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Title: Howard Wilder interview--November 14, 2003
Description: Howard Wilder, WWU alumni; earned teaching certificates in 1925 and 1931.
Digital Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Local Identifier: SCOHP_WilderHoward_20031114
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Howard Wilder ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use"
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Howard Wilder ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. All materials cited must be attributed to Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. This interview was conducted with Mr. Howard Wilder, alumnus. The interview was conducted in the Cascade Room, Best Western Lakeway Inn, Bellingham, on Friday, November 14, 2003. It was a combination oral history/press conference. Those present were Tamara Belts (Libraries), Al Froderberg (Foundation), Jo Collinge (University Communications), Kay Hoyt (Friend), Paul Madison (Sports Information Office), Mike Allende (Bellingham Herald), Pete Kendall (Bellingham Herald), Zeb Wainright (Western Front), and Howard Wilder. PM: I‟ll introduce the different people here. This is Tamara Belts. She‟s with our Western Library. We‟re taping you for a historical piece so we don‟t lose… HW: I‟m getting pretty old; I have a very poor memory. I may not remember very much about the Twenties. PM: You know Al Froderberg, Jo Collinge with our [University] Communications Office. And you know this lady [Kay Hoyt], and then Mike Allende from the Bellingham Herald [reporter]. We [have] Pete Kendall [photographer] from the Bellingham Herald and Zeb Wainright from the Western Front, the school newspaper. Howard drove halfway up here; he drove from Hoodsport to… KH: He drove from Olympia. HW: I drove from Olympia to Mount Vernon. PM: I heard that you play sixty five rounds of golf a year. Is that true? HW: So far this year I have in 88. However, the last few years, I only play nine holes. A few years ago I was playing eighteen, and about five years ago I think it was, I played 212 times. All: Wow. HW: But I don‟t have anything else, that I have to do, and that‟s what keeps me going. I get out there, I get some exercise. Otherwise I‟d just be sitting in that easy chair at home and I don‟t think I‟d last very long. PM: Anybody that has questions, we‟d just like you to just say your name ahead of time so that we have that on the tape, is that correct? That‟s how we want to do it? Okay. So we‟re just going to have at it with questions, and then we‟ll go from there. I know Howard [you were] originally from Blaine, HW: Yes. 1 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PM: Went to Blaine High School. HW: Yes. PM: And then from there did you come up to Bellingham Normal? Is that the progression? HW: Yes, that‟s right. Sam Carver was coach at the Normal School at that time and I had talked to him about coming and told him I needed a job. But then it got fairly close to the time for school to open. I hadn‟t saved enough money. I wrote to him and told him I would wait a year. But there was a group that was down there for two weeks before school started, for football practice. After the two weeks, one of the fellows that I knew got me on a Saturday night and talked me into it. Sam wanted me to come down and they had a job for me. So I had to quit the job I was working on. I had to work Monday and I think I worked Tuesday until noon and then went down. PM: You played during the 1923 season? HW: ‟23, yes. ‟23 and ‟24. And then I taught school for five years and took a year off, went back to do my third year work. I turned out and I played football again. I shouldn‟t have turned out. But anyhow, after the season was over with, there was a group of us in Sam‟s office discussing things and I said, “Well, after the second turnout, I realized that I shouldn‟t be turning out. But Sam was a very good friend of mine. It was in 1930, the depression, and the enrollment was down, and his squad wasn‟t too hot. I thought I‟d be letting him down if I dropped out.” When I said that, he kind of chuckled and he said, “Well, after the first turnout, I realized you shouldn‟t be out here. But I was afraid it‟d break your heart if I suggested that you turn in your suit.” (Laughter) PM: Well, take me back to 1923 though - our first conference title. I think that was the first year we were known as the Vikings. HW: Yes. PM: The first year that we played at Waldo Field. HW: Yes. Waldo Field was dedicated that year at one of the games I think when we played the Ellensburg Normal, as I recall. The Vikings, I remember, that was adopted that year. Blue and white was officially adopted as the colors; it had been used some before that but as I understood it had never really been adopted. I think it was during that year that the song I want to say… JC: The alma mater? HW: Yes, yes, was written. I understand that they had the words but not the tune for it or something now? I‟m tone deaf, so I don‟t get into music at all, but as I recall, at the time it was one of the students that wrote the song -- the words. And then they set it to a tune of a song that was well established. TB: Cornell University. The melody came from Cornell. PM: Can you tell us a little bit about Sam Carver? HW: Well, I did know he was quite intense -- he was so busy and all. He coached football, basketball, track, baseball, and had gym classes, and he coached tennis as well. They hadn‟t gotten into golf yet at that time. Personally I liked Sam very well. There were some that didn‟t care for him. If they didn‟t make the squad or something, they didn‟t get to play enough, well, it was the coach‟s fault, you know. PM: What position did you play in? 2 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HW: Fullback. PM: Fullback? HW: Mmm hmm. PM: What kind of formation did we run? What did Sam Carver do as far as…? HW: Well that first year in ‟23, it was formations that Sam had picked up. Penn State had [played] the University [of Washington] the year before and we used the formations that Penn State used. When we went down and played the University freshmen, there‟s a man that watched that game that said it was just like watching Penn State! He worked in some things. He lost two games with Ellensburg and then Cheney and I think that was the first year they‟d ever played Cheney. I‟m not certain, but they played Ellensburg I think before. We had a very small squad. I think there was only fifteen that made letters. Of course, we played both ways then. PM: Right. What did you play on defense? HW: It was offense and defense. PM: Right. What position did you play on defense? HW: I played fullback. PM: They had the same terms for both. HW: Mmm Hmm. AF: Did you travel by train? HW: No, we traveled that year by bus. We played both Ellensburg and Cheney in Bellingham and took the bus down to Seattle for when we played the University freshmen and two other teams [(St. Martins and the College of Puget Sound)]. We only played five games. PM: It was a good season. You never lost. HW: No. We tied two games I think. St. Martins I believe it was, we tied 3-3, and the College of Puget Sound it was 7-7. Ellensburg, 19 or 20 to nothing. With Cheney, I think it was 26-13. Any other year, I wouldn‟t be able to tell you what it was. PM: You scored a few touchdowns in those games. HW: Well, in those last two games I scored three touchdowns in each. That was kind of a quick play in away…we‟d go down, get inside the ten yard line and going back – we didn‟t huddle then – but just going back to positions, the quarterback would start it out and “let‟s make it, let‟s make it this time” and that was our signal and we got down and when he said signals, the snap signal, and the ball was snapped to me and the other team wasn‟t set and it was easy for our linemen to open up a hole. Against Ellensburg we used a play three times and made three touchdowns all from it. Against Cheney, we used it four times and made three touchdowns. My fault that we didn‟t make three for three on that but when it is just a split second that I didn‟t get started and so we ran it again and there was no hole there and I went off to the left and cut in and [got tackled]. 3 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PM: Can you describe the campus at that time? HW: Well, everything was in Old Main practically, except the Industrial Arts Building. The library was in Old Main, it was on the second floor and afterwards they divided it up and made two large classrooms out of it when they got the new library. Edens Hall -- that was [the] first year for Edens Hall to be open. [I seen something here a few years ago saying] that Edens Hall was opened in 1924 but it was opened in 1923. I know I worked in the kitchen washing dishes! PK: Well, I wanted to ask something if I may. My name is Pete and I work for the Bellingham Herald. I was wondering do you follow football at all today? HW: Not very much. I don‟t care much for watching pro football. On TV I‟ll follow college football somewhat. I used to follow it a lot, for years, but I‟ve kind of gotten away from it. PK: Is that right. Are there certain colleges that you tend to follow that you‟ve been a fan of? HW: No, not really. It‟s what ones I find on TV (laughter). JC: Is there a reason you don‟t follow pro football? Is there something you don‟t like about it? HW: I just think college football is more interesting. In pro football, the good passers [are] back there passing on every play almost, and you almost know it‟s going to be a pass. You don‟t know just what kind of formation they‟ll use but… But I just think college football is more interesting. PK: Do you think that perhaps college football was more interesting when you were playing? HW: Well, we didn‟t have pro football then. (Laughter) PK: If somebody went to a Western game and watched you play and watched you run with the ball, how do you think they would describe your style of playing? HW: Oh, I have no idea on that one. PK: You never ran scared with the ball though, right? You were always very confident in what you were doing, right? HW: Well yes. I‟d grab it, I didn‟t fumble very often. I‟d go as hard as I could. If there was a hole there, fine, and if there wasn‟t I just kept pushing as far as I could go. I had very few long runs. I think probably the longest one I ever had was when I was back there in the Thirties, and I forget who we were playing but they had the ball and had the punt and it was partially blocked and at that time I was kind of like a wing back on defense, and the ball went out here, and I ran out and caught it and went about, oh I don‟t know, forty, fifty yards for a touchdown with that, but that‟s the only time I had a real long run. PK: Okay. Did you have a nickname? And if so, maybe you could share that history with us. HW: Well, I haven‟t heard it for long time, but it was with me for many years, from the time I was [in] about the second grade I think. I‟d said something and I guess I didn‟t say it very plainly and a fellow said, “You sound like a Dutchman!” He said, “I‟m going to call you „Dutch!‟” And it stuck with me. Maybe you heard that before. PK: Well, I‟m wondering, when is the last time somebody called you „Dutch?‟ HW: Oh, it was during the Fifties. I worked for Columbia Valley Lumber Company and a man that had known of me, one of the officers at that time he was vice president, and he used to call me Dutch. 