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Title: Peter Elich interview--April 11, 2003
Description: Peter J. Elich, WWU faculty member, 1961-1999; Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the University. In addition to department chair he was a long time Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
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_ElichPeter_20030411
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Peter Elich ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" cr
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Peter Elich 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 Dr. Peter Elich, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at his office in Miller Hall on April 11, 2003. The interviewer is Steve Inge. SI: Today is April 11, 2003. We‟re talking with Dr. Peter Elich, Professor Emeritus…not quite. PE: Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus. SI: Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, congratulations! And former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Western. The interviewer is Steve Inge. For the record, this is a second effort at this interview, first having been fouled up by operator error. So Pete, thank you for your patience. Could you tell us how it is that you came to be at Western? PE: I completed my undergraduate work at the University of Washington. I came to Bellingham and began teaching in the public schools, first at Whatcom Junior High School, which is now Whatcom Middle School. I taught a variety of courses. I had no room of my own. I walked around carrying history maps one time and materials for the science lab the next time. I spent two years at Whatcom, then went on to Bellingham High School, where I taught and coached football for a couple of years. During that time I was going to school at Western, working on a masters degree in school psychology and working graveyard shift at the paper mill. I had three kids at that time and a $3,600 a year teaching salary, so a little extra income was much appreciated! About the time I completed my master‟s degree, I was also not doing well as a football coach. Maurice Freehill, who was a professor of mine here at Western at that time, asked me one day if I would be interested in going on to graduate school. I hadn‟t thought about going on to get a PhD. He suggested I go down and talk to some people he knew at the University of Oregon. He thought they had a good program in the area of educational psychology where you could do most of your work in the department of psychology, since I already had a lot background in education. So my wife and I went down, spent a couple of days, and by the end of that time we were enrolled. That next fall we went down and spent two and a half years at the University of Oregon finishing a PhD. By the time I got out in ‟61, there were a lot of jobs available. I‟d done some research at Oregon, but was primarily interested in going to a school that emphasized undergraduate education and teaching. A position was available at Western. I made a phone call to Chuck Harwood, who was the chair of the department of psychology, and sent him a letter. I got a call back from him indicating I was hired. I didn‟t need to come for an interview because people knew me pretty well, since I‟d been doing work in the department. I had a lot of family in the area, so I came back to Western, for a starting salary of $6,000 -- a significant improvement. I taught a variety of courses, almost everything in the department except animal behavior. I was pleased with the opportunity to come to Western (then Western Washington College of Education), because of its strong reputation as a quality undergraduate school. We had a small lab with four rats, and that was about it, in Old Main. A few years later we added some armadillos. Carol Diers was interested in studying armadillos because they have identical offspring so you can tease out the effect of environment upon learning. She almost burned down the building I recall one time, when she had a heat lamp above the baby armadillos and it caught the straw on fire in the middle of the night! 1 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SI: In Old Main? PE: Yes, fourth floor of Old Main. Jim Jarrett had just become president the year before I came. He came from the University of Chicago, Great Books tradition, and started a shift almost immediately from exclusive teacher training emphasis, to a broader, multidisciplinary, departmentalized approach. There was a lot of difference of opinion on the faculty about this change. There were two groups, one that was going along with Jarrett to emphasize more the liberal arts and sciences focus. Prominent among those were Herb Taylor, Henry Adams, Don Blood. And then there was a group that was trying to hang on to the exclusive teacher training focus because we had a very strong reputation as a teacher training institution, particularly at the elementary level, but also to some extent at the secondary level. We had a national reputation of being one of the better teacher training institutions in the country, and people didn‟t want to lose that by moving in another direction. I taught at Western in the department of psychology until about 1971. I worked with Tom Billings in setting up one of the first Upward Bound programs in the country. Billings went on to become the national director of the Upward Bound Program. During the latter years of the „60s, I spent a lot of time traveling around the country – literally, the Pacific Islands, Alaska, and Pacific Northwest, helping set up Upward Bound programs and doing evaluations of those programs. In about ‟68, ‟69, I was involved in trying to set up a programmed learning workshop during the summer. That was a hot new thing at the time based on the theories of B. F. Skinner. We looked around the country to find where the activity was going on. Xerox was big in program instruction at that time, and they had a person who I wanted to bring but he couldn‟t come, so they suggested another fellow, Bill Laidlaw. Bill came out and spent that summer and liked it so well here that he took a leave and stayed an entire year. Then he went back to New York and got involved in the New York State Higher Education System. He was hired by the City University of New York to be the dean of developing Hostos Community College, which was in the South Bronx. Because I‟d had some involvement in working with American Indian kids, and Hispanic educational issues, he called me and asked me if I was interested in coming back. I went back and spent two and a half years in New York helping to get that program going. I headed up the social and behavioral science area, selecting faculty and developing curriculum. It was a very, very interesting experience. Bill later came back and became the President of Whatcom Community College, and unfortunately was stricken by cancer a few years into his tenure there. He was a very close friend of mine, and a very great loss, not only to his friends and family, but to the community and to the community college. Soon after I came back, Meryl Meyer, who was the chairman of the psychology department, took a position at University of Florida, and I was selected as the chair of the department. I served as chair of the department for fifteen years. We had as many as thirty two faculty at one time, principally because we had a very heavy proportion of the teacher education program. We taught measurement, learning and child and adolescent development for all students planning to become teachers. Then in about ‟83, the dean‟s position became open in Arts and Sciences. Jim Davis stepped down, and I was appointed interim dean. I was the successful candidate and became dean of the College, where I served until my retirement at the end of fall quarter, 1999. One particularly noteworthy experience during the time that I was department chair, Bill McDonald suffered a mild heart attack. He was the dean of men at that time, and I was asked if I would stand in for him until he recovered, which would be a couple of months. So I spent half a day over here chairing the department, and half a day over there at the dean of men‟s office. It was during the time there was the Vietnam issue, and things got pretty hot around here. There was a mass demonstration one day on Red Square with the Weathermen here with big dogs and side arms, and it had the potential for getting pretty nasty. Jerry Flora was president at that time. Flora and his inner circle of 2 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED people, sometimes they called them “the six pack.” I don‟t remember all six, but it was at least Alan Ross and Herb Taylor and I think Jim Hitchman, who was the dean of students at that time. Sam was probably there; Sam Kelly was always part of that group, and whoever else might have been there at that time. The president of the Faculty Senate perhaps, whoever that was. They were up in Flora‟s office, and I was sort of the runner between, communicating messages between them and the students. I would go out and hear what the students had to say, and then I‟d run upstairs and tell them what the students had to say, and then they‟d tell me what I was supposed to tell the students and I would run back down and tell the students. Then I‟d hear more from the students, and I‟d run back up and tell them. I must have made that trip six or eight times during that day. During one of these times, I was standing on the edge of the pond there, and the students were getting understandably a little frustrated with not having direct access to the President, but to somebody they didn‟t even recognize as having any authority at all, which was true! And somebody hollered out, “Throw the fucker in the pond!” They started moving toward me. Fortunately for me, there was a circle of football players, I later learned, who warded them off and ushered me to a safe entry back up the stairs and told me that I when I came back down they would take care of me. This potentially violent situation was calmed by a group of faculty, organized and led by Professor Mike Mischaikow from the economics department who broke the students into small groups, where faculty would listen to what they had to say and reassure them that they would bring their concerns to the attention of university officials. Let‟s see, what else…Well I think that the transition of the presidents I‟ve had the opportunity to work with maybe warrants a comment. I mentioned Jarrett to begin with. I got to know Jarrett reasonable well because I was in the psychology department where some of his closer advisors were, people like Don Blood, Henry Adams and Carol Diers. I socialized somewhat with Jarrett and that group, so I got to know him reasonable well. I had a high regard for his intellectual capability and his direction. I think that period of time probably represents one of the most significant periods in the history of the University, that shift from exclusively teacher education to Western Washington State College and then eventually to Western Washington University. And then following Jarrett I think we have Harvey Bunke, who didn‟t stay long, but I thought Bunke was a very good president. He actually encouraged me to look into academic administration. He called me over one day and asked me if I was interested in going to an administrative workshop at the University of Minnesota. So I went to that for three or four days and learned about how you shuffle paper and that kind stuff. But he was encouraging. And then I think we had Flora following that, yes. And Jerry was a very popular president at the beginning of his tenure because he was a very well-known faculty member, an outstanding faculty member, an excellent teacher and campus leader and well-liked by people. I had the opportunity to work closely with Jerry Flora as well. It was during that time (1969) we had enabling legislation from the legislature to grant a PhD. They didn‟t give us any money, but they gave us the enabling legislation. I wrote a proposal for a PhD program in school psychology with some people in education and we had the appropriate visitations from people who could evaluate the program and so on and it came out pretty well. So Flora and Alan Ross, who was dean of the graduate school at that time, and I traveled around to visit each of the members of the council, I think it was the Council of Post-Secondary Education, the group that was essentially responsible for making recommendations to the legislature and to the governor regarding higher education issues. And we visited each of them in their own communities, took the person to dinner, and lobbied them on behalf of our proposal. Flora meanwhile had been lobbying the presidents of the other four year institutions. When we went to the meeting where the vote was to be taken, it appeared as though we had a narrow majority voting in favor of us. Just after the debate and just before the vote, the President of the University of Washington, called for a brief recess, and called the presidents of Central and Eastern over and when the vote came, the presidents of Central and Eastern voted against us. And Flora was quite sure that they would vote in favor. As I recall, they said that they were informed by the President of the University of Washington that their chances of ever being named a university would be markedly reduced if they supported our effort to have a PhD program. They were, as we, interested in becoming a university at that time. That was another issue before us. So we lost the opportunity. We could have gone ahead with the program, but we lost the opportunity for any funding. In retrospect, I think it is a good thing that we did not pursue a doctorate program because of our undergraduate program. We are principally an undergraduate institution, that‟s our main strength. When you have a doctorate program, you tend to put a lot of your main resources, your strongest resources, into that program. 3 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SI: At that time, the institution was some what of an even balance still between teacher education and arts and sciences, and many of the other colleges had yet to emerge, so it was a logical position at that time. PE: Right, right, yes, that‟s right. I think it was about in that time when the cluster college concept began? I think Paul Woodring was one of the people who was influential in that movement; the idea that we would develop a variety of small cluster colleges with different kinds of emphases. They would be relatively small, and some faculty would live in with students, so that you would have kind of the Oxford environment. By the time the first of those was developed, Fairhaven, the glamour of that approach sort of wore off and nobody wanted to live in! Students didn‟t even want to live there! But Fairhaven was developed and endures today. I think it offers an excellent educational opportunity for some students who need the more flexible environment that they have in Fairhaven. Huxley was also developed following that same concept and endures today as one of the relatively few remaining environmental studies programs. A lot of them were developed, and a lot of them fell by the wayside. Also the College of Ethnic Studies was developed. I think the recommendation by the dean of the College of Ethnic Studies, Jesse Hiroaka, to close the College of Ethnic Studies, was probably as unique among deans‟ actions in the history of higher education. But Jesse had the foresight to see that isolating minority students was not what you were trying to accomplish. What you wanted to do is to have broad cultural integration in the campus, rather than to isolate the minority students from the majority population, so Ethnic Studies was closed. PE: Paul Olscamp followed Flora. I was on the search committee for Olscamp as well. He provided strong academic leadership. I think that that combination of Olscamp and Talbot, in terms of the internal management of the university, was one of the strongest periods in our history. Talbot, in my judgement, was an excellent provost. He was strongly supported by Jim Albers, who was this person that you interacted with on financial matters. I remember going frequently to Albers‟ office, where you had to go for additional sections of this, that, and the other thing. It was like going to a loan shark without any collateral. But you usually got what you needed, but not always what you wanted. Olscamp pretty well let Talbot run the show inside. I‟m sure they conferred about directions and things of that sort. I took the proposal for the PhD program to Olscamp a few months after he was here and reviewed it for him briefly. What he already knew, I‟m sure, was that we had the enabling legislation. The Counsel on PostSecondary Education voted against our doing it, so we had no resources coming, but I asked him if he wanted to do anything further with it and he, decided that we should not pursue that at this time. PE: Following Olscamp we had Bob Ross. I was rather fond of Bob Ross, as a personal friend as well as a president. He was a marked contrast to Olscamp. Olscamp was much more of a strong academician in orientation. I think much more of – I don‟t want to call him “elitist” – but much more focused upon quality undergraduate education, focusing upon relatively few programs. Don‟t expand too far, but make sure you have very good study in-depth, and attract the very strongest students you possibly can to those programs. Ross was very much of a populist. His approach was that we should offer a wide variety of programs appropriate for a regional comprehensive university. If a student came to Western for a quarter that would probably enrich their lives, even if they didn‟t go on to school beyond that point. We went through the frequent drill of developing a strategic plan during that time. I remember we developed a variety of objectives. We‟d have list of a dozen or so and people said, “Well what about this?” and Ross said “We‟ll add that!” We added it, and we ended up with, I don‟t know, forty, fifty objectives, which gave him license to do anything he wanted to. He could make this decision, and say, “Well this fits items six, seven, eight, nine, ten…” whatever. Backing up, somewhere during that period of time, and I don‟t recall exactly the year, we went through a serious budget reduction. It was prior to Ross. It may have been during either Olscamp or maybe even Flora‟s tenure. We had a big Reduction in Force at the University. We had the Mischaikow Committee, and I was a member of the Mischaikow Committee. I think we met all summer long and we had to reduce by a hundred and twenty some positions in the University, which we were able to do largely by attrition. Some departments even took reduced salaries for a period of time to save some people. We came out of that. But that represents, I think, a very important period in the University‟s history. Comparing Central and Western which were very similar prior to that, more similar than they are now, Western took the position that we‟re going to retain essentially the structure that we have. Trying to maintain strong academic departments, and we‟ll take the cuts and not change the structure. Central took 4 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED the position that we‟re going to try to save everybody, and we‟re going to do this by farming out programs in the Seattle area, in the Yakima area, doing a lot of extended education, taking a lot of people offline, and let them work, on the money that can be generated from offline courses. So they sort of diluted their programs to some extent by spreading out and doing a lot of things at a lot of different places; adding a lot of programs. Western retained our basic structure. I think that was a very important decision on the part of Western, which enabled us to retain that strong academic focus and not try to be everything to everybody, but to focus upon the basic liberal arts and a few selected professional applied colleges and programs, that depended upon the philosophy and the content, and methodology of liberal arts and sciences as a basis. We had Education, and Business and Economics, and Huxley, and Fairhaven, and Fine and Performing Arts, which spun off from that but are all closely tied to the liberal arts and sciences, whereas Central became much more diffused. Going back to Ross now which is a later period, Ross‟ presidency was, I think, marked by, in addition to his approach to developing programs and the populist kind of approach; he was also a very strong representative of the University to the community and to the legislature. I‟ve been told by people from other institutions that he became one of the principal spokespersons for higher education before the legislature and legislative groups. He was very effective in representing higher education; very effective in representing the University to the community. He could talk to almost any kind of group, from the farmers out in the county, to fishermen on the docks, to the business people and education people as well, and I think provided in his own way, strong leadership, although many faculty did not like the more populist approach that he took. He unfortunately, as everybody knows, was killed along with Jeanene DeLille, Don Cole and the pilot of the plane in that tragic accident. I might have been on that plane, I had been with them on the same plane a couple of days earlier at another meeting, and I might have been on that plane as well except that Jeanene DeLille had found a fundraising training activity for deans in Washington D.C. All the deans were in Washington D.C. on the day the plane went down. We hustled back as soon as we learned they were missing. But we found out en route, as we could call each time we had to stop, that they had found the plane and there were no survivors. A great loss of three people who provided strong leadership to the university. Ken Mortimer was next. Mortimer had some clear ideas about what the university should be. He wanted to strengthen the basic liberal arts and sciences orientation, offer a very high quality education. I remember his saying on many occasions that he thought Western was already, and should be further recognized and further developed as, a quality liberal arts and science based institution as an alternative to the more expensive private institutions in the state; the Whitmans, and the PLUs and places of that sort. And he saw us in that light, and that was consistent, I think, with the faculty notion of what the University should be as well. And he supported increasing diversity of the student body. He also tried to strengthen the bonds with the community, and really got the Foundation moving, although the Foundation really began with Olscamp, and Ross moved it along a bit, it really took a significant step forward with Mortimer. I remember Mortimer calling the deans in one day and saying “We have to put a couple, three, four hundred thousand dollars into the Foundation if we want to make it go…if we really wanted to move. He outlined for us what he saw the advantages might be. But informing us that that was money that might otherwise go to us, we were in a reasonably good budget period at that time and after some discussion we unanimously supported putting that money into the Foundation, which enabled him to hire a new director and staff. The Foundation really moved from that point on. He put a lot of energy behind it, and the payoff in the long haul is going to be very strong as a result of that. Then of course the most recent president is Karen Morse, who has continued to work very hard to develop the Foundation, and had done an excellent job in continuing to raise resources for the University, from private, corporate and philanthropic donors as well as from the legislature. I think she has served the University well in her representation to the legislature and worked very hard in providing leadership to the University. I haven‟t agreed with some of her decisions, but that‟s to be expected, you‟re not going to agree with everything that other people do. I can‟t fault her for hard work and her sincere effort. She‟s an extremely nice person and I‟ve been fond of both her and her husband Joe, who unfortunately suffered a tragic stroke a few years ago. SI: I have a couple of people that I would like you to comment on, some of whom we have talked about… PE: Oh yes. 5 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SI: Chuck Harwood, who hired you to come in here, and then Chuck goes on to be the first Dean of Fairhaven, and dies tragically later. Could you talk a little bit about Chuck? His notions about education and what he was doing in Fairhaven? Even in psychology? PE: Chuck, I think, provided very strong leadership for the department of psychology. It grew rather significantly during the time that he was here. Not only in numbers of students and faculty, but also in terms of the quality of the program, the kind of people he hired. We had some excellent faculty that came on at that time. He was an extremely nice person to work with. He was a very friendly guy, and an excellent scholar and excellent teacher in his own right. I had some classes with him while I was doing a master's program here. I was actually a bit surprised when he took the Fairhaven job, but I think he provided the kind of leadership they needed there as well. His ability to work with any variety of people, and Fairhaven certainly had its variety of folks. My wife and I and family became close friends -- they had children about the same age as ours. We were in New York at the time that he was overcome by carbon monoxide on his boat. His wife Vonda survived, but was ill. Anyway, I thought Chuck was a very important person in the history of the University, and certainly a valued colleague and valued friend of mine. Another person who fits into that category, who I actually knew for a much longer period of time, was Sam Kelly. Sam and I began teaching, let‟s see now, he was at Bellingham High when I came to Bellingham High in 1956, and we taught there and got to know each other quite well. We were working on master‟s degrees at the same time at Western. He went to the University of Chicago and got a degree in higher education. I went to the University of Oregon. Then we both returned to Western. Sam was in education for a while then went over to Old Main, I never could quite figure out what his job was, but he did a lot of things. He had a few titles; one was director of the Center for Higher Education. He was also then the graduate dean, and I think for a while he was also the dean of research as well. But I think most importantly, he was a very valued advisor to the senior administration. He was a wise man, a very quick wit, and a very intelligent person -- he provided very effective council to the presidents and provosts and to me. I didn‟t mention this before, but I think it was between Bob Ross and Karen Morse; we had Al Froderberg as interim president of the University for a while. He was serving as the interim provost at the time of the tragedy and so he was moved into the presidency. And then later Larry DeLorme served as the interim president following Mortimer and during the search that resulted in hiring President Morse. Talbot left the provost position in 1983[?], he didn‟t work too well with Ross; they were of different styles, put it that way. Ross, the “good old boy” from the south, and his style was the “good old boy” approach. And Talbot with the Australian background, and had been working with Olscamp, and had a little different style. So they parted company. But I had high regard for Talbot and I relied upon Talbot and on Sam Kelly for council throughout my tenure as dean. A word or two about Froderberg; Froderberg was an outstanding department chair in the department of mathematics. I worked closely with him in my early years as dean and valued his contribution greatly. Ross was trying to select somebody to represent the university at the legislature. He called Sam and me in one day and he had a person in mind. He said he was inclined to hire this faculty member and both of us said “Oh God, no!” This person would not be the person you‟d want to send. “Well all right, who in the hell are we gonna select?” So I suggested that he talk to Al, even though I was reluctant to have Al assume that position. But I thought Al and he would get along well. Their personal styles, kind of casual in their approach, if you will, a sort of down home kind of approach. I thought Al had a respect for the faculty and would represent the faculty position strongly. He‟d been the President of the Senate and so on. So they struck it off right away. He put Al in that position, and Al represented us in the legislature for a number of years. A great loss to the academic side of the house, but a great plus I think to the University in general in terms of his representation at the legislature. Another person I should mention is Larry DeLorme, who was chair of the department of history, with whom I worked closely. I think probably among all the chairs the two that stood out in those early years especially, were Froderberg and DeLorme; very strong, and helped to shape some of the policies for the college which then really influenced some of the policies for the University as well. Then Larry went on to become the Provost, and I worked closely with him obviously in my role as dean. Then, unfortunately, he had a long period of illness and strong 6 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED medication, and his overall performance declined, not as a function of any lack of ability or intent on his part, but I think just as a function of the illness and the medication that he was taking during that time. I think he had all the potential to continue to be a very strong academic leader for the University. Unfortunately he was not able to carry out his career as I‟m sure he was capable of doing. SI: During your time as dean was Joe Hashisaki still chair in mathematics, or had he passed away? PE: No, I think Hashisaki had left the chair before that. SI: Well Joe later dies. PE: Yes, Joe did. But I think first Al was chair at the time I became dean, I‟m quite sure. SI: Because Hashisaki had been hired by Jarrett to initially build that math department. PE: And he did a fine job. That was a very strong department. He did an excellent job, just as Don Easterbrook did a fine job in building an extremely strong department of geology. I think that approach that Jarrett used of going out and trying to bring in some of the top people he could possibly bring in as chairs, then give them some leeway to make decisions in hiring faculty and things of that sort. It was a very good approach. I had the opportunity to be involved in hiring some of the excellent chairs from outside; Rick Emerson for one, Ken Hoover, Jay Teachman. They‟re people who provide very strong leadership for their departments, and I‟m sure there are others who I am overlooking at this point that are equally strong. SI: One program that emerged in that time and sort of got lost was the nursing program. PE: Yes. SI: Did that begin during your time and then subsequently end during your time as well? PE: It was in the initial stages when I became dean. It was a program that was designed for people who already had RNs to get the baccalaureate degree part of their program if they had their RNs from the community colleges. For a variety of reasons it just didn‟t work very well. We could not maintain the enrollment in the program. I think it may be partly leadership, partly because the program was maybe a bit too rigorous or not flexible enough for people who were working as nurses. At any rate, it was a program that I was later instrumental in phasing out. Similarly the apparel design/fashion marketing program, that was a Seattle-based program, we developed that when Rosalie King came to head up the department. She was hired by Jim Davis just before I became dean. She headed the home economics program and she was instrumental in adding the apparel design/fashion marketing program in Seattle. Actually not doing too badly for its purpose, but not a good program for Western; not to have a program stuck out there like that. The students really didn‟t have any attachment to the University. SI: Is this a bit of an expression of the Bob Ross populist approach? PE: I think it is. I think that‟s a good illustration. And I think some of the students who had AA degrees from community colleges came there and took their upper division program in Seattle and many of them never set foot on Western‟s campus. There is actually another person who I didn‟t mention, Les Karlovitz, who was the provost for a brief time. Les was ill when he came here and didn‟t last very long. He died of cancer. I thought he had the potential to be a very strong provost. Sharp mind, brilliant guy, but he was agonized from the time he came. He‟d have those Saturday meetings with the deans, and God, he‟d come up, and he couldn‟t even wear regular clothes, he‟d come up in a sweat suit. He‟d walk around in pain from conducting a meeting, tenure promotion cases and things of that sort. I felt so sorry for him. SI: But not opposed to working you on Saturday! 7 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PE: But not opposed to working Saturday, yes. He was a hard driver, yes. He was a hard driver. I‟m not sure if I would have lasted as dean if he‟d stayed on as provost. His staying on and my leaving as dean might have been good for the University, I don‟t know! I probably stayed on two or three years longer than I should have. Well anyway, what I‟m doing now is, I had a post-retirement agreement when I left, essentially the same agreement that I had negotiated with forty or fifty faculty when I was dean, for people who had been here for a long time. Teach one quarter a year, you give up your tenure of course, and you don‟t have any benefits, but you teach one quarter a year for three years. And I had that arrangement. Then I had the opportunity to teach a fourth year at a markedly reduced salary, which I did this last year. Just got my teaching evaluations back and they‟re quite good, I‟m very proud of them. A little better than they were last year. I‟ve told the chair that if he needs somebody next winter, I‟d be available again, but don‟t take that as a request to teach, merely an indication of my availability. And if you‟ve got other people who want to teach and need to teach more than I do, hire them first. SI: One other person, Herb Taylor. PE: Herb Taylor, yes. Herb Taylor‟s a real legend at the University as one of the original “wiz kids,” you know, high IQ, Mensa, charismatic personality, dynamic lecturer. I used to occasionally sit in on his lectures just for the entertainment quality. Also I think he was extremely well-read and well-informed and knew a lot about his subject of anthropology. And was a strong leader in the University. As I mentioned earlier, he was one of the people who quickly supported Jarrett‟s efforts to change the nature of the University. He went on to become the dean for research, and did a lot to develop the research activity. Under Taylor‟s direction, that‟s probably when the emphasis upon research at the University really began to blossom. Not to make us a research institution, but to encourage faculty research. And I worked with him and had one of the first grants, actually the largest grant the university had ever gotten for research - $45, 000 - back in the „60s. Taylor was inclined also to call you at odd hours. I remember he called me Thanksgiving morning and said, “I‟m in my office, I‟ve been going your proposal for the grant,” or something, “and there are some significant changes that need to made. I want you up here right now.” And I said, “I‟m preparing dinner for my family!” “Well get up here, it won‟t take too long.” It was Thanksgiving morning. He wanted to talk really, mainly, and chatted a bit. He said, “I think you should maybe change this paragraph a little bit, put this part first and that part second.” A few things of that sort, nothing of any significance, you know. I think he wanted to let you know he was on top of things. I think if anybody had classes from him, they remember Herb Taylor. As well as people like Keith Murray. We have had many great teachers at Western. SI: Maybe if you would editorialize just slightly, but in the Ross period and then his death, and the death of Don Cole, and Jeanene DeLille, was in certain respects a watershed just because of the loss…I don‟t know if you could comment upon what that may have done, if anything, to the institution, but it might be an interesting insight? PE: Don Cole, whose loss I think, to the University, was much greater than most people realized. Cole worked very quietly in his role as vice president for business affairs; but did an extremely effective job in managing the financial resources of the University, with principle focus upon supporting the academic programs. It seemed as though Don could always find at the end of the biennium, a few dollars for the president to have to support this, that, and the other academic program. I think he probably represents one of the stronger people in that position in the University‟s experience. I came to value him very greatly. I think one of the things that happened following the tragic accident was that…we had a period of time, we‟ve talked about the Kelly/Froderberg/DeLorme people involved in … sort of the, I wouldn‟t call it confusion, but there wasn‟t much happening at that time -- people were sort of holding the fort until we got more permanent administration in place. I don‟t see that that had any really strongly negative effect upon the University in the long run because we had strong leadership following that when Mortimer came. But it was a period of time when we were just sort of treading water, I think. Not to in any way discredit the people who were in those positions, they did a good job of doing what they were doing, but they weren‟t there to provide leadership at that time. They were there to keep things running smoothly until we could get new leadership on board of a more permanent nature. 8 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SI: At that time, at least I have heard, I have no idea if it‟s true; Ross had, for example, a notion of a College of Engineering Technology, which did not fully develop because he was gone. But that was kind of a Bob Ross project that he kind of liked to move along in its own subtle ways. PE: That‟s right. That was certainly something which I think he was pushing forward. I recall one particular incident. I didn‟t mention Paul Ford, who was a Provost for a while under Ross, as well. We had a lot of provosts, and some of those I‟ve even forgot. I recall one day the Deans were in a meeting in Paul Ford‟s office. Paul announced that Bob Ross was advertising, (we had a position open for the chair of that department) for a director of the Division of Engineering Technology. And I said, “We don‟t have a Division of Engineering Technology, we have a department, and we don‟t need a director, we need a chair. And if you‟re going to create a division like that, that‟s normally something which would go through at least the faculty, Academic Coordinating Commission, Planning Council, things of that sort.” “Well,” he said, “here, take this,” he again showed me the announcement. “He‟s down in his office.” Well I got up, took this down to his [President Ross‟s] office, and asked if I could see him, and went in and shut the door. Ross was a guy you could argue with in private, but you never took it outside the room. You could cuss at him, and he‟d cuss at you, and sometimes you gained a point and sometimes you lost. So anyway, I said “God dammit, you can‟t do this.” [Ross], “What do you mean I can‟t do this?” [Elich], “You can‟t just go creating divisions and hiring directors. This is a department in the college I‟m administering.” “Well, what do you want me to do?” he said. [Elich], “What I want you to do is change that to what it‟s supposed to be, to a chair of a department.” [Ross] “Give me that piece of paper!” And he reached out and got a pencil and wetted it his tongue. And he crossed out “director”, and he wrote in “chair,” and he crossed out “division” and wrote in “department.” He says, “There, does that make you happy?” I said, “You‟re not going to change anything, are you?” “No, I‟m not.” He was encouraging us, during a period when the budget was reasonably good, for the Deans to squirrel away some money for a rainy day. So we were in a pretty good budget situation at that time. That was another function of Sam Kelly. Sam Kelly somehow, could take end of biennium money and hide it somewhere for two or three days then give it back to you. I think he usually took ten percent off the top or something too. So we had $250,000-$300,000 that we were saving as a reserve, that‟s what we called it. One day we got a notice that all these reserves were being recaptured centrally. I went over to see Ross and I said, “What are you doing? You told us to reserve this money, and now you just take it away!” And he said, “Well I need it.” I said, “Well we need it too! That‟s my money!” He says, “Listen, it‟s all my money!” That‟s his style. SI: He didn‟t hide it! Now he‟s being the good guy, bringing it back! PE: That was just his approach. “Hey, listen now, it‟s all my money.” 9 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I was very happy to have stayed at Western during nearly all of my career. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching and had the great pleasure and honor of being selected as Western‟s, “Outstanding Teacher Award” for „65-‟66, by the Associated Students of Western Washington State College. I treasure that, as well as the recognition from the Faculty Senate upon my retiring as dean, and being named Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus. But I thoroughly enjoyed teaching and I thoroughly enjoyed my contact with my colleagues, thoroughly enjoyed the position as dean, particularly the opportunity to work with department chairs and individual faculty to help them build stronger departments and hire stronger faculty. I think I was greatly influenced by an early workshop I went to for the National Council of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, a dean‟s workshop; Bernard Kelly was retiring as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Dakota, where he‟d been the dean for twenty years or so, and he announced that he could really sum this up very easily. He said, “You want to select the very best department chairman you possibly can. And then provide them all the support that you possibly can in hiring and developing the strongest faculty that you can. And your job is to facilitate the chair‟s job in building a strong department, in hiring strong faculty and supporting those faculty. Providing them the things they need in order to exercise their capabilities and talents.” And I always remembered that, and that‟s the way I tried to manage my affairs as dean, as a facilitator rather than a director. When big issues came up, I would call the department chairs together to get their collective wisdom because it was certainly stronger and much more effective than my individual position. I think that my greatest satisfaction came in working with the department chairs and faculty to help them develop as teacher-scholars, and help develop strong departments. I gained a lot of satisfaction in seeing departments develop and faculty and staff develop. I couldn‟t always do everything they wanted, but I always kept the role of the faculty central. The relationship between the faculty and the student is the principle area of focus for the university. END OF TAPE 10 Peter Elich Edited Oral History Transcript – April 11, 2003 Campus History Collection © Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Kwame Alexander interview
