Welcome to Louisiana Lefty, a podcast about politics and community in Louisiana, where we make the case that the health of the state requires a strong progressive movement fueled by the critical work of organizing on the ground. Our goal is to democratize information, demystify party politics, and empower you to join the mission, because victory for Louisiana requires you. I'm your host, Lynda Woolard. On this episode, I'm taking a point of personal privilege. My Father, Ed Woolard, passed away last week. When I first started Louisiana Lefty, and as the country was still incapacitated by COVID, I interviewed him to talk about bipartisanship. Ed was a conservative Republican, I'm a liberal Democrat, but we had many a productive conversation about politics. He would often ask me how my sister and I ended up as Democrats and I'd always tell him that he and my mom raised us to be good Christians, and that those values aligned most with the values on the left as I saw it. I was blessed to have my father for so long in my life. And I was lucky to have been able to have so many wonderful conversations with him. I'm also grateful that I thought to record this interview as a remembrance. And the fun part for you, the listener, is that he was a bit of a legend, with an incredibly storied life, which very much comes across in this podcast. It's good to see you.
Well, thank you. But tell me about your long hair, is it any longer than usual?
Well, I haven't been do to hairdresser since the pandemic started.
Okay, well, now here's the thing. I have a basketball game in an hour, so... let's get started.
Let's go then. So that I restate... I'm kind of exploring a couple of different topics. One of them is this idea that conservatives and liberals can't have reasonable conversations. And then another one being that this notion that we're too far apart in our views to ever compromise on anything, and I think that that's wrong, too. So one of the things, we donated to each other's candidates in 2008, which I always thought was a funny thing. It has come up recently, when I was running for state party chair, people wanted to know why I had donated money to a Republican 12 years ago, or however long that was ago. I didn't mention it, but at the time, you and I were both in the primaries, tried to get our candidates to the general election. And we were kind of supporting each other in that in that.
Yeah. That's very good. Hey, something I just thought of... you remember the very first time Biden ran for president?
I don't think I remember the very first time, but I know he's run a couple of times.
He has. Well, the first time, it doesn't matter when it was, the point is, I sent him a check for $1,000 because he was a friend. He's from Delaware. And they asked me, "Are you really going support him?" I said, "It depends on who the Republicans put up." And there were a couple of crazy people. I said, "If they put those up. I'm for Joe, if they put up a really strong, smart guy who cares about the country, I probably vote the other way." So I gave I gave Joe $1000.
All right. So you do consider yourself a conservative Republican? Is that accurate?
Yes. Well, I'm conservative, and there's no other place but the Republicans for a conservative. So yes.
Okay. Just making sure I'm being accurate.
I'm much more interested in several things that I don't see the Democrats do. So China... China has been selling us $400 billion worth of stuff and putting it all in military. During the Obama administration they built their navy to be bigger and stronger than ours. And they have said, I've never heard a Democrat say this on MSNBC or anywhere, they said by the year 2025 they want to they want to be the number one country in the world. And I did hear Obama say this, well, somebody said that to him back then, and he said, "Well, let them be, it doesn't matter." Well, it does matter because they will then capture the whole Southeast Asia.
And that's one of the reasons you're a Republican?
Yeah. It's not about, you know, climate change, or any of those kinds of things. I'm all for it.
You're all for addressing climate change?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay. One of the things I told you I wanted to talk about is access to affordable health care, it is a big issue on the left. I was unaware, when I had a business in Delaware, I bought into a small business pool, acted like, essentially, all the small businesses were, like, in terms of that healthcare plan, one big corporation that could negotiate with hospitals and pharmaceuticals, etc, to get lower costs for them. And so I was talking about that at one point in time and saying, "Well, why don't we do that nationally?" You mentioned you helped pass that?
Yes, absolutely. I can't remember to be honest who it was? I can't remember.
I'll double check that.
But the thing is, there was no disagreement among, I forgot what they called them, a group of all the CEOs work together, but I was pushing it hard. And they all said, "Yeah, that would be great. Let's do it." Whether they were Democrats or Republicans. So that's the kind of common thing, you can convince reasonable people to listen to.
