Sissy Farenthold Interview, Part 1 of 2

(MISC.)

My name is David Todd and it's October 4, 1999 and we have the pleasure of being in Houston, Texas and in the apartment of Sissy Farenthold who has been nice enough to spend a little time with us to talk about her work in conservation in Texas and-and indeed around the world. And I wanted to take this chance to thank you for spending the time with us.

ST: I'm glad you nailed me down because I've tried to avoid the past, David.

DT: Well, what we'll try and talk more about the past and the future since you know much of what you've done is to try and care for the future generations. And, we all appreciate that.

I wanted to, to start perhaps with your personal background and maybe you can tell us a little about your parents or childhood and maybe how your interest in conservation first began.

ST: Yes, I don't even think we had that term when I was growing up in South Texas. I was a native of Corpus Christi, Texas which is on the bay of Corpus Christi and just in front of us are the Barrier Islands in Mustang, so that was very much a part of my growing up.

And, one part of my family had been in that area for about five generations, and so I used to say my roots, when I started into electoral politics, would say though I lived in Corpus Christi, my roots were in rural Nueces County.

And I think that that alone gives you a sense, gives one a sense of protecting the land and maintaining it. And of course in my early childhood we never gave a second thought about clean air. That was a given. There certainly, as were the bays, the bays were clean. That was before shell dredging came in.

So, I can look back and see the terrible deterioration. I think the first thing I noticed...I had a native American nurse, and I couldn't have been more than four or five years old when she'd take me for walks and she'd call the wild flowers, which were lovely down there, gods flowers.

And that has always stayed with me as, you know, looking over we lived just outside of Corpus Christi, and it was before there was any development to speak of. And we'd take horses and ride in that area. And, that's when I first noticed the consequences of oil and gas drilling. Because you'd see what had happened with the land with the salt that had been taken out...the pools of water. But, I must say, I was not...it was a given. That's how you extracted oil.

As a matter of fact, we had to pull the shades down at night because of the burning of the casing head gas. But we never thought of that as being wasteful that was just a given. But I must say, I was conscious of that. And then as, as the years went on, just living on the water, you could begin to see the deterioration, the stuff that swept up on Padre Island for example.

The plastics and that kind of thing. And, the bay front was always something we took great pride in. And my first actual endeavor, I guess you would say public endeavor, came over a situation with oversize, an oversized sign. A variance that had been given for an oversized sign to Ramada Inn on the shore line.

And we took that case to the State Supreme court where it was held that a citizen, we used my mother as the citizen, had a right to bring a suit. She had a, as they call it, a justiciable interest, because she owned a lot on Shore Line. And Shore Line is-has been preserved. It had very rigid zoning requirements. But it was being nibbled away with these variances that were being given to hotels. And that was stopped, it's still, it's not as pristine as I would like to see it today. But it is a tangible product of real citizen efforts that went on back in the mid-60's.

DT: You mentioned your mother, did she have a similar (conservation interest?).

SF: Well, I can't say. I think that people that lived in the country, say before the 1930's, really always wanted to get into a town, as they called it, so if she had an interest, except...it was not pronounced -- it was a given. It was a given. There wasn't anything to destroy it, in other words. But she was willing to be the plaintiff in this law suit to stop the city from doing what it was doing in granting this variance to Ramada. And if we hadn't had her, we couldn't have, I don't think we would have succeeded.

DT: Were there other family members that were interested in (?)

SF: Well, on my mother's side, on my mother's side I would say again, there was this deep love of the country. They'd lived there, they'd had land there. And, they cared for it. But that was a given, that was a given. I think it was only when we saw the deterioration, and it was becoming pronounced by the time I was an adult, that, that we became involved.

There also, I have a son, George, that was very involved, he followed me, I think, in many ways on this issue. I have a young cousin, a contemporary of my son, in Dallas, that is carrying on. And a cousin in Corpus Christi that is doing the same thing.

DT: Do you have any thoughts about why these interests sometimes run in families and get passed on from cousin to cousin or generation to generation?

SF: (talking over DT) I, well, I think, to me it just goes basically back to, back to, and that's what I say, my roots go back to rural Nueces County, though I never lived in the country, I grew up knowing about it and really caring about it, with a, with a deep love of it.

