Todd Parnell and James Leon Combs

[00:01] TODD PARNELL: Good morning. My name is Todd Parnell. I will be 75 years old in a month. Today's date is Monday, May 9, 2022. And we are conducting this in the Ozarks, the broad Ozarks in southern Missouri. The name of my interview partner is Leon Combs. He's a dear friend for many years, and I'm just honored to be here with him. Thank you.

[00:27] JAMES LEON COMBS: Thank you, Todd. My name is Leon Combs. I am 87 years old. Today is Monday, May 9, 2022. We are in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri. The name of an interview partner is Todd Parnell. Not a lifelong friend, but a long time, very good friend.

[00:50] TODD PARNELL: I'll start out with the first question, if you don't mind, Leon One of the stories that you've told me over the years that just intrigues me is how you came to the Ozarks. And I think that would be a good jumping off point for us to talk about what we're going to, which is basically growing up in the rural ozarks. You're going to talk about Bradleyville, Missouri, principally in the 1940s. I'm going to talk about Branson, Missouri, principally in the 1950s.

[01:14] JAMES LEON COMBS: Yes, sir. And we both were born in Taney county. You and Branson? I and Forsythe. But I got a circuitous route coming back to the Ozarks. When I was a 20 month old baby, my parents took me to Colorado Springs. And on Christmas Eve in 1936, my parents died tragically. I won't get into the details of that, but they died, and I was taken to California by an older relative. They were going to put me in orphanage there until they called back to Missouri and talked to my deceased mother's brother, Etzel Combs, and he said, I'll take that boy. I'm getting married. So in 1937, when I was two years old, an elderly lady brought me on the train from Sacramento to Springfield, Missouri. My new parents lived 50 miles into the wilderness of the Ozarks. There was no conveyance. So the mailman picked me up the railroad station and took me to Bradleyville And I don't remember any of this, but I ended up with two wonderful, loving parents who loved me. I had children of their own later, who are my brothers and sisters. I didn't even know I was adopted until years later.

[02:28] TODD PARNELL: That is a remarkable beginning to a remarkable life, Leon. It just really is touching.

[02:35] JAMES LEON COMBS: I'd like to start by asking you some questions, Todd.

[02:38] TODD PARNELL: Sure.

[02:38] JAMES LEON COMBS: But I know that you are known throughout this state and probably the midwest for your concern and your care about clean water. And I was just curious to when did you first become aware of the need to protect the waters of the Ozarks?

[02:57] TODD PARNELL: Well, it happened over the years, but if you really want to be specific, I grew up next to Roark Creek in Branson, Missouri. And from a very young person, I knew what that meant to me. I grew up almost in an idyllic situation next door to my grandparents. My grandmother loved to fish. She took me down to the dock they had and taught me to fish from a very young age. So I would say in the beginning, my exposure to a beautiful setting to grow up in probably planted that seed of concern.

[03:28] JAMES LEON COMBS: You know, I had a similar experience. I know I've mentioned this to you, but when I was a little boy, my dad, this is my, my new dad, I call him. He was my dad. He took me fishing regularly in Beaver Creek. And I was maybe, you know, five years old, and I went with him. I liked to fish for a while. You know, how long we can concentrate when we're five years old. Then I started whining for I wanted to drink water. He said, there's water. There's a whole creek full of water. Drink there. So he said, get on your belly and drink some water. So I lay down on my belly and got in to that fresh, clean, clear water, drink my belly full. And I don't know that I would want to do that today. I'm not so sure the streams are as clean as they were in 1940.

[04:14] TODD PARNELL: I don't think they are, but I do want to share, jumping ahead of the 1950s that Beaver Creek has always been one of my favorite places. All of my children and my grandchildren have had their first float trips on Beaver Creek. And it's a spectacularly beautiful piece of water that is just very near and dear to my heart and my family's heart.

[04:35] JAMES LEON COMBS: I've lived on Beaver Creek much of my life, and my parents owned the store at Brown branch. It was a country store in the forties, and in those days, we had no big box stores like Walmart and Target. We had no McDonald's and all those. It was all so the country sold everything. They sold groceries and plow shares and guns and feed and shoes, clothing and gas. But I lived on Beaver Creek there. And when I was young, we would go out there and swim. Had a great big ten foot hole with a big rock, perfectly made, a giant tree where we tied a rope on it. We'd swing out and drop into the creek. I mean, those were the days of really joy and during the wintertime. I couldn't wait till spring to get out there when it was meant to swim.

