband, my grandfather's, place up in northern Wisconsin.
And my dream was every other year, Dad would let us go up for
two weeks up to northern Wisconsin.
That was my vacation. This was idyllic.
This was heaven, because there was [sic] no chores to be done
and I didn' t have to get up and milk the cows in the morning
and we could go out and play all day in the woods and on the lake
and it was wonderful. But, yea, but it was a lot of very, very
hard work. And so all of us were [chuckle for emphasis] were anxious
to get away.
None of us went to college anywhere where
we could possibly be remotely close to our dad so our dad could
get his hands on us [chuckle] on weekends. So my brother, Walt,
went to Iowa State College. John went to Northwestern. I went
to Northwestern [Evanston, Illinois]. And Beth went to Stevens
for a year and then we sold the ranch, [laughs lightly] so then
she moved back to Arizona after that. But, we all went away after
school. And I actually, I think my siblings have never forgiven
me for this.
I actually got away early. I got away from
the ranch a little bit early, because when I was sophmore in high
school, my, I was appointed a page in Washington, D.C. by Barry
Goldwater, so I went off to high school and spent my sophmore,
junior and senior years of high school in Washington, D.C. So,
How did that all come abou.
Well, I had been interested in politics
and government. And I have been fascinated by current affairs
since I was a kid. I remember my very first political memory was
when I was six years old of coming home from school, first grade,
November 1948, and mother saying with some disgust to my brother,
Walt, who was 12 years old, who being very worldly, and saying:
"Dewey lost!" And of course, everyone had expected Dewey
to win. And I we had all gone to bed thinking that Dewey had won,
but the next day.
The next one '52 Eisenhower. Oh, yeah, I
was a big Eisenhower supporter. I was the chairman of the Eisenhower
committee in the fourth grade of Patagonia Elementary School.
Oh, you betcha. Oh and I distributed buttons to the kids and stuff
and there weren't very many Republicans in Santa Cruz county in
those days [he laughs] I can tell you, [I say there weren't
that many in Arizona].
Oh yea, but especially in the rural areas.
There were no Republicans down there. [Commenting on drive] Boy,
we are just eating up this gas here. Anyway, as a result of that
experience, and then I can remember a year or two later, the Armey-McCarthy
hearings and finding myself glued to the radio. I was fascinated
by that. And then of course, the conventions.
In 1956 my father went to the Republican
Convention as an alternate. He went to San Francisco. I didn't
get to go with him. But I followed it by radio and when he came
back he brought us little memories and buttons and things like
that. So I had, when I was about 10 years old, read in "Boys
Life Magazine," about pages. And I said, I want to do this.
So, when I was 15, in 1957 I got appointed as a page back in Washington
and went to high school there and graduated in 1960.
Now, you applied to Barry Goldwater yourself?
Or how did it work?
Yea,
you applied. I actually didn't matter to me who appointed me.
It didn't matter to me if it was a Democrat or a Republican who
made the appointment. I was just interested in the political experience.
I applied to Senator Goldwater. I almost got it through Senator
Hayden one year and then he decided since my parents were obviously
Republicans he better not make that appointment. So I got it a
year later from Barry Goldwater and so that was really my start
in politics.
In those days, I mean you were there
for three years. Today, I think, it is limited to one year.
Yea, today it is limited to the junior year
in high school. Now it is a very structured program. The kids
are, they come and they live in a dorm and they go to school set
hours and they have to be in a certain time and there's residents.
There's RAs, college students, that live in the dorms with them
and supervise them. No such thing, when I was there. You had to
find your own place to live.
I found a place with two other pages a rooming
house essentially on Capitol Hill. Which in those days was a pretty
run down area. So I moved into a rooming house with them. It was
a great experience. I loved the experience. I loved being in Washington.
I loved the page experience. I loved the work that I was doing.
Thinking back on it now. I can't imagine a parent letting their
kid go off to Washington at age 15 with absolutely zero supervision.
I think that reflects now how unafraid
we were as a nation.
Yea, obviously. That's another part of it.
You couldn't imagine doing it today, because you just wouldn't.
Given all the pressures on kids today, whether it is drugs or
crime or whatever, you just wouldn't put them loose in a city
like that. I'd have to say that a lot of kids turned bad as a
result of that.
There was a lot of them that had alcohol
abuse. I mean there was nobody there to supervise them. A lot
of them that didn't focus on their studies since they would play
at night or gamble or play cards. So there was a fair amount of
alcohol abuse and other kinds of problems, which now is, I am
happy to say, is much much more controlled.
What stands out in your mind about Washington?
Did they already have the cherry blossoms?
Yeah, the Cherry Blossom trees were brought
in 1920s to Washington. I am not that old [he laughs heartily].
Yeah, the Cherry Blossoms were certainly there. I guess the impression
that I had what a much nicer city Washington is today than it
was then. It was a pretty run down city back in the 1950s.
I read Malcolm X's Autobiography and
he related how run down Washington was earlier in the century.
He said it was just a dump and that was like in the 30s. [He had
grown up in poverty and he was shocked by the state of the city.]
