Oral History Program L.G. Bingham Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 5 August 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah L.G. Bingham Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 5 August 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Bingham, L.G., an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 5 August 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. L.G. Bingham L.G. Bingham 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with L.G. Bingham, conducted over the phone by Sarah Langsdon on August 5, 2013. L.G. discusses his work as a lawyer representing criminals and capital murder cases, and his time teaching at police academies. He shares his memories of Ogden and 25th Street, including the presence of prostitution and gambling, and discusses his time at Weber State University as a lecturer and professor in criminal justice. SL: Tell me a little bit about where and when you were born. LG: I was born in Ogden, Utah, August 15, 1926. SL: When and where did you earn your law degree? LG: In 1951, University of Utah. SL: So this was after you returned from the war? LG: That’s right. SL: Where was your office located? LG: Part was in the Eccles Building and the last part was in the First Security Bank building. SL: During what years were you in the Eccles building? LG: Oh I’m not exactly—it was seven or eight years. The rest of the time in the First Security Bank on 24th and Washington. SL: How did you come about to represent Rose? LG: How does a lawyer come to represent a madam? I didn’t meet her at the Rose Rooms. She called me up and said, “I need a lawyer; I’d like to come in and talk 2 to you.” I said, “All right.” She came into my office; that’s how I meet all my clients, in my office. I don’t meet them at their place of work. SL: So the case was the drug charge? LG: Yes. SL: Did you represent anyone else on 25th Street? LG: Yes. I had four murderers, one riot, two rape cases, three burglaries, two robberies, armed robberies, and drunk driving cases. Stolen motor vehicle cases besides some others. SL: What were your impressions of 25th Street during the times you were down there? LG: Well you have to be careful when you’re talking about when I was down there. The only time I was ever down 25th Street—I was never down there in the sense that—I don’t quite understand when you say I was down there. I represented people who lived on 25th Street, but I wasn’t down there as if I lived there. SL: Did you ever go down 25th Street for anything other than work purposes? LG: There was a time when I worked at the postal terminal in town at the depot. I worked the night shift from midnight to 6:00 a.m. There was a time during lunch hour that I went to one of the restaurants, but other than that I was never down there that I can remember at night for any reason. SL: Do you remember any shops on 25th Street or even downtown on Washington? LG: I remember them all. You want all of it? SL: Yes. What do you remember about them or what are some of the ones you remember? 3 LG: Well where do you want me to start, on Washington? SL: Sure. LG: Now remember, this covers quite a period of time. I remember one time I sold newspapers when I was a kid, so it was on 25th Street. Occasionally I would sell newspapers there. I remember the Broom Hotel on 25th and Washington and then you go down to the hat and shoe shine store on the corner of Kiesel, run by a guy named Lockas, a Greek fellow. His son Pete went to law school and practiced law in Ogden for many years. I remember when he was shining shoes at his dad’s place and then you’d go to Ross and Jack’s and the Senate Café. I don’t know why they called it the Senate; it was a Chinese restaurant and later it moved to Riverdale. Then you go on further west, why, you get to the Marion Hotel. On the north side would be the Trailways Bus Depot, on the south side would be the Greyhound people. On the south side was the Lyceum Theatre on 25th Street. At one time there was the Ogden Theatre which was above Washington on 25th Street. Then, I say the Lyceum on 25th Street and later there was a liquor store there. SL: Yes, the state liquor store. LG: And on the other side of the street there was the Mecca, which was a strange name for a bar because Mecca is a holy city for the Muslims, and they strictly forbid drinking. So it was always kind of interesting to me a bar, a saloon would be named the Mecca, of course the other name termed for it was a greeting phrase and anyway there were a series of other bars, different kinds of names. Also on 25th and Grant was Armstrong’s Sporting Goods Store. A Korean lady 4 had a café there. If you go back up 25th Street towards Washington, the Rodeo Café which was run by a couple of clients of mine. Then as you go down 25th Street, there was the Kokomo and the Gift Shop, which is still