Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

esearch if you needed it?
A: Bill I)ay did help me a lot in later years.
Q: You didn't have occasion to use it?
A: No, not very often.
Q: (pause) So when you were researching, did you normally act on your own or
did you get together with a number of people to develop a position?
A: Pretty much on my own. Just as I would as a practicing lawyer and I wanted
to find out about something, I would just kind of do it myself.
Q: So, and once you felt you had the information you needed, then it was a
matter of getting together with the other individuals that you knew were on
your side qnd come up with a position?
A: You didn't always have time to get together with the individual you knew
was on your side. As a matter of fact, you didn't always know who was on your
side. When the debate started and you got up and made your input, then you
may have somebody from the Republican party over here and somebody from
upstate over there and those coalitions would be formed pretty much instantaneously
rather than sitting down working out our strategies.
Q: Were there any individuals from downstate that you became quite active
with in those early days?
A: Oh, yes, I worked with a lot of those fellows from down there. Clyde
Choate and Paul Powell and, in the early days, a fellow named Butch Katcliffe,
a fellow named Joe Stremlau. Several of them. I got along with all of them.
I would help them with their programs, they would help me with minc.
1 remember helping them considerably with the Southern Illinois University
when they first started moving toward helping to build it and develop it. I
worked very closely with them and so, when we got ready to put in the Illinois
University Circle campus, they were helpful to me, getting that set up.
Q: Who was the leader in the Southern Illinois University development?
A: Paul Powell and Clyde Choate.
Q: Do you remember any specific actions that were taken that you . . .
A: I don't remember any specific actions except I do remember that the University
of Illinois at Champaign, through their representatives, were not very
keen on the building up of this new university down there.
I
Q: And who would that have been? Do you remember any individuals there?
A: No. (pause) You know, whenever you build a new school, the ones tha! are
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