My name is Val Peterson. I, I was director of facilities management at
issue and I arrived Early in the year 1988 and left in the year 2000. The
date of my birth was June 201938 and I was born in uh, in the Snake River
Valley in Idaho. I grew up on a farm uh, in a rural community, worked very
hard with my other brothers and my parents too raised potatoes, alfalfa
and wheat. What's a good life was a good life. There were five boys in the
family. Five boys. Now your parents, how did they come to be at this? Uh,
Snake River Valley Location. My grandparents moved there. Uh, we'll
probably the early part of the 1900s and homesteaded an area in Idaho,
Idaho would had been developed by some settlers who came there and found
that the volcanic soil was ideal for raising produce and crops And so they
developed irrigation canals to go with the ample supply of water that ran
through the valley and through the use of irrigated farms. People made a
living. Our, our farm was a little larger than some most. Most farms back
in those days were 40 acres But we had 120 acres that was all cultivated
and irrigated. I have driven horse equipment raking hay. I've also driven
tractors when we gathered and harvested wheat to take into the threshing
crew and so I learned to, I learned to make that transition fairly easy to
learn how to fix things. I learned how to fix things on a, on a farm. You
, you grow up quick. Uh you need to be able to do anything that comes to
mind on our farm, we had a jeep and I was driving that jeep by the time I
was eight, the legal driving age in Idaho at the time was 14 if it was in
the daytime, 16 if it was at night, but nobody worried about that. Now on
this farm, How close was the school? I guess you walked uphill. We always
uphill both ways to and from like, like most stories of the old days. And
uh if I went, uh most of our roads were graveled in those days, but there
was a, there was a highway paved highway running through the community.
Now this community was known as taylor and it uh it consisted of a country
store, a small country store, a brick schoolhouse, two room schoolhouse in
a church. And uh I went my first eight years of schooling in that little
elementary school. There were grades one through four in one room and
grades five through eight in another room. And they each had their own
teacher. And that may sound like a really awkward way to do things, but my
class was typically five students. And so uh the teachers, you know, class
consisted of 20 students roughly. And it was interesting. They would, they
would start on one side of the room and work their way through the rows
and and while she was doing that, you were doing your assignments, you
know. And then when she finished with that group, she just started
rotating again. So it seemed, it seemed very reasonable to me. Of course I
didn't know anything else is an apartment in the school. And uh, my very
first teacher was, was a sister to the county sheriff and her older sister
was the teacher in the next room. And so they shared this apartment. Of
course she handed down corporal punishment somewhat like her brother, the
sheriff. But it was still a good experience even for a first grader. Now
the extracurricular activities, I guess if you had a school that big, you
were on all the sports teams. If they had any, we didn't have teams. The
only sports team we ever had is we got in trouble for doing it. Our
teacher got permission to have a football game with the adjacent school in
the next community. And of course we didn't have any equipment pads or
anything. It was football. And so we played football with no pads, no
protection. And uh, I don't remember who won the game, but we, we had a
lot of fun, but it was the first and last time we ever did that because
when the superintendent of schools found out, he stopped it as this is
through grade school. How about high school? Where did you? I went to the
big city of Shelly And we had a high school of 300 students and I had a
class of about slightly over 70 students and I spent four years there. I
participated in athletics. I lettered four years in track and uh I took
the regular required classes plus shop, I dabbled in thespians,
I dabbled on the uh the book staff and I
also dabbled in student government, yes, yearbook staff, any jobs that you
had other than at the farm, The farmers were always looking for help. And
many times I I would go out and uh work by the hour for farmers stacking
hay or or hauling hay or or whatever they needed you for. That was, that
was always fun. But uh my dad kept me pretty busy on the home farm. As I
got older, we had a Baylor and he said, okay, when we're done, bailing are
, hey, you can go out and I said, I'll pay for all the expenses, you go
bail, bail the neighbors hey, and I'll give you everything they give us.
And so that was a pretty good deal. Mhm. And my father always maintained a
small herd of beef cattle and he gave me a calf wants to raise and gave me
all the feed and so forth. And uh when it was marketable age, we took it
to the livestock market and sold it and that was mine. So how about dairy
cows? You have dairy cows? We had, we had enough that I never wanted to
milk any more cows again in my life when I left the farm had chickens, we
had chickens, pigs.
