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Sesquicentennial Interview: A. D. Moore

When: 1974

This interview was conducted in 1974 as part of the I Remember When television series produced by the Ann Arbor Public Library.

Transcript

  • [00:00:11] TED TROST: We're talking with Mr. A. D. Moore, who served on the City Council of Ann Arbor from 1940 to 1957. Mr. Moore, how did it happen that you became interested in city government and serving as a councilman?
  • [00:00:25] A. D. MOORE: I'm interested in many things, and always have been. One goes back to boyhood. When I came home from school in a little town, Pennsylvania, I could stop and lean in the doorway of the justice of the peace and see him trying a case right here two yards away. That has a profound influence. Then I had a grandfather who died at 97. He was a justice of the peace for years. An older brother became justice of the peace. All these have an influence. I was in many things here in my younger years, got interested in politics and decided to run.
  • [00:01:09] TED TROST: What were some of the important pieces of legislation that had to be passed when you were on the city council?
  • [00:01:18] A. D. MOORE: In seventeen years, there really is quite a number of those things. One of the perhaps the outstanding thing that happened during my years in the council was adopting a new city charter. New city charters often do not get passed the first time they are presented to the electorate. But we had a good charter commission. They brought in a good new charter. There were good arguments for it. Even that isn't enough often. But I might say that I'm a Republican, but the Democrats also trusted me, and I stood back of the new charter and think that was a major influence in getting it through on the first vote.
  • [00:02:09] TED TROST: Were the council meetings on Monday night as they are.
  • [00:02:12] A. D. MOORE: They are on Monday night, yes.
  • [00:02:13] TED TROST: Did you have people come from time to time to ask questions?
  • [00:02:17] A. D. MOORE: Typically, every meeting.
  • [00:02:20] TED TROST: What were some of those meetings like? Rather heated and controversial?
  • [00:02:23] A. D. MOORE: Once in a while, they were, not nearly as much as in the recent years, of course. Much more tame, thank goodness. But once in a while, the arguments would break loose in the audience or the audience with the council or vice versa, or within the council itself.
  • [00:02:42] TED TROST: I suppose you remember a number of interesting persons who served with you on council, both party. Why don't you tell us a little about some of your colleagues.
  • [00:02:52] A. D. MOORE: There was George Sallade, who ran the bookstore and before him by the way, was his father in law, George Wahr. I knew old George Wahr intimately for years, lived next door to him when I was a bachelor and his other home down on Division Street, grand fellow. Then George Sallade came along, got into politics, and came in as a Republican and switched to the Democrat side later on. I don't know why you'd have to ask him, but he was one. Art Bromage, a great friend, won the council with him for some years. There was Cecil Creal, old friend, often fought with him on various issues. He was on the council with me for a long time. You see, I served more continuously for seventeen years than anybody else ever has as an elected official. Bill Brown mayor, very strong mayor.
  • [00:03:53] TED TROST: Yes, I was going to ask you about some of the mayors. Bill Brown was a very strong mayor.
  • [00:03:58] A. D. MOORE: Very strong mayor. Strong minded. We had good arguments, too sometimes. [LAUGHING]
  • [00:04:05] TED TROST: Obviously there is a difference of opinion as on any council. Was there a good spirit among the men in regards of their respect and concern for each other?
  • [00:04:17] A. D. MOORE: Mostly in my years, a very good spirit, yes. You could be completely on the other side of the fence with a man, but if he meant well and in the things that he believed in, you could respect him. For the most part, that's the way we were.
  • [00:04:36] TED TROST: Do you recall any incidents when the people of Ann Arbor were extremely upset, at least to the extent of wanting to show up for one of the meetings. Do some come to memory at all?
