Abstract
Dick Pogue, a lawyer in Cleveland, describes his positions at Jones-Day and at the City Club. He describes what he did while he worked for Jones-Day, and how he had a hand in making it the second largest law firm in the country. He then moves into his membership and involvement into the City Club. He spends much of the time describing the membership and direction of the City Club. He points to a change in the mid-1990s that became more welcoming to business members. He says the key points to bringing in new members revolved around renovations at the City Club. Pogue believes that in order to keep membership up the leadership should be balanced, and that young people should be targeted for membership. One way they did that was by bringing in high profile speakers like President George W. Bush, for example. He concludes by discussing the capital campaign that was key in fundraising, but perhaps more importantly, engaging the younger demographic.
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Interviewee
Pogue, Dick (interviewee)
Interviewer
Humphrey, Tom (interviewer)
Project
City Club - Civil Rights
Date
7-24-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
40 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Dick Pogue Interview, 24 July 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 807014.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/407
Transcript
Dick Pogue [00:00:03] Are we looking at the camera or at you?
Tom Humphrey [00:00:05] You’re looking- Well, you could look at the camera. You could look at me.
Unknown Speaker [00:00:10] I picked the camera myself.
Tom Humphrey [00:00:12] That’s usually what happens. I understand.
Unknown Speaker [00:00:15] We’re rolling?
Tom Humphrey [00:00:19] I know it seems insanely early to start gathering information for the City Club’s 100th anniversary, which is now six years away.
Dick Pogue [00:00:28] Yeah, that’s a good running start.
Tom Humphrey [00:00:31] We’ve actually been doing it for several years.
Dick Pogue [00:00:33] Oh, really?
Tom Humphrey [00:00:34] Yes.
Dick Pogue [00:00:34] Wow.
Tom Humphrey [00:00:35] Some of the long-term members are- We interviewed them [inaudible], so I feel like Tom Campbell, for instance. So I feel like we were lucky to talk with somebody like that. So. Okay, we’re rolling? My name is Tom Humphrey. I’m here at the City Club of Cleveland with Richard Pogue. We’re conducting the City Club oral history project. It is July 24, 2006. Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed.
Dick Pogue [00:01:10] Be glad to.
Tom Humphrey [00:01:13] Your last name is spelled P-O-G-U-E. Just for the record.
Dick Pogue [00:01:17] That’s correct.
Tom Humphrey [00:01:17] We know how to spell it when we play it back.
Dick Pogue [00:01:19] Right.
Tom Humphrey [00:01:20] Properly identified. I guess I’d like to kind of start with if I could get you to kind of tell us a little bit about yourself, kind of. I know you went to Cornell and then I think you went to the University of Michigan Law School. Is that. Are you from Cleveland? Could you kind of bring us up to the point where you come back to Cleveland or come to Cleveland?
Dick Pogue [00:01:39] Okay. You stop me if I tell you more than you want to know. I was born in Cambridge, Mass. Lived there in Boston for a while. Then I lived in New York City for a while. And then I really grew up in Washington, D.C. and then I went to Cornell University and Michigan Law School. Three years in the Pentagon, after that in the Army JAG. And then I came here to Cleveland in 1957 to join Jones Day, which is a very fine corporate law firm that had the kind of corporate practice I was, I had hoped for, and it was not in New York, which I had early on decided I didn’t want to live. So I came here in ’57 and thought I’d be here about five years and I’m still here.
Tom Humphrey [00:02:26] And you became a managing partner. I’m not. I’m unfamiliar, I think, with the lexicon. You became a partner in 1961?
Dick Pogue [00:02:37] Yeah, I came here in February of 57 and became a partner January 1st of 61 and then became the managing partner of the firm in March of ’84 and served in that capacity for nine years. And that was a period of great growth in the legal profession. And our firm participated in it and we went international during my period and eventually became the second largest firm in the country.
Tom Humphrey [00:03:05] Oh, so it was not international before?
Dick Pogue [00:03:07] No.
Tom Humphrey [00:03:08] It was fairly local. Now it’s one of the largest in the country.
Dick Pogue [00:03:11] Well, when I took over in ’84, we had five offices and 330 lawyers. And when I left nine years later, we had 20 offices around the world and about 1,200 lawyers.
Tom Humphrey [00:03:27] That’s quite an expansion.
