{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/rx93777q4b/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Bill Boucher III interview, circa 1990"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/053/original/cropped-marmia-logo-copy1.png?1586173104","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://marmia.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/25726"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["circa 1990 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["Be advised that this video may contain sensitive, triggering, and offensive language and content. (Content warning)","Digitized with funding provided by the Council on Library and Information Resources' \"Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Amplifying Unheard Voices\" grant program. (Funding note)","Bill Boucher III, Executive Director of Greater Baltimore Committee from 1955-1981, is interviewed about his life and career in Baltimore. (Scope and Content Note)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["1 Betacam"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["WJZ-FLDTP-006-009 (Identifier)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Series Title"]},"value":{"en":["Field Tapes"]}}],"summary":{"en":["Be advised that this video may contain sensitive, triggering, and offensive language and content.","Digitized with funding provided by the Council on Library and Information Resources' \"Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Amplifying Unheard Voices\" grant program.","Bill Boucher III, Executive Director of Greater Baltimore Committee from 1955-1981, is interviewed about his life and career in Baltimore."]},"provider":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["MARMIA"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["MARMIA"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/053/original/cropped-marmia-logo-copy1.png?1586173104","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/253/891/small/thumbnail_253891_1728350283.jpg?1728350284","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - open-uri20250109-552-m0h7hi.mp4"]},"duration":1258.373,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/253/891/small/thumbnail_253891_1728350283.jpg?1728350284","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-marmia.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/253/891/original/open-uri20250109-552-m0h7hi.mp4?1736437961","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":1258.373,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["AUTO_TRINT_WJZ-FLDTP-006-009.mp4 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"It's always exciting to meet a new friend. Well, yeah. You see, Bill had a heart attack just before I went into treatment. And I was a security. And so going and meetings for him was all right. Just give me a little sound level. Mary had a little lamb and Mary had a little lamb. One, two, three, four. Perfect. Okay. You're not in trouble. No, No trouble. That's good. Now, you. You go by Bill or will. Bill. Bill? Bill Bush. Okay. Let me hear you. C h e r. Is that French? French. In a city that has gout college. I always had trouble. Except for my family's business for Bouchet. But everybody would say Blucher. Gautier, because robots are so hard to pronounce. Yeah. I You are pretty obviously our Baltimore boy. Absolutely. Born and raised here. We went to work there, Right. Schools, public schools in Baltimore. And you somehow got let's back in. You served with honor in our Air Force during the Second World War. Correct. North Africa, Sicily, then out. And they wound up at the end of the war in Okinawa. Going over to Japan. Flew a bomber? Yeah. How many missions? 24 or 5. I forget, frankly. I don't like to talk about the service. I really don't like to talk about. Well, I'm sure those of us now who know you are in. Thank you very much for all the work you do, not only in Baltimore, but but you well preserved Baltimore and helped make it what I was. As I say, I went in before the war, got out after the war, and I was exactly off of air bases and that had a lot of non flying duties because your your C.O. and exact officer wanted to in command of air bases.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=1.09,135.53"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And we have squadrons of Air Force planes that come in and out base there and go out. So I was it I was in a lot of bases. I was in Missouri, operational training for combat. But the one thing you became a major at age 21, 22, you well, they obviously also saw the potential in you at 22 years, all the way to almost 20 zero. And it was and it was it was so close. It was in November, I think. And when you got out of the Air Force, you work, right. Where are you? Well, I was a major I was a major. I could have gone to lieutenant colonel if I stayed in. But I was so anxious to get out. When I got out in California instead of here, he was on my. You want to get on the ball, right? That's right. Almost did. Did you know then back in the in the mid to late 40s that you were going to get involved in Baltimore to the degree that you had to be that you got. yes. yes. Yes. I, I came back and there was a there was some people working on the problems of the city through Citizens Planning and Housing Association, CPA, who were of course and one of those persons was Judge Webster, who was director of public Works, director of welfare for the city. And he took me soon after I got out of the service on a tour of the slums of Baltimore. And I saw some of the slums that exceeded the slums I'd seen in Algiers or Dakar or Tunis, places like that. The slum. We had 24,000 homes without indoor plumbing downtown in the 40s, in the 40s. And I became involved in that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=136.94,261.019"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I later ran for Congress as an independent Democrat against the incumbent Democrat. His name was Bolton. The time I became involved in politics, at the same time I was keeping my hand in my family's business. They were upset that I was in politics and they were upset that I was out front on a lot of issues and things like that, but was not overtly with tobacco, cigars, cigars and retail and importing and distributing and yeah. Cigar. You even had a cigar named after you. Yeah, I believe that's it. Right? Don't that's really so I have never met anyone with a cigar named after neither of us. I think they sell three boxes. My father bought all two. 2 or 3, I guess. But. But anyway, your family wanted you in a tobacco business, and you decided that Baltimore City needed you. Well, my my grandfather started the business in 1888. My father went into the business at the time of the Baltimore fire because he was in school and the family had great losses in the Baltimore fire. So he went in at age 14 into the business without completing high school. My father and when we came out, he wanted us if we wanted to. He didn't exert any pressures on us to go into the business. My two brothers went into the business. One of them got out after about 15 years or so, and another one stayed until they sold the business. He had a heart attack and they sold the business. But you I didn't go in. I didn't go in. That was my choice. And I decided I was going to get involved in the city and city problems fairly soon after I got out of the service through Judge Webster, he showed you these areas that were that were more more slum than some of the slums that you had seen in Africa.