Interview with Paul T. Smith, January 11, 2002

BIRDWHISTELL: Let's see. General, it's January 11, 2002, we're at your home here in, here in Burkesville and we're doing a session for the Kentucky League of Cities Project, and I appreciate you taking the time to, to meet with me this morning and, and talk about your, your years as mayor here in Burkesville. In these interviews, before we get to the actual mayor's story, I think it's important to find out a little bit about the person before they show up as mayor, and in your case it's a--it's quite an interesting story, I know. But let's just get back to the beginning. I guess you--your roots go way back in history here in Burkesville and Cumberland County, I understand.

SMITH: They do. Yes, they do.

BIRDWHISTELL: On both sides of your--

SMITH: Both sides of my family came here in the late--either the late 1700s or early 1800s, between 1795 and 1805, both my mother's family and father's family.

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh. Tell me your father's name.

SMITH: My father's name was Samuel Joseph Smith.

BIRDWHISTELL: And what did he do for a living?

SMITH: Well, he did various things. They ran a big--his--my--first of all, my grandfather and great grandfather built the only three stores in town that are still in Burkesville. They owned the ferry between the town. There were no government ferries or anything like that--between this side of the river and that side of the river, and my grandfather had about eighteen farms, about a little over 3,000 acres, was quite well off. And my father managed a store in town, which was the biggest store back then, had a grocery store on the first floor, men's apparel on the second, women's apparel on the third, and I could go for a moment with this, if I may, because I'll give you some idea what happened here.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: See, in those days, people couldn't drive anywhere else. All between Burkesville and Glasgow was a, a little two-lane like stagecoach road, and there was literally a stagecoach that went back and forth, and it took two days to get there.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: So everybody had to--you had a captive audience. Everybody had to. And in the mid-1920s they started building a new road between 00:02:00Burkesville and Glasgow. And my grandfather, who didn't have much education but was really a sharp fellow, intelligent, he, he told my dad, said, "We're going to need to sell this store because once that road gets finished to Glasgow, people are going to go somewhere else to shop."

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: For example, you couldn't have bananas or oranges here because they would rot before you could sell them. You had to go to Glasgow if you wanted fresh fruit. And they sold the store, and sure enough, the Gla-, the road operating--opened in 1928 and there were cars that could to go back and forth. By then a few people had cars and little towns like this started drying up.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: They started drying up. We had twice as many people in Cumberland County before World War II as we do today.

BIRDWHISTELL: Twice as many.

SMITH: Um-hm.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: And, of course, the steamboats stopped running in 1929.

BIRDWHISTELL: 1929?

SMITH: And that--yeah, that took a lot of--took a lot out of it, too. My grandfather owned a big mill and a lumber place right with the steamboat landing, also. They owned the land just above the steamboat (laughs) landing.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow. So in, in your lifetime you've seen tremendous--

SMITH: Yes, I have. Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --changes?

SMITH: Yeah, you know, I don't think about being old when I think about the things I remember and that people don't remember. I hear, for example, people talking about--writing about World War II and what happened during World War II, and a lot of it's just plain wrong. (Birdwhistell laughs) I mean was an officer when World War II started, so I know what went on. I lived it. (laughs) And they just, they just don't get it right sometimes.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. But it's, it's your generation that sort of transcends this change. I mean you can remember as a young boy--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --the old ways of Burkesville, you know, with the river traffic--

SMITH: Yes.

BIRDWHISTELL: --and with the roads being difficult, and, and you've seen, even though you were away for many years, you've come back and, and you've witnessed, over time, this sort of transformation of a place like Burkesville.

SMITH: Yeah. I was home at least once a year except for the years when I was overseas.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Of course I couldn't come home from there. So I kept up and had a big family on both sides to visit. And my family on the other side 00:04:00of, of--my mother's side was more a cultured, better-educated family. My mother had been a school teacher.

BIRDWHISTELL: What was her name?

SMITH: Bonnie Ferguson.

BIRDWHISTELL: Bonnie Ferguson.

SMITH: Ferguson. Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: And what--

SMITH: In fact, when we go around town--I'm going to insist you to take this little drive around town as, as part of your payment for this interview.

BIRDWHISTELL: Okay. (laughs)

SMITH: But the old house that she was born and raised in is still standing and it's the oldest house in the, in the city.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: There's even a little earthen cellar underneath it where they used to hide slaves during the, the underground rail, you know, where the slaves were going north to escape. And that cellar is still there and still earth walls just like it always had before.

BIRDWHISTELL: Now, would that be on the other side of town as you head out toward Columbia or--

SMITH: Pardon?

BIRDWHISTELL: Was it on the other side of town as you head out toward Columbia?

SMITH: Yeah, it is.

BIRDWHISTELL: Is that where the house is?

SMITH: It's, it's off, off of the ----------(??). The front part, which is now built up, was part of their farm.

BIRDWHISTELL: I see.

SMITH: And her grandfather was a county attorney and started the first newspaper in Cumberland County in, in 1870.

BIRDWHISTELL: Okay.

SMITH: So I have a real deep history--

BIRDWHISTELL: Her grandfather Ferguson?

SMITH: No, her grandfather was Matthews.

BIRDWHISTELL: Matthews.

SMITH: Her mother was a Matthews. He was a lawyer from Oswego, New York. I was never clear how he got down here, but he came to, to Cincinnati and then the Civil War started. They moved to Louisville, I think, and the story goes that the, the--one--either--I'm not sure whether it was the southerners or the northern army burned down their store and somehow they came down to Cumberland County. I never did know why they--none of them are living anymore--and I never did know why they came to Cumberland County, of all places, but they did and, of course, he was an attorney already, had been an attorney before he came down.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. So he was already married when he came down?

SMITH: Hmm?

BIRDWHISTELL: He was already married when he came down?

SMITH: No. No. No, he wasn't.

BIRDWHISTELL: A lot of times you'll find if a--when a guy's out of context, it's because he's met a woman. (laughs)

SMITH: Yeah, he--I, I, I don't think he was married here. He might've married in Cincinnati before he came down here because my grandmother 00:06:00had some first cousins that--some in Cincinnati and some in Nashville.

BIRDWHISTELL: I see.

SMITH: Of course, you know, during the Civil War people migrated a lot back and forth.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: And I, I've got all this written down. I got the family history back for even when they came here from the old country on both sides.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, well, that'd be great to copy.

SMITH: My mother, my mother got most of that and, and did a lot of research on it before, before she died--

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: --and, and I have what she got and I've done a lot more.

BIRDWHISTELL: Well, good. Well, that'd be wonderful to copy and put with your interview at some point if you'd allow that.

SMITH: Well, it's not, it's not in order because a lot of it's pencil and lines--

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, I mean just as, as, as information, not as a--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --not as a written--

SMITH: I have it, I have it all and it's quite interesting. I--in my own research, since I retired here, when I was younger--you know, when you're young, you don't think much about that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: You're busy making a living, especially--

BIRDWHISTELL: There are a lot of other things on your mind.

SMITH: --in my case I was living all over the world.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yes.

SMITH: I wasn't even living around my relatives and I just wasn't interested. And since I retired I got really interested, and there are families in here, were kids when I was a kid, that I've known all 00:07:00my life that are related, I mean distant relations, that I didn't even know about.

BIRDWHISTELL: Didn't even know.

SMITH: I already knew about half the county was kin to me anyway.

BIRDWHISTELL: So you come from two very entrepreneurial, hardworking, successful families?

SMITH: Well, I guess you'd have to call it that. Bear in mind, I grew up through the Depression, and not many people were successful during the Depression at anything anywhere.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: But I don't recall growing up here--we really had, to the best of my memory, only one really poor family in town. Ca-, we were-- everybody was cash-poor, but there was a lot of trading and everything, and if someone--this is before welfare came along--and if someone needed something, why, if you had a relative that lived out in the country, they would bring you this and they'd bring--people--things swapped back and forth and no--very little cash ever changed hands.

BIRDWHISTELL: You know, it's funny you mention that because this morning I was listening to two radio stations in the area and both of them had a swap-shop--

SMITH: Yeah (laughs).

BIRDWHISTELL: --programs going on. I mean, so that's a--it's culturally embedded in, in terms of swapping and trading and--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --and then--

SMITH: Yeah, they, they're always doing that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Now when your grandfather sold the store, did he retire then after--

SMITH: Well, people didn't retire in those days.

BIRDWHISTELL: But I mean he, he didn't, he didn't open up another business or--

SMITH: Oh, well, it wasn't a business for him anyway. It was an investment. He was a--he, he--as I say, he had eighteen farms--

BIRDWHISTELL: He had all this other (laughs) stuff.

SMITH: --and he had seven sawmills and a lot of, a lot of timberland.

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: And that was his, his, his personal hobby was sawmills and lumber and timber and shipping it up and down the river and hauling it to market and all that stuff.

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: And he and his brother started a drugstore over in town, which is Smith's Pharmacy, and that's the oldest drugstore in the state of Kentucky. This past--about two years ago, I guess, it was verified by whoever does the historical stuff--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --as the oldest stuff--oldest drugstore in the state. And so, he had so many things going, he never retired.

BIRDWHISTELL: I see.

SMITH: In fact, he was 81 when he died, and he died from a, a bursted appendix. See, if we'd had a local hospital, he probably wouldn't have died. We didn't have, so before they could get him to Glasgow, he died.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. So when you're, when you're growing up here in 00:09:00Burkesville, you're living in town?

SMITH: Uh-huh. Well, let me digress a second. When I was two years old--my father was a great wanderer. They moved to California for two years, near Fresno, California--

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: --and stayed out--went on a vacation and stayed a year and a half. (Birdwhistell laughs) I know from the old records because I'd see the checks he wrote, "cash," for a thousand dollars, "cash," for five thousand or something like that, and stayed out there a year and a half on vacation. (Birdwhistell laughs) That's when they still had the store. And then he came back. And then, then the Depression hit. The Depression hit--hadn't hit when we were in California, I guess.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And then the Depression hit in '32 and it was hol-, my grandfather--

the president of the bank told me that many times, and back then the president's son was president the next time, generations in the bank here, a local bank, and this banker told me, after, after I grew up, he said that about three weeks before Roosevelt closed the banks in 19-, I believe it was late '32, and he said, "About three weeks before the 00:10:00banks closed," he said, "Mr. Smith came over here and said he wanted his money." (Birdwhistell laughs) He said, "How much?" He said, "I want it all." He said, "How do you want it?" Said, "I want it all in cash, preferably coins." And he said, "Well, it'll take us a while to get it ready." So anyway, to shorten the story, they did get it ready. He brought it back across the river, which was his kingdom over here, you know, and there was all kinds of rumors he buried it in different places. Now, no one knows. But when the banks closed then three weeks later he was one of the few people around the county that had any cash on hand at all.

BIRDWHISTELL: He (laughs) had his money.

SMITH: And he loaned a lot of people money to help them get back on their feet and get them going. He was really well thought of by everybody. He--

BIRDWHISTELL: So ----------(??) ever found out what happened to the money?

SMITH: Oh, he had it. (Birdwhistell laughs) After, after he was satisfied that the banks were going to be all right again, he took it back over there and put it back in the bank. And he swore that he didn't have any way of knowing and, of course he couldn't have had any way of knowing it. Back in those days Burkesville was isolated as hell anyway--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --and you didn't have the communications you have now. But he just had an uneasy feeling about how things were going and--

BIRDWHISTELL: Took all his money out.

SMITH: --his businesses, see, were, were, were--because he sold to people out away.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And he just had an uneasy feeling about it and he said, "When you get uneasy, you want your money around you." So (both laugh) he wound up with quite a bit of money, and, and everybody--

BIRDWHISTELL: I love that!

SMITH: --yeah, and that, and that's the truth. There's, there's so many legends about them; it bores the hell out of younger people. When I was your age even--did you say you were fifty?

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: I barely remember being fifty. I think I should have. I must have at one time. (Birdwhistell laughs) I would get bored with older people talking about old stuff. But now that I've gotten to be an old man I understand that because somehow those things--you don't have so many other things blocking your mind if your current pro-, job and all that kind of stuff--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right. You're able to reflect.

SMITH: --and you--yeah, you think and you reflect and a lot of that-- those things just come rushing back to you that you hadn't thought of in decades.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. I think that's fun. I think it's fun when that happens, you know.

SMITH: So there are all kinds of tales about what they did. And my other grandfather at the other end of town--I'll--I'm going to drive you by their place later on--the, the city limits were at the beginning 00:12:00of his farm. There are still houses built up around everywhere, but he just stubbornly resisted it being annexed into the city because he didn't have anything to do with government. (Birdwhistell laughs) The one grandfather over here was a Democrat. He didn't know why.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And my grandfather out there, he was an anti. He was anti whoever was in power. Didn't make any--he just didn't want the government to have anything to do with anything that was his. "It's mine, I made it, I built it, I got it, I'm taking care of it, just government keep out of my way."

BIRDWHISTELL: There you go.

SMITH: And they're both right religious and went to church all the time. (laughs)

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: But it, it, it's so different the way things were. Everybody was self-reliant. I remember when the first truck came up from Florida, and I believe it was '35. I was a boy. Came over and parked on the square in town. It was loaded with grapefruits and oranges. They brought them up to give away to people, you know, to--for--through welfare.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And this, this truck came into town and everybody stared around and looked at it and walked around. They'd tell them to take this, take that, take this. And you know that nobody would take a thing off that truck?

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: And it left without anybody taking anything from it. People had too much pride to do it, even the hobos that ran around and knocked on your door. We had a lot of them through here, too. If they asked for something to eat, they wanted to know if they could chop wood or mow grass or something. And if they didn't have a--if you didn't have a job for them, they'd go over to the next house.

BIRDWHISTELL: Is that--

SMITH: They just didn't want to take anything free.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: They weren't bums, they were poor! (laughs)

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And, you know, that's a big change, and people don't realize that. You'd have to live through that to realize it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And, and most everybody admired them, was nice to them, and they were nice. A lot of them were well-spoken and polite--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --obviously, you know, people of some substance, but they just couldn't find any jobs.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, and they just--

SMITH: So they were roaming around getting whatever they could and doing whatever.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. My grandfather did that--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --rode the rails.

SMITH: And you, you have to admire people like that. And I think about how things have changed now. Now people demonstrate and riot and everything else if you don't give them something. (laughs)

BIRDWHISTELL: What, what year were you born? What's your birth date?

SMITH: I was born June 22, 1923.

BIRDWHISTELL: June 22, 1923.

SMITH: Right here in Burkesville.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right here in Burkesville. And, and so you're, you're growing up here in Burkesville. Do you have brothers and sisters?

SMITH: One brother and one sister, both older than me and both deceased.

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh. How--what--how much older were you--were they?

SMITH: My brother was seven years older than me and my sister was five years older. Both died of accidents, as a matter of fact.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really? In, in, in adult--in their adult life period or as children?

SMITH: Oh, yeah. My brother was--my brother was 56 and my sister was 51.

BIRDWHISTELL: I see. So you're the baby of the family?

SMITH: Yeah, I was. Yeah, I almost grew up like an only child because they were so much older than me. You know, at that age--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --you, you know your older brother--

BIRDWHISTELL: Five or seven years--

SMITH: --but you don't--you know you like him and all that, but you don't have anything in common, really.

BIRDWHISTELL: So you, you're growing up in Burkesville, and then you start school and you go to the local--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --school.

SMITH: Yeah, well, a little bit before that I started school. I told you my mother had been a teacher, and she, and she was an avid reader and she also was a music teacher and played piano real well and the 00:15:00organ both. She played the organ in our church for nearly forty years.

BIRDWHISTELL: I was going to say she probably played in the church. (laughs)

SMITH: Huh?

BIRDWHISTELL: I was going to say she probably played the organ--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --in the church.

SMITH: And she, she taught me the alphabet and the multiplication tables through ten and to read a little bit before I started to school. Then you didn't have a kindergarten.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: You had what they called the primer and a first grade and a second grade et cetera. And I spent a month in the primer and a month in the first grade, and went right into second grade--

BIRDWHISTELL: Is that (laughs) right?

SMITH: --when I was still six years old. So I graduated--see, I graduated at sixteen.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Thanks to her. And she also made an avid reader--I had to spend a certain amount of every day reading. Oh, I was a rough little, old boy, but I had to spend a certain amount--I can't remember whether it was an hour or something like that reading. I read books like a Tom Sawyer--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: ------------(??) stuff.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And they had a series of books called Horatio Alger books in those days. And the story's always about a poor boy who worked, worked, worked, worked real hard, studied hard and succeeded. They were always--they're big books about this thick.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: But I read every book about--for Horatio Alger that I could find. And then I got interested in reading.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: ------------(??) and all this stuff.

BIRDWHISTELL: And so you had books in your--you had books in, in your house--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --as you were growing up?

SMITH: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And, and I say, I had assigned reading periods. American Magazine and Collier's Magazine, I had to read certain articles out of that. And, of course, she was such a wonderful mother, and I never remember her raising her voice at me or Father or anybody else. But, anyway, I, I wanted to please her so I read. And then, I don't know when the transition took place, but pretty soon I didn't want to let anything interfere with my reading. And to this day I read voraciously. I've read all these books, and I gave a couple of hundred books to the local library when I retired and moved down here that I couldn't move them around with me anymore.

