Description:
James Foliart talks about his life and career as a lawyer in Oklahoma.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Mr. Foliart’s son – unnamed but likely Dan Foliart the composer
Interviewee: James Foliart
Interview Date: 11/7/2007
Interview Location: Ron J. Norick Downtown Library
Transcribed By: Katie Widmann
Proofed By: Alex Hinton
Male Interviewer: It’s November the 7th, 2007. We are at the beautiful new library in Oklahoma City, and I’m talking to my father, who happens to be James D. Foliart. I would say it’s an unseasonably warm evening in November in Oklahoma City. It’s beautiful outside. The trees are starting to change colors. Let’s talk first about – tell me a little bit about your background. Let’s start at the very beginning. Where were you born and when were you born? Let’s start with that and we’ll head on.
James Foliart: I was born the year before women were given the right to vote by the 19th Amendment, which happened to be 1919, on October the 29th, and twelve years after statehood in Oklahoma.
MI: What city were you born in?
JF: I was born in McAlester and lived in many cities in Oklahoma and outside of Oklahoma, before I graduated in Oklahoma.
MI: So, McAlester, Oklahoma. Let’s work up to how you ended up being born in McAlester, Oklahoma. Tell me a little bit about your father or your father’s parents and when they came to the state, as much as you can remember back and back.
JF: My father’s parents came to Oklahoma in 1893. The opening of the Cherokee Strip was during that time, and his father homesteaded just outside of Enid, close to what is now the Oak Wood Country Club just outside of Enid. As I say, they came from South Dakota. On my mother’s side of the family, the Tobin side, they were good Irish people who had come to New York during one of the potato famines in Ireland. They came to Chicago, and from Chicago to Guthrie, Oklahoma in 1893. My mother was born in 1894, and my father was born in 1891.
MI: Your father was born somewhere near Enid?
JF: Yes.
MI: Were they living in a palatial mansion there or what were the circumstances of both sides of the family? What kind of houses did they have?
JF: On my father’s side they had a rather modest place, which was either a dugout or a lean-to. On my mother’s side, I think they actually had a house. In fact, I think they bought a house from some lady who had already arrived in Guthrie, Oklahoma, so she lived in a house when she started out.
MI: Well, you know, I was just in Guthrie, Oklahoma earlier today and I was thinking about your mother and my grandmother and how that was a very, very exciting city in 1893. In fact, I think Guthrie may have been one of the largest cities in Oklahoma at that particular time.
JF: In fact, the state capitol started out being there.
MI: That’s right. Now, let’s talk about your mother. Did she live there for long before she headed for other areas? Can you tell me anything about her early childhood?
JF: She moved from Guthrie. Her parents moved from Guthrie to Covington when she was small. She lived in that general area during all of her childhood.
MI: Do you know why they moved to Covington?
JF: I don’t know all the reasons, but they apparently thought it was a better place than Guthrie. I think it was because her father’s farm interests, is the reason that they moved.
MI: Is this the gentleman that’s referred to as “Grandfather Tobin?”
JF: I think he was called Grandfather Tobin.
MI: As I understand, he was a musician as well.
JF: Yes. He’s supposed to have been able to play the violin very well. I never actually heard him play the violin, but he certainly had a lot of PR and people that said he could play it well.
MI: Did you ever talk to your mother about her early education and those early days of her life? Was she going to school in one of those one room schoolhouses? Did you ever talk to her about that?
JF: I never talked to her at great length about it, but she did go to a one room schoolhouse. She started teaching quite young. She started teaching when she was about 17 years of age, as did my father, and taught in that area for some time. She lived on the farm out there near Covington and went to school there and started teaching by the time she was 17 years of age.
MI: I happen to know that you’re an only child. How many brothers and sisters did your mother have?
JF: My mother had a brother and a sister. My father had five sisters and a brother.
MI: Ah. Okay. Do we know why your father’s family came from South Dakota to Oklahoma? Was it because it was the land of opportunity? They came during the opening of the Cherokee Strip, right?
JF: That’s right, and that would have been of course after the run in 1889 in Guthrie. There were several openings of those strips, but it’s the opening of the Cherokee Strip in which they were involved. They came from South Dakota by rail to El Reno, and then went by wagon or horseback from there to outside of Enid. That would have been, as I say, in 1893.
