The first author ever interviewed on Books of Our Time, Joseph Ellis, returns to the program to discuss  his book First Family  with Dean Lawrence R. Velvel.  Velvel and Ellis discuss the enormous impact of the Adams family on the creation of the United States, why we will never see their type of leadership again,  the marriage and letters of John and Abigail Adams, the accomplishments of John Quincy Adams, how Adams differed from Washington and Jefferson, as well as Adams’  work in the Continental Congress as well as in the Presidency.

Mr. Ellis is a Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College and the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2001.

The following is a rough transcript of the above video, courtesy of YouTube captions.

welcome to books of our time
brought to you by the massachusetts
school of law
today we shall discuss first family by
professor joseph ellis
professor ellis who previously has
written books on george washington
thomas jefferson
john adams and the events of the
revolutionary era and the early years of
the republic
is one of america’s leading historians
and writers on that period
his prior work has won both a pulitzer
prize and a national book award
the book we shall discuss today first
family which has just come out in
paperback
the hardcover edition was published in
two thousand ten
is the story of a marital and political
partnership of john and abigail adams
it has won the best nonfiction by a
massachusetts writer award
in the fascinating pages of first family
will learn a trove about a marriage
views and actions there were instrumental in
creating our country
and about the historical and political
events of the founding period
professor ellis the author was the very
first author ever interviewed on
books of our time
nearly a decade ago
and is a trustee of the massachusetts
school of law and the american college
of history and legal studies
he is with me today to discuss his
latest work first family
and i am lawrence r velvel the dean of the
massachusetts school of law
joe thank you for being with us for the
third or fourth time its always
great to be back larry thank you
uh… on his tv shows which
gave me the idea for
this program brian lamb is always asking
i would say he’s forever asking very
gruffly what do you write
what time of day
where do you do it
i was on a program he asked me
that uh…
so why don’t you i’ve never
seen before something that you did in
the acknowledgment section in the
rear of your book
where you described your method so that was so
interesting to me
and so wonderfully and delightfully
old-fashioned yeah
will you tell
the audience where you do your writing
when and so on how so and so forth
i do my writing uh…
most of it in the morning
usually rewriting in the evening in my
study
surrounded by uh…
it started a
golden retriever and a jack russel
and now its
a labradoodle and a jack russell
and and very brave cat
um…
their is no technology in the room
apart from the lights
uh… i write uh…
longhand with a uh… roller ball
fine point
black ink
on the back
of xerox paper
previously used previously the front
side is used you just keep
it printouts from various things you
can save
huge stacks of that stuff
um…
and uh… eventually what i write is
rewritten and then
put on a disk
and you can play with it their who re-writes it
well i rewrite it and then i give it to
my assistant
whose name is linda fernandez and linda
uh…
types it into
the uh… onto the internet and um…
uh…
the basic
creativity for ellis
if there is such a thing
occurs
in the rhythm
between my brain motions and the
movement of my hand and my wrist
there is some connection there i believe
and you can
sometimes if you’re a really fast typer
you can type too fast you can
type faster than you can thin
that’s not good it produces these pause
yeah uh… yeah
anyway
obviously very old-fashioned and there are
some people who accuse me of writing
with a quill pen i don’t do that
it’s it works for me
maybe someday i’ll become
technologically literate but i’m trying
to keep that as far into the future as
possible given the results to date i
i would
push it far back
people have tried to persuade you to
change
and
you have
told them np
and i think that it’s fair to say that
for every
book they produce you produce
three four five
but what we why do they want what is their
alleged reason for wanting
you to change besides
technological conformity i guess
yeah i think that’s the main thing it’s
like
it’s a way of trying to make me do
something that i don’t want to do
uh… out of some
petulant academic reason i don’t
understand uh…
maybe it’s well well-intentioned in
many instances look joe this will make it
so much easier for you
and it’s because i’m weird
and singular in this regard and uh…
uh… and they
they would like everybody to be alike
uh… you know people have this
thought that uh… what’s newer is
always better
i think not
again
i don’t want to sound like i’m coming out
against technology of the automobile or
like that
yeah it’s i’m just you asked me how i
work and that’s how it is it’s
very old-fashioned
but so far it’s been successful and
another thing that i think is
hugely important
you read all this stuff yourself
yeah i don’t have any research
assistants
i have an assistant who takes care of it
translating this into it
into print uh… and
sometimes i have students to help me get book
but… i’ve never been able to manage
research assistants
primarily because
if i already know what to tell them to look
for
then i don’t need a and uh… you know
and
and I also think that my eyes have to see
it
because what i will see is not the
same thing that somebody else will see
in the way of an anecdote a particular
quotation
uh…
something that would fly by most
research assistants uh…
so it takes a little bit longer in the
research phase for me
though the research phase is not totally
separate from the writing phase
i found that i have to start writing
before i’m really ready
uh… in times
then i’ll know where i’m gonna head
in the next piece of research
it’s a back-and-forth kind of thing
though you have to get a certain
foundation of research done so that
pretty much know what to the story is
before you can really start writing
sometime then in the nineteen thirties
joe
when you and i were not around
no uh…
uh…louis brandeis
maybe it was the twenties said that that the
reason the supreme court was still
the most respected body in washington
is that it’s the last place in
washington when people do their own work
and that is no longer as true as it used to
be
what brandeis said and with you have just
said that is exactly the same
there is no substitute for the creative
mind
looking at something himself or herself
there is no substitute when people
have gotten into trouble for
for plagiarism
famous writers
it’s usually because of research assistants
they didn’t realize what the research
assistant was giving them
in the way of
direct quotation that wasn’t directly
quoted
and therefore they reproduce it in their
book but they’re responsible
yeah uh… and conversely the research
assistant does not know as you know what to
look for
and is not struck by things which you
have to have a tremendous background of
knowledge to be struck by
yeah i’ve been at this for forty two years yet
and uh… so
if somebody twenty three
years old
is supposedly looking at this stuff uh…
it’s not going to be the same
they say that young people do the best
work in math and science but that’s
not when it comes to the humanities
one other thing joe that’s not
directly relevant to what we’ve been
talking about but you mentioned
at lunch
that so many of your students
do not understand
you notations on the papers
that they hand into you because they
do not know how to read cursive
that’s a bit of recent phenomenon
you know how your correcting student
papers commenting on it
in the margins and then longer
uh… message at the end you write in this
long hand
and uh… uh… in recent years
i’ve had more and more students come up to me and
say
professor ellis i cant read this i can’t
read your writing
i say its perfectly good writing whats
what wrong then I said
why can’t you read it he said
oh i can’t read cursive
and so
and i i asked the students
do any of you send
letters that are hand written
if i get a hand-written letter i feel
honored
they feel
dishonored
they feel that uh… more
familiar kind of
correspondents or is in print form or
digital form
yeah and uh… for me
somebody’s taking the time to hand write
a letter that’s just great
you know uh… uh…
it occurred to me when you this joe
that the historian uh… the
professional historian
is in a a certain sense eating its young
by not demanding that
people who get degrees in history
read cursive because
how are those people going to read
the archives
it’s almost like they have to have to learn
another language
exactly
executed it will have to be taught us a
foreign language right
well this is astounding to me
but so be it we find this in the law school
too
okay now let’s let’s talk about
the book itself as opposed to the
methods that you use
this is this this book first family
is the uh… the story of a partnership
as seen extensively
through the letters written one partner
to the other
if you would elaborate on that a little
bit
explain the different
function of letters in those days and
today which i suppose to many people
will be self-evident
and uh… what the problem was
uh…
that created
distance in those days as opposed to now
when you pick up your cell phone and you
say hello afghanistan right
that is a multi-part question let me
do justice to it
if I can
this is a book about
two people
who meet eventually fall in love and
stay together for fifty nine years
during that time they happen to be
living their lives across the most
consequential landscape in american
history namely the coming
and winning of the war for independence
and then the
creation
and securing of the first enduring
american republic
that’s the longest standing republic in world
history
part of it is about the meaning of love
and how it changes over time
between a man in a woman
a political collaboration between
abigail and john
that is most
noticeable once he becomes president
but a partnership also in terms of
raising the children they really are a
partnership marriage
and they are the most fully revealed
couple in this era and maybe in
american history because of their
letters
theres about twelve hundred of them that
have survived
and it’s not just the quantity of the
letters it’s the quality of them
they talk to each other about very
important and intimate stuff
in fact at one point abigail says
i can write to you some things that i
cannot say to you so that
again to your question letter writing in
the eighteenth century was an art
uh…
the founders uh… contain among them
jefferson franklin adams
less so washington
master letter writers
uh…
and abigail though not
formally schooled she was what we would
call home schooled by her father and her
grandmother
was an extremely literate person
and uh… very well read in the british
classics favorite author was shakespeare
uh…
so you’ve got a couple
that are
intellectual equals
writing to each other in an extremely
intimate way about all kinds of personal
plans
at the moment that
america’s being created
this is what
enriches the correspondence and we’ll
never know as much about
barack and michelle obama right
because of
the internet and the cell
phone
distance
well first of all letter writing then was
not like writing an email is for
most
younger people today
it was a more deliberative
process
for example when john is down in
philadelphia at the continental congress
and she’s up in braintree which will
soon become quincy
uh… takes about two weeks for a letter
to go from one to the other
when a letter came to her
it was read aloud at the dinner table to
all the kids
and then she took it into her little
closet and she reread
again and thats when she tended to write
her responses she wrote in the
evening
john tend to to write four thirty five
thirty in the morning
because he was is on all these
committees and all these other things
and didn’t have a lot of time
her letters are longer
more literate more
that’s not the right word john’s very
literate too
more make more references to
literary
works literary allusions
sometimes you come across a phrase
and you say
like she wrote to jefferson once
faithful are the wounds of a friend
i was like that’s a great phrase
well it’s in proverbs uh… she
got that from someplace else uh…
but the psychological
difference then too
produced by distance
and the fact that instant communications
and interactive communications were
impossible
uh… especially when he’s in europe and
she’s back in in quincy
uh… so it’s six months before a message
can get from one end to the other
it really does
mean that when you sit down to write a
letter
it assumes much more dramatic significance
you are creating
a set of pictures for the receiver and a
persona
it’s an expression of a whole persona
it’s not just a jotted
stream of consciousness thing
and distance also meant that you didn’t
know what was happening to your partner
there’s a moment in the summer of
seventeen seventy seven in june
abigail is pregnant
with what will turn out to be the last
pregnancy
and he know’s she’s pregnant but he
doesn’t know
what’s happening how far along she is and
whether she’s delivered and he’s worried
about what general
howe is going to do and duh duh duh duh
he said i’m concerned about the
movements of the british army you be
concerned about the movements inside
your own body
well it turns out that
something happens to the kid she feels
it
she says i think something’s wrong
then she starts to have contractions
and she writes to him in between
contractions
and eventually
the kid is born and it’s
stillborn it’s dead
perfect but dead
and she writes to him well see it
takes two weeks for that letter to get there
and during that time he’s writing to her
all about the politics of what’s going
on in the continental congress
and then when that letter
gets to him he says oh my god
i feel so guilty that
i wasn’t there
and that i’ve been bothering her with all
this other irrelevant stuff
later on when he’s president and she
is sick
with uh…
with rheumatism and other
complications
he decides to stay with her
and not go down to philadelphia for like
a year
everybody’s really critical of him
he said I left her once when she
was in trouble and i’m not going to ever
leave her again and he was at a
time president yes
he said we can do everything for
everything by mail
uh… because i remember you you make the
point that the in Philadelphia
said yeah well he’s up in braintree worrying
about the british and the french and this and that
and actually he was worried about his crops and
and it was like
yeah yeah
i was very surprised to read joe
that uh…
although we have twelve hundred of the
letters
or something like that
uh… a lot of times letters
as soon as the british navy
appeared over horizon they’s all go
into the drink right during the war
yet uh… abigail said i’m probably sending
most of these letters to Neptune
and uh…because
they were carried onboard ship obviously
than didn’t have airplanes to fly it over
and um…
and as you aid if the british worship
appeared on the horizon they
threw all the mail overboard even
though
uh… that seems sort of crazy but
they believed that the intelligence that
would be have been made available to the
british
uh… justified it
one of the ironic things is they
kept
not consistently
abigail and john
periodically
copied their letters so that when
she would write a letter and send it to
him when he was in paris she had a copy
that means we have the letter at the
mass historical society okay
in many instances it never got
to john
so we got to read it before he
di and uh…
uh…
so that’s weird and you’re not quite
sure which ones are which
you say that uh… that
john
he was nuts about eternal fame
from the beginning
from the beginning of his diary as a young kid
he is practicing
in front of a mirror
the mannerisms of cicero
the body posture
um… he
has no
respect
for somebody who’s highest aspiration
is to make money
or to get wealthy
there’s a higher form of
significance
which is
to serve the public
and to be remembered
that’s the key
to be remembered as as a public figure
who’s whose
behavior
significantly affected uh…
policy
in this case the winning of the american
revolution
uh… so when
imperial crisis begins really is
seventeen sixty four sixty five with
british legislation chiefly to stamp act
adams is looking for it
he is working for a cause
to lash himself to
larger than himself
his father had wanted him to be a
minister
he went to harvard at that time
most people became ministers though
they were staring now to become lawyers
a dangerous trend I should say
and uh… has gone beyond all the no
and uh…
his calling to public service
was like the calling of a
minister to a cause
that is also
other worldly and uh…but he
harbored this
obsession about
the letters and about
fame
in part because he really wasn’t sure
there was
a spiritual life after death in the
traditional christian sense of the term
he and jefferson and a few other people
exchanged letters on this and
adams ultimate position is agnostic
well
i don’t know but if there isn’t one
i’ll never know it
uh…
he has a funny line that i think i have
in the book that because it can be never be
shown
conclusively that there is no life after death
my advice to every man woman and
child on the planet is to take opium
which is a great line
only a person who does
significant
public service
is worthy of being in the history books
and history books keep alive your
memory
as well as the letters that you will
also read
so he wants us to remember him
and in some ways the fact that we’re
sitting here in massachusetts on this
day
uh… in two thousand eleven confirms
his fondest hope
namely that he will live on
you say at one point that we are the
audience
for whom he was striving in a sense
yeah
like we are in some sense complicit in his
in his greatness because he’s
performing for us he’s on his best
behavior
uh… because he knows we’re we’re
looking
but you also said it took two hundred
years why did it take two hundred years
because uh… and there still isn’t an
adams monument in the middle of the mall
or anything like there is for Jefferson
like there is for
uh… washington
which would surprise that generation
they wouldn’t be surprised
washington was there but that
jefferson was there an adams wasn’t
they would have reversed that
when adams was when the first public
election after
the constitution was essentially a
referendum on the founders
who was the greatest washington was
first adams was second
partly
adams is tough
to make into an icon
because he tells you too much about
himself
one of the reasons the supreme court
stays above it all and one of the reasons
that washington stays above it all
because we don’t really know what
they’re talking about their meetings
are secret
until recently they didn’t allow cameras
right
i don’t know whether you still can get a
camera in there there’s somebody petitioning for it
for the case uh…
of the uh…
c_ span is yeah the uh…
medical
healthcare case adams
is imperfect
he’s vain
he’s ambitious
uh… has a temper
uh…
he’s also
extremely lovable extremely honest
uh…
he’s got he’s a he’s a human being of
considerable interesting parts but
to the extent that we want our founders
perfect
he’s never going to make it on mount
rushmore
right now of course none of them is
perfect right
and i think the resurgence of interest
in adams is a sign that we’re finally
matured and recognize that
you can’t be expecting perfection from
our historical eras
and just because they’re capitalized and
mythologized asfounding fathers
we’ve got to see them as imperfect
creatures great in many instances but
imperfect
well adams is the breakthrough guy he is
the most the greatest and the most
imperfect of them all and uh…
uh… and i think in the h_b_o_ series
that uh…
that was put together a few years ago
miniseries
uh… the depiction of him is very very
accurate
i mean the characterization of him by
geamatti actor
is uh… is well done
uh…
and um…
he’s a hero for our time
at last
you say that uh…
the uh… adams are the uh…
most important couple in american
history
are they more important and in what ways
and theylike or different from
the roosevelt’s
i think that
what i was trying to say is they’re the
most prominent couple in american
history
that have told us so much about
their relathionship
and allowed us to recover so much of
that
the relationship between franklin and
eleanor is is
is a different kettle of fish
uh…
i think he gave her
uh… a lot of independence
the civil rights act
the u_n_
those were her own bailiwicks
but of course we now know he was
having an affair with his secretary and
she was having probably an affair with a
woman
um…
though we don’t know
the whole story
uh…
uh… i’d be interested if anybody can
come up with the real couple
to match abigail job in terms of the
volume of letters and what we
know about the inner lives of these
people
and the significance of what they
they achieved
okay why why did she save the letters he
he was
a nut on eternal fame
why did she save the letters because he told her to
and
she would say i saved them for our family
for my grandchild
she wouldn’t say i saved it for
posterity
she would say these are documents for
the grandchildren the great grandchildren
a form of posterity
they succeeded
in siring
three further generations
at which you could call great people
american
probably the greatest family in
american history james is a pretty
pretty powerful and
and i guess if people want to argue the bushes
can
clan this but
the bushes
well there is a
there is the first father son president
john and john quincy and then
george and george w
uh…
she was the
she was the conscious founder of the
dynasty
and they invested so much in john quincy
from the time he was
out of the womb they were expecting him
to be come the first magistrate of the
republic they didn’t have the presidency
yet so they couldn’t think that way
uh… every kid in america
now women as well as girls as well as
boys
or told
they could be president
john quincy was told if you don’t your a
failure
uh…
complete
and uh…
probably the best educated best
read person ever to enter the presidency
which he was a total failure at
and um…
but you’re right
each generation of the adamses
first in
headed abigail john’s kids and then
their
kids the
grandkids there’s one person
who excels an often quite
quite
impressive
and the rest of them end up failures
some cases but uh… alcoholics drug
addicts
they’ve had miserable lives married the
wrong person
in abigail and john’s case maggie the oldest and
the only daughter ends up marrying this
guy
whosa of former
officer in the continental army
on washington staff graduate at
princeton
dashingly handsome perfect choice
right
it only shows you never know
cuss this guy ends up being a bum
and um… couldn’t hold down a job
loses all his money charles is the
charmer
and it’s difficult when you’re reading
the
letters
encountering the young kids and what
people are saying about charles
everybody loves charlie
charlie’s even dogs just follow him
wherever he goes
and uh…
you know what’s going to happen to charlie
charlie is going to die at thirty years of
age an alcoholic and a drug addict and
living in whore houses in new york city
despite the fact he has a wife and two
kids
the other kid tommy he’s almost
invisible in the correspondence thomas
the youngest
he looks good he goes to harvard he
works for john quincy as hi assistant in
uh… prussia
but it never works out for him
and he becomes an alcoholic
and he moves back to live near his
his parents
he meets a local girl and they have like
eleven kids
uh… that seems to be the only thing
he’s able to do
and um…
he’s a failure
after that generation
there was that uh… generation of
