It's November 15th 2010. And my name is Elmer Gooding and it's an honor
and a privilege for me to interview a very special lady Madeline. Right?
And we're doing this as part of the A. S. U. Retirees Association Living
History video project madeleine today. We want to learn more about you and
your experience today issue and a little bit about the university as well.
But let's start by having you tell us about yourselves. My name is
Madeleine Albright. And at the time of my retirement from a issue I was
the academic scheduling manager, administrative staff. Where were you born
and raised and that sort of thing. Before it even came to the issue, I was
born in a little small town called Lichfield Oklahoma, which was about 20
miles from Tulsa and it was a priceless community because it was a town
where everybody looked after everybody's Children and you could be turned
loose and go any place you wanted to go and somebody was watching you and
our parents didn't have to worry. And so it was a great place to grow up.
And then did you go to school there as well? Or I went, yes I did. I went
through high school and then when did you come to Arizona In
1953? I believe That's when that's when I began working. No, I came about
10 years before that. Oh that was that was the A. S. You date and tell us
about your your first job at a. S. U. I was an office assistant
and I made I think oh let's see here. Right, I made $166
a month.
And uh
that was not a very big salary even in those days? Mm hmm. But you but you
made it well, made. Well I did well at issue now that was a part time job
, you know that was a regular full time job. And uh and now that was in
the registrar's office, that was in the registrar's office and I stayed
there all the way through. But In 58 the business office or for me
position as cashier. And I submitted my notice to Alfred thomas that I was
going to have to be leaving because I really needed the money after a few
days he said we'll talk about this later. And after a few days he came
back and presented a record supervisor's positions at three at 2200 a
month. And that looked like a gold mine. I was glad to stay.
And then what did you get a promotion at that time? Yes. From uh from the
office assistant two record supervisors. Well tell us about some of the
other positions you had because you had a lot of different positions at
the register. Yes I did. I stayed as record supervisor until 1968
and possibly 67. And I became assistant registrar to Alfred thomas when
you were in the registrar's office and in charge of records. Were there
any interesting stories that you might tell us about what happened there?
Many, many stories. one story, which was, but just before I got the record
supervisors job was a young man came to the window and wanted to look at
his record. Well the girl who was supposed to be taking care of him was
not there at the moment and I went over and asked if I could help him. He
said yes, he wanted to look at his record and I said just a moment, I'll
get it. I turned to leave and he said, don't you want to know my name? And
I said, aren't you? So and so and he said, yeah, well, he looked at his
record when I brought it and thanked me and left a couple of days later my
husband picked up the Arizona Republic and as a, apparently he was a
reporter as well as a student. And it had an article in there that said,
warning, Don't any of your students go over to the Registrar's office and
try to pull a fast one. Madeleine wright knows every one of us by name.
And
about how large was a s. You back at that time you recall what the size of
the institution was. It was not very big. It was like an overgrown high
school. Uh it was the fellows were coming home from the service and a lot
of wives were being hired two work so that their husbands could go to
school. And it was a very interesting time. I had one of those young man
that I wasn't married who I think got a crush on me because somehow he
found out when my birthday was. This young man was from texas. And he came
to the window on my birthday with a cake that had sparklers that were all
lit and there was no way you could put them out, you had to stand there
and watch them burn all the way down. And I was so embarrassed. That's an
interesting friendship between texas and Oklahoma. Usually they're in
competition with each other. Well, I'm I'm sure he didn't know if I was
married or if I wasn't married because I had never told him Madeleine who
was registered when you, when you started was Al thomas at that time. And
I know you have a quote there that you got from Al thomas. Why don't you
share that with us? No book about a issue? Well, this was a book that he
wrote And on the inside he said to Mrs Madeleine right with sincere
appreciation for outstanding service for wonderful loyalty, for doing many
diversified jobs and responsibilities. Well, for being pleasant when it
would be easy not to be best wishes. Alfred thomas Jr That's quite
attribute that's wonderful. Now Al thomas was registered. Who was
president back at that time. Was that probably damage, damage damage in
the very beginning. Uh huh right now after record supervisor, then you
moved on to another position. I went to assistant registrar in uh not 1968
July I. 1968. And that was, that was quite an honor. You can you tell us a
little bit about the registration process and how that was when you first
arrived. As compared with how it was in in in later years, did you use
punch cards to pull for the classes or how did how did the students
register back in those days? Well when
we did, when we had the registration, everything was manual, nothing
nothing was done automatically. And we had class cards for each class, the
department's had the glass guards, they had a position where they sat and
distribute them manually and the students would go stand in line to to
select the cards that they wanted to register for. Um they had to be made
up
printed ahead of time that was done. But then when the registration was
over we had to take all of those cards and put them into pigeon holds and
to where they went. And then we had to type the class list that were to go
out to the faculty members. And uh at the end of the semester when grades
came in we had to we started typing up the report cards ahead of time so
that we had the student's name and class is on the cards. So when the
semester ended then we would go through sort all of the class cards that
came in and enter each one of those. We spent many a night well into the
night and coming on saturday to saturday and even onto sunday if necessary.