4 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AF: Where did you teach from ‟25 to ‟31? HW: Well, I had quite a few places. I often taught one year and moved on, if I didn‟t get the kind of deal I wanted for the next year or something. But I started out in Anacortes, then I went to Orting, and from there I went to Lynden for two years, and then I went to Centralia. That‟s when I took the year off then after that [and] went back to school. Then I went over to Grandview, Yakima County. On that one I was principal of an elementary school with fourteen teachers. I made $1,400 a year. AF: At Grandview? HW: At Grandview. I taught one class. We were on the same grounds as the high school and the freshmen had practically all of their classes in the elementary school building. I taught a class in algebra. But the depression had hit pretty hard on the farmers over there. The next year they wanted me back, but they would only pay me $1,000 and I would teach a full course. I passed up on it. I didn‟t find another teaching job, but I happened to run into a job in Seattle. It was an athletic supply company. It had just started. The man that had the company had worked for another firm and I was in town and I dropped by to see the other man because I knew him. When I asked him, he said, “Oh, he‟s down here some place,” and told me where he was and [that he] had a business of his own. He just opened up in Seattle in the spring sometime and he said in the fall he‟d be on the road calling on schools and so on and his wife would work in the office and handle things in there. He thought he would get a high school kid to come and do some of the stuff, the shipping out of stuff. I asked him if I could have that job. I got it. I was there for a couple years. No, for one year I should say, and then I got a job in education at the state reformatory at Monroe. I was Assistant Director of Education there. It was my job to pick out the fellows in there that had more education or high IQs or something and use them for teachers. What I had was anything that was needed, starting with first grade work up through eighth grade. I remember I had one man in there, he was forty one years old, he couldn‟t write his own name. But while he was there, he learned enough to write a letter home to his sister. I had an opportunity to read it before he sent it. It was like what a first grader would write. But he was so proud of the fact that he had written a letter. AF: That‟s pretty neat. HW: Then I left there and went to Ellensburg and taught junior high school teaching industrial arts. I was there for four years. Then I moved over to Highline High School, teaching industrial arts. That was during the war time. It got into the spring of the year of ‟44, and I had signed my contract for the next year and I gave it up. I decided the kids were irritating me and I thought I was irritating them. All winter long I had been working another job with a quartermaster depot in Seattle. I would work there from six to ten, five days a week and eight hours on Saturday. After I was away from things for a while, I realized that I was just all in, tired out and so that‟s what caused me to quit. AF: Did you do any coaching when you quit? HW: The only time that I really coached…Well, when I went to Anacortes, I knew the man that was coach there. He had been a baseball player and a basketball player. He had been an All-Conference Guard on the University of Washington team. I did a lot of coaching of the football team [there]. I worked with him doing other sports [too]. Then the next year, they were going to (and I was teaching elementary school) hire a junior high school coach and a high school assistant coach, and I wanted to get one of the jobs. I didn‟t get it, so I left and went to Orting where I coached. The only thing they had down there for sports was basketball and track. I had them. Then, when I went to Lynden, I coached a second team. The superintendent there wanted me to stay because the coach that was there was going to be retiring and they wanted me to take over. But I didn‟t want that job. PK: Did you play other sports in high school besides football? HW: I played basketball. 5 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I turned out for baseball, but the coach was hitting fly balls (I was supposed to be an outfielder) out there. One of them came down and hit me in the chest. Another one hit me in the head. He said, “Wilder, why don‟t you turn out for track.” (Laughter) So I did. I ran the mile. I placed third two years. PM: Was football pretty popular at Bellingham Normal at that time, when you played? HW: Well, you mean with the town folks and so on? PM: And the school. HW: At school, yes. I don‟t remember about others coming too much. I may be wrong on that, I‟m not certain. PM: Do you know where Bellingham Normal played their football games at home before Waldo Field? HW: Probably on the high school field. The fact is, there was Battersby Field and the one at Bellingham High School now used to be known as Whatcom High School and they played their games there and that belonged to the city, I think. And then basketball, when I was at Normal School, played their games either in the Whatcom High School or Fairhaven High School gyms. They just had a little room a little bit larger than this that was a gymnasium. TB: Where did you live most of the time that you were at Western? HW: Well, a lot of homes around there took in roomers. My first year there I was way out on 21st Street quite a ways. Then the second year, I got an apartment that was -- I don‟t know if any of you knew where there was a tunnel across the road from the school, right across High Street. There was a bank up there and a house up on top of that. Then there‟s a tunnel going through and some steps going down to a house that I guess faced out onto Garden Street. In this tunnel, there was a door to go into the basement of that house and it had windows looking out over the bay and so on. I made arrangements and rented that and got three or four other fellows to come in with [me]. We all ate over at the dorm. MA: What kind of things did you do for fun in 1923? HW: Well, I don‟t know. You could go to a movie, or they‟d have a dance at school. [It] used to be four o‟clock every Friday there was a dance in the Women‟s Gym. Different organizations would have dances. Some [might end up] as more formal dances and they were held in a room up in Edens Hall. TB: Did you ever participate in the Chuckanut Marathon? HW: Once. I didn‟t care to try it again! In the summertime though they had quite a hiking program, I enjoyed that. In fact, I went to the top of Mount Baker seven times. AF: With Dr. Bond? HW: Dr. Bond, yes. The year after I graduated (got my degree finally there in ‟37, I started in ‟23, so I was a slow student), in ‟38 I was back there and handled the detail work for the hiking program and I taught a couple classes in industrial arts. KH: Didn‟t you belong to the Mountaineers at one time? HW: At one time I did, yes. 6 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED KH: Was that later? HW: Well, I joined them when I was teaching at Orting, which was my second year of teaching. I joined the Mountaineers and kept my membership for oh…not too long. In Bellingham there was a -- I don‟t know what they call theirs now – hiking organization, mountain climbing. It seems to me it was the Mount Baker Club, maybe. I belonged to that for a time. TB: But you weren‟t a part of the group in 1939 that went to Mount Baker? HW: No, I wasn‟t there. I‟m very happy that I wasn‟t there. There were some reasons, [things] that had happened the year before when I was handling things. I didn‟t want to go back. I remember hearing about it and I remember I called President Fisher and I asked him if there was anything I could do to help out. He said they had all the help they needed -- maybe some money to help support them while they were searching. JC: Do you gentlemen know what we‟re talking about? Tamara, do you want to… TB: The students had hiked up Mount Baker, it was a hike that they did annually. I think it was the twentieth annual in 1939 when there was a big avalanche and six of them got killed. HW: Five of them were killed I think it was, five. TB: Something like that, five or six. ZW?: Did you know anybody that was up there that year? HW: Yes, I knew some of them that were killed. They‟d been on our hiking trips the year before and so on. There‟s one lady that was killed and her father was desperate to try to find her. He tried to get them to get somebody with a bulldozer to go up there and bulldoze that snow off, see if they could find the body. AF: Some of them were never found. HW: Yes, that‟s right. It was a terrible thing. TB: What about Dr. Fisher, what was Dr. Fisher like? HW: Well, in some ways I thought he was pretty stiff. Dr. Fisher started there as President in the summer school of 1923, and I came along in the fall quarter, so he was only a quarter ahead of me. But I remember one thing that came along -- they were going to have a big New Years‟ Eve dance -- and President Fisher had suggested it and that kind of surprised everybody I think. They rented the Armory and had the dance down there. He made a lot of changes. My first quarter there, there were four hour courses and two hour courses. But starting in the winter quarter, we had five hour courses and maybe two or three hour courses, I don‟t remember which now. Things started changing. At that time, in 1923, there was only one professor with a doctorate degree that was Dr. Miller. Some of them I don‟t believe had a bachelor‟s degree. I don‟t know if Dr. Bond did or not. But some of them they‟d gone out and taught in public schools for a year or two and came back and were teaching there. He‟d start urging them to go on and get more education. Dr. Bond just kept plugging along until he had his doctorate degree. He did very well and was very well thought of nationally. AF: I think he went to Columbia‟s Teachers College. 7 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HW: Yes. He told me one time that he was back there taking eighteen hours work one quarter, and he was writing a series of mathematics books for elementary school, and in that quarter, he did the one for either the fifth or sixth grade. He was gone to Boston for several weeks making a survey of their school. And he got all As. But you had to know Dr. Bond to appreciate him because he was just as common as an old shoe, you might say -- a very fine man. He had a daughter and three sons and he had one son that was teaching and was principal of a school in Seattle and I never knew him. His daughter had taught in the high school in Blaine one year and I knew who she was. And then he had two other sons. They went through Normal School and then they went on to college. AF: At least three of them went to Columbia Teachers College. HW: Yes, they all did. I think they all did. AF: All did. HW: Yes. And they all ended up teaching in colleges. They pooled their money together at times to put somebody through school. AF: Oh yes. TB: Yes, Guy Bond I think taught at the University of Minnesota and he played on your football team. HW: Yes, yes I knew Guy. He was there when I was there. AF: His widow still lives in Bellingham. HW: Oh, is that so? AF: Yes. HW: But I guess the whole family of them… END OF SIDE ONE TAPE ONE HW: …at the school and ran into Bill Fisher, President Fisher‟s son. He told me something about them that they thought all of them had died. AF: And Mary Bond is still alive. TB: Yes. AF: She was married to the one who taught here. HW: Who was that? AF: Eldon Bond. His widow is still alive. JC: Excuse me. We‟re doing two things here: We‟re doing an oral history, but we‟re also doing an interview for the Herald and for the Front, so are there any more questions that you gentlemen would like to ask, for your purposes, and then perhaps we could continue with the oral history. MA: I was wondering, when was the last time you went to one of the college‟s football games? HW: I think that was ‟91, when I was invited up. At least it was the year when they had re-established Homecoming. They hadn‟t had it for a few years and it started [up again]. I‟d had notice of it and I thought 8 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED it‟d be nice if I could get together