charles francis adams
becomes american ambassador to england
during the civil war
and he keeps
he keeps england off the side of the
south
rights is a huge achievement right
and his son rights about that
in the education of
henry adams that’s the third
generation
and henry adams or course
he was a
a great uh… great friend of theodore
roosevelt theodore roosevelt and uh…
uh… who is the secretary of state a
hay john hay
and they also with lodge and
and that that whole crowd um.
they got us into the
spanish-american war right though he
didn’t like that i mean henry adams was
not in favor of that
yeah but roosevelt got us in
it’s like a miracle the way that happened you know
roosevelt the assistant secretary of the navy
the assistant secretary of the navy is playing golf
and while he’s playing golf
roosevelt starts a war in the phillipines
it’s like he does it all himself i
know it’s unbelievable proceed
immediately here right to manila bay
unbelievable
so he he was in it and
of course he wrote that book
the education of henry adams
so that generation
and henry adams brother charles francis
adams junior i think was president of
the union pacific railroad was he not
and thats kind where it ende
four generations yeah
that’s pretty good yeah not bad
did though so we’re talking at lunch
about
all these people claim to be descendants
of adams but none of them
yeah seems to be
there’s a man whose a corporate president who
probably is a direct descendant
but it petered out yeah petered out and
and henry adams never held office
never ran for office and the
education of henry adams is about
failure
its about being displaced by time in history
you know its an
eloquent ironic
tragic story about his life
and you know he marries this woman
whom
commits suicide
and uh… she’s buried in
rock creek park there’s a big statue
yeah and uh…
by the way did you know
gore vidal purchased the plot right
next to that for himself
he’s not there yet no he’s not
i wonder about something you say that its
tragic and about failure
you point out in the book that
john and john quincy had
a tragic
one could say flaw
uh… one could say
a wonderful
characteristic which almost nobody else
has which
has been summed up by somebody or other with a
the phrase i’d rather be right than
president right that was in a play about
franklin roosevelt
george m cohan played him
but um…
john adams and john quincy will be the
same type of
president too
but remember he’s the guy john who
defended the british troops in
the boston massacre in seventeen seventy
this is the first
clear evidence of the kind of contrarian
and streak in him
and adams almost takes it to the point
of perversity
he thinks most majorities are usually
wrong
and they are
and they are
and the
popular mood swings are usually
excessive
and misguided
therefore if
you do something that’s unpopular it’s
probably the right thing to do
and uh…
thus defending the british troops or
his big decision his trademark decision
as president was to avoid war with
france
and which was very much almost going
it was called a quasi war
and to negotiate an end to that a peace
treaty with uh… with france that
avoided war
very unpopular
i like to say you’ll like this larry
that adams is the anti-bush
bush
got elected for a second term by going
to an unnecessary war
adams
assured that he would be defeated
by not
having an unnecessary war
yeah ok he always said its the
proudest
jewel in my crown if they wish to call
me a monarchist
uh… and he thought as you as you say
that if we went to war with either
france or england
it was the and
of the american experiment
that he did washington thought the same thing i
mean you had to avoid war until
this is this new kind of political
experiments settled
that it would break up into a series of
confederacies
and england and or france would come in
in a predator fashion and take over the
rest of the
the country outside the alleghenies
all kinds of
scenarios but the
the phrase we the people of the united
states the first words of the
constitution
was an expression of a hope
rather than a reality at that stage
their were
people did not identify with
the nation
they identified with their region or at most
their state
or their town
and it needed time i think that
sometime after the war of eighteen
twelve you can begin to see say there is
some kind of national existence
but if you’d had a war before then we would have
split up
i think it was shelby foote who said
somebody who said
that uh… after the civil before the
civil war
the phrase was the united states are and after the
united states is
he did and it took
that long
for the spirit of
one country unty nationalism call
it
what you will
uh… to build up yeah
and a war
six and thirty two thousand casualties
over the issue of whether or not you
wish the central government to have power over
the state’s right
uh… right
talk if you would joe tell us a
little bit about the many things
that john quincy or as we wouldwould stay here
john quincy adams oh…
jqa they called him jqa
he did from the time he went
abroad with his father
through his ambassadorship he’s
he’s got an and incredible life
uh… I thought about trying to
to write a biography of him but its
i’d die before i ever finished it because
the documentation is
is larger than for almost a figure in
american history because he kept a
diary
for the time he was eight years old
and almost every day and i mean
everyday
until he died at eighty one
he made an entry
sometimes they were cryptic and just
talked about the weather but a lot of
times you know
i was swimming in the potomac nude in the
potomac today and its september and the
waters still fine duh duh duh he did swim nude
in the potomac too he
used to take walks between
the white house and the capital to to
see how fast he could do it
he’s a precocious child
reading latin at five
uh…
groomed by his father and mother very
tough task masters
i don’t want to judge them too harshly but
when he goes john quincy with his father
over and there’s difficulties on the
voyage and to she’s worried about the
chip going down because
reports are that the seas are tough out
there and then finally she finds that
he’d been made it ok
but she says
that to the extent that you grow up to be
something others a virtuous young man
i would prefer that you had died and
gone into the ocean right now
it’s like woah you know
you been handled handed many
opportunities
if you do not take full advantage of
them
it will be your fault
so he got all that pressure
on him he accompanies his father to paris
and then
the second time andlearned french much
better than his father did he did he
learned french quickly
he would take his father to plays
and translate for him
very good with languages
and uh… and young people in general can pic em
up faster than us old guys anyway
uh… one little anecdote he got to know
later of course jefferson got to know john
quincy and became kind of this mentor when
he was a young kid
and uh…
uh…
and when he was president he had john quincy
for dinner and the
president was talking abut how he’d
learned spanish by reading
don quixote onboard the ship going over
and john quincy said
mister jefferson tells lovely but tall
stories jefferson never learned spanish
and
jefferson never even learned french to be
fluent in it and his correspondence
he had to have somebody else do it for him
anyway john quincy goes on to harvard
doesn’t do very well as a young lawyer
is immediately recognized by washington
as an up-and-coming guy and may i stop you
for just one second
i was
thunderstruck
by the fact that
the old man had to bail him out
because he could not make a living as a
lawyer how could that have happened
he was you know he was living in a
market that was saturated with lawyers
oh yeah you never heard of that one before yeah never heard of
and uh… and uh…
he wasn’t a
a salesman he had difficulty selling
himself
yes okay
uh…
whereas charlie
as alawyer in new york
and he’s he’s being mentored by
alexander hamilton
his firm
he has all kinds of clients
but john quincy not
john quincy is emotionally immature
too and he’s like
doesn’t know how to behave around people
sometimes and uh…
anyway does through that
at the ago of i think twenty six he is
nominated to become american
ambassador to the netherlands
and um…
and adams is concerned about this
because the vote for approval is in the
senate and he’s vice president
who is
overseeing the senate
there would be charges of
nepotism here
washington says it’s not because he’s
the son of john he’s the most
qualified guy
one guy gets up
in the debate in the senate and says
is there anybody else fluent in latin
greek french
dutch
and russian
hearing none
um…
he was approved
by acclamation
he goes on to other posts in prussia
and in saint petersburg he marries a
delicate orchid of a woman whose half
english called luisa
luisa uh… is uh…
is with him rest of his life
she has like eleven or twelve
pregnancies and like
eight or nine
miscarriages
um…
he becomes a u_s_ senator
he becomes a professor of rhetoric at
harvard
uh… he becomes then eventually
after his ambassadorship
to st. petersburg
secretary of state
under monroe
probably the greatest secretary of state
in american history he’s responsible for
what’s called the transcontinental
treaty
where we get
florida
and then this is jagged line everything
west of the
uh… north and west of the uh…
west of the rockies and and north of
what is now california
so instead of calling it the monroe
doctrine they should call it the adams
doctrine adams is responsible for that
even though monroe as president gets it named
after him but the
the relationship with
britain and with the the notion that
this hemisphere should not be open to
european colonization
was it he who said the something to the
effect
that uh… america goes not abroad in
search of dragons to slay
exactly right america goes abroad
goes abroad
goes not abroad in search of dragons to
its not slay but something like that
that’s a phrase that uh…
george kennan always used to liked to
use
and uh…
it’s from a
a speech that john quincy gave in
eighteen twenty one on the fourth of
july he was asked to give a fourth
of july speech
great speech it ought to be rescued from
semi oblivion
especially at this moment in our history
we are trying to think about what our
foreign entanglements ought to be
but john quincy thought that the best
way to project america’s
values abroad was by example
and once you militarized that process
you fundamentally changed it
which has as you’re indicating
proven to be correct
in any event he was one of the uh…
outstanding men of american history
that stand out he is like
he is the missing link between
the founding generation and the
revolution
and lincoln
as a little kid his mother takes him by
the hand i think he’s seven to see to watch
from afar the battle of bunker hill
he sees his own doctor get killed
joseph warren
the end of his life
as he’s
giving a speech in
in the house representatives he has a
stroke
and he falls
one of the people that gathers around
him and helps carry his body out
is abraham lincoln
they only-time lincoln’s the only term
lincoln served in the house
and so he’s the missing link
in american history that was if i
remember correctly joe
that was either the congressional
term forty six seven and eight or forty
nine and fifty its in forty eight
forty-eight
i have never heard or seen of
a daguerreotype of john quincy adams
their is one there is none
yes there is
a couple of em
there are uh huh
now there’s a real link with the founding generation
and t there’s a couple of them he really
looks like that meanest son of a
bitch you ever want to see
like uh… emerson says like he
used arsenic in his tea
and uh… he says he’s like one of those
cardinals you know that totters on his cane
and then when he’s named pope he throws the canes
away and goes sprinting out of the building
uh…
henry adams in the education tells a
great story when he’s
misbehaving as
as a young child and won’t go to school
john quincy just shows up at the door
doesn’t say a thing just takes him by the hand
and walks him to school you know
and uh…
his last
years are really his greatest because he’s
a major advocate for ending
slavery or for
denying the right of slavery to expand
he’s opposed to the mexican war for
that very reason
defends the
the uh… captured africans in the
amistad case and
and opposes and successfully overturns
the gag rule
which makes it
illegal to talk about slavery in the
house
in some sense
he’s much better as a congressman than he
is as president in the united states
to go back for a moment to
the
question of the drive for fame
would you compare
american presidents
you can see famous
you could say infamous
you can see notorious
there’s a lot of words that could be
used
uh… in their drive for fame
and i wonder if you could
you might guess
even if fleetingly
compared john adams drive for fame with
certain other people notably lincoln who
had t the same thing
and then you know you get the f_d_r_ and
uh…clinton and
name you know so on and so forth
there’s more direct evidence in adams
case that he was self-conscious about the
public service was the only form of
achievement that would
permit posterity
permit fame and posterity
you’ve you could have a fortune
or you could have both but usually
wouldn’t get both and fame was in
some sense a higher former currency as
for as he’s concerned
i think as the political process in
twentieth century america at the
national level especially has become
more
expensive more exhaustive more media
driven
uh… that certainly i think become true
over the last fifty years
none of the people in the
eighteenth century would have run for office
in those conditions
they would regard anybody who does that
as crazy
and i’m some sense they are
and i mean you gotta be crazy to do this
yeah and uh…
and
so that we’ve had
created a
political culture in which a certain
only a certain kind of mentality
is going to succeed
uh…
and it’s not quite there kind of
mentality at all
and of level of desperation about
winning
uh… at all costs no matter how many
times you have to reverse your position
uh… and how much money you have to
spend and what the toll it takes on your
family
uh…
uh… that’s not quite the same goal
that adams had
it’s it’s a bit irrational and uh…
and it seems to me it’s not as
attractive
you’re being kind
uh… i i i don’t uh… couple of weeks
ago i read finally at long last
somebody wrote something that i’ve been
saying for maybe thirty years
the uh…
the fact that you were elected is proof
positive that you shouldn’t be
there’s some truth i mean adams felt
that uh…
almost a groucho marx line
any club that want mess I
don’t wanna belong to
uh…
political parties were
something he didn’t want
to join at all
i think in some sense
one of the reasons that
there is this
very real popular interest these days in
the founders
and not just the tea party angle on it
which is somewhat miss misguided i think
it’s all political
but you know the fact that
these people were buying books about
jefferson and washington you know
mcculloch’s miniseries and that kind of
thing
we see in them
this sort of
gold standard for the
current
base political currency of our time
what’s really different is they were
interested in serving in
interest of the
public
which is not the same thing is the
interest of the people
interest of the people is a more
fleeting and temporary thing now driven
by money
uh…
the public is the long term interest of
the people which it any given time
the majority of the people might not
understand right
do the right thing for the long term
interest of the people
reguardless of its political
consequences
and that’s what is so attractive
to people now because they know nobody
does that now
you know i think you and i both
realize
that’s very elitist and if so so be it
thats right its pre democrat
so be it
that’s that’s the reason it worked
yeah uh…
and elitist is not a bad word
you know it’s like
what was a bad word was democracy
democracy was an epithet
democracy meant mob rule
right democracy meant conceding
the issue to people who don’t understand
it
and so
and and what this is a natural
aristocracy that we create then
what we would call a meritocracy
uh… none of them would have made it
into the british aristocracy right
uh… i mean
hamilton was a bastard literally
uh… jefferson you know
would have been a minor countrymen
country farmer
washington would’ve made major
yeah washington as i remember
from your book very angry that he
could not kill you they wouldn’t accept
yeah they wouldn’t accept his appeal for a
uh… commission in the british army
yeah and uh…
boy did they regret that
i’ve heard the bullets whizzing around
me and believe me there is something
charming in the sound that’s
exactly right at the battle of the
Monongahela which he survived quite
miraculously but uh…
but my point earlier is that simply that
i think that generation embodied a form of
political uh… behavior that is
it’s like a lost generation you’re never
going to see it again and yet
its very existence
is alluring because
once upon a time
there was uh… a possible kind of political
leadership that functioned in this fashion
was it you who said somebody said it
was the greatest leadership since uh…
some period of rome
yeah somebody was i think it was
um…
it was quoted in perry miller
i was a british
a british leader was uh…
heard to say that
this was uh… the
leadership in the united states
under the founding was the greatest
political leadership act of political
leadership in world history with the
possible exception of
rome under caesar augustus
not bad not bad
john
adams
was the first to understand apparently
that british interests
the first understand
what britain really was trying to
accomplish
and he was subsequently the first
to understand
the real differences between what the
french wanted and what the united
colonies or the united states wanted
now how is it in bodies
full of people who are regarded as
brilliant
he was the first
in fact i guess for a long time the only
one to understand
what was in the minds of the
opponents the first example
your talking about is the pre revolutionary
period he’s the first person to realize
that this
imperial this tightening of the empire
that’s begins in seventeen sixty
five or so
is going to lead to a
secession from the british empire
and that the we’ve created two different
cultures
in america especially new england and
and england
we can’t stay together and
and he read this as a conspiracy on
the part of the brits
uh… to impose these
new constraints and to move from us from
being
fellow members in the british empire to
colonists
whose rights
don’t really exist
and um… he’s very well read one of the
readings very well read in english law in
constitutional history
he’s well-read in european history
he’s thought a lot about these
constitutional issues and as i indicated
earlier
he’s looking for it
he’s looking for
a cause that will eventually
will eventual call them independence
to latch himself to and become a leader
and so he’s self-conscious about
posing for these roles like you
know
so he wants to be appointed to the
continental congress
even though that’s risky at that time
but he’s betting the farm
okay he’s betting hte farm his whole career
his life and fortune and sacred honor
as jefferson put it
that this is going to be
a revolution that’s going to succeed
even though we’re going to be fighting
the greatest military force
combined army navy in the world
they don’t have a chance
and we didn’t fully
i think understand why he was right
about that
until vietnam
vietnam made us aware the british
never had a chance
uh…
it so it’s a reverse and he understood
that
okay and he was the equivalent of secretary
of defense
during the whole during the war up to
seventeen seventy eight in the continental
congress is head of the board of the
war did he understand about
the so-called fabian strategy
yes he read about that
he said no person has read more military
history in the last three years in the world
than i have
uh… and he
he associated with
sometimes with fabians but also with
the thebians
in the peleponnesian war the thebians
essentially decided not to fight and
too back off to never have a serious
engagement with the spartan or the
athenians i guess it was
and that’s so after
washington nearly lost the army
in manhattan he said
the thebian strategy is right for you now
meaning don’t fight don’t you know don’t ever put
the army in a situation where it could be
annihilated
he’s so
you know like people sometimes say
jospeh ellis is a
presidential historian I’m not a presidential
historian i write about
people who happen to be president
but in his case Adams’s case and this
will be true of washington and jefferson
as well
the presidency was not the capstone of
their
of their career
Adams thought the greatest thing he ever did
he did in the continental congress in the
seventeen seventies that was his
big big moment big contribution
washington would have said it was winning the war the
presidency is a epilogue
let me go back for just one moment to the
continental congress cuz that’s a major
thing
but you’ve explained why he understood
that england couldn’t that we were going to
break with england
how did he come to
understand that the
french view of the united of what they
wanted in america was way
different from the uh…
from the time he first went to
france and he went once in seventy eight
and came back to write the massachusetts
constitution which is not
in the film by the way uh… and then he
goes back again
he’s at odds with franklin
in terms of the the delegations
posture towards the french government
as embodied in the french foreign
minister Vergennes
and vergennes hate adams
he thinks he’s a a bull in a china shop
which to some extent he is
and uh…
so he’s always
saying
for example
we had if the french the french
come over to sign the
the franco-american treaty is signed in seventeen
seventy eight committing the french to
the american cause that means a lot of money but
also means troops
he has it in the treaty
insists on it
the french have to leave as soon as the
war is over
and if they don’t
something like war will start up between
because he’s terrified that the french
want to recover a portion of their north
american empire
don’t let them into canada once they get
up there baby there never going to leave yeah
okay
the french have a military agenda
diplomatic agenda that’s much larger
than the united states
and the end of the war with england allows them
to get back some of their colonies
in the west indies
so there’s a real tangle of european
interest there that adams wants to keep
the united states
clear of
and he is right to do that and franklin
resists it
franklin whose one of the wisest men
of the age to be sure but he has been in
france so long and he is so close to Vergennes
can’t quite see it clearly eventually
jay and adams persuade him
and he says he’s the one that breaks
the word to vergennes
by the way
we’re gonna sell you out and
and so doing would you give us
another fifty million livre
he has the gall to be asking
for money like this quite a character
but
adams sees things adams sees big
things
they have huge strategic implications
and consequences really clearly
he has a feeling for the future in his bones
well thank you very much
it’s been a pleasure coming here again
uh… i enjoyed the questions
they allowed us to free associate in the
way we can do that
and your program is one of the best in
on on television in my view in terms of
being informed about what the author has
written
and then allowing the conversation to
follow its natural course so
larry thank you so much thank you
thank you
and since you’ve told us a little bit about
your next book
i demand
uh… that you come here to be
interviewed
shortly after it publication it will be
on the calendar i promise you okay thank you
and to the audience
thank you for being with us and
be with us again next time

