Transcript of interview with Carolyn Goodman by Barbara Tabach, August 18, 2016

AN INTERVIEW WITH CAROLYN GOODMAN An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Amanda Hammar iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Carolyn Goldmark Goodman (1939- ) is the mayor of the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. She began her first four-year term in office on July 6, 2011 and was re-elected for a second term in April 2015. She succeeded her husband of 50 years, Oscar B. Goodman, who served three terms as mayor. Carolyn founded The Meadows School in Las Vegas in 1984, the state's first nonprofit, college preparatory school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. She oversaw planning and daily operations of the school for 26 years, retiring in 2010. Carolyn and Oscar Goodman arrived in Las Vegas in 1964. Carolyn Goodman started out working in the hotel industry, and later earned her master's degree in counseling from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) while raising four children. As mayor, Goodman has focused on improving public education and the local economy. She is a board member of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and serves on the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance (LVGEA). She is actively involved in the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), as a member of its Advisory Board, vice-chair of its Task Force on Education Reform, and chair of the Mayors? Business Council. In 2014 Goodman received the UCSM?s Large City Climate Protection Award. As leader of the Meadows School, Goodman was recognized nationally by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the National Association of Independent Schools in 2006 with the Seymour Preston Trustee Award for Leadership. She has also been honored by UNLV, receiving the Distinguished Nevada award in 1989, an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree (PhD) in 2006, and Alumni of the Year in Education in 2010. In this interview, Goodman talks about her family background and touches upon her childhood in New York City and attending Bryn Mawr College, where she met Oscar. She discusses the growth of the Las Vegas Jewish population since arriving, efforts to build Jewish community, and her involvement, including with Temple Beth Sholom and the Jewish Federation. In addition, Goodman talks at length about her husband?s political career as well as her own, both dedicated to developing Las Vegas into a safe and prosperous city, with quality education, health care, and arts and culture offerings. She also discusses establishing The Meadows School. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Carolyn Goodman On August 18 and August 31, 2016 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface?????????????????????????????????..?..iv SESSION 1 Talks about family history; growing up on New York City?s Upper West Side; attending Bryn Mawr, where met husband, Oscar; becoming more observant Jew with Oscar; moving to Las Vegas with Oscar. Mentions people first met at Temple Beth Sholom; being involved with Jewish Federation; other Jewish people who moved to Las Vegas with growth of gaming in 1960s......1-5 Talks about building a Jewish community in Las Vegas and names residents that contributed to that effort; becoming involved with Federation?s Women?s Division. Reflects upon experiences with anti-Semitism, during childhood and adulthood; starting Meadows School; her daughter?s education and professional experiences?????????????????????..6-12 Talks about raising her four children and how that prepared her for success in politics; Oscar?s run for mayor?s office and accomplishments, and then her own current service as mayor???.13-18 SESSION 2 Shares about her passion for sports and attempts to bring professional sport franchises to Las Vegas. Discusses the benefits to community development and growth of having sport franchises; spending funds on the arts, like the Smith Center, Discovery Museum, Mob Museum; the importance of research institutions??????????????????????...19-24 Describes typical day and duties as mayor; goals for rest of current term, to continue Oscar?s projects and vision, revitalize downtown area. Talks about meeting with then-Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson about federal funding to Las Vegas; attending Federal Emergency Management Agency training on handling terrorism; dealing with local earthquake. Discusses first job, working for Sun Oil Company while Oscar was in law school; then working at Riviera, Caesars Palace; as Louis Prima?s assistant; for Department of Labor on the Westside???25-33 vi 1 SESSION 1 Today is August 18, 2016. I am with Carolyn Goodman in her office. We will jump right in. I?d like to know a little bit about your ancestral background, whatever you might share with us about your forefathers, how people came to the United States, and we'll go from there. Oh, my goodness. If you know anything about that. No. You need to read Our Crowd by Stephen Birmingham (1996). That will give you the background on my mother's side. Seven brothers went into banking, came from German; I'm not sure which city. Came here