Date: 2015-10-21
Description: Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, New York Times bestselling author of 21 books, and recipient of the 2015 Newbery Medal for his novel, The Crossover.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: AlexanderKwame_20151021
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Kwame Alexander ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Kwame Alexander 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 Kwame Alexander on October 21, 2015, in the Special Collections Conference Room, Western Libraries in Bellingham, Washington. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: So we are here with Kwame Alexander, who is in Bellingham for several days for the Compass 2 Campus program, as well as lunch with Western students and high school students, and this evening is giving a community presentation. NJ: Sponsored by PoetryCHaT. KA: Welcome to Fresh Air, with Nancy and Sylvia, and Kwame Alexander. ST: If only I was as smart as Terry Gross. NJ: Yeah, really. ST: So, in the tradition that we’re trying to start with these oral histories, we’re hoping that you can talk freely, and we’ll see where it goes. And just kind of a free flow conversation opportunity for you to kind of riff on your own thought process, writing process, what you -NJ: History as a writer. ST: -- some of the insights you have about your own books, interactions, intersections. So we could start out with just some of this. We were just looking at some of the titles, and I was just noticing, myself, some of the interplay between the books. NJ: Are you even aware that you do that? Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: Yes, I’m certainly aware that the poems speak to each other and the books connect with each other. Some of it is intentional. Some of it is like when you get into this sort of rhythm, into this zone of the writing, it just -- it happens, you know. It’s sort of the writerly destiny of it all just takes over, and that’s really exciting. I don’t know how to sort of -- If I could bottle that, it would be wonderful. But I think most of it comes from BIC - Butt In Chair. Like the more you just sit down, and you’re writing, and you’re just living this writerly life, as Langston Hughes’s Jesse B. Semple character used to say, “Everything is connected.” And so the connections sort of find themselves. And it’s kind of cool, it’s exciting, especially when readers like yourself are able to pick up on that. The titles I think are really important to me. I remember my first play that I wrote. It was back in college, and it was a play called Self-Discovery 101: You Gotta Have It. And so, I was at Virginia Tech, and there weren’t a whole lot of black students there, and I really wanted to write a play to talk about what it means to be a black student on a predominantly white campus. And I stayed up all night. I’d never written a play before. I’d read plays, I’d acted in a few plays. I acted in a play on Broadway when I was 13. So at some point, I thought I was going to be an actor. But I was familiar with the theater enough to think that I could write a play. And so I stayed up all night and wrote a play, a two-act play. I remember calling my father about 7:00 in the morning and saying, I wrote a play last night. And I remember him being really excited and telling me, asking me, “What are you going to do with it?” I said, “I’m going to produce the play.” And so I started reading and researching how do you produce a play. And of course you need a director, you need a cast, you need a venue. And so naturally I didn’t have a whole lot of resources at my disposal, so I said, Well, I’ll direct it. I wrote it, I’ll direct it. I’ll get my friends who are in the theater department to act in it, and that was my cast. And then of course I had to find a venue. Well as it turns out, I had received a letter inviting me to a student leadership conference at the College of William and Mary, and that was taking place in about four months. And I said, How cool would that be? They’ve got to have entertainment there, so why not my play as the entertainment? And I’m a sophomore in college, and I remember calling up the director at the College of William and Mary of the student leadership conference and saying, “My name is Kwame Alexander. I’m a playwright at Virginia Tech, and I’d like to offer my play as your entertainment for your student leadership conference.” The sort of the audacity to do something like this is something I was raised with, that level of confidence, to think that the world is at your disposal. And something my father always tells me is that you have to behave and act like you belong in the room. If you don’t believe that you belong in the room, then people are going to notice and you’re not going to be sort of embraced, and there are going to be some opportunities that you’re going to miss. And so I’ve always believed that I belonged in the room, even times when I probably didn’t. But, Dr. Carol Hardy was her name, and she said, “Tell me more about this play.” I said, “It’s about student leadership.” I had all the buzz words. “It’s about black students and how they can, you know, sort of reach their destinies” -- And she said, “Well how much are you charging?” I hadn’t thought that far. I said the biggest number I could come up with. I’m a sophomore, I didn’t have any money, any food in the fridge. “What would be a good amount?” “A thousand dollars.” “Hmm, well, that’s too much.” “Can you do it for $500?” “Yes.” Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections I talked to some friends and so I knew -- I’d written a play, so I knew the number of actors it was going to require, and it was nine. And here I was getting paid $500 for a play that was going to take place three hours, four -- five hours away from my school, and I had to get everyone there, and I had to pay everyone, got to have a place to stay. So I said, “Well, I can do $500, yes, but we’ll need hotel rooms.” She said, “I can give you two rooms.” I said, “Done. And, we’ll need to attend the conference for free.” This conference cost 300 to 400 bucks. And I’d been invited but none of the cast members, I knew, would have been invited. So she agreed to all that. I got my cast together, started rehearsing. The play happened on a Friday night, the opening night of the student leadership conference. It was the main attraction. And I’m 17 years old, I’m thinking, Okay, this is cool. I’m going be a theater minor. My minor was theater. And, the auditorium was 800 people filled. I mean it was exhilarating and it was like, Wow! It was Broadway to me. Like I knew I had arrived (laughter). And we -- the play happened. It went off exactly as we had rehearsed it. It couldn’t have been any better. That is not to say that it was very good, because I only knew so much about the theater. But within the constraints of what I thought was good, it was excellent, at the time. Standing ovation. And of course the students, who were my peers, didn’t know any better either. Standing ovation, the teachers, the professors. The administrator was like, Whoa, what just happened? So, me thinking on my feet, which is another thing that I’ve sort of been groomed to always do. When we were kids we’d be in a grocery store. My father didn’t cook until very later in life, but he shopped. So my sisters and I would be in the grocery store at the checkout line, and he would not let the cashier take an item and ring it up until we could tell him the cost, with the sale and the double coupons. Unless we could tell him what the price was, he wouldn’t let it go through. And this happened for every item. So you had to be able to think very quickly on your feet. And so I remember saying to myself, We’re about to do a question-and-answer. We can do a Q-and-A. And part of it was my ego, like wanting to savor the spotlight. And the standing ovation, and then I said, “Okay, we’re about to have a Q-and-A.” And the actors sat down on stage, and I stood up, and we started taking questions, and it was amazing, the energy in that room. And the whole time I’m answering questions, I’m thinking this is my life. This is what I want to do. I knew it in that moment. I wasn’t able to articulate that it was going to be some combination of writing and presenting, but that’s what I had just done. So I said, this energy, this spirit, this feeling right now, this is what I want to do in my life. And I just got paid $500. It’s a wrap. And so, the Q-and-A goes on for an hour, and it’s 10 o’clock, and people are -- you know, at these kind of conferences for students, Friday night is time to party. So kids, nobody’s like trying to get out of there to go party. They’re staying around asking questions. So one kid asked a question, she’s from Rutgers, and she says, “Kwame, have you thought about taking this play on tour?” And I, come on, I was barely in the room. I barely made it into the room. But my answer was, “Yes, we are doing a tour.” So as she’s saying that, thoughts are going through my head, How can this happen, how can this happen? And so I say, “Well, after everything’s over, tomorrow…” because I knew that my father, who was a book publisher, had a -- Another thing that I’d been able to negotiate was for my father to have a booth, and so he would sell books. So I said, “At booth number Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections so-and-so, I’ll be giving out information on our tour.” So everybody’s like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. I said, the tour, “It costs $1000 for us to come to your school.” I should have never given the price out in front of 800 people, even though I was sort of married to it. But they clapped again. It was over. And we did an 8-city tour to Rutgers and Fisk and NYU... And it was sort of the first time that I was able to sort of understand that writing is, for me, is more than pen to paper. It has to be writing with sort of the goal of being able to share your words with the world in some profound way, and you now have the capacity to do it. So you don’t have to just write and it ends up in a drawer or under a mattress. You’re going to share your works with the world, and the degree to which you do that is only limited by your vision and your dreams. So you start -- we started with me talking about titles, and of course we ended in another place, in terms of this first experience where I knew I wanted to be a writer and live this writerly life, in all of its different aspects and capacities. But the title for that play was really not that good. I had borrowed it from a Spike Lee movie called She’s Gotta Have It, and so I said, Self-Discovery 101, You Gotta Have It. It seemed pretty cool. I guess the kids liked it. But from that point forward, my titles got progressively better, and so the next couple of titles...there was a title called Ebony Images, another play that I wrote, which was still okay, probably bad. But titles became very important to me. I really wanted titles that A reflected the subject matter of the book, but B, that sort of had a little bit of edgy and coolness to it, and so the titles got a little bit better over the years. I remember a really good friend of mine, my best friend, who was an actor in that first play. He’s always ribbing me about my titles. He’s like, Dude, you don’t know how to come up with titles. That used to be a really sore spot for me. We used to argue about that. And I think, you know, now he’s like a huge fan of my titles. So I think he really inspired me to sort of work on those titles. And so, when you think about - there was a play -- After Ebony Images, there was a play called 8 Minutes Till 9, which was bad, like what does that mean? The play was about a Muslim and a Christian who were twin brothers, and who were trying to figure out how to live in the same space when they had these sort of different, distinctly different, views on religion and the world and spirituality, and their mother. And so their mother -- And they hadn’t spoken in a while -- and their mother was in the hospital on her deathbed, and she died at 8 minutes till 9. Not a very good title. And then my first book of poems, Just Us: Poems and Counterpoems. What are counterpoems? I have no idea. And I think probably -- And then Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur. That’s kind of cliché. I think probably the transition into like really coming up with a title that was concise and represented the book and still had an edginess was the book Crush, and that was 10 years, 10-15 years into my writing. But I think that sort of when I hit my stride, if I can say that, Crush: Love Poems for Teenagers, I felt like it was really simple, it represented what the book was about. It had sort of an edginess to it. Just the word “crush” in and of itself has some energy. And from there I felt like it was on, with the titles. NJ: I am curious as you were just talking about that play, the 10 minutes to 9? KA: 8 Minutes Till 9. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: 8 Minutes Till 9, thank you. It really impressed me -KA: Yes, it’s just, it’s a horrible title. KA: Yes, 25 minutes past 11. NJ: Yes. And (The) Crossover, and twins, mother on a deathbed... Do you find you come back? And what do you come back to in different maybe iterations? KA: Wow. So that’s great, because we’re talking about the books talking to each other. And here’s this play that I wrote that has this direct link to this novel that I wrote, which was 20 years later. And so the thing I didn’t tell you about 8 Minutes Till 9 is that -- this was my third sort of, my third attempt at producing theater, okay. So after that first play had just wild success, as a 17 year-old, of course, I can do this. I can do this now. I will become a theater impresario. And so part of this whole idea of finding your rhythm and saying yes is that there are going to be failures. And I think that, the thing is, you got to be willing to deal with the failures. Like you’ve got to be willing to let those happen, embrace them, and learn from them. And that way you’re able to sort of find what’s possible. And so with 8 Minutes Till 9, it was my third attempt, I felt like I was in a rhythm, and it was now time for me to actually go to Broadway, like literally. NJ: Oh my gosh. KA: And so I found a theater in my home town, in Norfolk, Virginia. It’s called the Norfolk Center Theater, I believe, and I had 800 students in the first play, because the students had been registered for the conference from all around the country, so they were -- that was my audience. I didn’t have to market, just had to show up and do my piece. Well now I had to market to the Norfolk Center Theater, and I remember getting my scholarship money from school, I was now a junior, and I had leftover money. And I decided I’m going to use this money to produce my play. The theater sat 2,000 people. I’m going to do this. Everybody’s going to love this play. And there were 5 people in the audience. And I remember feeling like, or feeling a number of things. Two of the people were my parents. And I remember feeling like it was the end of the world, like it’s a wrap. I mean, just thinking about it right now makes me just want to, wow, it was devastating, because I had done everything I thought that I knew, everything that I thought I had to do in order to bring people out. And certainly a theater with 2,000 people in there and there are 5 people in the audience, there’s no way to sort of think positively about that, especially as a 19 year old, who thinks he wants to be a writer/director/producer. And so I was devastated. ST: So as part of the consequence of having the tremendous confidence and self-assuredness, when it doesn’t happen, it sounds like there’s some extremes going on. I mean, that’s a challenging way to move through the world I imagine. KA: Well again, it’s no way around that. You can’t, I don’t care how much confidence you have, you can’t rationalize there being 5 people in a theater of 2,000, in front of the people you care the most about, and the actors who you promised that this is going to be. And it was just, like you really just felt like you wanted to be in your mother’s arms. You wanted to just be away from the world. And it was Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections the lowest -- it’s one of the lowest points in my writing career. And then the other thing happened, because you can’t take away confidence, 19 years of confidence being instilled in you by your parents and being reinforced daily. That doesn’t just end because you’re devastated. It takes a hit. It doesn’t go down though. And so we did the play. We did the entire play. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Of course I’m only 19, so how many hard things have I done? But when you start looking at the future, in terms of my writing career, it definitely laid a foundation for how I would move through the world, how I would deal with the nos, because that was the biggest no. It’s probably one of the top three biggest nos I’ve ever faced in terms of the rejection that I felt. But we did the play. We did the play. I don’t know how that 2 ½ hours -- I don’t remember how I made it through that 2 ½ hours, but it’s not, you know, we did. And when it was over and I got home, yes, I felt a whole lot better because I was out of that space, and I was able to look back on it, and I knew that I would never be in that position again. I would never be in that position again. I mean, I gave up my scholarship money for this, to produce this. I didn’t, obviously, I didn’t market it and promote it well. And so, yes, yes, yes. And so, to go back to your question and the idea when we look at The Crossover and we have similar sort of themes, in terms of twins, rivalry, parent, parental illness. I kind of I guess when I think back on it, I guess I feel like I never -- that story never got told. And so maybe I needed to be able to close that chapter in some way, and this was sort of a coming full circle. I don’t know, I’m speculating, but I think our subconscious acts in ways that we don’t necessarily know. So when you bring it up, maybe that had something to do with it. I needed to have some closure, because I always felt like it was a great idea. So I needed to circle back and deal with some of that. But oh, I get chills when I think about that theater. It was the hardest thing. But again I mean, we can’t have the yeses without the nos. You can’t have the mountains without the valleys. You just you can’t. The world doesn’t work like that. So, yes, 8 Minutes Till 9. NJ: Music. It’s everywhere, in your work. KA: Yes, the music. I told my parents that I don’t remember music being in our house. I don’t remember you all listening to music. You know, I remember gospel music because my father was a Baptist minister, and so I remember church, and I remember my father didn’t listen to secular music. So he never, I don’t have that recollection of him listening to music outside of church. I remember him trying to sing in the pulpit and sounding horrible. I remember that. I remember my mother humming songs and singing songs around the house, If you want to be happy for the rest of your life... I remember her singing, How much is the doggy in the window? I remember her singing songs like that around the house. I remember that a lot. So I remember those two things. And I remember, certainly, my sisters and I loving Michael Jackson and sort of going through our phases. And then I remember falling asleep at night listening to the oldies but goodies, every night. I had a little alarm clock radio, and so I’d fall asleep, Breaking up is hard to do. Now I know, I know that it’s true. Don’t say that this is the end. Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again. I beg... So I used to listen to these songs. Yes, I guess there was music in my house. There was a lot of music. I used to listen to those songs every night, loved the stories, loved the stories. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections But you know, the music in the books, I think, comes from a couple different places. Obviously it comes from that. But it comes from, I love writing while listening to music. The writing, it centers, it calms me, it inspires me, so I love listening to music, especially instrumental jazz music. The music has to be instrumental. I can’t have words when I’m writing. So I think the biggest thing in terms of why the music is so much a part of my life now, and therefore a part of my writing life, I was a sophomore in college and I’d come home, and again, the only music I ever heard my father embrace was gospel music, and I came home -- and this is a man who didn’t, he never said I loved you. I didn’t hear that. Like you knew he did, but you didn’t ever hear it. He wasn’t very emotive. But he was emotive when he fussed. But you didn’t really get the warm and fuzzy, Oh come here, son, give me a hug. That never happened, ever! So I remember coming home sophomore year and being in our attic. My grandmother used to say that I was a meddler. “Why is that boy always meddling in my stuff?” He’s in my closets and then, “What are you, Ed, come down!” She used to call me by my first name, Edward. “Edward, come downstairs and stop meddling up there.” I loved going in drawers and finding things and being under beds, and there was always little things that you could find, and it was just so cool to me to discover all these wonderful things that you knew had stories, had these sort of backgrounds, these histories...medals in your grandfather’s drawer, and fur coats, oh and fur hats. Oh, my favorite thing was papers, anything that was paper, because papers had things written on them. And whatever was written on them, you knew was going to be something that you didn’t know before. And so you got this sort of peek into these people’s lives who were your family. My grandmother used to say, “Why is he meddling?” And this is both of my grandmothers. My mother’s mother and my father’s mother, I did the same thing. My mother’s mother had an attic where her mother had lived, so it was a whole apartment up there. Oh my goodness! I found watches, encyclopedias, you know, can I say bras? I mean, I found everything, and it was all so exciting! And so, I come home sophomore year and I do what I always do. I’m in our attic, because growing up I’d never discovered everything that was in the attic, so it was always cool to go up there. So maybe I was up there looking for something from my high school days. Everything was in boxes. And I find two crates of records, and I started looking at the records, and the records are like Ella Fitzgerald, Live in Berlin; Duke Ellington; Ornette Coleman; Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain. And I’m like what is this? And I look at the top of each record, and in stencil, which is what these guys in the Air Force used to use to identify their records, it said, Property of The Big Al. And I’m like, That’s my dad. My dad’s nickname in the Air Force was The Big Al. My dad has a record, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” What is my dad doing with Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith? What is he doing with these? And then it hit me, My dad was a huge jazz fan. Anybody who loves jazz has to be okay. That’s when I sort of fell in love with my dad. That was the moment. I took those records back to college. I took them all back to college, bought a record player, and began to just fall in love with jazz music. And it has informed and influenced my writing ever since. And I guess in some way, it’s sort of me, reestablishing or reconnecting with my dad in a really profound way. ST: I don’t know if you could hear your dad while you were giving your Newberry speech, because you were up there, but -KA: I’ve been told. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Oh you have. I loved it! It was -KA: It was church. ST: It was church, and it was -- it was church. He was so loving and so supportive and exhilarating about what was happening. KA: Yes, I think for them, for my mom and dad, the whole, you know, awards, the Newberry Medal in particular, it was -- it was validating for them in some way. Because when I got the call on February 2, at 7:16 a.m., I called him. He was the first person I called. And his response was, “We did it.” Which I was like, Dude, we didn’t do anything. But of course we did. Like I wouldn’t have been getting that call had he not done all that stuff that they did. And my father and I -- again, he wasn’t very emotive, so we didn’t -- We talked every couple months. We had conversations every now and then. It was cool. And as he’d gotten older, we talked a little bit more. But beginning February 2, we talked an hour a day, which is -- I mean, there are some days where I just, I can’t, I can’t do it tonight, Dad. I’ll have to call you tomorrow. But we talked an hour a day. And I think, what better way, what is more important for a parent than to see their child living a life that they have always hoped that they would be able to live. Maybe they didn’t articulate the specific, but that everything we put into you, we see it coming out and we’re very -- we feel good. We’ve done something. And you know, me fighting or me fussing because I have to read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and him not being able to understand. Why are you fussing? And me tearing... So there was this phase in my life where we lived in Brooklyn, and we lived in this awesome row house on President Street, between New York and Brooklyn Avenue. It was owned by this older woman who had first editions of quite a few books, Alexander Dumas. She had everything. And she left the books, and there were built-in shelves in every room. So I had a room with built-in shelves everywhere, and I hated it. Because I knew I was going to have to read these freakin’ books. And he made me read them. And so, when he traveled, I would rebel. This is not the kind of thing to share when you’re talking with librarians and English professors. It’s a part of my life. I would take books off the shelves and start tearing pages out. That was my way to rebel. I would only do it when he left town. I wasn’t crazy enough to do it when he was there. To come from that place -ST: And would you get rid of the pages, then, or would they -KA: I don’t remember. I’d tear a page out. I’d tear a page out and then throw the book. My mother would come in. We won’t say what she did, but I had to stop. That was sort of my way. So to come from that place to now be here, I think they’re just very thankful, and my mother said -- I remember my mother saying to my father, “Where did he come from? Where did this guy come from?” So I think they’re just very proud. I know they’re very proud. I’m really happy to have -- I feel like it’s good. It’s sort of my way of saying thank you for all the stuff I put them through as it related to literature. But they never, they never stopped. They never stopped, I mean, “We don’t care. If you don’t want to read, too bad you’re going to do it.” That thing never stopped. And so yes, he’s right, we did do it. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Do you think work, know when something’s going to end up being a picture book or a novel or a collection of poems? Is that conscious? Does it happen organically? KA: Yes. It’s a good question. I have not always, I haven’t been -- Quite a few of my writer friends are very sort of, and I say this in the most respectful way, in the clouds. They’re inspired, and the muse comes, and that’s all good. And to a certain degree, yes, I have muses. But I am also very methodical about my approach to writing books. I’m going to sit down and I’m going to write a play tonight. That’s always been my mindset. I’m going to sit down, I’m going to write a picture book. This morning I was working on a picture book, looking out on this beautiful water and listening to the trains, and I’m going to write a picture book. So it’s very, it’s very planned. I mean, it’s very intentional. I know what genre it’s going to be. I’ve thought about it over and over in my head because there are -- before I can actually sit down to write, I have to know what genre. There’s not going to be any I don’t know, maybe this is something else. No, it is what it’s going to be. I have to know the title. I have to know that from the beginning. And I have to know the whole -- and I have to know the entire story. I have to know the beginning and the end. I don’t have to know the middle. But I have to know those three things. And so it becomes very -- it becomes less, let the muse sort of inspire me, let me find out what this is, and more of, alright, muse, you ready to do this? Let’s make it happen. This is what’s about to go down. NJ: Do you think the muse is percolating even though you’re not aware of it? KA: Yes. NJ: So by the time -KA: Yes, the muse is definitely -- yes. By the time I actually write, I’ve already started writing, and the muse has been working with me and inspiring me. So all that happens up there while I’m presenting, while I’m traveling around, walking my daughter to school, the muse is working. When I sit down to write, I’m taking all of that that I’ve gathered and culled together over the weeks, months, or years. It’s interesting because when I present to students or when I’m giving a keynote, it’s weird because two things are happening up there. Number one, I am present in the moment, which is why I try to make sure that I connect with students and get names. And it’s not just so that the students can feel connected. It’s so I can feel connected too. Because there’s another thing going on. I’m also actively at this simultaneously, I’m involved in this whole other process, and that process is -- I’m not even sure if this is something I should say. That’s the thing about this, in this age of Twitter, stuff ends up everywhere. ST: Nancy and I do not know how to Twitter. NJ: We don’t tweet. We do not tweet, so. KA: I’m being facetious. I’m being facetious. ST: I’m not. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: My mind, my mind is in the moment and I’m trying to connect with you, but I’m also thinking about what I’m going to be doing over here. And over here could be, I heard four kids up there laughing and being rambunctious. Okay, at some point during this presentation, Kwame, you need to make your way up there, and you need to do that poem that’s on page 46 in Crush, because that poem is going to resonate with that boy, because you saw the way... So I’m having this whole other conversation as I’m connecting with this student over here. And I don’t know if that’s multitasking or literary schizophrenia, or whatever it is, but I have stopped trying to understand it and just do it. I don’t know, I don’t know how it happens, but I just do it. NJ: I think I mentioned to you at Singapore American School that that’s what I hope I get better at as a teacher. I mean, watching you yesterday, watching you at the Singapore American School, you are so present for the learners, the kids, whoever’s there, even the grownups, that we’re sure you’re -- It’s like when I go to a really good church service, it’s like, Oh, that sermon was for me. KA: Right. NJ: And that’s what I hope I can learn to do as a teacher so that when I leave they go, Oh yes, that lesson was for me. I needed that one. And you don’t even seem to think about it. I think it’s kind of who you are. KA: Yes. NJ: You’re saying, No, I’m not a teacher. You are a teacher at the core. KA: Well, yes, thank you. I tried teaching, I tried teaching. NJ: Well you’re still doing it. You just don’t do it with a certificate. KA: Yes, right. NJ: You don’t have a teaching certificate. You’re still teaching. KA: Right, right. NJ: I saw you with your daughter. KA: Right. NJ: I mean, you’re still teaching. KA: Yes. NJ: And in ways that sometimes we can’t get away with in a classroom. Cool, we’re lucky to have that happen. KA: Right. I remember Scott Riley, one of the teachers in Singapore. At the Singapore American School, he told me, it was like, “The kids are the curriculum.” And so, if you’re teaching the curriculum, you got Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections to teach to the kids. And we forget that sometimes. And I think that one of the beauties of presenting with students, like the 5th graders at Western Washington, is that you get to -- it’s sort of like jazz. When you have a jam session, you have to be present in order to riff off of your bandmates. In order to follow along, in order to get in the groove, and you don’t know the kind of magic that’s going to come out of that, but you got to be willing to do that and discover it. And I think each time I go into a class or into an auditorium or what have you, I want -- it’s a jam session for me. We’re all involved, and I may have some ideas about what I’m going to do, and I’m also open to wherever this is going to take us, because there may be some teachable moments here. There may be some things that I’ll discover about myself. There may be some things that some student will discover about her or himself. And I think that’s really magical. But you got to be willing to have five people in the theater to do that, and that is not easy. ST: Thanks. KA: Thank you. NJ: You got two people in the theater. NJ: It’s easier. -KA: Yes. It’s good to be able to talk about it. A lot of this stuff I haven’t shared in a while, just remember. It’s good to remember that. ST: Yes. KA: Yes. ST: We have a few more months until the next announcement in January. I hope it carries, I hope it flows over. You’ve talked about this year as this platform that you’re honored to be on and to reach out, and I don’t see it ending, to be perfectly honest. NJ: I think you’re booked for the next two years anyway, right? KA: Yes. NJ: I think you’ve found the theater. I mean, it is really not gone. KA: Right. I think I was able to sort of merit all those things, right? NJ: This is your theater. That one was temporary. It was a placeholder. KA: Right. NJ: It’s a placeholder theater. KA: Yes. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Right? I mean, this gig is not Broadway, but for you, you’re on a different Broadway. ST: Well it’s the trifecta that you were talking about of who you are, what you’re writing about, and the connection with the audience, that initial rush that you had from that first place. NJ: Yes. KA: Right. NJ: Sharing your words with the world. ST: And then here you are now -KA: Oh, you’re right. ST: -- in that same experience. It’s like it’s that whole spiral, cyclical thing going. And it’s like, wow, that does make a lot of sense. KA: You’re right. That’s exactly what it is. NJ: And so it’s no wonder it’s like it feels like you’ve come home when you do that. It feels right because it is right for you. KA: Right, right. NJ: Not for all of us -KA: Right. NJ: -- but it’s right for you. KA: Yes, yes. NJ: And that’s why the other people who have a muse that is different, that’s right for them. KA: Right, exactly, exactly. NJ: And that’s right for them. This is you, and to try to find that, we don’t always find it at 18 or 19. We’re looking. KA: Right. NJ: We’re meddling. KA: Right, right. NJ: Right? Yes. So you kind of hope that there is that place. And it’s just lovely when you know. I mean when you know it, it’s like, I am so lucky. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: Right, exactly. I was telling Sylvia, I wake up every morning, I just laugh. It’s like, “No way, really?” NJ: Really, seriously, right? Hey, Dad, I am going to talk to you for an hour because really? KA: Right. ST: Well, that’s a good place to end. NJ: But you wouldn’t have known that when you had five people in your audience. ST: But you knew it when you had that previous feeling. It was the feeling to repeat. NJ: Yes, yes. Thank you. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Barbara (Welsh) McCollum interview--February 16, 2006
Description: Barbara (Welsh) McCollum attended the Campus School, 1938-1947.