MI: So two years after your father was born?
JF: That’s right.
MI: What profession was his father in?
JF: His father was basically a farmer. They staked a claim outside of Enid, and he had the 140 acres or 160 acres or whatever claimed.
MI: All right. I want to start talking about your early development. How did you happen to be born in McAlester, Oklahoma?
JF: I was born in McAlester because my father was appointed or selected as principal of the Fourth Ward Grade School. My mother taught down there, so they were both schoolteachers. My father was administrative and more, and he also taught. My mother was a teacher. Basically, they moved down there because of their teaching profession, and that’s where I was born.
MI: You were born in McAlester, Oklahoma. Tell me a little bit about – I understand that as a child you moved around and lived many different locations. Tell us about some of your early development as a child and some of the places you had a chance to live.
JF: We lived in McAlester until I was – I went to the first and second grade at the Fourth grade school. After my second grade we moved to Ocala, Florida because my father had a superintendency in Ocala.
MI: He had some opportunities open up for him.
JF: They taught both in McAlester and also the big city of Savannah, which is near McAlester. They both taught there for a period of time during those early years before we went to Ocala.
MI: Ocala – is that near some other city?
JF: It’s fairly close to Jacksonville, Florida. I think I’ve only been back once, probably, since those early, early days.
MI: I went through Saint Augustine. You went through Saint Augustine.
JF: I went to Saint Augustine and was very impressed with the fortress.
MI: Fort Marion.
JF: That’s right. They fought off all on comers at that fortress.
MI: So as a child, you got a chance to live in Florida. Do you remember about how old you would have been at this time?
JF: I would have been in Florida when I was eight and nine years of age. We were there two years. We would come back from Florida to Oklahoma, and my parents were going to school at Tahlequah at Northeastern, and they would go to summer school there. We’d be in Tahlequah in the summertime, and then go back to Ocala. We were in Ocala for two years.
MI: What were the circumstances that you found yourself moving back to Oklahoma?
JF: My father had an opportunity to finish his degree at Northeastern at Tahlequah, and also to teach as an associate professor there. He went back to Tahlequah and both of my parents ended up graduating from Northeastern State College.
MI: I see. When you moved back, you would have been about, what, twelve years old?
JF: I was about ten years old.
MI: Okay. So you moved back just about the beginning of Great Depression. As a child, do you have any memories of how the Depression affected your family and that sort of thing?
JF: I remember more about the Depression, like from about 1933 to 1936. I was in high school. I was in various schools in Oklahoma, but I ended up graduating from high school at Enid, Oklahoma, which would have been 1936. I can remember the Depression era from 1933 to 1936. Before that, it didn’t have that much of an impression on me.
MI: Once you became aware of it, did it change the circumstances you were living in?
JF: I read and hear and see about the desperate condition that people were in during the Depression. Fortunately, we had a little bit better circumstances. We were certainly not people of wealth, but a schoolteacher did have a regular salary.
MI: Certainly, and you continued to have – that was a profession that you needed to have schoolteachers. This would have been also the era of the Great Dust Bowl and all that. Do you have any – I mean, you were living up in Enid, Oklahoma. As a child, do you have any recollection or is it mainly what you remember as an adult?
JF: From 1933 to 1936, during that era, I do not remember all these dust storms. Again, I read and see and hear about them. I did see dust storms when I was in college. After I graduated from high school, I started college at Alva, Northwestern, when I was 16 years old. During that era of 1936 to 1940 when I was in Alva, I remember dust storms very well in that particular era.
MI: I want to backtrack just a little bit. You graduated from Enid High School. What other cities did you live in during your high school years? Or towns if you will?
JF: Before my three years at Enid High School, I had lived in Stillwater. I had lived in the Osage Country at Mound Valley, which is close to Hominy.
MI: That’s where those Indian ruins are, right? Where the Indian mounds are?
JF: Up on the hills, yes.
MI: Did you ever go up there and look for –
JF: I went up there and scraped around and went through all that.
MI: Did you find some artifacts?