I can't express it any other way. And it hurts to see things, to see things happen. And I think you can see a real connection. Every time I see a picture of a bird laden with oil, as we saw out of the Valdez, you know those pictures, it stabs you some place, because I think we're all one.

DT: You mentioned that you grew up in Nueces County and visited some of the Barrier Islands. Can you tell us what they were like when you were growing up?

SF: There was, well of course, Padre wasn't opened really, until my children, and my children, we'd spend a lot of time out there when my children were small. I didn't have that opportunity because my parents were afraid something would happened to us, and so on. And so, we didn't get to the islands. So as an adult going to the islands was a very special occasion for me as well as the children.

Now, with, from the time we were there to now, it's all been developed. I mean couldn't believe I think there's 7000 people living on the northern tip of Padre Island now. There's a golf course and there are houses out there. And I guess something has really just kept me from returning. Because I wanted, I want to remember it as it was which was miles and miles of beautiful white beaches.

DT: Would you see wildlife out there?

SF: Yes, yes and you would see wildlife. Of course, I don't want to over romanticize it, because by the time our children were, we were taking them out there would be, what, in the 50's and 60's. Ah, the plastic bottles were beginning to show up, and that kind of thing, and the oil, and the oil.

And then in 1972, somewhere I was talking to a German sea captain. And he told me that he had, he had sailed before the war as well as after. And he was telling me that everywhere he went he saw the pollution in the seas that had not been there before. So it all sort of tied in you know you could see these things coming.

And then when I went to the Legislature, I took an active interest in, in, hopefully conserving bays and estuaries. And, I had a, spent a wonderful day once on Mustang Island with the late Justice William O. Douglas, who cared greatly for the environment. And I think I was in the Legislature then, and he was telling me about the threat of bays and estuaries, which of course I knew on a small scale, I knew where I came from, the way it was.

Because, for example, we actually, in Corpus Christi, had a fresh water lake where the ducks used to come called Tule Lake, out where the refineries are now. And, that was totally destroyed. I used to call that area out where the refineries are, just a wasteland.

Which had been, but when those things were coming in, I must say, you know, we were grateful for jobs, for the economy, because in great part, except for people who lost their land, and many did including parts of my family, Corpus Christi escaped the later part of the depression because of the oil boom.

So, oil and gas production and development was nothing, I mean was something no one questioned, they were grateful for it. It was only later that we could see the devastation that came from it.

DT: You mentioned this sea captain and then William O. Douglas as well. Can you talk about some of the people that may not have been family members but who were mentors, teachers, or people who told you stories that resonated with you?

SF: (talking over DT) Well, there all different kinds of people from all different kinds of, and one person I was going to mention because we made such an unlikely twosome, was the fire chief, Carlisle. He was the fire chief in Corpus Christi when I was in the Legislature. And, he was an ally because his concern was safety. And he was so concerned about the lack of care of the refineries and all that went on-on the port.

So, as I said, you never knew where you were going to find an ally. And, chief, the fire chief would take me down there and show me things. And this is all 30 years ago, but that made a great impression. Another group of people which were of enormous help, were the game wardens of parks and wildlife. And they would show me the places that, where there were real problems with the environment.

That meant an enormous amount to me, because some of mine was theory, some of mine was looking but not really being knowledgeable. And I also learned how our system works, because one day one of them told me that they had gotten, and this was when I was in the Legislature, and we would go around and then I would write letters to the appropriate official in Austin about the problems we had and so-forth. And one of the wardens told me that they had gotten a directive from their head office in Austin, not to cooperate with me any longer, let's put it at that.

So, one of the things that I really want understood is that, when I was in public office I received so much help from people that were holding positions in government but could not do anything. They had the information and yet it would do them or the issue no interest, it would do...to be a whistle-blower. And, I was there and able, and I can cite example after example where assistant city attorneys, assistant attorney generals, game wardens and so forth, would bring me the information.

DT: And you would be their spokesperson

SF: That's right, that's right.

DT: Can you tell us about some of those instances?

SF: Well, when I, I've listed them. I've mentioned about the, the game wardens. The same was true when I started in on this illegal variance that was given in Corpus Christi to Ramada Inn, which was my first ex-- , I guess you'd say public endeavor which was about 1965. And the assistant city attorney was sitting next to me at a hearing and in effect saying this variance is illegal but I can't do anything about it, because the zoning commission wants it, wants it, wants the variance.

