Gerald W. Smith Memoir - Brookens Library

Gerald W. Smith 242I officially went to work on Thursday, the 16th, and first Board meetingwas Fxliday, the 17th. I want to apply the therne of the munt of actSonthat was taking place at this point, even though references will needa little explaLning later on. At the September 17th rneetlng the Bodconfinned employment under the terms that 1 have already stated. Theyalso noted that the Board of Higher Education was going to meet on September 21, to take their action with regard to the proposed Wage CountyCollege. Then the matter of payment of state aid claim to the juniorcolleges for the previous semester and IW. Page reported that he hadchecked through his finance dep&ment and had learned that his officehad already paid the state aid claims, so that was not a mtter of businessthat any longer required action. Then there was the matter of haw tohandle the existing colleges which were now designated in the law asClass I1 and some discussion was held with regard to that because the existingcolleges were already asking the Mard, '" do we become Glass l?llThen I swsted to lW. Fwle and Dr. Browne at our meting earlier in theweek that this was a brand new Act, rather long and conrplfcated and boththe Board and Executive Secretary and especially the Executive Secretarywas going to need legal advice with regard to this new Act, as to what thelanguage meant and so forth over and over again and I felt that we shouldhave legal counsel -available a-,Now, wlder the law, the AttorneyGeneral is the legal advisor to the state agency of this kind, but theAttorney General's office is not geared to giving you quick-off-the-cuffanswers, so to speak. Their answers have to be more deeply thought out.If you had a diffuclt problem you'd go to than, but you need somebodp that ' scloser to you than that. They agreed with us. Dr. Bmvme and I had eachsaid at that meeting in the af'ternoon that we had an individual in mind,neither one knowing whom the other had in mind. When we canpared notes wehad the same person in Illind, and it was Mr. Kenneth Lemner, an attorneywith offices and home in Havana, Illinois. Mr. Lemr had been the legalcounsel to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction under Geo~geWilMns. When Ray Page took office he reappointed Mr. Gene Hutson who hadfor a number of years been the legal counsel for the Superintendent ofPublic Instruction under Mr. Nickell, before Willdnsl term. When Ray Pagewas re-elected-h@ t#pgs3nted Hutson to his role with hhj the SchoolProblems Cmrsnlssion -employed lb.Lemr. Mr. Lemr waS an experiencedrran in school law and so forth. I became acquainted with him and thowth i m of him and so had Dr. Bmwne. And so, at this September 17th meetingon qy recorrmendation and supported by Dr. Brawne, the Board appointedMr. Lmmsr to be our legal counsel.Q. They didn't qpoint him; they probably authorized you to appoint; him.A. Yes, they authorized me to appoint hQn.Q. I suppose it was because @. Lemr was nat a oardid&% dt that/ the?A. That's right. S m of the other mtters that were before the Boardon that September 17th meeting to again emphasize the munt of activitythroughout the State--witon Wllege which didn't have the same y&,f