Remind me to sit up straight. I usually get done.
Ok.
Where are we today? Is Tuesday, April 24th, 2012.
We're doing an interview for the Arizona State University Retirees
Association video History project and are located today at the community
service building on Curry Road in Tempe. I am David Shots, professor
emeritus technical sports staff. Today is uh we're down to Linda Van Sky
camera person and chair of the video history project. Also in attendance
is Darryl Sh
um Barbara, would you please introduce yourself, giving your name, your
years of service at a SU and your position when you left? Sure. Do you
want all of my names, David,
whatever you're comfortable with? Well, my maiden name is Barbara Jean
Bradford. I'm a direct descendant of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth
colony and my, my history includes three marriages. So my full name is
Barbara Jean Bradford Bowling, Powell, Ebo. I'm difficult. Ok. Thank you.
And your uh position at a su when you retired. Well, I actually retired
two times. The first time was June 30th of 2006. That was from Information
Technology and my title then was probably the longest title on campus. It
was director of it, Facilities and Resources Administration. I did not
invent that title. It was invented for me. What it basically meant was
that I was the business manager for Information technology and the
facilities manager of the computing commons. And the space occupied by
Darrell's telephone services group in the first floor of Old Main. Then
the second time I retired was June 30th of 2008.
And that was uh in economic affairs. I was a program coordinator. I
handled all of the business functions of economic affairs and I also
operationalized Sky.
OK? You seem to have brought quite a few talents with you to a su so let's
uh go back to your history first of all. Uh when and where were you born?
Well, I was born in Southern Illinois. I really wanna be a southern girl.
So I always emphasize that I was born in Southern Illinois, a town of
about 30,000 called Edwardsville. It's very close to Saint Louis, Missouri.
Um And my brothers and I were all born there. My parents came from
central Illinois, very small towns. Um The, the largest town nearby is
Macomb, but they came from little towns with a population of 506 100 each.
And my dad um had started his education at the University of Illinois,
but World War Two broke out. So he interrupted his education to enlist in
the army. And then when he completed his mission, he, he served in both
Europe and the Philippines. He came home and he finished his degree at
University of Illinois and met my mom and they married June 1st, 1947.
So I was born November 1st 1950
dad had just begun his 40 year career with shell oil company. He, that's
the only company he ever worked for. It's very unusual in today's society
for anyone to do that. But his whole career was with shell oil. So being
born in 1950 I was the quintessential baby boomer.
And you know, right there at the, at the early phase of it, my youngest
younger brother uh was born in 57 and the other brothers in between in 54.
So we're all boomers, but I'm more a boomer than they are. So we were
Barbara Bet and Bruce Bradford the three Bs. And uh because we were with
shell oil, we got moved around a lot. Shell families were a lot like army
brats. You expected to be transferred at some point. Dad started his
career at the Wood River refinery. He was a chemical engineer, catalytic
cracking was his specialty. And we lived in Edwardsville until I was 12
and that was the first move we made, he got sent to head office in New
York. So we lived in Connecticut. We lived there for three years. Then he
got sent to the Norco refinery outside of New Orleans. And, um, so I
started going to a non denominational private school there. The public
schools really are poor in New Orleans because they have no property taxes
to support them. And, um, then when I began college at Tulane University,
I attended Newcomb College of the Women's College of Tulane University.
They like to call it the Harvard of the South,
which may or may not be true. But anyway, uh, as I began my college career
there, uh dad was transferred back to head office and I was thrilled
because I got to stay in the town. I loved that, that I adopted as my
hometown and my whole family. I just enjoyed very much waving goodbye to
my brothers. And this was at what age that they left and you were, they?
Well, I, yeah, I lived in a dorm all four years. I graduated from Country
Day in 68 and started then the following fall at, uh New, no, wait, you
were in a dorm at Country Day? No, no, no, no, no. I lived at home at
Country Day when I began my career at Newcomb college career. I lived in
the dorm and I lived in the dorm all four years till I graduated in May of
72. And, uh, I, I just wanna comment that the fact that we moved often.
Well, a lot of people think that's very disruptive to kids. I found it.