JF: I found some things that I thought were artifacts that went back centuries, probably.
MI: That was a unique experience. So, you lived in Stillwater, and you lived in Mound Valley. Where else?
JF: I lived, of course, in Tahlequah for a period of time. Stillwater, Tahlequah, Mound Valley, and then on to Enid.
MI: Do you remember during your – during these years of high school, try and give me an idea of what your remembrances were of your family life, your life sitting around the house. Were you listening to the radio? What was a typical day besides going to school? Do you have any remembrance or recollections of what life was as a teenager during these years?
JF: First, I want to comment that I was very fortunate in going to school in Enid, Oklahoma because they had one of the best high school speech departments in the state of Oklahoma as far as high schools. I was interested in debate and public speaking, so I had that opportunity.
MI: What sparked that interest? Do you have any idea?
JF: I don’t know. I just had a great interest in public speaking early on.
MI: Which was kind of different from your dad because your dad was more of a mathematician and engineer, right?
JF: My father taught physics, chemistry –
MI: Penmanship.
JF: Penmanship. He was an expert penman, and he also authored a book which was not published on physics and chemistry and that field of knowledge, and also authored a book on penmanship which was not published, but he was a renowned penman.
MI: Kind of a different direction that you took. Your mother, on the other hand had a great number of friends. Didn’t she work in the welfare department during this era?
JF: She taught for years, and then after we moved to Enid, she was appointed to the Welfare Department and became head of the Welfare Department for Garfield County. She held that position for some 25 or 30 years, and was known as Miss Flossy at the Welfare Department at the courthouse in Enid, Oklahoma.
MI: I’ve seen some of the pictures and she had a great number of friends, but you don’t know exactly what sparked this interest in speech and debate because it’s going to have a big impact on what we’re going to be talking about next, which is your professional career. There was no moment that you said, “You know, I think I’d like to be a speaker.”
JF: I think one thing that sparked interest – I was interested in athletics and would have liked to play football and basketball and so forth. They had a very outstanding speech teacher at Enid High School. Her name was Hazel Hatch.
MI: [clarifying] Hazel Hatch?
JF: Hazel Hatch. She was well-known in the state for having good debate teams. Enid, Classen High School, and Wewoka were the highest schools in the state.
MI: So she was an excellent teacher. Knowing what I do about you I would say she’s probably fairly attractive.
JF: I’d like to agree with it, but that’s not quite the way I remember Hazel Hatch. She did spark my interest in public speaking.
MI: That started you off on quite a road. You mentioned that you ended up going to school at Alva, Oklahoma. Can you tell why Alva, Oklahoma? Why did you pick that school?
JF: In high school debate, we traveled around the state debating at these regional debate tournaments, and also out of state at Missouri, Texas, Kansas, and so forth.
MI: Did they take you on a bus?
JF: They took us in a car. We’d usually take two cars for the debate team. I was in the regional tournament there my senior year at Alva, Oklahoma, which was one of the better tournaments in the state. Our team won the tournament and I got recognition, so they offered me a scholarship at Alva.
MI: They offered you a scholarship. You said you graduated from high school at 15. Is that true?
JF: No. I would have been 16 years of age. I started college at 16 years of age.
MI: [tone is slightly argumentative and protesting] But that’s an early age to be starting college.
JF: Well, I suspect that the fact that my father was superintendent of schools or principal may have had something to do with me jumping grades. I don’t know that my great academic standing was responsible for it, but I did jump a couple of grades along the line.
MI: Do you remember throughout the balance of your high school years studying a great deal in the evening? Do you have any recollection of that?
JF: I don’t have much recollection of that. I remember that one summer I went to Fort Sill for some sort of military training program. I think it was probably to keep from having to work while I was in high school. I did do that one summer, but I don’t have any great recollection of studying over the books.
MI: No studying by candlelight, then. [laughs]
JF: I would like to say that but I think we had kerosene lights. No, we had electricity by that time.
MI: Okay, so we find out that you’ve moved on to Northeastern at Alva. You’re 16 years old. You’ve been given a scholarship. Let’s talk about college. What year would you have begun?
JF: Well, first you said Northeastern. That’s at Tahlequah. It’s easy to get them confused.