  • [00:04:50] A. D. MOORE: Rent control, which was on during the war and the idea of doing away with that, I remember brought in a very large crowd. I think we met in a church on that issue to have enough room. Another one was urban renewal. I tried to get urban renewal to Ann Arbor, and had the thing very well started, and then for various reasons, it was not supported, and it fell through. But at least I tried. Largely, we'd have a moderate size audience anywhere from maybe on a bad weather night with nothing tough coming up, maybe five or ten or fifteen people, otherwise, I might have forty, fifty or a hundred.
  • [00:05:38] TED TROST: I suppose people were always objecting to the raising of taxes.
  • [00:05:43] A. D. MOORE: It's been a pretty decent town, and I can't remember any real hot issue and of that kind.
  • [00:05:54] TED TROST: Now as you look back over your life of service, how do you feel that Ann Arbor has changed? Because obviously it has, and this is a somewhat controversial issue. Some say for the better, some say for the worst. How do you see it?
  • [00:06:12] A. D. MOORE: Ann Arbor has changed so much that, you see since I've retired, I've been traveling 96,000 miles all over the country lecturing, including a trip to England and Wales lecturing.
  • [00:06:26] TED TROST: On what subject, might I ask?
  • [00:06:27] A. D. MOORE: Electrostatics. That's what you see over there.
  • [00:06:29] TED TROST: The Engineering School.
  • [00:06:32] A. D. MOORE: When I come back, if I stray off the beaten path, I may get lost in Ann Arbor. [LAUGHING] You get the idea of change?
  • [00:06:42] TED TROST: But it certainly has grown. Such a small community to over 100,000 people. Obviously, there would be some political problems that.
  • [00:06:51] A. D. MOORE: Many problems.
  • [00:06:51] TED TROST: But there are those today who are even saying that the problems of government at all levels are almost too complicated to handle.
  • [00:07:02] A. D. MOORE: They are very sticky problems. But again, with good participation by the public and by city officials, they can be worked out one way or another.
  • [00:07:15] TED TROST: We've had some ups and downs and heated meetings of the coming of the human rights party and so on. There are those who feel so discouraged. Old Ann Arbor town not being what it used to be. They've said to me. Are you optimistic, though about our community in let's say the next five years as so as we go into the future?
  • [00:07:37] A. D. MOORE: I think probably there will continue to be serious problems of one kind or another for the next five years. But the city can't dry up and blow away. It's still here, and it will have to be handled in one way or another, and if mistakes are made, why they will cost something one way or another, but eventually rectify. They have to be.
  • [00:08:00] TED TROST: Do you feel that we'll ever get over the notion that many have today, the big government, big university, big industry, there's no way for the average person to be heard, then there are a lot of people who want to turn off politics because they believe it doesn't result in anything, do you think that's a temporary idea, or do you think it's a serious problem?
  • [00:08:22] A. D. MOORE: It had better be because if you turn off politics, in essence, you are resigning from the human race. What could replace it?
  • [00:08:34] TED TROST: That's right. But you feel that the systems can be corrected so that.
  • [00:08:40] A. D. MOORE: It has to be. Yes indeed.
  • [00:08:43] TED TROST: That calls for some very bright and committed leadership.
  • [00:08:46] A. D. MOORE: It calls for yielding. It calls for compromise.
  • [00:08:52] TED TROST: Well, we began by talking about what got you interested in the field of politics along with your engineering and teaching vocation. May I ask, as you look back, what genuine personal satisfactions you have derived from your experience in city government?
  • [00:09:09] A. D. MOORE: Very great deal. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. It means, of course, living two lives at once and doing two jobs at once, full time at the university. It should be full-time downtown. Yet you simply have to do the best you can on both sides of the fence there. I had a very rewarding experience. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I had the opportunity to bring voting machines to Ann Arbor. I'm the one who led that parade. After staying up till seven o'clock in the morning one night, counting ballots, paper ballots. I decided that this wouldn't happen anymore. I was the main influence in bringing parking meters here over some dead bodies.
  • [00:10:03] TED TROST: What was the objection to parking meters?
