Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/515661
t m c » p u l s e | m a y 2 0 1 5 25 HARRIS COUNTY JUDGE ED EMMETT SAT DOWN WITH TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF STRATEGY AND OPERATING OFFICER WILLIAM F. McKEON TO DISCUSS THE PATH THAT LED HIM FROM THE HALLS OF RICE UNIVERSITY TO THE TEXAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND HOW HE IS HELPING TO ADDRESS SOME OF THE CITY'S MOST PRESSING CHALLENGES. Q | Can you tell us about your formative years? A | I was officially born in Overton, Texas, but my whole early youth was spent in New London, Texas, which is three miles from Overton. Famous in the old days because the school blew up in 1937. Because it sat on top of the East Texas Oil Field. And that's why you can now smell natural gas. Natural gas is naturally odorless, so they added mercaptan to it. My father was an oilfield worker his entire life, until they moved him into an office job later on. He had a panic disorder that I didn't know about until I was a junior in high school, such that he could never be alone. And that's why I have this passion for mental health. Now, he was able to cope with it and mask it with things as extreme as he would always ride the bus when we lived here, because there was always someone on the bus. But he had such good friends, they'd meet him at the elevator and ride up with him to his office. They'd come get him for lunch. And then he would ride out to where my mother worked at Meyerland Mall at JC Penney and he would just walk the mall until she got off of work, because there were all of these people around. That plays into the mental health, for the obvious reason, but also, had he not been kind of a mid-level oil company guy, he would have been arrested for vagrancy, particularly if he had been a minority. So, back to where I grew up. East Texas Oil Field. We moved to Tyler for five years after that because the regional office moved there, and then we moved here. I didn't know anybody, so I had nothing to do but play tennis all summer. You come to the end of your junior year, and what do you do? I didn't know that you didn't go to Hermann Park and play tennis at night. But I did. So I got to know all kinds of people, mainly in the Third Ward. But me being from up there, it didn't matter to me. I graduated from Bellaire, and the simple reason I went to Rice was that if you got into one of four schools, then the Humble Oil Company would give you a scholarship. It's called the Teagle Foundation. Humble Oil changed its name. It's called Exxon now, but my father never agreed to that name change. He always said he worked for Humble Oil. So you had to go to Columbia, Rice, MIT or Tulane. I didn't get into MIT. I didn't apply to Columbia. I got into Rice and Tulane. Rice was a better financial deal, but one of the real reasons was the admissions director at Rice went to Bellaire Methodist Church and had this sort of penchant for Bellaire kids, I guess. So a whole lot of us went to Rice. That's how I ended up at Rice. Q | Did you imagine, before you started at Rice, where you would end up? A | I was going to be a physics major. Even though I came at the end of my junior year to Bellaire, I repre- sented Bellaire at the nuclear science symposium that summer. In high school, I thought I was a whiz when it came to physics. The chair of the physics department at Rice convinced me otherwise when he gave me, I think it was a 12 on my final in my freshman year. I passed the course, but I thought I probably didn't want to be a physics major anymore. So I ended up getting a degree in economics. And of course, going to college in the late '60s and early '70s, everything was political. You had Vietnam, you had women's rights, you had birth control, you had drugs, civil rights. All of that was just this maelstrom of activity. So I got interested in politics in a big way, and was president of the college—not to be confused with the actual university, since Rice has the college sys- tem. I did that, played tennis, though not well enough to be very good at it. I was on the team at Rice, but I didn't get to play. I tried to be a tennis pro for a year and a half, and actually made decent money straight out of Rice in 1971. But I went back to graduate school. I thought I was going to go to law school, but through a total quirk of fate, walked across the street from the UT Law School to the LBJ school, where my brother-in-law worked, and ended up going to the LBJ School. Full ride. And got my master's degree in public affairs. I thought I'd come back and get into politics. And eventually I did. Q | When you thought about politics at that time, what did you envision? A | Oh, if you had asked me at that time, 'Gosh, if I could grow up and be in the legislature, that would be the coolest thing in the world.' I did that at age 29. I served four terms in the House, and was chairman of the House Committee on Energy, which was interesting because I was a Republican. There were 110 Democrats, and a Democrat speaker, and yet I got appointed as chairman of the House Committee on Energy. Q | How did that work out? A | That was a time when people weren't as partisan as they are now, and that's a time that I would like to get back to, frankly. Which is one reason why I am a Republican and I am proud to be a Republican most of the time. But at the same time, if we don't find a way to compromise and have a little bit of a bipartisan approach, we are going to be in a world of hurt. INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT Yeah, I could tell you the bills I have passed, or this, that and the other. But if all of these people who have worked for me go on to do bigger and better things, then my life is good. Judge Emmett delivering 2015 State of the County Address. (Credit: Richard J. Carson)