Today is Monday May the 3rd 2010. I'm Linda Vanscoy. I'm a retired
employee from Central Administration and I'm also chair of the video
history project. The uh technical support staff we have today with us are
John mcintosh, running the camera and Dave shots, our director and we're
conducting an interview as part of the Arizona State University Retirees
Association video History project. So, Guido, why don't you start by
introducing yourself, state, your name and the positions you held at a su
and the positions you uh my name is
Wweigent
and uh I was Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
It is. Yeah.
And to begin with, um why don't we give our viewers a view of your past?
And can you tell us where you were born and raised? I was born in
Australia
in 1920 man. Mother moved to Vienna. So I was raised in schools in Vienna
, Austria, Hitler marched into Austria
and I will never, I can never forget that because that's sort of I saw him
and German troops marching in, he took over all the functions and, and I
quote, escaped your mother had a coffee shop in Bulgaria. Bulgaria. That's
right. My mother had moved to Sofia Bulgaria as the owner of a half a
coffee house. I remember it was near the, near the railroad station so far
and I was, I was going to live in Bulgaria with her
and she was, she was expelled from Bulgaria. And my father got me his of
the United States. About what year was that? Do you remember? 1938?
What about your education after that University of Chicago and got all
three degrees there.
You were at Rutgers before coming to a SU I. So when you came to a SU that
was in 1976
and you were hired on as dean of the College of, was it Liberal Arts,
liberal Arts at that time? I believe the academic vice President at that
time was Carl Danen Feld. So he must have been the person who was
ultimately responsible for hiring and bringing.
And then um during your, your career, I think you served also under two
other provosts or academic vice presidents. Um Paige Mulholland and uh
Jack Kinzinger
as the daughter of a professor. How about telling us about your earliest
memories of life where you live? My first year was at Rutgers College and
then I transferred to be at A U and
I learned I met a lot of the football players because they were all living
in the same dorm. So I became an athletic tutor and it was about that time
that my dad was cracking down on the athletic department because the
athletic department used to be in the Liberal Arts college. And so he was
cracking down on them for academics. And here I was being paid by the
athletic department to be a tutor. And, um, and I went to study halls and
, um, so they moved the athletic department out from the Liberal arts
college. At least that's my memory. I don't know if it's accurate or not,
but she never told me that. Well, yeah, you knew that you tried, you tried
to crack down on him. I was not treated as the dean's daughter by
professors though. They had a tendency to be harder on me than because
they didn't want to show favoritism. And my dad, by the way, his first
year lived in Manzanita Hall. I don't know if you knew that. Oh, no, I
forgot about that. So he knew so many girls and all when I, when I arrived
on campus and people started to know who I was, girls would come up to me.
Your dad is so cute. You know,
I was in the army and, uh, became,
and Asians in Europe for CIA. Well, first it was called Os S the Office of
Strategic Services.
We, we did uh secret activities
but vs in basic training, uh colonel, it was a challenge to Andrew if I
had have me transfer to Os S which was a new organization.
And so I was, as far as I remember I was in the initial team.
But, uh, and it was fascinating.
I enjoyed every bit of it. They sent me wherever they needed me. That was
behind the German lines problem is that
no one knew who it was. You mapped out battle sites you'd photographed
where they should land and those kinds of your knowledge of his os Well,
his, his experience, first of all, when he, when he says he escaped from
Austria, it was a rather, um, it was a, it was a lot more interesting than
came out. But he, um, um, first Hitler, the, the soldiers all marched into
the classrooms and he was in gymnasium, which is kind of like a high
school. And, um, and they dismissed the class and the professor, the
teacher was a, was a Jewish man and there were a number of Jews in the
class and when, when, uh, they all disappeared two weeks later or three
weeks later, when classes resumed, the teacher was gone. And, uh, you know
, and some dad always felt badly because he had been mischievous and, you
know, he'd been dropping sodium in the ink wells and causing poofs of
smoke. And so he had this guilt feeling that he had not been kind to this
man. And now he was gone. And so anyway, then my, my dad went down to
Bulgaria, Sophia when my mother had this coffee shop and he had been told
by his father who had left the family and married somebody back in the
United States and was living in Chicago and basically had abandoned the
family. But he had told my dad that he needed to get out of the United
States. I mean, get out of Europe because it was not looking good. And he
was going to be drafted into Hitler's army and which indeed, as soon as
Hitler invaded Austria, that's where he was supposed to go into Hitler's
army. And so dad tried to go, went to the American consulate and spoke to
a man by the name of cannons, cannon. And um, do you remember that? And,
and asked him to? Yeah, but he first said, no, I can't give it to you
unless you get a visa from an exit visa from, from uh from Austria. And he
, so dad then had to go back to the Austrian, I guess consulate. I'm not
sure where it was that she went. And, um, and the young Austrian who was
stamping visas looked at him and said, where do you want to go? And he
said, well, dad couldn't say he wanted to go to the United States because
he wouldn't let him. So he said, well, I want to go to Italy, I wanna go
to Czechoslovakia and he started rattling off all these European countries
that were controlled by Hitler. And so the, he said, the young Austrian
just looked at and looked at him right in the eyes and then said, ah,
that's too much work. And he stamped him with a world visa. And so he
doesn't know if, if this young man was knowing what he wanted to do or, um
, or just lazy. But, um, that's not too complicated.
And so then that, yeah, I shouldn't say that
that they were lazy. Yeah. Well, so then dad took that back to cannons,
cannon and cannons, cannon. Then said, well, you know, I can't let you out
and, and you said, but you promised. And so then he gave him an exit visa.
So um he then needed money and he went to this coffee shop in Sophia and
there was a Jewish man who was a customer and he was a big fat man and he
, he heard my dad that he needed money and he pulled out a wallet, a big
wad of money and he peeled off $10 and he gave it to my dad and that was
what he used to pay his expenses to get back to the United States. And
then he, when he got back to Chicago and entered the University of Chicago
, his father was remarried to a Jewish woman actually. And um she uh he
asked if he could have some money to send back to this man. And she said,
no, you have to earn it. So he worked in a, as a bus boy and, and he would
make $1 a week or something and tips, tips. And so he had to, she took all
of it, but a small amount. And so he had to save this money over the, over
the months and months. And finally he had enough to send back to this man.
Do you have any advice you would give to young people about choosing
universities or about their careers? Do your work? Do your work?
One of the pieces of advice that dad gave me that, I think that he should
have, you know, repeated just now. But he said major in what you love,
don't try to major in something to make money, but major in something that
you, you are passionate about.