with some of the fellows that I played football with in 1923. I talked to, I don‟t recall his name, but he was… AF: Chris Goldsmith I think it was. HW: Yes, to see if there were any of them around. He found one that lived in Snohomish, and I talked to him. I thought we maybe could get together and have lunch before the game. But that one had been ill and wasn‟t able to come. I think that‟s the last time I‟ve seen a game. I think that was ‟91, I wouldn‟t swear to it. MA: Are you excited about seeing them tomorrow and being a part of the last game? HW: Well sort of, yes. MA: Have you decided if you‟re going to call head or tails in the coin flip? HW: (Laughing) I don‟t know anything about that. PM: Well, I know that we didn‟t call the right one for the first seven games. (Laughter) Dr. Morse called it down at the Battle in Seattle. AF: Yes she did, didn‟t she? PM: And we didn‟t get it -- but the co-captain said it‟s no problem; we haven‟t gotten it right this year yet. HW: You mean that I‟m supposed to call heads or tails for it? PM: Yes. They‟re going to have you call it. You‟re going to see if we win the coin toss before the game. HW: I didn‟t know that. Al here hadn‟t told me. (Laughter) AF: We‟re going to put you to work tomorrow. ZW: Actually I have two questions. One is, how has football changed? Like the style of play. HW: Well, of course, the big change I think probably was having offensive teams and defensive teams. Let me go back to the way it was before then. If you were in the game and you went out in the first half, you couldn‟t come back in to the game until the second half. And if you went out in the second half, you were finished. You couldn‟t go back in again. AF: You couldn‟t come back? HW: No. AF: For goodness sake. HW: And a sub going in couldn‟t talk to anybody on the team on the field out there until after they had run one play. That was so the coach couldn‟t send a sub in to tell the quarterback what play to run. And then of course, passing has improved and plays a bigger deal in it than it used to. Kids grow up with a football now and they learn to pass and some of them do pretty well. My senior year in high school we did quite a bit of passing. I should say a lot of it. I remember we played Whatcom High School and the coach – he really wasn‟t our coach, our coach wasn‟t a teacher. So, at the game one of the faculty members was in charge. He had coached some before. He told the quarterback not to do any passing, so he didn‟t until Whatcom High School had run up a score of twenty six points and 9 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED there was eleven minutes left in the game. In that eleven minutes we decided we were going to pass anyhow. We scored two touchdowns and were down to about the fifteen yard line for going for the third. And of course, Whatcom High School at that time had around 1,000 students. And Blaine, we had I think that year maybe 200. The year before that Whatcom had played up at Blaine. We won the game there. Things you can‟t do now, the rules have changed some, but there was a time out for some reason, somebody might have been injured or something, I don‟t know or remember why, but a halfback went out, stood out right along just inside the sidelines. In those days a lot of places it was a half field. The fans were lined up, they weren‟t back in grandstands, bleachers or something, they were right along the sidelines. So anyhow, I had this play set up for that, it was a forward pass. We got lined up. When the referee would blow his whistle to indicate that time was in again, his whistle was our snap signal. The quarterback got the ball and threw it to the fellow out there in the sidelines and he went long, 40, 50 yards for a touchdown. They cried their eyes out about it. They said that it was illegal because they claimed that time was out, we couldn‟t do that. And then we made a second touchdown, too. We beat them thirteen to nothing. MA: What do you think of the salaries that athletes are making today? HW: Well I think it‟s kind of ridiculous. I think it ruins a lot of them. Some of them can handle it and some of them can‟t. The owners were making big money and the players decided they should be entitled to some of it. I don‟t know what‟s fair and what isn‟t on that part. I think all of the football, basketball, and baseball people I think get too much money. But who am I to say? MA: Did you follow sports when you were growing up? Were you a fan of any particular teams or anything? HW: Oh, some of them. Before I was in high school you mean? MA: Or even when you were a young man. HW: Oh yes, I followed them, yes, some then. MA: What was your favorite sport? HW: Well, I think probably I like football the most of all, and then baseball. Basketball I didn‟t care too much for watching it. If I was in there playing it, I enjoyed it, but I didn‟t care to watch it so much. MA: Did you have any favorite teams or players when you were growing up? HW: In baseball, yes – Lou Gehrig was my favorite. JC: Did you listen to the games on the radio? HW: Oh yes. AF: Golf has turned out to be one of your favorite sports. HW: Yes, yes. But it wasn‟t…way back then it wasn‟t popular. The year I went back to school in 1930 is when I was introduced to golf. I went through school fall and winter quarter and I dropped out and worked the spring quarter, then I was back there in summer school. There were four or five of us that got out. I think maybe we had [classes] up to one o‟clock. We would go right out to the golf course. I guess this is, right here, might have been part of one of the courses [Best Western Lakeway Inn]. We played here and we played Riverside at Ferndale. We would come up and for thirty five cents we‟d play -- forty five holes was very common. I don‟t think we ever played less than twenty seven. PM: Is that right?!? 10 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HW: One day I played fifty four holes. AF: (Laughter) That was a long day! HW: Well, that day they had an excursion deal, a chartered boat to take them [(students)] to Vancouver. I was down there with some others to see everybody off. We didn‟t go. The ship pulled out, we started walking away, and somebody said, “Let‟s go play golf.” So we went out and we played twenty seven holes of golf and went back in. I was eating lunch at the little place that used to be on the corner that had a stationery store and soda fountain, lunch counter. I was having my lunch there and some of the fellows that I usually played with came by and they were just getting ready to go and I said, “Wait for me!” I finished my sandwich. We went on and played another twenty seven holes. PM: What are some of the inventions or different things that have happened during your lifetime that …? HW: Inventions? PM: Yes, anything. I‟m stealing this from Al. HW: Well, I don‟t know. I should have brought a sheet with me I guess that I have about some of the things. Back in the time when I was born, 1903, I think there was less than 200 miles of paved roads. AF: Is that right? HW: It stated how many automobiles there was in the United States. A telephone call from Denver to New York City, a three minute call, cost eleven dollars! I think in the whole United States that year there were something like 250 murders. This article said, think what the next hundred years are going to be like! But the inventions…the automobile was very new of course. The Wright brothers made their first flight a few days after I was born. Radio came along, new thing. Wireless first, and then radio was developed. Automobiles were greatly improved. I can remember riding in one. They were built like a buggy with wheels that would be up maybe this high with hard rubber tires on them. Some of them were chain drive. I remember seeing one that had a belt-driven to the back axle. [There are] so many things that we take for granted now that wasn‟t even thought of back then. AF: The highways have certainly changed. HW: Oh! I don‟t know what they‟re going to do about highways, they can‟t build enough. AF: No. I think that‟s right. HW: They‟re clogged all the time and they build more of them, more lanes, more automobiles take them up. The population is getting so big. It used to be if you had an automobile that was great, but now a family will have at least two, maybe more. ZW: Do you remember what your first car was? HW: Yes. My first car was a Model T Ford Touring car. I think it was a 1918. The top folded down and it had side curtains to it. I think the gas tank was underneath the front seat. (Laughter) PM: Where did you buy it? In town? Did you buy it here? HW: Oh, no, my dad bought it and he decided it wasn‟t for him. It was a used car then when he bought it. He wanted to get rid of it, so he talked me into buying it from him. 11 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I had it for about a year and traded it in and bought a used Model T Coupe, then I had that for a while. JC: How much did you pay your dad for the car? HW: $100. JC: That was a lot of money. HW: That‟s what he had paid for it. JC: What year was that when you got it? HW: When I got it, it was 1927. AF: What was your starting salary in your first teaching job? HW: $1,200 I think it was. AF: A lot of money in those days. HW: It wasn‟t enough! (Laughter) AF: A hundred dollars a month. TB: Who were some of your other favorite teachers when you were at Western? HW: Well, Miss Keeler [Delia L. Keeler, Rural Education] was there, I don‟t know if you‟ve heard that name. But later on, Herb Ruckmick in the industrial arts department was one of my favorites. We were good friends. Fact is he wanted me to get a masters degree and come back and teach with him there. But the war came along, he left and went into the service, and I quit teaching. Some of the others, I can‟t remember their names. TB: Do you remember Mabel Zoe Wilson? In the library? HW: Yes, yes. TB: Any special memories of her? HW: Well, some people thought she was very strict. I never had any run-in with her or anything of the sort, so as far as I was concerned, she was okay. TB: Did you have any thoughts about Dr. Fisher? He was kind of removed from being president in ‟39? HW: I was sorry for that because he had made so many improvements in the school and the curriculum, and all in all I thought he was doing a very good job. He was accused of being a communist, but I‟m sure he was no communist. He may be a liberal, but not a communist. Not too long before he was removed, I had written a letter to the governor urging him to not fire him. There was a lot of flack out there -complaining about him -- I think they were the Birch Society. One thing that happened, there was a communist paper that came out, and as I understood, it was dumped on the campus, up at one corner of the campus, and students could get it. They blamed President Fisher for it. They thought he should put a stop to it. But I don‟t think educators think that way. The students should have an opportunity to read those things and draw their own conclusions. 