Question:
When did you begin working as a mediator or conciliator at CRS?

Answer:
I began in February, 1967.

Question:
When did you leave CRS?

Answer:
I retired in October, 1986.

Question:
What was your role while you were at CRS?

Answer:
Well, I served in various roles. My first role was Field Coordinator for the western region; the later title was simply Western Regional Director. Then a few years later I moved to another position, and another person came in as Regional Director. Finally, I became a Senior Conciliation Specialist (mediator) and I served in that capacity until I retired.

Question:
What were you doing prior to joining CRS?

Answer:
I had been in the civil rights field in various capacities before I joined CRS. For seven-plus years I had been the first staff director of the California State Fair Employment Practice Commission, now known as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. I was an appointee of Governor Pat Brown. That agency got started in September of 1959, and I was the organizing staff person. Prior to that, for thirteen years, I was executive director of a city-wide interracial organization called the Council for Civic Unity of San Francisco. Today it would be called an activist/advocacy organization, fighting for fair employment laws, fair housing, urban redevelopment, non-discrimination policies and desegregation across the board. At that time (1945 - 1950s), there were no state or federal laws or policies, for example, prohibiting discrimination in redevelopment programs or private employment.

Question:
What was it that attracted you to CRS?

Answer:
It seemed to me there was a real need for it and I liked the idea of working on community problem situations. In fact, a year or two before, while I was still at the State Fair Employment Agency, one of the original staff members of CRS came to see me to ask what kind of role I thought there was for CRS. I encouraged him strongly, as it seemed to me there was a real need for a trouble-shooting agency over and above the handful of city human relations commissions that existed here and there in the West. And I thought there was a real role for an outside intervening agency when problems got rough. I didn't know that Ronald Reagan was going to become governor and that I was going to be looking for a job in another year, but that's what happened. I was serving at the pleasure of the governor, so I submitted my resignation when Mr. Reagan was entering office and we discussed a mutually convenient time for me to depart.

Question:
Now we'd like you to "walk us through" one case that typified your work with CRS. Please tell us about the case, how you gained entry, and you did from that point on.

Answer:
Okay. We received a phone call one day from a woman who was the tribal chairperson of a small tribe in a southwestern state. She had found the name of the Community Relations Service in the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, a document at that time that listed all kinds of services available through federal agencies. She indicated that they had some problems with two neighboring non-Indian communities, mainly with respect to water. There were some other problems with neighborly relations too, but the main issue was water supply. I indicated that we'd probably be able to come down and talk with them and explore the possibility of getting some discussions going with each of these two neighboring communities. So they invited us to come do that. We did and they expressed great interest. I explained the mediation process at some length and exactly what was involved as we saw it if they chose to have us assist in a mediation effort. They liked this idea. Part of the explanation was that I would need to get in touch with the other parties and see how they felt about it, explain the process to them and see whether they were interested -- because, of course, it's a totally voluntary process. So I got the names of key people in each of the other communities and went looking for them.

Question:
How were you able to come up with the key names?

Answer:
My recollection is the tribal leadership was able to suggest some people. One of the communities was a neighboring small town, and the other was a most unusual sort of an enclave within the reservation, that was located right on a major spring. There had reportedly been understandings between that community and the tribe dating way back regarding a fair division of the water of the spring -- and I should hasten to add that in many parts of the Southwest, water is extremely valuable. That is especially true in this area, where the soil is very sandy and where there are few springs, and most of the land is not suitable for agriculture because of the lack of water. The few creeks that do exist usually dry up for at least half of the year, so this spring water was very important to the tribe and the community. It took a few visits to find everybody and sit down and find out that they were willing to undertake the process. We suggested that they select a team representing each party and that each team then select a leader. Then we went through some of the processes of negotiation. We had a set of suggested mediation ground rules that one of my colleagues, Bob Greenwald, had compiled. We found this usually worked pretty well. It started out as just a little two-page document which he called "Notes on Mediation." It gave an introduction of what mediation is and then suggested a few ground rules. With his permission I started using that and gradually added to it with additional ideas and ground rules which I found useful. Both parties looked this over and agreed to proceed, so we had both the neighboring community parties, one more reluctant than the other, enter into formal mediation.

Question:
What did you do to get the reluctant party involved?

Answer:
A couple or three visits and lengthy discussions. The more reluctant party was this enclave community that sat on this great spring, and they had been there for a century. They were Mormon agricultural pioneers -- at the time I was there, there were seventeen or eighteen households. The key person in that community, who had status as an elder and who also had some kind of quasi-judicial capacity in dealing with matters there, was very reluctant to tolerate what he saw as federal intervention. Now and then one would run into that. I can remember at least one school superintendent in a totally different situation who really didn't want to allow any outside assistance. It was something he felt he ought to be able to handle. So that kind of thing was not all that uncommon. It took a little while, several conversations with this key gentleman, and then they decided not to have that much of a formal mediation, but a kind of a quasi-mediation process with a lot of discussion, some joint meetings, not quite as formal as usual, but addressing the problems. This individual, the one who was most reluctant to get involved, eventually agreed, but he probably remained skeptical throughout the process.

Question:
So what was the problem they had?

Answer:
Well, the tribe felt that they weren't getting their full one-third share of water which an older informal agreement had provided to them. That was really their number-one concern. One of the reasons they were calling CRS for some help was that the tribe's attorney was up in Salt Lake City, which is a mean distance from the tribe's location, and their lawyer was a member of a very prominent Mormon law firm. So the Indians weren't at all sure they were getting the kind of committed representation they needed to deal with their problems. There was another problem, too: the people in the enclave community felt that some of the cattle from the tribe were occasionally trespassing across fence boundaries, so there were concerns on both sides. A key thing in this case was how to handle technical problems. I had no knowledge and would not presume to have any knowledge about water issues, so everybody agreed to get a hydrologist in and another related expert to help us. We were able to get some folks from the state university and one other expert to come. Everybody, tribal folks and enclave folks, walked the area with the experts, examined the spring, discussed ways in which the waterflow could be enhanced even over what it was at that time, and these gentlemen did some measurements on the scene as to how much water was coming out, so that there could be some accurate checking. One of the counter-grievances that the enclave community had was that there was another big spring up the canyon that the tribe was trying to develop. The enclave worried that that was going to interfere with the flow of the existing spring. Eventually, an agreement was reached that was put in writing, and that seemed to lay a foundation for a better relationship.

Question:
How much longer after you first went to the site did all these meetings occur?

Answer:
Well, after the initial visit to the tribe, I tried as quickly as possible to reach this key person in the enclave community. I wanted to do this as quickly and expeditiously as possible, not only to move it along in an efficient way, but to avoid having suspicions arising on either side as to what was happening. I wanted to have quick, face-to-face, frank discussions of who feels what and what appears to be the problem.

Question:
Did you have that goal or that plan set out before you went on-site, or is this something you came up with as you got there?

Answer:
I just had a common sense of mediation. I knew I needed to reach party A, and then the other parties as soon as possible.

Question:
So how did you set your goals, then, once you got on-site and you'd spoken to those parties?

Answer:
Well, I would say the goal simply arose from the nature of the problems that got defined by the respective parties. The basic mission of CRS was to help folks who were in tense, potentially (or actually) confrontational or violent situations with each other, to help them identify their main areas of grievance and difficulty and see whether something could be done to reach a common ground and ease the tensions. The problems automatically dictate the goals. Of course, CRS is concerned with not just trying to paper over the situation, but hopefully enabling the people to address real problems that underlie their difficulties, so that justice can be served on all sides by whatever resolution is reached.

Question:
Did you find that there was much discrepancy or difference between what you thought to be the issue and other underlying issues, and what the people revealed?

Answer:
I don't think a great deal of difference. There were some questions of fact that got straightened out with the assistance of the hydrologist. So the concerns and fears of the tribe eventually became somewhat eased. Both parties listened to the hydrologist and others as to how they could enhance the flow of the spring. As a layman, I was fascinated to begin learning about this. There were cottonwood trees and other growth in an area surrounding the spring, and the water experts pointed out if you cut that growth down, the spring might yield more. Somebody had the bright idea to put in a small herd of goats and let them eat up the vegetation.

Question:
Was there any question about the credibility of the hydrologist? Did anybody think he was working for one side or against another side, or did they trust you to find an impartial expert?

Answer:
I think maybe one or the other party asked me to suggest where we could find an expert. The suggestion may have come from the tribe or from the enclave community. Once the two men came up there, though, I don't recall there was any question of their credentials.

Question:
Were members of both key parties always willing to meet with you when you designated a time and place?

Answer:
We would work out a time and place mutually. They were busy folks, working folks, so we had to work around their schedules and mine.

Question:
Did either party ever ask you to do something that you weren't able to do?

Answer:
I don't think so.

Question:
Tell me about the role of trust in this case. How important was it? And how did you try to build trust with the reluctant party?

Answer:
I suspect that with this one initially reluctant individual, there was never one hundred percent trust. I would like to think maybe there was seventy-five percent. I would guess that he decided there was some value in spending his time this way; it was almost more a matter of confidence than of trusting. He began to feel maybe it was worth doing, and I think others in the community felt -- more than he did -- that it was worth doing. I don't think he ever got enthusiastic about the process.

Question:
How did you "ferret out" the issues in the case?