MI: It’s Northwestern.
JF: Yes, Northwestern Oklahoma College.
MI: Which, if I might interject, because you’re a modest man that he received the Outstanding Graduate Alumni from Northwestern and I was happy to see a plaque and much recognition a few years ago, so you must have excelled there and certainly has a lot to do with what happened afterwards. Okay, so Northwestern – what year was it that you entered there?
JF: I entered there in 1936 and graduated in 1940. From there, I went to OU. I always wanted to be a lawyer from the time that I could remember as a teenager.
MI: Well, I don’t want to move ahead too fast. Tell me about what you remember during your four years at Northwestern. Are there any particular recollections that you’d like to talk about during that period?
JF: Well, other than speech and history and government, which I was very interested in all of those and the academic aspect of it, I liked the school very much. It was a small school and had some outstanding professors.
MI: Did Eleanor Roosevelt come to speak there while you were there?
JF: Eleanor Roosevelt came and spoke I think in 1937 or 1938. It was a very good academic school, as I say, and had very fine professors. It was about the right size school. I do have some memories of in the summertime having to work on some of the difficult jobs.
MI: Tell us about some of those jobs.
JF: Well, I worked in the wheat fields in Kiowa, Kansas.
MI: Oh, that was during that era? Okay.
JF: That was during that era. I worked on some construction jobs. In fact, I worked on construction jobs and built the first dormitories at that school. That’s what I did in the summertime. There was one summer I worked in the wheat fields outside of Enid. I worked manual labor enough to realize that there was a lot to be said about trying to be a lawyer. [both laugh]
MI: Point well made. You were working manual labor. It took you four years to go through college. In this day and age, sometimes it takes five years. I happen to have a son that’s taken him five years to get through college.
JF: Yes, I have a grandson that’s on a rather lengthy program.
MI: With you, it was four years.
JF: That was not unusual back in those days.
MI: You always wanted to be a lawyer. Did that start probably at your – when you started having the interest in debate?
JF: That was probably it, and certainly as I mentioned, the more manual labor I did, the more I was impressed with something that did not involve manual labor. [MI laughs] I was always intrigued with the practice of law from an early age.
MI: Excellent. So, you graduated in four years, and then you applied for a – did you apply to law school, or did you apply to graduate school? How did you go from Northwestern to the University of Oklahoma and for what purpose?
JF: I had planned to go to the University of Oklahoma to go to law school, and perhaps graduate school. I was kind of on a long-term program. I loved to go to school, and I figured if I got out of school then I would have to go to work. Anyway, I had some friendly college professors at Alva that wrote some very commending letters for me.
MI: Glowing letters of recommendation.
JF: Probably far more than I deserve. They wrote some letters to professors at Oklahoma University (Transcriber’s Note: University of Oklahoma), so I got a job there working in the government department for the professors there and going to grad school.
MI: So, you went to graduate school before you went to law school?
JF: That’s right.
MI: This would have been what year?
JF: I would have been at OU from 1940 until 1943 when I was called to the U.S. Army Air Corps. That’s what we called the Air Force then.
MI: Okay, well, before we get into that, I want to talk about your college years. What kind of studies were you –
JF: I majored in government and I got all the academic requirements for a Master’s degree, and was still in the process of writing my thesis when I started in law school also. I got in one year of law school during that period of time. I was working on my thesis when I was called into the Air Force.
MI: Let’s talk about a couple of professors. I know you’ve mentioned names of people that had a major impact on you. During that period, were there certain professors that –
JF: The head of the department at that time was a professor named Cortez Ewing, who –
MI: He wrote a history book, didn’t he?
JF: He wrote a history book. He’d played professional baseball and was also the best pool player on campus and was very outstanding. I worked for him personally and did research for him. We had a Professor Dangerfield and a Professor Thornton, who taught municipal government. We traveled around the state some and he’d give speeches in various towns.
MI: And you had the opportunity to go around with him?
JF: I had the opportunity to go around with him and I had a very close relationship with these professors because we had rather small quarters in the basement of the old law barn, as they called it, in the OU Law building.
MI: That building is still there.
JF: The building is still there. It’s Monnett Hall, named after the first dean of the law school at OU.
