Bill Nash

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Announcer: William Ray Nash was the founder of United Bank in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which he sold in 1984. The bank became known as the Bank of America. His first experience in the banking business came in 1966 when he worked for the Bank of Oklahoma in charge of advertising, public relations, and marketing. He graduated from the Oklahoma Intermediate School of Banking at OSU and the School of Bank Public Relations and Marketing at Northwest University in Chicago. Bill became head of the Real Estate Loan Department to head the Correspondent Department at the Bank of Oklahoma.

Bill and his wife Edna came to Tulsa in 1956 to work for Oral Roberts in the Radio and TV department. In his public service, he served as the chairman of the Tulsa County Election Board later serving on the Oklahoma Transportation Commission rising to the position of chairman.

In addition to his professional career, Bill talks about the plane crash which took the lives of his brother Marshall and sister-in-law Rebecca — the daughter of Oral Roberts — on the oral history podcast and website VoicesOfOklahoma.com.

Chapter 2 - Radio

John Erling (JE): My name is John Erling, and today's date is April 12, 2023. So, Bill, would you state your full name, please?

Bill Nash (BN): I'm William Ray Nash.

JE: Your date of birth?

BN: July 14, 1935.

JE: Your present age?

BN: 87.

JE: Soon to be 88, correct?

BN: Correct.

JE: William Ray Nash, any story to that name?

BN: No.

JE: All right, what was your father's name?

BN: Walter Jones Nash.

JE: All right. Down south, everybody, you went by that second name, right?

BN: Double names normally.

JE: So you grew up as Billy Ray?

BN: Billy Ray, James Morris, Marshall Everett.

JE: Right.

BN: Edna Earle, my wife. (Laughing)

JE: And we're recording this in our studios of Voices of Oklahoma.com here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Where were you born?

BN: In Alberton, Georgia.

JE: Where is that in Georgia?

BN: That's in Northeast Georgia and it's called the granite capital of the world. I was born on the square, on the 2nd story above --the last time I was there -- Moore's Menswear, in a little private hospital called Thompson Johnson. It closed the next year after I was born there.

JE: They didn't want any more of this, right?

BN: They built a public hospital a few blocks away where my younger brother was born two years later.

JE: OK. Your mother's name?

BN: She was Francis Naomi McCurley Nash.

JE: And where did she grow up?

BN: She and my dad both grew up near each other right along the border of Hart and Elbert Counties in Northeast Georgia.

JE: What kind of personality did she have? What kind of person was she?

BN: She was quiet, sweet, thoughtful, loving. Perfect mom.

JE: Yeah, good cook too, I suppose.

BN: A very good cook, right.

JE: Your father's name?

BN: He was Walter Jones Nash.

JE: And his personality?

BN: He was outgoing. He was an old-time preacher man -- very dynamic, Oral Roberts-style, never stayed behind the pulpit. Always came down, walked up and down the aisles, talked to the people, called them by their name. He was dramatic and had an interesting career.

JE: Was that his full-time calling as a minister?

BN: Yes, he started in life early as a teacher at Emanuel College. Back when he was teaching there, it was called Franklin Springs Institute. He taught, believe it or not, French and history. Later, he was a principal of a consolidated school there, and then he entered the ministry. Well, he was already in the ministry, he pastoring several small churches simultaneously once he finished his schooling. My mom and dad both graduated from the University of Georgia back in the early '30s.

JE: So then your father, he was a traveling evangelist?

BN: He was for a while, but he pastored a number of small churches in his early years. Fairly young in his career, he was elected bishop for the state of Georgia, and he served quite a long term there. Then he became pastor of the largest church in the denomination, the National Church in Washington, D.C., at 610 Maryland Avenue Northeast. After that pastorate ended, he went back and became bishop again.

JE: The denomination we're talking about?

BN: Pentecostal Holiness.

JE: Oral Roberts was a member of that too, wasn’t he?

BN: Yes, right.

JE: So then let's find out about you. Your education, where did you start school?

BN: Well, I started at Royston, Georgia public schools and went through 1st through the 8th grades. Then I transferred to a private religious school called Emanuel Academy in 9th grade. I had four years to go before I graduated, but John, I was in a hurry. I took five courses each year instead of four, and in my senior year, I had finished 15 hours. I took the 16th hour from the University of Maryland by correspondence, and I graduated one year ahead of my normal class.

JE: OK, so why were you in a hurry?

BN: I had things I wanted to do. I wasn't sure what they were, but I wanted to get out of the red mud and the pine trees of North Georgia and find my mark in the world.

JE: Going on in the world in 1941, December 7th, you would have been six years old or so. Do you have any recollection?

BN: I do. I remember us putting quilts over the windows when we thought there was possibly an air raid to darken our homes. I remember listening to the radio every day to hear the news from overseas, both in the Japanese arena and the German arena. I remember it well.

JE: Did you have friends or loved ones who joined the war?

BN: My dad's brother served in France, Uncle Tom.

JE: Was that kind of a scary time for a young boy?

BN: I wasn't too afraid. It seemed that the war was a long, long way to my small mind.

JE: So you get out of school. What year did you graduate?

BN: 1952.

JE: All right. Then what did you do?

BN: I went on to Emanuel Junior College, graduated in 1954, and then I went to the University of Georgia in 1955. I got married the day before I finished my junior year.

JE: And what year was that?

BN: That was in 1955 -- May the 29th, to be precise.

JE: OK, but let me bring you back to high school. You had an interest in radio?

BN: I did.

JE: Tell me about your high school radio experience.

BN: Well, it came about because the high school I went to, Emanuel Academy, and the junior college were all combined -- same faculty, same buildings. They had a radio program on WKLY in Hartwell, Georgia, on Sunday afternoons where the students would go and sing and talk about the school. One day, the announcer was sick and couldn't go; and they asked me to fill in for him. I went over to that radio station for the first time ever inside a studio, and I did the announcing that day, and the following week, I had a second opportunity. I thought, "Wow, this is great—people out there everywhere hearing me talk today." A few weeks later, I was in a jewelry store buying my wife an engagement ring, and they told me that Joe Wilder was leaving WKLY and starting his own station down in Barnwell, South Carolina. I got in my car, drove straight to WKLY, and I asked to meet the manager, Max Fender, and told him I wanted Joe Wilder's job. Talk about brash.

JE: Yup.

BN: He said, "Let's go in the studio." He ripped off a couple of pages from the UPI wire, handed me a couple of commercials—in those days, all the commercials were in a loose-leaf notebook— and you just turned the page and read. And he said, "Read this news story, read this news story, read this commercial." I did. He said, "When can you start?" I said, "In the morning."

JE: So what was your shift? When did you work?

BN: I came at daylight. It was a daytime station. I signed on at daylight, worked till 9 o'clock, and 14 miles away, I had a 9:10 class to start school. I never made it on time.

JE: And they understood?

BN: They did.

JE: Then I came back and worked an afternoon shift from about 4 till sign-off, and I worked weekends.

JE: Wow.

BN: I earned $175 a month, John.

JE: Was that tall cotton for you?

BN: For me? Tall cotton. I would have paid them for that job. I loved it.

JE: So you got the radio bug.

BN: I did.

JE: Did you go to another radio station?

BN: I did. When I transferred to the University of Georgia, I applied for a job at WGAU, the CBS outlet there, the voice of the Bulldogs, and I got that job. I worked nights and weekends there. I had a wonderful show that started at 8 o'clock every night called "Dancing in the Dark," and it was primarily aimed at the student body. They would call and request music from the fraternities and sororities and from the dormitories, and I played wonderful music.

JE: What kind of music?

BN: Pop music.

JE: Pop music? Was it big bands then?

BN: Yes, Al Hibbler, "Unchained Melody." That was my wife's favorite, so I played that for her every night. And let's back up. When I was at WKLY, I had a show every afternoon called "Sundown Serenade." It was 30 minutes of instrumental music done only by The Three Suns—that's S-U-N-S. You never hear them anymore, but they had some beautiful instrumental music featuring an accordion. One of those was "My Isle of Golden Dreams," and I played that right at 6 o'clock every night for my girlfriend, who I knew was listening down in Royston, Georgia, 15 miles away. And the night I proposed to her, it was midnight, 1954, in my mother and father's living room, sitting on an oriental rug in front of the fireplace, listening to WSM in Nashville, Tennessee. I proposed to her. She accepted. I reached in my pocket and got out that little half-carat diamond that I'd worked so hard to pay for, and as I slipped it on her finger, the disc jockey on WSM started playing The Three Suns' "My Isle of Golden Dreams." And she said, “Wow.” And I said, “Stick with me, girl, and I’ll take you there.” She did; and I did.

JE: Was that just by accident?

BN: Purely accidental.

JE: …that that song was played?

BN: I think it was a message from the Lord. (Laughing)

JE: Isn't that amazing?

BN: Totally amazing.

JE: You could have told her, "No, I called the station and had them do that," but no, somebody else did that. Yeah, that's a great story. So then we’re talking about Edna then, obviously.

BN: Yes, Edna. About five months later, she graduated from Emanuel Academy at 6 o'clock. We got married at 8 o'clock, and my father tied the knot.

JE: So how old were the two of you at that time?

BN: She was 17. I was 19. I went back to the University of Georgia the next morning and took a French exam at 8 o'clock. I told Dr. Womack, my wonderful teacher, "Dr. Womack, when you grade my final exam today, please remember I got married last night, and my mind was not on 'parlez-vous français.'"

