Western Washington University Libraries
Special Collections
Oral History Program

Harley Hiller

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. Harley Hiller, Professor Emeritus of
History, Western Washington University. The interview was conducted at his
Bellingham home on August 6th, 2004. The interviewer is Tamara Belts.
TB: Today is Friday, August 6th and I am here with Dr. Harley Hiller, retired
professor emeritus. He has just signed the Informed Consent Agreement and
we‟re about to proceed with the oral history, so, good morning Dr. Hiller.
HH: Good morning Tammi.
TB: How did you happen to come to Western?
HH: I was at the University of Minnesota to do my graduate work from 1950 until 1955. This was a
terrible year to come out and look for a job at the college level because the veteran‟s bulge had gone
through the University of Minnesota and all other universities about the time of 1949-50. The number of
people in graduate school built off of the veteran‟s bulge but the veteran‟s bulge had gone through the
schools by the mid-50‟s. For example, the University of Minnesota, which is the only figure I have in my
head, in 1949 had about 35,000 students. In 1955 it had about 19,000 students. It had shrunk to just about
half the size, subsequently most universities weren‟t hiring a lot. I started looking in 1954 and I continued
looking throughout 1955. I went to all the professional meetings with my advisor and he said, “When I turn
around I want to see you right there Harley, because I want you to meet people.”
There just were no jobs, and I applied for everything in the world. I came in third at a college in
Springfield, Missouri (Southwest Missouri State University), probably a state university now; I applied to
the University of South Dakota, I applied at the Air Force Academy, I applied at a high school even,
someplace in Colorado, and I applied at Eastern Kentucky University. I applied all over. I was at the job
search center [at Minnesota] and I saw an opening at Olympic Community College in Bremerton,
Washington, and so I applied. They called up (we‟re probably talking July of ‟55) and said, “We‟d like to
interview you. We‟ll fly you out and pay all your expenses. We‟d like to see you.”
It was a fascinating experience because Olympic at that time was made up of one permanent building and
then a bunch of temporary Quonset huts. So I go into Bremerton, I take the bus and now, keep in mind that
I am coming from a Big-Ten school, buildings all over the place. I say, “Let me know when we come to
Olympic,” which was a junior college at the time, incidentally.
“OK,” the driver says.
He stops the bus and says, “OK, here‟s the college.”
I look out and I see Quonset huts and I‟m thinking -- Oh my goodness sakes, what have I gotten myself
into!? Anyway, I got the job and I signed a contract and two days after I signed the contract for Olympic I
got a phone call from the University of Houston, “We‟ve got a job for you.”

1
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

I had talked to the people before this at, probably the Mississippi Valley Historical Association Convention,
and I said, “I‟ve already signed a contract with another school.”
They asked, “Are you happy with the contract?”
I said, “Well, it‟s a contract! I‟m sorry I can‟t take your job.”
I called my advisor at the University of Minnesota, well, the call from Houston was about six in the
morning and I waited till about nine o‟clock, then I called up and I said “Don, I just got a call from
Houston, they want me and I turned it down.”
He utters an oath which I won‟t repeat here. He called back after about two hours and he said, “You know
Harley, I think you‟re just as well off there, on the West Coast at Olympic College, which is going to get
the population growth, as you would be at the University of Houston.”
OK, so I go to Olympic. I taught a political science course, I taught a U.S. history course, I taught an
economics class and I taught a history of American culture class which was about the finest experience that
I have had anyplace with a team taught course, it just was first rate. At the end of the first year, there was a
delegation that came down from Western making rounds of all the, what were then junior colleges. I don‟t
remember meeting them and I only remember one of these persons. It was Don Ferris who at that point, I
think was registrar at Western. They came down, visited the campus, went back to Western and then
apparently talked to some people and said something like, “We ran into a fellow, or we heard about a
fellow who is doing a good job down at Olympic College.”
Ed Arntzen called and said, “We‟d like to talk to you about a job at Western.”
So my wife, Joyce and I met them at, I think the Olympic Hotel in Seattle. We sat down (and talked about
this) and they said, “Well, we‟d like to have two more people in the History Department this coming year.
If we get one person, we need a European historian. If we get enough money for two people then we‟ll take
you, because we like your Canadian and Latin American background.”
Well, they only had room for one for that coming year and that was Bernard Boylan. Then they told me that
the following year I would have a job at Western. And so I never really put roots down at Olympic because
I knew I was just going to be there for two years. Don Beatty was right, you get out here on the West Coast,
there‟s population growth, and I came to Western in 1957.
Probably folks have talked to you about this as part of these interviews, that Joyce and I had been in the
Middle West working on a thesis that summer, got back here and we expected to be paid probably the first
of October, and we needed the money. At the first faculty meeting Dr. Haggard, who was president then,
got up and said, “Well now, there‟s not going to be a paycheck this year until the first of November,”
because of something having to do with how long you worked before you got paid.
At any rate, we went -- Oh my -- and then the word was that the Fair Market, which was a grocery store
downtown, which doesn‟t exist anymore, would extend credit for groceries. OK, we got into debt during
that two month period that we were here before we got paid and we‟ve never been out of debt in
Bellingham! (laughs)
TB: OK, I think you‟ve sort of described the hiring process too…
HH: It seemed to be, incidentally, very informal. I mean, we never hired like that when I was in the History
Department here. You know, we‟d have the committee and, of course a lot of things have changed because
of Affirmative Action and things of that nature, but now it‟s more complicated and formal. I mean my
experience was -- meet in a hotel and get a job -- for heaven‟s sakes.

