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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 7/19/2007 Title A name given to the resource Merrill Townley Oral History Interview Description An account of the resource Oral History Program The State Historical Society of Missouri © 2007 Collection C3929 Politics in Missouri a.c. 323-326 An Interview with Dr. Merrill Townley at his home in Chamois, Missouri 19 July 2007 interviewed by Rebecca Rose NOTICE 1) This material is protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). It may not be cited without acknowledgment to The Oral History Program of the State Historical Society of Missouri and the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, a Joint Collection of the University of Missouri and the State Historical Society of Missouri. Citations should include: [name of interviewee], [name of the interviewer], [date and place of interview], [audio recording or transcript], and [where it can be found, for example, The Oral History Program of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Politics in Missouri Oral History Project]. 2) Reproductions of this transcript are available for reference use only and cannot be reproduced or published in any form (including digital formats) without written permission from the Western Historical Manuscript Collection. 3) Use of information or quotations from any Politics in Missouri Oral History Project transcript indicates agreement to indemnify and hold harmless the University of Missouri, the State Historical Society of Missouri, their officers, employees, and agents, and the interviewee from and against all claims and actions arising out of the use of this material. For further information, contact: Western Historical Manuscript Collection 23 Ellis Library University of Missouri Columbia, MO 65201-5149 PREFACE The interview was taped on Maxell COM-60 audio cassettes (normal bias), using a Marantz PMD-222 manual recorder and a Shure VP64 omnidirectional microphone placed on a tripod. There are a periodic background sounds that occasionally interrupt the interview, but the recording is of generally high quality. The following transcript represents a faithful rendering of the entire oral history interview. Minor stylistic alterations -- none of factual consequence -- have been made as part of a general transcription policy. Any use of brackets [ ] indicates editorial insertions not found on the original audio recordings. Parentheses ( ) are used to indicate laughter or a spoken aside evident from the speaker's intonation. Quotation marks [“ ”] indicate speech depicting dialogue, or words highlighted for the usual special purposes (such as indicating irony). Double dashes [--] and ellipses [ . . . ] are also used as a stylistic method in an attempt to capture nuances of dialogue or speech patterns. Words are italicized when emphasized in speech. Although substantial care has been taken to render this transcript as accurately as possible, any remaining errors are the responsibility of the editor, Rebecca Rose. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 1 RR: [This is Rebecca Rose with the] State Historical Society of Missouri. It‟s July 19, 2007 and I‟m in Chamois, MO with Dr. Merrill Townley. Chamois, not Morrison? MT: It‟s Chamois. RR: Ok. Well, can you start by telling me something about your early life? MT: Well, I was born in this house, and lived here until I went off to college and the Army, and [I] went to a one room school, Schawnee Creek, and its about two miles up here. Since then it‟s burned, but—in fact, the last year—the year that I graduated, we had three students. We had five students, and three of us graduated and then they closed the school so, you‟ve heard of the story of burnin‟ the school down to get the kid outa school, well that almost—but that was about the time of consolidation of the—and the end of the rural schools. Course, then I went to Chamois to high school. RR: What year where you born? MT: 1934 RR: And, did your—you mentioned that this was a family house, did your mother and father grow up in this house then too? MT: No. They built this house in 1930, and the first three rooms that they built was sawed out of the—they cut the logs on the farm and had a sawmill right out here and they sawed the—like if they needed 2x4‟s well they‟d saw a bunch of 2x4‟s and saw boards and they‟d bias boxed it and this was all outa oak. You try to drive a nail in it and you can‟t do it anymore after seventy years or eighty almost—nearly eighty years. Anyway, they built three rooms and then the year after I was born they built another room and a porch ________________________________________________________________________ 2 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose on and then they built on in 1968 and then in [19]77 when we came back down to the farm, why we built this part here on it. RR: So, where were your parents from originally? MT: My dad, his home place was the adjoining place over here and this was my grandmother‟s home place and I‟ve got a picture of their wedding in 1902 out in front of the old log house over here and, but she—they didn‟t go very far to find their wives at that time, you know, and they were joining farms. Then she died when my dad was about seven years old and my grandpa and his sister was—I don‟t know, three or four—and so then he raised them about ten years before he remarried then. So, my dad was raised there and then my mother, her—my grandfather and grandmother on my mother‟s side came from Germany in the late 1800s and they settled down at—down around Morrison down on Bailey‟s Creek. And then they were married in, I think 1930 or somethin‟ like that. Right in the middle of the Depression— RR: Yeah, did they ever mention why they chose to come to this area? MT: No, you mean the German? RR: Yeah. MT: No they—well there were just a lot of—there were a lot of people that had immigrated here from Germany and it—like even down in Hermann. Then the group that came from—came to Loose Creek, they were all—they all came from about the same area. There were some that were Catholic and then there were some that were Evangelical or, you know, the German Evangelical Church. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 3 RR: What did your father do for a living? MT: He farmed until long in the Depression when it was gettin‟ pretty rough and then he went to work for an insurance company and he sold insurance—he ended up selling Kansas City Life Insurance, but—he worked for a mutual insurance company in Jeff[erson] City and we always farmed. RR: I thought I had read somewhere that he was also a doctor? MT: No, he was not a doctor. We had several doctors in our family, but they were of a different—the old man that came from Virginia in 1829 was a doctor, he went to Middlesex College at Lexington, Kentucky and went to medical school for about six months and became a doctor and then he came out here on a mule. I‟ve got his diary—in fact the Western Manuscripts has a copy of his diary, I gave it to „em and they made a copy of it, and those are the wheels (points to a set of wheels) that were on the wagon that—where his wife‟s family came and they crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis and they lost a horse in the Mississippi River that drowned in the Mississippi River. They would drive the team and the horses—I mean, I don‟t know how many horses there was but—but anyway, they would swim and then the wagon would float, and that‟s the way they crossed the Mississippi, and—that was—anyway, then when he married—he knew where he was comin‟ to and he came to this Alkire family. They had come earlier in the, oh 18—18 teens, and then he came and then he married one of the daughters. And then they had I think they had somethin‟ like eight or nine children and there were bout four, I think five boys maybe and four girls and the cemetery over here—the Townley ________________________________________________________________________ 4 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose cemetery—the first grave in that was one of those children and they put rocks over it, they were afraid that the wolves would dig into the grave and so—its the first grave that was in the Townley cemetery. Then there were several of these boys and the house that the old man John Mann built is over on the next place over here and that was the line that my family came from and, of course that‟s been in the family for all these years, and then another line was one of the sons—became a doctor—and then his son became a doctor, so there were—and one of „em went to a—was in medical school or maybe had just graduated, but he died when he was twenty-three years old, so there were about—I don‟t know, there were about three or four MD‟s in that that were Dr. Townleys.1 My dad figured out when I graduated from vet school that I went to school longer to become a veterinarian than any one of those did to become medical doctors. But this old Dr. W.D. [William David Townley] who died in the forties, he had practiced here for fifty years, I mean—in this area. He was the last one of them. RR: Before I forget, what was name of the gentleman you were talking about who wrote the diary? MT: John Mann Townley RR: Okay. And, can you describe your father to me? MT: Well, he was just a little, short, fat, jolly guy. That‟s all. He was just pretty jovial, he took things pretty—he was a people person. RR: What about your mother? 1 MD stands for Doctor of Medicine. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 5 MT: She was more reserved. She was a stay-at-homer. That‟s a picture of her up there too, in her older days, and she was a typical frontier mother. I mean, she canned and gardened and cooked and sewed and did the things that women back then did. RR: Did she also help out on the farm as far as— MT: She never did do a lot of work out on the farm however, my dad had an office in St. Louis and they—the fella that he worked for that owned the company asked him to go down and manage that office and, he had a house out in Ladue and he said, “You can live in that.” My mom and I decided that we didn‟t wanta move to St. Louis, so for all several years I guess, probably nearly twenty years, he drove back and forth. He did work in between, I mean, he—back then they used to deliver beneficiary checks whenever somebody died, why, they would take the check to „em and he would leave—sometimes on Sunday evening, sometimes Monday morning and then he would come home on a Friday. Sometimes he‟d come home on a Thursday if he had quite a bit of work to do around here then so. But, that was—and then when that mutual insurance company went—got sold—the mutual insurance company‟s were goin‟ outa business and they‟d become old line insurances so he—then he went to work for Kansas City Life then, which is an old line. RR: So, how many siblings do you have? MT: I‟m the only child. RR: So did that mean that you had a lot extra responsibility then if your father was— ________________________________________________________________________ 6 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Yeah, I started out to tell that my mother do a lot out on the farm back then, supervisin‟ me, you know and helpin‟ me to do things, you know—do feedin‟ and things like that. RR: So, can you tell me something more about Schawnee Creek School—you mentioned it earlier. MT: Okay. Schawnee Creek School came off of the old Townley farm and they gave— well there were several Schawnee Creek Schools, there was the school down in the valley just before that—well, you didn‟t come that way, just at the bottom of the hill there (points), there‟s a pretty big house and the one section of it is log, and that was the first school, and then they built the school on top of the hill then, which come off of the Townley place. My dad went to school there so I mean it was at least back to the—well he would have been in school, he was born in 1904, and he was six—he woulda been startin‟ school about 1910, so it was there then and then course I went to school there then too. RR: So then, since it was built off of the old Townley farm, did your ancestors help build and run the school? MT: Well, they were, course they were on the school board a lot. My dad was on the school board my grandpa was on the school board and other people in the neighborhood. I might tell the story though about during World War II when I was in school. We—there were some of the kids walked back toward [highway] 89 that lived back that way and the rest of us back this way. And, so we‟d all walk to school together, you know, and back and forth and course, there were several ages of us—I mean there were eight grades so _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 7 there were some that were older and then some of us that were—I was one of the younger ones at that time. But anyway, we got to throwin‟—the old hill telephone lines were a community telephone and you just—they just—the community set poles and nailed these insulators on and strung the wire and had these glass insulators. Well, as boys are want to do, we started throwin‟ rocks at those insulators. And, we broke a few, and so the school board—there was a three man school board then—my grandpa was on the school board. My grandpa had big ol‟ red whiskers, he had „em—he had this beard as long as I can remember but then, as he got older, why he said it got frostbit and it turned white then, but—or gray, but anyway—they decided that the school board ought to come up and do a little disciplinin‟ and so they kept those of us that walked that way after school and so they put us up on the front row and the school board was there and my grandpa was the spokesman and he could never remember that my name was Merrill, he‟d always call me “Elmer,” he was dyslexic I guess. But anyway, he started on the upper end with—on oldest kids and he asked „em if they had broken any insulators and, “Yes sir, I did,” and right on down—there were about four of us, five of us I guess, and he got down to me and he said, “Elmer,” he said, “did you ever break any insulators?” And I said, “No grandpa, I couldn‟t hit „em.” And he, he couldn‟t control himself, he threw his head back and laughed and that was the end of the discipline. There weren��t any insulators broken after that either, but they were effective. But, I‟ll never forget—I didn‟t know what else to say (both laugh). RR: So, if it was a one room school, did you only have one teacher? ________________________________________________________________________ 8 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: One teacher, yeah—we only had—I only had three different teachers. I had a teacher that—Isabel Cramer that taught me in the first grade. And then Ms. Verna Ruddy taught the second grade, and then Ms. Beulah Malan came and taught all the time from third grade on. And, this was in a period of time in the education system where times were changing and consolidating and things like that, and so they didn‟t think that the country schools were adequate education, you know, the powers that be in education. Well, some of our most—some of our best leaders in all different phases of life came out of one room schools. But anyway, when I was in the seventh grade, they consolidated. They knew that there was—consolidation was coming on, and they moved—they brought the Rost School over here and we had probably forty kids in that one room that year and then they went—took them to Morrison. They had two rooms—two school—two rooms. And, so then the last year—the next year when we graduated, why they closed the school and that was the year that they consolidated and I can tell you a story of back then. We had consolidated you know and were part of the Chamois school district. And, my dad—the tax levy for the Schawnee Creek School district was