Senator Richard Lugar Oral History Interviews

SCARPINO: Our primary is also recording and so as I said when the recorder was off, I’m going to start with a short statement.

Today is September 30, 2016.  My name is Philip Scarpino, Professor of History and Director of Oral History for the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).  Today, I have the privilege of interviewing former Senator Richard G. Lugar at the Lugar Center in Washington, D.C.  This interview is sponsored and funded by the Administration of IUPUI, and is co-sponsored by the Tobias Center.  We’ll place a more complete biography of Richard Lugar with the transcript of this interview.

So briefly, Richard G. Lugar graduated from Denison University, Granville, Ohio, in 1954. He was first in his class and co-president of the senior class with Charlene Smeltzer, who he later married.

Following graduation from Denison, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford, England, as a Rhodes Scholar.

He served as an officer in the United States Navy from 1957 to 1960.

He was elected to the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners in 1964, serving until 1967, when he resigned to run for Mayor.

Richard Lugar served two terms as Mayor of Indianapolis, 1968 through 1975, during the time period in which both Unigov and IUPUI came into existence.

He was elected to the United States Senate in 1976 and served as a senator from Indiana from January 3, 1977, to January 3, 2013.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in November 2013.

He presently heads the Lugar Center in Washington, D.C. [The Luger Center] is dedicated to issues such as energy and food security, controlling weapons of mass destruction, and effective governance.

Before I actually begin the interview, I’m going to ask for your permission to the things that you just agreed to do in writing, just in case the paperwork ever gets misplaced.  I’m asking your permission to do the following: to record this interview, to prepare a verbatim transcript of the interview, to deposit the interview and the verbatim transcript in the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives and the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence, and your permission for the directors of both of those organizations to make the interview and the verbatim transcript available to their patrons which may include posting all or part of the audio recording and the transcription to their respective websites.

LUGAR: You have my permission, and I’ve signed papers signifying that.

SCARPINO: Thank you so much.  Let’s get started. In a few minutes I’m going to ask you a few basic demographic questions just to get that in this record, but for now I’d like to step back a little bit.  Because of your record, and because the co-sponsor is the Tobias Center, I’d like to start by asking you, how do you define leadership?

LUGAR: I define leadership by having vision-- that is, to be able to try to see what’s going on presently, but likewise the potential future, trying to create the abilities that could lead one to make a difference.  I’ve often defined these, as I’ve talked to students and others, as the ability to speak well and to write well.  These are elements of authority. Likewise to have content, an educational experience that gives you at least the background of what has occurred in the past, as well as alternatives presented by folks that are very important.  So finally, then of course, to be in a position in which leadership is required, or you at least believe that it’s required, that your vision and your capabilities, your background and scholarship, your ability to speak and write well, fit with a situation in which you see the importance moving ahead and have objectives that you outline.

SCARPINO: You mentioned when you started to answer about making a difference, when you look back at your years in Indianapolis and your two terms as Mayor, what’s the one thing that you point to and you say, “I really made a difference?”

LUGAR: I believe that the foundation of Unigov was the thing that made the biggest difference in my life in Indianapolis.  It was a vision of a great city, one I envisioned as one of the greatest cities in our country and in the world, and the elements that were going to be required for that to happen.  Of course, the basis of that was my own ability to get elected Mayor of Indianapolis to be in a position to try to outline this and to gain supporters, and to try to make sure that vision became reality during the term of office that I was given.

SCARPINO:  When you ran for Mayor, the governance organization that we now call Unigov, that was part of your vision.

LUGAR: Yes, it was, and I didn’t call it “Unigov” necessarily, but I envisioned the situation in which all of Marion County would be one city.  There would be one Mayor, one council, elected by districts – as it turned out 25 by districts, four at large – there would be one budget for all of this.  This at least, was a vision that had come from some study of Jacksonville, Florida, for example, and Nashville, Tennessee.  In both cases, there had been something comparable to Unigov, or some meshing together of parts there that had led to distinct strength in those cities, forward-looking people.  I was also aware that, given the racial difficulties that were apparent not only in Indianapolis, but in most large northern cities, that this type of unification was going to be very difficult. It was.  But nevertheless, my vision really came from taking a look during my years of living in Indianapolis, and being a part of the fabric of that city, and then my responsibilities as a School Board member, which brought home very specific difficulties, neighborhood by neighborhood, and then opportunities to visit with Mayors of other cities, people from other places around the country, who were pointing at great difficulties that lay ahead of their cities, and that were going to lay ahead of Indianapolis.

SCARPINO:  You talked about, you said some research, and you mentioned Jacksonville and so on, were you referring to your research?  Are you the person who looked into those governance situations in other cities and thought, “We could do this here.”

LUGAR: Yes, I was.  The idea of Unigov was very much in my mind.  I was looking for experiences that others might have had.  A lot of the experiences that I studied turned out poorly.  That is, things never came off; the legislatures of those states didn’t work, or the citizens of the cities involved really resisted any further unification, or mergers, or whatever might be.  This is why I cite Jacksonville and Nashville as two that stood out in my studies.  I went to work to find out how it occurred there and really what the results had been.

SCARPINO:  You obviously had a core group of advisors and people who worked with you, Keith Bulen and others.  When you suggested this idea, how did they respond?

LUGAR: Well, my core group of advisors, as you describe it, were very interested.  I wouldn’t say that they were overwhelmed by the idea, but they were intrigued by the thought.  As a result, we began a series of visits together. Many of them were held in the living room of John and Ardath Burkhart’s home out on the north side of Indianapolis.  They were gracious hosts.  John Burkhart himself was a great civic leader. Keith Bulen was almost always present.  So were legislators; Larry Borst, State Senator Larry Borst, was a part of this; Ned Lamkin, a member of the House, come to mind as two who were very, very crucial when it actually came to getting the work done in the legislature, but from the beginning discussed really the possibilities for the greatness of our city, what was going to be required.  This was not simply a political strategy situation.  We believed we were talking about the arts and education, and job creation, transportation.  Already Indianapolis was the hub of transportation, as we saw it, in the country. These were assets that we could build upon, people recognized.  We also, however, were practical politicians.  We knew that Indiana has laws that makes cities creatures of the state, so to speak.  You cannot simply, on your own, revise the structure of your city or town, as the case may be.  This really calls for action by the Indiana General Assembly Legislature meeting in session.  So this meant, of course, not only our own ideas needed to come together with some agreement, but we were going to have to be very convincing to people all over the state that this was in the best interest of Indiana--that the precedent that we setting was not so upsetting to others that they would reject the idea out of hand, or that first of all, they would spend that much time on Indianapolis, or Unigov.  Lots of things come up in Indiana General Assembly.  The Governor’s Agenda might certainly have primacy, but we talked together in these meetings.  I do not recall specifically how many there were but quite a few, because the idea was exciting.  This was my first year as Mayor, the first few months really, that that occurred.  Already we had had some sense of the national perspective, in sort of a shockwave really, that came with the visit of Senator Kennedy to Indiana as a part of his bid for presidency…

SCARPINO:  …When Martin Luther King was assassinated…

LUGAR: …Yes.  On April 4th, which is just three months or so into my Mayorship, that occurred.  I remember the whole day very vividly because I was trying to convince the Kennedys and their campaign not to come to 17th and Broadway, which is where they wanted to have their rally.  We were having considerable difficulty with law enforcement in that particular area.  But it was a deliberate choice on their part.  I was in the basement of the Marott Hotel at the time I got word that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.  I had a police officer with me at that point and I was attending, of all things, a banquet for the Shortridge High School basketball team.  That had been my high school – the only time that Shortridge ever had gotten to the final of the state tournament – and suddenly I realized we were going to have to take some action.  We’re only at the Marott Hotel, about two miles away, or less than that from 17th and Broadway.  Quickly we tried to pull together an organization of the police force. That would be very important because the Kennedys were still bound to come there.  It turned out, the Kennedys were coming to the Marott Hotel itself where they were going to spend the night.  In other words, what started out as a Shortridge High School banquet turned out into a full scale operation.  I always tell the story, and I believe that it’s true, that one of the features of my Mayoralty campaign had been a group of so-called black activists.  Two of them by name, Snooky Hendricks and Ben Bell, come to mind.  They were there at 17th and Broadway and were among those that said to the crowd, “Not now, not now, this is not the time,” and what have you, which was tremendously helpful.  The Kennedys gave their speech.  They came to the Marott Hotel really ashen, understandably, given the frightening circumstances that night.  I mention all of this because we started, at least that year of 1968, with what could have been a total disaster. But it turned out to be a plus factor.  Many people pointed out that of all the cities in the United States, Indianapolis had remained calm and had continued the conversation.  I had a lot of help in that.  The television stations in Indianapolis allowed me a certain amount time almost every night to talk about what was happening in the city, just for reassurance of everybody.  But it was in this context that these meetings were occurring with the political leaders and the Burkharts and so forth, talking about the future of Indianapolis, even as we were living through really very tough times of the presidential campaign of 1968.

SCARPINO:  I mean, obviously, that whole period with the assassination of Martin Luther King was a difficult and sad time. But overall, it seems to me, that that must have been a pretty exciting time to be a young Republican. I mean, if you look to the future and imagine the changes you could make and realize, “We could really do this.”

