Theodore
So Kerr had that kind of a brain. I guess we could all train ourselves to do it,
but we don't, and it's probably not important now. But this was one of the
characteristics that reinforced my feeling of respect for Senator Kerr, especially
because my father had the same ability.
So I really had a lot of loyalty to him, and the relationship was reciprocal. But
all of his staff felt the same way about him and felt close to him in a personal
way. He had a press assistant named Malvina Stephenson who traveled on all
these trips with us and who eventually, I think, wrote the first draft of his
Wood
Water. She was an ex-newspaper person from
book,
Oklahoma, and there was a bitter feud between her and Don McBride as to who
was really closest to Senator Kerr. Everybody always wanted to feel they were
his number one assistant. Everybody on the staff.
I didn't feel quite that way. I knew I wasn't, and I was still on the Library
payroll. I got a big kick out of traveling with him to the hearings. We traveled
on a twin-engine Convair plane provided with a pilot and staff by the Military
Air Transport Service. It had tables in the back where two people could ride
backwards, and Senator Kerr always took one of the rear-facing seats. On one
of the trips he asked if anyone played bridge. From then on we started to play
bridge on the airplane trips. You'd think we would have been working,
preparing for the next hearings, but no, he wanted to play bridge. It was
always Senator Kerr and Malvina playing Senator Hart's assistant, Muriel
Ferris, and me. I had played a lot of bridge when I was growing up, but hadn't
played much after I got out of college. And I don't think I was a very good
player. I don't think I even knew
But inevitably it was just like
sometimes you get a streak of luck. Maybe Muriel Ferris was good enough to
make up for my shortcomings, but anyway, we almost always beat Senator
Kerr and Malvina, largely because Malvina wasn't a very good player. This
really irritated Senator Kerr, and we wouldn't be off the ground in the airplane
on the next trip when he would get out the cards, because he was just
determined to beat us. I think he even got Malvina to take lessons.
This rivalry even extended to when we had a staff picnic for everybody at
Muriel Ferris's house in McLean. All of the staff and their families were
invited, and we had a picnic one Sunday in the summer. When we got there the
first thing Senator Kerr wanted to do was play bridge. So we started in at 11,
o'clock, or whenever we got there in the morning, and we played all day,
and he lost all day. My wife was furious and said I should have circulated with
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