2
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TB: What was the atmosphere in the History Department, or was it still called the Social Studies
Department when you came?
HH: Right, it was. As a matter of fact I think the whole college was organized on an interdepartmental
basis. I think there was a chair of the Science Department and then kind of sub-chairs, and Ed Arntzen was
the chair of Social Science and then Keith Murray was the, I don‟t know what we called him, the head of
the history part of it. And I think the History Department was Ed and Keith, August Radke, Bernard
Boylan, Dick Whittemore and myself, I think there were six. I remember we could all fit in one car which
lasted for probably four or five years and those of us who were in at that point thought that when we got to
the point were we didn‟t fit in one car, the atmosphere within the department simply changed. It was them
and us, you know, the guys in the other car (laughs).
TB: OK. What was the atmosphere on campus like at that time? Any comments about that?
HH: Oh, it still was a very small campus. I‟m not sure about the enrollment. It might have been in the
upper teens; 17, 18, 1900. There was a faculty picnic, chicken picnic, out at Lake Whatcom say like August
or something like that, prior to school. There was a faculty meeting; it might even have been weekly, all the
faculty attended. Everybody knew one another‟s name. It was a small college and of course it was teachers
college oriented at that particular point. I don‟t know what the ratio was but I would image that eight or
nine or ten to one education degree people and arts and science degree people, totally different than in ten
years, during what I call the Jarrett revolution.
TB: Can you tell us a little about what Dr. Haggard was like and any favorite stories about Dr. Haggard?
HH: Ah, there‟s of course the usual one about walking on the grass, [Dr. Haggard] tearing out of his office
to go chase down a student who walked on the grass. There was the usual thing that Western always had
classes. I recall the first time that we didn‟t because of weather, there‟d been a silver thaw and a piece of
ice had fallen and hit a student on the head. We canceled classes and stopped until the ice was off the trees.
The problem is I can‟t remember if that was Haggard or Jarrett, but I would imagine it would be Haggard. I
mean, we met for classes, by golly, come whatever, except for the one time when this student got nailed
with some ice (laughs).
TB: I‟ve never heard that one before. How about Ed Arntzen?
HH: Oh, just a jolly old man and a very old-school type of guy. I have no idea what my reputation was
with respect to using test questions over and over and over but the word on Ed was that it was always the
same test. He thought, I recall, he was really doing a good job because I think he used a percentage grade
situation [and] all of his students had 97% or better. He never tumbled to the idea that if you‟ve got old
tests, you really had it nailed in Ed Arntzen‟s class (laughter).
I look back on that, I don‟t see how I got through those first years. I taught the sections of civilization; the
old 105, 106 and it was a general education class and I think they were in groups of about a hundred, and I
had not had, at the graduate level, any European history. I taught those and probably there were a couple a
quarter; 105 and 106 or two 105‟s, I don‟t recall.
I really don‟t remember when I started getting involved with U.S. History but it was early on, probably by
the early 60‟s and then we got some European historians. Then August Radke and I did several sections of
U.S. History at a time. Again, I do not recall when I started to get involved with a Latin American course,
or when I started to get involved with a Canadian course, but, over the years I was there, I probably,
certainly by the early eighties, maybe in the mid seventies, was not doing any U.S. or any Civilization, it all
was the Latin American or Canadian. I think I wound up ultimately having probably four Latin American
classes and probably five or six Canadian classes. I think I taught each one of them every year and the Latin
American class, twice: a history of Latin America and a history of Latin American Civilization, which
ultimately became general education courses. They would, all of them, close out at a hundred, hundred and
twenty five, even a hundred and fifty students.
3
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

By the time they got that big I had teaching assistants and I designed the tests so that teaching assistants
could do half of each test and then I‟d do the essay half so that I got
to grade part of each student‟s test so I knew how they were doing.
Oh yes, I should say, kind of interesting about this because it speaks to the difference in history
departments over the years. The University of Minnesota History Department, when I was there, which was
1949 to 1955 was still under the influence of the Bolton School of Hemispheric History, in which you look
at the whole sweep of history with the Spanish, Portuguese and the French and the English in the
hemisphere. This is true, probably of all schools of history and in the sixties and seventies you get a
reaction to this so that well, we don‟t care about that broad view of things. We‟re interested in what
happened in Asunción, Paraguay on July 13th of 1865 or something like that. Pretty soon you don‟t do the
sweep or survey courses, all you do is look at “post-holes.” My own view of this was not the “post-hole,” it
was the total sweep. The historians that we hired and that graduate schools were turning out in certainly the
seventies and eighties were “post-hole” historians. Their research was in a very small area and they were
not trained in the total sweep of things, which meant that you would have, let‟s say, a survey of United
States History from the beginning to the Civil War, and that was a prerequisite, for any more courses in that
particular period in U.S. history. Well, the people teaching it wouldn‟t bother to cover the whole thing
because -- well I think that the period of Jefferson is very important, so we’re going to spend three weeks
on Jefferson, forget about the Civil War. So you get courses that didn‟t sweep the whole thing anymore
which, to me, was a real problem, a real error with respect to the teaching side of a person‟s specialty, and
specialties, nowadays, are quite narrow. Specialties when I was at Minnesota were very broad. There are
problems with both and I suspect that there‟s going to be a reaction to the “post-hole” theory in another ten
or twenty years.
TB: Just going back a little bit, where was the History Department located? Where were a lot of your
classes when you first came?
HH: Oh my! Well, they were in Old Main. I think they probably all were in Old Main. We were there when
there was still a gymnasium in Old Main, down there where the little theater is now.
TB: Yes.
HH: There was a gym in there. I shared an office with Bernard Boylan, first of all and it was in the
basement overlooking that grass area in the front of Old Main. I don‟t know if everybody shared offices but
I know we did. Then, when the gymnasium was remodeled and turned into a classroom, I think we still
shared an office. We moved into what would be the top part of the gymnasium; it was no longer a gym, you
didn‟t have the high gymnasium ceiling but it was the top part of that and then from there, I think we went
into the Humanities Building.
OK, so we would have been in Old Main at that time, then to the Humanities Building, and my office
overlooked the big lecture hall and in the other end of the building there are two smaller ones, L2 and L3,
one above the other. Anyway, over in that -- the haystack building we called it [Fraser Hall], there were no
windows, my office overlooked that. A lot of classes were there and then of course the Humanities
Building had classrooms at the bottom level, and then the graduate classrooms at both the top two levels.
TB: OK, this is going back to when you were first [at Western] -- what kinds of activities were you
involved in besides teaching, or were you involved in some other activities? Were you involved in
overseeing student government or any other kinds of things?
HH: I was a freshman advisor, and I don‟t think it had to do with history students, but with all students.
And for a couple of years in there, we‟d have about thirty students as our advisees, to get them through the
first year. I think that‟s probably the way it worked. I recall that we had them out to our homes. I think all
the faculty did this, had them out for dinner. The college provided the food and all we did was host and put
it on, and I remember it always was ham. Ham and green beans and I forget what the rest of it was but the
4
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

college did it. It meant a lot to the students apparently, because they got into the home of a professor which
they‟d never done before. But that didn‟t last too long. I would guess that was probably over by the time
that Haggard was gone. It might have lasted two or three years. It was a huge undertaking.
TB: I‟m curious, because I have heard that before. Did they deliver the food warm or did they just gave
you cold ham and you cooked it?
HH: Warm.
TB: They were driving around all over town dropping off these warm hams? (laughs)
HH: Apparently, I don‟t know how they organized that but all I know is that at some point in there, ‘Hey,
here’s your food!‟
TB: And it‟s all ready to go.
HH: All ready to go.
TB: I had one other question, were they still doing the assembly or some other kind of thing during the
week, when you first started?
HH: I don‟t think so. No, because in order to do that, you‟d have to shut down classes for a period. No, no,
they didn‟t do that.
TB: OK, so Dr. Jarrett comes in 1959 and he is president from 1959 to 1964 and you‟ve already mentioned
the Jarrett revolution, so maybe if you could describe that?
HH: I think that there were people on the Board of Trustees that wanted to change this into a liberal arts
school, so the revolution had to do with courses and faculty and it had to do with a decrease in the
importance of the education side of things. I do not recall if the Campus School closed as part of the Jarrett
years or not. I would guess it probably did. It was early sixties.
When did Jarrett come?
TB: He came in 1959 and left in 1964.
HH: An interesting side issue on Jarrett: Jarrett was a big man, maybe still is. He‟s still alive, is he not?
Yes. Tall man. He was, I think probably taller than I, he might have been 6‟2”, 6‟3”, at least that‟s my
memory, although maybe all university presidents look taller to a faculty member (laughter)! And the idea
was that Western was going to hire a vice president or academic dean or something like this. There were
three University of Minnesota history people on the staff here: Jim McAree and Al Roe, and myself. My
advisor at Minnesota was a man by the name of Don Beatty, and each of the three of us had known Beatty.
Beatty was an historian who tended to be the administrative type and we got together and said, “You know,
I‟ll bet that Don Beatty would really fit in here as kind of a balance to Jarrett.”
We talked to Jarrett about this. Don Beatty, I should say was also about 6‟4”, 6‟5” -- a large man. Jarrett
went back to Minneapolis and had an interview with Don Beatty, and I have no idea what happened at the
interview but that‟s as far as that thing went. I guess they just did not hit if off at all, and I‟m not that
surprised because they were very different kind of men but we could just see, as we talked about this, that
these two head academicians at Western, both very tall and good looking guys, that they would come into a
meeting and, ‘This is great! Look at those guys!’ (laughs) We had visions of this kind of thing but they
didn‟t hit it off so that never happened.
TB: You mentioned that Roe and McAree both came from Minnesota; somebody else has commented that
often times a department did have a lot of people from the same school, and yet it didn‟t sound like in your
5
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