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=261.41,392.48"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"All right. All right. What did you feel? I mean, well, Baltimore, obviously, back then was really in disrepair. Sure was. Sure was. And I just had this motivation. Mission to try to do something about it. And I had a lot of people who were pushing me, like the people in CPAC and the reform movement was coming along. I talked about that to new people into politics, new people in the civic work. And that's what got me going. And I was preoccupied with that. And I was frustrated throughout the whole period of time that I took that frustrated during that whole period of time by how hard it was to make change in the city, because we had social workers and we had lawyers and we had a whole range of good people working on these problems, but they weren't getting anyplace. And what we were missing was the business community. Business community working on what's best for the city, not what's best for business, but what's best for the city. So along along Cal and Clarence Miles and formed the Greater Baltimore Committee. So I went down and knocked on Mr. Moore's law firm door, and I said, I want to work for you and you don't have to pay me. Let me work for you. Well, he didn't accept the no pay, but I was they were looking for a permanent director. They had a temporary director, Archie Rogers. And so in September of 55, I went to work for the Greater Baltimore Committee, and I was its first permanent director. After the organizing period was over, I was the director, and I stayed there until October of 81, 55, 81, a long period of time. So you I mean, in that in that time span, Baltimore changed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=393.38,512.96"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Changed dramatically. Dramatically. Well, I guess one of the first things that one of the first large projects, I would imagine was the Charles Center. Well, we we got this missing ingredient, the business community, to work with. Whoever is mayor, The mayor has to get elected and the business community doesn't. But the business community can initiate, take risks, plan things, take them to the mayor and work in a partnership. Okay. And we decided that right off the bat there were three things that needed attention. In 1912, Woodrow Wilson I'm going to take more than Two and a Half Men. Woodrow Wilson was nominated for president at the Fifth Regiment Armory. And that was the only convention hall would have only large hall we had. And it was a disgrace. So between 1912 and 1955, there was talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about an arena, a civic center. Okay. For 30 years, we talked about a Port Authority from Maryland and talked it to death while Norfolk and Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans and New York and all these other places were building up competitive entities to get their ports active. We talked it to death. 19 four after the Baltimore fire, the Reconstruction Commission of that day said we better build a traffic artery to the north. And we had planned and had defeated in city council five times the Jones Falls Expressway. So we took those three as immediate things to do to establish our credibility the civic center, civic waterfront and the road ahead for the Port Authority and the road north. Now, while we were doing that, we also knew that the Fourth Ward downtown was going down the drain. The people were going to leave the city. Yes, I was going to move out.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=513.48,644.06"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And another location telephone company had already and did move some over here on Valley. A lot of decisions were being made that were adverse to the center city and the tax base. And the job base down there was in trouble. So while we were doing these three projects over here, we were also planning the redevelopment of the center city and came to the conclusion early on that if something wasn't done that was dramatic and big enough to shake the city out of its inferiority complex, which it had in a hurry. The rest of the plans wouldn't make the rent amount to elevate. So we carved out the Charles Center and that was 22 acres. Tear down everything set for buildings, building 14 new buildings in its place. Now, Baltimore had had one new building in 30 years of commercial credit, one new building. And here we were proposing 14 right away, planning, planning for the like you guys, it's pretty much up. Staff thought we were nuts. And the community did. The community said, wonderful. It never happened. Well, it did happen to a lot of good people like Jeff Miller and a lot of other people and and mayors, because we formed an alliance with D'Alessandro, Grady Goodman, Miquelon D'Alessandro, Schaefer. We had a partnership with all those guys. And they they were the public people. We were the private people to get the money and the plan one thing or another. And we had the first building, one child center occupied when Ted McClellan was elected mayor. De. 63, 63. And he said to us, I'm going to be mayor for one term. After that time, he's going to get it because I pulled a fluke. I got elected as a Republican in the Democratic city, which I've done before, by the way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=645.23,780.6"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And he says, I've got one term. I want to make my mark on the city. Will you join with me? Can we join together to work the partnership to go to the Inner Harbor and play in the Inner Harbor? And we established the same team to plan the inner harbor that we had for Child Center. And he said it's going to take seven years to get the money to condemn the property and everything. I'll be gone, but at least I will have started it. And and he did. He did. He gets