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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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Part:         Session:         Page of 1143

How, to tell a little bit more about what we did with the Governors--because a discussion about Basil O'Connor is an expression of frustration on my part that he didn't go into this area--after we got the governors to pass this resolution that we talked about, the next step seemed to be to get the governors to accept the recomendations of the survey that was then made. Mike Gorman went to a meeting in Seattle in August of '53 and persuaded the Governors to formally accept the recommendations of the survey report. He also got them to vote to hold a Governors Conference on mental illness during the winter of '54.

Q:

What was rather revolutionary.

Lasker:

Yes, it really was. And on our return from California in '53 Florence and I had gone to pay a call on Frank Bane, the Executive Head of the Council of State Governments. He was an experienced politician and administrator, very cagey and intelligent. We offered to lend him Mike to set up a clearing house for information about mental illness and mental hospitals, which the new report recommended the instituted by the Council of State Governments. He was rather acquiescent at this point, but when Mike got in touch with him to ask him what he could do, Bane was vague, and we realized that we'd better have Mike working with the Committee than on the outside.





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