Today's December 4, 2012. We're conducting an interview for the Arizona
State University retirees Association video history project and today
we're at the CSU Community Services building. I'm Ed Sylvester at
professor in the walter Cronkite school Technical support staff today
include Roger corridor who was operating the camera and audio dave Schatz
lee the director and linda Vance Coy, who's chair of this history project.
So Conrad, I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself but once you've
done that, I'd like to ask you a few questions. Alright, happy to do it. I
am Conrad store ad and Worked here at Arizona State University for a
little more than 24 years. Actually this week on thursday it'll be three
years since I tendered my retirement papers. So happy to be back on campus
and talking about my time at the university.
Well let's go back to the beginning Uh in the fall of 1982 I was a new
assistant professor and very excited to hear that we were starting a
master's program and we would actually have these people called Graduate
Assistance, which I had heard of. And one of them in particular was a
young man from Barberton Ohio who worked for the weekly newspaper there
and most interestingly had a dual degree from the university in journalism
and Biology and I've never really heard of anybody doing that. And even
more interestingly he liked science writing, which was my special area. Um
why don't you take us back to Barberton and tell us a bit about where you
came from and then how you got to a S. U. From there, back to Barbara in
Ohio, my hometown, Right next to akron Ohio 30 miles south of Cleveland.
The factory town with lots of rubber plant, retire plants and babcock and
Wilcox plant. It's his the builders of the boilers at three Mile Island. I
don't know if they like that, but we had some of our history there in our
town, but I was a University of Akron graduate and my degrees were in mass
media communication with the emphasis in environmental sciences. And so of
course I went to work for the newspaper. I was a newspaper reporter,
sports editor and eventually became the general manager and editor of the
newspaper At age 23. I was the youngest person there and I was the boss
and that was a learning experience too and dealing with people. But this
is 1980 81. Ronald Reagan is president. We have a big recession, plants
are closing, people are losing their jobs, stores are closing. Advertising
revenue goes down, our newspaper's in trouble. We've got this 23 year old
kid running the thing and they say we got to get rid of him. He's the he's
at fault. Well we ended up getting bought out and everybody was let go. So
what do you do? I want to go work at the daily newspaper Cleveland Press
dies. Now there's 300 seasoned reporters out there, competing for a few
jobs. So it's time to go to graduate school and I was kind of bitter about
what had happened because I love my job and I was working hard and so I
wanted to get as far from Ohio as I could. I looked at a map, there was
Arizona, here's Ohio, that's pretty far. I'm gonna go there. Well, I I did
my research. It turns out that a issue was starting a brand new graduate
program in journalism and it was designed for people who had actually
worked in the media and who wanted to come back to further their education.
So it looked like it was the perfect fit for me. Doug Anderson was
directing the program eventually became director of the Cronkite school
and when it became the walter Cronkite school. Well, he was calling me all
the time because he wanted me to be part of this new program and he said
you're the perfect fit for what we're looking for and we want you to be a
teaching assistant and that will help pay for your school. And so that's
how I ended up in Arizona. Yeah, we talked about seminal moments in your
life and one was the day I met you, I was assigned to be Ed Sylvester's
assistant as a teaching teaching assistant journalism school and what I
remember Computers were just coming in. So it's 1982, fall semester, 1982
, the reporting labs are switching over from typewriters, two computers. I
think they were IBM 80 S. Or X. T. S. Whatever the first generation were.
And always remember on the box that said 240 K. Memory more than you'll
ever need in a lifetime.
But of course there was no such thing as I. T. And they told you Ed you're
in charge of the computer
plugged into the wall. So I was your assistant, you're my assistant. So we
were always a couple steps ahead of the students to learn the computers.
But that's how I got to Arizona State University. It was part of the first
group of masters degree students in the journalism school ended up being
one of the first three graduates of the program. That's right now. The
interesting thing here is that I thought all grad assistants were like
Conrad. I was immediately ruined for the rest of my career. But by the end
of 1983 you became one of the first three of our Master's graduates and
immediately went off to a very prestigious fellowship right in the area
you were interested in. And where was December 1983 graduated, but I had
the fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Washington in Bethesda
Maryland at the National Institutes of Health. So I had an internship as a
science medical writer, which is what my whole degree program was geared
towards Science journalism. And so I got to spend almost a year in
Bethesda working for the federal government and learning that this is not
what I want to do for the rest of my life, it was a very interesting place
to be And I happen to be there through the beginning of 1984 when the AIDS
virus was discovered was identified. And it was the National Cancer
Institute scientist that actually made that discovery. So I was part of
the office of Cancer Communications and was part of the teams that had to
write press releases about. We know what this this disease is now, what's
causing it. And that was just a really interesting place to be and to see
the media circus that ensued from that and to deal with gigantic egos and
all of this things which all you know, is part of your education and
you're gonna put this to use later in your career. And it did, it happened.