JE: (Laughing, clapping) That's great. That's great. And so he gave you a good grade, I'm sure.

BN: I passed (Laughing).

JE: That's wonderful.

Chapter 3 - Enter Every Open Door

John Erling (JE): At Emanuel Junior College, you were involved musically there. You were a singer too, weren't you?

Bill Nash (BN): I was. I sang in the Emanuel College Quartet for 3 years and traveled on weekends when I could and lots in the summer, recruiting students. We would go Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night in churches, and revivals, and the summertime camp meetings. We made a lot of radio and TV appearances, sang at a lot of funerals, a lot of civic clubs, even sang on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour at the University of Georgia before 3,000 students.

JE: Really? So did Ted Mack bless you?

BN: We did not win.

JE: Alright, but you got to sing there. Did you meet Ted Mack?

BN: Yes.

JE: Wow.

BN: Interesting guy.

JE: Yeah. And then you graduated from Emanuel Junior College in 1954. Were you involved in other areas of school life there? Student council or anything?

BN: I was president of the student council. I was captain of the football team, president of the choir, played baritone in the band. I was very active at Emanuel. If you could get in any activity, I got in it. John, when I was about 10, I met an old-time preacher man named JB Todd. He was instrumental in getting my father converted. It was at a vacation Bible school there at the college, and I remember I was standing at the little water fountain where you used to push the button and it was squared up and you take a drink. He said, "Billy Ray, I've been watching you the last few days. You're an interesting young man and I have some advice for you." I said, "Yes, sir." He said, "I don't want you to ever forget it." I said, "Reverend Todd, I won't," and I'm 87 now and I haven't forgotten. He said, "Four simple words: Enter every open door." He said if you will do that, it will take you far. I believed him and I did that and it has worked extremely well for me, so every open door at school or anywhere else since, I walked through it to see what was on the other side.

JE: That was 10 years old. OK, let's enter your faith walk here too, because you grew up in a Christian family,

BN: Yes.

JE: And you believed, then, in your faith. Tell me when you became conscious of what it was about and your commitment at an early age.

BN: About 10, about the same time. During a revival that James Taylor from over in South Carolina came and held at the college, I knelt down beside my seat. I didn't go down to the front. Nobody laid hands on me. I didn't see lightning or hear thunder. I just said, "I believe what these people are talking about. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the Bible. I'm going to follow you starting tonight," and that was my journey into the Christian faith.

JE: Pastor James Buskirk, did you know him in Georgia?

BN: No, I knew him only when I moved to Tulsa. Wonderful man, dear friend.

JE: So that experience, and you graduate in 1954 from Emanuel Junior College, then you're on to University of Georgia, is that true?

BN: Yes. Yes.

JE: And your involvement there, the open doors there -- what were they?

BN: I joined the University Men's Glee Club and the Alpha Omega fraternity, which was for former Boy Scouts. I was a scoutmaster when I was a youngster. I shouldn't have been, but we couldn't find one. We found one on paper that never attended a single meeting, so I became the acting scoutmaster and enjoyed scouting so much, became tapped for Order of the Arrow and went through that experience in the North Georgia mountains. So Scouting was very important to me in my early life.

JE: I should have asked you, brothers, sisters -- siblings?

BN: Two brothers, Marshall, my younger brother by 2 years, and James Morris or “Jim”, my older brother by 2 years.

JE: Is he still living, your older brother?

BN: No, my older brother died of a heart attack at 39.

JE: And then we'll talk about Marshall, what happened there. So, all right, then you were married. When you married Edna, and then you graduated, what was your job? What were you trained for?

BN: I was studying pre-med at the time, John, but my interest changed dramatically in the next couple of years. The job I had the night we were married was I was manager of the produce department at Kroger in Athens, Georgia, and working nights and weekends at WGAU in Athens. I did that throughout the summer and supported us. We lived 30 miles away. I bought a little book of tickets for $2. I'd get 20 tickets on Greyhound. I didn't have a car -- very poor growing up. I would go out a half hour before Greyhound came and I would hitchhike, and 99% of the time I caught a ride every day to Athens and one home, and I rarely used those 10-cent coupons.

Now I want to back up. While I was a youngster, my family traveled extensively in the summer because I mentioned my dad was a famous camp meeting speaker. He held camp meetings everywhere from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Madera, California. One of those at about age 10 was in Ada, Oklahoma, a big camp meeting. People came by the thousands. We had community dining there, the staff and the officials of the church—must have been 20 or so of us—every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Two of those people every day were Oral and Evelyn Roberts. He must have been in his early twenties, maybe mid-twenties. That's when we first met the Roberts family.

JE: He was born in Ada.

BN: True, he was at home. My dad was very popular there. He also preached at the Carnegie, Oklahoma camp meeting and one in Cherryvale, Kansas, so my dad brought us west. That was a big deal for us young boys. During the times we traveled to those camp meetings, we saw things that none of our peers saw. We went to the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, Carlsbad Caverns, Yosemite National Park, the Pacific Ocean, Great Salt Lake, and Niagara Falls. When we got home in the fall, the first day the teacher would ask the three little Nash boys, "Tell us where you have been this summer and what you saw," and the kids couldn’t believe all the places we had been because my dad was a famous camp meeting speaker.

JE: Back to Oral, was he an evangelist at that point, or was he just thinking about it?

BN: I think he was just a pastor.

JE: OK.

BN: One of his earlier churches.

JE: I've interviewed Oral Roberts for this.

BN: I've heard that program, John.

JE: And I always tell people when I asked him where his mother was born, he says, "Well, John, I really don't know. I think she was born on the banks of a river somewhere." Isn't that amazing?

BN: Yes, it is. The interesting story that follows that—a few years later, while my dad was bishop of the state of Georgia, he had a vacant pastorate in Toccoa, Georgia. One of the senior members of that church had seen and heard Oral somewhere in revival and said, "That young man would make us a good pastor." My dad called Oral and said, "Would you consider coming to Georgia and being a pastor at Toccoa? We'll pray about it and let you know." And he accepted that pastorate and moved to Toccoa, Georgia for a relatively short time. My dad was his bishop, and we went to his church during his pastorate there, and they came to our home. So we were close to the Roberts in the early days, which will help explain, after a while, why I moved to Tulsa in 1956.

JE: You recall listening to him -- Oral -- speak then, that he was an outstanding speaker?

BN: Yes, I went to his Greenville, South Carolina crusade and his Columbia, South Carolina crusade right after we were married.

JE: But your father was maybe equally as electrifying as a speaker. Is that true?

BN: Yes, but not to compare with Oral.

JE: No, he went on, but anyway, your father was in that league, right?

BN: Yes.

JE: All right, so did you make your way to Washington, DC?

BN: I did. After the summer we were first married, my wife became pregnant and I wanted some better opportunity. I didn't know what it would be, but I thought Washington, DC would be better than Athens, Georgia. So my dad was pastoring there at the time. He lived in a three-story manse.

JE: In Washington, DC?

BN: In Washington, DC. 4502 South Dakota Avenue Northeast. We moved into the third floor of the parsonage, or manse as they called it, and we lived there about 6 months. I worked for Sears as a salesman, and I was pretty good. I made pretty good money and bought a 1952 Cadillac for $2,000.

JE: Was that new at the time?

BN: It was not; it was 2 years old.

JE: OK, and did you enjoy Washington, DC, and living there?

BN: No, I did not. Southern country boy, I felt totally out of place. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I enjoyed the historical part of Washington. My wife and I spent lots of time seeing all the famous things from the Capitol to the White House to Mount Vernon, the Ford Theater. We did it all—the Smithsonian. While we were there, we took advantage of it and educated ourselves about the early history of this nation.

JE: All right, so how long did you stay in Washington?

BN: About 6 months.

JE: All right. Your daughter was born?

BN: Well, not yet.

JE: OK, when was she born?

BN: April 6, '56. Let me just transition from there to her birth.

JE: Yes.

BN: Sunday night in Washington, DC, a guy and his wife showed up by the name of Lonnie and Betty Ricks. He had been the choir director at my father's church earlier in his career, but he was now working in Tulsa, Oklahoma for Oral Roberts in the radio and TV department. After church Sunday night, all of us were in the back talking. We said, “Let’s go out to the hot shops and have a snack.” We did, and I sat by Lonnie. We started talking. I was asking him what he did for Oral, and he was telling me about radio and TV. And he said, “What have you been doing?”. I told him about WKLY and WGAU. He said, "I could use you to help me in Tulsa. Would you be interested in moving to Tulsa?" I said, "I sure would. I'd do most anything to get out of Washington, DC." He said, "Well, I'm flying back tomorrow. I'll mail you an application." To make a long story short, he hired me, and we moved to Tulsa in March of '56. Our daughter was born three weeks later, and that's an interesting story.

JE: And her name?

BN: Elizabeth Earle Calford.

JE: All right, and you say it's an interesting story.

BN: The doctor said, "You can't drive from here to Tulsa now. You're too far along in your pregnancy, but if you could fly, you can go." She had never flown. I bought a little cheap trailer, put our refrigerator, stove, bed, chest of drawers on it, and I set out for Tulsa. I stopped in Birmingham, spent the night with a dear friend Owen Todd, drove all the way from Birmingham all night long, arrived at 41st and Yale at the service station at 8 o'clock Saturday morning. I called Lonnie Rex and said, "I'm here." The following Saturday, my wife boarded Eastern Airlines in Atlanta. She flew to Birmingham, to Memphis—same plane, changed crews to Braniff—flew to Little Rock, Fort Smith, and finally to Tulsa just before sundown.