Dick Pogue [00:03:28] Yeah. That was a period of great growth in the legal profession.
Tom Humphrey [00:03:31] Right. Did you. When you moved here in 1950, did you start coming to the City Club? Or when did you first hear of the club? When did you first start coming to the City Club, I guess?
Dick Pogue [00:03:45] Well, I joined it in 1964, primarily because I believed in free speech. When I was in college, I was the managing editor of the daily newspaper. And so I kind of had an interest in journalism, free speech and so forth. But I was really not active in the club for 30 years. I paid my dues, and maybe once a year I’d stroll over for a special forum, but I was not active at all.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:16] And where was the City Club located when you first started?
Dick Pogue [00:04:20] As I recall, it was at the old Hollenden Hotel on East 6th Street near Superior.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:25] Okay. And so this is after it moved off Short Vincent. I think it was on Short Vincent for a while, and then moved over to the Hollenden Hotel.
Dick Pogue [00:04:34] When I recall it, it was in the Hollenden Hotel.
Tom Humphrey [00:04:38] Who were- If you- Who would provoke you, kind of, or prompt you to come out from behind or come out of your legal office to come over?
Dick Pogue [00:04:46] I think the guy who talked me into being a member was Don Carmichael. He was a businessman who was president of the City Club. I think he may have been a client. And so I came over once or twice and kind of liked hearing the speeches and so forth. But as I say, for many years, I seldom came over to the club. I just- I believed in it, I supported it, but didn’t really participate.
Tom Humphrey [00:05:13] It’s busy.
Dick Pogue [00:05:14] Yeah, I was very busy.
Tom Humphrey [00:05:18] Excuse me. Sorry about that. Who were some of the speakers that you. Do you remember any of the speakers in the ’60s, maybe early ’70s, who you thought, that’s a person I want to go see?
Dick Pogue [00:05:29] No, I really don’t. I think, as I remember, Carl Stokes spoke here a couple of times. I think I heard him, but I don’t have much of a recall.
Tom Humphrey [00:05:38] Okay. So if we kind of go into the 1970s, it’s a period when Cleveland is kind of suffering and growing and declining. Growing in some areas, declining in other areas. So what was the club, like in the 1970s or 1980s when you started to come somewhat more regularly?
Dick Pogue [00:05:59] Well, I may have had a kind of a warped view of it, but I felt that it had become kind of somewhat irrelevant to the mainstream of business activity. It was. My perception of it was that it was a group of kind of insiders, the people who were here every Friday and the same old group asked the questions and it was not. Well, theoretically it was open to anybody. It was a pretty closed group. That was my impression. And I also thought that it was not very sympathetic to business interests, commercial interests, and it was a little bit on the liberal side. And that didn’t particularly bother me. But it just wasn’t relevant to what I was doing because I had a lot of business clients and they were not.
Tom Humphrey [00:06:53] Did they feel too that maybe they weren’t quite as welcome at the club or maybe the club.
Dick Pogue [00:06:59] I don’t want to say that, but.
Tom Humphrey [00:07:00] Maybe the doors weren’t quite as.
Dick Pogue [00:07:02] It just didn’t seem relevant to them, I think. I don’t know, you’d have to go back and look at the membership, but I think there were very, very few business members in those days.
Tom Humphrey [00:07:14] Do you feel that that has changed over the course of time?
Dick Pogue [00:07:17] Yeah, I feel it’s changed very dramatically. I think in about the. Well, let’s see, probably the mid-’90s, we had a crisis about the club. Things were really in bad shape. They kept asking me to come on the board of the club and I didn’t want to do it. I had too many other things to do. But finally, I think in 1995 or so, I finally agreed to join the board. And at that time the club was in pretty bad shape financially. Yeah, financially they were having a hard time financially. They had decrepit facilities. They were right here where we are today. But they hadn’t maintained the place and it was seedy and unattractive. I think the membership was down pretty close to 600, which was an all-time low. And it was just not a very attractive place to be. So I came on the board about the time I’d finished up my period as managing partner in my firm. So I had a little more time and it wasn’t a very business friendly place, I’ll tell you that. And the board was sort of dysfunctional. We had opposing camps and people would argue about the minutes of the prior meeting. It was just in a state of. Well, it wasn’t the state that you’d like to see it in.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:43] Right. It wasn’t quite operating as smoothly as you would like.
Dick Pogue [00:08:45] Right.