And you had a particularly interesting exchange with a nobel laureate,
didn't you? You on a bench? Well, I happen to be working there and I was
26 years old, so a lot of the other interns were freshly graduated
graduated students just with undergrad degrees and had never worked in
their life anywhere. And I had already, I've been working for a newspaper
, running a small company, now had my master's degree. And and so I get my
assignments and I'd get them done the same day, well that's not how it
works in the federal government. And I said, well I turned in my my
assignment and I said, well what is this? So what's the story you wanted?
I interviewed and got the story done. Well, that was supposed to last you
all week. So I had a lot of downtime while I was there. So I got to know
the National Institutes of Health and I'd walk around and and visit the
clinical center and it just happened at that time. Albert Saban was there.
Albert Saban who had discovered the um oral polio vaccine. He was in his
80s then and he had been working on a aerosol vaccine for measles. And
there had been a little lab accident and he had inhaled some of this. And
Ironically he was paralyzed from the waist down. Here's a man who had
helped so many people avoid paralysis through polio and here he is. In his
80's. He's paralyzed. Well, he eventually recovered and he was actually
there doing his recovery and the park area outside NIH has never been
there. Beautiful campus wooded area. And so he was sitting on a park bench
outside the clinical center. I was walking with a friend of mine who
worked at the cancer institute had cerebral palsy. So he had a withered
arm and withered leg and he points out to me, so you see that guy over on
the on the bench and I said yeah because that's Albert Saban. I said no.
He said, yeah. I said Albert Saban polio vaccine. Albert saving because
yeah Nobel laureate. Albert Sabban says yeah because let's go talk to him.
He said we can't go talk to Albert Saban can we? Yeah let's go talk to
him. So we walked over and he saw my friend and he said oh are you one of
my Children thinking that he had been a polio victim? He said no no I. C.
P. And what do you what do you guys do? What? Sit down with me, sit down
with me and we explained what we did and that we were science writers. And
and he asked me and I was on a fellowship and he was really interested.
And he wanted to know how do you like working with some of the scientists
here and my age? I said well you know it's interesting but there's a lot
of big egos here and a lot of them are not very helpful for me to do my
job. And he said Con Conrad And he was calling me Conrad right away. He
said Conrad let me give you some advice. And I'm thinking okay Albert
Saban's going to give me some advice. He said if everyone who was writing
about science had to have a PhD in science there would not be very much
science writing done now would there. So yeah. And he said let me tell you
this when you're working with a scientist or a researcher if they cannot
explain to you in words, you can understand what it is they're doing. They
don't know what the hell they're doing. I've never forgotten that. It was
a great mantra to have in the back of my hand back of my head when
interviewing scientists. And you're not putting people up on a pedestal,
you're trying to get information because you're trying to tell a story to
a lay audience in words they can understand. So, doing your job as a
translator in a in a way, but always had that in the back of my head, you
know, they don't know what the hell they're talking about. If they can't
explain what they're doing in words you can understand. So that kind of
became my base point to go on to my job. And also fortuitous for me.
Conrad was still there when I was passing through the National Cancer
Institute Working on my 2nd book and he was there to introduce me and set
up interviews with the leading cancer researchers that I needed to talk to.
And from there when you were done with the federal government, remember
we said I was
that's how we referred to. Yeah, that's right. And a very good mole work.
