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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: 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: 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, but when I went up to hit it that time, it was just like this. And I hit it too high, I hit it way up here, and it couldn‟t swing. There was a place cut out of the sod and filled with shavings where we would land, and my forehead just hit where the sod was cut out. I spent a week in bed after that. The fact is I think it was the last game I played. The coach sent me to a chiropractor (well first I was in bed for a week). If I wanted to turn my head from one side to the other lying down I had to do it this way. But I went to a chiropractor and he‟d straighten [things] out and I‟d go up, skip school and practice, and go back down the next day, and things were all knocked out of shape again. After a few days, I guess he told the coach that I shouldn‟t play anymore. [I turned out, played around, throwing passes back and forth with somebody.] Then there was the year I went back to school. We were playing Monmouth Normal School. That‟s the same school that‟s going to be here tomorrow, isn‟t it? PM: Yes. HW: And on the kickoff for the second half, I got clipped. I think that was the first year that clipping was illegal. And from then on, I was in a daze. I think, I‟m teaching school in Centralia, but here I am in a 14 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED football suit. It doesn‟t make sense. Why am I in this football suit? But I played all through it in the second half until about two minutes before the game was over. I went out and I went up and caught a pass and two fellows clobbered me and I was down for a little bit, got up and went back to the huddle. A sub came in for me, and I went over and sat down on the bench next to the manager. I said, “Bill, where are we?” He looked at me, got up and went over to Sam, and he said, “Wilder wants to know where he is.” He told him to take me up to the dressing room – and this game was played in Portland at Multnomah Stadium (or something like that that they used to have, I don‟t know if they have it now or not). On the way there – there were very few people at the game I remember – but this announcement came on inquiring if there was a doctor in the crowd. There wasn‟t, but the trainer from CPS was there and he came in tried to help me. But I just lay out on the floor for about two hours before I was able to come around. All the players, most of them had come in and showered and dressed and were gone. But I finally got out of it. I didn‟t know what was wrong with me until, oh, years later I was telling a doctor friend about it and said, “Well, you had a…” Now I can‟t think of the name of what it was… TB: A concussion? HW: A concussion, yes. AF: Pretty tough games. HW: Yes. TB: Why did you choose to come to Western in the beginning? Did you come just to play football, or you came because you knew you wanted to be a teacher or…? HW: Neither! I wanted to go on to school, but I didn‟t know what I wanted to take or what I wanted to do. But I knew a man that we had there that had gone to school, and he taught there for two or three years and he left, got into something else. I thought well, I can do that. Maybe I‟ll find out something that I wanted to do. That‟s how I got into it. So I just went on teaching until the time that I got tired out and I quit. TB: Were you ever sorry that you quit teaching? HW: In some ways, yes, in other ways, no. I had got into the business end of things and the experiences I had there was something I enjoyed. JC: Where are you living now, sir? HW: Olympia. I lived on Hood Canal for several years. Then I lived over in Alderbrook for a while. But I got so all the doctors I had were in Olympia. I was getting to the place where my eyes were bothering me and I was afraid I wouldn‟t be able to drive much longer, and I thought I should move into Olympia. Shortly after I got in to Olympia and moved, I had a note from the eye doctor that it was time for me to have another exam. He told me I needed tucks in my eyelids. He took pictures up close of my eyes, and then he took the tucks, and after it was all over with, then he took another picture. And I could see that before he had taken the tucks, my eyes were less then halfway open. I was seeing so much better afterwards. If I had had it done before I moved, I wouldn‟t have moved. AF: (Laughter) For goodness sake, it wouldn‟t have been necessary. PM: Well Kay says he drives fifty minutes to play golf. Is that right? KH: Yes, about fifty miles. PM: Fifty miles, I‟m sorry -- fifty miles to play golf. 15 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED KH: You drive up to Cushman [near Hoodsport] to play golf. It‟s about fifty miles. HW: Fifty? No. About thirty six, thirty seven miles. KH: It takes me an hour to get down to your place! HW: Yes, I know. But some of that road‟s only forty five miles an hour, and sometimes in traffic, you can‟t go very fast. A lot of it is on a road that you can‟t pass anyone because it‟s two-lane. KH: I think you should tell them about your property on Triton Head, that‟s real interesting. HW: Well, my wife, and this happened before she was married, she and her sister, [and] her sister‟s husband came up from Arizona. This was during the depression. He‟d lost about everything in the automobile business. He was in business in an Arizona mining town that became a ghost town, and now it‟s a tourist attraction. I can‟t think of the name of it, but anyhow…He was a Chevrolet dealer and he sold cars, business had been gone, the depression hit, and then the mine closed… END OF SIDE TWO TAPE ONE … folks were turning their cars back. So the bank wanted their money back, and it wiped him out. They came up with the lady that I married a couple years later, leased a piece of ground up on the canal with a few cabins, four or five cabins on it, a tourist camp. My wife had always wanted to run a dining room. She taught school, she was a home economics teacher. She worked there during the summer months. Her sister and her husband lived there the year round. But anyhow, after two or three years – we had gotten married in the meantime – the owners had a chance to sell the property, and when they leased it they had an option to purchase. So they had a chance to sell that property, they offered a piece of property at a very reasonable price. We had got over a half mile of waterfront and quite a big piece that went out from the highway, out to the water and around. Then up across the highway there was more land, right in the neighborhood of two hundred acres, I‟ve forgotten whether it‟s a little less or a little over. They sold it to us, all of that property, for $2,000 because they broke the lease. We sold lots down there in the waterfront pea gravel, just a nice slope down, sold for $10 a front foot. This was starting in the Forties. The last beach lot I sold was along in the early Nineties. There was a seventy foot piece of land that was in what we bought originally, but the survey didn‟t show, the surveyor had made a mistake. Later [when] the state [was] making some surveys of the land up across the highway they tied in with us and it showed a little narrow strip on their map. I asked them who that belonged to. Well, the court would have to decide that. But the more I thought of it and studied it; I decided it was part of the property we bought. But anyhow, that seventy foot strip I sold I think for $83,000. AF: (Laughter) My goodness. HW: We had a four-year contract to buy that property. We made it for two years and got on to the third year and I didn‟t know how I was going to pay my part, and made a deal with the people that had bought the property where the motel was, because we had property right in back of them going up on the hill. Sold them eighty acres for $1,000. That $1,000 paid off the balance of our contract so everything was clear. But the other eighty acres that we had up there, a few years later I sold for $100,000. (Laughter) TB: I think you‟ve answered all my questions. AF: Well this has been very enjoyable. PM: Thank you very much Howard. HW: Yes. 16 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AF: Pretty long session! HW: Something I‟ll tell you just for your personal interest: I think you all know the Peace Arch in Blaine. I worked on the project when that was built. AF: Is that right? HW: Yes, for about a week and a half. My brother had a contract with them for doing grading work. AF: That was Vince? Your brother Vince? HW: Yes, Chuck‟s father. He hired me. I worked in the gravel pit with pick and shovel. We‟d load a wagon with the gravel; there were a couple men there. The team would come up and hook onto that wagon and leave the empty wagon. By the time they‟d get back making a round trip, we‟d have the other wagon loaded. I worked there for a week or ten days until they finished that particular job. Then I worked for a cannery for the rest of the summer. I worked for two summers in the cannery. AF: Right there in Blaine. HW: I did that one summer, then I worked three summers in Alaska. I went up there in 1920 for the first time. The group was high school kids, there were twenty of us. Then I went up in 1930 and I was very fortunate; they were going to put me on a job outside which wouldn‟t have been very pleasant a lot of the time because it was when the boats would bring in the salmon, and a lot of times it was at night. Of course, it rains a lot in Alaska. You had to be out there when they were unloading the salmon. But I was up there three weeks before they started canning. The foreman, maybe it was two young fellows there, kind of had us working together. He‟d tell us something and I remember one time he was setting something up on a machine and [he explained] how it had to be lined up with the pulleys up above. I said, “Okay, I understand.” And a few things went along that way that he said, “Do what I said.” And I said, “Okay, I understand.” Then he got to a place where he said, Well, Wilder get your crew and do this.” So anyhow, he gave me a job by myself. It was the clincher machine. The clincher machine puts the cap on the can and it just clinches it a little bit, just clinches it enough so they don‟t come off when they‟re in the vacuum machine. While they‟re in the vacuum machine, they‟re sealed. But this clincher had been taken apart and the parts had been spread out on a table. I suppose that they had been covered with oil, but some of them were rusted and so on. He told me to clean them up; I‟d do that with emery cloth. This foreman, he had the greatest knack of coming around just the time you‟d get finished. I‟d just finished that cleaning, and he said, “Oh, well, you might as well put it together now.” I thought he was kidding me, but he seemed to be serious, so I said, “Okay.” Some parts I could see where they fit on there because of the way the paint was pressed and so on. We had three of those machines. Two of them had been taken apart at the end of the season and the third one hadn‟t. So sometimes I‟d take a part and go over to that machine to see where it went! And then there was a place that had a thing that came down and out over where the cans went through, but there was a slot in there where it was fastened that could be adjusted. I didn‟t understand it, but I looked at the one that hadn‟t been taken down and I put it on as close as I could to that. The foreman came by just then. He said, “Oh, all done.” “Did you get this adjusted right?” He grabbed a can and turned the hand wheel on there so the machine wouldn‟t run by itself. I was lucky I had it just in the right place! But anyhow, when we got to canning salmon, I looked after the clinchers and 17 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ran the vacuum machines, but I also ran the steam engine that ran the cannery and took care of all the pulleys and belts in the cannery. I didn‟t make much money, but I got my board and room and transportation up on a passenger ship paid from the time we left Seattle until we got back. AF: And that was during the depression. HW: Yes. That was in ‟30 and ‟31, those two summers I worked up there. I had the same job again for the third year and then Sam Carver was going to take the summer off to go to school some more, working at his masters. I was offered the job of being assistant in the PE department and I took that. In some ways I kind of wished I had gone back to the cannery, but… AF: Where was the cannery in Alaska? HW: That cannery was in Cordova. AF: Oh yes. HW: The first one I worked in was at…I can‟t think of the name of the little place…it was on the first island off of the mainland in Aleutian group. AF: Oh, way up north. HW: Way out west, too. AF: Yes. HW: We were just about due north of Honolulu. AF: Wow. The first one in the Aleutian group. HW: Yes. Unimak Island. AF: Oh yes. PM: He is something else! TB: Yes. (Laughter) KH: You‟ve got a better memory than you thought you did. JC: Yes he does. TB: Thank you. 18 Howard Wilder Edited Transcript – November 14, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Ted White interview--June 21, 2003
Description: Ted White, WWU alumni, BA 1948, BAE 1949
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_WhiteTed_20030621
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Theodore White ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use"
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Theodore White 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 Ted White (BA 1948/BAE 1949) in the Viking Union on June 21, 2003. The interviewer is Christine Kendall. This was conducted as part of the Golden Viking Reunion weekend. The complete transcript is available for viewing in Special Collections. Ted White Edited Transcript – June 21, 2003 – Golden Viking Reunion SOME RESTRICTIONS APPLY ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Betty (Anderson) Watson interview--September 10, 2005
Description: Betty (Anderson) Watson is an alumna of WWU. She received a War Emergency Teaching Certificate in 1945, BA in 1948, and also student taught in the Campus School.
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_WatsonBetty_20050910
Text preview (might not show all results): , started many of my classes with him, with a “pop quiz” on the assigned reading for the day. I sat next to a “jock” (definitely not a scholar-athlete) who never seemed to have read any of the text an
Show more, started many of my classes with him, with a “pop quiz” on the assigned reading for the day. I sat next to a “jock” (definitely not a scholar-athlete) who never seemed to have read any of the text and was always in a panic. Mr. Kibbe, interesting psychology teacher who didn‟t like Freud and we didn‟t ever learn anything about Freud from Mr. Kibbe! That was his selection, his choice. Miss Breakey, lots
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Title: Gene Ervine interview--October 4, 2016
Date: 2016-10-04
Description: Eugene N. Ervine graduated from Western in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and minor in creative writing. He was editor of Jeopardy in 1971. He himself is passionate about poetry and shared some of his work in this interview.
Digital Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Type of resource: text
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Local Identifier: SCOHP_Ervine_Gene_20161004
Text preview (might not show all results): disciplined as a Zen monk and a translator of Asian texts, and it was a very kind of formal and deliberate approach to his craft. And of course Ken Kesey was a member of the Merry Pranksters and was
Show more disciplined as a Zen monk and a translator of Asian texts, and it was a very kind of formal and deliberate approach to his craft. And of course Ken Kesey was a member of the Merry Pranksters and was interested in experimenting with LSD and quantities of marijuana, and it was a very interesting conversation. And I wish somebody had recorded it, because I think it may have been one of the great conversations
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Title: Lynda Goodrich interview--March 16, 2017
Date: 2017-03-16
Description: Lynda Goodrich, WWU administrator, 1973-2013. She coached multiple sports most notably as women's basketball coach and twenty-five years as director of Athletics, retiring in 2013.
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_Goodrich_Lynda_20170316
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Lynda Goodrich ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use"
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Lynda Goodrich 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. TB: Today is Thursday, March 16, 2017. My name is Tamara Belts. I’m here with Lynda Goodrich and Paul Madison. We’re going to do a oral history with Lynda. I’m first going to ask her a few questions about how she got to Western, and then I think Paul will ask more about her long career here. So my first question is: How did you choose to come to Western as a student? LG: Well, first I went to PLU out of high school, and then decided -- I wanted to be a missionary, actually. Then after a year at PLU, I changed my mind and decided I wanted to be a teacher. So this was the college of education and the college to go to, so that’s why I transferred to Western. TB: So what were your dates of attendance at Western? LG: 1963 to 1966, for my BA degree. TB: And then, what -- you’ve already answered, the BA degree. And then did you get your master’s here as well? LG: I did, in 1973. I came back in 1971 as a graduate student because Margaret told me I could coach basketball and volleyball, and so that was one of the reasons I wanted to come back so I could coach. And I got my master’s degree in 1973, and then they hired me to continue coaching and teaching. TB: And I assume that that was Margaret Aitkin? LG: Margaret Aitkin. TB: Was she the athletic director or just – 1 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LG: No, she was the department chair. And I think she was the chair of women’s physical education at that time, and then the departments merged and she became the chair of both. And I don’t remember the year they merged, but it was a big landmark thing to do, and particularly to put a woman in charge of both, because athletics then did report to the chair of physical education. Later they separated out athletics from physical education. And when they did that, they asked me, do you want to go physical education, or do you want to go athletics? And I chose athletics. TB: So, what was your first job after leaving Western the first time? LG: I taught at West Seattle High School, physical education, for five years. TB: Okay. And then when you were at Western as a student, where did you live? Did you live in the dorms? Any favorite memories? LG: Well when I first came to Western, they didn’t have any rooms in the dorms, so we lived in one of those off campus houses, right down here on State Street, where there were six of us. A family would take you in, give you room and board. And then after a quarter, Higginson, a room opened up in Higginson, so I moved into Higginson. And then when I became I think a junior, you could move off campus. Up until then, you couldn’t move off campus until you were a junior. And most of us fled off campus because you had to be in by 10 pm on week days and 12 am on week nights, and so as soon as we were able, we, you know, found apartments. TB: And actually, could you tell us a little bit about what the dress code was then for women? LG: Yes. You had to wear skirts or dresses before 4 o’clock to all classes, and you couldn’t wear pants or shorts on campus before that time. It was pathetic. Can I add that? TB: Who were your favorite and most influential teachers, and why? LG: Well, first was Margaret Aitken. She was really a brilliant woman. I had her for several classes, theory classes. She was really demanding yet fair, and just a straight shooter, very direct. And I just thought she was really an awesome teacher. 2 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The second one was Lou Kilby, who taught methods. And she was -- and also coached, I was coached by her for a while in field hockey. But she was just a superb teacher, taught us a lot about how to teach, and was really inspirational. TB: So your main courses studied would have been physical education. Did you have a minor? LG: I did, history and English. TB: Okay. Anything else about what classes that you liked the best and learned the most from? LG: Well, I think I liked methods, methods of teaching. That was one of my favorite courses. I enjoyed my history and lit classes immensely too. I originally I wanted to be a history teacher, but DeLorme was the chair then, and I met with him, and he said there weren’t any jobs in history teaching unless you were a man and a coach. And so that’s why I decided to go -- truly, I was just being practical. Where were the jobs? I loved physical education too, so that’s why I went that route. TB: Okay. And then, this might end up moving on into your athletics because my next question is: Which extracurricular activities did you enjoy the most? LG: Well obviously, I played basketball, field hockey, any sport that they had going I was involved with. TB: Nothing else. I’ll probably turn it over to Paul, then. PM: Okay. Let’s go back to your days at Lake Stevens High School, a young girl, 16, 17, 18 years old, and opportunities as far as athletics and sports and your situation while you were there. LG: They were very limited. They didn’t have athletics for girls. We had what were called play days. And let’s say there’s a basketball play day, you’d sign up for it, whoever wanted to go from your school would go and meet up at a central location with all these other kids from other schools, and they’d put you, assign you on a team, never more than two from the same school on the team because they didn’t want you to be too competitive. And then we would play basketball all day, and then we would have punch and cookies afterwards. And I always call it the punch and cookie era. And this is before Title IX, and opportunities for girls were really limited. I know for myself, I loved playing basketball. I used to go to the playground and play with the boys, and that was the only place I could really play basketball. TB: Could we just insert: Would you describe what basketball was like then? LG: Well for girls – TB: For girls, yes. LG: -- it was 3-on-3, half-court basketball, and that’s what I played in high school. And then, they added a rover, so one person could go full court, so it ended up being 4-on-4 in the half court. But if you 3 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED weren’t the rover, you could only run to half court, then you had to stop. They were just afraid that we were going to hurt our reproductive organs if we ran too much. I’m serious. PM: Oh, I know, I read it. LG: And it wasn’t until 1971 that the rules changed to 5-player basketball, which in the scheme of things isn’t that long ago. PM: Right. PM: I think one time we were talking and you talked about the fact that there was one day a year where the girls got to play a game before the men’s game. LG: Yes, we would do the juniors and the seniors, and so we would play -- we got to play before a boys’ game. And we played regular rules, and, you know, a 5-player game. And honestly, we had some great athletes when I went to school. I just look back and think, what a terrible thing that they didn’t have an opportunity to pursue that. And all of us, we were just wanting it so badly, and we’d look forward to practice and get ready for that one time. PM: So we’ll go a little bit farther ahead to Western and what women’s athletics was at the time you were at Western as an athlete, a student athlete. LG: As a student athlete? Well, it wasn’t too different from high school, except we did play other colleges in field hockey and in basketball, very limited. Probably the premiere sport though was field hockey. You know, I remember traveling to Oregon, to the University of Oregon and playing. But it was always in a tournament format. So if you played in field hockey, you might go and play for a weekend. You might play two or three or four games, kind of just -- And there wasn’t ever any standings or winloss records. It was just playing. And in basketball, we played other schools, but the same thing. We might play two games in a day. When I first started coaching, we played two games in a day, because we were trying to get games in. So, when you look back, it was tough. PM: Yes. One time you made a humorous remark about the vocations that were open to women – LG: Well, I felt for me that I could be a nurse, a secretary, or a teacher. And I didn’t like blood, I wasn’t a very good typist, so, and teaching seemed to be the best option. I remember when I was in high school, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, and I went in to check out a book on the law. And a woman librarian said, What are you doing? And I said, Well, I’m interested in going into law. She goes, women are not lawyers, put it back. And, you know, when you look back on that, it’s amazing that women accomplished -- well it’s no wonder we revolted and said, you know, it’s about time we got some equality. 4 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PM: Exactly. Okay, now you’ve come through Western and you’re at West Seattle High School, and tell us a little bit about the fight or the, as far as athletics while you were there. LG: Well, there again, it was still in that era of play days, and then it evolved to sports days. And sports days where you could play as a team from your school, but you would go to a -- all of us would go, like in the Seattle school district, we would all maybe go to Rainier Beach, and we might play some other team. At least we were playing as a team, representing our school. But there were no varsity sports for girls. And everything was revolving around sports days in all the sports. And, you know, at that time was about the time that the women’s movement really started getting under way, and likewise it was the same in athletics. There are several of us that taught P.E. in the Seattle school districts, and we’d get together at somebody’s house at night and talk about, try to strategize how we could put pressure on the school district to allow girls to have athletics and varsity sports. And I look back at some of those women, I can’t remember their names, but one became head of the WIA, you know, another became the athletic director for Seattle Public Schools. So, you know, there were some women there that really had the gumption to take on the school district. And it was a fight. There was no funding. We used to sell concessions at the boys’ games, and any money we made we could use to help our teams. By the time I left, after five years, basketball and gymnastics, and I think track, were varsity sports, and then eventually the others. The others followed, but it was a struggle. TB: Just one quick one, what about tennis? LG: No. We didn’t even have tennis, I don’t think, in the Seattle School District. Probably because of facilities. You know, I doubt that the schools had tennis courts. TB: Okay. PM: So, what were the rules that you were coaching at West Seattle under, and then also, you were also involved with AAU? LG: Yes, for basketball it was the same. It was the same as the college at that time. It was, you know, half-court basketball with a rover, so basically 4-on-4 in the half court. But I, loving basketball joined an AAU team and there were several players on that that I played against, like Central or different universities, and we formed an AAU team. Which at that time, AAU was the mecca for women in sport. There was a national championship. Some of the best teams in the country, you know, Wayland Baptist was really good, the Flying Queens from Wayland Baptist. In the South, they were much more progressive than we were up here in women’s basketball. But we formed an AAU team, and we would play in Canada, and we’d play other AAU teams, but our goal obviously was to get to the national tournament, which we did. And that was 5-player basketball and full court. And I played that until I severely hurt my ankle, and so I was really limited the last couple of years, and so I was kind of the assistant coach, but I learned a lot about 5-player basketball in that experience. 5 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PM: Title IX starts in 1972, but a lot of people think that that’s when things [got going], but there was actually that huge movement by people such as you who took it to the point where Title IX was pushed forward. LG: Yes, I think Title IX was a result of women saying enough, enough. It was just like our group and the Seattle school district, well, that was happening I’m sure nationwide, obviously. But Title IX wasn’t just for athletics, you know, that was supposed to be a small part of it. It was for anything. Like if a university offered an engineering class, they couldn’t -- you know at that time, engineering was really under represented by women, same as the sciences. They couldn’t withhold that from a woman making that a major. That’s why Title IX says that whatever activity you have, whether it’s a class or athletics, the number of women in that program should be the same as the number of undergraduate women you have in your university. And that was the crux of Title IX. Well what happened was, and if you didn’t do it, you wouldn’t get any federal funding, so the universities were like, Ooh, we can’t lose federal funding. And they probably -- the universities probably moved quicker than the high schools, but the high schools had to follow suit as well. But it didn’t hold much teeth until [someone at] WSU filed a Title IX lawsuit and won, and I think it was Brown University. And they had to pay huge damages and it went back. And when that happened, that’s when, because there were court cases prior to that and they didn’t really get upheld, so there wasn’t the teeth into Title IX. But once it was upheld in court and those universities had to pay, you know, money speaks, and so then people started jumping on ship. PM: Do you feel like Western was a little bit ahead of the – LG: I do. I think, I think we -- I mean, it was a struggle. Let’s face it, I mean, my team won in 1972, wasn’t it? Yes, 1973 maybe, 1972-1973, to go to the national tournament in New York. We had no funding. So we did bake sales and garage sales, and kids had to bring in their own money to go. We won again the next year and we had to go to Manhattan, Kansas. Same thing. And at that point, I can remember going into Margaret Aitken and saying, Look, I’ve sold my last damn cookie. If you want to have women’s athletics, you need to start funding it, because this is ridiculous. You’re punishing us for being successful. I think they just wished we wouldn’t win because of, you know, the pressure was on. But I think because we had Margaret Aitken and myself, I think I was really pushing, and we had Mary Robinson, who was the dean of students, I think our university was ahead of it. And that was obvious in our success. We were successful from the get go, and part of that was because of the women who were here at that time. And I think, you know, Western prides itself on being liberal and forward thinking, and I think it was even that way then. PM: We were talking when we won our first regional championship. We’d lost to Washington State the year before. Now you and Western Washington and Washington State are in the championship game again, and unlike the first one, it gets to be played at Western. Can you tell about that story about it how it ended up being played not in the Gym D or in the little gym or the women’s gym, but it became, got to be played in the main gym – 6 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LG: Old Carver, that it’s called now. It used to be called Gym D and the women’s gym, and that’s where we played our games. But since we got to host, I convinced Boyde Long and Chuck Randall, although remember that game was played in the afternoon so we wouldn’t interfere with any of their games, to play it on the main court. And I think we had about 2,000 people there. PM: Yes, it was huge. LG: It’s considered the largest crowd to see a women’s basketball game nationally. And I think we only won by – PM: Two points. LG: -- two points. It was really a close game. And my favorite memory of that game now is when there was a crucial time we scored a basket, it’s coming down to the wire, and all the way across the gym, this male student who’s up about three or four rows jumps out of the stands cheering, and I thought, We’ve arrived! And we didn’t play any more games in the little, the girls’ gym. But we had to play in the afternoons so we didn’t interfere with the men, and then eventually, you know, things evened out. But it took a while. I have to hand it to Boyde and Chuck, I think they came around to it gnashing their teeth. I remember Chuck Randall saying to me, What must I do to keep you in the girls’ gym? I said, Well I need glass backboards. I need a clock. And that was for -- but I said, But that’s for practice only. (Laughter.) LG: And we did get those things. But I said, We’re still playing in the big gym. PM: So now, Western because of that, they’re going to New York. And one of the teams that we played there after our first, we win the first round, is Immaculata. LG: Right. PM: Immaculata was the first “Tennessee.” I mean, it was like “the” – LG: Yep. They were the -- well I think they won three straight national championships – PM: Right. They’d won one the year before. LG: -- under Cathy Rush, the coach. And there’s a great movie out called The Mighty Macs about their story. It was only a 16-team tournament. So we’re in the round of 8, and we have to play Immaculata. And the nuns of Immaculata would come to the games with their pans and wooden spoons and beat on it the whole time. And that is when, after that is when the NCAA outlawed -- (Laughter.) 7 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LG: -- when we became NCAA, they outlawed noise makers at games, because it was really deafening. But that was a leading reason, I think. PM: Immaculata went on to win the national title after that. That was their second one. But they only won by seven points over Western. LG: Right. We gave them a battle. PM: Yes. LG: They were good, though. PM: So now, if you could talk a little bit about the caliber of competition that you had that you were facing during your early years at Western. I mean, you’re talking about the top schools in the Pacific Northwest. LG: Yes, at that time, we were in AIAW. The women when we finally -- we got ourselves organized and we formed the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, because the NCAA and NAIA didn’t want any part of us. So we formed our own association, which in retrospect it’s too bad it went away, because it had a lot of good things about it that, you know, the stress on education first, some of the eligibility rules. I thought it was very forward thinking. Well, we all played then in the AIAW, and so that meant in the Northwest, we kind of -- and I think we were in a conference. I’m trying to remember. But we would play, you know, U of W, WSU, Oregon, Oregon State, Boise State, Idaho, and we were in that league more -- we didn’t play the small schools. The smaller schools, the PLUs, those, they were in their own conference, the religious school conference I think. PM: Right, Northwest Conference. LG: Yes. And so, we were in -- we played the major institutions. And then when the men realized that, and I’ve always thought that the -- I mean, we were growing, we were getting stronger, and I think it was one of those, if we don’t take them in -- Let’s take them in, then we can control them, rather than let them be on their own, because we don’t know what will happen. And so then, they enticed primarily the big schools, the WSUs, the UWs, across the country to go into the NCAA. And they offered them monies to do it, and those programs left the AIAW. And when that happened, that spelled the demise of the AIAW for all of us. And because our men were aligned with the NAIA, it made sense for us to then also align with the NAIA, and that’s what we did. And then eventually, you know, when I was the athletic director, we moved all of our programs to the NCAA Division II. And I think that was a good decision because I think the NC2A (NCAA) does have more money because of television and all the rest that they have going for them. I mean, men’s basketball television revenue funds everything. And it allowed us to, I think, flourish better, and it’s ended up well. I think we have a big conference now. 8 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PM: Can you just kind of state your philosophy of coaching, when you were the women’s basketball coach at Western? LG: Well, hmm, that’s a hard one I think. I think I expected my athletes to work really hard, to give it their all; and if we won, great; if we lost, okay, there’s another game. And, you know, you don’t look back, you just learn from it and move forward. And I think I would, I don’t think, I might have pushed players. I don’t think I was ever demeaning. I don’t believe in being demeaned but being positive. I learned early on in teaching that if you -- we call it coaching, “Tamara, you need to, when you’re dribbling the ball, you need to push the ball a little harder to one side,” or something, and some players would go, “She’s picking on me,” and they would never hear that. So, I soon developed to where I would say, “Tamara, that was a great pass. But on your dribble, if you could...,” and then kind of open their ears a little bit. So, I don’t know. And you know, I love the competition. I love being able to pit myself against the strategy of the game and being able to see if we can out think the other team. I don’t know if that answered your question. PM: No, it does. You won 20 games -- let’s see. You didn’t have a losing season in 19 years. You went to the post-season 18 times out of that. You had 13 20-win seasons that’s even a little discombobulating, the fact that you had to basically get to the post-season just to get 20 games. LG: Yes, right. You know, my goal when I started at Western -- Prior to the year that I start in 1971, the team had only played 8 games the previous year, so my first goal was to play 20 games, that was to me like the benchmark, and that we should play at least 20. And that’s why we had to play sometimes 2 a day to get that 20 in. But it’s like you said, I mean, we were 19-1 that second season, so it’s not a 20-win season, but 19-1 isn’t too bad, so. PM: Yes, that percentages isn’t too bad. Were there any particular teams that kind of -- I know that through 19 years and all of them pretty successful, or very successful. But were there any teams that kind of you think about or moments or national, get in the nationals or – LG: You know, somebody asked me that question, so I have thought about it, and I think there are three. There’s the team that won 30-some games, and that was just an incredible year. I mean, to get to 30 wins, and I don’t know what we ended up. Was it 30 or 31, or something? PM: That was back in 1985 or – 1989. LG: Yes. The one with Anna Rabel, yes. PM: That would be 1989. LG: And that was a really spectacular year. 9 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Then there’s the year that -- when Carmen played and we beat Gonzaga in the regionals here. And I’ll never forget that game. It was really back and forth. I remember Carmen -- there was a tie ball, and then we used to jump the tie balls. We take a timeout, and I said, First of all, we’ve got to get the tip. We were down, I think by, what, two points? One point? We have to control the tip. And then we set up this play for Lynda Dart. And Carmen said -- I said, Carmen, you’ve got to get the tip. She goes, I will get the tip. And I think she might have even held [that other player] (inaudible, laughter). We got the tip, Lynda Dart scores, and we win. And remember, there were still some seconds left, and my bench just, and my assistant coach, Linda [Hopper rushed the court, like, ahh... And I know I was like, game face on, grabbing her, Get back, there’s still seconds left. Because, you know, we still had to keep them from scoring. And so it was like, I don’t know how long afterwards. They were making the presentation. I still am like, we could have lost that game because you rushed the court. And I remember Anne Cooper was standing next to me, our team captain. She goes, Coach, we won, you can smile now. (Laughter.) LG: And then the other one was the year that Cheryl Boxx and Lori deKubber and that group played. And we weren’t very good in the beginning, and I thought, this is going to be a hard year. And they just worked so hard and got better and better. And we ended up going to Lewiston, Lewis-Clark to play, and we won. And then we had to go to Great Falls, and we won. And then we had to come back to Seattle to do the Final Four, and we stopped, and we’re driving, you know, two or three cars, because they didn’t do busses then. So we stopped in Spokane to practice at Eastern, and I’m thinking, How did this team get here? But I’m giving this talk like, You’ve got to believe. You know, we’re playing Idaho, who was really good. And I said, We can do it. You’ve just got to believe. And whatever it was. And Cheryl Boxx, I remember, that she walks up to me and goes, Coach, I believe. And, you know, we almost won that game. Lori deKubber made a shot and they ruled that it went off after the clock and we lost. PM: Oh wow. TB: Oh. LG: And you know, that was just an amazing year, so. But, you know, they all had their own story to tell. Every season has a story to tell. PM: I think some people, they think of women’s basketball as not being physical, but I just, I remember -- you might want to tell some stories about the Gonzagas and the rivalry that we had for a while. LG: Yes, we had a huge rivalry with Gonzaga because we were the two best teams. And they had a couple players on their team that were really mouthy. But I remember when we played them here, the one player, she always would get technicals in a game. And I remember we had a student hold up a sign that said, So-and-so, your technical average is better than your GPA. (Laughter.) LG: But only at Western, you know, it’s kind of like -- So we did our part to incite that too. And we’re over there, and we -- I can’t remember, even, if we won. I think we won. And that’s when Boyde was the athletic director. He was over there. And the baseball team would sit along the sidelines and just harass our team. And I remember one time, Lori deKubber is taking the ball out of bounds, and this guy, 10 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED a baseball player, reaches up and grabs her shorts and pulls her shorts down. And she took her hand, put one hand on the ball, took the other hand and knocked his hand off her butt, and the official gives her a technical foul. And I can remember just losing it, and I remember going toward that official with the thought, He’s a little guy, I’m going to pick him up (laughter) and I’m going to throw him across the court. And I remember my hands were like this and I’m like, take a breath. And I go, What kind of call was that? And he goes, I’ve got to protect the fans. I said, You should be protecting the players. But anyway, then after that game, they’re shaking hands, and suddenly these fans rush the court and start getting in a fight. I think it happened with two of our players exchanging, or our player and their player. Somebody threw a punch, and it’s like emptying -- I was getting my stuff on the bench with my back [to the floor], and all of a sudden I see this body slide across the floor. And I remember thinking what the heck, and Boyde was rushing out. It was just a mess. We don’t have to play them anymore, I think technically. PM: Yes. So now you’re going to make the transition from coach to AD. Any thoughts about that time? LG: Well you know, that was an interesting time. I loved coaching. I didn’t have thoughts about becoming an athletic director. Boyde resigned. And the president then, G. Robert Ross, who I knew. I mean, we used to play tennis together. He calls me, he said, Would you apply for the job? I’m going to do an internal search. And I go, I don’t want to be the AD. I don’t want to be, I mean, over men and women, no, I don’t want to be that, you know, pathfinder. I’ve done that. And I watched Margaret Aitken go through the stuff she had to go through. And I said, Why would I want to do that? You don’t pay me enough as a basketball coach. He goes, Well, I’ll pay you a little more. And I go, I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it. And so he convinced me, so I applied, then got the job. And I said, Well I’m not going to give up coaching, because I thought, if I don’t like what I’m doing, I can always go back to coaching. And so I did both for three years. But I was hired in May, and in November, Ross and Jeanne DeLille, and – TB: Cole. LG: -- Don Cole were killed in the plane wreck. And I really thought, I think I’m not going to do this because it was hard being a woman AD over both. There were very few of us in the country. And men weren’t very accepting of having a woman over their programs. And I thought, I can do it as long as you have the support of the president. I mean, that’s the most important person on campus, and as long as I had him, I felt comfortable. But when he died, I thought, maybe I should step back. And at his memorial, Betty Ross comes up to me and hugs me, and she’s hugging me and she goes, You do a good job. Bob had a lot of faith in you. So you make sure that you show them that he was right. And I’m thinking, Christ, now I got to do this. But I coached then for three years before I decided, okay, I could do it. Plus Carmen was my assistant then, and she was itching to become a head coach. And I wasn’t really ready to step down then because I had a good team. But I knew that if I didn’t step down, let her take the reins that we’d lose her, that she would go somewhere else as a head coach, because she was ready. 11 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED And that’s probably the best decision I ever made as an athletic director in hiring, because she’s proven to be just one of the best coaches in the country, if not the best coach. PM: Speaking of that, more often than not, I mean, like way more often than not, the coaches that you hired were coaches that had never been head coaches at the collegiate level. LG: I know. PM: That isn’t so much the question, but it’s just like, what were some of the things that you looked for in a coach when you made these hiring decisions. LG: You know, what’s really funny is I didn’t realize that until somebody listed out all the coaches that I had hired that hadn’t had head coaching experience. And you know at the time, even though that’s a factor, their experience is a factor, I mean, that’s something you take into consideration, but more important to me was what their philosophy was, how they were with people. And I think -- I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but I think one of my greatest strengths is being able to read people. I get a sense about a person, and so I listen to it. And that’s what I did in many of the hires. I just felt like they were the right fit for Western after talking with them, reading their letters, but really, after meeting with them and talking to them. And it’s worked out okay. PM: Yes, more than okay. The move from the NAIA to NCAA Division II, we were in a tough spot with the NAIA with football and that type of different situation, but what kind of happened during that time to kind of push that – LG: Yes, you know, like I said, the NAIA was losing its prestige, but then one of the major issues was in football we were aligned with schools in the private sector, Linfield, PLU, Pacific, Lewis-Clark, and they opted to go NCAA Division III. And I remember meeting with them and said -- and they didn’t want to have Western or Central or any of us in there. And so I met with them and said, If we went Division III, would you play us, would you put us in your football conference? And they said no. And there was no cajoling on that. In fact, Eastern Oregon worked for years to try to get them to take them in, and they just were not going to have any part of a public institution in their conference. So then we had to look. Did we want to stay and try to be independent in football? Or did we want to look at going NCAA ourselves? Then at that time, I think Seattle Pacific was NCAA, maybe Billings, and so I did a lot of -- and Karen Morse helped a lot in talking to presidents. I talked with ADs about getting a conference together of Division II schools. And we started with the Hawaii’s with us, and then had to break that apart. But we really didn’t have a choice, I didn’t think, and joining NCAA was a good fit for us, at Division II. And competitively it was a good fit. So you know, it did cost us a little more money than the NAIA because of somethings, but I think in the long run it’s worked out really well. PM: Back in 1989, you made the decision to hire Rob Smith, and that was a tough situation because you’re the woman AD and making decisions about football, and your thoughts about the program at that time and what would eventually happen. 12 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LG: Well, prior to that I fired the football coach, which was like, How could a woman [fire a football coach]? You know, it was interesting because Ross and I had that discussion about the football program and whether that coach would continue, and we both agreed to give him another year and then make that decision, but probably he was done. So I made it anyway. And Al Froderberg was the acting president -- no, actually Mortimer came in. PM: Right. LG: And I know Mortimer used to tease me about -- one of the first things that happened when he took the presidency is I fired the football coach. And there was an uproar, and then Rob was an assistant in our program, and I just thought he was a great fit for us, and he was. I mean, he turned out to be just an awesome football coach. PM: And the best years ever -LG: Yes. And then he decided to hang it up, and now he’s back coaching. And then we hired Robin Ross, and then we eventually had to drop the program because of the state cutting our budget tremendously. PM: I remember you at the time saying either we are going to do well in it, or … (Laughter.) LG: Well I felt like it. PM: And he did. LG: Yes, I think football is -- you know, at the big schools it’s the goose that lays the golden egg. All their money comes from football, TV, gate and so on. That’s not the case at our level. Most of our budget goes to support football. But if you’re good at it, then it helps every program be successful, because an interesting thing with people, and I still hear it in the community, if football and men’s basketball are doing well, then the whole program must be good. They don’t think about the soccer and the women’s programs or anything else. It’s always those two. And football was really terrible for a long time at our institution, and it drug the full program down, you know, trying to get donations, trying to get things funded. People would only look at that and just think it’s not worth it. But then, the hiring of Rob and getting some more resources in that program, we became very good, and it helped everybody. PM: Seven national titles in women’s rowing, one in softball while we were in the NAIA, and then the men’s basketball, I mean, (inaudible, pretty amazing things. LG: Yeah, honestly I’m so proud of those national championships. It’s so hard to win a national championship in any sport, to accomplish that is just a real testament to the athletes and the coaches and our program. And you know, we’ve had volleyball’s been a runner up a couple, I mean, right there at the door, and now women’s soccer winning. I mean, it’s just a great testament to the program, I think, and you hold on to those. And we’ve had a lot of individual national champions in track and field. 13 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED But it’s a hard thing to do, and it’s especially hard in a team sport like men’s basketball. That was a special time. PM: As an AD, there were so many things that we would do just to say, you know, we’re going to do this. And you know, it might be Viking night, or it might be some kind of a fundraiser, or it might be different things. What are some of the things that you thought were some of the main accomplishments that you [were involved in]? LG: Well I think – PM: Other than the national championships. LG: I think a couple. I think I was really instrumental in the state funding tuition waivers for women athletes, which boded well for all of our programs. You know, I served on a committee, a state committee that met with the legislature, and we put a lot of pressure on it. And in 1989, that came to fruition. And that opened the door for scholarships, which we had been lacking. And then I think with that, it really -- coupled with that but also aside, I recognized that we really needed to -- you know, you’re not going to get the money from the state or the institution, you are going to have to do it for yourself. So you’ve got to find a way to make some money to fund the program, because honestly what the state gives us and the institution can give us, isn’t enough. You have to fundraise. And prior to me becoming AD, we had zero dollars in scholarships monies or in the foundation. And I don’t know how many millions it’s up to, but it is in endowed scholarships, and plus the annual fundraisers that we do to help fund the program. I just think, you know, even the signage, the sign boards that we did was an opportunity to get marketing dollars in for our program. And that was huge. So, I would think that, I would count that as one of my major accomplishments, was to get us moving in that direction. PM: You never seemed to be afraid to try something. LG: No. You know, I don’t, and that’s silly, isn’t it? (Laughter.) I know. Well I talk to people, and you’re in counsel and coaches, and I just believe that sometimes you have to take risks to succeed. Sometimes your risks work and sometimes they don’t. But if you don’t ever try, you’ll never know, so you might as well put yourself out there and go for it. And within reason, I mean, you can’t bankrupt everything. But you know, we had some really good things, so I think a Battle in Seattle was a huge risk because we had to come up, you know, guarantee a lot of money, but that really ended up being a great, great thing for us. PM: Just, your philosophy of life? 14 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LG: Well, I’m the eternal optimist, as you know, Paul. I always see the glass half full and always live for today. And I think about tomorrow. I don’t worry about yesterday. And I just, the sun’s always shining for me. And I’d rather live that way than the other. I don’t hold grudges, and I don’t want to be bitter about anything, because all that does is make me, you know, bitter. So I know I’m probably sometimes overly rosy-filled glasses, but it’s okay. PM: Better than the other way. LG: Yes. PM: Looking back would you ever have thought like that you would be a Golden Viking? LG: That’s amazing, isn’t it? I know it. I went to my 50-year reunion in high school a few years ago, and I’m like, 50 years and they all look so old. (Laughter.) LG: And yes, I’m a Golden Viking plus one. PM: Yes, that’s amazing. What are some of the things that you like to do, like, not just now, but I mean throughout your time at Western as a coach and as an AD, some of the things you liked to do away from -- just, I thought one of the neat things about you is the fact that you actually had a life. You actually made sure that you still had a life. LG: And you know, I preach that to our staff too, coaches, you, everybody: Make sure that you have balance in your life, because I think that’s really important. If you put all your eggs in that basket, you know, it’s not healthy, and so you have to have balance. Early on, I played a lot of golf. I loved golf. I liked competitive golf. And then I became the AD, and that kind of went by the wayside because I didn’t have enough, as much time. And golf is a time consuming sport. I’ve always loved gardening. And you know, my house I think I’ve been through three remodels, and the gardens are always changing things there. But you know, that gives me a lot of pleasure. Actually, I’m really glad I have that. I have five acres, and it allows me that to do in my retirement. You know, I’d hate to think about retiring and not having a hobby or anything to go to. And I like activities. I like to exercise, so I try to make that a part of every day. I like to read. I like to do crossword puzzles, as you know. I’m into jigsaw puzzles now. And once in a while, I play a little blackjack. (Laughter.) LG: It’s that gambling thing. 15 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: I had a couple more, just a little bit, talk about again, like your relationships with presidents. You talked about how important Ross was. Can you talk a little bit about how your relationships with the other presidents, how important? Because you and Morse especially – LG: Well, my first president after Ross was Mortimer, and at that time the AD reported to the president, and then he moved me to the vice president, to Saunie Taylor. But that wasn’t, I didn’t take it as a slight. He moved other people that had been reporting to the president that way. And I probably had less to do with him after I moved reportage than others. Then Karen Morse became president and we had her for for fifteen years. And she and her husband really loved athletics, so that was great for us because she came to games, you know, went on the road, and was just -- became a good friend. And you know, I cherished that. And then we had Bruce, who I just think was really a great president. I really respect him. Totally different personality than Karen, but really a good man. I will always be thankful to him for when we faced the challenge of dropping football, how he handled it. He stood up and said, This is my decision. And he took the brunt of it. I mean, I got my share of nasty emails, but he took the brunt of it. And you know, I’ve seen other institutions where the presidents weren’t so giving. They kind of threw the AD under the bus, and he never did that. And I always admired that in him. And then, he was my last one. TB: What about, you know, you mentioned you used to play tennis with Ross, was that -- I guess I’m trying to get at, is there a kind of a political, or was it strictly just playing tennis or – LG: Yes, because he was a tennis player, and I had played tennis at the time. I used to play tennis at the tennis club all the time. And so he found out I played tennis, and he liked to play once in a while, and so he would arrange some double matches. I can remember one where Irwin LeCocq was on the board of trustees, and he was playing with Ann Heaps, who was in our Counseling Center, and Ross and I, we would play them. And Irwin was a smartass, and he was giving us the worst time. And I went back to serve, and Ross walked back with me, which is unusual in tennis because usually your partner stays up. And I said, What are you doing back here? And he goes, You know what’s worse than playing with a board of trustee member? No, I don’t know. He goes, One that’s a smartass. (Laughter.) LG: I’ll never forget that. And then, one time he had to really run to get a ball that was over, and he finally got there and lobbed it back, and he goes, Well it took me a while, but I did get there. And he was a big man, so he was fun. TB: Well, is there anything else that, especially Paul, but that we haven’t asked you that you think is an important part of your story here at Western? LG: I can’t think of anything. You guys asked a lot of questions. You covered it from the beginning to the end almost. 16 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PM: (Inaudible.) You talked about your mentors, I mean, like Dr .Aitken and Kilby, and I guess the only thing that we didn’t bring up was how Dr. Ames, who was the basketball coach, one of the basketball coaches when Lynda was there, would take Lynda out of the game because of the look on her face. LG: She did that once. (Laughter.) Yes, I was very intense. I used to design plays, even then. I’d say, you know -- and I didn’t even know what they were called. PM: Wow. LG: Because I hadn’t been taught. But I’d basically design give and goes, and pick and rolls. And I’d say I think we can score on this, and I’d show them to her. And we’d practice it and do it. (Laughter.) TB: I did have one more question though that we will keep in, maybe. I mean, it’s just that I appreciate the fact that you continued to stay. I mean, you’re at all the games and stuff like that. Actually both of you are. But I mean, how’s that when you’re -- is it nicer to go because you don’t have any obligation, or is it sometimes you think, oh come on? LG: No, I sit there and go, go to zone, do this, put in so and so. But then when the game’s over, it’s over for me. But you know, I was that way anyway, so. I really enjoy going, but it’s nice that I don’t have to get there until game time, and I can leave right after the game. Because Paul will tell you, that wasn’t the case when you’re working. You know, on game nights you’re there a long time, Paul much longer than the rest of us, yes. PM: Amen. Yes, before and after. TB: Well terrific! Well thank you both very much. This was really awesome. LG: Thank you. TB: So thank you. 17 Lynda Goodrich Edited Transcript – March 16, 2017 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Nancy (Beebe) Ervine interview--October 4, 2016
Date: 2016-10-04
Description: Nancy Beebe Ervine first attended Western in the Fall 1966 completing her degree in 1974. Following graduation she held various teaching positions in rural Alaska before settling in Anchorage, Alaska.