12 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I thought that was a shame because I think he did a lot for the school. He was really the only one I ever knew because after I got my degree and so on there were several different presidents in there but I‟ve never known any of them. PM: What prompted you to write that letter? HW: Well, I was hearing this grumbling and people urging the governor to fire him, and I thought I‟d write a letter supporting him. TB: A lot of people on campus kind of heard it through the grapevine or whatever as rumors, because there‟s nothing in the student newspaper ever about it. HW: Oh, is that so? TB: Yes. But you obviously then all knew that there was a lot of talk about it. HW: Yes, well I wasn‟t in school then. I was teaching over in Ellensburg at that time. TB: Okay. HW: But I had heard it, I suppose it was in the newspapers. ZW: There was a school paper then? The Western Front was around then too? PM: No, it was called the – was it the Collegiate at that time? TB: Probably. It had different names. PM: Even before that there was the Norseman or something like that. TB: Yes. The Messenger, [too]. PM: Yes, you can take a look at them all; they‟re all in the archives there. It doesn‟t really take you that long to go through them, it‟s really pretty interesting. ZW: Can I ask one more question before I go? What was Waldo Field like? HW: Waldo Field? I played in the first game that was played there, in the dedication game anyhow. Well, I played some in the first game, too. I was told that there had been a swamp that had been filled in, and it was crowned up nice in this grass field. By the time the season was over with, instead of being curved, it was down this way! It had settled, and pools of water were around. It was okay, and other than that it was a good field. We had a grandstand on one side and that had a track, a quarter mile track around the [field]. ZW: How many fans would show up to the games? HW: I don‟t think I could answer that; I wouldn‟t even want to make a guess on it. PM: Did you like the idea of not having the face masks, or do you think that was a good invention to have a face mask? HW: Oh, I never gave it much thought. Of course I never wore one. I think at first I wondered if I would like it or not. And of course now it‟s just acceptable. I think especially in the pros, they hit so much harder, it‟s a rougher game. I think it‟s necessary. PM: Did you have a few broken noses? 13 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HW: No, I didn‟t. However, when I was in high school, they used to say I never played well until I got a bloody nose. (Laughter) I remember one game I got one of those, everybody jumping up and down on the sidelines. As the quarter was changing, it was changing from this position on the field to that position over there, and as I was walking across, my brother came along and asked me if my nose was broken, and I said I didn‟t think so. Somebody from the other team heard it and they went to their referee and complained that somebody was talking to me out there, and that wasn‟t to be. And so the referee asked me about it, I just told him, my brother asked me if my nose was broken. But I took some other hits in my time. When I was a senior, I was playing halfback that year and it was a kind of off-tackle play, and it didn‟t look like a hole there and I made a lunge at it, and just then the hole opened up and I went down and I put my hand down and back up and started forward and the defensive back came in fast and I think he hit me with his knee in the head. I was down for a bit, they had a time out for me. Finally I got up and went back on playing. But the referee was the superintendent of schools in Lynden, and a few years later I taught for him over there. He told me about that. He said he didn‟t think I would get off the field under my own power. He thought they would have to carry me. He said I started to get up once, and I dropped back, and he said my body quivered all over and he thought I was a goner. But I finished the game! My first year at Normal School, I remember I was practicing on kickoff returns. I went to block a man, and I got two men. I got one man I guess with my shoulder, and the other one, my head hit him. The one that my head hit, he hobbled around but he played all the rest of the year. The one that my body hit, he didn‟t play any more football. AF: Is that right? HW: Yep. He got banged up. When he was home at Christmastime he‟d gone to a clinic; he was from Tacoma. They couldn‟t work things out for him, but eventually he got over it and he played for CPS. I think my neck got hurt on that play, too. The next year, we were practicing on the tackling dummy. It was up there, and this one went up with a rope that went up over a pulley and to a weight, where the tackling dummy itself was hooked to the rope. There was a spring arrangement in there, so if you hit it hard enough, you would trip the spring, and the dummy would come loose. Sam Carver was on leave of absence, he was working for his degree. The coach that was there had some blocks down so we‟d have to dive over some blocks to make the tackle. I came up and he said, “You‟re hitting it a little bit too low, hit a little bit higher.” Things just was wrong, I don‟t know what happened, but that dummy was supposed to be hanging up here just so, not touching anything on the ground, but when I went up to hit it that time, it was just like this. And I hit it too high, I hit it way up here, and it couldn‟t swing. There was a place cut out of the sod and filled with shavings where we would land, and my forehead just hit where the sod was cut out. I spent a week in bed after that. The fact is I think it was the last game I played. The coach sent me to a chiropractor (well first I was in bed for a week). If I wanted to turn my head from one side to the other lying down I had to do it this way. But I went to a chiropractor and he‟d straighten [things] out and I‟d go up, skip school and practice, and go back down the next day, and things were all knocked out of shape again. After a few days, I guess he told the coach that I shouldn‟t play anymore. [I turned out, played around, throwing passes back and forth with somebody.] Then there was the year I went back to school. We were playing Monmouth Normal School. That‟s the same school that‟s going to be here tomorrow, isn‟t it? PM: Yes. HW: And on the kickoff for the second half, I got clipped. I think that was the first year that clipping was illegal. And from then on, I was in a daze. I think, I‟m teaching school in Centralia, but here I am in a 14 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED football suit. It doesn‟t make sense. Why am I in this football suit? But I played all through it in the second half until about two minutes before the game was over. I went out and I went up and caught a pass and two fellows clobbered me and I was down for a little bit, got up and went back to the huddle. A sub came in for me, and I went over and sat down on the bench next to the manager. I said, “Bill, where are we?” He looked at me, got up and went over to Sam, and he said, “Wilder wants to know where he is.” He told him to take me up to the dressing room – and this game was played in Portland at Multnomah Stadium (or something like that that they used to have, I don‟t know if they have it now or not). On the way there – there were very few people at the game I remember – but this announcement came on inquiring if there was a doctor in the crowd. There wasn‟t, but the trainer from CPS was there and he came in tried to help me. But I just lay out on the floor for about two hours before I was able to come around. All the players, most of them had come in and showered and dressed and were gone. But I finally got out of it. I didn‟t know what was wrong with me until, oh, years later I was telling a doctor friend about it and said, “Well, you had a…” Now I can‟t think of the name of what it was… TB: A concussion? HW: A concussion, yes. AF: Pretty tough games. HW: Yes. TB: Why did you choose to come to Western in the beginning? Did you come just to play football, or you came because you knew you wanted to be a teacher or…? HW: Neither! I wanted to go on to school, but I didn‟t know what I wanted to take or what I wanted to do. But I knew a man that we had there that had gone to school, and he taught there for two or three years and he left, got into something else. I thought well, I can do that. Maybe I‟ll find out something that I wanted to do. That‟s how I got into it. So I just went on teaching until the time that I got tired out and I quit. TB: Were you ever sorry that you quit teaching? HW: In some ways, yes, in other ways, no. I had got into the business end of things and the experiences I had there was something I enjoyed. JC: Where are you living now, sir? HW: Olympia. I lived on Hood Canal for several years. Then I lived over in Alderbrook for a while. But I got so all the doctors I had were in Olympia. I was getting to the place where my eyes were bothering me and I was afraid I wouldn‟t be able to drive much longer, and I thought I should move into Olympia. Shortly after I got in to Olympia and moved, I had a note from the eye doctor that it was time for me to have another exam. He told me I needed tucks in my eyelids. He took pictures up close of my eyes, and then he took the tucks, and after it was all over with, then he took another picture. And I could see that before he had taken the tucks, my eyes were less then halfway open. I was seeing so much better afterwards. If I had had it done before I moved, I wouldn‟t have moved. AF: (Laughter) For goodness sake, it wouldn‟t have been necessary. PM: Well Kay says he drives fifty minutes to play golf. Is that right? KH: Yes, about fifty miles. PM: Fifty miles, I‟m sorry -- fifty miles to play golf. 15 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED KH: You drive up to Cushman [near Hoodsport] to play golf. It‟s about fifty miles. HW: Fifty? No. About thirty six, thirty seven miles. KH: It takes me an hour to get down to your place! HW: Yes, I know. But some of that road‟s only forty five miles an hour, and sometimes in traffic, you can‟t go very fast. A lot of it is on a road that you can‟t pass anyone because it‟s two-lane. KH: I think you should tell them about your property on Triton Head, that‟s real interesting. HW: Well, my wife, and this happened before she was married, she and her sister, [and] her sister‟s husband came up from Arizona. This was during the depression. He‟d lost about everything in the automobile business. He was in business in an Arizona mining town that became a ghost town, and now it‟s a tourist attraction. I can‟t think of the name of it, but anyhow…He was a Chevrolet dealer and he sold cars, business had been gone, the depression hit, and then the mine closed… END OF SIDE TWO TAPE ONE … folks were turning their cars back. So the bank wanted their money back, and it wiped him out. They came up with the lady that I married a couple years later, leased a piece of ground up on the canal with a few cabins, four or five cabins on it, a tourist camp. My wife had always wanted to run a dining room. She taught school, she was a home economics teacher. She worked there during the summer months. Her sister and her husband lived there the year round. But anyhow, after two or three years – we had gotten married in the meantime – the owners had a chance to sell the property, and when they leased it they had an option to purchase. So they had a chance to sell that property, they offered a piece of property at a very reasonable price. We had got over a half mile of waterfront and quite a big piece that went out from the highway, out to the water and around. Then up across the highway there was more land, right in the neighborhood of two hundred acres, I‟ve forgotten whether it‟s a little less or a little over. They sold it to us, all of that property, for $2,000 because they broke the lease. We sold lots down there in the waterfront pea gravel, just a nice slope down, sold for $10 a front foot. This was starting in the Forties. The last beach lot I sold was along in the early Nineties. There was a seventy foot piece of land that was in what we bought originally, but the survey didn‟t show, the surveyor had made a mistake. Later [when] the state [was] making some surveys of the land up across the highway they tied in with us and it showed a little narrow strip on their map. I asked them who that belonged to. Well, the court would have to decide that. But the more I thought of it and studied it; I decided it was part of the property we bought. But anyhow, that seventy foot strip I sold I think for $83,000. AF: (Laughter) My goodness. HW: We had a four-year contract to buy that property. We made