Um And you moved on then from there to Kent state. Isn't that right? Right
, I finished up the internship in. I was not enamored of Washington. A lot
of people say you get potomac fever, I did not get potomac fever and I
didn't want to continue that job, but I wanted to do what I had trained to
do to write about science in a venue with a vehicle to get the message out
to people and not just be a news release that sort of set on a shelf. And
so I was looking for a job I missed Arizona tremendously, but my money was
gone and circumstances were okay. I have to go back to Barberton. I mean
looking for jobs at the same time I interviewed for a job at World Book
encyclopedia in Chicago. And that had actually been a little dream of mine
to work for Science year, the sci annual, that World book put out. So they
flew me to Chicago and I had to do all these tests. Was there at
marketplace in downtown Chicago, They have several floors in that building
was pretty impressive. And at the end of the day, I'm meeting with the
vice president, he says, well you've done really well. Conrad. We want, we
haven't talked money, We can pay you $16,000 A year to be an editor while
I've been making $17,000 as a weekly newspaper editor two years ago and
had gone and got my master's degree is like, no, I'm gonna live in Chicago.
So thank you very much for the interview, went back to Barbara and ended
up getting a job at Kent state University as their science editor and
feature writer in their communication services office. But I was home. But
Arizona still was tugging at me and really missed it. I didn't realize how
bad I had fallen in love with the Sonoran desert and with Arizona and
about two years went by. I got a telephone call from a friend of mine I
refine who was assistant business editor at the Arizona Republic. He was
one of my graduate student colleagues in the program. And we stayed in
touch and he had given me a call. He said Conrad Arizona State University
wants to start the science magazine. It looks like the perfect job for you.
You should apply. So I looked into it like okay, I'll apply. And it turns
out that of course they did not want to hire someone from outside or pay
money to bring somebody in from out of state to interview. But as we all
learned it's all about who, you know, the connections you've made. It
turns out that members of the higher committee were people that had gone
to graduate school with. And so they put in a good word for me and they
said you really should at least talk to this guy. So I did get an
interview as you flew me out. I ended up getting the job.
I was hired To do two jobs. I was hired 50% time as the science editor for
the issue News Bureau and that was working underneath Brown at that time.
And the other 50% was to start this magazine and they didn't know what
they wanted to call it. And that was going to be under Henry Reeves who
was the first vice president for research at Arizona State University and
that was, he'd only been there a year as as VP. And so I'm going to have
two jobs. It's like okay let's see how that works like that. Well we can
talk about that. Yeah we can talk about that. But when I heard Conrad was
coming on board as newsletter editor I knew what newsletters look like. We
all do. We taught students to make them, you know they're tri fold the
print on them and their trade
vehicles where you tell what's going on to other people. And lo and behold
after a very short period of time do you have an example of what popped
out of the hopper there? I'll show you how it started. There was a
newsletter that originally had started in the graduate school called A. S
. U. Research News and it had been in existence for 20 years black and
white newsletter. And this was moving over to the VP for research office
now. And I remember when I was interviewing With Brent Brown uh it was
1980 was the centennial for a issue And they had done a four color version
of this newsletter. So it's essentially a bunch of stories done in color
and just put together with a cover and they were very proud of it as they
should have been compared to what it had been. And Brent brown showing
this thing to me. He says, well, young man, can you do something like this
? And I said, oh I can do a lot better than that. And I think he's
thinking what kind of arrogant cusses this? You know, I just spoke my mind
said, well that's pretty nice, but it's not a magazine. So of The idea was
to create a four colour magazine. That would be the grandson of research
news. So that was one of my charges. But and to be done 50% time because
remember you're still doing this other job another time. So that lasted
for about two years. Uh Actually I brought with me, I couldn't find the
first copy we did, but this was actually the the second edition of issue
Research magazine. And we called it that they said, I said, well what do
you want to call us magazine? And they said research. Well, we should call
it something other than that. That that word has connotations that
whenever I give talks around the state around the country. I said, what
what's the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word
research and and what what do you think of science? Science? Okay, what
else? Not exciting? And what do you think of boring? It's usually the
second answer we win. Yes, you win a prize boring. And of course we know
that research is the exact opposite of boring. It's about furthering human
knowledge, it's about discovery, it's about you know learning new things.
Of course there's a lot of tedium and a lot of hard work involved to get
to that point, but it's the exact opposite of blurring. But that's what
most people think. So I'm thinking if we call our magazine research we're
gonna have a hard time getting people past the cover. But I had no no sway
at that time. So it was called research and And it lasted that way for 24
years but this was the second issue we did and we tried to come up with
themes and so this was Phil Christensen who's still here at the university
and Ron Greeley, good friend who just passed away last year I believe it
was. And you know one of the original scientists involved with all the
National Nasa missions to MArs. So I can remember this interview ed with
Phil Christensen, he was a new assistant professor in geology and he had a
little cubicle and I went to interview him because I was interviewing
anybody involved with MArs related research for this story. So I met Phil
and he had a mock up of this device on his desk and I said Professor
Christensen. Well what is this? That is a thermal emission spectrometer.
