WEBVTT

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 This is Tuesday, July 30th 2002. And we are here at the A SU visitor

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Information center uh doing a his uh
interview for the Arizona State

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University Retirees Association uh
Living history video project. And I'd

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like to have you introduce yourself.
So we get your name pronounced

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correctly for posterity. OK. Nick
Salerno or formerly Nicholas Andrews

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Salerno.

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And what years were you at A SU I go
back to 1953

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because I was an undergrad student
here first. So I have a B A from

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Arizona State College, an ma from
Arizona State University

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and then started teaching in 1962

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and retired in 1991.

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So I had 33 years in all Don Dots and
I were classmates,

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we interviewed him.

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Then you go back even further. I'd
like to start at the very beginning and

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ask you when and where you were born?
OK. Chicago, Illinois, the son of

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Italian immigrants, I'm first
generation American grew up actually

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speaking Sicilian before I ever spoke
English. And my father with as

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little English as he knew, taught me
to read English from the newspapers.

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I tracked World War I I across the
headlines and that's how I learned to

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read English. Even before I got to
school. I thought that was remarkable

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for immigrant to be able to do that
for his Children were born 1936 June

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21st, the first day of summer, it was
Flag Day and it was Father's Day. It

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became a very memorable day
altogether.

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My father was so excited over having
his first son. He got sick. He had a

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nervous breakdown. I'm serious. He was
in bed two weeks longer than my

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mother,

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Italian fathers for you. So how many
Children were there in two? And I'm

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the only son, one sister. And we lived
in Chicago until 1948. Moved here

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for my father's health in those days.
If you had asthma, you came to

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Arizona because the air was still
clean. Um Did you hear stories about how

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your parents came to America? Oh,
sure. I know the whole thing. And I

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spend approximately four months a year
now in Italy and most of it in a

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little town called Prizzi, you may
remember a novel in a film called

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Prizzi's Honor. That's the town except
it's only a family name in the

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novel in the film. But I interviewed
Condon the author and I asked him how

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he had ever chosen that name. He said
he wanted to talk to somebody, he

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wanted to choose a name that nobody
had ever heard of. So I said, well, I

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got news for you. My parents were both
born there. He was dumbstruck. Just

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dumbstruck. Why did they come to
America? Uh, because it was the land of

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opportunity. Uh, for a while, I'm told
that my father kept putting money

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away to go back. He thought he would
make his fortune here and go back.

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And after I was born, he told my
mother that there was no point in going

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back that we could never accomplish as
much in Italy. The Children could

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never accomplish as much in Italy as
they could in the States. So that was

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the end of it. They never thought
about going back again. You're telling

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us about learning English um and
learning to read and talk a little bit

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more about growing up in, in Chicago
when you were young. Well, I was

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really uh we lived in a tenement. Uh
It's hard to believe, but the first

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live animal I saw was a rat in the
alley. It was that kind of an

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environment not us. My mother was so
meticulous. We had a grocery store,

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we lived in the back of the grocery
store, pot bellied stoves in two of

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the rooms to warm the place. I used to
actually check out customers when I

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was perhaps seven years old. My father
worked in a hat factory. My mother

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took care of the store. My mother got
two after she got uh Tuesday night

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and Sunday afternoon. Off and we went
to the movies and we saw double

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features and she learned English, she
learned English at the movies. I

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learned to think that what was on the
screen was real life. I was in for a

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surprise later on. But, but II, I tell
people I grew up in the dark when

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they ask me how I know what I know
about the movies. It's not like uh I

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mean, it's been my whole life.

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The earliest movies that first scene I
can remember is Lassie jumping out

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of a second story window and breaking
her leg on the way home to Roddy

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mcdowell and The Wizard of Oz. But The
Wizard of Oz you see came out in 39

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I couldn't remember it. So it must
have been a reissue later on. I

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remember seeing Snow White on its
initial release. No, again, that had to

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be re released because that was 37 Kit
Carson, South of Pango, Pango. You

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name it? I saw, it was remarkable to
live in Chicago. I think looking back

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now, I saw British films that great
expectations in the Red Shoes. A

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Russian film called The Long March
about Stalingrad and I mull it over.

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And what must my mother have made of
those films because she could barely

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read English. And these, you know, are
subtitled. But we saw four movies a

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week together.

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A unique childhood memory. I was
quite,

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I still have the dishes Tuesday night
was dish night at the movies and

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they gave you a dish. It's a set. It's
made by Lee Pottery. It's called

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Maroon Emperor's Gold and it has 24
karat gold on it. And I have most of

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the set.

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I'm not going to have 12 people over
to dinner any time soon. But I have

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this complete set of 12 of this rather
valuable collector's item. Now,

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Tuesday night was dish. So that's
probably why she arranged it that way.

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Well, that's probably why Tuesday and
we had vaudeville still. I mean,

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it's hard for me to believe. I
actually saw vaudeville. But yes. And then

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we go downtown and see the stage shows
that preceded the films and who

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would be on stage, Frank Sinatra or
Perry Como or Milton Burl. I mean,

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hard to believe it's a long time that
long ago. But it is.

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Um, are there any other childhood
stories you wanna share with us in, in

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Chicago? And then we'll bring you to
Arizona. How about school? Um, did

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you speak good English by the time you
started school? Yes, I did. Well,

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you're gonna edit this. Right. Uh,

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I don't want to sound like bragging is
my problem. I mean, I could tell

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you stories about school. I mean, I
skipped two grades.

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Ok. Ok. Well, um, let's go back to my
father who could barely read English

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, teaching me to read English before I
got to school. You would not think

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that that son of that father would end
up an English professor or do that

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well in school. But I skipped the
second grade and the fifth grade for

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that reason, I was basically a social
misfit all of my elementary school

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because I was always physically
further behind everybody else. I don't

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regret it a bit. I was told I was a
real troublemaker in school because I

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got bored so fast. There was one
teacher who was always pulling my hair,

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they could do those things then. And
it took uh finally the uh fourth

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grade teacher who caught on and she
set up a bookcase in the back of the

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room, put me in the last seat in the
first row and said, you just read all

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day. Don't pay any attention to what's
going on in class. And I just went

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on from there.

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I've been singularly blessed all the
way through. Even phd work. I had

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teachers who were interested in me
except for the one who pulled my hair.

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I had teachers who were interested in
me always. I don't know if I hope

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there's that kind of dedication still
today between teachers and students.

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But I don't know the public schools
anymore. Pretty much. You were in an

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Italian neighborhood. You went to the
public schools. I was first in an

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all Italian neighborhood. And then we
moved to the west side, we sold the

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grocery store and moved to the west
side and I was in an all Jewish

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neighborhood on a typical Jewish
holiday. There were quite literally seven

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kids in school, me and six girls. So
that, um, my ethnic tastes, if

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they're not Italian are generally
Jewish, I can tell you as much about

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Jewish food or as Italian food.
Although there were, it was a, a Syrian

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population too and, uh, eating grape
leaves at eight years old, stuffed

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grape leaves is probably unusual for a
non Middle Easterner, but I take

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Middle Eastern food for granted too.
Chicago was that kind. At least my

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part of Chicago was that kind of an
environment.

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I look back at it and seems kind of
glorious. But that's because I had

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such wonderful parents, I think
because I know that we didn't, we weren't

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poor for sure, but we didn't have
money either. I never sensed it. I never

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sensed it. Not for a second. What was
it you growing up during World war

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two? The younger years? Sure. Um, we
had a Victory Garden.

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I still have a ration book.

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There were certain products that were
rationed tires, anything made out of

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rubber, canned goods. Sugar

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can't remember what else right now.
But you had to have a ration book and

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each book had so many stamps of a
certain color blue was canned food. So

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if you didn't have a stamp left, you
couldn't get the product. Now we had

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a grocery store. So it didn't much
matter, but people would change stamps.

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There were families that didn't eat
canned fruit but they needed tires

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and they would find a family without a
car and exchange their, their books.

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We had paper drives, we would, uh, get
a baby buggy, borrow somebody's

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baby buggy and go door to door and
collect the newspapers for the drive.

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Uh, each house had a, uh, generally an
empty coffee can on the stove

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whenever you were done cooking
whatever you collected the grease and

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poured it into the coffee can when the
coffee can was full, you took it to

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the, the butcher and that went to
making, that was, you know, uh, like

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petroleum that went to making whatever
went to making rubber. For the most

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part, I was told, uh, I, I don't
remember

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sensing that there was a war on, uh,
until towards the end of it when I

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had, I asked one day why that house
had, uh, a little flag with a star in

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the window and was told that the son
had died. And then I remember looking

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around the neighborhood and there were
lots of families that had sons who

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had died and had the flags up. And
then they built a flagpole in the

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neighborhood and put them down at the
bottom. A, uh, a stone with the name

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of all the names of all the, the men
who had died in the war. I remember

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Roosevelt dying, but I was happy in a
way because school was dismissed. I

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had no real feeling for who Roosevelt
was but school was dismissed. So we

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had a holiday. Uh even somehow the
memories of World War Two turn into uh

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you know, pleasant trees in their own
way except for the flag in the

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window. I remember that very well. We
also put signs in the window for ice.

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There was a four sided sign had a
different number on each side. 1020 etc

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and you put it up. If you put up the
10, you wanted £10 of ice delivered.

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We didn't have a refrigerator. A few
people did. So you had ice boxes or

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as Italians called them boxes.

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Uh We had ice delivered. There were
those signs in the window. There were

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men who came,

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you could purchase just about
everything off of a cart on the street. The

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vegetable man came, the egg lady
delivered eggs to your house. There was

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the milkman milk in glass bottles
where the cream rose to the top.

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It was different. You said your, your
family had a grocery store. Did you

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help and work in the store too? I I
did check, check in or what do you

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call it now? Check out, I guess
cashier, right? What actually what I would

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do is because of my memory when you
went into a grocery store, it was all

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behind the counter. So you would ask,
I want this, I want this. It was all

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put down on the counter. Then I would
take the things and tell my mother

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17 cents and put it over here because
I knew the prices of everything on

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the shelves. To that extent, I did
work in the grocery store. Why did your

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family get rid of the grocery store?

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We didn't need it in a sense. They had
made enough money to buy two homes

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on west side, Chicago.

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And so we moved to the west side. My
father was still working. I mean, he

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worked, he was a cutter in a hat
factory. So he was still working. But my

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mother finally wasn't working. The
store was open from 7 to 11 in the days

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before we had stores called 7 to 11.
And, uh, we gave credit. I don't know

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if stores give credit anymore to
anybody. Uh, customers would run up a tab

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and at the end of the month, most of
them would pay it. Some of them

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wouldn't, but they didn't need the
stores anymore.

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So that must have changed your
lifestyle somewhat. In CRE we even got a

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refrigerator when we moved. Uh, it was
a big event when that refrigerator

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was a Westinghouse, came in the door,
kept the ice box in the basement

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still for overflow. My father made
wine. He had, I mean, a gigantic wine

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press with a thing like this at the
top and you poured all the grapes in

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and uh we had barrels of wine, which
strikes me as amusing because none of

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nobody in the family drank any wine. I
think it was just for company. Uh

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uh company drank it. Uh Sometimes it
all turned to vinegar and we'd have,

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everybody in the whole neighborhood
would have vinegar for three years

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after that. I remember that in the
basement there would be hanging salamis

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and cheeses and things of that sort. I
really did have a very

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stereotypical Italian upbringing
except that I loved going to school. I

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thought a lot about Martin Scorsese,
the movie director who has exactly

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the same kind of history that I do.
Sicilian American parents. Sicilian

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parents, first generation. He grew up
in New York and I grew up in Chicago

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with alley rats, but his view of the
world is so dark, whereas mine is

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still so bright. I wonder what made
the difference? I did meet him once,

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but it was in an interview situation.
So I didn't want to ask him that,

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but I've been very curious about what
turned him, what makes him see the

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world so darkly now, theoretically, I
look at the world as he does or he

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ought to look at it as I do. But we,
we live in, in opposite parts in two

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different ends of America as, as near
as I can tell. Maybe it was you

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coming to Arizona? Well, that I was 11
then. So, you know, I was formed

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already. Well, tell me what, what was
that like, what did you think at 11

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when your family said they were gonna
leave Chicago and come out into a,

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I think, uh, I, I don't remember too
much, actually. I don't remember

00:17:53.650 --> 00:17:59.535
feeling I should or shouldn't. But
when I got, when we got here, we lived

00:17:59.568 --> 00:18:03.656
in central Phoenix 14th Street in
Roosevelt.