Answer:
The tribe's number one issue, as I've said, was the question of proper share of water. We sat down and talked it over slowly in sessions that would run a couple hours, three hours maybe. The tribe talked about certain grievances and problems and I would ask a lot of questions to try to make sure I understood exactly what they were saying, and that may have helped them to get a little more exact about what they were concerned with. One of the problems of defining issues and of getting into the formal mediation process involved the relationships within the tribal leadership specifically. I've experienced it in more than one situation where there is a substantial difference between the younger members and the senior members. In this case the youngest member was also the tribal administrator. This was a small tribe, it did not have much staff-- I think there was maybe a part time secretary and one full-time person --and it turned out that he was quite reluctant to speak up on behalf of the tribe. So folks would sit around everywhere on the edges of this common meeting room and there would be lots of long silences and getting the process to move along took some doing. The mediator had to push a bit.

Question:
How did you do that?

Answer:
I explained the negotiation process and explained that in order to get into mediation they would really need to decide one, two, three, four, five, what they wanted. What did they want to ask of the other party and what kind of solutions did they want to ask for, what remedies for the problems? This was a slow, slow process. When it seemed their problem was getting defined and a remedy suggested, I would try to phrase it clearly and ask, "Is this correct, is this what you're saying?" The act of getting it on paper and reading it back seemed to help. In fact I don't know when we would've gotten it underway if I had not done that.

Question:
How did you decide when was the right time to bring those two parties together?

Answer:
Now here let me switch to the other case which involved the neighboring small town that had a different kind of a water problem with the tribe. That problem had to do again with the absence of formal historical legal documents. About a two-mile stretch of pipeline that served this neighboring community from a spring many miles to the north went across part of this reservation, and it was an old six-inch cast iron pipe that everybody knew had been leaking. The town had a need to replace that pipe with a non-leaking pipe, so they needed the tribe's permission to do this. They knew there was an easement across the tribe's land, but the records were lost. The tribe had a small community at the west end of the reservation, a tiny community that had only about three households in it, and they didn't have any piped water. So the tribe, knowing the town wanted a new easement, said, "Ok, we want water." The only water they'd been getting for this tiny community was trucked in from about a mile away. There had been an understanding that they had a cattle watering tank that came out of the town's water. It was understood on both sides that the tribe was supposed to get some water, but this was the only water they were getting for many years. The tribe was concerned, so I contacted the head of the town's water council, who was very much interested in mediation. There were lot of tangles and problems due partly to the great distances between the town and its attorney who lived at least a four or five hour drive away. On one occasion the tribe was a little short of funds and we had a delay of some months because the attorney's fee was not forthcoming. There was a standstill for quite a few months on that. I kept sort of nursing it along, keeping folks interested and pushing toward the objectives, and of course there were on-site visits and discussions of the water line. There were gaps of understanding and serious differences over what could be done and what could not be done. Eventually, after having been in and out of the scene for something like three years, eventually we began to shape up the draft of a possible agreement that went through several drafts and discussions. The final result was almost fours years before we got it nailed down.

Question:
Did you have to employ any persuasion techniques in order to facilitate this whole process?

Answer:
Persuasion, persistence, and patience are the name of the game. But also I would say technical assistance was important. Technical assistance to the tribe and helping them when it appeared that some kind of letter from the tribe to the town would be essential to make the next step, I would assist if they wanted me to, and they did.

Question:
Does this mean you drafted the letter?

Answer:
I did some drafting, yes. This goes back to the question of how the parties are trusting you-- whether one side or the other is going to suspect you of taking sides. My moral, professional take on that is - and I'm perfectly willing to say this to both sides - I am assisting in some ways to make the process we've all discussed and agreed on possible to get to some kind of resolution.

Question:
Did you give any assistance beyond drafting agreements and just helping them understand the process?

Answer:
When we got into the actual mediation process, the first joint meeting was with either five or six members of each team. I had attempted to assist particularly the tribal folks but I went over the same thing with the town folks, the elements of negotiation and what's involved. You're trying to reach these other folks, you're trying to persuade them. Of course I'd gone over all that stuff with both sides. But I think it's fair to say that the tribal folks had had almost no experience in negotiation and needed more help in that regard. When we got into the first joint session that evening, I was chairing the session, and the agenda involved the demands that the tribal group put forth and the concerns that the town had. But it was hard to get anything moving.

Question:
This case sounds fairly typical of many environmental mediation cases. Was there anything about the racial dimension to this that made it more difficult to handle?

Answer:
I guess there would be two dimensions of that. One is between the parties, and the other would be between me and the parties. I don't think there was a problem between me and the parties. With the neighboring Mormon community, I don't think there was a problem, and we were invited in by the tribe, so I don't think there was any problem that way, as far as my being involved. I've often asked myself how come this white man can seemingly have these good working relationships with other folks. I'm not sure I know the answer to that except I think maybe it goes to the question of the folks in so-called "minority communities" who I think are quite capable of spotting phonies. I've fared reasonably well that way I guess.

Question:
What about between the parties?

Answer:
Between the parties, I think there were some degrees of distrust and skepticism, probably both ways, but I think it varied as to individuals on the respective teams.. But there wasn't much problem in fact I can recall one or two members of the town team who seemed to me to be very open, straightforward, and respecting over the years of their neighbors in the tribe.

Question:
Does CRS often go into situations where racial relations really aren't the key issue? Was there any question whether CRS should be involved in this since the key issue was not race-related?

Answer:
No. I don't think so. I think I'd be correct in saying I don't think CRS ever limited or defined its role such that it had to be "a race issue" per se for us to get involved. It had to do with whether it was a minority community group concern or issue or issues affecting minority communities, usually with an establishment party, government, or corporation that put it within the meaning of the statute.

Question:
This sounds like a fairly low tension situation. Was there any serious tension between the groups?

Answer:
Pretty hard to discern. Undoubtedly there were some members of the town committee who looked down their noses at tribal members, but that did not become manifest. I recall one member of the town committee who after we had an agreement expressed the feeling he wasn't happy, even though he went along with the agreement. He seemed to reflect some kind of a disdain toward the tribal members. I'm sure that some of the older tribal members had past experiences that were a source of unhappiness, but this did not get expressed and did not enter into the picture.

Question:
Did you try to address any power disparities between the parties? Was the tribe considered significantly inferior to the townspeople?

Answer:
Well I've already talked a little bit about what seemed to me to be some disparities in experience negotiating and the capability of wheeling and dealing. I think the duty of a mediator is to try to help the parties get into positions where they can really deal with each other.

Question:
How did you deal with the idea of impartiality, neutrality, or objectivity? If you are actively telling the tribal group this is what you need to do, how does that affect your neutrality in situations? Or was that even an issue?

Answer:
It didn't get raised by either side as an issue. I don't like the term "neutrals" to describe mediators, I prefer other terms, "objectivity" and "impartiality." I don't think any individual mediator is going to be without his or her assessments and personal values with regard to situations. The only question is whether that is going to interfere or unethically intrude upon the action that the mediator takes and that's a distinction obviously that ought to be maintained. The more strongly you feel about a given injustice as you see it, the more careful you have to be as a mediator. The mediator really does need to look at the concerns and problems of both sets of folks.

Question:
In these two cases, or in other cases, did you ever have a problem deciding how far you could go helping one party and still be acting objectively? Was this a fine line you had trouble discerning?

Answer:
Maybe I'm just fairly good at rationalizing my actions. My rationalization is that I'm trying to facilitate reaching a resolution of a whole bunch of problems. Sometimes a whole bunch of them, sometimes just one or two main ones. You can justify all kinds of things if neither party is being pushed into something that is inappropriate or you're substituting your judgment. I would say there probably are some fine lines there. Let's say maybe the weaker party gets too dependent or gets very dependent or would be willing to take a strong recommendation from a mediator as to what their course of action ought to be. I think that gets into areas that are questionable, where good ethical professional practice of a mediator should give pause. It's not always easy to do or answer where that line is.

Question:
Did you have difficulty in finding that line at different times in your career at CRS?

Answer:
I think I was aware of it now and then in situations. I'm sure there were some times at which I advised myself to pull back a little. As much as I felt I saw the solution, I knew I needed to back off.

Question:
When you thought of solutions and you didn't see them going that direction did you raise them?

Answer:
Oh I might ask a lot of questions. What's one of the useful concepts, of course, is a reality check. I would use that often, or occasionally at least, in preparatory sessions when a given group, usually the minority agency group or minority community group was shaping up its demands in anticipation of a mediation session. There would often be one demand to fire the police chief, or fire the supervisor of welfare, for example. We had one case that involved a social welfare department in a rural county where such a demand, along with eight or ten other demands, came up, and that took a little doing to deal with. You try to ask how important is that demand in relation to the other eight or ten. In the case I'm thinking of, there were ten or fifteen points on the agenda that were shaped up in the course of a couple of long get-ready sessions. An attorney from one of the public rural assistance outfits helped articulate those concerns and put them in shape, which was very helpful. In that case you try to counsel people and ask, "is this demand within the realm of possibility?" This county supervisor of welfare had been in that job many years, and undoubtedly had high status in the county establishment. Yet the group was unwilling to abandon the demand that he be fired. But we managed to get them to put it at the end of the list of fifteen or so. That leads to another interesting point which applied in this case. Do you submit the demands in writing in advance of the mediation session? I tended to favor not doing so for the rather obvious reason, well for a couple of reasons. One, a demand like that was going to blow it. But even apart from that, if you formalize it all in writing and submit it in advance, you're sort of making it like a legal court process. My second reason for preferring not to have demands submitted in advance of the first joint session is that it formalizes it and gets the other party in a more adversarial stance and lets them prepare to come back with rebuttals, and counter- arguments. I'd rather have that as a spontaneous process. They may come back and object like crazy. But if it's in a mediation process where we're tying to establish some relationships and where I can facilitate it or function as moderator, we've got a better chance of getting something done. In this particular case I was referring to, with the proposed firing of the welfare superintendent, the superintendent was present at the mediation, as well as a key county administrative officer. The group of six or seven Chicano agricultural workers and community people who had brought their complaints about the behavior of the welfare department were also there. We got through the first three or four points on the agenda and we were making reasonable progress when the county administrator leaned over to me and asked if anybody could call a recess and have a caucus anytime they wanted to. I said, "of course," and he called for a recess and asked for his team to see the mediator. So we sat down together, or maybe he just spoke to me privately. His message was that the superintendent had finished reading all the way down the list and had come to the end of the line that said, "fire said superintendent." This guy was very helpful in this whole deal. He said, "This is going to blow it, she's going to walk out and it won't go." What I then did was caucus with the other group and say, "Hey we got a problem." I guess they were willing to set that aside, at least tentatively, and see how we could do on the rest of the stuff. So we resumed. By two or three o'clock that day we wound it up. I went back to the motel room and spent half the night writing the agreement up, which is one of the functions I did frequently. The next day it got signed, we had a deal. So reality checks attempted in advance don't always do it.

