WEBVTT

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 I want a master's degree or tape is rolling down. Ok. Well, let's go

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ahead and start this. Um I want to
identify on the tape that today is

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Tuesday, January 16th of 2007. And I'm
Pam Stevenson doing the interview.

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Manny Garcia is our videographer and
we're doing an oral history

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interview for the A su Retirees
Association Living History video project.

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And I always like to start off and let
you introduce yourself. Would you

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give us your full name, Gail Richards,
full name Dale Lee Richards and G

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is still Gale.

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It's as mass killing as I could get
it.

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Um, when and where were you born? I
was born.

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I have a quirky way of describing
where I was born. I was born in a board

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and ba and painted farmhouse at the
head of a holler, a double stone show

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from the main southern railroad

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that went through that area, which was
in Baltimore and Ohio, which is now

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gone. Uh Three miles out of town, not
in the hospital. My mother had five

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Children out of hospital.

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And um, what year were you born? I was
born in the last day of the, in the

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last six month period before the end
of the first World War on July 31st,

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1918.

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Are you hearing me clearly? Yes, I can
hear you fine. You mentioned there

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were five Children. Where were you in
that? The oldest youngest, I'm the

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oldest still. I am. They're all over
70 all healthy and well, good, good

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genes, healthy and well, as well as
closely as you can define it. Um Well

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, what was that community like? Where,
where you grew up? Did you grow up

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there? I spent five years there and
then was removed and had all of my

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education in Akron, Ohio up through
the University of Akron, which was

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then a municipal university, but it is
now a state part of the state

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system. 30,000 students. It's large,
like everything else. Uh I, I was

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raised in Akron in uh one of the city
high schools there. And the reason I

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do not show the dialect, the Southern
mountain dialect that's

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characteristic of West Virginia where
I was born. Had I included that. Did

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I skip over that? I think you did.
This is uh this location was at uh uh

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the best I can do it because it was
out in the county and not in town was

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to describe it as long run, which was
the name of the run on which my

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birthplace was seed. Why, why was your
family out there? What did they do

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for a living. My family has been out,
has been out there in that location

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since 1750.

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There was a re fall, uh, a re, uh,
which is the German version of the name

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in my case, build a fort to protect
against the Indians of the Richards

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fort about 50 miles due east of the
Ohio back up in the Indian hunting

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country. And, uh, that location, the
location of that fort

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is about 10 miles from where I was
born. That's the degree of mobility the

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family had until my generation, family
moved to Ohio and I was raised in

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Akron, Ohio. So your whole family
moved to Akron, Ohio? And what did your

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family do? What did your father do
there? A variety of things including

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working in the coal mines. But he was
a member of a large family that was

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quite comfortably well off. And we
didn't feel the strain of that until,

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uh, depression, things began to build
up in that weird, weird period just

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before the Second World War. And, uh,
uh, my father brought us to Akron

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primarily partly because my mother's
family, which was also a large family

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and very busy folks, very ambitious
folks and they had to remove their

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kids to Akron because that was the
nearest place that she could get a good

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education all the way through the
steps.

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It was for availability more than
anything else. But also, of course, that

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was the seat of the tire building
industry in a period when the cars were

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being developed. And so it was a
prosperous place relatively for jobs.

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And so a lot of them moved to Akron
Detroit,

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uh Ann Arbor places like that close
by. What do you remember about growing

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up in Akron? I remember it with great
fondness. It has often been,

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it was described in a sociologist
book, Vance Packard who wrote a book

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about Akron as a quintessential uh
socially conscious town, you related to

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the people that you worked with
primarily and in the time slots in which

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you worked. And it was a very self
consciously, socially distinctive uh

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how I once went out several times uh
in Miami early in my naval career

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with a gal who turned to me because
she just remembered that she knew

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Martha Firestone and she asked me if I
knew Martha Firestone and I giggled

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and gave my game away. So I had to
explain to her to some degree that I

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would not ever have gotten close to
Martha because she was not in my

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social group. We didn't belong to the
same country club.

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In fact, I didn't belong to any
country called Royal where essentially my

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, my dad was a, essentially a blue
collar worker. What he wanted was his

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eldest son who appeared to be bright
enough to do it to go to college and

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get a college degree.

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So that was always sort of expected of
you. And I was a role model. I was

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supposed to set the tone for the, it
was quite a burden at times.

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My father was intolerant.

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What about your mother? What was she
like? She was the exact opposite and

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there were opposites physically. And
my dad was a very large man over 6 ft

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and my mother was 5 ft two and could
walk under his arm. But she was,

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she was an intellectual. She was
interested in the kinds of things that

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were good for kids. And so the kids
responded properly

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and we all finished high school and
most of us finished college.

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You mentioned that the depression came
along in there. What, what was that

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like? For me, it was a lucky thing
that uh

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Roosevelt is one of my heroes because
he paid my way through school with

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the NY A program which was a good deal
like WP A, it was built like the WP

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A except it was for the purpose of
funding

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education. And then my last years and
there I, as you see on the sheet, I

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was on scholarship

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growing up. What did you wanna be when
you grew up?

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I wanted to be educated. I assume
that. And it was true at that time that

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you could tune the uh prospective
amount of pay to the number of years of

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colleges you had, you could count on
an addition to salary of a certain

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amount of respect for the 5% of the
population who had college degrees was

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in that tone frame.

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Oh, I guess when you got out of, um,
college was the depression still

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going on then, or? Oh, no, no, I
graduated in 1940

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and, uh, we were beginning to move up
on the war and the prosperity

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economically that went with that.
Everybody was busy doing that. So, the

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next step after college for me, uh,
went in that direction. Do you want,

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do you want, do you want the
employment? And sure as a boy, did you have

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to work to help out the family too?
Oh, yes. We spent, my dad went broke

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and we spent a period of time on 100
acre farm. And so, yeah, fragile

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character you see, pushed a 14 inch
turning plow with a couple of horses.

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Somebody once described me as having the best, bad back muscles around.

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So, how did that work? How did you end
up on the farm?

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Oh my, I'm sorry. I was not, I did not
complete that. Thought I do that.

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You promptly so I can get it in. Um,

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my dad was AAA an accomplished roofer.
He had a friend who had a roofing

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business

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and uh this friend also owned this 100
acre farm and needed somebody. The

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people who were renting, it moved out
and he couldn't get a replacement

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because it didn't have electricity,
you know, and

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did and uh immediate heat to the
heating system. So there were some

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Riggers involved in this, but it was a
big old comfortable house and, you

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know, we were there for two years and
considerable comfort. But then

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things warmed up and the job market
began. My dad was fairly high on the

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list because of his size and strength.
And, uh, so he got back to work and

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carry it on from that point on. But
mostly my education was subsidized.

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Mostly I worked part time. I carried
18 semester hours

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a couple or three semesters

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and then worked 15 hours a week to
make money of my own and worked another

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15 hours a week in order to, uh, pay
for my ny A obligations.

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What did ny A stand for National Youth
Administration? It was a part of

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the WP A.

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So did you live at home while you went
to school at home?

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Rode a streetcar from the edge of the
town where the farm was? It was

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right on the county line. And, uh,
that affected my grade average didn't

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matter because they didn't have a
five, be a cap I had and, uh, a, it was

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that included in that prestigious
outfit. We had our own local,

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but we didn't have a fire baby camera.

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So, what was your major in college? My
major in, uh, for the undergraduate

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degree was theater. Then this is, this
reads into some things about the,

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what was going on here because they
were after somebody who had been

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broadly educated

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was essentially a liberal arts degree.

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Uh, oh, I was very active in the
theater group as an actor for the, in

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most of the productions they were in.
And, uh

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so it kept me tuned up in a movie then
during the years

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and that the, uh uh

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where did I stop now?

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My short term memory shorts. How was
you're talking about the theater

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department and your acting? Um,

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oh, I, I was very busy in the theater
activity

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but I kept my coursework closely
controlled. So I had a, uh what the dean

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insisted was a happily well balanced
liberal arts degree with 24 upper

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division hours. And that's it. You
spend the rest of the time in

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psychology, political science and
literature.

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And then they had their own general
studies program which was carefully

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designed for broader cars. How did you
think you were going to make a

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living with a degree in theater?
Didn't worry myself about it. I assumed

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that I would. And as a matter of fact,
I've never been without a job offer.

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Did, did you hope to become an actor? Go to Broadway or? I started my

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professional life in the local basic

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CBS

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radio station. They, I had been doing
the announcing for a set of musical

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programs and they liked the way I was
able to handle the musical

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terminology. I had a chunk of
background in music history. And composition.

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And that so a leg room mouse, Myo so ruled off my tongue freely and they

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like the voice. And so instead of
reaching out, they reached inside and

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hired me.

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And this is when my dad really went up
for all, when I decided within the

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year to take off for the University of
Iowa, because I had gotten a

00:16:44.250 --> 00:16:52.250
scholarship of fellowship actually
from uh the Akron Beacon Journal to do

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that along with about 25 other people.

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And, uh, so, so my education was
subsidized all the way through one way or

00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:11.805
another. But my dad got really upset
when he lost that voice coming out of

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the radio or

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the radio station was even close by so
I could reach the parking lot in

00:17:20.358 --> 00:17:27.986
about 10 minutes. So it was a real
convenient thing. But that was the only

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broadcasting job I had, it was my plan
though to take the master's degree

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and go into, back into Chicago and do
either writing in, in radio or

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production work for which I was
suitably prepared that by that time,

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but I didn't do that either. You
didn't want to be a star? I didn't, I, I

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liked the performance and actually I
kept performing for some years. I did

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a little theater work when we were in
Reno.

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So you went to Iowa to go to, to
continue your, your education. Then after

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you, was that after you graduated from
Akron?

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00. Yeah. So the first year after, and
what was your plan in going there?

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My plan of going there was
professional in broadcasting.

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That's what I meant by the, by the
production and writing. I was uh as it

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turned out rather facile writer. And
so they were encouraging me to go in

00:18:44.269 --> 00:18:46.785
that direction.