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I remember walking. I, it sounds odd
but since I was, you know, 11 years

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old, but I would walk as much of the
day as I could, looking at the sky

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high. I could not believe that skies
were blue that there was sun, that

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there were actually oranges growing on
trees. Although most of the oranges

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then were those decorative sour
oranges. Uh I was in the days over

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the

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what we would now call the environment
and how clean the environment was.

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I didn't have the vocabulary to say
that, but I, I really literally would

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walk around like this, looking at the
sky and the trees and the sun. What

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time of the year did you come here?
March March of 1948 I went to Whittier

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school for three months and then
Edison opened. And so I got switched to

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Edison for one year and then to
Phoenix Union from there. Still, if you

00:19:17.170 --> 00:19:22.805
show me one of those sour oranges with
the funny skin, I'm 11 years old

00:19:22.838 --> 00:19:27.956
again and I can smell the air and see
the sun. What did you think when it

00:19:27.989 --> 00:19:34.906
got to be summer? I love the heat. I,
I think I must have loved it then.

00:19:34.939 --> 00:19:41.456
We only had swamp coolers. Uh We, my,
my parents bought four little frame

00:19:41.489 --> 00:19:44.916
houses on the corner of 14th Street in
Roosevelt. We rented three and

00:19:44.949 --> 00:19:51.085
lived in one. The total income was 100
and $80 a month. My father could no

00:19:51.118 --> 00:19:55.887
longer work. He was too ill from
asthma. So the houses were the, the

00:19:55.920 --> 00:20:01.986
income and uh we had two swamp
coolers, one that they each blew straight

00:20:02.019 --> 00:20:07.367
down one half of the house in the days
when you had to change the straw

00:20:07.400 --> 00:20:11.926
every year and wrap the straw in
cheese cloth. Now you buy that stuff

00:20:11.959 --> 00:20:15.967
already made or they don't even use
that anymore. I don't know. But then

00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:22.097
we'd have to change it. Um, I don't
remember feeling it was especially hot.

00:20:22.130 --> 00:20:29.335
I'm sure it was uh for heating. Even
in that house, we had a little floor

00:20:29.368 --> 00:20:36.996
gas heater, but I don't remember ever
being cold. I look back at childhood

00:20:37.029 --> 00:20:43.097
and it seems golden. And again, I have
to blame it so to speak on my

00:20:43.130 --> 00:20:47.516
mother and father because whatever
problems I now realize they had

00:20:47.549 --> 00:20:53.575
financially. I never sensed it. I was
somehow, never allowed to sense it.

00:20:53.608 --> 00:21:00.156
Did you ever work for, for money for a
short time in the summers? There

00:21:00.189 --> 00:21:02.426
was

00:21:02.459 --> 00:21:06.835
a furniture company or two or three
furniture companies owned by Alfonso

00:21:06.868 --> 00:21:11.597
Garcia, but the stores weren't called
Garcia as one was called. At least

00:21:11.630 --> 00:21:16.916
not at first made, man. You remember
quality furniture or Garcia's

00:21:16.949 --> 00:21:22.555
furniture. They lived right across the
street from us. Yes. Exactly.

00:21:22.588 --> 00:21:28.035
Exactly. I worked at quality
furniture. Sanding furniture wasn't very good

00:21:28.068 --> 00:21:31.347
at it. I mean, you give me a table
that started with a flat top and when I

00:21:31.380 --> 00:21:37.357
was done it looked like this. But
Mister Garcia didn't say too much about

00:21:37.390 --> 00:21:43.285
it and he paid me whatever it was. I
was paid that. I also worked at a

00:21:43.318 --> 00:21:51.318
credit bureau. Another neighbor across
street opened the first credit bill

00:21:51.459 --> 00:21:59.285
collector, bill collection agency in
Phoenix. And I was their errand boy.

00:21:59.318 --> 00:22:03.815
I remember that they would send me on
errands and I had a bicycle and this

00:22:03.848 --> 00:22:07.986
time I do remember a heat story in the
middle of the summer. The store was

00:22:08.019 --> 00:22:13.156
, the shop was right where Phoenix
Union was Taylor and Third Street or

00:22:13.189 --> 00:22:17.815
something like that. Told me to take
this delivery over to some place near

00:22:17.848 --> 00:22:20.436
the state fairgrounds

00:22:20.469 --> 00:22:26.656
in July or August. I got on the
bicycle and started this trek over there,

00:22:26.689 --> 00:22:32.387
but halfway over realized this was not
any fun, stopped and got a drink

00:22:32.420 --> 00:22:38.176
out of some hose from some house,
turned around, drove back, threw it on

00:22:38.209 --> 00:22:43.795
the desk and said I quit. Uh, so I, I
guess I do have a heat story to tell

00:22:43.828 --> 00:22:48.117
you. I do remember that. Uh, I never
worked anywhere else though, just at

00:22:48.150 --> 00:22:51.897
the furniture company and the credit
bureau. Interestingly enough. Now,

00:22:51.930 --> 00:22:55.916
the people who own that credit bureau.
Oh, I did babysit. I did a lot of

00:22:55.949 --> 00:23:00.647
babysitting. I babysit. I babysat the
two Children in that credit bureau.

00:23:00.680 --> 00:23:04.926
Now they went to Rome in the early
sixties they went to, but first they

00:23:04.959 --> 00:23:09.906
went to Israel, they lived in the
kibbutz but the Children didn't like it.

00:23:09.939 --> 00:23:14.367
So they went to Italy, they never came
back, they came back actually only

00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:19.006
to sell the house. And then they've
lived in Italy in Rome all that time

00:23:19.039 --> 00:23:23.877
when I go to Rome. Now I have the use
of the apartment. Any time the

00:23:23.910 --> 00:23:28.397
Children that I babysat are in their
sixties now,

00:23:28.430 --> 00:23:34.897
the long since dead and they have
owned all that time, an English language

00:23:34.930 --> 00:23:38.726
bookstore right in the center of Rome.
It was the only one when they

00:23:38.759 --> 00:23:44.196
opened that. Now, there's lots of
competition from international chains

00:23:44.229 --> 00:23:49.156
that specialize in English books. But
that friendship goes all the way

00:23:49.189 --> 00:23:55.496
back to 1948. Was that a lot different
when you came to move to Phoenix?

00:23:55.529 --> 00:23:58.347
You were used to growing up in Italian
neighborhoods and you said you

00:23:58.380 --> 00:24:01.575
moved to a Jewish neighborhood, but
Phoenix was a whole different kind of

00:24:01.608 --> 00:24:07.397
neighborhood, wasn't it? Yes, I had
never thought about that. Well, it, it

00:24:07.430 --> 00:24:11.795
wasn't an ethnic neighborhood of any
sort.

00:24:11.828 --> 00:24:16.075
I mean, I could tell you I can still
tell you who all the neighbors were

00:24:16.108 --> 00:24:21.766
and probably what nationalities they
represented. But it wasn't, it was an

00:24:21.799 --> 00:24:28.397
American neighborhood. It wasn't an
enclave in the middle of a larger city.

00:24:28.430 --> 00:24:34.446
I did know a few Italian kids, but I
knew as many Hispanics and Polish

00:24:34.479 --> 00:24:41.107
Children and Middle Eastern Children
as anything else. It was, it was

00:24:41.140 --> 00:24:47.686
definitely an integrated American
neighborhood. What about the theaters

00:24:47.719 --> 00:24:51.597
here? Did you, you said your mother
really loves going to the movies. Did

00:24:51.630 --> 00:24:55.357
you continue that when you move? Uh I,
I was too old to go to the movie

00:24:55.390 --> 00:24:59.377
with my mother. By that time, my
mother continued to go to the movies on

00:24:59.410 --> 00:25:04.906
Monday afternoons. She would cook, uh
she would make chicken soup and take

00:25:04.939 --> 00:25:10.065
off and go downtown and she, we didn't
have a checking account. So she

00:25:10.098 --> 00:25:14.967
would go to the one by one to the
utilities and pay the bills and then she

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:21.416
would go to the Woolworths at the
corner of Washington and

00:25:21.449 --> 00:25:28.397
Central 1st, 1st. Yes, first and have
a hot dog and then go to the movies

00:25:28.430 --> 00:25:33.117
. I went to the movies on Saturdays
when school was out and I would

00:25:33.150 --> 00:25:38.367
frequently see six features in a day.
I would just go from one theater to

00:25:38.400 --> 00:25:42.387
another. I could probably, I can still
tell you in which movie theater in

00:25:42.420 --> 00:25:49.416
Phoenix I saw which film our um first
film I saw in Arizona was, uh, you

00:25:49.449 --> 00:25:53.535
were meant for me with Janie Crane and
then it was High Wall with Robert

00:25:53.568 --> 00:25:56.976
Taylor and neither one of them
distinguished movies. But yes, I continued

00:25:57.009 --> 00:26:04.266
, I was already, without even knowing
that I was already stuck in the

00:26:04.299 --> 00:26:09.535
movie going or out. You know, a lot of
people that we've interviewed,

00:26:09.568 --> 00:26:13.926
talked about their memories of the
theaters in, in Phoenix, the movie

00:26:13.959 --> 00:26:17.575
theaters and movie theaters. How did,
what did you think of them as

00:26:17.608 --> 00:26:22.035
compared to where you were from in
Chicago? Well, only on rare occasions

00:26:22.068 --> 00:26:27.335
that I get to go to a big theater
downtown in Chicago. So uh they our

00:26:27.368 --> 00:26:32.285
local movie theaters were comfortable
up but nothing special. But the, the

00:26:32.318 --> 00:26:37.387
Orphe and the Fox here were
particularly impressive because they had

00:26:37.420 --> 00:26:43.065
incredibly, the orpheum still has the
original murals. But the Fox and the

00:26:43.098 --> 00:26:47.926
Orphans had skies that moved, there
were stars and clouds that were

00:26:47.959 --> 00:26:54.890
constantly circulating above you. I
mean, these were really movie palaces.

00:26:55.209 --> 00:26:57.209
Uh they were, they were, but there were dinky movie theaters too, like the

00:26:59.229 --> 00:27:04.406
Rialto and the Strand and the Ramona
and the Rex, there was another

00:27:04.439 --> 00:27:10.055
interesting theater on Central Avenue,
the vista, uh not terribly big but

00:27:10.088 --> 00:27:17.065
very nicely put together. Uh Once it
booked The Sound of Music, The Sound

00:27:17.098 --> 00:27:22.236
of Music ran three years in that
theater and it changed the whole makeup

00:27:22.269 --> 00:27:27.825
of movie theater business in Phoenix
because movie theaters until then

00:27:27.858 --> 00:27:33.295
changed their program three times a
week, there was a Sunday, Monday, a

00:27:33.328 --> 00:27:38.897
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then
a Friday, Saturday and two features.

00:27:38.930 --> 00:27:44.156
Once The Sound of Music did what it
did not only at the vista locally but

00:27:44.189 --> 00:27:49.406
nationally, the pattern for movie
exhibition changed all over the country.

00:27:49.439 --> 00:27:55.926
Sound of Music is single handedly
responsible for that. Or I could take

00:27:55.959 --> 00:28:01.325
if I wanted two buses transfer, there
were two bus lines, the metropolitan

00:28:01.358 --> 00:28:05.565
and the city and I could take the
metropolitan to one point and transfer

00:28:05.598 --> 00:28:10.026
to a city bus and go up north central
to the Palms Theater, which was the

00:28:10.059 --> 00:28:17.335
really elegant theater. And they
always showed MGM movies and I was in

00:28:17.368 --> 00:28:21.676
love with Elizabeth Taylor very early.
So I would have taken six or seven

00:28:21.709 --> 00:28:25.847
buses if I'd had to, to find an
Elizabeth Taylor movie. But fortunately

00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:33.880
only two were necessary and how far
you have to go well, uh to just short

00:28:34.219 --> 00:28:40.397
of Thomas, I guess it's, it was on
Virginia and you, isn't that south of

00:28:40.430 --> 00:28:46.756
Thomas, right? Uh Which today is not
north at all. No, not at all. I

00:28:46.789 --> 00:28:51.946
didn't have a bike. Uh when I got a
bike, then I just biked it. And then

00:28:51.979 --> 00:28:55.276
of course, I got into high school and
I felt I was too important to ride a

00:28:55.309 --> 00:29:00.357
bike. So then I would take the bus
everywhere. You know, kids get these

00:29:00.390 --> 00:29:05.926
even kids can get be snobbish and uh I
was too old. I would not go to the

00:29:05.959 --> 00:29:10.065
theater with my mother anymore and I
wouldn't ride the bike anymore. I

00:29:10.098 --> 00:29:16.236
would do something like bike, take the
bus. I also remember how important

00:29:16.269 --> 00:29:24.269
it was for me when, um, I was, um,
student correspondent to the Republic

00:29:24.969 --> 00:29:31.357
for the, uh, for Phoenix Union, I
remember we were paid five cents an inch

00:29:31.390 --> 00:29:39.390
for the stories. And I remember also
making up to $50 a month at times

00:29:40.209 --> 00:29:45.295
until the management got upset because
I was making so much money and

00:29:45.328 --> 00:29:49.535
Phoenix Union was getting all the
coverage in the paper that they limited

00:29:49.568 --> 00:29:54.656
me. But as soon as I had money like
that, I would, uh, instead of bringing

00:29:54.689 --> 00:30:00.226
my lunch to the ca to campus, I would
eat in the cafeteria and that was a

00:30:00.259 --> 00:30:06.055
big step up for an Italian kid. Uh, my
freshman year I wasn't doing that.

