My name is Barry R Brons. R is for Richard. Uh, I worked at Arizon State
University for 38 years. Uh, I started as an accountant in the
controller's office, uh, worked up to assistant to the vice president,
then, uh, assistant vice president for, uh, business affairs at the West
Campus. Uh, subsequently became vice provost for business and finance and
also vice provost for planning and budget at the West Campus. And uh which
I was there for for most of my career and then came back to MP as
assistant vice president for business and finance uh west in downtown
campus. The West Campus where it is now started with just 300 acres of
dirt. And so we were going to dedicate. The corner where the flagpole,
well not the word flagpole, but we're going to dedicate the coroner as
sort of the dedication of the campus before they started preparing the
site. We set up tents in the quarter and we obviously must have had some
kind of advertising going because we were serving food and people knew
this. Well, all the dignitaries by the time they got there, uh, there was
no food left because all these RVs had pulled in and the retired people
were having lunch and, uh, we, we ran out of food. I think it was hot that
day. It was, I mean it was around this time actually it's probably it was
like February 26, 1986, so. Uh, it was hot for, for February and it was
miserable, but, but again that came up. But anyway, I, I digress. Uh,
these are the kind of, these are the kind of things you, you remember
forever when we first moved into Montebello, uh. It was in August and
around October we were getting ready to turn on the heating because what
you had were were individual classrooms from the old classic grade school
it was a great school. uh, you had two classrooms in each building but
they found out there was no heat. The gas lines had rotted. So, uh, we, we
had, I called my good friend George Morrell who was director of purchasing
and a legend in his own right on this campus. And George, we got to do
this right now and so they got all the waivers and everything and we had
somebody out there working but there was no heat and it was starting to
get cool, uh, so we had to rent. I don't know if you ever watched the old
time football games, they had these big torpedo heaters sitting on the
sideline. Uh, so we rented a couple of those and went around and stuck
them in each classroom just before classes started to sort of take the
shell out then hope the body heat would take care of the rest well. We
were very small then, so I was moving the heaters around and uh got one a
little too close to a plastic chair. And we found out the fire alarms
worked, so, uh, but other than that it was uh it was uh it functional and
we did finally get the heat on, but those are the kinds of things you just
don't get to experience very often in this day and age.
My name is Richard Peck. I came here as provost in 1988. Accidentally
became interim president when Russ Nelson retired almost immediately after
I arrived, and, um, I spent 9 months in that job and during that time was
nominated for a presidency elsewhere, so I left here to go to the
University of New Mexico, where I retired after another 10 years. I had
two very good years here and I enjoyed the experience a lot. I learned a
good bit. I learned a lot from Russ even in that short time that we were
together. I have one example, one of the departments was unhappy with the
treatment they perceived to be receiving from the dean. I thought the Dean
was right. Um, I thought the department was, uh, being unreasonable, and I
didn't know what to do about it, and Russ said, what you do about it is
meet with everybody in the department, talk with them, listen to what
their complaints are. So it was a substantially sized department. Let me
guess, 30 people. I spent half an hour to 1 hour with each one of them,
and each one of them said the same thing. He said, I'm OK, but these other
guys are really unhappy with the deed. And, and one at a time, they all
declared their allegiance and also identified the, uh, rebels in the
middle of their own department. And after all those conversations, the
furor died down, uh, things calmed down, and, uh, we went on. There's a, a
story that I'd like you to tell about the Danford Chapel, but Danforth
Chapel had, um, there were people on campus who were. Concerned that this
was a conflict between um education and religion and this is a public
university and we should not be churchy and so on um and so the conflict
went on and bubbled it was in the newspaper and not much happened until
one day I got to campus early and the cross off the top of the Dansworth
chapel was lying on the ground. And one of the students said, the wind
blew it off. And I said God works in one ways His miracles to perform. The
wind will blow it back up by tonight, and the wind blew it back on top of
the chaps. Uh, I went to Vermont to meet with Laddie, and he asked me what
I thought the problems were and what the opportunities were, and I was as
frank as I could be without any idea of what that would mean to him and
then kept out of his way. In fact, he told a wonderful story. Uh, this is
his story, but let me tell it. Uh, he said, when you become president of a
university. Um, it's very easy for your ego to swell. You get to be very
self-important very quickly, he said. He, when he became president of
Vermont, he'd only been there a week, and his son came running upstairs.
He was taking a shower. His son, you got a, you got a phone call. And
Larry said, Take, take the message. He said, No, no, no, it's Time
Magazine, and they, they have to talk to you. So he got dried off and went
to the phone and said this is President. Um, and he said, wondering all
the time which of my faculty has done something worth celebrating or
something worth criminal indictment. And the woman on the phone said, oh,
I'm glad I've got you. We've got a special, uh, offer now and a 3 year
subscription.
And he said,
uh, now, I, I might not have taken the call if I known what it was about,
but, but my ego told me it's Time magazine and they want to talk to
somebody important, so here I am. Um, I, I like the self-effacing part of
that story.
My name is Walter Harris. Uh, I was uh vice provost of the university when
I left the university. Uh, I had a number of different titles over the
course of my time here, but, uh, was vice provost at the time I left. At
about the 4th grade, uh, my family moved to the big city, uh, which was
Selma at the time. Uh, then I went to, uh, finish, uh, elementary school,
intermediate school, and, uh, high school, uh, in Selma. All right, tell
us about the historical events that were happening in Selma. Well, there
were, as you know, some really um uh earth shaking events that were
occurring in Selma uh during the uh during the 60s. Uh and I. have had a
very unique.