Question:
How much do you try to get people to reframe what they're saying in terms of demands or positions to the underlying interest?

Answer:
The term "demands" is not always helpful. "Proposals", perhaps; semantics are pretty important. Usually we weren't talking "demands" when we sat down together, although it might have started out that way in the get-ready session. A very large chunk of the time is spent with the preparatory work. I think sometimes as much as forty or fifty percent of the effort might have been there.

Question:
Tell us more about what the "get-ready work" entails.

Answer:
As I mentioned before, it entails making sure they had defined their problems and hopefully had been able to focus on some proposed remedies. For a less sophisticated group, sometimes that would take a lot of time. When feelings are high and grievances are pretty heavy, one of the problems for the mediators is trying to get the folks to understand we aren't going to adjudicate what has happened up until now. As nasty as the history may be, we are not judges, and this process isn't going to result in any decisions as to who was guilty or not guilty. The point is how are you going to make this situation better in conjunction with the other party? It would sometimes take long and repeated efforts to get the focus away from blame and guilt. I recall one case of young adults in a Chicano community who were in a hassle with the administration of a community college. The most articulate activist in the group had had many acrimonious run-ins with the college president. I guess we were invited in or we offered to assist, so we went in and met this guy. He was very passionate, very articulate, and effective in lots of ways, but he was very outspoken. There must have been eight or nine people who made up the main group. They decided to go for mediation, so they put a team together, and we went over the ground rules and all of that. We had met two or three times before we reached that point. When they selected their team, they left him out. I may push a fair amount sometimes for including people, but I wasn't going to push for that. I was very relieved that was their decision, because it certainly enhanced our possibilities of success. Apparently they realized that he would probably continue to blow his stack and blow it all. I think they made him an alternate member of the team. We would often suggest maybe a couple of alternates in case somebody couldn't be there, but a heavy emphasis in our ground rules is don't accept a position on a team unless you're really making a commitment to be there, because continuity is extremely important.

Question:
Did you ever run into trouble where the people who were on the designated team were not accepted by the other people outside?

Answer:
I think there was care enough in putting the teams together by the group that I don't recall that happening. CRS followed a process of closed sessions. I remember once we were about to convene the first session with a tribe and the sheriff's department. In addition to the five or six team members, a tribal council member who was a very articulate, strong person but who wasn't on the team, insisted that she and one or two others be allowed to sit in. I did my best to explain that everybody has come together here on the understanding that these were going to be closed sessions, and I pushed for abiding by that understanding. But the tribal council member didn't buy it. I think I suggested a recess, and asked if I could sit down with the tribal folks. In a caucus we talked it over, and she was allowed to sit in. I guess I must have talked to the sheriff's folks too-- their team of three or four. It was decided it really wasn't worth excluding that good lady.

Question:
Did you ever have to mediate conflicts within one group, between group members?

Answer:
Yes. A higher-level person in our agency did raise a question as to whether we could properly take jurisdiction. In California, where we don't have large tribes, there are rancherias that may consist of only a handful of households, or maybe a hundred to two hundred people, and in many of those cases, long term antagonisms between groups, between families-- almost like clans within the tribe--continued or festered. Well, we took on one like that. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) called us in that one, saying there was a tribe that needed a constitution. The two factions within the tribe could not convene peaceably in order to get one written and submit it to a vote. And BIA couldn't force it, yet BIA also couldn't discharge its legal responsibilities to deal with the tribe unless it had a duly constituted government. They called us, I then called the two sides, I got names from BIA and made some phone calls and they said "yeah, come on down." So there were two factions within this band. We had an intensive all afternoon meeting with one side, all evening with the other side, then it was mostly done. I think we came together the next morning with the elements of an agreement as to how to proceed to get a constitution written and acted on. I left the next afternoon. It doesn't always go all that smoothly, but they got off the ground on that. The jurisdiction question for CRS was raised internally because this was not a minority community vs. the outside world or an establishment party, so how do we get jurisdiction? My rationale was that these minority communities are there by virtue of history and the establishment and they have serious residual problems which obviously emanated from the actions and policies of our dominant society.

Question:
When you were doing a mediation between a tribal community and the majority group, did you have to do mediation within the individual side before you were able to bring groups together, or did you figure that outside your role?

Answer:
No, I would not have considered that outside the role if, in order to arrive at meaningful, potentially useful negotiation and mediation, it was necessary to help folks get themselves together.

Question:
How did you identify the community resources that would help you resolve your conflict?

Answer:
Well, we used the hydrologist from the state university in that one case, and in that other case, involving the county welfare department, outside assistance was very vital there. We needed clarification about the exact meaning of complex statutes, and federal and state regulations regarding welfare aid to dependent children and a whole lot of other stuff. Here again, most of us, certainly myself, and I think most of the community people, were not experts on any of that. So it was agreed in advance that we would get two experts up from Sacramento to help us. They were from the State Department of Social Welfare, and each had his or her area of expertise with respect to the statutes and regulations, and that was agreed to by all sides in advance. They participated in the sessions, so they were there and could answer if any questions arose as to what the regulation was.

Question:
So they were there to give factual information?

Answer:
Correct, technical and factual, not to do anything else, and they didn't try to do anything else.

Question:
Were the experts from the welfare department seen as being on one side or the other?

Answer:
No, I don't think so, because we had agreement in advance that said we needed some people who would call the shots as they were and who were not themselves involved or seen as involved with the county welfare department.

Question:
Did you ever bring in outside resources who might act as informal mediators or people who helped groups work better together, such as church people, for example?.

Answer:
There was a big case in Atlanta involving the Atlanta police department, the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) which included the white officers, and the African-American Patrolmen's Association (AAPA). This was a three-way court referred case. The case was long-standing, it had been a long stalemate and hassle that the Atlanta downtown community wanted to see resolved.

Question:
What was the issue?

Answer:
There were complaints brought by the black officers about the whole hiring process and the lack of adequate representation at various levels. It had been stalemated for a long time, without any progress being made. An earlier court decision had actually frozen hiring, so the city was hurting, it needed cops! Of whatever color. Our regional director down there in Atlanta, had tried several times to get the city to vote for a try at mediation. The mayor apparently did not want to bring it to mediation and let CRS try to help resolve it. Finally it was getting to a zero hour, the court had a date set for resuming the trial, I think about a month away. Finally on the initiative of one of the black members of that city council, a very prominent guy, a motion went through that the city would request CRS assistance in the case. That's what brought us into it. And the Director of the Agency at that time, Gil Pompa, asked me to be the primary mediator. I didn't get but a dozen hours of get-ready time because everybody was so anxious to get rolling. The Atlanta regional director had selected one of his key men to be on the mediation team as associate mediator, and he was well acquainted with the case, which I was not. I flew in one morning and the mediation was to be convened the following morning. So I had a busy day of trying to get somewhat familiar with what this was all about, and to get squared around with my great associate mediator. We needed to have an understanding as to how to handle ourselves together at the head of the table. Fortunately, the regional director had it all set up and arranged, being a very effective operator. And the downtown community, being kind of interested, one of the great big downtown banks had turned over its posh top floor board room for this mediation. It even provided coffee and refreshments throughout the day. When we went into the lobby that morning to go up, security was all over the place. It was understood this was to be highly confidential. They all took it very seriously. You might say there was a bit of an outside assist from an unusual source. The whole thing took five weeks. Within a couple of days, two and a half days, we had an agreement, it seemed. We went over the terms of the agreement, back and forth, not just casually, but point-by-point-by-point. It was a matter of the respective attorneys doing final draftsmanship and our convening either the next morning or two mornings later to sign. I think it was the next morning we got into a session that was to be a signing session, but one faction had serious second thoughts or a claimed difference of understanding about certain provisions, so they said "no dice, no agreement." This was the middle of the first week and had we thought we had an agreement. So we went back to work. We worked our tails off day and night for all the rest of that week and part of the weekend. It went on and on. Finally, I was very surprised and pleased that one of the white sides wanted to caucus with my black associate. It was not the AAPA that asked to have that, but the whites. They had a good session, and it finally worked out. We had to ask the judge for a one week extension on that trial date and I remember he set it for two p.m. on a Monday, and we worked right down to the wire. At one p.m. that day we got the last signature. Later on women officers in the department raised some serious questions. They had not been part of the process and they had not been asked to be part of the process by the black officers, the white officers, or the city. None of these folks, including the women officers themselves, had raised the women's issues while this thing went on. But they did later. I don't know what happened about that--whether the consent decree was finally amended, or not.

