Bob
Bynum Oral History
Interviewer: Bob one of the things that strikes me about your
career is the extraordinary range of jobs that you had in the
Agency over the years, starting from your beginning job in a field
office and going all the way to the Deputy Commissioner job. So
I want to have you walk us through your career and tell us about
the jobs you've had and the issues you've encountered during that
time and what sticks out in your mind as important at each of
those stages in your career. We will just use that as the structure
for our interview.
Bynum: Okay, that will be fine.
Interviewer: So, if I've got it right, you started with SSA
in January 1948.
Bynum: That's right, almost on New Year's day.
Almost on New Year's day in the Montgomery, Alabama Social Security
office, as a Field Assistant. I guess I was one of the last of
those too, because shortly following my entry in 1948 we began
to bring all the people in as Claims Reps or Claims Assistants.
Interviewer: What did the Field Assistant do?
Bynum: The Field Assistant was the person who
was at work outside the office.
I was fortunate enough to be hired by Cecil Simpson, who was
an old-time manager in Social Security offices in the Atlanta
Region, and I enjoyed my time with him and with that office very
much.
I also had a remarkable opportunity, when I became a Field Representative,
to come to Washington for a year, for an entire year, in what
then called the Civil Service Commission, in the Junior Management
Intern Program. There were five of us from SSA in the program.
The Civil Service Commission sponsored the program and we were
able work in an whole series of different organizations within
the Federal Government. We went to seminars and did a number of
other things. Also, the five Social Security participants in that
particular program started one of the first "communes"
in this country. We rented a house out on Connecticut Avenue,
the five of us, and lived together during the entire 12 months
that we were in the program. Two of the individuals were married.
I was, and one of the others, and the other three were single
individuals. So we started the first commune in this country.
Interviewer: Did you spend all of your time in that developmental
program in Washington getting trained by the Civil Service Commission,
or were you in Baltimore at SSA at all, or both?
Bynum: Both. It varied, just depending on the
individual, as to how long you spend at different agencies. We
would actually go and talk to the appropriate person--whether
the person was head of the agency, or whoever--about working there,
about getting an assignment with them for a month, or two months,
or three months. I worked with the Department of Agriculture,
the Forestry Service and the Civil Service Commission itself.
I had a brief assignment in Social Security in the Bureau of Old
Age and Survivors Insurance, as it was called back then, in Baltimore.
The other participants from Social Security had similar experiences.
I have always felt that particular experience early in my career
gave me an opportunity to see how the Government worked across-the-board,
not just at my own Agency, and it was really very significant
in terms of my lifetime career with the Social Security Administration.
It gave me a breath of knowledge, in looking at how other organizations
did their work, that I think proved very beneficial to me as I
went along.
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Bob Bynum in 1950 meets with Oscar Pogge, Director of
the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance. SSA History
Archives. |
Interviewer: Now before we go on past that point, I want
to take you back to Montgomery and to that job in the field office.
That was before the 1950 Amendments?
Bynum: Correct.
Interviewer: So we hadn't done the expansions of coverage
that happened in 1950. What kind of work were you doing in 1948?
What was the major task for a Field Assistant?
Bynum: The Field Assistant, or the Field Representative
as they would eventually be called, actually had three primary
responsibilities. We were public information experts. We visited
the newspapers in the 14-county area that the Montgomery office
had, we talked on the radio, in the different communities that
had radio stations. We also were the traveling claims-takers at
the Contact Stations. The Contact Stations were places where the
representatives from the office would go perhaps once a week or
every two weeks, some of them just once a month, and accept applications
from people who came in and answer other kinds of questions.
Back in those days one of the big things that we did, that I
guess began to vanish completely from the picture by the late
1950s, was to chase down--and I mean that literally--employers
who were not reporting Social Security wages, who were not paying
Social Security taxes, and not reporting employees on Social Security
tax returns. That was a major problem during those years following
World War II, particularly in the South. Timber workers and people
like that just didn't think that was a very good thing that they
had to do, that the Government, was requiring them to do. Sometimes
they were quite belligerent in that. But anyhow we had the opportunity
to do that. Thank goodness we didn't have to collect the tax.
We just had to make sure that the employers understood what their
reporting responsibilities were. And we learned about those cases
primarily from bunches of forms we would get from the Division
of the Accounting Operations, which listed unreported and non-reported
employers, but also employers who reported names but not Social
Security numbers. That would give us leads on the employers and
that kind of thing. It was fun work, but it was kind of scary
work too, in a way.
Interviewer: I want to ask you something about your early
training. We used to bring new employees back to Baltimore and
do a training session and one of the things we did in that training
session was give a lot of grounding in the philosophy and history
in the program-the rationale for social insurance and so on. Did
you have that experience?
Bynum: Yes. I had that experience in Baltimore
as a matter of fact. Some of the people who hear this in the future
may remember Francis McDonald, who headed up the Training Division
of the Bureau of Survivors and Old Age Insurance, for many, many
years. So I was in Baltimore for a couple of weeks for that kind
of experience. Then subsequently, after I had gone back to Montgomery
and had opened the first Social Security Office, in Selma, Alabama,
as its manager, I went back to Baltimore a couple of times to
be an instructor in those same kinds of courses, working with
individuals from the Division of Training, which again was a great
experience for me early on.
Interviewer: Good. Well that's a perfect segue,
because that's what I want to ask you next. After you finished
that training course you became the District Manager and opened
an office in Selma, Alabama, the first DO in Selma. Tell me about
that.
Bynum: It was very interesting. Hugh McKenna,
the long-time head of the then Division of Field Operations, and
I had made several contacts in one way or another. I was helping
with the training program and doing things like that, and I had
my assignment in headquarters while I was in the Civil Service
Commission training program. Hugh had gotten to know me pretty
well and in 1951 or 1952, perhaps 1952, the Bureau proposed opening
about 25 new offices around the country. Something happened in
the budget process that year, I'm not sure just what, but the
same kind of things that continue to happen today, and as it turned
out the office in Selma was the only one of the 26 or 27 that
was opened and I was selected as the Manager. I have often thought
it related to my contacts in Washington, and my connection with
Hugh McKenna and the other folks that resulted from my experiences
in training and staff development that took place there.
But the experience of opening a new office, Larry, is unique.
That again served me in good stead in subsequent years when I
became the Director of the Bureau of Field Operations and we were
opening several hundred new facilities around the country, I could
at least remember all the pain and turmoil I went through when
I was doing that in a small community of Selma, Alabama.
Interviewer: How big was that first office?