Tom Humphrey [00:08:47] Were you a member of other clubs in the city at the time? I would imagine, as the managing partner at Jones Day, to be the member of several clubs. Did you feel somewhat more welcome at the clubs maybe than you did at other clubs or maybe than you did.
Dick Pogue [00:08:59] Well, they were mainly business oriented. Yeah, I guess. No question.
Tom Humphrey [00:09:05] And which clubs do you feel like.
Dick Pogue [00:09:06] Were more relevant to me?
Tom Humphrey [00:09:09] Well, both to you, but also.
Dick Pogue [00:09:11] Well, I mean, in theory, the City Club was always very relevant. I mean, I’m a believer in free speech and I still am. I mean, I think that frequently it’s difficult to get business and conservative leaders to speak out. They’re just naturally, you know, they’re not in the position where they want to be speaking out too vociferously on things. So they don’t feel very comfortable in this kind of a setting. But I didn’t feel that way. I always thought that this should be a place with a balanced programming and with people of all different persuasions and interests.
Tom Humphrey [00:09:49] So it was interracial and it was a racially mixed club right from the beginning, although.
Dick Pogue [00:09:56] Yeah, I think so. I mean, certainly in theory it was.
Tom Humphrey [00:10:00] I’ve spoken with other Tom Jong, for instance. When I asked him why he joined in 1968, he said, well, no other club would have me.
Dick Pogue [00:10:07] Oh, well, he meant that literally. Yeah.
Tom Humphrey [00:10:10] No other club would let him.
Dick Pogue [00:10:11] Well, I kind of like the liberality of the membership. Yeah. Right, Absolutely.
Tom Humphrey [00:10:16] So why do you think this is maybe not necessarily about the club. Why do you think some of the conservative leadership or conservative businessmen in the city don’t feel necessarily comfortable speaking out? Is it a business decision or did they feel it? Maybe at the time or maybe now. Maybe at the time they felt less comfortable. Maybe now they feel more comfortable.
Dick Pogue [00:10:34] Well, I think the club has changed dramatically in the middle 90s. I think the leadership of the club made a determined effort to get more balance into the programming and make people feel that their views would be respected even if they weren’t of a liberal bent. And so today, I think the programming is very open. You have people with a spectrum of points of view come here and they feel perfectly comfortable answering the questions from the floor and so forth. But back then, I think it was.
Tom Humphrey [00:11:06] A little different, a little tighter, less relevant. The club moved to this space that. It’s on now or it’s in now. Sorry, not on in. I think Gary said 1982.
Dick Pogue [00:11:20] Yeah.
Tom Humphrey [00:11:20] So it was kind of. Do you feel like the club was floundering in this space for probably about 10 years, eight years, maybe.
Dick Pogue [00:11:27] Well, as I said, I didn’t come much, so I’m not very good judge of that. But certainly in the early ’90s, the facilities were really terrible. I mean, as I remember, there would be. The rugs would be worn, they hadn’t painted the place. It was just not attractive, not welcoming atmosphere.
Tom Humphrey [00:11:46] And so did you feel like this is a moment when you should join the club? Not join the club, but step into somewhat of a more leadership, somewhat take on a bit more responsibility?
Dick Pogue [00:11:55] There was a little bit of that, yeah. Alan Davis was Jim Foster’s predecessor and he had asked me a number of times to come on the board. I just kept putting him off. But by this time I was no longer fully occupied in my position at the firm and I had a little more time and I hated to see the club go down, down, down. And so I finally agreed to come on the board and I was hoping that I could maybe inject a little more balance into the programming. But the critical point came, I think, was when we had a lease renewal coming up about a year before the lease ran out in ’97. I had just come on the board and the decision the board had to face was whether or not to renew the lease for another five years. And I was a strong believer that we should get out of here, should find new quarters and a place that would be attractive. And then if we had a decent facility, then we could begin to grow the membership back up to where it should be, and then we’d have the financial wherewithal to operate like we wanted to. But there were some old timers on the board that had a nostalgia about this place and they wanted to stay. So I finally said, well, look, if we’re going to stay, let’s fix the place up. Let’s go out and raise some money and fix it up.
Tom Humphrey [00:13:22] And you mean in this physical space?
Dick Pogue [00:13:24] This physical space, as you said, old.
Tom Humphrey [00:13:27] Timers wanted to stay in this physical space.
