WEBVTT 00:00:01.840 --> 00:00:07.096 it's monday november 24th of 2000 and three. And we're here at A. S. U. 00:00:07.129 --> 00:00:12.707 To do an oral history interview for the Arizona state University retiree 00:00:12.740 --> 00:00:18.306 association living history video project and I'm pam Stevenson and I'll 00:00:18.339 --> 00:00:26.339 let you introduce yourself. Okay, my name is Brandon Whiting Brown and 00:00:26.440 --> 00:00:30.587 you want some of my, just give you a little history of myself. What were 00:00:30.620 --> 00:00:34.376 you doing when you left A. S. U. And when did you retire? Well I haven't 00:00:34.409 --> 00:00:40.866 actually retired yet. I'm in the process. I will retire next May and I was 00:00:40.899 --> 00:00:45.086 an associate professor in the school of Public Affairs and go back and 00:00:45.119 --> 00:00:49.317 cover the whole career a little bit later. But let's start with your, your 00:00:49.350 --> 00:00:52.237 early life. I always like to just have a little background about where 00:00:52.270 --> 00:00:56.946 you're from. So tell me, well I was I was born and raised in ST johns 00:00:56.979 --> 00:01:02.756 Arizona a little community up in the northeastern part of the state. My 00:01:02.789 --> 00:01:08.296 ancestors arrived in their their from Utah in 1876, so they were some of 00:01:08.329 --> 00:01:13.557 the first settlers in that area and my family has been a ranching family 00:01:13.590 --> 00:01:19.906 in that area ever since. And when were you born? I was born in 1941, 00:01:19.939 --> 00:01:26.607 I've been interviewing Stewart Udall so little um 00:01:26.640 --> 00:01:33.167 So you you grew up then in the ranching family. What were your career 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:41.147 goals as a young boy? Well my I thought I was going to be a lawyer but I 00:01:41.180 --> 00:01:46.507 got interested in political science in in college and kind of skewed 00:01:46.540 --> 00:01:52.167 towards that area and I ended up getting my PhD in political science from 00:01:52.200 --> 00:01:56.977 the university of Illinois. I got my masters from Arizona State University 00:01:57.010 --> 00:02:01.156 and Political science and my Bachelors from Brigham Young University. All 00:02:01.189 --> 00:02:05.277 in political science. So I got interested in political science and kind of 00:02:05.310 --> 00:02:11.307 went in that direction moved around from university. 00:02:11.340 --> 00:02:17.327 Um What do what were you going to do with political science teach? 00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:22.226 I was I was going to teach it. I thought about teaching at high school but 00:02:22.259 --> 00:02:28.267 then I recovered from that and decided that if I was going to teach its 00:02:28.300 --> 00:02:33.517 best at the university level high school level. No and in all the years 00:02:33.550 --> 00:02:38.106 that I've taught I've never had to meet a parent. 00:02:38.139 --> 00:02:42.506 So I made the right career choice. 00:02:42.539 --> 00:02:46.957 Well tell me about what what was your first job out of college? My first 00:02:46.990 --> 00:02:51.527 job out of college was assistant professor in the political science 00:02:51.560 --> 00:02:56.656 department at A. S. U. Was that always your goal to come back to you? Well 00:02:56.689 --> 00:03:01.047 I I never thought I would be able to because you know it's hard to go home 00:03:01.080 --> 00:03:06.666 but the opportunity was there and I grabbed it. When was that 1972? I 00:03:06.699 --> 00:03:09.606 started here in 1972. 00:03:09.639 --> 00:03:16.106 So this next spring it'll be 32 years. 00:03:16.139 --> 00:03:19.786 You've seen a lot of change I imagine since then. Um why don't you tell us 00:03:19.819 --> 00:03:24.506 a little bit about what a issue was like when you came in 1972 00:03:24.539 --> 00:03:32.436 there was absolutely no parking. It was a disaster. You would drive around 00:03:32.469 --> 00:03:36.386 if you got here for a 10 o'clock class or meeting, you would wait in the 00:03:36.419 --> 00:03:41.147 parking lot until somebody left and then run and grab it. It was an 00:03:41.180 --> 00:03:47.446 absolute nightmare. So in that arena things have improved. Now. They 00:03:47.479 --> 00:03:51.376 didn't charge you anything, they only charge you $5 a year or something 00:03:51.409 --> 00:03:56.786 for a sticker but there was no parking. So so things have improved a lot 00:03:56.819 --> 00:04:01.756 and as far as parking is concerned. And I came here just as they were 00:04:01.789 --> 00:04:07.327 building, just completed the part of the new stadium and then they added 00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:12.906 to it and the new fieldhouse. And so I got here at the beginning of the 00:04:12.939 --> 00:04:19.406 construction era which hasn't stopped, it hasn't stopped. 00:04:19.439 --> 00:04:24.937 So your first position, uh what what, how many classes did you teach? Well 00:04:24.970 --> 00:04:30.536 , I was in the School of Public Affairs. And so I taught two classes a 00:04:30.569 --> 00:04:37.036 semester and uh I only stayed in that position for a year and then I 00:04:37.069 --> 00:04:43.856 became the acting director of the Institute of Public Affairs. It was a 00:04:43.889 --> 00:04:50.877 division of, of Political Science. And during that year we kind of split 00:04:50.910 --> 00:04:55.846 off from political Science and became the School of Public Affairs. And 00:04:55.879 --> 00:04:59.726 it's always been a separate entity since that time, explain to me what is 00:04:59.759 --> 00:05:04.796 the school of Public. Well, it's, it's a research and teaching entity. It 00:05:04.829 --> 00:05:09.207 teaches mostly students who are working on their master's degree in public 00:05:09.240 --> 00:05:14.246 administration are their PhD in public administration. And it teaches 00:05:14.279 --> 00:05:19.567 people who are going into public service city managers, people that want 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:22.906 to do government service. 00:05:22.939 --> 00:05:26.416 It's not something that most people would be aware of as a separate thing 00:05:26.449 --> 00:05:29.986 to study. Not unless they're interested in public service. And then 00:05:30.019 --> 00:05:36.007 students learn about it come this way. It's a very well respected school. 00:05:36.040 --> 00:05:41.916 It's in the top 25 schools in the country, Top 10 and in the management 00:05:41.949 --> 00:05:46.627 area, urban management area. So it's a good school. Um was it something 00:05:46.660 --> 00:05:50.457 new at the time when you split off? We were the founding, I was one of the 00:05:50.490 --> 00:05:54.507 founding fathers. Yeah, I mean, were there other schools like that? 00:05:54.540 --> 00:06:02.277 Another university? Yeah. USC Syracuse indiana LBJ school and in texas. So 00:06:02.310 --> 00:06:07.906 there there's a there's a lot of schools like that around the country. 00:06:07.939 --> 00:06:13.587 So how big was it when it first started? Three professors, 00:06:13.620 --> 00:06:19.906 Then we went up to five I think right away, about 60 students. 00:06:19.939 --> 00:06:24.746 Mhm. And so your first position, there were the chair, I was the acting 00:06:24.779 --> 00:06:32.317 chair, Chair. Well, no, I didn't become chair because I after I served 00:06:32.350 --> 00:06:37.846 that I got chosen by Governor Castro to go down and head what was then the 00:06:37.879 --> 00:06:43.017 Office of Economic Planning Development. So I worked under Governor Castro 00:06:43.050 --> 00:06:47.377 and then Governor boland. And then Governor babbitt for four years. I was 00:06:47.410 --> 00:06:50.387 , I was the head of the Office of Economic Plan Development. it was a 00:06:50.420 --> 00:06:56.207 major state agency and 00:06:56.240 --> 00:06:59.587 I was on the leave of absence from the University for four years at that 00:06:59.620 --> 00:07:05.236 time. And when I came it's now the department of Commerce, it's now called 00:07:05.269 --> 00:07:11.476 the Department of Commerce. When I came back, uh they asked me to because 00:07:11.509 --> 00:07:15.116 they didn't have a lobbyist for the university and they, we're just 00:07:15.149 --> 00:07:19.546 discovering that they needed to have somebody lobby for him. And so they 00:07:19.579 --> 00:07:26.166 asked me to do that. And I started out, I think my title was Director of 00:07:26.199 --> 00:07:33.486 Community relations and that that went until