Bruce Cumings, Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Korean War: A History, joins Dean Lawrence R. Velvel in part two of this episode of Books of Our Time.

Cumings and Velvel discuss the historical origins of the Korean war, from the early disputes between North and South Korea and then on thru to the more recent history of North Korea, from General MacArthur’s massive underestimation of the North Korean army, to the north’s involvement with China, all the way to the great famine, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of modern democracy in South Korea.

This is part 2 of the interview. Click Here to be taken to Part 1.

The following is a rough transcript of the above video courtesy of YouTube captions:

welcome to books of our time brought to
you by the massachusetts school of law
and seen nationwide
today we shall discuss a book entitled
the korean war
the book discusses the historical
origins of that war which to this day
are unknown to most americans
joining me today is its author bruce
cumings the chairman of the department
of history at the university of chicago
and i am lawrence r velvel the dean of
the massachusetts school of law
thank you for coming up thank you for
having me
delighted i wish to say that having heard
you uh… at lunch
i feel that a lot of the questions i
intended to ask are not necessarily
geared
to some of the things you said so
i hope you will just use my questions
not just as something to answer but also as
springboards to other things that you
might wish to talk about
we have a pretty literate and educated
faculty and i think the uh the
amount of things the number of things
you were talking about that were unknown
even to a
pretty accomplished group
illustrates the need
or the desirability
of saying them on television if we if you
remember to say them
now i want to avoid misconceptions
because
i’ve read that you know reviews and so
forth
and
to avoid misconceptions
why don’t you tell us you know
briefly or at length whichever you wish
with as much detail as you wish
what’s your concession your view
all over the country
when there were these guerrilla wars
and so forth
before it got divided at the
thirty eighth parallel and and even
afterwards
massacres were the order of the day
of hundreds of people of thousands of
people at a time i think you
mentioned digging pits
it’s like you see in the movies from eastern
europe with the germans lining the people
up to shooting
well it’s uh
most of what i put into this book is
based on research that i did
twenty years ago or more ’cause I did a
two volume study of the origins of the
korean war
based on mainly american and north
korean
archives
the north korean archive came courtesy
of douglas macarthur which by the way i should
tell the audience that two volume study
is mentioned in all reviews and it’s
regarded as
you know the font of most knowledge
about the whole thing these days but go
ahead
well thanks very much for that it taught
me not to write long books
uh… because people don’t read them and so I say things in
here that i said in those two books and
people treat it as revelation
but i i was also able to drop a lot
of south korean research that has come
out since they
democratized in the nineteen nineties
and in particular the truth and
reconciliation commission in seoul
that has done very painstaking
research on
massacres of civilians
and the results are horrific
uh… first of all
our side the south koreans
are running six to one ahead of the
north koreans in terms of killing
civilians
most americans would think north koreans would
just kill a civilian to look at
him
the
the numbers are
astonishing in toto
somewhere between a hundred and two
hundred thousand were killed in the
early months of the war
in political violence
that adds up to about another hundred
thousand that were killed in political
violence
from nineteen forty five to nineteen
fifty
and so
i mentioned in the book that they
had been studying in spain scholars
had been studying franco’s
political massacres
and the figures in about seventy five
percent of the
provinces or counties where they’ve
been able to do this research
come up to around
two hundred thousand
so we’re talking franco spain or korea
franco franco spain willoughby didn’t write about
that I presume no uh…
korea’s worse in other words and it
happened
in in often in full view of americans
now the worst incident no
review that i’ve seen as
wanted to get into this
but i called it
our srbrenitza
because somewhere between
as many as seven thousand
political prisoners were murdered in a
period of days they were put into pits
with our c_i_a_ people watching
our military people watching
the south korean police did this
and
then it was covered up
blamed on the communists even our
official history of the war by roy appleeman
blames all
this entire taejon massacre it happened
at
small city taejon
blames it on the communists
and then the joint chiefs of staff
classify the photographs of it ’cause
the photographs make it clear who’s doing
it
and they don’t let the photographs out
till nineteen ninety nine when a korean
finally got them declassified
so in other words
they knew what our
south korean army and police were doing
but how can you take a massacre of
seven thousand people
turn around and blame it on the communists
rather than stopping it when it was going
on
and then the pentagon did a
video
uh… a little movie called
crime of korea
that’s where you see the best shots of
the pits they go on through like a
football field
pit after pit of
dead people
and then humphrey bogart is in a is
in a voice-over saying someday
the communists will pay for this
someday we’ll get the full totals and
believe me we’ll get the exact accurate
totals of the people murdered here
and we will make these war
criminals pay
and everywhere lay the murdered dead the
scenery of destruction is monotonous
atrocity stories keep repeating
themselves what can i tell you
what can i show you of the ten
thousand human beings slaughtered in
seoul
perhaps it isn’t exactly ten thousand
perhaps the total figure right now is
approximate
if that makes any difference
in time we’ll get a careful tabulation
we’ll learn the exact number of the
slaughtered
down to the last corpse
now this is a complete reversal of black and white
done as a matter of policy
and i was astonished when i didn’t know
about it I didn’t know it reminds one
frankly of the katyn forest yeah
in reverse where the communists blamed the nazis
and everybody believed them until we found out it
was really the communists yeah i mean
it
it is a
an aspect of a very deep american
responsibility for
the regime that we promoted more really
more than any other in east asia it was
our creation in the late forties
why do you think
that things seemed the
media in particular
seemed to have been so different
almost from the beginning
of the vietnam war
well i think korea had a
an impact it certainly did on president
johnson and many of the generals
they had developed this
line after the korean war ended that we
don’t ever want to fight another land
war in asia
then lo and behold a few years later
they get into another land war
and for johnson he wanted to make sure
the chinese weren’t gonna come into the war
and destroy his administration the way
they had destroyed truman’s that
was
that’s very clear you know right at
the top of his head
in a
deliberations from the oval office during
johnson’s years
but i think it it uh…
had a lot to do with a TV
with the ability to photograph the
battle scenes either
as movies you know with uh…
hand-held camera that would then be
uh… shown in theaters in
documentaries uh…
i remember in nineteen sixty-five seeing
a documentary on the war that was
very shocking to me
and then of course it it spilled out
into a living room war
as more and more television cameraman
came to cover it
and i i think if there had been
television
in in korea that
the war would be much better remembered
for one thing and it would be much
more
contested
i want to say for your viewers that
they can go look at gallup polls
in nineteen fifty two and fifty three
and see that the korean war had become
just as unpopular as the vietnam war
did by nineteen sixty nine or
seventy
and truman’s popularity rating was down
around
twenty five twenty six percent
even george w_ bush didn’t hit that low
until right at the end of his presidency
and those are the two lowest ever
so it wasn’t a popular war but it was an
unknown war
because there was no lens to open up on
it
like vietnam
and second by the early sixties
mccarthyism head
waned
very considerably
and you know when the house uh… un american
activities committee would would
try to get a vietnam war protester
like
like uh…
what’s his name rubin
what’s his first name jerry rubin jerry rubin
blanked on that
get jerry rubin up to testify he comes
in in a revolutionary war uniform
generally makes a
you know bedlam and a big joke out of the
whole thing
but mccarthyism was very real and very
uh…
oppressive in the early fifties
uh… even the new york times would
write articles condemning protests
against uh… the korean war
paul robeson got a protest going in
harlem
in august in nineteen fifty
and the times condemned it in no uncertain terms
so that i mean the korean war
began just after the rosenbergs were
indicted and it ended just after they
were executed
and people are
thinking my god you you could go up the
river to sing sing and get executed for
your political beliefs
now this they were said to be spies and all
of that but i mean people don’t make
those distinctions yeah
you know isn’t it kinda
interesting
it never occurred to me uh… before a
few days ago
but MASH was one of the most popular maybe
the most popular t_v_ programs ever
and they had various points to make
about war and was supposed to be about
vietnam though it was set in korea
and the idiocy of it
but i don’t
i don’t claim to have watched every
episode of MASH at some point or another
but i don’t ever remember anything about
some of these what i’ll call the bad
stuff
us participating in slaughters of civilians
I don’t remember anything about that no i don’t
think they did
i mean i think when you look at the
vietnam war that most americans
think that lieutenant calley and a bunch
of other
bad hats carried out the my lai
massacre
and that’s about the only one that
happened in vietnam
when in fact there were my lais all
over vietnam uh… well you know another
thing americans just put out of their minds
don’t know
this didn’t start in korea it started in the
philippines
actually started with the indians
but it was big time in the philippines
and everybody at the time knew it
it was the subject of articles in
newspapers and
not denials but apologias
in in the newspapers
so this has been a constant in
american history
well it reminds me that
two statements by roosevelt and
achison
teddy roosevelt
teddy roosevelt
when people were complaining about the
philippines war
he said everything you can say for aquinaldo
you could have said for sitting bull
and then i i found in atchison’s papers
at yale
in a letter to a professor who had
complained about the vietnam war and that ho chi minh
was a real patriot
atchison said everything you say about
ho chi minh could have been said about
kim il-sung
you know that was true wasn’t it
uh… and uh…
we knew nothing about the
history
we knew nothing about the nationalism
we knew nothing about who had been
helping
our enemies and who had been helping our
friends
we just uh… reflect anti communism joe
stalin
fight a war against them
well there’s a new book on george bundy
that has an astonishing passage in it i mean
i
not much astonishes me having you know
written these books and taught
courses on the korean and vietnam war
my whole career
but bundy is going on about why we
lost the war is this goldstein’s book yeah
we had him here go ahead
well he gets out of bundy
that i was never interested in the vietnamese
he says it i was never interested in them
and he goes on to indicate that he never
inquired much about them either
he didn’t know his enemy
and he didn’t care to know his enemy
now he’s a boston brahmin and all of
that and he probably thinks the same
thing about you and me if he were still
alive you know not interested in
people like that
but for a guy to be prosecuting a war
and he was one of the biggest
warriors in terms of expanding the war
he wanted to invade north vietnam it was a global
chess game to these people yeah
he tells reporters
that he found political and religious
factions in vietnam
united in their beliefs that the
vietcong is their common enemy
we had an opportunity to talk
frankly and freely uh… with them
they again emphasized
the overriding importance in south
vietnam of the contest against the
communists
they emphasized the political leaders
had done the importance in their own
dedication too
the importance of and their
dedication to the task of
forming a stable and effective political
society under a stable and effective
government in that country
a view which of course uh… we share
you talk about having no interest in
people
like the vietnamese or people
like you and me
and you have said
at lunch and i think you might have once
mentioned here
that um…
the c_i_a_ has its ideas
and when you come they ask you to
talk or you’re at conferences and
you interrelate with them they say
cuming’s again they turn around
you know bacevich who’s been here three
times
andrew bacevich
has uh he’s written a book which i
read and I’m in the middle of rereading
it to write about it
called washington rules
yeah i want to that’s exactly what he’s
talking about they don’t care about what
people like you and bacevich
say
uh… i you put this in a context of
washington at lunch you might expound
about this
it is the narrowest minded
geographical area you have ever
been exposed to
you might expound about that a little bit if you
don’t mind
well i i uh…
i want to make clear to your viewers
that i uh… i’ll talk to anybody
if the north koreans invite me to
give a lecture i will
and i i do lecture to c_i_a_ folks and
state department people and i go to
conferences but I never
do anything that requires a security
clearance
and the reason is that if i ever get a
security clearance I’m going to be part of the
same mindset that they’re part of
what makes you think you could get a security
clearance
uh‚Ķthat’s another thing
but uh…
I
did start going to washington frequently
after the north korean nuclear
crisis broke open around nineteen ninety
two
and there are
uh… i i mean there are a range of
think tanks there i had some very
interesting conferences at the carnegie
endowment
on north korea nuclear
proliferation all of that but the guy
that organized them is selig harrison
who is one of the most independent
investigative journalists
i’ve ever known he worked for the
washington post his whole career he’s
retired now
still very active
so it is possible to get some light
under the
tent there in washington
but what you get with with north korea
starting in nineteen ninety two
is beltway speak
that north korea is going to collapse
tomorrow morning
and it becomes the c_i_a_’s mantra
when they go before congress
it’s not a question of when
north korea will collapse whether it’ll collapse
only when
and i see this stuff and i think what do they
know that i don’t at first
and then i realized it’s just
they talk to each other
they’re trying to get ahead in
washington or get a job in an
administration and if hilary clinton is
running around saying north korea has a
power struggle and might collapse who am I to
say
no she’s full of it
you are a failure and that’s who should say it
she came into office
picked up the bush administration’s line
on north korea
and just kept
ongoing
meanwhile here we are two years later
north korea hasn’t collapsed
the succession seems to have gone
smoothly to the younger son
which is what i would have predicted
so i mean there is
maybe i should write a book
like bacevich’s where I try to
figure out
it’s it’s shocking to me
it’s just shocking to me to see
perfectly intelligent people often with
degrees from the very best universities
who uh…
are going around not just in public but
in private saying things
that are manifestly
can’t happen
you know if i were to put it all in a word
it’s careerism
a lot of it is careerism
but it’s a bipartisan careerism so you
have
certain guys who take a line that that
will get them a job in the republican party
certain guys who take a line that will
give them a job in the democratic
party but there’s really not much
distance between them even though their
career
tracks yeah
i think what you said at lunch amounted to you
saying there’s about an inch between them
that’s about it
well the the fellow that we have as our
undersecretary of state for east asia
kurt campbell
uh… i’ve been to conferences with him
including back in the nineties
uh… i don’t know why he’s a democrat
but somehow he hooked on with
uh…
the clinton administration so he
probably got on the democratic
trajectory
his views are indistinguishable from
a lot of right wing conservatives
he’s a bully
and I don’t particularly like him as
you can tell
but he is the last person to bring fresh
thinking
into our policies toward china
if you don’t want to
deal with something like north korea how
about china which is becoming a bigger
and bigger problem
and that’s a
obama administration is supposed to really
do something new
and it hillary clinton’s
turned around to the same old people
that were
any other democratic president would have
hired
well that’s why
much of the country is so ultra cynical
about anything anything a politician says
you know the old joke how do you know
when a politician’s lying
his lips move
ok
you know one thing that’s interesting
about halberstam ’cause you said that
if i remember correctly you said that in
his book the coldest winter which i read
cover to cover fascinating book I thought
uh…
there’s not
there’s almost
nothing expressed about the history
beyond
june twenty-fifth nineteen fifty
and at the same time this is the guy who
was one of the major media figures in
blowing the whistle on what was going on
in vietnam and why
don’t you find that a kind of a strange
paradox
well i wrote a few pages about
that book and about david in in my
new book
he uh… called me up
asked to
talk about the war with me
could i come to new york or see him next
time I’m in new york
i was amazed at when i called him back to
you know he’s listed in the manhattan
phone book and he picks up which
i always liked david a lot I thought he
had a terrific career going
back-and-forth between you know serious
political subjects and sports and
was terribly eh… sad when he died
going to interview YA Tittle
but i could tell after an hour or so that we
didn’t see eye to eye to eye about
the korean war
and that what the korean war meant for
david
was that he had lived through it as a
young man probably a teenager or college
student
and it was something he wanted to avoid
it was something that contrasted with
the halcyon fifties when
so many other things were going right
and that he hadn’t paid a lot of
attention to it
but one thing was going to happen
in his book
truman and atcheson were going to be the
heroes no matter what any historian says
from washington general of the army eisenhower sets out on
a mission unprecedented in history
to organize and command an international army to defend
western europe against communist aggression
mr president
i devoutly pray the commission on which i’m
leaving this morning
will result in nothing but peace security
and tranquility for our various nations
secretaries marshall atcheson are present as he leaves
to visit each of the twelve
nations which through a treaty called the
atlantic pact
have banded together for mutual
defense
for david
i mean he’s got douglas macarthur
sending us into north korea even though
we have about three books now that show
that wasn’t true
that it was uh…
truman and atchison in washington who
made that basic decision
to go to go to the yalu
march in and try to knock
knock over the north korean regime as
part of the roll back communism idea
exactly uh… and this is
slightly off of the point of
halberstam and this is another
point that’s not widely known right
people think it was macarthur off on a
frolic and detour
and and essentially uh…
that’s what halberstam
says he he actually allows atcheson
to be quoted saying
we sat in the rooms just like little
babies while he just took the war
and did what he wanted with it
and that that’s a complete
complete yeah he says that everybody in washington
was in such fear of
the august god
douglas macarthur that nobody dared to
say a word one against his moving
north
yeah so i mean i think that both his book and
philip roth’s novel
that i also discuss its not set in the
korean war but he’s going to uh…
college
and gets kicked out of the college and
then gets sent to korea and dies there
uh… that novel
i’m blanking on the name of it was
something like interrogation or
something like that
he has a similar attitude toward the
korean war that that it was
something he didn’t really understand it
kinda blindsided him when he got sent
there
uh… it blindsided
the fifties
it blindsided his generation
but you know uh… ten years later
a guy like david halberstam was trying to cut
his spurs at the new york times
and
thinking that there was
you know some problem
uh… with what he was hearing in
south vietnam and he becomes a big
critic of the of the war
and does excellent work
but in the in his uh… book on the
korean war i mean i gave him both of
my big tomes and uh…
a list of other good books on the war
he doesn’t mention them
he doesn’t mention the bombing of the
north
he mentions the three-year u_s_
occupation of south korea in one
sentence without
giving it any significance
and mentions a total of two
south koreans in a seven hundred page
book syngman rhee
and his old general paik sun yup who
everybody all the western journalists
are taken to paik sun yup so he
can
tell them how things really happened
now to bring this back to our earlier
discussion
pain sun yup was born in pyongyang
he was about ten years younger he he’s
younger than kim il-sung
he was a lieutenant in the japanese army
he fled to the south with his brother
and they both became
central people
in the command of the south korean army
when the war broke out
so kim il-sung grew up just outside of pyongyang
here’s two two other guys took opposite
sides during the colonial period
and they’re facing each other off
on the thirtieth parallel on june
twenty-fifth nineteen fifty
uh… so
it’s uh…
astonishing that
anybody
in in washington that knew anything
about korea could have
been surprised by this war
stay with us we’ll be right back
president truman arrives at flushing meadow
five years to the day after his
historic proclamations which announced
the beginning of work by the united
nations
mr. truman dramatically calls on the world
assembly of nations
to bring about real disarmament
through control of atomic and all other
weapons
then the president says
vast sums now being spent on rearmament
could be used for world betterment
in the reception that follows the
president greets the delegates of the
sixty united nations among them are
russia’s andrei bashinski and soviet
security council delicate jacob malik
america’s warren austin and eleanor
roosevelt
the un anniversary is hailed around
the world massachusetts school of law
legal education that is practical
accessible affordable
and enjoyable offering flexible day and
evening classes full or part-time
studies
candidates are assessed not on the
LSAT
but their academic and other accomplishments
providing more professional skills
training than any other law school in the new england
massachusetts school of law
visit us at mslaw.edu
training students to become successful
lawyers and advocates not just legal
scholars
the topic i will be discussing today is
whether a person or a couple
should make a will
the short answer is yes
before i discuss specific situations let
me state a few things in the hope of
clearing up some misconceptions
first
the law of wills is state-specific
that is each state has its own set of laws
governing who can make a will
and the formalities one must comply with
in order to make a valid will
one that a court will enforce
second generally a person who wants to
make a will needs to be eighteen years
old and of sound mind
which means that the person has to
know that they are making a will
that they know the nature and extent of
the assets they own
and that they know the natural objects
of their bounty
in other words you have to know what you
were doing and why
a written and signed document is
required in almost all but a few special
cases
and most states require that two other
people also sign the will as witnesses
some states do not require witnesses as
long as the document is signed by the
person making the will known as the testator
and the material portions of the will are
in the testator’s handwriting
the main reason to make a will is to
make sure that upon your death your
property goes to those persons you want
your property to go to
a will can accomplish that objective and
do so in a legally accepted manner
if you do not have a will then you die
intestate
and the law of the state you live in
will step in and make the decision for
you about how your property will be
distributed
and to whom
again each state has its own rules and
each person’s family situation is
different
in another presentation i discussed
the general rules of been intestacy
so i will leave that issue for now
there are other reasons to make a will
and they are as varied as each families
dynamics
providing for children especially for minor children
providing for partners
providing for aged parents
minimizing taxes
selecting fiduciaries to handle your affairs
selecting guardians to raise your minor
children
and making sure that there is an orderly
process to reach a distribution goals
are but a few of the many other reasons
let me give you three typical scenarios
first a young unmarried person
just starting out in his or her career
second a recently divorced parent of two
young children
and finally
an older couple with grown children
who have started their own families
first the young unmarried person
just starting out in your career you
might feel that you do not have enough
assets to bother with making a will
that may be true but even if it is