LUGAR: Well, I had a lot of confidence and certainly did not lack the confidence that I felt was going to be required.  I was hoping that I had the political skills because we were, as I say, in a presidential campaign year, ’68.  It was not ’67 and the Mayor race.  Now we were, a lot of people running for office…

SCARPINO:  …It got really complicated with Lyndon Johnson withdrawing…

LUGAR: …Well, it did.  I went to a large number of Lincoln Day dinners all over Indiana that year, really just to get acquainted with the members of the legislature, or the candidates that were running, usually as Republicans, for those seats.  These were the ones appearing at Lincoln Day dinners.  That turned out to be very important. We were on the ground floor with a great number of people.  We were not talking about Unigov at all these occasions, although they were intrigued by rumors of the new Mayor in Indianapolis and what seemed to be evolving.

SCARPINO:  So you were partly selling the new Mayor, as well as your ideas.

LUGAR: Yes, I was.  I was also – this arose on some occasions – Mayor Cavanagh in Detroit, Mayor Stokes in Cleveland – I did not know either one of them initially, I met them in due course – but they were outlining what seemed to be crisis situations in their cities. Things were sort of falling apart and they were desperately trying to keep that from occurring.  That was true of a large number of northern American cities at that particular time.  This impelled me really to be more vigorous in my attempt to make sure that not only that Indianapolis was a sound and safe place in which to live and grow, but likewise, to sort of evolve to a leadership among the cities of America. We had an idea here that could make a huge difference for us and really a leadership of cities in America.

SCARPINO:  What do you consider to be your own most effective leadership qualities?  What works for you?

LUGAR: Well, I think my best qualities of this sort, if I can identify them, are the ability to create friendships, to have not only a civil conversation, but I would say a more sympathetic conversation-try to understand the viewpoint of the person that I am talking to and his or her needs. The ability then, however, to offer potential solutions or ideas, as opposed to simply indicating that I understand the gravity of the situation.  I also want to offer some thoughts that if we might do this or that, we might proceed further.  Usually, hopefully, these conversations and the initiation of new friendships are based upon some good scholarship that comes before that.  In other words, the ideas really come from the fact that I’ve studied something carefully, or I’ve seen how it might work and have some confidence that the advice that I’m giving is sound.  As a result, if it proves to be that, obviously that builds on the friendship.  It builds the confidence level that you might be trusted to proceed along some further steps.

SCARPINO:  You’ve had the chance, in your long political career, to meet hundreds of leaders.  Is there somebody who stands out who you really learned from, who you look at that person and say, “I could really learn something about leadership from him or her?”

LUGAR: Well, earlier we talked about the Indianapolis situation.  Clearly, I thought that Keith Bulen, as the Marion County Chairman, was an outstanding leader.  He had really a vision, not just for Marion County, but for City of Indiana (sic) and really for the nation.  I came into a friendship with Keith Bulen largely because I think he felt Indianapolis had elected a democrat as Mayor for the last 20 years and demographically looked like that would be the case for the next 20.  I’d created so much of a stir in the three years that I was on the School Board.  By that, I mean essentially we were attempted to try to desegregate the public schools of Indianapolis with some initial success with the so-called Shortridge Plan, but nevertheless, overwhelmed really by the enormity of that task.  We had initiated the first school breakfast and lunch programs over the strong opposition of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce.  They said, “Not one dime of federal aid has ever come into here and we don’t want any of it,” and that sort of thing.

SCARPINO:  There was that tradition in Indianapolis.

LUGAR: Yes, very strongly.  As I recall, Editor Evans of the Indianapolis News just editorialized what in the world was happening to that School Board.  It was coming apart there, as I tried to lead this effort along with Gertrude Page, an African-American lady whose, husband Horace Page, had died.  He was a coal dealer in Indianapolis.  We were a partnership, really, in a number of these endeavors. For better or for worse, they had created quite a bit of notice of the School Board, really reaching out in the various issues in Indianapolis.  In any event, Keith Bulen organized a small group that was set up to sort of nominate an ideal set of candidates before we got to the primary. I emerged as the choice for Mayor.  Marge O'Laughlin, who is still around and a delightful person, was the City Clerk candidate, as I recall.  But this was not accepted by the party as a whole.  We had a primary; there were many candidates, and I won, but not by a great margin.  It was largely, I suspect, because of reorganizational efforts of Keith Bulen.  Then we still had to face the incumbent Mayor, Mayor Barton. He had been a good Mayor. He had not done a great deal one way or another, as I could see it, but at the same time did not have a host of enemies or a backlog there.  So that was a very difficult campaign and an unexpected victory, perhaps, for many, but we came into office really after all of this turmoil.  It was hardly a certain path. I mentioned Keith Bulen to begin with in terms of leadership because clearly his ability, both within the party and outside of it, was extraordinary in this respect.  I think, leaving aside the local politics, I was impressed during my time in the Senate with Ronald Reagan’s presidency.  Perhaps this is because I had many opportunities to visit the White House, to be a part of small conversations or groups even in the living quarters and what have you.  I appreciated, at least, his vision and the constructive things he was attempting to do.  He was really very eager to be helpful. He also had a remarkable way of articulating to the public, as well as in private.  He was a really interesting leader to watch and to emulate.

SCARPINO:  As part of the research for getting ready for this interview, I read an interview done with James Morris, who was your Chief of Staff from ’67 to ’73.  The interview was done as part of a project called, “Rebuilding Indianapolis: The Sport Initiative Project.”  I’m going to use Morris’s words so you know this isn’t me.  He described you as the “antithesis of a bigshot.”  He noted that the two of you often ate lunch in the old IU Medical School cafeteria and he assumed that you were there because the food was cheap and healthy.  You know him well, so you know obviously he wasn’t criticizing you, but do you think he was correct in labeling you as the “antithesis of a bigshot?”

LUGAR: Well, that’s an interesting way, certainly, to describe…

SCARPINO:  …I was very careful to say he said that…

LUGAR: …I think it is fair to say that I was careful not to take on the airs of a “bigshot” in quotes.  As we discussed earlier in this conversation, I tried always to exercise diplomacy and thoughtfulness, understanding in the other person’s point of view.  I did not have any authority, somebody to dictate or demand that certain things occurred.  It was a question always of convincing somebody else, of gaining their support, their friendship, and I think that is the best way to go about it.  Other leaders have tried other means, of course, but we were at time in which we really didn’t need to convince each other.  We needed to talk through these – there were no obvious solutions for cities in America at that time.  Maybe that’s still the case…

SCARPINO:  That was a very contentious time, which people…

LUGAR: …Yes…

SCARPINO:  … sometimes forget as we look farther and farther into the past.

LUGAR: …Given the racial difficulty, other sociological difficulties, the fact that…

SCARPINO:       …The war in Vietnam…

LUGAR: …Yes.  You know, we had the case in which a noted author wrote about Indianapolis and used the phrase “Indianoplace” describing the situation. This certainly offended all of us, but that was a view of many Americans.  This is in print that this is our situation.

SCARPINO:  So one more general question.  I read that you as a child and a teenager were a voracious reader and that you especially liked biographies of generals and politicians and scientists, and that you imagined yourself in the roles of the famous men you were reading about.  But I also read that, as early as the age of eight, you imagined being a politician.  I thought, you know, I raised some sons, I’m familiar with young children.  At the age of eight when most boys want to be baseball players or basketball players or firemen, did you really imagine that you wanted to be a politician at that young age?

LUGAR: I think I did catch the gleam then. It was because my dad allowed me to sit up with him until 3 A.M. in the morning listening to Wendell Willkie’s nomination to be the Republican presidential candidate.

SCARPINO:  On the radio, for the record.

LUGAR: Yes, on the radio.  This was an intriguing experience with my dad. When Wendell Willkie came to Indianapolis, I think in the latter stages of the campaign, maybe in October of 1940, he spoke from the balcony of the old English Theater.  My brother, who was a year younger than I am, Tom Lugar, and I were small enough that we were able to wiggle our way through the 25,000 people, or what have you that were at Monument Circle, almost underneath the balcony where the great man was speaking.  I was reminded of this many, many years later because someone from the Indianapolis Star uncovered a photograph that showed two young guys underneath the balcony…

SCARPINO:  …It was you and your brother…

LUGAR: …My dad and my mother went to Elwood, Indiana, to hear Wendell Willkie accept the nomination, which was the way they did it in those days.  They came back with all sorts of tales of that experience.  It was the beginning really, I think, of a spark there that I was interested in politics.  I continued to be interested.  Finally we could see these things on television.  One nice thing about – early in high school, I won an oratorical contest and the prize was a television set, which was the first one we had had in our home.  So I remember watching the conventions and things now on television, being captivated by all of that.

SCARPINO:  It is true though that at a relatively young age you could sort of look into the future as much as a young boy could do, and say, “I could do that.”

LUGAR: Yes, I was excited about it, as you’ve suggested.  At the Rauh Memorial Library, up on Meridian Street near 30th in those days, they had a contest in the summertime.  If you read eight books, you’d receive a prize of some sort.  When you read the book and you returned it to the library, the librarian would ask two or three questions that was required to know that you’d read the book.  In any event, I became a kind of voracious reader, at least a very steady one, taking out the books, and with a lot of biographies of people, learning about their lives, what had happened to them, and what relevance there might be for my own life.

SCARPINO: Did you learn anything about leadership from all that reading?

LUGAR: Oh, I’m certain I did.  A lot of the people had led in many ways, some successful and some with some difficulty.

SCARPINO:  Do you think that leaders should read?

LUGAR: I don’t understand the question.

SCARPINO:  Do you think that a person who aspires to be a leader should be well-read?

LUGAR: Yes.  I’ve indicated earlier in our conversation that I think not only well-read, but a scholar, an avid student of what is available so that you don’t make all the same mistakes others have made in the past.  Or you at least are intrigued enough that this may set in motion some imagination of how it might be.