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_Ervine_Nancy_20161004
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Nancy Ervine ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" c
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Nancy Ervine 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. TB: Today is Tuesday, October 4, 2016, and I am here with Nancy Beebe Ervine, who is an alumna of Western. And our first question is: Why did you choose to come to Western? NE: I really don’t know, except that my parents are both college graduates and they expected their kids to go to college, and the time came and somebody said, you ought to look at Western. And we drove up here one day and drove around, and went home and applied, and sure enough this was where I wound up. That’s really all I know. I was very quiet and shy and terrified of doing most anything. TB: And so, I think you came up just with your parents, correct? NE: Yes. TB: Now, they do a lot of different summer starts and different programs to have students see campus ahead of time. NE: I had no high school counselor. He died my freshman year, and they never replaced him. They probably have now, but not during my high school years. I had no counseling, no nothing. TB: And where did you go to high school? NE: Vashon Island High School. TB: Okay. And so what were your dates of attendance at Western? NE: I started in the fall of 1966, and I went through spring of 1970, I believe, and Gene and I got married in 1970, the summer of 1970. I got sick, it seems, and I didn’t come back for a couple of quarters, and then I finished I think in 1971. TB: What degrees or certificates did you receive from Western? NE: I got a teaching certificate and a degree in elementary education. 1 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: So everything you did was in education. NE: No. TB: Okay. NE: I was very interested in math and science and art, and I had in my head I wanted to be an architect. I knew nothing about how to become an architect or where to go, and why my parents didn’t encourage me to find out any of that, I do not know. It’s a sadness in my life. But I came here as a math major, and I had in high school I’d taken advanced math and science. I took physics, a couple years of physics in high school, and placed high on the entrance exams, which put me with upper division boys in my math and physics classes, and I couldn’t handle it. I had a -- my first advisor here was in the math department, and the one time I ever spoke to him, he said, Girls don’t make good math majors. So by the end of my freshman year, I thought, I’m not going to do that anymore. And so I kind of thrashed around, took a bunch of different things, took some of the requirements. They used to have a seven credit requirement, I can’t remember what it was called, humanities [Gen Ed], maybe? TB: [Oh, okay]. NE: And I didn’t take that my freshman year. It would have been probably different if I had. I took it sophomore or junior year, and that kind of opened a few new avenues for me. I liked art, took some art. By the time it was time to graduate, the fastest thing I could do was graduate in art education, so I did, student taught in high school art. TB: And where did you do that at? NE: That was in Deming. TB: Oh, okay. NE: With a Western, I believe he was a Western alum, Gary Sirguy was the art teacher there. And I really struggled. I wasn’t much older than the high school kids. I was too shy. But at least I was a graduate by then. TB: So you graduated and then you went and student taught? NE: No, I student taught -- I think I student taught spring quarter of 1970, and I didn’t graduate until a couple of quarters later. TB: Okay. So have you received any other degrees anywhere else? NE: I worked on my Master of Education in Alaska, at the University of Alaska. TB: At Anchorage, then? NE: Anchorage. 2 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: And then what was your first job after leaving Western? And any distinctive memories of this experience? NE: Well I should say that I realized that I couldn’t teach high school, and I had done enough with elementary students to realize I really loved them, and I wanted to teach elementary. Gene and I came back to school in 1974, and I got my elementary certificate then and student taught in elementary in Sedro Woolley, in fifth grade. So 1974 I finished my -- I took, I think, just one quarter of classes. I must have been almost there when I graduated originally. And student taught, and it was then that I saw -- I was walking through Miller Hall one day, and I saw a little notice on the wall on a 3x5 card, typed: We need a teacher in a one-room school in a logging camp 50 air miles north of Sitka. And it told where to write, and I wrote. I went home, showed Gene this notice. I was just finishing up my student teaching. And he said, Oh, I’ll help you apply. So he did. I mailed off my application. Ten days later I got a telegram. TB: Wow! NE: Offering me a job, for $11,000 a year. TB: Wow. NE: And I thought that was all the money in the world. I’d be making more than the students who were graduating and teaching in Whatcom County. So that was my first job after finishing my elementary certificate. TB: Okay. And then I assume that you and Gene went up there together. NE: We did. We went up together. He was very reluctant to. He had a close family in Mount Vernon, and even though he had helped me apply, he -- I guess he didn’t expect me to get it (laughter). But, we did go up together, and he worked in the logging camp. I taught 23 students in Kindergarten through eighth grade, supervised high school kids in the evenings on their correspondence studies. And did that for two years. TB: Awesome. And then where did you go? NE: Then we went to Sitka, and I taught in Sitka for six years, I taught third grade. And the year before - well during my fifth year, I had a little girl, and I wanted to quit teaching and stay home. After six years, then Gene was working full time with the National Park Service, and I was able to stay home. We moved to Skagway, where his job was. TB: Nice. NE: Undoubtedly you’ve been there. TB: Yes; and so did you not teach again or work outside the home again? NE: I did work outside the home again. I took fourteen years off, and then we wound up in Anchorage, and I went back to -- I started substituting. I’d let my certificate lapse, which is a really dumb thing to do, 3 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED so I had to go back to school, which I did. It was good because the education community at that time had a different philosophy. Everything was cooperative education, which fascinated me. All these new cooperative models for teaching and learning was very interesting to me. I subbed for a little while. My daughter, who was in about the third grade when I started subbing, said to me the first day I went out to substitute teach in a Kindergarten class, Mom, don’t show fear. They can sense it. TB: Wisdom from your daughter. NE: Yes. She’s a very wise young lady. TB: Nice, nice. So did you keep substituting, or did you start getting a regular class? NE: I substituted for a while. I was very interested in the Anchorage school district because it was so diverse. Here’s a little factoid -- of the twenty most diverse elementary schools in the country, the top nineteen are in Anchorage. TB: Wow, wow. So, what composes their diversity? NE: Well, there is a definition. To be considered diverse, they have to have so many different cultures or native groups of people in them, so many different languages, and a percentage of the total school population has to be considered diverse. I taught in a fifth and sixth grade up there, in a special program, and then I moved to the gifted program. I studied gifted education at that point. I had moved into the gifted program and taught in the most diverse schools in the gifted program in Anchorage, which was fascinating. TB: Nice. And then how long did you do that for? Until you retired or? NE: I did that until I retired, which I ended up retiring early because I developed a muscle problem and I could not -- I couldn’t do it, great big buildings. But I didn’t want to retire. I loved it. TB: Nice. Now we’ll come back to your experiences at Western. So, where did you live, at home, in a dorm, with a local family? Any favorite memories? Looking up in the directories for the time, I know that you lived in Sigma? NE: I started out in Sigma, as a freshman, and I liked Sigma. Like I said, I was very quiet. I did not make many friends. TB: Because wasn’t 504 called the penthouse? NE: Yes. TB: I lived in Sigma, too. We had the pit and the penthouse, right? Because that’s one dorm that spans five floors. NE: Yes. And the first is way down in the pit, yes. I was there when a student from Juneau set the dorm on fire. 4 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Ooh, tell me more. NE: Well, I don’t know much about it, but I do know the fire engines came and we had to get out of the building. But she threw a match in a, apparently intentionally, in a waste basket and set the curtain on fire. But the building is cement, and it did a little damage, [so] we were able to move right back in. TB: Oh, okay. NE: I started out on the third floor and convinced my parents that I needed to move to the fifth floor. TB: Because those were all single rooms, right? NE: The fifth floor had five single rooms in it, yes. A guy that was in one of my physics classes had lived in Sigma when it was a men’s dorm, and he told me where to look in the dorm where he had punched a hole in the wall. It had been covered by a blank switch plate. He covered it, but he said he left a little note inside. So I found this little note inside, and put it back in, screwed it back on. TB: Oh, a secret. So that’s on the fifth floor? NE: That was on the fifth floor. TB: Okay. And then, so you lived in Sigma for two years? NE: I think I moved maybe my sophomore year? TB: Okay. NE: I can’t really remember. Toward the end of my sophomore year, I moved into an apartment on 23rd Street, directly across from the Burns’ little cabin off there in the woods. TB: Oh sure, yes. NE: And I knew about the Burns because my sister was living on Waldron Island at the time. So I lived directly across from that. It was a two-story, old house there. My roommate and I had the top floor. TB: And that was probably before they put in College Drive or something. Would that be right? NE: They didn’t call it College Drive. TB: [Maybe] they called it 23rd then or something. NE: There’s 21st and 23rd. Oh, I know. My first home off campus was in the old Quaker meeting hall. TB: Which was? NE: On 21st Street, in an old white house just immediately below campus, where campus was at the time. Howard Harris, a sociology professor and his wife [Rosemary}, they owned the building, they 5 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED called it the Center for Learning [Ed. Note: 438 21st Street]. They had a little school there. And I helped out in the school, and I lived upstairs in their building. TB: Okay. Did you do any babysitting for them? They had quite a few children. NE: They had six children. Their children were all in the school. I did not babysit. Their kids came every day to school there, and I helped out in the school. I taught math and art, and I was taught about how math and art are integrated. That fascinated me. TB: Are you skilled at music? Because music fits in there oftentimes too. NE: No. TB: Okay. So who were your favorite or most influential teachers, and why? NE: My teacher I remember the most was my math education teacher, who just opened my eyes to teaching math through projects, and she’d written the textbook we used. And her last name was Kelley, I believe. Margaret Kelley? Something Kelley. [Ed. Note: Sara Jeanne Kelley]. TB: Okay. NE: The book was called Math activities for young children. I’m sure I still have the book. TB: So that was kind of a good experience since you had a real heart for math, to then have a positive experience, having your freshman year not having been so positive. NE: I think that yes, yes, absolutely, and I realized at that point that I wanted to be an elementary teacher. And I tried to take more classes like that, but I couldn’t find them. TB: And do you have any other favorite or influential teachers? NE: Oh golly, I hate to say, I can’t remember. I do remember some of my art teachers. TB: Go for it. NE: Mr. [Dahlen] did a sculpture class, and I did very mathematical, precise sculptures. That was kind of fun. TB: Did you have Ms. Kelsey, Ruth Kelsey? She would have been drawing. I think Hazel Breakey was probably was retired by then. NE: I took weaving from Mary McIntyre. Wonderful teacher, I really liked her. And that encouraged me to get a loom and a spinning wheel which I recently sold. I kind of felt like I was on my own a lot. TB: So my next question is: What was your main course of study? And it would have been elementary education, art, a little bit of math education too? 6 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED NE: Mm-hmm. TB: Okay. Try to get a little bit more, I think we’ve kind of got this, but what classes did you like the best or learn the most from? NE: Well I probably learned the most from elementary reading because I had no idea how to teach reading, and that was one of the classes I came back and took in 1974. TB: So who did you have for that? Did you have Dr. Mork? I’m not sure if that’s what he did. NE: Boy, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I just – TB: It’s just fine. What extracurricular activities did you enjoy the most? NE: Sailing. TB: Nice! So did you take a sailing class at Western, or just because you’re from Vashon Island – NE: I grew up sailing. We always had sailboats. I’d sailed a lot. And that was one area where I as a freshman, I was willing to seek out the sailing club. Sailing is very mathematical. I did a lot of sailing out at the lake, Lake Whatcom, the Lakewood property. I raced. TB: Okay. Is that on the International 420s? Or was there an earlier version? NE: No we had Penguins. And at that point, I was a crew member because the only skippers were males, so I crewed and the guys liked me as a crew member because I was very cool and precise. TB: And so that was out at the lake or? NE: Out at the lake. And we raced. We went to Vancouver and raced. We raced on Lake Washington, Puget Sound, Tacoma, wherever the team needed to go. TB: And so that was a coed team? NE: That was a coed team. TB: Okay. Now did you ever race on Bellingham Bay? Any of the Wednesday night series or Thursday night? NE: No. TB: So do you have any other special memories of the sailing, like where else that you might’ve went that were really cool or? NE: Sailing, going with the sailing team up to Vancouver was really fun. We capsized once on Lake Whatcom. The skipper was John Clark, and he was at the helm when we capsized. He always liked me because he said I was so cool, cool under pressure. 7 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Well, you would’ve been really confident having grown up on a boat, like, or down on Vashon. NE: That was one of the few things I was confident about. TB: Interesting. NE: I also skied. I don’t know if the school had a ski team or not. TB: It probably did. I would think so. NE: But I went up to Mt. Baker and skied. I wanted to teach up there. Franz Goebel ran the ski school. He said I didn’t fit the image of a ski instructor. TB: Were they all men? NE: Mostly, but they were very flashy too, and I wasn’t flashy at all, and I had my old wool baggy pants I wore, and my old parka, and I think that he sold equipment too. TB: Oh, and you weren’t buying it. NE: I wasn’t buying it (laughter). TB: That’s kind of cute. Well I have to ask this, so how did you meet Gene? NE: Well, Phil -- Dr. Kennedy out there, was dating a roommate of mine when I lived on 23rd, across from Fairhaven. My roommate was Phyllis. She had also been in Sigma, and we wound up in this little apartment together, I think my junior year. Gene had started out at Whitworth, and he was transferring over here. Gene’s very good friend, Dale Zeretzke, was going to school here, and he knew Phil because he was in the dorm with Phil, and Phil played the pipes, and Gene loved bagpipes. So Dale would take Phil home, I guess, he lived in Mount Vernon also, and took them up to the Ervine place, which was up in the hills. Gene grew up in just a little house up there without electricity or indoor plumbing when he was young. Phil would go up there and play his pipes for Gene’s dad, who was Canadian and loved the pipes. And Phil said to Phyllis, Well, my friend Gene Ervine, who’s kind of a weird guy, is coming here next year and, Phyllis, I want you and Nancy to look in on him and make sure he’s okay. And Phyllis said, Okay, okay, okay. So Gene’s first day on campus was a couple of days before classes started. So Phyllis and I were walking across campus, across Red Square. We were going into the library, and here comes this tall, string bean of a guy coming out of the library, and we met on the steps of the Mabel Zoe Wilson Library. And Phyllis said, Oh there’s that guy we’re supposed to look after. So she introduced me to Gene, and she said to Gene, Well we’ll have to invite you over for dinner someday. So we talked for a minute, and 8 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Phyllis and I walked on and Gene went on his way. And I said, Hey, Phyllis, when are you going to invite him over (laughter)? And she said, Oh, Nancy, don’t be silly, I’m not going to, that’s just something you say to be polite. And I’ve never forgotten that because I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that was one of those greetings, you know, kind of an elevator type greeting. Anyway, I bugged her enough that finally she said, Okay, I’ll invite him over. So she did. He came over and read poetry, and we hit it off, so spent time together. The rest is history, two years later we were married, that was 46 years ago. TB: Nice, nice. Wow, nice. But you must have a real appreciation for poetry too. NE: Well, I learned to have an appreciation for it. My mother was also an English major and is a writer, and my dad had an appreciation for poetry and gave me a couple of nice poetry books when I was in high school. TB: Do you have any other outstanding memories of your college days? NE: I just remember feeling independent, and I spent a lot of time by myself. I walked a lot. I covered Bellingham on foot. I remember sitting and reading outside, and sitting in Red Square. I remember I could get a cup of coffee for five cents ($.05), or seven cents ($.07), and then ten cents ($.10) for a big cup, seven cents ($.07) for just a small ceramic cup, ten cents ($.10) for a mug. Does that sound right? TB: Could be. I didn’t drink coffee back in those days, but it seems to me I remember a pop being about ten cents, like a can of pop. I definitely when I was little bought a bottle of pop with a dime, so coffee is usually kind of close to pop, so. Is there anything else you want to say? I guess I’m fascinated about what life was like. Any other special memories you have of maybe of the logging camp life? I mean, that’s really interesting to me, having spent a summer up there. Is there anything else you can [add]? NE: Well, it was very interesting. It was interesting partly because I was the only person in camp who was not paid by the camp. So I had some independence from the rest of the crew, and I think that was kind of hard on Gene at times because he was the school teacher’s husband. He was not considered a logger. He was considered the school teacher’s husband, who happened to be logging. It was a real education for me in having so many kids of different ages. It was very difficult. I was not prepared at all. Not that it was Western’s fault. My teaching certificate, I guess, was Kindergarten through eighth grade, which they sure don’t do now. Now it’s divided more early childhood and intermediate on. But I learned a lot, learned a lot about life and a logging camp. And then in Sitka, I learned a lot about teaching. TB: One more quick question about the logging camp: Did you work the traditional September through June? Because in the wintertime, doesn’t the logging camp close down a lot and people leave? NE: Some camps more than others. Our camp did -- well, the first thing that happened was Gene’s father passed away after we’d been there two months, and we left camp and were gone a week or so. I was gone a week, I think, and I had to make up that time. There were no substitute teachers. So if I was sick, we would make it up. And we made up those days when his dad passed away by going to school on 9 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Saturdays. And usually I tried to make Saturday different. We’d go for a hike, although all the paranoid parents in camp made sure that I had somebody with me carrying a gun. TB: Oh, for the bears, yes. NE: And that was kind of fun, but different than I had ever expected. I think that first year we did go out a little later in the year. A bunch of kids left in the winter, but not all of them that first year, because it was a brand new camp and people would come up from Oregon to run the camp, and they brought their Oregon loggers with them, who had no place to go. They didn’t have homes elsewhere. However, I had a couple of kids who lived in the bunkhouse with their dads. TB: Wow. NE: And I remember one time, Gene and I were going into town, and we didn’t go very often. The weather was bad or we couldn’t fly or whatever. But it was sometime in the middle of winter, maybe January we were going in to get groceries or take a break, whatever. This father handed us a 20-dollar bill and said -- oh, he was on the plane with us with his little boy, who was one of my students – who said, You’re a teacher, you take care of Billy while we’re in town. I guess we were there for the weekend, and he was leaving town with his son for a while. He said, You take care of Billy. So he handed us $20 and said, He needs shoes and pants. So we went and bought Billy shoes and pants and fed him and went for walks, and then we gave him back to his dad. But that wasn’t unusual. Other times, the following year, a parent left camp, both parents left camp for two weeks and said, Can my kids stay with you? TB: Oh, wow. NE: There were two kids. I said, Sure. Well, when you live right there next to the school and all the families live right there too, it’s a very close community, and I got to know the kids quite well, got to know their parents quite well, which was a very tough environment for kids, very tough living, not just the environment but the home environment of loggers and the mothers who complained to each other all the time because there was no TV or radio reception. They didn’t care about radio, no TV reception, they missed their soap operas. The first year the camp, the school froze early in the year, by the end of October, and it didn’t thaw out until spring, so we had no bathrooms at school. And the kids, of course, immediately wanted to take advantage of that. I need to go to the bathroom, I need to go to the bathroom. That’s great, go home. That took care of itself really easily because those mothers didn’t want those kids coming in their house. And I knew that would take care of itself. After that, then it was just lunchtime or maybe an emergency, recess or something, they had to run [to] their house to use the bathroom. And I did the same. TB: You know, my summer, I just remember everybody would like have coffee at 9 am or 10 am or something. They were like always going to everybody’s trailer to have morning coffee, and yes, I think when I got there they were real interested in what was happening on some of the soap operas that I’d been watching when I came up there, and it was kind of cute. Anything else that I haven’t asked you that you would like to share? NE: One thing I’d like to share is that I’m very impressed, not just with Western, the teachers they’re turning out, but I think all teachers are coming out of college far better prepared than I ever was. I’ve had 10 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED student teachers from the University of Alaska in my room, and I am so impressed. I talked to some young people in the teacher’s program here, and they talk about the experience they get in the classroom and what they’re learning in their classes, and it is so much more than I ever learned. I had a teacher here named Bill Heid. An interesting guy. He lived out on Lummi Island. His -- I don’t know, I was going to say his sister was a good friend of mine. His wife? It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I took an education class from him, and we all went out to the lawn, I think right here in front of the arts building, and he said, Okay, we’re just going to sit in a big circle and get in touch with our feelings. That was an education class. TB: So did you enjoy that or? NE: Not particularly. It was – TB: You’re shy. NE: I was shy, and I didn’t think I needed to express my feelings (laughter). It seemed like a waste of time, and then we had to write about it or something. And that was pretty much the whole class. Well, I think they’re better prepared now. I think their student teaching experiences are a lot better. They take more time. In Alaska, they have to student teach in two different classes, two different age groups. So, I think that’s good. TB: Nice. If you don’t have anything else, I don’t have any more questions. I will say, Thank you. NE: Okay, well, thank you. 11 Nancy (Beebe) Ervine Edited Transcript – October 4, 2016 Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Sarah Clark-Langager interview--July 2016
Date: 2016-07
Description: Sarah Clark-Langager, director of the Western Gallery at Western Washington University, 1988-2014.
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_Clark-Langager_Sarah_2016
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Sarah Clark-Langager ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Sarah Clark-Langager 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 in two parts. The first on July 19, 2016 is with Sarah Clark-Langager and takes place at her home in Lynden, Washington. The interviewers are Barbara Miller, Professor of Art, and Hafthor Yngvason, Director of the Western Gallery. The second interview takes place in the Fine Arts building on the Western Washington University campus. The interviewers are Tamara Belts, Special Collections Manager, Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Barbara Miller, Hafthor Yngvason and Sharron Antholt, Professor Emerita of Art. SCL: I was teaching at North Texas University, outside of Dallas, and Craig and I decided that we wanted to get back to the Northwest. I was seriously thinking about leaving fairly soon, and I got a telephone call from Gene Vike who was the chair of the Art Department at that time. He asked me if I was interested in applying for a job at Western -- that they had built a new gallery, and that the job would involve not only running the gallery but obviously taking part in helping with the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. I already knew about the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. When I was in Seattle at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), I think the last time that I actually visited the sculpture collection was when the Contemporary Art Council actually had a symposium at Western. The Contemporary Art Council, of which Virginia Wright was a large part, was very much interested in the sculpture collection, and I distinctly remember looking at the di Suvero and being just absolutely awed by it. Finally, I began to remember some of the pieces that I had seen at that symposium. So I called Gene Vike back the next day and said, because of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection and because it is a new gallery, I’m very much interested in applying. So I applied. It’s interesting that Larry Hanson, who was Sebastian’s counterpart, was the person who represented the Art Department on the Art Acquisition Committee. And as you know at that time, the Art Acquisition Committee was really made up of a Dean, Richard Francis (professor in the English Department), Larry Hanson, and a couple of other people. So I came in 1988. I came for an interview, they offered me the job, and Larry Hanson was still in the sculpture department. BM: Was he curator to it? 1 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: Yes, he was the curator of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. That’s what they called him on the Art Acquisition Committee. BM: And so was there like a Western Gallery? Wasn’t it – SCL: The Western Gallery was in the [Fine Arts] building and it was up on the second floor. It occupied the space that now is the lecture room and the slide library, that’s where the Western Gallery was. BM: Oh, so 238 plus the slide library. Oh, okay. SCL: That’s where the Western Gallery originally was. Then downstairs where the gallery is, I would say part of the storage area of the gallery was part of the [Fine Arts] building, and that’s where, what they called Industrial Arts was. Industrial Arts went over to the [Ross Engineering Technology] Building (ET) when that was built. So the new part of the gallery was actually a little bit of the storage area and then the new exhibition space. So the Art Department when they realized that finally Industrial Arts was going to be in this new building, they definitely put on a campaign to get a new gallery space to add to the Fine Arts building. That was in 1988, and the gallery was just being finished when I got there. I mean, they were still doing construction. I came in the fall, and we did not have the first exhibition until January of 1989. But getting back to Larry Hanson, what’s interesting about him was that he was part of the Seattle-King County Arts Commission’s Earthworks Symposium (1979). So he had a connection to people like Nancy Holt and Robert Morris, because he essentially met up with them again at the Earthworks Symposium. Both Morris and Holt had already done their works at Western in the 1970s. HY: Was that in 1987? SCL: In 1987 was the earthworks symposium. [WWU’s Site Specific Symposium, organized by Larry Hanson, with artists: Aycock, Trakas and McCafferty]. SCL: Anyway, the Seattle Earthworks Symposium decided that there had to be at least one representative from the Northwest and Larry Hanson was chosen to be the representative. So that put him in the spotlight in the Earthworks Symposium, and certainly put a spotlight again on the sculpture that was at Western. So when I came in 1988, Larry was there to assist me to, you know, about the sculpture collection, etc., but he bowed out and let me take on the responsibility. But he was always a very good colleague, very much so. Anyway, so when I arrived, I knew that I was responsible for exhibitions in the gallery, and I was responsible for the Outdoor Sculpture Collection, but there was no history whatsoever written about what exhibitions had actually occurred in the gallery. There was nothing on the portable collections. The only information on the Outdoor Sculpture Collection was in the Art Acquisition Committee minutes that Richard Francis, thank god, had kept very diligent notes on. So I put the interns to work, and I made them read all the newspapers, anything in the library that told about what had been happening at the university. They gradually made a long list of all the exhibitions they could find that had occurred since the 1930s. So I then had a sense of what, you know, the gallery had done and what the gallery had not done. 2 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: So Western Gallery started in the 1930s? SCL: I would say [1938], something like that. BM: I had no idea it had that history. SCL: It was first called the Studio Gallery. There’s a brochure on Helen Loggie that the Western Gallery did, and the introduction tells basically the history of the gallery. Anyway, Helen Loggie, the famous Bellingham printmaker, was extremely helpful in helping with the gallery in terms of exhibitions. So there is a file, Hafthor, somewhere in your office that says “history gallery,” and there should be a long list there of all of the exhibitions that ever occurred. HY: I found it. SCL: Yes. So that gave me a sense of what I didn’t want to repeat and what I wanted to do. Then in terms of the collection, the storage area was jam packed with student work that was leftover from exhibitions, and nobody knew what to do with it (or leftover in the halls), and they all said, just put it in the Western Gallery. So what I did was I went to the archives and I went to the Art Department boxes, and I went through every scrap of paper I could find, trying to find a sales slip or something that would give me a clue really as to what was a part of the collection or where it had come from. So I gradually began to weed out the student art that was leftover and what really was supposedly part of our collection. Then I gradually realized that nobody knew what I was supposed to do. Coming from a museum background, I realized that they didn’t realize that there were such things as Art Acquisition Committees, and that when a gift was given to the gallery that you had to go through certain procedures, etc. Then also, I figured out that all the different colleges on campus were just willy-nilly accepting things, and they had no idea that there was supposed to be a university database, so that if somebody called me up and said, Where’s the Rembrandt? And I said, Duh... BM: Wish we had that. SCL: I would have to say, gee, I didn’t realize we had a Rembrandt. Where’s the Rembrandt? (Laughter) Anyway, so I began to put together procedures of how things should really work, and then I began to literally indoctrinate everybody. I would work with the Dean and say, this is how we are supposed to be operating. I would go to the Foundation and I would say, no, you can’t just accept the flower painting. It has got to go through the committee, etc. Then I began working with the campus -the mapping out of the new campus. I sat on that particular master plan committee [Master Plan Advisory Group], and I learned very quickly that I had to literally defend the sculpture collection. I remember standing up one day and saying, these are not tinker toys. They cannot be moved around campus just to any other place. I think they were talking about moving the di Suvero, and I just, ah, fell over backwards. So I became very much a part of the [Master Plan Advisory Group]. And as I said, my job really was to defend the sculpture collection. I think I told you the last time we met, that they really wanted me in the last mapping out of the master plan -- they wanted me to put into the master plan sites for sculpture. In other words, go ahead and designate that this spot over here and this spot over here were going to... And I refused to do that. I just said, no, that’s not how we’re going to operate in terms of artists coming to campus and choosing sites. 3 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I would say that it was a huge learning curve. It wasn’t a learning curve in terms of what to do with the sculpture or how to do exhibitions, but it was a learning curve in terms of how to deal with all these people on campus who didn’t know anything about how a university gallery should operate or how artists worked within the campus. BM: So it was more of an educational curve -- kind of get people to understand what the sculpture collection was -- what it could be, how it interacted with the rest of the university. SCL: Right; and it was critical for the master plan committee to gradually understand that it wasn’t just that they were planning where buildings were going, they had to literally think about the landscaping elements, buildings, and sculpture collection, you know, the bigger picture. BM: So what was your first show? SCL: It was Milton Avery [which] had already been selected by Robert Sylvester who was the Dean under whom I came. He had chosen the show, Milton Avery: Progressive Images (January 9 – February 17, 1989) which was a very good show done by the Boise Art Museum. BM: So it came all the way over. SCL: Yes. BM: Well that’s good. So, you came here, there was nothing in place – SCL: Nothing in place. BM: -- no documentation about anything. You had to basically start from square one. SCL: Right. There were no files on any of the art objects. Gradually I began to build up files for the sculpture collection. As I say, I went through all the Art Acquisition Committee minutes and Xeroxed anything I could find – nobody had a routine, or had any idea that certain things had to be done. So that’s when I got Patricia Leavengood [Art Conservation Service] a conservator in Seattle to come up, and we established this routine of what had to be done absolutely every year. But still with the charges on the maintenance, there still was not enough money really to do absolutely everything. So I went to the provost that first year when finally we had this routine. I went to the provost, and he said that he would give -- actually it was DeLorme, the editor of this book, Perspectives on Excellence -- he would give $10,000 towards bringing the collection back up, you know, doing what we were supposed to be doing in terms of routine and any special work, which really helped tremendously. I think that was probably the first time that any recognition was given to the sculpture collection, in terms that it had needed maintenance, continual maintenance. But there always was a problem and finally -- I think this was in the 1990s sometime, whenever President Karen Morse first got here [1993], that was the first time that they put into the university budget that there was going to be some funding for maintenance of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. The Board of Trustees said that it should be in the university budget. BM: And did it always stay at $10,000, or did it eventually get – 4 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: No, it stayed at $10,000, and then Dean Dan Guyette and the Vice President for Business and Financial Affairs, Rich van den Hul, said that they would chip in a certain amount of money. But the problem has always been that of course over time, everything is aging, so you spend, you know, practically the entire budget on conservation of one particular piece. BM: Right. So when they chipped in, did it substantively go up, or was it just an ad hoc? SCL: Yes. Each one of them chipped in $15,000, so it went up to $30,000. HY: [And it just stayed there]. Tell us more about the gallery -- your vision, direction, and what kind of exhibitions you did? SCL: Well once I figured out what exhibitions had occurred and what the collection supposedly was, I decided that really what we needed to do was to focus more on our national and international exhibition schedule, that I really did not want to -- I didn’t want to have student shows, I didn’t want to concentrate on faculty shows. I really wanted to bring in work that the students were not able to see in Bellingham. I tried not to overlap with anything that was going on in Seattle or in Vancouver because I figured the students could at least get to those particular places, if they would go. So I just began talking to people across the United States. You know a curator in one particular museum, and you just call and say, what exhibitions are you planning? And then I worked a lot with Independent Curators Incorporated, and just gradually brought in exhibitions from the national and international scene. And of course always, you know, the budget was, well, I can’t spend more than $5,000 (laughter) on an exhibition, and of course these types of exhibitions the rental fees are out of sight. BM: And the shipping fees are expensive too. SCL: Yes. So that’s when I really began to talk about how there should be some sort of endowment for exhibitions at the gallery. And Miriam Mathes was the -- well, who was she? She was the Children’s Librarian at Wilson Library and she of course had retired numerous years ago (1971), and she came back for a visit. The Foundation asked me if I would give her a tour of the Western Gallery, whatever the exhibition was. I didn’t know her from Adam, and she came, and I forget what the show was. I think it was the African-American show from the Smithsonian.1 I think that’s what it was. Anyway, I gave her a tour, and very soon after that she gave money to the gallery for an endowment, just out of the blue. HY: That is wonderful. SCL: So that is what gave us more money, other than the measly budget we were getting from the college to do exhibitions. BM: And is that endowment still there? SCL: Yes. 1 African-American artists, 1880-1987: selections from the Evans-Tibbs Collection, exhibited at the Western Gallery, September 28-November 1992]. 5 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: What’s the endowment called? SCL: It’s named after her husband [Homer Mathes], but it’s the Mathes Endowment. HY: So, most of the exhibitions were traveling exhibitions with national or international artists. SC: Right. HY: Did you set some direction beyond that, what kind of – SCL: Not really. I tried to keep a healthy mix. I wanted sculpture, I wanted painting, I wanted works on paper. So I tried to vary the media. Also I was very concerned that it would be a gallery space where other students, students other than art students, would come to the gallery. So I spent a lot of time going to Deans’ meetings where they gave me five minutes to say what we were doing at the gallery and how it could possibly relate to subjects other than art. I began to have Wednesday Gallery Tours where I would invite faculty from other colleges to come in and talk about the art. They always said, well, I don’t know anything about art. And I would say, but you have a particular perspective that is important to understand the art that’s in the gallery, and I’ll be right there with you to, you know, talk with you, etc. They really enjoyed doing it. Those were very popular for a while. Then I would always send out notices. If it was an exhibition that dealt with environmental things, I would always send notices out to the pertinent Dean or the pertinent college about this exhibition, and certainly to faculty that I knew that this would be an exhibition they would want to bring their students to. I constantly gave tours because I believe very strongly that the gallery definitely should be oriented to the entire faculty and students, rather than just to the Art Department. Then of course the Washington Art Consortium was very important, because Western was a founding member of the consortium, and I knew about the collections. I had been at the Seattle Art Museum when the first one was formed. So I knew about the importance of the collections, and I intentionally after showing one of the consortium collections, it must have been the American Works on Paper one, I intentionally lobbied to keep the collection at Western. And gradually tried -- I didn’t really have to persuade that many people, but just made a good argument that it would be good to have them in one place and that we had the possibility of getting proper racks, etc., for storage for them. Because for instance the American Works on Paper were in these hideous orange crates for just years on end. You can just imagine what was inside those large old crates. We finally made the argument and the consortium accepted the fact that they would pay for racks in storage. But I always felt and it’s true that Western is sort of the low man on the totem pole in terms of the consortium. Because here is the large Seattle Art Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Henry Gallery etc., and here we were, you know, two people on staff compared to these mega places. The consortium really gave us prestige. People would find out about the consortium collections, and they would begin to associate it with Western. BM: So how did the consortium collection, how did that all form? I mean, how did we get the works? Where were the works from? SCL: Virginia Wright went to the NEA with a grant idea of getting institutions to come together so that there could be this portable collection that went around the state. The NEA gave her the grant with the 6 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED condition that she would match it, so that is how the Works on Paper Collection came together. She asked Richard Bellamy, who was an art dealer at the time to be an advisor. She probably had other advisors too. Then there was a representative from each of the institutions coming together to form the consortium and they are the ones who selected the works. BM: And so through Richard Bellamy, he was a New York art dealer who had a lot to do with pop art. SCL: He was an advisor, so he and [Jinny] would select the work or select let’s say, a couple of examples by Richard Serra and say, you know, we think this is the best one. Then they would bring those examples to the committee of consortium members and have a discussion, and then they would decide which Richard Serra to buy. BM: Oh wow. So that all came about because of the NEA grant – SC: Right. BM: -- and Wright matching the funds to buy this portable art collection that is now prints, photography, and some paintings? HY: It’s prints and drawings, right? SCL: Yes, prints and drawings. BM: Prints, drawings, and photography? SCL: Photography? HY: No, photography came as a separate collection, right? SCL: Which one? HY: The Photography Collection came separate. SCL: Yes, that was -- so the first one was American Works on Paper. Once they formed it, it went on a tour under the American Federation of Arts. It went all over. Then it came back and was housed at WSU. When I got to Western, I knew it was at WSU, so I, you know, had an exhibition and told WSU I’d be more than happy to keep it. (Laughter) Then the Photography Collection a couple of years later, again in the what, late 1970s, early 1980s, was formed, and that was formed essentially in the same way. BM: With Wright – SCL: With a grant and with Virginia Wright matching. BM: Oh wow. HY: And who selected that? 7 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: The curator at the Whatcom Museum and a curator from the Portland Art Museum selected the work. Rod Slemmons was at the Whatcom Museum and went on to become the curator of photography at the Seattle Art Museum, and then he went off to Chicago. BM: And that was in what year? SCL: I’d have to go look. But I’m going to say late 1970s, early 1980s. BM: Before you came. SCL: Yes. BM: Okay. SCL: And then it was not until the 1990s that the Aiken Collection, which was a private collection was offered to the consortium and we accepted that collection. Then, of course in 2010 or whenever it was, 2009, 2010, that’s when Safeco Corporation decided that they were going to essentially deaccession or get rid of their collection. The curator of the Safeco Collection was of course extremely disturbed about that, so she called and said, what about the idea of giving the Safeco Collection to the consortium, meaning that the collection could stay together but it could be dispersed among the seven institutions. We essentially said, it’s a great idea, but we only collect works on paper. So there was a committee formed. I was on that committee and the director at the time at the Seattle Art Museum was on that committee, and Chris Bruce [WSU], so we formed a Safeco Works on Paper Collection. Then we said, what about the idea of -- if you still have work in the collection -paintings and sculptures and glasswork, etc., what if we accepted that collection but it would be dispersed among the seven institutions, so that’s what we did. So that’s the work that you -- the greatest part of the work is the work that you see in the PAC galleries. BM: And so was there a budget associated with Western maintaining that, or did you do it out of your own pocket? SCL: I was on the committee with the director of the Tacoma Art Museum, and we said to Safeco, we will accept the work IF you give us monies to disperse the collection to the seven institutions and IF you will give us monies to help conserve the work that we, the institutions, are taking. Safeco said that they would. HY: That is very smart; tell me about the collections in the Western Gallery? What was your direction in building it? SCL: Well, primarily when I got there, it was just prints and drawings. I said, well that seems to me what is already in the collection, and so we probably should take that approach plus there was, you know, there was no place to really store them. So I thought prints and drawings are going to be the easiest to store. I had to think about storage. There certainly were some paintings already in the collection, but I tried to be very practical. Then I had to be in charge also, or I put myself in charge of the other works that 8 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED were coming to the other colleges [on campus], because people didn’t know what to do. So I, I’m going to whisper this, I essentially named myself as the – BM: Do you want me to push pause? (Laughter) HY: No, let’s hear this. SCL: -- curator of the University Collections, because nobody else was going to do it. I mean, they didn’t even know that they should be doing it. I just assumed this role. I kid you not. I assumed this role! BM: I believe it! I believe it! SCL: And I said to the different colleges, if you want this particular work that Mrs. Jones is giving you, you are going to have to be responsible for it. It is not going to come back to the Western Gallery. So, you know, again you had to educate them. That is why the University Collections are very diverse. But the Western Gallery, its unique collections, really were prints and drawings, -- there was already some sculpture in the collection, and of course later the Leese Collection. Vera Leese. She had this wonderful collection and she invited me to come see her, and I used to go see her at least once a week. She and her husband Al were delightful, could talk on any art subject known to man. Over the years, I just built up this wonderful relationship with them. Her daughter, Marian, called me one day and said that her mother had died and that she had decided -- and her mother had given her the art collection, but she decided that it really should come to the Western Gallery. BM: Oh wow. SCL: So it was the Leese Collection that allowed us to expand beyond just prints and drawings and it was important, again, to keep that Leese Collection all together. HY: And then the Safeco, more paintings were added. SCL: Right. Now Safeco, this is – BM: What year was the Safeco? SCL: Safeco was like 2010. BM: Oh, very recent. SCL: The consortium decided that now that they had formed their own Safeco Works on Paper Collection that what we needed to do with the other Safeco Collections was to have sort of like an NFL draw. There was a long list and images of everything in the Safeco Collection, and we all studied the list, and then we put all our names into a hat, it was a computer drawing, and it came out that the Seattle Art Museum had the first draw and the Western Gallery had the last draw. (Laughter) HY: But it flowed in a circle -9 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: And so we would go in a circle. I made a list of my priorities, of what I really wanted for my first go-around. It was all done over the telephone. So you could hear people sighing, or you could hear people whispering, like, what should I choose now? My heart was just going like this. Anyway, we got everything we wanted, with the exception of one work. BM: What was that? SCL: That was a Roger Shimomura painting that WSU got. [But otherwise] we got every single one. HY: How did you select those paintings? SCL: Well, I knew a lot -- well, having been in the Northwest, I knew a lot of the artists, and so I knew which were the most important artists, there are a lot of artists you have never heard of. But for example, with the Seattle Art Museum, they already had three or four Alden Masons, so they didn’t necessarily want an Alden Mason, which gave us a chance to get the Alden Mason, or whatever artist. Knowing my Northwest art history, I could really pinpoint what I thought were the ones to accept. But before we had this NFL draw, I went to the Dean, Dan Guyette, and said, If you want Western to come out on top here, you’ve got to do something, because there is no place to store these big works. That’s when he and I decided that okay what we would do would be to take the foyers over in the PAC and make them into galleries. That was the big plan, so with that plan in mind, of course no money whatsoever, Dan told me to go ahead and I could go choose whatever I wanted to in this NFL draw. So I just went to town (laughter), choosing what I thought would be good and not worrying about whether it was the biggest thing or smallest or where I was going to store it or anything like that. We came out very well. Plus as I said then, there was a formula set up that depending upon how many works you got, there was a certain amount of money that would follow those works. So there is in our Foundation account, there is the Safeco Conservation Fund. BM: And they’re still on the hook for that money now, for the conservation? SCL: No. We already have that money -- that money’s already in the Foundation. BM: Oh, I see. SCL: Yes. That’s when the Foundation went to, me not knowing it, that’s when they went to Virginia Wright, and said, Would you give monies to renovate these galleries? Because they knew that she was very much oriented towards the consortium and what the consortium had been doing and knew about the Safeco gift, etc. We already had these wonderful Alexander Calder tapestries in one of the PAC foyers, and she was very much interested in that story of, you know, again, a fluke that we got them. So she gave the monies to renovate the galleries and to frame the tapestries, so that’s how we could put up the works. BM: I’ve never seen those tapestries. SCL: The Calder tapestries? HY: Go and see them. BM: Yes. 10 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HY: They are worth it, yes. BM: Where are they? In the – SCL: They are in one of the lobbies of the PAC. If you go in the PAC and turn to the right, and walk far right, past the Zervas video, you go in one gallery and then there is another gallery over to the left. That’s probably the one that people use as an exit when they come out of the performance hall. BM: I’ll have to look, I’ve never seen them. SCL: Those came by a fluke. Susan Sollins2 called me one day and we had a nice chat. She said, you know, there’s this donor that I know and he has these Alexander Calder tapestries that he would like to give to an institution, and I just keep thinking about the sculpture collection at Western. Would you be interested in these tapestries? I said, why of course, Susan! I had no idea who this donor was, absolutely no clue whatsoever. So she went back [to the donor] and she honestly said, this is the place where they should be. HY: Tell me more about creating the portable collection. After getting the Leese collection did you start deliberately collecting more paintings? Or did you stay with Works on Paper? SCL: I would say that I probably still thought that the Works on Paper Collection the most important, because the paintings were a little bit of European here, one or two 19th century there. It was just spread out, it was way too random. I felt that there was a better chance of filling in the Works on Paper Collection and really making it a solid collection, rather than trying to just have, you know, have a little bit of everything. HY: So the Works on Paper -- the paintings are, right, that they are more Northwestern? SCL: Yes, yes. HY: But the Paper Collection is – SCL: American, Asian works, European... BM: It’s a real mix, yes. I’ve been through all the paper collection, Works on Paper. I haven’t been through the sculpture collection or -- But we went through the whole paper collection that one time – SC: For a show. BM: Yes, everything we went through. (Laughter) SCL: Yes. 2 Susan Sollins was the director of Independent Curators Incorporated with whom I had dealt with a lot with the exhibitions. She had on numerous occasions asked me to write letters when they were applying for grants to the NEA, and I would write letters saying how wonderful Independent Curators Incorporated was. 11 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: So I’m pretty familiar with the paper. Tell us about the Chair Collection, how did that come about? SCL: That’s another one of those interesting stories. I had no clue that the university had a Chair Collection, no clue whatsoever. I finally met Dorothy Ramsland, who was the person who was in charge of the Home Economics Department before they merged that department into the Design and Industrial Design. So I met her and she told me that there was a Chair Collection. I said, Now, Dorothy, where is it? She said that she had a small budget, and every year -- she particularly liked going to Scandinavian countries. So every year she would take this small budget and go to Europe and buy. It could be glasswork, a chair, things that students needed to see as interior decorators; what they needed to see and know about design. She decided that she was going to focus on chairs. I forgot who was the provost at the time [DeLorme] but the administration decided that they were going to merge the Home Economics Department into the Design and Industrial Design Departments3. One day I hear via rumor that they are getting rid of the Chair Collection. So I called up Dorothy Ramsland and I said, Where is the Chair Collection? She said, It is in the attic of Old Main. (Laughter) I found out how to get to the attic of Old Main, and I kid you – BM: That’s a feat. SCL: I kid you not, the room probably was no bigger than this porch, and it was jammed with all these chairs. Mary McIntyre was the Assistant Vice Provost, and she was from the Art Department. I went to Mary McIntyre [Gorrell] and I said, I’ve heard via a rumor that you are going to get rid of the Chair Collection. Do you realize how important this Chair Collection is? I told her about it and said, the Western Gallery will take the Chair Collection. Do not get rid of it! Do not sell it! There was some discussion about, still, selling it. I said, well, do you know to whom you would sell it, or do you know to whom you would give it? I called up Patterson Sims at the Seattle Art Museum, and I said, Patterson, I want you to come -- he was a curator. I said, Patterson, I want you to come and look at this Chair Collection, and you tell me whether the Seattle Art Museum would take this Chair Collection or not. He came up, and we crawled through the attic, and he thought it was a wonderful collection. And he said, if offered to the Seattle Art Museum, he certainly would take it. So I said to myself, no. He knew I was – BM: Fishing. SCL: -- fishing. So you know, I went and said, the Western Gallery wants this Chair Collection. We will use it as a study collection. It has always been a study collection. They said, okay, fine, but you will have to take everything else that was in the Home Economic department. I said, okay. Oh my lord, people! (Laughter) We had stacks of dishes, towels, we had, I mean, everything known to man. Ramsland had built up a department where you went into the kitchen, and this is how you designed a kitchen, this is how you designed a living room, etc. I said, there is no way I can accept it. I mean, it just is beyond the Western Gallery. What about the possibility, not to step on anyone’s toes, [that] we just store all this stuff for about five years until the 3 Editors note: Home Economics program enrollment was suspended effective, Winter 1992. 12 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED clamor subsides (because all the graduates of the department of Home Economics were livid that the department was folding)? I said, let’s just store all this stuff for five years and let everything calm down, and then we will disperse with it. That’s when I persuaded the university that we could have our first auction. They’d never had an auction before (laughter). I called it the bake sale, because it was like a bake sale. So I called in various people in town who knew about antiques, dishware, etc., and they helped me price everything. We put everything in the Western Gallery, and we advertised. We literally had to have [police officers] at the front door because there were so many people who were trying to crash the gallery to get to this auction (laughter). BM: So you did deaccession something (laughter)? SCL: So, we did. We got rid of all that. HY: And did you get rid of the duplicate chairs or things like that? SCL: Yes, we did. Also by that time, I had figured out what was all the student art and all the art that the Western Gallery should really have. I went to the assistant attorney general and said, I want to deaccession. First of all, I’m going to write to every student (if I could find the student). If I want to also deaccession something that has come into the collection that really just should not be in the collection, I’m going to write that particular collector and tell them that we would like to deaccession, and that we were having this auction, and it would benefit the gallery. A lot of the students said, keep it, use it in the auction and so did the collectors. So I went to the assistant attorney general -- who looked at every one of those files on who the donor was and who the student was etc., and gave me permission to deaccession them. So we put them in the auction and sold a lot of the leftover student work that was in the gallery. BM: So you have to go up to the Assistant Attorney General to deaccession? SCL: [Yes]. And then we had a second auction when we were putting the Chair Collection in the back room. I said, you know, we still have a lot of duplicates. So I went to the business office again and said, I’d like to have another auction because we’ve got duplicate chairs we would like to sell. Plus we had the wonderful orange crates from the consortium that people were just dying to buy and just a lot of stuff like that. Old frames, we had taken all of the works -- the Leese Collection were in all these old frames and, you know, terrible backing, etc. One summer, interns and I, spent the entire summer taking everything out, the Leese works out of the frames, etc. It was a mixed bag auction. But again, people loved it. BM: Was that in the early 2000s? I think I vaguely remember that. SCL: You vaguely remember that. Yes, probably. BM: Okay. Was Rosalie King part of the Industrial, the Interior Design? SCL: Yes. BM: Okay. So that’s that whole legacy there. SCL: Yes. 13 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: Okay. And so, did you ever replace the chairs that were stolen? SCL: No. But we did replace -- what did we replace? The Matta, the Roberto Matta. What did we do? I called up Knoll, and I think they sent us -- we were missing a section, and I think they sent us a section for that. BM: So how many chairs were stolen? SCL: Let’s see. The Wassily chair was stolen. And then one of the chairs -- what’s the name of that designer who did the bird chair and -- a very important chair. BM: Bird chair. SCL: Yes, bird chair. Swan chair, bird chair. HY: Is it Jacobsen? SCL: Yes, Arne Jacobsen. HY: This is a very specific with the Matta there was one piece missing and you had it redone. SCL: Right. HY: Was cloth put on it? SCL: Yes. HY: Okay. So, basically in the Matta Collection, everything is there. SCL: Right. That one piece that we had to -- that was stolen, and so we had to go to [Knoll], and they sent me that one section. Now, whether they -- did we put cloth on it? I’d have to go look, to stare at it to see if I remember. HY: Okay. SCL: It’s not in the files? It doesn’t say anything in the files? HY: I have to look for it. SCL: Yes, okay. BM: So how many chairs do we have? SCL: How many chairs do we have? 50? HY: 65? 14 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: 65? BM: There’s that many? SCL: Oh, yes. BM: Wow, oh wow. And so, like – SCL: Because see, you know, there’s the chair room, but then there’s chairs still in the basement. BM: I didn’t know that. HY: They have been all brought out. SCL: Good. HY: I put them on exhibition at the library [they] created a space there. SCL: Oh, good. I went to the library and said, how would you like to hang all the chairs on the wall? (Laughter) BM: That would be good. SCL: They weren’t up for it. BM: And so, there were only about four or five chairs that were stolen then. SCL: I would say three. BM: Three chairs? SCL: Yes. BM: And that’s the only theft that ever happened in the – SCL: Yes. Now there were days when Paul and I couldn’t find things. And I’d say, just relax, Paul, we’ll find it. I swear we’ll find it. (Laughter) HY: Now, what are the other big issues you should explore? You know, highlights of your career? What are the exhibitions that you find most memorable and successful in some way or other? SCL: Oh, gosh. I would say the highlight of my career was definitely working with the artists in the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. My focus has always been towards sculpture. So you know, my great love was the sculpture collection, and of course my greatest worry was the sculpture collection, biggest headache. But I thoroughly enjoyed being the Director of the [Western] Gallery, in choosing exhibitions, and definitely trying to relate those exhibitions to the campus at large. I think that was the biggest challenge, trying to get the campus oriented to the gallery. 15 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HY: And were there exhibitions that you were particularly proud to have [brought in]? SCL: I think probably -- I would say the Noguchi exhibition that we did, we have a very strong relationship with the Noguchi Foundation. So they offered their particular show on The Bollinger Years when Noguchi was traveling. I decided that what I would do would be to pair it with an exhibition that I would put together, particularly having to do with Noguchi and dance. I remember that exhibition very well. I’m very proud that we did the Northwest, first ever, environmental art exhibition, focused on environmental art, artists in the Northwest, the one that’s called Critical Messages.4 I’m very proud of that one. BM: When was that – SCL: That was in about 2010, I think. I paired up with William Dietrich, who was in environmental sciences. I went to him and said I know nothing about what are the most critical issues in the environment, but would you give me ten of the most important issues that you think are important. He gave me the ten, and then I did an exhibition where I tried to find artists who were dealing with those ten issues. I would always ask the artist, I would call and say, I’m interested in your work. This is what I think. Am I pushing it too far? I only had one artist who said, I think you’re pushing it too far. Everybody else said I was right on the money. So it was the first time that people had concentrated -- that any attention had been brought to artists in the northwest dealing with these environmental issues. BM: When was the Noguchi exhibition? Because it would be interesting because you’re going to get the Noguchi painted, it would be interesting to have that. SCL: Oh boy. You know, Michiko Yusa, who was in, who is still in the department of [Modern and Classical] Languages, she used to do every spring -- Japan Week, where she would concentrate on Japan. She came to me and she said, Well, Sarah, we ought to concentrate on Noguchi. So we did this symposium on Noguchi5 and various people wrote essays. I elaborated on what I’d written in the sculpture book on Noguchi. I re-read that essay again today, Barbara, and I’m convinced that you could go to the Ibsen Nelsen files in the archives and find some interesting information that you were interested in. BM: Yes. HY: Tell me -- I heard that an exhibition of the [Tibetan monks constructing a sand mandala] that got 11,000 guests in [six] days [May 15-20, 2000]. SCL: Yes, true. 4 Critical messages: contemporary Northwest artists on the environment, exhibit held at the Western Gallery, April 12 – May 29, 2010. 5 Isamu Noguchi and Skyviewing Sculpture, symposium and guest lectures held as part of Japan Week 2003, April 28 – May 1, 2003. Proceedings published under this title in 2004. 