by myself. Um and the date today is monday january 9th of 2000 and six.
And I'm pam Stevenson and manny Garcia is our photographer. We're doing a
interview for the living history video project of Arizona State University
retirees association and we're at the visitor center at CSU at rural and
Apache standard building. That may be torn down soon. And I'd like to have
you introduced yourself if you could give me your full name? Well, I'm
Jack Russell nelson. I go by Russ nelson. And what more do you want to
start at the beginning? You can tell me when and where you were born?
Portland Oregon December
18, 1929.
Um why don't you tell me a little bit about your growing up years? Did you
grow up in Oregon? No, Southern California From 1932 Until 1940. My
parents moved to Utah in 19 I'm sorry 1937. We lived there til 1940 and
then returned and I finished growing up in California and lived there
until, Let's see, I think I moved away in 19
hmm, 19
60 59,
and moved to Michigan
California. I lived in Glendale almost all the time. And was there a
reason why your parents moved so much or? Well, I don't think they really
moved a lot.
Yeah, they moved a couple of times. Well my father was ill briefly and he
found work in southern California in the depression era. And stayed on
there for until He moved away. He didn't move until 19 59. What did your
father? He was a hospital administrator most of those years.
Um Growing up in in California, were you a good student in school? Not
particularly.
Were you active in sports or? No, no, I was not a robust child and I was
not particularly adept at sports activities. I enjoyed being outdoors, I
liked hiking, but I didn't do much in playing baseball or things like that
because I wasn't very good at it and had been prevented from it by health
situation
as a boy growing up. What what were your plans of, what did you want to be
when you grew up older?
You know, that's that's not the kind of question that is easy to answer. I
don't recall that I had
Consistent aspirations at one. wanted to be a chef and I got over that and
then I I worked in a print shop during the time I was in high school and I
thought seriously about being a printer. I wanted to print High quality
one of a kind books and I found when I looked into it seriously, when I
was in college that there was a struggling industry for making fine books
and that there were very few find bookmakers who made a successful living.
There were a few in san Francisco, I did a survey in san Francisco to
find out what the prospects were and I found that in a city with literally
hundreds of small print shops that printed fine books, That there were
only two or 3 that were making enough money to make a living And that the
remaining people in that industry were right on the verge of poverty. And
I decided that that was not going to work for me. So in college I studied
business and particularly accounting and then aimed for a job in that
field. And where did you go to college? I went to pacific Union College.
It's a religious school in northern California on a hill that used to be
a volcano. And the colleges actually actually situated in the depression
left when the volcano quit being active
pam. Let's stop this for one second. There's some sort of yes,
well a lot what you need is triple glass
is quite frequently on this street. Okay, pammy. Okay. We were talking
about your education. Was it always assumed growing up that you were going
to go to college? Oh, I think that was one of the aspirations my parents
had. My father went to two years of college and that was quite a bit at
the time. He went to school and I think he came to recognize that the
people who tended to get the farthest were the people who went to school.
And so he and mother always encouraged me to go to college and I never
seriously thought I had an option. So I went to college and your family
was able to afford it, that wasn't it. Uh college was cheap in those days
, relatively speaking. And yes, uh they pretty much paid my way through
undergraduate school. And how did you choose? That must have been a fairly
small school. My folks gave me two choices, both religious schools and
that one was farther away from home.
Okay. And you said you sounded like you were interested in the arts with
printing books as well as a matter of fact I was. And while my major was
in business, my minor, the school had a semi vocational program set of
programs as well. And I worked in the print shop. I had worked in the
print shop when I was in high school and had become fairly skilled in the
printing trade. And I continued that when I was in college and I you had
to have a major and a minor my minor was printing. And I took it from a
wonderful teacher whose name was George J's, who was a printer, but he was
also a kind of philosopher and poet and he wrote poetry and wrote
philosophical pieces in his spare time and was a very thoughtful man and
well
versed in the history of printing as well as in the technology of printing.
And that was probably the most memorable side of my education there. And
I thought of going on there. There was an advanced program at one of the
eastern schools, one of the technical schools in the east and I thought of
going there. But that in the end, that didn't seem like the right thing
because I got married at the end of my junior year to the same woman I'm
still married to. And so I realized that I needed to be able to make a
living. And printing was probably not the way to do it. I finished up in
accounting and immediately went to work in one of the local hospitals as
an accountant.
And that probably goes back to your father having been, uh, well, my
father did that. Yes. And I'm sure that influenced my choice. Whether he
had something to do with my getting the job would be hard to say.
What was that? I finished college in 1952.
And so you grew up during World War Two. Yes.
Remember I certainly do. Um We lived in southern California and you may
recall that there were concerns about japanese air raids and at night we
would draw the, the curtains with heavy blankets over the windows to
prevent light from going out. And we had frequent air raid sirens going
off, but nothing ever came of it. Although there were reports that maybe
japanese aircraft came close to La. And I know they, that the submarine,
they had a couple of small submarines that shot some
shot into California coast up by ventura, but we never actually saw any
japanese aircraft, but there were patrols in the sky much of the time
during the war and we had a kind of wartime way of life with rationing and
so on. But you know that's natural when you're in a in a fight.
Did you ever consider joining the military? No. Because I was rejected
being four f
given that I had heart problems.
So you married in in college? Was that a big decision That you think that
marriage is always a big decision?
Yeah. And we we
we talked about getting married at the end of our sophomore year and I
would have had to have my parents permission and we decided it would be
more independent action if we waited a year and could do it on our own. So
we did. And we married about a week after the junior year was finished and
then went back and both finished the following year. And you were quite
young then. How old were you? Mm Hmm. It must have been 22.
So once you got out of school your first job was in the hospital. I was an
accountant in a hospital. And it was it was a very interesting situation
because I came in as a bookkeeper and I kept the night books so that every
morning patients could get an updated bill if they wish to leave the
hospital. And there were it was a small hospital. It was a small office.
There were three of us who were accountants in the office and the person
immediately above me got a job. So I moved into that position and then the
boss left. So when I was 23 I was the chief accountant and chief financial
officer of this hospital, which I think surprised a lot of people myself
included. Did you plan for that to be your career?
Well, no, but it it was what was available and it fit my background and so
I was happy doing it, but they didn't want to pay me what they had paid my
predecessors. And so I left after about six months as the chief accountant
and got a job as the administrator of Modesto City Hospital in Modesto
California and worked there For about roughly two years.
