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Georgia Sparling
This is Why We Write a podcast of Lesley University. Each week we bring you conversations with authors from the Lesley community to talk about books, writing and the writing life. My name is Georgia Sparling, and today I'm joined by Patty O'Connell Pearson whose latest book is "Conspiracy, Nixon, Watergate and Democracy's Defenders." She's also an alumna of our MFA in Creative Writing program. So thanks for joining me today, Patty.
Patty O'Connell Pearson
Well, thank you for having me.
Georgia
Before we talk about your latest book, I'd love to learn a little bit more about you. So how did you decide to pursue a career as an author?
Patty
Well, it's sort of a Grandma Moses story. I taught high school history for 25 years and then I spent another decade doing curriculum and materials development for history education. I'd always been writing, partly for work and a lot for work in that second career, but also for professional journals, and some small feature essay kinds of things and papers and that kind of stuff. I always wanted to write, and so after I'd been doing the curriculum stuff for quite a while I thought, if I'm ever going to write, I have to do it now because I'm running out of time.
And so that's when I applied to do an MFA. It was the best decision I think I ever made. I came to Lesley for the Writing for Young People, I had decided by that time that all those years of teaching history to young people, that's where my voice was. And so I did that and it was just a wonderful experience, both for the writing, obviously, and wonderful instructors, and the wonderful cohort of students who didn't mind that I was old enough to be their grandmother [chuckles], particularly in the Writing for Young People tended to be younger students as well. And so that that's how I got to it.
Georgia
Why did you want to write for younger readers versus adults?
Patty
Well, I think I found when I was teaching, and I got feedback on this, when I was teaching, that my strength was, I hope I had more than one, but a big strength was being able to explain complicated concepts to a younger audience, or to an audience, not necessarily younger because I did teach high school, but an audience that didn't know anything about it. So, that was something that I felt good about. And my goal as a teacher had always been that by the end of the year, my students would like history, because so often, they come in thinking they don't like it.
I knew they weren't going to remember names, dates, who stood were on the battlefield, etc. And it didn't matter because if they came out liking it, and having a sort of pegs to hang things on pictures in their mind of time periods, then as they enter the adult world, they pay more attention and they pick up on it, they can read, they can learn it forever. So those two things combined, I think led me to want to write for that younger audience. And I don't write for little children. I write for middle school and up.
Georgia
And when did you get interested in history yourself?
Patty
Junior year of high school. I had overtly disliked history prior to that. Right through freshman year world history where I got a lot of naps in. Junior year of high school, I had this teacher who --it wasn't like dynamic teachers today do where they're bringing in primary source documents and all kinds of things and the students are being the historians and so on. It was the old-style lecture class, but she was so good. She would walk back and forth across the front of the room and then suddenly turn around and point and say "fact!" on to whatever the fact was, and it was riveting. And from then on, I majored in history in college and went from there. I never planned to teach initially, but I just loved history.
Georgia
That's great. Um, yeah, so let's talk about "Conspiracy." Your new book, out in the fall of 2020. Why write a book about Nixon and Watergate in our unique time period that we're in right now in an election season that we just, well, now we've just finished it?
Patty
Well, I have to give credit to my editor at the time at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers ,who had published the first two books I did. I got an email one day, and the subject heading was "thinking of you," which made me a little nervous since you can't read inflection in writing an email. I opened it up and she said she'd been listening to a podcast and had I ever thought about writing about Watergate for kids. And I sent back an email immediately and said, "No, I haven't, but I am now." So, I thought about it and I listened to this podcast that she had sent me the link to and it was fascinating.
Georgia
This is Slow Burn?
Patty
Yeah, yes, it was Slow Burn. I'm old enough that I remember Watergate quite well. I've always been intrigued by the story. I'm fascinated with it. It made me one of those people who became a great fan of investigative journalism and probably, that's when I became a sort of a news junkie, and have remained so. I loved the idea, but I wasn't sure there was a way to do it. There are a few books out there for kids on Watergate. But it's just such an enormous topic, absolutely enormous. And aside from being enormous, most books as I began to read, and these were largely by the people involved in at the time, memoir after memoir, they would start with a table of contents. And then there would be a page that would say, "cast of characters." There would be as many as 100 names listed before you started reading the book so you'd know who was who. And I thought, how do you reduce that for a 10 or 12-year-old?