BIRDWHISTELL: Did your mother go off to a normal school or a college to--

SMITH: No, just here.

BIRDWHISTELL: Just here?

SMITH: Well, you didn't have to have any college back in those days teaching, you know.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. I just wondered, though, if, if she had--

SMITH: No. No, she didn't. No, she went right here and started teaching.

BIRDWHISTELL: And then when she started her family she stopped teaching?

SMITH: Yeah. Oh, yeah, back then women didn't work after starting a family--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --unless you were going to stay an old maid. That's why all the, 00:17:00the schoolteachers, you know, were unmarried women.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Because you--if you got married, you had to quit, right?

SMITH: Yeah, you had a choice of a career or a family, and, and you didn't try to mix them--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --because you didn't dare neglect your family or your kids. That was a full-time honored and honorable job.

BIRDWHISTELL: So you and your brother and sister became her students as well as her kids.

SMITH: Yeah, in effect. Well, they didn't--my brother was real, real smart. My sister, she didn't take to studying very well. She was kind of a rebel and she didn't, she didn't like that too much, although she was--she did learn to play the piano and won, I believe, second in the state piano contest when she was in high school.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow.

SMITH: She could--

BIRDWHISTELL: Did you--I assume you played the piano, too, when you were--

SMITH: No, I don't.

BIRDWHISTELL: You didn't--

SMITH: No. No, no, no, no. And that's one of the greatest regrets of my life.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: My mother wanted to teach me but, you know, when I was growing up, things were different. It was kind of sissy for a boy to play a piano (Birdwhistell laughs), and I was anything but a sissy. And I sure didn't want to be accused of being a sissy.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right! You had to be--

SMITH: And I have--you know, I have, I have regretted that all--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --of my life--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --because I love music.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Absolutely love music still to this day.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And, and I, I could have been--just for my own entertainment because all of my time in the army moving around--of course, there's a lot of social stuff that goes on--the most popular people around are people that can play a musical instrument.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right.

SMITH: At a party everybody gathers around to sing around the piano, and I can't do any of that. So that was one big mistake that I really regret.

BIRDWHISTELL: Now, as you're, as you're, as you're growing up, you get to be ten, eleven, twelve years old here in Burkesville. What, what, what is your social life like? What is the entertainment in town?

SMITH: I left out one thing.

BIRDWHISTELL: All right.

SMITH: When I was nine, my father found another big opportunity with a cousin of his out in Arkansas. So we moved to Arkansas--

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?

SMITH: --up a town called Piggott in the northeast corner of Arkansas, and he was--he--my father then had a truck line here and his cousin had a truck line in Arkansas. And his cousin had just gotten a, a franchise for the route--back then they gave franchises for routes and 00:19:00you couldn't haul stuff if you didn't have a franchise--between that little town in Arkansas and St. Louis. So ----------(??) happened that they were going to consolidate and be partners. Well, we moved out to Arkansas and they were going great guns, and I went to the fifth and sixth grade in Arkansas and then we--

BIRDWHISTELL: Really? In a small town in Arkansas?

SMITH: Yeah, oh yeah. About like Burkesville, a little bit bigger than Burkesville and, of course, that part of Arkansas is more thickly settled. There are more towns around.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Did you like that?

SMITH: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I liked it all right. Yeah, I liked it fine. You know, it didn't bother me. Wherever my parents went, I went. I, I never--I don't remember any disappointments or really, unhappiness as a kid.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: I don't have anything but fond memories of my parents and growing up and all like that. But we stayed out there for two years (laughs), and this, this probably is not good to tell on that, but to give you an idea how Kentucky reputations can carry you along. We went out there and we got the--I got in a, a little fight with a neighborhood boy. We had a real fine home just a block off the square, a real old 00:20:00nice home, expensive place. And this little boy named [coughs], excuse me, his name was Bobby Lee. He was a snotty little fellow and he was irritating me and, of course, a new kid, you know, always gets some hassle, and he hassled me a little while. Anyway, to shorten the story because I don't remember all the details, we got in a fight--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --and I, I took care of him pretty good. And, and then he went home bawling, and it turned out his father was the superintendent of the school. (Birdwhistell laughs) And I got ready to start school that, that--we moved out there about early summer, about May or right after school was out here, and at the time of school--I'd go to school- -of course, I have my report card from here, "Promoted to the, to the fifth grade."

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: I was nine years old. And they told me, "Well, you can't be in the fifth grade at nine years old. You're supposed to be in the fourth grade." I said, "Well, I, I was in the fourth grade last year and I'm supposed in the fifth." They said, "You can't be in the fifth grade." He says, "Well, I'll talk to Mr. Lee." Mr. Lee was the 00:21:00superintendent, the daddy of the boy (laughs) who I'd--who had this-- and I didn't think about the fight. We were friends after that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: You know how kids are.

BIRDWHISTELL: Well, sure.

SMITH: They'll have a little spat.

BIRDWHISTELL: Sure.

SMITH: And anyway, my mother, for the first time in my life I saw her get up in arms. She said, "They're not going to keep you from going to the fifth grade, Paul, if I have to go to court or whatever." And she said, "We're going to see the principal." So we took it to the principal of the school and she had me wait outside of the office.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And I don't know what she said to him. She had my report card signed that I had been promoted from the fourth grade, and she came back and said--and grinned and said, "Paul, you're going to the fifth grade." (Birdwhistell laughs) And so I got in the fifth grade, and that guy never did like me after that, and neither did his son. But, heck, I'd already finished the fourth! And so I (laughs)--I went and did okay. And then--

BIRDWHISTELL: And you did okay? Yeah.

SMITH: --and my brother had an altercation. He was sixteen or seventeen at the time, and they had a truck terminal in the, in the town near the square where the trucks all operated. They had their own gas stations, pretty, pretty good-sized little outfit. And my brother was driving a 00:22:00truck. I don't know how he was driving at that age, but he was. And, and some of the truck drivers didn't like him because they were--he was the boss's son. He was a big, big kid and the--one of the truck drivers challenged him to a fight because they thought because he was the boss's son; he was getting preference on routes and whatnot.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right.

SMITH: I don't know if it was--then to shorten the story anyway, this guy, the challenger's name was Jack Waddell. I don't know why I remember that, but I do. (Birdwhistell laughs) His name was Jack Waddell. He was a pr-, pretty, pretty good-size man too, and he told Clifton, he says, says, says, "Your blah-blah"-- and he used curse words, and says, "I'm gonna whip your you-know-what."

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And, and he said, "You--won't you--won't you fight?" And as the story goes, it all late-, later came out, my brother said, "I won't fight you, but I'll shoot you right in the gut," and pulled out my daddy's .45 which he had gotten somehow, I don't know how. Anyway, they got the police down. Big excitement in town about that. And then 00:23:00after that my father knocked somebody in the head with a blackjack. They tried to, tried to rob him in the car one night and, and daddy kept a blackjack down between his legs. It was rough back in those (laughs) days. He was, he was pulling out and he reached out and whacked that guy across the skull, which knocked him out. And, and we had--we little kids had fights with BB guns back then. We wore what they called sheep-lined jackets.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: There was fur on the inside and imitation leather on the outside and it came down below your waist--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --and we wore the airplane helmets from World War I, you pulled down, had goggles on them. And we'd put on all this stuff and we'd have fights with BB guns. Now, we didn't, we didn't, we didn't aim for anyone's, anyone's head. You aimed for a part that had the --------- -(??).

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: We weren't supposed to hurt each other. That wasn't what it was all about. Anyway, we did that, and some girl sitting on the fence who lived behind us--there was a fence about--a road here, a road here, a fence between the hou-, between those houses. This girl named Virginia Harris was sitting on the fence and, and she made some smart remark about some boss boys trying to kill each other, and she called me 00:24:00something because I was not from there, although I was--I guess I was the biggest one of the bunch. I didn't realize it but I was usually the biggest one. And I, I told her to get off our fence. She says, "It's not your fence, it's my fence." I said, "I don't care whose fence it is," in effect, "get off there." And she wouldn't get off. "If you don't get off I'm going to shoot you." She said, "You wouldn't do that." And so the story goes, and then guess it's true, I raised up my gun, I shot at her and I hit her upside the head.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh!

SMITH: I going to--I was trying--because she had a coat on and it was cold weather and I hit--hit her upside the head. She fell off that fence like this right down the ground, and it turned out later she was faking being unconscious. It scared me to death!

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, I'll (laughs) bet.

SMITH: And their, their--her father came out and got her and, and told me to get in the house. He'd called the sheriff and, and I went in the house. I'd just got the BB gun that Christmas.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, wow.

SMITH: I was very proud of it. A nice Daisy air rifle. I mean it was a beauty. And (laughs) been in the house a little while and, and my mother called my father and my father comes at the house and asked me 00:25:00what happened. And I said, "I shot, I shot Virginia by accident." He said, "Did you shoot her by accident?" I said, "Why, I didn't shoot her by accident but I shot her in the head by accident." (Birdwhistell laughs) Because I didn't dare lie back then. Kids just didn't do that.

BIRDWHISTELL: No, you couldn't.

SMITH: And he said, "Well," said, "I hoped you'd have a lot of fun with this air rifle." Said, "I see you don't know how to use it yet." And he took that thing up and just broke it, bent it double around his knee.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh!

SMITH: Didn't do a thing to me, and he said, "Now, when you grow up a little more maybe you can have another, but that's the end of this one." And I see a sheriff car pull up out front. A sheriff car, and the sheriff comes knocking on the door and, of course, my heart is going ninety miles an hour. I'm still just ten--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --and I was scared to death. (laughs) And the sheriff came in, gave me a big lecture and said, "Mr. Smith, I ought to put him in jail. But," says, "I see you've taken care of his gun, and I think I can trust you to take care of him." And then my dad said, "You bet I will." And so the sheriff left. Turned out that my daddy went by the 00:26:00sheriff's office and made it up with the sheriff to come down after me and come in and scare me real good. My dad didn't tell me that 'til years later. But anyway, we--and we had the doggonest reputation: that, that, that Kentucky famil-, family that lived down on south (??), man, you better not mess with them!

BIRDWHISTELL: ----------(??)!

SMITH: My brother and my father and myself (laughs), you know. So anyway, things went well in Arkansas for a while, then they, they had a bunch of truck wrecks and ----------(??) furniture. Loading furniture--furniture is made in that part of the country and taken into St. Louis, and it burned--three trucks burned them up. And I never did know the full story on this but, anyway, the insurance was not in effect. My father said that the, the secretary in the office who was supposed to do that stuff didn't pay the bills or whatever. Anyhow, it bankrupted the company. They took every dime they got. Cleaned us out, cleaned it out. So we came, came back to Burkesville and my granddaddy, as he always did--my father was the oldest son. Granddaddy had fourteen children to grow, grow up and my daddy was his favorite. 00:27:00And so he would give my daddy some money to get started on something else, and he got the--this was '30--'34, I believe. Yeah, '34, and he got the bright idea--by then things were recovering a little bit here. Not much. But no one had cars. You know, there weren't any cars around at all and, in effect, there weren't any roads. About three miles out of town on either side you ran into mud--dirt roads which turned into mud on rainy days.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: And my father was always getting these bright ideas about what to do, and he got the bright idea he was going to start a taxi line here. So my--so the story goes--I didn't know at the time--my grandfather loaned him money to buy two brand new Fords, and then he bought a second-hand car, three cars running out of the square of what was then the Parkway Hotel. It's--the building's still there. It was a very busy hub here for--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right on the right on the corner as you come in.

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. I, I knew that was a hotel.

SMITH: Yeah, it, it was, and, and back in those days quite a swanky 00:28:00little hotel. You know, they had colored waiters with, with tux, tux coats and white collars and towels over their arm. It was a real classy place. Most of the better families in town ate Sunday dinners there after church.

BIRDWHISTELL: After church.

SMITH: Anyway, he started that thing and, and the next thing you know, making pretty good money. You know, people would drive their mules and their wagons up to the--there were several places about three or four miles out of town on all sides except this way and that way. The roads were good toward Columbia. And then we would pick them up at the--at like, say, seven o'clock on Saturday morning, and then about five o'clock start taking them all back to their separate destinations so they could pick up their wagons and go home. And in those days around the square of Burkesville you couldn't hardly walk around a square to save your soul. Everybody walked clockwise. I don't know why. But if you tried to go to--

BIRDWHISTELL: Clockwise.

SMITH: --two or three stores down going this way, you just couldn't hardly do it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Just on Saturdays?

SMITH: Yeah. And, you know, we had a--we had a movie theater in town 00:29:00then. We had a bowling alley and had a skating rink and a--

BIRDWHISTELL: Roller skating rink, right?

SMITH: Yeah, roller skating rink.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And there was just lots to do. And one of the drugstores a, a young druggist from Albany ran it named Cross, and it had a place where the school kids could dance in there. Had jukeboxes, and if you didn't have a nickel, he'd put one in it (Birdwhistell laughs) or trip it one (??). And we just had all kinds of things to do back then that they don't have now.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And a movie theater every night. Shows Sunday, Saturday afternoon matinees with cowboy shows and stuff like that.

BIRDWHISTELL: You watched a few westerns there I bet? (laughs)

SMITH: Huh? Oh, I'm telling you the truth, we all thought we were cowboys. And it was just--it was just a going little place and if everyb-, people were poor but I don't--nobody much realized it. We didn't think about being poor.

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: And, of course, basketball games we played towns from way far away. We--as far as Munfordville, which is, you know, a two-hour drive from here, and Corydon, and we, we'd just go catch us--there was no 00:30:00such, no such thing as a school bus. Someone would volunteer to take you in their cars and you, and you'd get--if you had an out-of-town game you'd get time--a lot of times, say, 1:30 get--before the time you got back home.

BIRDWHISTELL: Now, when--when you get to high school and you're here for high school, that's Burkesville High School I assume, right, not a--

SMITH: That's right. Yeah. It didn't become Cumberland County High School 'til--

BIRDWHISTELL: And then you had little--

SMITH: --years later.

BIRDWHISTELL: --you had little high schools out around the--

SMITH: Yeah. Marrowbone, Marrowbone, Marrowbone was the on-, only other one in Cumberland County.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really? You just had one high school out in the county?

SMITH: Yeah, Marrowbone, one. And I believe Barren County or Glasgow had four I believe: Temple Hill, Fountain Run, Glasgow, and there's one other one I can't remember. We played all of them. We all played basketball in our schedules, you know.

BIRDWHISTELL: So you didn't have a football team, I guess?

SMITH: No. They, they--no, for one thing football is too expensive.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And you got to have some pretty big old boys. Then, my graduating class, there were only twenty-seven people all told in my graduating class, and, and there was as many girls as boys. There 00:31:00might've been more girls, actually. All of them are dead now but five or six of us. But I don't remember any--I don't have anything but fond memories about growing up. Never had any money. I can remember going on basketball trips, and if you could get a hold of a nickel or--and especially a dime, you could buy a hamburger and a coke after the game at whatever town you were, at a restaurant.

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: A, a dime would get you a whole meal though.

BIRDWHISTELL: So even though you come from a--both sides of the family which had been quite successful when you were growing up, you don't feel wealthier than the other people as a child?

SMITH: I wasn't.

BIRDWHISTELL: (laughs) Because you weren't!

SMITH: If I was I didn't know it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: No, there, there are a lot of people wealthier than, wealthier than we were.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: But I don't know how to put this to make it not sound wrong, but we were from good families.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: Well, you know in the South, being from a good family means more than money. (laughs)

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right. Right. No, I know exactly what you're-- what you're saying.

SMITH: So I, I never had any feelings of inadequacy and, of course, I 00:32:00was in the middle of everything. Played basketball, in all the school plays, debating team and--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --everything.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. A lot of bright young people from your generation were advanced through the grades. You know, the, the brightest, where, where they would--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --they would skip a grade here, skip a grade there, and was, was that ever a problem for you, I mean in terms of, you know, your development, being two years younger than people in your class?

SMITH: I didn't know it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Never thought about it. It was, was never brought up.

BIRDWHISTELL: Never an issue?

SMITH: It was never brought up. Of course, I say I was bigger and, and- -oh, bear in mind we'd been together since the second grade, you know. You didn't have too many people come in from out of town. A few, but not very many.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: But we'd always been together, and I never, never gave it a thought.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, never was an issue.

SMITH: Never realized it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Never was an issue. So as you're--as you're going through high school in the, in the thirties and, as you said earlier, even 00:33:00though there wasn't a quick turnaround, there was a change in the economy, that there was a sense of things were getting better, and then you had these events internationally going on where you had the war developing in--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --in Europe. And as a, as a young, a young guy here in Burkesville, what did you make of all of that going on out there in the world?

SMITH: You know, I'm glad you brought that up because I, I'm a bug on education. First of all, I've got a lot of education. Including my army work, I've got over 23 years of formal classroom education--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Yeah.