Question:
How much is later on, a year, weeks, months?

Answer:
I think within the following year, they got some kind of recognition, whether they were made part of a formal agreement, I don't know. But the main agreement that came out expanded the range of hiring, the geographic range of hiring among other things. And it covered a whole lot of other measures and actually spelled out some promotional slots and all kinds of stuff the black officers had been seeking.

Question:
You mentioned this was a court-referred case?

Answer:
The court referred it in the sense that the court was referring it for an attempted mediation while retaining jurisdiction.

Question:
How often will CRS serve the court in that capacity?

Answer:
The agency was quite interested in having that kind of case whenever the court was willing to do it. And we had several in this region that I was involved in. It had lots of advantages to everybody. Most of the judges who were involved in complicated cases involving a number of plaintiffs liked to have it. I handled two cases involving major police departments that were court referred by the US District Court here.

Question:
Were you able to complete those successfully?

Answer:
Yes. We came out with formal agreements. Another of them was not that big and complicated and formal. I don't think that resulted in a consent decree-- it resulted simply in a better deal. It involved a state college and a certain department within the state college. I think that may not even have qualified as a full-fledged mediation case, but some desirable results were obtained. The others were very formal, with major concluding memoranda of understanding, pages long and a lot of specifics.

Question:
How did you know that you were done? When did you call your job "complete"?

Answer:
I think the answer to that is fairly simple in that you have either exhausted every effort over time and you got an agreement, or you haven't. Or one party or the other has exited and it's fallen apart. That didn't happen in any of these court referred cases. In one of those cases, the city police department and the city administration were extremely reluctant to enter into a mediation process. It took quite a bit of persuasion and probably implicit pressure from the District judge who strongly recommended it. Almost kicking and squealing, the city entered in. Then there was a long slow process-- it dragged out longer than it needed to because we couldn't get them to meet as fully and frequently as we would've liked. I think we met only two or three hours once a week. Nevertheless, we eventually got a good agreement.

Question:
What mechanisms did you use to enforce the agreement once it was made?

Answer:
In the case of a consent decree, if there is an apparent violation, then the attorneys of the plaintiff may go back to the judge. We usually build into these agreements a provision that if there is a dispute as to the implementation or interpretation of the decree, they would try an informal process to resolve it, using us, if necessary, to help. And failing those efforts. the attorneys would move in. But we hardly ever got called on for that; it didn't really become all that necessary.

Question:
One of the areas we haven't gotten into is the media. Did you ever get involved with the media, and if so, how? And did you find them to be a help or a hindrance, or some of each?

Answer:
As you're aware, the basic policy and approach of CRS in mediation was not to initiate media contact. We did not try to involve or use the media in any way. Sometimes the media were there first, and were aware of a problem and CRS came in, so there was media attention to it. In most of my cases, mediation cases, as well as the others that were not mediation, there was little or no media involvement. One of the points in mediation, one of the understandings we would have as a basis for the process, was that it would remain strictly confidential. Nobody would talk to the media, other than the mediator. He would only do that to answer limited informational questions-- obviously without going into issues or where it stood. "A useful session, good progress was made, we are hopeful," all that stuff. Most of the parties found that quite acceptable. Usually in a memorandum of understanding, the agreement would be released to the press in a manner that the parties would agree to in advance. Sometimes we would do this with the parties present, at least the team leaders. Often the mediator would summarize the agreement, team leaders would each make a comment or two and a copy of the agreement would be handed over to the press. I remember specifically doing that in one situation involving one of the California Indian tribes and the sheriff's department. We had a full dress press conference in a hotel in a nearby city, to get it into the public domain. At least in those days, none of us assumed that these agreements were enforceable, but we figured getting the agreement made public helped with compliance. Gradually, toward the latter part of the time I was with CRS, there began to be some thought that maybe some agreements were enforceable, and I guess the field has moved along in that regard now. But we relied on public pressure, and media attention as a means for enforcement, so it was important to make a good splash if you could.

Question:
Did any of the parties insist on having the media present in order to continue with the mediation process?

Answer:
No. Not in my experience. If they had made that pitch, I don't think our CRS director would have allowed us to proceed. I know I wouldn't have felt that I could say okay without checking with higher authority at that point.

Question:
How did you judge when a case was successful, or what did you consider success?

Answer:
I guess the main criteria would be that both parties seemed reasonably pleased with it, hopefully enthusiastic. And it being a written agreement.

Question:
If you didn't get a written agreement, was it a failure?

Answer:
Um...not necessarily. But it wasn't a complete success either. I can think of two examples. In the case involving the big spring and the enclave community, as I remember, there was not a full formal agreement. I think there was some memo exchange or something, but it didn't have quite the full status that I would have preferred. Nevertheless, I think it was meaningful, as it was a substantial advance over the previous messy non-communicative situation. We had a few other cases that were not formal also. We tried to get into formal mediation, if we could, because we think that the potential results are much better, but even if we couldn't, it was nice to try to come out with something. So there was a fair degree of success sometimes.

Question:
Did CRS measure success any differently than you would've measured it?

Answer:
I'm not sure that I ultimately know. There might have been a few times when my superiors thought that I had spent enough time on a case and suggested that I leave before I was ready but that didn't happen often.

Question:
What did you do then?

Answer:
I might have tried to persuade my superiors to let me have at it a little more.

Question:
Did you ever have to exit early, either because of pressure of other things going on, or whatever?

Answer:
No, I don't think so. But as you already know, some of these cases dragged out anyhow, so even if there was a heavy priority on something else, it wouldn't necessarily kill a given case. Of course, some others did not drag out, we got them done in a day or two days, and of course, nobody was going to pull us off that Atlanta case which was very much in the public eye. It was a very important case. There were several others in the Midwest and the East that were big ones too. In Tennessee, there was a big fire department case that had a lot of attention that involved the same basic questions of quota, hiring, all that stuff.

Question:
Did you ever have to leave a particular case because the violence or the potential for violence was too great, or you felt you were in danger by remaining with the case?

Answer:
No. Let's see, on the latter point, no. As to whether the general potential for violence was too great, I don't recall. I was out of the country when the Watts riot happened and I wasn't with CRS. I was with the state FEPC, and some of my colleagues tried to do a few things, but obviously, that's no mediation case. Now and then you'd go into a situation that was a little dicey, where you didn't quite know what might happen. One of those was a case I greatly enjoyed, again involving some of our Native American citizens in a heavy situation where an encampment had been established on an important river. A timber company and a private ranch also had land on this river. The Native Americans had established this camp to try to make a big statement about Native American rights with respect to fishing and other things, and had even been peeling off a few shots at commercial boats going up the river. They apparently had even strung a cable across the river to impede the progress of tourist boats. So it was a dicey scene. It was in the papers, of course, and there were reports about it. I was able to make a few phone calls and find out more about it quite easily. One of the things that was happening was that apparently some of the young super militants had gone over to this nearby ranch and were sort of terrorizing the families that lived there roaring their way in their cars into the ranch and also cutting their plastic waterlines. The ranchers were folks whose ancestors had owned a large part of this timber land which was now owned by a timber company. But they had this beautiful ranch sitting on a bluff overlooking the river and they'd been there for two or three generations. So it was those folks-- one could hardly blame them who pulled out their firearms at a certain point in self-defense. It was a little dicey. The sheriff was trying to decide whether or how to deal with it. He was aware of the terrible dangers to everybody of armed confrontations, and he feared that if he had his men move in on this Native American camp, somebody was going to do some shooting. And of course he was worried about this ranch. I met one morning up there at breakfast with the district attorney and the attorney for the timber corporation and the sheriff to get their advice on what we could do. I indicated that we were willing to go in and try to talk to folks, and they were all for it. They gave us all their support. I got my directions on how to get there. It was only few miles on a dirt road off the highway, but there had been some blockage of that road by some of these guys. So it was not certain whether my little rental car would be allowed to proceed.

Question:
Did you call before you left?

Answer:
There was nobody to call. This was a camp out on the banks of this major river under a few trees that this company had left along the riverbank God you should see the clear cutting that had been done-- it was just criminal. Nobody blocked the road and I found my way in and parked near the river and I realized the camp was about 300, 400 yards away. I walked in. Naturally somebody came out to meet me. We talked, and I asked if I could see their head person. The person who met me wasn't sure. There was a tent or two and a fire pit and some other stuff along the river. So we wound up having long, unhurried discussions about everything, about the issues and the grievances and fishing and so on. The hours went by and I was invited to lunch--the lunch was fresh smoked salmon over a pit--smoky and beautiful. It was getting to be about 2 p.m. and I wanted to try to get some work done. But the head person hadn't emerged from the tent. I wasn't getting very far, it seemed. A sister of the head person was around, and there weren't very many people there. None of the young militants was there, no one was being threatening. I tried to get out of them whether they would consider some mediation if the folks at this nearby ranch agreed. I couldn't get any definite answer, so I said that I'd walk over to the ranch and then I'd come back, which I did. I spent a fair amount of time with the ranch people and came back at practically the end of the afternoon, and the camp people said that they were willing to try some kind of conversation with the family at the ranch. But I never could get to talk to the head person. Her sister said that she wasn't feeling well, and we were never able to get anything nailed down to an agreement to convene. Fortunately, no fireworks ever took place between the sheriff's people and these folks, so things were calmed down at least a bit.