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But I, I did,

00:18:51.189 --> 00:18:57.976
I did radio production work stu and
student productions with

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undergraduates and graduates mixed and
a new program that they had set up

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in, in broadcasting there

00:19:09.029 --> 00:19:14.585
that we're, we're talking 1940 now. So
I was broadcasting a fairly new

00:19:14.618 --> 00:19:21.256
field at that time. Well, first for
university study, it was relatively

00:19:21.289 --> 00:19:29.289
actually the whole idea of, of
studying the oral dimension of inter inter

00:19:30.818 --> 00:19:38.818
uh intercommunication among human
beings with uh I think I'm need to speak

00:19:39.420 --> 00:19:47.420
up and be harsher. Um No, that's fine.
So 1940 you went to Iowa, 1940 I

00:19:49.098 --> 00:19:55.035
went to Iowa and they brought me back
to Akron to teach for a year on the

00:19:55.068 --> 00:20:02.656
fact that somebody went to get a phd
in Wisconsin. And uh so they put, put

00:20:02.689 --> 00:20:10.065
me in, I'm hooked on this. Are we
doing it step by step or? Yeah, we're

00:20:10.098 --> 00:20:16.166
trying to kind of go chronological if
we can. Um So you're a ball game and

00:20:16.199 --> 00:20:22.717
I try to play it. Yeah. Um Did you get
your masters in Iowa then? Yeah, I

00:20:22.750 --> 00:20:28.676
have a master's in doctor for my and
you came back, I guess what's

00:20:28.709 --> 00:20:35.085
puzzling me is that I sent along a
rather extended resume and I thought

00:20:35.118 --> 00:20:40.575
perhaps you would skip over this. And
so I didn't really quite clean. I

00:20:40.608 --> 00:20:47.166
had to clean out my mind to get any
kind of remedy. And what I'm saying,

00:20:47.199 --> 00:20:51.805
I'm an expansive person. Well, we just
kind of want to get it down for you

00:20:51.838 --> 00:20:56.117
to tell us in your words. I understand

00:20:56.150 --> 00:21:01.035
one thing that you didn't mention
there. The, the war started

00:21:01.068 --> 00:21:05.627
in. Well, that was the next step after
a year of teaching at the

00:21:05.660 --> 00:21:11.357
University of Akron, I completed my
master's degree, which I still have a

00:21:11.390 --> 00:21:19.390
thesis to do at Iowa. And in February
of 1943 I went into the Navy through

00:21:20.459 --> 00:21:26.877
the Notre Dame Midshipman school which
had recently been established and I

00:21:26.910 --> 00:21:32.266
was in the second class in that and
they immediately went to sea and

00:21:32.299 --> 00:21:40.299
stayed at sea and never had anything
but a fleet assignment on a ship.

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Mostly, unfortunately, rather small ones. Bouncy little devils, you know,

00:21:49.098 --> 00:21:54.085
and which ocean were you in? I, I was,
uh I was all over the Central

00:21:54.118 --> 00:21:56.236
Pacific.

00:21:56.269 --> 00:22:04.269
I, my first ride into the Pacific took
me 10,000 miles to SaiPan.

00:22:04.430 --> 00:22:10.426
I did that twice, not once but twice
in a small ship. I was sent out to a

00:22:10.459 --> 00:22:16.857
second one to take command of it to
replace a guy who was ready to be

00:22:16.890 --> 00:22:24.127
discharged. The war was over and
things had been cleaned up and he wanted

00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:29.916
to get out of there. And so they
honored this by sending me out to my

00:22:29.949 --> 00:22:37.949
second assignment on the same kind of
little 110 ft tub. What did you do?

00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:44.176
What kind of work did you do on the? I
was an anti submarine warfare

00:22:44.209 --> 00:22:47.647
specialist.

00:22:47.680 --> 00:22:51.256
I was a sub killer.

00:22:51.289 --> 00:22:54.637
Do I look like this?

00:22:54.670 --> 00:22:58.756
No, you don't. Because I don't know
what one would look like. They told me

00:22:58.789 --> 00:23:04.555
I was pretty good at it. I almost sank
a ship or two.

00:23:04.588 --> 00:23:09.946
How did you learn to do that? That was
a special program, which was an

00:23:09.979 --> 00:23:13.436
extension of a program

00:23:13.469 --> 00:23:19.686
of, of a midshipman school program.
Where do you want to go? I would like

00:23:19.719 --> 00:23:24.137
to go to sea. Do you like large boats
or small boats? I don't know. I

00:23:24.170 --> 00:23:30.597
haven't ridden around with any kind
of. So they sent me to this, to this,

00:23:30.630 --> 00:23:37.367
uh, location in Long Beach where they
were building three or four of them

00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:43.065
and assigned me to one of those. And
that's how I learned from other

00:23:43.098 --> 00:23:48.906
people who were as ignorant about
sailing in the navy as I was until they

00:23:48.939 --> 00:23:54.847
had been trained. I was fully trained.
If I'd come out of the college

00:23:54.880 --> 00:24:02.880
program, they had one in a number of
universities. The ROTC on location.

00:24:04.068 --> 00:24:10.877
We have, we don't have a navy one
here. We have Air force and army. Mostly

00:24:10.910 --> 00:24:14.627
air force. A big one.

00:24:14.660 --> 00:24:22.660
And, uh, those are marvelous programs.
Those people really train people up

00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:30.956
was a very happy experience for me
except for the heavy seas. I didn't

00:24:30.989 --> 00:24:38.989
like her. These little tubs would roll
35 degrees in this direction, 70

00:24:39.549 --> 00:24:45.766
degrees across the line over the other
side, back and forth. Like that

00:24:45.799 --> 00:24:50.597
doesn't sound too good. That was even
worse when you went into it this way.

00:24:50.630 --> 00:24:58.630
I wouldn't write up roller coaster for
years after.

00:24:59.789 --> 00:25:04.397
Was that a minesweeper, sir? What,
what designation on the boat? Slightly

00:25:04.430 --> 00:25:10.295
smaller than a mine sweep, uh mines
sweeps? We were both in the service

00:25:10.328 --> 00:25:18.328
section. We both worked for uh for
John mccain's grandpa who was a John

00:25:18.650 --> 00:25:22.555
mccain one or two or something back
there. You know, I think that was

00:25:22.588 --> 00:25:30.295
number one. It was a sub.

00:25:30.328 --> 00:25:38.328
It did not have a name. This was, this
was the lowest, the smallest size

00:25:39.858 --> 00:25:47.858
that they, that the navy floated for
fleet work. And we, so we were fully

00:25:48.578 --> 00:25:53.857
equipped to kill subs if we could find
them and stand up to him long

00:25:53.890 --> 00:25:57.535
enough to get something in them that
would explode them. But if we didn't

00:25:57.568 --> 00:26:02.127
, then we all went up together

00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:08.147
because among other things, I carried
all kinds of weapons of Lord. I was

00:26:08.180 --> 00:26:13.967
the first gunnery officer and of
course the one that was the most fun was

00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:16.295
a £300

00:26:16.328 --> 00:26:18.756
uh

00:26:18.789 --> 00:26:25.936
de de charge. Thank you. Um

00:26:25.969 --> 00:26:33.186
And this was, I was trained to do this
and our ship was one of the prize

00:26:33.219 --> 00:26:36.726
ones that we went through the training
program. We got many,

00:26:36.759 --> 00:26:43.506
congratulations for our testing. We
never got to kill a submarine. However

00:26:43.539 --> 00:26:50.246
, so I didn't have that experience
that ever. And they never killed you.

00:26:50.279 --> 00:26:58.279
Yeah. Which is more important because
the main gun was larger than mine

00:26:58.699 --> 00:27:05.246
and they could pick me up further out.
Wouldn't have been any fun at all.

00:27:05.279 --> 00:27:09.887
So, how many years did you stand out?
And once at sea? Not quite three

00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:13.996
years, by the time I was through, I
had so many points that I came out

00:27:14.029 --> 00:27:21.107
with the first group who was
discharged and I was back in Iowa by February

00:27:21.140 --> 00:27:25.686
of 1945

00:27:25.719 --> 00:27:32.857
and working on the doctor and I had
taken them some extra hours and so I

00:27:32.890 --> 00:27:39.776
was only a year and a half away from
filling my requirements.

00:27:39.809 --> 00:27:43.367
I mean, what was your doctor again?

00:27:43.400 --> 00:27:49.936
The doctor was in communication. We
call it now. I, uh, I am probably the

00:27:49.969 --> 00:27:53.585
senior, certainly the oldest

00:27:53.618 --> 00:28:00.597
but, but there was a possible
exception of the chair, current chair. I'm

00:28:00.630 --> 00:28:08.630
the oldest living member of the, uh, h
down school of human communication.

00:28:13.400 --> 00:28:15.400
So, when did you get your doctorate in 1950?

00:28:18.358 --> 00:28:24.075
I finally wanna do that. And what,
what did you do with that? What, what

00:28:24.108 --> 00:28:26.736
did you do after you got out of the
war? I guess you came back to school.

00:28:26.769 --> 00:28:34.769
But, ok. Uh, I, it, it just continued
in the same pattern. I, there were

00:28:35.880 --> 00:28:40.575
jobs all over the place. They needed
teachers desperately, particularly

00:28:40.608 --> 00:28:47.117
ones who are finished with their
training and ready to teach full time as

00:28:47.150 --> 00:28:55.150
a tenured faculty or whatever. And so
I, I finally succumbed to Drake

00:28:56.539 --> 00:29:02.065
University, which was close by because
I was still writing my dissertation.

00:29:02.098 --> 00:29:07.805
When I finished that I got less eager
to be there and went to the

00:29:07.838 --> 00:29:13.026
University of Nevada in Reno, which
was a tiny little school, but a

00:29:13.059 --> 00:29:16.196
marvelous school

00:29:16.229 --> 00:29:21.335
and taught there for four years. And
then, and I, the University of

00:29:21.368 --> 00:29:28.877
Washington was beefing up its faculty
to accommodate a new doctoral

00:29:28.910 --> 00:29:34.565
program. And I went to Washington for
six years.

00:29:34.598 --> 00:29:42.217
And what I did in Washington got me
enough notice. So I came back with a

00:29:42.250 --> 00:29:49.347
promotion to us c for seven years
there. And I'm still talking to myself

00:29:49.380 --> 00:29:54.627
about whether I should have left or
not

00:29:54.660 --> 00:30:00.246
because it was a good job. But there
were some things, there were some

00:30:00.279 --> 00:30:07.906
things there and some things here uh
tagged in that direction.

00:30:07.939 --> 00:30:12.026
So after the war, did you decided you
wanted to come out west? Was that a

00:30:12.059 --> 00:30:19.256
decision you made or how did you
happen to be? I just moved to my sometime

00:30:19.289 --> 00:30:22.617
in that uh n period

00:30:22.650 --> 00:30:30.650
I switched my permanent address was
the Navy to Long Beach and of course,

00:30:31.430 --> 00:30:36.256
I am included by the important
accomplishment. I got married during that

00:30:36.289 --> 00:30:43.016
period of time to one of the local
ladies where the ship was being built,

00:30:43.049 --> 00:30:49.416
I met her in November and we got
together and after the ship had been

00:30:49.449 --> 00:30:55.325
transferred to San Francisco, we got
together again and decided to get

00:30:55.358 --> 00:31:00.906
married and she moved in with me and
never went back and I moved in with

00:31:00.939 --> 00:31:04.867
her and never went back to Akron in a
while.

00:31:04.900 --> 00:31:10.055
So a woman had something to do with
your decision to move out. We sure did.