Also, it's a complicated story, because it involves all three branches of government heavily, and constitutional conflicts and concepts and so on. I thought about it for a long time and then I wrote back to her and said, "Are you still interested?" We were in the process of getting out the book that was coming out in 2018. And then she said, "Yeah, absolutely. We're still interested." So I said, "Well, here's what I have in mind." I had seen a documentary called "Watergate Plus 30" done for the 30th anniversary and it was interviews with many of the main characters who are still with us.
Towards the end, the host, said, we have all these different perspectives, different views of Watergate, but what all of these people agreed on, in the end, was that whatever was taught about Watergate in the future needed to focus on the Constitution. And that really gave me an in as to how to approach the story, so that's when we got started. Then because of our current, interesting situation, it became a real race, to see how fast I could do it. I remember getting an email in October a year ago, saying, I had sent an outline and a chapter and, and getting this email back saying "How fast can you write it?" I said, Well, I guess we'll find out. And it came out this past October, so that was fast in the publishing world.
Georgia
Oh, definitely. Well, I read the book, I've got about 20 pages left, but it's really clear and compelling. It has so many layers like you're saying. What was your approach to making this assessable and digestible for younger readers?
Patty
Well, my general theory since I write about history, --say your nonfiction writers, some people are perfectly happy taking on science and all different kinds of topics. I'm not. I write about history. In my mind, any piece of history can be essentially a page turner if it's focused on the people because people are people in any time period and any part of the world. And we all have the same experiences in terms of fear and worry, and challenge, and so on. So anybody, even a young child, can relate to being angry, being afraid, thinking something is unfair. Those are kind of universal.
I wanted to go at it not from the story of Nixon and the President's Men, although obviously, they have to play a large part or there wouldn't be a story. I wanted to go at it from the perspective of the people who stood up and said "Stop. This cannot happen." That then became, after a quick introduction, into those people in chronological order, essentially, as to when each of those-- first it's the press that's looking at Watergate initially. And then as time goes on, then it's the court system and then it's the judicial, the special prosecutors, and then it's the Senate, and then it's the House and then the Supreme Court. So everybody gets involved, but there's a chronology to it.
Georgia
I really was very impressed. Because I knew a little bit and I had listened to Slow Burn a long time ago, but and this just really explained it in a way that nobody has to me before. And so I think even if you're not a middle-grade reader, there's a lot you can pick up for sure. How did your understanding of Watergate change as a result of writing this book? Because you said you lived through it.
Patty
I had never done research on it or anything, I can remember, because I lived at the time in the same city I live in now, but not in between. But I live in the city of Fairfax, Virginia, which is right outside Washington, D.C. Our local paper is the Washington Post and it was the Post that was covering Watergate from day one, before a lot of other media sources, really got particularly interested in it. They covered it initially when it was headline stuff, and then it kind of faded over the first couple of months, except the Post kept at it. It was on the front page every day for two and a half years. Consequently, people in this area, were just far more aware of what was going on, revelations that were coming out, and so on. When I started doing the research for the book I read, which I'd read before "All the President's Men" by Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters involved. But that only covers half the story.
Most people associate that-- because of the book and the movie, --most people associate that with the whole thing. But that book was published long before Nixon was turning over tapes and so on. And so that's sort of the first half. And then I read various-- I can't remember what order I read them in-- but the various people that you see in the book, The Special Counsel for the Senate committee and the Special Prosecutor's press person and the Judge John Sarica wrote a book and one of the special prosecutors, the second one wrote a book. So all of that's out there, as well as some people who are sort of eyewitnesses, but they are a step back.
There's a wonderful book called "Washington Journal" by the journalist Elizabeth Drew, who is still active today. But she worked with Atlantic Monthly at the time, and she told her editor in September, this all happened in June of ’72, the break in the Watergate building. By September of ’73, things have come out, but it's still simmering. It's not boiling yet. She said to her editor, "I think by this time next year, we're going to have a different president." And he said, "Well, if you think that then you need to start keeping a journal right now." And she did, and her insights in real-time she's hearing what's happened that day, and then that night she's writing about it are just amazing. It just blew me away, how insightful she was.