it for two years and got on to the third year and I didn‟t know how I was going to pay my part, and made a deal with the people that had bought the property where the motel was, because we had property right in back of them going up on the hill. Sold them eighty acres for $1,000. That $1,000 paid off the balance of our contract so everything was clear. But the other eighty acres that we had up there, a few years later I sold for $100,000. (Laughter) TB: I think you‟ve answered all my questions. AF: Well this has been very enjoyable. PM: Thank you very much Howard. HW: Yes. 16 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AF: Pretty long session! HW: Something I‟ll tell you just for your personal interest: I think you all know the Peace Arch in Blaine. I worked on the project when that was built. AF: Is that right? HW: Yes, for about a week and a half. My brother had a contract with them for doing grading work. AF: That was Vince? Your brother Vince? HW: Yes, Chuck‟s father. He hired me. I worked in the gravel pit with pick and shovel. We‟d load a wagon with the gravel; there were a couple men there. The team would come up and hook onto that wagon and leave the empty wagon. By the time they‟d get back making a round trip, we‟d have the other wagon loaded. I worked there for a week or ten days until they finished that particular job. Then I worked for a cannery for the rest of the summer. I worked for two summers in the cannery. AF: Right there in Blaine. HW: I did that one summer, then I worked three summers in Alaska. I went up there in 1920 for the first time. The group was high school kids, there were twenty of us. Then I went up in 1930 and I was very fortunate; they were going to put me on a job outside which wouldn‟t have been very pleasant a lot of the time because it was when the boats would bring in the salmon, and a lot of times it was at night. Of course, it rains a lot in Alaska. You had to be out there when they were unloading the salmon. But I was up there three weeks before they started canning. The foreman, maybe it was two young fellows there, kind of had us working together. He‟d tell us something and I remember one time he was setting something up on a machine and [he explained] how it had to be lined up with the pulleys up above. I said, “Okay, I understand.” And a few things went along that way that he said, “Do what I said.” And I said, “Okay, I understand.” Then he got to a place where he said, Well, Wilder get your crew and do this.” So anyhow, he gave me a job by myself. It was the clincher machine. The clincher machine puts the cap on the can and it just clinches it a little bit, just clinches it enough so they don‟t come off when they‟re in the vacuum machine. While they‟re in the vacuum machine, they‟re sealed. But this clincher had been taken apart and the parts had been spread out on a table. I suppose that they had been covered with oil, but some of them were rusted and so on. He told me to clean them up; I‟d do that with emery cloth. This foreman, he had the greatest knack of coming around just the time you‟d get finished. I‟d just finished that cleaning, and he said, “Oh, well, you might as well put it together now.” I thought he was kidding me, but he seemed to be serious, so I said, “Okay.” Some parts I could see where they fit on there because of the way the paint was pressed and so on. We had three of those machines. Two of them had been taken apart at the end of the season and the third one hadn‟t. So sometimes I‟d take a part and go over to that machine to see where it went! And then there was a place that had a thing that came down and out over where the cans went through, but there was a slot in there where it was fastened that could be adjusted. I didn‟t understand it, but I looked at the one that hadn‟t been taken down and I put it on as close as I could to that. The foreman came by just then. He said, “Oh, all done.” “Did you get this adjusted right?” He grabbed a can and turned the hand wheel on there so the machine wouldn‟t run by itself. I was lucky I had it just in the right place! But anyhow, when we got to canning salmon, I looked after the clinchers and 17 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ran the vacuum machines, but I also ran the steam engine that ran the cannery and took care of all the pulleys and belts in the cannery. I didn‟t make much money, but I got my board and room and transportation up on a passenger ship paid from the time we left Seattle until we got back. AF: And that was during the depression. HW: Yes. That was in ‟30 and ‟31, those two summers I worked up there. I had the same job again for the third year and then Sam Carver was going to take the summer off to go to school some more, working at his masters. I was offered the job of being assistant in the PE department and I took that. In some ways I kind of wished I had gone back to the cannery, but… AF: Where was the cannery in Alaska? HW: That cannery was in Cordova. AF: Oh yes. HW: The first one I worked in was at…I can‟t think of the name of the little place…it was on the first island off of the mainland in Aleutian group. AF: Oh, way up north. HW: Way out west, too. AF: Yes. HW: We were just about due north of Honolulu. AF: Wow. The first one in the Aleutian group. HW: Yes. Unimak Island. AF: Oh yes. PM: He is something else! TB: Yes. (Laughter) KH: You‟ve got a better memory than you thought you did. JC: Yes he does. TB: Thank you. 18 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Frank "Moose" Zurline interview--November 8, 2005
Description: Frank Zurline, WWU alumni, Class of 1950 (BAE)
Digital Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Local Identifier: SCOHP_ZurlineFrank_20051108
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Moose Zurline ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use"
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Moose Zurline ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. All materials cited must be attributed to Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. This interview was conducted with Moose Zurline at his home in Bellingham, Washington, on November 8th, 2005. The interviewer is Tamara Belts. His wife Vi is also present and makes some comments. TB: Today is Tuesday, November 8th, 2005, and I am here with Moose Zurline. He did just sign the Informed Consent Agreement and we are about to do an oral history. My first question is why did you choose to attend Western? MZ: Because it was as close as I could get. In those days we didn‟t have cars. We didn‟t own one. We weren‟t rich enough. Chuck Lappenbusch at the time was a coach at Western. He walked down the street to get me. He watched me play in high school. So when I graduated in 1942, he enrolled me in Western. I drove a bus for a while when I was at Western. We used to shuttle people to Battersby Field. All the local people who played on the team, they knew me or I knew them. So that‟s how I happened to go to Western. I almost lived on the campus! TB: Right, you were just saying you lived just to the south of campus. MZ: Yes, a couple blocks. TB: Why don‟t you tell me where you grew up. MZ: I was born in San Diego, California. My mother married a sailor. But my grandparents owned quite a bit of property on 24th and Douglas, so we had a home there and I was raised there. The buses went right by it. The buses started coming in 1942 and went up 24th Street and around over the hill to Western. We lived there for probably all my life except for a short period of time we lived on 14 th Street by Lowell School. My grade school days were Lowell and Larrabee. I played football in high school, and I graduated in 1942 from Bellingham High. In the fall of ‟42 they got me to come to Western to play football and basketball. I played the fall of ‟42, then the war started and I got drafted, so I went overseas with the Army engineers. When I came back, I re-enrolled at Western and played football and basketball and then I graduated in 1950 and went out and taught school at Edison. I was teaching for a while, a year or two, and then I went into business selling appliances for fellows by the name of Al McNeill and David Morse. Al passed away this year and David Morse is still active. Then I went into business for myself. I sold appliances. TB: When you worked for Mr. Morse, was that also appliances? MZ: Yes, that was at Bellingham Hardware. I started refereeing after college, I started being an official in football and basketball. I officiated twenty-five years of basketball and forty years of football before I had enough sense to retire! TB: You also started your own appliance store then? MZ: Yes, I started my own; “Moose Zurline’s” I called it. 1 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: How long did you have your appliance store? MZ: The appliance store, I started it, and then Red Haskell bought me out and I moved on to his building so I sold there for many years. I stayed in the appliance business because I could referee football and basketball in the evening. I sold a lot to the college. College kids had apartments there. I was there for probably thirty years or so. Then I went and sold incinerators for Haskell. We built them and sold them. Burning large incinerators: it‟s better than burying the garbage; we buried the ash. Then all of a sudden Chuck Wilder wanted to be in this business so I joined [him]. I only had two or three bosses in my life: Chuck Wilder, Red Haskell, Al McNeill and David Morse. David Morse and Al McNeill both owned Bellingham Hardware together. TB: How did you get started with Zurline Travel then? MZ: Vi was working part-time for a travel agency in Bellingham. All of a sudden everything came together and we ended up buying the travel agency. I was just a coolie then. I am doing the same thing at the travel agency right now, delivering tickets, as I did when they started. I was about 46 or so. It‟s amazing how it grew. TB: So you did have the travel agency at the same time that you were selling other things? That was more Vi that did the travel agency? MZ: She kept her business completely separate. TB: That‟s great. Let‟s back up a little bit here. What were your exact dates of attendance at Western? MZ: 1942 in the fall and then I had to come back in 1945. I graduated in 1950 because there was the war in between. TB: How long were you in the war? MZ: Two years in Europe. TB: What degrees or certificates did you get from Western? MZ: Bachelor of Education. TB: Did you get any other degrees elsewhere? MZ: No. TB: Did any other members of your family attend Western? MZ: No. TB: What was your first job after leaving Western? MZ: Teaching school at Edison down in Skagit County -- Edison Grade School. TB: And how long were you down there? MZ: A year and a half. TB: And you just didn‟t like teaching? 