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_McCollumBarbara_20060216
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Barbara Welsh McCollum ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair u
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Barbara Welsh McCollum 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 Barbara Welsh McCollum on February 16 th, 2006, at her home in Bellingham, Washington. Her husband Richard McCollum is also present and makes some comments. The interviewer is Tamara Belts. TB: Today is February 16th, 2006 and I am here with Barbara Welsh McCollum. She was a Campus School student. We are going to go through the Campus School Questionnaire and add in some extra stories, too. Our first question is how did you happen to attend the Campus School? BM: I think it was because we lived in the area, period. My brothers… TB: Your brothers had already went there? BM: Yes. TB: That‟s actually our next question. Did anyone else in your family attend the school and what were their names? BM: My twin brother Bill Welsh, my brothers Bob Welsh and Barney Welsh and [sister] Joan Welsh. TB: What were the years and grades of your attendance? BM: I don‟t remember. TB: I think you must have come in the fall of 1938 [Kindergarten] and graduated in 1947 [ninth grade]. BM: Good. Yes, yes. TB: We‟ll double check that but I think for other people in your class that seemed to be when they were there. BM: I‟m only forty seven, how did it work out [laughter]? Go on. TB: That‟s true, that‟s true. Did your family pay any fees, do you know, to attend the Campus School? BM: I have no idea. TB: We don‟t think that they did. Where did you live when you attended the Campus School? BM: On 17th Street. TB: Okay. How did you get to and from school? 1 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: Well, when we first started going to school, we had a chauffeur and his name was Gunther and he would drive us to school. We would pick up Dan and Chuck Olsen at the corner and go to school that way. Mother would [also sometimes] drive us to school, or [we took] the bus, or we walked. TB: Okay. So you really did go to school in a limousine! I heard that. BM: Yes. TB: That‟s wonderful. And/or your mother took you. BM: Mother would take us to school but she wouldn‟t be dressed. She would have her bathrobe on and [once] she ran out of gas so she learned to get dressed because she had to get help to get home! TB: Oh no! Please share any favorite memories of this experience (walking to and from school). You also talked about walking across the hill. BM: I remember on the bus now getting off then you had to walk up those stairs. They were steep stairs all the way up then across, then you had a road guard gal, then you had Old Main, then you went to Campus School. It was those stairs that were so difficult to go up. TB: Were they then in front of the library? Or were they off of Garden? BM: Off of Garden; really straight up. I remember Gene Geske played the saxophone or some instrument and she could barely get up the stairs! But the road guards, it was either adults and then later on you could be in eighth or ninth grade out there, the people crossing the street. TB: Okay. What did you do for lunch? BM: I think in the beginning it was soup, (I was trying to remember this) soup, something, and ice cream. We used to bring our lunch, but Don Turcotte, he was always the one who ate their lunch there. I remember that because he used to get a funny face. When we were older then we were over at the cafeteria at Edens Hall. That‟s where that picture was. TB: Okay. I‟ve definitely heard of Edens Hall by the time you were in junior high. I think there was a lunch cart when you were in the new school. BM: Yes, they would bring it up; soup, milk and ice cream. That was what the teacher would say, “Soup, milk and ice cream.” And Don Turcotte always ordered that, but we had sandwiches so we didn‟t have to fool with that. TB: Nice. Do you remember any favorite classmates? Please name them for us and tell us some stories about them. BM: Well, since there were four Barbara‟s, we went by our last names. Susan lived up on 17 th Street. She was my favorite friend. Gene Geske lived on 17th Street and her sister Robin went to Campus School. I don‟t know if we‟re talking about where everybody lived. TB: Right now, first, just remembering your favorite classmates. BM: Oh, they all were, from time to time. TB: But you had some stories about each one of them. You actually went by „Welsh‟? BM: I was “Welshie.” TB: Welshie, okay. What was Barbara Albers called? 2 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: Albers; and Lindy and Dorsey. TB: That‟s great. BM: I don‟t know how to explain it. We had gangs. It was separate groups. I was fortunate enough to be able to be in both of them because Gene Geske and I and Bea Nelson, we used to walk the railroad tracks. In those days you could walk from 17th Street clear down. We would pack a lunch and walk the railroad tracks and eat lunch and whatever. The other girls wouldn‟t do that but Gene and [Bea and I] would do this all the time. We were camper-outers and we used to scare the Boy Scouts because there on 18th Street they would have all their things up there and Gene and I were troopers. We could hide and we watched them and scared them! We were outdoorsy. But I got to [be part of both groups] because [I also] went to dance school and all [that] sort of stuff so I was a part of both „crowds‟ I guess you would call them, not gangs. Rosemary Rykken, then, was the head of the crowd. If Rosemary walked backwards, so did Albers. It was gang things. TB: So was the dance school part of Campus School, or was that something you did after school? BM: It was after school. In fact, I made my debut at the American Theater which became Penney‟s. I didn‟t know that they showed a movie first and then we danced. We got on stage, curtsied and walked off, you know. Everyone took dancing lessons; or piano lessons, too. TB: Why don‟t you tell us a little bit about your brother? BM: Bill? TB: Yes. What was it like being twins in school, in that class? BM: Well, I think that was pretty good. We didn‟t have that many problems. It was in high school that Bill used to rat on me at dinner time. [The school] alphabetized everybody, so they switched it so Bill and I didn‟t have to be in the same classes. So he couldn‟t tell if I was a slow reader or I did this or whatever. Bill and I did very well in school because Bill had his friends. TB: Alright. So who were your favorite or most influential teachers? BM: I think all of them. Miss Nicol; I‟m trying to think. Lucille Barron, who died, taught. TB: Oh, really? You had her for [Home Economics]? BM: Yes. Susan Jones and I flunked sewing. We did not do sleeves well and aprons. I remember Susan and I weren‟t very good at that. Lucille was a very, very pleasant gal. TB: Wow. So that must have been in the junior high? BM: Yes. They taught us all about vitamins and what [they] meant. I thought we would be learning to cook. We did, it was the first time I ever cooked carrots. We didn‟t like…I can‟t think of her name. Cunningham? What Rosemary did when making custard, instead of using sugar, she put in salt! Miss Countryman, maybe it was Miss Countryman, [she] took it home. She lied when she came back and said everything tasted so lovely, but we knew what Rosemary and Albers did! That‟s what was so priceless about Campus School. You learned to write. You learned about food. Mrs. Button is the one that gets the „A,‟ teaching us music. We had desks (this is in the new school) where you put your head down and she would tell you about it and then play Peter and the Wolf. She gave us all, people who weren‟t aware of music, (my mother had been an opera singer, but the other kids) they heard about that and then appreciated music. She was excellent. Her mother was Mrs. Deerwester-Darling. TB: Oh! That‟s right! That has come up before. Oh, I know, because of Ned Button! 3 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: Yes. TB: Do you remember any of your student teachers? BM: The only one I can remember because of Sarah Rankin, in the ninth grade, Mr. [Ludwick]. We called him „Luddy.‟ These are guys that after World War II came home. That‟s the only one I can think of. I can visualize but I don‟t remember their names or anything except „Luddy,‟ [Ludwick]. TB: What were your favorite subjects or classroom activities? BM: Well it was drawing, art. I loved music. I don‟t know, just about generally everything. TB: How about woodworking? BM: I did that in the sixth grade because I wanted to be with the boys again, so I got to make a menu thing. TB: And the girls did do that a lot, didn‟t they? And the boys did cooking too, didn‟t they? I mean, I shouldn‟t lead you, but I‟ve kind of heard it was kind of unusual because boys and girls both did what was not always [traditional for them]. BM: Yes. Miss Gragg taught us writing, the round of the „o‟ and all this sort of stuff. What I thought was so much fun, again, sitting in the third grade on the floor and – God rest his soul – Pete Onkels used to get up to the blackboard and make huge letters and be silly. TB: Tell me about that. If you guys didn‟t really have desks, how did you write? Or how did you do homework? BM: I‟m sure we must have had desks. I know in the first grade we did. Maybe it was just certain times that we sat on the floor. TB: Okay. BM: Yes, because art, we were at tables. TB: Any more thoughts about the handwriting? A lot of people have commented about distinctive Campus School handwriting. Did you learn to do cursive or was it just printing? BM: Cursive and printing. But then when you got older you weren‟t making your „e‟s this way, you were doing backward threes, being very sophisticated you know. Now my grandkids, their writing is terrible; you can barely read it, whereas Miss Gragg was right there with you. Either big lines on a page then there‟s lines and do it that way, or larger or whatever she did. So she made you think about what you were doing. She was very good. God rest her soul. TB: What kind of learning materials did you use mostly? Did you have regular school textbooks or materials created by your teachers? BM: I don‟t remember. I don‟t think we carried too much to school. I think it was supplied. I don‟t remember having homework. Maybe Margaret will tell you. Maybe we did later in the eighth or ninth. We did dissect. In the seventh grade or eighth, I don‟t remember his name, but we dissected animals. TB: Oh wow. What did you think about that? BM: It smelled. I remember that. I can see him, I can‟t recognize his name, but that was biology. So we learned that. 4 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: What kind of grading system was in use during your attendance? Did you have letter grades or narrative reports? BM: Letter. TB: Do you especially remember any creative activities such as weaving or making things? BM: No. One thing that I‟m very proud of at Campus School was that they did honor Thanksgiving. Over in the Old Main auditorium there, all the classes would get there and they would have kind of a show. The ninth graders got to come in and hold bananas and we would all sing, Come Be Thankful, People Come. TB: Nice. BM: It was a celebration of Thanksgiving. When we were little, the May Day, the May Pole, the girls would dance around that. TB: Wow. Now where was the May Pole located? BM: In my mind I‟ve got it right in front of the Campus School building, the new one, right out front. Maybe they were still doing the rocks, I don‟t know. We celebrated all these things. TB: Let‟s talk a little bit about that. You mentioned it before we turned on the tape about the rocks when they were building the new school. BM: Yes. It was a long length of grass but then they needed help to get all the rocks and pebbles and put them in containers. Another thing that was so great is that we couldn‟t wait for bad weather because then the sawdust truck couldn‟t make it. The schools used sawdust. TB: Instead of salt, then? What was sawdust used for? BM: For the furnace, for heat. TB: Oh! BM: So when the weather was bad, then we could get out of school because the sawdust truck couldn‟t make it up. So we were always hoping that the saw dust truck couldn‟t make it because it wasn‟t coal, it was sawdust then. TB: So did you get fresh sawdust almost every day or just like once or twice a week? BM: I don‟t remember. TB: And that was probably still when you were in Old Main, is that right? BM: Yes. TB: Oh! That‟s cool. BM: I think we had sawdust at the house and Darrell Crait, who lived next door to us, they had sawdust and we were always anxious to see if they could make it up the hill when we were in snow. We used to have more snow than we do now. TB: Right. Wow. That could be important though at home, too. The sawdust truck might not get home and then it would be cold. 5 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: It‟s not a garage but you open up something by the house and then they dump the sawdust down there. It was bins or something. You‟re making my mind work here! TB: What was it like to be observed so often by student teachers? BM: I don‟t remember it being a problem. TB: Did you ever go to summer school at the Campus School? BM: Yes. I had to go because I was lousy in math. I had to go to summer school once and I wasn‟t happy because the weather was too nice. TB: Do you at all remember how they taught you math? Other people have had problems with math that were in the Campus School. BM: Well we had [multiplication tables] you could look at, „Seven times six is forty two,‟ so you would try and memorize those. I don‟t think I was very good at math. TB: What out of classroom activities did you enjoy the most or did you engage in? BM: Well, it was always a lot of PE things. I don‟t remember doing anything out of school. I had dance classes to go to. What was so fabulous was that we learned to play volleyball, we learned to play basketball and all that at the very beginning. They taught you teamwork. TB: What out of classroom activities did you engage in? What did you do at recess, lunchtime, what did you enjoy the most and what games did you play? BM: When we were in the seventh or eighth or ninth, after lunch we went into a room and danced. You learned to dance with girls so it helped you learn to dance and be good at it. We had field trips, I remember that. Identify trees and birds, and that was because we could go from Campus School right up on 18 th Street and it was all woods. We had cards that showed you the birds and we tried to look for them. So again, what Campus School did was open all these eyes so you could see more than paperwork; and clouds in ninth grade. Because Mr. Ludwick had been in the military, they told us about clouds. Every time when there‟s a pattern then I know it‟s a cirrus cloud but don‟t ask me anything else! We had to memorize the different cloud patterns. TB: Nice. Do you think on some of those walks, I‟m going to call it the „nature walk,‟ but whatever, was that often something that student teachers took you on do you remember or was it your regular teacher? BM: You got me. I would probably think it would be student teacher, not teacher, because they were a little older. How old were our teachers? In their thirties and we thought they were old! I don‟t know how old Miss Kinsman was. TB: Any other thoughts about what you usually did at recess? BM: The boys played basketball or something and we jabber-jawed or danced. That was [when we were] older. I don‟t remember [before that]. TB: Did you visit the college itself very much or attend assemblies or sporting events that were at the college part? BM: We went to concerts there or plays. I remember that. But I don‟t think we went to sporting things. TB: At what grade level did you enter public school and why did you transfer and what was the transition like for you? 6 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: When I left Campus School [I] went to Bellingham High School. What you did, you would go down to Adam‟s Style Shop and get a cashmere sweater so you would wear that to school the first day. What was so great was the other high schools getting together so those crowds, this crowd and then Campus School, we all got together and we would go to the Mt. Baker Theater to the movies and we would sit together. When we go to concerts I think, we were all down there! Fairhaven High School, a lot of the kids lived on 14th Street or whatever, so they got to be good friends because of location. TB: So you didn‟t find it difficult to transition to public school? BM: No, I didn‟t have a problem with that at all. I ended up going to Helen Bush in my senior year because I got tired of the same routine sort of stuff. I talked to my brother Barney. He said, “I’ll help you out. Think this through.” So I did. I went to Helen Bush for my senior year, so I don‟t have an annual. TB: Now where was that, down in Seattle? BM: Seattle. TB: It was a private school down there? BM: Yes, a girls‟ school. TB: Why did your brother Bill leave the Campus School a year before you? BM: I think he got tired of it. Actually I think at Whatcom High School he had more fun. Dick was there, and all the guys. I have no idea. TB: Please share any specific differences that you saw between public school and Campus School that especially affected you. BM: Homework, I think! You say that and the first thing that comes to my mind is Miss Martin‟s Latin class. We had Latin class just before lunch and then after so we would go and then bring food back for her so we could shorten the class and learning [Latin phrase]. I think it was just more routine. Was it forty five minutes a class? TB: Probably. BM: Something like that. My brother Bob and Barney and Tom, Dick‟s brother, they used to do funny things. They let a cow go through Bellingham High School. I can‟t remember what else they did. I didn‟t want Mr. Emery to know my name because he remembered Bob and Barney! It was during the war era. TB: What further education did you pursue (college, graduate or professional school)? BM: I went to Stephens College in Missouri for two years. TB: So you didn‟t attend Western and major in education. BM: No. It‟s so funny because at Stephens with two years there I could teach preschool children if I was in Columbia, Missouri area, in the south. Coming here, I remember talking to Dorothy Button, she said no way after two years. You couldn‟t even walk in a door. So I didn‟t, and then when I married Dick and we were in Springfield, Virginia and the kids were older and we needed more money, I taught nursery school; two- and three-year-olds. TB: How did you happen to decide to go to Stephens, or go to Missouri? BM: What‟s the other girls‟ school in Colorado? There was another one. I have no idea. Susan Jones. Susan and I went to Stephens. 7 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Are you still in touch with any Campus School classmates? And if so, could you help us contact any of them? BM: Sure. Gene Geske. I talked to her just the other day. TB: Excellent! BM: She‟s in Sun City. Susan Jones is down south a little bit, Seattle. Have you talked to Barbara (Lindy) Holmes? TB: I think I have her address. But I know I don‟t know anything about Gene Geske. BM: She wasn‟t very, quote, “smart,” just about like me, but she ended up becoming very smart and she was an artist. She draws things. And she turned deeply religious. She married her husband and they were missionaries in Germany. She‟s the one that we scared the Boy Scouts! Don‟t forget that! TB: Wow! BM: Let‟s see, who else do I talk to? Sara I haven‟t talked to her in a long time. “Lindy” I saw the other day. It‟s so funny, you could live in Bellingham all your life and never run into anybody that you know! TB: I would think that some of you guys would. BM: The guy you said a few minutes ago, Larry Olsen, Dick sees him. Well, you‟ll be at Haggen and run into somebody. The thing is, at Dick‟s class reunion, God love them, they put the picture on the back so when you look at the front you know who are they are because people have changed their looks! TB: That‟s true. BM: My first boyfriend was Phil Clarkson. He lived in Happy Valley. Do you know where Happy Valley is? TB: Yes. I think he‟s another one we don‟t know where he is. BM: I don‟t know if he‟s alive. The other one I was madly in love with was Norman Bemis. He passed away. TB: What happened to Dick Wahl? BM: He died maybe ten years ago or something. You should call Gene Geske‟s sister because she is married to Terry Wahl. TB: Oh, okay, I know he was a news broadcaster or something, right? BM: Yes. TB: I heard about him in another context but I didn‟t realize he was in your class. BM: I see Brian every now and again. He was with the downtown business. TB: Do you know where Ken Wherry is? BM: Yes, he is down in the Seattle area. We saw him I think last summer. He came up and we went out at the Marina. He used to be one of Bill‟s best friends and he was a Sigma Nu with Dick at the University of Washington. 8 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: I don‟t know anything about Phil Clarkson, Darrell Crait, do you know where he is? BM: No. I don‟t even think he went to Bellingham High School. TB: And Barbara Dorsey? Do you know where she is at? BM: No, I don‟t know. She was also in a religious missionary thing. It‟s got to be ten years since I have heard from Dorsey. TB: But she did go onto Bellingham High? BM: Yes. TB: What about Joanne Holcomb? You don‟t have her on your list. She was in your class in sixth grade. BM: I have no idea. I will probably wake up in the middle of the night, “Joanne Holcomb!” TB: It must have been Jack, when I first saw „Jackie Longstreth‟ I was thinking of a girl, but it‟s probably a boy, right? Jack. BM: Yes. Longstreth. TB: I know his dad was a doctor because that was my Grandpa‟s doctor I bet. BM: All I can think of was we didn‟t like him or we did tricks on him, I remember that. Here‟s one about the war. We‟d go trick-or-treat, Susan and I, on 17th Street and we‟d do 15th and all that sort of stuff. A woman we went to trick-or-treat, she said, “Don’t you realize there’s a war going on?” TB: Oh! And just didn‟t think it was appropriate then to be doing that? BM: Yes. End of Side One. TB: We had a Richard Peters and you‟ve got him as Dick Peters. BM: Yes. TB: Do you know what happened to him? BM: No. The story about him was he was – on what day are you born that‟s [in] Leap Year? So he was never old, he was always younger! So we joked with him. He lived where old Saint Joe‟s is, he lived on that corner right there. TB: Oh, okay; Tom Slipper? BM: Oh, yes, you say that and I know where he lived, right on Garden Street. TB: We have a Carol Ann Stuart and Donald Turcotte. Do you know anything about what happened to him? Did they all go on to Bellingham High School? BM: Yes. TB: What class would that be then? What was your graduating class from Bellingham High School? 9 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: Remember, I didn‟t graduate. TB: Well, so it would have been 1950. RM: 1950. TB: Would you be willing to serve as a contact person for your class for the purpose of encouraging participation in the reunion that they are going to have in 2007? BM: Sure. I would love to because my cousins would love to come; Pat Templin and Judy Templin both went to Campus School. TB: Okay, I think I have heard that name before but I want to make sure I get that from you before I go. Do you have any Campus School memorabilia, including photographs, class publications, crafts, artwork, etc. that you would be willing to let us borrow for the exhibit? BM: Sure and I‟ll get you one right now because I found this and I don‟t know, I think this it was 1947 (referring to photograph). TB: Please share any favorite memories of your Campus School days and then areas not covered by the questions above that you might want to talk about. One thing might be World War II and what it was like to be in school during World War II. BM: Other than my telling you that we had to practice in case there was an air raid, I remember that. Not at school, but the windows all had to be covered at home. Mr. Wahl was the area warden. Mother worked at the Filter Center down there, all the soldiers were there, plotting airplanes and things. Our house, in case Saint Joe‟s burnt down, ours was [designated] a hospital, our basement. It was huge. All the supplies were downstairs, the beds and gauze and all that sort of stuff so that if there had been something there, our house would have been the hospital. TB: Wow. So your mother had a job during the War, then? BM: At the Filter Center and Red Cross. TB: Okay, wow. BM: Everybody was busy. My aunt Doris, my Mother‟s sister, worked at where the Bon Marché used to be. Boeing had a plant there. TB: Really? Boeing was in Bellingham? BM: Well a plant, yes. She worked there. We used to have all these ships come in; submarines and others. TB: A busy time. BM: Yes. That has nothing to do with Campus School. TB: Well no, but Bellingham. Anything else I haven‟t asked you that you would like to talk about? BM: I think we‟re fine. I‟ll get you those addresses. I‟ve got Ken Wherry‟s. TB: Excellent. I will say thank you very much. BM: On behalf of a grateful nation, yes. 10 Barbara McCollum Edited Transcript – February 16th, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Bill and Audrey Nelson interview--May 7, 2007
Date: 2007-05-07
Description: Well-known fly fisherman and guide, one of the "fathers" of the Federation of Fly Fishers.
Digital Collection: Fly Fishing Oral Histories
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Fly Fishing Oral History Program
Local Identifier: FFOH_NelsonBill_Audrey_20070507
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Fly Fishing Oral History Program Audrey Nelson ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fai
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Fly Fishing Oral History Program Audrey Nelson 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 Bill and Audrey Nelson on May 7, 2007, at their home, in Eugene, Oregon. The interviewer was Tamara Belts. TB: Today is Monday, May 7th, 2007 and I am here with Bill Nelson, and his wife Audrey. We’re going to do an oral history. He did just sign the Informed Consent Agreement. Our first question is: How did you get started fly fishing? BN: My father was a fisherman and he dallied with the fly fishing system. When I got into high school, one of the shop teachers was a fly fisherman and helped me build a vice, that’s when I started tying flies. Then as time went on, my father would take me up and drop me off on a stream on his way to work, and then picked me back up again after work in the evening as I came down the river. TB: Now which river are you talking about? BN: Stillaguamish, and also, the Skykomish, because it was close and had good fish. TB: Pilchuck? BN: Yes, I fished the Pilchuck once in a while and the Snohomish. There were fish in the Snohomish that you could take on a fly. But that’s about it. I didn’t journey to a lot of places when I was still a youngster. Fishing was good in those days. TB: Now what was that shop teacher’s name? BN: His last name was Jones, first name Casey -- Casey Jones. TB: Where did your father work? BN: He had his own business for a while; he was in the tire business, Nelson Tire and Recapping. TB: So he traveled? That’s why he could drop you off at the rivers and you would fish down? BN: Well, no, he’d just drive up there, drop me off and then go back to go to work, and when he was through work, he’d come up and pick me up. Usually, on those forays we’d be fairly close to town anyway, on one of the rivers. Pigeon Creek was another one, Rock Creek; there are others that I just can’t recall all at once. We would pick out a stream and a time and place for him to pick me up. TB: So what was it about fly fishing that attracted you? 1 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: Well, mostly to be able to do it. We did a lot of things that were near to where my folks lived on Puget Sound, right on the beach practically. Just out of the Indian Reservation, they were down on the beach. It’s called Tulare Beach and I’d go out and fish in the salt chuck, trying to catch fish. I was tying flies when the war got going and I was still too young to enlist in the service. I sold quite a few flies to Sears, the local Sears store, and they liked them. I got, I think it was twenty cents each for those flies that I tied. Then they sold them, I forget what they sold them for and I didn’t want to look. We had a zoo there and I would go up to the zoo when I was short of feathers of some kind. I’d take some peanuts with me and I could get a peacock to come over, show it to him, and then you’d throw it just a little ways [behind] him and he’d turn around and you could get a [tail] feather. The guy that was up there running that thing decided that he was going to save some skins for me if one of their exotic birds died. Then I’d run around and see who was raising chickens and I’d get some chicken feathers. There was a feather pillow in the house, it was kind of worn out, and the feathers would come out of it and I’d use every one of them. So I just monkey-ed around mostly. But I did catch fish on the fly when I was in high school. Fresh water fishing mostly, but my parents lived on Puget Sound, which is salt water fishing. I’d walk around on the beach and cast for cutthroat or whatever, there’s a lot of things you can catch out there on a fly. Bottom fish, as we called them, mostly cod, and things like that. They would come up and grab it, sometimes, so it was fun to do. Phone rings BN: I went into the Navy right out of high school. TB: Did you fly fish when you were in the Navy? BN: Whenever I had a chance, yes. When I was kind of through with schooling and the war was over, actually, I was at Clearfield, Utah. (I could tell you a crazy story, but I better not). Anyway, we fished on several of the streams down there in Utah, and they were fun. I’ve got some pictures of that someplace. Pretty soon we had about three or four guys that would go with us; I mean that all of us would go together. One of my shipmates was a native of Salt Lake City, which is just south of Clearfield. We had a lot of fun doing things, but we’d also fish a lot. It was like still being in school, you got Saturday and Sunday off. And that’s what we’d do, whenever we got a chance, we’d go fishing when we weren’t working. They have a funny schedule when the war’s over and the Navy’s doing this and that. I was sent off to find a filter for the pool so we could kind of redo the pool. We had a swimming pool there at Clearfield, and I’d use that as an excuse to go hunting for that filter and we’d fish along the way. It was fun to do that; we’d have a jeep, the Navy jeep and go down to Salt Lake City, and try to find out what we could do there. On the way, if we could do something good, well, we’d do it, and get the filter and go back and install it, but on the way we would probably get a few casts in. That was fun. I had a bamboo rod (glass wasn’t really used in those days). I still may have part of those bamboo rods that were made in the years past. You put them in kind of a case and try and save them, and pretty soon you loose track of where they are. But I still have a couple of fishing rods and stuff like that. TB: So you got out of the Navy and then you came back to Everett? BN: Yes, I came back to Everett then. I enrolled right away at Washington State College. It’s called Washington State University now, and that’s where I met Audrey. TB: So you went to school, and what did you study to be? 2 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: I was studying things like math. I was thinking of becoming an engineer and I kind of switched and got out with a business education. I felt that it would be great to be an engineer, but the way things worked out was better. TB: So then you after you graduated from college, what did you do? Or how did you get back to Everett? BN: I was still in Everett in the summer time. I went to work at U.S. Rubber Company. That was kind of a strange thing too. I didn’t have a real, full education in business, but had some engineering background in it. I didn’t really graduate, but that was the four years counting the credit I got for the things that I had completed at Montana School of Mines. AN: Bill was stationed at Montana School of Mines (Butte, Montana) where he earned some college credits. He later transferred to Clearfield, Utah. BN: In the V-5 program which is a Naval Aviators training thing. They gave me full credit. They taught us engineering and things of this nature. Also we had Naval Organization, Naval Org they called it, they didn’t give you any college credit for it but it was supposed to be done before you were able to continue with the program. We would have football, baseball, and basketball teams from Montana School of Mines and that was still in the Navy. As soon as I got back, I registered at Washington State University. I had credits that I could use there and that was helpful. I knew a lot of the people at Washington State, and we re-established old friendships and went fly fishing there. TB: So where did you go fly fishing at Pullman? BN: The Grande Ronde. We didn’t really know what we had at that time. We’d go there and go fishing and try to catch a trout. I wasn’t there in the real summer time. The late summer and fall steelhead fishing is just outrageous, it’s so good. We married and settled in the Seattle area. The district manager for U.S. Rubber Company in Seattle came in and grabbed me, says, “We have a desk for you over in the U.S. Rubber Company,” (because my father had been in the tire business). That’s the way I started with the U.S. Rubber Company. It was my first job after leaving WSU. I was an order-clerk (I think is what you would call me). Then I got to be a salesman on the road, and calling on all of the U.S. Rubber Companies’ accounts, in various areas. AN: When you worked for U.S. Rubber, you were only in Seattle a short time (mid-1949-1950). Then he was transferred to Portland first (1950-1953), then Grants Pass (1953-1955), and finally Eugene (19551957). You did a lot of fishing in Oregon. BN: The Sandy River and the Willamette. We’d go down and fish there too, just below the falls. AN: He’d bring home all kinds of big fish. There was a little grocery store across the street that had a freezer, and they would put them in their freezer, and keep them for us and for themselves. You did a lot of fishing there; we were there for two years, in the Portland area. BN: It wasn’t all totally fly fishing there below the falls, but another good thing we’d catch was Jack Salmon, and catch them on the fly better than a spooner could or anybody else. We’d fish with a fly beneath the falls there for quite a long time. Then when it was tough, we’d have a casting rod and pitch it somewhere out there and try to catch some fish there. It could be wonderful fishing there and they’d let us go through the mill and down to the rocks right there at the bottom part of the falls, so I got hooked on that too. AN: You ought to tell them about when you were in Grant’s Pass and Eugene, how you had this little boat on top of [your] vehicle. He just went everywhere – down to the coast and over to Klamath Falls. TB: How did you get involved in the Evergreen Fly Fishing Club? 3 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: In 1958 I accepted a job with Armstrong Rubber Company and moved to Lynnwood, Washington (1958-1962). One of my best friends, Lew Bell, was president of the Evergreen Fly Fishing Club and I knew a lot of guys that were in the club because I was raised in Everett. I was living in Lynnwood but I would drive down to the meetings in Everett. There were a lot of nice guys in there. TB: How did you come to know Lew Bell? BN: I went fishing with him a lot and things like that. We just became dear friends; he’s my closest friend ever. We did other things besides fishing; we did potlucks for the club and stuff like that. But that’s a close-knit club; everybody is familiar with everybody else. It was a small enough group you got to know everybody in the club. They’d switch around to have lunch in various places. We’d go to lunch on Fridays, I think it was. Anyway, they’d have a weekly luncheon at the Elk’s Club or someplace else. (My father used to have the tire business right across from the Elk’s Club in Everett). It’s hard to recall those things in sequence. I wish I could do better for you. TB: You’re doing great. So how did you first start talking about forming the Federation of Fly Fishing? BN: We were on the Grande Ronde River, Lew Bell, Dick Denman, Dick Padovan and Dub Price and quite a group went there, it was kind of an exclusive group. At that time that was the best steelhead fishing in the world. We tried to get days off together, so we would all have the same week off, or two weeks off. Rick Miller would go down and fish with us in the Grande Ronde too. And we just started talking about it. We actually started talking about it when I was still up in Lynnwood working for Armstrong Rubber Company. We would have coffee at the Alpine Café (Everett, WA) and there would be about six or eight of us around this table and we’d just start talking about it. We all got together there at least once a week and maybe a couple days in a row, you know if I was around for a little while. We had discussions there when we were having coffee. But most of the planning and the ideas were thrown together up on the Grande Ronde when we were fishing. When we got back, everything was pretty much in our minds. We didn’t get it to a point where we got the Federation of Fly Fishermen through in thought but we all knew exactly, how it would go and where it would go. Then we bought the business in Eugene (1962) and moved here. TB: What business did you buy? BN: Eugene Tire Patch Company. The guy just said, “Well, you’re the only guy I’m going to sell it to and I’m going to make you a good deal. We’ll sell your home up in Lynnwood.” He took the job of selling the house we had in Lynnwood along with letting me buy his business. Then he spent about a month or two following me around. He worked with me for a month anyway. I got used to driving this panel [truck], and then I put some racks on the top. I had a light aluminum boat and I could put it up there on top. Everybody got a kick out of that and so half of my accounts became fisherman. That was fun. When I got down here to Eugene I found out they didn’t even have a fly-fishing club, and I thought, well, we must do something about this, we’re going to get a fly club, so I put an ad in the paper to find guys that would be interested, and we had six guys, I think it was, to begin with, set for the first meeting of people. AN: Oh, you had more than that, you had about a dozen the first night, I think you had about ten or twelve guys. 4 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: Yes, okay. Anyway, we formed the McKenzie Fly Fishers. TB: Now, let’s back up a minute, when you guys were talking on the Grande Ronde, what were the things that you thought needed to happen? Why were you interested in forming the federation? BN: Well, we worried about people doing things. We wanted to preserve as much of the water like the Grande Ronde and several other rivers, if we could possibly do it. Then we got to be friendly with people from various other places. I think I took two or three guys from the East Coast fishing here and there and that was when I was still up in Lynnwood. Then my travels around