I was a vice president. They 00:07:33.519 --> 00:07:39.397 kept changing my title and moving me up the ladder and I became assistant 00:07:39.430 --> 00:07:42.887 vice president for community relations and then vice president of 00:07:42.920 --> 00:07:48.666 university relations and Served in that capacity for 11 years. It seems 00:07:48.699 --> 00:07:53.377 like that area has been an area that changes its name a lot. But does it 00:07:53.410 --> 00:07:57.387 change its, it's description of what it does to, Well, it was a very 00:07:57.420 --> 00:08:02.866 dynamic area and a very dynamic university. I've, I've told people that, I 00:08:02.899 --> 00:08:06.546 don't think there was another university in the country where as many 00:08:06.579 --> 00:08:13.036 things were happening as at Arizona State University. The growth, the, you 00:08:13.069 --> 00:08:19.806 know, dynamics of a major university in a major growth area. It was just 00:08:19.839 --> 00:08:26.007 very impressive to see what was happening during that era and your role 00:08:26.040 --> 00:08:30.656 for most of that time then was down at the capitol. I I was the chief 00:08:30.689 --> 00:08:34.606 lobbyist for the university during all that time. What was the biggest 00:08:34.639 --> 00:08:42.047 challenge of that job? Well, when I, when we started out, we we were the 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:44.106 low 00:08:44.139 --> 00:08:50.207 university on the totem pole, the history of A S. You had always been 00:08:50.240 --> 00:08:54.207 second fiddle to the University of Arizona. 00:08:54.240 --> 00:09:00.177 It's not quite as intense as it used to be, but at that time it was very 00:09:00.210 --> 00:09:05.587 intense because Arizona State University had never had a member of the 00:09:05.620 --> 00:09:10.256 border regions After they unified the border regions and I think it was 00:09:10.289 --> 00:09:17.976 1946 when they unified the border regions. So from 1946 until 1972, we've 00:09:18.009 --> 00:09:23.856 never had a member of the border regions and we were always 00:09:23.889 --> 00:09:30.827 second fiddle. And so the big challenge was to to change that. In fact, 00:09:30.860 --> 00:09:34.707 I'll tell you a little story that I was a student here at Arizona State 00:09:34.740 --> 00:09:40.896 University as an undergraduate. That was before my, my graduate days. But 00:09:40.929 --> 00:09:46.876 I was taking a class from ross Rice and it was legislative relations and 00:09:46.909 --> 00:09:52.026 we had to write a paper for that class. And so I decided to write it on 00:09:52.059 --> 00:09:57.067 the appropriations process. And my brother was in the legislature. Then my 00:09:57.100 --> 00:10:01.256 brother is Jack Brown. He's still in the legislature, He's a minority 00:10:01.289 --> 00:10:05.236 leader in the Senate still, but he's he's been there 30 years and he was 00:10:05.269 --> 00:10:09.547 on the appropriations committee. And so I attended the appropriations 00:10:09.580 --> 00:10:13.837 hearings and one day while I was down there, they kicked everybody out of 00:10:13.870 --> 00:10:17.236 the appropriations committee. That was before the days of the open meeting 00:10:17.269 --> 00:10:23.047 law. And so I stuck around outside to see what was going on. And when they 00:10:23.080 --> 00:10:27.157 finally broke up an hour or so later, I asked Jack what happened? And he 00:10:27.190 --> 00:10:31.907 said, well, he said, sweet johnson, who is the U. Of a vice president, 00:10:31.940 --> 00:10:36.096 wrote the budgets for the three universities. And I said, well, where was 00:10:36.129 --> 00:10:41.837 a issue? He says an any you, he says they weren't at the table. And so I 00:10:41.870 --> 00:10:48.496 knew that that at that point in time that A. S. U. Was way behind in terms 00:10:48.529 --> 00:10:53.146 of influence at the legislature. And little did I know that years later I 00:10:53.179 --> 00:10:58.457 would become the lobbyist for the university and help to correct that. And 00:10:58.490 --> 00:11:03.657 it was a battle, but we did turn the tide and we're able to get some 00:11:03.690 --> 00:11:07.537 equity with the University of Arizona. But it was not an easy process. It 00:11:07.570 --> 00:11:12.567 was long, hard and we had a lot of political battles. Didn't you tell me a 00:11:12.600 --> 00:11:20.600 little bit about how you did that? Well, the leadership of the House and 00:11:21.519 --> 00:11:25.146 was particularly the House had always depended upon the University of 00:11:25.179 --> 00:11:32.407 Arizona supporters to kind of bring things to closure and to balance it. 00:11:32.440 --> 00:11:39.907 And there was a group of, of people elected from Maricopa County who 00:11:39.940 --> 00:11:43.726 started to take a S. You under their wing. There were people like Tony 00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:50.026 west and carl cannon Asic. And the first thing that they took on was the 00:11:50.059 --> 00:11:54.506 capital budgets. They always appropriated more money for the U. Of A. For 00:11:54.539 --> 00:11:58.626 capital budgets than they did for a issue, even though we had more 00:11:58.659 --> 00:12:03.087 students and we had a greater need because we were growing faster. And so 00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:07.266 they took a stand one year and said they would not support the budget 00:12:07.299 --> 00:12:12.386 unless there was some equity built in there. And that started the process 00:12:12.419 --> 00:12:17.717 of the leadership having to pay attention to the issue. And then it kind 00:12:17.750 --> 00:12:22.396 of mushroomed from there. But it wasn't just the legislature that it was a 00:12:22.429 --> 00:12:27.187 big problem. It was the border regions that was so tightly controlled by 00:12:27.220 --> 00:12:33.307 the U. Of A. And we were way underfunded in the formulas that they use 00:12:33.340 --> 00:12:40.947 just for for teaching, You know, student ratio, you know, student 22-1. We 00:12:40.980 --> 00:12:46.096 were way out of balance and they were just, you know, so much better 00:12:46.129 --> 00:12:52.626 funded than we were. And one year the region's allowed us to ask for some 00:12:52.659 --> 00:12:55.207 catch up positions. 00:12:55.240 --> 00:12:58.427 And I think that the only reason that the region's did that is that they 00:12:58.460 --> 00:13:04.700 didn't think that we could that we could get that through the legislature. 00:13:05.539 --> 00:13:07.539 Well, because we were we were behind, see if you if you just sat down and 00:13:10.379 --> 00:13:12.917 said, what are the number of students going here and what are the number 00:13:12.950 --> 00:13:17.226 of students going to the U. Of a. We were way underfunded. And so they 00:13:17.259 --> 00:13:20.677 finally allowed us to say, okay, we're going to give you a chance to catch 00:13:20.710 --> 00:13:24.896 up with some of these positions. And they allowed us to ask that year and 00:13:24.929 --> 00:13:32.929 we did it, we cut we had 52 new positions that we're not funded at the U. 00:13:33.419 --> 00:13:37.337 Of A. In the same ratio. They were catch up. There was new money for issue. 00:13:37.370 --> 00:13:41.077 That was the first time that we really broke down the barriers And 00:13:41.110 --> 00:13:49.110 started to get some equity between the two. That was in 1980, 00:13:49.139 --> 00:13:55.986 80, I think 79, 80. It could be a year or two. Often you mentioned about 00:13:56.019 --> 00:14:01.606 the Board of Regents being unbalanced with that s you people on it also. 00:14:01.639 --> 00:14:09.639 Um how did you change that or we didn't haven't yet. There are some, there 00:14:10.009 --> 00:14:17.817 are some. Now Ralph Watkins was in the post war era Since the regions were 00:14:17.850 --> 00:14:24.596 unified in 1946. Ralph Watkins was the first appointee who was a graduate 00:14:24.629 --> 00:14:28.817 of a issue, but he only served a little while because he was appointed by 00:14:28.850 --> 00:14:34.327 Mickum and and he never got confirmed, I don't think by the Senate. And uh 00:14:34.360 --> 00:14:40.116 but he served for a while, but that shows you how long it was without an A. 00:14:40.149 --> 00:14:46.376 S. You graduate. It was it was one of the most bizarre political things 00:14:46.409 --> 00:14:51.787 that I've ever experienced because we couldn't we couldn't move at this 00:14:51.820 --> 00:14:57.746 university, we couldn't do things at this university. My job was to find 00:14:57.779 --> 00:15:01.707 out ways to get around the border regions. 