Otherwise, what it taught me was to be adaptable and how to meet people.
Uh, now it could be very hard for a kid who was basically painfully shy,
but I wasn't painfully shy. So there was only a little period in
Connecticut the first time when my little brothers were my best friends
for, you know, a few months, those kids were a little standoffish, but it
was the opposite. When I got to New Orleans, they, they all wanted to meet
the new girl, the Yankee. They called me a Yankee, but they still were
very friendly and they liked me going back to your grade school in
Illinois. Um, any uh interest there, uh, music or she was
bless you. Thank you, stifled it. Any uh interest there in uh the
elementary school music or art or like that. Yeah. Well, first of all,
academically, I liked everything. I always liked everything I liked math.
I liked English and writing. I loved handwriting. So that, that kind of
was an early indication of my interest in art. I started piano lessons
when I was six and had the same teacher in Illinois till we left when I
was 12. And then once we moved to Connecticut lo and behold, right down
the street on our block was this wonderful lady Mrs Swenson who was a
Juilliard graduate and she had a 9 ft Steinway in her living room with
another grand piano sitting right next to it. Um, that uh enabled students
who had comparable abilities to play two piano duets versus four hands on
one piano. But all through grade school, I um I loved art. I in uh girl
scouts, I was in girl brownies and girl scouts. And if you look at my
badges, it's, it's painting, it's needle point, it's dress making, it's um
crafts. I, I always enjoyed all, all of that kind of stuff. So there was
always a lot going on my whole life between music and art. My mom was a
self taught artist. My parents both sang in church. My mom was a wonderful
pianist. She was an organist at church. She was the organist for Eastern
Star. So I had a lot of there, there was just a lot of music background in
our family. OK. And the Country Day school in Louisiana, uh any special
interest show up there or you're exposed to things that were quite
different. Well, Country Day was quite a unique experience. It's a, um,
private school that was founded by, um, we called her grandma Stern. Mrs
Stern was actually, um
from the Sears Roebuck family very well to do. And the home that they
built in mere Louisiana is open for view these days, it's Long View
gardens. And so when they built their home in me, they wanted a school for
their kids nearby. So they founded Country Day in the twenties, I believe
it was. And there are Country Day schools all over the US. But each one is
stand alone, they have a loose association. So Country Day is K through 12.
40 kids per grade, 20 boys and 20 girls. And most of the kids that go
there are, they call them lifers because they've been there. Their whole
education K through 12. I showed up at the very beginning of 10th grade
and as I say, they were, they just bowled me over. They were so friendly,
but I, I never would have gone to a school like that if we'd lived
anywhere other than New Orleans. But it was a fabulous opportunity because
not only were they, uh, the academics were very good. I had to be tested
to get in there, et cetera. And I did just fine on that. But they had a
wealth of, um,
uh, extra curricular things like the art program was fantastic. The music
program was fantastic. Well, because I just left this teacher, Mrs Swenson
who I loved in Connecticut. I just dove right into the music program at
Country Day. Interestingly, I never took a single art class there, which I
certainly should have done. But I just dove into the music and we had a
chorus and I was in the chorus and my junior year I had the lead, the
female lead. It was, it was pretty cute. It was, uh, Romeo and Juliet
story set in the Appalachian Mountains. And my, my character was named
Lucy, I still have the score for the whole thing. You wouldn't recognize a
single song in it. But I was Lucy. And then the next year, my senior year
, they, they like to make sure that everybody got a chance to have the
lead roles. We did Oklahoma the next year my mom and I made all the
costumes for the whole cast because we were the seamstresses. And uh that
year they type cast me as uh giggling,
you know, I don't know why they gave me that part, but they did.