[05:23] TODD PARNELL: Yeah. Yep.

[05:27] JAMES LEON COMBS: When did you, you know, Branson? You told me earlier that Branson grew dramatically during the 1950s. And what caused that? What caused the people to go to Branson in the fifties?

[05:40] TODD PARNELL: Well, it grew from a town of about 1300 residents to about 1900 residents, over 40%. And my recollection is that we started getting tourists to come in. Major things that happened were the building of Table Rock Dam, which created Table Rock Lake, which created people coming in to take advantage of the lake life. Silver Dollar City was started at the end of that decade by the Hershen family, who had bought Marble Cave. And that was another attraction, a trip back into 100 years, into the early Ozarks. And people started seeing Branson as a destination for a trip. Some people had done it before in various segments. It had always been kind of a pretty place because it was on Lake Taneycomo but this really promoted it, and the people that were benefiting from it really became promoters.

[06:41] JAMES LEON COMBS: I remember the first time I met you and your father at the Friendship house of the College of the Ozarks. I was there with the White River Valley Historical Society, and you are guest speakers, and you talked about, as I recall, the five things that had made Branson grow over the years, starting with, or not starting with. But one of the five things was your family was highly involved in getting the table rock dam built on the great White river.

[07:10] TODD PARNELL: That's correct.

[07:11] JAMES LEON COMBS: Mainly your father, who had connections in Washington, DC, with certain people, and they got that done. And so you and your father named those five things over the years. I'm not talking about the fifties, but over the years that contributed to the growth of Branson. What were those five things?

[07:25] TODD PARNELL: Goodness, I can't remember. But I know one of them was the railroad. The railroad came to Branson in, I don't know, 1906, for some reason.

[07:34] JAMES LEON COMBS: Fix it in my mind, six or seven. Yes, yes, yes.

[07:37] TODD PARNELL: And then, you know, the. The lake. It was a very progressive community. I will brag on my grandfather briefly. He was a quiet man, a shy man who never gave a speech, never ran for office, and somehow he ended up being mayor of Branson three times, one term only, in three separate decades.

[08:01] JAMES LEON COMBS: Was that Ben?

[08:02] TODD PARNELL: That was Albert.

[08:03] JAMES LEON COMBS: Albert.

[08:04] TODD PARNELL: I don't think we know any politicians like that these days. No, they elected him because they trusted him.

[08:10] JAMES LEON COMBS: Both parties voted for him.

[08:11] TODD PARNELL: Yeah.

[08:11] JAMES LEON COMBS: Yes.

[08:11] TODD PARNELL: And when he was mayor during the Great Depression, he was a Democrat who had gone to the Democratic National Convention and voted for FDR. And he was one of the few mayors in the Ozarks, let alone Missouri, who reached out for these WPA funds. And he. They used those to construct the whole riverfront lakefront in Branson, which also became a tourist draw.

[08:36] JAMES LEON COMBS: Yep.

[08:36] TODD PARNELL: I'm very proud of his.

[08:38] JAMES LEON COMBS: He was a great contributor. And also, I think he said one of the first big draws of the area was the Harold Wright's book on shepherd of the hills.

[08:48] TODD PARNELL: That's correct.

[08:48] JAMES LEON COMBS: Then music came along later in the fifties and sixties.

[08:52] TODD PARNELL: That was big. In the fifties, live music, all numbers.

[08:55] JAMES LEON COMBS: So it was the book, the music, the water.

[08:57] TODD PARNELL: The railroad.

[08:58] JAMES LEON COMBS: The railroad.

[08:59] TODD PARNELL: The dam.

[08:59] JAMES LEON COMBS: The dam. So the water, you know, the water and the dam. Yeah. So I think that's it. I was very impressed with that delivery. That's where you and I first met. That was the beginning of our friendship.

[09:12] TODD PARNELL: We connected over writing. And you're a writer, and you have documented not only your life growing up at Bradleyville, but an incredible run of basketball that Bradleyville as a very small town had. Could you talk a little bit about that? Because it's very unique. It couldn't happen today like the other.