JE: (Laughing) Well, we complain because we have a one-stopover.

BN: That was her first plane ride.

JE: Oh yes, and how wonderful to meet her then, here. Which radio station did you work for?

BN: I worked for Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association here.

JE: Yes.

BN: And I did research for Oral to decide which radio or TV station you wanted to put your program on. It was a very simple research. I looked at a coverage map. I'd take the counties, say like KRMG, and I'd take all the counties in your primary coverage area. I'd see how many magazine subscribers to Abundant Life magazine we had in those counties, how many donors we had in those counties. If it met a certain criteria, then I'd get standard rating data and look at the stations in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and pick out the ones I thought would be best. I'd write them or call their rep for a program guide and see what kind of programming they had because we avoided rock and roll stations—those listeners didn't support religious programs. We'd find stations where Billy Graham was on or Back to the Bible and try to line up with those. Then I would try to find a time on Sunday that we could buy and then negotiate.

JE: So then what was the first station you bought airtime on?

BN: You know, I don't remember. They had a large network at the time. I was just doing the research at that time, John. Later I became head of the whole thing and did all the buying. The second job I had at Oral Roberts Association—we were farming out who duplicated the tapes that went out to 500 stations every Sunday. Lonnie said, "I want you to fly down to WFAA in Dallas. I hear they've got a real fine AMPEX duplicating system." I did. They had a master with 5 slaves. They could put the master of a 30-minute tape on at 7.5 inches per second and speed it up to like 60, and they could run 5 copies of that in a matter of 4 minutes. So I came back, told him, and had our purchase agent buy that setup. We installed it, and I started duplicating all the tapes and shipping them out to the radio stations. Once that was working smoothly, I hired a young lady to take that job, and I went back to time buying. Lonnie left about that time, and I was promoted to be head of radio and TV for Oral Roberts. Then I started going to New York City on a regular basis to meet with station reps because I could see one rep in New York City, and he might have 15 or 20 or even more stations that I could talk to him about and see if there was a time available, what the price was, what the competition was on other stations, and decide whether or not we wanted to issue a 52-week contract.

JE: So you were really on the ground floor in the growth of the Ministry of Oral Roberts, weren’t you?.

BN: Yes.

JE: KRMG—he was on KRMG?

BN: 8 o'clock Sunday morning, one of our best stations. We had one of the first computer programs, maybe in the whole world, where we knew every week how many people wrote in and said, "I listen to you at 8 o'clock in Tulsa," or "I listen to you on KRMG." We kept track of how many did that and how much income came in from each of those letters. We compared it with a computer printout of what the cost was and what the overage or underage was. We knew which stations were really delivering the audience for us and which weren't.

JE: Oral was one of the first to use a computer, I believe.

BN: Yes.

JE: Wasn't Al Bush the one that headed that up?

BN: He was -- a brilliant guy.

JE: Right. And so because of the computer, you wonder even if Billy Graham was using one at that time—a computer—but Oral did. He bought into that.

BN: I think we were ahead of everybody at that particular time in history.

Chapter 4 - Bank of Oklahoma

John Erling (JE): Well, somewhere along the line, you became a general manager of a radio station.

Bill Nash (BN): Right. The association bought KFMJ out on West Edison, 1000 watts, 1050; and they sent me out there to run that station. I had actually left the association before that and joined their advertising agency, Swan and Mason. I worked on their behalf and handled a few other clients here in Tulsa like Orbach's Menswear out of Utica Square. I've forgotten some of the others, but I did all that as an advertising agent rather than an employee of the association. Then they hired me to manage KFMJ Radio, and I had some very interesting people work for me there.

JE: Yes, like?

BN: David Ingles, who now is founder and owns the Oasis Network, Billy Parker, Country Music Association's Disc Jockey of the Year at KVOO years later. KAKC was the highest-rated station here in town at the time. I hired two of their best: Don Kelly and his little pseudo friend Chauncey. I hired Will Jones; so I had four of the great TV personalities here in town working for me at one time.

JE: Somebody said, Marvin McCullough.

BN: I hired Marvin McCullough.

JE: Great country singer.

BN: And great personality on the radio. But pretty foul-mouthed, John, and for a station owned by Oral Roberts, I couldn't allow that. So I talked to him at first and said, "Marvin, you're gonna have to clean up your language or I can't keep you on the air." "I will, Mr. Nash," but he didn't. So I started taping him and playing it, and that didn't work out too well. So I finally said, "Marvin, this is not working. You're gonna have to go somewhere else."

JE: So we had foul language on the radio.

BN: Well, what Oral Roberts would call foul language.

JE: All right. Billy Parker then, was that one of his first radio stations?

BN: It was his first.

JE: You know, I've interviewed him as well, and he said he was working at QuikTrip. He was mopping the floor and he heard the radio station say, "We're looking for a person here," and he says, "I dropped the mop, got in my car, and drove right out to that radio station."

BN: And Ron Blue hired him. He preceded me as manager. Billy was already there when I became manager. I was smart enough to keep him.

JE: OK, and Ron Blue, of course, became the manager of KRMG and he hired me.

BN: Exactly.

JE: How about that?

BN: Small family, John.

JE: We're all old radio guys sitting here talking. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So you enjoyed that then. How long did you stay there? That, by the way, KFMJ is now KGTO.

BN: Right. They've changed the call letters. It used to be Fred and Mary Jones—that was the call letters.

JE: Of Fred Jones Ford.

BN: Yes, and we jokingly said out there, "Can't Keep Feeding 'Em Jesus." We had religion in the morning and country or "Can't Find My Jug." We had to have some things to laugh about out there in the country. We had some interesting people come by there. We hired Red Sovine to come one Saturday, put a big flatbed trailer out there, had free hot dogs and Pepsis. We had several thousand people out there at our first country picnic. Patsy Cline came by one day for an interview. You've met lots of them, but we met a few in our little coffee pot radio station out there.

JE: Interesting—religious in the morning and then afternoon is was…?

BN: At one o'clock, we switched to country. David Ingles signed it on and took us to one o'clock, then Billy Parker first, and later Don Kelly, then later Will Jones from one o'clock to sign-off.

JE: Did Oral interact at all with you about all this?

BN: No. Never had a comment from him about the station at all.

JE: He was off doing his thing.

BN: He was busy.

JE: Right. All right, so how long were you there then at that radio station?

BN: Let me think. I believe they sold that to the Kravis family in 1966. That's when I left radio and went to work at Bank of Oklahoma.

JE: You said the Kravis family?

BN: George and Raymond. They owned KRAV, and they bought KFMJ. I knew they would use their family to run that station, so at the first opportunity, I left.

JE: So then you go to the Bank of Oklahoma in 1966?

BN: Yes.

JE: Right. OK. You didn't think your career was going to be in radio? You wanted to do other things, or how did this all come about?

BN: Well, let's go way back. When I left Royston, Georgia, the last stop I made was at Tri County Bank and asked them for a job. They didn't have one for me. The reason I did that is because all through school, I was great at math. I made 100 on every math test I ever took. I might not have been too good at English or history or chemistry or French, but algebra, mathematics -- numbers always appealed to me, and I was good at it. I thought I'd be a good banker, but then I didn't have any other opportunities until one day at the Downtown Lions Club. I'm sitting at lunch with Francis Hawkins, head of the trust department at Bank of Oklahoma, and he said, "I hear Kravis has bought your bank. What are you going to do?"

JE: Bought your radio station.

BN: Oh -- “bought your radio station.” I’m sorry. He said, "Oh, we just lost our public relations and advertising man. Would that appeal to you?" I said, "It certainly would." He said, "Well, I'm going back to the bank right now. I'll talk to Marvin Millard, our chairman, and see if he'd like to interview you." About an hour later, he called me and said, "Can you come down?" I did, and he hired me.

JE: OK, I lost track because earlier you said something about pre-med.

BN: That's what I was studying the first three years of my schooling.

JE: Right. And what made you leave pre-med?

BN: Marriage.

JE: OK. All right.

BN: And when I came to Tulsa, John, I hadn't said this, but I started at TU at night. I went to night school at TU for like 10 years trying to finish my senior year. I ran out of courses when I was six hours short of graduating, so I enrolled in the University of Tulsa School of Law. I didn't want to be a lawyer, but I did want to learn contracts, real property, personal property, torts. I finished 25 hours at the law school at night while I was at Oral Roberts, KFMJ, and Bank of Oklahoma.

JE: Man, you weren't afraid of work, were you?

BN: I carried a heavy load.

JE: Yes, you did. But OK, let's come back here to the Bank of Oklahoma—advertising, public relations, marketing department. Had you had expertise? Yes, you did. You were at another advertising agency, so you did have experience.

BN: I knew about radio and TV and newspapers. I bought all kinds of time for Oral when he'd go into a city for a crusade. I'd buy posters on taxi tops, billboards along the freeways. I bought signs on the sides of buses; I bought newspaper ads, radio, and TV commercials. So yes, I had lots of experience in the advertising part of it, not very much in the public relations part.

JE: But that probably came naturally.

BN: Came fairly natural to me.

JE: Right. So then are you continuing there? Didn't you—OK, your interest in banking became really intense, right? Talk to me about what developed.