Okay. So is that would that be your notion of the best way to tackle healthcare is individual pieces like that? Or do you see there to be some comprehensive thing we could do? And you don't have to say what you think a comprehensive thing is, I'm just curious, what do you think?
No, I'll tell you... Everything I tell you is what I would do if I was president. So there is some big number, like, 80 million people who are getting hit through their competence. And the competence are all reducing the value of the benefit, which is okay. But I would not stop that. They've got their doctors, they've got everything set the way they want it. And I will not eliminate that. But then I would take something like Obamacare, and just make it so it's not something so argumentative. And it's clear in my mind, there was a way to do that. But right now, it's such a hot potato. Joe Biden said, "We're gonna go back and have Obamacare like it was." I never thought the idea of telling people they have to pay if they don't want to health care plan, those things could be fixed up so, so easily. So you'd have a modified Obamacare. And Trump hated Obama so much, he wanted to get rid of it just to screw with Obama. But now the Republicans came up with a good plan. And Paul Ryan, who is libertarian, said, "it's just like Obamacare, it is gonna cost the country a lot of money." And... yeah. Well, but it costs a lot more not to have it. So it's once again, and I'm delighted, skipping around, to hear that a group of Republicans and Democrats have gotten together in the Senate and come up with a $900 billion compromise. And it looks like Pelosi and Trump going buy into it. It's very close. You know all about that?
You're talking about COVID Relief stimulus?
Yeah. The point is, they are working together to do it because they've spent three or four months bitching with each other. So as an example, that's all I'm saying.
Gotcha. So, so there is a possibility that people can work together?
I think the Democrats' strongest guy, and that is the West Virginia guy. You know, I'm talking about Joe Manchin.
Strongest guy how?
In trying to get cooperation and doing things together. I gather he was the lead horse Talking with Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney hates Trump. And he criticized him all the time. So Romney and Joe Manchin apparently started it and, and kept adding other people. So that's the perfect example, Pinky. Okay.
And tell me about, you know... We've talked before and again, you worked with Hillary Clinton when she was trying to pass Hillary care in the 90s?
Yeah, I was on the board of the business council. And I wasn't the president, that was another a year or so later. But there was about four of us that went to Washington to the White House, and sat with her. And we tried our best. And it was one guy that, I can't remember his name, was very knowledgeable about all this, and he and I were doing most of the talking with Hillary, but we liked it. We liked it. Well, we said, "Hillary, it'll never pass if you don't change A and B." She said, "Well, I can't do that." We stayed there, I don't know, hour and a half, two hours, trying to come up with ideas that will make it acceptable. And she never yielded. She didn't yield a minute. So yes, I worked with her, but was unsuccessful.
That experience and watching that experience happen, in my mind, was what made Obama address his health care plan, the way he did. Liberals were very, or progressives or far left people, were very upset with him. They thought he had compromised too much upfront.
Yeah. And I think you're right. I think he learned from that.
And if you don't have that context of having seen Hillary fail by trying to stay firm, and how she was doing it, you may not appreciate why Obama did that the way he did. But I always remember you telling me that that y'all had tried to tell her the things that were going to trip her up when she went in and tried to pass it that you would try to warn her about it and that she wouldn't listen.
Yeah, I'm not sure I'd want you to say that. But maybe you will. I don't really care. It'll just get people saying, "Well, he's a conservative, and he's trying to screw Hillary." But it wasn't that at all. We had a very congenial discussion. But she had worked with some guy and a team, and they had convinced her that it had to be that way. So we just kept coming up, "Well, suppose you did this and suppose you did that?" And she would say, "Well, I don't think the Democrats will go along with that." So yes, you said it simply that we never could come up with a compromise, maybe there's a better way to say it, then she wouldn't agree to change. But we tried. And that's what you're referring to? I mean...
So there's a sense in the country now, and... maybe there are some people who are elected... I don't think the average Republican voter, and that's where I like to make a distinction, right, there are some people who are elected they kind of always trying to gauge where on the spectrum. Are they there for personal advancement or for public good? And they all kind of fall on the spectrum, right? And so it depends on where they fall in that spectrum as to how they'll vote. So there probably are some Republican elected officials who just have no interest in getting health care to people, but I don't believe the average Republican voters feels like, "Nah, there should just be people who don't have access to health care."