Opportunity during those years to to meet uh with uh Doctor King, uh,
because oftentimes I would play for the rallies that they would have in
the city around at various churches, so I got to go to a lot of those uh
activities and would often play for the mass singing, uh, that would take
place uh in those situations. And of course as you know, um, the, the
movement there uh took on a certain uh momentum that was bigger than Selma
uh itself uh that is that it involved people from all over the country, uh
, going to Selma uh and other areas, participating, uh, in, uh, rallies of
various sorts, uh, uh, in the interest of uh civil rights.
My name is Madeline Wright. And at the time of my retirement from ASU, I
was the academic scheduling manager administrative staff. When you were in
the registrar's office and in charge of records, uh, were there any
interesting stories that, uh, you might tell us about what happened there
? Many, many stories and uh things like athletic eligibility. And uh They
That was complicated. You had to decide, you had to do itemized paperwork
on a students complete history. Uh, before he could play as an athlete.
And uh It was we had a great coach, but one who would wait till the last
minute. Frank Kush called uh secretary called me one night at 5 o'clock
and uh wanted me to clear one of the students for Saturday playing. Well,
that takes a good hour and a half or more to to clear one of the students
, and I said I just can't do it. My husband and I have plans and etc. and
uh. His secretary turned and told Frank what I had said. Well, he had a
pretty good vocal quality and um and he let out a stream of of words that
we won't mention here and uh and he came to the phone then and when he
said Madeline, and I said, Frank, I love you too and
Needless to say, he was pretty handy at convincing you you should do what
he wants to do. So, well into the evening, I finished that up so that his
boy could play. My husband was not happy.
Hi, I'm Colleen Jennings Road, the executive director of Arizona State
University.
And I am here with Clyde Parker, the famous technical director of ASU
Gamage. There was a line between MU and what was then East Hall. So there
was no Hayden library. No, it was Matthew's library, yeah. Where Jerry
Lewis filmed The Nutty Professor. Yes. You're quick and if you watch the
wide screen version of that, you can barely see my left foot exit.
The other funny thing about that, that movie, uh, yeah, well, we, a lot of
us were hired as extras and then everybody and their brothers showed up,
uh. One of the, the opening scenes of the movie or at least uh of the
filming, uh, supposedly the 90 professor
science building and there's billowing out through the window and they
were using, you know, the building, the sciences building cause that's, it
says science. And uh so there's all this smoke billowing out and what does
this shot show a bunch of students running into a.
My name is uh Brent Whiting Brown. And I was an associate professor in the
School of Public Affairs. I was a student here at Arizona State University.
As an undergraduate, that was before my, my graduate days, but, uh, I was
taking a class from Ross Rice. And it was legislative relations, and we
had to write a paper for that class. And so I decided to write it on the
appropriations process. And my brother was in the legislature then. My
brother is Jack Brown. He's still in the legislature. He's a minority
leader in the Senate still, but he's, he's been there 30 years, and he was
on the Appropriations Committee, and so I attended the appropriations
hearings. And one day while I was down there, they kicked everybody out of
the appropriations Committee. That was before the days of the open meeting
law. And, ah, so I stuck around outside to see what was going on and when
they finally broke up an hour or so later, I asked Jack, well, what
happened? And he said, well, he said, Swede Johnson, who is the UFA vice
president, wrote the budgets for the three universities. And I said, well
, where was ASU? he says, and NAU. He says they weren't at the table. And
so I knew that uh that uh at that point in time that ASU was way behind in
terms of influence at the legislature. And little did I know that years
later I would become the lobbyist for the university and help to correct
that. And it was a battle, but uh we did turn the tide and were able to
get some equity with the University of Arizona, but it was not an easy
process. It was long, hard, and uh we had a lot of political battles. The
, the leadership. Of, of the house and the particularly the house, it
always depended upon the University of Arizona. Ah, supporters to, to kind
of bring things to closure and to balance it. And there was a group of, uh
, of people elected from Maricopa County who, ah, Started to take ASU
under their wing. There were people like Tony West and Carl Kanassic. And
the first thing that they took on Was the capital budgets, they always
appropriated more money for the UA for capital budgets than they did for
ASU even though we had more students and we had a greater need because we
were growing faster. And so they took a stand one year and said they would
not support the budget unless there was some equity built in there. And
that started the process of uh the leadership having to pay attention to
ASU and then it kind of mushroomed from there. But it wasn't just the
legislature that it was a big problem. It was the the board of regents
that was so tightly controlled by the UA. And we were way underfunded in
the formulas that they use just for, for teaching. You know, student ratio
, you know, students, uh, 22 to 1, we were way out of balance, and they
were just, you know, so much better funded than we were, and, uh, one year
the regents allowed us to ask for some catch up positions.
And I think that the only reason that the regents did that is that they
didn't think that we could, ah, That we could get that through the
legislature and they allowed us to ask that year and we we did it. We
caught, we had 52 new positions that were not funded at the UFA in the
same ratio. They were catch up. There was new money for ASU. That was the
first time that we really broke down the barriers and started to get some
equity between the two. That was in 1980.
80, I think.