Question:
Did it often happen that in very confrontational situations where tensions are high and the potential for violence is high, that's it's difficult to get the parties or the other federal agencies who might be involved to agree to mediation?

Answer:
I guess that's true on some of the major confrontations that were wide public knowledge or wide knowledge at the time for a combination of reasons. But even when CRS was not able to play a mediation role, in some situations it was able to play a very valuable advisory role or consultative role with respect to decision making regarding what was more likely or less likely to lead to a violent confrontation. We'd advise other federal or state authorities about actions they might have been contemplating, and for what it's worth, would offer our insight about how to handle the situation. We would also fairly often be important sources of intermediation or communication, if not formal mediation. For example, we would at least assist by interpreting to each side where the other one stood, and what were some of the problems that maybe could be eased, depending on what decisions were made or measures taken. Sometimes we would be working in that connection with major federal enforcement agencies like the federal marshal or the FBI or Interior Department's or Forest Service's enforcement personnel. These would not usually devolve into neat, well-ordered mediation cases. They might have been very important situations though, and probably I think the agency helped substantially in such situations-- certainly we did at Wounded Knee.

Question:
Did you work with others or did you generally work by yourself?

Answer:
I worked mostly solo. Now that's on the mediation cases. Typically until CRS got so whittled down in terms of staff, typically in the older days, we would have gone out on cases in pairs. But you go into a problem situation and you almost always do it in pairs, so we could have a bi- racial or interethnic team that would go in. Sometimes in mediation cases, a conciliator would go in and do the important ground work he or she would have been in touch with the parties, would have sized it up, and would report whether the case had mediation potential. Then the regional director would say, ok, Howden get on in there and see how it goes. At some point the first colleague might depart the scene and I might take it from there.

Question:
When you went in by yourself, did you have someone to debrief with, did you call someone else for advice?

Answer:
For a long time, we were required to submit a report every night by telephone as to the status. And sometime we had to get approval from the Regional Director to move to mediation if the situation was questionable as it was, for example, with the factional case involving the different factions of the Native American tribe that needed a constitution.

Question:
Several of the scholars we work with argue that the standard, white, North American model of mediation is not appropriate in many more traditional cultures. This comment has most often referred to cultures outside the U.S.; however, I am wondering if you have run into cultural problems with your approach to mediation?

Answer:
Obviously my experience did not embrace non-U.S. cultures, but it did involve many different cultural groups. I didn't feel, and I didn't get the feeling that anybody else felt that there was a model being imposed--although, obviously, we were using a conventional, traditional North American mediation model. If any kind of mediation suited them, that was acceptable to them. I don't think we ever encountered a situation where an alternative model was proposed, or where the tribal group said we've got a customary way of dealing with this, in which case obviously we'd have been interested, and would have tried to be responsive. In one little case, I recall that there was a reference to their customary way of taking a vote or reaching a consensus on an issue. At dispute was whether a certain election had been properly handled and how to do the next one if there was going to be one. Offhand, that's the only recollection I have and that was just with respect to a vote on a given matter. It didn't have to do with there being an alternative process for dispute resolution.

Question:
What about communication styles? Were there situations where the communication style of one culture was totally different from the other group? Or did differing communication styles ever cause friction or tension?

Answer:
I think in one of the cases I described yesterday, I found that the Native American group responded much more slowly than I was used to. They were almost not forthcoming at all for considerable periods. The difficulties, from the standpoint of conventional mediators, was wanting something to happen, or having negotiation move a little bit. I realized that I was kind of urging it along, nursing it along, and apparently I did it with sufficient patience that nothing blew and we worked together over a long time. There were also different cultural patterns about deference to the elders. In many cultures, people will be reluctant to put himself or herself forward unless the elder has spoken up. But even the elders, I think, had the inhibition in some situations. I'm by no means an expert on this and my range of experience is not wide enough to be making any fat generalizations on that point, but those are some perceptions.

Question:
Did you ever get people who were on one side or the other to essentially assist in being mediator? Was there ever any question about the legitimacy of you, as an outsider, being the primary mediator, or did they just accept that notion?

Answer:
If we got in a mediation at all, that notion was accepted. We had our standard ground rules and we'd talk about those they didn't usually pose any problems.

Question:
We'd like to go backwards now and fill in some gaps cover some material that we didn't cover yesterday. One thing I wanted to explore further is the Navajo case that you discussed briefly yesterday that wasn't a clear cut mediation process. Is that an example of what you do when mediation is not appropriate?

Answer:
This was a few months after the disengagement at Wounded Knee. One of the young men who had been there remembered something about the role of the Community Relations Service and obviously remembered me being there, so he called me again. As you may know, CRS had gone into Wounded Knee. We had gone through the federal lines and consulted with the Native Americans there. We did lots of different things as part of our effort to help bring about an overall resolution of that standoff-- which went on for many weeks. In the following early September, I received a call from Ft. Defiance in the Navajo Reservation saying there were some serious problems, and there had been a killing in one of the border communities just outside the reservation, allegedly that a young Navajo man killed of a deputy sheriff in the parking lot of a convenience store, and that the suspect was on the run. People on the Navajo reservation were in considerable fear about the kind of reaction the state police and others might bring to bear--it was a very tense scene. Also, the annual Navajo nation fair was coming up within a week or so and that there were some serious tensions surrounding that. There were some problems between members of AIM, the American Indian Movement, and the Navajo tribal leadership who ran the fair. The fair is the biggest single event, apparently, on the Navajo annual calendar. AIM, as well as other Navajo folks, were concerned about this other matter and the possibility of heavy police presence at the fair. Now, obviously CRS had no role with respect to the law enforcement scene, or investigation, or anything like that. Our only role would be if there were fears and tensions based on relations between the Navajo people and police. We were willing to see if there was anything we could do minimize those tensions and get at some of the sources. Anyhow I went on down to Window Rock, which is the Navajo capital, and 5 miles from Window Rock is Fort Defiance which is where some of the AIM folks were headquartered. It's a long story. There wasn't any major role to play, happily, with regard to the suspect who was picked up soon without violence. So while that was a very aggravated scene, it was resolved quickly and was not a problem that we needed particularly to address. However, we did have to address the conflict with AIM. AIM's main demand of the Navajo people in charge of the big fair, was that they wanted an AIM element to be included in the all important parade that kicked off the fair, and they wanted AIM to be included in the rest of the fair as well. Also, about a week or 10 days later, AIM was planning to hold a big powwow on a ranch within the Navajo reservation which was owned by the grandmother of one of the young AIM men. Hundreds of people from outside the reservation had been invited to this event. The main issue with respect to the powwow was the FBI. Remember, this was only 3-4 months after Wounded Knee, and AIM was very worried that the FBI would disrupt the powwow. Some folks might have felt that this was a real paranoia, but this is how they felt. We talked to the AIM leaders and offered to talk with the FBI. The Navajos have their own substantial police department too, so we got with the Navajo superintendent of police as well. He was a very cooperative guy, open to discussion. He didn't feel there was any substance to AIM's accusations, and everybody else denied it, but the AIM folks were very, very fearful about this. They insisted there had been some over flights and they thought they had seen people hiding in the trees of a nearby mesa, so they thought they were being spied on. They thought somebody was going to come down on their powwow either when it took place or before it took place. I noticed out back of the Navajo police headquarters a couple of helicopters and I got an idea. I called the superintendent and asked what would he think if a couple of the AIM leaders and maybe himself and I took an unannounced flight to check out the area. The superintendent of police and the AIM guys agreed, so one late afternoon, the superintendent and my colleague from CRS and I and at least two of the AIM guys piled into one of these helicopters with a BIA pilot and took off. It didn't seem to me we took off very rapidly, but we got up and circled around the mesa top. The trees were so widely spaced that had there been anybody or any cars or pickups, or any group of people, they would have been clearly visible. But no one was there. Mission accomplished, I thought. But just as we finished circling the mesa top, the engine conked out on this helicopter. That's a whole other story, let's just say that happily, the BIA pilot was fabulous, and he saved our lives. The copter's rotors were clipped off by some trees during our descent, but we all got out without even a serious bruise. Anyway, that flight eased the fears about the surveillance, although there were a few theories about what happened to the helicopter. In the end, AIM did have a unit in the parade, and the powwow was held and was uneventful. But we were there as they requested, just in case a problem had arisen, we might have been helpful. There was another case involving the Navajo folks and AIM this one between AIM and the city of Gallup. In this one there was a Native American prisoner being held in Gallup, and AIM was bringing some of its national leadership in to have a march. I won't try to go into any real account of it, except that it was a classic case where we were asked to help with a demonstration. AIM wanted to march all the way from Windowrock to Gallup along the main highway to the federal building. This march would have covered many miles of highway, and they were worried about the police shooting them up.

Question:
Did they want protection?

Answer:
They wanted us to help provide the lead, to work with the law enforcement agencies to make sure the march went on peacefully. We went in and discussed this, and after they had reflected more fully on it, they decided that undertaking what would have been a two day march with an overnight beside the highway, maybe that was a little much. They revised their plans to simply have a march from a predominantly Indian community center in Gallup some blocks to the federal building, where there was to be a rally and some speech making. There was a lot of tension, certainly in official circles, the city council, and the police department, as you can imagine, and we certainly had our concerns about what might happen between police and marchers and so on. Several of us went on down we had three of us working on different aspects of this one. One of the problems was that the AIM folks had not applied for a permit in time, and the city council was not inclined to budge off that. We worked around with different folks, including the mayor, and one of the local judges, and had a lot of conversations with the AIM folks, of course, and we finally did work it out. It was agreed that the police would be around and available, but would not have a heavy presence close to the march. We came up with a general plan that was acceptable to everybody,

Question:
Did you come up with that plan with the help of the parties?