and obviously came right into New York City. Ended up by the last name of Seligman. And the book Our Crowd really is very specific about where they went, how they came in and started in banking. There's a community what they call Seligman [pronouncing Saligman], Arizona, but it's actually Seligman, Arizona that one of the brothers founded. Another brother founded White Pine County, Nevada. The others stayed Back East. So that, in fact, I am a kissing cousin of Queen Elizabeth's sister's first husband. There's too many details to deal with. But anyway, it's all through the Seligman-Bier side of the family and obviously Jewish. My father's family came from Hungary and ended up in New York City. His last name was Goldmark. (A composer by the name of K?roly, K-A-R-O-L-Y, Goldmark was a composer and did "The Queen of Sheba" and many orchestral pieces.) But anyway, my grandfather, my father's father, was a physician in New York City. Goodness, I don't know how many generations. We'll go back to my mother's father: he was the head of economics at Columbia University, very big in foreign affairs and government, and friend of President Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, you 2 have to go back. Wow. That's great. There's some real history there. My mother was the youngest of four children. Her brother was eighteen years her senior and then there were two daughters in between, all with strange names. Eustace Seligman, who was an attorney in a very, very well-renown law firm in New York called Sullivan and Cromwell. Then there were two daughters, Mabel and Violet. One died, I think, of diphtheria on a trip to Europe, and the other one died of appendicitis at Bryn Mawr. My mother was Hazel and, as I say, eighteen years younger than her eldest brother, (she) went to Bryn Mawr College in the days of Katharine Hepburn, and met my father. Oh my goodness, my mother's family and my father's family both had summer homes in Lake Placid, New York, and so my parents got married there in 1934, but lived in Manhattan. My mother did mostly volunteer work and worked in Harlem; she had all but her dissertation in economics from Columbia. My father did undergraduate at Cornell, then went on into medicine, Long Island School of Medicine; he ended up in obstetrics and gynecology, became head of the county medical society and the state medical society of New York. A very dedicated, great physician. Wrote a thesis, a book called Resuscitation of the Newborn; (he) did a lot of work in newborn work. I have a sister, an older sister, she?s two and a half years older than I. We grew up in originally Upper West Side, 106th Street between Riverside and West End Avenue. Went to a preschool in a church called the Riverside Church. Then transferred over in kindergarten to a school called Horace Mann Lincoln where both she and I remained. I think I was in second grade and one day was taken to another school to test for entry along with my sister. The school was called the Brearley School, which is an all-girls school. My sister was so far behind in the 3 progressive education, we were enrolled in that; she was going into fourth grade or fifth and they said she needed to find another place and they said they would take me, but I had to repeat second grade. So failure number one was having to go and repeat second grade. But my parents had entered us young. My birthday is in March. I graduated at eighteen. So it was on time. Then I matriculated to Bryn Mawr, as my mother had before me, and met my husband, goodness, in October of 1960 in a combined class. He had been at Haverford College, which was all boys, and I was at Bryn Mawr. We used to share classes with Swarthmore, Haverford and Bryn Mawr. Then decided to get married. His father?and I'm sure he probably told you?I believe was raised more in the orthodox and very, very strict dietary regulations as he was being raised?met and married my mother-in-law, then was more conservative than orthodox. I had never even been in a temple until I was sixteen when a relative of ours had died and there was a funeral held at Temple Emanu-El in New York. When did you realize you were Jewish? Goodness, I had gone to a summer camp outside of Hanover, New Hampshire, actually on the Vermont side of the mountains and went there from the time I was five until, I'm going to say, probably around thirteen. We had a rainy day in the cabin, same girls? camp. Everybody just went around the cabin saying what religion they were and everybody just said it and I said, "I'm Jewish." It was like I had twelve sets of eyes on me and I thought, wow, what did I say? And I wondered what that meant. So when I got back home I remember really beginning to be a voracious reader on what did it mean to be Jewish. Of course, in school you hear about the Holocaust, but really hadn't identified (with it). Really, I think it was probably that incident that made me very significantly aware that I was different. 