SCARPINO:  So I have to admit, I can’t resist doing this, as you look around the world today and around our country today and the state of political leadership, do you see that kind of a leader still in prominence?

LUGAR: Oh, I’m certain there must be many.  I would not criticize anybody in advance, but I…

SCARPINO:  …No, I actually wasn’t asking you to criticize anybody, I was asking for the…

LUGAR: …I think there is a need for more of this.

SCARPINO:  Just a few basic demographic questions so that anybody who uses this interview will just have it in one place.  When and where were your born?

LUGAR: I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in Methodist Hospital on April 4, 1932.

SCARPINO:  Okay.  Who were your parents?

LUGAR: My parents were Marvin and Bertha Lugar.

SCARPINO:  Do you have any brothers and sisters?

LUGAR: Yes, my brother, Tom, a year younger, and a sister, Anne, who is seven years younger.

SCARPINO:  What did your father do for a living?

LUGAR: My father was a farmer, in the sense that he bought acreage in Decatur Township of Marion County.

SCARPINO:  Down on the White River?

LUGAR: Yes.  He studied agriculture at Purdue University and graduated there. He  went into the livestock commission business with his father, Riley Webster Lugar, out at the former Indianapolis Stockyards.  I think my grandfather sold the cattle and my dad sold the hogs.  The market was set and over fairly early in the morning as farmers brought in their livestock.  He would then go out to the farm and manage affairs there.  Eventually, of course, he had tenants who were there on the farm who actually did the farming as he became more interested in lots of other things.  He also was a Rotarian – very interested.  I cite that because at the dinner table every Tuesday night, we got the lecture that he had heard.  That was intriguing to me as a boy, to hear what leaders or others who were coming to speak to the Rotars – and there were 500 members of the club at that time.  It was a very important factor in his life and became a factor in my life, too.  My brother and I were taken in as members when my dad passed away really out of remembrance and reverence for him.

SCARPINO:       What did your mother do?

LUGAR: My mother was simply a parent.  She looked after her children, looked after the household…

SCARPINO: …Which is hard work, by the way…

LUGAR: …Yes, but she was a very intelligent scholar in her own right.  I mention this because both of my parents were very ambitious for their children.  They really wanted to make certain, from the beginning, that we had every opportunity.  They were loving parents, but they were also parents who were excited about the possibilities that we had.  So they spent a very great deal of time in our activities and sort of managing our situation so that we would have the best opportunities.

SCARPINO:  Did your parents hold you to high standards? 

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO: Did they expect a lot from you?

LUGAR: They expected very high standards, and we tried to produce.  During grade school, I can’t remember, they didn’t have class rankings there, but I think that I got highest grades all the way through.  At Shortridge High School, I was valedictorian.  This, at that time, was sort of the college preparatory high school in the city.  There were 2,300 people in the school, a class of 500 and some, so to be valedictorian in that atmosphere was foreign.  I was valedictorian again at Denison University with straight A’s.  But this came really because my parents got us off on the right track.  They had really high requirements.  So we studied.  We did our homework.  We did the things that were going to be helpful in terms of being successful in school.

SCARPINO:  Do you have any idea that at some point, when your parents looked at their three children and they looked at you, that they realized that they had an exceptional child?

LUGAR: Yes.  This happened in different ways.  I cite one that came about because I was deeply interested in music.  My parents had started us out at the Jordan Conservatory of Music when we were in the first grade, as I recall, taking piano lessons.  So we progressed with that, but I progressed fairly rapidly in the sense that I was not only able to master more and more complex works, but I was also doing some composing.  My mother was very, very proud of this and had ambivalent feelings, however.  She took me down to Indiana University and…

SCARPINO:  …To the music school?

LUGAR: …Yes.  We saw the dean.  He pointed out that he was going to conduct one of his own symphonies at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra where my brother and I had been attending with our parents, at the children’s concerts for some time.  So I pointed out to him, “Well, I am also a composer.”  “Oh,” he said, “well, that’s wonderful.”  He said, “Come back stage after.”  I think the problem of all this was that my parent feared that they had sort of a child prodigy situation on their hands and that life was bigger than this.  So as a result, they strongly suggested that I take up an instrument and play in an orchestra.  There was, at School #60 fortunately, a small orchestra.  I took up the cello and studied with Walter Reuleaux, who was then first cellist of the Indianapolis Symphony.  When I went to Shortridge, there was a wonderful orchestra there.  It had eight cellos in the section.  I was number eight at the beginning in the freshman year.

SCARPINO:  But you worked your way up to number one.

LUGAR: Yes, in due course.  I was deeply interested in all of this.  I mentioned this illustration of my parents because, on the one hand, they were very excited that I had these talents, on the other hand, they wanted to make certain that, in terms of social integration, I think, that we move them along so that we could work with others in our musical skills.

SCARPINO:  They wanted you to have friends and a social life.

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO:  Other than your parents, as you were growing up in Indianapolis, were there other adults who had a significant impact on you and the career you later achieved?

LUGAR: It was much more indirect, but as a family we attended Central Avenue Methodist Church.  We went first all to the Sunday School as children, then the church services with our parents.  Central Avenue members, many of them, left to start St. Luke’s United Methodist Church up at 86th Street.  We were a part of that group that went up there.  I mentioned that because I was really deeply influenced by the pastors of both Central Avenue and St. Luke’s.  I took really seriously what was occurring in those services.  I remember I went with my dad out to DePauw University to an oratorical contest for Methodist youth.  I think I was about a junior in high school at the time, and I did well in the contest.  On the way back my dad said, “Now, Dick,” he said, “that was a wonderful speech, but I hope you really believed everything that you said.”  It was sort of a sobering thought which still sticks in my mind.  My parents were listening, and they were pushing to make sure we had every opportunity to succeed. But they also really wanted to sort of double-back from time to time to make sure that we had the sincerity, the conviction…

SCARPINO:  As you went on with the rest of your life, did that advice or question from your dad: “Do you believe what you really said?” Did that stay with you?

LUGAR: Yeah, that’s why it stays with me now, this conversation just casually in a car coming back from someplace.

SCARPINO:  Let me see if I can connect some dots here.  Referencing back to you talking about your service on the School Board and the fact that you advocated for lunch and breakfast and with some significant opposition in the city.  Did that background that you had in the Methodist faith have anything to do with you saying we need to get this done?

LUGAR: Yes, I think so.  I, you know, volunteered to become – I don’t know what they call the preachers that are not ordained but sort of…

SCARPINO:  …Lay minister?

LUGAR: …Yeah, the lay minister situation, and did a fair number of sermons when I was in college years and subsequently in…

SCARPINO:  …At Denison or here in Indianapolis?

LUGAR: In the Indiana area, often churches outside Indianapolis and what have you.  So I was a student, when I was at Oxford, of the rise of C.S. Lewis.  I was amazed, having heard him on British broadcasting,that he was actually at Oxford.  I finally found he was giving lectures.  I went over and actually heard the great man in person.  His writings, Mere Christianity, for example, and other books were very important in the formation of my own faith in my life.

SCARPINO:  And that gave you the courage to advocate a position that was…

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO:  … as quite a young man in your early 30s that was out of step with many of the Republicans in the city.

LUGAR: Well, in fact at the time of the School Board situation, that arose because I’d come back from the Navy.  My dad had died and my brother and I were trying to save our family business, the Thomas L. Green Company on the west side which manufactured food machinery.  My brother was a Purdue engineer.  He had a degree from there in something in Liberal Arts, politics and philosophy.  But in any event, to make a long story short, we did save the factory, but we spent all of our time.  We were really devoted day-by-day to everything there.  It was really out of that experience that people on the west side came to me one day, it was a rather elderly group, and said, “Lugar, you’ve got to run for the School Board.  Our kids on the west side are just getting dirt.  Nobody pays any attention to them.  Somebody’s got to be an advocate, stick up for them.”  One old lady, I remember vividly said, “You’re far too young but you’re about all we’ve got out here.”

SCARPINO:  You’re too young but you’re all we got.

LUGAR: That was about the last thing I thought of.  You know, you ask…

SCARPINO:  Is that where the idea came from, people approached you and said, “Will you do it for us?”

LUGAR: Yes.  You know, talking about Wendell Willkie and of this, I thought, I don’t know why the School Board even meets.  I know somebody from the School Board signed by Shortridge diploma.  My wife, Char, was very wise.  She said, “Our boys are going to go – and we had four boys by this time – to the public schools, maybe we better find out what’s going on there these days.” Which was a good idea because it was difficult.  I wouldn’t say a mess, but it was a problem.  In any event, I decided to run and it turned out that I had been so busy with the factory, just not oblivious of life going on, but the racial problems that were afflicting the schools at that point were very severe.  All sorts of people came into the race.  There’d never been such a School Board race before.  There were debates, not on television in those days, but on the radio and what have you.  I emerged and Gertrude Page, that I’d mentioned before, got the most votes; I got the second most.  We sort of started out a path seeing really what we needed to do.  That was the beginning of my political career, the first time that I was on the ballot or in office.  So I did the things from both my religious conviction, as well as common sense, with the so-called “latch-key children.”  These were children often pointed out on Indiana Avenue in those days.  They were sick in school because the parents had left, they had no breakfast.  This was the first federal program that really dealt with breakfast for latch-key children and people like this and so forth.  It seemed to me that obviously that this is something that we could do.  But as I mentioned, all hell broke loose, in essence.  That was true of many of the reforms we suggested.  Of course, this led to all sorts of new acquaintances that I would never have had just dealing with business out there at Thomas L. Green.   I continued that until I was elected Mayor.  We had three years on the School Board in that interim period between my coming back from the Navy and so forth.

