Oral History Program Alejandro Hurtado Interviewed by Ruby Licona 14 March 2002 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Alejandro Hurtado Interviewed by Ruby Licona 14 March 2002 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ 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 Special Collections All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Alejandro Hurtado, an oral history by Kathryn MacKay, 14 March 2002, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Alejandro (Alex) Hurtado conducted by Ruby Licona on March 14, 2002. Mr. Hurtado recounts his experiences on the Ogden City Council, leading the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and founding the Utah SOCIO branch. He shares his recollections of the Hispanic community in Utah during the decades he worked on behalf of Hispanic civil rights. This interview contains offensive or outdated language, including racial slurs. RL: This is an interview being conducted with Mr. Alex Hurtado, who served on the Ogden City Council in the early 1970s. Mr. Hurtado, could you start out and tell us a little bit about your place of birth? Maybe something about your parents and where they came from. AH: Well, I was born in Bingham Canyon, Utah; November 15, 1933. Bingham Canyon was a mining town, Kennecott Copper, and my mother was Alicia Tostado—she was from Old Mexico; she was born in El Rodeo, Tamazula, Durango, Mexico. She was born on May 10, 1909, and she died August 17, 1994. She met my father in Bingham Canyon—Alejandro Hurtado. I’m Alejandro, too, but that’s tough for the gringos, so I’m Alex. My father was born in Jalisco and he died in 1970. He was 63 years of age at the time. My father was a miner. My mother had come up from Old Mexico; I think her brother was working at the mine. There were copper mines out west of Salt Lake, and there she met my father, and they got married and had four children. My mother and father were divorced when I was about seven or eight. My father left and went down to Nicaragua. He remarried and had four children: two boys and two girls. 1 RL: Did you establish contact with them? AH: Yeah, every now and then. For my graduation from high school, my father called and asked me what I wanted as a present. I told him I would like to get to know him. He said, “Fine,” so he sent me a ticket, and after graduation I flew down and spent the summer with my father in Nicaragua, in a little town called Bonanza. He was a general foreman of a gold mining operation. I didn’t know my father real well, but he was a very good, hard-working man, nice fellow. My mother came from a pretty well-to-do family. I did not realize that until years later. I knew that they had a ranch, and I remember, as a child, going down with one of my sisters to spend some time on the family ranch. I remember riding a burro in the mountains for what seemed to be days, but it was pretty big. I found out later on that it was quite extensive. They had 1000 head of cattle, a couple-hundred-thousand square acres of land, and about 100 employees. When I found that out, I said to my mother, “Why didn’t you go back to Mexico after you and dad were divorced? I could have had a horse.” She said, “I thought this was a better country for my children.” My mother, after she divorced my father, was an extraordinarily hard worker; she could work 18 or 22 hours a day and had a wonderful personality. She rented an apartment house from a fellow, moved us in there, and she ran a boarding house. RL: Where was that? AH: In Bingham Canyon. So we had boarders, and then she would make breakfast, lunch, and dinner for about 30 or 35 guys. I don’t know how she did it; it was a lot of work. 2 RL: Did she make traditional foods? AH: Yeah, she made everything. RL: So she got up and made her tortillas in the morning? AH: She was an extraordinary cook. My mother could taste anything and within three or four tries reproduce it. My mother had been married before she married my father, and his name was Albert Lujan. RL: Now, Tostado was her married name or her maiden name? AH: Her maiden name was Tostado, and then she married Lujan. He worked for the government and was killed in some accident. She had two children from him. RL: So did she have a pension from that? AH: No. RL: Nothing? AH: No, and so when she got divorced from my father, she told him she didn’t want any money from him because she didn’t want him to tell her how to raise her children. In those days, that was really something, because she had no relatives, there were no food stamps, no poverty programs and stuff like that. RL: So that was during WWII? AH: That was just before WWII in the ‘30s, and she went and got that boarding house and she moved the six of us in there and raised ‘em up pretty good. Later on, she met another fellow who was a businessman coming down from Montana to set up a business in Bingham Canyon. He sold her a small hotel, and she bought a bar and restaurant on 25th Street: 159 25th Street. RL: On 25th Street in… 3 AH: Ogden, during WWII. She moved us up there. Downstairs we had a restaurant and a bar, and upstairs on the second floor was where our family lived—my brothers and sisters and my mom and I. On the third floor, we rented rooms to workers, generally railroad workers. RL: Did you rent the rooms to Latino railroad workers? AH: No, there weren’t many Latinos in those days; it was Anglos, by and large. Bingham was a very fascinating experience because it was a mix of cultures. There were Greeks, Italians, Norwegians, Swedes, Mexicans, and Indians. RL: Then you came to Ogden; was there much diversity here? AH: There was considerable diversity. Ogden has been ethnically the most diverse town in the state because of the railroad, and because of the military outfits and other things like that—and because farming was big in those days. RL: So your mother had bought this place from the businessman from Montana, and you lived here in Ogden on 25th Street. How old were you then? Was this when you were in middle school? AH: Let’s see, that was about 1941 or ’42, but by that time I was around 10 or so. Twenty-fifth was a very rough street. Well, first of all, going back to Bingham, Bingham was very ethnically diverse, and so I met a lot of people; became good friends with Greeks and others. We had fun as kids running the mountains and playing games and riding the trains and trading ethnic foods with each other. We got to be pretty good friends. RL: Do you still have contact with any of those friends? 4 AH: Not too many. But it was good preparation for going out in life and meeting other people. I wasn’t hung up on whether they were brown, green, black, or purple. We learned in the mines that it’s how good of a man you are: if you are a good worker, if you know what you are doing, if you are honest, if you take care of your wife and kids. So it was a very good culture. While we were there, we learned to box; my brothers and I became boxers. We kind of became town heroes. My younger brother was a referee; my next brother and I boxed, and we were known as the Fighting Hurtados. We were asked to go all around the state and be the opening routine and box. RL: Did you fight against each other? AH: Oh yeah, and we got so popular, my mother took a velvet dress she had and cut it up and made us shorts. It was fun. They would throw money into the ring after we finished the fight. RL: Were you able to leave the fights in the ring? AH: Sometimes. RL: Sometimes you took them home, huh? AH: Yeah, but we generally did fight with each other. In a mining town, when you meet a guy, you probably had a fight to see who’s gonna be the boss, or if you are going to be friends. I made some of my best friends after a bunch of fights. We would sit down and visit and got to like each other. It’s a very interesting town. We had a pretty good experience there; then we moved up to 25th and Wall in Ogden during WWII. Of course, by that time, Ogden was in the middle of the war, and we were only about a half a block from the train station, so we were 5 used to troops just pouring out of there by the thousands and then loading back up and leaving. It happened all day long; 25th Street was notorious for all kinds of fun and activities. During that time, my mother took the precaution of sending myself, my sister, and my two younger brothers down to St. Anne’s orphanage in Salt Lake on 7th East and 21st South. We were there for a few years. Then we got older and I came back, and then pretty soon they came back. I went to St. Joseph’s School, and then later on I went to Central Junior High. We worked in the bar in the restaurants and we hid under the counter when the cops came in. RL: When you were in the orphanage, you still saw your mother? AH: Oh, yeah! RL: It was just for your good, rather than having you grow up on 25th Street? AH: That was a lot of it, and education-wise. My mother, as I’ve said, was a very good businesswoman, and so we did well in our restaurant and bar. It was hard not to do well in those days. I mean, when thousands pour out of the train, and they’ve made up their shopping list: 50 hamburgers, 25 hamburgers, 40 cokes, 20 beers. Then they’d load up and go back to the train. RL: That’s really take-out, isn’t it? AH: It really was. You would see them come in from the Far East in bandages and crutches, and you knew they were coming back. If they were fresh and undamaged, you knew they were going out. RL: So you worked behind the bar and hid when the cops came. Did you ever get caught? 