Bynum: Five people, including the Manager. One
Claims Representative, two clerical people, a Field Rep., and
a Manager. It grew to seven people before I left there a couple
of years later, but it served four counties.
Of course, remembering too, that this was just after significant
amendments to the Social Security Act were passed that brought
self-employed people under coverage, and a number of State and
local employees as well. Those people, for the most part, had
not yet been employed long enough, or been contributing to the
Social Security system to get benefits. So we were spreading the
word, the public information word again. But the actual workloads
for claims processing and all that had not yet developed, because
the coverage was so new and it just had not had time to materialize.
Interviewer: Did you have any issues around compliance, with
the extensions of coverage?
Bynum: Oh yes, of course. The same issues as
earlier. The self-employed small-business person--whether agriculture,
or commercial, or retail-- typically are very independent, quite
suspicious of Government. A lot of them didn't think that they
needed government imposing its will on them, that they would take
care of themselves at whatever age.
One of the interesting things is the fact that the most common
criticism, or the most often expressed item of concern today-especially
by younger people--is that Social Security will not be there when
they get to be 62 or 65 or whatever. That was a big item back
in 1950 as well. They "knew" it would not be there.
Well, most of those people who knew that, have long since been
drawing Social Security payments and many of them have died, and
survivors benefits have been paid on their accounts too. But that
has been the underlying current that has run through my entire
time with the Social Security Administration, which numbered quite
a few years.
Opening the office though was a good experience. I was running
a Resident Station, as we called them back then, in Selma, which
meant I was permanently stationed or located in Selma as a one-person
office. I would fill-out the claims in the Resident Station and
the processing was done back in the Montgomery field office. From
that Resident Station the workloads were developed and the decision
to open a new office came from those workloads.
You mentioned early on that we were doing this review in Austin,
Texas in connection with the celebration of 30 years of Medicare.
I thought so many times of how much the world has changed here
in the length of time I worked with Social Security. But the Contact
Stations that I maintained, both as a Resident Representative
and as a District Manager, were always segregated, waiting rooms
had "White Only" signs. Those sorts of things existed
back in the early 1950s, and it wasn't just in the South either,
it was predominately in the South, but in other parts of the country
as well. How much progress that we tend to overlook, I think from
time to time, was made in connection with equal rights and equal
opportunities.
I guess the point I really want to make in that connection is
what a major role Social Security played in bringing about those
social changes. I was reminded of that by some of the speakers
that we've had here at this Medicare celebration today. My own
guess is that some of the things that they talked about being
in place 30 years ago-- hospital segregation for example--would
not have been broken-down if it had not been for the Medicare
program. Because the standards for the Medicare program absolutely
required that there be no discrimination and that patients just
be placed in the order in which they came in. If that meant in
a four-bed ward, two blacks and two whites, then that's the way
it had to be. One of the things that we did in the early days
of Medicare--we are skipping forward quite a distance in the story--was
to go to those hospitals, those places where there was any rumor
reaching us, or any allegation reaching us, that they were not
maintaining an integrated facility, and inspect, actually walk
through the hospital. We would talk to the staff and listen to
some of their complaints and all of that kind of thing too. The
Medicare business became so significant in terms of the overall
economic success of the hospital, particularly as Medicare began
to take off, that those kinds of changes that had to be made,
were made.
And let me just back-up, while we are on that same line, because
that also happened with our Contact Stations and with our offices
in the South. The person from whom I probably learned the most,
Hugh McKenna, decreed--and this would have been before Medicare,
in the early 1960s--that we would no longer serve any community
that did not provide a completely integrated facility, whether
was the Courthouse, or whatever, as long as they had discriminating
signs. I was working for McKenna in Baltimore at the time, heading
the Management Branch of the Division, I guess I was an Executive
Officer at the time. Anyhow, we actually decreed that we would
absolutely not put a Social Security representative in non-integrated
facilities. We gave them three months to comply. In my former
service areas in the South we only had three, as I recall, that
we had to close of about 650 that were listed as having some discriminatory
practices, whether in the restrooms, or in the eating facilities,
or in any of those kind of things. There were a number of others
in other parts of the country too, it wasn't just in the deep
South.
Interviewer: Approximately what year are you talking about?
Bynum: I'm talking about 1961 or 1962 or 1963,
I don't know.
Interviewer: Even before we had the Civil Rights Act?
Bynum: Oh yes.
Interviewer: We were doing this on our own?
Bynum: We were. And we had a lot of criticism
from some of our sister Federal agencies. As a matter of fact,
the Internal Revenue Service in two or three locations-and one
of them was the Atlanta District of the of the Internal Revenue
Services--said, "Hey you're just ruining our reputation,
ruining our image by the actions that you are calling attention
too." But it brought about the necessary changes, at least
in process and procedure, not necessarily in the hearts of men
and women. But it brought about the changes that were required.
So again, referring to what we've been talking about at this
particular meeting, I couldn't help but reflect on that and also
on what Medicare helped to do-to really break down the walls and
barriers and bring about much better relationships, with or without
the Civil Rights Act. Although Medicare itself is built on the
Civil Rights Act, we had that included in the law, but we certainly
didn't have that included in the basic Social Security Act to
begin with.
Interviewer: All right, let me take you back then to the
time when you left Selma and came to Central Office in 1955. You
were with the Bureau of District Office Operations (BDOO) in various
staff positions for several years?
Bynum: Except it was called the Division of
Field Operations then, because the Bureau was still in existence-the
Bureau of Old Age and Survivors Insurance.
Interviewer: One of the things that you worked on was some
of the planning for the 1956 Amendments, which was the disability
program. Tell me a little bit about that what your role was and
what was going on in the Agency around the 1956 Amendments.
Bynum: Okay. We were still located in downtown
Baltimore. The Division of Accounting Operations was down on the
harbor in an old building, the Candler Building. The administrative
offices of the Bureau were in the Equitable Building, which is
right downtown. And in a couple of the surrounding buildings we
had some offices at that point too. My role at that particular
point was to head up the training and staff development for the
Division Field Operations. Interestingly enough, I was talking
with Bill Fullerton--who is here and on the agenda for this meeting--
and Bill was one of the people who was assigned to me, one of
the five who were working on the training and staff development
for all the field offices around the country at that time. We
were as busy as can be with all kinds of training activities-bringing
people in from the field for the kind of training that we talked
about earlier. But also for training the trainers, if you will,
in connection with the disability amendments, like the "disability
freeze," which we had to begin with. You are not old enough
to know about that, but you've read about it.