16 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HY: Can you tell us about all of that? SCL: Let’s see, how did that come? Anyway, a Dean, Bert Van Boer, brought it to my attention and said, You know, I think this would be wonderful for Western. And so I just called up and said, we would be interested in you coming to Western and being in the gallery. They agreed to do so. They told Paul [Brower] exactly what they needed -- a big pedestal where they could do the sand mandala. We had this very formal opening. We had ropes around the mandala where they were working. End of Part One Insert provide by Sarah Clark-Langager Background on Western Gallery Studio Gallery (now called Western Gallery) started in the Thirties when there was a nationwide movement calling for more public spaces (versus private collections) where people could see art. The Studio Gallery was in Old Main and then [the Campus Elementary School]. When the Art-Technology building was opened in the Fifties (1950), the art gallery became known as the Western Gallery. It was located on the second floor, about where the lecture hall and slide library are now. In the Fifties at the beginning of the gallery, Helen Loggie, well-known printmaker, suggested print shows, such as John Sloan, and that is how we got our wonderful Sloan prints in the collection. Various faculty members took on the job of part-time director. Larry Hanson (sculptor) had the longest directorship and put the gallery on the regional map. A good number of small-scale sculptures and drawings in the Western Gallery collection came from an annual juried show which he did for ten years or more. Larry also did shows borrowing from Seattle collectors, including Virginia Wright. When I was Associate Curator at Seattle Art Museum (SAM) in the seventies, I remember meeting Gene Vike, chair, in Seattle and helping him with suggestions of good artists. He ended up doing a show of seven Seattle artists and I got to see the old gallery for the first time. Also during the Seventies the SAM head curator and myself took trips to WWU to see the sculpture collection – Jinny must have alerted us to one of her projects. The Contemporary Art Council at SAM had a critic’s symposium (Robert Hughes, Milton Kramer, [No, Hilton Kramer!] a critic from S.F., and M. Kangas in Seattle) at WWU and we all walked the campus. The new Western Gallery Craig and I left NYC in mid-Eighties to head back to NW. We stopped off in Texas where I taught, was director of North Texas University Gallery, and finished my dissertation. Gene Vike called me and asked if I would like to apply for the directorship of the new Western Gallery, which was being constructed/added on to the Art building; part of the first-ever full time job was also to take care of the sculpture collection. 17 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1988-2014 I started the job in the fall of 1988; the building did not open to the public until January 1989 when we presented a (traveling) Milton Avery show. In the beginning there was no time for grand visions as I had to dig deep in the archives to figure out the history of the gallery and sculpture collection and to construct what seemed to be a gallery collection of prints and drawings among a lot of student work “left” in gallery storage. There also were the 50+ paintings by Harold Wahl, which Gene Vike accepted because he knew the family and these works still take up a lot of room; I never would have accepted them! The only vision I had was to make the new gallery an all-university gallery, not a departmental gallery. I essentially wrote my own job description. Based on my numerous museum jobs, I knew what I had to do. I “appointed myself” to give focus and context to the gallery collection, sculpture collection and to try to rein in the activities of other colleges accepting art gifts with no forethought. Over time – in the Nineties- I wrote an operations/procedural manual for the gallery, which was approved by the Assistant Attorney General and President Morse.6 Knowing the legacy of Washington Art Consortium (WAC) and its two collections at that time – American Works on Paper and Photography [in the] 70s- I intentionally requested to store these two collections as I knew it would bring us prestige. People did associate WAC with WWU. I kept WAC alive (acting as president numerous times) until WAC got its 501c3 around 2000. (Ask Willow for copies of brochures, which give history of WAC.7 ) The exhibitions for the most part focused on national and international art, just like the sculpture collection. To get the full range of shows, go to Special Collections and ask Tamara Belts to see the gallery media books8 which gives information on every show done from 1988-2014. Based on the university’s goal of diversity, I did a lot of “multi-cultural” shows during the Nineties. In 2007 I took a traveling show of Japanese textiles called “Wearing Propaganda”. Julia Sapin, Seiko Atsuta Purdue, and I paired it with our own co-curated show –“Fabric of Identity.” From time to time, I would include one or two art department faculty in shows I curated and both Seiko and Cara Jaye were in this beautiful show. (Both Julia and I over-rode Seiko’s objection to be in this show.) We did several environmental art shows – the first being Botannica: contemporary art and the world of plants, and then later, Critical Messages: Contemporary Northwest West Artists on the Environment. Two favorite traveling shows were: Inescapable histories: Mel Chin: an exhibition [exhibited at the Western Gallery, January 28 – March 16, 1997) and Embedded metaphor (exhibited at the Western Gallery, September 29-November 22, 1997), a bed show which had some incredible installations. I had a goal to connect shows with other colleges/departments on campus. Paul and I did a car show with engineering technology materials, I figured if the Guggenheim did a motorcycle show, we could do a car 6 Under Acting Dean CFPA Ron Riggins I wrote an operations manual for the gallery and for art procedures on campus. This manual was approved by Assistant Attorney General Wendy Bohlke and President Morse [ca. 1994? Morse came in 93. When was Riggins's first tenure as acting dean?? you could just put mid nineties] In 2014-15 this manual, under guidance of Dean Kit Spicer, was officially accepted into the new university policies and procedures. 7 Washington Art Consortium set to have disbanded in 2017, according to www.artnews.com, February 23, 2017. 8 These gallery media books were deaccessioned from Special Collections and returned to the custody of the Western Gallery. 18 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED design show. We took a traveling show based on collecting and inserted collections from Anthropology and Biology departments. We collaborated frequently with Canadian Studies. We did a large chair show featuring our collection and northwest artists who did work with chairs. And as I mentioned, I seemed to orient myself to dance – first the “Noguchi and Dance” show in [2003?], then Diane Kornberg photos and set for Montreal Danse which was in residency at WWU, and finally with Gosia Wlodareczak’s drawings of WWU dance students. In order to get other departments involved, I invited faculty across campus to give exhibition tours on Wednesdays and they usually were excellent. I connected with student events such as fall parent’s weekend where the large receptions were held in the gallery. I gave orientation tours in the summer to new students and endured the annual spring festival. Greatest challenge My greatest challenge was to give focus to “art on campus”, including the sculpture collection, where both the administration and faculty outside the Art Department would/could see the interdisciplinary aspects of art. Sculpture Collection As mentioned before, I think it is important for people to see the connections WWU has had with regional events and arts – for example Paul Thiry (Fitzgerald, Seattle Center concrete murals done first at WWU, etc.) Certainly, Larry Hanson’s involvement with Earthworks Symposium was important and he probably was the one who told Gene Vike to call me about the gallery job (I have no proof – just guessing). The symposium began in 1978; the jury on which I sat was in January 1979. It was Craig’s early relationships with Nancy Holt, Robert Morris, Beverly Pepper, and Dennis Oppenheim at the symposium, which allowed me avenues to them when I first got to WWU. Dennis married Alice Aycock in late ’79-early Eighties so I got to know her through Craig too. More on sculpture the next time we meet. This is the second part of a two-part interview. This one takes place on July 27, 2016, in the Fine Arts Building on the Western Washington University campus. The interviewers are Tamara Belts, Barbara Miller, Hafthor Yngvason and Sharron Antholt, BM: I was going to say what we did last time so that everybody is on board, and then we go in the room. TB: Okay. Perfect, perfect. BM: Okay. So last time, we met at Sarah’s in Lynden on July the 19th, and we talked about the gallery, the history of the gallery, which we hadn’t really planned on but kind of organically evolved as we were out there. I didn’t know that the gallery started in the Thirties. It wasn’t called the Western Gallery, it was just called the Studio Gallery. Then Sarah [came as] the first director, hired in 1988. So that was a pretty historic moment, and it’s great to have all of this on 19 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED tape. Last time, we talked about what it was like coming with no files set up, with all of the collection kind of here and there, and trying to organize it. We also talked about the different collections, the Safeco, the Leese, the Chair Collection, and the Atkins Collection. Then Hafthor at the end asked her what her highlights were, and Sarah said the Noguchi Exhibition, the exhibition on environmental art, and she also said working with outdoor sculptures and the site-specific artists, which was great. That meeting was just Hafthor, Sarah and myself, Barbara. And so today, Sharron Antholt has kindly consented to coming and adding her memories of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. So, if we go around the room that would be great. SCL: I’m Sarah Clark-Langager, past Director and Curator of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. It’s my joy to be here, for you to joggle my brain today. HY: I’m Hafthor Yngvason, the current Director of Western Gallery and Curator of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. SA: I’m Sharron Antholt. I taught the Outdoor Sculpture Collection for many years when I was teaching here. I recently retired. BM: And I’m Barbara Miller. I teach art history, modern and contemporary art, in the Art Department. I’m still here. Okay. So, I have some questions but Hafthor, did you want to ask any specific questions? HY: No, let’s start with yours BM: Because I have a list. I have about ten questions. So what was the Outdoor Sculpture Collection like when you arrived in 1988? This is a list of what we have now. I’m assuming that most of this work was added under your tenure, probably quite a bit of it. SCL: No. BM: Actually, probably a good dozen or so though. SCL: So, the Rain Forest [James FitzGerald] was here, the Norman Warsinske was here, the Tibbetts, the Noguchi, the Robert Morris, the Bassetti, the Beyer, the Hamrol, the di Suvero, the Caro, Melim, Westerlund Roosen, John Keppelman, Nancy Holt, Robert Maki, one Beverly Pepper - the Wedge, the Serra, the Judd. The Trakas was a temporary work when I arrived and later got added as a permanent work. The Aycock was here. The Scott Burton was during my regime, the Rückriem also, the Meg Webster also, Abakanowicz under me, the Otterness under me, the Nauman under me, the Ireland under me. Burning Island, what is that? I have no idea what that is. And Claude Zervas was under me, and the one that’s over in [Miller Hall] -Paul DeMarinis and Rebecca [Cummins]. BM: Okay. And then, also, Paul -- Claude -20 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: Claude Zervas. BM: Yes. SCL: That was also under me. BM: Okay. So a number, a good half, a good dozen, have been under your supervision and instruction. SCL: Yes. BM: So, what were some of the highlights? What are some of the things that you remember most about working with those artists, working with the committee? Maybe you should just explain the setup of the committee, because last time we talked about how originally architects had sway over everything, and then with public funding coming on board, things had to change. SCL: Right. So it was in the 1970s when the Washington State Arts Commission set up a public art program that the university sort of, what shall I say? In unison with a sort of awareness of public art, there were people in the Art Department, especially Larry Hanson, who made it very clear that it should be people who had expertise in the arts, make up the committee. Rather than a dean or you know, a vice president, a provost type. And so they got together what would have been known as the first sort of real Outdoor Sculpture Collection Committee. The committee worked together. Larry Hanson obviously was representing the Art Department, and then there was Richard Francis, who was in the English Department, but he was very active in terms of the committee. Richard Francis was superb in terms of taking notes of the committee. That is how I found out about a lot of the history by going through all those minutes that happened since, I would say, mid-1970s. Then gradually, when I came on board in 1988, we kept that Arts Committee, and it changed a little bit over time. Primarily I would say though, the main factor was adding someone from Facilities Management (FM), because anything you do, as you know, eventually ends up in Facilities Management, getting permission of where to work on campus. Then we had to work with the Washington State Arts Commission because they had certain rules and regulations as to what we could do and what we could not do. BM: So the person who represents Facilities Management, did they begin as an advisory role? Because now they vote. SCL: No, they were placed on the committee by President Morse. BM: So they were always a voting member. SCL: Yes. BM: Okay. SCL: So, depending upon where the funding was coming from, if it was coming from the state, the Washington State Arts Commission, there were certain rules we had to follow. Then if there was a gift, for example from Virginia Wright, obviously the committee -- that gift would be brought to the committee, and the committee would make a recommendation. The recommendation, obviously, would then go to the president, and then to the Board of Trustees. I would say that probably -- I would say in the early Nineties, it was when Western got permission from the State Arts Commission to actually nominate 21 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED artists to be put on the jury list, on the selection list. In other words, before that time, the only artists we could look at when we dealt with state money was the artists who were in the state database. We, having a very strong emphasis on national and international artists, really made a strong case that we should, given our history, that we should be able to nominate artists to be put into the database. That’s when I knew that most artists, for example, [Ulrich Rückriem], let’s just say a lot of them are, so even Abakanowicz -- if a letter was sent from the state that said, we are having a competition, please submit work. Obviously, artists of that stature are not going to submit. I would give the names of the artists to the State Arts Commission, and then I would follow up with telephone calls to either the dealer or to the artist themselves and just say, we are the ones who have nominated you to be in this database. Please submit. BM: Great, thanks. So I mean, there is a lot of sort of rumor, questions about how pieces were dealt with, when pieces broke down how they were fixed, and it would be really nice to have all of that on record. So, I was thinking like starting with the Morris Steam piece [Untitled (Steam Work for Bellingham)]. I mean, I think it’s really important to have what you and I talked about in regards to James FitzGerald’s work. And even though you’ve written a little bit about the Lloyd Hamrol, the piece [Log Ramps], it would be nice to have a little more information about that. And more about the Alice Aycock, the Beverly Pepper, and Keppelman’s piece. And at the end, I really want you to talk about what you told me about Nauman. Then some other things that you said in an email. So, if that’s too much, we can select it down a little bit. If there’s something that you guys want to particularly ask about or go a different direction, does this sound reasonable to ask about? SA: It does. HY: Sure. BM: Okay. SCL: So who -BM: So Morris, start with Morris. SCL: Robert Morris. The situation with Robert Morris was that one summer, a mother and her child were visiting campus and the child got in the Robert Morris and stepped on the hot, heating coils, because someone out there in the world had actually dug them up out of the earth. We did not know that they were lying right there on top. So, the young child got burned on the foot. The parents went to the university and demanded that the sculpture be turned off, which of course upset me greatly because I knew that the real problem was the vandalism that had brought the pipes up to the surface. So we worked on the problem of how to solve that for years on end. Finally, Facilities Management, the director, the previous director of Facilities who was an engineer came up with this plan, they tested it, and it worked. We sent the plan of how we were going to change the heating systems, so to speak, or the steam system, and we sent it to Robert Morris, who gave his approval to go ahead with it. He was kept – well, all of the artists whenever there was a problem were always kept -- I always kept them, you know, right there with me in terms of letting them give me advice or saying they objected to whatever I was telling them. So, I cannot, I’m not smart enough to tell you how the steam system works 22 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED now, but I’m sure there’s enough information someplace, in an email or in a file or whatever, that tells you exactly how it happens. The other thing that we did, we made sure that the pipes were down in the ground and that there was a grid that went over the pipes so that no one would be able to dig them up again. HY: Was the work moved? Or is it right in the same place as it was -SCL: Same place. That I would say that easily went on for about ten years. BM: Yes, easily. I think I remember when I first got here, which was about 16 years ago, and then for the longest time until a couple years ago was it turned back on again. And I always wanted to see it, and I couldn’t. It was just this pit in the ground. SA: Well I remember it when I first came here in 1996, and in fact the first day that I came up to the Art Department, driving around that corner and seeing that, steam coming up, and I had just seen the Robert Morris retrospective that had been at the museum, at the Guggenheim. SCL: Yes. SA: -- in New York a few years before that. They had actually re-created the Steam sculpture there, and it wasn’t very effective because in New York there’s steam coming out everywhere. SCL: That’s right. SA: But then I saw it here and it just took my breath away, because in those days, the steam would come out by chance. It was early spring, so it was just billowing out, this huge cloud and it was such a fabulous thing. I never got tired of seeing it. SCL: It depended upon how much steam or how much heat Fairhaven College or that end of campus actually was using. It’s true, during the summer, it just barely percolated and then in the winter, you would come on campus and the wind and it would just -SA: And it would just blow different directions. SCL: Oh, it was gorgeous -- absolutely gorgeous. SA: It was stunning. BM: So it somehow is hooked up to Fairhaven? I thought it was hooked up to the whole university. SA: The steam -SCL: Well, that end of campus. BM: Okay. SCL: So whatever that would be, besides the end of campus. But Robert Morris called me and said that he wanted to re-create the Steam piece at the Guggenheim. And I said, well, it’s okay with me, if it’s okay with you. So I had to go to Facilities Management and get the secret formula of how much pounds 23 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED of steam or however you measure steam to make it work [PSIA or PSIG], and so he could then gain permission, that I could send that off to the Guggenheim. BM: And so he was fine -- did he ever see the piece, whenever it was redone? SCL: Yes, yes. BM: And he was all fine with it. SCL: And the other thing we did was to -- there used to be logs that went around the rectangle. I’m pretty sure that he requested the concrete that’s there now that goes around it. We sent him pictures when it first steamed, that glorious day in the spring after umpteen years. BM: It was at least a decade, yes. SCL: Yes. BM: So, let’s go back to the James FitzGerald, because we’ve talked about that as being the first piece in the collection and being of an older generation of outdoor sculpture that really isn’t necessarily site specific -SCL: Right. BM: -- or more kind of a gallery piece that is outside rather than inside. I think it is a pivotal piece in the collection. So maybe you could tell us some of the history of that piece. SCL: Well that was -- Western actually started its own art program. They basically said that anytime Western builds a new building, we’re going to give some money towards art. So that was the first, it was Haggard Hall, and so that was the first piece. Paul Thiry who was the architect realized that the Board of Trustees had made this declaration, and so he decided that he would select FitzGerald to do a fountain. But basically he didn’t call it art, he just put it in the plumbing budget. And the work was, and it actually was, it’s hard to describe where it was first because you would have to know what Wilson Library looked like originally. SA: Hope there are pictures. SCL: But when I came, the FitzGerald piece had actually been moved over to the side of Haggard Hall. BM: There’s a picture here of the campus in the Sixties. SCL: Where is the library? BM: That would become Red Square, and I think the library’s here. SCL: So, it would not be on the side of the library that looks out over on Old Main. It would be on the side that where the flow goes from Red Square to High Street, yes. TB: Yes, that’s the first original place where it was. 24 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: Oh, okay. Oh good. SCL: And so, I don’t know when, I don’t remember, when it actually got moved over closer to Haggard Hall. It probably was when there was a new addition to Wilson Library, when Bassetti [did his addition]. TB: 1972 [completed addition]. SCL: Yes, so they did the new addition to the library then it got moved to the corner. Then when they decided to renovate Haggard Hall and it would no longer be a science building but was going to be part of the library, they decided to essentially take out that whole section. It used to be that you walked in Red Square, went up steps, about seven steps, walked across, and then walked down about seven steps over to High Street. They essentially sort of flattened it, if you will. They put the skybridge between Wilson and Haggard, and they obviously told me that we had to move the FitzGerald sculpture again. So the FitzGerald also stayed in storage easily for ten years because they kept deciding what they wanted to do in terms of the campus. One of the ideas was that they were going to renovate High Street and there was going to be a section close to where Mathes Hall is now, and they were going to sort of have a -- what shall I say? -- sort of a seating area that would go around the FitzGerald. They didn’t get the funding to renovate High Street. So again, it just sat in storage until the Student Recreation Center came online. The students on the committee, Architects Committee, came to me and said, We understand that there is a general practice here on campus that when a new building is built that art is purchased. I said, yes, and then I told them about the FitzGerald that was in storage and how wonderful it would look on their front porch. (Laughter) They loved the idea. So the architects worked with it, and obviously that’s where it is now. But also we talked a little about the donor who had been here at Western, who was giving funds to help conserve the FitzGerald when it was brought out of storage, and he basically said that he would give money to Western if there was a plaque somewhere that would honor the veterans of World War II. And I remembered the other day, there is a plaque over in the lobby of the PAC.9 BM: There is a plaque though, there’s a donor plaque, and then there’s a plaque saying honoring the veterans of World War II on the side of it. So it’s moved twice? Is that what you’re saying? SCL: Yes. No, three times. The FitzGerald was moved three times. Originally in front of Wilson, and then it got moved to sort of the front of Haggard Hall, up closer, but up against Haggard Hall, and then the third time was when it went to the Student Recreation Center. 9 Editors note: Memorial Organ, dedicated on April 30, 1952 in the then new Auditorium-Music Building (now PAC). “The organ in this auditorium is dedicated to the memory of the students of the college who gave their lives for our country, 1941-1945.”] 25 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: So what’s that, what, four decades or three decades in storage? SCL: No, I would say about ten years. BM: Only about ten years? Oh, okay. The Lloyd Hamrol also, it’s been moved a couple times too, right? SCL: The Hamrol originally was where Parks Hall is, until a bulldozer came and knocked it down. Obviously, Hamrol was called in to redo the piece. And I think, well initially, I think, the NEA had given money to help do a workshop when Hamrol built it with the students, and then the monies -- I would have to look at the credit line and where the money came from to actually have Hamrol rebuild it.10 He re-built it where essentially it is now. BM: So it was originally done in 1974 and reconstructed in 1983 and 1995. SCL: 1995 was when they removed a lot of the rotten logs. BM: Oh, okay. So, is -SCL: 1983 would be -- that’s about right because that’s when Parks Hall -BM: -- was built. Oh, reconstructed in 1983. So is that part of Western’s stewardship, or is it part of state funding? I’m just wondering because that piece is going to continually rot because of what it’s made out of. SCL: Right. That was an initiative on the part of Western. BM: So, we have to come up with funding every time we want to -SCL: Right. The Washington State Arts Commission, whatever they have given, whatever we have partnered with the Washington State Arts Commission for, they will only give monies for conservation for those pieces which are probably, what, seven? BM: Was that all? SCL: That’s all. They will not give us any money if it’s a private gift. They would not give us any money for the James FitzGerald. They wouldn’t give us any money for Nauman, etc., because it’s not part of their program. SA: Even Virginia Wright’s gifts, they didn’t -SCL: Oh no. (Pause in the recording) 10 Original funding: Combined funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bureau for Faculty Research, Department of Art, and Art Allowance from Environmental Studies Center. Funding for 1983 reconstruction: Parks Hall construction funds, gifts from Georgia-Pacific Corporation and Builders Concrete. Funding for 1994 reconstruction from WWU Physical Plant. 26 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: So, Alice Aycock. I mean, that’s kind of a nice resolution about what happened to Alice Aycock’s work. SCL: Well, first of all, Washington State Arts Commission would help with funding on the Alice Aycock because it was in partnership with their Art in Public Places program. The Aycock, the architect of the Chemistry Building sent me -- came to me or sent a representative, I honestly can’t remember at this time, and said essentially that the Aycock had to moved because of the erection of the Chemistry Building. And I think you all have heard me say, removal is not a word in my vocabulary. So, as you know, they came back and they adjusted their architectural plans so that there’s this wonderful curve at the end of the Chemistry Building that sort of matches or sets up the same contour of the Alice Aycock. Then when they got ready to add Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education (SMATE) to that science complex, they again came and said, we need to move that sculpture out further. I said, it just cannot be moved. That’s when they had the idea of having the stairs that would go down. And Alice -again, I called up Alice and tried to tell her exactly what was going on and what advice could she give me and what she would really like to happen. She loved the idea of the stairs, that you had that sort of a little parapet where you could stand and look over the sculpture and then go down the stairs. She really liked that. BM: It is nice. I went out there recently -SCL: Because otherwise you had to stand where the Richard Serra was and just sort of – hope you could [see] it. BM: Yes, I think it actually makes the piece better. SCL: Oh, absolutely. BM: So, that was a really nice resolution for -SCL: A very nice resolution. So good things can happen. (Laughter) BM: If you get the right architect. Beverly Pepper’s, Wedge was moved though, right? SCL: Was it moved? BM: That’s what it says in an article I read. SCL: The Wedge was moved? You came up -- no, it wasn’t -- I take that back, it may have been moved but it certainly did not move very far. In other words, when you came up the front steps between Parks and environmental sciences [Environmental Studies Building], it was about where it is right now. What they did do was to put it on a pedestal; they built that sort of hill for it to be placed on. There’s an amusing story when they were moving all of those boulders out of where the Biology Building is now, they were just, you know, taking the sandstone boulders, putting them on the lawn. I came out one day, and the landscape architects had decided that they would like to put the boulders around the Beverly Pepper sculpture. (Laughter) I said, I’m sorry. They said, well, we just can’t move these. And I said, the Egyptians were able to move the pyramids, so you can move these boulders. (Laughter) 27 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: I also read that the Keppelman was moved. SCL: The Keppelman was where the Chemistry Building was and so when that got erected, we had to check with John as to where a good site would be. He really needed a site that seemed to have a backing. In other words, so the trees now are also of a framework, if you will, or backing, for the sculpture. BM: And even though I don’t think her work was moved, the Abakanowicz -SCL: It was moved! I’ll tell you a delightful story on that. She came to campus and made the proposal - well, she gave us two proposals. One was that she would do something with the boulders out in the area where the Tom Otterness was, or she would create one of her hand-like pieces for us. It was a very, very difficult decision, but it basically came down to how much money there was in the pot. This also was a Washington State Arts Commission [funded piece]. So while she was here she sited the piece. Obviously it was made in a foundry in Italy and got shipped here. They brought it to campus, and it hung literally in the air until she arrived in the Washington State Arts Commission black limousine. She got out and went over and looked up at the sculpture and looked out over the landscape, and said, No, it cannot be placed there. The dedication was to be the very next day and we needed a concrete pad. So she said -- and actually where it was would be if you were walking towards the Fairhaven tunnel, if you look up there’s sort of a hill that you have to climb up to get where the Abakanowicz is now. The original siting was just at the top of that hill, but she moved it back closer to the road. So I ran to Facilities Management and said, oh my gosh, we’ve got to pour a concrete pad. What can we do? And supposedly there’s some miracle – that you can do that. BM: Fast-setting concrete. SCL: Yes. And so we got it done. BM: Oh wow, in 24 hours? That’s -SCL: In the nick of time. BM: That’s a heavy piece, I’m surprised. I’ll have to go look at the concrete pad. (Laughter) BM: And then, you have lots of stories of the Bruce Nauman [Stadium Piece]. About how it was sited -see, I never understood that it was always planned to be moved. SCL: Yes. BM: The move was part of the contract. SCL: Well first of all, I remember Virginia Wright calling me one day, and she was practically in tears, and she said, I have just found out that there’s no money left in my Virginia Wright Fund and that I’m going to have to build it up over, you know, a long period of time. She said she really wanted to do something for Western, but she just couldn’t do it at this time. So I reassured her that everything was just fine. Then when she was ready to give Western a gift, she called me up and she said, I would like to give Western a sculpture. Who are some of your favorite artists? Who would you like to propose? And I said, of course, I adored Bruce Nauman’s work, but I said, you know, Bruce Nauman came in -- I think he 28 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED was second to Abakanowicz when we had that jury. And I said, everybody was very much in favor of his work, and I think, you know, that people would agree, that they would love to have a Bruce Nauman. She also was interested in proposing [Sol LeWitt] and somebody else. I don’t remember the third person. But she and I agreed that if Bruce was interested, then she would commission him to do it. So she commissioned him and obviously he came up. He was interested in the Hamrol sculpture. He liked the idea of sitting, and he could see and obviously the ramp. He was very much interested in -well, everybody was interested in the whole sculpture thing. Anybody who visited really was very much taken by that. He made the proposal to do Stadium Piece, but the Board of Trustees, the president of the Board of Trustees made it a condition that he would have to place the sculpture basically where the parking lot is now, behind Parks Hall, and that when -- what’s the building over here? Communications. When Communications [Facility] was finished, they didn’t want it to be placed out in front of Communications because they wanted that to be a playing field. When Communications was finished, and then when the AIC [Academic Instructional Center] came online, they began to talk about being able to possibly move the Nauman where he originally wanted it, which is just almost where it is right now. But given the new AIC building, he obviously wanted to re-site it slightly differently because he wanted it so that when you came up from Fairhaven and you approached the bridge between the two wings of AIC that all you saw was the Bruce Nauman sculpture, the steps. That caused a great furor because the president wanted, when you came up from Fairhaven, wanted you to be able to see the front steps of the university. The artist won on that one. That’s all I’m going to say. (Laughter) BM: Did you want to talk a little bit about the plans that he -SCL: When Nauman made his proposal, he was very -- he was interested in the topography, everything that was going to be around his sculpture. He made this 3D model, and it had, you know, the landscaping just right, and then he had essentially this block that had been put over the Nancy Holt sculpture. When the model was presented to the president and to the Board of Trustees, it was the first time that it really had dawned on them that the AIC building was going to sit on top of the Nancy Holt sculpture. They had seen it in drawings, but until they actually saw it in Bruce’s model, it literally had not phased them. So Bruce Nauman, you know, in a sense I think saved the Nancy Holt, to a certain extent, in that they literally did not place the building on top of Nancy Holt. BM: Had he done a stadium before that? SCL: He had done a series of bleachers. SCL: Bleachers in a gallery, in the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago. Hafthor has in his collection a photograph of a Nauman bleacher piece. Have you found that photograph? HY: I’m not sure. SCL: It’s a gift -- it was a gift of an art critic in New York, and he had a photograph of a bleacher piece in New York City, and it was a Bruce Nauman. I think there’s some slight drawing on the photograph that Nauman had done. BM: So the bleachers are no longer in existence? SCL: No. 29 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: They were just temporary? SC: Yes. BM: The more I think about it, the more I think that, and as you were saying, the Nauman was really, Nauman when he came, he was very interested in the Hamrol and the Nancy Holt. I’ve been thinking about the Holt as being a kind of arena. I’m just wondering if he was really trying to have a conversation with other pieces in the collection. It sounds like he was doing that. SCL: I don’t think he was. BM: You don’t think he was? SCL: No. I just remember him making comments on the Hamrol and the Nancy Holt. Obviously Holt and Nauman lived in the same area, so, you know, he knew Nancy. SA: He also had been working on these step pieces, which had irregular steps like our Stadium Piece does. He has one in the Art21 video, he shop talked about that one that he has where he lives. There’s also -- there’s one in Artpark that goes up a hill that has irregular steps. I don’t know the timing of this, but I think it was something he was working on at the time. He had one set of bleachers which hung from the ceiling -SCL: Yes. SA: -- when he showed -SCL: Yes, and he also did a step piece for Steven Oliver, and Oliver was – Oliver Company was the construction company that made the Bruce Nauman for us. BM: Wow, okay. So another one exists in this general area? SCL: No, Oliver’s is in – it’s out of San Francisco. Bruce also made a pro- Well, I take that back. I remember Donald Young, his dealer, saying that, Bruce is interested in several ideas. One was the Stadium Piece, and the other idea was -- you know, he was doing these like holes in the ground, these rooms underground, and he was interested -- and it was in a sort of triangular shape. I thought, I’ll never, ever, ever get the university to accept that. (Laughter) Never. So I said, I think maybe we should go with the Stadium Piece. BM: So how difficult was it to orchestrate the move? Was it a lot of paperwork? SCL: I think in the contract that the university signed with Nauman, it said that eventually it would be moved, so that there had to be a plan as to how it was going to be moved. And I think, I’m pretty sure that Oliver put into the contract or the plan was that they literally were going to pick it up. But when it came to being moved, they essentially moved it as if they were moving a house. BM: Oh, they put it on -SCL: They put it on, what would you call it? You know, when you do a flat tire, what is that called? SA: Jack. 30 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: Jack. So they jacked it up and inched it across to the side, and snow was on the ground -BM: It didn’t crack? SCL: No. BM: Wow. HY: We have great pictures of it. SC: And they had to rebuild the base. Yes, there are some wonderful photographs. BM: So do you want to talk about the Noguchi parking pass or no? I think it speaks to education. SCL: I don’t remember when this was but let’s just say, in the recent past. I went to get my parking pass in September, when we all came back to the university. I went in, plopped down my money, and they gave me the parking pass, and on the parking pass was the Noguchi sculpture. I must have just sort of did like that and didn’t say anything, and went back to my office and fumed all day about it. I finally called parking and said, I’m very sorry, but you do realize that we do not own the copyright to this image and you cannot do this. At that time, no one was really talking about copyright. I mean, it just wasn’t on people’s brains. So I said, you know, I’m going to have to tell the Noguchi Foundation that this is what you’ve done, and I am sure that they are going to fine you. And of course they were very upset. But I said, but this is how the world works. So I called up Amy Hau at the Noguchi Foundation and told her that I was very sorry to report that they had put the Noguchi on the parking pass. You could hear this gasp, but she was a very, very understanding person, and she said, you know, I used to work at universities so I know how this can happen. I said, you have every right to fine the Parking Office, and they did. They sent the Parking Office a fine of, what did I say it was, $500? And the Parking Office had to reprint the parking passes. BM: I think it’s good to sort of, speaks to how we still need to educate. Because even though these sculptures are on campus, we don’t own copyright. I think with, what is it, the GO, Pokemon GO, students are uploading sites for that, and there have been some YouTube sites that have been uploaded with -- Someone just sent me, Alan Stein just sent me a video on, what’s the game where they shoot with suction? I forget what it is called. SCL: I’m not a video person. BM: I mean, I think that it kind of all speaks together, that it needs to be a little more stressed [in our] education about the works on this campus, that they are [under copyright]. It’s pretty important that it be done. SCL: Right. BM: It’s an ongoing process. How do you do that when students are playing dodgeball or these shooter games inside, first person shooter games or whatever they’re called. They sort of have this sort of thing where they shoot these suction cups at one another through the windows of Nancy Holt, which is an issue. SCL: Well they used to -- every summer I used to give tours when new students would come on campus, tours in the afternoon. I’d take the parents and the students on tours around campus, which basically was 31 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED really sort of showing them the campus, but I obviously wove into those tours not a lecture on the sculpture but just helping them understand, you know, what the sculptures were all about, and how we could appreciate them, etc. Then for a while, I gave tours to the people who were in charge of the residence halls, so that they were aware of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection, and then the students in the residence halls, they could tell the students in the residence halls, etc. BM: There’s still a lot of vandalism on campus. SCL: Yes, but it’s the same thing, I think, when the Seattle Art Museum did their sculpture park. You know, it was like the first day or the first two days, there was graffiti on the sculpture in Seattle. And the newspapers, Seattle Times, The P-I, etc. started calling me and saying, we realize that you have a sculpture collection at Western, and what have you done in the past about graffiti? Suddenly, you know, after about the second call, I said to myself, I better really think about what I’m going to say. So the next time I got a call from a reporter, I said, you know people are used to going to a museum. They go to the museum and go out the back door and there’s this beautiful little sculpture garden, and they realize with the proximity of the sculpture garden right next to the museum, they are essentially in sort of a gallery space, and so they know how to act in a museum. When they go to the park, they expect to be able to throw Frisbees, you know, run around with friends and dogs and everything else. And when the two come together, sculpture and a park, they don’t know how to react. And so I said, basically, it’s an issue of respect, of young people coming to realize that it’s not just sculpture but it’s all property that we have to respect. So that basically was my statement any time somebody called me. (Laughter) BM: I don’t know, we can talk about missed opportunities, or issues of dealing with vandalism... I don’t know, what do you want to talk about? I did not know that we almost got a [Felix Gonzales-Torres]. SCL: Oh, yes. That’s a very interesting story. What was his name? Pablo Schugurensky came from New York, he was the head of the public art program at Washington State Arts Commission. It was at the time of the monies coming from whatever the credit lines is on Abakanowicz [One-half-of-one-percentfor-art, Art in Public Places Program]. He set up a jury, and he brought in two people from L.A., and one person from the East Coast, I think, New York. Then there were myself, Virginia Wright, Chris Bruce, who was at the Henry Gallery at the time, and Patterson Sims, who was at the Seattle Art Museum, on the jury. The three outside people, the two from L.A. and the one from New York were never given any information about the Outdoor Sculpture Collection, and Pablo did not put a tour into the program, a walk around campus. So they really did not understand, you know, what sculptures we had, what the campus was like, etc. At that time, we were not, I’m pretty sure we were not allowed to make our own nominations of people to submit to the database. I am almost positive that the people who nominated the names outside of the database were the jurors, because I distinctly remember going through long lists and trying to find how many people wanted X-artist and how many people wanted Y-artist. And one of the artists was Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and when he sent in his material for the database, he actually sent in a proposal of what exactly he would do here on campus, which was a boxing ring. We were all intrigued with it. But all I’m going to say is that there was a very -- there was a procedural matter that made us redo the whole jury system, because, and I cannot remember, again, I’d have to go through the files. It was either -BM: It had to be the early 1990s, because that’s when Gonzalez was doing those boxing rings. 32 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: Yes, right. And it was either something having to do with voting, or it had to something to do with the fact that we objected to the fact that this was the only artist that we were looking at who was making a proposal. In other words, we were swayed by the proposal rather than -- because always in the past, we always chose the artist, and the artist came to campus, etc. But it was a procedural matter, and all of us essentially woke up the next morning and said, uh-uh, something’s wrong. It wasn’t the work that was wrong, it was a procedural matter that we said, we really need to redo the jury again. And I and Virginia Wright and the Dean at that time actually went to -- I want to say the World Trade Center -- the trade center in Seattle [World Trade Center Seattle] and had a conference with the Washington State Arts Commission people to explain to them what we thought, you know, should happen and what we deemed had gone wrong. So we redid the jury, and that’s when Abakanowicz was chosen. BM: Okay. SCL: And, what’s the name of the critic who writes in Seattle? Jen Graves? Is that the name? The Stranger. SA: I just read something, and I can’t think of her name. BM: Is it Jen Graves? SCL: I think it’s Jen Graves. [She] found out about this years – how old is the Abakanowic? The early Nineties, right? So, she called me up, oh let’s just say 2010, and was very interested in this story. And we had to turn over the files to her so that she could, you know, look at the files. I had to take the files to the Assistant Attorney General and let her go through all of the files to make sure that Western couldn’t be sued or whatever, and she deemed that the files were perfectly okay. So there is some comment made by Jen Graves in The Stranger about the Felix Gonzalez-Torres almost happening at Western. BM: Okay. That’s kind of, 2004, that’s -- because Felix Gonzalez-Torres died, I think, in the late 1990s, mid to late 1990s.11 I don’t remember exactly when he died, probably was the mid to late 1990s. That would have been quite a bit after his AIDS-related illness death. What about Gary Hill? SCL: No, we did almost -- I don’t see it that way. The Gary Hill that we have, which is adjacent to Hafthor’s office, was actually a project of the state for two other buildings in Olympia. They decided that they did not want it, and so, the Washington State Arts Commission came to me and said, we have this Gary Hill that’s just sitting in storage. Are you interested in having the Gary Hill? And I said, yes, we would very much be interested in that. Then they proceeded to tell me that I had to put it in an enclosed space because of the projectors, if you will that he, the very early ones that he was using that might be dangerous. So that’s why it’s in the enclosed space. BM: In Hafthor’s office. (Laughter) Do you have any memories or recollections, Sharon, about any pieces that bother you as you’ve been teaching over the years? 11 Felix Gonzalez-Torres died, January 9, 1996. 33 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SA: I know that Magdalena Abakanowicz has said that the cost of the sculpture, having it made and brought here was about exactly what the budget was, so that she felt that her piece was a gift. That happened to other artists as well, didn’t it, that they really didn’t get paid very much for their work, or is that true? SCL: Abakanowicz definitely stated that to me just as she was leaving and wanted to know were there any extra funds that could be given, and I said, no, I mean, that’s the budget. I think we have been extremely lucky [in having] artists who have been willing to work with us knowing that we had no money whatsoever, [not having] a decent budget. BM: Holt, actually, put some [of her own] money -SA: Oh that’s right, you said that. BM: Richard Serra paid for -- I don’t know, did he get money out of Wright’s Triangle? I know that he paid for at least one survey, about the ground. SC: Right. BM: There were like three different surveys done about that [regarding] the integrity of the ground where it was originally sited. I know he paid for -SCL: Right. But otherwise the money came from the NEA grant and the match by Virginia Wright. I’m trying to look here to see if there’s anything else. Another story I can tell you. BM: Do artists -- have artists donated work to campus? Like, not collections but -SCL: I always said, we don’t accept donations from artists. But we made an exception and I made a case when -- I just passed his work -- Cris Bruch offered some work to the university. The Cris Bruch works are down in the Communications [Facility]. I made the argument to the committee at that time that Cris Bruch had always been one of those artists who had been on our list of who we really were interested in someday having in the sculpture collection. Everyone agreed that that would be fine. So that’s the only - and then Mia Westerlund Roosen, she essentially gave her piece, Flank, but it had been, you know, it had been here for how many years before we asked it to be permanent, and that was a gift. BM: Any questions you have about conservation (referring to Hafthor)? I mean you’ve been working this summer on conserving a lot of work, and you’ve written about the Di Suvero piece in your essay, right? You wrote about the changes to the piece that weren’t anticipated? SCL: Yes. BM: Yes. I don’t know, is there any questions? HY: No, not about conservation. SCL: I’ll tell you a quick little story about the Do Ho Suh. Well, I’ll tell you two stories. 34 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED It took forever to site the David Ireland work. It took easily five years to site it. He wanted it in front of Old Main, because he had gone to Western12 and he had fond memories of Old Main. The president did not want it in front of Old Main because, again, it would block the view of Old Main. BM: How much would it block the view by? (Laughter) SCL: That the lawn of Old Main should remain pristine, even though we had the Donald Judd down there at the far right-hand side. Anyway, we sited I cannot tell you how many different places on campus, and, you know, there was always some sort of objection. Finally, Linda Smeins was the acting dean at the time. She and I came up with the idea that maybe they would accept the idea of it being put on the hill, the ridge of a hill close to Fairhaven. He was very, he did not, he was adamant about really wanting it still on the Old Main lawn, but he understood that this wasn’t going happen. So I would say that probably was the worst case scenario that I had in terms of just going around in circles and not being able to do anything that really pleased the university. HY: What were the objections that people had? BM: To putting it on Old Main? SA: Besides the Old Main lawn, there were other places. HY: Yes. SCL: One place was basically where the Meg Webster is now. So in other words out in front of SMATE. And we would go -- there was a wonderful person in Facilities Management who was great with digital photography, and we would take an image of the David Ireland, and I’d just go around and place it in various places and hand over the proposal to them. But that would not work because that whole lawn out in front of SMATE varies in terms of hardness and softness. It can vary like two inches. It can be very hard underneath and then go to complete soft and so the engineers basically said, that’s too tricky. Another place was sort of across from where the Robert Maki is now, in front of Edens Hall. They didn’t like that because that would mess up Edens Hall. Let’s see, there was a suggestion of it being in that whole area where Communications and AIC was, but I knew -- I really wanted the Nauman to sort of star in that area. So you know, we just ran out of suggestions. BM: And eventually wound down. SCL: Yes. BM: I’m assuming that initially there wasn’t too much to the contracts. I mean from what I saw on Nancy Holt, it was a description with some siting involved in it. How did the contracts change, with artists? I understand now the new contracts that happen have a clause in them that the work can be moved? 12 David Ireland attended the Campus Elementary School (Training School) during the 1930s and early 1940s. 35 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: I don’t know about that unless the state contracts have that. But contracts that are written with a particular donor, in other words, when Bagley and Virginia gave those seven works in 2010 or whenever it was, they didn’t have anything in that contract that said, you know, the work [wouldn’t be moved]. [Nor did] the university put anything into the contracts that said we had the right to move [them] anywhere we wanted to. BM: Oh, that’s my misunderstanding. SCL: That’s okay. BM: So, an artist can object if it’s sited one spot and then moved to another spot. SCL: The artist can object, I mean, obviously I would voice the artist’s objections, but whether the university would do anything about it is a different question. HY: But some of the works are site specific, other works like Meg Webster’s is not -SCL: The Meg Webster could be put any place. We could find other suitable sites for the Meg Webster, but what I’m saying is that there’s nothing in the contract that says that Meg Webster cannot be moved. HY: Exactly, it was bought for Virginia Wright, for her house and it’s been relocated here. The seven works that Sarah mentioned all came from Virginia Wright’s house. BM: Right, yes. I mean, I just found it really interesting that thinking about the evolution of sculpture, thinking about how it gets moved outdoors, and once it gets moved outdoors, you think about things like climate change, the climate hitting it. You think about environmental factors, but you don’t really think about university expansion. I mean I’m sure they thought about vandalism to some degree, but there are a lot more factors that are suddenly impinging on these works that weren’t -SCL: Yes, that’s right. BM: -- initially there. SCL: The Scott Burton was moved. When the Scott Burton came to us, that was part of the Meg Webster and the Joel Shapiro, you know, that whole big gift. The university said, the football team could easily move these sculptures, and so we really wanted them inside. So we placed them just inside Haggard Hall. Artech from Seattle helped us install them. Virginia Wright, oh, a couple of years ago, she and I were having a conversation and she said, you know, I really would like to have the Scott Burton outside. So we went through siting them. Actually one of the ideas was to place them sort of like on the porch of Old Main, so you’d go up the steps and there’s sort of a grassy area and place them there. Finally, you know, that didn’t really work. So we walked around, and we decided to place them in front of Biology, and she was very, Virginia Wright was very pleased that they were now outside. Artech had to come and remove them from Haggard Hall, and it was like moving the pyramids because they literally had glued them, used a type of glue to the floor. Also in one of the sections, they worked all day long on just one of the chairs. But they unhinged it, beautifully. HY: [I want to] ask you about the title of the work, it is Two-Part Chairs: Right Angle Version. Shouldn’t they be at the right angle? 36 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: Should they be at the right angle, meaning? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Should they be -BM: Situated. SCL: Situated... HY: So one is at the right angle to the other -SCL: Oh, to the other? I don’t know. That’s a good -- that’s a way to interpret it. I always understood that he wanted them like Virginia Wright -- you’ve seen the picture of how Virginia Wright had them at her house, and she said it was like the chairs were for two sort of guards, sort of guarding the doorway. SA: And they were sitting at right angles to the wall. SCL: Yes, yes. But that’s an interesting interpretation. HY: Is that a question? (Laughter) BM: And you can’t ask him, so. SCL: That’s right. But the Do Ho Suh, that was a very, very tricky installation in the AIC building because the artist was originally was given the -- now, you all who know architecture, where the original drawings by the architect, and then there’s another set of drawings that are called, what, made to build drawings or something like that? They gave Do Ho Suh the original architect’s drawings. So all of his team went according to those particular drawings. And when they realized that it was, that we had this made to build situation that Facilities Management was going by -- that they weren’t going to mesh. And if you go upstairs on the same level, what would that be, the second level? Where you can look straight out towards the sculpture, if you sort of move to the back where the elevator is, and if you look up, you’ll see these short figures hanging down, and of course the strands get longer and longer and longer. Where the short figures are, there is a sort of block section of concrete, and the figures just fit within that area. In other words, we did not have to start all over again and, you know, do the ceiling all over again. It was sheer miracle, that because the figures were smaller that they fit. As soon as you look up you’ll notice. I don’t have any other stories -BM: Did he come to campus for the opening? SCL: Yes, he did. BM: And so he must have been pleased with it. SCL: He was very pleased. BM: Oh, good. SA: He seemed to be, because he spoke at it. SCL: Yes, yes. BM: Yes, [I remember he talked and everything, yes]. 37 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SCL: But you know, he had just finished doing that piece at UCLA, for the Stuart Collection, which was the one on top of the building [Jacobs Hall]. SA: Right on to, the house -SCL: The house that collides with the building. And I remember showing that to the president and saying, be thankful that he’s not providing this (laughter) – on top of Old Main. BM: [It is a] nice story because his work on campus kind of collides with the ceiling. SCL: Yes. BM: It wasn’t meant to, but it does that. SCL: Yes, yes, it does. BM: I mean, it’s a very vivid part of it where the ceiling kind of breaks into the piece. It’s kind of nice. Anybody else have questions? Do you remember anything else you want to say? SCL: Oh I’m sure when I get in bed tonight, I’ll remember something else, but …. HY: What was the most fun to work with? I understand what you were feeling, you know, I’m so glad now every time …. SCL: I enjoyed working on the Bruce Nauman the most, just because he was such a wonderful person. And Ed Simpson was the representative from Facilities Management, and Ed was excellent, excellent to work with, and would just try to help Bruce do what he wanted to do. And so it was a very enjoyable situation. HY: Could you tell me about the Otterness? Now that is not minimalist sculpture, were there some -- did it attract opinions about the Otterness? SCL: Well, when Otterness was chosen, I -- maybe we had a conversation about this obviously is not Minimalists work, but I think in the most cases on those jury situations, we really were trying to find the best artist possible, and you know, obviously, he was chosen. Because I was curator, I could not say to the jury, Okay -- I could make an argument for a particular artist, but I did not control, I couldn’t control the jury. In other words, my vote counted just as much as their vote did. So when Otterness came [and] walked around campus and proposed what we have now, the biggest outcry came from the people in Biology, because it was going to be -- the sculpture was going out there in the green area, the landscaped area, and they could not get it into their minds that the sculpture was only going to be 18 inches high. They kept saying, 18 feet, in that area? So the biggest outcry came from the Biology people. SA: And actually, after it was installed, remember we had that FAST magazine then -SCL: Yes. SA: -- newsletter, and for weeks after it was installed there were articles, letters to the editor saying that they didn’t think it was sophisticated enough for our sculpture collection -38 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SC: Right. SA: Not from people in the Art Department, from other people that really didn’t like it. SCL: Yes, that it was too whimsical, that art couldn’t be funny. SA: Yes, art shouldn’t be funny, all those things. SCL: That’s right. SA: Which made me like it more. (Laughter) SCL: And so, I used to say, Well, go look at the Richard Beyer, go look at The Man who Used to Hunt Cougars for Bounty, that’s sort of whimsical, you know. (Laughter) BM: Well, I don’t know if it’s whimsical. SA: Students have another name for it. SCL: Yes, I know. HY: When he was there, was the [Beverly Pepper, Normanno Wedge] already in place? SCL: Yes. HY: You know, I know the one where one of the figures is holding a stone above his head, [is that a direct reference]? SCL: Yes, yes. Yes, I think so. HY: Another question, do you know El Lissitzky’s work from 1920 called [Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge]? BM: “Lead the Whites with a Red wedge” is what we used to call it. It was a comic book, it was not a comic book, but it was started for children, but it’s this very abstract circles and wedges that are about Russian politics at the time. Just to jog your memory if you don’t remember. HY: Yes, I was just wondering, would it be appropriate to expect Beverly Pepper to have made reference to that work?13 SCL: I would think so. I mean, you know, personally I would just ask her, but she’s -- I think she is very much aware of other people’s work, so, yes. HY: It kind of gives it a [provocative edge]. SCL: Right. 13 If one is to look at the work of Malevich and/or El Lissitzky and then the work of Beverly Pepper there does seem to be a resemblance to both of these constructivist’s works. 39 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: It would be interesting to find out if she was thinking -- because like, Zaha Hadid, I mean, her whole work just came from Malevich and so a lot of the Russian Constructivist, Productivist work was highly influential to a lot of American artists. That would be fun to ask her. I mean, that’s a pretty clear connection. But it would be interesting, it would be great to just email her and see what she has to say. SCL: Well, her early sculpture, I mean, the sculpture that’s at Dartmouth is very, you know, very much like that, very sharp angles, going into the ground, and -SA: She made a number of wedge sculptures. SCL: Yes, yes. SA: Quite a few. HY: Everybody was doing sculpture with wedges at that time. BM: Any other points, questions? It’s your time to get this on tape Hafthor. (Laughter). HY: I have a direct connection to Sarah, so whenever a question comes up on conservation and things like that, I just call her up. SCL: I’ll say, just give me a day and I’ll remember. BM: I think it’s, I mean, just for my own little bit of research, it’s nice to have some of this stuff recorded. I mean, I like the idea of the oral history a lot. So it’s good to have this on so that it can be -SCL: But what really needs to be done is to redo the sculpture book, because so much has changed. SA: But that will continue to be. I mean, it will continue to change. Like, every time they do a new one of these, then they have to again revise it. SCL: Yes. Or at least do a book on, you know -- I mean, how many sculptures that are in here are not in the book? SA: That’s right. SCL: Easily ten. BM: For me, it was most frustrating doing research on this, in not being able to find an online document that readily -- I mean, I really had to search to find things online. And a lot of collections now have -- I don’t know if they really focus too much on paper products, but a lot of them have -SCL: You were saying maps and -BM: Yes, maps or, yes. HY: Well, we are launching up a new website in Drupal, in a couple of weeks. They’ve been saying that for a while (Laughter). But Drupal is much easier to work with that way. The website we have now is very static, and to make any changes/additions is a huge amount of work. Also it’s very difficult to search it, so you put in Noguchi and don’t get our website. 40 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BM: That is frustrating, yes, really frustrating, to be working and researching. HY: So I’m hoping to be able to put a lot more information on the website, including a bibliography. But one thing that I really want to bring back, which I think is an amazing feat, you know, one of those great projects that you did, that I wish I had done, and was on my resume, was the interview of the artists’ on the outdoor sculpture tour. That of course is outdated now, and the technology is outdated etc. But I’ve gone through the text, and it doesn’t need much revision. Some of the other works can be treated in the same way -SCL: Right, right. HY: -- we could get an interview with the artists, etc. And my plan, my hope, is to basically use your text, add to it, use the same quotes from the artists, get the appropriate students from the Theatre Department to read it all and then have it available on the website. SCL: Yes. That’d be great. SA: It is in your book, much of those interviews are in your book. SCL: Yes. HY: The whole statements, whole interviews are there. SCL: What was I going to say? But we used to in the day when people did audio phone tours, people would come to the gallery and pick up a little walkie-talkie. Pause in transcript HY: But then, you know, when Robert Morris was created [Steam work for Bellingham], people were not so into thinking so much about the environment, but later that became a huge issue, because people wanted to turn it off completely because they did not want to display this waste of energy. SCL: That’s right. And they would always give me, you know, it costs so many millions of dollars per year to run the Robert Morris. And I would counter with it takes so much money to do, I’d pick something. BM: How much money does it cost to run the Morris? SCL: I don’t know. BM: I can’t imagine that much. SA: And much of it was excess steam, that’s why you get more in the winter. SCL: That’s right, yes. HY: But they refused to keep it on for the whole day. SA: Well, it wasn’t that you wanted it on for the whole day, because the point of the sculpture, which you spoke about in the beginning, was that it had to involve chance. You wanted it to involve chance. In 41 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED the beginning, that is what happened. It would come up more when there was more steam and dwindle down in the summer. SCL: Right. SA: Where now there’s no chance involved at all. SCL: That’s right. HY: That’s right, yes. So, since it’s been turned off and on? SA: Yes. You know exactly what time it’s going to come on and you know what time it’s going to go off, and you know how much steam is going to come out too. It’s no longer conceptual, dematerialized work that has to do with chance, what he originally wanted. SCL: But when we got with him and explained the situation, he did a lot of research. Going to, supposedly fairs, state fairs, [where] there are rooms that you can go in that have fog or steam or something. There’s this company that does this, this atmospheric thing to entertain the kids at the state fair, so he helped by looking at all those, saying would it work or wouldn’t work, etc. SA: Well, to a certain extent I can see that, because one of the ideas he’d been working with at that time was this interest in the actual making of the work, how it functioned, and this idea of plumbing was really – that’s why he talked a lot about how this plumber was a genius. SCL: That’s right. SA: And the idea of plumbing would still be there in this work, the fact that you could just make it work in a different way. HY: Marcel Duchamp said that the only great works that America had produced were plumbing and bridges. [The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges]. (Inaudible, multiple speakers) SA: -- Bridges and plumbing. HY: Bridges and plumbing. (Laughter) That he was trying to make a great American masterpiece. SA: And Duchamp was one of his great influences. BM: That would make a lot of sense that he would, so it’s a funny piece. I never thought of it as being a humorous piece, but it is. SA: It is. SCL: And you know, I once did a show in the gallery on the Outdoor Sculpture Collection, and I borrowed from the Seattle Art Museum the Box with the Sound of Its Own Making -SA: Oh, perfect. SCL: -- which was perfect to go with the steam piece. 42 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HY: That’s in Seattle? SCL: Yes it is. SA: It is; it is because of the [ready made with the hidden noise]. Well, he did another piece called Three Rulers. SCL: Yes. SA: Which is like the standard stoppages [Three Standard Stoppages]. HY: Now Lucy Lippard, in her book Six Years of dematerialization14, that is just display, there is no text about it. It’s actually the steam work he did in Philadelphia. It’s just pictures of it. I saw just clear examples of dematerialization imitation. Do you know if he was thinking about that or did he ever? Was he trying to create work that was just pure display of dematerialization? SCL: I don’t know. I’d have to go back through -SA: My take on it was that, this was a perfect example of answering the question from Duchamp, Is it possible to make a work that’s not a work of art? Because sometimes it’s not even there, and still it’s a work of art. SCL: Right, yes. SA: And you can’t -- or like Christo [Christo Vladimirov] came to the campus once, and he walked around, and they were saying, Well, what if you built one here, what would you do? And he said, I’d like to wrap the Steam sculpture (Laughter). Of course, you know, there’s nothing, really. HY: That’s what we did when we did the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland with Yoko Ono. You know, we explained to her that there were all kinds of environmental conditions and you would not see it for weeks. And she said, that’s exactly what I want. That piece was based very much on one of her instruction pieces from 1965, create a house with replacing prisms. If the sun is not shining the house is not there. TB: Well, I have a quick question if nobody else does. Because you did talk a little bit about Richard Francis and some other faculty who obviously kind of really engaged. Did that happen very much? I’m thinking of a nice article in FAST in 1997, when they’re talking about, I think, moving the Holt (Rock Rings). Vladimir Milicic, I think, in Modern & Classical, he wrote quite a little piece about the interaction of the three pieces on the south side [Rock Rings, Steam Work for Bellingham, and Manus]. So did that happen a lot where faculty got involved in it, other than being critical, to be supportive? SCL: I think there were various faculty on campus who were very much interested in the sculpture collection and would -- for example, the mathematician who would always give – [Branko Curgus] -who would always give his students some formula or something in regard to the Noguchi sculpture. 14 Lucy R. Lippard, editor, Six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthethic boundaries … New York: Praeger, [1973]; 43 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: I still have that on my desk. SCL: It’s in the Noguchi symposium book.15 Every spring I’d have to get out the folder and say, I don’t remember the formula. Just hold on a minute (laughter) I’ll get it. And there were people, you know, like people in Liberal Studies -- I used to go to Liberal Studies a lot and give lectures to the students on the sculpture collection. And I think somebody who used to be in environmental scientist, somebody by the name of John Miles.16 He was very interested in the Nancy Holt sculpture. So yes, you could go around to the different departments and colleges and pick out people who were very much interested in -SA: And as time goes by -- these are going to be more and more appreciated because their values are just going up and up and up, and I think as time goes by, they’re going to be much more appreciated. SCL: Yes. And I’m always amazed at how many people would walk by the gallery and say to me, I was in Chicago, San Francisco, whatever, and I saw a di Suvero, or I saw an X, and they would be just so pleased that they were able to identify them, the artist. TB: I’m one of those. Because I ran into one in Paris -- there was the Abakanowicz -- the Manus piece was in Paris. I was just shocked. I didn’t realize that people did multiple copies of almost the same thing. And there’s a di Suvero, I think, down at Stanford? Oh, it’s the one that’s For Handel. Who did For Handel, di Suvero? SCL: Yes. TB: Theirs is a smaller version of it, yes. HY: That’s a smaller version! TB: Yes, right. We’ve got the big ones, you know. It is exciting when you’ve been on the campus for a long time, and then you go someplace else and you go visiting and you recognize the work, and you’re -BM: I know people who make trips specifically to Western for the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. SCL: Oh, absolutely. BM: Take their students. SA: Oh yes. Whenever an artist has come to visit me, they want to see that first and me second. (Laughter) BM: Thank you. End of recording 15 Curgus, Branko, “Numbers in the Sky(viewing sculpture),” Isamu Noguchi and Skyviewing Sculpture, edited by Sarah Clark-Langager and Michiko Yusa, Western Washington University Publishing Services, 2004. 16 John C. Miles, Professor, Geography and Environmental Social Sciences. 44 Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions Campus History Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Rick Osen interview -- April 8, 2019