Washington, Oregon, Northern California, and Western Idaho, to sell patches to fix tires and tubes; while I was doing that, I met a whole bunch of different guys that were interested in fly fishing, so I thought, what the heck! We formed a club here and I laid it on them, and they went ahead with it. It was quite an affair really, by the time we got through starting that thing. People came from a long ways away and some of them were well known in those days and it kind of turned all of us on to what we wanted to do, and that was to help preserve fly fishing as a sport. We felt that we were more concerned about the fish than anyone else was, as far as preserving a run of fish in this river or that river. Anyway the whole thing was just a great experience for everybody involved, really. Some of them aren’t with us anymore, but you sure think of them with great respect. Lew Bell was my closest friend, he was an attorney in Everett, and actually, he was asked to serve in the U.S. Senate! He said, “No, I just don’t want to get mixed up with that.” TB: The other thing is why did you feel that there needed to be something beyond Trout Unlimited? I read where Trout Unlimited had formed in the Fifties, and it was geared towards preservation of fishing. BN: Oh, yes, and Martin Bovey who was the president of Trout Unlimited, came to our first meeting in Eugene when we were going to build a Federation of Fly Fishing. TB: So, the Trout Unlimited wasn’t going far enough? BN: No, it was just a different system. End of Side One, Tape One BN: Trout Unlimited was a good organization, don’t get me wrong. Martin Bovey asked for a list of the folks that were going to be in the Federation and then he, in turn, gave one of our members a list of the fellows that he thought would be very interested in the Federation and in the fly fishing system. There was also fly fishing clubs on the East Coast that he gave us information about. Martin Bovey was really good; he gave us a lot of information. We even had guys like Lee Wulff. TB: Now how did you get the idea to ask him? AN: He was a famous guy. Bill wrote to a lot of people that were prominent in that business or that liked to fly fish like… TB: Bing Crosby? AN: … yes like Bing Crosby, and Bill received a really nice letter that we can’t find. TB: I’ve seen a copy of that. AN: I think somebody published it at some time, but I can’t find it, but it was a nice letter of regret, but he had a lot of positives too. 5 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: Oh and we flew to Jackson Hole. One of the guys had an airplane, Bill Hilton, who was another close friend, and I’d fish with him a lot. We took four guys all together, including Bill, and went to an outdoor writer’s convention in Jackson Hole. We went around and met a lot of the guys and we got a lot of support out of just that meeting of the outdoors writers. That was one routine we went through, and it worked out very well. Also, we had folks that didn’t really want to belong to something, but yet they thought that our idea as far as conservation and everything like that was concerned was good and they came along and went to it. It wasn’t an easy program having the first conclave. But everybody really pitched in and did the best they could. TB: So you were a new club, that had just been formed, and right away you were trying to have this big conclave, so how did that go over with your club? And did everybody stay with you? BN: Oh, no, in the beginning there were guys that just didn’t think it would go, and they even quit the club, so to speak. But then in the interim period the guys that stayed and talked about it, the next thing you knew we had a run of people that wanted to be in the club and to help with this conclave we were going to put on to form a federation. The word conclave came from me in the fact that when I was going to Washington State, the fraternity went down to Las Vegas. The University of Nevada was going to have a new charter down there, so we went down there and we kind of got everybody else that we could to go to this thing and it worked out really well. It was a conclave they put on there, and that’s where I got the word conclave. TB: The conclave was in 1965. BN: The first one. TB: And I think you had just formed the club in 1964, didn’t you? BN: That’s correct. AN: Yes. TB: So it’s like the first thing your club did was to have this national conclave the next year! AN: It scared the guys. But they were all young and enthusiastic and ambitious, and full of it -- they had confidence. BN: We had the cream of the crop. We had the cream of the crop of everything. AN: The ones that dropped out though, a lot of them came back in, too. BN: Yes, that’s right, after we did the work. But it was a good club too – it was just outstanding as far as I was concerned. But the Evergreen Club is still part of it too, they helped so much. AN: And his friend Lew, who was an attorney; he helped do so much of the work, in that line. He was from Everett and he was a wonderful speaker, too. BN: I think I’ve got a little tape on that someplace, haven’t I? AN: Well, you’ve got all the beginning. TB: Oh, all of those speakers are on tape? BN: Yes, some of them are. 6 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AN: I don’t know all of them, but some of them are on that Never Name the River? TB: Oh, sure, that’s where the footage came from. BN: Have you seen that? TB: I did; that was invaluable. Tell me a little more about you then, I know you are well known for being a salt-water fly fisherman; you were a guide up in B.C., right? BN: Yes. TB: How did you get into that? BN: Well, I belonged to the McKenzie River Guides Association here, and some of us would go up to B.C. on our vacations to a place called April Point. We were friends with a couple – Marsh and Stephanie Webster – and we shared a cabin at April Point for quite a few years. We’d each take our own boat and have a great time. It was a fantastic setting. We were fly fishing on salt water. Sometimes we would use up about everything. TB: Now that was kind of a new thing, wasn’t it? BN: I think so, yes. But we’d wade along the inside edge of the kelp, and cast ahead of us, and try and catch fish that way, and we did! It was amazing how many fish are inside the kelp and nobody can go in there and troll for them. We’d fish the mouths of the rivers in the fall, and just fly fish it, and it was just absolutely outstanding. I met a guy, his name was Bob Hurst, and he was with the Canada Fisheries, in the area there at Parksville. That’s south of where we were on Quadra Island. We got to be good friends. Then we started trying to use flies and by golly we sure did use them, and they worked out pretty good. Two or three fly fishermen in the fisheries and then there were guys that were just fly-tiers and they started tying salt water flies. Short Break TB: Now which fly is this? BN: I guess you’d call that The Mrs. Nelson. But this is a better example that kind of does the work, there, that’s a herring. Then they come out in different sizes. TB: Now how did you happen to name this Mrs. Nelson? How’s it like to have a fly named after you? AN: It’s great, it has a great story. BN: I was fishing with a guy from South Africa, William Vander Byl, who came to the lodge, and he was kind of excited about casting for salmon in the salt chuck. We took him down to the south end of the island and he’d cast and catch fish here and there, and he did really well, in comparison to some of the people that we were trying to help catch fish. We were coming back from the south edge of the island and we had two or three fish that he caught. He lost a few fish and then he had very few strikes down there. I had a net float on my console (I had a compass in there but then the compass went haywire and the hole that held the compass was just right to hold the net float). When I wasn’t using the flies I’d put them in this net float. And he said, “What’s that fly there in that net float?” 7 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED And I said, “Well, that’s a fly I tied for my wife.” He said, “I sure like the looks of it.” And I said, “Well, I think it’s a good one, I like it.” And he said, “I’d just love to try it. Do you suppose that your wife would mind if I tried it?” And I said, “No, she’d be delighted.” So we put in at Quathiaski Cove and the second cast he hooked a nice Coho that was swimming around in there and we got him in, and released it. (He was a good releaser he couldn’t take fish back to South Africa anyway). He kept casting and about every other cast, he’d hook another fish on the fly. He was all excited. I’d left it (the fly) on the rod (he was going to go out again the next day). He went back into the lodge for lunch. (I didn’t eat in the lodge because I thought it was too expensive and I went home for lunch). While I was at home, why he sat down at the table where there were several guides and other guests, and he started talking about Mrs. Nelson’s fly. The guides and the guests went down to the boat to look at it, and he said, “That’s it right there, that’s Mrs. Nelson’s fly.” The people that went down to look at it, they picked it up and brought it back to the lunch table and talked about it, called it the Mrs. Nelson. And it’s been “The Mrs. Nelson” ever since that. I was going to explain to you that there are a few things that are different. I tie a lot of Mrs. Nelsons because it is a very good fly. Here’s a reasonable example of the Mrs. Nelson fly. It generally has a good eye, and here’s another one, bigger. I got the idea, and maybe it’s right or maybe it’s wrong, but it seemed to work for me, that you want to match the size of the bait more than you do any other part of it. Some guys just put a great big one on and it scares the rest of the bait away. But the one that’s the same size as the bait that’s in there generally doesn’t seem to bother them. So I go from this to this, and all the way in between. TB: Wow, so these are all Mrs. Nelson’s over here (referring to some flies)? BN: Yes; and then there’s another one, you know what a candle fish is? TB: I don’t. BN: Well, it’s a very thin, minnow type thing, and people call them candle fish or needle fish. Up there in Canada, they call them needle fish, because they’re thin and long. The candle fish have enough oil in them that Eskimos can dry them and light them and they’ll work -- they have that much oil in them. At least that’s the story I get, I never tried it myself. But here’s an imitation of a candle fish, they’re darker on the back and they have a green and a pink in the sides. TB: Wow! Now did we really settle how it was that you started going up there to Quadra Island? How did you decide to retire and become a guide up there? BN: Well, we went up there many times. The guide whose family owned the lodge would come around and we’d talk to him. I was out on the dock, there, casting for perch, really, and we got pretty well acquainted. He even came down to visit us once when we were still living in the States. The Websters and the Nelsons would have a standing reservation for a cabin a certain time of the year (the first week in September). It was a big time. We’d go up there and fish and got to know quite a few people that were of course at the lodge there, and the guides. We were fishing with flies, and the guides would get a pretty big kick out of that, especially a guy named Rob Bell-Irving. He was one of the fine, fine guides. His father was Lieutenant Governor of B.C. and the background of his family was mostly medical people, but we became fast friends. He gave me the idea about keeping the boat running, and run the fish and the fly behind the boat. Up to that time we had really only cast. Then we started having so much fun doing that that it was just great fun for us. The lodge owners actually gave me an invitation to come and build a house there or lease something, but we’d already gone on the main island, Vancouver Island, with the Websters and bought a piece of property, because they were going to retire too. Warren Peterson, who was the head person there at the lodge, said, 8 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED “Oh, gosh, don’t go there, come over here, you’ll like it, and we’ll lease you a piece of property to build a house on.” The lease was very reasonable, as far as I was concerned, so we talked the Websters into that too. I went out and built the first house, in this little cove, and then the next year the Websters retired, and they built a home there. The two of us settled in behind this cute little island, like you saw in the picture there. It was just like it was all supposed to happen. Then I became a guide there (1978). I was guiding while we were building the house too. It was kind of a fun thing to do, and it helped take care of a lot of our expenses. It was just a great idea, and a great thing that I enjoyed very much. It was just a part of my life that I’ll always remember. It was fun to be there. TB: Now, were there some celebrities that came up there to go fly fishing? BN: Oh yes. TB: Anybody special that you might have guided? BN: Well, let’s see, actually, I guided Julie Andrews and John Wayne. Her husband had a yacht, and I only had her one day and then we found a girl guide. That’s a little tough out in the boat when we were going out for a long time, but it was fun. She’d come up and fish for a month sometimes, stayed there. One time they were taking the yacht out and two of the guides that were very familiar with her because they were kind of the back up boat for this girl guide, and as her husband’s yacht went by the dock, one of the guides wearing his clothes, ran down the ramp, and jumped off the end of the dock, singing, “The hills are alive…” It was funnier than heck, it was kind of at lunch time, and we were up there and I thought I’d fall down laughing. You remember that? AN: No, I was home. TB: And John Wayne came up there? BN: Yes, he did. I only guided him a few times up there, but we hit it off pretty well. He had his yacht parked in the dock area there. And one time I dropped somebody else off, and I was going back and he was sitting on the fantail of his boat (it was a converted torpedo boat, that’s what his yacht was). And he says, “Hey Bill! I’ve got a problem here.” And I said, “What’s up?” And he says, “Well, I’ll show you.” I climbed the ladder, got back to the fantail there and there was another chair, and I was standing there, and he says, “You see that bottle over there? I’ve been working on that for two hours, and I only got it down that far. Now I need some help.” So I had to sit and have a drink with him…and that was fun. Now where am I? Ted Williams, did you know who Ted Williams was? TB: That’s a baseball player right? BN: Yes. That’s a picture of him there on the console and then Norman Schwarzkopf. I have nice letters from him (we kind of lost track as far as keeping in communication). AN: Bill, you should remind her you were a senior guide. There were only two of you, and Warren, the owner of the lodge, that was in your age group, which was fifty when he moved up there. The rest of them were all young kids, they were in their twenties and a few, a very few in their thirties, I think. They were young, Bill was an old guy. But he taught a lot too. The owner up there had Bill give classes to the guides on deportment, and what do you do if you don’t catch any fish, and all these different things -- look at the eagles and this and that. He knew all this other stuff. He provided entertainment out there on the water; it’s not just all fishing. TB: Oh, yes, very cool. Wow! (looking at photo) BN: That’s Norman Schwarzkopf and that’s his son, Christian. 9 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: And that’s you? BN: Yes. And see what Christian is holding in his hand? It’s a sling-shot. I kept the sling-shot on the boat and a can of marbles. And if the seals or sea lions became too aggressive (they would come in and grab a fish while you had it on), why you could kind of drive them off with a slingshot. That kid kept the seals off of that -- that was twenty-eight and a half pounds. Norman caught that fish on a number six fly rod, and that’s Audrey’s fly rod. AN: My fly too. I took it away from Bill right when he came in from that excursion; I put that fly and hid it so he’d never use it again. Bill gave both Norman and his son Chris a copy of the fly as a keepsake. TB: Is that what’s framed here then? AN: Yes. TB: Nice! Very cool! AN: At that time Norman was so famous it was just right after the war. He had security all over the place, flying around. TB: Oh that’s right, 1993 was after you had retired. BN: Yes, we had moved back here. We had a camper and took it to B.C. to fish and to see his old friends. End of Side Two, Tape One TB: So why don’t you tell me about taking Norman Schwarzkopf fly fishing? BN: Didn’t I tell you how they got in there and everything? TB: Well, we weren’t on tape, though. BN: Oh I see, okay. I think Ted Williams talked to Norman. They were up in that area and I’d been guiding Ted Williams a bit and he knew we were up there on a vacation. And so they got on the radio at the lodge and called me to stop, they wanted to talk to me. There was some concern about something happening to Norman, so they didn’t talk about him on the radio or anything. When I got to the lodge, why, they asked me if I would take time to guide Norman Schwarzkopf, and I said, “Well, I sure will.” So I said the tide is right at ten o’clock, and we should get on the water before ten, if we can. He was going to be in the following day so I was supposed to pick him up. He was going to be there by ten and we’d take off. I had to make sure they had everything they needed. But the chopper was late coming in. The guides would walk by me and they’d say, “Hey, what are you doing? That’s the second time you’ve washed that boat!” I said, “Well, I have to do something here, I’m waiting for a guy.” And they said, “Well, do you want us to help you?” “No,” I said, “I kind of want to stay here and keep track of it.” (I’m just washing the boat to make people think I’m busy). They got quite a kick out of that. Those guides were just wonderful at April Point. I still hear from quite a few of them. Two, three of them have their own lodges now, up on Vancouver Island, the north end of the island. We hear from them, we get Christmas cards exchanged. There are a couple of them that moved to New Zealand, we hear from then now and then. Anyway, I don’t know how I got off on that tangent. TB: Back to Schwarzkopf. 10 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BN: Okay, we’re back to Norman now. He came in on a chopper with his son and another guy that wasn’t there to fish. They took the chopper back out of there after that and took it someplace else. In a little while, here comes an Otter (DeHavilland Twin Otter two-engined) floatplane, and it pulls up by the dock. I can’t remember how many there were, at least five, maybe six guys get out of there. They had vests and sport coats, and they got off that Otter, and you could see the bulge because I know they had arms to protect in case something happened. They were the people that were going to take care of the security. They kind of grilled me and then they said, “You’re not to mention his name.” And I said, “Well, I’ll just say, the position and this is Kisser One.” The name of my boat was Kisser One. (Stan Stanton named it; he said, “That boat just kisses the water.” It was his first look at a Boston Whaler, and he says, “That’s just fine.” We were talking on his radio and mine, and it just ended up with Kisser One. It was kind of funny too.) When I took off from the dock, I would say, “Kisser One, now leaving the dock, all free and clear here,” so that they knew where I was. If there was any problem at all, they had a boat there to come. “Kisser One, south end of the island, we’re going to go out.” “Kisser One to the south end of the Marina” (that’s another island). So we went across and went to another island. We caught fish at the south end of Quadra Island, four or five of them, and released them. He was great for releasing and so was his son Christian. We went back over to Marina (we had to get him back in by four, he said) and we were over there and we were catching Coho here and there. There was a big rock pile and you had to know where the rocks were before you drove in there, and I kind of mapped it in my mind so I could drive through. There was a little kelp bed and we were releasing a fish and I looked up, and there was a big fin and tail that had come to the surface and went back down again. It was big! So, I said, “I know you want to get back, but let’s take one more shot, I saw a good rise over here. I was quite impressed with the size of the fish.” So we went by there, and he got his fly on the surface and was kind of making it move a little bit and it went right through the place where that fish had come up. And it came up, and came down on that fly just like a mako shark! It didn’t really do much for a little bit there, and then all of a sudden the fish decided, I’m not going to have anymore of this, and it takes off. Man oh man, I knew then that we had that big one. One of the other guides was in another boat and saw us over there and he tried to cut in front of the seals (when you see a fish in trouble why those seals are coming). He cut in between the seals and the fish and kind of scared them away a bit, which was a great move on his part. Norman’s son Christian was up there, I gave him the slingshot and a can of marbles, and he was good with it. I thought he hit one seal right in the middle of the head, but I don’t know for sure, I was doing a lot of other things. But he was coming so close to those seals that I think he just kept them away. He didn’t hurt any of them, I don’t think, but between the other guide running across, we got that fish up on the boat. Norman says, “Well, let’s release it.” I said, “No way! We release it guess whose going to get eaten? That fish will be eaten by seals, and I just as soon not turn it over to them. Let’s just bring it back into the lodge and get an ink print made direct from the fish (not with a camera), so that you have an idea how big it was.” It was a big fish (Chinook), caught on a number six fly rod, Audrey’s number six fly rod. Schwarzkopf just did a wonderful job playing that fish. He was a good fisherman, and I think his son, Christian, just did a wonderful job too with that slingshot. They both did well, on every fish that we hooked. TB: So it was just the three of you out on the boat? None of the security detail actually came out on the boat with you? BN: No, they had a different boat. If they thought we were in trouble in any way, why they’d come swinging around there. But they stayed half way down the island. They were in radio contact with us, and it worked out fine. I said, “Kisser One, I’m having a little trouble with a fish here, trying to get it close to the boat.” Of course that worked for them, but when they saw that fish, then they smiled and waved. 11 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Any other of your own personal stories of a great fish you caught, or any other great fishing story? AN: You rowed for Tyee, or somebody rowed you because they wanted you to catch a Tyee, and you did. Everybody has to do that, or give it a try, you know. Tyee are great big, fat fish and somebody has to row a boat – no motors. BN: When they are 30 pounds or better they’re a Tyee. You can’t use a motor with them or anything; you have to row the boat. You can’t use bait so we threw out a fly. TB: And where was this? BN: This was right out in front of Painter’s Lodge on Vancouver Island, it’s right across from April Point, just about a mile and a half, across the passage. One of the guides there that I was friends with rowed me for a Tyee and I got a Tyee pin (maybe I’d better show you that). Anyway, took it on a fly, and it was quite good. It was a lot heavier rod than Norman had, a heavy weight, I think it was a number ten. We were going to catch a big fish. It’s quite a thing to be in the Tyee Club. AN: It’s an annual event up there, every season they have a big rowing contest, well, it’s not really a contest, men go out and they have just a whole bunch of rowers out there trying to get these big fish and see who can get the biggest fish. BN: That’s kind of at the mouth of the Campbell River, itself. They say it was great fun to live there. TB: Then you came back to Eugene in 1989. You must have rejoined the McKenzie Fly Fishers. Do you want to tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing since 1989? And especially I want to know about your Lapis Lazuli Award. AN: Well they only give one of those every year. I don’t know how long they’ve been giving those, actually. Not every year since it started. It’s one of the nicest awards given at the conclaves. BN: Well, I think they gave that to me in 1990. My guides and I started a fly club up in Canada. TB: Oh, up in Canada too! BN: The April Point Fly Fishing Club. AN: They didn’t have anything to do with that award, though, honey, by the time you came here … BN: Well, what I’m driving for is because I kind of got three clubs started and whatever else, they decided they were going to make an award, so that’s how it got there. AN: I think you were Master of Ceremonies for that event weren’t you? BN: I think so, yes. TB: For the 1990 Conclave in Eugene? BN: Yes. TB: It’s hard to get you to brag about yourself! The three clubs you started were: the McKenzie Fly Fishers, the one up in Canada (April Point Fly Fishing Club), what is the third club? BN: I was instrumental in helping the Klamath Country Fly Fishing Club. They recognized us, so I’m an honorary member, and then the same thing at Reedsport -- the Reedsport Club. 12 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Well, how about Lew Bell? What were some of his great accomplishments? You can’t tell me his story, but what do you think are significant things I should know about Lew Bell? BN: I miss him! He was a great conservationist, a good fisherman, and a wonderful friend! I think, individually, he did as much for other people as anyone I’ve ever known, and an attorney at that! You don’t think attorneys are going to be that great, but he was, he was the greatest. He sent me a couple of things, you know. (To Audrey) -- go get one of those glasses, would you, with a fly in it? Oh, here it is! He sent me this set of [glasses]. AN: Oh, that’s why you won’t let me throw them away! They’re all beat up. I almost threw them out. BN: Well it’s kind of that Lew gave them to me. And then there’s Dick Padovan. TB: Yes, so tell me about him. BN: Well, he’s been on the Grande Ronde with us and been a very fine friend also. He was a banker, a manager of a bank in Everett, and you wouldn’t think that those attributes that he has, of kindness and straight-forwardness with his friends would come from a guy that has been in the bank business! Anyway, he’s still up there, he lives on Puget Sound, and we phone each other pretty often. He’s a good friend. TB: What about Walt Johnson? You’ve got his flies over there. BN: Yes, Walt Johnson, yes, I knew him quite well, took me a minute for my brain to wake up. He tied some flies and sent them to Audrey and me that she used for pins, you know, they’re just gorgeous. He’s one of the great fly tiers of all time, as far as I’m concerned, and he lived right on the Stilly in his later life. I imagine Jack Hutchinson had a few things to say about Walt. TB: He’s mentioned his name. Did you know Ralph Wahl? You’ve got his flies up there. BN: Yes, quite well. TB: Did you ever go fishing up at Deer Creek? Or that was probably already gone by the time you were fishing? BN: No, I fished there, a lot of guys just had a summer home right there, right where Deer Creek comes in to the Stilly and Lew and I would fish it. Gosh I started thinking about that now. Things are just flooding down into my mind here about being with Lew on the river. One time he handed me his rod, I had reeled mine in and he wanted to light a cigarette, so he handed me his rod. He had already cast it, and I just kind of made a little move like this (demonstrating), made the fly move a little bit, and a steelhead took it. And I handed him my rod, and he says “Oh, no, you can’t get away with that!” He says, “You’re just trying to make me feel bad.” So I handed him the rod with the fish on it, and he says “No way! No way!” He’s just something else, just wonderful to be with. AN: Gordy Swanson. You fish with him a lot too, didn’t you? Or did you? BN: We all went to Davis Lake; more people went to Davis Lake than I think were on the Stilly. The whole club would come down and we’d fish at Davis Lake. AN: The two clubs would go and hold an annual thing, I think, maybe they still do. BN: Well they do it on the rivers now, they have a steelhead outing. What we started was a Davis Lake thing and the guys would bring their whole family, and camp there. Then we just had great things happen. We’d have frog races. 13 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Frog races! BN: Yes, there were a couple of kids, one of the kids, I think Gordy Swanson’s son, would go and catch frogs. There are frogs all around in the reeds at Davis Lake and then we would have frog races. Monty Rounds was there, he became our frog master, or whatever you want to call him, so that was for McKenzie, and then the Evergreen had somebody else going this way, we’d have two or three frogs on the same eating table, you know, with the benches on it, and they’d put a little stick at one end there and they would start them behind the stick. Monty was our frog keeper and he’d get his mouth full of gin (only he wouldn’t let anybody know anything), and he could go like that with his teeth (demonstrating), and the minute he set the frog down and then says, “Go”, why he’d (demonstrating) and the frog would just jump!. We won more frog races with gin than we did with the regular training, it was wild! I don’t understand how we could have so much fun, having frog races, but we did, it was fun. TB: Okay, well, anything else I haven’t asked you that you’d like to make sure we get on the record. BN: I can’t figure out where we are now, let’s see. Lee Wulff was a lot of help in doing the Federation stuff; he just was a wonderful guy. He stayed with us in Eugene a few times when it had nothing to do with the Federation or anything else. I took him fishing on the Alsea for cutthroat. The way I caught cutthroat there was I would pitch in underneath the brush and stuff and try to get one to come out of there, I thought they were hiding in there all the time, but Lee, he knew what was going on, and he out-fished me about eight to one. He’d even use my fly, and he’d fish the various places he thought the fish were and he had a propensity for knowing that. Did you know that he wrote a book about wading? TB: No. BN: Yes, wading on the rivers. We were fishing on the Grande Ronde and Lew would go down this one point where the water would turn and churn and he’d get out of the water and go back up again because he couldn’t get across the other side there. He’d go back up again to get across the other side and then he’d fish the other side of the river. Lee was backing up to get back up, and he waded the river. He was serious, he wasn’t fooling anybody when he said this is how you are supposed to wade, and he did it, he waded. He did a wonderful job of wading. He was a good guy too, he wasn’t pulling anybody’s leg or anything -- he just was a good guy. TB: He still has some kind of line of I think. BN: Yes, he’s got a company his wife runs and they sell rods and different things and they ship it everywhere. My son visited there, and he had a fly rod that I got for some reason or another, it was awarded to me, remember that rod, that little bamboo rod? AN: Yes. He died a long time ago (1991). His wife married another fellow then later and she’s still teaching fly fishing and things like that. BN: He was getting a recheck on his pilot’s license, and something went wrong with the airplane and it crashed. He was killed. I was awarded a Lee Wulff designed rod, and it was Lee Wulff by Lee Wulff and I gave it to my son. He has a friend that’s a wholesale salesman for fishing tackle, and he said that this is the original Lee Wulff rod. AN: Craig (our son) just happened to bring out that rod to show him and he said, “Oh, you’ve seen this?” The guy almost fainted because it was a real Lee Wulff original. That’s kind of nice. BN: The wholesale tackle salesman told him it’s worth about five thousand dollars now. So, you know, that’s kind of scary. I don’t think Craig uses it anymore. 14 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AN: He probably doesn’t! He’s probably got it on display. TB: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about how you see the future of fly fishing? BN: Well, I think it’s gaining and I think there’s more people concerned about being able to fly fish than any other thing. I mean there are guides now that live off of fly fishing. TB: But is that hurting the sport? BN: No, I don’t think so. I think if anything, it helps it and most of the guys that I know that guide are very happy to release the fish. We’ve made a tool to be able to release those fish. Should I show her that? AN: Sure, yes, that would be good. TB: Wait, not right now, lets finish the tape part of the interview. I’ve heard some people not being happy with the current etiquette, feeling like there’s getting to be too many people and some of them are pretty rude. AN: I think in all sports and all of society, it’s just much more casual and not very nice sometimes. BN: Well, I know Gordy Swanson says, “It’s too political, the Federation’s getting too political.” There are too many guys that just want to run for office or something. I agree with him, to some extent, but I don’t agree totally. He’s got a good mind and he’s a good guy and everybody isn’t going to be as good as he is, and he’s got to figure that out. End of Side One, Tape Two BN: Gordy has property up on the Stilly. When we have an outing there he just takes care of everybody and does a great job. We have a McKenzie Cup; the McKenzie Cup goes between the two clubs, between the McKenzie Fly Fishers and the Evergreen Fly Fishers. Whoever catches the biggest fish, or I think it’s the biggest steelhead; they get to take the trophy home. I think the Everett guys have really done awfully well and have retained their possession of that trophy. Sometimes we get some pretty good guys here too, don’t get me wrong, there’s some awfully good guys here, good fisherman. Of course that’s not all there is in life, there’s more to association with people that you respect and like and they are easier to find in the fly clubs than they are anywhere else in the country. It seems like these people that are in a fly fishing club have more ability to be semi-polite. You very seldom hear bad language with the guys that are fly fisherman, I’m not sure, but they may be hoping The Lord will forgive them. If they pay attention it comes out that way. It just seems to be that way. I’ve gone to church for a long time and I believe in the Christian way of life, and I try to keep my language reasonable, and some guys, they just, man, it embarrasses me. I didn’t use to be that like before I went to college and was in the Navy, why I heard some strange speaking and I think I responded (but I’m not positive) in some way. There are some good guys in the Navy too, but in the fly club, you’ll find an awful lot of them. There’s something that turns them on to fly fishing, and I think it has something to do with character. It’s hard to find a real jerk in the fly clubs. Most of them are really good people, and its fun to know them. You don’t just talk about fly fishing every moment, you have some other conversations. We hope that we get enough guys with the right attitudes that will be able to present ourselves to other organizations to help save, what we consider to be a wonderful resource, and that’s the fish and the sport. We’re getting to the point now where you have to buy so many licenses and do so many strange things -- like if you want to go crabbing when you’re down there on the bay; you have to have a license for that. And if you want to take … I’m going to get this so I can show you. 15 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I’ve gotten to a point where I stuff my licenses into one thing here, and I’ll take them out for you, it’s amazing what’s here. That kind of bothers me but if it’s going to save the sport, why then that’s great! I’ll just read them off to you here. Now this is a boating card, and it says “has successfully completed the boating safety course, which meets the standards set by the Natural Association of State Boating Law Administrators.” I have to keep that with me. And here’s a shellfish license so you can get things like clams and crabs, when you’re down there fishing in the salt chuck. Senior citizen permanent license number, hunting/angling license, that’s all well and good, but by the time you’re through adding the other things on here, the cost of this punch card, you think that you’re saving something by being a senior citizen, let’s hope that we are sometime -- no charge down at the bottom, no charge, so you’re getting the hunting and fishing license basically for being an old guy. And all these things, you know, it’s a darn nuisance -because we are tested. Now this has something to do with the guiding, but pretty soon you wonder what’s going to happen. You carry all of this so you’ll be able to fish. I hope it helps them but I wonder how helpful some of this stuff is. I hope it helps all of the agencies that do take care of the fish. And watch out for real bubble heads out there in the water. Anyway, I thought we’d bring that in. Well let’s see, what else can I confuse you with? TB: No, no, I think that’s good. Maybe the only other thing I have a question about is you said you went fishing in New Zealand. Where else have you gone that’s kind of exotic? Have you been to Christmas Island? BN: Yes, I’ve been to Christmas Island several times and also to Mexico, Belize, and to Los Rogues. That’s an island just north of Venezuela. It’s kind of fun to go there and see it. Bone fish is the big thing there. I’ve also fished in Argentina at the south end where the rivers run into the sea. I flew down there with Marty Rathje a long time ago. AN: And Alaska. You’ve been to Alaska several times. I remember fishing “Yes Bay” near Anchorage with a group of friends. BN: Oh yes, we go to Alaska and British Columbia. In fact, every fall for many years, I think back twenty years that we’d go to Tofino, B.C. and there’d be, Dick Padovan and let’s see … John Fabian went with us once. My son and grandson went with us a couple times and others. It was a wonderful group. TB: Well, I think that’s it for my questions. Then maybe you can also show me the release tool. BN: Oh the release tool, yes! AN: You should demonstrate how that works. BN: Oh yes, I’ve got a demonstrator too. TB: Okay. End of Recording 16 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 17 Bill and Audrey Nelson Edited Transcript – May 7, 2007 Fly Fishing Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Melissa Sweet interview
Date: 2016-02-25
Description: Melissa Sweet is an awarding illustrator of children's literature.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: SweetMelissa_20160225
Text preview (might not show all results): with the front matter a little bit to make it a lead into the story. And there had to be -- so in this case -- That’s a great question actually. In this case, we had Jane and Heidi’s text, but we had