  • [00:10:05] A. D. MOORE: There's always objection to parking meters. Merchants say on Main Street or whatnot, think that it'll drive people away, and it doesn't work that way, but they tried them, and they're convinced. Let me say this, without parking meters, there would have been no parking structures because it was a little bit like a dare between two boys. Let's say I'm a bigger boy, and I say you got a reputation before you come around, challenge me. Well, the city has to get a reputation in order to get a parking structure. By putting in parking meters and getting an income that's established on a certain level, and you can go to your bonding people and say, here, will you sell our bonds? They did. Then that means more income, and that means another parking structure. That's how we got so well off.
  • [00:10:57] TED TROST: You said you led a parade for the [OVERLAPPING] .
  • [00:11:00] A. D. MOORE: Politically, yes. In the Council and through writing in the newspapers and so on.
  • [00:11:05] TED TROST: You did lead a march, literally.
  • [00:11:06] A. D. MOORE: No.
  • [00:11:07] TED TROST: That came maybe a little later. [LAUGHTER].
  • [00:11:09] A. D. MOORE: Yeah.
  • [00:11:09] TED TROST: What committees did you serve on that brought particular satisfaction?
  • [00:11:13] A. D. MOORE: I guess just about all of them. I was chairman of the ordinance committee for some years. I was on the budget committee for years, and the fire and police committee and things of that sort.
  • [00:11:27] TED TROST: Did you see a strengthening of the police and fire departments during the years you were in Council?
  • [00:11:35] A. D. MOORE: Steadily, yes. Right.
  • [00:11:37] TED TROST: Right down to the present day.
  • [00:11:38] A. D. MOORE: The City of Ann Arbor is extremely fortunate in having a very good police department all these years and a very good fire department. I know what I'm talking about. I have visited other cities, many of them, and have gone into their police departments or say visited fire departments as in Lexington, Kentucky, ridden around with the chief. An interesting thing there that he told me. He said we have telephones, we have fire alarms. You sit up in the white section. Nobody knows where the fire alarm box is. You sit down in the colored section, they all know where it is, and the man will run six blocks to turn in the alarm. Racial difference. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:12:26] TED TROST: Have you ever in your travels had an opportunity to visit our sister city, Tuebingen in Germany?
  • [00:12:32] A. D. MOORE: Which city?
  • [00:12:33] TED TROST: Tuebingen in Germany, Ann Arbor's sister city?
  • [00:12:35] A. D. MOORE: No. I've never been to Germany.
  • [00:12:38] TED TROST: If you ever get that chance, I think you'd probably be interested in finding out what their city government [OVERLAPPING] .
  • [00:12:43] A. D. MOORE: I may have.
  • [00:12:44] TED TROST: I know the Mayor has been to Ann Arbor for vacation.
  • [00:12:45] A. D. MOORE: Yeah.
  • [00:12:54] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Can I ask a question. I know we asked you how you were interested before in politics in Pennsylvania, but what made you get involved in Ann Arbor? You had been here since 1916 and yet really weren't in the council until the 40s. What happened there?
  • [00:13:05] TED TROST: What particular thing excited your interest to get involved in politics in Ann Arbor?
  • [00:13:16] A. D. MOORE: Frankly, I don't remember. I have long been interested in police work. Way, way back, I began visiting the police department. I knew the policemen. I knew the chief. I liked the way they were handling the job, and so on.
  • [00:13:39] TED TROST: With Cappy Enkemann here in town.
  • [00:13:40] A. D. MOORE: Yes, Cappy and long before that, way back to Mortenson, beyond that to Fohey and back of that old Tom, what's his name? I knew them from my very first coming to Ann Arbor on up. Police workers always greatly interested me. That was a first rate introduction to that end of City Hall. I like organizational work. I feel that I'm creative and that I can do things to put things in better shape and have a record to prove it. Finally, somebody said, why don't you run for council? I forget how it happened. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:14:23] TED TROST: It obviously has brought you a great deal of satisfaction.