6 AH: No, I’d remember getting caught. I didn’t work the bar; I worked the restaurant in the back. RL: And you went to St. Joseph’s, then to Central Middle School… AH: Central Junior High, I went there in the eighth grade. RL: After that, where did you go? AH: Oh, about that time—it was about ‘46 or ‘47—my mother sold the bar, and she ended up marrying the fellow that sold it to her, Albert Lujan. We moved to Salt Lake, and they bought a house down on 1799 South State. I went to school for about a year at a city school. Then I found out that I could play football in the ninth grade and I thought that would be fun. It was at Judge Memorial. High school in those days was only 10th, 11th, and 12th. Maybe it still is, I don’t know. But at any rate, I went up to Judge Memorial, which was a Catholic school, and in our first year, we won the state championship in football. RL: What position did you play? AH: Guard and quarterback. I was just a freshman. But, anyway, we won the state championship, and that summer the fellow that had coached us died. He was about 47 years old. He was a returned veteran from the military, a major in the Marines, and he had an attack of malaria while he was swimming and drowned. That really crushed us because he had won 11 or 14 letters at Loras College in different sports. RL: At what college? AH: Loras, in Dubuque, Iowa. He made a real impact on me in an indirect way. He was very direct, but he was smart about doing it indirectly, and between him and 7 the teachers, I was learning a lot and enjoying it. But the most important thing is we decided we wanted to come back and win another state championship in his honor. RL: What was his name? AH: Bill Moran. They recruited another coach and this one was 23 years old, fresh out of Loras College, a tackle by the name of Bill Mares. An accountant came out to be our coach. He changed us from the single-wave to the T-formation which was kind of new in those days, and we went back and won another state championship. By that time, I was a junior and I thought, “Well, there is no use horsing around, I’ll just stay here.” So I ended up graduating from Judge Memorial. Later on, I went up to the University of Utah. When I was in Salt Lake, I worked a number of jobs; I’d learned to work since I was a little kid in Bingham. We would get rocks out of the mines, wash them, stick them in jars, and sell them to the tourists for tourist mementos. They didn’t have much tourist mementos in those days. We ran and delivered groceries, put out fires for the AFL-CIO. Then on 25th Street, I learned to shine shoes, besides working in the back. One of my jobs—not a job, but one of the things I did a lot for the Hispanics that didn’t speak English—I would take them up to the bank to get their money, and take them to the stores and help them shop. RL: So you served as an interpreter, kind of? AH: Yeah. 8 RL: Were there a lot of Hispanics coming through at that time? Was it migrant workers? AH: I didn’t really pay that much attention; some were railroad, some were migrant workers. Most of them, I think, had to do with the railroad, because that’s who we were in contact with down on 25th and Wall. My mother taught us to speak Spanish, so we never had a problem. We spoke English in the streets and Spanish at home. RL: Did you ever learn to write Spanish, or read it? AH: A little bit, yeah. I’m a more verbal person than a letter person, and that goes for my English, too. Although, if I really put my mind to it, I can sit down and do a fairly articulate piece in whatever I’m thinking about. But anyway, I learned to shine shoes, and when we moved to Salt Lake, I worked doing dishes, and then I had a life-changing event. I went to buy a pair of shoes. Sounds funny. RL: How was that a life-changing event? AH: I went to Florsheim Shoe Store, 164 South Main. I went to buy a pair of shoes because that was the “in” shop. But I couldn’t afford the Florsheim’s, which were the expensive ones. I bought a pair of Worthmore’s, but at least they were from Florsheim. At any rate, just before closing time, I went in and bought my shoes, and as I was waiting to leave, the fellow in front of me paid for his shoes and said to the manager that he’d like to have them shined, ‘cause he was getting married that night. The manager said that he was sorry, but he didn’t have a shoe shine boy. I said to the guy, “Put on the shoes and I’ll shine them for you.” 9 The manager looked surprised and he said, “Do you know how to shine shoes?” I said, “Yeah, I shine shoes for the Greeks down the street.” He says, “Well, are you sure?” “Yeah.” The guy got to the shoe shine stand, I gave him a good spit shine, and when he was done, he was going to pay me and I said, “No, that’s my wedding present.” He said, “You don’t even know me.” I said, “Doesn’t matter, have a good wedding.” The owner was impressed; I volunteered to do this, didn’t want to get paid, and seemed to have a good personality about it, I guess. He asked me for my name and phone number. A couple of weeks later, I was working at shining shoes; I was also working doing dishes, and I quit because they had a new owner and he was cutting back my hours. So it happened that Mr. Homan called me and asked if I would like to shine shoes for him, and I said, “Okay.” So I went down there, and that was one of the centers of town. If you ever saw “Salt Lake in the ‘50s,” that was one of the big things. In fact, I was in that show, “Salt Lake in the ‘50s.” But anyway, it was a great place because I met all kinds of people, and I became the most famous shoeshine boy in town. RL: Was there a documentary made about Salt Lake in the ‘50s? AH; Yeah, KUED just did one. One of the guys that used to come and get his shoe shines from me, Ted Capener, was doing the show, and he called me, and he 10 wanted to do a show on Ogden in the ‘50s. When he came up, he asked me to go down to Union Station, and when we were talking, they were filming, and he asked me how I started with Florsheim and I told him. He liked it, and I guess he stuck it in the “Salt Lake in the ‘50s” show. But, anyway, I met all kinds of people down there, and got to be well-known; the disc jockeys always talked about it. They gave me the nickname “Felix the Cat,” and so people thought I changed my name when I said I was Alex because those guys kept calling me Felix the Cat. RL: Felix and Alex. AH: Yeah. Anyway, I went to Judge Memorial and then I kept working there and I became a salesman. While I was selling shoes, somehow or another, I met a fellow—who got to be a very good friend—by the name of Evans. One day, he asked me if I would like to join the Jaycees. I said “Jaycees? What the hell is that? I’ve got enough trouble being a Mexican.” He said, “It’s a civic organization for young men.” “Well, what do they do?” You do civic projects.” I said, “When do you meet?” He said, “We meet at noon.” I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t want to join, but I knew my boss would never let me off during the lunch hour—he wouldn’t let any of us off, that was a busy time. I said, “Well, if