[09:32] JAMES LEON COMBS: Part of my life. It started off in a pretty poor way. When I played basketball at Bradleyville, there were eight seniors in my graduating class. To give you an idea, the size of the school, we had no gymnasium. We wanted to play basketball. We had no gymnasium. So we played on outdoor courts with handmade wood made wooden backboards with rims. The blacksmith guy made the rims, which they probably were not the right size. I had never seen a net. So we played out there, and if it was raining and muddy, we didn't get to play much. We have to try to find a dress. Anyhow, I played four years, and we got the gym built, a cheap gym to, I think, a $2,000 gym built with a tile floor. My senior year, we lost every game. We played for four years except two. So that was just kind of a backdrop to what happened when I left. So some of the good players came along and they started winning, and they hired a new coach in Blue Island, Missouri, named Ray Gibson, who came over there, and they hired his brother, Omar Gibson, as superintendent and Ray as the coach. The package deal was $10,000. The superintendent got 6000 a year and the coach got 4000. So the coach promptly developed a team and won the state championship.

[10:50] TODD PARNELL: And that's all sizes, right?

[10:52] JAMES LEON COMBS: It's all. Well, no, those days, no, it was three sizes. But they beat. They beat Joplin for example. And Joplin had 2000 students. Bradley had 75 at school. So that happened, which was phenomenal. I could get into great detail about all that. But then later on, Ray Gibson, having won the state championship, they got a big job somewhere else, so he left. But then Arjun Ellison came in and coached, and they won almost every game they played. They won two more state championships. And the last game they played, it was a 64 game. They had a 63 game consecutive win streak. They had won the state championship the previous year, 1967. In 1968, they were playing a school from southeast Missouri, had two gigantic forwards, six, six six. And this is 1968. That was big for high school. And they had two little, this was, players in this school were all, it was a segregated school in those days. They were all african american boys. They were great players. And the two little guards up front were about five foot five, but they were just like Harlem Globetrotters. They were fast as lightning and they were playing for the state championship. And at the end of the game, they swore was tied, so they would play to overtime. At the end of overtime, the score was tied to, they played a second overtime, the score was tied. They played a third overtime, the score was tied. And finally, in the fourth overtime, David Combs, my first cousin, made a last second goal and beat Howardville, giving Bradley go his third state championship.

[12:29] TODD PARNELL: Yeah, incredible accomplishment. And for anybody that's interested, you can read all about this in Leon's book, the hicks from the Sticks, which, fingers crossed, is going to be made into a movie in the near future.

[12:42] JAMES LEON COMBS: Got some people working on a movie right now, some people from California, Hollywood specifically, who are working on a screenplay. And hopefully they'll get done. I hope so.

[12:51] TODD PARNELL: But I began this part by saying that we connected through writing. And I was an amateur writer myself and I, this was after the fifties decade, but I took my son, who was underperforming, I will say, in school, on a float trip of the whole magnificent Buffalo river in his 8th grade year. I promised it to him when he was in the 6th grade if he would raise his grades. He did. And we floated for eleven nights and twelve days, the whole river. And it was a life changing float trip for both of us. The point being, I wrote it all down to give to Ben. And because we traded stories from time to time, I gave you a copy of it and you said, todd, you got to write this, you got to make a book out of this. This is a father son development story that needs to be shared with other people. And he said, I've got an editor that will help you. And I sent my manuscript to this editor. I got back a four page letter which still sits in my desk to remind me to be humble and talked about what a horrible story it was and how poorly written it was and how the facts were all wrong. And I took my manuscript and stuck it back in my closet. And I saw you a couple of months later, and you asked me, how'd this go? And I said, it was horrible, leon. I told him what this fellow had told me. He said, don't think a thing about it. He used an expletive. But you said, the guy told me the same thing. We got to get your book published, Todd, and with your help we did, through the University of Missouri Press. And so we have always been linked with our writing.