very little credit for that. He sure does. All right. Others get some credit for it. But that's why I'm calling my book a thousand. You know, there's a term success has a thousand fathers. Failure has one. In other words, if you fail, it's your fault. If it if you got a winner, everybody gets credit. So my book is called A Thousand Father. You got to give credit to everybody who does. Everybody who deserves it. Right. And they have a lot of them. Incidentally, McElveen wrote a book, if I think called The Mean City. Correct? Correct. Right. He was a unique guy, but he, in his inaugural address, said, we're going to plan the inner Hummer because we had worked with him. Jim Ross and I went over to him and we worked out a deal. And so the Inner harbor came along. And of course, that had that. And Charles Center had the transformation of the city right. In a part of hand. Well, you obviously have had so much input into this. Are you satisfied with the way things are now? I think. I think unless somebody is impatient and dissatisfied, they die. Is there is there something in our city that if you were mayor, what would be the next project? You would initiate the 2 or 2 more dramatic reformation of the educational system? Well, I said To what? I mean.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=782.01,916.93"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I mean, you know, I'll take it, but I would initiate a reformation of the educational system. Much more dramatic than they're talking about now. I mean, with this private outfit that you don't know whether they do it or don't do it, but we've got a top heavy administration, almost defeated principle for schools. When I was in the public school system, I can tell you now, 60 some years later, that the principal at Roland Park Public School was Grace Fairbanks, and she read about it. And at the principal over at City College was Doc Edward's very tall guy. He ran that school. Now, I can tell you my my principal was shot and he ran that I know. And his son lives down the road. Is that right? Okay. Now that we know he's a distinguished guy. Yeah. Mr. Schrock? Yeah. Yeah. Southern High School. Yeah. So you would you would try to tackle education? I would. I would also tackle the kind of thing that the city and Ralph's are doing over in Sandtown, which is housing and neighborhood building. It's not just housing, but it's neighborhood building. You've got to take care of health and you've got to take care of all the ingredients in the neighborhood. And that example of what's happened over and happening over and since Sandtown has got to be dramatically increased. The third thing I do, I try to get. Smokes. Campaign to decriminalize, not legalize decriminalize drugs because that is the root cause. Root cause of crime. And until you take the profit out of crime, you don't tackle the problem. Boy. I'm with you 100% on that. You got my vote? Yeah. Do you think they over improved the look of Baltimore? No. When you. When you see Baltimore, when you're coming, when you're safe, head north on this side of the harbor, on the south side of the harbor.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=917.33,1049.59"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And you're looking north and you see the skyline. Yeah. What does it do for it? It pumps me up. I get excited about it every time I stood with one of the one of the country's greatest planners one night on a boat coming up the harbor. I've had bacon on the legendary dive, now retired from Philadelphia. But the dean of city planners and he turned to Annie and myself and said, this is the greatest downtown rehabilitation in the country. Yeah. And it's very, very exciting. And a lot of things are continuing. I mean, there's there's a whole Boston Street undertaking that's going to mature in time. Hopefully the key highway thing will take off. It's a very ambitious, not a terribly economic project. The Columbia of Christopher Columbus Center. A lot of things that are in the mill come along. So we're not sitting back or our hunches waiting till you're still involved. Well, I'm involved. Yeah, I'm trying. Not officially, because I'm officially retired, supposedly. I'm very much involved in looking at issues. I my book is going to have a major section of it on recommendations of things that ought to be done. One of which is that the greater Baltimore committee ought to ought to go back to its original form and get involved. When we when we when the Greater Boardman Committee was 100 members, only limited to 100 men, and it had to be the CEO of a major business and industry banks, a lot of law firms, etc., etc.. Why? Because they can make the decision. It's a if the president or chairman board of or couldn't come to a meeting, nobody came. So what is it now? It's the modern major chamber of Commerce. It's an advertising agency for tourism.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=1049.89,1179.37"},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Yeah, it's a it's a chat room. The focus, the rifle shop that emanated from our decision to go for three projects while we planned the others we knew we could accomplish those three Civic center. Gunn Falls Expressway, Port Authority. We knew we had the clout working with the mayor and the governor to get those three things done. All that gave us credibility and confidence. If the business community hadn't been involved in that kind of stuff before. This committee was involved in lobbying for business interests. You know, at about the time we started, there was a guy who was General Motors, chairman of General Motors, and he said, what's good for General Motors is good for the United States. Well, we turn that around. What's good for the city is good for business, you know, because unless you have a viable ally, city business is going to leave. And what we need, what what Baltimore needs, it has some good plans, excellent plans from things like Christopher Columbus Center, the key highway, the waterfront. They all Allied Chemical.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891#t=1180.08,1255.94"}]},{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["English [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://marmia.aviaryplatform.com/collections/948/collection_resources/136879/file/253891/transcript/71658/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"subtitling","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/071/658/original/trint_WJZ-FLDTP-006-009_transcript.vtt?1728353199","format":"text/vtt","language":"en"},"target":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/file_transcripts/associated_files/000/071/658/original/trint_WJZ-FLDTP-006-009_transcript.vtt?1728353199"}]}]}]}