MI: Was this a positive experience, going to school there? Did you enjoy it?
JF: Oh, yes. The government department in graduate school was in the basement and then the law school was in the upper part. As I say, for one year I got in a year of law so all I had to do was go upstairs. I was in the government department anyway. I was in the same building going to graduate school as I was taking my one year of law school.
MI: Were you working jobs there in the Norman area? Were you working at –?
JF: I was working for the government department in the summer and in the fall also.
MI: I thought you were working part time at some kind of eatery? You know, like some kind of place where you could have –
JF: I did do some of that kind of work. In fact, I think I worked at a place where they couldn’t have served liquor because it was illegal at that time, but they at least served beer. But yes, I worked at a place like that on the side.
MI: Do you remember where you lived during this period?
JF: I lived on a street – they call it Campus Corner, which is right across on the south side from the university campus. I lived from that corner about two blocks down the street. I cannot recall the name of the street, but it was a big old house where you could dine.
MI: Was this a boarding house?
JF: Yes, a boarding house.
MI: Is that where you talk about the boarding house reach? Elaborate on that.
JF: Well, they’d have a large group of people dining at the same table. Some of these people did not have all the manners in the world and they were young, so they would reach quite far for food sometimes before you got to it. They used to call it the boarding room reach. [both laugh]
MI: Well, these are little pieces of history. Did you have a car? What was your form of transportation?
JF: No. One of the requirements that I had with any co-ed that I might encounter was that she have wheels because I had no transportation. The way that I went from Alva to Enid during my four years there was I hitchhiked. I hitchhiked all over the state. That was my means of transportation. So, in other words, no, I had no car.
MI: All right. 1943 – your education got interrupted. I say interrupted, you’d already been to school for seven years.
JF: Well, it was close to seven years at that point.
[talking over each other]
MI: So it was interrupted. What happened at this point?
JF: I was called into the Air Force as a cadet, and was sent by train to Santa Ana, California, where I went through 90 days of training as a cadet. Then I was transported to Ellington, Texas and was there for a period of time. I was also in gunnery school in Harlington, Texas, but then I was commissioned as an officer at Hondo, Texas.
MI: How did you get commissioned as an officer?
JF: I’d gone through the cadets –
[talking over each other]
JF: That’s the way you became an officer.
MI: Where did your career go as an officer?
JF: I became an instructor as an officer at a little town outside of Houston. I was an instructor for a period of time, both there and at Hondo, Texas. I went into instructing and was not sent overseas at that time.
MI: I see. All right. After this, did you go back to school or what happened?
JF: I started back to OU in 1947. I got out of the service in ’46, started back to law school in ’47, and graduated from law school in ’48.
MI: Is this when you would you have been classmates with G.D. Spradlin?
JF: Yes. During that period of time, I was a classmate with G.D. Spradlin.
(Transcriber’s Note: G.D. Spradlin was an Oklahoma lawyer who eventually went to Hollywood and acted in movies.)
MI: Who were some of your other contemporaries that you can think of?
JF: There was Russell Holloway, Pharrell Rogers, Jack Thompson. At that time, there were all males in the law school. I think my last year there was the first lady lawyer they had there as a student in the law school.
MI: These are names that I’ve heard you – many people that I have known all went on to become prominent in their field for the most part. Oklahoma no doubt had a very fine law program as they continue to this day.
JF: They had some very fine professors there and they had a very fine professor in tort law, which would be negligence law, which ultimately I went into. They had a fine faculty there in the law school, as they did at the government school.
MI: I know that you were also very close to receiving your Master’s degree. Was that cut short when you headed out?
JF: That was cut short. I had a rough draft of my thesis when I was called into the Air Force. It somehow – when I came back to law school, some of my government professors were still trying to get me to get that thesis complete, but I got involved in practicing law.
MI: Okay. Well then, I didn’t mean to make light of it. Your career was cut short because if you hadn’t been called, you probably would have finished that thesis. As we’re going to find out as we move into the next phase, [JF laughs] it had very little impact on the success that you were able to achieve thereafter. Okay, so you graduated in ’47. What happened after that?