You're probably right. I think there are many in the Congress, Republicans, there's not many who wouldn't like to have health care for everybody. But they always come up with something that requires somebody to pay for it instead of the government. And they've spent their whole career saying we got to balance the budget and, like I said, with Paul Ryan...
Rand Paul, or Paul Ryan, who you talking about?
I'm talking about the senator, Rand Paul. Talking about him and he just kept saying, "Well, it's got the same problem Obama had, it's gonna cost the government a tremendous amount of money, we already owe so much." He's a libertarian. He's strong against anything that is real expensive. But most of the Republicans were close to that plan. And he just kept convincing them, "We can't do that."
I'm really questioning, though, you as a Republican voter, I'm asking you more to be the representative of Republican voters, which I know you can't, you're not monolithic, but as a Republican voter, what I'm saying is I don't think the average Republican voter wants to deny people health care.
No, I totally agree. Yeah.
I mean, you are around a lot of conservatives, I think, you know, you have friends who are conservatives so I mean... I suspect you would have are different from them.
I think everybody would like to have health care for everybody. I mean, I think most Republicans, it's back to the question of how do you do it without a huge price for the government? Really conservative conservatives? They don't want to spend money. And they can block things by just saying that. I think most of the Republican senators would love to do that because it would help them back in their home district. The reason they lost the house was health care. They said the Republicans don't want health care. And they were too stupid to go ahead and do something. Just thought of something else. Bob Dole, I talked about something we could do in the climate change. And it was two of us. I don't remember exactly what the project was. But it was very close to being passed in the last session, last year of Clinton's first term. And I brought the waste management guy, a CEO, and I was now the chairman of business council. And we stayed in there an hour with Bob Dole, and he said, "We can do something like that when I get elected, but we're not going to do it now and give Clinton something to brag about." And he got so damn mad with me because he would say that and I say, Well, Bob, it's about the country, It's about the country, it's about something very important, who knows who's gonna win the election?" And twice he said, "I got to leave and go vote." And I said, "Sir, please don't, we got to keep talking abou this." It's unbelievable. He made me wonder if he was just trying to get rid me. But I saw him again later, when he came to on the Business Council meeting, and they wanted me to sit beside him. And he said, "No, he's on the wrong side."
So that's an example. I was trying to work with Clinton. I was very close to Clinton, on a lot of things because as chairman of the Business Council. He was smart, he was likable and just advanced. And I talked with him about many different small things we could do in the whole, we weren't calling it climate change, whatever it was... global warming. And he liked everyone. Now, I got the impression later after talking to him a lot, when you leave talking to Bill Clinton, you think he bought what you said he's gonna do it. But then he may or may not. But anyway, he said, "I like it all, Ed. I want to ask Al Gore to get together a little committee and you bring your people." And so we had like four meetings with Al Gore in the White House. And Al would say, "Yeah, we can do these two, but these two look very possible so I'll get back with you shortly." And he never did. So the next meeting, I'd bring it up again, he said, "Well, I wanted to do it, but, you know, when I got down to the people in the EPA, or whatever they call it, they said it was too risky or too expensive or too something." And fundamentally in the four meetings, and maybe 10 or 12 ideas, they did two. That's my recollection.
So do you think that was just a product of bureaucratic problems or?.. Bureaucracy, not necessarily political will?
Bureaucracy. There's two good points here. One is I was, for the first time, trying to work with Clinton and his team. And Gore, I got to know Gore pretty well. And they said, "Well, when they talk to people, there's a big risk if you do that." Yeah, so is it was the bureaucracy. And by the way, changing the subject, but when you do these regulations, like Obama or Bush does regulation, they don't have anything to do with the way it is written. Some person down the line who wasn't elected, who, on both sides, drafted what it was going to be. And it was horrendously tough on small businesses. And Obama, when people would... he would understand that. So it's your point, it is not just the difference between the leading people in the Democrat and the Republican Party, but it's the people down the line who make all the decisions and the specific decisions.