[14:26] JAMES LEON COMBS: It was a great, when I first, when I first read this, I said, this is not necessarily a fishing trip. I read this story because your son was having difficulty in ski o boo. Because he wasn't, wasn't trying. He wasn't trying. And you were in a new job, an executive level at a new bank in St. Louis. And getting off work was not easy because it was kind of precarious for you, but you decided that your son's development was more important than your job. So you managed to get off a week or ten days or whatever it was. You took him down there and you had a wonderful experience and became best of friends, which was the great, which was the story in my, the flow was, that was the vehicle to tell the story. And you told it so extremely well. This has got to be a book. You wrote the book. It's a beautiful book. It reads beautifully. And what's the name of the book? Ben and Buffalo.

[15:17] TODD PARNELL: Ben and me.

[15:18] JAMES LEON COMBS: Buffalo. Ben and me. So you get it on Amazon?

[15:22] TODD PARNELL: Yeah.

[15:22] JAMES LEON COMBS: Yep. A little bit of commercialism there.

[15:25] TODD PARNELL: And then I, you know, I did, it did cost me dearly to be in that, gone that long with my wife. And the next year, my son Patrick demanded the same trip. And I said, sure. And she put her foot down and said, only if I do half of it. So we split up the whole trip the next time. And so great fun.

[15:40] JAMES LEON COMBS: The love of the rivers and the streams and the floating has to be gone through at least two generations now.

[15:48] TODD PARNELL: Three generations with the young ones.

[15:50] JAMES LEON COMBS: What you're doing with your children, it will carry on long after you and I are gone. And I think that what a wonderful thing to do with your family and how many kids in the cities and other parts of the world would be so blessed to have that opportunity, because, you know, all kids, this is almost a positive statement. All kids love to fish. I started off with a cane pole and worms.

[16:14] TODD PARNELL: Me, too.

[16:15] JAMES LEON COMBS: And the thrill of feeling that fish bite and thrilled. A feeling coming out when you catch one.

[16:20] TODD PARNELL: Yeah.

[16:21] JAMES LEON COMBS: Yeah. It's. I want to ask you some other things about. You've also been a leader in education. You're a retired university president. And when did you, how did the education differ from then? I mean, I'm talking about Branston in the fifties. What was the, what would you say is the difference in education in Branson schools then and Branson schools now?

[16:45] TODD PARNELL: Well, I'll go back to the fifties to try to provide context. And it's interesting again, Bradleyville, Branson, get drawn together. Omar Gibson was a teacher in Branson. When you all hired him away. I had him, I think he taught math. But in Branson it was very personal and very small class. And if you had a good teacher, you had success. If you didn't have a good teacher, you didn't really learn a whole bunch. And there was one teacher I had that changed my life. Her name was Sybil James and she taught me math. And I think this was in the 8th grade. And at the end of each class, she would ask the class to get involved with some mental gymnastics with math, you know, like two times four times three divided by two. And it just was something that really brought to mind how if you concentrate it, you could do numbers in your head and look smarter than you are.

[17:46] JAMES LEON COMBS: She made learning fun, challenging and challenging instead of a chore and distasteful.

[17:56] TODD PARNELL: That's just an example. I don't know what Branson education is like now, but I know it has a highly rated school. It's much larger. And I doubt that it's as personal as it was when I was there. I live next door to my kindergarten teacher, Bernice Ferguson.

[18:11] JAMES LEON COMBS: I wonder how many people your age and mine, who had their lives influenced by a teacher. And I know a lot of people, men and women, boys and girls, are influenced by the coach. I read somewhere that second to your parents, and maybe even before your parents, more kids are influenced by their coach because they look up to the coach and they're doing what they love to do in basketball or football or volleyball or whatever. And I had a similar situation in Bradleyville. Bradleyville at that time was not really a good school because they didn't have any money. As I recall, it wasn't even accredited, but estate. And I know some of the teachers didn't have degrees I know my typing teacher couldn't type. My math teacher was a coach who was giving us fifth grade math. I was a senior in high school. That's why I had such a hard time when I went to college. But I had one teacher, my english teacher, misses Brewer. She was the wife of the superintendent. He had just got back from World War Two. He'd been in war. This is in the late forties, and his name was Mister CD Brewer and her name was Dorothy. They were from Mississippi. And she was a beautiful woman. I was 18 years old. She was probably 23. I was in love with her because she had a southern accent and she was. Although she. She challenged us in English, in those days, you had to diagram sentences.