Date: 2019-04-08
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_OsenRick_20190408_Final
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Rick Osen ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" crit
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Rick Osen 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 Rick Osen, alumni of Western Washington University (Huxley College, BS 1979), and Western Libraries staff member, 1977-2014. Rick’s library career began as a library student assistant (1977) and took him through almost all areas of the Libraries including serving as Acting Dean of Libraries during the 2012/13 academic year; he retired in 2014. TB: Today is Monday, April 8, [2019]. My name is Tamara Belts. I’m here with Rick Osen. And we’re going to do an oral history with Rick, as a long-term library employee. He is also an alumni of Western, so we’re going to first start with a few questions that we always ask our alumni. So, why did you choose to attend Western? RO: I already had a degree from Simpson College in Iowa, and then I had spent four years in the Air Force. The year after I got out of the Air Force, a friend and I both got interested in environmental issues. We were living in Spokane. At that time Huxley was one of the original environmental study schools in the nation. We came over and visited, and we decided that we’d apply for enrollment the next year. We moved to Bellingham and started at the beginning of fall quarter, 1976. TB: Okay. And so what were your dates of attendance at Western? RO: I attended the school year 1976-1977, though I really only did two quarters that year, fall and winter. I took spring off, except for doing an independent study. Then I went to summer school that summer. Then I took a year off before attending the entire 1978-1979 academic year. TB: Okay. And then what degrees or certificates did you receive from Western? RO: Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies. TB: Okay. And then you already mentioned it, but what degree did you earn then from Simpson College in Iowa? 1 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED RO: It was a Bachelor of Arts in Education with a concentration in Physical Education and a teaching certificate. TB: So you were, when you came to Western, living with your buddy. Any other favorite times? Memories from your off-campus hours, I guess, in terms of some people etc.? RO: Well, not too much. I was coming as an older student; I would have been almost 28 when I enrolled at Western. And truthfully—my friend was also the same approximate age—we didn’t spend a whole lot of time on campus other than coming to classes. Though we used to come to some ballgames. I remember going to basketball games and stuff like that. But typically we weren’t very involved in student life at Western because we were older students, pursuing second degrees, at the time. TB: So who were your favorite or most influential teachers? RO: Well, Lynn Robbins was my advisor at Huxley, and I took more classes from him than anyone else. And John Miles I also remember very fondly from Huxley. This was before he became Dean. So those two I think were the most influential. And I’m still good friends with Lynn to this day. TB: So when did you start working in the library as a student employee? RO: In the summer session, 1977. TB: Okay. So what was the library like when you came as a student, or how much awareness do you have of being able to remember it? RO: I didn’t intentionally seek employment at the library. I just saw they were advertising for help in the summer, and I didn’t have any big expectations about that. I was on the GI Bill and thought a little extra spending money would be nice, so I applied. And I found out that I liked library work. I was at the Circulation Desk, what was called the Loan Desk back in those days, which involved shift work— evenings, weekends, and that was fine. I was used to that kind of schedule in the Air Force, always working shift work. So it wasn’t that big of a deal for me. And I liked the work. But then at the end of that summer I left Bellingham. I had met Barbara earlier that year when she was in the United States working temporarily at Eastern Washington University. She had to go back home to Poland at the end of the summer, so I followed her there and we got married in Poland. We were returning to Bellingham at the end of the summer of 1978 from Poland and I was re-enrolled in school. I had contacted Christine Kendall, for whom I had worked in the summer of 1977, at the Loan Desk to see if she might need student help for the fall of 1978. So she said, sure, come on back. And so then I worked at the Loan Desk for the entire school year of 1978-1979, including intersessions and pretty much any other hours I could pick up. Then that summer, after I had earned my Huxley degree, I was hired into a temporary staff position. By the end of that summer, the evening staff person, Connie Horstmann, left her position and moved away. I got hired into the night position beginning in the fall of 1979. At that time, the library was changing its closing hour from 11 p.m. to midnight, so I was hired to work 3 p.m. to midnight, Sunday through Thursday. I did that for the first two full years that I worked in a staff position at the library. 2 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Okay, so that means 1979 to 1981. What happened then? RO: I believe it was spring of 1981 that the person then in charge of the Loan Desk, Ginny Roecker, resigned and left town. I got hired into the position of Loan Desk supervisor. TB: So then you were there until you went to the Music Library? RO: Yes. I had that job for about four years. And then in 1985, some administrative rearrangements were made in the library, including the elimination of the Loan Desk supervisor job. The Music Library supervisor position was vacant, and a new supervisor position in Science Reference was being established. It was understood that Christine Kendall and I were going to fill those two positions. Each of us interviewed for both jobs with the librarians in charge of them, Marian Ritter and Kathy Haselbauer. It worked out amicably as I opted for the Music Library position, and Christine took the job in Science Reference. TB: Okay, excellent. And so you were there for just a year? RO: I went there in the summer of 1985. One of the issues coming up was that Marian was going to be gone on leave that upcoming winter. Harry Ritter, her husband, was going on sabbatical to Vienna for research, and Marian wanted to go with him. So as soon as fall quarter was over in mid-December 1985, she left and didn’t return to work until the start of spring quarter at the end of March. I managed the Music Library along with student assistants, which worked out fine. I knew some music since I had played trombone from sixth grade through high school in both bands and ensembles and other things, and so I could read music and knew works from some composers, and that helped a lot stepping into the job there because it was obviously heavily based on music. (Laughing) There were some really good student assistants, and it was a very busy job. It wasn’t too long after I left that position that it was determined to have a second staff person there besides the supervisor, but I don’t remember exactly when that happened. Then in late spring of 1986, or thereabouts, Ruby Gunderson, the Circulation manager retired, and there was a recruitment for a Circulation Department supervisor. It was the next category up. I was a Supervisor A, and this was going to be a Supervisor B job, which was to oversee both the Stacks Maintenance (Return Room) supervisor (Carolyn Mendenhall) plus the Loan Desk. Marie Vosti was still supervising the Reserve Room at that time, and she was going to be separate. TB: Okay. So then you came to Circulation. Is that when Frank Haulgren went to the Music Library? RO: No. Marian had a summer research grant in 1986, and so the deal was I got hired as the Circulation supervisor, but I also supervised the Music Library that summer until she came back to work full-time. They didn’t necessarily want a new person there when Marian wasn’t around. I think that that’s when Virginia Beck was hired. I think she replaced me at the Music Library, but I’m not sure about that. TB: That would make sense and that Frank was later. RO: No, Frank never worked over there. TB: Okay. I remember talking to him about it. Oh that’s when June McKenzie got the job. 3 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED RO: Yes. So Virginia for sure replaced me over there. TB: Then she came to the library in [1989] to Special Collections, I know that she was over there awhile. RO: Yes. TB: Okay, so then let’s talk about you back in Circulation. There were so many things that happened in that time. RO: Yes. About a year later Marie Vosti retired. When Marie retired it was decided that the Reserve Room would report to me, as well. I had hired Frank Haulgren in 1984 to work the evening shift at the Loan Desk. The first hire I ever made when I became the Loan Desk supervisor was Lanny Birdsell to replace me on the evening shift. About three years later Lanny left to go to grad school in Detroit, I think. Anyway, when he left I hired Frank. Then when the Reserve Room position opened up, I hired Frank to be the Reserve Room supervisor. So, the Circulation Department then consisted of the Reserve Room with a supervisor, the Stacks Maintenance (Return Room) with a supervisor, and the Loan Desk with a lead technician, which I believe was Kim Marsicek by then. That was about 1987, I think. Anyway, since I had taken over as Circulation supervisor I had reported to Dan Mather, who was the lone Associate Director at that time, the library having downsized from two Associate Directors to one. TB: Oh, because Bob Cross retired in 1987? RO: This was a little before he retired. There were some budget issues and some criticism was raised that the library was too top heavy administratively. So Bob Cross moved into the Reference Department for the last year or so before he retired. And Dan was then the only Associate Director, and I reported to him. But somewhere right around the end of 1987 or the beginning of 1988, Dan retired. And then Diane Parker made the decision to use that position to hire a professional, Tom DeRose, to run Media Services. I don’t remember what his title was (Director), but before that there was a higher-level staff person in charge of the Media Services in Miller Hall, which reported to the library at that time. Diane decided she wanted a professional person there, so she used the vacated Associate Director position to make that hire. TB: And Dan had been over in Media Services for a while. RO: I think he’d been keeping an eye on it, yes. Anyway, when he retired, then Diane asked me to take over the Facilities management and planning work that had been part of Dan’s oversight. TB: That’s what I was wondering, okay. So that’s about 1988? RO: Yes, I think it was 1988 and the first facilities project I oversaw was the installation of the compact shelving in Wilson Library’s basement. We were starting to plan that when Dan retired. Also, sometime not very much later than that, maybe a year or so, there was another administrative reorganization, and Interlibrary Loan got moved from Reference over to – TB: Resource Services, I bet. 4 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED RO: Yes, to report up through me, too. We didn’t really combine the operations but we combined the space for Interlibrary Loan with Reserves in the old Reserve Room, which is now Zoe’s Bookside Bagels. So Frank took over the supervision of that, as well. TB: And you were reporting to Donna Packer though then, right? RO: Well, I’m not quite sure of the timeline on that. When Dan first retired, I reported directly to Diane for a period of time. I think it was at that time that my position was reallocated to Program Manager A because of all the various areas that I was in charge of—Interlibrary Loan, Reserves, Loan Desk, Stacks Maintenance, and Facilities management. At some point the library organized around three operational areas—Public Services, Technical Services, Access Services. The Access Services units reported to me and Donna Packer became the Head of Access Services, so I started reporting to her. I’m guessing this might have been around 1989 or 1990. TB: Right. So was your first big project in Facilities beyond the compact shelving the asbestos abatement project? RO: Yes, I think we did a couple other minor things, but in 1992 a study of facilities about the presence of asbestos was undertaken, and concern was expressed about the library’s low ceilings and the asbestos coating that was easy to knock free. It was about that time where the whole nation was getting concerned about all the asbestos in buildings. For years it had been a fire retardant, and nobody thought anything about it, and then they started discovering people that had worked around asbestos for a number of years developed these lung diseases and the like. So it became a major concern right around that time. There was also money then to deal with it, so the state put forward a significant amount of money to take care of the library because it was such a high traffic area. I mean, this stuff was just falling off the ceilings if somebody scraped a book against it or sometimes just on its own. So, I remember attending meetings where the university treated it very seriously, and the legislature promptly provided money for abatement. As you might remember, it was an extremely significant project in the fact that the affected areas had to have basically everything cleaned up. So we took advantage of that to do a lot of other things that the library needed, which was new lighting, carpet, painting. We repositioned all of the stacks to make them mostly ADA accessible, which also was a fairly new law at that time, and installed them to meet new seismic codes. The project lasted two full years. We did one phase about every quarter. There were eight phases in all. Everybody in the library moved at least twice, and all the collections moved at least twice. I think Carolyn and I figured out that if we had lined up all the print materials moved, it would have stretched from Bellingham up to Blaine, on one shelf. (Laughing) Twenty-some miles of stuff we moved over the two years. And like I said, most of that moved twice, and some got moved more than twice. That is when we started using the Commissary building to store some materials. The Archives Building had just been built when this project got started, making space available. TB: The University Archives had been in the Commissary, and so had the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies? RO: Yes. I’m pretty sure it was the University Archives that had been in the space that we occupied in the Commissary building, not the State Archives. We just occupied that one big room, but not the rest of the building. 5 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED So, the plan was to move some materials, those considered low use items, out of compact shelving to the Commissary. Then we moved the equivalent of one floor wing of materials in the main library down to compact shelving to keep them in the library. And then we used that emptied floor wing for the staging area for all the other phases. Everybody and everything moved into there, and then back from there when their area got renovated. So, yes, it was a very complicated project. TB: Is that when you moved to being pro exempt or administrative exempt, whatever your title was? RO: Well, simultaneously or actually right before that there were two things going on. In about 1990-91 I got involved in two state committees that were both related to the ICCL group, the Inter-Institutional Committee of Chief Librarians. One issue was that the state was looking into doing an upgrade of their Facilities Evaluation Planning Guide, a state document with different chapters for different kinds of spaces within higher education institutions. Sifting down from the state’s university provosts’ group, the ICCL group had been invited to draft an update to the library facilities chapter of the Facilities Evaluation Planning Guide. Diane Parker, who I believe was serving that year as chair of ICCL, asked me if I would be interested in working on this, and I said sure. ICCL set up a committee of three people: Sarah Michalak, an assistant director at UW Libraries to serve as chair; Randy Stilson, an archivist and librarian at Evergreen; and, myself. We spent the better part of a year or more revising that chapter. We typically would get together at least once a month at Sarah’s office at UW, because it was halfway in between for the other two of us. Then almost at the same time, there was also another state-wide ICCL concern. At the time there were two personnel boards for state employees, the Higher Education Personnel Board (HEP Board) and the state personnel board for all other state employees. [These were since merged into one personnel board.]. Within the HEP Board, the class specifications for the library series had last been revised in the early 1970s. There was no mention of computers or other current tasks in the job specifications. The HEP Board asked ICCL to propose changes. We had an internal group in our library, as did each of the other libraries, which worked on this. Then there was a coordinating group at the state level, which was primarily representatives from each of the six baccalaureate institutions. We met fairly regularly at UW about that as well. Diane was either the chair or the co-chair of that effort, and I was the other library representative from Western. She and I would travel to these meetings together quite often. Again, this lasted several months. Both of those efforts were going on simultaneously. And, both of those happened before the asbestos project. Part of the new class specifications that were developed included a new class called Library Unit Manager, which was meant to bring people like me back into the library class series rather than being program managers. [I was a Program Manager B by that time.] I believe I became one of only three people in the state that was assigned to the new classification. There was Gary Jeffries at Eastern and a woman, I can’t remember her name, who was involved in running the new branch library for WSU at Vancouver. No sooner than that had been done, the state, because of another change in laws, was looking at what positions in the state shouldn’t be identified as classified staff but should instead be exempt staff, or whatever they called it at that time. Later, at Western, it became professional staff. Exempt staff meant being exempt from fair labor standards. In other words, these positions meant being expected to work as much time as it took to get the job done, and there was no 40-hour week, no overtime, no comp time. Each of the universities were charged with examining any jobs on campus that might fit the criteria. And so my position got reviewed by HR here at Western. I think the only other position in the library they reviewed was that of Walton Anderson. They determined Walton was properly classified within the 6 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED library series, but they determined that my position should be exempt. Interestingly, I was made exempt for what I was doing at the time, but shortly after I became exempt, Diane moved me into the administration office where parts of my job changed focus. (Laughing) TB: So was that about 1993 or a little bit earlier? RO: It was either at the end of 1992 or the beginning of 1993. At the time, we were already planning the asbestos project, plus we’d also already done the first pre-design for the Haggard remodel, which was in 1991 and 1992. I served with Diane on the university committee for that. I had this history of working with Diane on all these different committees, and I think that was one of the reasons she felt comfortable moving me into the administration office. She needed some help, and I think she noticed that ever since Mather retired. Then about the same time that we were starting the asbestos project, state officials approved the updated version of the Facilities Evaluation Planning Guide, on which I’d worked. The library chapter had a lot of formulas that showed how much space you should have to meet both your current needs and for future growth. I immediately applied those formulas to our situation at Western, and through that I showed that the space that was being planned for the library in the first pre-design of Haggard wasn’t going to be enough to give us any growth room at all. We were going to fill it up the day we moved in, and everything would be full. I believe Marian Alexander refers to this in her history of the library. I’m not sure who made the decision, though it was timed when Karen Morse came in as the president, to reevaluate the project and do another pre-design in the next biennium. When funded, major capital projects typically take three biennium. The first two years are for pre-design, the middle two years are the design phase, and the last two years they do the construction, which sometimes, like in the case of Carver, stretches out even further than that. So, Haggard then ended up being an 8-year project because we did two pre-designs. For the second pre-design we hired Phil Leighton to come in as our library consultant. Diane had set up a committee to select the consultant, and I served on that. We all know sometimes you can tell the powers that be what’s really needed but they don’t really believe it until they pay somebody else to come in and tell them. (Laughter) Phil was very helpful in demonstrating our needs, and he became a good friend of mine. We stayed in touch for years after that. I worked very close with him for the next couple of years or so. He spent quite a bit of time up here. You probably sat in on some meetings when we were in the planning stages. TB: It was inclusive, yes. I mean, he met with all the different units and they talked about what they did and what they needed. RO: Right. Because part of what he was doing was not only helping us out with the Haggard project, but then doing programming for a pre-design for Wilson renovation, which was being planned to follow the completion of the Haggard renovation. Of course the Wilson renovation never happened. But we had the pre-design document ready. Phil met with the staff again and drew out work areas and floor plans. I’m sure you have copies of those documents here in Special Collections. 7 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Even though we never got the money to totally renovate Wilson, we’ve done bits and pieces at different times. Did this pre-design work become a kind of model that you followed even though you couldn’t do the whole building? RO: We did, we did. We were supposed to get the Wilson renovation done immediately after Haggard was completed and occupied because that was the time when we were going to have the most space before collection growth would start filling it up. Well, that didn’t happen. And then the first time we tried to request funds for a smaller project in Wilson, we were told no, this will just be taken care of when the renovation happens. Well, the renovation hasn’t happened yet. (Laughing) So what we did was that we started submitting smaller projects that were based on our Wilson pre-design plans saying that this work will not be wasted even if the renovation goes forward later. And over the next years we addressed a lot of programmatic issues. But we didn’t address the infrastructure issues, which are the real pricey parts of renovating an older building. Also, there were space needs associated with how our services were changing and the effects of automation. So, we got pretty successful in getting funding for at least some kind of project or projects every two years to help address programming needs, kind of doing it in stages rather than all at once. But still the main infrastructure things have never been addressed. TB: Let’s go back quickly because I think we got a little bit past the Haggard project. Okay, so who really had the idea of the sky bridge? Was that yours, or was that somebody else’s? RO: No, I can’t claim that. TB: Because we talked about an underground connection, too – RO: Yes, the underground connection was an idea of the first pre-design study, because we were only going to get the bottom floor in Haggard, just one floor instead of the two floors we ended up with in the second pre-design. So, the idea was to tunnel under the stairwell to connect the bottom floor of Haggard with the Wilson basement. At first we were questioned why we needed to connect the spaces at all. And our argument was that if they weren’t connected it would be like a branch library, which are expensive to run. So I don’t remember when the idea of a sky bridge surfaced, but it might have come from the architects, or it might have just been a group effort. I served on the architect selection committee when we chose ZGF to do the design work. [A different firm had done the pre-design.] The library was getting two of Haggard’s three floors, and a connection to Wilson was needed. The idea of a sky bridge meant that the library could take the upper two floors rather than the lower two floors. The issue of the sky bridge, though, generated a lot of concern. People were so used to those stairs coming up from High Street going down into Red Square. And there was some concern expressed about a sky bridge destroying the view from the PAC plaza over to Red Square. So, ZGF produced a model of what became the sky bridge, and how it would affect the surroundings. You still have it in Special Collections, right? TB: Yes, yes we do. RO: And then ZGF did a computer mock-up that showed how the view would be so much better with the sky bridge than it was with the stairs, because the stairs actually blocked your view of Red Square from 8 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED across the street here. The sky bridge model showed that you could view all the way through. We made a presentation to the Board of Trustees about it because it was that big of a deal, a real big deal. And they were convinced that, yes, the view would actually be better. And so the sky bridge turned out to be, I think, the signature part of the project (laughing), the way it’s turned out. TB: Right. It’s been a popular place, that’s for sure. RO: Yes. A lot of times those ideas come from people sitting around and just, you know, throwing out possibilities, and then everybody at some point kind of says, yes. TB: And there already was a sky bridge, wasn’t there, between the science buildings? Or was that after? RO: No, that was done after. TB: So they modeled it after ours. RO: Yes. The Chemistry building was built first, I think. TB: 1993, yes. RO: And then once we did our sky bridge, when they were building Biology that’s when they decided to join it to Chemistry via a sky bridge. TB: That’s when they did it, okay. And Biology was last because SMATE was right after Chemistry. So can you talk a little bit more about -- well, I guess, did you have anything to do with the LIS? RO: Well, yes, as a matter of fact. The LIS was obviously a major change. Jerry Boles was fairly new to Western when the university funded and started planning the LIS. Also, after Jerry’s arrival he reorganized what had been one Computer Center on campus into two distinct groupings, an Administrative Computing group and an Academic Computing/Technology group. And as part of that technology group, that’s when Media Services left – TB: Oh, the library? RO: Yes. Media Services had been administratively reporting to the library, but were transferred to the new Academic Technology group. Their work was getting more and more technical and computeroriented. Anyway, a steering committee was set up to oversee the LIS project. The committee was a joint effort between the Provost’s Office and the library, and included Jerry Boles, Diane Parker, Marian Alexander and John Havland. However, in 1994 while this planning was well underway, the directorship of the library changed with Marian taking over as the interim or acting director. She appointed Karen Rice to take over the LIS coordinator for the library, thus Karen took Diane’s place on the steering committee. Then as planning proceeded, Marian formed two different committees. One was the LIS Implementation Committee, which was the main library thrust of planning all the modules and how it would work and all that, which was chaired by Karen, and the other was the Technical Committee that was going to plan the technical infrastructure and implementation of that. Peter Smith originally was going to chair that committee, but he asked Marian to be removed from it. So she said, Rick… (Laughing) 9 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED And I said, really? I don’t know technology. And she went, it doesn’t matter. Just coordinate the work. And so that was the first time I started working with Jerry Boles regularly, and that working relationship continued for many years up until the time he retired. We had no technical people in the library at the time except for Tom McNeely, who was a student employee. Tom reported to me then. So it was Tom and I and Jerry and two or three people from his new organization, including Don Hicks, who was a programmer, and George Liu, who now I think is the supervisor of the computer maintenance/support, but at that time was brand new at Western. George was going to be involved in equipment installation for the project. There was a couple other people involved off and on, too. At the time of our planning, it was still pretty common for libraries to use dumb terminals to access their library systems. But Innovative Interfaces, the system we were purchasing, had just come out with their graphical user interface. So, after mulling this over for some time, the decision was made, and I think Jerry was the key in making this decision, that it would be better to go with PCs rather than dumb terminals in order to be prepared for the new interface. PCs would be the future. That was a huge decision at the time, because otherwise if we had purchased dumb terminals, about two years later we would have had to be redoing everything again. TB: Where was circulation at right then—what had happened in that period between the punch cards and the LIS? Had there been an intermediate step, or were they able to make the transition – We barcoded everything in like 1995. RO: Yes. Prior to the LIS the administrative computing folks wanted to get rid of the old IBM computer in Bond Hall, which dated back to the 1960s. It was, like, humongous. That was the reason they built Bond Hall the way they did with the large atrium in the middle – so they could get that huge computer up to the floor they wanted it on. We were the last department still using the IBM on campus, and they wanted to get rid of it real bad. So before the LIS came, we worked closely with the Administrative Computing people, primarily Billie Watts, and Steve La Bree from the Registrar’s Office, and also Mike, what was his name, from Administrative Computing? TB: Massey? RO: Massey, Mike Massey, yes. Mike Massey and Billie Watts were the primary people who worked with us on reprogramming our old home-grown circulation system so that transactions could be loaded onto disk. So instead of carrying all these punch cards over to Bond Hall, we’d just carry a disk over every night. It was quite a bit of work for what turned out to be a fairly short period. It was only a couple of years or less before we had the LIS. But it was primarily something that Administrative Computing wanted to clean up. We had to take part in making the change, but they did most of the work. It was interesting, a funny story dates back to when we still were using the punch cards, and the machines would just keep breaking down at the Circulation desk. There was a guy named Lowell, can’t remember his last name, who was from IBM, and he was there so often that people thought he was one of our staff. They’d come up and ask him where something was or for help (laughing), because he was working right at the counter. That was funny. Then I also remember when the key punch machine was still in the library and IBM had to call a guy out of retirement to come fix it because they had nobody still on staff that had ever worked on one of them. (Laughing) 10 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: And all of that didn’t change until like 1995, when we had a barcode day to prepare for the LIS. RO: Yes, and it was also about that time, probably 1994, when the Western Card got planned and implemented, and so the library was critical in that. TB: Because that was critically tied to the LIS too, really, right? Because we needed a card for Circulation. RO: Yes, we had to have barcoded cards prior to the LIS. However, the university was interested in combining more operations onto one card. The library had always had its own library card. I think I still have a copy of one or two of those at home. TB: Yes, the original library card before that Western Card was a key punch card because it had all those little holes in it. So, talk a little bit more about the Western Card and that time. RO: Yes, Donna Packer and Kurt Willis co-chaired a committee to make a recommendation for a Western Card, and I served on the committee as well. There were representatives from around campus. There were big ideas for a lot more places on campus to use the card. The idea was that down the road it would be for everything, like even a bank card and dorm access card, all that kind of stuff. A lot of those things never happened, but there was a lot of talk about it at the time. Still it did serve a critical thing in combining on one card functional use for Dining Services with that for the library and – TB: And Copy Center, yes. RO: --- and, yes, Kathy Tadlock was a part of that committee, too. So it was good change overall. It just didn’t quite serve all the functions they thought it was going to at the time. TB: So can you talk a little bit about the changes you saw overall, I guess? This question was actually from Kim, in terms of how we shifted, although I think we would always think we were student centered, but there was really a change in the library, probably, even campus wide, to really become a more student-centered library. I know with the coming of Judith, it became part of the strategic plan. She even used those words, client-centered, or student-centered. But is that really, was that new or was it just sort of suddenly more articulated? Because now we talk about it all the time, right? RO: Yes, yes. But I think part of it was that….I don’t know how much to say about certain people here, but (laughing). TB: Just the idea of the change. RO: Okay. So Judith Segal was hired in 1996 and came in with a lot of new ideas, many of which had good merit. But, she didn’t turn out to be the best of administrators. As we talked about before, this was an era where much in libraries had been automated, and then of course we were one of the last academic libraries anywhere to automate. This was changing a lot about what traditional library jobs were, especially, I think, for professionals. One of Judith’s key concepts was to get librarians out of the library to be engaged with faculty on campus, rather than concentrating too much about traditional, basic library operations. She proposed reorganizing to make librarians for the colleges. 11 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Reference librarians has traditionally been liaisons to particular academic departments. She meant a different focus beyond the liaisons being selectors of materials for specific disciplines. And, there was some reluctance from some librarians to make this change. But I think it was just part of the times, in the way that libraries were already fundamentally changing to being places where you didn’t necessarily have to go to all the time because you could access so much online. And, of course, when we implemented the service of delivering materials to faculty offices, then faculty didn’t come here hardly at all, probably until we built the café. So it was a different time. And this is skipping, we’re not going in a real chronological order here, but you might remember we had a consultant in -- I want to say he was probably here around 2009.1 Scott Bennett, who had recently retired as the head librarian at Yale University. We hired him to evaluate and make recommendations about our spaces. He evaluated spaces in relation to what kind of services we were or should be providing. I remember a meeting he conducted where he asked the librarians: Where do you spend most of your work time? And they replied that they spent the majority of their work time inside the library. Well, where are most of the people you are supposed to be serving? Are they in the library? Well, no, not physically. So he said, why aren’t you out there where they are, then? It was that kind of attitude that I think people needed to understand. It used to be if anybody wanted anything from the library, they’d have to come to the library, and it wasn’t that way anymore. And I think that was a huge change. And of course it changed faster than I think we all recognized, which often happens. You know, it is said that leaders of the country don’t really lead, they take their clues from what’s already going on in some part of the country and then claim it as their own. (Laughing) TB: Right. Hurry up and follow my people. RO: Yes. And I think that was the case then, too. So I would say yes, right around that time as more and more library materials and services became automated, then behaviors and attitudes changed. TB: Can you tell in numbers? I mean, this is asking you to remember off the top of your head, I guess Circulation would have them anyway. But just the radical drop in numbers in terms of circulation of materials and people in the library. Because we’ve obviously made an effort to bring all these things like the Learning Commons into the library and develop spaces to get people back in. RO: Yes, right. Well I don’t remember the numbers. Academic library circulation numbers are never as high as, say, public libraries. That’s because so much of what people were using, whether they were students or faculty, were typically academic journals. And of course we didn’t allow those to circulate to students. So what is your circulation number, really? I think sometimes we didn’t think about it. We were doing things in a traditional way, gathering traditional statistics and not necessarily understanding what was really happening and quantifying what we were providing. The vast majority of the acquisitions budget was being spent on journals and not on books, and that dated back to the 1980s, at least. So that wasn’t a new thing. In some disciplines most of the journals were being published electronically instead of in print, which was another reason that especially faculty didn’t physically come to the library. 1 Bennett, Scott. Western Washington University Library consulting report. Place of publication not identified: S. Bennett, 2009. 12 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: So, can you think of some other changes that happened with our students or the type of students that we had, or the faculty? Just the whole way that you saw the university changing over the years? That’s kind of a hard question, very wide open, but … RO: Yes, I think we always had the advantage here that we employed a lot of students, and sometimes that clued you in to what students who weren’t our employees were thinking. I think that was always an advantage for us if we wanted to use it. Listen to what their experiences were, not as a worker but as a student. I always considered student employees to be students first, and then our employees second, TB: Can you talk a little bit about that, though, that every time minimum wage would go up, what that did to our -- well, the hiring of students. RO: Well, yes. It was a concern for a number of years because we typically were not funded for those increases. We began continuously trying to get more Work-Study students. When I first started working with the library budget, many of the student supervisors didn’t want to hire Work-Study students. Over time we convinced them they’re just like any other student. But the fact is they’re getting paid to work for us outside of our budget, and we have a budget problem. So I think that was a big change that kind of helped us deal with that rising wage issue, the fact that we really tried to concentrate on the Work-Study money that was available. In a lot of cases, in my remembrance, Work-Study students were some of the best students we had. Though, we always got that occasional one that thought they were being paid to study (laughing) while they were on the job. TB: Yes. What about -- and whatever you just kind of want to share -- I feel like the university’s a very big place. There’s the formal channels of information sharing and how things get worked out versus an informal way. You were friends with everybody, you know, for instance Rob [Galbraith] . . . How much of the work kind of got done [in those informal channels versus more formal channels]. I guess I just feel like it seemed like you were always a really powerful guy and had a significant impact. But a lot of it seemed to me was almost like an informal thing because you – RO: Relationships around campus are extremely important if you want to get things done. One of the things I remember learning from Jerry Boles was that you don’t get things done because you ask for them. You make connections and start talking about what services you can provide or what needs you can meet, planting those ideas in people’s minds. Then, when it comes time for funding you have others to speak up saying the library needs to do this and they need the money to do it. You build support and get others to advocate for you. I think building those relationships is a big deal in order to get things done. You can hardly do anything on your own at a complex university. Even in the library, which is also complex, it’s hard to do anything on your own without cooperating with other people, building relationships. I consciously tried to do that, in a way because I’m just that kind of a person anyway. But I think it helped a lot over the years in building support for things where we needed it. I always tried to appreciate the work that other people did around campus, not just in the library. It comes more naturally, I think, for some people than others, but I always found it to be the fun part of my job, to really get to know people around campus, what they do, what we can do with them, not just for them but with them. And we did a lot of good cooperative things, I think, over the years. 13 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For example, I think we developed very good relationships with, most of the time, ATUS, and with the Facilities people. I always tried to work very closely with the Space Administration people and help them out when they needed help with something like temporary space. Because then when you ask for something, they remember that you helped them, those kind of things. I cultivated relationships with individuals in HR and in the budget office, since those areas were part of my job. I don’t know if that really answered your question. TB: Yes, I mean, that would be my observation. You kind of confirmed it. RO: I did consciously seek out campus committees that I could serve on, because it gave me another inroad to other people who had influence that could be of assistance some time. TB: And why don’t you talk about that. You were on the University Planning committee for quite a while. RO: I was. I was on the University Planning Council, I think it was called at the time, for seven years. And of course that’s a Faculty Senate committee. I chaired the council for three years, and I believe I’m the only non-faculty person to ever chair that, or maybe to ever chair any of the faculty committees. There were several interesting things that happened during those seven years. One of the biggest, most controversial, was the proposal to split apart the College of Arts and Sciences into two colleges. The University Planning Council got involved in holding open forums about the proposal that were well attended, with most everybody speaking against the idea of breaking the college apart. So it was a political dynamite kind of thing, which I don’t know if I want to go into. TB: That’s fine, that’s fine. And what about some other changes that you saw in the library? I mean, the library has changed so much in organization. One of the fascinating things I always found, it seems like cataloguing was always the thing that was going to go away, and cataloguing is the one thing that always stays. And then, reference has kind of morphed into the Research and Writing Center. I shouldn’t insert myself. But you know, that’s really changed. And so any thoughts that you have about that, or what you saw? RO: Well, I mean cataloguing is still there, but it’s not the expansive department that it was at one time. TB: It’s not as expansive, but it still does critical kind of work in terms of local collections. RO: Yes, I think in the whole what we tried to do later on is understand that the big role for cataloguing is the cataloguing of things that are special, unique to our situation, and that is where they can really make a contribution to the greater world, to make those things known to the rest of the world. The idea of copy cataloguing has changed a lot. I mean, I just look at the public library where I’m involved now. They have hardly anybody left in Cataloguing because they’re getting all their materials pretty much preprocessed. TB: Probably already comes with cards or whatever, well not even cards, but a record, online record. RO: Yes, labeled and everything. 14 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Wow. RO: And I think they only have two or three people that are still even involved in any kind of cataloguing. They don’t get much original material, as the university does, The growth in Western’s various archival and primary source materials, such as those at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies and Special Collections, has been a major thing in the last few years. Maybe it doesn’t seem like that to you, (Laughing) but the focus on it is much higher than it was several years ago. TB: Yes, and I think my point around Cataloguing was with the putting ourselves into this shared catalog (Orbis Cascase), at the same time there’s so much local information that still needs to be in the records and has to be maintained, and that ends up being Cataloguing, because you can’t do it OCLC anymore. Have you any other thoughts maybe that you do have about the difference between a public library and the academic library? RO: Well, the clientele’s much different. The university’s main clientele are faculty and students, and anything else is kind of residual. One of the biggest focus areas for public libraries is early childhood learning. For instance, at the Bellingham Public Library nearly 30% of the items checked out is from the children’s collection. TB: Wow, I didn’t know that. RO: They do something like seventeen story hours a week, and every one of those is booked to capacity. So it’s just more of a focus both on early childhood development and learning, and also on lifelong learning for adults and seniors like myself. And of course now, the homeless people use the public library a lot in the daytime, just to have a place to sit, and that’s not something the university faces very much. TB: I was thinking, is there a similarity though in the sense of we’ve expanded. It’s not the same kind of expansion of social services that the public library would have, but we’ve really expanded our services by bringing in the Tutoring Center, and all these things kind of serve so many other needs of the people beyond just the traditional way we think about it. RO: Right. Well really, Western’s primary clientele are again the faculty and the students, and the students are very well served, I think, by co-locating services next to each other. We saw immediately after bringing the Writing Center and the Tutoring Center into the library that their visitations went up tremendously because, I think, in some cases nobody could find them before. So you have students that use those services now because not only they’ve found them, but maybe also for students who just became aware of the services since they were coming to the library, anyway. And I think the synergy of those services being together also improves the educational experience for students, which is the main mission of all of us at the university, regardless of where we work. So, I think as you said, that focus is a little different, since a lot of what had been traditional library services aren’t quite as relevant now. I thought the university has taken a step administratively to make most of those services part of the library, because it’s true of the Tutoring Center, isn’t it? TB: Yes, yes. 15 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED So what about, any other comments about the Directors or Deans or anything else when you were working with them? Also, you had a year of being Interim Dean. Was that, like, the highlight, or was that, like, oh my gosh? RO: Well, I think in many ways the last four or five years I worked were the most fun I had, even though probably the most work I had as well. Though there were plenty of times where I had a lot of work before. When we were doing the asbestos abatement project and also doing Haggard design simultaneously, I didn’t have time for anything else. During the last few years there were obviously some problems, especially budgetary problems and some controversies over what we had to do. There were some leadership issues as well. But in many cases, I really enjoyed the last few years where I got to work with other library staff and campus personalities more closely than I had. I felt I was very well accepted, even my year as Interim Dean from the other Deans, which I appreciated. Many of them are no longer in their positions, as the campus administration has recently undergone frequent changes. Right when my time as Interim Dean was up is when the Provost changed. The new Provost was somebody with whom I’d worked and who I really respected, Provost Brent Carbajal. He took over right when Mark Greenberg got here as the library Dean. TB: So just in your career, what are the things you’re most proud of? And I want you to brag because you know a lot more than I know. RO: I feel like I was well respected, and I’m proud of that. And that was around campus as well as the library. I think that working on Facilities projects was one of my favorite parts of things I did over the years and that many of those projects made a noticeable difference. I hope this space has worked out well. TB: It’s beautiful. It gets used all the time for non-special collections things. I mean, it’s – RO: Yes, we just hired RMC to do an upcoming project at the public library next year. There’ll be some significant renovation on the main floor, and we just hired them to be our architect. But yes, I think that was the most fun part of my job, because I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed working with the facilities folks, with the architects but also the maintenance people, those kind of folks. There were some difficulties, off and on. Once I got in the Administration Office, I worked for seven, and if you count Mark, eight different changes in administration in, what, 21-22 years. So that was a big turnover, and in a way I had to be the constant through all of those changes. And, some of those changes were done better than others. I’m also thinking of when we hired these two consultants2 to come in and look at organizational culture and functions, and that was a pretty big shake up. Bela Foltin was getting ready to retire or was being steered that way. I don’t know how that process affected the rest of the library, but I felt there was a big change and that it was probably needed at that time. And I think changes did take place over time. I think things are different now than they were awhile back, and I hope it’s for the better. 2 Pitkin, Gary M. and Glenda A. Thornton, Western Washington University Libraries: the report of consultants Dr. Gary M. Pitkin and Dr. Glenda A. Thornton. Place of publication not identified: G. M. Pitkin, G. .A. Thornton, 2007. 16 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: You might not want to answer this, so that’s fine too. But was it ever kind of hard, you had all these different people, and they’d come in and they’d have all of their ideas, and you know the culture of the library. Did they kind of listen to your voice sometimes in terms of saying, well, you know, we might be able to do this a little better if we did this or whatever, or did some of them even resent -- I mean, I know that every one of them ended up thinking you were, like, the rock star. I know they all came to you, but was it ever hard to get them to listen to you? RO: I don’t think so. I mean, my style has always been that when I work with somebody new, I just try to kind of get to know them first before I start saying too much. TB: Smart. RO: And you’re right, every one of them was different. (Laughing) They had different strengths and different weaknesses, and, even different views about what they wanted to do or not to do. And sometimes it’s just trying to build that trust up first, then you go from there. There were some difficult things that happened over the years. But I would always try to be supportive, not necessarily trying to enforce a view that I had that was different, but I would try to make them aware of what that difference might be and ask them to look at it. Some were easier than others. TB: Yes, yes. So anything else I haven’t asked you that you know or something you think it’s important? RO: Oh, let me think. I think we covered quite a bit of stuff. Obviously it’s hard -- when you’re living with change all the time, it’s hard to think back, but obviously it’s a far different place now than it was in the 1980s. The campus is so much different too, you know. It’s grown like crazy compared to when I first got here in the 1970s. You were here in the 1970s, and it’s just a much different place, and I think the library tried to adapt and change with the changing campus, and that’s good. You know, when we first got here there was hardly anything or very few things south of Red Square. I mean, there were a couple buildings – TB: Arntzen was new when I came, yes. RO: Yes. But all that growth down on the south campus was a major thing over the years. TB: What about budget? How did your job evolve from budget? You would’ve started in -- because you even ended up with the acquisitions budget, didn’t you? Even ended up with everything? RO: Well – TB: Donna did it, I mean, for a long time, but. RO: Yes. When she retired, we had a combination where Jeff Purdue was working with the acquisitions budget – TB: Collection development. 17 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED RO: -- and Julie Fitzgerald, of course, was instrumental in all that. But we did make some significant changes in the acquisitions budget because, you know, there’s never enough money for acquisitions to meet faculty needs and desires. You might remember that we did this survey called LibQual+ a couple times. I was in charge of doing the first one, and luckily I delegated Frank to be in charge of doing the second one. (Laughing) I went to a training for it at ALA before we did our first one. I heard somebody who was presenting from one of the major institutions in Texas, I can’t remember if it was Texas A&M or if it was the University of Texas. But they talked about doing LibQual+, and they had, I believe, the third highest acquisitions budget of any institution in the country. And they still got rated low by their faculty. (Laughing) So I realized right then, you’re never going to win this game. We made big changes towards data-driven and demand-driven expenditures in the acquisitions budget during the time I was acting as Assistant Dean for Collections and Technology in addition to my regular administrative job. I then also had oversight for you guys, all at the same time. TB: Yes, Heritage Resources for two years (2010-2012). RO: It was during that time when the budget cuts were heavy. We faced significant cuts three years in a row. We tried to cut whatever else we could before touching the acquisitions budget, but by the third year that was all there was left to cut. That’s when we really went all in on scrapping the long-standing allocation plan and turning to data-driven decision making. First we had to convince the library selectors that this was what we needed to do. Then, working through the Senate Library Committee, we had to convince the university faculty about the fact that if we were spending X-amount of money on a subscription that was only getting X-uses, and therefore every use was costing us $100, that we couldn’t continue to support that. We could purchase the faculty member an article much cheaper without subscribing to the entire title. That was a big shift in starting to make datadriven decisions versus subjective-driven decisions. Like I said, that was kind of a two-phased process we had to do. First we had to convince our own selectors that that was the way we needed to go, so that they could talk the same talk when they were talking to faculty. Then we did the same sort of thing for books. Why are we buying these books? We’ve owned this book for five years now and nobody’s used it. So why are we buying things on speculation when we can’t afford to buy everything we want? Let’s buy things only because somebody requests them. TB: And what about Summit? Summit was probably transformational then, right, because it seems that we did it quick. RO: It was. It was a huge change for all the libraries in the region. Our first consortium was called Cascade, which included just the six Washington state four-year institutions. Then that group joined with a consortium in Oregon to form Orbis Cascade. I’m trying to remember what year that was. This was some time right around 2000, I think, or maybe early 2000s? TB: Probably. But I was just thinking now with the shared catalog, that’s what’s really phenomenal. I mean, you find it in the catalog, it almost doesn’t matter who has it because if we just immediately say, if you don’t have it, we’ll get it, and it comes within a couple days, so it’s like – 18 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED RO: Sure, yes. That was a huge change. The philosophy was that we were one big library. But, I wonder how it’s doing now. I could start seeing when I was getting ready to retire, and especially the year that I attended the meetings as our Dean, that some of the Alliance’s initiatives were negatively affecting the smaller schools in the Alliance. All participating institutions had to be in on some of these initiatives and purchases, the fee schedule usually set on enrollment so that if you had 10,000 students, you paid approximately 10 times more than an institution that had 1,000 students. It wasn’t quite that simple, but it was roughly proportionate. Still, it was hard for some of the smaller schools who really had small budgets in comparison, to commit to something, anything new, because they just lacked the funds. You just wondered at some point, is that going to be a breaking point for the Alliance? It doesn’t seem to have been yet, but who knows. TB: A couple of those really small schools are closing, too. RO: For the small schools, they have so much less flexibility in their budgets or at their institutions that it can be very hard for them. But the shared catalog and the resource sharing that happens within the 40 institutions, or whatever it is now, has been a big bonus overall, I think. Though I do know that when we were changing into the new system vendor here about the time I was retiring, it was a major problem. I don’t know if that stuff’s ever gotten ironed out. TB: Still working on it, but yes. Anything else we haven’t talked about? RO: I’m trying to think. Well probably, but (laughing). TB: Well if we think of something else, we can definitely add it in later. RO: Okay. TB: Okay, good! Thank you! (End of audio) 19 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Oral Interview – Additional Thoughts Technology: We talked about how the Western Libraries were very late to adopting technology, being one of the last academic libraries nearly anywhere converting from a card catalog to an online one. However, there are three things where our library became a sort of technical leader that I’d like to point out. 1. Though we were late online adopters, our purchase of the Innovative Interfaces system led to all the state’s other baccalaureate institutions also purchasing III, converting from whatever systems they were using. This, then, led to the formation of the Cascade consortium, and the eventual consolidation with Orbis, becoming the Orbis Cascade Alliance. 2. Somewhere around 1997 or 1998, Frank Haulgren brought to me news of the availability of a new interlibrary loan software system named ILLiad, developed at the University of Virginia. It took some convincing, but we talked our superiors into purchasing it. We became one of the first 15-20 adopters of it, and certainly the first in the Pacific Northwest. It turned out to be very successful, and I remember a number of regional libraries sending their ILL folks to Western to have Frank and his staff demonstrate the system for them. Eventually, ILLiad became so ubiquitous that OCLC bought it. 3. Somewhere in the early 2000s, I think, we also started a laptop checkout program, which was very common then. Funded through the Student Technology Fee, it became a smashing success, and certainly contributed to student use of the library. Students: We also talked about the focus on students, and one very obvious thing the library has going for it, through the long-time generosity of the Hearsey family, is the Hearsey Scholarship program for deserving students who work in the library. Begun, I believe, in 1995, I was fortunate enough to chair the scholarship selection committee for the first 18 years of its existence, and it was always one of the most enjoyable parts of my job! Being proud: Your question about what I was most proud of obviously caught me off guard. I should mention two official recognitions: the 2007 Excellence in Service Award presented to me by the Professional Staff Organization; and the President’s Exceptional Effort Award in 2012. The 2007 award meant a lot to me as it came from peer employees across the campus, and was given to just one person a year. My name was engraved on a plaque with the other yearly winners, and hung in the Board of Trustees room. The President’s award was special as for it I was nominated by colleagues from within the library. [I also received an award with the same title in 2004, but I think the process was different back then.] 20 Rick Osen Edited Transcript – April 9, 2019 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: James L. Talbot interview--April 16, 2003
Description: James L. Talbot, WWU Professor of Geology, 1976-1997; Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs, 1977-1984; also served as Acting President [July] 1982-January 1983.