00:15:01.740 --> 00:15:09.407 I'll give you a good example. Okay. There was agitation for an ax you West 00:15:09.440 --> 00:15:14.207 and I don't know if interview interviews have ever told a story of how the 00:15:14.240 --> 00:15:18.807 issue West went down in flames under 00:15:18.840 --> 00:15:23.807 under president, 00:15:23.840 --> 00:15:31.726 who's the president that went to Utah home or doing okay? Goodyear. I was 00:15:31.759 --> 00:15:36.106 not here then, but I heard I've heard the story, I lived in the aftermath 00:15:36.139 --> 00:15:43.827 of the story. Durham had received property from Goodyear. Goodyear had 00:15:43.860 --> 00:15:48.526 given them some property to build a university up there and the Board of 00:15:48.559 --> 00:15:53.907 Regents had accepted it and 00:15:53.940 --> 00:16:01.526 they had all, everything was ongoing. And they were going down to make a 00:16:01.559 --> 00:16:05.486 presentation to the joint appropriations committees to get the initial 00:16:05.519 --> 00:16:10.217 funding that they needed. And Troy crowder stopped and picked up some 00:16:10.250 --> 00:16:16.407 sandwiches for everybody and they got down there in the hearing 00:16:16.440 --> 00:16:20.307 and as they started the hearing before they could start the hearing. 00:16:20.340 --> 00:16:26.407 Senator john Conlan from Scottsdale 00:16:26.440 --> 00:16:32.407 got the floor and he said, you know, mr Chairman, I'd like to ask a couple 00:16:32.440 --> 00:16:38.526 of questions of dr Durham. And uh, the first question is I understood, I 00:16:38.559 --> 00:16:43.417 understand that you had a peace rally on the campus last night, is that 00:16:43.450 --> 00:16:48.626 correct? And the president responded, yes, that's correct. And he said 00:16:48.659 --> 00:16:53.317 that I understand that the Dean that you have chosen for the new college 00:16:53.350 --> 00:16:58.917 Dean Blandino took part in that peace demonstration. Is that correct? And 00:16:58.950 --> 00:17:02.516 Dean Blandino was sitting there and, and it was correct that he had 00:17:02.549 --> 00:17:09.246 participated in an anti war protest and there was bedlam in the 00:17:09.279 --> 00:17:16.036 appropriations committee hearing. The hearing was shut down ah Troy 00:17:16.069 --> 00:17:19.246 crowder as said that they, I don't know what they did with the lunches, 00:17:19.279 --> 00:17:24.056 but they were all wasted. They came back home, there was never a hearing 00:17:24.089 --> 00:17:30.586 on that campus. President Durham went to Utah Goodyear took their land 00:17:30.619 --> 00:17:38.097 back and I started under Suada and Swaddle would not talk about an A. S. U. 00:17:38.130 --> 00:17:46.130 West campus, he would not even consider it. And so when and I was the 00:17:47.259 --> 00:17:50.976 lobbyist and I was getting lobbied all this time by the people down in the 00:17:51.009 --> 00:17:55.657 legislature from the west side and they were getting pretty vociferous 00:17:55.690 --> 00:18:00.516 about. They wanted a Westside campus and I was lobbied pretty intensely. 00:18:00.549 --> 00:18:05.707 And when Russ nelson came, 00:18:05.740 --> 00:18:10.357 I, I had my first interview with him and I still got the paper that I 00:18:10.390 --> 00:18:14.726 wrote down that there were three things that Russ nelson had to do while 00:18:14.759 --> 00:18:22.016 he was here. Number one is, he had to build a West campus. Number two, he 00:18:22.049 --> 00:18:26.816 had to make sun Devil stadium available for pro football. And number three 00:18:26.849 --> 00:18:32.046 , he had to increase the Mexican Americans at the university attending the 00:18:32.079 --> 00:18:38.066 university and I'm happy to say he did all three of those things, but the 00:18:38.099 --> 00:18:43.336 west campus was one that he had to pull together and I can tell you how 00:18:43.369 --> 00:18:47.576 that happened if you want to please do no one else has. I even asked 00:18:47.609 --> 00:18:50.306 someone and they didn't know 00:18:50.339 --> 00:18:58.167 there was a in the legislature, it was a year when they needed to have a a 00:18:58.200 --> 00:19:04.476 sales tax increase. And Burton Barr was the leader of the majority leader 00:19:04.509 --> 00:19:09.566 in the house. And stan turley was the president of the Senate. And they 00:19:09.599 --> 00:19:17.457 needed a vote very crucial in the Senate and so they they needed a vote 00:19:17.490 --> 00:19:23.076 from a couple of West Siders legislators. Leila Alston is one who who was 00:19:23.109 --> 00:19:26.877 there and Leila said I'm not going to vote for it unless you support an A 00:19:26.910 --> 00:19:32.937 . S. U. West campus. So stan turley phoned me up and said Brent I'm on 00:19:32.970 --> 00:19:39.306 board for a West campus. What what have you got, can you deal? And so I 00:19:39.339 --> 00:19:43.006 got a page Mulholland 00:19:43.039 --> 00:19:46.306 Russ, nelson 00:19:46.339 --> 00:19:49.207 Reeves. 00:19:49.240 --> 00:19:56.667 Uh Jack Kinzinger. No he wasn't here because paige was here. No. Yeah he 00:19:56.700 --> 00:20:01.107 was here. Jack Kinzinger was here. Page was was doing something else. Then 00:20:01.140 --> 00:20:05.157 Anyway there are four or 5 vice presidents and we got in the room and I 00:20:05.190 --> 00:20:09.597 told him that there was a window of opportunity here that that we could 00:20:09.630 --> 00:20:16.066 get the support from the legislature for West campus. And Russ nelson's 00:20:16.099 --> 00:20:20.907 response was well that sounds really good. Let's appoint a committee and 00:20:20.940 --> 00:20:25.707 you know, study this issue and I said no Russ, you've got to understand, 00:20:25.740 --> 00:20:33.256 you've got until one hour from now, if you want to West campus, we can 00:20:33.289 --> 00:20:41.289 deal. And to his credit, he said, go and we went down and we cut the deal 00:20:42.940 --> 00:20:50.076 and we got the money in the budget, appeared in the, in the in the in our 00:20:50.109 --> 00:20:53.707 budget to do something at west campus. 00:20:53.740 --> 00:20:59.407 And the next year, very shortly thereafter we got doug Todd to help us. 00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:04.177 And we rode into the legislation that there would be an issue west campus 00:21:04.210 --> 00:21:10.276 in the statutes before the border regions ever considered it. 00:21:10.309 --> 00:21:16.286 And that's how we got around the border regions. Can you do that? We did 00:21:16.319 --> 00:21:18.607 it, 00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:22.607 you can, you can check the record, it was in, it was in writing in the 00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:26.707 statutes that there would be an a sus campus before the region's ever took 00:21:26.740 --> 00:21:31.897 up the issue of the west campus. So then they had to figure out how to do 00:21:31.930 --> 00:21:35.766 it or did they figure out how well we both had to figure out how to do it. 00:21:35.799 --> 00:21:40.816 But we got the initial appropriation in and, and it was there, we were, 00:21:40.849 --> 00:21:44.816 we were spending money before they ever approved it. So what was the first 00:21:44.849 --> 00:21:48.816 thing you had to do then to get the land? Was that the first thing or then 00:21:48.849 --> 00:21:53.526 we, we get the land trade and got the land, but we have the Westside 00:21:53.559 --> 00:21:59.847 legislators, you know, mhm. You know, lobbying for us and helping us. And 00:21:59.880 --> 00:22:05.016 so there was already a piece of land out there that we traded for some 00:22:05.049 --> 00:22:08.976 land over here, that was state land. So that was the easiest part of the 00:22:09.009 --> 00:22:12.526 deal because I get out there once or twice a year and it's amazing how 00:22:12.559 --> 00:22:16.647 it's grown to, it looks like a real campus. It is. 00:22:16.680 --> 00:22:23.457 But that was how that little little campus was born 00:22:23.490 --> 00:22:29.806 and I, I can guarantee you that nobody on west campus knows that story. 00:22:29.839 --> 00:22:35.897 Well, we've got it now and it just proved to me that my feelings for john 00:22:35.930 --> 00:22:41.907 Conlan were well found. 