And then I was also the uh the accompanist for the middle school, the
junior high age kids. They did. You're a good man, Charlie Brown. So when
they did that performance, I played the whole score for that. So I
continued playing piano the whole time. Ok. So on the new college. And uh
what happened there? Well, I get to new and I think I'm gonna continue my
, my music as well as the academics. And I tried out for the Newcomb a
cappella choir which was very competitive and because I'd done so much
singing and I had a good ear. Um, they selected me well, after I was
selected,
I just blew it off because I got interested in other things. I, I took my
first studio art class and it was like, oh my gosh, this is fun. So I
started out what, in the sciences? Well, dad sent me off to school because
he was a chemical engineer as I was waving goodbye to my family as they
left me in New Orleans and headed back to Connecticut. Dad said the only
degree worth getting is a Bachelor of Science. And I said, ok, because in
, at country day I had taken calculus my senior year and I'd taken science
classes. I didn't take physics, but I took, um, you know, biology and
chemistry. And as I say, all the math classes I could take. So I declared
math as my major. And freshman year I took uh an honors calculus class and
uh I'll tell you, Dave, I got in that class and I thought this is
Norrisville.
I don't want to major in math. But at the same time, freshman year, I took
an economics class. And so I thought, well, it would be cool to be a lady
Stockbroker because in those days, most of the stockbrokers were men. I,
you know, I, I can't even think of any lady stockbrokers at that time. So
I, so I changed right away from math to economics all the while I kept
taking these studio art classes. And I also took a Shakespeare class. Well
, I fell in love with Shakespeare. So then I changed my major to English.
Meanwhile, you know, I, I don't know this is going on but my dad's, you
know, starting to rub his head and get a little worried and my mom's
telling me. Oh, you know, don't worry about it, just don't worry about it.
So I kept taking studio art and, you know, but I was taking everything
else to fulfill the requirements for a Bachelor's degree and I, I wasn't
wasting time. Well, then I took art history. Oh, my gosh. Loved art
history. I'm also taking painting, drawing, ceramics,
loving it. But, you know, still fulfilling all my requirements. Well, I
finally did it. I finally changed from math to economics to English to
art, studio, art and, and even then I couldn't make up my mind between
painting ceramics and art history. So I just, the, the major I ended up
with was a B fa and those three things with honors. And I thought my dad
was just gonna have kittens because it was 100 and 80 degrees from what he
advised me to do. And mom just said, you know, she'll be fine just, she'll
be fine. And I graduated four years later. And then, and then,
well, I don't know if you want me to get into the story about I, I'll,
I'll touch on it because I, I got frustrated with the guy I had dated
since my senior year of high school. Uh Oddly enough, his name was Kenny
Hike. We were Barbie and Ken and we dated four years. But sadly, even
though I thought he was gonna be my fiance, he missed my birthday,
Christmas. You know, I got senioritis Christmas uh New Year's Eve
Valentine's Day. So I just said, well to hell with him. And I began to
date my ceramics professor, not a good move. And he left Newcomb College
to accept a position in the art department, faculty position at UT Austin
University of Texas at Austin. So I graduated from Newcomb. I got married
three months later, I moved to Austin with husband number one and uh got
my first job with a Bachelor of fine arts degree. And my very first job
was in the Electronics Research Center at UT Austin. Uh the director of it
, executive director was Doctor Irwin, a Dougal, an electrical engineer
who interviewed me. And uh he really insulted me because one of his
interview questions was so Mrs Bowling, tell me what does a fine arts
major know about addition and subtraction.
I just wanted to wring his neck but I stayed calm. And I said, well,
Doctor Doug, I said I started out as a math major. I did take honors
calculus in my freshman year. So I got the job and that was the start of
my uh career at UT Austin, which lasted five years because the marriage
only lasted five years. But uh I had my daughter Erin during that period.
She was born in 1974
and I followed future husband number two from Austin to Tempe Arizona
because he was a master's student at UT Austin in geography. But he
started out in architectural studies. And what he was interested in was
the effect of climate on different types of building materials. And he
wanted to come to a su to get a phd in geography with an emphasis in solar
energy because the dean of Solar energy in the world was John Ye. He was
in the College of Architecture. He was the most wonderful man. And so
that's why we came here in August of August of 1977.