The fact that it was called Modesto City Hospital doesn't mean it was a
public hospital. It was a private hospital operated by a physician and he
had picked the perfect location in Modesto because the public hospital,
that is the, Not the charity hospital, but a public hospital for the
people in Modesto was located about 15 miles out of town. And people would
rather go and the doctors would rather serve patients near their offices
than to go out of town. So the hospital opened and was an immediate
success. But for a whole lot of reasons having to do with some bad
financial planning prior to the time I got there, I concluded I would be
better off to leave. So I left and about about two years after I started
there and the hospital prospered immensely and was very beneficial income
producer for the owners. And I went to graduate school
at UCLA. Why did you decide to go back to school? Well because I realized
at the age of 23 or 24 that it was very difficult to be the chief
operating officer of a hospital Working with doctors who were 45 and who
were certainly powerful and um ah not accustomed to dealing with
youngsters in important positions. And I decided that if I was going to be
a successful long term hospital administrator I needed to learn some more
and get a little maturity. And I went back, I went to college to U. C. L.
A. For that purpose. And then shortly after getting there was invited into
the PhD program and became so entranced with research and with the range
of activities in the graduate program that I abandoned the idea of going
back to hospital administration and charted a different course. And what
was your major, well I was in the business school and at U. C. L. A. And I
was studying finance and I became interested in the stock market and in
how uh stock prices were set how they operated. And I wrote a dissertation
on a very small piece of that question.
Was that for your masters or no. That was for a PhD. I got a masters on
the way because I was expected.
So how long were you then at at U. C. L. A. What was your, I was there for
? Years.
And why did you leave there? Well because I finished mm. Mhm. And it's
sort of a natural thing to do.
And we moved and I taught briefly in michigan and that didn't seem to be
the best environment for us. So we moved to Minnesota and I had a
wonderful time at the University of Minnesota. I went as an instructor. I
got my PhD awarded about six months. Well four months after we arrived and
then I became an assistant professor. And eight years later I was promoted
to full professor having gone up through the ranks and while I was at at
the University of Minnesota, I was nominated to be an american council on
Education fellow. And I interviewed for that. And I was one of the people
chosen in 19
It must have been about 19
70.
No 1966
uh to be an american council fellow. And I had the opportunity through
that program to work with a university president of my choosing for a year.
I chose to work for Arthur Fleming who was president of the University of
Oregon. He had been Secretary of health, education and welfare. He was one
of the architects of uh of national pension plan, Social Security. And he
had been a writer for what became U. S. News and World report. So he had a
very interesting background and I had a wonderful year at the university
should be able to get through that intersection.
Well anyway, I had a year. They're working uh for Arthur Fleming and he's
an extraordinary, he was an extraordinary man of great accomplishments,
great talent and I enjoyed working for him. I went back to University of
Minnesota because that was part of the deal and didn't realize until later
that they would have released me if I had wanted to do something else. But
I went back for a couple of years. And in the meantime, Arthur Fleming
moved to Mcallister College as president and he felt that student
government function in that college was under
played and wanted to create a circumstance where they might have a more
active and significant role in advising the president and hired me to come
part time for about a year and a half to work with the students and the
university and the college to develop a plan for an enhanced role for
students in the college. And I did that and one thing sort of led to
another. And about a year later, I was invited to become part of the
provost staff at the University of colorado,
moved to the University of colorado and the person who hired me Fell ill
three months after I arrived
and left the office and I filled in as provost for the remainder of that
academic year until they appointed a full time provost, regular provost
and then was named vice president for planning?
And then it became apparent that the administration that had come in a
year before I got there was in trouble and people started leaving the
university and I had additional duties assigned to me and within about two
more years became ah uh executive vice president of the university when a
new president was named and I did that for five years. Uh During the time
that I was in that position, a plan had been developed by a an intern who
worked for me from university of from michigan state University to develop
to reorganize the university with greater independence for the satellite
campuses. And so the major duty that I had during the time I was in that
office was to carry out the reorganization of the university that gave
full campus standing to the medical center, to the Denver campus and to
the Colorado Springs campuses. And then at that point a new president was
appointed and there was a change again in who was doing what to whom and
a person came to be the chief officer at the Boulder campus
almost immediately became part of president carter staff and ultimately
resigned from the university and I was appointed provost of the main
campus, Acting and six months later the the appointment was confirmed and
I served as provost there for four years before moving to Arizona State
University as president. So that's my academic history. What what caused
you to come to Arizona State? How did that come about? I knew that I
wanted to be a university president, uh the year that I came here or the
year that I was chosen here. There were five or six of us nationally who
were looking at positions and there were five or six positions and I think
each of us ended up going to one of those positions and it was, There were
two or 3 of us who had interviewed here and they offered me the job and I
accepted it. Ah and
no, I was in, yes, I was in colorado at the time as chance. What do they
call me Chancellor of the Boulder campus. That's one of the things they
called me. Well
most of them you can't mention on here,
you were looking to move from there more than you were looking to move to
. I was looking to move up. I wanted to become a president and uh I was
looking at at presidencies and this one looked as if it had considerable
appeal, which in fact it did. And so I I accepted when I when it was
offered to me, what was it about a issue that was appealing? The regions
had just approved a new mission statement for Arizona State University
which was to transform itself into a major research university and I had
spent, well 20 years at that point in major research universities, first
at the University of Minnesota and then subsequently at the university of
colorado.
And so I had, I felt that I knew something about major research
universities, about their special needs, about their goals, about the
kinds of work they did and that I could make a contribution in helping
asks you to transform itself from primarily a teaching institution into a
major research university. And I thought there was a lot of work to do to
make that transition.
What was your first impression of a s you the first time you've visited
here? Oh, well that it was overcrowded,
that it was under supplied with buildings that it had been treated um less
well than its competitor in Tucson
and that it was more likely to have more students in the future than
Tucson was because of the growth of the metropolitan area and that we
needed. I made a survey during the first summer I was here and concluded
that we were a million square feet short of academic buildings. Well, that
in itself is a major challenge to anyone looking at an institution,
particularly if the regions indicate that they're interested in filling
that gap. And if it seems likely that the money would be available from
the state to make it, make it happen.
So I saw institution building and the shift from a primarily teaching
institution, undergraduate teaching institution to one that had a More of
a kind of balance that would be appropriate in a, in a Pacific 10
institution. And we had Only shortly before become a PAC 10 member. That
this would be a very interesting challenge just for the record. What year
was it that you came here, 1981
june 1? Mm hmm. Have you been to Arizona? Did you know what about Arizona
? Before that? I had visited here a couple of times in the 40s.
I sang here at a wedding once for a friend.
And that was the extent of my knowledge of Arizona until I paid two or
three visits as a candidate.
Well,
it's long gone. Now the last time I appeared publicly was in the
centennial celebration where I did a solo with the jazz band. Let's see.
That was the jazz band that went to Disneyland and I think it's still
there. I hope someone recorded. Yes, they did. Yes. And the recording is
awful.
I have a copy and we played it once.
Well, what is it like to come into a university that you're not that
familiar with and to become the president?