things could change quickly
you could inherit money from a parent or
a grandparent
you could get injured
and receive money either in a lawsuit or
as a settlement
regardless
you have your own ideas about how
your property whatever the value
should be distributed upon your death
everything to partner if you have one
some to your parents
some to your brothers or sisters or a favorite
niece and nephew
how about to a favorite charity
and if you have pets who will take over
their care
without a will your preferred
beneficiaries may or may not receive
your property when you die
and with a will
you choose an executor or executrix
someone you trust to make sure your
testamentary plan is carried
out
let’s consider another example
the recently divorced parent of two
young children
in this situation
your primary goal will probably be
insuring that your children are taken
care of if you pass away
for you there are two major concerns
first who will be the guardian of your
children
that is who would you want to raise your
children if you pass away
and your ex spouse is either passed
away is unfit to raise the children
or simply does not desire to do so
an elderly parent
a sister in a faraway state
a successful sibling who is married and has
children of his own or her own
in a will you choose who will be the
guardian of your children
while your choice is not absolutely binding
on the probate court
it will be given great deference
and it would be a good idea to select
an alternate guardian
in case your first choice of guardian is
unable to take on the role of guardian
second how will your property be distributed
this situation also requires careful
thought and planning
and may involve providing money to the
guardian to help pay for the cost of
raising your children
and even setting up trusts for things
like their college education
and finally
the older couple with grown children
who have children of their own
will there be enough money to ensure
that the surviving spouse can live
comfortably
what happens to the estate
when the second spouse dies to whom
should the property go the wealthy and
successful daughter
the son struggling to raise a family
with a spouse
siblings in need of financial support
or specific grandchildren
what about grandchildren yet to be born
and what about planning for medicaid
eligibility and long-term care
finally what about estate taxes
for those fortunate to have had
financial success
the list of issues to be addressed goes
on and on
whatever your current situation
it is probably a very good idea to
consider making a will
at a minimum
making a will gives you some peace of
mind
knowing that if anything should happen
to you
your wishes upon your death will be
honored
at the new american college of history and legal studies
in salem new hampshire
you can finish your bachelors degree
affordably and get on the fast track to law school
we teach american history
and you will receive a rigorous education at a
very low cost the small day and evening
classes allow you to interact closely
with a distinguished faculty
at the american college of history and legal
studies
professors don’t lecture
through the discussion method of teaching
you’ll be engaged in the issues raised in class
you’ll learn to be a critical thinker a
better writer and a polished public speaker
and you’ll be able to
compete with anybody in today’s competitive marketplace
you can also get on the fast track to
law school
qualified students gain early admission
into the massachusetts school of law
the new american college of history and legal
studies offers the junior and senior years of
undergraduate education to finish your
bachelors degree
with the opportunity to start your law
degree early call or visit today
united nations troops once again hit the road
towards korea’s capital city of seoul
on the way american infantrymen fight through
towns like the rail center of an yang
south of seoul
this time the advance is different from
previous allied attacks
led by tanks diving deep into the
chinese communist lines searching out
the reds in the rice paddies
the goal of the united nations command
this time is not to capture towns
but to track down the enemy and destroy him
is this war of maneuver gains ground
so much the better
and gain ground we do u_n_ units hurling
back chinese counterattacks
reach the blasted bridges along the
vital han river across from seoul
for the fourth time since the war’s start
the city of seoul comes under attack
the offensive is was backed up from bases in
japan where flying boxcars of the combat
cargo command
take to the air to drop supplies
just as though they were coming off a
factory assembly line
uh…
welcome back why did mao
mao
come across to help the
the north koreans
well i think it’s
true that he was defending his own
border
and the industry’s uh… japanese had
also put a lot of industries into
manchuria
but not china didn’t have much industry sort
of an imperial fringe you know of
shanghai along the coast that other the
british and others had built factories
and there was a distinct
possibility that the u_s_ would
would uh… bomb those factories
that the u_s_ would
put an american army on the yalu river
which i think the chinese still
would resist if korea were unified
but I developed a lot of evidence
mainly in chinese and koreans sources
that
it was also a matter of reciprocity for
what koreans had done for them and that
for a new revolutionary regime to let
the north koreans hang out to dry
when many of his officers had fought
with uh… kim il-sung and other
guys in the north korean military
would be
most unfortunate
and then the third reason
yeah I mean it took me forever to get any handle
on what
koreans had done in china
with that revolution
but it goes all the way back to
nineteen twenty one or two
when the defense minister
of the north korean army in nineteen
fifty had been at the
whampoa
military academy that’s where
chiang kai shek went
many of mao’s allies it’s most famous
military training facility all the way
back to the early twenties
there were koreans on the long march including
one of the biggest generals in the north
korean army in nineteen fifty may I ask a question why
well because
i mean it’s it’s it’s partly
that when westerners look at east asia
they think well i better learn something
about china better learn something about
japan but i don’t really need to learn
much about korea
I’m joking a little bit but i’ve seen that
many times
it’s also the
schisms that came into
the postwar communist world where
the chinese felt the koreans didn’t give them
enough credit
koreans felt the chinese didn’t give them
enough credit you know things like
that so that these stories
get
distorted but why did so many koreans
fight with mao
you know in the long march and in the
fighting chiang kai-shek and all that
i think that uh…
japanese colonialism was so oppressive
to young men in particular
there’s a great book called song of ariran
ariran is a famous korean song
written by kim san
who was uh… korean revolutionary who
died
in uh… the late thirties
edgar snow’s wife took his biography
but he said
and he said specifically about syngman rhee in
nineteen nineteen
he went to versailles to try and get
the
powers to give korea independence
and this this kim san said how how can syngman
rhee think that because he can speak
english
he’s going to go to versailles and somehow
those great powers are going to
force japan to give up korea
it’s just naivete on an
unbelievable scale says words to that
effect
but then he says why he joins the chinese
revolution is because somebody’s finally
fighting the japanese
cause i mean the borders between
korea and china almost didn’t exist
the the japanese were
in
uh… all of northeast asia by
nineteen o five
at one point or another and then they
controlled
the northeast provinces of china for
fifteen years so
it was natural i think that you get a
generation of revolutionaries who
think the only thing the japanese
understand
is bullets
well now we’ve got about fifteen
minutes left and
i’d like to
discuss perhaps three or four major topics
number one we discuss the japanese
here a lot
and i think you feel that uh…
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody take a
different position
that the japanese and the north koreans
have never reconciled
and very interestingly and I had not heard
this because i think of my own ignorance
frankly
that you feel that the people who have
been high in the japanese government
and who to this day are high in the japanese
government
are related by blood to the people who
were the fascists in the japanese
nation in the nineteen late nineteen
twenties and thirties and who brought on
world war two
and that the north koreans are well
aware of this
i don’t think there’s any question of
that
one of the people
who was in manchuria
kishi nobusuke who became postwar prime
minister in japan
great favorite of the americans even though
he was really a right winger
kishi was running the munitions
operation in
manchuria in the mid-nineteen thirties as
a young man
i go into
these various lineages in
my book uh…
but uh… two uh… of the most recent prime
ministers are direct descendants
of people
that go back to that period
but the other thing I mean two things
japan has the most hereditary democratic
parliamentary system on the face of the
earth
they have kept districts where
the son the grandson and
you know the great-grandson are going to
hold that seat
in the diet or the parliament
that’s more true of the liberal
democratic party which is temporarily out
of power
but was in power through most of the
post-war period
they have very deep roots in the
countryside
they have very deep hereditary roots
it’s
not to say it isn’t a democracy
but it uh… it would be like
taking the kennedys and several of our
you know rockefeller’s and other families I was going to say
the kennedys and just blast you know plastering
them all over the country
and then the other thing is
koreans
were always known hundred and fifty
years ago they were known for keeping
genealogies
and that had to do with
if you had an aristocrat in the last
four generations
of your genealogy
of your family history you could sit for
the civil service exams which was a way to
get upward and onward
and if you didn’t you couldn’t
so hereditary systems are very strong in
korea including slavery
but if you could trace
you know your your family back
to some distinguished person you u
you could do much better in korean
society
so koreans are just
widely known they’re great students of
genealogy most families have extensive
family trees
and so the first thing the north koreans
do
since they think the japanese are
unreconstructed
and every
wipstitch some l_d_p_ politicians shows
that they’re unreconstructed by saying
you know we really developed korea we
didn’t hurt korea stuff happens all the
time
they all look at the guys genealogy
you know there have been some famous
episodes recently
that indicate this although
we americans don’t know the background
that you just presented
uh
you know the claim
there was no such thing as comfort women
and you know when the when the
chinese government says to them
you really should apologize for thus and such
like uh…
the rape of nanking
oh no no we had nothing to do
with that you know
well i uh… i think it’s a very
serious problem because
they’re wonderful japanese
historians that have pointed all this
stuff out three hundred thousand people
died at nanking
comfort women were hundred and fifty
thousand so you know there are very
good historians people that i consider
very good friends who have total
contempt for their own government
but the politicians are constantly
saying things that are
that seem to be purposely
designed to
put salt into the wounds
and what amazed me though is that the head of
the air force in japan a year and a half
ago got up
and he gave a speech
where basically he said
japan’s been right in every
international conflict it’s gotten themselves
into since eighteen ninety-five when
they
scuttered the chinese
and blamed uh…
world war two on pearl harbor and
roosevelt listening to too many
communists i mean it was just a really
wackey
thing but in the middle of it
he says there was a great korean officer
named kim suk won
oh he killed so many chinese you know
he was terrific we really liked him
well that was the guy in the nineteen
thirties who headed the unit
to track down and kill
kim il-sung
and kim suk won was the commander of
the thirty eighth parallel all through
the summer of nineteen forty nine
when the south was making these
skirmishes and attacks
and i mean you didn’t need anybody else
there to provoke a war
i mean this guy is a quizling traitor
a benedict arnold
and you know we’re standing there next to
him with our
officers
while he he he he literally said
when i attack the north I’ll have
breakfast in
pyongyang and uh…
lunch in some
place and dinner on the border chin
wi she he said this to
people all the time
but i think your average american
you get
instead of an expert with forty years of
experience you get forty guys with one
year
of experience
and then they’re going off to their next post
they don’t know anything about this
guy’s background
yeah yeah there are some real questions for a
different day but
there are some real questions about the
way in which our state department and for
that matter one might even say
the military operates in the ability
a year or two years
there are certain real benefits
to that but there certain downsides that
don’t
often get discussed
uh why don’t you talk about
tell us about the one
thing probably most known to
americans
whether we understand the whole story i
don’t know but that’s the print those
are the prisoner of war issues when
when the war was finally the armistice
was finally signed
well uh… the uh…
there a lot of things to say about the
p_o_w_ issue
it held up the signing of the armistice
primarily because we wanted some
mechanism
whereby
anticommunist soldiers would not be sent
back to north korea or china
they would be rewarded as it were
well
if they were anticommunist they should go to south
korea or taiwan but not go back to a
communist country
but that was based on the treatment that
the russians gave to germans
who had surrendered to them and so it
was a perfectly
reasonable position
but it ignored what was going on in the
p_o_w_ camps which was a virtual
political war sometimes open war
warfare
where the communists
on the north korean side would
would get everybody together and organize
their camp
and then fight with the anti communists on the south
korean side except the north koreans are
much better organized
south koreans tended to have youth group
leaders
the south koreans were the anti
communist p_o_w_s
they were the ones who wouldn’t join
with the communists even though they had
been communist
or they have been in the north korean army
they had been captured
in the north korean army or as guerrillas
yeah okay or they got into the
camps and figured the u_s_ was going to
win this war sooner or later and they would
go to south korea
and there was a lot of anticommunist
indoctrination among those north and
south koreans a lot of south koreans were
captured fighting on the north korean
side
and and so
syngman rhee also in addition to
these fights that were going on
he decided to sabotage the armistice
couple months before it was signed by
letting twenty five thousand prisoners
go free
these were anticommunist ones or probably
anybody that realized they were going to
go free on
tuesday morning if uh… syngman rhee
let them
and that infuriated
the uh…
american command
which was running everything
i mean the u_n_ had almost no role in
korea
and so uh…
that managed to delay the
armistice for several months
but to me
what most americans remember i think is
the americans in north korean and
chinese p_o_w_ camps
because of the uh…
the shocking things that came out when
they came home
the most shocking being that twenty-one of the
p_o_w_s stayed behind
and i’ve actually met
two of them
they all eventually made their way back
to the united states
they went from north korea to china some of
them stayed there decades
others came back fairly quickly
but they were just confused young men
in one case a black guy who said he had
no future in the united states and the
chinese promised him a job in in
education
which is entirely plausible
he’s now
runs a chop suey restaurant in memphis he’s a very
funny guy
and he got his education his wife and his job in
china
but he told us in an interview that he
wanted to come back to the united states
because there’s no ceiling on your
ambition
where as there is in china
it was just a fascinating
interview
very uh… interesting person
so twenty one stayed behind and they were
supposed to have been brainwashed
when in fact the political
indoctrination was fairly
light compared to what most people
believe
uh… i’ve read a book by a black guy
who was
a p_o_w_ and he said they would
come to him and talk to him about imperialism
and he’d say it’s a bunch of hogwash and
they’d come back and try and do it and
the worst thing ever did was make
him stand on the ice in his bare feet
for an hour or so
teach him a lesson
so i i i a lot of it was
overdrawn but it fed into this idea
we couldn’t win the korean war
we were stalemated
what happened to the world war two
generation
when men were men
and you see then in the mid fifties all
of this talk about the decline of
american manhood and
rebel without a cause james dean’s most
well-known movie
you know
his father’s going around in an
apron
he tells his father why don’t you slug mom
in the mouth for christ’s sake instead of letting her push
you around
i mean it you see it in hollywood
you see it in stories and scenes on t_v_
and so the uh…
that particular p_o_w_ episode
and it went beyond that because
a lot of americans died in captivity
and one thought
well it’s the brutality of the north
koreans and the chinese
but there were a lot of british p_o_w_’s
hardly any of them died
and so when studies came out and there
there are some excellent studies by
sociologists on this
including a book called mass battle and
behavior in captivity that i think is the
best book
it turned out that the british knew how
to keep their morale up much better than
the americans and these guys would just give up
commit suicide or just die like bridge on the river
kwai in a way isn’t yeah it is
and i don’t think it has
anything to do with american manhood it
has to do with young people
who don’t know where korea is
that get six weeks of infantry training you know
one of the things maybe this
american manhood thing is a
perpetually cycling idea because as
you will remember
this was something that tremendously
bothered theodore roosevelt and other
people who were the sons of the civil
war generation
and who had never proven themselves you
know in his famous comment i want a war
any war
but we need a war right
yeah actually one of the fascinating
things about korea is how well officered
the american military was
almost all the officers who fought in
world war two fought in korea
ridgeway macarthur clark
you
you can’t uh…
hardly name anybody who didn’t
fight there and that
and that made be losing that war or not
winning it
all the harder to take
a couple of last questions that seem
to be related i think
talk if you would about the
growth of democracy in korea after
in south korea
after this vile dictatorship until
about nineteen sixty
under syngman rhee whom we brought back
there
and the fact that today the south
koreans seem to understand far better
than we do
that the korean war was fundamentally a
civil war among koreans
the same thing that is said about the
vietnamese later on
well syngman rhee had
a dictatorship masquerading as a
parliamentary democracy
for twelve years from nineteen forty eight
to nineteen sixty when he was
overthrown in a popular rebellion
uh… and at that time
people in the countryside in particular
settled scores with
policemen and
military people who had killed their
family members in political violence
during and before the war
and for about a year you had a
situation moving toward a a
genuine democracy
and then
in may nineteen sixty one park chung
he mounted a coupe
and uh…
took over the country
and uh… kennedy
didn’t like it
made him run for election in nineteen
sixty three
but all during the park period for the
next uh…
twenty years
koreans would tell me
if he ever lost an election he’d just put
the tanks in the street again
so most of the elections were for show
but in nineteen seventy one uh
he ran against kim dae jung who was
uh… a much younger politician and
very charismatic
and somehow kim got forty six percent of
the vote
and
nearly got killed for that
and so park declared himself president
for life put in a new constitution a
year later
a kind of pressure cooker was built up
in korea in the seventies and eighties
where the civil society and the educational
level of the people and all that was
way beyond
living in a military dictatorship
modeled on what the japanese had done
in the thirties
so when park was assassinated in
nineteen seventy nine you had another
year when it looked like
uh…a democracy would develop
and then one of his proteges took over
chun doo hwan in nineteen eighty
and prolonged the dictatorship until
a major rebellion throughout
kind of like what’s going on in tunisia
today every major city had
tens of thousands of people in the
streets
overthrew chun doo hwan
and you had the first direct election of
a president
and then in in the nineteen nineties i
think korea really fully democratized
and in many ways it’s a more democratic
country than our own i think in that
it’s is it’s as stable a democracy as we
have
but its spectrum is much wider
the political spectrum
they have a left-wing newspaper that’s
one of the most popular newspapers and
I don’t mean left-wing like the new york
times but it it it’s uh…
yeah
it’s not a liberal spoken like a true
right winger well sarah palin might
think it’s a left-wing newspaper but
and a full spectrum of debate and a very
lively civil society
and in that context all kinds of
questions that
people had been
tormented about
but couldn’t talk about for decades
started to come out
like the no gun village massacre
which was an american massacre of
women and children and that got
made a lot of news here
but of course koreans are more
interested in the massacres
that their people did and so
pretty soon you had the truth and
reconciliation commission
uh… and and a number of other
similar projects
so that and then this went along with uh…
as you said a different evaluation of
the nature of the war
for a young person in nineteen eighty to hear
that kim il sung was actually a gorilla
fighting the japanese rather than a
stooge of the russians which is
what had always been put out
and that
the top officers in the south korean
army were all
at the time of the war were all
people who served in the japanese army in world war
two
this is like
somebody telling us i don’t know
what i mean that
john kennedy was a secret communist or
something like that that it’s just had a
shattering effect
on young people
in particular and so the whole
postwar consensus that the conservatives
have tried to
curdle up over
the decades collapsed
and they’d like to put it back together
again but they can’t they’re too old
uh…
anybody who fought in the korean war now is
going to be about eighty
and
so the to me as a historian it’s one of the
best examples of what democracy can do
for you
because when people are actually
allowed to inquire into those things
that move them deeply
they do very good work
well I must be a real democrat because for the
last ten years i have come to think
that robert taft was a great man and you
know back in the nineteen fifties
people thought he was the incarnation of
right wing ogrism
and he was so right about what was
happening in the executive branch of the
united states government
well I uh
grew up among a bunch of ohio cousins
who thought robert taft walked on water
and i still remember
one of my cousins pounding his fists into
the sand we have
I used to my parents owned a cottage
with a bunch of other cousins
who had their own cottages coming down
from a nineteenth-century farm that my
great grandfather owned
i went through every summer for twenty
one years
and i remember
one of my cousins pounding his fists into the
sand
listening to the radio
so angry and i said
to my father I said what’s wrong he says
eisenhower’s getting the nomination not
taft
well you know taft maybe some maybe he was
sort of right wingish on domestic
policies but boy when it came to foreign
affairs and
the ability of the executive to do
whatever it wants and congress being a
mere cypher oh my god was he right on
took a lot of years to realize he was
uh
my cousins were at that time mostly
small businessmen
or salesmen for
some buick dealer or whatever
and he was a champion of small business
low taxes
but he was principaled
low military budgets too
uh… and i wrote about him not in this
book but in another book
of mine that came out a year
uh… or so ago
where he says
what truman is embarking on
with this military budget and these basis
is just a disaster
sooner or later it’s going to get us
into wars
and it’s going to bankrupt us
and it’s been doing that now for sixty
years
yeah
and now we we really have to wrap this up
but i will add that now there is talk
in congress and elsewhere
that what is happening on the
international fund front militarily
does threaten the country with
bankruptcy
you’re you’re exactly right i mean you see it
coming slowly in
in the morning paper
more and more congressmen more and more
pundits talking it and conservative that’s the
thing that interests me so much yeah
conservatives who are
hard-line
hard line when it comes to the military and when it
comes to our role in the world and they are
say
it’s going to bankrupt us I very much
have
grown to like secretary of defense gates
because he’s the first secretary of
defense since eisenhower left
you know the presidency to talk about
reducing the military budget in serious
ways
well sir thank you thank you very much
it’s been a good discussion
boy i think i think that uh… you were
terrific so thank you very much thank you
thanks for the good questions and you’re welcome
and to the audience be with
us again next time
or the next issue the next uh…
episode
installment I guess that would be the best
word
of books of our time thank you