BN: Well, Bank of Oklahoma was very good to me. They sent me first to Oklahoma State to the Intermediate School of Banking where I graduated. They sent me at night to the American Institute of Banking, which was at TU and was taught by other Tulsa bankers. I received my basic certificate there, and then later they sent me to Northwestern in Chicago and Evanston for two summers to the School of Bank Public Relations and Marketing, and I graduated there. So I was continuing my education. I also enrolled at Oral Roberts University under Dr. Henry Mayori and studied at night out there and took several courses that would help me in my business career.

JE: But at the bank, you were promoted.

BN: I got bored with doing PR and advertising. Along came this guy named Dr. Eugene Swearingen -- Dr. Eugene Swearingen -- president of the University of Tulsa. One day, Chairman Miller called me up to his office. He said, "Bill, this afternoon we're going to elect Gene Swearingen president of Bank of Oklahoma. I want you to go out to the campus, find his office, interview him, write the story for the Morning World, the Afternoon Tribune, and the TV stations." So I went out to TU, found Dr. Swearingen, and we hit it off like nobody's ever believed. He became my second father. So he came to the bank, and he didn’t know anybody there except the top officers and me. Every time an opportunity arose, he'd call me and say, "Bill, I want you and Edna to go with me to New Orleans this weekend. I've got a convention for the ABA set up there, and I want you to help me."

One day I was going through the lobby, and he stopped me on a Friday at noon. He said, "Bill, I want you to fly down to Miami in the morning, check in at the hotel there, and attend the real estate convention for the ABA." I thought, "What?" He said, "Go see my secretary. She'll tell you all the details. I've got to go catch a plane." So I went up and talked to Virginia Domingos, and she said, "I've got your tickets here and your registration. Here's some money. I want your wife to go with you." So I went to Miami Beach, checked into the hotel, went to the convention, and came back.

Oh, I forgot to tell you—I had gone down to see him a few weeks before and said, "Dr. Swearingen, I'm bored. I'd like to change areas of the bank sometime." He said, "OK, you can do anything you want to do. You just come back and tell me what you want to do." Well, I pondered that for several weeks, and I couldn't decide. Do I want to be in real estate loans, automobile loans, commercial loans? Do I want to travel and represent the bank with other banks? I never went back to him because I couldn't decide.

Then he called me one day and said, "Our real estate loan head is retiring. Would you consider heading the real estate loan department?" I said I would. My brothers were both in real estate here in Tulsa, building apartments and homes, and I'd studied real estate law at the University of Tulsa Law School, so I had a basic understanding. I went down there, and we did very well. It was in a time of boom here in Tulsa.

JE: What time was this?

BN: This would have been around 1969 or 1970. Our department was the leading moneymaker percentage-wise in the whole bank that year, so I got his attention and the board's attention. I did that for two or three years, and then another opportunity arose. The head of the correspondent department retired. He called and asked me if I'd like that job, and that’s where you go to other banks that did business with our bank—mostly smaller banks in Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. A lot of traveling and build those relationships.

So I accepted the job as head of the correspondent department. That's where I first got the idea of building my own bank because I saw first how you do it. We made bank stock loans to a lot of these people who owned banks, and they gave us all their business. Every night when they put all their checks together, they'd send them down in a batch, and we'd send them all over the world to be collected. If they needed to buy bonds for their bond portfolio or treasury bills, we sold them that. If they had a loan that was too big—above their loan limit—they'd take the first $100,000, and if it was a $500,000 loan, we'd take the other $400,000.

So I saw how that worked, and my mind was really turning fast those few years I worked in the correspondent department. I also saw all the things I thought they were doing wrong. I thought, "If you could start from scratch, brand new, you wouldn't set these policies. You'd never have to change them, and you wouldn't have to fight your customers by doing something different."

Chapter 5 - Start a Bank

Bill Nash (BN): And so one day I was over at my brother Marshall's, and I said, "Why don't we start a new bank in Tulsa?" He said, "I'd like that. I've got the perfect spot for it." I said, "Where's that?" He said, "I've got five acres on the southeast corner of 71st and South Lewis." Bingo. Next day, I ran into Jim Robinson, the bank's attorney, in the lobby, and I said, "Jim, my brother and I are thinking about starting a new bank at 71st and Lewis. We need legal counsel." He said, "Come on up to my office. I've been thinking about the same thing, Bill. I just hadn't found the location yet or the people." I said, "Well, let's join up." So that threesome, and we got Doug Mobley, my brother's partner, and we got Lee Braxton, who was Oral's right-hand man, and we filed for a charter. It was granted to us by the State Banking Commission. In November of 1973, we opened United Bank at 71st and Lewis, and I became its first president.

John Erling (JE): Why did you choose that name, United Bank?

BN: My brother Marshall chose that name, and I'm not sure what the answer is. We first were thinking about University Bank, but for whatever reason, he thought United sounded better than University.

JE: And then at 71st and Lewis, the shopping center was developed there, right?

BN: That came along later. I've just made a mistake—I said '77, but it was November of '73 we opened the bank. Part of my deal with my brother was, when we started finalizing the mechanics of it, "You lease us the land at your cost with an 8% return. You build us a building at your cost with an 8% return, and you can buy 10% of the bank at going-in price and be on the board of directors." He said, "Deal."

JE: That was Marshall?

BN: Marshall—25-year lease, two 10-year renewals, so we had a 45-year lease on that southeast corner. Later, we bought the southwest corner, primarily as insurance to keep another bank from opening there, and we built a drive-in over there.

Now, come along a few years later, when we built the bank there, John, there wasn’t a thing in sight in any direction. In fact, one of the state banking commissioners said, when he was fixing to vote on whether we got the charter or not, "I drove up there yesterday, and there’s nothing in that area but a bunch of cows and pecan trees." We had Oral with us over there, and he said, "I’m fixing to build a major university out there." I'd hired Joe Welling to go up and down all the major streets and put together a survey from the owners about what they were going to do. He prepared an elaborate, bookletted presentation showing what was about to happen on every major piece of land, and we painted a really bright picture of what was about to happen around 71st.

One of the big developments was started by my brother, John Williams, and Oral Roberts University had a partnership. They bought all of that land, which was in a floodplain. They put in that Joe Creek concrete ditch from about Lewis all the way to the Arkansas River, spent over a million dollars, and took that land out of the floodplain. Now it was developable. They started putting in streets, street lights, laying it out. That’s when my brother came to a terrible end by dying in a plane crash.

JE: OK, and I want to get to that. So because you wanted to start a bank, that whole area—you were the genesis of that whole area developing.

BN: We were the seed that started it.

JE: You were. Now John Williams, who I’ve also interviewed for Voices of Oklahoma.com, John and Oral were partners, business partners. Somehow they connected. We don’t know how, do we?

BN: I don’t know how, but they became close friends. I know that over the years.

JE: Right. He took me into his office, John Williams, and he was very proud to show me pictures of Oral and him hanging in his office.

BN: And my brother was the managing partner in that trio. He was doing the day-to-day work.

JE: So when did you become president?

BN: ‘73.

JE: And then you sold it?

BN: In ‘84.

JE: All right. But you had good growth?

BN: Excellent growth.

JE: Who were you competing with then?

BN: Didn’t really have a competitor in the beginning. Then Western opened up two miles north of us, which was our closest competitor.

JE: How about Bank of Oklahoma?

BN: It was downtown, and they had no branches. That’s why we sold. The state legislature changed the law in 1983 to allow one-bank holding companies. So then Bank of Oklahoma, Fourth National, First—they could have another bank. I told my principal owners at that time, "This will be a choice time to sell because all the big boys are going to want to expand immediately, and they're going to be fighting one another to see who gets us. We are the plum in the orchard."

JE: Right. Then you’d really have competition, wouldn’t you?

BN: Yes.

JE: Yeah, right. So then in '84, you sell it. Who did you sell it to?

BN: Fourth National.

JE: And how long did they have it?

BN: Not very long. They sold it, then it was sold again, and now it’s Bank of America. It changed hands several times—bing, bing, bing.

JE: So some of you made some money on the sale of the bank.

BN: Most all of us did.

JE: Yeah. All right. And then did you stay on after you sold, as chairman?

BN: I stayed on 18 months as chairman of the board. And then I retired.

Chapter 6 - Deadly Plane Crash

John Erling (JE): Let's talk about Marshall and the plane crash, which happened in 1977.

Bill Nash (BN): ‘77. In February.

JE: 1977. Tell us what happened.

BN: Well, Marshall had a condo in Vale. He and Rebecca had gone there for a skiing trip along with Bud Buzzard and his wife from Miami.

JE: Rebecca would be Oral's daughter.

BN: Oldest daughter. And they were trying out a brand-new airplane out of Oklahoma City, and the pilot who was demonstrating the plane. Marshall had really gotten interested in banking through his involvement with me at United. I didn't tell you, but along the way, we bought the Bank of Ketchum—Marshall, and I, and Doug. Then Marshall and others bought a whole host of other banks, including one in Hollis, and ended up buying Bank of Commerce. They were going to buy this plane -- Marshall -- so he could go to the board meetings in these various cities every month. It was a twin-engine -- brand-new plane. They had gone up there, skied several days, and this pilot and his wife came up to get them, bringing them back to Tulsa, demonstrating the plane that he wanted to sell to Marshall. Somewhere over a wheat field near Anthony, Kansas, they crashed and killed all six of the passengers.

JE: What was the weather like? Was that a contributing factor?