Mr. Homan will let me off during the lunch hour, I’ll do it. Go ask him.” 11 He went over and he came back and he said, “Mr. Homan thinks it’s a great idea, and he’ll pay for your membership.” I thought, “Holy gosh!” So, anyway, I went and got involved in the Jaycees, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and met guys who would become big leaders in the state. But more importantly, I got involved in the Junior Chamber civic work, and I was intrigued by the political process they went through for their elections. Later on, I was promoted to assistant manager, and by that time I was in almost my third year at the University of Utah. They said they were opening up a new store in Ogden. They were going to lease a space and put in a Florsheim shoe store, and they asked me to go up there and be the manager. I agreed to do that, but I didn’t want to leave my girlfriend and I didn’t want to drive back and forth, so I thought it would be a good idea if we got married. We got married before we came up. RL: So you got married so that you could come take the job? AH: No, so I didn’t have to drive back and forth. I was very lazy about driving around to pick up a girlfriend. RL: How long did the marriage last? AH: We’re still married. RL: You’re still married. Well, you must have done something right. AH: Forty-three years, four children. RL: When were you married? AH: October 23, 1959. 12 RL: Okay. Before you got married, were you in the military? AH: Yes, that was my interruption before I became assistant manager. I just thought I should do my part. I had been going to the University of Utah and I was in the Air Force training program up there. Then they changed the rules so that they’d only keep you if you could be a pilot. I had a bad right eye—had it scarred when I was young, so I couldn’t be a pilot. It used to be that if you couldn’t be a pilot, you could be a co-pilot. They kind of finished that out, so I went and joined the National Guard because my brother was in the National Guard. I became a sergeant in the National Guard, combat engineers. I just thought that it was time for me to serve. I told them I wanted to go on active duty, so I went on active duty and I ended up going to Germany after I finished my basic training and advanced training. When I got there, within a week after I got there, they sent me to the seventh Army NCO Academy—the Non-Commissioned Officers Academy— which was known as the West Point of Non-Commissioned officers, in Munich, Germany. I found out later on that the reason they sent me down there was because they figured I couldn’t make it. If I didn’t make it, they’d break me in rank, and then they could make somebody else a sergeant. But I surprised the company commander and I graduated in the upper 10% of my class. He was so proud, he came down for the graduation. Trouble is, when I got back to the unit, he put me in charge of troop information and education, the mail room, plus I had a tank and a half track and training. I didn’t mind it because I liked the work, so I had a lot of fun, and we spent a lot of time out in the field. 13 RL: Well, with that much variety, it didn’t allow much time for getting bored, did it? AH: No, actually, we spent so much time in the field that when we got in, the first thing we wanted to do was take a bath, get dressed, go out, eat and drink, and drink a lot. That helped a lot. I love that beer. Unfortunately, when I came back and tasted American beer, it was crappy, so I stopped drinking beer. But that was a very good experience. Then I was back at the University of Utah, and I was asked to come up to Ogden. I agreed to come up. I got involved in the Junior Chamber of Commerce up here. That led to involvement in civic and community work; later on, I was the leader of the Hispanics in the city. RL: In Ogden? AH: In Ogden, and one of the leaders in the state. I set up the structure for SOCIO, a Spanish-speaking organization, and I helped the Hispanics a lot here. As a leader of the Hispanics, I got them to stop wasting their time talking about discrimination. In the late ‘60s we had the riots down in Los Angeles and back east and all that. One day I got a call from this fellow from the Rotary Club, and he said, “Alex, we feel this town is ready to explode.” I said, “You’re right.” We had the largest Hispanic population of any city in the state, and the largest black population. He said, “We ought to do something about it, can we talk?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “Okay, let’s get together over here at the Ben Lomond Hotel.” I said, “Nope. I’ll meet you in West Ogden. I’ll call you back.” I called the priest at St. Mary’s and said, “Can we have a meeting there?” 14 “For what?” I told him and he said, “Okay.” So I called him back and said, “I’ll meet you at West Ogden at night.” Because these guys got to work during the day, they were very nervous about coming to West Ogden. RL: They didn’t want to go there at night, particularly. AH: But it was a church, and I said, “God will protect you.” I knew what was going on; because of being raised on 25th and Wall, I knew that when I went to Washington Boulevard and east, that was a new world. That was a different world. I shaved and dressed to go up to Washington and above. I knew for those guys, they were afraid to even go on 25th Street; to go to West Ogden scared the pants off them. But I told them, “It’s very important you do it that way.” Then I got the Hispanics together, and I told them, “I’m going to meet with the gringos, and we are going to tell them how things are.” They started to, “Yeah, we’re going to tell them.” I said, “No, you don’t understand. We’re just going to tell them how things are. I don’t want anybody to talk about ‘discrimination’.” “Grumble, grumble, discrimination!” “I know, I don’t care. It’s not discrimination until they think it’s discrimination. We’ll just tell them how things are, and then we’ll see what we can do about it.” Well, we had a meeting, they came over; there must have been around 15 or 18 of them plus us. RL: Do you remember any of the people who were involved? 15 AH: Gilbert Moore, he was in rocket science and rotary. I don’t remember many of them. I have more concern about my people. There was Silva, Martinez, Dolores Silva, some of the gals were great. Anyway, we told them how it was. Far as I knew, there were only two Mexicans working on Washington Boulevard that weren’t janitors. I was the manager of Florsheim; there was another Mexican kid who worked for a jewelry company, who was a manager. RL: And everyone else was…? AH: Janitors, if they were that, and very few. No sales clerks. We just went through; I forgot what we were talking about, but somebody said, “It works like this: you go in through here, and you have to be out of here.” Finally one of the gringos said, “Well, that’s discrimination.” I looked at my people, and they looked at me, and we smiled, and we said, “Yeah, I guess it is.” They said, “Let’s have another meeting.” “Okay.” So this time, when we come back, there’s about 30 of them. We talked about what we could do to cool things off. RL: This was in the late ‘60s? AH: Yeah, I was president of SOCIO. Then for some reason or another, I don’t know if it was a result of that or what, but I decided maybe what we ought to do was throw a party for the Hispanics and the gringos in the community. Only this time, make them feel comfortable. I told them we would have it out at the South Ogden Armory. I called the governor and I said, “We are going to do this. I think if you could come, it would be good.” 16 RL: Now, who was the governor then? AH: Bangerter. He had gone to school with my wife, and he knew me because I’d helped him. He said, “Okay.” So we got the armory, set up Mexican food, got bands, and invited up the gringos—told them they’d bring the gringos and we’d bring the Mexicans, and we’d all get out there and have a good time. Well, we had a hell of a snowstorm, it was winter, but we got a terrific crowd—700 or 800 people. I remember midway through the night, a guy come to me and he says, “Alex, the governor’s here.” I said, “Good.” He says, “No, no, you don’t understand. He’s standing in line in the snow with the others.” “That’s okay.” “But he’s the governor.” I said, “He knows what he is