2 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED MZ: No, Al McNeill talked me into coming to the hardware store. He was a good salesman. He talked me into coming to sell appliances for him. We had a large appliance store; our only competitor was Sears & Roebuck. TB: When you were going to Western, where did you live? MZ: First I lived at home before I got married because it was only two blocks up to campus. Then when I got married we lived on Huntoon Drive. It was a housing project on campus down probably almost where the Carver Gym is now, right in the back of that area. There was a road going there. There was Huntoon and a couple of old Army barracks they moved in. TB: And that was like Veterans‟ housing, then? MZ: Yes, mostly. Most of the veterans started coming back from the war in 1946, ‟47, ‟48 and I graduated in ‟50. TB: Who were your favorite or most influential teachers and why? MZ: Probably the most influential teacher was Charles Lappenbusch, he was my coach. Then following him was Dean McDonald. TB: Tell me why he was so influential. MZ: Lappenbusch took me under his wing as a son. If you made a mistake there was no yelling or screaming or flunking or anything like that; he worked you through it until you understood it. We had a teacher named Tom Hunt in geography. He made it interesting because [he took] each day at a time, what caused the weather [to be what it was] like today and why was it smooth yesterday? He taught different. He didn‟t teach out of the book, he taught from common sense. There were a lot of good teachers. Another one was Mr. Arntzen. Arntzen Hall is named after him. He was one I had. I was a commercial fisherman, also. So when I got out of teaching school, in the summertime, when there were no sports, I commercial fished. I needed one credit to graduate and the summer came, the summer of 1950. On the fishing boat I would study every day when we weren‟t fishing. I came back and had to be interviewed by Dr. Arntzen. I thought well I better bring him a great big salmon, probably a thirty-five, forty pound salmon. I cleaned it all up, wrapped it all up and brought it, “Here you are.” I thought that might help [pass the] class. I remember getting a B out of him so I could graduate. It was only one credit! TB: What was your main course of study? What did you major in? MZ: Physical education and my secondary was geography. TB: So when you were at Edison, is that what you taught? MZ: Yes. TB: Geography and physical education? MZ: And all sports. TB: Did you coach there too? MZ: Yes. TB: This is kind of the same question but what classes did you like the best and/or learn the most from? 3 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED MZ: Tom Hunt in geography. World history and geography were the best, those two classes. Then I learned a lot in football, naturally, and all sports. In those days, you could play anything at Western -football, basketball and baseball. You didn‟t just have to play football. We probably didn‟t get too good of grades if we played a lot of sports. TB: What other extracurricular activities did you enjoy the most? MZ: Playing sports. TB: Did you do any student teaching at the Campus School? MZ: One quarter. That year, 1950, I won‟t be perfectly right on this, but that 1950 class at Western was the first class that they put students into public school buildings to teach. We always taught at Campus School. Then as the war got more over and soldiers were coming back, there were more students going in, there was not enough room to have [everybody] student teaching in the Campus School. Three or four of us in a group were assigned to Larrabee School. We taught one quarter there. There was a Dr. Hawk at Campus School, I was [around] there because I student taught and Vi was involved with the travel agency, Dr. Hawk told us (our baby was just born, our daughter) he said, “Sign up right now or you won’t get in!” [Our children] went to Campus School when they got ready to go to school. But that‟s how we got in there. TB: Please share any other special memories of your college [ties]. MZ: We got real close from a lot of the coaching, naturally. And the presidents of the [college we] knew most of them. There seemed to be in the latter years, more like when Dr. Ross was here, he had more people into his home for gatherings. He‟d have the seniors come in and then he got killed. But that‟s where the closeness for me started to grow. TB: It was actually when Dr. Ross came? MZ: Yes, and we got real close because we had the travel business, too. We used to have a Dr. Bond, Bond Hall, and the function was down at Larrabee State Park, that big salmon barbeque in the summer. We got all the people that came down there. Everybody jammed in together. We didn‟t have a lot of cars around to shuttle people, they didn‟t have buses or any of that stuff. But after [that] other presidents, Olscamp, Bunke and then Ross. Ross had the idea of a larger house, had more parties, really. But he‟d have “senior day” and he‟d have this day and that day. We grew into that and then Kenny Mortimer came along and each one of these, in my opinion, had a different function with the school. Ken Mortimer was not as athletic-minded as say, Ross was or Karen Morse. It just makes kind of a wave of people come through; you get to know more people, and those are all good memories of people. People would give sculptures and you would learn a lot about that. Certain professors wrote books, like Flora, Tadpole Critters. And when you read a book and you know the person who wrote it, it makes the book more interesting. So that‟s how I got started in Western. But mainly I lived so close to it. When I was a small kid, living on 24th and Douglas, where Campus School is, in that general area, that was the football field. They didn‟t have any lights or anything. [It was] probably more toward the hillside of Sehome. They had a big fence around it. On game day, they would put canvas up so people would have to pay to get in. They put the canvas up and the track was there. I was around there a lot. Then there used to be, coming down 21st Street, coming north, down where the Communications Building is, you used to go straight down through, then you went down that low valley and to the left [would be where] Carver Gym [is now]. It wasn‟t there then. There was a great big rock right where the bridge goes over now from between Wilson Library and Haggard Hall and College Hall was over there. This big rock, it was one lane only to go through over to High Street. That was a main thoroughfare. You went right down High Street a little ways. But then pretty soon they kept digging it a little wider and a little wider, and pretty soon Wilson 4 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Library was there right at the edge of the rock. So we walked on 21 st Street, curved through there. Wintertime it would flood over. You drove in water about that deep. So that‟s how I got real familiar with Western a lot more than other people would have. TB: Can you tell me a little bit more about Lappenbusch? I know he had something called the “straight line defense.” MZ: He had an idea, and books have been written on it. You probably have his books in the archives. If you take a field in football and you have a line, and you have the quarterback in the back field, what you have here is a straight line. His idea was that these guys up here would be like wings. If a player went this way, you swung out and you blocked them in. He had more innovative ideas. They would have two players here and two players here, and just play regular football. Lappenbusch turned this real thin one line, three people, myself right here, or Jack Frazier, Mel Lindbloom, right in a line like that, real thin. So you could watch them. As soon as they come moving toward you, you‟d close right up that gap. That was the straight line. It‟s like a „T‟ upside down. It was so successful that major colleges started using it because of this wing atmosphere. If you watch football on TV today, you‟ll see the whole mass of guys coming the same way, the runner and the blockers. Well Lappenbusch cut all that. He brought the whole line over with him. He had little innovative ideas in that way. He was real influential. He was a teacher, where a lot of people today are coaches, not too good as teachers. They teach football only. But Lappenbusch, he had kinesiology. We‟d get a bad bruise or something and he‟d do more than a chiropractor! He called his class „Kinesiology‟ and we all got credit for it. TB: Well, can you talk about some of your games? You guys used to play Central, didn‟t you? MZ: At that time it was a little different than it is today. They had the church schools, which were UPS, Pacific Lutheran, Linfield, Whitworth, and then the state-supported schools were Central and Eastern. Then of course Eastern went to a higher league now. It was a fantastic league because you didn‟t spend all the money traveling all over the United States. They were all confined to the schools in [Washington] and Oregon: Linfield, Willamette, PLU, UPS, Whitworth, Ashland, Oregon. There were six teams, all religioussupported. I don‟t know about Ashland, if it was religious-supported. But there you see, when someone came to town, there was always a bunch of people at the stadium, as much as now or more, at Battersby Field, because everybody had people going to school at some of those schools. You had a lot of kids from Bellingham that went to Pacific Lutheran, so their parents would all come see their sons play. Right now if you had to go to a football game, would you go to a game with Mesa State or Grand Central? It doesn‟t mean a thing to you. But if Central came or Eastern came or Whitworth came, there is more of a spirited type of people. Then they started breaking off because we give scholarships, not many, but Central gives scholarships and Eastern gives scholarships, well Eastern made off and went to Division I (to a different classification). But here was Western out on the end who gives scholarship and grant aid, and you see church schools and they gave nothing. If you went to PLU, you got some kind of help in classes and books and stuff like that, but there was no funding, maybe room and board or something like that. So they pulled out, they‟ve got six teams by themselves, all church-league, all the same rules. That‟s what started breaking it up. TB: Okay, what about basketball and Coach MacDonald, what was he like? MZ: He was new. He was a basketball player and he was big. See, Lappenbusch had football and basketball when I was there, both sports, and a master of both; different psychology; very slow, low-key, and a “get the job done” idea. He put this formation straight line defense and everybody thinks it‟s football, but he used it in basketball, too. You only had five people now [but] he put three up and two in line. His idea was, there‟s one basket, they have to get there somehow. So he would just keep cutting them off with his swinging. But they don‟t write that up too much because you can‟t see it so obviously. But when “Mac” yelled something at you, you shook. The whole gym shook! TB: Now, did you try out for baseball, too? 5 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED MZ: One year; they only had it for a couple years. Everybody kind of filled in; it was kind of a fill-in sport. I wasn‟t much of a baseball player. I just took up space. TB: You were the first [road] trip by air, the first flight, any thoughts about that? Was that a big deal? MZ: Oh yes, it was. Students were out in the airport and I have pictures of the airport with me standing in front and it‟s West Coast Airlines. We flew to Spokane. That was a big deal! That was a big deal for Lappenbusch to fly [the team] to Spokane. They had a big picture [taken] out in front of the airport before we left. I happened to be the tallest there. They had people on the stairs [of the plane]. I had a big „W‟ on my shirt. TB: Was that to play both Eastern and Whitworth? MZ: No, just Whitworth. You couldn‟t stay away from school two weeks, so you would fly over for one week and play on a Saturday. I think we would go like a Thursday, turn on Friday, play Saturday, then fly home. TB: Any other thoughts about football or about some of your companions, like Mel Lindbloom? MZ: I graduated in 1950 and most of that group did. Lappenbusch kept having a party every year for many, many years. He‟d have them either in the Bellingham area, or after he retired we went down to [where he lived]. I followed up, Jack Frazier and I and Mel Lindbloom and Les Winters, there‟s a lot of them, probably three quarters of the team, we all had to go down to Lappenbusch‟s house when he was sick. He had a big place in Enumclaw. He had visions of environment. He owned lots of property in Bellingham and Whatcom County. He had a tree farm, he got into the tree business. He went to Sequim and lived in Sequim for a long time, his wife and he. Then he had a place in Enumclaw. He