So all those things as I'm reading, I couldn't stop. I mean, this was not like work to do research. This was like, stay up late to keep reading. It was just so astonishing how much was going on. I think it was Lowell Weicker who was a Republican in Congress at the time, he had 10 tabulated toward the end of the whole thing that there that Nixon and his administration had committed 360 some crimes, separate crimes. It was just astonishing. 49 members of this administration were indicted, were convicted. 69 indicted. It just blows you away. I do remember being frightened. I think the whole country was frightened.
When the Supreme Court finally in August of ’74, told Nixon, he had to release the tape recordings that he had refused to release under subpoena, he would not release them. The Supreme Court unanimously said that he had to and he had appointed for those people. He still didn't do it immediately. The big question was, if he doesn't release them, then what? Or even if he releases them, what happens if you won't leave? Could be sounding familiar? Where in the Constitution, does it tell us what to do then? And it doesn't, there is a presumption that people will do the right thing. So the country was very, very nervous that he would tell the Marines to circle the White House, who, in the government would have the authority to then say, "Go arrest this man." It was really frightening.
And, of course, in the end, he resigned, he did. He was convinced that there was no path forward, as they say.
Georgia
When you wrote this, that was before our election took place in this case, although there was plenty of speculation that if the president did not get the proper amount of votes, that he may not step down. It's December 17 right now, and we still don't have a concession from him. As I was reading this, there are congressmen who are really torn over the whole thing what should their allegiance to the president be? And there are people who are calling it --they didn't use the term fake news then-- but basically, that's what their cry was. there are other people who are just terrified that democracy was about to come to an end. I mean, it just sounds a lot like what we are facing right now.
So how would you like your book to inform your readers who are living in our current political situation? Especially if they're young readers? They obviously can't vote yet, but they hear the news. They know more that's going on than we sometimes think that they do. So what is their response? Or what would you like them to get out of your book?
Patty
For me, the takeaway from Watergate is -- and I hope my book gets it across -- but for me, the takeaway, and I would hope for young people to take away from what happened to them, is that the big hue and cry then in great relief when he resigned was the system worked. The constitutional system worked, checks and balances, and all that kind of stuff. But the takeaway is that the system worked only because people made it work. The people who took this on, who took their oath, who took their jobs seriously, and who kept their priorities in order saved us. And so they genuinely are heroes, because, in many instances, it would have been easier to say no, I don't want to be the special prosecutor for that.
Georgia
Yeah. Like, I'm good. Yeah, no, thank you.
Patty
They had self-doubts, many of them. Peter Rodino, who was the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and they are the people who have to decide whether to bring articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives, which is where that takes place. It had been, we've unfortunately had a number of impeachments in recent years. But in 1974, the only other one that had ever happened was Andrew Johnson in 1868. That was it. There was no other example. And so a lot of them had doubts. In the Senate, there were Republicans who, who said outright, "I wouldn't be in the Senate if it weren't for Richard Nixon. He was my mentor. He was my friend, he campaigned for me. And now I'm on this committee to say he needs to go." So for some of them, it took a long time to come around. But what they did was go back essentially to the oath that every person who works for the government takes to support and defend the Constitution.
So that, to me, is the takeaway; you should not be torn between your loyalty to the person and your loyalty to the Constitution. You took an oath to uphold the Constitution, you did not take an oath to be loyal to anybody, any person that doesn't exist in our system. It was those people, regular civil servants whose names we will never know who, when he's trying to use the IRS to go after people on their taxes because he's mad that they didn't do it. People in the judiciary, who, just regular public servants who are doing research or what have you and are not caving, to hide the facts, we the people are the only way the system works, because governments are flawed because governments are people. It takes all of us to keep them in line.
And the press comes into that, as well. They don't take an oath to uphold the Constitution, but they have that ethical, good journalists have the ethical standard of the public's right to know, and reporting the facts regardless of where they lead, that freedom of the press is enormous, and Nixon tried to shut that down, even before Watergate with the Pentagon Papers. You know, the Post was at great risk at the time that he was trying to shut it down by going after their financial interests through the Federal Communications Commission, wanting them to deny licensing rights to radio stations, all kinds of subterfuge going on. The owner of The Washington Post, Katharine Graham, just said, "No, we're not backing down." So it takes all of that and altogether that keeps a democracy going.