SMITH: --study. But when I was growing up in high--going to high school here, I, I'll--I maintain, except for the high tech stuff and the advantages in technology, we got a far better education than children get today. For example, they don't know anything about history. Nothing. They don't even know American history. We had, we had to take four years of history. We had to take four years of English. We 00:34:00had to take Algebra I, Algebra II, and either Trigonometry or Geometry. We had to take general science. We had to take four years of English, grammar mostly and literature both. But one of the things we had, there was a--there was a newspaper, you may have heard of it or seen it, called Current Events, published nationally somewhere. I don't know where it is. A paper about this size and the title was Current Events. It came in on Wednesday--or it came in, I guess, Tuesday's mail, but it came--it was distributed every morning at Wednesday's history class. We got that. And then on Friday the class was a discussion--the whole class was a discussion of what was in Current Events--

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: --that week. So we, you know, we knew when Hitler went into the Sudetenland and we knew all--everybody who was on the Supreme Court. We just knew all this stuff so we were able to follow it--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --and so it meant something to us. Now they don't know--hell, they don't know where--like right now in Afghanistan, they don't know where it is! (Birdwhistell laughs)

BIRDWHISTELL: ----------(??).

SMITH: And, and I don't blame the kids for that. It's not the kids. It's the educators fault, and I realize you are an education major.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's all right.

SMITH: But we had a lot of educational philosophy. My daughter--one of my daughters is a schoolteacher--

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: --and she got married and quit for a while to have her children, but she's taught about 25 years now. Teaches in Winston Salem, North Carolina and, of course, they have a real good school system in North Carolina. And we talk about and it's quite accurate, and when she went to school to major in education, she got all kinds of courses on how to teach: educational psychology and all sorts of courses on how to teach. Didn't get anything on what to teach.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. Um-hm.

SMITH: So they get out and the guy says, "We're going to make you a history teacher." They don't really have to know anything about history. Well, they're not going to make them history teachers because they don't teach it anymore.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right.

SMITH: But whatever it is, teachers are just different. They're educated different, so you got the, the education philosophy has changed entirely of what you have to do to educate somebody. And that bothers me. That bothers me a great deal because one of the things under me in the military, when in the army, my last job as Adjutant 00:36:00General of the Army covered a whole broad scope of many, many things, one of which was the, the dependant, the dependants' school syst-, educational system, like all the--there're six posts like Ft. Knox and Ft. Campbell, several posts in the United States plus, plus all overseas in, in Germany and, and Japan, and we had something like 350 or 360,000 kids in K-12 all over the world. And as a result, I was al-, I was usually called upon to speak to the NEA, the National Education Association, at their national convention in Washington every year and I did. And I, I--both years--the two years that I did it, I had a question-and-answer period after I explained how, how we worked ours, and every year the question came up worded maybe differently but the same thing gives, said--they asked, "Why is it that the Department of the Defense Dependants' Schools consistently outscore the public 00:37:00schools almost every year?" Said, "How does that--how does that happen, and you're all over the world with them, and all over the United States with all kinds of diversified populations and communities, and just --- -------(??), why do they make better grades?" And I said--I--my standard answer was, "I'll be glad--I'm happy to have that question. There are only--you won't believe it, there are only two basic reasons why that happens. Now, you can break that down and right a book about it, but there're two reasons: we create an environment in which learning is possible, and we require that the, the children master the requirements of one grade before they're promoted to the next. We don't believe in social promotion." I said, "That's my answer." And they'd say, "Is it really that simple?" And you know, every time they come crowding up to the stage after to talk about that. But that really is essentially all there was to it. You know, we--social promotions had then become big--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --and we didn't have them in the military schools and dependent schools. There's just no social promotions at all. In fact, a first cousin of mine was superintendent of schools at Fort Knox for years and years and years. He retired there.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really? I didn't know that.

SMITH: Died a couple of years ago, but he retired from there. But I've 00:38:00always been a real bug about education. And my children fortunately got out of college. The, the youngest one graduated in 1970 just about the time the colleges were falling apart and stopping to educate people. And I was at a KLC conference, oh, a year--the last year I was mayor, I believe, up in Lexington and it was about education. And the fellow was a--kind of a real good speaker, I forget now where he was from. We had a lot of--KLC has a real good program of--educational type of program for you. And he said, "How many of you graduated from high school in the last thirty years?" And a lot of them held up their hand. Of course, I didn't because it'd been longer than that. (laughs) And then he'd say--and he said, "How many of you remember studying civics in high school?" And none of them raised up their hands. He said, "Nobody? Nobody?" He says, "Well, I didn't expect anybody because if I did I wouldn't believe you because civics has not been taught in high school for more than thirty years in the United States."

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: And I hadn't thought about that. But it's, it's true. And, you know, we knew all about how the government was organized and, and the Supreme Court and the relationship between Congress and the executive and judicial and legislative branches.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Down in little old backward Burkesville, Kentucky, we knew all that. We were taught all that. And we took examinations and, brother, if you didn't get it, you didn't pass. There were--we had--in my graduating class we had one 27-year-old, one 26-year-old, and had two or three that were 22, 23.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: But they stayed with it and they finally graduated. So I, I think that we are under-educating a whole--two generations already, maybe three as you count back, but we have--we have under-educated generations of people in the United States, and that is bad when other countries are pinning down. You know what, things like science things we, we run about--we rank about seventh or eighth in industrial nations now.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And, you know, that's a shame because that was always one of our strong points before. And, and education is the key to the future.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: So while your kids may be twenty percent of your population now, but they're a hundred percent of your future.

BIRDWHISTELL: (laughs) That's right.

SMITH: You can't deny that.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right. So when you're--

SMITH: Let me say one more thing about education.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, sure.

SMITH: I've got to get these rec-, I don't get the chance to gripe much to people--

BIRDWHISTELL: No, this is your story!

SMITH: --to people who are intelligent enough to understand what I'm saying.

BIRDWHISTELL: People will thank you. This is your story.

SMITH: But it, it really bothers me that we get all this criticism of, of the money being paid to chief executives of, of big organizations, big companies, and I, I've run what, in effect, is a big company a lot, and at the same time, at the same time we don't say anything about people--those who entertain us like athletes and actors and musicians, millions and millions and millions of dollars, and we don't decry the proposition that we pay the people who are teaching our children, who are the future of this nation, such abysmal salaries for what they do.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: So what they're being paid and their contributions to society 00:41:00have no--

BIRDWHISTELL: There's no correlation?

SMITH: Yeah. And this is something else about being in the army, especially after being in the ----------(??). Get this: you learn to be objective about things. You learn to work with facts, not emotions or feelings, and you learn analytical thinking. You try to go to the hub of the problem. Some of the arguments that are going on these days about different things just absolutely boggle my mind. I don't understand it at all. This country is more--is, is more divided racially, by gender, by sections of the country than it ever has in my memory. You know, there are really two--there are two United States. There is the, there is the urban United States and there is the rural United States, and they don't think alike, they aren't the same kind of communities, they don't--take SUVs. You have all these--all the liberals say, "Well, get rid of the SUVs. Don't need the SUVs." Well, hell, when I was Washington I had people working with me, civilians, 00:42:00that lived in Washington and all that had never had a driver's license. A car is a nuisance in a place like New York City unless you got a chauffeur to drive you around or, or unless you lived out in the suburbs.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right.

SMITH: So SUVs to them aren't important except for status, the ones who can afford it. But out in places like this, what they call "the fly-over country" between the East and the West Coast and the upper the Midwest, Michigan and that area, things like that, you live with pickup trucks and you haul--you, you can count the number of pickup trucks you see empty on the--with all--on the fingers of one hand. Damn near everybody's got something in the back end.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right.

SMITH: Or an SUV. I've got to haul my dog. My dog weights a 170 pounds and I have to take it to a vet in Glasgow. I have to have something like that to haul the dog in.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right.

SMITH: So it's a practical thing.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: But everybody is so damn selfish and self--and, and impressed with themselves that they don't want--they want everybody to do like they think they ought to do.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: Why in the hell get this--I hate to bring up Rodney King but when he said, "Why can't we just get along?," there's a whole lot to that, you know. (laughs) But Kentucky's pretty much the same. We have the 00:43:00Golden Triangle is dif-, all different than the rest of the states.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Let me turn this over.

[Pause in recording.]

SMITH: I served on a lot of state committees as well as district. One time I remember seventeen committees, and I was chairman of six of them here in Kentucky. And one of them was the Industrial Revenue Bond Oversight Committee--

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: --which, which you get the applications from, from companies that want to start something, and want to--they want to issue industrial revenue bonds to finance it?

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: They all come before our group and we had the final say, really. And about eight out of every ten came from the Golden Triangle between Louisville and Lexington and Covin-, Covington, and the rest of the state had nothing going for it. And really, they're different. They're like different states or almost like the United States between this- -its metropolitan area along the East Coast and the West Coast and I'd say the upper, upper Midwest, Michigan up in that area, and, and the rest of the country. They're just different and they don't really have very much in common. Consequently they argue all the time, and they 00:44:00argue without objectivity. They argue mostly--I claim--it's pretty obvious listening to me that I'm pretty much a conservative, except in social ways I'm not quite so conservative. But I'm soc-, I'm, I'm conservative as far as fiscal stuff is concerned. And it just, it just seems odd to me that, that people, that people think they're entitled to their own facts. You know, there's an old saying in argument I learned years ago in debating teams, "Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts." And we have all sorts of allegations that both couldn't possibly be true.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And nobody tells us the truth because the press is damn near as, as polarized as the rest of the nation. You know, the Courier-Journal and the Lexington paper, as far as I'm concerned, are, are terrible for Kentucky. It didn't used to be that way years ago.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: Both of them are just liberal as all hell, and they just bang down all the time like this. So I get the Washington Times Weekend Edition, and I get the Human Events newspaper, the Middle America News and, oh, Spectator magazine and what else do I get? I did get 00:45:00the Weekly Standard. I canceled it. I've got--was getting too--I was getting too much stuff to read.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And I read them religiously. And you can read the same story in the Washington Times and in the Courier-Journal, and you don't even think you're reading about the same event.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: Yeah. Yeah. Nobody gives--and really the people don't know what the facts are because they--these alleged certain things that are--that couldn't--are mutually exclusive, yet they both use that to bolster their argument. Well, if you don't have an objective mind, an analytical mind, you're not going to pick that up. Come in. This is my wife--

[Pause in recording.]

BIRDWHISTELL: As you were getting this good basic high school education and becoming aware of all the developing events in the world and in the country, what were your ambitions at that time when you're fifteen, sixteen or so--

SMITH: Oh,--

BIRDWHISTELL: --a junior and senior in high school?

SMITH: --as far as I can remember, when I first started thinking about 00:46:00me and while I was going to do high school, I always, I always wanted to be a soldier.

BIRDWHISTELL: From--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --as early ----------(??)?

SMITH: My--my older brother joined the army in 1935 at Fort Knox, that outfit right there as a matter of fact.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?

SMITH: And, and he used to sometimes take me up on a weekend to spend a weekend there, and so--and maybe some serge-, he knew who was going to be away. If he wanted, some sergeant would be going, and I'd sleep in that sergeant's room and, and eat in the mess hall and all that stuff, and I liked that. I liked the discipline. I liked the cleanliness of the barracks. Hell, you could eat off the floor and, and everything is clean, as neat as a pin. They knew exactly what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it, and that, that impressed me, and I wanted to be a soldier!

BIRDWHISTELL: Huh. Now, had people in your family bef-, before--

SMITH: No.

BIRDWHISTELL: --this generation been in the service?

SMITH: Not to, not to my knowledge. I had some relatives a long time ago in the Civil War and the, the Revolutionary War--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right. There's no one--

SMITH: --but no, no-, not recently. And I, I just--that, that was what I wanted to do. I never considered doing anything else.

BIRDWHISTELL: So you graduate from high school in what year?

SMITH: 1940.

BIRDWHISTELL: 1940. And, and you choose not to go to college or to--

SMITH: Well, you've got to bear in mind those were mighty hard times.

BIRDWHISTELL: So I--no, I --

SMITH: Mighty hard time. My, my--and my parents couldn't have paid for college. My grandfather probably would have, but the price for doing that would be coming back here and, and maybe working for him and managing or, or doing the paperwork and--

BIRDWHISTELL: I see.

SMITH: --bookwork for his farms or something like that, and it meant spending your life in Burkesville, and that didn't seem very attractive to me.

BIRDWHISTELL: That just wasn't ----------(??).

SMITH: No, that didn't--

BIRDWHISTELL: Where did people--the people who went to college from Burkesville--from, say, Burkesville High School, where did they--

SMITH: Western mostly.

BIRDWHISTELL: Western?

SMITH: Yeah. Ninety percent of them went to Western.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: A few, a few might've gone to--well, some went to Lindsey Wilson back when it was a junior college, then they'd go to Western for two more years, but that, that was pretty much it. Western was by far the, the most popular one. A lot of people went to Western.

BIRDWHISTELL: So you decided you wanted to join the military--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --and how did you go about doing that?

SMITH: Well, back in those days--this is before the war started--and- -but everybody knew there was going to be one, so the military was building up and they had recruiting parties come through all these little towns, you know, with a--well, the one that came here was a--a scout car with a .50-caliber machine gun on the front and--

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?

SMITH: --and two .30 calibers on the rear. Came in town with sirens going all like that and parked on the square.

BIRDWHISTELL: (laughs) That would get people's attention.

SMITH: Oh, yeah, everybody went. And, of course, the attitude toward the mil-, military wasn't like it is now. (laughs) It was real good then.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: And, and I, I thought about it, said "By golly, that's sort of--I want to be one of those. I want to learn to do that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Who did you--

SMITH: I want to drive one of those things, shoot one of those guns, ride one of those motorcycles. Had a motorcycle, a military motorcycle went with them, too.

BIRDWHISTELL: Did you tell your father that's what you wanted to do?

SMITH: Yeah, I did and, and I wasn't old enough. And he said, "Well, you're not old enough, Paul." And I said, I had said, "I know, but I know a lot of people falsify their ages and nobody is going to raise any questions." And, and he said, "Well, we'll talk to Mama." And my 00:49:00mama said, "Paul, if that's what you want." Of course, Clifton had done real well. He'd gone up rapidly. He was a--I guess he was a tech sergeant or a master sergeant already, which was the highest enlisted grade back in those days. And he was smart, book smart and very--he made--his, his grade out of this high school is never been equaled to this day. He didn't even go to school most of his senior year because he'd already completed all the credits.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow.

SMITH: And so they signed it and I went up there. Back then you had to find a place to--or try to find a company--you know what a comp-, you know anything about the military?

BIRDWHISTELL: I don't know as much as I probably should.

SMITH: You know, like you have companies and regiments and stuff like that?

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Well, a company is the smallest administrative unit.

BIRDWHISTELL: Okay.

SMITH: You had to find a company that had a vacancy for a new private in order to get in the army.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: See, the draw--the draft hadn't started ----------(??).

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. So you really had to find your own way?

SMITH: Yeah, you did. And I had to go to Fort Knox and I found--and Clifton knew of, of a couple of companies in, in that outfit that, that had a vacancy. And I went down to the machine gun troop of the First Cavalry, and the first sergeant was a friend of Clifton's, my brother, 00:50:00and, and Clifton had told him I was coming so he gave me a thing saying that they would accept me as a private in the company in their troop. And then you had to go across the post to the enlistment station and present this certificate, and then they'd call and verify it, and then you could enlist.

BIRDWHISTELL: I didn't know that.

SMITH: Getting on, getting on was hard. We had, you know, we had sergeants--we had a lot of sergeants with college degrees.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Because, you know, back in those days college degrees were going begging because there just weren't--there wasn't suitable work for anybody. We had two buck sergeants I know of, they had--they both had bachelors degrees, one of them from Western.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: And so that was it. So I got in and, boy, they let you know right away where you were and what, what was going to happen to you because I--(both laugh)--I've never forgotten this in my life. Of course, I was--I didn't ever do anything illegal. I didn't drink or smoke because if you smoked, you couldn't play basketball in Burkesville, that's all there was to it. You (snaps fingers) were off the team, just like that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: I smoke now but I didn't then. And anyway, when I--when we got up there for--we, we had 24 boys in my group, and they were all young boys like--not as young as I was, they were like 18, 19.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And they were primarily from Kentucky, West Virginia, and Southern Ohio. And we had to live out in the parade ground that's out--on the outside in tents.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: Sure, because we were recruits. We weren't soldiers yet! And they had the big, nice brick barracks there, brand new brick barracks with showers and floors that you could eat off, waxed floors.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, and here you are--

SMITH: And we could go inside to use the latrine, take a shower or something like that, and to eat our meals--

BIRDWHISTELL: But you --

SMITH: --but otherwise we had to live out in the parade ground, and it was August in Fort Knox, hotter than the blue blazes! (Birdwhistell laughs) And that first morning we all--they got us all out, lined up so a red-headed sergeant walked up and down in front of us. He looked like you could strike a match on his face, (laughs) you know. Of course, they didn't scream at you. They didn't intimidate you, but they didn't have to back then.

BIRDWHISTELL: (laughs) Did that--

SMITH: And he walked up and down and looked at us and turned around, chewing tobacco there, spits tobacco, says, "Well, you young people might as well learn to like it here because nobody gives a damn if you 00:52:00don't." (Birdwhistell laughs) I'll never forget, those were the exact words and I never forgot that to this day.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's so funny!

SMITH: And I thought, oh!

BIRDWHISTELL: What have I done?

SMITH: Of course I kind of knew what to expect--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --but he meant it.