hiring process that they didn‟t go back to Minnesota to get you. So, do you have any input about that or was
that just totally coincidence?
HH: Oh no, the hiring process was different. In Al Roe‟s case, we were looking for an economic historian,
and I knew about Al and so I simply would have put the name in the hat. McAree, we might have gotten
first and then Al. It doesn‟t make any difference but that was the process. I think that we had gotten both
Radke and Boylan from University of Washington, and so was Keith for that matter. And so it was a case
of „Well, we have enough people from University of Washington. Let’s go to some other university.‟ (Oh,
Boylan‟s degree was from Missouri).
TB: Do you have any other thoughts about the period that Jarrett was here, when there was a lot of building
going on? The Humanities Building‟s being built, etc.?
HH: I was involved in those years on the Faculty Council and I do not recall the years but I was secretary.
There existed then among the three state colleges something called, the Committee of Nine and then the
Committee of Twelve: the Presidents of each school, the business officers of each school, Joe Nussbaum,
and Ernie Sams, and I think probably the registrar. We would go to the three schools and talk about matters
of common concern, try to establish a common front with respect to the Legislature and budgets, trying to
keep programs the same so that people could transfer from one of the state colleges to the other colleges
and so forth.
We also began at that period an Association of Washington State Historians, in which we would gather
together with the community colleges, the two large universities, and the regional universities, and meet for
a day at which we would get speakers and just kind of informally exchange ideas and things of that nature.
It was on one of those meetings that we all went over to Wenatchee. We had gone – all of the history
department could get into one car – and we had gone up to Rocky Reach Dam and we were coming out, to
get back on whatever highway number it is, and whoever was driving pulled out in front of a truck and I
remember we weren‟t hit but it almost wiped out the whole History Department at Western (laughs)! It was
a case where the whole department got into one car and the car gets hit the whole department goes right
down the drain! But that effort only lasted a couple of years, it simply did not work out, perhaps the
colleges had different goals and needs.
Incidentally getting back to Olympic, the dean at Olympic, Lloyd Elias was in the forefront of the move to
go from junior colleges to community colleges, and that took place the two years that I was down at
Olympic. When I went to Olympic the junior colleges were administered as grade 13 and 14 in each of the
school districts. Lloyd worked on that and got it to the point where they had their own boards, separated at
the state level also as to how they were handled.
END OF SIDE ONE – TAPE ONE
Sometime in the seventies or eighties when the first big enrollment bulge hit Western (and enrollments
were going up all over the United States), there developed a move at Western, to begin a doctoral program
of some kind. I was in the forefront of this for the History Department. There were four departments:
History, English… Well there were four.
TB: Education probably was one of those.
HH: No. The whole idea was that since we couldn‟t compete with the University of Washington in placing
doctoral people for the purposes that they had, that we would aim at the education and training of historians
for community colleges. And so we would offer a PhD, we‟d probably call it in education, in the history
department. As part of that – for about two or three or four years, in that range – and I directed the program
in that – we put on a community college history conference at Western – just for historians, just for history
staff. And we began an internship program of which we placed -- I think we had four students in the
program -- which we placed, at community colleges around the state. So we spent a lot of the effort of the
department, in the development of a program. Just about the time I think that at the university level they
6
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

were ready to go into this, the enrollment slumped – it probably was in the seventies. And rather than all
these jobs at the community college level, there now simply were no jobs at the community college level.
You know some of the people that were involved at Western who got jobs at community colleges but that
emphasis was very short lived – three, four years maybe. And then it just died.
TB: Were you involved in the Humanities Program at Western?
HH: Very briefly. I gave some general lectures over in the Auditorium Building, which was a terrible
teaching situation. And then I taught some sections but that was very briefly.
TB: Bunke came in 1964. He was here for a very short period of time. Do you have any specific comments
about his presidency? And then also I think he made you a Danforth Scholar, could you tell us maybe what
that‟s about?
HH: Exactly. Yes, from my standpoint he‟s one of my heroes because that Danforth activity was great. The
Danforth Foundation probably started in the sixties, a program to “reward” people who had a reputation as
teachers with a regional conference which they held in all the regions of the country as far as I know. We
were involved in Idaho, Oregon and Washington, and they gave financial support to go to the meeting, and
the first one we went to was at Sun River down in Oregon. That was a splendid place! Joyce and I had
never been to a resort area of that sort. They paid for the whole thing, there were speakers, the meals were
fantastic and it lasted something like Friday night through Sunday noon. It was just a great experience.
There were probably, the most I recall is about four or five at Western – four or five Danforth Scholars they
were called. And it was keyed to the teaching side of things. The Danforth Foundation kept that up for
probably ten years and then they decided to put that money into urban rehabilitation in the St. Louis area
which I think was the home area of the Danforth Company. We made some efforts to keep it going on a
private basis which is to say that we would pay for our own situation at these resorts. But it never was the
same. I recall that one of the prayers that was given at the opening banquet by a fellow from one of the
private colleges down in Oregon (and keep in mind that this resort was just magnificent and the facilities
were great), and he got up and he starts his prayer with Oh Lord what have we done to deserve all this!
(laughs) And you know, we just had never had that opportunity before to do that. And so Bunke is one of
my heroes.
I recall one of the Council meetings. The Board was looking at the issue of closing down the business
education and the home economics departments. It had come to be that one person from each one of them
(and I know the names but it isn‟t necessary here) was up for full professor. They had gone through all of
the steps within the faculty and the Board had rejected those two sort of with a mentality of -- and keep in
mind that now we had just gone through the Jarrett revolution and this is the time following – so why
should we promote to full professor a typing teacher? Or a cooking teacher? I mean this is not the kind of
thing we do at the kind of school we want here. Well, big fuss! This was my first real experience with the
Faculty Council standing up to the administration and to the Board. Again I know the names here but we
don‟t need them. Bunke was sitting in on a Faculty Council meeting and a faculty member who happened
to be an assistant professor (which is a part of this), got up and said and I remember the words – to Bunke
now – “But sir, have you thought about the effect of this upon, blah, blah, blah?”
Bunke hit the roof! “All we need is some upstart assistant professor telling the administration have you
thought about this! Of course we‟ve thought about it, what do you mean!”
And my first experience with Council and administration and I think it was about that time that I quit that
whole business because you begin to get involved in the years – now we‟re talking the [mid]-sixties (yes,
Bunke was here in the [mid-sixties]) – with the Council and then the Senate almost assuming an antiadministration [stance]. I mean because administration can‟t do anything right of course. And that‟s not my
own attitude so I kind of got out of many all-university committees..
TB: In 1967 we have Dr. Flora appointed as interim and then he became the actual president. Do you have
any special thoughts about Jerry Flora as president and also then in the spring of 1969 the student protests?
7
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