  • [00:14:31] CATHERINE ANDERSON: What was the old City Hall like?
  • [00:14:34] A. D. MOORE: I missed that.
  • [00:14:35] TED TROST: What was it like at the Old City Hall?
  • [00:14:38] A. D. MOORE: Well, the room upstairs for years was a gloomy place, badly lighted, and the hearing was not good. But we got along. The days were simpler and there was less to do and so on. Gradually, we got the place painted and made it look better. We got along better. One of the things I'd like to mention is one of the big lessons I learned in those 17 years about people. You see the problems of a city are not things. They are people. If you can't get the people to move with you, you won't get the things, like a raise in taxes or an extension of the sewage plant and so on. Now let me relate this story. The old charter said that after a council meeting, the city clerk had to get the minutes of the meeting on the mayor's desk in 24 hours and he did. Now, the city was steadily growing. There are more and more problems, more things to do, and the city clerk found that he needed more time. I brought in to counsel a charter amendment to give the city clerk 48 hours. Now, my friend, you cannot invent a more noncontroversial issue to put before any public anywhere in the world. There is absolutely no controversy about it. It is put to the vote of the people of Ann Arbor, and 25% of the votes cast were against that charter amendment. If you can ever explain it, come around and tell me, I can't.
  • [00:16:32] TED TROST: No, that would be difficult to explain.
  • [00:16:34] A. D. MOORE: Are you interested? That's one of the biggest lessons I learned. All of our Pollyannas who think that if you can just get people who disagree to sit around a table and talk it all out, you can reach an agreement, do not know what they're talking about. They never tried it. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:16:54] CATHERINE ANDERSON: What was politics like when you first came to Ann Arbor in 1916?
  • [00:16:59] A. D. MOORE: Well, it was pretty tame. It was you might say old fashioned. The city was small. University had about 10,000 people, 10,000 enrolled, as I remember it. All the butcher and the baker and the harness maker. Any one of them could be elected mayor. Things ran along, ran along all right, I guess. I don't think there ever was a major scandal in this government. Never, in my 17 years, was there ever any hint of a council member being approached in a shoddy way. I have no reason to think that anyone ever was. But on back of that, I can't say it was not in the government, but I read the papers, and I can't remember any scandal. It's been a good town.
  • [00:17:53] TED TROST: What was the reason that the old City Hall building was torn down? Was it just because it was old? The fire house is old and even a landmark today [OVERLAPPING] come down?
  • [00:18:03] A. D. MOORE: We were bursting at the seams. We just had to have a lot more room than we had and we'd rent some space here and rent some space there. There comes an end of to that kind of things.
  • [00:18:17] TED TROST: It doesn't make fiscal sense to keep spending.
  • [00:18:22] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Can you talk specifically about the early days of the Republican Party? I know I talked to Mr. Staebler and he was talking about how the Republican Party was very strong until the Depression years. Is that true?
  • [00:18:37] A. D. MOORE: I missed a part of that.
  • [00:18:39] TED TROST: She's asking the question, since Mr. Staebler has talked about the Democratic Party and its early years. Maybe you could say something about the history of the Republican Party here, which we understand was fairly strong, at least to the Depression.
  • [00:18:54] A. D. MOORE: Yes. The Republican Party was strong, I think, right on up all through the end of my career downtown.
  • [00:19:08] TED TROST: Did they have a majority on council much of the time when you were there?
  • [00:19:12] A. D. MOORE: Yeah.
  • [00:19:15] TED TROST: The mayor was always of the majority party.
  • [00:19:21] A. D. MOORE: This, I could not say. He always was in my 17 years, yes.
  • [00:19:28] TED TROST: Did any of the people that you knew in city government go on to state or national posts during the years you were serving on council?
  • [00:19:38] A. D. MOORE: Charlie Joiner of the law school was a colleague on the council, and he's now a judge in Detroit. You read his name every so often. George Sallade, I believe, went to the legislature for a term or two.