BIRDWHISTELL: But still just being there at--

SMITH: --and nobody did anything--didn't try to get ----------(??) because then, any NCO, or non-commissioned officer, could march you across the street and lock you up in the guardhouse. And they had five days to what they called prefer charges against you, and during those four or five days they could do anything they wanted to with you and did. (Birdwhistell laughs) So then--and anybody--it doesn't make sense to buck a system you know you can't buck. You know, the old saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?" There's a hell of a lot to that. Either join them or you get the hell out and get away. So I, I made up my mind--of course Clifton had already told me, he said, "You won't have any trouble." Said, "All you got to do is don't be thin-skinned. If somebody bawls you out, take it like a man." And the other thing is, "Do what you're told to do and do it the very best you can, and that'll separate you from the others."

BIRDWHISTELL: Very good advice!

SMITH: That, that really was good advice--

BIRDWHISTELL: It really was.

SMITH: --and that's exactly what I did.

BIRDWHISTELL: (laughs) So this is August, 1940?

SMITH: Hmm?

SMITH: August of 1940.

SMITH: Yeah. August 13, yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: You're living out on the --you're living out on the parade ground.

SMITH: Sixty, sixty years ago--sixty-one years ago last August, yeah. That's--I don't feel like I supposed to be that old, but sixty-one years ago! (laughs) Then I made--and I was promoted to corporal in that troop in a shorter time than any would have been since World War I.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: I was still just seventeen. I made corporal. But what happened, I, I, I wouldn't want this published anywhere, but I think it's kind of interesting because I had lucky breaks, but I guess I had some basic good qualification to begin with. We were out on a report, on the parade ground parading. Back then, basic training, a lot of it was marching, marching, marching, marching, marching, marching, because you've got automatically obey (snaps fingers) everything just like that. And we had a--in a tank outfit you don't carry rifles. We'd never ever saw a rifle yet. We carried .45 pistols, and they're heavy- -big heavy pistols. And first thing in the morning you did is check out your .45, strap it around your waist. We wore--you could see in there- -boots and riding breeches, which was a cavalry kind of thing, and then 00:54:00we marched, that old .45 swinging along your hip. By the end of the day it rubbed your hip raw as hell, you know. The next day you put it on and go right back through it again. But one hot, sweaty day they, they marched us all and the whole company into the mess hall, and the mess hall was inside. A nice, nice, beautiful room really, and sat us all down. Well, they had something brand new that had been introduced to the army called the AGCT, Army General Classification Test. They said for a better name you can call it an IQ test. Of course, there, there never was and still aren't any pure IQ tests, but it's an indicator--

BIRDWHISTELL: The IQ test came out of the army, I think.

SMITH: That's right, it did, and--

BIRDWHISTELL: That's the first place they--

SMITH: --yeah, the military people started that. And this was the first one ever given. Again, now, this was before the war. And they sat us all down in the mess hall, explained the test to us, passed it out, gave us the signal to start. Well, I finished my paper--I was always really--I was always real good at tests. Tests never bothered me. I'm a, I'm a real good test taker. And I got the paper up to turn it in 00:55:00to the proctor and he said, "Are you finished with this?" I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Did you answer--did you answer all that you knew?" I said, "I answered all of them, or tried to." (Birdwhistell laughs) He said, "You finished the test, all 150 questions?" I said, "Yes, sir." I didn't want to make a big deal about it. He said, "Well, I'll tell you, nobody's ever finished this test. You must have--you must've left out a hell of a lot them." I said, "Sir, I answered every question that I knew to answer." And anyway, then he left and, and about a week later or something like that it came down that I'd made the third highest grade in the whole damn regiment, over fifteen hundred soldiers all the way from the master sergeants right on down.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: It shocked the hell out of me! (Birdwhistell laughs) And so it would've been a 132 IQ. And so they right away took me out and decided they're going to--that I should do something to work with your brain. They sent me to the Administrative Clerical School, which had just opened up across the post--

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: --to teach you company administration and, and the--how to type 00:56:00and all that kind of stuff, and all the rules and regulations the army went by to become a company clerk. And so I finished that, and about that time it turned out, and I didn't know it, the company clerk was a--most, most of the people, like even the privates first class, had ten, twelve, fourteen years service as corporal. Then you had to be a sergeant to be married, and this corporal who was the company clerk was about 34--34, 35 years old. Anyway, they found out he had secretly married and hadn't told them, but they didn't have anybody to take his place, and that's why they sent me to this school. So I came back and then they--he got discharged from the army, got busted down to private because--for getting married without permission because he was not supposed to do it.

BIRDWHISTELL: How come?

SMITH: Well, it's against, it's against regulations. Regulations are regulations, Everybody knew it, you know. (Birdwhistell laughs) Because I think the big thing was that the buck sergeants and below 00:57:00were supposed to live in the barracks with the men--

BIRDWHISTELL: I see.

SMITH: --because they kept control and they also tutored them at night and stuff like that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And then also you didn't get any allowance for a wife or child- -children, so you were going to be in financial trouble sure as hell. Bound to.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Yeah.

SMITH: So it, it just was a rule. I mean, you know, the civilian liberals didn't control the army rules back (laughs) in those days. These were the rules of the army and it worked. Anyway, they busted him down to private so he, he--or he had the choice of that or discharge, so he took the discharge and they made me the company clerk and, and then promoted me to corporal. And, let's see, this is--that was April, yeah, I was still just seventeen. I had--I wasn't old enough to be in the army yet.

BIRDWHISTELL: That was April of '41?

SMITH: April of '41, yeah. I don't remember the exact date but it was some time in April.

BIRDWHISTELL: And you're still at Fort Knox?

SMITH: Yeah, same company. Machine gun troop, First Cavalry. That's where I was all along. Machine gun troop with the First Cavalry Regiment. And that one that you see right over there.

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: And I, I took to that like a duck takes to water. I really--you had to type a payroll back then. You had 120 men that come--had 00:58:00to type down on the payroll the men's last name, first name, middle initial, serial number, and any remarks that affected their pay that month, if they had a change or a promotion or something like, and then put down the amount of pay where you typed it. And so I typed up these payrolls and, and it wasn't, oh, two, three months, I could type down every man of those 120 men with their first name--first name, middle initial, without even looking (Birdwhistell laughs)--without even looking at anything. And so the other guys--the other companies couldn't do that, and they'd pay me to type their payroll. (both laugh) So I was making money doing that, too. I--anyway, anyway, I just took to that like a duck takes to water. And I thought to myself, "Well, this is my forte."

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: There's no--I don't--no point in me going out and shooting at people and getting shot at. This is what I'm good at, and then I really liked doing it. I really liked figuring out the things that were hard to figure out.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's good.

SMITH: So I took to that like a duck takes to water, and then the, the company commander was a fellow named Ralph Young who was a graduate of Texas A&M, a captain that took ROTC at Texas A&M, which put out an awful lot of officers for war--for, for war--for the army during World 00:59:00War II. And he, he took a liking to me for some reason or another, and, and he said, "Well, I'm going to appoint so and so company clerk, and I'm going to make you a squad leader of a machine gun squad, a combat squad," he says, "because you need both to get ahead." Said, "You've got a lot of potential to get ahead in the army, but you need both." And he said, "I'm going to--that's what I'm going to do." So I, I said, "Yes, sir. Okay." And, and I thought, "Well, boy, that's good!" And, hell, I'm still just a (laughs) kid, you know, and I get there and back in those days--bear in my mind there are no draftees. There's 240,000 people in the army, and three years later there are ten and a half million.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: So we were just--we were the only soldiers in the army. And they had--every company had what they called "the goon squad," which is the troublemakers. The guys who've been in--guys who have been in trouble and were perennial troublemakers, they put them all in one squad. And they always made the corporal--the newest corporal became the squad leader of the goon squad. That was their first job. (Birdwhistell 01:00:00laughs) And so they gave me the goon squad. And we had bunks lined up- -the squad leader slept here and the other people--there were ten men-- the other people slept in the next lobby. And your area--every morning, every morning you had to mop up, mop that area even if it wasn't dirty. I don't care if it was or not, they had to mop it and then you had to put wax on it, and you'd have--we had these electric scrubbers--it's- -there were spinning brushes on the bottom that polished it. That was every morning we did that. You could have eaten off a barrack's floor anytime. The neatest place you ever saw in (laughs) your life.

BIRDWHISTELL: I'd guess.

SMITH: And we had to do that and, and one morning there was a fellow named Vincent, and I never will forget him. He was in the goon squad. He was also just a, just a troublemaker and kind of a bully. He was a big--fairly big fellow. He wasn't as big as I was, although I didn't think about that at the time because by then I'm about a 185 and I was 5'10". I've shrunk about an (laughs) inch since I've gotten older. And he didn't, he didn't mop up around his bunk. Everybody was--you 01:01:00had one mop and you passed it around. Everybody was supposed to do it. And he didn't do it, and so I told him, "Mop up. You got to mop up under your bunk because you didn't do it yet." And he said, "Well, there's no chicken"--they called younger chickens--younger boys--he says, "There's no chicken corporal is going to tell me what to do." And I remember reading or hearing one of the sergeants say it some time and I made a big mistake. And I said, "Vincent, if I couldn't make you do it, I wouldn't have told you to do it." (Birdwhistell laughs) And, and, and I then thought--I thought inside, "What the hell did I say?" (both laugh)

BIRDWHISTELL: I was going to say--

SMITH: I mean , it leapt right out of the movies but, but is that going to work for me? It worked for Buck Jones, but I don't know whether it will work for me or not. So he said, "You can't make me do it," and he came at me.

BIRDWHISTELL: Hmm.

SMITH: And I never had a fight in high school. One of the few boys I ever knew. I never had a fight. And we fought--I don't remember the details of it but I do remember that in just a little while I was sitting straddle of him beating the hell out of him. They pull-, pulled me off of him and said, "You're going to kill him! You're going to kill him!" Well, I was scared to death! You know he was about 25 01:02:00or 6, and no matter what your size, if you're seventeen and you got a boy-- a man 25 or 6--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --well, you're kind of afraid of him, you know?

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right.

SMITH: You just psychologically--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --don't want to get messed up with that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And from that day on I didn't have any trouble with anybody in the squad.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow.

SMITH: When I told them to do something, they--of course I always told them nicely. That's another thing my, my brother said, too, is, "Don't raise your voice and shout at people because your stripes tell who you are. They know. You don't have to show off every day what you are."

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And he said, "It'll, it'll do you more harm." He said, "The worst mistake you can make is to humiliate anyone in the presence of someone else."

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: "Don't ever do that." And that was good advice. I never forgot that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: But anyway, after that I never had any trouble at all.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow. You--

SMITH: And so they just--

BIRDWHISTELL: --you were challenged though?

SMITH: Yeah. Things went on from there, and I was in cadre to the Sixth Armored Division. They were forming a new division. They'd take about, about three, four thousand regular army soldiers who were like- -like we were and put the key spots in the commissioned ----------(??). And then they'd put about ten thousand draftees in to be trained, and 01:03:00that's how the divisions were all built up during World--

BIRDWHISTELL: I see.

SMITH: --War II, and it was a rapid thing that took place all the time. And I was cadred out to the Sixth--to the Sixth Armored Division. It formed at Fort Knox with the cadre, and then we went--we moved to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, the first--we were the first troops to occupy Fort Chaffee. It was a brand new fort out there. And we marched all the wheeled vehicles from road--from Fort Knox to Arkansas and I was riding a motorcycle for traffic control out there for Headquarters Company, because Headquarters Company is where I was. And so we got, we got out to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, and then I--that was in February of '42, and then--

BIRDWHISTELL: Let me, let me just back up a little bit and--you said earlier that people could see the war coming--people could see the war coming, that--

SMITH: Oh, yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --America's involvement--

SMITH: Oh, yeah. It was just a matter of what was going to get us involved and when.

BIRDWHISTELL: What did you think was going to get us involved? What were you anticipating prior to Pearl Harbor?

SMITH: Well, I, I, I don't think anyone expected it for a while. I expected that, that as soon as Roosevelt could get enough backing, he would go ahead and declare war to go and save Europe. What we wanted to do was save England--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --because England would've been--could've been occupied and taken over completely by Hitler in a matter of months.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And so we, we all felt that that was--we were going to go to, to Europe anyway to save England and hopefully free the rest of Europe. But I never knew of anybody that even dreamed about the Japanese attack on Pearl. We--in fact, we weren't thinking about the Japanese much at that time because they didn't have any of our territory.

BIRDWHISTELL: So I'm sure people have asked you before, and it's one of the questions that your generation gets asked, you know, where were you and what did you think, what went through your mind when you first got the news about Pearl Harbor?

[Pause in recording.]

BIRDWHISTELL: We're back on, General. We'd--before we took a little break there I'd asked you about that question that your generation gets 01:05:00asked all the time, where were you on December 7, 1941 and what was your reaction to the news?

SMITH: I was right here in Burkesville.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: I'd just come back for three months maneuver in Louisiana and in--around the coast and up to North Carolina. By then it's December 7, cold as the devil. We got--as I recall we got back to Fort Knox on Friday and, of course, they let every-, let everyone go home. So on Saturday, I came home to Burkesville, and Sunday, I was home hearing on the radio about this and they, of course, directed that all servicemen report to their bases immediately--

BIRDWHISTELL: Immediately.

SMITH: --and I did. I went back up to Fort Knox and, and around my outfit was--as I say, it was an old regular army outfit, the--this sounds odd these days, but everybody from the sergeants right down to the privates were just cheering, says--and you know what their attitude was? "By George, we're now going to get to do, do the thing we've been 01:06:00training all these years to do. Let's go after them." That's just what the way--and that's the--they were ready to go and they were one of the first--I was cadred out to the Sixth then, and they went on over to North Africa, and at that first big tank battle as Kassarine Pass in North Africa, almost fifty percent of that company was killed.

BIRDWHISTELL: Fifty percent?

SMITH: That's what I read later. I've got a, a--an album of, of the people that were in the company when I was a private and went in. And I look at those pictures every once in a while because I don't know which ones were killed and which ones weren't. But I look at them knowing half of them were dead. Had one fellow from here, a good friend of mine, went all through the war as a tank commander and, and fighting in a tank, and he was killed two weeks after the war when his tank ran over a mine that had not been discovered and blew it up after the war was over. He went through four years of war and didn't get a scratch (laughs) and got killed two weeks after the war. But the, the attitude--well, of course, the attitude of the country was pretty much the same thing. You know, everybody was a hundred percent--there 01:07:00were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of, of young men lined up at recruiting stations all over the United States even the day after Pearl--Monday and Tuesday after Pearl Harbor.

BIRDWHISTELL: Let me ask you two questions about Pearl Harbor. Ever since that event there's been second guessing, third guessing-- guessing, you know, books written about how that could have happened. Did it occur to you at the time that that was--how could the United States be so vulnerable? How could we lose three thousand men in one-- and all of our ships in one attack?

SMITH: No, because you have to bear in mind that you didn't have the communications and the ability to monitor the communications that you have these days. We had no way of knowing that the Japanese were going to do that. I--it turns out that people at the higher levels thought they might do something. You know, we placed an oil embar-, oil embargo on Japan which was suicide for Japan. They have no oil.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And they were upset about that and, of course, we'd been selling them scarp metal for years that they helped to build their armaments with, but I don't think anybody really thought they'd do that. I think ever-, most people that I knew thought when it started it was going to 01:08:00start in Europe by something else happening or by Roosevelt being able to convince the people we ought to go help Europe.

BIRDWHISTELL: Well, then once it happened and you already had been following closely the events in, in Europe and the attack on England, now you've got the Japanese in the war, was there ever initially any doubt in your mind that we could be successful in this operation? Were, were--did you have any doubts at all that we would ultimately win this--

SMITH: Oh, well, no. Not--no, servicemen didn't. We did not. I don't think the population did. We, you know, we just assumed that we were the biggest, strongest country in the world, and we had to prove it. So I don't think we ever--there was some concern that we might be attacked, particularly the West Coast.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right.

SMITH: There was some concern about that. But I don't think--the only time I had any doubts about it was years later, in April, I guess it was, of '45, that Roosevelt died. I think it was April of '45. I was 01:09:00stationed in the Pentagon as a young lieutenant, and when the, when the word came over--came out that he had been--I was in--at work in the Pentagon, now I remember--when the word came out that he had been--that he had died, my first thought was--I just almost turned pale ------- ---(??) and said, "My God, now, we'll win the war--I mean, we'll lose the war."

BIRDWHISTELL: We'll lose the war.

SMITH: What will we do without Roosevelt?

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And--

BIRDWHISTELL: Well, because it--

SMITH: --several others because I never remembered any president except Roosevelt!

BIRDWHISTELL: --you--you're whole--yeah, your whole life.

SMITH: And, and most of the people I knew sort of had that thought. It wasn't spoken out loud. I never spoke it out loud, and I don't think anybody else did, but later on several people said they thought the same thing, but he's all we'd ever known--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --and everybody liked him and he was our father figure, you know.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: It hadn't come about him having a mistress, and little things like that hadn't come out--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --so we just thought he was a great man. And we knew that the armed forces were strong enough that we would win it. We never had any doubt. I don't think any of us had any doubt about that. It was just a matter of how long it was going to take and how many people won't be lost doing it. But for a, for a short time there it was kind of panicky when he died.

BIRDWHISTELL: So when you returned to Fort Knox after Pearl Harbor, how does this immediately change your life? What, what happens--what, what starts to happen in your--in your life then?

