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xiii 6X`cdlaZY\bZcih As background for the Simon story, I sought conversations with people who knew Paul Simon at critical moments. There are not many people around today with personal knowledge of Simon from 1948 to 2003, the span of his public life. His brother, Arthur, is one, and he provided important details. Simon’s daughter, Sheila, has encouraged me whenever I launched a project involving her father. For the newspaper days and the early political times, Ray Johnsen and Elmer Fedder had front-row seats. They were generous with reminiscences. I called on former Sen. Alan Dixon, Gene Callahan, and Sen. Richard Durbin to cover the political years. They spoke candidly about their friend and colleague. As a journalist, political operative, and Simon’s partner in the public policy institute at Southern Illinois University, Mike Lawrence offered his observations of Simon across the decades. Staff people and colleagues, such as former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, helped define Simon’s congressional years. I am indebted to everyone for impressions and recollections of Simon and his times. Many others contributed to this project. At the beginning of my newspaper career, I benefited greatly from associations with Bill Boyne and Charles Stewart at the East St. Louis Journal. They taught me about the crime culture of the region and inspired my search for details. I called on longtime associates David Kenney, D. G. Schumacher, and Fletcher Farrar Jr. for their editing expertise and familiarity with Simon’s performance. I leaned heavily on Cheryl Schnirring’s familiarity with Simon material from the Illinois years under her care at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Skilled researcher Claire Fuller Martin is an expert at developing resources in Springfield, and I am grateful for her many contributions to this story. Walter Ray of the Morris Library Special Collections Research Center at SIU-Carbondale sorted through the huge Simon collection for details of the congressional years. As on many previous occasions, Steve Kerber and Amanda Bahr of the Bowen Archives at SIU-Edwardsville responded capably and promptly to my requests. Working with Southern Illinois University Press editor-in-chief Karl Kageff was a pleasure. When it came to images of Simon to complement the text, I called on old friends Charles Brown at the St. Louis Mercantile Library, Heather Moore at the U.S. Senate Historical Office, Bill Tubbs at the Journal of Illinois History , and Mary Michals at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Also contributing was Walter Ray at SIU’s Morris Library. Book ventures are always a team effort, and it was a pleasure to work with those who assisted on the visual side of this project. I am grateful for the personal experiences with Paul and Jeanne Simon. Of many encounters, an evening at their Makanda home in February 1998 ranks at the top. For hours they shared stories of their long and turbulent relationship with Paul Powell and their time together in the state legislature. Thank you, Paul and Jeanne, for that, and much more. And a special note of appreciation for Mary Hartley: listener, editor, critic, and most of all, patient partner. xiv acknowledgments ...

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