Tell me about, because we've talked about this before, the chlorofluorocarbons that they wanted phase out that, there was always talk of phasing out. I remember your face on a billboard. Greenpeace put up a billboard with your face on it about destroying the environment.
I'm gonna tell you a lot about that because it's so important. So I think Heckard was the chairman when some group of outstanding professors or technical or chemical people came to the conclusion that it was very harmful. I don't remember all the details. CFCs. They call it Freon remember?
Yeah, I do.
So DuPont and Heckard was Chairman and I was president. And we said, "Okay, we accept it for the first time, and we're going to come up with a substitute." We were already working on it. And yeah... because we knew the odds were that eventually we're gonna have to get rid of it. So after I became chairman, I got with all our people and said, "What's the fastest we can do it? How much money would you have to spend to do it faster?" Kind of like the vaccines they're doing now. Do it fast. And they came back. So I got back with Gore, and Trump, I keep wanting to say Trump, Clinton was there. And I said, "We can do this in two years, but remember, the environmental people are trying to make us do it immediately." Remember that hospitals have to have this to clean rooms and businesses have to have this freon. And people who live in Texas and Nevada, it can't drive airplanes, that has cars without it. So I want you to understand that we're gonna be the leader. We're gonna be the first one to do it. And we can do it in two years. So they both said, "We agree with that. We understand. We know you can't do it till you get the substitute." But it's not just a substitute. Everyone who uses Freon has to change. You can't just put it in the system they have now, they have have to make modifications to the system because it works differently. So I was proud and pleased so I went back and told people that and we're leading the way. And so I put a team together. And just to add support to the work the scientists were doing, and kind of checking every month they report back to me. So that was going great. And then the thing that I told you, Gore called me and said, "Ed, the car manufacturers they are calling like crazy. They said they've talked to you. And you told him you committed this to the government. And you can't change." So well, "What is it you want, Al, Vice President Gore?" He said, "They want at least another year, they got to totally rebuild their air conditioning system in the cars." And I said, "Well, maybe... but maybe they just saying that and they need to put more people on it. He said, "Whatever. I want you to delay it a year." And I think I said something smart ass, like, "Well, I never thought the vice president of this country would come and say to delay something to prove the economy. He said, "Yeah, I know." He was very nice. I went into office one day, and he has in there a full scale thing that, I can't remember what you call it, of him. First thing you see is something lifesize.
Like, a cardboard cutout of him?
Yeah, so I still remember that. But anyway, we got along great. And then Clinton was gonna give a speech in Washington on the subject, and he asked me when I can come up. I said, Sure. So I flew up there. And he gave his speech while they were doing all, a lot of environmentalists in there. I thought he would call on me. But he never really said that there was Ed Woolard from DuPont here in the audience. Because he had this position set and he told them and that's why it's got to be what it is. And he said, "I'm as anxious as you are, but we got to do this thing in a practical way." So after it was over, Gore came to me and said, "You want to come out and talk to the President?" I said, "No. I mean, you asked me to come up to answer questions, I assume." And he got through it very well. He explained it well. He was a great talker. So I never did talk to Clinton, but I talked to Gore.
But you did fund a version. You were at a Clinton birthday party in Jackson. Did you talk to him there about anything substantive or just?..
Oh, no, no... I tell you who did, Peggy talked to Hillary. And we had just come back from China. And I noticed she was over talking to Hillary on a sofa, like an hour. And somehow she told Hillary that we just come back from China and Hillary said, "I'm getting ready to go, tell me everything you think I need to know." So Peggy got along really well with Hillary. And then after everybody was leaving... We were invited to come spend three or four days at our friend's home. And when he said Clintons coming, I said, "We'll come later" and he said, "No, I want you to be here." So we did, he came in, we had a cookout, and she was talking to Hillary, and people were leaving, and everybody been drinking and Clinton and a Democratic senator, myself and some other people were around the piano, singing songs. We all sang songs and Clinton was very good at it. And I said, "Peggy got through it with Hillary." And they were ready to leave then. And you'll get a kick out of this because this is your mother, we were standing there and I shook his hand said 'great evening.' Peg had a good time with Hillary. And so he left me, he was gonna hug Peggy,
I shake his hand and she turned her back and walked away. She turned her back on the president of the united states.