[19:36] TODD PARNELL: Right? I remember that.

[19:37] JAMES LEON COMBS: I don't think kids do that nowadays, but you had to. And that became an onerous thing. She gives page after page of sentences, diagram to take home and bring back the next day. Diagram properly another subject, predicate, object and all that. Which helps me even yet today.

[19:51] TODD PARNELL: Yeah.

[19:52] JAMES LEON COMBS: But anyhow. What? I liked her. And when I was a senior, I remember specifically one day the bell rang and I was looking forward to graduating in a month or so. And the bell rang. Everybody's charging out the door because we used to go play basketball before the buses took us home. And she grabbed me by the arm as I walked out the door. She said, leon, come back. I want to talk to you. I said, no, I gotta go home. No. She said, I want to talk to you. And she said, southwest Missouri State, which is now Missouri State, gives a full scholarship to the valedictorian class. There were eight seniors in my class. I said, misses Brewer I'm not the valedictorian. Patsy, God is. She said, patsy's not going to college. We've already talked to her. It goes down to you, the second class. You're salutatorian. So she said, you're going to college. I said, okay, goodbye. Thank you. And that got me started. And I ended up. That was. Had it not been for that brief conversation, I probably would be driving a truck today.

[20:54] TODD PARNELL: Well, I know that the principal motivation for me in education were my parents. My parents believed very strongly that giving my brother and I a good education, as good education as we could absorb, would be the best thing they could do to us, beyond loving us. And so I really was lucky to have that background. My dad was a first generation college attender. My mother never graduated from college. She went to college. And yet both of them had that instilled in them that the way for my brother and I to have worthwhile contributing lives was to get the best education we could get.

[21:32] JAMES LEON COMBS: Yes. And your mother is a great story in herself.

[21:35] TODD PARNELL: Yeah, she is.

[21:36] JAMES LEON COMBS: She was in World War two.

[21:38] TODD PARNELL: She was in world War two. She was a Red Cross girl. They called them donut dollies. And she followed the, the soldiers as they marched across Germany to the end of the war. And they treated them like home folk and were really a relief to the soldiers that would come back from the front lines. And she did that because she lost her first husband in the war and she felt like she needed to do something. As she told me once, she said, I felt like I needed to get out of myself and do something for somebody else. And by golly, she did well.

[22:09] JAMES LEON COMBS: They good parent. Excuse me, I have a waist. I got allergies. Good parents train their children and some take it and some don't. But I know you and your siblings did very well. You all went ahead and listened to your parents. You've all been very successful. And that's something that I didn't necessarily have that kind of support. My parents love me, but my parents, neither of my parents even finished high school. So it was not easy for me. When I went to college, I remember I had to take what they call retarded. We called retarded math and retarded English to get in to pass that. But we did that and got through. And then the one class I have, I didn't know what to do when you go to college. I thought, well, I'll be a coach, because I like to coach. So unfortunately I had to take 15 hours of biology to be a phys ed major. Well, I was colorblind, for one thing. So when I go to the lab, I couldn't see the colors. And it was just like a whole new language to me. I had not had any science classes at all. And so I flocked biology. On my first year of fluke biology and in algebra, college algebra, I got a standing ovation for getting a d. At the end of class, the professor said, and Mister Combs passed with a d. And I want the class to recognize Mister Combs

[23:35] TODD PARNELL: That's great.

[23:36] JAMES LEON COMBS: It's kind of a joke, but true.

[23:38] TODD PARNELL: Tell me, if you would, how Bradleyville changed from during that decade of the forties. Did it grow like Branson or did it stay pretty much the same?

[23:50] JAMES LEON COMBS: You know, Bradleyville was on the route from Arkansas to Springfield. And in the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds, Bradleyville flourished because people would come and bring their goods and their cattle and their railroad ties. They'd go through Bradleyville to get to Chadwick, where the railroad was, and to Springfield. So Bradleyville became a stopover in those days, where they had two hotels, they had a bank, really. They had odd fellows lodge. They had a livery stable for the horses, and it had restaurants and had saloons, the whole thing. And so Bradleyville was flourishing more in 1900 and in 1940s than it is today.

[24:33] TODD PARNELL: I'll be darn.