HH: I was going to say the student protest thing, yes. The only time where students were a problem for me
– it may have been after Kent State – but I recall I was giving examinations in my classes on the day after
the episode that kicked off the protest – and the students were busy writing away – and a couple of black
students came into the class (this is in one of those little lecture rooms in [Fraser Hall] – and really started
an uproar! I tried to get them out and it wouldn‟t work and we simply canceled the test.
PHONE INTERRUPTION
That episode in the class was the only impact of the whole student protest that affected directly what I did
in the classroom or what I did at Western. I mean the other stuff went on but classes went on, that‟s what I
remember.
Flora had come the same year that I came, in 1957. There were eight to ten appointments that year and
about only three or four maybe five people stayed on for whatever reason. I recall that there was a problem
with the student newspaper and Jerry called me into his office and said, “Harley, I‟d like you to take over
the faculty advisor job of the student newspaper.”
I say – Huh!
Matter of fact I think the administration had fired the advisor, anyway, because the Western Front was
antagonizing most people so I recall. This was one of the real turning points in that I, at that point, was an
associate professor and I said to Jerry, “Jerry, I‟m in the promotion zone here. I‟m quite aware that I don‟t
have any publications. Probably I‟m going to have to publish in order to become a full professor. I don‟t
know if I‟m going to publish in order to become a full professor, but I know darn well that if I become
advisor to the [student] paper that‟s going to be such an uproar time for me I‟ll never get [published] and
I‟ll never become a full professor.
You want to talk about promotions for awhile?
TB: Sure.
HH: OK. So a year or two after that meeting I decided to test the waters on promotion to full professor and
still had no publications. At that point the requirements (doesn‟t sound like the right word), for promotion
to full professor were teaching, service to the -- and I think it was -- university (I‟m not sure if it was
community), and publication. Demonstrate two out of three of those and that‟s what you need for
promotion to full professor.
OK. Well I could demonstrate two out of three of them because I had consistently received excellent
ratings by the student rating systems that were used at that particular time. I had spent the time on the
Faculty Council, I was involved with this degree program that didn‟t fly ultimately, and I was involved in a
variety of committees around the campus. I had two of the three. So I went up for full professor. And there
were a couple of people on the Tenure and Promotion Committee that talked to me about this afterward and
said, “We really didn‟t want to promote you Harley, because you didn‟t have any publications, but you
fulfilled two out of the three requirements that are in the faculty handbook and we couldn‟t find a way that
we couldn‟t promote you.”
I said, “That works for me.” That‟s all I need! (laughter)
This would have been during the Flora years. What were the dates of his time?
TB: 1967-1975.

8
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

HH: OK, this probably would have been 1972-3-4 in there, it‟s some place in there. I was one of the few
people promoted in this fashion. As a matter of fact I think they changed the requirement situation so that
people like me would not slip through that loophole. I thought it was a great loophole, I still think it is!
TB: I‟m pretty sure you were by 1974 when I came but I don‟t know why I think that.
Do you have any other thoughts about the tenure and promotion process? Or how it changed over time?
HH: Well it really was (I better keep this in the past tense, I don‟t know about now), but it was a very
difficult process. I chaired, well every department had a Tenure and Promotion Committee, and I chaired
several departments when they were dealing with such matters. I just never heard an uproar like some of
these cases when they‟d come in front of their committee – and there were some departments that it seemed
like everybody hated everybody else in the department and if anybody got one out of four people that voted
to promote it was just a real joy in those departments. It was just a terrible process. You could feel that they
didn‟t like this person and by golly we‟re not going to promote. Well a department chair who wanted to
promote, you‟d get on the T & P committee and get these ridiculous things about we want to promote this
person but we hate them. It was a very difficult process and anybody who survived was just so fortunate.
I imagine now it‟s promotion based on publications and very little else makes any difference. That‟s a
guess.
TB: Going back a little bit to the story that you were telling earlier about the two people who went up and
didn‟t get promoted. Do you know if when they had the uproar if that got reversed?
HH: Yes. And those departments still exist. They are not called those names anymore. I think the “typing”
side went into [business and economics] side and they probably don‟t teach typing in the business and
economics department anymore, that‟s a guess. I don‟t know the names on the home economics side; I
don‟t know what that‟s called now. Do you know?
TB: No, the textile part went into art and some things did go away.
HH: OK.
TB: Any other thoughts about the sixties? There is a lot of new hiring in the History Department, you talk
about when people can‟t all fit into the same car and [there seems to be a loss of cohesion -- is that possibly
just generational? Then they come out of graduate school at different times, so they have different
expectations about what it means to be faculty]?
HH: I think it bears on the way I talked about my own training as a generalist and others that are not
generalists. That it has to do with the respect for the other people who are not trained in the same way you
are.
There‟s always a competition. For example, the issue of how big a teaching load should you have? The
generality was when we went to promotion based on publications that you can‟t have a huge teaching load
and expect somebody to do research for publication. So the generality would be that you would have the
people who were not publication orientated, like myself and several others in the department, who would
be aware of this and so we would say, OK, give us fifteen hours of teaching a quarter. And the people that
were not, some of them were not all that great teachers even though their research and publications would
be fine, they would have a lighter load. Well you can‟t have some people at fifteen hours and some people
at one class a quarter without having some problem in feelings on this.
Also we very seldom denied anybody tenure. I don‟t have any idea what the figures would have been
college wide, but I can remember – well did we turn anybody down? Yes, we did one, but that was kind of
indirectly because we voted not to promote – and if you couldn‟t be promoted to associate professor within
five years then automatically you were going out. You were dismissed. The department didn‟t vote to
9
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