You know, I was born and raised um just as we're coming out of the Great
Depression and farmers had it a lot easier than some people in the cities
because we grew much of our food. We always had a large garden and you
didn't have to use those ration tokens for during the war for butter. And
yes, we did. Yeah, farmers were required to do that. There were a little
more liberal on on rubber tires for the equipment, but you know, your car
still had to get in line with everyone else
gasoline. They were a little more liberal because you needed that for the
equipment. Um farmers were given some exemptions during that period. So
any recollection about the depression and the war years, you know, as I've
looked back on that several times, I remember that that was happening, It
was discussed by the adults every time a group of adults would get
together in the presence of Children. But I don't, you know, it didn't
seem to affect us too much. We did have a, a a group of uh japanese
american citizens who got sent to a camp that raised a lot of fewer in our
community and and they did send in a bunch of uh prisoners from Germany,
the german soldiers to work in the fields during that time. And those are
those are some of the most prevalent feelings and remembrances I had uh
during that time in high school, did you develop certain interests in
things like art or music? I really like mechanical drawing. I really liked
football. I was a pretty good student. I had been a pretty good student
all my life, but I finished number two in my class And my best friend was
# one. Were you on the football team? You said track you were on? I was on
the football team. I was a quarterback my senior year that affected me for
the next year. My right arm was damaged uh on one of the numerous tackles
that occurred and on at least one of them a chip fracture happened in my
wrist and the local doctor was was not highly trained, he was a general
practitioner, he diagnosed it as a sprain and he cast it up and uh
I actually didn't even cast it, he just put a splint on it and I used to
tape it very tight during the games and just learn to live with the pain.
But when football season was over, I I did go to a specialist and he
looked at it and x rayed it. So you got problems son. He said you've got a
bone that's half decade and he said you got two choices, you can you can
wear a cast for a year and or we can put a take it out and put a stainless
steel bone in its place. What do you guess I wanted to do?
I wanted to go with a quick fix the stainless steel bone. I mean it
sounded high tech to me but my parents didn't want to do that. So I wore a
cast for a year and it it healed it up. Although when when I got that cast
off I couldn't move my wrist, only just a very small amount. And it took
me years to get the movement back into my wrist. Now as I get older, I can
feel some of that coming back on me and it's probably got arthritis in it.
But we'll see what happens in the future.
Alright, So here you are, graduating from high school. And what happens?
Well, I had a girlfriend at the time and so I went to as close as I could
to home to college. It was called Rick's colleagues then it's called BYU
Idaho. Now after I finished that, I stopped earn some money to go to
school in the fall. And I worked at a mine that's not the normal kind of a
mind. Probably one of the few people that grew up on a farm that ended up
in a mine, but we used to mind palmer stone. I told you we had volcanic
soil on the west side of the Snake River. There's a large volcano flow. An
Ancient one. when that was active, there was a lake in their uh filled the
whole valley and the ashes from the volcanic action blew across to the
other side of the lake on the east side of the valley and deposited in the
mountains. Then I packed my bags and moved to Utah and went to school at
the University of Utah believe it or not, maybe you can't believe it
because you're an architect. I wanted to be an architect. I spent a year
in architecture. I found out I had no talent for architecture. Uh, so the
process drummed me out as they try to do in your first year. But I, I
still liked a lot of things associated with that. So I went into
mechanical engineering and that's what I got my degree and it was
mechanical engineering. And while I was in school I had the opportunity to
work for due to different consulting engineering firms. And I learned to
become somewhat proficient at the time in designing mechanical systems,
plumbing systems so forth for buildings. University of Utah is in what?
So now you're in the big city going to school and I got married while I
was a student.
So when I graduated from the University of Utah, I was not focused on any
more education at the time, but I had a family to take care of. So my
first job out of college was uh, at a nuclear reactor, I had some diverse
experience. This was back in Idaho atomic nuclear test site in Arco. And I
was third engineer on a reactor that really didn't need three engineers.
They had nothing for me to do unfortunately for me and for them I only
lasted three months before it drove me crazy. I mean, there was an hour's
bus ride out to the site was an hour's bus ride back from the site. But
the eight hour layover on the job was more than I could take. I went back
to the big city of Salt Lake and went back into consulting. I spent five
years in Salt Lake City as a consulting engineer. We designed heating,
ventilating air conditioning systems for all kinds of buildings, not many
residential, but they were mostly commercial retail, ah
colleges schools of all kinds and we would design heating plants, central
cooling plants. And by the time five years was up, I had a fairly decent
reputation as a consulting engineer and I thought that was gonna be my
life's work. But it wasn't,
I was, I was working there and I had done two major projects at Utah State
University and they both worked. I mean that's always a good sign when an
engineer, the stuff you design works and they were very happy with the
systems. And so they called me one day and said
come up and talk to us, we're looking for a new facilities person. The old
, the old guy here has been here forever and he's gonna, he's thinking of
retiring and we need some new blood and we need somebody who's a good
engineer and I wasn't interested at the time and I turned them down, he
gave me a month and they called me back and said well wouldn't you just
please come up and talk to us. And so I took a day, one Saturday I went up
and talked to them and lo and behold it sounded better than I anticipated
it would be. So I determined to take that job with with two criterias in
mind. One is I would keep it for five years and I would do everything I
could to make that operation a good quality operation. But the end of five
years I wanted to quit and go back into consulting.