doing; he’s from Magna, out by Bingham. He knows, just leave him alone.” RL: Trying to be one of the people. AH: He knew how to play the game. We had a wonderful time, and then after we paid all of our bills, they said, “Well, we’ve got about $700. What do we do with it?” I said, “Give it to the city.” This was in the early 70s when we had that dance. Because I was on the City Council, I said, “Give the money to the city.” “What?!” I said, “You guys are always complaining, you always want things. Show them you can do something for the city.” I said, “Don’t get a check, get the 17 nickels, dimes, quarters, whatever you got, dollar bills; bundle it up, throw it in a sack and bring it up to the Council.” They did, and the City Council didn’t know what to do. The Mexicans were there giving them money. So we did a lot of things like that. We worked with the colleges; I remember I set up an IBM Clinic. That’s an Indian, a Black, and a Mexican. RL: Okay. Clinic, you mean like a health clinic? AH: IBM Clinic. We’d get an Indian, a Black, and a Mexican, and we’d go around. I’d started to realize that our culture was different, so our words meant different things to me than they did to the gringo. Our concepts were different, and I was trying to get us to bridge this so we would understand each other. The first thing I realized is the gringos don’t understand our culture, and we didn’t know how to communicate to them in their culture. For example: You’re a Mexican, how do you get to heaven? Be good. Right? RL: Right. AH: You’re generally a Catholic, and you just have to be good. How does a gringo get into heaven? Work. They work their way into heaven. It’s a vast difference. Different words, different family. Mexicans are hard-working, they love their family, their family is everything. A couple will move up here, then the rest will move up here. Gringos can spread all over the country, and they don’t go there in clusters like the Hispanics do. We, unlike other ethnic groups, come over here, and like to keep touch with the old culture. But Mexicans, we were plain Mexicans in the United States; we didn’t become Americans in those days. Now, that’s mitigating, but we had to bridge that gap so they understood us a little 18 better. We would go to teachers, and I had fun with teachers. We would go in; in those days they were very receptive. I understood that language because I had been a salesman. RL: They might have been saying they were receptive, but their body language… AH: No, they weren’t saying they were receptive, they were saying with their body language, “We’re here because they told us to be here, because you are troublemakers. You Blacks, you Mexicans,” mostly Mexicans because there were more of us, “and you are going to talk to me about culture.” What I would do, I would say to them, “I’m going to tell you what a pleasure it is for me to have an opportunity to talk to people like you, who teach us to be Americans. Hey, I’m very proud to be one of those people: American, and you people teach us how to be Americans. Tell me, what is an American?” [Uses a very emphasized Spanish accent]. “Well, an American is someone who can say and do whatever they want to say.” “They do that in other countries. Tell me what else.” “Well, they can be what they want to be.” “They can do that in other countries. Wait a minute…” After a while, “I start to get the feeling maybe you guys don’t know what it means to be an American. You’ve got to teach me how to be an American, and if you don’t know, how can I know?” Well, enough of that crap. RL: You get rid of the Speedy Gonzales accent… 19 AH: I wanted them to open up and say, “Wait a minute. Ol’ stupid here is not a spic, he’s up to something. I don’t know where he is going, and that bothers me, because I’m smarter than him; I’m better-educated than him.” So anyway, I’d say, “My observation is that an American is what you believe in, what you’re willing to live by, and what you’re willing to die for. I may be dying for a taco, but I’ll be damned if I die for it.” I said, “Let’s play a game called football.” At that time, Brigham Young University had just won the national championship, and I said, “How would it be if we got them all back together again?” The coach says, “Boys, it’s going to be better than ever before. You’re going to have individual coaches, you are all going to graduate from college, you are all going to get NFL contracts, you are all going to be famous football stars, and you are all going to have all the girls you want and make a ton of money. The only thing we will do differently is we’ll practice like we always do, but we will never win a game. Okay?” “Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Why are we playing?” “We don’t care about that. You are playing football for sex, for money, for notoriety. You’re getting it and fame. Forget that winning crap.” “Well, then why are we playing?” I said, “Okay, let’s change the uniform. Let's make it a military uniform. Army, Navy, Air Force, okay? Now we send those guys out, and we tell them, “You can bomb, you can strafe, you can do all kinds of things. You can kill, but you can’t win.” What happens? Korea. What did the Americans do? They 20 rebelled. The 51st Parallel or something like that was the blocking line; we couldn’t cross it, but they could cross it. Then we got into Vietnam, no win. What happened? It was so anti-cultural that people were going into the streets and protesting the war. They didn’t protest while we were killing people, they only started protesting when we said, “We’re not going to win,” and they started running off to Canada and other places to evade the draft. My point is, that’s your culture. Your culture, as Americans, is to win. Why do we get mad if Weber doesn’t win when they play a great game? Because that’s the name of the game: win. So it was a way of teaching them their culture. By understanding their culture, they could start to understand our culture and our values. Then we’d go around to the cops, and I remember doing the ones at the Ogden City Police Department. I was standing by the chief of police, and he said, “We had a black guy up there,” and one of the cops raised his hand and said, “Well, some of my best friends are niggers.” The chief of police goes, “[makes a noise].” RL: Did he have a heart attack? AH: Damn near. But it made the point. You see what I mean? In those days, yeah, I heard niggers call each other niggers. I never called them niggers. If I called them a nigger, that was offensive. RL: That was fighting words. AH: But my friends who were black would call another guy a nigger, which surprised me. But then, I learned that in the mines. We would be in the barber shop, couple 21 guys waiting for our haircut; guys would come in and say, “Hey, Greek, where’s the spic?” “He’s with the wop” [Italian]. That wasn’t offensive because they were buddies, but if somebody else did it, it was offensive. But anyway, we kind of worked on setting up those understandings and those bridges. We lucked out, we didn’t have a big war. Then I was involved in the Junior Chamber of Commerce and helped elect guys. I’ve been to national conventions and state conventions, and so I started learning the politics of politics. That helped me in my civic work. I used a Jaycee structure to reorganize SOCIO statewide. At one time, it was the most significant of all ethnic groups. When they had the Mexican earthquakes, I was chairman of the committee in Utah to raise the money to help with the earthquake victims. RL: How much were you able to raise for them, do you remember? AH: I forgot how many 1000s it was, I think it was under 10. But it was from Hispanics who aren’t used to giving a nickel. RL: And who don’t have that much to give. AH: Yeah, they didn’t have that much to give. But anyway, the governor was good enough to call me. I said, “Just don’t give it to the damn government.” He said, “Well, find a project with the money that’s left.” I said “Fine.” So I got a hold of the ambassador and said, “Give us a project,” and they said they found one that was a really needy area up in the mountains. San Maria… I forgot the name of the state. They didn’t even have an indoor john, they were so rural. So I set it up so they could build another 22 classroom and some indoor restrooms. I told