Let's see... there was one other thing I was gonna say about it. Oh, this is huge. This is huge. So we did it and the other companies were either not doing it and fighting it or much slower. And on board was... my memory is fading so bad. Anyway... Bronfman.
Edgar Bronfman?
Edgar Bronfman. Yes. He said, "Why do you let him call you Ed, your name is Edgar, and my son's name, Edgar." So we had a board member, every time you saw him, he'd say, to wrap my head. Anyway, this is the God's truth, Edgar Brafman said to me, "I know the head of Greenpeace very well. And he's willing to talk to you." I said, "Fine." I forget if we were in Washington or whatever. And so I started by saying, "I'm amazed you are willing to talk to me, you guys put signs all over my town, community, saying, you know this guy? He is killing the environment." And I said, "But it didn't work for you, because people kept saying I hope you got elected." Because they didn't read it carefully. Anyway, that meeting, I said, "What is it you want? We got it done." He said, "I want you to help me get the rest of them, if they're fighting it, to stop, and if they're slow to speed up." I said, "Of course, I'll be glad to talk to them, and tell them they're making a huge mistake, because they're fighting against the government, they're fighting against the scientific community, and I'll help them, I'll give him advice on how we're doing it." And he was very thankful. And I did it. He never called back to say it's going better. But I know each of them said, "Yeah, you're probably right." Because you know, the head of DuPont is a big man in that community. At first they were cross with me for giving in so easily. But then they said, "Well, okay, you've done it, dammit, now we gotta do it."
Did you end up compromising on how fast you phased out the Freon, CFCs, whatever, or did you go ahead and go at your timetable? Did you do what Gore wanted and slow down? Or?
We did what Gore wanted. I mean, like I say, the automobile companies were already calling me and saying, "It's impossible. It's impossible. We didn't know you're gonna be ready that fast. And we haven't modified our cars." I said, "Well, I'm sorry, I got to deal with Al Gore and I'm gonna do it, and you might have to do what we do put a team on it and get ready." So I turned them all down, about three, at least. So when Gore called he said, "Yeah, no fooling. They can't get ready. They say they can't get ready. So the President want me to ask you to delay a year."
One, two, or all the above, - was it just good business, was it good for the environment, was it outside pressure? What made you decide to move forward with phasing out CFCs?
Well, it's very simple. At DuPont, this sounds weird, but at DuPont we always want to do things the right way. And we fought it and we weren't gonna change. I was a president, we got together with our science people, and he said, "Are we gonna have to do this or not?" And they said, "Yes, you will be forced to do it." And we always wanted to be the leaders. When our scientists said that they carefully studied ever everything in that report and we needed to do it. And so you can say it's outside, but it's outside and not in a negative way. It's people who are just studied it in great detail for a year. Scientific data, we never fight scientific data, we never fight science, whatever it is, if it's something to do with damaging the water, whatever. Now, I will confess that some DuPont plants and various things getting our freon were still doing things that were seeping things into the water, and when they got caught saying, "Oh, we didn't realize we had to pay." But we just said, "If our scientific people say the scientific study was exactly right, and it was causing harm, we got to do it." So we always wanted to do whatever was necessary, it doesn't matter what it was, if it was harmful. And if you go back and read my article, I want you to, in the book, I say that. I say when I took over, and I remember, he was there two years, and I was president so I was preparing what my thoughts were gonna be. So I gave a talk in Europe a week after I'd been there and said, "We allowing too much bad stuff to come out of our plants. And we're gonna change that." I don't like DuPont being considered one of the dirtiest company as it was becoming. So I went on and on about that we're going to commit to 35% reduction in all those releases, and then 60% in a certain period of time. And it was just as I said, honestly, I don't believe our company. And I believe our employees like seeing in the paper that DuPont is releasing on the top two or three in the country. And we can stop it, and we're going to. We just got to spend some money changing the way we do things. And we did it. We did it. We cut by 60% in three years. And in that case, I didn't talk to the scientists on that. And after I said we're gonna cut it by 60%, they came to me saying, "You can't do that." I said, "No, I can't, but you can. Now go do it."
