HIL CO 73 page 18 B: What was his name? C: John H. Cone, from Plant City. He was a brother to the Cone Brothers Contracting Company. An old family in Plant City, on the other side of Plant City. He was active, and I did not really get out actively putting up signs, putting up bumper stickers, and those kinds of things. I am not sure that was even a big thing at that time. It became very big in our election, the 1960 election, but I voted for him and obviously I was for him because Mr. Cone was. Dan McCarty would have been a great governor. B: What other elections did you get involved in, between then and when you worked for Farris Bryant? C: The first statewide election I got involved with was the Supreme Court. I still have a file in my office, and a picture. In 1954, Steve O'Connell was appointed to the Supreme Court by LeRoy Collins, and he ran for election. A group of us in Hillsborough County, one of us, Neal McMullen, had gone to school with him. He was way ahead of me in school. Red McEwen was very close to his brother, who was the state attorney in Palm Beach County, Phil O'Connell. I met Phil through Red, and then, of course, I met Steve O'Connell through Phil O'Connell. Knowing how important the University of Florida was to Steve, I helped him in that election. I still have my file with his picture. Subsequently, after he went on, he was appointed to the Supreme Court, and then he went to the University of Florida as president. He left, I think, in 1972. Later on, I opened that office in Tallahassee, and Steve became, in effect, a partner in the firm, and it gave him a place to go. He was retired from the Supreme Court, he was retired from the presidency of the University of Florida, and he was a hell of a friend and a good guy. So, I opened an office, and he got two other people to come in and staff the office along with him until I broke up the firm in 1989, at the time I merged my firm with Holland & Knight. B: So you helped O'Connell when he ran for election. C: I was on his committee. I remember meeting in a little office, in Neal McMullen's office in the old First National Bank building. Then, people did not have big spacious offices. They were very small offices. Neal was a good guy, and he later on became a circuit judge and was a good one. B: That is here in Hillsborough County. C: Yes, in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit. There are probably half a dozen of us who were friends of Steve's, who got out. The first political speech I made in my life was at a little gathering in Seffner, which is a little old bump in the road between here and Plant City. The little city club got together, and I went out there and made a speech for Steve.