Well, I think the first reaction that I had was that the, the people on
the campus, we're not very much aware of the action of the regions and of
the steps taken by the regions to come to that action that would change
the mission and the character and the expectations.
And I remember that I made a speech the first time I met the full faculty
about this, about the commission from the regions and the, their adoption
of a new master plan or master outlook for what the university should
become. And I think the faculty was for the most part taken by surprise at
that. And I talked about the importance of research in a major University
of Caliber of a PAC 10 school and I had the impression that created some
consternation among some members of the faculty. And in retrospect, I
understand that a bit better than I did at the time. How large was a issue
with that? Well. It was almost as large as it is now. It was over 40,000,
but it was on a campus that was desperately short of instructional space
where the library wasn't adequate to accommodate the needs of the students.
The building was small, the reading rooms were small. I don't mean to
denigrate them. They simply hadn't kept pace with the number of students
coming to the campus and I don't think that the idea of becoming a a
player more like UCLA for example, was something that had been right in
the front of the minds of the faculty. There were a few people who were
actively engaged in research a very small number.
Ah we didn't even make the list of major recipients of grants from the
federal government even as a footnote. And so we had a long ways to go.
And I think people uh
we're not necessarily put off by the change in expectations but they
certainly were concerned about how to do it with the campus facilities as
they were and with no all of the circumstances that go along with a
particular set of programs and and performance expectations in a
university that's not a major research institution. And so you have to
sell all of that and it's not a sexy package for most people. Speaking of
that didn't a issue at that time. Its reputation. I think among students
and other people was more of a party school than, well. I think that's one
of the myths of higher education. Lots of schools are rated as party
schools. That doesn't mean it's their major activity and I don't pay a
great deal of attention to the ratings that you get in. So in the
magazines that make those kinds of judgments about institutions, I'd
rather they didn't. But it seems to me that they overplay that
significance. Colorado was another school that always rated high as a
party school. Well, there's certainly a lot of high class parties that go
on here and at colorado and at every other school um high profile would be
a better word instead of high class. And there are certain consequences
from that, but I don't ever think that was a central activity here. Even
though playboy like to talk about it.
And you mentioned comparing it to U. C. L. A. I actually went to U. C. L.
A. Myself and I know that the standards to get into UCLA were quite high
and it was kind of a thought at the time I was there if you couldn't make
it so that you could always come over. Well that's not unrealistic. One of
the things that happened in California that that made the environment for
education in California what it is was the major role played by clark Kerr.
Clark Kerr wrote the master plan for higher education in California. Now
there were other people that helped him but his name is on the report and
he was clearly the moving force in that Clark Kerr um Divided the schools
in California. The public institutions into three classes.
There were the community colleges. Anybody could go to community college,
there were the state colleges. If your academic performance were above a
certain level You could go into the state colleges. If you were in the top
15% you could go to the University of California.
But the genius of the curve plan was that if you started in community
college and did well you could move up in the system if you did really
well in community college you could go directly into the university of
California.
And if you made progress you could go through the state college system and
then into the university of California.
So that the the structure of that plan didn't preclude anybody from going
to the elite institutions,
but it did set standards for those institutions that kept out many people
who in other states would be able to go to the main state university.
Well in California, there what 150 community colleges and there are 30
state colleges, All operated by the state of California. And there are 13
campuses of the University of California In Arizona, there are three
public campuses
and a couple of them have, or maybe all of us now have some satellites.
But Uh when you've got three campuses that are public schools uh that are
operated by the state, that's a very different environment than in
California and you can't have the kind of structuring here that you could
have there.
And as a result, I think we all end up um with a different uh situation
with the students then would have prevailed, then prevails in California.
I don't think that's going to change. I don't think it's a bad thing, but
it means that things are different and that you have a mixture of levels
of work That's different from what you have in California where you've got
one set of schools that only have the top 15%
good way to explain it. Mhm. Yeah, you talked a lot about turning it into
a research university, but you also had a lot of emphasis on the
educational mission. Well it seems to me that you can't be a research
university unless your educational programs are at that level too because
the people who teach freshman english are also going to be interested in
teaching PhD students in english. And the same is true across the programs
in the university and we were desperately short of campus facilities. The
library was inadequate. I don't mean it was a bad library, there just
wasn't enough space in it for all the stuff we had to have and there
wasn't enough space and for all the people who needed to use it. And
because we're in phoenix and probably have the best general library in the
city of phoenix, we also have an enormous amount of public use, lawyers
use our libraries, for example, other people come to the university and
use the library because it's the basic research facility for the whole
metropolitan area. And we did it in a very small space in which we
couldn't even display all the books. And the librarian who came in, I've
forgotten his name now, made a major contribution in rethinking how the
library should operate in building the collection through acquiring
materials that were not in, not printed, but we're on tapes and in other
media. And then we were successful in getting the the legislature to
appropriate money for a major increase in the scale of the library on
campus. And that was helpful. But that was just one of many things. We
were under, under supported in many of our buildings. Ah, it's probably
not polite to say so. But the University of Arizona had a significant role
in suppressing the development of the physical sciences here, particularly
the biological sciences. Their preference would have been that Arizona
state not offer coursework beyond that required to get into medical school.
And if you're going to be a major institution, you've got to do more than
that and we had inadequate space and inadequate support and that was true
in, we had inadequacies pretty much throughout the campus to become a
major research and PhD developed institution and partly it was physical
facilities. And I think I said a little earlier that the first summer I
did a kind of survey I brought in Hideo Sasaki who was, I had known him at
the University of Colorado where he was the chairman of the committee that
reviewed the improvement of physical facilities on the campus. He was a
famous nationally, internationally famous architect And he would come in
three or 4 times a year to chair a committee that looked at physical
facilities at Boulder and the other colorado and other campuses of the
University of colorado. And I hired him to come in that summer for a week
and do a survey of the campus.