[24:34] JAMES LEON COMBS: Because recently we, Bradleyville had nothing but a school and a post office. Well, my brother Joe opened a store there now, and the people were very grateful because he's selling gasoline to them. They have to go 30 miles away to get it, some groceries and so on. So Bradleyville now, the school is still there, thank goodness, and if the school is ever reorganized into a larger district somewhere, Fred Bradleyville will go off the map.

[25:03] TODD PARNELL: Well, tell me, if you would, what this incentive that you put out to students that graduate from Bradleyville to try to get them to go to college is a very forward looking, generous approach to trying to raise the level of graduates.

[25:19] JAMES LEON COMBS: Thank you, Todd. I left Bradleyville when I graduated from high school in 1953, and I was gone basically about 40 years. When I came back, I realized that almost no one, almost none of the graduating seniors were going to college. I mean, they all get a job, go to work. And so I suggested to the school that we start a scholarship, five k walk, run, and that I would raise money to help that, so forth, getting money for scholarships. So we started out in 1995, started or by Brown branch up on the hill. And I advertised widely in Springfield and Branson. Everywhere. We gave, we gave $500 or $1,000 for the winter. I mean, we made it all.

[26:01] TODD PARNELL: I never won, so I wouldn't know.

[26:03] JAMES LEON COMBS: But, you know, we had, we had some money and we brought people, and we'd have a thousand people there sometimes for this run. And the entry fee in those days was like $5 or something, but long story short became a thing. And people would come from all over. We advertised in runner's world and everywhere, and we would average at least $25,000 a year in net profit or more. And then we established a program where every graduating senior from Bradleyville gets a $1,000 scholarship for every year he or she remains in college or accredited technical school. And the percentage of kids went from almost nothing up to, like, 60%. And I attribute much of that to the scholarships, not just the money, but the peer pressure. When some of the kids started going to college, other kids say well, you know, maybe. Maybe I should do that. And so I think that's where even now we had enough money to admit leftover. I think the community foundation has almost $300,000 of the Bradleyville scholarship fund that they use still to fund those scholarships.

[27:13] TODD PARNELL: That's so impactful. It is just absolutely making an impact and raising the quality of life in your community. Let's talk about something that we've laughed about in the past, but this whole stereotype of the hill building, we both come from rural southwest Missouri, and people have made fortunes off this stereotype. What's your take on it? When you were growing up, did you have any sense of what people were making fun of, or was it true?

[27:52] JAMES LEON COMBS: Yes, I had very much a sense of it. It would come to me. We had relatives living out in Washington state, Oregon, relatives who had gone out there during the grapes of wrath day in the thirties. They would go out there to get jobs, and many families stayed there, because when I grew up, we had no running water, we had no electricity until my high school years. So we had no indoor plumbing at all. It had no telephones at all. The roads were not paved, gravel roads. So when it would rain, the roads would get muddy. So it changed immensely. And I wanted to get out of there. I mean, of course, when my cousins would come, they'd say, you mean you don't have daily newspaper where I can read about the cardinals? Well, I hardly knew anything about the St. Louis Cardinals, because I had no way of knowing. We did have a radio. The one entertainment I enjoyed was listening on Saturday night to the Grand Ole Opry. And we had a good radio. My parents did. So some of the neighbors would come over, and they would listen, and someone would bring their banjos and guitars, and they'd play along with them. But I wanted to get away, and I was gone for 40 years. My first wife passed away many years ago. I married my second wife, and she said, where were you raised? I said, oh, I was down in the ozarks. It's just really not a nice place to live. And so she went. She'd like to see it. So we came down from St. Louis, and she said, oh, my goodness. She said, this is a beautiful place. Why don't we live here? And that's what brought me back, and I'm so glad.

[29:29] TODD PARNELL: Well, I, you know, one thing I remember about growing up in that decade of the fifties, which speaks to the quality of life in some way. We never locked our doors. There was never any crime. There was never anybody attempting to break in. You just basically went next door to your grandmothers and spent time with. She and your grandfather came home. Nobody locked those doors at all.