And so that was the thought I had when I went into it when I got there I
found that I really liked the university atmosphere. I was doing something
different every day. Unlike uh some other kind of things where you spend a
lot of time doing the same thing. And so that was interesting to me. Uh it
was a, it was a vibrant area that uh I, you know, I had seen the other
side of it as a student. You know, it was all drudgery because I was
studying and taking classes. But you know from the other aspect you work
with professional people, you work in a professional environment and it it
really is a nice place to work stayed 20 years describe a little bit about
the organization,
how many people he had the campus? Mhm. Uh the campus was about 12,000
students at the time. And it over the over that period of time, it it grew
modestly. I think the 14 or 15,000 during the time I was there we doubled
uh the academic space uh because they were growing, wow,
I think there were about
14 buildings, a major buildings built during the time I was there
including a new football stadium and a new basketball arena. 20 years is a
long time to to fight the same battles over and over. And so by the time
20 years came out I was thinking you know, maybe I ought to do something
else and I was thinking of consulting but I was also thinking of other
things. I had made a commitment mainly to myself that because that's where
all of our Children were raised, that's where they considered home. And I
didn't want to uproot them until at least the youngest was out of high
school. And that was about the time 20 years arrived
when the headhunter came calling from A S. U. He said we're we're gonna
have an opening here at a S. U. Or I think they already had an opening.
And he said we'd like to consider you for the top facilities person in
colleges and universities, the facility people have a good grapevine. And
I've heard some things about Arizona State University that lead me to
think, I don't think I wanna worked there under the current organization
that they have For who would be supervising me, this is 1987
87. And uh so he said okay uh when I turned him down, he said it didn't
give me any occasion I'd ever hear from him again. And he went back. But
about a month later he he called again and said tell you what what if they
had decided to change the organization that got rid of all of the things
that you, I figured were negative. Alright, so I would probably come look
at the job then. And so I did, I have a scheduled appointment with me.
Dave Brixton who still at the university was there and he was competing
for the job as well as scott cole who was at the university for a time,
I wasn't prepared for the for the rigorous uh interview interview process.
I've never seen anything like that. I had interviewed for jobs. People
are not very many, but I'd interviewed for jobs and you talk to somebody
and they they ask you a few questions and then they either hire you, they
don't hire you, but what happened here is you end up in a room and there's
six or eight people sitting across the table from you and they have these
sheets of questions and they go through in turn and ask you one of those
questions and then you try to sound like you're intelligent uh in in that
process. And then that wasn't the end of it. Once once they got done
interviewing well then I was taken all over the campus and I talked to
vice presidents. I talked to Deans, I talked to the director of housing, I
talked to the director of student affairs and and all of these kind of
people who facilities would inter relate with. And and I was I was talked
out at the end of the day. It was a that was a pretty grueling process. So
who are some of the people that you interacted with on that first
interview at A. S. U. Well I didn't know any of them but after the fact I
found out you were one of them weren't you? Um My Dean may have been I
don't think I was in that position then. No it might have been jim wrap.
Maybe it was jim. There was somebody from architecture. Um I remember
jerry Snyder was there. I remember the Chief of Police was there and I
don't recall his name. He's been long gone. Uh Janice Burton who was the
man I would answer to was there anyway I figured you know I was I was
young enough I had a lot of confidence in my abilities and I figured well
I can, I can figure it out and deal with it. I went back home and thought
about it and uh the next thing I know is I get a call from genesis and and
he asked me something that really boggled my mind. He said, I want to come
to campus and interview your people and see what they think of you. And I
said, genesis, you can't do that. Nobody here knows that I'm I'm even
looking at a job and he said, well, you know, we're not gonna hire you
until we, we come and see what kind of a job you're doing. So I talked to
him about, you know, some possibilities what he might do. And and he said
, okay, I'll try to do that. But he, he actually came to the campus, uh
set up a whole series of interviews just like I had gone through uh had a
tour of the campus and I only saw him for one of one of the group
interviews I was in. And somehow he, he must have done a pretty decent job
of of faking it because I didn't have the next day, one person come and
ask me what in the world was going on. He was just on a fact finding
mission for you and your name wasn't involved.
Anyway, that was, that was an experience that I thought was pretty unique.