And he spent,
he lived in the bay area and he came here in august
and spent all day every day inspecting buildings and inspecting the campus
and wrote what I thought was a brilliant three page summary of the campus
and what we needed to do and then subsequently agreed to be a member of
our design review board, which I established to help oversee the
development of university facilities during my time here and we set about
to build new buildings. Now, the reason I admired what he had done is that
we had had at the University of Colorado, An architectural style that was
set in 1916
and every building at the University of colorado is done in rural italian
style with red brick as part of the building. Red sandstone is part of the
building, tile roofs as part of the building. That's a requirement
anywhere on the main campus,
but today was very flexible and he came in in in that course of walking
around the campus for a week, concluded that the, the beauty of the campus
here came from its plantings
and that we had a wide range of styles in the buildings and we ought to
take that as a point of pride and that we should have always have variety
in the buildings and he recommended then that we seek the best architects
and make each building unique And we did quite a number of buildings
during those years. No two of them are the same. Some of them are good,
some of them are not so good. Why don't you talk about some of them? Well
, um I think the library is a particularly interesting building because
it's a very large addition. It resolved the short term pressure. Mhm. For
uh stacked facilities. And in the longer term it solved the problem of
meeting the needs of the students for space in the library. And because
the librarian at the time emphasized materials that could be on tape and
so on, the collection was able to be built up to the quality that we
needed without requiring that we keep adding stacks base because there
were other means of holding the materials. And I imagine that the library
is probably as big as it will get now, at least anytime in the foreseeable
future. We've got several facilities around the campus. They they do a
pretty good job with the students. And the change in the use of media will
probably take a good bit of that pressure off. And I I happen to think
that the new building buried in the ground as it is, was a novel idea that
protected that green space in the middle of the campus. And I like the
symbolism of the light that provides sunlight into the guts of the library.
And that that
pedestal, I guess you'd call it with, with its symbolism on the on the
mall. I certainly like the fine arts center, but then that's I have a
biased opinion there. But that was the first
full fledged competition and it was a it was an international competition
with an international jury And it was this the building that was built was
the unanimous recommendation of the panel that evaluated it and was widely
supported on campus right up until it was in place. And then there were
some, some people who didn't care for it. But I think it's worked very
well. Why was there a need for a new arts building?
We had a theater program with no theater
and so we needed a theater. We had a major collection of art without a
facility to store or how's it? I remember visiting Rudy turk on rainy days
when they would be rushing around in the upper stories of the what used to
be the old library, moving pieces to get them out of the drips that came
through the ceiling. And I don't think they ever lost anything of great
value. But they simply didn't have storage space. Ah They didn't have
facilities that would allow them to accept traveling shows because they
didn't have temperature and humidity control. They didn't have security.
And we have one of the major college libraries in the western part of the
United States, Western, we have one of the major
museum collections of art in the Western United States. And many people
don't know that. But if we have an extensive and important collection
because a lot of rich people who moved here in there later years donated
collections to Arizona State University that constitute the heart of the
collection. Almost certainly have the finest university collection of
turned wood objects as just one of the many things that we've collected.
And okay, that building has the, the fine arts building housed that. We
didn't have an adequate facility for the dance program. They were using an
old gymnasium and that gymnasium is fine as a practice facility, but it's
not a great performance facility and we didn't have a an accommodating
theater on campus. So those seemed important if we're going to emphasize
as we chose to do the fine arts on campus,
the fine and performing arts is your interest in the arts that come from
your background. You're printing, art, printing. It was probably
influenced by it. I just thought, you know, I guess I've always liked to
go to museums. That's what little boys who can't play baseball do.
Well, I remember speaking to you many years ago about a hobby that you
have. That I thought was sort of the fine arts. Did you tell pam about
that? Oh well I turned wood. I also build furniture.
I, you you couldn't have been better with your timing because I just
talked with a person in the east two days ago who called Me because a
peace of mind that I had sold to a very famous collector and turner is
going to go to the would turning center in philadelphia to be part of
their permanent collection. I did it peace uh, when I was taking a course
from Tom Eckert, I did a three part piece. It's three vessels. The largest
is about that tall and about that big around and the smallest is about
that tall and about that big around there turned out of palm and I
happened to find in an alleyway, a palm trunk, the heart of which was red
. I hadn't hadn't seen that before. And I turned these pieces out of that
palm. And then I made ah brass or bronze
Cap for each one and a skirt for the base. And so these are, these are
somewhat unusual and the person wanted to know what they were worth. And I
told him what I had sold them for. And he said, well, there were three
times at least three times that today. So I was pleased about that. So
when did you get interested in doing turned wood? I've done would work um
most of my life. And when I, When we moved back here after I left the
University of Colorado the second time in 19
91. Ah
looking for something to do. I started taking courses in woodwork from tom
effort and would turning looked interesting. So I tried it out and I've
been building furniture and turning would ever since. I didn't know that.
Thank you manny. Most people, most people don't. Well, I was wondering
which came first because you mentioned the collection. But Jacobson's
collection
collection.
I just wondered if you had been instrumental in getting that donated here
. I think the collection from Jacobson came after I had left. Um He was
collecting and I was certainly interested in the collection when I was
here but he was still collecting it but had an uncanny ability to pick the
next thing and he did it all of his life. One of his collections is by
what was the name of the famous okay surrealistic artist here. No here.
Yeah. All of his figures are tall and skinny and. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well bud
collected Phil Curtis before anybody heard of or before he had become
famous and amassed a fine collection of his work. And that's in one of the
museums now. And in one of his metamorphosis he became interested in
turned wood. He was the first serious collector of turned wood and the
first time I went to his apartment it was to see his collection of turned
wood objects. And the place was filled with everything from tiny pieces
that were as thin as paper turned as thin as paper. Two enormous turned ah
balls. And that collection of eventually came here to a. S. U. After
touring the United States. It's last stop before it came here was
the Arts and Crafts Museum in Washington D. C. What's the name of it?
Somebody knows
it's in an old mansion across the street from the White House.
It's a part of the Smithsonian. Yeah. Well anyway that's where it went.
And then it came here as a permanent gift and his partly displayed in the
curator's office and the rest is in the basement. But in in that lovely
storage space and is is frequently augmented now by famous turners who
turn in pieces because this is the major collection now.
So let's talk a little bit more about getting that building built here.
How did you, you talked about having the competition and the selection of
antoine was the architect was freedom. Yes, yes. Antoine product. It was
first, it was his first competition and he immediately run, won a whole
series of other competitions and ended up building several houses here in
in the greater phoenix area as as a result of people seeing his work here
in the flesh and being interested in it. So, had you heard of him before
that or how did that all come about of? We ran an international
competition and sent materials out to people to make them aware of it. And
he was one of the people who responded and I was not familiar with pre doc.
He had never been the winner of a competition before And he beat out some
very famous architects. There were four quite well known architects who
three others who submitted in the final series and he was the one who was
selected unanimously by an international panel because of the um elegance
of the design and its appropriateness for this environment.
You didn't have any say in actually selecting that then? Well, yeah, in
the end I did because they made a recommendation based on what the
competition had come up with. I could have said, no, we're going to do
something else. But if you spend all that money for a competition and you
get a beautiful design, I think you're inclined to go for it. So it was
your final approval. Well, I had to give approval. Yes, but it seemed
clear to me that he won the competition because of the find design that
he's superior. Was it your favorite? Also without any question.
So one of the things I was going to ask you is how your name came to be on
that building.
Well, you'd have to ask Herman chan in that the regions have typically
named a building for each president. Not necessarily early, sometimes
rather late. There's one president who's not yet memorialized.