there, and the Kokomo I think is still there. SL: Yes, the Kokomo is still there. LG: The club run by the Pappas brothers is still there. Then as you go further down it was a Chinese restaurant run by Glen C. Gay. He was a client of mine. He later moved his restaurant up on Washington and 27th street. It was, what was it? The guy out front that’s got the arrow shot in his belly. SL: Oh, yeah the Buddha. LG: Well anyway, he opened that restaurant, China Nite. He was a very interesting man. I don’t know whether he is alive now or not. I kind of kept track of him. Every year they would bring me a turkey on the front door at Thanksgiving, the doorbell would ring and I’d go to the door and there’d be a frozen turkey on the front porch. He was a very interesting man. He came from China Town and handled his legal affairs, not criminal for a while. I said, “What about your—did you have to borrow money to open your restaurant?” He said, “Oh yeah.” I said, “Well where are the documents, the papers and so forth? Do you want me to look at them?” He says, “There are no documents, no papers when you’re Chinese and you want to go someplace and open a restaurant you meet with various Tsongs, groups of businessmen in China Town and they decide whether you’re worthy to be loaned money. You don’t sign anything, nothing is signed. However, 5 you understand what the terms of the contract are and you keep the terms of the contract,” but nothing was signed. SL: Interesting. LG: Various times on 25th Street there was Gifty’s that opened a fortune telling place, and I represented Gifty’s for quite a while, but they were a very fascinating group of people. They usually, their name was Marks, that was usually the name they went by. I’m not sure whether that was their names or not, but evidently because I had represented some of them, they knew for instance, I guess, across the country that if you had problems this was the lawyer you would go too. In other words they were a tight knit community clear across the country. They never sent their kids to school, they handled their own system of justice, and their own divorces. Their own marriages, their own contracts, if you got in trouble they punished you, a separate government, fascinating group of people. I wish they had more time. Anyway you go on down 25th Street there were a series of hotels, the Wilcox. A series of them. On the other side of the street there was Panchos on the corner of Lincoln and 25th. Then across the street was the Rose Rooms and on the south side was the Star Noodle, which was a Japanese noodle place. Over to 24th street a little bit there was a, what was it called? They had a search light. Anyway there was one bar on 24th street. SL: Was it the Light House? LG: Yes, the Light House. They were very restrictive of how many bars—there was a bar over on Wall Avenue, the Willows. There was a bar there and then there was 6 a bar, about 15th or 17th on Wall Avenue. Of course outside five points there was a series of bars, Sacco’s they called it the Old Man’s Saloon, he was a client of mine. A lot of Greeks opened bars in Ogden when they came here. Anyway there was a clothing store run by a Jewish fellow, his name was Herschel Saperstein. He attended law school. Herschel and I lived in the same house for two or three years. He’s a good friend of mine, he’s a lawyer in Salt Lake now. There were two shop owners on 25th Street that sent their sons to the University of Utah Law School, but neither one of them practiced criminal law however. SL: Can you tell me why 25th Street was called Two Bit Street? LG: Well I don’t think anyone knows for sure, but the story usually goes around is a bit is a small portion of something. Two bits would be two small portions. In the ground in 1800s, around that time when 25th Street changed from 5th street to 25th Street, there were very small amounts of small change, nickels, dimes, quarters and so forth. I couldn’t read old west novels, they had a Mexican peso, like a silver dollar. They had silver dollars, but they didn’t have quarters, nickels, and dimes, etc. I guess the government figured they were too expensive to admit gold coins, five dollars and twenty dollars. They used to have a problem because the gold was fairly soft and people used to shave silver dollar, and shave gold coins. You know what that means? SL: The edges right? LG: Yes, and if you took a sharp knife you could gather enough to be worth your while and that’s why they narrowed them, those little edges around those coins so you could tell if they’d been shaved. Most people don’t know why the silver did 7 and the others didn’t. Anyway not having any small change and, of course, things were expensive in those days. When I was a kid you could buy a hamburger for a nickel. So they would take a silver dollar or a Mexican peso, which was silver and take it to a blacksmith and they would get their chisel and they would cut it into 8 pieces, 8 pieces of pie and these pieces were, of course, called bits. They had a sharp edge, they’d carry them in a leather bag you wouldn’t want to put it in your pocket you’d get stabbed by it. For a while they were a bit, so two bits, a bit was 12 and a ½ cents so 2 bits was 25 cents. You’ve probably heard the phrase, shave and a haircut 6 bits. SL: Right, yes. LG: Yeah, and it’s 75 cents. But anyway that’s the most logical explanation I ever heard for it. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. SL: Did you notice any gambling that was happening in downtown Ogden? LG: The only thing, and like I say there were times I sold papers. I sold papers on Pearl Harbor Day and made enough money to go to Ross and Jack’s and go to the Paramount. Are you interested in the theatres that were in Ogden? SL: Oh, yes. LG: The theatre was the Ogden Theatre and above Washington there was the Lyceum which was kind of a different place in a way. I only went there two or three times. I really wasn’t allowed on 25th Street. Then on Washington just north where the Key Bank is, there was the Colonial Theatre and then of course the Egyptian. Then the Paramount down on Kiesel. I guess that’s all of them. The Paramount and the Orpheum. The Orpheum was great because it was designed 8 for vaudeville, it had a balcony. It was kind of small because they didn’t have microphones so you could hear the performers. The Egyptian and the Paramount had magnificent organs, pipe organs which they took out. Why? I don’t know. Before the movies start they would have men come in and play the organ. The Egyptian had a projector which would project stars on the ceiling before the movie started, that was great. But anyway the Paramount was my favorite theatre because of the balcony, it was a great theater. Incidentally, if you wanted to do something worthwhile, and I know you do. SL: Yes. LG: In the Bigelow Hotel, Ben Lomond in the lobby hanging on the wall. The lobby is quite high, there were several pictures, large pictures, paintings. They must have been 8 feet by about 12 feet, really large. One of them, all it had was an expanse up the side hill of a mountain and a building, a white building about three stories. Do you know what that was? SL: Was it the White Hotel? LG: No, this was at 7th and Mountain Road where the blind school is now. At the time when the painting was done there was nothing there except that white building, about three stories that was square, and looked like old World War II barracks only bigger and it was white and it was all alone on that hill. There was no other building around. Any idea what it was? SL: That wasn’t where the sanitarium was, was it? LG: Yes, it was a TB sanitarium. And I want you to do some research on it. There’s some that has been done on it. I lived at the time when there was no cure for 9 tuberculosis. Before the antibiotic, it’s a bacterial type infection. Do you recall a short time ago that the whole world was chasing a guy that was traveling around the world that had a very virulent type of TB? You remember when they cut him off and arrested him? Most people don’t realize that the government has authority under certain circumstances, like Typhoid Mary, to arrest you. They would take you into custody if you had a contagious disease, but anyway, everybody was so afraid of tuberculosis, this was after Doc Holliday. At one time they called it consumption and they just considered well it’s just kind of a problem that you have, almost like a hereditary problem. They didn’t realize how dangerous it was, but when they finally did they kind of panicked. So all the states built sanitariums and they built them a long ways away from any place else which is kind of ridiculous. I guess they were worried about if we have a downtown or something, why windows open and the bugs come out and then infect everybody in the neighborhood. But it was a long ways away, so they stuck it up by themselves. That picture always impressed me because it was such a sad, sad place. The saddest place in probably the whole world because I can remember. I don’t remember who it was, I wasn’t a lawyer then, but I remember reading in the paper and my mother and father taught me about it. This lawyer had been arrested and taken to the sanitarium. If you went into the doctor and he diagnosed you with TB, he was required to call the health department and they would send a deputy sheriff over. They would put you in handcuffs and take you immediately to the sanitarium and once you were there you would never leave as long as you lived. Could you imagine the path of sadness? Your husband, they 10 call you, “I’m sorry to inform you but your husband is diagnosed with tuberculosis, he’s been taken to the sanitarium.” Not a chance to say, and not only