  • [00:19:57] TED TROST: You've spoken about our police department, which you think is fine in our fire department.
  • [00:20:04] A. D. MOORE: We have one of the best police departments.
  • [00:20:06] TED TROST: I believe it. You've also talked about the good men that you met in government while you were on council. How about our judges in Ann Arbor and the members of the bar? Have you been impressed with that through the years, the caliber of people we have involved in?
  • [00:20:25] A. D. MOORE: I have been, yes. I've known either very much of or known them intimately for many years from Judge Sample on up through all the others. They have been a very good group.
  • [00:20:45] TED TROST: Even about Neil Staebler's father. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:20:50] TED TROST: Now, anybody that you can think of. Were there any characters, for instance, who would sometimes regularly show up in order to sometimes just aggravate the discussion. Interesting persons in that light.
  • [00:21:06] A. D. MOORE: There were the characters right. If you're looking for characters, One of them was a woman. I will not name her. She was in my ward. I understand that she and her sister had been very beautiful girls in the university. But she had gone enough off the beam to be somewhat off. She was forever suspicioning anything that we did downtown. She would call up and talk endlessly. We finally learned to try to shut her off. This is pathetic in a way, but I was running the voting booth in our ward, and closing time came at 8:00. It was a wild night. Everybody who wanted to vote had come by 8:00. It is my duty to step out on the porch and raise my big voice and follow the law and say, here ye, here ye, the polls are about to be closed. This poor woman had been hiding in the bushes on this rainy night across the street. In the middle of my speech to the public, she came across the street to vote. Going to find out if we close the polls, you see one minute ahead of time. Too bad. That's both humorous and sad. Well, if I had time, I could think of a lot of things. I can think of how friend of mine who had been to Texas, came back with a cartoon, which I will not describe. At council meeting, he showed it to me. Well, it's a very funny cartoon. I went down that night, got in my car, began to laugh over the memory of it, backed out, and scratched $50 worth of damage on the car next to me. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:23:24] TED TROST: That cartoon must have made quite an impression.
  • [00:23:26] A. D. MOORE: Very powerful cartoon.
  • [00:23:31] CATHERINE ANDERSON: What is your best memory about working on council? If you were talking to young children, school age children about politics. What was your best memory?
  • [00:23:47] A. D. MOORE: Well, let's see. I wouldn't know how to answer that. Give me the question in your words.
  • [00:23:58] TED TROST: If you were talking with some school children. Young people. Believing, as I know you do that life is good and life is full. Could you tell them about something in your career that was especially meaningful that would also be meaningful to them? How would that be? Something you'd like to have them remember about government or about the America or about Ann Arbor? If you look back on it.
  • [00:24:32] A. D. MOORE: Well, I could for example, relate some police stories that would make them glad that they have a department like we have.
  • [00:24:43] TED TROST: That would be good because, today, sometimes they're not [OVERLAPPING].
  • [00:24:46] A. D. MOORE: Shall I tell you one little story right now?
  • [00:24:48] TED TROST: Go right ahead.
  • [00:24:49] A. D. MOORE: Do you have time? This had its funny aspects, by the way. One Sunday, a woman doctor up in my neighborhood came back to her home, went in, and heard a sound. To anticipate the sound was made unintentionally by two thugs back in her kitchen. She had surprised them. She quietly went to a den, I guess, and called the police department. Meantime, these two gentlemen were whispering to each other as to whether to kill her or not. They left the house. The police arrived. Barney Gainsley, who is still living in with the university and security work, was lieutenant then, I think. The police began to scour the neighborhood. Now, the funny thing is that our end of Ann Arbor is so twisted that they had parked their car and they couldn't find it. Barney and another man who had been in the house came out, turned down the sidewalk and saw two men coming to them, toward them. Barney walked right up to one of them, Touched him here, felt a gun, and they were captured. The men were too astonished apparently to do anything. That gun was the biggest revolver I have ever seen, and I know because I was able to borrow it for a few years and had it in my home as a kind of a keepsake before I turned it back in. One of those men was killed in a bar room episode in Detroit, and the other was sent up for a lot of terms. I don't know how they caught them both, right there. Later one got out and was killed. Well, I can tell you many police stories.
