M: That made it a rather prestigious firm. I became the number two tax lawyer
 for Jesse Jones, and it was a very interesting position.

P: Maybe we should identify Jesse Jones.

M: Jesse Jones was a man who had been a real estate entrepreneur and a banker
 in Houston, Texas, and was brought to Washington [DC] by Mr. [Franklin D.]
 Roosevelt to head the Reconstruction and Finance Corporation [RFC]. That
 was the entity that provided money to businesses that did not have a strong
 enough financial statement to obtain financing through any other source.

P: He became a great power during the New Deal period.

M: He became a very great power during the New Deal period.

P: He was still living (obviously) at the end of the forties when you were
 associated with the firm.

M: That is correct.

P: And you did work with him.

M: I worked with him. I was the number two man, but I had occasion to be
 with him. Mr. Jones would call in his staff, which was small, and his advisors
 on New Year's Day, and he would tell them what he was going to do for the
 next year. He had the most complicated real estate transactions I had ever
 heard of until about the last ten years.

P: He was a grand old man in Texas, in the South, and in the nation.

M: He was very forward thinking, and his imagination added value to real estate
 parcels. As an example, it is well-known that a parcel of real estate that is
 on a street has a higher value than one that does not have street frontage.
 He put arcades in his building and enhanced the value of the store space in
 the arcades because, while it was not worth quite as much as being on the
 street, it was worth more than if it had just been interior to a building.

P: He provided that access.

M: That is right. He also seriously considered generating his own electricity
 during that period of time, as I subsequently found out.

P: In terms of your work with him, did he play any kind of an important role in
 your career, or was he just a person for whom you worked?



 28