JF: I graduated in the fall of ’48, October 1948. I, of course, didn’t have a job and I figured the best place to find a job to start practicing law was to go over to the county courthouse. I went to some county courthouses in some remote areas, and I decided that I would much prefer to be in Oklahoma City, a more populous place. So I went to the county courthouse in Oklahoma City and wandered around –
MI: That’s very close to where we are sitting right now.
JF: That’s right, just within our reach. Sure enough, some friendly court clerk sent me a wire – they couldn’t reach me by phone, so they sent me a wire – to call them as soon as possible. By that means, I met the law partner that I started practicing law with.
MI: Is this Draper Grigsby?
JF: I met Draper Grigsby, who was a very famous trial lawyer, both criminal and civil cases.
MI: Yeah, tell us a little bit about Draper.
JF: Draper Grigsby had one of the most successful prosecuting attorneys and was quite common at that time and somewhat now. Being a successful prosecuting attorney, he went into civil practice and was very successful. He represented an ex-governor in a bribery case. He was well-known for representing some very prominent defenders. Then he went in representing primarily railroad companies and insurance companies and so forth, and had developed a very substantial practice at the time that I had an opportunity to meet him.
MI: You met him and how did things materialize from that point?
JF: Well, I met him and we went up to the Old Beacon Club at the First National Building and had lunch there. He had more cases to try than you could count, and he was overwhelmed by it. He was a very successful trial lawyer.
MI: Are we still in 1948 now?
JF: This is in – I should have jumped. I actually started to practice law in January of ’49, but I had interviewed with him in ’48. It was exactly the kind of law practice I wanted to go into. We talked about the salary a little bit, and I think I was wanting $150 a month, which was far too much, so I didn’t have any trouble agreeing on salary, which I hesitate to mention but it was lower than $150 a month.
MI: I’m sure that that was – you were being paid well for that time and place. Where was his office?
JF: His office was in the First National Building.
MI: The same place that you had met him at the Beacon Club, right?
JF: That’s right.
MI: Do you remember what floor it was on?
JF: He was on the 13th floor of the First National Building and had been there with a previous law partner for a period of time. We started practicing there and continued there except for a couple of years where we were over at the Hales Building. Other than that, we were in the First National and I continued in the First National until two years ago.
MI: That’s true. Now, I know you – we’ll come back to that. You started on the 13th floor. Ultimately you ended up having all of the 19th and 20th and 21st floors?
JF: I started on the 19th and I’d always envisioned of having the 20th floor of the First National. It had a ring to it. I ended up with, after about 20 years on the 19th floor, I took over the 20th floor. I was there for 20 or 30 years.
MI: How many lawyers were there with Draper Grigsby?
JF: Just me for a time. I had practiced law with him starting in January of ’49 and I was recalled into the Air Force in 1951. I was in Mobile, Alabama when my son was born, and in Panama during that period of time. Then I returned in September 1952 with Draper Grigsby.
MI: So you were gone for a couple of years, but did he have any problems with you disappearing for a couple of years for the service of your country?
JF: He went to every effort possible to keep me from being recalled.
MI: But once you got recalled, he accepted you back when you returned?
JF: He did, and in fact, he got on the train and came to Mobile, Alabama to see me when I was there. He started to come down to Panama to see me there, but things intervened that kept him from doing it.
MI: Give us a little overview of what the legal practice, at least your specialty. By the way, what has been your specialty field within the law profession over the course of your career?
JF: Well, as Draper Grigsby did, I tried jury cases and he’d just try one jury case after another. It was not uncommon in those days to try two jury cases to a verdict by the jury per week. He had these cases – we were trying them all the time.
MI: And there was just the two of you there?
JF: Just the two of us at that time. Now, when I was called back to the service, he had brought in an attorney by the name of Jake Hunt, who graduated a little bit behind me in law school. I didn’t know him in law school. Then it was Grigsby, Foliart and Hunt.
MI: So the fact that there was another person – you needed someone to pick up the slack when you were headed to the military. You say it wasn’t unusual to have two jury cases a week. Give us an idea. What sorts of cases were you involved with?