I thought I had come to hell and brought my little 2.5 year old daughter
to hell. But uh she was so cute because she told people that uh that she
came to Arizona so that daddy could study solar injury.
Oh yeah. So um but uh I got a job, I, I went to human resources. It was
then called personal personnel.
Pardon me? We had a green sheet, right? Uh The problem at a su in those
days were personnel and uh physical facilities and, and, and, and shoot
what's the third one? Purchasing purchasing personnel and physical
facilities. So I went to personnel, took a typing test. I scored 100 words
per minute with one error because I used to moonlight and type the and
dissertations for students and research papers for faculty. And because I
was really good in English, I would edit as I typed and, and this was not
word processing on a computer. This is an old fashioned typewriter because
I'm old. But uh I got my first job at a su in the college of architecture
which suited me just fine because it was art related design, art and it
was with John Yell. And I very quickly got to know the faculty of the
college and all, all of its areas, architecture, planning and design,
which included interior design. And Hugh Burgess hired me as his executive
assistant to the dean. Uh So I was the business manager. So the hiring
there. Did you have any trouble with the women's issues? You might say I
did, I did right off the bat again. I'm, I'm being interviewed by Dean
Burgess the first time I met the gentleman. And oddly enough, he kept
asking me questions. I I was Barbara Powell at that point, we got here and
we went to the Maricopa County Courthouse and had a civil ceremony with
little 2.5 year old Aaron who was fidgeting and touching all the things on
the, on the desk of the uh Justice of the Peace. But um so he was
interviewing Barbara Powell. Well, he kept asking questions about um your
husband is working on his phd. In what? And I answered that question and
then he asked me another question because I mentioned John Ye the interest
there. So he had another follow on question about Gary Powell. And then he
asked me a third question about my husband and I finally I didn't throw my
hands up, but inside me, I did, I just said, well, Dean Burgess, I really
don't see the relevance of that question, which was kind of an uppity
thing to say in an interview. But I'd had enough, you know, ask me about
me and what I can do for you. Interestingly, um, interestingly, uh, the
person I was replacing her name was Mary. She'd been there for years. She
told me later that um I did impress him, but he was worried about how long
I would stay there that if Gary finished his phd, that I would be taken
off in a heartbeat. And she, she asked him, she says, do you want the
person who's gonna stay the longest or do you want the best person you can
get now? So I got the job.
Ok. So just describe a little bit about that job, how it uh prepared you
maybe for the next job, what you did there? Well, first of all, I had to
clean up the mess that was left to me by my predecessor. And in 1977
if you were a new staff person at a su first of all, there was not a
procedures manual in sight. Nowhere. You had to figure it out on your own.
You had to call the controller's office, you had to call personnel, you
had to call your accountant. What have you because nobody could tell you,
I mean, you couldn't refer to anything. Um, it was, it was an interesting
university compared to UT Austin. A su felt to me like a small school
because compared to UT, it was smaller and it was in its infancy in many
ways. Um, but I got to know some wonderful people right away such as
George Morrell. Every time I walked a purchase order through. He was so
sweet. He always was in his office number one, he always had the door open.
He'd see who came in to purchasing and he'd hail you. You know, he'd say
hi, he'd say come on in, you'd go in, sit down visit with him. He was just
adorable and, and he really was very encouraging. You know, it didn't
matter that I was just the brand new uh assistant to the Dean of the
College of Architecture. He was just wonderful to me. So, and there were a
lot of nice people like that um in the admin building. And otherwise,
because I was like the girl Friday for the Dean of Architecture, I went to
the budget office and, you know, turned in our requests. I had the
excitement when something was funded to go pick it up, be the first one to
open the envelope and read it and come running back to the College of
Architecture and say we got the money to do this and that. And I threw
myself into the College of Architecture. They had a gallery for crying out
loud. So that was right up my alley. Uh Jim Rap and I, he was the chair of
the gallery committee and I volunteered and helped with installations in
the gallery. That was just right up my alley. I did um re small remo,
remodeling projects because, you know, Dean Burgess said, well, this is
what we, what we wanna do with this space and then he just turned it over
to me, which was fine with me because nothing I like better than a project
and it was design related. And so I got to exercise my talents that way.