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_TalbotJames_20030416
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Jim Talbot ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" cri
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Jim Talbot 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. Jim Talbot, on Wednesday, April 16, 2003, in Wilson Library. The interviewer is Steve Inge. SI: Today is April 16, 2003 we are talking to Dr. James Talbot, Professor Emeritus of Geology and former Provost and Executive Vice President at Western Washington University. Jim, thank you for taking the time to come in. Maybe if you can begin by just sharing a little bit about your life and where you came from and how events brought you to Western. JT: I was born in 1932 in England. I went to school in Reading and then went up to Cambridge University where I earned a Bachelors of Arts in Geology. After that I moved around a bit; spent a year in Toronto, two years in Berkeley and ended up in Adelaide University in South Australia. In fact my life has been largely a series of accidents, influenced by other‘s suggestions. I had a cousin in Australia who suggested that I should try to come to Australia, so when a position became available, I applied for it and got it. I was appointed as a lecturer in Geology there and at the same time I got my PhD there, so that was a stressful period. In 1967 we (my wife, Margot, and three children born in Australia, Katrin, Gretchen, and Susan) moved to Canada to what was a new university on the north shore of Lake Superior, Lakehead University. We stayed there for three years and froze our butts off in the winter (laughter) and decided that we were not really made for that, and so I applied for a position of Chair of the Department of Geology at the University of Montana in Missoula. That was successful, so we moved to Missoula. We had a small adventure on the way. We were outside Livingston on I-90 and we were pulled over by local highway patrol. And as there is no speed limit in that part of Montana at that time I wondered what the problem was. And the guy said, ― How‘d you like to spend the night in Livingston?‖ And I thought, ―Ohgosh, what have I done (laughter)?‖ But it turned out that that was a promotion for the Livingston Rodeo, that somebody was given free room and board. We went to the rodeo in a stagecoach, which had been used in a movie. And we enjoyed it. It‘s the only rodeo I‘ve ever seen in my life (laughter). And that was our adventure on our way to Missoula. After five years as chair of the department there I came back from a vacation and found a note on my desk to go see the President. He said, ― Well, as you probably understand we‘ve had a search for Provost this year and it was unsuccessful.‖ It‘s what I call the Jesus Christ syndrome. There was one candidate who was so much better then anybody else and who was going to lead us out of the wilderness, but he turned us down. And so nobody was interested in either the second or the third candidates. So he was looking for an Acting Provost and asked around, and he said that my name kept bobbing up like a cork. So he decided that he would ask me if I was interested. And I said, ― Well I‘ll have to go back and talk to my colleagues,‖ which I then did, and they said fine. I‘m not sure whether that‘s a good thing or not (laughter), but they said fine. And so I took the job for a year. I‘d had no experience of course in administration other then being a chair. And I had no real responsibility as Provost because I couldn‘t make any decisions that would last beyond the year I was going to be acting as Provost 1 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (laughter). That‘s a great situation to find yourself in! But I did some interesting things, I thought, there. I first of all conducted a coup; well actually I had done that before I became Provost. The University Curriculum Committee had always been chaired by the Provost. And I conducted a coup in which it became a faculty member‘s prerogative to have the Chair. And I thought that showed the direction that I was interested in in administration. And the other was, when I was Provost, I persuaded the Dean‘s that they needed a Dean‘s Council. Before that time there had been no cooperation between the Deans, and they had no single voice to report to the President. And I thought that was important to establish. Anyway the next accident that came along was the Provost‘s position advertised in Bellingham. I would not normally have thought of coming to Bellingham except my former father-in-law had said (even before I went to Australia), ― You know there are some interesting places in the United States to get jobs,‖ and he singled out Bellingham. He lived near Chicago; I don‘t know why but I always thought of Bellingham as a place to settle. In fact at one point I applied for a job, unsuccessfully, to come here into the Geology Department from Australia; people in the United States simply don‘t hire without interviews and nobody was going to bring me from Australia (laughter) to interview. So anyway this job came up at Western and I applied for it. A very simple letter, I remember it was only two paragraphs long. I‘ve seen many applications since then which need three ring binders to hold. I had never been to Bellingham by the way, but it had some programs that I knew about. Fairhaven and Huxley were relatively new programs then but they had already a reputation outside of the State of Washington and so that was attractive. The Geology department was particularly strong and was well known to us. I had been the editor of Northwest Geology that we started in Missoula. We had invited all programs in the region to tell us where their Masters and PhD students were working and we put them on a map printed on the back cover. I saw that Western had a lot of students doing some interesting work, and the reputation of the faculty was very strong, so this was very attractive. If I was going to come here (I had no thought at all of being an administrator for my entire career), the Geology Department would be a good place to be. So I applied and I got called to an interview. I don‘t remember much about the interview. I remember only one question that was asked of me, it was asked by Mary Robinson who at that time was in Student Affairs. She said, ― What are the major barriers to employing more women in faculty positions?‖ And at that time I hadn‘t given it any thought whatsoever because really all of that came a little bit later. But all I could think of is there aren‘t many women in PhD programs and that needed to be changed. So anyway, I was successful. The one part of the process which I thought was interesting was that before I was made the offer, I got a call from Alan Ross asking me to set up interviews with various people at the University of Montana so he could come out and meet with them. Obviously one was the President; the others were the Dean of Arts and Sciences, the Chair of Philosophy, the President of the Associated Students, and there may have been a couple of others. So he came out and met with them all, and gave Paul Olscamp a call, and I got a call from Paul that same night offering me the job, which I took. So we sold our house in Missoula and headed for Bellingham. We stayed in Birnam Wood for a month while we looked around for a house, and settled into the University. We bought a house on what became Garden Terrace so I was able to walk to the University everyday; which I had also been able to do in Missoula by the way. So we settled into the job and the first thing I had to do was to figure out what the job entailed, because after all I had limited administrative experience. But it soon became clear that the big issues in the University had to do with recovery from the Reduction in Force of 1972 (I arrived in 1976), and to try to improve faculty morale. Paul Olscamp had arrived the year before and he was already working with the faculty to get a better governance system. And he had in fact promised the faculty that they would have a separate faculty senate; that wasn‘t in place when I arrived but it was by the end of the first year. The governance system at that time was a University Senate, which included administrators, staff and faculty, and some students as well. And there was a Faculty Council which was a subset of that, which dealt with those issues that were specifically faculty related. Whoever it was who thought that it wasn‘t working very well, Paul certainly supported the idea of breaking it up, and by the end of that year there was a Faculty Senate. As part of that process and increasing the faculty morale, we set about to change the Faculty Handbook. And I recall those harrowing sessions when we did that. I don‘t know how it‘s done nowadays; I‘ve been retired too long for 2 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED that. But I sat down, just me, with the thirty members of the Faculty Council and we had to decide what the Faculty Handbook would look like. I remember in particular one session; I had decided that the old Faculty Handbook was a mess, and it had to be reorganized into what is essentially the order it is in today. And we sat down and we agreed on most things. The main change, because many things were in transition at the time, was that the qualifications for promotion and tenure were changed from excellence in teaching or research to excellence in teaching and research. That was a big change. It was not a change that I initiated. It was already in the minds of the faculty; they knew that they were trying to improve the University. They were anticipating a transition from what was the State College, a general college, into a regional university that happened a year later. And so they wanted to make sure that the qualifications of the faculty were appropriate to a university, because it‘s a different than a state college. So we were able to do that. But there were two other items in there that I do take credit for, and that was the change in the sabbatical leave policy and the sick leave policy. Up until that time, if a faculty member went on sabbatical they got paid threequarters of their salary, one quarter went back to the department. I had come from a tradition where it was regarded as absolutely essential that faculty left their hometown, and that they went to distant corners of the earth. In Australia and Canada, you either have to go Europe or to the United States and that costs money. The idea that you would do that without any help was considered outrageous. You got full salary and some expenses as well. Not much, but I recall it was enough to get me to Europe on a boat, and I took my family along and that was extra. So that was one thing, we changed it so that faculty are now paid their whole salary while on sabbatical. The other was the sick leave policy. Faculty, I assume other people as well, can sign up for long term disability insurance. This kicks in six months after you get sick. So I supported the idea that the faculty sick leave could be up to six months at full pay. After that they would have to go on their insurance. So if they didn‘t take out the insurance that was their problem. It was relatively cheap, so I think everybody did. It may be mandatory now, I‘m not sure; I don‘t think it was at the time. So those were the big changes. They don‘t sound like much, but remember the idea behind this was to improve faculty morale, to make sure that they were taken care of. These were ways in which we could take care of them, there may have been others but I don‘t recall what they were, but it was a long time ago. The other thing that we instituted was going around and talking to everybody. I don‘t know whether past provosts and presidents have done that but Paul and I went around to every department. Obviously it was pretty stilted; particularly as one of us tended to be, shall we say, rather forceful (laughter) in our responses. But you got a lot of information there and you got the feel of the faculty. I remember somebody saying (it could have been Jerry Flora) to me at one point, that one of the most important things you can do is to walk around the campus, and this was part of it. The change to University status clearly focussed our attention on many changes, including curriculum changes. The university had just created two new colleges in 1975—Fine and Performing Arts, and Business and Economics. I don‘t really recall what all the changes in curriculum were, but, we had to change the curriculum to increase the importance of majors; whereas before we had been much more of a general studies sort of university. The year I arrived was the first year that the College of Business and Economics and Fine and Performing Arts came into being. They were led by Rox Collier in CBE and by Bill Gregory in Fine and Performing Arts. I don‘t know where either of them came from, they were appointed before my time. One important aspect of our administration was the introduction of a period of relative stability. When I came for the interview, one of the questions I was asked was how long I would commit to the job? And I made a number up-five years. I actually I have a philosophy about that. When you‘re appointed to a position, you‘re appointed because it seems to the interviewers that you‘re the best fit between the problems and the solutions that are available to the university, and that you can bring about those solutions with relative ease. So when you arrive the first thing you do is to solve people‘s problems. There is nothing easier than that (laughter). You just have to be there, and just accept whatever it is the people say, and you know where you‘re going to go. And I think that takes about three years to do all of that. And I don‘t think I‘m speaking in retrospect here. This is what I really believe. After that period you start introducing items that maybe were never discussed at the interview, or policies that occur to you need to be changed, and maybe other people haven‘t seen that. That becomes more difficult and you start making enemies at that time 3 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (laughter), and you get cabals. And so after about five years it‘s time to leave. I did not articulate it that way when I said I would stay five years, but that‘s what I believe. Let me say a little bit more about the continuity of the administration because I think that was important at the time I was here. I was Provost from 1976 until I went back to the faculty in 1984. Paul Olscamp was the President, Tom Quinlan was the Vice-President for Student Affairs and Don Cole for Business Affairs. In my office I had two people who had been appointed before I got there: Jim Albers who was responsible for budget and planning; and Bill O‘Neil who had been the Registrar but had been promoted or transferred to the provost‘s office to take care not only of the Registrar and Admissions offices, but also Summer Session and Extended Programs and stuff like that. And so I had these two individuals who were just a fount of knowledge and without them I clearly couldn‘t have succeeded in the Provost office. But that was essentially all we had. We had a secretary, Ruth Huffine and office manager, Joyce Oiness. And that was it; that was the Provost‘s Office. At that time the College of Arts and Sciences Dean was Jim Davis and he was directly across the hall (eventually he was moved over to the Environmental Studies building largely because the other Deans thought that he was too close to the Provost.) And he had one helper too, Brian Copenhaver, who was his Assistant Dean, and a secretary. So we had a relatively small administration then. The other Deans were: Rox Collier in CBE; Bill Gregory in Fine and Performing Arts; Joe Bettis at Fairhaven; and Ruth Weiner at Huxley. Bettis and Weiner left relatively soon after I arrived. Ruth Weiner essentially was in her final year of being Dean and Joe Bettis left at the end of that first year. Bettis was replaced by Dan Larner and Ruth Weiner was replaced temporarily by Michael Mischaikow one of the promoters of Huxley College. (He took over for one year until we appointed Dick Mayer.) Arnold Gallegos was the Dean of Education and with the exceptions of Fairhaven and Huxley, all of the deans remained while I was Provost, at least until the last year. The last year I was Provost, Jim Davis stepped down and Pete Elich came in. Bill Gregory left as well, I‘m not sure if that was last year or not. But the point is that the administration stayed there for a long time and so we could in fact get our act together and move the University forward through its transition. Others who I think were very important in the running of the University were: Gene Omey was the Registrar and stayed there for a long time; Dick Riehl was the Admissions Director; Bob Lawyer was the Librarian; Mel Davidson the Computer Center Director; you, Steve in charge of the Alumni Program and Chris Goldsmith in charge of Public Information. And you all stayed there the whole time I was here. I think the importance of this, of stability, can‘t be over-emphasized. Before I arrived there were I was told (although I‘m not quite sure I totally believe this), seven Provosts in five years, including very short term ones. I don‘t think the Provost had stayed in the office more then two years since the Dean of Faculty position had been formed. That was probably in Jarrett‘s time, or maybe even a little later then. SI: Jarrett appointed Harold Chapland if I remember right. JT: Back to the problems. The major problem while I was Provost was a second Reduction in Force, which came in 1982, about the time I was thinking of stepping down and going back to Geology or moving on to something else. I really hadn‘t thought about that very much, but it seemed to me that one of the things you need in a period of stress is a sense of institutional history. And a lot of other people agreed with that. I remember members of the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate talking with Paul Olscamp and me about how we would handle the reduction and who was going to be the point man? And they said, ―L eave it to Jim (laughter)!‖ SI: Leave it to Jim (laughter)! JT: So Jim was to do this, and that‘s exactly what I had to do. I had meetings with everybody. I remember a meeting in one of the lecture halls with just anybody who wanted to come. It wasn‘t just faculty, there were staff and students too. I remember the most persistent question was ― Why don‘t we all take a pay cut?‖ My answer was that we couldn‘t do that because you could never restore that cut. If you decided to take a ten or twelve percent reduction 4 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (there was a twelve-percent budget cut that we had to deal with that year) it would stay with you for the rest of your career. In most cases we were able to deal with this cut by simply not filling positions. We cut back on part-timers almost completely at that time. And there were some actual dismissals, but not on the faculty. So that was apparently a much better situation than the previous RIF. One of the problems I found when I first came here was that there were some departments where some members were still not speaking to each other because of their actions in the first Reduction in Force. For example, one of the techniques for saving money was to cut back some positions full-time to part-time. Some people volunteered to do this, others did not. And the people who volunteered had a hard time getting back to full positions and they resented the fact that their colleagues were not supporting them. So we certainly knew to avoid that this time. I think we made one big mistake when we went through Reduction in Force. The University budgets at that time were arranged in two categories: formula and non-formula categories. And what we did when we went through the Reduction in Force was to make sure that we maintained the formulas. We didn‘t reduce the percentage of faculty relative to the students. That‘s essentially what the formula did. And if we were going to make cuts, we would make them in non-formula areas, and Physical Plant was one of those areas. You didn‘t get a percentage of your budget to run the Physical Plant. You got the money you needed; you presented your needs to run this Physical Plant. Never of course everything you ask for and so we made some cuts there. Whereas other universities in this state that I‘m aware of, Central in particular, decided to cut their faculty and to cut their formula because they thought that the formula would be restored. They were right, we were wrong. And it‘s one of the reasons why we have a lower dollar per student ratio than the other regional universities. That was my mistake; formulas were restored, but non-formula areas were not. I was the one who decided to do that (laughter). Too bad! So we were able to get through some very difficult times because we stuck it out. I remember we put together a planning process which is no longer active. Jim Albers was in charge of the Planning Council (although I think he was always elected to that, I don‘t think that was an appointed position, but it might have been). And we encouraged the Planning Council to think about what the University would look like over time; which areas needed strengthening and to make recommendations each year on what new appointments should be made if ever we had the money. Well it would actually have been nice if we‘d had some money (laughter). It was largely an exercise that really didn‘t produce very much. It produced some very nice recommendations, but in fact during my stay as Provost we had no net gains in the University. The student body remained at about ten thousand I believe. And the legislature was not giving us very much money. Faculty salaries did not increase very much. In fact the largest faculty salary increase took place in my last year. It was when President Ross came on board. The legislature granted us a twelve-percent increase in salaries, not just faculty salaries, but before that time it had been virtually flat. So I think you can see that the salaries people have right now are largely a function of post 1984. Let‘s talk about some of the characters, starting off with people who worked for me. Jim Albers was my Assistant— Vice Provost for Instruction and Research. He was a physicist who had come to Huxley because he was interested in environmental matters, and so he mostly lectured on energy issues in Huxley. And he had been appointed Assistant Provost I believe the year before I came, maybe two years. I‘m not sure about that. He was the one who provided leadership in budget matters and in certain personnel matters as well. I recall, and this was after I stepped down as Provost, Pete Elich reminiscing about Jim and about how he kept control of the budget and making sure that we were spending money in an appropriate manner. He said, ―An ytime I would go in and ask him for some sections, maybe an additional section in chemistry or psychology, it was like going into the Inquisition (laughter). You had to justify these single courses to Jim Albers.‖ He really kept us solvent. 5 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED I recall that we never ran out of money when Jim was in control. Of course there were other people in the budget office and so on whose job it was to make sure we didn‘t run out of money. But Jim always had some money set aside so that we could meet emergencies. And the way in which we did this was really quite simple, and that is for every hire, we would budget more than it would actually cost. And so there was always money left over, we were never short money from any faculty hiring. And that meant that that money was available to take care of whatever crisis came up. And of course crises come up everyday, we all know that. So Jim was a steady influence and he made absolutely sure in the Planning Council that the faculty knew exactly what was going on with the budget of the University. And I think that helped us a lot, that kind of openness. I can‘t emphasize too much how important that is, that everybody knows what the heck you‘re doing. It really helped us through the Reduction in Force. We had special editions of FAST in which we recorded all of the suggestions anybody had made to get us out of this wretched situation. And we recorded all along the actual actions we were taking. And I recall at the very first meeting we called, which was a general meeting, there were probably about five hundred people present to figure out what we were going to do, and simply to react. We had to do something. Probably less then six months later, when we had the final open forum, there were no more then a dozen people present, because everybody seemed to know what was going on. After the RIF was over, Jim conducted a survey on what we could have done differently. And the only item that sticks in my mind is that we could have talked to individuals more. But the process within the University, information going back and forth, nobody had any serious complaints about any of that. But the people who were going to be most affected felt that they needed more stroking, and that‘s reasonable. SI: When you‘re about to lose your job you really want to know why (laughter). JT: And of course nobody ever wants to do that (laughter). Anyway so Jim was a very important member of the administration. Bill O‘Neil, he was fine. He did his job. He actually didn‘t like Paul very much. He thought Paul was too intimidating and didn‘t appreciate what he did, and so he retired early partly as a result of that. But I think he was tired of doing all those things. But he kept his area going. I never had any complaints about how those particular areas were running. In fact I recall meeting with Omey and Riehl after my first year here. Because I would sit down with everybody who reported to me, even those who reported several steps down the organization. And I recall Riehl saying to me, ― You know we expected the whole area to be reorganized when you came here.‖ And I said, ― Why?‖ He said, ― Well you just look like the person that would do that (laughter).‖ And I said, ― If I wanted to reorganize the Registrar‘s or Admissions Offices I would have applied for that job.‖ I said, ― That‘s not my job.‖ In fact I think it‘s very important that people understand that they‘re there to do their job and you‘re not there to do their job. I think that‘s a lesson that is lost on a lot of people. It‘s not just a question of delegating. It‘s a question of trust. These people have a job to do, and unless you hear otherwise, they‘re doing fine. Just let them be. If they‘ve got problems, they‘re going to bring them to you. You don‘t have to meddle in their day to day operations. I think that applies to all the administrative functions of the university, also to the colleges. I think there‘s far too much meddling in the affairs of the Colleges. And I mean this as a general criticism, not just a criticism of this institution. But people can‘t let well alone. Anyway, so Bill was doing his job. After Bill left I appointed Mary Robinson to fill that position. And she has a long and interesting history that I‘m not totally familiar with. I think she had been Dean of Students at the American University in Lebanon. She said it was a glorious place and it was so sad to see how it had been destroyed in the war with Israel. Anyway she had come here; I don‘t know what her position was in the Student Affairs Office. But she had impressed me. When I conducted an internal search, there were really only two candidates for the position. She was one and the other one was Joe Correa, Director of the Center for Continuing Education. And I thought that she had better and broader qualifications then he had. And so I brought her in to the Administration, and worked very well with her. She would get frustrated with me from time to time because she would bring me all kinds of problems for me to solve, but that 6 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED at the end of the meeting she would say, ― You just want me to solve my own problems don‘t you? And I said, ― Well, yes (laughter)! SI: As a matter of fact! JT: (Laughter) That‘s what you‘re here for and so on. And another member of the administration who is now dead was Don Cole. He was the Vice President for Business and we had very good relations with Don, at least I had very good relations with Don. I don‘t recall others people‘s of course. I used to go down to the Physical Plant once a year as part of this going around to people. And I remember being impressed by the way in which he articulated his job and the job of his area. Not just Physical Plant, of course he had Financial Affairs as well. He said we are here to serve and to make sure this University runs properly, and everybody has to understand that. And I think he embodied that himself. He never argued with you about any particular academic need or said we can‘t do that. And I think his tenure was one again of great stability. He was criticized by some of the people that worked for him as not being a strong enough advocate, but he said that that was essentially because they were in a service role and you couldn‘t really criticize him for that. I got along very well socially with Don Cole as well. We would go out to his shack on the south end of Lake Whatcom, Blue Canyon. So I liked Don Cole and his loss in the plane crash with President Ross was the real loss to the university SI: It‘s been said that, among people in his profession, he saw himself perhaps more as an educator then he did really perhaps in the business, financial. His function was in education. JT: Yes. SI: And that was his mission there and as he said, as a service person, quite unusual. JT: Well I think so yes. Of course I haven‘t had much experience with other people like that. I certainly didn‘t think the administrators in Montana had that idea. He certainly saw that his role was part of an educational system and it was an essential part of that system. And also he made us understand that as well. It was as essential in running the institution as having a good library. Things worked and if they didn‘t, then by golly they needed to be fixed. There‘s no argument about it. And of course he had to do that under very limited budgets. SI: Tom Quinlan? JT: Tom Quinlan exhausted me (laughter). He ran the Student Affairs area I think roughly the way we tried to run the academic area. He set up an administration. No more people than there were before, but he reorganized the administration and essentially delegated to carry out their jobs. And he was, I think, very effective at that. When I said he exhausted me, you always had to be on your toes with Tom. Not in how he ran the his part of the University, but just in life (laughter)! I mean, he would talk at such a different level than most people that you really did have to pay attention and follow along and respond, do all of those kinds of things. With a lot of people you can just hang out, and things will blow over you. But not Tom, he engaged people a lot, and I appreciated that even though it left me exhausted. I got a divorce while I was Provost, and I remember Tom being really the first person to respond to me and to support me and try to help me through the problems that were going on at the time. So I regarded him as a good friend. Paul did as well, but Paul‘s different. SI: When you came to interview and you met Paul, and he talked about what he wanted you to do, did you feel that there was a chemistry between you in terms of the joint vision of where the then college should be going and, how would you describe Paul, I guess? JT: Oh, yes. At the interview we got on like a house on fire. And in fact I was told by the person who was squiring me around-- afterwards, not at the time, ― When you first set foot on the campus, things changed. There was 7 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED absolutely no doubt in people‘s mind you would get this job if you wanted it.‖ So the chemistry with Paul was very good. Some people didn‘t like Paul. He was a very intimidating individual. But he also was the last academic president we had. There is nobody who‘s been president after Paul who has the same academic view of the institution as Paul did. The faculty are the most important part of the institution, both of us agreed with that. I mean, everybody mouths that, but if you can‘t build up a strong faculty and encourage those faculty to do their job, then the university doesn‘t work. You can have paint peeling off the walls, the sewers can sometimes stink, buildings catch on fire (laughter), none of those are important if you don‘t have a strong faculty. And that was obviously the area where I think we actually made a difference, the two of us. I remember him saying, ―Yo u know, if we did nothing else, we have improved the status and the quality of the faculty while we were here.‖ We improved the selection process. It was sort of random at the time. But we insisted that it be well-documented and that you actually use some criteria for hiring faculty, not just hire somebody you knew. And we certainly improved the tenure and promotion process. In my first year here, I turned down half of all applications that had come to me on the recommendations of the Deans. And I thought that was terrible. Terrible! You should never have to turn down a recommendation of a dean. SI: They should never have made it that far. JT: They should never have made it that far. People simply didn‘t understand what the criteria were. They had ignored the criteria that were clearly stated and so we had to do something about that. After that, things improved dramatically. And I think in part, people actually changed their behavior, not just changed their applications. Their research became more important to everybody. And actually demonstrating that you were a good teacher, I don‘t know how it was done before! It said excellence in teaching or research, but evaluating teaching is always very hard. SI: This was the beginning of the actual evaluation process by students and faculty, originally optional? JT: Yes, oh yes. But we insisted that you have a certain number, I forget what it was. SI: Or like when your promotion came around, the data had to be there to show … JT: The data had to be there. Certainly something more than half of all the classes you taught had to be evaluated. It‘s not necessarily a good system to do it that way, but how else are you going to do it then? Nobody wants to take the time to go and observe and be a mentor, that kind of stuff. Even though we say we do that, we don‘t really. We do the minimum to get the job done. But the student evaluations at least point out some of the problems. You can tell the difference between somebody who gets—say when most of the students think you‘re doing okay, not necessarily excellent, but that‘s okay. Then you get some faculty where you get bipolar results. They either think this person is terrible, or he‘s the greatest invention since sliced bread (laughter)! Those sorts of things should be an indicator to the chairs that things need to be worked on. And generally speaking there‘s a simple solution to a lot of those things. There are a lot of curmudgeons for which there will never be any change of course. I happen to know quite a few (laughter)! Anyway, where were we? Oh we were talking about Paul, yes. To my dying day, I will appreciate what Paul did for me. I don‘t remember much about the interview, in fact I think the only thing I can recall after 27 years is that he liked my coat! I‘m sure there must have been other things; but that sticks because I‘m not a person who cares very much about how I dress. Maybe he was just looking for something to say. But once I‘d been appointed, he essentially said okay, you can run the University. Your job is to run the University. My job is to take care of the outside. Of course ― I want to be told all the time,‖ he would say. And in the time that I was his provost, there were only two or three times when he came storming down to my office and saying, ―Yo u just made a shitty decision.‖ (laughter)! But the point about it was he never overturned it. I never 8 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED once had a decision that I made overturned by Paul. When people went around me on appeal for whatever it was, whether it was tenure and promotion or some kind of budget problem, if I‘d said no, the answer was no. I didn‘t realize it at the time, but I think that‘s the way to run a university. And the same thing I tried to do with the Deans— after the initial problem with tenure and promotion decisions. I mean it didn‘t work that way in the beginning, but if they said no to somebody, I didn‘t want to have to turn around and say yes. They had to have their reasons stated; similarly for when they said yes. I didn‘t want to say no when they‘d said yes to something like promotion or tenure. And so that changed quite a bit. I think that‘s probably persisted, I don‘t know. Once you change a culture like that, things tend not to change back to chaos, which is what I think it pretty well was before. So Paul was very good in that way. Paul stated very clearly what everybody had to do, and then left you to do it. If you made mistakes, he might get ticked off at you, but that was the end of it. When he left, we had just as good a relationship as the day I stepped on board. I‘m pretty sure of that; maybe you should ask him that. I thought we got along like a house on fire. But all good things come to an end. Paul left. I was appointed Acting President, without, by the way, anybody asking me whether I wanted to do the job (laughter). I mean this was simply announced in the news conference, announcing that Paul was leaving, going to Bowling Green; and that I was going to be Acting President, and that I had agreed not to apply for the permanent position. Really? I didn‘t know I agreed to either of those things (laughter)! That was Curt Dalrymple for you. I mean, I didn‘t care, but that‘s all right. So anyway, I became Acting President for just six months while they looked for a new president, and of course they appointed Bob Ross. Now Bob Ross was the biggest disaster I think this University has had in a long time. He simply ignored faculty governance. One of his first questions to me when he came on board was, ― Do I have to go to the Faculty Senate?‖ He had absolutely no interest in faculty governance. He sort of destroyed it. I remember one of the psychology faculty saying to me later on, after I‘d stepped down, that the faculty are like rats in a psychology experiment where you shock them enough if they do the wrong thing; after a while they just go sit in the corner and cower. And that‘s essentially what the faculty did under Ross. There was absolutely nothing that you could negotiate with Ross. He simply decided what it was he was going to do. He captured all of the money we used to have in the Provost Office for crises and handed it out himself. He didn‘t need a provost; he needed a ―g ofer‖, somebody that would simply do things for him. This is a small thing, but at the end of each year, if there was any money left over in the Physical Plant, the library would buy books with it. They had all the orders right there, ready to go, and so many thousand dollars would come in if it had been a mild winter or something like that, and we would buy books. He took all that money back. He essentially ran this institution like a fiefdom. But, that‘s one person‘s point of view. Paul Ford became his Provost. He had been Acting Provost in the six months that I had remained as the Executive Vice President after Ross came here. I had appointed Paul Ford as Acting Provost while I was President, and he remained as Acting Provost in those six months, and he applied for the position after I announced I would be stepping down. And I asked him, ― Why did you apply?‖ because he was always complaining about Ross! Ross was making Ford ill. I said, ― You come to me and you complain about this man, and then you apply for the position!‖ I told him three times about this at various stages in the application process. He said in the end, ― Well, it‘s the best job in the institution.‖ I said, ― No it‘s not! Not under those circumstances.‖ But he applied for it, got the job, and I think suffered for it. I don‘t know this first hand, but people tell me that he really did suffer under Ross, as I think anybody would have. You had to have particular kind of personality to have flourished under him. Anyway, I‘m not sure what else I can say about him. In the time that I remained as Executive Vice President and Provost (it was eighteen months that I suffered under that), I recall having the weekly meetings with the other Vice Presidents and occasionally at the President‘s House. We really didn‘t discuss anything. He would simply tell us what he had done, not what he was about to do, what he had done, if he thought it was worth commenting on. 9 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED He would give us a quiz every time we went in there. He would take USA Today, which has lots of what I believe are called ― factoids‖ in it, and he would ask us one of these things, and of course none of us would ever know because we didn‘t read USA Today. But that was the level of his intellectual achievements I guess. SI: It was my observation that you could never tell him ‗no‘ without being punished. JT: That‘s probably true. SI: He could not accept ‗no.‘ I mean, that was personal disloyalty and it shifted you in his world. There were those he had confidence in, he trusted, and those who he did not. And my observation was that those weren‘t in good, who got into the outer darkness were those that had disagreed with him and perhaps not on anything of any particular importance. JT: Yes. Well I simply found I couldn‘t work with him because he wouldn‘t let you make any decisions. SI: But he liked to hold people responsible for his decisions. JT: Yes, right. He hung me out to dry two or three times, and after a couple of times I knew, this wasn‘t going to work. I remember one of those times, we were changing the Reduction in Force regulations, and he had directed me to work with the Attorney General‘s Office to see how we could get more flexibility in getting rid of faculty if we needed to under Reduction in Force. And so I did this and presented it to the Senate. It was a terrible document, I admit that right away. It gave the administration essentially carte blanche for what they felt needed to be done. But I did it anyway, I‘m a loyal subject! Of course there was a lot of flack from the Senate, and I took that flack, and I was still taking that flack when suddenly he said, ― Well, seems like we‘ve got a little bit of a controversy here, so we‘ll do something a little bit different.‖ And he came up with something, I can‘t recall what it was, but that was what he did. And I thought, ―Ok ay, if that‘s the way you want to do it, then you go right ahead.‖ I remember Pete Elich telling me that he had been essentially directed by Ross to present to the board the closing down of the nursing program, and so he did that and the board objected to that, and he changed his mind! Just like, just right there. Well, you know, that‘s fair enough, but you don‘t tell people to do something and then turn around and leave them hanging out like that. SI: It‘s just soft, right? JT: It‘s doesn‘t work, right. It doesn‘t work that way, and he did that kind of thing a lot. And on the other hand, if you got in to see him, whoever you were, with a proposal, and if he liked that proposal, then hey, he would use that money that we used to use for emergency sections and so on and fund your proposal. I don‘t think that‘s how a university should be run. Maybe that was the way it was run in the 1930s, but I don‘t think that‘s the way it should be run in the 1980s. Okay, universities have changed a lot in the last century. Whoa, we‘re going way back now, aren‘t we? In the early 1900s, approximately one percent of the eighteen-year-old population went to university. That was about half of all high school graduates. In the 1950s, that suddenly went up. It still remained about half of the high school graduates who went to college, but the numbers increased dramatically until right now I think about a third of the eighteen-year-olds go on to college at one time or another. What has changed of course is the number of high school graduates. In the early 1900s, there were relatively few high school graduates. If you graduated, then your chances were pretty good of going to college. Now, if you graduate, your chances are still pretty good of going to college. Nothing has changed except the number of people who actually graduate from high school. So there‘s been a huge change in universities, particularly since the Second World War; the G.I. Bill here, the same sort of thing happened in England. There‘s been an enormous increase in the number of people who could come to university. 10 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED But there was a lot of discrimination that went on. I mean my first job, for example, in Adelaide; I got that by the ― old boy‖ network. I didn‘t seek it, I got it that way. I was working in the Northwest Territories in Canada, working for Shell Oil Company on a summer job. I got a letter from my mentor at the University of California, where I was at the time, completing a Master‘s degree. He said, ― I‘ve had a letter from my old friend Arthur Alderman, who is the Professor of Geology in the University of Adelaide, asking me if I would recommend a person to fill a petrology position, and I thought of you. Are you interested in that job?‖ And I wrote back to him and said, ― Well yes, I am.‖ I didn‘t tell him I‘ve got a cousin in Australia and I‘ve always wanted to go there. But I said well that sounds like a good idea. The next thing I knew is I got an air mail letter, hand-written letter, from one Arthur Alderman, while I was still in the Northwest Territories of Canada, offering me the job. I mean, that‘s laughable! That‘s how the universities were run in those days. There was a network, and of course they were old boy networks. Things have changed dramatically, and they were actually changing dramatically while I was Provost. Affirmative Action was a program that was instituted during my time. Not because of me; I mean, I thought that it‘s a good idea, but whether I thought it was a good idea or not is not the point. It just happened to be the time that I was here. And we dramatically increased the percentage of women hires, though it didn‘t make much difference to the actual numbers because we weren‘t hiring very much. But we dramatically increased the number of women in the new hires. And that of course has continued, and that‘s not a thing that we alone do, it‘s a thing that everybody does. So that has been a big change. The other change that coincided with my tenure as Provost was the response to sexual harassment. We didn‘t really know what sexual harassment was. People were complaining about faculty members and staff making comments or propositioning women students, or men students for that matter. But we didn‘t really do anything about that until the sexual harassment laws came into place. But then we did. We moved into it. I remember some rather sticky conversations we had with the Faculty Senate, about changing the system is what it boiled down to, by changing some procedures. I remember some faculty members wondering whether some of their comments would be regarded as sexual harassment. It was a time of great uncertainty. I think some of those comments were frivolous, others comments were serious. People simply didn‘t know how to respond to this. But we did make the changes, and it has provided for a healthier environment in the institution. I feel privileged to have been part of defining those systems. One specific example—a senior member of our Accounting Department actually said to his class at one stage ― Women shouldn‘t be in accounting because all the accounting firms, big accounting firms, are run by men, and they‘re not going to let women become partners. And so any of the women in this class should consider dropping out because you have no future in this.‖ I mean this was after affirmative action was fully underway. So, you know, it takes a while before these things sink in. SI: The outside culture has to do some catching up as well! JT: Yes, it does. Anyway, that was an example I was going to give about that. I wanted to give a personal example of that. JT: Okay, back to Bob Ross and to Tom Quinlan. Tom Quinlan left because of Bob Ross, I resigned because of Bob Ross, and unfortunately Don Cole was killed because of Bob Ross. But I recall a meeting in November of the year before he was hired, he came in January. I had called together the other Vice Presidents and myself of course as Acting President, and we met with him. We outlined what we were doing and we wanted to make sure that we were doing things that he thought were OK, because after all he was eventually going to take responsibility for everything. And after we had been doing this for about fifteen minutes he said, ― How long do you think it will take it would take for my furniture to come from Little Rock?‖ Oh, well, we understood at that time that he really wasn‘t interested in our ideas. SI: Yes. JT: And so we quickly drew the meeting to a close. And I remember talking to Tom Quinlan at that time, he said, ― I don‘t think this is a person I want to work for.‖ 11 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Now I was a little slower on the uptake (laughter). I was willing to give it a try. I thought well maybe the guy‘s under some stress or something like that and he really doesn‘t want to be involved in all of these kinds of things and he‘ll pick them up when he gets there. But Tom saw immediately that this was not a person that he wanted to work for; and in fact he was gone within six months. He went down to Florida. He just decided right then and there to leave and that was it. It took me a little bit longer. I got hung out to dry as I said two or three times before I decided that, ― Really this isn‘t going to work.‖ So I went in one day and simply said to him, ― This isn‘t working out, and I‘ve got my colored parachute here. Would you agree to these conditions?‖ And he did. I realized at that time that if I was going to back, I needed to get back into Geology. So I needed a sabbatical to go back and learn what had happened in the ten years since I‘d been a Geologist. And I did. I went to Imperial College London, where they have a very strong program in my particular field of Geology, for a year and got back into it. And of course I don‘t regret that now. I mean I was over fifteen years as a faculty member here after that. And I think I contributed to the Department. I became Chair of the Department on four separate occasions (laughter). The last time was my final year. They had been having trouble finding a new Chair, because they‘re all internal at this stage. And I made the mistake of saying to Ned Brown who was in charge of it, ― Well you know if all else fails I‘ll do it for a year.‖ And that afternoon I was appointed Chair. It was as simple as that, nobody wanted to do it. But I enjoyed being Chair. I enjoyed working with Pete Elich. I thought Elich was a splendid Dean of Arts and Sciences; not an intellectual, not a scholar, he just knew what Arts and Sciences should be about. He ran the College in a very democratic way. I had the opportunity on those four separate occasions to be in the Dean‘s Advisory Council--that‘s all the Chairs. We would meet with him once every two weeks, maybe once a week, I‘m not sure. And he was always very open, would listen well and would tell you why we couldn‘t do things or why we could, or why we shouldn‘t. And he had tremendous support, I thought from the Chairs. And it was sad when people started to attack him, he didn‘t deserve that. No. I think I‘m kind of running out of things to say right now. I certainly appreciated this opportunity of saying a few things. Presumably, if I want to add something to the transcript I can do that. SI: Certainly can; thank you. 12 James Talbot Edited Transcript – Interviewed April 16, 2003 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Kamalla Rose Kaur Whitley interview--January 31 and February 6, 2007
Description: Kamalla Kaur Whitley attended the Campus School from 1960-1967 and was known as Allyn Elizabeth Blood during those years. She was the daughter of Don and Patricia Blood; and later also attended Western Washington University.