Answer:
We worked on every problem that offered itself. For example, the city council and the mayor backed down and didn't demand the advance permit, so that obstacle was removed. I don't remember for sure, but we probably made the suggestions, how about this, all these kinds of things--and eventually it came off ok. And of course we monitored the march and kept an eye on how it was going, and nothing blew. The rally was held, and speeches were made on the steps of the federal building, and nobody got hurt.

Question:
What you did to reduce tensions when they are high? Did you ever run into a situation in mediation where things got really tense and you needed to calm them down?

Answer:
Sometimes. I was usually able to moderate the situation without any heavy handedness. Once in a while a certain decisiveness, maybe even standing up and speaking very loudly, was necessary. That was rare, but I can recall a couple of occasions where that, in my judgment, became necessary. One was a business mediation, which was kind of unusual for us to do, but a minority sub-contractor was one of the parties on a big housing development that had been ninety-seven percent completed. It was a middle income development, and there was an impasse between this sub-contractor who had some minor finishing work to do and the general contractor who was not minority. They had some bad blood on various things, various past hassles, and now they were right at impasse. As I recall, somebody from HUD called us. HUD was involved in some aspects of the financing and everybody wanted to see the project finished since housing was a desperate need. The attorneys for the two parties actually were willing to have us give them a hand. One of the attorneys handled arrangements and they were willing to move fast, like tomorrow. I had no chance to study the issue. They were so anxious to get to it, I think it was the attorney for the minority sub-contractor, that he arranged the meeting room in a major hotel-- normally I would be doing that. Anyhow, we got into that session quickly. The minority sub-contractor, the main person, didn't have a bonding capacity or something, he had some kind of a problem financially, and he had brought in this guy from New York to help him. We went through the regular opening routine and I explained to these folks, "look, you all understand that I'm not expert in the contracting business and I've had no chance to study up on this as there's been no time. You're in a hurry, so you're going to have to educate me as we go along, and I may have a lot of questions." They agreed, and we got going. We got fairly well into it but then an impasse developed and people got angry. A gentleman representing the minority sub-contractor who was six foot three and big strong guy, said angrily, "I'm not going to take any more of this, you know," and accused the general contractor of insulting him. "I'm not going to take any of this, this is a waste of time" and he stood up to walk out. So I'm at the end of the table and I stood up and said, "Dammit, Mr..., you agreed to the approach we were going to take to this, and we are following that approach and I think we can make it, so please sit down." He paused a moment, and then he sat down. And we got on with it. By the end of the day we had a deal. As a matter of fact, Mr... was so happy with the deal, he invited everybody down to a bar at this famous hotel and bought us a round of drinks. There was one other intra-tribal scene where a lot of folks were present and it was just not feasible to limit it to a four or five member team. Actually there were several teams from either side. There was a clan or family grouping, with history behind it, that was very unhappy for maybe a couple of generations. Some of the other members of the band insisted on being present. It wasn't public with press, but there was quite a crowd, and that got messy. People were standing up shouting, and it became pretty difficult to have any orderly process. After a time trying to keep it on track, I asked for a recess and spoke with some of the folks. I explained that we had agreed in advance who the people were who were going to handle this, and I told them that we were not going to be able to pull it off if it continued like it was going. "I don't want to tell anybody to go home, I can't tell anybody to go home," I said, " but how about we convene the original group in such and such a room." So we proceeded on that basis. But that was one case where it was it couldn't have gone anywhere on the basis on which it had started. In situations with high tensions, from time to time there would be individuals who would explode or get close to exploding, but usually we didn't have anything fall apart when that happened. We were able to have our recess and to caucus and get back on track.

Question:
Were there any other instances that you can think of that you reached impasse?

Answer:
I remember one big and complex case that did not go to conclusion, but it didn't result in a blowup. This case had to do with long standing fire department hassles. With much effort over weeks and weeks and weeks, we had gotten the case into a mediation with all the parties, kind of a multi-party thing. This one involved representatives of the fire commission, chief-officers association, the middle and upper lever supervisors of the fire department, the black fire fighters association and the fireman's union, which was predominately white. Many of the black firefighters didn't want to belong to the firemen's union, although they were technically members, because they had no confidence in the union. There had been heavy enmity and some of them had dropped out of the union. They were one party; Hispanics and Asians did not have an organization, but we had one representative from each of those groups. The case went through some early and very difficult stages. We finally got it going and in two or three fairly lengthy sessions got through the first and easiest of the agenda points. The second one was the next easiest, or the next more difficult. We were obviously working toward those which were going to be really rough. Somewhere along in that process the black firefighters team said that they really didn't have any confidence in what the ultimate result would be and they decided to break off. My colleague and I asked for a caucus with them. We had worked with them at great length in advance of the mediation to help them get their act together, and so we asked for a caucus with them so we could try to get them back on board. But we couldn't succeed in persuading them to continue, so the process ended. There had been earlier court decrees, and there had been unhappiness with the outcomes, and there was plenty of potential for court action that could happen--and which in succeeding years did happen. This was a number of years ago, and the situation as of today is a much happier one in terms of those issues than it was at that time. I don't think there was a lack of trust in the mediators, but I think there was simply no confidence that the city establishment would listen or would agree to do something that resulted from mediation.

Question:
In your opinion, was it something that could have been worked out through mediation?

Answer:
Yes, I felt we could. I think that the mayor and the city attorney, who later turned out to be a very constructive force in the court actions that went on, was consistent all the way through in supporting the position of the black firefighters. The first point had to do with outreach, affirmative efforts to do a whole lot more recruiting, and there was no big hassle about that, everybody agreed to that, even the union was gung-ho for that and had worked out a lot of specific ideas about what would be done. But some of the other matters were tougher.

Question:
Was there ever a time when you advocated the parties skip mediation, and go straight to litigation?

Answer:
Offhand I really don't recall. I wouldn't have advocated that often. But I certainly feel strongly that if the mediator, or anybody around the scene feels strongly that this is an issue that really ought to be adjudicated, then maybe I would recommend that. Maybe one of the primary, fundamental reasons for that would be if there's a constitutional principle or point that can be made through litigation. I'm sure at various CRS meetings we discussed that from time to time-- there's no way that we would attempt to push it or coax a case into mediation if the attorneys felt that a case ought to go to court for long term, basic reasons.

Question:
What if you saw a situation where you thought that the minority group would probably do better in litigation than they would through mediation? Would you tell them that?

Answer:
I don't recall that that happened, but I think I would have asked them to consider that pretty seriously. I'd suggest "you might do a lot better that way." At the same time, I made the point that, put very simply, people had nothing to lose if they gave mediation a try. "If it isn't going to take too much of your time and energy, and it isn't going to take any of your money, why not give it a try?" That would be our more customary pitch. But if there were some compelling reason otherwise, I don't think we'd get in the way of litigation.

Question:
Going back to where you were with the case that broke down at point three, were you able to resurrect some sort of agreement on the easier points, where they came to agreement? Were you able to get them to at least do that, or did they drop whole thing?

Answer:
The black firefighters group really didn't want any further involvement.

Question:
So even the outreach fell apart too?

Answer:
I don't think anybody negated that, but I'm afraid to say I don't think anybody followed through on that either. Later on, given the consent decree, they had to.

Question:
Did you often handle cases over the phone alone, without going on-site?

Answer:
Oh no. I can't even think of one such case, and certainly not a formal mediation case. But I think CRS people got quite a bit done over the phone. They didn't try to avoid going on-site if there were any dollars in the till to get on a plane, and I might add there were some times the dollars were not in the till. There were some terrible cutback times. There was one period when there was not any travel money in our regional office and I said frankly so to the BIA office and to the tribal chairperson that we had enough money that I could get part way there by plane, but not all the way. So they sent a car out to the point where I had to get off the plane and we went the other sixty, eighty miles by car to the tribe and we got that case taken care of. We kept working no thanks to the then political administration.

Question:
Was there a time when one party to a conflict asked you to intervene but the other side didn't want you to come in?

Answer:
Oh, sure, on conciliation as well as mediation cases, though it's not even a prospect for mediation unless both parties show some interest or willingness. Let me back up and amend that. On conciliation cases, CRS didn't have to stay out of a community just because one party didn't want us to come in. If we felt there was a tension scene that needed attention, we would do some kind of advance assessment over the phone by talking to as many people as possible to get some feel for the situation. And if that assessment indicated that we really ought to make more effort on-site, the regional director or whoever else was supervising the scene would say "go," and we would go.

Question:
How would you deal with the party that didn't want you there?

Answer:
I don't recall being refused entrance, but there must have been a few times somebody said no dice, "I really don't want to spend any time with you." Mostly I remember that there would be reluctance about taking any other step beyond us getting in the door. The plus factor in being in the Department of Justice was that it helps you get in the door with a sheriff or a police chief who might otherwise have said, "Who are you?" So we would get in, whether some of the steps we wanted to have taken would happen or not. A bit of persuasion sometimes helps, and of course, if the situation was pretty volatile, most conscientious and intelligent officials are going to want all the help they can get. They're going to want something defused if possible. They may not have, at the outset, any great interest in rectifying some of the causes of the action, but CRS would attempt to help them to see some of those underlying factors and hopefully to address them. In fact we would have no hesitation in pointing out, "Look you know, you can't just paper this over. We're not just here to quiet the situation, we hope that you have an interest in preventing and correcting the problem or some of the sources of the problems."