00:22:41.940 --> 00:22:48.107 It was amazing how deep how he deep Sixed that whole process and Goodyear 00:22:48.140 --> 00:22:54.736 took the land back. It was by litchfield park. But, and that's, that's how 00:22:54.769 --> 00:22:59.667 it all came about. Set the state back in a lot of ways. It also shows that 00:22:59.700 --> 00:23:05.157 people can make a decision in an hour if they have to. I was, I was proud 00:23:05.190 --> 00:23:08.556 of the people that did it. It was really Russ nelson who made the final 00:23:08.589 --> 00:23:14.097 decision and most people think that he was not a very strong president. 00:23:14.130 --> 00:23:17.677 But he did some things that like that, that didn't get a lot of attention 00:23:17.710 --> 00:23:22.847 that we're, that really moved this, this university forward. That was a 00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:28.806 big, that was a big step forward because the whole strategy that we, if we 00:23:28.839 --> 00:23:35.167 were ever going to compete with the U. Of A as we had to cover the valley 00:23:35.200 --> 00:23:39.786 and the U. Of A. And N. A. You fought us on this branch campus because 00:23:39.819 --> 00:23:44.597 they knew that if we got the, you know, extended in the in the phoenix 00:23:44.630 --> 00:23:50.246 area that they could not contain us. Well you're landlocked here. Yeah. 00:23:50.279 --> 00:23:57.967 And like I say that the atmosphere is not like it was when I started out, 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:03.576 you have to remember this university is the only university in the country 00:24:03.609 --> 00:24:09.506 that has been named by a popular vote. Have you covered that? Well we've 00:24:09.539 --> 00:24:12.296 talked about the vote but I hadn't thought of it in those terms of it 00:24:12.329 --> 00:24:18.127 being the only one. Herman Kahn who was a futurist when he was on campus 00:24:18.160 --> 00:24:25.457 here studying and writing. I was introduced to him once as a, as a, as a 00:24:25.490 --> 00:24:30.177 lobbyist for the university and he says, my gosh, he says, I'll never 00:24:30.210 --> 00:24:35.407 forget a story I heard. And the story was when we were trying to change 00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:39.467 the name of this university from Arizona state college to Arizona State 00:24:39.500 --> 00:24:44.847 University. We couldn't get it through the legislature, we we couldn't get 00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:48.566 it through the region. So they went to the legislature, they couldn't get 00:24:48.599 --> 00:24:52.857 it through the legislature. And Herman Kahn says the most bizarre story 00:24:52.890 --> 00:24:57.526 I've ever heard is that they brought somebody in from the hospital on a on 00:24:57.559 --> 00:25:03.637 a gurney to vote against changing the name. He says that is the most 00:25:03.670 --> 00:25:07.647 bizarre story I've ever heard in my life. And that was the kind of 00:25:07.680 --> 00:25:14.756 atmosphere that was prevalent in those days. It was not a friendly 00:25:14.789 --> 00:25:21.576 relationship. It was open warfare in the halls of the legislature and it 00:25:21.609 --> 00:25:26.576 was, it was brutal and you didn't take prisoners and I was lucky to have 00:25:26.609 --> 00:25:33.316 survived because that was a a no no to go around the regions and and do 00:25:33.349 --> 00:25:39.576 that. But the rest is credit. He protected me. Why don't you talk a little 00:25:39.609 --> 00:25:42.677 bit about the presidents, You served under a couple of presidents that not 00:25:42.710 --> 00:25:46.467 too many people have talked about heard a lot about damage and I've heard 00:25:46.500 --> 00:25:52.786 a lot about jerome. Um, but tell me about the, you said you started 00:25:52.819 --> 00:25:59.486 underhand Suada was, they came in the aftermath of that debacle. And he 00:25:59.519 --> 00:26:07.519 was very cautious, a very, I think very smart, brilliant individual. But 00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:16.177 that episode so colored his administration that I don't think he, he fully 00:26:16.210 --> 00:26:21.496 recognized how cautious he was and there were a lot of things that needed 00:26:21.529 --> 00:26:28.246 to be done. And in Arizona, we have an interesting situation in a lot of 00:26:28.279 --> 00:26:34.026 states. The regions are elected Only. Our elected sometimes and appointed 00:26:34.059 --> 00:26:37.607 only to represent one university 00:26:37.640 --> 00:26:43.207 in in Washington, Washington has a set of regions, Washington state has a 00:26:43.240 --> 00:26:47.877 set the university, I graduated from the university of Illinois. They have 00:26:47.910 --> 00:26:52.276 a set of regions that are only for that university and they become 00:26:52.309 --> 00:26:57.417 advocates for that university. We used to have that in Arizona until we 00:26:57.450 --> 00:27:03.607 went to a unified board. And what has happened is that the unified board 00:27:03.640 --> 00:27:08.407 became more of a watchdog 00:27:08.440 --> 00:27:14.516 board than a, than a supporting board. Nobody was advocating for the 00:27:14.549 --> 00:27:21.046 universities and it's still that way. So the only one that can advocate 00:27:21.079 --> 00:27:25.707 for the university and have any credibility as the president. 00:27:25.740 --> 00:27:32.066 And I spent a lot of time prodding presidents that you have to take on the 00:27:32.099 --> 00:27:36.986 legislature, you have to get out on front on these issues because nobody 00:27:37.019 --> 00:27:44.417 else is doing it. And so that, that was a hard thing to get across because 00:27:44.450 --> 00:27:48.336 presidents, when you finally make it to be a president, you're very 00:27:48.369 --> 00:27:52.627 cautious because you've learned to be a dean, you've learned to be, you 00:27:52.660 --> 00:27:56.857 know, vice president going up the ladder. And so it was not their natural 00:27:56.890 --> 00:28:01.177 inclination to be entrepreneurs. 00:28:01.210 --> 00:28:07.437 And I will say this for, for the ones I served under uh Russ and and 00:28:07.470 --> 00:28:12.786 Laddie were much more entrepreneurial than was wanna Shweta was more of a 00:28:12.819 --> 00:28:16.786 caretaker. But there were so many things going on that even a caretaker 00:28:16.819 --> 00:28:22.276 president had lots of lots of things to take care of because of the growth 00:28:22.309 --> 00:28:26.506 that issue was experiencing 00:28:26.539 --> 00:28:31.016 nelson you just talked about that one instance where he, well, he did a 00:28:31.049 --> 00:28:36.907 lot of things, he started the on the road to a research one university, 00:28:36.940 --> 00:28:40.907 I'll tell, I'll tell you another thing he did. That was very courageous. 00:28:40.940 --> 00:28:46.076 We decided that we weren't getting our share of federal dollars because we 00:28:46.109 --> 00:28:53.407 didn't have the infrastructure and the research. So we went after money 00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:57.296 and direct appropriation from Congress 00:28:57.329 --> 00:29:00.607 and we were 00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:05.476 kind of bandits in that regards because that is a no no, because most 00:29:05.509 --> 00:29:12.086 universities have the peer review system and they look with a sconce at 00:29:12.119 --> 00:29:17.266 anybody that gets direct appropriations from Congress. But we decided that 00:29:17.299 --> 00:29:20.766 we had to do it because we didn't have the infrastructure to do it any 00:29:20.799 --> 00:29:28.799 other way. And so we hired a lobbyist and in convincing rust to do this, 00:29:30.039 --> 00:29:35.907 we hired George Ramona's who was a lobbyist in Washington and paid him 00:29:35.940 --> 00:29:43.006 pretty good money to be our lobbyist. And we talked it back and forth. And 00:29:43.039 --> 00:29:47.076 Russ finally said, we're going to go ahead and we're going to do it. And 00:29:47.109 --> 00:29:51.236 he says, I just want to send a little note to the regions and you know, 00:29:51.269 --> 00:29:55.816 advise them of what we're doing. And I says, Russ, this is one instance 00:29:55.849 --> 00:30:02.496 where you do it. And then you advise the regions because I knew that the 00:30:02.529 --> 00:30:07.496 executive director of the border regions, small abroad, I wanted to take 00:30:07.529 --> 00:30:12.717 over the federal lobbying and make the university's go through her, which 00:30:12.750 --> 00:30:17.806 would have been a disaster free issue. And I encouraged rust to move fast 00:30:17.839 --> 00:30:22.776 to hire the lobbyist. And then to tell the border regions and to his 00:30:22.809 --> 00:30:29.917 credit he did, which was, I think a very brave stand because it was much 00:30:29.950 --> 00:30:33.107 like, uh 00:30:33.140 --> 00:30:38.407 president damage when he decided to go to the initiative to name the 00:30:38.440 --> 00:30:46.440 university. Well this was very courageous too because Russ did that and 00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:51.566 told the region's later on. And then this resulted in the appropriation 00:30:51.599 --> 00:30:56.326 for the Goldwater building. And that was the 25 million that we got for 00:30:56.359 --> 00:31:01.687 the Goldwater building. That put us over the top in the special status to 00:31:01.720 --> 00:31:06.347 be a research one university. If we hadn't had that 25 million, you have 00:31:06.380 --> 00:31:10.707 to have so much in federal funding to qualify. And if we hadn't had that, 00:31:10.740 --> 00:31:15.907 we weren't qualified. So it was a very courageous stand for him to to take 00:31:15.940 --> 00:31:22.137 much like a S. U. West. Was that 25 million of direct appropriation from 00:31:22.170 --> 00:31:25.306 the US Congress? 