FNP 51 Page 17 G: A Mr. Bob Fackleman. He is deceased now, but he was absolutely a distinguished gentlemen. In my newspaper career, I have come along with some real boogers, but I have come along with some of the finest gentlemen that I've ever met, and Bob Fackleman was among them. Bob Fackleman owned a big group of newspapers, weeklies and dailies, and one of his hired-I accuse him of being a hired gunman-people that he had bought out (the other paper in Live Oak) in hopes of jacking the price on it and then turning around and forcing Tom Ricketson to buy it. Tom Ricketson, of course, refused to fall for that kind of stuff, and Tom Rikardson is another gentleman. I [have] some good things to say about a number of people [who have] worked with me over the years and helped me, and I could never, ever have done this without, first, I guess, my momma and daddy's raising and then the friends that I've had over the years. I mean, they don't make a self-made man. They just don't do it, I don't guess. But, when Tom Ricketson refused to fall for this, then they came to me to buy my papers out. [A] fella [who] worked for Bob Fackleman [came]. I told them I wasn't for sale, but I'd lease it to them. Well, they'd never heard of leasing a newspaper, and I hadn't either, but I'd leased this woodyard down here to Gilman Paper Company, and I'd leased out other things that I'd bought and acquired over the years and turned around and stop selling it; just leased it back to them. You know, industrial property and stuff. So we sat down and worked out a lease, and I leased them all my newspapers, which then gave them the upper hand over Tom Ricketson, because my newspapers kind of surrounded [his]. The first thing they did was move the main office from Madison to Live Oak. I knew then, in my own mind, this isn't going anywhere fast. You know, we were running fifty-eight employees out of this one office. I was, with my other newspapers and operations and all. We [had] the big press here in Madison, a warehouse full of paper, and I was printing thirty-six newspapers at the time, all being printed out of this one building. I had a printing operation that was just really doing me good. That was before everybody else decided to get into [printing]. Then, right shortly thereafter, Tom Ricketson and this fella worked out a deal that they swap the Live Oak Post in Live Oak, so that became under Tom Rikardson's umbrella, and the Taco Times and the Perry News Herald [were] owned by the two different groups down there, so they put those two together. It worked out real good for both of them [then;] the Fackleman group had both papers in Perry, and Tom Ricketson's [two] in [Live Oak]. Then, the fellow that was in charge of Fackleman's doings quit paying. We fought this thing back and forth for five years, and I finally wound up suing and getting the newspapers back in five years rather than ten years. P: Let me go back. When did you start buying other newspapers, and tell me which ones you bought? Obviously, you had at that point made a success of the local paper in Madison, right? G: Yes. P: So you could expand?