JF: We specialized in personal injury cases or damage suits and were predominantly on the defense side, although we tried plaintiffs’ cases also. It was not unusual for us to have pending, at any given time, 20 or 30 jury cases for trial. Back in those days, you actually tried them. You settled very few of them. You were just trying one jury case after another. It was not unusual to have one jury out on a case you just tried, and be selecting a jury for the next case. You were just trying one case after another.
MI: How could you possibly be prepared on this many cases?
JF: You had to prepare quickly and back at that time, they didn’t take as many depositions. They didn’t go through what we call discovery. They didn’t go through as much of that. You weren’t overwhelmed with paperwork as you were in later years as law practice changed.
MI: For the most part, you’ve tried cases in almost every county in Oklahoma. I mean, so it wasn’t just here in Oklahoma City. You’d try cases –
JF: There are 77 counties in the state of Oklahoma. I can fairly say that I’ve tried cases in more than 60 of the 77 counties. I’d like to say I’ve tried in all counties, but I can say I’ve tried in more than 60.
MI: This had to be as well as keeping you busy, it had to be a very exciting profession in those days.
JF: Oh, yes. Traveling from county to county and meeting these different types of jurors in different parts of the state that had different backgrounds. Trying a case in Seminole or Sapulpa or Wewoka, you’d be dealing with people that had been in the oil fields and so forth. You’d try cases in Weatherford and out in the western part of the state in Guymon, Oklahoma and forth and these were farmers. You learned about different types of people and picking these juries and trying these cases.
MI: [clears throat] I think being the person that runs this interview, I can say a few things that a normal interviewer might not. [JF laughs] I can tell you that I spent my entire adolescence having one attorney after another saying that Jim Foliart was the greatest attorney there has been in this state or this part of the country. I don’t want you to say it on there because it would sound immodest, but I know that this was the case. What happened? I know that Draper Grigsby passed away fairly soon after you all started your partnership. Talk us through what that transition was and how you were able to pick up the slack.
JF: This was an amazing transition. Draper Grigsby died at age 59 in 1954, so he died young.
MI: Three years after you came back.
JF: That’s right. Of course, we were overwhelmed with jury cases and it was a very, very stressful time. Jake Hunt and I ended up with all these cases and so then we had to start adding on to the law firm. Within five or ten years, we had more lawyers. I practiced law with Jake Hunt continuously. We practiced a total of ten years together, and then we had different members of the law firm. This law firm has remained as a firm. In other words, from the time I started with Draper Grigsby in 1949 and now it’s a very active law firm in Oklahoma City.
MI: You touched on it a moment ago. You were maybe trying as many as two cases to verdict a week. I mean, not every week but let’s say it averaged out to two. Today, give me – I mean, there’s been a fifty year span or more. How would you sum up the basic difference in your profession today versus when you first started?
JF: Back in the early days – we’re talking about Draper Grigsby – and the days following that, it was not unusual for a lawyer to try to a verdict 20, 30, 40 cases a year. If you practiced law for 15 or 20 or 30 years, multiply that towards that number and you get into a very large number of jury cases that you tried. A law firm at the present time of trial lawyers would never try that many cases in 30 years. Cases are mediated now, which may or may not be for the better. The jury system, as it existed back at that time, has changed dramatically in the last ten or fifteen years.
MI: Is this a change that you as a lawyer are in favor of or not in favor of?
JF: I am a great proponent of the jury system and I fear that with the change we’re making towards trying fewer and fewer civil cases, that the jury system itself may be at risk. It is, of course, staying in existence as far as criminal cases are concerned because you’re dealing with human rights in that regard. As far as a civil trial of jury cases, it has diminished so rapidly that there’s a danger to the jury system itself in the civil field.
MI: I have personally seen you try so many cases and your record stands as a man who has won, if not every case, nine-tenths of those cases and as a result, I know you’ve been a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy and the American Federation of Insurance Counsel, and you’re listed in the Best Lawyers in America from the day that book started, for years and years. I guess I would say that you probably found a profession that you really enjoyed doing.
JF: I can’t think of any profession or any way to make a living, so to speak, that I would have preferred over what I did as a trial lawyer. It was absolutely perfect for me.