So you work with facilities uh project. And Ted Woods was we had a shop in
the College of Architecture, Ted Woods was the guy that ran the shop. And
so in architecture, we did a lot of things on our own in the shop. Uh and
the architecture library, Jane Conroe was our librarian. So I got to know
Jane and all the faculty. Uh Jeff Cook was, oh
Palo Soleri was an adjunct faculty member. He would show up for guest
lectures at times or student critiques. There were a lot of interesting
people and then there was Dave shots. I remember, I remember Dave shots.
He was, he was really, really young just like me
just like I was OK. So why would you wanna leave such a great place where
Dave shots was?
Well, you know, I I cleaned up all the messes. I did, you know the
administrative messes. I, I did the remodeling projects. I helped the, um
the faculty with the promotions and tenure um projects, you know, I, I was
very well versed and, you know, I just kind of felt like the title I had
wasn't, really, didn't fit the job. The executive assistant to the dean
just sounded like I was his secretary, you know, kept his calendar or
something. Well, it was a lot more than that. So I was working with
personnel trying to get a reclassification.
And what I honestly felt was appropriate was the title assistant dean,
which interestingly, 30 years later, all the colleges changed all the
people that did what I did, then they changed them all to assistant deans.
But I think he just thought that, oh my God, this, this woman's out of
control. So we were kind of doing this about the recla and, and I was very
frustrated because I didn't have any career path. I didn't wanna be the
executive assistant to the Dean of Architecture forever. Of course, I
didn't know I was gonna be at a su for 30 years either. Um So there was uh
a hiring action that Dean Burgess put me in charge of it was to hire
together with computing services, a graphic design person, a, a computer
graphic specialist. And that's how I met Lynn Bellamy Lynn was the head of
computing services and it might have been uh IRM at that point too. I
think it was. And so he and I worked together on the hire of Jim Howard
who came to a su from Boeing in Seattle. He was a computer graphic
specialist and it was a 50 50 split budget wise. So that's how Lynn met me
at the same time that was going on computing services, had a business
manager that they were less than happy with. So Lynn was actively
recruiting me for this business manager job in computing services.
Contrary to what Darryl X told you, it wasn't because Lynn just thought I
was cute.
Darryl made that up in a feeble attempt to be funny. But um what I really
wanted to do was to be Paige Mulholland's assistant. That was the job that
really attracted me to take her job. No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't Linda
Van Sky's job. It was another position. Little did I know it was already
wired for somebody else that, that really disappointed me. I also wanted a
job in the budget office. Alan Carroll was the head of it then, but I
think that one was wired too. So, you know, Lynn had this opening and
computing services. So I, I left the dark side of the campus and I went to
computing services and, and it was a totally different environment. The
academic side is completely different from the non academic side and I
very quickly fit, felt very comfortable in computing services. I, I kind
of started out working for Ken Pollack but Lynn went back to the faculty.
