Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

of course I filed in the Democratic primary and I didn't have any opposition, but Ford never
got beyond the primary stage.
And I went in to ask for a leave of absence. I didn't want to quit my job - the job at
Springfield only paid $3,000 a year, or maybe $2,500, I'm not sure. And I was making more
than that at Shell, not a lot more, in those days, but I was making it. I was trying to make
extra money that's all, honest money. And well they said, "If you get elected . . ." They
indicated to me they didn't think I'd win. Well that didn't bother me. I mean the person
I talked to kind of - they only said it jokingly. Rut as the luck of the Irish will have it,
I won. And I went for my leave, and I - now this has to do with Shell, maybe the union
and my career at Shell - and got a leave of absence for five months, the first of February
1947 till the first of July or maybe ten days extra if we were still in session, and that year
in the General Assembly, in the sixty-fifth session, they just met every other week.
I think there was a primary race in Chicago, and of course, if you don't think Chicago doesn't
have something to say in the Illinois General Assembly, you'd better think again. I'm sure
you know that. (laughter) And I think Root was running against Kennelly. I believe
Kelly had retired. That was prior to the Daley era. And I guess the Republicans figured
they had a chance. They were making a fight of it and - what I'm trying to say, hell, I'd
go up on a Monday night and - at that time, the Trailways ran a bus, ran a bus right
by my house, and I didn't have a lot of money, all we had was ten cents a mile. We never
had any expenses from the General Assembly and I only had that one session, my last
session. And I - well I was watching my p's and q's. I wasn't getting paid from Shell. I
had a leave of absence without pay officially.
Q: Yes.
A: But Shell had a habit - it was one of their rules, that my accrued service started in
July, 1927. But after thirty days of my leave without pay, my accrued service moved up
to four months, from July to up in November. And hell, I went out to see Mr. Lohmann. I
said, "Mr. Lohmann if you're going to do that" - and he was a very gracious man, he was
the chief industrial relations man. I said, "I'm not going to have a vacation." We got a
vacation, we got two or three or four weeks. Of course the union got us that. I said, "The
next time if I win you're going to overlap into a different year. You're going to move my
accrued service up from 1927 to 1928 and that's going to slow down my vacation period. I'll
never get a vacation." And he said, "Well 1'11 tell you what I'll do. I'll let you come back
and work one day out of thirty." And I said, "Fine." And well coming back and working
one day out of thirty, I started that, it was in the Sixty-sixth General Assembly. And, oh,
some of the mcn didn't like that, but it worked out. For the next three sessions I got to
do it. And I saved my vacation time. I got my vacation.
I first considered taking a withdrawal card from the union. And the fellows said, "Well
just don't do it." They said, "You don't know how often you're going to get elected or all
of that. You'd just have to come back in." But every time I'd come back, why, I had to
take a physical examination. I didn't like that. Well I just didn't like it. I said, "What
the hell, if I don't pass I don't have a job you know." And they'd say, "We're going to pass
you. It's just part of the rules." And I never liked that. Of course then that went on for
the Sixty-fifth, Sixty-sixth, Sixty-seventh and Sixty-eighth assemblies, and I got beat.
Q: Yes.
A: And that - as happens. I was married by then and Pat was born in 1949, and Maureen
was horn in 1954. So I had the two children and we were buying our home and I just went,
settled down, and went to work. And the labor strife at Shell, the union at Shell, was in
that period. Seems like the decade of the 1950's to the 1960's, oh, we could have had - I
mentioned to you about going to the Jesuit retreat league at the White House down there.