SMITH: Well, ----------(??) I'm trying to put the years together, '41- '42. Well, just a couple of months after Pearl Harbor is when I was transferred to the Sixth Armored Division--

BIRDWHISTELL: Okay.

SMITH: --and, and went to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. I didn't--you know, we in the military never worried or thought about anything like that. You know, you did what you had to do, you were trained to do it, so you, you did what you're told to do. Never thought about questioning something. But then we went to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Then I was promoted to buck sergeant in February and went to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, and then I, I was--that was February of '42, and in June of 01:11:00'42 I became nineteen years old, I guess. Now--and always before in the army, to get a commission or to get--to make warrant officer you had to be 21, and they lowered the--they lowered the grades to eighteen just about the time I was becoming nineteen. So I applied for an opportunity to take a competitive test for appointment as a warrant officer and I apol-, I applied for Officer Candidate School both at the same time. And about a month--that was October--about two months later I got a call from the Division Adjutant General's Office telling me that I'd been ex-, my appointment as a warrant officer had been accepted, and I believe I was one of six people in the--in the division took it. They were all old master sergeants like my brother, they were 01:12:00old soldiers and stuff like that, and I was just a staff sergeant just barely (laughs) nine-, bare-, just turned nineteen. And they were all laughing at me for taking it. Well, mine was the first one to come back. Of course, they didn't, they didn't send them all at once. Mine was the first one to come back and I got sworn in as a warrant officer, and (Birdwhistell laughs) and the division adjutant general, who was a lieutenant colonel, said, "Well," said, "I've got a problem with you, Sergeant Smith." Said, "I've got your appointment here as a warrant officer on one hand, and on the other hand your application for Officer Candidate School has also been approved."

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: Says, "Which, which, which do you want?" I said--of course I was a wiz on regulations by that time. I was an expert on it. I said, "Well, sir, so far as I know, I don't have to choose. I can have them both. I can be promoted to warrant officer and I can go to OCS as an officer." He says, "Well, that's never happened before." I said, "Well, sir, I think that's right, though. I've checked the regulations and as far as I can see, that's the way it is." And, and one of his captains was in there who overheard, he said, he said, "Colonel, I think Sergeant Smith is right!" (Birdwhistell laughs) Said, "I can see no 01:13:00reason why we--why we don't have to promote him to warrant officer and send him on to OCS." The division was going out the next--a week later to California for desert training prior to going to--they thought then they were going to have to go to Africa because of desert training out in California, and that'd leave me behind either way because in either way I wasn't going to be part of the division anymore. So anyway, they, they decided that, yeah, that they'd do that. So I got promoted to warrant officer and I stayed at Fort Chaffee, although the division was going off until time to go to OCS two weeks later, and then I reported to Officer Candidate School at Mississippi State College in Starkville, Mississippi.

BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?

SMITH: Lived in a dormitory called Pole Cat Alley, a men's dorm. And I- -after that I met more people who went--men who went to Mississippi and lived in Pole Cat Alley than you can imagine. (Birdwhistell laughs) We were absorbed into the campus for that part. We had our own separate program and all like that--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right.

SMITH: --but we lived right on campus with the rest of the students.

BIRDWHISTELL: Where, where do you think this--how do you account for this sort of confidence and, and ambition you had as a 19-year-old 01:14:00young man that you would say, "No, I can, I can do both," you know?

SMITH: Well, I'd, I'd read the regulations.

BIRDWHISTELL: You just knew it, right?

SMITH: Well, I'd read the regulations. You know, it's in--everything- -in the army, everything is in regulations somewhere if you can find it. Well, I knew the regulations really well, and the ones I didn't know my older brother knew, and he told me, "You got them both." He said, "If you have any trouble, you get me to go in and I'll talk to the colonel." Of course he was the division sergeant major, the chief enlisted man in the whole damn division.

BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?

SMITH: But he didn't have to get involved in it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow.

SMITH: But he told me, he told me that I was right. And I don't know I'd, I'd, I, I guess I, I guess I began to think, and this is a terrible thing to say, I, I guess I begin to think that I was a little bit brighter and better informed than the other people I was working around.

BIRDWHISTELL: I mean that's, that's, that's not a terrible thing to say because--

SMITH: Because my, my--later on, my senior--officer senior to me had told me that--

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: --and, and I--because I was always told, if you get a job--say 01:15:00there're lieutenants and there are five of you and you're doing essentially the same thing, you do--you size them all up and you decide what you're going to have to do to outwork all of them, and you just do better than them. And if you're willing to work hard and work smart, you can do it if you want to do it. Just get your--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --the old saying, you get the head down and your tail up and you go after it, you know. (both laugh) So I just did that and I had- -after I had two or three of these little successes, I began to gain quite a bit of confidence--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --that I could do it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Well, that's--you know, this is why I spend time--you know, we're eventually going to talk about Burkesville more and your role as mayor, but that's why I spend time with mayors who come from these towns because here you come out of Burkesville, you know, in the 1930s, and yet you enter a broader world with great confidence and great abilities.

SMITH: Well, I didn't enter it with great confidence.

BIRDWHISTELL: Well, but I mean--

SMITH: I, I--

BIRDWHISTELL: --I mean--

SMITH: --entered with great trepidation.

BIRDWHISTELL: Well, but--

SMITH: But as things progressed and I saw what I could do, I gained confidence.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, that's what I'm saying, though, that you, you called 01:16:00upon a--you know, you're sort of--what you knew from here and the strength you had and, and developed that confidence.

SMITH: And I realize, too, much of my--wouldn't be surprised these days, I guess, that my high school education in Burkesville prepared me to go out as well as anybody's high school did from Male--from Male in Louisville or any, any other high school of people I ran into--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --just as much.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. That's what I was trying to say. You said it better, that, that--

SMITH: I was prepared better.

BIRDWHISTELL: --coming out of Burkesville you were as prepared as--

SMITH: I was prepared better than I--competitively, than I realized I was.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: I guess I just assumed because we were a little bitty town way back here in the backwoods that--that I, I've made the speeches many times, that there are as many brilliant minds in the rural areas of Kentucky and every other state as there are anywhere else.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: The only problem is giving them an opportunity to develop them.

BIRDWHISTELL: Giving them that chance. That's right.

SMITH: And that's true.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right, General. That's right. That's right. So you find yourself in Starkville, Mississippi? (laughs)

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: Now, some of the people I've interviewed about the--I mean, there's a difference in interviewing people about what happens in the actual war as opposed as to what's happening as the country is changing in, in the sense, General, that for young people, this war mobilization and the, and the changing climate in the country was quite a--was quite thrilling in a sense, because there's a--you're going places you'd never been before, you're seeing things you've never been before, there's new experiences and new opportunities, right? So in some ways it's a very upbeat time for a person in terms of meeting new people, going new places, those types of things, right?

SMITH: Um-hm.

BIRDWHISTELL: It's not entirely--it's not all negative, is what I'm trying to say. This is--

SMITH: What is not entirely negative?

BIRDWHISTELL: The war isn't automatically just an entirely negative for everybody's lives. That there's--

SMITH: Oh, no. No. No, no.

BIRDWHISTELL: --opportunities to be--to go places and do things and meet 01:18:00people and, and that--

SMITH: Oh, yes! You broaden yourself so much. Oh, yes!

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Yeah. I, I went to places--for an example, I had--when I was a boy growing up, of course, obviously we didn't have television, but we did have AM radio that reached all over the country. We got the--we got New York stations, we got Chicago stations, we got Los Angeles stations, we got New Orleans stations. We listened to the big band music from all over the country, the famous nightclub like the Latin Quarter in New York, and the Diamond Horseshoe and the Stork Club and the 21 Club--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --and the Pump Room, the Ambassador in, in Chicago and the Aragon in L.A., or the Aragon was in Chicago. They played in L.A. on one of the beaches. Anyway, we just dreamed about those places. I saw in the movies about all these places like the Moulin Rouge and the Lido in Paris and things like that, and I'm one of the few people I know that got to see all those places I'd heard about on the radio and I'd seen in the movies. I got to go to all of them, even the Rembrandt, the 01:19:00Rembrandt Museum in--

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: --Amsterdam and the Louvre in Paris and, and the El--the del Prado in, in Spain, in Madrid. I got to go to all those places that I'd seen and dreamed about as a, as a young fellow growing up.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: I got to see every one of them, and I was--I've got to say I was disappointed in most of them (Birdwhistell laughs), because I'd built such a picture of them, you know--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right. Right. Just what--yeah, again you said it better than I could, but the opportunity is out there to--

SMITH: Absolutely.

BIRDWHISTELL: --to broaden your--

SMITH: Absolutely.

BIRDWHISTELL: --broaden your life. But now you're in, you're in Starkville in, in, in school. Tell me how that--how'd that go? How, how did you enjoy that?

SMITH: Well, you're, you're in the school and you're graded just like in any other school. You have academic subjects, mostly academic subjects because you already had the military training. You get some military drilling and stuff, but it's mostly academic subjects. And then you take your examinations, and your final examination like everything else. And if you passed, then they have a commissioning ceremony which you're read your commission, you're sworn in as an officer and given the oath and they pin the bars on your shoulder and you're an officer. Then they give you your orders to where you're going to go next and 01:20:00what you're going to do.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm. So you didn't have any problems with that--

SMITH: No.

BIRDWHISTELL: --that part?

SMITH: No.

BIRDWHISTELL: So how long were you in Starkville?

SMITH: I never, I never, I never even considered that I might ever fail any examination I ever took. I never, never--it just never got in my mind I might because I prepared.

BIRDWHISTELL: How long were you in Starkville?

SMITH: It was for three months. Ninety days, early--that's why they called the second lieutenants "ninety-day wonders." All the OCS's were ninety days.

BIRDWHISTELL: And how would you describe to somebody who wasn't there what Starkville and Mississippi State was like at, at that point?

SMITH: Well, (laughs) I don't know. We didn't get to go anyplace but Starkville. You know we didn't, we didn't, we didn't get--

BIRDWHISTELL: No, but I mean that--

SMITH: --a lot of time off.

BIRDWHISTELL: --your time up there, what was it like? You lived in the dorm and was it a--

SMITH: And we ate in the college cafeteria with the other students and, of course, with all their football games, things like that, we had reserved seats for us and they're, they're the Bulldogs and we, we had us a little bulldog mascots that we took to the ball games and, and cheered with the cheering squad. We were just part of the campus. They were awful nice to us. They welcomed--welcomed us right 01:21:00into things so we were--we were Mississippi State people (laughs) and we liked it. We were Mississippi Bulldogs. And that's--of course, Mississippi and Mississippi State football--annual football game is one of the damnedest rivals in the--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --whole world, worse than Kentucky and Indiana, I believe.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And there'd be old men running out of their caves beating at each other (laughs) on the, on the side of each team and cheering like the devil for it. It was, it was quite an experience. It was a nice experience. Grueling because it was hard, it was everything condensed into three months what would've been probably an academic year. But again, you know, you know what you have to do so you do it. I've learned a long time ago that the best thing in the world is you do what you have to do. If it's bad, tough. Suck it up and do it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yes, sir.

SMITH: (laughs) You don't have a choice.

BIRDWHISTELL: So where do you go from there? Tell me where you go next.

SMITH: From, from Starkville or from here? (laughs)

BIRDWHISTELL: From Starkville.

SMITH: Oh, Starkville? I was assigned to the--to the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation to go on to North Africa at--that's at Newport News, 01:22:00Virginia, right down by Norfolk--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --on the James River.

BIRDWHISTELL: And so how long were you there?

SMITH: I was there a long time. There's a little more to it. I got there, and bear in mind the army is still expanding rapidly, rapidly.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: There's things called publications depots that handles all the, all the regulations and manuals and training manuals and instructional manuals on all the vehicles and the weapons and all like that, about 55,000, at that time, different items. There's a lot more now. Had to have depots--they have to send them to where--whoever needs them and send them with the stuff that goes overseas, and they had e-mail--or v-mail started about then, and there's like a million pieces of v-mail a month that had to be shipped to Africa. It was a great big --------- -(??) thing. And they only had one depot at the time in the basement of the Pentagon. So they're ex-, like everything else, they were expanding them. And I reported in to Hampton Roads and, of course, this AGCT 01:23:00score's was on my records all the time, and old colonel named George A. Moore--well, old--he was, was probably not older than fifty if he was that, but at nineteen he looked old, you know. (Birdwhistell laughs) And so he was the guy I had to report to, and I reported in to him and he said, "Well," said, "I see you're nineteen years old, that right, lieutenant?" I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Well, you can work 24 hours a day if you have to, is that right?" "If I have to, sir, I can do it." I said it tongue-in-cheek but he knew I did. And he said, "Well, I've got a problem," I said, "I've got to establish the AG depot down here at the port to serve everything in North Africa, and eventually, most of what's in Europe," and said I, "I don't have any idea what one of these things are." He said, "I know there's one in the Pentagon, but there aren't place else except the army (??), but," said, "there are seven others going to be put up in United States. Somebody's got to draw a plan for this thing, draw up the job descriptions, the employees, staff it, hire the people and get it going, and they've got six months to do it." He said, "You think you can do that?" I said, "Well, sir, I don't know anything about it either." He said, "Well, I 01:24:00see you've got a high AGCT score and you're nineteen years old, like I say you can work 24 hours a day or you can study twenty--you can work twenty and study the other four. You can find out." And he said, "I'm going to give you this job," and says, "you can go anywhere you want to. You can go to New York." He says, "There's one, one being made up in New York, one in Boston, and one in--and one in Baltimore." He said, "You can go to any of those you want to to see what they're doing and, and whatever you need I'll get for you. I'll back you all the way." Said, "I just--I'm sorry, I just don't know anything about it." Said, "It's never been done before, and you're going to have to do it on your own. You can go to the Pentagon and talk to people up there," said, "just tell the adjutant where you want to go and he'll give you orders." So--and he said, "I'm assigning two of your OCS classmates with you to work for you." And I said, "Sir, they're a lot older than I am." He said, "I know it, but they haven't had the experience you've had." He said, "They're going to be under you." So in my first assignment I had two of my OCS classmates working (laughs) for me.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh!

SMITH: And I did. I don't know what they called it, the Baltimore Steam Packet that winds the way up from Norfolk up to Old Point Comfort 01:25:00at Fort Monroe and then--and then ov-, on up the Chesapeake Bay to Washington--

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: --then it goes around the ocean and also goes to Baltimore and Newport (??). And you get on the thing about 7:30, at night and then you wind up where you're--where you are. You wake up in the morning like, for example, in Washington, D.C. So I got on that thing and I went up, went up there and went to both of them, and, and an old major named Stoff (??) was commanding the one at Baltimore. He was about, about forty, I guess. Most of the people, though, were from civilian lifes. There'd been all kinds of people called in from civilian life with specialties--

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: --like specialties in publication things like Central Ohio Paper Company in Columbus there. The president of that was called to active duty and made a major to head up--fix one of the depots. People like that. You know, railroad people were commissioned, brought in to run the military railroads. They brought many--that's what saved us in World War II was these civilian businessmen experts and engineers and scientists and stuff that they just gave them a commission based on 01:26:00experience, and they come in and went to work.

BIRDWHISTELL: Hang on just a second.

[Pause in recording.]

BIRDWHISTELL: Okay, so--

SMITH: And they, they--by the way, I think those, those were the unsung heroes of World War II. They, they contributed so much because the army didn't have the people to do that kind of stuff, and you didn't have time to teach anybody.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right. I mean--

SMITH: So the--for, for example, the commanding officer of the Newport News--of the Newport News-Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation was a big old brigadier general. We called him "Big Beef." He was baldheaded and had a great big belly, but what was he in civilian life? He was the president of Madison Square Garden.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: Imagine that. Well, hell, yeah! He knew big business stuff like nobody's business.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And a guy named Omar Jeter (??) was the president of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, the one--no, the one that runs up and down- -yeah, I guess it was. President of the railroad, and, and these people just put on uniforms, whatever the insignia was, and kept on doing what they'd been doing.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: That's what, that's what helped us through World War II. Most people don't know that--

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: --but that's what it was.

BIRDWHISTELL: And get it moving so quickly?

SMITH: Yeah, because it takes so much more than the fighters to win a 01:27:00war. You got maybe 20-25 percent of the people fighting, and you got the other 75 percent doing all the backup stuff that's required to--

BIRDWHISTELL: In the rear, yeah.

SMITH: --let the war happen.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: So that was, that was a great help to me. Anyway, to shorten the story, I, I got a place in the--they gave me a warehouse down on the dock where the ships are, and I got a, I got--I've got all the plans drawn up and job descriptions wrote up, people hired, and the next thing you know I've--I opened the depot one month earlier than I supposed to.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: And I had a 130 people working for me, and I was by far the youngest. Most of them were civilians, a few soldiers, a couple of officers, but then I got a big reputation in that business and about a little over a year later--a year and a half later, I guess, I got a call from the commander of the depot in Columbus, Ohio, as I say, this fellow had been to the president of Central Ohio Paper Company named Ray Polin (??), and he, he'd lost an officer and he called. I'd met him at a depot commanders conference. To digress for a second, they 01:28:00had a depot commanders conference in, in Chicago, and I got a picture of it somewhere if I can find it. I haven't been able to find it for a long time but, anyway, it showed all the--there's lieutenant colonel this, lieutenant colonel this, lieutenant colonel this, major this, and First Lieutenant Paul Smith after those. (both laugh) I'm, I'm this nineteen-year-old, twenty-year-old kid by all these guys in their mid-forties as a depot commander. [phone rings] But he offered me a job and--

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: My wife's got more damn friends. She knows everybody in the county, their wives, their children, and most of their dogs.