dismiss we just voted not to promote, so they didn‟t stay – it was either up or out as the phrase goes – either
you get promoted or else you‟re out.
TB: Do you remember when RIF (Reduction in Force) was going on, any comments about that period of
time? Was that difficult for history?
HH: Yes. Our department like other departments voted to share; some people shared in taking a reduced
load and salary so that that person could stay on. I don‟t know how our department split on this. I did not
do that. It was a difficult process obviously and it would have been much more readily understood if all
departments would have cut their most junior member, the one who was last there. It would have been
understood at least, now whether or not that‟s the way to do the process [I don‟t know]. But if you don‟t do
it that way then you‟re reduced to getting involved in varied judgments and you can‟t understand that. I can
understand the other.
TB: Right. Any other comments about that period? Olscamp comes in 1975.
HH: I really don‟t remember any relationship with Olscamp at all, personally. By that time you had deans
and vice-presidents, the inside man and the outside man, or woman, the person who was pretty much
involved in the public relations side and relationship with the Legislature. Then you had the internal
workings. Jerry Flora was the last president with whom I had a personal relationship. But when Olscamp
came there was not, for whatever reason, that personal situation anymore. This was true of the rest of the
presidents that I served under.
TB: So you really don‟t have any comments about the rest of them?
HH: I retired under Mortimer and the only time I was even in the same room with him was at my retirement
ceremony. I had never shaken his hand until then. And he comes over and he says, “Congratulations!”
And I say, “Thank you!” And that was it, OK (laughter).
But that‟s all right that he didn‟t know me and I didn‟t know him. He was just there pro forma no doubt.
But the office of president became very different over that span that I was at Western – just very different.
Western in a sense grew up just like other universities.
TB: I‟m going to go back a little, I‟m just curious, do you remember November 22, 1963?
HH: Oh yes.
TB: Can you describe what happened on campus that day? Or what it felt like, or how you all found out
about it?
HH: Well my memory – I had a U.S. history class over in Fraser Hall.
TB: I think it was just called Lecture Hall, now its Fraser Hall.
HH: Lecture Hall 1. OK. On the way to class I‟d heard about the assassination and the students generally
had not. So I‟m up there in front and it was time to start the class and, of course, I didn‟t feel like class –
state of shock -- so I announced the assassination and said, “I don‟t feel like this and I‟m quite sure you
don‟t either so we‟re dismissed – no class.”
I was trying to think what period that would have been, what time? My memory is like 11 o‟clock. Dallas
would have been two hours earlier; it would have been one o‟clock. Is that about right?
TB: He died at one o‟clock.
10
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

HH: So that‟s about right. It might have been 10 o‟clock class I‟m not sure. That‟s the only time that I
remember in addition to the student protest thing that a class was interrupted for something like that. I
tended to hold classes as they were scheduled and as long as they were scheduled even on the Fridays
before a long weekend. And hold also to the idea that if only let‟s say 50 out of 100 showed up that I was
not in any position at all to say, well only half of the class is here that‟s not enough to talk to and then
cancel class when people had made the effort to get there. I had some classes where the attendance was
pretty small where I‟d go ahead and lecture (laughter). You’re supposed to lecture; you’re supposed to
lecture by golly.
TB: Overall what did you think were the most significant changes that happened at Western over the time
that you were there?
HH: The obvious ones, the shift from college of education to an arts and science school and the size – size
of classes, number of faculty, and then what I just talked about – with that whole new level of
administration whereby the president became a more remote figure. Haggard of course was not remote at
all. That whole shift and this probably took place in every university or college that went through that
particular size [change]. I don‟t know – it seems to me we used to say that when colleges get to the size of
10,000 then you‟ve got to put in those layers of administration and so you have one kind of school up to
about 10,000 student body and then another kind of school after that -- that you have to do it for whatever
reason. I think those were the big changes.
I don‟t think that I‟m aware of a change in kinds of students other than what they were going to do after
graduation. When I came here most of them were going to be teachers, when I left there were very few
going to be teachers.
There was another change also, however, when I was there all of us [were required to] have office hours. It
seemed to me that most of us had three office hours a week that we were supposed to have. Some of us did
2 o‟clock Monday, Wednesday, Friday or realizing that students who had some other class at 2 o‟clock they
couldn‟t make those, we would have Monday and Wednesday at 2 o‟clock, Friday at 10 or something like
this and then others by appointment. I recall a lot of times especially during the periods of registration, and
I took over the job of History Department advisor during registration periods, so that when a student had a
problem and they were a history major, they‟d come over to me. So I kind of spent a long time at that time
simply doing a lot more than just office hours and of course we didn‟t have classes during periods of
registration so that was pretty easy to do. That‟s the way it was. Some people were more available to
students just by nature perhaps then other people, I don‟t know. But I was up on campus a couple of years
ago and the History Department had gotten a new faculty member and I wanted to meet that faculty
member. Anyway I called up the office and didn‟t get anything, went over to see about office hours and on
the door it said – Office Hours by Appointment – and I thought Uh-huh, in other words to talk to this
faculty member you’ve got to see the faculty member to say can I talk to you? That‟s a big change!
END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO
HH: I thought this illustrates a point of relationship with students. Again, this gets back to publication. If
you‟re going to publish you need time, and if you‟re involved with students on an advisement basis
extensively at all, it‟s going to take that time. I made that decision to go the student route instead of the
publication route and I was very fortunate – I mean very fortunate, in that regard.
TB: That may have almost answered my next question, but what were your hopes when you came to
Western, and did you accomplish those?
HH: Yes. It was interesting that when my wife and I were at Minnesota and began to think about jobs and
we were talking 1953-54 – we said, Well what kind of school do we want to wind up at? We said, We’d like
a city, probably 50 to 70,000. Not a larger city, but a city that would be close enough to metropolitan areas,
larger than that, so that you could get in there for concerts, or get in there to whatever, but you didn‟t have
11
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