In this episode of The Massachusetts School of Law’s Educational Forum, Assistant Dean Diane Sullivan speaks with former Boston Bruins Derek Sanderson and Ken Hodge Jr., Richard Johnson, curator of The Sports Museum of New England, author Russ Conway, former player Mike Milbury and attorney Ken Lakin about the game of hockey including how the league has changed since the original six, the violence of the game, player salaries and the league’s future.

The following is a rough transcript of the above video, courtesy of YouTube captions…

welcome to the massachusetts school
of law
educational forum thank you for joining us
this program is brought to you by the
massachusetts school of law
and is shown nationwide
the topic for today’s show is the n_h_l_
for hockey fans hockey isn’t a game it’s
a way of life
there’ve been great players like gordie
howe bobby orr and wayne gretzky
hockey has given its fans great moments
one of the most memorable is when a
group of college students from the
u_s_a_ defeated the mighty russian
olympic team also known as the miracle
on ice
the n_h_l_ has produced great teams such
as the big bad bruins
for which derek sanderson mike milbury and
ken hodge played
and who could forget the high-flying
edmonton oilers of the nineteen
eighties
plus hockey has one of the most
successful franchises in sports history
the montreal canadiens
in an effort to get as many perspectives
as possible
we thought it would be a great idea to
get the thoughts of a man who knows
the game from a players view as well as
from managements view
we visited with michael milbury in new
york
mike was a top defenseman with the
boston bruins
after retiring he progressed through the
bruins organization
from player to head coach of the bruins
affiliate the mariners where his team
captured the division title and he was
named coach of the year
mike then became head coach and assistant
general manager of the bruins leading
the team to division titles mike then
became the general manager of the new
york islanders
mike tell us a little bit about the
game of hockey how’s it changed over the
course of your career first as a player
well it’s changed in a whole lot of
different ways from the
just from the size of the players who
are so much bigger so much stronger so
much faster than they’ve ever been
and uh… and that makes for
a whole different set of uh… rules for
coaches to live by and they coaches
have adapted incredibly to the game and
now we’re much more they’re much more
sophisticated in terms of
positioning and technical play
uh… makes for a real challenge for an
opposing coach when you
come into a new building and they’ve
seen everything that you’re gonna do
and from the business perspective it’s
uh… incredibly different it’s uh…
there’s all sorts of things that go on
in an arena during the course of the game
advertising even here in this little
rink that you’re seeing everything that you can
possibly imagine on the side boards
uh… and of course the money
is uh… hugely different do you think
in any way it’s becoming a game or it’s
going to become a game of speed and and
of size and strength as opposed to
technical skill
you know we’re we’re facing a time now
where teams have become so
uh
detail oriented and they play the trap
which is a
real tight defensive system
i don’t know how we’re going to get
around that it’s there’s still a lot of
excitement to the game there’s a lot of
transition off this defense
but a lot of us are concerned about
what it’s doing to the flow of the game so
it’s something that we’re looking at and
especially with the new CBA around the
corner
we’re looking at it very intently in the
next year or so
so we’ll have to stay tuned see what happens yeah
i think so but i but every year there’s
probably three or four general managers
meetings
most of the managers are ex-players but
all of them are dramatically interested
in the welfare of the game
and we’re always looking for a way to
make it better and we get input from the
players as well so I I think the game
should be flow excitement and
that’s its roots it’s uh…
its essence was on rivers and ponds and
where there was just an explosion of
energy and speed and and the more we can
keep that essence of the game the
better it is for all of us do you
believe that the fighting or the
violence is an essential part of the
games is that what viewers want to see
well that’s two different questions uh… i
don’t believe that that fighting is an
essential part of the game
i believe that we’ve allowed it to
become a part of the marketing
aspect of the game
uh…
no other major sport allows it to occur
in its uh…
in it’s field and i don’t think we
need it
uh…
other people will argue that this is a way
to
to that people police themselves on the ice
uh…
i frankly think that’s
uh… sales pitch and i think we could
easily do without it
and make the game
uh… better because of it but uh…
you know I’m in the minority on that one and i’m
not that i mean i fought
plenty of times when I was a player it’s not that
i’m uh…
a pacifist in any way shape or form no way
but i uh… i think we can it’s time to move
on
that’s right
let me ask you a somewhat related
question hockey players are rarely in
trouble with the law or are in trouble far
less than other athletes why do you
think that’s so
you know we’ve had the we’ve been lucky
to
to uh… in many ways unlucky i guess the
salaries have been low they haven’t been
introduced into the fast lane
there are a lot of us that are very concerned
about that we had a recent episode
with uh…
a tragic episode where
where one of our players in
atlanta passed away and it was a fairly
innocent occurrence you know somebody
driving a little too fast
but it’s it’s when you introduce
the opportunity and all the money that
comes with it it’s something that
concerns me but up until now it’s been
sort of a down to earth group and and i
guess maybe that
maybe most of the time people are coming
from canada forty percent of our players
are still from canada
but it’s a kind of uh… an earthy game
and the guys are generally well
grounded and uh… i hope we never lose
that entirely
i wonder if you might comment on the
diversity now in the league you said
still forty percent of the players are
coming down from canada but where’s
everyone else coming from
well there’s uh…
they’re coming from everywhere and we
have people from long island now that
are playing in the league
we have people from the midwest of course
and all across a europe uh… the
russian
the russian system which seemed to be in
incredible disarray
ten years ago with a
the political changes has now somehow
rebounded
as as they become economically more
viable a lot of these
businessmen have poured money into the
hockey system so we’re getting
a real rebirth in russia
finland has always been there and i
think can produce more sweden has always
been a great source of talent in the last
ten years the czech republic
and slovakia is an up-and-coming uh…
hockey power uh… they won the world
championship a couple years ago so it’s
uh…
it’s nice to see that hockey is
flourishing across
some of these places and one day
hopefully we’ll have a
an artificial ice surface that will
introduce it easily to to warmer
climates that’s uh… that’s something
they flirted with but haven’t really
quite
been able to uh… perfect
let’s talk a little bit about the
popularity of the sport why is hockey
nationally less popular than other
major league sports
uh… huh
my opinion the reason is that
people don’t play it yes
I mean in south florida
or alabama
it’s very expensive
uh… there are no natural surfaces on
which to play it people
ball hockey is a tremendously popular game
right now
but it’s not ice hockey and
to get a sheet of ice like this is this
is a
you know multimillion dollar facility
so therein really lies the biggest rub
that that people just don’t have access
to the
to the ice surfaces
and the expensive
the expensive nature of the equipment
also is
prohibitive so
that is going to keep us somewhat
unfortunately
contract what advice would you have for
kids that really wanna make it in the
n_h_l_ is it a realistic goal
every kid uh… should have a dream and
if it happens to be in
athletics i think they should be able to
dream that I think
that the first thing that you need to do
is learn how to skate
uh… my advice really doesn’t go to the
to the kids it goes to the parents where
i think we’ve made a mockery of what we
should be doing
in uh… athletics as far
as hockey is concerned anyway
we’ve got kids that are six and seven and
eight that are on travel teams
traveling around two and three hours to
play a fifteen minute game
I know there’s some socialization that occurs
there but
that could happen uh… a lot closer to
home and for a lot less
expense and
i think if we could
we could get more training into our
early
uh… hockey programs
more training less travel less game playing
and then of course less nonsense among
parents in the stands
that i think we’re much better off and
and some of the european countries we’ve
always known that they’ve been much
better technically
it’s because they’re trained more more
thoroughly and properly
they don’t play as many games there’s not as
much emphasis on the games
so consequently as they get older and do
play more games
they’re better prepared and i think
that’s something that we should all look
at
and my advice to the kids in general is
learn to skate learn the learn the
skills
and then you’ll get your game sense as time
goes on a kid though that wants to
make it in the n_h_l_ all they can do
today is play hockey they can’t diversify themselves and
do other sports it’s a it’s a
sad comment really for me but uh…
specialization is here to stay it looks
like
i think we just have to be careful you
can still
as a kid play other sports uh…
but the way things have been structured
there’s if you’re part of a program it
starts in september it doesn’t end until
april
there’s offseason
conditioning programs that they want
summer hockey schools that they want you to be a
part of
it’s tough i still think there’s a
little room for it
but like anything else if you put your
mind to it if you have a gifted with
some
some natural ability you’ve got a chance
but it’s not something
professional sports is not something
anybody can count on this is
this is a your chances are remote that
you’ll make it but
it’s uh…
not a
unfair or unwise to dream
and yeah like you say it’s good to have a
dream
different question unlike other sports
hockey is much more reliant in my
opinion on what i call ticket or gate
income what does that mean to the game
the reason why is simple we we have
uh…
never been able to expand to a regional
or national audience on on a great scale
the game is difficult to broadcast
there’s a very small object of
everybody’s attention the puck is not
very big
it’s tough to see it as
as you will note or most people note but
once you go to a game
you can get
you can get
hooked on the thing oh sure the problem is
that we have uh… we have enough issues
in sort of selling it to the public i guess
somewhat related question do you think
that hockey players now are going to
start to look for the big salaries like
other major league sports it’s already it’s already
there
as a business
i think it’s safe to say that the
case will be made by ownership
that they can’t afford it we’re
we’re paying more money in many cases
to players than
than football and and baseball and
basketball for the marquee players it’s
it’s a
it’s not big money will come it’s
big money is here right
and hockey
has a unique problem as i see it any
way that you have a lot of teams out
there that are losing money and you have
expansion of the n_h_l_ and how does
that all play into it i think what
happened here is that that uh… in the
days of the sixties fifties sixties and
and seventies really
uh… i think ownership took advantage
of players
i think there was a real
uh…
one way street and that was uh…it was
not going the players way
as the union changed
as the uh… as times changed
the union became much more powerful much
more in tune
and the pendulum swung the other way
uh… now it’s the players that are
in control consequently there’s a lack
of trust between the two parties
and we’ll say something and they’ll smear
they’ll say something and we’ll say
can you believe they don’t understand it
until we get to some sort of
understanding of each other’s
difficulties
and the fact that this is a business
that requires
obviously players and obviously the
capital and the input of ownership and that
we’re a partnership
we’re in for a rocky road right
so get on the same page
that’s the answer there’s
obviously people want to come to the
game
we play to mostly full houses
uh… as we mentioned earlier it is that’s
where we get our revenue
uh… so we’ve got something that people
want to see people wanna watch on
on t_v_ when they’re familiar with the
game
but we need to
we need to know that we’re we need each
other in this whole business oh yeah
you look at boston you look here in new york
i mean we love hockey but that’s
not true everywhere
no it isn’t true everywhere because they
haven’t been introduced to it and for the
other reasons not
the lack of kid participation but
once you see it once you’re part of the
action once you actually get people to
a game
you can really hook them and uh…
it would be a shame if we couldn’t find
a way as players and owners
to to and manages to come to some
commonality without having a work
stoppage for a length of time yeah i mean i wonder
whether the n_h_l_ would survive
long-term some type of a lockout
well the
no matter how we try to screw it up
the game keeps bouncing back yes it does
and it’s great
let’s talk a little bit about you
what was your experience what has
hockey meant to you it’s been your
whole life as i can see it
I had a dream like all other kids but it was at a
time when you played football and
you played hockey and you played
baseball and basketball and soccer and
everything else you could get your hands
on
so I you know as I headed off to
college
i guess it was the dream was still there
but i was being a little more realistic
about
you know options as a professional
athlete but when i got out of college
i got the opportunity to try out for the
old boston braves
uh… and showed them enough to get me
back to training camp in the fall
and then that I got lucky enough to to
stick with the bruins organization
uh… a lot of it’s luck a lot of it’s
timing lot of it’s hard work
I had a good fortune of having uh…
don cherry who was a
big supporter of mine and harry sinden
who was a
great friend and mentor
and who uh has always meant the world to
me in terms of
personal and professional life uh… he
gave me an opportunity to get my career
started not only as a player
but then when it was over as a coach and
manager in in portland
uh… so
it it’s just sort of
popped up it was there and and i’ve been
able to take advantage of it and
it’s been a great life for my for
my kids and my family and uh… been fun
everybody sort of rallies around
you know whether the bruins or now
the islanders it’s a it’s a way of sort
of
you know everybody getting on the same
bandwagon even as a family that’s hard
to do so
it’s been a great ride for me i’ve been
privileged
uh… to be part of the professional
scene you’ve done everything
what have been some of your favorite
experiences from a hockey standpoint it’s
been uh… it’s
been wonderful to get the chance play
with a group of guys
I mean even in the minor leagues which is a
different time in the early seventies
when i played i played with guys like a
you won’t recognize harry
shaw rick pagnutti who
played from september until
april and then went home and they were
truck drivers or mailmen or
whatever the case may be but when they
came to the rink they gave it everything
they gave me a lot of experience a lot
of their time
and we had a ball i mean
and uh…
the american hockey league was a great place to
get started and then of course playing in a
city like boston
when i came in we went to the stanley
cup finals my first two years and
stanley cup semifinals my third year too
many men on the ice against montreal in
seventy nine was a
was a incredible experience despite
the fact that it ended
somewhat bitterly but to be
playing in front of the hometown
fans for the bruins
of harry and bobby orr
esposito jerry cheever
was a thrill in and of itself uh…
the things that we did the games that
we played
there’s too many to enumerate but i i i’ll
never forget
being in that old barn
even just standing there for the
national anthem and getting
goosebumps every time we came out on the
ice it was a
the whole thing still was a little
surreal for me
and uh… I never ever
forget how lucky I’ve been
to be part of the boston sports scene
joining me now is the n_h_l_ rookie of
the year for the nineteen sixty seven
nineteen sixty eight season
derek turk sanderson
derek is well remembered as one of the
finest four checkers to play the game and
for setting up bobby orr’s cup winner
on may tenth nineteen seventy
with his pass behind the saint louis goal
he played on one of the finest defensive
lines in the game
derek was also the first athlete from
any sport to sign a contract in excess
of one million dollars
derek tell me how the game of hockey has changed
since you’ve been a player with the boston bruins
see I didn’t read these questions but that’s a good one
uh… the game is I mean vastly different
and if i can say but it’s really the same
uh… you know why i played in the original
six teams
uh… for boston
and they were everybody was good
two-way positional
response time you had no time to think
out there
as expansion came in it started to get
watered down to the point
defensively
not offensively
the skills have always been there
the goal tender’s equipment has gotten a
little bit bigger and so the numbers
have kinda stayed the same
and then the
patrick while flop style goal tending shut
lower
uh… that started to creep in
goal tenders have
become very very good
and there’s been an explosion in that area
of talent
uh… offensively the europeans have come i
the americans have
tremendous contributions
stevenses
these guys that can play
there’s just tremendous
talent
uh… so extension was something that
had to take place
and uh… i think somewhere along the
lines
they forgot
about the defensive aspect of the game about both ends
of the building
that’s all they have the players are bigger
stronger better shape
uh…
but they’re not faster
just just the game is played at a certain
speed
and uh…
i think it’s a great game my sons love it
and i’ve always loved hockey and
whether it changes it but it’s kinda
stayed the same there’s still
there’s still only a few things you can do to get out of
your own end
little bit of a different question
has the n_h_l_ expanded too far
have we diluted the talent pool too much
what the when you bring in the when
you bring in the uh… europeans
they’re very skilled offensive set of
players
they are used to playing
a schedule that is not nearly as long
so they have
dreadful slumps sometimes uh… and then
when it’s moved up a couple of notches in the stanley
cup
they haven’t made that acclamation yet
the canadians the north american players and
the canadian american players have but the
european has to get there yet
and once that takes place it will be terrific
do you believe that the violence or the
fighting is essential to the game is that
what the viewers want
absolutely
hockey is not for everyone uh… wish
the national hockey league would learn how
to market the game
I agree it is not for everybody diane it’s
a game
that is a physical
it’s a violent game played by violent people
and you’re gonna get hit you know you’re
going to get hit and you’re going to get hit hard
you’re going to bleed
you’re going to lose teeth things are going to happen to you
uh and you accept that when you sign your contract
fighting is a
essential part you have a club in your
hands
frustration gets to such a level when
a guy’s hookin’ ya and grabbing’ ya slowing you
down impeding your progress
one you’re not allowed to touch a player
without the puck
and if they would just call the rules it
would be terrific but they don’t
so now a player gets frustrated he starts to slash
and spear and using the stick as a weapon
you’re far better off dropping the gloves and having at it with
fisticuffs it’s over it’s very aerobic
it’s usually over in forty five fifty
seconds
you’re balanced on a sixteenth inch of
steel off of frozen water I mean
how strong can you be
so you’re ripping guys it’s a lot of
wrestling
but i think it it gets out
frustration that keeps the level of
violence down
hockey players are great athletes though
and i think we lose sight of just how
talented a hockey player is
i do i do firmly believe that
when you look at uh… at the n_f_l_and
football as good as they are the
quarterback the running backs and
and the defensive backs
those are the skill positions most of it is
just in the trenches hitting hard
movin’
uh… and they don’t go very far
uh… hockey is a game that is played by
uh… offense can hit defense
uh… there’s no out of bounds there’s no
set rules
i don’t have possession like a
basketball I give you the ball
except for the jump ball
it’s uh‚Ķa I haven’t got posesion hockey it’s dropped
it’s anybody’s puck
uh… so there’s no set plays it’s a
game of ad lib it’s an entirely different game
uh… when the puck changes hands
uh… and you don’t have it and the puck
changes hands your job changes
and you have to be able to read that if you can’t
read that i can’t coach that
you have to have the sense for the game
if you don’t then you can go up and down the
wall mind your own business
probably have an
okay career if you’re really talented
the art of it is in understanding the game
why isn’t hockey as popular as other
sports is it that it is hard to follow on
t_v_ that you really have to be at the
rink to really enjoy the game
well there’s two very good points
the puck is too small even for t_v_
uh… so when you they come up with that
silly laser puck remember that one
okay and it was in the stands sometimes
people going
uh… but
when you look at hockey and the puck
being so small it’s actually game that you have to be there
to feel the energy
uh… i’ve watched it I think they do a far
better game today
with they make it exciting today on television
ESPN has done a marvelous job as uh…
and all the stations have
uh… you did a marvelous job when we
played when we playedi i
remember when i watch the highlights
of bobby orr I was showing it to my sons one day
and my wife
sitting their
and I said whoa
we look slow were we that slow
and she said yeah it does look kinda slow
and i went to the game that night and i
spoke with fred cusick
who was probably the greatest broadcaster ever
came down the pike
and i said fred is it really we we were
that slow
he said no
when you played derek in that era it was
one camera game
it was at center ice thirty feet off the ice and it
panned and that’s all it did
and so the downtime through center ice has now
changed
they have forty eight cameras now
they take a guys hands feet bang this player
breaking that player breaking no puck
you don’t see the puck half the time
and they take you through the coming under
your own end through center ice till
you’re around the net
then they pan out and see some action
so it’s actually the producer the
director how they pick the camera the
shots and
they make it very excited
and they make it look faster but it really isn’t
so how do we increase the popularity
i think you market to people that that
that love it and the people that like it
boston fans
yeah you just really pay attention to
your fan base
uh… let the bruins go and reach
the community
columbus atlanta
reach the community
go out and street hockey
uh… i mean you got wonderful equipment for kids
franklin manufacturing has a
whole line
of street equipment
so you get the kids into street hockey
then you get them onto the ice and you get them
feeling better about it
but the teams have got to go to the community
and take all the suburbs and sure and
those hotbeds thirty thirty
one cities i mean that’s all you need
and market out
from the building
and then start to develop a fan base
the national hockey league excludes its fan
base
they go to general
they go to some ads say watch hockey
it’s the coolest game in the world
well if I’m sitting in
peoria illinois
you go to if you get familiarity get
the players out to the community and start to
market it
is hockey though accessible to most kids
no to expensive yeah it is it’s an extremely
expensive game
the goal pads are up to a thousand twelve hundred dollars
the gloves are state of the art now wonderful
equipment kids are better protected
than they ever were
maybe more so
not enough fluidity
not enough movement not enough ability to
get out of the way
because you’re so encumbered with equipment
uh… so
it’s it’s a different game
with the equipment and that aspect of it
what advice would you have for kids in
the audience that think you know one day
i’m gonna play in the n_h_l_
well I that was a dream that i had
the
the boston bruins bought me when I was ten
years old
and uh… it was professional rights for a hundred
dollars and that’s what they did in
the old days
follow your dream if you’re a young kid and
you wanna play you’ve gotta think it all
the time though
it isn’t something you can do part time no not anymore
you’re not going to make the red sox part-time
you’re not going to make the patriots
part-time celtics’ part time
you gotta think about it all the time
your diet
your decision making your building
your body getting your rest
uh… what you know it’s just
all-encompassing now athletes today
are in tremendous shape yes they are
while we’re talking about players
something that i’m personally intrigued
about you think of hockey
as being an aggressive sport as a
violent sport but yet we rarely if
ever hear about hockey players being in
trouble not like other athletes why do
you think that’s so… i have always had
kind of a personal opinion
i think it’s
hockey
in all the campuses in the united states
and all the junior teams in canada
and all the europeans
hockey is a
game of humility
hockey I tell ya
to play it you’re humbled
time after time shift after shift by other
people’s talents or jobs or just whatever
there’s no
uh… social set like on campus
big man on campus in high school
there’s no cheerleaders
there’s no uh…
you’re special
but football and basketball in america
is treated special
the athlete starts to believe that
he starts to walk around like he just owns everything
let’s talk about derek today
uh first of all the farthest thing from
my mind was ever to be in the investment business
but when i was playing and i was fortunate
we spoke earlier about
free agency and
the WHA and making all that money I went
to
my lawyer and he took me to uh…
an investment firm and
he got power of attorney and
i was taking advantage yes
I did a lot of foolish things on my own
but i didn’t spend all the money
so it’s gone
and i did not want to have that happen
to any other player you know
and uh… I did the tucker anthony
golf classic
and john goldsmith was the chairman of tucker anthony
and clyde fizioli
brought me on board and then john goldsmith
encouraged me to go back to get my series
seven understand the industry I did
and then i realized that it’s basically an industry
of all the money management
the brokers everybody’s pretty talented
what do you pay me
what do you charge me
and what do you give me what dod you do for that
as basically what i wanted
a fee based
sports group
i wanted to protect the athlete number one
from himself number two
take him out of the hands of
the philistines take him away from the people that would
take advantage of him and over power him
so the athlete spent so much time on his
game that he doesn’t he or she does not spent