sixty cents. When we consolidated into Chamois, it was a dollar, and that was the year that I started to High School, and my dad—they had—here when I was six years old, I walked that two miles to school, except the year they brought Rost School over and I rode the bus, but—all of those eight, all of those seven years I walked that two miles to school! And so, the law was that they had to bring a bus. A kid didn‟t have to walk more than one mile, and so when my dad insisted that they come and get me that one mile because he was sore _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 9 because the levy had gone up forty cents and they didn‟t wanna close the school in the first place. But anyway, he kept me home from school the first two weeks that I was supposed to start high school until the school board determined that they was gonna come and get me that two miles, and so it was embarrassing to me—I mean—but it was the principle. My dad took that as bein‟ the principle and that was the way he—and since then, I‟ve been turned into an agitator too, but—(laughs). RR: So that was in 1948 when they closed the school then. MT: Yes, uh-huh. RR: And, in 1970 is when it actually burned down. MT: Yeah, okay. RR: The officials ruled that arson do you know anything about what actually happened there? MT: No, I don‟t know much about what the situation, course that was—I was not here then, I was in school and in practice, but—Yeah, I don‟t know what happened. They sold those buildings at auction and the guy that bought it—I think he paid about sixteen hundred dollars for it. Incidentally now, my cousin has recently bought the land back, so the land is part of his place now so—where the school was. RR: And you mentioned then going to Chamois for high school. How was that different than Schawnee Creek? MT: Well, I mean, it was really—we lived out here in the country. We were pretty isolated. We didn‟t get to town very often and we—even in a town of three or four hundred people, the ________________________________________________________________________ 10 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose town kids—they kinda looked down on the country kids. So we—it was a little different for me to mix with the town kids. RR: How many students were there in your class? MT: I don‟t remember, I think there „bout twenty-five or somethin‟ like that. RR: And what did the town kids then try and do to, I guess, stress the difference between country and town? MT: Well, I don‟t know that they—they just—this wasn‟t a big thing, it wasn‟t, but there was just a little bit of that feeling. And it wasn‟t everybody either, you know, I mean—like the boys, they went out and worked on the farm so they—it was some of the girls that were—thought they were just a little bit more sophisticated than some of us. I mean, and we were—we were country. We didn‟t—it wasn‟t hard to tell that—I‟d never owned a tie or a suit until I got my graduation suit, you know so. RR: Was Chamois really that big of a town at the time? MT: No, it hasn‟t changed. It‟s about the same size as it was. RR: What about Morrison? MT: „Bout the same only Morrison is goin‟ down hill now (phone rings). RR: So while you were in high school, did you work? MT: Worked on the farm, yeah. RR: So, that didn‟t pay at the time then, it was chores basically— MT: Yeah. RR: And what did you do on the farm? _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 11 MT: Well, I—I shouldn‟t say that, I did help the neighbors haul hay and things like that and there was a circle of kinfolks that worked together and, course didn‟t get paid for that but we worked with each other, you know, when puttin‟ up hay and things like that. Got in on the tail end of the thrashing—the last year that they thrashed I think was, I don‟t know 1948-49 somewhere along in there, bout the time I was in high school. RR: So, what would a teenage boy in the 19—late 1940s want to spend their money on? What was the one thing you would want to buy? MT: Oh, I don‟t know—I bought a car, an old car—a 1937 Plymouth and bought it from the neighbors down here and started to town and I had two flat tires on it before I got to Chamois with it so (both laughing). RR: So, was that something unusual then in the 1940s to actually be able to afford to buy a car? MT: Well, yeah I don‟t know, yeah I guess—I don‟t remember how much I paid for it or anything about it but that was—I did want to have a car. RR: What was a typical day like on the farm, for you as a child? MT: Oh, you just got up and did your chores and went to school and came home and did some more chores. RR: You mentioned in your book your first experience calving, or birthing a cow. MT: Yeah. RR: How old were you at the time? MT: I would say I was probably twelve maybe, somethin‟ like that. It was—I wasn‟t too strong, so it was a hassle. [It] happened right down the hill here. ________________________________________________________________________ 12 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose RR: Can you tell me about it? MT: Oh, okay. We—course we only had this eighty acres here. I might tell you how this place got bigger. My dad bought the place from the old bachelor uncles—his old bachelor uncles, and they didn‟t—my grandmother was the only one that married, so he and his sister were the only heirs. Anyway, he bought this eighty acres from him and paid eight hundred dollars for it, told me many times that—before he built the house and he told me many times that he didn‟t know if he‟d ever get it paid for or not. And my mother had worked in St. Louis, and before she was married and had saved—I think two or three hundred dollars, or maybe more than that, but anyway—when they got ready to build a house, why, she wanted to use that money to build a house and my dad said, “no,” he said, “I married you,” he said, “I‟m gonna get it paid for somehow and we‟re not gonna use your money.” The banks went broke and she lost almost all of her savings—I mean ten cents on the dollar they got back or somethin‟ like that, but anyways, that was—that‟s an interesting facet of the house building. Now, go back to your question again that you— [END OF TAPE 1 SIDE 1] RR: I was wondering about your first experience—well, can you actually—since your parents went through the Great Depression, how did that affect your life? _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 13 MT: Oh, it made you very conservative. I mean—that‟s the root of conservatism is when you don‟t have things, why, you make do with what you got and do what you have to do to survive. But anyway, he had bought this eighty acres—goes back to that original—and this was all that we had and we had a few old cows. We milked cows, sold cream and anyway, we had a couple of heifers that we‟d saved for cows and course they were breed probably younger than they shoulda been and I couldn‟t find this one heifer. And, we‟d pretty well—on eighty acres you pretty well kept track of „em, you know, and so I was lookin‟ around and I was supposed find her and I found her down there and she was down calvin‟ and she was smaller than she ought to be she had horns. I couldn‟t— apparently, I believe it was—the presentation was right you know���the head was between the feet, so I went off down in the woods where we‟d thrown the hay bail strings and kinda had to pull on „em to see if they‟d rotten and that they were strong enough to use. And I put them on the front feet and got back there and put my foot against the rump and was pullin‟ and then she give a kick and she throwed me back and did this last strain and we pulled the calf—and the calf come on out then and I ended up back in the brush in the briars and. What I described was pretty well exactly the way it happened. And then, course I didn‟t know about prolapses then but, that was—later on I woulda been afraid of that too—but anyway, she didn‟t, but anyway, she was layin‟ on her side though, so I had to get her up on her, and so I got a hold of her horns and I pulled her around and drug the calf around there and got him cleaned up and she started lickin‟ him and takin‟ care of him, and so that was my first experience with dystocia. ________________________________________________________________________ 14 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose RR: Would you say that that had anything to do with your decision to choose veterinary medicine? MT: Oh certainly, sure, I always—always enjoyed workin‟ with livestock. RR: Was there any specific instance that really—where you actually, you just knew that that‟s what you had to do with your life? MT: No, I don‟t think I had any certain—the one thing that, of course I liked—I always enjoyed writing in English classes and one teacher had what she called daily observations and I enjoyed writing those things as I was goin‟ to school and around the farm and observing what was goin‟ on around and I enjoyed that. I had considered law school, considered medical school, and I did enjoy the—I liked workin‟ out in the country so I mean that was probably the reason that I chose veterinary medicine. RR: Well, I‟m sure that your parents had certain expectations for you, all parents seem to. What did they want you to do whenever you— MT: They never did encourage, you know, tell me anything. In fact, they probably wondered, “how in the world does he think he‟s gonna get a college education.” And that‟s probably right. I didn‟t know either but I just took it on faith and run out of money several times. I don‟t know if I told you how I went through school or not, but I didn‟t have enough money to start school the year after I graduated. When I graduated in the spring from high school in the spring and I didn‟t have enough money to start at the university that fall semester, but I saved my money and I went in the second semester and I got enough to get through there and then I went through—went the next semester, that _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 15 fall semester, and ran out of money again. I didn‟t have enough money to go to school, so I dropped out, and I stayed out two years and a half. In that time, I was raisin‟ hogs and had quite a few hogs at that time, so I saved enough money that I decided—that I went back not that fall—I skipped two years actually—and started back in the fall and then I had saved enough and could borrow the money too and so I started back and went that whole year and applied for vet school and got turned down. So, then that next year, then I went one more semester and then I was up for draft and I had joined the Army Reserves, so I went to basic training in the spring of that year—well the summer of that year. RR: What year was it, do you remember? MT: Well, it was July of 1957. And then when I came back then I went back another semester and applied for vet school and was accepted. And then I had the four years that I was in vet school I had—the first year I had to borrow money along in May right before the end of school and then the next—the second year I had to start borrowin‟ money back in January and February and finally the forth year, I had to borrow enough for the whole year, but I ended up owin‟—I don‟t know, five [or] ten thousand dollars. RR: So, you went to school at the University of Missouri-Columbia? MT: Yes, Uh-huh. RR: And do you know what year you graduated with a DVM?2 MT: „63. 2 DMV stands for Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. ________________________________________________________________________ 16 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose RR: „63. What was it like in Columbia at the time? MT: Oh, it was a lot different than it is now, not near as many—well there were almost as many students, but there were—but it was a lot—the College of Agriculture was a homey place, I mean, we knew people pretty well, and then vet school was very close knit, I mean, you only had—back then they only took thirty students in, and so you had 120, at them most 120 students in vet school. RR: Can you think of any instances that were especially memorable from your time in college? MT: As far as what? RR: Um—just—like a dance or something that—an incident that happened in class, anything like that. MT: Oh I wouldn‟t--I really didn‟t spend a lot of time socializing. I worked I fed—I did feed the cattle when they were first doin‟ these studies on dwarfism. Dr. [William] Foley was just—received a citation of merit this year for his work, and he‟s down at Auburn University now, I believe but—anyway I fed those cattle and they had dwarf cattle and then had dwarf carriers and they were doin‟ the work on that, studying that and I fed that. And I also fed the sheep for the nutrition lab and they were doin‟ work with nitrates and they did some work with urea and this sort of thing. I enjoyed that. RR: Was that something that was a part of a class that you were taking? MT: No, it was work. I mean, you got—I think we made sixty cents an hour. And I don‟t know if I mentioned the story about when we were, when I was in school and the Home- Ec[onomics]. Department nutrition had a—they were doin‟ a study on lysine when they _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 17 were first determining to supplement bread with lysine and part of that study was—they got, oh vet students and research PhD3 candidates, graduates students, and things, and there were six of us on this study and the study was—No meat and no milk. So they were trying to get Lysine, which meat and milk have lysine in them. So they were lysine deficient and the thing about it is that you could not eat anything accept what they gave ya so they knew what they were—what was goin‟ into your digestive system. And then you had to collect your urine and your stool and they gave us a blue bag to carry around and we were the blue bag crew and they paid us two dollars a day and our meals, so you didn‟t make much money, but ya sure didn‟t spend much either cause you weren‟t buying snacks or anything like that, drinking soda and everything. You certainly didn‟t drink any beer, so, that was the—there was—I think we were on that for about six weeks. Two different times— RR: So some of your experiences then gave you practice for becoming a veterinarian yourself. MT: Oh sure. RR: Do you think it was easier in the 1960s to do that than it might be today, or do you employ veterinary students too? MT: Well, I‟ve been fortunate and I‟ve really felt a debt to everybody that supported me and I‟ve had some—I‟ve almost always had vet students when I was in practice in Jeff[erson City]. It was handy for „em to come over from Columbia and I had a number—I almost constantly had interns or they worked for me on weekends and stuff, and I‟m kind of 3 PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________________________________________________ 18 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose proud of the fact that one of—several of those have gone on to be very successful. The one [Dr. Clark Fabian] is in practice up at Sedalia and he‟s now our area representative to the AVMA—delegate to the AVMA from Missouri, Iowa, [and] Kansas.4 Really active in that and the acting dean of vet school now [Dr. Cecil Moore] interned with me. He went on to graduate school to become a veterinary ophthalmologist but, I mean he— we‟ve got a number of—one of the inters[, Dr. Dave Hopson,]is now the district man for the USDA program [for Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas], so I mean, he‟s—I always enjoyed havin‟ students with me.5 RR: Has the veterinary school gotten more specialized in recent years? MT: Certainly, well, one of the things that‟s driven it is that they‟re required to take more females, now, Kansas State—they threatened them that if they didn‟t take fifty percent females they were gonna take their accreditation away. We never got to that point, and of course in the—when I was in the legislature then, we worked on gettin the new vet school, and part of that accreditation—I‟ve got a little bit of a—as a conservative, I‟ve got a little bit—and now this goes back to consolidation of the rural schools and—the accreditation, professional accreditation goes: you have a—like from the American Veterinary Medical Association, they have a council on education. The medical profession has a council on education, the engineers have a council on education, but that council on education determines—they do the accreditation for the various schools. The accreditation is based on a self evaluation, so in other words, they let me set in on the 4 AVMA stands for the American Veterinary Medical Association. 