BN: We don't think the weather was a contributing factor. We think it was the autopilot. The attorneys told me it was like if you were going 100 miles an hour in your car, stuck your hand out the window, and started to move it up and down—it would suddenly go very, very fast. They said the autopilot started doing ups and downs, ups and downs, and quickly got to shaking so fast that first the tail broke off, then the wings broke off, and it plummeted to the ground in pieces over a half-mile area. The autopilot had been defective, had been sent back to the factory, repaired, and put back in the plane, but apparently, it had not been repaired correctly.

JE: So again, the year is 1977.

BN: ‘77. February.

JE: How did you first hear about this?

BN: My wife and I were at her grandparents' home in Royston, Georgia, and my daughter Elizabeth called and said, "Daddy, I hate to tell you, Marshall and Rebecca were killed in a plane crash last night." I turned to my wife—she was wondering why someone was calling, as we had just gotten there the day before—and I said, "Honey, Marshall and Rebecca have been killed in a plane crash. We have three new children," because we had made an agreement with them just a few months before that if something happened to either of us, we would swap children.

JE: Oh, you had talked about it.

BN: We had talked about it, never dreaming it would happen.

JE: And those three children—what are their names?

BN: Brenda, who's now called Sydney, was 13; Marshall was 8; and John Oral was 5.

JE: So that was a no-brainer. You were going to raise them.

BN: Absolutely. So we caught the first plane back, and when we got to St. Louis, I called Oral and told him about the agreement we had. I said we would be home in a couple of hours and we'd be over to his house to pick up the children and take them to our home.

JE: I can't imagine the grief that was going on then. Was Oral -- was he a great supporter of you? How did he help through all that?

BN: Yes. Well, my mom and dad lived here too at the same time, and of course, they were very close. All four of them were tremendously supportive. I told you I was traveling a lot, and as Highway Commissioner, I was traveling a lot. So when we needed to go or do something, we could take one or two of the kids to one set of grandparents and the others to my mom and dad's or vice versa. They were always available to babysit. Anything we needed—they were there to help all the way until they all died.

JE: All died?

BN: Oral, Evelyn, my mom, and dad -- they supported us up until the end of their lives. Great support.

JE: Oral, in one of his television programs, talked about this, didn't he?

BN: Yes, he did. The entire program.

JE: Right. Yeah, I remember that.

BN: It was a dramatic program.

JE: I remember watching that day. So tell us then about the children. Where are they today?

BN: Well, the baby, John Oral, is a finance professor at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida.

JE: At which university?

BN: Full Sail University.

JE: OK. How old would he be now?

BN: He was born in ‘73, so he's coming up on 50.

JE: And then?

BN: Marsha, the middle girl, was just here for her mother's funeral. She's in Orange County, California. She has two grown children—one just graduated from Boston University this year, and another one graduating from high school there in Orange County, going to Northeastern in Boston this fall. Sydney has remained a single girl and she's in San Jose, California. These children have been the joy of our life. They have been such a blessing.

JE: How old were you and Edna when this happened?

BN: Edna was 39, and I was 41.

JE: And then Elizabeth, how old was she at this point?

BN: Elizabeth had gotten married two months before, in December, and left the house. We said, "Wow, that wasn’t very difficult. Now we can run around the house naked and go wherever we want to go! We're still young!" And 60 days later—you’ve got triplets. She was an only child. Beth was an only child, so what a shock when those three kids came to live with us. But what an opportunity and what a blessing.

JE: And then in their teen years, you had to live through all that, didn’t you?

BN: Got up the first morning to take them to school—we didn’t even know where they went.

JE: Where did they go to school?

BN: Two of them went to Holland Hall, and one went to a private Methodist pre-kindergarten, John.

JE: John Oral. Was he a favorite of oral?

BN: Well, he was the first one to take his name. Oral had him stand up on the back of a seat in chapel one day and said, "Folks, this is the prince." He shouldn’t have done that.

JE: Because they called him that. Made fun of him, I suppose?

BN: Everyone dreamed that, you know, one day John would be where Oral is now. That didn’t happen, hasn’t happened, and won’t happen.

JE: Because John had no interest in being a minister or anything?

BN: Well, John had some interest in his earlier years and did some preaching and some evangelistic work.

JE: Really?

BN: He did. It was part-time. He went to Tulane first for three years, then came back and graduated from ORU. Then he got his master's in finance in New York from the University of Rochester. He became a stockbroker with one of the major firms back on the East Coast but he was doing evangelistic-type work on the side. But somehow, that wasn’t his niche, and he ended up being a finance professor down in Florida. He's raised three wonderful children. One graduated from ORU just this past year. The middle boy, John Oral Jr., which we call Jack. Connor just graduated last year from Liberty University and just got married last month to a wonderful girl from Liberty. Kylie is a junior at a state school in Jacksonville, doing extremely well. Precious children.

JE: Then you must have grandchildren from Marsha.

BN: Marsha has two. I just mentioned one graduated from Boston, and the other is going to Northeastern this fall.

JE: Well, it turned out -- this often happens in life -- when something tragic happens, then yet something good comes out of it. I don’t know why I’m getting teared-up here… Your association with those children and the impact you left on them—they turned out to be wonderful people.

BN: And now that I’ve lost my wife a month ago, what would I do without them?

JE: Because they've been so supportive of you.

BN: Oh, they’ve been around and upheld me in every way you could do that. And of course, my own daughter too, who lives here in Tulsa. She married a banker, and he's done well. They have been so supportive of me my whole life.

JE: And Edna just died. When did she die?

BN: March 13th.

JE: Right. And she was how old when she died?

BN: She was 85. We had 67 wonderful, wonderful years.

JE: Yeah. And that’s been tough for you.

BN: Yeah. Beth and Brad have two girls, and they’ve been a blessing to us. One is here in Tulsa, one’s in Colorado Springs. They have two great-grandchildren, Sam and Grace, who are now teenagers. They’re blessing my life in so many ways.

JE: OK, so they come from where?

BN: Beth.

JE: Oh, your daughter?

BN: My daughter Julie. So I have a wonderful family here. My brother Jim raised five children here, and they have grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Our tribe has multiplied in Tulsa. There must be 60 of us here now. I came first, then my brother Marshall came and lived with me when he was quite young. I was teaching a Sunday school class at Bel Air Community Church. Rebecca Roberts was in my Sunday school class. They met, began dating, and ended up marrying.

JE: Rebecca Roberts would be Oral's daughter.

BN: Oldest daughter. And my brother Jim moved here and was hired as well as his -- Oral’s -- photographer for the magazine and later for his movie shows. He traveled with Oral everywhere he went for many years. Then my mom and dad moved here. My mother ended up dying at University Village, which my brother Marshall built. There’s a chapel there he built—the Nash Chapel—in memory of my mom and dad. So this is an important community for us.

JE: Oh yes, right. But you mentioned Rebecca. Then Oral’s oldest son was...

BN: Ronnie.

JE: Ronnie, yes.

BN: Wonderful, brilliant kid. He was in my Sunday school class too and came to our home many times. He loved my wife and me. We could talk to him when he couldn’t talk to his parents.

JE: Oral talked about that. Ronnie took his life.

BN: Yes, he did.

JE: So to complete then Oral’s children: Rebecca...

BN: Ronnie, Richard, and Roberta.

JE: Roberta—you call her Ro-berta?

BN: Yes, Roberta.

JE: Is that the way they address her?

BN: Yes, Roberta Potts.

JE: OK.

BN: She married Ron Potts.

Chapter 7 - Transportation Secretary

John Erling (JE): So as you left the bank, you served in many capacities. You served as chairman of the Tulsa County Election Board, didn’t you?

Bill Nash (BN): I was probably the youngest election board chairman in the state. I was maybe 23 when I was named chairman of the Tulsa County Election Board.

JE: Who named you?

BN: The state election board.

JE: But why did they take this young man?

BN: Interesting story, John. I'm working for Oral -- “enter every open door”. Jim Maxwell, one day I was down at Democratic headquarters and he was running for reelection as mayor. He said, "I need somebody to set up a ride-to-the-polls for the election on Tuesday in North Tulsa." I lived up near McLain High School. By the way, “enter every open door”—I ran for chairman of the precinct and I became the precinct chairman at McLain High School. There’s an interesting story that comes out of that, I'll try to come back, Tommy Frazier. So I was chairman of the precinct at McLain High School, and I said, "Mayor, I'll volunteer. I'll take a day off and I'll set up a carpool out of my home on North Trenton. We'll have anybody call who needs a ride, and I'll find where they live and send somebody near them to pick them up and take them to the polls." So I ran that carpool all day on election day and made friends with Mayor Maxwell and all the city commissioners. They were all Democrats back in those days.

So there was an opening on the election board, and Ed Parks was our county chairman. Mayor Maxwell called him. He said, "I want you to name my friend Bill Nash. He's a good Democrat, and he's working hard for the party, and he's bright, and he'd make a good member." I wasn't chairman, just a member. Well, I got over there. Ellis White was a secretary. Walter Hall, the attorney for Service Pipeline, was a Republican. I had to be the chairman. So for four years, I was chairman of the election board and put the first voting machines in Tulsa County or in the state of Oklahoma. Seismograph Service Corporation right here in Tulsa made them, and I made the motion and led the fight for us to buy them and put them in every precinct here in Tulsa. Very proud of that even to this day.

JE: And how did that go over? Was that accepted?

BN: It went over quite well. Of course, better voting machines came along, safer. But they worked quite well. A few glitches along the way, but nothing serious.