sold thousands of trees a year. He had a big tree farm. Then he got sick. TB: Oh, did he have cancer? MZ: Yes. But every year when it was his birthday, maybe eight or ten of the team would go down there. Bob Niegemann and a lot of Bellingham people here would come down. Then they started peeling off, dying here and dying there. But we still, we‟ve been down now to Bob Niegemann‟s house on Camano Island and we visit six or seven of us every year. But probably who influenced me mostly on being a loyal Western supporter was Lappenbusch. We tell more stories about him, you know. Vi worked in the bookstore when I was playing football after we got married. Lappenbusch was crazy to work for and that was Vi‟s boss, Lappenbusch. TB: He ran the bookstore, too? MZ: Louie Earl worked in the bookstore, but Lappenbusch had an office over in Carver Gym and Vi was over in that office. But he had a very close association and we bought everything on campus. Lappenbusch also refereed a little bit and he was on the phone one day and Louie Earl was over in Old Main, Lappenbusch was in Carver Gym, and he says, “I want a pair of shoes just like this one.” And he was serious! He was going to explain to Louie Earl why he wanted that shoe, and Louie didn‟t have it. We always tell stories like that. TB: That‟s great. What was Homecoming like back then? MZ: We went out to, and it‟s now a parking lot, but that area that was flat going down south. All week long they‟d bring wood in and paper boxes and they had a big bonfire, a tremendous sized fire! They had an engine up there, there was a group with a fire hose and all. They would get much larger turnouts. There wasn‟t as much activity in those days. Now they have breakfasts, they have this and they have that and they have tours of the city, tours of the campus. We came up there and probably had a beer bust and this fire. But that was all. And then all the houses down High Street, see High Street was still a main road, there was 6 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED no music center, so you would go down High Street and there was Daniel‟s Hall and these different campus houses. They would all decorate up for Homecoming. Then they would have a parade downtown right through the middle of town. TB: Now did you guys have a big rival back then? MZ: Central; Central and Eastern. TB: Has it always been those schools? MZ: Always those schools. TB: Any other thoughts about people like Frank Gayda? MZ: Yes, he was on the team with me; Leroy Wade and Les Winters. Lappenbusch recruited down in that area of southwest Washington. A fellow by the name of Clayton was the kicker. We didn‟t have masks on our face, you know. If we got hit, we got our nose broke. But all that group, most of them are still alive and still in this area. Homecoming weekend, it looks like it‟s large now because there‟s a lot of people, but it‟s tours and educational, seeing the buildings and all that. We didn‟t have all those buildings, but we had all these houses. I can‟t remember them all now, right over where Viking Union is. That was all homes there, all the way across there, and people lived in them. They rented to the college kids. Daniels Hall was where most of the sports figures went. It‟s still there, that building. I don‟t think it‟s called Daniels Hall. They had a big contest every year. It was all decorated up; all the houses were. Then they had this big parade right down through Holly Street and down on Cornwall Avenue and come right around and back to the campus. TB: Wow. So do you think Bellingham used to be more supportive of Western? MZ: Yes, because there was nothing else to do. The games were played at Battersby Field. You know where that is? TB: Yes. So what was it like playing at Battersby Field? MZ: Like a mud hole! We always had a good time. One year we played Central, the last game of the season, it was cold and blustery and mud a foot thick. I was trying to play kicker. I remember that game so well because we went into it tied at the end of the game and I made a point and won the game! Over there (at our rivals) it was the same way. The wind blew so hard, you‟d kick the ball right in the middle of the goal posts and it would blow it out. Central has always been a friendly deal like that. Then the basketball coach, Mr. Nicholson, his son Dean became a pro basketball player. Those people you became closely associated with. End of tape 1, side 1 We usually played most of the schools twice, just like we do now. Their field was so nice in the fall because of the dry climate and harder than hell. But we always felt the equalizer over here was the rain and the mud. And they had big wood stands on Battersby Field. It was a baseball field, all coming down home plate and around. The other thing interesting in our time, my time, Western, at football halftime always had a marching band. Blue and white uniforms, nice uniforms, now you get a drummer in the stands and a couple trumpet players, it‟s different. They don‟t have a marching band now. You go to the games, don‟t you? TB: Yes. MZ: Did you see the day Ferndale was there? That‟s what they had all the time. It was a heck of a show. Only the band marched the whole season. Don Walters, he was the band master. When they had a parade, 7 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED he would march right through the middle of town, the whole dang thing. But there weren‟t as many students, either. TB: Anything else about your own time as a student at Western that I haven‟t asked or that you would like to talk about? MZ: The thing that really amazed me of this group, Gayda, Winters, Boyd and all those guys, they all went into coaching, so I started seeing a lot of them refereeing. It‟s amazing, one man – Lappenbusch – kept this nucleus together. We still see each other. As time went on, we had parties in Seattle. There would be fifty, sixty people show up. They would all pay their own [way] just to get in and show some movies of last year‟s season. These are the guys from all over the Northwest, and it was coaches. Well, he was the most influential teacher I held close to me. I‟ll tell you another person that is influential to his players like Lappenbusch was to us, is Rob Smith, the fellow who just resigned. He had a real close-knit with his players, very close. But players have a different attitude now. They got so many things to do. They can go skiing, they can go here, go there, go boating, sailing. We didn‟t have that. [There is] soccer going on, this going on, every night of the week you could go to some kind of game. TB: That‟s right. Do you think the players today are less disciplined? MZ: Oh, I wouldn‟t want to be quoted as saying that, but there‟s a different attitude. TB: Distracted? They‟re more distracted. MZ: Distracted. That‟s the best word to use. TB: Why don‟t you tell me a little bit more about your refereeing. Did you referee high school or college? MZ: Both. When I graduated, there was a couple [of referees]. Two of them [from] Lynden, then Mr. Isham went into refereeing, Frank was coaching, so they talked me into coming in (Mr. Fisher did) just one year out of there. I was lucky because I knew Coach Nicholson at Central, [and the Eastern coach], the two coaches. They accepted me to work the Western games, which was unusual. Haggarty was a professional official, so he wanted me to go into basketball, too. Just influential, these people let me start real early. That‟s the only reason I got the forty years of football. It was available. TB: We haven‟t talked about Dr. Haggard, either. What was he like as a president when you were there? MZ: We had an auditorium in Old Main then, a large auditorium, all the students [went there], probably a few hundred. Dr. Haggard would wander around all dressed [up] in his tie, no sports mind at all. He‟d come to the games and knew everybody by name and when we‟d have any meeting going on, everybody would be talking, and he would put his hand up, “Quite please.” As soon as he would put his hand up, all [went quiet]. [Also] when we were there, it was – “Nobody walk on the grass!” TB: I‟ve heard that. MZ: Absolutely. He lived down by the alumni house at the corner house on Oak Street. He didn‟t associate with everything, but he really spoke very high of all his students. “By the way, stay off the grass.” To this day when I‟m up there I don‟t go on the grass! That‟s influential! When they called an assembly, the auditorium was plum full and he got his point across. He was a different type of president. He belonged to the rotary is about all, but the [college] was clear on top of the hill and here was the city. It [was] a long time before these two factors got together. I remember when I was in the Lions Club and stuff, I would get speakers down. We used to have campus speakers come down if you were on the program committee. But you had to work at it. I can‟t remember what president decided that he was going to do something downtown. Do you remember, Vi? 8 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED VZ: Well the first one that was having meetings was the funny guy that sang the operetta. MZ: Olscamp! VZ: He was an egotistical man. Then Bob Ross was the next president I believe. We met Dr. Jarrett the great books man because he came over to our house one day; Bernice was across the street. MZ: Bernice Hall. VZ: She was on the Board of Trustees and so we got to meet him but I think it was a little hard. Of course we were a lot younger then, too, it was a little hard unless you talked on their level. What Moose and I found with Bob Ross and then Kenny and now Karen, even though you don‟t have the doctorate degrees and stuff, they are still good people and they have a lot of fun. MZ: Dr. Ross became the Fourth Corner Development president while he was still president of the college. But he was the first one to get the city to start coming up the hill. VZ: Well I remember being on that board, and that‟s when the foundation started getting more active, as I recall. I could be wrong because Bernice said it was going like eighteen or nineteen years [before] but strictly within the college, I think. Then when we started getting out into the community more, it was quite interesting the different things that we did. And Ross would go along with them. MZ: At the end of the football season, he‟d have all the families to his home on Toledo, the President‟s house. TB: All the athletes? MZ: Parents, too. VZ: We did that for several years. It was for a lot of stuff. MZ: There was nothing off-campus before. VZ: We maybe weren‟t involved, either. You don‟t want to take just our word for it, but it seemed to me that in the last…when did Ross come? TB: 1983. VZ: That‟s only twenty some years. It seems to me that the college became a big factor in the community in these last twenty-five years. MZ: The people going for money like Haskells and Diehls and working the foundation downtown, doing business, it brought a lot of new people to the university. They‟ve done a better job at the university of selling it, but you never heard of going off and having meetings in Seattle. Do you ever remember going to Seattle for a meeting? VZ: I went down once or twice but you know, it‟s been so long. I‟ve worked on the board back since when Jeanene put me on and Dr. Ross. You know, you forget, but I was busy working then, too. TB: One of the things that would be interesting to me, and it‟s a little bit different than what you were saying, but how do you get more support for Western athletics downtown? You go to some schools or towns and it‟s all painted. You go to Beaverton, Oregon, and everything is orange and black. If you were in downtown Bellingham, you would never know that we had the Western Vikings. 