He was here in 1930, 19 28-1931
and he has not got to mention on campus he was the most hated president.
But it's it's worth noting that he was the person who got this school
accredited for the first time we ran as you know, a teacher training
program and we were not accredited. And in the right at the beginning of
the depression, it was very difficult to place. Teachers who came from a
non accredited school. And so the region's brought him in and charged him
to get the school accredited
And he fired all of the faculty members who didn't have degrees. That was
50% of the faculty did not have degrees at the time.
Ah, He, it's clear from the record that he was keeping, the region's fully
informed, but he didn't win the popularity contest as you might expect
when people who did not have degrees that would make them acceptable in a
teacher training institution had to be dismissed right at the onset of the
depression. But other than that, every president has a named facility on
campus. Do you want to name him? I think he should be having, uh,
something named for him. What is his name? You know, I can't tell you
right now because I don't remember it. But then I don't remember a lot of
things. So that's not unusual. It'll probably come to me if I think about
it. I think he should have a building because he was courageous and he did
what had to be done. And then he left and had a very successful career
somewhere else. But in any event, every president other than him has had a
building named at some point. And the Regents made the decision to name
before we left and announced the name at our farewell dinner.
Did you know about it before that? Yes, they called us up to see if we'd
have a problem with it. I thought that was generous,
as you mentioned, that became very controversial building. Oh, I know
there were some people who didn't like it, but they weren't the ones
living in it, but some people still don't like it. I understand that, but
you always did like it. Yes,
I think it's a functional useful and from my point of view, an attractive
building. Ah I accept that if you build a range of buildings, not
everybody's going to like every building. Some people like the
architecture building and some don't. I understand that.
Um Let's talk a little bit about you mentioned. Mhm.
The growth of the issue and multi campus is now when you came here, there
was just the one campus that issue. Tell me about how that changed. Well,
the regions a couple of years before I came here, the regions received an
appropriation from the legislature to begin planning for a west campus.
And they used a little tiny bit of it, I don't know for what and reverted
that money
at the end of the year or the next year. Uh And didn't do anything again.
And then there began to be a very active movement. Uh And Lindemann was a
key figure in it on the east side, not the only one, but yeah, I mean, the
west side, of course she was a key personality in that and her position in
the legislature was such that she was able to be very effective in
promoting the idea of a west campus and
things began to move. And in fact the charge that the region's gave to me
when I came, that printed thing they gave me and circulated and which
shocked the faculty was that one of the things that was to happen was the
development of a Westside campus.
And yes,
although they had said they wanted that to happen. They didn't do anything
to make it happen. And page Mulholland,
who I had moved into the position of executive vice President,
became our representative to the legislature along with Brent Brown and
they persuaded the legislature with the help of an Lindemann two begin to
create the legislative milestones that would make this happen. And I
wouldn't say that we got into trouble with the regions, but they were a
little surprised that things moved forward in the way they did and that we
ended up with authorization to proceed and with some money to proceed. Um
, and I think they felt that probably the university had lagged in getting
their approval for these things and it's probably true, but they didn't, I
think they were disappointed that we hadn't been
more in sync on this. And I think the feeling here was that they were not
receptive to being in sync. And so the thing was kind of awkward, but we
ended up with approval and some money from the legislature.
And so we began looking for, for building space, found a site and acquired
that and then moved ahead and Gary McSheffrey, I appointed him to be the
key person on the campus there and
he planned and gained approval within the university and from the regions
for the first six buildings including the the, the power plant and uh work
building and then the first six buildings which included the library and
administrative facilities and uh facilities for classrooms and the like
back up a little bit about how did you get that location and all that land
? It's quite a large, yes, it's a half section, it was vacant and it was
perfectly located, it's right on the boundary between Glendale and phoenix
and is in fact in phoenix which made it a kind of an ideal piece of
property and it was completely vacant and we had help in acquiring it in
farmland. Um you know, I don't, I remember it as vacant land and
I don't remember the details. It seemed to me that it may have been owned
by a family who operated a ford dealership in that part of town and it
seemed to me that they have, my recollection is cloudy on this, but in any
event it seems to me that they were ah he and maybe other members of the
family had gone to a. S. U. Some may have been an alumni of the university
and it was an opportunity to to get a piece of land from a friendly source
at a good price. They may have donated a portion of it, I don't remember.
And it was, it seemed like a, an ideal location for the new campus with
ample space for parking and for expansion and it certainly has done that.
Yes. Well. And it also had good access from all the surrounding areas.
You've really seen it grow from nothing to have you been out there lately
to see, I haven't been out there for a couple of years. But yes, it came
from a weed covered lot. Two fine looking university
because I know the first few times I've been out there was basically a
library and a few other buildings and now it's starting to look like a
campus. Well, jerry McSheffrey was dean of architecture and so he had a
sensitivity to design that I think was important in the early years and
knew how to move projects forward. So it was a particularly fortuitous
choice to have him be the first head of that campus and we're going to be
interviewing him shortly. Um, anything special? I should be asking him
about it. We think
I would say ask him anything you want to
no secret surprise questions you can give me. Uh, no, no,
Do you know him? No, I don't. Oh well, he, he's irish and he has a lovely
irish lilt. Thank you.
One of the other things that was notable, I guess about your time here was
your relationship with the athletic department? Well, that was always
interesting.
Um
we had a renegade athletic department in my opinion
and explain that life of life. We moved from the
from one conference which is not a major athletic conference. I'm sorry.
They would take offense at that. But the fact is it's not one of the
major conferences even though they sometimes produce very good football
teams. And we moved into the PAC 10. The Pac 10. It was a conference that
had some really serious scandal problems.
I remember when I was at U. C. L. A. And they had some before that before
I got to UCLA
and ah the dean of the College of Law at Arizona at the University of
Oregon became the clean up guy And he worked very hard to help the PAC 10
conference develop a way of life that would keep it clean and it hasn't
been perfect. But they and the big 10 Are very clean conferences. The PAC
10 I think is the only conference that does its own investigative work on
infractions and produces its own penalties. They are reviewed by the
But the PAC 10 is intent on being a clean honest conference to the extent
possible given the demands of of semi professional athletic programs. And
so it has a unique standing and frank kush
recommended that we not joined that conference because he said we weren't
ready that we were not ready for to meet their expectations.
Well, that was a good recommendation on his part, but there were
compelling reasons why it's advantageous to be part of that conference.
And we joined. And the penalty that we paid was that we had a very large
number of programs that were out of control.
And I didn't fully appreciate the extent of the problems until we had gone
through five track coaches In about a two year period.