00:30:06.088 --> 00:30:11.545
And at Phoenix Union, two people would
share lobster lockers

00:30:11.578 --> 00:30:19.578
and there was this very nice but very
American boy who one day took my

00:30:20.439 --> 00:30:25.315
lunch by mistake and I ended up with
his, well, I didn't know when I

00:30:25.348 --> 00:30:29.617
opened and found I had a cheese
sandwich that was ok for me, but he opened

00:30:29.650 --> 00:30:34.075
his and found an eggplant sand,
eggplant Parmesan sandwich. He didn't

00:30:34.108 --> 00:30:38.127
quite know what to do what, he didn't
know what it was when we finally met

00:30:38.160 --> 00:30:44.565
again later in the day. Uh, he went
lunch less that day. Uh, but when I

00:30:44.598 --> 00:30:49.756
got to eat in the cafeteria I had made
it, this was American.

00:30:49.789 --> 00:30:53.835
Tell me about the schools when you
came here. What grade were you in?

00:30:53.868 --> 00:30:59.305
Seventh grade, seventh grade and the
eighth grade at Edison. And I can

00:30:59.338 --> 00:31:03.666
remember the, uh the moment in fact
that I became an English teacher. Our

00:31:03.699 --> 00:31:10.686
eighth grade teacher was a woman named
Lucille Tuy Touhy. She read us

00:31:10.719 --> 00:31:17.726
Lamb's tales from Shakespeare. She got
to the Winter's tale, which is not

00:31:17.759 --> 00:31:25.759
a good play at all. But it has the
husband has, has falsely, has assumed

00:31:26.338 --> 00:31:30.946
wrongly that his wife has been
cheating on him. So he decides to have her

00:31:30.979 --> 00:31:35.686
killed, but she doesn't get killed.
She is spirited off and hidden until

00:31:35.719 --> 00:31:40.236
he finally sees the light of day and
realize she's innocent, but it's too

00:31:40.269 --> 00:31:47.055
late. And then he's told that they
have uh created a statue

00:31:47.088 --> 00:31:51.315
so that he will always be able to see
his wife. And then when he goes to

00:31:51.348 --> 00:31:56.906
see the statue, it's actually his wife
and she starts moving and play has

00:31:56.939 --> 00:32:01.035
a happy ending. But when that statue
came to life, I became an English

00:32:01.068 --> 00:32:09.068
teacher. I was just so entranced with
this happy ending based on uh this

00:32:10.660 --> 00:32:15.006
trick of telling him he's going to see
a sculpture and then it ends up

00:32:15.039 --> 00:32:19.717
being his wife from then on, I was an
English teacher. It doesn't sound

00:32:19.750 --> 00:32:26.009
like the kind of thing we do. Well,
she read every single one of the plot.

00:32:26.338 --> 00:32:28.338
She was a remarkable teacher. So, is school a lot different from Chicago?

00:32:31.890 --> 00:32:37.357
Well, I don't know how to explain this
but it was a lot easier in Chicago

00:32:37.390 --> 00:32:45.390
. I knew that I could be the best but
I had to work at it. I got here and

00:32:46.189 --> 00:32:50.795
maybe it was because everybody else
was interested in the outdoors. I

00:32:50.828 --> 00:32:55.107
could, I could just coast through and
get A's without it. It was simple.

00:32:55.140 --> 00:33:00.035
It was almost simple minded. I don't
know, maybe it wasn't that maybe I

00:33:00.068 --> 00:33:06.196
had just learned better study skills.
I'm not sure when I went to high

00:33:06.229 --> 00:33:11.127
school, there were very few West High
opened when I was a freshman, there

00:33:11.160 --> 00:33:18.565
was a Phoenix Union and North High ST
Mary's Catholic School. Phoenix Tech

00:33:18.598 --> 00:33:24.035
for those who didn't feel they wanted
a liberal arts education. Phoenix

00:33:24.068 --> 00:33:28.266
was segregated, there was Carver High
School for the blacks. Carver did

00:33:28.299 --> 00:33:33.236
not close until 1953.

00:33:33.269 --> 00:33:41.269
The closing of that and the first
black white dance at a high school in

00:33:41.368 --> 00:33:47.147
Phoenix was so big an event that it
made Look Magazine. There was an

00:33:47.180 --> 00:33:53.186
article on it in Look Magazine because
Phoenix had finally seen the light

00:33:53.219 --> 00:33:59.137
and had been willing to take the risk
of putting white and black Children

00:33:59.170 --> 00:34:04.266
together at a high school dance and
nothing untoward had happened. Uh

00:34:04.299 --> 00:34:08.336
There were very few high schools,
others all came after that. Phoenix

00:34:08.369 --> 00:34:15.526
Union had uh 5000 students. It was one
of the top 10 in size in the

00:34:15.559 --> 00:34:22.175
country. We had a graduating class of
over 1000 in 1953.

00:34:22.208 --> 00:34:28.055
So, what year did you start? High
school? 49 the fall of 49 and finish in

00:34:28.088 --> 00:34:32.664
the spring of 53.

00:34:32.697 --> 00:34:37.385
I was in the mask too. I was in the
mask. Mask of the yellow moon was a,

00:34:37.418 --> 00:34:42.706
uh, an outdoor pageant about the
history of Arizona. Every year. A

00:34:42.739 --> 00:34:47.146
different part of the history of
Arizona was, was dramatized. Although

00:34:47.179 --> 00:34:51.827
that's a strange word to use because
it was scheduled in Montgomery

00:34:51.860 --> 00:34:57.595
stadium in the football stadium so
that everything was orchestrated so

00:34:57.628 --> 00:35:02.495
that it could make sense if you were,
you know, half a mile away from what

00:35:02.528 --> 00:35:08.217
was going on down there. The woman was
named Cordelia Perkins. She was the

00:35:08.250 --> 00:35:14.646
founder of the mask and it didn't much
survive her death. But I was a

00:35:14.679 --> 00:35:22.006
pilgrim one year. I was a cowboy
another year. Uh I was in a three years.

00:35:22.039 --> 00:35:26.506
I don't remember the third year. I did
a little bit of, of dramatics in

00:35:26.539 --> 00:35:32.195
high school. I did a little dramatics
in uh in, in elementary school. Now

00:35:32.228 --> 00:35:36.717
, don't laugh when I say this because
it always comes out wrong and it's

00:35:36.750 --> 00:35:40.695
not meant to be a dirty joke. But

00:35:40.728 --> 00:35:46.345
in elementary school we did Hansel and
Gretel, the Humperdink opera. Our

00:35:46.378 --> 00:35:53.646
room was assigned the trees in the
forest. So I became a pine tree. I held

00:35:53.679 --> 00:36:01.267
a pine tree. Now I was the only tree
that had a woodpecker on it. And now

00:36:01.300 --> 00:36:05.925
whenever I tell that story, people
always crack up, but I don't know how

00:36:05.958 --> 00:36:11.186
else to tell, tell the story. I was a
really special tree because I had

00:36:11.219 --> 00:36:17.155
this red bird pasted on me. I played
George Washington in elementary

00:36:17.188 --> 00:36:21.316
school. I only remember that one
recently but in high school I played

00:36:21.349 --> 00:36:26.905
pretty boy Floyd the Gangster. But
basically high school was journalism

00:36:26.938 --> 00:36:32.276
for me. I was editor of the yearbook
on the newspaper for many years. I

00:36:32.309 --> 00:36:37.606
ask you what your favorite subject
was? English. But I didn't have a non

00:36:37.639 --> 00:36:43.385
favorite subject. Oh, yes, I did.
Algebra. The teacher was wonderful, Mrs

00:36:43.418 --> 00:36:49.876
Brecker Baumer. And she worked as hard
as I did for me to get my a but

00:36:49.909 --> 00:36:54.796
algebra did not come easy for me.
Geometry was ok. That was more fun. But

00:36:54.829 --> 00:36:59.615
algebra, it's not that I didn't like
it. I just couldn't do it. I didn't

00:36:59.648 --> 00:37:03.776
really much care about the storekeeper
who had coffee at two different

00:37:03.809 --> 00:37:07.666
prices and was going to mix them up
and you had to figure out how much he

00:37:07.699 --> 00:37:11.986
should sell it for. I couldn't get
into that or two trains coming from

00:37:12.019 --> 00:37:18.827
different directions and how, when
would they meet? And you know, at 66

00:37:18.860 --> 00:37:22.945
now nobody's ever asked me about the
price of coffee. It's just never come

00:37:22.978 --> 00:37:28.936
up once grocery store that would have
been, but we never mixed coffee, our

00:37:28.969 --> 00:37:34.327
coffee was pure grade.

00:37:34.360 --> 00:37:40.236
You knew all the prices. Phoenix. If
it wasn't for that part of algebra,

00:37:40.269 --> 00:37:46.776
the word, the word problems, the word
problems. Right. I could figure them

00:37:46.809 --> 00:37:51.356
out but they were so dumb. I just
couldn't make any sense out of why we

00:37:51.389 --> 00:37:56.316
were doing. This. Phoenix Union was
very big though. And you could study

00:37:56.349 --> 00:38:00.296
anything you wanted. But I was in the
Mass June. Yes. Did you go to

00:38:00.329 --> 00:38:08.329
Phoenix Union? Well, they were in the
mask too. It was city wide.

00:38:09.199 --> 00:38:12.776
You mightn't have been in it but the
mask was city wide. Each school was

00:38:12.809 --> 00:38:17.206
assigned a certain, a certain part of
it. Well, Manny is too young, I

00:38:17.239 --> 00:38:22.175
think, I think by the time I got

00:38:22.208 --> 00:38:28.227
Manny is too young for it.

00:38:28.260 --> 00:38:33.327
I have very extensive scrapbooks for
all of my high school years. I have

00:38:33.360 --> 00:38:38.727
all the programs from the Mask and the
plays. Eventually I'll give them to

00:38:38.760 --> 00:38:45.256
this Phoenix Union Society. But since
they don't have, uh, a place for

00:38:45.289 --> 00:38:53.106
them, I'm holding on to them until I
hope they get some stability.

00:38:53.139 --> 00:38:57.526
That's a good idea. June. I hadn't
thought of that because I have all

00:38:57.559 --> 00:39:00.615
sorts of,

00:39:00.648 --> 00:39:05.986
but I do have to find a place for them
as U is taking all my scrapbooks

00:39:06.019 --> 00:39:10.856
from the ASU years. I'm annotating
them now because I've got so much of a

00:39:10.889 --> 00:39:17.666
U history in them. But the Phoenix
Union ones are older and the Phoenix

00:39:17.699 --> 00:39:24.497
History Museum might, well, be the
place for it

00:39:24.530 --> 00:39:28.037
to

00:39:28.070 --> 00:39:35.586
senior year, 1953 time to start
applying. It was never a possibility that

00:39:35.619 --> 00:39:39.566
I would go out of State. I don't think
I applied to go out of state. I

00:39:39.599 --> 00:39:42.885
mean, we just couldn't afford it. In
fact, I wouldn't be able to go to

00:39:42.918 --> 00:39:48.247
college. Probably if I hadn't had my
way paid through. I, uh, my father

00:39:48.280 --> 00:39:51.787
died, um,

00:39:51.820 --> 00:39:55.747
when I was a freshman in college. And
this is an example of what the

00:39:55.780 --> 00:40:00.467
mentality of the family was. Like. The
last person my father spoke to was

00:40:00.500 --> 00:40:06.577
my sister and he said, make sure Nicky
finishes college. Those were his

00:40:06.610 --> 00:40:12.836
last words. That was what the whole
family emphasis was on. So in high

00:40:12.869 --> 00:40:20.869
school, I applied for money to a SU
and one, what was then the most

00:40:22.260 --> 00:40:27.356
prestigious scholarship that a su had
the Phelps Dodge scholarship. So I

00:40:27.389 --> 00:40:31.807
was put through, I never paid, I never
paid a cent for any of my college

00:40:31.840 --> 00:40:39.840
education from B A right through
through phd. Uh, that was the only really

00:40:41.889 --> 00:40:46.267
that it's, it was the scholarship that
had the most money attached to it.