a lot of time on their financial life right
and i figured if i could be an agent
supportive
a financial arm
uh… and responsibly prudently manage
money and wealth
it would be an added service
and it was uh…I started it about ten years
ago it’s been extremely successful
I moved
from a couple of firms for services
and i started in the business with J. henderson
who is the president here
uh… of the investments side
uh… so senior vice president
and jay and i known each other for
eleven years and I said to him
talked about my athletes being here because
this is a wonderful firm to have your money managed
it’s simple high service
high touch high technology
but always a warm body
and that’s what the players needed education
compassion understanding
where they’re not embarrassed to ask a question
they don’t feel foolish about
uh…you know mailing or forgetting stuff
you know how your bank they get mad at ya
it’s my money they get mad at me
I say whoa
I made a mistake
joining me now is a hall of fame hockey
writer
the long-time lawrence eagle tribune’s
sports editor russ conway
russ was a nominee for a pulitzer
prize in recognition of his outstanding
investigative journalism and he was
the nineteen ninety nine recipient of
the elmer ferguson memorial award as
selected by the professional hockey
writers association
he is the author of game misconduct
alan eagleson and the corruption of
hockey russ welcome to the show my pleasure
delighted to have you here russ you’ve
been covering hockey a number of years
tell us how the game has changed over
the course of time
the gaming hasn’t changed
its what’s gone on around it the business
end is entirely different
uh…the players are bigger stronger faster
not necessarily as skilled yeah
but the business part
of hockey as in all of professional sports
is basically the uh… engine that runs
the
locomotive
why haven’t hockey salaries escalated
like other sports salaries oh they have
they’re getting there but still less than
other other sports’ athletes are receiving they’ve gone up
they really have caught
up
you must remember
uh… there are thirty teams there are
roughly seven hundred players
that are on rosters
uh… and each team also
fields at least one
minor league team
the overall
salaries
which are the big bite
uh…
for a
the price of a ticket
uh…
are the single number one reason why tickets have
absolutely shot through the roof
people think right or wrong that hockey
players are aggressive they’re fighters
but you never hear or rarely do you hear I should say
about hockey players getting in trouble
why is that i think there is
a real good reason for that
most hockey players
their upbringing
is
either in a low class uh…
low middle-class income bracket
very few hockey players are well to do
when they first break into high school
or college now but
by the same
token it’s a very
expensive sport to play
and these kids
really have a work ethic
i think originally that is
probably in the uh… stems from
the canadian upbringing
I mean for years in canada I mean people were brought
up
to appreciate things
they they remember their roots that’s
one thing i like about hockey players
today and always
if there’s a tradition off the ice
they’ve been some of the most
generous
when it comes to charities and
community involvement
popularity of the sport why is it that
hockey is not as popular as some of the
other sports is it because it’s low
scoring
hard to follow on t_v_
uh… a little bit of that
they’ve really made great strides
in their telecast they they went
to
canada and basically ah…
took the uh… work ethic and and the
type of
production that they did in canada
finally brought it to the states and
they’ve done a much better job with it in the
last few years
but you must remember
by its own definition there isn’t a lot
of ice
in south eastern or south western united states
now the n_h_l_
to gary bettman’s credit
has slowly worked its way
into
different regions that had never seen
hockey before that’s right yeah
I mean the florida panthers uh… you know when
they
made it to the stanley cup
finals
south florida went absolutely crazy
for them
and uh… they built a brand new rink
whoever thought you’d see an NHL rink in ft. lauderdale
a sunrise florida
another one in tampa
brand-new rink just come in phoenix
you know that has brought more
people
to the game
there are more hockey fans today than ever
but has the league expanded too far
that’s a great questions uh…
sometimes i think it has
and yet
in order to in order
to find your level
you’ve got to be able to see how
far you can go we tend to think of
hockey as a violent
or as an aggressive sport so i have a couple of
questions
first question is is the violence and
the fighting essential to the game do
the fans really wanna see it
I uh… cringe every time people say
it’s violent
the n_b_a_ they have these
bench clearing brawls all the time
end even in the NFL
and if you watch a major league baseball
season
how many are there uh… i mean you know
twenty twenty-five a season
uh… i don’t find it violent
when it is a contact sport
and whenever you have
two people going twenty five to thirty
mile an hour
and they crash into each other is that how fast
they go russ sometimes twenty twenty eight miles an
hour on skates you can reach
and you have a little disc a rubber disc
that your winging ninety five
miles an hour some players
can wing it up to a hundred
miles an hour
i mean people some people are gonna get
hurt it’s not
for the uh…
the sissies that’s for sure are hockey players
in your opinion becoming too greedy at
the expense of the league are they in it
just for themselves and not
considering the longevity of the league
I don’t think all players are like that
by the same token all owners aren’t like that either
you must remember
player is offered
x_ amount of dollars and I’ll use bill geren
as an example that played here in boston
the owner of the dallas stars offered him
five-year contract
for forty five million dollars now what
would you do
he’d be a fool not to sign that
so take it that was a
guaranteed contract
he took care of his family
his grandkids his own kids his grandkids
and what whatever generations there are to
come
the owners in
some areas
have been their own worst enemies
what about revenue-sharing
what can we do to have a better equity they
have a slight revenue
uh… sharing program but you’ve got to
lose x amount of dollars for the
canadian teams and that was because of
the dollar the u_s_ dollar
uh… versus the canadian dollar the
exchange rates were just out of sight
for a long while
all NHL players are played paid
in u_s_ dollars
well it’s pretty difficult
for the calgary flames or the vancouver
canucks or toronto uh… montreal
etc. to
complete when they’re paying their payroll in
u_s_ dollars but they’re income
is derived in canadian dollars sure
uh… it’s amazing some of them held on
ottawa was in big trouble for a while
if they really want to look at it
positively for the sport
for the fan
for the player for the owner
the owners are entitled to make a profit
i mean they have an investment that’s
why they’re in the business
the players are entitled the good ones
are entitled to be paid
good professional sports money
but in order
to bring those two together you’ve got a
look and say
are we going to be partners
because you must remember they do not
have the television contract
that the other three major league sports have
yes that’s exactly what i wanted to ask you
they don’t have the t_v_ the
merchandising the other
you know the other sponsorship
revenue that all the other sports have
TV is the big issue t_v_ for example
in the n_f_l_
basically pays the payroll
the player’s salary payroll
if you look at nascar i mean nascar
gets two point eight
billion dollars for its
television commitment
for uh… the course of five years
that pays the purses that those drivers
go at each different track basically
takes care of the whole purse
in the n_h_l_
the t_v_ revenue in canada and in the united
states
doesn’t come close local
local t_v_ pays separately
right to clubs but the t_v_ revenue doesn’t
come close
now their merchandising and marketing
has been really well done
it’s a billion dollar business
uh… the n_h_l_ and their teams
have done a great job they’ve they’ve
come up with revenue sources that
they never had before
but they had to
sure they did to exist
uh…
i think at the end of the day
they’ve gotta say
what is the value of a franchise
the value of the hockey rink
if the boston bruins didn’t play there
sure
the answer is
no and you’ve got to
go further than just the hockey rink
to see
what the hockey team is responsible for in
terms of revenue
right the answer no longer can be to raise ticket
prices because i mean i think we’re at it’s tapped
out yeah exactly
pretty much tapped out other than maybe cost of
living or whatever
boston uh… uh… takes a bad nock for
that harry sinden has done a pretty good job
putting a cap on
tickets the best they can
it used to be
not long ago
that ticket revenue paid the salaries of
the players
and pretty much every dollar that’s spent by
a fan ends up going back into salary
you’re about tapped out you can’t keep
jackin’ the ticket prices
last question tell us about your book
tell us about your investigative work
well the eagle tribune
and it’s publisher at the time
irving rogers junior
and editors
were totally supportive
i had a number of players come to me
with various suspicions various
complaints both current and past players
of where their international hockey
money was going about their pensions
they had questions they couldn’t get answers
and basically eagleson wouldn’t
service them
uh… he’d shut you out browbeat you and
we went after it
uh… had total support we did eight
different series in the eagle tribune I had
a number of
publishing companies come to me ask to do a
book
we conducted that investigation the f_b_i_
got involved justice department the
mounties
and it became an international event
so to speak that
certainly took a lot of patience
and uh… a lot of support
uh… it was no one person but it
was quite a
uh… an experience to go through
i
said during the
during the saga and finally he went to
jail went to prison I said you know i
hope there’s some life left after this
thing’s over
and uh…
justice was served
uh… thirteen hundred forty three
players got pension money back
eagleson was fined he was exposed
he was kicked out of the hockey
hall of fame so to speak he resigned
because he had to under pressure
uh… he was kicked out of the order of
canada
and uh…
people in canada certainly around the
sport know
that he was a fraud and he was a crook
and we were able to uh… uncover it
wow you know terrific job you’ve heard
that a million times i know but as i
prepare for the show and i’m talking
with various people
everybody is so grateful to you
I appreciate that okay
joining me now is former boston college and NHL
player ken hodge
ken was drafted by the minnesota north stars
in the nineteen eighty four draft
ken played with the north stars as
well as the boston bruins before
retiring with tampa bay
welcome to the show ken thank you so
much for coming thanks for having me diane
ken is joined by his attorney kenneth larkin
he has represented a number of
professional athletes over the years ken
great to see you again diane
always a pleasure to see you welcome to the
show
ken let’s start with you how has the game of
hockey changed in the past two decades
has it become a game of speed and strength
as opposed to skill
uh… well the easiest answer to that one would
be the money i think is the biggest change
changed to a game of money you go
back to the era of the seventies when my
dad played
uh… they only made maybe twenty five to fifty
thousand dollars per season which was
big money back then
uh… and then i went in in the nineties
guys were making a million dollars which was
probably
you know the top end guy and then after
that it’s been
if you don’t make more than a million
dollars as a low end guy there’s something seriously wrong
but wow you can also look at
the the size of some of these guys
there some six four guys as the average size
size strength and speed
is a big attribute for that hockey for
playing hockey now big part of the game
today absolutely is
uh… and that’s if you don’t have that
size and speed
your not going to play
wow ken is it the lawyer
is it the agent is it the
representative of the player that’s
responsible for this escalating salary
problem uh… I’m often asked that question
both not only in the NHL but in the NFL
representing
NFL players over the years
you know there’s a lot of factors involved
with it
uh… commissioner bettman has done a great job of
bringing uh… the league out in licensing and
advertise in the league
at different levels the problems been what
number of teams have spent money stupidly
unecessarily that’s created a quagmire
obviously the t_v_ revenues as opposed
to the other
sports is a significant issue that the
NHL has to face
but players and the agents and the
lawyers who represent them are out to get
them what they can get them
and if a team is going to pay them money for that
in their services today it’s a free market
system they’re entitled to get that
that’s the foundation of the
whole country is a capitalist system but does it
become a situation of personal greed over
really the security of the
league
no i wouldn’t classify it as greed
there’s revenues that are there and each
team’s
different you you take teams like
ottawa and buffalo and atlanta that have had
significant the first two were in bankruptcy
significant issues but the other teams like
the rangers and other big market teams
have done very very well it’s up to the
individual owner and their management team
and the player and the agent involved
to get their value for that player and if
the player is going to draw in people in that
particular
uh… location that particular team then that person
should be rightly compensated for it it’s not
the role of the player or the agent
or the lawyer
to be into into the management game
for different for different cities and
different teams that’s their responsibility is
the violence
and the aggressiveness an essential part
well i think it’s because uh…
you have to have some some kind of
fear factor in hockey in hockey and you hate to
use those words but
uh… when you’re not intimidating somebody maybe
that’s a better better
terminology than
you’re gonna have they’re gonna have
the upper hand on you and that’s kind
of what hockey is it’s an intimidation game uh…
uh‚ĶI’ve seen recently
I hate to keep going back to the early seventies
and sixties but
they had bench clearing brawls
on a night in night out basis uh… now i
think you could count on the number on one finger
the number of times in the last
ten years there’s been a bench clearing brawl they’ve tried
to cut that out of the game which i
think is a good thing
uh… but yet
there’s still the intimidation factor
there’s still these uh… again six
four guys you
go in to lay a body check on a six-foot guy
it’s gonna be intimidating and
then all of a sudden you have to drop the
gloves and now all of a sudden here you go and now
you have to fight these guys
and uh… you have to have some
some type of intimidation to be able to play this game
the viewers love the fights though
well they do and i i i think uh… you
some of the bigger players like
mario lemieux and and wayne gretzky when
they were prominent in the league
were trying to cut it out
because they I think the league went through a
period of
uh… where a team would win games one
nothing
two to one and the fans
weren’t as into the hockey game as
a as they are now when they see some more goals
so the big guys the bigger named guys like
lemieux and gretzky and an even brett
hull to an extent
uh… advocated to get
fighting out of the game and that’s
exactly what happened for a little while but
it’s slowly creeping its way back in
why isn’t in your opinion hockey as
popular as other major league sports i
mean i read reports that say well
the viewers find it hard to follow on
t_v_ or the fact that it is low scoring
is problematic for people’s interests i
think there’s two factors I think one is
it the speed of the game on t_v_ it
doesn’t come across as if you were actually
at a game you see how fast these guys are
actually skating
and i think also to the second thing was
when they came in with helmets
you don’t get to see the guy’s face as
much
now the guys wear face shields some
guys wear
uh… you know full face cages when
they’re injured obviously
so you don’t really get to see
the player and identify with that player
and
and when that player’s in one city he might
not be there for more than a year
and all of a sudden he’s playing somebody somewhere else
so that’s another part of the the name and
face recognition that you don’t have any
more as much as you had back in the early seventies
i think another issue along
those lines also is hockey unlike
some of the other main sports
is kind of a regional sport
the northeast and the midwest in particular
to the west and the southwest and the south
is not nearly as popular but isn’t
it interesting the teams are outstanding
now i mean you played in tampa bay
right uh…they were trying to
get into a different market I think hockey was
trying to
grab some different places and trying to get some
different
uh…
establish some roots when I was i
tamps bay we had uh… fifteen
thousand seat building we were at
and it was the first year of the team
they maybe had five thousand fans
were cheering for us and a thousand ten
thousand fans were cheering for the other
team that was coming in you know if you think about it
you got a lot of canadians a lot of northern people go down
to canada or down to tampa rather
and spend their their winters down there sure
they’re not rooting for the lightning they could care less about the lightning
yeah they can’t get tickets up north so
they’re going to see their favorite teams
well you see what happens with the red sox the red sox and the yankees play
down there and the same
thing happens
not trying to diss tampa bay my brother john lives down in tampa bay
I’d never try to diss his
area
but basically what’s happened is the
larger market teams not only in the NHL
but a lot of
uh… other sports as well is these
large markets are subsidizing these
teams should not have a pro team
maybe they should have a triple A team
or a minor league team not a pro team ’cause that cuts
into the overall revenue issues that we
addressed earlier when you’re supporting a
nashville you know a tampa bay’s these areas
columbus that
are you know arguably not major
market areas that should have major
pro teams and
it’s to some extent indirectly syphoning
some of the revenues of the overall
overall NHL coffers and i
think that’s an issue i really do
I wonder in light of
what ken just said unless you’re
really at the game you don’t appreciate
all of the skill and and the beauty of
the game unless you’re there ’cause it’s
lost on t_v_
but how does one go when tickets are
seventy ninety dollars how do
you take your two
kids into see the boston bruins gotta have
good friends that have a lot of tickets
well you know it’s funny my firm had season tickets for a number of years
we couldn’t give them away to
clients
so we don’t have tickets season tickets anymore
because if i need to send a client to a particular game
i could just go buy two tickets
and sent them to the game i think the issue
that’s a that’s a quagmire
the increase in NHL tickets has
been eighty one percent in the last ten
years they’ve optimized
their growth level at this point
the ticket is seventy five dollars but
that’s that just gets you into your seat yeah
right you’re looking at you gotta pay twenty dollars
or twenty five dollars to park your car
down at the fleet center now
and that’s not even that’s in the lower
garage where you might not even get a spot down there
first off
and then we you get into the building now you gotta
pay five dollars for a hot dog
five dollars for a soda by the average
family of four by the time they get to the hockey
games it’s five hundred bucks to get home i mean an
and they can’t do that they can’t especially with the economics
the way they are nowadays uh… you just can’t
afford to take
a family on a consistent basis on a
an eighty two game season
there’s forty one home dates
you can barely go once or twice a season go
to a game spend a thousand dollars
right
and hockey unlike
major league baseball unlike football
unlike most of the other sports
heavily dependent from the numbers
i’ve looked at
at that gate or that ticket income to pay
their biggest expense which is in fact
player salaries so what’s the hockey league
going to do to attract more sponsorship
or more t_v_ contracts or do something to
bring down the
the ticket price
I think there’s a couple issues there
the when you look at uh…
how hockey has to draw
I personally think they have to
downsize the league I think it’s just too big of a league
a couple of large markets
and strong geographical areas and then
try to therefore than cut down on
some of the ticket prices across the board
I think they did to do a much more
better job in marketing
doing merchandising licensing rights
and things of that nature
like the NFL
if you look at the NFL players association they’ve done
a tremendous job on that the
n_f_l_ in general has done a tremendous job
of attracting a new market of people maybe
going overseas
into the european markets and the asian
markets and doing things like that in order
to attract more money to bring it into the league
but i think the way that the league is structured
now
and given that the t_v_ contract is is
laughable I happened to be playing at the time when
gary bettman became the commissioner
he came in
from the n_b_a_
and the n_b_a_ was just at its height of its
popularity bird and magic and all those guys
were coming into the height of
their popularity well he said let’s do the
same thing let’s try to take that model of
the n_b_a_ and let’s bring it over to the n_h_l_
doesn’t work because as you mentioned
before they got the helmets and they don’t have the name
recognition and guys are just constantly moving
back and forth
that that’s
hockey’s got a kind of do its own thing and
not worry about
the n_b_a_ the n_f_l_ or
major league baseball they gotta start worrying about themselves
joining me now from the sports museum
here in boston massachusetts is richard
johnson he’s fondly known as the soul
man of boston sports dick welcome to
the show thank you very much
dick did you have a
favorite hockey team or favorite
hockey player when you were a kid growing up
well the bruins of the bobby orr phil esposito
era were as charismatic
a group
uh… that have ever played any sport in any
league uh… they were
just you know the team and they worry that that was the
team of my youth and uh… and the
team that made me a big hockey fan
great let’s look at the evolution of the
game tell us a little bit about how it began
as the original six and take us up to
current
well it was interesting that hockey had had
deep roots in the new england area
long before the start of the national
hockey league
you had hockey being played at saint
paul’s school in concord new hampshire
in the eighteen nineties
the collegiate uh… hockey league
started uh… pretty soon after that so
i believe uh… harvard’s program
started also in the eighteen nineties
so the sport
really uh… is uh i think the one
closest to our hearts here because there
have been more
professionals that have come from the
new england area in hockey than in any
other sport
and then certainly uh… the great
number of uh…
olympic players
the great high school tradition here
this is also the home of the first
interscholastic hockey league in the
country
dating back to the nineteen teens
and uh… the boston arena now known as
matthews
arena
is the oldest indoor ice arena in the
world wow did not know that and that’s still here
that’s where the bruins started back in nineteen
twenty-four
so the origins uh… of hockey in this
area go back to the origins of the sport
itself
it helps get us through these new
england winters i think that’s why we
love it so much yes
dick different question is the violence
or the fights of the game essential to
people being attracted to watching
hockey
no i don’t think so because in
collegiate hockey
fighting is punished with a game
suspension so
anyone that’s watched top-level
collegiate hockey knows that it’s as
good as it gets and you don’t need the
fighting it’s a distraction
but that being said certain teams had as
part of their identity
a fighting mode to them uh… certainly
the bruins had that for a number of
years
you know they were a tough team they were a
team to be contended with a at all times
and the fighting was almost a part of
the script
the flyers of the early seventies sort
of took a page out of the bruins book
and tried to intimidate opponents as well
as out play them
but that being said
i think anyone that’s watched enough hockey
knows
that when it’s played well
it’s a beautiful sport
and the fighting tends to delay it it
tends to be a distraction
and in this day and age uh… they’re not many
teams that can really intimidate you
anymore
the game has changed a bit it’s a more
flowing sport
and uh… skating skill and overall talent
really are what you pay to see you don’t
pay to see a couple of goons out there
slugging it out
hockey players are great athletes yes
why haven’t hockey salaries escalated like
other sports salaries well uh… hockey
professional hockey the national hockey
league in particular
just does not receive the television
income
that the other major sports you know
they really we really think of there being
four
major sports in north america
the national football league has the
biggest t_v_ contract
they also have the most players to pay
but you know they’re paid on an average
higher than the national hockey league
players the n_b_a_
has a larger t_v_ contract major
league baseball
uh… they’re certain individual clubs
in MLB that that paid an
enormous amount teams such as the
yankees so
the national hockey league has always been the
fourth
of the four major sports in terms of
pay just because the money’s not there
the money has to derive from ticket
income
and you can only charge so much
and is it accurate to say that
much of the
the gate income as i call it the ticket
income is paid out in fact for salaries
that’s where they spend the bulk of the
money
well they claim that nearly seventy four
seventy five percent of
uh… player’s salary comes from ticket
income and i believe it and the fact
is is that certain teams
charge an extraordinary amount i was at
a game in toronto uh… two years ago
and the price for individual tickets in
the loge good seats but not great seats
was one hundred and sixty two dollars
and fifty cents apiece now that’s
canadian but still that would be about a
hundred and ten dollars uh… american
currency
for one hockey game and this was against
the nashville predators not exactly a
classic contest
so
that’s what they’re up against
and uh… the league is really at the
point now where
uh… i can’t imagine them possibly
increasing prices anymore than they have
let me ask a different question why do
you think hockey is not as popular
throughout the nation as other sports
is it that it’s low scoring or hard to
follow on television or is there some
other reason
well i think the popularity of of
any sport is based on whether or not
kids have played it
so that in most of the country
kids have just never put the skates on and
gone out and played hockey it’s as
simple as that the other factor that
really has an impact on the game not being
as popular as the other sports
it’s so expensive yeah
just to outfit uh… a squirt player you’re
spending upwards of four or five hundred
dollars
dick thank you so much
for joining us here today thank you