5 USDA stands for the United States Department of Agriculture. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 19 accreditation when we were about to—the University of Missouri was about to lose its accreditation for a number of reasons and—so then the council on education came to the school to do a site visit and they allowed me to sit in with them because I was in the legislature and we had to dig up the money to do what needed to—to keep the accreditation. Well, a lot of the things that these councils on education require are more academic than they are research oriented than they were—than they are anything else you know. So anyway, we—the self evaluation is they ask the vet students what they thought of the vet school. They ask the graduate students what they thought of the vet school. They ask the interns what they thought of the vet schools. They ask like the faculty what their evaluation of the vet school was. The administrative, the dean and the administrative people, and then they send us all of this conglomeration of people—what various facets thought of the vet school and their appraisal of it. The vet students said, “We‟ve got a good vet school.” The graduate students said, “We‟ve got a vet school—a good vet school.” The interns said, “We‟ve got a good vet school.” We got to the faculty and they—you‟d thought the darn place was gonna fall down, I mean they—they found everything wrong with it! The administration found everything wrong with it. Well, then the council on education is largely made up of people who are academic, who are deans and administrators and heads of clinics and all of these things, well then, their evaluation was taken, not from the people who were gettin‟ the education, but the administrators and the faculty. And they said, you‟ve gotta have all of these new fangled things and you gotta pay your faculty more and you gotta have more PhD‟s on the staff. Well, the ________________________________________________________________________ 20 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose University of Missouri Vet School has always been known for its ability to put out general practitioners, and now we‟ve turned into an academic community where you send somethin‟ up to the diagnostic lab and they‟ll go through all these gyrations of doin‟ laboratory work and then come up with no specific diagnosis. Well, out here on the farm, if you‟ve got hogs dying or you got an epidemic in cattle or whatever, you need something—now I can go out and post an animal and come up with a diagnosis and know what to do to turn it around, and so the diagnostic lab is—has turned so academic that it isn‟t even of value. And then, the same thing is happenin‟ to the teaching—that‟s—the PhD‟s are teaching our practitioners and they come out and they don‟t—they don‟t have any grasp on reality. RR: So they‟re not teaching at all the practical use anymore, is that—for example, you mentioned the diagnostic lab whenever you are in the field as a veterinarian, you don‟t have access to all of these specific things—they are no longer teaching—one thing you mentioned was (phone rings). So I was asking about the practical use and one thing you mention was autopsies at sites so that you would be able to tell us—maybe the bladder was distended or something and be able to diagnose the animal. So, they don‟t teach that practical use anymore? MT: Well, they—no, but they want us—they are taught to get a specific diagnosis and if you don‟t get—if you don‟t culture the organism or you don‟t have all of the lesions or whatever, then they say, well, that you are flying by the seat of your pants, which is _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 21 basically true, but timeliness is the important thing, and to get—that‟s the problem we‟re up against. RR: Would you say that then drugs have become more specific to the different organisms too that makes it more difficult? MT: Oh yeah. Many of the new generation antibiotics and all of the new drugs and things like that are more specific and more expensive. RR: Do you think that with animal is it similar—there‟s an argument with treating humans anyways that antibiotics have been used and overused so much that they are no longer becoming effective and that‟s why they are more specialized, would you say that that‟s happened in the animal practice at all? MT: Oh sure, sure. Yeah. We‟ve developed some immunity to or resistance to drug resistant organisms. RR: Well, you talk a lot about your veterinary practice in your book and I was just wondering, can you tell me something about your book. First, what was the title of your book? MT: The Strangest Species: The Observations by a Country Vet.6 RR: And what was it about? MT: It was about my early days in vet school and what led me to vet school and what my first three years when I was in practice in Hermann. 6 Dr. Merrill Townley, The Strangest Species: Observations of People by a Country Vet (United States of America, 2003). ________________________________________________________________________ 22 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose RR: One of the things that you mentioned in the book is that the progress in farming has caused many of the problems that you, a veterinarian, encounter today. Could you explain what you meant by that? MT: Oh you mean the technology—the—I don‟t know exactly what you‟re— RR: Well, for instance, what are some of the major technological changes that you encounter? MT: Oh, some of the nutritional things that we‟ve had to—we‟ve started using urea in rations, we‟ve used more fertilizer, we—which brought on the nitrate problems. We‟ve—that‟s the kind of things that technology that agriculture‟s changed and now that the question that we‟re up against is how to best use the byproducts of ethanol production. We‟re learnin‟ to do that too. RR: How do the new fertilizers or the overuse of fertilizers affect the livestock that eat them? MT: Well, it used to be, it brought on some of the nitrate problems, but now as the price of fertilizer has gone up and the public concern for use of herbicides and insecticides we‟re using lower dosages and using less than we used to because of the public perception of quality of food. RR: Well, how do you think that vaccinations then have changed the farming industry? MT: Oh, they have just really protected the—we don‟t—many of the diseases that we‟ve gone through, we‟ve learned to deal with through vaccine and management and things like that. Practically—we‟ve got rid of tuberculosis and incidentally it is coming back a little bit now, but it used to be that the source was animals. Brucellosis. We‟ve practically eliminated the brucellosis which causes undulant fever in humans. The hardly ever see a _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 23 case of undulant fever. We don‟t have brucellosis in their cattle anymore. We‟ve done a lot with Johnes disease, with management and that sort of thing. Hog cholera is non- existent today. RR: Well, one of the things that you sponsored, a piece of legislation in 2003 was the biosafety level 3 lab. Would that be some place where you would study the diseases that you‟d eradicated but—? MT: No, the level 3 is—what we were tryin‟ to do was get this lab to—for biosecurity. One of the things that terrorists can do and they can really ruin our—cause a lot of havoc to our country is if the would enter, could introduce foot and mouth disease or animal disease that would annihilate our livestock industry. Worse yet, if it was some disease that was transmissible to humans—That‟s what this level 3 lab was to do was to be a rapid response test for that. RR: So, do they use the lab at all then—I noticed that one of the things that in the newspaper they mentioned they were thinking about or considering upping it to a level four. Did you see that? MT: No, I didn‟t see it. RR: I thought I saw it in the Columbia paper a couple of days ago, maybe a week ago. But, as a level 3, do they actually train the students then to work with that or is that something that only the faculty uses? ________________________________________________________________________ 24 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Well, yeah—I don‟t know exactly what—I mean it‟s, it‟s a diagnostic tool, I don‟t know just exactly what—who all would be workin‟—I‟m sure the students would be involved in it some, but it would be primarily run by diagnosticians. RR: What contributions do you think that you‟ve made to eradicating disease in animals? MT: Well, I‟ve always been proud of the fact that I was right in the middle of the brucellosis eradications. Got in on the tail end of the tuberculosis- TB- testing—was right—I‟d say almost on the end of hog cholera eradication. [END OF TAPE 1 SIDE 2] RR: Eradicating hog cholera and brucellosis— MT: It‟s hard to determine—to separate the economic diseases from the public health diseases, but you know, for instance, hog cholera was more of an economic situation than it was public health, where as brucellosis was very much of a public health significance—same way with rabies. That‟s very much of a public health disease and we do an overkill on rabies. While it is not a big—it‟s not widely—we don‟t see a lot of it, but it used to be that it was a hundred percent fatal in humans. Now they‟ve saved a few people with flushin‟ with serum in the spine and some of those things, but—we want to prevent it. We don‟t want—there will always be some rabies out in the wild animal population, but we‟re trying to place a barrier between the domestic animals and humans and the wild animals. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 25 RR: Well, you had at least one encounter with rabies didn‟t you? MT: Yes (laughs). RR: How did the vet school actually get the rabid horse? MT: Apparently it was—it had been bitten by a wild animal somewhere, that‟s all we know. RR: And, what actually happened, can you tell me? MT: Okay. This was a professor who—he was in the animal breeding department in the College of Agriculture, and he had had applied for vet school for, I don‟t know, a number of times and they never would take him. He ended up goin‟ to Iowa State and he graduated from vet school up there. But, I don‟t know why they—I don‟t know the story on why they wouldn‟t take „im. But, anyway, he brought this horse in and they were just—they couldn‟t figure out. He had some central nervous disturbances, he‟d move his head— they thought about tetanus and encephalitis and all kinds of different things, and so finally down right before Christmas, why, they decided that they were gonna euthanize him. He wasn‟t makin‟—they never did get a diagnosis on him, and so, everybody had been through—the various sections, you know, had been through and the clinical group and the diagnostic lab and everybody had been through tryin‟ to figure out what to do with this horse. Well, they ended up euthanizing him and I happened to be in the cycle of post mortem then in the diagnostic lab and so we went through all of this—went through from one end to the other, and finally as a last resort, Dr. [Loren] Kintner said, “I‟m gonna run that brain.” And that‟s where you have the Negroid bodies that show up and it‟s diagnostic for rabies. I mean, it‟s the only thing that produces these Negroid bodies in ________________________________________________________________________ 26 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose the cerebellum. So, course, as the story was—that I had left, I was gonna go test cattle that winter, over that Christmas vacation, so by the time he got it run why, he said, “Well it is rabies,” and so they—the ones that were still around there why, they sent them over to the clinic to have the fourteen day treatments you know. And, course I didn‟t feel like I was exposed you know, and so anyway—they called down there to Dr. [Eugene] Plegge in Linn and I said, “Oh,” I said, “I‟m not worried about it.” So in two weeks, why I got back up there and they were still takin‟ the last of their fourteen day treatments and of course, vet school is—the class is very close knit I mean and they horse around a lot and they kid each other. Well, they said, “Well Merrill, did you take those treatments?” “Naw, I didn‟t take um,” and course those that had taken „em why they were kiddin‟ me and they said, “Boy is your mouth—are you slobberin‟ just a little bit? Is your—your face is kinda distorted there you know—” And I woke up in the middle of the night and I had this—I had this nightmare that I was developin‟ rabies you know— (both laughing) and so I went and took the fourteen day treatment which was way too late. If I was gonna get it I‟da got it but—but anyway, I do have a good immunity now and have never been exposed to rabies. Almost every time that we have a case of rabies, why I go and get three shots to boost my immunity and we‟ve got a test for it and I‟ve gone in and had my immunity tested a few times and it was way up and I didn‟t even need the shot so—We probably had—I probably had half a dozen cases of rabies in my career. RR: Mostly with— _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 27 MT: Dogs, cows, and then sometimes, why they kill a fox or a coon or somethin‟ that‟s actin‟ silly that‟s out in the daytime when it shouldn‟t be and then we take it to the lab and we—I was at a meeting one time where a lady from the communicable disease center said—told us, she said, “you‟re sendin‟ in way too many negatives,” and it really made me mad you know, I said. I finally got up and I told her I said, “Lady,” I said, “you‟re getting‟ paid to do the diagnosis—do the lab work.” I said, “You shouldn‟t make a decision about whether this was a good idea to test this animal or not.” I said, “If it had central nervous disturbance, we need to know. We need to know where the rabies is in our communities.” I said, “I don‟t—I think that you‟re out of place to tell us not to send in as many false negatives.” But anyway, and the others there agreed with me. RR: Yeah. So you‟ve always aired on the side of caution then? MT: Sure, yeah. That‟s the same way with vaccinatin.