Dick Pogue [00:13:28] Yeah, because they had an affinity for it. They’d been here a while and they kind of liked it. And it is a great location, in a sense, right at 9th and Euclid, right at the heart of the city. The parking has always been a little problem, but they had solved that pretty well with a garage next door. But it was just- The place was so run down and so decrepit. It was just very unattractive, very unappealing. So how could you get any new members? You know, they walk in here and they would immediately be turned off.
Tom Humphrey [00:14:01] Well, it’s kind of a chicken or egg thing. You need the membership to raise money to help revitalize. Yeah, but you also need to draw new members.
Dick Pogue [00:14:07] Exactly. That’s right. It’s exactly the issue we had. And my feeling was we would never be able to grow the membership with an unattractive physical facility.
Tom Humphrey [00:14:19] And so how did you go about maybe remedying? Because it is, it does seem to me, a chicken, egg kind of thing that a lot of. A lot of other organizations in the city faced at the time to mid-1990s.
Dick Pogue [00:14:35] Well, we had a very critical debate about whether or not to move. We explored several other alternative locations, and for one reason or another, none of them were quite right. Each we had some very interesting alternatives, but there was always a problem. For example, Jim was reminding me today that we thought about going into the English Oak Room up at the Terminal Tower. And I think it would have been a terrific setting, beautiful setting. But the problem was that during December, the height of the holiday season, the owners couldn’t guarantee us adequate parking because they had to have parking for their retail customers. So they suggested that we take the month of December off. Well, City Club’s not going to take the month of December off. So there was always some problem in each one of these other locations. And we kept being kind of forced back to look at this place. And so I can remember the board meeting where I made a motion that we commit the board to raising the money to fix this place up and then stay here. And I think it was $2 million that we set out to raise. And at that time, for the City Club, that seemed like a lot of money. And so since I was the wise guy that made the motion, I got. I was requested to lead the capital campaign. And of course, we had a very successful campaign. We went way over the top and fixed the place up. Had a wonderful architect that came in here and had some volunteer committees of people who were interested in the physical arrangements and had great involvement in the design and the construction of the building place. And once we opened it up, it was beautiful. And the word got around quickly that this was a very attractive place. And the membership just started to take off. Now, I think it’s 1400 or something like that.
Tom Humphrey [00:16:44] And so the painting off to our right.
Dick Pogue [00:16:48] Yeah.
Tom Humphrey [00:16:49] Was that part of the original. Was that part of this building when it was here in the early 1980s or was that brought over?
Dick Pogue [00:16:55] I can’t answer that. I believe it was brought over. I know it was done in the 30s, and I think it was over at the Other place, but I’m not sure.
Tom Humphrey [00:17:03] Maybe the place. I’m short, Vincent.
Dick Pogue [00:17:04] Although I can’t. Yeah, could be. I’m sorry, I don’t know.
Tom Humphrey [00:17:08] So who did you kind of appeal to in the city at a time when lots of hands were out in the city?
Dick Pogue [00:17:16] Yeah, well, we of course first went to the membership and then we started on a corporate campaign and we tried to convince some of the funders that we were going to change the nature of the City Club. It was going to be, have a more Catholic set of speakers. We were going to open up ideas and not be very one-sided and that we would have an enhanced membership. And so we started to convince a couple of the foundations and then some of the corporate foundations that this was going to be a new City Club and they bought into that theory.
Tom Humphrey [00:18:04] So were you kind of saying to them that over the course of the last maybe 40 years, the City Club might have gotten away from some of its primary directives of offering both sides of the issue, but we want to return back to.
Dick Pogue [00:18:16] That was my theory. Yes, absolutely. Now, other people might argue with me, I don’t know, but the perception out there in the business community, which I knew, which I was a part of, was that it had become very one sided. The speakers were all of one persuasion and it wasn’t open to a broader spectrum of speakers.
Tom Humphrey [00:18:38] Do you feel like the infusion of corporations, corporate dollars has kind of. I’ll paraphrase, because I haven’t written it down quite exactly, kind of brought more balance back to the speakers, kind of to the list of speakers and maybe even. Well, we’ll get to that- We’ll get to the other question in a minute. I think the corporate sponsorship has- Well, it must have done a couple things. It must have encouraged corporations to encourage their employees, their work, to join the club because they could promise them the kind of thing that you had hoped to promise or that you had kind of said that you would deliver. Do you feel like that is. Do you think the club has fulfilled that goal? How has it fulfilled that goal? The goal that you’ve set?