And there was arrangements made with post office so that they would have
someone at the post office that could take those Greg cards after we had
worked them and have them in the mail on monday because the students had
to register on Tuesday and yep it was a handful even though we were small
when you do everything manually it doesn't doesn't go that fast.
Well the registrar's office of course outgrew the administration building
and the entire operation was moved to the more building and my area was
put down in the lower level and it was it it was not an unpleasant place
to be. You didn't have any outside windows or anything like that. But I
for some reason got started with plants, I bought it brought a few in and
it seemed like then that everybody on campus that came and saw plant down
there. I wanted to bring me a plant and pretty soon I had a garden down
there and they grew like they had sunshine and everything we couldn't
quite understand but they thrived and uh so it it made for a very
interesting situation one time the agricultural department had visitors
from another country and at the moment I've forgotten which one. And they
actually put that on their tour for their visitors to come down and see
the plants that I was growing
When I, when I left I gave them all away and people, you could look out on
campus and people were carrying them in every direction, you know, with
all of the plants and all of the books that you had lining the walls
describing all the classrooms. You had a very full office. As I recall.
We never did get to see frank Lloyd wright walking through the more
building when we were in the administration building every once in a while
we'd look out our window and here he'd be going down the hall and up the
stairs to see Grady Gammage. And that was quite a Interesting.
And then on from there, you moved up to another position? Yes. I went to
ac academic scheduling coordinator in 73 and then to academics. Well, just
a few days later they changed the title. And I got a notice from Elmer
Gooding saying that I had gone to Academic scheduling Manager,
administrative staff. I remember working with you many, many years. And
then uh, with all of this scheduling, I don't know anybody on the campus
that that new every classroom, I knew how many chairs were in each
classroom, knew exactly what the configuration was. And I recall one time
that we were doing a survey and we were comparing our use of classrooms
with the normal standards for the national And we were, we were running at
about 200% of capacity because of the tight scheduling that you did. And
you had remember in your office you had all of these books up along the
wall, among the plants that you had in there. She had the most healthy
environment that you can imagine with all the plants that she grew. Um,
tell us how you, how you, how you did all this with without computers. And
before the days of computers, I think it's probably almost impossible to
explain it. I got used to where people like to be and you'd think with all
the classes that would be too much to remember. But somehow it always came
out right and and everybody was so satisfied. I also recall that if any of
our faculty members had a disability of any type, that you always made
sure that they were scheduled in a room that was close to their office and
and many other very personal things like that. So everything like that
entered in and they were so appreciative, but it was long and hard to, to
figure all of them out. I'm sure you have some other interesting stories
you'd like to tell us about issues or anything else that comes to mind
that would you like to share with us story that's connected with the
classrooms is that, and I forget exactly what year it was. But the federal
government contacted a issue and said, you're in trouble. You have been
putting too many students in in certain classrooms.
And when we checked it through, what they were talking about, the room was
plenty large. The chairs were plenty, but there were not enough doors for
them to leave by if there was an emergency. And so they told us that we
had to cut the number back and that until the doors were put in, well,
administration and you may have been in on that. Um, I don't know. They
convinced them that since we had to go through the state of Arizona to get
money, that it was not possible to do it until they had time to meet and
so forth. So they gave us a deadline to do it. Well, somehow it fell
through the cracks and the next year or the next time they came, we still
were scheduling with the same number of doors and
they, the administration didn't didn't couldn't locate a record. And I
remember when the president himself called me and said, madeleine tell us
what we've done wrong. Um, I explained it to him and I said, but I have no
proof of this. I said, I can't give you any documentation. He says, if you
tell us, we believe it will take care of it and they did, who were some of
the, the, the other people that you worked with during your, your various
years in in in all the different positions. You held any special people or
persons that come to mind. There was just so many and you knew about
everybody I guess I knew, I knew I knew practically everybody on campus
and uh I had
reached a point where I was even invited to come to the higher ups
remember our meetings and so forth. So it you know, it's really hard to
start naming names. But were you, were you in the the registrar's office
when they kind of moved over into computerizing all of the records and yes
, and almost lost my mind. We had Ronald Reagan that came to A S. U. And
convinced us that he was representing the computer that we should have and
so forth and a issue agreed to try it. He said that Ronald Reagan, I
wanted you to introduce computers. You mean the Ronald Reagan? The Ronald
Reagan, yes, came to a, he was working for General Electric
20 mule team Borax Borax also. He went from a movie star to general
electric to becoming a political person. The first computer on campus was
the one thing. Uh and I don't know if you want this or not. When the, when
he left the White House, he had foul things up so much for us that we
finally had left that system. And so when he left the White House, he came
to a S. U. And I was told and I assume it's true that he gave the
commencement exercise free of charge because we said he was trying to get
rid of his guilty conscience.