There was a story you told me about a particular plant or something that you've told them? Is that Is that what you're referring to? Or, you know, a more general term, but there's a specific story, right?
Oh, yeah, much more general terms. Every plant had to reduce or eliminate certain amount of waste, toxins they're putting in the air. But the one plant was the one who were trying to trick me. Well, they were serious. They said, "We can do it, but it'll cost 200 million." And I said, "Well, we're not going to spend that. So shut the plant down and buy it from a competitor, they seemed to have been able to do it." It was in Beaumont, Texas. And they say, "We can't shut the plant down. We got people been there a long time, we got customers. I say, "Well, that's the problem, it's your problem, shut the plant down or meet our target." And as I told you, they came back in about three or four weeks and said, "We're starting over from scratch. We're going to run an entirely different chemical process because we couldn't modify what we had, and it will reduce the products we're releasing by 60%." And then they said with a shameful phase, "And it's gonna be cheaper than what we're doing, we just need $15 million." I think that's in the book.
So $15 million to set up the new system and then the production from that point on would be cheaper than their current.
You got it. So that was my favorite story of all time.
Well, I'll check that out in the book, and I'm conscious that we're getting up close to an hour so I don't want to keep you longer. You mentioned the thing, and then dark water story is starting to get a lot of play now for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because Biden's elected president, so there's a little more focus on DuPont. But I want to talk about that today, we can talk about that later because that might be a longer conversation. But I do want to just ask...
Are you talking about the movie?
There is a movie, but the story, the situation that that movie was based on has come out again, because it's someone Biden put in charge of the EPA, or he's going to put in charge of the EPA, Erin Brockovich has come out against and has written up a piece that was in The Guardian about it. So that to me, might be a longer story. But if you want to respond, you can.
Well, I will I don't know anything about it. I didn't go to the movie. I don't know which plants they were talking about. I don't know if we were guilty or not. I talked to the CEO. And he said it was DuPont. And I said it's very misleading.
They might not really be aware of it. There was some claim that they knew decades ago. So I don't have enough info on it, to set it up for you to respond to so I don't want to.
I won't talk about it. Because a lot of people have asked me to talk about it. And I say, "I haven't studied it. I never heard a word about it when I was there." If it was going on it's as a shame and we all have to pay for it. But I don't know. I don't know a thing about what they claim DuPont did. I took Chad Holliday, who was the CEO after me, and I said, and they interviewed him, and I said, "People said that your interview wasn't very helpful, that you were not answering questions." And they said, "It's all true." And Chad said, "It's not true, Ed. It is not true." And yeah, I guess I was coached not to say a whole lot. But just to say, "I'll look into it further. But so far, if we've done anything wrong we will correct it." So I've just elected not to learn about. It just makes me sick.
Not your circus, not your monkeys anymore. So the last thing I'll ask you, in line with the kind of spirit of the conversation, and I didn't email this to you, but it's something that occurred to me this morning. A lot of conservatives are social conservatives, and I don't know that I would consider you that. But you know, I don't want to speak for you. But I do know for instance, Billie Jean King has tweeted about you being her mentor. And you know, she tweeted about that because there was a program about trying to get more women into boardrooms and such like that and so if men would mentor women, we've already gotten a lot of women mentoring women but But men already have higher positions and a lot of women so in order to get more mentors, you want more men mentoring women. So I know she considers you a mentor and that your friends and that you've worked together quite a bit. And you know, she's a LGBTQ icon. So I was just curious if that ever was an issue between y'all.
No, absolutely not. Nothing came up. Sometimes I would kid him. I forget, there be certain things happen, I said, "Oh my god, y'all trying to take over the world" or something like that. But no, absolutely not. No. And Alana is even closer to Alana because she and I would occasionally have to slow Billie Jean he knows things she wanted to do. But that's an interesting story too, because I'm going to go watch the ball game... Many years ago, many years ago, 10, 12, well, maybe 15. Billie Jean said, "God, I got so much going on and nobody to help me." And Peggy allegedly said, "Well, Ed will help you, he just retired, he likes tennis." So I started helping her and we made some progress on things. She was doing a lot of speeches, not getting paid for it, wearing herself out, traveling around the country. So got to really make decisions on what we do and what we don't do. And the biggest thing I did for her, while there were several really big ones, but this was the biggest. She came to Delaware because Delaware smash was playing that night.