JE: Right. And you served there for many years, didn't you?

BN: Four years.

JE: All right, but while you were doing that, then you were working. Where were you working?

BN: I was still working at KFMJ.

JE: Oh, during those years? Man, you were a rising shining star, weren't you?

BN: Well, I was entering every open door.

JE: Yes, you were. All right, then let's bring us to… You served as transportation commissioner from 1974 on.

BN: We were very close friends of David and Jo Hall. Another -- that's back to when I was elected chairman of McLain High School precinct. I called Tommy Frazier because they gave me the credentials and said to call in the election. I said, "This is Bill Nash, reporting precinct from McLain High School." He said, "Who's the chairman?" I said, "Me, I'm Bill Nash," and gave my phone number. He said, "Who's the co-chairman?" I said, "Charles Doty." He said, "You can't do that. They gotta be of opposite sex." I said, "Well, we didn't know." I said, "What do I do?" He said, "Change it to Charlene and send it in." Right then, I knew I was dealing with a character that didn't have the same moral principles that I had, so I didn't do that. I called the county attorney, who I didn't know, who happened to be David Hall. I said, "What do I do?" He said, "Call another meeting and re-elect the co-chairman." So that's what we did. We showed up down at Central High School on Saturday for the meeting, and I met David Hall. I found out that he was leading a contingent fighting Tommy Frazier, who was a split here in the Democratic Party. So I sided with that bunch.

JE: With which bunch?

BN: David Hall, Ed Parks, who was elected chairman that day, Elizabeth Edson, who was elected co-chairman and ended up Jo Hall's personal secretary in the governor's mansion. Anyhow, out of that, Ed and I became very close friends of David and Jo over the years, and the night he was elected governor, we were on the sixth place plane from Tulsa with him, staying in the hotel with him that night. We went down to the Daily Oklahoman at 3 a.m. to get the first paper off the press that said "Hall elected governor." And four years later, we were with him at the mansion when he was defeated and cried with him and Jo. We were friends until they both died not too long ago.

JE: But David Hall…

BN: He appointed me to the state highway commission. That's how I got on it. That's why I was talking about David Hall.

JE: But he was a district attorney here.

BN: He was district attorney -- first county attorney, and later district attorney. Ran for governor, lost, ran again, and won.

JE: But here's a man that was very charismatic. I think we talk about him. If Bill Clinton was charismatic, David Hall had that same—

BN: Same quality.

JE: Could talk to people, could remember people's names, that same quality, and that brought him into the governor's mansion. But then how close were you when he was convicted?

BN: Very close.

JE: Talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, he was taking money on the side, wasn't he?

BN: No, he was convicted. The board that he was a member of invested state funds in U.S. Treasury bills and U.S. bonds, which was totally legal. But he was alleged to have received money from the firm that the state bought those bonds from as a campaign contribution. The prosecutor, who was a former chairman of the Republican Party, alleged that it was a kickback or a bribe. The court convicted him, and he got, I think, four years at Stafford, Arizona, for that crime.

JE: So you still believe in his innocence to this day?

BN: No, I think that happened.

JE: That he—the money came to him?

BN: I think he got a campaign contribution from that firm, yes.

JE: Were you and Edna counseling or being with them? I mean, that was a horrible time.

BN: Yes, we were there most every day. Sad, sad chapter.

JE: And then maybe even with him when he went into prison?

BN: Yes.

JE: The day he went in?

BN: Not the day, but just close to it. Saw him many times after he got out of prison. He painted my wife a painting of a clown, which she loved cowns—that's hanging in my bedroom today. 1977.

JE: And I've interviewed David Hall for Voices of Oklahoma.com, as a matter of fact, and he talked about his days in prison. So you were in touch with him and visited him in prison?

BN: I never visited him there.

JE: Why?

BN: I just never—I don't know. I was busy running a bank.

JE: I get you.

BN: Jo was going every weekend.

JE: OK, so she was—OK.

BN: She drove that little Volkswagen out to Stafford from Oklahoma City every weekend of the world for four years, took him a picnic lunch and photographs and mementos, and kept his spirits up.

JE: Wow. They had a reunion of all the governors, and he came back for that reunion.

BN: I was there.

JE: All right. And I thought, how big of him. A lot of people would have dodged that, but he came back anyway, and the governors—I don't know which ones were at that event. Can you remember?

BN: Well, Nigh, Boren, and I think Bellmon was there.

JE: They all embraced him. He had that personality that was easy to embrace, and he came back to be a part of that.

BN: I served under him and also under Boren his four years, and I served under Nigh. So I served nine years on the commission, including chairman and vice chairman. It was one of the highlights of my career—being on the commission, the Transportation Commission.

JE: Yes, the Oklahoma Transportation Commission, often called the highway commissioner. Can you tell us any major projects that you saw accomplished there when you were there?

BN: How long have you got?

JE: OK, one or two that would—

BN: All the major expressways in Tulsa: the Cherokee Expressway, the Red Fork Expressway, the Mingo Valley, The 71st Street Bridge, which has my name on it—that's a great story. I want to tell you that story.

JE: Why can't we do it now?

BN: Well, now's a good time.

JE: OK.

BN: Interstate 44 was coming across 51st Street Bridge and was getting a lot of local traffic, which was loading it down. Otherwise, you had to go down to Jenks to cross. So I could see that there needed to be a bridge between 51st and the Jenks Bridge. And I guess I saw that because my bank was just down the street a few blocks. So I had the idea that if we could get 71st Street put on the state highway system, we could then spend state and/or federal money to do something about it. So my first objective was to try to get it from the Okmulgee Beeline all the way over to the Broken Arrow Expressway. I was just going to make that a state highway, 71st Street. Chairman Kennedy shot that idea down.

JE: Why?

BN: He said Tulsa's got too many bridges already.

JE: Because he's in Oklahoma City—he's in Lawton.

BN: He’s in Lawton, OK. J.C. Kennedy. Well, his time as chairman came and went, and my time to be chairman came. So I thought, well, I'll try it again, but this time we'll put it on the state highway system from the Okmulgee Beeline over to Peoria and then up to I-44. We'll make it a lot shorter.

I called Governor Nigh, and I said, "Would you and Dick Ward, the Secretary of Transportation, fly over one day and let me join you at Jones Airport? I'd like to show you from the air what I have in mind." I called Ken Greenwood and I called…

JE: KRMG.

BN: KRMG general manager. I called Dan P. Holmes, Highway 66 man, and Oral Roberts.

JE: Excuse me, Dan P. Holmes, so it was Highway 412?

BN: Yeah, now, but it used to be Highway 33 when he was pushing for it. I said, "Y'all all meet us down at the state office downtown. As soon as we land the plane, we're going to come there with the governor, and we want each of you to tell them why it's important that we build a bridge across the Arkansas at 71st."

So we got up in the plane, rode over 44, showed them how busy that was and how dangerous it was to get on and off there, and then down to Jenks. I said, "Look, if we'd extend 71st over to the river, we can get the county to do that with county funds. We can get the city from Riverside Drive to a few hundred feet over to the river with city funds. Then the state will build the bridge. Then we'll take it off the state highway system and let the county and the city maintain it." So I called Terry Young before the plane trip.

JE: Terry Young at the time was…?

BN: He was chairman of the county commission. He said, "Count me in."

JE: And he was a former mayor, of course.

BN: So I called Jim Inhofe, who was the mayor. He said, "Count me in." I called Patty…

JE: Eaton.

BN: Eaton, who was in transportation, she said, "I like that idea." So when the governor came, I said, "Now I've got the city and the county also in the tub with us. We're all taking a bath together on this."

We went down to the meeting, and I had George Nigh's largest campaign contributor, a Jewish oilman here—a wonderful man, I’m not sure if he’s even still alive— was in the room. George listened to us, and he said, "I think I could go along with that." I said, "Well, what I need you to do, Governor—we're meeting Monday morning. I'll make the motion if you line up the other members of the commission to vote for it." He said, "I'll take care of it."

So I made the motion. It carried 8 to nothing. We built the bridge. Terry Young four-laned it over. The city kept their commitment and built it over to the edge of the bridge. We had a flatbed truck over there, the Jenks High School band, Governor Nigh, Mary Inhofe, and all the celebrities. We dedicated that bridge. My son, John Oral, and my granddaughter, Julie, were the first ones to go across it in a little toy Bugatti that belonged to my son. My wife and I, my daughter, and my secretary were the second ones across it.

JE: How fun. And again, that year is 1970-something?

BN: I'm not sure what year that was, maybe around 1980 -- along in there. There's a big concrete kiosk with a bronze plaque with William R. Nash on both sides of it now, but if you slow down to see it, you'll probably get rear-ended.

JE: (Laughing) You know, I bike and run down in that area. I could easily walk up there and see your name on it, and I'm going to do that and take a picture of it.

BN: Terrific.

JE: Yeah, and you deserve to have your name on it. Oh, how fun. How fun, how fun, how fun. Also, you served as Downtown Lions Club, that was a fun experience for you?

BN: Yes, it was.

JE: Past president of Oral Roberts University Golden Eagles Club.

BN: Yes.

JE: I'm thinking about Whitley Cox.

BN: He was very active with the downtown offices, you know, they had on Boston and promoting primarily athletics out there.