Interviewer: Yes, I've read about it.
Bynum: For a couple of years the law simply
provided that if a person became disabled then we would not count
the time that he was disabled against him or her in terms of calculating
his benefits or in terms of calculating the insured status. So
it really was just a freeze. Then it didn't take Congress but
a couple of years or so to realize that was not really doing all
that much so disability benefits were passed--by a one-vote margin,
I believe, or something like that. And off we went on that particular
program as well.
At that time we created a separate division for Disability, DDO,
the Division of Disability Operations. Art Hess-who subsequently
became Deputy Commissioner of SSA and has been very prominent
in Social Security matters over the years--was made the head of
that particular operation, I believe. We spent a great deal of
time, at the Headquarters level, trying to cope with the changes
that were brought about by the disability program. Meanwhile,
we still had new areas of coverage, that we talked about earlier--the
self-employed, State and local government employees. Professionals
finally came in, doctors, and attorneys and others like that.
Keep in mind, too, that we had just moved in the early 1950s--really
about the time I moved from Selma, Alabama into Baltimore--we
just moved from what was essentially a paper-record process of
all the earnings records of people around the country, to the
early stages of the use of the computer. IBM actually had a facility
at Social Security Headquarters where they were working on their
processes.
Interviewer: Like a test-bed?
Bynum: Yes, like a test-bed, that's right. In
that day we probably had about as sophisticated a record-keeping
and computer system and telecommunications system as any organization.
Maybe the CIA or some of the others had something a little better,
I don't know. But I think the organization moved along very rapidly
in that respect--and again I am jumping around--but when we built
the new facility in Baltimore to house the computer process and
all the records processes it was a five or six or seven story
building and all of the space was really needed to house the equipment
and the people. It is my understanding that now most of that building
is used for other purposes because of the enhancements that have
been made by the industry in terms of telecommunications and record-keeping
and all of that.
Interviewer: So when we put in that first electronic system
that was a major event?
Bynum: Oh yes, it was.
Interviewer: Even traumatic in some ways for people, because
it was such a change of how we had done business and what our
procedures had been. Is that right?
Bynum: That is absolutely correct. It did not
affect, in a real sense, those of us who were in the field operations
part of the business nearly as much as it did those in the Divisions
of Accounting Operations where the records were maintained. Even
after the computer was the basis for maintaining those records,
out in our field offices you simply got the wage record and you
could calculate it there--the benefits of the individual--and
send it back to what was then the Division of Claims Control,
later called Area Offices and Program Services Centers, for them
to calculate or recalculate and make sure that the field offices
had made the right decisions and made the right calculations.
And a lot of the record-keeping that we did to measure the quality
of work performed by the field offices was based on those "write
backs" that you got from your Area Office, or Payment Center,
as they were called at that time. If you got lots of those back,
then you knew that something was going wrong and some added training
was needed in a facility or in a group of facilities, or indeed
in all facilities. Sometimes you had to go to the Division of
Claims Control, as they subsequently became known, and argue-out
issues with them, because they simply were interpreting things
a little bit differently from what our training materials had
said to the field offices.
I filled several jobs after the one heading up the training operation
there in the Division of Field Operations. I took over the budget
shop. In fact, I think, probably even today, that I am the only
Budget Chief of the field operations that ever got cited by Congress
for over-spending our budget. That is a dubious claim to fame.
Interviewer: I can't resist that one. Tell us about that?
Bynum: Well, I always maintained, and I know
this is true, that it was not my negligence or anything else that
accounted for this. I took over the Budget Office about six weeks
before the end of the fiscal year. The previous individual, who
served as the Section Manager, was long since gone. He went to
an office in New York to manage. The die was already cast. So
while I was the one cited--Hugh McKenna and I were the ones cited--it
really came as a big surprise to me, because I was too new on
that job to know what was going on, but the damage had already
been done. It was the source of some embarrassment to a lot of
people around there that we had over-spent our budget. At that
time we didn't get a composite budget in the sense that we've
gotten in the last 25 or 30 years. It was a budget that was broken
down by Division and each Division Director. . .
Interviewer: So DFO over-spent it's budget, not the Agency?
Bynum: DFO, the one that I was responsible for,
over-spent its budget. So if you go back and look, I'm on record.
Interviewer: So that's one of your claims to fame?
Bynum: That's one of my claims to fame. And
I guess at that point I didn't know enough about the whole process
to worry that much about it. But it sure did embarrass, Oscar
Pogge, who was probably still around as the head of the entire
Bureau, and Hugh McKenna. They were really the ones that got cited,
but my name was mentioned over and over again in the citation
too.
Interviewer: By the way, for the 1956 Amendments and disability,
did we expand the number of offices to accommodate that? I know
we did when Medicare came, but did disability cause any expansion
in the field offices?
Bynum: Not very much. There was the usual process
of adding offices, which we did almost every year, maybe two or
three, perhaps 10 or 15, but no, there was no real expansion at
that stage.
Interviewer: At some point in this process, in this period
from 1955 to 1967, while you were in DFO, you became the first
Executive Assistant in DFO?
Bynum: Yes, I think in about 10 or 11 of the
jobs that I filled in my career, I was the first person in those
particular jobs, and this was one of them. The Bureau, and we
were a Bureau at that time, was headed by Hugh McKenna, whose
name I have mentioned so many times already in this discussion,
and Elmer "Pinky" Lupton who was the Deputy. We had,
I believe, four Divisions, because we were operating under the
Bureau structure. So we had a Division of Management, and Programs,
and so on. So we decided, it was decided, that with all the staff
there, and with the added staff that we were putting out in the
Regions, that the position of Executive Assistant was needed to
help in the front office to make sure that everything was done
on a timely basis and all those kind of good things. I reviewed
most of the work there that came out of the Divisions and stayed
in that job for about, I think about a year-and-a-half, or maybe
two, I can't remember exactly. I then became the Chief for the
Management Branch at the time when we only had two Branches, or
two Divisions within the Bureau. And I served that way for quite
a period time.
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Mr. Bynum at his desk, date unknown.
SSA History Archives. |
Interviewer: Now one other big event of course during this
period was Medicare in 1965, which we've mentioned earlier. How
did that impact on BDOO and SSA?
Bynum: Well, of course at that point, all the
health insurance business was a part of SSA. By that time we had
set up Assistant Regional Commissioners in the 10 Regions. So
we had a different structure out in the field with the Bureau
of District Office Operations having one of the units out there,
the Regional Representative for District Operations. So we organized
around that kind new structure.