We are going to build this Conrad, we're going to put it on a satellite
then we're going to send it to MArs and it's going to go around mars and
it's gonna tell us what mars is made of. Eventually we're gonna put it
onto some kind of vehicle that we land on MArs and it's gonna drive around
, it's gonna tell us all kinds of things and I'm writing this down in the
back of my head, I'm going, yeah, right buddy, sure you are, of course we
know the end of that story, Phil Christensen is now one of the most famous
mars related scientists in the world. He has an entire building for his
team, the old more building and 30 or 30 or 40 grand students famous. He's
built several of these devices and devices that are on the rovers that are
driving around mars and satellites that are still going around mars and
just amazing. But I will never forget that being in that cubicle thinking
, yeah, right buddy, you're going to do this and he he surely did. So this
was one of the first issues we did. Yeah. Now and one of the things that I
think led to the major success, obviously your own ability to spot a good
science story. But you also teamed up with a very brilliant graphic artist
named Mike Hagel Berg and tell tell us about how that happened, How you
ran into each other. So we're continuing the story of doing these dual
jobs. Well, we've done a couple of magazines and they of course, first
they wanted this to be quarterly. Well, there's no way to do four
magazines a year by yourself because I had no staff and I was working 50%
time. So if we were doing three in the beginning and I was assigned, I
said, who's going to design this? So at that time the university had the
um university public publication design center and it was part of the news
bureau. And so I was assigned to this young designer. His name was Michael
Hagel Berg. He said, well, Mike likes science, you know, he should work on
this project. Little did I know that Michael Hagel. Berg's probably one of
the most brilliant illustrators in America, incredible designer and his
background was in physics. He could talk to the scientists better than I
could, but then he had the ability to take that information and make it
visual. I was the word guy. He was the image guy. So, again, another
seminal moment. It's a, you know, meant to be and we ended up working
together for 24 years. But it took two years. I finally, I told the vice
president's that if you really want this magazine done right, it needs to
be my full time job. I can't just be doing the science editing job and the
magazine as well, especially if you want to do it right? And of course I
was being evaluated by two vice presidents and so I never get a raise as
much as anybody else because they said, well we can't evaluate on that and
we can't evaluate that on that. So I was always losing out. So I had
learned to open my mouth and wrote a memo to Henry Reeves and said, you
know, I think this magazine needs to be my full time position and we
should form an office that's under you. And and that's what we'll do. And
so he called me into his office and he said I like what you wrote here.
Conrad. He says what should we call the office? I said, how about
research publications and what would you like your position to be? I
hadn't thought that far us about director. Sounds good. Mhm. So I've
learned open your mouth and ask for things. Sometimes you get it. So that
was 1988 uh finally had a chance to do the magazine full time and we were
off and running and started, you know, doing a little bit more doing a
little bit more because in the early days of course they wanted to
highlight the big money projects, which makes sense. And the issue was
brand new in the research game in terms of a national level. I mean
there's always been research here, but you know, to really get some of
these big projects, some things were starting to come in and that's what
they wanted to highlight. But with my background as a journalist knowing
that that's not necessarily the best stories and you know, you can write
about particle physics and you can write about space, but most people
don't have an idea what that is or quantum chemistry, wow, you're really
having to do a lot of translation. But when my idea was, let's take that
word research and stretch it to its broadest definition. And what does it
really mean? It means discovery. It means exploring for new knowledge. And
so what does a history professor do they? Right. That's their research.
What does someone in architecture do? That's research. What does someone
in art do? Okay, not you might not, you're thinking science right away,
but more research is done in art or dance or music. So we started to slip
stories into the magazine in some of the social sciences and and uh the
humanities, we didn't want to go too far because we don't want to get our
hands slapped. We're still doing the big money pieces that we had
engineering in the hard sciences. But our idea was to create a magazine
that was of newsstand quality. My we were stuck with that name. Research.