‟ We vaccinate for rabies routinely and I encourage it because there‟s a lot of dogs out there that you never know where in the wildlife population where it would have some rabies. RR: Well, after you graduated you went to work in Hermann, is that correct? MT: Yes. RR: Can you tell me about your first job as a veterinarian? MT: I don‟t even remember… (Laughs)… RR: Well, you were employed with Mr. [Leo] Rohlfing… MT: Dr. Rohlfing. RR: Yeah, sorry…Dr. Rohlfing…Were you considered an employee or a partner? ________________________________________________________________________ 28 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: No, I was an employee. RR: What was a—do you remember what a typical day would be like as a veterinarian then? MT: Oh yeah, it…we changed off duty, so I mean, one night, why I‟d have the duty and the next night he‟d have duty and we‟d—like if you were on duty that night until eight o‟clock the next morning why then you‟d—if there was a milk fever or calving come in when the dairymen when out to milk at five o‟clock in the mornin‟ and they found the problem, well then you had to take it. Then you work all day and then you‟d be off at five o‟clock at night or whenever you got through, but the timing was not very strict, precise. But that‟s the way we operated and then if you went on emergency duty after work then why—if you had calls, if there was some calls left why you had to take them then until you got through, you know. We were pretty compatible, we worked together pretty well. RR: Were there any days that were specifically memorable or unusual? MT: Oh certainly. You always remember those nights when you went out on a calving case and it was snowin‟ and blowin‟ and you—you‟re windshield wipers you could run the windshield wipers and the defroster and run the battery down from usin‟ it so much, you know, that sort of thing. That‟s—course that‟s the things that I‟ve written about in the book is—those are the interesting things. RR: Yeah. How long did you work in Hermann before you moved to Jefferson City? MT: Three years. RR: And why did you decide to move to Jeff? _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 29 MT: My wife was pregnant and we were gonna have a new baby and I wanted to be the boss. That‟s the first chapter in the next book—(laughs). RR: Oh. You were a large animal specialist, correct? MT: Up there yeah. I did a little small animal but I did—that‟s one reason I sent to Jeff is that I enjoyed the large animal practice and I—in Hermann I had to do some small animal work. When I went up there, both of the veterinarians—there were only two veterinarians in Jeff—and both of „em wanted to quit large animal practice and so I bought one of „em‟s—all of his large animal equipment, his truck and his large animal equipment, large animal drugs, and I didn‟t buy any blue sky, I just started practice on my own. And then the other one—he had quit large animal practice and so I did all the large animal practice there. Course, Jeff [erson] City was not near as big as it is now and there was a lot more—there were still sixty dairies in Cole County when I went up there. And I did a lot of dairy work. RR: So, then you‟ve always wanted to own your own practice? MT: Not necessarily, I just—Dr. Rohlfing didn‟t indicate that he was gonna take me in as a partner. He had started that practice and—I don‟t blame him but, after I left and another one came in and then the next one, he—he let him buy in and then he left and he had to end up goin‟ back and buyin‟ him out. He was—I would‟ve probably stayed with him forever but, but that‟s—you never know about those things. RR: Would you say that you‟ve done anything to further the study of veterinary science? ________________________________________________________________________ 30 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Well, yeah. I���ve—I had one article published about the cost of doing—of an IBR outbreak that was over at Tebbetts and I wrote that up and it was published in the Journal of Veterinary Economics—no, in the small—large—no, the magazine was just Veterinary Medicine.7 That was the name of it. When I was down in Hermann, I wrote the article for the—it was a case report on acorn poisoning and then I won the case report in my senior year in vet school and they put that book—put that in a abstract of articles. So anyway, several years later, why, I bought a three volume book. One of „em was on nutrition, one was on metabolic diseases and the other one was on infectious diseases, and anyway. In that book they abstracted my acorn poisoning case report. So, I just got these—bought these books, so we had a bad case of acorn poisoning that year and so after I‟d posted the animal why I said, “Well, I just got some new books I‟m gonna see what they say about it so looked up in this book, and the only article that they had abstracted on acorn poisoning was mine. So I told the owner, I said, “Well this is the blind leadin‟ the blind so”— (both laughing). “If they—if there‟s nothing new since I‟d wrote that, why, we got a problem, but anyway. There‟s not much you can do with it any, but— RR: How long have you been practicing veterinary medicine? MT: Forty-four years. RR: And are you still practicing? MT: I do some, yeah. We‟re gonna de-claw a cat this afternoon. 7 IBR stands for Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 31 RR: I understand that you met your wife while you were in vet school. MT: Yes, or before I was in vet school. RR: What year did you get married? MT: [19]63. RR: And what‟s her name? MT: Norma Jean. RR: So, you actually got married right after you graduated. MT: Yeah. Tomorrow‟s our anniversary. RR: Oh. Happy anniversary. MT: Yeah. RR: Did Norma Jean work? MT: Yeah��well, you mean when she was in school? RR: Well, after— MT: She worked through school and her dad wouldn‟t let us get married when I was in vet school. He didn‟t—he said he didn‟t want any daughter of his puttin‟ a guy through vet school and then go off and leave her. So, she taught school for four years while I was in vet school. And I didn‟t give up, and I finally married her then but—that was—she taught four years. Then, when we were in Hermann then we got married and she taught two years at Washington and then of course she was pregnant and then we moved, and that‟s an interesting story too I guess. But anyway, she taught two years and then when we started our own practice why, she run the office and has always done that, so she‟s—________________________________________________________________________ 32 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose she hasn‟t worked out since then. Let me tell you about when we moved. It was the last week that I was workin‟. I was supposed to work „til a Tuesday I believe and on Wednesday the movers were coming, but anyway. The baby was supposed to be—our oldest boy—was supposed to be born about two weeks earlier and he just chose to drag his feet and not show up until the twenty-ninth of May. We had planned to have the baby and get all of this all done and then move. Well, I was still workin‟ that day, on a Sunday—I had duty that Sunday. So, we‟d talk on the radio periodically and she decided that it was about—it was eminent. So, I didn‟t—I hadn‟t had lunch yet. It was five o‟clock and I hadn‟t had lunch yet, so finally Doc Rohlfing‟s wife said, “You‟ve got to take—go her and take her to the hospital.” So anyway, we had to go to Washington, there wasn‟t a—didn‟t have a hospital in Hermann then. So, we went to Washington and so we started down there. Well, it had kinda abated—her labor had abated a little bit and she said, “Well, stop and get you a sandwich,” and so we stopped and got and sandwich and I said, “You want somethin?” [She said,] “Yeah, I want an ice cream cone.” So she ate an ice cream cone. We went on down to the hospital then and were waitin‟ and they had her all prepped and ready to—but the delivery room had somebody in it. And there was a kid there, who—he wasn‟t but seventeen years old, and his wife was in the delivery room and they had come in the night before already! And, course I had been pullin‟ calves all day you know and I was twenty-eight years old—I was pretty cocky you know, and so he said, “Well,” he said. The nurse came out and said, “The doctor want to talk to you.” He said, “I wonder what he wants?” I said, “he‟s gonna wanna do a cesarean if—_____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 33 you‟ve waited long enough. It‟s time to get on with this.” And so anyway, they pulled her out and took her to the surgery room and put Norma Jean in and course, Greg was born right away, you know—eight o‟clock and we‟d left home at five and so. So anyway, why—she had taught a course in family living, which was the beginnings that was first put into the home economics curriculum and she‟d had some boys in that class. And, this one boy that was in that class—his mother was the nurse there. So brought Greg out and she said, “I‟m not supposed to show him to ya „til we get him cleaned up but,” she said, “I‟m gonna let you see him.” So I looked at him and then she went on and cleaned him up. But anyway, that was on a Sunday, well then I worked Monday, Tuesday—we had the movers comin‟ on a Wednesday and they moved us up there and then I sent down on a Friday I guess. They kept „em a lot longer in the hospital. So then I went and got „em on a Friday—she and Greg—and moved „em into this little old house up in Jeff that we‟d rented. So, that‟s the— RR: And you have three children then? MT: Three yeah. RR: What were there names? MT: Greg is the oldest. Bruce and Brenda. RR: And have any of them decided to follow in your footsteps? MT: Nope. Greg went to Ag School at the university, and he‟s up in Iowa now. He got his master‟s in dairy. He did the—milked those cows up at Lenneus when the intensive grazing research and he did the—he milked those cows—those beef cows to see how ________________________________________________________________________ 34 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose different methods of intensive grazing would effect milk production in beef cattle and so his degree was in dairy, his masters, and he works for NRCS-USDA up in Iowa.8 Bruce is the—he never indicated—never had any plans in agriculture. He went in the Navy when he was—he spent his eighteenth birthday in boot camp in the Navy. He was in the navy for four years and then came back and went to Lincoln [University] and got an ROTC and then he got a commission and then he went active duty Army and he‟s now the commander of a—of two garrisons in Korea: Camp Long and Camp Eagle, and we‟re goin‟ over in September to see him but—and then he also went to Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown School.9 That‟s a picture of when he got his commission. They let me swear him in (points to a picture on the wall). RR: Has he had to go over to the dessert? MT: No. No, he‟s been—his first overseas assignment was Korea. Now the older boy is in the Reserves. Greg is in the Reserves and he spent almost a year in Iraq. He‟s been in the Reserves for over twenty years. RR: The Army Reserves? MT: Yeah. And his wife is in the Army Reserves. And I‟m retired from the—I was a State Veterinarian for the Missouri National Guard for about twelve years. RR: When did you get into the military? MT: In [19]50—57 I believe somethin‟ like that. 8 NRCS-USDA stands for the Natural Resources Conservation Service- United States Department of Agriculture. 9 ROTC stands for Reserve Officers‟ Training Corps. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 35 RR: And you served for the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps? MT: I was in the—I went in as an enlisted man and went through artillery basic and stayed in the Reserves and made sergeant E-5. Then when I got out of my junior year of vet school why I spent as a co-step program—it‟s the U.S. Public Heath Service—it‟s a commission and I spent that summer up in Kansas City testing cows for histoplasmosis. We were lookin‟ for a farm around—close to Kansas City where they could—where the communicable disease center could find some soil that histo in it and—so we found some. Anyway, I had resigned from the Army Reserves to get that commission and then that was to get me to go to work for public health service when I graduated. Well then when I graduated, I didn‟t go with „em and so then they withheld my commission. And then when I was in Jeff [erson City], they needed—they put a slot for a veterinarian in the Missouri National Guard and they called me up and they asked me if I was interested and I said, “Yeah, I was interested.” So, that‟s when they had this “try one” program where you enlist for a year at your old rank and they said, “We‟ll enlist you like that while we‟re getting your commission,” and so then I did the veterinary work as an E-5 until they got my commission as a captain and then I went on. I ended up retiring as a lieutenant colonel. RR: After 24 years, correct? MT: Yeah. RR: So, you were actually in the Reserves then during Vietnam, is that correct? ________________________________________________________________________ 36 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Yeah. Well, yes. Let‟s see. I went back in about [19]70. See I was out for about ten years. So I‟d say it was probably—yeah it was during the Vietnam Era yeah. RR: But you didn‟t have to go overseas for any of that? MT: Uh-uh. No. RR: What did you do as a veterinarian for the military? MT: Primarily I taught food service sanitation and inspected the dining facilities and did a little bit of rabies control at Camp Clark [and] Camp Crowder. RR: Was that a very time consuming job? MT: Ahhh—It was about—well, it was one weekend a month and about—I did a lot of extra time so I‟d say probably—I probably got probably thirty days of active duty a year. [END OF TAPE 2 SIDE 1] RR: And what do you think the most important thing that you learned from your experience in the service was? MT: Oh I (laughs)—I don‟t know, I guess just the patriotism part of it. RR: So, has religion been an important part of your life? MT: Sure. RR: What role would you say religion played in your early life? MT: Oh, I‟d say that it was always there. I think it molded my approach to people and duty. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 37 RR: Would you say that whenever you were younger that religion and church were separate entities or—do you think that— MT: Oh, no. My first experience was when we were—we had a little Sunday school over here and we went to that all the time and that was—and that was part of bein‟ in the country, you know, and we didn‟t get out and get to know very many other people. That was the first religious training. RR: So was the church actually—being in the country the church was a really important place for people to gather, is that—do you— MT: Well yeah, I would say so yeah. RR: So then the social events like church picnics or something like that would be where the whole community could actually get together? MT: Well, it wasn‟t necessarily. See, this was pretty much a Catholic community, and we didn‟t, I mean, we neighbored with—I mean, we would have—the social activities revolved around the school and the community you know. There was—the school was, of course, goin‟ back to the school again. World War II, a lot of that was—we‟d have pie suppers and we had old fiddler‟s contests and things like that to raise money for the war effort you know, and that was more the school. I mean now, they‟d have a church picnic once a year, you know, but it wasn‟t the—that wasn‟t near as big a social thing as the school. RR: And you still attend church is that correct? MT: Yeah. ________________________________________________________________________ 38 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose RR: Where do you go? MT: Church of Christ in Jeff [erson] City. RR: Would you say that religion has influenced your political opinions? MT: Oh certainly. Sure. RR: For instance, what is your stance on abortion? MT: I‟m strongly opposed to it. Anything that allows the killin‟ of a baby, that‟s just the way I am. RR: What about in the instance of if the mother‟s in danger, if she‟s dying, or— MT: Well, the problem that we‟ve always been up against with the abortion—the strict abortion people say, “Not abortion under any conditions.” I have always had a little bit of a problem with rape and incest and this sort of thing, but the problem that I‟ve always also had was that if you cave over on one thing, then they‟ll find an excuse to use that as an excuse to abort a perfectly normal baby and that‟s the interesting facet of this discussion that—and so I‟ve always taken a strict definition of abortion as in bein‟ opposed—You might be interested to know that my second son Bruce, they have adopted two children from Russia