Delaware smash, the tennis team, for a while.
She was laying on the bed and called me and I went out there and she said, "I'm so exhausted. I need some advice. I need some help." I said, "The best advice I can give you and I want you to listen carefully, Alana loves you. And she does the things she can do for you. But every time I hear you talk about it, you're saying I'm gonna leave all this for Alana" Because Alana is about 10 years younger. I said, "That's not what she wants. She wants to be a part owner. If I was you, I'd give her a third. And she will bust her ass not because of the money because she wants to be..." people in the tennis world know that its Billy and Alanas World Team Tennis. She said, "Really? She knows that I'm gonna leave it to her." And I said, "She doesn't wanna wait for you to die. You got to make her a partner." So she did and has given her a quarter. And exactly true, what I said, Billie Jean was now the proud owner, Alana was the proud owner of Team Tennis not just Billie Jean King. And I did a number of things like that, where she just didn't have any experience. So common sense.
In the business world?
In the business world. So she would tell people, I went to a talk she was giving and she said, "Sitting there is Ed Woolard, My mentor and he helps me in every way." So yes, and the gay thing was never ever an issue, even for a minute. Like I said, occasionally I'd say, "Okay, God, slow down." She said, "Now, we got to do it. We got to do it now." All right, go ahead.
Just out of curiosity, do you think it should be legal for like Billie Jean and Alana to be married? Is that anything you care about?
Here's what I've thought all along. And I guess the answer is yes. Yes, legal. 10 years ago, I thought they should come up with another term. I mean, I read the Bible quite often, Pinky, and I'm very thankful to God and Jesus for the life I've led. Unbelievable. Started work in Dupont, by knocking on the door, was told repeatedly every time I got promoted, that's as far as I could go, if I could do that well. And I said, I love the company, I'll stay here in this job. And having Peggy with me for 64 years, we both been healthy till the last year. And you coming along and never given us any trouble like people here and say that their kids... how do I put together and accept that what the Bible says and I'll give you my answer. Jesus never said that. I read it over and over and over. Jesus never said it. It was said in the Old Testament. And Paul, St. Paul, who was wonderful guy, and did so much because his job was to move from the Jews to the Gentiles, which is all of us. And tell them Jesus is there for you too. And he just traveled all over the world starting churches, and unbelievable what he did, but he's the one that said it's against God's wishes. Only a man and a woman should marry. So I've comforted myself by saying Jesus had plenty of chances to do it and he never said that in you know, St. Paul was supposed to just say things that he had heard from above but he's said several things that weren't necessary. So I don't think by supporting them in marriage, that I'm violating my beliefs with God and Jesus.
Well, there you go.
There you go.
I know you have a ball game to get to. So I don't want to keep you and I appreciate your taking this much time to speak to me. I hope we'll get to do it again.
Well, I don't know that I know much more, but we can talk on anything you want to because I love. I'm sorry, we don't get to see you more often. I'm very pleased with all you've done, I want you to slow down and not keep just going on something new, but you won't do it. And that's, I guess that's me, too. Okay, honey, I love you. I'm thrilled that you're working on all this. And I've given you some pretty good information, particularly during the Clinton series because okay, this is off the subject. But we always went to Washington, all the 100 CEOs and I asked him one time, why don't you come to William Williamsburg when we're having our annual meeting? He said, Okay, so he came, that's the only time he ever went out of Washington to meet with the Business Council. And I was walking in with him to introduce him. And it was gonna be who's the head of the World Bank? And I said, I know you got five people, but this is the best one. You ought to take him. And he did. I don't know that. That my advice to do it. He did. All right, honey.
I love you. Thank you and I will talk soon. Enjoy your game.
It's early in the season, but I want to see him. Okay.
Thank you for listening to Louisiana Lefty. Please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you to Ben Collinsworth for producing Louisiana Lefty, Jen Pack of Black Cat Studios for our Super Lefty artwork, and Thousand $ Car for allowing us to use their swamp pop classic "Security Guard" as our Louisiana Lefty theme song.