Georgia
To pivot a bit, I'd love to mention at least your other books, the other two books for young readers, which I haven't read them yet, but they sound really interesting. Your first book was "Fight of the Forest," which is about the Civilian Conservation Corps. And the other one is "Fly Girls," which is about female World War II pilots. I was wondering if you might say a little bit about how you decided to write those books.
Patty
"Fight of the Forest," which is about the civil Civilian Conservation Corps, the most popular program of the New Deal during the Great Depression, the alphabet soup that we hear about in textbooks. I always knew about that story because just growing up, I had been several times out to Shenandoah National Park here in Virginia, which was one of their biggest and their first project. I always loved that place. It's just an incredible park. And so I knew about them. And then, of course, I taught American History for all those years and teach the Great Depression, the New Deal, the alphabet, soup, CCC, and here it is. And so it was always kind of rolling around the back of my mind.
When I was at Lesley, I was doing historical fiction primarily. But one semester, I decided I would do nonfiction and that was the topic I decided to use, because I already knew what I would do with it. So I wrote most of that while I was at Lesley. Then when I was graduating, one of the things I really liked, there was this push particularly from my thesis adviser, saying you have to have another topic before you leave so that you'll keep writing. So I was looking for a topic and I happened across an article in the paper, just a short article about a woman in this area who had died at 95 and she had been one of the women Air Force service pilots during World War II, and I had never heard of them. I thought "I've taught American History for 25 years, and I've never heard of these people."
So I read the article which just gave me a paragraph or so of explanation as to who these women more and I thought, "I wonder if there's enough." You know, that's one hard part of writing nonfiction is there has to be enough information available to make it a book. I thought "Well, is this a short story a small article, or is it? Is there a book here?" And so when I started poking around, I thought, "Oh, there is a book here". So I got started on that. That happened to be the one that Simon & Schuster bought first. That one came out in 2018. And then I went back to the Civilian Conservation Corps, that one came out in 2019. I'm actually working on a new one.
Georgia
Now, that was my next question.
Patty
Yeah, the next one, which I just got the contract for the other day. It's about massive resistance. After Brown vs. the Board of Education, there was a county in Virginia, in South Central Virginia, that rather than desegregate their public schools, they closed them for five years.
Georgia
Wow.
Patty
No public schools, and the damage, they opened a private Academy for whites and managed to finagle using state tuition grants for kids to go there. But there was nothing for Black students. And some of those students, their families, sent them to live with relatives. The Quaker Society came in and did a placement program. Some more students of junior college in North Carolina accepted, some who were high school level, and so on. But a majority of them simply did not go to school for five years. They were not people of means, it was a relatively poor County, and they were the poor people in the county, and a number of white students who were very poor didn't go to school either. Some of them never were able to make that up. They started working on family farms and so on and just never went back to school. I'm plugging away on that one now.
Georgia
That sounds awesome. Do you always have a few ideas percolating?
Patty
These four books, each of them has come up in a different way. One that I always knew, one that I happened across, one that someone else suggested. Now the most recent one, I was really thinking, looking for a topic, you know, I try just to stay alert to what's going on in the news. I usually look for a story that is a smaller story inside a bigger story. And I like stories that have -- I hate to use this word -- that are inspiring because it sounds so awful. But I think it's good to read about -- particularly as you are moving toward adulthood -- I think it's good for adults to read something and say, "I could do better. I could do better than I am. Or I could pay more attention. Or I could, here's an ordinary person who did something extraordinary. Or maybe it's an ordinary person." And what they did, didn't take any feet of superhuman powers or anything, but they stood up for something or they stood up to something or against something. They stood up. If you don't see a lot of those examples, then chances are you probably won't ever do that yourself. I like that kind of story. I like to read them myself, so that's why I like to write them.
Georgia
Yeah, that sounds great. And I think that's a great stopping point for us. Patty, thank you so much for joining me today.
Patty
I enjoyed it. Thank you.
Georgia
Patti writes under P. O'Connell Pearson and her latest book is "Conspiracy: Nixon, Watergate, and Democracies Defenders." She's also the author of "Fight for the Forest" and "Fly Girls," all available from Simon & Schuster. For more information about Patty and our MFA in Creative Writing program, check out the links in the show notes. This is our last episode of the year and we'll be taking a break for January while we talk to more authors from the Lesley University community. Thank you so much for tuning in this year. If you've enjoyed listening, please leave a quick rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll be back in your ears in February 2021.
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