that, it’s interesting, the situation was terrible. Anyway, somebody should write not only about them, but about the heroic nurses and doctors that worked there, eventually who, a high percentage of them also got TB. One day you’re working there as a doctor or a nurse and the next day you’re there as a patient. It was a life sentence, you never left. SL: I didn’t realize that it was that you could never leave. LG: Well they had no cure for it. Eventually they got a cure of course, but originally you were there for life until you died. The dying was not very pleasant either, it was a terrible disease. Anyway I think somebody, some history buff, should write about what a sad situation it was and what a heroic people were that volunteered to take care of those people. SL: Yes, I’ll have to tell a student; I always have history students looking for fun and interesting topics to write about. LG: Well that may be an interesting topic I think, but anyway it always impressed me. Back to where we were going. SL: I had asked you about gambling. LG: Oh, I recall seeing it one time. A keno card, you know the ones where in like Las Vegas they put a flash of ink on the numbers. I remember seeing one of those at one time and asking what it was. There were some Chinese fellows who ran a Keno game at one time, but I never saw any gambling in the sense of like Las Vegas with wheels and that. But most of the bars had slot machines, I remember 11 seeing that. And of course the Elks Lodge and the Moose Lodge and the American Legion they all had slot machines. That was a large part of their operating expenses and every once in a while a wife would complain that her husband got paid and went to American Legion and lost all his money in the slot machine. She’d go to the city council and complain and they would say, “Well we certainly didn’t know it was like Casablanca. We didn’t know there was gambling going on, we will do something about it.” They would call up the American Legion and say, “We’ve got some complaints about your slot machines we’re going to come up tomorrow night.” They’d say, “Okay.” They’d haul all the slot machines down into the basement. They had a bunch of old ones that they bought from Las Vegas, 15 or 20 dollars each, they didn’t work. They would haul them back up and put them in at the top. The police would raid the place, grab the slot machines, and next day in the Standard-Examiner you would see a picture of the sheriff with a sledge hammer smashing them at the dumps. Everybody was happy and after a week or two they would haul the good ones back upstairs again. It was well known to everyone and nobody really complained too much. SL: Other than when their husbands lost their money right? LG: Yeah, and they went home after troupe de flight with prostitution. I never defended anyone on a prostitution charge, including Rose Davie. I never defended a prostitute. What they would do is everybody knew there was prostitution, but Rose was advertising it openly, which I think was one of her mistakes. She shouldn’t have been so blatant about that, but anyway everybody knew. Once in a while, after a while the pressure would kind of build up and 12 people would go to the city council about it, but Ogden was ambivalent towards it. Val Holley told me one time he thought he was in a pretty good position to work on what happened on 25th Street because his mother and father lived out in Slaterville. Now I don’t know how living out in Slaterville would make his mother and father an authority on prostitution on 25th Street, but he seemed to think that it would. Anyway my parents used to live in Gentle Desert Virginia City or Abilene or one of the frontier towns or tombstones. In a way they kind of liked the reputation for being wild and rowdy, but in other ways they didn’t. But they periodically got a lot pressure on prostitution so they would raid some place. They would come down and arrest two or three prostitutes and then they’d haul them into court and fine them 100 dollars. The judge would always say, “Not only am I fining you 100 dollars, but I’m giving you six months in jail if you’re found in Ogden City in the next six months.” Well that was all right because they were kind of on a circuit: Rock Springs to Kemmerer, Wyoming to Cut Bank, Montana to Havre, Montana. They were on a circuit so they were going to leave town anyway so it wasn’t a big deal. SL: What were some of your impressions of Rose? You hear Rose and I’ve always had this mythos of her. There’s sort of an impression about the type of woman she was and I’m interested, since you actually knew her, what you thought about her? LG: Well I probably shouldn’t. I’m not divulging any secrets. As I say, I met Rose. She had been arrested. She needed a lawyer, came into see me and she was a 13 beautiful woman and she was a very poised woman, self-confident. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn, she walked like she had been raised with books on her head. She was then about, I don’t know how old she was 30 to 35 or so at the time when I met her. She was a good client, in other words a lot of people, “Oh you represent Rose Davie did she want to take it out in trade or something?” She was a business woman and in fact she kind of cowed me. She came in she said, “I’m Rose Davie.” I said, “Yeah, sit down. Most people call me LG.” She says, “I’ll call you Mr. Bingham, you may call me Rose.” I thought, hmm, and I said, “Well no, my friends call me LG.” She said, “I’m looking for a good lawyer, I have plenty of friends.” She gave me a look, it wasn’t a cold look. It was a look that said, “Mr. I’m hiring you to be a lawyer and I understand you’re a good one and that’s what I’m hiring you for.” But I don’t know, I never asked her for instance, “How does a nice girl like you get involved in this kind of a business?” I mean you don’t ask those kind of questions. She had a look; people’s eyes have always fascinated me. Never been able to figure out what her eyes looked like, what color they were or anything. But she had a look that, not an unfriendly look, but one thing you knew if you had a confrontation with her she would win with her look. She had a powerful personality, but like I say, I don’t know how you would publish it. But anyway, oh I’ll tell you. One time she was in my office and I had a client in there. She came in, my secretary was gone, I don’t know why, and I heard the door open and went out. I said sit down I’ll be with you in a minute and my fiancée came in and I introduced her to Rose, course she knew who she was. I thought that would be 14 an interesting confrontation and I told Rose that she was my fiancée and I could hear them talking cause I was with this client for about a half an hour and I could vaguely hear them talking. I’ve always wanted to know what they were talking about, but I’ve never dared asked my wife and Rose never said. One thing, I tried a case in Salt Lake, a case that I tried for and I was in Salt Lake quite a while. My wife never was jealous of Rose in the slightest, ever. You have my word. I don’t know what they said, but I’m sure that Rose told her not in so many words that your fiancée or husband is perfectly safe with me. In other words I never got the impression of what my wife actually thought of her. Anyway, she was a powerful personality. SL: And you said Rose was pretty well-known around Ogden right? LG: She was very well-known. In fact with her auto, convertible, her cat on a leash in the front seat, she was. This is what she told me, they used to have boxing matches out at the Coliseum. You know where that is? SL: Yes, out west. LG: They’d box in it and evidently she had boys going around passing out her business cards. She was very well known, although you didn’t have that many photographs at that time, of course you didn’t have T.V. But I’m sure everyone, everyone in Ogden could recognize Rose Davie in a minute at that time. She was the type of personality that when she walked in the room everyone would immediately notice she was there. SL: Did you ever meet Bill? 15 LG: I represented Bill in an accident case one time. I never knew him in great detail. I knew he was a stand up for gambling, but he was kind of a good match with Rose. He was a strong personality, in other words when I met him I don’t know anything about any crime that he was involved in or anything of that nature. SL: Right. So when Rose was she was arrested on a drug charge, was Arlyn Garside after Rose? Was he the one that arrested her? LG: This is where we get in a touchy area because Arlyn was controversial. He was a captain of the vice squad and the only time I ever had a conversation with Arlyn was on the witness stand. After he retired he moved up to the little town Mountain Green just before you get to Morgan, when you go through the canyon. I never heard of him after that. See the problem with talking about Arlyn, there are always controversies swirling around, insinuation, police department accusing each other and all sorts of things going on. I have no knowledge of Arlyn Garside ever doing anything wrong. There were always allegations; law enforcement during that era was a different kettle of fish than it is now. Then he was the officer, and I’m not saying Arlyn was one because I don’t think he was. Many of them had the idea it doesn’t matter if you fudge a little bit to get somebody convicted because we all know damn well that they committed a hell of a lot more crimes than they’ve ever been punished for. Course my idea was directly the opposite, so I can’t tell you much about Arlyn. SL: So is it the same with Mac Wade? I know Mac and Arlyn didn’t get along. Did you have any impressions about Mac Wade? 16 LG: I never had any court cases with Mac, he was quite a guy. I talked to him quite a bit, but we talked about ranching and being a cowboy. He was one of the last cowboys here that Weber County had. He reminded me a lot of John Wayne, big cowboy boots, cowboy hat. Never wore a 6 gun, but it would’ve been appropriate if he did. He was a kind of a rough spoken cowboy, but like I say, I never had a case with him, but I had a lot of conversations with him. I think he was born 50 years too late. He would’ve been a good cowboy, kind of like Mac Dylan, except I think he kind of had the idea that 25th Street was a necessity. 