00:31:10.088 --> 00:31:16.746
And the she was a, a California girl
was that she was a native Long Beach.

00:31:16.779 --> 00:31:22.535
She was born and raised in the house
where I met her. Oh, she was living

00:31:22.568 --> 00:31:26.835
in when I met her. She was in the
literary,

00:31:26.868 --> 00:31:30.847
we met at a,

00:31:30.880 --> 00:31:33.476
in a group,

00:31:33.509 --> 00:31:38.035
us all time entertainment.

00:31:38.068 --> 00:31:46.068
But she was very active and to active.
She became a target.

00:31:48.309 --> 00:31:53.887
So was she interested in theater like
you were? Oh, yes, she's very much.

00:31:53.920 --> 00:31:57.897
We have a lot of similar.

00:31:57.930 --> 00:32:03.276
Well, this is what nurture do. We
only, we were together about six weeks

00:32:03.309 --> 00:32:08.776
before we were married. I then

00:32:08.809 --> 00:32:15.535
or what they call a shakedown period
when the ship was being checked out

00:32:15.568 --> 00:32:21.467
was only about six weeks long. And so
I've been sent there a month or so

00:32:21.500 --> 00:32:29.500
earlier and that was it until I had
invited her to come to. No, I came

00:32:30.039 --> 00:32:37.526
down, didn't. I, I came down, came in
out of the storm of Santa Anna like

00:32:37.559 --> 00:32:45.467
we just had over it and uh Malibu

00:32:45.500 --> 00:32:49.107
and we caught the tail end of it out
there and it got so rough. The

00:32:49.140 --> 00:32:55.867
skipper decided he had too many
seasick sailors. We were a fresh boat kids

00:32:55.900 --> 00:33:01.226
who had never been to sea. It was a
mess.

00:33:01.259 --> 00:33:06.315
And the minute we hit shore, I hit
telephone

00:33:06.348 --> 00:33:10.756
and that's really what started it all.

00:33:10.789 --> 00:33:16.285
62 years. Pretty good.

00:33:16.318 --> 00:33:21.217
So, you must have you, she was back
home when you were in, when you were

00:33:21.250 --> 00:33:28.666
in Los Angeles teaching at us. C Yeah,
she, she was with me. Uh, this was

00:33:28.699 --> 00:33:31.016
in 1944.

00:33:31.049 --> 00:33:38.117
It was right. It was right in the
middle of the, of the pacific part of

00:33:38.150 --> 00:33:43.016
the, or W W-2.

00:33:43.049 --> 00:33:50.276
I was in places that you would
recognize the names for Quadra. I was, you

00:33:50.309 --> 00:33:56.055
know, we talked two or three times
going back and forth. That's 1000 miles

00:33:56.088 --> 00:34:01.085
east of the A and the Marianas.

00:34:01.118 --> 00:34:09.118
I've been in Guam, I've been to Iwo,
Jima. I saw the flag close up.

00:34:09.407 --> 00:34:12.595
We can give that one back

00:34:12.628 --> 00:34:17.816
or have anything to do with that
little while. That's the meanest piece of

00:34:17.849 --> 00:34:24.236
earth I around,

00:34:24.269 --> 00:34:31.217
I'm taking the, taking up time with
your professional career. Then, um,

00:34:31.250 --> 00:34:35.396
you say you went to, to teach in Reno
and then you went to Washington

00:34:35.429 --> 00:34:41.247
State. No, Washington University of
Washington. In Washington State. In

00:34:41.280 --> 00:34:46.316
Washington State. I'm sorry, what were
you teaching at those schools? I

00:34:46.349 --> 00:34:54.349
was coaching debate. Um, that raise a
mys mystery where they, I was in

00:34:55.398 --> 00:34:58.756
charge at Reno,

00:34:58.789 --> 00:35:03.175
that's, that's where I hooked on. They
had it to do and nobody else could

00:35:03.208 --> 00:35:09.206
do it. So I did it. So I was a self
trained debate coach. I had never

00:35:09.239 --> 00:35:16.327
myself competed in that sort of thing.
So I never would have made the

00:35:16.360 --> 00:35:21.816
$500,000. I would have paid the debate
coach

00:35:21.849 --> 00:35:25.537
if there were computers.

00:35:25.570 --> 00:35:32.247
You don't believe that? Do you? Not
back then? Not now?

00:35:32.280 --> 00:35:39.336
Ok. They don't get paid, like football
coaches paid well. And

00:35:39.369 --> 00:35:43.247
pardon? If you can throw a rubber
ball, they pay you lots of money. Oh,

00:35:43.280 --> 00:35:49.365
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But all, but all the
kinds of competitive nonsense as

00:35:49.398 --> 00:35:55.247
you get there, you get in these, uh,
these kids will kill for a win, you

00:35:55.280 --> 00:36:02.686
know, that sort of thing. So, um, so
you were in Washington then? What,

00:36:02.719 --> 00:36:10.719
what brought you to us c, well, my
wife went to school. I was part of it.

00:36:10.958 --> 00:36:16.916
Uh, and her father went to school
there and her uncle was a team physician.

00:36:16.949 --> 00:36:20.307
 He was a football player.

00:36:20.340 --> 00:36:28.186
Uh, you know, it was like that. And I
joked that when I left I see, come

00:36:28.219 --> 00:36:34.115
over here, somebody asked me why I
left. You know, why did I re, uh,

00:36:34.148 --> 00:36:41.615
resign from this, uh, uh, the, the
program in communication. There is an

00:36:41.648 --> 00:36:47.296
ancient and honored one. It's a very
good one. So it was prestigious. I

00:36:47.329 --> 00:36:53.327
had an offer from San Francisco State
University in hand when it came to

00:36:53.360 --> 00:37:01.360
me. So I, I actually could have stayed
in San Francisco if I had wanted to

00:37:01.969 --> 00:37:07.807
and I wanted to, but I didn't want to
because I wanted to, I had good

00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:14.537
friends in the US C program and I
wanted to be there. In fact, when the,

00:37:14.570 --> 00:37:20.037
when I left the Dean of the University

00:37:20.070 --> 00:37:24.756
honor and you were one of the silliest
things I've ever heard anybody say

00:37:24.789 --> 00:37:31.666
to anybody, but I think he was
desperate for other things to say my chair

00:37:31.699 --> 00:37:36.787
was out of town. So I had nobody
citing me. When I went in to negotiate

00:37:36.820 --> 00:37:44.256
with him, I had a plan and got sort of
half trapped in my own plan. I, I

00:37:44.289 --> 00:37:51.827
wanted, it was hard to become a full
professor at us c and I wanted to get

00:37:51.860 --> 00:37:56.936
it over and done with and this looked
like the opportunity. And so I laid

00:37:56.969 --> 00:38:03.327
it out. You, you quote me or I, I
leave because these people are going to

00:38:03.360 --> 00:38:08.376
pay me the money eventually, if not
now, because that place is going to

00:38:08.409 --> 00:38:15.767
grow. And um when I left at the end of
all of this was an unsatisfactory

00:38:15.800 --> 00:38:19.686
result hanging in the breeze.

00:38:19.719 --> 00:38:27.719
Uh As I left the office, the dean
said, Yale, I said, yes, sir. He said,

00:38:28.849 --> 00:38:36.849
uh you are aware that A SU is not the
same quality university as us. C how

00:38:38.289 --> 00:38:41.827
would you like that one?

00:38:41.860 --> 00:38:47.977
What did you say? I said, yes, sir.
I'm well aware of that because I was

00:38:48.010 --> 00:38:51.396
one of the reasons I came.

00:38:51.429 --> 00:38:56.517
Well, tell me about how did you, why
did you come? Because it looked open

00:38:56.550 --> 00:38:59.217
to change

00:38:59.250 --> 00:39:04.646
wasn't quite true. And there were a
couple of untruths that involved in it.

00:39:04.679 --> 00:39:11.967
This gets you up into what I, what I
took some notes on, I had a mind to

00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:17.436
talk about. Um

00:39:17.469 --> 00:39:23.916
what year was it that you decided to,
to come to? This is 1965.

00:39:23.949 --> 00:39:31.949
So I had 22 years of teaching here. 17
out there before I got here, then

00:39:35.800 --> 00:39:41.526
you need to take a drink. I think I do
and get a drink of water there.

00:39:41.559 --> 00:39:49.559
Want it.

00:40:13.860 --> 00:40:21.860
OK.

00:40:28.429 --> 00:40:35.717
Um The whole thing here at us C I
actually went to UCL A. So

00:40:35.750 --> 00:40:41.066
I was born in an, I was born and
raised in Los Angeles. So I, I knew more

00:40:41.099 --> 00:40:48.506
people there than I knew of us. C we
did talk at one point about going

00:40:48.539 --> 00:40:53.095
there when I had a good friend who was
sitting in the chair. I was very

00:40:53.128 --> 00:41:01.128
busy in, in uh university and uh
professional groups.

00:41:02.159 --> 00:41:08.936
Uh I was for getting an award for this
or a suggestion about that. It

00:41:08.969 --> 00:41:16.969
served as officer, several of these as
a demonstration of my uh my uh uh

00:41:21.679 --> 00:41:27.956
effort to improve myself
professionally. And I got into that habit because

00:41:27.989 --> 00:41:33.206
of this debate. Thing. As a matter of
fact, I had to self learn and you

00:41:33.239 --> 00:41:36.727
didn't do that unless you circulated.

00:41:36.760 --> 00:41:40.767
Well, tell me about coming over to a
su who offered you a job here. How

00:41:40.800 --> 00:41:45.146
did that come about? Did you know
somebody here?

00:41:45.179 --> 00:41:50.967
Should I take in the whole story here?
Do you think

00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:54.557
they forgot to tell me one thing?

00:41:54.590 --> 00:42:00.236
What's that? They told me shortly
after I got here because they still gave

00:42:00.269 --> 00:42:03.796
me opportunity to refuse,

00:42:03.829 --> 00:42:08.945
but they didn't tell me what. I, I
suspect I may have ducked the whole

00:42:08.978 --> 00:42:15.796
thing if they had told me that my
predecessor had one vote to a nervous

00:42:15.829 --> 00:42:23.829
breakdown, not once but twice in the
two years. Perceiving my parents on

00:42:23.949 --> 00:42:30.717
the scene, the second year patients
wore out with a problem.

00:42:30.750 --> 00:42:36.046
Has this kind of problem. And so they
went out and they,

00:42:36.079 --> 00:42:41.497
we were forced to remove them
somewhere in that period. Two year period,

00:42:41.530 --> 00:42:45.336
they were forced to remove them as
chair.

00:42:45.369 --> 00:42:49.977
He was a good guy, a real good guy and
a fine professional. He was a

00:42:50.010 --> 00:42:55.747
speech pathologist had a phd from
Stanford.