00:40:46.300 --> 00:40:53.327
It was, I think 1500 a year. And that
was a lot of money in 1953. And I

00:40:53.360 --> 00:41:00.046
went straight through on that. Uh, I,
I, my first trip to campus, I took a

00:41:00.079 --> 00:41:05.356
bus from Phoenix. It dropped me off on
Mill on Seventh Street. I walked

00:41:05.389 --> 00:41:11.727
down Seventh street towards college,
that street with all houses and I can

00:41:11.760 --> 00:41:17.767
still see it. I don't even have to
close my eyes to see it. Gigantic trees

00:41:17.800 --> 00:41:24.217
that nearly met. That seventh street
is pretty wide. But those trees came

00:41:24.250 --> 00:41:30.276
like this and shaded that whole
street. There's hardly any of it left now.

00:41:30.309 --> 00:41:35.977
Maybe that portion where tricks is
today. But that was a beautiful street.

00:41:36.010 --> 00:41:43.477
Uh We, uh and that was for the inter
interview interview part of the test.

00:41:43.510 --> 00:41:48.365
And I remember being interviewed by uh
Herbert Stony who was in biology,

00:41:48.398 --> 00:41:53.577
the, the professor who became
internationally famous for what was called

00:41:53.610 --> 00:41:59.936
the um ligature cryotherapy method of
curing of, of uh preventing people

00:41:59.969 --> 00:42:04.827
from dying from snake bites. It had to
do with cutting, not cutting, it

00:42:04.860 --> 00:42:09.506
had to do with freezing to keep the
poison from spreading. I was

00:42:09.539 --> 00:42:14.166
interviewed by Stankey Jo Grimes who
was the head of the College of

00:42:14.199 --> 00:42:20.925
Education, Dorothy Schilling, who was
in the English Department.

00:42:20.958 --> 00:42:26.456
HD Richardson who was vice president
then. And the fifth one, I can't ever

00:42:26.489 --> 00:42:31.526
remember somehow that one name escapes
me. May I tell you a Dorothy

00:42:31.559 --> 00:42:37.827
Schilling story or two Dorothy
Schilling was probably in all my education.

00:42:37.860 --> 00:42:42.606
 The best teacher I ever had uh

00:42:42.639 --> 00:42:49.206
an old maid. That's what we were, they
were called a incredibly, I had her

00:42:49.239 --> 00:42:54.956
for both undergraduate and graduate
work, incredibly

00:42:54.989 --> 00:43:01.727
probing in the sense that your exams
for her were not answers but

00:43:01.760 --> 00:43:06.816
questions now that you've studied, for
instance, all the poetry of John

00:43:06.849 --> 00:43:13.396
Dunn. If you were given the money to
do research on him, what problems

00:43:13.429 --> 00:43:19.456
would you attack? That was the kind of
question she had, she was funny,

00:43:19.489 --> 00:43:25.267
brilliant beyond belief. OK, English
building right now, the university

00:43:25.300 --> 00:43:33.300
club then had an outside stairway that
was attached on one of the

00:43:33.519 --> 00:43:41.126
departmental members and I won't
mention his name. He, he drank a lot. Um

00:43:41.159 --> 00:43:47.467
on and off campus, Schilling was very
formal. Miss Schilling was always

00:43:47.500 --> 00:43:51.356
Miss Schilling. Incidentally, you
wouldn't even when I became colleagues,

00:43:51.389 --> 00:43:54.626
I never would have called her Dorothy,
my God to call me Schilling,

00:43:54.659 --> 00:44:01.615
Dorothy. So Miss Schilling is making
her way down the outer stairway and

00:44:01.648 --> 00:44:06.146
the other professor is at the bottom,
we'll call him Mister Smith and the

00:44:06.179 --> 00:44:11.376
Goodyear blimp just happens to be at
that moment above the fountain. You

00:44:11.409 --> 00:44:18.365
know, they're in front of old man, et
cetera. So Mr Smith decides to tease

00:44:18.398 --> 00:44:26.398
Miss Schilling. She gets to the bottom
and he says, Miss Schilling there

00:44:27.699 --> 00:44:34.776
is a flying saucer above campus. She
says that's very interesting, Mister

00:44:34.809 --> 00:44:39.146
Smith and I was there. I mean, I saw
this on my own. Doesn't skip, doesn't

00:44:39.179 --> 00:44:43.977
step up. It keeps moving steadily.
Very interesting, Mister Smith. But

00:44:44.010 --> 00:44:50.066
Miss Schilling there may be some
little men in it.

00:44:50.099 --> 00:44:54.626
Pray do not let them land here, Mister
Smith. There are enough little men

00:44:54.659 --> 00:44:59.807
on this campus already.

00:44:59.840 --> 00:45:07.840
I think that's so classic.

00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:13.986
Remind the Churchill story. It's like
just pray. Do not let them hand here

00:45:14.019 --> 00:45:19.557
, Mr Smith. I went into her office
once when I was already teaching and uh

00:45:19.590 --> 00:45:23.517
she summoned me. You went to Miss
Chili when she summoned you. Even if you

00:45:23.550 --> 00:45:29.175
were faculty member, we were actually
close friends that I took that kind

00:45:29.208 --> 00:45:34.787
of a chair and I turned the back to
her and I straddled it and my pants

00:45:34.820 --> 00:45:38.276
split up the back.

00:45:38.309 --> 00:45:42.445
So I got up and I, she didn't know
what had happened. I got up but I said

00:45:42.478 --> 00:45:48.276
, I have to excuse myself. And here I
am backing towards the door and she

00:45:48.309 --> 00:45:52.925
says, whatever is the matter. And I
said my pants just split. She said,

00:45:52.958 --> 00:45:59.095
sit down, you'll be as safe here as
you will anywhere.

00:45:59.128 --> 00:46:04.467
That's what she was like.

00:46:04.500 --> 00:46:08.706
First time I saw her buying a loaf of
bread at a grocery store. I couldn't

00:46:08.739 --> 00:46:14.135
believe it. I didn't think that the
Gods bought stuff at the grocery store

00:46:14.168 --> 00:46:20.445
and she taught 17 th century British
poetry.

00:46:20.478 --> 00:46:27.436
How long she was here forever. She was
chair during World War. I, I most

00:46:27.469 --> 00:46:32.405
of the men were drafted or like I
think Mac Myers worked as a code breaker

00:46:32.438 --> 00:46:37.756
during World War Two and she was the
first I believe Dorothy Schilling was

00:46:37.789 --> 00:46:42.986
the first female head of any
department ever on campus. But that was only

00:46:43.019 --> 00:46:50.057
by default because of the, the
Warriors. So she was here somewhere you

00:46:50.090 --> 00:46:57.006
know, in the forties and retired
somewhere in the seventies. You did too.

00:46:57.039 --> 00:47:03.195
Yeah, she sounds like she was
legendary. She was, but there were, there

00:47:03.228 --> 00:47:07.666
were some, there were such great
teachers around here, John Ratliffe. J

00:47:07.699 --> 00:47:14.186
Montague Mac Myers, Louis Taylor and
Dave Conlin. So, when you came to a

00:47:14.219 --> 00:47:19.925
su what was your major at that time?
I, uh, journalism, I did a double

00:47:19.958 --> 00:47:25.376
major in journalism and history and,
um, journalism in English and a minor

00:47:25.409 --> 00:47:30.787
in history. I, I was enrolled in the
College of education. I got a B A in

00:47:30.820 --> 00:47:38.820
education and, uh, then an ma in
English later I, I, um, I got, I was ROTC

00:47:39.438 --> 00:47:47.135
, I got commissioned in ROTC, ROTC. I
mean, um, at that time there was no

00:47:47.168 --> 00:47:54.365
war. I got my B A in May. I went to
two summer sessions and got 12

00:47:54.398 --> 00:47:59.695
graduate credits. Went into the army
in August for six months of active

00:47:59.728 --> 00:48:06.646
duty as a second lieutenant. I was out
in February because my six months

00:48:06.679 --> 00:48:12.006
were up as a first lieutenant, came
back and enrolled in the second

00:48:12.039 --> 00:48:18.695
semester. And I had, and what I'm
getting at is I graduated one year with

00:48:18.728 --> 00:48:22.666
a B A and the next year with an ma and
spent six years in the six months

00:48:22.699 --> 00:48:29.747
in the army in between and then spent
12 years in the Reserves after that.

00:48:29.780 --> 00:48:37.416
But that was an ROTC commission in the
days when, again, when ROTC was

00:48:37.449 --> 00:48:43.666
not considered a bad word. And, uh,
what was required to begin with? The

00:48:43.699 --> 00:48:47.557
first two years were required of all
male students. But the second two

00:48:47.590 --> 00:48:52.787
years I did by choice and then the
reserve, it was by choice too, wasn't

00:48:52.820 --> 00:48:56.456
it? Or were you required to stay in?
Uh, I was required to stay in for

00:48:56.489 --> 00:49:00.506
another year and a half, but I stayed
in for close to 12 years after that

00:49:00.539 --> 00:49:05.646
. I ended up as a captain,

00:49:05.679 --> 00:49:09.956
actually ended up as a major. What
happens often is the army is in the

00:49:09.989 --> 00:49:12.936
army is when you resign,

00:49:12.969 --> 00:49:18.385
when they say goodbye, they give you
the next rank as a farewell gift

00:49:18.418 --> 00:49:23.606
since there's no salary attached to
it. So I actually was a captain but

00:49:23.639 --> 00:49:31.639
got de mobbed, you might say as a, as
a major about my freshman year, I, I

00:49:31.829 --> 00:49:35.896
haven't thought much actually what I
was going to talk to you about. But

00:49:35.929 --> 00:49:41.896
one thing I remember very, very, very
well, the building that is now, I

00:49:41.929 --> 00:49:48.077
think the archives is, is the
president's house, is the archive now, right

00:49:48.110 --> 00:49:56.110
? Ok. Ok. That was where the damages
lived and they held a reception for

00:49:59.469 --> 00:50:07.469
all freshmen students. Now contemplate
that today, the president trying to

00:50:07.840 --> 00:50:14.756
personally shake the hand of the
students and their parents actually. And

00:50:14.789 --> 00:50:19.756
that house has a big, then had a nice
big lawn and sheltered gardens and a

00:50:19.789 --> 00:50:26.017
wonderful series, a Night Blooming
series in front of it. Uh

00:50:26.050 --> 00:50:30.526
Well, again, I guess I, I had a kind
of privileged life. I started, you

00:50:30.559 --> 00:50:35.686
might say my freshman year in Gamma's
house and as a student, I was often

00:50:35.719 --> 00:50:40.336
at Gamma's house because they
entertained

00:50:40.369 --> 00:50:47.327
groups of students. I was state press
editor. So I was always a Trump,

00:50:47.360 --> 00:50:52.376
Katherine Gamma. Kay Gamma used to say
that when Grady would come home

00:50:52.409 --> 00:50:56.945
looking particularly peaked, she'd
just look at him and say, what did Nick

00:50:56.978 --> 00:51:02.467
write today? I had some editorial in
the paper. I think she just liked to

00:51:02.500 --> 00:51:07.615
tell the story that way. I don't think
it was true, but the relationship

00:51:07.648 --> 00:51:12.106
between faculty and students was
certainly very different. Then. It was in

00:51:12.139 --> 00:51:16.365
many ways more formal. You would never
think of calling a professor by his

00:51:16.398 --> 00:51:23.077
first name. And yet in many ways, much
more informal in that uh

00:51:23.110 --> 00:51:25.166
undergraduates

00:51:25.199 --> 00:51:29.736
would be invited to faculty homes,
president's homes, et cetera. Whereas

00:51:29.769 --> 00:51:33.655
today, I think it's mostly graduate
students who have that kind of a

00:51:33.688 --> 00:51:39.916
relationship with faculty members.