I've never heard that happen before. But he must have liked what he saw
because then he went home and pretty soon he sent me a letter offering me
a job. So you must have had some happy people that worked for you back in
Salt Lake there. That was in Logan where the university was. Yeah. Yeah.
The University of Utah in Salt Lake Utah State is in Logan Utah yes, I was
actually president of the Chamber of Commerce in the city at that time and
I had to, I had to make some trips back after I got to Arizona to finish
out my year as president. So we've become pretty well ingrained into the
community after 20 years. I think the people that that knew me appreciated
me and what was your family size at this point? We had six Children and I
like to tell people because it was the number which I was raised, they
were all boys except five. So I had five daughters and one son. Okay.
How'd the job work out?
Well, uh, the warning that, that those people talk to me about uh, during
the interview,
we're pretty obvious once I got to the organization,
there was low morale. There was a lot of discord in the organization.
They had no confidence in the leadership of the department and they were
starting to unionize. I mean that's as bad as it gets and not only that,
but the university wasn't very happy with us either because we weren't
doing the kind of job we all have been doing. So uh, I was committed to
make it work. And so what I did is I I started to meet with all the the
units in in the operation and I had devised in the meantime a five year
plan that if we if we do these kinds of things and I had a series of goals
set up, I told them if we do these sort of things in five years, we'll
have one of the premium facilities management organizations in the country
and that that sort of feel caught fire with with the people and and they
got behind me. Uh The other thing I had to do was have a whole series of
meetings with everybody at the university that uh that we did work for the
provost, the Dean's, the vice presidents and and areas that we did a lot
of work with like housing and athletics and commit to them. That this is
my plan that we're working on, give us a little bit of a break and we'll
soon be there. How about just describing some of the units in your
organization that you were managing. It was, it was, it was a pretty
diverse group, probably more diverse than any other unit within the
university. I had all of the, well we had our administrative people, we
had a budget officer. We had a a human resource officer and and we had our
own computer uh specialists. But we also had all of the trades, plumbing,
air conditioning, electrical, all of those shops that were part of that
operation. We had the central plant uh There was the motor pool in the
garage, There was custodial grounds.
I fear I'm forgetting someone. But but it was About 600 people. All right
to to do all of that maintenance for for the institution. It was always a
pretty good sized operation. It was, it was about three times larger than
the one I had left it Utah State. So it was a pretty big ship to turn
pretty unruly ship. Well, we were starting to make some real progress that
first year I think I felt. And then lo and behold Vic's Afra threw a curve
at me. He called me over one day and he said genesis is going to take a
sabbatical. I want him to go out and learn more about properties and
property acquisition and he's gonna be gone a year. I'm looking for
someone to replace him over here for a year. So, you know. Well, I'm the
new kid on the block. Why me now, what were his responsibilities? He
supervised facilities management, planning, construction and purchasing.
So planning and construction was not under you at that time. Not at that
time, it was later but not then. And who who had that operation at that
time planning, construction, It was under Henry moore karate, long story
short uh I went over there for a year and sat in genesis office fought
genesis battles and
the day to day supervision over facilities management kind of suffered
because I had lots of other obligations,
not the least of which we're negotiating with srp for some new contracts.
And so things sort of slipped during that year on my five year plan when
I got back, we had a little rebuilding to do and they got behind us again
and we started moving. And I felt that by the time we finished five years
, we had pretty well done a lot of things that had uh had placed us where
I wanted to be at that point in time, morale was up. They no longer wanted
to unionize. People were speaking to me. Uh I wish they weren't before. Uh
And and and there was, there was just a lot of good feeling in the
organization. In fact, a little later on, a fellow came from Denmark, not
Denmark, from the Netherlands, who wanted to do a sabbatical at our place
because he thought we were doing a good job. And after he had been with us
for he for about two weeks, he came to me and said, ah, I can't get over
your people. And I said, what do you mean? I can't get over my people. He
says they're happy now, who's sure they're happy. He says, my people
aren't happy. And I said, well, you gotta work on that anyway. He said
that isn't the europe way, you know, employees never even if they're happy
, they don't pretend to be happy. So that was the thing that amazed him
most about the organization. People were happy. Well that's the thing
about that kind of business is you only hear from people if they're
unhappy. Uh usually usually within the organization and outside the
organization. Uh we had a lot of customers as you might. Well, no, I mean
students were our customers. They didn't always feel a need to come talk
to us, but the faculty weren't the easiest people in the world, please,
neither were the dean's or the vice presidents or the provost. But we did
our best. Ah how about talking about some of yours star performers, you
had some notable people working in your organization.