SCARPINO:  How did a relatively young white male who had grown up in a relatively privileged environment figure out how to deal with people who were so much different than he was, mostly African-Americans in the city?

LUGAR: Well, I listened to them, got to know them.  In this School Board campaign, I saw all sorts of people.  I was exposed to conflicts that I didn’t have any idea existed in Indianapolis.

SCARPINO:  For example?

LUGAR: Well, I think there was, in some cases, a push by some people in the black community to say that, “We’re going to have a majority of citizens, I mean, before long.  Let’s not make too many compromises.  As a matter of fact, what might work out is that a good number of Caucasians will leave the city; they just will sort of depart. We will stay and we will grow.”  There was this sort of dynamic going on there that was not apparent to many people in politics or elsewhere, but I certainly became acquainted with as we were trying to deal with starting with the school lunch or breakfast program.  When we got into desegregation, here I would go to elementary schools maybe for an open house or public discussion.  People became very, very excited.  We would almost – we didn’t have to call the police, but we were on the verge of that.  This was a very tough time that I could see in Indianapolis.  I was unaware of this when I was just dealing with the factory day-by-day, but I certainly became aware of it in a public situation like the School Board, and even more so as a candidate for Mayor, you know, in the primary and the general election.  But at the same time, getting back to your basic question, it appeared to me that this was something that I really wanted to do.  I had faith that it was the right thing to do and that we were really going to make progress.  It was not something I needed to do to make a living, or that I saw, really, necessarily as a career.  That really came much, much later when we got into political affairs.

SCARPINO:  As a youth, you were a Boy Scout and you achieved the highest rank that a Scout can achieve, which is Eagle Scout.  What was it about Scouting that managed to hold your attention from Tenderfoot to Eagle?

LUGAR: Well, I think in retrospect it was probably the agenda of all the different skills, which included how to cook, how to…

SCARPINO:  …Do you use those skills?

LUGAR: … create fire by friction, do all sorts of things. We had variety.  It was, likewise, a social endeavor.  The Scout troop that I was in had a wonderful scoutmaster and he had ties with people in Brown County.  So we’d go down to Brown County and camp out and learn about the wilderness, so to speak, down there.  I had some great experiences.  I remember, when I was trying to get my camping merit badge, I had to do fire by friction, I mentioned that.  When I was out at Camp Belzer – it was called Chank-tun-un-gi in those days – and the very first night there was a terrible storm.  It rained.  The tent that I had with my colleague there filled up with water.  It was impossible to figure out how we were going to get fire by friction and pass the whole thing.  Furthermore, there were rumors that there were German prisoners at Fort Harrison - this was still during the war days – and that they were going to come over into our camp some night.  It was quite an exciting experience.  My brother, Tom, showed brotherly love.  He produced for this camp about a dozen boards that were made up of wood taken from trees on our farm and the spindles that were required to do fire by friction, so that all these campers that were out there were able to get and pass the merit badge and proceed onward.  So those were exciting events in my life that came from out of the blue really.

SCARPINO:  What was your Eagle Scout project?

LUGAR: In those days, I don’t think we had one.

SCARPINO:  Okay.

LUGAR: That was before the current situation.

SCARPINO:  In 1950, you graduated first in the class of about 600 from Shortridge High School.  Along with being class valedictorian, you brought together really a remarkable high school record, and I’m just going to mention just a few of the highlights: President of Key Club, champion debater, Eagle Scout, first cellist in the Shortridge orchestra, member of the Senior Council.  For one thing, I imagine that took a tremendous amount of energy.  As you did those things, were you following your interests or were you putting in place elements for a future career in politics, or both?

LUGAR: No, I was following interests.  I really did not see them related to that.  I was also following interests in athletics, not nearly so successfully.  I was a member of the Shortridge High School freshman football team that won the city championship among freshman footballers. I ran a half-mile and mile relay on the track team as a freshman.  By the time that I’d finished my sophomore year, it was apparent to me that I was not - well, I was cut from the basketball team.  I made freshman team but didn’t make the sophomore year, and that was going to happen in football, which was disappointing.  I took up golf and tennis. I continued the running.  I’ve always done that.  But that was not my most successful part of high school, but these were things in which I spent a lot of time and really wished that II could have done better – was always trying to do better.  Finally, my excitement came at Oxford, of all places.  They were forming a basketball team to play Cambridge. So I played for Oxford against Cambridge and won my half blue, which is sort of their equivalent of a letter, or what have you, there.  My basketball career finally revived in postgraduate times.

SCARPINO: Did they have very many people to draw upon who knew how to play basketball?

LUGAR: No, no.  The Rhodes Scholars were – Paul Sarbanes was one…

SCARPINO: At the same time that you were there?

LUGAR: Yes, and he was a fine player at Princeton.There were a couple of others like this that came over and supplemented the English group.

SCARPINO: Following high school, you attended Denison College in Ohio.  It occurred to me that a person with your high school record could have gotten into any college or university in the United States, had he so chosen.  Why Denison?

LUGAR: Well, I was accepted at Princeton, and I was accepted at Carlton College.  I chose Denison really because of the recommendation of some friends of my family in Indianapolis who had a great experience.  It was also the factor that my dad was very ill.  As it turned out, he was going to pass away just after I graduated, but I wanted to be within driving range.  At the same time, I really wanted to go off to a new experience.  I wanted to go out of state.  Denison provided a full tuition scholarship.  This was an inducement.  In those days, there were only two given at Denison, and so that was quite an honor.  It was a good choice for me because it was a small liberal arts college, about 2,000 students, but I had an opportunity to continue what I had been doing at Shortridge.  At Shortridge, I had a weekly column in the Shortridge Daily Echo, and I was a member of the debate team that won the state championship. I continued these things on at Denison.  I wrote a weekly column for the Denisonian, the school newspaper.  I paired up with Tom Skidmore, who had been a rival all the way through in various things, on the debate team.  Oxford University had a team that was touring and they came to Denison. We debated them and participated in a national contest and that sort of thing.  Denison offered really an opportunity for me. You mentioned the student body situation.  My wife and I were both elected co-presidents of the student body.  This was not senior class president but co-president of the student body.  Denison was way ahead of the time having male and female co-presidents.  I was not going with her at the time.  I’d given my fraternity pin in Beta Theta Pi to another woman and she had taken a pin from another.  But after we got together as co-presidents, well, we rapidly dispensed with the other pinnings and we’ve been married for 60 years.  That was very important that I found my sweetheart at Denison. It was a very good choice.  The Rhodes Scholarship thing was not on my mind at all at that point.

SCARPINO: You were the first Rhodes Scholar from Denison, is that right?

LUGAR: Yes, the only undergraduate before or after I was ever elected.  There was one Rhodes Scholar who went to Denison but was elected in graduate school, before my time.  I read about it [the Rhodes Scholarship] in “Fortune Magazine.”  I corresponded with three people who kindly wrote back to me and encouraged me to get into the competition.  I felt when I mentioned it to the Dean there that he was going to accuse me of over-standing, which in essence, he did.  He thought this was not ludicrous.  But in any event when I came to the – and Herman Wells and Fred Hovde, I mentioned, were members of the Board in Indiana that selected two people from Indiana…

SCARPINO: …President of IU and President of Purdue…

LUGAR: …Yes.  And Byron Trippet from Wabash was also on, but my first acquaintance with all three of these giants in Indiana education.  It was a situation in which I won, finally.  My rival, Skidmore, was one of the two from Ohio.  We met up in Chicago, and I prevailed and went to Oxford. It was an experience that I really had never envisioned.  It came really out of, simply, curiosity.

SCARPINO: You, you were reading “Fortune Magazine” and you just said…

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO: … “I’d like to do that.”

LUGAR: I was so far out of it that when I won the thing, I got word that I needed to select which college I would attend.  I said, “Well, Oxford.”  They said, “You don’t get it. So, finally, I selected Pembroke College because there were no Americans there and I figured this was going to be sort of total immersion, which was a good choice.  Then following our conversation, I got elected President of the student body there in my second year…

SCARPINO: …At Pembroke?

LUGAR: …Yes. Although I was the only American, I was successful in finding at least my supporters and others to become President of the student body there.

SCARPINO: What was it like for a young man from the middle of Indiana or the middle of Ohio to suddenly end up in the U.K., in England?

LUGAR: Well, it was a mind-bending experience.  I had never been outside our country.  I went over on the boat with the other thirty-one Rhodes Scholars, arrived at Pembroke in the middle of the night, and there’s nobody there, really.  I discovered, really, how big the world is, how dangerous it was for our country, given all the people that I saw at Oxford from different countries with different ideas altogether.  Some were radically different.  I traveled with a lot of English students throughout Europe.  I went to Switzerland and learned to ski the first time.

SCARPINO: Oh my goodness.

LUGAR: Bois d’Asson Provence in France with the French students.  I had all sorts of great experiences in finding out what was going on in Europe.  Of course, the Cold War was still going on.  Germany was divided.  It was an experience that changed my life in terms of international understanding and interest, really, in the world as a whole.

SCARPINO: Could you articulate that a little bit?  What insights did you gain in international understanding that I assume stuck with you all the way through the Senate?

LUGAR: Well, of course, Europe was still divided, I mentioned. Germany in particular. It was my first acquaintance with the Russians.  There were a few at Oxford, not many, but I gained some insight into their mode of thinking and how Europe might wind up under certain circumstances.  I spent some time at the Oxford Union hearing British politicians, and that was instructive.  But then I was most interested in a number of students that were coming from Africa.  These were people, many of them, who returned and became leaders in their countries.  Others returned and were assassinated sort of forthwith.  But I got some sense, really, of what life was like in the so-called underdeveloped world, or places that were colonialized and so forth.