So I would take that information and as I said, we finally at least prevailed as a citizen. But here was someone that worked within the government, knew it was illegal but was powerless to do anything about it. And then of course, I had the same experience when, with the land commissioner which I jumped in because anything that concerned my district, I was concerned with in the Legislature, whether I was on that committee or not.

DT: And your district was...

SF: Was, was Nueces and Kleberg Counties. And of course, it went from Port Aransas down to what we call Riviera Beach, so it was the coast line there, which, of course, I was very very interested in. Well, in any event, with, with the Jerry Sadler ruckus, it was an assistant attorney general that said to me, "he's lying." It was as simple as that. And, there's no need to go into that. But we were able to save a few of the gold artifacts that had been taken and actually the

DT: Is this from a shipwreck?

SF: A shipwreck, a Spanish shipwreck off Padre Island, and able to save some. I think some of them are still up in Indiana at something called Platorio(?) which Sadler had a contract with. Saved some of those and actually the Antiquities Commission came out of that effort. So these were things that I probably would have missed had people within the government not helped me. So although I was holding public off--, in the later examples, not the one with the over sized sign in Corpus Christi, though I was holding public office, I would not have had the information without that help.

DT: These people who came to you as whistle-blowers in a sense...what sort of fears did they have for themselves?

SF: (talking over DT) They had a lot, they had a lot. And the way is that they didn't really come to me. I would be at the hearings, I would be at the hearings and I, I guess they knew I'd be responsive to what they were saying to me. And I would check it out and it was always very accurate. But it was not that they came to me so much as I would be there when they were present.

DT: You mentioned earlier that some of your first environmental work was in terms of esthetic issues, like the sign control issue, or in public safety like with your work with the fire chief. And I was wondering if you could talk about those being some of the roots of the environmental movement which I guess came a few years later.

SF: Yes, you know, and-and one day, I had been down at a city council meeting on this sign variance, and if necessary, would take my children who were all small with me and one thing and the other, and I walked into our back yard and looked up and realized that we had the biggest mess of telephone lines right in my back yard. And I called the telephone company and told them to come out, that we had to do something about it. I mean, you know, because once you see, I think it's like with many issues in the environment, once you see it, you see them every place. And once I saw that mess of the telephone line I had in my back yard, which was going on right at the same time of the sign dispute in Corpus Christi, I would see every telephone pole, I think, that was sort of mangled in the-in the whole community.

So, one thing led to the other and-and also in that instance, people that would help on one issue would have other interests. Now there was, and you asked mentors, in Corpus Christi at the time that I started out in a kind of public way, which was the later part of the 6--65 and there after. There were two scientists, Dr. Sutter and Dr. Hildebrand. And, Dr. Sutter wrote for the paper and I think Dr. Hildebrand was out at the university of Corpus Christi. Now, A and M and Corpus Christi, but it was free standing I suppose at that time.

They were part of an environmental group. And this, we started a little environmental group over this sign business. It was called OPUS, Organization for the Preservation of an Unblemished Shoreline. And that little group, though it was disparaged and one thing and the other, did a lot. And one of the things it did was bring people of like minds together. And from, from those two scientists, I learned about, oh this terrible discharge, and the the name escapes me now...PCB, that was the first time I heard about PCB.

DT: And what year was that?

SF: That would be in the late 60's. It was before I went to the Legislature. And it was being discharged into the bodies of water there from the Naval Airbase. I never heard the term PCB. So, you know, I became acquainted with that kind of thing. And I want to cite something now, because it has developed in my mind, I was not working on it when I was in the Legislature, not even after I got out.

But the biggest polluter we have, and the one that's least discussed, is the military. I mean it is appalling, you know we can do everything we want with trying to cut down on mileage in cars. Well, one of these sophisticated fighters, in one hour, will consume what our car driving will in a year. So, but if you'll notice, there's very little discussion of pollution from the military. And the very first inkling I had of it were the thing of the discharge of the PCBs. And I thank those two, Dr. Hildebrand and Dr. Sutter, they're both deceased. So, they had a great bearing.