25th Street was not something that Ogden had because it was kind of a luxury. It was something that was there and you couldn’t get rid of it as long as the money was there and business was there, you’re going to have 25th Street. We can control it, but one of the things that most people don’t realize about 25th Street is they had all these competing like Jack Card, who was a professional baseball player before he became Mac Wade’s chief deputy. SL: I didn’t realize that. LG: He was an interesting man. There were all these conflicts between them, but nobody got beaten up, nobody got taken for a ride, nobody got shot, nobody got killed as I ever knew of. There were competing interests, but I can’t remember any violence for some reason. This person causing problems—sometimes they would allege that somebody turned them into the cops or something. Oh another thing I’d like you to do for me. You remember Doc White? SL: I do. LG: You never saw him of course? 17 SL: No. LG: Truly a great guy. He was a podiatrist. SL: Yes, a podiatrist. Joe McQueen told me that. LG: In St. Louis he used to come visit me all the time. In fact he talked me into joining the NAACP one time. Yes, anyway Doc was a very, very intelligent man. Then there was another black man named Eason, you probably never heard of him. He was a black patrolman, he was the only one we had. He wore a policeman’s uniform. He patrolled 25th Street, mainly the Porters and Waiters side of the street. I never had a conversation with him. He was a man, looked like Joe Lewis, a big man. He and Doc White were the only two black officers that we had. I wish somebody would look into that because he kept the peace in the black community down there. It was all very quiet. SL: I will have to mention his name to Joe McQueen, because Joe and Doc White were good friends. LG: And another thing I’d like you to look into. SL: You bet. LG: From Weber State. What did Weber State do when they finally decided that they should recruit some black athletes? Where were they going to live? They couldn’t live in the dorms. They couldn’t eat at the cafeteria. What were they going to do? They’re going to board them at the Porters and Waiters Club. SL: I was going to say, Annabelle took a lot of them in. LG: Yeah, but just think of this. You’re the mother of a black athlete in California. Where’s my son going to live? He’s going to live on lower 25th Street in the 18 Porters and Waiters Club which has a reputation, although unproven, with gambling and all sorts of things going on. That’s where he’s going to live. He’ll get out and ride the bus up to Weber State. Have you ever heard of Lyle Korasaki? SL: No, I haven’t. LG: Korasaki, a Japanese fellow. I think he played football for Weber State and he lived down on 25th Street too. I wondered if anybody knew that. Later he quit the college and worked with the manager of the Porters and Waiters Club for a while. A very interesting man. But anyway then, there was another guy, a basketball player named Holmes. SL: Oh, Allen Holmes, yes. LG: He was very well known at the college and had an association with the college for a long time. Got in an accident and was no longer able to play basketball. I always wondered where he lived, whether he lived in the Porters and Waiters Club. But anyway, I don’t think Weber State is particularly proud of the fact that the first black athletes were relegated to 25th Street. I think it should be looked into. SL: Well, I talked to Joe McQueen about having to be on the south side of the street and things and he said that was the culture and the climate of the time. For us now, looking back at it it’s kind of hard to believe. LG: And Doc White was a brave man who got killed by a 14 year old guy. Okay, what else? SL: Well, I don’t know if you can talk about any other cases you had. 19 LG: Well, I did mention I had four murder cases on 25th Street. Four capital murder cases, and all four of them happened in the Rose Rooms. One happened in the Rose Rooms when it was an apartment; had nothing to do with Rose. One was out on the street; one was the man who shot his wife on 25th Street, just above Wall on the south side, a black bar. The gentleman was a man by the name of Smith, Kenton Smith. I’ll talk to