SCARPINO: You learned about the impact of colonialization?

LUGAR: Yeah.  It was just a myriad of personalities and friendships and what have you, but really very, very important in terms of my background.

SCARPINO: Did you remain engaged with those folks who had been your classmates over the years?

LUGAR: Oh, with many.

SCARPINO: Yeah.

LUGAR: Exchanged Christmas cards throughout the years, try to keep track, who’s still alive and who’s…

SCARPINO: …I mean, any of the African students who went back and survived and were not assassinated – were they in leadership positions while you were in the Senate?

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO: For example?

LUGAR: Well, I can’t remember who. There were some but I really can’t claim that I was in touch with them during that period.  I was just aware of who they were.

SCARPINO: After Pembroke, you came back to the United States and you enlisted in the Navy.

LUGAR: Well, I enlisted in the Navy while I was in England.

SCARPINO: Yes.  You attended Officer Candidate School and then you followed that with Naval Intelligence School.  Now, I’m assuming that a young man with your record got to pick.  You must have gotten your first choice when it came to what to do after OCS.

LUGAR: Not really.

SCARPINO: No?

LUGAR: No.  After OCS, it was apparent that I was going to be assigned to Air Intelligence Command and probably would be on a carrier off the port, well, in Morocco.  I was sent to Air Intelligence School from OCS to prepare for that.  I was really plucked out of obscurity by somebody in the Pentagon.  Admiral Arleigh Burke, who was Chief of Naval Operations, was setting up a special briefing theater in the E-Ring of the Pentagon in which all 50 admirals more or less, would come every morning at 8:00.  He would also invite members of Congress or other people in the administration to hear the so-called Navy point of view.

SCARPINO: Right.

LUGAR: His rival was Curtis LeMay of the Air Force…

SCARPINO: Oh my goodness.  There’s a personality.

LUGAR: …One of the Joint Chiefs.  But in any event, they were looking for a briefing team.  So, as I say, I was picked out of obscurity.  Came to Washington then…

SCARPINO: Somebody must have gone through your file and realized that you had…

LUGAR: …Probably…

SCARPINO: … intelligence and high grades and debating ability and…

LUGAR: …Yeah, probably so.  I was assigned to the Naval Intelligence School in Washington after doing – I finished Air Intelligence first, and then to the Pentagon fairly shortly where my responsibility was to come in at midnight, read the secrets of secrets until 6:00 in the morning.  The other admirals began to require that I give them a copy of my briefing notes by 6:30 because they were afraid, on occasion, Admiral Burke would send a carrier the other way around the Cape of Good Hope or something, totally upsetting the whole situation.  They wanted to know what he was going to hear.It was a very formal thing.  There was somebody playing a Victrola record of the Stars and Stripes Forever outside the room and everybody marched in and I would give my intelligence briefing…

SCARPINO: …To all of these admirals?

LUGAR: …Yes.  Then after I’d finished that, many days I would go to the basement of the Pentagon and meet with the CIA people…

SCARPINO: …CIE?

LUGAR: CIA.

SCARPINO: Oh, CIA.

LUGAR: … or other intelligence services.  Occasionally, very seldom, but occasionally I was assigned to go to the White House.  I never saw General Eisenhower person-to-person.  I was in a briefing theater that had been set up and with all of the charts and graphs and what have you.  I could hear him harrumphing in the background.  General Goodpaster, I think was his aide, and he would ask me the questions.  It was a very exciting situation for a young guy.

SCARPINO: You were briefing on closed circuit television?  Is that…?

LUGAR: Yes, at that stage.  Admiral Burke sometimes slept in his office if there was a crisis.  I remember being called one time and he asked me who this guy was as he woke up.  I said, “Oh, he’s the premier,” of wherever it was.  Well, he said, “Thank goodness,” and goes back to sleep reassured.  We would have breakfast together on occasion because he was up and at it and knew I was in the Pentagon.  It was a very exciting time, to say the least.

SCARPINO: So you were, in Navy parlance, a junior, lieutenant junior, right?

LUGAR: I got up to, yeah, to that, JG.

SCARPINO: And you’re briefing a room full of admirals.

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO: What was that like?  I mean, for anybody who doesn’tunderstand the military, this is the lower end of the officer corps and the top end of the officer corps.

LUGAR: Very exciting.  Obviously, you wanted to prepare well for what you were going to do.  There was an occasion, for example, a Commander Massey was giving sort of an operational briefing.  After the intelligence briefing, somebody would do operations.  He gave some answer to a question which was just something incorrect, very ill-informed. Within a week, he was assigned to Taiwan.  So, it gave you an idea this was serious business and not Trivial Pursuit.

SCARPINO: So relatively high pressure.

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO: What did you take away from that experience that stayed with you for the rest of your career?

LUGAR: Well, first of all, another great educational experience.  If you are reading these intelligence briefs or what’s happening all over the world every day and you’re able not to memorize it, but to – this is quite an education, for three years, to see the world really from that perspective.  But it was also interesting in terms of later political career because I was seeing a lot of people coming and going through this situation.  Admiral Burke, one time, asked me to come and give a briefing to Gus Long, who was head of Texaco, as I recall, at that time.  They had been friends from way back. I did my best to give a briefing on Cuba at that stage, because Gus Long was worried about the Texaco properties and this sort of thing, and…

SCARPINO:  This is right before the revolution?

LUGAR: Yeah. He asked, I think the question, “Do you believe that Castro is likely to stay?”  I said, “Yes, I think that he is.”  He said, “My goodness,” he said “that’s ridiculous.”  He said, “Arleigh, what has gotten into this fellow’s head?”  So he said, “What do you think Arleigh?”  And so I thought, well, this is a moment of truth.  Admiral Burke says, “I agree with Lieutenant Lugar.  I think that’s what’s going to happen.”  And so, “You’re both full of it.”  But he didn’t really pay attention and he lost the Texaco operation there, but there were implications of that.  I went out with a young guy who was one of my aides there in the Pentagon to see Castro come in at Washington National Airport when he came over for his one appearance at the U.N.  That was fascinating.  We were working a crowd along the stretch there and so forth. All sorts of episodes of that variety which really gave me a much more enriched feeling of what’s going on in the world.

SCARPINO: In addition to what you learned I assume from the very, very inside about what was going on in the world, what did you learn about leadership as a military officer?

LUGAR: Well, I’d watched Admiral Burke.  He was exemplary in that respect.  I’m not sure I could list all the qualities that he had but….

SCARPINO: Well, let me step back.  What kind of an impact did Admiral Burke have on you?

LUGAR: Oh, very, very strong impact.  First of all, I was amazed, perhaps, that he had this much confidence in a young Lieutenant JG, and that we had this kind of an association.  This doesn’t work this way in the hierarchy of the military by and large, to say the least.  Then I was impressed with way he reached decisions.  I could watch, really, somebody who was on a key point where a decision had to be made for our country and advise to the president and whoever.

SCARPINO: When you got out of the Navy, you came back to Indianapolis…

LUGAR: …Yes…

SCARPINO: … to help your brother with the family business…

LUGAR: …Yes…

SCARPINO: … and you talked a little bit about that, but you did this for a few years.  I mean, it wasn’t just a short-term commitment.

LUGAR: No.

SCARPINO: What did you learn from being immersed in business and really struggling to save the family business that stayed with you?

LUGAR: Well, among the things that were most important was the trust of our employees.  I personally handed out the paychecks each week.  We payed them weekly, going machine to machine to see the person and give the check and find out what was going on in his life and the family, and what have you.  Likewise, I found out some things about how I could be helpful in saving the business.  Senator Homer Capehart had been a friend of my dad back in Rotary Club days.  I asked Homer Capehart to get me an appointment with the Export-Import Bank because we had a possibility of selling some machinery, a large amount, to a Mexican firm on a conditional sales contract.  I asked the import bank to really underwrite the conditional sales contract, which they did.  I came over to Washington by myself and found this person.  So we made this sale.  It was very important to our business and really set the stage for a whole series of sales in Mexico, other Latin American countries, and finally, the Philippines, for example.  It was a whole new experience for me outside of anything I’d ever done before.  I’d just come over here to Washington to see the Export-Import Bank and convey this back.  In fact, we accomplished so much in exporting that we won President Kennedy’s “E” Award for export excellence.

SCARPINO: Gee!

LUGAR: The “E” Award had been given to factories in World War II who had been exemplary in their production.  President Kennedy’s administration was trying to emphasize the need for America to export more.  We were the first firm in Central Indiana to win the award, maybe in all of Indiana.  So I erected a large flagpole outside of our factory where the “E” Award could be raised with the American flag.  Governor Matt Welsh came out to help raise the flag and do the honors, and so forth.  It was a very small firm.  We went from 50 employees to about 100 by the time that I had left, but a money-making firm in which I learned a great deal, literally, sort of day-by-day in terms of the mechanics.

SCARPINO: When you were leaving and your size of your workforce had doubled, were you still out on the floor handing out the paychecks and talking to the workers?

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO: Why did you think it was important to do that?

LUGAR: Because I felt that the loyalty of all of these associates was extremely important, that they wanted to make sure somebody understood their problems, apart from the ones we were struggling with in the factory, which everybody was aware of.

SCARPINO:  You sold to Mexico, you sold to other countries in Latin America…

LUGAR: …Yes…

SCARPINO:  …you sold to the Philippines.  Did you go there personally?

LUGAR: No, my brother did, however, and two other people in the factory who were serving in the sales force.