And, I don't think the answer yet, and this is some natural, I guess, manifestation, but down in Laguna Madre, outside of Corpus Christi. I would be taken there because either every year, I think it is, there's this incredible fish kill. And, and the whole top of Laguna Madre is simply covered with dead fish. And, I don't know what causes it. But, but these things were ever present. So you couldn't, if you lived in Corpus Christi, you were, if you wanted to be, you were conscious of the increasing deterioration.

DT: You mentioned Dr. Hildebrand and Dr. Sutter and both of them were professional scientists. And, I wonder if people believed them when they said that these are problems or that these things were even occurring. Since this was sorta the beginning of the movement...

SF: This was the beginning, this was...

DT: What were peoples' reactions to their charges?

SF: Well, they were respected, but I don't think they were listened to. I would say that they wouldn't meet with the disparagement. For example, when I would go to city hall and my colleagues, on this over sized sign one, we were actually told at one night hearing, at a night hearing, why weren't we home taking care of our children. Now they wouldn't say that to Dr. Sutter and Dr. Hildebrand, but that was, and by the way I think Mrs. Sutter still carries on, I hear. I'm not that acquainted with what goes on in Corpus Christi today. But, no, I don't think they were listened to.

DT: Speaking of,-of, you know, their kind of, unkind remark about why you weren't home caring for your kids. I noticed that a number of the people who were involved in early environmental work in Texas were women.

SF: No question about it.

DT: (talking over SF) And, do you have any idea why that was? Was it coincidental, or something behind it?

SF: (talking over DT) Well, and I guess the only thing I can think of, umm, and I wouldn't want to generalize from my own experience. But I know on the oversized sign business, down there, I was on the Museum of South Texas, as it's now called, I was on that board. And I was asked to go down to represent the museum. I was asked by another woman.

And when I went there, looking for like minded people, you know, I found some women from the League of Women Voters who were also active in the Presbyterian Church. And that was really the nucleus of this OPUS, this organization. And, umm, there was one woman named Jim Alice Scott that took the brunt of this fight we put on to get that sign taken down. Which, by the way, we didn't get that sign taken down at that time. It came down later. But it stopped other signs.

And, she was an extraordinary woman. And went on to work for desegregation, and because of her work in desegregation, her husband lost his job. And, she educated, among other things, educated herself in chemistry for all this PCB business. I mean, she took the technical end of it and mastered it to the point that she could go before the Water Quality Board, the Railroad Commission and talk the language of their staff.

But after he lost his job, she then, she and her husband moved to Colorado and she earned a Ph.D. She was a contemporary of mine, earned a Ph.D. and became a city planner in some Colorado city out there. But, this is what is costs some people to be activists, if you want to call it, to be fully participating citizens. I didn't have that happen to me, for, well, it just didn't happen to me. Though, I had some static, you could say. But, it was by-and-large women. They, I guess, in quotes, had the time.

DT: You mentioned the League of Women Voters. They have a pretty broad mandate from what I understand for good citizenship, good policy. How do you think the environment got on their radar screen?

SF: See, I don't really know. And, umm, they were also into the reform, the reform of the Texas legislative rules and so forth, because I ran into them then. But what I found is that, in many instances, they would do the studying, but getting into the fray, so to speak, they'd pull back. I don't want to generalize, but.

For example, two of the women that were with OPUS, that were League of Women Voters, later organized my campaign for the Legislature. And when they did that, they had to withdraw, of course, from the League of Women Voter activities, because it's non-partisan. But there's some excellent material gathered by the League of Women Voters. And, of course, the big impetus, two things I want to mention.

One of the real changes that came about, when Ms.-- Mrs. Linden Johnson came out for beautification. Up until that point, down in that region, we were a group of meddlesome women that had no business being down at city council. I mean, that was her work, on billboards and beautification in general, gave our local efforts a legitimacy that we didn't have before. And that made an enormous, an enormous difference.

And then, as you know, in 1970 was the first Earth Day. I participa--, I was in the Legislature at the time, participated in it in Austin. And, umm, then it-it was more or less on the front burner. Probably more so then than today.

DT: How was Earth Day celebrated in 1970 in Austin?

SF: We had a huge rally. A huge -- it was a large rally. And, I've forgotten where, I know I spoke at the one in Austin. Bob Armstrong went out to speak somewhere in east Texas. And, I mean, he was in the Legislature then as well. And, I remember that specifically because he had interest in the environment as well.