00:42:55.780 --> 00:43:03.517
Uh I knew the man personally with whom
he worked there. Uh He was one of

00:43:03.550 --> 00:43:09.017
the two people I knew in the
department before I came, I met him at a

00:43:09.050 --> 00:43:15.186
conference and liked him when we
chatted

00:43:15.219 --> 00:43:18.675
and he, uh

00:43:18.708 --> 00:43:25.396
he couldn't stand the stress that was
involved, you know, in, in the

00:43:25.429 --> 00:43:33.429
change from the department from a
section of English to a full time

00:43:34.219 --> 00:43:39.876
department in the regular sense in f,
in a new finance college they just

00:43:39.909 --> 00:43:45.425
created and the dean was of course,
very happy to have this happen because

00:43:45.458 --> 00:43:51.206
he was trying to run up his numbers
and get more excuse for added

00:43:51.239 --> 00:43:56.836
personnel. Everybody was fighting the
same battle competitively. And I

00:43:56.869 --> 00:44:01.336
expected that I had been, I was
familiar with that sort of thing in a big

00:44:01.369 --> 00:44:07.557
university. What I didn't like was the
failure to warn me that it might be

00:44:07.590 --> 00:44:14.166
, may have had other kinds of results.
And when I got in and looked, it

00:44:14.199 --> 00:44:18.885
looked as much like a challenge as
anything else would look like a

00:44:18.918 --> 00:44:25.006
challenge. It was underpaid, it was
understaffed. It had no senior

00:44:25.039 --> 00:44:30.905
citizens who were scholars in the full
sense that's going to be required

00:44:30.938 --> 00:44:37.445
to say 5, 10 years out there. And uh
it's gonna take some mean, hard

00:44:37.478 --> 00:44:43.686
pushing to get that money when other
people needed it too. So when you

00:44:43.719 --> 00:44:48.307
came here, um what was the department
that you came to? What was, what was

00:44:48.340 --> 00:44:55.095
your, it changed? Uh It wasn't really
a department, what it was was the

00:44:55.128 --> 00:45:00.345
representatives from what would become
three different departments and

00:45:00.378 --> 00:45:06.577
those departments uh which now have
all have three degrees, they all have

00:45:06.610 --> 00:45:12.756
doctorates. Uh our, our theater

00:45:12.789 --> 00:45:20.789
communication that is interpersonal
communication and uh uh and speech and

00:45:22.349 --> 00:45:24.876
hearing sciences

00:45:24.909 --> 00:45:30.356
is what I think they call themselves
now. And I had background and all of

00:45:30.389 --> 00:45:36.526
those I had picked up. In fact, I
almost decided to specialize in voice

00:45:36.559 --> 00:45:44.559
science. And uh I had, of course, I,
my teaching location was in the

00:45:44.938 --> 00:45:50.526
communication part of it. And I was a
senior specialist in group

00:45:50.559 --> 00:45:56.816
communication, which in some programs
is, is special and that was one

00:45:56.849 --> 00:46:01.316
direction that they, they could go.
They had a nice little group of

00:46:01.349 --> 00:46:06.615
theater people, a senior member of the
group and it was the largest group

00:46:06.648 --> 00:46:14.648
in terms of the number of the staff.
Uh It was uh

00:46:14.989 --> 00:46:21.736
an assistant professor. I had no
senior colleagues. Uh When I counted up

00:46:21.769 --> 00:46:28.756
the numbers on it, uh I was five years
older than the next oldest person

00:46:28.789 --> 00:46:35.986
who had been there for 20 years
coaching debate that he was my original

00:46:36.019 --> 00:46:43.175
contact. This came in off the road. I
had done various things which kept

00:46:43.208 --> 00:46:49.166
me in contact with the university and
with programmed with academic

00:46:49.199 --> 00:46:52.747
affairs. I was always

00:46:52.780 --> 00:46:57.546
trying to get myself hooked in
somewhere where I can affect the way the

00:46:57.579 --> 00:47:02.767
programs were constructed because I
thought they, that could be improved

00:47:02.800 --> 00:47:08.135
as part of the game. So who was your,
your immediate superior when you

00:47:08.168 --> 00:47:16.168
came over here? My immediate superiors
or Carl Dan Feld and the new Dean

00:47:17.019 --> 00:47:24.486
of uh Fine Arts who was at the same
time as well, the head of the music

00:47:24.519 --> 00:47:30.595
department and he was my reporting
senior. He was the guy who made the

00:47:30.628 --> 00:47:37.506
first decision, then the decision was
taken to Carl who then still

00:47:37.539 --> 00:47:45.539
a Dean. What was the first guy, Dean?
I'm sorry, the first one that you

00:47:47.398 --> 00:47:55.398
talked to me, what was his name? Henry
Rings. Bru I am

00:47:58.550 --> 00:48:03.037
B A. Is that right?

00:48:03.070 --> 00:48:05.767
S ma

00:48:05.800 --> 00:48:13.695
um sl A um So what, what did you think
of a su when you first got here in

00:48:13.728 --> 00:48:18.057
1965? What was a su like

00:48:18.090 --> 00:48:20.747
the bit about

00:48:20.780 --> 00:48:25.135
Bob? All right,

00:48:25.168 --> 00:48:32.885
he's, he's dead now. He committed
suicide when his son was, was, uh,

00:48:32.918 --> 00:48:36.686
killed in Vietnam.

00:48:36.719 --> 00:48:41.646
It was appeared in the smallest piece
of paper newspaper you could

00:48:41.679 --> 00:48:47.807
possibly can see by a very sensitive
character who was then the owner of a

00:48:47.840 --> 00:48:52.606
, of the T Daily News.

00:48:52.639 --> 00:48:58.385
And, uh, he did a nice job on there.
Bob

00:48:58.418 --> 00:49:04.836
Bob was on campus and he tried to get
into the pro back into the program

00:49:04.869 --> 00:49:10.017
and I tried to get him back into the
program, but the younger members did

00:49:10.050 --> 00:49:14.186
not, were reluctant to have him do
this. They were afraid he would do the

00:49:14.219 --> 00:49:20.537
same thing. And in that period, in
between, he was in the library as a

00:49:20.570 --> 00:49:24.477
circulation library

00:49:24.510 --> 00:49:27.217
one day

00:49:27.250 --> 00:49:33.717
decided apparently he couldn't handle
it at all. And he went out and

00:49:33.750 --> 00:49:38.546
crawled his truck about nine o'clock
in the morning

00:49:38.579 --> 00:49:45.526
and door LA ca and park the thing
there

00:49:45.559 --> 00:49:51.115
and uh, pull out again. I was

00:49:51.148 --> 00:49:56.706
the glove compartment, he left it open
so he knew where he was carrying a

00:49:56.739 --> 00:50:00.706
thing. But anyway, he had,

00:50:00.739 --> 00:50:04.756
he had this gun that he had been
carrying for some time and his wife was

00:50:04.789 --> 00:50:07.997
not aware of this

00:50:08.030 --> 00:50:11.356
and

00:50:11.389 --> 00:50:15.626
he killed himself in the truck.

00:50:15.659 --> 00:50:23.659
A sad day. It was bad enough for what
it was because, uh, my, you know, I

00:50:24.699 --> 00:50:30.577
, I thought he would work fine in the
program with compatible people as

00:50:30.610 --> 00:50:38.610
this kind of senior citizen. He was a
very able professional.

00:50:38.898 --> 00:50:43.856
This, of course, was part of the
reason why they were interested that I

00:50:43.889 --> 00:50:49.916
have this sort of background was
because that was a continuation of the

00:50:49.949 --> 00:50:57.949
previous chair. And quite frankly, I
didn't like that way of hiring. Um I

00:50:57.989 --> 00:51:03.307
didn't think that was probably a good
way to go

00:51:03.340 --> 00:51:09.566
like everybody else. I would have done
it differently and probably falling

00:51:09.599 --> 00:51:15.385
around my face. Well, what was a su
like back in those days? You know, how

00:51:15.418 --> 00:51:19.336
did it compare to the US C that you
just come from? Well, they were busy.

00:51:19.369 --> 00:51:27.369
I will. Uh I, I had a class, I had to
call it a class, a group of about

00:51:27.489 --> 00:51:34.175
two dozen professionals who were
brought in to help service nine doctoral

00:51:34.208 --> 00:51:41.006
programs that were started in the
previous year and uh a group of

00:51:41.039 --> 00:51:46.445
department chairs who needed to be
created out of new programs. Homer

00:51:46.478 --> 00:51:50.936
Durham was an expansive character and
he was expanding the daylights out

00:51:50.969 --> 00:51:57.345
of everything and specializing it in
the direction of the university

00:51:57.378 --> 00:52:05.378
pattern that he had successfully
helped. I helped out. He was a great guy.

00:52:07.619 --> 00:52:09.619
One of the best presents we had and what were your responsibilities? What

00:52:13.329 --> 00:52:20.945
did you do when you first came here? I
chaired three.

00:52:20.978 --> 00:52:26.876
I don't believe this myself. When I
say it, I chair in three

00:52:26.909 --> 00:52:32.316
departmental programs that were going
to develop over the next 10 years

00:52:32.349 --> 00:52:38.095
and then probably become separate. And
I knew this in advance and

00:52:38.128 --> 00:52:43.836
understood because I had been in a
couple of large programs or the, the

00:52:43.869 --> 00:52:48.615
theater, for example, at Washington
was a totally separate program and it

00:52:48.648 --> 00:52:54.787
had been from the very beginning of
its existence as a chair, as a, as a

00:52:54.820 --> 00:52:59.336
department, as an academic human.

00:52:59.369 --> 00:53:05.057
So I had a chance to see what kind of
splits would occur and what kinds of

00:53:05.090 --> 00:53:09.046
relationships might

00:53:09.079 --> 00:53:14.166
and it became, it became the kind of
challenge that threatened Bob, I

00:53:14.199 --> 00:53:21.146
guess. Uh you had to, you had to be in
everybody's lap, solve problems for

00:53:21.179 --> 00:53:27.896
everybody and resolve a conflict for
everybody. And it was a, a royal pain

00:53:27.929 --> 00:53:30.756
sometimes.

00:53:30.789 --> 00:53:36.595
Were you teaching? I was teaching half
load

00:53:36.628 --> 00:53:42.997
and I was not teaching on the year
plan. And that was one of the things

00:53:43.030 --> 00:53:48.796
that I was upset about and tried to
get it changed and got a kind of vague

00:53:48.829 --> 00:53:56.829
promise that it would be changed.
Never, it took three, took 44 or five

00:53:56.949 --> 00:53:59.477
years

00:53:59.510 --> 00:54:05.345
before that finally happened.

00:54:05.378 --> 00:54:09.896
I claimed I was overworked, the
department was overworked and understaffed

00:54:09.929 --> 00:54:12.095
and underpaid.