And
that was the point at which I asked frank Saxton, general franks Acton to
become athletic director And I think he fired 2/3 of the people in the
department. What were the problems with all these people? They didn't
understand the rules? Uh, and as a consequence, we were doing a lot of
things that were illegal
and then we were getting caught doing it and then we were getting
sanctioned. What kind of illegal things they were doing, paying money that
shouldn't have been paid.
I mean, that's, That's a pretty obvious one.
Just a variety of activities that were illegal, illegal recruiting
activities. Um, Probably the bloodiest case was the basketball coach. He
and his two principal associates.
No, neither. Two of those people have never been able to work in
intercollegiate athletics again, they are essentially banned for life.
They've had very successful careers in professional basketball, not as
players, but as as coaches or executives, but I think they were incapable
of running a clean program. One of them cleaned up his act And was a
successful coach for a number of years indeed in the PAC 10 conference.
But that's one out of three and there were just continuing infractions in
all of the programs I think when
Frank's Acton took over the program he fired roughly 2/3 of the coaches.
Tell me about frank Stanton. How did you get him to come and take well
frank is an amazing man. Are you interviewing him good
frank, join the army in the Mid to late 30s and rose to be a three star
general. He ran the tests of the atomic weapons in the south pacific. He
has done many amazing things and is one of the smartest
and wisest and most subtle people that I know and I found that he could
fix anything that was broken
and he became my fix it man which he was happy to do because he enjoys
working. And so we we have had a very good in fact I'm taking frank to
lunch next next Tuesday a week from tomorrow and
he was, he was a very wise counselor, ran a very low profile and
everything that I gave him to work on. He fixed and the athletic
department was a good example of that. He ran it for two years. I made him
not acting athletic director. I made him athletic director and he did what
he thought he had to do to fix the program. And so did you bring him in?
He was here,
he was here. He he's been teaching public administration
particularly public budgeting for years. So how did you discover his
talents for being the fix it man.
Yeah. Mostly by giving them assignments.
The people that I know who have gotten to be three or four star generals
are very, very capable people and they know how to fix things because they
don't have a very long time in office in any one job in the military. You
move about once every two years and whether you get to move again depends
on how well you perform the last time. So you come into a situation,
you fix it and then you immediately move on. And so in my experience,
people of high rank in the military are extremely good at what they do and
frank is exceptionally good. And he had a good reputation in town. When he
moved here, he became ah sort of a major domo for one of the governors and
he's been active in community affairs ever since. And he's he's just an
extraordinary man. Those things come to your attention and that's why I
picked it was
your relationship with the athletic department other than when you put
frank in charge. How would you describe that?
I would say that it was probably not the warmest relationships that I had
at the university though, I think in general, many of the people came to,
we came to get along with each other quite well, but it's it's difficult
to change established ways of life and it's hard for people to accept the
fact that what they had done for years is not going to be acceptable in
the PAC 10 conference. And ah I can tell you after the travails that the
PAC 10 went through in getting its own shop cleaned up. They weren't going
to take a lot of advice from people who were constantly in trouble. And we
had some very nasty confrontations in hearings with them over infractions
and the like. And it's just it was perfectly clear That if we wanted to be
successful in the PAC 10, we had to clean up the place.
Do you think that was the athletic department, surprised that you became
so active with that or did they think that I think they were appalled that
I became so active with it?
How do you, how do you know that? Well, athletic departments are generally
left alone and if they run clean, that's fine because what they do is is
an expected and major activity of any major university. They handle tons
of money. They have the lives of considerable number of students in their
hands and they lived by an arcane and complex set of rules which many of
them think are nonsense rules and so there's a natural tendency to want to
do things in a little different way if you can and most of the people that
we hired in were people who came from conferences that didn't have a
reputation for being crystal clean
and the people that were hired before you came? Well, it's hard. Yes. Uh,
we started trying to hire good people and we even hired some people from
the, from the pac 10 That were inveterate violators, but you know, I
didn't know that at the time we hired them. We went, as I said, I think we
went through five track coaches In uh, in less than two years
and ah, that At least some of them came from other PAC 10 schools.
And I don't know whether they came here because they thought that life
would be different here or if they came here and in a serious and open
minded way, but they didn't play by the rules and it was disheartening to
have a coach in and say, now, here are the things you can do and here are
the things you can't do and have them say, oh, I understand and that's the
way we'll live and go out immediately and the next day schedule a track
meet that was illegal. You can't, you can't live with that. One of the
coaches went home. I think in a month after we hired him because of an
inability to live with the, with the requirements. At what point, how long
after you came here did you realize that you were going to have to spend
so much time and effort with the athletic department? That probably wasn't
your original plan. It was not my original plan.
Ah
I knew that I that I was going to be in better shape when I hired frank
Saxton to run it and clean it up.
I don't remember what year it was. I don't remember how long. It's not
soon enough.
Well the department you have to understand, it's not just the department,
it was the it was the Sun Angels as well. Mhm. And I think in the end the
University of Arizona did a better job with their support group than we
did with ours. And the thing that alerted me that we had a real problem is
that they wanted me to sign a letter giving the proceeds of 300 of the
highest priced tickets to frank kush
and I couldn't legally do it. And they priest this, you can't put in your
final story.
They gave me a trumped up letter that they said that my predecessor had
written but had never signed. Well he said he never saw it either,
that they wanted me to sign. That would give them the proceeds of the 300
highest price tickets in the stadium which they would then give to frank
kush.
Forever
frank frank kush. Didn't work here at that point, did he? Well, no, he had
been dismissed. But they felt he'd had the short end of the stick and they
may very well be right. I don't know. He did win the lawsuit after all.
But
that's all water under the under the bridge as far as I was concerned. So
I got this faked up letter without the President's signature on it. And
they said well this is the draft he sent to us. And so I called the
President. He said well that's the draft they sent to me and which I
didn't sign and which I wouldn't sign.
And that was sort of an awakening for me. That was very early. That was
within the first six weeks. But I'm a slow learner and it took me a long
time to get around to to doing all the things that had to be done. But you
said you came here with your goal to make this a research university. Yes.
So I would imagine that. Well, I thought it was a diversion actually.
Thanks
and frank took much of that diversion off my hands and did it frank has a
way of handling people that leaves very little blood on the earth.
That's an interesting way to put it. Mhm. Well, he's had a lot of
experience.
Well, you want to talk a little bit more about what you did to make it a
research university? Well, one of the things that I learned when I got
here was that as one example we had colonies of animals in a number of
places at the university. But we had no policy on the care of animals,
you have to have written policies
on how to care for animals and you have to demonstrate that you're doing
it, none of our facilities would qualify. So one of the things we did was
to set out to fix as many as possible of the animal care facilities so
that they would be ah compliant with good practice. Um, another thing that
many people do is experiments with human beings. We didn't have
institutional policies, There were practices in departments that do
studies of human beings, but we didn't have institutional policies on that.