Dick Pogue [00:19:23] Yeah, yeah. I think today the programming is very, very balanced. I mean, I think it’s a wonderful range of points of view and different attitudes, different speakers. And I think the, the question period is much different too. I mean, we have some of the old timers who always ask questions and they’re very good. You know, people like Bob Lustig and Stan Adelstein. They’ve always got terrific questions, no matter who the speaker is. So we Have a few of those old timers, but then you get all kinds of people asking questions from different backgrounds, different perspectives. And I think it’s a much more open atmosphere in the programming.
Tom Humphrey [00:20:04] So that you think the corporate dollars have kind of. Have they compelled maybe the board to somewhat. Not to say beholden to the maybe being more relevant, as you mentioned before. I don’t want to say beholden, but to be at least a little more aware of perhaps some of the interests of the business community or the members of the business community.
Dick Pogue [00:20:24] Yeah. But I wouldn’t connect those quite as directly as you’re suggesting here. I mean, I think we needed some corporate funding because we needed enough money to keep the place going. So we set out to invite corporate memberships and make it attractive to companies at the same time. We were trying to broaden the programming, but I don’t think those were- I mean, one didn’t necessarily have its premise based on the other. There were two differences in approach that were adopted about the same time.
Tom Humphrey [00:20:58] Right. I didn’t mean to say drive for corporate dollars was connected to once we get in, we’ll start doing those things. No, but it is. Do you feel like that’s one of the unintended consequences? Certainly more people from corporations around the city are joining the club.
Dick Pogue [00:21:13] Yeah. And that spreads the word. I mean, when you have business people here, they hear, first of all, they get exposed to points of view they might not otherwise ever hear. They get some of their prejudices broken down. I remember myself I’d never heard of. I’d never known much about Henry Cisneros and I assumed he was a flaming liberal, you know. Well, I came here and heard him. My gosh, he was so logical and persuasive and organized in his thinking. It was a revelation. Well, I never would have known that had I not been here at the City Club, heard him answer questions and, you know, it was a great experience. So I think a lot of the younger, particularly younger business people that came here had an exposure to speakers and points of view that otherwise they might not have enjoyed.
Tom Humphrey [00:22:01] And certainly one of the offshoots of that, or at least since the shift to a somewhat. I don’t want to say that more recently the club has targeted younger professionals. Was that also part of the initiative?
Dick Pogue [00:22:13] Yeah, it was definitely. Definitely. Yeah. The club had kind of grow old and, you know, I mean, that was the perception. No, I agree, not totally bad, but the perception was that it was primarily male, primarily older, and we wanted to kind of change all that and get some Newer people get more women in it and kind of open it up more. I mean, technically it was open to anybody, but I mean, in terms of the actual participation, we wanted to enlarge it.
Tom Humphrey [00:22:48] Right. It’s called de facto versus de jure.
Dick Pogue [00:22:51] Exactly. Yep.
Tom Humphrey [00:22:53] Do you feel that the club has, then, in that direction, where do you see the club moving then? In that direction or maybe away from that direction in the future? Do you think that the kind of legacy that you’ve set up, certainly not implying that anybody’s old enough to kind of be overly concerned with the legacy, but do you think that the club is now moving in a somewhat more inclusive, somewhat different direction than it was, say, in the 1960s when you first kind of encountered it and figured it to be kind of relevant, maybe ideologically and theoretically, but less relevant realistically to people who live in. To people who live, and more importantly, perhaps work in the city?
Dick Pogue [00:23:31] Yeah, I think it’s very open now. I mean, if you look at the board and the presidents of the last few years, we have people from all different types of backgrounds. We have African Americans, females, lots of different points of view. One of the things we were worried about when our membership was so low in the 600s, if I remember correctly, in the ’90s, was that we weren’t attracting younger people. I mean, the membership was growing older and we. We just. The young people, again, thought it didn’t have anything to do with their interests. And we worked very hard at that. And some of the younger people, we finally got this New Leaders program started to make it attractive to people under 40. And they had- Once a few of them got involved, they had some requests that they made for programming at different times of day during the week and so forth that were a little different than the City Club had been experiencing over the decades. And we were very open. We said, yeah, look, you tell us, what do you need to attract younger people? We want to get them in here. So. And the New Leaders, really, under some leadership of some very fine young people, just really took off. And now, I don’t know, there’s several hundred members of it.