00:51:39.949 --> 00:51:44.706
You might be able to correct me on
this. But my, my memory is that there

00:51:44.739 --> 00:51:52.396
were 4000 students when I enrolled and
4000 freshmen. When I graduated,

00:51:52.429 --> 00:51:58.526
there's a lot of growth, a lot of
growth, a lot of growth.

00:51:58.559 --> 00:52:05.945
What year did you graduate? 57

00:52:05.978 --> 00:52:10.307
I graduated from Arizona State
College. The name change officially

00:52:10.340 --> 00:52:15.405
occurred while I was in the army when
I came back, it was Arizona State

00:52:15.438 --> 00:52:19.655
University. But I do remember Jim
Crean and the name change and the

00:52:19.688 --> 00:52:27.688
petitions when I was editor of the
State Press which was 5556 Don dot was

00:52:28.228 --> 00:52:30.856
editor of 5657.

00:52:30.889 --> 00:52:37.615
After me, he was my sports editor.
Actually, I had started using Arizona

00:52:37.648 --> 00:52:43.566
State University in the State Press as
the what I call the university,

00:52:43.599 --> 00:52:49.037
what I call this place, the U of a

00:52:49.070 --> 00:52:56.106
newspaper got wind of that and didn't
like it protested to the regions and

00:52:56.139 --> 00:53:02.885
I was officially ordered to cease and
desist using the word university for

00:53:02.918 --> 00:53:08.595
Arizona State. So from then on, I just
referred to it as Arizona, I was

00:53:08.628 --> 00:53:13.477
told not to say Arizona State
University. So from then on, I simply called

00:53:13.510 --> 00:53:19.566
it Arizona State. I did it my way
anyway, but the name change was

00:53:19.599 --> 00:53:24.155
traumatic for the U FA as you can.
Well imagine. And some others have

00:53:24.188 --> 00:53:27.767
probably talked to you about it. Have
they? I mean, it had to be done by,

00:53:27.800 --> 00:53:33.537
by uh a voter of the public because
just like today, the legislature

00:53:33.570 --> 00:53:37.666
couldn't, the legislature did nothing
then to either some things don't

00:53:37.699 --> 00:53:40.635
change, right?

00:53:40.668 --> 00:53:43.526
Uh What, what difference did it make
when you came back? And it was now a

00:53:43.559 --> 00:53:51.559
university? None at all. None at all.
Uh I wasn't tied into, I wasn't the

00:53:52.239 --> 00:53:58.227
prof yet. So I don't know if it made
any different in budget or not. I

00:53:58.260 --> 00:54:04.445
don't know, I never sensed that we
were we were suffering when we were as

00:54:04.478 --> 00:54:10.666
c but there certainly was a lot of
prestige connected to it. We did seem

00:54:10.699 --> 00:54:13.807
to have an awful lot of buildings. I
don't know if anybody has told you

00:54:13.840 --> 00:54:20.115
that the standing joke was that Grady
Gammon had an edifice complex

00:54:20.148 --> 00:54:24.037
because he always was another building
going up every time you turned

00:54:24.070 --> 00:54:31.675
around. Uh I, I don't know that we
suffered but we certainly did not have

00:54:31.708 --> 00:54:38.365
many partisans, many A S Arizona State
College, university partisans in

00:54:38.398 --> 00:54:45.227
the legislature. Uh, that was, uh, the
main thing that kept us back was

00:54:45.260 --> 00:54:49.807
that most of the legislature was pro U
of A, I mean, the people who went

00:54:49.840 --> 00:54:54.945
into the legislature were not
teachers. You see, and we were a teacher's

00:54:54.978 --> 00:55:02.978
college all that time. Uh We didn't
have the clout, our graduates weren't

00:55:03.139 --> 00:55:07.776
going out to do anything but teach in
the schools. It also explains, I

00:55:07.809 --> 00:55:12.345
think why the alumni association had
so much trouble raising money at

00:55:12.378 --> 00:55:17.316
first because they were raising money
from elementary and high school

00:55:17.349 --> 00:55:19.506
teachers.

00:55:19.539 --> 00:55:24.967
Part of what surely one of the
benefits of the university status and the

00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:29.816
various colleges, a law school of this
and that. But now at least we had

00:55:29.849 --> 00:55:35.916
an alumni with a monetary base that
they could draw from.

00:55:35.949 --> 00:55:41.175
Then. I don't know, I never was part
of the politics of it as an

00:55:41.208 --> 00:55:44.776
undergraduate. I was interested in all
the things undergrads were

00:55:44.809 --> 00:55:50.686
interested in the student government,
all that stuff. Um, and I, I made,

00:55:50.719 --> 00:55:56.456
uh, I got two B's in college, one from
Ann Pitman who is a good friend of

00:55:56.489 --> 00:56:03.456
mine in, what was it? School?
Community health and the other in an ROTC

00:56:03.489 --> 00:56:07.526
course in math. Reading where, where
if I, maybe if I know more algebra I

00:56:07.559 --> 00:56:12.537
could have gotten an a because it was
all, all mathematics.

00:56:12.570 --> 00:56:16.336
So, what were your goals as you were
going through college? You were

00:56:16.369 --> 00:56:21.296
writing for the State Press and I was
going to be a high school journalism

00:56:21.329 --> 00:56:27.916
teacher. I had no doubt, not at all. I
had no intentions of getting

00:56:27.949 --> 00:56:33.916
anything beyond a master's degree.

00:56:33.949 --> 00:56:38.787
Shakespeare teacher, John Ratliff, who
is still my closest friend when I

00:56:38.820 --> 00:56:43.115
was in the army wrote me a letter
about, I said, I'm looking forward to

00:56:43.148 --> 00:56:47.546
getting back and finishing the degree
and I knew that I could teach

00:56:47.579 --> 00:56:50.856
journalism at Phoenix Union High
School. I was going to go right back to

00:56:50.889 --> 00:56:55.456
where I started. He wrote me a letter
and he said, don't do it. He said

00:56:55.489 --> 00:57:01.747
high school teaching is not for you. I
remember very specifically. He said

00:57:01.780 --> 00:57:09.780
you will settle down into a life of
vague prudish disaffection.

00:57:09.809 --> 00:57:17.307
And he said you must apply to grad
school. So I applied to,

00:57:17.340 --> 00:57:22.767
I wasn't gonna fool around was I
applied to Harvard Yale, Berkeley, UCL A

00:57:22.800 --> 00:57:28.695
Pomona Graduate School, University of
Colorado and Stanford. And every

00:57:28.728 --> 00:57:33.526
single one of them offered me money
and I picked Stanford because it was

00:57:33.559 --> 00:57:37.695
Ratliff's school also because you
don't have to wear winter clothes. And

00:57:37.728 --> 00:57:43.186
so the money would go further. Uh, I,

00:57:43.219 --> 00:57:47.916
you know, you look back at things and
decisions you have made and you

00:57:47.949 --> 00:57:52.115
wonder how did you ever have the guts
to do that? You were, I guess you

00:57:52.148 --> 00:57:58.217
were just too young to know any
better. So I asked Harvard to pay for the

00:57:58.250 --> 00:58:03.057
education of a kid from Arizona State.
And they did, I mean, they would

00:58:03.090 --> 00:58:09.135
have, and curiously, when I got to
Stanford, which gave only two graduate

00:58:09.168 --> 00:58:14.376
fellowships in English, the other one
was from the University of Arizona.

00:58:14.409 --> 00:58:19.646
We had an Arizona State and the U of
A, we had both fellowships, Dennis

00:58:19.679 --> 00:58:25.787
Moran. He actually joined the faculty
here later on too. And so your

00:58:25.820 --> 00:58:31.477
bachelors was in journalism. Yes.
Journalism, English double major,

00:58:31.510 --> 00:58:39.510
history minor was in liberal arts,
English. And the phd was in 19 th

00:58:39.510 --> 00:58:46.586
century British Lit. And I took a
minor in Latin language and literature.

00:58:46.619 --> 00:58:50.916
I didn't, I was very snobbish about
American Lit. I wasn't going to study

00:58:50.949 --> 00:58:56.876
American Lit. So I chose Latin Lit
instead. And what did you plan to do

00:58:56.909 --> 00:59:01.236
with that DD? Oh, I knew exactly what
I was gonna do with it. I was gonna

00:59:01.269 --> 00:59:06.756
come back here and teach that it, uh
the either the stupidity or the

00:59:06.789 --> 00:59:11.896
innocence. I'm not sure which word
you'd want to apply to it. Uh I, I was

00:59:11.929 --> 00:59:18.916
at Stanford two years. I did the
degree in two years. I taught as well as

00:59:18.949 --> 00:59:25.017
wrote my dissertation. The second year
they offered me a tenure position

00:59:25.050 --> 00:59:31.106
at Stanford and II, I think I really
said you must be kidding. I'm going

00:59:31.139 --> 00:59:33.646
back to TP.

00:59:33.679 --> 00:59:37.807
Uh, I'm, I, I, I'm almost positive
those were my words to the chair of the

00:59:37.840 --> 00:59:44.615
department. I don't regret it at all.
But I do wonder what route my career

00:59:44.648 --> 00:59:48.756
would have taken if I'd stayed at
Stanford. I know for sure. I never would

00:59:48.789 --> 00:59:52.477
have taught film history

00:59:52.510 --> 00:59:58.405
that it was hard enough getting film
courses added at Arizona State.

00:59:58.438 --> 01:00:03.336
Stanford. Much more traditional would
have taken another 10 years. I just

01:00:03.369 --> 01:00:06.247
don't know what direction

01:00:06.280 --> 01:00:11.057
career would have taken, but I knew I
was coming back here. There wasn't

01:00:11.090 --> 01:00:14.896
the slightest doubt in my life and you
never considered like a career in

01:00:14.929 --> 01:00:20.807
journalism or always teach. Why do you
think that is that you always

01:00:20.840 --> 01:00:26.026
wanted to teach rather than to? Well,
I don't think it was in a sense it

01:00:26.059 --> 01:00:30.385
was an either or because for a while,
as I said, I wanted to teach high

01:00:30.418 --> 01:00:32.936
school journalism,

01:00:32.969 --> 01:00:37.807
but I'm, I'm not exaggerating when I,
I say it was that heist that eighth

01:00:37.840 --> 01:00:44.497
grade homeroom teacher who read his
lamb's tales from Shakespeare. I felt

01:00:44.530 --> 01:00:47.477
so exhilarated

01:00:47.510 --> 01:00:50.327
by this strange

01:00:50.360 --> 01:00:56.776
world of, of the English language that
she opened up that I, I wanted to

01:00:56.809 --> 01:00:59.675
do the same thing.

01:00:59.708 --> 01:01:04.905
And then I always had great teachers
and I realized that, you know, good

01:01:04.938 --> 01:01:12.405
students get paid more attention to
them so that

01:01:12.438 --> 01:01:16.206
I'm not sure that other people around
me would say they had great teachers

01:01:16.239 --> 01:01:20.905
all the way through. But mine seems to
be my teachers from elementary

01:01:20.938 --> 01:01:26.467
school through phd. I was their life.
That's the way I looked at it

01:01:26.500 --> 01:01:30.546
because they were, they would do
anything that anything I wanted, they

01:01:30.579 --> 01:01:37.276
would do. Uh the money kept coming
through. I always, I wanted to teach, I

01:01:37.309 --> 01:01:44.155
wanted to give Shakespeare to other
people.

01:01:44.188 --> 01:01:49.577
I still, I mean, for all the time I've
spent teaching film. It, it annoys

01:01:49.610 --> 01:01:56.477
me when people in public even now.
Remember me only from cinema classics

01:01:56.510 --> 01:02:01.936
and don't have any. I don't seem to
have any idea that I ever taught

01:02:01.969 --> 01:02:08.256
literature. II, I love film. I think
The Godfather is every bit as great a

01:02:08.289 --> 01:02:14.376
work of art as Van Gogh's Starry Night
or Beethoven's fifth Symphony or

01:02:14.409 --> 01:02:20.586
anything of that sort. But given my
druthers, there's nothing as great as

01:02:20.619 --> 01:02:28.619
a printed page with English used the
way it was meant to be used. First

01:02:29.110 --> 01:02:35.146
teaching job here. I taught four
classes of freshman English for $4000.

