YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Vilsack

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94

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2016-08-15

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2016-08-15

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1. “Yeah, no, it's great. So, anyway, because of that experience and because of his direction and example and inspiration, my kids said, don't do it, Dad, you're going to get hurt. I didn't want them to think I was going to be hurt running for office. So we ran. I ran.”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Do. I'll never forget Joe Biden coming into our home. There were three matriarchs of the Catholic Church in Mount Pleasant, and they were all sitting on a love seat in our home. And Senator Biden comes in. The first thing he does, he scopes out the room and he knows exactly where the power base is. And he gets down on one knee, and he starts talking to these women. I'm relatively sure those women would have walked on hot coals for him after that.”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “And we were just incredibly supportive of then Senator Biden, thought he was then and still due today, an incredible, wonderful human being. And he had, our job was to try to get young people involved in the process, and he had this video that we took to show kids in which he basically quoted someone from Greek philosophy about the penalty for not getting involved as a people less qualified than you end up governing you. So when Eilfing came into the office, I thought, well, what would Joe do? I went home.”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Yeah, it was. We raised money for a fountain in the middle of the town square in his honor, and I helped to lead that fundraising effort, and his father, Eilfing, was not happy with the way the city was being governed after his son was killed. And so he came into my law office one day and started to cry about that, and asked if I would consider running for mayor. Now, ironically, Christie and I had just completed working on Senator Biden's first presidential campaign.”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “That's right. In fact, 30 years ago this year, Mayor King, who had been mayor for a considerable period of time, was in a council meeting on Wednesday night, and Ralph Davis, a disgruntled citizen who had been a former prisoner of war during World War two, was upset about a sewer problem that had not been fixed by the city, and he came into the city council chambers with a loaded gun. He seriously wounded two council members and shot and killed the mayor. It was and still today a very devastating thing to happen in a small town.”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Remarkable amount. Small town. Nobody thought this was possible. What followed was months of additional donations by laboring guys. They came in, they said, give us a six pack of beer, we'll work on Saturday, we'll work on Friday night, we'll build this thing voluntary basis. Corporations came in, gave money, and we ended up having an amazing facility for kids. And it was an incredible community building experience. And from that, I got a name, and then it was, you know, can you be the chamber of commerce president? Can you be the United Way chair and all that kind of stuff?”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “So it was one of the most remarkable experiences in my life. I can still call up the feeling I had on Sunday night when we exceeded $200,000 in pledges, which at the time in 78 was a lot of money.”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Yeah, making sure people get to where they have to go. It's great So, the great thing about being a young person is that you don't know enough to know that you can't do something. And that is just the beauty, and we see this in politics. We see this with these young people in politics. They just don't know enough to know they can't do something. And that's the beauty of it, that's the passion of it. So off we went and got a bunch of young people involved in this. We took over the local radio station, violated probably a million FCC rules because we kept the radio station on all night. I think we were supposed to do that. And I was the Jerry Lewis of Mount Pleasant for a couple of days, where we encourage people to call in pledges. And I had secured in advance.”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “She looked at me and she said, You know, there are three rules of success here in Mount Pleasant, and you need to understand what they are. First, you have to have been born here. Secondly, you have to be a Methodist. And third, you absolutely have to be a Republican. You were born in Pennsylvania. You are a Catholic and a Democrat. Good luck But I didn't know enough”

   2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “And so I figured, well, I really have to do something here for people to know who I am. So I decided I was going to take on a challenge of raising money for an athletic complex that was in great need for the community and for the kids of the community. But we had failed to pass bond issue time after time after time. And so I came home one night and I said, Christy, this is terrible. I said, these kids are taking showers and places of scalding water and the football field's crappy. We really have to do something about this. I said, I'm going to raise the money myself.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Yeah, well, he had me at page one So I studied for the bar exam on my own. And in those days, you found out the day, the last day of the exam, you found out that night whether you passed or failed. So I was able to start practicing law in 75, June of 75. And the problem, though, when you move to your wife's hometown, is that your wife's husband. You are Tom Bell's son-in-law, you are a person without a name.