  • [00:26:51] TED TROST: Go right ahead. But this one, all because they couldn't find their car.
  • [00:26:53] A. D. MOORE: They couldn't find their car.
  • [00:26:55] TED TROST: Because a gal called the police.
  • [00:26:57] A. D. MOORE: I can tell you about case of the I was in the police department one night on a Saturday night when school was about to open. Nothing was happening. Then along about seven, a woman came in. She said to the officer, she and her husband, a doctor, had driven in town, that he'd be along after a while. They were from Boston. They were on the way to the State of Washington. They'd driven in looking for the Michigan Union. They'd gotten lost. He was tired of driving. When they stopped, she got out of her side to take the driving over, found the union, and then found that she had lost her bag, a handbag. The officer said what was in it? She said $2,300. Pretty soon, the doctor came. The four of us got in the car. He drove, I sat beside him. They were behind. We went to Washtenaw. She said, Yes, we came in here. They turned on Huron. We had they had us turn on Huron. Then they had us turn north. At that time, the university was putting up a new building there on that corner with bare electric lights strung along. It was nighttime now. We turned there, and the head lights showed us something out from the curb about two feet. I got out and picked up her handbag, and there it was with $2,300 in it, and that ended that story.
  • [00:28:36] TED TROST: Nobody spotted it til you came along.
  • [00:28:37] CATHERINE ANDERSON: How about any stories about the city politics themselves? Do you have any stories from that?
  • [00:28:45] A. D. MOORE: What was this?
  • [00:28:47] TED TROST: Any stories about politicians or politics on the council and humorous stories on Council itself that might be of interest.
  • [00:29:04] A. D. MOORE: I wish I had more time to think about some of these questions because any number of things happened of interest, of course.
  • [00:29:15] TED TROST: You can take a few minutes.
  • [00:29:19] A. D. MOORE: I remember the night, committee of mine had to meet with the Board of Education and the school superintendent who is no longer here. I will not identify him, but I had to ask him a question, and he stood up and he talked for about four minutes. I wish I had a tape recording because he had used more words to say nothing and give no answer than anybody I ever heard. Later he departed.
  • [00:29:46] TED TROST: It's not only politicians that sometimes keep on talking too. I don't say too much.
  • [00:29:53] A. D. MOORE: One of the best things I ever heard about a politician was out of a Canadian. He said, back of every successful politician stands a surprised mother-in-law.
  • [00:30:05] TED TROST: That's good.
  • [00:30:09] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Anything else that you would like to have recorded on the tapes for your years on council? Anything you'd like to say about it?
  • [00:30:21] TED TROST: Is there anything, as you look back that you'd like to have recorded because we'll keep the whole interview, which will go to the public library, about your years on council, anything you'd like to say about it as we wrap this up or conclude it? Anything?
  • [00:30:38] A. D. MOORE: Well, number one, being on the council is a highly responsible form of public service. Number two, the man who runs for council just for a term should not do it. There's no such thing as a professional member of the council. We're all amateurs, even the lawyers are. The man in his first term is very largely a learner. He's a freshman, as in Congress. He doesn't have to keep his mouth shut, and so on and so forth, but he has a great deal to learn. As I said in an article that I can mention, if you want to, the man who runs for one term only is really a loss. There's time invested in him and then that's all lost. You ought to run for two terms in mind at least, if you're successful more than that. Of course, as a matter of honesty, we ought to take that for granted, but I'd better mention that there are some crooks in the game here and there, and again, fortunately, we've been remarkably free of that. I hope we stay that way.
  • [00:32:01] TED TROST: I do too. Thank you very much.