4 How did that base?because you had, it sounds like, a very city, urban upbringing? Oh, yes. ?and a very successful world. Oscar obviously was going to be a successful man even if he was young and just starting. And he tells great stories about that, as you do together. When you first landed in Las Vegas, what do you remember about that? Can you paint a picture for me of what that was like? Well, we were relatively newlyweds. I think we were two years married when we came out here. It was just more of thinking this is really breaking away from the mold. My parents had not wanted me to marry him in the first place and then for me to leave the cocoon of New York City and Manhattan and everything they dreamed of my future to come out to Sin City with less than a hundred thousand people, I'm sure they thought, oh, my God, they'll be back; there's no way that she is going to stay out there. It had nothing to do with anything religious, but because I really was deeply in love with my husband and because of that I tried to please him as much as I could. So from someone who had eaten everything, whether it was snails or whatever, I immediately became very restrictive on my diet, but certainly nothing in the house, no shell products, no shell food, no pork products, and I began to do Passover dinners and really began to run a Jewish home. Of course, as we had children that even became more significant and really to this day?hold the line?we've never varied from that at all. But it was really to make him comfortable and part of the trust of a good marriage that you can trust the person you're with to not cheat and do this. So coming out here...I'm just trying to think if by then?no, I hadn't because I don't think we really had any dishware at all. So there were no two sets of dishes or anything like that, but I didn't mix with milk products and meat products. But that was all. We began, of course, for the High 5 Holidays immediately wanted to find out what was here in town. Of course, Temple Beth Sholom, for us in 1964, was on Oakey at 15th. And so we immediately joined and then as we had children in the years after, of course, had them going there for their training. Do you recall who some of the first people who you met at Temple Beth Sholom were? Well, of course, the rabbi was Rabbi Gold, as I recall. Goodness. Cantor Kohn. Oh, goodness gracious, you're taking me back. Leo Wilner and then Rabbi Schneerson. But it was the old Jewish crowd?Greenspun, Mack, Entratter?the names that were just the Jewish crowd of old here. Of course, so many of them were involved with either the banking arm or with the publishing arm or with the hotel (industry), the privately owned hotels. Of course, everybody was involved in everything. I think Jewish people, as my daughter always tells me, when you know somebody is Jewish, there's a connection that immediately takes you to a level beyond that you don't have to go back and reinvent. Because when you meet somebody that's not?and it may be true with all religions?there's something about you have to find out who they are. What is their integrity? What's their morality? Who are they? Well, when somebody says to you that I'm Jewish, you automatically know what that core is. So we all knew each other. That's the names of the people and the children. And we raised our children very much together because we kept seeing them at different functions. Then, of course, Federation began?and I think this is its fiftieth year. Right. A big celebration coming up. So it was expected that we would be involved. I remember Mort Galane and Neil and Elaine Galatz. I think of names of people that are our generation. Those are the people you saw all the time. 6 Then as the hotels came onboard in '66, of course, (also having had its fiftieth, Caesars Palace,) and that brought in Nate Jacobson, Jewish, and Billy Weinberger, Jewish. When I think of the hotels, the Riviera where I started work in '64, a big Jewish contingent there as well, in the casino mostly. So those are people where the little children became pretty much similar with our little children. You think of (Jay) Sarno and (Jerry) Zarowitz at Caesars and those children were all?unless they lived also in L.A. or somewhere else. Duboef, Larry Duboef and Lovee Duboef, who is now Lovee Arum. Oh, goodness. You can look at old pictures of old events we had. Epstein, Donna and then Kenny Epstein. Yale Cohen. I love looking at the old photos that we're gathering together. There are pictures of you and this cast of characters that you've listed. Probably Marshall-Rousso (Art Marshall and Herb Rousso) group when you just think. And so many of them lived near the temple. But then as the country club was developed, many of them bought into the country club. Then you had Molaskys and the Frys that they bought into the towers in Las Vegas Country Club, Augusta Drive. Then a smattering of people were over in Rancho Circle in those days. That's all there was in the mid- to late-1960s were those living quarters. There were some wonderful times and different generations and really a sense of building a community. My family was in New York. As I said, I wasn't even in a temple until I was sixteen and was aware of the Jewishness, as I mentioned, because of that episode at our camp. There were two Jews, my sister and me, and that was it out of five hundred girls that attended that camp from the time I was five until I became head of the waterfront as a counselor