SCARPINO:  In 1964, you were persuaded by people in your part of town where your factory was located to run for the School Board.  Did you see this as a first step in a political career, or did you just decide to do it because you were asked and thought, “Maybe I could make a difference?”

LUGAR: I think the latter.  I did not see how this lead to anything.  In other words, it was not a part of the Republican/Democratic situation.

SCARPINO:  In those days, I think I remember, there were slates of candidates.  One was sort of Republican leaning and the other was Democratic leaning, so I assume you were in the Republican one.

LUGAR: Well, to some extent that was true.  There was…

SCARPINO: …Did Keith Bulen have anything to do with that?

LUGAR: No.

SCARPINO: No?

LUGAR: I really had not met Keith Bulen at this point.  There was a Citizen’s School Committee.  I think that was the name of the group.  It usually had a slate of candidates. In this particular election, they had candidates and I was a member of their slate, but another slate came in altogether different.  You may be right that one was more conservative and the other not so. But, it was not really clear.  The issues really weren’t the same that were being fought in the ’68 presidential campaign or the national campaign.

SCARPINO:  We talked at the beginning about some of the things that you tried to accomplish then, but in 1967 you stepped down to run for Republican Mayor of Indianapolis.  Now, I looked this up because, I admit, I didn’t know this until I started the research for this interview.  Between 1930 and 1968, Indianapolis had 10 Democratic Mayors and three Republicans.  You defeated incumbent Democrat, John Barton.  Whatever caused you to believe that you could win?  I mean, that sounds a little more facetious than I meant it to sound, but I mean, you’re a young man, you have a busy life…

LUGAR: Well, I think it’s good to even raise the point that I think I mentioned earlier that there had not been a Republican elected for 20 years.  So although there might have been three…

SCARPINO:  They were back in the past.

LUGAR: …Yes, because the demographics of the city apparently were changing, at least that’s the way observers thought.  Well, I think the fact is that I was convinced, after Keith Bulen’s small committee that he set up nominated me, I was really excited about the possibility.  I became really ramped up in the whole thing.  It’s interesting. Keith was a great leader, but he had to present this slate to the meeting of the ward chairman at the Columbia Club. I mentioned Marge O'Laughlin earlier.  I saw her recently at the Indianapolis Kiwanis Club.  They celebrated their 100th anniversary.  She and Sarah Barker, Judge Barker, were two of the first women taken into Kiwanis, but pretty late in the game, about 1989 or something.  In any event, Marge O’Laughlin and I were in a room there in the Columbia Club waiting to be called before the Ward Chairman’s meeting.  Well, the time went by, and time went by, and nothing was happening.  I began to get a little bit worried about it. We had every reason to because Keith was really facing a storm of people who felt that, I think, he had overstepped in trying to select who the nominees were going to be and that this was up to the whole group, and maybe they didn’t like the people that he’d selected.  So, we finally were admitted to what was a rather raucous gathering of people.  This was the beginning of a campaign for Mayor in which it was unlikely the Republican was going to win anyway, given the course of things.  But it led to several other Republicans entering the primary, despite the County Chairman’s views on this including, as I recall, Alex Clark who had been elected Mayor 20 years before.  He was encouraged to come back in, and I think Judge Bill Sharp, and I forget who else.  It was quite a field.  So we had a, a real contest just to get the nomination for something that most people didn’t think was going to be worth the paper after you finished the whole business.  But, I was excited about it.  I really, maybe, was overconfident that it was going to work out alright.

SCARPINO:  Well, clearly, once you had the nomination you were in it to win.

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO:  Yeah, I mean, you expected that you could win.

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO:  I’m going to make sure we get to IUPUI.  In the political history of Indianapolis and during your years as Mayor, the intertwined issues of race and education were significant.  Just to get a couple of facts into the record for somebody who is looking at this interview in the future, I’m borrowing a few lines written by Wilma Gibbs, who is the African-American history expert at the Indiana Historical Society.  I’m quoting from Wilma just to get us started.  She said, “In May 1968, the United States Justice Department filed suit against the Indianapolis Public Schools to force the desegregation of its schools.  The case was tried in July 1971.  IPS was found guilty.  The court charged IPS with,” and I quote, “‘operating a segregated school system.’During the summer of 1973, United States District Court judge for the Southern District of Indiana, S. Hugh Dillin, ordered the one-way busing of black IPS students to the surrounding townships.”  How did you see that situation with IPS with the forced bussing impacting the vision that you had for the future of Indianapolis?

LUGAR: Well, first of all, I think Gertrude Page and I had tried back in ’65 or thereabouts to start the desegregation process. We had had some success with the Shortridge Plan.  The first class of freshmen coming in, if you were coming in as a freshman, you could go to Shortridge from anywhere in the city.  The bars were down low.  Classes were about 50% black, 50% white.  Now, it had been prior to that time, 90% black, 10% white.  Educational journals said it’s like water going uphill.  But it didn’t last.  Some of my colleagues on the School Board said, “Lugar, you’re too interested in sociology and race and what have you; we’re just interested in education.”  They began to backtrack and this led then to the beginning of the court case that you just said finally came from this point.  It all went on while I was Mayor, and it was a situation we just simply experienced.  There was not anything we could do about it as a city government.  As a person, as a father, why, I became involved because after this desegregation occurred, my two sons who were in high school age were assigned to Crispus Attucks High School. They attended there and played football.  My wife became a volleyball coach and so forth.  So we were right in the middle of the desegregation with our own family, literally.  When I was elected to the Senate; why, we all moved over to Washington, and they went to school there at McLean High School (words inaudible). As I say, it was simply one of these things where we tried awfully hard to change the course of things on the School Board and succeeded, and it played out in the federal courts.

SCARPINO:  Okay, so I’m going to switch and we’re going to talk specifically about IUPUI.  Again for the record and to tell you, in case you don’t know, there’s a soon-to-be-published history of the IU Medical School that’s mostly written…

LUGAR: …Oh, great…

SCARPINO:  … and I’ve had an opportunity to read it draft, and I’m just going to quote one line from that soon-to-be-published study.  It says “The election of 1968 changed the political landscape in Indianapolis, and high on the list for the new Republican regime at City Hall and the Statehouse was creation of a new university in Indianapolis.”  Well, of course, you were the Mayor then.  Why was the creation of a new university in Indianapolis a goal of yours?

LUGAR: Well, I envisioned Indianapolis as one of the great cities of America.  I saw at a time in which – it was John Gunther who talked about “Indianoplace” – but the problems that Mayor Cavanagh, Mayor Stokes, the others had were getting much worse.  It was apparent to me that most large cities in the United States, as a matter of fact, were going to go through a period of not only lack of growth but sort of disintegration in much of what had led to their prominence.  One of the things that I was struck with was that, in most large cities of the United States, there was a university that was a central focus.  It was a very important part of the leadership of that city, in terms not only of the educational opportunities, but actual work by the president of the universities or the leaders there.  And maybe some of it was sort of a romantic vision that we really deserved to have a great university in Indianapolis.  We had some universities already; Butler University there, former Indiana Central come to mind.  But as I visited with people from Purdue and Indiana University, at least initially they were very pleased with the way things were set up as it was…

SCARPINO:  …Two extension programs, medical school, dental school…

LUGAR: …Yes, yes, and could not see any particular reason to change the formation simply because I was saying, “Indianapolis is great, we’re headed to the stars” and so forth.  In one of the publications that I’ve read about the history of IUPUI, they don’t give a date, but they mention a speech that I gave that had a prominent audience toward the fall of 1968, the first year that I was Mayor, indicating that I was very hopeful of creating the University of Indianapolis.  So this, of course, brought about a certain amount of discussion, not commotion, about what all this meant.  There were many others I’m sure who may have shared that idea, but I was given, at least, credit or blame for raising the issue in such a conspicuous way at that point.

SCARPINO:  I’m going to keep at that, but I’m going to back up a little bit.  As part of the background I did for this interview, I talked to people who knew you during your earlier political career and may still know you now.  Among those was John Krauss, Deputy Mayor for a while, and this is a paraphrase of what Mr. Krauss said.  We had notes, but he said:  “Richard Lugar,” he said, “Was a visionary who understood the power of education as an agent of transformation.  The city, especially the downtown, in the 1960s was a bleak place with no character and attraction.  Lugar saw that it needed to get beyond just being okay, just being satisfied with mediocrity.  The big issue was transforming the Indy downtown.  Lugar was all about developing the downtown to create an identity.”  The first question, I guess, just to get us started, do you agree with Mr. Krauss’s explanation of you or definition of you as a visionary?  Is that one of your strengths?

LUGAR: Well, I appreciate his designation.  I was, at that time, engaged not only in talking about the University of Indianapolis but also, as the Hotel Association pointed out, I remember I had a meeting with them, oh, a couple of years ago, and they said at the time that I became Mayor, the last hotel in downtown Indianapolis closed.

SCARPINO:  Yeah, there was no place to stay down there.

LUGAR: No, no.  From that point onward, of course, Indianapolis has built a tourism hotel industry that’s $4 billion a year, about 70,000 jobs. That’s quite apart from the sports stadiums and Super Bowl and what have you.  But the fact is that I was deeply interested in the downtown.  It was disintegrating rapidly, not only in terms of employment, but the condition of the buildings and the lack of visitors, tourism situation.  So the university was not part of the tourism business, but it came together with the whole idea.  I’d already been involved in trying to save the Pacers, in a different story altogether, by getting a downtown building…

SCARPINO:  …Market Square Arena…

LUGAR: …yeah, for them, and that really got us into the big leagues and to stay.  There was one opportunity after another of that sort that came along.  I thank John for calling this visionary, but these were all elements at least, but in the city that I saw…

SCARPINO:  Would it be fair, in sort of putting the pieces together and figuring out a little bit about who Richard Lugar is, that maybe part of being a visionary is to see the opportunities and put them together in ways other people didn’t?

