The timeline helped me understand why my father quit his well-paying job as the General Manager of the Denver Milk Producers Association (DMPA) in 1964 and suddenly moved our family to Texas. All he ever said was that he didn’t think “the dairy business should be in politics.” I was only sixteen at the time and never asked why we had to move – we just moved.
With the timeline, I discovered that, as the GM of the DMPA he would have been an executive of the Associated Milk Producers of America (AMPA) who decided in 1964 to begin gathering $2 million from member associations to illegally contribute in 1972 to Richard Nixon’s campaign. These became the “bribes” from the Dairy Industry which led to Watergate. The fact was, if my father not resigned when he did and had gone along with the scheme as some of his contemporaries, he too may have wound up in prison for violating Federal campaign laws!
A small family matter was actually part of a larger historical story if you are aware of the context and connection.
No comments:
Post a Comment