“One night I was in the players’ parking lot at the Fleet Center in my Celtics warm-ups about a half hour before a game, waiting for one of my dealers to come up from Fall River, because if I didn’t get my stuff I was too sick to even go through the pre-game layup line, never mind actually play in the game.” – Chris Herren.

In this episode of the Massachusetts School of Law’s Educational Forum Associate Dean Michael Coyne talks with Chris Herren about his memoir in which he goes from high school glory to Hell and back.
Kirkus Reviews calls the memoir, ” An unflinching look at a life of wasted potential…told with a bluntness and heart that you can’t help but root for Herren to stay clean.”
The Massachusetts School of Law also presents information on important current affairs to the general public in television and radio broadcasts, an intellectual journal, conferences, author appearances, blogs and books. For more information visit mslaw.edu.

Below is  a rough transcript of the above video, courtesy of YouTube Captions

hello i’m michael coyne associate dean of the
massachusetts school of law at andover welcome
for anyone who watched the movie the
blindside or blue chips
you would think that having recruiteres
knocking on your door or sitting in the
stands watching your every move
would be the best thing that ever
happened to any high school or college
athlete
and i’m sure it was for a lot of student
athletes
but not the one sixteen-year-old
durfee high school in fall river mass
for him that pressure became unbearable
this promising athlete was called hte best
white white guard since jerry west
a high school hero
the next great hope
but all that pressure made him turn to
drugs on
today’s edition of the educational
forum we talk to that young man now grown up and a
father of three
who has written a new book in which he
talked very frankly
about his spiraling down and out life style
and what it took
get himself free
of his addiction
the book is entitled basketball junkie
a memoir
and our guest is Chris herren
chris herren was in fact a basketball
junkie
also joining us is frank catapano a national
basketball player agent
and chris’ agent for many years
chris explains just what it felt
like
to have this agents sitting in the stands
and watching his every move
well i i think when
you know when your sixteen years old and
you look up in the stands and you know theres
is rick pitino and billy donovan
uh…stu jackson jeff angundy
i don’t think any sixteen-year-old
sixteen-year-old knows how to uh…
to deal with that
you know it’s uh… it besides
performing
at a level that they expect you to
perform
and that you want to perform
because you don’t wanna fail so
i think the whole remedy
is a uh… is a disaster
you know i i wish
the the
n_c_a_ would change actually
uh… that process and starat
the recruiting process later on
you know the junior year junior senior
because i had them around since i was a
freshman and i was it was difficult
now you had your pick of schools and
it
came down to a choice between syracuse and
bc
uh… hometown boy
stays home town in retrospect would that do
you wish you made a different decision
there cuz i know
uh…at BC at least initially
you were on the cover of sports illustrated
with uh… ray allen and allen iverson your
where the next three
greats yet uh… you know something i
wouldn’t
hindsight you know looking back
maybe what i would change is goto prep
school for a year
rather than
jump onto a college campus with all that
freedom
i would change that
if i would change anything i might
change
staying at bc
and going through what i had to go
through
and uh… and finishing it
fresno was great to me in different
ways uh… but you know when
you’re when you’re thirty five years old
and you see a
bc education as opposed to
you know fresno state
its a little different the degree would have made
a little more impact yeah of course
the degree you know you can only
play basketball for so long
and uh…
and i don’t care if you played in the
n_b_a_ for ten years you still gotta
live
two-thirds of your life
without basketball and and that degree
is a huge
plus you know going forward
now you saw your drug and
alcohol problems really started
in high school
you know i tell kids when i go and speak
to kids at schools my
i drank in high school i used drugs in
high school
not the hardest drugs uh… mostly
marijuana
you know and some hallucinogenics
once in a great while but
i think that the cautionary part of it
that i can tell kids is that there were
kids in high school that were much worse
than me
you know kids that were drinking much
more smoking much more taking much more
but i started that process in high
school
do you think that that’s uh… there’s
that that’s an additional pressure not
just on the athletes in highschool but
all the kids in high school
uh… you knows a lot of the if they
could see the road as you now see it
would would they have been making
different choices in high school
well i think it’s you know
i think every kid has
you know doesn’t have the perfect live
you know and i think it’s
extremely hard
to look down that road
you know back when i was seventeen years
old my goal was to
my goal in life was to win a state
championship at durfee
you know that’s all i saw i didn’t
see past that
you know i
when i go around i speak to the schools
and the kids at prep schools and
colleges i just tell them that you know
it’s uh…
whether it’s basketball law school
whatever it is if it’s causing
too much stress and it’s and it’s
becoming
difficult in your life
you need to remove yourself from and
i try to tell kids that you know because
that’s
that’s what
was a huge
source of stress for me
now when you got to bc and you were playing
college ball
uh… there were more parties and more
activities
uh… i guess i wonder to what extent do
you think that anything could be done
about that if
again if we could go back in hindsight
or ife we can even think about players today must
have very similar
uh… experiences and it’s awfully hard
for a young kid to be exposed to such
things
yeah you know i i i think i was on that
road
you know i was on that road to a
living that life i was
i was a little different in my
party
social
circles
you know a lot of kids athletes
that i played with with uh… looked at
me and say i don’t know how you do it
uh… so
you know i was definitely on that road
to a uh…
to a rough road
and and
you know but
it’s not
at bc bc dealt with a different
bc dealt with it with a very hard line
approach
and i said that the book new fresno
different handled it very
differently with more of an enabling
approach in trying to help me through
the process which one is right i have no
idea you know because it was years after
the fact that i
found sobriety so who knows
frank with the latest to philosophy in
college for a lot of the students
to be you know this one and done
uh… how many high schools seniors are
really prepared for the rigors of
major college programs and then a very
quick introduction into the n_b_a_ in your
experience
uh…
i’d say probably zero
although
depending on
what their upbringing was and the people
around them
i mean you have varying results
i don’t think it’s ever healthy to put
people in before they’re ready to do
something
and you know one of things you chris
answered before i’d just like this
from my two cents in
when you talk about jim calhoun or
rick pitino or whoever whatever
big-time coaches were visiting chris
it’s not just the player whose sucked
in by this
it’s the family and friends in
and they live
vicariously through that person and
that person i don’t think is ready to
have people live vicariously through them
and having been in the agent business a
long time and having dealt with
some high-profile guys
i made this same mistake myself sometimes
wanting more for a person than they were
ready to do
wanting more than they really wanted for
themselves
and not really understanding where they
came from
and i think allot of
different things caused
the problems chris has
and i know he in his book he takes the
blame for most of it but
i think
everyone around him
all throughout his period
could have had a little more
to do with him
getting out of the sooner
if they’ really were
just looking out for his best
long-term interests and not looking out about
his basketball ability
or his star power and things i think that’s
so i i don’t think many of these
kids are ready for it
well let’s talk a little bit about
tar the shark and the
uh… fresno state period because
uh…
in reading the book and it’s a
terrific read
uh… sounds like well thats your second
chance uh…
but it wasn’t just your second chance it
was tarkanians second chance and it
was uh…
somewhat chaotic
uh…
you talk in the book about some of
the team members are on the bloods and
some are on the crypts and that’s a
that’s no fooling around with that was a
serious issue that the
team was
pretty much a mess but i think at
least initially you saw itas
sort of salvation potentially
you know i saw it as a
a life vests
you know i mean i was drowning i was
back in fall river i was hanging out at
a friend’s house and
not many schools were really reaching
out you know i mean that’s just the
reality of it had talked with pat
kennedy at florida state
and a couple of others think it was
tom penners of texas at the time
but not many were really coming after
me
and i grew up watching you know
duke and unlv
uh… so when when he called and said
listen i’m starting over
and i’d like you to start with me
that was appealing
you know
i’d played with bloods and crypts i played with
kids who came from very uh…
tough backgrounds
and i think
i try try to
come across in the book
i was probably
more mental than all of them you
know
I had guys on my team that would come out
with me and they would be home by two
instead
i’d be going until seven in the morning
you know so those kids would look at me
and say
your out of your mind i gotta go
the whole the whole situation
there was difficult it was set up to win
immediately
so we took in as many
hi talented kids no matter what the
background
and when you put all those kids in one
locker room
it’s going to be volatile and uh… i
mean i think we ended up having in one
team we had to eight NBA players we
were talented
we were as talented as they got but
could never
translate over
to the n_c_a_ tournament to
many success after
into march
how uh…
are you able to do that because you would
party all night
uh… get a little bit rest
and then back in the gym and playing
these pretty high-profile games
what do you feel how could you fuel that
for that long
you know something i think it’s uh…
i can’t even answer that question i
remember times pulling into the arena
playing on c_b_s_ and i hadn’t slept yet
you know walking in to play u mass I think it was a
four-o-clock game on espn and I hadn’t
I
hadn’t slept and uh…
i didn’t have a choice i had to play
uh…
i look back and i shake my head and
uh… i’m blessed that i was able to
uh…
not forget play but to make it
through let me ask you about the u mass
game when you’re with fresno state
so
now you’re a sophomore or should be there
abbots in college uh… you’re coming
home hopefully this was your second chance
to play with fresno and be back at u mass
and
and uh… you describe a particularly
horrific experience
uh… with uh… u_-mass
uh… game where they’re taunting you with
druggie and p
i mean as a sophomomre
again
that that has to be pretty hard to be
listening to all of that as you’re getting
ready to play a
game on a
on e_s_p_n_
yeah i mean i had that since day one you
know i think you know i’d been dealing with taunting
since i was uh… a freshman in high
school
you know my first game in weymout i was
fourteen years old and
you know
was introduced in warm ups and they
started singing new kids on the block
and had newspapers up front of their face
uh… i remember
playing that game and being afraid to
shot the basketball and uh…
that was my first real
feeling of of these people don’t like me
you know uh…
and that went on for many years and you
know i’ve had athletic directors get
on the you know the
that that uh… mike at
half court and ask their students to stop
because their
chanting chris heroin or the
druggie and coming home to fall river
i’m coming home to u mass and hearing
that i was expecting it
at that time it fueled me but
you know you look back and say i
mean
how can any
eighteen-year-old kid have to be
subjected to that
you know and expect to come through in a
positive way i mean its
tough i mean i have children myself now
and i’m sitting in the stand and some guys call
on my son
you know a bum
you know and and and and drug addict
i’d have a tough time handling that
never mind when theres fourteen
thousand doing it
so it’s not exhilireating its
at the end of the day that still
leaves scars
oh there’s no doubt about it
it does you know
it definitely
leaves scars uh…
at the time you have no choice but
to use it you know you know
against them
uh… but
it’s a tough process
is is definitely a tough process to go
through
and so the at some point
uh… while you’re still with fresno state
the the whole
uh…
team really sort of
ends up in a disaster mike wallace does
a
piece on sixty minutes you a kid from
fall river get uh… talk to mike
wallace but it’s not a good piece and
it’s now
well the things they’re say about
your team have to be really discouraging
i mean you know they wouldn’t be there
if we weren’t doing it
you know so it was uh… i actually took
a as a uh…
it was scary
the fact that sixty minutes was on campus
but i actually sat down with mike
wallace and just took it as an opportunity to
meet mike wallace and ask questions and
he was actually a pretty good guy
you know he sat with me for about an
hour
and answered every question i had for
him and and uh…
and they did their piece but their piece
i don’t know what their peace was
but i know
that they wouldn’t be there if we weren’t
doing it
but your team at that point is called
basketball’s heart of darkness and
you’ve got players with samurai swords and
god knows what else i mean this is this
is just college basketball at its worst
at that point isn’t it
yeah
you you can say that i mean samurai swords
that got blown
a
little bit out of proportion you know
i think you know there
were a lot of people
you know when you when i look back at my
days in fresno
you know Adrienne wojnowsi is now the
head guy at yahoo sports
Andy Katz is now the head guy one of the head guys
at e_s_p_n_
rishi candidate is
the woman first intent
mike hill is an anchor for ESPN
all these people the we we
helped
make their careers
we catapulted their careers
there was plenty of stuff to cover and
they covered it and they did it well in
and you know they liked the details and
sometimes they put a little more into
it but
it is what it is
uh…
it said the piece that said about you at
fresno state its that part montgomery
clift
part jerry west
no individual player ass ever seized the
imagination of the city of fresno like
chris herren
he’s got n_b_a_ talent hollywood glitter
and a blue collar game that local
fans fully understand
pretty heady stuff again your
big man on campus there as well
well you know something that i i i would
say
the last part would probably
sum it up
new with the uh…
you know uh… a blue collar game that
the fresno fans really felt the
hollywood glitter
uh… i i don’t know about that
the fresno fans were amazingly supportive
of me and i hope that comes across in
the book how
appreciative i a m
of what they did for me
you know i mean to keep it
one hundred percent
honest i mean i was part of uh…
a federal investigation grand juries
sixty minutes rolling stone
there was a lot of ups and downs
no i was i was involved in a couple of
instances off campus where police were
involved
so
these people could have wrote me off a long
time ago
well but they
they embraced me and uh…
and took m me on as
one of their own in a lot of ways most
of them use
for that i’m always grateful
and throughout all this time then in
college though its basketball and drugs
and really not a lot of other things
that are not a lot of academics hahaha
there wasn’t much time for
studying yeah
no there was not and and honestly
and one thing i say to again i keep
referring back to the kids the one
thing i say that i have the most
regret
one of the things is that i uh… i never
paid attention school you know because
i’m perfectly capable to to sit in the
classroom and do the work write the papers
and participate as a college student i
did not do that
i was not a college student
and part of part of that if i read it if
i read it correctly is
you attribute a little bit of that to
the lack of preparation in high school
since you were such a great athlete and
could score virtually at will
that some of the academic side the
academic preparation for for college and
beyond was was lacking or was excused
i should say yeah and you know something when i
was it was my last year my last year in high
school when they
finally changed the SAT
and the g_p_a_ where it’s now on a
sliding scale
when i was a senior in high school all
you needed to get was seven hundred
on your SAT
and and uh… and pass
your courses so there wasn’t much
motivation
you know to do well in school i
knew i was going to get the scholarships
uh… so
my goals were to get a
seven hundred
and pass
which is sad
you know it truly is i have a brother
who went to BC and played basketball
there for a year but is extremely bright
and on his s_a_t_’s
thirteen fourteen hundred and straight A’s
through high school
he did it differently i didn’t
but but your whole goal really was it
from the time you were in high school
was to play in the NBA
no oh no you didn’t see that as how
could you
as a kid from fall river there was no
one before me
you know so
my goal growing up as a kid was to be a
terrific basketball player and then
goals changed was that uh… to be part
of BC and and keep going even at
fresno it took me awhile before i
aid you know what maybe this can be
possible
you know maybe i can make it to the nba
but no i i really didn’t looked at it
like that
and not to mention the fact that my life
was so fast it was tough to slow down
and really look at goals
you know i was just trying to get
through
you know my
you know my my uh…
my main goal was to get the next opponent
i wasn’t looking beyond that i wasn’t
that type of kid it was j just a very
short term view of the world yeah i mean
i didn’t have much time the
social life was
much more time-consuming then basketball
at that time in my life
chris’s college career at fresno state went
like this
he played eighty seven games he averaged
thirty point two minutes per game
had a total of a hundred and sixty six
three pointers
four hundred seventy-one assists
averaging fifteen point one points
per game
we need to take a break
but when we return we’ll talk to chris
herren about his professional years
in the u_s_ and overseas
the new american college of history and legal
studies in Salem New Hampshire
you can finish your bachelors degree affordably and
get on the fast track to law school
we teach american history
and you’ll receive a rigorous education at a very
low cost the small day and evening classes allow you to
interact closely with the distinguished
faculty at the american college of history and
legal studies
professors don’t lecture through
the discussion method of teaching
you’ll be engaged in the issues raised in class
you’ll learn to be
a critical thinkers a better writer and
a polished public speaker and you’ll be
able to compete with anybody in today’s
market place you can also
get on the fast track to law school
qualified students gain early admission
into the Massachusetts School of Law
the new american college of history and legal studies
offers and junior and
senior years of undergraduate education to
finish your bachelors degree
with the opportunity to start your law degree
early call or visit today
you don’t have to be perfect to be a
perfect parent
when you adopt from foster care
just being there makes all the
difference
massachusetts school of law
legal education that is practical accessible
affordable and enjoyable
offering flexible day or evening classes full or
part-time studies where candidates are assessed
not on the LSAT
but on their
academic and other
accomplishments
providing more professional skills
training than any other law school
in new england massachusetts school of law
visit us at MSLAW.edu
training students to become successful
lawyers and advocates not just legal scholars
welcome back to the educational forum
our discussion today is with chris herren
discussin his new book
basketball junky a memoir
now we turn to chris’s professional
career
in nineteen ninety nine chris was
drafted by the denver nuggets he was
draftet in the second round thirty-three
overall
let’s hear what chris says about being
drafted by the nuggets
it was great
it was absolutely great and i was
married
i was expecting my first child
the work had paid off
took a chance on me
and and and drafted me
and it went well initially
you know i was surrounded by some very
good veterans in denver with matthias
with george mcleod roy rogers
and they looked after me and then knew
my history they knew my past and
they made sure that i kinda walked a
straight line
turned into a deep a decent second half
of the season for me in denver
which leads to a uh… a trade to boston
let me ask you about that uh… the drug
use even then in and before as you
were getting ready to leave college
did it
never crossed your mind at that point that it
potentially was really going to mess up
any potential
the chance to make a real money at the
game that you’d worked
so hard it
it was always in the front of my mind
that this could
blow up in front of me
any moment
but by the time I really sat down and
thought about it it was
already way out of control
and uh…
and like i said i was able to go through
denver
yeah i was i was on the
rookie substance abuse program
very early because of my history in
college
so they put me in the substance abuse
program where i was tested
uh… drug tested much more than other
rookies
and
i went through that you know but again i
was surrounded by good friends
positive veterans who looked out for
my well-being popeye jones was their
chauncy bullets was there
and uh…
you know they they helped
and i was in denver and away from
you know what was an unfamiliar place
to me
so so that that year went well
you know
it went very well yet went well for me
you know i mean that was probably
the healthiest i’d had been in years
was that that year with denver now frank you
were uh… chris’s agent at that point
he had signed with you
uh…
what do you what doe an agent try to do
to to help their client get on the right
path or is it just that
that’s their private life that he keeps
private and yedoesn’t disclose
a lot of it to you in
uh…
and are there things that you can try and do
uh… uh…
well sure there are things you can try and do
at some point
it registered with me that something was
wrong
at that time i hadn’t had much
experience with people who are doing drugs
since that i’ve had a lot of experience
with them
one of the things that
we don’t realize sometimes up almost
every family there is is affected by this
drug thing chris is not unusual
in that regard i think there’s
so many kids and it’s a tough thing once
you’re on it and anyone who’s been
around people who are on it with who they love
realized that
but i didn’t realize it but i what i did
realize at some point
chris was too good a basketball player
to be doing as bad as he was doing
and you know he had a couple of injuries
at boston bad shoulder injury
and all those things seemed to delay
what we knew do could do
but then the delays just got
longer and longer and longer
and at some point i said to myself
i think i even told chris he might
remember better than me but i told him
look chris i don’t know the reason
you not doing well but there’s
something wrong here
and we discussed this with
his closest people
and
i think
we were all sort of
everyone around him was somewhat of an
enabler whatever that means
and and
i’ve discussed this a lot with
chris so this is not a new subject
we’ve tried to figure out when do you
become an enabler rather than somebody
who’s helping and boy the line is thin
and from my standpoint
i’d just basically had enough
at some point and i realized that
chris wasn’t listening to me
and whatever i could do for him
wasn’t working
and we sort of sort of i don’t say we
split apart but we just realize it
wasn’t working
and i didn’t know the reason to be
honest with you
did you just keep it all to
yourself maybe few close friends who
you
probably did drugs with and
everyone else
you kept this whole
yeah it really came out in
boston
you know it really came
out in boston
you know the cocaine
on friday and saturday is
going into sunday and monday then
you know you get off it
for a couple weeks and get back on it
and when i crossed the line into
opiates
it became a daily habit
and once that became a daily habit that’s
when things really started to snowball
people knew
i’m sure not exactly
what what frank said like
he didn’t know exactly what i was doing
the outcome was never right and and the
results were never right
there was some something that was
hindering
my ability
and to to not only
be a basketball player but to be
uh… a
a good person
you know and do the right things i
was
i was caught up in a very
vicious cycle