00:31:25.339 --> 00:31:30.806 I got a plaque on my wall. That's for the 1st 10 million written into the 00:31:30.839 --> 00:31:38.306 legislation. I didn't know you could just do that. It's done all the time. 00:31:38.339 --> 00:31:40.607 Mhm 00:31:40.640 --> 00:31:48.640 um Any other stories about President nelson that you'd want to tell us? 00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:56.640 Well, I'll tell you the story of how the cardinals got here. Okay. 00:31:57.140 --> 00:32:02.066 I try and avoid that discussion, but I thought I would live long enough to 00:32:02.099 --> 00:32:07.056 have them make me look good, but I'm approaching retirement. My hair is 00:32:07.089 --> 00:32:11.207 getting gray. 00:32:11.240 --> 00:32:18.207 It's hard to describe the, the fever that was in this community too. Have 00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:24.566 a pro football team here. We had had, well, I'm going to tell us what a 00:32:24.599 --> 00:32:29.806 story before I tell you a nelson story 00:32:29.839 --> 00:32:35.197 they wanted, there was a lot of the downtown people who wanted to use Sun 00:32:35.230 --> 00:32:41.236 Devil Stadium for pro football and cush and miller were adamantly opposed 00:32:41.269 --> 00:32:48.836 to that, adamantly opposed. So this jockeying had gone on and finally some 00:32:48.869 --> 00:32:53.667 of the powers that be downtown decided that they would bring in a couple 00:32:53.700 --> 00:32:56.006 of proteins 00:32:56.039 --> 00:33:04.039 to play in a and but um boys town uh huh exhibition because they used to 00:33:07.500 --> 00:33:15.500 go around and play exhibition games. And so it's not boys town, but 00:33:16.740 --> 00:33:20.187 equivalent of that Big Brothers, I think it was okay. Big Brother's not 00:33:20.220 --> 00:33:24.236 boys town, It was a big brothers organization. And so they came up with a 00:33:24.269 --> 00:33:30.367 scheme to invite a couple of teams here to play in Sun Devil Stadium and 00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:34.296 fred miller, the athletic director and frank kush said over our dead 00:33:34.329 --> 00:33:36.776 bodies. 00:33:36.809 --> 00:33:44.809 And then Mr Suada was invited down to the legislature into mr Burton 00:33:45.450 --> 00:33:48.107 barr's office 00:33:48.140 --> 00:33:51.546 and the conversation went, something like this, I wasn't there, but I 00:33:51.579 --> 00:33:55.877 heard about the conversation and the conversation went, something like 00:33:55.910 --> 00:34:03.066 this. President Suada, I have a piece of legislation here that I will drop 00:34:03.099 --> 00:34:09.896 in the hopper if the Big brothers don't play that game 00:34:09.929 --> 00:34:16.566 in Sun Devil Stadium, you got to choice and the legislation will take the 00:34:16.599 --> 00:34:24.599 stadium away from a shoe and create a separate stadium entity to manage it. 00:34:25.239 --> 00:34:27.239 The game happened. That was the first breakthrough of a pro team playing 00:34:31.670 --> 00:34:34.506 in Sun Devil Stadium. 00:34:34.539 --> 00:34:39.327 And then we had the outlaws and we had other teams, we had philadelphia 00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:45.166 coming out here. There was just a lot of agitation to play in Sun Devil 00:34:45.199 --> 00:34:47.407 Stadium 00:34:47.440 --> 00:34:54.706 and I was the vice president over the stadium at that time and I knew that 00:34:54.739 --> 00:35:01.947 the agitation was continuing and I got a call from from Hurt who was a 00:35:01.980 --> 00:35:07.037 columnist for the Arizona Republic and he said the Cardinals were 00:35:07.070 --> 00:35:10.106 interested in coming. 00:35:10.139 --> 00:35:14.086 And so I says, well, we'll open up discussions 00:35:14.119 --> 00:35:16.106 and 00:35:16.139 --> 00:35:21.206 a issue was gun shy because we had had philadelphia out here and if you 00:35:21.239 --> 00:35:25.247 remember the atmosphere, philadelphia owner was going to come, his 00:35:25.280 --> 00:35:29.537 daughter was out here to sign the agreement and the police surrounded his 00:35:29.570 --> 00:35:34.206 place and he couldn't get out and and he didn't. The people in 00:35:34.239 --> 00:35:39.097 philadelphia prevailed and he and the team didn't come. And so everybody 00:35:39.130 --> 00:35:44.376 thought that the cardinals were using us. But I opened up discussions with 00:35:44.409 --> 00:35:49.787 the cardinals and to make a long story short, I kind of believe that they 00:35:49.820 --> 00:35:56.307 were going to come and I was put by Russ nelson as the, as kind of the 00:35:56.340 --> 00:36:01.197 bizarre over all of these negotiations. And so we kept edging forward 00:36:01.230 --> 00:36:06.296 edging forward and we finally reached an agreement 00:36:06.329 --> 00:36:11.276 and we signed that agreement. Well, no, we didn't sign it. We reached an 00:36:11.309 --> 00:36:16.407 agreement and then president bidwell said, I've got to have that signed by 00:36:16.440 --> 00:36:21.296 tomorrow because I'm going back to ST louis and I'm going to need that 00:36:21.329 --> 00:36:24.827 because I'm going to the NFL to make an announcement on whether the team 00:36:24.860 --> 00:36:30.296 is going to come here or not. But he says I gotta have that letter signed 00:36:30.329 --> 00:36:37.876 and the rust was gone. And so I wandered around campus and thought, well 00:36:37.909 --> 00:36:43.166 what do we do? And finally I came back with the legal counsel telling me 00:36:43.199 --> 00:36:47.736 not to sign that letter. That I didn't have any authority to sign that 00:36:47.769 --> 00:36:50.986 letter. And I said, yeah, I got authority to sign that letter because I'm 00:36:51.019 --> 00:36:55.657 over the stadium and I signed contracts all the time. And so I signed the 00:36:55.690 --> 00:37:03.690 letter and I senate with bidwell. Russ nelson was out of town and Russ 00:37:03.690 --> 00:37:09.327 nelson came back. This was on a thursday. I signed the letter, bidwell 00:37:09.360 --> 00:37:15.486 took it on friday on saturday. I got a phone call at home and Russ nelson 00:37:15.519 --> 00:37:20.037 wanted to see me at his home. The one and only time that I got called on a 00:37:20.070 --> 00:37:27.177 weekend to go see him. And when I got there I could I could see that the 00:37:27.210 --> 00:37:30.347 atmosphere had been poisoned a little bit because the legal counsel was 00:37:30.380 --> 00:37:32.396 there 00:37:32.429 --> 00:37:38.907 and the conversation went, something like this Russ was pretty pretty grim 00:37:38.940 --> 00:37:44.137 about it all. He said, I understand that you have sent a letter saying 00:37:44.170 --> 00:37:49.347 that the Cardinals could play in Sun Devil Stadium. And I said yes, I've 00:37:49.380 --> 00:37:54.717 done that. And he says can you get the letter back? And I said, no, the 00:37:54.750 --> 00:37:59.077 letter is already gone. And he says, what if I tell you to get the letter 00:37:59.110 --> 00:38:01.347 back? 00:38:01.380 --> 00:38:06.557 And I says, well Russ, you can do this, you can fire me and then you can 00:38:06.590 --> 00:38:11.407 tell Bruce to get the letter back. But before you do that, let me tell you 00:38:11.440 --> 00:38:14.686 why I signed that letter. 00:38:14.719 --> 00:38:20.276 And I went on to explain to him that this is a time when I knew that I had 00:38:20.309 --> 00:38:27.057 to bite the bullet because he couldn't. I said there's no way you could do 00:38:27.090 --> 00:38:35.090 that without getting border regions approval, but I can and I'm expendable. 