You had to go through the telephone system at that time. You couldn't you
you put it into a computer, but it went into the telephone system and
somehow worked. We had so many temperamental things that happened. The
business office had their records run during the daytime and we had ours
run during the night. All of a sudden the computer quit working our
records and uh nobody could figure out why. Well when they did find out,
it turned out that they had started turning the lights off when they went
home at night. The computer was supposed to run, the computer wouldn't run
with the lights off. Mhm. And so after we almost were the to the point we
didn't think we could recover why they discovered that and things did get
a little better. But eventually they didn't stay with that computer. Can
you compare that to what the process was like at the time that that you
retired, Although you weren't actually in the registrar's office at that
time. But and things have become pretty well computerized by that time, I
assume completely computerized. Yes. So that it it was very simple in
comparison to what it had been in the very beginning, even though we had
thousands of students more and even online registration, which never would
have been thought of back at the time you began your No, no, every
everything was manual when you were in the registrar's office and in
charge of making sure the grades got out on time. Did you ever have any
interesting story or event or anything that might have happened during
that time period? I have a great story. I used to call the professors. If
they didn't get their grades in on time, I would call them no matter what
time of the night it was even because we were there working when the
grades were due on friday, we had to process them on saturday and into
sunday if we had to arrangements were made with the post office so that
the grades could be taken over and put into the mail because the students
had to start re registering on sunday or on Tuesday. And uh, that was just
impossible if anybody didn't have their grades in. But this professor, I
called him, he was in bed and I told him that we had to have those grades.
We couldn't wait till morning. And he got out of bed and came over and he
said to me, please don't call me at home anymore. My wife doesn't believe
it was the office. And uh, I told him, I'm sorry if you don't have yours
in on time next next semester, you're gonna hear from me again, Just just
for the record. I never did get a call from Madeline at home.
Well, was there any other notable achievement that you'd like to tell us
about? Or let's see, were you you were there at the time when A. S. U. Was
trying to move to university status? Oh yes. Oh yes. There was many things
that were going on, I don't recall On that particular one. At least you
weren't in the middle of that battle. Right. Well I guess everyone, you
know, we were it was Arizona State College when I started. And so yes, we
we knew what was going on and everything, but we we were a little distant
from that
as a issue grew and became larger and larger and larger. What are what are
some of the challenges that you faced in the in the various offices that
you were in, either in the registrar's office or in academic room
scheduling, any, anything happened to come to mind. There is a particular
challenge that you faced. Well the not in those particular areas uh Per se
I found that everybody on campus had to be involved in something so that
my job as it normally would have been, became very large and and
complicated. I wondered if somebody else ever came in on my job, what kind
of a problem they were going to run into? I did things like athletic
eligibility and uh they
that was complicated, you had to decide, you had to two itemized paperwork
on students complete history before he could play as an athlete. And uh,
yep was, we had a great coach, but one who would wait till the last minute
frank kush called secretary called me one night at five o'clock and wanted
me to clear one of the students for Saturday playing well that takes a
good hour and a half or more to, to clear one of the students. And I said
, I just can't do it. My husband and I have plans and etcetera and his
secretary turned and told frank what I had said. Well, he had a pretty
good vocal quality and um, and he let out a stream of, of words that we
won't mention here on the telephone. And, and, and he came to the phone
then and when he said Madeline and I said frank, I love you too. And
needless to say he was pretty handy at convincing you, you should do what
he wants to do. So well into the evening. I finished that up so that his
boy could play. My husband was not happy. But I'm sure frank was and they
probably won because he won most of the games that they played, he won, he
won most of the games. And one of the other,
uh, situations that I seem to develop that I'm not sure was a part of my
job was a close contact with our campus security and they called me
anytime they needed to run a student down or or if a student had a problem
and so forth. Or sometimes the students had to have records taken to the
courts for certain ah problems that had developed one way or another and I
did this so much that eventually campus security who had Chief Duffy at
that time and he was a wonderful person uh presented me with captain's
bars and I had a code number that was six, so two, so when they came to
pick me up and take me into the court with the records and They would call
into the office and say we have just picked up 602 and never a name was
used and felt very official. Mhm. Well tell us a story about the
commencement and how you, how you worked with commencement and what some
of your responsibilities were.