01:02:35.179 --> 01:02:40.497
Took me a number of years before
Calise Portnoff allowed me to teach a

01:02:40.530 --> 01:02:44.695
literature course. She gave me, Calise
Portnoff was the chair of the

01:02:44.728 --> 01:02:50.166
department. Good friend of mine. And
then one semester I had a literature

01:02:50.199 --> 01:02:53.606
course and the schedule came out, I
didn't have a literature course. So

01:02:53.639 --> 01:02:57.986
one of my few sleepless nights I spent
the whole night preparing my speech

01:02:58.019 --> 01:03:04.066
for her. Either you give me this
course back or I'm quitting. And I had

01:03:04.099 --> 01:03:10.307
all my arguments laid out and I go
into her office the next day and I said

01:03:10.340 --> 01:03:18.186
, Calise, you must give me back my
English literature C she said fine.

01:03:18.219 --> 01:03:26.219
That was the end of that. She, she
didn't even know that I was upset.

01:03:29.438 --> 01:03:34.626
What year did you come back? 6161

01:03:34.659 --> 01:03:40.666
I was hired by Grady Gamage. But by
the time I came back, Gamage had died.

01:03:40.699 --> 01:03:47.006
And so HD Richardson was the first
vice president that I worked for was

01:03:47.039 --> 01:03:51.135
the first president I worked for. But
Richardson had interviewed me when I

01:03:51.168 --> 01:03:55.885
had come up for a Phelps Dodge
scholarship. And because of the State Press

01:03:55.918 --> 01:03:59.445
, I knew all of the administration

01:03:59.478 --> 01:04:03.945
that was working for a close friend in
a sense. But after the State Press

01:04:03.978 --> 01:04:07.606
, they weren't like, oh, no, he's back
again. I, I think Kay just like to

01:04:07.639 --> 01:04:13.816
tell the story. So what was it like
here in the sixties?

01:04:13.849 --> 01:04:21.267
Because of time, I want to jump
straight to the campus unrest. I think

01:04:21.300 --> 01:04:25.967
there are some things I know about it
because I was so close to John Ryan

01:04:26.000 --> 01:04:31.956
who was academic vice president and
George Ham who was dean of students.

01:04:31.989 --> 01:04:36.986
I'm sure you've already had been told
stories about campus unrest. And do

01:04:37.019 --> 01:04:41.945
you know about the petunias and the
flagpole?

01:04:41.978 --> 01:04:48.586
They were actually petunias. But you
know that story? Ok. Ok. Have you

01:04:48.619 --> 01:04:54.037
been told about the takeover of the
ROTC building?

01:04:54.070 --> 01:05:02.070
Ok. A handful of students no more than
10 taking over the RTC building is

01:05:03.179 --> 01:05:06.956
the wrong way to describe it, but
that's how it was described. They just

01:05:06.989 --> 01:05:12.945
sat in, they just decided to sit there
and they would not move. We're not

01:05:12.978 --> 01:05:19.767
this. Well, I don't know how I can get
to the date early in the late

01:05:19.800 --> 01:05:22.997
sixties

01:05:23.030 --> 01:05:30.405
protesting ROTC. They wanted ROTC off
campus. It was pre Kent State, but

01:05:30.438 --> 01:05:36.706
it was an anti ROTC demonstration and
it was the old main then was the

01:05:36.739 --> 01:05:43.885
home for ROTC. So that's where they
had settled in. Now, this is the kind

01:05:43.918 --> 01:05:50.486
of thing that wasn't public. There had
been campus unrest on and off

01:05:50.519 --> 01:05:55.646
because it was all over the country.
And one of the methods that the

01:05:55.679 --> 01:06:01.365
administration used to keep it calm
was they irrigate it every weekend. So

01:06:01.398 --> 01:06:07.577
that all the lawns were that deep in
water and you couldn't have

01:06:07.610 --> 01:06:11.977
demonstrations on the lawns. I mean,
there, it wouldn't be possible is

01:06:12.010 --> 01:06:18.905
what I'm saying. Uh John Duffy was
head of campus police uh before gay

01:06:18.938 --> 01:06:24.807
Schumann took over George Hamm by uh
Dean, Dean of Men and John Ryan,

01:06:24.840 --> 01:06:31.586
academic, vice president. And these
kids are sitting in the ROTC building

01:06:31.619 --> 01:06:38.095
I didn't know any of them but I had
good rapport with students and

01:06:38.128 --> 01:06:45.396
students knew that what nobody, except
a very small handful of people knew

01:06:45.429 --> 01:06:50.037
was that the campus was surrounded by
National Guard. The government had,

01:06:50.070 --> 01:06:54.396
the governor had called in the guard.
The guard was armed and they were

01:06:54.429 --> 01:07:00.195
prepared to shoot if necessary. Uh,
they were gonna get those kids out of

01:07:00.228 --> 01:07:08.186
that building that day or else, uh,
that's what I wanted to tell you. I

01:07:08.219 --> 01:07:12.385
don't think has ever been made public
before.

01:07:12.418 --> 01:07:16.747
The rest of it is kind of irrelevant
in a sense. I went in there. I sat, I

01:07:16.780 --> 01:07:20.695
remember sitting on the floor with the
students. I don't remember what I

01:07:20.728 --> 01:07:27.247
told them except that I promised them
that there would be no repercussions

01:07:27.280 --> 01:07:31.717
afterwards if they just got out that
they wouldn't be. I had no right to

01:07:31.750 --> 01:07:38.436
say that because nobody gave me
permission to say it. I just felt so I was

01:07:38.469 --> 01:07:44.077
really nervous about the guns.

01:07:44.110 --> 01:07:48.546
How many students were there? About
10?

01:07:48.579 --> 01:07:56.579
Ok. Anyway, I talked him out of the
building and I think it's so ironic

01:07:57.099 --> 01:08:00.905
that have only made the front page of
the Republic once and that was in

01:08:00.938 --> 01:08:06.227
because of a student demonstration,
but it was dangerous. It was dangerous.

01:08:06.260 --> 01:08:11.945
We had the whole campus surrounded by
armed National Guard, never hit the

01:08:11.978 --> 01:08:19.476
papers. I never heard that. Who was
the Governor Williams? I think

01:08:19.509 --> 01:08:23.916
the incident is clear, but I'm sorry
that I should have looked up the date

01:08:23.949 --> 01:08:28.076
because I did want to tell this story
about the National Guard is the only

01:08:28.109 --> 01:08:36.109
thing I pre planned. Uh, it was a
scary, scary incident. There's another

01:08:38.047 --> 01:08:43.245
thing connected with the 60 si wanted
to bring up again. Something that it

01:08:43.278 --> 01:08:48.066
doesn't much matter. Now. You've
probably been told about Morris Starsky

01:08:48.099 --> 01:08:51.554
and the Starsky case.

01:08:51.587 --> 01:08:57.865
Well, Starsky was one of the most
obnoxious men I've ever known in my life.

01:08:57.898 --> 01:09:03.566
 He was a loud vulgar crude.

01:09:03.599 --> 01:09:09.515
He was a vulgarian, but he was a
scapegoat.

01:09:09.548 --> 01:09:14.796
Faculty members, miss classes all the
time. Sometimes for good reasons and

01:09:14.829 --> 01:09:22.656
sometimes for not Mari happened to be,
uh, a communist

01:09:22.689 --> 01:09:28.496
and the university used the excuse
that he had dismissed classes to go

01:09:28.529 --> 01:09:36.529
down to the U of A, to give a, uh, a
revolutionary talk. I was told very

01:09:37.198 --> 01:09:42.026
recently by another member of his
department that he had had permission to

01:09:42.059 --> 01:09:50.059
give that talk. I don't know that. But
when the university fired Starsky,

01:09:50.378 --> 01:09:55.946
the, uh, I, it, it wasn't, I want, I'm
gonna use the word trial but you

01:09:55.979 --> 01:10:01.536
have to understand that it's a
university procedure, not a courtroom trial.

01:10:01.569 --> 01:10:03.946
 The university's

01:10:03.979 --> 01:10:11.979
prosecutor was Richard Landini, very,
very close friend of mine. Now,

01:10:12.060 --> 01:10:19.036
Starsky and I had tangled in a number
of ways. We just didn't have the

01:10:19.069 --> 01:10:24.696
same kind of personality. We were
friends strangely, but we would give one

01:10:24.729 --> 01:10:30.256
another hell regularly. I wrote him a
letter, a personal letter about his

01:10:30.289 --> 01:10:35.876
behavior at a faculty meeting in which
had totally disrupted the whole

01:10:35.909 --> 01:10:42.796
proceedings with the four letter words
which then were not common.

01:10:42.829 --> 01:10:49.506
So he wrote back a letter in which she
said I could go to hell using much

01:10:49.539 --> 01:10:55.527
stronger words than that. And he was
going to do everything he could to

01:10:55.560 --> 01:11:01.217
bring down the university
administration as far as he was concerned, the

01:11:01.250 --> 01:11:05.967
federal government too, by any means
possible.

01:11:06.000 --> 01:11:12.336
And I showed that letter to Landini
and Dick wanted to use that letter in

01:11:12.369 --> 01:11:18.336
the hearings to demonstrate that Mori
was indeed a communist and that we

01:11:18.369 --> 01:11:24.357
had good grounds for dismissing him.

01:11:24.390 --> 01:11:30.296
I said, you can't have the letter. I
said when he asked for it later, I

01:11:30.329 --> 01:11:35.036
said you can't have it. It's a
personal letter

01:11:35.069 --> 01:11:40.076
even beyond that. I don't like the
whole, I just don't think Starsky

01:11:40.109 --> 01:11:45.586
should be fired for speaking his mind.
Much to my amazement. Dick

01:11:45.619 --> 01:11:50.906
respected my wishes. He knew the
letter existed. He was the official

01:11:50.939 --> 01:11:57.756
prosecutor. We were close personal
friends, probably if he had pushed it,

01:11:57.789 --> 01:12:01.946
I might have given it to him, but he
didn't push it. He respected my

01:12:01.979 --> 01:12:06.567
wishes. I gave the letter to the
university archives. It's still there

01:12:06.600 --> 01:12:11.476
somewhere. I gave them two or three
letters of the sort that are still

01:12:11.509 --> 01:12:19.509
sealed. Starsky is dead now. So it
doesn't much matter. Uh But though Mari

01:12:20.449 --> 01:12:22.737
was

01:12:22.770 --> 01:12:28.446
as, as, as much of a Vulgarian as
Maury was all Maury's crime was, was

01:12:28.479 --> 01:12:34.576
speaking his mind. And one assumed
that on a university campus, if nowhere

01:12:34.609 --> 01:12:39.187
else in the world, one should be
allowed to speak one's mind. There was no

01:12:39.220 --> 01:12:44.027
, it was totally unjustified.

01:12:44.060 --> 01:12:49.095
It was an emotional time, wasn't it
during the sixties? Well, uh I another

01:12:49.128 --> 01:12:53.046
story mentioning Landini, have you
talked about Litchfield College with

01:12:53.079 --> 01:13:00.156
anybody? Ok. G Homer Durham as
president

01:13:00.189 --> 01:13:07.586
and Richard Dick Landini is his
assistant, the hatch a scheme, so to speak

01:13:07.619 --> 01:13:15.175
to form a branch of as in the East
Valley. The legislature of course is

01:13:15.208 --> 01:13:21.796
very pro U of a not pro as this was
going to be however, something

01:13:21.829 --> 01:13:26.866
different, this was going to be a
liberal arts college. No major, he

01:13:26.899 --> 01:13:34.376
majored in liberal arts period. Uh and
it was called Litchfield College.

01:13:34.409 --> 01:13:38.897
OK. Dick was appointed the president
of it. He was going to be the

01:13:38.930 --> 01:13:43.885
president of it when it opened. Of
course, we have a Su East and I don't

01:13:43.918 --> 01:13:48.425
mean east, I mean West. It was going
to be a U where a U West is now, we

01:13:48.458 --> 01:13:52.437
have them because the legislature is
on our side for the most part. Anyway

01:13:52.470 --> 01:13:59.817
, it's the Vietnam war.

01:13:59.850 --> 01:14:03.586
We're having a silent vigil in front
of the language and literature

01:14:03.619 --> 01:14:08.586
building there. The long line of fact
students now, you understand in a

01:14:08.619 --> 01:14:12.406
silent vigil, you're supposed to be
silent.

01:14:12.439 --> 01:14:16.576
Well, Dick Landini is one of the most
colorful characters. I've ever known

01:14:16.609 --> 01:14:23.206
in my life. State press editor, state
press reporter came by and wanted to

01:14:23.239 --> 01:14:30.217
interview people. You're supposed to
shut up in a silent vigil. Landini

01:14:30.250 --> 01:14:34.326
decides to talk to this reporter.