00:38:35.889 --> 00:38:41.376 And if it doesn't work out, you can fire me. But I says the thing you 00:38:41.409 --> 00:38:47.247 don't want to do is to get yourself mixed up in the middle of this because 00:38:47.280 --> 00:38:52.177 there there's no way that you could have sent that letter. And if bidwell 00:38:52.210 --> 00:38:56.776 had gone back and said I couldn't get anything from a issue, I wanted to 00:38:56.809 --> 00:39:01.776 come, but they wouldn't Cooperate, you might not have survived that either. 00:39:01.809 --> 00:39:06.557 So either way it was a catch 22 for you and at times, vice presidents are 00:39:06.590 --> 00:39:14.037 there to be expendable. And so I did that. Now you can fire me if you want 00:39:14.070 --> 00:39:20.197 to and to his credit, he didn't fire me. We went through a lot of ups and 00:39:20.230 --> 00:39:28.186 downs, but we did get him in Sun Devil Stadium, we got some new sky boxes 00:39:28.219 --> 00:39:32.546 built the city of phoenix wanted to come and play in our stadium and the 00:39:32.579 --> 00:39:36.137 downtown people and then leave us without anything. And I said it's not 00:39:36.170 --> 00:39:41.006 going to happen. So they build us some skyboxes, they improved the stadium 00:39:41.039 --> 00:39:46.997 and they played here from, This is 87, they'll probably be here for 20 00:39:47.030 --> 00:39:55.030 years. So all in all, not too bad, Maybe they'll win someday. They played 00:39:55.579 --> 00:40:00.666 a good game. Almost one yesterday. Well, you've got a lot of good stories. 00:40:00.699 --> 00:40:05.706 Um, do we want to do anymore russell nelson stories or were you involved 00:40:05.739 --> 00:40:11.896 at all in the, the building of the art museum? The controversy over the 00:40:11.929 --> 00:40:18.206 design of that. And no, I didn't have anything that, um, well, Russ was my 00:40:18.239 --> 00:40:22.867 favorite of all the years because we were of a like mind, he was a 00:40:22.900 --> 00:40:27.606 photographer, I was a photographer and we spent a lot of time, you know, 00:40:27.639 --> 00:40:32.236 talking about that. He is photography of the fine arts system. I'll tell 00:40:32.269 --> 00:40:36.477 you how, we have got one other piece of property. 00:40:36.510 --> 00:40:43.577 The old TB sanitarium, which was a Children's hospital 00:40:43.610 --> 00:40:46.376 and 00:40:46.409 --> 00:40:52.396 the state was, was kind of using it for that. It had somehow gotten into 00:40:52.429 --> 00:40:57.836 the hands of the, of the state and the Legislature wanted to give it to 00:40:57.869 --> 00:41:02.947 the Health Department wanted to turn over the Health department and we 00:41:02.980 --> 00:41:07.677 discovered that there was a little clause in there that it was originally 00:41:07.710 --> 00:41:15.710 the city of Tempe land and that they had to approve whoever it went to and 00:41:15.769 --> 00:41:20.756 what it was used for? And we got the city of Tempe to tell the state that 00:41:20.789 --> 00:41:25.936 they wouldn't approve anything except that going to ask you. And so we 00:41:25.969 --> 00:41:32.497 acquired that 27 acres out there that became part of the S. U. Campus. I 00:41:32.530 --> 00:41:35.657 haven't been out there in years but it's still part of the campus hasn't 00:41:35.690 --> 00:41:42.217 changed a lot. It's a nice location, horrible building. Sometimes maybe 00:41:42.250 --> 00:41:46.677 it'll sell off the property and make a million. 00:41:46.710 --> 00:41:51.977 Mhm. About the downtown center. 00:41:52.010 --> 00:41:56.887 The downtown center is another than a S. U. East that we were involved 00:41:56.920 --> 00:42:01.847 with. The downtown center came about because we we were trying to get 00:42:01.880 --> 00:42:07.927 something going downtown. We really needed to do it. And Alfredo Gutierrez 00:42:07.960 --> 00:42:15.896 was in the majority in the Senate and he said Brent, I will help you get 00:42:15.929 --> 00:42:22.867 the downtown center. But there is no administrator. 00:42:22.900 --> 00:42:29.646 Mexican american administrator at a issue in any capacity. 00:42:29.679 --> 00:42:33.867 And he says I will only do it if you appoint somebody as an assistant vice 00:42:33.900 --> 00:42:37.456 president. 00:42:37.489 --> 00:42:43.637 When I said, I think we can do that. And he appropriated the initial money 00:42:43.670 --> 00:42:49.436 for an issue downtown. We started it. That's what we have today was an 00:42:49.469 --> 00:42:57.126 outgrowth of that decision and we did hire a mexican american to be an 00:42:57.159 --> 00:43:03.467 assistant vice president frank. 00:43:03.500 --> 00:43:07.816 First one, you said one of your goals that you told Russell nelson was 00:43:07.849 --> 00:43:13.166 that he needed more hispanic 00:43:13.199 --> 00:43:16.936 representation on campus. Did you, do you think you've fulfilled that? I 00:43:16.969 --> 00:43:21.736 think we made good strides. I think the university is, is still trying to 00:43:21.769 --> 00:43:25.767 achieve that to make it happen. We started what was called the Los Diablos 00:43:25.800 --> 00:43:32.736 , which is a chicano alumni association made up of mexican americans had 00:43:32.769 --> 00:43:36.657 graduated from the university who started a scholarship program which is 00:43:36.690 --> 00:43:42.626 still going, which has resulted in a lot of a lot of people coming to this 00:43:42.659 --> 00:43:49.767 university. We started the Hispanic convocation, Channel eight filmed it 00:43:49.800 --> 00:43:54.497 where you have people watching them go through and get their graduation on 00:43:54.530 --> 00:43:58.956 tv and I'm sure influenced a lot of people to come here. So we made some 00:43:58.989 --> 00:44:05.467 strides. We, we, I didn't achieve total parody, but we made some strides 00:44:05.500 --> 00:44:09.597 in that area. And there are a lot more chicano administrators now than 00:44:09.630 --> 00:44:13.117 there were when, when we started. 00:44:13.150 --> 00:44:18.626 We've talked about west and downtown without issue East. Um, there must be 00:44:18.659 --> 00:44:25.477 a story with that. Well, my, my career, okay, my career was pushing the 00:44:25.510 --> 00:44:31.267 envelope. Okay, that's what I was good at june knows I wasn't the greatest 00:44:31.300 --> 00:44:36.146 administrator at this university if you mean by administrator keeping the 00:44:36.179 --> 00:44:40.376 paperwork flowing, but I was smart enough to get bob Ellis to help me at 00:44:40.409 --> 00:44:45.896 that. So he kept the paperwork flowing. I perceived my job as pushing the 00:44:45.929 --> 00:44:50.927 envelope and to push it out there so that people would have to make 00:44:50.960 --> 00:44:55.617 decisions that I thought were beneficial for the university. That was kind 00:44:55.650 --> 00:44:59.427 of maybe egotistical of me to think that I knew what the university needed. 00:44:59.460 --> 00:45:03.367 But I felt like I had a good feel politically for the Valley and the 00:45:03.400 --> 00:45:07.767 state. And I came from a political family long time I had good 00:45:07.800 --> 00:45:12.256 relationships with the Legislature so I thought I could feel what had to 00:45:12.289 --> 00:45:19.436 happen much like A. S. U. West, we had to have an S. U. East 00:45:19.469 --> 00:45:25.356 laddie arrived on campus a month later he went out to talk to the issue 00:45:25.389 --> 00:45:32.106 partnership. The I. S. U. East Partnership, not a issue East Valley 00:45:32.139 --> 00:45:36.287 Partnership. I'm sorry East Valley Partnership. He'd been here maybe a 00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:42.097 month, maybe two months. And I had been telling him that at that speech, 00:45:42.130 --> 00:45:47.057 he had to say he supported in east campus 00:45:47.090 --> 00:45:53.197 and he did it. But later on he told me he thought I was crazy, he thought 00:45:53.230 --> 00:45:55.956 I was absolutely crazy 00:45:55.989 --> 00:46:02.666 and but he did it and that kind of kept the ball rolling and then the 00:46:02.699 --> 00:46:05.847 campus 00:46:05.880 --> 00:46:10.157 base air base closed out there. And that became an excellent opportunity 00:46:10.190 --> 00:46:16.347 for us to to move in and and it became a reality. But laddie had to do it 00:46:16.380 --> 00:46:21.506 on our our say so. And he did did he did he tell you why he thought you 00:46:21.539 --> 00:46:26.566 were crazy? He thought I was crazy because he thought that there wouldn't 00:46:26.599 --> 00:46:31.606 be an a sus campus out there for years and years, he didn't think the 00:46:31.639 --> 00:46:35.046 political support was there. 