BIRDWHISTELL: I heard she's running for mayor, is that right?

SMITH: Yeah. Yeah, she's on the council now.

BIRDWHISTELL: Is she?

SMITH: And she's running for mayor this time. I don't know how it will come out. Of course it's early to tell.

BIRDWHISTELL: The--did you get your age straightened out with the army at some point?

SMITH: Yeah, later on I did. I didn't, I didn't yet. I didn't until after World War II.

BIRDWHISTELL: Okay. That's what I was wondering, if you --

SMITH: At Hampton Roads, by the way, I was on my way to North Africa and, and based on my records they stopped me there. They stopped me and put me on this job because if you had special requirement--I didn't 01:29:00know that at the time--if you've got some kind of special thing about you, why, you got managed. You know, somebody picked you up, you're an asset then.

BIRDWHISTELL: Were you concerned in--were you concerned in terms of--if you're interested in being career military, were you concerned that not being--going on to North Africa would hinder your promotions within the army?

SMITH: Going to North Africa would have helped it if I lived.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's what I mean.

SMITH: Oh, yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: But did you worry--were you--

SMITH: Well, no. Not--

BIRDWHISTELL: How did you feel about not going?

SMITH: Well, I guess, I guess my generation's different and especially we who were regular army services--

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: --or soldiers before the war--

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: --you do what the army tells you to do.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: You didn't--you don't question. You don't wonder if it's going to affect you then, you just do it.

BIRDWHISTELL: You just do it.

SMITH: And you do it as best as you can if you want to get ahead. You just do it the best you can.

BIRDWHISTELL: This was the opportunity you were given--

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --and that's what you--

SMITH: You, you accept the fact that the people over you are smarter than you are. That's not always true, but you--nevertheless, you accept that.

BIRDWHISTELL: You, you just have to--

SMITH: Yeah, we weren't rebels.

BIRDWHISTELL: ------------(??)?

SMITH: You can't be a rebel and last in the army this long. 01:30:00(Birdwhistell laughs) I'll tell you, Bill--I'd give Bill Clinton three months at the most. You just, you just can't do it that way. And, and, you know, that becomes a way of life especially as young as me. I grew from a boy to a man--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --like--knowing these things and doing these things. So it's automatic and it still is. It's as much a part of my personality now as, as a bald head is. So there's--we never questioned why.

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: We, we just did what we were told to do because if you didn't like it after the army, get out--after the war, get out of the army and forget about it.

BIRDWHISTELL: So why do you think you were so successful and being able to put together this, this depot? What--just hard work again?

SMITH: A combination of two things: smart enough to ask the right questions from people who knew the answers, and working hard enough to get it done. I've--I'd be down there on--we unloaded things out of boxcars with, with little forklifts, you know, ----------(??), I'd go down on Sunday driving that forklift myself. And because I did it, the other officers that worked for me did it too. See, I didn't ask 01:31:00them to, but they, they didn't want to look bad when I did it. And I just--I'd go down and drive a forklift. You did what you have to do.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: You--if you've got, if you've got--and I cannot emphasize that enough and I--civilian life, this doesn't exist on the part of very many people at all. If you've got a job to do, you do it. Whatever it takes that's not illegal or doesn't hurt someone, you do it. If you got to work 36--which I have many times--36 hours, 40 hours straight, you do it! You just do what you have to be doing. You suck it up and you say, if you get a hard time, use the old saying, "This too shall pass." You keep on doing it 'til it passes and then it's over with and you've got it done. That's just what you do. That's how you did it. That's--by the way, that's exactly the way I approached my mayor's job when I got to be mayor.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Well, that's what I'm thinking, see.

SMITH: That's what you have to do. And every successful person I know, except politics, you've got--in politics, you know, Lord knows what it takes to be successful, but every successful person I know, just about, has those characteristics, has done his job that way. They laughed 01:32:00at Ross Perot and made fun of him all the time, but I'll tell you one thing; somebody starts up with a, with a thousand dollars of investment and winds up over three billion dollars, people don't make money being dumb. (Birdwhistell laughs) I don't care what these liberals say, they don't get rich being dumb! (laughs) I never, I never saw a dumb man get rich.

BIRDWHISTELL: (laughs) No.

SMITH: But--and they all have the same thing, the, the ability to concentrate, to the exclusion of everything else, on what you're doing, and the ability to push yourself as far as you have to go to do it.

BIRDWHISTELL: You know, that reminds me, General, the--there was a local boy from Lexington who graduated from UK, and when the war started he got involved in the, he got in the army and was involved in helping to arrange for the private sector to get involved in the mobilization effort, and he learned a lot about business in that process. You know who that was? W.T. Young. That's how he got--

SMITH: Was who?

BIRDWHISTELL: W.T. Young?

SMITH: Oh, yeah! Bill Young, yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's how he got his start by--when he got in the army- -he was an engineer by training, and he got in the army and, and was involved in the mobilization of civilian stuff into the military effort.

SMITH: There are a lot of--there are a lot of people that did well in civilian life that, that started in the army and got, got their understanding of what you have to do to get things done.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: You have to ----------(??)---------- complain about your situation.

BIRDWHISTELL: (laughs) That's right.

SMITH: And, and still--well, this guy, a friend of mine, wound up General Dynamics president. He was a West Point graduate and a pilot in the Air Force. Was shot down over Germany. And he told me after he became pres-, first he was president of, of T.R.W., which is another great big company up in Cleveland, and we used to have--one day over lunch he used, he used to tell me, said--he said, "I'll ret-, I'll hire a retired military officer any day in the week because you don't have to teach them anything, you don't have to check their attitudes, because nine times out of ten they're going to do whatever you give them to do and they're going to do it the very best they can." He said, 01:34:00"I'll hire one hands down anytime."

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: I, I was offered all kinds of jobs.

BIRDWHISTELL: I'll bet.

SMITH: Later on after I got in the computer business, I was a--I was offered all kinds of jobs. I was--I think I'm probably jumping ahead, but I was in charge--I was actually the commander of the, the army computer systems command in Fort Belvoir, under the Pentagon, but we were stationed at Fort Belvoir that did, that did all of the, the development operations of all the computer systems and the personnel, logistics, and financial business, as well as tactical, in the whole world.

BIRDWHISTELL: Hmm.

SMITH: And I did the study that started that because the navy and the air force were screwing around and we wanted to get ahead and we did. So I wound up commanding that thing. I was offered some fabulous jobs around Washington when--about the time I got ready to retire.

BIRDWHISTELL: I'll bet.

SMITH: I could've gotten rich. Sometimes I regret having not done it-- or not having done it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: But you just, you just have an attitude without which you don't succeed. We don't think about it because that's the way you are, you know. You just get that way and that's the way you are. And if, if you and I are both officers and we--and we've got to do something that 01:35:00involves both of us and we have a disagreement on something, we iron it out and we agree on what to do. We shake hands on it, that's all that's needed. And you never break your word to a fellow officer. You never do it. And everybody understands you don't do it. So if you aren't going to agree, you don't give your word. You keep on 'til you do. But once you give your word, that's it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And I found out real quick in civilian life (laughs) that's not so. As a matter of fact, a written contract is not always enough in (laughs) civilian life. I'm not advocating there about being in the military, I'm just saying the differences.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right. When you met with the depot commanders from around the different places, were all of them run pretty much the same way? Had you all developed similar--

SMITH: Well, we were all doing the same things, and I haven't gotten to that story just yet. We were doing the same things, but we were doing it in different ways.

BIRDWHISTELL: Hmm.

SMITH: And later on--oh, what was that, '40--about a year--wasn't all of two months after that, I was transferred to Washington to the Pentagon, 01:36:00to the office that oversees the operation of all the depots, and also oversees the printing and the distribution of all of these things. There are millions of copies of these things that go all over the world all the time. And I was brought into there, and the fellow that was in charge of it, I knew him and he knew me just by me visiting on some official business there. But--not well but, anyway, he told me, he said, "You're, you're--I brought you in here for a specific reason, Paul." Said, "You're going to develop a standing operation procedure for all seven depots to follow on everything they do, from receipt of stock, from, from the accounting for the stock, or the stock records things, and, and the shipping and receiving, the whole thing from the time something comes in 'til the time it goes out. I want a detailed procedure for everything they do." Said, "You can think it up?" I said, "Yes, sir, I had one for mine." He said, "I knew that." Said, "You're the only one that does and (Birdwhistell laughs) that's why you're in here." He said, "Do you think you can cough it up enough to suit all 01:37:00of them?" I said, "Well, sir, I think so." He said, "Well, I'm going to assign to work with you and," he says, "he's a captain and you're a lieutenant, but," says, "you--neither one of you will be working for the other. You'll be working together. If you get along, you'll love him." His name was Harold Barnes, Nebraska, and Harold Barnes, turns out--he's a little bitty fellow.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: Little, short guy, intellectual-looking fellow, and he was a champion typist in the state of Nebraska. Won it three or four years in a row. He was a court reporter and he could type accurately a hundred words a minute. You never saw fingers--he was a little fellow, had long, slender fingers. You ever saw him, like playing boogie- woogie on a piano. His fingers, "prrrt" like that. So we sat down and set to work, and he--I picked, of course, he knew about the operation, too, but I, I would say something and he'd agree with it. I said, "Well, I'll, I'll dictate and you write." He dictated this thing and we wrote it down and we wrote that thing in about two months. It was this thick, the first one that ever existed for the army, and that got me a real reputation then because that got over everywhere. And that went 01:38:00out. Then I stayed there 'til in the end of--then I was on the way to, to Japan, you know, when, when the, the war in Europe was over and everybody was going to go to Japan. So I had not been overseas yet, see? I got stopped.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And I was, I was on the way to, to Japan, and it was at the Los Angeles Port of Embarkation that little town called Wilmington, right down south of Long Beach, ready to go and they pulled me off again. Something happened at the adjutant's office, a personnel officer or something, and they wanted to keep me there a few months to operate as personnel officer and then I'd go on to the Pacific. And to shorten the story, anyway, I did that.

BIRDWHISTELL: What were you going to do? When you're on your way to Japan, what were you being assigned to do?

SMITH: I don't know.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh.

SMITH: Wouldn't know 'til I get there, see.

BIRDWHISTELL: Orders were to--

SMITH: The people in the States, they just give them the people. The people over there decide what you're going to do.

BIRDWHISTELL: So you were in Washington until then--

SMITH: Yeah. Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --you got orders to go to, to Japan.

SMITH: Well, I asked, I asked to get to go because I needed to get overseas. If I was going to--because I had already decided I was going to stay in the army.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And I needed to get some overseas service in because I hadn't 01:39:00been! I hadn't seen--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. You had to get out of the country some way.

SMITH: Yeah. I, I hadn't heard a damn gun fired in my ear at all. (Birdwhistell laughs) And I went out to Los Angeles and, and while I was still there, they dropped the atomic weapon, August the eighth, or whatever the hell it was, 1945, and Japan surrendered right away.

BIRDWHISTELL: So there you are.

SMITH: So the war's over. (both laugh)

BIRDWHISTELL: Before you were--and you weren't able to get out of the country.

SMITH: Yeah. I don't want to misrepresent it. I was not anxious to go anywhere to get shot at.

BIRDWHISTELL: No, I--no, I understand.

SMITH: --because--and even --

BIRDWHISTELL: But for your career you needed--

SMITH: Yeah. Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: --to get out of the country.

SMITH: Even in, even in the combat theatre there's an awful lot of jobs where you're in soft danger without any--you're not like out laying in the jungle fighting back and forth. I didn't want to do that. I didn't volunteer because I, because I was past that point. I was too high ranking for that anyway. But, anyway, I got out and, and I had the, the worst--the only time in my life I ever lacked confidence in myself was at the end of the war, when the war was getting over and they, they offered any reserve officer, which I still was, reserve 01:40:00officers called to active duty during the war who wanted to stay in the army. [telephone rings]

[Pause in recording.]

SMITH: Oh, yeah, but this is important. I don't know if the--I don't usually tell--I tell young people this sometime because I made a big mistake. See, at the, at the time I still had just a high school education, although I had a good record and good grades on all my tests and all of that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: But--and then I, then I was thinking about the old army that I came into, that all these wartime people are going to go home, we're going to have the old army again, and all these officers are--most of them are West Pointers--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --and the ones that aren't West Pointers are ROTC graduates with college degrees. And I don't even have one year of college. I can't compete with these people. So--and, and the offer was that, that you could re-enlist within ninety--if you wanted to get off active duty, re-enlist within ninety days as a master sergeant, which was the top enlisted grade then, and in the meanwhile I was married and had a couple of kids and I, I thought, well, my permanent grade is just that corporal I had a long time ago, and master sergeant would be at least 01:41:00a pretty good living anyway, and I'd be assured of being at least that high as long as I stayed in the army, maybe I better get out and re- enlist. If I hadn't been married, I wouldn't even have thought about that. And I thought I better do that because I just don't measure up to, to what regular army officers were before the war, the, the college degree and all that stuff. So I did that, and that was my biggest mistake.

BIRDWHISTELL: Why?

SMITH: Biggest mistake! Got on recruiting duty at Arkansas, and I was, as a matter of fact I was on recruiting duty in Texarkana when Bill Clinton was born.

BIRDWHISTELL: Really?

SMITH: I didn't know it, though. (both laugh) And when Ross Perot was in high school right there in Texarkana. Hope is just thirty miles from Texarkana, you know. And he was--you know, he lived in Hope when he was six years old, and then he grew up in Hot Springs, which was the gambling and prostitution capital of Arkansas in those days. Still is, as a matter of fact. Anyway, I got--went on recruiting duty and after about a year, a year and a half I thought, well, you know, I, I sold myself short. I can, I can do a lot because I've--on recruiting duty they had listed me--then, hell, right away they made me the sergeant 01:42:00major of the damn place, the chief NCO, and I was the newest one. I said, "I've got to get back on as an officer somehow." And so I applied for, for a recall to active duty. But before that I said, "I'd better get this age," because as soon as you apply for a regular army commission, first thing they do, they send, they send the FBI around checking all your background. They came here.

BIRDWHISTELL: Did they?

SMITH: Talked to my granddad, and my granddad thought sure I was in some kind of trouble. (Birdwhistell laughs) So I put in for a, a letter. I just simply said, "Because my age be changed to reflect the birthday to so and so and my purpose--my age was falsified for the purpose of fraudulent enlistment, August 13th, 1940, Fort Knox, Kentucky," signed my name. And I'd already greased the skids, and then a few weeks later I got it back, said, "'Records--the records have been changed as indicated,'" signed so and so."

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow.

SMITH: And if I hadn't done that, then they'd pull one afterwards--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --and had I left that thing for ----------(??), then I wouldn't-- would not have gotten it.

BIRDWHISTELL: You would've been--

SMITH: ----------(??).

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: In fact, I forgot about it and--until--it didn't matter until I was deciding to apply for a permanent commission. And then I did and, 01:43:00and I got the, I got the regular army commission then. Meanwhile, I'd been in Japan and I was in MacArthur's headquarters and--

BIRDWHISTELL: What were you doing?

SMITH: I was, I was still just a lieutenant at the time. I was working part of the time in the publications section, and then I got transferred to the--what they called the radio and cable branch. That's an office on the second floor of his building. It's--and all of the electronic messages coming in and out come through that office, and they'd have an action office that read them and sim-, decide who should get the action, who gets the copies and all like that. And we'd see everything. In fact, I was in there--we--when we got the message that the North Koreans had jumped off into South Korea and started the war on June 27, 1950. I was on duty in the radio--

BIRDWHISTELL: Were you still in Japan at that time?

SMITH: Yeah. I was on radio cable thing then and saw that first message and we thought, you know, they're going to bomb--of course, we kept maps on the wall of everything that was happening, and the Russians had just moved an air division down to Chung-shan, China. And you could 01:44:00draw a straight line from Chung-shan, China across Tokyo and right up to Vladivostok, which was one of the Russians' place. And we thought those sons-of-bitches, you know, they could come and fly the bombers, come right across and hit Tokyo.

BIRDWHISTELL: Sure.