01:14:34.359 --> 01:14:39.345
So the reporter ends up with a story
that makes the Republic about this

01:14:39.378 --> 01:14:45.746
college Landini who's supposed to be
going out to head litchfield college

01:14:45.779 --> 01:14:50.656
standing in an anti Vietnam war vigil
in front of the language and

01:14:50.689 --> 01:14:54.326
literature building. The next week,
Landini was summoned to the

01:14:54.359 --> 01:14:59.116
legislature and in the legislature was
someone who may or may not be alive

01:14:59.149 --> 01:15:04.595
now. But John Conlin, a senator whose
name will probably forever go down

01:15:04.628 --> 01:15:10.777
in Arizona State history as John
Bircher of the most conservative kind.

01:15:10.810 --> 01:15:14.866
Well, he started in on Landini and by
the time he was done, Litchfield

01:15:14.899 --> 01:15:22.217
College was abolished, it was just as
simple as that

01:15:22.250 --> 01:15:28.937
the Vietnam war protest were you
involved in? I was involved in the, in

01:15:28.970 --> 01:15:35.467
the confusing ways that most of us
were. Uh I started out pro and I

01:15:35.500 --> 01:15:42.845
started out in favor of the war and
with a number of other professors

01:15:42.878 --> 01:15:48.826
circulated a letter which we intended
to have published in the newspapers

01:15:48.859 --> 01:15:55.116
supporting the war. And it wasn't
really in the matter of supporting our

01:15:55.149 --> 01:15:59.946
forces the way we talk about things
today, we were actually supporting the

01:15:59.979 --> 01:16:03.906
war. The letter did get published,

01:16:03.939 --> 01:16:09.876
the more the war went on, the more I
realized, uh it couldn't, it

01:16:09.909 --> 01:16:15.277
shouldn't go on I was wrong. And so I
end up in silent vigils and in

01:16:15.310 --> 01:16:23.310
various protests, I was not involved
in any of the

01:16:23.390 --> 01:16:31.390
clashes between on campus. Uh But I, I
did a total about face before the

01:16:31.779 --> 01:16:36.496
war was over. The letters I know got
printed in the papers. I'm sure

01:16:36.529 --> 01:16:41.265
they're still there signed by hundreds
of faculty members. I, I would bet

01:16:41.298 --> 01:16:47.586
that 90% of them eventually did the
about face. What made you change your

01:16:47.619 --> 01:16:53.437
mind? I didn't even know enough about
the war when I hate to admit it, but

01:16:53.470 --> 01:16:59.116
it was total ignorance and what was
going on there that made me be pro war

01:16:59.149 --> 01:17:07.149
to begin with. Uh as it went on, you
could see that if, if the simplest

01:17:08.009 --> 01:17:12.996
way to answer, that would be to say we
couldn't win. But the better way to

01:17:13.029 --> 01:17:18.496
answer is what really were we there
for? What were we trying to accomplish

01:17:18.529 --> 01:17:22.515
and the tremendous drain

01:17:22.548 --> 01:17:29.987
of uh of American kids being killed
there in many ways. It was, uh you

01:17:30.020 --> 01:17:35.286
might say a war fought by American
blacks, so many American blacks being

01:17:35.319 --> 01:17:40.166
killed in that war. The longer, I
mean, day by day, the more I learned

01:17:40.199 --> 01:17:46.527
about it, the more impossible that war
uh that, that war should continue.

01:17:46.560 --> 01:17:52.845
It just shouldn't continue. Uh I think
I'm a good example of the confusion

01:17:52.878 --> 01:17:56.656
that that war caused in the country.

01:17:56.689 --> 01:18:02.956
Did that have any impact on your
career at a su No, no, not at all. No.

01:18:02.989 --> 01:18:10.989
Except for, uh, uh, poor Murray. I
don't think anybody's, uh, of vowing

01:18:13.310 --> 01:18:20.616
that they were pro or con, that war
was ever, uh, ever affected them. I

01:18:20.649 --> 01:18:28.649
was involved in, um, I, I was, you
know, I was such a, uh, you know, kind

01:18:29.109 --> 01:18:35.956
of a Dudley do right in some ways and
in other ways, uh, more student

01:18:35.989 --> 01:18:41.885
oriented by far than, than faculty
oriented. So, like, when sds was

01:18:41.918 --> 01:18:47.635
sitting in and blocking buildings, I
was always continuing like that ROTC

01:18:47.668 --> 01:18:53.277
thing, I was always the one that had
to uh get them out of there. I was

01:18:53.310 --> 01:19:00.317
constantly bailing SPS students out of
jail. Uh They had done something

01:19:00.350 --> 01:19:05.015
like block a doorway or something of
that sort. None of them ever skipped

01:19:05.048 --> 01:19:11.616
town. So I never ended up losing my
bail money. But, uh

01:19:11.649 --> 01:19:15.576
you know, I come to think of it. I
never talked about any of that before

01:19:15.609 --> 01:19:18.166
either.

01:19:18.199 --> 01:19:24.345
They were, they were parlous times
because the students

01:19:24.378 --> 01:19:28.786
have the right ideas and the wrong
methods.

01:19:28.819 --> 01:19:34.765
They really, many of them seem to
think especially in sds that violence

01:19:34.798 --> 01:19:37.706
could solve the problem

01:19:37.739 --> 01:19:42.976
or, or would get them their way and,
and it, and it wouldn't,

01:19:43.009 --> 01:19:47.397
but they were, they were perilous
times.

01:19:47.430 --> 01:19:53.916
I can envision so clearly that that
part of the campus around the fountain

01:19:53.949 --> 01:20:00.726
where Old Maine is what yet still
called Old Maine and the University Club

01:20:00.759 --> 01:20:08.706
are and thousands of demonstrators
shouting and screaming in there. And

01:20:08.739 --> 01:20:13.857
the students on the upper stairways at
the English building, other than

01:20:13.890 --> 01:20:20.437
our OTC building, actually, uh they're
not gonna get out of the building,

01:20:20.470 --> 01:20:25.446
you know, a more cheerful thing here
where the English building currently

01:20:25.479 --> 01:20:32.036
stands now was the other original
building in the quad. There was the, the

01:20:32.069 --> 01:20:36.296
science and administration building
became the English building, became

01:20:36.329 --> 01:20:41.885
the university club. The college of
Education became all main While going

01:20:41.918 --> 01:20:46.067
around one more building was the
auditorium.

01:20:46.100 --> 01:20:51.246
Same kind of red brick construction
with a balcony which collapsed at one

01:20:51.279 --> 01:20:55.777
point in a performance. Fortunately,
it was a performance. Nobody wanted

01:20:55.810 --> 01:21:02.317
to see. So nobody was hurt. I was
editor of the State Press and they were

01:21:02.350 --> 01:21:07.437
going to tear down the auditorium,
they tore down the auditorium filled in

01:21:07.470 --> 01:21:11.515
the foundation. The foundation of the
original building is still there

01:21:11.548 --> 01:21:16.277
with the language and lit on top of
it. But I saw one of these big trucks

01:21:16.310 --> 01:21:19.555
, you know,

01:21:19.588 --> 01:21:26.506
gigantic truck come and it was chained
to the wall. And the idea was that

01:21:26.539 --> 01:21:33.317
the truck was to pull the wall down.
Well, the truck strained and strained

01:21:33.350 --> 01:21:39.357
and strained and then went like this.
It just, you know, it was flat and

01:21:39.390 --> 01:21:45.175
it just the truck folded in half. And
the building, the wall stood

01:21:45.208 --> 01:21:51.175
straight now being an English major. I
saw great metaphorical significance

01:21:51.208 --> 01:21:57.817
in this, that the, the the auditorium
where all the arts were performed

01:21:57.850 --> 01:22:02.456
would stand no matter what and it had
survived the attack of the

01:22:02.489 --> 01:22:07.967
mechanical age. So I got the news, I
was editor. Of course, I got the

01:22:08.000 --> 01:22:13.515
photographer. We got pictures that all
exists somewhere. But it, it is,

01:22:13.548 --> 01:22:19.095
it's funny. Now I really saw it in
metaphorical terms. The mechanical age

01:22:19.128 --> 01:22:22.937
had come right up, head to head with
the arts and the arts had won this

01:22:22.970 --> 01:22:25.656
battle.

01:22:25.689 --> 01:22:30.777
They apparently did eventually, they
got it down, right. They got a bigger

01:22:30.810 --> 01:22:34.555
truck in is what they got it on a
lighter note since we're running out of

01:22:34.588 --> 01:22:37.286
time. Why don't we talk a little bit
about the thing that you say that

01:22:37.319 --> 01:22:43.055
you're best known for? Oh, television.

01:22:43.088 --> 01:22:48.515
Ok. You, you've talked to Bob Ellis, I
think already probably,

01:22:48.548 --> 01:22:54.286
uh, he was the general manager, but
the guy who ran the station was Joe

01:22:54.319 --> 01:23:01.496
Zesbaugh. They, they bought for airing
a package of Ingmar Bergman film.

01:23:01.529 --> 01:23:06.726
Well, actually what they did was call
me because people knew that I was

01:23:06.759 --> 01:23:12.166
this film nut and said they had been
offered a package of Bergman films.

01:23:12.199 --> 01:23:17.376
Should they buy it? Would anyone watch
it? And I said, well, isn't that

01:23:17.409 --> 01:23:23.116
your job to put things on that, uh,
that you would not be able to find? So

01:23:23.149 --> 01:23:27.286
they bought the Bergman films and
aired them. Then they were offered a

01:23:27.319 --> 01:23:33.536
package of 20th century Fox films and
remembering the Bergman thing

01:23:33.569 --> 01:23:41.569
Zesbaugh called me and asked me if I
might want to introduce these films.

01:23:41.609 --> 01:23:49.609
And so the show started very quietly
with just local shows of uh not

01:23:50.418 --> 01:23:56.647
terribly good films. Actually, first
film we showed was young Mr Pitt.

01:23:56.680 --> 01:24:02.237
But for whatever reason, the show
caught on, there were a couple of times

01:24:02.270 --> 01:24:07.616
in its history, for instance, when it
had the highest uh Nielsen or

01:24:07.649 --> 01:24:13.696
Arbitron ratings, whatever they are in
the market, which is phenomenal for

01:24:13.729 --> 01:24:18.746
a public television station. One was
for the Marco

01:24:18.779 --> 01:24:23.147
and the other was for the Blue Lagoon,
the original Blue Lagoon with Gene

01:24:23.180 --> 01:24:29.756
Simmons. The show just somehow built
in popularity part of it. I'm sure

01:24:29.789 --> 01:24:33.607
had to do with

01:24:33.640 --> 01:24:36.406
the interviews.

01:24:36.439 --> 01:24:40.857
I interviewed, for instance, Raul
Castro, who was the governor and now he

01:24:40.890 --> 01:24:47.696
had never done a television interview
on campus before and I was showing

01:24:47.729 --> 01:24:53.196
uh Juarez the Bette Davis Paul Muni
film. And I thought it would be

01:24:53.229 --> 01:25:01.229
interesting to have the governor
comment on another, uh Mexican leader. I

01:25:01.899 --> 01:25:07.345
had to get permission in order to
invite the governor to the campus to do

01:25:07.378 --> 01:25:11.626
this interview. Well, it wasn't, you
might say the most exciting of

01:25:11.659 --> 01:25:18.126
interviews, but uh it was the governor
after all. And then we started

01:25:18.159 --> 01:25:24.305
adding interviews and I got connected
up with the press, the local pr

01:25:24.338 --> 01:25:30.286
agencies so that when names came into
town,

01:25:30.319 --> 01:25:34.987
they would want to appear on the show
because the ratings were high enough.