Show more with the front matter a little bit to make it a lead into the story. And there had to be -- so in this case -- That’s a great question actually. In this case, we had Jane and Heidi’s text, but we had to give them, these birds, a life. What does it mean that pigeons nest on concrete ledges, catbirds nest in green hedges? Did they need to relate at all? Not really, but they’re going to be opposite each other, so
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Title: Liz Van Doren interview
Date: 2016-01-15
Description: Liz Van Doren is the Editorial Director at Boyds Mill Press and Highlights for Children. Kerry McManus is the Marketing and Permissions Manager at Boyds Mills Press and Highlights for Children. Wordsong, an imprint of Boyds Mills Press, is the only children's imprint in the United States specifically dedicated to poetry.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: VanDoren20160115
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Liz Van Doren ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria o
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Liz Van Doren 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 Liz Van Doren and Kerry McManus on January 8, 2016, at the American Library Association Midwinter conference in Boston Massachusetts. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: We are here at ALA Midwinter in Boston. And, we’re having the wonderful opportunity to speak with Liz Van Doren, who is the Editorial Director of Boyds Mills Press. KM: And Kerry McManus, marketing manager. NJ: And what we will do is try to disappear, because more than anything, we would just love for you to talk. Mostly, because this is for our PoetryCHaT, poetry collection, about Wordsong. Don’t worry about it being a natural flow. Whatever comes to mind from when you started working with Bea would be awesome, any of that connection. LVD: So I wish that had been the case. Wordsong was started at the beginning of Boyds Mills Press, which is 23 years ago. The story, it’s a great story, and we can provide you with this interview. There’s an interview with Bea in -KM: -- NCTE journal. LVD: -- an NCTE journal. She was originally invited. She was connected to Highlights for years, and she was invited by our editor in chief to come and speak to the board about what makes a great story. She was also a longtime friend of Kent Brown, who was the founder of Boyds Mills Press. He is the grandson of the founders of Highlights. And he wanted -- Kent is kind of a visionary, and he saw things that maybe other people don’t see, and he was perhaps less concerned with commerce and more concerned with bringing great books to kids no matter what it takes. So he wanted to start a poetry imprint, and he invited Bea to come and do it. Nobody who is on the staff now, unfortunately, worked with her because her association with Wordsong -- I’m not going to say it ended, but it kind of, you know, slowly slipped away over the last 10 years. I’ve been here for 5 years, and I don’t -Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KM: Yes, I agree. It’s probably been closer to maybe 7 or 8 years that she hasn’t been affiliated with, strongly affiliated with Wordsong. LVD: And as she kind of slipped out of that role and did other things, we hired first as a freelancer and then as a full-time staff person Rebecca Davis, who had worked at Simon & Schuster, she worked at Greenwillow, she worked at Orchard. She has a deep passion for poetry. It really takes a special kind of editor to edit poetry. It’s very, -- it’s complicated, and yet it’s just the same as editing anything because a poem is a story. But poetry also has form, and you need to understand the form, and you need to understand when the form works and when the form doesn’t. So Rebecca pretty exclusively publishes all of the poetry for Wordsong now. We think a lot about, National Poetry Month is in April, and we kind of look at how many books a year are we going to publish, and how are we going to manage those? We do publish poetry books in the fall occasionally, a few. We try to publish them mostly in the spring so that we can take advantage of any poetry month promotions. But we also try to keep the list small so that we’re not cannibalizing our young, so that every book has an opportunity to -KM: And there are some years that we don’t publish any Wordsong titles. LVD: Right. NJ: So you don’t make a commitment to say, We will publish two Wordsongs a year? KM: No, it’s really list driven, I would say, author driven, editor driven. LVD: So one of the things as I was doing some research because I have to confess that I had to go to our editor in chief and say, I should know how Wordsong was founded but I don’t know that much about it. And she said, I don’t know that much about it either (laughter), which made me feel so much better, because a 23-year-old history is 23-year-old history. But Wordsong is the Japanese word for poem, and that was Bea’s idea to name this imprint after something really sort of deep and ethereal and heartfelt. I know, very cool. And so, one of the things you asked in the email is what drives our acquisitions? You can imagine that Rebecca gets a lot of submissions every year, and some of them are great, and some of them are okay, and some of them are not great. And so, it’s always a little bit mysterious and yet completely obvious what’s great. One of the things that’s sort of the hallmark, one of the things that we look for, is books that are unexpected. If it’s been published before, we - you know, there’s no point in our doing it. NJ: I’m chuckling because it makes such good sense. LVD: Yes, unexpected is a really important word. If something is expected, that’s not a good thing, in a landscape where books are very expensive to make and very expensive to market and very expensive to buy. We look for books that are kind of inspiring to young readers, that challenge readers to think about themselves, to think about the world, to think about their assumptions, to think about what is inside them emotionally. I think that poetry publishing is a very underserved genre. I just love that there is a Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections day called Keep a Poem in Your Pocket Day, and I love that schools do that, and I think that poetry, even for the most reluctant reader, poetry is something -- a poem is something that they can be successful with. And a poem tells a story in very few words. But we really think about, you know, we look for excellent writing, we look for a deep understanding of form. A rhyming picture book is not a poetry picture book, and so that’s always - something that is talked about a lot in our editorial meetings, is, you know, someone will invariably say, Well, it rhymes. Shouldn’t it be a Wordsong book? And Rebecca has a bruise on her forehead from banging it on the table because no, poetry is something bigger than just rhyme. ST: And that’s something that we addressed and confronted ourselves as we were developing the collection, what we’re going to bring into poetry collection from the picture books. And coming to that same, really coming to that same decision that rhyming picture books are not part of what we are going to define as the poetry collection. LVD: Right. And a book could be -- the entire book could be a poem. You can take a poem and illustrate it, and then that’s a poetry picture book. ST: Right, absolutely. LVD: A book can be a collection of poems and be a picture book, and as I talked about earlier, have a story woven through, something that knits all of the poems together. NJ: Your example today, The Farmers Market KM: Right. LVD: Yes, the Fresh Delicious, by Irene Latham. A book, you know, poetry extends into older age groups, and I’ve just been so excited to see acknowledgment in the literary world of novels in verse with our own Words with Wings, with Sharon Creech’s books, with Karen Hess’s book, -KM: Kwame Alexander. LVD: Yes. So, I think those are -- And Rebecca can definitely speak to you more about what, but one of the things we always talk about, Is it unexpected? Has it been done before? How will it be illustrated? With a picture book, that’s really important. We have rejected manuscripts that we could not figure out how to illustrate. There’s a great book that we’re publishing next year called Thunder Underground, which is a collection of poems by Jane Yolen about what happens below the earth. But it’s not just about ants and moles and rabbits. It’s also about sewers and earthquakes and volcanos and what’s under the ocean floor. But it was a crazy challenge to illustrate that book and to figure out, to find an illustrator who wanted to take it on, and kind of figure out how not to be literal with the illustration. KM: And to that note, we have really renown poets that we publish some works on like Jane Yolen and Nikki and Lee Bennett Hopkins. We have a collection of his, Jumping Off Library Shelves, which has all of Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections the different renown poets in that book. So it’s curated by Lee, and then we have Nikki and Jane in that book as well, and then we have new poets. That you could probably speak to, Liz. LVD: Right. So I brought a list because we had a -NJ: We’re curious who you got to illustrate that one. KM: Jane Manning was Jumping Off Library Shelves. NJ: But who is doing Thunder Underground KM: I don’t know. I can’t remember. LVD: I’m going to look because I think I have it here. I can tell you -NJ: You said it was a real challenge, and so I’m curious how you worked through that. LVD: It was a real challenge. NJ: Because of illustrators of poetry collections, that’s something that Sylvia and I have been talking about. LVD: Josée Masse. She’s a -- J-O-S-É-E, with an accent on the first E, M-A-S-S-E. So glad I brought my publish list. Be prepared! So, you know, here’s a list of some of the people we’ve published: Jane Yolen, Rebecca Dotlich, Laura Purdie Salas, J. Patrick Lewis, Amy VanDerwater, David Harrison, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Marilyn Singer, Georgia Heard, Nikki Grimes, Janice Harrington, Irene Latham. And we had a dinner at NCTE last year. It began with Janet Wong saying, I got a few people, let’s have a dinner. And then we were like, Let’s we’ll have the dinner, and we’ll invite eight people, and it was one of the most moving experiences of my career. We had 30 -KM: Yes, 30 -LVD: -- 35 or 38 -KM: It was like Wordsong throughout the years. All of these backlist authors, and front list authors, all in one room. LVD: Everybody who is writing poetry for kids was there. KM: Yes. LVD: I was like, Oh my god, it’s like the Academy Awards. KM: Yes, it was an amazing gathering of people. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections LVD: So we really do -- we publish just about everybody who’s writing poetry. We also happen to be the only publisher with an imprint devoted to poetry. But you know, the goal is not volume. The goal is quality. The goal is refinement. The goal is to celebrate poetry. KM: To do the best. LVD: And publishing poetry is hard. Poetry books don’t sell the way picture books and novels do. Occasionally if they win an award, that certainly helps it. It’s interesting to me always that poetry is categorized as nonfiction by the ALA committees, which doesn’t make sense to me at all. NJ: -- Dewey Decimal System. LVD: And in the Dewey Decimal System. Like, where did that come from? Why is that? Isn’t that -doesn’t it always seem odd to you? ST: And we always joke about it. LVD: Everybody always jokes about it. KM: -- and we always forget about it, and then we’re like oh, it’s nonfiction, so we have to recalibrate our thinking sometimes. LVD: I think everybody has to recalibrate their thinking. ST: Well there’s a sense of the history of poetry as expository, as something that was actually historically something, that wasn’t necessarily -- it’s interesting how it ended up in Dewey as nonfiction. It’s interesting too when -- I was preparing for this myself and inventorying our own holdings of Wordsong. I was surprised that there were not fewer titles because we plan on having every single Wordsong book in our collection because we have to have that. KM: Yay. ST: And I was struck by the same thing, but hearing you talk right now about the importance of selection and the intentionality about what you publish, it makes perfect sense. LVD: Well, and the reality that any publisher will talk about is we’re not a nonprofit organization. You know, we have to think about sales as we -- So we do think about Fresh Delicious, for example, that manuscript really, as I said earlier, it sparkled. And there’s a lot of books about farmers’ markets, but there’s no poetry book about a farmers’ market. But there have been other poetry collections that have been submitted to us that just didn’t jump off the page. There was just something about those poems that make you want to eat the fruits and vegetables, want to hold them and look at them, because it’s about color and it’s about taste and it’s about shape and texture. NJ: Texture KM: Yes, sensory. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: I would like to ask you a question about, and this goes back again to Bea, but the NCTE poetry award and the books that they used to have for poets who won the award that Boyds Mills did, that Bea was a part of, what’s Wordsong or Boyds Mills’ connection to that award, if any? Do you know? KM: I don’t know. And yes, I’d have to look through -- we have an archivist actually at Highlights, so that’s a great -NJ: We could send that question. LVD: I think it was -- here’s what I think about it. The book was called A Jar of Tiny Stars, KM: Right. LVD: -- and then there was a second called Another Jar of Tiny Stars, and I just had this perplexing conversation with our sales people because we put A Jar of Tiny Stars out of print, and they were like, Well why would you do that? It sold a lot of copies. And I said, because Another Jar of Tiny Stars is the same book with more in it.” NJ: It’s different poets. The first ten and then the next ten. LVD: Right. It was a hard decision. They were, again, I think that was Bea’s labor of love. NJ: Yes, I think you’re right. LVD: Because we don’t -- there was no connection between Boyds Mills and the award. It was her connection with Boyds Mills and the award. NJ: That helps me. LVD: Yes. NJ: How do you choose an illustrator for a poetry collection? LVD: It’s interesting. It’s pretty much the same process as choosing an illustrator for a picture book manuscript. You know, we think about what -- the first thing an editor thinks about is, What kind of art style do I think would work? Do I want quirky? Do I want humorous? Do I want watercolor? Do I want graphic? Do I want contemporary? Do I want classic? Do I want timeless? And once you kind of shake that through the funnel and kind of come out with the style that you’re looking for, then you start looking at illustrator websites, agent websites. This conference and any conference is an awesome opportunity for us to walk around and look at what other people are publishing. Because, to be very frank, because the sales of poetry are slower and smaller than the sales of picture books, we also really like to discover people early in their career, partly because they’re willing to maybe accept a lower advance than they would for a picture book. But also because it’s a different kind of illustrating, but the thing we’re always asking them is, You have to tell a visual story. You have to find the visual thread that pulls you through. Not every illustrator can think that way, but when they can it’s great. So it’s not any different a process than matching a picture book manuscript to an illustrator. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections You should ask Rebecca that question too, though. She may say something different. NJ: Does she, which is an interesting question I have, does she make all of the decisions for poetry about which books, all these that you’re going to do or which one a year, and does she make the decision about the artist. LVD: She makes the recommendation. KM: Yes, it’s very collaborative. We have an editorial meeting every month. NJ: Okay. KM: All of us are included in that, and we all give our opinions, good or bad, but then generally it moves from there over to a smaller, more succinct group of people, Liz, and a smaller group that makes the final decisions. LVD: The final decisions are made by me and our publisher with feedback from marketing and feedback from sales. But Rebecca makes all the recommendations, and it’s usually pretty clear. You know, she’s a smart cookie. It’s not that often that we say no, because she has already gone through her own process of vetting. ST: And that encompasses type, font, and those kinds of decisions as well -- because that’s also so important for a poetry book, how the word -KM: Mm-hmm, how it’s laid out -ST: -- the layout of the actual -LVD: Those are all decisions that are made between Rebecca, who’s the editor, and the designer. NJ: Designer, okay. LVD: But again, because publishing takes a village, the creative director and I certainly weigh in. With every book, once the illustrator’s chosen, then we either create galleries for the illustrator to do their sketches with, or they do their sketches, and then we start the type design. The designer and the editor will work closely together, and then they’ll present what’s called the dummy, the pages to me and the creative director, and we’ll -- Our creative director has a really good eye, and she’ll say, I think that font is going to overwhelm the artwork, or it’s too thin and you can’t read it. So there’s -- publishing any book is, I would like to say in any house, I can’t speak per many other houses, but at least at our place and most of the places I’ve worked, a very collaborative process that involves editorial, marketing, sales, design, and production. KM: Right. NJ: All those names don’t go on the book. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections LVD: None of the names -- you know, the only names that go on the book -- this is so funny -- the only names that go on the book are the designer and the production manager. KM: Yes, I know, that is kind of funny. LVD: In magazines, every name goes in it. KM: Right, marketed by... NJ: I want to go back to something you may have answered, but I might not have heard it clearly. So this coming year, you have two novels in verse. KM: Mm-hmm. NJ: Are they Wordsong, or how do you decide? LVD: They’re Wordsong. NJ: As long as it’s any kind of poetry, no matter the form, format, it would be Wordsong? LVD: Yes. KM: Correct, yes. NJ: Okay. I just wanted to be clear on that one. ST: And how do you juggle all these different parts that you have in terms of the differences. KM: Well we write marketing plans every list. Every season and every list, we prioritize our lists. And sometimes it’s a tough process. We have to -- we get a lot of feedback from editorial. We work very closely with Liz, and we identify our lead titles, and then we really put our muscle behind select books. We love them all, but the beauty of Boyds Mills Press is that it’s a small list, so we can work with every author, every illustrator, every title -ST: You can adjust if a book emerges in the list KM: And we can adjust. But I will tell you, like Nikki’s Garvey’s Choice is a lead title for us of course, so we will be putting a lot of marketing muscle behind it. NJ: And that is when? KM: That is fall. LVD: Fall of ’16. KM: Fall of ’16. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections LVD: So we will have ARCs for that book at ALA annual. We will have a big marketing -- it also depends on the author’s availability -- Nikki’s very excited about this one. KM: -- it’s a collaborative, and then another collaborative process over here. That kind of swirls around, and we work very closely with authors and illustrators, especially now with -- We were just talking about this today at the lunch, you know with the advent of Twitter and Facebook, a lot of it is author driven, and it has to be, but we can support them and help them find other avenues to market themselves, but a lot of it is heavily author driven. NJ: It is so different. KM: Yes. NJ: It adds another layer to an author’s life. KM: It does. It’s a good thing though. Ultimately it’s a good thing, but it takes a lot of time. ST: Well it makes a personal connection -- between the book and author, but as you said, it takes a lot of time -KM: Yes, it takes social media -NJ: And some authors, I’m sure, are less, not just skilled, but even willing to -KM: Exactly. NJ: -- invest that part of self. It’s because it’s an investment of yourself. KM: It is. It takes a lot of time for them. LVD: It takes a lot of time for them, but I think today more than ever, any author who expects the publisher to do all the work for them is very misguided. KM: Right. LVD: It just doesn’t happen. It can’t happen. KM: No. It’s a different era. You know, working in the ‘90s and publishing, it’s totally different. It’s really evolved in many, many ways. ST: You still have plenty to do. LVD: We have plenty to do. KM: We have a lot to do, a lot to do. It’s never ending. We could always be doing more, and that’s one of the factors with our jobs is that we have a certain layer of guilt sometimes, that we could always be Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections doing more to help an author, but we have to sometimes really pick and choose and really put time behind certain titles. NJ: How many other publishing houses have you worked with? And I’m going to say with poetry. LVD: Four. NJ: Okay. So in those houses, how is poetry here different from poetry in those houses? I mean, you have an actual imprint specific to poetry. KM: Right. LVD: Well, that’s the big difference. I think poetry in my longest gig was a little bit marginalized. It fell in the regular picture book publishing program. If it got attention, if a poetry book got attention, it got great reviews, then people would pay attention to it. But the poetry picture books were seen as picture books first and poetry second, and I think we look at it the other way, right? KM: Yes, I agree, I agree. And that’s my experience too, from working at Random House in the ‘90s, it was always picture book first. If it was poetry, that was always second. LVD: Even though you would say, It’s a poetry picture book, what people heard was picture book. KM: Right. NJ: And you, I’m imagining, feel free to correct me, the reason no one else has an imprint, one of the big reasons, is sales. LVD: Absolutely. ST: So what do you attribute the current upsurge, as modest as it might be, within publishing that’s happening currently with narrative verse in particular, but poetry also? Or maybe not, you don’t see it as much in picture book poetry, but certainly in narrative verse it’s there. KM: I think it’s reactionary to other trends in publishing, you know, the whole dystopian novels maybe. It’s a kinder, gentler reading for a student, or a person in general. LVD: You know, and I have to say, librarians and reviewers are deeply important to our business, and when a book like Out of the Dust wins the Newbery, or Newberry Honor, I can’t remember which one -NJ: The Newbery LVD: -- the Newbery, it gives us hope that when we publish a novel in verse that it will be paid attention to. So as Kerry said, it is reactionary. I was at NCTE last year. We were right across the booth from another publisher, and I was so excited to see one of our authors, Laura Purdie Salas, sitting there with a signing line that went on and on and on and on, and she’s very early in her career. And I think I should mention teachers too. I think that poetry is a really integral part of elementary, you know, ELA Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections classrooms, and I think that it’s a great way to teach writing. It’s a great way to teach reading. It’s a great way to talk about creativity. There’s a lot of now national programs. I cannot underestimate the importance of things like the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, where young poets can be honored nationally by the submission of poetry that is judged by grownups, by real live, awesome, adult, wellknown poets. And I think that, I don’t know, I’m very happy to see it, but it is reactionary, and I think it’s just something changes and then people notice, and then it changes a little bit more, and it changes a little bit more, and suddenly it’s just part of the conversation. KM: Yes. ST: Well, I know in speaking with Sylvia Vardell, her comments about The Poetry Friday Anthologies that she and Janet Wong are publishing and how they’ve gone through to middle school, and that’s sort of their cut off. They are not doing those for high school, because it really is at K-8 grades where they’re finding this rich response to those collections of verse. And I’m just curious myself eventually to see what’s happening with YA literature and poetry. It’s curious -KM: Right. And we have ambassadors, like the children’s poet laureates -KM: -- J. Patrick Lewis. That didn’t exist. NJ: -- and Jackie Woodson is now in that role. KM: That didn’t exist. So that’s a fairly new phenomenon that really keeps poetry in the forefront. NJ: That’s right. That’s a good point. We need to think about how we weave them into the conversation. That award and people who created that award. LVD: Well the National Poetry Foundation is a really, really powerfully active organization, and I think that they have certainly helped. Because they support that post, and so I think it would be very interesting to talk to their director as well as to Pat Lewis or, I forgot who followed him. I think that -NJ: Kenn Nesbitt. And he’s in Spokane in our area. And, the role of people like Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell, and they’re so present out in the social networking of poetry, that’s cool. I mean, they do such cool stuff for teachers. And I imagine that that has, I would hope, had an impact even on poetry sales? KM: It’s huge for us. Sylvia every year comes to us and says, What do you have that’s new? NJ: Every new book – it will be posted on her blog. KM: And she will support us. She supports us. LVD: And she supports our authors. KM: She does. She really tries to get a Wordsong author on her poetry panel every year at TLA. So she always lets us know, always asks us. If we have somebody, she accepts them, and it’s a great promotion for us. So she and Janet are support. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections LVD: It’s great support for us because we do need that support, you know. We can’t just do it ourselves The poets do. KM: Right. LVD: I also think something else that I’m noticing as the parent of a middle schooler, and Kerry, you might be noticing this too. Poetry has gotten kind of cool. Like that whole kind of downtown art beat spoken word. Like spoken word is now part of the conversation among teenagers, and it’s kind of this sort of retro, this thing that has come around again. KM: I agree. Even with social media that they use, you know, the Snapchats and Instagram posts, just a little quick poem accompanied by a photograph is -- I see that a lot when I check their social media LVD: Exactly, when we monitor their social media. KM: It’s cooler. Even the stores they like to shop, and, you know, the little journals that have little poems added. They love that. They love it. So it’s coming around again to that age. NJ: There’s so much about poetry that’s about identity and voice. LVD: Yes. NJ: But I think of Kwame’s making it cool. In fact, he’s a huge influence on the role of poetry, spoken poetry, but linking it with basketball. You and I know poetry’s about something, but a lot of people don’t know that. LVD: Well, they’re threatened by it. They think, I’m not gonna understand it. ST: Well, there’s the right answer that you have to answer about poetry, which is unfortunate. LVD: You know, something else I didn’t say earlier that sort of belongs in the how do you make a decision about what to publish. I talked a lot about picture books and a rhyming picture book, and this is a trend we’re seeing that I’m about to address. A rhyming picture book isn’t necessarily a work of poetry. A novel that has line breaks in the middle of a sentence is not necessarily a novel in verse, and we get a lot of submissions that are just phrases kind of lined up to look poetic, and Rebecca will be the first one to say, It’s not poetry. It’s just broken sentences. KM: Right, right. LVD: So that’s also interesting that we’re getting a lot of those submissions. NJ: It helps us understand what it is, then. What is the difference? KM: Mm-hmm. LVD: Yes. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Because that’s part her expertise. LVD: She speaks about it way better than I can. ST: It’s part of the craft. NJ: How long has she been with Boyds Mills? LVD: She started out as a -- it’s been about five years. She’s been our full-time employee for three, I think. NJ: Did she always do poetry in her other houses? LVD: No, she did picture books and novels as well. But when she was hired to work as a freelance editor, she was hired because she is an editor who deeply understands and is very passionate about poetry. But she also publishes picture books and fiction as well. For example, if another editor wanted to publish a Wordsong book, they could, but Rebecca would be involved because she has so many smarts and so much to say and so much experience. NJ: She’s got a lot of knowledge. LVD: Exactly. ST: I don’t know if we have anything else. This has been a wonderful start. And gosh, and again, just to reiterate the centrality of Wordsong as an imprint. LVD: Well thank you so much. ST: I anticipate it might be that we come back again and have another conversation. KM: Yes. LVD: Absolutely. We’ll talk on the phone. LVD: We’re on the phone all day long, so -KM: You can dial in to our 800 hundred number. ST: And we are so grateful. KM: And like I said, we have a lot of archival information about Wordsong that we can pass -LVD: Yes, that interview with Bea is great. KM: I will make sure I’ll put together a whole packet for you on a .pdf, whatever you’d like. NJ: Really valuable. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: That would be extremely valuable. The vision for the collection really is very broad at this point. We would like to interview illustrators, the publishers, the editors. We would like to interview the publishers and the editors and all the different components that belong, LVD: Yes, it would be really interesting to talk to the illustrators. KM: Especially the ones that had a relationship with Bea. LVD: But like, someone like Matt Cordell, for example, he illustrates picture books. He also did a book of poetry for us. KM: Right. LVD: So, it might be interesting to talk to someone like him about what’s the difference. ST: I’m going to turn off the recorder at this point. End of recording. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 14 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Sylvia Vardell interview
Date: 2016-01-08
Description: Sylvia Vardell is a Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman's University. Her work focuses on poetry for chldren, including a regular blog, PoetryforChildren. She is the regular "Everyday Poetry" columnist for ALA's BookLinks magazine and the 2014 recipient of the ALA Scholastic Library Publishing Award.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: VardellSylvia_20160108
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Sylvia Vardell ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Sylvia Vardell 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 Sylvia Vardell on January 8, 2016, at the American Library Association Midwinter conference in Boston Massachusetts. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: We are here in Boston, Massachusetts and Midwinter ALA with Sylvia Vardell, professor at Texas Women’s University and we are going to spend some time finding out about your poetry experience. SV: I’m thrilled. Do you need to check the recording, or you’ve done this and you know that it reaches. NJ: It’s one of those fancy pants ones. SV: Super duper, alright. ST: This is not the old fashioned kind. SV: I know, I’m such an amateur -NJ: Could you speak a little louder? SV: A cassette tape. NJ: We’re going to mostly let you talk, and we might occasionally have a question or two. SV: Okay, start from the beginning. Alright. Well, my professor work with poetry is in the last 15 years or so, but in doing this, it got me thinking, where are these roots from? Where did this come from? And it just surprised me that poetry was there in my childhood in a way that I hadn’t really articulated until I was way old. And I grew up as an ESL kid. My first language was German. My parents were German, and I learned English from neighbor kids. And, yes, so poetry was a way for me to get a handle on English, you know, the rhythm and the rhyme Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections and the way words are supposed to be pronounced. And I never really put that into words until way, way, way later. It was very powerful for me. And when I was about 8 -- the first books that I had were in German, little children’s books in German, and there was a book that had all kinds of prose and poetry pieces. And there was a little poem in there that I made myself memorize and perform for my mom for her birthday that I still know, and it’s not a great poem by anybody famous -ST: Well let’s hear it. German poem from childhood Wenn Vater oder Mutter Geburtstag haben Was soll ich Dir sagen? Was soll lich Dir geben? Ich hab nur ein kleines ein junges Leben. Ich hab ein Herz dass denkt und spricht Ich hab dich lieb Mehr weiss Ich nicht! (Original source unknown) NJ: Could you translate? SV: It’s something like when Mom or Dad have a birthday, what should I say? What should I give? I only have a small mind, a small heart, but I love you dearly, and that’s all I have to give. Something like that. I know, it sounds really schmaltzy and corny in English, but in German it’s just sort of rollicking, rhythmic rhyme, just silly kind of thing. But anyway, I did that on my own initiative because that was the book I had, and I wanted to do something for my mom, and what did I choose? A poem. And I just love that. And I love that it’s still with me. That’s sort of the power of poetry too. It sticks in your brain forever. But then years go by, and I’m an avid reader. I read lots of things. I don’t actually read that much poetry as a kid, after that, when I move into English, I really don’t. You know, you have to in school, memorize “The Village Blacksmith” in 6th grade for Mrs. Brooks. Under the spreading chestnut-tree the village smithy stands.” And that was a hideous experience, because I didn’t know what I was saying, you know, you’re 12 years old. What’s a village blacksmith? I’m a little German girl. I’ve never seen a blacksmith. So, and then the whole agony of getting up in front of your classmates to say a poem was a big negative for me. Even though I’m a really good memorizer, that public performance thing, that was not comfortable. I was a very shy kid, if you can believe it, very shy. And so, that was, “Oh, poetry is not for me.” And then in high school and college, you’re memorizing, not memorizing, you’re analyzing poetry, and I was actually very good at that. One of my favorite stories is an English class at UT Austin where we had to describe our analysis of a poem, and I hadn’t Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections even read it, I just made shit up, and then the professor reads my response out loud to the class as a model example. So what that taught me was, it’s just all bullshit, you know. So you’re going to have to censor that. NJ: Or not. ST: Not at all, that’s -- a real response. SV: Poetry is what it means, you know, whatever you think it means. And I was lucky enough not to have too many teachers who said, “You have to get what I got out of it.” It was the ‘70s and we were all hippies, and they said, “Whatever you think, that’s valid and legitimate.” Which, I value that, but on the other hand, I didn’t have any guidance in really understanding or thinking deep or looking at the context in which the poem was written, anything. So that -- in my childhood I loved it, then I didn’t read it, then I just made stuff up, and then -- actually at the University of Minnesota in my doctoral program, I was studying children’s literature in depth, just loved it. That’s really where things just caught fire for me professionally. And I worked with Norine Odland who’s no longer with us. She was a giant in the field, and a cranky, cranky lady, but she was so smart, and she mentored me. She thought she saw something. And that was such a great experience. It just totally turned my life down the children’s literature path. But I also met a fellow doctoral student named Mary Kay Rummel, and I don’t even know what she’s doing now. NJ: Oh-SV: Do you know Mary Kay Rummel”? Is she somebody? See, I’ve not kept up with her in 30 years. NJ: I haven’t heard the name in a long time. SV: She was a Ph.D. student ahead of me, almost finished, and I just knew her a teeny bit, but she was a poet. She wrote poetry and performed it and published it, in just small presses, and I was like, “Oh!” It just like opened the door again. And I just really sort of dived in and started reading all the poetry I could find, especially for young people. She was really writing for an adult audience, and I didn’t pursue that, oddly enough. But it made me think about poetry again, and this is why I’m, oh my gosh, I’m going to be so old. This is when Shel Silverstein was new. Where the Sidewalk Ends was like brand, right -NJ: First editions. SV: -- brand new hot, and I’m teaching 6th graders. Where the Sidewalk Ends was written for my class. Oh my gosh, they loved it. And I always said, if I was stranded on a desert island with 6th graders, that would be the one book I would like to have, because you could just read it over and over and over again, and just laugh and laugh and laugh, and they were so, you know -- there’s sort of an angry subtext in some of those poems. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Of course SV: Right, right. Which 6th graders totally get. So that was it, that was it for me. I thought, oh my gosh, I just love this. I did not think that poetry could be anything but the “The Village Blacksmith” or silly childhood rhymes, which I also value classics and silliness, but I’m now I’m seeing, oh, you can write with a child audience in mind, or you can write for adults but then kids see something in it too. It just, Woo! Very exciting. So then I started reading more poetry for kids, and various poets come to the University of Minnesota because they host authors, and that was awesome, meeting an author. Wow! I did not grow up with that as a kid. I don’t know if you guys did. But wow! ST: No, it wasn’t a time -- this is a new time when authors started to travel and actually present about their creative process. That wasn’t an experience for my childhood. SV: Right, right. Or maybe adult authors did it for adult audiences. I don’t know. I just never -- did not know. I was very like lower-middle class, you know. So that was so exciting to hear Tomie DePaola talk about work and sit at a table with him because the doctoral students are -- oh my gosh! Yes, and a special time, and it was great. It was great. So then I started -- you know, I got my first professor job and started working in children’s literature. NJ: Where was that? SV: That was at a small college. The University of Houston had a branch in Victoria, TX, way down on the Gulf Coast. At the time, it was just juniors and seniors and master students. I don’t know if it’s expanded since then. They had a visiting position open, and I had just finished my exams actually. I hadn’t written a dissertation. And my husband was ready to move. He had stayed another year in Minnesota so that -- We went there for his schooling, he finished, then I started doing schooling, and I was almost finished, so he stayed another year, did another degree. He loves school. He could do degrees till the cows come home. But we were both ready to move back to Texas, which was sort of home for us, and that position was open, and I was like, oh, that would be cool. I’d never thought about being a professor, honestly. I wanted a Ph.D. because that was the most school that you could have. That was my logic. I mean, I love school. I just kept going to school and teaching kids. So I thought I would just be some curriculum person. Move from the classroom into supervision, and that was fine. But then I was flipping through The Chronicle, there was that position, I applied for it, and they hired me. Oh my gosh. I was just like, a professor, okay. I never knew a professor in my entire life. I didn’t know to aspire to even think about doing that. But oh my gosh, that first summer I taught summer classes that started at 7 in the morning, and I lived an hour away. I know! Now I’d be like, Hell no. But at the time, I was like, I will pay you if I could do this. It was amazing. It was the perfect storm of what Sylvia has to bring and what job is out there in the world. I felt like the luckiest person ever. And I still feel really lucky. Don’t you feel really lucky to do this job, to get paid to read and teach and talk about books and help children and people who work with children, love reading? Oh my gosh! If I Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections were going to invent a perfect job to do for my life, that would be it. And I’ve been doing it almost 40 years and just love it. So at the time, children’s literature was not a thing you could do exclusively, so I taught reading and language arts and methods, even curriculum and instruction. And I supervised student teachers. You do a whole lot of things, especially at a small campus, any campus. And I enjoyed all of that, but children’s literature was always my favorite thing. And little by little, I was able to specialize in that and move to a couple different universities. And each time, it was a position that was just children’s literature, until I moved to library science, which was quite a leap, in 2001, at Texas Woman’s. I’d always been in reading or in curriculum, and they had an opening in their library information studies program, where Betty Carter was retiring, and she’d mentioned it to me. She said, “You should think about it.” I was like, “Really? I don’t have an MLS. I’ve never worked in a library.” I took a library science course at the University of Minnesota, loved it, but it was at the very end of my program. If anybody had said to consider this, I would have done that in a minute. But again, you know, it’s all the things that are in the road in front of you that unless somewhere mentors you, and I never had any mentors. So, she said apply, and I was like, Okay. And I applied, and I kept saying, I don’t have an MLS, right? You know that, right? Because I didn’t want to pretend to be something I wasn’t, and I was older at this point and pretty established, and they hired me as a full professor at TWU, and I just do children’s YA poetry, multicultural, just literature courses, and oh my gosh, that is the icing on the cake. So that’s my career trajectory. But the poetry interests actually evolved too, because first I was just doing general children’s lit, and I’m studying authors because I was so taken with this power of meeting authors, did a lot with that. And then got involved in CLA, the Children’s Literature Assembly at NCTE, which really was my mentoring body. They changed my life too. I met the best people, and opportunities came my way. Do you remember Richard Van Dongen? NJ: Oh yes. SV: -- invited me to be on the Notables committee, and I was just like, Oh my gosh, this is so amazing, books come to your house? Oh, I just thought that was I’d died and gone to heaven. Was it? Yes, and that was it. Then you’re like, I need more of this. I need some more heroin. And so many good people. And then you just feel really connected with a bigger family professionally. And got really involved in CLA. And so first the opportunity was Notables, so that was sort of wide reading, and then the next opportunity was nonfiction. I did like 10 years, got to work on the Orbis Pictus and established that award. I got to come up with a name for it, and that was so fun. I still love nonfiction, but then I was also intrigued by multicultural literature, again because of my background, the different language and cultures that I grew up with. A lot of my family doesn’t even Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections speak English, so I was very aware of how important it was to expose kids to all kinds of literature. So I spent a lot of time also reading and writing about multicultural literature. And then in each of these things, poetry’s always popping up because poetry’s considered nonfiction, right, in the library world? It’s kind of weird. And then poetry kept popping up in multicultural literature because so many authors of color are poets or write poetry. I was very intrigued by that too. So little by little, I’m writing more and more about poetry, and I’m all the time reading it and including it in my teaching. And then, I think it was when I moved to TWU, yes, I think it was, that I really decided, you know, I just want to look at poetry now. Maybe it was because I finally felt comfortably settled professionally. I could focus. And I had this idea that we needed a book of professional resources, it was very practical, about the teachings of poetry and the sharing of poetry. Really not even the teaching, just the knowing of poetry for children, because there was so much out now that I felt like my students didn’t know about. They at this point knew Shel Silverstein, and then some would know Jack Prelutsky’s work, but that was it. They didn’t know the NCTE poetry award. And the more I taught the more I was like, you know, there’s an absence here. So I came up with this proposal for a very little practical book about poetry and the sharing of poetry for kids and wrote a proposal, and ALA accepted it, and that became the book, Poetry Aloud Here! And man, that was so exciting to get to write that little book and have it be a big success, and then that opened all these doors and windows for meeting poets and presenting about poetry at conferences and sharing more ideas with students. And then the blog thing happened. People started doing blogs, and I was like, “What’s that? That’s cool!” And so I wanted to do a blog. As a professor I thought that’s a good idea to model for students. What shall I do? Well there were heaps, and this is 2005, heaps of blogs now emerging on children’s lit, and I thought, Well, I don’t want to be another children’s literature blog. I’m going to do poetry. So I just started writing about the poetry that’s out there for kids, how to share it, what to link it with. Then very, sort of practical -- always very practical minded. I’m not really a scholar, really, researcher. I know, I know! But, I’m not really investigating things. I’m more -- I had a colleague once who said, You’re a translator. You’re trying to take what is known and then help people in the field use it. ST: A connector. SV: Okay. Whatever word you want to use. ST: Translator. SV: And I love that. I don’t apologize for that. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Your blog is exceptional though, in terms of the resources. It’s very evident that you work very hard on it, the extensive listings of poets as well as the topics you bring up, and it’s current all the time. You go and whatever’s emerging really -- it’s really a place. SV: Thank you very much. ST: You’re welcome. NJ: Powerful resource. SV: I’ve had a lot of fun with it. And it was an opportunity to explore blogging. And then it was an opportunity to keep up. It’s like going to Weight Watchers and you know they’re going to weigh you, and so you’ve got to keep up. So you’ve got a blog every Friday, you’re like okay, you’re looking around, what do I need to write about? I’m a little behind at the moment actually. It’s on my list of things to do. It’s a Christmas post at the moment. But I’m always looking for the moment, because I’m thinking of my audience as basically practitioners, right? So they don’t want to just analyze a poem, they want to know who’s writing, what are the new books, how do we share them, -- what unit will this go with, etc. So, I’ve had a lot of fun with it. It’s 10 years now. NJ: When you said that I couldn’t believe it. SV: Yes, this coming summer, 10 years. I’m trying to think of what to do for 10 years. But of course now there are fewer bloggers I’ve found. That’s sort of winnowing, but I still feel like that’s a worthwhile resource. And then that blogging led to more presenting at conferences and more fawning over my favorite authors. And I went to an IRA where Janet Wong was signing the very first book, Good Luck Gold, I believe, and I just loved that book. To me, it spoke to me as a little German girl, right, with two cultures, grandparents who didn’t get America. I mean, she and I had a very interesting parallel path. And I went up to her and got her to sign my book, and I said, “Oh, I just love your work.” And you know Janet, she’s like, “Oh, now we’re best friends.” And I was like, Oh. So she was so accessible and just really engaged with me, and so as a professor, if you can put a proposal together with some authors on it, you’ve got a little better chance of getting accepted. So I thought, Well, I’ll ask Janet. And she said yes to being on a proposal, and we had a really good time doing our session. I thought, Okay, I’ll work with her again, because I’ve worked -- lots of authors, and some of them are easy and they deliver, and some of them are eh-well. Good writers, all, but some people are better speakers. Some people are easier to work with than others. ST: Of course. SV: Anyway, so oh man, this is kind of a long life story. So then I get a chance to be on the NCTE poetry award committee, and I co-chaired with Peggy Oxley, and that is tremendous. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Wow! SV: That was a fun experience. And we chose Nikki Grimes as our recipient, which was awesome. I got to become friends with Nikki. And then the committee following mine had Janet on it, and Janet was a member, and I think it was Ralph Fletcher that was the chair. Oh I can’t remember who they chose now. Was it Lee? Yes, it was Lee Bennett Hopkins. So Janet, being the dynamo that she is, when it came time for the committee to put forward proposals, because every committee is supposed to get on the docket for the next convention, she’s like, Well, maybe Sylvia will help. And I’m like, Sure. So I wrote the proposal, even though I was the last year’s chair, and it of course got accepted because it was a committee sponsored proposal. And so lo and behold, here comes the, I think it was the Philadelphia convention and Lee Bennett Hopkins was going to be honored, and it’s falling to Janet and me, even though she’s just a member, not the chair, and I’m on the old committee. Anyway, and we are like a deadly combination in terms of having ideas, more ideas than sense or money. And I said, You know what, we should do like a little Festschrift for Lee, like a little dittoed book of poems in honor of his winning the award, and she said, That’s a great idea. She said, We should get it funded. And I’m like, I just thought we’d, you know, go run it off at Kinko’s. You know, my dreams are like this big, her dreams are like this big. And she’s like, I’m going to go to NCTE, and she did. They gave us a thousand dollars, and now all of a sudden it was going to be a little nicer. And so -- I know, I know. So in the space of the summer before the NCTE conference, we gather all these contact emails from poets. We write them and say, Would you write an original poem for Lee? And like 65 people say yes, and they send us poems. And Janet and I go back and forth and back and forth, getting the poems, organizing them, and then we decide, We need to publish a little book. And Steven Alcorn, who’d worked with Lee, gave us free art. And then Janet did this research on who could publish a decent quality book. It was some company in Michigan. I mean, it was just insane how this little idea became, wow, really cool. I’m very proud of that little book. And Lee just loved it. It’s a really nice actual book. ST: Was it a surprise for Lee? SV: Uh-huh. ST: Ah, you managed to keep it a -SV: I know! ST: That’s marvelous! SV: Or maybe it wasn’t and he just acted like it was, but he was thrilled, yes, it was great. NJ: Wow. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: And we learned a lot about the poets that we were working with, again, who’s easy and who’s not, who uses the f-word in a poem and what do we do with that? NJ: Who makes a deadline. SV: Who makes a deadline, who doesn’t. And we learned a lot about each other, and each other’s working style was we were just so parallel. We would like, well, Nancy can totally appreciate this too, I’m sure. You probably can too, Sylvia. You know, you have people you write and then you wait a couple of days and you get an answer, and it’s not clear and you have to follow up... Well, Janet and I were so in sync. Within minutes of each other, we were emailing back and forth. And, I don’t know, it was incredible, it still is, an incredible working relationship, where there’s no ego. Instead maybe she’ll say, That’s a stupid idea, and I’m like, You’re right, that is! NJ: But it’s an idea. SV: How about we just don’t hurt each other’s feelings. It’s really great. I don’t know how that is, but yes. So that was our first little effort together, and then she’s like, We should do something else together. And I’m like, Yes, that would be great. And one of my colleagues in Texas was telling me the following summer that Texas was about to start testing children’s knowledge of poetry. ST: Sigh. SV: I know, I know. But my thought was, You know what that means? That means that teachers are going to freak out because they don’t know how to do this. They don’t know how -NJ: The Blacksmith poem. SV: Right, right. They don’t know how to approach poetry. They don’t do anything with it. ST: Yes, the poetry that they knew, exactly, from when they were growing up instead of something that’s new and innovative. SV: This is an opportunity to create a resource for teachers that bridges that gap between -- they’re going to be tested. Teachers need to know poetry first, and then they need to know how to share it. And that’s how The Poetry Friday Anthologies were born. NJ: Wow! ST: Oh, is that right? SV: Yep. NJ: So it was because of Texas initiative. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: A very bad, yes. And yes, that’s still - I hate that for testing. NJ: Do they still do it? SV: Oh yes. They keep refunding it, yes, yes. (Sigh) So, that is sort of my career trajectory and sort of the history of Janet and me working together and the PFA series. NJ: But it’s not the only book. SV: No, no, one thing led to the next. NJ: Want to keep it going to how one book led to how do you make the decisions about, what book you’re working on, and how do you -SV: Sure. NJ: Could you talk about those choices within the publishing and creating that. SV: Okay. Yes, because that’s been very interesting too, in terms of our deciding to publish it ourselves. Yes, that was totally nuts. But how did that happen exactly? We were walking around NCTE in Orlando, and I was sharing this idea with her about how I thought there was a market for something, because my Poetry Aloud Here! book had shown me that there was an audience for teachers and librarians to know just the nuts and bolts of how to select and share poetry with kids. But I thought, teachers in Texas, for example, needed more than that. They needed like lesson plans or actual poems, you know. I know. So we were just tossing ideas around, and as Janet does, she starts promising, We’re going to write a book, and then she starts telling everybody that we walked by on the sidewalk, So, what do you think we should do? And she’s just so open and transparent. It’s really great. It’s a little nerve-racking sometimes too, but it’s great. So we would like survey everybody we had dinner with at that whole conference about, What do you think, what do you think, what do you think? And I’m not even exactly sure, you know, how things sort of clicked, because we spent actually months on the format. What was the book going to look like? And originally, what was it going to include? It was going to have even more than it has, because Janet wanted -- We both agreed, by the way, we needed poems and lessons, sort of, together. But then she wanted even more. What did we have? The page was really full. We had a poem and a lesson and something else too. I can’t think of what it was. Was it about the poet? It might have been, eh, it might have -- oh, I think it was. It was from the poet, like the writing of the poem, something like that. Which I love in concept, but when we had a layout, it was just like ehhh, you know, you just, it was more -- it was sort of the tipping point of I can’t do anything with this for a teacher, you know, overwhelming, I don’t know where to start. It assumed that you already loved poetry and that you would know what to do first, second or third, and I said, No. And she kept saying, You know, we need to get out of the poetry ghetto. Janet says that a lot, because we’re always talking Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections to other people who love poetry. She said, That’s nice, but that’s not changing anything for kids, right? That’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, see? We want to reach out to people who don’t love poetry and show them, You can do this. You will like this. You’ll be surprised how much you like this. And so that’s when as we were looking at what should the book include, I said, Let’s really distill and simplify. I think that that was my doing. I thought we just need the poem and the lesson, and that’s it. And then we could have ancillary things on the web, because Janet’s also very tech savvy, and she’s pushed me to learn a lot about how to use websites and marketing, etc. We can do more elsewhere, but the book itself has to be -- the thing we were going for, that a teacher opens it and says, I can do this. And I hear that a lot, and it just makes my heart glad when a teachers says, I can do this, because before they were like, I can’t do this. I don’t know poetry. I can’t do it. So, how did we decide to self-publish? I think it was simply a matter of how fast she likes to work, the speed. Because you know, it takes two, three, more years, years, to take a book from proposal to actual publication. And then -NJ: It couldn’t wait. You got that test coming. SV: Yep. I mean, that was sort of our logic. I’m sure it was Janet who knew about CreateSpace. That was not me. And I’m not sure how she knew about that because she had not done anything with it before. So I’m not quite sure. I’ll have to ask her again, Where did that idea come from? But I know that wasn’t mine. And so she was like, CreateSpace, it’s from Amazon. It’s print-on-demand. I’m like, What? So you know, I did some looking and I thought, Well, okay, it’s self-publishing, actually, but I thought, Why not? I don’t know. Janet always makes me feel like, Why not? And I kind of grew up with that. I guess it’s my immigrant parents, you know, who left Germany -NJ: They had to say that. SV: -- moved to Australia, and they’re like, Why not, why don’t we go to America? My dad opened companies when he was alive, and yep, I kind of grew up with this, Why not? Which actually I’m so grateful for, because a lot of people I’ve met in my life, most people I would say, are like, Let’s play it safe. I know this, I can do this. And I love that Janet and I both are like, Why not, let’s try this. So, that’s -- we decided on the self-publishing route. And now she calls us micropublishers, which I love. Because we established an actual company. NJ: Because it has a name. SV: Right, right, right. And that was her idea too. She’s very business savvy. I am not. I would just give it away, honestly. It’s so much work to be a business. But yes, so we came up with a company, and we went back and forth on what should it be called? That was a fun exercise, and I think I was the one who said Pomelo, because, gosh, we had spent months on this. It was going to be like Red Squirrel and Poetry is Us, and, you know, we came up lots of bad ideas. I was looking -- you know how you just Google words and the online thesaurus, What’s another word for a poem or poetry? I was looking around, and the letters of poem were in Pomelo, and somehow Pomelo popped up, and I was like, Oh, Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Pomelo, that’s a fun word, although a lot of people say “pa-mello,” and I say, whatever. But what was really powerful about it is that it has great significance in Asian culture, and it’s very popular in Asian countries, and so Janet is very big on that too. She’s so interesting. She’s such a down to earth, practical gal, but the significance of numbers, numerology and good and evil -Yes, it’s very big to her. So like we can’t launch on an odd day and stuff like that, and I’m like, Okay. She’s not really superstitious, and yet, you know, she has some ideas about that’s not lucky and that is lucky, so that’s been fun. I didn’t know all that. ST: Delightful. SV: Yes, right. So, we went back and forth, Pomelo, yes, let’s do that. And so the first book came out, Poetry Friday Anthology, K-5, and we decided also to research the common core because that was new, right? And the Texas standards were out, the testing that was coming up, and we decided to try and combine those. And basically what we’re trying to do is show people that really good teaching needs the skills and standards no matter what. We’ve said that for how long? But we tried to actually itemize and show, These are the skills that you are supposed to teach. Here they are. See, we’ve done it for you. But we tried to create these “Take 5” lessons so that they’re real organic and playful and fun and varied. It’s not the same formula over and over again. Each time it’s a little different, and it’s very interactive with kids. So that’s been successful. Teachers have really responded to that. NJ: So how many books now? SV: The first one was in 2012, is that right? Yep, because that was my cancer year, going to always remember that. And then we were like, What are we going to do next? And people were saying, Are you going to do one -- the audience was saying, Are you going to do one for older kids? And we talked about that at length, middle school and high school, and the common core standards and the Texas standards for middle school are much more extensive for poetry than for K-5, as you would guess. They’re older kids, they can do more. And so I was like, Well, it’s going to take more space in the book to create a lesson that is meaningful for middle school, but we could do it if we have the poem on one page and the lesson on the other. Previously it had been poem with the lesson on the same page, okay? But previously it was K-5, six grades, now it was 6th, 7th and 8th, three grades, so we were like, Oh yeah, okay, we can do that. So I had a lot of fun. I do all the lessons. That’s my proponent. I had a lot of fun with that, creating lessons that involved lots of technology and lots of drama and music, and that was fun. And so we did the middle school book. Some people have asked about high school. We have decided unequivocally we’re not doing a high school book, a lot of reasons. Mainly, in middle school it’s still -- it’s probably a specialist in English language arts or a reading teacher who’s teaching it, but they’re still sort of generalists, in terms of Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections covering lots of content in English. In high school, they really begin to narrow down. They think of themselves as academicians. They’re very specialized and a little bit snooty and purist. NJ: They teach content not kids. SV: Right. And we thought, they won’t want new contemporary poetry, live poets. They want classics, by and large. And they don’t want the lessons made for them. It just -- we thought, it’s not a good fit for our approach. Our approach is much lighter and more -- these are incidental things you can do in addition to curriculum. It’s not intended to be a full-blown lesson. If you’re going to do an hour lesson with students, this is not for you. You can build on it, but in a high school class, it’s just a whole different ballgame. So we’re not ever going to do that. I’m not, not interested in that. NJ: And you don’t need to, you have apparently enough projects -SV: Yes, we always have projects. Yes, so what was after that? We went back and forth. We’ve had lots of ideas that we haven’t pursued, but Janet thought that we should connect with the content across the curriculum in some way. And I said, Yes. I teach a course in poetry for graduate students, and I said the unit that is the most popular is “Poetry across the curriculum,” and she was like, Oh, okay, yes, that fits. And she said, Well, what is the area that typically is the biggest draw? And I said, Science, without question, because there is so much great nature poetry, animal poetry that naturally fits, for science instruction. So we decided to go down the science poetry path. But, once again, being the teacher, well we’ve got to connect with the standards, okay? So we had to really dig deep into the NSTA Next Generation Science Standards. That was an education. We actually went to science teacher conferences. NJ: I know. SV: Yes, very cool. Wow, that is such a different world! So different, and so fun, and they were so open to poetry. It’s amazing. Yes, really, really open. Who knew? More so than generalist elementary teachers are open to science. They’re not. There’s a lot of resistance to science. It’s very interesting. But we did the science one. And then that was 2012, was K-5. 2013 was middle school. 2014 was science. And last year, 2015, was the celebrations book. And in the science book, we had a few poets who said, they were Latina, Can we do our poems in Spanish and English? And we were like, Yes, that’s a great idea, absolutely! Because again, with my language background, I thought, I would love to validate many languages. And actually, one of the ideas I floated many times that we haven’t pursued is an international poetry collection, with poets around the world using their home language and English. But the whole prospect is so daunting, not the least of which is paying royalties in different currencies. ST: Yes, I think that’s a fascinating direction -- the idea of children’s, poets who write for children, it might be that they are adult poets who then have some children’s poetry. I’d be so curious about that. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections I’ve done a little bit of exploration of French children’s poetry, and it’s few and far between. But I’m not sure if that’s just because I haven’t dug into it a little bit, or -SV: It’s actually very popular in France. There’s a whole company that specializes -ST: But historically, I guess more, I was looking at that. So was there any older material? I think so, yes, because I was having -- anyway -SV: Yes, I love that idea. In the middle of all of this, I was editor of Bookbird for a bit. NJ: Right. SV: And that’s an international journal of children’s literature, and in my editorship, I wanted to emphasize poetry. So the last page of every issue was a poem, for kids, by a different poet from around the world. And so it was fun to explore. So I have those contacts too. And yes, I would love to do that. But it is quite daunting. First of all, the communicating with international poets is much slower. First you have to track them down, and then you have to tell them who you are. They have to figure out, What? And you have to figure out what language you’re communicating in. Typically there’s rights issues too, because a lot of them have publishers they want you to go through. And then they’re not fast in responding. I mean, most people have a much saner way of life than we do. They take six-week vacations, and they take a week to get back to you. NJ: August – the whole country. SV: Right, right. So my urgency is not their urgency. So it would be a long-term project. I don’t -- I would like to revisit that, but it would definitely take some doing. And then the characters of the different language -NJ: The editing you’d have to have. SV: It’s – yes. NJ: And Janet brought this up. I think, I don’t know how it usually works in anthologies, but you pay royalties to every poet. SV: Yes, yes. NJ: Is that unusual in an anthology? SV: No, poets get paid. We’ve actually paid more than average, though. We’re kind of proud of that. From what I’ve learned, poets typically get, typically, a hundred dollars per poem for an anthology. NJ: A one-time. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 14 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: One time. Sometimes more, sometimes 200. That’s fairly generous, but that’s about it. But where they make their money is then their poem is out there, and this is awful, but textbooks and tests want to use the poem, and they pay big to the poet to use the poem there, and that’s where poets make more money. ST: Wow. SV: How about that?! NJ: I did not know that. SV: Yes. NJ: So, if Lee does a collection, an anthology of Paul Janeczko, for example -SV: It’s a flat fee typically. I think Lee might pay $200 a poem, because his books -- he’s more known, they sell a lot. I would bet Paul pays a hundred, but I don’t know. But in our first four books, we paid per poem per book, so it’s an ongoing royalty, but it was peanuts. I think it was -- I think it’s 2 cents per poem per book, which sounds like nothing, and it was a labor of love for all of us. We didn’t know if it was going to sell or not, and poets were like, We love you, Janet and Sylvia, here, it’s great. But it’s ended up being more like $800 a year for some -- yes! -- for some poets, because the books have done pretty well. NJ: I was going to ask, how -SV: Yes. I mean, our money that we make, we just plow right back into the books. ST: But it’s unique on the market -- for having something for educators to actually integrate poetry. NJ: And the poetry collection. And so the new ones have, the new science one, has its own anthology just for kids. It doesn’t even have -SV: Right, right. That’s brand new. NJ: So that’s a new piece for you. Are you going to continue that? SV: I think so, I think so. What I would like to do, and Janet seems open to this, is that middle school collection, the 6th, 7th and 8th, I’d like to take those poems out and make like a teeny, cool looking rad you know, right? NJ: Right. Do it. SV: Yes. NJ: That would be one that’s almost done. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 15 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: I think so too, right, right. Minimal art, very graphic looking, but yeah, we’ll see. ST: So you mentioned Bookbird, but you have other columns that you write. SV: Mm-hmm. ST: So could you talk a little bit about your experience. Was that something that you proposed to Book Links or -NJ: She edited it. ST: Edited Bookbird, but you also do a regular for -SV: For Book Links. ST: -- for Book Links – the poems. I just was using it recently and I was going through it and acquiring, trying acquire all the gaps that we didn’t have, SV: Okay, cool. How did that happen? Well, initially I don’t remember exactly. It’s a long time -NJ: I thought it was Laura Tillotson. SV: Right, mm-hmm, yes. I love Laura. Oh, she was so great to work with. And initially, I just submitted articles to Book Links because I liked it. It’s such a practitioner-friendly magazine, and it was a chance for me to mentor a new colleague and a doctoral student, so I wrote with a variety of people just to submit. And I think it was Laura who said, I love what you’re doing with poetry. Would you consider writing something for us? And I was like, Sure, that would be great. And so one thing led to another led to another, and then all of a sudden it became like a column, you know, a regular, and I’m not exactly sure how that happened. I think it was a combination of they liked -- you know what, it really can come down to the editor likes poetry, and I’ve been really lucky. Laura was a fan of poetry, and then Gillian Engberg after her, huge fan of poetry. Now they’re kind of in transition. Gillian’s actually not editing. She moved to Switzerland with her husband. They got married. Unfortunately, the last I heard from her, things were not working out well. The job was not what they thought it was going to be. So I think she’s in transition again. I’m not quite sure. Anyway, yes, they sort of embrace poetry. And another person might have asked you for an article on something, and then they’re like, Thank you, that’s nice. But she wanted another and then another, and then all of a sudden we’re seeing, Well this is going to be a regular installment, which was great, even though the discipline of it – You got it. It’s like, Oh, it’s already a deadline again?! How the heck did that happen? Right, yeah so, there’s some days I cursed Book Links. But I love that they value poetry, and I love that the audience then is getting a steady dose of, Oh, yes, yes, I need to think about poetry. And it’s great for me too. It’s great for the recognition that I am associated with poetry. It’s about my other work, and Janet’s and my Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 16 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections work. It keeps us on people’s radar, basically. So I’m now kind of synonymous with poetry, which is awesome. I love that. But that just sort of happened, and yea, I love that. I love the Book Links. I can’t believe Book Links still exists, honestly. NJ: It doesn’t exist like it used to. SV: Freestanding. I think its greatest value is the online supplement nowadays. NJ: Yes, probably. SV: Because a lot of teachers can’t, or librarians, they can’t afford to subscribe to Book Links. I couldn’t subscribe to Book Links. I get it because I write for it, but otherwise, I couldn’t do it. So that’s a shame. NJ: Could you talk a little about you and Janet, that collaboration, and how that works, especially when you put books together, or maybe even plan programs, but you each bring strengths to it, but just a little bit about that. SV: Okay. Yes it’s great. I love working with her. And she’s like the most responsive person. I guess we both kind of live online, all the time. I guess you guys probably feel the same way, but you can count on that person to respond right away, right? And if they haven’t responded -NJ: You’re worried. SV: -- you’re worried. Is Sylvia okay? NJ: I know. It’s really good. SV: It’s been 20 minutes. SV: I know. It’s so sick, right? But it’s lovely that you have someone so simpatico. And when it comes to academic and these proposals, I write all the proposals. And it’s funny because I’ve been doing a poetry session at the Texas Library Association for 12 years now, and we call it the Poetry Roundup. It’s based on the ALSC thing. I went to the very first ALSC poetry -- was it called a “Blast”? -- and I just loved it, because it was just a session where poets got up and read their work. And I was like, Oh, this is so fun, and we should do it in Texas. So I started it at TLA, and it’s been going on 12 years. I’ve had like a hundred different poets over the years. But now Janet comes every time, and everybody thinks it’s Janet’s roundup. NJ: Okay. SV: Exactly, okay. ST: She’s a presence. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 17 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: She is a presence, and I love that. So any kind of academic thing, I do all of that. But she’s really -she knows everybody, and so she’s really good about reaching out and saying, Would you like to be part of our proposal? So I’m like, Oh, okay. I put them in, but she’s the contact. In terms of our books, that’s really even more collaborative. Typically, our most productive, like dynamic brainstorming, is when we are physically in the same place. That’s when we launch new things, I would say always. We’ll toss ideas back and forth via email, and we’ll get on the phone and chat, but to really be serious about, Okay, we’re going to do this now -How are we doing for time? Okay? ST: I was just going to say, we have about 5 more minutes. SV: Okay. ST: We should -- I didn’t want to look and interrupt you. SV: No, no, that’s alright. That’s no problem. So we do take great pains to make sure that we’re in the same place a couple times a year, actually more and more and more. This summer -- she’s also a go-getter for getting us to speak to schools and libraries. That’s her doing. She does a lot of that. Do you like to do that? Do you like to go and -NJ: Mm-hmm. SV: Do you? Okay. NJ: I haven’t done any of that -- they’ve stopped doing it. SV: Yes, exactly. There’s not much of it. In-services and that kind of thing. I don’t love it as much as she does. I find it really exhausting -NJ: It is. SV: -- the preparation and the execution, and she’s very energized by it. But she just shows up and she’s Janet. And I’m doing a hundred PowerPoint slides, right, research, articles, readings -NJ: That’s the difference, yeah. But I learn so much when I do them. SV: Oh yes, absolutely, and I try to then transfer that into my writing and my blogging. I mean, it’s all great, but it’s a lot of time and work, yeah. And Janet’s just Janet, and I love that, but she’s like, Well we can go do a week, like we’re going to Millersville University next summer, and I’m like, A week? Okay. So that will just take me a lot of prep time to have something substantive to offer. But that’s great. She gets it now, when she says, Oh, Sylvia, we’re going to talk for a whole day. Okay, I’ll do that, but -- Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 18 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Yes, so, this summer I was -- she had arranged for me to talk to a school in New Jersey, which was interesting, and those were not poetry lovers, but it was fine. But, because I was in New Jersey where she lives, we knocked out three extra days. I stayed over and we worked, worked, worked for three days. It was really great. That’s when we start to think, Okay, what do we want to do next, and how are we going to take this in that direction? And Janet has lots of crazy ideas that I think are very interesting, but we haven’t committed to yet, like she wants to make toys and -- I know, I know -- card games! NJ: Well, she’s getting this new machine that’s -SV: The 3D printer. This is Janet, right? ST: It’s marvelous. And I think this is actually a really nice spot to end up the recording piece of this, on ideas and what, because I imagine that this will, to be continued. SV: Okay. ST: I can’t imagine that this will be the only time that we’ll get a chance to talk to you, but it’s part of the oral history recordings. SV: I feel like it was too much of my life, though. NJ: Well that’s what it was. This is called your oral history -SV: Okay, alright. It seems weird, but -ST: Well, the reason it doesn’t seem weird to us is that we have been so incredibly grateful for your really tangible support of launching the PoetryCHat vision and what’s happening. NJ: Oh, I know, that huge support -ST: The response has been really -SV: Well, you’re welcome. Let us know what else we can do. ST: Absolutely. SV: There’s lots more. (End of recording) Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 19 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Joyce Sidman interview