SMITH: Because we didn't know what was going to happen.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: They--when they drew across the ambassador--Ambassador Muccio in Seoul was the--our US ambassador to, to Korea, and they were running away in a, in a little weapons carrier, a little pickup truck like thing, military, and they were sending di-da-dot (??) and dash messages from the back of the thing and they were being fired on then. And they would--the signal would, would fade out and we didn't know whether they were alive or dead or what. They were running like hell. That was on June the twenty-fifth. So we kept watching that and there was a threat that the, that the Russians were threatening to come on South--North Korea's side and anyway, it was--we wore guns and everything, just like in wartime for a long time there. But after a little while I got a call then from a colonel--full colonel whom I didn't know. Between Tokyo 01:45:00and Yokohama there's a big Far East Command Publication Depot like the thing I was talking about. Now bear in mind, this is 1950, and '45 is when I had gotten out of the army, got--although I went on active duty in the States somewhere else. And said, "This is Colonel Powers at the Far East Command Publication Depot." I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "Is your name Paul T. Smith?" I said, "Yes, sir, it is." Said, "Were you in the publications business back during World War II in the States?" And I said, "Yes, sir, I was (laughs), how do you know that?" And well--he said, "Lieutenant-Colonel so-and-so--," and I can't think of that guy to save my life--he was a lieutenant in the Boston publication depot when I had this one at Hampton Roads Port. He wasn't a commander but he was the lieutenant, and I met him. Later made captain. And then turns out he--by then it's--he stayed on active duty. He's lieutenant colonel in Japan then. He said, "Colonel--," and I--damn I can see his name plain as anything, "Colonel so and so has had an operation. He's--is ill, maybe terminally ill. He's going to be to sent back to 01:46:00the States, and I've got to have a replacement for him." And I said, "Well, sir, to replace him, you mean, as commanding officer?" And he said, "Yes." I said, "Well," I said, "you know, Colonel, I'm only a first lieutenant." He said, "I know that, but I also know that he's-- that colonel so-and-so, and I've got a lot of respect him, will tell you that that lieutenant up in MacArthur's headquarters, Paul Smith, knows more about publication depot operations of anybody in the whole U.S. Army." He said, "You--you need to get him." I said, "You want me to come down for an interview?" He said, "You don't need to come down to interview." Said, "I trust this guy implicitly, and I checked you out with a few more people, including in Washington, they tell me you're the man for the job." I said, "Well, it's a lieutenant-colonel's job!" He said, "I know that!" Said, "I'm going to give you--you're going to get a lieutenant colonel's house to live in and you're going to get the car that the colonel, the colonel gets. All you're not going to get's the pay for it." (both laugh) And, and I said, "Well," I said, "if you're sure you want me, Colonel Powers, I'll, I'll be happy to take it." Anyway, to shorten it up, he did, and I went down there. And 01:47:00there, there was a lieutenant senior to me--two lieutenants senior to me working already, but that didn't matter because I was lieut-, first lieutenant, too. So he put me in command of the thing and, and the, the depots had a system. They had, they had efficiency indicators, you know, length of time it takes to process requisitions and all that kind of stuff that measures your efficiency. This was written in my SOP that I'd written five years before--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --to judge the relative efficiency of the various depots because they were doing same thing. And if you had common things by which you could measure them, you could get a fair indication who's hot and who's not. And anyway, I looked at those reports and, and this depot was--out of the seven in the United States, it was number five, and barely number five. It was damn near number six, and I thought, "Jesus, this is not going to do." Of course, they didn't have anybody to talk about it because nobody knew anything about it (??) out there but me. And I got my crew together and I told them about it. I said, "Now, look, this is where we are now." I said, "The next time this thing comes out the next year, we got to--we're going to be in the top three or I'm going to be terribly disappointed, and when I'm terribly 01:48:00disappointed, I'm terribly unpleasant. But I'm going to help you every inch along the way. We're going to work together. We're going to make ----------(??)." They said, "Yeah!" And, and in six months, I wrote, I wrote a friend of mine back in Washington, a lieutenant colonel in the publication branch to ask him how we were doing. Because they keep the records every month. They just don't publish it every month. He said, "Well, I'll tell you." Said, said, "You're right now in third place, and you're not far out of first."

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: And when that next then came out we were in first place, just like I thought we'd be.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: And then anyway, everybody was frozen over there because of the Korean War, and then when the war was over I was, I was able to--I was kept past my due time because I couldn't come home because of the freeze. I was allowed to go, and I got a call from people in Washington said, "I hear you're going to rotate?" Rotate means coming back to the States. And I said, "Yep. I'm coming up." Said, "Where do you want to go?" I said, "What do you mean, where do I want to go?" He said, "Where do you want to be assigned to." I said, "Well, I guess the career branch will assign me." The career branch assigns, assigns and you don't have anything to say about. He says, "Well, they do, but we 01:49:00got a lot to do." He said, "I'll tell you. We want you to stay in the publication depot business, and if you want to stay in publication you can go to any one of the depots in the United States you want to go to."

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: And I said, "You sure?" He said, "Absolutely. We can make it happen." Said, "You just tell us where you want to go, and if there's not a vacancy there, we'll put you there anyway and, and that way, when they do get a vacancy they won't have to have somebody." And they'd just started one in Westfield, Massachusetts, and I'd never been up to New England any, and, and, and a fellow I knew of by reputation was the CO up there. So I said, "Well, sir, how about Westfield, Massachusetts? Is that possible?" He said, "Anything's possible. If you want Westfield, you got Westfield," just like that. And I said, "Oh, God, is that easy!" you know. (Birdwhistell laughs) And so I got--about two weeks later I got telegraphic orders that assigned me to the depot at Westfield and--

BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?

SMITH: --came back--came by Burkesville here, spent about a week here with my mom and--

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: --and, and visiting relatives. And went on up to Westfield and, of course, I'd had, had a great time up there, and we pulled that one up to number one then. And then, then I, then I decided--I'd gotten 01:50:00confidence in myself again. I decided ----------(??) this--as good as I'm doing, they say I am, anyway, I'm going to try for a regular army commission. To hell with these people. By the time, this time I'd served with a lot of the regular army. They weren't a damn bit smarter than I was. I found that West Pointers put their pants on one leg at the time just the (both laugh) rest of us do.

BIRDWHISTELL: That's right.

SMITH: So I applied for a regular army commission, and to shorten the story, I took the examination and got it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Did you really?

SMITH: Yeah. And that, that's, that's--

BIRDWHISTELL: What year was that?

SMITH: That was early 195-, late--December, '53, I believe it was. And then I was detailed in a tankers--back to tankers and came down and went to Fort Knox to school, to the Armored School for five months and then, then went to Germany to the Second Armored Division over in Germany and spent a little bit over three years over there.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: And meanwhile, I started going to school at night in Germany. The University of Maryland has a--has courses--had had courses in Germany and in Korea and Japan both that are considered residential courses. They have, they have certified assistant professors teaching 01:51:00them. So I started doing that, taking those courses in Germany and to study German, too. As a matter of fact, I had four semesters of German, and good grades. In fact, I've gotten scholarship medals, you know, that you get for a 4.0 semester. I've got several of those things, big old round metal pieces, because I worked. I studied. And I went four nights a week. And then I--

BIRDWHISTELL: And you had a family too, right?

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: Were they with you in Germany?

SMITH: Yeah.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, they--

SMITH: What the hell. You have the--all military wives understand that the military comes first. If they don't understand it, they don't make it. The marriage doesn't work. That's all there is to it.

BIRDWHISTELL: Just won't work, yeah.

SMITH: And so that was not a problem at all. No problem. Had three kids, too.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: But you had, you had servants. A maid was six dollars a month or something like that. This was before the peace treaty was signed. Gas was like 45, 50 cents a gallon, something like (laughs) that, so you could live like a king on, on--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --I was a captain then, on a captain's pay.

BIRDWHISTELL: Captain.

SMITH: And so I got that done and, and where did I go from there? Oh, 01:52:00came back from there to another school for the Adjutant General School at Fort, at Fort Harrison, Indiana, right outside of Indianapolis, and attended that for six months. And then I was assigned to Washington. Again, they offered me whatever job I wanted, and I told--we had a thing called Personnel Researchers and Procedures Branch which developed all the personnel procedures and policies for the army, and did all the, did all the psychological testing. We had 65 PhDs in psychology that did all this work on the testing, aptitude tests and all like that, and that's where I learned that on a survey, an attitude survey, you can make it say whatever you want it to say. If it doesn't say it the first time, you can do it again, by God, until it says what you want it to say. (Birdwhistell laughs) So I read all these polls with a real big tongue-in-cheek. And some of those psychologists were pretty hon-, pretty, pretty honest about that's the way it happened. I remember one--the Congress had come up with the thing of, of paying 01:53:00big re-enlistment bonuses to people to re-enlist in the army, to try to keep them because they were getting out and going back to civilian life back then.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: And so they wanted--Congress, then, wanted an attitude survey to--done to see whether or not this really was working. It'd been about a year after it was put in effect. Had to do an attitude survey to see how well this was working. Well, they did the survey in the regular way they normally would have done it, and the survey comes back proving that this doesn't have any effect one way or the other on the average soldier's decision on whether to stay in the army or not stay the army. Whether he liked his career or not and liked the army had more impact than anything else. And it got up to, to the Secretary of the Army. Now this is where you get the difference between a military staff and a--and a civilian staff. Got up to the Secretary of the Army who saw it and the Secretary, "Oh, we can't have this! We sold this to Congress. We told them this was going to kept--keep people in the army. We can't go back and admit that it didn't." So, in effect, the instructions were sent back to where I worked--I was a 01:54:00major by then and there was a full colonel in charge, and he was--had a Ph.D. in psychology, too, and told him to do the survey again. This answer is just unacceptable. Congress--the secretary won't send it to Congress. The chief of staff was willing to do it. A four-star general, who was chief of staff of the army, "You know, we thought it did and we were wrong." Well, you know, politicians can't afford to be wrong! (Birdwhistell laughs) And they did that, I think, two or three times. And finally, it came back that it did make a little bit of difference. Of course, they changed the wording, tweaked it, tweaked the population they sent it to and the geographical distribution and all that kind of stuff to get it like you wanted it so you knew it was going to have to come out the way you said it would come out, and they finally did it. And that disillusioned the hell out of me, you know. That was my first great big disillusionment. I thought, "My God, this kind of stuff (??)." In the military, the uniform members of the service, on up to four-star general who was chief of staff of the army, did not want to do that. They said, "You know, we thought it would happen. We honestly thought it would."

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: "Our commanders told they thought it would."

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: "We, we made--our judgment was wrong."

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: "And so why don't we just say that?" And--but--that didn't get 01:55:00past--get up to the political appointees, that doesn't get anywhere. So that really, that really disappointed the hell out of me.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, that's funny. That's funny.

SMITH: But that, that was a good experience and I, I never was assigned by the career branch from the time I was a captain and on. They always either called me or somebody called and asked for me. But I--

BIRDWHISTELL: That's a compliment to you.

SMITH: --I went--I made major then, and I was then, then I was put into the computer systems development thing. They had a com-, the computer system was just starting to build in those days. The computer system- -have you ever seen any of the, the great big old reel things that are about six feet tall and this wide with the great big reels of tape in them?

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: They'd take this whole damn house to, to put a system to do much, do very much good. And, of course, that was--had the unit card--unit record system which was a punch card system, and we were making the conversion of the punch card system to the computer system, and they were looking for people that had studied that. In the meanwhile, I'd had a lot of management courses. I taught management at the University of Maryland in Korea, as a matter of fact. Was--as an assistant 01:56:00professor. Got paid for it. And I'd lecture on management to service schools all over, and I got quite a reputation as being a--and I am, and unabashedly can say I'm an expert in management, not only book- wise, but practice--

BIRDWHISTELL: Operational.

SMITH: --what I've done. Because I've made mistakes and I've had great successes. Fortunately, the latter outnumber the former. And, anyway, they, they sent me, then from there I went to--I was a major and a sen-, getting to be a senior major. I was on the lieutenant colonel's list. And there are two or three things in the army you really need to succeed like the Adjutant General Corps. You need to be the adjutant general of a combat division, a fighting division. You need to be the adjutant general of something bigger than that, like the--an army headquarters or something like that, and you need to--if there's a war going on, you need to be adjutant of a combat theater. So I--they sent me to Korea to be adjutant general of the First Cavalry Division in Korea, and, and I was still a major, but the lieutenant colonel--but I 01:57:00was on the list for promotion. However, I went there as a major, the first time a major had ever been assigned to be the adjutant general in a lieutenant colonel's position like that in a combat division. But I went there and I got promoted and I made it. I stayed there and came back. And I came back from there, and meanwhile, the chief of staff's office had, had established an assistance for automatic information data systems called the Special System Aides. Not AIDS like of have aides nowadays. But--because we were just getting in that stuff in those days. And I'd had a little bit of experience in it before, so the fellow that ran it was a general named Jim--James Landrum, and the adjutant general there was a major general named Kenneth Wickham. Turns out, they had been West Point classmates in the graduating class of 1938. So Landrum calls Wickham, "If you've got anybody that, that can work for me? I've got vacancies for lots of officers. Any grade from full colonel down to captain, I can take them." And he said, "I've got a real crying need now for somebody that can understand 01:58:00tactical systems, because we've got some real problems with a couple of projects." General Landrum and, and Wickham both told me at separate times this, and Wickham said, "Well, we've got an officer coming back from Korea, a Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, Paul Smith." And, and Wickham told me, he said, "I told him." He said, "You're one of the smartest officers we'd ever had, and, and," he said, "I'll recommend him to you very highly. Now, Paul, don't you go up there (laughs) and make me look bad." And I said, "General Wickham, you know I won't do that," and he said, "I know it." And up there Landrum greeted me with open arms. Anyway, they gave me--they had a, a system called the Tactical Fire Direction System, which was used in the, in the Gulf War, that they went over and shot down the Patriot missiles, you know?

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Or the Scud missiles.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah, the Scuds.

SMITH: Anyway, they'd spent some horrid $140 million on it. Now, bear in mind, this is '65. A hundred-forty million dollars was a lot more money than it is now, and it'd been on for going on ten years and they hadn't been able to break through. What it took, it took a scientific breakthrough. You're, you're stretching the envelope of 01:59:00the tech-, technology envelope, and, and they just couldn't get some of the things doing. First of all, the militarization of computers was a difficult thing to do, which the military was backing because we had to have small computers to go into tanks, small computers to go in the airplanes, and smaller computers to go in ships. So many people don't know it, but the, the military pioneered the miniaturization of computers. That's why we got the desk tops that we have today.

BIRDWHISTELL: It's why we have the Internet.

SMITH: Millions and millions--well, you, you see why we needed them.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: See, business didn't need them necessarily. They, they liked to have had some littler, but it didn't matter.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: But to go in a tank or a ship--

BIRDWHISTELL: It wasn't --

SMITH: --or a plane, you got to--there's no question about being in there.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And the problem was in, in developing them, was shortening the, the circuits where they get the cir-, they get so close together, the, the--I don't know the--I don't understand the technical reason of it, but the electrical signal--to pass an electrical signal through the--

BIRDWHISTELL: They bleed, bleed--

SMITH: --they, they bleed off, they flop off when they get too close, and they can't keep them captured way up to just getting down like this. That's way before the chip was invented. Anyway, I did a study 02:00:00of it. I had the study that--I went all over Europe and had six months to get it done, and this is for the chief of staff himself of the army.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: And I don't why I was selected, but I was. And I had permission to go anywhere in the world I needed to go to. I went to Europe, I went to, I went to, to Italy, took a train down to Italy. I went to Belgium. I went to Panama. I went to Korea and Japan--

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: --Fort Hood, Texas, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I went all over the world. Everywhere I needed in order to get stuff. And I took a little recorder with me because I couldn't take notes fast enough to get it all down. And I found a lot of things. And then I went to Litton Industries out on the--out in Van Nuys, California, just out of L.A., who was the developer, had the contract for it. Talked with them about the technical problems of it. They were real nice people, too. And I understood by then enough technically about it to talk to them. I talked to them about what the technical hold-ups were and what the prognosis was for the future. "Are we going to be able to get this done or not?" Anyway, I picked this study up, a big thick thing, and 02:01:00I typed it myself. I can type about sixty words a minute, and, and as long as I use my old manual typewriter. The electric typewriters, my fingers are too heavy for them.

BIRDWHISTELL: Going so fast. That's right.

SMITH: Anyway, I finally got it done. I have a tape of it upstairs. I briefed the chief of staff of the army who was a guy named Creighton Abrams at the time. He was the hero of the, of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and a real, real good fellow but rougher than a damn cob. And he didn't take any bullshit from anybody. He's a combat general, period. That's what he is, nothing--he hated the Pe-, hated the Pentagon and (laughs) everything about it. He--and the full colonels would come in to brief him and he'd ask--he'd start rubbing his chin and he'd asked a couple of questions and, and if they'd hem and haw and couldn't answer his--"Colonel, go away and come back when you know your subject. I don't have time to waste." And, of course, that, that--he never raised his voice, but that just scared the shit out of everybody, you know, to be talked to like that and you've worked your butt off trying to do something! So I was so nervous and I was 02:02:00so afraid that he was going to ask me questions I couldn't answer, but I rehearsed that thing I don't know how many times, and I was a lieutenant colonel then, too!

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: Getting to be a senior lieutenant colonel.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: So I, I went in and I made my little presentation and--

BIRDWHISTELL: Hmm.

SMITH: --and I'm on, I'm on pins and needles wondering what's he going to ask. My mind's going ninety miles an hour, "What's he gonna ask me?"

BIRDWHISTELL: Just waiting! Just waiting!

SMITH: And he, he talked and looked around a little bit, he--and he, he said very little. He was a man of very few words. He says, "Sounds pretty good to me. What do you think, Sid?" talking to his vice chief and he says, "Sounds good to me, too." He said, "Let's do it."

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: And one of my, one of my recommendations was, we had these things spread all over the place I told you I'd ----------(??), each one doing some part of something--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --and not being able to communicate terribly well--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right.