but how would someone know
you know because for the most part
i imagine you’re keeping
the purchase and the use of the drugs
pretty secret
so how would someone know and uh… i
mean they can tell you chris you got to
do this you got to get you to straighten
out
but most of that your probably doing in your private
yes i mean listen people
could have pulled me aside back then
you know hey chris what’s going
and
i wasn’t going to listen you
know
you know something
i had at that time
at that time i have money to continue
you know i wasn’t really at that time i wasn’t
really feeling
the effects
you know of the drug
it because uh… i wasn’t broke
my kids weren’t hurting for money my wife
wasn’t trying to pay bills that was
already taken care of that time
so there really wasn’t uh… a ton of
fallout
from my drug abuse besides
what what was going on internally
but as that drug use continued it was
very easily and very evident
uh… throughout
people back at that time could not
have really picked up on it
or or helped
well and you’re also the star right i
mean you get drafted by denver they have
a parade
you get police escort back through town
and again
you’re the
big-deal one of the few people
in massachusetts who have ever been
drafted then ultimately going to play
for the celtics i mean
again this is
it’s a fairy tale
there’s no doubt
about it and you know i say that
that’s the power of substance abuse that
you know i i played in my driveway
far hours shoveled driveway in rain
as a boston celtic them
from the time i was six years old up
uh… to be there
once i get that could care less
well see that’s the part where that’s
the difficult part i found in the book
because
my own background is a lot more blue
caller and i come from uh… the
city as well
and you were lucky you were
one of the guys who made it out
this shouldn’t happen to you
you you had it all you’re making half a
million dollars playing for the boston
celtics at the
boston garden i mean
that is that that is a fairy tale
week i mean its a fairy tale to you
because you never lived it right
so live it and then tell me if its
a fairy tale you know what I mean
its not a fairy tale anymore
may i interject sometimes we use
cliches and we wonder
hey that guy’s really cliche
and the cliche that comes
to my mind here is
and its not just chris
a lot of them don’t get on drugs
but they
money is a drug and
they blow it quickly
easy come
easy go that’s a cliche but it’s very
TRUE
when you earn something really hard
it’s a lot harder to give it up and you
blow the foundation and i think
chris never got a chance to build the
foundation because of the whirlwind he was in
so so it’s not a fairy tale well it
wasn’t my fairy tale
i understand where you’re coming from let me tell you
something i dreamed about it right
well like you di
just like you did
but what i’m trying to say is
when you land I
mean when i was put in that position
uh… traded to boston and
you know
went through what i went through and and
and getting injured and then becoming
hooked on oxycontin
there is no that’s a nightmare
so there is no let me tell you
fairy tale days are over
you know
waiting in parking lots
i could care less about the celtics you
know i was more worried about getting
those little pills you
know that wasn’t that wasn’t even an issue
and i look back i said in the book
i look back at it now
i watched the importance of
and the power of
the boston celtics’ through my kids eyes
when i took him back to a game when i was
a year and a half sober
and he stood up and watched the whole
game and never sat down now then i could
appreciate it
i could not appreciate it then how could i
appreciate anything when i was in
full-blown addiction
again you you made
reference to the year
between denver and the celtics
almost in retrospect you wish you had
stayed in denver again i think a little
further from home from the kids you
probably grew up and that all those
influences that are
there
uh… is it playing in
the professional basketball that
ended up being the nightmare or coming
actually returning home
visiting hero yet again
you know something it was a thats
so i i understand where you’re coming
from with that question but that’s
always the easy way out and that was
always given to me and that was part of
you know when frank talks about enabling
it’s very easy for a for reporters or
growning up as a kid to say
you know
you got to get away from
fall river and you get away from
your buddies you gotta you know
but chris herren got high in beijing
chris herren got high in tehran chris herren
got high in istanbul chris herren got high
everywhere he went
and none of my friends were around and fall river was
far far away
you know it was it was
me who had to deal with it
and i never did and i’ve never
never took a moment to stop and and and
look at it and
go into a treatment facility and try to
take care of this so
you know it’s tough
well you make reference to that in the
book too you say well you think by
the time you get back to the celtics its
you have the perfect life and it’s
anything but at that point it’s
crashing all around you
oh yeah i mean
listen it was crashing the celtics life
so bad that its tough to remember
to be quite honest i mean that year
those that year
and the summer league year and the year
that i got cut in preseason
i mean its tough bill reynolds
had to remind me a lot of it
because that’s how much of a whirlwind
my life is i was living in waltham
playing
practicing for two hours flying down to
fall river picking up my drugs flying back
to waltham
being a father being a husband
you know flying from city to city making
sure i had the drugs it was crazy i mean
that there is no time to really
appreciate that lifestyle
you tell onestory in there and
that’s where i finally got the uh…
title basketball junkie it really it had
some impact with me
made reference to being in your celtic
sweats getting ready for a game that’s
going to be nationally televised
and your outside the
garden waiting for your dealer to show up
so that you can even run the layout
line prior to the game to be able to
function yes
absolutely
you know that’s
that’s where it leads you
here i am i have
family friends fifteen thousand people
coming to watch
you’re a boston celtic from fall river
and i’m in my warm ups in the parking lot
by myself waiting for this kid to
show up so that
i become healthy enough to be able to
even
play if i get the opportunity to
it must be frank for a lot of these
players than in the n_b_a_
with the the women the money the
drugs and in all of the
external influences and especially the
hangers on
uh…
very very difficult to be able to manage
uh… all of the activities in a
professional way so that they
they have a life after basketball
it’s really difficult and
it’s not something that there’s a
formula for because everybody comes
from a different place
although i i don’t
i think in
i’ve had guys who’ve managed it well and
done well with it
and i think the key with those guys
was
some real solid discipline
from an early age and maybe
the ones who managed it the best have been not
as talented as some of the others
i think chris i don’t think a lot of people
realize what a good player he really was
a lot of it was natural
there’s no reason why he knew how to
pass the ball well
he early knew how
to play a team game
and you know
it doesn’t
it doesn’t seem to mix with the
the selfishness she showed doing drugs
and all those other stuff but he was a
real team play he knew how to win
he was a winner
and i think he had so much talent i
think those guys have sometimes have
a little more trouble
than some of the guys you have to bust there
but from the beginning
just to get to the next spot to the
next level to the next level
and a perfect example that would be that
one of the guys i’ve dealt with
in my basketball days is scott brooks is the
coach of oklahoma thunder
scott brooks is one of the most disciplined
guys and if you compared scott brooks’
talent
to chris herrens at
different ages there’s no comparison at
all
chris is so much better as a talent
but sometimes talent doesn’t do the
whole thing and i think there’s a
discipline
and i don’t know if it’s the people
around you because i think the people
around chris love him
and they and i think even when he
was having trouble
i didn’t see anyone
was around trying to take advantage of
him
and his wife is a great gal
bill reynolds is a terrific
guy and a good friend of
chris’s may be a second father his
father
was always a terrific guy around me
i never saw anything bad and his brother mike
they were all very interested in chris i
never once heard them crying about
themselves so i think they all cared but
it just didn’t translate
though and i think only chris can answer that
it’s tough man you i
see it all the time today when i
talk to family members
of kids who are struggling or
loved ones of kids of
you know people who are struggling
it is so hard to take that head on
because that means you have to acknowledge
all of it
you know you really have to look into
what’s really happened over the last so
many years
you know and and and that’s very hard to
do it’s very hard to say
you know what i love u but you’ve
stolen this you’ve written this check you’ve
you’ve hurt my feelings here
you didn’t show up at this time
those are very tough things to bring up and
loved ones they’re in a very
tough situation to really take those
things head on
so from my brother and my father and my
mom and my wife and bill reynolds
you know it would be extremely
difficult
and you know something
i probably wouldn’t have paid attention
you know
i think it really what it
came down to was
whether or not
i wanted to either
get sober
or go to jail or die
the one thing i want to mention
i didn’t mention chris’s mother
i really didn’ know chris’s mother
i met her one time
i’m sure she felt the same way as his
father brother and all those
i didn’t leave her out intentionally and i really
didn’t know her
you know my mom
had private eyes follow me my mom knew what i
was doing before i uh… you know before
anybody
and my mom talked to me about it and
wanted me to get help
you know when your kid is hurting and your kid
needs money or your kid is struggling
you know its a very fine line
you know which way do you go do you
love them
or do you let them go
yes
is it just the addiction is so
compelling is that what it is because you
really you may reject that you have it all
as many would see it but
jeez you have a future i mean ray allens
playing for another championship this
year and your on the cover of sports
illustrated coming out high school
yeah i could really care less about where ray allen
is
to be quite honest with you great for ray
allen but like i said
in measuring stick to where i’m at today
i have it all
i wouldn’t change my spot today
and how i feel
on the inside my soul yep
for any
celtics jersey nuggets jersey any jersey
would you change the journey
i would change it
not for me
for my children
right and my wife and my loved ones
cuz as it had to be a tough journey
watching what you went through especially
watching through sober eyes i went
through numb they went thru
sober
i would change it for them i wouldn’t
change it for me
because you really do believe that
its made to the person you are today
there’s no
yeah 100 percent no i know it’s don’t
forget where you came from is where i come
from too the journey is
important
uh… but let me ask you a little bit
about the the warning signs that you
talked about in high school the
partying every weekend
uh…
you know is is that really where it starts
a couple of beers a bottle of
duck and then its you just move through
there
i think so i mean i think
i think certain people are predisposed to
it i think it’s genetic i think you’re
born with that that gene you
know whether or not
you know it will come out in you
you know
you know i think
i ask kids all the time what is
it that you want to change about
yourself
you know and i had to ask myself that
what is it that i really don’t like
about me that need to put something in me
to become somebody else and i
ask kids that today when i go and speak at
their schools or their colleges
ask yourself that question and uh… and
maybe you’ll figure it out
you know but
whether it’s a high school
that your
socially awkward or you’re scared to or nervous
around people so you have to have a
couple of beers to dance or
whatever it is
but i believe it starts then i believe
marijuana and booze is the beginning
of the process
you uh… talk in your book and just
want to read it so i quote it correctly
correctly it says
uh… two things actually
back-to-back one thing is people
can’t believe that you could shoot up
in the car with your daughter in the car
and then the other thing that i
think helps to explain it says people
think that when you’re doing drugs
you’re high all the time out partying
they think you’re having fun that is not
it at all you’re not having fun
you’re in hell
without the dope i would be dope sick so
that i would be so sick that i couldn’t
do anything couldn’t even get up
i’d be in a
fetal position
at some point
you doing drugs simply because you have
to yeah there’s no social once you
cross the lines of heroin and oxycontin
there is no more social aspect to your
life
you know it overcomes it it becomes your
life i um my wife wanted
to take out that part
of my daughter
and shooting up in the car i can see why
yeah but you know something there’s another parent
right now doing that
that’s hard to believe as a parent but
at some point it’s the addiction
that makes you do it
yeah i mean absolutely i mean it can’t be that
hard to believe you know i mean its all over the news
you know what i mean
you can look at how every you want
whether a parent has a few beers and puts their
kid in the car seat what’s the difference
right
you tell me no i hear you
i know plenty of parents who’ve
who’ve pulled over at the at restaurants
and chugged down a couple of drafts
and threw their daughter and son in the back
seat
is there a little difference
of severity of the drug
no doubt about it
the details that go into a
absolutely
but you know something i didn’t do this book to
get rich
i can do this book to become
anything but
raise awareness and maybe because
through a program that i go to
and hearing people’s honesty i was a
able to get sober
you know and hearing other people talk
about the pain that they inflicted on
their children
gave me the courage to talk about the pain that i put
on mine
which healed me
and and and if there’s somebody out
there that can
can’t get something out of that
then so be it i’ve never thought there was
a time my life i’ve never thought i
could get through this guilt
and this shame
and i was so wrong
can i just add one thing to that
what about parents who aren’te drug addicts
who aren’t drinkers
who inflict pain on their kids we all
do that at some time because we’re not
perfect people
and i think chris’s imperfections
are his but we all have them
and he he said a question that we
all should ask ourselves as adults he asks
a kid what does he really want to get out of
something and what does he feel he needs
what about adults we don’t ask ourselves
the tough questions either sometimes
listen i agree with both of you
i know i know chris’s
to me and i think it is important to
leave it in because to me it helped
convey to me
the the depth of the addiction because
obviously you’re a parent and throughout
the book you see the the love you have for your
children and your wife
uh… but knowing that you know you’re
in hell and that at least at this point in
time there’s no one reaching down
to pull you out and as you’ve said in
other places no one else can do it
you’re the one that’s gotta find uh…
the way out of this you’re absolutely
right
and excuse me
a very profound moment
and i don’t even to be quite
honest with you
i don’t even know if i put this in the
book
i had come back from treatment
and after watching my son drew
my third child be born
and i walked through after relapsing
forty days into it
i walked through the doors this little italian guy
who ran the facility that i was at in new
york looked looked
looked me dead in the eye
and said why don’t you do the most
admirable courageous thing of your life
and get away from your children
let them go
let them heal let them live
because all you do is sink em
and that night i went to bed
and i contemplated
whether or not
i should
and from that moment on
i decided
to be their dad you know
whatever happened in the past was the
past you know what i mean
it was a very spiritual moment for me
it was a crossroads
and i was very close
to
letting my kids go
and you know this is a big spiritual
component to that to to you and that’s
what i want to ask you about is
uh… i’m going to ask you is this the
final act because i do see salvation and i do
see a lot of spiritual uh… aspects to
it the the nuns allowed you to use the gym
and that’s what helped you get the
school going that uh… and then you say
that you pray uh… regularly for
for help with this because
it can’t hurt
can’t hurt and i need every prayer
that i can get that’s right
you know something there’s a very
spiritual aspects see i think there’s a
spiritual aspect to everything
you just have to see if you’re
aware of it
and
fortunately enough
today i am aware of it and
the nuns
at eight months sober
heroin addict felonies on my record
let me handed me a key to their
not only their gym but to their whole
school
and said
you know lets go on lets lets
lets help yourself
let let me help you get back on track
and from that has became a great
company uh… that i’ve started but
the spiritual side to this is amazing
well it really is amazing i mean that
that the nuns would be actually just
as you said give you the keys to the gym
knowing that theres kids in schools in school
there with
all of your problems at
this point and uh…
that somehow this would be the light out
and
the uh… they said thats what christianity’s
all about forgiveness
you know and and i she’s
actually not a nun the
nuns run there’s two nun’s that live on
campus that had to okay it but the
principle donna glavin
she said you know something
this is what it’s about it’s about
forgiveness and allowing uh…
someone else to move forward in
life and they did that for me so
let’s talk a little bit about the basketball camp
and the the rules that you have there
cuz i
i’ve been involved in youth sports on a very
minor level with uh… around here and
it’s uh…
your philosophy reall resonates with
me as well i think it resonates with a
lot of the people that hope to get the
best out of youth sports uh… because you
make a point that it’s really not about
basketball it’s about the things you can
learn from basketball
and that is what youth sports is supposed to
be about most of these kids are not
going to be
playing in college or the n_b_a_ or
it’s about building self esteem character
and and knowing see i know there’s an
end
well some kids don’t some kids like me
thought they would
play basketball for ever
but i know there’s an end to it
some end earlier than others
most do
so if i can have an impact on a kid
uh… where
they feel comfortable in their own skin
they they’re happy to return to play the
sport
uh… and stay fit and stay healthy
then i’ve accomplished my
goal with them
and hopefully their parents unfortunately
parents mess up the whole process
we tend to don’t we no doubt about it you
have four rules at the camp they are
uh… to encourage each other yep that
there be no bullying yep
no laughing at one another and don’t
make anyone feel
less than you yes no doubt about it
how do you
get that accomplished because those
are easier said then done with
youth sports yeah i tell them that their
money will be refunded
immediately
i have that talk with the whole
camp
when it starts with the parents there
that uh…
if i see any of this behavior
that there kids will be
you know won’t be allowed back because i
don’t want this kids most kids
aren’t good at basketball
you know i have a basketball camp with a
hundred kids
fifteen are good
you know the others really aren’t
they’re just trying to stay busy stay active
and uh… kind of fit in and when a kid
doesn’t fit in to something i think
things go sour quick
for that child you know and i don’t want
to start that process at a young age
you know i don’t want a group of six to
eighth grade girls some girl never coming
back
to play as sport because she had a bad
experience at my camp
there’s no way that’s happening
uh…
you your you you say in the book i
think today’s basketball culture can be
very detrimental to kids
days of playing in your buddies back yard
are over
there’s no playing just for fun no one plays
two sports anymore nevermind three its
all changed for the worse you know
something its
i love basketball i love what it could
do for kids but i also think that the
culture of it
has changed
i think that the
parents are way too involved
i think the AAU is way too involved
and i think that’s
that’s the problem i think that you
know my i just had to my son had to
travel two a half hours to
middletown connecticut in six grade to
play for a weekend
i mean that’s that’s crazy
yet that he could that he could do
that in
fall river new bedford brockton totten
and i think there’s a lot of pressure to
to that you know when
it’s i think there’s too much emphasis on
success
at an early age when
you could get that in your driveway in your
local park
that kind of stuff so
and they really feel the pressure of
the thought of having to try and get
that college scholarship because of a
you make reference to the price of
education being so outrageous these days
that even those young AAU or
club soccer athletes really do feel the
pressure that they’ve got to excel
because
their expectations around that are put
on them are so high i think the parents put
that on them i mean i hear parents in my
gym all the time say well listen
if if he doesn’t get a scholarship then
we can’t send him to college
that’s a whole lot to put on a kids you know
shoulders to say
if you don’t
play
how we want you to play
and how college coaches want you to
play
your gonna save us two hundred thousand
dollars and if you don’t
then you go to community college
theres something even worse than what chris said
today and i didn’t see that
when i was growing up
parents want to live vicariously through
them through the children rather
than
be role models for their children
and and demand respect and demand discipline and
demand performance in in other ways they
want to live through their children
adults can’t live through children it’s
too much pressure on children
and i think
this goes on constantly and if there’s
one thing
that i read in chris’s book that meant a
lot to me actually i don’t even know if i read it we
talked about it
a little chubby girl ten year old girl
whose
not such a great player ti’s as important
to him as the kid whose going to get a
scholarship to duke or
notre dame
and i think and there’s a lot more of
them then the kid getting a scholarship
to duke or notre dame the chil
we get a lost generation
because of this vicariously living through children
they’re children they’re no
adults and it’s a real problem and i
think chris addressees it in his book
and i think he’s addressed it personally
more than most people i know
i address it in my gym constantly
it’s not allowed
you know if the parents if the
parents are overbearing
there is no sideline coaching in my gym
if one parent acts like that
here’s your money
take your child i’m not gonna be part
of your child’s demise because how
crazy you are against you know
towards your child
the crazy ones they drop off and they
pickup and then i have them for an hour or two
hours and and and we’re together
doing this
but yeah i can’t i can’t be part of that
and be part of that process we only want
to try to
like frank said the little
ten-year-old girl with glasses
is just as importune
if not more than the kid who already
has a scholarship to duke he does’t need your help
forget him he needs god’s help
you said in the book that you never
cross the lines on the basketball court
without feeling
distress
yeah of course
well again from outside
that’s harder to see because
and you are the high school hero
the college hero the
nab hero who says
well that’s what it looks a lot better
from this side than obviously your side exactly
i never said that
no you didn’t i never said that i was the
hero the high school hero
it was everybody else saying it so now
everytime i walk through those lines
it was everybody else saying well he’s
going to average or score these many points
tonight and its you know we’re here to watch
him play and he better
do a b_ and c_
uh… i never said that
uh… yep
and i’d never had those
and never stepped up and said those type
of things no no i wasn’t trying to infer
but that has to be a
pretty heavy burden to carry with you
because that’s what everyone else
expects of chris herren yes and that’s why
i never listen
by nature I’m a competitor
you know and then
put all the other stuff involved
it becomes
a serious competitor
and uh…
you know i never walked
through a
opposing teams locker room doors
to hit the floor
or my locker room
without a high level of intensity and
stress it
is no doubt about what’s the final act
one day at a time you know
one day at a time i mean that’s that’s
what it is i don’t know uh…
god knows
i’m good today
you know and we’ll see what’s up for tomorrow
thanks for joining us