there. So all those years. So it wasn't a significant piece. My sister married a Jewish fellow. I think my parents had hoped that I'd marry somebody because of the World War and because of Hitler. Better just to...From their perspective, they were never ashamed of being Jewish, but again, too, they didn't raise us in 7 any formal religious manner. So it really didn't have a significance. I learned because of Oscar. Your identity grew from just more of a secular, cultural identity to a religious one. Yes. But Oscar, of course, he became president of the temple. I did join Federation early on. Elaine Galatz was president of the Women's Division. And then I think she was in her second year, she and Neil took off for a trip to Africa and she said, "You'll have to do this; here's membership," or whatever I was supposed to do. So was that Women's Philanthropy? It was the Women's Division of the Jewish Federation, United Jewish Appeal, all of that. Were there any other organizations in the Jewish...? Early on, no, that was pretty much it. We met over at Christensen's Jewelers on East Sahara, east of Paradise, in that little complex. Just to the west of it there's a lamp store that's still there, but then there's a two-, three-story building where Christensen Jewelers was and we had the second floor and that was for years. It's right across Commercial Center. Yes. I think of Mike and Sonja Saltman. The town began to grow and expand and different types of people came in from different parts of the world. Then there was the cluster of the really good Jewish people that helped build the temple that were a part of the Women's Division of the temple, which I didn't join. I mean, I did for donations, but not to participate. Then you see?oh goodness, I can see so many faces; I can't pull up the names, though?but of women who were a part of the Women's League or different groups of men and women that were doing different events. Of course, Sol Sayegh and Marilyn. Goodness, other people from the Desert Inn. And Moe Dalitz. It was just the one temple and then there was a Chabad that was in a building on Maryland; those 8 were the two. Then, of course, we have eighteen temples today and four Chabads. Oh, yes, it's amazing. Close to eighty thousand Jews, but all from that little nucleus. And Adele Baratz. Goodness, I know probably the first Jews who were here? Was up north because they came in from the Comstock Lode up in Virginia City in the 1860s; something like that. A couple of Jews up there and then they came down here. Then, of course, we have [Benjamin] Bugsy Siegel. I don't know how Jewish he was. And so really, it's just been amazing to watch it grow to the numbers that we have and the number of temples?it was great. I wouldn't trade it for the world, all of it. Yes. I can see that in your face, too. As you just list those names, you're reminiscing there. The idea of anti-Semitism, did you ever experience that here? Oh, I did when I was?oh, here? That was I knew when I was different that day and that afternoon in that cabin at thirteen in Vermont. I knew there was something different. I sort of felt there was something wrong with being Jewish from their perspectives. And most young people, as we know, are a reflection of their parents and their parents' attitudes. So if a child was looking at me to question where my horns were or whatever, you knew the parents. And that was the totality of all of them this the cabin; there wasn't a one that was different. But as far as anti-Semitism, I remember coming cross country with my mother in '58 for, I guess, a mother and daughter bonding, just the two of us, and we went to the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club to check in and we were denied rooms. We walked up and I don't know what happened. I guess my mother must have gone to the registration desk. Well, they must have just seen the name. And so you experience it. Did I feel it in Las Vegas? Yes, certainly from other people who, again, learning it from 9 their parents who don't know Jewish people, and so they're taught that something is bad. You have to be taught to hate. You have to be taught. It doesn't just come. It comes from ignorance. Well, it comes from ignorance and it comes from accepting your parents and what they believe. And if you don't have good parents...And fortunately for Oscar and me, we both had great parents. Having run a school for many years, anything I wanted to find out, I'd go to the elementary school and take a vote in the classroom. I knew exactly who every single child was; and therefore, I knew. I mean, they were way too young to understand half the time when I was asking them something, but it was really informative. Talk about starting Meadows School. Oh, that really was out of necessity. It really did not take rocket science to know that because of the nature of the community with the huge growth that was coming in the hotel business?it's mostly blue collar employees for the hospitality, for cleaning, more maintenance, and custodial service. There was a formula that for every hotel room that's built, five people are needed in the total community to sustain it, less of the executives, but more of the people