I did Dave Dave Webb was over the grounds at the time and uh he was, he
was a mover and a shaker and when I got to the campus, that was one thing
we could be proud of. The campus looked great and it was mainly because of
the attitude of the people at the top and he had a lot of good ideas. He
was a very creative person and and in fact it hadn't been very long after
I got to the institution that the associated students passed a resolution
giving appreciation to the facilities organization for the outstanding
care that they gave the grounds in support of providing a good atmosphere
for the students to be educated in as the campus progressed, it was
obvious that the campus was growing and it was squeezing our grounds
tighter and tighter all the time. And and we had never operated under any
sort of a a plan, you know of what we wanted to do and in talking with
Dave Webb he felt that if we could get designated as an arboretum it would
provide some some guidelines for us. It would provide some rules that that
may prevent some bad things from happening. It would provide some
opportunities for funding as well as for exposure. And so uh I petitioned
the president was last week or at the time about the possibility of
creating an arboretum and he liked the idea and so he just waved his wand
and said we were in arboretum and we started from there and it's opened a
lot of good things for us. Okay. You mentioned victor's afra that you
worked for him for a year. Any stories about the victors? Afra era, well
anybody that knows victor knows that, you know victor background was in
the office of budgets and whatever management back in Washington D. C. And
he brought a lot of bureaucracy with him when he came to a issue and and
he uh he had the reputation of being a micro manager among the people that
worked under him. Uh He would he would have you do issue papers on
everything that you wanted to do. You got to the point where you wondered
if you should take an issue to him to resolve because it just meant a lot
of work for it. You had to do an issue paper but you know in working with
him over that year um I come to understand him better, I didn't
necessarily agree with him on everything he did but I think I think with
some of the discipline he showed me uh he made me probably a better
manager and leader than I was before and so you know I have to give him
some credit if I had any success. Is why perhaps he helped along the way
your facilities where you operated from was over there at Mcallister and
uh university and tell us a little bit about that operation. Seems like it
was getting squeezed down as you grow. Well It was only about 10 years old
when I arrived there and it had been designed specifically for the
facilities group But a lot of growth that occurred over those 10 years all
the shops were situated so that they were butting one another and they all
had a DACA comin doc and a place where they could load up and unload
things and it was it was probably one of the at the time it was built it
was probably one of the best facilities operations in the whole country
but we have got to the point where we were busting at the seams and we had
to start moving uh units here hither and yon to to make ends meet and so
we, we created some, some spaces here and they're built some metal
buildings, uh renovated some uh quonset huts that happened to be on the
property and, and, and we're just getting by. When I left, we were still
searching for space. So the USB came after you, wow,
that's one of my accomplishments. I feel getting that new space even
though I had nothing to do with putting facilities there. Yeah, for years
that pen more old pen, more building that was there had come up for sale
and I would go to the university administration, my boss, you know, we're
gonna need this someday. You ought to buy that. No, we don't have the
money now, we don't have a need for it. And finally after half a dozen of
those kinds of things happened, it came up at a price that it was hard to
turn down. I think it was a bankruptcy sale and uh they decided to pick it
up. Well, it's a good thing because the the nice offices that I was
talking to you about are now converted to academic and research facilities.
The facilities and and human resources and and the controllers group had
moved, moved there that gave them a good adjacent to the campus site that
I would have not been available. Uh, probably about the time they made
that move. If they hadn't have acquired that property, wasn't it Laddie
core who said we're not going to go beyond the perimeter of this present
site. We're not going to buy any more land. He was kind of limiting the
main, main campus I think at one point. Well that was a, that was a
situation that that came and went over the years. Um, that limiting the
growth of the campus and limiting the number of students. But when push
comes to shove, they always let more students come. So I think eventually
the handwriting was on the wall. We can't, we can't stay within those
confines and, and, and make it work. Were you a member of any professional
organizations along the way that helped you guided you with your
management of facilities?
Yes, I've always been a member of an organization that was formerly called
Apa, the Association of Physical Plant administrators. They've now
expanded that name and upgraded it to be more current with today's names,
but that's an international association that I was president of at one
time Back in the 80s and we also had a regional association. There, there
are many regions of that organization that operate on more local scale and
I was a member of the Rocky Mountain Association, which I was president of
that at one time to outline a few of the what you might consider major
accomplishments that happened during your era.
Well, I thought that was an accomplishment to get the kudo from the
students. Uh, you know, that was, that was one that, uh, that was totally
unexpected, but it was, it was really a wonderful thing to have happened.
But in addition to that, there were, there were many, many other things
that I felt we were able to accomplish over the, over the years, the
organization that I had sort of evolved to the point where people were
willing to do things for the betterment of the entire organization. They
weren't just myopically looking, you know, how it affects them. And so we
used to get a lot of really good suggestions that came from our people and
I solicited those and many of those we implemented and uh, and they worked.