We were not going to get away with that. But what we had wanted, what we
wanted to create was discover magazine that you would buy on the newsstand
and it would be open to anyone who picked it up, it would be willing to
pay money for this even though we weren't going to charge money for it. We
wanted to do a real piece of science journalism and so we do little things
and wait to see if we were gonna get smacked down and we never were. So we
pulled a little more on the rope and we did a little more and we did a
little more and we built this thing. I can jump ahead all the way to the
end at the end of the magazines life, we we're read by More than 150,000
readers In all 50 states and 49 countries. And that was just the print
piece. And in addition, there is now a University Research magazine
Association, Irma, which did not exist before. Conrad started as you
research and everybody there, whom I've met says, well, there he is. I
mean, there's the guy that started it all. So it had quite a quite, quite
an impact as it went along. But one other thing that's sort of a harbinger
of the future is that you also made interesting contact with teachers of
science in Arizona and wound up creating a whole special magazine just for
them
things. Days go on. Years ago by, we're doing these publications were
looking for other outlets to get the message because that was my charge
from the VP Tell the world what's going on at Arizona State University in
terms in terms of research and scholarship. And so we had this magazine
and you're you're limited by the budget you have of how many you can do.
The Internet was just coming into play in the 90s. So we created one of
the very first websites that issues. We had a web outlet version of the
print magazine. We also work with Channel eight to do, we wanted to do a
tv magazine and that ended up being called A S. U. Research Review.
Another not overwhelming name But it it aired three times a year for
almost 12 years and got good Nielsen ratings. But it was you know, it was
a television version of the magazine. We we pick out the stories that we
thought would translate best to video and it won lots of awards. So we had
we were the envy of a lot of universities around the country in terms of
our uh research communications operation because we had the trio, we had
print, we had television and we had the internet. What we were missing was
something for kids in my mind because down the line I I'm a Children's
author and I was writing Children's books and I was visiting lots of
schools around the state and I would get feedback from the teachers, they
knew what I did with the magazine and it was greater good for older kids
because we wrote the magazine at about 8th, 9th grade level, maybe a
little bit higher, but they wanted something for the elementary students
and they said, and I had the idea what if we did a magazine for kids,
would this be something you could put to use? And they said, oh my gosh,
anything you could get us? You know, budgets are being hammered, we have
resources, we teachers are totally innovative and come up with ways to
stretch a nickel and and whatever you can get us, we can use. So we came
up with the idea to do chain reaction magazine. And so I got finally got
to come up with a cool name and something that would be engaging. We
wanted an active, active name and we tried a lot of different things and
had a lot of feedback and chain reaction is what it became. And this is
one of the very first, this was actually the second chain reaction here.
So what was really interesting, I think that we did with chain reaction,
we didn't want to be one of the ideas was to call it Research Junior or
Research Light. No, we didn't want to do that. Um and of course research
magazine was a compendium of stories across disciplines. It wasn't
thematic what the teachers told us, they said if you could do a
publication that fits our curriculum, what we have to teach that would
really be useful. So we spent time when we looked at the Arizona science
standards for elementary schools and we saw there were certain themes that
are taught at certain grade levels. And so with each issue of chain
reaction, we made it a thematic issue. So this one happens to be Sonoran
desert biology, basically. And in fourth grade in Arizona, they teach the
Sonoran desert. So all these stories are related to something about
biology of Arizona. But of course it's all stories originating at Arizona
State University. So people would, I like to call me a pr guy and I'm
anathema to that. It's like, I'm not public relations, I'm a journalist. I
just happened to be writing all my stories about Arizona State University.
So we wouldn't, we didn't want to do the hard sell with this. So the
other idea was, here's this publication we're going to produce. And of
course we're, we were funded by um, A fraction of 1% of all the grants and
contracts that come into the university for research. That was my office.