I happened to be in Atlanta at the Regional Conference at the
time the reorganization was brought into place. Bob Ball called
me and told me that he would like for me to make the announcement
to the Regional Conference of what the new changes would be and
what the setup was to be. So he went over them with me and I announced
it to the Conference. And there were one or two people there who
no longer had Bureaus for offices, they were abolished under the
reorganized structure, which made for a little bit of excitement
at the time too.
But we did a lot of the work in connection with the coming of
Medicare. People signing up for Medicare changed our whole public
information thrust to making sure that people did come in and
apply for benefits whether they were actually going to retire
or not, to be sure that they were eligible for Medicare payments,
even if they were still working. We were the only structure that
was dealing with Medicare at the time, and we set-up a Bureau
of Health Insurance, that was part of this reorganized structure.
They set the policy of payments and all that kind of stuff, and
worked closely with our Regional people in the field to come up
with the carriers and intermediaries that actually handled the
Medicare payments in the field. But the District Office was still
the only real point of contact for all the issues that Medicare
brought to us--for handling all the program responsibilities and
any help with claims filing, the whole smear. We were the only
presence out there, long before the Health Care Financing Administration
was formed.
So we worked closely with the Bureau of Health Insurance. Art
Hess helped us get the health insurance program under way, just
as he did with the disability program, by heading up that particular
Bureau, a name well-known throughout Social Security in the early
history, and later history too, as far as that is concerned. But
in any event, everyone of these things that happened put us in
an operating mode-- us being all of Social Security--where you
could no longer make your own decisions. In the glory days of
the field division of SSA-- when I first went to Baltimore-- for
other than the claims policy issuances, which were in a Claims
Manual, you were your own boss--I mean you didn't have all these
other offices and programs and concerns to coordinate with and
to work with. You made the decisions and you sent out the directives
and those things were done or not done.
Interviewer: Let me see if I understand, because I think
this is an important point. In that early time, the BFO was the
heart of the Agency, in the sense that you were driving both the
policy and the operation. It was more than just an operating component.
Bynum: Yeah, it really was. I'm sure in the
organizational manuals of that day it was an operating component.
But you had three principle players at that time, outside of the
Bureau Director, Oscar Pogge and company. You had BFO, and you
had the Division of Claims Control, which was the Payments Centers;
and then you had the record-keeping operation, which was DAO,
the Division of Accounting Operations. There were some other staff
offices. But essentially, what we said went for the field operations;
and what the people in the Division of Claims Control said went
for the Payment Centers, the area offices; and what Joe Fay--who
was with the organization from the very beginning, who set up
the Division of Accounting Operations--what he and his staff said,
controlled the record-keeping operations there. As we added disability,
as we added health insurance, as we added Supplemental Security
Income, all these other programs as they came along this just
made the need for--the absolute necessity, just not the need,
but the absolute necessity--for coordination and working with
other Divisions and other Bureaus, as they were subsequently called.
It was just absolutely necessary.
Interviewer: Two points about the Conference. First, let
me make sure that when Medicare came in we did expand the number
of offices, is that right?
Bynum: Yes we did. Large numbers of offices
were added at that point. And then again when SSI came in we went
up another bunch.
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Bob Bynum in official Agency portrait, 11/5/69.
SSA History Archives. |
Interviewer: We're going to talk about SSI later. But let
me ask you a general question about of the management challenges
SSA has faced over the years. It seems to me that in the initial
implementation of the 1950 Amendments, the expansions of coverage
in the early 1950s, the disability program, and Medicare, that
the Agency responded to them successfully and that we were able
to accommodate those challenges and sort of rise to the occasion
and that our reputation was more or less untarnished. That changed
with SSI, we stumbled with SSI, uniquely for the first time, in
a way that we had not stumbled with disability and Medicare. Is
that accurate in your view?
Bynum: It certainly is, Larry. I received a
Distinguished Service Award from the Secretary of the Department,
Caspar "Cap" Weinberger. I was head of the Bureau of
Field Operations at that time, including all the District Offices.
I received the highest award that the Department can give, for
the successful implementation of SSI. I have used that as a case
study.
Since retirement I've done some work for the Office of Personnel
Management in their Executive Development Seminar Center out in
Denver, where high-level federal executives come in for two or
three weeks. And I have served as the Father Confessor, the teacher,
the person running some of those seminars. And I've used that
particular episode as a case-study in asking these federal executives,
and would-be federal executives, a variety of questions about
what happened and what went wrong. And after we've had that half-day
of discussions, I tell them just what I've told you. That here
in a special ceremony, two or three of us received this highest
Commendation that you could get from the Department, and yet you
characterized it exactly correctly. It wasn't a fiasco by any
stretch of the imagination, but those were very, very difficult
days for us in Social Security, for two reasons.
We had built our confidence on all those other things you mentioned.
We could do it and do the job right, which had been what was happening
all along. So perhaps we were a little bit too cocky, and I don't
mean just us in the Field Division, I mean SSA as a whole, and
indeed the Department. That was one issue.
The major issue though, was that in the legislation passed by
Congress we did not get quite the clout that we really needed
in terms of dealing with the States. You know this, but maybe
for historical purposes, some of the people would not. We didn't
just setup the SSI program. What we did was bring in 50 State
programs, into a single system. And the records kept by some of
the States were atrocious. None of them were very good, and all
of them had to be brought into this single new system--which had
different criteria and different standards, and different payment
levels in the individual States--into this single Federal system.
On top of that, we have particular problems with a number of
the States, including some of the very largest, like the State
of California Cap Weinberger was our Secretary at that point,
and he'd come out of California, and he knew something about the
complexity of the situation out there. I remember he met with
us, with Bob Ball and several of us, just before we went "live"
with SSI to see whether or not we really wanted to. We had the
option of delaying for a year the inclusion of any of the States
if we felt that was necessary. We said, "No, we can handle
it." But Cap was concerned about that at the time. He wasn't
so sure that we could, I guess. And besides some of the State
people had pressured him a bit too about whether or not we were
ready to do all these kind of things.
But anyhow, the complexity of the 50 programs that we brought
in and had to meld them into a single one; the inadequacy of the
their records; and frankly, the antagonism among the States--not
all of them, some of them were very glad to get rid of the job,
but a number of the States, we were convinced, went out of their
way to make the transition difficult, not easy, but difficult--and
it was indeed difficult. We had hundreds of thousands of people
paid the wrong amounts--generally overpayments. And all kinds
of other things, checks not getting out on time. And we set up
systems to rush checks out for all of that.