00:46:35.079 --> 00:46:41.316 It seems like it's really just getting started to true campus. Well, I 00:46:41.349 --> 00:46:44.276 don't think anybody could have anticipated the growth that this valley had 00:46:44.309 --> 00:46:52.309 , but I think we're very well positioned now with west east downtown and 00:46:54.579 --> 00:46:59.157 I think I'm part of that legacy. So that's, that's what I left at the 00:46:59.190 --> 00:47:04.546 university. 00:47:04.579 --> 00:47:07.316 You've talked a lot, a lot of interesting events. Is there anything 00:47:07.349 --> 00:47:11.066 special that stands out of your career that you wanted to be sure and 00:47:11.099 --> 00:47:17.927 mention to us today? Well, I didn't get fired and I didn't go to jail. So 00:47:17.960 --> 00:47:25.960 okay. When the, when the, when the Super Bowl was here, that is an event 00:47:26.559 --> 00:47:32.336 that, that probably hastened my going back to the faculty. That was a very 00:47:32.369 --> 00:47:39.086 tough, very tough thing to have because you have the NFL that is held in 00:47:39.119 --> 00:47:43.736 stadiums that are owned by the owners and this was one of the few times 00:47:43.769 --> 00:47:48.887 that was held in a, in a university setting. I don't want to brag. But I 00:47:48.920 --> 00:47:53.066 don't think that if I hadn't been the vice president, that probably 00:47:53.099 --> 00:47:57.816 wouldn't have happened because you had to do a lot of things without 00:47:57.849 --> 00:48:04.227 getting border regions approval. Mhm jim Steeg and I who was the person 00:48:04.260 --> 00:48:12.260 from the NFL on a handshake agreed on a half million project at the 00:48:12.610 --> 00:48:16.847 stadium with neither one of us knowing where the funding was going to come 00:48:16.880 --> 00:48:22.617 from. Exactly. And that's some of the things you had to do because you 00:48:22.650 --> 00:48:27.146 couldn't put it out to bed. You couldn't, you know, you had to, you know, 00:48:27.179 --> 00:48:31.456 bypass all the bidding procedures and get approval to do that. And it 00:48:31.489 --> 00:48:37.447 drove the legal counsel absolutely crazy. But it happened, it came off 00:48:37.480 --> 00:48:42.177 there were not any major glitches. We made improvements to Sun Devil 00:48:42.210 --> 00:48:48.296 Stadium and I'll tell you how we made the money. I didn't endear myself 00:48:48.329 --> 00:48:53.977 with the coaches and the athletic director because we moved everybody off 00:48:54.010 --> 00:48:59.236 the 4th and 5th floors over there, the 5th and 6th floors, 00:48:59.269 --> 00:49:03.026 all of the offices we cleared out. And this is at the height the 00:49:03.059 --> 00:49:07.657 recruiting season and all of this. And, and you must understand that that 00:49:07.690 --> 00:49:13.217 they were not happy campers, but we made a half million dollars by selling 00:49:13.250 --> 00:49:16.936 those for game day as sweets. 00:49:16.969 --> 00:49:21.427 I mean, it's just, it's such a big event that it just boggles the mind. 00:49:21.460 --> 00:49:25.796 You know, you could sell those sweets for, for that kind of money. Did you 00:49:25.829 --> 00:49:28.577 realize that going in that you would be able to do things like that? 00:49:28.610 --> 00:49:34.037 That's what we were hoping. We didn't know if we could or not, 00:49:34.070 --> 00:49:37.106 but that's how we got the money for the improvements that we had to have 00:49:37.139 --> 00:49:40.236 for, for Sun Devil Stadium. 00:49:40.269 --> 00:49:44.407 And you say that hastened you're going back to teaching, you did sort of 00:49:44.440 --> 00:49:50.066 leave. I mean, you could have stayed, I suppose. Well I, yes, yeah. I 00:49:50.099 --> 00:49:55.037 think it was my choice to to step down. I've been An administration for 20 00:49:55.070 --> 00:50:00.486 some years and I I taught a class all those years though I kept my, my 00:50:00.519 --> 00:50:06.276 hand in teaching. So I always thought of myself as a teacher on a short 00:50:06.309 --> 00:50:11.436 term leave to push some things across the table. And you know, in 00:50:11.469 --> 00:50:16.787 retrospect, I probably one reason that I was able to push that envelope 00:50:16.820 --> 00:50:24.117 with a little more authority than than somebody else as I had tenure and I 00:50:24.150 --> 00:50:29.767 could do those kinds of things. You could put your, you know, here career 00:50:29.800 --> 00:50:32.736 on the line and say, hey, if it doesn't work out, I'll go back to the 00:50:32.769 --> 00:50:37.787 faculty. So it's, it's a nice thing to have. You know, when you, when you 00:50:37.820 --> 00:50:45.227 can do that in administration, 00:50:45.260 --> 00:50:49.267 anything that you guys are sitting there thinking I should be asking. I've 00:50:49.300 --> 00:50:52.807 learned some things that I was right in the office, some of this stuff 00:50:52.840 --> 00:50:57.916 happened. And I haven't told some of these stories 00:50:57.949 --> 00:51:03.327 stories, stories, you could probably do another hour and some more stories 00:51:03.360 --> 00:51:07.217 , especially down at the legislature. I'm sure there's a lot of skeleton. 00:51:07.250 --> 00:51:12.637 You got time for one more Engineering Excellent story. 00:51:12.670 --> 00:51:15.807 That was a big thing for free issue. We were trying to promote this 00:51:15.840 --> 00:51:18.327 engineering excellence 00:51:18.360 --> 00:51:21.427 and we, 00:51:21.460 --> 00:51:27.126 we, we just had to have some crucial support in the legislature for it. 00:51:27.159 --> 00:51:32.526 And one of the things that I had done when I had taken over as a lobbyist 00:51:32.559 --> 00:51:37.537 is that I had made my contacts and and the chairman of our subcommittee on 00:51:37.570 --> 00:51:44.836 appropriation was a gentleman by the name of Jack Taylor. Excuse me? And 00:51:44.869 --> 00:51:50.736 Jack Taylor was an old whack referee. He was a former mayor of Mesa, but 00:51:50.769 --> 00:51:55.736 he was an old whack referee had refereed games for the whack and I found 00:51:55.769 --> 00:52:00.916 out that he had never been invited to an A. S. U. Football game. 00:52:00.949 --> 00:52:04.117 He was probably the most crucial guy in the legislature as far as our 00:52:04.150 --> 00:52:09.816 budgets were concerned. And this was before the days when legislators 00:52:09.849 --> 00:52:13.347 could accept tickets 00:52:13.380 --> 00:52:21.380 and Jack, can I get a drink? Oh 00:52:26.050 --> 00:52:30.787 and so I invited Jack to a football game and I took him down in the front 00:52:30.820 --> 00:52:36.727 of the box and I said, Jack, these two seats right here are yours as long 00:52:36.760 --> 00:52:41.137 as you want them, just let me know anytime you want to come to a football 00:52:41.170 --> 00:52:47.416 game and he will, we'll take care of you. 00:52:47.449 --> 00:52:52.677 Well, we got involved in this engineering excellence and they passed a 00:52:52.710 --> 00:52:56.936 budget without the engineering excellence money in it because of the U. Of 00:52:56.969 --> 00:53:01.677 a strength in the in the legislature. We weren't able to do it, but we got 00:53:01.710 --> 00:53:08.026 Jack Taylor and Tony West who were senators over there to agree that we 00:53:08.059 --> 00:53:11.916 can try and amend it on the floor. 00:53:11.949 --> 00:53:19.517 That's never done. You usually don't do it that way. And 00:53:19.550 --> 00:53:26.876 excuse me. And so we we got them to do it. And every time they would bring 00:53:26.909 --> 00:53:32.276 it up on the floor to pass it. Tony West would stand up and Jack Taylor 00:53:32.309 --> 00:53:37.927 was supporting him. And sane, I've got an amendment I'd like to offer. And 00:53:37.960 --> 00:53:40.847 they'd have to close it down because they knew that Tony West had the 00:53:40.880 --> 00:53:43.717 votes. 