JE: You talk about a man. I'm glad we can talk about him a little bit here, a man that had such charisma. He was a whirlwind, and we would talk to him on the radio many, many times. "Come on and have some coffee with me." Oral set him up in an office downtown Tulsa because he knew Whitley would talk to everybody and they'd come and hang out there.

BN: Yes. You know, he had Cox Department Store out on 31st long before he retired and took that job.

JE: I didn't know that.

BN: 31st and... I'm not sure. Yale maybe.

JE: But what Oral wanted him to be, was that to draw attention to the university, to recruit or what? What was it? Why did he do that?

BN: Goodwill, public relations, hand out brochures, get tickets to the basketball games, whatever he could do to help promote ORU, Whitley was out there doing it.

JE: That was great, and there is the promotional side of Oral Roberts, as a matter of fact, you know? You were named JC's Outstanding Young Tulsan.

BN: That was at the Mayo Hotel, and Lieutenant Governor George Nigh presented me with that award before he was elected governor.

Chapter 8 - President Carter

John Erling (JE): So in the '70s here, along about 1973, I believe, President Carter came to town.

Bill Nash (BN): Yes. Very interesting story. Started funny but ended wonderful.

JE: Why did he come to town?

BN: He came to Oklahoma City to speak at the governor's prayer breakfast on Monday morning. But he flew in Friday afternoon. About lunchtime, my wife got a phone call from First Lady Jo Hall. She said, "Edna Earle, Rosalynn, Amy, and Jimmy Carter are coming here this afternoon to spend the weekend with us at the governor's mansion. I just got a call from David's chief of security. He's in Dallas in the hospital. We think he may have had a heart attack. I'm here alone. You're from Georgia, your husband's from Georgia. Get over here quick and help me entertain the Carters this weekend."

JE: So David was in the hospital?

BN: In Dallas.

JE: OK, all right. So you then?

BN: I ran home. She said, "I'll have the suitcase packed as soon as you get here," and an hour and a half later, we're at the governor's mansion. In come Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy. Friday night, all day Saturday, all day Sunday—we're best friends getting acquainted with the Carters.

JE: Because it really helped that you were from Georgia.

BN: Yeah, we could talk about Emanuel College. He knew all about Emanuel College and Royston, home of Ty Cobb, where we grew up, and we had a wonderful weekend. Monday after he gave his presentation before the legislature, he said, "I wish y'all would take me out to the airport. Governor Hall was thinking about buying a state plane. I'll tell you the pros and cons about the state owning an airplane." So we all loaded up a couple of cars, and the highway patrol drove us out to the airport. He showed us his plane. I wasn’t chairman at the time; that was before I was chairman, but I was on the highway commission.

As they were all leaving, I was the last one off the plane, and President Carter came up, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Bill, next week I'm going to announce my candidacy for president, and I want you to help me in Oklahoma." I said, "President Carter, you don't have a Chinaman's chance of carrying Oklahoma." He said, "Now I know that. You don't understand. All I want is the Democrat delegates at the national convention." I said, "Oh, we can do that."

I made a deal with him to meet me at United Bank on Sunday afternoon, and I invited all the Democrats I thought would go to the county convention and get elected delegates to the state convention. And we would try to get as many of them that afternoon to pledge they would go to the county to try to get elected delegate for Carter. We had the bank lobby full on Sunday afternoon. We got quite a large number of the prominent Democrats -- that day -- to commit to working for him at the county convention. When we got to the county convention, we carried Tulsa County, and of course, we carried Oklahoma State at the national convention. So he had Oklahoma in the bag, partially because of Tulsa's strong influence.

My wife picked him up at Jones Airport that day in our little Monte Carlo. He got off a single-engine plane with one suit of clothes on his back. She told me that night, "If this is the best he can do coming into Tulsa and the bank president's wife is picking him up in a Chevy, no way he's going to ever be president, Bill." Well, after he got through at the bank, he said, "Would you run me out to Oral's house?" I said sure. You and Oral talked about that on Voices of Oklahoma. I took him out there. I stayed in the car, and they went in there. Oral said that he told him he was going to run for president, he didn’t know how to be president, and he wanted him to pray for him. And he did.

Then I took him over to Channel 8, and he appeared live on the 6 o'clock news. After that, I took him out to Tulsa International Airport, and he caught a plane back to Atlanta.

JE: He had been here. You were able to deliver all the votes at the convention, and then he became the nominee.

BN: He became the nominee, and we got invitations to everything at the inauguration. We had breakfast in the White House on the morning of the inauguration with President Carter and Vice President Mondale.

JE: Wow.

BN: This old boy that used to hoe cotton and plow corn and slop hogs down in Georgia’s in the White House. What a remarkable story.

JE: Yeah. You've just opened a scrapbook here.

BN: Yes, I kept everything, fortunately, and I've got pictures. He invited us back over and over again to the White House. He invited us there for the formal dinner with President Tito of Yugoslavia. We're walking up the driveway, and it's snowing. My wife's in a full-length beautiful baby blue gown. I've got my tuxedo on. The night, you know, when I asked her to marry me and we heard the music, I said, "Stick with me, girl, I'll take you there." That came true. “Stick with me, girl, and I'll take you to the White House.” And she laughed, but we had a wonderful time at the Tito dinner. I found pictures on the internet last year of me shaking hands with President Carter and with President Tito.

JE: And there you are.

BN: Unbelievable.

JE: Wow, that is -- yeah.

BN: He invited us back for a gospel sing one Sunday afternoon on the lawn.

JE: Oh, that must have been fun.

BN: All the famous people in the gospel music world, and he's sitting out there with his shoes off, his bare feet on a quilt, drinking iced tea out of a quart jar. I'm sitting there beside him, and we're laughing and singing gospel songs together, having the time of our life, and I'm thinking, “Is this real? Is this old Georgia boy really here?”

JE: Come up with some words to describe Jimmy Carter, his personality, and who he was.

BN: Brilliant. Assured. Confident. Honest. Integrity. He was all the great things that we need in a leader.

JE: To this day.

BN: To this day.

JE: Sweetness -- was there a sweet side to him?

BN: Yes, there was. Gentle. I loved the man. Still do.

JE: And beautiful blue eyes.

BN: Yes, and Rosalynn was another wonderful, wonderful lady.

JE: And we should say he is lingering in hospice on this day, even in 2023. It's amazing he hasn't passed because he's been in hospice at least for several weeks, hasn’t he?

BN: Yes, he has. And the whole nation is praying for him, but we know we're going to lose him soon, and we're going to lose one of the greatest men this nation has ever known.

JE: The thing we can say about him, since people knew that, and he lingered, much of the media began to write about him and talk about him and thought maybe he became even greater after he left the White House and all the wonderful work he did -- Habitat for Humanity.

BN: Yes. He invited me back -- just me -- one time for a finance conference, and he had his secretary, Zbigniew Brzezinski, talk to us as bankers. We had a little reception line, and the Marine on his left would read your name tag. He said, "I know Bill," and he said, "Lean over here." I leaned over, and he said, "Oral was just here a couple of days ago. We slipped over there in that little nook and had a season of prayer. Tell him I said, 'Hey.'" I thought, “That had never been said here in the White House before today.”

JE: Yeah, nice thing about Jimmy Carter when he won, he defeated Gerald Ford. But then he lost. Were you around him then in the final days of his campaign and his losing?

BN: No.

JE: OK. Then Ronald Regan defeated him then. And, so, was that your last contact? When was the most recent contact you had with President Carter?

BN: While he was still in the White House. I haven't seen him since. I've had some correspondence with him. I still get a Christmas card from him every year that he paints himself.

JE: There you have it, yes.

BN: All these are Jimmy Carter paintings.

JE: Oh, wow, yeah, there it is—beautiful. And these are beautiful cards. While we're sitting here talking, you know, I'll just take a picture of that if I may.

BN: Sure.

JE: Right, there's a Jimmy Carter picture. Jimmy Carter and Oral shared the same faith. And you shared the same faith as Jimmy, so you probably talked about that. It was another bonding for you, for all of you. Oral was a Democrat, right?

BN: He never talked about it, but I thought he was.

JE: OK, so he wasn't. He talked in the interview I did with him, and it just makes me mad I didn't follow up. He said Richard Nixon invited him to the White House, and—

BN: He didn't want to go. I never did understand that.

JE: It makes me mad I didn't do the follow-up and ask him why. I didn't know that. Do you think it was because he was a Republican?

BN: I don't know. I have no idea. I never heard it talked about in our circle.

JE: So you are a Democrat. Does that go back to your family?

BN: Yes. Everybody I knew in Georgia was a Democrat, John. I didn't know a Republican until Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act, and suddenly the racist state that it was—we all were racist. Terrible thing to admit. And I did my dead-level best after coming to Tulsa through a several-year transition to make up for what I was taught and what I was as a youngster. I nominated the first Black person to be a member of the Gilcrease board, and he was elected—Cliff Taulbert.

JE: Oh yes, and I've interviewed him.

BN: I think I had the first Black officer in my bank—Jackie Fox, whose husband played basketball at ORU. I had the first Black director of my bank, Ed Goodwin, the publisher of the Oklahoma Eagle. I nominated, I think, the first Black person to belong to Southern Hills Country Club—Cliff Taulbert—and he was admitted. So, I'm proud of a little bit of the work I've done to redeem all the bad things I did as a youth.

JE: But you were raised in that culture, weren't you?

BN: Everybody I knew was a racist, and many of them still are today, sad to say.

JE: The people that you knew from there?

BN: Yes.