And the charge again to tell the story as wide as you can. So we had
minimal dollars and we wanted to stretch them as far as possible. So we
did these thematic issues that met the science standards. We printed these
magazines And we bundled them in packets of 30 and we would give them to
teachers. So they have a classroom set and we ended up eventually printing
Almost 180,000 copies and it would only be about once a year. We didn't
have money. We never did get to the point where I wanted it to be ah
180,000 copies. Mostly distributed in Arizona. But I had Teachers in 44
states Canada and several european countries who are using it in their
classrooms. So then thinking about the marketing aspects and the pr
aspects, think about it. Here's a publication going into an elementary
school and if you're a student child interested in science and we try to
make it as interesting as possible, eventually you're going to want to go
to college, where are you going to go? I've been reading about this
Arizona State University place, there's all these cool guys and these cool
projects there, that's where I want to go. Of course I was never able to
put a monetary figure on our impact, which was to my demise because I
couldn't quantify it of what we were doing. Although I had all the other
anecdotal evidence and testimonials and teachers begging for more. We
couldn't do it enough. And we actually were the only university in the
United States that did a magazine for kids. We also did a website and this
was early days of websites again because this was Just after 2000, I think
that we began this and we needed needed more help to do animations and do
games and those kind of things that everybody is so used to now. But we,
we never could get the support to make this thing. We had to scrape scrape
my budget to find enough money to do this over the years. So we only did
seven in all those years. It's whenever I could save enough money and hide
money and not tell the bosses that I got this over here and and but I did
have vice presidents who were really supportive this. I'm excited to talk
about that. I've worked for some of the find people here at the university.
Henry Reeves was one of the men that hired me, robert Barnhill was my
boss for about 10 years and then john fink, john Fink expert in volcano
volcanic science geologist. He was my boss too. And they were always
totally supportive of what we were doing. They knew they understood that
we're getting that message out there, even though there's if we can find a
way to quantify it in terms of dollars, we would have still been alive
anyway, so that's, that's how it started. This was the last one, All about
weather. We actually did two of these and these were just, I go to
classrooms, still two elementary schools around the state and teachers
have these eight years old. They have them on their shelves and they're
beat up and when is that gonna come out again. It's like, I'm sorry, I'm
not there anymore and they don't do it anymore. It's only online. But of
course, there's never been the support to keep it going to do new. It
still exists online. And every once in a while there's a new story. So, I
mean, that's probably one of my biggest regrets that this thing hasn't
been supported the way it should have been, but we have to convert it to a
pdf and leave it online. But uh, you are so good. We have all original
stories or PDFs. Teachers can download them if it's still I don't know if
those sites still exist. You know, all of our libraries were wiped out.
And I don't know what happened to any of this stuff
now. This leads into our very interesting conclusion, the the future of
the Future Life of Conrad's Store ad because you mentioned you had been
writing about science for Children for many years already and you took
that to a fare thee Well, when you retired, why don't you tell us a bit
about what you do now and how busy you are now this week, it's three years
since I've retired and the last three years, I've been busier than I've
ever been in my life, but smiling every day. Uh but I've been writing
children's books for about 20 years. And so I finally, now I have full
time devoted to what I found out was my passion and you learn about things
as you grow and I love my job. I loved working here. I love what I did.
But I really found that what I really did best or like the most was
communicating science to kids, not only in magazine articles, but in books
and people say, well, how did that happen? Well, I was asked, it wasn't
something I pursued. It's one of those instances where a door opens and
opportunity is there, You're either gonna walk through the door or pass it
by. I walked through the door, 1991 wrote a book about Saguaro Cactus.
It's a little science book for fourth graders. I was hooked. I started
getting assignments and eventually moved into picture books and I've
enjoyed a great amount of success with my books over the years. Um, I
brought some, let's, let's take a look here. A lot of people will
recognize this book, don't call me pig javelina story. It's probably my
most famous book gets sold More than three quarters of a million copies
now since 1999. And it's a little story, it's about have Alina's with
which are not pigs. And of course no one knows that they think they're
wild pigs. They're here in the desert. And I was working with this company
was a toy company and he was making stuffed animals and he was selling
tens of thousands of his have Alina toys. He wanted to do a javelina book
even though he'd never been a publisher before. See, and I had worked for
him on the side doing some other little projects. He said, Conrad could
you write a book about have Alina's? And I said sure I can do that. I had
written books about scorpions and tarantulas, little science books for
libraries. So that's what I thought I was gonna do. But as I started this
project I realized this is gonna be for kids. And I was doing my research
about what have Alina's are and everybody thinks they're pigs and of
course they're not something we don't call them pigs. I had my title, it
was in my head kind of chuckled don't call me pig. And I thought about
kids playing on the playground calling each other names. We didn't like
somebody to call you a name, you wouldn't want someone to call you a pig,
here's this animal in the desert and everybody's calling it a pig, it's
not a pig, Don't call me pig. And so I started playing around with rhyme
and then I couldn't stop. It was in my head and I couldn't stop until I
was done and we found illustrators don rance and beth neely were from
Prescott, they were agent professors at N. A. U. Of art, they had never
illustrated a book. The publisher was a toy company who had never
published a book. I had never done a picture book. We all came together.