So Ken stepped up to Lynn's job, which meant Connie stepped up and I
reported to Connie mcneill
and then one day, yeah, I started April 1982 working for Connie. And um,
I'd never touched a computer before. I mean, heck, I was keeping books
with ledger books. I mean, really the old fashioned way. Ledger books and
, uh, writing by hand and a calculator. So early on my door was always
open and it was right next door to Connie's office and there was a door
between our offices. Well, this big guy with a beard darkens my doorway
and he has this monstrosity piece of equipment in his arms. I didn't know
then that it was a 32 70 terminal, but it was a 32 70 terminal. He comes
in, he doesn't say hello. He doesn't say my name is such and such. He just
barges in. He didn't say, excuse me, he barges in, walks to the corner of
my office where there's an empty terminal table plops this hunk of junk on
it. And he looks at me and he says, here, you better learn how to use this
thing. You're part of a pilot program and walks out,
I'm like, who the hell is that? And I went right into Connie's office and
I described what happened and she said, well, what did he look like? I
said, well, he's a big guy with a beard and she just starts laughing. She
says, oh, that's Darryl. Oh, that's Darryl. I'm like Darryl. Who? Oh,
that's Darryl Eshbach. He just ignore it. She says, just ignore it. He,
he's just that way. And, um, so I thought, well, ok, I, I didn't know what
he did. I mean, I was so new. I didn't even know where he fit on the org
chart but he, he did not impress me favorably at all. But the pilot
program I was part of was pros, which was IB MS acronym for professional
office system. And I quickly learned that it was being implemented top
down from the president to the VPs to a, a handful of deans and to a
handful of us in computing services, we were testing this thing and, uh it
was, it was pretty cool. I mean, I was a good typist so I could type a
little note really fast, but it was also very frustrating in a lot of ways
, you know, we didn't have any etiquette on how to do things. We, we had
to fumble along. But the whole idea was that if we started at the top and
connected the VPs and the deans, well, then everybody was gonna want it to
get in the network. So that was Darryl's project. Well, he was part of the
project. Yes, he was part of the implementation team. Uh, I, of course,
thought he should be sent to an etiquette school in New Orleans and learn
how to, um, introduce himself and be polite to charm school. I'd been to
charm school. Didn't have charm school, that's for sure. Ok. Well, how did
you,
how did your job progress there with, uh, Connie? Well, Connie, working
for a woman was a breath of fresh air. Connie was a fantastic role model
for me. Fantastic. Connie was smart. She was competent. She, she,
she could analyze things. We were on the same wavelength, you know, we, we
both had business heads about us, we could talk about money, we could talk
about statistics. So you were swimming, both swimming in a man's world. We
were, and we were doing a damn good job of it too and it was wonderful to
have an ally and Connie wasn't the only woman in computing services. There
was Linda Bankson. She was another uh direct report of, there were a lot
of women. It was a much more mixed environment, certainly more mixed than
that college of Architecture.
Thanks. There were a few women over there, but they were in the design
department. They were the interior design faculty wouldn't, you know, and
the administrative staff were women. But other than that architecture was
a man's world. So I, I felt much more comfortable in computing services
and I felt more valued too. So, your duties, how did they uh change
increase uh as you progressed. Well, Connie very quickly recognized that I
could do more than just be the business manager. So one of the things she
handed to me right off the bat was to create the computing services help
desk. So that was one of my first projects and in its infancy, it, it
wasn't even close to what the help desk became, ultimately, I mean, it
became very technical. Initially, it was to just be a single point of
contact. The number was 6500 single point of contact that anybody, anybody
could call for whatever problem they had. And then the people and there
were only like, we only had three people to answer the phones of the help
desk. But they could do triage if they could answer the question right off
the bat. That's fantastic. But they knew the organization of computing
services well enough that if they couldn't answer the question, they knew
who to hand it off to. And then she gave me uh the next assignment she
gave me was to take over data entry
and computer accounts. And again, those were non technical functions of
computing services. Um Data entry. We, I mean, in the old days, we did it
the old fashioned way, literally keep, you know, key punch machines. And
then it progressed to something um more sophisticated than key punch um
computer accounts. Those were very simplistic s systems. Initially, the,
the biggest job I had in computer accounts was learning from Lynn Bellamy
and that mean guy Darrel how to do rates. So again, like my first week or
two in computing services, they come into my office and um have a flow
chart on a piece of paper of how the whole rates process works. They had a
program from, I think it was University of Kansas. If I'm not mistaken,
that literally Darrell had to run on punch cards, but I had to gather all
the information, all the financial and usage information to plug into it