to live in the big city. We’d like a college – both of us had had a small liberal arts college background and
experience –We’d like a college that wasn’t too big and that emphasized teaching rather than publication.
You see my advisor was right I would probably not even have survived at Houston, and then to fall into this
position at Western and Western fit what my wife and I had talked about right down to the tee. Now, it
became something different of course.
No, I always I think envisioned myself as a teacher and as one who was involved in making the thing go –
within the context of a college is – with faculty, organization and structure. But what Western has become
is not anything I care to become involved in -- it just is a different school. Well, I was going to say I prefer
the one in the fifties than the one now.
TB: What are your favorite memories of Western?
HH: Students obviously, that‟s a no-brainer.
My wife and I had and have a life outside of Western. It‟s in church activities and that took away from –
although it‟s amazing what I did in churches at the same time maintaining a teaching load up there – but
that kind of an involvement. So that‟s where a lot of our energy went when we both were working.
TB: What are your worst memories of Western?
HH: Oh some of the faculty fights, both inside the History Department and other areas of Western as well.
You create patterns in which you have us and them – and it just is not healthy to the operation of the
department – and all departments have that I‟m quite sure.
TB: Do you feel that you were treated well as a faculty member at Western?
HH: Oh goodness, yes. Oh yes! I got to teach the courses that I was trained for; I got promoted when I
thought I should be promoted.
For another story on promotion, I came here without the degree – without thesis. The assumption was that I
would get the degree, OK. I still did not have it at the end of four years. As I look upon it now – no wonder
I didn‟t – I was teaching fifteen hours of courses I didn‟t know anything about (laughter) – I mean no
wonder! The spring of 1961 President Jarrett called me in. He said, “Harley, you‟re doing a great job. We‟d
like to keep you, but we want that degree. We want the degree by the end of next year -- otherwise you‟re
gone.”
My wife and I went back to Minneapolis of whatever year this was, it would have been 1961 and I finished
the thesis in about two months back there. All I needed was a threat I think. Anyway finished it off – then
had the final orals for it over Christmas vacation, that‟s right, Christmas vacation of 1961 – and then the
degree was granted in 1962 – maybe March of 1962. I made it but all I needed was the threat (laughter).
TB: Who were your heroes on campus? Did you have any heroes? Who did you think were the most
influential campus leaders among the faculty? Any comment about that?
HH: Well I don‟t like heroes – I mean that word -- but I got along very well with some people who were
very different than I am. One of these was Herb Taylor – Herb Taylor was his own special kind of man.
Probably the smartest person I‟ve ever been around. You know the story about the quiz kid stuff back in
Chicago for the show …
TB: No, I haven‟t heard that one.
HH: Well, there were some shows – might have been on television – in which there were kids and they
were asked questions – and I think it was …
12
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TB: You mean like College Bowl?
HH: No, no, this is like in the early teen‟s age. The rumor was, again I‟ve never even checked this, that
Taylor was one of these quiz kids at some point. For some reason we got along very well and we could kid
each other. At some meeting which Taylor and I and two or three other people attended -- I have no idea
what it was -- and I drove the car. I dropped off the other people first and it just so happened that Herb
Taylor was in the back seat. We were driving up High Street -- at that point, of course, you drove through
campus. I started giggling and he said, “What‟s funny?”
I said, “The faculty is going to get a real kick out of this because here‟s this guy Taylor who says he‟s so
great in the back seat. Here‟s Hiller driving and they‟re going to say, Taylor -- what a snob! He’s got his
own chauffeur and the chauffeur is taking him around town.”
He jumped -- so help me -- jumped right over the seat into the front seat – just like that! (laughter) It was
one of the funniest things.
Keith Murray I think was another man I admired a lot because he [was] the same kind of person I was –
that in addition to the college there was a church involvement also. He was heavily involved in First
Presbyterian and I was heavily involved in another Presbyterian church here in Bellingham. He of course
was kind of a man for all sorts of things – man of all seasons sort – off campus, on campus, he published,
he taught – the whole thing.
TB: Anything else that I didn‟t ask you yet that you‟d like to comment on?
HH: I don‟t know. I was thinking about this earlier today what kinds of things would I bring up? And of
course there‟re all sorts of things up here in the head but I think I‟ve probably interrupted other things to
tell some story or something along those sides.
I never was involved in the big fights! Well I was involved during the Jarrett period on the committee that
recommended that we close down Campus School. Then I was on the Council that voted to do that and that
was – a very important step in the development of the college. And I recall our arguments – our younger
son, I think, was there and was affected by this. The argument that was made was that the Campus School
was becoming a “company school,” that the children of faculty and the children of business people around
town were those who went there. It was not at all a cross section that any student teacher would ever get
involved with in any other public school situation. It was very precious as the phrase went. The rumor was
that people were registering kids at the time they were born. Here’s little George we’re going to take him
up and enroll him in the Campus School, to start in five or six years. There was little research being done.
Even if research was done, then it didn‟t apply to the public schools because the school was a unique
school. Plus the fact, and this is the second argument, that by the early sixties Campus School was doing a
very low percentage of the number of students who were going into teaching. They did probably thirty a
year and we had a couple of hundred who were going into teaching. If you viewed this as a place where
students would do their student teaching it wasn‟t doing that. But there was the usual upset about this as
you can imagine and it was an ulcer time because it was a real part of the Jarrett revolution to close Campus
School.
It‟s interesting you walk up there now and you can still feel the remains in the slanted ramps instead of
stairways and stages – you don‟t want to hurt these little kids.
TB: Oh, ok, wow! Well I actually have a few more questions for you.
HH: Go ahead.
TB: I don‟t know how this is going to work but obviously I have a certain prejudice in that I did have you
as a student and I thought you were a great teacher. I thought you also gave life lessons especially in your
introductory, the first day of class kinds of lectures. For example, you always told us about old lady Gorton
13
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

– and I just thought that any student coming back and [listening] to this tape and thinking about Harley
Hiller is going to say, Oh yeah, what about old lady Gorton? So I was kind of interested in possibly getting
these kind of recorded if you can do that.
HH: Oh, I can do that. There are several kinds of students: one kind of student is the kind who registers for
class, they don‟t do any reading, they come to class every second or third day, and don‟t really get involved
with it, and never really become engaged with the class so that I could teach to them and they would
respond. I remember when I started getting that kind of student up here and I have no idea when that was,
probably always did. But we had an English teacher in junior high or high school who periodically when
some poor kid would do something really dumb, or wasn‟t [performing] – she literally would jump up and
down and scream, ‘You’re all lumps! You’re lumps! You’re nothing but lumps!!! Come on do something!
Come on get involved!! You’re lumps!!!’
And so I would do this – are you telling me I did this with every class?
TB: I know I heard it a few times (laughter)!
HH: Yes, OK (laughter)! But you know it‟s very obvious when this happens and you could watch students
who were like this and you knew what was going on, or what wasn‟t going on. All good teachers and
lecturers talk to several students that they would pick out whose face was responsive. You would pick them
out dead ahead, you‟d pick them out on the left, you‟d pick them out on the right and you could tell by
looking at those faces if you were saying something that didn‟t make any sense at all. Hmm! I’d better do
this again! If you could get through to them then OK, all right, OK, now we can move along like this. This
is the lump bit. I recall getting involved with that and it must have been in all classes – it must have been
every time I started a class – Don’t be a lump! Don’t be like old lady Gorton [described]! And I think in
my Latin American class I probably got in lumpismo business and things of that particular nature – no
lumpismo!
TB: That‟s right. [You also talked about the importance of how people dressed, the importance of tests, and
maybe people should dress up for tests].
HH: Well attitudinally, test days are different. It probably would only apply to finals because you can‟t
expect – you‟re going to get me going on how university professors look – and I don‟t want to go down that
path (laughs)! But exam day is different, final examination period certainly is different. If you can get
involved to the point where this is a special day and I‟m going to prime myself up for this I think you‟re
going to do better. Part of that is not dressing up in the sense of from a male standpoint of a tie or
something -- but don‟t be a slob. But as it worked out there were a lot of faculty who were slobs and so
students were slobs and we don‟t want to go down this road (laughs)!
TB: Something else that has to be asked is can you tell me anything about Blue Earth?
I mean every class somehow Blue Earth was always in the class. If you would just hear the word Blue
Earth and hadn‟t learned it spelled out you wouldn‟t probably even know what Blue Earth was.
HH: Right, now you see you are saying it right. What Tammi is talking about is the town of Blue – Earth.
Blue Earth so called because the earth there when it was wet, sides of stream beds, or a plowed field had a
bluish tinge to it. Blue – Earth! I was brought up in Blue Earth, [Minnesota], all the years of my public
school education were in Blue Earth. Oh yes, those of us who come from there and Tammi said it this way
– Bluerth! Bluerth! I would start talking Bluerth in the class and hands would go up – bluerth! What do
you mean bluerth? What’s this? I would have to backup and [say] Blue – Earth! OK and I would throw this
in in a variety of ways. For example, with respect to Coronado and Spanish exploration of the southwest in
the United States and he comes up looking for the seven golden cities. He comes up through Texas and gets
involved with Colorado and gets perhaps in Oklahoma and Kansas and he doesn‟t find anything so he turns
back. Spain emphasizes the area of Mexico because that‟s where wealth is and a labor supply and so on. I
would say to my classes -- just think -- that if Coronado would have gone about another five or six hundred
miles and had seen Blue Earth the whole face of Latin American history would have been different because
14
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