00:54:12.128 --> 00:54:15.445
I had to work on all of those.

00:54:15.478 --> 00:54:20.057
But that's why I took the job because
it was a challenge.

00:54:20.090 --> 00:54:24.316
So when did the departments actually
split apart? Then when you came to

00:54:24.349 --> 00:54:29.017
speech and theater and communications
were all one department, right. When

00:54:29.050 --> 00:54:35.287
did they say it was called the
Department of Speech and Drama? And they

00:54:35.320 --> 00:54:40.686
quickly changed it to speech and the
theater and then they changed it to

00:54:40.719 --> 00:54:44.135
communication

00:54:44.168 --> 00:54:51.477
and theater. And still the speech
engineering people were not happy.

00:54:51.510 --> 00:54:57.526
And so we finally separated them and
it took, uh it came after I left the

00:54:57.559 --> 00:55:00.405
chair.

00:55:00.438 --> 00:55:05.276
So were you still involved with
debating back then? No, except the

00:55:05.309 --> 00:55:09.936
administrative.

00:55:09.969 --> 00:55:13.666
Are there any special things that
happen that stand out in your memory of

00:55:13.699 --> 00:55:17.925
uh here on campus?

00:55:17.958 --> 00:55:23.416
Yeah. Here we go.

00:55:23.449 --> 00:55:29.365
Should I say something? He's looking
at you? One of the things that was

00:55:29.398 --> 00:55:37.398
interesting was that uh Roger Stevens
who was head of the Arts uh for the

00:55:37.500 --> 00:55:43.436
uh the National Head of Arts was chair
of the commission.

00:55:43.469 --> 00:55:46.925
Do you want to tell the story because
you've got the microphone? She

00:55:46.958 --> 00:55:51.856
doesn't. So I see. Right. Right.

00:55:51.889 --> 00:55:57.456
Well, a lot of interesting uh Homer
Durham particularly was pushy on the

00:55:57.489 --> 00:56:03.497
social side, but we had lots of the
same sort of academic push. We were

00:56:03.530 --> 00:56:10.186
forever going out on the street and
picking up uh academ from other big

00:56:10.219 --> 00:56:16.365
universities. Who were doing important
things and bring them in on some uh

00:56:16.398 --> 00:56:24.398
immediate or, or not so temporary
basis and then often offering him a job

00:56:24.570 --> 00:56:29.385
at the end of it, we were, we were
probably madden, a lot of people were

00:56:29.418 --> 00:56:34.365
trying to hang on the and of course,
our people were open to the same

00:56:34.398 --> 00:56:40.126
pressure. I lost as many as I got, uh,
after we had had them a while and

00:56:40.159 --> 00:56:44.106
brought them along. We've got a
college president out there. We've got a

00:56:44.139 --> 00:56:51.986
chair and a dean, uh, and Big Un and
big public universities

00:56:52.019 --> 00:56:59.595
who were stolen back. Uh, they were
just bought, they were buying. Uh, and

00:56:59.628 --> 00:57:04.436
that was a sense of my exchange with
people about how I handle the

00:57:04.469 --> 00:57:12.469
retirement. I said I told him I didn't
retire from us. C I divorced it.

00:57:13.510 --> 00:57:18.635
You didn't tell the story about Roger
Stevens and Henry. Oh, that's right

00:57:18.668 --> 00:57:26.086
. I didn't get, that was a beautiful
example of the kind of thing we had

00:57:26.119 --> 00:57:34.119
that and my Henry Loose and Clare
booth loose. We sat at dinner with them.

00:57:35.260 --> 00:57:38.405
 Why did they come here?

00:57:38.438 --> 00:57:46.438
Looses lived in, up in, uh, in uh
Boomer Hotel region. They had a mansion

00:57:46.570 --> 00:57:51.747
up there. They were residents actually

00:57:51.780 --> 00:57:59.780
and we, uh we entertained them, you
know, I never would have probably

00:58:00.099 --> 00:58:07.376
gotten close to anywhere except maybe
us c on a kind of sentimental basis

00:58:07.409 --> 00:58:14.635
from some things they do over there.
But this was uh homer was pushing

00:58:14.668 --> 00:58:22.668
this kind of thing, relate yourself to
significant people. Uh Roger Steven

00:58:22.820 --> 00:58:30.385
Stevens was brought in because we,
there was an opening of a, oh, was it

00:58:30.418 --> 00:58:37.287
was, uh, was that when the, when the,
uh, the, the music building of

00:58:37.320 --> 00:58:40.845
course, was built in this period of
time, there are all kinds of busy

00:58:40.878 --> 00:58:46.796
things going on there. And it was, I
think the music building, uh,

00:58:46.829 --> 00:58:54.236
celebration that brought, brought him
in, uh, remember what Homer Durham,

00:58:54.269 --> 00:58:59.977
how he toasted the evening? I thought
that was, oh,

00:59:00.010 --> 00:59:06.356
Homer was fun. He loved theater, he
loved music. He liked musical theater.

00:59:06.389 --> 00:59:09.675
 So he came to all the performances

00:59:09.708 --> 00:59:17.708
and apparently I enjoyed them and was
very defensive of their prerogative

00:59:17.750 --> 00:59:22.747
to use a certain amount of freedom and
the humor, some, sometimes, even in

00:59:22.780 --> 00:59:30.780
those days, sometimes the humor was
pretty raw and so it was based in

00:59:31.260 --> 00:59:35.155
standard literature. It was taught to
the students. So it was a point of

00:59:35.188 --> 00:59:37.796
some sensitivity

00:59:37.829 --> 00:59:41.845
and in this case.

00:59:41.878 --> 00:59:43.925
Mhm.

00:59:43.958 --> 00:59:51.958
Did I deep track again? I'm sorry. At
the dinner he toasted with, let's

00:59:53.208 --> 01:00:00.057
see, what did he call it? Um,
something ale. Uh, 000, I'm sorry. Yeah. Uh

01:00:00.090 --> 01:00:07.146
, his way of handling things was his
thumbprint was all over everything

01:00:07.179 --> 01:00:13.425
that was done. He pushed everything,
uh, and pushed it hard. I don't know

01:00:13.458 --> 01:00:19.276
how he got it done in the 10 years
that he was here, but he was a real, a

01:00:19.309 --> 01:00:27.309
real genius. At this developmental
sort of thing. Uh, he is a Mormon as

01:00:27.719 --> 01:00:35.719
you know, and, and, um, so he, he,
he's caught at the, uh, at the dinner,

01:00:37.139 --> 01:00:44.037
which he, to, which he invited us with
the, uh, looses because of course,

01:00:44.070 --> 01:00:50.517
her, uh, connection with the theater
was my connection with the theater.

01:00:50.550 --> 01:00:56.396
We had a lot of busy times of that
sort for that reason. It was real, real

01:00:56.429 --> 01:01:03.316
nice. But, um, he ran hard up against
something that was perfectly obvious

01:01:03.349 --> 01:01:10.945
at the table which is a club like turn
liquor. Uh She was a great drinker

01:01:10.978 --> 01:01:18.385
and she would not go to dinner to, to,
to a dinner invitation. So which

01:01:18.418 --> 01:01:24.686
excluded liquor. And so she had been
assured that she would drink liquor.

01:01:24.719 --> 01:01:30.675
And so, uh Homer quite appropriately
got up and toasted her and what he

01:01:30.708 --> 01:01:35.675
referred to as Adam's Ale,

01:01:35.708 --> 01:01:42.896
which of course is a glass of water
with an ice cube,

01:01:42.929 --> 01:01:49.557
but he was his own joke to make it
even funnier. He just did not, he was

01:01:49.590 --> 01:01:54.307
not threatened by

01:01:54.340 --> 01:01:59.796
19

01:01:59.829 --> 01:02:02.546
69.

01:02:02.579 --> 01:02:07.095
Been about four years after I came
three or four years. Do you, do you

01:02:07.128 --> 01:02:11.717
remember how much you got paid when
you got the big raise? I've forgotten

01:02:11.750 --> 01:02:19.345
, but it was uh the raise of some
horrendous amount like, you know, $6000

01:02:19.378 --> 01:02:27.327
7000 reaped me. I have, I, I stayed on
top of the heap for the next 20

01:02:27.360 --> 01:02:29.477
years

01:02:29.510 --> 01:02:33.655
when you came here. In 1965. Did you
intend this to be where you would

01:02:33.688 --> 01:02:36.997
stay for the rest of your career?

01:02:37.030 --> 01:02:44.195
Yeah, I realize that I might get
caught in that position. Yeah.

01:02:44.228 --> 01:02:52.228
Not everybody can use a one on one.
Wow. Work. Course like me.

01:02:53.449 --> 01:02:58.747
Well, what did you like about a su, I
like the busy. I like what Bob

01:02:58.780 --> 01:03:04.557
didn't like. That was the honest part
of the transaction. I liked what was

01:03:04.590 --> 01:03:10.577
going on. That was what I wanted to
do. I like curriculum. I like a

01:03:10.610 --> 01:03:17.356
development. Academic development is
an area of concern anyway.

01:03:17.389 --> 01:03:23.916
Yeah, even my scholarly work leans
this way. I like the editing better

01:03:23.949 --> 01:03:29.456
than the writing. Sometimes I like to
shave it up into something that will

01:03:29.489 --> 01:03:36.276
fit into a category or meet a need or
something of that sort. And where

01:03:36.309 --> 01:03:40.486
was your first office at a su? It was
in the language and literature on

01:03:40.519 --> 01:03:46.526
the sixth floor was the biggest office
in the building was a huge office.

01:03:46.559 --> 01:03:52.945
It was like 24 28 ft in length.

01:03:52.978 --> 01:03:59.977
I sat over in one corner and set up a
conference area in front.

01:04:00.010 --> 01:04:04.506
But because it really technically
belonged to the English Department, but

01:04:04.539 --> 01:04:09.445
they took it away. It was only two
years old, a brand new building. That

01:04:09.478 --> 01:04:15.267
was another thing was obviously going
to be another eight or 10 years

01:04:15.300 --> 01:04:21.217
before c would get around to building
a building for the communication

01:04:21.250 --> 01:04:25.155
program old as it was

01:04:25.188 --> 01:04:28.655
So, did you stay there during your
whole career or did you move other

01:04:28.688 --> 01:04:36.688
places on campus? Oh, we, uh, we were
immediately in plan for a building

01:04:37.559 --> 01:04:44.445
here. First, a theater, then a
building. So, where was the theater at the

01:04:44.478 --> 01:04:52.478
time when you came here, or? Uh, that
was, uh, I, I remember in 1939

01:04:54.679 --> 01:05:02.057
um, what is the name of that little
building over there?