[29:57] JAMES LEON COMBS: And everybody helped you out. If you had a problem, the neighbors would help. They would help each other put up the hay, and they would go out, and you got 100 acres of hay, and you say, Leon can you help me? Sure. Chocolate. We didn't even talk about pay because I was going to call you to come and help me. And you did. So they never exchanged money between each other. And no matter what happened, if you call your neighbor, if you need to go to the doctor and he had a better car than you did, they would take you.

[30:29] TODD PARNELL: Yeah, well, I had an experience as an underage bank teller, which I was hired by my dad at $0.25 an hour. I think that forever changed my life. It's one of those ones that happens that you will remember when you get in certain situations. I was being a teller, and there was a fellow who came in who was a customer who repaired cars, and he gave me two twenties, and he said, I would like to have 41s in change. I gave him 45 SDe and that night I stayed till 06:00. I was too old to cry, but I was. I was just near tears because I was off $160.

[31:15] JAMES LEON COMBS: Did you know where it went?

[31:16] TODD PARNELL: No, I didn't have a clue what it was. And, you know, back then, you didn't do all the checks and balances that you do, you know now. And as a bank teller, and I was really too young to be a bank teller, but I went home that night and came back the next day, and they were kind enough to at the bank to forgive me and say, you know, it happened. Just don't worry about it. And, Leon, believe it or not, that guy who was very poor, who could have used that $160, walked in that morning and gave it back to me.

[31:46] JAMES LEON COMBS: Why?

[31:47] TODD PARNELL: Where does that happen?

[31:49] JAMES LEON COMBS: It doesn't have any.

[31:50] TODD PARNELL: That's a lesson in honesty that stuck with me forever. And that's a small town value that's not talked about in a stereotypical way, but it is.

[31:59] JAMES LEON COMBS: It's the handshake philosophy, because, you know and I know that those days, what you say is true, people were honest. If they would find something, they would return it. And also, if we made an agreement, I'll do this. I'll buy your pickup for $2,300. We didn't sign your contract. I'll buy your farm now. Eventually, you had to sign paper. Soon you closed on it. But people make deals, and you'd get a bad reputation if you were a guy who backed out. You can't trust him because he backs out. I mean, everybody knew who it was. I want to ask you another. I know that you and your family have loved and almost lived on the Buffalo river in Arkansas. And I also know one time the Buffalo river was targeted by some people who wanted to build big dams on it, as they did on the great white river and make lakes out of it. But I know that movement was stopped, and I think you and your family had a lot to do to turning it into a. Was now called the only national river in the country.

[32:58] TODD PARNELL: Right. We did not play that significant role, but the Ozark society did. Doctor Neal Compton was the leader of that, and they stopped it dead in its tracks. It's one of those few stories where the good guys win, and they were going to dam it in two places, and they got public opinion, including a supreme court justice, to come down and float and go back to Washington and brag about how you can't destroy this place. Place. It's too spectacular. And then just as recently as ten years ago, another grave threat to it, they set up a pig cafo, you know, a confined animal feeding operation.

[33:35] JAMES LEON COMBS: You were very involved in that.

[33:36] TODD PARNELL: I was involved in that. But that was on the banks. And it immediately began to absolutely ruin the river and got it added to the list of ten most endangered rivers in the United States. And again, people rose up and protected it, and people from all backgrounds and of all interests, but they recognize it for what it is. One of the most beautiful places in the world.

[33:58] JAMES LEON COMBS: It is. And you wrote two or three books about that, about the. I have. The desecration of the river by the caphos. I was going to ask you to. Do you remember the White river before Table Rock? Was that before your time?

[34:19] TODD PARNELL: No, no, I remember it.

[34:21] JAMES LEON COMBS: And was it floatable? I know you had. Yeah.

[34:23] TODD PARNELL: Yeah, that's. Jim Owen was the really.

[34:25] JAMES LEON COMBS: The. Even after power side dam was built on foresight. Yeah.

[34:30] TODD PARNELL: They would put in on the James river, and they would do several overnights out and come down to Branson and take out. And going back to your analogy of drinking out of the river, my dad, I remember him telling me he was on one of those float trips and. And he was thirsty. And the guide said, just dip your cup in the white and take a sip. This big, huge river. And he did. And he said it just. It was not inhabited by all the things that make you sick.