The Bureau of Data Processing--as it was called by that time,
the old Division of Accounting Operations--simply could not cope
with the record-keeping requirements that were laid on them as
a result of bringing these 50 plans in and making them into one
plan.
We set up a Bureau of Supplemental Security Income (BSSI). Sumner
Whittier, who had some experience in the Federal Government and
otherwise with these kinds of programs, was named the Director
of that Bureau. Their role was to simply develop policy. Our role
in the Field Operation, which I was heading up at that time, and
in the Data Processing Operation, was to implement it, to make
it work.
Now of course we took hundreds of thousands of new applications,
because our rules were much more liberal than the rules had been
in some of the States. We also at the same time agreed--in about
16 or 18 of the States--to handle their supplemental payments.
Because, again using California as an example, their payment level
was considerably higher, as a State program, than the new Federal
SSI program provided. And so law provided for us to take on the
role of paying the State supplement in addition to the other benefits
we were paying under the Federal law.
So all of that put together, just made for a very, very hectic
two years. We had the media in almost all of the time. I know
one of the writers-- I think that he was hoping to win some kind
of a prize, Pulitzer or otherwise--called several of the "Barons
of Woodlawn"--which was where the Central Office was located,
and all those decrees that we put out and all that kind of good
stuff.
It was an exciting time. It was a fun time too. But it was exciting
and very frustrating too for many of our Field Managers and Field
Office staffs. I tried to get out to as many of those as I could
during those days and literally for the first time we had to hire
guards for some of the offices for crowd control.
For example, I went into New York city, the downtown office.
They were just over-run with people testing the system, you know
filing a claim thinking "oh hey, we can make it under this
one." Several of our managers had some real serious health
problems, because again, they had previously been able to cope
with everything and now they couldn't.
Bob Ball, who had been our Commissioner for a number of years
and the recognized expert on Social Security issues--not just
in this country, I think, but around the world--was relieved of
his position by President Nixon, who called in all of the political
appointments that were made when he began his second term. He
just decided to replace them, quite a number of them, and Bob
Ball did not continue. So we had a new crew of people coming in,
and that--up until today--became a point of difficulty, I think,
for all of the senior staff and even the other staffs within Social
Security.
Interviewer: The turn-over in leadership?
Bynum: The turn-over in leadership, yes. All
of them were very smart people. In fact, that might have made
it worse, I don't know. Because they would come in with at least
some preconceived notions of what needed to be done. It reminded
you a little bit of the Freshmen Republicans in Congress this
year. I mean they came in with a very definite push to get certain
things done, and I'm sure that some of these individuals in talking
with the President had their missions outlined for them; you need
to do this or you need to do that, or you need to do the other.
And so that added to the confusion of the whole process. Fortunately,
at the second level below the Commissioner--and the Commissioner
at that point was the only political appointee we had--below that
level we had, for the most part, experienced people who had been
with the organization for some period of time.
Let me digress for just a minute. I consider myself particularly
fortunate for having come into the organization when I did, and
for having the experiences that I had with the first leadership
team of Social Security. Many of them were the ones that started
the whole "shebang" and were still there. One was Hugh
McKenna. Joe Fay, whom I've mentioned. Ewell Bartlett, who headed
up the Policy Division and helped set policy. Alvin David. Art
Hess, who was around. Just a whole number of people at the top
level. Oscar Pogge, whom I mentioned earlier, who had started
the Bureau and who had built into the organization a sense that
we are in the public service business and we are going to do this
job in the way that best benefits the public. They were all still
there. I had the opportunity--one of the very few people, really,
who is still around--who had the opportunity to serve in a fairly
significant role while these people were there to be viewed, with
their sense of mission and purpose for the Social Security Administration.
And to learn from them, and to listen--just as we are doing with
this tape--to listen to their stories about the kinds of things
that we had gone through over all the years.
One of the deputies that I had mentioned earlier, Pinky Lupton,
had been with the organization from its very beginning. He came
out of Kansas and into Headquarters pretty earlier on in the Field
Operation. I've said many times that in terms of new ideas and
dealing with related issues, Pinky may not have been the most
innovative, but boy he knew what wouldn't work from his 20 or
25 years--by the time he became my Deputy, when I became his boss--he
knew where we had gone astray and where things went wrong in the
past and could counsel on that and was very helpful in that respect.
But again, the opportunity to be in that in-between situation,
where I had the old experienced heads, and then I, along with
two or three others, perhaps, were able to capture that and then
to move on and to bring along the people who have subsequently
provided the leadership for Social Security, was something just
very special.
Interviewer: We need to go back. We skipped a step in your
career that I didn't want to skip. So we need to go back to 1967
for a minute when you became the Regional Assistant Commissioner
of Atlanta, tell me about that.
Bynum: Yes, the best years of my Social Security
life probably. The Regional Assistant Commissioner job and it
was subsequently re-titled, while I was there, to Regional Commissioner,
which is what it should have been all along. Jack Futterman gave
it its title and Jack was for a long time the head of the Division
of Management--the Associate Commissioner for Management, depending
on where we were at any given time. He came up with a title because
he didn't want anybody to usurp the title, if you will, of Commissioner.
He thought Regional Commissioner was going to almost be in the
same league with the Commissioner of Social Security. So my understanding
is that he convinced Bob Ball that we ought to at least be Regional
Assistant Commissioners. So that's what I was for about a year
or two there, but then for most of the time I spent in Atlanta
I was the Regional Commissioner, with responsibility for the eight
southern States. I would say the southeastern States, seven or
eight thousand employees.
The Regional Commissioner had semi-aligned responsibilities for
supervision of the various Regional Representatives--Health Insurance,
Disability Insurance, Field, etc., but not really direct line
responsibility. They were responsible, first of all, in terms
of line direction, from their Bureau head or their Associate Commissioner
back in Baltimore. And the Regional Commissioner job was more
a coordinating job of making sure that the program worked, you
were the person out front in terms of being the spokesman for
the organization, you were active in the community of Atlanta
and throughout the Southeast, as far as that is concerned, in
terms of really being "Mr. Social Security". And you
could pick and choose among the things that you felt were most
important to do in the areas that you felt you needed to influence
the most, because you didn't have that line responsibility.
So it was happy years, and a great
staff in Atlanta. Gordon Sherman, the present Regional Commissioner,
was one of the persons working for me at the time. I subsequently
made him Deputy when the opportunity arose, and then by that
time, when I was leaving, I was in a position to make sure
that he became the Regional Commissioner following me, and
a number of other Regional Commissioners I appointed, of course,
at that time. But it really was a great experience.