01:05:02.090 --> 01:05:06.845
Yeah,

01:05:06.878 --> 01:05:12.925
I see. Yeah, that was where
productions and the program was good. It was a

01:05:12.958 --> 01:05:18.787
good program. They're good people.
They're very, very skillful and

01:05:18.820 --> 01:05:26.820
effective production people and all of
them are individually talented.

01:05:27.918 --> 01:05:34.807
Mhm. What did you like best about your
job here? The development part,

01:05:34.840 --> 01:05:38.445
development part.

01:05:38.478 --> 01:05:44.896
Uh that was, uh, as I said, that's
what hooked me. I, I'm sure it was that

01:05:44.929 --> 01:05:52.247
, uh, that, that part of it was a true
bill. They had sensed that that was

01:05:52.280 --> 01:05:57.106
what I enjoyed doing. It was why I
probably had become a rolling pedant.

01:05:57.139 --> 01:06:02.175
Did you ever hear that praise? I was a
roving patent. That's, you move

01:06:02.208 --> 01:06:07.977
every five years, usually associated
with a large salary increase or

01:06:08.010 --> 01:06:10.405
promotion.

01:06:10.438 --> 01:06:16.037
I was tenured in three universities.

01:06:16.070 --> 01:06:20.166
Um, well, looking back, is there
anything particularly that you're

01:06:20.199 --> 01:06:25.155
proudest of that you accomplished
here? Well, I think that I helped them

01:06:25.188 --> 01:06:30.566
do what they wanted to do and what the
university wanted them to do. I

01:06:30.599 --> 01:06:36.717
think they did a very noble job with
what they had. They the mistakes they

01:06:36.750 --> 01:06:43.195
made were mostly in the direction of
things that affected their ego of

01:06:43.228 --> 01:06:47.057
speech engineering people I had
difficulty with because they felt

01:06:47.090 --> 01:06:52.916
threatened by anyone who looked like
they might chase around them and take

01:06:52.949 --> 01:07:00.686
up a job uh uh somewhere and, and they
would have to go through the same

01:07:00.719 --> 01:07:05.577
process again. And of course, what
they did was simply ensure that that

01:07:05.610 --> 01:07:13.456
would happen. I finally got disgusted
with that. And I went for a senior

01:07:13.489 --> 01:07:18.905
colleague of mine at Washington who
was about ready to be promoted to full

01:07:18.938 --> 01:07:25.497
professor. And I figured maybe that
might tickle his fancy and get away.

01:07:25.530 --> 01:07:30.586
And I could have a senior person to
talk. I had nobody to talk to. I had

01:07:30.619 --> 01:07:36.316
my problems and I had nobody to talk
to except a couple of the more senior

01:07:36.349 --> 01:07:40.767
ones who were more reflective about it
and they were kind, but there was a

01:07:40.800 --> 01:07:46.436
limit to that. You get up to a certain
point and you got to make a

01:07:46.469 --> 01:07:54.106
decision and, and fast decisions. I
didn't like all that. Well, and too

01:07:54.139 --> 01:07:57.405
many of them came off badly,

01:07:57.438 --> 01:08:00.436
you know, under pressure.

01:08:00.469 --> 01:08:08.469
Um, I, I guess one way you could think
about it is that uh Bob's leaving

01:08:09.349 --> 01:08:17.349
the second time must have had a, a
kind of depressing effect on the family.

01:08:19.019 --> 01:08:24.616
Nobody wants them or nobody wants to
deal with them. They don't want to

01:08:24.649 --> 01:08:27.706
solve our problem

01:08:27.739 --> 01:08:33.555
and what they saw in me. Was somebody
I guess who they thought might solve

01:08:33.588 --> 01:08:40.425
the problem and they behaved this way.
They were very kind to me. I mean,

01:08:40.458 --> 01:08:46.126
she wants to know how you feel about
the, the university, the contribution

01:08:46.159 --> 01:08:53.076
you think the department has made to
the university? Yeah. Yes, indeed. It

01:08:53.109 --> 01:08:59.107
is fulfill it and tell me how the only
places where I would differ would

01:08:59.140 --> 01:09:06.196
be professional differences, conflict
about the labeling courses and that

01:09:06.229 --> 01:09:12.027
sort of inside thing that really is
not relevant to the developmental

01:09:12.060 --> 01:09:15.467
process per se

01:09:15.500 --> 01:09:22.415
right down. Where or, or may we, we
have become well known as a program

01:09:22.448 --> 01:09:29.656
because few downs in Dallas for 5
million bucks. When did that happen?

01:09:29.689 --> 01:09:34.526
That happened the year I, I retired.

01:09:34.559 --> 01:09:38.514
When did it become the Department of
Communications? When did that change

01:09:38.547 --> 01:09:43.014
from that? That was a title change in
the department? That was one of

01:09:43.047 --> 01:09:48.325
those things that some of the people
pushed, some of them didn't push and

01:09:48.358 --> 01:09:54.514
didn't care. And so it took time to
get it done, time and a little tact.

01:09:54.547 --> 01:09:59.976
How did you feel about it? I, I think
they did what they should have done.

01:10:00.009 --> 01:10:04.586
Which was that? Were you for it or
against it? Oh, I think, I think you

01:10:04.619 --> 01:10:08.286
should have been in the Department of
Communication. I also think that

01:10:08.319 --> 01:10:16.319
mass communication should be
integrated with it because, uh, uh iit on

01:10:17.390 --> 01:10:22.796
toes here because you have background
in this area. But, uh, I, I think

01:10:22.829 --> 01:10:29.406
the thing, probably that particular
conflict between journalism and mass

01:10:29.439 --> 01:10:37.439
communication in its other dimensions,
um whether that should be

01:10:38.970 --> 01:10:43.217
or there should be change, it should
all be combined, but it should all be

01:10:43.250 --> 01:10:48.937
combined. And I made such a proposal
and it was not honored for inside

01:10:48.970 --> 01:10:51.536
reasons.

01:10:51.569 --> 01:10:55.987
It happened. What happened was, uh,
they're in the same shape that they

01:10:56.020 --> 01:11:01.786
would have been if they had done it,
except they would be, except

01:11:01.819 --> 01:11:06.866
journalism would be divided up
differently. And that was where the

01:11:06.899 --> 01:11:13.487
argument was. We had a lot of news
people, we had a lot of people who had

01:11:13.520 --> 01:11:21.476
theater backgrounds or entertainment
showbiz background.

01:11:21.509 --> 01:11:27.226
One of the real good persons as a gal
who has quite had quite a career as

01:11:27.259 --> 01:11:29.527
a child's

01:11:29.560 --> 01:11:36.206
broadcast or who's that? Very well.

01:11:36.239 --> 01:11:38.635
Nefarious.

01:11:38.668 --> 01:11:41.675
Nefarious. Yeah,

01:11:41.708 --> 01:11:49.277
that's Dave's, that's Dave's last
name.

01:11:49.310 --> 01:11:53.226
You know, she's blonde wears

01:11:53.259 --> 01:11:58.675
all the time. Uh Mary Lou. Mary Lou
Coalition is the one I know. That's it.

01:11:58.708 --> 01:12:04.876
That's her, that's her. That's who
we're trying to reach. For. Labels are

01:12:04.909 --> 01:12:10.067
hard. How many Mary Lo there could be?
Label labels are hard to start with

01:12:10.100 --> 01:12:13.265
the hatched it.

01:12:13.298 --> 01:12:17.326
Ok. Uh Did you know Hugh Downs?

01:12:17.359 --> 01:12:22.206
No, and that's kind of interesting
itself because he and I were in radio

01:12:22.239 --> 01:12:28.595
stations in the same state about 200
miles separated. He was in Lima and I

01:12:28.628 --> 01:12:36.006
was in Akron in the same period of
time. We're about the same age.

01:12:36.039 --> 01:12:44.039
He's a here are two younger, I think.

01:12:44.229 --> 01:12:50.906
Yeah, and a perfect guy to do what he
has done, which is become a kind of

01:12:50.939 --> 01:12:57.366
walking symbol of sorts of attitudes
you should have toward this sort of

01:12:57.399 --> 01:13:00.015
thing.

01:13:00.048 --> 01:13:07.246
Um See any other, any other me
memories that you wanna talk about that you

01:13:07.279 --> 01:13:10.567
remember things that happened here,

01:13:10.600 --> 01:13:16.206
you went past one there bar that you

01:13:16.239 --> 01:13:23.126
did. You make a note of the, the, the
loose, I guess we covered that. We

01:13:23.159 --> 01:13:26.897
introduced Randolph Churchill.

01:13:26.930 --> 01:13:34.717
One of, one of my first uh uh polite
courtesy invitations to occupy a

01:13:34.750 --> 01:13:39.626
platform was to introduce the nephew
of Winston Churchill who was on a

01:13:39.659 --> 01:13:41.765
tour

01:13:41.798 --> 01:13:46.626
and then it got loused up and somebody
dropped the ball organizing the

01:13:46.659 --> 01:13:52.296
thing and we wound up with a half
empty auditorium with a guy who should

01:13:52.329 --> 01:13:58.357
have, you know, he had a big audience
for him. He was a good speaker, good

01:13:58.390 --> 01:14:06.390
kid, uh marvelous guy. But here I was
suddenly, I just come into this

01:14:06.569 --> 01:14:11.586
place and here I was up there on the
platform

01:14:11.619 --> 01:14:18.095
facing the price of early of 3000.

01:14:18.128 --> 01:14:24.456
I was a little threatened. But where
was it held at? Damage? Damage? There

01:14:24.489 --> 01:14:31.147
was a story. I was here in the early
days. I, they had billets

01:14:31.180 --> 01:14:36.967
but uh it hadn't been used much and
they were still working out the use

01:14:37.000 --> 01:14:45.000
pattern. And I was involved because my
folks used the uh the, the

01:14:45.079 --> 01:14:53.079
carpenter shop, a place where we
rigged the settings for, for uh, plays

01:14:53.829 --> 01:14:58.946
and that was the only place that was
big enough to, to accommodate.

01:14:58.979 --> 01:15:03.897
They, they did some pretty ambitious
things for a bunch of kids. It was a

01:15:03.930 --> 01:15:11.246
funny story that, um came out of that.
Um, you know, Jimmy was a very

01:15:11.279 --> 01:15:17.925
popular janitor. He was in charge of
damage during that period and, uh,

01:15:17.958 --> 01:15:23.237
the governor was having a luncheon and
using it on the stage. Um,

01:15:23.270 --> 01:15:31.095
everybody had gathered up there and,
uh, Jimmy came in about two o'clock

01:15:31.128 --> 01:15:35.857
and announced that, um, they'd have to
discontinue

01:15:35.890 --> 01:15:41.046
that. Um, and another group coming in,

01:15:41.079 --> 01:15:47.555
uh, he's telling the guy you can't
continue to use the stages, the

01:15:47.588 --> 01:15:52.607
facility for his own purposes.

01:15:52.640 --> 01:16:00.385
Yeah, I just checked my watch list
again in a long time. It was very brisk

01:16:00.418 --> 01:16:03.376
old Jimmy was a character.

01:16:03.409 --> 01:16:07.845
Sometimes those people kind of take
possession of their building. Well,

01:16:07.878 --> 01:16:11.786
yeah, he had his, the director's

01:16:11.819 --> 01:16:18.107
support and that kind of got everybody
in tow because it wound up with

01:16:18.140 --> 01:16:25.567
Dean and, uh, Dave scholar who was the
director of damage. Uh, a little,

01:16:25.600 --> 01:16:32.277
all sorts of one because Dave had told
Henry something that was not true.

01:16:32.310 --> 01:16:39.925
They were looking for some programs or
something and, and, uh,

01:16:39.958 --> 01:16:47.015
Dave cut the dean off very briskly and
was annoyed with him. You must have

01:16:47.048 --> 01:16:53.696
had an argument with somebody that he
didn't want to have an argument with

01:16:53.729 --> 01:17:01.729
and I tried to just wiped the Dean
off, you know, just dismissed the idea

01:17:02.890 --> 01:17:07.626
that anyone would lose this sort of
thing that way. And of course, they

01:17:07.659 --> 01:17:12.967
found it very close to where Henry
thought it was.

01:17:13.000 --> 01:17:17.147
And you were involved with a Su West
also, weren't you tell me about that

01:17:17.180 --> 01:17:25.180
? Well, the there were some programs
that were put in over there that had

01:17:25.529 --> 01:17:32.456
certain general studies requirements
and there were also, there was also

01:17:32.489 --> 01:17:38.277
room for some academic development. So
we actually develop a program over

01:17:38.310 --> 01:17:45.446
there. That was another thing that
happened. We developed uh really uh uh

01:17:45.479 --> 01:17:49.996
a somewhat broader program

01:17:50.029 --> 01:17:56.055
over there that, than we had on
campus. We also left out some parts like

01:17:56.088 --> 01:18:02.076
it takes expensive equipment to do a
speech and hearing program and this

01:18:02.109 --> 01:18:07.206
was the impending intense space,

01:18:07.239 --> 01:18:15.046
uh intended space for over here. And
so we couldn't do it over there. So

01:18:15.079 --> 01:18:19.277
you start, were you out there at a Su
West when it first started? Yeah.

01:18:19.310 --> 01:18:24.175
What was it like when it started
there? Oh, you know, some tents with air

01:18:24.208 --> 01:18:26.385
conditioning

01:18:26.418 --> 01:18:34.418
pretty much actually, I think they
were the wooden type. Um, oh, I know, I

01:18:35.229 --> 01:18:41.717
know what it was. It was those,
remember those rounded things were,

01:18:41.750 --> 01:18:44.967
um,

01:18:45.000 --> 01:18:50.467
the name for them or something,

01:18:50.500 --> 01:18:55.595
right. What did you think of the idea
of starting a branch campus out west

01:18:55.628 --> 01:19:00.836
? Well, I thought everything was going
to expand it matter where you did

01:19:00.869 --> 01:19:08.869
it, you do you go to the need unless
it is over expenditure of valuable

01:19:09.390 --> 01:19:14.675
funds. If you got the money and you
got it, all, you, all you need to do

01:19:14.708 --> 01:19:20.116
is put the space there. Let's not have
people arguing about who does what

01:19:20.149 --> 01:19:22.527
with whom?

01:19:22.560 --> 01:19:27.147
That's what you do in a quiet room
somewhere.

01:19:27.180 --> 01:19:34.135
I would never let my people argue
those kind of things. We build some sort

01:19:34.168 --> 01:19:39.777
of construct that would get it done
quietly.

01:19:39.810 --> 01:19:44.527
So, did you, I didn't always succeed.
I mean, did you do much teaching out

01:19:44.560 --> 01:19:50.345
there or did you get involved with the
SU Yeah. II I taught uh I had a, a

01:19:50.378 --> 01:19:56.996
senior level group course and which
emphasized leadership and it was a

01:19:57.029 --> 01:20:04.476
departmental requirement for a major a
and so I, I would get from both

01:20:04.509 --> 01:20:08.925
sides and I'd have a nice size class

01:20:08.958 --> 01:20:13.746
and occasionally I would pick up a uh
beginning class in a group

01:20:13.779 --> 01:20:19.777
communication.

01:20:19.810 --> 01:20:26.476
I might say that I probably encouraged
some of this development by

01:20:26.509 --> 01:20:34.206
appointing some people who are of like
mind to uh teach these particular

01:20:34.239 --> 01:20:37.476
classes.

01:20:37.509 --> 01:20:43.786
But I can't remember for sure you
reflect a little bit on the college

01:20:43.819 --> 01:20:47.385
program. Pardon?

01:20:47.418 --> 01:20:51.086
The college of public programs? Do you
remember how that came about? Yeah

01:20:51.119 --> 01:20:56.126
, I suggested it to Nick Henry

01:20:56.159 --> 01:21:01.076
that he, that he, I suggested that he
separate himself from political

01:21:01.109 --> 01:21:09.036
science and build a unit around it.
That's what he did. Why did you

01:21:09.069 --> 01:21:14.576
suggest that? Because I think it was
the way to do it,

01:21:14.609 --> 01:21:21.107
I'm not sure we did it with the right
guy.

01:21:21.140 --> 01:21:23.607
I said,

01:21:23.640 --> 01:21:27.937
um, any other things that you wanted
to? Be sure you talked about, Bob? Oh

01:21:27.970 --> 01:21:33.817
, jeez. Let me think, Bob. Do you have
any other things? Too minor, kind

01:21:33.850 --> 01:21:39.906
of frivolous ideas? You know, things?
No, they're not. No. Cut that, that

01:21:39.939 --> 01:21:42.147
kid,

01:21:42.180 --> 01:21:44.796
you're a veteran.

01:21:44.829 --> 01:21:50.095
Can you reflect a little bit on the
president that you mentioned? Be happy

01:21:50.128 --> 01:21:57.836
to. Our two best presidents were
Durham and Nelson. They were good. All of

01:21:57.869 --> 01:22:01.107
them were good presidents

01:22:01.140 --> 01:22:04.845
and you like to

01:22:04.878 --> 01:22:10.786
and uh yeah, there was one dean who
with whom I had a love her. But that

01:22:10.819 --> 01:22:18.546
was because he too was a uh wasn't an
anti submarine warfare specialist.

01:22:18.579 --> 01:22:24.305
He had been in command of a destroyer
escort. What was his name? Peak?

01:22:24.338 --> 01:22:31.619
George Peak. And he was the dean of
what he was the Dean of Liberal Arts.

01:22:32.449 --> 01:22:34.449
Well, we were good friends because of the navy thing, but I think we would

01:22:36.569 --> 01:22:42.366
have been friends anyway because we
were, neither of us had anybody to

01:22:42.399 --> 01:22:47.777
talk to on the campus during the
period when it became important, whether

01:22:47.810 --> 01:22:53.015
you were a hawk or not, a hawk in the
Vietnam thing.

01:22:53.048 --> 01:22:57.385
And I was in sympathy with what the
kids were experiencing and what they

01:22:57.418 --> 01:23:03.006
wanted to yell about. But I my whole
way of thinking was constructed so

01:23:03.039 --> 01:23:09.206
that I was hawkish when it came out
the other end. For example, I think

01:23:09.239 --> 01:23:16.076
the answer to the military resource
problem is the draft. It was that way

01:23:16.109 --> 01:23:21.506
in 1787 and it's that way now

01:23:21.539 --> 01:23:25.265
and what I think they ought to do is
make it permanent. And that's where

01:23:25.298 --> 01:23:29.036
the kids quit talking to me,

01:23:29.069 --> 01:23:33.055
like, better permanent stuff

01:23:33.088 --> 01:23:36.845
per of and inclusive.

01:23:36.878 --> 01:23:41.296
And, and, and George said George is in
full agreement with that everybody

01:23:41.329 --> 01:23:46.437
, two years of service

01:23:46.470 --> 01:23:52.107
and we'd sit and talk about that, get
it off our, out of our hair and then

01:23:52.140 --> 01:23:56.555
go on to the next topic. Did you
witness some of the demonstrations that

01:23:56.588 --> 01:24:02.706
went on on campus during the, the? Oh,
yeah, funny things, funny things

01:24:02.739 --> 01:24:08.086
happen. But what was funny,

01:24:08.119 --> 01:24:10.406
uh,

01:24:10.439 --> 01:24:18.439
the kids would do things that were not
terribly threatening and, uh,

01:24:19.220 --> 01:24:26.456
and certain people on the same people
would get upset about it and then

01:24:26.489 --> 01:24:30.656
another group of people would get
upset because of this reaction. The

01:24:30.689 --> 01:24:35.397
first thing, you know, you got a full
scale academic battle which has no

01:24:35.430 --> 01:24:43.076
academic content to it. Starsky was a
good example.

01:24:43.109 --> 01:24:49.456
You can set him up with all the sound
in the world that he could use to

01:24:49.489 --> 01:24:54.515
talk to whoever he wanted to talk and
he could talk himself halfway down,

01:24:54.548 --> 01:24:59.015
half a mile down into the soil and
then it would make no difference at all

01:24:59.048 --> 01:25:03.095
because he didn't make much sense.

01:25:03.128 --> 01:25:09.166
One thing we're not supposed to be is
stupid.

01:25:09.199 --> 01:25:14.555
You knew, you knew Starsky then
pardon? You knew him personally. I didn't

01:25:14.588 --> 01:25:21.296
know him personally. I knew of him. I
knew his boss personally. I worked

01:25:21.329 --> 01:25:27.746
for him is chair Tom Holt.

01:25:27.779 --> 01:25:35.779
He was another one who could get a
little irrational in his resistance.

01:25:37.109 --> 01:25:42.196
Oh, so I openly insult her.

01:25:42.229 --> 01:25:49.015
Uh, our academic vice president, Carl
Dan

01:25:49.048 --> 01:25:56.777
and become, and you know, Carl was a
good guy.

01:25:56.810 --> 01:26:01.015
Carl was real upset, asked me if I
could do anything about it and I said,

01:26:01.048 --> 01:26:05.147
no, I'm as helpless as you are. I may
as well climb over the banister and

01:26:05.180 --> 01:26:11.376
come out and join you.

01:26:11.409 --> 01:26:15.437
Those were pretty interesting days at
the on campus everywhere. They were

01:26:15.470 --> 01:26:23.470
, they were, they were and uh good
places to learn to have, get lessons

01:26:23.918 --> 01:26:25.996
for

01:26:26.029 --> 01:26:30.726
about how you can handle things that
are difficult to handle. It's the

01:26:30.759 --> 01:26:37.166
only way is on the ground and busy
doing it.

01:26:37.199 --> 01:26:42.687
Good places to have some debates too
and learn about speech and debating.

01:26:42.720 --> 01:26:47.446
I think those are all good things. I'm
not sure I was a proper person to

01:26:47.479 --> 01:26:53.515
be doing it, but I think I did my part
in getting the base laid. I think

01:26:53.548 --> 01:27:00.647
that was probably my chief
contribution was to get the thing organized so

01:27:00.680 --> 01:27:06.635
that you could work out a way of
handling whatever you're doing. I think

01:27:06.668 --> 01:27:11.397
I'm pretty good at that, the rest of
it. I'm not so sure we mentioned

01:27:11.430 --> 01:27:15.095
Russell Nelson was one of your
favorite presidents. What did you like

01:27:15.128 --> 01:27:20.567
about Russell Nelson. He went right to
the heart of the problem. Never

01:27:20.600 --> 01:27:27.126
horsed around. Give me an example of
that.

01:27:27.159 --> 01:27:32.156
Well, we had a,

01:27:32.189 --> 01:27:38.095
I suppose, well intentioned person
here

01:27:38.128 --> 01:27:44.107
whom he handles simply by promoting
him to a higher position, which had

01:27:44.140 --> 01:27:52.140
different duties. Who was that? The
name was Mulholland, as I recall.

01:27:53.759 --> 01:28:00.555
And, uh, I, I couldn't imagine any
sharper way of handling that than he

01:28:00.588 --> 01:28:07.286
did put him in charge of the rest of
the university except that where he

01:28:07.319 --> 01:28:11.416
was raising hair

01:28:11.449 --> 01:28:14.786
giving people offset.

01:28:14.819 --> 01:28:19.246
Did you know Russell Nelson
personally? Yeah, he lives right around the

01:28:19.279 --> 01:28:25.786
corner. Do you still see him? Yeah.
What, what is it that you, you liked

01:28:25.819 --> 01:28:29.237
about him? And you know what kind of a
president was? He? He was a very

01:28:29.270 --> 01:28:37.270
fine he and Homer D were the two best
we had in that period of time in my

01:28:37.439 --> 01:28:43.187
and sort of a horse a piece with la
cour in there. Who is the easier

01:28:43.220 --> 01:28:48.836
standard type one? Who knows about the
money?

01:28:48.869 --> 01:28:53.256
Now, you got one who knows more about
money

01:28:53.289 --> 01:28:56.916
and what do you think of Michael Crow?

01:28:56.949 --> 01:29:04.949
Well, I think he's what we should be
doing at this point in time.

01:29:05.470 --> 01:29:10.586
I don't know about that salary, but

01:29:10.619 --> 01:29:15.666
I'm a little sensitive at that point.
Did you ever think that the campus

01:29:15.699 --> 01:29:22.027
would get as big as it's gotten?

01:29:22.060 --> 01:29:28.976
Well, that raises you to another
level? Uh, I suppose you, if you were

01:29:29.009 --> 01:29:35.706
gonna organize it, you would, um,

01:29:35.739 --> 01:29:41.467
you know, like the change of the, of
the name to Arizona State University.

01:29:41.500 --> 01:29:46.437
This is one of those sorts of things.
It is a political solution. It's a

01:29:46.470 --> 01:29:52.937
political problem. And the reason you
go a particular direction is to

01:29:52.970 --> 01:29:59.937
satisfy the political requirements
rather than to uh, preferences which

01:29:59.970 --> 01:30:04.576
have to do with what, what kind of
product you will turn out or whatever,

01:30:04.609 --> 01:30:10.937
how, how it's best to do that. So, I
guess my answer to that would be the

01:30:10.970 --> 01:30:16.046
most direct way is the best way. But I
don't think you should have any

01:30:16.079 --> 01:30:22.147
university if you can possibly avoid
it, have any university. That's more

01:30:22.180 --> 01:30:26.487
than about 20,000.

01:30:26.520 --> 01:30:31.616
It's about twice that just on this
campus.

01:30:31.649 --> 01:30:38.385
II, I just, if I had it to do over
again, I probably would not.

01:30:38.418 --> 01:30:46.418
And go find me a nice 1214, 15,000
student campus

01:30:48.100 --> 01:30:56.100
and find a guy who could
administrative. We, we sent a youngster out who

01:30:56.350 --> 01:31:04.350
went from pos T to No, he went from
here to, uh, a proposed job back in

01:31:05.699 --> 01:31:09.996
Indiana and then crawled up the system

01:31:10.029 --> 01:31:15.317
after a brief tour at Wayne State
University

01:31:15.350 --> 01:31:21.726
and he would make a prize for the
right size. Just he'd handle it with his

01:31:21.759 --> 01:31:24.967
left hand.

01:31:25.000 --> 01:31:28.476
What kind of advice do you give to
young people that might be thinking

01:31:28.509 --> 01:31:36.509
about trying to choose a college or a
career?

01:31:36.579 --> 01:31:41.456
Oh, the only thing I quarrel about is
tolerance.

01:31:41.489 --> 01:31:46.796
I think people should be more tolerant
than they are

01:31:46.829 --> 01:31:53.416
and that we should teach him in that
direction, teach them how to think.

01:31:53.449 --> 01:31:57.737
And I think, I think, I think the
tools that we're getting are moving in

01:31:57.770 --> 01:32:04.826
that direction, uh um business of
starting with the basic facts and adding

01:32:04.859 --> 01:32:11.086
up to get the total sum rapidly and
then get into the problem area when

01:32:11.119 --> 01:32:14.666
you, when you know what's there and
what's being done and all about it

01:32:14.699 --> 01:32:18.336
that you can find out quickly

01:32:18.369 --> 01:32:25.857
that would hasten it a good deal for
me. Maybe not for others.

01:32:25.890 --> 01:32:29.256
There. Any other things you wanted to
talk about that? I didn't ask you.

01:32:29.289 --> 01:32:34.845
No, I'm sorry, I, I'm a little slow on
some of these things. We, we

01:32:34.878 --> 01:32:41.286
actually did go over them as you know,
but I, but I, uh 11 thing he's

01:32:41.319 --> 01:32:46.967
particularly proud about is the fact
that through the years, um, there are

01:32:47.000 --> 01:32:52.385
large universities that have lost
their communication programs and, uh

01:32:52.418 --> 01:32:59.067
they really lay the firm foundation
here and the fact that it's endured

01:32:59.100 --> 01:33:07.100
and uh have become what it is today is
a source of time. I think you can

01:33:08.890 --> 01:33:15.046
be very proud of it. Yeah, I think a
good communication program can make a

01:33:15.079 --> 01:33:21.857
, a distinct contribution to the
general education of the student

01:33:21.890 --> 01:33:26.366
population, which is needful

01:33:26.399 --> 01:33:30.836
and the way they're going, it's going
to be even more important because

01:33:30.869 --> 01:33:35.595
handling information is a touchy area.

01:33:35.628 --> 01:33:38.765
Well, that's changed a lot over the
years with computers now and the

01:33:38.798 --> 01:33:45.555
internet a lot different than it was
years ago. You see it in the kids. We

01:33:45.588 --> 01:33:52.357
, we have a young grandchild who shows
this very clearly.

01:33:52.390 --> 01:34:00.390
She talks, talks like that. Like our
uncle who is an accountant,

01:34:01.918 --> 01:34:07.805
she uses language like a data
processor.

01:34:07.838 --> 01:34:11.666
They all know more than we do. And

01:34:11.699 --> 01:34:18.126
OK. Any, anything else you wanted to
add? It was a different world

01:34:18.159 --> 01:34:23.567
during this time. It was um personal,

01:34:23.600 --> 01:34:31.600
um lots of activity going on. Uh um
Everybody got to know one another. It

01:34:34.029 --> 01:34:39.616
was, it was different and um then
suddenly it all grew into this

01:34:39.649 --> 01:34:44.866
impersonal sort of thing. We even
noticed a change in the office where

01:34:44.899 --> 01:34:48.607
things got closed up and you, you talk
to somebody through a little window

01:34:48.640 --> 01:34:56.317
, you know, offices weren't open and
answered and whether that's good or

01:34:56.350 --> 01:35:02.717
bad, Bob anything else you wanted to
add or ask,

01:35:02.750 --> 01:35:08.095
the only other thing would, would
relate to the move of public programs to

01:35:08.128 --> 01:35:14.496
the downtown campus. And uh we, you
seem to have come from a really

01:35:14.529 --> 01:35:21.987
general studies, communication
background. All my degrees were in liberal

01:35:22.020 --> 01:35:27.666
arts, but it seems that they're moving
more in a specialized direction

01:35:27.699 --> 01:35:34.305
related to communication where it
would be more difficult for people on

01:35:34.338 --> 01:35:38.687
the main campus, for instance, where
the, the Warts College will be housed

01:35:38.720 --> 01:35:43.956
to, to take communication courses or
vice versa.

01:35:43.989 --> 01:35:51.756
That being the case. And I'm not
terribly close to the, to the people who

01:35:51.789 --> 01:35:58.796
are in charge now. So I'm not sure
what or, or they, they are going but,

01:35:58.829 --> 01:36:06.067
and so can't talk for them. But if
that's the case, if they really believe

01:36:06.100 --> 01:36:12.305
that that's the case, that's what you
need to do, then we're in for a

01:36:12.338 --> 01:36:17.256
period of time when it might be a
little tougher for certain kinds of

01:36:17.289 --> 01:36:22.527
persons to affiliate themselves. And
so we bring them in and take them out.

01:36:22.560 --> 01:36:29.817
There's some indication of that in the
current group with, uh, I, I went

01:36:29.850 --> 01:36:31.845
for

01:36:31.878 --> 01:36:37.487
at least five years without any
retirement at all in the program because

01:36:37.520 --> 01:36:43.666
they were all so young. And now

01:36:43.699 --> 01:36:48.586
that question, should we retain this
person and move along and hold them

01:36:48.619 --> 01:36:50.836
in place

01:36:50.869 --> 01:36:57.647
or should we release him just to other
kinds of duty is, uh, is gonna be

01:36:57.680 --> 01:37:01.366
fought out somewhere

01:37:01.399 --> 01:37:07.095
because that's, uh, that gets down to
your personal professional stuff and

01:37:07.128 --> 01:37:11.527
we don't deal with that the same way.

01:37:11.560 --> 01:37:17.156
Mm. Ok. Well, I think we've pretty
much covered it, let's see, have

01:37:17.189 --> 01:37:20.805
anything, any,

01:37:20.838 --> 01:37:27.027
what's hard to do is be fair to
everybody, I think.

01:37:27.060 --> 01:37:29.310
Yeah, I'm sure.