But one of the, one of the things that was obvious to me when I first
went to the organization was that key control was non existent. I looked
at a report that there was thousands of keys that have been issued to
individuals that nobody knew where they were. The individual that
supposedly had them said I gave those to somebody else. And there was no
good way of controlling at, Well, I was concerned enough about the safety
on campus. I made it or I generated a report for the administration and
sent it to them and of course that caused a concern there. And so laddie
core promptly appointed me chair of a key policy committee, campus-wide
group over over a period of a couple of years, we were able to kind of
pull that all together and I think now the university is operating under a
pretty good system. That another thing that uh that happened is we didn't
have a very good preventive maintenance program. It was kind of, you know
, if we have time, why we'll go do some preventive maintenance here or
there and that's not any good because you know, it's a proven fact that if
you don't maintain your equipment, it's not gonna last as long as it's
going to break down more and it's not going to be as efficient. And so we
we developed a, what I thought was a good preventive maintenance program.
And I was really proud of the roofing program because they just didn't
have a program of preventive maintenance and roofing, you know, in Arizona
it doesn't rain, but when it does it pours. So I had, I had implemented a
program at Utah State where you use a non detect non destructive ble a
moisture detector that you you grid your roofs and you go through that
grid and it'll tell you where you've got moisture and how much moisture
and so instead of tearing off a whole roof and fixing it. Yeah, you fix
the parts that where the water's been causing problems. One of the other
problems I found was in the shops, they were all maintaining their own
inventory of materials and products
and I didn't think that was a very good idea who it was too many things
could walk away without people knowing it. And it just wasn't very secure.
So I created a central maintenance stores and there wasn't a real popular
thing to do among the foreman at the time. But I think they understood
that uh, you know, times are changing and they had to get with, do what
the big boys were doing because at that particular time we were, we were
the big boys when they needed it, why they had to go to the central stores
and check it out so that we had a record of who got the materials, how
much they got. Uh, and where it went. One of the things that I thought was
was pretty neat is uh, as you drive down the highways, you see adopt a
highway signs all over and I got the idea that I think we ought to adopt
that on campus and have adopt the mall program. So I got with Dave Webb
and of course he, he ate it up. He wanted to do it and we did that and it
was very successful. I don't know if it's still going, but you know the
fraternities and the sororities all had to give service hours and they
just loved that program because it gave them a a way to contribute back
and help the campus. And so it was, that was, that was a good thing to do.
The other thing, we was a broad based group that talked about the issues
of cleanliness on campus and mainly they centered around at least
initially how to control litter better, both on the grounds and in the
buildings. And uh, and with that broad based support and they had a
promotional campaign that tried to get people sensitive to that that made
a difference as you contributed labor to a program called christmas in
april an off campus program. And I was on the board at one time and after
I come off the board, I went to genesis and said, you know, we, we don't
need them. We're, we're our own moving force. We ought to create our own
program. And so we did, We created the program a issue cares. And I think
that's still going today. There's a program that we initiated sometime in
the mid 90s. We were, we were good at responding to work orders on things
that needed to be done. We weren't very good at going out and finding
things that needed to be done. So I created a, an inspection team to go
out and and identify those problems before you or somebody else had tell
us they needed to be done. Then we also created and we took those from the
, from the trades people and we also created some handyman that could go
out and circulate through the buildings and if they saw something needs to
be done, they just fixed it right there. They had little carts they took
with them. And uh if it was something that couldn't be done then they
wrote a work order for the shops to fix it. And I think that turned, you
know, a lot of efficiencies.
That was good. The building text I guess they known then and they were
very good part of the organization and there's building text, different
parts of the campus. And I remember at christmas time they set up a little
coral group and they'd come over and sing christmas, carols to us in our
big atrium there, that was nice. So they were, they were known for that
but I especially appreciated it when you would come around either annually
or semiannually,
you made it a point with the Dean and we would get our list of things we
wanted to tell you about before you got there. So I think from your
standpoint it worked very well because you either I'd with the people who
we're complainers, but once you came around and usually a few of those
things we gave you on their list got done right away. So no, no secret
when I and I went, I went around to all the vice presidents, all the deans
and all of the heads of departments that we, we interacted with a lot. I
also went to the provost and uh some of the some of those people were were
not very happy with us. But over time uh that changed. I had one dean. Now
she will remain unnamed. Uh that looked me in the eye one day when I come
to visit after about a year and she said how come you keep coming back? He
says I just keep abusing you. And I said well I'm gonna come to you quit.