Tom Humphrey [00:24:51] I think they make up a- They’re close to making up a majority.
Dick Pogue [00:24:55] Of the members, is that right? Yeah. Well, it doesn’t surprise me. Well, in 19, if you’d go back and look at the. Look at the ages in 1994, 5, 6 and 7, it was very, very low. I doubt if it was 10% under 40.
Tom Humphrey [00:25:10] Right, right. Do you feel maybe one of the interesting kind of consequences, unintended consequences, is that Business people like yourself or businessmen like yourself in the 1960s, may have felt. In the 1970s through maybe the 1980s, felt somewhat- Not that the club’s doors were open, but they were maybe not quite as open enough or open or relevant to businesspeople. And so as more and more business people come in and kind of exert more authority or more power over where the club is going to, is there a danger of the outsiders perhaps coming in and slowly taking over and becoming the insiders?
Dick Pogue [00:25:57] Well, there’s always a risk, but I hope that doesn’t happen. I don’t think it does. We’ve had a. We’ve spent a lot of energy on our nominating process. And we have a nominating committee that’s very diverse. Traditionally, it’s been very diverse. And we try very hard to. When we. I’ve been on the nominating committee for many years, and we have the various categories of people by age group, by race and so forth. And we try to strike a balance as best we can so that no one particular group will be dominant. And I think the club’s worked very, very hard at that. And the nominating process, we have changed that. One of the most dramatic changes, and I’ll take credit for this or blame whatever you want to say. It used to be that you ran for office as a trustee of the City Club. And you’d have maybe eight people run for four jobs or something like that. And I found that to be very demeaning. Very. It brought out the worst in people. It discouraged businesspeople from running. They didn’t want to run the risk of losing. And it was just a- I thought it was an artificial procedure that had a lot of negativity to it. So over the course of several years, we changed it. And now it’s a more traditional style of selection of members. Anybody can still run, but they aren’t sanctioned by the board as being a candidate for office. See, we used to have, as I recall, the board would identify at least two people to run for each spot. So here are two people nominated by the board running for one spot. So the guy who loses, you know, it’s not very pleasant. Now, if you’re running on your own, that’s fine. You take the risk. But to be nominated by the board and then lose, we thought was very demoralizing. So we changed that. Now we have a more traditional style. But still the nominating committee, which. The board does not nominate the candidates anymore. The nominating committee goes direct to the membership. And so the nominating committee feels a Special sense of responsibility to be sure there’s a balance in the people they nominate.
Tom Humphrey [00:28:23] It’s somewhat easier to kind of regulate that if people are, so to speak, putting their own heads in their knees.
Dick Pogue [00:28:28] Yeah, right.
Tom Humphrey [00:28:30] You kind of selecting them. So I feel like there’s somewhat more populist approach to nominating is.
Dick Pogue [00:28:36] I really feel that way. Strange as it sounds, I think we- I mean, we really reach out to get balance. We. And we’re turned down sometimes. You know, people turn us down for one reason or another, but I think we work very hard. For example, I was the one who suggested we definitely should have somebody from the labor movement on the board. So we didn’t look too heavily business oriented and we reached out and we got John Ryan to come on the board. And he’s been a fantastic trustee. Absolutely fantastic, wonderful ideas, energy, follow through. And so it’s important that you have a nominating committee dedicated to trying to achieve balance.
Tom Humphrey [00:29:22] Right. I think I’d like to move a little bit more into the future, more contemporary for us. You have been involved in two more notable events in the City Club. The first is, and I know that nobody acts alone in the City Club. The first is awarding the Free Speech Award to Antonin Scalia. And the second is, and I’m under the impression that you were, again, nobody drives the car alone here, somewhat instrumental in having George Bush speak at the City Club as well. Would you like to speak about both of those? We’ll talk about one and then maybe the other. Antonin Scalia comes up in part because he’s a Supreme Court justice.