DT: How many people do you think came to Earth Day?

SF: Well, more than several hundred. Now most many of them were students, you see, that -- that was where the activism was at that time, was as much or more with students. Of course that was the case with the Vietnam business and the environment. No, the students turned out big time, so to speak, for that.

DT: What were they concerned about? Do you remember?

SF: Well, of course, their primary concern was-was-was Vietnam. But, outside of that, whatever the environment entails, they were interested enough to come to an Earth Day. I don't remember the specifics of that. Though I remember doing my research and probably it was a very dull speech for them, because an open air speech doesn't lend itself to data particularly, you know. And I had picked up a lengthy article in the New York Times about the way our sea shores were disappearing.

And of course, its still true. I mean I drive down to Corpus and what was once just a marsh now has apartment buildings on it. And we see that every place. But 1970 was a big Earth Day event in Austin, Texas and other towns and cities in Texas.

DT: Can we go back a few years before Earth Day and talk about what brought you to Austin. And-and your campaign for a seat in the Legislature and why did you decide to run?

SF: Well those are all ah...I had been Legal Aid Director for two years, and what would it have been 65 to 67. And, umm, I must say that was, I can only describe it as a soul-searing experience because, umm...it was also the time that it was incorporated into the, so called, war against poverty.

And, though I, the Bar guarded zealously what I could do, I was limited to civil actions and consulting, and I found that there was a whole underclass in my community that I was more or less oblivious to. That they had what I call cluster problems. That many-much of the system really worked against them. And that many of the problems stem from state policy.

Now, of course, we're notorious as being, and this is when we had welfare I don't know what we have now work-fare or whatever. But I was repeatedly calling Austin the public the department it was then called the Department of Public Welfare, I think. And, the umm, the regulatory agency for, umm...what do you call them loan sharks. I had problems with what were contract for sales, you know, rather than deeds. They were contracts where you never did develop an equity in the property and you miss your payments and you loose your house.

Many of these things went back to state policy. And the only state official that I found was of any help was a man named Frank Miskel(?). And he was head of the, umm, the regulatory agency for the loan sharks. He was the only public official. Now, many of them I didn't know, didn't know- didn't know how to call them. But he was the only one. And he actually sent an investigator down.

Because, by and large, my clients were Spanish speaking, they had been intimidated into signing these contracts by being sometimes locked in a room until they signed them. I found that they would buy furniture from furniture stores in Corpus Christi that would come in big boxes and be broken, be broken furniture.

I ran into problems with the local Bar, because I found that some lawyers had low rent houses that were in deplorable conditions. I found, for example, that we had a a Clara Driscoll Hospital for crippled children, which had been created for indigent children, and yet for mothers to get there with their ailing children, they had to change bus zones and therefore pay more.

I mean, I found so many things that it either just took place by neglect, umm...or indifference, I guess, are the kindest terms you could use for the things that I saw. So that after I spent two years there, I I had studied I'd even studied the Texas Constitution by the way when I was an undergraduate at Vassar I was concerned about the state and our government back then. But this two years at Legal Aid gave me a picture of state government that I never, ever had before, and the lack of care, a lack of interest in human beings.

So, the night, the night of the filing deadline in 19.., well the election was 68, so it was 68, a friend of mine who had been in law school with me and who had had been on the opposite side in some of these legal aid cases that I had down at the court house, because I was down there for two years, asked me to run for the Legislature out of the blue. And I said, well I have to ask my husband, and I'll ask my cousin, Dudley Dougherty, who had served a term in the Legislature.

And it was getting late in the evening of the deadline, and so I talked to both of them and they encouraged me to run. They actually did. And I wouldn't have done it, at that time, without that support. And, so that's how I-I literally came to it. I later learned that...I want to say I was to be a stalking horse, but I was, I think I was put in to see that someone else didn't get in. But I didn't know that til later. And by then, I was off on my own.

And, then it was that election in 68 that I said, you know, I had all these men advisors, but the people that did the work were the women, and they were these women that I mentioned out of the League of Women Voters, primarily Jim Alice Scott(?) and Ruth Gill(?), were their names. Both people very concerned about the environment in-in Corpus Christi and its environs.