you a little bit about these former cases. All four of them were practically the death penalty. In fact, at one time I was the only death qualifier lawyer in Northern Utah. You know what death qualified means? SL: That you can try capital murder cases? LG: The supreme court at one time—I could graduate from law school today, be admitted to practice law tomorrow, come up to Ogden, you could hire me to represent you in a death penalty case even though I had never been in a court room in my life. It’s like somebody saying, “I want to be a brain surgeon,” and they say, “Well have you ever done anything?” He says, “Well no.” They say, “That’s okay start in. You learn by experience.” Anyway, so I was appointed on a lot of it and what most people don’t know is that I got paid nothing. Those four on 25th Street, one of them I got paid on, the other three I got paid nothing on. All I got was people angry at me for defending each person, and yet I had no choice. Anyway one of them was a black man who shot his wife as I say. He had been in the Marines and after the war he came to Ogden on the greyhound bus. Got off the bus, put his backpack in a locker, walked across the street to the, I think to Mecca, went in ordered a glass of beer. He didn’t drink any of it, turned around, walked out, talked to an 81 year old man by the name of Edington sitting 20 at a table, went over to the bus depot, got his 22 semi-automatic came up and pumped 9 bullets in the old man. Walked out of the bar, walked up to Grant, walked along Grant towards the Brown Ice Cream and, of course, the people were following him and called the police and said there he is. They arrested him, I was appointed to defend him. I asked him, “Why did you shoot him?” He looked at me and said, “How would you feel if you walked into a bar, ordered a glass of beer and instead of beer, v8 juice came out of the oven?” I said, “How did you know it wasn’t tomato juice? You didn’t taste it did you?” He looked at me like I was crazy. Anyway he was found guilty by reason of insanity, went to Provo, very intelligent man. I don’t know what experiences he had in the war, but I think they were pretty terrible. At Provo, a number of years later, I went down and he was sick. Dr. Kiger was in charge of criminal cases and when somebody would run away from the hospital they would have a group of patients who would go out and wander all around Provo looking for them cause they knew what they looked like. Kiger’s Tigers, and this man was the Captain of the Kiger’s Tigers. Later the judge ruled that he had been restored sanity and he married a psychiatric nurse that he met in the hospital. Very, very interesting man. Then another one was a case involving a couple of Mexican farm workers who were up here for the summer and that was a very difficult case for me because none of them spoke English. The man that shot his wife, it was kind of interesting, he was a black man and in the newspaper article they always pointed out that he was a Negro, and the last one said he took off and was arrested in 21 Wyoming and brought back. The newspaper article said the defendant is a Negro and it said his wife that he killed is also a Negro, they made certain that was prominent. Of course Doc White was angry. He was found guilty of manslaughter, served about three years, but he worked in the Warden’s House. At that time the Warden had a home on the prison grounds just outside the prison wall. Wardens used to live in the prison in the old days. I was down there one day and I saw him outside the fence, his name was William Howard Robinson. Murderers were only allowed to work the Warden’s House where his wife and kids were, they won’t hurt anybody. A robber or something never. SL: But a murderer was okay? LG: Only if you murdered somebody like a family member. I had another man who murdered his wife and his boyfriend. He used to complain to me all the time that he couldn’t read his bible in prison, in the jail because of the foul language that was going on, it upset him, and yet he killed his wife and boyfriend. Of all the murders that I represented, I represented nine death penalty cases. Not one of them ever said to me that they were sorry that they killed the person or that they were sorry for their family or anything, not one of them. Not one of them ever thanked me either. A mother thanked me once, a grandmother thanked me once, but never the client. SL: Did you ever know Eddy Doherty? LG: Oh yeah I knew him, I represented Eddy. He was another man that was interesting. Eddy was an alcoholic eventually. That’s another story I shouldn’t get into because it involves a couple of law enforcement officers. They had an 22 undercover woman, an informant and she talked Eddy into going along on a burglary. The judge knew that, everybody knew that she had talked him into going along. He sat in the