LUGAR: Sure, yeah, and that’s what we tried to do in each of these cases.

SCARPINO:  I assume that as you’re running for Mayor, you’ve got a vision for what downtown could be if you’re successful, and a major state university was a part of that.  I mean, it also appears to me that part of your agenda was the identity of the city…

LUGAR: …Yes…

SCARPINO:  … no more “Indianoplace.”  How did you think that a major university would change the identity of the city?  I mean, it’s not a sports team, nobody roots for it; people don’t come to see it from Florida, so?

LUGAR: Well, maybe it was in my excitement about my own career through Denison and through Oxford and what I saw could occur really in the lives of people that were a part of a university experience, especially a successful one, a growing one.  I was aware of these educational institutions that we had, but maybe it was sort of a romantic vision that a University of Indianapolis was sort of a capstone of this.  We have the state capitol here and, ideally, it would be surrounded by scholars, by able students who are going to become leaders who are close to the situation.  I’m not sure of all the thoughts that I had at the time, but these were some of them, I’m sure.

SCARPINO:  Just for the sake of somebody who would use this in the future, a couple of sentences of background.  As early as the 1950s, IU President, Herman Wells, was working on plans to consolidate Indiana University’s academic operations in Indianapolis on the near west side, around the Medical and Dental School.  In 1962, Indiana University hires Mr. Charles Hardy to oversee the acquisition of land around those existing schools. In ’64, IU made plans to move its downtown campus and its Law School to the near west side.  So I assume that you knew about IU’s plans, you knew Herman Wells, and so on and so forth.  Did you talk to Herman Wells or other IU officials as you were running for Mayor and pushing this idea of a major state university?

LUGAR: No, I didn’t. It’s probably not correct that I really knew of all their plans.  This was just something…

SCARPINO:  …Okay…

LUGAR: … that I was probably not following that closely in those days.

SCARPINO:  So then maybe my next question won’t quite work, but I was wondering if you considered a major university as an important agent of transformation of the city, why not just align with IU that was already attempting to create a campus on the near west side?

LUGAR: I think I had maybe a view, and this may have not been as accurate or sophisticated as it should have been, that there were parts of the IU organization here, as there were parts of the Purdue organization. Both institutions really wanted to leave it that way.  They sort of liked to have colonies who were here, but the real show was in West Lafayette or Bloomington.

SCARPINO:  “Colony”, that’s an interesting way to look at it.  Indiana University, with the hiring of Mr. Hardy, was busy buying up land and relocating people off of what they imagined would be a future near west side campus. Most of those people were African-American.  How did IU’s efforts to buy up the land and relocate the African-American population on the near west side square with your efforts as Mayor to improve race relations in the city?

LUGAR: Well, much of the land that they were buying up had decrepit housing, very difficult neighborhood circumstances.  It was, I think, apparent to me these were areas that were going to have to be rebuilt at some stage.  I’m intrigued with all the work that Mayor Buttigieg is doing in South Bend, for example.  I’ve talked to him a great deal about this.  They’ve identified building after building that should go.  They don’t have an idea of clearing it out for a university; this is just simply -- But I was working on this problem very hard with our staff in the Mayor’s Office.  It was easier in those days for a variety of reasons, and I can’t recall all of them, but if I would go into an area and find a total mess, we would try very hard to see if we could not get our Department of Metropolitan Authority, what have you, maybe just to clear it up, to clear everything out, to get a block of land there that could be utilized for new housing or a for a business or for whatever.  So what was occurring out there on the west side was pretty close to our factory.  Our factory was out on Ohio Street across the river. But nevertheless, I would come in Ohio Street or come in Michigan, these were regular routes, and I was aware of what was going on there and the status of the land and so forth. I think, perhaps, welcomed the fact that somebody really was taking the initiative to really turn this into a better property situation.

SCARPINO:  If you could have had complete say over the creation of a major university in downtown Indianapolis, or in Indianapolis, where would you have put it?

LUGAR:  Where would I have put it?

SCARPINO:  Yeah.  In other words, if the choice had really been up to you and you had this idea, so where would you have put it?

LUGAR: Well, I think the location, however it came about, really was an excellent one.  I’m not certain I would have a better nomination because, as it turned out, it is close to the state capitol, it’s close to the city government for that matter.  It’s right in the midst of the tourism and the people coming from all over the country for conventions, for sporting activities, and what have you.  This is incidental, but two weeks ago I had a couple hours of free time between speeches, and I just walked from the Downtown Marriott out to the IUPUI campus.  I was amazed, really, how many new things were occurring, the expansion that is going on, and just delighted to see that.  But I was just reminiscing as I was walking along there sort of how each stage occurred and what it looked like many, many years ago and so forth.  But I think they’ve done a great job with the property, and I think the location is an excellent one.

SCARPINO:  In more than one place, I’ve seen the merger between IU and Purdue that created IUPUI described as a “shotgun wedding.”  So again, if you would have had complete control over the creation of the university in downtown or in Indianapolis, how would you have done it?

LUGAR: Well, I don’t know whether it was a “shotgun wedding” or not…

SCARPINO:  …Well, that’s not exactly my term but I’ve seen it enough times…

LUGAR: … but the point is, I think, that it wasn’t really taken for granted in Bloomington or West Lafayette that this was ideal or was going to occur in quite this way.  This is why I think my speeches and rhetoric at the time kept emphasizing the need for a great university.  Now, as I’ve admitted, my hope was that it would be called the University of Indianapolis.

SCARPINO:  But somebody beat us to it.

LUGAR: Well, no, they didn’t beat us to it.  This was sort of the offspring of – in other words, Gene Sease who was a very dear friend, after this didn’t occur, picked up the name and changed it down at Indianapolis Central.

SCARPINO:  Which I will say, I was there is 1986, I thought it was brilliant that he did that.

LUGAR: Yes.  Well, I agree.  But anyway, my hope was – but this was not shared by the leadership of IU and Purdue. The thought was that they, if this merger was going to occur shotgun or not, you’re going to have IUPUI to be the name of what occurred.

SCARPINO:  I’m going to come at that from a slightly different direction.  Again, the unpublished history of IU Medical School says the following, “Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar spoke on December 14, 1968, in favor of a new public university in the city, encouraging the General Assembly to pass a bill to be submitted in January for the creation of a state university to be independent of all other state universities and to be located in Indianapolis.”  And of course, as we know, the reaction of IU and Purdue was pretty swift.  The two university presidents, Joseph Sutton at IU and Frank Hovde at Purdue, got together, they agreed to a merger of their programs in Indianapolis.  Their Trustees pretty quickly validated that, and by January of 1969, we had this thing called IUPUI.  Now, when you were making these speeches, including the one on December 14, 1968, saying that you were going introduce legislation in January, did you mean it or were you trying to force their hand?

LUGAR: No, I meant it.  It wasn’t a part of the Unigov, but that was the same time that we were formulating all the legislation that became Unigov.  So that was on my mind, that was sort of my method in those days.  I’m glad that you identified the date of the speech, but nevertheless, no. This was really for real, we were wanting to propose -- But you’re right that even before the legislature really got serious about Unigov, and this took a little while in the General Assembly that time, the presidents of Purdue and IU had had their meeting or meetings that created the merger.

SCARPINO:  I mean, that speech was like you hooked on to a car battery and turned it on.  I mean, they really moved quickly after that.

LUGAR: Well, I think they saw that it was conceivable.  It wasn’t that everybody thought Unigov would happen, but the progression now was for real.  This was not simply a hypothetical situation.  You had a good number of legislators that I’d been meeting with around the state, in addition to the Marion County delegation, who were prepared to make things happen.

SCARPINO:  You had been clearly laying the foundation.

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO:  That leads me to the next question I want to ask you.  Republicans had a majority in the state legislature, but both IU and Purdue had decades of experience lobbying the legislature.

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO:  They had their own alliances, they worked with state government for years and years and years; did you really believe that legislation creating a new state university in competition with those two universities could get through the legislature?

LUGAR: I probably was unaware of the power that both the IU and the Purdue presidents or delegations had.  I think looking back on it, as you’ve described it, it was very considerable, probably much more so than I had estimated.  Maybe I was so convinced that we were going to pass the Unigov bill and everything else associated with that, that I really was not cognizant of all the other lobbying efforts of people that were involved there.  And with the Unigov thing, this was pretty tough sledding as it turned out.  I remember an occasion in which Speaker Otis Bowen decided to sort of lay it aside for a moment.  So I, over here in the City-County Building, had a press conference. I asked everybody in the city to call Otis Bowen and gave the phone number out and so forth.  The State House was just inundated with all of this.  Obviously Speaker Bowen was very, very angry that not only I had called upon him, but all this was happening.  So I had at least the good sense to apologize.  I had not appreciated really all the trouble that I was going to cause and so forth, and asked people to stop calling.  It was a very tumultuous session, to say the least.  But I was unaware altogether of the merger negotiations going on between the two presidents.

SCARPINO:  Until they were announced?

LUGAR: Yes.

SCARPINO:  What, in your mind, was the connection between Unigov, which is the merger of city and county government, and a new university in Indianapolis?

LUGAR: Oh, it may simply have been that this was the right time.  People had come to see that, altogether, this is a pretty exciting situation for Indianapolis.  We were on the threshold of the census of 1970 and it was very probable we were going to be elevated up into the top 10 cities.  Which we were.  I think we came in number eight or something like that.  We’re down to 14, I think, now or thereabouts.  But this was totally unexpected.