and they‟ve adopted one in Oklahoma City who they‟ve—they went into the hospital and put „em in the next room to the mother. The baby was born and they have kept—and they took the baby right away, but they have kept contact with this baby and its mother—its biologic mother. Now, they also adopted a little girl in Lawton, Oklahoma and they put them in the room next to „em, the baby was born—she never saw the baby. They brought her—the baby to them—and they raised her and they even _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 39 entered the hospital under an assumed name so that there is no connection between the mother—the biologic mother and them. So, it‟s a—I feel very strongly that this abortion issue is a—is very touchy and I don‟t want to be a part of allowin‟ that to happen. Now, the stem cell research and the stem cell issue is another one of those things where the true pro-life people don‟t even want to destroy a fertilized embryo and that‟s carryin‟ it pretty far, but on the other hand, that‟s exactly the question. You either can be—you can only be for or against killin‟ babies no matter what stage, so I‟ve taken the approach that I don‟t want to do stem cell research and then destroy the fertilized embryo. We don‟t have to do—we can have the same results with umbilical blood stem cells. We don‟t have to fertilize embryos and destroy „em to do the stem cell research. They‟ve never had any results, any good cures or prevention from embryonic stem cells where as the last—this one that they just had the other day—stem cell—awe, I say the other day, I read it in Reader’s Digest. They had used stem cells to—they harvested the stem cells from the leg and put it in the brain for some brain cure. This was not—this didn‟t involve destroyin‟ an embryo. RR: The adult stem cells? MT: Yeah. RR: Is what they were using? MT: Yeah. RR: So, do you actually think that stem cell research then is beneficial to curing certain diseases like Alzheimer‟s? ________________________________________________________________________ 40 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Oh certainly! Certainly! RR: So, you are opposed to using embryonic stem cells with the exception of the umbilical stem cells. MT: They are not—they are not embryonic. They‟re adult stem cell. RR: Oh, okay. There is also the argument that the adult stem cells can‟t be coaxed into the various different types of cells in the same way that embryonic stem cells can. MT: Oh. I don‟t know. I don‟t know. You are saying that they can‟t differentiate? RR: Well, I read an article that stated that the embryonic stem cells were actually better for the research because you could coax the stem cells into various types of cells, you know how stem cells— MT: No—a stem—well, they may use that but a stem cell—a true stem cell can be, can convert into other, well, it‟s the basis for all of our tissue cells. All of our brain cells, our bone cells and everything else have to come from a stem cell. That‟s the first step. RR: Several people argue that embryonic stem cells—for the use of embryonic stem cells— because the stem cells that they are using, the embryo‟s were going to be thrown away anyway—ones that were in labs preparing to be fertilized. What would you say about that? MT: Well, that‟s a matter of definition of—that makes it that much easier to abuse it so I don‟t buy that argument at all. RR: How would you suggest then finding some of these cures if—would you suggest using adult stem cells to find cures as research or—? _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 41 MT: Sure. RR: Well, in recent years, many of the experiments have been preformed—drugs have been tested on animals as opposed to the human stem cells and then they still have to go through a phase of testing with the FDA on humans before they can be approved for used on humans, is that correct? For instance, different drugs that they are trying to use to find a cure for something— MT: I don‟t quite follow you. RR: Well, I was just trying to ask you how you felt about testing on animals, as a veterinarian. MT: Certainly. That‟s—I mean, we do that all the time. I don‟t know exactly. RR: Well, there‟s an argument that—well of course there‟s the argument at what point an embryo becomes a sentient being. You know, some people argue at conception, the first trimester, birth— MT: The first division of the cell. RR: Yeah, there‟s also then—with animals, nobody argues that they are not sentient beings, correct. So, I was just wondering how you felt about justifying the use of animals for testing verses the use of humans. MT: You know that were on a borderline of the animal rights people sayin‟ animals are people you might say. They‟re even tryin‟ to get us to say that you don‟t own a pet you are the guardian of a pet. That gets into some very, very touchy ground as far as this animal research is concerned. The animal rights question is event gettin‟ so strict that they‟re ________________________________________________________________________ 42 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose trying to make us do teaching with virtual teaching rather than with live animals that— don‟t break a dog‟s leg and set it, don‟t teach surgery on animals, you know. RR: Do you think that they‟re going to be successful? MT: I don‟t know. Not—probably not in my lifetime, but that‟s a scary thought that—this is all—all of these things are—the ethical medicine is almost a quagmire of possibilities, you know. RR: Yeah. How would you then—one of the arguments for abortion is a woman‟s right to choose what to do with her body. How do you respond to that? MT: Well, I don‟t think that anybody has a right to kill a baby. That‟s my feeling. I don‟t care, I mean—and we wouldn‟t have all of the problems that we have today if—this has led to the promiscuity that we have and this sleepin‟ around is what has caused a lot of pain and misery for those—and they can talk about birth control all they want to but that won‟t— that isn‟t a hundred percent. That gets back to the question of morals and biblical teaching and that‟s where I stand. RR: So you think then if abortion were banned, women would be forced to accept the consequences of their choices and then less likely to be as promiscuous? MT: That‟s exactly right, yeah, that‟s true. RR: Uh—I just lost my train of thought—One of the things that you mentioned was that your son had adopted several children, and I read an article recently that said that a lot of children were being adopted now from other countries or from different races that normal don‟t get adopted because abortion has led to this decrease in the number of children in _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 43 the U.S. that are generally adopted. Would you say that if abortion were banned that there would be more children in the United States that needed to be adopted? MT: I guess—I go back to the old—what causes babies, and outside of marriage, that‟s the problems that—that‟s one of the problems that the black community has is that they don‟t have—you look at the single black mothers, and they‟re the ones that are in poverty and those are the kids that grow up and contribute to the crime and the drug culture and everything else and I know that its—you‟ll say it‟s a cliché, but God planned two people to raise kids! This maternal society is just not workin.‟ RR: Well, do you think that people will have abortions anyways if it‟s banned, but it will just be more dangerous? MT: Oh, I‟m sure that‟s right. That doesn‟t make it right. RR: So why did you decide to enter the political arena then? MT: For those reasons: education—the moral situation, the financial situation of the taxes and things like that. RR: Have you always been interested in politics? MT: Oh yeah. Yeah. RR: Were you raised as a Republican? MT: Nope! Townleys were all Democrats. RR: So were political conversations then part of your daily upbringing? MT: Oh I would say so, yeah. RR: What were your memories maybe about politics? ________________________________________________________________________ 44 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Well, course my family were—they probably go back to the—go back—the abstract on this place shows, or my grandpa‟s place shows that they had slaves. They—in the Civil War, I‟ve never found any of the Townley‟s that ever served in the Civil War, which would have been on a Confederate side. My grandpa Barchard, this place here, he served in the Union Army, so he was a Republican and they were, of course, Democrats. That was the—and then of course the—goin‟ back to the Roosevelt administration and the Democrats bringin‟ the country out of the Depression—they were still fightin‟ the Depression. Now, many of the people today have changed and have seen the era of the welfare state. The welfare state is not—we don‟t need to encourage—we need to encourage positive things: work and good management and family values and this sort of thing. I think that the Democrat party in general has left that, I mean, they wanna be politically correct and they don‟t—then that gets into the welfare situation and I just don‟t believe that that‟s what‟s good for the country. RR: So that‟s the major reason, then, why you decided to be a Republican? MT: Yes. Yeah. I‟ll tell you a story. My uncle, who was in World War II, never gave up bein‟ a Democrat. He was a strong Democrat. When I first ran for—I ran for the [State] Senate in 1972 and got beat but I ran, and I was in practice up in Jeff [erson City] and I was farmin‟ here. My dad was still—well, my dad died in ‟72, but anyway, I‟d come back down here and so I went in and my uncle worked—was the postmaster—and he‟d got that—my dad had helped him get the job through political. The Democrats and Clearance Cannon was our congressman back then, but anyway—He got the job. So I _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 45 went in and I had been very close—I was always very close to him because he farmed right next to us there and I was with him „bout as much as I was with my dad—and so he said—and then of course when I ran as a Republican, why the local Republicans, they‟d have coffee every morinin,‟ and they‟d give he and my dad a hard time about me runin‟ as a Republican, and he said—I went in to see him one day I sat down there and he said, “Yeah,” he said, “that‟s the trouble with you damn guys. You make a little money and you turn into a Republican!” (Laughing) And, he was just as serious as he could be. He really believed that I was makin‟ lots of money and that‟s what made me be a Republican. RR: Well, so you ran in 1972, were you asked to run for the Senate? MT: No, I just did it all—I‟ve always run pretty much on my own. I didn‟t get asked to run very much. RR: Were you in any local—in local government at all before you went to the state government? MT: I was on the water board up in Jeff [erson] City, we had a problem they kept—it was under poor management and graft and everything else so we—I ran for the one seat on the board and there were five member board and the other four were hand picked by the manager and for a year, why I voted no and they voted yes. So, we got two more people to run the next year, and they were—we got—we agitated. We carried a petition to have the state auditor audit the books and then we also ran and elected these two people and then the night we were organized. We organized, we—they elected me chairman of the board because there would be three-two, and they elected me chairmen of the board and ________________________________________________________________________ 46 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose president of the board and we fired the manager that night and hired another. Hired a guy, why, I had him lined up in the—and I called him and said come over, we‟re gonna hire ya. We fired this guy that night, and from then on why we—it improved and we had people that—his buddies that was hooked up without a meter and they‟d take the water district truck and steal—take the gas from water district and he‟d take men down to the lake fishin‟ and then another time why he‟d take the women in the office. He‟d take them down and take them boat ridin‟ down at the lake. So we broke up that little game, but that was one of the things that I was involved in. RR: Well, then in ‟82, you were elected as a State Representative for the 111th district. Had you moved back to Osage County by then? MT: Yeah. We moved back in ‟77. RR: Were you living here by then? MT: Yes. RR: Can you tell me something about your first campaign? MT: Oh, it was just—we just had a lot of people that got behind me and helped me. RR: Who did you run against? MT: Oh. Thurman Willett. He was the superintendent of schools at Linn. He started Linn Tech—Linn State Technical College. He and I were in the Guard together. This is kinda interesting because there were—the Linn School district was strongly divided. Part of „em wanted—agreed with Thurman that they needed to have some technical education, and the others said that he was—he just was a wheeler/dealer and that he shouldn‟t have _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 47 been—he shouldn‟ta branched out like that. He and I were both in the Guard and we were down at Camp Clark the summer when we were runnin‟ against each other. We were good friends. Anyway—I never said anything bad about Thurman all the time that we were running—he never said anything bad about me. We were friends, but the paper got on my campaign and just were—they had been on him for all the things that he did and they just—and he and I would sit down at the, we were in the same barracks, and we would laugh about how the paper was harassin‟ him, you know. Many of the things they said were true, you know, but anyway—that was the campaign, and of course, people— of course I—there was one township and a little bit more than one township in Cole County where we had lived before we moved back down here and so those neighbors, they really helped me out. I mean, they—and voted for me. I carried all three counties. No, I carried Cole County and Osage County and Maries County, course was so strongly Democrat. Carried, I beat him by twelve votes I believe, somethin‟ like that. RR: Did your family help you campaign? MT: Yeah. Uh-huh. RR: Were you nervous at your first election? MT: No. [END OF TAPE 2 SIDE 2] ________________________________________________________________________ 48 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose RR: [How has campaigning] changed since the early 1980‟s or even 1972 when you ran for Senate? MT: Well, course I never—my campaigns were never personality things. I tried to keep personality out of it. I didn‟t run against I guy, I run against what he believed in and what his philosophy was. I wasn‟t runnin‟ a popularity contest for myself either, I always tried to say this is what I believe in and if you believe in those things then you ought to vote for me. I‟ve, as a result of that, the press has always been pretty good to me because they—I didn‟t pull any punches—they didn‟t have to refigure what I was—that what I said was what I meant you know. I never tried to be a PR person.10 I don‟t believe in PR drivin‟ the ship. We need the real activity you know. What you believe in, so. That‟s the way our campaigns have always been run. In fact, I had to be very—I had to really watch that my people didn‟t get into those things. That‟s why I always—that‟s why I got along pretty well runnin‟ in a small district, but I never was successful in a Senate campaign where there was eight counties, you know and they—I ran for Senate three times and got beat three times. RR: Did you ever use the television for campaigning? MT: No. RR: No? MT: Uh-uh. RR: So, what did you—did you go door to door, or fliers, or what kind of stuff? 10 PR stands for public relations. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 49 MT: Door to door, picnics—just get out and meet the people. RR: What was your—your strategy for winning then was what you said, to run on issues rather than personality? MT: Sure. Yeah. RR: Were you campaigning at the time that the Gasconade River flooded in [19]82? MT: Yep, yep. RR: Did that affect any of your campaigning? MT: Well, it did from the standpoint that they made a big to do about—and I got crossways with [John] Ashcroft on that and he came down and stood on the bank and said we‟re gonna do everything we can to do—Shell Oil Company did an admirable job of pickin‟ up the oil, you know. The environmentalists went at them like they was—that it was their fault and things—accidents do happen. I think that‟s the biggest problem that the press is up against with is that we‟ve come to believe that everything that goes wrong has to be caused by somebody—their negligence or their policy or whatever. That bothers me because things do go wrong accidentally. Accidents happen and he got down on the riverbank and he [Ashcroft] said, “Well, we‟re gonna make Shell Oil Company clean this up.” Well, when they got through, they spent a lot of money cleanin��� up stuff just—that was just trash. It cost Shell Oil Company a lot of money. It ended up—whenever you have that policy it costs the consumer. The consumer ends up payin‟ it regardless of how much they spent cleanin‟ up the trash that was on the side. If it had a drop of oil on it ________________________________________________________________________ 50 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose they picked it—they made „em pick it up, you know. That‟s, you know. I was crossways on that too. RR: So was that one of the issues then when you campaigned at all? MT: The oil spill was after that though wasn‟t it? RR: I‟m not exactly sure. MT: No. You‟re talkin‟ about the flood of [19]82. The flood of ‟82 was durin‟ the campaign. We had just been elected and then the oil spill was later, it was in the „70s. That‟s when I got crossways with Ashcroft for overkill on the cleanup. RR: Well, what were some of the major issues in your ‟82 campaign election? MT: Well, the newspaper wanted to make the issue that—about Thurman and how he had used a lot of strange tactics to develop the tech school and all of that and that was the biggest thing. The other—I don‟t even remember what all the current issues were at that time. RR: What role did money play in elections then? MT: In these House races, the money wasn‟t important, I mean, I didn‟t have any trouble raisin money for a house race „cause I didn‟t spend it on television and all that. But now the Senate races, I didn‟t adjust to the methods that you had to do to raise money and that‟s why I lost, you know. RR: Do you feel a sense of obligation to the individuals who supported your bid, financially? MT: I always approached people with the idea that—I want you to donate to my campaign because you think I‟ll do what‟s right. If you think that you can buy me with your money, I don‟t want your money. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 51 RR: Do you ever think that was a problem with some of the legislators you worked with? MT: Oh yeah sure, some of „em were bought and paid for before they ever got there. You bet ya. RR: So you always placed your constituents before your donors then? MT: That‟s right, and I wanted people to donate to my campaign based on [the idea] that I would do what was right, and even if they didn‟t agree with it. RR: So, how did you find out that you‟d won your first election, the first State Representative election? MT: Oh, we had a party that night and watched television and—we‟ve always had those watch parties. RR: What was your first day as a representative like? MT: Oh, I don‟t know. I just went in and was sworn in and that was it. RR: Had you ever been to the capitol building before? MT: Oh yeah. Yeah. RR: And how long did you remain a representative? MT: Well, I was—I served ten terms all together. I guess from [19]82 to—well, it‟d be ‟83 was when you was sworn in „til ‟94. See—that‟d be six terms wouldn‟t it. Yeah. Six terms and then I came back and served four more then. RR: What would you say the average day was like? MT: When we‟re in session? RR: Uh-huh. ________________________________________________________________________ 52 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Well, you just go in and you go to your committee meetings, you sometimes had some caucus meetings, you had—you met with people that were—there were always people comin‟ in with special organizations and special issues and dependin‟ on what the—what was gonna be on the agenda that day, why, they were—they usually came in to talk to you. Then, went in about ten o‟clock in session and then most—early in the session, why, it was mostly committee meetings in the afternoon. Back in those days we used to have committee meetings that‟d last „til midnight or after, and somewhere along the line they realized that they didn‟t have to do that. So they quit havin‟ those late night sessions. They���d have one that‟d go in the evening and—but last „til maybe ten o‟clock or so, but. Then there was always the—somebody was always havin‟ a reception or somethin‟, I mean the Springfield, St. Joe, St. Louis—they was always—or it mighta been the engineers would be in or the—all the different organizations would come in and many times they‟d have receptions. I didn‟t have enough labor union people when the labor unions would have their reception. I didn‟t usually go to that. Unless I had somebody that belonged to—and they‟d come in and specifically ask me to go, why, I‟d go. RR: Do you think that the lobbyists had much influence in the state government? MT: They used—the always had quite a bit of influence, but they‟ve got a lot more influence since term limits because the people don‟t know—the elected people don‟t know all of the issues. I was—one time—I went to a—and I‟m a little, I was always a little bit of a different kind of a representative, but I went to a—I don‟t remember what organization it _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 53 was, whether it was a grocers or the retail or what it was, but anyway, they had their meeting and they asked several legislators to come and talk to the membership and so they—after they asked their questions then and one of „em said, “Well, what do you think about lobbyists?” And I said, and I told „em, I said, “I like lobbyists. If I have a issue that I don‟t know very much about, I can figure out and call the lobbyist on this side of the issue and the lobbyist on that side of the issue and then they will tell me—give me the arguments for this side and this side and then I can put that together and determine who‟s—I can figure out who‟s lyin‟ to me and who‟s got the most valid argument. So then they asked me, they said, “Well does lobbyists ever come—do they come see ya pretty much?” And I said, “Oh, they don‟t come very often, you know, I mean, most the time when I wanna know somethin‟ I call „em and ask „em to come by.” Then they said that their lobbyist, they said well, “Do you ever call on Doc?” And he said, “Well, there‟s a couple reasons why we don‟t. One of „em is we always know where he stands. And the second reason is that he probably wouldn‟t change if we went and talked to him (laughs).” I took that as a compliment, so— RR: Yeah. Is there anyone in particular then that you remember as a lobbyist? MT: Oh, I remember almost all of the old-time lobbyists. Many of „em are retired now but, one of the best friends I have is Bob Wilson and he was the—he lobbied for the Conservation Federation and then he lobbied for several—some of which—oh he lobbied for the timber industry and he was probably—I probably disagreed with him about as much as I agreed with him. But, when I was passin‟ the fence bill, I wanted to—when I first wrote the bill ________________________________________________________________________ 54 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose up, it was that everybody would have to build a fence. The timber industry, they didn‟t wanna have to build fences, and we stayed with that stance for three or four terms and I finally figured out that I was gonna have to give a little bit or we wouldn‟t even fix what we set out to—we wanted to fix the differences between livestock owners buildin‟ the fence, you know. So, I said, “ok,” I said, “Lets leave the people off—the recreation people and the forestry people off. Let‟s leave „em off. If they don‟t need a fence, then let‟s say you don‟t have to build a fence. If you‟ve got livestock and you join somebody that‟s got—that doesn‟t need a fence, you build a fence, but then…let‟s put it on the deed, so that if they ever—if they wait for you to build a fence and they you build a fence and then they put livestock against it, you can go back and get your—get paid for it. So, we put that in the bill and we finally passed the bill then. That was a compromise that— that‟s the right was that compromise oughta be done. RR: Do you remember John Britton? MT: Yep. Good friend of mine. RR: And he was the Anheuser-Busch lobbyist, correct? MT: Yep. RR: So, did you go over to his house for the parties that he had? MT: I went to his parties. He‟d buy a keg of beer for our campaigns and whenever we‟d come up with a drunk drivin‟ law, I‟d vote for it. I mean—he knew that—John knew where I stood, that I didn‟t believe—and they don‟t want drunk drivin‟ either. But, some of the things of special taxes on alcohol and things like that I voted with him because I don‟t _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 55 believe that we oughta be pickin‟—that we oughta be enforcin‟ morals with taxation, and that‟s—I‟ve been consistent with that philosophy. That doesn‟t mean that I have to be in favor the breweries, but it‟s not right to tax it special. RR: Do you remember what your first piece of legislation was, the first piece that you passed? MT: No I don‟t. What was it? RR: Well, I couldn‟t actually find that, it was kind of difficult to find. What about your most successful legislation? Do you have anything that— MT: Oh, the fence bill. I‟m very proud of that cause that was somethin‟ that needed doin‟ and not very many people were concerned about it, except when they got—they were all concerned that they had constituencies that wanted fences and didn‟t want fences. Course, eminent domain was the—that kept my career and didn‟t get it passed „til the year after I was gone. But I—they give me credit for carryin‟ the bill to get eminent domain passed. See, I spent ten terms in the legislature, nine in the minority and one in the majority. So when I was the chairman of the Natural Resources—Conservation and Natural Resources Committee, I passed—I didn‟t get the eminent domain bill passed, but I did a lot of work on it and I also got the bill passed that was—to revise the fees for hazardous waste, and that was somethin‟ that needed doin.‟ It was fair to the industries that do it and it was environmentally correct. I‟m proud of the fact that I—I‟m pretty good at workin‟ with both sides, I mean, you gotta have your principles, but then you also got to be flexible enough to see that you—if you do compromise—that you don‟t compromise the basic good of the people, you know. ________________________________________________________________________ 56 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose RR: So, which suggestions did you make to the eminent domain law? MT: That they have announce it before they take it, a year or so before, and that they be flexible and maybe move—listen to the owners instead of just goin‟ in rough shod and sayin‟— like—if you‟re gonna take somebody‟s house, it may cost a little more to change that power line around, to go around it, but why not be reasonable about that? The—and I picked up a lot of support in the cities with eminent domain and Page Avenue where they went through and they just went through rough shod and took people‟s houses. Then, the matter of how to determine the pay, we—it used to be that they—the utilities could just about set the price, you know, take it or leave it. We fixed that. RR: Is it fair market value now? MT: Yes, uh-huh. RR: So, do you think that large corporations and developers are taking advantage of people? MT: This has slowed it down a lot. It sure has. RR: And you mentioned Page Avenue. Were there any other specific abuses that you can think of that made it necessary to change the law? MT: What started it was this power line from here at Chamois down to Frank‟s Station down at Pulaski County. When I was runnin‟ for the senate the last time, I was in a restaurant down at St. Roberts and I‟d been to a meeting with some people and I walked out and, course, was campaignin‟ and I shook hands with this guy and he said, “I know you,” he said, “you helped me to get paid for that power line goin‟ through,”—he had good timber and my argument, of course, was that if you go through a stand of timber, that‟s the end _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 57 of that enterprise because you cut that timber off and then it never grows back. If it were a well managed timber farm, you cut timber today and then five, six, seven years later you cut some more timber off of it. He said, “You got me paid for losin‟ that timber,” and he said, “I won‟t forget ya (laughs).” RR: Well, because of your unique background, did you concentrate on any legislation to improve the standards for farmers—any of the standards? MT: Oh. Course, I worked on the ethanol situation quite a bit. As a minority member, I—the Agriculture Committee in general, was not very partisan. We, I mean, I was involved with noxious weeds, I was involved with brucellosis programs and the chairmen of those committees—when they were Democrats, always were good friends of mine and listened to—they depended on me—partly because of my profession, but they knew that I didn‟t—that I told it the way it was, I didn‟t take a partisan stance and so I would give „em good advice on the brucellosis program and milk sanitation bills, testing. One of the bills that I passed was to allow U.S.—the Missouri Department of Agriculture to do the testing—the inspection of manufacturing plants—the dairy manufacturing plants. Well, that was just somethin‟ that—it was a minor in the big scheme of things, it was minor, but to the dairy industry, it was a major thing and I got that passed when I was in the minority. RR: Was that a reaction at all to—one of the farmers you mentioned in your book, Ed Wagner, or farmers in general who were like him who, even as a veterinarian you gave him advice ________________________________________________________________________ 58 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose so that he didn‟t contaminate the milk supply for others, though you just know he was ignoring your advice? MT: Yeah. That‟s one of the things that‟s always bothered me is that I could—course now we‟ve got testing so where you—where they test that milk and if they woulda caught that triple sulfa in there today, he‟da been off the market almost permanently. Where then, they didn‟t have the testing methods. We tried—we have really conscientiously—most veterinarians are very conscientious of followin‟ the rules because we know that our market is under pressure from the environmentalists that say, “Oh, you‟re usin‟ all kinds of insecticides and herbicides and all kinds of alternate genes and everything. We don‟t know how much that causes cancer.” Well, the only protection we have as producers is to know—to follow the rules that USDA and FDA put out, because—even if we don‟t agree with „em, we know that they‟re over cautions, but from sellin‟ our product, we need the consumer confidence that says that we need to be able to trust the quality of our food.11 Our food in this country is the most—not only nutritious, but most sanitary of any country in the world. We oughta be proud of that. Then on the other hand, we need the inspectors to be reasonable and sensible too, you know. [END OF TAPE 3 SIDE 1] 11 FDA stands for the Food and Drug Administration. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 59 RR: Well, I also read that in 2003 you passed legislation, or sponsored legislation, that encouraged the Animal and Plant Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture to develop a permanent tracking system that would follow livestock from the farm to the table. This is something that you were talking about, I guess. Was this at all a reaction to mad cow disease? MT: (Laughs)—this was the beginning of the animal ID program and the interesting thing about it, if you stay in politics long enough, you‟ll change directions several times. That resolution was what we needed to [have] in reaction to the mad cow disease. Now then, they have used—Korea especially, has used mad cow as a—they won‟t buy any boneless—they won‟t buy any imported beef with bone in it. So, if they find a couple a little chips of bone in it, then they immediately say, “Well, we need to be—we don‟t wanna buy your beef.” That‟s—we‟ve got into the same problem with the animal identification, the difference between mandatory and voluntary. If we have a mandatory animal identification program, the packers will know where every calf is in the country, how many of „em there are, and how low they can bid the price to buy the cattle, and that‟s why I have turned around and don‟t want a mandatory animal identification. Now, we‟ve got into the same argument with the COOL program—Country of Origin Labeling. Country of Origin Labeling. If we are gonna put somethin‟ on it that says that this piece of meat is raised in the United States, (phone rings) the only way you can enforce that is to have animal identification. So, we‟re in two different situations now. ________________________________________________________________________ 60 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose RR: What do you—do you think they should just end the bill then, or what do you think they should do? MT: Oh yeah, we‟ve done—we need some identification, but it‟s sure a problem to [decide] what‟s obtrusive and what isn‟t, you know. RR: You were also on several agricultural, conservation, and natural resource committees while you were serving as a representative. Do you think that environmental issues garner enough attention in politics today? MT: Sure they do, but what we need to do is we need to be reasonable. Some of our environmental friends are unreasonable and have used—for instance the endangered species or whatever—as a method of promoting their agenda. Global warming is a generality that is much misused and unfortunately, the press would take those things and carry the ball with „em, you know. It‟s unfortunate that they get things completely out of perspective. RR: Well, you mentioned earlier the bill that you sponsored for instate waste facilities—for the out of state tax and fees. Can you tell me something about the bill? MT: The unfairness of it was that the people that were burning the trash, or burnin‟ the hazardous wastes were being charged—they were being charged fees for doin‟ what was environmentally correct, and so we had to change that around to where we—where the generator had to pay more of the load than the people who were doin‟ the—that were burnin‟ the trash. Well, the cement kilns over along the Mississippi River, they were burnin‟ tires, they were burnin a lot of the oil—what‟s considered hazardous waste—_____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 61 what I found out is that our hazardous waste definition is way, way too strict. In other words, we consider—anything is considered hazardous waste, we had a mineral oil spill here a while back—mineral oil is not a hazardous waste! While we was in Columbia—it was up there in Columbia. Mineral oil is not a hazardous product. It doesn‟t hurt anybody, we use it. We put it—I put it in horses for colic—put it down their throat, so— RR: So do you think that they will ever possibly change and make the laws less strict on—is it anything that is not bio-degradable, is that—or— (phone rings) MT: Yeah its, no, they say that any—they categorize hazardous waste as anything—I don‟t know just how the definition reads, but its way too strict. RR: Wasn‟t Chamois nominated for hazardous waste facility? MT: (Laughs)—that‟s another story. Ok, we were—course, Chamois has trouble getting any industry, you know, we‟re kinda off the beaten track and so, Floyd Riley up at Moberly tried to get a hazardous waste incinerator. So, there were a number of us, the banker and the superintendent of schools, the superintendent of the power plant and I, we visited around at these hazardous waste incinerators, and we determined that this was somethin‟ that was a plant that we could use that would hire fifteen, twenty, [or] thirty people and would be a good thing for the community. Well, the environmentalist, who don‟t want— they want to create a problem, but they don‟t wanna create a solution, and so we had the solution. They got on us and me personally as if I was tryin‟ to pollute the whole country, you know, and course I stood up and believed that this was a thing that was good for our community. You‟da thought that I was the—I mean they just made fun of me, ________________________________________________________________________ 62 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose they said, “Oh my goodness, what‟s the matter with him, he wants to bring—haul all this hazardous waste in.” Well, the hazardous waste was used motor oil and things like that, but it had to be burned. So anyway, they took after me—the environmentalists took after me and that has stayed with me all of my career, I mean, they always depicted me as a hater of the environment. RR: What year was that in? MT: That was in—oh, back about 1980. RR: Really? And ever since then—do they bring it up during elections and stuff ever since then? MT: Oh, well. They don‟t up out—put somethin‟ in the paper about it or on ads, the just whisper, “Oh, he wanted to build a hazardous waste incinerator in Chamois!” RR: After you burn the hazardous waste, what do you do with it? MT: It‟s gone, it‟s destroyed. RR: It‟s completely destroyed? MT: It‟s destroyed. You‟ve gotta have a—the same—oh, the what do they call that—that goes on the exhaust—scrubbers. The power plant down here, all the coal power plants, have to have scrubbers on „em. That‟s one of the reasons that they‟ve gone to the low sulfur coal is—they can pay for haulin‟ that low sulfur coal from—where Montana or somewhere, all the way back here cheaper that they can maintain the scrubbers to use Missouri coal or Illinois coal. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 63 RR: Well, did your constituents give you an opportunity to explain your position before the turned against you? MT: Oh yeah. In fact, it never affected my election, I mean, there were more people that believed me than—they brought a guy in here from—he claimed he had worked for NASA, but he was, oh I don‟t know he was—he didn‟t have a—we found out he didn‟t have a big—he wasn‟t an expert, but they depicted him as an expert on hazardous waste.12 He came in and bought a place down here and went after me. But, nobody pays any attention to him anymore, but they showed—they had movies—videos—and this is one of the things that I learned from politics is that you can make a video showin‟ the worst case scenario, and they made this video and they put a red hue on it and showed it to whole neighborhood and they‟d say—and it was showing—it was actin‟ like how toxic it was. But that red hue, psychologically made them—made people think that, “boy this is really bad stuff,” you know. They—I went to a plant down in Alabama, well, somewhere down in Alabama, but we went through there and I went to this plant and I went into the office and I said I‟d like to see your plant. “Oh no,” he said, “We can‟t— we don‟t show—we don‟t take anybody in there.” I said, “Let me tell you my story,” I said, “We‟re tryin‟ to build a hazardous waste incinerator in my town and we‟d just like to know what the risk and what the—.” He said, “Sure, I‟ll take you around,” and he showed me all of the materials and most of the stuff they were burnin‟ was waste oil, you know and so we went over to the—to a restaurant and was eatin‟ in the restaurant and we 12 NASA stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. ________________________________________________________________________ 64 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose asked the waitress, “How do you get along with this plant over here?” She said, “What does it do?” We said, “It burns hazardous waste.” “Is that what it does? Why I didn‟t know that!” She said she didn‟t have any problem with it. So, anyway, that‟s—but anyway, they‟ve—that kind of sabotage is what animal rights people did with the animal breeders. They would—they call them—they wanted to give it the name, “puppy mills,” you know. These are animal breeders! They make a livin‟ raisin‟ dogs that can be sold on the pet market so that people can buy a good, healthy, pet! They showed the worst case scenarios of the filthiest—I don‟t—and I got to a lot of these kennels and inspect a good many of „em, and they‟re clean. If they‟re not—if they don‟t keep „em clean, their animals‟ll be sick and they won‟t make any money on „em, so—but boy, I mean they showed this to the—when we were having the—they were tryin‟ to outlaw animal breeders, make „em registered and everything, you know. It cost a lot of money. It run a lot of good breeders out of business. It got rid of a lot of the bad ones, which is fine, you know, but they showed these videos of the worst case scenario. RR: Were there any legislative leaders that you admired? Or, which ones did you admire the most? MT: Oh yeah, I mean, there were some that have gone. Course, John Ashcroft was a—he was a good man, there was no doubt about that and he took the beatin‟ for the—as attorney general, when he was attorney general, but he was a good man. He is a good man. Delbert Scott was a good one. RR: Delbert Scott? _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 65 MT: He was a good Christian and tried to do what was right. I knew some of the old line characters—Dick Webster, who was in the Senate. He and Emory Melton were both Republicans that were in a Senate that was controlled by the Democrats. They had a lot of clout „cause everybody respected them, and they were wheeler/dealers. They‟d make deals, but they were—they stayed straight though, unlike Dick‟s son Bill [Webster]. Bill was attorney general runnin‟ for governor and he did lose his credibility and that‟s what got him beat. RR: How did he lose his credibility? MT: He was usin‟ stuff in the attorney general‟s office for campaigns. Equipment, copy machines, and phones and this sort of thing, and he ought not do that. There‟s a lot more of that done than should be, but it‟s hard to separate it off, but. Course, I was there when Bob Griffin was speaker and Bob was as bigger crook as there was in the country. He got caught and he got by with this for a long, long time, but that was the way we—that philosophy is why the Republicans got control. RR: Was there anybody else who—was there anybody that you actually didn‟t get along with for any reason? MT: Oh, I got along with people. One of the stories that I tell about is—I was a—course corrections is a—I did veterinary work for the Department of Corrections when then had their farms, and course when I got into the legislature, why I was on the Corrections Committee. Talk about controversy. That‟s probably one of the reasons that I ran for the office was because the management—the way that the farms were bein‟ run—they just—________________________________________________________________________ 66 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose I mean, the hired help was stealin‟ pigs and calves and everything else and I saw all this happenin‟ and thought maybe I could clean it up a little bit when I ran for the legislature. So, I was always on the Corrections Committee and Betty Hearnes was the Chairman of the Corrections Committee. Betty was—her husband was Warren. So, we were citing the prison up Cameron and, course, I voted in committee against citing at Cameron cause it was clearly a political move by Bob Griffin to enhance his political career. So, I voted against it, well, he kicked me off of the Corrections Committee. So, she—Betty—went to him and said, “I want Merrill back on the Corrections Committee.” “No!” he said, “I‟m not gonna do that! He screwed me and I‟m not gonna put him back on it.” He said, “Why do you want him on it?” She said, “Because when he—,” I had very a very good relationship with the correction officers—people that worked in the corrections and they would tell me what was goin‟ on in the prisons and I would tell the committee what was goin‟ on. Then when they‟d ask me, “Where‟d you get your information?” I said, “That‟s none of your business.” I didn‟t want those people who gave me the straight information to lose their job or be harassed by the management of the Department of Corrections. So anyway, he did put me back on then. So, I was back on the Corrections Committee, but Betty Hearnes���I always respected Betty for goin‟ to bat for me. It was kind of an interesting situation. RR: Was she well respected within the representatives? MT: Oh yeah. Yeah. She was a real lady. This is kinda interesting too. Some of the people that I considered my friends were some of the people that I most disagreed with. Kaye _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 67 Steinmetz was from St. Louis, she was raised down at Rolla, but she was a liberal‟s liberal, I mean, she believed in—she worked on all the child abuse stuff, and you couldn‟t help but love her because she was so passionate in what she believed in, and the things that she believed in where right! But, the results of doin‟ it caused some real problems with child abuse, you could blame somebody for child abuse and they were guilty until proven. They shoulda been innocent until proven guilty but they were guilty until proven innocent, you know. We had some real problems with some of her bills with parental custody and this sort of thing that—I mean, you take somebody—could just say that they abused me and then, even though you were not convicted, why, it wasn‟t right, you know. But anyway, she—you couldn‟t help but like Kaye for her passion for kids, you know, but the long and the short in it was that you didn‟t—you couldn‟t have—you could overdo it, you know. Another one that I disagreed with, and I can‟t think of her name now, she was the, oh, she‟s dead now, but she was from St. Louis—but anyway, she was very passionate in her beliefs. She was the one that introduced the first women‟s lib [eration] bill—equal rights. She kept tryin‟ to get us to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and you know, she was adamant about it, but it was the wrong thing to do. RR: Not even all the women supported it. MT: Uh-uh. No. I got a kick out of—first time I ran for the Senate in [19]72, there was a couple of those little old—that was when the Equal Rights Amendment had been passed and was—had to be ratified, and so they had a candidates meeting up at the library up here in Jeff[erson City], and I was—somebody asked me the question, “Well, where do ________________________________________________________________________ 68 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose you stand on the Equal Rights Amendment?” There was three of those