Richard Gaines and Jessica Gaines

[00:02] RICHARD GAINES: My name is Richard Gaines I'm age 76. Today's date is October 15, 2023. The location is St. Louis, Missouri. The name of my interview partner is Jessica Gaines Mason. Relationship to partner is. She is my granddaughter.

[00:20] JESSICA GAINES: My name is Jessica Gaines I am 33. Today is October 15, 2023, in St. Louis, Missouri. I am interviewing my grandfather, Richard Gaines Okay. I'm really excited to do this. I'm really happy that we're doing this. So I feel like we talk pretty often, and we've had quite a few conversations about more. I would say more. I've heard a lot of stories about you growing up. I've heard stories that have been specific to different points that I've been in my life, advice you might give based on where I am in my life or decision that I have to make. But there are some questions that I don't think are just answered in everyday dialogue. So I'll start with a few questions, if that's okay. What have been some of the happiest moments in your life?

[01:29] RICHARD GAINES: Hmm. It's a good one. Your birth was one of them in terms of having to go all the way down to Florida and bring. And put you and your mom on a plane to get you back home, I guess the birth of your mother and your aunt, now my great granddaughter, both wives. I guess the first time that between you and I, I guess the first time I saw you back in St. Louis after the harrowing trip that your grandmother and I and your aunt went on to get you back or to get back here after your birth, I think you're going to high school and getting out of high school. Some of the things I've seen you do over the years, particularly with what you're doing now, in terms of having become a little bit more stable and going into business for yourself and fighting those kinds of things that you normally have to deal with, that's been exciting. Some of the travels. I always remember when we went to Puerto Rico and you were a little bitty girl. How excited you were and everybody, the whole family was and how y'all wanted to put your mother out because she snored. I don't know. Those things. I guess the personal things, more so than anything else. The rest of the things that you get in life are just, you know, bonuses, but the things that really matter, those. Those times that you're with people that you know you won't always be with. That's been good for me.

[03:42] JESSICA GAINES: What about the happiest moments in your career?

[03:48] RICHARD GAINES: Boy, that's a good one. I really guess the last, when I was directive up at bound at St. Louis University and we would have a graduation ceremony for the kids who were graduating high school and we were sending on to different colleges and I think that last graduation ceremony for them because it was so very important and special to them and each one of them, I had 110 of them and I had a special memory for each one and I'd see to it over the two years that I'd have a special memory for each one of them. And to see them choked up, I'm choked up, their parents choked up, the staff choked up, everybody's choked up like crazy, but it was very meaningful to them. I don't think I've ever done anything in business or from, from a vocational standpoint that was ever more enjoyable to me than those graduation exercises. I think you were one of them. Little bitty baby.

[05:06] JESSICA GAINES: Oh, that's something I always, or as I've been progressing in business I start to. You told me why insurance, you know, which was very like to take care of your family, but why education?

[05:28] RICHARD GAINES: Well, I went to school with the notion I was going to save the world. I'm a product of the sixties, so we, my first choice when I went to school was to be an organic chemist. But after 1965 and 66 came about many people my age who were in college began to see things that were social nature that were more important, I mean literally more important. We really thought we would change the world and we have, you know, as a group of people we really have to be away at school in a totally different environment. As you know, I went to school that was 99.9% white and I had graduated from Bishan, which was 99.9% black. So to go into that environment and to look in terms of what you do in the future, most of us ended up, a large number of us ended up at the undergraduate level dealing with old social service kinds of professions where we were all going to again come back and save the world. So that was extraordinarily important to me, the first 1st parts of my career or my life's careers. And so education ended up being one of the easiest things for me to deal with because I had so many beliefs about it and what it should be and what it could be and those sorts of things I was able to align myself with, I'm going to say options that allowed me to do a lot of the things that I wanted to see done from the standpoint again of saving the world.

[07:22] JESSICA GAINES: What can you name a few of.