in the kitchens and in the service areas. Of course, because where we are positioned physically near Southern California, New Mexico, Arizona, we get a lot of influx of less expensive service people to come in, many of whom of Catholic faith, which calls for a lot of families?if they're good Catholics in those days, to use any mode of holding on to how many children you were going to have. So there wasn't a huge interest in the education. Either it was more about the jobs, getting the jobs and being able to?which is today, too?sustain your family. But really, as I said, it didn't take any genius to know that 10 we were going to be explosive here and the schools were not at all keeping up. The year that we came here, I had done the research ahead of time. We had no children, but I knew one day we would have children. So I did the old kind of research, going to the library and reading books and magazines and making phone calls and writing letters. Clark County was only number two in the country next to New Trier Township out of Chicago. So I figured, great. Then when we had our first child in '69, somewhere around '72, I went around to look at the schools and I came home and said, "Oscar, we're out of here. There is no school that goes K-twelve. The only school I could find that teaches a foreign language is the Day School and they teach German. We don't even have a German population, but the owners were from Germany. They don't teach Spanish and this is going to be a Spanish-speaking community and the earlier you bring it in, the better." So I said, "We've got to leave." Then one of my friends found the most incredible woman, a Mormon lady who had grown up in Idaho, taught in a one-room schoolhouse, came here in '57 as a teacher. Got her degree, ultimately her Ph.D. from Brigham Young University in education and had this very strong, but very traditional conservative focus on quality education. It was exactly what I learned in New York City at the Brearley, but she was K-five. So I hired her because our three boys had gone?well, all four children went through elementary school in the public system in her school. Then the boys had to go?it was an affirmative effort action by the governor; they began what was called sixth grade centers. So after the cocoon of K-five, they pick up the children from five different schools, integrate them for one year in a sixth grade center in the lower economic area, right at the onset of puberty?I mean, just really dumb?and then put them back in middle schools. So I was all over my three boys on that making sure that I could keep them on the path that they needed to be. But then came the daughter and I thought, no way. 11 So at that point in earnest I began trying to find money to build a school and people who believed and wanted to learn what Eastern college preparatory education may have meant, which is basically the British form of education and adherence to certain basics; then building that so each child would graduate (to be) competitive with the best and the brightest in the world, coming in to take our spots in college and how do you get them to that point. That's where you start. What is it you're trying to prove? That's what I wanted and I wanted our daughter to have the choice not to be forced to have to go somewhere. As I'm sure you know, they're all adopted. So there's eight genetic pools and none of them are (biologically) ours, not that it would have been good or bad. Our daughter, Cara, ended up going to Stanford. So I think the whole experiment, if you look at that, really worked. And then the following twenty years, this school just flourished and we've just had the greatest placement, kids all over, at Harvard. And it takes a while to establish for the institution. This is back from 2011, but you can see some of the institutions that they went to. This is trying to help sophomores, juniors and seniors. Just flip the pages. Cal Tech, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Berkeley, just the best of the schools in the country because we knew what that education was. Oh, this is nice. Of course, Cara was with Michelle. And Cara participated in one of our Growing Up Jewish in Las Vegas. Oh, right, I couldn't make it then. I do remember that. She's a delight. I really have enjoyed getting to know her. What was beautiful was?I mean, here is somebody?I remember very clearly, not that I was any different?but in sixth, seventh grade, when it was that time of the month?you never know; all of us women never know. So either you sail through the month perfectly and go through your natural 12 physical issue, or you may end up with the most horrible blemish on your face. You may be very emotional and weepy or you can really be a gorilla and nasty and in a bad mood. So when I would pick her up, I could just see it that she was just this tiger ready to attack. And I'd say as we got closer to home, "When you get home, you're going to put on your candy striping outfit." Obviously, a lot of push back and I didn't listen. When I'd pick her up two or three hours later from Valley Hospital, the smile on her face was so incredible because she got out of the "me, oh my" phase and into "oh, wow, there are other