So that's how I came to the Legislature, and...being a life-long Democrat, never raising a question about the Democratic Party at that time. I did not run for the open seat. I took on the Republican. Now, of course, there was only one Republican from that area at that time, so that meant I had to run three races, the primary, the run-off and then the general election. But I made it through them all.

DT: Can you tell us about your campaign and particularly the environmental parts of your platform?

SF: Yeah, there were, there were and one of the things that I used to say was that work for 68, I mean working to get in in 68, and planning for 78, my god 78 is so gone, gone, gone. But at that time, it looked along ten years ahead. And that was where a lot of the environmental discussions during my campaign were.

I had just several issues. One was, of course, civil rights. One was the vote for the 18 year-old and, of course, the environment. And the interesting thing, of those issues, the one that was usually raised by people critical of it was the 18 year-old vote. People did not want 18 year-olds to have a vote. Now, the young people were very...women got my race started, no question about it. I mean, we didn't even have terms, you know the...the term sexism wasn't even created until 1972, wasn't even coined.

So, umm, and I must say before I got in that race, I thought it would be at least 10 years before a woman would be accepted down there. It just wasn't a given. In the in Corpus Christi, for any elective office. There had been one woman that held a post in the city council and she had just an abominable press. I don't even know what she was like, but she couldn't even get through the press. And, umm.

DT: While your talking about the press, can you discuss, you know, the role of the media in-in your campaign?

SF: (talking over DT) Absolutely essential. I used to say, and I said it to Jane Ellie(?) later on in my first gubernatorial race, the the media is the conduit to the public. You can stand on the court house steps and say whatever, you know, or come out with whatever data, or whatever. But if its not heard, its meaningless. So it's-it's very-very important. And I have been on both sides of that. I mean, I've been treated with skepticism and I've also had support, I would say at least supporting what I thought.

Umm...I-I used to say, in that first campaign of mine, that I could say pretty much what was on my mind because people didn't listen to it. I mean, I think back and think I used to go and quote on-on the issue of civil rights. I'd quote Malcolm X's letter from Mecca, which is an extraordinary thing; he said, you know, our society was bent on racial suicide if we didn't look at ourselves and do something about it. And I carried that message of Malcolm X all over south Texas, but I don't think people were listening to me.

DT: Was the Corpus Christi Caller Times helpful?

SF: (talking over DT) Yes, yes it was. I would say it was supportive and, of course, then it was, TV was just beginning. And, you know, that was the era, you as a candidate knew everything about your campaign. There were no consultants. I wrote my own script. I drove myself. And, wrote whatever I was going to say, I wrote it myself, or else, on the back of an envelope. I mean, in the beginning, I was very uncomfortable with all this.

Umm, actually, umm, I had a very difficult time. I never did ask people to vote for me, I'd just say consider it. Because I-I think voting is a very private thing. It's like the discussion of religion, I mean I don't think that is part of, I abhor what goes on today on that issue. You know, bearing your soul and picking up votes that way. I find it just abhorrent. But, I also find a decision to make a vote a very private thing, so I could never ask. But there is a story about my campaign.

Dewitt Hale(?), who headed our delegation, kept saying you've got to get out and start campaigning, and where's your picture? And I said, well I don't have a picture. He said, don't worry about that. Just take your high school graduation picture. And you have push cards. Now it's mostly, much of it's TV and all of this stuff, but we had push cards, which meant it had your name and you passed it out. And my husband gave me a dime -- that's when you could make a phone call for a dime. And I took my push cards and took about 200 of them one Saturday afternoon to a mall.

And he said shopping center, he said when you're through, call me and I'll come pick you up. And so I stood there, because the only place I''d put my push cards before had been the Laundromat. I was comfortable there. So, it was a very trying afternoon, because, you know, you give them the card and then they drop it. And I'd go pick it up, because I didn't want to see that on the ground. But anyway, I learned to campaign I guess. But that's where I started. I was a very reticent campaigner.

DT: What would you tell people?

SF: I'd just ask them to consider-consider me for the Legislature.

DT: And on what grounds?

SF: Well, I mean, all these things I was talking about, you know: Civil rights, participation of citizens, environment, you know, our gulf coast that was deteriorating, and so forth. I didn't know what I'd be into. And so, when I talked to a friend of mine that had served with my cousin, I said, well what do you do in the Legislature? I mean, I had the theory but I didn't know the day-to-day. And he advised me to keep up with my mail. So that's all I...that's the only kind of advise I got.