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “And it was sweet. I mean, he broke down the law practice. He said how much he had made that year, what he could afford to pay. And he was convinced it would be in our best interest. And I think he genuinely wanted to be close to his daughter for multiple reasons. So we made the decision to go back.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “It was very pleasant. Loved her dad. Christy had lost her mom just before she graduated from high school to cancer. So she was helping raise her younger brother Dick. Her older brother Tom had already gone off and had gone to law school and was practicing along Wisconsin. And her dad needed somebody to come in and help him with the law practice. He had made the decision that there was an opportunity there for a young lawyer in Mount Pleasant. And we had made the decision that we were going to go into a small community, that we were going to live either in western Pennsylvania where I grew up or we were going to live in Iowa. What really broke the tie was a letter that Christie's father wrote in his own handwriting on yellow legal paper seven pages of this is why you should come to Mount Pleasant.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Well, I had an opportunity to visit Christie, a small town, Mount Pleasant, a town of 8,000. Dad was a small town lawyer, successful, had a nice law practice right across the street from the courthouse. Courthouse was right next to the main square of the town. It was his ideally place. And Christie had this wonderful experience growing up. How can you know?”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Veterans benefits Social Security student loans eventually a public school teaching salary from Christie all of those combined. So when people say, you know, less government, I say without government, I would not have had anywhere near the life I've had.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Well, it took me a while to figure it out. But my dad was obviously there a lot sooner than I was. I called my dad on April 15th, 1972. I remember the date because it was the day I got the last letter from the nine law schools that I had applied to. I got accepted at one, the acceptance letter. I called my dad and I said, Dad, I got accepted to law school. And he said with a relatively tired voice, I don't know where we're going to get the money, but we'll find a way. Day he passed away”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Decided we got engaged. My dad. Again, business wasn't doing well, but I was home for spring break, my senior year. And he called me into the living room of our little duplex that we were living in, and he said, I've got something I want to give you. And he had a finger ring that his father had given him, and it had been a tie clasp at one point, but it was a fairly nice looking diamond in this ring. And he gave it to me. He says, now I want you to give this to Christie. He said, I don't care what happens to the two of you. I want her to have this. So I went to my mom. I said, Dad's giving me this ring. What am I supposed to do with it? My grandmother had just passed away and she had left a couple hundred bucks. I called my father.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “More importantly, yeah, but I met Christy at college, and we had a relationship that spanned our entire college time there and made an incredible difference, had a hard time getting into law school, very hard time. Did”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Off to college. Yep. Fortunate enough to get into a good college. And boy, it really changed my life. Two things happened my first year in college. One was I made the decision never to be involved in elected office because I got absolutely slaughtered running for president of the freshman class. I got 18 votes. There were 20 guys on my hall. I only got 18 votes.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “And you want to be in a position when there are that fork in the road that when they decide to do, as my mom did, to turn their life around, that they have all of the support necessary. They've got the treatment, they have the community of support, they've got the A meetings, they've got the faith base, whatever it is that surrounds them and provides the help because without it, it's really hard to do.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “So it is absolutely part of this effort to try to get people to understand you got to talk about it. Somebody has to talk about it. Otherwise, what's going to happen is that person's going to reach that fork in the road and is going to make the decision, the tragic and fatal decision. Yes.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “We absolutely stigmatize it. We absolutely believe make people feel as if they are. They can't talk about it, nor can their family members talk about it. And it's particularly true in rural areas where privacy is important.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “And it generated such an incredible fear in me that I literally went to bed and actually put the sheet over my head because I was so fearful of that person. But it reinforced the fact that this is not a character flaw. This is a disease. This is an illness just like cancer, just like diabetes, just like everything else.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “I thought, you know, geez, mom, you know, just buck it up here. Stop drinking. It should be a simple thing. Just make the decision to turn your life around. Much more difficult than that. It is a disease. It is, and I had a very scary experience that reinforced this when I became older. After 14 years of sobriety, my mom finally had brain cancer. And I remember one of the last days I was with her, I was in my mid thirties. The cancer had impacted her on this particular day to the point where she acted and talked exactly as she did when she was drinking.