And she did. I had, I had told my staff that I said I'm going to I'm
going to gather some some things as I go about meeting with these people
and I'm going to pick at least two that I think are very important and I
want them fixed Within 24 hours
and most of the time they did that. And that made a difference that made
believers out of people. And you know, what really happened is after after
a while people like john Mayer who used to have a really good list. I mean
it was, it was type, you know, usually on one page, sometimes more he
would just come and chat. They just come and chat. Things were going that
well. And I appreciate that. I mean that was worth all the effort val how
about some of the financial issues that you might have had during this
period that you were at a. S. U. How the the funding would come in from
the legislature or how it would be distributed for your organization
cutbacks or you had to lay off people, we had a large organization. So we
had a lot of money that went into salaries. We we we were responsible for
all the utilities and we were responsible for all of the the operational
and maintenance costs of the buildings. And so that's a that's a big
number. And it was always such a big number that it was always tempting to
say they won't miss a few million here or there. And uh and that's what
tended to happen Once in the mid 90s. Our budget was cut by 20%. Now
that's a big number that generated a lot of money, but that didn't come at
no cost. Uh we had to we had to cut back some service in some areas. Uh, I
ended up having to even with retirements and and not filling some jobs. I
had About 33 employees. I had to sit across the table from and and tell
them they were fired and that's tough, mm hmm. And uh, you know, uh a
little bit of belt tightening, you know, is usually good. But Early in the
90s we went through some belt tightening in the middle of the 90s, who
went through some belt tightening and then towards the end of the 90s, we
went through some more belt tightening and it gets to the point where you
can you can hardly do the job that really needs to be done. But, but
somehow with the cooperation of the university and the cooperation of our
employees, we were able to make adjustments here and there and do some
things to gain some efficiencies that, you know, I don't know if they
would have come about without the belt tightening issues, but I thought, I
thought our belt tightening was a little uh severe, but I don't think in
all respects it was bad. Who would you say? Maybe you did mention victor's
Afra had the greatest impact on you say that service here? Well, I used to
interact regularly with everyone from the president on down to him and the
provost, the vice president's, the dean's, a lot of the faculty and, and
all of them had had an impact on me. Uh, they knew my name. That was one
of the good things about my meetings. They knew who I was. You know, I
wasn't just a voice on the other end of the telephone and if they would
see me on campus, they would wave and say hi. You know, that that means a
lot to, I didn't have that same uh, sort of feeling at Utah State even
though it's a smaller school, the faculty here were more accepting and
more open of what we did and tried to do than they were there. And so I
always appreciated that fact here. And so I think all of those people were
uh, you know, had a big impact on me and the people that I work closely
with within my organization, Dave and Polly and Dave bricks and Polly
Penney and some of those kinds of individuals, uh, they were more than
just employees. They were, they were friends. And even though we didn't do
a lot together socially, we sort of treated one another as friends rather
than boss and employee. And, and I tried to develop that relationship as
far down into the organization as I could. And I wanted people to feel
comfortable to come to my office and talk to me and many people did, many
people have had a concern or problem would would just come and lay it out.
Ted Carey was was in that list. Had a, had a lot of really great uh
foreman, I guess you learned also at your organization, the national
organization that you'd meet at have annual meetings. Uh, were there other
universities that kind of were a role model and the way they operated, one
of the nice things about belonging to that association is they were always
willing to share. And many of our meetings, we would go to those people
who felt they were on the cutting edge of doing something would share that
uh, in a formal presentation. And so a lot of the lot of the good ideas
that I got, I got from them and uh, they picked up good ideas from us. Uh
I used to write a newsletter article for the International Association and
it was mainly on I believe firmly in. And so I would write a little essay
each each month we had the the the magazine go out and they ended up after
a few years wanting to take an accumulation of those essays and put them
into a book. And so they did that and they published a book called
Communication Is the key out of those essays that's still on sale today.