01:25:35.020 --> 01:25:39.027
And then pretty soon I was being
invited to press junkets all over the

01:25:39.060 --> 01:25:44.206
country one time, I also took a camera
crew over to, over to L A and

01:25:44.239 --> 01:25:50.256
interviewed couple of dozen people. I
mean, brand names in a very short,

01:25:50.289 --> 01:25:58.156
uh, two week period. Jack Lennon, for
instance, um,

01:25:58.189 --> 01:26:02.746
either they came to me like bow
bridges and Sally Fields or I went to them

01:26:02.779 --> 01:26:08.406
, uh, in New York. I would do, uh,
Dustin Hoffman and James Mason and

01:26:08.439 --> 01:26:13.857
Terry Garr for, for Tootsie. Uh, The
interviews I think were part of the

01:26:13.890 --> 01:26:19.866
reason why the show got so popular. It
got so popular that the station

01:26:19.899 --> 01:26:25.196
decided to try to syndicate it. So for
three years, it went into national

01:26:25.229 --> 01:26:31.175
syndication on PBS with a series of
Goldwyn films. It was then called that

01:26:31.208 --> 01:26:35.595
three year Period was called Cinema
Classics, The Golden Touch, The

01:26:35.628 --> 01:26:41.467
Goldwyn Touch. So that instead of
being on just twice a week, Saturday at

01:26:41.500 --> 01:26:47.156
10 Sunday at one right here on channel
eight. Now we had the Goldman Touch

01:26:47.189 --> 01:26:53.487
series in addition to that. So it was
on four times a week. Uh People

01:26:53.520 --> 01:26:57.397
still are telling me they used to go
to bed with me, meaning that they

01:26:57.430 --> 01:27:01.885
would watch this show on Saturday
night because it was always Saturday at

01:27:01.918 --> 01:27:07.506
10 Sunday at one. So we had three
years of national syndication and the

01:27:07.539 --> 01:27:13.015
way it worked was if the film uh were
91 minutes long, I had to fill to

01:27:13.048 --> 01:27:20.296
the next half hour. So I had 29
minutes if the film were 100 and 19

01:27:20.329 --> 01:27:26.675
minutes, I had one minute the film. So
I was basically filler but the

01:27:26.708 --> 01:27:32.336
interviews attracted the films, of
course, got to be wonderful. I got to

01:27:32.369 --> 01:27:37.987
pick them. We paid good money for
them. No commercials,

01:27:38.020 --> 01:27:41.156
good prints. I would send the prints,
but I would preview them. If I

01:27:41.189 --> 01:27:45.756
didn't like the print, I would send
them back. So we did offer something

01:27:45.789 --> 01:27:50.305
that wasn't available anywhere else on
local TV. And this was in pre cable

01:27:50.338 --> 01:27:55.616
days. The interview certainly helped.
But the fact that we could do Zorro

01:27:55.649 --> 01:28:01.666
in a pristine black and white print
without a commercial interruption, uh

01:28:01.699 --> 01:28:08.796
I certainly had a lot to do with it.
And what were the years that, that 70

01:28:08.829 --> 01:28:16.237
to 8210 year? I've always had this
funny thing about doing something for

01:28:16.270 --> 01:28:22.166
10 years and then quitting it. I do
kind of switch my life around every 10

01:28:22.199 --> 01:28:28.277
years. And when I started, I said if
it will last 10 years, I'll do it.

01:28:28.310 --> 01:28:35.635
Now, when I went off air, I went off
air in a kind of scandal. The

01:28:35.668 --> 01:28:43.015
Republic entertainment editor uh,
wrote an article saying that I was about

01:28:43.048 --> 01:28:46.906
to be fired, which was interesting
because I wasn't paid to begin with.

01:28:46.939 --> 01:28:50.416
This was volunteered work

01:28:50.449 --> 01:28:55.616
and because my 10 years were up and I
had already given notice that I was

01:28:55.649 --> 01:29:01.866
quitting and then I did go off the air
the way the press looked at it is

01:29:01.899 --> 01:29:07.467
Bud Wilkinson was responsible for this
whole thing. So, unfortunately, I

01:29:07.500 --> 01:29:15.500
didn't go out in as calm an atmosphere
as I would have wanted to. Although

01:29:16.039 --> 01:29:21.786
I was, they did the cover story on
the, uh, the parade magazine that, that

01:29:21.819 --> 01:29:25.175
weekend with, with the show.

01:29:25.208 --> 01:29:32.296
It, it, it took over my life, but
there is not a day goes by yet that

01:29:32.329 --> 01:29:36.976
somebody doesn't bring it up and I'm
not complaining. I think my answer is

01:29:37.009 --> 01:29:43.156
standard now. Thank you for
remembering. And I do mean that it's more than

01:29:43.189 --> 01:29:46.586
20 years after all. I mean, you've got
to have been pretty young to

01:29:46.619 --> 01:29:52.726
remember that show at this point. Uh
But uh it, it took over my life. It

01:29:52.759 --> 01:29:58.635
gave me uh for better or worse, an
identity not connected, whatever to, to

01:29:58.668 --> 01:30:03.305
the English department. I loved every
minute of it. It's not, there are

01:30:03.338 --> 01:30:10.296
not many English professors that get
to interviewed Dustin Hoffman or uh

01:30:10.329 --> 01:30:14.196
interview Gene Simmons. I had this
crush on Gene Simmons. And in the

01:30:14.229 --> 01:30:19.595
middle of the interview, she put her
knee, her hand on my knee because she

01:30:19.628 --> 01:30:24.786
could see I was nervous and she put
her hand on my knee and I went like my

01:30:24.819 --> 01:30:30.107
body levitated and that's all you
could see on camera was my body going up

01:30:30.140 --> 01:30:34.717
like this. It made an interesting life
for an English professor. How much

01:30:34.750 --> 01:30:39.696
time do we have left?

01:30:39.729 --> 01:30:45.911
We need, we need college bowl. I
didn't talk about just about. Was it

01:30:45.944 --> 01:30:53.101
Betty Davis at G that there was some?
Oh Yeah. And you got up to ask a

01:30:53.134 --> 01:30:57.312
question, she opened it to the
audience and you got up to ask a question

01:30:57.345 --> 01:31:02.961
and I remember that the audience, the
audience all cheered when I asked

01:31:02.994 --> 01:31:09.256
this question and she says, who are
you?

01:31:09.289 --> 01:31:13.635
And she said, I told her my name, she
said, I want to see you in my

01:31:13.668 --> 01:31:20.095
dressing room after the show. So I
went back to otherwise I wouldn't have

01:31:20.128 --> 01:31:24.265
met Betty Davis. That's true. June.
Right. I, I find it interesting. You

01:31:24.298 --> 01:31:27.876
mentioned that you were a volunteer
that whole time. I'm sure people must

01:31:27.909 --> 01:31:33.192
have thought that you were a highly
paid. Exactly. I got paid for the n

01:31:33.225 --> 01:31:38.821
the three years on national, I got
paid 5000 for the three years, 5000

01:31:38.854 --> 01:31:44.550
each year, no, 5000 for the three
years. But the other, the rest of it was

01:31:44.583 --> 01:31:49.631
, I, to me it was volunteer work. It
was, it was PBS. And so you did it. I

01:31:49.664 --> 01:31:54.817
had fun. Of course. And you didn't get
the bug that you wanted to continue

01:31:54.850 --> 01:32:00.836
on. No, I really didn't. In fact, this
is the first time I've allowed

01:32:00.869 --> 01:32:08.305
myself to be filmed in about 10 years.
Uh, I loved being recognized in

01:32:08.338 --> 01:32:12.187
public and I probably would have been
terribly depressed if I hadn't been

01:32:12.220 --> 01:32:18.647
, but I couldn't go out. It wasn't
like I could throw on a pair of Levi's

01:32:18.680 --> 01:32:25.076
and go out looking any old way. I had
a public, they were gonna recognize

01:32:25.109 --> 01:32:29.305
me. I had to do, I had to live up to
this. I couldn't eat a meal in a

01:32:29.338 --> 01:32:35.576
restaurant if you can. I, I thought
about, I was a very big fish in a very

01:32:35.609 --> 01:32:43.609
small pond, but I can understand why
Redford and Streisand would rather

01:32:45.529 --> 01:32:51.067
not deal with the public because what
I had on a very small and never

01:32:51.100 --> 01:32:58.406
unpleasant, never unpleasant basis,
they must go through hell dealing with

01:32:58.439 --> 01:33:02.866
the public. So, are we going to feel
sorry for Robert Redford? I don't

01:33:02.899 --> 01:33:09.015
think so. I mean, but still it, uh,
you say people recognized you from,

01:33:09.048 --> 01:33:16.277
sign off, uh, for a while it's,
sometimes it's ok, sometimes it's not ok.

01:33:16.310 --> 01:33:23.086
Do we have time for the bow? I had, I
had two of the, well, I know we have

01:33:23.119 --> 01:33:27.616
to have everything out of here for 330
meeting if you can hold off those

01:33:27.649 --> 01:33:34.385
people. Right at 330. Well, let, let,
let, let it go. It's, it's, uh, it

01:33:34.418 --> 01:33:38.656
was only a one year in a su history.
So, doesn't it, can you tell it

01:33:38.689 --> 01:33:45.397
quickly? Sure. College Bowl, is it
still going? College Bowl was a

01:33:45.430 --> 01:33:53.430
nationally syndicated show in which
each week two colleges or universities

01:33:53.539 --> 01:33:59.265
competed. It's like jeopardy except
they were four and four from two

01:33:59.298 --> 01:34:07.298
schools and we were invited to be on
it with Ernie Parker. Who was a great

01:34:07.779 --> 01:34:13.015
friend of mine and a great, great man,
a man who had literally run across

01:34:13.048 --> 01:34:19.805
Europe escaping the Nazis and ended up
at Arizona State as a poultry

01:34:19.838 --> 01:34:26.147
professor. Anyway, we coached the
college bowl team. We picked them, we

01:34:26.180 --> 01:34:31.786
ended up with our four team members
and five alternates. We tried out

01:34:31.819 --> 01:34:35.305
various contests, they always beat the
faculty members, they beat the

01:34:35.338 --> 01:34:42.126
rotary club, etc. We went on national
TV. The night opened, I missed, I

01:34:42.159 --> 01:34:47.656
had tickets at gamma since the day it
opened the same seats. I missed the

01:34:47.689 --> 01:34:51.746
opening performance of the
Philadelphia Symphony because that was the

01:34:51.779 --> 01:34:58.476
first college bowl show. We actually
went to five weeks. We lost the last

01:34:58.509 --> 01:35:06.509
game on a quirk. And the question was
uh a Greek

01:35:08.199 --> 01:35:15.296
uh form of architecture and a book of
the Bible are. And at that 0.1 of my

01:35:15.329 --> 01:35:21.406
team members pressed the button and
said, Corinthians

01:35:21.439 --> 01:35:26.675
and Bob Earl looked over at the judges

01:35:26.708 --> 01:35:31.147
and he said, I'm sorry, that's not the
correct answer. Let me finish the

01:35:31.180 --> 01:35:36.595
question. A book of the Bible and a
form of Greek architecture were named

01:35:36.628 --> 01:35:40.737
after a Greek, what is the name of the
city? And the correct answer was

01:35:40.770 --> 01:35:47.467
Corinth. And so we lost that
championship game by the five points. The

01:35:47.500 --> 01:35:52.305
poor boy who did that did nothing
wrong, nothing that he wasn't trained to

01:35:52.338 --> 01:35:57.567
do, but he never required, he never
recovered from it. The kids were so

01:35:57.600 --> 01:36:05.600
attractive and so brilliant and so
unexpected in the sense that here these

01:36:06.168 --> 01:36:11.515
kids are from this cow college in the
west, come to New York and knock off

01:36:11.548 --> 01:36:16.226
these teams. One after another, they
made all the New York newspapers.

01:36:16.259 --> 01:36:21.857
There were feature stories on them in
all the New York newspapers

01:36:21.890 --> 01:36:27.147
somewhere. I don't know where, but
there is in the archive. The, you also

01:36:27.180 --> 01:36:32.555
got to put on t on before the show. Uh
a three minute film showing the

01:36:32.588 --> 01:36:37.467
college. Now that film is somewhere in
the archives,

01:36:37.500 --> 01:36:41.317
there's a lot of memorabilia that I
have still from college ball that I'm

01:36:41.350 --> 01:36:46.487
going to turn over to special
collection. 1964

01:36:46.520 --> 01:36:54.345
1964. That should be mentioned. It was
a big step in Arizona State's

01:36:54.378 --> 01:37:01.527
recognition, primarily outside of
state, but also waking the valley up to

01:37:01.560 --> 01:37:06.576
the possibility that we really could
produce some extraordinary students

01:37:06.609 --> 01:37:14.609
here. I was told the year after that
the,

01:37:14.750 --> 01:37:19.336
the request for admission, the
application forms for admission almost

01:37:19.369 --> 01:37:24.385
tripled from out of state because of
that.

01:37:24.418 --> 01:37:28.595
Right. I don't know if we accepted
them, but they applied anyway. Well, I

01:37:28.628 --> 01:37:32.756
think we need to do another hour
sometime.

01:37:32.789 --> 01:37:36.560
I'm sorry. That's ok.