00:53:43.750 --> 00:53:51.750 I got called by Burton Barr over to his side of the house and he put me in 00:53:52.030 --> 00:53:55.316 a room right next to their caucus, 00:53:55.349 --> 00:54:00.086 a dark room and he would leave me in that dark room and he would go to his 00:54:00.119 --> 00:54:04.907 caucus and then he would come next door and the conversation went, 00:54:04.940 --> 00:54:07.506 something like this. 00:54:07.539 --> 00:54:13.037 Brown, you're dead. Don't even show your face around here next year. You 00:54:13.070 --> 00:54:18.236 know, you are dead meat. You know, don't even think about coming down here 00:54:18.269 --> 00:54:22.336 next year. We will bury you so deep. I mean, only Bar could express 00:54:22.369 --> 00:54:26.706 himself like this. And then he would leave me there sitting in the dark 00:54:26.739 --> 00:54:32.146 and go next room and visit his caucus and then he would come back in and I 00:54:32.179 --> 00:54:37.686 kept telling Mr Barr, there's nothing I can do because I have made 00:54:37.719 --> 00:54:43.336 commitments and I will not back off until my people say to back off and 00:54:43.369 --> 00:54:48.097 they're not backing off. Anyway, it went like this for two or three days. 00:54:48.130 --> 00:54:52.686 And finally, Mr Barr came up with a solution where you gave it to you a 00:54:52.719 --> 00:54:57.157 little bit more money, You have a a little bit more money but we got our 00:54:57.190 --> 00:55:02.057 engineering excellence money in the base and the other two didn't get it 00:55:02.090 --> 00:55:08.356 in the base. And so that was a major, major victory for Arizona State 00:55:08.389 --> 00:55:15.106 University. And right after the session, Bert Bar came out to visit us, 00:55:15.139 --> 00:55:19.506 which illustrated that we had become players. He had never had to pay 00:55:19.539 --> 00:55:24.057 attention to a S. U. Before. And that was the first time that he 00:55:24.090 --> 00:55:27.856 recognized that we were players in the process because we stopped the 00:55:27.889 --> 00:55:30.907 budget process called. 00:55:30.940 --> 00:55:35.506 I may have, there may have been other instances that that has happened. 00:55:35.539 --> 00:55:39.856 I'm not aware of them ever stopping it on the floor of the house when the 00:55:39.889 --> 00:55:44.916 subcommittee's had agreed to the budget and we did it because Jack Taylor 00:55:44.949 --> 00:55:50.506 and Tony West and others took a strong stand. 00:55:50.539 --> 00:55:55.717 Mm hmm. An interesting legislative lobby story of how those things work 00:55:55.750 --> 00:56:01.896 behind the scenes. Did Burton Barr have allegiance to you? No, Burton Barr 00:56:01.929 --> 00:56:08.787 was a in fact Jack Feaster and I are riding a a book on not a buck a 00:56:08.820 --> 00:56:14.497 pamphlet on Burton Barr, but 00:56:14.530 --> 00:56:21.217 he was one of the legislators that really had the interest of the state at 00:56:21.250 --> 00:56:26.017 heart. The reason he didn't pay attention to the issue is that we never 00:56:26.050 --> 00:56:31.037 exercised any muscle. He was not necessarily at U. Of a. He played ball 00:56:31.070 --> 00:56:34.977 with the U. Of A. And the legislature because they had power and they 00:56:35.010 --> 00:56:39.677 exercised it. We had never done that before. I was the first lobbyist for 00:56:39.710 --> 00:56:43.506 the university and from what I've heard to the legislature worked 00:56:43.539 --> 00:56:47.697 differently back then. Um It wasn't as partisan. Everything that now seems 00:56:47.730 --> 00:56:52.296 to be down partisan lines. It's very very partisan now very much more. So 00:56:52.329 --> 00:56:56.856 they traded back and forth a lot more. And Burt Barr was was a real 00:56:56.889 --> 00:57:01.997 majority leader. Now they don't have the power that he had. 00:57:02.030 --> 00:57:06.106 When you started out, you talked about economic planning and development. 00:57:06.139 --> 00:57:13.086 Governor Castro state agency. The name frank. Saxton. You you must have 00:57:13.119 --> 00:57:20.936 had some strong connection there. Well frank. Okay Frank is a three star 00:57:20.969 --> 00:57:27.456 general. He came out and sent somebody, he was working for governor 00:57:27.489 --> 00:57:33.230 Williams and he sent somebody out to talk about getting into the program. 00:57:33.329 --> 00:57:35.329 And finally he revealed himself that it was him that wanted to come to the 00:57:38.309 --> 00:57:46.309 program. So he started in my budgeting class as a student. Okay we got to 00:57:46.550 --> 00:57:51.677 the P. B. B. S. That's planning, programming budgeting system. He was a 00:57:51.710 --> 00:57:57.416 controller of the army under McNamara and he implemented that program in 00:57:57.449 --> 00:58:00.686 the defense department and I was trying to lecture on it. And here was a 00:58:00.719 --> 00:58:05.637 guy that had implemented it. So the first semester he took the class from 00:58:05.670 --> 00:58:10.026 me the next semester he was my graduate assistant and since then he's 00:58:10.059 --> 00:58:14.086 taught the class every year. 00:58:14.119 --> 00:58:17.836 So an interesting experience to have him as a student anyway. Well he's a 00:58:17.869 --> 00:58:22.256 very gracious individual. He was he was very kind when I started trying to 00:58:22.289 --> 00:58:26.287 explain about it. 00:58:26.320 --> 00:58:32.316 Very kind. Good questions like that. There's been a history of a issue 00:58:32.349 --> 00:58:39.486 written by Mr Thomas went through 1960, Gee Homer wrote a book the 00:58:39.519 --> 00:58:43.387 described his era of course from his viewpoint. But there hasn't been 00:58:43.420 --> 00:58:49.427 anything written since then. It sounds like you'd be the man. 00:58:49.460 --> 00:58:56.637 I really like the stories I may be too close to. Some of them are very 00:58:56.670 --> 00:59:02.657 interested in this. They are probably too close to the to the trees, but 00:59:02.690 --> 00:59:07.387 somebody should write it. I think one of the tragedies of the centennial, 00:59:07.420 --> 00:59:14.186 if I have any little criticism of Russ is that they didn't do a history, 00:59:14.219 --> 00:59:16.816 they let it pass without doing a history and they should have done 00:59:16.849 --> 00:59:22.387 something. But there was kind of a controversy of 00:59:22.420 --> 00:59:27.097 I think Russ wanted a more professional historian to do it and they never 00:59:27.130 --> 00:59:29.186 happened. 00:59:29.219 --> 00:59:35.046 Do you have any particular dean's or leaders on campus who you consider 00:59:35.079 --> 00:59:40.686 visionary? I think, I think Roland Hayden was a very visionary Dean 00:59:40.719 --> 00:59:47.017 because he he was the driving force behind the Engineering Excellence. I 00:59:47.050 --> 00:59:50.146 just helped get it through the legislature. But without his vision it 00:59:50.179 --> 00:59:53.537 wouldn't have happened and that was a very important step for issue. We 00:59:53.570 --> 00:59:57.977 got that new building. You know, we started to get in grant money and all 00:59:58.010 --> 01:00:02.807 of these things were needed to push us to research one status. And so 01:00:02.840 --> 01:00:06.477 without that kind of vision, it wouldn't have happened. 01:00:06.510 --> 01:00:14.510 So I think growing Hayden was was crucial person during those those years 01:00:17.110 --> 01:00:22.416 and some of the other deans don't ask me to come in. 01:00:22.449 --> 01:00:25.736 Well, 01:00:25.769 --> 01:00:30.026 you already have another area that it seems like you've gotten a lot of 01:00:30.059 --> 01:00:33.706 the recognition, recognition and research statuses through the MArs 01:00:33.739 --> 01:00:41.739 research that's been going on. The martian is to mars mars right, space 01:00:43.710 --> 01:00:48.657 involved. I wasn't well, I was I was not directly involved sports 01:00:48.690 --> 01:00:56.690 activities. Oh, pain, pain, lots of pain and continues to be pain, 01:00:59.010 --> 01:01:07.010 lots of pain. Were you involved with kush! I became kush. I took over as 01:01:07.789 --> 01:01:14.436 Director of community relations Under kush. No. And kush was a coach in 01:01:14.469 --> 01:01:22.469 july and he was fired in october disaster. Okay. Yes. Disaster. I took 01:01:22.900 --> 01:01:26.376 over as 01:01:26.409 --> 01:01:30.097 assistant vice President. You know, I moved up the ladder a little bit. No 01:01:30.130 --> 01:01:34.586 , as vice President. I think I took over as vice President when Winehouse 01:01:34.619 --> 01:01:40.977 was fired. That was another unmitigated disaster. 01:01:41.010 --> 01:01:45.456 But those stories are too long. Probably for you to tell. There's there 01:01:45.489 --> 01:01:51.356 are stories there though, probably almost, yeah, we're actually, we're out 01:01:51.389 --> 01:01:54.997 okay. We have to talk about the story another time. I think you're much 01:01:55.030 --> 01:01:57.510 too young to beretiring