car while this woman ran the burglary. I don’t know how drunk he was, but I felt sorry for him, the judge did too. Anyway he was sent to Utah State prison and I represented him at the parole hearing and the head of the parole board at that time was the vice-president of a bank in Salt Lake. The bank that used to have the scoreboard on it. I don’t know whether you know what I’m talking about or not. Anyway he was the chairman of it and it was an Irish name. I told Eddy when he appeared before the parole board, he said, “I don’t know what to say.” “Eddy with your record.” He said, “Well I’ll do the talking.” When they called him up the chairman said, “You’ve got quite a record here, been in prison most of your life.” Eddy said, “That’s right, sir.” “How come?” He said, “Well, as you know,” and like I said he had an Irish name, “We Irish we are always cops or thieves, and I never wore a badge,” and he laughed and laughed. When he went out he gave him one year minimum. He was a very smart man, he had a wasted life, a very smart man. I don’t know, what people don’t realize, I didn’t talk to any people about give me your background, tell me about all the things you did wrong, when you were a little boy was your momma mean to you or what? I talked about what I needed to talk to them about, what I needed to defend them. SL: Exactly, that’s what you needed to know and that’s what you did. LG: Did you know I worked with Weber State? I worked thirty years at Weber State. Ten years as an adjunct and twenty years as a faculty member in criminal justice. 23 For twenty-five years, I practiced law and I taught part-time at police academies. I taught twenty years at the police academy in Salt Lake, twenty years at the corrections academy in Brigham City when the Indian school was there. They had police officers from all over the United States, Alaska and Puerto Rico and Hawaii. I taught up there for five years before it moved to New Mexico. I taught classes at Lame Deer Montana to the northern Cheyenne, towards Duchenne, to the Ute Indians, Fort Hall to the Shoshone. I taught down at the police academy in Window Rock Arizona to the Navajo. I taught a lot of classes, I taught a class to the Utah Supreme Court. I had twelve appeals to the Utah Supreme Court, which you don’t win, and I won six of them. In other words when you appeal a case to the Supreme Court you have about ten percent chance of getting a reversal. Anyway it’s interesting. I was the administrative law judge at Weber State for twenty years, a hearings officer. I taught the first interactive T.V. classes from Weber State. They can talk to me, I can talk to them. I had a number of classes on that which was great. During the summer quarter I’d go fishing down at Flaming Gorge, I can’t remember I think it was Thursday night when I did the T.V., I would kind of, as a joke, stay in my hip boots and fishing outfit and I’d go down to Vernal and teach the class from down there then go back and go camping. One time the Supreme Court heard a case, use of deathly force by a police officer. It changed Utah law. There were three ways that they could do it. The old law was the Fleeing Felon law. If an officer thought somebody had committed a felony and he was running away the police officer could shoot him. 24 A felony was defined as any crime for which you would go to the state prison, including adultery. Then other states said you can’t shoot him because it’s any felony, it has to be a portable felony which they defined. In other words, you can’t shoot somebody that’s fleeing on a forgery charge. You can’t shoot them, you can run them down or chase them down, but you can’t shoot them. That’s the new kind of law Utah had. The Supreme Court ended it by saying this is the only way you can do it. This was a problem for Utah because we had all these police officers throughout the state of Utah running around who had been trained under the old law. In other words they had several people who were shot, a burglary suspect for instance. If a guy is trying to break into your home of course you can shoot them, but if an officer gets called and the burglar is running down the street, unless he has probable cause that the person had seriously hurt somebody or killed them, he can’t shoot them. He had to run after them. A lot of the officers thought you could still shoot them, which would mean they would be liable, both criminally and civilly. So one summer when I wasn’t teaching the corrections department, the state of Utah hired me to go travel through the state to teach classes to all the law enforcement. So I spent—it was a 4 hour class—so I would go to Beaver or St. George, or Panguitch or someplace go fishing and then teach the class then move on to the next city. So I had a paid vacation for a whole summer. SL: Very interesting. Those were all of my questions. Thank you.