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_WhitleyKamalla_20070131
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Kamalla Rose Kaur Whitley ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fai
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Kamalla Rose Kaur Whitley 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 Kamalla Rose Kaur Whitley (formerly Allyn Elizabeth Blood) in two sessions, one taking place on January 31, 2007, the other on February 6, 2007, at the Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections, in Bellingham, Washington. The interviewer is Tamara Belts. Campus School TB: I’m here with Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley), born Allyn Elizabeth Blood. She’s ready to do an oral history; she did sign our Informed Consent Agreement, and we are videotaping. We’re going to start off going through the Campus School questionnaire and hope that we get all of the good stories that you also shared in your story called ― Making Guinea Pigs.‖ The first question is: How did you happen to attend the Campus School? KRK: My father told me that on the day I was born that he went and signed me up for the waiting list. I imagine that that’s true. So, I was born to be part of the Campus School. TB: Very good. KRK: I was born in the hospital right down the hill here, St. Joseph’s, which was a block away from where our house was on Forest Street. So I was a ― born on the hill, live on the hill‖ child. We had a whole community including, little neighborhood grocery stores, and dairy products delivered to the door. Bellingham didn’t have supermarkets yet. It was a Campus School village . . . professor’s village. TB: Did anyone else in your family attend Campus School and what were their names? KRK: Bruce Blood, my brother, is 4 years older, and he was ahead of me four years at Campus School. TB: What were the years and grades of your attendance? KRK: I attended from 1960 until it closed in 1966 or 1967 when I went into middle school as a sixth grader. I attended Campus School through fifth grade and then went to Fairhaven Middle School. That was the first year the junior highs had changed to middle schools. TB: You probably did go through 1966 because in 1967, the last year, it only went up through the 4th grade. KRK: Sounds right. TB: Did your family pay any fees for your attendance at the Campus School? KRK: I have no idea. 1 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: How did you get to and from school? KRK: I lived at 416 Forest Street across from the Spanish villa building where my godfather Herb Taylor and family lived. Next to that, the Floras lived in the big white house in the early years. Everybody later moved other places, except the Monahans still live on Garden Street directly above where I lived as a child. All the neighborhood kids went to Campus School and a couple of them were not college professor’s children. We all went up via paths through people's yards. I can’t remember all the names now, but kids came up through someone's yard on State Street to the alley and then through the Yancos’ house, through our yard, up to the Monahans’ house to the stairs that were at Garden and Cedar Streets. There were a different set of stairs back then. As I recall, they went straight up, so it was quite a climb to school everyday. I also often walked with my father. I usually would stay after school (the campus was our playground) until my dad was done for the day - he worked until 5:30pm or so - and we’d walk home for dinner together. TB: What did you do for lunch? KRK: I took a lunchbox or brown bag lunch. My mother would pack it each day and it was always the same for many years, peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a piece of fruit, maybe chips, and milk. TB: Oh excellent. KRK: After WWII, Western hired lots of young professors, and it had an optimistic Camelot feeling back then. They all believed in liberal education - that if you gave everybody as broad, as expansive and as rich an education as possible, that no matter what the future held in store, we would have the ability to learn, and thus cope. My dad, Don Blood, came to Western in 1950 after getting his PhD in Iowa. My brother and I were both redheads and we had redhead personalities and my mother was very much the social redhead herself. She enjoyed the role of hostess and my brother and I were both outgoing. We were very close to all the adults around us as well as the kids. TB: What was the campus like when you were a child? KRK: There was no Red Square. That whole area was our playfield. Haggard Hall (the science building) and Carver Gym were newer buildings when I started Campus School. Carver Gym seemed wildly modern in architecture. The playground was sexually segregated. The girls played on the blacktop close to the building. We played four-square, and tether ball and jump rope, while the boys played out on the field with balls. The girls wore dresses - often with those horrible scratchy net slips, and shiny shoes. ― Playing‖ was out of the question because if you jumped or fell, your skirts would fly up and your underwear would show, and that was a big, big deal back then! TB: What about your classmates? KRK: We were basically the same 25 kids going through each grade together. We also socialized after school and on weekends. We were average children. Not all of us were brilliant and academic like so many of our parents were. However we were unusually enriched children. TB: What about Campus School teachers? KRK: Miss Nicol was the Kindergarten teacher. I remember going to the Campus School assemblies and 2 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED school performances as a toddler. I went to see my older brother Bruce perform. Miss Nicol’s Kindergarten class did the scarf dance each year. Those 5 year olds ran around in a circle fluttering these big beautiful scarves. Thus I knew as a baby that, when I got to Kindergarten, Miss Nicol would be my teacher and I too would do the scarf dance. I was really excited about that part. I was going to get to perform the scarf dance, and since Miss Nicol lived in my neighborhood, I already knew and loved her. When I got to Campus School I did get to perform the scarf dance and I also got to sing a lot too! Miss Casanova, our first grade teacher, used a great big Dick and Jane book to teach us to read. ― See Dick, see Dick run, go Dick!‖ That book was almost as tall as we were. My mother always told me that Miss Casanova was an excellent reading teacher. My mother was gifted at teaching people to read herself. Despite this, I did not really learn how to read until fourth or fifth grade - learning disabilities. That got very difficult when they started doing reading groups, because the professors - our parents - were so competitive; you just did not want to be in the slug group, you wanted to be an eagle. So for those of us who were not learning how to read quickly, being in the slug group was socially horrible. Parents started worrying ―Ohmy God! One of my kids isn’t brilliant!‖ They were brilliant and they thought that being brilliant was important - so they were hoping their kids were brilliant as well. Back then educators didn’t know about all the different kinds of intelligence, but Western's education department and Campus School teachers were on the right track. I can see, in hindsight, they were working on developing all our various talents. TB: It’s interesting that you say that you were having a difficult time learning to read. You would think that with all those student teachers to assist them, they would find a way to work with a student who maybe wasn’t . . . KRK: I figured it out later with my second child, when she experienced the same thing: Age 8-9 she could stand up and read out loud, but she really wasn’t reading books… She and I weren't early ― readers.‖ I wasn't up at night, with a flashlight under the covers, reading books, like my friends. I believe that this was simply because my parents and teachers were always pushing me into harder and harder material, instead of handing me a bunch of comic books. At puberty, I taught myself to read on romance novels. I hid them. Reading silly trash was taboo in my family, not because anybody was saying I couldn’t read anything, but my parents and brother thought romance novels, and romance novel readers, were stupid. I didn't want to be seen as being stupid. Around the same age, astrology intrigued me, though there were few books available on that subject prior to the Sixties Rebellion. I remember being at the grocery store and seeing those little astrology magazines and I picked one up while my Mom wasn't looking. I knew it was taboo. TB: Tell me about Kindergarten and first grade at Campus School: KRK: Miss Nicol taught kindergarten and Miss Casanova taught first grade, and they were Campus School institutions. I think they were both excellent teachers, and of course they were the elders of the school. TB: Did you pick that up when you were there? KRK: Yes, they’d been there for years and the other teachers were younger and hadn't been there as long. Certainly, as a child, I was very aware of older teachers as distinct from younger teachers. Miss Casanova and Miss Nicol were in their fifties or sixties, while, Goldie Vitt, our amazing second grade teacher, was in her mid-thirties, maybe forty. She was at the height of her career, and she was a genius teacher. She opened up the whole universe for us - that is how I remember Mrs. Vitt; as the best teacher ever! Mrs. Vitt taught second grade when ―n ew math‖ was coming in. Due to my strange brain, I can’t do linear thinking that great, but I ended up being good at math. I entered Fairhaven Middle School with math aptitude, but within a year or two, I never did math again, or science. Because I couldn’t adapt to the way math and science were taught in the public schools—because I can’t do linear! 3 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED So how did I do math? I was taught ―n ew math‖ as an experimental program in second grade, with Mrs. Vitt launching the curriculum. She was working with the education department, with everybody watching. This was a new program that would later enter the public schools. First thing they taught us was set theory, and after that they taught us bases. I learned how to count in base twelve or seven as I was learning about base 10 - that is, learning how to count. I knew what binary was from the time I was a second grader. Generally speaking, my Campus School teachers had the ability to let me get to the answer anyway I wanted to. Imagine being a teacher at Campus School! They sure had a big audience. The student teachers were watching them. The education department was watching them. The college professors with children at Campus School were watching, and so were the professors who didn't have young children there, and the college students were intrigued by us too. Mrs. Vitt was always teaching at several levels at the same time and she was such a good teacher at all those levels. Her student teachers were so jazzed by her and all sorts of people would come in just to watch her do her job. For instance, as I recall it, Mrs. Vitt read us Wrinkle in Time - a now classic kids’ sci-fi novel. In this book the characters experience time travel using a ― wrinkle in time‖. They bend space/time, make a loop, and travel across the top - thus saving both time and space. In the book this is known as a ― Tesseract‖. Campus School has those ramps connecting the first and second floor at both ends of the building. The ramp goes up, and then it loops in a hairpin turn and continues up in the opposite direction. There’s this median strip, hand-bar section, in the center of the hairpin. Imagine starting on the second floor and coming down the ramp, except suddenly you simply leap over the median, directly from the top of the ramp, to the bottom of ramp below! The kid who did that stunt while our class was traveling down that ramp was asking to get in trouble! Except that as he was flying he declared at full voice, ― I'm doing a Tesseract!‖ Mrs. Vitt was THRILLED. We all Tesseracted, I mean the whole class, and Mrs. Vitt was happy about that because we were engaged and learning and creative! Teachers at Campus School were prepared. They had a beginning, middle and an end to their lessons. They also usually had a moral to the story, and for sure there was something they were trying to teach, every single class. They had people observing them, an adult as well as child audience. In a sense it was teaching theater. Then in third grade they brought in Mrs. LaBounty. She was a horrible match for Campus School. She was brought in from Canada, for some reason, but she was just a straight normal teacher from ― out there.‖ While in her third grade class, we had to walk everywhere in lines! I mean, come on, that’s pretty embarrassing. Nobody else on Campus walked in lines. We didn’t have to be militarized to do anything. I had nightmares about this teacher because she was a whole new thing to me. She taught penmanship! We had to learn how to write cursive so Mrs. LaBounty bought these little pens from Canada that were bulbous down by the tip. You couldn’t buy them in the USA. My dog ate my pen. I had to get my dad to go into this class with me and explain to this woman that the dog really had eaten my pen. My parents didn’t like her either. I can now feel sorry for her because the 'parent-teacher' conferences with our academic parents must have been hell for her! I had Mr. Mork in fourth grade and in hindsight he was a very, very good teacher and it was good to have a man teacher. He replaced Mr. Miller. My brother had Mr. Miller in fourth grade. Mr. Miller's class was known for being FUN. The kids loved him, but some of the parents wondered. It was in Mr. Miller's 4th grade that my brother Bruce threw a water balloon out of the second floor of Campus School and it just happened to hit a pregnant woman. Not hit her on her head, rather it exploded at her feet and got her all 4 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED wet. ― I didn’t know she was pregnant!‖ my brother assures me. Thus I was sad that I didn’t get to have Mr. Miller. Instead we got Mr. Mork, who was quiet. Oh well. I have to mention Mr. Vike, our wonderful art teacher. Also Mr. Murphy, the fifth grade science teacher right at the end of Campus School. He had ears that stuck out, a big heart and he was a brilliant teacher. In fourth and fifth grades, we had a homeroom teacher for a couple of periods, and then we had classes with other teachers, just like high school. Mr. Murphy was my science teacher. I didn't have him for homeroom. TB: Could you tell us the Mr. Murphy story about the guinea pigs? KRK: One day, Mr. Murphy posted a recipe for guinea pig. As I remember it, he had it written on parchment - like an old alchemy potion. There were various minerals listed on the recipe in different amounts, but mostly water. He declared that he was going to make a guinea pig and he got us going. Now we were in fifth grade and we were all pretty educated so we knew he was being silly. But then again, we were still kids and he got us going! He had his Bunsen burner ready and everything! We started believing that we could really make a guinea pig! Of course, in the end we all gathered around and stared at the foggy water and it was very disappointing! Then Mr. Murphy sat us down and asked, ― Where do guinea pigs really come from?‖ [We answered,] ― They come from guinea pig mommies.‖ I remember him delivering the final line of that day's lesson, ―Ye s, guinea pigs can only be created by a mother guinea pig, and a father guinea pig, and there’s nothing more magical than that! There’s nothing more miraculous than that!‖ TB: Any Campus School activities you didn't enjoy? KRK: Bombardment! In PE, we used to play Bombardment. That felt like institutionalized sexist child abuse to me. They threw those balls hard! They’d divide us up in that little gymnasium - half of us on one side, half of us on the other. Then you’re supposed to throw balls hard at each other - when you get hit, you are out of the game. Again the girls couldn’t wear pants and it hurt to get smacked on bare legs. I was scared to death of those games. All that stuff was really hard for me. I was clumsy and slow. TB: Most of the people who have talked about Bombardment before have been people who loved it. So it’s good to hear someone else's perspective. KRK: On the other hand, we went swimming! We had swimming lessons as part of our regular curriculum. I remember I hated the locker room and the ugly (I felt) swimsuits. I remember scooting from the shower with the unfluffy little towel and feeling really embarrassed that people (adults, college students and fellow students) were witnessing that. But the swimming was grand and then we had the afternoon off. Tuesday afternoon was a free day, as I recall. TB: I’ve heard one other person mention that -- Short Tuesdays! KRK: Short Tuesdays! Yes! Campus School was so enriched! I remember being in fourth grade art class and the teacher announcing, ― I’ve gotten hold of so-and-so in the art department. Come on, get your coats . . .‖ This happened often, ― Grab your coats, we’re off!‖ So that day we walked over to the Art Building into a whole room full of potters' wheels! Then during summer session, my parents agreed to let me take a class in pottery held at the art department taught by a grad student or new professor. I really loved that. Oh, and in regards to being a young artist, I also must mention Mrs. Hinds and music. TB: Evelyn Hinds. KRK: Evelyn Hinds taught music way before I arrived in 1960 at Campus School. She was certainly also 5 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED my brother’s music teacher. Again, he is four years older. I believe she also taught classes of some sort in the music department. Her office was in the music building, I remember. And she would come over and teach the classes as a consultant teacher. Evelyn Hinds was a dramatic person. She was not afraid to walk into the room and burst into song. She played the autoharp. She had a lovely operatic voice. Here’s a song that I learned from her: (Singing) ―L isten to the bluebirds gaily sing/ happiness and joy to all they bring/ winter days are over for a year/ and the bluebirds tell us spring is here/ toorah loorah loorah loorah lay/ toorah loorah loorah loorah lay / toorah loorah loorah loorah lay / toorah loorah loorah loorah lay.‖ My whole family was very musical. My brother Bruce had a great musical gift. The story goes that my brother was in first grade in Mrs. Hinds’ music class. She brought in a record player, and she had different classical LP’s with her. Her lesson plan was to have the first graders listen to various excerpts of classical music, and then share together how it made them FEEL, or describe the imaginary pictures the music was evoking. However, my brother started waving his hand as soon as Mrs. Hinds dropped the needle! ― Yes, Bruce?‖ Mrs. Hinds stopped the music to ask, ― What do you want?‖ ― That’s Mozart, Eine Kleine Nacht Music, 1st movement!‖ Bruce declared, happily figuring he had won the ― Name That Tune‖ contest. Mrs. Hinds talked about that for years! By the time my brother was six, my father had trained him. Bruce could recognize any Western composer, usually be able to name the piece, and the movement, and often the opus number. It was a game with them ― Drop the Needle‖. Music was one of my favorite subjects. I consider myself a singer, a musician and I always have. My father was a statistician, but he taught high school before he got his PhD at University of Iowa, and he was the band leader and the music director. He had a minor in music, played piano and he wrote his own compositions. I learned how to read music easily at age 3 or so. I told you, I was actually a late reader, but I was fluent in music by 3. I was trained up as the alto in the family, my brother sang tenor, my father was a baritone - he had traditionally been a tenor, but his voice was deepening with age - my mother had a lovely soprano voice. By the time I was five or six or seven, I not only knew how to read music and play the piano a bit, but my whole family could whip off major pieces: The ― Messiah,‖ Bach string quartets, that sort of thing. In the car we were always singing. We were singing all the time. We sang far more than we talked. We talked quite a bit, we argued quite a bit, but singing was the thing that mattered most. Music made all the fighting and talking livable. Music was my father's religion. Specifically, Beethoven’s 7th and 9th Symphonies - but don't forget the 5th and the 6th - the Pastoral Symphony…god-stuff. He was an atheist/agnostic. Yet every Sunday, Dad would play Beethoven's 9th, often the 7th symphony as well. Mother loved the opera. She expressed her emotions through the use of opera. When she was upset, enter Don Giovanni! This was a bit too intense for me. I didn't like opera, still don't. I also grew up to not like symphony orchestras as much as chamber music. I prefer non-Western music to Western music these days. My brother was tracking popular music as the Sixties came on, buying 45’s by the time he was in fourth grade. Thus my brother started to educate himself and me in pop music very early as well. My brother was taught violin by Arthur Thal. I took piano lessons, and had less illustrious teachers. Mr. Thal was very short, and extremely Eastern European and Jewish. His whole house smelled delicious and different. I just loved it there. I got to sit through some of my brother’s violin lessons. I’m not quite sure why I ended up there, maybe it was a babysitting thing, but I remember sitting through them and being so impressed. My brother had a wonderful talent. Mr. Thal was totally in love with my brother and probably my brother 6 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED was one of his best students. Mr. Thal was very disappointed when my brother dropped violin and devoted himself to the guitar - the electric guitar. I don’t know Arthur Thal's background. I do not believe he had any connection to WWU other than the fact that he was a world class trainer of violinists. When I grew up, I learned that music is something that many/most people do not experience the way we did. A lot of people don’t like music. They keep it in the background. They use it like TV. They don't need it. They can live and breathe without it. There were so many musical and artistic and scientific opportunities for us at Campus School. The professors put on recitals and the college students too, of course. There were often great virtuosos of different types, visiting Western. Then the Sixties happened! If you were a teacher at Campus School, you could always take a lazy day. You’d just trudge those kids over to the art gallery, or something. Or get some professor to show us how to wrap wire to make batteries, or whatever. TB: Campus school children had the run of the campus? KRK: Yes, we did, and some of us really took advantage of it! We would walk right into the professor’s (our dad's and ― uncle's‖) offices. I don’t remember ever not being welcome. The secretaries all knew me by name and let me right on through. Uncle Jerry (Flora) was head of the biology department before he became president. Uncle Herb (Taylor), my godfather, was dean of graduate studies and he’d treat me like any adult, except better. We’d visit and talk. I kept him up to date on all the neighborhood and childhood happenings. He was the best story teller! All my father’s friends, my pseudo-uncles, held goals in common; like their belief in liberal education. They would have all taken a bullet for that. And I remember that they were all concerned that the campus should be beautiful - that the architecture should hang together. That was a problem with Carver Gym. It was a concern that it never would quite hang well with the other buildings. Everyone agreed that there should be quiet spots on campus where you could meditate and study - little gardens and grottos and sculptures. I remember the adults often discussing what the buildings looked like, and who the architects were. The Viking Union was an interesting building when it got built. It looked so much like it was made with one of those panel and girder sets that my brother had - that 1962 look. I think they have the same furniture over there still. It was so sleek and modern-looking back then and it has lasted. When I was in second grade, they started building the Humanities Building. Red Square happened in 1968 later. To build the Humanities Building, they had to use a pile-driver to penetrate the Chuckanut mountain sandstone. For that whole year, these great big crane-like things kept pounding and pounding, right outside our classroom windows. It drove everyone wacko! ― Pile Driver‖ by Allyn Blood, 1962/1963 Boom! Hiss! Boom! Hiss! Boom! Hiss! Boom! Hiss! Please stop the Boom! Hiss! Boom! Hiss! Boom! Hiss!‖ 7 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: That was excellent. KRK: That was heartfelt. The other poem I remember writing in second grade, was: Pumpkin pie, pumpkin pie, when I eat pumpkin pie, I always think of you. My mother claimed that I wrote that poem for her. I may have written it for her, or my grandmother. But actually I think Mrs. Vitt had a hatful of pieces of paper with words written on them. We had to pull out a word or concept and write a poem about it, and I got ― pumpkin pie‖. Of course, I remember best the things that impressed me most. I remember art projects that I did. I especially remember that I would do a piece of art in class and I’d turn it in and it would disappear. Because I was in school, you’d turn things in, and the teachers would keep some things - and maybe you got it back at the end of the semester, or whatever. But more than once, I’d walk into the Campus School office, and suddenly see my art, matted and hanging on the wall! So I grew to believe that I had artistic abilities because of these little things. I also particularly remember the day that Mrs. Vitt took us over to visit my dad in Old Main as a field trip. I got to school one day not knowing this was going to happen. My dad didn’t tell me, kept it a secret from me. My dad was the director of institutional research, in charge of Western's first IBM mainframe. He didn’t know anything about computers, nobody knew anything about computers, but he was a statistician so he got the job. The computer was programmed with cards. Dad sat our class down at the card punchers. He had gotten a list of all our names and birthdays. So he taught us how to make the cards, and he put the cards in the slot at the side of the huge machine, and the computer spewed out this long piece of paper that created a banner to hang in our classroom, ― Mrs. Vitt’s Class‖ which had all our names on it. And the computer made a birthday card for the lucky kid who happened to have his birthday that day. Campus Community Before I was born, my parent's first house in Bellingham was right where Fairhaven College parking lot is now. That little valley where they built the Fairhaven complex was called Hidden Valley. My brother was a baby, and he has memories of his first years there. It was right next to a big farm, with cows and a Farmer White or something like that. There is this story from those times about my brother getting lost and the police being called. Bruce had one of those little pedal fire engines and he simply ― drove to work‖ one day. My mother lost him and called the police and it was all a hullabaloo. So there was my dad, finishing a class lecture, not yet aware that his son had gone missing, and in toddles my brother, age 3, to visit and upstage his papa. I was born after my parents moved to Forest Street, right below Campus. It was a completely open neighborhood. We were always in and out of each other's homes. The parents all had different ways of calling the kids in from playing outside. My parents had a cowbell, and the Yancos had a whistle, and Uncle Herb would come out and holler like a seal! He had a booming voice and did a perfect sea lion imitation. My father and Herb would occasionally both perform their excellent seal lion act, baying at each other across Forest Street, flapping their flippers. Didn't embarrass me one bit either, in fact I miss the high levels of self-expression that were enjoyed by all back then. There were different patterns played on our family cowbell that meant different things. One pattern meant ― Come home now!‖ and another meant ― Hey kids everywhere! Come over for cookies and Kool-Aid!‖ In my parents’ circle the children called the adults uncle and aunt. Certainly the Taylor and the Flora kids called my dad, Uncle Don and my mom, Aunt Pat. Any child was welcome to call them that. In my family we adopted most everyone! Uncle Paul Woodring, Uncle Barney Goltz . . . uncle everybody. Whether they 8 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED remember being my uncle or not, that is how they were referred to in my world. TB: Otherwise you probably would’ve had to call them by their formal title? You couldn’t call them by their first name, is that it? KRK: Yes! Children did NOT call adults by their first names. For instance, we never used first names with our teachers. There are many parents of my friends who I did not know as well, or whom my parents did not socialize with as much, who I called Mrs. or Dr. To this day, it is hard for me to remember these people's first names and then even harder to remember to call these, now fellow adults, by their first names! When the Sixties happened, we suddenly started calling the liberal adults by their first names. It was Peggy (Bishop) and Lois (Spratlen) and Rita and Bill (Sodt) - no aunt or uncle added. I must add that Uncle Herb had this whole other name thing going! Everybody had ― Bear‖ added to their names by Uncle Herb. There was Laura Bear, Carol Bear and so forth. TB: Did he just have one daughter? He had four kids, didn’t he? KRK: No, only two. My brother and I were raised with Laura Taylor and Bud came later. Bud was really fun for me because I could hold him and play with him - a baby! Laura was two years older than I, and one year younger than my brother. We were raised together. For example, it was my dad who answered our questions about sex and reproduction. Had Laura and I asked Uncle Herb instead, he would have told us the answers we were seeking. Herb and my dad were such good friends that they completely adopted the other's kids. Of course, we lived across the street from each other. In hindsight, I think those two men understood that Laura would behave better for her Uncle Don and I would behave better for Uncle Herb and they used that fact to achieve their parenting goals! The only place they differed was on the subject of punishment. Uncle Herb was pro-spanking and my parents, not so much. I never got spanked by Uncle Herb. TB: What about the Floras? KRK: When I was a young kid, the Floras lived right across the street from us. Then they moved further down Forest Street. At some point they moved to the President's Mansion and the farm. I am fuzzy about whether they lived in the President's Mansion and the farm at the same time - or one place and then the other? They certainly were out on the farm by the late Sixties because Jerry tells the story about the Fairhaven College Outback and the pigs. Turns out the Fairhaven Outback didn’t have their pigs in pig sties that were up to code, so Jerry had to take the pigs out to his farm until they dealt with the problem. TB: He was still president? KRK: Yes, I think so. The Flora farm was a whole new exciting experience. There was horseback riding! And they had this barn, and they had this rope, they had this hay, and they had this loft, and you could swing! And you could fly into the hay! I don’t ever remembering saying a word to Rosemary and Jerry when I was on their farm. It was just like, ― Hi!‖, ― Bye!‖ and head for the barn! It was the loveliest place. On a clear day, you can sit in their living room, and Mount Baker is sitting there with you. On cloudy days you would never know that a mountain is there. Sometimes it played hide and seek mysteriously for hours. Such a big beautiful mountain! Aunt Rosemary (Flora) is a very educated, very confident person. She was another of my amazing pseudomothers. What a blessing! In hindsight, I see there was so much co-parenting. My parents didn’t care where I was as long as I was home in time for dinner, or called to say I was eating at someone else's house. Bellingham was very safe too and life was intensely educational. Say a group of people got together to go to Larrabee State Park? At the beach, the parents would do the 9 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED parent thing and the kids would do the kid thing, but then Jerry Flora would get bored with the adults and come and hang out with the kids. Suddenly you’re looking into tide pools with Jerry Flora! And he’s interested in how we think and what everybody’s seeing and he’s asking us questions and we are asking him questions. That was a little moment of fun for Uncle Jerry, he gets to be with his kids, and he gets to be with other people’s kids. But in hindsight, what a great gift to experience tide pools as a child with Jerry Flora! Here is another example that I remember. I was at Francis and Henry Adams’ house on Lake Whatcom one day. I’m sitting under a hedge in their backyard. I’m literally under one of their bushes. It’s shady and it’s private and I’m in my own little world and I’m digging in the dirt. As I dig down I find a ring. It is cheap metal and glass, a Crackerjack treat. Still I'm excited to dig up this ring and I want to share my discovery. Uncle Henry is out on a chaise lounge in his backyard, with his cocktail and his cigar and he’s sunning. I run up and I show him the ring. He puts the chair up and he looks at this ring very carefully. Then he starts telling me about how I’ve found something from a hidden civilization that is underneath his property. He starts telling me about this world beneath us, and, of course, he’s actually teaching me a lot about archeologists and ancient civilizations. He’s making it all up, and I know he is making it up but he is opening up a wonderful new subject for me. After that I dug so many holes under that bush that they probably had to replace it. I was that kind of kid; you could always catch me up with a good tale. I was a very well-tested child because my Dad, Dr. Don Blood, ran the Testing Center. Carol Diers tested me and my father tested me in front of their classrooms, and I know now it was partly because I had learning disabilities. I was quite smart, but again, I don’t do linear that swell. There I was, always in social situations talking to brilliant professors and they’d be asking me what I was learning. They were curious because they had kids too and they were all teachers. ― What are those Campus School teachers doing?‖ In my case, these professors/parents would very quickly get to the edge of my elementary knowledge on any subject because, whew, these people were brilliant! All my favorite adults were absolutely brilliant professors, lecturers and teachers. They were passionate! Not wishing to appear stupid, when I didn't know the correct answer, I would spin tall and silly tales - that was my coping thing - I was a little entertainer. And then I’d hear the stories come back. My mom would say, ― Uncle Henry told everybody at the party about what you said to him!‖ Uncle Henry Adams: ― So where is Bruce?‖ Me, age 5: ― Oh he’s off barking with the dogs!‖ Turns out that this was witty and amusing, but, of course, it was simply the way I perceived things. My senses are heightened and my brain runs in circles. I loved language and I would take words and use them actively and in creative combinations. I had this whole thing about words. Every word was a kinesthetic, lucidly experienced, ―v erb‖ for me. How wonderful that I could talk to these professors about that! I'd ask them ― What are your favorite words? Mine are 'mayonnaise' and 'elbow.'‖ th We moved to 17 and Garden Street when I was nine. One of the people I'd see everyday was Dr. Hicks. Dr. Hicks was a marvelous person. He was a ― beamer‖, some people just beam. And of course, it was all a joke about how he could walk and read at the same time. He was really reading - Shakespeare and the like. It would appear as if he wasn’t looking at cars at all. Mr. Magoo on TV was similar but not as fun to watch as Dr. Hicks. I remember tagging along with him, asking him what he was reading - just loving being around him. I know he liked me too, and enjoyed those times. I also remember when Carol Diers was working on armadillo research. She had an armadillo mother that was going to reject her babies; the parents were going to eat the babies again. Carol was trying to keep the armadillo litter alive so she took her armadillo babies home to her house which was on 21st Street at that time. Her dog had just birthed puppies and Carol put the armadillo babies in with those puppies and the dog accepted them! We all went to see that! What a strange sight! Likewise, Uncle Herb (Taylor) back when he lived over on Key Street, (before the Taylors moved across 10 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED the street from us on Forest, into the Spanish Villa) owned a Belgium hare named Alcibiades. The Key Street house had a little half bathroom on the back porch. I have this extremely early memory sitting in there on the throne, peeing, while Alcibiades hopped around the toilet. Alcibiades used to eat books. Bad bunny. I remember that. At one point, Uncle Herb had crocodile babies, or maybe they were alligators, in his bathtub. What a great universe we lived in! Almost every family had a dog and there were no leash laws. Dogs had the run of the neighborhood, and the campus too in truth. When I was very small we had a huge boxer, unusually large, named Leo. Leo had his daily rounds. He visited the backdoors of the neighbors for a bit of communion and a treat. He was a noble, calm soul, who generated great respect. The mothers trusted Leo. Forest Street had very little traffic. Leo would lie down across the middle of the street. This allowed the kids to play in the street. When a car was on its way, Leo would stand up, stretch and wander over to the relevant lane, and take his stance facing down the oncoming vehicle. This was our cue to get out of the street. When Leo was sure all the kids were safe, he'd let the car through. Then he'd settle back down to sleeping in the middle of the road and we'd go back to playing in the street. Leo had a special thing for asparagus. My mother would lay cooked asparagus across Leo’s bowl of dog chow. Leo would carefully, with his big jowly lips, remove the asparagus one at a time and set them aside all with great grace and appreciation. Then he would eat his chow. Then, for dessert, he would lie down and take one asparagus at a time between his floppy lips, and Leo would daintily sip it up. Leo died when I was 5 so these are very early memories. I remember seeing the Disney movie, Peter Pan, and relating to how the children's Nanny was a sheep hound. The Taylors and the Bloods preferred classical names for our animals. The Taylors had a dog named Hadrian. For us there was, at different times, a Siegfried, a Marcus Aurelius, a Marcus Antonio, and a Caesar. Years later, I understood the twisted joke about the Taylor's white cat. She was always getting pregnant. They kept trying to get her spade but she would turn out to be pregnant again. Her name was Sappho. TB: What did you do after school each day? KRK: Many of us would stay on campus until dinnertime. Or we’d go to friends’ houses, and lots of times, we’d just hang out up on Sehome Hill. That’s where our fantasies played out, where we built our forts, and formed our clubs. We lived very close to nature. Our Moms would tend to kick us outside, of course, and we would head to the forest. Highland Drive was almost completely forested back then, except for the houses right on the street. The Harwoods and the Marshes lived on Highland Drive, right next door to each other. The Fleasons were up there too, and several other Campus school families. When the Broads came to town, Susan Broad lived up there. The Bishops lived up on that hill. Up on Highland Drive, we would head into the woods, because the woods were wonderful there. Ridgeway dorms didn’t exist yet. In our neighborhood, we played at Cedar Street Park. Across the street from the park is the International House. This was another wonderful aspect of our neighborhood; the international students who were living at the International House. Of course, you can learn English by talking to children. I remember taking my job as tutor very seriously. I loved trying to communicate with people who were learning English. I loved looking at their pictures and seeing the things they brought from their home countries. The barges and ships would come into Bellingham Bay and dock below State Street. There were ships from Japan. I don’t remember why they were here but the Japanese sailors would come up the hill to the International House, and to Cedar Street Park. When that happened, it was so much fun! We’d have these big baseball games. Usually, it was the Japanese crew against the whole neighborhood; Dads, a couple Moms, and kids. Cedar Street is very steep. In the winter, when it snowed, Cedar Hill was our sled hill. It was also neighborhood entertainment in the winter to watch cars attempt to go down Cedar Street Hill in 11 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED the snow. That was a sled ride too. Cedar Street Hill could be dangerous. It was tempting to try to ride your bike down it. If you wiped out, then you'd end up at the end of the block, at the hospital again. Dr. Jim (Mason) would meet you there and stitch you up. In the summer, the park recreation person would come to Cedar Street Park. This was the City of Bellingham providing art classes! Plaster of Paris was really a big thing in the early sixties in those art classes. They gave you these molds, then you poured the plaster in, and then the Indian chief face would pop out, and then you'd paint his face with poster paint. Or they had this colored plastic string stuff that we braided into key chains. Or we'd weave potholders out of these stretchy loops. Tacky! I remember doing those sorts of projects at Cedar Street Park and thinking they were so stupid. At Campus School, I was given clay, or canvas and water colors or even oil paints – I was never given any sort of prefab ― art‖. We did silk screening in second grade, so you can imagine what I thought about cutting construction paper and sticking colored macaroni to it. I felt sorry for the children in the public schools because they were not allowed to do real art, just phony art. TB: Please share about summers on Lake Whatcom and Lakewood. KRK: Several of my parents’ friends lived full time or part time on Lake Whatcom, and then some summers my parents rented a place on the lake. They’d rent out our home on Forest Street to visiting faculty. It was great, but it could have some surprises, too. One year, during the spring before we moved to the lake, the whole neighborhood gang of Campus School kids discovered peashooters. The shooters were simply big straws. But instead of using peas, we used popcorn. It hurt to get hit on bare skin! Come summer, we moved to Lake Whatcom, and when we returned in September our yard was a field of 6 foot tall corn. The neighborhood was highly entertained. The renter hadn't mowed the yard, nor had they cleaned the house. I remember singing, ― Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day! The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye!‖ Life was a musical for me. Every summer we’d spend a great deal of time at Lakewood. What a great ― perk‖ Lakewood is for WWU faculty! We could go sailing, or take out a canoe, or go rowing! And swimming...brrrrrrr! In the spring, I would start taking cold baths to prepare myself for Lake Whatcom. Gradually, I'd start putting more cold water in my bath, so I could swim come June. Lakewood is at the cold end of the lake, which is much deeper. TB: Shadier, too. KRK: Yes, but come August, shadier is great! I was allowed to go barefoot when the temperature got to 65º in Bellingham. I remember learning how to read the thermometer very young. I had to wait until it was 65º. My parents would have probably preferred 70º, but 65º was good enough. Then I could go barefoot. This was HUGE for me. I hated shoes. Still do. During the summers we were living on the lake, Western kept on impacting our lives. One summer, Uncle Jerry decided to put crawdad traps off the side of our dock. We were doing science experiments, bringing up crawdads, counting them. That kind of thing was always happening. Another example, Uncle Jerry has this big lion skin rug. I don’t know where he got it on his travels. It was a great huge skin of a lion with a stuffed head, mouth snarling. He still has it at his house. He showed it to my son. For some reason, Jerry lent my mother this skin, and it was in our living room, in front of the fireplace for several years. Our living room also featured two of Dr. David Marsh’s paintings. One of them we had over our mantle and it was a lovely painting. One day my mother put a flower arrangement of forsythia up on the mantle beside the painting. David Marsh came in and saw his art, thus honored, and he was struck. He renamed it, 12 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ― Painting with Forsythia‖. It was always like that. I don’t know if my parents were gifted with the painting, or paid for his art - but it was a porous community. We mustn't forget the picnics at Lakewood. We ate an immense amount of salmon. Huge salmon barbeques happened all during my youth. Pacific Northwesterners eat so much salmon. My brother won’t eat salmon. He ate so much salmon as a kid, he’s just got to the point where he’s not going to eat any more. Women of Western TB: What about the women of Western? KRK: I read the book written by elder WWU professors, WWU! As It Was. and I think it often gives the impression that Western was about what happened in the smoking room and at those poker games. The book talks too much about what the patriarchs were competing about down through their careers. But that’s not what Western was like at all! Western was about the students and the student association and it was enriched beyond belief by the power and dedication of the Faculty Wives Club! Western was wonderful because of what was happening in the classrooms and the campus activities, not in the meeting rooms and cocktail parties. Of course, when I was a child, Western was a patriarchy. My brother was very much initiated by the men: Henry Adams taught my brother how to sail - countless hours out on the lake, and Uncle Herb took him hiking for the first time. There were practically no women professors back then. But all my Dad’s friends hired a bunch of women before they retired. They did that. If I had a hundred dollars for every woman professor I’ve met since I came back to town who tells me, ―He rb Taylor hired me,‖ I’d be, well, richer. They had an agenda to hire women. But there were very few women professors at Western when I was a kid. Instead, there were the faculty wives, the moms. I would say that almost all of them were very intelligent women - oftentimes educated as well as their husbands, just not college professors. Some of our moms were probably college professor wannabes. My mother was one of the first people in her family to go to college at all. As soon as she gave up teaching sixth graders as a career she just threw herself into ― The Great Books Club‖ and taught adults ever after that. I got her to admit that she should have become a college professor. I think some of the other wives were also like that. All of them put immense energy into the quality of life at Western and they were competitive too, in their way. My mother was a feminist and many of the other mothers were feminists, but everything was still all run by men. Roles were changing, but they hadn’t really changed yet. My brother fed the dog and mowed the lawn. Compared to my brother, I felt that I did an immense amount of domestic labor in our house. We were being trained to be good housewives AND intellectual career women at the same time! We were being trained to be super-women. My mother could not have conceived that I might simply grow up and be a career woman with a messy house. You can’t have a messy house, if you’re going to be a career woman no, you have an immaculate house and you’re a career woman, and you’re also a chef and you dress well and are beautiful, published, socially adroit, and ... and... and... Girls had more labor, and we had a lot more limitation. Again we had a dress code, we had to wear skirts. We had to wear petticoats, and the women wore girdles and other heavy ― foundations‖. The underwear was torture. This was the true reason for the Sixties Rebellion - freedom from bad underwear. Can you imagine? Can you remember? All the women wore girdles, foundations were very important, and there were those horrid metal and rubber garters to hold your, forever running, nylons up! Back then, those were all very big parts of life and sleeping on curlers. OUCH. My brother didn't have to experience that hell, and I am glad for it. No child should have to sleep in those awful plastic curlers. It isn't humane, but 13 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED back then, it was normal. We had to learn how to do laundry. My mother didn’t have a dryer when I was a young child. She hung all clothes on lines in the basement in the dark months and outside during nice weather. My mother canned. Can you believe it? She was a career woman. She went back to teaching in 1962, and she still canned, and did all that stuff, and tried to teach me how to do all that stuff. Mind you, my father was very progressive in the sense that he did at least half of the cleaning and cooking often more. He was far ahead of his time, a feminist. Still, girls were stuck, while the boys could run around. When we’d go to a restaurant, my brother could ask to be excused so he could go wander around the restaurant or go outside. I wasn’t allowed to leave the table. It was all these little things that seem so silly now - we have lived through a big change. TB: Can you talk a little about some of the professors’ wives in your neighborhood? KRK: I had a thing for elders. As a little girl, I would happily go spend time with my next door neighbor, who was Mrs. Van Aver (Dr. Van Aver’s wife). She was somewhat housebound, a very quiet housewife who did needlepoint, but I spent an inordinate amount of time with her because she’d tell me stories. TB: What kind of stories did Mrs. Van Aver tell you? KRK: Sadly, I don’t really remember the specific stories. One thing I remember was that their son Phillip was a fabulous artist. He painted incredible miniatures that I would look into - you’d need a magnifying glass - and there was a whole universe in teeniest detail - full paintings. They were an inch or three in size, with a couple mattings and deep frames, so it was like looking at mysterious icons…very intense. Mrs. Van Aver was so proud of her son. Dr. Van Aver was gruff, but good-hearted. The story is that he was out mowing his lawn, going back and forth, when my parents moved into the house next door. My brother was around four and he went right over there (right through the hedge) and started following behind Dr. Van Aver as he mowed the lines. When Dr. Van Avers finally stopped and turned, my brother simply stuck out his hand and said ―Hi,I’m Bruce!‖ and they were friends for life. My mother was very neighborly with Mrs. Van Aver. They shared recipes and canning tips and I was often sent over there with flowers. Mrs. Van Aver was a lovely gardener, but I think she was sickly. There was something…like it was harder for her to stand up and sit down and things. I think she had something going on with her health, but as a child I wasn't concerned and hardly noticed. She liked to show me how homemaking was done in previous eras. We'd look through vintage women's magazines together and have a great time. She even had a wringer washing machine that she still used to do her laundry. My mother put Mrs. Van Aver through a terrible ordeal one day when I came home all happy with a HUGE bouquet of crocuses. In the Van Avers’ backyard, there were hundreds of crocuses each spring - they just came out of the grass. In our backyard we didn’t have these crocuses growing in our grass. They were beautiful, so I picked a bunch of them, and brought them home and gave them to my mother. Imagine my surprise when my mother announced, ― Those are not your crocuses to give.