people in this world and they have needs." It's interesting to me because after Stanford, she did her graduate degree there in some related business; I can't remember what the title of the degree was. She was doing more of human resources work when she went to work at Deloitte Touche and PerkinElmer, a couple of jobs after Stanford graduate school. You could tell; she was doing it, but it wasn't great. Then she decided, because she's a people person, she wanted to go into family therapy. So here she is full-time at the burn unit at UMC and in trauma doing things I could never do. But yet, there was that same hospital giving thing, who she was even then. It hit a cord. It's like Michelle (Light), too. Michelle was just such a warm, delightful people person. So for the recording, we're talking about Michelle Light, the Director of Special Collections. So anyway, but that's why The Meadows. Then it's building it because how do you make it work? So I really learned from a blank piece of paper, what do you do to build a not for profit school? I never owned it. I never took a salary from it. I worked it twenty-four seven for twenty-five years, twenty-six years. That's amazing. I think it's great. Raised the money for it, everything that's built. Got the forty acre campus donated by the Howard Hughes Corporation. We didn't pay for that either. Then you see all the buildings around there. 13 But very careful to hire the right people and then not listen when I knew what we needed to have. We had parents who would come in and say, "Why are you teaching Latin?" Get a bunch of parents together, "We don't want Latin." I'd say, "Fine, go to another school. You need Latin." So there were things I knew because it was my background. Became very, very successful obviously and learned about the budgeting and how to run?it's a $12 million?well, it was?it's probably fourteen- or fifteen-million-dollar-a-year operation and hiring the faculty and training and putting pieces in place to make the business work, but most importantly to get the product out of the school. So was that a great incubator for you to personally step up into a more political world. The children did it. We had four children thirty-eight months apart. So when you want to get anything on in life, you have to listen, you have to know what you're talking about, get your information, and then you have to reasonably communicate that information and gain consensus. Because you don't take four little children that are?who cares?eight and seven and six and four and a half. Each of them wants a hundred percent of what they want. They're not interested in consensus. So you've got to hear each one. And that was the best training ground for me all those years. Of course, too, because they each have the delight of not knowing who they are. Certainly your daughter is?I would assume she's not adopted. No, she's not. Fine. So she's part your genes, which mean your mother and your father and back generations, and then her father and his back generations. So there's an expectation. She may come out as an opera singer and you think there's somebody that had a beautiful voice; it could have been my great-aunt or somebody. But with these four children I had no idea. It was like the laundry. I'd wash the laundry, same detergent, put the clothes on the children, totally different smell on each of them. 14 But it was the best training ground. I love people, love working with people. The school became a result of that, too, of knowing how you find the best teachers. How do you help train teachers? When we came here, there was not even a knowledge by the college counselors in the public schools of any school east of the Rockies, no knowledge. It was the most amazing thing to me. I'd say, "Have you ever heard of Namibia?" No. "Have you heard of Washington University in St. Louis?" No. All they knew was what was in Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada and California. So that was also helping people here get a sense of...And we've come a long way. And that was 1984 when you opened up the school. Yes. When did Oscar become mayor? 1999. Ninety-nine was his first year. What do you remember about that decision-making process for him to run? Well, he'd represented a very colorful group of people. We had the best life. We just had such fun. He never was in bed with his clients. We never socialized with them. But when he'd have a big win, we'd go out for dinner. Of course, I had been at the Riviera in advertising, marketing and publicity. Then I had been at Caesars. So we knew a lot of Strip people and we were out a lot. But with his representation of alleged organized crime figures, he was all over the country all the time. When his biggest client, most consistent long-term client was murdered, after a good twenty-five years of Oscar representing him, the belly went out of him. I could just see it. He became methodical. He probably even told you, just for him it became how much more can I charge? But the interest wasn't there. He didn't have that...And it's exhausting. He was always alone. A defense attorney is always alone against banks of state or federal lawyers. 15 He said, "I want to do something else." I