SCARPINO:  Top ten cities in what?

LUGAR: In the country…

SCARPINO:  Oh.

LUGAR: … in, in terms of population.  Prior to that time, we were down somewhere off the charts. But by adding all this new territory and population, we elevated ourselves, really, into a prime spot.  And it was recognized fairly rapidly, when I was nominated I think by President Nixon, his administration, I forget, to be the city’s representative on the Council of Intergovernmental Relations in Washington.  Nelson Rockefeller, I think, was representing the governors at that point and so forth.  I was elected President of the National League of Cities.  And so these things just hadn’t happened with regard to Indianapolis mayors, but this was recognized in the country and people here saw that.

SCARPINO:       People saw what was going on here and you were the…

LUGAR: …Yeah.

SCARPINO:  If I were to just turn that around a little bit, and given all of the activities that you were involved in and all the ways that you were attempting to change the identity of the city and economic and social well-being of the city, did you see, as part of your responsibility, to get people to believe?  Were you still preaching? Only now what you wanted them to believe in was the city instead of God?

LUGAR: Well, I was certainly a very strong advocate for what I believed in.  There’s no doubt about that, to the point that I inundated the State House with all these calls, and had to apologize to Otis Bowen.

SCARPINO:  I interviewed Otis Bowen.  He remembered that.

LUGAR: Oh, did he really?

SCARPINO:  I think so, yes.  If that legislation that you proposed had actually been submitted and had actually passed the legislature and been signed by the governor, what did you think would happen to the IU facilities and programs that were already in the city?

LUGAR: I don’t know, to be truthful.  So much time has passed since then that I don’t really have a view.  I’ve really not researched on my own the legislation that I offered on the university side.  I’ve had occasion with regard to Unigov to go back and examine.  I spoke over in St. Louis a couple of years ago – they’re still struggling with this problem and were very eager to hear.  So to get my facts straight, I went through the whole history of the Unigov through the legislature, but I’ve not done that with regard to the university legislation, largely because it became irrelevant.  The merger occurred and action was taken.

SCARPINO:  So the merger occurs and it’s a done deal, you’re the Mayor of Indianapolis.   As IUPUI was coming into existence, as the merger was being effected, from your point of view as Mayor, what did you see as the greatest challenges?

LUGAR: Well, I didn’t know at that time how popular this was going to be; in other words, how many students and/or their parents or what have you would be interested really in coming to Indianapolis, or to live downtown, or to be a part of the city in a very different way.  That was certainly of considerable interest as to how this would take hold, what the marketability would be.

SCARPINO: I found a picture of you from, I think 1969, at the groundbreaking for Cavanaugh Hall…

LUGAR: …Yes…

SCARPINO:  … and you’re all wearing hardhats and all that stuff.  Joe Taylor was there, I think, and other dignitaries.  As you stood there with the shovel in your hand and looked around and many of the original buildings were still there and falling down and so on, did you really think that could happen?  Or to ask it a slightly different way, a couple of weeks ago when you walked across campus, did you think back to that day you stood there with a shovel in your hand and go, “Oh, my gosh, what’s happened here?”

LUGAR: Well, maybe I was so optimistic that I felt this is just right in the course of things.  This was not an abnormal occasion, a wonderful one, but a part of getting the job done and getting it underway.

SCARPINO:  Again, as the university was coming into existence and effecting this, this merger, outside of yourself and your administration, were there any other civic or political leaders in the city who you remember as playing a prominent role?

LUGAR: I don’t, but this is maybe unfair to a lot of people who were, I’m sure, working at it.  It’s just a history that I’ve not thought about, maybe, or gone into for quite a while.

SCARPINO:  Did you work with the new administration of IUPUI as it was coming into existence and you were still Mayor?

LUGAR: I’m certain that I did, but I can’t recall instances of particular decisions, but I think I very deeply interested in it and therefore tried to be as closely in touch as possible with our civic administration.

SCARPINO:  I’m going to respect your time and ask some questions to sort of draw this together and give you a chance to say anything that I didn’t give you the opportunity to say.  During your years as Mayor, you clearly had a vision for what Indianapolis could become.  Measured against that vision, how has the city done between 1968 and 2016 to fulfill what you believed it could be?

LUGAR: Well, I think the city has had a great history in that period of time.  I think the illustration of the tourism, the people coming to our city, finding all the excitement that we always thought was there and creating some more -- The Super Bowl instance is a good example of something everybody understands, but really, remarkable to see those crowds of people not just watching the football game, but throughout the city and the areas downtown where the recreational facilities have been set up, and all the rest of it.  But likewise, the Big Ten championships that have been regularly coming; they’re illustrations of the fact that Indianapolis is perceived, really, as an ideal location geographically in terms of the distances that people can come from, but also in terms of the accommodations.  There’s the friendship of people and the hotel facilities, all the rest of it.  I think that clearly Indianapolis has grown financially, economically, jobwise.  All those criteria have been fulfilled many times well beyond the imagination of what we might have thought at the time.  I read the “Indianapolis Business Journal” every week and it’s sort of a good chronicle of the charts and so forth. But to illustrate all of this very substantially, I think that we have a great airport and that’s been a strong asset in terms of peoplecoming and going to Indianapolis.  We still are a transportation hub and we found people do more with those opportunities.  I hoped that would be the case.  But geographically, the location is great for the state of Indiana but, likewise, for our place in the country.  We’ve had some other opportunities and they’ve gone well beyond what I tried to start.  You may recall that President Nixon asked me to go with Pat Moynihan, who was then one of his assistants, to Europe to NATO.  I did so, to this conference on cities, and invited all the Mayors of the world to come to Indianapolis, and about 50 did.  Now this brought discovery of all the ethnic groups. While these Mayors were here – the Croatians and the Serbians and everybody else, had breakfast or, and really sort of came out of their shell and brought really a new emphasis upon the culture of relationships that we have in our city. That has moved ahead in many respects subsequent to that.  Because I was President of the National League of Cities, I was able to bring a lot of things to Indianapolis, and I did, without any shame or hesitation. That just continued.  The Mayors that followed me, we had a wonderful meeting with the Indianapolis Progress Committee celebrating its 50th anniversary a couple of years ago, and we were all sitting there on the stage together.  One of the things that was obvious is that all the things that I started, Bill Hudnut continued right with, so did Steve Goldsmith, so did Bart Peterson, and that was wonderful.  It wasn’t a question of somebody had some radical suggestion and then there’s a reaction in the next administration or of the next group that comes in.  It really flowed right through, in a bipartisan way, for the better part of 50 years.  So that’s been the real key to success.  We had some good ideas I think to begin with, but it took a lot of follow-through for about four decades after I left the Mayor business.

SCARPINO:  Same question about IUPUI.  When you were running for office and when you came into office as Mayor, part of your idea of changing the identity and revitalizing the downtown was a major state university.  You just walked across campus a couple of weeks ago; how do you think what’s there now measures up to what you imagined in the ‘60s?

LUGAR: Oh, much more than I could have imagined, both in terms of the size of the campus and the buildings, but the student body, the size of the student body, the size of the graduate students, and the impact that their citizenship has on the rest of the city of Indianapolis.  These are citizens day-by-day, and they’re right in the heart of the picture.  Because of that, they have a better idea, I think, or might be more interested in state government and local government because they’re right up into it.  But the fact is, they expanded.  That that many people have actually bought the idea, have come themselves or sent their children here, is truly remarkable.

SCARPINO:  Two more questions.  Is there anything that I should have asked you that you feel that I didn’t?

LUGAR: No.  I think you’ve covered a lot of territory.  I’ve really expressed the best I can the thoughts that I’ve had about it.

SCARPINO:  Is there anything that you’d like to say that I haven’t given you a chance to say?

LUGAR: Well, I think that I would just pay tribute to, and this goes way back to my parents, Marvin and Bertha Lugar, who not only were loving parents as I’ve described them, but very ambitious for their children.  They made possible for us all sorts of experiences and ideas that engendered our excitement in Indianapolis and the lives that we had here and how fortunate we were.  The fact that my grandfather had founded a factory on the west side of Indianapolis that my dad and then my brother and I were able to continue on. The fact that my dad had purchased farmland in the 1930s down there and I’ve been managing that farm for 50 years…

SCARPINO: …It still grows soybeans ...

LUGAR: And corn, 604 acres, beautiful place with the hardwood trees that my son Bob and I have planted over the years, and so we’re very much a part of this as a family.  Our thoughts have been really, throughout my boyhood history, but became because my father and my grandparents before that were deeply interested in what was occurring here and were very supportive of all the things that I did.  So I’m very grateful for that.

SCARPINO: I should have looked this up, but I didn’t.  Was your mother still living when you successfully ran for Senate the first time?

LUGAR: I’m, I’m…

SCARPINO: It’s okay.

LUGAR: I really, I’m trying to place the dates.

SCARPINO: I mean, if she was, she must have been proud.

LUGAR: Oh, she was.  She was living, of course, when I was Mayor and was very excited about all those events.

SCARPINO: Well, listen, before I turn the recorder off, on behalf of IUPUI Administration and the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence, I would like to thank you very much for sharing two hours of your time with me this morning here at the Lugar Center in Washington, D.C.

LUGAR: Well, I’m very grateful to you for engaging me in this conversation because I really appreciate so much what’s occurred at IUPUI, and I’m very excited about all that’s going to occur, and will take some more walks around the campus and keep checking on it.

SCARPINO: I’m glad you were there incognito and got a chance to see the place.