JE: Yeah. Wow. And then when the Civil Rights Act came along, you began to look back and say, "This was not right for me to treat Black people that way."

BN: True. And, of course, coming to Tulsa, I met a lot of wonderful Black people here when I was in politics. Hubert Bryant was a very good friend, an attorney in Greenwood, and I got close to him and he influenced me. Then later, Ed Goodwin and his children, Bob and Jim—wonderful people. I went to law school with Jim, and I think we integrated the first Crosstown Grill. He said, "I can't go in there." I said, "Six of us—they won't kick six of us out after law school one night." He said, "Well, I'm willing to try." We went in there, and they served him. He said, "Well, that's a first."

Chapter 9 - Miracles Are My Business

John Erling (JE): Oral's favorite sport was basketball.

Bill Nash (BN): Yes.

JE: He was a good golfer too.

BN: He was a good golfer.

JE: Were you a golfer at all? Did you play with him?

BN: I played with him, and I have a wonderful story.

JE: I want to hear it.

BN: He heard—as you know now, and we haven't talked about it—but I have a second home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that I built actually before I sold the bank. That's my legal residence today. I vote there and pay my taxes there, and I'm going home in just a few weeks and I'll be there till the snow drives me out next October. He heard all his grandchildren, Marsha, John, and Sydney, talk about Jackson Hole, Jackson Hole, Jackson Hole. So he and Evelyn flew up one summer and rented a condo for a week, and I said, "What do you want to do?" He said, "Let's play some golf."

We have lots of wonderful golf courses in Jackson Hole, but not all of them are public. But one called Teton Pines is semi-public. When the county commission approved the development of that, they put a contingency in there that they would allow Teton County residents to play if they played. But they didn't set the time or the price, so they said, "Fine, you can play, but you have to wait till 3 o'clock and you have to pay the fees." Well, that's all right. Oral and I could afford the fees. He's getting on older, so I'm not near the golfer Oral was. He taught me a lot of good things about golf.

We're to the 17th hole. He drives it down the middle. We're tied. There's a big creek in front of us with huge boulders in it and the green just on the other side. I slice mine off to the right behind a huge willow bush. I'm about 110 yards to the green. He hits his shot first, and he's 10 feet from the hole. I know he's gonna make a par. All I've got that I can go over the willow bush is a sand wedge, and I can't hit it 110 yards. I thought, "How in the world? If I chip out and then on in three, he's gonna win the hole." I've got to try. So I hit that sand wedge as hard as I could hit it, got over the willow bush, went right in the creek. But it hit one of those big boulders, bounced 30 feet up in the air, came down six inches from the hole. I went over and got in the cart and he said, "Bill, miracles are my business."

JE: (Laughing) Oh, that--

BN: The pros there still tell that story every time I go out there.

JE: That is a great story. All right, I asked about golf, but basketball was a great sport of his. In fact, he played basketball. He hired Ken Trickey, and what I was alluding to—Ken Trickey brought all these Black players in from Tennessee, right?

BN: Chattanooga.

JE: Tennessee, right. And so that introduced Black players out here.

BN: Yes.

JE: And you were a big supporter around all that, weren't you?

BN: Yes, absolutely. I met Ken Trickey at the airport, picked him up when he came here to be the first coach because I was president of the Golden Eagles. His wife Peggy became my wife's soul mate for life.

JE: Is that right?

BN: And she flew here for the funeral from Nashville. Her name is Peggy. Peggy Trickey Enloe. She ended up, after they were divorced, marrying Bill Enloe here in Tulsa—another wonderful man.

JE: And Ken Trickey, who I've also interviewed, by the way. That's amazing—all these that I've interviewed as…

BN: You've interviewed everybody, John.

JE: No, no, but as in your story, I have. And it's gonna move on as we begin to wrap this up. What a wonderful time this has been. But listen, speaking of golf, you enjoyed golf and all -- you were co-founder of the White Hawk Golf Club in Bixby.

BN: Yes.

JE: How did that come about?

BN: Gary Suelander was the mover and shaker behind that. He flew up to my home in Jackson Hole one weekend and spent a couple of days with me and said, "I'm looking for investors," and he said, "I've got one spot open. I know you belong to Southern Hills and you like to golf." He presented me the financial details and I said, "Yeah, I'll take that share." And so I came back in time for the first round. One of the people that we played with that day was Jim Stovall, a blind man, and I saw him tee that ball up and knock it right down the middle, and I thought, "What a miracle that is." Another remarkable man. You've probably interviewed him.

JE: “I'm fixin’ to”, as we say.

BN: Wonderful. Well, you'll have a joyful event.

JE: You were president of Northridge Development Company in Altus.

BN: Altus, Oklahoma. Another interesting story. Bob Kerr—not the senior senator, but another Bob Kerr—was on the transportation commission with me. We became close friends, very close friends, where they would come to Tulsa and we would go to Altus. One day right after I sold the bank, he knew I had some money. He said, "I'd like to buy this 600-acre plot of land and have some homes built here in Altus," and he presented me with the financial details. So I said, "Fine, I'll be your partner," and I bought into that. We put in the streets and the utilities and divided it up and started selling lots. Along about a third of the way, I bought everybody out and finished developing Northridge. It has some of the most beautiful homes in Altus, and there's one street there that I named, or we named, after my wife. It's called Learley Lane. My wife's nickname is Learley—that's the Earl in the middle with an L in front and a Y on the end. So if you go to Altus and you go down Learley Lane, that's Edna Earle Nash.

JE: We have an air base there, don't we? Altus Air Force Base?

BN: Yes.

JE: How about that? How many homes? About 500 homes or so, I think, that were developed there.

BN: Yes.

Chapter 10 - Don’t Kill Your Dwarfs

John Erling (JE): Well, this has been a quick journey to talk about it, but how interesting it is.

Bill Nash (BN): Memories are wonderful, aren't they?

JE: Yeah, they are, and you went through some tragedy—your wife, your brother, and all that. Hard to see how anybody, when they lose their wife, something good is gonna come out of that. But you're going back now to home, you said,

BN: Yes.

JE: In Wyoming?

BN: Forty years ago, we built a log home up in Jackson Hole, and we've been going there every summer since—May till October. We have many wonderful friends there, and it's one of the most beautiful spots in all the world with some of the best people in all the world living there. It's getting to be so rich that it's hard for me to keep up anymore.

JE: What do you mean, “so rich?”

BN: It's the wealthiest county in America. The personal income there is three times more than any other county in America.

JE: But you didn't come there when you were wealthy.

BN: No. The billionaires are running us millionaires out.

JE: (Laughing)

BN: Oh, John, I bought my first 3.5 acres for $28,000 in the late '70s.

JE: Wow… In…?

BN: Late 70s. I bought my next 2.5 acres for $39,000, and I built a little log home on it for like $50,000. It's on the tax rolls today for over $2 million.

JE: Isn’t that amazing?

BN: Insane. It's the land; it’s not the building.

JE: I know the land. I was there last summer, and I know that area.

BN: Only 3% of it is public. The other 97% can never be developed, so when the wealthy want something that's rare, they run the price up until they get it.

JE: You've had so many wonderful things happen to you. Is it hard for you to look back and say, "Ooh, that was good, that was better, that was good"? Any highlight that you would bring out? But maybe they were all so good, weren't they, for you?

BN: Oh, marrying that little 17-year-old girl was the highlight of my life.

JE: Yeah. Is it gonna be tough to go back and go into that house without her?

BN: Yes.

JE: But you’re brave enough and you wanna be there.

BN: But I wanna be there and relive the memories that we had there.

JE: Because she would want you there.

BN: Absolutely. We talked about that before she left, and my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, they'll all come drifting in and out all summer long, and a lot of friends. It'll be the Nash Hotel this summer, not the Nash cabin.

JE: (Laughing) But the hope you have, you'll see Edna again one day, won't you?

BN: I have that hope.

JE: Yeah. Advice to those who want to do startups as you did in the bank or business. We have young people listening to this. What advice would you give them?

BN: Something I read that Paul Getty said. I know you interviewed him or had his…

JE: We had an interview of him.

BN: His story is on Voices of Oklahoma because I listened to it last night. This is importantly short, but you have to listen carefully to every single word: "A part of all I earn is mine to keep." And I've told many students as I speak to schools around town and around the country, if you'll do that from the time you start earning until the time you retire, you'll be wealthy. A part—you choose the part; it can be 1% or 100%—of all. Not this week's salary and not next week's, every earning you have, you've got to set aside "a part of all I earn, it is mine to keep." And he should have said "and invest." Let it work while you're asleep.

My mother left all of her grandchildren a $10,000 CD. When I dispersed them to them at the bank, I said, "I want you to think of this CD like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This is one of the dwarfs. You're Snow White. As long as you leave it in the bank, he will go to work 365 days a year. He won't take off Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Easter. And when he comes home at night, he'll give you all his money. But if you cash the CD, it's like you're shooting the dwarf and killing him. He'll never work again for you. So please don't kill your dwarfs."

JE: Wow. Yeah, good sound advice.

BN: And the other is: “Enter every open door.”

JE: Amen. Well, I hope you had as much fun as I did listening to you.

BN: Well, I've had years of fun listening to Erling in the Morning. I never missed a show, and it brought my day off to a great start every morning. I skied the Tulsa Mountains mentally with you every time you talked about it.

JE: (Laughing) Oh, that's so wonderful.

BN: Thank you, John.

JE: Thank you, Bill. This was fun.