It was during that time too, or shortly after that time, I
was able to select a group, take a delegation, to the Soviet
Union, looking at their social security system. And a couple
of other places. And to entertain people coming in from other
places as well. It was just a very pleasant time. Atlanta
was a good city to live in, not nearly as crowded as it's
going to be with the Olympics this year. |
|
Bynum in April 1967 around the time of his appointment
as Regional Assistant Commissioner in Atlanta. OASIS photo,
SSA History Archives. |
Interviewer: Okay, so now let's pick back up with your career
sequence. You came back to Baltimore in 1971 and ended up being
the Director of BDOO, is that right?
Bynum: Yes, that's correct.
Interviewer: Then there was a reorganization in 1975 and
we did something with the Bureau structure, not quite what happened
later, but you became the Associate Commissioner for Programs,
if I am correct?
Bynum: Yes.
Interviewer: What was that 1975 reorganization about? Was
that a significant change?
Bynum: It was a very significant change, again
relating to some of the things that we've already talked about,
with the increased complexity and increased numbers of programs-just
the size of the organization, in terms of numbers of facilities,
the numbers of employees and all those other kind of things. And
the importance of the programs with the Congress, with whoever
is occupying the White House at the time-- everything was increased,
really, to a significant degree.
So the decision was made to reorganize and to set-up a system
where you would have a single Deputy Commissioner, who turned
out to be Art Hess at the time. Stan Ross, who was active in social
insurance issues and still is active in some of these things around
different places, came in. We set-up the new organization and
they asked me if I would serve as Associate Commissioner for Program
Operations. That included supervision over all the operational
aspects, except the Division of Claims Control, and the Program
Service Centers. So that meant, I guess at the peak of all of
this, there were 70 thousand people reporting up through the lines
directly to me. So it was a major reorganization.
A number of staff-type Associate Commissioner offices were established
at that time too. So that you had a situation where again there
was an increase in the number of staff people at high levels reporting
to the Commissioner. That increased the problems of communication
across the board, as well as some of the other things some of
the earlier reorganizations had done.
And keep in mind too, Larry, that this was at a time when we
were still stumbling a bit and struggling a bit, as a result of
the SSI implementation, and people--the Congress, occasionally
the White House, and the media--were looking at us in a more critical
vein than they ever had. Also, the tax rate, or the Social Security
contribution rate, as we were prone to call it, rather than tax,
had increased, and the average citizen was saying "Hey, you
know, it's not $30 a year, which is the most that could be taken
from your wages for the first 14 years of Social Security, it's
not $30 or $100, it's a $1000 a year or maybe $2000." So
they began to be more aware of the impact of Social Security on
them; and the beneficiaries, likewise, because they were getting
increased benefits. So we were more the focus of scrutiny by all
kinds of people at that time than we had ever been before, which
made the job even more difficult.
A story I have told lots of people: we had a breakfast meeting
over at the Capitol, set up with some members of Congress who
were still concerned about the SSI program and some other things
as well. I explained to them what all we had done and the fact
that we had not lived up to our estimates of the number of SSI
recipients that we would be paying at the end of three years.
And about everything that the organization had done to get the
word out to try to get people to sign up, if they were entitled.
One member of Congress, who is still there, stood up at one point,
and he was seated most of the time, and pointed his finger at
me and said "Mr. Bynum, so long as there is one person anywhere
in this country who is entitled to SSI payments and not getting
them, you're not doing your job." And I said, "Yes sir."
I knew it was no point in arguing with him at that stage of the
game.
But anyhow, the scrutiny really did become much, much greater.
Our budget, where it had been in millions and hundred of millions,
was up in the $2 billion range. And the fact that almost every
year-or at least every two or three years--we would improve our
administrative costs as a percentage of total intake, was not
all that significant to them. Because even so, we are talking
about two or three billion dollars, and while we were doing the
programs for less than one percent of the intake or the payout,
either one, it was still a pretty sizable hunk of money.
Interviewer: You mentioned something that was an interesting
aspect of what Stan Ross did in his 1979 reorganization. One of
the consequences of what he put in place was that more people
were reporting directly to the Commissioner. And I think that
he did that deliberately, if I understand him, because he wanted
that control. How did you see that work out? Did it pan out the
way Stan Ross hoped it would or was it more problematic than you
thought?
Bynum: I think it was more problematic. How
he tried to compensate for that, Larry, and how he did compensate
for it, was to bring in quite a few additional staff people reporting
directly to him. They served in a very special relationship with
him. Several of them were people he had known all along, maybe
from his law firm days, and other times too, but people who knew
him and would want to do exactly what he wanted to do. He brought
them in to serve as sort of an intermediate point between those
of us who were Associate Commissioners and himself. And they took
some of the load from him because he trusted them completely--not
necessarily in terms of their knowledge of SSA, but their knowledge
of what he was attempting to do at the time.
At that time, when Stan came in, I moved from where I was, into
a Deputy Commissioner alignment. And the Deputy role that I played
at that point was not dealing with operations, but dealing with
Program Policy and everything else other than operations.
Interviewer: Before we go to that, there are a couple of
other things that I want to cover first. One of the things you
said just caused me to think about something. You mentioned earlier
the fact that the tradition at SSA was for the Commissioner to
be a political appointee, and not many other folks were. What
you just described with Stan Ross sounds to me like one of the
things that he did was to bring in more political types from the
outside and in some sense began a process of more politicizing
the Agency than it had been in the past. Is that correct?
Bynum: That is exactly correct, yes. I don't
even know what the current situation is.
Interviewer: The trend has not diminished. It continues to
this day.
Bynum: I am sure that there are many, many more
that are really political appointees, and by definition are. I
don't really have a problem with that as long as the individual
who comes in is aware enough of the complexity of the program
with which he or she is dealing and will surround themselves with
people who have experience in running the program. And I think--there
may have been one or two exceptions, three or four exceptions
over several decades--but I think the people of SSA were so inculcated
with the desire to get the job done and to do it right and to
serve the public that they wouldn't be that Machiavellian and
try to lead the new political appointee astray. They would do
all they could to advise and counsel and make sure that things
went in the right direction. And sometimes our ideas, those of
us that were with the organization a long time, would not be the
best ideas and they should be countermanded, no question about
that. But on basic issues, the new person coming in, and in particular
the new person coming in who knows he or she is only going to
be around for only a couple of years, needs to proceed with some
degree of caution. They see it, though, as proceeding with a great
deal of urgency, because they are only going to be around two
or three years. So, whatever they see as the need to get done,
they will try to do.