Question:
Did you ever run into some people who thought that violence was the way to go that they would get what they needed that way?

Answer:
I'm sure there were some who thought that way, but the only ones I recall who picked up their rifle and said "this is the way to go" were one a few young militants. In my experience two or three young Native American militants in certain situations, who were not the guys who were representing the community, but were along for the action, might have felt that way. But, happily, they were not running the show. Most militant folks who wanted to run a march or do a heavy demonstration were, even if they didn't say so at the outset, were soon quite willing to say, "Hey we want a peaceful demonstration." CRS' pitch to everybody was "okay, we could try to help make it peaceful, have it happen, make it peaceful." And we were involved in some big scenes like that. The L.A. moratorium marches, back in the early stages of the Vietnam War, were primarily Chicano, but many other people were also involved in those marches. Now there was some violence, some deaths even, but they could've been a whole lot worse if the liaison and the sensible working out between various police departments and the marchers hadn't happened.

Question:
Were there any cases you were involved in when you helped a particular party save face?

Answer:
I was probably too cautious or sensible a character to promise anything. But it seems to me it's kind of one of the regular conscious concerns of the process, which is to enable everybody to be involved. I don't think of it in terms so much as saving face but to have the dignity of being dealt with directly and straightforwardly. I think it's the mediator's responsibility to try to help each side understand some of the main feelings and hang ups and positions of the other side. In my little sermonette at the opening of each mediation I told people, "Look, I know some of you feel that you've been abused, and you've been offended at the treatment you've had at the hands some of these folks across the table now, and I know it's a tough thing to ask, but please try to set that aside for the purpose for which we're here. If you can, we might get something done." I think however strong the feelings were, there was a lot of responsiveness to that.

Question:
The checklist you gave us yesterday suggests that you did try to get the feelings out on the table and deal with them directly. Is that so?

Answer:
Maybe not always in joint session, although I wouldn't rule that out totally. If it seems useful to me, at some point, at a joint session I might say to one party, "Are you aware how Gerald here feels, what his feelings are in the wake of what happened?"

Question:
You tended to do that more in caucus than you would in joint session?

Answer:
I think so. You could be a little more blunt in caucus. Going back to our earlier discussion, I didn't handle any one case entirely by phone, but one of my first formal mediation cases was handled entirely without a joint session. It was one side and the other I went back and forth. A resource that was very helpful in that was the local priest. This priest had helped the Chicano community deal with problems with the sheriff's office. The priest had done some very good work before we even got in there he was very effective in helping the community folks. Now I'm thinking about your question about resources--he wanted to see resolution and he would help all the way up and down the line. The two parties I was working with as parties were the community group--including the priest, and the sheriff's office.

Question:
Did you ever set a limit or deny someone from helping with the mediation process?

Answer:
I don't think so. And it would've been up to the parties. The main problem that would have arisen is if someone else wanted to get onto the negotiation team.

Question:
When you went into a case in which you were not called, but in which you initiated the contact, who did you contact first and how did you "get in?"

Answer:
That would happen, has happened with every CRS worker at one time or another, where we saw a story or heard something on the radio about community X where something had happened or people thought something was about to happen. The story hopefully would have a little bit of information as to what community group was involved and what the issue was. Typically we would check in with our supervisor, then get on the phone to at least one party or maybe both.

Question:
Would you usually call the community group first, or the sheriff?

Answer:
That is a good question, because sometimes it could be very sensitive who got called first. You know I'm not sure there's any fixed rule or practice on that. I think we might have been more inclined to call the community group first usually. And, of course, if we thought that they knew us or knew something about us or if we'd had any prior contact, certainly we would've asked, "What's happening?" Our next question would be, "Can we help?" Then of course we'd get quickly onto some of the establishment folks and talk to them.

Question:
Now if you said, "can we help?" and they said "no, we don't need help" did you drop it there?

Answer:
We might have said, "Are you sure? Let's talk about that." We would have explained what our legal duties are, and what we're not. It's very important to define the agency in its role. It might be that some group would say, "Well no thanks," but I hardly recall any situation like that. There must have been some here and there, but then you know the next question is, "is that group fully representative of the community and are there other folks whom we might probe a little further?" But if there's a clear cut group, for example, the NAACP branch, I don't think we really want to go around them. But we might want to get an assessment from the establishment- types of how serious that scene is. We have a duty to do that. As we read the act, it does place a legal duty on the agency to do its best to help in a situation. You don't have to wait for an invitation from anybody.

Question:
If you were in a situation where one person or one group didn't want you to come in but you still felt like it was important, what would you do?

Answer:
I think this would not be an individual decision. This would be in consultation with the regional director and maybe with Washington.

Question:
How common was it that you or other CRS workers have to revisit a site more than one time-- say you've gone to one site and developed this strategy to help the situation, you leave and you think it's all fine and good, but then it goes bad. Did you have to come back after a case was closed?

Answer:
Yes, but I don't think CRS was ever able to do enough follow-up on agreements that had been reached. Many of us were interested in that and tried to do some phone calls to find out what was happening. Of course, where we had a formal agreement we would have provisions for resolution of new disputes or disputes about the implementation of the agreement would've been written into the agreement, and that included calling us if they needed to. On one major case involving a Native American community and a sheriff's department, we actually had three Native American communities, technically three different tribes, but in the same general area. With great effort and some initial reluctance on the part of the sheriff to get into it, he got persuaded to let it happen. We had a big mediation and came out with a full fledged agreement. This had to do with all kinds of frictions and tensions between members of the tribe, particularly younger members and sheriff's deputies that were the law enforcement in the area. We got a good agreement, announced it publicly and it took effect. Four or five years later, there was a new sheriff. I had some occasion to talk to the new sheriff who apparently had come up through the department, but was younger than the old-timer we had dealt with before. He seemed to have some progressive ideas. I remember asking him how was the agreement going and it became clear to me he was not very well aware of that agreement. I said, "Wouldn't it be a good idea to maybe take a look at it, and if necessary, update it?" The short of the story is he agreed with that and so we went back and in effect did much of it over again. We reviewed the whole thing as to the progress that had been made point by point, or had not been made, and we came up with a second new agreement with the new sheriff and announced it publicly.

Question:
If I could just ask you one more question about your follow-up when you say you write into the agreement that you will keep in contact with that particular group, is there a time-frame in mind or is it on-going? So if you mediated a case today and said we'll have ongoing contact, does it become the responsibility of every CRS worker after then to continue with that?

Answer:
Bear in mind I retired 12 years ago, I don't know how this is handled in CRS in these last few years, except I'm aware that the CRS ranks that were very thin when I was there, are threadbare today. Even while I was still there, I would say that our resources were so limited we were trying to hop in all directions. We at one time had small field offices. Now I was operating always out of the Western region which was Arizona, Nevada, California, and Hawaii (I never got to Hawaii). We were about to open one office in Phoenix and then, boom, the axe came down and in due course all the field offices were closed. I don't recall that there was ever a formal follow up procedure-- which I think many of us felt would have been very desirable. But it would have been a real press to try to deal with it with our thin ranks. Personally I certainly strongly agree that there should be some procedure.

Question:
Going back earlier in the process, after you've done your assessment, gone on-site and talked to all the parties, how do you decide when to bring them together and when to deal with them through shuttle diplomacy?

Answer:
Well, as I mentioned a moment ago, in one case we never did come together except to review the document which everybody had seen, and come face to face to sign the agreement. But that was rare. Shuttle diplomacy is very important and very useful, mainly in the get-ready stages. I don't think I would've forced a joint session unless I thought it would be useful. I wouldn't have pushed too hard for it, but mostly at some point you were able to get into it, otherwise it wasn't likely you were going to get a meaningful agreement. Within joint sessions, though, recesses and caucuses are an essential tool.

Question:
In the joint sessions did you do something to try to get parties to listen attentively to each other and talk civilly to each other?

Answer:
If I felt that somebody was really not participating, if somebody was overtly making obstacles, I would try to correct that on the site gently, but as firmly as necessary. If that wasn't working, we'd go into a caucus on the subject. Folks were pretty well engaged with each other and with the point. Of course I think a common problem all mediators face is sticking to the agenda and dealing with one issue at a time. I had no hesitation on insisting that we had agreed to an agenda and problem statements, it had been agreed to and I would insist we take up one thing at a time. I thought of a couple of other cases where I had some community resources. I seem to be only talking about Native American cases, but there were a few others. I thought of two examples. One was a tribal hassle. In Arizona there were serious difficulties between two main factions to the point where an election was in serious contest or they needed to have another election. It didn't look like it could come off without violence. I think BIA called on us to see if we could be of any help. We went down and talked with an Interior Department attorney who was helping BIA on this and who analyzed the scene for us. This is before we got out to the reservation at all. I'm not clear on detail, but the resources aspect was how to pull this off. BIA will not supervise a tribal election. We didn't see that we could directly do that and so somewhere in the course of the discussion somebody got the bright idea, "Hey, what about the League of Women Voters?" The idea came up and we all grabbed it. We got in touch with the city and the state heads of the good old League of Women's Voters and they said sure, they'd be glad to go out and supervise the election. I went on-site and discussed it with the tribal folks in advance, obviously. There was advance agreement to it. We didn't want to just let the ladies go out there by themselves. I don't pack a gun, but I went too. There were provisions for security and we had assurances for all kinds of things, but it was still a potentially volatile scene. The balloting went on all day and then there were a few characters who wanted to make some problems, but they got eased out. It was in the community hall of the reservation. Folks sat around while three women from the League counted the ballots. I hung around until late that night, until the result was reached and it went off all right.