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “No, that's absolutely correct. And one of the things that I always will feel badly about is that as my mom was going through this process, I was very judgmental. I was a kid. So it sort of, I give myself a break in a certain sense.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “That public is not a four-letter word. It's an important concept, and I think this current administration, the President Obama's administration, has, I think, begun the slow process of reconnecting people in a way to some of the important aspects of government.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Exactly. And then when you get hooked, you'd like to be able to get treatment and help, but 76% of the shortages of that kind of help are all in rural areas, and so there's no place for you to go. Or if you have to go someplace, it's 50 miles or 100 miles from where you live. And it really speaks, I think, to an emerging issue that the next administration and future administrations will deal with, which is a rebuilding and restructuring of the public health system in this country. So if you're dealing with pandemics, Zika, Ebola, whatever, or addiction, you need to have a public health system in place to provide very basic assistance and basic information and access to basic services. In many parts of the country, that doesn't exist. Because we have sort of demonized all things public. Public schools, public education, public health, public safety, it has been a concerted effort over a long period of time. And I believe that eventually we're beginning to turn the corner on this. I think people are beginning to realize that”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “And there are millions of people suffering from addiction. And it's one of the reasons why I'm so supportive of Hillary Clinton, because she was sensitive enough as she traveled around Iowa, New Hampshire at the beginning of this campaign to actually realize and appreciate that she was hearing these stories over and over and over again in different communities and different locations. And it is particularly difficult for rural America because the work in rural America is very physical, so you have a greater chance and risk of the injury, the stroke.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “You see a lot of that. I mean, and you see a lot of alcoholism, you see a lot of drug use, and you see a lot of families. There's a statistic, I think a Kaiser Foundation said that 44% of Americans know someone who's addicted to opioids. I mean, that's amazing statistics.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “And so went to high school and my dad's high school and it was academically much more rigorous than what I had been exposed to before. And I just had a really hard time. And I remember my sophomore year I was ready to give up. I flunked exams and it was a mess. And all of it was at a time when mom and dad separated. Things weren't not great And then all of a sudden Mom decided to move back with Dad. My sister was going to get married and they decided it was important for them to be a couple again for my sister. And they rented a little house and we became a family again. And the next semester I was on the roll. And all of this, David has significance to me as we deal with issues of addiction.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Yeah, he did. Looking back on it, I couldn't realize at the time. I thought, boy, he's pretty calm about this. So obviously somebody had picked up the phone and called him in advance. I see. He was prepared for my visit.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Yeah, it was. Well, I was right. I was arguing on behalf of my classmates because we weren't being treated fairly. But I went a little over the top, I think. And so, Sister Mary Peter sent me home. That was a long, long trolley ride in my dad's office to tell him I had been kicked out of eighth grade.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Dad had sold the membership in it was particularly important because it was his grandfather who founded that club, who was one of the founding members of that organization, so it obviously was very difficult for him to acknowledge. My childhood home was sold. We moved into a very small apartment. And I was having trouble. I was having trouble in school. In eighth grade, I was kicked out of school briefly for telling a non to go to hell, which is probably not the best place to tell a non to go to. Yeah”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “No, well, I didn't know that he was doing that until there was a place called the Pittsburgh Athletic Association, the PAA, and it was a place where I used to go as a kid to Bowl. They had a Saturday bowling league, and our family used to go there for Christmas, Easter dinners kind of thing. It was one of those places where there was a gymnasium and a swimming pool. It was a club And you could go and you could order a cheeseburger and a cherry Coke, and you'd just sign it your name and the membership number. So I remember going there one day and ordering a cherry coke and a cheeseburger and signing the card. And the guy came back and said, well, you know, your family is no longer a member here.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “So she lived near you. I did. It was decided that I would live with my dad and my sister would live with my mom. And we lived probably two or three blocks from one another, and I would go see my mom every other weekend type of thing. It was tough because dad's business was failing at the time and he had essentially convinced my mother that I should go to this high school that he went to, and it was a fairly expensive proposition. So he was selling things in order to get me that education. And he taught me a valuable lesson about sacrifice and the importance of education.