MI: I want to touch on a couple of areas besides your successful career. By the way, we could have certainly a whole other segment of this where you would be telling interesting cases that you’ve been involved with. I’m not sure that wasn’t a direction that we could have gone in this. Give me some idea about Oklahoma City and how it’s changed and we’re now in the Centennial year of the state of Oklahoma. Tell me about Oklahoma City. You’ve lived here most of your adult life. How has it changed over the years?
JF: The population has changed tremendously. There’s more traffic, new buildings. You look at pictures that were taken 15 or 20 or 30 years ago, and then look at Oklahoma City now. It’s become more metropolitan as most cities have. We’ve also culturally added to the city quite a bit, like having this fine library where we’re carrying on this conversation. We’ve got a museum of art. We’ve got a fine concert hall. In the arts and that field, the city has improved tremendously also.
MI: What did you do for fun back in the ‘40s? I know there was a place, Spring Lake, that I went to as a child. You used to go out there.
JF: They had amusement parks. Spring Lake was one of the finest.
MI: Were there big bands and that kind of thing?
JF: They had big bands out there. There were some of the best bands playing in the ballroom at Spring Lake Park, like Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman and you name them back in that era. They played out there, and they would also play on the campus at OU. We had some fine entertainment.
MI: Tell me your different residences here in Oklahoma City.
JF: I didn’t move around very much. When I came back from the service in 1952, I moved over to 19th. I was on 19th Street.
MI: It was Walnut before that.
JF: I lived on a street named Walnut, a little bit on the east part of town, for a period of time when I was in school at OU. I was there for a while. When I came back from the service, I moved to a little house on 19th Street. The lady tried to get me to buy the house and I said, “Well, I’m not going to be here that long.” As it ended up, I stayed there for six years. My son – brought him back from Panama and he spent his early years there. Then we moved to Nichols Hills. Those are the two areas, 19th Street and Nichols Hills.
MI: Nichols Hills, at 6410 North Hillcrest.
JF: That’s right.
MI: When did you – at what stage did you meet my mother?
JF: I met her when I was at OU, when I was in graduate school.
MI: And her name?
JF: Her name was Mary Lou Wilson. She had graduated at Chickasha. It was a women’s college at that time, and she had graduated from there and was taking some extra courses at OU. When I was in graduate school, that’s when I met her.
MI: I know that her father actually I think came from Kansas, didn’t he?
JF: They came from Missouri. Her father was Judge Wilson, district judge down there in Tillman County in that district of the state. He graduated from Missouri University law school and started practicing in Oklahoma the year of statehood, 1907.
MI: In Fredrick, Oklahoma.
JF: Somehow, he ended up in Fredrick, Oklahoma and established a great practice there. One of her brothers practiced law with him and another brother was a professor at Illinois University.
MI: And her mother came from - was it Tatum, Texas?
JF: Tatum, in east Texas. Tatum, Texas. In fact, the Tatums were part of the family.
MI: There’s so much to cover on. You’ve had a fabulous life here, successful life as an attorney. You have a loving family. I know that you’ve had a great time seeing a lot of changes in this city. I think that I’ve covered just about all I can cover in this particular amount of time, and if we find that we need to do an addendum to this – is there anything else you haven’t said?
JF: Well I haven’t discussed the greatest success in my life, which happens to be my son. [MI laughs] He is really successful and a most talented composer, and whose performance will, in fact, be performed Friday and Saturday of this week at the concert hall.
MI: Yeah. In fact, I’m headed over right now for my rehearsal.
JF: It is entitled, “The Oklahoma Trilogy” with a photography background being done by Brin Kerr, the grandson of Bob Kerr, the famous senator from Oklahoma and governor. That’s the most successful part of my life, is probably my son.
MI: Awww. Well, we’re not going to finish on that, although since I’m doing the interview maybe we will finish on that. I’m glad I had this opportunity to talk to you. This is just scratching the surface, but there’s some good facts that came up that told us a lot about your life and your early life and for you here and your life in the present day. Thank you very much for this interview, my father.
JF: I do want to add this. If you’re going to be interviewed for a historic occasion like this, you certainly would prefer to be interviewed by your son. [both laugh]
MI: All right. Well, thank you very much. [both laugh again]
End of interview.