Interviewer: The next thing that I want to talk to you a
little bit about is the 1977 reorganization when HCFA was created
and the Bureau of Health Insurance was removed from SSA. That
was a major change, a major reorganization?
Bynum: It was indeed, because up until that
time we were health insurance; I mean, we ran that program completely.
You had the Bureau of Health Insurance and, subsequently, an Associate
Commissioner for Health Insurance. However, when HCFA was created
and established and set up in one of our buildings there in Woodlawn,
which they still occupy.
Interviewer: Not anymore. Last year they moved into their
own building.
Bynum: No fooling? Okay.
Interviewer: Big new building.
Bynum: So that building that stands by the Administration
building is back with SSA?
Interviewer: Yes.
Bynum: Well okay, that's progress I guess. In
any event that made quite a change. And initially was a source
of, as you know, of some conflict. What made the transition easier
was that for the most part the early HCFA was made up of SSA people.
They just moved over and had a different boss, but they were SSA
people, who knew the total program-- many of them did. And they
knew that they were going to need to continue to work very closely
with the SSA staff. My impression is that is still the case. There
is a close working relationship. I hope that is the case, because
the organizations really are so intertwined in terms of a number
of things that they do. But it did complicate the process, just
a bit, in terms of policy and procedure and coordination, and
lots of other things to have them as a separate agency.
Interviewer: Now was there some issue or some debate or some
discussion about the impact of this upon the people in SSA and
in the Bureaus that remained? I have seen memos where there was
discussion of downgrading some Bureaus and there was some debate
about that. In fact, I've seen your name on some of those memos.
Do you recall that? Was that a significant issue?
Bynum: Well the issue, if you talking about
a issue where I got pretty strident with some of my suggestions
and complaints, was back in the earlier reorganization, when we
first set up the Associate Commissioner for Program Operations.
I had been Associate Commissioner over Regional Commissioners
and then when they setup the Deputy Commissioner for Operations,
I was still to be, in a sense, in charge of the Regional Commissioners,
but the responsibility for line management was coming from this
other job, which I subsequently moved into after Hugh McKenna
retired. But there was a period of time of several months where
we were really floundering and the Commissioner did not just to
resolve it say "this is the way we are going to go."
I still wanted to be the boss of the Regional Commissioners and
the regional operation. On the other hand, as it turned out, that
was not the idea. The person who filled my particular role in
the new structure, the role that I had been filling, was to be
a staff person--almost a staff person--to this new Deputy that
was being setup.
But I also had a lot of interplay with the Commissioner, and
with the Office of Management, and a number of others too, as
we went along. I can't recall if it was specifically the 1977
organization or not, but having some pretty strong feelings about
organizational direction and how to avoid any more confusion out
in the field where the public is served directly, than we could
help. So I staked myself out pretty firmly in that respect. I
guess then after I was made Deputy Commissioner and Associate
Commissioner for Program Operations, then I was kind of arguing
against myself at that point.
Interviewer: Okay. In the 1979 reorganization you became
a Deputy Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner for Programs. What
was that job? In recent years we've had a job titled that, but
I'm not sure if it is the same function.
Bynum: Well, the Program Policy-setting operations
came under my jurisdiction at that point. By that time I was in
a position where I was seriously considering retirement. My wife
Norma had major brain surgery at Johns Hopkins in 1975. She had
enough of other things that had happened to her, and we concluded
that since I was now eligible for retirement, not because of any
unhappiness about the work or anything like that, but I had concluded
that I really ought to get out of this stressful kind of situation
where I was away a good deal of the time and everything else.
It was just time to make that kind of a move. So in talking, I
think again it was with Stan Ross at that time, about the situation
and he first said, "Bob I'll set you up as a Special Assistant
to the Commissioner." Well, I didn't want any part of the
Special Assistant to the Commissioner because that's a dead job.
So I said "No, that won't do, I'll just go ahead and hasten
my retirement rather than take on that kind of a role." I
think I could have been helpful to him.
As it turned out, he was really very appreciative, for the period
of time that he was there, of the support that I was able to give
him. Because, I was about the only one left that had been there
for a long time in that position of responsibility. When he talked
with folks in the White House and Bob Ball and a number of others,
they, as he told me later, they clearly told him you had better
keep Bob on the staff in some capacity and not let him retire
until you've gone through a period of time. So we set-up the two
Deputies, one for Operations and one for Programs. Since I had
been for several years in operations, it was perfectly all right
with me to take the other role, which meant dealing more with
the Congress and with the White House and with Washington instead
of the operational end.
Interviewer: The first time in your career, really, that
you made that break from being in operations?
Bynum: Yes it was. I had been in operations
the whole time, although filling some staff positions along the
way, like training, the budget, and that kind of thing. I enjoyed
those couple of years very much. I did spend a great deal of time
on the road back and forth between Baltimore and Washington. Sometimes
the driver would transport me three times a day to some kind of
a meeting the Secretary had, or someone else was having, or over
to see some member of Congress and then back to the office in
Baltimore. And we had offices in both places, here in the Altmeyer
Building and in Washington too. But I think it was a good ending,
Larry, really, for my career. I was by that point the senior career
person, maybe not in chronological years, but certainly in terms
of experience in the organization. And I felt that I could be
quite helpful in these transitional times that were taking place,
with Commissioners beginning to come and go, and with the other
kinds of changes that were taking place.
Interviewer: That 1979 reorganization that Stan Ross did
was kind of the "atomic bomb" of reorganizations at
SSA, and it created this functional organizational structure,
and got us away, completely, from the Bureau structure, or remnants
of whatever was left of the Bureau structure.
Bynum: And I guess that is pretty close to where
we are today. Is it?
Interviewer: Yes. It hasn't changed yet. We have the functional
structure still in place. It's been, you know, tinkered with at
the edges, but it's the same basic structure. I still hear people
complaining about that reorganization today--years later.
Bynum: If you talk with a lot of people who
left the organization at that time, many did simply because they
were moved from one operation to another, one staff role to another--numbers
of people retired at that point, numbers of people who were eligible.
I guess, in retrospect, beyond the health issues that I mentioned
relating to my wife, probably one of the reasons that I retired,
I felt at the time, under that arrangement--and again I was the
Deputy for Programs and all that kind of stuff at that point--I
felt at the time that my influence was no longer needed or could
be as fully utilized as otherwise had been the case. Stan apparently
did not feel that way at all. But I guess in one sense, Larry,
getting out of operations into program planning, that kind of
operation, is quite a change. I guess just that kind of a change
made me realize that maybe it would be a good time to move on
out.
