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negotiations about the legislation, and it was not possible to talk to him by the time it was being settled in Albany, but the last day where we'd made the settlement, I had to make a decision, are we going to accept legislation that's confined to New York City or not? And I decided that I think that it would be the best thing to do.

I called Davis, who was home by that time, and I said, “Dave, I don't want to ask you, but I'll tell you what I've done.”

He said, “Good. Come home right away on the first plane.”

So I went to the airport, and on these small planes I sat down. The first thing I knew, I threw up all over the plane. When I got to Davis' house, there was Dave and my wife and Bill Taylor and Jesse Olson.

Bill Taylor was the secretary treasurer.

Yes. And Jesse Olson, who was then a rank and filer, but a friend who lived close by. And Elliott. And we sort of had a party, a party with two very ailing people.

You threw up from illness or anxiety?

Everything had built up in me so that I hadn't eaten all day, either, so I grabbed something on the plane, some kind of sandwich they had, and immediately--and then the plane was very rocky. I recall that.

I recall in 1962, I remember staging the hospital legislation to become a state law after a meeting that we held the day Davis came out of jail on July Fourth, it would be in '62, at the Hotel Manhattan, where my friend Hank Paley, who was the key legislative aide for Senator Joseph Carlino of Nassau, and the governor's counsel, Sol Corbin, and Davis and I met to discuss how it's possible, or if it's possible, for the governor to settle the hospital strike. We wanted it to be done in Albany because the mayor controlled city and couldn't get the law changed.

We devised -- I projected “what if.” If I got every newspaper in New York to editorialize that “Rocky” has to step in because there's turmoil and potential race riots, and for the good of the country and the good of the people, the poor people everywhere, it's important that Rockefeller step in and end the dispute, implying that ending dispute meant supporting the hospital workers' law.