It was meant to be that wins Arizona Children's book of the year it comes
wins the silver medal in the Benjamin franklin awards as the best
Children's picture book in America and we're off and running Later on in
2006.
Well, this was 1999 in 2006. Janet Napolitano was governor of Arizona and
each year during her terms as governor, she would select a book. She had a
literacy program and it was underwritten by Phelps, dodge corporation and
Southwest Gas. She would select a book. Every first grader in Arizona
would receive a copy of that book from the governor. In 2006. She picked
this book. So 93001st
graders got a special edition copy of this book from the governor. And it
was a very good day for me. Yeah, I have to tell you a quick story. So I
got to meet the governor. We were at Galveston's elementary school in
Chandler where they're going to make the announcement that this is the
governor's book for 2006. They had 100 and 51st graders sitting on the
floor in the library waiting for the governor. My wife's there. The media
is, they're super. The school boards there and you're gonna meet the
governor. The governors Going to arrive at 9:00, Her motorcade shows up.
My wife whispers to me, are you nervous? Here's my old, hard boiled
editors. Ah, I've met these politicians before. It's like no big deal.
It's nice, but Hannah, Janet napolitano walks in the door. My brain turns
to oatmeal. She had an aura about her. She comes up, she strides right up
to me, she grabs my hand, she says, konrad good to meet you, Janet
napolitano and I'm going right, I know
she talked to the kids, She sat down, criss cross applesauce on the floor
with the first graders and she's reading my book to the kids. Well, I have
puppets that I use with my books and I have Julio the javelina and he has
his little no pig shirt and I have the puppet dancing around by the
Governor's head as she's reading the story. And this book has been out for
a while and a lot of kids around the state know this story. There's a
refrain where I usually have the kids yell as loud as they can, don't call
me pig and they get into that through the rest of the story. Well, we get
to that refrain and 151st graders shout at the top of their lungs, don't
call me pig. The Governor jumps back and she's looking at me with this
quizzical look and I said, Governor, they know the story you chose. Well,
she was into it after that. And so she had them all screaming, end of the
story. Governor is getting ready to leave her security deals, hustling are
out of there. My wife is four ft 10. You got to get the picture here.
Laurie is four ft 10 and I need a picture of you with the governor. She
steps in front of the security details. Just stop. I need a picture of my
husband with the governor and this big guy is looking at her like get out
of the way lady and governor says, no, it's okay. Conrad come here and so
we're standing together and my wife's taking pictures and jen napolitano
leans to me and she says Conrad, if you ever decide to write a sequel to
this book, maybe you could call it, don't call me republican.
And so I always send her copies of my books when they come out now. So
that was the first picture book maybe to wrap up if you, I hope you, you
and your grandkids and kids get around the state and get a chance to
actually see a performance by Conrad um displaying one of his books with
his little creatures and especially to meet his interesting assistant who
plays various roles. Who is that again? Conrad,
The newest book. This is the official centennial book for Arizona students
in 2012
and it's called Arizona way out west and wacky. It's not about politics.
It's in Arizona history book, a coloring book activity book. And of
course the cover here is the official state mammal of Arizona and you know
what it is. I know, does anybody else know what this animal is. It's our
official statement.
Yeah, most paris zonas don't know. It's called a ringtail cousin to a
raccoon and there's a big history behind it, but we actually have a full
body costume and this is jane Ringo and her brother johnny Ringo are kind
of the stars that narrators the book. And so even though this is on tape,
my wife please jane Ringo and she has garnered tens of thousands of hugs
already. But I have, I found my niche and it's like you come to a point in
your life, everything was meant to happen. That's happened. Everything I
had here at the university has brought me to where I am today. I just
passed 1025 schools elementary schools that I visited In 17 years in 13
states. I just passed 900,000 kids that I've read too. So my goal is to
read to one million kids. I'm getting there getting close. That's
fantastic. And lots more projects coming out. So that's really fantastic.
All meant to be. And it all started right here with you and I want to
shake your hand. I'm happy to have a role in that. I'll tell you that's
that's part of some of the best news I could have. Uh and also obviously
one of the great examples of there's nothing better than to have the pupil
surpass the master and we have a great,
well, thanks very much Conrad. It was really interesting to talk to you
today. Thank you very much.