Dick Pogue [00:30:05] Well, I think you have to put him in context. We decided, I don’t know, five or six years ago that we ought to have one big. So we would create the Citadel of Free Speech Award, which would give the City Club special stature, kind of move it out of the humdrum week to week programming and identify somebody who had, for better, I mean, for one reason or another, made a particular contribution to free speech. So they asked me to chair that effort and I did. And the first speaker, the first recipient we had was John Glenn. And I recruited John because I knew him and he spoke. Then we had a couple of years where we just couldn’t come up with the right candidate. And then eventually the committee decided Nino Scalia would be. Because he’d written some opinions that were very controversial, but they were basically in favor of free speech. He was the one, I think, that was principally responsible or he was certainly a significant spokesman for the idea that commercial speech can be protected by the First Amendment. And so he had a special angle on free speech that was significant and impactive. And so we invited him to come out. And then another couple of years went by and we decided that Andrew Young had made some very, very strong, taken some very strong positions early and particularly early in his career in defense of free speech. So those have been our three recipients. And it’s not easy because people of that stature are accustomed to getting big honoraria. And so far, we have not paid any honoraria. And so-
Tom Humphrey [00:31:52] And the City Club does not pay its speakers.
Dick Pogue [00:31:54] That’s what I mean, the City Club. And so we’ve had- That’s been a major limiting factor.
Tom Humphrey [00:32:04] And you’ve known Antonin Scalia for a long time?
Dick Pogue [00:32:07] Yeah, he worked. Actually, he worked for me in the antitrust field for six years. When he first started out after Harvard Law School, he came to Cleveland and worked here with Joan today for six years.
Tom Humphrey [00:32:19] What did you think about somebody who, as you mentioned, had a journalism background in college? His policy, he exercised it here in Cleveland. I think part of the reason why it mushroomed was because of the award he was getting for free speech. His policy across the board, it seems to me, is to- I think at least it is his policy across the board. I don’t think he kind of implements it here and there.
Dick Pogue [00:32:47] No, no, no. It is across the board. And as I recall it. And I could be wrong on this, but as I recall, several other justices had the same personal rule of conduct. How do you explain it? I don’t know. I’m not here to defend it. Because he had no problem with reporters being in the audience and taking down every word he said and writing it up. Not a problem. But for some reason, he didn’t want to be electronically recorded by television. And that’s been his rule throughout the years. And we didn’t know that really, until he got here. So we had to make a command decision. The board talked about it and concluded that it was the free speech would be benefited more by hearing him subject to that limitation than him not being here at all. [00:33:45] So we made the decision to keep the invitation open.
Tom Humphrey [00:33:48] And he did not let the City Club, as it usually does, record electronically for later broadcasts. Is that correct? That I can’t. I honestly cannot remember that. He did not let reporters record it, but I can’t remember. I don’t think he let the City Club report it, record it either.
Dick Pogue [00:34:04] You know, I’m not sure. I can’t either. I’m sorry, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was C-SPAN. They wanted to film it, and he said no, and they got very upset. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And we didn’t know it when we selected him for the award. Now, whether that would have made a difference or not, who’s to say? But we didn’t know it.
Tom Humphrey [00:34:30] And how did the invitation. I suspect that the City Club regularly invites sitting presidents to speak. How did this invite invitation turn into an agreement?
Dick Pogue [00:34:44] I guess I wasn’t in on the final stages of that, so you have to ask Jim Foster about that. But several years ago, I said that it seemed to me that it would be good to get some people from the White House and eventually the president, to speak at the City Club, to have City Club be more broadly understood as a forum for points of view other than the opposition, which we had plenty of.
Tom Humphrey [00:35:17] But that’s a little disingenuous because both Ronald Reagan and George. George Bush, the first president.
Dick Pogue [00:35:24] Yeah, he did come here. That’s right.
Tom Humphrey [00:35:25] They both spoke here.
Dick Pogue [00:35:26] Yeah. And so did Clinton, of course. Well, anyway, for whatever reason, I thought it would be a good thing to do for the City Club. And so we started to make inquiries, and we got nowhere. At first. We got a pretty cold shoulder, but we kept at it and kept at it. And finally, mainly through Bob Bennett, who’s the chairman of the Republican Party, we did get a couple of cabinet officers. And then I think the breakthrough came when Condoleezza Rice was here and she spoke and she did a fabulous job and handled the questions just marvelously. And I think that made somebody in Washington kind of relax. And so then, of course, the president was seeking places to speak. And so, having had all these good experiences here at the City Club, they decided to appear here.