so that we could spit out rates so that we could charge those nasty
faculty researchers for their time. Stop. OK. And then, um lastly, Connie
also gave me responsibility for word processing. It used to be a unit that
was over in the basement of Matthews. Uh They produced the green sheet but
then they expanded and, and would do word processing for faculty members,
they'd bring their papers or whatever uh to them. And we combined that
group with data entry and we called it data text entry. So Connie took me
from just being a, a box on the org chart with one responsibility
reporting to her to having my own little section on the on the org chart
with um the help desk and computer accounts and data text entry. Now,
Connie was in there for an interim period between uh Lynn Bellamy and Ken
Pollack. Right. There's this, she's no Ken was on the scene when I came to
computing services in April of 82 he was in between Connie and Darryl and
Lynn. But then Lynn went to the faculty. So Ken moved up and um
Connie and Darryl still reported to Kennett kind of eliminated a layer of
management. And um but again, I reported to Connie Darrell had his people
, he had the the tech shop and data comm and the and that constituted the
early years of telecommunications and Connie had administrative computing
, academic computing computing operations. My group, I think that was
basically it. I didn't realize she had taken on academic computers. Yes,
she did. Yes, she did. Darryl was way out there in the dark side of
engineering. You were in a SB and he was over in a wing. Yeah, I was in EC
A. He wasn't in the trailers yet. He was over in ECB near the OPER
computer operations. Connie. Connie was up on. No, she, we were all on the
third floor. We had the computing site on the first floor of EC A and
office space beyond the site that was part of the engineering A wing
computer room. We had two computer rooms. A wing was the academic
mainframes. B wing was the administrative mainframes
and then second floor of EC A had some um academic offices. I don't recall
what department it was, but we also had a, a lab. We had an early, early
graphics lab on the second floor, but we didn't own the whole second floor.
We, we occupied all third floor, all first floor and ECB and Ken Pollack
was over, he was an admin in the Provost office or reporting the page. Ok.
Ok. So, all right, continue on the uh job responsibilities and how well
have changed. Um, I reported to Connie and handled those areas of
responsibility uh for several years. Um and then came along the Computing
Commons project. And that's why, how do you see that as developing, who do
you think triggered that project? Well, it had been an idea on paper for a
couple of years before it materialized it. I I would say it was on paper
maybe 86 definitely. By 1987 it was a concept on paper because our
department was scattered in nine locations on campus. So the initial
concept was really pragmatic just to bring all the staff of computing
services and telecom together. At that point, it had nothing to do with a
student computing site or classrooms or any of the things that eventually
were realized in the computing comments project. But then page left and
after several years, Ken left and followed page to right state. When that
happened, there was this National Search and Lee Ally was hired and I
think in Darryl's interview, he already explained how Lee uh was the guy
on the front line with the board of Regents to sell the idea, we called it
at that time, the computing and network services building. It wasn't
called the Computing Commons. It was the computing and network services
building. And Lee did a really good job selling it to the board and it'll
never happen again. You know, they said, well, you know, if you had more
money, what would you do with that? And then it got expanded into really
two projects that came under one roof, bring all of computing services and
telecom staff together and create a technology hub for the students and
the faculty of the campus with a big computing site. It ended up that when
we opened the doors in 93 fall of 93 that site contained 200 workstations
and classrooms, 10 classrooms. OK. Let's stop here. Um
The, the regions approved the project, I don't know if the legislature had
to do it also, they probably did. Uh at that point was this building
committee formed. The building committee was formed as soon as we had the
funding approved, which was $15.2 million. Jerry Snyder sold the bonds. OK.
Now you were still doing facility management for computing services. Yes
, I was, you know, I was doing little, I was doing small remodel projects
like we, we would expand a space on EC A three, but you had the connection
with facilities if a project needed initiated. Exactly. I'd worked with
them in architecture and I worked with them in computing to be on the
committee. Well, I was on the committee by virtue of the fact that uh I
had functions, computer accounts being one help desk being another. I had
functions that were directly related to the functions of this new building.
Who else was on the committee? Well, Darryl and uh Neil Arm and George
Watson, because Lee Ally had pulled in what was called the micro computer
resource facility known as Murph for short. So George Watson was on our
committee. Um,
um, Bruce Johnson had Bruce left Bruce went to NAU, but I think he was
still around at that time. And, um, uh, Kim Wilkerson, he was the guy
responsible for the information center that was the, the unit under Connie
that helped develop word processing and email and getting all those things
out. Let me stop here and get Darryl in here.