It's not a big seller, not a best seller, that's for sure. But it's still
out there. You did mention that planning and construction was separate
when you got here and then it came under your supervision. What were some
of the big projects that happened during year period here? They were just
finishing up some things. Or in the middle of the underground library, the
expansion of the music building and the fine arts center. When I first
came we we were pulling all of those together. They were just in the in
the midst of construction, we built the computer building we built, we
built the student recreation center. We built the law library, built the
Goldwater building. We built the cancer research center. So a lot of those
major buildings all happened. It was about, I think 10 of those major
buildings and that came along during that period of time. Well there's
some good accomplishments there, val
the other accomplishments that I might ask you to tell about, tell us
about. Are these five girls and one boy, I think it is that you have in
your family, What happened to them? I know the one son I've heard stories
about, but we're proud of our Children. Um, I think, I think one of the
things we were concerned about having both my wife and I have been raised
on farms that our kids would become adults and know how to work. We
worried about that. And so we, we made sure that in addition to the chores
they did around the house, that, that somehow they found employment
somewhere within the community or whether that was at Mcdonald's or or
taking newspapers around on a route or, or whatever it was. We, we sort of
pushed them a little bit for to have those kind of opportunities. And in
our, in our opinion, they've all turned out to be very successful. I've,
I've got a daughter that my oldest daughter lives in Eugene Oregon and she
has two boys and her husband works at the University of Oregon there in
Eugene and she's, she's very accomplished uh, as a calligrapher. And as in
her own right, a computer programmer, even though she's not had formal
training in that she's also accomplished in theater, but her husband is in
set design. Our second daughter lives in Hawaii, her husband took a job
over there temporarily. And she's one of those kind of kids that she was
growing up. You didn't tell her, you you can't do that because she would
prove you wrong. If you, if you told her that you can't do that sort of
thing, she would make it happen. There isn't anything she can't do. She's
she's got a little son that came along later in life. She had a hard time
having Children. But she's, she's very accomplished in in many areas. The
third daughter was, I went to school as a computer programmer and She has
two Children and she unfortunately had
under diagnosed Lyme disease and went for years until it finally wiped out
her immune system. And so she's had a a life filled with pain and not a
lot of ability to to respond like she wanted to because she's a very
talented person. But when she's feeling good, nobody is better on the
computer than her and she does Photoshop things that I certainly wish I
could do. Our fourth daughter lives in Riverton Utah and she works with a
doctor and they've they've had more of a struggle in life than than some.
But her husband was out of work for a couple of years when this economy
turned down. In fact Our first grandchild was a girl in the next 11 have
been boys. Our son, he's in the Air Force, he's a helicopter pilot. And uh
he's uh he's more like his mother than me because he, he's a friend to
everybody. He's he's a wonderful son and he's done a good job in his in
his Air Force career. And our youngest daughter, the one that went to
Dublin with us, she worries about us all the time and she's she's got a
she's got a great job, she lives in colorado and wait a minute now she's
in Dublin. I thought she was we took a trip. Uh No we had to visit the
Guinness factory because she she is the comptroller at a at a small
brewery in Fort Collins. And uh she she's worked her way up to that in in
a very short time and that is the that is the premier place to work in
Fort Collins. They treat their people and pay their people better than
anyone else. And she's doing pretty well because the other last year she
wanted a Prius and there she had a Honda crv that I'm driving now drove it
here today That had 25,000 miles on it and she said hey I'm gonna give you
my car so I can justify getting this new Prius. So she just had to come
pick up the car that's the kind of kid she is so yeah they're all
wonderful.
Okay now what have you done since you've retired
since you stepped down from a s you rather uh we're active in our church
and we we do a lot of volunteer work with that. My wife and I volunteer
On on two shifts on Friday and Saturday night at the Mesa temple and
it gives us the opportunity to give back. Um In addition to that
I've been active in the retirees association here today issue and done
did my stint as president and few committee chairs and enjoy getting back
and associating with the people that I knew how I was on the campus and
then more so that I've been able to make new friends that I didn't know
before. That seems to keep us busy. My wife and I wonder why we're so busy
but we have an active life. We we go to the gym and work out regularly and
try to stay healthy and we'll be around I guess as long as the Good Lord
will let us stay then you've got that camera that takes up sometime I
guess. Well yeah we we've got kids spread all over. We've got six Children
in six different states. And so uh we we plant a lot of trips around going
to visit them. And uh in between times why we find other places we haven't
been to go visit. I love to take photos. I would I would say that okay
working at at a S. U. While it was it was at times very intimidating and
at times very stressful. It gave me three incidents with my heart and a
triple bypass.
But uh I think I think it was it was worth it all. You know it probably
would have happened no matter where I was. But
I'm just glad over over the period of my life that I've been able to work
it at places where I have had a chance to contribute to two institutions
that have made a difference in the lives of the young people. I'm a strong
believer in education and we've encouraged our Children to be educated.
And my parents, even though we grew up on the farm, they always encouraged
us to receive an education. So it's always been a strong part of of our
life. I was the first grandchild and my whole entire family to ever
graduate from college. And so I I'm just grateful for the opportunities
I've had. Things seem to have come my way that that I didn't plan. Uh But
I'm happy the way they turned out. And uh I'm just glad that I could make
a contribution to to two great universities because they have they have
been good to me. I certainly want to thank you for your service to A S. U
. I can attest to the fact that you made a issue a lot better during your
time here. I appreciatethat