9 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED VZ: That‟s true. When we started that scholarship for Moose back in the Eighties, that was the first one, I guess. We just started a small one, we couldn‟t afford more than that. It‟s interesting how more and more people got involved. When they started moving out, it was surprising what people gave. A lot of people wouldn‟t give to athletics, but they gave [to our scholarship]. MZ: I worked for Al McNeill and he was so tight, a real Scotchman. If he gave a hundred dollars, it was lucky. We went to a party at the Canada House one night and David Morse came over and said to me, “Moose, did I hear right about Al giving some money?” He said, “How much money did he give?” “$250,000.” “No!” He wouldn‟t believe me, he had to go and ask Karen. TB: Wow. MZ: And that‟s how you nurture these people along. VZ: Well, if they have the money and they feel the need to give it away to something, a lot of people can be talked into [giving to] the university. There are so many good things that go on up there. Peggy had a little scholarship going because she was a pianist. Peggy Hamstreet. I don‟t know how big it is now because she died, but it was music. So you get into so many different phases and people have so many different interests. Not everybody cares about athletics. MZ: One of the friends that served with me, he thinks I saved his life in the war, he comes out to visit from Michigan. I showed him the campus and we went to the games here and everything. I just thought if he could give $1000 it would be real nice. He went back. We were talking now for three or four days (his wife and he stayed here). He sent into the scholarship [fund] a $5000 check. TB: Wow! VZ: It made Moose feel good because he could well afford it. If people can‟t afford it, you can understand. MZ: It used to get so bad, Jim Brooks, I would come to his place and he would be in his office at the stairway right at the top and he would stand at the top of the stairs, “Okay how much now?” I think we‟re not selling a lot of these people real well. That isn‟t the fault of the people. Every place in the world has a foundation now. You can get three letters a day some days! VZ: A good example of that is St. Luke‟s Foundation. When the hospital was closed, they started St. Luke‟s Foundation. Our foundation was funded because of the sale of St. Luke‟s, so we had over ten or eleven million dollars. Now St. Joseph (and we gave a lot of money to St. Joseph‟s) is starting their own foundation, which Frank has been working on, and already they‟ve gotten up to three million, but it is the only hospital in town. So there‟s all kinds of places to put your money is what Moose means, when it comes time to give money. MZ: When the growth of Western, beyond what it‟s doing now (athletic I‟m talking) is when they get a field on the campus and seats and the parking. You know, you ask a person to go to basketball game and he might be halfway down to my mother‟s house before he can park to walk to it. VZ: They have the shuttle honey. MZ: Yes, they got the shuttle. VZ: But they get a good turnout at the college basketball games. MZ: Yes, they‟re getting better. Football‟s not as good because you have to go off campus. TB: Right. It‟s harder for students to get there, or at least that‟s what they say. Any other thoughts about the growth of athletics, or the role of the athletic director? 10 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED MZ: Oh yes, I knew them all. We had a big swimming program too, but I credit Don Wiseman with the pool and everything. And you had Bill Tomaras, who was the football and wrestling coach. He was an athletic director, too. Then you always had a woman athletic director over there. Lynda Goodrich and Ruth Weythman go way back and Margaret Aiken. VZ: Chappelle Arnett. MZ: So you had kind of a split, women and men. Then you had a whole big turnover in the athletic department because you had [Fred] Emerson, he was a player up there. He was a football coach for a while. You had Jim Lounsberry. He was there a long time. What‟s the football player from Notre Dame, the big guy? VZ: That went to Notre Dame? MZ: Yes. VZ: I don‟t remember. MZ: There were quite a few coaches there for a year or two in basketball. Then all of a sudden you get Rob (football) for seventeen years and you also have Brad (basketball). Then you have the finest fast pitch softball [coach], Lonnie Hicks. It‟s fantastic. He‟s doing a good job there. VZ: There was also Boyde Long, did you mention him? MZ: Yes, Boyde Long, he was a good football coach and athletic director, too. But they slowly started growing together into one person like we have now. These people have supported the foundation, [provided] money for athletics. I keep in touch with a lot of them. I write a letter out every year. It‟s just surprising how much comes in. I‟m on the foundation board and I think that watching friends like Jean Burnet and my daughter and my son who went to Washington State, Jean went to Stanford, and I see these bulletins come through. The one thing they work on are memorials and deaths. VZ: And they work on their alum. MZ: They work their alum way harder. We haven‟t had a director until now. Bill Farkas, he left. Chris Goldsmith was a real fine worker and worked hard, but I don‟t know why in the world [he didn‟t] go off the campus [more]. We had at a couple cruises in southeast Alaska so we set up an alumni meeting in Ketchican one year. Then Harrington, what was her first name? I think she works for Don Haggen now -Mary Ann. TB: That‟s it. MZ: And her husband is out at the campus, too. VZ: Actually, when you think back, Moose, when the other men were the coaches and stuff, you were close to Mac because you played a lot of ball with Mac. But the beginning of the expanding of the foundation and everything is probably what put a lot of things together because the foundation was always there but not extensive. MZ: Lynda Goodrich and Vi have a scholarship in my name. It‟s surprising, I looked at all the football players and it‟s amazing how much money we raised from them putting money into the foundation in my name, a couple thousand dollars. I‟ll tell you one thing. Western is growing and is going to grow more, were going to be confined in area. The largest thing that should be done -- you know they have that new communication building, and there‟s 11 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED one more building going up now, they‟ve got the stadium, they got the mat down and everything and the field -- they have to have the stands put up there. So in the future they can have all these large functions on campus. Suppose they want to have a marching band? Where do they practice? There‟s not enough room except the football field. I think that the next step is a natural. I had a drawing made of it because we were going to go ahead with it and then they decided we didn‟t raise enough money (because it was about twelve years for the football field). You can put the stands right up there and drive right under it. The far side is already sloped. It‟s just natural. TB: Do you think they‟re going to do that sometime? MZ: If it‟s going to come, I‟ll probably be gone! I think with a good drive put on by the whole campus, alumni and everybody, if it functioned right and you marketed it right, it could be a winner. TB: You know, this isn‟t exactly the right [time] to ask this, but I‟m going to ask it anyway. Why are you called Moose? MZ: When I was in grade school, just starting at Larrabee. We lived on the south side. On the south side of town, a lot Slovakians lived and they all had nicknames. Like Andy Vitaljic, there‟s three Andy Vitaljic‟s all about the same age; and Zuanich and all these different people. One Vitaljic was a tall kid, they called him High Pocket. Then another one looked like Andy Gump and they called him “Gumps.” Another one had chickens, we called him “Chickie.” Zuanich lived right behind my house on 14 th street. We had a basket up there. I was just a big kid, my folks were in the fishing business and my arms were strong helping with the nets in the summertime. So I would bump him and knock him down. He says, “Geez, you damn moose!” He was a little guy and we called him “Batini.” To this day, it‟s been my nickname, in fact with some of the jobs I‟ve had they‟ve decided my name was Moose Zurline. VZ: They don‟t even know that he has a name! MZ: So it just kept carrying on. Then when I got to high school, I was around 225, 250, so I was big in those days. Some of my friends were about your size and I‟d go in for a practice tackle, bang into them, they‟d say “Jesus Christ Moose! Find someone your size!” So it just kind of stayed on. VZ: It‟s pretty cute because different people say, “Does Moose have another name?” I said, “Yes, his mother didn’t name him Moose when he was born!” It‟s kind of funny. MZ: It just caught on, business wise, sports wise, and public relation wise, it was a good nickname. That was the reason to do it, to make Frank Zurline and Frank Zuanich, distinctive. VZ: Lots of people have the same name. Yes, it‟s hard. MZ: Not as much as they used to. VZ: We all had nicknames. TB: Anything else I haven‟t asked you that you would like to comment on? VZ: The only thing for me is I think being involved in our university. Everything is so important when you are a part of this community. I don‟t have a degree from Western, but we‟ve tried to do all the things [we could]. In fact, when Moose and I first got married, Mac promised me a job. Moose was fishing. Wasn‟t that it? MZ: Yes. Was that Lappy or Mac? 12 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED VZ: That was Mac. And Mac said , “Oh you don’t need a job, Moose has a good position.” So I went to Dr. Haggard. Dr. Haggard was so sweet! And he got me a job and I worked for Lappenbusch and Ruth Weythman. “Lappy” – I think I‟m one of the few women he mentions in his book. TB: Oh, really? VZ: Yes, for some reason. There was something, he couldn‟t quite figure me out, I think. That was kind of fun to be involved that way. That Lappy, he would be on the phone and say, “I want a shoe just like this one!” Outer space! Anyway, I think community involvement first, I feel that‟s important. MZ: If you took all the teachers from our time and stand them around downtown Bellingham, then ask them a story about Western, Lappenbusch‟s name would always come up. He was a character. When he spoke at the Rotary Club or the Lion‟s Club, honest to god, they would shake their head. VZ: How about Leon? Have you interviewed him? TB: Leon who? MZ: Alpaugh. VZ: He was in the class of ‟38. They are both still alive. They live over at the „Pink Palace‟ now. Betty and Leon are pretty interesting people. TB: Ok, thank you very much. 13 Moose Zurline Edited Transcript – November 8, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: William Lee Jackson III interview--October 29, 2009
Description: William Lee Jackson, first came to Western in the Fall of 2005 as an undergraduate student recruited for the football team. He received his BA in 2010, and his MIT (Masters in Teaching) in 2012. In the interview he talks about his experiences as an African-American student at Western, and a member of the football team.
Digital Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Local Identifier: SCOHP_JacksonWill_20091029
Text preview (might not show all results): fourth year, then football was cut. So we were headed in a good direction, but bad things happen. TB: So tell me, were you at the meeting where you first heard it got cut? WJ: I was. TB: So can you t
Show more fourth year, then football was cut. So we were headed in a good direction, but bad things happen. TB: So tell me, were you at the meeting where you first heard it got cut? WJ: I was. TB: So can you tell me about that? First of all, how did you hear about it? How did you know that there was going to be a meeting? WJ: Our coaches had our phone numbers so they’d text and they’d tell another player to text
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