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TG = Terry Goddard
PS = Pam Stevenson - Agave Productions
TG (T. Goddard): He was the Democratic Chairman in 1960.
PS (Interviewer): Of the whole state or just --
TG (T. Goddard): State. State. There was a vacuum. And, and they also I think, uh, there were a lot of sharp but I think marginally ethical, uh, uh, Democratic operatives in those days. And, and he was seen as fresh meat. Somebody who had no background, who was willing to spend his own money. Uh, and, and who had some talent. And, and they grabbed him very quickly and tried to get him involved and, and I don't think they pushed him to run for governor in '62, but, but it was a fairly natural progression. And many of these people figured that, that they, they had just begun to come in for some criticism and the paper was beginning to lean on them. There were a number of criminal investigations in the Corporation Commission, for example, in those days. And I think they needed something to sort of brush their image and, and they grabbed Dad as, as somebody who could do that. He'd just been, 1959, he was Man of the Year in Tucson. He'd just led the first successful United Way campaign; the first time they made their goal. Uh, and although he was mostly a southern Arizona commodity, he was becoming pretty well known.
PS (Interviewer): (Laughs)
TG (T. Goddard): But he was a bull in a china shop. I mean he was, he was somebody who wanted to do it his own way. Uh, had a very different culture from what most of the party people had. Uh, even though intellectually and, and I think just in terms of serving kids, especially needy and under privileged and, and, and disadvantaged in terms of, of either being in prison or having serious illness. Uh, and that was Mom's passion as well.
And so he did a study for the United Way of Pima County, of the juvenile institutions in Arizona and decided -- that the study decided and so did Dad that this was a disaster. That they were just, at that point it was Fort Grant, and, and women there was no state institution, so they sent them to the Home of the Good Shepard, and which was religious. And they didn't have, uh, much for care I mean, Steve Vuksevich ran Fort Grant as a, as a major penal institution and, and it was in no way something that provided educations support or any, anything but a place to lock kids up. Uh, oh there's a place called Mother Higgins in Tucson but it was, that was just a halfway detention. Uh, and he felt the political structure was unresponsive and we wanted to do something about it. I mean, that was his, his passion.