the Spanish would have emphasized Blue Earth as the center of their empire the area of southern
Minnesota rather than Mexico City just because it’s such a great place!
I‟ve had students who would send me post cards from Blue Earth -- it‟s on Interstate 90 in southern
Minnesota – saying either, you know this is a great place and we can really understand how you talked
about this; or, we didn’t think Blue Earth was all that great (laughs)!
Blue Earth was a little agricultural community, I think about 3,700 people. It had the same experience there
as they used to say about Iowa -- that the biggest export of these areas were their children -- because there
simply were no opportunities in those towns. The farmers when they would retire would move into town
and the kids take over the farm. There seemed to be very little opportunity, kids would be gone.
I grew up and my high school years were during the Second World War, and I graduated in 1945. I think
three of us had taken what was called the Eddy Electronics Test in late 1944 and we passed that and
enlisted in the Navy as Seamen First Class in the Naval Reserve. We finished up our high school career as
actual members of the Navy. We could send mail free, the whole drill and the whole thing was predicated
on the basis that as soon as you graduated from school you would go into the Navy.
OK so we graduated late May, and by that time the war in Europe was over and the war in the Pacific was
running down -- I guess that‟s the right phrase. They said, Well we’re not going to call you right away.
We’re going to take you as your number comes up. OK. All of a sudden instead of being called we weren‟t
going to be called, or at least it wasn‟t going to be immediate. So a bunch of us had to take jobs, we hadn‟t
planned on summer jobs, so we took jobs and then the war ended in August. We all got discharges. We had
not served, really served, and we got discharges. I jumped into college in a hurry and – oh yes – but
because we hadn‟t served we then were subject to the draft and I saw no overwhelming reason to get
involved in being drafted when the war was over – so I jumped into college. But I could pull the college
enrollment thing only for one semester, and then I had to either be drafted or go back into the Navy so I
went into the Navy again, and did aviation electronics. It was an important time of my life because after the
school experience, then I was assigned, matter of fact I chose it, I remember, to go to Patuxent River Naval
Air Base which was just south of Washington D.C. It was a test center and I was assigned to a couple of
Philco engineers who were designing aviation antennae. They would design it, I‟d build it, we‟d take it
down and install it in airplanes. The airplanes would go up and fly around; we‟d have equipment that would
measure the strength of signals and all of this kind of thing. They‟d land; we‟d pull it out, put in another
system. [I] hated it!
It was critical because I was going to go into engineering and I hated it. As I look on it now it was probably
the Navy I hated but then that‟s another matter. But at any rate, I got out, got back into school, not knowing
where I was going to be from the standpoint of a career. I took an aptitude test as part of the Naval
discharge process. It developed as a result of that test [I] received one of the best letters I ever got and I still
have the letter -- that given your background and how you did on the test that you would do better to get
involved with, I think they used the phrase, social science or something involving people, rather than in
science. Oh! OK, lucky me that I found this out!
It‟s the kind of thing that happens often times. I took a couple of history courses and really liked the history
prof and so, Well I think I’ll go into history.
I was just so fortunate because in that time in the Navy even though the war was over I got the GI bill and I
got two years. It was done on months, you got your enlistment time plus a year on the GI bill and that
would give me twenty-four months and a year, that‟s right, which would be thirty-six months. I got four
years of college. I finished off undergraduate work, I got probably two years or so of graduate work at
Minnesota and then that stopped and then I did other things. Again, [I] was very lucky because in my last
year at Minnesota I applied for and got a fellowship from the Ford Foundation for the Advancement of
Education, which was designed for doctoral students to experience for one year what it would it would be
like to have a job in college. So I was attached to a member of the History Department, who was Don
Beatty, and the thing was – go where Don Beatty goes – and for that year I “puppy dogged” him. I just
15
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

followed him around. I went to meetings that he attended and so on. I taught parts of some classes for him.
[I] remember my first lecture was in a chemistry lab, a history class in a chemistry lab, I never was so
scared in all my life.
As part of that we were supposed to go visit three campuses, a private school, a smaller state school, and a
large university. OK, well I had attended a private school so we didn‟t do that, I went to a college of
education in the state of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. It was part of the system. I spent a week there on campus
and then I was going to the University of Minnesota so I spent more time following Beatty around and
things of this particular nature. But it was a real good experience for me and it paid money, I think $3500
which was a fortune then. But I needed that money in order to get through this time when there were no
jobs. That‟s probably another reason I like to think why that degree wasn‟t finished at Minnesota because I
was doing this other thing. Well why were you doing this other thing, well I was doing that to make money.
OK.
But it was I think very valuable because I got to visit schools and to see how they operated and to get
involved with some teaching staff – kind of like a student teacher thing that we put education students
through. Very fortunate. Then I was a teaching assistant at Minnesota for two years also. I got a lot of
teaching as part of my degree situation.
That whole process in there, or how do you go from somebody who‟s going to be an engineer in 1944 to
somebody who retires from a state university is a very interesting process. You can go through all kinds of
Y’s in the road, (you know you come to a fork in the road, take the other one). But it‟s the whole thing that
you think you‟re in charge of your life -- well you’re not (laughter) -- if I‟d have gone to Houston, or if I‟d
gone to Eastern Kentucky, or if I‟d gone to Vermillion, South Dakota, or Springfield, Missouri – totally
different. A shift in a couple of days and I‟d have been at Houston. And Houston from what I hear about it
now, I‟ve only been in Houston for just a day or so when I was in the Navy at Corpus Christi. Houston
would not be a place that I would choose to live right now. Bellingham, I would choose to live here.
TB: Anything else then about your career at Western?
HH: There probably would be all kinds of things after you leave, but I can‟t think of anything now. I pretty
much have responded to your questions or at least I‟ve tried to.
TB: We also like to catch up with what people have been doing since they retired. What have you been
doing since you retired?
HH: Interestingly enough I don‟t go back on Western‟s campus. I‟ve talked to retired people and most of
those that I talk to simply don‟t go back. Or they might go back to a concert in the Performing Arts Center
but they don‟t go back. The first reason that comes to mind is that the University now is not the college that
we came to in the fifties and sixties – it‟s just so different – and you can‟t find a parking place anyway so
why try! (laughter)
TB: Parking does come up a lot (laughter)!
HH: I‟ll bet it does. Well you know I never objected to that, I didn‟t see why the University should provide
free parking. I didn‟t fuss with that.
I did go back, I taught a class for the Academy of Lifelong Learning two years ago, maybe three years ago
now. Three years ago would have been 2001 which would have been twelve years after retirement.
Primarily for the teaching -- it certainly wasn‟t the money, it wasn‟t that much money.
END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE
I recall going up to campus normally on Sunday evening and I mean evening, on the Sunday before
registration would start the next day and classes would start either Wednesday or Thursday of that week (I
16
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