Date: 2015-02-15
Description: Joyce Sidman is a Newbery Honor winning children's author and poet.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: SidmanJoyce_20150227
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHAT Joyce Sidman ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHAT Joyce Sidman 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 Joyce Sidman on February 27, 2015, in the Special Collections Conference Room, Western Libraries in Bellingham, Washington. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: Let’s start with your early writing. JS: Well, I’m thrilled to be here, being recorded. I think I was born a writer in many ways and always enjoyed words and always enjoyed putting them together, and probably put a few too many of them together for my mother’s liking. And also remember getting sent out in the hall for talking during class. So I think words were always vital to me. But I also think that a poet’s way of looking at things in metaphor is also a part of who I am, and that’s something that I think all children have. I remember walking on the beach with my nephew when he was only four or so, and he would be picking up shells and saying, Look, Aunt Joyce, it’s a hat. Look, Aunt Joyce, it’s a horn. Look, it’s a wing. And just that automatic integration of his imagination and the tactile reality of the world was so natural to him. And I think of that as kind of the basis of poetry, connecting, connecting things, finding ways to connect things and make patterns. And I do think you can be born with that. I think it can be cultivated also. But it always felt right to me to connect things like that, to compare things to other things and make meaning with words. And I loved finding that in books, and I loved making it myself. But I don’t think I really thought of myself as a writer until probably middle school or high school. And then there was a very, very patient teacher who would read my poetry, anguished poetry, and always find something nice to say about it. And I think she was some of the reason that I kept writing poetry anyway. ST: Were you writing in private as well, was this assignments, or was it something that you found -- I think you mentioned finding someone you trust to share, was that the beginning of that, or a person or…? Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: Yes, I think…I think I had friends who were also interested in writing, and we would share with each other, but I think teachers were really important because friends weren’t honest, and teachers were a little bit more honest. And teachers could tell you, you know they could look you in the eye and say, You have a gift for this. You love to do this. You should keep doing this. And I think that’s something that teachers can do that no one else can do. Parents can do it, but kids don’t always believe parents. They know that parents are positive no matter what sometimes, and so I think teachers are just so critical in that way of really saying to a child, You are good at this, or, You love this and you should keep doing it. NJ: You didn’t go to college, though, to be a poet. JS: Well, I did…I wrote through college. In fact, I had two independent tutorials. I went to Wesleyan where you could basically do whatever you wanted to. And two different professors had writing tutorials with me, one poetry and one short story. But I was not an English major because basically I didn’t like the other English majors. They were too snooty. So I decided I wanted to learn German because I had German background, and so I majored in German instead and studied German literature, and went to Germany. But I was a secret English major. I really loved English courses and took a lot of them, so I was really into literature then, but I just couldn’t stand to hang out with the English majors. It’s terrible to admit. ST: But you were in school, maybe, to be educated, because being a German major isn’t practical in that sense -- so you had the opportunity to go to college and learn. JS: Yes. I did, yes. ST: But without thinking necessarily where -JS: Well, I was just going to say, I think my parents really believed in a liberal arts education. I grew up in New England, and it was a kind of accepted course, and maybe not even that I needed to be thinking about a career, because I was a woman. And I did feel like when I graduated from college, I needed to work and support myself, but I was not shunted into one career or another. And in the back of my mind I always assumed that I would be writing, and that’s what I would doing. NJ: What is the distance between when you graduated from college and your first public, whether it was published, but your first public writing? JS: Besides high school? NJ: Mm-hmm. JS: Well, let me think about that. I did send poems to adult journals when I was just out of college, and I think I had a couple of them accepted then and then later when my kids were young. I had children by the time I was, let’s see, 28 -- 28 and 30 I had my two kids. And I was sending out adult poems whenever I could. And then I think I just got immersed in motherhood and reintroduced to children’s literature and just remembered all these books that I loved and how the authors put their words together and how evocative they were and how much my children loved them. And I think that’s when I Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections started thinking, You know, this might be your world. I think you have to find your people. You have to find where you belong, and, you know, it’s kind of an extrapolation of the not liking English majors, I was not enthralled with the world of adult literary people, and I feel like I needed that wakeup call with my children. And I just -- the children’s literature world just felt so much more comfortable to me. It felt like people that had imagination but they were friendly and they support each other and they love to play, and it’s just all the things that I loved about writing in one place. ST: And lack of critique, maybe, from your adult community, or? JS: Yes, I think it’s the competitiveness that really, I mean, I have a writers’ group and we critique each other’s work, but we do it with love, and we do it to support each other. And I felt like that was lacking a little bit in the adult literature world, so, but I don’t in the children’s literature world. NJ: Have you always been a part of that group, or is that after you published some work? JS: I joined a group in Connecticut before I was ever -- my children grew up in Connecticut, or at least they were little in Connecticut. They were born in Connecticut. And I joined a group, and this is a lovely coincidence. That teacher who encouraged me in high school, she lived in Connecticut. That’s where I went to high school. And after I’d followed my family around, as my husband was training to be a doctor all over the country, we ended up back in Connecticut, and she invited me to her writers’ group, so I was in her writers’ group. And she was still writing poetry, and I was writing poetry, and it was just like, Oh, this is so wonderful to be with Marsha again. I had to learn to call her Marsha instead of Mrs. Sanderson. And we would walk dogs together, and she knew my kids, and so it was just this wonderful coincidence. And there were other children’s writers. And then we moved from Connecticut, but wherever I’ve gone, I have found compatriots. And it really helps me to have that core group of people that support each other, and also can be honest with each other. NJ: Is she still alive? JS: No. NJ: Did she know any of your work before-JS: I dedicated my first published book to her. It was a chapbook of adult poetry. I almost brought it for you, and I thought, Well, this is children’s literature. But she knew of that. I gave her a copy, and she was at that time just on the tip of Alzheimer’s, but she really appreciated it. And that was--it was just great to be able to do that, give it to her. ST: And your own parents and your family, do they love your work and-JS: They do. ST: Do you feel known by them? Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: Oh yes. I think, yes. In the beginning it was a little bit like, So, have you thought about writing a real book, Joyce? Which all children’s literature people. But what they meant was a book that they would read and that they -- you know. And so I can totally understand that now. At the time it irritated the heck out of me, but I understand it now, and they were very supportive, and they love that I’m doing this, and they brag about me, and it’s kind of a fun thing that I can share with them. NJ: And your children, when you were publishing, how old were they when you were first starting to publish the children, your poetry for children, not the chapbook? JS: Right. I think I still have the note that my son wrote me. He took a message from the editor that accepted my first book, and I have it over on my desk. It says, “Call back. Millbrook wants to buy book.” And I think he must have been in the 5th grade or something like that. And so I have that in his little handwriting, you know, up above my desk. So they were -- they were -- I think they were totally floored because they’d been listening to Mom whine for ten years about not getting a book published. I think in a way, I mean who knows what effect you have on your children, but I think in a way it taught them that you can love to do something and you can be passionate about it and you can be -- You can fail over and over and over, and then you can finally triumph. And, if I didn’t teach them anything else, I hope that that’s what I’ve done ST: Well, you lived that. NJ: Yes. JS: Yes. ST: I mean, that’s a powerful example of words over… JS: And I had support from my husband, without whom I would not have been able to fail over and over again, so it was this wonderful sort of family effort of them inspiring me, both with their characters and with the literature that they were reading and my husband supporting me and me cranking it out. ST: Cranking it out. So there were some bumps? I mean, when you say cranking it, that makes me think that maybe there were some desert stretches, or not? JS: There were many, many desert stretches. When I say ten years, that was the time from the idea coming into my head that I wanted to write for children and the birth of my publish. And, in that period I was finding my voice and realizing I couldn’t succeed with novels. I didn’t understand how to. Plot is important. And also selling things to Cricket Magazine and places like that. ST: Okay. JS: You know, kind of getting a readership. And I wrote different kinds of things. I wrote essays for the newspaper, for the op-ed section, and that kind of thing, and just keeping going. I think a lot of the people that are published are the people that love it enough to keep going in the face a lot of rejection. Not everybody, but. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Well, Ubiquitous has a bit of a plot. JS: It does. NJ: So, does Winter Bees. A lot of yours do, in some way, and how you envision the plot. JS: Yes. Right, right. NJ: In my class this past week, the question came up, and I’m curious to your take on it: What is the difference then between poetry for children and poetry for adults? JS: Hmm. It’s an interesting question. I think some of it has to do with subject matter and writing about things that are interesting, both to children and adults. I feel like -- I often feel like the poetry that I’m writing is more for me at that age, and I guess a lot of writers feel that way, that you’re writing for the child within you who’s still just floored by the world and excited by the world and believes in magic and gets excited about things, and that’s who I feel like I’m writing for, not necessarily children, but anybody who has that sense of wonder. But I’ve, you know, written adult poems that are about things that children don’t understand yet, or they -- it would hurt them, so I think -- I think subject matter is alive, but sometimes treatment is some of it. NJ: Can you elaborate on what you mean by treatment? JS: Well, I feel like adult poetry has an obscurity to it sometimes that -- or layers to it that children can’t decipher, can’t get under, and it takes an adult mind to work at it and get to that point. Children are -they’re often very literal, and there are even times when I feel I’ve been explicit in a poem, and I talk about it with a class, and they’re like, Oh, I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize that was going on. Some of them will get it, some of them won’t get it, and then you’re wondering, how many children are understanding this? And who -- which children are you writing for? And you can kind of shoot yourself in the foot by wondering that too long. You just have to write for that inner child. ST: Which, I’d be freed up once that first published book comes along so that you ‘re not rethinking, or second guessing, or not? Was there a shift or something? JS: I wish it were that way. NJ: Do you ever stop second guessing? JS: No. NJ: Okay, okay. JS: I think having the first book published is a huge threshold. I will not lie. And actually having the second one published, so you know the first one was not a fluke. ST: There you go. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Yes. JS: Then you start thinking, Okay, I can tell people I’m a writer, and I can really feel like a writer, and yeah. And that is really huge. And I have many friends who had not had that success, and they’ve been writing as long as I have, and so, you can’t just say, Oh, it’s just as hard with the tenth one as it is the first one, but -- because it’s not, because people know that once you have a published book -- I mean, they’ve never heard of it. They meet you. You say you’re an author. They say, Oh, what did you write? No one has ever heard of anything I’ve written, which is fine. But still, I know that. I know that I have published work, and that’s -- that is really huge. But, I think that your standards start going up and you start thinking to yourself, This is a really stupid subject. I can’t believe I’m thinking about writing this. Or, and I’m going to talk to this in my talk too, you start looking at your writing with loathing. You know, the next day you look at this and you think, Ah, I can’t believe -- I’m just going to rip this up. So you have to fight that. You have to fight your inner editor and just be willing to take risks, the same way you were when you were hungry for publication and you were willing to try anything because nothing else was working. And also people expect certain things of you. This format that I’ve been using, people love that format. And when I do different things, they’re not always open to that. Thankfully my editor is very open to it. But you do still have to fight. You still have to fight that voice in your head. NJ: Could you talk a little bit about your editor, Ann Rider, has edited how many of your books, and what’s that relationship that you have? JS: She has edited every -- all of them except the first two, so that’s eleven, maybe, something like that. And I think we have an unusual relationship in this day in age in that I don’t really send anything to anybody else. She rejects -- she still will turn me down, but I have this trust in her that says to me, If she’s turned it down, then it needs work, then it’s not ready. And I have people in my life who tell me I’m crazy to do that and I should just send manuscripts to somebody else, but there’s just been something about that woman and me that has worked, and she has been the reason that I’ve published all of these books, and they’ve been so beautiful, and they’ve worked. But I kind of like, I don’t want to mess it up, and it’s working well for us. We see things in the same way in a lot of ways, and she’s just so great at choosing the good illustrators. It’s just a really good working relationship. But she doesn’t -she doesn’t agree with everything. NJ: How about that Newberry call? JS: Oh man. NJ: Poetry -- come on! JS: Oh, gosh, that was just so amazing. ST: So walk us through it. Did you have some inklings? So kind of take us from -- Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: There had been a lot of buzz, and so I’m not one of those authors who’s gonna tell you, Oh, I didn’t even know what day it was, I was off in Costa Rica… Which Pamela Zagarenski was off in Costa Rica when this won the honor. But yeah, there had been a lot talk, I have to admit I was hoping. And I knew when the broadcast was, and it was one of those years when it was, I think, somewhere where it was -for me in Minnesota it was going to be a little bit on the late side. I can’t remember where it was that year, but. So I figured out when the broadcast was and when the committee would be going into -- for the announcements. And I knew from getting a call for the Honor book for Red Sings that they call you before they go out and -- So I thought, Okay, if they don’t call by blah-blah, it’s not meant to be. So I kind of hung around the house, and I had to meet a friend for lunch. She was going to take me out whether it won or not. And so I kind of hung around and -- Well, I didn’t take the dog out, just kind of hung around, you know, cleaned my desk… So then it reached the point, Okay, that’s it. You better get in the shower, you’re going to lunch. So, I got in the shower, came back out, the light was blinking. I thought, Okay, probably my husband. So I press the button, and it’s Cynthia Ritchie and she says, Hello, this is Cynthia Ritchie. I’m calling from the Newberry Award Committee. And it was like the floor had dissolved, and I was like falling through space. It was the most amazing moment. So I listened to her whole tape, the tape of her voice, and then I immediately tried to call her back because I just wanted -- I knew the whole committee would be there, and I just wanted to talk to them. And so I called back and I said, Hello, this is Joyce Sidman, blah, blah, blah… And then they called me back, and it was this whole -it was this whole rigamarole, and that they were finally on the line, and they were all cheering, and it was just -- I will never forget the moment of hearing her voice. It was -- it was an amazing moment. And it was almost better because I had given up. NJ: Yes. JS: And then she called. Because I think every author dreams of it, and I didn’t ever think poetry would win, and yet of course you dream of it anyway. NJ: Yes. JS: So, it was amazing. NJ: How did it change you as a writer? Did it? JS: I think actually getting that Caldecott Honor for Song of the Water Boatman changed me in a sense of making me more nervous about writing. But winning the Newberry and being validated for my writing as opposed to the illustration -NJ: Yes, right. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: -- I think it was only positive. I just feel like it was a wonderful moment. It was a magical moment. I couldn’t believe it happened, and it was just magic. I mean, I’m still really critical of myself, but I feel like that was that magic moment. No one can ever take that away from me, and I re-live it in my mind when I’m feeling low. I was so thrilled this year when Kwame Alexander won because that’s my publisher. They had sent his book to me to write a blurb for the back of the book. And I wrote back and said, I love this book! This is an awesome book! I want to write a book -- That was a book I read and I thought, I want to write a book like this. NJ: It had a plot. JS: It had a plot! And it had different -- different voices, and it was just a perfect book. So I was really thrilled. I’m always thrilled when poetry wins. It’s just thrilling. Sweet -- Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! I was totally thrilled when that won too. ST: So then, did you call your husband or call your -JS: I called my husband. I said, in this just deadpan voice because I was still in shock, I got a Newberry Honor. He goes, They didn’t give you the award? You only got an Honor? This is not the right reaction. ST: Wow. NJ: Wow. And your boys, were they at home at the time? Were they still living at home? They were -JS: No, they were off in college and, but they were thrilled and -- You know the way college kids can be about their parents lives, which is, sort of -NJ: Oh very -- that’s really nice, Mom. JS: Called my parents, called my writers’ group. NJ: And Ann. JS: And Ann. NJ: Did she knew before -- did she know before you did? Before they called? JS: I don’t know. NJ: It depends where they get the phone number -JS: I couldn’t reach her actually. She was there. I reached Lisa DiSarro, who’s the marketing director, first, who is just a doll. Yes, it was -- it was such a high. It was great! Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: And then you went to the banquet, eventually. You had some months of reveling. Did you go to bookstores? Did you do some of that? SJ: I did the bookstore thing in my own hometown, but Houghton isn’t -- well I -- I shouldn’t even bring in the publisher, it’s -- Poetry is a tough sell in a bookstore, and I learned that kind of early on, and I don’t really advocate for that anymore. I love to talk to groups of either students or adults, but the bookstore’s not a great arena for, for what I do, and so, you know, Kwame’s going to totally crush it because he’s such a presence anyway. But, yeah, I’m more -- I’m more comfortable in schools, really, and at universities and places like that. ST: So you’ve had kind of a spring after your -- the Honor. You were -- you made a few bookstore appearances. JS: Yes, I did. ST: And then you had the -JS: Locally. ST: Okay. And then you had the banquet, which was where? JS: Yes. ST: That was -JS: Pretty cool. ST: Yes, mm-hmm. JS: Yes. Well I’m not that comfortable in huge crowds of people, and I don’t like to dress up, so -NJ: Uh oh. NJ: It was a mixed gift. JS: Yes, exactly. But at least I didn’t have to talk. That was -- that was lovely. But it was -- it was very magical. And, you know, then they break out -- The whole ALA is just so overwhelming but full of these passionate book people who just, I love them, they’re just awesome. NJ: It kind of goes back to what you were talking about with your -- you found your people. JS: Mm-hmm. NJ: You know, as a writer, and ALA is another type of your people, who are floored by the world, who are -- they’re floored by the world of children’s literature. And they’re all grown-ups. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: Yeah, it’s true. And I hear from a lot of those people, people who will write me out of the blue and say, I love your poetry. I read it with my students, or I read it with my children, or my grandchildren, and I’m just writing to tell you how much I enjoy that. ST: Do you take a lot of photographs? JS: I’ve just -- it’s a hobby that I’ve started. ST: Is that kind of recent, or is it -JS: It is fairly recent, yes. ST: Okay. JS: I’m going to show a lot of them on Saturday. ST: Is there interplay between the writing and the photography? JS: Yes. I think there is. It certainly appears to be from someone who’s looking at it, but I don’t know if that’s -- I think so. I think it’s noticing things. I love macro photography and noticing little things. ST: Yes, yes. There’s a lot of connections between how something’s structured and poetry. NJ: Yes, just even the lens you use. ST: I’m so interested in all the different forms that you like to play around with, and introducing them. I think Nancy’s earlier question about the difference between children and adult poetry, which I think is really true, a lot of the things that you surface, but, you know, the triolet, right? And the pantoum -- Do you sneak those in there? Do you boldly put them? JS: Well, I don’t write out and I don’t start out to write in any particular form, but I think sometimes the subject matter lends itself, and I think I’m particularly drawn to forms where you’re using the same line more than once but you have to present it in a new way. That’s always appealed to me. Even in college, I remember writing pantoum-like poetry because I feel like when you have that golden line, it’s wonderful to be able to recycle it and show it in a new way. And so that -- pantoums are some of my favorites. And triolet I really -- I love that poetry format and I feel like Alice Schertle wrote one, the perfect one about the cows wanting the grass on the other side of the fence. And Marilyn Singer wrote a gorgeous one about dinosaurs. And I was almost -- I had some trepidation about using that because it’s been done so well. ST: Oh, skunk cabbage -- is a lovely example of, you know. It’s hilarious, right? Yes, it is. It’s a funny plant and – NJ: It’s the perfect poem. JS: Do you have that here in Washington state? Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Skunk cabbage, yes, when I used to teach we had it. We’d take our students and they’d go. I wish I would have had the poem then. JS: Yes, right. NJ: We talked earlier about one of the unique, I mean one of the Joyce Sidman trademarks is the nature poetry and the nonfiction, alongside each other, leaning against each other, supporting each other, illuminate each other. Could you talk about that decision, how you make the decision to do that? Which do you write first? How do you revise? How do you use a poet’s eye to write nonfiction? JS: Hmm. Well, I’m not sure I can totally answer that because a lot of it is kind of organic in the way that it grows. But I start by reading a lot about the subject matter, and then I find specific creatures or plants or phenomena that interest me. And then often the next step is to do research, and I find out as much as I can about that particular subject. And then I wait for the voice of it, and sometimes that’ll come right away, sometimes it takes a really long time. But there’s only so much -- I have to discover what I call the coolness factor, which is what it is about that creature that really is the coolest thing to me. For instance, in Ubiquitous, when I was reading about geckos and reading about how they spread around the world, they’ve spread because their eggs are sticky and stick to flotsam and jetsam and float everywhere. But the cool thing, the coolest thing about them, is that they have these toe pads that interact at a molecular level with the material that they’re stepping on so that they can walk up walls, and I thought, That is so cool! But you can’t put that in a poem. You can have them going up the wall, but you can’t say that their toe pads are interacting at a molecular level. But kids deserve to know that. That’s just so awesome. So it’s that kind of thing, those kinds of things, that I want to include for them because I don’t know whether the child approaching this book will be most interested in the science of it or in the poetry of it or both equally, and I just feel like they’re both interesting to me so I deserve to put both of them on the page. And I think that’s really all that goes into that decision for me. It’s everything I want that I think is cool, but some of it belongs more in poetic form, and some of it belongs more in nonfiction. And I love writing the nonfiction. It’s really as fun to me in a lot of ways as the poetry. It’s tough to keep it short, and it’s tough to keep it aimed at 10-11 year old. And as I’m going to talk Saturday about it, the most difficult piece of writing I’ve ever written is the nonfiction note for the “Snowflake” to try to describe how a perfectly symmetrical snowflake forms randomly and exclusively in the chaos of the cold skies. It’s really difficult. It’s like physics, and it has to do with molecules, and so paring that down to this nonfiction note was really, really tough. It was a wonderful challenge, but it was very, very difficult. But I enjoy it. I enjoy the nonfiction too. NJ: How long does it take you to -- when I think of a book like Winter Bees, can you kind of give us the arc of how long it takes from maybe first idea and -JS: Some books take longer than others. This one -- Ubiquitous took a really long time because it was -there was so much science involved, and I wanted to pace it in an evolutionary way. But something like Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Winter Bees, which is a little bit more straight forward, I would say probably it takes about a year, a year and a half, to write, because I have to do a lot reading, I have to choose, I have to make sure they’re all perfect. I have to find the voice for every poem. I have to send them off to scientists and see if I’ve done things right. And then I turn it over to Ann, and then my part essentially is done, except for cleanup work and looking at the book dummy and everything. And then it takes another two years for that illustrator to -- well, a year for the illustrator to create the art and then another year for it to come out in production. ST: And you mentioned that you have a curriculum or you when you -- So are you thinking of that? Do you make a little side note while you’re writing, or is that something -- the book’s out and then you say, Oh, I’m going -- would like to have this as a book to work with students in schools if I’m asked? JS: I think it happens in the year that it’s in production. I think, Okay, how can teachers use this in the classroom? Because since I go into the classroom and use certain poems as model poems, I look through the poems and think, Which one of these would be a model poem, and how could a teacher bring this into the classroom and use it? And I try to include some art projects too, but I’m not an artist, so I kind of just think about it from, What would a 4th grade teacher want to do with their kids? ST: So, you author the curriculum, the guides? JS: I do. Sylvia Vardell did the one for Winter Bees, and I didn’t even know Houghton Mifflin was contracting for her to do that. But it was lovely, and I didn’t have to do it. But yes, I don’t mind doing it all because -- because I teach that way anyway, so it’s not that hard for me to do. ST: It would be wonderful to hear you read some poems. JS: Alright. Any in particular that you would like -NJ: You used “floored by the world.” Is there a poem or two that comes up, you think, Yeah, this one really -- this topic floored me? JS: Well, let’s see. In terms of science, I think Ubiquitous was the one that really -- well, the squirrel poem was pretty fun -JS: I have to take a sip of water before I do it. I was just in New Zealand, and New Zealand does not have squirrels. And I don’t want to tell you how many New Zealanders said, Oh Squirrels! Oh, I would love to see a squirrel! And I think, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I also love the squirrel poem because Beckie Prange took a photograph -- This is my dog. She took a photograph of my dog. I put a rawhide treat up in a tree, and she took a picture of him trying to get the rawhide treat, and so there’s Watson in the book. Okay, so this is a poem I tried to write in a squirrel’s voice, so it’s called: Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections “Tail Tale.” (Transcriber’s note: In the book, this is a concrete poem within the silhouette body of a squirrel.) OK, your brains are big while ours are just the size of walnuts which we love to eat by the way with teeth that can chew through any sort of bird feeder you care to erect and believe me we will find them no matter where you put ‘em being insatiably curious and natural-born problem-solvers just as we find the nuts we cleverly hid last fall all over your yard even though you let your dog out at every opportunity Sure dogs run fast but what can they do in a tree nothing besides paw the trunk and stare at us hungrily as we dash limb from limb sailing out over the leaves with our parachute tails which by the way also act as umbrella, float, flag, rudder, and the warmest, softest, coziest quilt you could ever imagine oh yes indeed your brains are bigger…hmmm bigger brains versus tree-top living with a free fur coat and the ability to crack any safe known to man now really which would you choose if you actually had a choice which you don’t? NJ: Yes, awesome! Clearly as you’re reading this and looking at your facial expression, you’re tickled by this. I don’t think a lot of people think of writing poetry as being tickled. They say poetry is about emotions. Well, that’s an emotion. And I’m curious, did you always know that? When did you know that poetry can really tickle you? JS: Well, that’s an interesting question. I think from reading other poets and finding their humor in it, in adult poetry as well as children’s poetry, and feeling like it was okay to -- to feel a connection between a creature and myself and feel like I’m putting part of myself into the poem, even if it means using my imagination to become that creature. I think that’s something I love to do, and I think kids still love to do that too. But I think there has to be that part of yourself that you understand. It’s almost like that squirrel or like that gecko or it’s a part of you that’s bonding with that creature, and that’s the part that always tickles me because I love pretending I’m a water bug or a dog or whatever. I think a lot of kids do too. NJ: What’s next for you? What will we see next? JS: Well, what we will see next is a book called Before Morning, which actually was originally a poem in What the Heart Knows. It’s a poem called “Invocation for Snow in Large Quantities,” -- and it was one of the first poems to -NJ: Boston will not like you JS: Actually, my editor just said, You know, they all love that book, Joyce, but they love it a little less. And while I was working on this book, Ann Rider called me up one day and said, You know, Joyce -- she sends poems to her kids by email -- she said, You know, I was looking at that snow poem, and I put it with some art by Beth Krommes -- because she has a lot of snow art, she lives in New Hampshire -- and I Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections just thought, maybe we should do that as a picture book. I thought to myself, It’s the easiest book I’ve ever sold in my life. NJ: So it’s like Swirl by Swirl in that regard, so it’s a single poem picture book. JS: Yes. And it’s just a very simple poem about wishing for snow. And Beth took it and created this whole story that’s set in like a Quebec City kind of a place. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about, but she created this whole story around it, so that’s hopefully going to come out in November, if she can get the art finished. And then there’s another book I have under contract that’s going to be similar to Swirl by Swirl, only it’s about round things, about spheres and round things. ST: So I have a practical question for you. JS: Okay. ST: So, you’re out a lot, getting inspiration and walking your dog Watson, and do you keep a little recorder with you? Do you have a little piece of paper? Do you have a brain that retains that amazing line that came to you a mile out on the lake? How does that happen for you? JS: That’s a great question. I’m going to talk a little bit about that on Saturday too. I have this terrible suspicious mind, and it’s borne out in reality, that if I actually bring the pen and the paper with me, nothing will come into my head, because part of what a walk is for me is just to release and letting my mind just drift. So what happens is that I will get the line, like I’ll get the voice of a poem. For instance, the “Oak After Dark” poem, I hadn’t -- I knew I wanted to write about a tree because I found out that trees do different things at night than they do during the day, seemed so fascinating to me. I wrote a lot of really terrible tree poems. And then finally I was walking through the woods and the line “to anchor earth, to touch the sky” came into my head. That’s it, that’s the voice of the oak. So I went thumping home saying to myself, “to anchor earth, to touch the sky, to anchor earth...” And I just went all the way home with that in my head, and then I wrote it down as soon as I got home. But that’s what seems to work for me. I’ll get something in my head and I’ll just repeat it until I get home. But I can’t take the pen and the paper. It just doesn’t work. I don’t know why. ST: Jinx it. JS: I know. It’s crazy. And I always tell kids to carry a notebook with them wherever they go. ST: Right, right. JS: And you know, they’re never really far. They’re at most 45 minutes away, those pens and paper. NJ: So, do you still use old fashion pen or pencil? If we walked into your studio and were -- just kind of peered over your writing, what would we see you use? Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 14 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: I write notes longhand, but I compose a lot on the computer. I like to see the way the words will look on the page, and I like almost to see the sculptural quality of them. And I love to be able to move them around. And I’ll print out different drafts of things. But I really do prefer to see -- My handwriting’s getting worse, and I just prefer to see how those words are going to look as a sculpture on the page, a printed sculpture. NJ: Would we hear you read -JS: Oh, yes. You’d hear me reading, talking to the dog, talking to myself. Yes, I think they do need to be read aloud. And often they need to be read to an audience, and that’s why the writers’ group is so important. Because things change when you have people there and you’re reading to them. You can tell by the tenor of the silence whether you have them or not. So I think that’s really important. I tell kids that in the classroom that they have to read aloud to somebody. ST: Can we hear one more -- maybe the oak? JS: Sure. ST: Do you want to read the oak tree or, choose? JS: Sure. That’s one of my favorites. “Oak After Dark” As nighttime rustles at my knee, I stand in silent gravity and quietly continue chores of feeding leaves and sealing pores. While beetles whisper in my bark, while warblers roost in branches dark, I stretch my roots into the hill and slowly, slowly, drink my fill. A thousand crickets scream my name, yet I remain the same, the same. I do not rest, I do not sleep, and all my promises I keep: to stand while all the seasons fly, to anchor earth, to touch the sky. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 15 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: The best of me is in those books. I believe that. Sometimes I feel like authors shouldn’t be let out of there. All of this is because their best words are in their books. ST: Thank you, very much. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 16 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Fred Moody interview--April 10, 2015
Description: Fred Moody, WWU Alumni (BA 1973); member of the first group of students who helped plan Fairhaven College.