‖ I had to go and knock on the Van Avers' door and blubber, ― I’m sorry, I picked your crocuses!‖ and there was poor Mrs. Van Aver stammering, ― Oh child, those silly old things, oh please you can . . .‖ We were both very upset. But of course she also knew that my mother was trying to train me not to go picking everybody’s flowers, and I needed to be trained about that in that neighborhood - because there were no property lines for cats, dogs or kids. I remember looking at Mrs. Van Aver, and I knew she wanted me to pick her crocuses. So I dried my tears and we got over it fast. TB: Tell me a little about Barbara Daugert and your friend, Elizabeth Daugert. KRK: Yes, thanks. Barbara, and then Elizabeth, both died so young of breast cancer. 14 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED There were three older boys - Larry’s the oldest and then Steve and Fred. Elizabeth came last. I believe Barbara was a trained educator, but I didn’t ever know anything about that. Barbara was a pseudo-mom of mine. I lived at the Daugerts’ house off and on for many years. Elizabeth and I spent huge amounts of time discovering Western together. We would explore every building. We checked out every door on Campus, all the time. And of course, eventually we got into some great places! We made it up into the attic of Old Main; that was an adventure! There were no floorboards, so we were on the beams…it was dangerous, it was horrible, we could have fallen down the chute - there was a shaft up there and I got a little wobbly - nothing happened. It was scary and I felt over my head and I have stayed away from beam walking ever since! The other thing that Elizabeth and I used to do - which shocks me now - is sit for hours up on the roof of Old Main. When I visit WWU today, when I look up through the mist and there’s Old Main, built up there on that hill, sitting high above campus, I remember climbing the fire escape that used to be on the front right corner of the building before the addition was built. When no one was looking we’d just pop up that fire escape. It was about six feet off the ground, but we’d climb the wall, and hoist ourselves up and climb the stairs to the top! Another boost up onto the slanted roof, a careful crawl up to the chimneys and we were safe and sound and at peace. I'd sing ― Up on the Roof‖ to myself for hours there. There was always a song in my head when I was a kid, as now. Whenever I hear that song I think of being up on the roof of Old Main. I learned a great truth there, people rarely look up. It was a different era. I mean that weird red industrial sculpture outside the PAC, the music building, had a swing on it when it got put in, and you were SUPPOSED to climb that piece of art. Even my son managed to climb it before it got firmly taboo to climb that thing. I let him too even though maybe I shouldn't have. I reminded myself, ― Well, my brother climbed it. I climbed it‖ From a modern parent’s point of view, climbing that ugly red sculpture seems terrible, but it wasn’t like that when we were kids. Doctor Jim used to say that it wasn’t spring until my brother had his first set of stitches. Doctor Jim was Evelyn Mason’s husband and he was the village doctor. He made house calls all the time. Most of us broke our arms, or broke a leg. We had measles, mumps, and chicken pox. (Kids don’t break bones much anymore. They wear out their wrists using computer mousse). We climbed trees. Oh my God, we climbed trees. You know, we were all climbers. I remember climbing library stacks…in this very building! The science building, Haggard Hall, was a great place for Beth Daugert and me to explore. We got into great mischief, and we discovered marvelous friends too. I have published the story about how Elizabeth and I ― discovered‖ Dr. David T. Mason one day. How is THAT for getting lucky? We spent an inordinate amount of time in the bottom of Haggard Hall because they had a public display alcove you could go into - you hit the button and it had black lights shining on minerals - great colors. Taxidermy was big also. I remember Elizabeth and I once checked the door and got into where they were storing all the old mountain goats or whatever. I remember when Jerry Flora and students disemboweled a dead sea lion - bletch! When the Alaska earthquake happened - that was really big news! We were all visiting the seismograph in Haggard Hall after that happened. Elizabeth and I knew everybody, or we thought we did. We thought we owned the place. Campus School kids were underfoot all the time. Many of us stayed after school on campus, and even after Campus School closed, I’d walk from Fairhaven Middle School to my house on Garden Street, and then I’d usually keep on walking up to Western. The Daugerts were a big part of our yearly Christmas celebrations - they hosted a couple of yearly community activities at Christmas. Dr. Stan Daugert played piano and so we went over to the Daugerts each year for Christmas carol singing. I loved it! I remember sitting up beside Dr. Daugert on the piano bench for the whole thing, singing my heart out. 15 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Also, every Christmas season, Barbara invited the mothers and the daughters over to her house to make Christmas decorations and crafts. She collected ribbons and Christmas stuff all year and she'd bring it all out, and we'd have incredible fun. Likewise my mother would often have all the kids over to make and decorate Christmas cookies. TB: What about Carol Diers? She was an early woman hire. KRK: Uncle Herb often told people that Carol was the smartest person he ever encountered in his classroom. She was his student first. That was the hugest compliment that Uncle Herb could ever give anyone. In their universe, being smart was the coolest thing. I think Uncle Herb was very pro-women philosophically, and very alpha-male otherwise. As a student, Carol lived in the Taylor’s house and helped with the household. She was often our babysitter, but everyone respected her intellect and quiet wit. Then she went off to grad school and came back with a PhD and got hired. It was after Carol came back to Bellingham that Uncle Herb and Carol fell in love and then got married. Carol was/is not gamey at all. Beyond being a brilliant scientist, Carol was also an excellent photographer, artistic, and a great listener and counselor. Even though she was not a clinical psychologist, Carol was good therapy. She was good for Herb. They had a good life together. TB: You didn’t really come in contact with her in Campus School? KRK: No, she was more like family. The Sixties KRK: My mother and father were very, very dedicated to the civil-rights movement. My family grieved deeply when Martin Luther King was assassinated. As bad as the John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy assassinations were, the death of Martin Luther King trumped them. They weren’t happy over Malcolm's death either, but they didn’t understand Malcolm X as well, of course. My parents were liberal democrats not radicals. The thing they most liked about the Kennedy brothers was that they believed the Kennedys were completely committed to fighting racial inequality. The Kennedys, in truth, were civil-rights heroes. Martin Luther King, however, was better yet. John Kennedy was such a good public speaker that people had records of him. My parents, friends, kids too, would listen to his speeches on records. Also we had records of comedians who were politically progressive. . TB: What was it like at Campus School the day of the Kennedy assassination? KRK: They sent us home from school. They tried, I think, to contact our parents to inform them that we were being sent home. In my case, that was my dad because he was close, he was on campus. But I think Dad was in class so I went home by myself or with my brother. I remember being very, very upset, and my father told me that when he got home he found me crying. He said that I believed that the whole government had gone down, and he had to explain to me that there was a vice president, and who that was, and what happens in these cases. None of that was explained to us that day. TB: So the school didn’t really use it as a teaching opportunity? KRK: Not on the day it happened. I mean, it really put the whole nation into shock. So we were just sent home. I don’t remember ever being sent home from Campus School for any other emergency. Everybody was in shock. Our parents were in shock. It was a very big deal to the professors at Western who were Camelot. Kennedy was Camelot. TB: So in a way, all the vibrant things that were happening at Western kind of coincided with the Kennedy 16 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Administration to make everybody feel like it was a whole new world and a whole new generation taking over. KRK: Yes, I believe that was the case. Kids who went to Campus School had a jump on the Sixties. We were really experiencing a lot of things early that influenced popular culture later, experiences that grew into the Sixties Rebellion. I have always thought that Fairhaven College was an extension of Campus School, they were just teaching a different age group. At Campus School they had given us a lot of freedom to design our own courses in some sense. So how did the generation gap develop between my parents’ generation and our generation? Hippies and Hippie Values My brother and I started working hard to be authentic and spontaneous, where my mother was working hard to be more packaged in her approach to things, and that meant from the top of her hairdo right down to her pumps, you know. She was very much conscious that she was a role model for her sixth grade students and she dressed nicely - you know, Decorum Mom - where my brother and I were wishing to be freespirited artists. Enter the Spratlens into my life! The Spratlens came to WWU in the early Sixties. I didn't really know them until the Sixties rebellion happened, however. Lois Spratlen was the Sixties! She taught us all how to play guitar. Lois was a gifted folk singer, a fan of Joan Baez. She and Dr. Thad were ambassadors for the African-American race here in Bellingham. And they knew it, and they took it seriously, and they did it. TB: Now your parents had been well-established before the Spratlens came— KRK: Yes. I was nine when we moved to our house on Garden Street and they lived right down the street. I got adopted by Lois Spratlen - we all did, which was very nice. Pam Spratlen and I were best friends for several years during puberty, one of my serial monogamous best-friends - there was some overlap. I didn’t know anything about being Black when I met the Spratlens; I had just been trained that there was no difference. But there IS a difference and I loved it! Lois's house was ALIVE. Her family was completely different from mine. Dr. Thaddeus was so big and he had big hands. I remember just being in awe of his hands, and actually touching his hands - wanting to be touching his hands and just thinking that he was such a marvelous person. Charisma -- Lois and Dr. Thad had ― IT‖. He and I didn’t say much, but I loved him…I mean the house was a zoo! We’re talking Thad, Jr. and there was Peter Townsend, those were the two little boys, and then three older highly self expressive daughters - five kids! Whereas it was just my brother and me - and he was four years older, doing his own thing. Our house was very sophisticated and classy, and the Spratlens’ house was WOW!!!!! Simply wonderful. Lois didn’t keep a messy house, but she didn’t keep a sanitized house like my mother did. She had no help! Life was different at my home. My mother hired somebody to help her with the housework, and my dad cooked and cleaned too. I would get myself invited over to other people’s houses for dinner, and my mother was always encouraging me and my brother to bring our friends over to our house. But in truth our friends didn’t like coming to our house because we had formal sit down dinners every night of the week. My mother was an excellent cook, my dad was an excellent cook too, but they kept the old protocols. My brother or my father would seat me at the dining room table, and seat my mother, and other women. They would stand when my mother and I walked in through the door (or any other woman). My mother kept all that stuff happening. My father probably wouldn’t have cared, but it was important to my mother. 17 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED There was never a time where I didn’t know what all the forks or spoons were for. Because if we had salad, there was a salad fork, and there was a dessert fork too, because we had dessert. I set the table. I used to assure my intimidated friends, ― It’s so easy, just work from the outside in, eat from the outside in.‖ I also knew what wine to serve with which meat - my mother would serve wine with every dinner and would have never served white wine with beef. Candles - full-out performance dinners, every single night. My Mom worked. She was a passionate school teacher. Yet she kept an immaculate house. Back then it seemed like women had to be better than men at everything to gain any equal clout. Best to be beautiful and brilliant, and never let them see you sweat. Thus I remember the shock I felt the first time I saw Lois ironing Patty’s hair in the Spratlen kitchen. ― Holy moly, what’s this about?‖ Soon they would all sport ― Afros‖, thank god! I loved Afros! Being the kind of person I was, it was so great to be able to put my hands into black people’s hair. I had understanding and permission from Lois to explore and become part of her family. One day Lois put me in front of the mirror. I was eleven or twelve. I was self-conscious. My freckles stood out - they were darker on my face - our freckles fade as we get older. Thank goodness! Lois stood behind me, with her hands on my shoulders. Our eyes met in the mirror and she said, ― You are half black and don’t you ever forget it.‖ And I didn’t! That was my first experience being initiated - allowed into something that was completely separate from my mother’s and father's experience. Mind you, my mother was really happy that Pam and I were friends and that I was so welcome at the Spratlens. One of the best parties my Mom ever threw was for the neighborhood on Garden Street. She invited all these people that she didn’t know and that was the first time that she invited the Spratlens over. I think that she created that party to get the Spratlens over. She loved that party because it was surprising and different - a total success. TB: What about your father and the Sixties? KRK: When the Sixties started to happen, it was wonderful. I was still pretty young, eleven or twelve, and my father was very interested in music, and willing to take me and my brother to all the concerts. My brother, being older, cut loose from us to hang with his friends. Dad and I saw Simon and Garfunkel, the Youngbloods – I saw the Youngbloods many times - the Byrds, oh, and the Fifth Dimension! It’s was a wonderful concert - the Fifth Dimension comes out, and one of the women singers is so drunk that she staggers to the lip of the stage and barfs into the fans. Carver Gym - you don’t forget those kinds of things. Later, I went to concerts at WWU with my friends. I remember Tower of Power, all sorts of African and world musicians - I wish I remembered all their names. Ravi Shankar! Taj Mahal! Taj Mahal stopped by Western and performed, several times, and made me a lifetime Taj Mahal fan. Jazz performers! Amazing classical musicians too, of course. Oh, and I mustn't forget how my father took me as a very young child to see Eleanor Roosevelt here on campus. I remember that in the moment, I understood everything she was saying, but I don’t remember what she said. It was very inspiring. I’ve always remembered that I saw her before she died, here at Western. Also, thrillingly, I got to meet Ralph Harris as a child! He was the first person from Australia I ever met. He was a semi-famous singer and is now a very well known TV performer in the UK. He also was an absolute look-alike to Jerry Flora. They met because they looked exactly like each other and they became friends. Ralph and his wife stayed for quite a spell in Bellingham. My parents really enjoyed Ralph, had him over for dinner. He had a wobble board! Remember ― tie me kangaroo down, jack, tie me kangaroo down!‖ It’s the novelty song that made Ralph Harris famous. Remember the whom-pa whom-pa whommm-pa sound? That was made by a wobble board. The Furthers Bus (Ken Kesey and Merry Pranksters) came to campus in 1967 and also the Jefferson Airplane performed here, but I don't remember those things clearly. Jerry Flora pulled the plug on the 18 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED strobe light. It was a big deal at the time. TB: What about sex and drugs in the Sixties? KRK: I was in ninth grade or so when abortion became legal. I was not sexually active yet, but I remember what a huge relief that was. The fear of pregnancy was so intense for young women up until then. Around the same time, birth control became widely available. You could get birth control by 1968 without your parents’ permission in Bellingham, and what a freedom that was for humanity. The Sixties certainly included this new sexual freedom, but in many ways, the sexual revolution hit our parents’ generation a lot harder than it did us. They were adults and we were kids. We got the bad press. They were more discreet. And we were not discreet. That was one of the real big differences between the generations. As soon as sex got safer, the divorce rates really started going up on campus. I don't know who was swinging. My parents were monogamous, so I’m not talking about them. I’m just saying in hindsight, I realize that the wild sexual freedom of the Sixties was happening in the older generation too. Again, they were adults, we were teenagers. Professors having affairs with students, and wife-swapping - these experiments were happening quite a lot in the late Sixties. Not just at WWU - everywhere. Seemingly the whole society had felt very restricted, and then it suddenly seemed a lot safer to experiment. Our generation, the Sixties Generation, gets the credit for all of the drugs and sex, but that isn't fair. Drugs became much more available in the Sixties. I’m talking about pharmaceuticals, where the adults were taking tranquilizers, sleeping pills, and popping speed. Diet pills were common for women to use for a few years there. Then David Mason came to Western in 1966 and soon he was admitting that he had taken LSD - there was a whole article about it in the Western Front. All these things were really shocking and fascinating. I don’t know when marijuana came to town; it was available for me around 1967 or 1968. So the generations were splitting along drug use lines. We liked different drugs. It was hard for the parents to impact the youth by saying in effect, ― Don’t use those drugs! Use our drugs instead!‖ Alcohol was WAY overused by Frank Sinatra’s fans the world over. These same social realities existed at Western and in Bellingham. Alcoholism was a tremendous problem for several of our families. TB: How about Campus School kids in the Sixties? KRK: What happened in the Sixties to Campus School children was often hard. Few of us went the direction that our parents were hoping. I do know that if you’ve ever had any liberal education, it changes your whole life, whether you’ve had it in college, like at Fairhaven College, or whether you got it at Campus School. You’re never the same. I was in sixth grade at Fairhaven Middle School the first time I was publicly accused of being a communist by a right-winger. My math teacher was a raving fascist who loved to be distracted from doing algebra problems. Any opportunity to debate, nay verbally abuse, hippies was great for him. Likewise my eighth grade homeroom teacher taught the Bible. ― I am not a Communist! I’m a European Socialist!‖ I declared proudly. I thought they would understand, but actually, of course, my retort made it worse. TB: What about the peace movement? Can you share about the Harris School, the UUs and the Bishops. Who were the UUs? KRK: Unitarian Universals. Quite a number of professors were Unitarians. It was the home of a lot of antiwar activism. The peace movement in Bellingham - and this could be said about the Underground Railroad, too - the peace movement in Bellingham that I knew was linked to: (1) Peggy and Dick Bishop, and other Unitarians like Frank and Liz Morrow; (2) Rev. Bill Sodt and Rita Sodt were fantastic leaders. Bill was the Lutheran Campus Minister and his wife, Rita Sodt, was an amazing, incredible, genius, radical, activist! She had a radio show at KUGS for years; (3) The Harris family. They are Quaker - also dedicated peace activists. The 19 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Harris Family ran an alternative school out of their home on 21st Street. Rosemary Harris started the weekly ―Sile nt Vigil for Peace‖ down at the Federal Building. The Unitarian church was at Gladstone and Franklin Street, in the York district, and it was really a center. They bought the church in 1966. It was an old relic even then and it isn’t very big inside. Peggy Bishop and others started Bellingham's first hip coffee shop there. They actually made espressos. They had folk singers, and the freaks and intellectuals gathered to debate and rap. It was hip. I have been told that there was a church schism over the Underground Railroad. Some of the UU’s were sneaking draft dodgers and deserters into Canada during the Vietnam War. Unusual for schisms, the most liberal side won and stayed in the building and everybody else left. That had a lot to do with the Bishops, I imagine. Peggy Bishop was as close to being a Unitarian saint as the Unitarians get. She was, far as I could ever see, a completely selfless, social justice activist, and Dick and Peggy were part of the Underground Railroad for sure. The Bishops arrived in 1966. In their kitchen they had two phones mounted. If the top one rang, you answered it, ― Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship, may I help you?‖ and if the bottom rang, you said, ― This is the Bishop family‖. I suppose I shouldn’t say they were the Unitarian church, but they were completely dedicated to it. Dick Bishop told me that, from his perspective, the students of Western were generating the peace protests and that he and the Harris family, and the Sodts were simply helping and supporting them. I believe that is correct. Students everywhere were protesting and having sit-ins in the president's offices. Uncle Jerry often shares how much he authentically enjoyed having protestors in his office. With or without support from older folk, many students were dedicated to protesting the war and the draft. That said, these adults were tremendous mentors to the leftists students on campus. They were all very sane and intelligent people. They were all very productive. They were humbly and sincerely dedicated to human rights, and the political process. They modeled PEACEFUL activism. They preached against violence. They pushed us all to vote. Dick Bishop was the hip new Sixties professor when he arrived at WWU. His son Thom and I were better than best friends, we were twin souls. Though I can't claim Thom all for my own - he had lots of best friends. Thom attended fifth grade at Campus School only - last fifth grade of Campus School. He was a grade behind me and when he went to Fairhaven Middle School, he was terribly, harassed, abused and attacked. TB: Why? KRK: He was a hippie. The coach would publicly ridicule Thom. Every day, the coach would rip Thom's peace beads off of him by force in the locker room when Thom was dressing - with everyone watching. Every night, Thom would re-do a peace necklace readying him for the next day's ordeal. Thom developed psoriasis. He was a real scrawny, little kid - not football star potential. The coaches were sadistic and rightwing and homophobic. Campus School kids seemed like complete leftist, radical communists. Thom and I were particularly attacked because we actually were hippies. Thom went to his dad, and Dick allowed Thom to go to the Harris School. I was jealous. I was not so lucky, but I hung around with the Harris family a lot. Their house had the biggest, bestest kitchen ever. I learned how to bake bread there and cook natural foods. Rosemary Harris needs a book of her own. She has so much character, she IS a character. She is short, Quaker and powerful - a talker. Dr. Harris is quiet with a profound twinkle in his eye. He is brilliant and kind - another ― beamer‖. The Harris family had a parcel of kids, four or five of them. They were all great people. They introduced us to all sorts of good clean fun. For instance, they did folk dancing. Thom and I both really enjoyed that. Rosemary Harris and Rita Sodt basically ran the local chapter for the United Nations together for years. They were unstoppable. Those two got more done in one week than most get done in a decade. What 20 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED amazing women! Speaking of Rita Sodt – her home, of course, was another very important Sixties hang out – there was the Campus Ministries and its extension, the Sodt family home on 14th Street. The Campus Ministries was on Garden Street, close to my home on Forest Street. It was this great big, boxy, beautiful old Bellingham white mansion, right where the parking lot under the Viking Union is now. Rev. Bill Sodt was the Lutheran Campus Pastor and that building housed the Campus Peace Movement, a crisis hotline and all sorts of activities. It was a heartbreaker when Western decided to take down that building. They built the new campus ministry, and Bill was there until he retired. Rev. Bill and Rita Sodt were major lifelong peace activists. I believe that Bill was the key person behind the Underground Railroad. But nobody knows. Still people I’ve talked to tend to assume that it was Rev. Bill Sodt who was the master connector to the rest of the Railroad. They would get called and told to expect a package. Then the person would arrive. Soon they would take a family trip up to Vancouver, go over the border and simply come back with one less person. As the border got tighter, the Bellingham Unitarians started coordinating with the Unitarian church in Vancouver. They’d have picnics together at the Peace Arch Park. Everybody would arrive at the picnic, eat and play and then go home. The draft dodgers went home with the Canadians, of course. Thom Bishop never told me that he was involved the Underground Railroad. I thought there was nothing we didn't share, but he never told me a thing about it. Rather, I learned what I know from Dick Bishop Again the usual ploy in the Underground Railroad was to appear like a family going up to Vancouver for the day. Who noticed that the older brother ― forgot‖ to come home? But what about African American draft dodgers? Bellingham had no black people except the Spratlens and the border wasn’t expecting to have that many African Americans going back and forth. It was feared that the border guards would ask more questions. (I do not know if the Spratlens were part of the Underground Railroad. We must ask them). So one day a black brother draft dodger and Thom went to Peace Arch Park and they started playing Frisbee. Thom threw the Frisbee, the black guys threw it back, and Tom threw the Frisbee, and back and forth - all the while working their way into the Canada side of the park. Finally Thom hauled off and threw that Frisbee as far as he could. And the guy went chasing after that Frisbee, never to return. Dr. David T. Mason has told me that the Underground Railroad also had an unorganized side of it. Many draft dodgers and military deserters headed to Bellingham. Bellingham was smaller back then and pretty intimate so these young men stood out.. Many locals helped draft dodgers over the border without being part of any organized Underground Railroad. TB: How often did the border stop people? KRK: My experience all down through my whole life, especially these days, is that getting into Canada is pretty easy, getting back into the United States is a horrible drag. I got stopped at the border quite a lot in the late Sixties. We were going over because the drinking age was lower in Canada. I would avoid getting strip searched on the way home because I could start naming names and back them off. My Mom was a school teacher and well known. Uncle Jerry was president of Western. One of the guys who moonlighted as a border guard was a coach at Sehome High School. Once I was told to empty my pockets at the border as a teen. My mother had given me a ―Co ntact‖ cold capsule - remember what they looked like? They were big honkin’ clear capsules that had all these colored little balls inside them. Very ―f ar out‖ looking for sure! The guard panicked when he saw that - figured it was some weird psychotropic trip about to happen. ― Look at this!‖ the guard shouted to his peers and they started running our way. ― It’s a Contact cold capsule! My mother gave it to me! I have a cold!‖ I wailed. He was embarrassed. ― Okay, you’re right; it has CONTACT written right on it.‖ I was lucky. Elizabeth 21 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Daugert was strip searched.... a couple times. TB: They were looking for drugs then. KRK: Yes, but it was also a ―h arass the hippies‖ thing. Meanwhile, the parents taking the draft dodgers into Canada did not get hassled because they looked nice and straight. TB: Do you know anything more about the protests that went on in Bellingham? KRK: Yes, middle school was a drag for me, so I would skip and go to every protest I could. I remember one at the Bellingham Library that overfilled the whole lawn area in back - right across to City Hall. It was before they built the present court house building. Why I remember that protest in particular was because someone was up on the old courthouse roof, filming us. I remember that very distinctly. I understood, with a cold shiver, that the FBI or CIA or the men in black, were tracking us. I vaguely recall a protest held on campus where the rumor got out that they were going to napalm a kitten. The Humane Society arrived, and the newspapers and I am pretty sure that it was Dr. Harris who spoke and assured everyone. ― We don’t have any napalm, we don’t have a kitten. Yet if you are so upset about napalming a kitten, then I suggest that you need to think about whether it is ethical to napalm human beings.‖ One protest shut down the freeway. I did not participate in the freeway sit-in, but that happened. There were a lot of different protests. There was also a lot of just hanging out in parks with the hippies and bubbles, wearing wild clothes. Rosemary Harris started ― the silent vigil for peace‖ held at the Federal Building downtown every Friday afternoon. It is still going strong. TB: How did you hear about the protests? KRK: I heard about them from the Harrises, from the Bishops - or I saw flyers on campus or heard about protests from college students, or by hanging out at ―A tlantis‖ - Bellingham's first head-shop. It was across from the Leopold. Atlantis opened n 1967 or ’68 and it was the first hippie experience in Bellingham. I believe they sold records as well as pot paraphernalia, incense, hip literature and all sorts of poster art. They sold postcards that had Tibetan tankas on them. I’d never come in contact with sexual/sacred art before entering Atlantis. Atlantis was where we learned about what was happening in San Francisco. We learned from the comic books, posters, products, and books there. TB: Tell me more about Thom Bishop. He died young. KRK: Yes, Thom died at age 18 - an accident. . The evening I first met Thom Bishop I was sitting out on my front steps wearing my Twiggy costume. I had short hair with little spit curls by my ears and the ratted poof at the crown. I was wearing a mini skirt, and go-go boots, a tight top, and I had the wide belt. I’m sitting there, bored, looking like Twiggy. I looked up and there was this figure walking down the middle of 17th street, walking down the hill towards me. He had long hair - like the Beatles. He was wearing a Nehru jacket, love beads, and he had wire rim glasses. He looked like an elf. At that age, it’s not common for a young man who doesn’t know you to come up and introduce himself. But Thom walked right up to our property line and said, ― Hi. You want to go May Daying?‖ What a good idea! In truth I’d been waiting to go May Daying my whole life! I was a grade ahead of Thom, 22 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED but I followed Thom around everywhere from then on. He was an absolutely magical person. In hindsight, I highly suspect that Thom was gay. Certainly he and I were completely platonic throughout our teens - more like twins than anything else. Thom was not age-ist at all. He would make friends with babies and old people and everyone in between. He had a way of meeting the coolest people. TB: What did your parents think about your involvement with the Peace Movement? KRK: My parents’ circle was liberal but not radical. Just because my mother didn't fully agree with Peggy Bishop's or Rita Sodt's politics, didn't mean she didn't respect them. Rita and my mother were both active in the League of Women Voters and the AAUW (American Association of University Women). KRK: They respected each other from across the room. They were both women who got a lot done in committee - they were both good at organizing people, good at doing whatever project they were asked to do. The Bishops and the Sodts and the Spratlens and the Harris family were extremely ethical leaders - they didn’t misuse power or the sexual ―f reedom‖ of the era. They were very good role models - all of them had very strong families and I feel very blessed that they were here to guide us. My parents trusted them, too. I think my parents had some room for us to be more radical in our politics than they were - partly because we were young. There is this old idea that you’re liberal when you’re young, and you get more conservative as you get older. Rita Sodt would sniff to hear me say that. And she'd be right. Were my parents alive today, in these times of Fatherland Security - I mean Homeland Security – they would be as radical in their politics as Rita was all the way along. TB: Wow! Well, is there anything else we haven’t talked about that you would like to add? KRK: [No, I don’t think so.] TB: Okay, great, thank you very much. 23 Kamalla Rose Kaur (Whitley) Edited Transcript—January/February, 2007 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: James and Patricia O'Brien interview--July 27, 2005
Description: James and Patricia O'Brien were both faculty at Western; their children attended the Campus School (1955-1967) and Mrs. O'Brien also taught physical education in the Campus School.
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_O'BrienPatJames_20050727
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Pat and James O’Brien ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair us
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Pat and James O’Brien 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 Pat and James O’Brien on July 27, 2005. The interviewer is Tamara Belts. TB: One portion of our Campus School questionnaire (you’re actually the first ones to be tested out on the parent question) -- is to get parents’ perceptions. I’m here with the O’Brien’s and we’re going to try doing a joint interview to gather their comments about their children’s experience and/or the parents’ view of the Campus School. So, our first question is: how or why did you decide to have your children go to the Campus School? JO: Well, it was convenient, for one thing. We lived very close. They could walk there in ten minutes. I was teaching at Western (I don’t know if I walked up with them all the time), and I think at that point most of the faculty had children who were using the Campus School unless they lived farther away. PO: I think we both had respect for the teachers at the Campus School and for what their projects were that they were doing and it was really a very enriched kind of program that would be possible for our children. And since I was also a teacher, I was trying to be sure I wasn’t harming them or harming the program by being involved. So, I think Jim’s comments as the parent are probably more apropos for that point. TB: OK, how many of your children attended Campus School? JO: All three. TB: All three. And what were the years/grades that your children attended? JO: Let’s see, Bill went… PO: Kindergarten through five. By the time of the fifth-grade, that was the last year for the Campus School. So, Maura went Kindergarten through four and Kathleen, Kindergarten through two. TB: Those were the Sixties, then? Correct? PO: Yes. JO: Yes. And also it was very close. It was the closest school. They could walk there in fifteen minutes. PO: For us it was geographically as close as Lowell -- closer. TB: And then you also, Mrs. O’Brien, taught at the Campus School. PO: Right. 1 James and Patricia O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: You were teaching during that whole period that your children were also in school there? PO: Not the whole period. I taught for a few years, because I was doing some part time work there. TB: O.K. So, where did your family live when the children attended the Campus School? JO: Our residence during Campus School years was 154 South Garden Street from 1955 to 1965; 200 North Forest Street from 1965 to close of Campus School and to 2002. TB: So they were able to walk to and from school. JO: Yes. Even from Kindergarten. That was very handy; it was convenient from that standpoint. TB: Did they serve lunch at the school or did you have to prepare a sack lunch? PO: They no longer had the lunchroom so they had to take their own lunches. TB: So at some point in time there had been a lunchroom? PO: Yes, because at one time they included sixth-grade. One time they had eighth-grade and they were using part of the Old Main. TB: Who do you think were their favorite and most influential teachers and why? PO: I think Synva K. Nicol and Katherine Casanova. I asked my daughter, who was a fourth-grader at the time and she also mentioned, Mrs. Limbacker, who was only there for one year, but she thought she was one of the nicest ones she’d had. I think Ted Mork was one of the most influential with both Bill and Maura for reading. And there was Mike Murphy who was there. TB: So Ted Mork both taught at Western and taught in the Campus School? Or he taught at the Campus School and then later ended up teaching at Western? PO: I don’t know which way that went, but he was faculty and he was at Western. And those are full time positions, whereas my physical education or art or music was part time. And those specialists came in for just small portions. TB: So at Campus School he mainly taught reading to the students? PO: I think he was a fourth-grade teacher; which meant a core program and he did a fine job throughout the core. TB: As parents what did you like about the curriculum or think was most beneficial for your child? JO: I think the reading, they learned to read and keep books. PO: They had supplementary French. I was personally delighted that they had a good physical education program from Kindergarten through sixth and fifth-grades. I think that that was a big help. They had good field trips. They safely conducted a lot of varieties of programs with the different types of student teachers there, so you didn’t suffer problems with student teachers that you can sometimes have. Though they were a guinea pig group and did demonstrations, I think it was augmenting their programs. TB: Do you think your children were ever confused about who their teacher was or who the student teachers were? To a child I think everybody seems like the teacher. Do you think that they always knew for sure who their real teacher was? 2 James and Patricia O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PO: I think that more or less they knew that each quarter there would be new group of student teachers, and they accepted them. The room teacher made sure that they felt comfortable with that status. JO: I think they became used to change from the beginning. That’s the way things come, different people come and you have them for a while then somebody else comes. PO: I think that an interesting is that when my son married, his wife-to-be asked, who’s this woman in California? And he said, “She’s my first-grade teacher.” She was startled that Bill would send his firstgrade teacher, Katherine Casanova, a wedding invitation. TB: Wow. So they definitely stayed close all that time. JO: Oh, yes. And we knew her well. PO: I had been a single teacher and I knew these other single teachers. So as we had family, often we’d come to a holiday and I’d think, “Those ladies won’t be having any special place for Easter dinner” or whatever and I’d say, “Would you like to come to a picnic?” or “Would you come to this or go on these trips, go to the Stommish?” It would be a nice outing for them and they got along very well, but kept their position nicely, and the kids liked them. TB: I’ve heard a lot of good things about her (Katherine Casanova). What types of special programs, if any, were the parents invited to attend? PO: Well, you (James O’Brien) were pretty good at coming to a lot of these, but I think they certainly enjoyed coming to the early morning Christmas sings with Evelyn Hinds, having the children sit on the floor and do Christmas songs from various countries. By the way, Evelyn Hinds (Wellman) the music specialist, was another one of their favorites. They had different field trips. There was a time when they were doing some construction on the campus and they put up big boards, so the people could walk safely past some of the construction. Gene Vike was the art coordinator at that time so he had them all decorating all these boards. It was a wonderful special program and I think the kids responded very well. TB: He’s another person then, if he was involved in Campus School ended up also being, on the Western faculty. PO: Well, he was on the Western faculty first. Gene Vike had a wife, Marglen, who taught second-grade; [she] was the one who did some teaching at the Campus School. TB: Do you remember what sort of corrective behavior they might have used with misbehaving students? Or what the discipline was like at all? PO: As far as I saw, it was time outs; that type of thing. TB: Sat in the corner or something? PO: Oh, I think they had a place to go away from the rest of the crowd. I think we tried (I’m thinking as faculty), to prevent those kinds of things. You were trying to be ahead of it. So that, if I knew in my little PE program that somebody was having major troubles in tumbling rather than make him feel foolish, I would take this Kindergartner or second grader in and have him work on that forward roll in the silence of the empty room, with no crowd. And he thanked me for it later. Some other people were called in for different behavioral problems, but I didn’t get too many of those or hear much about it. TB: Were there parent volunteers in the classroom or was there a PTA or any kind of other organization for the parents? JO: I don’t think so. 3 James and Patricia O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PO: I think they would ask for the parent involvement when they thought it was appropriate. Then they’d come with cookies or whatever that was involved. But no, there was no special room program like that. Cupcakes for all were permitted for birthdays. TB: What were some of the differences that you perceived in the Campus School from the public schools? PO: I thought some more variety. Later on in the public schools I was glad when they moved into some foreign language options too before school. That was part of what the Campus School had available. I think that one of the drawbacks was that they missed out on some of the all-city type competitions or groups of things, but those are so broad based that if you wanted to be concerned about that aspect, you could make sure they got into something musical or athletic or recreation or something. JO: Well, they wouldn’t have athletic programs would they… from Kindergarten through sixth, they’re pretty much contained in the school room, aren’t they? TB: That’s true. I did interview someone that had went when the school was Kindergarten through eighthgrade, and they did participate, apparently, in some athletics, but they got beaten badly because it’s such a small pool of people. Let’s see, any thoughts about what the transition was like then for your children when they began to attend public school? Was it easy or hard? PO: That was the year the public school levy failed. And that was just when these children had moved on. I could speak to that because as a sixth-grader, Bill moved right to the middle school and now he was suddenly going to meet new people anyway. And that proved not to be that much drawback. He’d already known some of these people through church or through Boy Scouts or something. Maura was a fifth grader in Mr. O’Neil’s class, I believe, at Lowell School. Our second grader moved into a third-grade with a man that was suddenly facing forty children, he had no aides, no extra help. (And Lowell School is one of the better schools here). He actually had a nervous breakdown by the end of the year, it meant that even though they got him as many student teachers, whatever help they could, it was just too much. She continued to be a good reader. She went on into science and math. I don’t think she suffered. But it was the hardest on her of any because of the problems that the school district was facing at that moment with that particular funding cut. TB: Now, what about the report cards that students got. I understood they were not alphabet, A, B. PO: Evaluation. TB: Did you find that satisfactory as parents? PO: You answer that question. JO: I don’t remember. PO: Well, you saw them. JO: Yes, but they did pretty well, so it wasn’t anything we got troubled about. PO: It didn’t bother me. I didn’t know whether it bothered some of you academics more. You wanted it to be 100%, 90%, A, B, C, D. And I didn’t care. I thought we were trying to show level of achievement. TB: And did the children have any problem when they went to public school then and got letter grades? Did that bother them? JO: Not that we know of. 4 James and Patricia O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PO: I think we were able to cushion that transition all right. We said, “You should be able to get A’s, but if you’re not getting up to that (because we expect a lot of you), do your best,” and they did. They came through; they were on honor rolls and so on. I don’t think they felt the pressure from home nor from the grades themselves. TB: Overall, what do you perceive as the strength of the campus school and then I’m going to ask, overall what did you feel the weaknesses were, if any? PO: I think you should speak to that. JO: Yeah, but I’m not a clear mind. TB: It’s been a long time, I’m sure, since your kids were in Campus School. JO: No, I think the teachers were able to help the individuals enough, but it was hard to remember how much they improved because you see them every day. PO: I thought, roughly, they had good quality teachers. I had seen it over the years. I saw only a couple of people that I thought could well be replaced. But essentially, I thought they had really quality teachers. And those teachers compared with any of the quality teachers I knew throughout the other fields. I think one of the big drawbacks was they became more elitist. JB: Campus School brats. PO: This worried the faculty themselves. Because when I first taught there in 1951-53, they were trying to have sort of a broad social cross section. We had a little more of a variety of types of students from high income, low income, different academic backgrounds and so on. As we grew, faculty sometimes had first options to get on the waiting list to get in and we got more and more faculty children. That, as I say, it became elitist. That was to me one of the big drawbacks that it wasn’t representative of the community. I think I liked specialized education; go as far as you can, but I think you do need to have a broader view of community. TB: I’m just curious, was there a fee? Did you have to pay any fees? PO: No. The kid just had to be on the waiting list and usually when the child was born you got on the waiting list. TB: And that’s really true. PO: That’s really true. TB: I’ve heard that story. So as soon as the kid was born you went and got them on the list at Campus School. PO: Yes. TB: As soon as you had a name. PO: I did think they gave preference to people that were siblings, so that if one of them was on the list, why then the next child could get on. I think that some of the people that came later on the faculty and wanted to get kids in the Campus School and couldn’t, were a little disillusioned. They thought it was really a little unfair. I could understand where they were coming from. I didn’t have a good answer. It was getting more and more compressed, they couldn’t expand it. They were needing to reach out into the community, which they later did, even in student teaching. Early student teaching saw everybody at one 5 James and Patricia O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED teaching school, the Campus School. Everybody did at least three observations during the fall quarter or whatever. But now this became less possible. TB: Am I correct, there was only one class each of every grade, right? PO: Right. TB: So it’s actually (I suddenly realize), a small number of students that would go through. JO: Yes. PO: Twenty-four, I think, that was the limit. JO: Yes, so that wouldn’t take much of a neighborhood. Most of them lived close, although that wasn’t required was it? PO: No, not at all. TB: Well, any favorite memories of your children’s Campus School days? JO: I can’t think of any now. We talked a lot about what they did each day. PO: I think it was sort of a family type atmosphere. That Christmas caroling before classes began, because some of the dads would walk their kids up and they’d come over and sit on the floor beside them to sing the Christmas carols with Evelyn Hinds. That was sort of fun. TB: Yes. Well, can you think of some other questions that I haven’t asked you that would help us gather this story of the Campus School experience? JO: I don’t know. It would be hard to get the stories, I guess, of people who didn’t like it and then took their children out. TB: We might find one of those, though. JO: Oh, yes. PO: I know one mother who had one child go through the Campus School; and by the time the third rascal showed up, and was a little out of hand, they were asked to have him go to public school. She could give a little different viewpoint if you wanted. TB: Right. It sounds like these kids probably were pretty well behaved and if not, then they probably didn’t stay at the Campus School. It wouldn’t be like the public schools, they really have to keep all students. JO: Yes, they did have some say. PO: No, we didn’t have disruptive behaviors. I feel for the teachers teaching nowadays, there’s some real crises. JO: But it was a select group, I think. It’s hard to avoid, they didn’t take all of the people who could walk easily to the Campus School. PO: I could suggest the name David Maness, who was one of the organizers of the fifth-grade graduates, when their going to have a Campus School reunion. When the last reunion developed, he made sure that 6 James and Patricia O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED group of fifth-grade people got a hold of their friends, and that was a very fine reunion, over at Miller Hall. And he has quite a lot of material and is willing to share it. TB: And he lives in Bellingham still? PO: No, he lives in Mukilteo, works at Boeing. I have an e-mail address I could get you (David.J.Maness@Boeing.com). TB: O.K. Yes, I’m sure we’ll want to talk to him. That’s all my questions, unless you have something else to say about that. JO: No, I think they enjoyed it. PO: I think they had positive experiences and I’d be glad to share more of the specifics about teaching there, because I’ve got some of the background, another time. TB: Excellent, O.K. Well, thank you very much. JO: It was kind of a sad time when they closed it, you know, but I guess it was a necessity. TB: I’ve heard that space was needed because campus was growing and everything else. O.K, well, thank you. 7 James and Patricia O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus School Memories Project ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: James O'Brien interview--July 27, 2005
Description: James O'Brien, WWU Professor of English, 1946-1985.