Tom Humphrey [00:36:17] And of course, I think one of the rumors that was floating around the city, which I think is a rumor and was false, we can clarify it here. Is that the peak of the people who asked questions were screened beforehand?
Dick Pogue [00:36:30] No way.
Tom Humphrey [00:36:32] Just that’s what I heard.
Dick Pogue [00:36:35] Not at the City Club!
Tom Humphrey [00:36:36] Because some of the questions were- At least one of the questions I remember was critical, which I think is a charitable way of putting the question.
Dick Pogue [00:36:44] Critical of the president?
Tom Humphrey [00:36:46] Yes. Yeah.
Dick Pogue [00:36:49] I don’t know, but we never screen the questions, ever.
Tom Humphrey [00:36:52] That’s what I thought. Did you get a chance to meet him? I’m not sure if you’ve met him before.
Dick Pogue [00:36:59] Yeah, I’d met him several times, and I met him when he was here.
Tom Humphrey [00:37:04] I guess I have another question. I guess before we kind of wrap this up a couple more.
Dick Pogue [00:37:08] Yeah.
Tom Humphrey [00:37:10] The Friday Forum has been in place. It has been kind of a standing tradition of the City Club since its inception.
Dick Pogue [00:37:18] The what?
Tom Humphrey [00:37:19] The Friday Forum.
Dick Pogue [00:37:20] Oh, yeah.
Tom Humphrey [00:37:20] Speaker gives us. Gives a speech for a few minutes. Question and answers.
Dick Pogue [00:37:28] Right.
Tom Humphrey [00:37:29] I was a member of the City- I was a member of the New Leaders until they drummed me out.
Dick Pogue [00:37:33] Oh, really?
Tom Humphrey [00:37:34] Yeah, they drummed me out when I got over 40, so took away my key card.
Dick Pogue [00:37:40] Right.
Tom Humphrey [00:37:41] And-
Dick Pogue [00:37:43] Well, I hope you’re still a member.
Tom Humphrey [00:37:45] Yes.
Dick Pogue [00:37:45] Good. Okay.
Tom Humphrey [00:37:46] One of the things that this New Leaders talked about was kind of some alternative to the Friday forum.
Dick Pogue [00:37:54] Yeah. Right.
Tom Humphrey [00:37:56] So I wonder not to replace the Friday forum, which seems so, which seems so traditional and it is.
Dick Pogue [00:38:02] Right.
Tom Humphrey [00:38:03] What kind of direction, what presentation, what way? What kind of. What would you do to kind of enlist?
Dick Pogue [00:38:11] Well, we pretty much left it up to the New Leaders. I mean, they said that they felt that it was difficult for some of them to come here during the lunch hour. I don’t know. Absolutely. So they wanted it different times of the day and different days of the week. And our attitude was, fine, go ahead. I mean, as long as you’re not changing the Friday Forum, the regular forum, that stays in place. But if you want to add supplemental programming other times, other places, that’s fine. And I think the City Club’s always been pretty open to that. I remember we used to have an arrangement out in Lake county where they would have some forums out there during the week.
Tom Humphrey [00:38:59] Remember that, too. The other thing is somewhat on a lighter note, and I think we can end on this. Sometimes the New Leaders would like to get a little drink.
Dick Pogue [00:39:10] A drink.
Tom Humphrey [00:39:12] Can you bring that up to the board for us?
Dick Pogue [00:39:15] I doubt that that’s going to go through me too. Yeah.
Tom Humphrey [00:39:19] I want to thank you for sitting down.
Dick Pogue [00:39:21] Okay, fine, sure.
Tom Humphrey [00:39:23] Thanks for all your information.
Dick Pogue [00:39:24] Okay, thank you.
Tom Humphrey [00:39:25] I think that’s it. We’re done. I guess I should say. Do you have anything else to add? Do you want to talk? Anything else? Is there something you feel like I missed?
Dick Pogue [00:39:38] No. The only- I think I would add that during the capital campaign, it was a tremendous thing because not only did we go way over the goal and fix the place up, but we enlisted the interest and the enthusiasm and we reengaged a lot of people who hadn’t been around or had soured on the City Club. And so that capital campaign had more than just the money raising aspect to it. It really got a lot of people back interested in the club. So it was a wonderful experience to go through that.
Tom Humphrey [00:40:12] Good. I’m glad it turned out really well.
Dick Pogue [00:40:14] Yeah, the club is a great place, right?
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