Question:
Then it was successful then.

Answer:
Yes. The other resource example was an community in California. An intra-community conflict arose over an election of leadership of a major organization in the Samoan community. I had a helper who was on the staff of that county's human relations commission and he had excellent understanding and background in the Samoan community, which I didn't have, and we conducted a pretty difficult mediation in one or two sessions with quite a few people around the table. There were some high tensions in that scene. Apparently one of the cultural givens with Samoan folks is that you handle a lot of things physically. Some of that practice was threatened in the course of the mediation. It happened that the little man who was the long time president of the community organization had a very small build but every other male Samoan present had a line backer physique. We finally reached an agreement as to how the election would be conducted with the help of the county human relations commission. It did take place and it came off with relative peace.

Question:
Did you seek out the human relations person?

Answer:
I don't recall whether they initiated contact with us, or we with them, or we read about it in the papers and called them. We had great respect for the staff director of the commission who, I'm happy to say, is still on the job.

Question:
So what do you do, or what did you do when you've gotten this cultural group that wants to take care of things physically?

Answer:
There was not violence breaking out all over, but there were some kind of threatening words at times. One of the key actors was a well trained Samoan professional social worker. She, like all the others, had very strong views. There were these big men who were "talking chiefs" (which is not quite the top chief in the ranking, but pretty important) and she had whatever it takes to tell that talking chief whatever she wanted to say to him and vice versa. It was lively. We had a table arrangement instead of across the table, so that there was a physical distance between the parties. We were here and the other table was there. It worked. We kept on the subject. I heard later that it was not atypical that if there was some difficulty between the kids at school or there was an animosity between a couple of families, a mother walking her child home might be physically assaulted by another mother. I never heard that weapons were involved, thank god.

Question:
What do you think are the most important skills or attributes for a good civil rights mediator and what would you say is your greatest strength?

Answer:
I noticed in the letter that the director of our agency, at that time Gil Pompa, sent to the Justice Department in which he was asking I be given a certain special commendation, he said something like, "His tenacity and his creativity." One of the common terms in a lot of situations today, real estate, for example, is "creative", creative financing, creative this, creative that. By which most folks mean that something is a little out of the ordinary or maybe even out on the edge of things and even questionable. Another term they like to use is "resourcefulness." Obviously, if you see impasses and problems between folks you try to think of something that might be useful.

Question:
What's the most creative thing you've done?

Answer:
I'm not sure I can confess that. I don't remember specifics, but I remember my colleague in that Atlanta case. The case ran over a five week period and with people from the city of Atlanta and police bureau we would spend hour after hour, night after night in between sessions racking our brains trying to come up with some breakthrough possibility. But that seems to me that's par for the course in a difficult case.

Question:
Were there any cases that you were involved in or CRS was involved in which you thought they should not have gotten into or were there any times where you felt hey, we really need to be in there but you were not for whatever reason?

Answer:
I'll take the second one first. I thought that CRS should have tried to be a part or to be the mediation agency in the huge Navajo/Hopi line partition hassle. And when I first heard about that hassle coming up long, long ago, I made a pitch to our Washington office, but I don't think anybody pushed it. Top CRS leadership in some situations, I don't think really operated in the real political world, in the real world in terms of finding your constituencies and finding your allies and understanding survival, taking opportunities to do the job you're supposed to do. I would add though that whatever the process of selection was for the mediator for the Navajo/Hopi case, the man they picked was a retired past head of FMCS Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, a man of great reputation, and probably as fine a mediator as you could find. I don't know him and I don't specifically know his work. He was out of a labor mediation background -but I'm sure he knocked himself out to try to get something and I'm also not at all sure that the issues were resolvable.

Question:
It's still going on, is it not?

Answer:
Well, we even worked on some of the residual hassles. I was down there a number of times for that kind of reason. But not on the central issues. We were down there mainly after the partition lines had been drawn and the order drawn up for people to be moved. The relocation process and problems. I was down there at Big Mountain a lot of the time which is where some of the oldest traditional Navajo families lived ,who were going to have to be moved, and who weren't going to move, no way. We were involved in trying to help a little bit on some of the attendant tensions. The essence of what happened there was that the mediator did convene teams from the Hopi and Navajo tribes and they worked at it-- I'm sure they must have worked pretty hard at it. Despite his best efforts they did not make it, did not come to agreement on a partition line between the two reservations, and under the terms of the legislation that he was operating under, it was then his job to draw the line or lines. I guess one of the necessary characteristics a of mediator is to have hope to be a stupid optimist. You don't know unless you really work it, you don't know if it's really winnable unless you're into it deep.

Question:
What about the other side of that? Where there cases that you were involved in actively and felt like, hey we shouldn't be here?

Answer:
I don't recall any that I was personally involved in or that I know of right around here that I thought we shouldn't have been involved in really.

Question:
Is there anything we haven't asked that you would want to add to this tape about your experience while you were at CRS, or any advice you would give to other mediators?

Answer:
A lot of the stuff that I think I learned in the course of my experience is reflected in some of this material that I've given you, as to some of what I think are the essentials in trying to carry out the process. I should say and maybe others told you this, I think all of us who did mediation were grateful in the beginning when CRS initiated its formal approach to mediation. There was a certain point at which it decided to get into formal mediation. Up to that time it had been informal conciliation stuff and so on, and I think we were all grateful in that beginning go around for the training that AAA provided in New York. I think we all appreciated that training. And later, AAA did some training back down in Washington. This must be 18 years ago or maybe 20. We also had a very fine joint meeting one time between CRS and FMCS mediators for a day or so down in Atlanta. In fact some of us got involved in SPIDR. CRS Director Ben Holman had the good sense to send several of us down to a bi-annual meeting of the FMCS. Some of the guys there had just the year before founded SPIDR and some of us got interested and became members and were members for a long time and were active in some things. We put on the national conference out here at one point and then I helped found and headed the Northern California chapter for a time. In this meeting with FMCS people, one of their guys described what they called a "relations by objectives" approach to dispute resolution. I think it was a fascinating program. I expressed a lot of interest in it and was able to sit in on one of their sessions, a quite ambitious undertaking that took a couple of days. It was an in depth approach to trying to deal with problems between two parties before they reach crisis stage. It was used to address a whole range of ongoing problems and try to establish relations that would be better for the future. The sessions I attended were in the Claremont (CA) area, and involved the middle and top managers of a steel plant, the union guys, the foreman and the works. Actually a whole lot of people are essentially doing this in one form or another now, but it was new to us at the time. The basic pattern is get all the folks together, get a lot of technical help, and you break into smaller groups at some point which are equally representing both sides. You run down all of the problems that anybody sees and feels and then you ask the questions consecutively on each side. What do you think these other guys should do about this problem? What do you think you should do about it? Then you go to the other side and you ask them the same questions. It was good to start with, and then of course you get this whole list laundry list of problems, recommendations and so on, and you work your staff like crazy to consolidate something and get it together and you try to come out with a comprehensive program. Not just a program but time tables, responsibilities for implementation, the works! Very hard boiled, very realistic. I encouraged somebody up the line about this-- I think it was Gil Pompa. at some point- to look this over very carefully and see if it might have usefulness to CRS. At one of our staff meetings I made a presentation on all this and my pitch for our applying it in special situations. I suggested that we call it "Joint Problem Solving." It never became a big thing throughout the agency as a whole, but lo and behold, later on, in this region we did do a substantial job with a high school using this approach. We went in and did just that kind of a program. This was a high school with a multi ethnic student body and with a whole bunch of problems including a deteriorating building. The school had a very progressive open black principal, a terrific guy, who was willing to accept the help of an agency like ours. We went in and discussed the whole idea. We had some good sessions with him. He sat down with us and it was decided, "Yes, let's give this approach a try" with the students, faculty, parents, administration and counselors at this high school. We took some pretty careful consideration of how we would do this, but essentially we followed those same procedures. In this case the problem identification was done on a segregated basis. The black students, Chicano students and so on in the first go around in the first day met together to identify their problems. Then of course we mixed it up the next day and to ask the questions and so on what should we do, what should you do. We got some parent involvement-- not quite as good as we wanted-- but some pretty fair parent involvement and came up with a specific overall program which presumably the school would go on to implement.

Question:
Was it specifically on racial issues at the school or did it include problems between faculty and teachers that were unrelated to racial issues?

Answer:
I would say not those, although if problems like those came up they weren't ignored. For example there weren't enough counselors, which is true everywhere. There were serious problems with the shape of the building and the bathrooms and stuff like that. These were problems everybody raised, so they were all part of the problem list.

Question:
So when you went in initially, how did you describe what you were looking for? Did you say any problems relating to the school or were you more specific than that?

Answer:
I don't think we got specific about that. I think everybody was conscious there were problems between students and teachers, students and administration, and they are among students with each other to some extent. Anything and everything could go into the agenda. I understand that after I left the agency there was another case in southern California where the agency went in and pulled it off again. Julian can tell you, he would know, if you want to pursue that at all, they might have done it several times. It's kind of a big undertaking.

Question:
If we ask him about it will he recognize the term "relationship by objective?"

Answer:
Just refer to the first case we did which was at a high school in Stockton. That's the one that I was involved in, and that's the only one we did while I was still at the agency. It was pretty much my baby as to putting it all together, along with the late Bill Briggs, our main guy on educational matters.