DT: And, and when you were looking through mail later on, or in the course of the campaign when you would listen to people who came to hear you, what were they saying? What were they concerned about? Were there any environmental concerns?

SF: Uh, it varied. Say the little group of League of Women Voters, the OPUS group, and it-it broke down very much into the ethnic matter. Now, Corpus Christi is now over 50% Hispanic. It wasn't quite at 50% when I was there, and those were totally different campaigns. We had a man that-named Lapas(?), I think was his name, was incredible.

We would go to Robstown, which, umm, is near by cotton, was in the past a cotton producing area. And, umm, for us that didn't speak Spanish, he would translate, first for one candidate and then for the other. And that's the way we would campaign there. Now, those interests were different. There was no concern about the environment, none about the environment.

DT: Did you talk about pesticides in the field?

SF: Not, not, no, not at that time. Not at all. And, of course, I later learned there were terrible waste disposal problems in-in Robstown. But I didn't know that til later. But, what I tell you about the old-fashioned campaign is the candidate learns. And I think that's what's completely lacking today. Between consultants telling you how to look, what to say, where to go, and usually protecting you. I had no protection.

And even later on, because I couldn't afford a lot of television when I ran later for Governor. I went on every talk show. I took questions that sometimes would freeze me. But, I took them. You never know what's going to come on the telephone. And that exposure sometimes was painful, but was very-very important.

And, just as my Legal Aid work had told me a lot about the community that I didn't know before, often I'd be the only Anglo at gatherings, and-of Hispanics. Because in the general election, I had the support of the GI Forum, and I would see Hector Garcia on human rights issues, Dr. Hector Garcia, who was the founder of the GI Forum, was a mentor of mine.

And, so often I would be going into places where I'd be the only Anglo. And I could hear, and I listened to what was happening to people. And so, I wasn't educating the people where I- where I- where I was. I was being educated. And I find that, I continue to find that. And sometimes it's a little uncomfortable, but it's important. It's very-very important. And I think that that's one of the things we don't have enough of today.

DT: Did you question your-your, sort of, personal convictions about the environment, because the-your constituents' concerns were about more, sort-of more day to day civil rights?

SF: Well, it didn't, it didn't take that away. It didn't. And then, of course, later on, you know, there wasn't that term either, but the term of environmental racism. And I think a town like Robstown that is plagued with all the-the waste sites.

There's a case going on right now over in Sinton, umm, in a very poor, primarily Hispanic area. Let's name names. Browning Ferris dumps their stuff, on all this stuff from oil fields, so there is a relationship. I won't say, at the time, that I was conscious of it. Certainly by the time I left the Legislature I was, about low income and, umm, environmental degradation.

And, I guess when the culmination of that was in 1993, when I went to a world conference on uranium in Salzburg. And there you saw that the uranium primarily came from lands of indigenous people. Testing was done either in colonies, or where indigenous people were. And there-there you really, you see the overall picture of combining the deadliest of...manmade creation this plutonium you know, from uranium, and seeing what it's done to-to people without voices. And...

DT: And it's not just an isolated thing?

SF: (talking over DT) Oh no, it's every place, it's every place. We had miners from the uranium, umm, uranium in Namibia that didnt even know what was wrong with them until they came to this conference in Salzburg, in 93. Now that was, to me, one of the turning points in my life to just be there and hear, and listen. And yet, it had no coverage in this country. Absolutely none. I have the-the proceedings here some place.

DT: We talked a little bit earlier about the media in your campaign, and I guess, in continuing controversies that you have been involved in. How do you get the media to cover environmental issues?

SF: You don't. DT: Why don't they, if they fail to?

SF: Well you know, here, and see, we had help from the Houston Post. And I'll be very explicit about that. There was Harold Scarlet, who wrote a column, that Rex Braun had working relationships with and he must have had with Dr. Quebedeaux as well. Umm, when I worked on the Sadler matter, ah- the Post was very supportive. I, I don't know why you don't get support on Nuclear issues.

DT: Do you think that it was a top-down thing, that the Hobbys, the owners of the papers, were supportive, or did there have to be a columnist like Harold Scarlet?