We set that in motion. Um and you can go through the panoply of
activities that are research based and we did not have them formally cared
for in the university and we set about to establish them in policy, get
them properly approved and get them placed in practice. Um We did not have
relationships with Washington. Most of the money for research comes from
Washington. And if you don't have access consistently, we had we had
someone Who made two trips a year to Washington for a week each, but you
almost have to have somebody living in Washington to maintain the kind of
relationship that keeps you attuned to what's going on. Mm hmm.
Ah Many of our departments did not differentiate who could be in the PhD
programs as faculty members. We had faculty members teaching in advanced
programs in the sciences who didn't do research and you have to deal with
that because if you're going to, if you're going to be doing research in
the sciences or turning out PhD is capable of doing it. They need to have
been nurtured and instructed by people who are doing it and to be sort of
partners in that endeavor. That meant that we had to rethink the duties of
some faculty members.
Did you have at that time a provost for research? Yes. One of the things I
did was to appoint Henry Reeves as provo as vice president for research.
And he spent a lot of he had been someone who had spent two years working
in one of the ah organizations in Washington Research organization. And so
he was connected back there. He had friendships in congress and in other
places. And I appointed him as our vice President for research and he made
it his duty, as I had asked him to do two bring these things to be be in
issue and to establish the kinds of relationships that we needed in
Washington in order to get money.
Did you have at the time, any areas of research that you thought you might
specialize? The regions had, Just before I came in, that document had
identified certain areas that were to be areas of emphasis at ASU and I
can't cite them all. Ah I know that the School of Fine Arts was one of
them, but there were certain science areas that were also to be emphasized
and we've tried to do that and I think that's still an emphasis here. And
certainly the recent hirings in the sciences carry that forward in a major
way, you know that in the area of the research for mars missions. Yes, no
, that had been here before and it has prospered. It's one of the very
interesting things that's here.
One of the other things that, as I was looking through your time here, it
talks about the major fundraising campaign went on. What do you want to
talk to? The centennial fundraising campaign was the first university wide
fundraising campaign that the university had ever done. It had done
fundraising for specific projects, the Memorial Union, various other
things like that, but it had never done a university wide fundraising
program. And so Lonnie Ostrom, who at that time it was a faculty member
here but was a fundraiser all over the country for training other people
to be fundraisers, agreed to become head of fundraising and development.
And it was an outstanding choice. He ran the first program, the first
campaign, which was the centennial year We set as a goal, $100 million. Ah
A very modest goal. We were never sure we were quite going to make it, but
we ended up with about $120 million. And the next campaign, which laddie
undertook with Bonnie's assistance Produced 640 million. So once you get
started and begin to develop the network to do it, particularly if you
have students who go into businesses that have unusual opportunities,
then you can go back to them down the line and get some of their, some of
their largesse. And so the second campaign has was much more effective
because of what happened in the first one and then the follow up to it. I
understand that now The next one is likely to be for 200 minutes, two
billion or one or 2 billion. So your goal is to escalate the amounts and I
think they have a pretty good list of where the money is now. Also have a
large staff working on doing that. Yes, just a couple of people. Yeah.
Has that changed? It doesn't seem like that. It didn't used to think of
the university president's job as raising money. That's probably one of
the major jobs today. That's one of the changes. Yeah. University
presidents used to walk the campus, sit in their offices and write
brilliant speeches and occasionally go to the Legislature and fundraising
is a major undertaking today and eats up a tremendous amount of time even
at a state university. Well, the state universities have to catch up.
one of the things that has happened is that the amount of public money
going into state universities has declined relative to the need for it.
And
the the money generally hasn't kept pace with inflation and it has
certainly not kept pace with the number of students. And you either cut
your programs back or you find ways to get money and most of the schools
have tried to find ways to get money
most of the good ones, so we're going to survive.
Another thing that mentioned at the back of your time here was that there
was a time when computers were really becoming part of our everyday lives
and we can talk a little bit about your thoughts about computers and how
that changed the university.
Well, it has affected or infected
every area of the university. You really can't function without computers.
And we had a few computers scattered about
and some very good people trying to build a computer system for the
university.
I felt that one of the ways to make that work was to require
administrative leadership to become computer literate and to use the
computer in their work. So I started communicating with Deans by computer
and some very quickly learned how to do it and would respond to others
never did. And I remember one would always have his secretary take the
message down then he would give her a handwritten response and she would
put it in the computer and send it back over his name. And uh that's all
gone now and a lot of things that should have been done a long time ago on
computers is now being done. and I think particularly with laddies
emphasis on the development of instructional computing that there's been a
revolution in the use of computers in the university. Well they're talking
about now, people can even take their courses and get their degrees
without coming to campus, I think well yes, there's no doubt that the
competition makes that essential,
that's what the university of phoenix does. An acquaintance of mine runs
there psychology program, you can get a PhD in psychology from them
without going to school on their campus.
What do you think about that? Well, um
I'm sure that in some courses you can produce a better course that's as
carefully thought out as a computer transmitted course has to be than some
courses that are taught by people who don't prepare that well for their in
in in course presentations.
So I'm I'm certainly not opposed to it and I don't see any reason that it
can't be done. Most of the places that I think are really good do require
from time to time that there be some in house meetings, maybe a week, once
a year, something like that where people can get acquainted. But I'm
certainly not opposed to distance learning and for some people, I think
it's maybe the only alternative
and it sounds like you started off with your communication with your
Dean's by computer. That was the early email. Well it was, it was, it was
email and it was very uncomfortable for the ones who had no computer
skills.
I've heard a lot of them, a lot of people talk about how they had older
people who had to learn to type.
Yes, with a different keyboard.
Have you always been kind of not computer literate before there were
computers, but you grew up in the time I learned to type when I was a
sophomore in high school and uh I ran a line of type that for a while that
was confusing because the line of type has a different keyboard and
that I I never got past that very successfully. But yeah, I learned to use
keyboards at a fairly early age. They were clumsy. I did my dissertation
work which required a lot of computation using a
a non electronic computing machine where you had to pull the handle
because you see Ella hadn't yet moved to the electrified ones for student
purposes. But that's all gone now. It certainly has seen a lot of changes
in your lifetime. Yeah. And the pace picks up,
Just reflect a little bit on how have you seen a huge change from the time
you first came here? Okay,
well I think in many ways it's much more mature. It's had a lot of
maturing experiences. I think laddie was instrumental in that
and certainly the changes that are coming now are emphasizing some of the
more contemporary means of analysis and research and I think it is it will
mature into a significant player. Uh, a sus significant problem, it seems
to me is, uh, lack of money and that makes life very difficult and it's,
it's also difficult for a school to raise all the money it needs when a
lot of people believe that it's getting lots of money from the state and
it does get lots of money from the state, but not not in comparison with
what universities elsewhere get from their states. And so I think the
university has made very good progress, but that the challenges are quite
large in Arizona. Hmm. And the tuition keeps going up to, I think the
tuition is very low, I'm sorry, but I think it's very low,
you know, I've, I've worked in two public universities other than here,
well, three, I spent a year at the University of Oregon
Oregon
colorado and Minnesota all charge substantially more than Arizona. And I
think we're hung up on the statement in the constitution that says that
the tuition should be as nearly free as possible. And I think the regions
have a tendency to place all the emphasis on the word free
and I place all the emphasis on the words as possible and if you want to
be competitive at a very high level, you've got to spend enough and you've
got to demand enough from tuition payers. Two meet the needs that those
students have for getting educated so that they will not fall into the uh
huh low income classes
as you look back at your career here. Um What is it that that you're
proudest of that you'd like to be remembered for?