think we got in a couple days of classes) because people were moving into the dorms. I still insist that that
feeling of electricity in the air, the feeling of all of these students coming here and what‟s going to happen
next, that there was just an energy level – we probably could light the lights in Bellingham if we‟d find a
way to bottle that stuff, but anyway, just great -- really primed into this. I‟ve discovered now that doesn‟t
exist – no – I don‟t go up to feel that. I guess I understand I‟m not a part of it anymore. But I wanted to find
out, I wanted to walk across Red Square going to that Lifelong Learning class to see if I still got the fire in
the belly when I was going to do this and I discovered that I did! Go over there for coffee before and Man
I’ve got to go over to class, got to get the map up! Got to … got to make sure about this … see if it’s all
ready to go!
Again this is another part of the way I viewed it there. There were profs who would show up five minutes
late all the time. I‟m saying what’s this? I tend to be a person who goes places early, all the time. If I‟m
going to go for coffee, I‟ll show up five minutes early, you know, just to get there and get ready because
there always, coming back to a class situation, was something that wasn‟t right. The boards had to be
erased or the organization of the room had been changed or something like this. It was just a feeling to
psych up for classes. I never had the feeling of -- Oh gosh, I’ve got to go to another class. I always had a
feeling that -- Oh boy we get to go to class! Fire it up here! Which is why lumps in classes offended me so
much.
But most people don‟t go back. Again a reason for this I think is that the image of a retired college
professor is pretty much out of date, that if you visualize how the movies do this, well there‟s old Dr. Jones
who used to teach here and he comes back and wanders the campus and you can tell he‟s faculty because
he‟s got his pipe, and he‟s got his tie on and he‟s got a corduroy coat, or a wool jacket, with sleeves that
have worn out, there are leather patches on the sleeves, and he‟s up here because he misses the students so
much and he just comes back and wanders around. Poor guy! I think that there was a required retirement
time at some point within the educational system. So somebody would have to stop teaching – have to stop
– no wonder they went up and walked around because that‟s where they wanted to be. That‟s not the way it
is now. The retirement system, the TIAA-CREF situation is so good and I don‟t like it up here anymore and
I‟m going to have enough money and I‟m just not going to do this anymore. So why would I go back there.
It doesn‟t make any sense anymore. I said that also primarily because it simply is not the kind of college
that we joined in the first place. And please don‟t ask me to explain why it‟s not the same kind of college.
TB: Any other thoughts or comments?
HH: I don‟t know.
TB: Do you mind talking a little bit about Dr. Radke and Dr. Boylan? Unfortunately we never got to do an
oral history with either one of them.
HH: Is that right?
TB: At least I didn‟t. It‟s kind of hard to talk about somebody else perhaps but it was good to hear about Ed
Arntzen and I‟d like to hear if you have any comments about Dr. Radke or Dr. Boylan?
HH: Yes, just talking about Rad and about Barney. We were really the same kind of generation of prof. All
three of us had had military service. Rad‟s degree from UW was probably the late forties, I‟m not sure.
Barney‟s degree? He was not Washington, he was Missouri, that‟s right. And neither one of them were
great publishers (and I certainly was not a great publisher!) and so we came about the same time. Our
memories were of Ed Arntzen; our memories were coming out of the whole GI situation in colleges, and
just so thankful to find a job any place.
I think that all three of us carried a lot of the load of the history department. This would be talking about
during the Haggard years, then Jarrett, then on for a while. We had the big classes and we did a lot of the
stuff relating to student relations in the department and things of that nature. The three of us got along
17
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

extremely well -- well most of the time, nobody‟s perfect. Again there was, trying to think when the next
hire was in the history department?
TB: 1964-1966 I think was big; DeLorme came in 1966. Didn‟t Eklund probably come close right after
that?
HH: Just about.
TB: Didn‟t Horn come …?
HH: Horn came later than that. Horn came when Bultmann was the dean for a while.
TB: That must have been 1967 then?
HH: I‟m wondering did we go that long without hiring? Anyway, the point is here that Arntzen and Keith
and the three of us were the History Department for quite a while. And so when the new people came they
were of course different and they just didn‟t understand. We‟d get together and kind of play -- ain’t it awful
-- and commiserate with one another. Radke stayed involved with the University matters probably all of the
way through his career. Boylan I don‟t think got involved in University matters, I‟m going to say at all, and
that‟s awfully strong, but not much, I‟ll put it like that. Then I was probably kind of in the middle of those
two. Certainly I stopped involvement sooner than Radke did.
TB: I used to always see you guys going to coffee together – did you talk about the History Department,
the University, or was it just a good social relationship?
HH: Yes, and we were the same generation at Western. It seems to me that it was myself and Radke more
than Boylan also. I think you‟ve mentioned looking out of the library and seeing Radke and me going over
– probably around 10 o‟clock or sometime mid-morning. It would have been after a class since we
wouldn‟t go before a class.
Oh yes, that‟s right, did we go back to the time when the Student Union was in the Performing Arts
Building, is that what it‟s called now? It was down in the bottom of the initial music building, way down
there. That‟s where the union was for heaven‟s sakes. I don‟t know if it was the union or …
TB: The Fountain Café or something?
HH: Yes, it was a café, well it wasn‟t much of a café, but I don‟t know if that‟s where the bookstore was?
Where was the bookstore?
TB: The bookstore was in Old Main at one point in time.
HH: Yes! Old Main, that‟s right.
And I guess we had the same attitudes toward things. I don‟t think any of the three of us got involved in the
Faculty Club when the Faculty Club was – well in my own judgment – an attempt to recreate the faculty
clubs that the University of Minnesota or the University of Washington or something like this. In no way
was that ever going to happen. It was over there -- maybe all of the time -- over there in Canada House. I
don‟t know if it still is or not. It was pretty much a place where people would go and play -- ain’t it awful!
I would guess there were not a lot of administrators that went there – that‟s just a guess.
TB: Just curious then of your overall view of the University? Like who really does run the University? Do
the faculty comments have a lot of influence? Or is it the president and the administration?
HH: Oh I think it‟s the president and administration. Faculty members are interested in what goes on that
affects them and faculty members would probably say that affects the faculty generally. But I think it‟s
18
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

pretty much – Well what does this have to do with me and the kinds of courses I’m going to teach and my
publications and things of this particular matter; at least then – sixties – seventies – the same people were
on the Faculty Council all the time – professional Faculty Council people. Again I don‟t know the names
that are on the Senate now but I recall that in my last years at Western that the people on the Senate were
the same people all the time. That‟s not all that healthy because you have the same people taking on the
administration – and I mean taking it on! It‟s an antagonistic kind of situation which is not all that great. I
would not like to be an administrator. I never had the feeling at all that that‟s what I would want to be. The
only chance that I had was – and I‟ll say chance that‟s all – was to be the (I‟ve forgotten the title) head of
the Canadian-American Studies program. I think it was when Jerry Rutan stopped doing that and people
asked if I had any interest in this at all and I said I don’t even have to think about that one. I think that‟s
when Monahan – this is not to say that I was first choice just to say that the question was brought up in my
office – took that position.
Yes, again whose responsibility it should be to run the college – I guess actually it depends upon the issue
involved. I mean faculty members shouldn‟t have the time to get involved with building plans or where
things go or should there be …. There‟s so many other issues that you don‟t have time to deal with that I
don‟t see how it would work, administration is certainly complex now. Oh my goodness! But in your career
in the library you are probably aware of that (laughter).
TB: Definitely no comment! (laughter)
HH: She‟s just going to sit there and grin at me. OK.
TB: Now is there anything else I haven‟t asked you or any other comments?
HH: I don‟t know. You see the more we talk the more things I think of.
TB: Right. We like to give you every chance -- you can even add it in later. Otherwise I‟ll just say thank
you very much, it was a great privilege.
HH: You‟re welcome.
TB: Thank you and that‟s it.
END OF TRANSCRIPT.

19
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

20
Harley Hiller Edited Transcript – August 6, 2004
Campus History Collection
©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED