This is Monday,
29, 2002. And we're doing an interview um for the A. S. U. Arizona State
University retirees association living history video project. And we're at
A. S. U. At the corner of rural road and Apache boulevard at the visitor
information center. And I'd like to let you introduce yourself um and
start to give me your your full name and maybe your position at A. S. U.
My name is Roy Doyle. Uh I came to a. S. U. Originally as a student, but
let me tell you about you probably want to know when I came as a faculty
member. Is that okay? I was a professor of education when I retired, I
came as associate professor of education and principal of the pain
training school uh in uh 19
59 it was the last year that Gammage was alive and it was just after the
name Change Initiative Back up then a little bit and talk about just a
little of your background, don't you tell me about when you were born and
where you were born? Okay. My grandfather was a pioneer, he came to farm
in West Phoenix in 1892.
And uh I was born in 1921 on a cotton farm by 59th Avenue and Thomas Road
very close to that, a close to Cartwright school. My mother taught there
And uh I graduated from Glendale Elementary School in 1935 and from
Glendale High School in 1939. I worked a year and then I came to ASU. As a
freshman in 1940.
About your growing up years you say your grandfather was a farmer. Did
your father? Yes he was a farmer as well. He was a cotton farmer. And uh
when the cotton farm failed it was during a period of time when it was
after World War One when the cotton market collapsed. And my father Who
was trying to buy his farm at the time and had a mortgage mortgage, stored
his cotton because he thought the price would come back up it didn't and
he had to sell it. And we moved to Glendale at that time. Uh we moved to
Glendale 1930 and uh I attended Glendale elementary school then. So I grew
up initially on a farm. But then I grew up in a small farming town because
Glendale was a small farming town.
It was a tough time. I had a paper route. I delivered both the Republic
and the Gazette in those days. Every morning I got up at 4:32 to go to
work and I carried the evening papers and would get home about 6:00 after
work. And that was my routine when I was in high school. And what did your
father do after? He gave up? Well unfortunately my father, he he worked
for a while, he operated a little store and then he got a job driving a
truck for the highway department but his health failed and he died when I
was in the sixth grade. So that was right in the middle of the depression.
So it was very hard for the family. I had two brothers and a sister and
my mother fortunately had taught. So she started teaching again. There's
somebody trying to yeah, quick break.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I know exactly what you're saying is great. Mm hmm.
Um, talk a little bit about your mother went and taught school. Was that
unusual in those days to have a working. It was the thing that was unusual
about my mother. She had grown up in Oregon and she went to school at
Oregon State University. And because the forestry program was the best
program, she went into that program and got a bachelor of science degree,
which was very unusual for a woman at that time. And she, her older sister
, I was married to the minister of a little church. That was right by
Cartwright school. And uh, she and Cartwright school in those days was a
two room school. She wrote to my mother and said there's a job opening
here. So she came down from Oregon and filled that job and that's how she
met my father, but she started teaching in Cartwright district when they
were only, there was just the principal and one teacher. Yes. And I might
say one other thing about that, that was unusual uh, during the depression
when my father was ill, he was ill for a period before he died. And when
he was ill there was a very strict rule that married women couldn't teach
, they wouldn't allow her to teach. She got a job working in the school
cafeteria. But as soon as he died then they gave her a contract and she
started teaching. But the feeling was so strong that there shouldn't be
two jobs in one family, you know and the woman should be at home and and
teachers should be single. You know. So yes. So we've gone a long way
since then. So you grew up with a mother that was educated in? Yes. Did
that affect your feelings about education? Yes I I think it did. I I
hadn't decided at that point I wanted to be a teacher. I think I became a
teacher because I came to the issue because that was really about the only
opportunity available to me. But the deeper I got into it the more I
decided that's what I wanted to do. Have you been a good student? Yes.
Well moderately good. I was a very good student at a. S. U. In fact I got
the more medal when I graduated as being the outstanding student. So I was
a good student. I wasn't such a good student in high school. I told you my
work routine, you know that didn't leave a lot of time for studying. So
what made you decide go back again and just explain about when you
graduated from high school, What year was that? I graduated from high
school in in 39. And I had an older brother who was at A. S. U. And a
sister who was at A. S. U. So I worked for a year before I came on. I
worked at what they called a soda jerk. You know I worked in a in a
drugstore uh at a soda fountain. And why did you want to go to issue? It
wasn't even no no it was Arizona State Teachers College. It was really the
only place available to me. If I went there I could get a job for my room
and board. And it was it was in the depression. Almost everyone worked at
A. S. U. Uh that the the school wouldn't have run without students. Uh For
example the cafeteria only had two employees. Uh Mrs Kraus and her husband.
Everything else was done by students. A friend of mine Don Ellis was
manager of the cafeteria. That meant he managed all the work personnel,
the students there and uh he uh the bookstore was managed by George Morel
. I could go. There was a long long list students just worked and and for
the most part they were poor people who came to issue because they
couldn't afford to go anywhere else. What did you do when you were a
student today Issue? What kind of work did I do? I started out sweeping
rooms, then I worked up to the point where I was the assistant to Mr
Hoover who was the geography instructor. And in those days everyone who
was in the education program had to pass a test in what they call
geography locations, They had to know the Principal mountains, rivers,
continents, oceans of the world, the cities and countries, that sort of
thing. If they couldn't pass that test, they had to take a required course.
That was a non credit course and they couldn't go on and get certified
unless they passed that course. My my job after I moved up in the world, I
taught that course as a student that non credit course for other students.
So did you plan to become a teacher? Yes. I decided at that time that I
definitely wanted to be a teacher. Why? Well I guess part of it was the
fact that my mother had been a teacher and maybe there was kind of a
natural thing, but I found I enjoyed it particularly when I got into
student teaching. I did my student teaching half of it at the old 8th
Street School which was on the corner of 8th Street was university, you
know, so it was a corner of what is now university and mail. There was an
elementary school there, I did my student half my student teaching there
and the other half at phoenix union high School and I just loved it. I
loved interacting with the kids and I just got a great deal of pleasure
out of it. So I was sure from then on that's what I wanted to do. What was
a issue like when you first came here? Can you just describe it for us? It
was very small. I think it's hard for people to understand how how small
it was. I don't know if I can tell you the exact enrollment but it was
just a few few 100 people. It was about, well I might tell you a story to
kind of illustrate when I did my student teaching at phoenix union phoenix
union was big, it was one of the biggest high schools in the nation
Because they were rather slow in building North I. And additional schools.
So it got up to about 5000 students. I was overwhelmed as a little
country boy from ASU. Going to Phoenix Union, it was so much bigger, had
so many more faculty and so many more students. So the nice thing about A
. S. U. It was small and we all knew each other. The fraternities were
just local fraternities, they weren't national fraternities, we had an
intramural sports program where we competed in all the sports and uh we
had Wednesday night dances on campus in the the more building which was
the women's p building at that time and it was just a fun small
environment
um described for us a little bit what it looked like, you mentioned the
more building was there, What other buildings? Ah Well East Hall was there.
I lived in East Hall and that the quadrangle was where most people, most
of the students lived. Uh East Hall, which is where the the high rise part
of of Hayden Library is, it was located right on that corner. College
Avenue went right through campus in those days. And across College Avenue
, the other part of the quadrangle was West Hall, North Hall and South
Hall. The women lived in those halls. Uh The other men's dormitory was
alcohol and alcohol was over where the life science buildings are now. It
was south, almost directly south from the well south from the the Gammage
home on campus. And that's south and a little bit east of old main who was
the president at the time when you were a student. Gammage was the
president. And uh we knew him well, you know he was such a fun person. He
we had softball games, you know, and he wasn't a great athlete, but yet
he'd get up there and strike out and play ball with everyone. So he just,
everybody knew him. He was when someone would come from off campus to be
to interview students when one of the superintendents would come to campus
uh that we set up a special table in the cafeteria for him, put a flower
on the table and all. And uh he would he would uh meet for lunch with the
person right on campus, you know, with the other students around. So
everything was very congenial and you mentioned his house was on campus,
his house was on campus when I joined the faculty later as a principle of
the pain training school. His son was in the in the school and I got to
know his son when he was a small primary school child and watch him grow
up to.
You were talking about how the campus faced to the north in those days.
Yes, I and I'm is this an appropriate time to talk about why it faced west
and how that came about? We might wait a little bit okay about your
student days. Okay. It was still sort of centered around the north. Yes.
Mhm. You mentioned about sports, what sports did you participate? I
participated in track and as a freshman and uh it was a great struggle for
me to win. My freshman numerals 44 which was the year I was to graduate,
but I was marginal. I ran on the the mile relay team, quarter mile. And so
we scored a few, we we had our competition with phoenix, what they call
junior college in those days. And Thatcher Junior college, they were the
Thatcher healer monsters as I recall and the freshman team at the U. Of A.
And the freshman team at an au and uh I I pull vaulted and uh and what
they then called broad jump. They now refer to it as a long jump. And as I
say, I had to pick up a lot of third places and into a meat. So when
enough points to get my numerals. But I was quite proud of those and we
didn't have, you didn't have the Sun devils yet then? No, no. We were the
bulldogs in those days. Um, Is this an appropriate time to talk about? I
was a cheerleader in those days. And uh, one of the things I want future
generations of, of the sun devils to know that they come from a long proud
line of bulldogs and the bulldogs in those days were as I said, we were
kind of the country cousins always struggling uh for status. And uh, so we
came from a long line of bulldogs that really grew up on the wrong side of
the tracks. And where as mean as junkyard dogs, you know, when provoked
and there was more than enough provocation from the U. Of A. They were
constantly putting us down. And our, our chant was one to beat the you,
their derisive response was 123 beat Tempe. They did everything in their
power to keep us localized. They were the university, very jealous about
the fact that the capital which they wanted when, when the 13th
territorial legislature created both A. S. U. And the U. Of a what the
people in Tucson really wanted from that legislature. It was for the
capital to be returned to Tucson. That was a proud old community, you know
, a century before phoenix was anything and uh they didn't get what they
wanted, but at least they got the university, the capital eventually came
to to phoenix. So there was a lot of jealousy over that, but they never
wanted to share this idea of university status with anyone else. So, so it
was a long hard to struggle in connection with that. So the old bulldog
yell, I'll demonstrate that for you later. But it was a very visceral kind
of a yell. It wasn't this intellectual abc type stuff. The the year, the
year that the yellow that followed was called with an A. And it was with
an A. With an A. With an A. R. I Z O N A. And it ended Arizona Arizona
Arizona state that is we, we were constantly reminding people, hey, we
serve Arizona, we're not just a little small town school.
I don't know if this is a convenient time to talk about this, but when we
finally indeed did beat them in in 1950 very convincingly in football, the
, to our dismay, the Arizona Republic had this headline, Can I show this
to you upside down there. It is alright. Yeah. They, the fact it
illustrates the fact that even though the Sun Angels now this was in 1950
the Sun Angels had been formed prior to that. The big boosters group were
the town cats, that is the Arizona town cats in phoenix. We held pep
rallies rallies at the Fox theater, for the matinee services on saturday
afternoon, trying to get phoenix interested in supporting A. S. U. But
that was a long, hard struggle and it wasn't until after the war really
that they began to identify with a shoe. Tell you about pep rallies. You
wrote something here about pep rallies and lighting the yes uh the pep
rallies there were and there hasn't been anything like it in recent years.
Um The student body was rather small, you know, in a high proportion of
the students were involved. I told you that a friend of mine, Don Ellis
was manager of the cafeteria in anticipation of the pep rally, he would
save the gallon cans in the cafeteria, fruits and vegetables and other
things came in and after we got enough of those for every participant to
have a gallon can. We, we, we had gathered sawdust from the lumber yard,
we filled those with sawdust and poured kerosene in them. And so we wound
our way up to the a on the beauty. Everyone carrying his own little can of
sawdust with the kerosene in it and then ceremoniously we let them, this
would be in the late afternoon lead a few years, I'll sing a few songs and
come on down the hill and then look back at our work and the a. Would be a
flame on the beauty. You know, it was very exciting. It was quite a quite
a tradition. Sounds like quite a sight. Yeah, it was fun. A little
dangerous to, well not really. Kerosene doesn't burn like gasoline, you
know. So kerosene was such a common uh product in those days because
people cooked on wood stoves and coal. And in the summertime they cooked
out on the screen porch with with a kerosene stove and the kerosene was
available in all grocery stores. You know,
I don't think they'd let them do that today though. No, probably not.
They'd be afraid of some litigation. Someone would light someone on fire.
They're the ceremonials on the butte, go way way back to the old lantern
walk, you know, way back in normal school days. So there's always been a
lot of ceremony on that butte.
Um You mentioned in here the phoenix town cats. Yes. Well that was a
booster group as I told you we were struggling so hard for status, but
people of means went to the U. Of a, you know, the people who wanted to be
lawyers and engineers and that sort of thing. The poor people that wanted
to be lawyers and engineers and the like they came to a S. U. So I would
say at least half of our students weren't really uh inclined to be
teachers but because of the U. Of a A. S. You couldn't offer any degree
except bachelor of arts in education. So one of my friends for example
Elden uh who later was a congressman and and uh I worked for the FBI for
awhile and was one of our illustrious alumni. He
he attended A. S. You not because he wanted to be a teacher eventually
went to the U. Of A. To get his law school. His law degree at Howard
Thompson was another very close friend of mine who became a Superior court
judge who was a student here. So it was the the people of means who were
the prominent people in phoenix that went to the U. Of A. And their
booster group was a U. Of a booster group, not a not a Tempe A. S. C. Girl.
So the phoenix town cats were you obey? Yes they were, they proceeded
they were succeeded by the Sun Angels. And uh and shortly after the Sun
angels were established uh they sort of died on the vine.
You mentioned that you're something about conference champs in 39 40. Yes.
The the interesting thing about our struggle with the U. Of A. We had
only beaten them two times when I when I joined the the student body there
but finally we we were very successful two years when we would have beaten
them but they wouldn't play us during those years. There was a ah there
was concern about recruiting which they considered a violation. They you
didn't have letters of intent in those days. And a number of outstanding
students that had gone to the U. Of A. And had worked there in the summer
were recruited by A. S. U. When dixie Howell came to campus. He was a big
star all american uh player from let's see Alabama and he had he played he
was a Rose bowl quarterback. And and when he came our fortunes turned and
and we had very good teams. They wouldn't play us in protest to that
recruiting thing. So unfortunately we didn't get our chance to beat them
until after the war. And immediately after the war uh we got together kind
of a ragtag group of of returning serviceman that went down to the to the
U. Of a. In an effort to sort of avenge the indignities of earlier because
football was suspended during the war. You know. And uh when we went down
there uh they beat us 67 to nothing. It's been called the massacre in
Tucson of that year. And it was and they left their first team in through
the through all of that experience. And the response was so strong to that.
It's probably a good thing that had happened immediately after that the
Sun angels were formed. They started support a. S. U. Not only athletics
but a. S. U. Generally. And from that time on phoenix began to identify
with A S. U.
Tell me a little about the war years. Um what happened in that period? You
were already a student? I was already a student and enrollment in from
1940 and 41 things stayed pretty stable. But after that when Pearl Harbor
occurred, all of us went down and you know, we we had registered for the
draft and it was rather common for the one of the problems the military
had. They needed just hundreds of thousands of officers, you know, and
they didn't have the training facilities to accommodate that many. So they
left them in school, the pilots, the ones who wanted to be pilots and and
uh Marine Corps officers, Navy officers and so forth. So we we signed up
and then in turn we were called to active duty and I was able to stay in
school to the end of my junior year 1943. And at that time I went on
active duty,
I think we were talking about the war years about where you ended up
spending the war years. Okay. I I went into the, I signed up in the Marine
Corps in their officer training program when I was called first active
duty, I went there, there wasn't room for everyone to be trained at
quantico Virginia, which those were the Marine Corps schools there at
Quantico. Uh they had to bring them in in phases, you know, so they sent
us to what was called a V. 12 school. And N AU was declared a V. 12 school.
So all the navy officer candidates and Marine officer candidates in this
area. And and from a larger geographic area went to Flagstaff. And at the
end I I went there in the summer of 1943. And in october of that year, I
went to boot camp and after I went on through boot camp that I went to the
Marine corps schools. And then I went overseas. Uh I went out from I was
hoping I could get back to phoenix, but I didn't, I shipped out from
Norfolk Virginia went through the Panama Canal out to uh the Pearl Harbor
area, flew from there to Guadalcanal and joined the the 7th 155 gun
battalion that was that supported the first division when they came back
to invade Okinawa. And then when the war ended, I didn't have enough
points to come home. I stayed on Okinawa for an extended period of time.
And then finally in the spring of 46, I came home and was was married and
in 46, returned, well, I see. I returned to a S. U. In the fall of 46.
That's right. And I lived in Victory Village. Then tell me about how you
met your wife. I met my wife in Washington, D. C. She worked for the FBI.
She she left home when she was 16 after she I mean 18 after he graduated
from high school, she uh worked for the FBI doing secretarial type work.
And uh uh Dorothy Doyle Dorothy strong in those days. She had come from
hibbing Minnesota and the liberty town for us was Washington D. C. Because
we were at quantico Virginia. And I met her at a dance there. And we
didn't marry until after the war when I returned. So you corresponded all
those years? Yes. So we were we were newlyweds when we came back to campus
and lived there in Victory Village. Tell me what was that like? Well you
know I thought it was great. In fact my we lived in a small trailer and we
had to share the there were common showers and and uh toilet facilities
that were in like a quantity kind of arrangements separated by sex of
course. But nothing like that available in those little trailers. And I
can remember my wife and we cooked on a little Coleman stove. Uh She I
really couldn't understand at first why she thought it wasn't great
because I just come back you know from overseas and I lived in tents and
when it rained off and you were out slogging through the mud and and I
thought gee how cozy this little places but she uh she didn't like it too
well but she she accepted it. Now Elden, my close friend uh had a little
daughter Caroline and she was just a little toddler at the time. And that
qualified him to live into the family housing. And they were much larger
units and they had their bathrooms and their showers and everything in in
the unit. So we were quite envious of of them. How long did you live in
Victory Village? It was called Victory Village. It was just a whole row of
of these trailers that had been moved in. They were located where Gammage
Auditorium is now now stands. And it was, it was a, it was a kind of
social life there, you know, we identified with each other and that was
just a little small community, you know? And uh, so that, that part was
fun. Okay. I graduated at mid year and uh, I took a job working for the
state entomologist until the next september when I got a teaching job in
the Madison school district.
What did you teach? Okay. I started out teaching junior high and I taught
pretty much the whole curriculum to my home room. Uh, I became principal
of that school later and uh, I left that school as principal to become
principal of the pain training school on campus. So that was, that was
sort of my entree into the back into the university
traveling here today. Didn't notice that before. Why don't you back up
again and tell me about your, your first teaching job. Um, and how long
you were there? Okay. My first teaching job was at Madison School # one
and I spent two years. It wasn't her at all. As I said, I taught just
about everything to uh 7th grade class and enjoyed it very much. I started
each summer I was eligible for the G. I. Bill and I I wanted, you know,
I've always been kind of a small town boy and on that I thought I'm going
to go to the most prestigious school I can find. And for teachers that was
teachers college, Columbia University, you know john Dewey, the great
education philosopher had been there and all. And so each summer I went
back there after teaching for two years, I took a year off and got in the
graduate program, taught for two more years and then went back and
finished my coursework for a doctorate there. And that really is what
allowed me then to come back to the the university and have some status on
the university faculty. So you always had ambitions beyond just being a
teacher. Well actually, yes, but not to be a superintendent or anything
like that. I I wanted to be at the school level. You know, I always wanted
to operate a school or teach at a school.
Okay. You mentioned the pain school. Um tell me about what what was pain
school. Okay, pains. The I. D. Pain training school had a long, long
tradition on campus. Unfortunately. It burned in. Let's see if I can think
of the exact date. It would have been uh
About 67 or 68. The school burned and set up temporary headquarters in the
old Cafeteria. In the meantime the university negotiated with the Tempe
elementary School district to buy the old 10th street school And the 10th
Street School. When they bought that five acres, it extended the campus
from forest through Myrtle over to uh to university. And uh the that later
became the the site where a number of buildings were built, you know, the
the fine arts building is there, the music building is there to education
buildings, farmer education building and and pain education building. Uh
But they were built on our playground, you know, as time went by and in
anticipation of the fact that damage auditorium was going to be built of
the flag pole was erected at the end of 11th street. That was that park
avenue kind of that comes in, you know, and and uh on you know, two ways
separated by a little park space in the middle. So the whole campus then
oriented to the west instead of orienting to the north as it had before.
So I was I was at that vantage point, it was from that vantage point that
I watched a lot of things happen at A. S. U. So tell me what year was it
then that you came, I came in 59 and uh President and I was so delighted
to be, you know, it was a homecoming for me. I'd always been so closely
involved with the university uh the year before that was the Name change
Initiative, you know, where everyone got involved in the influential
people in the legislature and others just absolutely refused to name us
Arizona State University. And uh so everyone got involved in the
initiative and I was the principle of Madison number one at that time and
I have been very, very active, you know, the university might have had the
influential people in the legislature and in various towns, but for years
a s you had been sending schoolteachers out to every community in Arizona
and we got extremely active. We all became very very active in that
process. Um Jim Cressman was sort of the coordinator of all that and he
kept us involved. And uh after the name was changed that very next year I
came to A. S. U. And uh it was so exciting to be back. I felt that I knew
President damage personally, you know, because as I said, it was such a
small school and he, you know, he was so personable too, he greeted me so
warmly like I was a long lost son, you know, when I came back to campus.
So that was, it was nice and what was your first job when you came back to
campus? I was principal of the pain of that pain training school. That's
where most of this the students did their student teaching. Uh We also did
a certain amount of research on various educational problems and we had
one way vision mirrors for every classroom and observation room. So the
education students came and observed instruction in all of our classrooms.
And this was the old paint. This this was the 10th street school that was
remodeled. Yes I should have it had burned when I. Yeah I should have made
that clear. They when they bought the 10th street school the purpose for
buying it. I think actually their purpose was the land acquisition but
their purpose theoretically was to establish a school They remodeled the
10th Street School as the i. d. pain training school. And that's when I
came when it was remodeled and new and and it was a very exciting time for
us
because it's we talked about here. Tell me how did the school burn? You
know I don't think they ever found out exactly how it burned. Uh The it
was really a tragedy. Uh I. D. Pain was so highly identified with that
school. He had laid out the plan for it and uh was so active as the as the
principle of it, you know as the head of it at that time at the time they
had burned. He he had moved more into the university generally. He was not
principal of the school anymore, he was a registrar and had jobs like that.
And uh also he was into placement services. No one was hurt or anything.
No, no, it burned at night. So no, no one was injured.
It was, it was a major event. Big, big fire too.
Um, Well tell me, you know, you came then to head up and headed up the new
pains street school or pain school. Um, tell me about how your career
progressed from there. Okay. I presided over the closure of the school.
The problem was that uh, they, there was kind of a general trend the
university was getting so big. You know, that a little small school like
that. We just had one kindergarten, one first grade, you know, through the
eighth grade and most of our student teachers had to go out in the public
schools anyway for placement and there was kind of a national movement
away from training schools and to rely more heavily on on public schools.
So we saw the handwriting on the wall, we could see that it was going to
close and progressively we started closing down. Um, the grades, like when
we graduated eighth grade, we, we'd not, uh, not included, not, you know,
we'd cut back to just an uh, lower grade institution and finally we closed
out completely and let's see if I can remember the date, it was About
1968 as I recall,
I meant to ask you to, you were obviously, you say you came here and Grady
Gammage was still president. Remember what happened when he passed away?
Yes, I I do remember how shaken everyone was particularly. We were at the
at the campus laboratory school. His son was there, you know, uh
Richardson who was the vice president continued as uh, as acting president
for a while and uh it was just a time of deep mourning. He was he was just
, you know, that the school was, he was the personification of the school.
So it wasn't like just an ordinary circumstance where uh, President dies.
You know, it was the whole institution was in mourning over that. Yes.
And it came so soon after this great victory. You know, he he didn't live
to see the memorial to him that was being established on the at the turn
of the highway there. You know, the frank Lloyd wright famous building.
Yes, he knew it was coming and he had been involved in the plans and
everything, but it was, was completed after his death.
It's going back to your career. Uh talk a little bit more, you know, you
say you actually closed. Yes. Yes. When when the school closed, the
founding Dean of the Modern College of Education was Dean G. D. McGrath.
He joined the faculty in in 1950 and he went through all of those
turbulent years. You know, when the College of Education grew separately
from the other the other colleges and we really became a first class
university, I joined him as assist as his assistant dean. And then when he
retired, he was replaced by or succeeded by Harry New Bern and Harry New
Bern was a person who had already retired as president of the University
of Oregon. He had been teaching as kind of a retired professor in our
department of Higher education. President Durham who succeeded damage uh,
uh, placed him as, as the acting, the dean well employed him first as a
regular dean following McGrath. But then later, when Durham left, he
succeeded Durham and became acting president of uh, of a issue and was
present for several years and he was followed by Del Weber and I was
assistant, well then they called it associate dean, you know how they have
the practice of not giving you any more money, but they changed the title
and make it a little loftier. So I had been an assistant dean under the
other two deans. But now suddenly I've become an associate dean with Dell
Weber and Dell left to become President of the Universe or Chancellor of
the University of Omaha's at Nebraska and had a very successful career
there just recently retired. So I enjoyed working with those first three
members of the Modern college of Education in the Dean's office. It was a
good life. How did you know, the whole college of education change over
the years from the time you were here as a student, You know, your
retirement, big, big, big, it just got so much bigger. But in another way
it changed to it. We just turned out a couple kinds of practitioners, we
turned out teachers and we turned out the school administrators, but later
we started turning out a variety of practitioners, education psychologists
, you know, librarians, whole whole variety of things. So the curriculum
broadened a lot. The first doctoral program was for campus was organized
in our college. It was the Doctor of Education program and that later, uh
later a PhD program was established in other colleges, but the doctoral
program was established, there was a great shift to graduate courses, so a
much higher proportion of our people were graduates. Then another
interesting change that took place as time went by, more and more of our
students came to us from junior colleges. Junior colleges were established
in Glendale and Scottsdale and Mesa. So a very high proportion of our
students now started coming to us in the junior year instead of the
freshman year. So teacher education had always been a four year program,
but under Durham, I mean under New Bern, uh he realized this simply can't
go on because so many of our people just aren't here in the freshman and
sophomore years. So one of the first things he did in reorganization was
changes to an upper division course so that you don't enter the college of
Education until your junior year instead of your freshman year, so those
were some of the differences. But I guess the big biggest difference was
just getting so terribly big and unfortunately we got more impersonal, I
guess it's just inevitable. But it, it wasn't like the cozy little group
that we'd had earlier. So how big was the college when you retired? Oh, I
wish I could give you numbers. I I can't tell you how big it was. But
large.
Let's talk about some of the events that you remember. Um you made a note
here, something about the campus protest in the 60s. Okay. Yes. Well the
interesting thing about that uh I was liaison with the Marine Corps. They
part of the ROTC was required, you know, in the early years, but you could
get out of ROTC if you signed up in a program that would get you
commissioned in one of the other branches of the service And the people
interested in getting commissioned in the Marine Corps and there would
normally be about 10 or 15 of them each each year. That would get
commissioned that way. I was sort of the liaison with those people on
campus because of, of my background. So I was, I was interested in
meetings that they had and coordinating them. There were lots of student
protests on campus with the Vietnam War and one of the things they did,
they dressed up a dummy in a marine outfit and put it on campus for a
while and then someone burned it at night and, and people thought and
because the marines had, had protested that that use of the uniform, a lot
of people felt that the marines had burned it, you know, to get it out of
the way. But actually I was sure that wasn't, wasn't the case. Well I was
close to the, the protest there from that vantage point that I told you
about, I was in the farmer building at that particular time. Let's see.
Yes, in the, I was in the pain education building at that time. But the
flag pole was erected at the end of that street by where the old business
college was and one of the, one of the big protests was the students came
in large numbers, they were going to take down the flag and campus
security got around the flag and there was a lot, a big struggle over
whether the flag was going to be taken down or not. And as I say, we were
close and we observed all of the hubbub that occurred and then they
spilled over into the farmer building which was our basic building,
disrupting classrooms and going through just causing all kinds of problems.
But one of the interesting things was, some of our people were rather
sympathetic with them and I, I recall it, nelson, Hey Gerson and others
when the students came in, they were really very disarming in, in the way
they treated them. The students came in wanting to fight about things and
nelson and others talked to them about it. We're interested in their ideas.
Nelson even said, do you people need access to an office, do you need a
telephone? And the interesting thing by the end of the day, there just
wasn't much disruption. Uh, they wanted someone to listen to them, you
know, and they thought no one would listen unless they just disrupted
everything. But by the time it was over it was it quieted down compared to
some other campuses? You know, I I think that the ROTC was housed then in
old main and I think there was a fire bomb or something. There was a fire
in that I wasn't close enough to that to know exactly what happened. That
was the closest thing to real violence that happened on campus.
It certainly was an interesting time. Um What about some of your other
memories of during your career or any other events that really stand out?
Think of anything.
I think we've probably covered most of the,
the big points. I don't think of anything off hand.
Yes, I'll think of a lot of things later. I'm sure that I should have said
, Well, as I told you, two of my close friends were Ellen and howard
Thompson, you know, howard Thompson well and I wrote a column in the state
press and then later when we went to N. A. U. Together in the V. 12
program, we wrote a column there and it was a column of just general
complaints about everything that went on. And we were joe college, you
know, and we didn't understand military courtesy and all that sort of
thing. And our column mainly was just to ridicule everyone that we could.
So we started making fun of all kinds of things. And and I remember 11
column that we wrote, there was a girl who complained that the fellows
were looking across the hall into her window, you know, and that she was
greatly uh put out by that. And and I can remember Howard was the
principal author of this uh Lady Godiva column that we wrote back and said
, uh people who live in glass houses shouldn't and uh the light. But
Howard Howard and I finally were called on the carpet because we had
written some things about, well, you know, how things are in military life
, this hurry up and wait sort of syndrome and all the kinds of
efficiencies. You know, the whole idea of snafu, you know, situation
normal, everything fouled up. So so we we played on that a lot in the
column. And the commanding officer invited us in his office one day, the
boy, we stood at attention, you know, and he told us, you know, your
college days are over boys, we do things a little differently here. And
looking back now, I realize that he said something in effect us do do I
have to really demonstrate to you how forceful I can be to get this point
through to you. We said no sir. We stood there and he told us to shape up
no more of that. And I can remember howard and I left convinced that was,
there wasn't gonna be any more of that. So Howard was a very good friend.
And, and as I told you, uh, also Elden was one of my close friends. There
were a number of others you had mentioned to me earlier Roy about the
alcohol.
Yes,
yes. Uh Bill Ward and I wrote that column, It was called as we see it and
we just wrote a column about things happening on campus. And Bill Ward, uh
, who was uh, one year ahead of me in school, he was the principal author
of that, that particular column. But it was, it started out with a
discussion of
as though it were a person, you know, that, so and so got grease on me
while fixing a flat tire. Uh, someone else, Don Ellis got lips stick on my
slave when he was out dancing at riverside and someone else spilled a
drink on me and it went on and on. And finally at the end it said, who am
I? I'm alcohols white coat. And it was kind of the personification of the
depression years and the fact that everyone shared everything, you know?
And there was in fact a white coat in the alcohol that got passed around
from one uh dance to another, you know? And uh so I just thought that was
such a great thing. I didn't bring the column with me. It reads a lot
better than I explained it.
Are there anything if you think back over all of your years at A. S. U.
Are there any particular accomplishments that stand out that what gives
you the most satisfaction or your proudest of? Oh
that's a very hard question. I don't know if I can single out a single
thing. I guess I was proudest of my years of leadership there at the pain
training school, it was a small school and it was very avant garde. You
know, we're trying to do everything differently. And uh we had a policy
that uh the things that we felt strongest about, we had an obligation to
state the principles as hypotheses, you know, and gather evidence to test
them. And I might just give you one example. We felt that that grades were
not necessary to motivate kids A. Bs and CS. Can you imagine anything as
outlandish is that? And so we operated the school on the basis of just
having parent teacher conferences. And we said that anytime you have
grades you try to distill everything you want to report about A kid's
success in reading 2 1 of a few symbols you know ACC or so forth. You can
communicate so much more uh Say in math with samples of the child's work.
You sit down with a parent and you talk with them and you talk about
what's reason, a reasonable expectation for this child. This child is in
5th grade, we expect 6th grade work of this child for these reasons, you
know? And so we set up an arrangement where we split every class into
beginning. As I recall. It was in the fifth grade. Uh we had uh 14 boys
and 14 girls in each class. You know we had a long waiting list. So we set
the the size of the class. So we took seven boys and seven girls matched
by I. Q. We gave I. Q. Tests in those days and previous achievement. Then
we gave half of the group report cards. The others never saw a report card
until you know through the rest of their school year. But there were
conferences for all of them. And then we had the standardized test scores
that we gave each year. And the interesting thing was we found that there
really was no advantage. The ones that had the that that worked for the
grades didn't score any better on the achievement tests at the end of that
experience than the ones who had a parent teacher conferences. So there
were just a variety of little things like that that we did that were kind
of pioneering and different. I wouldn't argue that anyone could do what we
did at that little school. One of the things that was a problem at the
school was, as I said, we had a waiting list who puts their child on a
long waiting list where you have to get the child on the waiting list at
birth if you want to get them in school, it's very sophisticated people
who put a high premium on education. So we didn't have a cross section of
Children that we wanted and I don't want to get into a long discussion of
, of how we, what we did later as a result of that. But uh, for that
reason we probably had a special group of highly interested parents, but I
think what we proved to the world was if your, if your parents of the
Children are really interested in education and if they'll come down, come
in about three times a year and sit down and face to face relationship
with the teacher and just talk specifically about what that child is
accomplishing a report card adds nothing to the process,
interesting, interesting. Um
really do you have advice that you give to young people today when they're
thinking about choosing colleges and choosing careers? What kind of advice
do you give? No, I don't try to give advice. I, I think very strongly that
uh, individual differences are so great with my own son, I didn't tell him
education is the greatest thing in the world you should come into
education. He had to find that out for himself. And at first he was
interested in biology and things like that. He ended up as a teacher, but
he did not because I encouraged him to do it and he's now chair of the
science department at Corona del Sol high school here here in phoenix. But
people are so different. And so I of course think education is, you know,
you can't have a better career in education if it's a good fit for you.
There's nothing that's more rewarding because you look back later, later
on a career and you have such a sense of accomplishment that you may not
get in most of the other kinds of of work. So, so I can certainly
recommend education, but I can also realize it doesn't fit everybody. What
do you see as the legacy that you leave? Oh, I don't know. You'll have to
ask other people that question. I don't know that I've left any particular
legacy.
One thing that you mentioned sort of in passing, I don't know, I don't
think even the camera was talking about summers in, in Arizona. Mm hmm. Oh
yes. You know my, in the summertime when my father was still alive. Um,
homes weren't, uh, cooled properly. You know, we didn't even have
evaporative coolers at first and so there was a screen porch on every home.
Oh. Incidentally when I was at East hall two, there wasn't refrigeration
or cooling in that there was a screen porch dormitory up on the west side
of the building. And everyone moved their beds into that dormitory in hot
weather that that part of the dormitory, they were just lined up along
that screen porch. And so that that was a common way in uh Arizona, you
know, to cool off in the summertime, families went to Prescott and our
family went to Oak Creek and I mean Wolf Creek which was very close to uh
groom creek, which was in that that area by by Prescott we would go up
there, we had a number of tents. And the first thing we did was we
gathered pine needles and the tent where the three boys slept, we gathered
pine needles and stacked them about two ft high in the bottom of the tent
, put a tarp over and that was our bed. You know, we we slept there. There
was another tent that my sister slept in and another one uh where my
parents slept. And then there was a tarp that we where we cooked and that
sort of thing. And we lived there in the summertime. My poor father went
down to work every weekend. I mean every week and then on weekends he
would drive up to be the family and then he would go back back to work in
the heat and that was a very common practice. Lots lots of people escaped
to the north in the summertime. And because you didn't have refrigeration
or cooling so you spend months up there. Yes. The only way to get cool
when I was a kid was to go to the Fox theater or the Orpheum and they were
refrigerated. You know, they were cool. What about on campus when you
first came to campus, the buildings where you had classes and things? You
mentioned the dorms didn't know they didn't have cooling.
Was that a problem? Oh, I don't, you know, I don't really think it uh you
know, school didn't start until about September one. We may have had a
disagreeable couple of weeks and then later uh you know in, let's see
school I think typically was out in ah
june may I think maybe the end of May. So we had a little hot weather but
not too much.
Um Well You saw the campus progress and grow a lot over the years. And you
talked about Yes. School that you took over. When did they build the
farmers? Okay. Farmer building. They started building that in 1960. I have
some pictures of that, which I'll show you. Dean McGrath came to survey
that land. You know, I told you they bought the old 10th street school and
I have a picture of Dean McGrath standing there surveying that lot and
they're beginning to erect farmer building there.
That was in 1960 and uh I don't know that I have the dates when all the
other buildings were built there. Ah
Okay. Here's the old bulldog yell, growl it out girl
girl,
full logs.
Our favorite chant when we played the university was one to beat the you
which sort of fed into their plan because they were the university and
their derisive response was 123 beat Tempe, the small town school
A. S. You waited so long for a victory over the University of Arizona when
we had our better teams under dixie Howell. They wouldn't play us. They
boycotted us at that time, We came back after the war and brought a ragtag
bunch of returning veterans down there and were defeated 67 to nothing
humiliating event. Finally we beat them decisively. And here are the
headlines that appeared in the Arizona Republic. So even though we had
defeated them, they were still triumphant in their primary effort. And
that was to remind everyone that Tempe was a small school A. S. T. C. In
those days or I guess it was a. S. C. At that time was a small town school.
Tempe beats Arizona.
Well in those days uh freshman had their own teams and uh it was a great
aspiration of everyone to get their numerals and in 1940 of course that
was 40 for the year we were to graduate and I was a marginal athlete in
track, participated in on the mile relay team, pole vault, Broad jump and
finally won enough 2nd and 3rd places to to earn that these numerals. I
was very proud of them And that was supposed to be the year you graduate.
Yes. And unfortunately I didn't graduate till 47. I gave three years to
the Marine Corps during World war two then came back and graduated.
Okay, I got this sign because I was very active as a part of the loyal
alumni were out there trying to convince everyone on earth that a s you
should be named a issue that we really were a university in fact, and we
had to be a university by name and it was a great triumph I think
primarily for the school teachers of the state because we were very active
in every community and as I said, I was principal of Madison number one at
that time and I was telling everyone that would listen that they had to
get out and vote and it went to the voters, it went to the voters and it
was an overwhelming defeat. In fact, the only county that it didn't carry
was Pima County and I think that it was an overwhelming defeat over
overwhelming victory. I keep thinking of defeating the U. F. A. Okay, let
me let me restate that it was an overwhelming victory and the only county
that voted against it was Pima County. And what year was that? That was 19
I. Of 58
Because I came the next year in 59 to the university.