[07:24] RICHARD GAINES: Those things well, I was fortunate enough when I came out of school to work in a program called, basically Neighborhood Youth Corps, my first professor job. And I was working with rural and urban kids in Iowa, relative to training, helping them to develop skill sets, professions, etcetera. And when I came home, I came home as director of community schools for downtown, the same neighborhood I grew up in, which was car square village and the projects and all of that, and to create programs to help that community realize some of its goals, to do things also for older people in that community, so that they would have options other than just sitting in their apartments. Those were good. Obviously. Upward bound, I thought was very important from purely going into a business, going into business. I truly wanted to become a real estate broker. And that was the first. My first choice. But I had two small kids, your mother being the oldest, and I think she might have been three or four or five, and you didn't get anything remotely resembling a salary from going into real estate. And I could not afford to do that. So insurance offered an opportunity for me to go into something akin to it. I always figured I'd come back out as a developer, to be quite honest. And until you walked in my office with these ideas that you came up with, I just figured that was going to be something of the past, and that's something I wouldn't do. Now I'm getting ready to come in here, and I'm on the phone talking with some people about funding and financing and all of that all the time. So those have been the major highlights and differences as we've gone through things.

[09:35] JESSICA GAINES: So would you. Would you say that you made the impact that you, you know, you talk about wanting to change the world. Would you say that you made the impact that you thought you would when you were younger? Do you think that the impact that you thought you would make when you were younger was, you know, like a. Like a. It wasn't a real goal to have. And do you feel like what you have done is more than what, realistically, if you had a, you know, if your equilibrium was right and you said, I want to change the world in this way, do you think that you've achieved that or succeed, surpassed that, or do you feel like you have more to do?

[10:30] RICHARD GAINES: I think my generation of people, both black and white, who became friends, yeah, I think we have done a great deal to change the world as a generation. Me personally pretty much confined to St. Louis. I think I've done some things that I'm very proud of. I think we've done. I've done things or been a part of doing things that nobody does anything by themselves. But I've been a part of some very significant changes in the city of St. Louis for the better, much of it being related to education and social justice in many regards. So some of it, yeah. Did I do everything I wanted to do? No, I never formally got involved in politics because I didn't see formal politics as being a true way of doing things. If I were thinking of it again, I might would change that opinion.

[11:41] JESSICA GAINES: Yeah. I think when we've talked in the past, the impression I got was that you weren't interested in politics and you felt like you could move freer in the spaces that you chose to operate. But it sounds like you're saying now.

[11:59] RICHARD GAINES: Well, when you get a little older and you look at a city like St. Louis in an area like this that has become so disinvested in and you know a little bit about investment philosophy and structure, I really think that the political end of that is just so important. And it's one thing to help other people realize goals of wanting to be a mayor or congressperson or whatever the case is, and to help them do that and then to try and do things through them. But it puts you in a secondary position. You're constantly, you know, there's no king. There are very few king makers anymore. So you're in a position where you're trying to get someone to do what they said they were going to do when they started out. And you find most people don't have the stomach to make the kind of decisions that go against the grain when they need to or when those kind of decisions have to be made. So you see a malaise, you see a lessening of structures that you think would make a difference for large numbers of people. That's been one of the reasons I've thought so much lately, in the last ten years, that maybe to have attempted to get more involved in the political arena on a direct basis, could have achieved more.

[13:33] JESSICA GAINES: What would you tell the younger version of yourself now? Having lived, experienced, all you have, what would you tell you?

[13:47] RICHARD GAINES: I tell my wife, your grandmother, to work harder, get a better job and support us. While I got involved more in real estate, I had a real opportunity with the largest black real estate broker in probably the history of the city until later times, who I work for on a part time basis, who wanted me to take over that firm when he retired. And by then I'd gone into education. If I'd stayed in real estate longer and had been able to figure out a way to do that and feed these children. I had. I think I would do that. On second thought, it was a way, I think, at this point in time, to have realized a lot of my dreams that were deferred. You know, I always had, in the back of my mind, I'm going to come back and do this. But coming back is hard. As you get older and life does more and more for you, it just gets hard. That's why it's important to me that you. That you take the hits that you take and that you continue to have to take to pursue what you see as your dream, very similar to mine. You know, I was taught to buy a full family flat and keep buying four family flats and keep renting out. Renting out. I didn't do that. Did it for a while. But when I got out of that environment, then what I was doing changed. So what you're doing and trying to do now is very important to you, and everything you do is important to me. So.

[15:41] JESSICA GAINES: I guess that you tell. You wouldn't go back and tell you anything. You'd go back and tell grandma to.

[15:49] RICHARD GAINES: Go back and tell her get a better job so she could support all of us until I can make this real estate stuff work. The hardest thing about it at the time, real estate was having its worst chance in the world. But I was working for a man who had bought up a huge volume of real estate in north city, and he needed someone young enough and smart enough to work along with him to do, really development. And I look back now, what could have been done with all of the property that he owned? He was probably the largest landowner, individual landowner in the city for years. Very few people knew that, but I did. He was. But if I had been smarter and I had understood that better, I would have stayed there and I would have learned from him. But I never thought I could afford it. I just thought I could not afford it. Sold my first house in U City, thought I was halfway rich. I think I made $216 in my cut. And that town is a whole lot of money. So I think we went out to dinner and had a whole lot of. You can even go to dinner with that now. But it was a whole lot of money then. But I think I would have stayed there. My parents did something for me from religion that I've always tried to do for you from the degree I could, and that was to not choose a religion for me, but say I had to go to church, I was going to be Christian, but I had to go to church every Sunday, but I could choose where. So I chose to be a Catholic. After going to every church in the neighborhood, I chose it. Probably not for the best reasons, but I chose it.

[17:44] JESSICA GAINES: What was the reason?

[17:45] RICHARD GAINES: Oh, it's crazy reasons. Mass was shorter. You didn't have to stay there as long. You didn't have to have a whole bunch of money, you know, in black churches. Hell, they closed the door and don't let you out until you give them some money. Catholics didn't do that. And the priests in my neighborhood were very, very important because they. And I know it was missionary work for them in certain regards, but they became a real part of the life of that neighborhood downtown, which was a poverty neighborhood, but they were not afraid. These were white priests, primarily white priests. There were one black priest at that time in the church, St. Nicholas, that I went to, and he was a recluse. The white priest ran everything. I mean, one of them was italian, and he was just my hero because he could fight. And when guys tried to challenge him, he fought them. Fighting priests flat out fought them. The young ones that thought they were gangsters, he wasn't afraid. So that was important. But I made the choice. If I was doing it again my age, would I make the same choice? Probably. But I was always given the right to make that choice. And for me, it's been important that you have the right, just as your mother and your aunt, that you have the right to make the choice. And it's my job to try and support that as best I can while I can.

[19:28] JESSICA GAINES: I appreciate that. I've gotten that. I would say that that's one thing that I really appreciate, is that you always give advice with a disclaimer. I'll never tell you what to do, but, you know, here's a. Some things to think about. Here's what I've done. So that means a lot. But I did want to ask, because you mentioned a couple key people that seem to have an impact on your life. The real estate developer, the priest. Who in your life, period do you think has had the biggest influence on your life?

[20:08] RICHARD GAINES: My father, followed by my mother. Most people would think your grandmother, but I mean your great grandmother, but it was my father because in the neighborhood that we grew up in, he chose to be a father. He didn't have to. A lot of people didn't, but he chose to be a father and to raise me, take care of my mother. And hard as hell, I don't think I try to get around that with you. But I never hugged my father until I was 48 years old. And the reason was based on where we grew up or where I grew up. And he would tell your granny, he'd say, well, he needs to grow up to be strong, because this neighborhood, if he's not strong, it'll kill him. So he was very. He was very hard on me. Coming up. It was just amazing to see how soft he was with your mother and your aunt and with you. I couldn't believe it. You know, he cuckoo and he talk all that kind of stuff. He never gave me the impression he was that kind of guy. You know, the guy would kill me if it looked like I was doing anything. But y'all, anything you wanted that he could do, he'd do it. But him, from the standpoint of making me understand that family is what's important, and that's your first order of business. Everything else, fine. You try and do it. You try and save the world, but you can't save the world if you can't save yourself. So he worked all of the time to do that and something that would seem simple to you but was so important to me to learn. When he took me to get my first pair of real shoes, Stacy Adams. I mean, shoes. And nowhere in the world somebody my age should have been wearing, but I always wore good shoes. And when he took me to get my first pair, he told me something I'll never forget. He said, you never buy a cheap pair of shoes. You never buy a cheap mattress. Cause most of your life, you're gonna spend on one of them, one or the other one. And I've never done that. I always have had good beds and a whole house full of shoes. The best money could buy. So it was funny, when I went in with a foot problem, the doctors told me something about he had these funny looking shoes. He asked, man, I ain't wearing that. You might have come up with something else. Nowhere in the world I wear my shoes. Nowhere in the world.

[22:54] JESSICA GAINES: So that when you were talking about that, you know, you always have a good pair of shoes. You always have a good mattress. I don't know if this is generational or maybe I'm just crazy, but I feel like, on this quest to be successful and, you know, like, make my place in the world, I feel like there's a lot of sacrifices that I have to make that, you know, might be, you know, like, okay, well, let's not buy the best mattress, because, you know, I'm working so hard, and this needs to go here let's not buy the best pair of shoes, because, you know, like, these will do. Do you feel, what is the. Is there a medium of, you know, like, the hustle, struggle? You know, when you're working towards something and, you know, you might have to just eat the. Eat canapeas every night for right now. Is there a medium between that struggle and the hustle and, like, being comfortable on the way to, you know, what's the. What is the.

[24:12] RICHARD GAINES: All of that relates to where your income comes from with you, because you are hell bent on doing things your way, which is why we run into one another now and then. However, sometimes you have to allow people to help. Sometimes you need to say, I need help here, and this isn't going right. I've always done that. I can remember various times in my life where I had to go back and talk to my father, and I had all his highfalutin education, and he worked. He was a construction worker, and he made more money than I did for the first five years I was out of college. And would remind me, at the end of the day, you gotta make some money to take care of what's yours. But you don't. You're not by yourself. And sometimes I think you believe you're by yourself because you are very, very interested in success, much of what you've already got, and you don't recognize it. I don't think sometimes it's really. But you. I think when you talk about a happy medium, I don't know that most of the time, I'm 76 and I'm still working, still in business. You got a lot to do with that, but still in business and still trying to do things that I have not done, because I don't know that when people stop working, what we call it, I don't know if they start dying, there's a sign that I think of that I saw, and I just recently saw it, and it says something to the effect of when we stop playing, we start dying. You have to balance those things that you have to do with things, with something that you want to do. I would like for you to basically spend more time with me, quite honestly. But I understand you working day and night and you doing those things that you think are important. But there is absolutely nothing, as you get older, more important than being with those people when you can, because you just want to be there, you know, whether it's family or it's friends or whatever it is that you. Because you just want to be there, because those are times you never get back, you know, everything, everything, just about everything in life you can buy with time. So that time that goes and you look up and you say, my goodness, I'm 76 years of age and look like yesterday, leaving co college with all of the ambition in the world to corral the world. And you never get all of the things you want. But it's interesting to me to watch you, to stand on the side sometimes and watch you figure out how you need to make your way and all of that on your own terms and want to say sometimes, hey, baby, why don't you come over and let's sit down and talk about some of this? You know, maybe you don't have to do all of that. Maybe there are other things that we can do together that will make that a little easier for you. But I guess you're stubborn. I was stubborn the same way. I guess so. It's hard sometimes to see somebody working so hard, so often, so much to achieve a goal, much of which, when you stop and stand back, much of which you've achieved, you know, you have done things that very few people in this town even recognize. I didn't recognize a lot of it until other people tell me about what you're doing.

[28:42] JESSICA GAINES: Introduce those people to me, because I don't know, I'm still. I think it's like working so much because, like the. You're working towards a goal, and along the way of working towards a goal, these obstacles pop up and they become the focus. And so I think, like, thinking about some of those obstacles which you know about, I think can like, cloud my judgment of what I have achieved or am currently achieving on a regular basis. Because, like, this thing, this one thing that is not ideal is kind of in the way. So I think that, plus I'm 33. When you were 33, I think you were much more stable than I am now. And so I think that there's the race against my internal clock, and then there's, because I'm building on your legacy, there's the race against you, you know, which is there's nothing you can do about it. You can tell me that you're extremely proud of me, and I'll accept it and receive it and appreciate it, but it won't, like, slow down, you know, the race for me or anything like that. So I think there's the mixture of that, my personal clock, the clock that's within our family, and then just the societal clock. So I would say that I do want to ask you, I want to ask you two more questions. First question. Is there anything that you. If this was our last conversation forever, what would you want to say that you haven't said or you have? But you want to reiterate to me.

[30:45] RICHARD GAINES: Specifically, since we have been on this track of being in business together and trying to put this firm together, I really think that the work that you've done, the work that you do, is more than you should do sometimes. I really think you really need to, you know, some of the hardest things sometimes is that you're so. You're so directed towards getting something done. You know, old folks in my generation, you talk about stop and smell the roses. I don't think you do enough of that. And sometimes it's just as important to learn how not to do things as it is to learn how to do things. There has to be a balance. Nothing works well if there's no balance. And however, whatever you get or you gain, or you do or you don't get or gain, there has to be a balance to that where you can sit down and not always say to yourself, but maybe say to others that have your best interest in heart. And you know who those folks are, hey, let's go do something that's just different. You know, we can play. When you were a little girl, I used to take you to play golf, and I used to love that and played basketball, and now you're a big girl, so we don't do any of those things anymore. But that playing is sometimes as important as the work and all of that stuff. I enjoyed it when. I'll never forget when Bob Mayfield, you wanted to jump on it because she thought he was both. He was going to bother your grandpa. Your grandpa and me and him, we talk about that all the time when we talk. And that's usually one of the things we talk about. That granddaughter, you're still jumping on people trying to protect you. I think there needs to be a little bit more personal involvement and you have to push away. Sometimes too much work can be as bad as not enough. So I think if I was saying anything to you because your motivation is absolutely certain, that I think would be important as much as anything else.

[33:38] JESSICA GAINES: Do you want more great grandchildren?

[33:46] RICHARD GAINES: I would love more great grandchildren. I really would. Yeah, I really would. At my age, they better hurry up.

[34:01] JESSICA GAINES: I was gonna say, do they have to be conventional? We gotta wait till I get married and all of that. I can adopt some.

[34:07] RICHARD GAINES: Oh, no, no. But no, I genuinely like children. And I mean, I really do like being around them. I like the fact that they. And the smaller they are, just like little puppies. The smaller they are, the more honest they are. So you don't have to wonder about how they feel or what they want to do. Cause they tell you. And that's refreshing. That is really refreshing.

[34:41] JESSICA GAINES: I'll keep that in mind. No promises, though. This is the last question. How would you like to be remembered?

[34:55] RICHARD GAINES: You know, I was in management with an insurance company, and the guy who was. Had the job of heading this division got abruptly fired. And when he was fired, the people flew in from the home office. It was somewhat tragic. People flew in from the home office and had all of the managers stand around this, in this conference room. And after we stood and they explained that he'd been fired and he would no longer be back, blah, blah, blah, then they talked about how the agency would go on, who would have what responsibilities, and so forth and so on. But after that, they interviewed every manager. And as they interviewed every manager, one of the first questions was, one of the things you asked me, who was the person you were most proud of? And I said, my father. And I think it struck them as being different, because I was talking about a black man who had raised a family and had done a pretty good job with the. You know, I thought with what he had to work with. But I can never forget, later on, as I went into upper management, I would go back and think about that situation and the comments. When they walked in and began to look around that room, all of the comments were, how did they react? Who seemed as though they were more affected by disguise firing than others. What could be done about that? Did it say anything about their stability? There were a whole series of psychological questions relative to how those of us who stayed there in management took that situation, how we handled it or did not handle it. Now, what that said to me was that people are always trying to find out who you are, what you're doing, and whether or not it agrees with what they think is what is, what is right and wrong. And for me, it's always been, be as direct as you can be, as forthcoming as you can be, and usually the world will accept you that way. They may not like you, but they'll accept you that way. They found it very difficult for a black man to be saying, my hero with my father. And that was even mentioned in some of the comments that were made. He continued to talk about his father. Had I been a white man, that would not have been so unknown. That's why it's always been important to me to be the best father I could be. I mean, realistically, the best I could be, because it makes a difference for your children and it makes a difference in the world.

[38:10] JESSICA GAINES: Well, I think you're the best dad, best grandpa ever. I'll put you up against anybody if it was dad contest.

[38:17] RICHARD GAINES: Yeah, that's cause you in this interview right now.

[38:21] JESSICA GAINES: Um, okay, the last thank you for the time. And I hear you with. You know, I do need to spend more time and stop and smell the roses, and I'm working on it, and it'll come faster than you know. I'm sure you're anticipating for it, too. But I'm gonna start this phrase off and I want you to finish it. And you'll know how to finish it when I start it, and it'll be the last thing that we say on the interview. So do you wanna say anything else before I say that phrase?

[38:52] RICHARD GAINES: I'm good.

[38:53] JESSICA GAINES: Okay.

[38:54] RICHARD GAINES: You, me and the world.

[38:59] JESSICA GAINES: Perfect.

[39:02] RICHARD GAINES: Little girl.