Although at the time, Joe Califano was being replaced as Secretary
of HEW--Joe had brought Stan in as Commissioner--and Stan Ross
was leaving at the same time, they asked me to stay. Stan talked
to me on two or three occasions about, "Don't retire now
Bob, because you know there's got to be some interest in you being
Commissioner of Social Security." And I said, "Well,
we have made that decision." And the fact of the matter is
I really was not interested in being Commissioner of Social Security.
It probably would never have happened anyhow. So I just set that
aside. Then when I knew that the Commissioner that was coming
in had been the former head of the Veteran's Administration--I
didn't know him that well--but I felt we probably couldn't do
any better than to have someone who has had that kind of in-depth
experience and he'll do a fine job. But it turned out, I think,
that for the most part it was to be a kind of a holding-operation,
because that was the election year (1980) and Bill Driver only
stayed a year and he was gone. And if I had agreed, and if I had
been designated, it probably would have been in the same situation
with me too.
Interviewer: Just three more questions and then we're done.
I want you to give me your assessment of the Bureau structure
as opposed to that functional organization, because you worked
most of your career under the Bureau structure and you saw the
functional organization get put in place. I would be interested
in your assessment of what worked better. Do you think that we
lost something when we left the Bureau structure?
Bynum: Yes, I think we lost something. I think
the main thing that was lost is that under the old structure most
people clearly understood where their instructions were coming
from, where their marching orders, if you will, were coming from
and who they were primarily responsible to for the job that they
were to do. I never did see under the new structure, that, that
was the case. In fact, there were things built into the new structure
to make sure, if you will, that was not the case. While you had
a Deputy for Operations and you still had the Commissioner, who
was the boss of everyone, having everyone responsible to a whole
host of people, once you get below the Commissioner level, I just
didn't think it was a better way to go. And I still don't, but
keep in mind Larry, that I left in January of 1980, with only
limited experience under that type of structure. Unfortunately,
the organization since that time has had so much turnover in the
Commissioner's position, and also in other high-level positions,
as you mentioned earlier, because they brought in many more people
and made many more changes than they did in the older and simpler
days.
|
Bynum in late 1979, shortly before his retirement. OASIS
photo, SSA History Archives. |
Interviewer: Well that's a good segue to my ultimate question.
Before I turned the tape recorder on, I was telling you that one
of the people I worked for briefly, and whom I admire very much,
Herb Doggette, used to say to me that you were one of his role
models and that he looked to you to learn how to be a good manager.
You were the model of what a good manager in SSA was. So I want
you to tell me a little bit about what your philosophy of management
was. What was a good SSA manager to you? How was it that you were
able to inspire Herb?
Bynum: Herb is so wise. Herb is a great individual,
and again, before we started taping, I said to you that he reminds
me so much in appearance, and the way he talks, of Colin Powell,
and he really does. He has youngsters, incidentally, who have
attended school, as did he, in Huntsville, Alabama. So, I maintained
a little bit of a connection with him even after I retired. I've
also gone out, while he was still in Social Security, and made
talks and different things like that for him.
Yesterday, one of the Regional people here, the Regional Commissioner,
as a matter of fact, Noel Wall, said that one of the things that
he had based his career on came from a talk that I had given at
a Regional Conference back, oh I don't know, 25 years ago. It
probably would have been in the SSI days, where one of the managers
got up and said, "What we are dealing with now is just unmanageable."
And I said, in response to that, "That's not true, everything
is manageable. You can manage sometimes to a better result than
other times, but I don't want to hear any talk about things being
unmanageable."
I really believe that and I think that the whole attitude that
permeated SSA over all the years, and I hope still does today,
is that the work can be managed. At times it's awfully hectic
and it's very difficult, and it's harder on some individuals than
others, but the workload can be managed.
The other bit of philosophy that I've built my life around, I
guess, for the most part is, that people can be trusted and relied
on to do the job that has to be done. If you provide that sense
to them that you believe in them and that they will get the job
done, if they understand what the job is to be, then they'll get
the job done. If you're yelling and screaming at them and telling
them "You are sure messing that up, or you are not doing
that right," then pretty soon they will mess it up and not
do it right. But if your expectations are high, or the people
that you work with, at your peer level, or those who work for
you at a lower level, that they care that much about public service,
they are going to do the right thing and work hard to get it done.
They'll do it.
So I guess those two things: anything is manageable and trust
the people and expect them to do their very best. Meanwhile, try
to do your best as well, I guess would be a pretty good statement
about my management philosophy.
Interviewer: All right, last question. Just to give you a
chance to tell me how you feel about your SSA career and sort
of sum it up for me. Was it a rewarding career? A fulfilling career?
Are you glad that you did it?
Bynum: Al Kuhle, who was Regional Representative
in Chicago, he was Regional Representative for BDOO--I can't remember
exactly when Al retired--said when we had a little retirement
get-together for him "Short of having entered the Priesthood,
I can think of no other calling that would have had the same excitement
and meaning for me other than Social Security." And I guess
I feel the same way.
When I told my dad back in 1948, I was in school at the University
of Alabama, that I had taken a civil service test and they had
offered me job with Social Security--he was a small contractor,
independent, going to take care of himself and all of that kind
of stuff--he said, "Well, I know what you are doing is right
for you Bob," but he said, "I don't really think it's
the right way for you to go." He didn't think that Social
Security was going to be there and besides that, the Government
had no business doing some of the kinds of things like, taking
your money and taking care of you in later years.
But boy, that didn't turn out to be the case for me at all. The
experiences that I had, the opportunities that I had--forget the
work for a minute--just to travel and just to meet all kinds of
people at State and local levels, at other countries, like taking
the delegation to the Soviet Union and their training people that
came from there, the connections that I still have anywhere I
go. . . Larry, almost anywhere I go, someone will come up to me,
even today, and this is after 15 years, and say, "Hey Mr.
Bynum, I know that you don't remember me, but I'm so and so."
And of course most of the time I don't remember them, but some
of the time I do after they have told me who they were and what
the connection was. But that is true in every place that I go
anywhere in the country today and spend a little bit of time,
there will be someone who recognizes me and expresses their, it
sounds terribly immodest, but expresses their appreciation to
me for what I've done in the years that I was with the Social
Security Administration, and the contacts I had with them.
And that's pretty good stuff. That's good stuff.
Interviewer: Thanks. |