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_MoodyFred_20150410
Text preview (might not show all results): this “Great Periods Curriculum” at Fairhaven where we kind of read in the Greek and Roman, kind of the seminal texts of – it was almost like a great books thing. And then when I determined I was goin
Show more this “Great Periods Curriculum” at Fairhaven where we kind of read in the Greek and Roman, kind of the seminal texts of – it was almost like a great books thing. And then when I determined I was going to major in English, I took my whole major in the Western’s English Department because Fairhaven didn’t have its own major until, well, probably sometime in the Seventies. I mostly remember these seminars
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Title: Henrietta (Daesener) Moseley interview--March 1, 2006
Description: Henrietta (Daesener) Moseley attended the Campus School (1954-1961) ; and later attended Western Washington University for her "fifth year."
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_MoseleyHenrietta_20060301
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Henrietta Moseley ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use&qu
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Henrietta Moseley 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 Henrietta Moseley on March 1 st, 2006. The interviewer is Tamara Belts. TB: Today is March 1st, 2006 and I, Tamara Belts, am here with Henrietta Moseley. She attended Campus School. She did not sign the Informed Consent Agreement but she does know that she is being recorded. Is that correct? HM: Yes. TB: Good. Our first question is how did you happen to attend the Campus School? HM: I always heard from my parents that my mother registered me for Campus after I was born. I have located the application that my mother kept and she registered me on October 6 th, 1949. TB: And you were born when? HM: I was born March 15th, so six months after. TB: She didn’t waste any time! Did anyone else in your family attend the Campus School and what were their names? HM: No. I think I was the only one who went through Campus. TB: What were the years and grades of your attendance? HM: I started Kindergarten in 1954 and went all through sixth grade; I guess I left in 1961. TB: Did your family pay any fees for your attendance at the Campus School? HM: Not that I’m aware of. It all was registering early and having that opportunity; you were selected to go. I never heard anything about fees. TB: Where did you live when you attended the Campus School and how did you get to and from school? Please share any favorite memories of this experience. HM: My family home was down on Garden Street at 242 South Garden. That’s where I was born and raised and lived my whole life. I walked to school. I met Dick and Bill Hearsey along the way and Jackie Levin. The three of us kind of sauntered up and arrived at school, hopefully on time! There were a few times we were not on time, especially in the fall. As we came up Garden Terrace we filled our pockets with chestnuts, I remember that, and huge maple leaves. That was a lot of fun. The three of us were real good buddies for getting back and forth to school. TB: What did you do for lunch? 1 Henrietta Moseley Edited Transcript – March 1st, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HM: I had a lunch pail, a little red plaid lunch pail. I was a real chubby little kid, so my mother – bless her heart – she tried so hard to just send the right things for me to eat. But just like Mr. Fisher, I had special days that I got to go down to the kitchen and order their spaghetti or something. That was a treat but most of the time I took my lunch. TB: So then you ate in your classroom or did you go to the cafeteria? HM: I think we ate in the cafeteria down there. There was a cafeteria. TB: Do you remember any favorite classmates? Please name them for us. HM: Yes, I had many favorite classmates. In fact, my oldest friend, today is her birthday and we have been friends since Kindergarten. We’ve been friends for fifty two years now and we still stay in very close contact, Jackie Levin, she’s now Jackie Kotkins. So Jackie and I were very close and Mary Louise Young and Jennifer Yanko and Leslie Swanson and Jeff Peters and Randy Budd. There was a whole list of them. I remember more of my friends from grade school than I do in any other period of my education. That’s pretty interesting. I was able to name and remember eighteen I think. TB: Wow; that is excellent. Who were your favorite or most influential teachers? HM: Kindergarten was interesting. Miss Nicol was really a nice lady. She was much older. I remember I liked her but she didn’t always let me paint! She and I didn’t always see eye to eye because I didn’t get as much painting time in as I would have liked to have. I remember Mrs. Vike in third grade and I just loved her to pieces because she let me do lots of clay work. My mother saved a lot of my clay pieces that I brought today. Mrs. Lee was my fourth grade teacher; she was a family friend. I remember Annabelle Lee. She was a really nice lady. Mrs. Power, my fifth grade teacher, she took me bowling. Then when she moved back to California, she still kept in touch with us and sent cards occasionally. I had some wonderful, wonderful teachers. Miss Weythman, Ruth Weythman, was a family friend. She was a PE teacher. I liked her, too. She was a very nice lady. TB: Do you remember any of your student teachers and could you name them for us? HM: I don’t remember student teachers. There were a lot of them though, like three or four every quarter. We just had a lot of teaching staff on board. TB: What were your favorite subjects or classroom activities? HM: I seemed to like to do things with my hands. I’m sure that’s where my love of doing things with my hands came from. I remember doing wood working, I remember weaving, and the clay work. I loved working with clay. Reading, I enjoyed the reading. We had Dick and Jane and I remember the stories of Sally, Dick and Jane and Muff, the cat I think, little Muffy the cat. I remember spelling. My first big spelling word I think in second grade I think was ‘constellation’. I remember that was just a huge achievement to learn how to spell that. I think some of the special things -- other than doing just math and English and reading -- I really enjoyed the industrial arts that we got to do, [plus] swimming, going to the library, some of those things. TB: What kind of learning materials did you use mostly (regular school textbooks, materials created by your teachers or other)? HM: I think the teachers provided a lot themselves. I do remember that I had Sally, Dick and Jane. That was the first Scott Foresman program that was out I think. We had math books. I don’t remember the name of the math book that I had, but I do remember Sally, Dick and Jane. TB: Excellent. What kind of grading system was in use during your attendance (letter grades or narrative reports)? 2 Henrietta Moseley Edited Transcript – March 1st, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HM: Narratives. My mother kept all of them. It’s kind of fun to go back and read over your little reports. They really were very generic in what they said, but they did focus more I think on each individual child. Since I grew up to be a teacher, looking back at these reports and what I did in my grading system, I spent a lot of time writing reports. Maybe that’s where that got started. TB: Nice. Do you especially remember any creative activities such as weaving, making things, etc? Obviously you liked artwork. HM: I liked the artwork. I also liked the music. I remember Evelyn Hines was one of the music teachers that I had. She did The Nutcracker with us one year and we got to perform that on stage in the auditorium. She also taught us a Hawaiian hula dance song, I remember that, of which I can still remember some of the words to it. It was like a line dance we were doing, that was wonderful. One of the neatest things that I remember is every Christmas as the month of December came, we got to go into the auditorium and there was a huge Christmas tree in there. It must have been ten or fifteen feet tall. The music teacher was in there. We got to gather around the tree every morning and had a good forty five minutes of singing together. We got to sing all sorts of Christmas carols from all over the world. That was wonderful. We had Jewish kids in our class and everybody sang. It was just a wonderful time. TB: What was it like for you to be observed so often by student teachers? HM: I think after a while you just didn’t even know they were there because we always had so many people coming into the Campus School to observe. They were just part of the group, part of the family. TB: What out-of-classroom activities did you engage in, what did you do at recess, lunchtime, what did you enjoy the most and what games did you play? HM: I remember the bars out in the back of the building. We went out there for part of our recesses. Some of our recesses were out in front of the building. I do remember that I played a lot of square ball and red rover and in the spring we played baseball. There were some dodge ball and soccer ball games. We got to use the field out in front of the building. We were pretty active out there. Then we did get to go swimming all the time so we got to go over to the big pool. That was wonderful, but I didn’t like the bathing suits! TB: I have heard that before. HM: Oh my gosh! They were like flour sacks! You only could hope to get a green one. I just remember that. If you got a blue one you were in real trouble! TB: Did you visit the college itself, the college library, attend assemblies or sporting events or anything else at the college while you were in the Campus School? HM: We went to the library probably every week because we got to go in and check our books out. That was part of our curriculum. I don’t remember going to games or anything; I think mainly the library. TB: At what grade level did you enter public school? Why did you transfer and what was the transition like for you? HM: My Campus School experience ended with sixth grade so then I moved onto Fairhaven. I do remember that I did not learn cursive writing at Campus School. As I look back, that was a real issue. Maybe you didn’t learn it until fifth grade. I think that was it. We didn’t learn it until late. It’s not that we didn’t learn it but we didn’t learn it until the end of fifth grade going into sixth. Otherwise we always printed. The transition to Fairhaven, I think I found it hard, especially in English. TB: Any reason why? 3 Henrietta Moseley Edited Transcript – March 1st, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HM: I don’t think I had all the English preparation that I could have had or should have had. I had a very well-rounded education. TB: Please share any differences between public school and Campus School that especially affected you. HM: As I mentioned, the singing at Christmas, we got to do that. I remember that every year through Campus School. That’s something that didn’t happen in the public school. It might have happened some but not as much. I think that we were exposed to a more well-rounded education. We had a lot more art and industrial arts. We had exposure to swimming and the main library. I think we had a lot more exposure at Campus School. TB: What further education did you pursue (college, graduate or professional school)? HM: I went on to get my degree in elementary education and then my fifth year I received at Western. I taught in Stanwood for fifteen years and moved into Mount Vernon and retired in 2002 with 32 years in the public school system. TB: By the time you would have went to Western, the Campus School had ended, anyway. HM: Yes, in 1967 I think. TB: Yes. How did your attendance at the Campus School influence your life and/or career? HM: I know as a teacher, when I was teaching, there were things that I did as a child at Campus School that I did with my students. For one example, I had the janitor in Stanwood make me fifteen weaving looms. We did a lot of weaving in my first grade classroom. I picked that up from Campus. TB: What is it that students were learning by the weaving? Someone has told me that they were also learning math. Is that part of what they were also learning? HM: I think, and design, repetition. TB: Are you still in touch with any of your Campus School classmates and if so can you help us contact them? HM: I think I mentioned that I am in contact with Jackie Levin. I have seen Mary Louise Young within the last couple years and Jennifer Yanko’s mother I just saw a month ago. Jennifer has her doctorate in linguistics and is at Boston University. She is back on the East coast but she does come out here occasionally. Basically those are the one that I have stayed in contact with. TB: Would you be willing to serve as a contact person for your class for the purpose of encouraging participation in the Campus School reunion planned for 2007? HM: Oh yes. I think everybody participate in this. This is a part of history here. TB: Alright. The question is do you have any campus memorabilia including photographs, class book pages, crafts or artwork and I can see that you brought some with you. HM: I did. TB: Excellent. Please share with us any favorite memories of your Campus School days and any comments about areas not covered by the questions above (for example, Short Tuesdays). HM: Oh, Short Tuesdays! That was a wonderful day. The kids got to go home at noon and the teachers stayed on. That’s when they had their meetings and preparation time. We had Short Tuesday once a month. 4 Henrietta Moseley Edited Transcript – March 1st, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED That meant I got to go to my friend’s house and we had more time to play so that was a hot day! I really remember Short Tuesdays. TB: Anything else we haven’t talked about? HM: I remember when I was Santa Claus in sixth grade! TB: That would be fun. HM: I was probably the tallest and most appropriate for being Santa Claus. They dressed me up in a Santa outfit and I got to go up and down those ramps and go and give candy canes to all the little kids in Kindergarten and first grade. That was fun; many memories. TB: Anything else? HM: I think that’s it. TB: Excellent. Thank you very much Henrietta. 5 Henrietta Moseley Edited Transcript – March 1st, 2006 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Troy McKelvey interview--July 16, 2005
Description: Troy V. McKelvey, Jr., WWU alumni, BAE 1950, MEd 1961; later received a EDD from the University of California, Berkeley.
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_McKelveyTroy_20050716
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Troy V. McKelvey ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use&quo
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Troy V. McKelvey 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 Troy V. McKelvey on July 16, 2005. The interviewer is Tamara Belts. This was part of the Golden Viking Reunion weekend. TB: Good afternoon. It is Saturday, July 16th, 2005. I am Tamara Belts and I am here with Troy McKelvey. Mr. McKelvey is an alumnus of Western here for the Golden Viking Reunion. We’re about to do an oral history. He just signed the Informed Consent agreement. Our first question is: Why did you choose to attend Western? TM: Because there was a girl I knew that lived in Edens Hall. She convinced me that I should come back to Bellingham after I got out of the Navy and I did. TB: Did you grow up in Bellingham? TM: No. But I had lived in the same community in Nooksack, 19 miles north of Bellingham when my father was there as an immigration officer. So I had known her since she was in the 2 nd grade. TB: All right. What were your dates of attendance at Western? TM: Well, I went spring quarter after I got discharged in 1946 and then I began seriously in the fall and graduated in 1950. TB: What degrees or certificates did you receive from Western? TM: Well, when I started out, I thought I wanted to be a coach or teach physical education but after all the blisters I got on my feet when I was practicing football and ending up number 13 on the basketball squad I decided that I should probably change it to social studies. So I graduated here in social studies and then I came back and got my fifth year. And then I came back for three more summers and got my master’s in 1961. TB: From Western? TM: Yes. TB: Okay, and what other degrees did you receive elsewhere? How did you get to California? 1 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TM: Oh, I have an EdD from University of California at Berkeley. I got that in 1966. After walking off this campus (after taking all of my exams for my master’s), my wife picked me up, I was then a principal in Moses Lake, and I told her never would I ever want anyone to get me back on a college campus. But they offered me an internship in the department of educational administration there and so I took it; because I had four children and all the cats and dogs and everything else and I had a wife. I figured that I could go back and teach or get a principalship at the end of the road somewhere if I didn’t make it. I planned to stay there one year and I stayed three. Then I took a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oregon and then from there on (after interviewing at several places), I took a position as assistant professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. TB: Oh, wow. TM: I stayed there thirteen years and took early retirement at age 55 (1979) and moved to Port Townsend. TB: Have any other members of your family attended Western? TM: Well, my wife attended Western and her sister and her brother attended Western. TB: What was your wife’s name? TM: Alice Hunt. TB: Her brother’s name? Her sister’s name? TM: Her brother’s name was Bill and her sister’s name was Bertha. Bill had graduated from here and went on to get a master’s degree at the University of Washington in librarianship and became the librarian at Port Orchard High School and was there almost until the day that he passed away. But, then, who else came here? My youngest daughter came here, spent four years and was an outstanding student, had breakfast with the president when she graduated. And my oldest daughter came here and got her teaching certificate and now teaches in Oak Harbor and has for 25 years. TB: And what are their names? TM: Katherine S. McKelvey, daughter (1976), Tracy Hagel, daughter (1980), and her husband (Vincent Mark Hagel, 1977) was a student here, at this institution, all of whom have bricks out there in the walk as a Christmas present from myself. Now, next year, my granddaughter will graduate from Western. TB: And what’s her name? TM: Amber Hagel (2006). TB: Okay, excellent. So, what was your first job after leaving Western? TM: My first job was fifth grade teacher in the Harmony Elementary School out on the Everson-Goshen Road in the Mount Baker School District. 2 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Do you have some distinctive memories of this experience? TM: Oh, it was just a delight to be in a place where they didn’t have anything and you had to build from scratch. They told me that I would be in charge of the physical education department there, while I was teaching fifth grade, but that would be one of my things. And I looked around; I couldn’t find a kick ball. They had a big gymnasium; I found one old beat up basketball. There were no bats and balls, no activity equipment whatsoever, no jump ropes, no, nothing. In fact, the playground was a sea of water every time it rained. So I asked the principal, who was Clara Hatvedt at that time, who lived right across the street over here, some apartments were on that corner. She says, “Well, I haven’t been able to get very far, do you want to go talk to the superintendent?” And so, I went to talk with the superintendent. We haggled about different things, including football and how the high school was doing and a lot of unrelated things. We got through and he says, “Well, what do you really want?” And I say, “I want an open charge account at Joe Martin Sporting Goods on Holly Street” and he said, “You got it.” I went down and filled my station wagon full of athletic stuff. TB: Excellent, excellent; any other information about your time there? TM: Oh, I had lots of fun there. An apparent happening every year that every class got (there were only six classes in that school) -- every class got to do something extraordinary, a field trip of some kind. And so the second graders went on a train trip down to Burlington and the parents had to go down and pick them up because the district wouldn’t furnish any transportation. That’s one thing I got, too, was transportation for those field trips. But I encouraged the teachers to think a little broadly. At that time, whirly birds were the thing on television programs and so I had Bonneville Power Administration fly in a helicopter. TB: Wow. TM: And this was kind of extraordinary for those days because helicopters were new and all that. The whole school went out and they landed on the baseball diamond. And we did extraordinary things for all kinds of crazy things in the community. The PTA was unbelievably supportive. The school kept growing and growing, not in terms of pupils, but in terms of community participation, which I believe in. In fact, when I became principal I moved out into the district, on the Mount Baker Highway. I just thought it was appropriate for the principal to be a member of the community. One of the annual happenings was Halloween. The kids would all dress up in costumes and then one class started parading through the next class and so forth and trading kids back and forth. Then we decided that we’d go into every classroom, we just had a serpentine that went round and round the whole school. It got so that parents were crowding in the halls, the kids couldn’t get through. In fact, I found my wife and another parent dressed up as sixth graders. But, we finally moved into the library, and the library wouldn’t hold them and then finally we had to fill the gym full of chairs in order to accommodate that activity. It was a very good experience for me. TB: And where’d you go after you left Harmony? TM: Well, I received a telephone call one day and there was a fellow by the name of Raymond Hawk who was director of student teaching at the campus school. His son-in-law was a fellow by the name of Smith. Bob Smith was superintendent of schools in Moses Lake. They asked me if I could break away for an hour interview up here and I said, “Yes, I thought I could.” I came up and they asked me to come over to Moses Lake and interview again. So in the dark of night I took my wife over to Moses Lake, I knew that sage brush would run it up the pole. But, at any 3 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED rate, we moved to Moses Lake. I took one of their nice, new buildings and I was there for four years, at which time I came over here and got my master’s degree. There were seven principals there of elementary schools and whenever we would have staff meetings, collectively across the district, it had been mentioned several times that – “I thought our policy was that we should have master’s degrees.” So I came over here and finished my master’s degree, during that four year time, which was very exciting. I had lots of wonderful experiences over there in that district. I was only half-time principal one year because the chamber of commerce wanted me to work as their special events chairman. We wrapped the fair and the grand county parade and had Hoss Cartwright lead the parade and really cranked her up -- 100,000 people came to Moses Lake that day. TB: Wow, that’s pretty amazing. Excellent! TM: But then I went to Berkeley and spent three years with my children and wife. There are some interesting stories about that. Actually, my two oldest children made more money babysitting than I did working for the institution as an intern. My wife was quite reluctant to let them go out in the evening and I said, “Well, they can sit over there and do their homework more easily than they can do it at home. At least they don’t scrap when their out in somebody else’s house.” During my first internship I had an opportunity to work with the Analy Union High School in Sebastopol and so I drove up there three days a week during one semester and two days a week during the other semester. The object of my internship was to take an eight campus high school, which had been already planned and reduce it to five buildings instead of eight. Everyone had to give up something -- quite a bit. That was my job for the year and when I finished a couple years later, the El Molino High School was built in Forestville, California. They’re very strong grape -- grapes for champagne -- people. In fact, the board had two or three of these people on [it] and they hadn’t taken any state money for the buildings in that district. It was a high school district, but I mean, they didn’t take any state money and they didn’t take state money or federal funds for hot lunches or anything else. They were strong, self awarding people. But that was my internship. The next year I was offered the only assistantship they had in the department and then they asked me to do a second year, so I stayed three years. And then, I noticed down in the dean’s office, a bulletin board had a little card on there about internships at the University of Oregon for a thing called CSEA, the Center for the Study of Educational Administration. So I applied and I got one of those appointments and I was up there for, oh, I don’t know, more than a year, about 16 months. They paid pretty good money, too. My responsibility was to just, oh, I could go to classes, I could audit classes, I could slip in and out all over the campus or I could sit under a tree and read a book. So it was a terrific experience for entering the professorship. And I almost went to two or three universities and finally ended up at the State University of New York at Buffalo. TB: How did you get back out here? TM: Oh, after thirteen years at Buffalo, I was an associate dean and an associate professor there when I left and they were kind enough to give me an emeritus status as an associate professor, which hadn’t been done before, but apparently they thought my service to the university warranted it. The dean was leaving and so I thought it was a good time for me to leave anyway. My children all came out here and went to school. There was one going to school here, one who just graduated from Northern Michigan and the boys had been going to school in Oregon, so 4 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED we decided that we’d been eating beans and paying tuition for three years anyway so why don’t we just go pick crab pots and go fishing. So we did and I’ve been in Port Townsend now since 1979. TB: And so you retired from State University of New York Buffalo and moved to Port Townsend? TM: I retired, yes. I really retired, because my wife, finally, after we’d been there a year said, “You know, we only have $50 in the bank.” I said, “Oh, is that right?” And we were renting a house there, it was a wreck, but it was $250 a month. That afternoon I had two jobs. One was as an education person for the Puget Sound Power and Light -- training person. And the other was I came up here and I convinced the director of student teaching and the superintendent of Port Townsend to send some student teachers over to Port Townsend High School for me to supervise. I supervised student teachers there in Port Townsend, Sequim and Port Angeles for two or three years and some administrative interns for Western. Then I taught summer school here one summer and it wasn’t very successful but that was probably my fault. I came out of a very academic, research oriented institution and it was the wrong approach for the students that were here for summer school. But, that’s a short assessment of it. But it was pleasurable and I enjoyed it. TB: All right. This is going back to the time you were actually at Western. Where did you live when you were a student here? TM: Well, my wife was a very strong person and she decided that she wanted her own house. She wouldn’t be satisfied with $19 a month for one of these student housing units that actually I worked for. I was the materials engineer for, oh, Sehome and Huntoon, that was the names of them and there was another one set up behind the gym to house married students. I bought a house at 1504 Lakeway Drive and that’s where I lived for probably seven years. TB: You must have gotten married then right away when you came here. TM: Oh, I got out of the service in February, was engaged in May and married in September. TB: Okay, by the time you really started school you were married? TM: Yes. Fact of the matter is we took Woodring’s course, my wife and I, and flunked it. The grand old gentleman of psychology flunked us both because we could never get there on time. It was a 7:30 class in the summer time. That’s a horrible thing to admit, but it happens. I had to repeat the course; my wife then had dropped out of school. TB: Oh, my goodness. TM: Oh, I’m a high school dropout, by the way, anyway. TB: Really? TM: I dropped out of high school my senior year and went in the Navy. That used to disturb my children at the dinner table when they’d ask me, when I did this, or did something, and I’d said, “Well, I dropped out of high school.” “Gasp! You dropped out of high school?” 5 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Well, it was a different era. TM: Well, it was a different era and there was a war going on, a war got in the way. TB: Right. Who were your favorite or most influential teachers and why? TM: I suppose that Dr. Bond who taught mathematics. I took algebra from him, he was quite influential, then Keith Murray in history. And I must say that Mr. Hearsay was also influential. I didn’t really like it at the time, but the work that he poured on me, which I thought was terrible, turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me, really. TB: Now, what class did you take from him? TM: It was a research course you had to take during your master’s program. TB: Oh, okay. TM: And it dealt with using, oh, it was all strange to me. I mean, I went through a year as a graduate and I didn’t know how to use the library. Using the library with all of the research, reader’s guide and looking up periodicals and just digging to find out sources of information that might pertain to whatever you were doing. But it helped me immensely in terms of going to school for my doctorate. TB: Do you care to share any of your memories of Miss Snow. TM: [Laughs] No, I didn’t have any particularly unsatisfactory memories of her, except that her reputation carried all through Old Main. I mean, God, we’ve got to take Books for Boys and Girls and I hate to go over there and sign up for it. I was one of those that picked up that she was a task master and she demanded those 65 books or whatever to be read and 65 books to those GIs was like horror in a basket, you know. But I took the course finally and got a passing grade, I guess. TB: Now, you told me this off the tape, isn’t it true that you thought you weren’t actually getting her because you were getting someone with a different name. TM: Oh, yes, well she got married and changed her name to Mathes because there was a Mathes House across the street from Edens Hall. I thought it was a different person and I about strangled myself when I walked into class. [Now], see, I went to the school for the wrong reasons at Western and [fortunately] they put up with me. I worked all afternoon at Sears and Sears was great to me, they let me punch in and out anytime I wanted and offered me an internship almost when I got out of here. I had to make a choice whether to go to teaching or go into an internship at Sears and Roebuck. But, I had three children and a dog and a house and all that goes with it. You know, car and dishwasher and all that stuff. And in 1950 I got called back in the service so I had to get my wife a new dishwasher and dryer, get her situated so that she’d be more comfortable if I had to go overseas. I went down to Seattle and they looked in both ears and asked me to cough and gave me a uniform and sent me home. I never heard from them again -- partly because I was the only male elementary school teacher in the four elementary schools in the Mt. Baker District. I guess that that was much more appropriate; anyway, it worked out real fine. 6 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: All right. So, what was your main course of study when you were here? TM: Oh, social studies, I guess, and history, physical education. TB: And what classes did you like the best and/or learn the most from? TM: I probably learned the most from Keith Murray’s classes in history because he made everything very interesting. He captivated the class and everybody was on the edge of their chair all the time. He was a great teacher. TB: What were his tests like when you were a student? TM: I don’t remember. I remember two things about tests. When we had to take music appreciation and my wife was still going here and the test was a fill in the blank, the answer was [Gott der Rache] and my wife wrote God damn rock and showed it to somebody else, see, and it was a big laugh. But she forgot to go back and erase it and change it. I’ve forgotten who the teacher was now, but he said, “Oh, Miss Hunt, by the way, what was your answer to question number 13?” Or something like that, she almost fainted. The other was a class that I took from Dr. Freehill, psychology. Freehill gave us a test one time. He left here and went to Hawaii and came back to the University of Washington. He visited me in Port Townsend a long time ago, once. But at any rate, he gave a test and on the back, at the end of the test, he had about two pages of true and false of which you were to mark a minus or a plus. This room is all full of GIs, you know. He came back in Monday morning and he said, “By the way,” he says, “my graduate assistant didn’t have time to grade the last part of this test and I wondered if we could do it in class.” And everyone says, “Sure.” So, if you put down a minus and it was really a plus all you had to do was mark it like that and you were home free. So, then when he got all through he says, “I lied to you, we did correct this test, prior. I wanted to find out what the honest ratio was in this class.” I just had the hunch that, you know, Maurice Freehill, if he didn’t have graduate students to do that he would have done it himself. So, I didn’t change a thing and it was a real trick. TB: Did it catch a lot of people? TM: Oh, yes. They ran the statistics about it and the percentages and everything the next day. It was funny. TB: Oh, wow. Okay, so what were the extracurricular activities you enjoyed the most? TM: Well, to tell you the truth, I didn’t participate very much in extracurricular activities because I was working. And if I wasn’t working I was playing baseball after work. My extracurricular activities were playing baseball and going through the chairs at the VFW and finally becoming the commander of the post and playing baseball for Sears and the VFW. TB: Wow. Did you have any experiences with the campus school? TM: Only in terms of observations over there and with interviews I did with teachers and knowing the people in the office and the director. Bearnice Skeen made Harmony Elementary School a little campus school. She had a student teacher in every class. Harmony was my first teaching position. For years we had a fairly close relationship. I 7 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED enjoyed her class, too, by the way. I was one of her boys, she said. And I regretted that I didn’t get to see her here in the last few years. But I used to visit her quite often. TB: Okay. Please share with us any other special memories of your college days. TM: Well, you mean, walking on the grass? TB: Sure. You did it a few times and heard from Haggard? TM: No, I didn’t hear about Haggard. But in 1946 when I received my discharge from the Navy I came up here to see a lady in Edens Hall. When I got downtown I called several times and no answer, so I took a cab and came to Edens Hall. I waited in the entrance and came back out and she wasn’t there, so I didn’t know what to do. I remembered that she said something about the bookstore and the bookstore was over in the far corner underneath everything in Old Main. I just cut right across the grass, because an old salty sailor didn’t worry about a little sign, and I was floating anyway. The girls opened the windows and started screaming at me, “Get off the grass before Dr. Haggard catches you.” But other than that I didn’t have an identity up here. It didn’t bother me much. But I mean, when I’d walk down the hall and Dr. Haggard would come by and say, “Oh, yes, I know you.” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “You’re Alice Hunt’s husband;” because my wife had been his student secretary. All during the time I was here at this place I was known as Alice Hunt’s husband. Then I came back here years later, after I’d been in Buffalo for several years, I came back here, I put in for an application for being on the program of the American Association of Professors of Educational Administration. They had their summer conference at this institution. So, I have the auditorium over here, I guess wherever they had the campus school at that time, full of people. I was up behind the podium and down below there was a young fellow crawling around on the floor with a camera. One of these old flash bulb cameras and he’s going this way and he’s going [that] way and I finally stepped off behind the podium and I said “Young man, can I help you with anything?” He says “Yes,” he says, “Are you Katherine McKelvey’s father?” TB: Poor guy; known by the women! TM: That’s right. TB: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to tell me? Or put on the record? TM: Well, my daughter was a very successful graduate at this institution and my second daughter has the highest marks as an elementary teacher and she got her certificate at this institution. My son-in-law, who was editor of the Klipsun or the newspaper or whatever it is here and received all kinds of national where-with-all for it. He’s just a very successful teacher. It was a very interesting experience except that after I began to apply myself to academics I realized that I really didn’t do justice to my program here at this institution. I have to thank them for letting me out and pushing me on my way. TB: Excellent, excellent. You’ve obviously kept in touch with Western. Is that because your children all went here or you just have your own deep affections? 8 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TM: No, not necessarily. I came back last year because I didn’t go the year before and I felt that I didn’t have anything else to do and it was pretty tough not to come so I came back to Western. I kept in touch with Western. I donate to the foundation every year and I’ve bought bricks for those in attendance in the family and put them in the walkway out here. I like this community, I’ve had a lot of fun here. TB: Excellent. Well, thank you very much. I’m glad to have you here and I’m glad to have done this interview. Thank you. TM: Thank you. TB: Here’s an addendum. TM: I edited three volumes works when I was at Buffalo. One was Urban Administration with myself and Austin Swanson and it was published and went out to all the libraries in the country. My daughter found out about it [and] when she came here to school she looked it up in the library. She called me on the phone and she said, “Dad, I found your book in the library! But no one has signed it out.” So she took the book out and got her friends to go in and check it out and check it out, so there were a few check outs on that book. TB: All right. Actually, that’s important, circulation is important to a book. TM: Then I did two more on the metropolitan school organization. But I don’t know where they are. I suppose there’s a copy in this library. TB: We’d probably like to track that down. We have the Western Collection which is publications by faculty, staff, student and alumni that we collect. TM: Oh, really? I doubt if it’s there. I don’t know. TB: Well, we’ll try to track it down. Okay, thank you very much. 9 Troy V. McKelvey Edited Transcript – July 16, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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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

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