Really, the restauration of Washington began
with Kennedy in the 1960s. The Pennsylvania Development Corporation
that restored began the restoration of Pennsylvania Avenue was
more than 30 years. I think it was 1977 we abolished the P.D.
Corp.
But all the things the Reagan Center, the
Navy Memorial, the Canadian Embassay. All the beautiful restoration
of the buildings along there, and the train station, well, the
train station is not on Pennsylvania Ave., and then there was
a gentrification that took place. Capitol Hill is a great example
of that. Capitol Hill was pretty run down.
There were these old buildings that had
not been renovated or restored and they were in pretty bad shape
in the 1950s and then professionals started buying those on a
song and they would restore them and come back in and so Capitol
Hill suddenly became a very hot place to live and remains that
today of course with very, very expensive homes. These beautifully
restored homes up there on Capitol Hill and much of the rest of
Washington that has occurred in, too.
There certainly is a lot of poverty and
slum stricken areas, particularly around Anacosta. [He yawns]
But, Washington was the highest per capita income of any city
in the United States today and that is of course everyone works
for the federal government.
Did you have a lot of contact as a page
with Congressman Goldwater? What kind of man was he?
Well, I'd like to be able to say I had a
lot of contact with him, but I didn't have a lot of contact. But
enough. I was a page. I was on the floor everyday. So, I would
observe him and the others as they would come to the floor to
vote and I worked in the cloak room and I would get to observe
him sit in the cloakroom and swap stories or jokes with others.
He was a ah, a bit of a maverick even back then. He got a long
well with is colleagues but he had no hesitation to say what was
on his mind and what he was thinking.
Did he impress you then as a person?
Kolbe mustering the troops on the USS Nimitz |
Yes, he always impressed me. He was not
terribly warm towards, as a person, he didn't take as much personal
interest in me as I think I take in my pages or some of other
members might take in their pages but he was still very good,
thoughtful and he had a wonderful staff. And when we were not
in session I would work over in the office.
I guess one of the great impressions that
I have of Barry Goldwater was that he was well known, of course,
that he was a kind of a nut for technology. He had hamm radios.
Back before anyone else had heard of such a thing he designed
this photovoltaic flagpole that would raise and lower his flag
at night based on the sunlight. And in Washington this was demonstrated
in his car. He had, now this is 1957, 58, 59, 60 I am talking
about.
He had the original first year of the Thunderbird,
which I think was 1955, I believe. Or was it 56. 55 I believe.
I can't remember if it was 55 or 56, but I believe it was 55.
And Barry Goldwater had, so it wasn't that old in those days because
it was only three or four years later, but he had a 1955 Thunderbird
and he equipped this thing with more gadgets. Because Barry Goldwater
was a pilot. He had been a pilot during the war and he was quite
a pilot and he equipped this thing with an array of devices in
the car that made it look like the cockpit of an airplane. And
he had mounted these underneath and over and things that were
altimeters. You would turn the car on and start it and it wouldn't
start half the time because the battery was always being drawn
down by all these devices.
When it ran the thing was humming and lights
flashing and all these dials turning and everything like that.
He just loved that. He just loved gimmicks like that. He was quite
a character. He really liked those kinds of gimmicks. But I think
Barry Goldwater was I think what he was remembered by his colleagues
was the fact that he said it like it was.
He spoke the truth and he never really thought
very much about the political consequences of what he said and
that was so refreshing now in an era where everything is designed
with a 30 second sound bite for televison and how is that going
to play on the 10 o'clock news. That wasn't Barry Goldwater. He
never made his remarks with that idea in mind.
Now, I want to go back a bit. You are
very personal. The little I have observed you myself. I would
say you are even charming. Do you believe you got your valuable
people skills from your mother or father or both? Or was it just
inherent?
I would say both. Both my parents were outgoing
people. Neither were shy. Both were active.
My father was not as active in the community
as mother, because he was so completely tied up with the ranch
that in the evenings he was really very tired. But my mother was
on the school board. The first woman ever elected to the school
board in Patagonia. And then she became the first woman ever elected
as president of the state School Board Association for Arizona
back in mid 1950s. So she was active in school board.
Dad was a little bit active as I mentioned
he was an alternate to the Republican Convention in 1956. So he
had a little bit of that kind of activity there. But both of them
were very outgoing, personable.
But I think the reason that I get it or
the reason where I learned this or where they/I developed this
skill was the fact that we ran the guest ranch. So every night
one of them was up at Casa Rosada acting as host or hostess. But
we were very young.
One of them always tried to stay down with
us for dinner. Weekends we would join mom and dad and have our
meals up there, too. And as we got a little older Walt left for
college. John left for college. It was Beth and me. We started
talking most of our meals up at the guest ranch. So I spent a
lot of time as a child with adults. In fact, I spent a lot more
time with adults than I spent with kids and I learned to engage
in the pre-dinner conversation. Cocktail hour conversation. I
learned to engage in these kinds of discusssions with adult discussions
over politics, business, international affairs.
A lot of the purpose of this oral history
project is to gain new insights into the common values of Arizonans.
Congressman
Jim Kolbe | Kolbe
Interview (first part)
Tucson
Memories | Benson