Oh, I I don't know, I could make a trite statement. I'd like to be
remembered as somebody who tried hard.
Did you have any disappointments things you wanted to do that you weren't
able to accomplish?
Oh, you'd always like to do more than you can get done.
Sure, But you do what you can do and take, take pleasure in the things
that worked. Well,
one Question I'm always asking everybody is about just um your, your
memories of a s you, are there any special memories that you have of the
years that you were here?
Well, yes, there are. I suppose at one level,
some of the most interesting memories have to do with
with entertaining we
Through most of the years, we probably entertained about 5000 people a
year at the house. And some of the some of the groups that came in were
really fascinating.
Um
The
Graham, what was her name? The dancer Martha Graham. She and her troops
Had dinner at our House one night about 1:00 AM.
They had, they had done their signature performance
In the course of a residency that they did on campus for several weeks. I
think they were here six weeks
and we invited the whole troop over and multitude of others to meet them.
And
I have an indelible memory
of Martha Graham sitting on the sofa in the living room, holding court
with the people who came in to talk with her. And we had a little sheltie
at the time who positioned himself right next to her and she was sitting
there petting and talking with these people as they came in Another time,
we entertained walter Cronkite many times when we were courting walter,
the use of walter's name on the School of Journalism
and
Our stepdaughter, Donna came in from a dance one night and sort of flipped
into the house and didn't realize that Cronkite was there and we
introduced them and he asked her what she'd been doing, She said, well
she'd been to a dance and he asked her if she knew how to waltz
and she said, well no, I've never done that.
So, walter and his wife and Donna moved into the entryway of the house and
he taught her to Wall Street.
That's a unique memory. Well, Mrs Cronkite hummed a few blue daniel.
So the naming of the Cronkite school came about during your time. Tell us
about how that happened. Uh it's it's one of the surprising stories. He's
a graduate of the University of texas texas has never asked him for
anything. And
the head of the CBS station in town. New Cronkite very well. Carl johnson.
Yes. And he began courting him on our behalf. And when he thought he had
it to the point where it would work. He introduced us to him and him to us
and then we had a series of events uh, to get better acquainted and he
agreed to put his name on the, on the program. And
without tom chauncey we never would have gotten out. And the wonder to all
of us as at the University of texas didn't go after him. He was after all
the most trusted man in America and one of the most famous and why texas
did never go after him. I noticed that at the last football game, the Rose
Bowl game this year they had him doing a commercial for them. And that's
that's a very unusual thing.
But that's how we got connected with him I suppose The other thing I
remember we had the black a black dance troupe here and I can't remember
the name of the group. But the man who organized the group and lead it
is a really interesting man and we had a sculpture from the museum in the
front entry And he came in one night and I can't remember which sculpture
was there that night. But he came in and he looked at and he threw his
arms around it and he said I love this piece.
So those are three indelible memories
and you actually entertain these people at your home that was near the
campus that home understands now being torn down. Yes. Probably starting
today. Oh let's see. There's one other who's the famous cellist
Rostropovich. We entertain him many times. And ah
he was an interesting character who came to the house and embellished it
in an inimitable style. Mhm.
It does seem though that you're losing something that university
presidents won't entertain in their homes like that. Well
some do, some don't. Uh the University of California has official houses
on every on every campus and they have not torn them down. They have given
money to the president's to live where they wish. And uh most of those
houses are still in use as entertaining settings. I know chuck young was
chancellor at U. C. L. A. I think 30 years And they moved out of the house
about 10 years before he retired. But they did their major entertaining in
that house on campus. It's a it's a beautiful house in a beautiful setting
And you can throw a party for six Or for 350 in that house with equal ease
and it has a feel about it to people who come there that is different from
doing it in a restaurant or a hotel.
Yes you don't really have that opportunity anymore then. Well I presume it
won't.
Now maybe the president will entertain in his own house and far from
campus? Well
one other question I asked everyone, what advice do you give to young
people today that are trying to choose a college or a career? What do you
do? Uh go to the best college that will admit you
study the program that attract your interest the most. And my experience
is that most people don't practice in the field in which they graduated
and if they need other education they can always get it.
I think those are the questions that I had. Is there anything that you
thought I was gonna ask you that I didn't know that you don't think I'm
going to tell you that actually people have done that. I've got some of my
best answers with
june. What should I ask him that I didn't I can't he's already said so
many things that I really gave me an insight into things that were
happening when I was at A. S. U. That's very interesting. So probably some
things you didn't even want to know about. It was just a different insight.
Which which is why we want to interview each of the people you all have
frank's Acton will have a different view of things. I'm sure he will.
There is one other interest that you and I discussed many, many years ago
and that's your interest in photography and in the fine art. Well, I have
quit doing anything with photography. I'm no good at it. When I saw Jon
Schaffer's work. I knew that I wasn't going to do photography. Have you
seen his work?
And he of course he knows all of the great photographers. And they have
that wonderful museum at the University of Arizona. And I just concluded
that carrying that thing around and taking the junk I was was not
profitable. And I saw more if I just looked than if I tried to take
pictures. So I quit. But your interest at the time when we talked was that
was before the photography collection went, you know, to the USA And I
remember just your interest in it.
Oh, I think it's a wonderful art and I enjoy looking at photographs. I
just find I'm not very good at doing it. I'm better at making furniture
than it shooting pictures. Well, that's a pretty good talent. More useful
to. Probably not necessarily when you retired. You left Arizona? Yes. Why
did you come back? Because Benito wanted to?
Mhm.
That's the only reason you didn't want to. No, I didn't. Where, where
would you rather be? Ah I would rather be either in Boulder or Eugene or
swim Washington.
And why does bonita like it here? Because she has a network of friends and
she likes warm weather
and flat pavement. I'm with her about the warm weather.
Anything else that we should have talk to? Ah No. And I'm not going to
tell you the things you shouldn't have askedabout