them to build a 50- by 100-foot cement plaza, so they would have a dry place to celebrate and to dance and to have their meetings. When it was ready, they invited the governor. The governor said, “I can’t make it, why don’t you go in my place?” So I went down to the dedication. They had a copper shield there with the governor, the state of Utah, the American flag, and the Mexican flag. You don’t find too many of those in Mexico. The plaza was nice, and we had a nice dedication there. They were all dressed up and carrying their shoes, walking in the mud till they got there, then they washed their feet and put on their shoes. RL: To go on the cement. AH: To go on the cement to go to the thing. You could see them walking through the fields when we were going out there. That was a good experience because I thought since I was down there, I would call one of my step sisters who lived in Mexico City. I went down to wait for her, because I didn’t know what she looked like, and there was a crowd down there, bunch of cops and military guys with guns, and I thought, “Oh, God, we’re having a revolution.” They said, “No, it’s the president.” So I just stood there and watched, and this guy came walking through. He stopped and looked at me and I looked at him—he was a Hurtado. RL: Oh, was he? AH: Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado. He looked like my dad. I didn’t talk to him. I was supposed to meet him when Ronald Reagan became president. I was going to fly down with Ronald Reagan for his first meeting with Miguel de la Madrid, but 23 Reagan was shot. That changed everything. But at any rate, those were some of the activities that we did in SOCIO. The main thing was I was trying to get other people involved in other things and not going around playing dumb-bat. I remember once they called me, and they were having problems with the community action agency. I went down there, and it was raining and snowing, and they were out carrying signs in the street, and I said, “What the hell are you doing?” “We’re protesting.” “Why? That’s a waste of time, let’s go in and negotiate. I don’t want to get wet.” So I told them how to sit down and talk, and we started getting involved in things and started to make differences throughout the state. We made good contacts with the governor, and he listened to us, the Junior Chamber of Commerce. I got involved in a lot of civic work, and that led me into more political work. RL: Now, you’ve told me about your education, your military, your work experiences. You said that the job with Florsheim was a life-changing experience because it started you in a different direction? AH: Yeah. What happened is, first of all, my wife and I had gone together. I was introduced to her by her sister, who was going at that time with one of my brothers. She was a wonderful gal. We went together while I was going to college, then she waited for me. I was surprised she waited for me while I was in the military. When I came back and started back up at the university, it had been almost seven years that we had known each other. So when I was coming up 24 here, I decided, you know, “That’s it. I’m going to marry her; I can’t go to college at Weber, it’s only a two-year college.” I got involved in Jaycees, civic work, Chamber of Commerce, and all kinds of committees. I was involved in the Republican Party. I’ve been the state delegate and the county delegate, and Richard Richards was the county chairman; later on, he became the state chairman. I once said to him, “If you want me to do something and help you in the campaign—besides put out bumper stickers—give me a call.” So, one day he called me and he says, “Alex, I think I’ve got something you might be interested in.” I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “We’re setting up a national program called Neighbors for Nixon, and I turned your name in.” “What is it?” He says, “Well, we will need you for two months.” I said, “All right. Let me know.” He calls me back and says, “You’re going to Chicago, and the day of the Democratic convention you’ll be in the Hilton Hotel in Chicago, and you’ll get your briefing there.” We went there, they briefed us, and I was assigned to be a field director for California and Texas. I never thought at the time, “I got two big states, I got two important states.” What we were going to do was phone banks, and that was the first time it had ever been done in national politics. They had done it locally, but never on a national level. 25 RL: So this was the Chicago Democratic Convention in ’68? AH: Yeah, and I was at a meeting of Republicans, so we watched the Democrats go in and annihilate each other. At any rate, we got our assignment; we had 30 days to set it up and 30 days to run it and shut it down, and my job was to set up five offices in Southern California and five offices in Texas, 50 phones each; that’s 500 phones. The last 11 days, they threw me into Colorado, and I did Denver with 29 phones. I had to hire one-and-a-half-times that many people in 30 days. Plus, I had to lease the buildings, so I had a lot of work to do, and I went out and set up the offices and had a lot of interesting experiences doing that. Met some very good people. To make a long story short, they started with 18 states, they increased to 24; we carried 22 of the 24. It was designed to move the vote 5%; Richard Nixon finally won in Southern California by 4%. RL: You pretty much were on target, weren’t you? AH: Richards was the one that elected Richard Nixon. They were proud of that. He did some dumb things, but he also did some great things. One of them was that he split Russia and China, which was the beginning of the end for Communism. Ronald Reagan finished it when he broke them. You smile like that’s not the truth. RL: No! It’s good to feel like you’ve had a hand in it. AH: I was taking a class from a Democrat, J.D. Williams, who is an icon in the Utah Democratic Party. He was a professor of political science at the University of Utah. I love history, and I had to take a class so I took one in political science, and he made me realize that it would be fun not only to know history, but to help 26 make history. I’ve had a chance to make history on local, state, and national levels. RL: So you became involved with the Republican party from the beginning, or how did that come about? AH: I don’t know. RL: Because traditionally Hispanics in the country have been Democrats. AH: Yeah, tell me. Ted Wilson, who runs the Hinckley Institute at the University of Utah is the director—a former mayor of Salt Lake and high-ranking, beloved Democrat, is the director—and I’m a member of that board. J.D. Williams started the Hinckley Institute. Mr. Hinckley, in automobiles up here, is the one that funded it. He made a fortune with ABC television. He was one of the founders. I remember once after Clinton announced the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays, I went down to a meeting. There were Ted Wilson; Scott Matheson, Jr., the old Democratic governor’s son; and Pat Shea, who was the Democratic state chairman, and later on became the national director of resources for the federal government. They were all talking, and I knew what they were talking about. I couldn’t resist and I went in. I said, “Oh, hi guys. You know, I don’t know what it is, but since Clinton became president, I feel so much younger and gayer.” RL: Flipping your wrists around like that? AH: Oh yeah, and Wilson says, “Alex, how…?” I said, “How did a Mexican Catholic ever become a Republican?” I said, “I have no idea. All I know is I learned to read, write, and think, and it just seemed to flow naturally.” So we started the meeting. J.D. Williams really impressed me 27 with Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson would have a hard time being a Republican. The other thing is being Catholic, we’re against abortion, and Catholics are pretty strong against being gay. Now, if I recall, the Republican Party leans more that way, and the Democratic party leans for the gays and for the abortion, which is kind of counter to my church. You can dance that one all you want, but I believe that what your parents teach you, on top of what you believe in for a religion, ought to be the basis for your decision—along with economics—on what your party is. I’m not in love with my party. I have served and picked my party because I think it is best for my country. I always admired Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a conservative, but he was a very smart, practical conservative, and he set up a lot of these things to get us out of a depression, but his full intention was to dismantle them after he got the economy going and the war was won. Unfortunately he died, and his lieutenants who survived him just knew that he was doing good things for other people out of my pocket. So I’m a conservative. I’m a liberal on social issues, and Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and those people—and certainly not Clinton—have served my country better. I have served Democratic governors; they were great! Calvin Rampton and Scott Matheson both appointed me to high positions. Calvin Rampton put me in charge of the Utah Manpower Planning Council, a very high position; not paid, but they would always give me freebies on my parking. Later on, Scott Matheson kept me 28 on when he became the governor, and then he appointed me to the Board of Regents, the governing body of all the colleges and universities in the state. RL: When were you on the Board of Regents? AH: Must have been around ‘79, ‘80, something like that, ‘81. I resigned because when I was in Washington, D.C., I became the director of political operations for the Republican Party of the United States in Washington. I just didn’t know when I would get back, and I didn’t want to be unfair to the state, the governor, and the Board of Regents, so I resigned. But when I returned from Washington, the governor called me and asked me to set up the JTPA: the Job Training Partnership Act. I did that. I took over for the old Manpower Planning Council. We set up and I made it an instrument of economic development of Utah, because the governor listened to me and must have pumped in a couple of hundred million federal dollars into economic development for the State. Scott was great, fabulous: great man, great governor. I knew the other two, Bangerter and Leavitt. I’ve been a delegate, I think, seven or eight times to the Republican National Convention. 28 years; I was a senior delegate for a long time. I’ve been a delegate to the state convention since I was 18, except for when I was in the army. I’ve been County Chairman of Conventions eight or 10 times. RL: So did your belonging to the Republican Party make any difference as far as your interaction among the Hispanics? AH: Oh yeah. That’s a very good point. They didn’t trust me. RL: Did they see you as a sellout? A vendido? 29 AH: Yes! I was a vendido. I’d say, you know, “Pardon my abortion. Pardon my abortion.” No, I knew exactly how they felt. The truth of the matter is, I didn’t put them to the wall and say, “Are you a Catholic? Are you against abortion? Then why are you helping a party that’s for it? You are a Catholic, you are against homosexuality, why are you helping a party that’s helping them? Huh? Are you this and that?” I leave it to them, because I understand the politics; it’s part of what your family left you. Eighty-five percent of the blacks are Democrats. It’s because Roosevelt made a quantum shift; the only way he could get elected was to get what he didn’t have and what he couldn’t get. I don’t blame the blacks for hating the damn Republicans. After all, it was a Republican who thought they ought to be free—Lincoln. You know, look at the trouble they’ve had ever since they became free. But at any rate, I understand the politics of it, and Roosevelt realigned those people. He took over the unions, he took over the minorities, and that gave him his base to win. But he was a brilliant conservative leader, and I think he would have straightened it out had he lived. He didn’t; we fell in love with it. It’s like universities. Universities are structured for an era that no longer exists and they will have to go through the bumps; it will be hard for them, but they’ll have to do it. I understand Hispanics who thought I was a sellout. But they also knew that I could get things done, and when the chips were down and there was a problem, they came to me. I solved the problem, and then they could go back to not trusting. But over and over, I came through for them. See, because I didn’t 30 want anything, I didn’t want a job, didn’t want a title. I was the first Mexican realtor in the state of Utah; I was the first Mexican councilman in the state of Utah; I was the first Mexican ever put on the Board of Regents; I was the first Mexican ever to get an honorary degree from a university. I was tired of being first. What I’m glad about is that I got four children. They’re all college graduates from Weber. Two of my daughters are lawyers, graduates from the University of Utah. My third daughter is working on her Master’s degree. That I’m proud of, because they had a great mother. I could be a Democrat if it’s better for my country. I never fall in love with my party. My party is a train; its job is to get me to a certain place, get my country in a certain place. I want something that is good for my country. Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad for me, ‘cause I know I can make it regardless of what it is. I learned that on 25th Street, and I learned that in boot camp. I learned that in the Army, I learned that in business. But you are right, you are very perceptive about that. I was a turncoat. RL: Well, I wasn’t making an accusation, I was just wondering about your interaction and whether it made a difference on how you are viewed. AH: No, you are absolutely right, it’s very perceptive. But they found that I wasn’t doing it for me, number one. Number two, it worked, and number three, I had access because I knew how to talk to the gringos; I knew how to deal with them. RL: What about now? AH: I’m an American, period, by choice. But I’m not ashamed; I never forgot my people. 31 RL: Well, I think that’s part of it: trying to hold on to that culture and to the traditions and so forth. Now Ogden’s demographics have changed dramatically. In the last census period, the state's Hispanic population grew by 136%, Ogden’s Hispanic population grew by 136%, and I understand that right now the count is about 25 to 27% in Ogden, and that’s what’s counted. AH: Gee, if we count all of them, then we got those big... RL: Well, there are people who are probably here undocumented. AH: Probably? RL: I’m trying to be diplomatic. What do you see as the direction that Ogden is going to have to go to deal with this influx of immigrants—to meet their needs, to help them contribute to Ogden Society and so forth. What do you see coming up? AH: You’ve got a good question but you are phrasing it wrong: it’s not what can we do for them, it’s what can you do for you? RL: That was a two-part question, though. AH: What are they doing for themselves, forget Ogden. Ogden will respond to power, like any other city, and presence, like any other city. Ogden City is on its way to becoming Tijuana North. RL: Well, what do you see as what Ogden can do to incorporate these immigrants and have them be viable, contributing members of this society? AH: Well, let me tell you, if I waited for those people to fix it up so I could get in, I never would have got in. Why don’t we just go do it? That was the story that I learned from my mother. She didn’t sit around and worry about being a poor 32 Mexican woman who couldn’t speak English. She ended up with two colonels, none of us went to jail; damn, isn’t that amazing? That’s amazing for us Mexicans. I remember some of the kids, seven or eight of them, that we played around with on 25th Street, they all went to prison or jail. One of them went up on a murder sentence. Why didn’t we do it? Mama. And the thing is what can we do for ourselves? The first thing I would do, I would get rid of Affirmative Action. Absolutely. You know why? Because that’s the minority. By the year 2010—I’ve been using this figure for the last 25 years or more—the minority in the United States will be the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male. Now, if we don’t get rid of Affirmative Action, they get to use it, the gringos. We want to get rid of Affirmative Action so we don’t have to support them. Second, one of the ways to get them involved, get the city started doing something, is to get in there, start running the damn thing, and play the game. When you have a percentage that big, get off your fanny and go vote. So number two, get involved; three, play the game. I meet all kinds of Mexicans. I say, “Why did you come up here?” “To make money.” “Okay, if you speak English, you can make more money. You know why? The gringo will hire you because you speak English, and he can talk to you in English, then you can tell the Mexican who can’t speak English what the boss wants you to do, and you work less and make more.” Does it make sense to learn the language? If I go to Rome, I’m going to learn how to speak Italian. 33 Number one is education. We have to teach our people and forget the victimization. A victim is a loser. I’m 5’3”, I’ve never been a loser, never. Neither has my family because we were not taught to lose by my mother. We were taught to go do it. I didn’t wait for them to invite me into the party, I came. My very first convention, all gringos, it was a state meeting, they were all gringos. I was 18, I got elected delegate. It wasn’t because they were being nice to the Mexican, because in those days they were dirt, we didn’t care. It didn’t matter, I didn’t care what they thought about me. I didn’t care if they hated me because I was Mexican, I liked it. Kept ‘em busy while I took their girlfriends and their businesses. I’m ornery, aren’t I? RL: Well, you’re honest. AH: I’ve always been that. I figure it’s better to be honest. That way I don’t have to have a great memory to remember all the lies I told to different people under different circumstances. No, quite seriously, I think I’ve been distressed by the Hispanics because they are so slow. You watch the Asian-Pacifics, they come over here and within a year or two they are fluent in the language, or moderately fluent, and they are up here graduating magna cum laude from the university, and they are students; they have a high percentage in college. There are about 30,000 to 40,000 Asian-Pacifics in the state; they have a higher percentage of their kids graduating from college than we do as Hispanics. We teach them how to work; it’s important that we teach them how to study and get prepared, which 34 is not a big deal in Mexico, so it’s not a big deal in our culture. But it should be a big deal here. Working is important, but also how to study. My next thing is that they are finally building a middle class. This week I ran into two guys who are police in the Ogden City Police Department. Another one in South Ogden. Hey, that was unheard of in my day. You go down Washington Boulevard and bang, bang, bang, I’m starting to see in different areas a springing up of Mexican businesses—that’s the beginning of the middle class. I’m starting to see Mexicans involved in selling real estate; that’s another step towards middle class. The percentages have increased in those enrolled in the university, and the enrollment in applied technology centers is increasing dramatically. All of that leads to one thing: involving the business community, and eventually it means involving the political process and the sheer numbers. Even the Republican guys are saying, “Well, duh, we get more Hispanics involved in the party, and how do we get them to run?” That was unheard of, but I’ll tell you the truth: as the director of political operations in Washington D.C., I shifted the party to go after the Hispanics. I knew they were growing, they were middle class, and they were Catholic; therefore, they would be against abortion, they would be against gays, and because of their church, they would be more likely to be involved in supporting the platform of the Republican Party. The best thing about Mexicans and Hispanics is they love their country and hate their government. Now that’s a Republican. RL: I guess that’s a good way to describe it. You certainly see President Bush trying to groom the Hispanic vote. 35 AH: President Bush’s brother is married to a Cuban. RL: Oh, is she Cuban? I thought she was Mexican-American. AH: No, I think she’s Cuban, Mexican or Cuban. Among the Cubans, there is a pecking order. Cubans are rated 5% Republican, and that is because of the Bay of Pigs. Some of my best friends were Cubans that were involved in the leadership of that. Then the next is the Mexicans, and then the Puerto Ricans— and they tend to be more Democratic, but that is eroding. One of the largest, best places for the Republican Party to go is in the Hispanic community. I do some political tricks there, too. When I did my phone banks in California for Nixon in ‘68, I hired bilingual people in certain areas. I told them, “If they answer in English, do the message in English. If they answer in Spanish, do the message in Spanish.” They were amazed; they were jumping in the cars and driving down to pick up their stuff, which the gringos said, “Mail me.” In 1980, I was asked again by Richard Richards to do the Reagan campaign. I did Utah, Colorado, and Nevada. Before that I did Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Later on, they threw in Oregon. Reagan’s first committed votes were out of the state of Guam. We did that with a phone call and Dick Richards’ credit card, and Puerto Rico, I took them out of the primary because I knew there was a trap there. The Virgin Islands, there was nothing good. Then we won it for Reagan. He was great, he was easy to do. After that, I was asked to go to the White House; I turned down three jobs there. I didn’t want a job, I wanted to come home. But I finally agreed to stay on as a political director of the Republican party. Prior to that, when I was on the City Council, I served on 36 the board of the National League of Cities and helped Hispanics there in the formation of the Hispanic Assembly within the National League of Cities. So I was involved in all those levels: state, local, national. RL: Do you see a difference, as far as generational differences, between people like your mother who came up here and people who are coming now? AH: Absolutely. I’m not in touch as much with the people coming now, but in a sense those people are more in touch with my mother’s generation than our people here. They are bringing those old values of hard work and family and God and church. That’s why these guys want to hire them. You go to McDonald’s, the people doing the hard work are the Mexicans. I have fun talking to them. They know how to work. The state just built a Workforce Services building out in Roy, and a lot of them were Hispanics. It means they are good workers and they like to take care of their family. So they’re coming, generational-wise. Those that come up from old Mexico carry more of the old standards. The ones that are here are becoming gringo-ized, in the sense that it’s “Me, me, me.” You are going through a cultural revolution here. Not only is the business changing from machines to minds and computers, the internet is changing the world in ideas and communications and sales, and then you are franchising the world so that the self-employed businessman is less and less a power within his community. The final big thing is the change in the status of women, which was triggered off better than anybody by Martin Luther King. That’s changing the whole culture. It’s tough for them as they are re-doing it, but it’s a plus. You’ve got a lot of change going on within this structure of Mexicanation. Don’t 37 underestimate that. I used the Hispanics to win governorship for New Jersey. I know that they are key instruments in major states now. New Jersey was one, Florida no question, but states you don’t even think about—like Illinois, Chicago, and other places. So the Hispanic growth is all-encompassing and very powerful, and irreversible. Their presence will be felt. I think they are dragging their culture with them. That’s good. RL: Especially with the food. AH: Well, the food and the family. The Anglos are seeing their family decimated; Mama works, Papa works. We care more about things than we do about our family. My wife never worked; if she did, it was only on the side. The most important thing to us was our children. Now we are all working, and we park the kids somewhere in a bin. Sorry to ramble too much. RL: No, don’t apologize. We want your observations and