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “She realized that no matter how bad she had been, no matter how much difficulty she had caused our family, that God still loved her. And somehow that gave her enough fortitude and To tell her brother that she needed help and that she was prepared to accept help and that she wanted to turn her life around. She went to a treatment facility for a period of time. My parents remained separated for about three years while my mom was getting herself. She taught herself how to drive. She hadn't driven before. She got a job, which she had never had before. She really became a completely different person.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Several days later, actually on Christmas Day 1963, she got on a train to go visit her brother. She was drunk in Philadelphia here, the great city of brotherly love. On the way, she had sort of an experience, and at that point in time she began the process of turning her life around. And as a result of that,”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “No, She was born six years before I came into the family, and my mom and dad had had trouble having a second child. There was a condition or something that happened. She couldn't have any more children. So mom leaves in Scary situation. I mean, I remember I was 13 years old. I remember my 13th birthday. I was supposed to go to my mother's new apartment. And I had just had my eighth grade. Graduation picture photograph And when I walked into this apartment to visit with my mom, She must have A hundred of my photographs. To the wall. It was a very surrealistic. Frightening experience. And she was drunk, and I left. I just I bolted Just didn't want to deal with her.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “I did and I didn't see her, obviously, but it was just. Just, I mean, it was a little shocking to know that your mother was in a facility that had bars on it because they were concerned about her mental health, tried to commit suicide a couple of times. I remember again waking up the middle of the night watching my grandmother and father walking my mother around and around and around right outside my door to keep her awake long enough for the ambulance to get there. So it was a really tough time. And in 1963, just before, just after actually, just after President Kennedy was killed, mom walked out. She just left. It was pretty devastating for my sister and myself and my dad.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “My dad was basically, I remember waking up one night in the middle of the night and hearing my mother pleading with my father not to put her into a psychiatric facility. But he tried that on a couple of occasions. I remember going to the corner of a street in Pittsburgh and my father telling me to count up the number of barred windows, the fourth or fifth barred window, and he said, that's where your mom is. So she was hospitalized.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Sort of very successful, owned a lot of businesses and that type of thing. Over the course of time his son was reasonably successful. My dad had a tough time in business. He was a real estate guy. because of a series of programs he began to lose a lot of the territory that he was responsible for in terms of renting and managing and selling. And so his business basically. Became very troubled. And about the time that was happening, both of my parents were hospitalized with various illnesses and so forth, and my mom then began to have serious problems with prescription drug addiction and alcohol. And when I was a young person, it was a really tough time. My mom would go away into the attic of her home for Weeks on end We would not see her. We would hear the liquor bottles dropping on the floor.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Well, I was surprised because I always had to figure that my birth mother was a teenager. For some reason, that was sort of stuck in my head. And the notion that my first name was actually Kenneth, my mom, my adopted mom, would never tell me anything about the circumstances of my adoption. She was very quiet about that, but just before she died she had cancer, she had brain cancer. I sort of I think I pushed her into finally acknowledging and giving me some tidbit of information, and she said that I'll tell you one thing that you were Kenneth, you were about to ask Kenneth. So they changed my name, obviously, and was adopted into family. And my family was a fairly prominent Pittsburgh family. My great-grandfather, Leopold Vilsack, founded the Iron City Brewing Company, and was considered to be a very, very wealthy individual.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “No, no. The information I have about this came from a letter that was sent to me in two thousand eight. When I briefly ran for president, Falling home or the orphanage decided to let me know what they could tell me legally. The records are sealed. And so this is the extent of which of what I know of.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “My birth mother came into this facility in September of nineteen fifty and assumed the name of Gloria, which was not her real name. She was twenty three years old, I know, and she was a secretary, probably Irish, but And I was born in December, and she stayed at this facility. It was a kind of, it was called a fondling home, a Rosalia Fondling home. She stayed there until January. And I was baptized with a different first name, Kenneth. She left in January and then in March my adopted parents, my mom and daughter.”

    2016-08-15 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 73 - Sec. Tom Vilsack · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source