little old Republican women sittin‟ in the back and they just—they gave me this (shakes head no), you know, and they didn‟t have to tell me what to say, but, they didn‟t want me getting‟ in trouble and tryin‟ to ride the fence on it, so I just told „em, I said, “I think it‟s the wrong thing to do.” I said, “and we won‟t even have the separate restrooms if they carry it to the ultimate limit,” and they just grinned, you know (Laughs). RR: What do you think the flaw was in amendment? MT: Well, we don‟t—we didn‟t really need an amendment at all, I mean, if people would— [END OF TAPE 3 SIDE 2] MT: …pays for bein‟ a conservative. I‟m glad that many things have happened that—in the line of civil rights and women‟s rights and everybody-all these rights, but I think that sometimes they‟ve been carried way too far, you know, and infringed on somebody else‟s rights, you know. And, course that‟s what, I‟ve been accused of almost bein‟ a libertarian, but sometimes we overreact with legislation, I mean. I set by a guy when— from St. Louis who didn‟t know beans about the livestock business, and when we first had the mad cow disease, he carried in armloads of legislation about—on the state level—to deal with the mad cow disease. We can get too much legislation, and I‟ve always—I‟ve really avoided I‟ve had people try to get me to say, “Well, Doc, why don‟t you introduce a bill to such and such?” We don‟t need that. That just creates more _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 69 bureaucracy and creates—causes us to hire more people that costs us money and it‟s difficult to enforce. RR: Uh-huh. It was especially difficult when, you mentioned that you were a minority most of while you were in office—do you think that it was especially difficult then to pass any legislation that the Republican party wanted? MT: Sure. That‟s—and I—and I guess that‟s true today too. It‟s harder for a person in a minority party to get a good amendment on than it is in the majority party. RR: The first governor that you served under was a Republican, Kit Bond. Can you tell me anything about him? MT: Yep. Kit Bond, I guess the biggest problem that I had with him was that he brought a director of corrections in by the name of George Camp. George Camp was a liberal and was—started the desecration of the prison farm system. We used to—back in the good ol‟ days when Hearnes was governor, why, they would have—inmates would raise watermelons and all kinds of food, and they had two dairies. They had a dairy at Algoa and they had a dairy at Church Farm. Produced all the milk for the prison system—had hogs. They butchered the hogs, they fed the steer, dairy calf steers out—the steer calves, and fed them out and butchered „em, had the beef, the pork to feed the inmates, and they worked on it and worked in the pack—they had a packin‟ plant and everything else. George Camp started to disassemble that program, and part of the reason was is that there was so much graft in it that—people were stealin‟, I mean they used to—course, they used to take watermelons up to the capitol, you know, from prisons, and they—________________________________________________________________________ 70 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose everybody got all the watermelons they could eat, and take „em home with „em, you know. But, that was (phone rings)—taught the inmates to work and they had a lot less problems then. That‟s a whole. The corrections system is a whole book of things that happened that will never be broadcast. RR: Maybe that‟s something to write about. MT: Yeah. RR: So other than the corrections system, how did you feel about Kit Bond as a governor? MT: Kit was a good man, he was—he‟s a real politician, I mean. You have to give it to him that he‟s a politician. You can see that now with the money that he brings home in pork now from Washington. [He] got the bridge built at Hermann the new federal court building was just announced. He brought that back. He‟s got enough seniority in the Senate that he‟s got some clout and he knows how to use it, but as a young man, why he was a good politician. RR: What about John Ashcroft who came after him. MT: John Ashcroft was as moral a governor as we have ever had, and he got abused for it. He stood up for his principals and stayed with „em. You can‟t say anything else about him. RR: Then he was followed by Mel Carnahan. I guess that… MT: Yeah, well Joe Teasdale beat Bond one time. RR: Yeah. This was—yeah, I‟m sorry, I was talking about the second—Bond‟s second term in office when you were actually serving under him. MT: Yeah. Ok. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 71 RR: So I‟m skipping Teasdale and moving on to Mel Carnahan. MT: Yeah. RR: How did you feel about him as a governor? MT: Mel was another one of those that was a politician. You couldn‟t say anything else about him. He just—he knew how to get votes. He—I hate to talk about the man when he‟s dead, but he had an agenda that was—when he was runnin‟ for the Senate—the night that he was killed, he had been over in Illinois raisin money among the gay and lesbian population. That never did make the news, but—he was willin‟ to compromise his positions for that agenda. RR: Do you admire him for that? MT: No I don‟t admire him for that. I think that‟s the wrong thing to do. RR: So, was it against his beliefs, is that what you‟re saying? MT: Why I don‟t know what his beliefs were. I mean, that��s—some politicians, you never know where they—what their true belief is „cause they just put their finger in the wind to see which way the wind‟s blowin.‟ RR: Yeah. MT: I couldn‟t live like that (both laugh). RR: Well after he died, Roger Wilson came in, and he wasn‟t in for very long—three months. MT: Roger Wilson was a good—is a good friend of mine. I probably never would vote for him, but—he‟s way too liberal for me but you can‟t help but like him. RR: Do you think he affectively used those three months that he was in office? ________________________________________________________________________ 72 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Yeah, I think he did. He had been in the Senate and served with the Emory Melton‟s and the Dick Webster‟s—he understood compromise, as long as his agenda was fulfilled. RR: Well, what do you think about our current governor, Matt Blunt? MT: Matt is—as is true with most young people, they get—they surround themselves with young people who don‟t understand the situation, and I guess that‟s what bothers me more than any with Matt is that he—I, you know, I think I had some experience, I sent in my resume for a—for some of the commissions, and I never got an answer back. That bothers me that you turn your back on the people that—and he should have known that I was a straight, you know, that I didn‟t—that I was objective. Objective people don‟t have a place in this world. If you look at the—every issue objectively, you‟re gonna have people on both sides that are mad at you. That‟s why I never did get ahead in politics. RR: So, which one of the governors do you think was the most affective? MT: Ashcroft. RR: Ashcroft? MT: Yeah. RR: Do you think that had anything to do with his upbringing? Son of a preacher and— MT: Well sure! I mean that‟s—there are a lot of people that say that this—the religious right is wrong and so I—but if—I feel pretty strongly that we need to go back to some religious. We shouldn‟t—it isn‟t necessarily political. This business of bein‟ politically correct is bad for the country „cause we don‟t have any moral values to lean on. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 73 RR: Well, your representation ended because of term limits—the term limits legislation you mentioned earlier—even though the legislation affected you adversely, do you think it‟s been effective, or do you think that—I mean, do you think its improved the law making process at all or? MT: I think that its, I‟ve said this many times, I‟ve always been in favor of term limits and the reason that I am is that we‟ve got some—we‟ve had some career politicians who were there forever and I knew that they weren‟t very smart. I could tell that they didn‟t understand the issues or else had an agenda that was not in good—in line with the best interest of the people of the state. But, on the other hand, it has taken away a lot of that knowledge of the issues. RR: In 2006 you ran for State Senate. Your opponent in the primaries, you lost in the primaries, correct? Who was—what was her name? MT: Suzie—Suzie. RR: Snyders. MT: Snyders, yeah. RR: How had the election process changed since your first election? MT: Oh, course I had some baggage in that election, I think that‟s probably why. I have always been a proponent of tort reform. I had introduced bills to make looser pay, in other words if you sue me with a frivolous law suit and you lose, then you have to pay my lawyer because people—the lawyers have found out—the trial attorneys have found out that you can—it can—you can deter somebody from suin‟ just by—if you sue „em, why they‟ll ________________________________________________________________________ 74 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose end up havin‟ to defend themselves and it costs „em a lot of money, and that‟s make two lawyers jobs. So, that looser pay is—and it incidentally was passed as part of tort reform after I was gone, but I introduced that bill. I also introduced the revision of joint and several liability. Joint and several liability is the situation where you—if you‟re ten percent at fault and somebody else is ninety percent at fault and you have insurance and they don‟t have, then your insurance has to pay all of it. The joint and several divides that up. The lawyers, the trial attorneys, don‟t want that because they call that the deep pocket. They can go to the one who‟s got the money and then they get their pay. Well anyway, that‟s what happened in this election is that Sara Steelman‟s husband is a trial attorney. This Suzie Snyders was—just lived a couple of doors down from „em. They got her to run against me because they knew that I was a strong proponent of tort reform and I—they needed to get me out of the way. I was a threat to the trial attorneys. The trial attorneys spent about a hundred thousand dollars to get me—to get her nominated. They didn��t care whether she won or not, I‟ve come to that conclusion, but they sent out misleading information on me about—that I had missed a thousand votes—I did in twenty years, I probably did miss a thousand votes. Went to—they talked about everything about me but my stand on tort reform. They sent a lot a mailings out and misleading and I couldn‟t even—the ethics commission wouldn‟t even—they‟re—its still pending, they won‟t even pursue it to find out who paid for that, and they‟ve got—the ethics commission has the subpoena power. They could have subpoenaed the company that mailed the things out and found out who paid for it, but they did—they won‟t do that, _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 75 so there‟s somethin‟ rotten in Denmark in the Ethics Commission too. I don‟t know how to fix it, but the trial attorneys certainly are—I didn‟t realize I was that much of a threat to „em, but it makes me feel good that they thought that I was dangerous enough that they—and then they didn‟t even give her any money to run against Frank then—Frank Barnitz then, but they just wanted me out. RR: Huh. Was this the worst case of mudslinging that you‟ve experienced in your career? MT: Yeah, by far. By far. RR: In the earlier days, was it much easier to get through a campaign without people bringing up— MT: Oh in a State Rep[resentative] race, it‟s not near as bad as in the Senate race, course the Senate has a little more clout too, but— RR: Well, I understand that you‟re in the process, or contemplating at least, writing a second book. The Strangest Species: Observations of People by a State Representative? MT: (Laughs) — I don’t know about that (both laugh)! I don‟t know if we‟ll—I got another veterinary book goin‟ first and then if I live long enough, why I may do that. RR: (Both laugh)—that would be an interesting book. MT: Yeah, but you gotta wait „til all of those people are dead though because, some of that is— as you can tell—I‟ve been—in this interview I‟ve been—tried to be kinda discrete in what I say. Try to get the issues out without pointin‟ at names. RR: In what ways do you think you‟ve contributed to your local community? ________________________________________________________________________ 76 MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose MT: Oh, I don‟t know, I think we‟ve—I‟ve—I was very instrumental in gettin‟ the Hermann Bridge goin‟. I was instrumental in gettin‟ the bridge built at—the four lane at—on the Osage. As far as local community, I don‟t know—I. Right now I‟m in—some people in the community think that I‟m the bastard because they were tryin‟ to get a ferry—get federal money for a ferry here and I said it would never pay and wouldn‟t get the right— enough usage and there are some people who won‟t hardly talk to me over it in the community. RR: But you still help out with MFA and— MT: Oh yeah, the Ambulance Board— RR: The Historical Society and 4-H too— MT: Yeah. RR: Are there any other fraternities or social organizations that you‟re involved in? MT: Well, I‟m a Mason and, course, the church. We‟re active in the church up there, and that‟s about it. RR: Well, the Masonic Lodge, for instance—many of America‟s great political leaders were members of this society. Do you think this has helped to shape you politically? MT: The moral teachings did yes. I don‟t—yeah, I think so, and the benevolent part of it too, I mean, they do quite a bit of children‟s work. We‟ve been involved with this—getting this CHIPs program goin‟ and things like that.13 We‟ve supported that. 13 CHIP stands for the Child Identification Program. _____________________________________________________________ MT= Merrill Townley RR= Rebecca Rose 77 RR: Well, I only have one other issue, and that was race. Would you say you were conscious of race as a child? MT: Oh yeah. Yeah. Let me go back to—and this is somethin‟ that I‟ve stated a lot of times— my, course, way back—my ancestors, they had slaves. My dad used to tell about when Aunt Mary Whiteside was a freed slave and she lived here in town and I don‟t know whether she‟d, I guess she‟d been a slave of the Townley‟s. But anyway, when my grandpa, course he didn‟t—his wife died when—they were only married seven [or] eight years, you know, a References A related resource that is referenced, cited, or otherwise pointed to by the described resource. http://cdm17228.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ohc/id/599 Relation A related resource thumb:001:http://cdm17228.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/ohc/id/599 full:001:http://cdm17228.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/ohc/id/599 linkto:001:http://cdm17228.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ohc/id/599 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Missouri Hub VRA Core VRA Core standard for artistic pieces and cultural heritage artifacts. The first input will be treated as a <display> element. More detailed VRA Core metadata is available below that input. Subject Terms or phrases that describe, identify, or interpret the Work or Image and what it depicts or expresses. These may include generic terms that describe the work and the elements that it comprises, terms that identify particular people, geographic places, narrative and iconographic themes, or terms that refer to broader concepts or interpretations. Townley, Merrill Oral history Missouri--History, Local Missouri--Politics and government Oral histories Missouri Politics Politics Political History Political Oral History United States Missouri Chamois, Missouri