your comments. AH: I was intimately involved in the growth of Weber County. I helped put in the mall and the Union Station, and then out in River Parkway, they’re starting an industrial park. It’s interesting to see how we get modern by tearing down what we build. RL: I was going to say, you helped build the mall that’s now going to be taken down. AH: Yeah, well, that’s moving forward. I remember we moved forward, we got rid of the trolley. Now we move forward and bring ‘em back. I remember we were moving forward when we got rid of those wooden floors and covered them with carpet. Now we are being modern and getting rid of that carpet and putting back wooden floors. I know we were modern when we built cars with trunks on them. 38 Now we are getting modern and we are getting rid of the trunk. We got modern, because people didn’t want to be shopping around looking for a parking place and going from store to store in the rain, the heat, and the cold, so we built malls; now we are going to tear it down so we can put open space, so they can walk in the rain, the heat, and the cold. RL: It all goes around in cycles, doesn’t it? AH: It sure does. The best way to be modern is: don’t change. It’ll come back to you. I used to be the chairman of the First District Juvenile Court, and we changed the law, took kids out of jails, and put them into juvenile detention facilities on their own. I selected the site out in Roy and the name of Moweda—Morgan, Weber, Davis. We changed it so they improved the building and won a national award. When they closed Kennecott, I was chairman of the Manpower Plan Council, and we threw the governor a petition and got six-point-something million dollars to help the dislocated workers. My experience has been that the poor worker has to run all over heck trying to get help. So I made them go rent a building out by the workers in Magna, and I made every agency put someone in the office, in one room, so that when they finished with one agency, they could walk to the desk of another and get service. That is now the model that they are using for workforce services around the country. I think we helped contribute to that. RL: What do you see as your greatest accomplishment? AH: Keeping my wife. RL: And raising your kids? AH: She raised them, I paid for them. 39 RL: Okay, but it’s a joint venture. AH: She’s the best person I’ve ever met in my whole life, and I’m astounded that she would even put up with me. I’m not easy, as you can imagine. Yeah, I think from that perspective, being married to Ramona; she’s a great woman. Fine woman. Great inspiration, and the kids love her and she’s shaped them into fine people. Going back to my friend who gave me the idea that it would be fun to make history—when I look back, it’s irritating to think that I’m so old you have to interview me, like one of the old fossils. But at least I had a chance in my own way, in my business, in my family, in local, state, and national politics, and community efforts to make a difference. RL: I had no idea what your age was. AH: Sixty-nine. RL: But I wasn’t interviewing you as an old fossil. Your name just kept coming up as someone who had made some contribution. AH: Well, I don’t know if I made a contribution they liked, but I did what I thought was right. RL: Well, in the end that’s all we can do, isn’t it? Stand by the decisions that you made. AH: Yeah, and I met some great people, had some great experiences, fun. I look back and think, “You were crazy.” Good thing I was crazy or I wouldn’t have done them. 40 RL: Well, I sent you a list of questions, and we talked about most of the things on there. Is there anything that you would like to talk about that wasn’t necessarily on the list? AH: To be honest with you, I’ve been so busy I haven’t had much time to think about it. I think the only thing is that I had such a varied friendship, I know, from the very rich to the very poor. The one thing I have realized is that I didn’t do it for money, and I didn’t do it for me. I didn’t care about a title, I didn’t care about a position, I didn’t care about prestige, and I didn’t care about money. But I did care about trying to do the best I could and doing what’s right. Not very smart. I’ve watched a lot of my friends who were involved in politics get rich, but that doesn’t matter. They did what they wanted; I’ve done what I wanted. Wish I could have done more of it and done it better. Mostly, I wish I could have made it easier for my wife and children. That’s it. RL: Well, but in the end, you can hold your head up high. AH: No, I can’t; I’m only 5’3”. RL: You can hold it up as high as you can. People give me a hard time about my short legs, but I tell them, “My legs are long enough to reach the ground, and that’s all they need.” AH: I like to say that God makes it right, and if it didn’t, she kept on working. RL: You got any parting shots you want to take? AH: No; frankly, I’m surprised to be doing this. I’m sorry I didn’t reflect on it more. I’m sorry I may have wandered and been less than articulate. I probably could have gone through it subject by subject; each on their own were interesting, you know, 41 to know that you made an impact in areas that you never dreamed of. I was important in helping Blue Cross Blue Shield; I was important in helping the National League of Cities stop running after 107 years, made them go get their own building. There are a lot of things that I think bring pride. Just wish I could have done them better. I wasn’t that good. RL: Well, nothing says that it’s over yet. AH: I do. It’s time. That is the hardest thing, I’m now working through that period of life called disconnect, where you are part of everything and it’s disconnecting and it’s ending. I don’t know if it’s going to be any fun to go in the next phase of life, just like President Thompson leaving. I’ve been friends with the presidents from the university ever since I came up here. The knocking down of the Ogden mall, the loss of friends, the changing in the landscape: I’m used to it. They tore my town down; they tore down my schools. I think I was born to be torn down. RL: Well, maybe there is enough of it left to be a foundation for the next person. AH: Yeah. I think this country needs a tough time so that we can rediscover what it means to be a real American. We wave the flag, but we don’t vote. That tells me a lot. We had 15% vote in Ogden City; they had a record-low vote in California, as I understand, in their last primary. We are just flag-waving, but we are not really doing our share for our country. RL: How do we change that? AH: It comes from a challenge like World War II, World War I, the Depression. You’ve got to go in, you’ve got to do it. It’s hard to do it if you don’t have to. They are going to go through some tough times; the world as we know it today is changing 42 rapidly because of the communications, internet, computers. We’ve talked about it, but some of our real institutions haven’t gone through it yet. Weber and the other universities are another one. They’ve got to do a shake-down. We are perfectly structured for the industrial revolution, but it’s over. All you have to do is look at the ATCs. They were kids that were stuck in an old building that used to be for reform school; then we started training them a little bit and we started growing into ATCs. Now they are Applied Technology Colleges, they don’t need all of the dance and the other stuff. And the internet—I don’t care if you are not in town, I can get it. I don’t care if you know or not, I can get it. I may not need your campus pretty soon, in a lot of ways. RL: Yeah, we’ve got a lot of online things available. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come. I’ll be in touch with you. AH: Well, if I can clarify some of the things for you, I’d be happy to. But let me tell you this, on some of the things I’ve talked about, particularly with minorities and that, I wanted you to get the real flavor of what it was like then. It was a little rough. I’m glad we got through without the riots and without the bloodshed that they had in other cities, but Ogden was ready to explode. RL: Well, it must feel good to know that you were able to be an active part of what prevented the rioting, or the explosion. AH: Yeah, I guess so. RL: Thank you very much. 43