[34:55] JAMES LEON COMBS: Now, your father must have been somewhat conflicted when he helped get the table rock dam built. I know he knew that would be a great enhancement to the business and to the bringing tourism, which is the great, greatest, probably the tourism in the state. Biggest business in the state. He knew that that would bring them. At the same time, he loved the fresh waters and the floating. So he had to sit down on his self and decide, what am I going to do? And because of his contacts with Stuart Symington and others, he decided, with the betterment of the community, not necessarily for my personal enjoyment, we needed to do this to him. And it was a great success, even today, at bringing millions of people to the Ozarks.

[35:35] TODD PARNELL: Yeah, yeah.

[35:40] JAMES LEON COMBS: I know that you floated a lot. Did you ever hunt and fish much?

[35:45] TODD PARNELL: I fish a lot, but I've never been much of a hunter. I can best describe that. When my son, who's an avid hunter, took me turkey hunting. And we walked around this property and he was calling and he got one to come toward us, and he threw me down behind some bushes. He said, get your gun ready. And I said, okay. And he sat down by me and he pulled this turkey. And this turkey just comes up prancing.

[36:11] JAMES LEON COMBS: You know, with its big old Tom turkey.

[36:13] TODD PARNELL: Yeah. With its feathers all stuck out. It was frankly one of the most beautiful, inspiring sights I'd ever seen. And he said, shoot. And I didn't. I ignored him. And he, after the turkey ran away, after it heard us scuffling around, he said, why didn't you shoot? And I lied. I said, I couldn't hear it. That's my bad ear.

[36:36] JAMES LEON COMBS: You would have been expelled from the hunter's benevolent society.

[36:41] TODD PARNELL: And that's after I raised my kids to never tell a lie. That one was to save a life. Okay, well.

[36:46] JAMES LEON COMBS: And I think more and more young people nowadays feel the same way. They feel the same way. I mean, some people are vegetarians for that very reason, because they don't like to see animals kill them.

[36:56] TODD PARNELL: Yeah.

[36:57] JAMES LEON COMBS: Let's see. If you were to live your life over in Brad, I think we're coming to the end of this. If you were to live your life over in Branson, would you change anything in the way you have lived, or are you pleased with your life?

[37:09] TODD PARNELL: I don't know how to answer that. I guess I would have to say I wouldn't change a thing because I'm very, very happy. I'm happily married with great kids and great grandkids. I had parents and grandparents that love me and gave me the best opportunities anybody could so I can't say I would change anything.

[37:26] JAMES LEON COMBS: Good. My son, who is a camera addict, videotaped me an hour and a half about my background growing up. Hour and a half. And then later on, he came back, did another hour and a half continuation, and he asked me all kinds of questions. And then the final one, he said, now, okay, now, dad, you're 87 years old. I'm going to play some of this at your funeral. What do you want to say to the people at your funeral? So I said, okay. I said, I want to thank the people from the community for taking me in. When I was a baby, I was brought here by the mailman. The community gave me a great set of parents who loved me and brothers and sisters who loved me and the community who loved me. I had a joyous time and a little school and fishing and playing and swimming and the Beaver Creek. So all I want to say is, I've had a wonderful life. Don't grieve over me. Go out tonight and have a party, and thank you for coming to my funeral.

[38:24] TODD PARNELL: That's beautiful. That is beautiful. And I will change one more thing. There is one thing I would change if I had the opportunity. My grandmother, as I said, taught me how to fish. And she was very. I was very close to her. And if I could change one little thing in my life, it would be not to turn her can of worms over into the creek. Because she was a church going lady. It's the only time I ever heard her curse in my life.

[38:51] JAMES LEON COMBS: Well, you had to dig those worms one at a time. Yeah. That was excitement for me. I'd come home from school when I was a little boy, maybe, maybe ten years old. My dad say, leon, go dig some worms. Wow. That was a signal. We're gonna go fish. Well, just thrill. Go get some worms.

[39:09] TODD PARNELL: That's awesome. Thank you. I have enjoyed this immensely, reliving all these memories with you in particular, because I just have so much respect for you.

[39:20] JAMES LEON COMBS: I feel safe about you. I can't think of anyone I would rather have this conversation with than you, Todd Parnell. Thank you.

[39:26] TODD PARNELL: I agree with you. Thank you.