Well from many years it was the registrar's responsibility to take care of
the lineups for graduation and so forth. And the faculty members were
required to attend if they didn't attend, they got a nice little letter
from the president, we had to turn their names in, so I seem to always end
up with the faculty
rather than the students and I would go to the graduation. I had a list of
everybody who had to be there. I would go down the road checking them off
when I get clear to close to the end, I would look back and half of them
were gone
And uh the uh for a week or so after that, every time I passed a faculty
member on the campus, they'd holler checking in, checking in. That's
a great story.
You were also in charge of residency requirements that sometime any,
anything interesting happened in that regard. Oh yes. I when the student
came in while they were classified by either the admission section or the
record section, depending on whether they were new or re admitting. And
but if they were made of nonresidents, they had a the opportunity to
appeal. And I was selected be one of the chairpersons that would make the
decision as to whether the residency had been classified correct. One day
when I was walking over to the Memorial Union where it was being held,
two boys fell in behind me and they were visiting as they walked over and
one of the young men said, I'll get residency this time. Your dad gave me
a sworn statement that I had been here all summer working for him and and
etcetera, etcetera. I am the other boys that my dad is that. And he says
yes, yes, he says I'll get that old bitty this time. And uh and anyway,
they continued to follow me over to the Memorial Union when I turned and
started to go up the stairs, they turned and started up the stairs behind
me and I went around and sat down in the chairman's spot and they sat down
where they should be. Well I call their name, I said I called his name. I
said you can present your case now and he says I believe I'll withdraw it
thank you. They realized that I had heard every word they said as as we
walked over out of your many many accomplishments at A. S. U. What do you
think is the one that might have given you the greatest amount of
satisfaction or position that gave you the greatest amount of satisfaction
? Oh my
I loved working there from the time I I went and all. Ah I really enjoyed
being a part of the registrar's office. I felt like I was needed and I
think that was more important than anything else.
How do you feel that the the university changed from 1953 when you came
until you retired in 1989. Ah What what are the most significant changes
that you think occurred in the institution during that time period?
That's hard to say because everything was changing and especially with the
computer, maybe the computer was probably the biggest. Yes. Yes, we grew
tremendously and of course it got more difficult to take care of. So many.
Well you had a lot of challenges because I know that a lot of times the
number of students that we increased each year was larger than than some
universities in total and so somehow some way we just absorbed all those
and work together. What what kind of advice would you give a young person
if they were thinking about a career at issue.
Oh I I would be right behind. They're going to A S. U. My daughter went
there and it was marvelous and she became a teacher and and four filled
all of our wishes and I even got a purpose. The fact that I worked with
the education department so much why they needed a student to teach how to
drive and craig Grover says we'll do it we'll take your daughter. And so
they took her out and gave her driver's lessons and even went up what is
it the mountain there by the football field? Uh Yeah they drove her even
up that path and all of this. I thought man drove up there. I said she got
the best experience that she could have ever gotten in her life. I didn't
realize you could even drive cars up there. I didn't either. That's
amazing. I didn't either. I probably wouldn't have let her probably have
to back back down you know. Well what has occupied your your years now
that you've been retired and what are the kinds of things you've been
involved with? Well I of course stayed with the retirees association and
uh I became the 7th president and how white with my vice president
I am. We went to a lot of meetings we went to the capital and And meetings
that were held on Campus one one night when we were at a meeting on campus.
Why? Ah Rudy Campbell came walking up and put his arms around me and gave
me a big hug and howls looked shocked. And when Rudy left, he said, I said
, I've known Rudy for a long time. He said, well, I didn't know you knew
him that well.
Would he have been married about that time? Would Rudy have been mayor of
Tempe at the time that that happened? I think this was after he was mayor
after that point, but he's one of my favorite people also. Well, he served
the university well, just just as you have, can you think of any other
stories or things that you'd like to share with us? I'm sure that there
must be something that I've missed along the way. But if you can think of
anything else you'd like to share enjoyed while I was there when jerry
Lewis came and made a movie, the nutty professor on campus and, and he had
some of our students in the movie. And uh after it was all over, he flew
in a band from California and had a big party over in sun devil stadium
and it was the small stadium at that time and that must have created a few
interesting challenges for you in terms of room scheduling and that sort
of thing when he was there definitely because the agricultural building
had to be cleared. And uh, so it uh, it was, but he served, he served
cokes and something hot dogs wasn't, I couldn't remember what the second
thing was, but for the, for that, of course we weren't as large a campus
at that time. I have to admit Madeline. We thank you so much for taking
time to allow us to interview you well. You certainly had a fantastic
impact on the institution. You did so many things, you do so many people
and you just kind of were the glue that kind of held everything together
and we appreciate you and we know that issue is a better place because you
were there
and I couldn't have done it without you.
Mhm,
mm hmm.
Okay.