"IMPROVED EXEMPTIONS AND IMPROVED DISCLOSURE"
THE OPENING PAGES OF THIS SPEECH AND OTHERS, GIVING A PERSONAL IMPRESSION OF RAY GARRETT, JR., HAVE BEEN GRACIOUSLY PROVIDED BY HARVEY L. PITT.

An Address by
Ray Garrett, Jr., Chairman
Securities and Exchange Commission

Presented before
THE COLORADO BAR ASSOCIATION
Brown Palace Hotel
April 30, 1974
Denver, Colorado

One of the more innocent notions that I entertained in accepting the Chairmanship of the SEC was the expectation of a fair degree of control over my own time and whereabouts. The best evidence of the fallacy in that thought is the fact that it has taken me nine months to get to Denver. Denver has a warm spot in my heart and those of our family.

My sister and her family have lived here since the oldest kids were babies, and for many years before his death in 1969, my father was a director of the Denver & Rio Grande [Railroad]. Monthly trips to board meetings in Denver were bright spots in his life and my mother's as well. Summer camping trips up in the mountains with my son are lively and happy memories. We were strictly tenderfeet, tail gate campers. What we did would be pretty sissy stuff for you fellows, but for me, it was great.

I remember, many years ago, Senator Neuberger, of Oregon, writing in the New York Times Sunday Magazine that it would be a major contribution to better government to move our nation's capital out of the miasma of Foggy Bottom and environs to the bright crispness of Denver. I thought it was a good idea at the time, and from my point of view, it would still be a good idea. But when I contemplate Washington today, and consider that you people voted down the winter Olympics even for just one season, I can imagine what would happen to a bond proposal to finance putting the whole Federal government in your lap. On the other hand, suppose it was only to move the SEC -- but that's dreaming!

Now that I am here, I would rather talk about how curiously fond my son and I were of the Great Sand Dunes and the San Juan Valley, of all the fishing licenses we bought and of all the fish that are still here for all we could do about it, of camping in the early fall among the cliffs at Mesa Verde, and of driving all the way u p Mount Evans and how I'll never do that again! But you didn't come here for that sort of thing, so let me get down to some official words of wisdom. I will, perforce, give you a deductible speech and, hopefully, convey some of our thinking on certain matters of common concern....

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