SF: (talking over DT) Well that's it. I don't know. I can't speak. I just, I don't know that much of the, but I do know that the Post was a responsive newspaper on environmental issues when I was in the Legislature. I don't even remember the Chronicle on it. I mean I, I don't even remember it. Also, the Corpus Christi, well I had the thing too that I used to call distance liberals, and what that was, was it was very easy if you were the Corpus Christi paper to talk about environmental degradation maybe in Beaumont, but not so about the port of Corpus Christi.

And you get - you get some of that, all , you know, often. Of course the Observer was always reporting on these things. The Texas Observer, yeah. And, ah- and it's very interesting if you don't, if you, they are the conduit. And I'll give you an example. When I ran for Governor in 72, there were towns in west Texas that apparently never heard about Sharpstown.

It had not been an issue of discussion in Lubbock, Texas where the then Governor came from. And the only contact we had that really worked with the media in Dallas was when Jim - Jim Lare(?) was on the local public television. And he would have us up to speak, because during that time, Ben Barnes was the favored, of, shall we call it for lack of something else, the Dallas establishment. And it was only that public television that we would go up there and talk about Sharpstown.

Now, there was a wonderful reporter in the Dallas Morning News named Tom Johnson, and he had to give his story to another paper, on Sharpstown. Because there was great protection of Ben Barnes in Dallas. That's all I can say. There was a lot invested in him. And he would probably be as frank as he can be, the first to say it.

But anyway, it varies. And, it varies on issues. And I think the most difficult issue, because I think we all want to call our eyes to it, is this whole nuclear, the devastation from it, the danger from it. And I think an example of that is the fact that from the time Laurence, who was the New York Times reporter, science reporter, that was given to the, either Army, Air Force I guess, on loan, who won a Pulitzer over the beauties of the A-bomb.

From that time to mid-80's when two investigative journalists for the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on nuclear issues, not one Pulitzer had been given on nuclear issues. Now it wasn't that the Pulitzers were ignoring this subject, it was the people weren't writing about it, because it was behind our curtain of national security. And so, it has not been a generally discussed issue.

And I could te...I remember, I did a lot of speaking on college campuses primarily after I left the Legislature in the 70's, a little in the early 80's, but a lot I used to say I was out singing for my supper. When I'd start talking about -- and we had some really close calls about false alerts, now I'm not talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but these other things -- I could just see peoples' eyes glazing. Because any time I started talking about the hazards of nuclear.

Now we have a devastating report that's out, put out by the Brookings Institute, called the Atomic Audit, about what it has cost us, not only in the realm, the coin of the realm, but also in the environment. It's an incredible piece of work. I saw it reviewed one place and bought it. But you don't have it, you don't have any discussion of it.

DT: While you're talking about nuclear issues, and this reaction you get, can you talk about why people have this sort of sense of disbelief, or lack of interest when you try to promote environmental issues? Whether they're atomic related, nuclear problems, or other issues. We all share the same biology, we all share the same risks, but...

SF: (talking over DT) Yeah, I used to say...

DT: (talking over SF)It seems like a very difficult sell.

SF: Yeah, very difficult. I used to say if we could only reach people as the way the-the anti-tobacco people have...only. And I try to draw comparisons, you know, and say, well what is the difference? And, of course, one thing is this, and I remember Justice Douglas, when he ended his speech talking about the most destructive of all pollutions and that it was tasteless, odorless, sightless.

And, of course, I think that's in it. It's no where around, you don't hear it in a cough. You do with uranium workers, but we don't. We meaning, out here away from those plants and away from that kind of work. I guess that's it. Plus, there is, it is, it is a time bomb. It could go off at any time. And that's the kind of thing we want to push away. That's all I can say.

And then, and that's why I told this story about the Pulitzer. It has been behind this national security curtain, don't you write about it, that's our national security. Now what's happened is, yes the cold war is over. We really haven't reduced our expenditures in new weaponry. We have maybe in readiness, as they call it. But not new weaponry. We have the same system.

The directive of President Clinton a couple of months ago, was that nuclear weapons were still the mainstay of our so-called defense. So we're still not looking at it. And, you know, I think it was Jonathan Shell(?) said, you know, we have a little time now, it, to me, ought to be priority. But, it isn't. It isn't with the people that are running for the Presidency. You don't hear it, and I don't know, in Senatorial races or Congressional races. But we ignore it at a terrible risk.

(misc.)