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_O'BrienJames_20050727
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program James O’Brien ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use"
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program James O’Brien 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 James O’Brien on July 27, 2005 at his home in Bellingham, Washington. The interviewer is Tamara Belts. Patricia O’Brien is also present during the latter portion of the interview. TB: Today is Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 and I am here with Dr. James O’Brien, former faculty member, retired from Western and we are going to do an oral history. He did just sign the Informed Consent Agreement. So my first question is always: how did you happen to come to Western? JO: There was a job in 1941 open when I finished my master’s degree at University of Washington. I was living in Seattle. With this job I could teach and earn enough to continue my work. I had a master’s degree from the University of Washington. I taught here during the school years, and each summer went back and took classes and did work on my thesis. TB: Who hired you? JO: Dr. Hicks, head of the English department. TB: What was the hiring process like at that time? JO: There was an interview with the English department. I also met with Dr. Hicks, the chair and then with Dr. Haggard, the president. I was to teach freshman composition. In the summers I could go back to Seattle where my mother lived and continue work on the PhD. In 1953 I took a leave of absence from Western and went to Dublin to write a dissertation on Irish authors; Dublin was a very economical place to live. So we went to Dublin. It was a fascinating period to have been in Ireland when horse traffic was still an important factor. TB: What was the atmosphere like in your department when you first came? JO: It was a very small department with four professors. There was also three or four instructors to teach freshman composition. TB: Do you have any other comments about your colleagues? What they were like? Cederstrom to me is only a name, what kind of person was he? Or Kangley? Hicks actually was here when I came (I’ve been here a long time). JO: You would have known Lucy Kangley? TB: She was already, I’m sure, retired, and I majored in history. Everybody knew Hicks because of his walking around reading a book. JO: Reading a book on the street. One of the comments that somebody made was, “You know, I’ve watched him very carefully and I’ve never seen him turn a page.” That was part of the folklore. 1 James O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: But were there any traits or anything that stands out about Cederstrom, Kangley or Van Aver? JO: Oh, yes. They were strong personalities. They got along well in managing business, but the direction of their personalities were varied and strong. I was a junior member; Annis Hovde was also a junior member. But they invited comment on things, especially about the students and class work. It was a lively, pleasant place. Things got done. The whole faculty attended a monthly meeting. Because I was in the English department Dr. Haggard said, “Ah, we have a man for secretary.” So I was secretary to the faculty. Part of writing the minutes was to take them, write them out, and then go to Dr. Haggard’s office. We’d go over the minutes to see if my summary accorded with his. He didn’t change very much. I had that job for three years. TB: What are your memories of Dr. Haggard? JO: I liked him. In those days it wasn’t just Dr. Haggard; it was Dr. Haggard and his family, just like it was with Sam Carver. Sam Carver’s son was a newspaper man. You knew the children, especially those going to the Campus School, and you were interested in them. A different atmosphere prevailed as we got larger. The single women and men would have lunch in Edens Hall in a small room. Here you found out what was important. They kept up with everyday affairs. Another thing that united the faculty was a smoking room, right across from my office. Faculty would come from other parts of the building. I didn’t smoke but often I went in there. If somebody was putting on a play or one of the coaches wanted to take faculty to a game, they could find faculty to help. TB: Where was your office? Where was the smoking room? JO: That was in the corner of Old Main pointing to the Campus School. Not everybody came to the smoking room. But those who came often were up to date. If you wanted to know about the plays or athletic events, you could find out about public things. We also had monthly faculty meetings. That was more to hear what the president was promoting or trying to make faculty aware of relations to the state and the budget. TB: It sounds like the single people, who were mostly female, but also you, had a hot lunch, then that must have been served in Edens Hall? JO: Yes, in the basement. TB: Then were did the married people eat? JO: A few would come when it was convenient. Some even skipped lunch. They all attended faculty meetings. You wanted to know what was going on or what changes were coming from the legislature or the community. There was a very good relationship between the university and places like the police department. The dean of men had some influence. He kept students out of trouble. If a student got drunk at a party, they tried to keep him out of jail. It protected the students and it gave them a place in Bellingham that they don’t have now. TB: Was that Dean MacDonald? JO: Yes. That was his first year here too. TB: 1946? 2 James O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED JO: Yes. He was a basketball coach. One of the committees to get on was the athletic committee because you got five dollars if you took tickets at a basketball or football game. The faculty smoking room and the lunch room were good places to make contact, a frequent need in a faculty of sixty members. TB: How did all of this change over time? JO: Change was very gradual, of course. WWU grew into an institution with many large departments. With each new building, a lot of work had to be done, by the administration and the departments. We branched out and took in more property. TB: Do you have any thoughts about when Jarrett came how that changed things? JO: Oh, yes. That was one of the biggest changes. He was a Great Books man. The departments were to be strengthened and enlarged and we became a university. I think the Auditorium-Music Building was finished in 1950. I have fond memories of that because tennis courts used to be where the music building is now. I played tennis with students and faculty. One time one of the faculty members had a visitor, a young woman who wanted to play tennis. He called me. So I went out to play tennis with her in the afternoon. The city traffic used to go right by the courts. The street turned at the gymnasium and went out into Happy Valley. Well, somebody was driving along who knew me and saw me playing tennis and he called the president and said,” “I saw one of your faculty members playing tennis in the mid-afternoon.” The local man did not approve of faculty playing tennis during the working day. Many faculty were involved in the community. The college had football practice close to the gym. Often one of the judges would come up to watch. I happened to have his daughter in class so I often talked to him. You would meet town’s people informally because they were interested in the college. There were many ties with the community. TB: Did Dr. Haggard tell you not to play tennis in the afternoon? JO: No, no. He didn’t, but gossip got around. That’s where the smoking room came in. Not all the men smoked, but if one wanted to find out about things one could try the faculty smoking room. Having most of the college in one building had great advantages. TB: Yes, I can see that. Anything more about Dr. Jarrett? The changes that he made? JO: I think he was here four or five years. He had a very good effect at a critical time, when we were enlarging and people could look ahead. Faculty wanted to have a strong liberal arts program. I think that a lot of impetus and strength came from his presidency. TB: Did you participate in that humanities program? JO: Oh, yes. TB: Do you have any thoughts about that? JO: Yes, the program was excellent. But it demanded cooperation from several departments. As we grew departments developed their own majors. Jarrett’s presidency came at a good time when we were still a unified college. Later departmental majors and departments became dominant forces in the university. 3 James O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED For example, in drama, Vic Hoppe was a very good director. He had many good students and he’d train them. The student newspaper involved students, faculty and the community. I was surprised when one of the judges would come to the athletic field to observe football practice. He came up to the campus to watch football practice and would talk to faculty and students. TB: Do you mind saying what his name was? JO: Judge Olson. TB: What about the curriculum changes over time? JO: Oh, yes. The curriculum committee was a center for debate and discussions. It authorized the expansion of departments. The enrollment kept growing and growing and soon we became quite a different place from one with 1200 students. When we had 1200, students had to go to programs on Tuesday and Friday morning. There would be a lecture or a concert at ten o’clock in the morning. Students came to the auditorium in Old Main. The big change came with the building of the Auditorium-Music Building in 1950-51. TB: Was that also kind of a bonding experience for the faculty and students to be together for that assembly time? JO: Yes. Not all faculty would go. You would discuss the lecture with the students. The student body officers had good relations with the faculty. Whoever was student body president was very important to each of us. TB: Do you have any thoughts about what the students were like when you first came and how that might have changed over time? JO: Oh, yes. The students were largely local. As we grew, the requirements, the student grade point average, went up, so the average student probably was a better student. The size of the institution and the relationships changed, too. There were advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes you knew the students too well as certain students had a reputation -- like Dick Wahl who was a good actor. The student body officers were important to the faculty. TB: Did the faculty have students come to their homes? JO: Oh, yes; Cederstrom (I boarded at Cederstrom’s). He would have students in frequently, after a basketball game for example. There were many faculty-student relationships. TB: What was that like living with Dr. Cederstrom? Was that fine? JO: Oh, yes, we had a great time. I was gone often on weekends; I was still working on my degree, so every second or third weekend I’d be gone. My mother was living in Seattle. I would go down; I had to get books from the university. It was a busy time, but a good time. TB: How long did you live with him? JO: Two years. TB: O.K. Well, that’s pretty cool. Do you have any other thoughts about how Western changed over time and becoming a university? How did the emphasis change from teaching the students to doing more research? Did that bother you or was that good? JO: It didn’t bother me so much because I was working on my degree. But I think that did make a basic change when faculty had to publish -- to get promoted. I don’t know how that affected the summer school 4 James O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED teaching, because one could do research if you didn’t teach in the summer. In the English department we taught every other summer. There’s never enough time to do research. But I think it improved the university greatly to have the faculty publishing. End of Tape One, Side One TB: When did that really start? JO: Oh, it was there, but subdued. But probably after Jarrett left, as the departments grew and new faculty were coming in with PhDs or about to have PhDs. Publishing became a critical point in respect to getting tenure and promotion. I think one had seven years before he or she got tenure. TB: What about service? Service is always an ingredient of faculty tenure and promotion too. JO: Committee work was important but had to be accompanied by publication of articles or books. I had been at the University of Washington where a friend started a magazine, a creative writing magazine. So, in the first year here I helped start a creative writing magazine here. What was the name of it? TB: The Writer (1947-1962). JO: As a graduate student at the University of Washington, we would eat with the faculty members at lunch-brown bag. There was one woman there named June Burn who once lived in Bellingham. She started a student magazine there so I thought, “Well, why can’t we do one?” Cederstrom taught creative writing and he was willing to have his students submit stories. TB: Do you have any thoughts on what are the most significant changes that you saw over your career? JO: Oh, in Western? I think the emphasis on faculty publication would be one; another would be tenure and promotion regulations. There was a couple of faculty that thought we should form a men’s cycling club. We’d go up to Abbotsford and Vancouver Island. (There was also a poker club.) We had trips up to Abbotsford, and mostly in the county. When the organizing fellow left the group broke up, it wasn’t critical to the life of the university to have a bicycle group. In the small faculty, things formed like that; when you had only sixty faculty, you only a few to draw on for certain things. TB: Do you think it was a more important part of your whole social life then? JO: Oh, yes. The faculty lunchroom had twenty people or so. You could also get things done in walking from Old Main to the gymnasium; you’d run into people. When Western became larger you didn’t have time and you didn’t see faculty as easily. TB: So you did see a lot of changes to the physical campus over time? JO: Oh, yes. Every new building was a large event for the Western and the community. TB: So what did you think of the Sixties and all the student protests; any memories of that? JO: Oh, yes. Students protested on the freeway. It was a troubled period. TB: What are your favorite memories of Western? JO: Oh, I think a lot of the classes and working on the literary magazine in the early years and when I taught summer school. We had a good program for trips to the islands and walks in the mountains. One of the best groups I belonged to was the math department hiking group. The chair, Joe Hashisaki was good at 5 James O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED organizing outings. Not all the math department took part in this, but for as many as five or six years, in the break, or between winter and spring, we would go to the ocean and walk for three or four days, camping each night. Then about 1970 or 1971 the State of Washington cut back on appropriations and many departments had to eliminate faculty. The math department got into such a heated conflict of those who were going, who was to be cut, that the walking group broke up. This isn’t for publication, but that’s the sort of activity that went on at that time. I’m sure there are a lot of other stories of groups, like the faculty men’s poker club -- I don’t know at what point that disbanded. The faculty smoking room in the corner of Old Main continued for many years. The official things of course, the president ran. He could get things done. When I first came in 1946, the faculty had a monthly meeting. In the first meeting I was appointed secretary, because I was in the English department. TB: What are your worst memories of Western (If you’re willing to share that)? JO: The time they had to reduce the faculty because of a limited state appropriation. I’m not sure the year that was. We had to eliminate a faculty. The bad effects of that reduction in faculty continued for years. There must have been some [other] things. Well, if anybody got in trouble with the police, that was always bad (students). I don’t think faculty, well, there was one faculty episode. But you don’t want to deal with that. I guess some things were bad, when somebody didn’t get promoted that you thought should be. But I’m sure that happens every place. Mostly there was expansion, new things, and more people coming, new departments. I am trying to think of any accidents. It was always bad when the coaches would lose games because they were our friends. They were doing the best with the material they had, but other schools, Central and Eastern, often had better teams than we did. The worst event was the state legislature about 1966 with the loss of appropriations; some faculty had to be eliminated. JO: RIF, reduction in force, that was really painful for all faculty. I think those who left got good jobs, but it wasn’t in their plans to leave. I think another one of the things was if the state didn’t appropriate enough money for new faculty that was often a source of difficulty. It meant the size of the classes would have to be large and faculty would not be hired and some would be dismissed. PO: Well, when you were ranking chairman you ran into a lot of buzz saws of problems that made you decide you’d rather spend the rest of your career teaching. JO: Yes, but you’re getting into personalities and how they agree or groups, clusters of agreement and disagreement. That’s very hard. TB: Well, did you feel that you were treated well as a faculty member? JO: Oh, yes. In general, yes. The salaries kept going up. And the school kept growing. That meant you didn’t have to teach so much freshman composition. To be here in the expanding era was good. TB: So who were the most influential campus leaders among the faculty? Are there some you can identify? PO: Would you say Woodring would be one? JO: Yes. Woodring and I guess Arntzen in social studies. Keith Murray was very good in history. Well, you know the music people were. They were always important to me, and the drama, Vic Hoppe and the other people who came after him -- like Lortz. You could tell in the first couple of plays, here was somebody who is very good. 6 James O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: And you’re talking about the current Theatre Arts faculty person? JO: Yes. I could tell from the first play, that, “I’m going to everything he does.” And I did, practically. There are others who are very good. The band director used to be a public figure. TB: Don Walter? JO: Yes. PO: Bill Cole was band director later. He’d come up from the University of Washington. That’s when marching bands were the great thing. He did a lot with that. TB: And then Phil Ager. JO: Yes. PO: Well, when I came one of the powerhouses happen to be Ruth Weythman who was behind the scenes. English and PE were not necessarily compatible, so he wasn’t as sold on Ruth Weythman as I was. End of Tape One, Side Two TB: Well, is there anything I didn’t ask you that you’d like to comment on? JO: Oh, yes, I think a continuing problem that was hard to keep up with was liberal education. When Jarrett came there was a hope that there would be a general studies program, that that would be part of a liberal education. I think the university is caught by the specialization. When we had 1200 students we almost had to have a liberal education. Being one of 1200 is a lot different from being one of 12,000. Among the faculty it was a matter of discussion of who was going to be student body president. We knew the candidates well. The collegiate experience changes when you get larger. You can’t blame students for not being more involved. They’ve got enough to do on their own. But there were real advantages, I think, as far as liberal education for a small institution. TB: So what have you been doing since you retired? JO: Oh, I was working on Irish writers, my main interest. We’ve traveled quite a bit. TB: Any other thoughts or comments? JO: Oh, I suppose, one thing is changes; they go on when you’re in there. They’re necessary because we moved from 1200 to 12,000 students. But it did make for quite a different life -- especially in university governance. Student life is quite different when you have 1200 than when you have 12,000. And the institutions are probably better in many ways. They can organize each discipline better. If you have a department with only six people you’re going to do certain things but if you have 20, you can organize better programs. TB: Well, thank you very much. JO: Well, I don’t know if I’ve been very enlightening on many things. TB: I didn’t know about the smoking room before and I didn’t know about the women having lunch in Eden’s Hall. I think there are a couple other things, but those were two things I really had not heard before. JO: Well, thank you. It’s made me think about a lot of things. 7 James O’Brien Edited Transcript – July 27, 2005 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Title: Larry S. Richardson interview--August 3, 2004
Description: Larry Richardson, WWU Professor of Communication, 1970-1997; alumni of WWU, Class of 1957 (BAE)
Digital Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: Special Collections Oral History Program
Local Identifier: SCOHP_RichardsonLarry_20040803
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Larry Richardson ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use&quo
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections Oral History Program Larry Richardson 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. Larry Richardson, Professor Emeritus of Communications, Western Washington University. The interview was conducted in College Hall at Western Washington University on August 3rd, 2004. The interviewer is Tamara Belts. TB: Today is Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004 and I‟m here with Dr. Larry Richardson, who‟s Professor Emeritus of Communication. He has just signed the Informed Consent Agreement and we‟re about to begin our oral history, and Dr. Richardson also is an alumni of Western, graduated, I believe in 1957 with a Bachelors of Education. I was going to start with how did you first choose to attend Western? LR: I was in study hall at Edmonds High School one day and the library was next door, and I was scrounging through the library and came across a book called Going to College in Washington. They had a page for each college and university in the State. I discovered that Western was here and they had degrees in music education, which I was interested in. It looked like it would be way cheaper than the University of Washington because there was no tuition here, and I was a very poor young man. Then, little by little, various of our friends thought they‟d come here. The principal of Edmonds High School, G. Mason Hall, was an alumnus of Western. He had high regard for it. Well, then it looked like his daughter might want to come here on an oboe scholarship and then my wife. They had the MENC Music Regional Convention on the campus and we came up for that. We brought our school orchestra to play and several of our musicians were in the All Northwest Orchestra or Band, and so a lot of us saw the campus that way. My girlfriend, Marilyn (who‟s still my girlfriend), and Sandra Hall, the principal‟s daughter, decided they‟d be roomies up here. Then we came up and auditioned for music scholarships and we all got those, which meant we‟d get free private instruction. Finances were tight, I think, for most of us and it just looked like a nice place, away from home, you know, the hundred miles away from Seattle, sort of thing. We all grew up in Edmonds and it wasn‟t too big a town, so it looked about right and that‟s how I did it. TB: Oh, good. What were your dates of attendance at Western? LR: Well, I think I came in ‟54 and then, after we married, I kind of I hurried up. We went a couple summers to hurry and get out. Then I left on an Emergency Teaching Certificate with one quarter left to go; went out and taught the remainder of that year at Neah Bay. Then came back the following summer and got my BA, so, my departure was sort of ragged, my diploma came in the mail, and that was that. TB: Where did you live when you were at Western? LR: I started off in Men‟s Residence Hall, fall quarter. My roommate was Doug Bridges, who is now retired. He ended up as librarian at the community college at Nanaimo. He was also an Edmonds graduate. We lived here together a year, I mean a quarter, and I was really stretched financially and, and I had some friends that were going to move into an apartment that was far cheaper, you do your own cooking and the like, so I moved out into that and that apartment over here was on High Street, right about where the bookstore sits now or right near there, and we lived there the remainder of my freshman year. Then my sophomore year I went down to the University of Washington. A couple of our High School teachers got a 1 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED hold of me and my best friend (he was going to Whitman), and they said „Oh, you need to go to the big school if you’re going to get a real education.‟ So we both went there, we both terribly missed our girlfriends, we both did not like the hassle and the impersonal treatment at the University of Washington, and we both came back then for our, in fact, I came back here Spring quarter of my sophomore year and then finished out here. Then, where did I live? Well, I brought up a guy from Seattle who hated UW too, Don West, and we lived together over on 21st Street. There‟s a lot of parking lots over there now but we lived there. Then when Marilyn and I were married, my last year, my roommate‟s moved out and Marilyn moved in with me, so that was great. When we came back in the summer, we lived over here. Oh, it would be about right in front of the music building, there was a sort of Spanish style apartment house there and we lived there that one summer. TB: Who were your favorite or most influential teachers and why? LR: Keith Murray was very influential in my life. Marilyn and I were both close to the Murray‟s. I ended up giving his son percussion lessons and Jamie ended up as a professional drummer in a jazz group for a while. Let‟s see, in the music department, I really admired Jerome Glass when he came here. He was a fine musician and an inspiration, and a good spirit especially among the instrumental music people. Frank D‟Andrea was the department chair and conductor of the orchestra, I liked him a lot. Then both Marilyn and I were close to David Schaub. He was the organist and taught music theory. He used to put us through our paces at eight in the morning and so we liked him. We remained friends up until recently. TB: Wow, I guess I‟m surprised at that; music was your main course of study then? LR: Well, yes. I was a music major and a speech minor. I joined the debate team right away. I had done debate in high school so I became involved in that and that became a minor for me. But the music major was my main interest. I was a percussionist and I played the tympani and the trap sets and the, anything, you know? I played in the orchestra and the band and the opera orchestra here, or the, you know, the shows that they did, and that sort of thing. Played jazz gigs around here. I‟m still in touch with some of those old music warriors; they have get togethers and things. I missed a picnic a couple of weeks ago up at Startup with George Ulrich and Ken Copeland, Jerry Mogelson -- just a lot of people who were in music. We stay in touch. Joyce Wold, who was a big singing star of Western, is a very close friend of myself and my wife. TB: What classes did you like best or learn the most from? LR: I learned a lot in music, probably could have learned more. You know that eerie feeling; they say you don‟t really learn to teach until you go out and start doing it. I had that -- now, what do I do, here -- here I was on an Indian reservation. The kids were really musically illiterate, they‟d had horrible teachers out there, and I started from scratch. But I had good preparation on getting started, so I have to acknowledge that, and I had good preparations to go into better and better schools. I ended up conducting the band program at Edmonds Senior High School. I think I stayed there seven years and got along quite well, and that was a very demanding school district and a very demanding and competitive environment, and we did a lot of good things. So, I‟d say the total department there was good. No real stars, they were good solid people and they had good character. They taught kind of by the book, but I learned a lot from that. Around the campus, another fellow [who] had a lot of influence on both Marilyn and me was Ralph Thompson in the [Education] Department. We liked him and he was a really solid thinker. Hmmm, who else? Well, Herb Taylor, we had him. When we decided to go to Neah Bay we thought we better learn something about Northwest Indians, so we took his course on Indians of the Northwest Coast and got some insight. TB: What was Herb Taylor like as a teacher? LB: Oh, he was flamboyant, had a lot of interesting details in his lectures, a little overbearing. This was an eight o‟clock class in the summer and he said, “If you can‟t be here on time, just don‟t bother to come through the door. When I close the door the door is closed.” 2 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED One weekend we went over to see my mother, who was camped out east of the mountains. We drove all night, I kept falling asleep at the wheel, Marilyn was driving, trying to make this eight o‟clock, and we got on to campus at ten after eight. We didn‟t go to class. I kind of resented that that day, after we tried so hard and didn‟t quite make it. He had quite a reputation around here. He was also an officer in the Air National Guard, of which I was a member, and so a lot of us who were undergraduates at Western in the Air National Guard would kind of watch his antics. He had a bit of the British -- strutting officer syndrome -- in his demeanor, so it was fun watching him play officer. TB: What other extracurricular activities did you enjoy the most? LB: Well, as I say, debating. We traveled some, nothing like the debate teams of today, but I remember going over to the Montana Tournament. Paul Herbold was really a train fanatic and he was our coach. We had to stop and see these gigantic steam trains which were sitting somewhere in Idaho waiting for other trains to come along that they could pull them up over the big grade. I guess they only used them for the big pulls. So, we had to climb all over those trains. We would go down to the Linfield Tournament and the University of Puget Sound, Pacific Lutheran; I think UW may have had a tournament. I enjoyed that traveling, that was a lot of fun. I enjoyed traveling with the band. We went on a tour every year. I enjoyed just being in the band, we did concerts, and the orchestra, and the musical shows were kind of fun because the whole department was in that and a lot of funny things [happened]. So I enjoyed that. I was involved in the USCF, which is now the Campus Christian Fellowship up here, and that was really getting started, at first, under the leadership of Reverend Alfred E. Dale, about the time we came. I was a President of that for one year and we were quite involved in get togethers and so on. It was the only main-line protestant organization on campus, so, I enjoyed that. Then we went to the Methodist Church with Reverend Clarence Forsberg who was very campus oriented. He saved two rows in front for college students and then he‟d stay behind after the sermon and have a talk back, mostly just for the college students, and social functions, and he coordinated quite well with the USCF Foundation. They were in an old mansion down on Garden Street that was eventually torn down. In fact, it was that old mansion that led me, much later, to become the first president of the Faculty Club because I heard that it was slated for being torn down and I started agitating to save that building, I guess it had been designed after the home of some famous poet on the East Coast, and, and down it was going to come and, so I got involved. Well, I got to be President of the Faculty Club for about six years but the building went down anyway, so we ended up over here at the former President‟s house instead, but that was a lot of fun. TB: Any other outstanding memories of your college days? LR: Oh, at Halloween, I got a job working for Dean Mac. A couple of Halloweens in a row, we would just patrol around campus and keep the younger kids stirred up and try to keep big insults from happening. That was kind of funny and kind of fun. Then I did get involved in student government, too. I was on the, what was called the Board of Control, and we had some very interesting goings on there. About the first black students that attended Western, came at the time that, you know, late fifties, and one was a star athlete named Willie Ball, and he is revered still on the campus and viewed as one of our important alumni. I remember him but there was another fellow here who came, and I don‟t remember his name, but he came here from Nigeria, I believe. One night the police hauled him in and beat him up and said, “Don‟t you know you‟re supposed to be out of town by night fall?” He said, “Sorry, I didn‟t know that.” Well, a little later they found out he was a student on campus and so they put his picture up in the police board room, down there, and said, “Don‟t beat up this guy, anymore.” So he had a special pass -- suggesting to a lot of us in the student council that other blacks did not have a special pass to be here after dark. Some of us started a bit of a protest. We passed a resolution in the Board of Control that we wanted the police chief to come up to the campus and apologize publicly. Well, about that, there was a ring of about three or four of us who were leading this agitation and, about a week later, Dean McDonald called us in and said, “You boys like going to school here?” 3 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED “Oh yes, we like Western.” “You want to stay?” “Yes.” “Well, I think we better resolve this situation with the chief of police.” He said, “I‟ve called him up and he‟s not willing to come up here on to the campus and eat crow over this. He‟s very sorry for what happened and what he will do is, a delegation of you are invited to go down to his office, see him at city hall or wherever, and close the door and talk this over.” We did, and that was the end of that incident, but, anyway, some of us had our first brush with the realities of the Civil Rights Movement at that time. TB: Wow. I‟ll switch over quick into how you happened to come to Western as a faculty member, but [first] how did you switch to speech as your profession from music? LR: Well, even at Neah Bay, when I first started off, I rounded up about three or four Indian kids and we went out to some tournaments just because I said, “Look, I know how to do this and it‟s fun.” In fact, even today there are about three of them, all women, who‟ve had very effective public lives and have said „that speaking kind of got my courage up.‟ One of them lobbies for Native American tribes from all over the West and is a professional consultant. She said she kind of got her start in our little tiny debate team at Neah Bay. I always had that as kind of a side thing. When I went to Edmonds High School, they‟d had a fine debating program and then it had gone dormant for a couple years because of personnel problems. A new principal came in and he put out the call that he‟d like to have someone coach debate. I said I know how to do it, and so I did and, and jumped into it whole heartedly and we did very well, very excellent high school, so we had a good start. And so, there I was with a high school band, a stage band to keep going, small ensembles, pep bands at basketball and football games. We took the whole band out for football games and did big marching shows. I was active in a community symphony, the Cascade Symphony and the debate coach at Edmonds High School and an officer in the State Debating Association, and along came some grants from the Federal Government in advanced speech: NDEA grants. So I went off on one to Pullman and then a couple years went by and then they had another one for curriculum development in speech, again at Pullman, and I went there. By then, I knew they were starting a doctoral program and the Edmond School District had a sabbatical program for teachers and I was then eligible. I arranged it, [took] that institute and then stayed on. I had planned to stay one year and do some of the course work toward a doctorate. Well, once I was there, they were eager to get people through because it was a new program. They said, “Well, we‟ll make you an instructor for another year and you stay and you can wrap it up,” and so I did. Well, along the way, it was funny; I had always told people I‟d probably just stay in Edmonds. I loved that school. I said, “If I ever left it would be to go to some small college that‟s nice like Western Washington.” I‟d name Western. Well, the job at Western came open and I applied. The first time I applied, they said, “You‟re not far enough along yet, towards your doctorate. We‟re not too interested in you,” and so they hired someone. Well, “someone” didn‟t pan out and so a year later I was through with all of my course work and I applied again and they hired me. Then I left the Edmonds Schools and went full time [with speech]. I knew I couldn‟t do anything with music, but I‟ve played little bits since then. But, anyway, that‟s how I made that switch. I just decided I had to get out of something; I was just doing too much and met myself coming around corners. We had three boys growing up and I wasn‟t home very much. So, that‟s how I made the switch. 4 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Ok, so when you first came to Western, I believe, in 1970, was that a tenured faculty position? LR: It wasn‟t clear. They hired three of us and by the end of the year the dean called and said, “You have to get rid of one of those three.” We were all good friends, they‟d hired one in each of the three areas: speech path., drama, and rhetoric and public address, and they‟re kind of looking at each other like „whose gonna‟ get the ax?‟ Well, finally, a guy who‟d gone away on sabbatical or was away studying, decided to keep on going, and he left and then that cleared it up. Then I went on to tenured track. I think they made us all assistant professors instead of lecturers and [that] kind of started the process. TB: Ok, you came at a time of transition when Flora was president; they [had] just finished having (spring of 1969) all these student protests, so, what was the atmosphere on campus like when you came? LR: It was quieting down. I know there were still students worried about being drafted. I remember one student; there was a Suzanne Radliff on the faculty and she would go on some debate trips as a judge. She really taught oral interpretation and theater but she had a knack for this stuff, so she would go along as a judge. I remember this conversation where this guy was saying, “Look, you just got to give me an A so I won‟t get drafted.” I remember her saying, “Look, you‟re a smart fellow. If you get drafted, you‟ll be smart enough to keep your head down and not get shot. If I give you a C, which is what you deserve, you get drafted, then you can be safe. On the other hand, if I give you A, then some other poor guy who isn‟t nearly as smart as you is going to go out there, take in all of that gung ho stuff and go out and get himself shot. So, which is the better choice here?” He finally agreed that he‟d either have to earn his A or take his chances because she wasn‟t going to fudge. I know there were issues like that around but they didn‟t have any big demonstrations. Of course, when we were in Pullman, finishing up, there was just one thing after another going there. They burned downed the stadium and they had to cancel commencement one year. In fact, they had to, no, they kept the commencement, they had to cut off classes two weeks earlier the year of Kent State. The students just rose up and the SDS just said anybody who tries to hold finals, we‟ll disrupt the goings on so much that you won‟t be able to complete them. I remember department chairs being called out. They had to stay in their buildings over night, many nights and just patrol because they were afraid of other arson over there. We had a very dear friend from Seattle, who was brought over, (we had been friends way back in school), Warren Burton. [He] was a black man and worked for the Superintendent of Public Instruction and they had him over there as an advisor. He knew a lot of the black kids who were involved in a lot of protests and he was able to sit down with them and help to keep the lid on. TB: So, what was the campus governance structure like when you came here? LR: Well, they were just moving into the Faculty Senate. They had something a little less formalized; I think they had a Faculty Council. The whole Senate concept came along when Paul Olscamp came. I remember it because I was involved in the committee that controlled funding for activities because I had a vested interest as debate coach, that‟s what they had was the advisors. Prior to that time it was all done very informally and casually and quite cooperatively and, I think, most people were pretty satisfied. I think the athletes always felt under funded and I think there was an implicit philosophy that we just didn‟t emphasize athletics very much at that time. But, other than that, things went along well. But when Paul Olscamp came he kind of saw the place of the house as three parts: the faculty, the non-faculty staff, and the students, and so when they organized the senate and all of the subcommittees, they all had representation. It was all structured so that all three of those groups would be represented. I know the departmentally related activities committee became very dicey as a result of that, it all had to be done with students and we had to 5 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED spend hours and hours kind of training the student. I‟m sure it was valuable for them and they picked up a lot of knowledge, so, I suppose in the long run, this was a wise thing to do. He‟d come out of Canadian education where the students actually manage all of their activities. If they didn‟t manage them, they didn‟t happen, and that‟s kind of the vision that he [had]. He said, “I don‟t see why our debate team needs [the] faculty handling it.” Well, debate in this country is much more on a business-like basis. When you go to a tournament you have to -- just like a football team showing up -- you‟ve got to have a staff and pay your bills and so on and so forth. It‟s pretty different from what that kind of simple good old day‟s concept was. So, we had to work our way through that mine field but it worked out pretty well. But that was the big change in governance when Paul Olscamp came because they still have the Senate. I know now that you‟re on the verge of, with the faculty, of a union coming in. As a faculty member [and] later on while I was a department chair, I got involved in the lobbying in Olympia. I was on the Senate Committee that did that and became chairman and so I became the lobbyist to go down there. Then, as a result of that, I was elected by the people of the six state schools to be the chairman of the whole six school thing, and I did that, I think, for a two year term. Then, about the time I was to get out, something bad happened to the next guy coming up, he was from Central, and the president over there dumped on him and pulled his funding because they didn‟t think we were all being cooperative enough with the administrative line. We were agitating for the right to have elections to collective bargaining that was one of several goals. I mean, we were supportive of better funding and supporting students and so on and so forth. I know we got crossways with the administration on another issue which was having students on the Board of Directors. We simply on our state committee didn‟t have a consensus and so our official position was no position, [we] just [abstained] when we got into that because no one was speaking for anyone else. Well, the administrators were very unhappy with that. They said, “Well, you‟ve got to go one way or the other,” and we didn‟t feel we could. So, we got a little crossways with the administration during that time, but that was one of the earliest times. There were bills going there for collective bargaining but it ended up being vetoed by Booth Gardner, once it got onto his desk, I think. They were pretty far along, anyway. That was another kind of an adventure growing out of that governance thing. I think over the years my opinion is that the senate became very much kind of -- to be very negative about it -- kind of a lap dog of the administration. There have been a few key, crucial issues where the Senate, in my opinion, rolled over when they should have barked, and they didn‟t. I don‟t think I‟ll go into any more details unless you want to push that along. Anyway, we got into the senate which, when things are working swimmingly, then things go swimmingly and when, when they‟re not, the Senate structure is not a good mechanism for the faculty to really have a strong influence or strong enough. We‟ve gradually seen the erosion of that faculty power. This is still, very much, a faculty run campus though, compared to other places. I know that‟s where we‟ve had problems with some of our presidents, they were totally unprepared for this much faculty involvement. That‟s funny because when I first came here, my committee chair at Washington State said, “Our understanding is the faculty is very involved in governance over there and they say it‟s a black hole. If you get too involved in that before you get your publishing and your reputation up, you can get swimming around in that pool and start making enemies and get nowhere and get nothing published, a lot of people kind of failed in that way.” So I had that warning when I came here. Unfortunately, I enjoyed politics a lot, so, you know, I did it anyway. 6 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Do you know how the Faculty Senate maybe could have been stronger? Not on any specific issue but just how could it have been stronger? LR: Well, I think over the years, for one thing, key faculty became disillusioned, and so they didn‟t run. It almost just became a way of getting your promotion sheet punched. There were a lot of younger people who didn‟t really know Western in a way; they didn‟t especially have a strong collegial, academic orientation. Some of them went in there, sort of, to pitch their own department, which is, you know, kind of like the U.S. House of Representatives; you go there and grab all you can for the State of Washington. But then when you get a national emergency, everyone needs to work together, and part of that working together, whether it‟s the U.S. Congress or our senate here, would be standing up to the other force, which is the administration. So, I think it was a gradual erosion. I think it‟s a cultural thing. I think more and more the young people just aren‟t interested in running the university. I think they‟re more and more oriented to just being in their department, get their papers, teach their courses and buy a house. I think maybe that day is over and it‟s going away. I don‟t know what the union‟s arrival will do. It‟s hard to guess. I know it‟s very different [in] different places; there are a lot of, you know, horror stories out there about awful things that happen some places but there are also a lot of stories about things where it‟s worked out beautifully and there‟re no big problems. TB: Did you start being the forensics coach right away when you came? LR: That was my job, yes. They were looking for someone to handle the Forensic program, right. That was, oh, about a half time job for me and then I taught a couple courses. Then, I think my fifth year here, fourth or fifth year I was elected chair of the departments and then I had to balance teaching and chairing and being the director of Forensics. TB: And you also started the summer program? LR: Right. TB: When did you start that? LR: Well, second or third year. I kind of got just a little idea; I became friends with a guy named Paul Winters who was a very beloved older, statesman coach from the University of Pacific, he was one of the great gurus of the West Coast. They had a big summer institute and he said, “This would be a great place to have a summer institute, why don‟t you do one?” Then I had him over here for a couple of summers to help kind of teach us what had to be done. He knew all the basic ingredients and said „do this and do that,‟ so he helped me get started. Then I had a wonderful group of alumni who came. Well, some of them were students at the time. I think one of our best alumni ever was Michael Bartonen. End of tape one side one LR: [The] first year we offered the institute, we advertised it and we didn‟t get enough takers so we had to call everyone up and cancel. Then, the next year it did take off, and so it grew little by little. I think it was the premier debate institute in the Pacific Northwest for several years. I had just a wonderful staff -- very loyal people. We staffed the institute with undergraduate debaters from throughout the Northwest and beyond. But we all had sort of a philosophy, you know, we didn‟t teach try to teach the kids to be killer debaters or extremely aggressive or extreme behavior in high school debate. We tried to teach solid research skills and responsible research skills, a lot of kids who do debating get a lot of their material sort of from canned sources or from quick fix sources. Some institutes sort of specialize in getting the kids cranked up, sort of like working up a role in a play, and they pump them up with all this stuff and hope that they can make it through the year on it. Our goal was to get them a good start on doing their own work, the right way, and our kids usually did very well. They‟d win the State Championship and so on because I think we‟d set them off in a direction that then they could keep growing on. A lot of them stayed with it so 7 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED that when we‟d have our college tournaments it was like a reunion for these kids, all getting together. They were all friends from our Western institute. Gonzaga had one that was a close second and so between the two of us we pretty much had the territory covered. I think it did a lot of good. We got up as high as ninety kids doing this and tried to teach a lot of values as well as just tips and tricks, and I think it paid off. TB: Well, good. There was a lot of changes in the speech department from when you came, by 1977-79 the catalog, at least, [lists the sections of the department] as Speech communication, Broadcast communication, Speech pathology and audiology. It looks like it‟s a lot to manage in one department but [then] it starts splitting apart. Was that a real advantage or was that a real struggle because of funding to get everybody adequate funding? LR: Oh, I think we all came away with kind of our share of the funding when it happened. I don‟t think that was a big problem. Everyone had sort of independent sources or budgets that worked. It was part of a national trend. The same thing has happened all over the country. Nobody was going away mad, they thought more they were kind of staying with national trends. Speech pathology and audiology departments are much more linked with education and with psychology, so like when they have schools, they‟ll have a school of behavioral sciences and a school of the arts and so on. We were just sort of in a meeting point of the arts, and humanities was pretty much where speech was, and moving much more deeply into the behavioral sciences. That was just happening while I was in graduates school in the 70‟s, speech as behavior in communication, and communication theory was just emerging. Now it‟s just blown full board to the extent that a few schools have tossed out the humanities influence -- the traditional rhetoric‟s and the Aristotle and Plato and Saint Thomas -- behavioral science is in. That would be the extreme form. But in most speech/communications departments it‟s still a blending of the behavioral and the humanistic study in one department. Now there‟s a lot of anthropology, and using anthropological methods and tools and so on, kind of a cultural thing. We talk about intercultural communication now, courses in that and cross-cultural communication, etcetera. TB: What about your linguists? You talked this before we were on tape, about you and broadcast and journalism, when you were all together for a while and then you split apart. Can you talk about why you first were put together and then how it split apart? LR: Well, I know a little of the history. In about 1925, in the Big Ten, speech departments started up. One of the first things that happened is rhetoric sort of split because a lot of people considered rhetoric to be an issue of style. When people in English talked (at least when they did, I think they‟ve come back more toward our direction now), they kind of pulled off. You know, if you take traditional Aristotle, you have five canons of rhetoric and they deal with research, they deal with presentation, and so on, there‟s the five canons. Of those the people in English focus much more on style and somewhat on organization -organizing a message -- and then kind of let the others go. In the twenties the speech people really, and they were very Aristotelian, Ciceronian sort of people, they wanted to kind of revive the whole tradition of the holistic act of effective speech giving, really, more than total communication. They saw speech courses as a valuable aspect of a democratic education. They really jumped up, I mentioned in the Big Ten, because the Big Ten grew out of the land grant colleges, which were schools for the children of the farmers and the laborers and the businessmen who needed skills. If you grow up in a Harvard family, you grow up around people who speak well and who have a heavy value on that. Although Harvard had one of the first rhetoric departments, they did not have this universal kind of speech thing. But throughout the Big Ten schools, the notion of a required speech course for all undergraduates really took hold and that jumped out to California and the West Coast, and that was the real under girding of speech. Then, forensics popped up about that time and debate as something for the more advanced students. But it was more of the same: learning to speak well. That developed and then theater programs had been around about the same time and they‟d also been somewhat neglected by English departments because they were more active doing rather than reading about, and so they allied themselves with this movement in speech and it was seen as a continuum. 8 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Some of the finest schools today -- I think of Indiana, Northwestern, Minnesota -- those schools developed bigger and bigger and bigger faculty and then they began to go into more specializations, and so that‟s how that happened. Then speech [pathology] showed up in the mid-West. A fellow by the name of [Charles] Van Riper at, I think, Michigan State really got things moving there, and so that allied itself. We used to kid that the thing we all had in common -- well, that most disciplines had a human organ, like, you know, psychology would be the brain -- we had the larynx. That was our common bond, the larynx. But then as, you know, in the seventies, as these different areas started growing more and more and becoming more diversified than the splits came. TB: Ok, you talked a little about Olscamp, how you felt he brought a lot of changes, got things more organized. What about when Ross came? Did you feel a lot of changes with Ross? LR: Well, Bob Ross was a good guy. He was quite a blowhard, I think. Well, you got some buildings up. I think he did impress the legislature. Apparently, Paul Olscamp, you know, he was very well liked by the faculty here and so on. But like he had a brown canvas briefcase and apparently all the legislators ridiculed him because they all had black leather briefcases, and they were kind of where’s this guy from, you know? Meanwhile, I‟m sure, Bob Ross had a black leather briefcase and he did very well backslapping. He was just a good old boy, southern, I think he was out of Texas and then out of Arkansas. He got some buildings up and things. I don‟t think he did much for the curriculum and I don‟t think he did much to develop faculty. The departments have developed themselves. You know, a real challenge to any department, not even just in education, [is], are you willing to hire people better than yourself? I think departments at Western have that willingness to go out and find the best people they can get. Plus, we have this wonderful environment going for us which means that people will come even for lower salary for the way of life around here. The departments have diligently gone out and done that. I know Bob Ross and Pete Elich, the dean, were good fishing buddies, but really [a lot of that credit should go to] Elich‟s leadership and that notion of getting good academic people. The leaders in the college of arts and science, I think, have been solid academic people and they got that message across to the dean who then got that across to others and by example did that. I think, the faculty, especially in the arts and sciences, is truly just far better than Western deserves (laughs), given our budgets and our place in the pecking order. We get people here who could choose between Western and a major university and that‟s not recognized a lot. Increasingly it is recognized but a lot of that credit, I think, goes to deans and department chairs more than to someone like Bob Ross. He did provide the support. He got some raises for us and that was good. In the big brush things [he was good]. He got some buildings for us. But in the fine tuning, it was the chair people and the deans that made the difference here. TB: Well, can you talk a little bit more about that because you were department chair for like twenty years, I think? LR: Mm-hmm, nineteen or twenty, yes. TB: Most of your career. LR: Yes, Dean Elich used to brag that he‟d been a department chair longer than anyone. I said, “I think I have you beat here.” “By golly, you do!” (laughs) 9 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TB: Can you describe that a little bit more? I mean, is that a hard position to be in? LR: Well, I fit it and it fit me in this department because it was small, we only had six or seven faculty. It was not the extreme strenuous work. I would not have stayed in it if, like in psychology I know, those chairs over there spent their whole summer doing personnel work, writing evaluations for several people going up for promotion and planning and so on. They just struggled with the job. The load here just wasn‟t that onerous because we were dealing with, I think, six or seven full time and three or four more part-time, and they were quite stable. Also, it was a very harmonious department at the time I was here. I was not involved in fights and feuds and people getting bent out of shape. We didn‟t have any pre-Madonnas around. They made it easy for me, I liked doing it and I think I did it pretty well. I had wonderful administrative assistants: Betty Warren, when I came and then Gail Grafwallner were just very, very good. I know occasionally I‟d go to a department chairs meeting and I‟d get all huffy about something and I‟d come back to my office after the meeting and I‟d write some stinging memo to somebody, just blow off steam in this memo, I‟d give it to Gail, „here, type this up!‟ And so, about four days later she‟d come in and sigh and say „well, I finally got that typed up but, you know, maybe you ought to reread that before you send it.‟ So I would reread it, I‟d say „Gail, yeah, you‟re right. Throw it in the wastebasket!‟ Sorry she had that work but she was a wonderful mentor and supporter, and same with Betty. I wouldn‟t have stayed if I‟d just had routine, you know, average secretaries, but they knew what needed to be done and did it and they enjoyed being part of the team. I know Betty, especially, was around as we were building up the institute and she worked really hard at doing the registering and keeping track of all the little details and all that. It was extra work but she relished it because it was an adventure we were on, kind of together, and she had that feeling too: „oh, we‟re successful,‟ you know, so that was fun. TB: Could you talk about the changes that happened in the process of hiring new faculty, and the tenure and promotion process? LR: Well, there got to be quite a bit of money, I‟m not sure when it really came in online, but also with Affirmative Action coming along, we were required to bring in lots of applicants and be very careful. When I was hired, I think, I kind of sent in some sort of an application and then they hired me. TB: You didn‟t actually physically come to campus to be interviewed? LR: No, I did. I came here and spent a day. TB: I know they would have known you a little bit before. LR: Yes, a couple of them did. But it was fairly casual. In those days, before the seventies, I think a lot of department chairs would call out to schools they knew, like if they‟d gone to someplace like Minnesota, because different departments would have a flavor of a Minnesota or that would be their input, or two or three schools. I know our speech path department was just Ohio State all the way; they just kept hiring each other as they came off the assembly line. Well, with the newer rules, you had to throw things wide open and I think you got a better cross-section. One funny thing, one time, that happened is we had three applicants in for a position and the Affirmative action officer says „you know, you haven‟t had a real minority person in this pool.‟ I think we‟d had an Asian or something but anyway, he says „you should have a black come out.‟ So, we went back through the files and here was a guy who had been president of the Black Student Union and one thing after another in Civil Rights. We invited him out to give some guest lectures and stuff and he was white. We said „what, what‟s the deal here,‟ and he said „Well, I‟ve always been involved with the Civil Rights and I thought this would, some of these memberships might spruce up my credentials a little.‟ You weren‟t aloud to send pictures in those days, so we were looking for a black guy and got this white guy instead. We didn‟t hire him. I thought he was too cute by half, I could see him scheming around the department like that, you 10 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED know? So, in a way the thing that makes you is the thing that breaks you but it was kind of a quirk of Affirmative Action, you know. TB: There was a lot of building changes while you were here, can you comment on that? LR: Oh, well, yes, the whole Southern campus just grew and grew and grew and that was amazing. There was one point at which someone got the idea that Fairhaven College ought to be closer to the center of campus, and someone said „well, let‟s just stick them in College Hall,‟ and I forget where they were going to send us, Mount Vernon or something. We started fighting that battle and I really worked hard on Larry DeLorme about it because I always thought this building, where it was located was very central to our discipline too. It was handy to plays and the library and all of that. But I remember just a lot of fretting and fussing over things like that. I know the Fairhaven people kept walking through here and kind of looking around at the offices and kind of picking out there spots and things, and that might have been cute for them. This department did not like moving out to the new Communication Building. TB: Oh, really? LR: Not at all. Well, we sent some nasty letters and things, and they finally said „shut up.‟ TB: Wow, wasn‟t it kind of designed with your department in mind? LR: No. TB: Oh, ok. LR: No. I won‟t go into the whole story, if you look at how the space is allocated, it‟s just a continuation of the master plan of the College of Arts Sciences, which the deans assumed was going to be rolling along and that this was really not the concern of the president. It was a long-term plan and that was computer science and physics, and they have lots of space in there. President Morse had an assistant who had a good communication background and she also had to very quickly come up with an idea. Anyway, so they kind of tossed us in gratuitously and called it the Communication Building but the name is almost bigger than our space. You can see the nice big offices in here, this is nice. When they‟re over there, they‟re about half the size. At one point somebody came through here and they were thinking that these offices are a third too large and they were going to maybe reconfigure the building just to comply with the State codes but the partitions between all of this are done with sort of a brick, it‟s kind of a hollow core, honey comb brick, and anytime you smash any of it, it just flies to dust and it‟s just a horrible, horrible mess. We got into it even when they put in these fire doors, they had to do some cutting, and the building just turned to white dust for a year or so. They didn‟t do that, thank goodness. TB: Let‟s back up. We did talk about Ross. Do you have any thoughts about Mortimer? LR: Yes, he was a good guy. I liked him. Some of the faculty didn‟t. He had kind of a MBA mentality, I think, is what a lot of them accused him of. I think they knew he was on the make for a bigger school. He had a little list in his pocket of things he wanted to accomplish. He‟d read, I guess, one of these books: “How to Succeed in Life”, or something and he‟d get out his list every day and look at it. He had to get one thing done every day, moving toward his goals. He had these goals in his pocket. I knew about that so I thought it was cute. But he did some quirky things. He was in part of a combine of about six people who had, I think they were out of Berkeley, they had kind of an institute for higher education, and these guys would hire each other to come in as consultants. Their main activity was going out -- this was during, there was a real depression on in higher ed., a lot of schools were really in the soup -- and they would go out and look these schools over and make recommendations to save their cookies. He started bringing these guys in and chairs would have 11 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED to go on Saturday morning and listen to some guy give a speech, and one guy frankly says „I don‟t know why I‟m here. Your school is not in trouble; you‟re getting along fine, and one thing I always suggest is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!‟ But anyway, we had to listen to these guys and kind of process it. See, it is true; each time we got a new president we got a new kind of planning process. I know when Olscamp came; he was part of a big inter-school combine where they were trying to use this uniform planning thing. Only a year or so after he‟d gotten here a guy from Montana called me and says, „You have to do this too!‟ „Yes.‟ He says „Well, if you‟ve already been doing it, send me some of your paper so I can get some ideas.‟ So I sent him all of our long range plans and stuff and he says „oh, thanks a lot! I get it.‟ That kind of thing goes through higher education in waves; different planning models and so on. Getting back to Mortimer, he was very much into that kind of thing. I think he did good on developing long range plans, like for the growth of the campus. I begin to see the fruit of that now: the new roads coming in and things. I look at that and say „well, that‟s pretty nice.‟ I just went over to get a parking permit yesterday, and they‟ve put that Campus Services building right on a very nice, very handy spot for anyone that needs to deal with it, it really makes sense. It always used to be a secret where you went to get your parking permit and now there it is, and they have a parking space and everything. So it‟s a little rationality. They were going to put, right outside this building, some big turn around or something and that‟s never come to pass but, anyway. TB: Well, what about Morse, then? LR: Oh, very negative feelings about her. She came, I think, out of an extremely authoritarian model and she expects to be authoritarian. I haven‟t been around for all the details but I know the faculty is extremely dissatisfied. The only exception would be people who are eager for their careers. I think what you‟re getting from faculty moving up into mid-range management are entrepreneurial types but this doesn‟t need to be on this. TB: Anything you don‟t like you can take out. LR: Yes, I think she‟s done a miserable job. TB: Ok. Before we get into what you‟ve been doing since your retirement, do you have any other thoughts about anything that I haven‟t covered or asked about? LR: Well, one hurdle I never got over as chair is just getting a larger faculty, a larger footprint as a percentage of the total school. I think we‟ve always been under- resourced in terms of what we could and ought to do. Public speaking is an option here. In a way, it‟s a little easier to teach in the sense that only those who want it or are comfortable with it do it. The other options aren‟t all that pleasant: an additional composition course gets you off the hook or, I think, foreign language, which is kind of a crazy choice. I think students should have both foreign language and speaking and logical thinking. What happens is, I think, when they‟ve written some of these curricula I think they‟ve really sat with the California State curriculum, really, which has those areas covered and just kind of cram them together and say „well, you can either be a logical thinker or a good speaker or a better writer.‟ You get your choice, at least, in the GURs. Well I think that this department should be large enough to give most students a speaking competency course of some kind. Now I know some faculty don‟t like that because they get all these kids with stage fright and troubles and then they have to deal with trouble. So, it‟s much more “happy face” if you just don‟t do it. But, you know, when we get kids that can‟t read we generally do something. It might be flunking them out but at least [we‟ve done something]. Well, you know, as an old music major I was always appalled that they didn‟t even absolutely require a music course for people who were going to teach in elementary school and then they say „teach your own music when you get out there.‟ Well, they just don‟t do anything and those kids don‟t get any music. In a lot of cases, in the English curricula and language arts curricula of the high schools, when they have people 12 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED who are just that limited, they just don‟t do it. They‟d say „well, let‟s just read another novel, kids. We‟ll do this instead,‟ and I think that needs to change. I think our public school curricula need to be more specific, more detailed. I think maybe they‟re heading there, there‟s some tendency in that direction. We have a huge English department here. I was always intrigued in English; they‟d go out and say „oh, we‟re just overwhelmed with composition. We need more help, we need more support,‟ and so they‟d (the administration) say „ok, we‟ll give you two faculty,‟ „fine.‟ They‟d go out and hire a poet and a linguist or something instead of building up their ability to teach basic composition. They‟re off in all these other directions and no one ever called them on it. I know one guy got out of that department and he had some idea of coming over here at one point because of that. He said they‟re just scamming the school. Are you out of English? TB: History. LR: History, ok. It‟s too bad. I think we should have half again more faculty and I always [thought that], this is from the year I came until now; it‟s kind of been that way. Western is very resistive to change and of course the part that gets the real growth is the new areas, where you have to do something; computer science. I know there‟s huge pressure on us from industry and in the public to have more computer science, more modern tech stuff that kind of comes out of the growth. The natural growth of the university seems to go into diversifying into those other areas rather than back filling in areas where you‟re understaffed. I kind of think that‟s what happed here because as a proportion of Western, the Speech Department has actually lost ground. TB: What were the most significant changes that you saw over your time here? LR: Well, becoming a serious university. I mean, when I was here, most people, as an undergraduate, wanted to be teachers and Western was well regarded as a teacher training school, graduates were in demand and had a good reputation. Then most of the other students were either just “going to college” because they wanted to go to college, a lot of them lived around here in the county and they did kind of a BA but they didn‟t know why, because someone told them they needed a BA, and others used it as a community college. In fact, they had, when I started here a community college program that was linked up with the UW and you could do GURs here and then just transfer just as if you were at Everett. When I came here, there were just seven or eight community colleges in the state. Of course they had that big outburst of building one in almost every legislative district, a little later. Western has just grown into a much more high quality, nationally recognized school in the time that I was here. I like to think our debating made a little contribution there. We did have a national reputation at the time and they all knew we got invited to the “very best tournaments” and thinks like that. We were part of, not the super elite, we weren‟t Harvard or North Carolina but we were in the group of very good state schools. There were maybe fifteen or twenty of those in the elite circle and maybe that many more little private colleges, that were kind of like William Jewell. Nobody knew about William Jewell except in forensics. They were very good at that, and we were kind of like that. TB: What were you hopes when you came to Western and did you accomplish them? LR: Well, just to be a successful professor and debate coach. Yes, I did, accomplish those. TB: What are your favorite memories of Western? LR: Many times I would go around, because I was really super poor, we had five kids, my father died, we were on Welfare, and I, for the first part, my high school experience saved me, I had high quality teachers where I went to, I went to Edmonds High School as well as later teaching there, and I had some of the WWII vet crowd, people who‟d been shot at, and they valued education and I learned to value education in high school, and so when I came here, I would go out, even while I was chairing, I‟d go to some meeting some place and then I‟d take about a half hour and just walk around and, because I like beautiful nature: 13 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED trees and grass and things, and I would walk around and say „I am so lucky that life just led me here.‟ (laughs) TB: That‟s good. Did you feel that you were treated well as a faculty member? LR: Yup. TB: And who were your heroes on campus? LR: Phil Montague, Pete Elich, George [Gerhold]. End of Tape One Side Two LR: …trying to think of others. Bill Cole, who was the band director here, he came up from the UW. He was magnificent. It‟s funny I don‟t think I had any real heroes in speech here. TB: Bill Cole or Phil Ager? LR: Bill Cole. TB: Ok. LR: Phil brought him up… TB: Oh, ok. Ok. LR: Very small world. Phil and I were teaching together at Edmonds High, he had the choir, I had the band. He had had the band, he just had so much because he was assistant marching band director at the UW and he was just going nuts. So, I got the Edmonds High School band and Phil had the choral program. Then, one day he gets this call and the paradox, the reason they wanted him to come up here [was] because there were a whole bunch of old boys downtown that wanted a marching band, and he said he‟d do it. I know the first thing [when] he came up here he set up a Band Day just like they did at UW. Our band came up to support him and the Mountlake band; about three of the bands that came up were Edmond School District bands. We did a show before school started in late September. But the marching band, it‟s just not in the culture here and so, after about two years, he got out of that. But meanwhile, Bill Cole‟s daughter died in a horrible freeway accident right near where they lived on a 135th, north of the UW, and they were totally depressed. He and Nina, and Phil said „well, just come on up here and get out of that.‟ Bill was not awfully well treated at the UW either because bands are not part of the elite conservatory environment, or it wasn‟t then at the UW. He came up here and was tremendously successful. He was taking the stage bands back to Kennedy Center and concert bands were just magnificent. So, he was a hero from back to when I was a high school teacher. Well, I‟m trying to think. I need to think some more but, clearly, Pete Elich was a model. TB: What did you like about him or why? LR: Integrity of view, wonderful counselor. He was one guy, when I was in a pickle of some kind; I‟d call him up and say „what would you do?‟ I used him just as a counselor. He‟d say „well, duh-duh,‟ you know, and give me some ideas or some background or „have you thought of this?‟ He was a mentor for department chairs. I don‟t know how many chairs used him as a mentor but he‟d been there and done that in [psychology] for a long time. The students I had here were just wonderful students, excellent. We were given an award two years ago at Pi Kappa Delta as having sent the most of our graduates, the biggest percentage or the biggest number, into debate coaching and speech teaching of any school in the country. That was true; I had about seven out 14 Larry Richardson Edited Transcript – August 3, 2004 Campus History Collection ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ALL RIGHTS RESERVED there at one point teaching and coaching debate. I still have a lot who are still doing it, although a lot of them have kind of moved into things where, they‟re not on the road all the time anymore. TB: Who were the most influential campus leaders among the faculty? LR: Well, ok, Elich, Gerhold, Tom Downing certainly, Montague, that‟s about all I know. I was never in the Senate, so I don‟t know what was going on there. But there was a lot of outside kibitzing because there was a lot of turn over and a lot of young people in the senate who didn‟t really know the school that well. Those folks I see as real leaders. I was trying to think anybody else. Oh, who was the chair in chemistry, the skinny guy? TB: Mark Wicholas? LR: Yes, Mark Wicholas had a lot of influence. I never was close to him. I ate lunch with him and things but we weren‟t buddies. But I think he had a lot to do with kind of keeping the place on an even keel again and getting good people. I don‟t see any of the people in the branch campuses as heroes. I can‟t think [that] they‟ve done an awful lot of good here. I think they‟ve done a lot of good for some students. In fact, my son Mark graduated from Fairhaven and it was a good program for him. I know one time we had a vote, Dean Davis, well, he‟s a hero, by far, yes, he was great for me. That‟s funny, I just didn‟t mention him. He way up there in my development because that was my early years as a chair and he was a real coach and a real supporter. He was the guy behind starting the Faculty Club. He did it all by remote control but he got about five of us stoked up. I told you how I got involved, because I was always calling about this building and there were some other‟s who had different angles on it, but he got us all together and we got it started. But, how did I get off? Anyway, Davis was certainly influential and again,

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