SMITH: --and the coordination of their efforts was just simply wasn't good. So I recommended that, that a central army command called the Automated Data--Automatic Data Field Systems Command be established at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, to not only look at the development of all of 02:03:00these systems, but to supervise the operating of those similar systems that were always in effect so you could, you could connect with what's done--what's being done now and how it's being done, with what maybe done in the future, and make sure the transition period, when it takes place, can be planned so it'll go smoothly--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --which made a lot of sense to me. And I recommended this that because the other services and the kind of people that, that industry has involved in this, like presidents and vice presidents, this ought to be a general officer command. There should be a general officer put in command of this thing so it'll come--show the respect that the army gives to this business.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: We're just were not very big in computers yet then. And he, he approved all that and that got done, and then, then this is kind of boring, but I, I think it's sort of important to go through because my life's like a miracle. The Adjutant Generals Corps is a small corps, first of all. It's not a combat corps. It's an administrative and management corps. And back--the, the four schools that are really--the 02:04:00three schools that are really necessary for a successful--a really successful career is the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth--

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: --and the Armed Force Staff College at Norfolk News, Virginia, which is for all the services, and the Army War College at War-, at Carlisle Barracks. Of course, the Naval War College is popular for the Navy and the Air Force War College at Maxwell is, is, is theirs. But you needed those then. What the, the Adjutant General Corps didn't- -doesn't get many allocations because they mostly go to combat arms officers instead, that sort of thing. Well, at Fort Leavenworth in '65--class of '65, they--the AG Corps had one vacancy. I was selected. ----------(??) my name on it and I thought, "Well, hell's fire, what about this?" Anyway, I went. And about halfway through that course, the course came out for the next semester for the Armed Force's Staff College and the Adjutant General Corps had one vacancy. I was it. I 02:05:00got it. And I came back to Washington before I could go down to start attending the Armed Force's Staff College, which the primary value is a stepping stone toward the National War College, which is the, the Harvard of all of them, you know.

BIRDWHISTELL: Um-hm.

SMITH: And then the National War College list came out. AG had one vacancy. They never had just one to all these schools. Who was on it, but me! I was on all those four lists that--the only one in my corps on it, and I wasn't the senior member by a damn sight.

BIRDWHISTELL: Hmm.

SMITH: Anyway, a fellow I knew, Bob Joyce, was the--had the alternate appointment to Norfolk, and I lived in Springfield, Virginia then, and I called him and said, "Look, Bob, I don't need to go to the Armed War--to Armed Forces Staff College, and you don't get many chances." He said--I said, "I'd be perfectly willing to back off that and just go to the National War College when my time comes this fall. If you want to go to the Armed Forces Staff College in my case--my case." He said, "Really?" And, and I said, "Yeah!" You know, "It'll, it'll do your career some good. It won't help mine any."

BIRDWHISTELL: Uh-huh.

SMITH: And he said, "Well, what's the career branch going to say?" "I've 02:06:00already checked with the career branch. They said it's all right with them." Said--this is like Friday, so it had be Thursday. You had to be there the next Monday. I said, "You get your gear together, get ready to travel to Norfolk, and I'll meet you out at the--out at the Edsel, Edsel Road turnoff of the--of I-95 at Surlington and I'll give you all the papers to take down with you. It's all approved by everybody already." And he said, "Oh, boy, this will be great!" And so I met him down there and, and, and he went down there with me. He's thank--oh, he just fell almost bowing and hissing with thanking me for it. And to shorten that story, he finally--he wound up being a brigadier general. Had not been--he always said, "Boy, if it hadn't had been for you, I'd--that made my life!"

BIRDWHISTELL: That was the break!

SMITH: He swore by me! He'd (Birdwhistell laughs) do anything for me! But I was glad to do it for him because it wouldn't have helped me. Anyway, I went to the National War College and--or Army War College, and then I came out as a full colonel and I went to be--then I got assigned as the adjutant general of the Continental Army Command at 02:07:00Fort ----------(??) just which is all of the continent--army of the continental United States, the way it was organized at that time, which is a big job. And I thought, well, that's great because I just made full colonel and it's a full colonel job. I had another full colonel working for me. My deputy was also a full colonel. So I got that and thought that was great, and then, and then I got to thinking, well, hell--and I got an efficiency report from General Landrum, my officer- -the one at the Chief of Staff's office and I did this study about this command--computer systems command--

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: --and I, I got a copy and I looked at it and I thought--and I've still got it somewhere--and it said, "Of the 75 lieutenant colonels in my office, Lieutenant Colonel Smith is by far the most effective. He has everything it takes to be a future general officer." I said, "God, me, a general? That's not gonna to happen!" (Birdwhistell laughs) But, but that, that efficiency report, out of 75 he says--

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: --is by far the most effective, and I thought--that's the first time I thought, "Well, you know, maybe I could."

BIRDWHISTELL: Maybe you could.

SMITH: Anyhow, then--but then you needed some of these other things (??). I needed to be--the job at CONARC (??), although I didn't ask 02:08:00for that. My friend, General Wickham, who was getting ready to retire and, and Landrum, turns out later on, engineered that for me to put me in the right place. And I called the colonel's branch then and I said- -of course, the tours in Vietnam were only a year, you only stayed--so it turns over every year. And after I'd been to CONARC my second year, I, I called, I said, "What's the chance of me getting a job of adjutant general of the U.S. Army Vietnam?" And there were several colonels over there and they said, "Well," the boss did, he said, "Well, Paul, it'd be, you'd be good for it. I'd like to see you get it." Said, "Trouble is, you're too junior." Said, "You haven't even been a colonel two years yet." Said, "There's six more colonels to go with that job." And he said, "To finding six colonels junior to you that hadn't already had a tour in Vietnam, they don't like to send anybody back twice, is, is, is damn near impossible." I said, "Look, if I find six colonels junior to me to go over there, will you go along with me getting the 02:09:00job?" He said, "Let me call you back." He called me back and said, "I talked to them all." And he said, (laughs) he said, "If you can get six colonels junior to volunteer and go back over there and work for you," said, "you can have the job." So I started making phone calls and it was kind of hard.

BIRDWHISTELL: I'll bet.

SMITH: But I did find five, and one of them a good, a good friend of mine hadn't been back a year yet--

BIRDWHISTELL: Huh!

SMITH: --and he volunteered to go back over there to be my deputy. And anyway, to shorten that, I got that, too.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow.

SMITH: And then I came back from there, I was on down in Florida at a motel on vacation and the phone rang at night or early in the morning, real early in the morning. And I answered the phone and they asked if this was Colonel Paul--Paul T. Smith and I said, "Yes, it is." And it was so and so from the career branch in Washington, and I had been assigned back to the Chief of Staff's office, I believe. And anyway, he said, "I've got some information for you. This comes direct from 02:10:00General Depuy, who was three-star general, vice Chief of Staff of the Army. Says, "You are to report to the Chief of Staff's office when you come back from Florida. Your other orders are being canceled." And he said, "You're to report back up here and you'll get further information when you get back up here," and said, "you need to be here no later than 48 hours." So I thought, "What the hell."

BIRDWHISTELL: Hmm.

SMITH: Anyway, I drove back to Washington, went over to talk to him and he said, "You're going to be assigned to the Computer Systems Command." That's the outfit that I had recommended be set up. I had no idea of ever being there because this had been--this was, what? That was 1965 and this was '72. This is seven years later.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: So I went to Washington and they said that the De-, that General- -a little short fellow named General Depuy, about maybe 5'5'', 5'6". And he, he knew me by reputation, and he didn't like the fellow who was director of the Tactical Systems Development because that's what I had studied, and it wasn't doing too well. And he was there looking for somebody to fix it up and, again, my name came up. And he talked 02:11:00to other generals around there that knew me like Landrum and Wickham and others, and they recommended me very highly. And he, he said, "I'm going to keep you here until the first of August. On the first of August I'm transferring Colonel Spann (??), who's the director of Tactical Systems, transfer him to Louisiana." Says, "You're going to go down there and be deputy for Tactical Systems." I said, "Who knows this?" He said, "Nobody knows it but General Schroeder (??), a major general who is in command of the thing." And so, anyway, that happened that way and I went down there and General Schroeder--then this fellow left and I took over as deputy of Tactical Systems and Schroeder was an engineer general. See, they didn't have generals yet because they hadn't had time to develop working their way up because there were already full colonels or generals when we got into this stuff.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. Right.

SMITH: So he was a brilliant engineer but he didn't know too much about computers. A nice fellow. He let me do anything I wanted to do and, and, and he came--time for him to retire and, and I'm--meanwhile I made, 02:12:00I made brigadier general. And so he retired and I took command of the- -I mean I'm in charge of this organization that back as a lieutenant colonel seven years, eight years ago then I'd suggested be set up.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: Who'd ever thought something (Birdwhistell laughs) like that? I never had the idea of that yet. And--because making general is, is--in the army is like a miracle. About one percent of the officers can make general.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: The year I made general, for example, there were five thousand full colonels selected. Twenty-five could be picked. Now, that's getting down and--

BIRDWHISTELL: That's in that category, "Many are called and few are chosen."

SMITH: Oh, Lord! Yeah, I'll tell you, that's, that's a hard call because I served on the board when I was a major general picking brigadiers, and it's just--it's terribly hard. You can cull out a lot of them right away, like the one with the master's degree, you don't even put them in the right pile. And you can cull out others, too, for crude screening. Then you wind up with about three or four hundred water- walkers that can't do no wrong!

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And you've got to whittle that. That's really bad.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: Yeah, that's really bad. Anyway, I made the list for major 02:13:00general and that lost me my job at the Computer Systems Command which I loved because major general--the vacancy was for to be the Adjutant General of the Army, the whole damn army because I'd been the adjutant general of everything else including the combat command in Vietnam, which I wrote a big after-action report for the schools to use which had never been done before.

BIRDWHISTELL: Wow!

SMITH: It's been used as teaching in the schools. I won several author awards for writing up stuff like that. But anyhow, I--let's see, where, where was I then? I was--oh, yeah, now I became--I became the Adjutant General, and that was a good job with a lot of prestige to it. I told you, I was a member of this international thing. My wife and I got to travel all over. Of course, the U.S., the U.S. host was always the most popular where everybody wanted to be friends with whoever, whoever the American general was. And I attended meetings all over Madrid, Spain and in Italy and Brussels, Belgium, Seoul, Korea, two 02:14:00or three other places, I can't remember all of them. And we hosted- -Phyllis and I hosted a meeting out in San Francisco for--75 nations attended the thing. People--representatives--and they were usually a Minister of Defense or some high ranking general, some important part of their nation. And, of course, I got a--before I went to any of those meetings, an interesting thing, I always got an intelligence briefing from the intelligence people telling me all about every senior officer from every country, all about their background, history, who they were and what they were and whether they spoke English and whether to watch them. Some of them spoke English but pretended not to. (Birdwhistell laughs) See, it's going to be here, and I knew exactly who they were. Then--and one--the French, I've never had a great deal of respect for the French anyway. They're like parasites on a cow or something. And a little airborne paratrooper by the name of Astore (??), about this high, and Astore would never speak English. But he spoke perfect English but, you know, the French always considered that French should be the world language, and certainly the language of 02:15:00commerce at least, if not government, too. And he just wouldn't speak English at all. I'd kid him and I'd say, "Come on, Astore! You know what I'm saying. Don't pretend you don't understand." He sort of grin- -he'd grin and he kind of unfroze a little bit but, but he just didn't, he didn't, did not think--

BIRDWHISTELL: Just wouldn't do it.

SMITH: --any language was really worth speaking but (laughs) French. Of course, I didn't understand French, either. And the fellow from Cameroon, a guy--he was a--as black as the ace of spades. A real, real Cameroon type. Of course, Cameroon was a communist nation. We had several communist nations as members of this, about ten or twelve of them. And, and I knew he spoke English. So my wife would help escort the wives around, like take them to the post exchanges which they loved to go to because they'd get things that they'd never had in their country. And took them on tours of the wineries in Napa Valley and arranged several tours for them. We had a, a navy fellow who set up social programs for all of them, and I told them I like to be careful and don't, don't say anything around this, this woman because she was the princess and he was the prince, really.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right.

SMITH: And don't--just don't say anything that you don't want her to know like making a side remark to someone else in English. So she didn't. Everything went along fine and, and there was a lot more happened there, but on the night before the leaving, a knock came on our door and here is this fellow from Cameroon. This prince of Cameroon and his wife came in carrying a--where is my ivory elephant tusk with the carvings on it? I don't know where the hell it is.

BIRDWHISTELL: Maybe in the other room.

SMITH: I thought it was down here somewhere. Maybe it's the other room. Anyway, an elephant tusk about this long, a real elephant tusk--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: --with a real delicate carving and worth a lot of money probably. And he came in and he said, "Just want to tell you, General Smith"--in English--"General Smith, how much we've enjoyed this conference and how nice your wife has been to my wife. We've had a lovely time and we thank you so much for it," or words to that effect. And I said--and he--and his wife said something to Phyllis in, in English, of course, 02:17:00and he said, "Are you surprised to hear us speak in English?" I said, "Prince, not at all." (both laugh) And he went--and he chuckled. He just laughed. I didn't say why or anything. He just chuckled.

BIRDWHISTELL: Not at all.

SMITH: You know everybody knew, everybody knew the game was being played but everybody agreed to keep quiet about it. And in, in--

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, that's funny.

SMITH: --in Madrid I got the--when the Turks and the Greeks were having so much trouble, I, I was the host again over there, the U.S. host, and I invited the, the general from Turkey and a general from Greece to have lunch with me in the dining room. And I didn't have--invite anybody else at the table, just the three of us at a table, just the generals to see how they would react to each other. And we sat and they both spoke fair English, and we, we just talked a little bit about other things and, and by no time they were chatting back--they'd never spoken.

BIRDWHISTELL: Is that right?

SMITH: They wouldn't get near each other. And they were chatting back and forth just having a gay old time. And the Turkish general told me and says--said, "General Smith, that was a good thing you did, to get me and general so and so together. We enjoyed talking to each other." He said, "We're going to talk again."

BIRDWHISTELL: There you go.

SMITH: But I, I just got--I thought that was nice to do. It was 02:18:00mischievous too, but I got a kick out of doing that kind of stuff. But that was a real experience doing that. So I had--and I would--I, I retired three years before I had to. I could've served three more years before I reached mandatory retirement and conceivably, conceivably might have got promoted again but I might not have, too. I'm not--you never know about that.

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah.

SMITH: But my mother here had Alzheimer's disease--

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?

SMITH: --and it got worse and worse and worse. And I was the only child left and--

BIRDWHISTELL: So you had the responsibility?

SMITH: --so we put her in a nursing home for a little while, and I was going--I'd retire and come down here to take care of her as long as she lived, and then we would move on someplace. I never really retired to come back here to stay. And we'd--but I, I applied for retirement. Because of my job it took three months for me to retire because they had to determine who was going to take my place, who, by the way, turned out to be the same colonel who volunteered to go to Vietnam as my deputy.

BIRDWHISTELL: Vietnam with you?

SMITH: He, he wound up getting a second star and taking my job.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, that's great.

SMITH: And two of my other colonels got stars that year, too. And-- where was I?

BIRDWHISTELL: About retiring, coming back home.

SMITH: Oh, yeah. And between the time I applied for retire--to retire and my retirement was approved, my mother died.

BIRDWHISTELL: Oh, really?

SMITH: So we came down to--and bury her and all that. Meanwhile we'd already signed a contract to start building this home--this house there because we were going to stay here and going to move her in here instead of being in a nursing home or something like that. And she died and we came down for the funeral and all like that, and it was a terrible, terrible, terrible shock. I don't care how old you are, you're never prepared to lose a parent. Never are prepared. And so we did that and we stuck here and I went to work for a construction company here for a while as executive vice president. I really managed it. Their owner was an absentee owner. And I ran that for a while and, and I didn't particularly like it. And we stayed here for about a year, year and a half, and then we put this house up for sale, decided we'd leave. And I'm getting to be a mayor. And we didn't get any nibbles on it. 02:20:00We got one nibble, some people that we knew by reputation but didn't know personally wanted us to take a great big second mortgage on the house against somebody you don't even know. Uh-uh, not me. Anyway, to shorten the story again, we were not able to sell the house. So we settled down to stay here a little while and bought a flower shop over in town, and my wife's running the flower shop and is losing money like crazy, and I told her, "This is a nice hobby. We can't afford it. We can make a hell of a lot more money staying at home." (laughs)

BIRDWHISTELL: We can't, we can't afford to work here.

SMITH: No. So we sold the flower shop--

BIRDWHISTELL: General, we, we could stop it right here if you like, and then we could pick up at that point--

SMITH: Okay, because--

BIRDWHISTELL: --and I'll come back again if that--

SMITH: --because, because I'm just getting to being mayor. That, that slices it--

BIRDWHISTELL: Yeah. Yeah.

SMITH: --between my previous life and the mayor's life.

BIRDWHISTELL: Right. It's been wonderful.

SMITH: I, I apologize for talking so much. You know, I didn't use to talk. But I've got to be an old man, I got to be verbose as hell, you know!

BIRDWHISTELL: But, see, if, if you weren't talking, it, it wouldn't work 02:21:00too well! So--but thank you for doing that today.

SMITH: And, (laughs) and I--

[End of interview.]